Better late than never

(Firework image from Wikimedia.)

Five and a half years ago, a colleague of mine did something which should have costed him the job - or at least most people around him, myself included, thought so.

He was ordered to stop teaching "until the case is clarified", but continued to receive his paychecks while we were doing his work.

With time, he was only becoming more useless and arrogant.

Yesterday, the case was finally clarified and his contract was terminated. The spirits at my workplace are high, we are literally celebrating. Few things bring as much relief and joy as getting rid of toxic people.

Bad countries persecute atheists

It is well known that Muslim-majority countries have a problem with atheists, particularly with those who have been Muslims and have renounced their faith. It is easily understandable. As Islamist theologian Yusuf al-Qaradawi candidly stated in an Al-Jazeera show in 2013, the death penalty for those who leave Islam has been a necessity since the 15th century, because "if they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment Islam wouldn't exist today".

Of course, the tendency can be observed in a pure form in Saudi Arabia. Last November, the Palestinian poet and artist Ashraf Fayadh (35) was sentenced to death for renouncing Islam. As the Guardian reports, Mr. Fayadh "was originally sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes by the general court in Abha, a city in the south-west of the ultraconservative kingdom, in May 2014. But after his appeal was dismissed he was retried earlier this month and a new panel of judges ruled that his repentance did not prevent his execution." This sinister pattern of giving a severe sentence to an innocent person and then replacing it with an even more severe one after appeal is already familiar to us from the cases of Raif Badawi and his lawyer Waleed Abulkhair, both still in prison.

What about rogue non-Muslim countries such as Russia? One wouldn't expect persecution of atheists there. The traditional religion in Russia is Orthodox Christianity. The Christian establishment has been made unable to deal with atheists a long time ago (which of course has led to further secularization of Christian societies and to the decision of the likes of al-Qaradawi not to allow the same process in Muslim societies). Moreover, after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Russia was made officially atheistic and its subjects could get in serious trouble just for owning a Bible.

However, non-democratic countries are notorious for easily switching from one extremity to its exact opposite. Putin's Russia has been demonstrating Orthodox fanaticism for some time, and this should not be dismissed as mere posturing. Christopher Miller reports in Mashable:

"Russian Viktor Krasnov, 38, could be jailed over an Internet exchange with two strangers in an online community during which he said that God doesn't exist. 

On Wednesday, Krasnov appeared in court in the southern city of Stavropol, where he stands accused of violating a 2013 law that made it a crime to offend the sentiments of religious people, news site Meduza reported. Lawmakers introduced the ban after Pussy Riot's infamous punk protest inside a Moscow cathedral and the trial that followed. If convicted, Krasnov could be sentenced to one year in a Russian prison. 

During the exchange in question, which occurred on the Russian social network Vkontakte (In Contact) in October 2014, Krasnov wrote, "There is no God"... Krasnov also used some derogatory words to describe Jews and called the Bible a "collection of Jewish fairy tales." But he's not in trouble with the law for those remarks. 

While Krasnov wrote the comments in 2014, charges were only brought against him in early 2015, and he didn't learn of them until April 2015, Meduza reported. Later, Krasnov was forced to spend a month in a psychiatric facility, where doctors observed his mental state, the MediaZona news site reported..."

It seems that in today's world, atheists are among the first groups of people to be targeted by rogue regimes, like miner's canaries.

Planned Parenthood sucks

My previous post was a condemnation of a deadly terrorist attack against Planned Parenthood. When something like this happens, the reflex of the well-meaning bystander is to elevate the target to hero status. Unfortunately, life has made me cynical and I am now careful to make people my heroes, particularly if they are still alive. Being in the victim position is no virtue in itself, and if you are too quick to give someone the ethical high ground, this person or group is more than likely to disappoint you the next day by acting like a jerk.

Below, I am copying most of Jerry Coyne's post Planned Parenthood tells HIV-positive youth it’s okay to keep their status secret from sex partners:

"Over at the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) site, you can find a description and a free download of their booklet, Healthy, Happy and Hot: A Young Person’s Guide to their Rights, Sexuality, and Living with HIV. And in that booklet you will find the advice that it’s up to infected people themselves whether or not to tell their partner. While the booklet does give good advice how to have sex if you’re HIV positive, it also asserts that people have a right to decide whether or not to disclose your status, and that apparently goes for your sex partners as well.

Here are some screenshots from that booklet:

 


When you share your HIV status. In other words, you don’t have to share your HIV status with your partner; it’s your right not to. There’s no advice I can find that you should and must share your status with those partners.



This is odious, for regardless of the kind of sex you have with your partners, there’s always a finite chance of infecting them. Apparently, for the IPPF, the “right” to keep your status to yourself trumps the “right” of your partner to know you’re infected, knowledge that is critical since infection can be fatal, and always burdens one with long-term and expensive medical care.

In fact, many states in the US require you to tell your sexual partners if you’re HIV positive...But note that the pamphlet says that these disclosure laws violate the right of HIV-positive people to decide whether, when, and whom to tell about their status.

I’m not sure what is going on here, or why the IPPF considers nondisclosure to partners a “right”. It isn’t, at least not by any reasonable lights. The “right” of partners to know that you’re infected surely trumps whatever “right” you have to keep that status to yourself.  Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted this pamphlet, but I don’t think so, although they do mention that there are laws. Nor am I sure whether the US branch of the IPPF agrees with this stand.

Clearly, if you’re not having sexual contact with someone, or otherwise putting them at risk, there’s no need to tell people you’re infected. But the line should be drawn, as it is in most states, at sex.

I’m always wary when someone asserts something as a simple “right”: all too often that’s simply a way to shut down further discussion. In fact, I’d prefer to avoid all talk of rights, and discuss why the law allows people to do some things and not others. In this case it comes down to public health and to morality, which themselves come down to what kind of society we prefer to live in. I would prefer to live in a society in which HIV infected people are required to tell their sexual partners of their status. To me, that’s better than an unproductive discussion about competing “rights.”"

I fully agree with Prof. Coyne. Let me add my twopence: for an old Puritan like me, even the title of the pamphlet is worrying. Healthy, Happy and Hot: A Young Person’s Guide to their Rights, Sexuality, and Living with HIV. This contains in a concise form some ideas that I consider serious faults of our culture: that to be happy, to be dignified, to be a real human being, you have to be "hot", i.e. sexually attractive; and you must actually make sex, a lot of sex, even if you do not really wish it, and even with people whom you do not love, trust, like very much or know properly. In short, this is advice to HIV-positive young people to adopt or continue a destructive behavior that (1) can lead to new infections and (2) is fairly likely to have got them infected in the first place.

The comments to this post are also interesting. Some make a lot of sense:

"A typical pro choice argument is that people have the right to protect their bodies from harm.Somehow, this logic is being thrown out the window when it comes to those who should be denied the right to choose whether or not to expose themselves to HIV. Shame on you PP."

"Maybe I’m getting old, but should you really be in a sexual relationship with someone you can’t trust enough to talk to about such stuff? Perhaps, for someone living with HIV, they should remember what it was like for them? They could maybe reflect on how they contracted it, presumably from someone who didn’t tell them about their status."

"That’s just plain insane! Maybe their position is that viruses have rights too."

