[Modern History] Guns Condoms and Electricity

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Modern History] Guns Condoms and Electricity

«‹›84 »

Punkin Spunkin: Jan 1, 2010

What caused the bottom to fall out on oil prices during that time?

# ? Aug 5, 2022 21:22

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 12, 2024 02:28

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Punkin Spunkin posted:

What caused the bottom to fall out on oil prices during that time?

reaction to the 70s shocks, basically. Those two big spikes are the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the associated oil shocks. By the early 80s, Western economies were consuming less oil because prices were high, industrial economies were contracting from high prices, and the combination of economic contraction and energy conservation led to double-digit declines in oil demand in North America, Europe, and Japan. At the same time there was an increase in global supply because of new non-OPEC oil fields coming online in places like Alaska, Siberia, and the North Sea. So a combination of decreased demand because of high prices in the 70s and increasing supply trying to capitalize on high prices in the 70s led to the initial decline in the early 80s. OPEC responded by continually cutting production to try and maintain artificially high prices, but in 1985 Saudi Arabia stopped this policy and resumed full production, which led to the second enormous rapid drop in prices. As far as I can tell from brief research (this isn't my field), the Saudis did that in part because they were tired of other OPEC countries cheating the quotas and partly because they were worried about losing long-term market share to non-OPEC countries that were investing in new oil sources because prices were high and supplies were low, but also partly because they were a Cold War ally of the US and the US wanted low energy prices to boost its own economy and to hurt the Soviets.

vyelkin has issued a correction as of 21:47 on Aug 5, 2022

# ? Aug 5, 2022 21:45

CoolCab: Apr 17, 2005; glem

it is straight up crazy how much the 70s energy crises impacted the world and how we learned absolutely nothing from it.

# ? Aug 5, 2022 21:53

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

there�s also the collapse and restoration of the dollars value between 1971 and 1983 contributing to the oil price shifts

# ? Aug 5, 2022 21:53

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

vyelkin posted:

reaction to the 70s shocks, basically. Those two big spikes are the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the associated oil shocks. By the early 80s, Western economies were consuming less oil because prices were high, industrial economies were contracting from high prices, and the combination of economic contraction and energy conservation led to double-digit declines in oil demand in North America, Europe, and Japan. At the same time there was an increase in global supply because of new non-OPEC oil fields coming online in places like Alaska, Siberia, and the North Sea. So a combination of decreased demand because of high prices in the 70s and increasing supply trying to capitalize on high prices in the 70s led to the initial decline in the early 80s. OPEC responded by continually cutting production to try and maintain artificially high prices, but in 1985 Saudi Arabia stopped this policy and resumed full production, which led to the second enormous rapid drop in prices. As far as I can tell from brief research (this isn't my field), the Saudis did that in part because they were tired of other OPEC countries cheating the quotas and partly because they were worried about losing long-term market share to non-OPEC countries that were investing in new oil sources because prices were high and supplies were low, but also partly because they were a Cold War ally of the US and the US wanted low energy prices to boost its own economy and to hurt the Soviets.

I'd add that apparently peak (per capita) oil production hit during the 70s too, which would presumably exacerbate the issues you already mentioned to make the price shoot up, causing the resulting drop to be even harsher.

# ? Aug 5, 2022 22:02

Weka: May 5, 2019; Can't post for 4 hours!

Calico Heart posted:

Any more info/link on this?

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65467/short-strange-life-mcdonalds-pizza

# ? Aug 6, 2022 07:49

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/gumby4christ/status/1555922303929786369?t=TPsDXH5z-73gP3iyImpuOw&s=19

Extremely yikes

# ? Aug 6, 2022 16:54

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

quote:

Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros, 10,000 Nama and an unknown number of San died in the genocide. The first phase of the genocide was characterised by widespread death from starvation and dehydration, due to the prevention of the Herero from leaving the Namib desert by German forces. Once defeated, thousands of Hereros and Namas were imprisoned in concentration camps, where the majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion

quote:

On 2 October, Trotha issued a warning to the Herero:

