Here’s a three-minute vid on English on a contemporary Russian Cossack school. It’s the real deal… even if Rod Dreher doesn’t like Cossacks. I say, if I had to choose to have the Cossacks or Rod Dreher at my back, I’d choose the Cossacks. The Cossacks are loyal to a fault… Dreher changes his opinion more often than he changes his gotchies. One of these things is NOT like the other!
BMD
1985
A vid on the surviving buildings of Auschwitz I camp… yes, Virginia, it DID exist, and Williamson is spouting rubbish on it (he’s been convicted in court of Holocaust Denial)…
Click here for a three-minute vid in English on the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial. The Holocaust Deniers are in full cry on the right… don’t listen to them! The beastliness of the Nazis was real… reflect on the fact that they killed more people than the Commies ever did, in only twelve years (with most of the killing concentrated in four short years, 1941-44). You could survive the GULag (and most prisoners did), but you didn’t have a prayer if you were sent to Auschwitz. Do ask the few surviving Carpatho-Russian Jews about that… they’ll tell you the truth (the Carpatho-Russian people lived in peace with their Jewish neighbours… the Nazis had to use Lithuanian, Galician, and Russian collaborators to round up the local Jews).
Pause a moment and keep a moment of vigil in respect for the innocent victims of the Nazis… and reflect on the fact that the contemporary rightwing glosses over this evil. NEVER AGAIN…
BMD
VDV chaplains awaiting the “green light” to jump
Exterior of inflatable mobile field chapel
Interior of mobile field chapel… icons are stuck to the walls with velcro fasteners. Do note that the priest’s wearing a telnyashka under his riassa, and that the ribbons on his riassa indicate that he’s a former serving officer.
Chaplains now serve with all manner of military units as “Assistants to the Commander” (in place of the old Sov-period zampoliti (“Political Assistants”)
Foreign cadets at the Ryazan Margelov Higher Airborne Command School (Twice Order of the Red Banner) take all of the above in… shall they take their observations home with them? One hopes so…
The sign in the background reads, ”Parachutist! If the chute doesn’t open – pull the ring!”
Click here for a 3-minute vid of a group of VDV paratrooper chaplains jumping from a transport plane with a large mobile chapel that they set up in the field upon landing.
30 March 2013
RIA-Novosti
In this 1990 production of Swan Lake, Yuliya Makhalina danced the role of Odette/Odile whilst Igor Zelensky danced the part of Prince Siegfried. This Kirov production includes the familiar happy ending in the final act where Siegfried fights and ultimately defeats the evil magician von Rothbart and is reunited with Odette at dawn.
As everyone knows, Russia has led world ballet since the time of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov in the late tsarist Silver Age. Russia has set the standard, and the Bolshoi and Mariinsky/Kirov have been the leading dance troupes in the world. This was so in the Empire, it was so in the USSR, it’s so now in the transitional period of the Russian Federation, and it shall remain so with the re-emergence of a reunited Eurasian state.
Russian Ballet lived, Russian Ballet lives, and Russian Ballet shall live!
BMD
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