DENNIS NEWMAN 02

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Training mania

It is very rare these days that you will catch me doing a workout for more than one hour, let alone one for two hours! But, alas, I did one this morning. Two whole hours of sweating over a piece of steel. Yip, I went for a kettlebell class with one of my new fitness heroes, Trent Murgatroyd, a kettlebell expert from Fourways, Johannesburg and IKFF certified.

 We started our session with some joint mobility exercises and then on to a warm up. Now if you think a warm up is a lazy let’s stand in the corner and pretend to stretch our “very stiff” muscles, again, you are sadly mistaken. We were allowed to grab a light warm up kettlebell (I rushed for the pink 8kg bell!) and we started swinging, cleaning, clean and pressing and snatching a couple of times (felt like a couple of hundred times). Fantastic, you are all warmed up and ready to go. To make this two hour story a little shorter, we continued to swing, then do push ups, planks, cleans and clean and press, some snatches, with bridges and side bridges for a good 45 minutes. Then the gloves came off. Ok, not really, they came on.

We did rounds of punching a bag, skipping and swings and every now and then Trent felt it would be ok if we could steal a sip of water. We continued and finished off with some heavy cleans and throw in some heavy swings just for good measure and it is all good.

The question is. Why do we all flock to get our kettlebell fix these days? It is not a difficult question to answer really. You just look at a bell and you can feel your muscles ache. Not in a bad way though, a bell is probably the most versatile piece of fitness equipment that you can find these days. Use just a little bit of your imagination and you can conjure up the most wonderful workouts. These can be combinations of some running, skipping, boxing, body weight moves and then the basic kettlebell moves, swing, clean and press and snatches. The other good news is that you definitely do not have to train 2 hours a day to see results with these steal wonders. If you keep the intensity of your workout high, you can do a 20 minute workout, no sweat (ok, I lie, lots of sweat). You will burn calories and build a strong physique. No is that not what all of us want out of a workout?

Go ahead, be crazy and put a bell to the test. The Russians have been doing it for hundreds of years and they are scared of no one. Maybe they carry a bell in their bags wherever they go…

[Via http://rapidresultsfitnesssolutions.wordpress.com]

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Mark Your Calendar Now- We Want You In Class Next Week!

We Want You…In Class Next Week!

Get your planner out now and schedule some time for you next week! We offer classes Monday through Thursday nights from 5:30-6:15 and 6:30-7:15. If mornings are more your style we have classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays from 9:30-10:15 and 10:15-11:00. They are $5 per class and if you really need the extra calorie burn our classes are designed so that you can get a two hour workout in.

Hope to see you next week!
Tiffany and Jennifer

[Via http://mariettabootcamp.wordpress.com]

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Too Beautiful to Lie ◘◘◘ Yalan Söylemek Bir Sanattır

Geçtiğimiz günlerde sürekli karşıma çıkan ancak izlemek için bir türlü fırsat bulamadığım bu filmi artık izlemeye karar verdim. Anneciğimle beraber -evet yanlış okumuyorsunuz kendiside bir KORE yapımları hastasıdır. Tabii sayemizde :D Filmin kısaca özeti diyeceğim ama değil. Filmin biraz uzunca konusu ve giriş kısmının minik  :D özeti aşağıdaki gibi.

Yeong-ju için yalan söylemek tam bir sanattır. Genç kız, hiçbir vicdanî rahatsızlık duymadan, hatta konser biletleri satışa çıktığı ilk günden tükenen bir ses sanatçısının gururuyla yalan söylemekte; bu husustaki maharetini de kendisi gibi suçlulara ballandıra ballandıra anlatmakta, bir de üstüne işin püf noktaları hakkında onları bilgilendirmektedir. Çünkü Yeong-ju, son dolandırıcılık girişiminde enselenmiş, yargılanmış ve kodese gönderilmiştir...

