Riddle me this

While I was waiting for a fuller text of Pentagon spokesmodel Lawrence DiRita’s “rebuttal” of Sy Hersh’s article to show up somewhere on the web (I still haven’t found it), Eli at LeftI has written exactly what I planned to write, which is that DiRita’s talk about rumor, innuendo, statements never made, etc. failed to deny a single specific in the Hersh piece or name a single one of the alleged factual errors. You can’t accuse DiRita of making factual errors, because his non-denial denial was completely fact-free. But this isn’t about facts, per se. DiRita says that these unspecified errors with which the article is “riddled” (riddled is the key word in denigration this week; Dan Bartlett used it yesterday) mean that “the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed.” It’s not really about facts, it’s about the media’s, at least the non-compliant media like Hersh’s, credibility.

The annoying thing is that I have much the same problem with the Hersh article: he didn’t provide enough backing evidence for me to judge the accuracy of his charges, so I’m left relying on his credibility, although that credibility is quite high with me, given his track record.

As a long-time observer of CIA dirty tricks, Hersh is especially worried that the shift of covert operations to the Pentagon will remove what little Congressional oversight was set up in the 1970s. The incursions into Iran are being defined not as intelligence ops but as “preparing the battlefield,” and as such immune from scrutiny.

Also, and I can’t believe even the Bushies are being this stupid again, they evidently believe that a successful operation against an Iranian nuclear facility would bring about an uprising against the government because it would destroy the mullahs’ “aura of invincibility.” Which come to think of it is roughly what the right is trying to do with the media: first make a surgical strike on Dan Rather, then Rather-bate other journalists, so you can dismiss Seymour Hersh’s “credibility” without having to address his accusations.

(Update: here’s the DiRita “rebuttal,” which is actually snider than I’d imagined. My favorite phrase is the dismissal of agreements between Douglas Feith and Israel as “the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists.”)

Not getting through

Just a few days ago Bush said of his 11% black vote in the 2004 election, “as to why that message hasn’t made it through, I don’t know, I’m not a pundit.” I just went to the White House website looking for Martin Luther King Day material to make fun of--it’s what I do--and there’s NOTHING there.


Just totally perplexed by the black people.

Still, it could be worse.

Leaning

If Iraq’s election monitors will be in Jordan, Western journalists still have to cover the country from in their countries, practicing “hotel journalism.” Robert Fisk reports that NBC journos not only don’t leave their hotel, but their security advisers have told them not to visit the hotel’s pool or restaurant. He notes that during the invasion, reports from embedded reporters were prefaced with warnings that they were produced under military restrictions, but now, when their only “reporting” consists of reaching out from under their bed to grab the latest press release issued by the US military or the puppet government, themselves isolated in the Green Zone from the real situation in Iraq, no such warnings are given.

With British elections coming up sometime in spring, the talk is of a further Tory party meltdown. Still, none of the parties are going in to the election with the leader they want. The Conservatives have discarded three party leaders since the last time they were in office, and Michael Howard is doing no better with the public. The Liberal Democrats are led by a man with a disconcerting resemblance to Conan O’Brien, enough said there. Labour would do better with anybody but Bush’s poodle, and there are fierce battles, all leaked to the press, being waged over when to replace him with Gordon Brown, the current chancellor, so they’re not looking too great either. Labour are currently thrilled that they were able to arrange for a Tory MP and former minister for higher education, Robert Jackson, to defect to Labour, although 1) he’s not planning to run again anyway, 2) all the issues on which he disagrees with the Tories are ones on which Labour is further to the right (charging tuition for universities, Iraq, etc).

Bill “Here Kitty Kitty Kitty” Frist says that Americans might have to “take some medicine” in the form of lower Social Security benefits. You know, as awful as Frist is as a senator, if poverty is his idea of medicine it’s probably just as well he gave up the doctoring gig.

Speaking of evil ex-doctors, the New Yorker just posted not only the Sy Hersh story about secret incursions into Iran, but also an interesting profile of Iyad “Comical” Allawi, another detailed biography which still doesn’t answer my question whether the guy ever practiced medicine.