I, the great general of the German soldiers, send this letter to the Herero. The Herero are German subjects no longer. They have killed, stolen, cut off the ears and other parts of the body of wounded soldiers, and now are too cowardly to want to fight any longer. I announce to the people that whoever hands me one of the chiefs shall receive 1,000 marks, and 5,000 marks for Samuel Maherero. The Herero nation must now leave the country. If it refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the 'long tube' [cannon]. Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children. I shall give the order to drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words to the Herero people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maji_Maji_Rebellion

quote:

The Maji Maji Rebellion (German: Maji-Maji-Aufstand, Swahili: Vita vya Maji Maji), was an armed rebellion of Islamic and animist Africans against German colonial rule in German East Africa (modern-day Tanzania). The war was triggered by German Colonial policies designed to force the indigenous population to grow cotton for export. The war lasted from 1905 to 1907, during which 75,000 to 300,000 died, overwhelmingly from famine

a force for good where development was encouraged and native governance flourished

Cerebral Bore has issued a correction as of 17:21 on Aug 6, 2022

# ? Aug 6, 2022 17:03

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:37

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

that's the most facebook meme i've ever read

# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:39

HootTheOwl: May 13, 2012; Hootin and shootin

God's very own glowstick caused the wounded soldiers to rave so hard that they invented the binky. Hence it's militaristic name: The Pacifier.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 04:24

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

I always wonder who will win the international science fair this year.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 12:11

MikeCrotch: Nov 5, 2011; I AM UNJUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF MY SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE RECIPE

YES, IT IS AN INCREDIBLY SIMPLE DISH

NO, IT IS NOT NORMAL TO USE A PEPPERAMI INSTEAD OF MINCED MEAT

YES, THERE IS TOO MUCH SALT IN MY RECIPE

NO, I WON'T STOP SHARING IT

more like BOLLOCKnese

Wasn't it just that the cold meant people didn't bleed to death? Seem to remember a similar situation at Eylau in 1807. That battle started because it was so cold that Prussian and French troops started fighting over who would get to sleep in a house and things escalated from there.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 13:10

Radical 90s Wizard: Aug 5, 2008; ~SS-18 burning bright,
Bathe me in your cleansing light~

No dude it was definitely the glowing angel bacteria

# ? Aug 7, 2022 14:05

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

there�s no accounts of angels glow from the records of the battle itself and if one digs into the unfortunate child one discovers his mom probably cooked the whole thing up to promote her own research

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17591840

# ? Aug 7, 2022 16:08

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://mobile.twitter.com/emeriticus/status/1556302676161355776

# ? Aug 7, 2022 17:44

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

well actually it was just a French genocide, they let the Anglos off with a warning

# ? Aug 7, 2022 17:53

Tankbuster: Oct 1, 2021

Poles confirmed black.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:03

Not So Fast: Dec 27, 2007

Tankbuster posted:

Poles confirmed black.

Didn't Haiti forgive a lot of the Polish settlers?

Edit: I'm dumb, they were legionnaires from Napoleon.

Not So Fast has issued a correction as of 18:10 on Aug 7, 2022

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:05

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

StashAugustine posted:

well actually it was just a French genocide, they let the Anglos off with a warning

They also designated Poles as Black in reward for turning on the French.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:05

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

The whole thing is kind of farcical, when you dive into it. Send a bunch of soldiers deeply committed to the idea of national independence, lead by a man of African descent who had personally been racially abused by Napoleon, to quell a slave revolt you claimed was a prisoner revolt. How are they not going to rebel against you or at least become insubordinate?

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:21

Eldoop: Jul 29, 2012; Cheeky? Us?
Why, I never!

The French imposing a regime of brutal racial subjugation on Haiti: Honhonhon oui!! Putain oui!!!

The French having a regime of brutal racial subjugation turned on them: Eh bien ça putain craint. Ce bordel.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 19:17

HootTheOwl: May 13, 2012; Hootin and shootin

Eldoop posted:

The French imposing a regime of brutal racial subjugation on Haiti: Honhonhon oui!! Putain oui!!!

