Wladimir Klitschko fights to save dolphins in Japan

As we have reported before, heavywight boxer Vitali Klitschko has made efforts to help stray animals in Kiev. His younger brother Wladimir recently joined his girlfriend, American actress Hayden Panettiere, who is a committed marine activist, in an action to save dolphins in Taiji, Japan. Panettiere has been involved in actions in Taiji with the organisation Sea Shepherd for a few years now.

In an annual hunt that lasts from October to April, dolphins are caught for meat and to be sold to delphinariums. The official number of dolphins caught in 2007 was 1,623, but unofficial estimates say it could be as many as 23,000.
Besides humans and other great apes, whales, pigs, octopi, elephants and crows, dolphins are one of the most intelligent animal species in the world, and probably the most intelligent aquatic animals.



In a silent protest, Hayden and Wladimir laid out a giant silhouette of a dolphin on the beach outside Taiji. Then they attempted to meet the mayor, but were met by outraged locals outside. The Ukrainian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reports that "Klitschko did not use his fists to protect his girlfriend against the offenders. Apparently the tiny but courageous actress was fully capable of standing up for herself."

One could question why an American animal rights activist doesn't look at "her own backyard" and focus on, for example, factory farming or animal testing in the USA, where slavery, torture and mass murder is carried out in an even more gruesome scale. But other animals than humans arguably don't care about human-made national boundaries. And if you have a special affection for dolphins, it makes sense to fight for dolphins anywhere in the world.

Anyway, this story is a perfect excuse to post some nice photos of Wladimir Klitschko (found in the extensive collection of sunshinetrue):





The following vintage-style photos are from the cute book Unser Fitnessbuch ("Our Fitness Book") by Vitali and Wladimir, where they present simple exercises for everybody to keep in shape.


















Above: young Wladimir. Below are some childhood photos:



Vitali, their grandma(?) and Wladimir



Vitali and Wladimir



Wladimir's school photo

Vitali Klitschko will help Ukrainian stray animals survive the 2012 European Football Championship

Mum is a great fan of Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, the famous handsome heavyweight boxer brothers, so it's really about time that we write something about them.

Vitali was born in Belovodsk, Kyrgyz SSR, and Wladimir in Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR. Their father is an Air Force General. Later on, the Klitschko family moved to Germany, where the brothers began their boxing careers. On the side, they both studied in Kiev and got Ph.D's in Sports science. After presenting his dissertation in 1996, Vitali was apparently the first boxer to hold a Ph.D. Wladimir followed in 2001.

Wladimir currently holds the IBF, WBO, IBO and Ring Magazine world heavyweight titles. Vitali is the current WBC world heavyweight champion, and he is the fourth boxer to ever win a heavyweight belt three times, after Muhammad Ali, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis.

The brothers are active in several charitable causes helping children around the world. Now Vitali has also stepped up to help furry children in need in his home town Kiev.



In his free time, Vitali is involved in local politics in Kiev. He is right now a member of the city parliament, and sits in the organisational committee for the 2012 European football championship.



The Football championship is something that deeply worries friends of animals in Kiev. The authorities have already organized mass killings of stray animals to "clean up" the streets for their international visitors, and animal rights activists are working hard to stop them from further mass killings.



Mass killing is not a sustainable solution, since it doesn't do anything about the root causes for strays, not to mention that it of course causes immense suffering. Neutering stray animals to prevent them from reproducing uncontrollably, and, most importantly, enforcing an Animal Protection Bill that would prevent most animals from getting to the point of being abandoned in the streets in the first place, are a much more sustainable solution.



The local animal rights organization Society for the Protection of Animals (SOS) has been in contact with members of the city parliament, among them Vitali Klitschko, to convince them of a humane and long-term solution to the problem with stray animals. Klitschko is now convinced that a humane solution to the stray problem is the right thing to do.



Recently he visited SOS's animal shelter with TV cameras in tow, in order to raise awareness about the work the organization is doing for animals in need. He was full of admiration for the people at the shelter, who work hard to improve the lives of stray animals in Kiev.





Find out more about the Society for the Protection of Animals (SOS), and what you, too, can do to help them.

Photos from Streuner in Kiew.

