According to the Soviet press, Angela Davis was arrested for her progressive views and the government fabricated the charges of her being and accomplice in a murder case. Her arrest was supposed to “discredit and hurt the Black Panther movement and start a misinformation campaign against the Communist Party of the USA”. Thousands of people signed petitions to “Free Angela Davis” and Soviet school kids participated in a “Million Roses for Angela” drive where they were mailing postcards with hand-drawn roses and their pleas for Angela’s freedom to the American president. As a special touch they weren’t attaching any stamps so that evil bastard President would owe the missing postage. In reality Angela Davis was arrested when her gun was used in a hostage situation and a shootout and she was charged  as an accomplice to conspiracy, kidnapping, and homicide. After 18 months in prison she was acquitted and released, clearly as a result of the White House being flooded with a million postcards; she went on to visit the USSR and meet L.I.Brezhnev and is presently working at UC, Santa Cruz.

Leonard Peltier was imprisoned by the military-industrial complex and imperialist murderers from the CIA for being an outspoken advocate for the rights of the Native Americans. The Soviet people stood up in his support with another letter-writing campaign, meetings and demonstrations but failed to get him released. One central newspaper was printing out pre-filled petitions which were supposed to be cut out, glued to a postcard and mailed to the (still an evil S.O.B) US President. In reality Peltier was arrested and convicted of killing two FBI agents and although the allegations had been disputed they were never overturned.

Charles Hyder is hardly known in this country but his name is familiar to anyone who grew up when his name was mentioned daily on the Soviet TV and in the press. Dr.Hyder was a progressive American astro-physicist who used to work for NASA. In 1986 he protested against the use of the nuclear weapons and the arms-race by staging a 218-day fast in front of the White House. All of the progressive humanity (except of course the heartless imperialists in this country) watched in owe as the aging professor was weakening by the minute for the cause of detente. Soviet TV broadcast daily updates on his health condition while that callous S.O.B President Reagan let this hero waste away. Gorbachev wrote a personal letter to Hyder and the Soviet people expressed their strong support for his cause and even offered to send him food and money. In reality, the consensus was that Hyder was cheating, either eating at night or sneaking food somehow because no one survives 218 days without food even to prove a point. In addition, it turned out that his doctor ordered him to lose weight due to a health condition. A Soviet correspondent faked the daily reports by changing his clothes and filming up to five updates on the same day. Dr. Hyder died in 2004.

There were some others that I don’t personally recall like Assata Shakur or the ones where the person was not a dissident but just a victim of capitalism like a fake homeless guy Joe Mauri.

The common thread was the forced enthusiasm with which the Soviet people stood up for anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Propaganda, constant barrage of falsified information and mandatory attendance of these “spontaneous” events created an impression, an impression is what we were after in the first place.

I’ll conclude with an anti-American poster from the olden days.

God, I apologize for this post.
*if you are reading this in the RSS reader and don’t see an audio link, please go to my site to listen to the clip

Few days ago I was at Costco thinking about buying some chicken soup. I always check the ingredients because of the food allergies in the family, but this time an unfamiliar substance caught my eye.

I mean I don’t mind some “chicken juice” in my soup but I draw the line if it’s not freshly squeezed. Sometimes I wish they would stop putting ingredients on the labels like it was when I was a child. I would just take their word that the product inside is in fact Chicken Soup.

See if you can beat my caption for this photo: “When you want your bowels loose, drink a cup of chicken juice”.

Exhibit “B” comes from Cargo-Largo. When a famous Russian writer Anton Chekhov said “People should be beautiful in every way—in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts and in their innermost selves” he couldn’t even dream that a pimp supply company would take his words to a new level. It’s not the color of these shoes that got me, it’s the fact that these shoes leave some pimping footprints. “Beautiful in every way” indeed.

Déjà Vu Then: M.S Gorbachev is speaking at the XXVII Congress of the CPSU.

Way before Then: L.I. Brezhnev is speaking at the XXVI Congress of the CPSU.

If only the giant Lenin’s head could talk!

Now: Members of modern Young Pioneers, the successor of the similar Communist league for pre-teens in the Soviet Union, salute to the monument of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin at his grave as their elder comrades laid a wreath at the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2008

Then: Young Pioneers are greeting (still alive) Comrade Stalin with flowers.

Pres. John F. Kennedy is sitting with Mrs. Nikita S. Khrushchev.

While Mrs. John F. Kennedy is talking with Nikita S. Khrushchev.

Seems like Khrushchev knew how to entertain a lady.

P.S. If you are one of my younger readers and have no idea who these people are please click here.

The day was already looking promising. I touched Obama bobble-head

and was off for a quick rinse with Obama 3-in-1 soap.

My Obama underwear, Obama t-shirt and Obama shoes were prepared since last night.

I looked at my Obama jeans, they were women’s and capris. “This is a change I can believe in”, I thought to myself and put them on.

Obama coffee was already brewing in the kitchen.

I poured it into my Obama mug.

I threw a “T-shirt shaped, peanut butter flavored treat with yogurt frosting for my Democrat dog” on the way out. I am sure my unaffiliated cat would enjoy it as well.

One fine Obama day was waiting for me outside.

• So “DOOs” are a good thing? I hate to see the “DON’Ts”. Some MO state park employee got paid for this.

And on the subject of DOO’s.

• If you ever wanted a scale with an opinion, this one is for you. Currently the display says “UH-OH”, you must be getting heavier. If you continue gaining weight, the scale will just make a disgusted face and possibly puke. Cut out from the sales flier.

• You may be able to read this billboard now, but the only way you can do it from your car is if you crash right into it. Too bad that would be after “the bad things happen”. This one is located at the merge of I-35 and 71 HWY.

• I wonder if this car ever parks by KFC.

• Few more from my growing license plate collection.

• This one required a second look to decipher. Does it actually say “Our 4 little ones?”. I guess this pattern would work up to and including 9 little ones.

Happy holidays Thanksgiving!

Additional materials about the battlecruiser Peter the Great can be found here and here. Short video from BBC.

Update: After I wrote this post, Russian media announced that Peter The Great wasn’t designed for pirate-hunting and will not be going to Somalia after all. Since I’ve already done all the writing and the linking you might as well do the reading anyway.