Kamchia is a river in Eastern Bulgaria. The area where it empties into the Black Sea used to be a protected territory. However, last year a holiday resort investor eager to build there successfully appealed Kamchia's protected status in court (mentioned in my July 9 post). When the same assault was attempted against Strandja mountain, protests by environmental activists prevented it, at least for the moment. But Kamchia remained in the dark. As I wrote in my Aug. 16 post, "This law (protecting Strandja) is an emergency measure and isn't a perfect piece of legislature. Worse, it cannot protect the Kamchia river which had already been removed from the list of protected territories. If the National Assembly decides to do something about Kamchia, it must be by a separate act. It can be voted no sooner than September (the Assembly is now in summer vacation) and surely much will be already built around the river by this time."
Now, I have a little more hope about Kamchia. My cautious optimism is based on reliable, although indirect, evidence.
Our best man Stoyan (not his real name) is an example of those too orderly and organized people who can never have real fun, no matter how hard they try. There is always something coming in the way. Several days ago, my husband came home and said,
"I have met Stoyan. He has had a sea vacation with his family at Kamchia."
"It was a protected territory until last year," I mentioned sadly.
"It still is," my husband laughed. "They are very disappointed. A sort of a miserable hotel far from the beach and some miserable restaurant far from both. No services. Quite undeveloped place. They had to travel around the wilderness all the time to obtain the most basic things they needed."
So, dear environmental activists and lawmakers, it seems that it isn't too late to save Kamchia! Any rescue efforts are welcome, their object is still alive!
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
A rant about the buildings of our Medical University
Recently, as I was listening to TV news, I heard my workplace (the Medical University of Sofia) mentioned. On Aug. 11, the roof over the Department of Forensic Medicine was set ablaze by a lightning. Happily, there were very few people in the building (it was Saturday afternoon) and nobody was hurt. However, much of the roof and some equipment was destroyed. The above photo is copied from a Netinfo report (http://www.netinfo.bg/?tid=40&oid=1083744). Our Department of Biology is located in another part of the same building.
I don't understand how such a thing can happen. As far as I know, technology protecting buildings from thunderbolts is simple, cheap and centuries old. In the 21st century, I wish to think I am safe at my workplace even if there is a thunderstorm outside.
One of my earliest blog posts was devoted to a fire which devastated our Department of Pathophysiology (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/04/department-of-pathophysiology.html). After this Department lost its home, the teachers were distributed to other departments to obtain temporary workplaces. Right from the beginning, there were rumours that the temporary situation would become permanent. There was a precedent: the Department of Physiology, which lost its territory decades ago (I don't know the exact circumstances) and is currently located in rooms scattered across all 4 storeys of our building. Now, the rumours are confirmed: the same fate awaits the pathophysiologists. Their beautiful building will never be rebuilt, it will be destroyed instead and their Department will indefinitely exist scattered in rooms taken from other departments. Our Department of Biology is ordered to give 2 rooms.
This development is not that surprising for anyone who knows the Medical University of Sofia from inside. Teaching and treatment facilities are left to deteriorate and new buildings aren't finalized. There are three quite large constructions in the Medical University campus that are "frozen" with zero probability to be ever finished. Sometimes they are referred to as "the Bermuda Triangle". As far as I know, the Department of Physiology had to be located somewhere in the Triangle. The constructions that ARE successfully finished are those housing administration staff. Our clerks keep multiplying exactly as predicted by Parkinson's law - and also becoming ever more powerful. They always think that the students and teachers of the University have too much funds, computer equipment, research equipment, working space etc. and rarely miss an opportunity to take these resources away.
For the moment, I have no problem with the lost rooms because I am still on maternity leave. But when I return, we'll have to walk on each other's heads. The only realistic solution is somebody else going into maternity leave. So, if any of my younger female colleagues is reading this - come on, girls, get to work on the matter, this country needs a younger generation :) !
Otherwise, it will be better for me if fewer Medical University employees read this post. It may put me in trouble.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Gypsy teenager murdered by Bulgarian teenagers
On Aug. 21 in the town of Samokov, two groups of teenagers met, one consisting of Bulgarians and the other of Gypsies. They started a brawl. One of the Gypsies, 17-year-old Asparuh (family name given by different sources Iliev or Atanasov) was beaten to death. The crime scene was in the range of security cameras and suspects were identified quickly. Four were arrested, of whom two turned 18 this year and the other two are juveniles. The authorities, again, are eager to dismiss any notion that the crime was motivated by hate (http://www.mediapool.bg/show/?storyid=131412&srcpos=1).
I remember a similar murder which took place in 1998 in Sofia. A homeless Gypsy boy was killed by skinheads, all aged 15-16. Then, a human rights activist said, "I cannot think of a crime more scary than murder of a child by children." I agree.
I never knew whether anybody was punished for the 1998 murder, but it is said that in Samokov alone, this week's murder has been the 4th murder of a Gypsy in 7 years and nobody has yet been convicted (http://big.bg/modules/news/article.php?storyid=50761). On July 27, 2007 Bulgaria was sanctioned by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for failure to bring to justice the perpetrators of another racist killing. The victim, a Gypsy man (28), was murdered in 1996 in the town of Shumen by seven Bulgarian teenagers, all but one of whom were juveniles. Although the case was fairly clear, investigation was protracted until the statute of limitation expired and nobody was convicted (sources, http://netinfo.bg/?tid=40&oid=1077473 in Bulgarian, http://www.idebate.org/roma/newsarticle.php?id=1855 in English).
I have been several times in Samokov, which serves as a gate to the Rila mountain. I remember it as a quiet town, I'd even say boring and sleepy. But it isn't quiet anymore.
When I heard of Asparuh's death, my first impulse was to pay a tribute to him by modifying or even deleting my Aug. 17 post, which is directed against his people. But then I thought over and decided to leave the post exactly as it was. Yes, it feeds stereotypes. But hate crimes aren't caused by stereotypes. They are caused by the idea that if The Other creates problems for us, we may solve the problems by getting rid of him.
People campaigning for minority rights often say, "We must fight prejudice, we must shake stereotypes." I don't find this a very good idea. Most stereotypes are firmly rooted in facts. Hence, "shaking stereotypes" means denial of reality and immersion in wishful thinking. Nobody needs a rosy picture portraying The Others as perfect people who they aren't. What is needed is acceptance. It doesn't mean that we may not want The Others to change and may not demand things from them. Rather, it means that no matter how problematic they are for us, we may never wish them away.
As for Asparuh, I hope that unlike the earlier cases mentioned above, this time justice will step in and perpetrators will be punished. Let me repeat what I added as a comment to the same Aug. 17 post: "To manage law and order... is the state's basic function and therefore the state is never allowed to abdicate of it."
UPDATE (Aug. 28): While police continue to deny that the murder in Samokov and the earlier riots in Sofia are motivated by ethnic tensions, psychologist Hristo Monov reported why the Bulgarian teenagers attacked: they thought that Gypsies mustn't be let into the central part of Samokov (source: Mediapool). Other sources said that the Gypsy youths went to the town center to buy ice-cream.
I remember a similar murder which took place in 1998 in Sofia. A homeless Gypsy boy was killed by skinheads, all aged 15-16. Then, a human rights activist said, "I cannot think of a crime more scary than murder of a child by children." I agree.
I never knew whether anybody was punished for the 1998 murder, but it is said that in Samokov alone, this week's murder has been the 4th murder of a Gypsy in 7 years and nobody has yet been convicted (http://big.bg/modules/news/article.php?storyid=50761). On July 27, 2007 Bulgaria was sanctioned by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for failure to bring to justice the perpetrators of another racist killing. The victim, a Gypsy man (28), was murdered in 1996 in the town of Shumen by seven Bulgarian teenagers, all but one of whom were juveniles. Although the case was fairly clear, investigation was protracted until the statute of limitation expired and nobody was convicted (sources, http://netinfo.bg/?tid=40&oid=1077473 in Bulgarian, http://www.idebate.org/roma/newsarticle.php?id=1855 in English).
I have been several times in Samokov, which serves as a gate to the Rila mountain. I remember it as a quiet town, I'd even say boring and sleepy. But it isn't quiet anymore.
When I heard of Asparuh's death, my first impulse was to pay a tribute to him by modifying or even deleting my Aug. 17 post, which is directed against his people. But then I thought over and decided to leave the post exactly as it was. Yes, it feeds stereotypes. But hate crimes aren't caused by stereotypes. They are caused by the idea that if The Other creates problems for us, we may solve the problems by getting rid of him.
People campaigning for minority rights often say, "We must fight prejudice, we must shake stereotypes." I don't find this a very good idea. Most stereotypes are firmly rooted in facts. Hence, "shaking stereotypes" means denial of reality and immersion in wishful thinking. Nobody needs a rosy picture portraying The Others as perfect people who they aren't. What is needed is acceptance. It doesn't mean that we may not want The Others to change and may not demand things from them. Rather, it means that no matter how problematic they are for us, we may never wish them away.
As for Asparuh, I hope that unlike the earlier cases mentioned above, this time justice will step in and perpetrators will be punished. Let me repeat what I added as a comment to the same Aug. 17 post: "To manage law and order... is the state's basic function and therefore the state is never allowed to abdicate of it."
UPDATE (Aug. 28): While police continue to deny that the murder in Samokov and the earlier riots in Sofia are motivated by ethnic tensions, psychologist Hristo Monov reported why the Bulgarian teenagers attacked: they thought that Gypsies mustn't be let into the central part of Samokov (source: Mediapool). Other sources said that the Gypsy youths went to the town center to buy ice-cream.
Political jokes in Communist Bulgaria
On Highlander's blog, commenter Adam asked, "I know that mocking of the leadership (in closed circles) was prevalent in countries such as these three (Czechoslovakia, Hungary and East Germany), but how was it in Bulgaria during the dark years (of Socialism)?"
I began to answer, but it turned out too long for a comment, so I decided to make it a post.
Mocking socialism and the current dictator (for the most of this period, Todor Zhivkov) was very widespread in Bulgaria, although political jokes were criminalized. Even people without pro-capitalist views enjoyed such jokes. Often, the subject was dictator Zhivkov's life expectancy and eventual death. In the absence of term limitations and free elections, nobody could predict that Zhivkov would be removed from power alive.
