Dad of the year

Below are copied parts of a report in today's Yahoo!News.




"Baby's body recovered, three missing, after raft carrying migrants capsizes in Rio Grande

By Andrew Hay (Reuters) 

The body of a 10-month-old boy was recovered on Thursday and three other migrants, including two children, were still missing after their raft capsized as they crossed the Rio Grande in Texas, U.S. Border Patrol said.

The rubber raft flipped over on Wednesday night near Del Rio, Texas, and all nine of its occupants were swept away in the cold, fast-flowing water, according to the father of the dead child, U.S. Border Patrol said in a statement.

The father swam to safety. A Border Patrol agent jumped into the river and rescued his wife and 6-year-old son. The boy was given emergency care and then rushed to a hospital for advanced treatment. Another man and his son were found on the river bank.

The missing were believed to include the 7-year-old nephew of the dead child’s father, a girl and an adult male, according to the statement.

"What we’re dealing with now is senseless tragedy,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Raul Ortiz said in a statement.

The baby’s body was found several miles downriver by a Border Patrol search and rescue team.

Drownings are common on the Rio Grande, which makes up part of the U.S.-Mexico border, as migrants try to cross on often overcrowded, makeshift rafts with no life jackets...

In the past seven months, Border Patrol has apprehended over 418,000 migrants on the southwest border, already surpassing the 2018 fiscal-year total. Most of those arrested were Central American families, many of them crossing the border in large groups that can number over 400 people.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 283 deaths on the border in 2018, ranging from heat-related fatalities to drownings... Migrant advocates say the death toll is far greater as many bodies are never recovered from deserts and the Rio Grande."

Nothing good can come out of emigration culture, i.e. regarding emigration to a more prosperous country as the default path to success, and those who stay and work in their homeland as failures. It drives people to emigrate at any cost, legally or not, and ultimately leads to deaths. At least, once this man's loved ones were in the cold turbulent waters of Rio Grande as a result of his poor decisions, he could try to bring them out, instead of swimming to safety himself and leaving their rescue to the Border Patrol. Moral: do not concent to a perilous journey if the man leading you is a coward and a loser. Of course, dragging one's family through deserts and rivers to cross a border illegally and earn detention is the sort of idea that comes exactly to losers, so wives should just say "no".

Iranian woman lawyer convicted for defending women

Nasrin Sotoudeh (image source: Amnesty International)

From a March 6 report by Jon Gambrell, Associated Press, via Yahoo! News:

"A prominent human rights lawyer in Iran who defended protesters against the Islamic Republic's mandatory headscarves for women has been convicted and faces years in prison, an activist group said Wednesday.

The conviction of Nasrin Sotoudeh, who previously served three years in prison for her work, underlines the limits of challenging Iran's theocracy as it faces economic pressure exacerbated by the U.S. pulling out of Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers...

It shows "the insecurity the regime has to any peaceful challenge," said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, which reported Sotoudeh's conviction. "It knows a large segment of the country . are fed up with the hijab laws."

Sotoudeh, 55, was convicted in absentia after she refused to attend the trial before Tehran's Revolutionary Court as she was unable to select her own counsel, Ghaemi said. The Revolutionary Court conducts closed-door hearings over alleged threats to Iran's government.

The charges range from her membership in a human rights group to "encouraging corruption and prostitution." That suggests her detention in part relates to her defense of women who protested the mandatory hijab.

Sotoudeh's conviction was not immediately reported by Iranian state-run media. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran relied on information about Sotoudeh's case provided by her husband Reza Khandan, who separately faces a six-year prison sentence over providing updates on her case on Facebook, Ghaemi said...

One of Sotoudeh's clients in the hijab protests received a 20-year prison sentence, showing the sensitivity authorities felt about the case...

The hijab and chador — the flowing, all-encompassing robe for women — have long been parts of Persian culture. They became political symbols in 1936, when Iran's pro-Western ruler Reza Shah Pahlavi banned the garments amid his efforts to rapidly modernize Iran. The ban became a source of humiliation for some pious Muslim women in the country.

As the 1979 Islamic Revolution took hold, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered female civil servants to wear the chador. At first, thousands of women protested the decision in Tehran and Khomeini later said officials should not insult women who chose not to wear it — though he also called the chador "the flag of the revolution."

The hijab and loose-fitting clothing later became mandatory for all women in Iran..."

On March 8, my sympathy to Ms. Sotoudeh and the suffering Iranian women.

Update: Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to to 33 years in prison and 148 lashes. Amnesty International has a petition to free her - please sign if you care!