The French having a regime of brutal racial subjugation turned on them: Eh bien ça putain craint. Ce bordel.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 19:34

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://mobile.twitter.com/billscher/status/1556447577800933376

# ? Aug 8, 2022 03:02

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

can anyone make a decent comparative guess as to how gay rights were treated in the united states versus the soviet union in the eighties i tried browsing wiki for it and noted with some suspicion that while the soviet article focuses on legal definitions and number of convictions the american article is about all these social movements as if each of these countries had only one or the other

# ? Aug 8, 2022 06:08

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Some Guy TT posted:

can anyone make a decent comparative guess as to how gay rights were treated in the united states versus the soviet union in the eighties i tried browsing wiki for it and noted with some suspicion that while the soviet article focuses on legal definitions and number of convictions the american article is about all these social movements as if each of these countries had only one or the other

# ? Aug 8, 2022 06:40

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Some Guy TT posted:

can anyone make a decent comparative guess as to how gay rights were treated in the united states versus the soviet union in the eighties i tried browsing wiki for it and noted with some suspicion that while the soviet article focuses on legal definitions and number of convictions the american article is about all these social movements as if each of these countries had only one or the other

Part of this is because of the nature of scholarship on it. Scholarship on LGBTQ+ people in the USSR is harder to do because they basically had no visible social movements to leave behind records to study (for example, the USSR's first queer journal wasn't published until December 1989, which is a huge difference from the US). That means a greater reliance on what records do exist, including much more ubiquitous official records like state newspapers or police records. Whereas for a place with a highly visible gay rights movement, like the US, there's a wealth of material to study.

Dan Healey, the foremost historian of queer Russia, has a chapter in his recent book Russian Homophobia (2017) about life for gay people in Moscow from 1945 to the 2010s. Here are some excerpts that give a sense of what life was like for gay men in the 70s and 80s:

quote:

Not everyone could find private space, and sex in public, which had long played a role in straight and queer intimate life in Moscow, continued to assert itself, particularly for gay men. So too did public courtship and socializing, following traditions established in the late nineteenth century.[26] By the 1970s and 1980s, the principal public meeting places for queer men stretched in an arc around the Kremlin and Red Square, producing a celebrated marshrut or �circuit� for the adventurous.[27] An underground toilet in the Alexander Gardens near the Kremlin Wall and just steps from the busy Lenin Library metro station was a notorious place of assignation. Ten minutes� walk from this public convenience, facilities in GUM department store on Red Square itself, or in the basement of the Central Lenin Museum just off Red Square and directly above the Revolution Square metro, served as the next ports of call. Leaving the museum and crossing Sverdlov Square, one passed a monument of Karl Marx glaring down upon the epicenter of Soviet queerdom: a little garden in front of the Bolshoi Theatre, with its benches facing each other in a circle surrounding a low fountain, forming the northern half of Sverdlov Square. The ensemble was partially shielded from the street by shrubs and gardens. Winter and summer this square � with a plethora of queer nicknames, but commonly known as �the bald patch� or pleshka � was a popular spot for cruising and socializing.[28]

The pleshka as queer site endured from perhaps the 1930s until the late 1990s when renovation, and then the Internet, largely killed it off.[29] That such a visible and central meeting place for queers, in the heart of the capital, lasted so long may seem odd, but the authorities evidently came to tolerate it as a way to monitor a normally secretive minority of non-conformists. Rumors even circulated on the pleshka, evidently attempting to explain the existence of this gathering place, that in the early 1970s, the state had secretly decreed a hiatus in the persecution of homosexuals.[30] Perhaps this was disinformation, circulated by agents provocateurs. Official statistics released later show no decrease in prosecutions.[31] Moreover, the clean-up of Moscow�s streets before the 1980 summer Olympics, which hit the �circuit�s� gay men as well as prostitutes and the homeless, showed that any such tolerance was conditional.[32]

Continuing the �circuit� in its arc around the heart of the capital, following Marx Prospect uphill to KGB headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square, one passed the Children�s World department store and side-streets harboring the Sandunovskie and Central Baths: traditional steam-baths where �[a]s in the toilets, furtive glances and sidelong looks pass between the gay customers, who, having found each other, get acquainted and go elsewhere for consummation.�[33] The busy, well-staffed municipal baths of the capital made 100it impossible for queer men to colonize them as they had before the Revolution.[34] Later in the 1990s, the �circuit� extended even farther around the arc, to Staraya Square, where a monument to tsarist Russian victory over the Turks provides a focal point for gay cruising even today.