Here is one joke that is better told than written (because it includes body language):
In a crowded bus, a man is reading a newspaper. Some other people see on 1st page large black letters (VIP obituary?) and a photo of a semi-bald man with smooth hair remnants and a large nose. They get very excited. However, the paper owner isn't very helpful to his fellow travellers and holds the paper in a way not allowing others to read. Finally, a tall man manages to cast a look. He turns to the others, nods and makes a "tsk" sound meaning "no", then says a single word: "Pompidou".
(French President Georges Pompidou died in 1974.)
Another joke from the 1980s: Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Todor Zhivkov are invited to visit God, who promises to answer one question from each guest.
Reagan asks, "When will US astronauts set feet on Mars?" God answers, "In 2023". Reagan begins to weep and says, "What a pity that I won't be alive to see this."
Gorbachev asks, "When will Russian economy catch up with US?" God answers, "By 2060". Gorbachev also begins to weep and says he is weeping because he won't be alive by this time.
Zhivkov asks, "When shall I die?" God, instead of answering, begins to weep. (I.e., even He won't be alive by this time.)
Violin player Alexander Nikolov, better known by his nickname Sasho Sladura, liked telling political jokes. Somebody reported him to the authorities. They sent him to the Lovech labour camp where in 1961 he was beaten to death, the usual method of murdering inmates in this particular camp. The above photo, copied from http://www.slovo.bg/old/litforum/106/czhivkov.htm, shows Sladura bottom left.
Later in the 1960s, civil engineer Boris Chinkov was sentenced to prison for telling jokes. He was released before serving his full term, allegedly after French President de Gaulle entreated for him during a meeting with Zhivkov. The court papers from Chinkov's case listed the jokes constituting his crime. One of them was "the joke about the best Michurinist mother". Here it is:
Who is the best selectionist among followers of Michurin? - Todor Zhivkov's mother, who successfully crossed a pumpkin with a loudspeaker and obtained a fully viable hybrid.
("The Pumpkin" was one of Zhivkov's nicknames. As usual for dictators, he was fond of delivering long speeches. Michurin (1855 - 1935), whose Wikipedia page is a bit too sympathetic to him, was a Russian practitioner selectionist. He definitely had a gift and produced practical achievements, but his lack of education made him stick to theories disproved decades and centuries earlier, such as that species aren't real, can cross with each other and transform into each other. Michurin was made an icon during Stalin's repressions against geneticists, but he shouldn't be blamed for this turn which happened after his death.)
In fact, only a very small percentage of jokers were punished. The regime, especially in its later decades, realized that people need some harmless vent for their discontent and, besides, it is impossible to imprison the entire population. However, the modest attempts for free speech were closely monitored. Tens of thousands of professional State Security (secret service) agents and many more cooperating agents had the task to eavesdrop, report and record jokes.
After 1989, many of these agents found good postions in politics and business. When the State Security past of any of them is revealed, he first denies, then says that his activity as agent was directed only against true enemies of Bulgaria and never harmed innocent people. It sucks that nearly 20 years after the regime's collapse, the country is still in the grip of State Security.
Monday, August 20, 2007
The village of storks
The above photo is copied from a July 16 Pointless Spring blog post of the same title. It said, "At a less than 50 kilometers distance from Sofia, hidden in the lower parts of Plana mountain you will find the village of storks - Popovyane. Every second house in the village shelters a stork nest."
A week ago, we went to Popovyane. I wanted to show my elder son storks and had to find them elsewhere after the Rasnik pair had taken flight. Indeed, the village was full of stork nests. Most of the birds were away. Their young have grown up and there is no reason for them to cling by the nest all day just to enjoy eventual visitors. However, after hanging around for a while, we saw about ten storks in flight and one in his nest. Thanks to Pointless Spring for sharing the information!
The village is located south of Sofia. The road passes through Bistritsa, Zheleznitsa, Kovachevtsi and then comes Popovyane. It is a beautiful mountain road. As soon as you leave Sofia, you find yourself in another world, green and serene. However, for the same reason, these less than 50 kilometers seem longer. This is definitely not a road for fast driving.
If you haven't the convenience of a car - there must be regular public transportation, we saw many buses. Possibly some bus goes to Samokov using this road and can get you there without change.
If you are in Sofia, reading this post soon after its publication and considering whether to visit Popovyane, make up your mind quickly or you'll go there just to discover that the storks have migrated!
Friday, August 17, 2007
Bulgarian police: Our safety first!
The above image is from yesterday Netinfo report about events that took place several kilometers from where I live (http://netinfo.bg/?tid=40&oid=1085596). Here is a quote from the text:
"On Tuesday night, there were Roma riots in the (Sofia) district of Krasna Polyana. Several cars were destroyed. Nobody was injured. Police presence was reinforced. The day before, four men were hurt after being beaten in a cafe... They were attacked by about 150 Roma who mistook them for skinheads. Property at the cafe was also damaged."
For those who don't know, "Roma" is the politically correct term for Gypsy.
Now, the million dollar question: If mobs of Gypsies armed with rods, spades and knives goes on a rampage through the city, damaging property and beating innocent people, who is to blame?
The answer of Volen Siderov's fans: The nasty Gypsies, with whom one should deal as Hitler did.
The answer of some politically correct people living at a safe distance from the Gypsies: The racist Bulgarian majority which, by discrimination and abuse, has driven the poor Gypsies to such acts of despair.
The answer obvious to anyone of the meanest understanding: The police, whose job is to deal exactly with behaviours like these.
However, our police have a different idea about their job. I am translating a little more from the same Netinfo report:
"Kamen Penkov, Deputy Minister of the Internal Affairs, spoke for the Darik Radio. In response to critics saying that policemen were standing by, idly looking at the armed men, he said that the police acted adequately in the very unruly night of Tuesday. "In this situation, against this group of people who cannot be compared to environmental activists, protesting Suhodol residents or retired citizens, I think that the tactic chosen by us was absolutely right," Penkov said."
The environmental activists Penkov was referring to are obviously the protesters campaigning to save Strandja (see my July 9 post). Suhodol is a Sofia suburb where the garbage of the entire city is stockpiled; the garbage was to be dumped there for a fixed period of time but the city authorities continued transporting it to Suhodol after the deadline and this triggered protests by residents. I am not sure which retired people Penkov meant, but police have recently mounted a campaign against old women who try to make ends meet by "unauthorized" sale of flowers and berries in the streets (Simion Pateev eye-witnessed one case and described it at http://nabludatel.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-post_08.html, in Bulgarian).
In all these cases, the police acted brutally against people unwilling and often unable to defend themselves by force. I haven't blogged about this, as I didn't initially intend to blog about this week's riots. I am not going to let either the Gypsy problems or our rogue police dominate my blog. But Penkov's statement was too juicy to omit. Let me translate its essence to plain understandable language.
"We, the police, are prepared and willing to use force against offenders such as peaceful protesters and old women selling flowers. Don't demand us to confront numerous armed and aggressive men. We were quite right not to intervene in this situation, because it was unsafe."
This is indeed exactly the attitude and mode of action of Bulgarian police, as I have observed it for years. However, it was surprising for me that Penkov said it in plain text.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Strandja seems to be safe, for now
(This post is about old news, as often happens in blogs that are updated not when it is due but when the author has the opportunity to write.)
Strandja mountain which was about to be stripped of its protected status by an investor eager to build (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2007/07/strandja-mountain-in-danger.html) seems to be out of immediate danger, at least for now. After continuing protests, the National Assembly (Bulgarian Parliament) hastily changed the law, so that acts establishing protected territories now cannot be appealed in court.
This law is an emergency measure and isn't a perfect piece of legislature. Worse, it cannot protect the Kamchia river which had already been removed from the list of protected territories. If the National Assembly decides to do something about Kamchia, it must be by a separate act. It can be voted no sooner than September (the Assembly is now in summer vacation) and surely much will be already built around the river by this time.
Still, things around Strandja developed better than I expected.
The Strandja protests allowed me to find a number of interesting Bulgarian blogs. I have put links to the ones I like most (unfortunately for the non-Bulgarian reader, they are all in Bulgarian, excluding the short English version of the Optimiced blog). I started blogging after the Danish cartoon story last year, inspired by other blogs covering the events. So it was natural for my blogroll to contain mostly Arab blogs. Every time when something important was happening in the Bulgarian political life (e.g. elections), I was searching for good Bulgarian blogs. Now at last I have found some. I am glad that many of them are conservationist - a favourite old cause of mine.
Now, let me translate parts of Michel Bozgounov's July 21 post(http://www.optimiced.com/bg/2007/07/21/feeling-tired/) to satisfy my incurably pessimistic nature. Michel is the blogger who was "cautioned" by police for supporting the Strandja protests (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2007/07/bulgarian-police-intimidating-blogger.html).
Feeling Tired
I haven't blogged for quite a while.
The reason is: feeling tired. I've even lost some weight. I feel strained. I don't sleep well.
The events of the last few days confronted me suddenly so I couldn't even say "Oh!". I haven't yet even read everything posted in the Web about the recent incident with me...
A rally was held to defend not only Bulgarian nature but also freedom of speech. It was said to have been attended by many people. True, I saw photos :). But I was hiding home. I somewhat didn't feel like it. Perhaps due to exhaustion. I haven't slept normally for - I don't know, possibly 5 or 6 days...
I've learned from Capital newspaper that my case isn't at the police anymore but at the Sofia District Prosecution. So, we are waiting now. I have no wish to write about it...
I understand the law and still, when I saw the prints of my blog posts at the police department, I felt wronged. Now, a week later, I am feeling just tired...
I heard that Strandja will remain a protected territory, after all. This is good, isn't it. So we won and our efforts as citizens were not in vain? :-) Then, why am I feeling so down-hearted now... I don't know.
A little sleep would be good for me. Or at least it's worth trying.
Yours sincerely, Michel
I understand Michel very well. In my already not too short life, I have had many causes, all noble (at least I've thought so), most lost. And even in the few cases when things turned out as I wanted, it was after so much efforts that at the end I was unable even to celebrate. I just sat quietly in some corner and asked myself whether the result was worth the efforts, whether anything in life was worth... anything.
Strandja mountain which was about to be stripped of its protected status by an investor eager to build (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2007/07/strandja-mountain-in-danger.html) seems to be out of immediate danger, at least for now. After continuing protests, the National Assembly (Bulgarian Parliament) hastily changed the law, so that acts establishing protected territories now cannot be appealed in court.
This law is an emergency measure and isn't a perfect piece of legislature. Worse, it cannot protect the Kamchia river which had already been removed from the list of protected territories. If the National Assembly decides to do something about Kamchia, it must be by a separate act. It can be voted no sooner than September (the Assembly is now in summer vacation) and surely much will be already built around the river by this time.
