Links
These are links I used in my research for the story, and others I just had around for the hell of it.
Almost all these links were researched at least 3 years ago, but probably 5 years ago, so it's been a long time since I've seen them. Also, I noticed in cataloging these finally that I lost so many good sites to the normal transience of the Internet (I lost all my Cuito Cuanavale pages from both the Cuban and South African POVs; and my Oil Sluts/MPRI article!). Tant pis por moi.
I make no promises about content or anything else related to these sites. I also in no way endorse any of this content; and note that some of it is from the "enemy's" point of view, depending on who you are (and you know who you are). Note that these links cover more than just Angola, but for the most part they will reflect something about the novel.
Angola-ish...
- Portuguese Hunter Company, 1969...and I only just now noticed the irony in the name of this unit in relation to my own Cacadores. (Portuguese; look at pictures anyway)
- Personal POV, from South African Defense Forces
- Interesting intra-Cuban discussion about the SADF boasting about beating up on the poorly trained and equiped FAPLA, issues around fighting in Angola, the weeniness of SADF, etc - ignore the racism (Spanish)
- Link1, Link2 , Offbrand info, blood diamond info, pictures of 1000 words
- Poetry from Agostinho Neto
- Things African, some Angolan info
- Link1, You don't learn Angolan political history without learning about Amilcar Cabral (Portuguese; look anyway)
- Link1, Library of Congress country study
- Factoids
- AllRefer's Angola, Angolan Political Geography
- Location of national parks (Spanish), also there are links to music videos on the site
- Some PHD thesis about Angolan society (Portuguese)
- Pictures in the mid 80's. Note: These are no longer in the original version I saw; may get redirected, not sure why, but at least 4 pics are Rated R (childbirth) (Dutch)
- Human rights links for lawyers; search for "Angola"
- Mail & Guardian article on motherhood
- Discussion forum for Angolans, maybe expats? (Portuguese; check out the ads, videos, promos for Angolan rappers, etc; and I have the lyrics to one of MCK's songs in the novel, check out his poster; and stop looking at the pictures of girls you naughty person you)
- Pix of Angola way back when from the Portuguese POV (Portuguese)
- When this comes back, hopefully you can get info on the Parliament again
- I spent so much time trying to track down trees. So-much-time. (Portuguese)
- For some reason I was looking up planes. I think I was checking out the different things SonAngol owned
- Ahh, is there anything cuter than the young Portuguese soldier? (Portuguese)
- World famous battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Wikipedia POV
- I cannot begin to tell you why I have the Banco Nacional de Angola site. But it does appear in the story, if you know what the outside looks like
- My original Caporroto link disappeared, so I just had to find a substitute. The article is about how Caporroto needs to be a registered mark
- This site is barely alive, but it has a few Benguela pictures (Portuguese)
- Good news for people who love bad news. Type "Angola" in the search
- Chinese bank gives $2B to Angola for totally innocent purposes (Portuguese)
- Made in China in Angola
- More panic about China from highbrow capitalists
- My original Sinopec article croaked, so I followed the Yahoo links and got to similar info
- My original chronology link was way better, but it's gone. This is okay. How about a game of count the ceasefires?
- I have no idea. I think there was some specific article (Portuguese)
- Returnees and the danger of landmines
- Landmines from the Care POV
- Okay, this site is not really for visiting. But if you are the guy who owns the site, please contact me! You used to have a blog when you were in Angola for work, and you had really, really great pictures. I would love to pay to use some of your pics. I think it was vidaemangola.blogdrive.com which I can't seem to properly get.
- Peaceniks in Angola
- I don't remember; cultural studies? (Portugese)
- Did I mention my search for trees? OMG. See the first two links
- Warning: really slow site...but there are the malaria videos
- Link1, For some reason I keep forgetting to come back to this site. I remember getting the violin vs kakocha idea after I looked here (Portuguese)
- More Amilcar Cabral, but maybe from the Portuguese POV, don't remember (Portuguese)
- Cool name, but if I remember I wasn't too happy about the bias; tourist info
- Want to be a tourist? (Portuguese)
- This is where the minor Fatima character's few lines came from: Tracing lost families
- Excerpt from a book, SADF POV
- Washington Post spotlight thingy
- Don't remember, but on the right side are publications for you research types
- 4000 Pictures of Luanda, past and present. If I remember correctly, a lot of the pictures are, ahem, racially homogeneous
- Union of Angolan Writers. One can only hope (Portuguese)
- My original link had stuff about the rapper MCK. But...
- Ministries
- News site (Portuguese)
- My favorite musseque picture, and if you sense something familiar, you should
- Private investment in Angola
- Palm oil
- Article about the siphoning of oil money
- Port agents
- Getting oil from Cabinda
- Pictures; Actual photo names from this site "Miss landmine contest"; also pictures of Soyo in Zaire province (Portugese; but they're pictures!)
- "A respected local firm..."
- Economical integration
- This might be the guy who had that great site, or another guy. Again, would pay for pictures. (Portuguese; but I don't think I ever bothered to read)
- Want oil? Offbrand articles
- Something about baobab's. Obviously I need to reread
- Movie I'd like to see; and hey, hero's an amputee!
- I just saw this on Amazon and added it to my wishlist.
- Tim the mercenary. Plus another clue about where the name "Dulcie November" came from, for those of you who hadn't spotted that one immediately. Extra credit if you figure out "Pik Wousson".
- Plight of journalists
- The UNITA perspective
- US military studies how to do terrorism and insurgency through UNITA
- Water in the musseques
- Slate on how to make money in diamonds
- Wanna see what it looks like when the musseque gets flooded? See Aug 17, Sambizanga Lakes.
