In the 1970's, while American hippies were busy inking themselves with peace signs and psychedelic rainbows, Danzig Baldayev, a guard at St. Petersburg’s notorious Kresty Prison, began documenting the far less Woodstockian body art of Russia’s most infamous criminals.
For 33 years, Baldayev used his exclusive access to and rapport with the prisoners to hand-illustrate and capture in artful photographs more than 3,600 inmate tattoos — as admirable a feat artistically as it was sociologically.
In 2003, when he was in his late 70's, Baldayev began releasing his magnificent archive as a series of books revealing a rich and eerie intersection of art and violence.
Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volumes I, II and III offer not only a visceral record of this intersection, but also Baldayev’s aambitious effort to, through text and illustrations, parse the meaning of these tattoos and place them in the context of this fiercely self-contained subculture. (Or, as it were, institution-contained as well.)
Perhaps even more striking than the body art itself is how Baldayev was able to talk some of Russia’s most dangerous convicts into posing for such intimate and often vulnerable portraits.
For a related glimpse of this darkly enigmatic world, the excellent Oscar-nominated 2007 film Eastern Promises about the Russian mob in London, starring Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen, offers an intriguing look at tattoos as storytelling, a narrative through which prisoners told their life stories and conveyed their credos.
Thanks, Greg
Each of the volumes is an absolute masterpiece and a fascinating slice of (sub)cultural anthropology. It’s the kind of thing that adds instant conversation potential to any home library or coffee table, and guaranteed you’re-cooler-than-my-other-friends gifting recognition.
photos of a 100 foot structure and says that it is a gift to the U.S. from the people of Russia. The email says that this is called "The Teardrop" and serves as a memorial to the lives lost in the World Trade Center attack of September 11th. The email goes on to ask why there was no press coverage.
The Truth: The "Teardrop" memorial is real and is a 100-foot September 11th sculpture that was donated by the Russian people and is located in New Jersey.
The memorial was dedicated on September 11, 2006 in a ceremony attended by former President Bill Clinton. Also in attendance were Michael Chertoff, the Bush Adminstration Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and family members of World Trade Center victims. Recording artist Leann Rimes sang the National Anthem and Amazing Grace at the dedication ceremony.
Click for Bayonne Local Redevelopment Authority site.
Contrary to the claim of the eRumor, the announcement of the intended memorial as well as its dedication did receive nationwide news coverage including a visit to New Jersey on September 15, 2005, by Russian president Vladimir Putin for the groundbreaking ceremony.
updated 03/15/09
A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:
Why is it we never heard about this? How is it that Russia can do it but the US hasn’t been able to create an appropriate monument?
Russian gift to the US I had never heard of this before receiving it. Why didn't the press report it?
This It is the "TEAR DROP" made and installed by the Russians to honor those who died in 9 11 and a statement against terrorism. It is very impressive.. The tear drop is lined up with the Statue of Liberty...
..it is an impressive memorial and statement against terrorism. Gift from the people of Russia...
"Monument to the struggle against world terrorism, artist Zurab Tesereteii"
The walkway is made of stones.
Names of the persons killed on 9 11 are inscribed on the base.
The base like the Vietnam Memorial wall. It was a cold and windy day but well worth the drive to see.
It is down in the shipping yards across from "The Lady".
Internationally renowed Russo-Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli will be in Bayonne, New Jersey on September 11, 2006 for a public ceremony dedicating a monument "To the Struggle Against World Terrorism".
Zurab Tsereteli describing his public art work in Moscow
The Associated Press reports that "The monument also has been billed as a gift from 'Russian President Vladimir Putin, the people of Russia and the artist' to the people of the United States, in the spirit of France's gift of the Statue of Liberty. The segments of the monument arrived in New Jersey from Russia last September, shortly before Putin attended a groundbreaking in Bayonne when he traveled to New York for meetings at the United Nations."
Fox News has an earlier version of the story discussing the controversy over whether some names should be removed from the monument. Unlike many other 9/11 memorials, the site includes the names of six people killed in the first terrorist attempt to bring down the World Trade Center, in 1993. New York and New Jersey officials are in talks with the artist's lawyer to decide about the other names not found in the official list of WTC dead.
Click on the extended post to see the monument and read the full AP article.
Artist's concept of the Bayonne 9/11 Memorial facing the Manhattan skyline
Teardrop sculpture in Bayonne to be dedicated on Sept. 11
By JANET FRANKSTON, Associated Press Writer
Published: Friday, July 28, 2006
Updated: Friday, July 28, 2006
BAYONNE, N.J. (AP) - At 100 feet tall, the bronze sculpture on the Bayonne waterfront is hard to miss.