"Better that Planned Parenthood should sell fetal tissue to Satanists for Black Mass rituals than that it should give such lousy advice to kids."

"I can think of no intimacy more selfish than having sex without disclosing to your partner that you’re HIV positive."

"For me, the important thing here is consent. You cannot consent if you don’t fully understand the situation. It’s unconscionable in my mind not to tell a partner that you are HIV positive, especially as it could have devastating consequences for the other party. Would PP advise it’s OK to not use a condom if you tell your partner you are using one? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t because it would violate consent. What’s the difference with disclosing HIV status? To me the principle is the same – you can’t consent if you are not aware. I know there are very real issues regarding HIV status being leaked, but if you don’t want it leaked and you don’t trust your partner don’t have sex."

"In practice (which I have much of), the grey area of someone being unjustly accused of “knowingly” transmitting HIV (when they in-fact did not know)… never happened. It just never came up. The worst of the worst has ALWAYS been the Gaetan Dugas type… KNEW but was determined to put everything on everybody he pooned. Either complete sociopaths or complete denialists that HIV had anything to do with anything. And we ran into a lot of them. What do we do? Let the worst gay persons’ nightmare go on the rampage? Some segments of the gay community said “yes”, but a larger contingent asked us to ignore the more idiotic of the politically-motivated, and to simply treat this disease like any other. In any case, the larger politically-motivated folks won out in the big cities. And the nuts was essentially chopped off of any systems to deal with disease control proactively — which is why we now see 90% of new HIV infections in gay males in all the big cities. The epidemiological picture has not budged since day one. It is truly tragic. And it is public health malfeasance, due to a misperception that such surveillance and control measures are tantamount to there being a “bedroom police” when such systems are maintained. They chose death for themselves and others over the freedoms for other to remain uninfected. That sucks... It is public health malfeasance. I don’t read minds yet, but attribute this kind of “hands-off” mentality to built-in desires to root for the underdog (supposedly, the infected). That the right of the uninfected to remain so is the central point of public health disease control (and usually enshrined in law in the local statutes, besides) seems to not cross the minds of many of the people involved in the biz, apparently." (Emphasis mine - M. M.)

"A friend of mine died because his partner did not disclose that he was HIV positive. And he died rather painfully. As far as am concerned, the partner is a murderer. The PP pamphlet is inexcusable."

Others put themselves in the shoes of the HIV-positive person wanting the best for himself:

"One reason – not by any means the only one – for being cautious about disclosing one’s HIV status is that there have been no small number of breakups after which one of the partners has disclosed the other partner’s status against their wishes. People do do horrible and unconscionable things to other people. I’ve a friend who has been in that boat. It’s not a nice place to be."

"“Freedom for Aggression,” as I call it, is a common position among “gay rights” supporters, though they avoid yelling it from the rooftops. For instance, you cite the ACLU, are you aware that the ACLU supports the same position the IPPF does?
https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/hiv-not-crime
https://www.aclu.org/blog/us-conference-mayors-takes-hiv-criminalization"

"I won’t address the moral issue of HIV non-disclosure but I would like to draw attention to the arguments against criminalization of non-disclosure from a public health/ prevention point of view.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3966663/
http://www.cdnaids.ca/actionalert-takingactiononthecrimin
(From one of these articles cited by another commenter: "“Laws that criminalize HIV exposure may actually undermine public health efforts by, for example, providing a disincentive for persons at risk to be tested (lest individuals become aware of their infection and have to disclose it to sex partners) or by reinforcing discrimination against persons living with HIV (PLHIV) and exacerbating HIV-related stigma.”)... There is no evidence that criminal laws reduce HIV prevalence... disclosure is not helpful (nor is it enjoyable discussing it with those who consider it a moral absolute). That’s the nature of HIV infection. Find out how to protect yourself from HIV. Don’t rely on the law or your partner’s disclosure to protect you. Take it from someone who’ve been HIV+ for over 30 years. And think about the morality of using criminal law to deal with a public health issue in a country where most kids get abstinence-only sex ed."

I have deliberately put this comment last, though this broke the chronology of the discussion (some of the above comments were actually reactions to it). The author is HIV-positive and wants for himself the right to make sex without disclosure but does not openly state his position. Instead, he deceptively claims that laws requiring disclosure are counter-productive and even cites some junk "scientific" article to support his argument. To me, such hypocrisy is more repulsive than even the most odious open manifesto.

The situation reminds me of leftists who want the West destroyed and hail everyone who could do it, be it Islamists or common criminals. These leftists know that few would support them if they openly advocated replacement of our beautiful civilization with either a Saudi Arabia-like theocracy or the jungle law. So they weave convoluted "arguments" that we shouldn't crack down on Islamists or lock up criminals because this only produces more of them. John Pepple mocked this nicely: "Isn’t it funny that experts on the left never say that going after racists or neo-Nazis will somehow help the recruiting efforts of those groups, but they always will say this when we want to go after the Islamists?"

Christian terrorist kills three in Colorado

On Nov. 27, Robert Lewis Dear (57), a self-proclaimed Christian with a history of anti-Planned Parenthood activity and abuse of women, went armed to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He opened fire and killed two people who were accompanying their friends to the clinic: Jennifer Markovsky (35) and Ke'Arre Stewart (29), an Iraq War veteran who used his last breaths to warn others to take cover. When police came, Dear shot dead one of them, Garrett Swasey (44), before being arrested.

Each victim had two children. Because of the murderer's rampage, two children will grow without a mother and four other children will grow without a father.

Dear's motivation: his anti-abortion views. (Planned Parenthood is the main provider of abortion services in the USA.) By cruel irony, such views are designated by the euphemism "pro-life". I also suspect that racism was involved in his choice of targets, because he is white while Ms. Markovsky was Hawaiian and Mr. Stewart was black.

To me, and to anyone of he meanest understanding, abortion is a basic human right. It reflects the woman's autonomy over her own body. I am not going to discuss the pain perception and cognitive abilities of human embryos and fetuses at different stages of prenatal development. For the argument's sake, let's presume that the fetus to be aborted is as conscious as you and me. Does this give him the right to live? No, because he cannot live on his own, and no human being is obliged to support another one by her own body.

If some patient with a rare blood group has suffered heavy blood loss and you happen to have the same blood group, should you be tied to a bed and forced to donate blood? No, you shouldn't. Nobody would even consider doing this to you, though the health impact of a blood donation is negligible, compared to that of a pregnancy plus birth. Moreover, in most countries - actually, in all countries I know - even the organs of a dead person, no longer useful to him, cannot be taken for transplantation unless family members consent or the deceased himself has stated such a wish before his death. Patients with kidney disease may be dying, but the organs that could save their lives are instead left in the corpse and cremated or put in a grave to rot.

Of all humans, pregnant women alone are reduced to a subhuman status and regarded as mere baby incubators, that is, tools to support the lives of other humans regarded as superior. Why? The answer is simple: because of religion. I know only one group opposing abortion on non-religious grounds, and it is the disability activists. This is actually a reason why I distanced myself from disability advocacy. I don't want to be around people whose agenda includes shaming or forcing women to carry to term disabled babies whom they do not want. However, the Colorado Springs murderer was no disability activist. As Wikipedia reports, "Dear voiced on several occasions his support for radical Christian views and interpretations of the Bible, and praised people who attacked abortion providers, saying they were doing "God's work." He also described members of the Army of God, a loosely organized group of anti-abortion Christian extremists that has claimed responsibility for a number of killings and bombings, as heroes." Dear was the products of a culture where Christian fundamentalists obsessed with looking into women's wombs still enjoy moral authority, and abortion-related attacks make news only if lethal, otherwise they are business as usual.

