Roger Cohen on European (lack of) solidarity

I have just read in the New York Times site an excellent op-ed by Roger Cohen, Poor Angry Magnetic Europe. It is so good that it made me forgive the primitive anti-Bulgarian hate campaign carried out by the same magazine several years ago. I am advising you to read the entire column, and now I am quoting parts of it below:

"BERLIN — Europe at the centenary of the war that devoured it is voting in elections for the European Parliament that will no doubt reflect the anger, disillusionment and boredom of people inclined to cast their ballots for an array of protest parties, many from the xenophobic right, some from the pander-to-Putin left...

In some ways Europe’s mood resembles America’s. Focus has narrowed and solidarity atrophied. Europe, like America, does not want to die for anyone else. It has turned inward, wanting its own problems solved, and damn the Libyans and Syrians and Ukrainians and whoever else may be making demands through their plight.

Anyone who believes the spread of freedom, democracy and the rule of law matters is a “warmonger.” The sharing economy is in vogue because it affords a better deal on a car ride or a room. Sharing politics is not because it may involve sacrifice for faraway people with strange names...

The European Parliament election coincides with a critical election Sunday in Ukraine, where Putin has created havoc by annexing Crimea, dispatching thugs to stir unrest in the eastern part of the country, and inventing a “fascist” threat in Kiev to conceal his own growing affinities with such politics (his beloved, much lamented Soviet Union of course allied with Nazi Germany in 1939 before Hitler tore up the pact in 1941; attraction to fascism is nothing new in Moscow).

On Kiev’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan, where Ukrainians died in numbers to escape the rule of an incompetent kleptomaniac backed by Putin, the European Union flag flies in several places. It is equally visible on surrounding streets. It is draped down the facade of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. It stands for something important in Kiev, something that seems almost unimaginable to Europeans in the confusion of their bile: the glowing possibility of freedom and dignity and pluralism, the possibility of a normal life...

But Europe is suddenly full of what Germans now call the Putinversteher — literally someone who understands Putin, more loosely a Putin apologist. Europeans of different stripes see him standing up to America, incarnating “family values,” countering a loathed European Union, and just being tough. Germans in surprising numbers are discovering their inner sympathy for Russia...

Europeans would do well to lift their gaze from the small world of their current anger toward those blue and gold flags fluttering on the Maidan, the better to recall what freedom means and with what sacrifice it has been attained."

European fellow voters, think of Ukraine!

On May 25, EU citizens will vote to elect their representatives in the European Parliament. My vote will be dominated by considerations who will support the best policy with regard to Ukraine.

I am outraged that Russia is attacking other countries and grabbing land again, and EU is practically doing nothing. So I will vote for those who, in my opinion, will be most able to stand against Russia and to think long-term of European solidarity.

And I would advice you to consider doing the same, if you haven't already decided it. Forget your and your country's economic hardships, social problems, ethnic tensions etc. Because you at least enjoy peace and, when you go to bed, you know in which country you will wake up tomorrow. So let's think of Ukraine and not ask for whom the bell tolls!

I lost my mother

When my brother died 4 years ago, I feared that my mother would soon follow him. Happily, she proved strong enough to endure and somewhat recover. Although devastated, she still enjoyed watching her grandchildren grow, meeting friends, following the news, reading books. She never complained of her health, and I hoped she would have more years to live.

She died suddenly on Monday.

The day before, I had been with my sons at a dinner in her home. We did it every week. She always prepared much more food than we could eat and gave the rest in boxes, so that I would not need to cook the next day. Until her very last day, she always cared for her loved ones.

My friend once said the system with the boxes was nice but, as my mother was getting older, hopefully at some moment they would start to travel in the opposite direction, i.e. I would cook and bring food for her. My mother, however, dreaded the very thought of such reversal. She said, "I hope never to live to a day when my child would care for me." And she didn't.

Emerging citizen

This days, my 10-yr-old son is for a first time realizing in earnest that he will die. He has asked me anxious questions about this several times.

Because I do not believe in any afterlife, it is a bit hard for me to confront his questions. I tell him that all people die and that not death as such but premature death is scary (so he must always be careful when crossing the street); but when a person lives to an old age and has seen and experienced much, it becomes easier for him to part with life, he can even get tired of life.

Today, after inquiring about death again, my son asked another, unexpected question:

"Will the city also die?"

I reassured him that cities are not like individuals, they are not doomed and can exist indefinitely, as long as their residents maintain and protect them.

The question surprised me because I have never tried to explain to him what it means to be a citizen, and in our conversations about death I have never mentioned that our deeds continue after us.

Discussions on Ukraine in earlier generations of my family

When I read news and analyses about Ukraine, I often make the mistake to look also at the comments below the articles. It is sickening, because no matter what source and what language I am reading, most of the comments are strongly pro-Russian, pro-Putin. Has the entire world gone crazy?

Analyzing the current situation invariably turns to digging into history, WWII and beyond. What strikes me is the tendency of some pro-Russian commenters to present the Holodomor as a natural and likely unavoidable famine. Quite like the pro-Palestinian Jew-haters with their Holocaust denialism.

This reminds me of my maternal grandfather. I am thinking of him on this day every year, because his name was Lazar, and today in Bulgaria is Lazarovden, i.e. St. Lazarus' day (tomorrow will be Tsvetnitsa - lit. "the day of flowers", i.e. Palm Sunday). I have mentioned in an earlier post that he was a carpenter. My mother still has in her home some excellent furniture made by him.

Unlike my paternal grandfather Georgi, who was strongly anti-Communist (and logically was killed by the Communists within weeks of their coming to power in September 1944), my grandfather Lazar was a Communist until 1945. His life had not been easy. His father Pavel, while serving in the cavalry, died in an accident. As he was riding through a forest, his head hit a branch and he fatally fell from the horse. After that, his family was of course doomed to misery.

The general with whom my great-grandfather Pavel had been serving wished to do something for his children. He arranged for Lazar to be enrolled in a carpentry school. So my grandfather learned his craft due to the goodwill of this general. Unfortunately, I am not sure in his name; I think it was Rusev.

When my grandfather grew up, he left his village Priboy and moved to the capital Sofia. His brothers gave him money that gave him the opportunity to settle in the city; in exchange, he renounced his share in the family estate. Poverty and injustice were widespread in Bulgaria at that time (the 1920s and 1930s). So he started to think that there were defects deep in the core of this society. He was shocked when his best friend's sister, a factory worker, died in an occupational accident. The young girl's death drove him to Communism.

