br23 blog - minsk, belarus

A friend from Belarus who usually doesn’t watch much TV wrote this entry in his blog several days ago (in Belarusian):
I just watched evening news on Russian NTV. Well oh well… Russian TV is quickly catching up with its Belarusian counterpart [in terms of amount of lies and propaganda]. About 3/4 of news were […]

The first photo is a screenshot of Lukashenka’s inauguration from EuroNews. The second photo is an “improved” version published in the main Lukashenka’s newspaper “Sovietskaya Belorussiya”.
The rumours of Lukashenka’s health problems are spreading further and further. The initial sign was an unusually long delay of his inauguration, by at least two weeks and his disappearance […]

TOL reports that certain positive signals are coming in our direction from the “Old Europe” ([1], [2]), but the heart of the Old Europe, Great Britain, confirmed today that it won’t change anything in that regard and will go on ignoring Belarus, as it has been doing before.
Here’s a short summary of RFE/RL Belarus service […]

If we don’t keep fighting, Lukashenka’s regime will go on destroying everything, until nothing is left. This is something we all should understand about this dictatorial regime. Today I received the news the the First Belarusian newspaper “Nasha Niva” is under a serious risk of being closed down.

Department of ideology wants to close it down […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]