The St. Petersburg ‘Bomb’ Flash
Amateur video showing a huge flash at a power station near St. Petersburg has gone viral on YouTube. Authorities say the flash was caused by ‘technical malfunctioning’ which led to a temporary power blackout. No one was hurt in the incident.
Shostakovich vs. Stalin
A 1997 documentary on composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s attempts to both live and not completely sell out his art in the face of Stalin’s dictatorship:
Sneaking Into A Russian Military Rocket Factory
When you walk by a topnotch military rocket factory and notice that there are no guards on duty, it’s an opportunity for fun. A set of unbelievable photos, via Gizmodo:
Her name is Lana Sator and she snuck into one of NPO Energomash factories outside of Moscow. Her photos are amazing, like sets straight out of Star Wars or Alien. Now the Russian government is harassing her.
It was easy to get in. She just went there, jumped over the fence and got right into the heart of the complex through a series of tunnels and pipes, which was very surprising. After all, this is an active industrial installation that belongs to one of the top manufacturers of liquid-fuel rockets in the world.
And yet, she found nobody. No guards, no security. Nothing. Just a few CCTV cameras here and there in rooms packed with huge machinery.
While some of these zones look decrepit…
Russian Woman Stores Alien Corpse in Fridge for Two Years?
Molly Fergus reports via Yahoo News:
Has a genuine alien corpse been discovered? One woman in Russia certainly thinks so. Marta Yegorovnam claims she salvaged an extraterrestrial body from the site of a UFO crash in 2009 and stored it in her fridge for two years before authorities took it away from her for examination, according to the Daily Mail.
The being is about 2 feet tall and looks suspiciously like stereotypical extraterrestrial beings: It’s skinny, sort of slimy looking, with a large, bobbly head, bulging eyes, and twiggy arms. The two men who confiscated the supposed body said they were from the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Of course, the odds are high that this could all be a hoax.
In April, an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old student set off an Internet frenzy by planting what looked like an otherworldly being’s remains in the snow in Irkutsk, Siberia, according…
Vladimir Putin Ad Shows Couple Having Sex In Voting Booth
Putin pushes the envelope, and points the way towards the future of political campaigning, by making pulling the voting lever seem to be some sort of sex act. Via Politico:
In a new ad for Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party, the weirdness of that country’s fake democracy is on full display.
The ad conflates voting and sex in a way that makes no sense but has great production values and a compelling beat. The slogan: “Let’s do it together.”
Russian Historian Lived with 26 Female Corpses Dressed Up As Dolls
Via MSNBC:
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia — Police have discovered the remains of more than two dozen women who were dug up from their graves by a man some described as a “genius.” The bodies were found this week in the home of 45-year-old Anatoly Moskvina, who lives alone in the city of Nizhny Novgorod in western Russia. The discovery was made when Moskvina’s parents visited him after returning from a vacation.
Russian media reported that Moskvina kept at least 26 bodies in his small, three-room apartment. They all belong to females aged between 15 and 26 who died years ago. The bodies were “dried up,” Interfax reported.
Life News reported [translated link] that Moskvina, who is a historian and was also involved in journalism, visited hundreds of cemeteries at night and dug up the bodies with a shovel. He then put the remains in plastic bags and dragged them to his home. Once the bodies…
Dau: The Biggest, Most Insane Movie In Cinema History
From GQ, Michael Idov visits the cult-like set of the Ukrainian film Dau — an enclosed bubble where thousands of actors have been living the lives of their characters 24 hours a day, ever since production began in 2006, using Soviet passports and money, in a world that is exactly as things were in the 1950s, while their real lives recede into the past:
Five years ago, a relatively unknown (and unhinged) director began one of the wildest experiments in film history. Armed with total creative control, he invaded a Ukrainian city, marshaled a cast of thousands and thousands, and constructed a totalitarian society in which the cameras are always rolling and the actors never go home.
