It's so weird to be reading C.J. Chivers' piece on Beslan in Esquire (its first part is online, here) - a story written by a former Marine Corps captain, among other things - and then run into this New York Times' review of John Updike's new book, his 22nd, and learn, against my will, how little it seems to take to construct a fictional account:

[...] For his new novel, "Terrorist," however, he ventured onto the Web to research bomb detonators. He was fairly certain, he remarked recently during an interview in Boston, that the only detonator he could recall — the one that Gary Cooper plunges in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" — must be out of date, but he was also reassured to discover, as he put it, that "the Internet doesn't like you to learn too much about explosives."

While working on the book, Mr. Updike, now 74, white-haired, bushy-browed and senatorial-looking, also risked suspicion by lingering around the luggage-screening machines at La Guardia Airport, where he learned that the X-rays were not in black and white, as he had imagined, but rather in lurid colors: acid green and red.

And he hired a car and a driver to take him around some of the seedier neighborhoods in Paterson, N.J., and to show him some churches and storefronts that had been converted into mosques. "He did his best, but I think I puzzled him as a tour customer," Mr. Updike said. [...]

I like what Updike has to say about adhan, though:

"Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot. [...]"

***

Chivers' Beslan story is difficult to read - not because of some truly unspeakable images that just don't go unless you talk to someone about them, but because it is not fiction and you know what the end is as if you were there yourself.

I'll write more, I hope, when I finish reading the piece.

Below is my translation for the Global Voices on this year's failed gay pride parade in Moscow:



This past Saturday marked the 13th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia, and a number of people attempted to take part in a gay pride parade in Moscow - despite the ban by a city court and mayor Yuri Luzhkov's words from the day before: "As long as I am mayor, we will not permit these parades."

Orthodox Christians, Russian ultra-nationalists and skinheads attacked a handful of gays who showed up by the Kremlin to put flowers to the Unknown Soldier Memorial. Riot police detained up to 120 people that day, among them journalists and human rights activists, mony of whom now intend to file a complaint to protest their unlawful detention and harsh treatment.

LJ user mnog was at the scene with a camera and posted a three-part photo series - part one, part two, part three) - entitled "And You Call It A Gay [Pride] Parade?"

LJ user onair described the failed event this way (RUS):

Moscow is the world's only city where a gay [pride] parade took place in the absense of the gays themselves. That is, there were a lot fewer of them on Tverskaya [Street] yesterday than there are at 7 PM on any workday. [...]

LJ user lev4enko provided a short analysis of what happened (RUS):

[...] What took place on Saturday very much resembled a well-managed riot (unlike [the World Cup one on Manezh Square in 2002]). Every such event is, for those who inspire these marches (fascist marches, I mean), yet another training. And it's clear that they are preparing for the [presidential election] campaign of 2007.

It's obvious that since there was not a single object of attack, they were forced to satisfy themselves with attacks on journalists. [...] What remains unclear: why Moscow OMON [riot police] a) didn't interfere when the red-brown instigators were attacking journalists, b) why, at the same time, did OMON detain and placed onto buses those very journalists who were peacefully fulfilling their professional duty, and c) why did these same OMON detain fascists very selectively and in small numbers? Do the aggressive skins [...] and pseudo-patriots have a lot more rights to walk freely in the city's center than the generally peaceful sexual minorities with flowers in their hands? [...]

Aidar Buribayev (LJ user aidar_b), a Russian Newsweek correspondent who got detained on Saturday, wrote this about his detention - and about the march (RUS):

[...]

5. [...] spent all five hours at the [police] department. It was prohibited to sit down and lean on the walls. Neither was talking allowed, and cell phones had to be turned off.

6. First, they let the nationalist ideologue Krylov go, then - skinheads, then - the homophobes who didn't look like skinheads, then - gays, then - their defenders, and they kept us, journalists and human rights activists, till the very last.

[...]

8. It's the first time that I didn't understand what they detained me for. I was leaving the square, when the cops stopped me, checked my papers and dragged me into the bus. Somewhat strange.