Christian family tortures 7-yr-old boy to death for not knowing Bible verses

In April last year, 7-year-old Ethan Hauschultz from Manitowoc (Wisconsin) was killed. His photo above has been provided by his mother Andrea Everett. Because of alleged neglect and abuse, Ethan and his three siblings were taken from her by the authorities and put under the guardianship of their grand-uncle Timothy Hauschultz and his wife Tina. These two individuals, together with their 15-yr-old son Damian, are now charged for his death.

(Photo from wbay)

Timothy required the children to memorize verses from the Bible and, when not satisfied, punished them by forcing them to carry around for hours logs heavier than 20 kg. On the fateful day, Timothy went out and ordered his son Damian (then 14) to oversee Ethan's punishment. Because the 7-yr-old kept dropping the log, Damian "hit and kicked the younger boy 100 times, rolled the heavy log over his chest and stood on his head and body while Ethan was face-down in a puddle. He then allegedly buried him in "his own little coffin of snow"" (Damian's words to the investigators; he laughed). When Timothy returned and found little Ethan lifeless, he rushed him to a hospital but it was too late: Ethan died from "hypothermia and blunt force injuries to his head, chest and abdomen".

It is not easy to find this case in the news without explicit searching - it is buried, like Ethan himself. It should be front-page news and send shock waves all across the Christian world. And also in child protection services, who rip children from allegedly unfit parents just to place them under the care of monsters who kill them. In another US case from last year (the Hart case), two crazy women killed their six adopted children in a murder-suicide after starving and otherwise abusing them for years.

Headscarves: photo evidence of cultural regression

Ex-Muslims of North America have declared today, Feb. 1, as No Hijab Day, to support the right of women to not wear the hijab (Islamic headscarf). The two sets of photos above speak for themselves. Both are from the Twitter feed of Roxy, hattip Prof. Coyne. I hope that the women shown (in the bottom photo, not actually shown) will eventually enjoy the freedom to express themselves and to feel the wind in their hair.

Do you believe in Santa?

Today is the second day of Christmas, and I hope everyone is having a good holiday. Every year, there is a discussion around Christmas time among a certain age group whether Santa (or whatever his equivalent is called) is real. Below, I am copying a brilliant comment on the subject, posted on Prof. Jerry Coyne's site by Justin Zimmer (I don't know whether this is all his original text):

"Typical non-believers. I don’t believe in the same Santa you don’t believe in. Year after year I hear the same old arguments rolled out against the literal interpretation of Father Christmas, but never do any of you address the best arguments for Santa Claus. Of course there isn’t an obese, bearded, cis-gendered, heterosexual, white male with bad taste in winter wear and an outmoded, non-vegan, yet carbon-neutral animal based transportation system who knows when you are sleeping, or awake and judges you based on adherence to a parental and often patriarchal set of rules. That’s simply ridiculous and no self-respecting possessor of Christmas cheer truly believes that. Only children would be so naive. What is “Santa Claus” really but the spirit of goodwill towards your fellow non-gender specific human beings, the ground-of-being jolly in the cold winter months and the joy of giving to those in need. No, Santa Claus is not a literal person you can write letters to beseeching consumerist trinkets in exchange for good behavior but the natural desire to do good by others, a sensus-saint-nicolatus if you will. When you sit down to write that letter to jolly old Saint Nick, you aren’t really expecting anything in return, just submitting to the hope that somehow good things will come your way and towards others. Santa is hope, Santa is love, and who would argue against hope or love? Jerks like you of course. That coal in your stocking is merely a metaphor for the blackness of your know-it-all, a-santa-ist hearts."

Kurds betrayed again

Throughout the war against the Islamic State, Kurds have been the most valiant and committed fighters. And now, after the USA has used them, President Trump betrayed them. He suddenly announced withdrawal of US troops from Syria, which will leave the Kurds at the mercy of their enemies. And this is just the umpteenth time in history when the so-called free world betrays them. About the Islamic State, Trump says it has been defeated and will not come back. We'll see.

Creationism wrapped in two sentences

Prof. Jerry Coyne recently reported how a creationist tried to troll his site. Below the post, commenter "Pray Hard" beautifully summarized the nonsense of creationism in two short sentences:

"I stopped trying to convince people about evolution long ago. If they can look at a fossil in stone and tell me that God put it there to test their faith, I don’t see much point in continuing."