My grandfather married a woman named Rilka, from the village of Herakovo. Her father Vladimir was a farmer - well-to-do, competent and respected. Like most people with a position in society at that time, he was anti-Communist. Thinking of this now, I even wonder how he allowed his daughter to marry a Communist. When he and my grandfather were together, they often had hot arguments on political subjects.

The regular topic of controversy was the Soviet Union. Information about oppression and misery in Stalin's realm was readily available, but my grandfather Lazar dismissed it all as capitalist propaganda. This included all reports of the Holodomor. His father in-law, however, knew that it was true. Not only because his greater experience in life was giving him better judgement, but also because some Russian refugees had settled in Herakovo, and actually one of them was working for him as a farm-hand. Their testimony was reliable. (I do not know what happened to these people after 1944. It is known, however, that many refugees from the Soviet "paradise" were rounded up after WWII and sent to Siberia, where they generally had short life spans.)

After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, my grandfather, like many other Bulgarian Communists, took part in the Resistance (though not in armed struggle). He told me about going out at night to cut telephone wires of presumed military importance. Happily, he never fell under suspicion. Had he been cought, he would have been imprisoned, tortured and maybe even killed.

When Soviet invasion and occupation of Bulgaria brought Communists to power, my grandfather quickly saw his error and repented. He could no longer close his eyes for the ugly face of Communism - "the face of the Gorgon", as poet V. Svintila called it. In 1945, while many people were applying for membership in the Bulgarian Communist Party, my grandfather left it. However, he never became open and active opponent of the new dictatorship. The situation was clearly hopeless.

Now, grandfather Lazar realized that the anti-Soviet "propaganda" had been right all along and even underestimated the dire reality of Communist totalitarian rule. His regrets were made worse by the thought that he could and should have seen the truth earlier. He remembered e.g. how during the war he and two of his Party comrades visited a poor wagoner, hoping to win him for their cause. He angrily ordered them to leave him alone: "Get out of my sight! When you seize power, you will take my cart and my horse!" My grandfather later said, "And indeed, this is exactly what happened." He was sad for having made an error which the wagoner, poorer and less educated than him, had avoided.

By mid-1980s, when I was a teenager, grandfather Lazar was my only grandparent still alive. He already considered me mature enough to discuss political subjects. He often talked to me about pre-Communist Bulgaria, which he had struggled to reform. He was comparing it to the current Socialist Bulgaria, and the comparison was almost invariably in the favor of pre-1944. As I was listening to his tales, the lost Bulgaria of his youth, made beautiful by the golden aura of nostalgia, was appearing in my imagination. A dead and gone world was briefly resurrected, like the miracle of his namesake Lazarus.

The Socialist society, which had seemed indestructible for so long, was now showing signs of weakness. My grandfather was more optimistic than me. He said every year, "This autumn the Communists will fall (from power)!" Unfortunately, he died at age 86 in 1988, a year before "classical" Communism finally collapsed.

With Russia, the West repeats Chamberlain's errors

The text below is from There is no appeasing Russia's mad king at theweek.com, by former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili.

In early March, the Russian Federation, after staging a referendum under Kalashnikovs in Crimea, proceeded to annex the region and laid the groundwork — according to Moscow — for "new political-legal realities," that is to say, a new Russian paradigm for a lawless world. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her speech to the Bundestag on March 13, Russia is bringing the law of the jungle to the table. For those of us who have lived through Vladimir Putin's attempts to reverse the results of what he calls "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century — the dissolution of the Soviet Union — what is happening in Ukraine is not unexpected. Nor does it mark the last act of the drama.

It should be abundantly clear now that Putin's initial plan of taking eastern Ukraine by mobilizing the Russian population there has failed. But that doesn't mean he's giving up. Russian strategists talked about a "weekend of rage" that could involve some kind of armed siege of government buildings in southern and eastern Ukraine. It happened — and if these local provocateurs and "self-defense forces" manage to hold these buildings as they did in Crimea, it might serve as a basis for further military intervention. Not that we should be surprised by this cynical playbook any more.

History can be a useful guide for politicians: first, to help prevent new disasters, and second, to help react to disasters that inevitably happen anyway, despite the best laid plans. And yet, plenty of politicians are making the same mistakes they should have learned from decades ago...

In Chechnya, tens of thousands of people were killed just to make Putin president and consolidate his power. Then, when the Colored Revolutions — and their successful reforms — became a menace to his rule, he invaded Georgia in order to kill this contagious model and again reconfirm his power. Now, as before, faced with eroding popularity in Russia, a shale gas revolution in North America, and the need for consistent port access to equip his allies in the Middle East, Putin attacked Ukraine and seized Crimea.
And yet, even with these myriad examples, the West continues to misunderstand or excuse Putin's aggression. These days, many pundits are busy with soul-searching, with one of the constant refrains being how the West overreached with NATO and EU expansion, and how it needlessly provoked the Russian bear. The conclusion they come to is that part of the reason for Russia's behavior, however petulant, lies in Western activism. It's a particular kind of intellectual self-flagellation and, for Putin, a reflection of Western weakness that only emboldens him.

Neville Chamberlain, when presenting the case for the great European powers to acquiesce to Hitler's occupation of the Sudetenland, argued that Europeans should not care about a "quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing." I hear a lot of pundits now talking about the "asymmetry of interests," implying that Russia is entitled to annex neighboring countries' lands for the simple reason that it cares for these lands more than the West. Others opine that we should all get used to the idea that the Crimea is gone, and that Russia will never give it back. This is exactly what I was told in the summer of 2008 — that I should be resigned to the idea that a part of Georgian territory, then occupied by Russia, was gone for good.

But this logic has its continuation. As we know from history, the cycles of appeasement usually get shorter with geometric progression. Soon, the same pundits may declare — with their best poker faces on — that now Moldova is "lost," or Latvia "lost," even some province of Poland. And just because Russia is not in the mood to give it back...


Certainly, Moscow didn't seem to care much about the minority Russian populations in its near abroad — so long as they were comfortably ruled by corrupt cronies of the Kremlin. But over the ensuing decade, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova have learned to look to the West, not so much because of geopolitical priorities, but because people there aspire to a Western way of life that respects human rights and universal values...The basic facts are very clear. Russia presents the greatest challenge to international law and order since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. And even though the West has much greater superiority over Russia — both economically and militarily — than it ever had over the Soviet Union, today's leaders are reluctant to take advantage of this asymmetry...

