The Russians Are Coming

[poliphilo]

I grew up during the Cold War. I remember playing a game called "Russian spies" which involved talking in a silly voice and brandishing crayoned drawings of space rockets. My friend and I never could figure out what Russian spies actually did. It was fun drawing the space rockets but the rest of it palled very quickly.

So I've got this conditioning. Russia is the "Evil Empire"- all that Reaganite crap. 

But

When I was a little older I discovered the Russians had written the best books in the world. Later I found out they'd also made some of the best films.

AND they defeated Hitler.  Yes they did. We helped out at bit, but they were the ones who fought the biggest battles and took the biggest losses. 

So LJ is now owned by the Russians. 

Yes I know the President of Russia is a scary bloke. (So is  the President of the USA if you hadn't noticed.)

But he's less likely to want to kill us- right- now we're his customers.  

We live in a global economy. And in a global economy this is what happens. Russians also own Chelsea football club and much of London.
 
The shop's new owner has a funny accent. Get over it. 

A capitalist is a capitalist is a capitalist. Are you trying to tell me  Russian capitalists are intrinsically more evil than American capitalists? (Or British capitalists, or Australian capitalists). That's silly. Go read some history. 

Comments

on the livejournal aspect

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

but to what is the starting point and your
and my concern, our investment in livejournal.
I am not concerned really. what would one
be afraid of? mismanagement and movement to
yet another owner? could happen but is off
topic here...
I think one question about this is what sort
of russian investment this is and whether it is
not of the sort of the buying of the football
team in chlsea--that is a prudent movement of
some part of holdings overseas by one of the
oligarchs (and you speak of capitalists but
remember that the money was all elements of
the monies of the communist time establishment
it is not produced from zero as it were).
however one concern, not for you and I, might
be this that livejournal as the reports say
is pretty much the Eussain blogosphere and
there is no doubt that control and intimidation
of the blogosphere could be part of the objective
of a centralized power which has silenced all
opposition media. their law does allow much
broader intercept of email and phone than does
ours. I cannot say if this move has any
ramifications ,at least psychologically, for
Russians but again I would think it depends on
what sort of group is providing the seed money
referred to etc.
But beyond mismanaging I do not see how they could
harm you or I. A determined intelligence service
would certainly already be able to read our
livejournals since for one thing yours and mine
are public etc as to playing some kind of dirty
tricks if we were of interest to this or that
intelligence service of another country well I
would think they might think of worse things
than painting a moustache on some mona lisa
we drew...
in short people who worry about this on livejournal
are ,as far as I can imagine, concerned without
reason. which is to agree with you, which you
deserve after my rather short tempered previous response
and now I must away in shakespearian dictum ,and
bungee jump into real space time yrs
+S

Re: on the livejournal aspect

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I agree with all of this. I think we should wait and see. 6Apart has annoyed a lot of LJers. Things might well get better under the new owners.

By their fruits shall ye know them.

amen

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

amen