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."

Comments

Good ol' Putin

[DNS-and-BIND]

If anyone wanted to know what a country would look like if a Bond villain actually won, look no farther than Russia.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Askmum]

Putin, Vladimir Putin

Re:Good ol' Putin

[93 Escort Wagon]

Except if Putin were a Bond villian, it would turn out he'd implanted high explosives into the orphaned cranes and was using this "rescue mission" as a cover for attacking Buckingham Palace and the Pentagon with explosive cranes.

Wait - you don't suppose...?

Re:Good ol' Putin

[flyingsquid]

Wonderful. Thank you, Slashdot, for posting an article glorifying this human piece of garbage. I suppose this is supposed to make us forget that Putin has jailed his critics, restricted the press, and rigged the electoral system to guarantee his victory? The man is nothing more than a bully, and these antics just show what a small, pathetic person he really is. The outlandish antics- tiger hunting, shooting whales, bare-chested horseback riding... he's doing it for the same reason as the guy who buys the really expensive, shiny, loud red pickup. He's compensating for deep insecurities. In his heart, he's nothing but a coward. If he weren't, he wouldn't have to spend all his time desperately trying to prove that he's such a badass. A real leader wouldn't spend all his time glorifying himself. And a real man wouldn't be so terrified by a bunch of girls in a punk band that he'd have to send them to prison for standing up to him.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Hazel Bergeron]

If he weren't, he wouldn't have to spend all his time desperately trying to prove that he's such a badass.

Nonsense. The guy is powerful beyond anyone's wildest dreams and is doing stuff that a) he enjoys; b) appeals as propaganda to the macho sort still prevalent in Russian.

Russia has become precisely what the left expected Reagan+Thatcher wanted in toppling the USSR: a corrupt, undemocratic kleptocracy with few new freedoms but no social cohesion or state protections, where middlemen and government have their hands constantly down each other's pants, jacking each other off while they kick the common man. It is the neocon dream realised.

Anyone who thinks that life wasn't better in Russia in the 1970s either 1) was not living there; 2) is one of the very few beneficiaries of business. (Hint: if you're a geek programmer living in Moscow, you're in category #2.) But the Soviet Russia will forever be remembered as it was in the late 1980s, which would be like judging capitalism only from the Great Depression, late 2008, the imperialist drive for profit, the Southern State free market definition of "person", Halliburton, &c., instead of all the good things it has achieved.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[mumblestheclown]

Here's not "Good o' Putin." He's a kleptocratic, fascist dictator who has directly caused the death of at least thousands of innocents and whose greed and duplicitous use of right-win poplusm has caused untold millions, both in Russia and in other states, from Uzbekistan to Ukraine, from Syria to Georgia, from Estonia to Africa to suffer. Let's stop the "wink wink" bond jokes and kitsch cutesy comments and unhesitatingly and forcefully condemn this evil man AND THOSE IN THE CORRUPT RUSSIAN MIDDLE WHO CONTINUE TO SUPPORT HIM in the strongest way possible.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Viol8]

My wife comes from Ukraine. It might not be great now was NOT better in the 1970s. I don't know where you get your facts from but I'd find a new source other than Marxism Today if I were you.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Viol8]

Are you completely braindead as well as brainwashed? I assume you've heard of the soviet union? Jeez...

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Viol8]

"said his wife thought it was better in the 70s under communist rule"

Other way around. Her opinion is it was a lot worse then bar a few things here and there. She still remembers food and fuel queues and of having to be very careful what you said in public. The only people who pine for those days are deluded western communists who can spout their rubbish thanks to the free society that was never enjoyed by the citizens of the USSR.

Isn't it odd how these self style "intellectual" lefties loved the idea of communism except when applied to themselves since hardly any actually went to live in the USSR (and even the ones who did usually did only to escape being tried for treason , eg philby & co). You'd think if it was such a workers paradise they'd have been on the first plane to Moscow as soon as they were out of short trousers.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[ZosX]

I have a friend that lived in unkraine under the soviets and actually thought it was better. Of course he's totally insane, so there is that too.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[AliasMarlowe]

Anyone who thinks that life wasn't better in Russia in the 1970s either 1) was not living there; 2) is one of the very few beneficiaries of business. (Hint: if you're a geek programmer living in Moscow, you're in category #2.)