Despite President Barack Obama's rhetoric, the West — particularly Europe — appears reluctant to impose tougher sanctions. Unlike during the Cold War, Western companies draw much more benefit from Russia today, and thus they too will have to pay the price of sanctions... The dilemma is simple: Is the West willing to pay this price now, or delay the decision and pay a much higher price in the future?...


Winston Churchill once prophetically told Hitler's appeasers: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war." Surely, we cannot expect modern-day politicians obsessed with polls and midterm elections to be Churchillian all the time. But at a minimum they should not want to go down in history as the Neville Chamberlains of the 21st century. And misreading Putin for the man that he is — and has always been — is at the heart of appeasement.

Some pro-Russian Crimeans already regret their votes

Supporting Russia is one of the choices that often are often regretted later. This is exactly what is expected to happen in Crimea. Some vulnerable people, like canaries in a coalmine, are already regretting.

Quating from Laura Mills' report Crimea side-effect: Addicts deprived of methadone (AP via Yahoo! News):

"Every morning, Sergei Kislov takes the bus to the rundown outskirts of this port city for the methadone doses that keep him off heroin without suffering withdrawal. Now that Russia has taken over Crimea, the trips are about to end...

Russia, which annexed Crimea in mid-March following a referendum held in the wake of Ukraine's political upheavals, bans methadone, claiming most supplies end up on the criminal market. The ban could undermine years of efforts to reduce the spread of AIDS in Crimea; some 12,000 of the region's 2 million people are HIV-positive, a 2012 UNICEF survey found.

After years of rapid growth in the infection rate, the Ukrainian Health Ministry reported the first decline in 2012.

Many have attributed that decline to methadone therapy...In Russia, which recommends that addicts quit cold turkey, HIV is spreading rapidly. According to the Russian Federal AIDS Center, the number of people registered as infected increased by nearly 11 percent in 2013...

In preparation, Kislov has already started reducing his daily intake of methadone by about 10 milligrams each week.

Although he voted enthusiastically for Crimea to join Russia, he didn't expect the methadone program to end so quickly...

Patients say that since the program started here five years ago, local doctors had been nothing but supportive of the therapy. They reassured recovering addicts ahead of the referendum that the program would be extended at least until the end of the year.

That attitude changed on March 20, when the director of Russia's Federal Drug Service, Viktor Ivanov, announced that the program would be banned in Crimea...

Even if the group gets permission from local authorities to extend the program, the Ukrainian health minister told local news agencies Monday that Ukraine would not be sending any more methadone to Crimea, and recommended that any addicts there move to mainland Ukraine if they wanted to continue their treatment.

For Alexander Kolesnikov, a 40-year-old who has now been in the group for four years, moving to Ukraine isn't a possibility. He's proud of being from Sevastopol and has an aging, diabetic mother to care for.

But while the two went proudly to the polls on March 16 to vote for joining Russia, they are now dreading how a return to life without methadone might affect them.

"One half of my mother's heart is for Russia — for example, she will get a higher pension and she'll have a better standard of living," he said. "But the other half of her heart supports me, and she doesn't want to see me in that state ever again.""

Let me first mention that I am filled with disgust to the Crimean voters mentioned in the report. I think that people like Kislov and Kolesnikov who have made such a mess of their lives should have the decency to abstain from voting. They have proven in a dramatic way their decision-making incompetence, and they should not go "proudly" to decide the fate of their country and their fellow countrymen.

As for Mr. Kolesnikov's mother, she shows us in pure form the ugly face of elderly egoism. What is her primary motivation for voting? To get "a higher pension and a better standard of living". For the same reason, elderly Bulgarians keep voting for the Bulgarian Socialist Party, although everyone knows that electing this party is a recipe for disaster. Obsessed with their pensions, selfish old people do not hesitate to doom their young compatriots to misery and nonfreedom. A surprisingly high number of retirees are happy to sell their souls for the equivalent of $ 5. Elderly egoism is a very serious menace for the future of all countries that have completed the demographic transition.

Let me finish by copying a comment to the report, by someone posting as Randy:

"Dude, you voted to become part of Russia and now you are complaining? Maybe you should have voted to stay as part of Ukraine. Given your choice, you would be facing this sooner or later. I don't know why I am having a problem giving you sympathy...  Many people in Crimea will soon realize that they have not exactly solved all their problems by joining Russia. Many things will, in fact, become a lot worse. Better get your visa so you can leave what you voted to create."

Dictators who attack other nations always oppress their own people, too

In recent years, Russia not only regained its image of a country attacking neighbors in order to grab land. It also became (again) a country where young women, mothers of infants, are jailed for years because of a protest song.

Now, we have new "achievements" of freedom of speech in Russia. Copying from Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News, A bit of satire in Russia earns a big backlash, by Fred Weir:

"A newspaper editor in Vologda had a simple question for President Vladimir Putin. Considering all that Mr. Putin has done in Crimea to protect the rights of downtrodden Russian-speakers there, won't he please consider sending troops to do the same for long-suffering residents of Vologda?

The open letter was tongue in cheek, of course. Vologda is a Russian city deep inside its country's borders and about 300 miles north of Moscow. And the letter wasn't even published in print: Roman Romanenko, its author, posted it to Facebook.

Mr. Romanenko, editor and part owner of Premier, a fairly mainstream newsweekly in Vologda, thought it might be thought-provoking to adapt the plot of "The Mouse that Roared" and ask the Kremlin to send troops to throw off Vologda's corrupt oppressors and free the Russian population.

"Our rights are very restricted, we suffer greatly," Romanenko's open letter to Putin says. "The occupiers who seized power here with the help of fraudulent elections do nothing to help the conquered population.... They lavish money on themselves, on their homes, offices, and private planes," while living standards, education, agriculture, and child care are collapsing.

"We will be very grateful to you [for taking action] and we guarantee there will be no danger of guerrilla war [against you] here, nor are there likely to be any international sanctions as a result.... We've heard about all the money you're going to spend in Crimea, and hardly dare to hope that you might do the same for Vologda region? Our region has become a debt pit, and we desperately need new bridges, roads, industrial development, new jobs.... With respect and profound hopes for liberation, the Russian-speaking inhabitants of Vologda," it concludes.

Vologda's governor, Oleg Kuvshinnikov, did not find that the least bit amusing... Mr. Kuvshinnikov turned the case over to the regional prosecutor, who is currently investigating the post, and Romanenko himself, for signs of "extremist activity and fomenting social, ethnic, and linguistic strife."

