Older blog entries for ilgiz (starting at number 20)

ghee @ 2011-02-22T17:21:00

Peter Pomerantsev expressed the essence of what I remember and sometimes see in the Russian television. He summarized his experience working with a TV production company and observing the customs of the country. The prevailing culture of the country instills expectation of humiliation and hardship into the minds of the citizens and downplays aspiration.

"Under siege from psychic spies and airborne fungi, audiences are kept in a constant state of panic."

Pomerantsev exposes Soviet era traditions of state television such as the formula of subjects in the news broadcasts and the way nation leaders hold their meetings. Growing in that environment made these traditions invisible to me.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n03/peter-pomerantsev/diary

CBC's Q aired an interview with Pomerantsev this morning,

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20110222_45720.mp3

Syndicated 2011-02-22 22:21:26 (Updated 2011-03-29 02:39:36) from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

Death and survival

A playwright Anna Yablonskaya died in the Domodedovo bombing. Her work Pagans received recognition by a leading cinema magazine.

"По сюжету, молодая девушка, которая потеряла связь с друзьями, с родителями, со своим любимым пытается покончить с собой, но остается жива."

-- "By the plot line, a young woman who lost connection with friends, parents and the boyfriend attempts a suicide but survives".


Анна Яблонская. Убита в "Домодедово" - Елена Поляковская, 25 января 2011 г., Радио Свобода.

Syndicated 2011-01-25 23:50:27 (Updated 2012-04-10 20:54:31) from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

BBC's change of strategy

British journalist, former editor of the Russian Features department in BBC Masha Karp wrote that she received a written warning over airing a programme "The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko" December 18, 2006. Her managers found that the programme presented "much stronger and detailed arguments from one side of the discussion and under-represent[ed] the other". In a phone call the day after airing, a senior BBC Russian Service editor told her that "pro-Kremlin guys sound stupid and Bukovsky and the others sound intelligent".[1]

Karp wrote that BBC closed her department and removed the need to broadcast opinions "not heard on the state-controlled media" from its strategy.

One year later Martin Dewhirst, University of Glasgow, and Victor Suvorov complained about BBC Russian Service's lack of impartiality. In their letter to the complaints unit of the corporation they mentioned that Deputy Head of the region and Editor-in-Chief of the service could have regular contacts with KGB in the past.[2]

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[1] BBC plays by the Kremlin's Rules: Masha Karp, November 2010, Standpoint Magazine, http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3492/full

[2] Letter to the Editorial Complaints Unit of the BBC from Martin Dewhirst, Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Glasgow and Viktor Suvorov, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Minutes of Evidence, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmfaff/50/7062714.htm

Syndicated 2010-11-10 20:52:15 from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

Assaults on opposition members in Russia

Human rights defender Yelena Vasilyeva, one of the top members of the Solidarnost opposition movement in Russia, was assaulted on her way back from the regional opposition conference in Tambov on April 5. Miss Vasilyeva helped free Larisa Arap in 2007.

A man approached her in the train and hit her into the chest adding, "we will unteach you from visiting Tambov region".

http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/article/1604731.html
(computer translation)

This happened less than a week after another prominent opposition figure, Lev Ponomaryov, was severely beaten on the way to his apartment in Moscow. Mr Ponomaryov carried civil investigations of human rights violations including the 2004 mass police mop-up in Blagoveschensk, Bashkiria.

Syndicated 2009-04-07 22:04:06 (Updated 2009-09-01 15:45:32) from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

ghee @ 2008-11-14T23:50:00

Just some 150 years ago a theory that newborns died from "cadaverous particles" brought on to them after autopsies was considered backward.

The physician who found the cause-effect link felt misunderstood and died from pyemia after a severe beating in the psychiatric asylum, according to references in a Wikipedia page on Ignaz Semmelweis,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

This mildly contradicts an article in a Russian pop magazine. The article says that the physician "died" after his spirits were broken and that his colleagues considered his idea anti-religious. But the references in the above page tell about his colleagues thinking that his idea was rooted in old beliefs.

Syndicated 2008-11-15 04:51:12 (Updated 2008-11-15 18:44:37) from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

ghee @ 2008-06-16T08:04:00

I am mesmerized by the late Russian royal family. I was not aware about their lives and deeds until recently.

G.D. Olga Alexandrovna was daughter of Princess Dagmar of Denmark and Alexander III. The other child of the pair, Nicholas, Olga's elder brother, later became Czar Nicholas II.

G.D. Elizabeth Feodorovna was daughter of British Princess Alice and G.D. Ludvig IV. Princess Alice was daughter of Queen Victoria. Elizabeth's younger sister Princess Alix (Alexandra Feodorovna) was Czar Nicholas's wife.

G.D. Olga escaped to Denmark, then lived a modest life in Campbellville (Canada), then Cooksville, then Toronto. Her mother, Princess Dagmar (Maria Fyodorovna) survived son's execution by 10 years.

According to Trotsky's diary, it was Lenin and Sverdlov who ordered the execution of Czar's family. (Alexis Scherbatow, The New York Times, July 17, 1991) To this day, Russian government denies such orders were made.

Czar with his immediate family and G.D. Elizabeth with others were killed by Bolsheviks 17-18 July 1918 in Yekaterinburg's Ipatiev House and in a mining pit 18 km from Alapaevsk's Napolnaya School on the road to Siniachikha.

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Update: The descendants' lawyer obtained the acknowledgment that the killings in the Ipatiev House were acts of political repression that need rehabilitation.

Syndicated 2008-06-16 13:26:31 (Updated 2008-10-01 11:46:08) from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

ghee @ 2007-12-06T22:39:00

"Запишись в группу избирателей в поддержку выдвижения Владимира Буковского на пост Президента РФ"

Syndicated 2007-12-07 03:39:27 (Updated 2009-09-22 01:44:04) from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

ghee @ 2007-12-03T02:05:00

I forgot my passport and was late for the Russian elections in Toronto last Sunday. I was going to vote for Yabloko. According to the "official", state-propaganda-affected data, Yabloko scored between 1 and 2%. I can't believe the government party scored 70% in the poll stations abroad, higher than in Russia itself. The 99% scored by it in the raped and killed Chechnya is also appalling.

When I talked and communicated with few friends and acquaintances in the last 24 hours, it was a pleasure to find common grounds and share some plans with them.

Syndicated 2007-12-03 07:07:03 (Updated 2007-12-03 07:09:28) from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov

I am worried about the sale of LiveJournal to SUP. Here is a picture worth many words I copied from someone else. It is a Stalin's portrait in the social realism style, with a question, "'sup?" ("What's up?") flying off his mouth.



In the good news, I found it important that Wikimedia and Advogato are officially not-for-profit, unlike LiveJournal.

Syndicated 2007-12-03 06:22:36 from Ilguiz (eel ghEEz) Latypov