9. Gay pride organizers consciously chose to escalate the conflict! They needed a loud scandal. I'm sure they did.

10. There were practically no gays and lesbians on the square. And if the gays were [too scared] to attend the march, this means they don't deserve equal rights with the heterosexual majority. Let them squeeze like rats around basements and clubs. [...]

Roughly a month earlier, on May 2, the same person (aidar-b) commented on his own homophobia (RUS):

homophobic

I've always considered myself a homophobe, always disliked gays, and every time I could, I used the forceful [offensive slang synonyms for "gay;" three of them used in the original sentence]. Sometimes, I was beginning to worry that maybe I couldn't stand them so much because I myself was a latent [homosexual]?!

It looks like I worried in vain. I feel terribly sick of these homophobic pogroms; there's more and more greyness around.

A constructive discussion ensued between two readers of aidar-b's LJ:

mike67: All correct and normal. To recognize [gays] as people with equal rights, you don't have to love them. We should work not on lowering the levels of homophobia, but on rising the levels of tolerance.

schukina_irina: I agree. One thing left to do is explain to the Orthodox [believers] what tolerance is. The question is HOW?

mike67: Yes, this is a problem. I'm trying but with no results so far.

schukina_irina: You are trying? In what ways, if this isn't a secret?

mike67: In what way? Through conversations. By attempting to figure out the situation to an extent that would allow me to explain it to the people with various degrees of preparedness. This, unfortunately, is the only way I can do it. I don't have access to the serious mass media.

schukina_irina: Does it work? I'd join you even... I wonder how such people react to all this, what they do, whether it is possible to explain anything to them. Often, they are impenetrable. I'm even interested in this as a future sociologist.

mike67: It's totally okay to have discussions on it in LJ - especially taking into account that it's here that all new ideological trends will be developed, one way or another. As for the opponents' "impenetrableness" - I wouldn't be so categorical. We are all "impenetrable" when it comes to this or that. An average skinhead is possibly as concerned about things as an average liberal. That's why it's better not to think that we are better in some way. And if we think they're mistaken, we should fight not with the people, but with their convictions. Though it's hard to implement it all in practice. Sometimes it turns out to be impossible, but so what?

School's out today.

It's been 15 years for me, mama dorogaya, and I don't have a single memory worth sharing...

And - yet another drunk sleeping at our playground on a Sunday morning. This one was scary - I didn't find the guts to take a picture of his face. It was horrible. And then so many people sit on the bench he slept on. And sometimes there are kids of some unsuspecting parents playing here. I do pity him, of course, but, to be honest, I'm a lot more nervous about all the germs that he carries.

I've posted 33 more photos into the Kyiv Day set over at Flickr (still can't make myself feel fully at home there for some reason...):

While Moscow's Gay Pride failed to take place in a rather nasty way, we had Kyiv Day here. I'll post more photos from Andriivsky Uzviz soon; here're the first three:

Raisa Bogatyryova, #5 on Yanukovych's list (I guess), has quoted Roosevelt on Savik Shuster's Svoboda Slova today.

Yanukovych had an American adviser during the 2006 campaign. They used We Will Rock You tune on their campaign song.

For all I know, they'll be pushing Ukraine towards NATO soon.

***

How funny: Yulia has just told Bogatyryova that Regions of Ukraine and Bogatyryova voted in favor of sending Ukrainian peacekeepers to Iraq - which meant they gave their full support to a totally NATO initiative. Yulia's faction voted against it.

Remember I bitched about Roddom #25 in Moscow back in October? Two buildings were being built right next to it - crazy. But I was punished for ... I'm not sure what the punishment is for, but I've got it: I've spent the past 7 months or so next to a larger, messier and stinkier construction site. I'm so upset about it, I'm not even taking pictures. Today was an exception, though: there was a rainbow in between all the cranes (five or six of them now) and it looked, very briefly, not nice, no, but unusual in a nice kind of way:

Whoa, this is scary:

"It is important that corporations make a choice as to what type of blogging they will allow," said Alfred C. Frawley III, director of the intellectual property practice group at the law firm Preti Flaherty in Portland, Me.

More - here.