The president's first love

The Russian newspaper Argumenty i fakty reports in the article "To turn down a president: First love is never forgotten" about the first love of Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

In 1994, Nazarbayev paid a visit to the city Dneprodzerzhinsk in Ukraine. He came by the vocational training school Nr. 8, where he in the late 1950's, in the dawn of his youth, had studied to become a furnace-worker, and met with teachers and old class mates. Surprisingly, he declared: "In your city, I helped two friends get married. But I myself failed. Here, I felt my first love."

Lyudmila Ivanovna Kalnysh, a former classmate of the president, heard this confession on the radio. She had not dared go watch the Kazakh president's visit, because she was afraid that she might faint if she saw Nursultan.

Back in their school days, Nuri had noticed Lyudmila in the gym hall, where he wrestled in one end of the hall and she did rhythmic gymnastics in the other end of the hall.

At some point Lyuda felt the gaze of burning black eyes in her back. She already knew that Nursultan was a straight-A student and the komsorg (komsomol organizer) of the class.
"I remember how the girls and I were sitting in the assembly hall at some boring meeting", Lyudmila Ivanovna tells AiF. "We didn't listen to the speeches. And suddenly Nursultan climbs on the platform. It astonished me how wonderfully he spoke. His words poured out beautifully, freely, without any 'er' or 'well'. And soon, after a gym class, he was waiting for me at the exit. I got nervous and dashed off through another exit on the other side of the building, and ran into the doorway of some unknown house. And there was Nuri: 'But that's not your house!' - 'How do you know?' - 'I know. Come on, let me take you home. It's dark outside - someone might insult you.'"

But then she fell ill, and had to stay at the hospital to have her pneumonia treated. When she was finally able to get up from her bed, she glanced at the street through the window. And there was Nursultan, looking up at the hospital windows. Lyuda hid behind the curtain. An older lady in the bed next to hers smiled at her: "Don't be shy! I can see all the way from here that he's a good young man."

Once Lyuda got out of the hospital, they danced tango for the first time:

"Nuri was so careful with me. He didn't try to press himself against me like other guys. With him I felt calm and like I could trust him."

Afterwards they traded photos with each other. And at some point it was time for him to meet Lyudmila's mother.

"He was terribly nervous, it took him forever to take his shoes off in the hallway. Nursultan plucked at the tablecloth, it seemed he wanted to say something important. But what? After a few days it became clear, when a good friend of mine came to me and whispered in my ear: 'Nursultan sends me. He asks if you'd like to marry him, if you'd like to come with him to Kazakhstan. He is waiting for your answer.'"

But what about my studies?, Lyuda thought.

"I enrolled at the school later than Nursultan, I still had one year left. Besides, with my 19 years I didn't think seriously about boys. I wasn't ready for close relationships. Mum and I lived like two nuns. My father had left us when I was four years old. Mum never married again."

So Lyuda said no. Still, Nuri didn't lose hope, and kept writing to her from Kazakhstan. And Lyuda went through the heavy school of life:

"I graduated from the school as a seamstress. I was assigned to the best dressmaking establishment of the city, but the director hated me for some reason. She kept insulting me in front of the whole brigade. I was constantly running to the toilet in tears. This woman had an effect on me like a boa constrictor on a rabbit."

One day, a young liutenant proposed to her on the street with the words "Marry me, I'll take you away from here!" Those words worked on Lyuda like magic, and there she was with him at the registry office, thinking that they actually hadn't even kissed yet. "That was terrible stupidity", Lyuda says today, looking back.

The young couple moved to the Astrakhan region, where he served. The fresh husband turned out to be a brawler and a scandalist who didn't mind raising his fists against his wife. Lyuda endured for five years, and then she took her little daughter and son and moved back home. She was now 25 years old, her self-esteem completely shattered.

"Somehow, one day as I was cleaning up at home, I found an old suitcase. Inside it I discovered Nuri's letters. I sat down and read them all, tears running down my face. I understood that this was my love. But instead of the pain of loss, happiness came to me. The little seed that Nursultan had sowed in my soul grew into a flower."

Lyuda's self esteem gradually returned, she went to the hairdresser and got new, nice clothes, and walked with her back straight again.

"But I didn't write to Nursultan. I thought I wasn't worthy of him. I prayed to god that he would find a woman who was better than I. I was happy enough with his letters having brought me back to life."

Lyuda found the strength to pursue something she had long been dreaming of - to get a second education as a medical nurse.

