Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Topics - Admiral Donutz

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6
1
Today it's 65 years ago that Japan surrendered. On this day my memories go to my grandmother and late grandfather in the first place and what them and their families experienced while being locked away in camps. I think about how awefull mankind can be, and how good people can be. My thoughts go to my family and how much I love them, my thoughts think of love, hate, horror, drama and hope.

 :(

2
My grandmother has some old jar but she doesn't know what the symbols on it mean. I figured it could be the three well know lines of "Luck", "Happiness" and "Good health" but that doesn't seem to be it? So anyone could tell me what they mean?

Pic 1 "7447":

Pic 2 "7448":

Pic 3 "7449":
.

The story behind the jar:
My grandmother moved to Indonesia ("Dutch Indies") in the mid 1930's as a 9 year old kid. As we all know , war broke out.  Father, serving for the Royal Navy (Dutch) had his submarine sank and he ended up in aPOW camp in Japan (forced labour in some mines). My Grandmother and her family (mother and sister) ended up in a women's camp on the other side of Java. I don't think I need to explain the... less then pleasant circumstances regarding labour, punishment and such...  Eventually the war was over, the three of them decided to stick around rather then try to head home, they had no clue were they were. Later on they heared plenty of people who tried to head home met an early death. After taking fire from the local population (people shooting their rifles into he camp) they eventually got releaved by the allies. Were set on transport and eventually got a shelter in some abandoned upperclass houses. The Japs left them. Obviously the houses got plundered by the time the family found shelter there. My grandmother (19) and her younger sister went to look around for useful items (not fully realizing the dangers of doing so.. two teenage girls in an aea that could potentially be hostile...). They found a handful of items such as a silverware plate, a stool and two jars. A blue one and a green one with chinese characters.

They took chose jars and other items back to the house they stayed in. A few weeks later they got a message from dad, who was now in Australia, that they had to be ready to  fly out to Oz the next day on a militiary transport. Couldn't take anything with them (not that they had anything left to begin with). Some friends offered to watch over their belongings and they would try to take them back to the Netherlands. THey stored them in some simple basked and headed to Oz the next day. The family got reunited and several months later they set sale to the Netherlands (ss Soerabaja/Surabaya). Eventually they met up with those friends from Indonesia again, they gave the basket (which grandmother had forgotten all about she said) to them again. Grandma's mother gave the jars away to (two different) family members.  One jar was lost in the Waternoodsramp of 1953 (when Zeeland got flooded by levy/dike failure during storms). . The green jar remained in the possession of an aunt. After this aunt passed on, grandmother explained the story behind the jar to her uncle and asked if she could have or buy the jar, but he had to "think about it".  As you may guess, this effectively meant that the jar remained in his possesion and later was passed on to his son. She wrote him (her nephew) a letter, once more explaining the story. She never got a reply. About a year later she stumbled across two jars on a market with second hand items.  A blue one and a green one, exactly the same ones (or so she is convinced atleast) as the two from Indonesia. So she bought them, gave the blue one to her sister an kept this one herself.

Edit: D'oh, where are my manners? Completely forgot to thank you people for any help in advance... :)

3
Off-Topic / Deaths as Israeli forces storm Gaza aid ship
« on: 31-05-2010, 11:05:45 »
Quote
Deaths as Israeli forces storm Gaza aid ship

More than 10 people have been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army says.

Armed forces boarded the largest vessel overnight, clashing with some of the 500 people on board.
It happened about 40 miles (64 km) out to sea, in international waters.
Israel says its soldiers were shot at and attacked with weapons; the activists say Israeli troops came on board shooting.
The European Union has called for an inquiry to establish what happened.

'Guns and knives'
The six-ship flotilla, carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid, left the coast of Cyprus on Sunday and had been due to arrive in Gaza on Monday.
Israel says its soldiers boarded the lead ship in the early hours but were attacked with axes, knives, bars and at least two guns.
"Unfortunately this group were dead-set on confrontation," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC.

