Monster mosque to be built next to Ground Zero

(The expression in the title borrowed from Atlas Shrugs blog.)
First, I am copy-pasting below most of the article Plan for mosque near World Trade Center site moves ahead, by Joe Jackson & Bill Hutchinson, published earlier this month in NY Daily News, but for the moment just follow the link and read.

"A proposal to build a mosque steps from Ground Zero received the support of a downtown committee despite some loved ones of 9/11 victims finding it offensive.
The 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center was unanimously endorsed by the 12-member Community Board 1's financial district committee.
The $100 million project, called the Cordoba House, is proposed for the old Burlington Coat Factory... just two blocks from the World Trade Center site.
"I think it will be a wonderful asset to the community," said committee Chairman Ro Sheffe.
Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who helped found the Cordoba Initiative following the 9/11 attacks, said the project is intended to foster better relations between the West and Muslims...
Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and Cordoba Initiative board member, said the project has received little opposition.
"Whatever concerns anybody has, we have to make sure to educate them that we are an asset to the community," Khan said.
Khan said her group hopes construction on the project will begin by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Once built, 1,000 to 2,000 Muslims are expected to pray at the mosque every Friday, she said.
No one at last night's meeting protested the project. But some 9/11 families said they found the proposal offensive because the terrorists who launched the attacks were Muslim.
"I realize it's not all of them, but I don't want to have to go down to a memorial where my son died on 9/11 and look at a mosque," said retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches - whose son Jim, a firefighter, was killed on 9/11.
"If you ask me, it's a religion of hate," said Riches, who did not attend last night's meeting.
Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, L.I., whose son, Firefighter George Cain, 35, was killed in the 2001 attacks, called the project a "slap in the face."
"I think it's despicable. That's sacred ground," said Cain, who also did not attend the meeting.
"How could anybody give them permission to build a mosque there? It tarnishes the area."

Frankly, I find it unbelievable. After some Muslims sacrificed their lives in order to destroy the Twin Towers together with the people inside, now other Muslims are keen to build a giant mosque almost on the cleared spot. As I wrote in my post about Samir Kuntar two years ago, "if we remove the fragile frame of civilization, what remains from the human? A Darwinian creature who will happily kill other people's children in order to make more space for his own progeny."
I am only slightly surprised that Muslims have come with such an idea. It is just the umpteenth piece of evidence about the nature of Islam. I am, however, surprised that the city is giving green light to this insanity.
The same NY Daily News page offers an opinion poll:

"Do you think it is appropriate to construct a mosque near Ground Zero?
- Yes, it will encourage tolerance.
- No, if the 9/11 victims' families are opposed.
- I'm not sure."

I cannot take part in such an opinion poll; I can just wonder at its authors' dhimmitude and stupidity. The first symptom of these is their priority of problems - regarding the intolerance to Islam as a more important problem than the deaths and suffering caused by Islam at Ground Zero and elsewhere. Following the same logic, we should build Nazi and Communist propaganda centers near the former extermination camps in order to encourage tolerance to these doctrines.
Second, I find it wrong beyond description that opposition to the plan is justified not with the need to regard Islam as the doctrine of supremacy, oppression and genocide it is, but with political correctness - not to hurt the feelings of 9/11 victims' families. So, if the Islamists had killed the whole families, there would be no problem at all, right?
I am outraged because the grieving relatives, instead of being allowed to devote themselves to the memory of their loved ones and the challenges of life, are now forced to fight against the trivialization of their loss and the planned building of an actual memorial to the murderers. We have observed the same in Bulgaria and other former Communist countries - the pressure put on the surviving victims of the regime, and on the relatives of dead ones, to put their hard feelings aside and embrace the Communists for the sake of "peace" and "reconciliation". It was wrong here, and it is wrong in New York now.
Another similarity is that Communists filled East-European cities with their landmarks and actively struggled for their preservation, because they knew the importance of architectural environment for shaping the collective mind. Russia successfully pressed Bulgaria to preserve the numerous memorials to Soviet occupiers. When a landmark of evil is standing, growing young people walk in its shadow and think, "How powerful they are - to kill so many of us, to do us so much evil and still to make us keep their monuments. We must always give them what they want, then they probably will leave us alive." The same is planned to happen in New York.
Disclaimer: I do not advocate any action against Muslims. I am against Islam, not against Muslims, as I am against AIDS, not against AIDS-infected people. And I do not like the fact that I feel obliged to include such a disclaimer. When I write against Nazism or Communism, I do not feel obliged to disclaim that I do not advocate any action against individual supporters of these doctrines.

Update from May 27: I voted with "no" in the above mentioned opinion poll, mainly to see the results. They are: 68% "yes", 31% "no", 2% "not sure".

Bulgarian authorities outlaw innocent immigrant

In my April 20 post, I wrote about candidate immigrant Arevik who came from Armenia to Bulgaria to unite with her boyfriend David but ended up imprisoned in the Busmanci detention facility. Arevik has been there already for 2 months, about to complete the crucial 1st trimester of her pregnancy. The personnel reportedly treats her well, but conditions are not suitable for a woman with a difficult pregnancy, and the mere fact of being imprisoned has its toll. This post will be about David Arutyunyan, Arevik's beloved and father of their unplanned but wanted and cherished baby. It is based mostly on Lyd's May 13 post and this post by David himself in a Bulgarian law forum, but the information is confirmed by other numerous sources.
Some readers coming from traditional cultures with strict views on family may say that David and Arevik are irresponsible people because they have conceived a child without being married. I wish to clarify immediately that they wish very much to marry but cannot because David has no identity papers, and in the 21st century it is impossible to marry without such papers. It is also impossible to study, work, or have property. By refusing to issue him ID papers, Bulgarian state (with the help of Armenian state) has made him a non-person.
When somebody is in such a difficult situation, people tend to think that he is to be blamed for it, that he has made something wrong. David, now 24, was only 6 when his family moved from Armenia to Bulgaria. They wished to remain but had difficulties because the residence fee of 1000 lv. per person was too high for them. They protested and even made a hunger strike. I think they were not right - after they were not refugees but candidate immigrants, they had to pay what Bulgarian law prescribed without grumbling or look for another country offering better conditions. Anyway, even if the actions of David's parents had annoyed Bulgarian authorities, no civilized government would revenge against a young child for his parents's deeds.
David went to primary school, which is mandatory under Bulgarian law. When he was 14, Bulgarian authorities finally allowed his family to obtain Bulgarian ID papers, provided that Armenian authorities would also do their part of the paperwork and give them a go-ahead. So David's parents obtained ID documents for themselves and for their daughter (David's sister). However, Armenian authorities refused to give a go-ahead for David because, according to them, he had to return to Armenia to serve 3 years in the army. David of course did not wish to return to a country which was just a vague memory to him. Meanwhile, he was denied permission to study in secondary school. Secondary education is not mandatory in Bulgaria and school authorities said that they "did not know" who David was. (Bulgarian citizens first obtain ID card at that age, 14. In my post about Busmanci, a young candidate immigrant from Nigeria named Olatodun Ibitui is mentioned. He is almost in the same situation as David, having lived in Bulgaria since age 5 but not allowed to study in secondary school. Now he is job-seeking but, despite being very intelligent, he will have giant difficulties. Labour market in present-day Bulgaria kicks back people without high school diplomas.)
To this day, David is living outlawed, his only ID paper being his Armenian birth certificate. He cannot obtain a work permit, so he just helps his parents in their family business. Several times per year, David is subpoenated to the police department in his town of Montana. They tell him that he is living here illegally and must leave his family's home and Bulgaria. They are also consistently trying to obtain a deportation order for him.
On May 5, David was ordered to go to the police department again. Natasha Filipova, head of the local Migration service of the police, gave him to sign a document in Armenian. David refused to sign a text written in a language he does not speak. When his parents came to translate the document, it turned out to be an application by David to be allowed to go to Armenia. The Armenian ambassador declared that this document had not been prepared by the Embassy. Apparently some bright head at the Montana police department has written it and got it translated to Armenian at taxpayers' expense in order to press David to "request" his own deportation.
In an April 29 Mediapool article by Irina Nedeva titled Arevik and David - a love story between Montana, Erevan and Busmanci, the head of the Young Armenians' Charity Union Victor Baramov is quoted to say that his organization has many other examples of people without a legal status in Bulgaria despite having lived here for 20 or more years.
Our domestic civil society is weak and is only now awakening to this problem; but where are the EU institutions and international human rights organizations looking?
If you want to tell our Ministry of Interior and the Montana Police Department what you think about their treatment of David Arutyunyan, their contact details are given in my previous post Help Arevik - innocent, pregnant, imprisoned.

