Here's the joke:
My girl's passport is quite old, not british, and when she tried to get into the UK they stopped her, made a phonecall and said "your government does not recognise you", made her shit her pants for 15 minutes while i was not allowed to talk to her, then said "oh go on then, off you go!" and let her through. WTF?

On the way back out of the UK they make you give up all your liquids (including my beloved peanut butter) and pack everything into one item of hand luggage only, carry your beauty products in a transparent bag and queue for ages while all this happens. I expect it's stopped, oh, 0.000045 terrorist attacks?

And when I go through to Belarus the border guards are normally either coldly efficient or very friendly. Never seem to be on a power trip. Only the Lithuanian guards get cocky and give me hassle for having a heavy record bag or whatever. The most "authoritarian" thing that happened to me on the border was the lithuanian guards stopping our coach 5 minutes before lunch, lining us up to check our luggage, and then literally going to lunch and leaving us for 45 minutes.

some fud for breakfast
http://www.videosift.com/video/Belarus-Europes-last-dictatorship

oh, and invite me

belarus was part of lithuania (or lithuania was part of belarus, depending on your bias haha don't start a flame war about that on youtube i warn you)

http://www.belarusguide.com/cities/castles/Belarusian_Knighthood.html

i also wouldn't choose belarus as a regime to live under, i just don't have such rose tinted spectacles about the european union as this journalist does. this clip looks like something out of the forties.

Very interesting. Thanks for the insight.

And you're right - Bush calls himself "The Decider" and he uses "executive privilege" as an excuse to cover his misdeeds.

Political protestors have been arrested illegally many, many times, only to be released later on. They've been shot at close range with rubber and wooden bullets, and bludgeoned without cause. They've been corralled in "free speech zones." They've had their organizations infiltrated by undercover agents working for the government, who often times proved to be agent provocateurs. All this happened in America under Bush’s rule.

I can't say I'd want to live in Belarus - but I will say I wish that America would stop looking so much like it.

You are talking about Belarus, where they also do this shit to opposition candidates at election time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaksandar_Kazulin
http://www.angus-reid.com/analysis/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewItem&itemID=11158

Careful who you presume to be guilty.

*dead btw

Yep he never really recovered from that one. It also paved the way for Canada to win the gold as they faced Belarus in the semi-final.