I support EU ban on non-evidence-based medicine

Avaaz.org is an international organization which mounts civil pressure for causes regarded by its leadership as good. Some of them are good indeed, such as the no-fly zone in Libya. However, as often happens with activists, they also advocate things that anyone of the meanest understanding would call foolish at best. See what I found in my Inbox today:

"EU: 3 days to save herbal medicine!
Dear friends,
In 3 days, a new EU directive will ban much of herbal medicine, denying us safe remedies and feeding the profits of big pharma. Let's raise a massive outcry to push the Commission to fix the Directive, and our national governments to refuse to implement it. Let's get to 1 million voices to save herbal medicine:
In 3 days, the EU will ban much of herbal medicine, pressing more of us to take pharmaceutical drugs that drive the profits of big Pharma.
The EU Directive erects high barriers to any herbal remedy that hasn't been on the market for 30 years -- including virtually all Chinese, Ayurvedic, and African traditional medicine. It's a draconian move that helps drug companies and ignores thousands of years of medical knowledge...
It's hard to believe, but if a child is sick, and there is a safe and natural herbal remedy for that illness, it may be impossible to find that remedy.
On May 1st the Directive will create major barriers to manufactured herbal remedies, requiring enormous costs, years of effort, and endless expert processes to get each and every product approved. Pharmaceutical companies have the resources to jump through these hoops but hundreds of small- and medium-sized herbal medicine businesses, across Europe and worldwide, will go bust...
There are arguments for better regulation of natural medicine, but this draconian directive harms the ability of Europeans to make safe and healthy choices. Let's stand up for our health, and our right to choose safe herbal medicine."

I am omitting the lines directing the reader to the online petition. If you want to sign it, you can easily find it by a Web search.
I have bashed the EU bureaucracy on numeral occasions on this blog and elsewhere, but I support it whole-heartedly in this case. It is high time to stand for evidence-based medicine and to ban all snake oils being sold us under the label of "traditional medicine" in pharmacies. There is no such thing as "thousands of years of medical knowledge" - the threshold when medical knowledge advanced enough to bring more good than harm is probably the turn of the 20th century, and it was passed only in the West. If someone thinks that a particular "traditional" remedy works for a certain condition, he has to prove his case to the appropriate drug administration, as with any other proposed remedy. I do not care that the "small and medium-sized herbal medicine businesses" may not have the resources for this, and I do not think their lack of resources is an excuse to let them sell whatever snake oil they wish without proving its efficacy and even safety. If they cannot do their business properly, let them file for bankruptcy, the sooner the better. And please, if you want me to hate Big Pharma which has saved my life more than once, give me at least one rational reason why Big Pharma must be hated, except that it works for profit (as if the snake oil salesmen work pro bono publico).
There is a myth among foolish people that traditional, "natural" and particularly herbal medicine is both effective and safe. To begin with, a remedy that is both effective and safe is a Holy Grail. There are a number of placebos that are safe but not effective, plus a number of effective drugs that are generally not quite safe but, if properly used, have benefits far exceeding the risk. Traditional medicine generally relies on placebos. However, we should not assume that it is always safe. Numerous plants contain potent toxins (take just the fact that Socrates was executed by herbal poison). Some of these toxins have found their application in evidence-based medicine and are being sold by Big Pharma; for the rest, you have only the toxic effect without any proven therapeutic effect. To make things worse, for many traditional Eastern remedies the natural toxicity of plants is not enough and they contain also well-known chemical toxins such as heavy metals (Orac and Skeptico have blogged about this).
Some hardline supporter of individual freedom may argue that consumers should have the right to make choices, even if they are not "safe and healthy". I disagree. A consumer should not be forced to be on a permanent alert in order to avoid buying useless and dangerous things - at least not in civilized Europe. Moreover, while responsible adults could at least in theory make their choices, there is no way to prevent parents from pushing placebos and poisons down the throats of their poor defenceless children. The Avaaz letter particularly stresses the need to keep "safe and natural herbal remedies" available for sick children. I even know parents who treat their own illnesses by effective evidence-based drugs but, when their children are ill, give them traditional medicine because of concern about the side-effects of drugs.
So let's hope that the ban will be enforced and EU pharmacies in the future will sell us only remedies that actually help, according to the best available knowledge.

Questions to the "green" Libyans

On Apr. 14, http://www.libyafeb17.com/ published a post titled Video: State TV claims to show Gaddafi touring Tripoli this afternoon. A "green" Libyan (i.e. a Qaddafi supporter) joined the discussion to put his twopence. Here is a quote from his comments:

"KADDAFI IS A REAL LEADER! AND SIMPLE PEOPLE LOVE HIM! MILLIONS OF LIBYANS LIKE HIM!... I know that Kaddafi makes a lot of mistakes! Specially last years when his son Saif al Islam brought to him the list of reforms he was planning to make but Kaddafi canceled all of them! Also it was no free press. But you have to understand that he is a man of ideology and he was opposing USA! The most powerful country of the world..."

My own comments in that discussion aren't worth a copy-paste, because this guy pushed up my blood pressure and I called him names. This is not a good thing to do in any discussion, though he deserved it well. However, another commenter with the simple nick "a" (the same one who visited my previous post) made better contributions. I am giving a part of them below, advising all my readers - and especially the "green" Libyans - to have a look.

"You know what? I am from Germany. I know this kind of stupid babble from some of our delusional grandfathers, -mothers... In Gaddafi, we only recognize a very poor Mini-Hitler... The “simple people” you speak of, he just betrays them. They are human material for him, he will not shed one tear if you die... It's your own decision: Be part of a past that is despised, attach yourself to a murderer without honor. End up in history's dustbin together with him. Or be part of the future of Libya.
Gaddafi... claims he made a revolution in Libya, and brought direct democracy, and spread the wealth of the oil money. Sounds good. But it is not the truth:
What kind of revolution is this, where only one family rules for 40 years and every opposition voice is silenced? It's like a monarchy. What kind of “direct democracy” is this, where citizens cannot even express their demand that after 40 years they want another government?
Why is no free press and no critizism allowed? If Gaddafi's ideas were so good, he needn't be afraid of competition with other ideas.
What happened to all the money, where is it, why do the Gaddafis own billions and spend Libya's money as they please?
What kind of real revolutionary would buy mercenaries and have them shoot at his own people? Even Mubarak stepped aside, Ben Ali quickly took an airplane. Gaddafi chose to kill people who do not agree to him. This is unacceptable, no matter what ideology he claims behind this.
And I am sick of people putting ideology or religion over human lives and the self-determination of others. Saif had the chance of reforming things, he was weak and lazy, and chose to have lavish parties in Europe instead. He had his chance, now it's Game Over.
But. At least you try to argue, and I try to understand you. That's a good start, isn't it? Instead of hatred. You have already risen above your dictator by doing that.
If you think there is anything good in Gaddafi's ideas, you will always be able to stand up for such ideas and raise awareness for them in a real democracy. Found a party that supports direct democracy and spreading Libya's natural wealth – I have no problem with that. But stop supporting a dictator who will impose only his own ideas over 6 million people and kill anyone who does not agree. Can’t you see that this is fundamentally wrong?"

Free world coming to rescue

My last post about the situation in Libya is dated March 17. So much has happened since then. On that same evening, the UN Security Council approved a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone and "all necessary measures to protect civilians". The draft was prepared by Lebanon, backed by France and Britain and approved by a total of 10 states. Five states abstained: China, Russia, Brazil, India and Germany. Bravo to Russia and China - they could impose a veto but they didn't. As for the other 3 - let me not call names but I don't want to hear a word about any of them becoming a permanent Security Council member in the foreseeable future, OK?


By the way, my Bulgaria also behaved in a shameful way. Our Prime Minister Borisov said that the intervention in Libya was a "reckless adventure" (avantyura) and he would never send Bulgarian military pilots to join it - as if anyone would want our Russian MiG planes that couldn't be reliably distinguished from Qaddafi's air force. Happily, Bulgaria is not in the Security Council now, so few people noticed; but we Bulgarians have to remember this next year when we go to the ballots.


Qaddafi declared a ceasefire almost immediately after the resolution, but it was only for external consumption. His troops, on the contrary, intensified fighting in an apparent attempt to win before anyone managed to implement the resolution. I remember how in the morning of March 19 I saw Benghazi shown in the Wikipedia map with the yellow colour of "ongoing fighting", and Al Jazeera reported that Qaddafi's tanks were entering the city.