The massive memorial evokes the World Trade Center that once sat across the Hudson River. Jagged lines divide the monument into two tower-like pieces, and a 40-foot steel teardrop gently hangs in the open center, like a bell.
On fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli will dedicate his 175-ton work, which sits on a former military base, past the entrance to a cruise terminal, at the tip of a peninsula. The Statue of Liberty is just across the water.
The names of the people who died in the 1993 and Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are etched in granite, in slabs that will form an 11-sided base.
There's some question about the accuracy of the names on the base. The memorial lists 3,024 names, according to the artist's attorney. That's 45 more than the official count of 2,979, which includes six people killed in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the 2,973 killed on Sept. 11, 2001 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
New York City officials removed 43 names in 2003 and 2004 from the list of the dead at the trade center, saying some people had tried to fake their own deaths, while others had been falsely reported missing or their deaths could not be proven to have occurred at ground zero.
Emily Madoff, an attorney for the artist, said after trying to determine the correct list of names from several sources, she asked for confirmation from Kenneth Feinberg, the former special master of a federal Sept. 11 victim compensation fund, who referred her to a book published by The New York Times in 2003.
"We tried so hard to make it right," Madoff said. "If we erred, we erred on the side of inclusion." She said she stands by her list of names as being "the most accurate one we could possibly find," she said.
The sculpture, "To The Struggle Against World Terrorism," will be the centerpiece of a two-acre park nearing completion in Bayonne, whose officials are happy to have the public art.
Like the 72-year-old artist, known for grand statues that some critics have called more "kitsch" than art, the sculpture isn't without controversy.
The first plan had the sculpture located on the Jersey City waterfront, but city officials there rejected it.
Mayor Jerramiah Healy said leaders didn't realize the monument's height and thought it would impede views of the Hudson and New York City skyline. He said the city's arts community didn't like it, either.
"Their message to the council was clear: it was not just unpleasant, but almost to the point of offensive," he said. "We're happy that Bayonne is happy and we're happy that Mr. Tsereteli is happy."
City officials in Bayonne welcomed the sculpture. They offered up a site, on city-owned land planned for redevelopment.
The city is not paying for the memorial, but agreed to pay $1.25 million to create the first phase of the waterfront park, said Bayonne Mayor Joe Doria.
"It's a very important memorial," he said. "We should be working against the terrorism that resulted in the attack on 9/11. The teardrop is an excellent context of what we have to do."
It's unclear how the monument is being funded, but Tsereteli calls it "his gift." He said he didn't want to take any money from the Russian government, but declined to elaborate.
Madoff said the materials, shipping, labor and cost to create the base is about $12 million.
The monument also has been billed as a gift from "Russian President Vladimir Putin, the people of Russia and the artist" to the people of the United States, in the spirit of France's gift of the Statue of Liberty.
The segments of the monument arrived in New Jersey from Russia last September, shortly before Putin attended a groundbreaking in Bayonne when he traveled to New York for meetings at the United Nations.
The monument came in five parts - four pieces that would be assembled to become the memorial - and the tear.
Tsereteli returned to Bayonne this month to put the finishing touches on his sculpture.
"From here if you looked at the trade towers, they looked as if they were blended as one," Tsereteli said through a translator, his 28-year-old grandson Vasili, pointing across the water.
Tsereteli said the tear symbolizes "sadness over grief that will become happiness in the future when terrorism is defeated."
---
Associated Press Writer Amy Westfeldt contributed to this report.
Please try not to vomit as you watch the video below, and here is hoping that this is NOT the answer to the world's hunger problem.
Japanese scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda has been busy playing Dr. Frankenstein -- he's developed a "burger" made from protein extracted from human feces. Yep, you read that correctly, real human poop.
He combined the synthesized protein with soya and added some steak sauce for taste and dubbed it a burger. According to the video, which explains the process, it even tastes like beef. "It's 63 percent protein, 25 percent carbohydrates, three percent lipids and nine percent minerals to make one Turd Burger."
So if the poop burger becomes a thing, will vegetarians eat it or is it considered an animal product?
Prague - Cooperation with Russia on the U.S. missile defence system is possible, but Moscow should not have the right to veto where NATO security matters are concerned, Alexandr Vondra, Czech deputy prime minister for European affairs, said in a debate on TV Prima today.