The rumors started seeping out of Ukraine about three years ago: A young Russian film director has holed up on the outskirts of Kharkov, a town of 1.4 million in the country’s east, making…something. A movie,…
Scientists Say Mythical Monster The Yeti Is Real, Lives In Siberia
The existence of a giant, apelike monster, alternately known as Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, Sasquatch, et cetera, has long been scoffed at and dismissed as a hoax. However, an international team of scientists say the mythical beast is real and roaming the furthest reaches of Russia. Via TIME:
Scientists and yeti enthusiasts believe there may finally be solid evidence that the apelike creature roams the vast Siberian tundra.
A team of a dozen-plus experts from as far afield as Canada and Sweden have proclaimed themselves 95% certain of the mythical animal’s existence after a daylong conference in the town of Tashtagol in the Kemerovo region, some 2,000 miles east of Moscow. In recent years, locals there have reported sightings of the yeti, also known as the abominable snowman.
The Kemerovo government announced on Oct. 10 that a two-day expedition the previous weekend to the region’s Azassky cave and Karatag peak “collected irrefutable evidence”…
Putin Calls For ‘Eurasian Union’
Putin (right) with President Dimitri Medvedev. Photo: Presidential Press and Information Office (CC)
Uh-Oh, this is bound to rile up One World Government conspiracy theory types … from Reuters:
Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he wants to bring ex-Soviet states into a “Eurasian Union” in an article which outlined his first foreign policy initiative as he prepares to return to the Kremlin as the country’s next president.
Putin said the new union would build on an existing Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which from next year will remove all barriers to trade, capital and labor movement between the three countries.
“We are not going to stop there and are setting an ambitious goal — to achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian Union,” Putin wrote in an article which will be published in Izvestia newspaper on October 4.
Putin said last month he would run in the March 2012 presidential election…
Russian Scientist Photographs The Soul
MosNews reports:
The activity of Konstantin Korotkov, deputy director of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Physical Culture and world-renowned authority on Kirlian photography, was recently highlighted by Life.ru. Korotkov is the developer of the gas-discharge visualization (GDV) technique in Kirlian photography.
Kirlian photography takes its name from Soviet electrician Semyon Kirlian, who discovered the process in 1939. It was the subject of extensive research in the 1970s in the Soviet Union and the West. It is commonly described as photographing an object’s aura. According to a website associated with Korotkov, he “confirmed earlier observations … that the stimulated electro-photonic glow around human fingertips contained astonishingly coherent and comprehensive information about the human state — both physiological and psychological.”
In other words, the GDV technique, which was developed in the late 1990s, can be used for diagnostic and assessment purposes. It is already used to measure stress and monitor the progress of medical treatments. In…
Putin Calls U.S. A ‘Parasite’ Over Its Debt
Just over its debt, Mr. Putin…? Richard Boudreux writes in the Wall Street Journal:
MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the U.S. “a parasite” because of its huge debt load, evoking a term used by Soviet leaders to demonize people who didn’t work, study or serve the Communist state.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, shown at a youth forum, on Monday labeled the U.S. ‘a parasite’ for its debt load. The term is steeped in Soviet rhetoric: Lenin invoked it after the 1917 revolution, and Stalin, himself denounced as a parasite by Trotsky, used the label against Jews, dissidents and others.
In a speech Monday, Mr. Putin said Russia and other countries should seek new reserve currencies to hedge against “a systemic malfunction” in the U.S. Both Russia and China in the past have questioned the dollar’s pre-eminence as a reserve currency and its role in international trade and investment.
Russia keeps…
Congressman Paul Ryan Hands Cold War Victory to the Ruskies
Well, there it is folks. Plain as day: Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap to Ruin” austerity program sh*tcanned the U.S. Spaceshuttle program and left us dependent upon the charity of ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin.
No you wouldn’t hear much about that from the Fox News(tm) Politburo. Seems that we have to rely on our Aussie cousins to get the scoop.
It’s true. Now without an independent space program of our own, we’ll be at the tender mercies of the apparatchiks in Moscow to support our telecommunications satellite infrastructure.
