br23 blog - minsk, belarus

Apparently, I was not the only one upset and saddened about the fact that Lukashenka disgraces and dishonors Skaryna’s medal, the highest award in Belarus, by giving it to second-rate Russian pop-singers and anti-Belarusan Russian politicians. Today there were two small rallies in Vilnia (Vilnius) and in Prague, with the message “Skaryna’s medal should be […]

I just watched a new EuroNews programme about Belarus, it was called “Vilnius — a capital of Belarusian exiles”. Again and again, there are dozens of serious discrepancies between the original English and the Russian translation. Just to give you an example, here’s the most important, opening paragraph:
Original English version (video in English):
“In Vilnius, Lithuania, […]

I just read Flashnews (a student publication) from my Alma Mater, and the main news story from the latest issue is about a funny little incident that has something to with the Belarusian presidential “elections”:
Students carried the old Belarusian [white-red-white] flag walking around and jumping. “We were in a good mood,” said senior Jamila […]

Let’s imagine that the most prestigious state award in USA would’ve been George Washington’s medal or something like that, and Americans would’ve elected a president that would award this medal to people such as pro-Saddam Arabic pop-singers or anti-American Hamas politicians who want to take over USA.
How absurd does that sound?
In Belarus, this became a […]

My online friend Konst published a very nice photo report from Bundestag. Apparently, in an underground tunnel under Spree they preserve many tiles with the inscriptions from Soviet soldiers. I’ve been to Berlin twice and walked around Bundestag, but didn’t know about that tunnel. Here’s one of the photos:

The writing in blue pen says: […]

The news coverage of Alexander Lukashenka’s inauguration ceremony on EuroNews demonstrated once again how biased the Russian language version of EuroNews really is.
The original phrase in English:
“International observers said the [Belarus’] vote was neither free nor fair. EU officials also warmly welcomed Milinkevich this week in a rebuke to Lukashenko.”
was removed and replaced with this […]

Belarus department of Radio Liberty launched a new photo contest for its web visitors. People sent pretty damn good shots.

See all photos:
• Photo Gallery #1
• Photo Gallery #2
In my opinion, there are a few crappy photos, but there are also several photographs that deserve to be published in “National Geographic.” And there are some […]

Corpse Bride is a brilliant animation. I’m not a big fan of puppets, not at all in fact, but this movie is brilliant: it’s funny, it was made by a genious director (Tim Burton), it has amazing dolls, great music score, hillarious black humour (the British way! I was really laughing my ass off).
The DVD […]

Scientific American: The Check Is in the Mail
“…even though the average migrant sends back just a couple of hundred dollars a month, it adds up to serious money. The World Bank estimates that developing countries received $167 billion last year–twice as much as they got in foreign aid. Mexico’s intake has quintupled in a decade, […]

Black spot is a death threat among pirates made of a black spot or mark on a scrap of paper with more specific detail sometimes written on the other side, referred to in the story Treasure Island:
`Thunder!’ he cried. `A week! I can’t do that: they’d have the black spot on me by then. The […]