In case there was any doubt, Romanenko, reached by phone Tuesday, insists that it was a joke and he only meant to stimulate a bit of discussion among his Facebook circles in Vologda... But called into the prosecutor's office late last month, he found himself facing a battery of harsh and insinuating questions. For example: "Did you write it yourself, or did somebody else write it for you?" and "What social group were you targeting" with this appeal?"

The investigation against Romanenko is ongoing. If he should be convicted of "extremist activity" under new, recently toughened laws, he faces up to 6 years in prison. And that's no joke."

Wake up, Russians! As long as you sleep, you will be a plaything in the hands of psychopaths!

Second death

When a loved one dies, at first we can think of nothing else, and the memory of his face and voice is more vivid than the living people around us.

Then, as we slowly resume life, the memories begin to fade.

I know this is necessary so that we can continue forward, but I am unhappy.

Even his child who adored him will remember little of him.

I know that this is as it should be. The beginning of life must not be dominated by thoughts of death. It would be too heavy a burden for the long journey ahead.

But still I am unhappy. Oblivion looks so much like second death.

Why I hate Russia

I hate Russia because too many of its people are clueless and imperial-minded, unable to build a decent country for themselves and ready to sacrifice their lives to prevent others from living well.

I am sorry to say it but Russians are relatively harmless only when they are starving. As soon as Russian economy provides enough for armament and food, in this order, the "democratically" elected Russian rulers begin bullying and killing non-Russians to boost up their domestic rating, because nothing seems to make the average Russian happier and prouder than seeing non-Russians (preferably civilians) killed or oppressed by Russian troops.

In the Soviet era, we had jokes that Russians "think their borders are secure only if they are steadily expanding" and "feel their borders secure only if there are Russian troops at both sides at the border". These jokes are actual again. Five years ago, Russia attacked Georgia, snatched land from it and got away with it. Now, it is attacking Ukraine after Ukrainians rioted against the "democratically elected" Russian puppet president and forced him to resign.

I do not want to go into detail how ethnic Russians in Ukraine behaved as traitors and hailed as heroes the bloody Berkut anti-riot forces who had killed dozens of demonstrators. Now, Russia has occupied Crimea "to defend Russian speakers" and seems prepared to take all of Eastern Ukraine, much like Hitler in 1938 attacked Czechoslovakia to defend the German-speaking minority there. Below, I am pasting from Laura Mills' AP report without further comments.

"MOSCOW (AP) — Thousands marched freely through Moscow on Sunday in support of Russia using military force in neighboring Ukraine, while at an anti-invasion protest nearby dozens were detained...

At least 10,000 people waving Russian flags rallied in central Moscow. Some dressed in Soviet military uniforms and shouted slogans like "Fascism will not pass!" and "No to Nazism!" — evoking parallels with the repulsion of Hitler's troops from Ukraine in World War II.

But at an anti-invasion protest near Red Square, dozens of demonstrators — one of whom held up just a blank piece of poster paper in protest — were quickly detained by police. The Associated Press witnessed more than 50 detentions and spotted at least five police vans, which carry between 15 and 20 protesters, driving away from the square.

Since parliament gave President Vladimir Putin the green light to use military force in Ukraine late on Saturday, the Russian leader has defied calls from the West to pull back his troops, insisting that Russia has a right to protect its interests and those of Russian-speakers in the strategic Black Sea region of Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine...

Russia Today claimed that 675,000 of Ukraine's population of 46 million had fled across the border to Russia, and showed the governors of Russia's western-most regions gearing up to accept the flood of refugees. State-owned channel Russia One showed what it alleged were cars lining up to flee the border into Russia — but the sign marking the border was actually for Shegini, a town on Ukraine's western border with Poland...

"We are one brotherly nation, we are all Russians in our souls," said Galina Kravchuk, a retiree at the pro-invasion rally who said she had lived in Crimea all her life but was visiting her daughter in Moscow. "Those protesters (in Ukraine) are hired. They are paid by the West and by America."

But among many at the rally, active support seemed paper thin. Many were delivered to the square by buses marked as city government property, and others confessed that they had been forced by their employers to attend.

"The boss forced us to come," said Elena, who wouldn't give her last name for fear of repercussions at her workplace. "Do you really think that all these people came here voluntarily? Never.""

Jesus Christ Emperor

Below is an authentic conversation with a 4th-grader after it is found out that he, to his teacher's utmost dismay, has written in a history test that Jesus Christ had been an emperor:
"What is an emperor?"
"A person who empers."
"And what does it mean - to emper?"
"To work as an emperor."

Ignorant fanatics doom their child to death and still try to pose as good parents

Ten-year-old Ohio resident Sarah Hershberger was diagnosed with leukemia (or, more likely, non-Hodgkin lymphoma). Chemotherapy was started, Sarah's tumors began to shrink and doctors estimated her survival chance at 85%. However, (surprise! surprise!) the side effects of chemotherapy were painful for Sarah, and apparently even more for her parents. Their best idea in the situation was to take her off the drugs and to use alternative herbal treatment to battle her cancer (!). The authorities intervened, and the parents together with Sarah fled the country to avoid forced chemotherapy. For more details, check Orac's blog.

A little twist to the story is that the Hershbergers are Amish. This is a loony sect of fanatics who deny technology. Cults of this sort are usually cited as religious freedom in action, but in reality only their founders enjoyed religious (or any other) freedom. Guess how much freedom you would have if you had had the poor luck to be born to such parents! Cult communities of this sort often seem cute from outside, with a show of pastoral happiness, until you have a closer look and discover that they are all tyranny and repression, especially of the weak, of women and children. All such cults survive by depriving their children of education and, hence, forcibly making every new generation unable to live outside the cult community. From Wikipedia: "They typically operate their own one-room schools and discontinue formal education at grade eight (age 13/14).^""

The politically correct, tolerant charlatanism of our era requires us to "respect" other religions, cultures and views, no matter how insane or how dire their results. This inevitably replaces normal speech with a Newspeak which hides the truth behind piles of meaningless words. Take the following quotation from the above cited report by A. Perez and M. Jaffe in Yahoo!News: "Sarah Hershberger and her parents oppose chemotherapy, and have been fighting the Akron Children's Hospital in court after the family stopped Sarah's treatment." Someone should informed these so-called journalists with one-digit (combined) IQ that a child of 10 hasn't the cognitive ability or maturity of personality needed to "oppose" a treatment or to "fight" in court. It is well known that a pre-teen child will "oppose" any treatment that causes any discomfort, even to immense detriment of her own interests. This is why children are not allowed to take medical (or legal) decisions. Such decisions are left to their legal guardians (usually the parents) in the hope that these guardians will stand for the child's best interests and will have enough brains to figure out what these best interests are, at least in simple situations such as dealing with a treatable and otherwise fatal disease. Unfortunately, this hope often turns false.