Still, things around Strandja developed better than I expected.
The Strandja protests allowed me to find a number of interesting Bulgarian blogs. I have put links to the ones I like most (unfortunately for the non-Bulgarian reader, they are all in Bulgarian, excluding the short English version of the Optimiced blog). I started blogging after the Danish cartoon story last year, inspired by other blogs covering the events. So it was natural for my blogroll to contain mostly Arab blogs. Every time when something important was happening in the Bulgarian political life (e.g. elections), I was searching for good Bulgarian blogs. Now at last I have found some. I am glad that many of them are conservationist - a favourite old cause of mine.
Now, let me translate parts of Michel Bozgounov's July 21 post(http://www.optimiced.com/bg/2007/07/21/feeling-tired/) to satisfy my incurably pessimistic nature. Michel is the blogger who was "cautioned" by police for supporting the Strandja protests (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2007/07/bulgarian-police-intimidating-blogger.html).
Feeling Tired
I haven't blogged for quite a while.
The reason is: feeling tired. I've even lost some weight. I feel strained. I don't sleep well.
The events of the last few days confronted me suddenly so I couldn't even say "Oh!". I haven't yet even read everything posted in the Web about the recent incident with me...
A rally was held to defend not only Bulgarian nature but also freedom of speech. It was said to have been attended by many people. True, I saw photos :). But I was hiding home. I somewhat didn't feel like it. Perhaps due to exhaustion. I haven't slept normally for - I don't know, possibly 5 or 6 days...
I've learned from Capital newspaper that my case isn't at the police anymore but at the Sofia District Prosecution. So, we are waiting now. I have no wish to write about it...
I understand the law and still, when I saw the prints of my blog posts at the police department, I felt wronged. Now, a week later, I am feeling just tired...
I heard that Strandja will remain a protected territory, after all. This is good, isn't it. So we won and our efforts as citizens were not in vain? :-) Then, why am I feeling so down-hearted now... I don't know.
A little sleep would be good for me. Or at least it's worth trying.
Yours sincerely, Michel
I understand Michel very well. In my already not too short life, I have had many causes, all noble (at least I've thought so), most lost. And even in the few cases when things turned out as I wanted, it was after so much efforts that at the end I was unable even to celebrate. I just sat quietly in some corner and asked myself whether the result was worth the efforts, whether anything in life was worth... anything.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Heat
Bulgaria had the dubious honour to be mentioned in the Yahoo! news for its wildfires reported by AFP (Firefighters struggle to contain blazes in south Europe):
"Firefighters backed by helicopters struggled Sunday to douse major forest fires across southern Europe as special prayers were held in Romania for an end to a deadly heatwave searing the continent. Firefighters staged an uphill battle to extinguish the flames which have ravaged forests in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, as well as Spain's Canary Islands off the western coast of Africa. In Bulgaria, where 23,000 hectares (nearly 57,000 acres) of woodland have been burned in the scorching temperatures of the past week, fires continued to rage in the south and centre.
The region around Chepelare was on high alert amid warnings that the 10th century monastery of Rila -- which has been declared a world heritage site by UNESCO -- could be in danger.
Bulgarian police said they have now arrested 20 people on suspicion of starting the forest fires."
I haven't seen wildfires first hand, but I feel the unprecedented heat wave. Temperatures keep at Celsium 35-40 for days. Even nights bring no cool air. The baby doesn't sleep well, often wakes up, screams and cries. In Rasnik, where we have spent most of the last two weeks, the small river has dried out. The pair of storks that made me so happy by returning to the nest (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2007/06/life-will-go-on.html) aren't seen there anymore. I've spotted them only once, in flight. My guess is that after the river has dried, they don't find enough food around it and have moved. They have no young, so nothing binds them to the nest. Unfortunately, even if a species isn't directly attacked by humans, it is often driven out of a territory by habitat destruction, usually also brought about by humans.
Every summer in Bulgaria has several continuous very hot days, usually at the end of July or the beginning of August. But this year these days began too early, lasted for too long and weathermen warn us that more are to come. I don't remember such a summer. Neither does any other person I've talked about that, no matter how old.
"Firefighters backed by helicopters struggled Sunday to douse major forest fires across southern Europe as special prayers were held in Romania for an end to a deadly heatwave searing the continent. Firefighters staged an uphill battle to extinguish the flames which have ravaged forests in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, as well as Spain's Canary Islands off the western coast of Africa. In Bulgaria, where 23,000 hectares (nearly 57,000 acres) of woodland have been burned in the scorching temperatures of the past week, fires continued to rage in the south and centre.
The region around Chepelare was on high alert amid warnings that the 10th century monastery of Rila -- which has been declared a world heritage site by UNESCO -- could be in danger.
Bulgarian police said they have now arrested 20 people on suspicion of starting the forest fires."
I haven't seen wildfires first hand, but I feel the unprecedented heat wave. Temperatures keep at Celsium 35-40 for days. Even nights bring no cool air. The baby doesn't sleep well, often wakes up, screams and cries. In Rasnik, where we have spent most of the last two weeks, the small river has dried out. The pair of storks that made me so happy by returning to the nest (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2007/06/life-will-go-on.html) aren't seen there anymore. I've spotted them only once, in flight. My guess is that after the river has dried, they don't find enough food around it and have moved. They have no young, so nothing binds them to the nest. Unfortunately, even if a species isn't directly attacked by humans, it is often driven out of a territory by habitat destruction, usually also brought about by humans.
Every summer in Bulgaria has several continuous very hot days, usually at the end of July or the beginning of August. But this year these days began too early, lasted for too long and weathermen warn us that more are to come. I don't remember such a summer. Neither does any other person I've talked about that, no matter how old.
Bulgarian medics freed, return from Libya
The ordeal of Bulgarian medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with AIDS (my last post on the subject is at http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2007/03/hiv-trial-in-libya-part-6-last-why-most.html) is over. First, their death sentences were overturned and replaced with life imprisonment. This was linked to agreements with EU guaranteeing treatment for the infected children, compensations for their families and funding an AIDS hospital in Libya. Then, after visits by the French presidential couple, Libya allowed the five nurses and two doctors to be transferred to Bulgaria to serve their life sentences here, as an agreement for judicial help between Libya and Bulgaria allows. Then, as our law allows, the Bulgarian president Parvanov pardoned them. The act of pardoning was issued swiftly and read right at the airport.
I hope the medics will be able to recover from what they had to endure and go on with their lives, though of course nobody can give them back the lost years or compensate for their suffering.
The Palestinian doctor could benefit from the same track to freedom because he had been granted Bulgarian citizenship. So here the Bulgarian state, generally not a very admirable one, did the right thing and followed the principle of leaving nobody behind. Dr. Hajuj will likely later move to the Netherlands, where his family resides. But anyway, he has his own state now and this state is Bulgaria.
As a friend of mine said, "Thanks to God and to all who did what was necessary for the rescue of those people." I would add my special thanks to all Libyans who defended them or at least doubted the official version about their guilt.
Most people in Libya seem outraged by the release (though, as far as I know, there have been no riots). I think that those who still believe in the medics' guilt are unlikely to change their opinions ever in the future, no matter what evidence is presented to them. I know Bulgarians who still think that the victims of the People's Court in 1944-45 were guilty.
Many non-Libyan Arabs believe in our people's guilt, similarly to most Libyans but without the same excuses. Now, because the children's families have received money (see above), Libyans are accused for being child sellers! Let me quote AngloLibyan's post The Democratic Arab World!: "The majority attacked the Libyan people for accepting the money to release the medics, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I see comments from Saudis, Egyptians and other Arabs saying that the victims families sold their own children, it makes you think that Egypt and Saudi Arabia are such democratic countries that the government can never force them to accept anything!!!".
I commented, "We Bulgarians often say that there are no devils around our pool of boiling water in Hell. I.e. devils keep guard by other nations' pools because occasionally some sinner manages to crawl out and a devil is needed to throw him back into the boiling pool; but this is not needed for the Bulgarians, because as soon as one of them tries to crawl out, the others pull him back themselves. You guess we have this saying because we, unfortunately, are inclined to put each other into trouble rather than helping each other. But I think this applies to the pan-Arab "nation", too. Every time when an Arab nation tries to make something good for itself, other Arab nations will surely try to pull it backwards. Misery is easier to endure if you have company."
I hadn't expected that the HIV trial would become, among other things, an illustration of the merits of pan-Arabism!
I hope the medics will be able to recover from what they had to endure and go on with their lives, though of course nobody can give them back the lost years or compensate for their suffering.
The Palestinian doctor could benefit from the same track to freedom because he had been granted Bulgarian citizenship. So here the Bulgarian state, generally not a very admirable one, did the right thing and followed the principle of leaving nobody behind. Dr. Hajuj will likely later move to the Netherlands, where his family resides. But anyway, he has his own state now and this state is Bulgaria.
As a friend of mine said, "Thanks to God and to all who did what was necessary for the rescue of those people." I would add my special thanks to all Libyans who defended them or at least doubted the official version about their guilt.
Most people in Libya seem outraged by the release (though, as far as I know, there have been no riots). I think that those who still believe in the medics' guilt are unlikely to change their opinions ever in the future, no matter what evidence is presented to them. I know Bulgarians who still think that the victims of the People's Court in 1944-45 were guilty.
Many non-Libyan Arabs believe in our people's guilt, similarly to most Libyans but without the same excuses. Now, because the children's families have received money (see above), Libyans are accused for being child sellers! Let me quote AngloLibyan's post The Democratic Arab World!: "The majority attacked the Libyan people for accepting the money to release the medics, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I see comments from Saudis, Egyptians and other Arabs saying that the victims families sold their own children, it makes you think that Egypt and Saudi Arabia are such democratic countries that the government can never force them to accept anything!!!".
I commented, "We Bulgarians often say that there are no devils around our pool of boiling water in Hell. I.e. devils keep guard by other nations' pools because occasionally some sinner manages to crawl out and a devil is needed to throw him back into the boiling pool; but this is not needed for the Bulgarians, because as soon as one of them tries to crawl out, the others pull him back themselves. You guess we have this saying because we, unfortunately, are inclined to put each other into trouble rather than helping each other. But I think this applies to the pan-Arab "nation", too. Every time when an Arab nation tries to make something good for itself, other Arab nations will surely try to pull it backwards. Misery is easier to endure if you have company."
