Monday, July 28, 2008

Только лежать


Greetings from Spain to the followers of this blog. My month in Russia ended this week after a traffic accident. I spent a week at a Russian hospital, an experience that gave me much material for this blog. I want to thank Ilia Magin for all his suport during my horizontal torture (Только лежать). I'm still recovering at my place, in Spain; and I am allowed to walk, wich makes me less intelectual but much happier. Posting staff keeps me connected with the world. Or maybe not. But feels good anyway.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Simón Bolivarienko is alive in Minsk

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was in Belarus this week for a one-day visit. He had negotiations with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Both are unpopular in the West. And both are ruling states wich are not pure democracies.

The first thing Chavez was asked in Minsk is what contracts he brought with him from Moscow, and is it true that they worth $30 billion. "I do not engage in the perversions that various agencies spread," he told journalists. "Numbers like that are crazy! Better to ask me how much money we invested in the development of our country!"

For Vadim Dovnar, journalist in Minsk, an answer like that is well within the limits of neither confirming nor denying, and Chavez decided not to return to the topic. Kommersant says that Chavez took a keen interest in buying a large lot of Igla-S portable ballistic missile complexes (up to 2.500 of them). A Rosoboronexport spokesman told Kommersant said that "the Venezuelans expressed the intention of obtaining Iglas during the first round of our meetings in 2005, when questions of providing factories to make Kalashnikov machineguns, helicopters and fighter jets were also raised," the spokesman said. "However, we are not making an agreement on portable ballistic missiles, because of agreements with the United States on the nonproliferation of that type of weapon."

In spite of the fact that Chavez spent only one day in Minsk, Belarusian authorities tried to make it a memorable day for the Venezuelan leader. A square in Minsk was renamed in honor of Chavez' idol, South American revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar. Chavez was touched. Laying a wreath at a bas relief of the national hero of his country, Chavez promised to fight against the enemies of Belarus. "I have fallen in love with the Belarusian land, the Belarusian people, and I commit myself to being the friend of that people. We fight one enemy. We have to call it by name. It is American imperialism. We have won, we will win, but the battle will be long," he said.

An agreement on that was signed in 2007 during Lukashenko's visit to Caracas, and in April of this year the document was ratified by the Belarusian parliament. Under the agreement, Belarus will help its ally create a unified air defense system and radar defense facilities. And both will anger United States together, wich seems to be more important from time to time. During the past years Chávez has focused considerably on Venezuela's foreign relations via new bilateral and multilateral agreements, including humanitarian aid and construction projects. Chávez has engaged, with varying degrees of success, numerous other foreign leaders, including Argentina's Néstor Kirchner, China's Hu Jintao, Cuba's Fidel Castro,Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russia's Vladimir Putin.
 
Some critics of Lukashenko use the term Lukashism (lukashenkoism) to refer to the political and economic system Lukashenko has implemented in Belarus. The term is also used more broadly to refer to an authoritarian political ideology based on cult of his personality and nostalgia for Soviet times among certain groups in Belarus. It is not known where the term was first used, though the earliest documented use was in 1998. In Venezuela population is divides about Chavismo, a national discrace for some and the salvation for others.

By the way, Lukashenko has the The José Martí Order (Cuba, 2000)

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Hungry bears, tasty humans

A pack of enormous bears searching for food killed and ate two men at mines in Russia's Pacific Kamchatka region and have kept hundreds of geologists and miners from reaching the mine, news agencies reported Wednesday.Village official Viktor Leushkin was quoted by ITAR-Tass as saying that a team of hunters will be dispatched to shoot or chase off the bears.

A pack of up to 30 Kamchatka bears — which are similar to grizzlies — prowled around two mines of a local platinum mining company where they killed the two guards on Thursday, local officials were quoted by the Russian ITAR-Tass news agency as saying. About 400 company workers have refused to return to the mines for fear of the bears, which stand 10 feet tall on their hind legs and weigh up to 1,500 pounds, Rampant fish poaching in the Kamchatka tundra often forces the bears to seek other sources of food, such as garbage. Bears frequently attack humans in the scarcely populated peninsula region.


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