To all opponents, co-commanders, etc.

[alaric99x]

...and today I could get 6500 rubles for my dollar, up to 7000 if I can find people desperate enough. The official exchange rate remains at just under 5000.

I'll go into a little more detail for those who may be interested. I've been watching this place for over 8 years since I met my wife who is from here. The dictator has been in power since 1994. He keeps fixing elections so he may end up becoming one of those "president for life" guys. His background is agriculture, or expert on collective farming. Russia tolerates him simply because they don't want Belarus to get too friendly with the EU. In fact, Russia is waiting like a vulture to retake control of this place. In past years Russia had provided Belarus with fuel and natural gas far below market prices. There were years of discussions about a common currency and closer economic ties between Belarus and Russia, each time the dictator backed off just before an agreement could be reached. A few years ago Russia announced that Belarus would have to pay market prices for fuel and gas, they have been raising the prices of those commodities by increments over the past few years. Without those subsidies Belarus started having economic problems, the broken economy never could sustain this country without some outside help. Fuel and gas prices, although much higher now, still haven't reached market levels, so this is another burden Belarus will be facing. Belarus started taking loans from Russia and the IMF. Russia always demanded compensation for the loans. Russian state owned Gazprom was able to purchase a share of Belarus transit pipelines as part of a 2009 loan agreement. Recently Russia agreed to another loan of $3 billion with the condition that they would be allowed to purchase a further $7.5 billion in Belarus state assets. The dictator made angry speeches about the Russian wanting to take everything of value from the people of Belarus, but he really has no choice other than to accept those conditions. The $3 billion from Russia is not nearly enough to save this economy and that loan will be paid out in tranches over a 3 year period, Belarus will get less than half of that $3 billion by the end of this year. So the dictator has asked the IMF for an emergency loan of $8 billion. The IMF lent $3.46 billion in 2009, but that loan was terminated because agreed upon conditions of economic reform were not met by Belarus. Among other recommendations, the IMF suggested that exchange rates be allowed to float. That never happened, that's why there's such a disparity beween the official exchange rate and the actual rate on the street. The dictator makes a lot of happy noises when he needs money, but then things go on as always once he gets the money. Additionally, Belarus intends to do initial publc offerings of stocks in two state owned companies. Of course, almost all major companies here are state owned. These are a dump truck manufacturer, BelAz, and a potash maker, Belaruskali. An IPO in this case is somewhat of a joke because of a lack of tranparency, not to mention the ailing local economy. Investors would want to see detailed financial records covering some years for these companies, and that just doesn't exist in Belarus. If any entity buys these stocks it will probably be Russia, giving Russia further control of assets in this country.

Historically Belarus has almost never been independent having been controlled by Lithuania, Poland, Imperial Russia and then the Soviet Union. The people here are amazingly complacent, other nationalities would have revolted long ago. Still, the situation isn't like the crisis of 1991, this tiime it's clear to everyone who is to blame. The dictator makes all the decisions and now we have the internet and other forms of instant communications. People are organizing and starting to protest. There's a square in town where people gather every Wednesday, we were warned to stay away from the place. They used to carry signs, but of course, they immediately got arrested for that. Now they gather and just clap, so the dictator made it illegal to clap in that place and people are getting arrested for clapping. Minsk, incidentally, has the largest per capita police force in Europe. So who knows what will happen here? As complacent as these people seem to be, any society can only tolerate so much. It may not happen soon, but if things keep going the way they are, it's inevitable that some kind of tipping point will eventually be reached. Incidentally, I never mentioned the dictator's name because the local goons also monitor internet communications so there is some small danger that they could track the source and prosecute me for insulting the president, another law made by the dictator.