It would be at least partly understandable if the parents had said that they prefer their daughter to die than to pass through so much suffering, and they alongside her. After all, when the strain of parenting becomes unbearable, while not let the troublesome child pass away and concentrate on the other six children? What disgusts me ultimately is not even the parents' decision to doom Sarah to possibly preventable death, but their experimentation with alternative, herbal "treatments". This is a circus performed to convince others, and most likely the Hershbergers themselves, that they are good, loving and caring parents who do their best for Sarah. They may well convince themselves, especially if they (like most other religious fanatics) think they have a direct hotline for communication with God. When the girl's cancer, this "emperor of all maladies" kills her, they will say it has been God's will. They may even invent a reason why He has done this - e.g. that He urgently needed a new little angel. But all this spinning will not change the fact that they and not God are responsible for whatever will happen to Sarah.

Damn idiotic hypocrites! To Hell with them!

Examination strategy

If you are a university student, and if you have a problem with some particular exam (or a catalogue of exams), attempting time and again to pass it, but to no avail, always going to malicious professors who enjoy giving non-passing grades to intelligent students like you...

...If this is your case... then, why not try to study before the exam next time? Just for change.

(Thoughts after the "emergency" mid-semester exam yesterday, when we were busy with medical student geniuses trying to pass biology for 8th or 10th time and still unaware that cells have membranes, and viruses are not cells.)

Omniscience

Our civilization is more and more dominated by omniscience.


The telegraph, and later the telephone, allowed news - especially bad news - to travel at the speed of light. Indeed, sometimes we are lucky. The worst news I have ever received came with the incredible delay of 24 hours. So I have an undeserved, extra happy day.

If you happen to be messenger of omniscience, to avoid the dreaded phone call, you will go to deliver the news face to face if possible. If the recipients are your loved ones, they will greet you with joy (before they see your face), and you will realize that you are witnessing their very last happy moments. You will remember to tell them to sit down before you start talking, but you will have forgotten to bring any sedatives.

When we have to talk with others - especially children - about the death of someone they love, we wish we could sincerely say that he has gone to Heaven. But being omniscient like gods, we cannot find comfort in the blind hopes of religion. Knowledge comes at a price, shutting out of Paradise those who acquire it.

We have no choice but to find ways to live with omniscience. If you have adopted a child, you know it is best to tell him early that he is adopted. Otherwise, some "kind" neighbour will do this, just to demonstrate his omnipotence.

Or the truth will surface after a banal medical test. These tests are another realm of omniscience. If you suspect that some unwelcome condition could develop in you or your child, you in most cases can get tested. If the result is negative, you will be reassured. If it is positive... you "at least will know".

Nothing can remain hidden. We know this and, nevertheless, still try to keep some things secret. And when, predictably, the secret gets out, we feel miserable and cannot ourselves explain why.

First grade

Today is Sept. 15, the beginning of the school year and one of the sacred dates in Bulgarian education. My father remembers that in his childhood the date was indeed so sacred that even when Sept. 15 happened to be Sunday, teachers, kids and parents after church went to school to open the academic year. We are less strict nowadays, so because today is Sunday, summer was extended by a day and schools open tomorrow.

The video above presents the song First-grade (lyrics by Matei Stoyanov, music by Boris Karadimchev). The music and the pictures in the video are more important than the text, so I shall translate only the chorus:

We are saying loud and clear,
First grade is an awesome year!
"First" means also "best, most valued";
as first-graders we are proud!

Good luck to all first-graders (my younger son and niece included) and their families!

Modern heroes do not fear gender conversion

The prototypes of heroic behaviour come from the twilight of legends. Best known to us are the Greek legends preserved in epos and drama. What did the ancient Greek tragic hero fear most? He did not fear torture and death, or successfully suppressed any fears of this sort. He cared little about his loved ones and not at all about his community. What he feared was showing fear, and he dressed his fear in very specific words: to "turn womanish". As Leonard Moss summarizes in his book The Excess of Heroism in Classic Drama, heroes of Greek tragedies fear "gender conversion" - and so do those of Shakespeare.

Many people believe that every difference between today and once upon a time is necessarily progress. If you subscribe to their opinion, you can cheer the huge progress we have made. Today's people who are regarded as heroes in the West resemble the ancient heroes only by their lack of concern for their nation. Indeed, they sabotage its security and do their best to empower its enemies. The prototype of these heroes is Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. However, a better example is a former US soldier who provided classified information to the WikiLeaks and who was born and known as Bradley Manning.

Unlike the old heroes, this former soldier did not fear looking womanish. Manning not only repented for what s/he had done but, immediately after being found guilty and sentenced to 35 years in prison, s/he released a statement that s/he "considered herself a woman, had taken the name Chelsea Manning, and would seek to undergo hormone replacement therapy". Here is a case where the stupid politically correct gender-neutral expressions "s/he", "she or he" or "xe" are quite appropriate!

While Manning had had documented gender confusion for years, I agree with those who think that by this statement, s/he hopes to draw leniency. Today, Westerners are so concerned not to look homophobic/transphobic that gender-confused offenders often get only a slap on the wrist in situations that would put a straight offender in very serious trouble.

I may be old-fashioned but when talking about heroes, I prefer those egocentric, brutal men of old whose highest priority was to remain very much men to the end. I should read more classic texts and less news :-).

God punishes those who take medical advice from stupid pastors

Below, I am copy-pasting most of the Aug. 25 USA Today's report Texas measles outbreak linked to church, by Liz Strabo.

"Measles is making a worrisome resurgence across the USA, with at least 135 documented cases this year.

Measles, once a common childhood infection that killed up to 500 Americans a year, has been officially eradicated in the Western Hemisphere. For many years, the USA's few dozen measles diagnoses were "imported" cases in individuals who traveled from countries where the virus remains common. High vaccination rates largely halted the virus at the North American border. 

The country's safety net has become more porous in recent years. Although overall vaccination rates remain high, communities of like-minded parents who refuse immunizations for their children have been vulnerable to outbreaks.

The latest measles outbreak is in Texas, where the virus has sickened 25 people, most of whom are members or visitors of a church led by the daughter of televangelist Kenneth Copeland.

Fifteen of the measles cases are centered around Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark, Texas, whose senior pastor, Terri Pearsons, has previously been critical of measles vaccinations.

The outbreak was started by a visitor to the church who had recently traveled to a country where measles remains common, according to Tarrant County Public Health spokesman Al Roy.