Help Arevik: innocent, pregnant, imprisoned

Arevik with her beloved David (photo copied from Svetla Encheva's blog).


I know Arevik's story from Bulgarian bloggers Svetla Encheva (here and here) and Lyd (here and here).

Briefly, Arevik Shmavonyan is a young Armenian woman. 5 years ago, she met on Skype David Arutyunyan, a young man of Armenian origin living in the city of Montana, Bulgaria. They fell in love and about 3 months ago Arevik came to Bulgaria to unite with her beloved. They could not marry because Bulgarian bureaucracy refused to clear their paperwork, but started living together. After Arevik's 1-month visa expired, she obtained a permission to remain for additional 14 days. However, despite this permission she was sent to the infamous detention facility in the Sofia district of Busmanci, where refugees and candidate immigrants are kept indefinitely without clear reasons (I have blogged about this facility in my earlier post Prison by any other name).
In Busmanci, Arevik found out that she was pregnant. Her pregnancy is problematic, causing cyclic vomiting and severe eating and sleeping problems. Arevik has been in Busmanci already for one month, and for this time has been taken twice to hospital unconscious. Nevertheless, she is still kept there, in a room with about 10 other women and without adequate care. Although Arevik has done nothing wrong, her release is not in sight, and her life is in peril as well as the life of her unborn child.
I appeal to you to try to help Arevik. Svetla Encheva in her April 18 post gives a beautiful model letter citing appropriate quotes from Bulgarian and European legislature, as well as the addresses of the Montana Police Department whose orders have led to Arevik's imprisonment. I shall not translate the letter - knowing the English proficiency of our average law enforcer, I think a short note comprised of simple words would do a better job. In fact, I think that the police will be more impressed by the mere obtaining of messages from abroad written in English than by their text.
Here are two e-mail addresses of the Montana Police Department: rdvrmon@net-surf.net, police@net-surf.net. You can also fill this form. At the top line, you must select "MBP - област Монтана" (Montana Police Department). The lines below are, respectively, for your first name, family name, e-mail, postal address, subject of your message and then comes the field for the text of your message. You are also advised to send a paper letter at the following address:

Comissar Valeri Dimitrov
Police Department - Montana
2 Aleksander Stamboliiski Blvd
BG-3400 Montana
Bulgaria

I also advise you to turn to the Ministry of Interior in the capital Sofia. Its contact form is here. The lines are (from top) for your first name, family name, address, telephone, e-mail and below is the field for the text of the message. The postal address is as follows:

Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov
Ministry of Interior
29, 6th of September Street
BG-1000 Sofia
Bulgaria

"Rufinka": Bulgarian folk song about death in spring

One of the best known and beloved Bulgarian folk songs is Rufinka bolna legnala (Rufinka was lying ill), originated some 150-200 years ago in the Rhodopa mountain (although, similarly to other Rhodopean songs, it is very difficult to sing). It was created by Bulgarian Muslims and, as far as I know, is the only element of their culture incorporated in mainstream Bulgarian culture. Once I read an article about the background of the song. According to it, Rufie (informally Rufinka) was a real person, a girl from a well-to-do family. About age 20 and before getting married, she succumbed to a progressive fatal disease, probably tuberculosis. Before her death, she was asked what she was more sorry for - her wedding dress or the world. The historical Rufie reportedly answered, "For the dress, because I shall never put it on." However, the character of the song gives a different answer - see below.

The lyrics in Bulgarian (in the original dialect) can be found e.g. at this forum. The participant supplying the text writes, "This is perhaps the only folk song I truly admire and when I listen to it, everything in me bristles up." My opinion is similar. This song in a very simple way gives you the tragedy of being human, of having a self-aware spirit longing for existence but trapped within a mortal body. It is felt even more clearly because of the mentioned abundance of life in spring, and because Rufinka despite her religion does not seem to believe in afterlife.

Here is my (quite rude) attempt of translation:

RUFINKA WAS LYING ILL

Rufinka was lying ill / there in the high mountain.

No one was by her side / only her old mother.

She was telling Rufinka, / "Rufinka my dear daughter,

Are you sorry for your wedding dress, / your dress and your beloved?"

"My dear, my dear mother, / I am not sorry for my dress,

I am sorry for the world, / because spring has come now,

Everything's coming out of earth, / and I shall go into earth.

Mother, call Mizho's Fatma, / let her come, and I'll tell her

To marry my beloved, / to take my wedding dress.

Flashback

I rarely publish photos of my loved ones, because of concerns about their privacy.

But now I just wish to share with you this charming document of happy life that was and will never be again.

The photo was taken about a year ago, presumably by my sister in-law who is absent from it.

Left to right: my late brother, I, his daughter, my sons and my husband.

"Let the memory live again."

Keep breathing

The text below is copied from the blog of a lady writing under the name "On the edge" - from her Feb 1, 2009 post Remembering to breathe. It is strange how different people are the same inside and feel the same.

"There have been times in my life when I have literally forgotten to breathe. I remember the first time it happened. I was 15 and the boy I had loved since I was 4 years old told me he was marrying... I can remember my heart stopped beating and I couldn't catch my breath for a minute. He broke my heart.
Then it happened again when the doctor told my sisters and me that our mother had colon cancer and would not live more than a year or two... She died just three short months later.
The day we got the lab reports back telling us our youngest son had HIV/AIDS, my head started to buzz and all I could think was no, it wasn't true. I had prayed so hard to Allah to make it not true. It couldn't be. There had to be some mistake in the lab work, but it was true.
When he died and they came to tell me, I was calm, but later after all business of the funeral was over, I would remember he was dead at odd moments. It would catch me off guard. I would stop breathing. The ache in my heart was so strong, it squashed all breath out of my lungs. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe off and on... The disbelief that my son was gone forever was almost more than I could bare.
I learned to get through these losses by taking one breath at a time. One minute, then two, pretty soon I was breathing whole blocks of time without reminding myself to keep inhaling and exhaling air. Amazing how resilient the spirit is when faced with the end of the world.
So, if this ever happens to you, just try to remember one breath at a time is all it takes to carry on with the business of life. One breath, then two, then three and soon it just happens on its own. Even if you wished it wouldn't ."

Tragedy

On March 22, I lost my beloved brother George.
He died suddenly at age 41, leaving behind a wife and a 4-year-old daughter.
Please do not leave comments to this post.