In destroying three human lives, "pro-life" Robert Dear was driven by his religious convictions and apparently eager to instill fear in survivors. So he is, by definition, a terrorist. His crime must be denounced for what it is, not just a triple murder but also an act of domestic Christian terrorism. And Christians should think how to stand against such atrocities, as well as the entire "pro-life" madness.

Will there be hope after Obama's "disastrous policies"?

From the Jerusalem Post:

"Column One: Rubio, Cruz and the US Global Leadership

by Caroline Glick

At some point between 2006 and 2008, the American people decided to turn their backs on the world. Between the seeming futility of the war in Iraq and the financial collapse of 2008, Americans decided they’d had enough.

In Barack Obama, they found a leader who could channel their frustration. Obama’s foreign policy, based on denying the existence of radical Islam and projecting the responsibility for Islamic aggression on the US and its allies, suited their mood just fine. If America is responsible, then America can walk away. Once it is gone, so the thinking has gone, the Muslims will forget their anger and leave America alone.

Sadly, Obama’s foreign policy assumptions are utter nonsense. America’s abandonment of global leadership has not made things better. Over the past seven years, the legions of radical Islam have expanded and grown more powerful than ever before. And now in the aftermath of the jihadist massacres in Paris and San Bernadino, the threats have grown so abundant that even Obama cannot pretend them away.

As a consequence, for the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy. But are they too late? Can the next president repair the damage Obama has caused? The Democrats give no cause for optimism. Led by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential hopefuls stubbornly insist that there is nothing wrong with Obama’s foreign policy. If they are elected to succeed him, they pledge to follow in his footsteps...

On the Republican side, things are more encouraging, but also more complicated...

Bush’s foreign policy had two seemingly contradictory anchors – a belief that liberal values are universal, and cultural meekness.

Bush’s belief that open elections would serve as a panacea for the pathologies of the Islamic world was not supported by empirical data. Survey after survey showed that if left to their own devices, the people of Muslim world would choose to be led by Islamic supremacists. But Bush rejected the data and embraced the fantasy that free elections lead a society to embrace liberal norms of peace and human rights.

As to cultural meekness, since the end of the Cold War and with the rise of political correctness, the notion that America could call for other people to adopt American values fell into disrepute. For American foreign policy practitioners, the idea that American values and norms are superior to Islamic supremacist values smacked of cultural chauvinism.

Consequently, rather than urge the Islamic world to abandon Islamic supremacism in favor of liberal democracy, in their public diplomacy efforts, Americans sufficed with vapid pronouncements of love and respect for Islam...

It is far from clear which side will win this fight for the heart of the Republican Party. And it is impossible to know who the next US president will be.

But whatever happens, the fact that after their seven-year vacation, the Americans are returning the real world is a cause for cautious celebration."

Bulgaria with decent stance about trade with Israel

Nearly a month ago, the European Union decided to label goods made in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.


I was outraged to hear this. What was the rationale behind the move? The rationale was to appease the Islamists by showing them that Europe supports the Palestinians and is against the Jews. (And if someone says that you can criticize the Zionist policy of Israel without being against the Jews, I'd suggest to him to analyze the following statement: "I have nothing against Italians, I just want Italy erased from the world map.")


To be a Westerner and to promote or support anti-Israeli policies is ethically problematic, to put it mildly. Besides, it is against your own interests. As Churchill once said, appeasement is like feeding a crocodile - all you can hope at is that it will eat you last. In fact, almost immediately after Europe decided to label the "settlers"' products, terrifying Islamist attacks were carried out in France, claiming 130 lives. France was one of the countries who led the settlement labeling effort. Another one was Belgium, where the attacks were planned. The Islamists are more rational and consistent than us. They look for weak spots and, when they find one, they press.


I am glad that my Bulgaria was among the EU member states that didn't press for labeling. (The others were Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia). Now, I'd wish Bulgaria to refuse to implement the decision, like Hungary.


I wrote this post exactly today to mark the Jewish festival of Hanukkah which began last night. To all who celebrate - happy Hanukkah!

Compassion to France

This crude drawing is to show my sympathy to the people of France after the Nov. 13 tragedy in Paris, where 129 innocent people were massacred in the newest mass murder in the name of Islam.

Princess mermaid

I am now busy with examining my mother's things and deciding what to take, what to leave and what to discard.

Of course, this work generally makes me sad. However, it occasionally brings nice surprises.

Last week, I found the drawing shown above.

It was made by my elder son at preschool when he was in 1st group, i.e. 3 years old. I was delighted to see it, because it was one of his first recognizable humanoid images.

I asked him what he had drawn. He replied, "a princess". Presumably he meant mermaid but didn't know the word. At that time, he already could read and was learning to write,as the drawing shows, but could not yet talk properly.

I wanted to keep the drawing but couldn't find it and thought that it had become just another lost work. I had quite forgotten that I had given it to my mother.

I suppose that only a parent can understand why I was glad to find it again and why someone would wish to keep such a masterpiece in the first place.

Honoring Taurian Bulgarians and Misho Hadjiyski

(Bulgarian readers can find this post also on my Bulgarian blog.)

In June, my father Dyanko Markov together with Georgi Chunchukov from the city of Dobrich and Filip Pitelov from the Association of Bulgarian Expatriates was invited to attend a ceremony to unveil a memorial plate of Misho Hadjiyski in the village of Inzovka, Ukraine. I of course felt quite uneasy because of the situation in Ukraine and the advanced age of my father. (It was difficult to manage his travel insurance, because for most insurance companies, people of my father's age simply do not exist.) This event made me learn more about the Taurian Bulgarians, whom I had known just by name.


When we Bulgarians talk about Taurica, we usually mean the region north-west of the Sea of Azov, where many ethnic Bulgarians settled in the first half of the 19th century. They kept their language and traditions because there was no local population to influence them - until their coming, the region was desolate. The settlement was under the auspice of Russian general Ivan Inzov. To facilitate the cultivation of Taurica, he ensured that the settlers would have rights of free people. At that time, the Russian peasants as serfs were deprived of such rights.


Taurian Bulgarians generally lived well until the October Revolution of 1917. After that, they together with the other Soviet subjects had to face the repressive terror of the Bolshevik regime. Although they had been farmers for many generations and had turned their land into a granary, they suffered and a number of them died in the Holodomor - the genocide organized by Stalin to subdue Ukraine, considered too unruly.

Memorial of the Holodomor victims near the village of Tyaginka, between Odessa and Taurica. Above, there is an inscription in Ukrainian: "Ukraine, to your sons and daughters, great and small, children and adults, suffocated by the bony hand of the Holodomor in 1932-33..." Below is a verse in Russian by the well-known poet Robert Rozhdestvensky: "Posredine planeti / V grome tuch grozovih / Smotryat myortvie v nebo / Verya v mudrost zhivih." (Amidst the planet, / In the thunder of stormy clouds, / The dead are staring into the sky, / Trusting the wisdom of the living.)