Yeong-ju, taş duvarların kendisini uzun süre içeride tutamayacağını bilmektedir. Çünkü şartlı tahliye isteğini gözden geçirecek ve sözlü ifadesine de başvuracak kurul, kısa bir süre sonra toparlanacaktır. Yeong-ju, kurulun karşısında eşsiz bir performans sergiler. Kendini acındırır, kurul merhamet ettiğinde gurur yaparak demogojiye yatmadığına inandırır ve bunu uzatmayarak; kurul üyelerinin, beyaz bir güvercini azat etme hissinin güzelliğini, tazeliğini yaşamasına izin verir...

Şartlı tahliye ile tekrar özgürlüğüne kavuşan Yeong-ju 'yu dışarıda talihsizlikler dizisi beklemektedir. Dışarı çıktığı gibi, evlilik hazırlıkları yapan ablasını arayan Yeong-ju, ablası tarafından mesafeli karşılanır. Ablası, bir dolandırıcı olan kardeşinden utanmakta ve evleneceği adam ile ailesini, kardeşiyle tanıştırmaktan çekinmektedir. Yeong-ju, yaşadığı şoku umursamadan tekrar trene atlar ve uykuya dalar. Gözlerini açtığında, bacaklarının arasında bir sapık olduğunu fark ederek, ikinci şokunu yaşar...

Aslında, bacaklarının arasında gezinen genç, sapık falan değildir. Sadece, sevgilisine evlenme teklif etmeye hazırlanan sakar bir romantiktir. Annesinden kalan ve sevgilisine vermeyi planladığı yüzüğü düşürmüş, genç kızı uyandırmadan yüzüğünü almak istemiştir. Fakat Yeong-ju, bacaklarının arasında ne yaptığından emin olduğu Hee-cheol 'un kendisini savunmasına bile fırsat tanımadan adi sapıktan kan çıkarmayı başarmıştır...

Kanamayı durdurmak için lavabonun yolunu tutan saf Hee-cheol 'ün yüzüğü bir yankesici tarafından çalınacak, az önce boğuştukları ve şartlı tahliyeyle dışarı çıktığı için hırsızlıkla suçlanmak istemeyen Yeong-ju, trenden inerek yüzüğü yankesiciden çalacak fakat trenin istasyondan ayrılması, gidecek başka hiçbir yerinin olmaması ve trende kalan çantasına da Hee-cheol 'ün sahip çıktığını düşünmesi üzerine; genç adamın kendisini savunmaya çalışırken: "Yongkang'da herkes beni tanır." dediğini hatırlayacak ve soluğu, Yongkang 'da alacaktır...

Yongkang 'da Hee-cheol 'ü bulamayan Yeong-ju, durumu ailesine anlatmaya çalışacaktır. Fakat olayları yalın bir şekilde anlatmadaki başarısızlığı ile yalan atmadaki başarısı birleşince; kendisini Hee-cheol 'ün önce kirlettiği, sonra da bir kenara attığı eski sevgilisi olarak tanıtacak ve işler fena halde karışacaktır...

Gelelim yorumumuza;

İlk başta söyleyeceğim şey eğer eğlenceli zaman geçirmek istiyorsanız ve yalancılarla büyük sorunlarınız yoksa tam seyirlik bir film bence. Ben ve annem izlerken inanılmaz eğlendik. Yalan söyleme işini adeta bir sanat haline getiren Yeong-ju ve olanlardan bi haber Hee-cheol' ün -yalan- üzerine hayatlarını+mücadelelerini izlemek çok keyifliydi. Aslında yukarıda yazılı olan özet filmi çok güzel anlatıyor. Ne ilave edebilirim ne ekleyebilirim diye düşündüm hatta bu yazıyı yazmadan. Yazabileceklerim çok sınırlı. Sanki birşeyler yazsam yada birkaç sahneden bahsetsem izlerken o etkisini yitirecek gibi hissediyorum. En iyisi mi siz bir ara mutlaka izleyin ;) İndirmek için tıklayın.online izlemek için buraya tıklayın LİNK

Bol eğlence, komedi, aile bağları, gelenekler ve azıcıkta dramsa eğer aradığınız o zaman bugün Yalan Söylemek için güzel bir gün. ;)

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DENNIS NEWMAN 01

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Raw images from the Russian front

A Russian gun about to fire.

