A depressing thread

[kentonio]

http://fumento.com/agent/agent.html

Have fun!

First result on google for "Agent Orange myth"

Looks like he's done a writeup on Gulf War Syndrome too!

Michael Fumento? The same guy who wrote "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics"?

[regexcellent]

Michael Fumento? The same guy who wrote "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics"?

Like I said, first result on google. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that article on AIDS though, not having read it. For all you know, it could be talking about the myth that heterosexual people are just as likely to contract AIDS as homosexual men.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9842495

There, something from the National Institute of Health. That's result four.

Since the late 1970s several epidemiological studies have appeared linking exposure to phenoxy herbicides or chlorophenols to some malignant tumors. Most of these compounds are contaminated with dioxins and dibenzofurans; for example, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is a contaminant of 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T), a component of Agent Orange which was sprayed in Vietnam during the war. The results of some of the epidemiological studies on cancer risks associated with exposure to these compounds have been manipulated and misinterpreted, particularly by the Australian Royal Commission on the Use and Effects of Chemical Agents on Australian Personnel in Vietnam. Furthermore, a book on Australian war history entitled Medicine at War, commissioned by the Federal Government, reiterates several of these misinterpretations, despite available contrary evaluations from Australian and U.S. authorities. These remarkable and confusing circumstances in the scientific process are considered also in the light of the recent classification of TCDD as carcinogenic to humans, Group 1, by a Working Group at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.

You keep forgetting about 2-4-D. It's part of Agent Orange. It's labelled for agricultural use using the same standards as every other chemical for agricultural use. By those standards it is a dangerous chemical and protective equipment should be used when handling it. There are associated health risks and proceedures to follow when exposed. These aren't some fairy tale.

You really are hopeless. Find me a study linking that chemical to Vietnam War vets with cancer and birth defects and I'll believe that Agent Orange caused cancer and birth defects.

If you can demonstrate that people who served in the Vietnam War were harmed by this chemical, and that it's because it was in Agent Orange, then you can demonstrate that Agent Orange actually harmed people in the Vietnam War. Nobody has done that.

My "safe to drink" claim comes from the fact that people in the USAF drank it. It's really not central to my point and your repeated challenge to drink some other chemical that contains a similar active ingredient to Agent Orange doesn't prove anything.

[regexcellent]

Quick wiki demonstrates that Fumento was not denying that heterosexuals get AIDS, but rather that they were the focus of AIDS education media and such, specifically middle class white men and women, who are not at strong risk of HIV in this country.

Fumento is perhaps best known for his epidemiology work, especially infectious disease outbreaks. He argues that the perception of such outbreaks becomes exaggerated or otherwise distorted by those who exploit them to serve various agendas. In November 1987 he published a landmark article, “AIDS: Are Heterosexuals at Risk?” ^[20] in Commentary which in 1990 became the basis of a controversial book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics ^[21] He has written dozens of subsequent pieces since the book.^[22] In Commentary, he challenged the presumption that, as Life magazine’s July 1985 cover declared in bold red letters, “Now No One Is Safe from AIDS.” ^[23] By 1987, the theme had become common. A January U.S. News & World Report cover story declared, "The disease of them is suddenly the disease of us . . . finding fertile growth among heterosexuals." ^[24] A New York Times headline that month read: “AIDS May Dwarf the Plague,” ^[25] citing remarks of then-Secretary of Health and Human Services, Otis R. Bowen, that AIDS could be worse than the “Black Death”, estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population.^[27][28][30] Surgeon General C. Everett Koop made remarks^[31] giving rise to the term “heterosexual AIDS explosion.” Oprah Winfrey told her audience, “Research studies now project that one in five – listen to me, hard to believe – one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years.”^[32]
Fumento challenged that orthodoxy, for which he and even those who wrote about him were condemned and even threatened.^[33][34] He did so by interviewing and citing the work of epidemiologists, including the top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) AIDS epidemiologist, Dr. Harold Jaffe,^[35] who told him, "Those who are suggesting that we are going to see an explosive spread of AIDS in the heterosexual population have to explain why this isn't happening."