Organisers of the flotilla said at least 30 people were wounded in the incident. Israel says 10 of its soldiers were injured, one seriously.

(...)

He accused the convoy of a "premeditated and outrageous provocation", describing the flotilla as an "armada of hate".
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Israel's actions, saying it had committed a massacre.
Most of the people on board the boats were Turkish.
Turkey said it "strongly condemn[ed] these inhumane practices of Israel", AFP news agency reported.
In Turkey, dozens of protesters tried to storm the Israeli consulate in the Istanbul, while Israeli ambassadors have been summoned to the Turkish, Greek and Spanish foreign ministries to explain what happened.

Blockade
Israel had repeatedly said it would stop the boats, calling the campaign a "provocation intended to delegitimise Israel".
Israel and Egypt tightened a blockade of Gaza after the Islamist movement Hamas took power there in 2007.
Israel says it allows about 15,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid into Gaza every week.
But the United Nations says this is less than a quarter of what is needed.
The incident comes a day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington after one of the most strained periods in US-Israeli relations in years.
Source: BBC News - Deaths as Israeli forces storm Gaza aid ship

Seems like the situation escalated, to say the least, because the ships would't stop.  If the cargo has been checked and only contains aid material, then I don't see why they wouldn't let the aid reach palestinian controlled land. Such blockades don't exactly encourage to come to a concensus, if anything it polarizes the parties involved...

4
Off-Topic / Dutch (and Belgian) parliamentary elections
« on: 30-05-2010, 11:05:20 »
With the elections being on June 9th, the parties started their election campaigns about 1-2 weeks ago.   Parties are starting to spread their propaganda now, the first television and radio debates were last week and more are comming up. So it's full gear for all politcal parties to convince people to vote on them.

______________________________________________________________________
A quick summary of the Dutch politcal parties:
The Dutch politcal parties
 
 The Dutch have the following left(ish) parties:
- PvdA = Partij van de Arbeid (Party of [the] Labour), center left.
- SP = Socialistische Partij (Socialist Party), left.
- GL = Groen Links (Green Left), left.
- PvdD =  Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the animals), left.
 
 The following are conservative (and not uncommonly labeled as rightish):
- CDA = Christen Democratisch Appèl (Christian Democrat Party/Allience), a bit conservative a bit liberal
- CU = Christen Unie (Christian Union), a more conservative party, also a bit more social (due to the social aspect of the bible)
- SGP = Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij  (Polical Calvinists Party), a very orthox/conservative party.
 
 The following parties are liberal (following the ideology of liberalism, often labeled as rightish):
- D66 = Democraten '66 (Democrats '66) centrist/somewhat-liberal, it ain't extremely (economically) liberal orientated neither very social orientated.
- VVD = Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (PeoplesParty for Freedom and Democracy), liberal party (socially but especially economically), favours coporations so to say.
 
 And the two "populist party's are also seen as liberal, and the political leaders actually left the liberal VVD party:
- PVV = Partij Voor de Vrijheid (Party for [the] Freedom), individualist populist party, let by Geert Wilders.
- ToN = Trots op Nederland (Proud of the Netherlands), an other individualist  populist party.

(Bit outdated, 2006, compass):


And then there are a few new and minor parties such as "Lijst 1" and I believe the Pirate Party is also running.. haven't heard much about those yet though...  It seems rather unlikely that they will win any seats.

And no, we don't have any silly First Past The Post systems, it's simple a representative vote to devide the 150 lower house seats.
________________________________________________________________________________

What have polls shown so far during the past weeks?

Just after the goverment stepped down, and during the municipal elections surveys indicated a the CDA to be head, closely followed by the PvdA and PVV.   Though things appear to have dramatically in the course of 4-5 weeks. It took me by suprise for sure. Just before my holiday in mid March, Geert Wilder's PVV party seemed to take 1st or 2nd place in surveys, but after I came back they lost a lot of support in favour of the liberal VVD.

