Slashdot Mirror
Nature Lover Vladimir Putin Flies With the Cranes
Hugh Pickens writes "Russian President Vladimir Putin is a nature lover. In 2007, the bare-chested president rode a horse through Siberia. In 2008, he fired a tranquilizer gun at a rare Siberian tiger. In 2010, he used a crossbow to shoot darts at an enormous whale in a fog-shrouded bay to collect tissue samples. Now Der Spiegel reports that on his way east to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Putin stopped at the Arctic Circle to fulfill a mission for which the Kremlin says he prepared assiduously for a year and a half: helping to save an endangered species of crane. In a meadow some 2,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow, Putin donned a white jumpsuit and black aviator goggles before swinging himself into the seat of an ultralight aircraft and as loudspeakers played the recorded call of a mother crane, Putin lifted off and a group of orphaned white Siberian cranes followed, allowing the aircraft to lead them south toward their winter habitat. On the first attempt, only one of the young cranes followed him up, which Putin said was because a high tail wind had caused the hang glider to accelerate too fast. On the second attempt, five birds followed Putin, but only two stuck with him for the full 15-minute flight. Putin's flight, given many minutes of airtime on Russian television, provoked an array of contemptuous jokes on the Internet, one of the most popular being: 'So Putin is off to wintering with cranes. Does this mean he's not going to be back before spring?' The Russian president, however, hit back at critics telling reporters at the conclusion of APEC summit that, 'It's true that not all flew right away, but the ones that didn't fly were the weak cranes' apparently alluding to the errant ways of those involved in protests that have hit Russia over the last year."
If anyone wanted to know what a country would look like if a Bond villain actually won, look no farther than Russia.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
This crap is already plastered all over Russian news sites, now it's here as well. Thanks, dear submitter, now we'll have to wade through another round of silly jokes (because there's no other kind given the context).
This is News for Nerds?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Even if it were all publicity, I must say, that I am impressed. Look what every other politician would do for some PR like that. Everybody can go around kissing babies. Doesn't matter what you think of him, but you have to commend his commitment.
He should rather care about independent journalists - the most endangered species in Russia.
Is /. being paid for these kind of articles?
If only he tried to look like crazy dictator little less.
839*929
These are exactly the same types of activities that Kim Jung Ill seems to excel at.
Some people stay up for New Years. You stayed up to post this.
Somehow that's a little disappointing.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Lil' Putin had a cocaine come down and/or woke up.
Hopefully our Russian brethren will too.
The Russians have bought Chelsea and TVR...you think they can't buy ./?
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Putin very cool man, and dangerous, and clever and so on - so YOU ( USA ) need to afraid of Russia.
"This is News for Nerds?"
No, it's stuff that matters. ;)
So basically he does what every heartland North American can do? Where's our photo op?
The new slashdot mods are behind the curve.... (From a 12.36 Yr Slashdot Vet)
The Russians have bought Chelsea
Chelsea CLINTON??
#DeleteChrome
What's dotslash?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Agreed. I read the submission twice. Then checked some comments. Then went back and read the submission a third time. I was sure I was missing something, somewhere. This has nothing to do with tech or nerds. It barely even qualifies as politics, for that matter. This belongs on Good Morning America or some other drivel.
He was KGB (now FSB), an *insider*, not a terrorist, not an outside invading army. He didn't take power by scaring the people with acts of terror.
Russia simply is a monitored society with a big secret police. He simply leveraged running the secret police into election rigging, ballot stuffing and in some provinces, the vote count was against him in the evening and for him in the morning, huge impossible swings in key elections.
So while UK, USA and the west are all building up their surveillance and secret police, to protect against this big threat of terrorism, the reality is far more dangerous.
The biggest threat to freedom is and always will be, the power hungry individual with police/military apparatus under his control.
Putin is a douchebag who is afraid of a few teenage girls.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Vladimir Putin casts YOUR ballot for you.
whilst riding a zebra.
Pussy Riot!
When I read cranes, I was actually expecting industrial cranes and I couldn't shake that the entire time when reading it.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
LOL, as if the little twerps in this thread have ever experienced 'real journalism' in their lives. Sure, the little prostitutes of the MSM in Europe and the US are the golden standard - don't make me laugh. Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong (ie. Russia) and clean up your own shit first OKthnx.
President assassinates YOU!
is now reenacting the movie Fly Away Home?
