br23 blog - minsk, belarus

My online friend Evgeny Morozov wrote yet another brilliant commentary for “Brussels Journal”:

The Russia-EU summit which took place in the Russian city of Sochi last week, was another foreign policy debacle for the European Union. Of course, the EU did reach a number of technical agreements with the Kremlin on issues like visa facilitation, but those had been on the agenda for several years and even the disaster management team of Solana, Barosso and Schüssel, which entertained the Russians in Sochi, could not have failed to sign them (though Solana, according to a Russian paper, was drunk during most of the ceremonial proceedings).

Read it all. Highly recommended.

Good news for RuSSian Nazis and imperialists. Sky Europe (the largest Central European low-cost airline) and “Novy Smichov” (one of the largest shopping malls in Czech Republic) are vouching their full support for Russian imperialism. Here’s the proof of endorsment:

(full-size screenshot)

The “new” map of Europe was spotted at the information kiosk at the main entrance of the shopping mall “Novy Smichov” which is visited by tens of thousands of people daily:

The exact same map is also available from their website at novysmichovoc.cz, on a page announcing a promotional contest to win free airplane tickets on Sky Europe airlines.

Happy RuSSian imperialists can direct their thank you letters to Sky Europe using their contact e-mails.

“Banker” published an article about Lithuania in its latest issue:

• Ten years old and looking good (online version doesn’t have table and graphs, unfortunately)

“Lithuania’s banking sector has come from nowhere a decade ago to become a highly competitive business.”

“Hansabankas was the first to introduce chip-cards in the country, and our ATM terminals are now chip compatible too. Also, we’ll be introducing WAP banking this year,” Mr Dusevicius says.

WAP banking is expected to prove popular, as Lithuania leads the world in mobile phone ownership, with 138% penetration. “Also, 80% of the bank’s payments are now e-payments, up from 20% in 2002.”

“…Meanwhile, Lithuania’s bankers have been involved in foreign expansion of their own. SEB chose its Lithuanian counterparts to lead its expansion into Ukraine when JSB Agio Bank was purchased in 2005. “We understand the mentality on both sides,” Mr Ziugzda says, adding that many Lithuanian businessmen are heading into Ukraine as the business environment improves there.”

“NORD/LB’s Dr Bubnys notes Lithuanian businesses interest is looking eastwards, and says that it makes practical sense to look at Belarus, as it is only 40km away from Vilnius, but “the political risk is still too high, and no deals are being backed.”” (Br23: I wonder why do Lithuanians use the word “eastward”? Minsk is on the same latitude with Vilnia, just a little bit South.))

In any case, it looks like Lithuania is doing a great job in this area. We could’ve been there too. We were living together with Lithuanians in a single state for 500 years, we often brought to pagan Lithuanians the literacy and culture that they were lacking. Belarusians and Lithuanians were peacefully co-existing for half a millenium, but now we went separate ways. Lithuania is an integral part of the united Europe. And Belarus is a Lukashenka’s controlled territory which he uses as a bargaining chip with Russia.

As for banking sector, in 1990 Lithuania and Belarus had exactly the same starting conditions. Today, Lithuania is enjoying a modern, highly developed banking sector. And Belarus is under a risk of being annexed by Russia, and is being run like a Soviet collective farm. Banking sector is no exception.

I can’t stop noticing that in the last several years I’ve become quite unfocused and lazy when it comes to reading books, both fiction and non-fiction.

University provided me with some sort of mental discipline and a habit to read books, but I graduated in 2000, and since then it seems I’ve been reading much less. Actually, no, I’m wrong. I’ve been reading increasingly higher volumes of text, but not books. On a daily basis I read online and paper magazines, newspapers, news websites, online discussion forums, and, of course, blogs, blogs, blogs… I’m very sure that in terms of absolute volume of “consumed” text I read now much more than I used to read back in 1999 , but not books.

You can already call me an information junkie. And I feel it’s quite unfortunate. I’d like to ask you, what’s better, more satisfying and more useful: to read 50 funny personal blogs or read the whole series of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy? To read 100 whiny Russian bloggers or read “War and Peace” in original? To read 300 tech blogs or study Donald Knuth’s “Art of Programming”?

To me the answer is quite obvious. But let’s face it: reading a good smart book is much more intellectually challenging than simply hopping over a dozens of blogs. On the other hand, the “returns” are higher. I was very pleased, elated, when I finally read several volumes of Richard Feynmann’s physics lectures back in 11th grade and got this amazing feeling that I already know our physical world quite intimately. On the other hand, if I’d spent that time reading blogs (non-existent back then, the era of early BBS) I probably would’ve felt anger and disappointment that I’ve wasted time doing something pointless.

I can see two reasons why I don’t read “difficult” books anymore. It’s my overall intellectual laziness and shorter attention span (the latter being just one manifestation of the intellectual laziness). It’s much easier to read 100 stupid comments on a discussion forum at slashdot than just one page on, say, new developments in quantum physics theory.