Surveys:
Current polls predicts the following amount of seats:

VVD  (Conservative Liberals): 38 - 36 - 36
PvdA (Labour, SocialDem): 29 - 32 - 29
CDA (ChristianDemocrats): 25 - 20 - 25
PVV (Populist NationalConservative): 17 - 19 - 17
D66 (centrist/socialliberal): 9 - 12 - 9
SP (DemocraticSocialists): 10 - 9 - 11
GL (Greenparty): 11 - 9 - 11
CU (ChristianCons): 7 - 9 - 8
SGP (ChristianCons): 2 - 2 - 2
PvdD (Animalparty): 2 - 1  - 2
ToN (populist ConservativeLiberal): 0 - 1  - 0
Others (Pirate Party, Lijst 17, Human&Spirit party, ...): 0 - 0  - 0

Sources: Synovate, TNS Nipo and Peil/deHond, respectively.

The reason? In February-March the main topic was intergration and safety. But now the main topic became economics (the whole deal with the euro, publication of the research into the banking crisis etc.). Wilders and his PVV ruled supreme in the intergration and safety debate but he's much weaker when it comes to economics. The VVD however has constistently hammered on fixing the economy, creating jobs and making the goverment more efficient (laying off  X goverment workers to safe money).

Possible coalitions: VVD+CDA+PVV, VVD+CDA+D66, VVD+PvdA+D66(+GL).
A leftish coalition (PvdA+SP+GL+D66) seems rather unlikely. So we may see a centrist (centre left, centrist, centre right) as usual, or a rightwing coalition. A right winged coalition with PVV would also be tricky due some majot disagreements between PVV on one side and the VVD and CDA on the other, mainly about intergration and the age of retirment. In additional several prominent (ex) party members have threatend to resign their membership of either the CDA or VVD party.

6
Bug Reporting / MOVED: pak35 static
« on: 30-04-2010, 17:04:32 »

11
Tactics & Tutorials / FH training videos
« on: 30-04-2010, 16:04:20 »
An absolute must see if you're new to FH2, these are the official FH2 training videos which will explain some essential basics!

Basic Training: Introduction
Basic Training: Weapon Familiarisation and Infantry Training
Basic Training: Vehicle Usage and Armoured Combat
Basic Training: Command and Tactics

12
Off-Topic / Dutch coalition goverment collapses
« on: 20-02-2010, 15:02:41 »
I was considering making a thread about Uruzghan and the Dutch troops there and what the Dutch politics should decide/do but last night the goverment coalition of center right wing conservative CDA ("Christen Democratisch Appèl" or Christian Democrat Party), centrist left wing PvdA ("partij van de Arbeid" or Party of Labour) and centrist right wing conservative CU ("Christen Unie" or Christian Union) discontinued their coalition. The coalition has fallen.

So what was the problem? Let's see what happend recently:
Well over the past weeks and months there were some major difficulties. Debates about raising the retirement (and thus retirement pensions) from 65 to 67 were a sensitive topic.

And more recently, at the start of this year, a commision looked into the topic of Iraq. This commision pointed out several flaws, problems and issues (such as "Minister President Balkenende (CDA) did not show any leadership in regards to this topic" ,  "The goverment coalition did not properly inform the parliament" , "The goverment supported a war on conditions -Findiing WMDs-  that were proven false" and the goverments vision on Iraq (to support the war or not) for a large part was decided in a 1 hour brainstorm session between several ministers and goverment officials".  In short, a pretty harsh set of conclusions.  Miniser-president Jan-Peter Balkenende gave a press conference which basically  set that the goverment coalition did not share the conclusions of this report and that it does not regret it's actions. This pissed of the PvdA, who said that the minister-president did NOT speak for the PvdA and thus also not in name of the coalition (as usually parties in a coalition come together and work out a shared view/vision/agreement and then make this public at the official view of the goverment coalition).  They demanded that Jan-peter would give a new press conference in which he would retract his previous statements and make a new one. Tentions rised, the coalition was said to be inches away of crashing and tumblign over the edge. After over a week of back chamber debates over this sensitive issue, finally a new statement was made in the form of a letter that was essenstially a major compromise, using language that neither outright reject, nor outright supported the conclusions of the Iraq report. Something along the lines of "With the knowledge we have know we may have acted differently, but with made the decisions on Iraq qith the knowledge we had back then". 