Memorial in the village of Kolarovka (Taurica) of the ethnic Bulgarian victims of Stalinist terror. The inscription in Bulgarian and Ukrainian is: "To the Bulgarians of Ukraine, victims of the repressions."

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Ukraine, Taurian Bulgarians wrote a letter to the Bulgarian king Boris III on April 20, 1942. I am translating a part of the text: "In this war between the two great states, we have been ruined and abandoned. Our prosperous villages have been turned into deserts... We have heard, King, that your Kingdom is an ally of Great Germany, may God help you in everything you do, but we are asking you for one favor: Let our plight is alleviated at last, let the Germans allow us to have in every Bulgarian village authorities of our own, subordinated directly to the Germans rather than to the Russians... Send here to Taurica an envoy to protect us... We shall be glad if you right now decree for all us sixty thousand Bulgarians to be accepted in Your Kingdom. Maybe there will be free lands for us to settle. We are not many, we are here [concentrated in] twenty-eight villages at the shore of the Sea of Azov, between the towns of Melitopol and Berdyansk. We are ready to share in the joys and sorrows of your Kingdom but to be under your protection. If we cannot settle all at once, King, allow to a part of us to come, so that we all move to Bulgaria in one or two years. We had turned Taurica from a desert into a Paradise on Earth. Give us desolate lands and we will settle there, because we have always lived by honest work..."

The letter was signed by 15 people. Most important, however, was the role of a young man whose signature was third, the writer Mikhail (Misho) Hadjiyski from the village of Inzovka. After obtaining permission from the Bulgarian authorities, he led nearly 2000 his compatriots to Bulgaria in 1944. The refugees were traveling on their own, in very harsh conditions, sometimes crossing battlefields with their horse carts. Upon arrival, most of them settled in Southern Dobruja, a region only recently reunited with Bulgaria. Misho Hadjiyski met Savka Nikolaeva, a university student from Sofia, and they married in late August.

However, the refuge in Bulgaria was too short-lived. In September 1944, Bulgaria itself was occupied by Soviet troops who installed Soviet puppets as new rulers. At the end of the month, Misho Hadjiyski was arrested and tortured. Some Bulgarian leftists advocated for him and he was released in the middle of November. However, on December 7 militiamen came to arrest him again and he committed suicide, shooting himself in the head. He was only 28 years old and had been married only for 3 months.

The next year (1945), Taurian Bulgarians who had moved to Bulgaria were sought one by one, dragged into trains and deported to the deserts of Kazakhstan - the method of genocide preferred by Stalin because it reliably destroyed a substantial part of the unwanted population without leaving troublesome evidence like gas chambers. As some commentators noted, the Bulgarian nation had managed to rescue its Jews two years before, but now was unable to rescue the Taurian Bulgarians.

At present, Bulgarian Taurica is divided. Its eastern districts have been affected by Putin's land-grabbing campaign and are currently under the control of pro-Russian separatists, but most of its territory is in free Ukraine, at least for now. Inzovka, named after the benefactor Inzov, is also in Ukraine. Until recently, the village school had no name, but now it is named after Misho Hadjiyski. The naming ceremony took place on June 18 and included unveiling a memorial plate of Misho Hadjiyski at the front wall of the building.

Nona Popova, Mayor of the village of Inzovka, is reading the naming order.

In front of the memorial plate, moments after it was unveiled.

The memorial plate, with inscriptions in Bulgarian and Ukrainian: "To Misho Hadjiyski, writer, human rights activist and Bulgarian patriot, killed by Stalin's repressions, from the grateful Taurian Bulgarians."

The guests from Bulgaria with a folklore group of Taurian Bulgarian children. The tall man is Georgi Chunchukov, next to him is my father.

The photos in this post were sent to me by Georgi Chunchukov; his report about the visit was also of much help to me in writing this text.

Savka Nikolaeva, the widow of Misho Hadjiyski, is still alive but is bed-ridden and cannot attend the ceremonies in honor of her husband. She did not remarry after his death. Stalin's terror not only took the life of Misho but ruined her life as well.

After his meetings with Taurian Bulgarians, my father was impressed that despite the past sufferings and the numerous innocent victims they hated nobody. Now, they only want to be free, to live their lives as they choose and to create material goods and culture. We had heard allegations of strong pro-Russian sentiments among this community, but they turned out to have been much exaggerated. Like most other Ukrainians, Taurian Bulgarians are looking in the direction of Europe and hope for their country to be admitted into the European Union. Alas, "old" Europeans are too inclined to betray the founding principles of European civilization and to seek only security and material well-being, which naturally leads them to collaboration with the aggressor Putin. In the long term (and even not so long), this endangers not only Ukraine but also Europe itself. Therefore, as my father said, the future of Europe depends on the survival of independent Ukraine.

I am glad that in the same year in which the residents of Inzovka could finally honor their countryman Misho Hadjiyski, honors to him and the Taurian Bulgarians led by him were paid also in Bulgaria. This is happening exactly in Dobrudja where the refugees were accepted and hoped to find new homes. A memorial plate dedicated to the Taurian Bulgarians will be unveiled today in the city of Dobrich, in front of the municipality building. So everyone who passes through the center of Dobrich will remember the events of 1944-45 that must not be forgotten.

Drowned while seeking a better life

A month ago, on Sept. 2, three-year-old Syrian-Kurdish boy Alan (Aylan) Kurdi drowned together with his 5-yr-old brother Galip and their mother Rehana after the overcrowded inflatable boat by which they left Turkey and were trying to reach the Greek island of Kos capsized. The victims' bodies were washed ashore back on the Turkish beach. There, a reporter photographed Alan's body and the images shocked the world. I don't post any of them here, because I don't want to absolutely ruin the day of my few readers. Let me just mention that the beautiful little boy lying face down on the sand looked to be just sleeping, which inspired artist Mahnaz Yazdani to draw the above cartoon titled exactly so, Just Sleeping.

As a hopeless cynic, I mention in passing that the strong reaction to the photograph was largely due to the fact that Alan and Galip in appearance - face, haircut, clothes and all, were quite like native Western children, like my sons at that age. The BBC admits the same: "David Cameron echoed many reactions on Twitter when he said that, "as a father" he had been deeply moved. Nicole Itano oversees all creative work for Save the Children, including photography. She is also the mother of a one-year-old girl. "My first reaction was, my god, that could be my child, who has the same colour hair, the same chubby legs," she says... "He looks like he could be any of our children."" If the victim was a dark-skinned child, or a slightly older girl in a headscarf, I doubt that we would have been moved the same way.

I have written elsewhere about the unfortunate events that made millions of Syrians refugees. However, Alan's family was no longer fleeing the war and genocide in Syria. They had lived in Turkey for years - for almost all of his short life - in miserable yet safe conditions. So their story is part of the broader, universal narrative of Seeking a Better Life. Alan became known to the entire world, but there are many others who drown, literally or metaphorically, while seeking a better life, and you never hear of them, unless they happen to be someone you love.