I think I started reading a bit more again when I bought a handheld, a palm pilot (Palm Z22) and downloaded several dozens of e-books via P2P networks and free websites. And, lately, I’ve been thinking that life is too short to waste this amazing human capacity to decipher rows and pages of symbols into concrete knowledge, imagery, ideas…

So from now on I’d like to plan my reading. Any advice and tips are greatly appreciated!

FYI:

My recent reading:
• The Man in the High Castle. Philip K. Dick
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick
• Father Brown stories by G. K. Chesterton
• Lord of the flies by William Golding

My current reading:
• Destructive Emotions : A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama
• The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom
• Investments
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
• Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve

I’m quite curious what are you guys reading these days? And I’m looking forward to your recommendations. Thanks.

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 German interest in mind.

A perfect example is their latest news item, a comment on Montenegro’s referendum for independence:

On Sunday the people of Montenegro vote on leaving the State Union with Serbia. The vote will decide the formal completion of the German-sponsored final destruction of former Yugoslavia. The supporters of secession will profit from the support of Germany and the EU, who have given uninterrupted support to leading personalities in Montenegro for years, in spite of their long-known, obvious, criminal activities in smuggling. Admittedly Berlin would welcome a further isolation of Serbia although the final secession of Montenegro will not have any further decisive significance. In any case, according to political commentators, the State Union with Serbia is “not at all functional”. In the meantime, in a move which lays bare the mainspring of the NATO war, the Germany is working on a plan to improve the utility of South Eastern Europe for businesses from the Western industrial states. The region of powerless mini-states of shattered former Yugoslavia should be put back together again in the form of a free trade area.

…From the end of the war Berlin influenced Montenegrin internal policy in this direction. The most visible expression of this was the adoption of the Deutsche Mark, which became the sole official legal tender in 2000. This enabled the German government to detach Montenegro (then still a constituent republic of Yugoslavia) from the sovereignty of Belgrade.

P.S. By the way, it’s also very telling that german-foreign-policy.com virtually ignores the topic of Belarus [1]. This is a significant indicator that German foreign policy chooses to ignore Belarus and leave it in the sphere of Moscow control.

I had an impression after our presidential “elections” that news coverage about Belarus very quickly subsided and returned to pre-election levels after Belarusans “failed” to stage a color revolution contary to Westerners’ expectations. This was just a subjective impression, but my hunch turned out to be correct. Recently, Google launched yet another new nifty tool, called Google Trends, and now you can check statistical data for any keyword. It shows a very clear trend for the keyword “Belarus”:

• google.com/trends?q=Belarus

There’s a sharp jump at the end of March, and then a very quick return to “normality” after the flop.

Upd: I’ve just posted this entry when I realized that my fellow bloggers at TOL Blogs have posted almost identical entry several hours ago!

It’s a historical victory over Switzerland. For the first time since Belarus gained independence our national ice hockey team has made it to the quarter finals of the world championship. We are playing Finland (Suomi) after tomorrow. What do we know about Finland, except Nokia? We know that they literally call us “White Russia” with two separate words (Valko-Venäjä). If nothing else they really deserve to be beaten by our hockey squad just for this little “misspelling.” But that won’t happen. They are a great hockey team. Oh, well, then maybe I should extend my “White X” funny game to Finns? So what shall we call Finland in our lingo? White Komi? White Sweden? White Estonia, perhaps?

More than a year ago Radio Free Europe made a public announcement that RFE/RL headquarters are to be moved from Prague’s center to a different location, away from the Old Town. And recently Czech government announced that they are giving a gift of one million dollars to the radio to be spent on the relocation to a new site.

Czech Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda and U.S. Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky were speaking today in Washington about this Czech government’s gift of $1,168,000:

(Cyril Svoboda in English: ) “This is a small contribution [which proves] that there is a permanent commitment, political commitment of my country, to support Radio Free Europe, because the fight for democracy is a never-ending story.”

(Paula Dobriansky: ) “This support for the Radios has never wavered, despite the difficulties that have been presented by some governments — foreign governments — some foreign governments — who do not want a free media reaching out to their citizens from [this location] in Prague.”

P.S. In other news, Czech government allocated several millions Czech crowns (again more than one million dollars) for special education exchange programs for Belarusian students that were expelled from Belarusian universities for political reasons.

Today, I started listening to a 6-hour long mp3 recording with the audio book Bill Clinton. My Life read by the author himself. It totally absorbed my attention. No matter what some Americans say, Clinton is an amazing personality, a brilliant politician (notwithstanding some problems), a really smart man. Such a striking contrast to the current president…

A youth opposition activist Mikita Sasim has been handed a three month jail sentence for draft evasion.

First of all, virtually no one goes to jail in Belarus for draft evasion. This is exceptional. Second, last autumn he had been granted a deferral from the army doctors because of brain injuries which he sustained after being brutally beaten by the Belarusian police during the break-up of a peaceful protest rally on September 16, 2005.

It’s absolutely clear that Mikita Sasim’s arrest is politically motivated. “Amnesty International” said that Mikita Sasim is to be recognized a prisoner of conscience and called on Lukashenka to release the young man.