Belarusian youth activists say police have "detained" some stuffed animals used in an antigovernment protest in Minsk, in an echo of similar recent protests in Russia.

This video shows activists from the civic campaign "Tell the Truth" placing a dozen fluffy toys in the snow and setting up placards around them bearing messages urging President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to "free the people!" or asking "Where is freedom of the press?" or declaring "Toys against lawlessness" and "Cops tore my eye out."



The campaign says the stuffed animals, placed near a bus stop on Minsk's Independence Square, were soon rounded up by the police. It adds that the toys "probably won't face charges, though it's clear there was a violation of the law against mass demonstrations."

The protest comes as authorities in a Siberian city clamped down on demonstrations using toys, following two such protests -- featuring Lego figurines, teddy bears, and Transformer toys -- last month.

Known primarily as a sun-drenched tourist hub famous for its seafront promenade and cafes, the port of Split on Croatia's Adriatic coast has just experienced its coldest and snowiest week on record, which almost paralyzed the city and put some 600 inhabitants in hospital with broken bones after they slipped on the town's icebound streets.

Although snow falls in Split every couple of decades, it usually melts right away.

It's no surprise, therefore, that the city's denizens' initial joy at seeing 25 centimeters of snow quickly evaporated as they found themselves struggling to cope with serious transport and supply problems.

One child in urgent need of medical treatment even died when emergency services were unable to make it to her house in time because of the poor weather conditions.

The chaotic situation has had people clamoring for Mayor Zeljko Kerum and the city administration to do more.

However, Kerum himself does not seem to share their sense of urgency

"This much snow is God's will, there's nothing I can do about it," said the populist entrepreneur-cum-politician, who was a surprise winner in Split's 2009 mayoral election.

Kerum's attitude will not have surprised many as the super-rich food-retail magnate has earned a reputation for being blunt and somewhat gaffe-prone.

His subsequent comment that Split's citizens are ill-equipped for snow and ice because they are paying too many taxes will have done nothing to dispel this impression.

Sisterly Solidarity

Now, amid increasingly loud calls for Kerum's resignation and the likely prospect of citizens filing lawsuits against him and the city administration, his sister Nevenka Becic, who chairs the town council, has risen to Kerum's defense, claiming that Split's residents only have themselves to blame for the problems they are experiencing with the weather. 

"All those who were going out, and did not really have the need, are themselves responsible," she said.

"As regards older citizens, they should all have children, and children are by law responsible for taking care of their parents.

"If they don't have children, than they could have nephews or nieces and should have a good relationship with them

"If they don't have nephews and nieces, then they have neighbors with whom they should have good relations."

-- Nedim Dervisbegovic

Reports say a police unit in Turkmenistan this week was named after the father of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov.

State-run media reportedly describe it as a gesture to honor Myalikguly Berdymukhammedov's years of service to Turkmenistan's Interior Ministry and "his efforts in educating the younger generation." (It might also help quash the persistent and seemingly groundless speculation that the president is an illegitimate child of former President Saparmurat Niyazov.)

AP says:


The facility reportedly houses a museum dedicated to the elder Berdymukhammedov, who once worked there as a deputy colonel. His former office is said to have been fully been restored to its former state.

Critics might regard it as a high honor for a colonel, which is the rank eventually attained by Myalikguli Berdymukhammedov.

It certainly wouldn't have raised eyebrows under the late Turkmenbashi.

In fact, it's hardly news given the recent direction of Berdymukhammedov's administration. The honor to the First Father comes one year after a statue of the First Grandfather, Berdymukhammed Annaev, was installed at the Turkmen Military Academy. Annaev also had a school named after him in his home province in 2009. The forward of a recent hagiography of Annaev was authored by the president and written by the president's father. (It's bound to be a best-seller in a country where insufficient familiarity with the official narrative can spell doom.)

All of this is not necessarily making headlines, even if it comes as Turkmenistan has stepped up efforts to win friends and investment from abroad. For Ashgabat is most frequently criticized for egregious rights violations, strictures on public debate, and serial economic mismanagement -- not megalomania.

But Berdymukhammedov, who took office after Niyazov's death in 2006, buoyed optimists when he initially strived to distance himself from the excesses of his megalomaniacal predecessor. That makes this current, languid slide into a new cult of personality all the more regrettable.

-- Central Newsroom

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appears to have an unlikely supporter in his camp ahead of Russia's March 4 presidential election -- or does he?

A video lauding Putin's leadership has gone viral, which is not so remarkable. But that it features a male singer with distinct Tajik features has some -- considering the intolerance suffered by Tajik migrant workers in Russia under Putin's watch -- wondering whether his ode is genuine.

A message accompanying the video uploaded to YouTube describes the singer only as "Tolibjon Kurbankhanov from Tajikistan." Nobody seems to know any more about him, but the lyrics in his song make clear that he considers Putin a "godsend" who saved Russia and ensured stability.



With landmarks of the Russian capital such as the Kremlin and the White House serving as a backdrop, the artist hails Putin as the "best sportsman" and "son of the nation." He lauds Putin's economic policies, alludes to his former career in the KGB by describing the prime minister and former president as an "agent," and calls on voters to make the right choice in the upcoming polls.

Each chorus begins with "VVP" -- the initials of the prime minister's full name, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. VVP, as the listener learns, came to power at the beginning of the new century and millennium, when the country was amid "crisis" and the nation was "suffering." Everything changed for the better, according to the tune.

The music video has become quite a hit on Russian websites, and found its way to more serious media, such as the Ekho Moskvy radio station's website, prompting many different comments and reactions along the way.

Going After The Minority Vote?

Putin has been very active on the issue of migrant workers and immigration in Russia, recently addressing a session of the Federal Migration Service with his proposals for tightening immigration law, including language tests and cracking down on the use of fictitious registration addresses.