By "seeking a better life", I don't mean the efforts to improve one's life but the drive to move to another place and solve all problems by finding a ready-made better life there. My opinion and experience is that, while trying to improve one's life is admirable even when not quite successful, the attempts to find a better life elsewhere are usually destructive. This "better life" is always said to exist in another, far-away place. This is a hint about its true nature: it is a mirage. And, similarly to physical mirages which are unreal but based on real objects and phenomena, this one is based on real places and facts. You'd better not believe that a better life is awaiting you in some Blessed Realm just because you possess photos, presents and other artifacts from this place. Even if you have visited it or have relatives living there - as Alan's father had - you'd better not believe that it is your dream incarnated. If you believe it, you sever your connection to the real world and get detached from reality. Only this can explain why an otherwise sensible person such as Alan's father could think that putting his most precious possession - his wife (who was unable to swim) and his young children - into an overloaded rubber dinghy supplied by unscrupulous modern pirates was a good idea. And even the lucky majority of better-life seekers who reach their destination safely find there not cloudless happiness but ordinary human life burdened with home-sickness and the strain of adaptation.

Seeking a Better Life is in the folklore of all nations. Remember Puss in Boots, Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk etc. The penniless hero finds a treasure lying in some cave without an owner, or a castle owned by some wicked being fully deserving to be killed and dispossessed. We read these tales to our young children, as if mixing poison into their breakfast milk. I wish to give examples of other folk tales, of heroes building better lives by work and ingenuity, creating prosperity where none existed before. However, there are too few such stories and they are obscure.

After the destruction of his family, Alan's father talked to some fellow refugees planning to embark on the perilous sea journey and dissuaded them. I am glad for them. Meanwhile, however, masses of thousands give their savings to the smugglers and sail the unfriendly sea to reach an unfriendly land. And I know that it is inevitable. Because to seek a better life is apparently ingrained in human nature.

The Ugly Animals by Simon Watt

This spring, I translated to Bulgarian The Ugly Animals by Simon Watt. I've just written a post about it in my Bulgarian blog (better late than never), and here is the announcement by the Bulgarian publisher. I admit I am proud to read at the Ugly Animal Preservation Society website (the above screenshot) that the book is "available in all good bookshops in the UK, USA and Bulgaria" (emphasis mine).

The cover of the Bulgarian translation shows a Galapagos marine iguana - a charmingly ugly animal that can inspire horror-movie screenwriters. I like it very much, though I still prefer the blobfish on the cover of the original which won the viewers' vote for ugliest animal on the planet (to me, this "ugly" fish is even cute, and I definitely like it and the other animals in the book better than the panda).

The Ugly Animals is devoted to species that are both ugly and more or less endangered. Each animal is presented by a nice large photo occupying as much space as the text. I think this is the correct way to address today's overworked, ever-tired readers - with a lot of beautiful pictures and a carefully controlled dose of text. Nevertheless, there are many things to be learned from this book. It is written with much humor, which I have tried to preserve in the translation but I don't know whether I have succeeded.

To me, it is unfortunate that so many otherwise sensible people create a false dichotomy about what we must preserve, ourselves and our civilization or the living world as we know it. I think that we must preserve both, and I believe that we can.

Kangaroo court of Ukrainian film director in Russia

Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov is now on trial in the Russian city of Rostov-na-Don because of his opposition to Crimea's annexation by Russia. Mr. Sentsov is a native of Crimea and was arrested there when the peninsula was taken over last year. He was reportedly mistreated in custody. The charge against him is... terrorism.

To me, the story is quite reminiscent of the Stalinist show trials from the 1930s. Unfortunately, it receives little coverage in international media. I heard of it from Bulgarian news sources.

Update: Oleg Sentsov was sentenced to 20 years.

Striving for excellence versus free speech

How free should our speech be?

In theory, we are all for free speech. In practice, we conform to restrictions and self-restrictions all the time, and impose restrictions on others. All parents I know start to impose restrictions on their children's speech practically from the moment the child starts talking. The process is long, and many of us, despite our efforts, are periodically called to unpleasant meetings with teachers because of our children exercising too much free speech at school.

Every system striving for excellence restricts free speech. An example is the school. Another, even better example is the business. Have you been badmouthed by a waiter? And if you are, will you endure it in silence for the sake of the waiter's right to free speech?

What is true for the waiter or cleaner is equally true for the CEO. Executives do not allow themselves free speech (read: adolescent talk), because it harms the business. It repels customers and gives the entire company a bad name. Personally, I cannot imagine any businessman saying anything of this sort:

"I am inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really... Despite the desire that all human beings should be equal, people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

These words belong to James Watson, Nobel Prize winner for the discovery of the DNA double helical structure. After the gaffe, he was forced to retire from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory which he had founded. And I think this was right. While scientific institutions stay apart from the market, they must strive for excellence quite like the companies trying to survive at the market.

Last month, another Nobel Prize winner put his foot in his mouth: Tim Hunt, honored for his important discoveries in regulation of cell division. Talking at a lunch for female journalist and scientists in Seoul, he said:

“It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls? Now, seriously, I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science, despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me."

For this, he was forced to resign from the University College London, where he had been Honorary Professor. And I think this was right. If a scientist not only harbors misogynist views but cannot keep them to a private, trusted circle of close friends, he must not hold any honorary position. Prof. Hunt damaged the reputation of his University and his country. I also suspect that, with these views and apparently nobody to criticize him through the years, Prof. Hunt has done a lot of damage to the "girls" to whom he has been superior, so his resignation was too little too late; still, better late than never.

I wasn't going to honor Prof. Hunt with a post, but Charles Steele, who disagrees with me and with whom we had a long discussion, suggested to me to write one. So this text owes its existence to him.

Ancient Greek complaints of financial problems

When one reads ancient Greek texts, some parts of them seem strikingly actual.

"Strepsiades: Huge, huge debts! They’re all eating me up inside!... I get torn apart with worry as I watch the months go by, the interest mounting up and the payments getting ever closer!.. Bring me my accounts books. I want to see what I owe and to whom. Tally up all the interest... Now, here I am, I’ve got a whole lot of lawsuits and the creditors want to seize all the collaterals! Bloody interest!...

Come down, my dear friend, Socrates!  Come down now, Socrates and teach me what I’ve come to learn from you!

Socrates: You’ve come here to learn what, exactly?


Strepsiades: Oh, Socrates!  If only you knew how anxious I am to learn… to learn all I can about rhetoric.  How to argue convincingly… against all sorts of dreadful creditors who are after my very blood! I want to remove all my painful debts… they’re after all my possessions, all my money – I am… Collaterally Damaged!

Socrates: And how could this ever happen to you without your knowing about it?

Strepsiades: It was a fast thing. Like a horse race!  Such an awful thing, it damned near killed me!  Come, Socrates, mate, teach me one of those two arguments you know. The one that lets you escape debt. Come on, tell me your fees and I’ll… I’ll pay them in full. I swear by all the gods!"

(Aristophanes, Clouds, 423 BC, translated by George Theodoridis.)


"Zeus: Good, Hermes; that is an excellent proclamation: see, here they come pell-mell; now receive and place them in correct precedence, according to their material or workmanship; gold in the front row, silver next, then the ivory ones, then those of stone or bronze...


Hermes: I see; property qualification, comparative wealth, is the test, not merit. - Gold to the front row, please. - Zeus, the front row will be exclusively barbarian, I observe. You see the peculiarity of the Greek contingent: they have grace and beauty and artistic workmanship, but they are all marble or bronze - the most costly of them only ivory with just an occasional gleam of gold, the merest surface-plating; and even those are wood inside, harbouring whole colonies of mice. Whereas Bendis here, Anubis there, Attis next door, and Mithras and Men, are all of solid gold, heavy and intrinsically precious.