The �circuit� of queer spaces surrounding Moscow�s heart did not exhaust the city�s queer possibilities. A major artery running north from Red Square, Gorky Street, ran into Pushkin Square, popular with all types of non-conformists, and Mayakovsky Square, where lesbians sometimes met. Cruising spots could also be found in Gorky Park, on the south-west fringe of the center, and farther afield on Lenin Hills, near Moscow State University.[35] There were numerous public toilets used by queer men, near the Kazan Railway Station, on Trubnaya Square near the old State Circus, in Hermitage Park, and on Gogol Boulevard steps from a monument to the queer nineteenth-century writer Nikolai Gogol.[36] Moreover, late Soviet Man, if he was one of the 15 percent of householders with a private car in 1985, used it for sexual trysts, although cars were still so rare that no notorious queer parking spots developed in Moscow�s suburbs.[37]

...

The sensibilities of the pleshka�s habitu�s merit closer attention than they have received. Some, reflecting the intelligentsia prejudice that held open queerness to be criminal, have tended to associate life on the �circuit� with law-breaking, a lack of education, and the dangers of the Soviet street, dismissing it as hazardous and coarse. They distinguish between intellectual gays who avoided the �circuit�, and working-class queer life on the streets. Intelligent young people supposedly hung around on the �circuit� only as long as it took to find a partner, then they abandoned it for the safety of private spaces.[41] There is much truth in this characterization, given the fear of KGB entrapment, and the violence meted out by homophobic gangs, that pleshka stalwarts evidently encountered. However, all was not fear, degradation, and empty pleasure-seeking, and the division between stay-at-home educated gays, and rough boys who roamed the streets in search of sex, was never so absolute. Observers noted serious attempts among pleshka denizens to create camaraderie (if not �community�) and to puzzle out the meaning of gay existence in Soviet circumstances.[42] The gay �manifestos� of Yury Trifonov (1977) and Evgeny Kharitonov (�Listovka�) lambasted Soviet homophobia, and similar thinking was easy to find on the street.[43] In the early 1970s, the lexicographer Vladimir Kozlovsky interviewed �Mama Vlada,� a man said to be �the chief homosexual of Moscow,� and a member of the �elite� frequenting the pleshka. In a conversation rich with scabrous wordplay, �Mama Vlada� argued bitterly against the persecution Russian homosexuals suffered because they were �nonconformists�:

I don�t understand our loving leaders, who can lock me up and work me over as much as they like, but they will never get me to change. It�s no fault of mine. I was born this way . . . Oh, if only the authorities up there knew how many celebrated names there are in our ranks . . . How many of [us there are among] their own KGB, police officers, people in the government, and People�s Artists, important cultural figures, award-winners in various fields, scientists, painters, poets.[44]

Repeating apologetics familiar to Russians since before 1917, �Mama Vlada� argued that Sigmund Freud discovered �bisexuality� and �was the first to see in the liberation of humanity from sexual prohibitions the path to spiritual liberation and personal development.� Moreover, �we have always existed � and what people there have been in our midst: Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, and Proust . . .� To Kozlovsky, �Mama Vlada� was a �major creator of homosexual folklore and mythology,� and evidently someone who commanded authority on the pleshka.[45]

A growing solidarity was emerging among queers who met in private apartments, in the closely knit circles of trusted friends (kruzhki, singular kruzhok) that were ubiquitous in urban society in these years, not confined to homosexuals alone. (Other designations for such groups were salony, �salons,� and tusovka, �the scene.�) A gay male Russian-speaking U.S. graduate student who lived in Moscow for several months in 1979 noted that �[a] strong sense of camaraderie results from the peculiar situation of Soviet gay people, a loyalty and devotion not only to one�s lover but to one�s circle of friends (kruzhok or salon). Most often, gay people meet other gay people through their friends and acquaintances; this is true, of course, outside Russia, but due to the lack of alternatives, it is much more important in Moscow.�[46] A queer New Left visitor from Boston saw in Soviet loyalty to friends and lovers a positive alternative to Western gay life saturated in pornography, consumerism and promiscuity.[47] Dymov, active in illegal publishing (samizdat), saw parallels and crossovers in the solidarities between political and sexual dissidents. Samizdat relied upon trusted groups to copy (by typewriter) and distribute (by hand) works of banned literature and journalism; he once found himself delivering such material to a gay kruzhok.[48] Gay kruzhki often circulated whatever reading matter about homosexuality they could obtain.