Has Slashdot been purchased by Russia Today? Could've fooled me....
He means the Russians can buy the current working directory.
Take off every 'sig' !!
What about fresh news of Kim Cheng Un or Lukashenka?
Enough /. for this month then.
behind Putin.
he appears to be mortally scared of pussies.
2 years in prison for a song protesting him? I hope he burns in hell and history remembers him for the despot he is!
zosxavius photography
That things have changed dramatically since, for a variety of reasons, shouldn't negate the fact that there were good parts of the Soviet Union, and under some conditions socialism worked quite well. It is equally possible, and equally misleading, to create a dystopic version of both the USA and the UK simply by focussing on the rust belt, inner cities, areas of house price collapse and places with a large incidence of extremists of one persuasion or another.
The point about Putin for the average Russian is that Eltsine let his mates steal virtually the entire wealth of the country, and Putin has got a significant amount of it back. He has doubtless enriched himself in the process, but at least he has prevented the "last one out turn off the lights, if no-one has stolen them" end game of his predecessor.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Paul Chambers, Bradley Manning. We really need to start working on the plank in our eye before removing Mr. Putin's.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I was waiting for the day after CmdrTaco left that I'd stop reading Slashdot, and I think I've found it.
Peace out, y'all.
They have also bought The Independent, and as The Guardian slowly goes down the tubes and loses all its principles, The Independent seems to be emerging as the last British newspaper with any credibility. Some at least of the oligarchs seem to have the ambition to become English gentlemen, just as those English gentlemen turn out to be pretty obnoxious themselves.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Looks like bots are online now: http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/08/27/0555219/russias-former-kgb-invests-in-political-propaganda-spambots
There are two things you will learn after reading the summary.
1) This was the weirdest slashvertisment ever.
2) If that joke is one of the most contemptuous and popular ones they need alot of practice and have a great lack of humor.
I used to come to slashdot for new and interesting articles. This article and quite a few others I've seen on slashdot over the last few months have been quite old. Why wasn't this posted closer to when it actually happened? I've already read this article and several versions of it. Why are slashdot's standards slipping?
slashdot /3
I'm done with you.
I propose we change the Slashdot logo for one day in October into all capitals and white-on-red, just like all of the other tabloids.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Either someone at Slashdot is a major league communost or Putin-apologist, or actually thinks this retread of 20 year old show science is something novel.
May we expect a piece on the cool scientific discoveries of Dr. Mengele next?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What's this? Technology? Science? Computers? Idle?
Fuck no, this is propaganda by a very questionable world leader.
Sometimes I feel bad for visiting slashdot with a ad-blocker.
Now that I read this story I have to say: I won't for at least the next five years. What kind of drunken, stoned, moronic idiot without any clue of what's going on in the world posted this story?
Of course, unless slashdot works with Putin to log IPs if "unpersons" who need to get "vaporized". This is so irrelevant for this page and clumsy in regard to conscience and politics it's beyond words (and thoughts, as they probably are forbidden in russia by now as well).
First I must state that by general default, I consider every global leader one of the following:
1. An Actor
2. A Power Proxy
3. A Prostitute
4. A Fool
5. Insane
6. In Extremis, Moribund, or Dead -- AKA -- Doing their job, Trying, or Successful
However, Putin is difficult to fit into any particular of my standard categories. Unlike most Big-Time politicians or leaders, he seems possibly interested in the longterm survival of his own nation -- quite unlike what seems the case elsewhere. He is one of the few yet unyielding to the flaccid and stagnant vernacular of conventional diplomatic bitch-speak -- the lingua franca of the Ministry of Confusion; He has exhibited unusual loyalty, albeit to a pretty rough group, but at least domestic; He has made what seems attempts at preventing the assets of his country from being overtaken by those with no portfolio of doing their own nations any good -- at least not by any means of self sacrifice. He is also capable of swinging more than a tainted pen (judo?) -- an uncommon attribute of politicians these days. (OK, fine; Rumsfeld was a wrestler. You got me on that.)
The world of Man being the laboratory of deception that it is, affords an easy image of Putin as an actor on the stage of geo-absurdity. The FSB, like the CIA, Mossad, etc., routinely engage in covert (and overt) criminal activity, some of which is arguably unforgivable. Maybe Putin is full of shit. Maybe not. From what I've seen, anyone not going along with the suicidal protocol of western bandits is villainized. I don't live in Russia and I don't know as much as I'd prefer to. I do, however, suspect Goldman Sachs and Friends would not fare so well over there; but again, I can only 'suspect'.