Poseidon: Hermes, is it in order that this dog-faced Egyptian person should sit in front of me, Poseidon?

Hermes: Certainly. You see, Earth-shaker, the Corinthians had no gold at the time, so Lysippus made you of paltry bronze; Dog-face is a whole gold-mine richer than you. You must put up with being moved back, and not object to the owner of such a golden snout being preferred."

(Lucian, 2nd century AD, Zeus the Tragedian, translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler.)

Saving Greece in two quick, easy steps

To say that Greece is in trouble would be an understatement. In January, the Greeks elected the far-left Syriza party because of its promises to end austerity measures. The victorious leftists formed an incompetent government (led by Alexis Tsipras) that pushed the economy off the cliff. While the country was spiraling downward, Mr. Tsipras decided to use several millions of the last precious euros available in Greece to hold a rush referendum about whether to accept creditors' conditions (?!), though Greek constitution, maybe for a reason, explicitly bans referendums on fiscal matters. The vote took place on July 5. The majority of participants voted against the deal, as the Prime Minister had advised them. After that, all hell broke loose, and now Greeks are staying in lines in front of ATM machines to obtain a maximum of 60 euro per day.

Nevertheless, many Greeks are still out of touch with reality and are now railing that the creditors have "humiliated" them. "What is at play here is an attempt to humiliate Greece and Greeks, or to overthrow the Tsipras government," said Dimitrios Papadimoulis, Vice-President of the European Parliament and member of the Syriza party. When economist Megan Greene tweeted: "Earth to Greece: blackmail really really REALLY is not going to work. The ones with the dosh lost patience long ago", Greek users replied: "who is blackmailing who? I think ur a little bit lost", "very interesting the choice of the word "blackmail" to describe letting people decide for themselves (i.e., Democracy)", "Greece to earth:Greece is tired of blackmails too." They still don't get that Greeks are not entitled to having luxury lives at other people's expense, and that democratic vote cannot give you unlimited access to other people's money.

If you are a Greek and you have read thus far, you belong to the important minority of those who understand that income is determined by productivity of labor rather than wishful thinking. I guess, you are wondering what to do in this dire situation. I can offer an approach that proved successful during the Bulgarian crisis of 1996-97. Indeed, the situation in Bulgaria was milder, because nobody could accuse us in destroying an international currency (we had a hyperinflated national currency) and, besides, all sums relevant to Bulgarian economy, such as the debt and the GDP, were - from the viewpoint of international financial institutions - pocket money. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the method worked, and it is worth trying, especially after trying so many things that have never worked anywhere, nor have they been expected to.

Here is how to save Greece in two quick, easy steps:

1. The rant of touchy Mr. Papadimoulis contains a grain of truth: EU countries and financial institutions don't want to see Prime Minister Tsipras anymore. So Greek patriots should stop waiting in front of ATMs like sheep and instead take to the streets and riot until their parody of a government resigns.

2. After successfully implementing Point 1, some decent, credible person with sense and basic economic knowledge in his head should be appointed as caretaker Prime Minister and urgently sent to negotiate. (I think e.g. Mr. Samaras will do.) His difficult job will include, among other things, to convince the annoyed creditors that the Greeks have learned their lesson, have reformed and are now a brand new nation, nothing to do with the people who voted so foolishly at the parliamentary elections half a year ago and the referendum a week ago.

Good luck!

Russia's lie about NATO

From Luke Coffey's article For Eastern Europe, Moscow is an existential threat, published by Al Jazeera:

"Russia's myths
There is a common misconception that the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act prohibits the permanent basing of NATO soldiers in central and eastern European countries. Russia regularly perpetuates this myth. This is not true. 

In regards to the question of permanent bases the Act states:

NATO reiterates that in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defence and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.

Since this agreement was signed in 1997, Russia has failed to remove troops from Moldova as promised and increased troops in Ukraine, Armenia, and Belarus - all of which border NATO. 

During this same period, Russia has also conducted cyberattacks against NATO allies, invaded Georgia (and is still occupying 20 percent of that country), used energy resources as a weapon against its neighbours, and most recently, annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine.

Consequently, the "current and foreseeable security environment" has changed since 1997. Therefore, NATO is able to rightfully create permanent bases in its Eastern European member states."

Ramadan makes no sense

Now is the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims are required not to eat and even to drink water (!) from sunrise to sunset.


This makes no sense and has no effect, except to make people feel miserable and interfere with their productivity. The requirement to fast during Ramadan is just another good reason to leave Islam.


Yesterday, the Islamic State caught two under-age Syrian boys eating and punished them by hanging them from a pole by their wrists. They were suspended at noon, and "they were still there in the late evening", according to an AFP report. I cannot yet find any information what happened to the boys in the end.


Commenter Mt. Pilot wrote the following:


"And we all know that all-ah is well pleased if you don't drink anything when it's a hundred degrees (Fahrenheit, roughly corresponding to Celsius 40 - M. M.) in the shade. He gets giddy and joyful when his creation is made to suffer for him.

Christ only asks that you believe in Him and make an attempt to follow His commandments... and even when we fail, all He asks is that you ask for His forgiveness.  His yoke is light and He is quick to forgive and slow to anger.  Follow Christ."


I'd add that you do not need to follow Christ, you can follow any deity you choose, or (what I prefer) try to find your path on your own. What is sure is that it is not a good idea to follow a God who demands you to torture yourself for no good reason. No wonder that so many intelligent Muslims leave their religion, if they can afford it, i.e. if they are lucky to live in a free land. Unfortunately, the two boys in the report are not so lucky.

Update: Reader Cat Brehme left the following comment to this post:

"My colleague is a Muslim and during Ramadan she just completely shuts down. She's tired, quiet and completely unproductive. Basically, you can just forget about her for a month and do her work for her. I don't follow any religion and I don't understand how intelligent people can enslave themselves to any religious rituals that don't make any sense whatsoever. This applies to any religion but especially Islam and Judaism. If I ran a company I would not employ any practising Muslims as they work a month less than anyone else does. It's completely unfair to your co-workers but just like anything to do with Islam, you cannot say anything because it's politically incorrect."

Unearthed: 7,000-yr-old tool workshop

In northern Bulgaria, there is a village named Kamenovo, close to the city of Razgrad.

(The map is from Bulgarian Wikipedia. I changed the bottom inscription to Latin, but kept Kamenovo with the original Cyrillic, because it is too difficult to change.)

It has been known for some time that stone tools found across the entire Bulgarian territory, and even beyond it in the southern Balkans, originate from the rocks in the vicinity of that village.

Now, archeologists claim to have found the prehistoric workshop for stone tools.

(The photo is copied from a DarikNews report, in Bulgarian, which is also the basic source for this post.)

The large-scale production of flint tools is thought to have started in early Chalcolithic age, about 4,800 BC. Between 4,500 and 4,200 BC, it expanded and supplied much of the Balkan Peninsula with tools. So we have large-scale production, division of labor, long-distance transportation and trade - a civilization, I'd say, if a fairly primitive one.