Significantly for the rise of open gay and lesbian activism in Moscow on the threshold of the 1990s, the queer kruzhki of the 1970s�80s developed a sharpening understanding of Soviet homophobia. Virtually all observers commenting on late Soviet gay life mention encounters with charismatic personalities leading their own kruzhki, expounding their pet theories of homosexuality, its persecution and prospects.[49] Soviet queers had an increasingly detailed awareness of how Western gay activism was making an impact on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and a sense of how implausible gay liberation might be in the USSR. Some queer Russians argued that Eastern European people�s democracies were more likely to produce a form of queer activism permissible under socialism. As Sasha, a perceptive engineer from Moscow put it in 1977 when asked if there was any prospect of a Soviet gay movement:

Definitely not for the foreseeable future. First, we do not have the gay subculture that exists in the West, and it is very difficult to develop the idea of a gay identity, and still less a consciousness of our oppression. Second, even if a group solidarity existed, it would be impossible to organize ourselves, given the political repression. The [Soviet] state has this matter well under control, in contrast, say, to the situation in Poland, for example. And just as a movement for democratic socialism has more chance of emerging in Poland than here, I think that a movement for sexual politics will arise first in one of the people�s democracies [rather than here].[50]

Foreign leftist gay activists expressed similar views, even as they made concerted and sometimes daring efforts to establish ties with gay and lesbian �leaders� in Moscow and Leningrad.[51] The opinion of the Russian-speaking U.S. graduate student writing in 1980 was pessimistic:

Soviet society changes with glacial speed; the enormous advances in gay rights during the 1970s in America and western Europe have not begun to happen here, nor are they likely to happen for generations to come. More important, even the small improvements that have occurred are not necessarily permanent. Who knows what will happen after Brezhnev?[52]

...

On the eve of Communism�s collapse, sophisticated and well-prepared Soviet queer voices took advantage of democratic politics to speak out with a fresh, uncompromising frankness about homosexuality in the USSR. The first Soviet gay and lesbian magazine, Tema (The Theme � a common tag for same-sex love), appeared in December 1989, edited by Roman Kalinin (born 1966) and Vladislav Ortanov (1953�2011), assisted by the politically experienced Debrianskaya, who devised a front-organization to support the publication, the Association of Sexual Minorities (ASM). The ASM hosted several Moscow media conferences in 1990�1, well attended by Western journalists and soon by Russian ones too; its first, in February 1990, saw Tema�s associates condemn the persecution of sexual minorities and call for the decriminalization of male homosexuality.[64] Early attempts to develop an organization representing all Soviet lesbians and gays came to nothing, but Tema itself galvanized young activists from across the Soviet Union. They had support from international friends, who invited Kalinin to San Francisco in late 1990 on a speaking and fundraising tour. The diminutive blond made an impression on U.S. audiences, and the funds raised went to support a major international conference of gay and lesbian rights, held in Moscow and Leningrad in summer 1991. In June 1991, Kalinin stood in the elections for Russian president as a candidate for the tiny Libertarian Party, and if his chances of winning were non-existent, the media publicized his demands for an end to gay persecution with a degree of bemused curiosity.[65] Activists around Tema participated in the public agitation that followed the August 1991 attempted coup against Gorbachev. They printed an extra four thousand copies of the magazine, with Boris Yeltsin�s proclamation denouncing the coup, and distributed them to crowds and soldiers in tanks at the Moscow demonstrations.[66] In retrospect, the small band of activists who gave voice to the demands of homosexuals in the last months of Soviet power now appear braver and more successful than many at the time were prepared to concede. While male homosexuality was still illegal, the KGB still threatening gay men, and when the social taboo against coming out publicly as gay or lesbian remained extremely strong, a core of Moscow radicals dared to organize a campaign for queer rights and to publish their demands in the country�s first queer magazine and in the national media.[67]

