br23 blog - minsk, belarus

Just read this in “New Scientist”:
Many of the phone companies that own the wires connecting people to the internet are gearing up to block free phone calls that use voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology.
The online edition of IEEE Spectrum, the house journal of the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, says phone companies […]

Remember I wrote about one month ago that a Czech journalist was shot dead 200 yards away from where we live? In the meantime, police found and arrested Lubina. Then he confessed, and besides, DNA test proved it was his blood on the spot. Several days ago he was brought by the detectives to the […]

This is already the second time in October that people protest in Minsk against Russian language broadcasts of Deutsche Welle to Belarus. And by the way, Belarusian authorities had apparently no problem with that, as Minsk city authorities granted a permission for this street protest.
Photo 1
“Mova? - Nein!
Jazyk? - Ja!”
(”Mova” is the Belarusan word for […]

“Die Welt” quotes Lithuanian president as saying that Lukashenka’s army could attack Lithuania:
Sein Volk fühle, “daß es nicht allein ist, was psychologisch wichtig” sei. Insbesondere Rußland, von 1940 bis 1990 Besatzungsmacht, sei nur noch wirtschaftlich als Bedrohung denkbar. Anders verhält es sich mit Weißrußland, mit dem Litauen eine 600 Kilometer lange Grenze teilt. “Wenn du […]

A Turkish court fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet. The court in the southeastern city of Siirt fined each of the 20 people 100 new lira for holding up the placards, written […]

Hungarian Uprising is an anti-communist anti-USSR revolt in Hungary lasting from October 23 till November 4, 1956 that was suppressed by Soviet troops. Many thousands were killed. Today is the 49th annivesary of the Hungarian revolution and the White Dutch TV channel Phoenix prepared a rather interesting documentary about those events:
• Historische Ereignisse. 23. Oktober […]

I enjoyed my first ride on the Intercity Express three and a half years ago, on April 2nd, 2002, when I traveled from Frankfurt-am-Main to Berlin, as an IT consultant going to our Berlin branch:
The electronic tableau over the sliding glass doors shows the speed: 240 km/h. And we were going 255 km/h at some […]

In the last several days three giants of the newspaper media world New York Times (1), International Herald Tribune (2) and Time ran stories about Alexander Milinkevich, a united opposition candidate for the upcoming presidential elections, our potential Anti-Lukashenka. Not bad.
P.S. Wikipedia already has a nice article about him: Alaksandar Milinkievič (as well as articles […]

According to Google Video, this is basically the only time Belarus was mentioned on any of the American TV channels (excluding C-Span) in the last several months:

- Where do we start? Oh, let’s try a “B” country for $400.
- What is Bhutan?
- Let’s try it for $800.
- What is Belarus?
- Let’s have “B” country for […]

This week I reread some of Stanislaw Lem’s short stories (Tales of Pirx the Pilot) and novels which I enjoyed a lot when I was a teenager. I first read them 16-18 years ago (when I was 12-14 years old), and now I realized that I forgot most of it, having retained just vague memories […]