Crazy ideas about motherhood, kidnapping and everything

See what I have just found on Yahoo!News. Shanara Mobley, a Florida mother whose newborn daughter Kamiya was abducted as a newborn from the hospital in 1998, was very happy when the girl was found alive and well last year. However, Kamiya (raised by her kidnapper as Alexis Manigo and continuing to use this name) didn't accept her mother and remained bonded to the kidnapper Gloria Williams even after she learned the truth. Now, Shanara Mobley admits that she has blocked her daughter's phone and wishes that “they never would have found her.” What impresses me most in this sad story is that almost all commenters support the daughter and say the mother should be more understanding to the young woman's hostility. Some even say that the mother should have demanded leniency for the kidnapper, "the only mother the girl knew". (Williams was sentenced to 18 years, Mobley wanted a death sentence. The daughter regularly calls her imprisoned fake "mother".)

There is almost a consensus that the kidnapper gave Kamiya a "loving home" and, hence, was not so bad after all. Also, the fact that Shanara was very young, single and poor at the time of birth is cited as an argument that the baby was lucky to be kidnapped. Some even hint that Gloria was a Good Samaritan motivated by an urge to save the baby from a miserable ghetto life with a deadbeat birth mom. People also blame the mother for receiving money from a settlement with the hospital and for being "vengeful" to the kidnapper. There is a universal sympathy to Kamiya and the way she feels about the two women who shaped her life.

On another page, I found information about what Gloria Williams said in court:

"Twenty years after she took a newborn from a Jacksonville hospital and brought the baby to South Carolina to raise as her own daughter, Gloria Williams is telling the court why.

Williams says she was in an abusive relationship with a man, Charles Manigo... She says Manigo wanted her to have a baby, and she thought that would help bring peace to their home, so she ultimately got pregnant. Williams says she miscarried as a result of the stress of the abuse... but even after she got it medically confirmed, she didn’t tell anyone.

In July 1998, Williams says she was leaving work, when she essentially went in to autopilot... She says she doesn’t know why she drove down I-95 from her home in South Carolina... “It was definitely not to take a baby, that’s for sure,” she says. That blank slate continued as she walked in to the hospital...

 

Williams says she went and looked at the other babies and thought about the one she had lost, and then walked in to Shanara Mobley’s room, again telling the defense she wasn’t sure why.

Williams says she spent a lot of time talking with Mobley and helping her out. She was still wearing scrubs from her job, and while she told the prosecutor that she didn’t claim to be a nurse at the hospital, she admitted that she knew that’s what Mobley thought. Then the newborn, Kamiyah Mobley, was brought in to the room.

“I was thinking about, you know, maybe this baby could help Charles, that’s what I was thinking. It was like, she [Shanara] was so young, and she just wasn’t real sure about what she was gunna do, and just my mindset at that time wasn’t logical, it definitely wasn’t logical. But for what I was thinking at that time, it seemed right, it seemed right,” Williams says.

Williams would ultimately take the baby back to her home in South Carolina, renaming her Alexis Manigo, and telling Charles Manigo it was his baby. She says the baby did not bring peace to their home after all, though, and when she ultimately had a custody agreement with her two sons from a prior marriage changed because of the abuse, she decided to leave with Kamiyah as well...

The defense walked Williams through a series of photos showing awards, celebrations and gatherings featuring Kamiyah while she was growing up. Williams further said Kamiyah was always cared for and provided for.

Things changed, when Kamiyah decided she wanted to start working. Williams says Kamiyah asked for her birth certificate and social security card, so she could finish all the paperwork on a job she had already lined up.

“I said, ‘you’re not my daughter’. I said, ‘I took you a long time ago’,” Williams says she told Kamiyah at that time.

Williams says she offered to turn herself in at that time, but Kamiyah told her not to. They went on another year and a half or so before the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office ultimately learned about Kamiyah and reached out...

Williams agreed that how this went is the “worst” possible outcome for Kamiyah... Upon questioning from the prosecution, Williams said her motivation for taking the baby was not out of concern for how Mobley would raise her, but for selfish reasons..."

So you see that by Williams' own admission, her kidnapping was not motivated by a wish to protect the baby from a hard life. It was motivated by an obsession to maintain a relationship with an abusive boyfriend. Being obsessed about sex doesn't exactly make one a good parent. Williams may have been financially better off than Mobley, but I don't think she gave Kamiya a "loving home". You also see from this short text that Williams is a master manipulator. One cannot help pitying young Kamiya. As a minority of commenters remarked, she was brainwashed and is now suffering of Stockholm syndrome.

But Kamiya is no longer a child. She is a 20-yr-old young adult who knows her situation and makes her choices. And she behaves like a worthy quasi-child of her kidnapper, unable and unwilling to tell right from wrong and lies from truth. In her immense selfishness, she uses her feelings as a substitute for the moral compass she lacks, sides with her evil impostor "mother" and victimizes her true mother for a second time. What if "the only mother she knew" had killed her actual mother? There is a tiny chance that Kamiya could reform as she matures, but my observation is that at 20, the core of personality has already hardened.