Bulgarian police intimidating a blogger, again

The title reminds my 2007 post Bulgarian police intimidating a blogger, and the two cases are distressingly similar. Now, however, we are not seeing the wide publicity and the blogger solidarity we saw in 2007. It seems that Bulgarians are in apathy after seeing in more and more detail the logical consequences of electing a cop to the position of Prime Minister, and after losing hope that EU would not tolerate a Third World situation in a member state. I learned about the present case from Svetla Encheva's blog.
The air of the Bulgarian city of Stara Zagora has been regularly polluted with high doses of sulphur dioxide for years. This pollution even has its own article in the Bulgarian Wikipedia. The presumed pollution sources are two large old-fashioned power stations located nearby. Some people, including blogger Genadi Mihaylov from Stara Zagora, also suspect a local military training square. Residents of the city have protested many times, to no avail.
Below, I am translating Genadi's Jan. 21 post Come to talk at the police station:

"'Hello, Mr. Mihaylov?'
'Yes, I am.'
'Good morning, I am calling you from the Stara Zagora Police Department.'
'Oooo...'
'I am calling you in relation to something that happened. Can you come to us to talk today?'
'Has something serious happened?'
'No, nothing, I just want to talk with you. When can you come here?
'In an hour or two, I suppose.'
(...)
When such a gentleman with extremely polite voice wakes you up, the wake-up is truly effective - like a laxative.
(...)
'Have you used Internet to announce the date of the protest?'
'Yes, in several Web forums.'
'And you have mentioned the word 'eggs'?'
'Yes, but I meant something entirely different. I have not appealed to anybody to spit on the minister...'
'This turned out to be a media speculation... You have attended the (Jan.) 18 protest (for clean air), haven't you?'
'Yes, I have.'
'And you haven't thrown eggs, have you?'
'No, I haven't.'
'And you do not know who has?'
'I only heard about it later from the news. I have no idea.'
'Have you seen any masked boys?'
'Yes, there were some.'
'Do you know who they were?'
'No, I don't. They were masked, how could I recognize them, even if I knew them?'
'Oh... One egg was thrown and the media reported it was raining eggs... so (superiors) called from (the capital) Sofia (emphasis by Genadi - M.M.)... anyway. Write down your full name and what we talked here...'
At that point, that uncle policeman (who was quite heavily built) opened at his computer a folder named 'eggs'. There were two my photos, this and this one. The next file was a text downloaded from the Web. Everything was of course absolutely serious.
I guarantee with my honour that everything I have written above is true.
...
Gas pollution poisoning hundreds of thousands of human beings vs. a bird embryo thrown at the local authorities by a gang of teenagers - nice, really nice.
Welcome to Absurdistan.
********
Of course that was not the entire conversation. In reality, it lasted half an hour, possibly an hour. The reason they called me to the police station was that I had posted the subject (on the forum) by copying the announcement for the protest which was already distributed all around the Web. Apart from the announcement, I really mentioned taking eggs (to the protest), but how could I know that someone would really take (and use) them? The basic idea was whether I could name the culprits. The policeman told me that at least several more people from the same forum had been called for questioning the previous day..."

International Women's Day in Iran, 2010

The text below was written by Saba Sobhi, Iranian freedom-loving university student, and posted on the WIP site. I advise you to read it, no matter what opinion you have of March 8 in general.

"We were returning from university talking with my friends about International Women's Day in last year and in years before, we wondered what should we do this year. On our way before we reach Vali-e-Asr intersection we saw a young girl maybe a high school girl.
Three surly women wearing chador and two bearded men with guns were surrounding her like hyenas surrounding their bait. They were harassing her and the poor innocent girl was horrified; her eyes looking for help.
She was quiet at first but talking with her eyes she asked: what have I done? What have I said?
When we got closer we noticed that they have searched her back and had found some posters with the picture of a woman on it crying in protest.
These street searches are executed in any time of the day and anywhere.
On the posters one could read this poem:
I will strike on the roots of the henchman,
You miserable you are the hay I am a woman!
(Pointing to Ahmadinejad’s calling the brave youths of Iran as hays).
And then;
the Iranian women honor the universal Women’s Day.
One of the Pasdar women (Revolutionary Guards) repeated the sentences and said: what else you wanted to do? This is striking at the structure of the state. To whom are you taking these posters? Do you want to distribute them among the school girls so that they would take into the streets on Women’s Day? Don’t you think we know what you intend to do? People like you have sunk the country into chaos. Moreover this so-called Women’s Day belongs to Moharebs, to seculars, this is an Islamic country and we don’t have a Women’s Day. This is none of your business. Just study your lessons and watch your veil!
People gathered there and protested: let her go. What has she done? What’s your business with her?
But while people were shocked with the act the Pasdars threatened her with gun and made her to get into their car and drove away.
I and my friends, while choked even more with our everyday tears were very sad because we couldn’t do anything for that innocent girl.
The girl was shouting: what have I done? It is only written that I am not hay I am a woman, what’s wrong with that? But her cries and our protest didn’t help.
These scenes are seen a lot in the sad streets of the city. Of course by Women’s Day coming up, street arrests have increased too..."

Norberg's Financial Fiasco in Bulgarian

The cover of Financial Fiasco: left - the original, copied from Amazon.com; right - the Bulgarian translation, copied from the site of the publisher MaK.

After Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, another libertarian book has been published in Bulgarian in my translation: Financial Fiasco, by Swedish historian Johan Norberg (published by the Cato Institute, 2009). I have written about it also in my Bulgarian blog; Bulgarian readers can go directly there.

This book describes and analyses in a way understandable for lay readers the global financial crises which reached its maximum in 2008 but is still reluctant to go away. According to the author (and I agree), the worst in this crisis is that it has caused comeback of the ideas for massive government intervention in economics. Norberg discusses and rejects the arguments for such intervention and defends the free market. To give the reader a taste of Financial Fiasco, I am quoting below parts of the closing Chapter 6 (but the other chapters are also excellent, so read the entire book if you can!).

"What exactly happened? How could overenthusiastic homebuyers in the United States sink the global economy? Many politicians across the world quickly declared that the crisis must have come from inside the financial system, that the reason must have been that market players had been given too free a rein and made toobig mistakes...

Politicians who had never hesitated to claim credit for each one tenth of one percentage point of growth or for each new job created now immediately went to great pains to pin the blame for the downturn on their lack of influence. But did they lack influence?
Critics say that the financial market was completely unregulated. But 12,190 people work full time on regulating the financial market in Washington, D.C., alone—five times as many as in 1960. The big wave of deregulation is said to have begun in 1980. Since then, the cost of the federal agencies in charge of regulating financial operatorshas increased from $725 million to $2.3 billion, adjusted for inflation.

A ‘‘Hoover myth’’ is now developing about President George W. Bush to the effect that he was some kind of a deregulator. However, during his eight years in the White House, new federal regulations were added to the tune of 78,000 pages a year. That is the highest pace in the history of the United States. Bill Clinton reduced the number of federal bureaucrats by 969; Bush increased their number by 91,196. Clinton reduced the cost of financial regulation slightly;Bush increased it by 29 percent...

(Some people) talking about inadequate regulation simply mean that the authorities did not understand the risks in the markets, paid attention to the wrong things, and made reasonable behavior harder and unreasonable behavior easier. Indeed. But that the government often acts incompetently is not news. And that is precisely why it is pointless to compare the real-life market economy, in all its imperfection, with an ideal image of how hypothetical, perfect
authorities would govern the economy. It goes without saying that we must compare it with the real, imperfect authorities that we actually have.
The problem was not that we had too few regulations; on the contrary, we had too many, and above all faulty ones. Some readers may object that by pointing this out, I am mainly quibbling about the meaning of words and fighting an ideological battle. I grant you that you may have a point there. Please feel free to call the problem whatever you like if you have political reasons for doing so, just as long as you are aware of what it consists of. Because what would be fatal would be for slogans about ‘‘insufficient regulation’’ to give rise to the idea that the crisis happened because the government was absent, and that the government must therefore intervene and regulate more to avoid a repeat...

