Andrei Khrapavitski: Belarusian American Blog

Here’s an interesting take from TED Fellow and Belarusian journalist Evgeny Morozov on the ways the Internet can actually help oppressive regimes stifle dissent.

I agree with most of his points. Especially, I concur with him that support for NGOs, dissidents, intellectuals is very important. Simply relying on the spread of Internet per capita won’t do the job. However, we shouldn’t underestimate the role of the new media in democratization. What is basically flawed (not in Evgeny’s speech, but in general) is how the pace of Internetization in Belarus is measured by various statistical institutions. Yes, there are lots of people who have access to the Internet, but the availability of a computer connected to the Web does not necessarily presuppose quality usage. Still too few Belarusians buy stuff online, read news, work online, etc. Due to Internet expensiveness, far too many simply check their e-mail accounts or read anecdotes. This may change when Internet becomes more widely available and less expensive.

Evgeny is right to say that the authoritarian governments have learned to use the Net for their cause (I like the term Spinsternet he invented). In fact, it would be naive to hope that the regime would keep out of the Web while opposition used it so voraciously. Yes, it makes our job harder when government spin doctors infest the Belarusian segment of the Web with pro-Lukashenka propaganda (it is already happening). However, I wouldn’t look at this as at the online battle of opposition vs the dictatorship. The Web is an invaluable source for disseminating news. It our job (journalists, NGOs, intellectuals) to make our sites more attractive, more interesting, more regularly updated, more inventive, more user-friendly, more Web2.0, more next-gen. Yes, if we allow discussion, spin doctors might join. But so will others, those who can tell truth from lies and who can post counterarguments. We shouldn’t worry about them infiltrating our sites, we should work hard to make our online presence as high quality as possible.

VIRGINIA – on July 17, 2009 a federal judge sentenced Viktar Krus to 7 years in prison for creating and running an illegal ring that supplied cheap workers to the East Coast resorts and railroad yards. 22 other co-defendants have been convicted in the case.

(read on at Bielar.us blog)

A couple of years back on this very blog, I shared a little dream that I had. I dreamt that Hollywood would finally discover my homeland, Belarus that is. For some weird reason Belarus had remained a real terra incognito for film-makers. Today I had a chance to watch Defiance, a true-story Hollywood drama about the Bielski brothers who, during WWII, formed a partisan detachment to save lives of Jews hiding from the Nazis in the Belarusian forests. (more…)

It is scary to read Paul Krugman, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics…

I believe not only that we’re living in a new era of depression economics, but also that John Maynard Keynes—the economist who made sense of the Great Depression—is now more relevant than ever. Keynes concluded his masterwork, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, with a famous disquisition on the importance of economic ideas: “Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”

Why scary? Because I doubt that Krugman’s advice will be followed to full extent. In this intertwined global market, we all depend on one another, a unilateral problem solving does not work here. I also have a sense that “the Republican (Conservative) Way” of handling the economy is becoming obsolete these days. It will probably come back (transformed and rethought), but not quite soon.

No matter where we are all in this together.