If you ask a young-Earth creationist about this time period, he will reply that the Universe did not yet exist!

To me, one of the strangest details in the story is the name of the village. "Kamenovo" means "Village of the stone(s)". Well, I guess that residents of the place in later ages have also found some use of the high-quality stone. Though I cannot find in the Web any reports of modern quarries, this is a more logical explanation than to suggest preservation of the name through more than 6 millenia and several languages.

Comparative criminal law: ISIS and Saudi Arabia

In my February post European Citizenship, I expressed outrage and dismay that the European People's Party, which is generally "my" party, opposed a European Parliament resolution in support of Raif Badawi.

What was the reason for this? According to Vote Watch: "The EPP group voted against the resolution and explained that it could not support the text as it stands because it associates Saudi Arabia with the organisation Islamic State, in regard to the type of punishments used. EPP representatives argued that they disapprove of the said association..." This rationale was confirmed by sources close to EPP, but I will not cite them, because they have not authorized me to do this. (Of course, the decision of the European People Party did not prevent nice people from its group to vote for the resolution despite the official party line.)

The "said association" between Saudi Arabia and ISIS "in regard to the type of punishments used", however, is the pure and simple truth. The diagram below, which went viral, is copied from the article Crime and punishment: Islamic State vs Saudi Arabia, by Mary Atkinson and Rory Donaghy, published in the Middle East Eye on Jan. 20:

From the same article:

"The Islamic State (IS) and Saudi Arabia prescribe near-identical punishments for a host of crimes, according to documents circulated by the militant group. IS published a list of crimes and their punishments on 16 December 2014 to serve “as an explanation and as a warning” to those living in territory under their control in large parts of Iraq and Syria. The document lists hadd crimes, which are considered to be “against the rights of God,” and includes fixed punishments for theft, adultery, slander and banditry. Crimes deemed hadd and their punishments are derived from the Quran and the hadith, the collected teachings and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad... But  while IS has actively sought exposure for their brutal punishments, Saudi Arabia has worked to keep evidence of their actions within the conservative kingdom. Authorities on Saturday arrested a police officer accused of videoing a woman being publicly beheaded in Mecca."

So the European Parliament members could be confident that criminal law of ISIS and Saudi Arabia is practically identical, as the resolution stated. Maybe the European People's Party worried that stating this inconvenient truth was too undiplomatic. However, the West's experience with Islamist states (e.g. the saga of the Bulgarian medics accused in infecting Libyan children with HIV) shows that it is to no avail to be diplomatic with them. If you are, they just smile in your face and continue their barbarities.

British minister: Torturing innocents is OK if Muslims want it

Quote from Francis Wheen's UK ministers have started to defend Saudi Arabia's flogging of Raif Badawi - it's breathtaking (the Independent, June 16):

"...Asked about the flogging and jailing of Badawi, the Foreign Office minister Baroness Anelay said in the Lords last week: “We maintain our view that freedom of religion and belief and freedom of expression are core rights that lead to long-term stability and good governance.”

But? Yes, of course there was a but, and one to take the breath away: “My Lords, I think we have to recognise that the actions of the Saudi government in these respects have the support of the vast majority of the Saudi population.”

Do they? Last Friday I asked the Foreign Office how the minister could be so sure. No answer has yet been forthcoming. Perhaps the “vast majority” of Saudis are indeed fanatical sadists who rejoice to see liberal bloggers whipped. Or, then again, perhaps they aren’t...

Even if you were a Saudi who deplored the flogging, you wouldn’t say so publicly – especially when you saw what happened to a man who did. Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, was given a 15-year jail sentence last July for criticising the judiciary and so “inflaming public opinion”. How the judges measured that inflammation was not revealed. Perhaps Baroness Anelay gave them the benefit of her psephological expertise..."

(Psephology is a branch of political science which analyzes elections and public opinion.)

So we have here a truly democratic Baroness, for whom what is supported by the vast majority of the population is right. The Saudi population allegedly supports beating a man over a blog, so Britain has to recognize this. If the same or another population supports stoning a woman for adultery or burning her because she looks like a witch, this presumably must also be recognized.

Oh, wait. Not every population is entitled to having its opinion automatically recognized. The vast majority of the British population never supported uncontrolled immigration of Third World Muslims and enslavement of local girls by them, yet British authorities had no problem allowing this. So what matters is apparently not what the population wants, but what the Muslim population wants - or at least its most aggressive subpopulation. It is exactly this thinking of cowardly or self-hating Westerners that has made Islam an existential threat to the civilization.

To all for whom Edward Snowden is hero

From today's Yahoo!News report titled Britain pulls spies as Moscow cracks Snowden files: reports

"London (AFP) - Britain has been forced to remove some of its spies after Russia and China accessed the top secret raft of documents taken by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, British media reported.

The BBC and the Sunday Times cited senior government and intelligence officials as saying agents had been pulled, with the newspaper saying the move came after Russia was able to decrypt more than one million files.

"It is the case that Russians and Chinese have information. It has meant agents have had to be moved and that knowledge of how we operate has stopped us getting vital information," a Downing Street source said, according to the newspaper.

Downing Street told AFP on Sunday that they "don't comment on intelligence matters" while the Foreign Office said: "We can neither confirm or deny these reports".

The BBC said on its website, meanwhile, that a government source said the two countries "have information" that spurred intelligence agents being moved, but said there was "no evidence" any spies were harmed.

Snowden fled to Russia after leaking the documents to the press in 2013 to expose the extent of US online surveillance programmes and to protect "privacy and basic liberties"...

Snowden worked as a contractor at the CIA and National Security Agency, where he was able to download 1.7 million secret documents that showed how hundreds of millions of people had been under surveillance, according to the Sunday Times.

He previously claimed that "no intelligence service" could crack the documents, saying he was able to "keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments".

But an intelligence source told the Sunday Times: "We know Russia and China have access to Snowden's material and will be going through it for years to come, searching for clues to identify potential targets."

An official from the interior ministry added that "(Russian President) Putin didn't give him asylum for nothing"..."

Raif Badawi and the value of thinking differently

Copying from a Tomowolade's post with the above title at Politics ad Infinitum, a British blog:

"Raif Badawi has been punished for the crime of thinking differently. In Saudi Arabia, the crime of thinking differently can land you with 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison...

What can be done to save Raif Badawi? Not much. Saudi Arabia is a geopolitical ally and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

What can be done to challenge the ideology that justifies Badawi’s oppression? A significant lot.

Civil society in the west is insufficiently hostile to Islamism because it assumes criticism of ideas is equivalent to bigotry against people. It assumes that a progressive case against fascism with a brown face is a contradiction in terms. It assumes, most of all, that Islam is a defamed religion and further criticism intensifies this defamation. In its desperate plea to eschew racism, the left has nourished de facto blasphemy law – and its primary victims are Muslims like Raif Badawi who think differently.

When gender segregation is condoned by some, and when the niqab is celebrated as a symbol of empowerment, and when student groups cheerily align with theocratic fascists, something stunningly clear emerges: In fetishising Islam as the religion of the oppressed, the left has lost sight of the people Islamism oppresses.

This is the great travesty of our age, for there are many like Raif Badawi out there... They face ostracism from people who want to kill them for thinking differently...