I hadn't expected that the HIV trial would become, among other things, an illustration of the merits of pan-Arabism!
Monday, July 23, 2007
After the murder
On July 17, a Swedish tourist (24) was beaten to death by guards of a disco in the Black Sea resort town of Nesebar. The murder happened in front of policemen who remained idle. The guards themselves were former policemen. The disco owner Venelin Tashev, member of the Nesebar municipality, said he stood behind his employees. The case became known because an eyewitness made a video of the murder with his cell phone camera and gave it to the BTV channel for broadcasting.
The direct murderers are being investigated for manslaughter only and the by-standing policemen will receive only disciplinary punishments (i.e. in the worst case, they will be fired). The first prosecutor in charge of the case "refused the monitor the case, saying that some of the guards at the pub, where the violent scandal unfolded, are former policemen" (http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=83121). The murdered young man was of Iraqi origin - so was racism involved as well?
You can see a fragment of the video at http://ns37351.ovh.net/murder/. It shows guards jumping on the victim's head. Children, pregnant women and all people susceptible to shock-induced health problems are strongly advised not to view it. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I agree with AngloLibyan that watching videotaped murders on the Web isn't a very good idea (http://anglolibyan.blogspot.com/2007/05/video-nasties.html).
You would ask, then why put a link to this video?
Because other bloggers who uploaded or linked the video before me received the following threat in anonymous comments (source: Simion Pateev's blog, http://nabludatel.blogspot.com/2007/07/blog-post_9092.html, translation by me):
"You seem to me an intelligent young man, which means that you shouldn't occupy yourself with stupid things but have fun, like all young people. Seeking sensations is a dangerous sport sometimes, life is also dangerous. Incidents happen, relations and friends are killed. You understand me well, I suppose. It is evident that you are intelligent and will reconsider some things."
I don't know who is behind the threatening comments but it is significant that the police still call the murder "incident" and, while letting murderers do their business, already have a history of intimidating bloggers (see previous post) and writing anonymous comments against the same bloggers (see here the anonymous comment posted on July 14th at 22:15 - it was reported to come from a police department). So if our police want the public trust, they should confront the mutra killers and guarantee freedom of speech, rather than attack it.
The direct murderers are being investigated for manslaughter only and the by-standing policemen will receive only disciplinary punishments (i.e. in the worst case, they will be fired). The first prosecutor in charge of the case "refused the monitor the case, saying that some of the guards at the pub, where the violent scandal unfolded, are former policemen" (http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=83121). The murdered young man was of Iraqi origin - so was racism involved as well?
You can see a fragment of the video at http://ns37351.ovh.net/murder/. It shows guards jumping on the victim's head. Children, pregnant women and all people susceptible to shock-induced health problems are strongly advised not to view it. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I agree with AngloLibyan that watching videotaped murders on the Web isn't a very good idea (http://anglolibyan.blogspot.com/2007/05/video-nasties.html).
You would ask, then why put a link to this video?
Because other bloggers who uploaded or linked the video before me received the following threat in anonymous comments (source: Simion Pateev's blog, http://nabludatel.blogspot.com/2007/07/blog-post_9092.html, translation by me):
"You seem to me an intelligent young man, which means that you shouldn't occupy yourself with stupid things but have fun, like all young people. Seeking sensations is a dangerous sport sometimes, life is also dangerous. Incidents happen, relations and friends are killed. You understand me well, I suppose. It is evident that you are intelligent and will reconsider some things."
I don't know who is behind the threatening comments but it is significant that the police still call the murder "incident" and, while letting murderers do their business, already have a history of intimidating bloggers (see previous post) and writing anonymous comments against the same bloggers (see here the anonymous comment posted on July 14th at 22:15 - it was reported to come from a police department). So if our police want the public trust, they should confront the mutra killers and guarantee freedom of speech, rather than attack it.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Bulgarian police intimidating a blogger
Michel Bozgounov has a blog at http://www.optimiced.com/bg/ (in Bulgarian) and http://www.optimiced.com/en/ (in English). He has been active in the campaign to save Strandja mountain mentioned in my previous post (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2007/07/strandja-mountain-in-danger.html). Last week, Michel was called by the police and officially warned about his blogging. Here is the story in his own words (from http://www.optimiced.com/en/2007/07/18/a-short-story-to-speak-or-not/):
"The statute of national park of mountain Strandja was about to be changed so that some companies to be able to build big resorts and hotel chains there...
I felt involved as I care about the nature in my country, Bulgaria, and because this subject is important for me, too, I started to blog about it, using information from all around the blogosphere – copying it & quoting it.
I also went personally on some of the protests, made photos and posted them on my blog. I also posted a couple of reportages, including my comments on the “Strandja” case and on the ongoing peaceful protests.
I never thought this could be something illegal...
Last week I received summons to visit the Sofia Metropolitan Police Department... There they asked me about my website (my blog) and about the Strandja protests. I had to write some explications and also signed a warning protocol, saying that I should not write in my blog anything that could call to disorderly conduct (like unofficial protests) and so on. I saw a line in the police documents, saying “the website www.optimiced.com must be investigated (watched constantly)”. I read on the top of the documents in front of me the name of the National Service for Combat against the Organized Crime, which indeed puzzled me...
Also there were printed sheets of paper from another blog of a guy, who wrote as well about the Strandja case, and he is also a journalist. On the stairs one of the police officers told me “in private” that I should be more careful what I am writing about in future, because journalists have a better defense against possible prosecution and I am just an ordinary person, an independent blogger.
That was the story in short. I had the feeling that it’s somehow strange that our police and also the National Service for Combat against the Organized Crime are so busy with investigating people like me, while there are so many criminals out there...
I decided to tell the story on my blog and I did it. But I wasn’t prepared for the avalanche of comments and people feeling concerned by this precedent, because the whole blogosphere felt that this as a strike against the free speech in the virtual world in Bulgaria. Now my only wish is all of this noise to end, but alas.
I said “no” to some media (a lot of reporters wanted to interview me), because I didn’t want to became a media star... I agreed for a short appearance in a morning broadcast on the Bulgarian National TV (http://www.bnt.bg/), just to show that I am not “virtual”, but a real person...
Michel, free blogger"
"The statute of national park of mountain Strandja was about to be changed so that some companies to be able to build big resorts and hotel chains there...
I felt involved as I care about the nature in my country, Bulgaria, and because this subject is important for me, too, I started to blog about it, using information from all around the blogosphere – copying it & quoting it.
I also went personally on some of the protests, made photos and posted them on my blog. I also posted a couple of reportages, including my comments on the “Strandja” case and on the ongoing peaceful protests.
I never thought this could be something illegal...
Last week I received summons to visit the Sofia Metropolitan Police Department... There they asked me about my website (my blog) and about the Strandja protests. I had to write some explications and also signed a warning protocol, saying that I should not write in my blog anything that could call to disorderly conduct (like unofficial protests) and so on. I saw a line in the police documents, saying “the website www.optimiced.com must be investigated (watched constantly)”. I read on the top of the documents in front of me the name of the National Service for Combat against the Organized Crime, which indeed puzzled me...
Also there were printed sheets of paper from another blog of a guy, who wrote as well about the Strandja case, and he is also a journalist. On the stairs one of the police officers told me “in private” that I should be more careful what I am writing about in future, because journalists have a better defense against possible prosecution and I am just an ordinary person, an independent blogger.
That was the story in short. I had the feeling that it’s somehow strange that our police and also the National Service for Combat against the Organized Crime are so busy with investigating people like me, while there are so many criminals out there...
I decided to tell the story on my blog and I did it. But I wasn’t prepared for the avalanche of comments and people feeling concerned by this precedent, because the whole blogosphere felt that this as a strike against the free speech in the virtual world in Bulgaria. Now my only wish is all of this noise to end, but alas.
I said “no” to some media (a lot of reporters wanted to interview me), because I didn’t want to became a media star... I agreed for a short appearance in a morning broadcast on the Bulgarian National TV (http://www.bnt.bg/), just to show that I am not “virtual”, but a real person...
Michel, free blogger"
Monday, July 09, 2007
Strandja mountain in danger
Strandja (also spelled Strandzha) is a mountain in South-East Bulgaria. It is sparsely populated and so its wild beauty is preserved. It is home to many wild plant and animal species, a number of them endangered. The above photos are from Wikipedia. In 1995, the Strandja Nature Park was founded. Including the central part of the mountain, it became the largest protected area in Bulgaria.
However, the park and hence the natural ecosystem of the mountain are in grave danger now because of the greedy people rushing to build over every square centimeter of our Black Sea coast (I have an earlier post about this madness at http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/08/black-sea-coast-newspapers-are-telling.html). The quote below is from http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20070708/tsc-bulgaria-environment-wildlife-proper-b1f5339.html.
Bulgaria's wilderness areas under threat from property investors
By Diana Simeonova, AFP - Sunday, July 8
SOFIA (AFP) - Bulgaria's wilderness areas, among the largest in Europe, are threatened by property investors who use legal loopholes to contest the territories' protected status to build holiday flats.
Last week, Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court stripped the protected status from the country's largest nature area, Strandzha, which spreads over 116,100 hectares (286,890 acres) in the southeast of the country.
The court ruled in favour of a major property investor, Krash 2000, which operates in the southern Black Sea region, one of the few areas untouched by the construction boom along the coastline.
Krash 2000 had sold some 90 holiday apartments in its "Golden Pearl" complex in the village of Varvara before local environment authorities froze construction last year.
A 1995 law regulating Strandzha's special status bans massive construction in the area, but Krash 2000 succeeded in having the law nullified in court by claiming it did not set clear boundaries for the protected territory.
Last year, another wild spot on the Black Sea -- the Kamchia river estuary north of Strandzha -- was similarly stripped of its protected status by a holiday resort investor.
Environmental watchdogs have warned that over half of Bulgaria's protected wilderness areas are susceptible to the same claim as their boundaries are only vaguely defined by law.
"The court gave Strandzha to the mafia," political analyst Evgeniy Daynov said in Dnevnik newspaper Thursday.
Daynov was among some 500 protestors who demonstrated in Sofia last week to protest the court's decision.
The protestors gathered suddenly, briefly blocking traffic on major crossroads and staging a lie-in in a central square, booing police and carrying banners reading "For a concrete-free Strandzha" and "Strandzha is not for sale."
On Monday, 35 demonstrators were arrested. Interior Minister Rumen Petkov said he would be "uncompromising" in dealing with such unauthorized gatherings.
