[OT] Cr*ppy Belgium

[Puke]

Originally posted by Thermodyne:
Let�s see how much you guys really know.

You know, Thermodyne, I honestly dont know. I know that the US, Russia, and France all export alot, but the items from the US and Russia are probably more big ticket items. I know that France sells alot of missiles, and Fabrique Nationale exports alot of smallarms.

I also know that China is a HUGE arms producer and exporter, and I am pretty sure that the Ukraine is too. I know that ammunition is manufactured in all sorts of odd places, I bought some bulk lots of 7mm Mauser ammo from Columbia, a couple years ago. are you seperating Ammo from Munitions?

Germany and Austria both produce alot of arms, but I dont know how much they actually export. Japan has a very well armed "National Defense Force," but I dont think they are in the business of selling weapons.

I have some spanish swords, but I dont think those count. the UK builds some nice tanks, and their own fare share of smallarms, but again, I dont know how many actually get sold.

honestly, your question is far to specific to test anyones real knowledge of anything, and looking up statistics is not high on my list of things to do right now. but I would be interested in hearing the answer, and whatever conclusions you feel like drawing from that answer.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Sinapus:
A guess. So I was wrong and you do have objections to the manufacture of automobiles? My sincere apologies.

Oooo aren't you clever. You got me. Give yourself a pat on the back. Yes land mines are just like automobiles.

I will now retreat from these politcal threads and go back to the game threads were people are actually friendly.

[Phoenix-D]

"Hmm, yes I see. The atombomb over Nagasaki and Hiroshima didn't kill people, it was the one dropping the bomb who killed people."

You're not following. Civilians tend to stay the hell -away- from warzones when possible, and anyone who is blindly running around one tends to have problems aside from mines.

EDIT: speaking of which, I have to ask again why it's always Hiroshima that pops up? Why not, oh, the firebombing of the other Japanease cities, or the bombings of various European cities?

Once the shooting stops, then you have the problem with the mines. Because unlike other weapons they just sit there.

"(In US many says " it's not guns whoo kill people, people kill people", yeah, five year olds who find's their dad's gun!)"

Total number of deaths in the US:
2,391,399
Deaths by firearms, all causes:
28663

One percent; the majority of people killed were in the 15-29 range for men and 30-44 for women. Not exactly an epidepmic of 5- year olds getting killed.

Phoenix-D

[ February 13, 2003, 22:57: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[minipol]

Originally posted by Sinapus:
Unexploded shells from a past war are still being found in France, IIRC. That past war being the Great War. AKA World War I, or "The War to End all Wars"... (Of course, I could be mistaken and the supply of unexploded shells found in French fields for the past few years might now be solely from the 2nd World War, but I hope someone gets the point.)

France? What about Belgium? We still find almost 200 tons a year of shells both conventional and chemical shells. Imagine. We are 2003 yet our fields are still full of them. And shells are not all we find: guns, bunkers, trenches, shelters, grenades, shoes, bullets and so on.
A friend of mine collects stuff from wwi and he once found a pair of shoes, with the feet still in there (decayed).

Whenever they start a rather big construction in the region of Ypres (where a lot of English soldiers where stationed and full of graveyards), they almost always bump into some forgotten trench or some other find that dates back to WWI. I mean we find a lot more stuff from WWI than we do from WWII. Might be logical because the frontlines didn't move that much here in the 4 years the war Lasted.
Almost every year a farmer dies when plowing his field because of a shell that hits the plow and explodes.
When my wife was little she was playing with small artillery shells that she and her sister had dug up in the backyard of the garden of her grandmother. Unexploded ones. Of course they where too heavy to lift. Imagine that. If they would have exploded, nothing would have been left of her. So in that respect, they might be as leathal as mines.
We even needed to build a special factory to clean up all the bombs and shells.

From WWII what we find most of the time is big bombs that where dropped by planes.
So Belgium is nice but you might want to check where you walk.

[edit for yet another spelling mistake]

[ February 13, 2003, 23:03: Message edited by: minipol ]

[Sinapus]

Originally posted by Puke:
for a while, it was popular to disaprove of cluster bombs, because their submunitions dont always explode, and their paper packaging looks just like the packaging on air-dropped food supplies.

Actually, the packaging is shaped very differently. The color of the so-called identical items was the same. (Finally found an image comparison in one of the US is evil sites.) Either that was a training round, or someone decided to make the submunitions a bright color so they could be easier to find by EOD teams.

Which probably proves the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" cliche.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by DavidG:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Some1:

quote:

---

Re: anti personel mines. How Can anyone defend the production of a weapon that maims 22000 civilians every year?? (and I sure that number includes a ton of children) Sure the problem may be not cleaning them up but frankly I think the world could avoid a lot of problems if those selling weapons cared a little more about how and who would be using them.

Someone was very drunk or naive when writing this.

R.

---

Oh very nice. I offer my 2 cents worth and get accused of being drunk. Got anything less insulting to say?

---

Some1, please don't be so arrogant to assume that you hold absolute truth and anyone that disagrees with you is naive. The only one being naive there is the person that believes they hold absolute truth.

Phoenix-D:

"(In US many says " it's not guns whoo kill people, people kill people", yeah, five year olds who find's their dad's gun!)"

Total number of deaths in the US:
2,391,399
Deaths by firearms, all causes:
28663

One percent; the majority of people killed were in the 15-29 range for men and 30-44 for women. Not exactly an epidepmic of 5- year olds getting killed.

Thanks for backing me up there.

[ February 14, 2003, 00:51: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Puke]

Thank you for the clarification, Sinapus.

[primitive]

Fyron:
Some1 breatched good netiquette with his post. But he has already appologized, and that should end it.

All off us posting in these political threads suffer more or less from the arrogance virus. We should all try to keep that patronizing tone out of our Posts.

EDIT: Oops! I did it again, this is hard.

[ February 14, 2003, 01:32: Message edited by: primitive ]

[Ruatha]

I think the only reason we post in these "political" topics is becourse we are frequent posters here.
We somehow got the impression that we "know" eachother and therefore feel comfortable enough to talk about these things, and not only SE4 things.

I think this is a good thing.

And I think Mines should be Banned in SE4 aswell, those pesky buggers kill most of my ships!

IBSE4MT (International Ban for Space Empires 4 Mines Treaty)

Also, people under the age of 30 shouldn't be allowed to have Phased Beam weapons, they migh harm themself, how about that Fyron and P-D, can you find any statistics?

[ February 14, 2003, 07:29: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[minipol]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
I think this is a good thing.

And I think Mines should be Banned in SE4 aswell, those pesky buggers kill most of my ships!

IBSE4MT (International Ban for Space Empires 4 Mines Treaty)

Also, people under the age of 30 shouldn't be allowed to have Phased Beam weapons, they migh harm themself, how about that Fyron and P-D, can you find any statistics?

Hehehe, good humour