Blake Hall
You know you have bad blood when your nemesis flips you the bird via the destruction of 9 metric tons of perfectly good cheese.
On Aug. 6 2014, the Russian government passed a complete ban on Western agricultural imports in retaliation to the UN sanction over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support of Ukrainian rebels. To celebrate the year anniversary of this sanction, the government steamrolled 9 tons tons of cheese.
The ban includes meat, milk, dairy, fruit and vegetable products from Europe and the United States.
The Russian government is also planning to incinerate 20 more tons of cheese and use tractors to eviscerate 60 metric tons of sweet, delicious peaches and vibrant red tomatoes.
How long does it take to steamroll 9 tons of cheese? About an hour, USA Today reported. That’s an hour of watching cheese that belongs on a cracker with a one-way ticket to your mouth get destroyed in a symbolic crushing of the West.
Witness the carnage.
The incineration will probably be completed more quickly. We eagerly anticipate 20 tons of melted cheese flowing across the Russian tundra like a Velveeta river.
Stomping on 60 tons of fresh fruit? Not so much.
It is perhaps fitting that the upcoming peach and tomato wrecking is eerily similar to John Stenbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. In destroying all this food, needy Russian citizens are being deprived of resources. The ban on Western imports caused Russian consumer prices to skyrocket, forcing more Russians below the poverty line. Smuggling of contraband items such like Dole bananas and Kraft mac an cheese is more widespread than ever.
Russia gets points for getting creative with its political posturing, but none for actually caring for its people.