The mother says: "I shouldn't have to compete with a kidnapper... I didn’t know this kidnapper had such a hold on her. I can see that it’s my child, but I can also see traits from the kidnapper in her. She would defend the kidnapper to me. She blames me for everything. I think she blames me that this woman is sitting in jail. She’s blocked now because I don’t want to argue with her. I’m tired of being hurt."

Nevertheless, the majority of people think that the mother should shut up and put up with the fact that the piece of shit who kidnapped her daughter 20 years ago conferred her personality to the girl, making Kamiya a similar piece of shit. People think that Shanara should be all sympathy and understanding. Modern Western society loves to put unrealistic demands to parents, especially mothers, and to smear them for nothing. Maybe this is one of the reasons why mothers are increasingly in short supply.

I also think the psycho kidnapper should not be allowed any contact with her victim.

Why I hate Russia, part 2

Four years ago, I wrote a post titled Why I hate Russia, which to this day accumulates comments by various people wondering (politely or otherwise) how one can hate such a wonderful state. To clarify this, I am quoting below yesterday's report from the Telegraph's site, by Alec Luhn.

"Russian court jails teenage critics as Putin cracks down on dissent ahead of World Cup

A Moscow court has left a 19-year-old Putin critic in pre-trial detention until September, as the Kremlin uses sweeping security measures to drown out dissent during the World Cup... Veterinary student Maria Dubovik... and five others who disparaged Vladimir Putin's government in private chats were jailed in March and face 10 years in prison for “organising an extremist group”. They include Anna Pavlikova and Vyacheslav Kryukov, who were 17 and 19 at the time of their arrest.
Four more defendants are under home arrest...

On Monday, a Moscow court sentenced Ukrainian journalist Roman Sushchenko, who was detained during a 2016 trip to Russia, to 12 years in prison for spying... Oleg Sentsov, a pro-Ukrainian film director who was given 20 years in an Arctic prison for allegedly planning to blow up a Lenin monument in Crimea, has been holding a hunger strike since May 14 to demand the release of Ukrainian political prisoners...

In the case of Ms Dubovik, she and several friends had begun discussing politics on the messenger app Telegram, which Russia has tried to ban, following a failed “revolution” of mostly young protesters called by self-exiled nationalist Vyacheslav Maltsev in November. They later began meeting in a McDonalds and going to opposition protests in Moscow.

A newcomer to the group, Alexander Konstantinov, rented an office for the would-be activists and wrote a political manifesto calling for Mr Putin to be tried by a “people's tribunal,” according to his testimony. He took some of them to shoot targets at a hunting reserve and learn to make Molotov cocktails at an abandoned building outside Moscow, although her lawyer said Ms Dubovik didn't go. Mr Konstantinov was in fact gathering evidence against the young people. Testimony revealed that a police investigator and at least one other man had also been secretly embedded in the group...

 
Opposition activist Ildar Dadin, who was released from prison last year after Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience, was one of several dozen supporters not allowed into the courtroom on Tuesday.

He asked how European teams could participate in a World Cup “in a country that kills and imprisons innocent people”.

“It's football on people's blood,” he said."

Arizona educators compromise teaching of evolution

Diane Douglas (pictured), the Arizona Superintendent of Public Institutions, has successfully pushed new education standards that reduce teaching of evolution and describe it in weasel words in order to cast doubt on it. Details on Prof. Jerry Coyne's site, from where the photo was taken. The aim apparently is to pander to the sentiments and demands of religious folks who get their science from a Bronze Age source (the Genesis) and want to push the same insanity down children's throats, and the Constitution be damned. The change of standards is idiotic, and when one sees people systematically acting like idiots, he makes the appropriate conclusions. In other words, the anti-evolution crusade makes Americans a laughing stock of the world.

There are two possible explanations of Ms. Douglas' behavior: she is either an unscrupulous career climber who will call the black white if it suits her, or a religious fanatic with subnormal IQ. I'd vote for the latter. Couldn't they at least put a male in this position? I hate when women are chosen to do such book-burning dirty jobs. This feeds the stereotype that women are less inteligent than men, less able to do or understand science and easier to indoctrinate.

Old e-mails

Recently, I received an e-mail to login for my account update and verification, or it would be shut down within 24 hours due to "termination request". I wonder now how I could believe in such an apparent scam, but I did. Happily, nothing scary has happened so far, but shame on me!