Well, life in the Soviet Union was of uneven quality, on geographical as well as political grounds. There were certainly places where life was better then than it is now. There were also many places where it was worse then than it is now. I spent time in both Moscow and Leningrad (as it was then called) for a period as a foreigner in the early 1980s, and formed opinions based on what I saw and what I was told by actual Russians. I'd class it as weird as much as good or bad.

Taking the "good" side first, I saw no particular poverty (unlike most large Western cities), and the people were all fairly well-dressed and looked healthy enough. The streets were quite tidy, just like Nordic cities of today. Also, the people I met all had jobs or sinecures of some sort, and even the lowliest (cleaners) had some spare money. Basic rents were controlled and cheap, so was food.

Taking the "bad" side, those I talked to (including our translator) said that it was a privilege to live in "display" cities like Moscow or Leningrad. Moreover, if they lost this privilege, life would be much tougher in the backwoods, and even keeping well-fed could be a challenge. Internal travel was highly restricted, and our translator needed internal permission papers for every place we visited or spent the night. The reason everyone had spare cash was because there were no luxuries available, and there was not much to spend money on after paying for food and rent - except for booze. Booze was cheap and plentiful, and consumed in prodigious amounts.

Then there was the "weird" side. Whenever we went to a touristy place, we were met by well-dressed most unbeggar-like kids who were determined to haggle - they gave us badges with Lenin and suchlike, and we gave them Wrigley's chewing gum. I still have many of those badges, with their prices embossed on them from manufacture. The staff at every hotel wanted to haggle over our jeans - Levi's only, forget the designer shit - and paid up to 150roubles a pair in cash (a rouble was worth more than a dollar at the time). To break the ice when meeting groups of Russians in a business context, we learned to bring along a few bottles of vodka - it turned the event from a confrontation between potential foes into a meeting of long-lost friends after a couple of bottles were empty. On one of our first restaurant visits, we forgot to "bribe" or tip-in-advance the head waiter, so we ended up waiting a long time for a table. We were then informed that only the set meal was available, and that due to time constraints, we could not have the dessert but that the price was unchanged. The entire restaurant staff came out to indulge in "self-criticism" before we left, just to rub in the lesson and let the other guests know what cheap-skates we were...

Another anecdote: a colleague left a party early and very drunk in late winter. He woke up the next day in our hotel on the other side of Moscow, with no knowledge or recollection of how he got there (and he didn't know the way). Our translator said that probably the police found him drunk and unconscious on the street, and took him to the correct hotel based on the ID in his pocket. She said that regular Russians would have spent the night in a police cell and would have been released early in the morning (a cold shower for the hangover was mentioned, but perhaps jokingly). Apparently, the main work for the police at night was picking up drunks before they froze to death. Most of my anecdotes from that period tend toward the scandalous; that one is tame enough.

For a Westerner interacting with regular people, the weirdness overwhelmed the goodness and the badness.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[dunkelfalke]

As a former Soviet citizen I can attest that for great many people lives indeed were better back then than they are now. Even with the food and fuel queues. What good is all the abundance if you cannot afford anything? USSR, for some time, was certainly not the worst place to live.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Hazel Bergeron]

Thank you. It is sometimes hard to explain that "abundance" does not mean "affordability" - indeed, one of the reasons a product may seem abundant is that it is still sitting on the shelves because there are not enough people who can actually pay for it! It is quite different from a rationing system where everyone receives a share of everything, even though it doesn't result in the queues so frequently mentioned by propagandists.

Marx was early to suggest that capitalism would degenerate into a system where there would be vast production of items that many could not afford. On this he was quite right. Maybe he missed the potential for extending absurd amounts of credit, but that's just given us an extra problem to prolong the pain.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[udachny]

(a rouble was worth more than a dollar at the time).

- I would like to qualify this statement with an explanation. NOBODY in Russia was allowed to deal in dollars OR gold. Nobody. Such deals were punishable by law with very lengthy prison sentences and confiscation of all private possessions, sometimes also by death.

Due to this, the black market for dollars (or any other foreign money that was called the 'valuta') was almost non-existent among the general public, it was of a very limited use.