Now I don’t have definitive proof yet that Paul Ryan is a sleeper agent for Uncle Vanya, but all signs point to yes. In debt ceiling talks this week his lot are trying to force American-born grandmothers to give up their cat food money in order to support the vodka habits of his Wall Street buddies like Frenchman “Fabulous” Fab Torre.
Woman Dies Of Heart Attack After Awakening At Own Funeral
When someone miraculously returns to life at their own funeral, but then dies of shock at what’s taking place, is it perhaps best to continue on with the service as if nothing happened? The Daily Mail reports:
A woman died from a heart attack caused by shock after waking up to discover she had been declared dead – and was being prepared for burial. As mourning relatives filed past her open coffin she suddenly woke up and started screaming as she realized where she was.
Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, of Kazan, Russia, had been wrongly declared deceased [the first time] by doctors. Her eyes fluttered and [she was] immediately rushed back to the hospital but she only lived for another 12 minutes in intensive care before she died again, this time for good.
Krokodil, The Cheap Heroin Alternative That Eats Your Flesh
It’s cheap, made from codeine and paint thinner, leaves you disfigured or dead, and not surprisingly is Russia’s most popular new activity. Death and Taxes writes:
The name krokodil comes from its trademark side effect: scaly green skin like a crocodile around the injection site. A quick search for that will bring up graphic images of people with swollen faces, exposed bones and muscles and skin rotting off on any given body part.
The reason the drug is so anatomically destructive is due to its mix-ins. Users stir in ingredients “including gasoline, paint thiner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorus which they scrape from the striking pads on matchboxes.”
Video is in Russian but the sight of someone’ skin melting away is the same in every language:
Alex Jones On WWIII (Video)
Apply as many grains of salt as you see fit (personally I think he makes many good points, but WWIII? I’d be surprised), but here is Alex’s predictions on the impending WWIII:
New Russian ATMs To Contain Lie-Detectors, Facial Recognition
“While Sberbank’s technology might strike Westerners as too intrusive, many Russians already assume the government can watch or listen to them when it chooses to.” Andrew E. Kramer writes in The New York Times:
MOSCOW — Russia’s biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old K.G.B. might have loved, an A.T.M. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud.
Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank’s end.
The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include “Are you employed?” and “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?”
The voice-analysis system was developed by the Speech Technology Center, a company whose other big clients…
Russian Cannibal Who Ate Victim’s Liver Arrested
“He was always different,” says his mother. Moscow resident Nikolai Shadrin murdered and ate a stranger and scattered body parts in various locations across the city. When the police arrived at his apartment to arrest him, they found Shadrin eating his victim’s liver with potatoes. Also, he has a very sunny demeanor and says he can’t remember the whole episode because he was very drunk when it happened.
Another Russian UFO Coverup?
It used to be that UFOs only visited the United States. Now it seems aliens prefer Russia (maybe they know that’s where the money is these days…). Michael Cohen gives his opinion on this Russian TV report for AllNewsWeb:
An important UFO event has taken place yet again in Russia, receiving massive media attention in that nation while being blacked out by the international UFO cover-up in the West…
Wikileaks Cables Show Race To Carve Up Arctic
BBC News reports:
Secret US embassy cables released by Wikileaks show nations are racing to “carve up” Arctic resources — oil, gas and even rubies — as the ice retreats.
They suggest that Arctic states, including the US and Russia, are all pushing to stake a claim.
The opportunity to exploit resources has come because of a dramatic fall in the amount of ice in the Arctic.
The US Geological Survey estimates oil reserves off Greenland are as big as those in the North Sea.
The cables were released by the Wikileaks whistleblower website as foreign ministers from the eight Arctic Council member states – Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland – met in Nuuk, Greenland on Thursday to sign a treaty on international search-and-rescue in the Arctic and discuss the region’s future challenges.
The cables claim the Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller joked with the Americans saying “if you stay…