I do not even use much this particular e-mail address, but I have there some old e-mails I do not want to lose. Not that it is likely that I will ever read them again. Old letters written by other people, when read by us, revive the past. However, our own old letters - those we wrote and those we received - are the exact opposite: they are a repository of a "dead future". Therefore, reading them can be recommended only to the happiest or the interpid.

The World Jewish Congress broadcasts lies of Bulgarian far-left

Every year in February, far-right Bulgarian organization and citizens hold a rally called Lukov March. It is allegedly to commemorate General Hristo Lukov (1887 - 1943), but actually more to reflect current events of interest to the participants. This is what I know from the media, because I have never taken part in the rally and do not intend to. I do not like these people and their views and I think they are discrediting Bulgarian nationalism. At the same time, I think that people in a free country have the right to express their views, to associate and to rally peacefully, regardless of whether we like them or not.

The latter opinion, however, is not shared by all. Every single year, self-described human rights activists (!) petition Bulgarian authorities to ban Lukov March. In these efforts, they not only criticize the organizers and participants as neo-Nazis but, by association, smear Hristo Lukov as a rabid Nazi and anti-Semite. This year, the efforts were supported by the World Jewish Congress. Its Executive Vice-President Robert Singer came to Bulgaria and handed a petition to the Prime-Minister Boyko Borissov, "so far signed by 175 000 people from all over the world", against the Lukov March. In an interview with Sega Newspaper (the above link), he stated: "The march is in the name of General Hristo Lukov, who supported the neo-Nazi laws in Bulgaria, and the deportation of Jews."

Unfortunately, human rights groups in Bulgaria are heavily infiltrated by far-left people who have a serious reason to dislike General Lukov: he was assassinated by two communists because their bosses feared that he might return to politics. It is true that Lukov, like many other Bulgarians of that time, was pro-German, but this wasn't necessarily because of any sympathy to Hitler. For Bulgarians, Germany was just the power that was hoped to reverse Versailles and the associated treaties that had torn apart the Bulgarian territory, leading to ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Bulgarians. However, no source known to me from Lukov's lifetime or more than half a century later describes him as an anti-Semite, even the memoirs of communists glorifying his killers. In a 2013 interview (source in Bulgarian), Bulgarian historian Nikolay Poppetrov (otherwise very critical of Hristo Lukov), when asked whether General Lukov had been an anti-Semite after all, answered: "There are no preserved documents [indicating this]. There is another suspicion - he had commercial activity, he might have worked also for some companies with Jewish ownership. His enemies [during his lifetime] had accused him in this..."

General Hristo Lukov was Minister of War between 1935 and early 1938, but after that, he was removed from government by King Boris III until his death. The nationalist organization headed by him, the "Legionnaires", was banned. He was assassinated on Feb. 13, 1943. The agreement to deport more than 11,000 Jews (most of whom died in the Holocaust) from Macedonia and Aegean Thrace was signed in deep secrecy on Feb. 22, 1943. This timeline, easily accessible online even for readers who speak no Bulgarian, proves that Mr. Singer and his organization uncritically broadcasted untruths fed to them by the Bulgarian far-left. As Bulgarian-born Jew Samuil Arditi commented (source in Bulgarian), "Lukov could not even known about the deportation while he was alive, let alont "support" it posthumously". Arditi called the claims of Lukov's support for the deportation "a lie in the name of political interests" that a certain Bulgarian Jewish organization "is selling to international Jewish organizations". My impression, however, is that most of the people smearing Lukov and recruiting international Jewish organizations against him do not even have Jewish background. There are indeed a few Jews among them, but the leftist identity dominates .

Unless and until any evidence is presented and not just baseless assertions, I regard the alleged anti-Semitism of General Hristo Lukov as a recent invention of our communists and other far-left activists who are deliberately and systematically spreading lies, selecting ones that would best stick abroad. Such people have also accused my father in anti-Semitism after his participation in a Brussels conference in 2014, and he has been suing them for libel and slander ever since. Two of his accusers were people I had personally known and regarded as friends. Therefore, the entire story not only burdened me as an aide to my father (a 95-yr-old man with multiple disabilities) but caused the emotional pain we feel when we lose a friend because of his transformation into an unfriend. As a supporter of Jews and Israel, I suffer a similar emotional pain when Jewish organizations work hard against my country, as in this case. However, I do not for a millisecond equate these organizations with the Jews they claim to represent (unelected), I continue to support the Jews and would advise anybody to do the same.

Islamist terror in 2017

To begin blogging in 2018, a short bulletin of Islamist terror attacks in the West in 2017, compiled with the help of Wikipedia:

- March 22 in London, UK: A convert to Islam drove a car into pedestrians south of Westminster Bridge, fatally injuring four, then stabbed a policeman to death.