Not trying to further derail this thread but kentonio's attemtped source assassination has fallen flat on its face.

[Aeson]

My "safe to drink" claim comes from the fact that people in the USAF drank it. It's really not central to my point and your repeated challenge to drink some other chemical that contains a similar active ingredient to Agent Orange doesn't prove anything.

It's central to your statement I addressed, which was that it was safe to drink and that that is because we aren't herbs.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Ok - some recent reading on AO, and some quotes from those too lazy to open links

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120915a1.html

Heather Bowser, 39, is the daughter of a U.S. soldier exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam during the war. "My father had five bypasses on his heart when he was only 38 years old and at age 40 he developed diabetes. When he was 50, he died of a massive heart attack," Bowser said during the visit.

The notoriously persistent effects of dioxin, which can even sicken the children and grandchildren of those exposed, did not stop with her father; his first two children died in the womb and when Bowser was born, she was 2 months premature and missing her right leg below the knee, several fingers and the big toe on her left foot.
.
After her father died in 1998, Bowser carried on his struggle to seek justice for those exposed. In 2010, she became one of the first second-generation survivors in the U.S. to travel to Vietnam to meet with some of the country's 3 million dioxin victims. Her trip was featured in a Japanese documentary, "Living the Silent Spring," directed by Masako Sakata.

While in Vietnam, Bowser met a young third-generation survivor whose birth defects mirrored her own. "Meeting him really struck home the legacy of these poisons across generations and borders. And on a personal level, it helped me to come to terms with myself," said Bowser.

http://news.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=33053

Writing in the journal PLoS ONE, biologist Michael Skinner and members of his lab say dioxin administered to pregnant rats resulted in a variety of reproductive problems and disease in subsequent generations. The first generation of rats had prostate disease, polycystic ovarian disease and fewer ovarian follicles, the structures that contain eggs. To the surprise of Skinner and his colleagues, the third generation had even more dramatic incidences of ovarian disease and, in males, kidney disease.

"Therefore, it is not just the individuals exposed, but potentially the great-grandchildren that may experience increased adult-onset disease susceptibility,” says Skinner.

[kentonio]

Quick wiki demonstrates that Fumento was not denying that heterosexuals get AIDS, but rather that they were the focus of AIDS education media and such, specifically middle class white men and women, who are not at strong risk of HIV in this country.

Let's see what the CDC have to say..

Heterosexuals accounted for 27% of estimated new HIV infections in 2009 and 28% of people living with HIV infection in 2008.
Since the epidemic began, more than 80,000 persons with AIDS, infected through heterosexual sex, have died, including an estimated 4,434 in 2009.
HIV infections among women are primarily attributed to heterosexual contact or injection drug use. Women accounted for 23% of estimated new HIV infections in 2009 and 25% of those living with HIV infection in 2008.

That's 27% of 1.2 MILLION people btw. Worldwide we're talking about 35 million people. Yes I'd call that an explosive spread.

Not trying to further derail this thread but kentonio's attemtped source assassination has fallen flat on its face.

Sure it has, you losing more people in a year to HIV than you lost in 9/11 is obviously irrelevant, just life those hundreds of thousands of people who bizarrely contracted horrific illnesses and had deformed children after all coincidentally happening to visit the same places in Vietnam and various US bases where the harmless Agent Orange was stored and used.

[molly bloom]

Like I said, first result on google.

Oh my.

[Jon Miller]

Ok - some recent reading on AO, and some quotes from those too lazy to open links

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120915a1.html

Heather Bowser, 39, is the daughter of a U.S. soldier exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam during the war. "My father had five bypasses on his heart when he was only 38 years old and at age 40 he developed diabetes. When he was 50, he died of a massive heart attack," Bowser said during the visit.

