Tag: ukraine

Top 10 Russian football songs: No. 9: Okolofutbola (“Round Football”, ahem) by Feduk (2013)

The hiphop theme of a cinematic tribute to Spartak ultras: “Stand in line with your brother and don’t take one step back / Russian brigades, like a bumper, ram our opponent.” Extras: Russian football hooliganism’s English roots; Anglicisms in a Russian hooligan lexicon; and use of “hooligan” in Russian before English, in an 1892 decree issued by a Petersburg mayor of Scottish descent.

Futbol, 1846 god, Kingston-na-Temze, Angliya (gravyura).

But what will be the everlasting fruits of the Second Crimean War?

CWI featured more or less the same adversaries and dealt with the same geopolitics, although this time the trigger is the looming NW/SE partition of the Ukraine, leaving a bankrupt Kiev with no Black Sea port and the task of negotiating cross-border traffic with their second-worst enemies, the Poles. The EU, its famous army, and…

Branding thugs

“First thing we do is break their noses,” says Ukrainian cop, Igor, over at this Don Weber exhibit (via BB). I think that’s also Algerian police strategy: the Algerians who stalk tourists here tend to have omelette noses, nasty limps, parapet dentistry, you name it, while their Moroccan colleagues are usually more or less unscarred.…