BF2S Forums EE Chats June

rip oli

loooooooooooooooooolllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

gg ted

man i wish bf2 was still as popular as it was 5 yrs ago. gaming sucks now

Games have waves. I thought when Street Fighter II died in popularity that gaming sucked thereafter; same thing again with TF; same thing again with Quake II.

Problem is that the collective we are trying to recreate the same magic that was bf2, doubt it will happen.

Dauntless wrote:

hey why don't you post in eechat lowing

this is like a bat signal

If someone wants to write "wash me" on my truck, I think I should be allowed to carve it into their forehead.

jsnipy wrote:

Dauntless wrote:

hey why don't you post in eechat lowing

this is like a bat signal

LoL
lowing

So when I first built started my Jeep and posted in on SA, practically the whole internet went freaking nuts. In the original SA thread I was contacted by a fellow named Ben Garbe, who had recently won a nerd rap talent contest on another part of SA. His song was about a rapping, time traveling, down-on-his-luck dinosauar scientist - and it was goddamn BRILLIANT. This song immediately went on my first Jeep mix and it's been a prominent fixture ever since. We play that song at least once whenever we're out and about Jeeping around. Anyway, Ben contacts me and asks if I'd ever let him use the Jeep in a music video. For anyone who owns a replica car, this -along with fanfilms- is a fairly common request that usually doesn't go anywhere. The guy making the video or film lives too far away or never follows up on things, anyway that's how it usually goes. So I say "absolutely" and I don't hear from him for a few months. Suddenly in fall of 2008, Ben calls me up and says he is touring with MC Frontalot and will be in Colorado Springs in November, and he'll be visiting family in Castle Rock Lowing. He tells me that he is bringing some camera equipment and would like to shoot pickups with the Jeep. I happily oblige and wait for his arrival.

burnzz wrote:

jsnipy wrote:

Dauntless wrote:

hey why don't you post in eechat lowing

this is like a bat signal

http://goo.gl/QRb6v

LoL
lowing

That's probably Robin casting the silhouette.

I just died in CoD because a centipede was crawling on my foot. Naturally, I had to freak out.
_{Didn't actually freak out, but had a "wtf" and had to look at that instead of my monitor}

Last edited by DesertFox- (2011-06-05 20:42:03)