THE REAL STORY OF THE RUSSIAN FRONT

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War
By Chris Bellamy: A tremendous contribution to the record of Russia’s struggle, for which future historians will owe a debt

Reviewed by Max Hastings

Moderation is conspicuously absent from the experience of the Russian people. Through the centuries, they have displayed a capacity for excess that leaves westerners gasping, sometimes at its magnificence, sometimes at its horror.

The second world war was the supreme example of both. Between late 1941 and D-Day in 1944, the British became blushingly conscious of how little their own armies were doing to defeat Nazism. They were seized with an admiration for Russian fortitude and heroism. The achievement was real enough. But British workers might have been a trifle less impressed had they known that Stalin’s forces were impelled not only by love for Mother Russia, but also by the knowledge that if they flinched they would be shot by their own leaders, as were at least 200,000 Red Army soldiers.

Those who allowed themselves to be taken prisoner by the Germans became nonpersons. In 1945, tens of thousands of surviving POWs were shot or sent to the Gulag. Westerners have wasted an absurd amount of sympathy on the fate of the Cossacks whom Britain shipped back to their deaths at Stalin’s hands in 1945, after they had fought for Hitler. What about all the Russian POWs who had fought for the allied cause, yet were also sent home to die? Marshal Zhukov, a monster like almost all of Stalin’s commanders, wanted to strengthen the deterrent against surrender by also executing the families of such offenders, although this proved too much even for Moscow.

When Marshal Rokossovsky, in Chris Bellamy’s view the greatest of Soviet battlefield leaders, was rehabilitated and given an army after a bracing spell of imprisonment during the purges, he was obliged to acquire a new set of steel teeth. Most of his own had been kicked out by Stalin’s torturers, who also smashed his toes with a hammer. Here was one trifling manifestation of the universe of blood that was the Soviet Union, long before Hitler invaded in 1941. Probably only a dictatorship as savage as Stalin’s, and a people as inured to barbarism as the Russians, could have broken Hitler’s power. The story of how they did so has never been one for weak stomachs.

Much of what was written afterwards by the Russians was myth. Bellamy recounts the example of a unit of 28 men, to whom a memorial still stands outside Moscow, celebrating their part in its defence during the winter of 1941. The glorious 28, it was said, held out against overwhelming superior forces, killing dozens of Germans and destroying 18 tanks. In reality, says Bellamy, the story was nonsense. As early as 1948, Moscow discovered that one of the 28, decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union, had become a police chief in the German occupation zone. But the Russian state valued its giant edifice of patriotic propaganda far too much to allow it to be tarnished. The truth was locked in the NKVD files.

To this day, almost all credible accounts of the Russian wartime experience are the work of foreigners. The pioneer British researcher was John Erickson, who in 1975 published a history of the Red Army’s wartime doings. Erickson gained extraordinary access to Soviet archives and surviving commanders. But some of us have always thought his works were compromised by an exaggerated respect for the credibility of Russian sources. For instance, in his text he refused to attribute responsibility for the massacre of more than 4,000 Polish officers at Katyn to the Russians, even through their guilt had been well known in the West since 1943.

He once put the argument to me that the Red Army was superior man-for-man to the Wehrmacht, which is nonsense. The Russians had mass and some supremely gifted commanders. They showed notable tactical gifts in reconnaissance, as artillerymen and night fighters. But their victories were mainly attributable to a willingness to sacrifice almost unlimited quantities of cannon fodder. In 1941-42, they were often losing 15,000 men a day. In less than a week, therefore, they suffered as many casualties as the British and Canadian armies in the 1944-45 northwest Europe campaign.

Bellamy was one of Erickson’s PhD students. He has now composed a new narrative history, based upon extraordinary access to Moscow’s archives. His work is infinitely superior to his former professor’s, and is probably the best account of the Eastern Front we shall see until President Putin relaxes his newly imposed restrictions on foreign access to the files.