In, pathetically, the boldest Democratic move yet on Alberto Gonzales, Ted Kennedy says he is “leaning against” voting to confirm him. But if you consider support for torture to be an absolute disqualification for the job of attorney general, and funnily enough I do, you don’t “lean” because there is nothing left to consider. You do not “lean” on issues of principle.

Not a pundit

Emperor Chimpy, in full-on smug mode: “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections. The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me.” Of all the assessments of the election results, I’m not sure anyone has said before that the electorate thought Bush was doing a really good job in Iraq.

And this bit, I just have to quote from the Post verbatim:

As for perhaps the most notorious terrorist, Osama bin Laden, the administration has so far been unsuccessful in its attempt to locate the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Asked why, Bush said, “Because he’s hiding.”

He admits that Muslims hate us, but is sure they’ll come around, he says: “There’s no question we’ve got to continue to do a better job of explaining what America is all about.” Yeah, because it’s the explanations that have been at fault, not anything you’ve actually done.

He also admits that black people didn’t vote for him, and is equally baffled by that, and equally convinced that he’s just being misunderstood: “the policies that we have put forth in this administration are, I think, beneficial to all. And as to why that message hasn’t made it through, I don’t know, I’m not a pundit.” Or a rocket scientist. Interview excerpts.


Perplexed by the black people.
In my on-going efforts to improve your vocabulary, here is a story from the London Times:

Constantin Putica, whose surname means “small penis” in Romanian, has given up trying to change it because he’s fed up with the red tape involved, reports the Ananova news agency. “I have got used to people laughing when they hear my name,” says the 45-year-old.

“I can live with it.” According to a local newspaper there are not only 243 Puticas in Romania but also 233 people called Muia, which means “oral sex”.

Our apologies for not mentioning the names of all the candidates

Charles Graner: “I can see, to a layperson, a lot of things happen in prison that may look wrong.” D’ya think?

Freedom, ain’t it grand:

The predicament for candidates was spelled out on a flier passed around town by the United Iraqi Alliance. The flier listed the names of 37 candidates for the national assembly. The 188 others, the flier said, could not be published.

“Our apologies for not mentioning the names of all the candidates,” the flier said. “But the security situation is bad, and we have to keep them alive.”

An election with no candidates, sounds like heaven after months of Bush & Kerry, doesn’t it? Oh sure, it’s a mockery of the political process, and it’s an insult to compare this with real democracy, but still... an election with no candidates.

That’s assuming that terrorists would just be sitting around and doing nothing

A piece of junk mail just arrived from the local cable company says on the envelope, “Comcast is bringing you powerful new ways to watch television.” Honestly, “powerful” and “watching television” just do not belong in the same sentence. Unless the remote comes with a button that makes actors’ heads blow up when they displease you, of course.

In response to Prince Harry’s insensitivity, his father is reportedly sending him to Auschwitz. And you thought your parents were harsh. Also, he has to apologize to the Chief Rabbi (slightly unsettling London Times headline: “Day of Atonement for Prince Harry.”)

It’s almost like a parody of Middle East politics: before Mahmoud Abbas is even sworn in, Sharon has already broken off relations with him “until he makes a real effort to stop the terror.”

Asked about a CIA report which says that Iraq is now a breeding ground for terrorists (Next up on the Discovery Channel: “The life cycle of terrorists: from breeding ground to suicide bombing”), Scott McClellan says, “That’s assuming that terrorists would just be sitting around and doing nothing if we weren’t staying on the offensive.” In other words, in the nature/nurture debate, Scottie comes down on the side of the former, arguing terrorists are not products of external events, like foreign occupation, but are just born that way.

Rwanda plans to try 1,000,000 people for genocide in village courts.

As I said two posts ago, the WaPo this morning complained about Venezuela giving “sanctuary” to a Colombian guerilla leader (Colombian warlord Uribe said today that the use of bounty hunters in another country and the bribing of Venezuelan officials is legitimate in fighting terrorism). Well, speaking of sanctuary for terrorists, today Haitian death squad leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant was served with papers in New York, where he lives. He is being sued by 3 of the women his paramilitaries gang-raped. Also, Mark Thatcher, who was just convicted for taking part in an attempt to overthrow the government of a whole country, is moving to Dallas, the site of some of his former felonious glories.

