Nicolae Ceausescu

...anyone see that documentary last night on RTE 2 on the Decree of 1966, abortion and contraception in Romania?

Very interesting stuff...

Sir Oxman

Damn! I missed that docu and I'm reading up about that despot.
I know he instituted punishments for women/families who didn't produce enough offspring like cutting their rations/fining them etc

An absolute insane tyrant - feted by the West during the Cold War, 'Sir' Nicolae Ceausescu indeed...

bottlerocket

The book "Freakonomics" goes into this in a little detail. A population boom resulted from this policy and it was the youth born as a result who inspired his overthrow. Talk about something coming back to bite you in the ass...

Executive Steve

that makes an awful lot of sense now...

i was in romania for a wedding in july and my girlfriend and i were both puzzled at the peculiar demographics... ridiculous amounts of beautiful women aged between 20 to 32...

our initial hypothesis was that they were the only ones able to survive crossing the streets in bucharest because cars would slow down to look at them making attractiveness a useful evolutionary strategy for survival.

i actually nicked a wee small piece of ceaucescu's palace, have it on a bookshelf as a paperweight... i reckon if i went back once a week to get another piece it would be decades before anyone noticed - that's how big it is... second largest [after the pentagon] building in the world, built across the street from the then romanian parliament - to remind them who was in charge..

go have a look on google earth - it's VAST - took us an hour and a bit to walk around the outside of it.

i'd thoroughly recommend bucharest as a place to visit by the way - sort of what paris might look like if it were in mexico after a limited nuclear conflict.

[cm]tyranny

[cm]tyranny wrote:

go have a look on google earth - it's VAST - took us an hour and a bit to walk around the outside of it.

Have seen it on telly. Pretty incredible thing alright. Ugly as sin though.

[cm]tyranny wrote:

i'd thoroughly recommend bucharest as a place to visit by the way - sort of what paris might look like if it were in mexico after a limited nuclear conflict.

Nice description. The phrase I have heard used for it was 'grim...grim'

Duras

[cm]tyranny wrote:

my girlfriend and i were both puzzled at the peculiar demographics... ridiculous amounts of beautiful women aged between 20 to 32...

That's just terrible!! I hope you recover soon from such an horrifying experience!