Shukhov Tower (Шуховская башня) in Moscow

By Jack Brummet, Moscow Travel Editor





Just down the block from our office in Moscow is the Shukhov Tower (Шуховская башня), an awesome broadcast tower in Moscow designed by Vladimir Shukhov. It's 525 feet tall (Seattle's Space Needle is 605 feet) and seems especially big because there are no tall buildings in the vicinity.  It was built from 1920–1922, during the Russian Civil War.  The tower sections are "hyperbolic steel gridshell of single-cavity hyperboloids of rotation made of straight beams, the ends of which rest against circular foundations." [tech details via Wikipedia]



It's funny -- my Russian friend just kind of shrugged it off when I first saw it and raved about how cool it was.  When I looked it up, I found that it is old and historical, and even endangered. The tower is visible, but not accessible to tourists. 

Shukhov Tower is under threat of demolition, and is number one on UNESCO's "Endangered Buildings" list [UNESCO is also the keeper of the great World Heritage sites list].  There is now an international campaign underway to save it.

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Two members of Pussy Riot sent to brutal Russian prisons

By Mona Goldwater, Human Rights Editor

Jack sent this article from this morning's Moscow Times (he shot it with his camera from the actual paper).  One member of PR has been freed, and the other two sent off to the Gulag.  

Maria Alyokhina, 24, will serve the rest of her two-year term at a women's prison camp in Perm, Siberia--as you know, a region notorious for hosting some of the Soviet Union's most brutal prison camps. 

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, has been sent to Mordovia, a region that also hosts a high number of prisons, not as notorious, but it sounds just as horrific.

click to enlarge

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Condoms disrupting oil pipeline

By Jack Brummet, Moscow Travel Editor


From The Moscow Times (an English paper in Moscow) this morning...one of the strangest stories I've read in a while. Must Fark this. "Condoms disrupting oil pipeline."

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The Czar's Cannon in The Kremlin

 By Jack Brummet, Russian Travel Editor

The Czar's cannon, a 40 ton machine, was mostly, they say, created to spook the enemy.  No one knows for sure, but it was probably fired once (a 1980 study found traces of gunpowder).  It was build in the 16th century of 100% brass and is over 17 feet long.   The cannon could not actually shoot the one ton balls sitting in front.  They were also created to spook the enemy.  The cannon probably shot a load of smaller balls.  Compared to cannons I've seen in the U.S. and other countries, it is elaborately decorated, including an elaborate equestrian carving of a Czar.  Our guide said that Napoleon Bonaparte considered taking the cannon back to France as swag after the French invasion of Russia.

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Moscow: The soldier's dog and his lucky nose

By Jack Brummet, Russian Travel Editor


In the Revolution Square subway station (it is beneath the square), there are 76 bronze sculptures lining a central hallway.  One of these sculptures is either titled "border guard with a dog" or "solder with dog."   It has to be the most popular statue of the Moscow metro. Muscovites believe that rubbing the dog's nose brings luck. As you can see, the nose is polished to a fine shine by the hands of people passing by.  Of course, I rubbed his nose too.  It must have worked.  Everything went well today.  I remember there is a statue of John Harvard in Harvard Square where I think you rub his foot for good luck.

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Russian Visas

By Jack Brummet, Travel Editor

Applying for a Russian visa has been a Kafkaesque experience.  The incredibly strange rules and procedures, the necessity of never actually saying what you will be doing in Russia; the need for an invitation from The Kremlin, and then the invite Telex, where the Russians let their embassy know they can talk to you.  This is followed by scads more paperwork and documents, some of which must be very carefully worded as well as having to, at times, actually paste in the actual Russian phrases.  And any whiff of a variant, or an error sends you to the back of the line.

But, as weird as this has been, it's nothing like what the Aussies have to go through.  What could they have possibly done to the Russians that provoked this?:

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President Reagan and Vladimir Putin. . .23 years ago?