Mohammed Nabbous was ready to meet them. This 28-yr-old blogger and citizen journalist had founded Libya Al-Hurra (Free Libya) TV in the early days of the protests. With his wife pregnant for first time, he had every justification to take shelter behind a thick wall. However, he decided to report what was going on in order to expose Qaddafi's lies to the world. As he was recording the attack with his cellular phone, he was shot in the head. Either Qaddafi's soldiers realized what he was doing, or - more likely - they simply regarded every human-shaped object as a target. Mohammed died several hours later.


Meanwhile, the coalition formed to implement the UN resolution finally stepped in. The first strike came from a French plane. Benghazi was saved, but in Musrata and some smaller towns the situation is still dire, people have ran out of everything and are being murdered by Qaddafi's mercenaries every day. I have no idea how this will end, I hoped for a swift and happy ending, but apparently things are not proceeding quite this way.


I am not going to describe the war in detail, let me just mention that I am disappointed both by the Coalition and by the rebel army. It seems, unfortunately, that the "Happy Arab" is right to call the operation "a mess" and "likely the most mismanaged operation in NATO's history". Indeed, this could be expected after the bitter experience of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq made Western powers so reluctant to intervene in Muslim countries that now everyone is trying to hide behind his allies' backs. However, this is nothing compared to the armed forces of the Libyan opposition. Most of the foot soldiers are civilians turned into combatants overnight. They lack weapons, training and discipline. The commander, General Abdul (Abdel) Fatah Younis, was Qaddafi's interior minister until February. Let's leave aside his involvement with the regime - it is clear that you cannot begin anew and appoint 18-yr-olds to all positions. What is more worrying is his military experience and expertise, or the lack of it. Nobody says whether Gen. Younis prior to February 2011 had ever fought an enemy actually able to shoot back. We do not know anything about his military education and service, if any. He is not trying to build infrastructure of defence, so Qaddafi's tanks roll, roll, roll gently down the roads as they wish and advance hundreds of kilometers per day. Instead of thinking how to retake the lost territory, Gen. Younis is delivering press conferences, telling how NATO is a problem rather than an asset for not fighting all the Libyans' battles for them. He is apparently the sort of buraucrat who, instead of doing his job, will produce a brilliant explanation why it is your fault that his job has not been done. I hope somebody soon reappoints him to organize the traffic lights or do some other job where he would be less harmful.


The good news is that my blogger friends in Tripoli gave a sign that they are OK.


Let me finish with a quote from the post Libya and the International Moral Question by Libyan-British writer Ghazi Gheblawi: "Libya didn’t come into existence as a nation until after 1943 when the allied forces of WWII occupied the country, and with the help of many nations and the newly formed United Nations, declared its independence in 1951. It was through the help of the international community that Libya was liberated from the horrors of Italian colonialism, and as the Libyan representative to the UN said few weeks ago on the floor of the security council ‘Libya was established through a United Nations resolution, now once again it needs the United Nations help’." Let's hope this help will become more effective.

ADHD quackery in scientific journal, again

I was not intending to blog on scientific themes these days, but sometimes duty calls. Carelessly browsing the Web, I suddenly found a link that switched all my alarms on. Briefly, it refers the reader to an article by Pelsser et al. titled Effects of a restricted elimination diet on the behaviour of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (INCA study): a randomised controlled trial and published in the February issue of the Lancet. I have no access to the full text, but the abstract tells us that from 100 children with ADHD aged 4-8, a randomly chosen half were left as controls and the other half were put for 5 weeks on a restricted elimination diet. There is no mention what this diet was, and the results are described in such a messy way that it is impossible to understand exactly what is claimed. Happily, the same Web site directs the reader also to a LA Times article by Jill Adams discussing the study. It informs us that the restricted diet consisted of "short list of ingredients that included water, rice, turkey, lamb, lettuce, carrots, pears and other hypoallergenic foods". "At the end of the study, 64% of the kids on the limited diet showed significant improvement on a variety of standard rating scales. Though the initial scores for all of the kids in this group put their ADHD symptoms in the moderate-to-severe range, after the diet intervention their symptoms were classified as either mild or nonclinical."

Three years ago, I wrote a post titled I am skeptical about food additives - hyperactivity link. It questioned another publication in the Lancet claiming that "artificial food colous and additives" were causing ADHD symptoms. If you are interested in the subject, you can read that old post, too. In the present post, I will not try to keep the same line of composed argumentation. I am furious and not going to hide it.

Are you worried about the quality of the food you consume? Are you anxious to obtain healthy food and to give it also to your family members? And if so, what are you thinking of yourself? Perhaps you think you are a responsible person and everybody should be like you. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the truth. You are victim of a disorder which turns your life into hell and endangers your physical health - and that of any child with the poor luck to be under your care. The obsession with healthy foods is a disorder called orthorexia by some psychiatrists. It is not an official diagnosis but is easily accommodated under the umbrellas of eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. My observations show that many people with real or imagined health problems, and particularly parents of chronically ill and disabled children, develop orthorexia. They swear that their or their child's condition has been caused by unhealthy eating and is currently ameliorated by some particular "healthy" diet. Here, "healthy" diet typically means one that, if given to convicted felons, will lead to prison riots and charges with inhumane treatment. The list of publications of the first author of the study in question - Dr. Pelsser, is not too impressive but clearly shows that she has orthorexic obsession about ADHD.

People of science have a saying that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Any claims for successful treatment of a socially important condition are extraordinary, and so are any claims based on an insane working hypothesis. If you ask me what hypothesis I call insane, I'll answer that I cannot give a definition but the hypothesis of foods causing abnormal behaviour is a brilliant example.

I would ask again, as I did in my old post, why wasn't the study done first on animal models? And if someone thinks animal models of ADHD are not satisfactory (i.e. fail to produce the crazy results wanted and expected by the researcher), why wasn't the experiment done first on adult volunteers with ADHD? Maybe because no adult, except some patients with much more severe diagnoses than ADHD, would agree to participate in such a study; but parents eager to streamline their disabled or just different children easily fall into the trap of wanting the child "either cured or dead". In the LA Times article, Dr. Pelsser says, "The children said they felt so different, as if some mad thing in their head wasn't there anymore". Eh well, if your 5-yr-old experimental subject talks of "some mad thing in his head", you should bury your own head in your hands, then abort the study and pray that your institution's ethical committee never hears of this. Has the whole world gone crazy?

The Lancet is a top scientific journal with an impact factor of 30 (for lay people - this is sky high). Such a journal, especially if specialized in clinical medicine, is expected to have a take-no-prisoners peer review that would not let any crap sneak in. However, this journal 13 years ago published the disastrous (now retracted) study linking the MMR vaccine to autism, it published the mentioned article linking food additives to ADHD 4 years ago, and has now published another nonsense about ADHD. When will the respectable Lancet raise its bar for quacks and stop shouting "Fire!" in crowded theaters?

Taste

Why do otherwise sensible adults portray the difficult period of childhood as a Golden age of happiness?
Possibly because at that time we are together with people who are later separated from us forever.
I remember that, when my brother and I were children, the spring was a season of awaiting cherries. We both liked fruits, and they were practically absent from the spring market until the appearance of cherries in late May. My mother was always telling us that there would be cherries after May 24. This is a Bulgarian holiday which she had set as arbitrary threshold to add accuracy to our expectation.
Once, when we were having a full dish of cherries, my brother pulled out a particularly large and red one, called it Count Cherry after a character from Gianni Rodari's Adventures of the Little Onion and suggested we make a contest and use the cherry as a prize. He won the contest but then laughingly said that "Count Cherry" was rotten inside. Life always brings nasty surprises...
Like many other siblings, we had a quasi-language just for us two. This now extinct language included a special anagram for grapes, another favourite fruit.
What else did my brother like to eat? It is difficult to remember, because he hadn't the sin of gluttony and always cared for the others. He liked chocolate but never ate more than his fair share of it while I sometimes took from his share. There is a traditional Bulgarian dish, meat-and-eggplants hash (musaka sas sini domati). It is considered a refined dish because it is difficult to prepare, but actually few people like it. My mother thought he liked it, and he was duly eating it in order to make her happy. It took years for him to confess the truth.
Unlike him, I have always refused to eat things I do not like and never resisted the things I like. To me, no great painting or symphony can compare with the pleasure given by the tasty roasted meat, the sweet chocolate and ice-cream, the fresh fruits and other tasty foods.
I admit I have the sin of gluttony. But there may be more to it. Taste is our tool to evaluate the substances that will build and power our body. Hence, of all our senses it is the only one directly related to our self-perpetuation, to the machinery of being alive.
And now, when I enjoy some piece of tasty food between my tongue and palate, often a quick thought pierces my mind that my brother will never again taste anything.