- April 4, Paris, France (not in the Wikipedia list): A French Muslim killed his neighbor, a 65-yr-old Jewish woman, by severely beating her and then throwing her out of the window. The perpetrator shouted "Allahu akbar" and "I killed the devil". French authorities and media tried to cover up this murder for as long as possible, categorizing it as a hate crime only 5 months later. I learned of it by chance, searching for something else in a Jewish media source. The victim, Sarah Halimi, happened to have the same family name as Ilan Halimi, another Parisian Jew savagely murdered by Muslims ten years before.

- April 20, Paris, France: A French Muslim shot dead a police officer.

- May 22, Manchester, UK: A British Muslim, born to Libyan refugees, carried out a suicide bombing at a concert, killing 22. This act was particularly outrageous because the concert was of Ariana Grande, a singer with audience mostly of teenage girls. The youngest victim was 8. The cartoon above, of the "Jesus 'n' Mo" series, was published two days later. I copied it from Prof. Coyne's site.

- June 3, London, UK: Three British Muslims drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, killing 3, then, after the van crashed, began stabbing people, killing 5 more.

- August 17-18, Barcelona, Spain: Five Spanish Muslims of Moroccan origin killed a total of 16 people in separate attacks by driving into pedestrians and stabbing.

- October 31, New York, USA: A Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan drove a truck into cyclists, killing 8.

As if this is not enough, some Westerners descend to the level of the Islamists, reacting to their attacks with equally ugly attacks on random, innocent Muslims. On January 29,  Alexandre Bissonnette (28) opened fire in a Quebec City mosque, killing 6. On June 19, Darren Osborne (47) drove a van into Muslims coming out of a London mosque after prayer, killing one. Again in London, on June 21, John Tomlin (25) poured acid on two Muslims, a female university student and her cousin, as they were sitting in their car.

Let's wish that 2018 will be better! I do not hold my breath, however.

Shame: my country joined the anti-Semitic orgy

A UN resolution has just voted a resolution that condemns the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and calls for this decision to be renounced. The BBC has published a list of countries that voted against, abstained, and voted for the resolution, respectively. Nine countries voted against, 35 abstained, 128 voted in favor. Unfortunately, Bulgaria is among the latter. Shame!

Europe should recognize Jerusalem as Israeli capital

Ever since the foundation of the State of Israel, its authorities and citizens consider Jerusalem as their capital, while other countries use Tel Aviv as interim capital so that not to anger Arabs, some of whom have claims on Jerusalem.

In the distant 1995, the US Congress voted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, recognizing Jerusalem as Israeli capital and ordering the US Embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Since then, three US Presidents have had their terms and none of them dared to implement the act. It needed to wait for Donald Trump to be implemented. He is widely regarded as crazy, and I dislike him, mostly because of his pro-Russian positions, but this act of him shows that even crazy rulers have their role in society.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu appealed to Europe to follow the American example, but European leaders refuse, at least for now. I think that they should absolutely support Israel and its right to name its capital. Especially after it was European countries that carried out the Holocaust. Unfortunately, it seems easier for the Europeans to shed crocodile tears for the Jews perished in the Holocaust than to support the surviving Jews and their state.

My prognosis is that Europeans will continue to make fools of themselves for some time, maybe several years, and then will quietly start to move their embassies to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Palestinian opponents of Israel are rioting and have already produced some victims. It is notable that the most violent protests are in Gaza, where there seems to be no other industry. In contrast, Arab residents of East Jerusalem are peaceful. The quote below is from an Atlantic report by Emma Green:

"Jerusalem—the political and geographical center of the debate—stayed relatively quiet... Palestinians in East Jerusalem have integrated with Israelis to a significant extent; they depend on Israel and its tourists for their livelihoods, so there’s a lot at stake if they decide to protest or strike... For his part, Abu Madhi says he wishes the Israeli government would make East Jerusalem a little nicer. “You’ve been to Tel Aviv sometimes?” he asked me. “Clean country, high-speed world, green trees.” He pointed to the Damascus Gate area. “Why shouldn’t we have here a garden, and here a basketball court? This thing that I prefer, the government could do.”... Eventually, a man brought a tarp out to the area near the Damascus Gate for the next round of prayers. More than 60 men lined up before the Old City, facing a row of cameras, a line of Israeli soldiers just behind them. This was the most peaceful form of protest—and the most normal thing in the world.... “Just one hour, and you’re going to see everything’s okay,” Abu Madhi said. “You’re going to see an Arabic man and a Jewish man sitting here.”"