A high school student suspended from high school in Missouri for wearing an “I’m gay and I’m proud” t-shirt has withdrawn his lawsuit, which is moot because he had to drop out after missing so many classes. That’ll show him for being gay and for being proud.

The Daily Telegraph reveals that in 1994

The Pentagon examined the possibility of developing an aphrodisiac bomb that would cause enemy troops to find one another sexually irresistible...

It also considered development of a "Who? Me?" bomb that would produce odours that suggested that other soldiers were passing wind or had serious halitosis to disrupt enemy morale. [And make it possible to identify guerillas not in uniform, the Times adds]...

It is not known if, or when, the programme was abandoned.

The Pentagon also considered chemicals that would make the enemy troops sexually attractive to "annoying or injurious animals" such as stinging and biting bugs or rodents.

While fun, it should be noted that these were just proposals from an Air Force Lab, for developing “harassing, annoying and ‘bad guy’-identifying chemicals”. What, like beer?

Obviously a student of history

Bush in USA Today interview: “Most people in Iraq do want to vote. Most people are interested in exercising their free will.” Very metaphysical, I’m sure.

The ass-kissing USAT interviewer prefaced a question with this implausible remark: “Q: You’re obviously a student of history.” The question was, “Do you now stop and think about the history that you’re making by doing this?”

Not to be outdone in the shite-talking department, the D- student of history responded, “I think we’re sowing the seeds for peace for a long time to come.”

As Reagan said, facts are stupid things

Charles “I love to make a grown man piss himself” Graner’s defense rested without Graner testifying in his own defense. For a blogger, that’s like the circus being cancelled.

Did the Bushies really think that not announcing they’d stopped looking for Iraqi WMDs would stop the news from getting out, albeit several weeks late? Normally you’d expect them to try to spin the news themselves, but I guess there was no way of doing so. Powell was on McNeil-Lehrer today, saying over and over that what he said two years ago was the best “facts” and “intelligence” available at the time. Given that none of it was true, you can’t really use the word “facts,” now can you? Rumor, innuendo, Chalabi fabrications, but not “facts.”

LA Times story: “Guantanamo Gets Greener With Wind Power Project.”

Four new windmill towers and turbines rising from the crown of John Paul Jones Hill will begin powering the U.S. Navy base here next month, saving $1.5 million in annual oil imports, reducing pollution and showing energy-starved communist neighbors what they are missing.

What they’re missing? Windmill-powered genital shocking?

The WaPo has another heavily slanted anti-Venezuela editorial, complete with sarcastic quote marks: “Venezuela’s ‘Revolution.’” As I said the last time the Post urged the US government to act against Venezuela, the US lost its moral standing to say anything about Venezuela when it supported a coup attempt there. The Post says Chavez is reorienting his “foreign policy away from the United States and other democracies.” The US’s domestic democracy is irrelevant to its foreign policy in Latin America. The impetus for the latest attack on Chavez (who I’m no fan of either) is his attempt at land reform. I don’t know the details of Chavez’s plans in this area, but I don’t see land reform as “undermining the foundations of democracy and free enterprise,” as the Post puts it. And if they’re so concerned about land seizures, they might ask how so much of Venezuelan property is in the form of huge haciendas held by an oligarchy of light-skinned folks. Finally, they accuse Christopher Dodd of caring more about oil than Venezuelan democracy (he expressed this contempt for Venezuelan democracy by saying that land confiscation is an internal matter), when their own opening paragraph inserted the seemingly irrelevant fact of V. being an “oil-producing country” into its diatribe against the “assault on private property.”The casually arrogant sense of American superiority is as strong in the “liberal” Washington Post as in the Bush cabinet.

The piece also mentions Venezuela’s current dispute with Colombia, “which recently arrested a senior leader of the FARC movement -- designated a terrorist organization by the United States -- who had been given sanctuary in Venezuela.” Actually, after first lying about it, Colombia has had to admit that its agents/bounty hunters kidnapped Rodrigo Granda and spirited him over the border. Colombia never asked that he be extradited, so “sanctuary” doesn’t enter into it.

Speaking of fomenting coups, Mark Thatcher’s admission of involvement in the coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea continues to garner one-millionth of the ink in the British press as Prince Harry’s little... what’s the German for faux pas? The Indy says the royal family had hoped joining the military would straighten the boorish Harry out. Obviously they needed to be more specific about which military.