When businesspeople and senior executives do a bad job, they are—eventually, at any rate—thrown out on their ear. When politicians and financial authorities do a bad job, however, they get more power... . After government authorities had helped create the worst financial crisis
in generations, the climate of ideas has now shifted dramatically in the direction of bigger and more active government... Create a crisis, and people will give you more power to fight it. This
could be called the ‘‘Stockholm syndrome’’ of politics—our utter dependence on our hostage taker makes us develop a relationship with him and start taking his side against the rest of the world... As I have shown in this book, today’s crisis is in many ways the result of our failure to break sufficiently free from the 1970s mentality and from the dream of the government as supervisor, monitor, helper, and supporter."

Blaming America by junk science

I have just read the March 4 BBC report Fallujah doctors report rise in birth defects, after following a link from the WIP site. I am quoting a part of it below:

"Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.
The city witnessed fierce fighting in 2004 as US forces carried out a major offensive against insurgents...
Doctors and parents believe the problem is the highly sophisticated weapons the US troops used in Fallujah six years ago.
British-based Iraqi researcher Malik Hamdan told the BBC's World Today programme that doctors in Fallujah were witnessing a "massive unprecedented number" of heart defects, and an increase in the number of nervous system defects.
She said that one doctor in the city had compared data about birth defects from before 2003 - when she saw about one case every two months - with the situation now, when, she saw cases every day.
Ms Hamdan said that based on data from January this year, the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births - 13 times the rate found in Europe..."

A commenter has left the following remark at the WIP site: "Bloody warmongering U.S. commits war crimes with impunity. I am disgusted and ashamed. Sincerely."
I wrote, "Comparing the congenital heart defects incidence in Fallujah to that in Europe, rather than to that in the same city in earlier years, in other Iraqi cities or in other Mideast countries, should immediately raise the red flag. Hoffman et al. (2002) in their article "The incidence of congenital heart disease" (J Am Coll Cardiol, 2002; 39:1890-1900) point out that this incidence varies greatly depending on which defects you count, and that including all of them gives a rate of 75/1,000 live births - only a little less than reported here for Fallujah. Of course there may be true increase in birth defects causally linked to the US weapons; but so far, the data presented remind me the infamous "vaccines cause autism" speculation."
In fact, the 95/1,000 heart defects statistics is the only number cited in the BBC report. All other data are anecdotal, such as how many defects a doctor "saw" before and now (which could be due simply to her now seeing a larger total number of babies, or to her hospital acquiring better diagnostic equipment).
According to Hoffman et al., "there is no evidence for differences in incidence in different countries or times". I would add that even if there are significantly more birth defects in Fallujah than in Europe, the cause could be selective abortion of malformed fetuses after ultrasound diagnosis in Europe, higher prevalence of consanguineous marriages in Iraq, other genetic factors or environmental factors unrelated to the US-led war. Identifying correlation, let alone causation, is serious business. So far, the presented "data" seem to show only that the war has had psychological impact on Fallujah doctors and their patients.
Of course, we cannot exclude true increase in birth defects in Fallujah caused by the 2004 US operation. Weapons are not presumed or expected to be healthy. However, such an increase can be revealed only by research worth this name, preferably followed by publication(s) in peer-reviewed journal(s). I find it unfortunate that the BBC is so happy to embrace any piece of junk science (if not plain propaganda) as long as it makes the USA look bloody and warmongering.

Prison by any other name

The above videos are from the documentary The Bulgarian Guanatanamo, by Bulgarian journalist Ivan Kulekov. It was aired on Jan. 5, 2009 during the Slavi's Show on BTV Channel. I learned about the documentary and these videos from Svetla Encheva's post The Bulgarian Guantanamo - the silence of media and bloggers. If you are a person concerned with human rights in the EU, I strongly advise you to watch the videos. The documentary highlights the arbitrary detenion of foreigners, and human rights problems in Bulgaria are solved either by strong outside pressure or not at all. Most of what is said is not in English, so for readers who speak no Bulgarian, and also for those whose connection does not allow watching videos on the Web, I am providing below a sort of a transcript.

In the beginning of the first video, the caption "Slavi's Show" appears. The host of this TV show, Slavi Trifonov (bald, with glasses, in a suit), introduces Ivan Kulekov (with grey hair, in black jacket and black T-shirt). Kulekov talks about documentary he has made: "In a beautifully-looking from outside building in the Busmanci district of Sofia, people are kept imprisoned on an order by the secret services. These are people whose visas and identity documents are lost or expired, or who are in Bulgaria illegally, or are concerned a threat to national security. In this facility, the laws valid for Bulgarian citizens are not valid."

Then the documentary begins. A label appears, "Ministry of Interior, Immigration Directorate". The camera moves backwards and shows a tall fence with barbed wire on top. Kulekov's voice-over clarifies that this is the so-called Home for temporary accommodation of foreigners (Bulg. Dom za vremenno nastanyavane na chuzhdentsi) in the district of Busmanci.

We see a room overcrowded with men. One of them complains that the room is kept locked all night, then is unlocked at 7 AM, but only for a short time. The inmates want to urinate and defecate, they are told to urinate in a bottle. The strain leads to quarrels and even fights.

The camera shows a grey-haired man in a suit - Yotko Andreev, the director of the home. He says that there are foreigners from many countries in the home and the personnel tries to distribute them in rooms in a way minimizing the strain between them, but these efforts are not always successful.

A young black-haired inmate, Javed Nuri, says, "I have seen many poor countries, poor not economically but legally, yet I have nowhere else experienced such a poor law - to be imprisoned together with people who have served sentences for murder, and with sick people."

The camera shows a room overcrowded with men. Andreev admits that in the corresponding institutions in Belgium there are 2-4 people in a room and it is supplied with running water and toilet, while in his Home there are 10-18 people in a room with no water and toilet.

An old woman with glasses says in Russian that she has been caught at the airport with a false Lithuanian passport. Kulekov asks her whether she had known it was false and she answers, "Yes, I bought it". The camera shows two younger women flanking her, each hugging a child; one of them is wearing a headscarf. The Russian woman complains that there are no conditions in the Home. Asked what conditions she had expected, she answers, "(I wish) at least that they give people toilet paper!"

The camera shows a dark-haired woman - Valeria Ilareva, a lawyer. She says, "These are people who are de facto banned from work, who cannot even leave our country. There are many persons from the former Soviet Union who now have nowhere to return - no country would accept them. There is a man who have been kept in Busmanci for 3 years and has now been detained there for a second time. They have nowhere to deport him to, he has no country to return. He has come to Bulgaria back in the days when there was Soviet Union."

Andreev says, "Another group of foreigners who are sent to the Home are those who have served prison sentences but owe money to Bulgarian government. Until their cases are clarified, we keep them in the Home."

A black, bald man says in English, "Even if we have offended and maybe we have no documents to be in the country, at least they could listen to us and consider us. Now, we are here for almost one year. I came legally with a visa but the visa expired, so I cannot go back to my country. That is why I am here, and most of people are here."

A man from Syria (I think, the same who complained from the locked room) says, "I am here because my passport expired." Asked for how long he has lived in Bulgaria, he answers, "For 15 years. Married, with four children."