Following his lead, legislation on language tests is working its way through the Russian parliament.

On February 7, during a meeting with campaign representatives, Putin gave his support to lawyers who want to impose criminal liability on multiple offenders of immigration rules.

"Otherwise this process will never end," Interfax quoted him as saying. "The person will know that he will go to prison instead of his home country."

Considering that nearly one in seven make the trek to Russia every year for seasonal work, such legislation would affect many Tajiks.

This has led some to question whether the singer Kurbankhanov is indeed Tajik, or whether the song might have been planted by Putin's campaign team as a way of attracting minority votes.

According to Muhammadnazar Mirzoda, the head of an officially registered NGO called the Tajik Diaspora in St. Petersburg, Kurbankhanov is indeed a Tajik citizen, is 28 years old, and resides in Ufa, the capital of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan. RFE/RL has not independently verified Kurbankhanov's identity or his ethnicity.

He's Down With VVP

Not everyone seems to be convinced that it matters, or that the song by Putin's Tajik admirer will yield any benefits for the prime minister or his presidential campaign. And some say it will have the opposite effect.

Prominent Russian blogger Aleksandr Plyushev has dubbed the video the "best anti-Putin video in history." 

And well-known Russian anticorruption blogger and opposition figure Aleksei Navalny, who himself is known for his nationalist leanings, has also weighed in.

In a February 6 post on his blog, Navalny wrote that "I don't know whether this video has been paid for by Putin's election camp, but in any case I suggest that it be distributed wherever possible."

Based on the number of hits "VVP" is now getting, it looks like Kurbankhanov is poised for stardom.

-- Farangis Najibullah

Antigovernment protesters in Syria have expressed their outrage at the veto by Russia and China of a resolution in the UN Security Council condemning the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

At a demonstration in Ras al-Ain, in addition to the usual Syrian flags, demonstrators also waved a flag of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria, the secessionist government that fought two wars with Moscow in the 1990s and continues an insurgency today.

The resolution was drafted by Arab League countries and submitted to the Security Council by Morocco -- with Western backing -- after Arab League monitors witnessed Syrian Army snipers killing unarmed protesters.

The Arab League's plan called for Assad to step down and be replaced by his deputy until elections can be held. Russia said it put too much blame on Assad's regime for the deaths in Syria.

-- RFE/RL Newsroom

The specter of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has been haunting the Irish blogosphere of late thanks to the popular "Come Here To Me" site, which takes a sideways look at Dublin life and culture.

One recent "Come Here To Me" blog revisited the longstanding rumor that Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent.

This subject briefly surfaced in the Irish media last year when an "Irish Times" newspaper column made a passing reference to Lenin's supposed Hibernian brogue.

The source the column cited for this claim was none other than Roddy Connolly, the son of the legendary Irish socialist James Connolly.

The article noted that the younger Connolly, who was himself a prominent socialist, met with Lenin on a visit to St. Petersburg in the 1920s:


Picking up the story almost a year later, the "Come Here To Me" blog got great mileage out of the fact that Lenin, the archetypal hero of the working class, apparently spoke "with the mincing, effeminate speech" used by denizens of the leafy Dublin suburb of Rathmines, home to one of the poshest accents in Ireland.

Over the years, this accent has been the source of many jokes in the Irish capital.

It has been claimed, for instance, that the law of torts first saw the light of day as legislation aimed at regulating prostitution in Rathmines.

Many Dubliners will also tell you that the word "creche" was originally used to describe a collision between two cars in the same fashionable south-Dublin district.

Back in the 1920s, the internationally renowned, left-wing Irish dramatist Sean O'Casey even fiercely lampooned the Rathmines accent in his play about Ireland's 1916 uprising, "The Plough and The Stars."

The accent is used to great comic effect in the play, when a "fashionably, middle-aged, stout woman" finds herself caught up in the middle of Dublin's violent insurrection:


Sadly, no recording exists of Lenin speaking English, so we will never know if the seminal Marxist revolutionary did indeed talk with a snooty Rathmines accent.

Then again, it would not come as a surprise if Lenin had perhaps deliberately suppressed any evidence of his English way of speaking.

Given that one of the world's most famous socialist dramatists chose to mercilessly ridicule the very same inflections in his play about the Irish revolution, Lenin may have decided to keep his Rathmines accent a secret, lest it would seriously damage his proletarian credentials!

-- Central Newsroom

Iran's Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults has reported a ban on the sales of dolls depicting characters from the animated U.S. comedy series "The Simpsons."

Western news agencies and the Iranian newspaper "Sharq" quote an official of that agency as saying the "Simpsons" dolls have joined Barbie and others on the Islamic republic's toys blacklist.

Adults aren't beyond Iranian authorities' cultural reach, either, particularly since hard-liner Mahmud Ahmadinejad assumed the presidency in 2005.

Since that time, officials have banned "Western" hairstyles (there's a list of "approved" haircuts) as well as books by internationally acclaimed authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (and plenty of their own acclaimed writers, too) -- including at their own international book fair. Wikipedia devotes a whole entry to "List of books banned in Iran."

Conservative Iranian authorities also heavily filter or otherwise censor music and Internet offerings where possible -- and threaten users of antifiltering tools with criminal prosecution.

There were no details in the report on why the "Simpsons" dolls were banned, or how Matt Groening's edgy sitcom about a dysfunctional family might offend Iranians any more than it does Americans.

But AP quoted the official, Mohammad Hossein Farjoo, as noting that dolls with distinguishable genitals are banned, as are dolls depicting adults.

He said dolls depicting U.S. superhero cartoon characters Superman and Spider-Man would not be banned because those characters "help oppressed people and have a positive stance."

-- Central Newsroom