News / Army of Poland and other kin Slavic countries [39]

Are you talking about the Uhlans below, or some even nicer ones? I saw these before, but they were very rare.


Ah, so even then you were a diplomat.

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The only military toys in "color" that I know were Soviet made, were the Cowboys and Indians. They were licensed from a famous French toy manufacturer. These were made at the Moscow-based "Ogonek" factory.

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News / Army of Poland and other kin Slavic countries [39]

@Torq

Damn. Poles had high quality toy soldiers.

Soviet toy soldiers (that I still had to play with in 90s):

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News / Army of Poland and other kin Slavic countries [39]

Too much to translate, sorry... PRL uniforms by branch of service. 1970s.

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History / Pol-Shorpy Photo Thread [950]


Seems less than two years was enough for them to break his mind. Then in another few months of being in the loony bin, he "died".

Soviet prisons were no picnic. Most Gulag sentences were less than ten years, but it may as well have been 40 in terms of the toll on the health and mind.

History / Pol-Shorpy Photo Thread [950]



Not all was hostile between the USSR and Poland in the 1930s.

Caption on the photo reads:

"The Polish port of Gdynia was visited by a Soviet naval squadron. Soviet sailors also visited Warsaw. In the photo: Commander of Baltic Fleet, Comrade Haller, being greeted at Warsaw Train Station."

I can add a little bit of history, re: Haller...

Lev Mikhailovich Haller - naval officer, from 1932 to 1937 - commander of the Baltic Fleet. In 1947, together with admirals N.G. Kuznetsov and others, was put on trial in a "court of honor" on charges that in 1942-1944 they allegedly handed over to Great Britain and the United States materials on a secret torpedo design, samples of these weapons, maps of two islands, and a map of the southern coast of Kamchatka. The Court of Honor found them guilty and transferred the case to the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. In 1948 he was sentenced to 4 years in prison. At the beginning of 1950 he was placed in the Kazan psychiatric hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he died on July 12.

History / Pol-Shorpy Photo Thread [950]


It only became clear it was a "failure", towards 87-88 and onwards. In 1981 the Soviet Union, could boast of achieving all its goals in Afghanistan. A masterful special operation, had neutralized the previous government with minimal bloodshed. Socialist government was installed across the country, and aid was pouring in.

The CIA and the Arabs only really "turned on" much later.

-----------

Regarding Jaruzelski, in the book from which I was paraphrasing different parts of his biography, everything Kania said is confirmed from the Soviet side. The book is Russian, and to some extent benefits from Soviet archival resources which I am not sure the author of Kania's book had access to.

1981 was the last year before Brezhnev's death. According to the so called "Brezhnev Doctrine", the type of things happening in Poland were to be promptly suppressed. However, Andropov (yes, Lord Voldemort himself), Suslov, and Jaruzelski convinced Brezhnev that it was a terrible idea.

Without the voice of Jaruzelski, some sympathetic members of the Politburo, and his wild gambit whereby he took all the men out of the barracks, Solidarity would have been crushed.

History / Can a nation totally change its characteristics and national character throughout history? [79]


Oh no!


Is there no end to Polish lawlessness?


Being beaten and arrested, is a little bit different than to have your skull crushed by a sledgehammer after witnessing your wife and daughter being raped.

History / Can a nation totally change its characteristics and national character throughout history? [79]


Ahh, so now you think the Russians were very gentlemanly for quietly taking some several thousand officers into the forest and shooting them?

No women, no children. No nailing people to crosses. Just quiet, methodical killing in a basement. Of a people that you fought 20 years before, and who will almost definitely organize to resist you again if you let them live.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Something called Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Have you heard of this?

It's an interesting bit of history, if one has the stomach.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Finally me and you are in agreement.

Off-Topic / Let's talk about shoes [344]

@Alien

I don't think very much about shoes, except like Forrest Gump - about the places they must have taken their owners.

History / Pol-Shorpy Photo Thread [950]

I don't understand these jokes about women not wanting to clean snow or fight wars.

It's normal for a human being to change their mind.

Yesterday, she "wanted it all", today she maybe does not "want it all".

Do you think we should take away their right to vote, and make them second class slaves again?

Their "feminism" movement, yielded some concrete results. Good for them.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


I know what I don't like about all this pro-Israel talk.

