Tuesday, March 21, 2006

I had a news story dream tonight: it was a report on how a few Belarusian activists went away from the square for a while to get warm, and by the time they returned, the police had taken down all of their tents, and Milinkevich was really pissed.

System overload in my head, I guess.

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In real-life Belarus, the protesters have survived the night without major incidents - for Belarusian LJ updates see Ivan Lenin's translations at Rush-Mush/Russian Mushroom.

(An aside: a tiny explanation of this Lenin-Russian-Mushroom (and Sergey Kuryokhin) thing is here: "...Kuryokhin was a controversial figure in his time, once appearing on Russian television to prove that Lenin was not a human being, but rather a mushroom.")

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And while I'm at it (the musicians), here's a familiar revolutionary theme: Lyavon Volski, a Belarusian rock musician, intends to invite U2 to sing in Belarus (via 19, in Russian).

I hope someone does tell Bono this time that it'd be a fun and useful thing to do. Please.

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More on Lyavon Volski and his band NRM in this March 2 Guardian piece by Nick Paton Walsh:

There's no official ban on NRM, but it only takes a phone call from the police for the director of the concert hall to cancel a gig, says Volski. "This country reminds me of the USSR in miniature. Now is the time for people who got C-grades at school. Everyone talented has gone abroad. But if I did not think democratic forces could triumph, I would have left long ago," he says.

1 comment:

  1. I doubt U2 (at least as a whole) can make it. Their guitarist's daughter is rumored to be very sick, possibly with leukemia. They just cancelled several tour dates in Australia and Hawaii.

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