My former countrymen amuse me.

Today, several news agencies reported that Shamil Basayev, the Chechen version of Osama, was killed in an explosion. This is great news since he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Russian civilians, most recently the Beslan school siege. The two sides of the Russo-Chechen war disagree on what exactly caused the explosion. The Chechens claim that he died in an accidental explosion while escorting a truck loaded with explosives. While the Russian security forces claim that Basayev was killed by a bomb they planted and detonated. The amusing thing about this is that back in the Soviet Union they used to claim that Russia was the source of every invention known to man. We even had a joke about it. We used to say that Russia was the birthplace of elephants. And it seems that it still is.