By Jack Brummet
Presidential History Editor

click to enlarge

I missed this photo/controversy when it first appeared two years ago.  People seem absolutely convinced this is Vladimir Putin posing as a tourist.  The Russians vehemently deny this is him at all.  There are fairly tantalizing arguments on either side of the question.

According to Pete Souza, "President Barack Obama's official photographer, a picture he took in Red Square 21 years ago indicates that Mr Putin was part of a KGB plot to embarrass Reagan on his first ever visit to Moscow."

Kremlin officials are said to be angry about the emergence of Mr Souza's photograph, and believe it is an attempt to smear Mr Putin.  Russian experts (e.g., "experts in Russia") claim that the young man dressed in a tight t-shirt with a camera slung around his neck is not Mr Putin.

Souza told National Public Radio in the United States that the incident occurred when Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet general secretary, toured Red Square in the Summer of 1988.  Reagan was led to a group of Russian tourists who were allegedly positioned in Red Square to ask a series of pointed questions about America's human rights record.

Souza now says that a secret service officer told him the tourists were in fact "all KGB families."

"Now what is really interesting is a picture I have in my Reagan book," he said. "Off to the left is one of these tourists with a camera around his shoulder and it has been pointed out to me and verified that that was Putin. As soon as you see the picture you go: 'Oh my gosh, it really is him.'"

Experts in Moscow, however, call B.S.  During Reagan's visit, Putin was serving as a mid-ranking KGB spy in Dresden and would not have been called to Moscow to help with a dirty trick.  The Russians also note that the man in the photograph has a thicker head of hair than Mr Putin ever did.

Yeah, it does resemble the Prime Minister.  But I could really go either way. . .

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Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov & The Russian DogBot

By Jack Brummet
Unexplained Phenomena Editor

Thanks to Jeff Clinton, our Number One paranormal and bizarre happenings tipster. 

Over the last few years, a lot of fascinating news and images have emerged from Russia and the former Soviet Union.  And this, like much of the news and images, is both difficult to pin down and incredible to imagine happening in what was then an extremely tightly-controlled society.  Neither Jeff nor I can determine if this is just an excellent PhotoShop hoax, or "real," whatever real actually means.

Gizmodo--whom I tend to believe--pronounces these images as excellent fakes (and say and, "like all good lies, there's a some truth in this story").

"According to recently unearthed—and completely fake—scientific papers posted in Russian forum Stepashka, the Soviets took over where the Nazis and Dr. Frankenstein left it: During the 1950s, a team of communist scientists from Moscow University and the Soviet Academy of Sciences led by Dr. Vladimir Demikhov worked on the creation of a giant robot controlled by a dog head in secret facilities created by Joseph Stalin."

Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov was an actual Soviet scientist (and one of the first people to believe that human lung and heart transplants were possible). He was both a latter day Frankenstein/madman and a scientific visionary.  He performed bizarre experiments with dog heads--including keeping them alive, separated from their bodies, and transplanting them to other dog bodies.  And just maybe, created a DogBot. . .

Click images to enlarge/zoom

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Alien Lore No. 200 - Dead alien found in Russian UFO hotspot (with video)

By Jack Brummet, Paranormal and Unexplained Phenomena Editor

Thanks to Jeff Clinton, as always, for another great UFO/Grey tip.

This clip was posted recently on YouTube by All News Web "The World's Only Inter-Galactic Daily News Service."  The video shows two Russian men walking up to, and videotaping, what seems to be the body of a Grey.  They say they discovered the decomposed  body  near Irkutsk,  north of the Mongolian border. This clip has become a mega-hit on YouTube, with more than 1.7 million views in a couple of days.

 

All News Web's Michael Cohen wrote that Irkutsk residents witnessed a UFO crashing into the forest, but--natch--though the event was "deliberately kept from public view" in the West. 

"An enormous team of government officials, including military personal, secret service agents and science ministry officials made their way to the UFO crash site within hours of the event occurring," Cohen wrote.