Maybe now, as a resident of a capital gaining international recognition, Mr. Madhi has a higher chance to see new gardens and sport facilities.

The Guardian feeds anti-Muslim stereotypes

Browsing the Yahoo!News, I have just found a Guardian article titled Trump’s error on Jerusalem is a disaster for the Arab world … and the US too, by Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. It is about the decision of US president Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli capital and to move the US embassy there. (The decision was actually made into a law by the Congress back in 1995, but three consecutive US presidents were too afraid to implement it. I do not like Trump, but I give him credit for this act.)

Briefly, Prof. Khalidi states that Trump's act was an error because it favored Israel and made Palestinians unhappy. He condemns the decision as a crushing blow to the peace process, while admitting that the peace process has been "at death's door" since 2014. He also states that "few [Palestinians] want a return to violence", though his entire text is a thinly veiled threat of long-lasting, "impossible to predict" violence. If you have time to waste, read it in entirety. Now, I'd prefer to discuss stereotyping.

All people stereotype and are stereotyped. This is how human brain works. And it works this way because stereotyping is, and has always been, a survival strategy. However, while it may be very useful for individuals and in the short run, stereotyping harms the long-term interests of whole societies. For example, here in Bulgaria we have a minority that performs more than its fair share of thefts. When members of said minority are on a bus or a tram, everybody, no matter how progressive, clutches their belongings. The stereotype in question, like most other stereotype, is concentrated experience and will die out only when the minority stops regarding other people's property as a free resource. In the meantime, however, I think it is counterproductive to talk too much publicly about thefts by this minority, because this will feed the stereotype to expand beyond its healthy degree and will hurt the employment of minority members, leaving them in a vicious circle with no subsistence other than thefts and welfare. (This is why I am reluctant even to name the minority; if you are European, you know perfectly well whom I mean, and if you are not, please consider my example hypothetical.) If you are a member of a stereotyped group, I think that, instead of attacking the stereotypers, you should address first those members of your own group who with their behavior have caused the stereotyping in the first place, and then those public forums that make a bad situation worse by needlessly feeding the stereotype.

Muslims are stereotyped as being anti-Semitic. Despite the presence of countless Muslims and whole Muslim communities (such as the Bulgarian Muslims) who do not harbor any anti-Semitism, this stereotype, like most others, is based on facts. It is so entrenched and normalized that even sophisticated people like Prof. Khalidi make no attempt to hide it. The big question is, why does the respectable Guardian, which claims (e.g. here) to stand against the "Islamophobia", publish a text that can only feed anti-Muslim stereotypes? I think that, if I were a Muslim, I'd be outraged by this. I would call Prof. Khalidi names and would write to the Guardian.

How a student made my day

Two months ago, we at the Medical University of Sofia were carrying out our regular additional autumn exam session, known among students and teachers as the "liquidation" session. It can be best described as "just another last chance" for students who have skipped or failed some exam both at the regular session and at the September corrective session. Unfortunately, while many students had learned at least the minimum of required knowledge and passed, others had not. (The ribosome, already proven to be a Waterloo for some, remained so; this September, two students independently prepared for me depictions of it as a circle surrounded by smaller circles like petals of a flower. I even composed a ribosome haiku: Know thyself and thy ribosome / And remember that it is crazy / To draw it shaped like a daisy.)

After one of those very hard exam days was finally over, I went out in a rush. There was a parent meeting at the school of one of my sons, the first such meeting for this school year. I didn't want to be late. The only way to get there quickly was by a taxi. I saw a free taxi, jumped into it and started to explain the destination to the driver.

Suddenly, a young man - apparently a student at our Medical University - shouted in English: "Doctor! This is a false taxi!" He came closer and pointed at the list of prices displayed at the front window of the car. The numbers were indeed about twice higher than those offered by most taxi companies. I usually check them, but not when I am in a hurry. Expensive or not, this taxi was my chance that night. So I said to the student "Thank you!" but did not leave the car. With it, I reached the school just in time.

That student made my day. I always try to teach well and to examine justly. And while I say that "I do my job the best way I can, and I do not care what others say", I'd wish my efforts to be appreciated... sometimes. That young man showed goodwill to me in circumstances where he could simply pass by. I am sorry that, with my poor ability to recognize faces, I shall not know him if I see him again. But I will remember him.

(This post, stuck in the pipeline together with many others, was called to existence by one of my current 1st year students, who rightly remarked that I should write not just about the poor students but also about the good ones.)

France, we have a problem

Below, another quote from the Newsweek about the scary reality of today's life in Europe - Muslim Anti-Semitism Threatens France's Democracy, a today's report by Simone Rodan-Benzaquen.