Because of that fact only, the government was able to set an artificial, official exchange rate, that had NOTHING to do with the value of Soviet rubbles, nothing at all, the rubbles were printed by the gov't, trillions of rubbles per year. That's the reason everybody was paid similar salaries and similar pensions but there was nothing much to buy in the stores, because nobody really produces anything but everybody gets paid this nearly fixed amount of money, nobody wants to sell.

We had black markets for products and when people had access to foreign goods, they normally sold them inside the country for multiples of year salaries of general public.

Imagine buying a foreign stereo system, maybe 1000 rubbles, when the most of the salaries are in the range of 60-120 rubbles per month. Try and figure that out, how dis some people manage?

That's because even in the most totalitarian states some people manage, there is always division to those who can do something and those who can't. In case of USSR people were stealing quite a lot from their places of work (it was very profitable to be a store manager or a factory director or a farm director, but NOT because you produced to satisfy market demand, but because you had access to items that you could physically remove, steal and sell on a black market).

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Viol8]

"Implying that the Ukraine was ruled like Russia under Soviet control."

It was.

"Implying that the Ukraine is ruled like Russia now."

It is. In case you hadn't noticed the Orange revolution failed and Timoshenko is now a political prisoner of the former mafia thug - now president - Victor Yanukovich.

"which many people cannot afford."

They can afford it. I suggest you visit there one day. Sure, there are poor people but not on the scale of india or africa and they're a long way from starving.

"On a personal note - if, Violet, you and your partner are lesbians,"

LOL. Violate , not violet ;o) But you could say I'm a lesbian in a mans body!

Re:Good ol' Putin

[dkleinsc]

Well, I'm reminded of a political cartoon I saw about 15 years ago, that had 3 pictures of a depressed-looking man with a glass of vodka in his hand. The first was captioned "Russia under the Czars", the second "Russia under Communism", and the third "Russia under democracy".

Re:Good ol' Putin

[dunkelfalke]

I personally know a few people living in Kiev. They hardly get buy, living on $200 per month. Sure, there are a lot of shops selling fancy stuff, but these catering to the rich people since middle class is almost not existant in Ukraine. And if you didn't notice anyone starving on the street, then you have only visited the tourist places, not the back street alleys.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Hazel Bergeron]

Hm, it sounds like a propaganda opportunity ripe for abuse.

"It may be shit for you, but you should just shut up and take it because it could be even worse!"

We want to get better - not compare ourselves with the worst.

FWIW, it was travel to third world countries which finally turned me from a spoilt rich kid who quite liked the West (even though I often questioned it, at least academically) into someone who despises it. The straw which broke the proverbial camel's back was a stay in Ph on business, living in the executive level of one of the nicest hotels in the area, enjoying a marble bathroom and raised swimming pool, a room at the front offering a rich buffet of infinite food while its back looked over a shanty town from which children would emerge to beg for money on the streets. Meanwhile my co-workers would bring prostitutes back to their rooms in the evenings, promising one that he would take her back with him.

I resigned from that job soon after returning home.

Anyone who says that rational self-interest lifts everyone up is a liar or an idiot.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[Hazel Bergeron]

I am hesitant to respond because you speak with the broad strokes of an amateur, but of course an economic system can encourage or discourage particular sorts of behaviour.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[shutdown -p now]

For starters, Ukraine wasn't a Soviet bloc country. It was a part of the USSR.

And you would be wrong. If you look at the raw data, RSFSR was essentially subsidizing other Soviet republics. The idea of "draining resources" is particularly silly, given that the territory of RSFSR is where most resources were on the first place.

You should understand that USSR wasn't a Russian imperialist project. It was a Soviet imperialist project. Russians were but subjects, same as any other nation in it. About the only advantage they had was that their language was the language of the state, but this was mostly a convenience thing - the government needed a single language to get things to work together smoothly, and, of course, they took the one that was most widespread.

Re:Good ol' Putin

[tftp]

A stupid monarch is a bane of all monarchies. The last Russian Czar is a perfect example. There are just a few monarchies remaining in the world, and in none of them the monarch is actually ruling the country.

