June 25, 2002

8:49 PM

I Told you the whole idea of “Hindu militants” was laughable. The eXile's 'war nerd' turns in another fantastically upsetting, yet dead true column. My favorite line: "Congratulations on shooting that Fortuin guy, the only interesting Dutchman in the past 200 years! Can’t have people like that running around!"
posted by GriffX (6 comments total)

I did get a kick out of Why We Always Wight--and it's by a Kiwi in a red beet Rooski e-zine, to boot.

and Cooks Corner, too!

Preparing for a train takes special care, because you don’t have the luxury of a refrigerator. I find the easiest thing to do is to reach back into some of my mama’s old recipes, which are ideally suited for staying fresh long. After all, she never had a fridge until her dying day, when papa beat her to death with a shovel at the dacha in 1966. She never even got to taste the fruits of the Brezhnev era.

Today we’re going to make boiled potatoes. This little number is fun to make and will stay good for the length of the Trans Siberian if need be. But, more importantly, they are really tasty and are always appropriate!


Then you got your Drunk Record Reviews, Remedial Slander and--what's this?--members of the Wu Tang Clan's franchise playing the Karma Bar in Moscow? Fuck Radio Ethiopia--I'm Radio Moscow!

Will wonders never cease?
posted by y2karl at 10:53 PM on June 25, 2002

saw this on ftrain! 911 Things To Hate About America :)
posted by kliuless at 9:34 AM on June 26, 2002

Interesting how it starts repeating itself verbatim halfway through. Jewish diamond merchants--sad but not all that surprising to find on a Russian made list.

Terry Gross of Fresh Air? And Single women who introduce themselves to men at parties? This is hateful? Criyi...

Oh, yeah, our enormous prison population--like the home of the prison system that's the drug resistant TB capital of the world has got room to talk? And don't they have more people in prison anyway?
posted by y2karl at 10:47 PM on June 26, 2002

y2karl: nope we have more people in prison, both as a persentage and as far as actual people go.

They are the only country that even comes close though.
posted by delmoi at 11:36 PM on June 26, 2002

Not so fast. According to this PDF (Jeez, what the heck is it with the government's aversion to HTMLizing data?) from a couple years back, Russia's got 685 inmates per 100,000 people while we've got a measly 645. In third place is the Cayman Islands with 575 / 100,000 (though that's a little iffy since it's only 211 prisoners out of 36,000 inhabitants.)
posted by boaz at 11:56 PM on June 26, 2002

hey just saw this in the wsj:

Prisoners like Mr. Multanovskiy are helping make the former Soviet bloc home to the world's fastest-growing HIV epidemic, according to a report last year from the United Nations' AIDS program and the World Health Organization. Between 1996 and 2001, the number of registered new HIV infections in Russia annually surged to more than 87,000 from about 1,500.

The rapid increase in infections and the huge number of Russians using injection drugs have fueled concern that the country could soon be host to one of the world's worst AIDS crises. But Russia faces an enormous challenge to containing the disease, as harsh drug laws send droves of HIV-positive patients into prisons, where treatment is minimal and the disease spreads through shared needles and sexual contact.

Drug use soared in Russia amid the social disintegration following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Enforcement of harsh drug laws, largely unchanged since Soviet times, has helped flood Russia's jails and prisons with HIV carriers. About a sixth of the country's roughly 195,000 registered people with HIV are currently in jail, and many others who are now free have previously been incarcerated. At Kresty, which had fewer than 10 inmates with HIV in 1997, more than 1,000 have the AIDS virus today, out of a total of about 7,800 prisoners.

HIV prevalence is far higher in prisons than in the general population, but health officials fear the figures are poised to rise both inside and outside prison. Russia's drug users number as high as four million of the country's 145 million people, according to some estimates. Intravenous drug use is the principal source of HIV infection in the country. Draconian drug statutes mean possession of even a minute amount of heroin can bring years behind bars. With the prevalence of needle-sharing in prison and the tendency of drug users to be jailed more than once, some experts project ever-rising infection rates across Russia through infected drug users moving in and out of prison.

doesn't look good :(
posted by kliuless at 6:22 AM on June 27, 2002