But the protests seem to have worked as Environment Minister Dzhevdet Chakarov told journalists Thursday that the government would definitely appeal the Strandzha court ruling and fight to win back the nature area's protected status...
Bulgaria has one of the best preserved nature habitats and largest wild animal populations in Europe, including thousands of brown bears and wolves.
You can see photos from the protest at http://nabludatel.blogspot.com/2007/07/20.html. (Update: I am including here three photos from the linked post.) I haven't taken part in this protest. Although other mothers of young children attended (as a photo shows), I am reluctant to bring my babies to rallies of any kind, especially ones where people are very likely to be arrested or beaten.
You can sign an online petition to save Strandja - for Bulgarians at http://www.bgpetition.com/strandja/index.html, for others at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/strandja-bg/ (the latter site also includes more details about the case in English). However, I wonder who will read the petitions. I think it is more important to give the case maximum publicity. If you have a blog, you could consider mentioning Strandja. It will be even better if you have connections to "official" media, environmental organizations or government. I hope that foreign pressure, if intensive enough, will stop Bulgaria from the folly of destroying its own nature
Monday, June 25, 2007
Life will go on
Last year, I blogged about the pair of storks nesting in Rasnik, how one of them was killed for no reason and the surviving one left to die in solitude (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/05/wanton-killing-of-animals.html).
We have gone to Rasnik many times since then and I've always tried not to look at the desolated nest. But last week this nest offered a delighting sight: a new pair of storks standing in it confidently, as if it had always been their home.
Such events fill me with hope that everything will eventually be all right with the world - a rather irrational way of thinking for an atheist.
We have gone to Rasnik many times since then and I've always tried not to look at the desolated nest. But last week this nest offered a delighting sight: a new pair of storks standing in it confidently, as if it had always been their home.
Such events fill me with hope that everything will eventually be all right with the world - a rather irrational way of thinking for an atheist.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Political correctness in action: Come, Wolfie, eat me!
When describing the enemy commanders, such as Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri or the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi, people usually include the phrase "very intelligent". However, some my friends (BTW not as pro-American as I am) say that the above mentioned organisms aren't significantly smarter than the average person or at least we do not need to assume this in order to account for their successes. While generally agreeing with the opinion that they ARE very intelligent, I'll try to argue for my friends' opinion in this post.
First, the enemy's agenda is 100% destructive. If they win, I guess they will be in a complete dismay what to do further, similarly to the Spartans after crushing Athens and the Barbarians after ruining Rome. And, owing to the inherent tendency of all matter to take the simplest possible form, a destructive program is much easier to execute than a constructive one. Remember the viruses that subdue and kill cells and organisms million times more complex. Is HIV more intelligent than the human it overwhelms? I would say no.
Second, our and the enemy's combatants operate on a profoundly different background. The Islamic world, while formally disliking Al Qaida, supplies it not only with money but also with unconditional approval of every anti-Western act, no matter how inhumane, and with unlimited numbers of brainwashed young men keen to become martyrs in the name of Allah. The commanders of the Western troops, on the contrary, have to act under the pressure of a pluralized and highly critical society. They are demanded to achieve a military victory without losing a significant number of soldiers, without killing a significant number of civilians, without shooting at enemy combatants if the latter aren't shooting at them at the same moment and without violating the human rights of captured (proven or suspected) enemy combatants. Quite a difficult thing to do, isn't it?
Third (this is related to the above), the enemy attacks not only our infrastructure and people but also the ideological basis of our society, while we try to attack only the enemy's active combatants while praising the ideology (passing as religion) which creates them in the first place. This is the multiculturalist aspect of political correctness.
Political correctness can be defined as deliberate modification of language in an effort to avoid offending a specific group of people. A Bulgarian example of political correctness is the term "Roma", which most Gypsies and human rights activists insist to be used instead of Gypsy. I complied and used it for some years, but then I mentioned that it wasn't serving any useful purpose. It didn't help the Roma integrate, didn't bring them to work, didn't bring their children to school, didn't turn their thieves into law-abiding citizens and didn't dissuade Bulgarian skinheads from randomly attacking innocent Roma just because they were Gypsies. So I reverted to the old term "Gypsy", as readers of this blog know.
I disapprove political correctness because it takes away freedom of expression, impairs the communicational function of language and often tries to obscure or dismiss a real problem by cancelling the words used to indicate the problem. Worse, if you agree to follow the terms of political correctness, you cannot speak against any behaviour accepted by another group, no matter how intolerable this behaviour can be. "There are no moral compasses to tell what is right from wrong. The very notion of right and wrong has come under question... Morality is a politically incorrect subject" (http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina60219p4.htm). So political correctness ties our tongues and hands, renders us uncapable of self-defence and inevitably brings moral relativism.
This is bad enough even when the other group also tries to be politically correct. But when it is free from the bondage of political correctness, our political correctness is a recipe for self-defeat, an invitation for hostile action. Bulgarians describe such behaviour with the expression "Ela, Valcho, izyazh me" - that is, "Come, Wolfie, eat me!". Once I commented on Highlander's blog about multiculturalist political correctness: "All people are good, all religions are good. What about the old Mexican religion?" (http://lonehighlander.blogspot.com/2006/08/unreachable-just-cause-i-had-one-of.html). Leilouta's husband independently came to the same argument and expressed it much better: "The pretensions of multculturalism and political correctness would break down if an Aztec was in the room asking for volunteers to help make the sun come up the next day" (http://leilouta.blogspot.com/2007/06/any-volunteers.html).
Of course the fact that "Multiculturalism in fact has served as the incubator of Islamism" can be explained, keeping in mind that "small minorities can overwhelm the majority by use of coercion" (http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1072). As a commentor mentioned, the caption "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam" actually means "CNN has chosen not to show the cartoons because we don't want any of our offices bombed" (http://www.tech-unity.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-9109.html).
However, the dictate of political correctness cannot be explained by the violence factor alone. The groups demanding modification of language typically aren't violent, aren't rich enough to exert economic pressure, aren't a majority (except in the case of women) and are underprivileged or at least with a history of oppression. And they need not be particularly intelligent. Have we any reason to believe that our Gypsies, on average, are smarter than the ethnic Bulgarians? No, we haven't. But fasten your seatbelts, the most surprising thing is to come now.
Several days ago, as I was serfing on some blogs, I realized that the term "mental retardation" is becoming politically incorrect. In a 2005 statement, Down Syndrome self-advocates demanded the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR) "to stop using the word mental retardation and change their name... In the Civil Rights movement, the "N" word was hurtful to African Americans. Likewise, the "M" word is offensive to individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities" (http://www.sabeusa.org/documents/Chester%20Finn2-14-05.pdf). Two years later, the website of the critisized organization states, "WELCOME TO AAIDD"(FORMERLY AAMR) Mental Retardation No more —New Name is Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities" (http://www.aamr.org/).
It is not just the professionals in the "intellectual disabilities" area who have to change their vocabulary. Black Eyed Peas group had a song titled Let's Get Retarded with lyric including the following verses:
Everybody, everybody, let's get into it
Get stupid
Get retarded, get retarded, get retarded
This text didn't survive for long. The song is now in a new version titled Let's Get It Started. Journalist Bridget Johnson writes, "I figured there's always a lobby of politically correct police that is the catalyst in these situations, so I e-mailed a representative at the Arc of the United States, formerly known as the Association for Retarded Citizens, the group that had recently tsk-tsk'd teen actress Lindsay Lohan for saying breast-implant rumors involving her were "retarded," a term Ms. Lohan also used to describe the paparazzi. "Did the Arc have anything to do with the change in lyrics of the Black Eyed Peas song 'Let's Get Retarded' to 'Let's Get it Started'?" I asked.
The first thing I noticed on the return e-mail was that the subject line of my e-mail had been changed from "Let's Get Retarded" to "Let's Get It Started."
"Thanks for your inquiry regarding Let's Get it Started/Let's Get Retarded," wrote communications director Chris Privett. "The Arc did publicly call for the song's lyrics to be changed, which included writing several letters to record company executives. We hope our actions played a role in getting the lyrics changed, but as we never heard any response from the record company or the group's management, we're not sure whether they planned to make the change anyway or whether we convinced them that the language was offensive."
In the same essay (read it all at http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005723), Johnson asks, what about "the words 'idiot,' 'imbecile, 'moron,' etc.?" All are medical terms once used to define different degrees of mental retardation that eventually took on slang meanings synonymous with "stupid"... Language is constantly evolving. Special Olympics now uses "people with intellectual disabilities" instead of the now frowned-upon "mental disabilities." However, I think we could point out plenty of intellectually disabled people who aren't retarded--particularly in an election year--and vice-versa. But what happens when this term, too, evolves into slang? "Dude, you are so intellectually disabled." "Getting breast implants is intellectually disabled." "Let's Get Intellectually Disabled"--new revision of the Peas track?"
So we see that two important attributes of our culture - freedom of expression and clarity of language, can be successfully attacked by an unarmed, unfunded minority of people who not only aren't particularly intelligent but have proven and self-confessed mental retardation. Now just think about the chances of this culture to survive if facing an enemy with some arms, some funds and intellectual abilities generally within the normal range.
Disclaimer: I have nothing against mentally retarded people in general. I dislike only those of them who want to censor my language (see above), plus the precious few who come to our Medical University with the aspiration to become doctors (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/09/update-on-our-islamist-students-or-how.html).
First, the enemy's agenda is 100% destructive. If they win, I guess they will be in a complete dismay what to do further, similarly to the Spartans after crushing Athens and the Barbarians after ruining Rome. And, owing to the inherent tendency of all matter to take the simplest possible form, a destructive program is much easier to execute than a constructive one. Remember the viruses that subdue and kill cells and organisms million times more complex. Is HIV more intelligent than the human it overwhelms? I would say no.
Second, our and the enemy's combatants operate on a profoundly different background. The Islamic world, while formally disliking Al Qaida, supplies it not only with money but also with unconditional approval of every anti-Western act, no matter how inhumane, and with unlimited numbers of brainwashed young men keen to become martyrs in the name of Allah. The commanders of the Western troops, on the contrary, have to act under the pressure of a pluralized and highly critical society. They are demanded to achieve a military victory without losing a significant number of soldiers, without killing a significant number of civilians, without shooting at enemy combatants if the latter aren't shooting at them at the same moment and without violating the human rights of captured (proven or suspected) enemy combatants. Quite a difficult thing to do, isn't it?