About the situation in Libya

Unfortunately, things are not developing well in Libya. Qaddafi's mercenaries have retaken a number of cities and are now threatening the very capital of the opposition, the valiant city of Benghazi. You can check libyafeb17.com and Wikipedia for the actual state on the battlefields.
I am outraged by the so-called international community. Indeed, France has recognized the opposition Council as legitimate government of Libya and, together with Britain, pressed for a no-fly zone. However, USA was reluctant, and Germany openly supported the Libyan dictator.
In fact, now may be too late for a no-fly zone. Different people are repeating this, including Saif al-Islam, the most disgusting offspring of Qaddafi. “It’s too late,” he said in an interview with EuroNews television, according to a transcript on its website. “In 48 hours, we will have finished our military operation. We are at the gates of Benghazi.” (Source: Business Week.) I wonder, why didn't all free people of the world press their governments to help the free people of Libya?
Azarmehr has written a very good post explaining why he backs military intervention against the Libyan regime, let me quote from it:
"If Gadaffi and his clan regain the control of the rest of Libya, there will be a massacre. If the world sits by and allows Gadaffi to bombard its own people in order to survive, it will send a devastating message to other dictatorships, use maximum brutality, do not give any concessions and you will survive."
Will he indeed be allowed to survive?

Greeting to Libyan rebels

This is The Song of the Rebels of (the town of) Panaguirishte, a popular song from the 1870s - the age of Bulgarian struggle for independence; lyrics by Ivan Vazov, the author of music is unknown. Below is a slightly compressed translation:

The fight is starting and hearts beat loud.
Our oppressors are coming now.
Courage, my loyal friends, show the world
We are no longer submissive herd!

Show we have broken the dirty chains
And we are free men, rather than slaves!
Let us begin the glorious fight
And God will help us with all His might.

Chorus:
Come on, brothers, all like one - to the fight we rush!
Come on, brothers, all like one - enemy to crush!
Oh you my mother, dear my homeland,
Lovely as Eden on this earth you stand.

Libya still struggling for freedom

Top: An opposition supporter at a rally in Benghazi. Photo Asmaa Waguih/Reuters.

Bottom: Map showing the current disposition of forces in Libya. Source: Wikipedia.

This post is an update to my Feb. 22 post Libya struggling for freedom.

The political situation in Libya, after starting as classic tyrannical crackdown on the peacefully protesting citizens, escalated into civil war when some units of the Libyan army took the side of protesters, and some rebels apparently managed to arm themselves. The opposition fairly quickly established control over the eastern part of the country around the city of Benghazi and some western regions. At one time, the situation was unclear even in Tripoli -Qaddafi's stronghold. Now, he is attempting to retake the country but I think his efforts are doomed and can only bring more deaths and inflict more damage. (The southern regions are desert, so the green dots there are not as important as they seem.)

The regime continues to shoot ruthlessly unarmed people wherever it can and to abduct injured protesters from hospitals.

The Q-man said in a speech, "If I were president, I would have resigned, but I have no position to resign from." Indeed, he is not a President, not a Prime Minister, he occupies no normal position in a government - he is "just Leader of the revolution". More and more often, I am thinking of this "leader" as translated to German - "Fuehrer". Other people also make the same parallel. Let me quote Sky News: "Libya's ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Shalgham, a childhood friend of Gaddafi and former foreign minister who has turned against the regime, pleaded with the Security Council to act against the 'atrocities' by Gaddafi.
He spoke of... Nazi leader Adolf Hitler... Now Gaddafi was telling his people, 'either I rule over you or I kill you, destroy you,' the ambassador added. 'Please, the United Nations, save Libya...,' he said."

The world, however, has been too slow to react. The first concern of various countries, of course, was to evacuate their nationals from Libya. Now, several powers are discussing a no-fly zone to prevent Qaddafi from air attacks on Libyan citizens, but Russia ruled out this idea. Indeed, how could we expect Russia to be against killing protesters, after this has always been a tenet of its own policy?

I keep paying worried visits to Libyan blogs, notably those of Highlander and Khadija-Teri who are in Tripoli. Below, I am copying a small poem Khadija-Teri posted on Feb. 27:

"Day and night we are not safe in Tripoli

Helicopters

There have been helicopters today

up over head.

More than ever before.

All of them are moving

toward the coast.

I'm afraid to go outside to photograph them,

in case I turn into a target.

The dogs growl and bark.

The sun is setting now.

Tripoli is a nocturnal place.

Day or night,

we are not safe

in Tripoli."

Let me try to end this post in a more optimistic mood - quoting from the Happy Arab's Feb. 24 post:

"The unforgettable show this blog was promising to the readers in Libya has surpassed all expectations. In a spectacular outburst of madness Gaddafi ordered his air force and navy to bombard Libian cities. The death toll is running in thousands. Now it seems to be only a matter of time before the opposition storms Tripoli and dangles the Brother Leader from a lamp post. The opposition will have no other choice as attempting to try Gaddafi is risky of leading to hours long orations that would decimate the court and audience and overwhelm translators from Arabic assigned an impossible task... As the time to bid Shalom is approaching, let me praise the Brother Leader by saying that he was one of those rare individuals who could either bore the living daylights out of his audience or leave you rolling on the floor laughing for hours. There seemed to be little left between these two options."

Of course, for the unfortunate people under Qaddafi's rule the show has not been so funny. Let's hope for an end, the sooner the better.

Why call "dominant" traits that are not?

(Readers without interest and background in biology or medicine are advised to skip this post.)
I am now preparing a lecture about Mendelian genetics and I included there the hereditary disorder achondroplasia as an example. All textbooks known to me describe it as a "dominant" condition, so I automatically put it under the headline "complete dominance". Then I started thinking on the subject and finally moved the slide below, to "incomplete dominance".
Why did I change my mind? Because, by definition, an allele is dominant when homozygous and heterozygous individuals having it are indistinguishable. However, in the case of achondroplasia, they are very much distinguishable: homozygous achondroplasia brings early death caused by "breathing failure due to constriction by a tiny chest cage and neurologic problems from hydrocephalus". So the surviving heterozygotes have a phenotype intermediate between that of the two homozygotes - the classical situation of incomplete dominance.
It is clear that, to determine whether we are dealing with complete or incomplete dominance, we must know the phenotype of both heterozygotes. However, in medical genetics, "dominant" is often used to designate any condition caused by a single allele, even if nobody has an idea what the mutant homozygotes would look like. In fact, medical geneticists have a working definition of "dominant" as "a pattern of inheritance in which an affected individual has one copy of a mutant allele and one normal allele". This is understandable in the context of past decades, when there was little chance to study the mutant homozygotes. However, with today's vast database of cases from all over the globe and the opportunity to create transgenic animal models, studying them has become quite realistic. So I think it is high time to sort out this matter.

Project for alphabet-teaching tool

I have a project for a set of pictures forming a tool to teach the alphabet to preschool children.

Of course, it is a standard method to teach the alphabet by illustrating each letter with an image of an object with a name beginning with it. However, in almost all cases the shapes of objects have nothing in common with the shapes of the letters they illustrate. The only exception known to me is the story How the Alphabet Was Made by Rudyard Kipling. However, even he illustrates only one letter by a common English word beginning with it (s with snake); the other examples in the story are either exclamations or words of an artificial language invented ad hoc.

I have thought for a long time that the alphabet can be better taught if each letter is illustrated by an object that not only has a name beginning with the letter but also resembles it in shape. I have realized this idea for the Bulgarian alphabet. You can see the result at my Bulgarian blog. The letters given in the column are linked to images that will give the general impression even to a reader who speaks no Bulgarian. The illustrations are of rather poor quality because I have used photos done by myself. However, technical perfection is not the important thing - any artist knowing his job could achieve it. It is the idea that is important.

