BAD NEWS FROM BELARUS:

Belarusian demonstrators tried to rally outside the office of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday to demand his ouster in a self-declared attempt to emulate a popular uprising in Kyrgyzstan, but they were beaten back by riot police swinging truncheons.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, harshly assailed the Kyrgyz opposition, warning that protests that drove longtime leader Askar Akayev from power this week could destabilize the entire region.

Lukashenko, who has largely retained the Soviet system and hasn’t changed the name of the KGB in his country of 10 million, has stifled dissent, persecuted independent media and opposition parties, and prolonged his power through elections that international organizations say were marred by fraud.

He’s not going to go easily.

UPDATE: As one of Daniel Drezner’s commenters noted, “not enough hot chicks.”

Yeah, if Salma Hayek had been protesting, things would have been different. And Dan would have had many, many posts.