cya ebugs lowing

The uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 were violently put down. Why did the ‘revolutions of 1989’ not result in similar bloodbaths?
Introduction
    The political and economic liberalizations through Gorbechev's Glasnost and Perestroika policies, in addition with a crippling political and economic power were fundamental to bloodless revolutions of 1989 due to the Soviet Union giving much more autonomy to Eastern Bloc nations (Remington, 1989 P.145). At first the Eastern Bloc was a Soviet asset as the Bloc produced economic surplus for the Soviet Union, hence keeping the Bloc under strict Soviet control was a necessity both politically and economically (Bunce, 1985 P.2), and the Soviet Union had enough economic capacity to fund a military campaign to crush the revolutions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia whilst the collapse of their economy during the 1980s led the Soviet Union acquiescence for the liberation of the Eastern Bloc (Weitman, 1992 P.11).
Hungary 's 1956 Revolution and Czechoslovakia's "Prague Spring" of 1968
    Although the Soviet Union did not carry out military intervention with many eastern bloc nations that challenged Moscow politically (Yugoslavia for example), the Soviet Union saw it necessary to intervene in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia as there were huge political and strategic issues at stake, being that both nations are a buffer to the Soviet Union to any NATO invasion and losing them would become a strategic liability in a possible military conflict (Jones, 1977 P.216).
    Hungary made the first political and economic affront when it broke away from communist ideology as the Prime Minister Nagy attempted to slow down the attempt of collectivization as per standard in a communist economy in order to moved towards a market based economy and he also allowed criticism within the communist party, establishing small steps to political and economic liberalization (R. 1957 P.5). Although both matters were more economic in nature, the Soviet Union saw this as a break away from their core ideology and would encourage dissent amongst bordering nations who were key buffer nations to the Soviet Union (R. 1957 P. 5).
    Hungary was on the stepping stones to becoming a democracy and what began as a protest by students and intellectuals became a full blown revolution as Nagy was fired by the Soviet politburo due to his ideological differences and became the face of the Hungarian revolution (R. 1957 P.12). Due to the massive amount of protests, the Hungarian communist party called the Soviet Union for assistance to keep the peace, but it was backfired as the Hungarian people saw it as an invasion of national sovereignty and Nagy was at the front leading the revolution (R. 1957 P.11). The Soviet intervention in this conflict was to save the current communist regime from being overthrown  from a popular uprising and brutally crushed all those involved including the execution of Nagy (Jones, 1977 P.241).
    Although as stated that the Hungarian revolution was crushed down as a popular uprising against communism, the "Prague Spring" was a series of political and economic reforms led by the Communist Party, in an attempt to "put a face on socialism" (Sharlet, 1978 P. 767). Although many reforms, especially those involving democratization were about to take place, there is a small number of conservative anti-reformist within Czechoslovakia that always relied on the Soviet Politburo for power, and any reform taking place would disrupt the power structure against their favor (Svec, 1988 P.984).
    During the invasion, Soviet troops that were involved heavily relied on the biased and subjective information by anti-reformist loyal "vassals" (Svec, 1988 P.983), thus the Soviet's plans to restructure leadership proved ineffective as they had to free many imprisoned officials  including Prague Spring leader Alexander Dubcek and grant them their official positions back as they failed to establish a proper government in Czechoslovakia, as the Soviet's essentially tore down the core communist party (Svec, 1988 P.986).
    Although the Soviets essentially had military victory, Brezhnev faced huge ideological defeat as the Czech leaders were not opposing communism itself, but merely reforming it to their fitting and the Soviets foolishly relied on military force to solve the reformist issue without looking at it as an attempt to improve communist ideology (Svec, 1988 P.987).  The Brezhnev doctrine does pull the Warsaw Pact into a tighter union with clear goals on oppressing any reforms within the Pact, however the doctrine displays the brute forced that will be used by the Union, establishing that power is the end game, not the ideological importance of communism within the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc (Deli, 2000 P.44).
Glasnost, Perestroika and Regional Autonomy
    After Mikhail Gorbachev stepped in as leader of the USSR after his two predecessors Chernenko and Andropov died from natural causes, he began a series of reforms known as Glasnost which meant "openness" which encouraged transparency in politics, paving way for political liberalization and  Perestoika which meant restricting, dealing with political but mainly economic issues within the Soviet Union (Gidadhubli, 1987 P.784). The main difference between Gorbachev and his predecessors was his openness to new ideas as he is quite a young leader compared to Khrushchev or Brezhnev (Gidadhubli, 1987 P.784).
    The reforms were welcomed by the public especially the removal of "wage leveling" where all workers were paid the same regardless of productivity, however this was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union where trade liberalization was occurred, but more importantly allowing the criticism of the state to exist and be published. Since the USSR openly published criticism through its main newspaper Pravda, satellite states were also allowed to criticize the bloc itself (Remington, 1989 P.148). Before where even a slight shift of communist ideology in the Soviet Union would lead to an overwhelming military confrontation, now under Glasnost and Perestroika it practically encouraged reforms across Eastern Europe (Gidadhubli, 1987 P. 787).
    One major blow to the Soviet Union's economy was the lost of exclusive trade rights to the Eastern Bloc through Perestroika, as the Eastern Bloc nations are allowed to trade with Western capitalist nations, where an influx of quality goods especially those in the manufacturing industry from the West were favored as compared to those made by Soviet industry (Gidadhubli, 1987 P. 785). As the Eastern Bloc is directed further away from the USSR economically, so were they politically  as their dependence on Soviet goods declined, the Soviet Union could not threaten those nations anymore through soft power economic restraints (Bunce, 1985, P.39).
    One of the major results of the Glasnost and Perestroika reforms is the mass autonomy given to the governments in the Eastern Bloc. With this allowance of autonomy for the Eastern Bloc governments, small movements of nationalism and nationalistic pride were restored to the individual nations as a byproduct (Remington, 1989 P.153). Borders slowly began to sprang up in the former Soviet republics as well since citizens of the Soviet Union were allowed to move freely along state borders only  if given by proper authority through Moscow, but now nations such as Estonia are setting up citizenship laws and re-dividing ethic boundaries of whether a person can choose to be Russian or Estonian (Remington, 1989 P.157).
    With less and less commands needed to be given by Moscow on how to run their governments, Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union has paved its own way towards the dissolution (Francisco, 1993 P.668), as the various governments are given the opportunity to run autonomously and relied less economic and political backing from Moscow Europe was once again on the path for clear nationalistic and ethnic division instead of the East and West divide as see during the Cold War (Remington, 1989 P.159).
    The end of Soviet federalism meant that all these authoritarian dictatorships were open to collapse by revolution as the Soviet Union has loosened its grip on its "colonies," and those governments must rely on themselves to keep afloat, however the Glasnost and Perestroika policy allowed journalists to openly criticized flaws of the regimes (Gidadhubli 1987 P.785). By allowing open criticism, open gatherings of political protest were possible and the likelihood of a  bloody repression by Soviet forces seemed unlikeley as autonomy came with a price of losing the backing of the Soviet military in times of revolt (Shonsee and Lederer, 1991 P. 311).
The Revolutions of 1989
    The Revolutions of 1989 was the largest peaceful and non-violent revolution ever to occur throughout Europe (Weitman, 1992 P.11), especially compared to the revolutions attempted by Hungary and Czechoslovakia previously, where it was met and brutally crushed with the overwhelming force of the Soviet military (Franscico, 1993 P.672). As the Eastern Bloc states became more of a liability than an asset to the Soviet Union with their rising debt to the west, for example the GDR's from one billion dollars in 1970 to 12.5 billion dollars in 1981 and Poland's relatively small 0.8 billion dollars to a staggering 27 billion dollars by 1981 (Bunce, 1985 P.39).
    The revolution in the Eastern bloc began in the GDR and the responsibility for the collapse of the GDR government was laid upon mistake of one man. With the Glasnost and Perestroika policy, the East German government allowed its people to move through to West Germany through the newly independent Czechoslovakia, but it attempted to keep mass immigration under control as most skilled East Germans would move to West Germany due to the higher wages (Fawcett, 2010 P.368).
     On November 17th 1989, East Germany Politburo spokesperson Gunter Schabowski (Fawcett, 2010 P.368) held a press conference with the Western media, which also broadcasted to local news stating that East Germany would allow direct crossings to West Germany and plans have been set out and the border guards would be informed of procedures (Kuran 1991 P.23), stating that the open borders plan would be "effective immediately, without delay." As thousands of people lined up at the border and crossing, the East German guards let them pass through as they received the same information as the populace from national TV and the East German government could not close the border after opening them and by July 1, 1990 Germany was reunified once again (Fawcett, 2010 P.368-9).The East German border openings was the most significant as it allowed direct freedom of movement through the "iron curtain," the German Stasi secret police did little to stop the mass migration and thus failed to prevent the revolution in East Germany (Popplewell, 1992 P. 43).
    In addition to regional autonomy, the Polish parliament had an election where the liberal Solidarity movement won most of the seats and controlled the house and Poland had the first non-communist government in the Eastern Bloc and there were mass fears of a Soviet invasion that never happened (Kuran, 1991 P. 32). Only through Gorbachev by allowing reforms in government through Perestroika and Glasnost were governments in the Eastern Bloc open to any reforms at all, or little reforms would occur out of fear that a Soviet military confrontation would occur such as Czechoslovakia or Hungary (Arrigi, et al 1992, 235).
Conclusion
    With a crippling economy, the liberal policies of Glasnost and Perestroika and Eastern Bloc countries becoming more of a cost than a benefit to the Soviet Union, the Revolutions of 1989 were met quite peacefully as compared to the bloody repression set out by the Soviet Army in Hungary and Czechoslovakia (due to both respective nations political and strategically importance). The accidently opening of the East German border was one of the strongest blow to the Soviet Union as hundreds of thousands of skilled East Germans were crossing into West Germany (Fawcett, 2010 P.368), effectively collapsing the GDR's economy. In addition to the regional autonomy and loosening of control from Moscow, the peoples of the Eastern Bloc nations were allowed to run their own country and did not rely on Soviet political and economic support, thus paving way for a peaceful revolution (Kuran, P.20).
 