Third (this is related to the above), the enemy attacks not only our infrastructure and people but also the ideological basis of our society, while we try to attack only the enemy's active combatants while praising the ideology (passing as religion) which creates them in the first place. This is the multiculturalist aspect of political correctness.
Political correctness can be defined as deliberate modification of language in an effort to avoid offending a specific group of people. A Bulgarian example of political correctness is the term "Roma", which most Gypsies and human rights activists insist to be used instead of Gypsy. I complied and used it for some years, but then I mentioned that it wasn't serving any useful purpose. It didn't help the Roma integrate, didn't bring them to work, didn't bring their children to school, didn't turn their thieves into law-abiding citizens and didn't dissuade Bulgarian skinheads from randomly attacking innocent Roma just because they were Gypsies. So I reverted to the old term "Gypsy", as readers of this blog know.
I disapprove political correctness because it takes away freedom of expression, impairs the communicational function of language and often tries to obscure or dismiss a real problem by cancelling the words used to indicate the problem. Worse, if you agree to follow the terms of political correctness, you cannot speak against any behaviour accepted by another group, no matter how intolerable this behaviour can be. "There are no moral compasses to tell what is right from wrong. The very notion of right and wrong has come under question... Morality is a politically incorrect subject" (http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina60219p4.htm). So political correctness ties our tongues and hands, renders us uncapable of self-defence and inevitably brings moral relativism.
This is bad enough even when the other group also tries to be politically correct. But when it is free from the bondage of political correctness, our political correctness is a recipe for self-defeat, an invitation for hostile action. Bulgarians describe such behaviour with the expression "Ela, Valcho, izyazh me" - that is, "Come, Wolfie, eat me!". Once I commented on Highlander's blog about multiculturalist political correctness: "All people are good, all religions are good. What about the old Mexican religion?" (http://lonehighlander.blogspot.com/2006/08/unreachable-just-cause-i-had-one-of.html). Leilouta's husband independently came to the same argument and expressed it much better: "The pretensions of multculturalism and political correctness would break down if an Aztec was in the room asking for volunteers to help make the sun come up the next day" (http://leilouta.blogspot.com/2007/06/any-volunteers.html).
Of course the fact that "Multiculturalism in fact has served as the incubator of Islamism" can be explained, keeping in mind that "small minorities can overwhelm the majority by use of coercion" (http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1072). As a commentor mentioned, the caption "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam" actually means "CNN has chosen not to show the cartoons because we don't want any of our offices bombed" (http://www.tech-unity.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-9109.html).
However, the dictate of political correctness cannot be explained by the violence factor alone. The groups demanding modification of language typically aren't violent, aren't rich enough to exert economic pressure, aren't a majority (except in the case of women) and are underprivileged or at least with a history of oppression. And they need not be particularly intelligent. Have we any reason to believe that our Gypsies, on average, are smarter than the ethnic Bulgarians? No, we haven't. But fasten your seatbelts, the most surprising thing is to come now.
Several days ago, as I was serfing on some blogs, I realized that the term "mental retardation" is becoming politically incorrect. In a 2005 statement, Down Syndrome self-advocates demanded the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR) "to stop using the word mental retardation and change their name... In the Civil Rights movement, the "N" word was hurtful to African Americans. Likewise, the "M" word is offensive to individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities" (http://www.sabeusa.org/documents/Chester%20Finn2-14-05.pdf). Two years later, the website of the critisized organization states, "WELCOME TO AAIDD"(FORMERLY AAMR) Mental Retardation No more —New Name is Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities" (http://www.aamr.org/).
It is not just the professionals in the "intellectual disabilities" area who have to change their vocabulary. Black Eyed Peas group had a song titled Let's Get Retarded with lyric including the following verses:
Everybody, everybody, let's get into it
Get stupid
Get retarded, get retarded, get retarded
This text didn't survive for long. The song is now in a new version titled Let's Get It Started. Journalist Bridget Johnson writes, "I figured there's always a lobby of politically correct police that is the catalyst in these situations, so I e-mailed a representative at the Arc of the United States, formerly known as the Association for Retarded Citizens, the group that had recently tsk-tsk'd teen actress Lindsay Lohan for saying breast-implant rumors involving her were "retarded," a term Ms. Lohan also used to describe the paparazzi. "Did the Arc have anything to do with the change in lyrics of the Black Eyed Peas song 'Let's Get Retarded' to 'Let's Get it Started'?" I asked.
The first thing I noticed on the return e-mail was that the subject line of my e-mail had been changed from "Let's Get Retarded" to "Let's Get It Started."
"Thanks for your inquiry regarding Let's Get it Started/Let's Get Retarded," wrote communications director Chris Privett. "The Arc did publicly call for the song's lyrics to be changed, which included writing several letters to record company executives. We hope our actions played a role in getting the lyrics changed, but as we never heard any response from the record company or the group's management, we're not sure whether they planned to make the change anyway or whether we convinced them that the language was offensive."
In the same essay (read it all at http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005723), Johnson asks, what about "the words 'idiot,' 'imbecile, 'moron,' etc.?" All are medical terms once used to define different degrees of mental retardation that eventually took on slang meanings synonymous with "stupid"... Language is constantly evolving. Special Olympics now uses "people with intellectual disabilities" instead of the now frowned-upon "mental disabilities." However, I think we could point out plenty of intellectually disabled people who aren't retarded--particularly in an election year--and vice-versa. But what happens when this term, too, evolves into slang? "Dude, you are so intellectually disabled." "Getting breast implants is intellectually disabled." "Let's Get Intellectually Disabled"--new revision of the Peas track?"
So we see that two important attributes of our culture - freedom of expression and clarity of language, can be successfully attacked by an unarmed, unfunded minority of people who not only aren't particularly intelligent but have proven and self-confessed mental retardation. Now just think about the chances of this culture to survive if facing an enemy with some arms, some funds and intellectual abilities generally within the normal range.
Disclaimer: I have nothing against mentally retarded people in general. I dislike only those of them who want to censor my language (see above), plus the precious few who come to our Medical University with the aspiration to become doctors (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/09/update-on-our-islamist-students-or-how.html).
An opinion poll for Arab readers: Are you for Israel or against it?
In his latest post, AngloLibyan describes how he went to the mosque to pray and instead had to listen to a US lecturer offending Arabs (http://anglolibyan.blogspot.com/2007/06/angry-sheikh.html, I advise you to read it - it's interesting). AngloLibyan, arguing that not all Arabs deserve to be "completely written off", wrote, "what about the young & old Arab men that are continuously killed by Israeli soldiers just because they are fighting for their land, what about Arab men that defended Lebanon and other countries too?"
I commented, "I don't understand you, AL. You have a "No to terrorism" appeal on your blog, yet you seem to cite as model Arabs those who are engaged in terror." AngloLibyan replied, "maya.m, from your experience with Arabs I am sure you know that we all believe that the Palestinian struggle and the Lebanese defendeing of their country against Israels vile and unjust aggression is a just cause".
This gave me the idea to start an opinion poll among Arab readers: Do you support Israel, or are you against it? You may take part in the poll by posting a comment.
In this poll, to "be against Israel" means to stand for the destruction of Israel or for its retreat to a territory smaller than the pre-1967 territory. If this is your opinion, please write what, according to you, should happen to the Jewish citizens of Israel.
To "support Israel" means to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish national state on a territory equal to or larger than the pre-1967 territory and to defend itself when attacked, like every other state. You need NOT be very happy that Israel exists or be anti-Palestinian. You may want Israel to retreat within its pre-1967 borders and a Palestinian state to be created on West Bank or Gaza, this doesn't disqualify you as a supporter of Israel. It does disqualify you, however, to consider the Palestinians and other Arabs "fighting for their land" something other than terrorists or, at best, hotheads delusioned by peer pressure and generations of misleading propaganda. Please write also how you think the problem with the Palestinian "refugees" should be solved. (I flanked this term by quotation marks because for me, a refugee is a person fleeing from an area of conflict, not this person's grandchild.)
The poll has no deadline, so you may take part in it, no matter when you are reading this. Anonymous comments are wellcome, especially pro-Israeli ones. I don't want people to lose friends because of my poll. If you are commenting anonymously, please write which Arab nation you belong to and, if you are an expatriate, where you live.
If you change your opinion after posting it, you are welcome to post again; please explain what has made you change your mind.
Non-Arab readers may comment also, but their opinions won't be counted. If commenting anonymously, please state that you aren't Arab, so that not to interfere with the poll results.
My working hypothesis is evident from my second comment on AngloLibyan's post: "I know from the Web that there are many Israeli Arabs who support their country (one of them, unfortunately, became known for shooting British pro-Palestinian activist Thomas Hurndall). Some other Arabs also support Israel (http://www.arabsforisrael.com/). You are right that this is a rare opinion. I haven't heard it from any Arab living or staying in Bulgaria. However, I am not sure exactly how rare this opinion is because of the apparent absence of free speech."
Perhaps my presumption about a significant minority of pro-Israeli Arabs is just wishful thinking. However, my experience has taught me that a uniform opinion usually is an artifact of suppressed dissent. It was thought in 1984-89, and still is thought by some non-Bulgarians, that the ethnic Bulgarian majority uniformly supported the forced renaming of our ethnic Turks. In fact, my entire family and most of my friends were against it. However, we didn't speak up, because this would just get us into trouble. But I would take part in an anonymous Web opinion poll, if there were such things at this time.
I commented, "I don't understand you, AL. You have a "No to terrorism" appeal on your blog, yet you seem to cite as model Arabs those who are engaged in terror." AngloLibyan replied, "maya.m, from your experience with Arabs I am sure you know that we all believe that the Palestinian struggle and the Lebanese defendeing of their country against Israels vile and unjust aggression is a just cause".
This gave me the idea to start an opinion poll among Arab readers: Do you support Israel, or are you against it? You may take part in the poll by posting a comment.
In this poll, to "be against Israel" means to stand for the destruction of Israel or for its retreat to a territory smaller than the pre-1967 territory. If this is your opinion, please write what, according to you, should happen to the Jewish citizens of Israel.
To "support Israel" means to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish national state on a territory equal to or larger than the pre-1967 territory and to defend itself when attacked, like every other state. You need NOT be very happy that Israel exists or be anti-Palestinian. You may want Israel to retreat within its pre-1967 borders and a Palestinian state to be created on West Bank or Gaza, this doesn't disqualify you as a supporter of Israel. It does disqualify you, however, to consider the Palestinians and other Arabs "fighting for their land" something other than terrorists or, at best, hotheads delusioned by peer pressure and generations of misleading propaganda. Please write also how you think the problem with the Palestinian "refugees" should be solved. (I flanked this term by quotation marks because for me, a refugee is a person fleeing from an area of conflict, not this person's grandchild.)
