Celebrating Paratrooper Day in Moscow... like real men!

Macho men are the same worldwide. Give them booze and a reason and off they go end up getting naked together.

All throughout the former Eastern Bloc, every profession had its own 'day'. So every year there would be a railway workers day, a day for geologists, one for teachers, one for post office workers and so forth. Each division of the armed forces also had their 'day', so there is a paratrooper day, a border guard day etc. The military-specific special days usually end up being excuses for, as what Julia Ioffe wrote on her Moscow Diaries blog:

...drinking, beating up Dagestanis, drinking, storming a cafe and breaking its windows and glassware, driving a tractor onto Red Square (the driver turned out to be a paratrooper poser), drinking, and raiding a watermelon stand. (When bystanders tried to stop them, the paratroopers answered that they were taking “theirs.”)

How charming! However what the paratroopers and border guards love to do most on such a day — other than drink, of course — is frolick. In fountains. In their underwear.

Capturing a glimpse of what fine and esteemed men serve in these important divisions of the military, Russian photo blogger Zyalt took these pictures in Moscow's Gorky Park of the Border Guards having 'fun'




Zyalt has more photos of Paratrooper Day here. These photos are of particular note:

On the band of this man's underwear writes 'Edinnaya Rossiya' (One Russia) i.e. the name of Putin's ruling political party.

That's beer they are drinking here. Beer in many Eastern European countries is sold in plastic bottles just like soft drink. Well, it's only 5% proof, so it's practically soft drink.

However, what was most fitting was that when taking these photos Zyalt was approached by the police and asked, “Are you Russian?” Yes. “Then why are you taking pictures?” What’s the big deal? “Why are you embarrassing Russia?”

What happened to the DPR Korea football coach?

OK, so I'm in a North Korean mood. I just found out something that I am cutting myself up about because even I missed this one... and it's my task to find this info out and inform. Well, better late than never...

Yet another beat-up/hearsay/speculation/outright lie about North Korea has been disproven. Something I commented about last month. After the shocking defeat of the DPR Korean team 7-0 by the Portuguese at this year's World Cup in June, the world's media was quick to pounce on a 'report' that the shameful team, upon their return to the fatherland, faced a marathon criticism session and that the coach, Kim Jong Hun, was severely punished. For instance, that bastion of 'truth', Germany's top selling tabloid Bild reported that:

The families of the players have reportedly been under close observation in North Korea during the tournament. Well informed Japanese secret service circles believe that the danger of severe punishment for the players is very real.

So where did this report originate from? Why of course, from a defector called Moon Ki-Nam, a 'former North Korean coach' who fled the country in 2004, who told AP:

The players and coach are rewarded with huge houses when they win, but they have to atone for losing by being sent to work in the coal mines.

Now what did I post about defector testimony before...?

So that's it. Based on this speculation, it was accepted as fact that those evil North Koreans had basically shot, or at least arrested the footballers and the coach with their families and sent them to the coal mines.

Was this the case? NO!

Again, why spoil a great story with the facts. What was not widely reported (except in South Korea) was that the coach did what most other national team coaches do in the same position - he resigned. A criticism session did happen, but yet again, post-mortums would have been undertaken by all football federations that had participated in the World Cup to investigate where things went wrong, what needs to be improved, etc. In North Korea's case, the coach's resignation was rejected by the DPR Korean Football section, giving coach Kim another chance. So they were far kinder and more understanding than the French or Italian football bodies! Plus, no coal mines or arrests. According to more reliable sources, Coach Kim and the boys are already training for their next task - the upcoming Asian Cup to be held in Qatar in January. We will be seeing them then, but with more experience under their belts.

So in the end, no treachery, no horror stories, no evil... just common sense. However, with no balanced reporting, the perception that the North Korean players are being tortured in some sort of North Korean gulag camps remains.

DPR Korea is a place where people live

Korea is here. I happen to stumble on these images taken by world-famous photographer Eric Lafforgue, offering a different insight to the unique country that is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Girl at a public holiday public celebration in Kim Il-sung Square, central Pyongyang

Woman police officer. Check out the shades.

Woman traffic officer directing non-existent traffic in Pyongyang

Family photos

Korean couple.

I love this shot. Despite that these Korean women are performing in a 'Mass Games' choreography, the height of collective subordination, this photo shows that they are all still individuals, and the look on many of them is that they are having fun.

Stunning! Statute of Kim Il-sung

English textbook about Mangyongdae, Kim Il-sung's birthplace. The fact that it is referring to Kim Il-sung as the 'Respected Leader' would suggest that this book was printed in the mid-1990s, so judging by its condition, it has been well used.

Students sweeping around the statue of Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang. Check out the fancy bags and the girl on the right - rather cool look.

Propaganda poster

Genuinely happy school children

Another propaganda poster attacking the USA

Near the Kim Il-sung statue in Pyongyang. Rice being delivered (I saw the same thing happen in Seoul with rice in same type of caldron being delivered to riot police stationed in buses awaiting student protesters). And how about the couple on the top right? Pyongyang yuppies. Love the purple coat!

Lone woman traffic officer in rain coat with nothing to do in Kaesong, a city kilometres away from the DMZ.

Waving the red flag.

Public dance celebrations, Pyongyang.

I love the smile on the woman in yellow on the back of the lorry.

Girls being girls.

DPR...OK?? Let's get it into perspective.