I would really encourage people not to focus on numbers

Looking for a Rumsfeld quote I’d heard on tv, I read the transcript of his joint press conference with the Russian defense minister. After Rumsfeld talked about how some released Guantanamo detainees have gone back to fighting, Ivanov chimed in about how they’d had the very same problem back when they were trying to subjugate Afghanistan. And no one present seemed to think there was anything odd about this exchange, just two imperialists chatting about their troubles with those devious natives.

Anyway, the quote was about the Iraqi elections, which are now being treated as the Special Olympics of elections. Rummy: “First, just having elections in Iraq is an enormous success and a victory.” And the electoral lists are diverse, so any government will be “broadly representative,” by which he means there will be tokens, not that it will be representative in the sense of reflecting votes. The Bushies are in the process of defining democracy downwards, as a WaPo article details, quoting a “senior administration official” as saying “I would ... really encourage people not to focus on numbers, which in themselves don’t have any meaning”. Silly me, I thought elections were about counting votes. Well, in fact no, since the Bushies are talking increasingly about cobbling together some sort of arrangement to give the Sunni delegates roles irrespective of the election results. It’s unclear why any Iraqis should bother running the risk of being killed for the sake of election results which “in themselves don’t have any meaning”. And Rumsfeld refers to worries about the security of the elections as “hyperventilation,” ignoring the many election workers already murdered.

Oh, and about that Newsweek article about Pentagon discussions about running death squads, “this so-called Salvatore -- Salvador option, I think it’s called.” Well, Rummy says he looked through Newsweek, couldn’t find the article, but it’s nonsense anyway. Honestly, read the transcript, couldn’t make this shit up, wouldn’t want to.

A good piece by Seumas Milne on Iraqi elections in the Guardian points out that while most Iraqis want the occupation ended, no one with a chance of being elected supports that because the occupation is all that keeps them a) in power, b) breathing.

From the AP: “Colombia has invited bounty hunters from around the world to search jungles and cities for Marxist rebel commanders and bring them back in exchange for large cash rewards.” No, nothing could go wrong there.

Customary policy of deference to the president

Good news on the Supreme Court striking down mandatory sentencing guidelines. Now we can go back to Southern states sentencing litter-bugs and sodomites to life in the stocks, and San Francisco sentencing mass murderers to aromatherapy and past-life regression.

What, you can’t figure out my position on mandatory sentencing based on that joke? Well, I don’t trust the federal government to set sentences irrespective of the details of individual cases, I don’t like gross regional disparities in sentencing, I don’t trust juries, I don’t trust judges with lifetime tenure, hell, I don’t trust the court stenographers, so I’m a little hard put to come to an opinion on how sentences should be arrived at.

The Supreme Court’s been all over the lot this week. They ruled that people can be convicted for conspiring to commit a crime without even starting to put the conspiracy into practice. This seems to me to be thought crime. The NYT forgot to include what the vote was.

And the Supes ruled that Cuban criminals can’t be held forever after serving their sentences, because Cuba won’t take them back, but it ruled that Somalis can be deported because of the Court’s “customary policy of deference to the president,” even though Somalia has no actual government, so we’d be literally just dumping people--convicted criminals, yet--in another country.

You don’t have a relationship, George, you are a stalker

Headline of the day, “I’m Sorry for Wearing Nazi Swastika, Says Prince Harry.” He was attending a “colonial and native”-themed party. Prince William went as a lion, which I assume is his idea of a native.

A London Times article on the Iraqi police:

Most policemen conceal the nature of their work even from their neighbours. They hide their faces behind ski masks or head scarves, and when they carry Kalashnikovs and man roadblocks it is difficult to tell them from guerrillas.

Sometimes the guerrillas are in uniform and the police in civvies: you only know which is which when they wave you through without kidnapping you. Last week a Times translator was stopped and searched at a guerrilla checkpoint only 100 yards from the main police headquarters in Baghdad.

