• luddybuddy [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Lib content warning: There’s a segment about why we got into Vietnam - smol bean president of South Vietnam was being overrun by communist hordes and asked us pretty please would we just destroy the jungle so he could win?

    The video is great though.

      • Incredible tidbit of information about Agent Orange. Finnish forest capitalist bought it and spread it all over the forests here as it was sold to them as coppice prevention, this went on from the 50s all the way to the 80s.

        As a result there were children that were born without limbs and the forests still haven’t recovered from it.

        An article about it in Finnish here

      • spudnik [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        I had a neighbor growing up who served on a patrol boat during the war. He grew up on a farm and knew all about pesticides, so when he saw the planes flying over spraying he would go down into the hold and breathe through a bandana until they passed. He told 12 yo me that everyone knew exactly how bad it was, that guys would avoid any duty that involved handling it at all, that people would make dark jokes about it etc. If cornfed boomer conscripts can figure it out, there is no reason to believe those responsible didn’t know