As a joke I forwarded a pic of the Ural Gear Up motorbike to my gf, told her I wanted it for my b-day. She's a Poli Sci major at Univ Texas in Austin; she responded jokingly that she'd go to Russia and then mentioned: "Did you know that 2/3 of car accidents in Europe happen there? Also, the suicide rate is 5 times higher and the murder rate 20 x higher. What a happy place, huh?"
I know you get defensive of Russia, like Yoshie's weirdness with Iran, or me w/ punk rock, but I'll admit there's shit when there's shit (Black Flag's "White Minority," Minor Threat's "Guilty of Being White," etc.) My gf got her info from a Prof. who teaches a class on right-wing movements in Europe, and who wrote this:
_*Voting Radical Right in Western Europe_* (It's a steal at only $65 US!)
So, come on, surely you can concede that a murder rate 20x higher and a suicide rate 5x higher than Europe ain't good? The car crash thing in absolute terms may just be due to numerical size of pop.
-B.
Chris Doss wrote:
"I was taking the piss, not being serious! Not even life in Russia is equivalent to life in Russia. The place is huge. It's like talking about 'life in America.' Where? New York? Rural Ohio? Appalachia? If you want a breakdown of income per capita on a regional basis, go to Goskomstat's handy income map, which uses Feb. 2007 data and is usable if you know the Cyrillic alphabet: http://www.gks.ru/gis/D_04.htm , ranging from a high of 29,924.7 rubles in the city of Moscow to a low of 3842.1 rubles in Kalmykia (the current exchange rate being 25 rubles to the dollar)."