Whoops, an even better headline, from the Daily Telegraph: “Thatcher Escapes Jail.” Sadly, it’s not about Margaret Thatcher going over the wall (oh man, I’m gonna have the Great Escape theme in my head the rest of the day now), but her idiot son Mark taking a plea bargain in South Africa for his role in financing the “time-share” coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. He’s getting away with a fine.

Oh, wait, it’s just gonna be one of those days. Also from the Telegraph: “Village Celebrates its Past with £10,000 Statue of Dinosaur Droppings.”

The Russian Duma is working on a law to deny visas to people showing “disrespect” for Russia or harming its values, whatever those might be.

Bush, in an interview with the Moonie Washington Times, says, “I don’t see... how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord.”

Doing “what we see fit to maintain security”

The US military has shot more Iraqi children, fatally in the case of a 13-year old girl, and, as with those other “possibly innocent lives” three days ago, immediately started casting aspersions on the victims: spokesmodel Major Neal O’Brien said, “This is an absolute tragedy. We do not know at this time what the children were doing in the area.” They live there, you moron, what were the American soldiers doing in the area? Oh yeah, shooting at anything that moved.

Posters issued in Anbar province of Iraq, by the Secret Republican Army, which CBS describes as “previously unknown”--oh, they’re good--say that voters in Wasit--which is next to Whatchamacallit--will be shot by 32 snipers. The governor of the province, who I assume plans to vote absentee, says, “We do not care about such statements” and that the government will do “what we see fit to maintain security.” Very reassuring.

Speaking of lame elections, Britain is gearing up for its next one, with these posters, masterpieces of the propagandistic arts:

I assume I’m right

Bush has named Michael Chertoff to head Heimat Security. He says that after 9/11, “He understood immediately that the strategy in the war on terror is to prevent attacks before they occur.” Because preventing attacks after they occur is, you know, hard work.


Must...resist...urge...to rub the bald guy’s head.


Bush gave an interview to the Wall St Journal, flanked by “senior aides,” because god knows he can’t be trusted on his own. He said, “I understand there are many who say, ‘Bush is wrong.’ I assume I’m right.” And you know what they say about people who assume...

Wherein I coin the phrase “one-sodomy rule”

A WaPo editorial notes that the Team Chimpy is planning to stick DC with the huge costs of security for the inaugural, a break with previous practice. DC will be allowed to use homeland security funds for this instead of for, say, homeland security, as clear an admission as you’d like that homeland security funding (I just used the phrase homeland security three times in a row without gagging, a sure sign of desensitization--what will we be accepting as normal in 2009?) is nothing but pork.

Speaking of abnormal, I just went to the supermarket, and why are all the oranges bigger than the grapefruit? When did that happen? I’m pretty sure this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

Speaking of...well no, I won’t go there.... The Supreme Court refused today to hear challenges to Florida’s ban on gay adoption (which only Florida has, by the way). The 1977 law says: “No person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is a homosexual.” This raises questions similar to those I asked about Muslims last month, when a poll showed 27% of Americans thought they should be required to register, namely, who gets to define “homosexual.” This is a law--Stat. § 63.042(3)--so you’d think it would include a legal definition of “a homosexual,” but it doesn’t. Indeed, the Christian evangelical types like Anita Bryant who got this law passed are the ones who insist that homosexuality is a “lifestyle” rather than an innate sexual identity (I’ve seen a similar argument from the other end, so to speak, of the spectrum, by Gore Vidal, who insists that there are no homosexuals, just homosexual acts). If a would-be adoptive parent denies being homosexual, how do the state and courts determine otherwise, by what standard? Measure blood flow to their genitals when they’re exposed to pictures of Brad Pitt? Do they have to fuck someone of the opposite sex in open court--and none of that fancy sex like we hear they have up north either. What about “ex-gays”? What about bisexuals? Is it ok if you just experimented in college--Lesbians until Graduation (LUGs) they called it at my college--or got really drunk this one time (at least that’s what you tell everyone), or is there a one-sodomy rule?

This is what happens when the state intrudes into people’s personal lives.

“I look forward to welcoming him here to Washington if he chooses to come here”

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo for business as a gulag. I just looked it up: the traditional third anniversary gift is leather. Oh dear.

Mahmoud Abbas has won the legitimacy that only comes, the world media imply, from an invitation to the White House. I mean sod the elections, if Chimpy invites you to break bread (now that I think of it, I’m not sure if a meal was actually mentioned; maybe better to nosh a little first), then you have been well and truly anointed.