Its subcurrent, is that the Jews are just such better stewards of the land.

"They made the desert bloom!"

"They have more start ups than San Francisco."

"They just wanna live in peace, and discuss philosophy."

I don't like this. It's like Germans saying that Silesia is richer, because it was German, or Kaliningrad because it was Koenigsberg. Some German or Englishman could do so much more with the bounty of land in Russia. In other words, Russians are spoiled by land, and don't deserve what they have.

I hate this. If I want to live in an irradiated wasteland, using my outside toilet, and saluting a portrait of Putin every morning - that's my God given right. No Jew, or German, or Japanese is gonna make my dump bloom.

I'm like Shrek. I love my swamp, and I don't want Prince Charming coming and fixing everything up.

Even if it takes Palestinians 10,000 years to live like Jews in 2023, that's their right.

Off-Topic / Let's talk about shoes [344]

@Alien

Do you sell shoes?

Why do you love shoes so much?

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]

Yes, not always cold capitalistic calculus.

Palestine is such an example.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Where the hell do you think the Book of Genesis comes from?

BTW - I hate all religion. Maybe not equally, but the hate is there - in my heart.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]

Really - I don't know why this thread continues to exist, after I posted my Biblical truths.

Who here wants to debate the Book of Genesis? I want to see this bold man.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]

I don't know why, but I do know a little bit of military history in this regard.

When NATO invaded Afghanistan, the Czechs trained to fly jet fighters in Israel, to get accustomed to desert conditions.

Israel provided this opportunity, because the first Israeli pilots were trained in Czechoslovakia.

So there is at least some armament cooperation, that survived the Iron Curtain and everything since.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


They are Arabized, but certainly not just plain Arabs.

When you find the rare pro-Israeli Saudi sheikh (yes, I was surprised too), you can hear some pretty incredibly racist things about Palestinians.

Some Arabs call them things like "Turkoman-Armenian" pigdogs. There is some truth to this, of course, hahahaha.

Probably no place in the world had such an amount of gene flow.

On the other hand, in support of your assertion - the size of the "Palestinian" population of Palestine was significantly smaller in the aftermath of the Islamic Conquest than in preceding Byzantine and Roman periods. The largely Christian population, consisting of numerous different ethnicities, was replaced with a much smaller, Arabized and Islamized one.

I think the way to think about Palestinian origins is as a sort of Macau or Singapore of sorts. An Arab main stratum, then some Greek, Armenian, Turkmen, Mongol, Kurds mixed in, and finally the very ancient lineages.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Wow, really?

No, you're lying.

A people displaced from their homes, want their homes back?

Asking a Palestinian if he wants Israel to exist, is like asking a chicken how it would vote regarding the execution of a fox.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Are there Palestinians that claim to be the real Jews, and that David and Solomon were actually named Ahmed and Mohammad? Do Palestinians claim that Jews lived in the swamps of the Euphrates, when real Palestinians were busy building the Second Temple?

Ukrainians are all about stealing someone else's history, because they don't have any of their own.

Palestinians do not do that.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Yeah, it's just that the opportunities for this were rare to present themselves.

It's what I alluded to with this list:

They stayed there through the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, Crusader, Ottoman, and British occupations.

Too bad Paulina was not around back then to advise them. In retrospect, it's kind of a no brainer. Just petition the Persian Emperor to opt out of the Persian Empire.

@BratwurstBoy

I must go to sleep now, but the bottom line of all my posts is - stop genociding Jews in Europe, and then complaining about their new living conditions in the Middle East.

A German should maybe stay quiet.

History / Pol-Shorpy Photo Thread [950]

@Extraterrestrial

A simple brain, is rarely brilliant. However, a brilliant brain, is often simple.

This is why I like Crow.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Yeah, because they lived there for 3,000+ years. That's a pretty good claim!

They stayed there through the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, Crusader, Ottoman, and British occupations. Somehow they avoided being expelled during this entire period, though their dominant religion had to shift at least three times.

What finally did them in, was when a people called "the Germans" killed 6 million Jews some several thousand kilometers to the north.

It was a good run they had, but as you can see - in life some things are simply out of your control.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Yeah, and the ancestors of modern Jews helped destroy it after it existed for barely more than a century. If modern Jews can claim Israel, then Palestinians can claim Phoenicia.