Reference List
    Arrighi, G., Hopkins, T., Wallerstein., (1992) "1989. the Contiuation of 1968" Review(Fernand Braudel Center) 15(2): 221-242
    Bunce, V., (1985) "The Empire Strikes Back: The Evolution of the Eastern Bloc from a Soviet Asset to a Soviet Liability" The MIT Press 39(1): 1-46
    Deli, P., (2000) "'Esprit' and the Soviet Invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia" Cambridge University Press 9(1): 39-58
    Fawcett, F., (2010) "100 Mistakes that Changed History" Berkley Books 367- 369
    Francisco, R., (1993) "Theories of Protest and the Revolutions of 1989" American Journal of Political Science 37(3): 663-680
    Gidadhubli, R., (1987) "Perestroika and Glasnost" Economic and Political Weekly 22(18): 784-787
    Jones, C., (1977) "Soviet Hegemony in Eastern Europe: The Dynamics of Political Autonomy and Military Intervention" World Politics 29(2): 216-241
    Kuran, T., (1991) " Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989" World Politics 44(1): 7-48
    Popplewell, R., (1992) "The Stasi and the East German Revolution of 1989" Contemporary European History 1(1): 37-63
    R, A., (1957) "The Hungarian Revolution" The World Today 13(1): 3-16
    Remington, T., (1989) " Renegotiating Soviet Federalism: Glasnost' and Regional Autonomy" Oxford University Press 19(3): 145-165
    Schonsee, R. And Lederer, G., (1991) "The Gentle Revolution" Political Psychology 12(2): 309-330
    Sharlet, R., (1978) "Dissent and Repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Changing Patterns since Khrushchev" Canadian International Council 33(4): 763-795
    Svec, M., (1988) "The Prague Spring: 20 Years Later" Foreign Affairs 66(5): 981-1001
    Weitman, S., (1992) "Thinking the Revolutions of 1989" The British Journal of Sociology 43(1): 11-24