Shrub added that he envisioned “a day when he and president-elect Abbas and Israel’s leaders could stand together and say, ‘We have peace.’” Hey, you can always say it. You say stuff all the time.

We’ve got torture, yes we do, we’ve got torture, how ‘bout you?

The lawyer of Abu Ghraib torturer Specialist Charles Graner asks the important question: “Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?”


Also, that leash thing, “A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections,” and hell, parents have their kids on tethers at the mall. Why, “In Texas we’d lasso them and drag them out of there.” Yee hah.

So in the same package of rule changes that gutted ethics inquiries was a provision that in event of “catastrophic circumstances,” a quorum is no longer needed in the House of Reps, just whoever shows up. No, I can see no way in which that could go wrong.

Lashing out

There’s a good essay by Gary Younge in the Guardian on how the Right’s backlash continues, even while the Left increasingly lashes in the first place. The national debate is thus conducted entirely within terms framed by the Right. Younge blames Clinton, which is too easy, for turning the occasional necessary capitulation by the left from a matter of pragmatism into a dogma, “triangulation.” Younge:

“The absence of the lash simply changed the nature of the backlash. It is no longer an act of political retribution: the right has turned it into an art form.

“First it finds an enemy - preferably a weak minority - gays, unmarried mothers, Muslims, the irreligious, international law or small countries that break international law, asylum seekers, Gypsies etc. In the inconvenient instance that a real enemy, no matter how exaggerated, cannot be found, it constructs one: the "liberal establishment", the "armies of political correctness", the "liberal media" or "feminazis". Then, with the enemy, real or invented, in place, it simply creates and inflates the crisis to suit, and bingo - the bespoke backlash. No lash required. Add venom and mix recklessly.”

Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle

So despite its promises not to interfere with the Palestinian elections, Israel interfered with the Palestinian elections. Quel surprise. They turned away voters in East Jerusalem (most East Jerusalahoovians weren’t going to be allowed to vote inside the city anyway, but make their way through checkpoints to the West Bank). Combine that with inadequate voter registration, harassment of candidates (Israel had the nerve to say that Barghouti was courting arrest as a publicity stunt--he was arrested Friday for trying to pray at a Jerusalem mosque without a license!), and voting under military occupation. All the reasons I’ve cited as making Iraqi elections illegitimate apply to Palestine. The infrastructure for free and fair elections simply does not exist. (Although that said, the Palestinians have a thriving political culture, unlike the Iraqis.) Israel has put its thumb on the scale in favor of Mahmoud Abbas, who they think is enough of a ruthless thug to deal with the other ruthless thugs. They’re even willing to ignore the little matter of Holocaust denial, just this once.

North Korea launches a campaign against long hair on men: “Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle.” Evidently long hair hinders intellectual development by diverting nutrition from the brain to hair growth. Clean shoes are also important.

Possibly innocent lives

The US bombed the wrong house, near Mosul, killing 14 people (the US says 5 without saying how they would know that), but issued the semi-apology that it “deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives.” Or maybe it possibly regrets the loss of deeply innocent lives. I’ve deleted the rest of what I wrote about that crack, because UnFairWitness had the exact same thoughts and posted them first:

Like maybe they killed 14 people in a house they weren’t even supposed to be targeting and just got lucky? Or maybe there are so many bad guys in Iraq that you can randomly bomb a house and get a few?

The insertion of that adverb shows the presumption of guilt Americans apply to all Iraqis.

A Romanian woman with two wombs got pregnant in each simultaneously. She had the first baby a month ago, prematurely, and will have the second in 5 weeks.

Don’t know about the American price of either, but the Observer claims that in Britain, cocaine is now cheaper than a cappuccino.

Responding to complaints from animal rights activists, McDonald’s in Britain is considering killing its chickens more humanely, by sending them to the gas chamber. PETA approves of this.

Yes, we have no banana revolutions today

Belarus’s dictator, and king of the combover, Aleksander Lukashenko insists that unlike Georgia or Ukraine, there will be no people’s revolution in Belarus, whether “rose, orange or banana.”


Long live the Banana Revolution!