- Don't remember. Story translated into English
- Flickr photo set, found while revising story
- This is an old link, and I can't get to the sublinks any more. On the other hand, for a look at how the folks in Cabinda see things, just delete after the last backslash.
South Africa-ish...
- Nelson Mandela bio
- SouthAfrica info
- ANC honor speech to Dos Santos
- Anglo Boer war museum, with fun facts like how Kitchener invented the concentration camp. There used to be pictures, not sure if they're still there
- Baobab facts. I had another one, but it's gone
- Buffalo (32) Battalion POV. Hopefully the links work because my other netcentral.co.uk pages vanished. I actually found this site rather tortuously when I was trying to piece togehter some of the South African invasions into Angola (Hooper, Askari, Moulder, Protea). By the time I'd found it I'd pieced this info together, but, hell, it's here. It's hard to think of 32 as having a veteran's association...
- Somewhere in there is some EO (Executive Outcomes info). I'll have to come back and check
- Part of an Umkhonto We Siswe (MK) story
- More MK
- History links
- English/Afrikaans translation. I'm at a real disadvantage when I don't speak the lingo, and always afraid of falling flat into literal transaltions.
- The famous ANC Kabwe conference, which I weaved into the Dulcie November (September, for those who know) story
- Pro SWAPO South African POV. Get it before Geocities vanishes
- List of dead ANC folks. ANC.ORG.ZA is the kind of site I hope never disappears; the same goes for the people on the opposite side of the conflict, though some may hate to read that. I mean "Angola- Training Accidents"? Amazing. Hopefully someone goes back and adds missing dates. And if I'd found these in time, I could have stolen all sorts of great names. I actually made up names, then found real names that were close somewhere else.
- Used this for maps to explore certain areas
- Absolutely fascinating stuff from the T&R Commission
- Antonio in my story has a line about the revolutionaries turning on themselves. It always happens. This one is fascinating, and I used some of these facts
- I think I was looking up the Mirage here
- SADF POV of Operation Protea. If you've read my novel, you know the bias I adopted. Read the "other side". The stuff on Hooper and Moulder was on Wanadoo.nl and now it's gone.
- SADF POV. It's not just his looks that are nasty, it's the story.
- My link died, but there's a chronology in there somewhere
- Again, link died, so I don't remember what I found here
- This is where "Vukani" came from. The site was less professional back then, and immediately caught me. I was researching Xhosa clothes similar to the ones someone (you know who you are) told me about, and found this site. The traditional wear has gone a little high end, but...
- SADF personal accounts. I'm guessing I looked at a lot of pictures. Site has links to many other sites I looked at, some of which may have vanished (hope not)
- Interesting...sorry, just looking at this again. Chris Hani, who gets a mention in the novel
- Country Studies for SA, looks like a chronology
- Recce POV. Hey, everybody needs a poem.
- Wow, where did this come from? More SADF POV, but it looks like a pretty complete set of links. Some of these open Google Earth. So many more battles than I had originally researched.
- The Hammer Unit from a reporter's POV. Those in the know (not me, to me it was just fascinating) would know more about this
- I don't remember whose POV this is, but by the title, I'm guessing not the SADF
- I was looking up SAAF stuff
- Chris Hani's POV of the MK in the Wankie campaign. It could be the ellipses, but there's a little bit of a personality in the language, which just reminds of old warriors
- Interesting source of publication for MK history and structure
- MK rules
- Ahh: we know where this came up!
- List of publications from the SADF POV
- Vlakplaas. Again, wish I knew
- I think I used Vuyisile Mini's song, or a modified version
- Web ring for people missing the good old days of Total Onslaught (to wit: "Our Once Proud Forces")
- I was probably looking at Xhosa jewelry; can't remember
- Xhosa chronology
Serbia (Yugoslavia)
- Don't remember what I got here since they're fixing their site
- This used to be a fun place to get some seriously biased anti-Muslim/Kosovar stuff. "Kosovo Albanian Islamic terrorist charged" "Foreign spies looking for Mladic"
- Ashamed to say, I couldn't remember the history I needed, so I had to look stuff up. I think I also looked stuff up in some huge "real" encyclopedia, but I don't remember the library or the book. Probably Falls Church, VA Pimmit library.
- Serbian government, also a fun place for views from the "other side" of things. Check out the "Kosovo is Serbia" logo in the middle
Weapons of People Destruction
- The landmine section has the nerve to be under construction, but there was a lot of stuff these Canadians tracked. I lost my Halo Trust link
- I had to look up how units are structured. I have a PDF somewhere of the Cuban structure, and I found an old library $1 giveaway with the Soviet structure
- Covert Action! Pick a country, read what happened
- The Beretta (and pistols in general) became pretty prominent in my story, so I had to know more
- Looking up guns, especially for that Antonio/Adao discussion
- Know your Soviet tanks
- This is such as cool concept, and someone (you know who you are) did something like this in college, so this stuck in my mind
- More Mirage III
- Soviet small arms
- The whole Catarina story came out of looking up this weapon. And the weapon came out of researching Marine Snipers or Navy Seals in one of their promotional videos (Thanks, NetFlix!)
- Military equipment tutorials
- I was looking up the RPG
- And also the RPD
- South African Military Industrial complex; Couldn't begin to tell you what I found here
- Mercenaries
- My link to mercenaries vanished, but it's probably in there somewhere
- There was a really good--and probably really ilegal--site based on that guy from the 80s who wrote a book on Spetsnaz. Unfortunately, this is the only link I have left
- I read some MPRI and Sandline stuff here
- All the interesting SAS stuff was already covered by Andy McNab's books, but I always used multiple sources
- 'Nother secondary Spetsnaz
- Spetsnaz, this may be related to that book, don't remember
- I can't tell what this "terrorist training" thing provided
If any links are broken, please let me know, and I'll clean them up eventually.