Bush imposes travel ban on Belarus government (election fraud!)

[NVMojo]

CITING ELECTION FRAUD!!!!! GIVE ME A BREAK!!!! Please, tell me what this is really about!!!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush imposed a U.S. travel ban on members of the Belarus government on Monday, citing electoral fraud, human rights abuses and corruption.

Bush took action following a crackdown on the Belarus opposition after the re-election of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in a March ballot that Western governments denounced as rigged.

"I have determined that it is in the interest of the United States to take all available measures to restrict the international travel, and to suspend the entry into the United States ... of members of the government of Alexander Lukashenko and others ...," Bush said in a presidential directive.

He said the U.S. measures targeted those involved in actions that "undermine or injure democratic institutions or impede the transition to democracy in Belarus."

more...


http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-16T001349Z_01_N15354980_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-BELARUS.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-Top+NewsNews-7

[nealmhughes]

1. travel ban

Damn! I was just ready to tour Minsk... I wouldn't feel safe there now knowing that their president's recent election was in any manner questionable.

[NVMojo]

2. ROFLMAO!!! No kidding!

[mac56]

3. ROFL!

:rofl:

Welcome to DU!

[Bossy Monkey]

4. Irony overload. Ummm, George?

You've taken all the mirrors out of the White House again, haven't you?

[DrDebug]

5. "Outpost of Tyranny" - C. Rice (Jan 19, 2005)

Condoleezza Rice, President George W Bush's nominee for secretary of state, has hinted at the direction of future US foreign policy by identifying six "outposts of tyranny" around the world.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4187361.stm

So why is it an outpost of tyranny?

Less bizarre than it seems
The landslide in Belarus reflects its demonised leader's refusal to back market fundamentalism

Mark Almond in Minsk
Tuesday March 21, 2006
The Guardian

After the death of Slobodan Milosevic, the west did not need to look far to find another bogeyman. Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus was on hand and facing re-election.

(...)

No communist-era throwback, Belarus has an evolving market economy. But the market is orientated towards serving the needs of the bulk of the population, not a tiny class of nouveaux riches and their western advisers and money launderers. Unlike in Georgia or Ukraine, officials are not getting richer as ordinary folk get poorer. The absence of endemic corruption among civil servants and police is one reason why the wave of so-called "coloured revolutions" stopped before Minsk.

But even if the government in Minsk is not corroded by corruption, its opposition depends upon support from abroad. If people resent anyone for getting rich quick undeservedly they resent the opposition types who receive lavish subsidies from the west to promote civil society and flaunt the latest iPod.

The irony of the west preaching civil society and shock therapy at the same time is that you cannot have both. Western advisers made economic transformation a priority, but wherever their advice was followed it was poverty, not pluralism, that resulted. Across the old communist bloc "shock therapy" enriched a few dozen oligarchs and their foreign economic advisers, but the mass unemployment it caused and the collapse of public spending it demanded smashed the foundations of the civil society emerging under Gorbachev.

(...)

Belarus is far from perfect, but it is a country where masses of ordinary people are getting on with life and getting a bit better off. That is why Lukashenko inspires fear and loathing in the thinktanks and foreign ministries of the west. By saving Belarus from mass unemployment he set a terrible example. What if the neighbours tried to copy it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1735464,00.html

[Odin2005]

8. Dictatotships who tow the Corporatist line arn't on th list.

I wonder why...

[endarkenment]

6. At the risk of stating the obvious...

the travel ban ought to be extended to the USA for the same reason.

Oh, by the way, is there a travel ban on China? Just asking.

[DrDebug]

7. There is no travel ban on China

In fact Bush recently ripped Hu's suit during his visit; It was an Italian suit made in CHina of course...

This is not a generic travel ban for Belarus, but just for the Belarusian government. You can still travel from and to Belarus. China depends on where you want to go, because not the whole of China is open for visitor because they still have some gulags scattered around the country and some insurgency in the occupied reunited territories like Tibet, East-Turkmenistan, Inner Mongolia etc.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. The rip is photoshopped. ** did grab his sleeve (idiot). nt