Anything and everything is written and speculated about North Korea... and then accepted as fact, despite there being no shred of evidence. Rarely is this misinformation questioned, especially as it helps bolster the ideological war against the DPR Koreans. Most concern Kim Jong-il's supposed bad health. Of course, the fact he is now 68 years old... of course his hair is going to go grey, is overlooked. There always has to be something sinister and treacherous instead.

Occasionally, there are times when things are put into perspective, only they tend to be hidden. Recently, deep, deep, deep into an article about the implications and speculation about the upcoming Korean Workers Party conference that appeared on the BBC website, there was this insight. Read and learn:

Brian Myers, a North Korea propaganda expert based at South Korea's Dongseo University, urges caution, given that much of the speculation about the goings on inside North Korea is based on sources outside the country, often North Korean defectors.

"The chances of your average North Korean defector knowing [what's happening behind the scenes in the upper echelons of DPR Korean government] are the same odds as an English teacher in a bar in Itaewon [in central Seoul] knowing what Obama said to his cabinet last week," he said.

Not until Kim Jong-un is officially appointed to a senior party position, and his name appears in black and white in a North Korean newspaper, will we be able to say with any certainty that the succession has begun.

Finally some sense! Basically, not even intelligence organisations, let alone bitter but savvy defectors, known what is really happening inside DPR Korea. So quit accepting speculation as fact. But then again, why let facts ruin a good story?

"If someone is responsible, it's me"

This is what Cuban leader Fidel Castro had to say regarding persecution of homosexuals in Cuba in the 1960s to 1980s, in an in-depth interview he recently had with the Mexican paper La Jornada. Castro has seen the errors of the past and is very much seeking to amend them. Cuba, like in many other social aspects, is a champion of gay rights in Latin America. Thanks to the revolutionary work of Fidel Castro's niece and daughter of current Cuban leader Raul Castro, Mariela Castro, homosexuals in Cuba are now enjoying greater rights and greater government assistance in areas of concern such as health and HIV than many gay people in other Western Hemisphere countries. Bravo Fidel!

Castro said homosexuals had traditionally been discriminated in Cuba, just as black people and women. In 1979 homosexuality in Cuba was decriminalised (earlier than many parts of the USA and Australia!) and, more recently, there have been efforts to legalise same-sex unions.

Many in the West are unaware that despite the fact that most Eastern bloc countries were very anti-gay and dismissed homosexuality as a 'bourgeois disease', there were times and individual countries where this was not the case. The early years of the Russian Revolution saw groundbreaking changes in gay rights, only for Stalin to repeal them, as remained as such until past the fall of the USSR.



The German Democratic Republic was a firm supporter of gay rights, especially towards the end of its existence in the 1980s. The GDR even decriminalised homosexuality and brought age of consent laws in line before West Germany! Gay groups under the auspices of the FDJ, the Young Communist League, were set up that organised gay nights and awareness, and even a gay rights film called 'Coming Out' was released in late 1989 just as the Berlin Wall was about to fall. Czechoslovakia (with the Czech Republic in particular) was also very gay-friendly as a society.


It's great to see that Castro is able to make amends for the errors of the past, and I would like to see his counterparts in Western countries to do the same.

Is Putin 'crude' because he's Russian? Are we in the West then 'proper'?

Here is a significant and much forgotten point that was raised by one commenter in response to a blogpost in the Economist snickering at the 'gutter language' Vladimir Putin uses. It insinuated that Putin's use of 'crude language', akin to Bushisms and Palinisms, reflects on Russia as a whole. Just like the stereotype of Americans being dumb and uncultured, so too must be Russians then, unlike western Europeans. However this is more the truth:

Many comments here erroneously assume that "western" cultural mores in general dictate that one must speak in a prim fashion suitable for a kindergarten at all times. This is hardly the case. Western Europe and America have a long tradition of "earthy" language that would be characterised as "crude" by these individuals.

In fact, this priggish attitude is a purely middle-class concoction - call it bourgeois, if you like. The upper and lower classes had no problem with "coarse" language, though since the 19th century the upper classes have been infected by bourgeois moralising to an extent. This bawlderising of speech became popular in English-speaking countries only in the 19th century as the middle class enlarged and sought to differentiate itself from the working class (whence most of them came) by implementing an exaggeratedly "good" standard of conduct that they thought made them seem more refined and pious and upper-class.

The upper classes were every bit as bawdy as the lower. Read Christopher Marlowe, for example, or Shakespeare. It was only the bourgeois middle classes who ostentatiously sought to parade their morality by proscribing "vulgar" language. It is hardly a "western" more.

With this in mind, this is why old money like George W. Bush seems like a 'common person' in his speech.

Conflict of civilisations... or interest??

Much has been whipped up over the so-called 'Ground Zero Mosque', which is not at Ground Zero in New York, nor is a mosque. One of the outlets fuelling this mountain out of a molehill is that comedy show, oops 'fair and balanced' Fox News.

On the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends last week, it was revealed that the Kingdom Foundation, main financiers of the 'Ground Zero Mosque' otherwise known as the 'Cordoba Center', is a dangerous Saudi organisation that, according to guest Dan Senor, funds radical madrassas and has also funded Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam at the heart of the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy.

Unmentionned by Fox, but revealed by Jon Stewart, is that the Kingdom Foundation is run by Al-Waleed bin Talal, who also happens to be...one of the NewsCorp's largest shareholders (Fox's parent company).

Now this puts an interesting spin on things.