br23 blog - minsk, belarus

Ze Germans are still pressuring Czechs about “bad treatment” of Germans during World War Two and apparently are planning to engage in WWII revisionism:
Even before a new Czech government has been constituted, prominent German politicians are exerting pressure on Prague. They are demanding the indictment of former members of the Czechoslovakian resistance against Nazi-occupation. The […]

There’s a website german-foreign-policy.com which regularly provides news, insider information, insightful analyses, reviews, interviews with top German politologists, diplomats and politicians.
It gives a very good idea of what Germans’ Realpolitik is all about. They are handling politics based on German-centered, strictly practical rather than idealistic notions, and practice them without any sentimental illusions, only with […]

München. RFE/RL Belarus Service. 1957-1958
This is a legendary team of Belarusian journalists from late 1950’s: the two guys sitting in front are Uladzimir Dudzicki (to the left; with glasses) and Piotra Sych (to the right). The people standing behind are (from left to right) Uladzimir Cvirka, Ryhor Krushyna, Barbara Wierzbalowicz, Janka Zaprudnik. All of them […]

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: […]

In order to refresh my (rather mediocre) German reading skills I stopped by the library today and browsed through the last several issues of the biggest German weekly magazine “Spiegel“. I’ve noticed that my vocab has shrunk: I encounter many vaguely familiar words that I can’t quite remember anymore.
By the way, Belarus’ presidential elections, mass […]

ARTE (one of my most favorite TV channels on ASTRA satellite) showed a very good movie tonight. It’s called Molly’s Way, and it’s a heartbreaking story of an Irish woman who had an unforgetable night with a cute Polish guy in Ireland, and now she came all the way across Europe to a small town […]

Finally, Belarus made it to the top news on CNN International, both on TV and on their website Belarus elections and protesters on October square in Minsk were their #1 top news for several hours this morning.
Here are the screen shots:

CNN did a great job. This looked so good on TV. And the anchor’s text […]

• 3SAT program about Belarusian culture, music and Lukashenka
(in German, a very nice 7-minute video, 100 Mb)
Bonus track:
• A hillarious “German” commercial from Google Video
(ze Germans are cool!)

Here’s another “brilliant” example of ze German journalism, an item from the #1 German news agency dpa:
Belarus to cut off home computer internet access nationwide:
Minsk - Belorussian Ministry of Communications officials on Friday announced new laws effectively banning home access to the Internet.
A policy statement from the national telephone monopolist Beltelekom defining legal internet […]

Ze German media is still silent about Milinkevich. But I’ve finally found a photo from Angela Merkel’s meeting with him. The photo is taken in a building opposite of the Bundestag. I don’t even remember what’s there. Is it the Bundeskanzlerin’s office?

Alexander Milinkevich and Angela Merkel
And here are two more photos from his EU meetings:

Alexander […]