For almost twenty years she knew nothing of Nursultan's fate. And then, suddenly, she met his portrait in the newspaper, where it said that Nazarbayev had become first secretary of the central committee of the Communist party of Kazakhstan. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Nursultan Abishevich was elected president of the republic, and in 1994 he paid a visit to Dneprodzerzhinsk.

When Lyudmila Ivanovna heard his love confession on the radio, she finally decided to write him. She didn't know the address, so she just wrote

To:
Kazakhstan
The President

About a month later, early in the morning, the phone rang. She immediately recognised his voice. The president asked: "So, with whom do you live?" - "With my daughter and my grandson!" - "Just the three of you?" - "Just the three of us."
Actually, Lyudmila was married. But it was a marriage of mutual respect, not love. "My husband was not in my heart." And on that day, she left her second husband. "I couldn't betray Nursultan, could I?" ...

Soon, Nursultan paid another visit to Dneprodzerzhinsk. Trusted men came to pick up Lyudmila Ivanovna and bring her to a celebratory dinner party. "We had five minutes to speak alone. And I said the most important thing - that his love had not been unanswered. The feeling that Nursultan is somewhere in the world has helped me cope with life to this very day."

Only once she turned to him for help. Her grandson stood before a complicated and expensive kidney operation, and Lyudmila did not have enough money to pay for it. She sent a telegram to Nazarbayev. And the hospital bills were quickly settled.

Backstage at Eurovision'09

A Muscovite security officer and one of Ukraine's dancers pose backstage at the Eurovision song contest in Moscow. (Source: SVT.se)

Cirayliq rock climbers

I used to do some rock climbing a while ago. I haven't officially quit, but I just haven't done it for a long time now, since I lost my climbing partner and also it's a bit expensive when you live in the city.



Anyway, rock climbing is a sport for which teenagers are the most suited. One of the greatest, albeit aging, stars of rock climbing today is 18-year old David Lama. His parents met in Nepal, where his dad worked as a sherpa and his Austrian mum was mountaineering. They fell in love, and settled in his mum's home country, where they continued to trek on mountains together. When David was born, they soon noticed that he liked climbing around on rocks more than trekking, so they put him in a rock climbing class at the tender age of six.

The rest is, as they say, history. Here David does some tricky bouldering at a competition in Birmingham, 2007:

Both photos in this post are by Rainer Eder. The first one is from David Lama's official website, and the second one is from an interview at Climb and More.

Furthermore, here is a clip from Malaysia (in German and English) - David Lama and a few others among today's top ten rock climbers were invited to the country to explore the rock formations and build new routes (for future rock climbing tourists). Probably for some sexist reason there is hardly any focus at all on the girls, but at least the boys are cute.

Someone who has been around a little bit longer is Serik Kazbekov, 38. He was born in Alma-Ata, but is nowadays competing for Ukraine.



Here is a gallery of photos with Kazbekov (and his daughter with insanely long hair) climbing in the Crimea, by Anna Piunova. Here is his profile at Risk Online.



Serik Kazbekov actually got into rock climbing because of fellow Alma-Ata local Salavat Rakhmetov, who nowadays climbs for Russia. This "ancient" 41 year old family father is still among the world's top climbers! Salavat was introduced to rock climbing by his older brother Kairat, after which he, in his own words, "stopped running 'horizontally' and started running 'vertically' instead". Up until then he had been a professional in light athletics.

In the following video he wins 1st place in bouldering in the rock climbing world championships in Munich 2005.

Racial stereotypes for Soviet policemen

Click to enlarge. This was sent to us by reader Ilshat Nazipov (unfortunately, he didn't include any nice photos of himself ... see his homepage).

It's a diagram of how males of different races in the Soviet Union supposedly look, used by Soviet police to identify nationalities.

It's funny how the 'Tatar' looks just like Lenin, though Tatars weren't such a prominent part of his very mixed ancestry ("Russian, Kalmyk, Jewish, German and Swedish, and possibly others", according to biographer Dmitry Volkogonov.) It's strange that the 'Georgian' doesn't look exactly like Stalin (probably because this was post-thaw, when the Soviet regime had distanced itself from Stalin). I wonder if it's a pure coincidence that the 'Tatar', the 'Jew' and the 'Gypsy' are next to each other. And we suspect that when the artist got to the 'Tajik' and the 'Turkmen', it was already close to deadline or the end of his workday, so he just drew something random - that's why they look a bit more imaginative than the others.

Ainur can't get over how cute the 'Jew' is.