The planned anti-missile shield is to include a radar base on Czech soil. The two Czech-U.S. "radar" treaties were signed by the Czech and U.S. ministers under George Bush's administration last year.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on the ARD television on Tuesday she considers it necessary for Russia to take part in the missile defence shield project.
On Wednesday Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said he would welcome it if Russia joined the U.S. anti-missile shield project in a meaningful way.
Vondra (Civic Democrats, ODS) today said he expects the new U.S. government of Barack Obama to place a bigger emphasis, in connection with the anti-missile shield, on a dialogue not only in NATO but also with the Russian federation.
"Everything I know makes me believe that they will continue their anti-missile defence project," said Vondra, former Czech ambassador to the U.S.
He said, nevertheless, that Obama's team might make "slight corrections" to the project. It may earmark less money than what was originally planned, he added.
Vondra said the U.S. definitely will not give its missile defence project up.
Apart from the radar, to be built in the Brdy military district southwest of Prague and yet to be discussed by the Czech Chamber of Deputies, the Central European part of the shield is to comprise a base with interceptor missiles in Poland.
Moscow has sharply protested against the project which it considers a threat to its own security.
Washington asserts the shield is to be aimed against possible missile attacks from "rogue" countries such as Iran.
According to Vondra, Obama and his administration will now probably seek even more intensive cooperation with Europe, and also a dialogue with Moscow.
"We negotiated about the issue with Russia in the past two years," Vondra said, recalling that the U.S., too, offered ways of missile defence cooperation to Russia.
One of the then debated possibilities was the presence of Russian monitors at the U.S. bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, which, however, both Czechs and Poles rejected.
"The cooperation, however, cannot include a Russian right to veto where decisions on NATO security matters are concerned," Vondra said.
Russian gas crisis sends Central Europe scrambling for future alternatives. By Benjamin Cunningham - Staff Writer
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ISIFA Photo
Slovakia considered turning on a Soviet-era nuclear reactor in response to the recent gas crisis.
A European Union-brokered deal to monitor the Ukrainian gas pipeline was meant to turn the gas flow back on, but it was not until Russia and Ukraine resolved a bilateral price dispute that natural gas again started flowing west.
As of press time Jan. 20, Russia had turned on the taps, and the first deliveries had reached Slovak pipelines.
The recent Ukraine-Russia gas row, which cut off supplies to parts of Europe for more than two weeks, again raised questions about the reliability of Europe's present supply lines and the EU's ability to influence key actors, sending the Czech Republic and its neighbors searching for longer-term solutions.
In Slovakia, the quick-fix was a proposal to restart a nuclear reactor at Jaslovské Bohunice, a plan that faced strong EU opposition before eventually being scrapped.
Energy supply breakdown |---------------------| Czech Republic 46% coal 21% oil 16% natural gas 15% nuclear 2% other sources |---------------------| Slovakia 28% natural gas 24% coal 22% nuclear 20% oil 6% other sources
Source: International Energy Agency, 2007
|---------------------|
"There is no reason at the moment to re-launch the second V1 nuclear reactor at the Jaslovské Bohunice nuclear power plant," Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on a Jan. 18 television talk show.
The Slovaks, however, did not eliminate the possibility of restarting the reactor in the event of another future energy crisis, a move that would break the country's EU accession treaty. Slovak Foreign Affairs Minister Jan Kubiš was in Austria Jan. 15 still trying to allay safety concerns related to the Soviet-era facility. The last reactor at the plant was shut down Dec. 31, 2008.
Natural gas is Slovakia's largest source of energy, totaling about 28 percent of use, according to Hiroshi Hashimoto, a natural gas specialist with the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Nearly 100 percent of Slovakia's natural gas supply comes from Russia.
The Czech Republic, by comparison, is both less dependent on natural gas in general and more diversified in terms of sources. In 2007, the latest statistics available, the country counts on natural gas for 16 percent of its total energy supply. Russia supplies 79 percent and Norway contributes most of the rest.
While many are quick to condemn Russia over the recent energy crisis, about 80 percent of Russian gas exported to Europe passes through Ukrainian territory. About two-thirds of Gazprom's revenue comes from gas sold after transiting Ukraine, according to a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
"On the whole [Ukraine] is not a reliable country," says Petr Kratochvíl, a Ukraine and Russia expert at the Prague Institute for International Relations. "The basic problem is that there is not a single voice. The internal political situation is a permanent political deadlock."