Now, I am offering the same idea concerning the English alphabet for sale. Above is shown a sample - h illustrated with horse. If you are interested in the project and you represent a publisher, a foundation, a rich philanthropist or a 501(c)(3) public charity able to provide fiscal sponsorship, you can contact me at mayamarkov [at] gmail [dot] com.

Libya struggling for freedom

This flag of the kingdom of Libya with the inscription "Free Libya" is taken from Anglo-Libyan's Feb. 18 post. As he wrote earlier, most freedom-loving Libyans still identify with this pre-1969 flag and do not recognize the "all green rug" Qaddafi forced on them.





The bottom photo is again taken from Anglo's blog - Libyans reacting to the speech of Qaddafi's son Saif.

After Tunisians and Egyptians and other Arab nations, Libyans also rose up, demanding freedom.
But Muammar Qaddafi (Gaddafi) is far worse than your average Mideast dictator. Not only is he 100% unscrupulous - many people, including me, have thought for years that he is mentally ill.
Yet, after he surrendered his employee Megrahi to be tried for the Lockerbie bombing and the sanctions against Libya were lifted, Western countries rushed not only to buy oil from Libya and to supply it with foods and textiles and photo cameras, but also to sell arms to it. Why? Isn't it clear that selling arms to a crazy dictator like Qaddafi is the equivalent of selling a gun to a psychopath like Jared Loughner, and that in both cases you can expect the same lethal result, just on a different scale? Now, as Qaddafi is committing a massacre on his people, the Independent reports, "Britain halted military exports to Libya last week but sniper rifles, which may have killed protesters yesterday, were amongst equipment exported to Tripoli last year".
It is difficult to know exactly what is happening in Libya now, because the regime keeps international media out and does its best to prevent its own citizens from reporting any information. Today, Reuters cites witnesses that "Muammar Gaddafi used tanks, helicopters and warplanes to fight a growing revolt". The uprising began in Benghazi - the residents of this city are among the most valiant people on Earth! - and then spread to Tripoli where, according to reports, there are now bodies of scores of killed protesters lying on the streets.
Libyans appeal to the world for help, but what can we, what can even our governments actually do? I just check the media and Libyan blogs time and again, hoping to find some good news.
What we hear sound all but comforting, yet I think that Qaddafi has lost control beyond the point of no return and his days as ruler are counted.
Update (several hours later): Qaddafi gave a hysterical speech in which he said, "I am not going to leave this land. I will die here as a martyr."
Come on, sir! Please do it! Do your nation and the world a favour!
Update (March 2): Unfortunately, Bulgaria has also supplied Qaddafi with weapons. A report by the Guardian reveals that in 2009, we sold to Libya ammunition and fuses for EUR 3,730,000. I recommend you to visit that page and shed a tear or two over Europe's travesty. As a commenter has written below, "Gaddafi laughed when asked if he would step down.
"As if anyone would leave their homeland," he replied, accusing western leaders of betrayal and of having "no morals". And he is absolutly right, we are the people who wanted to be his friend so we could buy his oil and sell him arms knowing full well that he was an unhinged tyrant - but it didn't matter, there were guns and oil!"

Well done, Egypt!

Top: Egyptian protesters, many days before their victory. Copied from Feb. 1 post of Jordanian blogger Roba, original source Reuters. For other beautiful photos of the protests see Roba's Feb. 6 post.
Bottom: One of the fallen Egyptian freedom fighters - 23-yr-old Sally Zahran. Copied from msn.com, original source unnknown.

When East-European countries, including my Bulgaria, suddenly freed themselves of communism in the "Autumn of the Nations" of 1989, I enthusiastically thought that my adult life would coincide with a global reign of freedom.
Some years later, I started to think exactly the opposite - that 1989 was not a dawn but a rare spark in a realm of darkness, and I would not live long enough to witness another similar spark.
But it is here and now - the so-called "the Arab Spring" is sweeping the North Africa and the Middle East, and it seems that nothing there will ever be the same again.
All began in Tunisia by a hitherto unknown man, 26-yr-old street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. For many years, he had been harassed, humiliated and blackmailed by arrogant and corrupted police and municipality officers during his overwhelming work to feed his family. When they confiscated his goods and beat him in December last year, this was the straw that broke his back, and he publicly set himself on fire. And then, the whole country caught the fire. Protests escalated, until the dictator Ben-Ali was forced to resign and flee to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14.
This was an awakening for other Arab nations who suddenly realized that their dictators were not invincible. In one country after another, protesters filled the squares. The events are still ongoing and the balance of forces uncertain, with one honorary exception - Egypt, where the protests beginning on Jan. 25 on the Tahrir ("Liberation") square in Cairo and in other cities forced the dictator Hosni Mubarak to resign on Feb. 11.
I wish I could welcome the Egyptian Revolution with my whole heart but, to be honest, I must admit that my feelings are mixed. I admire the courage of the protesters and their love for freedom, and I wish them and their whole nation all the best. However, I am afraid that events may take an unfortunate turn - and I am not alone. Because the main opposition force in Egypt is the infamous Muslim Brotherhood, many Western commenters see the shadow of the 1979 Iranian revolution - which also began with striving for freedom, and ended with establishment of a grotesque theocracy and slaughter of freedom-loving people. Tunisia is a tiny country, so nobody seems too bothered by the rumours that a motley crew of Islamists and Communists is heading for the elections there. However, Egypt is an important state, a regional power; and while the threats/promises of the Muslim Brotherhood to make a war with Israel may well be empty words, nobody is willing to bet on it.
Of course, I feel uneasy with this opinion, as a supporter of a wrong cause. Any statements that a nation is not yet ready for democracy and could not apply it correctly smell of racism and are usually voiced by enemies of mankind and civilization. Which, unfortunately, does not always guarantee that they are untrue... My opponents may ask, and will be right - how could a nation under a dictator teach itself to master democracy? How can you ban a person to immerse his foot in water, and then claim this is for his own good because he cannot swim? As the Benghazi Citizen (I hope he is OK) said, "No nation throughout history was ready for democracy, because those who ruled made sure that their people (or their subjects) are never ready."
In the particular case of Hosni Mubarak, he presented himself as a friend of Israel and the USA (enjoying a nice $1.5 billions of aid per year; as someone commented in the Ha'aretz forum, "real friends don't need to be bribed"). At the same time, he used his goverment-controlled media to enhance the antisemitic and anti-American feelings of Egyptians. Sandmonkey, who himself took part in the Egyptian revolution, wrote on Feb. 3: "A veiled girl with a blurred face went on Mehwer TV claiming to have received funding by Americans to go to the US and took courses on how to bring down the Egyptian government through protests which were taught by Jews... State TV started issuing statements on how the people arrested Israelis all over Cairo engaged in creating mayhem and causing chaos." So, whatever happens, I am not going to miss Mubarak. I cannot even call him what Paul Johnson called the former Nicaraguan dictator Somoza, "a loyal if disgusting ally of the West". Mubarak was disgusting but did not come anywhere near being a loyal ally. The best I can say of him is that he did not order a crackdown on his people and stepped down when the number of victims was "only" in the three-digit range (365 as currently reported by Wikipedia). However, I have all reasons to think that this was not Mubarak's merit; rather, the military sensed the direction of wind (as we say) and forced him to resign in time.
To continue the analogy with the swimming - normally, people are trained to swim under the supervision of skilled swimmers. When some country is stepping on the path to democracy, someone else must keep watch, give directions and be ready to intervene if things go terribly wrong. Outside Europe, this "someone" can be only the USA. What a pity that the Arab Spring had to happen exactly when the White House is occupied by a man able only to talk. As a person who makes her living almost entirely by talking, I know very well the limitations of what you can achieve this way.
But let's leave all these worries for another day. When a tyrant is oustered, it is time to celebrate. Well done, Egypt, congratulations! I remember a poem, by an unknown author, written in the unruly days of late 1989:

"Не бой се, народе, в тебе е силата,
днес си изграждаш нова съдба.
Добри или лоши - Бог знае ги новите,
но старите трябва да паднат сега!"

Translation:
Don't be afraid, people, you have the strength
To build your new destiny today.
God knows, good or bad the new rulers will be,
But the old ones must step down now!