"Paris—“In the Merah household, we were brought up with hating Jews, the hatred of everything that was not Muslim.”

These were the chilling words of Abdelghani Merah at the trial of his brother, Abdelkader Merah, who was accused of conspiring with a third brother, Mohamed, to murder three soldiers, three Jewish schoolchildren, and a teacher in Toulouse, France, in 2012.

Abdelghani also revealed, at the time, that “when the medical examiner brought [his] brother’s corpse home, people came over. They cried tears of joy. They said that he had brought France to its knees. That he did well. Their only regret was that he had not killed more Jewish children.”

These appalling remarks, which suggest the environment in which Mohamed Merah was immersed and his family’s way of thinking, have sparked a debate about the extent of hatred of Jews in the French Muslim community.

For years, it has been nearly impossible to speak about French Muslim anti-Semitism.

Many refused to take notice for reasons of ideology, discomfort, or lack of courage. Many feared being accused of “playing into the hands of the far right”... The Merah trial exposed a reality in France: anti-Semitic roots run deep within some elements of the French Muslim community...

French anti-Semitism is distinguished in Europe by its level of violence, ranging from attacks to abductions and even to murders...

Now, some French Muslim intellectuals are speaking out. The most recent example is film director Said Ben Said, who, writing in the French newspaper Le Monde , clearly and courageously criticized Arab Muslim anti-Semitism, after learning that he would not be allowed to sit on a film jury in Carthage because he had produced films in Israel.

The moral courage of such Muslim intellectuals should be commended because we know how difficult it is for them to make themselves heard. Journalists often prefer to invite more controversial figures such as Tariq Ramadan to their TV and radio shows.

And even when these intellectuals are invited, the simple act of denouncing anti-Semitism and extremism makes them susceptible to criticism, insults, and even threats of violence.

They are afraid. How could they not be, when they see that jihadists assassinate French Muslim soldiers and policemen because they are considered apostates, or that outspoken Muslims who denounce violence need police protection?..."

Terrorists should not brag online, hurts job hunt

The text below is from ISIS Members From Europe Can't Get Jobs When They Return Home, a several months-old report by Jack Moore

"The first thing an employer will ask about a resume is any gaps between jobs. But they probably wouldn't suspect that an applicant for a certain role who seems to have been unemployed for a few years was busy fighting for the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).

Jihadis returning to their home countries in Europe are now finding out the hard way, and many cannot get a job as they try to reintegrate into western society.

Swedish daily newspaper Expressen interviewed former jihadis about life after ISIS and they discussed the challenges of finding work. As many as 150 have returned to the Scandinavian country to try and rebuild their lives.

“I just want to forget everything,” Walad Yousef, a 27-year-old returning fighter, told the newspaper. “I apply for a lot of jobs, but I can’t get any because my pictures are out there.”

Yousef had posted images of himself in Syria on Facebook, posing at a training camp with a Kalashnikov, and encouraging friends to join him. He returned to Sweden and said he had only gone to Syria to help civilians in the eastern city of Raqqa, where ISIS has beheaded several western hostages...

Employers fear that returning fighters may commit attacks or help others to commit attacks and do not wish to be associated with them, said another returnee who has changed his name to Yousef.

"You in the media have scared them. I do not know why they are afraid," said a jihadi from the southern city of Malmo of the fears that employees and civilians had of returning foreign fighters...

Sweden is one the best countries for a foreign fighter to return if they want to reintegrate. It is trialling a rehabilitation programme that gives Swedish extremists housing, employment, education and financial support. Anna Sjöstrand, the municipal coordinator against violent extremism in the city of Lund, said in October 2016 that it is much cheaper to reintegrate someone than to abandon them...

 The country suffered only its second radical Islamist attack in April when an Uzbek national plowed a truck into civilians on a busy shopping street in central Stockholm. The attack left five people dead. Authorities arrested the driver and said he had sympathies with ISIS. ISIS did not claim the attack, but it generally does not take responsibility for attackers who are captured alive..."

The moral? If you really, really want to join ISIS or another similar bunch of good fellows, at least do not brag all over the Web about it. May cause problems if some day you change your career.

Does academic success matter

When my children have problems with their school grades, I try to put things in perspective. I tell myself that, ultimately, being alive and healthy is what matters. I also remind myself that academic success does not guarantee a successful later realization, let alone happiness, and I remember some who were nearest and dearest to me and had straight As at school, and were responsible, hard-working and compassionate, yet did not get the happy and long lives that they deserved.


But this thought gives no comfort.