Those sickened by measles include nine children and six adults, ranging in age from 4 months old to 44 years old. At least 12 of those infected were not fully immunized against measles, Roy says. The other patients have no record of being vaccinated. The 4-month-old is too young to have been received the measles vaccine, which is typically given at 1, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a classic example of how measles is being reintroduced," said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.

The USA has had more than twice as many confirmed measles cases this year than all of last year, when there were just 55, according to the CDC. Flare-ups brought on by foreign travel have caused that number to spike as high as 220 measles cases in 2011.

New York City also has battled a measles epidemic this year, with at least 58 cases, mostly in close-knit Orthodox Jewish communities. City officials say the outbreak was started by someone who traveled to the United Kingdom which, along with Europe, has suffered large measles outbreaks in recent years. One of the New York children with measles developed pneumonia. Two pregnant women were hospitalized and one suffered a miscarriage, city health officials say...

Other vaccine-preventable diseases also have broken out in recent years, including whooping cough and mumps. Some whooping cough outbreaks have clustered around private schools with lax vaccination requirements, according to CDC studies.

Measles particularly alarms doctors because it spreads like lightning and kills one in every 1,000 people infected... The virus can infect people even two hours after a sick person has left the room...

At the Texas church, the visitor infected not only the congregation and staff, but the church's on-site day care center, according to an announcement on Eagle Mountain's website. Health officials notified the church of the measles outbreak Aug. 14, and the church sponsored a vaccination clinic Aug. 18. Eagle Mountain also scheduled a vaccination clinic Sunday.

All of the school-age children infected in the Eagle Mountain outbreak were home-schooled, health officials say. Texas requires children be vaccinated before attending school.

In an Aug. 15 statement, Eagle Mountain's pastor, Terri Pearsons, said she still has some reservations about vaccines. "The concerns we have had are primarily with very young children who have family history of autism and with bundling too many immunizations at one time," she said.

Young children are actually among the most vulnerable to measles, Schaffner says. Their tiny airways can easily swell shut. "This is a sadly misinformed religious leader," Schaffner said.

In addition to getting a measles vaccine, Pearsons recommends that her congregants take vitamin D to fortify their immune systems. Schaffner said there's no evidence that vitamins offer any protection against measles.

"Our children and even adults of all ages need to be immunized now to stop the spread of measles and prevent those potential complications," Pearsons said. "The disease is only shut down when all are immunized.""

I find the report so good that it hardly needs any comments. However, let me add a word or two.

My title does not mean that I really believe in God, let alone God's punishment. However, people at the educational level of Rev. Pearsons and her congregants often use these terms to refer to laws of nature and other causal relationships. So the title expresses the idea (not new in any respect) that humans have evolved to survive and prosper by using their intelligence, and those who have too little of it or deliberately choose not to use it are likely to suffer, as those vaccination refusers did.

Many of these people are still able to learn from bitter experience, as we see from Rev. Pearsons' last words. The sad thing is that all the information that could spare them from the bitter experience was readily available, they just chose to ignore and deny it. Many cultures define stupidity as seeing (bad) things only when they happen and learning only through suffering.

Rev. Pearsons also clearly shows that once a person builds a stupid Weltanschauung, he is likely, even after correcting himself at one point, to continue stupid actions at other points. The stupid pastor who recommended non-vaccination until an outbreak happened now acknowledges vaccines (good) but recommends vitamin D to fortify the immune system (bad). In the 21st century, even the most stupid and ignorant people should know that vitamins do not treat anything except vitamin deficiency. A person with adequate nutrition will not fortify his immune system by guzzling additional vitamin D. Instead, he may harm himself because vitamin D is not readily excreted or degraded by the human body. So those who continue to take medical advice from stupid pastors are likely to suffer further punishments by God.

Bulgarian protesters better economists than Prime Minister Oresharski

(Bulgarian readers can read this post in Bulgarian.)

While anti-government protests in Bulgaria are continuing, yesterday the Prime Minister Oresharski talked to journalists informally (no cameras and voice recorders allowed). Dir.bg (source in Bulgarian) reports about the event:

""All countries in crisis, such as Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy are tightening the belts and this is leading to mass protests. In Bulgaria, we are relaxing the fiscal system, and the people are protesting. I do not understand this,"" commented Oresharski with surprise... He said also that his colleagues abroad cannot believe that in Bulgaria, at a time of relaxing the fiscal discipline and increasing the budget deficit in order to allow more social spending, people go out to mass protests."

Suprise, indeed! Protesters apparently have some economic background and do not want to roll down the slope to Hell paved with phrases like "relaxing the fiscal discipline", "increasing the budget deficit" and "more social spending". As good and enlightened citizens, they think long-term. While it may be true that in the long run we'll be all dead, these Bulgarians do not want to ruin their children's future in order to spend some extra cents today. And they cannot be bribed by social spending because they do not rely on government to feed them. In a word, they are better economists than Prime Minister Oresharski, who has a degree in economics. Eh well, I am exaggerating. I suppose that Oresharski is pretty aware what he is doing but has sold his soul to the devil.

While prospects for Bulgaria look grim, we can at least be proud that while we have a worse government than other countries, we have better protesters. (Turkey is our rival in both respects.) They do not want to live on the back of someone else (or of future generations) and do not believe in Keynesian pseudo-economic rubbish that austerity is bad. I keep wondering at our pro-government propaganda which has been repeating for almost 2 months, like a non-responding computer programme, that the present protesters (unlike the worthy proletarians in February) are working people with above-average income and education, residents of the big cities. This is an open admission that exactly the best, the nation's elite, are against you! But apparently today's rulers think the best part of society, and the only one with right to protest, are those unable to pay their utility bills and digital TV decoders and to support their children. This is because today's rulers imbibed too much Marxism in their young years.

Oresharski also said yesterday that he would "clear" some government agencies in order to cut expenditures from the inflated administration. This is the definition of arrogance, to say such a thing immediately after creating a new "Ministry of investment projecting" (yes, dear readers) which will have a building and personnel of nearly 900. Unfortunately, this new ministry is expected to do much more damages than its payroll and utility expenditures.

Too-actual quote by Ludwig von Mises

Bureaucracy by Ludwig von Mises (1944) is a remarkable book that I am proud to have translated to Bulgarian. Its Chapter V (you can read it here) contains a section titled The bureaucrat as a voter. I am citing it entirely, because I think it is too actual today and shows the cause of the dire political situation in Bulgaria (and likely also in Greece and other countries).

