A few weeks ago, I went to see a new Russian horror film called S.S.D. (the acronym translates to “Death to Soviet Children”) about a bunch of annoying Moscow urbanites who get slaughtered while shooting a reality TV show in…
October 8th, 2008 | Comments (1)
I was in Georgia last week researching a magazine story on the Russo-Georgian conflict, when I stumbled upon the shuttered Russian embassy in Tbilisi. The gated compound looked normal — no bullet holes or anti-Russian graffiti — but there was…
October 6th, 2008 | Comments Off on Postcard from Georgia: The Russian Toilet Protest
The Russian vacation season has finally come to an end, but for fans of Tyolka Thursdays, this means the real fun has just begun. It is a little known fact that in Russia, autumn is the official start of the…
October 2nd, 2008 | Comments Off on Tyolka Thursdays: Russian Girls on Vacation
No this isn’t from the mugshot section of Smoking Gun. These are official portraits of the men in the Russian Duma, which is what they call the parliament around those parts. Looking at these caring faces, you just know that…
September 19th, 2008 | Comments Off on Faces Of Death: Russia’s Duma Deputy Hunks
Last summer, I grossed out a bunch of my guests at a small party I had at my apartment. We watched a gruesome beheading video that was posted on the Internet that day. The video showed two masked Russian skinheads…
September 18th, 2008 | Comments Off on Russian Hate Crime: Brutal Beheading Caught on Tape, Case Solved?
These photographs, dating back to early June, are from a graduation ceremony for Moscow’s MVD Academy. These totalitarian tyolkas almost make you wish that Russia would come and occupy your country (i.e. our country). Serve up some of that sovereign…
September 18th, 2008 | Comments Off on Tyolka Thursdays: Totalitarian Babe Academy
eXiled Alert! Tyolka Tuesdays has been moved. From now on it’s going to be called “Tyolka”Thursdays” and will appear every Thursday, naturally. Relax, it’s still the same ol’ Russian chick fix, just on a different day of the week. This…
September 11th, 2008 | Comments (4)
Listen to the Radio War Nerd podcast [subscribe here] with guest Gunnar Hrafn Jonsson of Iceland Public Radio on the massacre in Orlando and how online Islamic State jihadis are dealing with battlefield defeats and the shrinking caliphate. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd through the show’s Patreon page.
One thing you notice more and more the longer you hang around this sleazy world is the way mainstream types can’t admit to the obvious. They always have to act shocked. So it’s like, “Bond Mogul Convicted of Fraud”-oh, the…
When the fourth of July rolls around, you’re supposed to think of, I don’t know, the Constitution and backyard cookouts like in old Chevy ads—but for me, it’s really Gettysburg we’re celebrating. Greatest battle in American history.
Summer Reading: Banquo’s Ghosts, by Richard Lowry and Keith Korman, Vanguard Press (2009), 352 pages. You have to feel a little sorry for the two neocons who co-wrote Banquo’s Ghosts. The idea seems simple enough: a Tom Clancy-style thriller about a…
It took me a while to figure out why everybody was nagging me to do a column on the Iranian elections. Everybody seemed to think it was all mysterious and world-shaking. Finally I realized, you’re all het up because every…
Kandy Man with long name who fought the Brits. Key fact: in Sri Lanka heroes were allowed to get fat, another reason to like the place. You see some pretty sick stuff when you do my job, but I just…
Cheech Marin moonlighting as the leader of the Tamil Tigers? I have to say “Thank you, God of War,” because we just saw a decisive victory in a war, for once. I never thought I’d live to see the day….
Velupillai Prabhakaran: LTTE’s Guerrilla Generalissimo One thing you have to give the doomed Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka credit for: their supporters sitting in comfortable first-world cities have no shame when it comes to begging for help. Militarily the Sri…