The camera shows him behind a window with bars, holding two of the children - boys who look about 3 and 1 year old, the younger one holding a rattle. Then we see four children in a room. I am not sure whether they are all his children - they seem too close in age to be from one family. They are three boys and a girl, all look younger than 5. There are matresses and toys scattered on the floor. A toddler is playing with a large cardbox, going into and out of it.

Then a headscarved woman talkes, with a 5-6-year old boy by her side. I cannot say whether she is the Syrian man's wife, and whether she is the same whom we saw earlier next to the Russian woman. She says in English, "No, I don't know how much I will stay here. Why we are here... We have children here. They want to help us, I see. They make a room for the children, they ask "What do you want?", they give clothes now. But I don't know. May be (to) live here (is) nice, the best for our (children?), I don't know." A toddler waves his rattle to the camera.

A middle-aged man - Dr. Ibrahim Dogmush, asks, "What is the fault of this child, the one you have photographed, to be in prison?"

The camera shows Nuri again. Kulekov's voice over, "Motivated by desparation and as a sign of protest against his arbitrary detention by the secret services, on Aug. 24, 2006 Javed Nuri covered himself in bedsheets and set himself on fire."

Nuri continues the tale himself, "I decided that death is better than living in such suffering. The deputy director of Busmanci came and said, "We cannot forget (?) people who have set themselves on fire." And then they threw me into the isolator. I was injured, my legs were black. It was called Three days had passed from my surgery and they threw me into that room without a bed, without bedsheets. To throw there an ill person - this doesn't happen even at Guantanamo."

The camera shows a man behind bars; his name is Tariq Adilsami. He talks in English.

"Where do you come from?", Kulekov asks.

"Palestine."

"Why are you here?"

"Because I don't have documents... I do not know why they brought me here. I have (made) no problems, I do not have any problems here. They keep me here for more than a month. Why?"

"Why did you choose to come to Bulgaria?"

"Somebody told me Bulgaria is a country in Europe."

Here, the first video ends and the second one begins.

"For how long will you stay here?"

"I don't know. People don't give me how long time I'll spend here, don't speak with me... I want my rights here, in Bulgaria. I want my rights, but they don't give me my rights."

"Have you a lawyer?"

"I speak with somebody for a lawyer, but I'm waiting now for months and no one comes to see me."

Andreev: "The idea is not to keep the person long in this building, but to achieve the (authorities's) goals, to talk with the foreigner in the meantime (while he is detained) so that he realizes he has made a mistake."

Ilareva: "In countries that have rule of law, it provides efficient guarantees against abuse of power. Decisions are not left to the discretion of those who hold power, but must be inside clear frames given by the law."

Andreev: "The case with Sid Kazdoev, who identifies himself as a Chechen, is very sensitive for our Home. He has been kept at Block No. 3 (presumably a punitive isolator - M.M.) for a long period. I have been Director of this Home for 3 months (and I cannot be responsible for what has happened before). The reason to keep Kazdoev in this block for so long is that my predecessor has decided so. He thought it was best for security of other inmates and of Kazdoev himself to hold him there for a longer time. (Kulekov asks for how long.) More than 7 months.

Ilareva reminds that the maximum length of isolation as a disciplinary measure in prisons is 14 days.

A young black man with glasses in an orange jacket, whose name is Oladotun Ibitui, says, "They say it is not a prison, but unfortunately it is a prison. I was ready for everything, even to die there. Because they do not tell you for how long they will keep you there."

Ilareva: "In Spain, illegal immigrants cannot be detained for more than 40 days."

A middle-aged black man with a blue hat named Qassim Usi Machanoh, in a very muserable shelter: "I have been in Busmanci for 2 years and 5 months... as a prisoner, and worse than a prisoner. I have been here for a year and a half. I have no right to work, no right at anything... No help from anywhere. Should I become a thief? (Asked whether he believes) I used to believe, I don't know anymore... I lose my faith... I was born Muslim but I realized that everybody has the right to choose his religion. I don't know anymore whether I am a Muslim or a Christian. I go to churches, I go everywhere, people pray to one and the same God..."

Ibitui again: "I was there for 1 year and 4 months. The authorities only waited until I turned 18 to say that I was illegal, have no right to live in Bulgaria and must go back to the monkeys in Africa. "We will send you back to Africa where the monkeys are." In my country - Nigeria, there are 1500 Bulgarians."

Nuri: "If somebody is a threat for national security, he must be charged. Evidence must be presented, and he must be tried. And then go to prison, not to a Home for temporary accommodation of foreigners."

Ibitui: "My father - what happened to him? A healthy man, never had any problems, never complained of anything. They kept him detained for 7 months. Then the doctor measured high blood pressure. They did not want him to die at their hands, so they released him. They released him at the 8th month, and he died at the 9th month. One month later, a Syrian man died at their hands."

Andreev (apparently commenting the Syrian's death): "It was the result of (stomach) ulcer hemorrhage - a natural death."

A bearded man named Ahmed Bethaush talking from behind bars in English, "I am here because I am ill. This is a hospital. I have been here for 4 months, because I don't have money to go to my country..."

"Have you made any offence?"

"No, I have done nothing, just don't have any documents."

"For how long will you stay in Busmanci?"

"One year, two years..."

"Why did you escape from Algeria?"

"I need to go to Algeria. I like Algeria. I speak to the boss that I need to go to Algeria. But they say there is no plane or no money, I don't know... This is a problem of Busmanci."

Ilareva: "It is not about the Arabs at all. It is about basic human rights to which every human beings is entitled just because of the fact of being human. Regardless of whether he has documents or not, to what religion or nationality he belongs... If we allow foreigners to be detained withour court, maybe in the near future the same will happen to Bulgarian citizens."

Nuri: "The word "dom" (home) is a nice word, everybody wants to be at home, but for me it now means things so terrible that I do not want to remember them, so I would wish never to hear this word again."

The last footage from the Busmanci institution is the face of a toddler looking close at the camera.

Closing words of Kulekov: "Dear viewers, it turns out it is legal to imprison somebody just because he has contracted tuberculosis. Everything happening at Busmanci is legal. It is legal to send a person behind bars just because one or two secret service officers have suggested so, and to keep him imprisoned for years. It is legal to keep immigrants and refugees for 15-20 years without permit to work and study because buraucrats have not solved their cases. Bulgaria is the only European country without provision for amnesty of immigrants, but this is legal here. There are such antihuman laws in action."

Update Feb. 20: Svetla Encheva reports that the inmates in Busmanci are now protesting, at least 25 of them are on hunger strike. Her Feb. 19 post includes a video showing the protest from outside. Allegations of corruptions are discussed - foreigners claim to have been told that they must give bribes to obtain favourable decision on their status, identical cases are solved differently and nobody explains why.

Voice of a Haitian

Rose-Anne Clermont is a German journalist and blogger of Haitian origin. She contributes to Women's International Perspective and writes a blog titled Currents Between Shores. I like very much her writing and her personality, though we disagree on most issues. I advise you to visit her blog for an update about Haiti. Below I am copying most of her Jan. 13 post Helping Haiti:

"As many of you know, my mother runs a center for homeless boys in Jacmel, Haiti, my father's hometown. My mother's hometown, Port-au-Prince, lies in rubble... We are still awaiting news from the Clermont Center and we're hardly comforted by the devastating scenes of leveled buildings, half buried people and eerie absence of a casualty and mortality count.
But I, and I encourage those of you who would like to help, am trying not to dwell on the over abundance of negativity, which runs in a loop whenever mainstream news sources focus on Haiti: "one of the poorest countries in the world, people eat mud cakes, there was no infrastructure to begin with, hurricanes have already left the country crippled"... alright already.
Let's move forward. Let's move something.
For starters, you can help (whether it's donating money or supplies or time).
All major international relief organizations such as UNICEF... will be contributing to the relief effort. But remember also Doctors Without Borders, The Clermont Center for Homeless Adolescents and Yele... "Men anpil chay pa lou." Many hands make the load lighter."