"The bureaucrat is not only a government employee. He is, under a democratic constitution, at the same time a voter and as such a part of the sovereign, his employer. He is in a peculiar position: he is both employer and employee. And his pecuniary interest as employee towers above his interest as employer, as he gets much more from the public funds than he contributes to them.

This double relationship becomes more important as the people on the government’s payroll increase. The bureaucrat as voter is more eager to get a raise than to keep the budget balanced. His main concern is to swell the payroll.

The political structure of Germany and France, in the last years preceding the fall of their democratic constitutions, was to a very great extent influenced by the fact that for a considerable part of the electorate the state was the source of income. There were not only the hosts of public employees, and those employed in the nationalized branches of business (e.g., railroad, post, telegraph, and telephone), there were the receivers of the unemployment dole and of social security benefits, as well as the farmers and some other groups which the government directly or indirectly subsidized. Their main concern was to get more out of the public funds. They did not care for “ideal” issues like liberty, justice, the supremacy of the law, and good government. They asked for more money, that was all. No candidate for parliament, provincial diets, or town councils could risk opposing the appetite of the public employees for a raise. The various political parties were eager to outdo one another in munificence. In the nineteenth century the parliaments were intent on restricting public expenditures as much as possible. But now thrift became despicable. Boundless spending was considered a wise policy. Both the party in power and the opposition strove for popularity by openhandedness. To create new offices with new employees was called a “positive” policy, and every attempt to prevent squandering public funds was disparaged as “negativism.”

Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government payroll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.

This is one of the antinomies inherent in present-day constitutional issues. It has made many people despair of the future of democracy. As they became convinced that the trend toward more government interference with business, toward more offices with more employees, toward more doles and subsidies is inevitable, they could not help losing confidence in government by the people."

Bulgarian protests, summer 2013

Delyan Peevski, photo cropped from the site of the 24 chasa newspaper.


This long-overdue post was my duty as a Bulgarian citizen, while other, more worthy Bulgarian citizens are out in the streets and squares, again, for the well-being of their children and their country. Right now, as I am writing, protesters are clashing with police in front of the Parliament. Last night, someone I know was detained and they did not allow him to make a phone call until the morning, driving his family to panic. I have no idea how these protests will end; I can only hope at success, and at as little violence as possible.

Nearly half a year ago, in January, our strongest political party - the Bulgarian Socialist Party (then in opposition), started the story. To understand the modern history of Bulgaria, you must know that it is dominated by the influence and interests of Russia. Unfortunately, we are still so much in the grasp of Russia that each government opposing its policies invariably falls from power. And the Troyan horse of Russia in Bulgaria is the Bulgarian Socialist Party, which whole-heartedly serves Putin and the Russian energy mafia. It collects votes from diehard communists, the security apparatus, employees of "businessmen" who have started their business with capital from the party, and, most importantly, a large group of retired people, unemployed poor, working poor, stay-at-home mothers and others whose personal situation makes them hate the free market and who would vote for the Satan himself if he would promise to give them a little unearned income taken from other people's earned incomes. (Of course not all in such a situation "sell" their votes and souls - but an alarming number do.)

Some of the worst excesses of the Socialists are done in an unholy alliance with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms DPS, a.k.a. "the Turkish Party". The leaders of this party and its members of Parliament, be they ethnic Turks, Bulgarian Muslims or Bulgarians of Christian origin recruited to conceal the party's tribal nature, are characterized by even lower ethics than the Socialists and by personal fortunes and informal power that cannot be accounted in any decent way. To my opinion, leaving all other factors aside, the steady presence of this party on the Bulgarian political scene dooms us to lag behind otherwise similar Romania in prosperity, democracy, rule of law, human development, and every other aspect you can imagine.

The previous government of Boyko Borisov, for all its defects, made some serious attempts to put the interests of Bulgaria above those of Russia. In particular, it announced it would not build a second nuclear power plant (at the town of Belene) which would benefit only Russia. This project, marred from the beginning by special interests and corruption and completely uncoupled from the real energy needs and the market situation, has so far consumed EUR 1 billion and is expected, if continued, to double the Bulgarian debt and to enslave the Bulgarian taxpayers with debt repayment for decades to come. However, the socialists made very successful propaganda that our electricity is expensive because this plant has not been built. In late January, they organized a referendum in which only 20% of voters took part but from those who voted, 60% supported the power plant construction.

Wide-scale protests started in a suspiciously short time, initially directed against the high January electricity bills but then quickly turned against the government. I know that the West perceived these protests as just another result of the "bad" balanced budgets. I guess that too much information is lost to observers who do not speak the local language. The mere fact that early elections were demanded despite regular elections scheduled for June, shows much. Moreover, some of the protest leaders (e.g. Angel Slavchev, link in Bulgarian), turned out to be socialist and pro-Russian activists. Unfortunately, the winter protesters were successful and brought resignation of government and early elections as they wished.

After the elections, the former ruling party won most votes but still not enough to form a government. So, currently we have a government formed by the other 3 parties elected in Parliament - the socialists, the ethnic Turkish party and the Ataka party of nationalist extremists. The leaders of all three parties know well that in a normal society, they would never see the Parliament from within; therefore they regard the Bulgarian nation as a sheepish flock ready to tolerate everything, and use their "democratically" acquired power with stunning arrogance.

You would expect the Socialist leader Sergey Stanishev to become Prime Minister, but this did not happen. Instead, the economist Plamen Oresharski took the post. Years earlier, he had tried to make a political carrier in right-wing Union of the Democratic Forces, the main opponent of the Socialists at that time. Bulgarians do not trust such colour-changing politicians, and for good reason, because they rarely have any resemblance to Winston Chuchill and we have not seen anything good from them. And our grim expectations came true very soon, while the government was still nascent.

After Oresharski's government was inaugurated on May 29, the first damn thing it did was to state its intention to build the Belene nuclear plant (the Prime Minister himself said it on May 31, link in Bulgarian). The second damn thing the government did, as the New York Times put it, was to try to shift blame for the 2012 Burgas bus bombing from Hezbollah (by the mouth of the foreign minister Kristian Vigenin on June 5). And the third damn thing the new rulers did was to appoint Delyan Peevski as head of the security apparatus. This passed in Parliament on June 14 and then the nation exploded.