Learn your Bible, Jesus!

Out of the Kingdom of David and Solomon (which historians say never existed), there emerged two successor kingdoms. The Kingdom of Israel, and the Kingdom of Judah.

The Kingdom of Israel had its capital in Samaria, while the Kingdom of Judah was centered around Jerusalem.

Relations between the Kingdom of Judah and the Kingdom of Israel were so great, that the Kingdom of Judah appealed to the Assyrians for military aid against its neighbor. The Assyrians obliged, and came and promptly destroyed Israel and deported its population. This is the origin of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.

The people that continued to live in what was once the Kingdom of Israel, mostly became known as Samaritans - as in The Good Samaritan. It was "the Good Samaritan", because by that point most Jews viewed Samaritans as slightly worse than dogs.

Oh, the twists of history...

So... there was no Israel between the 8th century BC and 1948. The Israel of the 8th century BC was destroyed in part, by the ancestors of the people claiming the name in the present.

Haha!

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Wow - I like this Poloniusz guy! Actual knowledge of historical facts is rare here in the "Emotion Zone".

Fact - whatever you want to call those people - they have been living there forever.

Even the Bible says, that the Land of Canaan had to be conquered.

In Genesis 12:1:

Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee.

Then in Genesis 15:

In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

19 The land of the Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,

20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims,

21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Doesn't sound like unoccupied real estate. So then maybe we should return Palestine to the Hittites and move on.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]

@Bratwurst Boy

Kurdistan never existed - but you still have Kurds.

Germany appeared yesterday, in historic terms, but everybody knew what a German was long before.

Off-Topic / Has Palestine ever existed? [70]


Genetic testing shows that Palestinians can trace their lineage to Bronze Era Levantine peoples.

When they take the skeleton of some person that lived in Canaan 3,500 years ago - there is a substantial continuity with modern Palestinians.

In other words - Palestinians did not come from outer space. They have always been there, and without a huge period of absence like the Jews.

There are papers that link Palestinians to the ancient Phoenicians. So you could take that as their first state.

Alternatively, you can take administrative units of the Roman Empire, like Syria Palestina.

Palestinians are ancient, it's just like with most other places that fell under the Islamic conquest, their culture and identity has become substantially Arabized.

Blood wise - they are closer to Jews than Moroccans.

History / Can a nation totally change its characteristics and national character throughout history? [79]


Azov IS made up of numerous Nazis. Unfortunately, however, there are very few of them that are descendants of Banderists.

Like I said, the Azov guys are all from Donetsk and Mariupol and nearby areas.

That's one reason they fought to the death in Mariupol. It's their home town. I can't imagine some Mykola from Zakarpatia doing a last stand in Azovstal.

Their origin was as the Ultras of Shakhtar Donetsk. Then, when the war started in 2014, skinheads ended up being the first to voluntary enlist.

History / Can a nation totally change its characteristics and national character throughout history? [79]

@Torq

Banderopithecus Troglodytus and Homo Sapiens Sapiens is not the same thing.

You are correct, UPA were a collection of murderous cowards grown in an Austrian lab called Galicia. They remain cowards and untermenschen to this day.

However, the Ukrainians that could and can fight almost all inevitably came from the Left Bank of the Dnieper. Right now, the hardened core that is resisting us is mostly guys that can only speak Russian and are mostly from Donetsk, Kherson, Odessa, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. The Azov guys, which are the most capable unit Ukraine has - had their home base in Mariupol.

Russian state propaganda is attempting to use this against Ukraine, and in the same way Ukraine is trying to use it against us.

1) Russian Propaganda - "Kiev is using the war to exterminate its Russian population. Recruitment disproportionately happens in the South and East. Western Ukrainians can't be bothered to fight this war until it reaches Lvov. By that time all the Russian speakers will be dead. Stop fighting in this brotherly war."

2) Ukrainian Propaganda - "Ukrainian fascism is a figment of the Russian imagination. Most of the men fighting the Russian army, know no language other than Russian. Yet even so, they feel it is their duty to take up arms against Russia."

So when I say that the only people that can resist Russia are Ukrainians, I really mean that the only people that can resist Russia are other Russians.