Gypsy adoption

I have been planning for a long time to write a post about adoption of abandoned Bulgarian Gypsy children by non-Gypsy Bulgarians and foreigners. (I prefer to call them Gypsy, not the politically correct Roma.) Gypsies in Bulgaria, as in other European countries, have always occupied the low end of the socio-economic ladder. They still have a high birth rate, many of the babies are unplanned and some of them are left in orphanages. And because the abandoned "white" non-disabled babies are fewer than the families seeking to adopt a child, the overwhelming majority of non-disabled children in Bulgarian orphanages are of Gypsy origin.
You can ask why the prospective "white" adoptive parents don't take these children as well. Essentially, the answer can be summarized by a confession that we white Bulgarians are damn racists. The former Communist government in the 1980s tried to integrate (as we would call it today) the Gypsies by denying their existence as an ethnic and cultural minority. The success of this pretence was zero, and from that time is the saddest story about racism I have ever heard. A childless couple from my city adopted a baby, allegedly without knowing that he was of Gypsy origin. In the beginning, everything was wonderful. The local diagnostic and medical center had a special wall to show photos of children best cared for, and the adopted boy had his image put on this parents' wall of fame. However, as he grew, his Gypsy appearance became apparent. For that reason, the adoptive parents decided they wanted him no more and left him back at the orphanage.
Traditionally, Bulgarian couples wishing to adopt tend to have unrealistically high requirements to the child being adopted. An employee at a child protection agency ironically described children wanted for adoption as "5-6 months old, healthy, beautiful, white, blonde, intelligent, having a university student as biological mother and, if possible, her professor as biological father".
Happily, things are changing and the same employee added that more and more white families not only take the chance to adopt a Gypsy child but later call to say how happy they are and offer their services to encourage other couples to adopt a Gypsy. Couples from other countries have less racial prejudice, but there is so much bureaucracy and obstacles to international adoption that too few children can benefit by it.
Recently, a family "indirectly known" to me adopted a Gypsy toddler. A friend was a bit worried and asked whether the child was predisposed to become a thief after growing up. I was happy to assure him that this has nothing to do with the biological ethnic origin. (I mentioned the case also in my Bulgarian blog.)
Another concern of prospective adoptive parents is that their child may never grow up to be close to their level of intelligence. This reason to worry is more legitimate. I do not believe that there are significant differences in IQ between different ethnic groups, but there are other possible factors affecting the intelligence of children available for adoption. These children may have had suboptimal prenatal development (a malnourished or even substance-abusing mother), they may have had a difficult birth, and they may be already damaged by their stay in an orphanage prior to the adoption. Anybody adopting any child, especially a child coming from a disadvantaged group such as the Gypsies, must prepare himself well for the possibility that he may never brag about the academic achievements of the child.
Of course, anybody deciding to become a parent must be ready for this possibility. People become parents for selfish reasons, for their own happiness, and always have an idealized image of the future child which must gradually be adjusted to reality. So, if a parent of a younger child tells me that his child, biological or adopted, has disappointed him, I could only say - welcome to the club!
However, there is a difference between birth and adoptive parents, and let's not trivialize it. Whatever our biological children bring to us, we still see "our blood" in them. In adoption, spirit triumphs over biology. And when a white person adopts a child, he needs a bigger heart if the child is Gypsy. He has to come to terms with the fact that his baby is so much unlike him. He has to face his own prejudice, conscious and subconscious. And if he lives in Bulgaria or another East-European country, he knows that he must also confront the racist society, stand up for his child and teach the child to stand up for himself. Therefore, I admire those white people who adopt abandoned Gypsy children. They and their children are trailblazers who, I hope, will in the coming years catalyze the integration of the entire Gypsy community.

Ruin

My district is called Zaharna Fabrika, which means Sugar Factory. It was named after the first sugar factory in Bulgaria, built in 1898 by the Belgian Solvay company. At that time, it was located at a railway crossing 4 km away from the city of Sofia. The city grew and eventually reached the factory. In the early 1940s, the district was built as accommodation complex for the factory workers.

The sugar factory itself stopped work decades ago. I have never seen it working, but have always liked the simple beauty of its buildings. It had the status of a cultural landmark. Unfortunately, Bulgarian government after 1989 abdicated from its duty to protect cultural and historical landmarks. Officials perceived democracy as an opportunity not to spend time and efforts on performing standard government functions, the functions that justify the very existence of government. Law and order deteriorated, education deteriorated, landmarks were sold away to private individuals and companies. In theory, the law required any owner of a landmark object to care for its maintenance. However, there was nobody to execute the law. Predator "investors" started buying landmarks and deliberately letting them to deteriorate by all means short of openly calling a wreckage crew. After some time, the landmark in question reliably turned into ruin, its disappearance was documented and the owner was free to do whatever he wished on his cleared land.

On Jan. 7, the Trud daily reported on its 2nd page:

"Greeks are appealing a fine for the Sugar Factory

The owners of the former Sugar Factory in Sofia are appealing in court the fine of 100,000 lv. (about EUR 50,000 - M.M.). It was imposed on them by the Municipality of Sofia because the building was dangerous. In December 2009, collapse of a concrete plate in the factory killed two Roma (Gypsies - M.M.). The Greek company TAB Real Estate, which owns the building, says that the fine is too high..."

I remember that day in 2009 (it was actually November, not December). My mother in-law came back from shopping and said, "I have passed by the Gypsy ghetto, people had gathered there, women were crying. Something has happened. Let's watch the TV news to find out." The same evening, TV channels reported that three young Gypsy men, two brothers and their brother in-law, had gone into the sugar factory building to collect iron pieces to sell them for scrap (many unemployed Gypsies try to feed themselves and their families in this way). However, the iron rail they took turned out to be a supporting part, so the building collapsed over them. The brother in-law managed to escape, but the two brothers were buried under the ruins and later found dead by the rescue team. Dnes.dir.bg gives their names as Dimitar and Stefan and their ages as 31 and around 40.

It was immediately reported that the owner was a Greek entrepreneur who not only failed to take the measures prescribed by the municipality to strenghten and guard the building but actually encouraged the local Gypsies to remove metal parts from it in order to accelerate its deterioration. The quotes below are from a Nov. 19, 2009 report by the BNT TV channel:

"Two brothers die in Sugar Factory building collapse

...Minko Gerdzhikov, Deputy Mayor of Sofia, said, "Owner of the building is TBA Real Estate (most other sources give it as TAB - M.M.). This is a Greek company, the owner's name is Kafalis. At present, he is hiding from us, does not want to speak. He is clearly aware that he is guilty of negligence. On the other hand, he apparently wanted this property not as a sugar factory but as a piece of land to be used by him for other purposes. I was informed by police sources that the owners even encouraged those living in the vicinity to demolish the building."

The locals quickly found whom to blame. The victims' sister said, "My brothers came to earn 5 leva, to buy food for themselves and their children, because they are unemployed. The owner came himself here in front of us and told us to demolish the building and told the police not to harass us, but policemen gather and only want money from us. They stop our horse carts and take 20, 30, 50 leva and this is why my brothers died here."

In October 2009, just a month before the tragedy, BTV channel reported that the cultural landmark could collapse any moment.
I would not lay any blame on the poor Gypsy men who struggled to support their families. You cannot realistically demand respect to cultural heritage from people who are hungry. And after the owner himself told them it was OK to demolish, how could they realize they were doing something wrong? I am sorry for them and their families, and I think the owner is guilty, and also our authorities.
I wanted to have the Greek nationality of the owner confirmed before writing this post, so I waited for quite a lont time. You see, it is dangerous even to report the truth in these matters, because it spawns xenophobia, let alone trust on rumous and unconfirmed hearsay evidence. Still I would not put "Greek" in the title as Trud did. One could assume that all Greeks have invaded Bulgaria en masse to destroy our heritage.
I wonder, what would happen to Mr. Kafalis (or whatever his name is) if he had tried the same business plan in his native Greece? Greek authorities would push him down a mouse burrow, as we say. And I think any government must deal with its nationals destroying heritage, whatever country they choose for their evil deed. Cultiral and historical heritage belongs to all of the world. And there is no hope to preserve it without international cooperation, exactly as it is impossible to defeat corruption without ensuring international transparency.
I made the first photo shortly after the tragedy, in January 2010. You see the collapsing builsing, and also the open unguarded gates. Anybody could enter there, any poor Gypsy scrap collector or bum seeking refuge or playing child could become the next victim. The next three photos are from July 2010. I made them to preserve the image of the Sugar Factory which I like so much, because it continues to deteriorate. It is already in a worse state that shown in the photos, and I guess it will be levelled to the ground in a few years. The last photo, like the first one, shows the crime scene. At least, the so-called owner has made it inaccessible. There is a fence and the gate is locked. Some minor buildings of the Sugar Factory complex have not been bought by TAB Real Estate and have remained outside the fence. They are illegally occupied by Gypsy families who maintain them as they can, and they are the only parts of the cultural landmark likely to survive.