The notoriously persistent effects of dioxin, which can even sicken the children and grandchildren of those exposed, did not stop with her father; his first two children died in the womb and when Bowser was born, she was 2 months premature and missing her right leg below the knee, several fingers and the big toe on her left foot.
.
After her father died in 1998, Bowser carried on his struggle to seek justice for those exposed. In 2010, she became one of the first second-generation survivors in the U.S. to travel to Vietnam to meet with some of the country's 3 million dioxin victims. Her trip was featured in a Japanese documentary, "Living the Silent Spring," directed by Masako Sakata.

While in Vietnam, Bowser met a young third-generation survivor whose birth defects mirrored her own. "Meeting him really struck home the legacy of these poisons across generations and borders. And on a personal level, it helped me to come to terms with myself," said Bowser.

http://news.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=33053

Writing in the journal PLoS ONE, biologist Michael Skinner and members of his lab say dioxin administered to pregnant rats resulted in a variety of reproductive problems and disease in subsequent generations. The first generation of rats had prostate disease, polycystic ovarian disease and fewer ovarian follicles, the structures that contain eggs. To the surprise of Skinner and his colleagues, the third generation had even more dramatic incidences of ovarian disease and, in males, kidney disease.

"Therefore, it is not just the individuals exposed, but potentially the great-grandchildren that may experience increased adult-onset disease susceptibility,” says Skinner.

Wow, one of the first times I could imagine a good argument for transfers in perpetuity.

JM

[molly bloom]

External strikes are the only way to carry out a counter-insurgency action. Our failure in Vietnam was due to lack of willingness to engage in attacks outside of South Vietnam; attacks in Cambodia and Laos were severely restricted and President Johnson stupidly believed that the Chinese weren't completely bluffing about starting World War III over North Vietnam if we invaded.

Insurgencies survive by their ability to receive aid and build up their forces outside of the area in which their opponent is willing to attack them. Generally this is done by camping out in adjacent sympathetic countries, or where there is minimal rule of law, and by making it difficult to discern combatant from civilian.

Observe the Malayan Emergency, where British, Australian, New Zealand, and CAF troops were successful in putting down a Communist insurgency due to a lack of ability for that insurgency to resupply, rearm, and regroup in neighboring countries.

Drone attacks are our way of striking at terrorist basis outside of our legal area of authority. Better yet, they never involve any American casualties.

In my view, civilian casualties are totally the fault of the Taliban the terrorists that hide out among civilians. They're the ones putting civilians at risk by using them as human shields, just like Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Therefore, not our fault.

There is one drawback with this post: it is full of crap.

Observe the Malayan Emergency, where British, Australian, New Zealand, and CAF troops were successful in putting down a Communist insurgency due to a lack of ability for that insurgency to resupply, rearm, and regroup in neighboring countries.

By all means, let us observe the Malayan Emergency.

Organised almost entirely by people from a minority group within the Malay States, the Chinese dominated Malayan Communist Party first attempted political pressure in the immediate post-war situation, but failed. They then tried strikes, assassinations carried out by the Min Yuen, and economic/strategic sabotage.

The M.C.P. was outlawed in July of 1948, and along with the Min Yuen and the remnants of Malayan Races Liberation Army (an anti-Japanese army during WWII) they retreated to the jungle.

Their numbers were estimated at between 7 000 and 10 000, and were composed almost entirely (90% or more) of Chinese. Yes, they lacked an external supply source, but they also crucially lacked the support of the rest of Malaya's inhabitants. They were but lightly armed, could not count on the local populace for support and were resented and disliked for the murders and bullying tactics against local Chinese Malays.

The British & Commonwealth forces defeated them by having good relations with various elements with traditional Malayan society, by promising independence and by creating strategic hamlets for the rural Chinese, which were well-run, protected and defended by Commonwealth and local security forces- amongst other things.