The poll has no deadline, so you may take part in it, no matter when you are reading this. Anonymous comments are wellcome, especially pro-Israeli ones. I don't want people to lose friends because of my poll. If you are commenting anonymously, please write which Arab nation you belong to and, if you are an expatriate, where you live.
If you change your opinion after posting it, you are welcome to post again; please explain what has made you change your mind.
Non-Arab readers may comment also, but their opinions won't be counted. If commenting anonymously, please state that you aren't Arab, so that not to interfere with the poll results.
My working hypothesis is evident from my second comment on AngloLibyan's post: "I know from the Web that there are many Israeli Arabs who support their country (one of them, unfortunately, became known for shooting British pro-Palestinian activist Thomas Hurndall). Some other Arabs also support Israel (http://www.arabsforisrael.com/). You are right that this is a rare opinion. I haven't heard it from any Arab living or staying in Bulgaria. However, I am not sure exactly how rare this opinion is because of the apparent absence of free speech."
Perhaps my presumption about a significant minority of pro-Israeli Arabs is just wishful thinking. However, my experience has taught me that a uniform opinion usually is an artifact of suppressed dissent. It was thought in 1984-89, and still is thought by some non-Bulgarians, that the ethnic Bulgarian majority uniformly supported the forced renaming of our ethnic Turks. In fact, my entire family and most of my friends were against it. However, we didn't speak up, because this would just get us into trouble. But I would take part in an anonymous Web opinion poll, if there were such things at this time.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Parents aren't justly evaluated by society
Many years ago, I read (in Bulgarian translation) the book "Children who are different" by Gerda Jun. It included the stories of 11 children with special needs, told by their parents. One child had cerebral palsy, one had attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, the others were mentally retarded and often with other conditions as well.
A narrator father of a girl with mental retardation (of unknown origin) had also two younger, typically developing children. Once, the school where they were studying sent to his workplace a letter that his children were awarded for success in the socialist school (this was in the German Democratic Republic). As this letter was read aloud in front of all colleagues, the father in question had a strange feeling. He knew his two children were doing well in school without any help from him. The situation was different with his eldest daughter, who couldn't attend a regular school. He had put much efforts to help her achieve the best development she could, yet nobody praised him. So he asked, "Does society acknowledge most the parents who really deserve most?".
Although my parental experience is still short, I can confirm first-hand that this father was right: the public opinion is utterly unjust when judging a parent. And one of the reason is that the child is regarded as a white sheet of paper and the parent as a demigod in full control of what will appear on this sheet. People underestimate the fact that a child's development follows its own built-in program that often couldn't, or shouldn't, be changed from outside.
During the last month or so, my elder son has been praised 4 times for his reading skills. (He doesn't really read yet but he knows the entire Cyrillic alphabet, the Latin letters without analog in the Cyrillic alphabet and can read short words.)
Praise was also addressed to me, although I have done almost nothing. Yes, about 3 months ago I spelled words to him, to help him understand that this is what letters are for. But his interest to letters, numbers and other printed symbols emerged at age 18-20 months without any help from me.
At the same age, something less pleasant happened. My son stopped saying the few words he could say ("mama", "dada" and several of this kind). He also became somewhat alienated from us and the world in general. This regression was followed by a plateau period of more than a year during which his skill development was almost zero. During this period, I of course was very unhappy and anxious. I was wondering what was happening to the child, thinking of all sorts of conditions from impaired hearing to mental retardation. Some of the people around encouraged me and urged me to believe in the child. However, others reacted in a way that only made matters worse, blaming me for all problems. According to them, my son stopped developing properly because I:
- wasn't paying enough attention to him;
- was working too much on my PhD thesis and too little on him;
- returned to work;
- wasn't talking to him all day (as if later in life we learn a foreign language by turning on a radio to listen to it all day);
- wasn't bringing him out to spend long enough time playing with other children;
- was often bringing him to my mother and leaving him alone with her (this is the favourite theory of one of my husband's relations who hates my mother and thinks she will surely damage any child in her custody).
At some time after my son's 3rd birthday, his speech slowly reappeared and resumed its development. The kindergarten has surely helped this, but I have the impression that most of his new talk was as spontaneous as his earlier silencing.
I recently learned that there are other young children (usually boys) who have strong interest in printed symbols, learn to read early without much training from outside and often are speech delayed. This phenomenon is called hyperlexia. Moreover, as many as half of children with hyperlexia regress at age 18 months and nobody has any idea why.
So I was blamed that my child wasn't talking and now I'm praised because of his precocious reading skills. Neither was my guilt/merit, unless in the sense that my genes were involved (I was also a late talker and early reader). My son was the same child and I was the same parent 2 years ago as we are now. So I would advise other parents, regardless of whether their child's development is typicall or not, to do what they think is best for him and not to listen to irresponsible talk by people who have nothing better to do than judging others.
A narrator father of a girl with mental retardation (of unknown origin) had also two younger, typically developing children. Once, the school where they were studying sent to his workplace a letter that his children were awarded for success in the socialist school (this was in the German Democratic Republic). As this letter was read aloud in front of all colleagues, the father in question had a strange feeling. He knew his two children were doing well in school without any help from him. The situation was different with his eldest daughter, who couldn't attend a regular school. He had put much efforts to help her achieve the best development she could, yet nobody praised him. So he asked, "Does society acknowledge most the parents who really deserve most?".
Although my parental experience is still short, I can confirm first-hand that this father was right: the public opinion is utterly unjust when judging a parent. And one of the reason is that the child is regarded as a white sheet of paper and the parent as a demigod in full control of what will appear on this sheet. People underestimate the fact that a child's development follows its own built-in program that often couldn't, or shouldn't, be changed from outside.
During the last month or so, my elder son has been praised 4 times for his reading skills. (He doesn't really read yet but he knows the entire Cyrillic alphabet, the Latin letters without analog in the Cyrillic alphabet and can read short words.)
Praise was also addressed to me, although I have done almost nothing. Yes, about 3 months ago I spelled words to him, to help him understand that this is what letters are for. But his interest to letters, numbers and other printed symbols emerged at age 18-20 months without any help from me.
At the same age, something less pleasant happened. My son stopped saying the few words he could say ("mama", "dada" and several of this kind). He also became somewhat alienated from us and the world in general. This regression was followed by a plateau period of more than a year during which his skill development was almost zero. During this period, I of course was very unhappy and anxious. I was wondering what was happening to the child, thinking of all sorts of conditions from impaired hearing to mental retardation. Some of the people around encouraged me and urged me to believe in the child. However, others reacted in a way that only made matters worse, blaming me for all problems. According to them, my son stopped developing properly because I:
- wasn't paying enough attention to him;
- was working too much on my PhD thesis and too little on him;
- returned to work;
- wasn't talking to him all day (as if later in life we learn a foreign language by turning on a radio to listen to it all day);
- wasn't bringing him out to spend long enough time playing with other children;
- was often bringing him to my mother and leaving him alone with her (this is the favourite theory of one of my husband's relations who hates my mother and thinks she will surely damage any child in her custody).
At some time after my son's 3rd birthday, his speech slowly reappeared and resumed its development. The kindergarten has surely helped this, but I have the impression that most of his new talk was as spontaneous as his earlier silencing.
I recently learned that there are other young children (usually boys) who have strong interest in printed symbols, learn to read early without much training from outside and often are speech delayed. This phenomenon is called hyperlexia. Moreover, as many as half of children with hyperlexia regress at age 18 months and nobody has any idea why.
So I was blamed that my child wasn't talking and now I'm praised because of his precocious reading skills. Neither was my guilt/merit, unless in the sense that my genes were involved (I was also a late talker and early reader). My son was the same child and I was the same parent 2 years ago as we are now. So I would advise other parents, regardless of whether their child's development is typicall or not, to do what they think is best for him and not to listen to irresponsible talk by people who have nothing better to do than judging others.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Boyko Borisov: portrait of a winner
On May 20, Bulgarians voted for the first time to send representatives to the European Parliament. You can see the results at http://www.socialistgroup.org/gpes/newsdetail.do?lg=bg&id=39356&href=home&site=msb. Most of the votes have gone to GERB (the party of the Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov), to the Socialist party and to DPS (the Movement for Rights and Freedoms). These three parties have obtained almost equal number of votes and will have 5 seats each. Two other parties will also send representatives to the European Parliament: Ataka (2 seats) and NDSV (Simeon II National Movement, 1 seat).
To be honest, I considered not voting at these elections because I don't believe the European Parliament is a useful institution. However, finally I made up my mind to vote (for one of the rightist parties that remained below the bar). So now I may, like every thinking Bulgarian, pull off my hair as I'm looking at the election results, but at least I don't feel guilty.
Why do I regard the results as a disaster? Let's mention the winning parties one by one. I've blogged about NDSV's leader Simeon II Saxe-Coburg-Gotha at http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/06/noblemen-who-steal-umbrellas.html and about Ataka at http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/09/dimitar-stoyanov-child-prodigy-of.html (D. Stoyanov will go to the European Parliament again as the first of the two Ataka representatives). I've also blogged about the Turkish party DPS at http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/04/dps-conference.html. In these elections, its good result was due not only to almost 100% mobilization of ethnic Turkish and Bulgarian Muslim voters (projected on the low activity of Bulgarian voters) but also on bribing many Gypsies and reportedly on intimidating some Bulgarians to vote for DPS. The Socialist Party is the renamed Communist Party from the Iron Curtain era; it still talks and promises social nonsense to its voters despite making virtually every member of its leadership a rich capitalist - need I say anything more? So now I have to describe only the big winner - GERB or, to be precise, its leader Boyko Borisov, because no one ordinary Bulgarian, including those who have voted for GERB, knows anything about its program or can name a distinguished member of the party other than Borisov.
My work is facilitated by Wikipedia, where Borisov is featured both in English and in Bulgarian. Born in 1959, he graduated the police college as a firefighter lieutenant in 1982 and began work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (the police). He made a PhD thesis titled Psychological and physical training of (police and firefighter) personnel. (I had to work on my PhD thesis for 11 years and to publish its results in peer reviewed journals with impact factor, so excuse me if I view Borisov's "PhD" as a personal insult.) Borisov was a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party - this was mandatory for every police officer during the Communist rule. After this rule ended in 1989, police were de-politicized and their officers had the choice to leave the Party or resign. Borisov preferred the Party and left the police in 1990. However, I wouldn't rush to call him a diehard communist - I think this was for him not a political matter but a convinient way to obtain a honourable discharge in order to start a business.
