Dear Straight Dope:For those interested, the rest of the article is here.
A lot of people are using and promoting the image of Che Guevara, selling shirts, etc. What does anyone really know about this guy? What impact or achievements did he have? How does "history" regard him and what he did? Was he much like Fidel? What did he want for the Cuban people/peasants of the world and the USA? What's the real deal on this guy? –Biff, Planet Earth
SDSTAFF Bricker replies:
Che Guevara was a self-sacrificing revolutionary who gave up a comfortable bourgeois existence to fight for the impoverished and oppressed, a staunch believer in the cause who rejected the trappings of power to return to the battlefield.
Or he was a violent, cold-blooded killing machine, a sociopathic hooligan who exulted in the death of his enemies, mismanaged the Cuban economy, and won battles by bribing his opponents to surrender in advance.
Like other polarizing political legends, the “real deal” about Che Guevara depends largely on whom you ask, and through what political lens your source views the world.
Russia, which suffers from a basic lack of democracy, continues slowly but steadily dismantling the free media, with industrial groups close to President Vladimir Putin buying up nearly all independent media outlets and with passage of a law discouraging NGO activity.To put a really fine point on the similar issues with the American free press, we have thd recent article by gonzo (I can only imagine he would enjoy the comparison) expat writer/journalist/editor Mark Ames of eXile.ru - Where Is America’s Politkovskaya?:
Each year several journalists are murdered in Russia with complete impunity. The person who ordered the July 2004 killing in Moscow of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, remains publicly unknown. The murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in early October 2006 is a poor omen for the coming year.
When put into context, the decline in the free press in Russia is symbolic of a global phenomenon. The index also notes that even traditionally high ranked countries like France, the United States, and Japan has seen press freedom deteriorate. Since 2002, when the ranking was created, the US has fallen from 17th to its current position of 53rd. It dropped seven ranks in the last year. RWB explains the drop in the US as a result of, “Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.”
The West has used poor Anna Politkovskaya's corpse to do exactly what she fought against: whipping up national hatred, lying, and focusing on evils committed safely far away, rather than on the evils committed by your own country. The West has exploited her death with all of the crudity and cynicism of an Arab mob funeral...only at least the Arabs use their own people's corpses to demonize an enemy that actually kills them. Whereas in this case, the West stole another country's corpse, then paraded it at home in order to whip up hatred against the corpse's birthplace. It would be like the Palestinians slipping into Tel Aviv, grave-robbing Rabin's corpse after his murder, then parading it around Gaza City, ululating hate towards Israel for allowing the great peacemaker to get killed.Perhaps you don't believe that the American military might specifically target journalists. It doesn't mesh very well with Americans self-image of our free country. Certainly, as Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert discusses regarding the death of Terry Lloyd, some of these increased deaths in Iraq are due to reporters blatantly and foolishly putting themselves in harms way:
That's kind of how Russians reacted when they saw that the West crudely exploited Politkovskaya's murder. The West's crude reaction only increased Russia's crude counter-reaction...
If you ask me, what is most significant for us in the West about Anna Politkovskaya's death, and her courageous life (btw, a big "fuck you" to our [Russian] nationalist readers who don't agree with this), is not so much what it says about Russia -- it doesn't say much new at all, to be honest, but instead is another chapter in an increasingly depressing story that started under Yeltsin.
Rather, what is significant about her death is this: Why doesn't America have an Anna Politkovskaya? Why don't we have someone as courageous as she was to tell the story of how we razed Fallujah to the ground Grozny-style? How we bombed to smithereens and ethnically cleansed a city of 300,000 people in retaliation for the deaths of four American contractors? Where is the American Anna Politkovskaya who will tell us about how we directly killed roughly 200,000 Iraqis, and indirectly are responsible for about half a million Iraq deaths since our invasion? Why isn't there a single American willing to risk almost certain death, the way Politkovskaya did, in the pursuit of truth and humanity?
