Traffic news, old porn news, and a modest proposal

First item:

There’s a site run out of Georgia – jobs.ge -  that has job information for individuals residing in the country. It’s a good site, both technically and with respect to content. I peruse it occasionally, in order to find out what the working classes are doing. Today I saw this. It sounds like a pretty good opportunity for those young Georgians who are interested in getting into animation services – providing

“… a stimulus to the mental, physical, and emotional life of people in a given area which moves them to undertake a wider range of experiences through which they find a higher degree of self-realization, self expression, and awareness of belonging to a community which they can influence.”

This is the part where I give my Beavis chuckle.

I had a friend in Uzbekistan who went to Turkey to do much the same thing: he got work in the hospitality industry (ahem, a travel agency, no, really), and was going to be making good money, and was given much the same job description as is in the first part of this ad. He got there, and what happened? First, the job was not as advertised… nothing too unpleasant, but the pay was next to nothing, living conditions were squalid (that’s a fun one to say), and so forth. Plus, his passport was taken from him when he got there – ostensibly so that his employer could work on his visa – and not returned. He got out of the deal, but it was a pretty educational experience for him. And for me, too, I confess – I’d always thought that Uzbeks only got trafficked to be, um, “maids.”

Anyway, have fun in the animation and dancing industry. Send me a card.

Item two:

How did I not know about this? Johnson’s Russia list let me down. The eXile let me down. I had to hear about it on the set of the soap opera. God bless the Asian Sex Gazette (though there’s a Moscow Times article that’s good as well). The ASG article is sheer genius; if you think that your employer may not want you clicking onto the site, here are the salient points:

• The main actors in the film have the same first names and bear a striking resemblance to Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.
• The article said that the producer had to abandon plans to invite Russian porn star Elena Berkova to play Yulia Timoshenko as the actress’ relatives in Ukraine had been receiving threats.
• Georgia’s president Saakashvili is played by an Armenian (can he bring the necessary savoir faire to the role?).
• Ukraine and Georgia have both protested against Mitrofanov’s project, and Ukrainian media has spread a rumor that a gay porn film featuring look-alikes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Ukrainian PM Viktor Yanukovich is being made as a result (no further data available on this).
• Mr. Mitrofanov faces an uphill battle for acceptance in the artistic pornography arena.

There’s an artistic pornography arena? Okay, here’s an idea: “Gladiator,” only in that kind of arena. Wait, no, that’s a bad idea. Actually I think they already did that one.

Anyway. The director is Russian parliamentarian Aleksei Mitrofanov. He’s a member of the LDPR – that’d be Zhirinovsky’s LDPR, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Mitrofanov dismissed all the criticism as groundless. He told the media that

“‘Yulia’ is a film that will take foreign relations to new heights – literally and figuratively. “Political erotics are a new genre that I have discovered,” he said. “The film is about politics. It makes a political statement, they don’t just [have sex].”

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I think this sort of statement has already been made. We call it “satire,” though. It’s kind of funny; in America, they have pornographers that encourage freedom and democracy, this seems to be the LDPR version.

Finally:

I think that the EU and US donors should seriously consider requesting proposals to help get the pornography – whoops, sorry, the political erotics industry in CIS countries (and former CIS countries, and soon-to-be-former CIS countries) on its feet. Training in screenplay writing, production, and so forth, as well as promotion and sales, would be easy enough; and then, my God, imagine the possibilities.

1. It would help vitalize political culture to a degree that previous democracy and governance grants have not.
2. It would allow cross-border exchanges between and among groups that have frozen conflicts (e.g. Armenians and Azeris, Georgians and Abkhaz) in safe spaces.
3. It would help vitalize the technology and communications sectors of the economy, given that folks would want to disseminate this political message over the Internet.
4. It would increase general awareness of the peoples, cultures, and practices to be found in an area about which Europeans and North Americans are largely ignorant.
5. It would increase tourism (come on, the NYT’s Frugal Traveler keyed in on the scantily-clad ladies of Issyk-Kul, although see Comment #26).

… I could go on. But really, where’s the downside? I don’t see it, honestly. I mean, here’s you have an industry that promotes democracy, culture, the economy, health – pick the sector to target. Mitrofanov may be onto something.