As an American seeing 'my' leaders only able to utter a word of sense under the contingency of inevitable contradiction, I can't help but to at least appreciate his abstinence from the parody I've come to expect as the height of political eloquence here.
I can't disagree with those who are upset about the Pussy Riot affair, but it is difficult for me to point a finger while sitting in a nation that not only has the largest prison population in the world and an entire industry built upon it, but boasts of liberty while doing so. And I think that for those who've had their coffee, the forecast suggests no improvement.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
and that is to have cranes with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Seems to me most people are just jelly of the guy and don't like his politics, but if given a chance to do the flying would be super-exited and talk about the experience for ages afterwards.
Seriously, the guy gets to do awesome fun things.
EOF
All cows eat grass!
This belongs on Good Morning America or some other drivel.
slashdot crew has career ambitions y'a know.
Can we have Jo, 22, from Leicester's opinion as the third comment on each story? OO
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Apparently Putin thinks that he is Cal Worthington
For "bad behaviour" you do not have to look as far as russia. Looking as far as slashdot is enough.
Slashdot is not moderated, it's also censored.
I wrote a topic Fuck Slashdot. It's not modded down, it's gone. Simply gone, even if "Fuck this" or "Fuck that" is something some geeks tend to say to express they dislike something. "Fuck Putin" is ok, apparently and left standing.
I also submitted a "Ask Slashdot: Do we need a moderation system for editors" which would indicate when an editor might need to get fired due to add too many stupid stories that do not match what the community wants.
It's gone as well. What are they afraid? An open debate?
This is censorship and from the same cake that Putin also takes stuff from.
In this light it's probably no surprise a horrible story like this one here pops up. The editors simply have no real "feel" for democracy.
Of course, this post is probably going to get CENSORED as well.
An ultralight, some loudspeakers, and having his antics displayed on television sets and subsequently joked about on the internet. Is this not enough tech-related material for you?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nature Lover Vladimir Putin Flies With the Cranes
Let me know when he sleeps with the fishes... but don't send the pictures (or it never happened), that's pron we could do well without.
No, these are the types of activities that authoritarian rulers everywhere do. The exception might be some really poor African or Asian country where majority of the citizens live in rural villages whose only means of electronic communication are dirt cheap dumb phones. For the rest of the non-democratic world, the leaders have to somehow show their soft or human side. People want leaders who give the impression of being just another bloke who happened to carry the "burden" of leadership. So here you get the Great Leader and/or Leaders visiting factories, having a face-to-face "chat" with some poor but smiling farmer, or playing basketball or whatever is the most popular sport in the country.
Of course leaders of democratic countries also do this but not to the stage-managed extent shown in countries like North Korea. For example, Obama seemingly dropping by a fastfood restaurant, when we all know that the shop has been secured in advance by the Secret Service.
A question, in all seriousness, to any Russians in the audience: does Putin doing these sorts of stunts actually increase his appeal to voters (I presume that's why he wants publicity of him doing these things), or is the reaction more along the lines of "there goes Putin, making himself look macho again"? Obviously national leaders have hobbies, just like anyone else does, but he's racked up a long list. Sometimes it seems like he's trying to get himself into Mountain Dew commercials.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
If Putin was in the Middle East, he would be a hybrid of Libya's Gaddafi and Iraq's Saddam.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Yes, the unions magically make things worse as the Bush tax cuts magically put us into recession. Fuck those poor people for wanted a say in their wages! They should slave all day and just make ME wealth while I pay them a pittance because I BUILT THIS without any help!
On the other hand, you have our pal who believes gubermint creates recessions because contracting and thus LOSING profit I would have had otherwise from better demand is better for us because I want to remove my worker's right so I can make MORE profit...makes sense...
I don't know, could recessions be caused by...gasp, actual market forces? No it has to be some nefarious plot by either the gubermint or corporations, economics be damned.
It's okay, your (plural you) only soapbox is slashdot. Loons from either side (save the Tea Party exterminsts) haven't made their way to a place where they can actually make important decisions, so I'll only mock your ignorance without worrying that you'll make decisions that will affect my day-to-day life.