Bellamy has no delusions about the nature of Stalin’s regime, and displays the scepticism that is indispensable to studying Russian accounts of almost everything. He focuses overwhelmingly on the first two years of war. Only the last 130 pages address events from the triumph at Stalingrad in early 1943 onwards. This is sensible. Antony Beevor and others have written excellent recent books about the later period. Moreover, after Stalingrad and then Kursk in August 1943, the die was cast. It was merely a question of how long Hitler’s army took to perish.

The Soviet Union acknowledged western aid only in the most grudging fashion. Stalin cared overwhelmingly about what America and Britain would not give him: a second front in northwest Europe in 1942 or 1943. Bellamy calculates that British and American supplies contributed 5% to Russia’s resources in 1942, 10% in 1943 and 1944. If this sounds marginal, he reckons it was probably decisive in enabling Russia to survive.

Bellamy’s mastery of sources is impressive. He has read thousands of reports by the NKVD, Stalin’s military enforcement arm. He notes, for instance, that 226 people were arrested for cannibalism during the siege of Leningrad, which cost one million lives.

In 1941 and 1942, commanders as well as ordinary soldiers were shot wholesale for failure on the battlefield. The author describes the grotesque legal proceedings that preceded the firing squad. The evidence was all lies, of course, but the Soviet system demanded that the most flagrant injustice was perpetrated with due formality. There is harrowing detail. An 11-year-old girl described in her school exercise book the successive deaths of each of her family during the siege of Leningrad, ending with the laconic words, “only Tanya remains”. Yet she, too, perished within a year. It was a miracle to survive Russia’s war.

I would take issue with Bellamy on a few points. Paying tribute to the extraordinary contribution of Russian women on the front line, he writes: “They may have had some civilising influence on their male colleagues.” On the contrary, almost every Russian veteran I have met recalls with dismay the ruth-lesssexual exploitation ofwomen, especially by senior officers.
More reflective passages would also have been welcome. What happened is here, in masterly detail, but the author could have speculated more about the grand enigmas – above all why most of the Russian people rallied under their unspeakable leadership.

Stalin’s lies persisted to the end, in small things as in great. The famous photograph of a Russian sergeant setting his flag atop the Reichstag in April 1945 showed the man wearing two watches – every Red soldier in Germany looted timepieces. When Moscow noticed, one was painted out of the photo. The legend of the Great Patriotic War must be unsullied, as Putin wishes it to remain even now.

Bellamy has made a tremendous contribution to the record of Russia’s struggle, for which future historians will owe a debt. The triumph of Stalin’s armies was indeed extraordinary, but it was achieved by methods that must make fastidious citizens of the western democracies blanch. Allied victory would have been nigh impossible without the Russians. But their wartime record mocks 1945 British and American bromides about “the triumph of freedom”.

A rather awed Soviet soldier cross-examines a giant of a German POW

Russian POWs executed

Disposing off bodies of dead Russian soldiers in a transit camp for POWs

Dour Russian POWs

This Russian POW is in a bad shape

General Krueger near Leningrad. 1941.

Colonel-General Richthofen with a group of officers in a discussion of the situation. 1941 in Ukraine

Soviet soldiers in action in Kiev.

German soldiers are in a hurry to move into Russia. 1941.

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Children in Russia during WW2

War is hell. Especially for children. How did Russian children deal with the Second World War? I have omitted images of children caught in the cross-fire or those injured.

Children in Kalinin. They lived in the dugout during the ocupation. 1942.

Children lay wreath at the graves of dead Russian soldiers. 1942.

A boy Russian soldier? What on earth was he doing in the Soviet army?

Boys play in the ruins of Stalingrad. 1944.

A boy makes a swing from a broken German gun.

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Russian front as seen by German soldiers

There are many images of the Russian Front which were not taken by the official Nazi propaganda machine. Present are some pics taken by the German soldiers on the field. They tell their own story.

Burying a departed comrade. German soldiers in Russia lower a dead soldier into his grave.

The final salute

Captured Soviet soldiers walk with a beady-eyed German guarding them.

Last farewell to his friend.

Calling it a night in a shed in Russia.

Marching on in Russia

These German soldiers lie in rest in a foreign land.

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