Vlad!
Who’s the badass PM
Who’s part machine and part KGB?
(Vlad!)
You’re damn right!
Who is the man
That could break your neck with just one hand?
(Vlad!)
Can ya dig it?
Who’s the cat that won’t cop out
When NATO’s troops are all about?
(Vlad!)
Right on!
You see this cat Vlad is a bad mother–
(Shut your mouth!)
But I’m just talkin’ about Vlad!
(Then we can dig it!)
He’s a complicated man
He can’t be killed and his reign won’t end
(Vlad Putin!)
As Ol’ Vlad the impaler concedes the presidential spotlight to Dmitri Medvedev, it’s good to be reminded now and then that he still retains his incredible state-granted super powers.
In a story out of “the wilds of the Far East”, killing machine from the glorious Soviet future Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin single-handedly tranquilized and subdued a massive Siberian Tiger just seconds before it could maul and eat the TV news crew he was traveling with. Sadly, there was no video captured by the crew, who were present for the sole purpose of…uh…capturing video. The bold story emerged nonetheless:
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was feted by Russian media on Sunday for saving a television crew from an attack by a Siberian tiger in the wilds of the Far East.
Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, apparently saved the crew while on a trip to a national park to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild.
Just as Putin was arriving with a group of wildlife specialists to see a trapped Amur tiger, it escaped and ran towards a nearby camera crew, the country’s main television station said. Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun.
“Vladimir Putin not only managed to see the giant predator up close but also saved our television crew too,” a presenter on Rossiya television said at the start of the main evening news.
The 55-year-old former KGB spy, who cultivated a macho image during his eight years as the Kremlin chief, was shown striding through the taiga in camouflage and desert boots before grappling with the feline foe.
He helped measure the Amur tiger’s incisors before placing a satellite transmitter around the neck of the beast, which can weigh up to 1,000 lb and measure around ten feet from nose to the tip of the tail.
And yes, in case you doubt his presence, the news crew got themselves together and remembered to shoot some post-conquest photos, like this one:
Forgive me if I smell a little Communist Bloc Party propaganda here. While I have no doubt that Putin could kill me in at least 57 unpleasant ways (making him like the Heinz of assassins) I somehow can’t keep my B.S.-meter quiet on this story. Even if there’s not another political figure alive as potentially well qualified for felling feral beasts as Vlad, this tale was so neatly packaged up with a shiny ribbon and fed to the willing-to-believe masses (who were, if the commenters from the USA in some forums where this is being reported are any gauge, all too willing to eat it up like good little proletarians) that it wafts a foul odor not unlike that proverbial rotting thing that the Danes seem to be forever stuck with.
Just don’t tell Vlad I said that.
Come on, Steve. You know that it is impossible to train a tiger. That’s why you never see them in the circus.
Russia is NOT COMMUNIST!
Is it a little bit of propaganda cooked up to sell the Russian people on the wonderfulness of their maximum leader? you bet. Is it a communist plot? can’t be.
Don’t we have photo ops too? Perhaps not as crudely set up, but then again, not as dramatic either. In fact, we’re in the middle of photo op season right now. Remember the NY delegation calling for a voice vote at the DNC? Same thing, but not as interesting for the average person.
Danby,
I’m less concerned about whether they are ACTUALLY Communist and more concerned about seeing them revert to their old way of doing things from the Communist days.
Things may be different, but the constant flexing they’re doing, the consolidation and centralization of power, and the tone they’re taking with the West sound familiar.
They also (seemingly) remain on fairly friendly terms with China, their red-flagged stepchild.
Regardless of whether the country is run by Mafioso billionaires, oligarchs, or Putin’s cabal, I see a trend back toward the sort of totalitarianist, propaganda-spouting uber-nationalism that was a hallmark of a bygone, Soviet time.
I don’t claim to be an expert, I just read the news. I know you’ve made defenses of Russia in the past when I’ve posted these things, but you seem willing to lend a pretty large benefit of the doubt whenever they do something that revisits the old way of doing things. So where do you see things going?
Sarah Palin has that picture of the caribou, but you’d have to go to the Molly Weasley Sarah Palin facts for a claim that she killed it with her bare hands.
Russia has ALWAYS been authoritarian. But, taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the fall of the USSR, we taught them all about democracy and freedom back in the ’90’s. You remember, when Harvard economists and Wall street notables went over to Moscow and enabled the oligarchs to steal some 900 Billion dollars worth of the savings of the Russian people. You remember how much fun they had, what with the starvation diet, which pushed the life expectancy down by 8%. And somehow making through a Russian winter with heat for 2 hours per day. Oh, and don’t forget the random violence and gang wars.