Two days later, Rose-Anne wrote that, fortunately, boys and staff at the Clermont Center are safe, though the building is damaged.

In Bangladesh, women must be virtuous, not alive

Below, I am copying a part of the article A Hidden Truth Behind Climate Change, by Riane Eisler.

"Studies show that women are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters. One heart-rending study of a Bangladesh flash flood found that 90 percent of casualties were female. Many factors contributed to this high casualty rate which were all avoidable. A woman's role in this Southeast Asian nation, as in most of the Middle East and parts of Africa, is one of dependency - so of course, these Bangladeshi women were not taught to swim. But perhaps the most important factor was that they lived and died in a culture where women are so rigidly controlled that they aren't permitted to leave their homes without being accompanied by a male family member. When the flash flood occurred, they sadly stayed and drowned."

Happy New Year 2010 to Enercon

Enercon E-112 prototype with two REpower 5M prototypes at Cuxhaven test field (image cropped from Wikipedia).

Our likes and dislikes may have different bases - some are rational, some are not. My pro-americanism, which is no secret for those who know or read me, is rational. It is based on what the USA do and don't do. And as soon as they do things that seem to me bad, I will attack them. I have already done this (and I intend to do it again) in relation to the Judge Rotenberg Center. This will also be a fiercely anti-American post, featuring another event.

Let me begin with a quote from Wikipedia:

"Enercon GmbH, based in Aurich, Northern Germany, is the third-largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world and has been the market leader in Germany for several years... Enercon was prohibited from exporting their wind turbines to the US until 2010 [1] due to alleged infringement of U.S. Patent 5,083,039 [2]. Recently a cross patent agreement was agreed with its competitor General Electric. Enercon claims their intellectual property was stolen by Kenetech (US Windpower, Inc.) and patented in the US before they could do so. Kenetech made similar claims against Enercon. However, solid evidence has been presented that shows there was espionage against Enercon... According to a National Security Agency employee, detailed information concerning Enercon was passed on to Kenetech via ECHELON.[1][3] According to this report, the aim of the espionage against Enercon was the forwarding of details of Wobbens wind wheel to a US firm. The consequence was that the US firm patents the wind wheel before Wobben, resulting in a breach of patent rights."

So US intelligence agencies devoted their time, resources and infrastructure to intellectual property theft and then the US court issued a verdict against the victim company, inflicting more damages on it. Need I comment this disgusting abuse of power? I think not. I wonder, however, what US people are thinking about this. Are they aware? Do they think that "national interests" justify everything? If so, then Americans will lose their moral superiority over their enemies. Do they worry that preoccupation of US intelligence agents with theft may jeopardize national security? I would worry about this.

Despite stealing innovations it could not develop itself, Kenetech company did not do well. Maybe evil deeds are indeed punished by God, as religious people claim, or bring bad luck, as superstitious people say. Anyway, Kenetech went bankrupt as early as 1996. Here are some relevant quotes from the European Tribune forum:

"Moon also references why Enercon turbines, the best in the world, are not available in the US. And that's only the surface of the sordid story. I fought Kenetech most of my career, because of precisely these kinds of actions. Their bankruptcy was a vindication of sorts for me personally, and my credibility in the industry. In actuality, GE now holds the old Kenetech patents, which expire in 2010, and Enercon has already made a royalty deal with them. But for political reasons, they have no wish to do business in the US... As someone formerly involved in the Aerospace industry, (I know that) this is standard practice for US firms and the US government. That's why I tend to make with the hollow laughing at a lot of the claims about "allies" and US innovation and various other topics."

This story touches me even more because of my soft spot for alternative energy. As I wrote once on Anglo-Libyan's blog, "at high school, I used to go to the university library and read books and articles about photosynthesis. I wanted to construct a chlorophyll-based solar battery. Such plans to save the world, the details varying according to personal areas of interest, seem to be usual at that age - though rarely talked about :-)." Several books on alternative energy sources (including wind power) bought at that time can still be found in my mother's library - the usual location for the books of a married woman.

In the summer of 1996, I saw live for the first time wind turbines, and they must have been Enercon's. I was on my way to my first (and only so far) international congress with several other Bulgarians, our participation being made possible by the enormous generosity of the German host. Soon after we crossed the Czech-German border, a colleague who had travelled the same path before said to me, "Look through the window and you'll soon see three wind turbines". And indeed, after a short time their beautiful giant silhouettes appeared in the blue evening sky, like something out of this world.

Later, I saw wind turbines on Bulgarian land. On our way to the sea resort town of Primorsko (described in my Aug. 2, 2006 post), we spotted several turbines near Sliven, a city famous for its winds. We had no sea vacation the following year because our younger son was still a baby. The next year (2008), we put both children in the car and set out for Primorsko, again, despite our slight dislike for its over-development. As we approached Sliven, I kept my eyes open for the wind turbines. However, I saw only one! Being a malignant pessimist, I immediately started thinking that something terrible had happened to the rest. But this was not the case. Several minutes later, the old group of turbines appeared in sight; it turned out that I had not remembered their proper location and the lonely turbine we had seen first was in fact a new addition. As we passed near them, I read the inscription "Enercon" on them. A year later, I first heard about the espionage story from the Explorer TV channel.

Now, as 2010 has arrived, I am glad that the ban that should never have been imposed is to expire. I wish more profits and less troubles to Enercon owners and employees. Will there be any reaction from the USA? Ordinary Americans could tell the story to those who don't know it yet and write about it in their blogs. Posslibly also e-mail their representatives in Congress that US security agencies should protect Americans from their enemies, rather than rob other countries. And President Barack Obama could welcome Enercon on US soil and say how sorry he is for what happened. After all, he is good at speeches (if not at anything else) and is always happy when he can bash his country.

Manuscript troubles

Why is it that the demands and problems presented by a co-author are always inversely proportional to his actual contribution to the work?
(Don't ask me about the events behind this post.)

Playing the guilt game

A year ago, Prometheus published a post titled How they do the voodoo that they do so well - Part 2 ("they" are the alternative medicine practitioners). I am quoting it below:

"Eventually, even the most successful, charismatic “alternative” practitioner will have a patient who doesn’t improve enough... For those situations, there are a number of strategies that are typically used. (The first one is,) Did you follow my instructions to the letter? One of the oldest dodges in the “alternative” medicine “biz” is to prescribe a regimen of treatment that is too complicated for most patients to follow. If they get better (by chance), then it was due to the “treatment” – if they don’t get better….well, they didn’t follow all of the instructions exactly, did they?"

I wish to add that, unfortunately, some real doctors also like playing the guilt game and blaming any unfortunate outcome on the patient's non-compliance. Even when - especially when - the neglected bit of medical advice has been backed by about as much evidence as the typical alt-med "treatment".
(The events that inspired this post are too personal to be revealed here.)

