You may recognize that fella up there underneath the black fashion sunglasses as the lead singer of Scorpions, and I thought that’s who it was as well until a Wisconsin teacher briefly stopped protesting to inform me that it is actually iconic Russian leader Joseph Stalin. This past Saturday, hundreds of mostly elderly Russians gathered in Moscow’s Red Square to honor Stalin on the 58th anniversary of his death. I believe that the 58th anniversary is the dirt anniversary, but I may be wrong. Anywho, it may seem surprising to hear that people are actually paying homage to the man responsible for the death of millions, but he apparently still has quite the following among old people. Ah the elderly, so cute at that age.
And Ol’ Commie Joe isn’t the only Red enthusiast gaining followers lately. Fidel Castro, the 84-year old dictator of Cuba, has had an honest-to-gosh legitimate Twitter account for about a year, and this week he finally went over the 100,000 follower mark. Castro generally Tweets about things like the U.S. being a big bunch of jerks, America being an imperial a-hole, and really anything about how much he hates America. While he’s no Charlie Sheen, Fidel gained about 800 followers on Tuesday to hit the 6 figure mark, but he’d probably have a wider audience if he’d let his people have Internet access.
Don’t worry, though, friends of liberty. Communism won’t be on the rise again anytime soon, at least not as long as The People’s Daily newspaper in China keeps serving its drab, olive-clothed overlords a heaping of PWNAGE! In a recent editorial, the staff of the Daily took the aforementioned Sheen to task for his philandering ways, record of spousal abuse, addiction and racism. But before Charlie takes to Twitter and threatens the Chinese with a machete and his lightning-powered hydrogen bomb erections, the newspaper was using him as a metaphor for the Chinese government. In your face, Chinese government! I believe that makes the score People of China – 1,000,000,000,000, Chinese Government – Infinity.
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- Old people celebrate the life of Joseph Stalin, Matlock. (Sydney Morning Herald)
- Fidel Castro passes 100,000 followers on Twitter, still refuses to #FF. (NY Post)
- Me Chinese, me play joke, me write editorial about oppressive government. (Al Jazeera)
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- Lady Gaga has ended a very lucrative partnership with Target because of the retail giant’s previous support of politicians with anti-gay agendas. If only they hadn’t advertised their new rainbow flag blowtorches. (NY Times)
- Arizona lawmakers are trying to convince lawmakers in other states to join them in an attempt to defy the U.S. government on issues like gun control, health care and immigration, but most people can’t afford to read about it because they don’t have jobs. (Arizona Republic)
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- After the fall of the Berlin Wall, at least 25 countries made the transition from communism to democracies, but it didn’t go as well as they initially hoped. In the immediate years after transition, the economies of these countries saw losses of between 4 and 10% from the previous years. But then they got bombed on vodka and forgot all about it. (Forbes)
- After communism, Russia experienced an annual decline of at least .36% in population. This steady drop was attributed to things like decreasing birth rate, increasing death rate, aging population, sexually transmitted diseases, and birth defects. Other than that, everything went great. (Russia’s Population Fallout)
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