History Forum / General / What If / September 2005

Decades of Darkness #123: Holding Out For A Hero
"Duty means doing what a man wants you to do because he wants you to do it."
- Konrad Dahl (Danish writer, philosopher, and psychologist) in "One
Thousand Queries", 1870

What if the Saudis, in a fit of identity politics and national or
ethnoreligious pride overriding balance of power thinking, decided to
ask the US to leave some time between 1991 and 2003 ?
Would the US have responded as it did to France's ouster of NATO? ie,

WI Japan had been able to win peace in World War II through some form
of armistice or truce in 1942? Would the traditional Japanese sports
like kendo, judo and sumo have had non-Japanese competitors, if only
from the conquered lands? I bring this up as a topic of discussion

    This world, most massive of the Earthlike worlds, orbits the
sun at about 1/10th of an AU. This means that it gets about 100x the
solar energy our world does and is accordingly much warmer. How much
warmer isn't just a matter of taking the 4th root of 100, since the

lclough wrote:

This WI is an alternate history theme I've been coming back to now and
again as current event warrant. Please feel free to think freely.
John Freck

I'd just like to begin this post to affirming that Andrew Reeves and I
did _not_ meet at the Yonge-Wellesley Starbucks in downtown Toronto
this Sunday afternoon just past to talk about affairs
alternate-historical. Never happened.

I present to you:
"On the reality show that Vicente Mercator, President of
Mexico, stages at irregular but frequent intervals for the
benefit of his nation, he is the only star. Most Saturdays,

i was amazed to find out recently that it was actually the russians who
reached the moon and venus first, with  probes sent years ahead of the
americans, plus they sent a probe to photograph the dark side of the
moon well ahead of their competitors. I found a topic saying what if

Don Adams, the infamous Maxwell Smart of TV's _Get Smart_, died on 25
September 2005 at the age of 82.  But what if...
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9 November 1956

Persia's woes.
For Persia the late 5th century and the 6th century have hardly been
good and the 7th century hardly starts any better. First had come
crushing defeat at the hands of the Ephthalites also known as the White

Can anyone think of a plausible scenario in which as many African
Americans become Buddhists as have become Mulsims in OTL?  While the
number of African American Buddhists is relatively small, there are
indications that skillful proselytizing can win some blacks over:  "It has

I've recently discovered podcasts (essentially people recording their
thoughts on various things on mp3s) and was wondering if anyone has
made an AH podcast yet.
If not, I'm thinking of doing one myself.  Any thoughts on what would

   IIRC, there was legally free movement across the land borders
between the USA, Canada, and Mexico before about 1920. I'm not sure
what triggered the borders to be legally closed (I'm guessing
Prohibition), but I'm also wondering what effects it would have if they

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Between 1929 through 1973, income inequality greatly decreased in the
United States and then the trend began to reverse.
How could we arrange it so that the rich-poor gap never shrank much in