I would classify Putin as "doing what he can, to the best of his abilities." I don't know all his motivations, of course. With regard to wisdom, the alternative is worse. Should we, perhaps, elect Vladimir Volfovitch? Or perhaps a hopeless idealist and a certified weakling Yavlinsky is a better candidate? Maybe we should all march under red banners of comrade Zuyganov? But those are the major alternatives. None of them will be able to keep oligarchs under control. Under Yeltsin the country was ruled (robbed?) by private interests. That's why Khodorkhovsky kissed the tarmac; his financial crimes were, of course, a lie. He was guilty of acting against Russian interests, and he was rich enough to be dangerous. Putin was able to tell oligarchs to either accept supremacy of the state or get out. Without Putin the country by now would be ruled by Berezovsky and Co, for their personal financial gain. How would that be better?

I could have sworn I typed "slashdot.org" just now

[wonkey_monkey]

This is News for Nerds?

Let's say it's all publicity

[maweki]

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.

Fuck this guy

[Anonymous Coward]

He should rather care about independent journalists - the most endangered species in Russia.

Is /. being paid for these kind of articles?

Great

[should_be_linear]

If only he tried to look like crazy dictator little less.

Kim Jung Ill - Coincidence??

[Anonymous Coward]

These are exactly the same types of activities that Kim Jung Ill seems to excel at.

Oh... he used an aircraft to fly?

[Rogerborg]

Somehow that's a little disappointing.

Re:I could have sworn I typed "slashdot.org" just

[Deus.1.01]

The Russians have bought Chelsea and TVR...you think they can't buy ./?

Yawn.

[betterprimate]

So basically he does what every heartland North American can do? Where's our photo op?

Re:I could have sworn I typed "slashdot.org" just

[Seumas]

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.

Re:I could have sworn I typed "slashdot.org" just

[Deus.1.01]

In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!

Re:What a douche

[dunkelfalke]

This is not quite right, I guess Putin doesn't care about these. You see, they weren't teenage girls and they have "protested" (personally, I believe them to be simply a bunch of attention whores) numerous times before, their leader even in a group sex session while being pregnant. Nobody cared until they tried to "perform" in the church and the church is a powerful institution in Capitalist Russia.

Fuck Putin

[ZosX]

2 years in prison for a song protesting him? I hope he burns in hell and history remembers him for the despot he is!

Unlikely as it seems

[Kupfernigk]

Just before I joined the R&D department of one UK company in the early 1980s, one of the engineers left to go and live in the Soviet Union. The Thatcher recession had just started (a recession deliberately started by her government to justify a reduction in worker rights), the future of British industry looked bleak, and while installing equipment for the company at a Russian research institute he was offered a job. He also fell in love with his translator, to be fair. But the conditions of life for a research engineer obviously looked more attractive than prospects in the UK at the time. Before anyone asks, during his original stint there (several months) he was living in a standard engineer's apartment in a housing block, under their normal conditions, and was actually paid by the USSR government. So he knew exactly what he was going into.

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.

Re:Unlikely as it seems

[Viol8]

"(a recession deliberately started by her government to justify a reduction in worker rights),"

What utter cobblers. The recession was a result of the previous labour govns spend spend spend policy (sound familiar?) combined with bloody minded unions who went on strike or work to rule over their "rights" at the drop of a hat and made UK industry even more uncompetetive than the lazy morons had managed even up until that point. You're obviously old enough to remember the power cuts in the 70s as I am due to endless miners strikes which - thanks to Thatcher - finally ended as she switched britain over to a lot more gas generation so the country could no longer be held hostage by a bunch of inbred ditch diggers.

"the future of British industry looked bleak,"

Mainly thanks to the unions. But lets not let reality get in the way of your left wing blinkered nonsense.

Re:Unlikely as it seems

[Hazel Bergeron]

I can't believe that most people still believe this.

Imperialist interference in Middle East -- oil crisis -- inflation -- increase income to management but refuse to pay more to workers -- strikes -- hardship -- blame response to injustice rather than cause.

The '70s, dominated at the start and at the end by a Tory government, was the start of the tedious neocon war on labour which ended up with Britain becoming the laughable shell of a nation that it is today.

You're right about one thing, though: the complete failure of Tory policy was somewhat mitigated by the fortuitous appearance of Scottish gas. That and accounting for public asset sell-offs in order to appear as though the budget had been balanced. Thatcher was an interesting prime minister in only one sense: she had a peculiar ability to seduce pathetic, authoritarian, second-rate males into following her silly policies and turning Britain into a nation of corporate welfare queens.