One reason why is because they risk getting killed not only by Iraqi insurgents and Al Qaeda terrorists, but also by the highly efficient American forces. (Not that this stopped Politkovskaya, but it stops America's righteous Politkovskaya-bearers.) And even if they get the story out, it gets quashed by the mainstream press, you lose your job, and you get met by a hostile, even bloodthirsty public who doesn't want to hear about it.
From what I could gather from the initial reports which came out at the time, Lloyd and his crew had disappeared into the battlefield area well ahead of coalition lines, unescorted and without telling the coalition soldiers of their plans. They came across a small convoy of Iraqi soldiers, most of whom were bearing arms, and decided in their wisdom to join them as they headed towards American lines. There is speculation as to whether the Iraqis were planning to surrender, but it seems that no white flag was raised or armaments abandoned to indicate such intentions. Nevertheless, Lloyd and his hapless crew stuck with the Iraqi column as it sped towards American lines. Unsurprisingly, the Americans believed the armed Iraqi soldiers to be attacking and opened fire, and somehow Lloyd was hit by either an American or Iraqi bullet. Lloyd was then transferred to an unmarked minibus which was being used as an ambulance, along with four Iraqi soldiers. The Americans then opened fire on the vehicle, killing Lloyd and the other passengers.However, this circumstance doesn't explain all 85 journalists deaths in Iraq. There have been many other cases of reporters killed or "discouraged" in Iraq, often while conducting investigations into unsavory deeds and under circumstances that beg questions. Not enough questions have been asked about some of these well-known attacks. Mark Ames again provides bloody details:
Far from being a deliberate murder of a journalist on the part of the Americans, those responsible for the killing were more likely dumbstruck at the stupidity of a civilian press crew accompanying an Iraqi military convoy which was, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, carrying out an attack.
Take the case of Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi correspondent for Knight Ridder. Salihee was shot by an American sniper with a bullet to his head on June 24, 2005. At the time, he was gathering material for an investigative piece about how the US was training death squads -- the very same death squads which are now responsible for the savage civil war that kicked into high gear this year.The overwhelming message is, that in a world-wide society that is becoming increasingly polarized and politicized, speaking out against your government's or citizenry's "official" or popular point of view is becoming more and more hazardous. Careers and lives are being lost in the free reporting of ideas and many citizens are becoming increasingly intolerant of differing points of views. Those opinions that remain free to be spoken are increasingly under large corporate or government influence, in a manner that stifles free expression. When those who have the most to lose by exposure, own the free press, the results are not likely to be good for the general population.
Salihee was killed; the American sniper was cleared; and Knight Ridder washed its hands, declaring "there's no reason to think that the shooting had anything to do with his reporting work." Imagine an analogous situation in Chechnya, the hue and cry from the Applebaums -- it'd be as inversely loud as the silence over Salihee's death. At least even the Kremlin admits Politkovskaya was killed for her reporting.
Indeed Salihee is just one of a number of journalists killed in Iraq, by far the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. And it's not all the insurgents' fault either. Some more marginal journalists, from Robert Fisk to Dahr Jamail, have written about how US forces in Iraq target journalists for murder. But no one wants to hear that -- so these kinds of reports stay on the margins. Journalists were targeted and killed at Al Jazeera; at first, reports that the Americans targeted them were dismissed as "conspiracy theory" talk, but recently, admissions that Bush, Blair, and a former Blair minister all explored ways to bomb Al Jazeera during the war are finally raising questions. Well, not really. Should be raising questions, leading to impassioned editorials by the Post and Anne Applebaum. But they're not, because they're too busy demonizing Russia.
Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who was kidnapped last year in Iraq and freed by an Italian intelligence agent, was shot and wounded (the agent was killed) by US forces when she was returning to freedom. She insisted that US troops deliberately targeted her. A smear campaign in the US press -- labeling her a Communist and an anti-American with Stockholm Syndrome-- effectively nullified her story, but even pro-Bush Berlusconi was so incensed by the incident that he started to back away from Bush's war.