The MRLA/guerillas had no choice but to approach the hamlets when they were short of food supplies- meaning a firefight which they were not equipped to win.

By 1954, the leadership of the M.R.L.A. had fled to Indonesia.

The Min Yuen were forced to turn from guerilla warfare to subsistence farming and shifting cultivation, eventually declining in numbers. The M.C.P.'s appeal was limited even further by excesses carried out by the M.R.L.A. and by Malayan independence with an elected government.

By 1957 only the diehards remained, with an estimated 7 000 insurgents dead by the ending of the Emergency, three years later.

Our failure in Vietnam was due to lack of willingness to engage in attacks outside of South Vietnam

So nothing at all to do with backing a dictator from a minority religion, who ran a regime which became a byword for corruption and nepotism ?

Who imprisoned his political opponents in concentration camps ? And by political opponents, I don't mean just Communists.

Nothing to do with failure to win hearts and minds- an estimated 100 000 South Vietnamese defected to the Viet Cong/Viet Minh.

A series of Department of Defense studies and C.I.A. briefings from 1961-1962 indicated that:

...the vast majority of Viet Cong troops are of local (South Vietnamese) origin... little evidence of major supplies from outside sources...

from 'Intervention and Revolution' by R. J. Barnet.

; attacks in Cambodia and Laos were severely restricted

As I recall, the Americans tried to topple the Laos government and install a puppet regime, provoking a civil war.

Great job.

This caused Prince Souvanna Phouma to look to the Russians for military assistance. Again, great job.

As Norodom Sihanouk said:

The best way to make Communists is to put the Americans into a place where there were no Communists before.

But perhaps a U.S. President summed it up best:

I am frankly of the belief that no amount of military assistance in Indo-China can conquer... 'an enemy of the people' which has the sympathy and covert support of the people...

For the United States to intervene unilaterally and to send troops into the most difficult terrain in the world, with the Chinese able to pour in unlimited manpower, would mean that we would face a situation which would be far more difficult than even that we encountered in Korea.

Anyone want to guess the Prez ?

It might also have helped, I suppose, if the U.S. hadn't backed characters like this:

General Vang Pao:

Air America pilots have since admitted that their planes not only transported rice, bullets and weapons, but also sacks of opium grown by the Hmong villages. Smuggled narcotics became a routine cargo transported from Laos and delivered into the corrupt arms of a clique of South Vietnamese generals in Saigon. Vang Pao even set up a heroin laboratory at the secret US CIA base at Long Cheng. The trade helped to fund Vang Pao's army, with the complicity of senior CIA operatives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/22/vang-pao-obituary

I seem to recall somewhere reading that 30 000 or so American troops became addicted to heroin whilst serving in Vietnam. Might there be a 'connection' here, so to speak ?

[molly bloom]

In an example I described earlier, South Africa's Border War, South Africa faced a very hostile media environment and did not have propaganda on its side.

Gosh, I'm surprised, what with the worldwide popularity for racial programmes not entirely dissimilar to those favoured by a certain European nation with a foreign born Chancellor who died in 1945.

Someone out there is going to construe this as a defense of Apartheid so I'd like to pre-emptively say that no, I don't support apartheid or South Africa's domestic race policies pre-1994 at all.

Oh, go on. Be all brave and tough and say you mean me.

By South Africa's 'Border War' I suspect you mean the attacks carried out on neighbouring countries who gave support to the political opponents of the apartheid regime- the same regime which denied the vote to the majority of its population solely on the grounds of their skin colour.

Which killed schoolchildren who didn't want to be forced to learn in Afrikaans.

Which believed so strongly in freedom of speech that it banned Ruth First from publishing ANYTHING. That's right- her signature, a doodle, a shopping list...

Which loved art and culture so much, it banned Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'.

http://www.theliteraturepolice.com/documents/

Which so loved science and rational behaviour, it racially reclassified a white South African as black- because she had Nelson's Syndrome which changed her skin colour.