Quacks of the world, keep your dirty paws off autism!

The text below is a translation (omitting some minor parts) of what I posted on my Bulgarian blog on Jan. 11 as a reaction to the dangerous export of autism quackery to Bulgaria.

The problem of children with autism is that they look quite like the others. When there is inborn malformation, chromosomal disease, sensory disability or another quite obvious problem, parents and society eventually accept the fact that this child is different and will remain so. But the inpredictable time course of autism, its still mysterious nature and the normal appearence of autistics mislead parents to hope that they will somehow be able to bring their child to norm. In fact, today the diagnosis of autism is handed around like candy, often by people who are not competent to diagnose but know well how to "cure" the incurable condition of autism (you ask how? - by relieving parents of their too abundant money). Many of the alleged autistic children actually have only speech delay and eventually catch up spontaneously. But pronounced autism is another thing. In the framework of an unaccepting society, it is perceived by parents not as a part of their child's personality but as an enemy to be faught. And then the quacks wishing to separate them from their money lure them easily and catch them on a hook without even a bait.
The last "achievement" of this sort belongs to Tokuda Hospital in (the city of) Sofia... They organized a conference on autism on Jan. 8-9. A special guest who presented a lecture on this conference was Dr. Arthur Krigsman, (advertised as) "a world-renowned gastroenterologist" from the USA...
A minute's Google check shows that he is indeed world-renowned. Have you a page in Wikipedia? Has your child's doctor or the hospital's director such a page? No? Eh well, Dr. Krigsman has one. You can read in it that he is known for his controversial and widely-criticized research in which he attempted to prove that the MMR vaccine caused autism. I love this little English word "controversial". It is used e.g. for Jeremiah Wright - the US president's favourite minister known for his statement that the USA deserved the Sept. 11 attacks. When a doctor is called "controversial" by a restrained source like Wikipedia, you can be sure that he is a top quack already fired from everywhere and awaiting only the prosecutor's subpoena, if not having received it already. I guess the coming of such a high guest to Bulgaria must be a reaction to some call "Quacks of the world, unite!".
From the conference at Tokuda Hospital Dr. Krigsman went to the At a cup of coffee TV show aired on the Nova TV Channel, so that the entire Bulgarian nation could enjoy his blessings. I owe thanks to my mother in-law who heroically watched the program and then retold it to me (I could not see it personally). To sum up, Dr. Krigsman explained for an hour how the neurological disability known as autism is due either to the digestive system or to the immune system or to heavy metal poisoning, how vaccines are to blame, how autistic children must be subjected to colonoscopy and biopsy (an invasive and not quite safe procedure) and how his method provides a cure for autism, described in all medical textbooks as incurable. And at the end of this hour, the gentleman said, "We are not curing autism, we are curing gastrointestinal diseases!" Ha-ha-ha. Western quacks always include such a disclaimer in order to avoid the heavy grip of law. Dr. Krigsman was unaware that in our part of the world, rule of law is a bit sickly and everybody can lie as he wishes without any disclaimers at all.
Unfortunately, (TV show host) Gala - this pride of Bulgarian journalism, really succeeded in advertising the US quack doctor. You can see the discussion in BG-Mamma (the major Web forum of Bulgarian mothers). I could endure only a brief glance on the first page. It looks to me like a chorus from the circles of Hell where gullibility is reinforced by positive feedback as it is handed from one desperate soul to another. But those who are really in the circles of Hell are the children (and adults) with autism. Not because of the autism itself but because of our attitude.
What do I mean? Imagine that you have a disability - let's say, you are blind or your legs are paralyzed. Imagine that society does not wish to accommodate to your disability, refuses to give you Braille books or a wheelchair and instead wants you to start seeing or walking. It suggests to you that if you fail to achieve this, you have no value, you are not a complete human, it is not clear whether you are human at all. Now imagine that your family members, on whom you have to rely because of your disability and your tender age, are not interested in your real needs but instead wonder how to cure you. They put you on a diet without bread, dairy products and everything you like, and they swear that, thanks to this diet, you already distinguish light from darkness or have slightly moved your left toe. (I am referring to the notorious gluten-free casein-free diet that not only does not lessen autism traits a bit except for the placebo effect, but deprives children of calcium and so makes their bones thinner.) Moreover, your relations bring you to some quack to poison you allegedly to detoxicate you from heavy metals, endangering your life. They also bring you to another quack to puncture your intestines, again endangering your life. They subject you to all sorts of experiments that are not even included in a legal experimental medicine study. They repent for the vaccines that have allegedly contributed to your condition, and swear not to vaccinate your little sister - which you take as a message that they'd prefer her to die of measles than be like you.
Unfortunately, right now I have no time to write a serious text about autism, which seems to be necessary. For those who can read English, I recommend the sincere tale of Dr. James Laidler how he himself got involved in quackery because of his desperation after his two children were diagnosed with autism, and then the blog of "Prometheus" - a molecular biologist and father of an autistic child. Meanwhile, to all who care for children or adults with autism, I wish high spirit, health, physical and emotional strength - and act cleverly!
(In an update, I added that Gala's guest was not only Dr. Krigsman but also his pal Dr. Anju Usman, who has direct responsibility for the death of 5-yr-old Abubakar Nadama by referring him to Dr. Kerry to be "treated" with the poison EDTA that killed him.)

Drive carefully on Bulgarian killer roads

The translation below is from an Aug. 22, 2010 DarikNews report:

"Boy dies after car crash near Burgas
A 16-yr-old boy from Sofia died after a heavy car crash on the road Sofia - Burgas (Bourgas). His mother, 14-yr-old sister and the driver are hospitalized...
The crash happened 300 m east of the village of Venets, near the town of Karnobat... The driver, a 46-yr-old Cuban citizen living in France, attempted overtaking, although it was banned by traffic sign and road marking. She lost control over the vehicle and crashed frontally into a tree.
A 16-yr-old boy from Sofia travelling at the back seat died at the spot. His 14-yr-old sister is severely injured and her life is in danger..."

Readers have left the following comments:
"Oh, oh, this road between Karnobat and Venets - the stretch of death."
"Come on, overtake where overtaking is banned, like savages!"
"I knew the girl - may her rest in peace, and her brother also. I do know know what happened to the mother, may God keep her strong if she is alive..."
"I knew the boy, his name was Kaloyan. We attended the same school. He was always merry and was making merry all of us. He was an excellent friend and will remain forever in my heart, and in the hearts of all who knew him! I hope he and his sister are at a better place now! My condolescence to the parents..."