Let me give a short biography of Delyan Peevski, translating from his page in Bulgarian Wikipedia and copying from the New York Times report (by M. Brunwasser) After political appointment in Bulgaria, rage boils over. Peevski (32) started his political and business career back in 2001, at the tender age of 21, presumably propelled by his mother Irena Krasteva, head of the Bulgarian national lottery and now owner of a "media empire, which includes roughly 40 percent of the print market in Bulgaria, the biggest printing press in the country, the fourth-largest television broadcaster, the distribution company for about 80 percent of the country’s newspapers and many other media outlets, according to industry watchers" (quote from NYT). Peevski has no official share in this empire but helps his mother run it.

In 2001, in his second year at law school (the Southwestern University, a diploma mill), Peevski joined the then-ruling National Movement Simeon II party and was appointed Secretary of Parliament and head of Bulgaria's largest Black Sea port at Varna. In May 2005, Peevski became examining magistrate in Sofia, although the law requires a minimum of 2 years lenght of service for this position. This was just another step in his career of appointments in the public sector without having the credentials required by law. Five months later, under the government of Sergey Stanishev, Peevski was appointed as deputy minister of government policy to disasters and accidents, responsible for the State Reserve service. He also became member of the agency issuing licenses for arms trade.

In 2007, prosecutors started investigating Delyan Peevski into possible abuse of office. Hristo Lachev, head of the national tobacco holding Bulgartabac, complained that Peevski had demanded from the holding to make deals with companies close to him. Peevski was fired. However, the investigation was terminated due to "lack of evidence". (As the NYT report mentions in passing, the European Commission has long criticized Bulgaria for failing to prosecute a single high-level public official.) After that, Peevski was restored to his positions as examining magistrate and deputy minister.

Peevski's career took a new turn in 2009, when he switched from the Simeon II party to the Turkish party DPS and was elected in Parliament from it. (The NYT with its usual political correctness omits the fact that the Movement for Rights and Freedoms is the party of our ethnic Turkish minority.) Since 2009, he has been a member of the Parliamentary commission for national security and public order.

So this man was appointed to head the powerful State Agency for National Security, "a sensitive state position in charge of fighting the most serious crimes, a job that includes access to classified information and the power to order arrests and wiretaps... A week before Mr. Peevski was elected to his security post by the Parliament, the law for the position was changed in an apparent attempt to qualify him despite no intelligence experience and just seven months in the state investigation service. Deputies from the Bulgarian Socialist Party were informed of Mr. Peevski’s candidacy only 30 minutes before they were pressed to vote for him, said Georgi Kadiev, one of four Socialist lawmakers who abstained. “As members of Parliament we are supposed to protect national security,” Mr. Kadiev said in an interview. “Instead, we ourselves became threats to national security.” " (from the NYT report.)

I advise you just to try Peevski's name on Google Image Search - the way he looks will tell you a lot! Above, I have posted a representative image of him. A US friend of mine with whom I exchanged e-mails about the situation in Bulgaria commented, "That guy Delyan Peevski looks like a thug and a creep. I can't believe he's a "media mogul" - isn't that a job that requires some sort of charm? If I saw him across the room, knowing nothing about him, I'd be keeping an eye on him. Doesn't seem a very reassuring appointment for that head of security!"

However, this time the arrogant ruling oligarchy crossed the line. Less than 12 hours after Peevski's appointment, tens of thousands of citizens gathered to protest. The rallies continued the following days, while EU and NATO officials expressed their dismay. Finally, on June 19 the Parliament was forced to cancel its own decision and to remove Peevski from his position. The rulers themselves had to admit they had made a mistake. When asked why Peevski had been appointed in the first place after being fired earlier by the Socialists themselves because of the corruption charges, the Socialist leader Stanishev said that, looking at Peevski, he had seen a man who "had passed through a very strong personal catharsis" (see this short YouTube video - even if you do not speak Bulgarian, you will be impressed by Peevski's body language, and by the laughter following Stanishev's words.)

After this first victory, the protesters went on to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Oresharski himself. They have been demonstrating daily for 40 days already. Even though Peevski was forced to step down, the civil society of Bulgaria has seen enough of Oresharski's government and does not intend to give it any more credit.

Another scandalous appointment by this government was of Petar Kirov as deputy transport minister. Kirov also did not have any credentials for the post. Moreover, there was conflict of interests because his father Volodya Kirov was former director of the Executive Agency "Automobile Administration", and current head of a hazardous materials transportation training center within the system of the Transport Ministry. The corruption in Volodya Kirov's agency was exposed by a journalist who bought from it a license for bus driver despite having never spent a minute behind the wheel of a bus (report in Bulgarian). The Transport Minister Daniel Papazov said, "I am not interested in who his father is. I learned that he had once been head of the Executive Agency "Automobile Administration", but this does not matter. The man is fluent in English, he has all the necessary certificates and a personal recommendation from Commissioner Hahn". This was somehow duly translated and brought to the ears of Johannes Haan, EU Commissioner for Regional Policy. He of course denied to have recommended Kirov Jr. and demanded apology from Minister Papazov but, as far as I know, has not received it.

A new Ministry was created by the current ruling majority, the so-called Ministry of Investment Projecting (I know it sounds idiotic in English, but it is not my fault - it sounds idiotic also in Bulgarian). Conservationists and transparency activists warn that it was created to be a source of corruption and to allow building in protected territories. They also criticize the appointments of Chavdar Georgiev and Burhan Abhazov as deputy ministers of environment and agriculture, respectively. Both are known as lobbyists for selling parts of protected territories and for building golf facilities in them (source in Bulgarian).

On Monday (July 22), the new government offered just another proof of its potential for harm. The Parliament endorsed a revision of the national budged proposed by the cabinet, bringing the deficit from 1,3 to 2% and including new debt of EUR 500 million. I hope that I have convinced you that this government has to go, immediately. When rulers behave like this, the fact that they have been democratically elected becomes irrelevant. To those who still would consider it relevant, I would remind that Hitler also came to power in a "democratic" way.

Today, the protests escalated and protesters besieged the Parliament to make it difficult for its members to leave peacefully.

UPDATE: Much of this post was edited today, July 24. The police finally brought the members of Parliament out in a bus after pushing the protesters back. This happened at 4.30 AM. Many protesters and at least one policeman were injured.

Update 2: Reporters were also beaten by riot police and their equipment was destroyed. The camera of Ivan Bedrov, a well-known journalist, can now record only sound - the display and the optics are in pieces. At least three other reporters named Fikov, Momchilov and Draganov complain that they have been beaten. Momchilov's camera has also been damaged. All of them claim to have been attacked after clearly presenting themselves to the police as journalists doing their job (link in Bulgarian). Our riot police invariably state that they act with restraint and strictly within the law but, strangely, always try to prevent reporters from documenting their admirable behaviour!