I find it rather odd that slashdot fails to mention that originally a russian biologist named Maria Gontsjarova blogged about this propaganda stunt. What she said was "somewhat" different from the so-called facts slashdot mentions here.
Her first report stated that several cranes were injured during transportation in cages while at least one died when putin steered his planes propellor into it. Somehow these reports were "corrected" to the "official" version shortly after. I suppose you can imagine the mechanisms Putin has in place for "correcting" information on the blog of a student. Glad to see slashdot supporting the Russian propaganda machine! Keep up the good work!
http://www.rferl.org/content/claims-rare-cranes-died-during-putin-stunt/24701513.html
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=8801623
0x or or snor perron?!
Top politician in his country, loves to brave the cold, does judo, loves nature, ..., OMG, he's Teddy Roosevelt!
for full 3D audio realism.
Then he would've manually compensated the hang glider for the sudden gust of wind, and kicked the crap out any cranes that were dumb enough to stay behind.
I applause his effort, in atleast taking a personal interest in such things, too many presidents today seem to just forget all about the environment they live in...
Surely Obama could have done a better job with the oil spill, but he just didnt care about the wildlife or sealife.... I wonder how Putin would have done in his place....
lined up the board of directors for that oil company and shoot them all???
All that KGB training turned Putin into a nature lover. My God; who would have guessed that.
Does not seem to make up for all the human life destroyed by the KGB and Putin, though.
meh
[quote]Russian President Vladimir Putin is a nature lover.
In 2007, the bare-chested president rode a horse through Siberia.
In 2008, he fired a tranquilizer gun at a rare Siberian tiger.
In 2010, he used a crossbow to shoot darts at an enormous whale...[/quote]
I'm a woman lover, but the last time I shot one with a tranquilizer gun she didn't seem to agree.
America's President plays golf, Russia's hunts and flies ultralight aircraft. Then people wonder why America is mocked
Yes there were major union problems in the 70s and 80s. They were almost all caused by underqualified, poor quality managements who didn't understand the first thing about negotiation, many of them accountant-led. A friend of mine who went to work for Leyland post-graduation soon left, citing the utter incompetence of his bosses. In the US, in my experience at the time, manufacturing was product-led and the job of the bean counters was to count beans. Successful companies like Thorn EMI tended to have high quality managements. Funny that.
The early 70s power cuts were the result of the poor management of the coal industry and the excessively combative approach of civil servants. It's interesting that Ted Heath actually sympathised with the miners, as did a couple of his more forward thinking ministers, and wanted to negotiate. He was sabotaged by Wilson and his own civil servants. Have you ever met a miner? Thought not.
The recession was caused by a sudden policy change to "strict monetarism" , an economic policy so disastrous that it hasn't been applied in this depression, in which an increase in the money supply is being managed by central banks. As a result, instead of using North Sea Oil money to pay for a transition from lower tech to higher tech industry, it was frittered away on giving sweeteners to high earners and friends of the Conservative Party. That notorious purveyor of left wing nonsense Michael Heseltine got it. Thatcher and her cronies didn't. I still feel, as someone who attended a few meetings with Heseltine and his policy makers at the DTI, that he was the best Conservative Prime Minister we never had. A Heseltine/Clark government could have seen off Blair.
Mind you, Blair and Brown weren't in the room when the SEC allowed the banks to deregulate in 2004, which led to the present crisis. It's funny how in the UK people like you blame Labour, when US economists actually point to the the precise meeting at which the second disastrous deregulation step allowed Lehmann and Bear Sterns, aided and abetted by S&P and Goldman Sachs, to create the housing bubble. Blinkers? Yup, you have them.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Wow, it didn't take long to find this (in case anyone doesn't already know, "udachny" is a sock puppet of "roman_mir").
that in capitalist countries it was (still is) possible to get a loan, a mortgage.
You have on multiple occasions, voiced opposition to the very notion of mortgages. You have claimed many times that the contribute to the "destruction of currency" - or some such similar mantra of your religious sect. Yet here, you are supporting the notion of someone getting a loan or a mortgage.
You can't have it both ways. Do you support, or oppose it? And why did you contradict yourself? People claim that you are a great example of consistency, yet you just said something that is diametrically opposed to what you have said before.
How do you plan to use slashdot as a tool for recruiting more followers to your religion when you can't voice the message consistently?