Italian TV later discovered evidence that US forces had used an illegal WMD, white phosphorus chemicals, during its destruction of Fallujah the year before. In spite of all the evidence, including burned corpses whose clothes were still intact, eyewitnesses, and even friendly Iraqi ministers who denounced it, the American media largely ignored it. Why the fuck did Italian TV, and not American TV, break this story? Where was Anne Applebaum on the atrocities in Fallujah?
The case of Eason Jordan, CNN's longtime superstar news chief, might explain the mainstream American media's silence. This is what happens when you're a mainstream American media man who dares to tell the ugly truth about Iraq. While hobnobbing with the Global Aristocracy at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January of 2005, Jordan made the mistake of telling his fellow elite what was really happening in Iraq: American forces were "out to get journalists, and some were deliberately targeting journalists."
Within two weeks, the longtime CNN honcho was out of work. His resignation came complete with a Stalin-esque confession that's chilling to read today:
"After 23 years at CNN," he wrote, "I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq. I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise."
Yes, he was a wrecker and a Trotskyite, and he begged for forgiveness. Because the man was dead -- in America, losing your job like that, after bad-mouthing America, means you're as good as dead.
A number of journalists have had their careers destroyed for not following the Party Line: Peter Arnett, Ashleigh Banfield, to name two of the most prominent. Meanwhile, the editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post who pushed for war, who spread lies about WMDs and helped bring about the 500,000 deaths reported today (a figure that of course is being attacked and demonized by the same people who cheer an organization's "courage" when such figures are arrived at in Chechnya), get to keep their jobs.
You can see now why we have no Politkovskaya, as badly as we need one. If you go against the "fascist" tendency in your home country, you're targeted for death and career destruction by the government and a bloodthirsty right-wing population. Just as with Chechnya, Iraq has been made too dangerous to work in, and the American government has put a perfectly air-tight lid on information, not even allowing photographs of the coffins of dead American servicemen.
Speaking during a summit with European Union leaders in Finland, Putin reportedly defended himself from charges that organised crime networks dominate business in his country by noting that 'the word mafia was born in Italy, not Russia', Spain's El Pays reported Sunday. The remark was splashed out on the front pages of Italy's leading dailies Monday and drew condemnation from government officials.Some other famous phrases and comments by Vladimir Vladimirovich:
'It was an incredible remark. Instead of speaking nonsense, Putin should explain what has happened with the murder of (Russian journalist Anna) Politkovskaya,' Italian Foreign Ministry undersecretary Gianni Vernetti told reporters. [...]
While Prime Minister Romano Prodi's office sought to play down the incident, saying Putin's remark was meant to be ironic, other lawmakers called on the government to issue a strong reaction. 'Italy should respond to the serious remarks made by Russian President Putin,' said Angelo Bonelli of the Green Party, which is a member of Prodi's centre-left ruling coalition.
Putin had come under fire during the summit over human rights violations in Russia and reportedly also accused many Spanish mayors of being 'corrupt'.
Lives Are Much Better and More DangerousDmitry Fotyanov, a candidate for mayor in the Far East city of Dalnegorsk, was murdered Thursday. The chain of high-profile killings continues. The murderOf course, the police don't invent the crime to begin with; however, the number of murders and violent crimes that remain unsolved and untouched speaks to a system that encourages such violence.of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov was followed by more in the banking sector and one in the political sphere -- the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Have we returned to the criminal levels of the 1990s?
The answer is no -- it's even worse. High-profile murders are only drawing more attention to the problem. According to the State Statistics Service and the Interior Ministry, the number of murders registered annually in the country from 2000 to 2005 was, on average, 10.6 percent higher than for the period from 1992 to 1999. The killers haven't gone away. Under former President Boris Yeltsin, there were 19 cases of violent death per 100,000 people, while under President Vladimir Putin the figure has been about 22. By comparison, during the 1980s, when crime levels peaked in the United States, the number of violent deaths per 100,000 people was 10.2. That number fell to five in 2000.