The most heart-breaking aspect of Rita Hoefling’s story is that it wasn’t just cruelty from anonymous strangers on the street, but also close friends and even family. Her husband, along with her children, left her. Her own mother forbid her from attending her father’s funeral because of potential embarrassment.

Ironically, Rita found solace in the segregated black community. She learned to speak Xhosa. She was befriended by the same people apartheid had kept her from all her life out of fear and ignorance. She was allowed into their homes and their lives.

In 1978, five years after her forced exile from white society, her skin began to lighten. Now, looking like the Caucasian she really was, she tried going back, but that life was gone. Her family had moved on and too much time had passed. She returned to living in Cape Town slums on a meager pension. At 55, she died there of pneumonia.

http://scienceray.com/biology/human-biology/the-true-story-of-a-medical-oddity-and-a-white-woman-who-became-black/

What a country to be proud of.

[regexcellent]

words

Nothing of what you've said contradicts what that source wrote.

Let's do a quick recap of this thread.

First I post on the necessity of preventing terrorists from rearming in neighboring countries, you disagree, and I demolish you on that. Then the thread turns into a general criticism of the Vietnam war, and having completely lost the argument on external strikes, you focus on my statement that Agent Orange didn't cause widespread cancer and birth defects like people claim. I prove you wrong on that and so you attack one of the sources I cite by saying that he wrote another also very controversial paper about AIDS. It then turns out the paper is only controversial because it seems to be saying something utterly ridiculous if you only read the title.

This thread is now about you refusing to give up your liberal orthodoxy in the face of hard facts.

Oh my.

I know, google turns you on. Sorry, I won't be your google buddy cause I don't swing that way.

mostly irrelevant history lesson about Malaysian communists

How does any of the **** that you posted contradict what I wrote?

I said the Malaya Emergency was easily winnable because the terrorists couldn't get aid from neighboring countries and you then post something about how the locals wouldn't help them either. Obviously if the locals won't help them then they need someone non-local to do so.

Thank you for supporting my argument.

[Hauldren Collider]

Hi, I'm molly and I know something about this topic! Excuse me while I pontificate about my IMMENSE KNOWLEDGE about this subject. Oh, you wanted something relevant to the actual discussion at hand? Well too bad! Google doesn't supply that.

[giblets]

So your theory is he googles topics that have nothing to do with the topic at hand and chooses not to google relevant information?

[Hauldren Collider]

No, my theory is that he googles the topic and posts a summary of what he reads, which doesn't actually support or disprove any of the statements made by anyone. It's just pointless background information no one wanted or needed. He just thinks it makes everyone look at him and think "oh, how worldly and smart you are!"

If he doesn't actually google it, that's EVEN WORSE, because it means he's memorized a ton of worthless trivia and is not intelligent enough to actually use it to support an argument.

[kentonio]

First I post on the necessity of preventing terrorists from rearming in neighboring countries, you disagree, and I demolish you on that.

Sure you did.

Then the thread turns into a general criticism of the Vietnam war, and having completely lost the argument on external strikes, you focus on my statement that Agent Orange didn't cause widespread cancer and birth defects like people claim. I prove you wrong on that and so you attack one of the sources I cite by saying that he wrote another also very controversial paper about AIDS. It then turns out the paper is only controversial because it seems to be saying something utterly ridiculous if you only read the title.

You tried to argue the Vietnam war was winnable, you then went into complete crazy man territory with your ridiculous claims about Agent Orange and then it turned out you were actually getting all your nonsense from a nutter who is so influential he had to self publish his own book.

This thread is now about you refusing to give up your liberal orthodoxy in the face of hard facts.

This thread has become two things, a) a testament to just how far down the crazy bunker guy path you've actually fallen and b) a testament to how no matter how insane the **** you spout, your fellow right wing butt chums will still pile in to support you.

It's gone so far past embarrasing now that it's actually hard to find the energy to mock you any more.