> That is as silly as some 20 yr. old college student saying that if I as
>a gay white male in San Francisco wish to comment on the struggles of third
>world transgenger prostitutes in Thailand like Solidarity member Peter
>Drucker <URL: http://solidarity.igc.org/atc/96Kinsman.html >here <URL:
>http://www.iire.org/workingpapers.html > N° 31 "In the Tropics There Is No
>Sin": Homosexuality and Gay/Lesbian Movements in the Third World, by Peter
>Drucker , I have no epistemological or ontological standing.
Look, my veiled point was that any criticism of Lukashenko, especially from somebody who has never been in the country and is not conversant with the country, should take into account the reasons why he is popular among the Belarussian public, who are not idiots. The same goes for Turkmenbashi, who is far more authoritarian but popular in Turkmenistan. Why would anyone like Turkmenbashi? one might ask. Simple answer: Turkmenbashi gives everybody several hundred dollars a year just for being a Turkmen. He is not Kim Jong-Il.
Most Belarussians will tell you that it is Lukashenko who has kept the country from becoming a mafia state like Ukraine. And make no mistake about it: The "liberal democratic opposition" to Lukashenko is every bit as corrupt and tied to crime as the people around Yeltsin were.
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