According to Supreme Court statistics, 1.2 million criminal cases were heard by Russian courts in 2005 (9.8 percent more than in 2004), of which about 27,000 were for premeditated murder (against 26,500 in 2004). The overall number of registered crimes rose from 2.7 million in 1995 to 3.5 million in 2005. And according to the State Statistics Service, the number of suspects apprehended for crimes fell -- from 1.59 million in 1995 to 1.29 million in 2005.
The country has grown richer, but this hasn't meant greater peace and order. The problem would appear to be in law enforcement. According to a number of different studies, the end of the 1990s saw a shift in the 'protection' business, with payments to the police and state security agent becoming more popular with businesses.
Even if you dismiss these studies as mere slander against the police, it's hard to ignore law enforcement's complete ineffectiveness. There are about 800,000 police officers in Russia, or more than 550 per 100,000 people. The figures for Europe per 100,000 people are less than two murders and slightly more than 300 police (according to statistics for 2000). That crime fighters here are either not fighting crime or not doing anything at all is supported by public opinion: According to polls by the Levada Center, the public confidence indicator for the police was minus 24 in September, minus 31 in March and minus 28 in September 2005 (calculated by subtracting the percentage of respondents who said they had no confidence from those who said they had full confidence).
MOSCOW, October 22 (Itar-Tass) -- The unified call center, which is preparing a live interview with President Vladimir Putin, has received 447,972 messages from citizens of Russia and other countries.So now is your chance to write your question to Vladimir Vladimirovich. I'm fairly well impressed with the Kremlin's attempts at technical saavy, if not exactly impressed with their execution. Questions from past have included asking VVP ... what he was going to do about high gasoline prices in Russia, housing and infrastructure problems, complaints and questions about small pensions, and how he was going to bring meaningful jobs to the Russian economy. Predominantly populist or bread-and-butter politics, with a great deal of formal politeness.
Some 432,567 questions were asked by phone, and another 15,405 were asked on the Internet as of 6:00 p.m. Moscow time on Sunday, the website www.president-line.ru said.
The president will answer the most important and interesting questions on Wednesday, October 25. The fifth live interview with Putin will start at noon and be broadcast by Channel 1, Rossiya, Vesti, Mayak and Radio Russia.
The unified call center will be receiving messages until the end of the live interview.
Stationary and mobile phone calls from Russia will be received for free at 8-800-200-4040. A special line (7-495-645-1010) has been opened to receive questions from abroad. A toll will be levied on calls from abroad.
SMS-messages will be received at 0-40-40 starting from 6:00 a.m. Moscow time on October 25. The messages from any place of Russia will be free regardless the mobile phone operator. They must be in Russian and do not exceed 70 characters.
Internet messages will be received at www.president-line.ru. The website has posted verbatim records of the previous live interviews with Putin.
Sharapova beats Hantuchova to Win Zurich Open Sharapova, who won her fourth title this season, still has a chance to finish the year as the top-ranked player. She'd need to win next week in Linz, Austria, and at the season-ending Women's Tennis Association Championships in Madrid.The lovely and talented Sharapova has won three of the WTA Tour's top 10 events, including winning the 2004 Wimbledon Championship, beating Serena Williams of the USA. She was the third-youngest Wimbledon women's champion in that tournaments history.
Amelie Mauresmo, who withdrew from the Zurich Open with a shoulder injury, and second-ranked Justine Henin-Hardenne, who hasn't played since mid-September because of a knee problem, still lead the U.S. Open champion in the rankings.
Mauresmo leads Sharapova by 630 points, but many of the Frenchwomen's points will expire before this season ends. Henin-Hardenne would have to fail to reach the WTA final for Sharapova to finish on top.
Neither Henin-Hardenne nor Mauresmo are expected to play before Madrid.