Re:Unlikely as it seems

[udachny]

he was living in a standard engineer's apartment in a housing block, under their normal conditions, and was actually paid by the USSR government.

- my grandmother was pushed back in the queue for a new apartment (she lived in a so called 'vremianka' - temporary accommodations, that means a shack with all amenities OUTSIDE the fucking house, and it was actually in the middle of a large industrial city with a million people, where many lived this way), so she was pushed back in the queue 3 times and waited for a total of 22 years before she got a 'scheduled' apartment, a 1 bedroom actually. Not bad, ha? In a capitalist country she could have bought herself a 1 bedroom in much less time than that just by working almost anywhere, and she wouldn't have to wait for 22 years, given the fact that in capitalist countries it was (still is) possible to get a loan, a mortgage.

So why was she pushed back into the queue? Oh, because the housing was built very slowly, but when it was built and she was ready to move in, 3 times there were circumstances, I remember 2 of them: 1 was that they brought in some families from Cuba and placed them there, because of the 'Cuban brothers' who were also Communists of-course, their gov't needed to be shown how well people are treated in USSR.

Another time was actually simpler than that, somebody with real connections to a local (regional) party leader wanted to have an apartment for their offspring. You think they had to wait for years for this?

Your former colleague, I wonder who got fucked and pushed back in the queue so that back in UK he could tell tails about the wonders of the Soviet planned economy.

--

Oh, and I don't even care much about that, I am much more angry with that former country for what it did to a bunch of relatives of mine, 7 of who got killed only on one side of the family because they had a farm and even hired help to do farming. On the other side of family, where a person owned a shoe factory and obviously it was stolen - nationalized. Another side of family, who actually interestingly enough had in their possession part of a forest and a river and even a village (yeah, they owned a village) in a beautiful place near Moscow. That part of family lost a number of people as well, who couldn't run away quickly enough.

So never mind housing accommodations. As to Thatcher, she inherited a situation, which was so dire, here is what the former PM (before she came to power) said about it:

We used to think you could spend your way out of recession and increase employment by boosting government spending, I tell you, in all candour, that that option no longer exists. And in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion⦠by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next stepâ¦

That was by a former UK PM, James Callaghan, at the 1976 Labour Party conference.

Re:Unlikely as it seems

[Hazel Bergeron]

my grandmother was pushed back in the queue for a new apartmen

That sounds unfortunate. Many people have to wait up to a decade for new social housing in the UK, especially since Thatcher sold much of it

In a capitalist country she could have bought herself a 1 bedroom in much less time than that just by working almost anywhere, and she wouldn't have to wait for 22 years, given the fact that in capitalist countries it was (still is) possible to get a loan, a mortgage.

Certainly not in the UK - mortgages are such that no single person on minimum wage would be able to save up for a ~10% deposit, let alone be offered a 90% mortgage.

1 was that they brought in some families from Cuba and placed them there, because of the 'Cuban brothers' who were also Communists of-course, their gov't needed to be shown how well people are treated in USSR.

Yeah, the BNP complain about immigrants taking social housing in the UK all the time too.

Another time was actually simpler than that, somebody with real connections to a local (regional) party leader wanted to have an apartment for their offspring. You think they had to wait for years for this?

Probably not. In my local town, planning corruption is awful - you can pretty much do what you want wrt/ buildings if you grease the right palms. Not sure about assignment of housing per se. Knowing an MP mysteriously seems to sort out most local hurdles in a few days, though. Feeling nostalgic yet?

7 of who got killed only on one side of the family because they had a farm... owned a shoe factory... in their possession part of a forest and a river and even a village...

I assume this was a Stalinist kulak purge. I am sorry. It would have been sufficient to nationalise these things and there was no need to harm the old owners.

As to Thatcher, she inherited a situation, which was so dire, here is what the former PM (before she came to power) said about it:

You mean that Labour's Callaghan inherited a situation made awful by Tory Heath. While Callaghan tried to reform policy (not in the cleverest manner!), Thatcher decided to destroy Britain out of irrational hatred for certain parts of society.

And I have four for you

[Kupfernigk]

Paul Chambers, Bradley Manning. We really need to start working on the plank in our eye before removing Mr. Putin's.

Re:I could have sworn I typed "slashdot.org" just

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

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?