Reflections on Megrahi's release

Because I am too busy these days, most of the posts I wish to write never see the light of day. However, this particular one was called to life by Highlander's post Donkeys Vs People: The Media Circus. After reading it, I immediately decided to leave aside all other matters that can be postponed and write down my thoughts.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is a Libyan intelligence officer who had become the sole convict for the 1988 bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 but was "freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government on 20 August 2009 following reports that he had terminal prostate cancer and had less than three months to live". In order to be freed, Megrahi had to drop his appeal.
The release made unhappy just about everybody. Most victims' families, US government and many ordinary Westerners are outraged that the convict was allowed to return home as a free man and received a hero's welcome, while most Libyans seem indignant because he is still considered guilty and his appeal will never be processed.
The Lockerbie bombing set a sad record in the number of civilians killed in a single terror act - 270. As far as I know, the previous record was in the distant 1925 - the St. Nedelya Church bombing in Bulgaria, by communist terrorists. So Lockerbie opened a new era in the history of terror and is undoubtedly very important. However, I must admit that I have never made efforts to be very informed about it. The details of the case are too far from my field of competence, and the information available in public space has been from the beginning too tainted with unsubstantiated guessing and apparent deliberate disinformation to be useful.
If you ask me what I think of Mr. Megrahi's guilt (or lack of it), I'll frankly say that I don't know. As I recently wrote on Anglo's blog, "I generally trust British justice, and I surely don't believe the fancy conspiracy theories circulated around. However, a miscarriage of justice can always happen, especially when a horrible crime is committed and the public insists to have somebody - anybody - punished". I would add that Britain has had sad precedents in convicting innocents after large-scale terror acts - the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. Indeed, their cases were examples of inquisitional-type justice relying heavily on confessions, while Megrahi never confessed anything. However, the little I have read about his case has left in me the impression that linking forensic evidence to him depended too much on the testimony of a single person, some shopkeeper from Malta. While this does not prove Megrahi's innocence in any way, it makes me doubt that his guilt has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt. But again, I don't know the details of the case even to the degree that has been released to the public, and so I may be wrong.
At some time after Megrahi's conviction in 2001, new arguments for his innocence began to be circulated in public space. They can be found on the Web very easily, so forgive me for not linking to them. I just don't wish to, because they do not sound to me believable at all, but rather look like a smokescreen. Briefly, it is claimed that Megrahi has been framed by CIA in order to shield the real perpetrators Iran and Syria, because Libya allegedly was a more convenient target than them. Let me quote what I wrote two years ago on Highlander's blog: "I won't bet my hand that Al-M. is innocent. If he is, I'll think this is despite the "new evidence" disputed now in all media, not because of it. This "evidence" has all the elements of the most persistent Western myths of recent time: the big bad USA deliberately (rather than by honest mistake) going after those innocents who are most suitable targets for the moment, retired CIA officers becoming whistleblowers (this agency's retirement rules definitely need scrutiny) and a conspiracy which managed to remain secret for many years despite involving dozens of people of all sorts. Not that it is impossible. No laws of physics forbid it. But it is highly unlikely. Besides, if it happened this way, why didn't CIA plant evidence also against Al-M.'s co-defendant and buy more reliable witnesses?We must keep in mind that European culture is tolerant to evil. This helps explain many things about Europe. E.g. the abolition of death penalty. I was all for it. It was said to me and others that death penalty isn't needed to protect the society from a murderer, because if the murder is a really grisly one (or more than one), he will be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. And now, after we have abolished death penalty, we are said that no European country has life imprisonment without parole. Letting a murderer walk free after several years in prison is at the basis of today's European psyche. People are conditioned to perceive this as normal. So give people the benefit of the doubt, but beware evil. Don't count on anybody else to stop it. There is nobody."
I still have mixed thoughts about death penalty. I am concerned about the innocents that will inevitably be wrongly convicted from time to time, I worry about the reflections of the death sentence on those who pronounce and execute it, and I am just disgusted by the idea of cold-bloodedly taking the life of a person unable to defend himself. However, I must admit that my opponents were right in one thing - that abolition of death penalty will allow release of any convict as soon as it becomes politically advantageous and the public is looking aside. In Megrahi's case, I fear how easy it turned to make witnesses withdraw their testimony or bring 3rd people to testify that they have bribed the witnesses; and because, unlike Bulgaria, it is (yet) not possible to make forensic evidence in Britain disappear, then you can find a big-mouthed former CIA employee admitting that he has planted it. Don't you share my fear that these tools have the power to make anybody immune to justice?
If you ask why I think somebody in the West would be interested in rescuing Megrahi from the grip of justice, I would answer that the urge to deal with Libya can quite create such interests. First, after Bulgaria joined EU in early 2007, this created solidarity links between it and older EU members. Soon, rumours started that the Bulgarian medics could be traded to Megrahi. If Highlander, the target reader of this post, has endured to this point, I would ask her to look at this 2007 Standart News report titled Saif al-Islam: There Is a Link Between Megrahi and the Nurses. Let me quote a little from it: "There is a connection between the cases of Lockerby bomber's - the Libyan Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi - and the Bulgarian nurses, said in his latest interview the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi Saif al-Islam for the French Le Mond. "We made a link between the cases. We also agreed to discuss the issue on a bilateral level - between Libya and Great Britain. Formerly, it was insisted that this discussion should be held on a broadly European level," he added."
I would not risk to guess whether such "agreement" really existed or not. However, the common rule in deals of this sort is that they are automatically invalidated if one of the sides makes them public. So, the fact is that our medics were allowed to return while Megrahi remained in prison. However, these days we heard again from Mr. al-Islam. Let me quote the Telegraph from Aug. 21: "Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif, claimed the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, was linked to trade deals between Britain and Libya." Understandably, these statements are of little help in convincing Westerners that Megrahi and Libya had no role in the Lockerbie bombing. Personally, during the years of the HIV trial I have heard Mr. al-Islam make and then retract so many conflicting statements without a shadow of embarassment that I have stopped taking him seriously a long time ago. The only rational explanation of his behaviour that I can figure out is that he intends to perplex the stupid Western infidels and show them that their brains are absolutely useless in understanding the world.
At the end of her post, Highlander writes, "My biggest disappointment is that now that the documents have been sealed forever we will never know what really happened on the ill fated Pan Am flight..." I envy her optimism that if the appeal hadn't been dropped, we would know what really happened. However, I still hope that some day the truth may come out. There is a broad agreement that the Lockerbie bombing was state-sponsored (be it Libya or another state). So there is still chance that truth will emerge one day from the archives of the state perpetrator. This happened in the case of assassinated Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov (no relation to me). After 1989, although the archives of our Communist security services were rigourously cleared, they still revealed evidence that Markov's murder was Bulgaria's deed.
My general impression from Highlander's post is that she has fallen in the trap of equating her homeland and people with the regime, a trap too often encountered by those living under rulers similar to Qadafi. E.g. she refers to Libyan authorities that had convicted the Bulgarian medics as "those 'evil' Arabs" (from Western point of view). I guess many other Libyans are in a similar mood. Therefore, I wish to end my post with a quote from the above mentioned Anglo's post. I am finding the quoted text so important that I'll mark it in bold:
"At the end of the day, whether he did this crime or not, Al-Megrahi was working for the Libyan intelligence and I do know from people that worked for Libyan Airlines in the 1980s that he was feared and was involved in many nasty acts against Libyans, this does not make him into a hero..."