***

I wish I had a blog when I worked for that American NGO where we had to ride the lousy Ukrainian trains all the time. So much material lost. There wouldn't have been much to regret if they had fired me for writing a blog - or so it seems now.

This blog appeared two years after I quit.

She's almost 6 months old, loves to sit, and even though in most cases I have to hold her hand or support her in some other way, sometimes she manages to keep balance all by herself!!!

More on how relaxed Kyiv is.

I was walking with a friend yesterday - he's a Moscow native but has spent the past decade living and working abroad; we met in Iowa City in 1996; he's in Kyiv for a few days now, his second time here, though the first time was 20 or so years ago.

A small rally was taking place by the gates of the presidential administration: supporters of Yevhen Zhovtyak, head of the Kyiv Regional Administration, whom Yushchenko fired later that day. My friend was surprised to learn that cops let ordinary people pass through Bankova even during a minor emergency like this; if he had been on his own, it wouldn't have occurred to him to even approach the blockpost.

On the way to the park, I told him the flag story - and this one as well:

A month ago, on April 26, the good-bye day of the previous parliament, I was passing by the Rada in the afternoon, with Marta, of course. When the MPs are on vacation or gone for the day, the cops and the military who guard the building let you pass right next to it and across the fenced off maidan at the park's edge. Sometimes they ask you to wait when someone's about to arrive - the way they drive, it's safer to wait, as one cop explained to me once.

This time, I wasn't really allowed to cross the street at all, I guess, but I pretended I didn't realize it and then talked the young cop into letting me pass on quickly and quietly. But I was stopped very soon again, before I reached the open space of the maidan: turned out I was on a collision course with Volodymyr Lytvyn, who had just become an ex-speaker and was probably taking his last nostalgic walk around the area. He was with a guy from his bloc whom I remembered from their campaign ads - and with bodyguards. I was with another cop, whom I had warned that if Marta woke up because of them all, they'd have to call in the troops to calm her down.

"Can I take a picture of Lytvyn?" I asked as we waited.

"What for?" he replied, rather amicably.

"Well, it's such a memorable day for him, the last one," I said.

"No, if possible, please, don't take pictures," he said, smiling. "You see, for as long as I've worked here, Lytvyn has feared someone'd kill him. So it's better not to do anything."

I felt it'd be mean to disagree.

When Lytvyn passed, I was allowed to proceed. Lytvyn wasn't inside the Rada building yet, and one of his bodyguards - his rear guard ))) - walked by me and - suddenly - said: "Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience." Very seriously, very politely, a very good-looking young man in a dark suit.

It was amazing: the conversation with a cop about Lytvyn's fears, his exemplary bodyguard.

It felt like Iowa City, I explained to my Moscow friend yesterday, using an analogy we can both relate to.

So relaxed it was almost possible to forget how they park and other shit. And even forgive them, temporarily.

And so unlike Moscow, it's making me proud.

On second thought, at least Yushchenko's son isn't there (though Yushchenko's brother Petro probably is). Andriy Yushchenko has been making trouble again, with yet another of his cars - some media report that he said some really inappropriate things to the Boryspil prosecutor, and then his bodyguard shoot the poor guy in the leg with a rubber bullet. All this on Tolstogo Street, very close to the University's Red Building.

Oh boy - not just Yanukovych, but his son as well...

Typical Ukrainska Pravda: a promising headline in allcaps, then two lines of totally non-controversial text - and that's it.

AKHMETOV, YANUKOVYCH AND TYMOSHENKO HAVE STARTED WORKING

Verkhovna Rada of the fifth convocation has begun its work.

The session was opened by the head of the previous Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Lytvyn.

They are reading patriotic poetry and singing patriotic songs at the parliament right now. I mean, someone else is reading and singing, and they are all standing and listening, very solemnly. (Update: Nina Kryukova is reading Love Ukraine, a poem by Volodymyr Sosyura; Veryovka Choir is performing Prayer for Ukraine, composed by Mykola Lysenko.)

The new parliament is here. No coalition yet.

(They are gone to take an oath or something now.)

Yulia and her people are the most eye-catching: they are all dressed in white.