The past week: Aghanistan is the dominant topic
:

Then came Aghanistan, the NATO sent a letter to the coalition goverment, requesting the Dutch to extend their troop deployement for one additional year. These type of official requests aren't sent before the NATO knows that , unofficially, that the country in question will accept the request. Apparantly the NATO thought that the Dutch would accept this request, the Dutch goverment apparantly gave the impression it would accept: Various officials had a meeting, including the minister of foreign affairs (a CDA guy). The PvdA leader (Bos, minister of finance in this goverment) was not at this meeting though the CDA said he was aware of it taking place. Towards the end of the day Bos heard that these officials agreed to consider a one year extention of the Aghanistan (Uruzghan) mission and was not amused, as the PvdA's vision ever since the elections was "We will pull out in 2010 no matter what". So he contacted either/both the minister of foreign affairs and the minister president (both CDA members)  to let them know that the PvdA was not amused and would not accept an extention. Two days later the official NATO request came in and then the blame game and finger poiting started.

The PvdA openly critized the CDA, especially the minister of foreign affairs. The pvdA and CDA ministers started to oublically show their disagreement. The PvdA stuck to the "we always said we would never agree to an extention, the CDA should know and did know/realize this" and the CDA said that the PvdA should me stubborn and cancel a mission that finally seems to start getting some results (the Dutch approach starting to pay off and becoming less of a war/fight mission and more of a rebuild and training mission, the latter always was the official intend of the Dutch coalitions, past and present) and that the PvdA knew about this meeting the minister of foreign affairs had and shouldn't say they didn't know and were suprised and offended by it's outcome.

So the CDA and PvdA tried to seek out a solution. The CDA insisted on staying in Uruzghan and that this option should remain open, the Christian Union (minor coalition party) wanted to pull out but agreed to keep the option open, and the PvdA wanted to pull out and therefor not even keep this option open (a simple "No, we either pull out or consider deploying rebuilding and training forces elsewhere in Afghanistan, any place were our troops won't have to engage into any combat"). No compromise or agreement could be reached, no party would give an inch and thus the PvdA pulled the plug and stepped out of the coalition.

What does this mean?
For the goverment this means that they will resign, Minister-President Balkenende will contact the Queen ASAP (she's in Austria on holiday right now) and officially offer the goverments resignation (which she then will accept, no royal has ever declined a resignation as this would eb quite pointless and silly). The goverment will become The current coalition (ministers and such) become "demissionair" (from the word "demissie" or "dismissal")  meaning it's a in a state of dismissal, an outgoing coalition. The parliament won't be allowed to vote on controversial issues anymore and set out new elections to be held 3 months or more from now.

Right now the local township elections are comming up (March 3rd), these were already affected by the national goverment but the national political status may become more dominant (regardless of the fact that these are local elections and that national politics/politicians has nothing to do with local issues). We will probably see the campaiging transfer fluently from local into national elections. 

Several parties are kinda popular, this being the left wing SP (Socialistische Partijor Socialist Party), centrist D66 (Democraten '66 or Democrats '66, left leaning on social issues, right leaning [liberalism] on economic and politcal items) and righ wing PVV (Partij van de Vrijheid, Party of Freedom, run by Geert Wilders). So we may either see a centrum left coalition come into power, consiting of SP (Socialst party), PvdA(Party of Labour), GroenLinks (GreenLeft) and D66 (Democrats '66). Or, more likely, a right wing coalition of CDA (Christian Democrats), VVD ("Volksparty voor Vrijheid en Democratie"  or Peoplesparty for  Freedom and Democracy, a liberal(ism) party)  and PVV (Party of Freedom).

