Hey, wanna see how a 1960 Soviet comic imagined the year 2017?
You are in luck… pic.twitter.com/LxKXTrgUcJ— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) January 8, 2022
While his American puppet rants about revolution from his Miami dacha, Vladimir Putin nurses his own dreams of vengeance…
Are they still eagerly awaiting the day when they’ll get Alaska back or has reality set in?
— (((Daniel Timm))) (@dtimm53217) January 8, 2022
Putin's favorite band is Lyube, practitioners of gangster/patriotic pop. Their most popular song is "Alaska", which commands America to return it or else.
It also blames Catherine the Great for selling it, despite its happening 70 yrs after her death. Because women, I guess. https://t.co/splJYrgDCp— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) January 8, 2022
Here are some more.
Don't play the fool, America
You're probably bored overseas
Siberia and Alaska are but two coasts
Broads, horses, expanse of the road(Alaska is not near Siberia. This song is as geographically illiterate as it is historically and grammatically)
— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) January 8, 2022
It seems like a bad satire to my American ears, but there’s a certain logic to Lyuba as the Russian version of Toby Keith’s We’ll put a boot in yer ass, it’s the American way...
And here is the original video of the song. The first five seconds really tell you everything you need to know.
The band's lead vocal, Rastorguyev, has never served in the military but has never been seen wearing anything other than faux military garb.https://t.co/jmuCbV3PU3— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) January 8, 2022
Starboard Tack
Putin wants to reassemble the USSR without the fiction of Communism.
The Dangerman
Would Russia settle for just the Palin Family?
Nettoyeur
Now that Putin’s plans and paranoias are resembling those of Stalin’s last demented years , maybe it’s time to trot out the old Evil Empire epithet. Seriously: (1) pretty much any non state media is required to label itself as a “foreign agent”, and lots of these “agents” are detained or under house arrest (2) resident foreigners age 7 and. up will be required to submit to testing for STD, AIDS, COVID, TB….. with required X-rays; (3) the epidemic of people mysteriously falling out of apartment windows continues; (4) Russian soldiers are now occupying parts of three former Soviet republics; (5) Putin is demanding free reign in any neighboring countries he thinks should be part of Russia’s buffer zone; (6) the CSTO, is like its Warsaw Pact predecessor, the only military alliance that specializes in invading its own members. This is huge blow to those of us with ties to Russia of one sort or another, who have been hoping it would continue transition to being a more or less normal country. I learned Russian almost 50 years ago, and used it extensively in my scientific career. I never paid much attention to Ukraine, thinking of it as a quaint Little Russia dependent on Moscow for fuel. Now I am trying to learn a little Ukrainian (which is similar to, but definitely different from, Russian) just out of spite.
Starboard Tack
@The Dangerman: We would deliver.
Starboard Tack
@Nettoyeur: Except for a decade or so after the Soviet Union and a few years after WW1, Russia has only been an absolute monarchy or some type of dictatorship. Not much history of “normal”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Starboard Tack: Putin wants to be Czar of the Russian Empire.
mrmoshpotato
@Starboard Tack:
So fascism instead of communism.
Starboard Tack
@mrmoshpotato: So the plutocrats can thieve in the open.
gene108
@Starboard Tack:
So did the Soviet Union, after the civil war. Ukraine, Poland, and some other places had declared their independence from Russia.
Edit: To be clearer, the USSR wanted to re-establish the borders of Czarist Russia, after the civil war. Ukraine, Poland, and maybe other places declared their independence after the Czar fell.
gene108
It always amazes me how bad we are at thinking about innovation, especially how the 20th century viewed what the 21st century would be like.
The Soviet comic from 1960 about what 2017 will be like is so similar to US ideas of man completely taming nature, and having machines cook for us.
Keith P.
It sounds like a shitty version of “Trans Continental Hustle” by Gogol Bordello.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108:
Someone doesn’t have an air fryer.
opiejeanne
@gene108: We do have machines that cook for us, although we do have to be somewhat involved.
We have rice cookers, slow cookers, instant pots, food processors, and various other “toys”, and microwave ovens have come a long way and are fairly inexpensive.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t have one, but I do have a convection oven which, I’m told, does pretty much the same thing.
opiejeanne
@Keith P.: Is it wrong of me that I laughed when I read this post and watched just a little bit of the Russian video?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: I got one for Christmas, best thing since sliced bread.
Captain C
@gene108: The Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, & Lithuania) made it out until 1940 when Stalin marched in under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
oldster
I hope he’s a failed tyrant, and he’s a thoroughly despicable person.
But he did manage to pull off the two biggest intelligence coups in the post-war era:
No foreign meddling that the CIA ever undertook in its heyday was ever anywhere near as profoundly successful as these two black ops. I hope Putin rots in hell, and I hope he starts doing it soon.
Captain C
@opiejeanne: That music sounds like early-80s MTV rock with a disco beat interspersed with a Balkan Muzak band. Then the vocals come in and you add a well-below-replacement-level attempt at Visotsky vocals.
Captain C
@Captain C: Also, IIRC, Georgia made it out briefly (1918-21 or so) before being reconquered by the Red Army.
burnspbesq
In the words of one of the great 20th century American philosophers, “Oh, bruddah.”
Frankensteinbeck
Removed because man, sometimes I just ain’t feelin’ public debate.
Baud
Wait, so we’re not open to giving Alaska back to Russia?
JWR
Two good interviews from Sunday morn. Both guests talked about Jan 6 and it’s implications going forward. Good stuff. And it’s nice that, since leaving KPFK, the interviews are no longer bound to the one hour limit. w00t!
p.a.
Holy shite! That was TFG’s plan: give Alaska to Putin, buy Greenland to, I guess in his ‘mind’, keep a supply of ice in our possession.
NotMax
“I can see Alaska from my dacha.”
//
Ten Bears
Great artwork. What Dangerman said …
sab
@Baud: How would Canadians feel about that?
VOR
@sab: Well, Greenland is formally part of the Kingdom of Denmark so not sure Canada has much role here
ETA: Ah, you meant about Alaska going back to Russia. Yeah, guessing the US is a better neighbor than Russia, at least from a government relations and defense standpoint. Canada would probably prefer the US keep Alaska.
debbie
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Then he should man up and apologize for murdering the Czar and his family. //
Nettoyeur
@Starboard Tack: yup. Naïve to expect anything else. But US blindness vis a vis Yeltsin sure did not help.
phdesmond
U.S. Senate Alaska Lisa Murkowski Republican
December 20, 2002 January 3, 2023
U.S. Senate Alaska Daniel S. Sullivan Republican
January 3, 2015 January 3, 2027
One way to get a Democratic majority in the Senate:
let the Russians annex Alaska!
J R in WV
@oldster:
I hope Putin lives to be a very old man, with many of the diseases old men suffer from, for many years. After suffering from gangrene in his limbs, macular degeneration resulting in blindness, an inability to urinate or achieve an erection, diverticulitis, food allergies, and serious paranoia about everyone around him…
Only THEN he should die, and rot in Hell, forever.