As instability in Ukraine increasingly worries Europeans about its reliability as a transit country, various gas-access options are on the table. The proposed North Stream pipeline would bring natural gas from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, then onward to the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The so-called South Stream pipeline would bring Russian gas through the Balkans to Italy. A proposed Nabucco pipeline would bring Central Asian gas through Turkey and into the EU. None of these options is near implementation, and all face practical and political hurdles.
Czech Energy Envoy Václav Bartuška has publicly advocated the idea of using liquefied natural gas, which is cooled and shipped in tanks, as a means of bypassing future pipeline problems.
Coby van der Linde, director of the Clingendael International Energy Project in The Hague, is skeptical. "The quantities are much smaller. It's just not physically possible," she said.
Coal, a fuel that presently covers nearly half of the Czech Republic's energy use, has been decreasingly popular in recent years, but new technologies could be making it viable again.
"Even though coal is very negative on the environment, if we can store the carbon dioxide somehow, we can use more coal," Van der Linde said.
Green energy options are increasingly popular, at least rhetorically, and Van der Linde points to Denmark as an example of a country formerly dependent on coal and now a world leader in wind energy.
Progress on the Slovak option, nuclear power, has been slowed in recent decades "very much by the Chernobyl event," Van der Linde said.
France, however, became a nuclear innovator in response to the first and second oil crises, Van der Linde said.
Locally, both the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Social Democrats (ČSSD) support expanding sources of nuclear power. The Greens (SZ) have slowed progress as part of their governing coalition agreement, but incoming Green Humans Rights and Minority Minister Michael Kocáb has said he would support a change in party position.
Separately, the largest state-owned energy company, ČEZ, announced plans Jan. 20 to build two new nuclear reactors in Dukovany by 2035. "Nuclear energy is a political risk, but this is changing because of the environmental discussion," Van Der Linde said.
The Czech Republic has made energy policy a priority of its EU presidency. During the gas row, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Moscow and Kyiv. While most laud the effort, there are questions as to the concrete results.
"The EU's role was quite weak and the monitors were more symbolic. All the trumps were in the hands of Russia and Ukraine," Kratochvíl said. "They somehow just meet behind closed doors but never know what the agreement is about."
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says the EU monitors are no longer needed because the price dispute has been settled. Kratochvíl says he is skeptical of whether the Russian-Ukrainian agreement will be honored, as the agreement is not public and various murky special interest groups on both sides persist.
Van der Linde has her own questions, mainly as to whether the EU will ever be able to have a cohesive, comprehensive energy policy. France, for example, is a strong proponent of nuclear energy, while Germany seeks to increase its access to Russian natural gas. "Member states have reaffirmed their sovereignty over energy mix," she said. "Maybe it is good that some countries are specialized."
Rather than a singular EU energy policy, she advocates power plants that can operate with more than one fuel - gas and oil, for example - and a Europe-wide "joint-crisis mechanism" to deal with shortages.
"That is something we can do," she adds. "And now."
Prague - The six-month Czech presidency of the European Union that started on January 1 is a great opportunity for the Czech Republic, Polish President Lech Kaczynski said after a meeting with his Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus today.
Kaczynski at the same time said he believes that the Czech presidency would be successful. Each EU-presiding country becomes a power and it depends on it how to it will use this opportunity, Kaczynski said.
"We envy the Czech Republic this presidency very much," Kaczynski noted.
Poland will preside over the EU in 2011 only. Kaczynski said the situation would be different then since the Lisbon treaty would probably take effect, changing the functioning of the EU.
The Lisbon treaty is to reform the EU institutions. Besides Ireland, which rejected the treaty in a referendum last June, the Czech Republic is the only EU member state that has not yet ratified it.
Klaus and Kaczynski today primarily focused on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that led to restricted gas supplies from Russia, but both presidents also discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Kaczynski said the EU represented by the Czech Republic should play an active role in the solution to the conflict. Both presidents mentioned that they touched upon several ideas in this respect during their talks, but they did not elaborate.
"I suppose that diplomacy demands certain discretion in such complex matters," Kaczynski said.
The Israeli military operation against the Gaza Strip started on December 27, 2008 in reaction to the activities of the Hamas radical movement. The conflict has so far claimed several hundred civilians victims in Gaza, according to Palestinian sources.
Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg headed the EU mission that visited the region last weekend. Klaus said today the Czech Republic would try to use all contacts that might help reach ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon and set up a long-term rational settlement in this part of the world.
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The "Teardrop" memorial is real and is a 100-foot September 11th sculpture that was donated by the Russian people and is located in New Jersey.