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Fun With Dick Nixon's Ghost

If you're a friend, or a blog follower, you probably know that LBJ and Nixon are the presidents I've studied most. With Nixon, it has been a life-long fascination. When I lived in NYC, I often brought friends over to pay homage at his townhouse on the Upper East Side--and where the Secret Service never hassled us, although we rarely arrived there before 2 AM, or even closing time (which in NYC then was 4 AM). I wrote a while ago about visiting him here. Or check here.

Anyhow, yesterday, I spent a half hour at his grave site, communing with the shade of Richard Nixon, who has fascinated me for forty-some years, and a couple more hours at his library, and birthplace. Despite being a Gorbachev Democrat, I still like the guy, and despise about 90% of his politics. He was a treacherous sneak, but managed to pull off some pretty stunning accomplishments before he was driven to the sea.

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Alien Lore No. 165 - UFO Hovers Over The Kremlin

[Thanks to Jeff Clinton for suggesting this story]

The hottest video on the Russian YouTube site is film of an alleged UFO hovering over the Kremlin. Some say the triangular craft could be up to a mile in length. As you see in the video clips below, it has been seen in both daylight, and at night.

Russia has become a hotbed in recent years of UFO news, UFO records and investigations made public, and indeed. . .numerous purported alien craft sightings. . .

The video clips, probably shot from a passing car, have gone viral, particularly in the former Soviet Union.









Nick Pope, who has worked on MoD's UFO Desk [ed's note: MoD is the British Ministry of Defense] for three years, called it "one of the most extraordinary UFO clips I've ever seen."\
He said: "At first I thought this was a reflection, but it appears to move behind a power line, ruling out this theory."

Web theorists suggested an air balloon or stunt, but a spokesman for aerospace experts Jane's News said: "We have no idea what it is."




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September 12 is The Day of Conception

The former Commies are getting a day off to procreate, and win prizes while they're, literally, doing it. For the third year in a row, the Russian region Ulyanovsk is once again celebrating Sept. 12 as the Day of Conception, and is giving couples time off from work to procreate.

The state hopes for a population explosion next June, on Russia's national day. Couples who "give birth to a patriot" during the June 12 festivities win will money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.

The number of competitors, and the number of babies they produce, has been on the rise since Ulyanovsk began the holiday and prizes. Russia, has one-seventh of the entire earth's land surface, but only 141.4 million citizens. . .and the population has been declining since the 1990s.

President Vladimir Putin's last state of the state address called the demographic crisis the most acute problem facing Russia and announced various efforts to jump start Russia's birth rate, including cash giveaways.

The Governor of Ulyanovsk, Sergei Morozov, tossed a few more incentives into the kitty for the campaign by handing our prizes. The 2007 grand prize went to Irina and Andrei Kartuzov, who won a UAZ-Patriot, a sport utility vehicle. They also gave away video cams, TVs, refrigerators and washing machines.

Alien Lore No. 106 - The 1989 UFO Battle Over Russia

One of the best known Russian UFOlogists—Nikolay Subbotin—told this story to his fellow American UFOlogists. This bizarre story took place in the skies 0ver Zaostrovka on September 16, 1989. Six metallic UFOs and one golden UFO battled it out.

Mr. Subbotin says hundreds of people witnessed a group of six silver saucers fight against one golden UFO. The UFOs engaged in a stunning show of aerial acrobatics, flying as low as one mile above the earth. Red beams, or lasers of some sort were the weapons.


A Russian UFO web site says that an account of the battle was published in the local paper, the "Semipalatinsk." The report was written by a helicopter commander named Sichenko, who claimed that the energy generated by the warring UFOs was so intense that local power stations automatically shut down.


The witnesses interviewed by Sichenko said that the golden UFO was finally defeated, after fighting a heroic battle, and crashed into a bog on the military test range. The area was then zoned off to everyone except military personnel.

Subbotin says a Russian army team searched the area following the battle and crash and that the story leaked out from these searchers.


The entire area was insanely high in radiation readings following the crash, and was eventually shut down. A crew of military personnel guarded the site. And there the story comes to an crashing halt. This is one of those plausible sounding cases, with many witnesses, where so few details have actually emerged that it is impossible to vet its veracity.
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