Decriminalization of gay male sex came soon after, in April 1993, in an omnibus package of laws rushed through the Russian legislature by the Yeltsin administration. The influence of the �first generation� of Russia�s queer activists on the legal change was probably very limited. Instead, Russia�s �shock therapy� reformers were keen to enact as much legislation to comply with Council of Europe human rights standards as quickly as possible.[68] When one considers how cooperation broke down later in 1993 between the president (who had a strong popular mandate after his June 1991 election) and the legislature (a holdover from the Soviet regime, packed with Communists), it seems remarkable that the administration managed to get its way on this controversial measure. Nevertheless the decriminalization of voluntary sodomy between adults was confirmed by legislators in Russia�s first post-Soviet criminal code in 1996�7.[69]

# ? Aug 8, 2022 13:06

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxxxlutsKuI

# ? Aug 9, 2022 00:06

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

Some Guy TT posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxxxlutsKuI

new my little pony holocaust empath just dropped

# ? Aug 9, 2022 03:12

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

what is the socialist version of the man in the high castle

# ? Aug 9, 2022 03:14

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

I watched the Pilot for the television show The Americans recently, and something I saw really gave me pause.

From what I know about the Soviet military, women serving with men were, as a matter of policy at least, untouchable. However, the female protagonist of the show is depicted as having been raped by her CO, and later she is told that he had the right to have his way with any of the recruits.

This gave me pause. What I want to know is whether or not institutional rape would have been permitted in any branch of the Soviet Armed services in the 70s, let alone the KGB. I understand that it very likely happened frequently, whatever the official policy was, but I was under the impression Soviet doctrine took equality between sexes fairly seriously. That a KGB trainer would be permitted to rape his recruits (implying it was something that was broadly permitted) struck me as off from what I know about women serving in the Red Army in WW2.

Is there any good unbiased source I can get on Rape culture in the KGB of that era?

# ? Aug 9, 2022 08:35

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://mobile.twitter.com/AttorneyCrump/status/1557092677551882245

# ? Aug 9, 2022 21:42

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/TayyanEl/status/1552034172335710216

The stuff that the French did to the Algerians is genuinely horrifying.

# ? Aug 9, 2022 22:12

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

Is there a good book about the Soviet war in Afghanistan? How popular were the Mujahedin?

# ? Aug 9, 2022 22:16

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Is there a good book about the Soviet war in Afghanistan?

Try Gregory Feifer's "The Great Gamble"

# ? Aug 9, 2022 22:26

V. Illych L.: Apr 11, 2008; ASK ME ABOUT LUMBER

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/TayyanEl/status/1552034172335710216

this picture does not look like what he's talking about

those poles are very thin and if these are prisoners they're very poorly secured or trussed up in a frankly inexplicable way. the picture looks more like dummies to me

# ? Aug 10, 2022 00:56

Azathoth: Apr 3, 2001

We had this discussion a bit ago and them actually nuking prisoners seems to be an urban legend driven by people seeing that photo and thinking they were real people and not dummies. That isn't to say if something was uncovered tomorrow proving they did it that it would be in any way shocking, just that what is happening there is not what is being claimed.

# ? Aug 10, 2022 01:23

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

V. Illych L. posted:

this picture does not look like what he's talking about

those poles are very thin and if these are prisoners they're very poorly secured or trussed up in a frankly inexplicable way. the picture looks more like dummies to me

They�re dummies, if you look at the comments people link to some sources.

# ? Aug 10, 2022 01:26

birdstrike: Oct 30, 2008; i;m gay

you�d have to be a dummy to stand there waiting to be nuked like that

# ? Aug 10, 2022 13:11

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 12, 2024 02:28

Cuttlefush: Jan 15, 2014; Gleichheit soll gedeihen

they're bicycles

# ? Aug 10, 2022 13:13

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Modern History] Guns Condoms and Electricity

«‹›84 »