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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (5148)	10/15/2001 4:23:06 AM
From: Copperfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Russian President Putin called President George W. Bush with an emergency: "Our largest condom factory has exploded," the Russian President cried. "My people's favorite form of birth control. This is a true disaster!" "Mr. Putin, the American people would be happy to do anything within their power to help you,' replied the President. "I do need your help," said Yeltsin. "Could you possibly send 1,000,000 condoms ASAP to tide us over?" "Why certainly! I'll get right on it," said Bush. "Oh, and one more small favor, please?" said Putin. "Yes?" "Could the condoms be red in color and at least 10' long and 4' in diameter?" said Putin. "No problem," replied the President and, with that, George Dubya hung up and called the President of Freecondoms.com. "I need a favor, you've got to send 1,000,000 condoms right away over to Russia." "Consider it done," said the President of Freecondoms.com. "Great! Now listen, they have to be red in color, 10' long and 4' wide." "Easily done. Anything else?" "Yeah," said the President, "print 'MADE IN AMERICA, SIZE SMALL' on each one."

To: SirRealist who wrote (5148)	10/15/2001 4:59:33 AM
From: Copperfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

New Russian Book Pokes Fun At Putin, But Cautiously MOSCOW -- Tossing and turning in bed, a restless Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn't stop worrying about his country's economic problems. Wishing there was someone to ask for advice, Stalin suddenly appears. "You should execute everyone in your government and paint the Kremlin blue," Stalin counsels Putin. "Why blue?" asks Putin. "I had a feeling you would only want to discuss the second part," replies Stalin. Sixteen months after taking office, the stern-faced Putin enjoys approval ratings of 70 percent, but a vocal minority fears that he is reintroducing Soviet-style controls over the media, the police forces and political parties. This mixed, often contradictory, portrait of Putin may not puzzle President Bush, who told reporters in June that he understood the soul of the former KGB colonel turned president after meeting with him for two hours at a summit in Slovenia. The two men will hold their second face-to-face talks in Italy on Sunday. For Russians, however, Putin is still an enigma to be deciphered, a task that has revived the enduring Russian tradition of laughing at the leaders. "We have a unique sense of humor. Russians have always told jokes about what they don't understand. Putin is popular, but people still don't understand what goes on in the Kremlin, who pulls the strings and how decisions are made," said Dmitry Perevozhkin, the author of "Anecdotes about Putin," the first collection of jokes about a Russian president to go on sale. Some of the jokes gathered by Perevozhkin show succinctly how Russians distrust the power elite and their patronage politics. As one gag goes: "The Russian president submits his economic plan to parliament with the title: Economic Reform With a Goal to Make People Rich and Happy. List of names attached." During the Soviet era, jokes were told about government policies, food shortages and Communist Party leaders. Leonid Brezhnev's senility, Mikhail Gorbachev's peasant accent and Boris Yeltsin's boozy excesses were the frequent butt of wisecracks. But unlike jokes about George W. Bush, which are mostly jabs at his personality and human foibles, most Russian political humor is dark and piercing. As John Steinbeck observed when he visited the Soviet Union just after World War II, Russian humor makes one clap with appreciation over the teller's cleverness, but not necessarily laugh out loud. In Soviet times, quips were told among friends while sitting at the kitchen table -- never in public. So when Perevozhkin's book hit the streets in June, it became a sensation in the national press. At first glance, the 20-page booklet appears quite harmless. Divided into themes such as "Putin and Elections" and "Putin and Free Speech," it seems an almost amateurish attempt to record jokes already widely told by radio announcers, taxi drivers and circulated on the Internet. Yet Kremlin critics are surprised the government hasn't confiscated the 20-page booklet, for its publication comes amid a pervasive, almost reverential attitude in the media towards the Russian leader. Russian journalists have helped fuel the Putin worship, with glowing stories about the dedication of busts of Putin in city halls and government buildings around the country and a schoolbook chronicling Putin's rise from a model schoolboy to Russian leader. The accounts hint darkly of a return to the cult of personality that all Soviet leaders enjoyed. Putin's staff deny he is thin-skinned and say he always laughs when he hears jokes about himself. But the president rarely appears in public and even less frequently is shown on television laughing or smiling. It was widely rumored in Moscow that Putin masterminded the April takeover of the NTV independent television station because he was annoyed by the satirical portrayal of him on one of the network's comedy programs. Perevozhkin's St. Petersburg-based publisher says Russians are very uneasy about the book. The publisher has had difficulty finding national distributors and selling it to independent bookstores. "We have come across the same problem both in St. Petersburg and in Moscow," said Victor Tovbin, deputy director of the Bukovsky Publishing House. "Many stores refuse because of the nature of the book. The profit margins are too small to outweigh the potential political risks." The author professes not to understand the fears that Putin arouses. "People for some reason see him as a Soviet-style leader. I don't think this is true," said Perevozhkin, a member of the St. Petersburg city government where Putin worked as deputy mayor in the mid-1990s. "Putin is a liberal politician. Why would he object to this?" Still, fears linger that Putin will sooner or later retaliate against his critics. Another joke in the book, hints at the unease. "What's the difference between the Russian Constitution and the American Constitution?" it goes. "They both guarantee freedom of speech, but the U.S. Constitution also guarantees freedom after the words are uttered