BELARUS….

Alyaksandr Lukashenka, preparing for a rigged election later this year, put the “full” in fulmination in a January 27 television address. He called opposition candidates “simply sick people” and said the West is planning to deploy 14,000-18,000 election observers, a “corps of guerrilla fighters who will tend the fields in the daytime but keep their guns under the bed and get those guns out in the evening.” Lukashenka promised to “take under control” the budget of the Advisory and Monitoring Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to ensure the docility of any observers foolish enough to try to examine the electoral process.