Fun with Russia

In doing my abnormal tour of news sites not dedicated to which Hollywood wheel did what to whom, or which doer/doee is complaining about Trump doing/not doing them now, I noticed a slightly elevated level of slightly amusing articles on our good friends in Russia.  Thought I'd share my take on a few.


First up, it would seem Putin has stumbled onto a brand new way of "draining the swamp."  Let me share the first part of the BBC article:


Two Russian officials say they were expected to lie down as armoured personnel carriers were driven over them as part of a new training programme for future regional governors.
The two participants in the course, who wished to remain anonymous, told the RBC news portal that they also had to make parachute jumps, throw hand grenades, and fire pistols and automatic weapons.
"Three hopefuls left after the parachute jumps with leg injuries, and another with a bad back," one participant said. "The jumps were designed for guys weighing 60-70 kg, not 100 kg (16 stone)," he said, adding that he couldn't explain what the aim of the exercise was.
The other participant was clearer on this, saying "anyone who hasn't yet been appointed" to a senior post has to take part, in order to develop their "military endurance and readiness for defence".


So this turns out to be a controversial and pretty extensive course, which at first blush makes one wonder if the point isn't to convince old and out of step politicos to retire.  In addition to training at a military base, footage has apparently surfaced of gubernatorial candidates jumping into a waterfall gorge near Sochi, as well as classroom work, guest lecturers and field trips to Malaysia and Singapore for some unexplained reason.  And it isn't exactly something everyone wants to talk about...


RBC approached some of the 40 other officials who allegedly took part in the course, including a number of MPs, but none would confirm their participation and one flatly denied it.


You gotta admit, the thought of putting Pelosi, McCain, Hillary, McConnell, or John Boehner through this is appealing.  But Harry Reid?  Maybe not, seeing's as he "got beat up by a treadmill".  A Union treadmill, no doubt.


The next lovely story comes from my friends in the KHL.  Dinamo Minsk was hosting old rival Spartak on Halloween, and decided to announce a costume contest.  Dress up, post you in your costume at the game to various appropriately hashtagged social media, and have everyone vote on the winner.

Two problems with this idea.  The team passed on the contest to everyone BUT the league and the police that worked the stadium.  AND, they forgot- but the police didn't- this crucial part of league rules:


clothes and other means of concealing the identity, meaning that masks and make-up that make identifying fans difficult are not allowed

Which means anyone whose costuming involved full face paint or a mask got stopped and told to remove the masks or themselves.  Which left us with this winner, with 30% of the vote:

Congrats, I guess...


Third story is an embarrassing, "I gotcha- oops, no I don't" that one might think couldn't happen outside the DNC.  I'll just put up the lead of the story...


Russia's Ministry of Defence has posted what it called "irrefutable proof" of the US aiding so-called Islamic State - but one of the images was actually taken from a video game.
The ministry claimed the image showed an IS convoy leaving a Syrian town last week aided by US forces.
Instead, it came from the smartphone game AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron.
The ministry said an employee had mistakenly attached the photo.
The Conflict Intelligence Team fact-checking group said the other four provided were also errors, taken from a June 2016 video which showed the Iraqi Air Force attacking IS in Iraq.


The response from US- Coalition spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon:


"I certainly can't verify, but I've seen the report that one of the pictures came from a video game. So, again that is pretty consistent with what we have seen come out of Russian MoD, as being baseless, inaccurate and you know, completely false," he said.



Next up came this tale from the Moscow Times:


At least one in three Russians have paid a bribe for public services over the past year, Transparency International’s new global survey has revealed.


To which I chuckled to myself, "Down from three of five in 1988."



And why do I not really care about supposed Russian influence in the US election?  Because stupid people will vote for whoever stupid people vote for.  As an example, I give you an excerpt from an article on Russia allegedly hacking utilities in the UK:


To coincide with its event, the Times also published details of a new study into how Russia used Twitter to influence 2016's Brexit referendum.
The research indicates that more than 156,000 Russia-based accounts - many of them automated bots - mentioned #Brexit in original posts or retweets in the days surrounding the vote.


Lesson to be learned- try to be more intelligent that to get your "facts" from social media.  Except this blog, which is 100%.  (100% what open to debate)


And finally an article on the Times on  their feature page on the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution.  This one is headlined "Why the 1917 Revolution was bad for the Russian economy today".  While this, in the right hands, could become a devastating comedy piece, the author does make the valid point of the one thing Bolshevism did right- raise the literacy rate from the low 30% range to 70-80%.  This, he claims, gave them the great potential for industrialization- which, he goes on to basically say they then pissed away on the military and other "non value added" pursuits.  And thus, they went from 1897, when their economic peers were Mexico and Brazil- to today, where their economic peers are... Mexico and Brazil.

But there's greater hope, he says, in Russia, because they have already learned the importance of increasing education among the masses.  Now, they just gotta tie it to a market economy model instead of Communism.


And who knows, he could be right?  After all, imagine Pravda publishing an article like this 100 years ago.