"Becoming No. 1 is a huge achievement, but I don't personally think ending the season as No. 1 is a huge deal," said Sharapova, who was top-ranked in August 2005. "I honestly can't remember who finished last year No. 1. You remember who won the Grand Slams and who has been No. 1, not who finished the year No. 1."
Sharapova, who withdrew from the recent Kremlin Cup with a foot injury, said she was playing through pain in Zurich. She picked up her 14th career title, her other wins this season coming at the U.S. Open, in San Diego and Indian Wells, Calif.
Hantuchova had to save three break points on her first serve before Sharapova swept the next six games.
IFAW's Animal Rescue Blog: Video Feature: Russian Winters are Cold Towards Brown BearsOctober 20, 2006 12:00am - Russian hunt organisers keen to make the visiting King of Spain's chances of killing a bear easier reportedly provided a tame one drunk on vodka.
A spokesman for Vyacheslav Pozgalev, governor of the northwestern Vologda region said: "The governor has ordered a working group set up...to check the facts published in local press about the killing of the bear."
National paper Kommersant carried a letter from Vologda's deputy chief of regional hunting resources management, Sergei Starostin, which accused hunt organisers of plying a captive bear named "Mitrofan" with vodka-drenched honey and then forcing him from a cage to be shot by Spain's King Juan Carlos I.
"His majesty Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with a single shot," Mr Starostin wrote in his letter.
Russian hunt organisers are not complete strangers to such tactics. Keen hunter and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had trouble with his aim in his later years.
Some of the animals he liked to stalk were either tied to trees or plied with booze.
A Russian official has claimed that a tame bear was plied with honey and vodka before being shot dead by King Juan Carlos of Spain. The official alleged that the king had killed the bear during a private visit to Russia earlier this year. "It's not hunting - it's murder," Sergei Starostin, deputy head of Vologda region's hunting resources department told AFP news agency.
A Spanish monarchy spokesman said the claims were "ridiculous". "We have no comment to make because this story is totally ridiculous and the source is sensationalist," a palace spokesman told AP news agency.
The palace said it would not confirm or deny that the king had been on a hunting trip during his visit to Russia.
Despite sizzling criticism from leading human rights groups, the new law on nongovernmental organizations is not as restrictive as similar legislation adopted by France, Finland and other developed democracies.Well, now we come to a deadline in the registration of NGOs in Russia, and it seems almost 100 were suspended. Is it a Russian crackdown ... or a self-fulfilling prophecy by NGOs who didn't get their act together in time? From the AP article:
What makes it potentially dangerous, however, is a lack of clarity over how it will be enforced at a time when the Kremlin is methodically tightening its grip on every area of public life and courts are not generally viewed as independent.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed to laws governing NGOs in France, Finland and Israel when he defended Russia's legislation in an open letter last month. He said worries raised by Russian human rights organizations were "inspired by an incomplete understanding of the situation in the given field of the legislation of leading Western democratic countries."
A review of legislation in France, Israel and Finland shows that they indeed are more restrictive. In France, an NGO must report all donations and bequests and can collect the money only with authorization from the head of the local administration, who first must examine the group's activities. Russian NGOs, in contrast, will have to report only donations from abroad.
Also, a French NGO is required to submit on request its accounting records to both the local administration and the Interior Ministry. In Russia, authorities will be permitted to carry out a financial check on an NGO only once a year.
Russia's law empowers authorities to examine whether an NGO is spending money on its declared program, while the French law only allows authorities to review whether an NGO's economic activities are unfairly competing with the commercial sector.
Russian NGOs have complained that the law uses vague language to describe the reasons a Russian branch of a foreign NGO can be denied registration. The list reads "threats to sovereignty, political independence, territorial integrity, national unity and originality, cultural heritage and the national interests of the Russian Federation." Most of those terms are left unexplained, opening the door for arbitrary interpretation on the part of bureaucrats.
