And that one sentance has just shown your undeniable lack of knowladge about Mr Hussains rule.

No, it frankly shows your lack of knowledge.

Thanks to Saddam’s rule, Iraq at the end of 70s was one of the more modernized countries in terms of living standards and law in middle east.

Of course! As a kid I was thru it all. Marching with banners ‘With Soviet Union forever!'” and screaming “Long live the Czechoslovak Communist Party!”, getting up at five and standing lines for brown colored Cuban bananas only available twice a year etc. For everything you needed to have contact somewhere, either a friend or someone you have bribed. Getting an appartment, buying a car, getting ketchup or a pair of jeans.

I’m from Latvia (not Latvian though) from what i heard from my mother, father and brothers they basically told me the same things, though the living standards improved with nikita in the late 50 and then went down again in the mid 60s. things changed again though in the 80 at least in Latvia they did. I can testify to that, you could get a lot of western products if you had money without much difficulty exception for cars, getting bananas wasn’t a problem either in fact fruit and vegetables we had plenty , meat and bread on other hand was a problem, especially bread. ( you had better chance in getting coca cola then bread )

Getting an apartment or trying to get a bigger apartment was still same old song.

Interesting. What were the general feelings about the West?

I was still a kid back then I really cant comment on that. I do know that my mother longed to go to western Europe though and as far as myself I really never thought anything about the west.

I could tell you my feelings and other east Europeans i know on what we think about living in the west, i’ve had visited few countries for a quite a period of time and i’ve been living in holland for about 13 years now.

People are born with similar priorities and the commie propaganda was by far not intensive enough to create some brainless west-hating monster-creatures. An average Eastener did not devote a minute in his day to thinking about fighting a war with USA. We were pretty much like today’s Iranians – mostly good people with damn crappy government and political system.. The feelings towards Russians were moderate, at best. An old joke from that time says it clearly:

A Czechslovak fisherman caught a golden fish and as usual, was offered three wishes against its release. He wished three times the same: that Chinese Army invades Czechoslovakia. Golden fish, totally puzzled by this demand asked for reasons for an unusual wish like that. The fisherman answered.. you know, if they invade us three times, six times they need to roll over the goddamn Soviets..

I frankly never seen or heard any anti western propaganda, but there was load of anti Nazi propaganda from movies to history books and lessons.

And as far as feelings towards Soviets, I do know that Latvians and Estonian hate them with a passion, still do actually, the difference now though is that Latvians do it now out in the open.

This is from Russian state television documentary “Udarnaq sila”.It’s like Discovery chanell.Lots of propaganda with some rare footage wich give value.
If anyone want i can post torrent files with most of the series.Later will comment more.Got to work!

Link to those torrent files, please 🙂

Damn Fox news

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/12/AR2007091200408.html

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin dismissed his long-serving prime minister Wednesday and nominated little-known Cabinet official Victor Zubkov to replace him in a surprise move that could put Zubkov in the running to replace Putin next year.

The nomination of Zubkov, who currently oversees the government’s fight against money-laundering, appeared to have caught much of the Russian political elite off-guard.

Putin had been expected to announce in December whom he would back to run for president next year _ and Russia’s two first deputy prime ministers _ former Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and gas giant Gazprom board chairman Dmitry Medvedev _ were widely considered to be the leading contenders.

After dismissing Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov _ triggering the government’s automatic dissolution _ Putin explained the shakeup was required to “prepare the country” for forthcoming elections. Legislative elections are to be held Dec. 2, and presidential elections are expected three months later.

State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov backed the 65-year-old Zubkov’s nomination, saying his “life path and professional activities in various fields undoubtedly allow him to lead the Cabinet of the Russian Federation.”

He said the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, could vote on the nomination as early as Friday.

Zubkov’s position in the Cabinet was relatively obscure; the Financial Monitoring Service he headed is an arm of the Finance Ministry that investigated money-laundering.

Zubkov also served under Putin when the two worked in the city administration of St. Petersburg in the early 1990s. Putin has regularly tapped former colleagues from St. Petersburg to head top posts in the government.

Putin is wildly popular among Russians, having brought stability and relative prosperity after the often chaotic presidency of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. As a result, whoever is nominated for the presidency by Putin is expected to win easily.

Dammit and here i was hoping he would take over Russia and rename himself into Tsar Vladimir the First ::diablo:

OH..IF ONLY THE MIG23 HAD A WESTERN MADE RADAR AND ARMED WITH FRENCH AIR-TO AIR MISSLES…IrAF Mig-21’s shot down IRANIAN f-4′ on few occations..although most kills were by MIG-25’S

Non export version of MIG 23 had a good rader for it’s time.

MIG-23 got a bad rap because of the export versions of MIG-23 ( MiG-23M/MS I believe ) which wher pretty target practice for Israelis.

Why does one hide something? Not to be found by enemy…in this case US. Some planes were flown to Iran and others were hidden under the sand in the desert. Not the best place to hide a plane, if you ask me.

yes I understand that, but why hide it where you can’t get to it very fast and potentially damage it