So what about Uruzgan / Afghanistan?
As I said, any controversial topics (any bill that does not have a large majority support and will almost unanimously be accepted by parliament) will be put  "in the fridge", on hold, for the new parliament to vote on.  It is likely that the new parliament will decide to redraw from Afghanistan as planned. The current mission ends at midnight of July 31st 2010, after which a redrawl will start, all troops will have to be out before January 1st 2011.  Though if the new pailiament takes seat around the summer (with elections in June this could be possible) they may decide to support the Afghanistan mission in some other form such as a partial withdrawl and focussing more on rebuilding and training as promised three years ago (and with was much more of a combat mission then any party really ever intended or forsaw).  Ofcourse there are concners about what the world (NATO, EU nations, USA, ...) may think of us.   It's likely that the NATO and USA won't be amused even though the Dutch feel like they made a fair contribution for such a small country (having said an example which currently is being copied by others in Afghanistan, pushing our armed forces to the limit) and that perhaps we will have to take a back seat again like other smaller "less important" nations, not being invited for the G20 summit and so on.

How about me? my opinion?
I'm split. I lack the knowledge to establish what would be the most wise approach in Afghanistan. How much of a difference could we make in Afghanistan in one more year in either Uruzgan or elsewhere? I don't want to let our progress go to waste, but if our results will be lost whether we pull out now or next year, what use would it be? I'd like to see our results paying of, which possibly would mean that NATO would have to stay for several more years to gradually train and setup Afghan authorities (police and army).  We have done a lot already overthere, we already extended our troop deployement once and made quite clear that this was quite a burden and controversial topic from the very start so the international community should not be displeased with us.

As for the political side: I'm not suprised. Politcally it made sense to pull the plug. During the elections the CDA has accused the PvdA of flip flopping, following popular opinion rather then sticking to it's vision/opinion/program.  This may have costed the PvdA voters (who went to the Socialist Party instead), the PvdA has "watered down the wine" several times in the past three years already and for them it made sense to draw a line and refuse to make many more compromises, especially over such sensitive issues such as a topic that gradually has lost a large amount of public support and to which the PvdA always had said "no, we will pull out".  Perhaps they could have compromised IF the CDA had made more consessions of it's own AND if the CDA wouldn't have hammered on flip flopping so much.  For the PvdA not to lose (m)any more voters it was time to stick to it's principals, it's party program.

It's kinda funny, although sad that minister-president Balkenende now has all 4 (four) goverment coalitions collapse beneath him. Balkenende I, II and III went down, and now his latest ship, Balkenende IV, sunk aswell. Ouch!

If all these names confuse you, here is the official goverments website on this coalition (may be updated soon though, currently it doesn't state that this goverment coaltion has fallen): Balkenende IV Government - Government.nl

TLDNR? Summary:
Dutch coalition goverment of Christan party and labour party collapses over aditional Uruzgan/afghanistan mission extention after a very tense set of weeks if not months over various issues.

13
General Discussion / MOVED: FH 0.70 problem
« on: 24-11-2009, 17:11:28 »

14
I was just lurking around and decided to look what the status was of TARA. Earlier this year it directed to some page explaining the Aerial archives had moved and had a new owner but now the websie is up again with some photo's.  

http://www.evidenceincamera.co.uk/ (redirects to http://aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/)

Many may remember how this site would have had an online database with thousands of aerial (RAF) photographs but that the site went down pretty much the instant it came online due to heavy traffic. Right now the number of photo's is still limited (atleast when it comes to non UK terrirtory, haven't bothered to look at photo's on Scotland and such).  Let's hope it will grow steadily and stay online this time.

Anyone has a clue when it came back online? Can't be that long...
Edit: Some googling makes me guess it came up just after mid 2009. Some online communities before that time talk about how it's still offline and such but a message on one community site posted on 13-08-2009 reads how it's back up and running again.

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 6