But the French, Finnish and Israeli laws are nearly identical in their language. In France, an NGO can be denied registration or shut down if it is found to operate "contrary to the law, morals or integrity of the territory or the republic." Finland's law says almost the same thing.
In Israel, an NGO's purpose must not contradict the law, morality or public order. Public associations there are also prohibited from undermining Israeli democracy or serving as a screen for illegal activities.
Western governments have expressed strong concern about the law, which imposed strict limits on all NGOs but especially Russian ones, as likely to curtail civil freedoms. The State Department on Wednesday urged Russia to speed up the re-registration process and to allow all NGOs to continue operating.So it would appear that more than half of the NGOs were able to complete their required registration on time, and those suspended appear to be so only temporarily while they are allowed to complete their registration. However, as these groups are supposed to be professionals and they have known this date was coming for quite some time - I have very little sympathy for their suspension.
But Justice Ministry official Anatoly Panchenko said authorities were unable to process the registrations of 96 NGOs by the midnight Wednesday deadline, although he promised they would do so as soon as possible.
"We will do our best to process them as quickly as possible so they can resume their work," he told the AP.
He was later quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying that the number of pending applications had fallen to 93. The Danish Refugee Council, an aid group active in Chechnya that has had uneasy relations with the Russian government, said it was told that its permit would be issued Friday.
However, medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said it had to halt some of its humanitarian work in Chechnya and a program in Moscow involving homeless children because two of its three offices - those based in Belgium and France - had not obtained registration.
The law obliged foreign-based groups to complete the procedure by the deadline or suspend their activities.
"We attach paramount importance to the principle of freedom of association and we hope the NGO law will have a positive rather than negative impact," European Commission spokesman Pietro Petrucci said.
An official from the Council of Europe, Europe's leading human rights body, urged the Russian government to issue the necessary permits. "We deeply hope that the authorities will very quickly give registration to organizations such as Amnesty," Annelise Oeschger said.
The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute, both U.S.-based organizations that promote democracy, were also affected by the suspension order - which lets NGOs keep paying staff and remain in their offices.
Officials have accused NGOs of filing their applications too late, saying many only began the process in July, although the law came into force in April.
But the NGOs complained of shifting guidelines and onerous red tape; one requirement stipulated that organizations had to submit personal details on their founders, even if they were dead. Some devoted lengthy time to searching for death certificates or affidavits from widows.
A Western NGO activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing the registration process, accused authorities of deliberately seeking ways to obstruct the applications.
Panchenko said 107 groups completed the procedure in time. The Justice Ministry had earlier estimated the number of foreign groups in Russia at between 200-500, but Panchenko said only about 250 were probably working in the country.
Russian NGOs face even more onerous controls under the law, which allows authorities to ban financing of specific NGOs or projects if they are judged to threaten the country's national security or "morals."
Russian military reverses, heavy casualties, and economic hardship contributed to the Russian revolution which withdrew the country from the First World War, releasing German forces for an offensive against the other Allies on the Western Front. Chaos led long repressed nationalist aspirations around the perimeter of the Russian empire to declare independence. Bolshevik excesses soon began to coalesce various factions, and civil war broke out. Japan was the first to exploit Russian weakness with an apparent view to annexing the maritime provinces in the East.To paraphrase Vizzini: They fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous ... never get involved in a land war in Asia ...
The British, French, and Americans hesitantly and fitfully intervened with a four-fold goal:
1) prevent Japan from creating an empire in the East,
2) prevent massive Allied stores originally sent to the tsarist armies from falling into German and subsequently Bolshevik hands,
3) assist the White Armies in overthrowing the Bolshevik regime and bring Russia back into the war against Germany,
4) rescue the Czechoslovak Legion trapped in central Asia so that they could rejoin the war against Germany.
Allied intervention joined White armies on four fronts:
1) White Sea ports in the north,
2) Black Sea ports in the south,
3) Caspian and Caucasus region, and
4) the Far East.