The victims are my neighbours' grandchildren. I vaguely remember the handsome boy with whom we exchanged greetings at the staircase of our apartment block. He often stayed with his grandparents because his school was in our district. Now, the obituaries of the two children with their smiling photos and attached flowers are facing us at the block's front door.
There are some inaccuracies in the DarikNews report. The boy was seating not at the back seat but at the front right seat, and this is why he died immediately when the right half of the car crashed into the tree. His sister was behind him. She died at the hospital 8 days later. The two adult women - the children's mother and her friend who was driving, were only slightly injured because they were sitting at the left side. The driver, presented in reports as Frenchwoman of Cuban origin, was in fact a Bulgarian living in France. Despite her long driving experience, she made the fatal mistake to drive on Bulgarian roads with a speed appropriate for a French highway, and to violate the overtaking ban.
Bulgaria has always been behind with its road infrastructure, but the situation became grotesque after 1989. As the emerging capitalism burdened our roads with unprecedented traffic, the domestic and EU money allocated for their construction and maintenance kept being stolen. I am not talking about "standard" corruption diverting 10-15% of funds yet allowing the road to be built. I am talking about Bulgarian corruption diverting 90-100% of funds. Millions have disappeared and we still have no roads. EU member Bulgaria does not yet possess a single finished highway - not one! With pain and peril, drivers navigate narrow roads full of turns, suitable for donkey cart travel between villages.
Through the years, every time when EU officials discovered that EU funds allocated for infrastructure had been stolen, they used a standard approach - to stop future transfers until appropriate anti-corruption measures are taken. I have very mixed feelings to this starvation policy. I admit that it is not too justified to enrich Bulgarian corrupt politicians with the money of European taxpayers. However, stopping the transfers deprived Bulgaria even of the small fraction that was used on purpose. What, exactly, are you hoping to achieve by depriving poor people of money? Possibly you are hoping that Bulgarians will behave as proper citizens and will keep their corrupt rulers responsible? But Bulgarians are not able to behave as proper citizens and to keep their rulers responsible, despite the superficially perfect multy-party representative democracy. This is actually the reason why Bulgarians, and also many other nations, are poor and stay poor. I would prefer EU to send Western companies with their equipment and workers to do the job, without any capital coming to Bulgaria in a convertible form.
Now, when beginning new constructions and opening road stretches finished with 15-20-yr delay, our rulers half-heartedly admit that the obsolete and poorly maintained roads take lives ("our goal is to diminish the number of car crash victims," said Prime Minister Borisov in 2009). It is good that they are talking like this, because talking about a problem is the first necessary step to solving it. However, it is not a sufficient step, and I don't yet see much deeds to back the words. No measures are taken even for places known to cause heavy crashes regularly, such as the Karnobat - Venets "stretch of death" which is narrow and has many turns.
Meanwhile, if you are a visitor to Bulgaria, your well-being and that of your fellow travellers depends on your successful navigations of Bulgarian killer roads. Be careful, do not speed and remember that there is no such thing as urgent business.
Keep your eyes open for potholes that "mine" Bulgarian roads. And for dangerous turns that are found at every kilometer. Because we are still using the old roads that connected towns and villages, you will pass through every single settlement on your way - speed down when you enter it. However, pedestrians and farm animals may appear on the road even when you are far from any settlement.
And please overtake as rarely as possible. All Bulgarian roads, if not 2-lane in their entire length, have long 2-lane stretches. You will soon find yourself behind some too-slow vehicle, and you will get nervous. Try to relax, rather than attempting a risky overtaking that may end in a frontal crash. And if overtaking is banned by signs, abide them even if you wonder why they are put there. Sometimes, such a sign marks a place where someone has died in attempted overtaking. So the sign may be an anonymous memorial to a previous victim, and it is not wise to neglect its warning.
Keep in mind also that Bulgaria is a poor country and if you are injured in a crash here, you may not receive state-of-the-art medical treatment. (This is not to imply that the Burgas doctors who tried to save the life of my neighbours' granddaughter have any responsibility for her death. She was injured very severely - I guess, beyond salvation.)
If you are travelling in winter, remember the risk of ice. Too little is done to make the roads usable after a snowfall, so you have to rely on yourself again. Personally, I always feel relieved when a winter car jouney comes to an uneventful end. It is January now and the most dangerous weeks for drivers are coming, as snow covers the roads where half a year ago two children were returning from their last sea vacation.

Eid changes to my blogroll

This year, Nov. 16 was Eid al-Adha (Kurban bayryam) - the Festival of Sacrifice, one of the most imp0rtant Muslim holidays. Celebrations often last for a week. Right now, I had to have a practical with a group of students from Turkey, but we agreed to postpone it, because all of them wanted to be home with Mommy and Daddy. So I have some extra free time, for which I shall of course pay later. I decided to spend it updating my link pages and deleting some of the Islamophobic links, undoubtedly a good way for an infidel to mark Eid.
I wish to state immediately that nobody has pressed me to do this. My anti-Islamic writings and links have not drawn any offline hostile action, which I attribute partly to the (still) very weak position of radical Islam in Bulgaria, and partly to the fact that nobody reads my blog :-). My opinion about Islam and Islamists has not changed, either. Why, then, have I decided to present (slightly) less Islamophobia? It was Esther, author of the Islam in Europe blog, who persuaded me. On Feb. 22, she wrote a post titled Opinion: Why don't the Jews join us. Let me give a part of it:

"An orthodox Jewish reader once asked me why Islam-critics criticize EVERYTHING about Islam. Why do they criticize the religious aspects and don't just focus on violent Islamic ideology?
Keep this question in mind as you read this.
A recent article in The Daily Telegraph brings a story which is repeated in various ways across Europe. Malmö, Sweden, is the city with one of the highest proportion of Muslim residents, and its small Jewish community is fleeing an increase in Muslim antisemitic attacks.Various anti-Islam, Islam-critical, counter-Jihad etc blogs and activists expect Jews to stand with them against the Muslims. But Jews don't always do so, and, sometimes, for good reason.
I do not deny the threat of Muslim antisemitism. But why put the Jews on the spot? When anti-Islam protesters wave Israeli flags, they might want to show that they're not antisemitic. They might want to make the Muslims mad. But what they're actually doing is focusing the hatred at the Jews. The Jews are a tiny minority in Europe, and one which has been through quite a lot. Why put them on the spot more than anybody else, and certainly more than any other endangered minority?"

I have never made it a secret that a great part of my Islamophobia is due to the anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli attitudes and actions of too many Muslims. (I have been occasionally blamed by hostile readers that I have sold myself to "my Jewish masters", and privately asked by friendly readers whether I am a Jew myself.) And now, Esther is asking those who really take the plight of Jews to heart not to be too Islamophobic. I am not sure whether she is right here, but I think she has considered this problem thoroughly and understands it much better than me, and I prefer to trust her.
So I deleted from my blogroll the links to two old posts: My Westerner's demands to Muslims and An opinion poll for Arab readers (the latter was useless anyway, because Arab readers were not giving their opinions).
I also opened from my Control Panel the Favourite Sites pages of my Web site (here in English, here in Bulgarian) and successfully changed them - the first change I am introducing myself to my brand new domain. If you are learning to create and edit Web pages and struggling with HTML the way a pig struggles with a pumpkin, what would you begin with? The easiest thing, of course. And what is the easiest type of change? Correctly, deletion. So I removed the link to FrontPage Magazine (it still remains in my blogroll), plus two links to sites with images of Prophet Mohamed: Zombietime's Mohammed Image Archive and the site muhammadcartoons dot com.
These links, plus the entire "Favourite Sites" page, were created in early 2006, in the midst of Danish cartoon crisis. Back then, it seemed to us that the very pillars of our civilization were collapsing. I am still far from sure that it is safe, but I think time is ripe for more long-term strategy and less impulsive actions. A nice example of impulsive action is the domain muhammadcartoons dot com, registered at the same time. Initially, the 12 cartoons were uploaded there. However, after the hot moment was gone, apparently nobody wished to devote his time and money to the tedious job of keeping a Web site. So the domain name expired and was released back to the ecosystem. Somebody snatched it and turned it into what I hope is a dating site, but may as well be a human trafficking tool. For that reason, I am not linking to it here, just showing enough of it to allow you check yourself. (Here, Muslim readers are allowed to gloat :-).) You see that it is a bad idea to register a domain, draw traffic to it and then leave it orphan - this can only benefit some shadowy and not too pretty figure. People should be more serious about the Web and not create and abandon sites at every whim.
If you want to see the (in)famous cartoons, I recommend the above linked Zombietime page, plus this American Daughter forum where Danish psychologists discuss the images. I was first directed to the former page by Freedom for Egyptians. I am sorry that she has stopped blogging; hopefully everything is OK with her.

My site is moving

My site, until now at www.mayamarkova.com, is moving to a new domain - www.mayamarkov.com (the English home page is at http://www.mayamarkov.com/index_eng.html).
If you have linked to it, please update your links.
I'll tell some other time the story of the site, and why I had to move it.

Confession

(Warning - long post.)

Photo shows Tiber river at evening.