It’s important to support groups like the council of ex-Muslims... We should challenge Islamism whenever we see it, and defend liberalism whenever we don’t. It is important to celebrate our right to think differently – for it is our most precious freedom, and it should be extended to all."

Bad news from Saudi Arabia

Bad news keeps coming from Saudi Arabia. In February, the court upheld the 15-year prison sentence of human rights activist Waleed Abulkhair, lawyer and brother in-law of Raif Badawi. He refused to renounce his pro-freedom activity and repent for it and so seems to have nullified whatever tiny chance there was for reduction of the sentence.

"Saudi Arabia jailed my entire family," complained Samar Badawi, wife of Waleed and sister of Raif. "When Walid was first jailed, I was just a wife. By the time the ruling was issued, I had become a mother. It was in court that he saw his daughter, Jude, for the first time. His daughter is almost a year old now, and her father is absent from her life."

Four days ago, the Saudi Supreme court upheld also the sentence of Raif - 10 years and 1,000 lashes. There are fears that he will be beaten tomorrow, as he was in January.

The touchy Saudis have again rejected criticism for their early-medieval "jurisprudence".

The million-dollar question is, why are Western countries still so eager to trade with Saudi Arabia? Why do representatives of the free nations love torturers' money so much?

Update: At least, the flogging was not resumed on Friday.

"Not all are bad" indicates inherent flaw

I visited Dr. Amy's post Congratulate me; I'm on the Anti-Vax Enemies List!! and found something  noteworthy in the discussion below.


Commenter MaineJen, replying to an opponent, says:
"...Do you hear the similarity between "But not alllllllll male gamers threatened that female reporter with death!" and "But not allllllll CPMs ignore safety standards, take on high risk cases they have no business overseeing and refuse to transfer care even when both mother and baby's lives are in danger."
When you have to make the "But not alllllll..." argument, there is something inherently flawed and wrong-headed about the culture you're defending. Do you agree?"
(CPM is "certified professional midwife", a poorly trained variety of midwives who are allowed to practise in the USA, God knows why.)


Commenter The Bofa on the Sofa added:
"I like your description so much I am going to co-opt your words:
Bofa's Law
If your defense of a group consists of "Not all of them are bad," there is something inherently flawed about the culture you are defending."


Emphasis added by me. To acknowledge intellectual ownership, I intend to call it MaineJen - Bofa Law.

Why Islamophobia is healthy

Copying a fresh report I found at Yahoo! News:

"French 'anti-Islamophobia' group on trial for plotting attacks

Paris (AFP) - Members of a French group that said it was formed to combat Islamophobia went on trial in Paris on Monday accused of plotting terrorist attacks. 

Led by 37-year-old "emir" Mohamed Achamlane, the 15 members of Forsane Alizza, who called themselves the "knights of pride", have denied involvement in a terrorist organisation. 

Achamlane told the court he had no "terrorist inspiration" and only wanted to defend Muslims against mounting Islamophobia in France. 

The group was formed in 2010, gaining attention for organising protests against the government's decision to ban veils in public. 

It was disbanded two years later by the government, which described it as a "private militia".

After it was disbanded, the group put a message on its website demanding that French forces leave all Muslim-majority countries. 

"If our demands are ignored, we will consider the government to be at war against Muslims," the message said.

Achamlane told the court on Monday that he was only calling for the "legitimate defence" of his community, adding "I am not racist, I am not an anti-Semite."

But prosecutors have put forward evidence including a list of "targets" that highlighted Jewish shops in the Paris region. 

Achamlane also tried to explain why he had released videos of himself giving inflammatory speeches with Kalashnikov rifles in the background, and using phrases such as "By all-powerful Allah, we will put scars on France."

"We wanted to make a provocative video with a wall of Kalashnikovs and my bearded head to redress the balance," he said, specifying that he felt Muslims were "excluded" from French society.

"There is no radical or moderate Islam," he added. "There is only authentic Islam."

A police raid in 2012 led investigators to fear the group was armed, although it remains unclear if the weapons found were real or usable.

Each member of the group faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. The trial is due to run until June 22 or 23."

No comment is needed, but still I'll write one.

As many people have pointed out, "Islamophobia" is a misnomer, because "phobia" means irrational fear, while the fear of Islam is perfectly rational. A Russian dissident once wrote that there is nothing wrong with anti-Communism, it is just the healthy reaction of a normal person when Communism is shown to him. The same is true for Islamophobia.

Time and again, our experience shows that the label of Islamophobia is used by aggressive Islamists and their leftist allies to shame us into submission while they are trying to destroy our civilization. The above report is about a group of alleged wannabe terrorists in France presenting themselves as an "anti-Islamophobia" brigade. In the USA, the Tsarnaev brothers also praised Islam and criticized Islamophobes, then proved Islamophobes right by killing children and women in the name of Islam. In January 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweeted, "I don't argue with fools who say islam is terrorism it's not worth a thing, let an idiot remain an idiot." At his trial, Tamerlan's mother in-law testified that Tamerlan "always wanted to talk about how Islam was good". The inevitable conclusion? If you accuse people of Islamophobia, this puts under suspicion not their decency but yours.

Defending non-traditional names against racism smacks of stupidity

Groundless and ridiculous accusations of racism are one of the best ways to make a fool of oneself. Quoting from Karthick Ramakrishnan's essay Condemning non-traditional names smacks of racism, published in the Los Angeles Times:

"Duke University professor... Jerry Hough wrote that African-Americans “just feel sorry for themselves” and compared “the blacks” unfavorably to “the Asians.” He argued, specifically, that African-Americans adopt “strange new names” because they lack a desire for integration, as opposed to Asian-Americans, who choose “simple old American” first names... It seems worth pointing out that unfamiliar names are not necessarily a barrier for advancement. A prominent circuit court judge, and likely next nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, is named Padmanabhan Srikanth “Sri” Srinivasan."

A characteristic feature of poor argumentation is that the author produces arguments that suit better his opponents. Why is Judge Srinivasan using as his first name "Sri" - an abbreviation which may not be American but is certainly simple, old and, above all, easily pronounced? Maybe because he has found out that having to spell your name every time and to teach people its pronunciation is not the best way to make a career. I also suppose that, had he been born in America, he would most likely receive another name.

Ramakrishnan's text continues: "Unusual but European-sounding names — such as Imogen and Maxton — gain in popularity each year, and these are unlikely to lead to discrimination..."

I googled the two names and found out that they are not "European-sounding", they are European. Imogen is a character from Shakespeare's Cymbeline, and Maxton is a Scottish clan. So they may be rare but they are as traditional as it gets.

I wonder, why does an established journal like the LA Times publish such an article? I guess, because it is fashionable to deny reality and common sense. Reality is that, as one commenter wrote, "the faux Afro or ridiculous Hollywood names or trailer trash names that send a red flag to schools and employers... connote uneducated parents and/or urban ghetto and/or white trash." And common sense tells that if a child is born to trash parents, he is more than likely to be a trash himself, due to important environmental factors (their upbringing) and maybe even genetic factors (their heredity). Of course, there is a chance that the young person with the strange name will turn out to be a beautiful flower grown on bad soil, but employers hate taking chances. So, as another commenter asked, "Why would anyone hamper their child's chances at gainful employment and success in business?" Why, indeed?