The plans of some Allied politicians called for advancing with the Whites on all these fronts to link up in the centre and crush the Bolshevik regime.
Although the civil war fronts fluctuated wildly, the Bolsheviks gradually developed discipline, and had the advantage of defending the central Russian homeland. Opposition White forces never developed military or political cohesion, and were hampered by appearing to be the tools of foreign imperialist interests. The civil war did much to harden the Bolsheviks from a relatively democratic party into a ruthless and draconian regime, which eventually reunified much of the splintered Russian empire by force.
Allied intervention was insufficient to provide meaningful support to the Whites, and the November 1918 armistice on the Western Front removed much of the raison d'etre for intervention, namely to bring Russia back into the war against Germany and protect stores from falling into German hands. Motivated in part by fear of world communism, Allied occupation of Russian territory did much to sow the seeds of distrust which grew into a fifty-year Cold War between the Soviets and the West.
The theater has a total of nine different routines, including "Cats From Outer Space" and "Nutcracker." No one show is ever exactly like another. "Cats are like actors," Mr. Kuklachev said. "They do what they want. Sometimes a cat doesn't want one trick, so he does another."
The next day, in rehearsal, Mr. Kuklachev gave a preview. A cat called Tamara was brought out onstage and began rocking on a glittering pink rocking horse, nearly tipping over at one point.
There would also be a "tightrope" act. Two people held a pole horizontally while Belok, who is white, walked across it, with an intent manner. A black cat named Charlie did the same thing, but upside down, grasping the pole from underneath with his four legs. Motia, who is off-white, outdid them both. She made her way across the pole from underneath using only two legs. As the cats worked, Mr. Kuklachev clucked and cooed encouragingly, rewarding them with gentle strokes of his curved palm.
The story of "Queen of the Cats" is a kind of allegory, Mr. Kuklachev explained. He plays a painter who goes to sleep and dreams thataliens arrive from outer space in a U.F.O. and try to steal his cats.
At one point, one of the cats stands on a mirrored ball that looks as if it has been borrowed from "Saturday Night Fever." She is emitting "rays of goodness," he said, spreading kindness throughout the world.
The idea of performing cats came to Mr. Kuklachev in 1971, he said, when he found a stray begging for food by performing on its hind legs and doing somersaults for onlookers. Mr. Kuklachev, the son of a truck driver and a factory worker, had attended clown school. He realized he and the cat might be able to do something together. He named her Strelka, and soon she was performing with him at the Moscow State Circus.
Mr. Kuklachev did an act which would become well known as "The Cat in the Pot." A cat would sit in a pot. He would take her out, and she would keep jumping back in again. In 1988 Mr. Kuklachev left the Moscow circus, and in 1990 he founded the Cats Theater. It is very popular in Moscow, Mr. Kuklachev said, and over the years hehas traveled to 80 countries and won many awards.
There are 120 cats altogether in the company. The other 94 are back in Moscow at the theater on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, where 10 caretakers and four veterinarians look after them. There, they live in the theater in glass-fronted spaces - not cages, Mr. Kuklachev insists - where they each have a bed and a chair to play on. They are allowed to roam but must enter and exit their rooms on his command, he said.
"We have no mice," Mr. Kuklachev noted.
But despite its name, the show is mostly a silent clown act, with Kuklachev center stage and in the spotlight for most of the hour-long intermission-less performance. (I've seen web postings from audience members saying the show had an intermission and was 80 minutes long. That wasn't the case when I attended.) He performs standard routines like continually stepping on a broom that always winds up hitting him in the back, pretending to be a great artist and painting portraits of audience volunteers or miming umbrella mishaps on a windy day. It's all very cute and suitable for the youngsters, but no more interesting than the average professional clown you might hire for a kid's birthday party.