More about the ship Rudnicar and captain Gorbatenko

In my June 4 post The Rudnicar mission, I had written about the two 1939 voyages of the ship Rudnicar under the command of Anton Prudkin. The Bulgarian Jew Baruh Konfino had organized them to bring Jewish refugees from Bulgaria to Palestine. Reader Chaim left the following comment:

"Many thanks for your article regarding Rudnichar. I was among the fortunate ones to be on it. I was 2 years old then. My parents told me that they came to shore of Palestine in barges. We arrived in January 1940. What I understand is that it was the 4th voyage of the Rudnichar. I wish to know from what port did it sail and who was the captain. This link reports on 3rd voyage."

At the Air Group 2000 site, I found information about the later Rudnicar voyages (after Prudkin's resignation). It is supplied by Atanas Panayotov, quoting the German professor Jurgen Rohwer. I'd immediately refer the Bulgarian reader to this site, and here I'll translate the relevant parts of the text. After the first two voyages under Prudkin's command, the Rudnicar made two more with Grigoriy (Grigor) Gorbatenko as captain.

"In Tel Aviv, our team met and talked with Baruh Konfino's younger son, Itzhak Konfino... He was certain that his father had never approved hiring Anton Prudkin as captain and fully trusted captain Gorbatenko, under whose command Struma perished... The captain's exceptional professional skills are illustrated by what happened on Nov. 7, 1939 (during the third voyage of the ship - M.M.). The Rudnicar and the Cooperator dragged by it found themselves in a heavy storm and only the navigation expertise of Gorbatenko allowed the crew to bring successfully the two ships back to the port of the Rodos Island for emergency repair...
The fourth voyage of the Rudnicar took place from Dec. 1, 1939 to Jan. 7, 1940, between the ports of Varna, Sulina and again Varna and then to Palestine. The passengers were approximately 500..."

This voyage brought my reader, then a young child, and his parents to Palestine. It was the last voyage of the ship bringing Jewish refugees to Palestine. Shortly after it, the Rudnicar was rented by a German company to be used as a cargo ship. As mentioned in my earlier post, its end came in 1942 because of captain's error.
"It is difficult to say why Dr. Konfino did not appoint Gorbatenko as captain of Salvador. The experienced navigator would have prevented the tragedy of Dec. 14, 1940, when 204 passengers, including 66 children, perished. Itzhak Konfino claims that his father had virtually no part in organizing Salvador's voyage, which explains Gorbatenko's absence from this ship." (In my earlier post, another explanation is given - that "no one serious captain agreed to take its command because everybody feared that the passengers and the crew were doomed"; however, the source used there is apparently biased against Konfino, so I would not judge without additional information.)
The Air Group 2000 site then describes the fatal voyage of Struma. According to it, Turkish authorities were not happy with the evacuation of European Jews to Palestine through Turkish waters, but did not want to openly take measures to stop it. Instead, they deliberately ordered Struma to spend more and more days in a limbo, relying on the Soviet submarines known to lurk in this region to do the dirty job. These submarines considered all ships in sight as German and had submerged the Turkish ship Chankaya only days before Struma and almost at the same spot.
Captain Gorbatenko is described by sources as "a Bulgarian of Russian origin". I suppose that he was an ethnic Bulgarian who had no Bulgarian citizenship, because he wasn't treated by the authorities the same way as the other perished Bulgarian crew members. Death certificates were issued to their families but not to Gorbatenko's family. His relations awaited the document for decades.
Struma, "the Bulgarian Titanic" as Panayotov calls it, and the people on its board - passengers and crew, are all but forgotten in Bulgaria. However, the memory is kept in Israel. The source mentions that Dr. Sonya Levi, of Bulgarian Jewish origin and researcher at the Yad Vashem memorial complex in Jerusalem, helped to find the names of Bulgarian crew members. They are:
Grigor Timofeev Gorbatenko, Lazar Ivanov Dikov, Damyan Stoyanov and Osep Garabedov.

Bulgarian resisting corruption is punished by authorities

Architect Georgi Yanev (not to be confused with demagogue politician Yane Yanev) is well known in Bulgaria as practically the only ordinary citizen who tried to fight the massive corruption in the country. First, I am translating part of the Mediapool article Agricultural minister "forgave" architect Yanev for alleging corruption (Feb. 6, 2008), changing the order of some sequences for clarity:
"Architect Georgi Yanev filed a complaint about a 50,000 leva (EUR 25,000) bribe asked from him by two officials from the Republican Road Infrastructure Fund. Last week, a journalist asked him why he, wanting to change the statute of a piece of land, preferred to bypass the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and turn to the road administration. (Yanev) answered that "corruption in the Agricultural ministry is a nightmare". Immediately after that, (agricultural) Minister Nihat Kabil gave him a deadline until Feb. 5 (i.e. 24 hours - M.M.) to either prove or retract his words. "If I do not receive an apology, I will report (Yanev) to the Prosecutor General for libel against a government institution," Kabil threatened... Architect Yanev publicly apologized to the agricultural minister for "having delivered in public space, in a moment of stress, allegations for corruption that cannot be proved". The Minister of Agriculture accepted the apology..."
The next translation is from the June 13, 2009 article "Authorities deceived the architect whose courage they had awarded," by A. Aleksandrov in Sega daily:
"The case with the corrupted officials in the road fund will discourage even the most intrepid from testifying against corruption... The story began in 2008 when after a complaint by architect Georgi Yanev two officials from the road agency were arrested for demanding a bribe of 50,000 leva in order to manage quick acceptance of his project. The arrest of the employees as they were receiving the first half of the bribe was made in a very public way. From the 25,000 leva, 10,000 belonged to the architect and 15,000 to the police. This happened just shortly before one of the important European Commission reports warning that the European money for Bulgaria would be stopped (unless corruption is fought)... The (previous) government several times pointed this story out to Brussels as an example of successful anti-corruption measures. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecution awarded Yanev... Then-Interior Minister Rumen Petkov and Prosecutor General Boris Velchev boasted and repeated many times that they need more citizens like him...
What a surprise when it turned out that the same authorities, after forcing the architect to give his own 10,000 leva to be labeled for proving the corruption, has no intention to give the money back to him. In the beginning, we were told that the money in question was forensic evidence and could be returned only after the case had to pass through the court... Here you see the first insanity - to charge somebody with corruption, Bulgarian authorities represented by the police and the prosecution take money from the victim of the crime for labeling... Is it so impossible to take the money from the Bulgarian National Bank and later return it back there?... Police and prosecution do the same with victims of telephone frauds - those who complain are forced to give their own money for labeling. In other cases, again under the pretext of "keeping forensic evidence", authorities were holding stolen and then found cars for years... It turns out that crime victims become victims of the state as well.
However, this wasn't everything in the case of the architect. Suddenly tax authorities remebered that he owed them 4,000 leva. They even blocked his bank account, and he had no money to pay because another government institution was holding his 10,000 leva...
In the last verdict sentencing the two accused officials from the road fund (one of them got 4 years, and the other who actually took the money just a suspended sentence - M.M.), the court surprisingly ordered confiscation of the money in question. It explained that the behaviour of the witness Yanev deserved condemnation because the project presented by him for approval "had apparent flaws". Therefore, by giving the sum he actually asked the accused for assistance and they just agreed..."
According to a today's report in Trud daily, those same judges said in their verdict that Yanev should be charged as co-defendant for giving the money.
To sum up, what is the result of being a good citizen, speaking out about corruption and helping law enforcement agencies to charge corrupted officials? - A fine of EUR 5,000, the danger of being prosecuted plus the humiliation of a forced apology to a notoriously corrupted minister.
To me, the most disturbing thing in the story is that back in 2008, when it was first made public, a number of journalists and analyzers immediately predicted that Yanev would be forced to pay a high price for his courage and honesty.
You can read about the case in English at the Frog News site, here and here.