After that are you surprised that they don’t really want our style of freedom (keeping in mind that Russia is actually more free than the US in many ways)? After we’ve spent the last 8 years encircling and threatening them, with fake color-coded TV revolutions and bombing their allies in the Balkans, can you be shocked at some evidence of hostility from them? As to the “tone” they’re taking. They see us maneuvering and encircling them. What tone do you expect, when we’re trying to put missle bases in Belarus and Poland? It’s better than the “tone” JFK took when the USSR tried to put missles in Cuba. Well, now they’ve laid out what they expect, just as we did with the Monroe Doctrine (and the various doctrines).
Try to see things from their side. I know that seems impossible for most Americans. Still, try. We’re building a military alliance (NATO) which commits us to war with Russia any time a member state (such as Georgia would be, had McCain and Bush had their way) decides to start a war. That’s exactly how WWI started. We all know how well that turned out. Even if they trust us, how can they trust Saakashvili? or any of the other tin-hat totalitarians we’ve adopted on the former SSRs?
Frankly, the US is a much greater and more present danger to Russia than they are to us. How many Russian special Forces troops are in Mexico and Canada? None. How many US Special Forces troops are in Georgia, Khazakia, Azerbaijan, Uzbeckistan, Turkmenistan, and all the otherstans? Literally thousands, over 1000 US troops in Georgia alone.
I’m not taking the Russian side, but trying to get people to see that Russia is not our enemy yet, and in fact would have liked to be our ally, had we taken a different course. Of course, I do hate to see intelligent people swallowing the porpaganda they’re handed.
Danby,
Amen!
I think future generations will look back and be astonished at our stupid nearsightedness in taking advantage of Russia when she was down, then poking the Bear with a sharp stick at every opportunity (and wondering when it starts to growl).
These consequences were entirely foreseeable in the 90s. But then, nobody in power consults me on foreign policy questions (or anything else, for that matter).
God have mercy.
peace,
Mr Putin was merely demonstrating his <a href=”http://notnews.today.com/?p=55″>superior Russian manliness</a> to the effete Westerners.
Dan,
Thanks for continuing to explain the situation. Not that I have time, but I could use some good reading material on this subject. Having grown up as perhaps the last generation to be ingrained with the fear of Soviet attack, my reaction to Russia remains one of suspicion and caution even now.
Oh, and come on, nobody liked the Shaft theme song re-work?
I liked the Shaft theme rework.
Oh, and yes, while we did enable the corrupt Yeltsin regime to loot Russia, that doesn’t mean that Russia’s current thugocracy is an improvement–it’s just temporarily healthy from petrodollars.
Putinism’s internal critics have a way of getting summarily dead, as another one did just this weekend, having been shot in the head at close range while “trying to escape.”
No, Russia should not be our enemy, but it also isn’t a natural ally, either, pace Buchanan. We don’t need to extend NATO past Poland (where we do have a vital interest), and once our stint in Afghanistan is over, we don’t need to be hanging around the lands of Tamerlane, either. Russia is withering away, and should be avoided save where the Bear barges into an actual vital interest of the USA. As I said somewhere else, Russia is a problem to be managed, not confronted.
I like the Vlad theme too,
You may not think Putin’s an improvement over Yeltsin, hundreds of millions of Russians do. And, frankly, Putin is good political theatre. He’s very close to the image that an awful lot of Russians have of Russia itself, masculine, energetic, intelligent, calculating, and very very dangerous to cross.
I would not say that Russia is our natural ally. It could however have been an ally, if we’d not treated it like an enemy. I’m afraid that moment has passed.
Afghanistan, where empires go to die. Think about it, what empire has not peaked when they tried to conquer Afghanistan? China, Rome, Moghul, Britain, Russia, all that have tried. And now it’s our turn.
Danby:
I didn’t say you thought Russia was a natural ally–but Pat Buchanan has, hence the reference to him.
While we certainly should have done much better with Russia in the 1990s, I doubt the Rodina would have been an ally for long. Russia and America drift into each others’ orbits on occasion, ally out of convenience, and then spin out of those intersections. Russia’s nationalism would, as it naturally has through history, have risen and led to a parting of the ways.
While I hate to be a nitnoid, Rome only got as far as east as the Persian Gulf during its expansionist period, and quickly abandoned Mesopotamia after that. Under Trajan, and from 115-117 AD, off the top of my head.
And Afghanistan as “graveyeard of empires” is a romantic misstatement. Britain never really tried to annex it, though it certainly sent numerous punitive expeditions against the Pashtuns. What killed the British Empire was the First World War and the wakening of nationalism.
From what I’ve read of the Mughals, they also never tried to annex it. What killed them was Awrangzeb’s attempts to carry the banner of jihad to the entire subcontinent south of the Himalayas. For some reason, the Hindus didn’t care much for the idea.
What killed the Soviets was the gory idiocy of communism. Sure, Afghanistan was a running sore, but when you can’t feed yourself when you rule *Ukraine*, that says a lot.
Don’t know enough Chinese history to honestly say.