As the show moves along, we start to see what is meant by "death defying acts" and some of the stunts become a little disturbing. One cat is placed on a platform attached to two bonded hula hoops and Kuklachev twirls it in the air at high speeds. Another cat is placed at the end of a pole and carried into the audience, allowing anyone to touch and pet it. Another has parallel bars placed under its kitty arms and it shimmies from one end to the other. The difference is that for most of the show the cats perform stunts by following commands, but in these cases, and others, they are placed in situations where they have no choice in the matter. My guest was a life-long cat lover who was very excited to come see cats jump through hoops and do balancing tricks, but she left the theatre repulsed by some of the stunts. I wasn't all that thrilled myself.
I don't want to suggest that there is any mistreatment of the animals. They are frequently petted and shown affection by the clowns throughout the show. But even if they were perfectly comfortable because they've done these tricks a hundred times, they still looked frightened during the more dangerous moments, and it's hard to be entertained by animals whose body language seems to say they don't want to be there.
The Lamb's Theater in the heart of the theater district is small enough for Dmitri Kuklachev's Moscow Cats Theater to still come off as a uniquely entertaining mom and pop style circus for the whole family. So, yes, it's still the cat's meeow and the human ensemble contributes more than its share of talent and laughs.Katja says Kuklachev is quite famous in Russia and his cat Theater is considered pretty amazing. I guess Russians are pretty surprised to see cats perform these tricks.
I was a little concerned about whether training cats -- not an easy task, as any cat owner will confirm -- would cause more sympathy than admiration for the cats. But the 20 cats racing across the stage, climbing poles, riding go-carts and tricycles seem none the worse for having weathered the rigors of becoming show cats. My feeling that the animal rights activists don't have much cause for complaint was confirmed by the frequently heard " ooh"s and "ah"s and "how cute" from the many cat lovers in the audience.
как живут ударники?
Как живут бездельники?
Ударники часто культурные люди.
Maybe you don't pay much attention to Women's tennis. I mean, it isn't as though it is a highly rated sport in this country, particularly these days. So, if you haven't been keeping up with such things, it might come as a bit of a surprise to you to learn ... that Russian women are hot.never mind.)Where in frozen Siberia did these Russians learn how to swing a racket? Svetlana Kuznetsova took the China Open. ... The glamorous Russian teenager Maria Sharapova swept past Belgium's best, Justine Henin-Hardenne, to win the U.S. Open.
And so it goes, the extraordinary invasion of ... women's tennis, by players from a country that shouldn't be playing tennis at all. Sure, Russians excel at ice hockey, or chess, and we wouldn't think twice if they dominated, say, gymnastics, or synchronized swimming. These are endeavors that sit well with our Western notion of what Russians should do well: sports that require year-round refrigeration, endless indoor drills and lots of brooding. But tennis? The quintessential bourgeois pastime?
Two decades ago, there were no Russian names among the top 100 players, much less among the glitterati of the sport. Today, Maria Sharapova is a trademark, and behind her is a cascade of top-ranked Russians with jaw-challenging names: Anastasia Myskina, Elena Dementieva, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Vera Zvonareva, Nadia Petrova, Mikhail Youzhny, Nikolai Davydenko, Dmitry Tursunov, Marat Safin. (Please, it's Sha-RA-pova, not Shara- POH-va; it's Kuzne-TSO-va, not Kuz- NET-sova...Oh,
Are these young stars a post-Soviet reaction to the collective ethic of the Soviet era? Are they another version of the trillionaire oligarch, people who frantically grasp for all the riches and glory denied them for 70 years? Tursunov has admitted in an interview that Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame was a model: "After tennis, I want to have a big house and wear a velvety robe." The Cincinnati Enquirer suggested that tennis was the Russian equivalent of basketball in the American inner city - a way out: "Think of a tennis court in Siberia as analogous to a basketball court in the Bronx."
expected to master skills, whether chess, ballet or tennis, through relentless practice, and the head of Russian tennis, Shamil Tarpishev, says the invasion has only just begun.