From June 6 to 11, I attended the Cell Model Systems Summer school at Tor Vergata Research Establishment, Rome. It was great experience and I learned a lot about liposomes and other membrane models, cytotoxic membrane-permeabilizing peptides, new materials based on plasma technology as well as current concepts about the origin of life - all this quite interesting and useful for a teacher in a broad-spectrum biology course like me. I saw first-hand how liposomes and nanomaterials are prepared, and how the atomic force microscope works, about which I had only read in articles. I am very thankful to my professor who recommended me for the summer school, to the organizers who approved my application, to the lecturers, and to my fellow participants. I whole-heartedly recommend CMS to every young researcher or teacher in life sciences. I also keep warm memories of our late-afternoon tours in Rome and in the beautiful nearby town of Frascati where we were accomodated, at the excellent hotel Cacciani.
But this is just an introduction - the post, unfortunately, is centered on something else.
Back in the 1990s, Bulgaria was even more miserable than it is today. And even more depressing than the crude reality was the feeling of hopelessness, of a lacking future. The ability to see future where it actually isn't, to see open spaces and blue skies while looking at a brick wall, was a vital skill. Those who hadn't it had to emigrate or let misery crush their souls. Among them was my brother. He had a rare gift in math that he later developed into computing, he was a good musician (though this was not his favourite occupation), but he was completely unable to see dungeon walls as open spaces. So he wished to emigrate to a country with a future.
From the European countries, three were considered seriously as prospective new homes - Germany and Switzerland, where we had relatives, and Italy, where my brother (sometimes accompanied by my sister in-law) traveled several times for temporary work with a student orchestra. Switzerland was most hostile to Eastern Europeans and was soon cancelled as a realistic possibility. My brother travelled to Germany to apply for a job, but without success. We had there a first cousin married to a German who owned small but successful business. This man said, "If you had a permit to work in Germany, I could give you a job at my shop. But I cannot obtain this permit for you - according to our laws, I have to prove that I cannot find a German to do the job, and this is impossible."
My brother actually liked Italy most because, as he said, the Southern temperament of Italians was making them similar to Bulgarians. A short Italian dictionary and a booklet titled Buon giorno - How to learn Italian in 10 days are still kept somewhere at my mother's library. But there, again, the attempt was unsuccessful. What to do - Western Europeans in those years were shutting us Eastern Europeans out as if we were leprosy-infected.
At the end of 1990s, my sister in-law and my brother obtained immigrant visas for the USA and settled there. He worked at days and learned English and computer science at night, then enrolled to study at a local college, then became computer programmer at the same college. He fulfilled the American dream... as more than one person said at his funeral ceremony.
You have surely read about parallel worlds - that when reality faces an alternative, it goes both ways, splitting into two. As a description of the physical world, parallel worlds are bullshit, but they excellently reflect the attempts of our mind to protect itself by shielding itself from unacceptable reality. The "what if" magical thinking. I still have a strong feeling about parallel worlds, and the impression that I have wandered into the wrong one that is not truly real. On Monday, March 22 I met my mother and we discussed the menu for the Friday dinner, when my family had to visit her. I asked her to fry meatballs, and we were very happy. This last happy day was in fact undeserved, because my brother was already dead - we just did not know it yet. Then on Friday, I felt trapped in a parallel world, in a wrong reality. Why was I in my home, when I had to be at my mother's apartment, eating meatballs? My mother of course had not cooked meatballs - she had flown to America the previous day to attend her son's funeral.
I had a similar feeling the night of June 6th when I arrived to Rome. The organizers of the summer school had sent a shuttle car to pick me and an Italian participant from the airport. As we travelled, my Italian colleague chatted with the driver. I was silently watching the landscape and I imagined that the shuttle car was actually sent by my brother and sister in-law, who were living in Italy. At one moment, the driver asked me in English whether I spoke any Italian. I said no, he jokingly asked why not, and I answered that I had no relations in Italy. As if reading my thoughts, he said, "Now is a very nice time to have relations."
In the next days, the summer school and the majesty of this great city distracted me and helped my recovery, well described by some psychologist as "adaptation to a world from which one's loved one is missing." Rome, Frascati, Italy are names that evoke good memories in me. Yet at the same time Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the entire "old Europe" carry for me the cold touch of the rejection. Because they did not accept my brother, that is, they were not here when I truly needed them. If he had gone to Italy or Germany, his life would not have ended so early. Or, at the very least, I would have seen him more often during these last years, and I would attend his funeral.
I have never want to emigrate myself - in fact, I spent most of my adult life struggling against other people urging me to emigrate, for my own good. But the visa refusals obtained by my loved ones scarred me with a rejection trauma without which I would be another (and almost certainly better) person. In particular, it made me more xenophobic than I would have been otherwise. Of course many immigrants are wonderful people and gain to old Europe, as would be my brother if he had been accepted. However, there are also the other kind of immigrants (let's not start a topic about freedom of speech, films, cartoons and so on). And I think I would not rant so much against multicultural Europe if I were not asking myself why such and such people have been allowed into Europe and my brother was rejected.
It is no use to try and explain down the world to me by reason. You need not mention that many immigrants are such and such because "old Europeans" wanted illiterate guest workers to clean their toilets for no money, rather than educated immigrants with Western mentality to join them as equals. My reason knows it perfectly but the irrational core of me refuses to come to terms with it. It is also of no use to mention that today Bulgarians, or at least white Christian Bulgarians, can move to any European country of their choice. In my world, now is just too late. This is my experience, and I give it absolute importance. For other people, especially for younger people who do not clearly remember the 1990s, my experience will be irrelevant. So, with rare exceptions such as this post, I'll keep it to myself, like a gem too precious to be appreciated by the populace. Value your experience, even if nobody else does. For good or for bad, it makes you who you are.

Arevik is free

This is old news, but still worth reporting.

In my April 20 post Help Arevik: innocent, pregnant, imprisoned, I wrote about young Armenian woman Arevik Shmavonyan, who wished to reunite with her beloved (and father of her child) David in Bulgaria but was instead detained at Busmanci for overstaying her visa.

On July 22, Arevik was released (hattip Svetla Encheva). Svetla made and published in Facebook some beautiful photos, one of which I cropped and posted above.

I hope everything is all right with Arevik, David and their baby. According to my calculations, s/he must already have been born, but I cannot find any information about this.

Update: On Nov. 17, Arevik gave birth to a boy who will be named Erik. Thanks to Svetla for keeping us informed.

Choice of profession

Generally, a person has to choose two important things in his life: a profession and a partner.
With the exception of traditional cultures where parents arrange marriages of their children, we choose our partners freely when we are already conscious adults. This doesn't mean that we are always wise and successful in this task. We actually seem to be even less wise and successful than the parents in traditional cultures. Very often we make serious mistakes and trap ourselves in short-lived or unhappy marriages. But at least the decision has been only ours.
Things are different with profession - at least in poor countries. The decision to acquire one or another profession has to be made in the teen years, if not earlier. At this tender age, it is heavily influenced by parents and other family members. And if the young person later wants to change his profession, it comes at a terribly high cost, or is not possible at all.
The written and unwritten laws of society are based on the working hypothesis that parents wish the best for their children. Unfortunately, too often this is not the case. And even when parents try their best, they are likely to make their child unhappy. They burden him with their own fulfilled and unfulfilled desires and ambitions, while neglecting or even fighting his wishes, gifts and inclinations. Just to give an example, here at the Medical University every year we have a legion of children of doctors, dentists and pharmacists, and a considerable part of these students lack the abilities needed for the chosen profession and/or the true wish to practice it. Their parents have pushed them into the medical profession, as commanders push their soldiers into battle.
Because this phenomenon remains in the private sphere of our life, the enormous damages inflicted by it are not very visible and the problem is not discussed in public. But it is real. Happily, economic progress brings spontaneous improvement. I mean, in a prosperous society young people are more empowered and independent and less likely to let their lives be ruined this way. And they have a second chance because they can earn the resources needed to change profession, even if it means new university study. So a mistake made early in life, either by themselves or by their parents, does not mean being directed into a one-way tunnel.
An improvement of the educational system would also help. I am against too early specialization which deprives the student from knowledges and skills in many area. Education must be broad and multi-disciplinary until the end of secondary school. And if some schools issue diplomas that are not accepted by universities, their graduates must be given the chance to obtain the needed certificate by some sort of exam.
Meanwhile, I wish to quote a man unknown to me but apparently a wise and good father. Talking to his teenage son about the choice of profession, he said, "This is very important for you and I do not wish to interfere with your decision. But please keep in mind that whatever you choose, you are expected to be doing it for 40 years to come, so it must be a thing you like doing."

All through the night

This post is a greeting to all who are having hard times, and particularly to one of my dearest people for whom I know that principally reads my blog (though I am not sure whether she is reading it right now).
The quoted verses are from the old Welsh song All Through the Night.

"Deep the silence round us spreading,
All through the night;
Dark the path that we are treading,
All through the night...
Though our hearts be wrapt in sorrow,
From the hope of dawn we borrow
Promise of a glad tomorrow,
All through the night."

The entire song is here.