In 1991, Borisov founded the private security company IPON-1 that guarded personalities like the former dictator Todor Zhivkov and the above mentioned Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I copied this from Wikipedia. What you won't find in Wikipedia is that IPON-1 was one of the numerous "security companies" abundant in the early 1990s and active in intimidation of the nascent private sector. Every businessman had to pay one or another of these companies for security, or trouble followed. The "security personnel" became known as mutras. Before 1990, "mutra" was an informal word for "face", usually an ugly man's face. Later, it became a term for the whole personality of the mutra-possessing racketeer thug. A person I know worked at that time for a company guarded by IPON-1. When Borisov's star rose on the political sky, that person said to me, "How can people like Borisov? Don't they see that he is a mutra?" The same source told me that "he isn't a dull mutra, he knows his business and never puts his signature under a document that may later be used against him". I'm citing this person because I fully trust him. At http://oshte.info/doc/boikoborisov/001.htm, you'll find (in Bulgarian) much more outrageous information about Borisov, but I prefer not to cite it, because I cannot guarantee the source is trustworthy. The author has preferred to remain anonimous, which I find more disturbing than anything he reports: apparently, when it comes to Boyko Borisov (similarly to Islam in other countries), free speech exists no more.
In 1991, Borisov founded the private security company IPON-1 that guarded personalities like the former dictator Todor Zhivkov and the above mentioned Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I copied this from Wikipedia. What you won't find in Wikipedia is that IPON-1 was one of the numerous "security companies" abundant in the early 1990s and active in intimidation of the nascent private sector. Every businessman had to pay one or another of these companies for security, or trouble followed. The "security personnel" became known as mutras. Before 1990, "mutra" was an informal word for "face", usually an ugly man's face. Later, it became a term for the whole personality of the mutra-possessing racketeer thug. A person I know worked at that time for a company guarded by IPON-1. When Borisov's star rose on the political sky, that person said to me, "How can people like Borisov? Don't they see that he is a mutra?" The same source told me that "he isn't a dull mutra, he knows his business and never puts his signature under a document that may later be used against him". I'm citing this person because I fully trust him. At http://oshte.info/doc/boikoborisov/001.htm, you'll find (in Bulgarian) much more outrageous information about Borisov, but I prefer not to cite it, because I cannot guarantee the source is trustworthy. The author has preferred to remain anonimous, which I find more disturbing than anything he reports: apparently, when it comes to Boyko Borisov (similarly to Islam in other countries), free speech exists no more.
Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha presumably appreciated the security provided by IPON-1, because when he became Prime Minister in 2001, Boyko Borisov returned to the police on a white horse. He became Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and colonel. Next year Borisov was promoted again, to general. As some commented ironically, such a fast climbing up the ranks is usually observed only for active combatants during a war.
In Bulgaria, the Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is the highest-ranking professional in the Ministry responsible for implementing the policy of the Minister (a political and usually non-professional figure) into practical actions. However, the Secretary also has the function to address the public in cases of important events concerning the police. So, if a charismatic and ambitious person occupies this post, there is a danger that, instead of serving the law and order, he will use his position to make himself popular as a stepstone for a future political career. This has happened before with Bogomil Bonev, Secretary in the early 1990s and not too far from winning the 2001 presidential elections (he remained third). Boyko Borisov's performance fitted the same pattern, in an enhanced and much more dangerous variant. In the early 2000s, I watched more TV and had more social contacts than now, so I could see Borisov's tactic and its reflection on ordinary Bulgarians.
Look at Borisov's photo above (copied from http://sofia.bg/display.asp?ime=bb&title=%20%20&pathtitle=%20%20; the same photo was used in the recent election campaign for the European Parliament). Though a single static image, it tells much about Borisov and the roots of his popularity. First, this heavily built man with large mandible is very masculine. He is a macho archetype, or as I called him once, a Neanderthalian sex symbol (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/10/dont-vote-for-georgi-parvanov.html). Being a heterosexual woman, I can easily detect his powerful primitive sexuality; however, I can even more easily reject its appeal, thanks to the thick layers of culture covering the female animal in my core. But many Bulgarian women yielded to Borisov's charm.
Of course this wouldn't be enough to bring success, because only half of the voters are female. One could expect Borisov's Paleolithic masculinity, while attracting women, to turn jealous men away. Perhaps it would, if they were truly men. But in our not so distant communist past, the omnipresent and intrusive government restrained and protected us in the same time, predictably making us infantile. To give an example, the majority of healthy adult Bulgarians don't regard themselves truly capable to stand on their own feet and provide for themselves, therefore they don't vote right. A party that doesn't promise tons of "social politics" has no chance to win elections in Bulgaria. Deep inside, our adults feel like children left on their own in a complex and cruel world; and Borisov appeared in front of them as a strong and caring Big Brother.
A psychologist said that the appearance and posture of Borisov (e.g. the leaned head) radiates aggression but this only brings him popularity because he is perceived as the good guy who will protect us from the bad guys and beat them up. Indeed, he deliberately makes himself looking aggressive by his three-day beard, short haircut and black leather jacket - the last two characteristics shared by regular participants in street fights. I don't see well how he is dressed in the above photo, but he usually wears the black leather jacket even on occasions when the protocol requires a suit. During his term as a police Secretary, whenever a grave crime occurred, he was quick to arrive at the scene in his jacket (like Batman, as Starshel paper ironized him). Presumably stepping on and damaging pieces of forensic evidence, he was explaining to journalists that the perpetrators would soon be found. The public liked these promises and didn't at all insist that they be kept.
By 2005, he was so popular that Saxe-Coburg-Gotha used him as a bait for voters in the parliamentary elections. Borisov was nominated and elected in two regions but didn't take his position in Parliament and openly admitted that he had taken part in the elections only "for the King's (i.e. Simeon's) sake". I think that in any normal democratic country such a behaviour would put an end to the person's popularity and political career. In Bulgaria, it didn't. Later in the same year, he was elected Mayor of the capital Sofia - the third most important position in the country after the Prime Minister and the President.
A year and a half later, the approval rating of Boyko Borisov remains high in Sofia, though it will be difficult for his supporters to say what actually he has done for the city. I can point at only one major achievement: unraveling of massive theft at the Sofia's heating utility, leading to the indictment of its former head Valentin Dimitrov (nicknamed Valyo the Warmth by journalists after the scandal bursted out). At http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=80933, you can read (in English) a short report about Dimitrov covering just a small episode of his saga; many millions of Euros with unexplainable origin were found in Dimitrov's accounts in Bulgarian and foreign banks. In Bulgaria, a major cause for the widespread chronic poverty are the "natural" monopolies - the heating, electricity, water and telephone companies that enjoy priviledged law status and rob the population with impunity, charging the hapless client as much as they want. In big cities, poor insulation of most homes and of heating pipes, combined with lack of control over the heating company, leads to average heating bills approaching average salaries. Moreover, once you have heating pipes in your home, you are forced to pay the heating company even if you decide not to use its services and remove all radiators. So it is small wonder that, despite the nearly subtropical climate of Bulgaria, we expect the winter with horror in our hearts - another feature (besides liking people like Borisov) which unites us with the Neanderthals. It is also logical that ordinary people cheered Borisov for exposing Valyo the Warmth. Unfortunately, they forgot to ask why, after the big thief was caught, the heating bills during the following winter were as high as before and even higher. To me, the only explanation is that somebody is stealing again, this time with the blessing of Mayor Borisov.
How will Borisov's career develop now after his May 20 election victory? Nobody knows exactly, but it is surely ascending and I don't like this at all. As my friend said years ago during Bogomil Bonev's campaign, in no real democracy could a person coming from the police be a serious candidate for any important elected position; this is possible only in a police state, or in a nascent democracy wished by too many of its citizens to become a police state. But besides his police background, there are many other reasons not to elect Borisov, as I pointed above. Radio Free Europe rightly called him (during the 2005 municipal election campaign) "a dangerous populist". (BTW, looking for my old post where I had mentioned Borisov in order to cite it, I tried a Google search for Boyko Neanderthal. The search results included a participant in the Sofia News Agency forum saying, "I'm terrified that anyone considers the neanderthal King Mutra Uncle Boyko could hold any post in public life". So the cyberspace contains at least one other person sharing my opinion.)
Somebody could ask, "But comparing Borisov to the other figures in the Bulgarian political panopticum, do you really find him much worse than the others? What actual harm do you expect from his potential rule, keeping in mind that now much of Bulgaria's politics will be determined by the European Union?" The answer: I don't expect Borisov to do much harm to the factual reality in Bulgaria, in the way Prime Minister Zhan Videnov did in 1996-97 (when Bulgaria was deprived of bread and monthly incomes dropped to the equivalent of $ 3-5). But I expect Borisov to harm the miniscule seeds of civil society in Bulgaria, because he wins support by directly engaging the subcortical brain regions and so cultivates stupidity. So his rule will postpone the emergence of true democracy in Bulgaria.
What actually is "true democracy"? It isn't just free and fair elections. It also requires political vote. That is, thinking citizens choosing between alternative programs of political parties. When people's vote is based on the candidate's tribal affiliation or personal charisma, this is not true democracy, even if the elections are free and fair. I won't say that democracy is not good for Bulgarians (or any other nation) because "they are not yet ready for it". This argument belongs to the arsenal of racist bigots and other enemies of civilization. I side with those who say that nations need time and practice to learn democratic rule after obtaining democracy, as individuals need time and practice to learn swimming after they enter the pool. But as years pass, now almost 2 decades since we were thrown into the water of democracy, I sometimes think in despair that we'll never learn to swim properly. At least we don't drown each other during our swimming lessons, as Iraqis do. But this is a pretty low standard to set.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Mideast conflict: the dire consequences of a "deadly and disgusting bias"
On the evening of May 14, 1948 Israel declared independence. Therefore, May 15 is marked by Palestinians and other Arabs as Nakba (Catastrophe) day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Day). This week, AngloLibyan wrote a post about it (http://anglolibyan.blogspot.com/2007/05/nakba-day.html). Libyan-British blogger Mani (currently occupying the prestigeous position of my favourite opponent) commented, "Besides the plights and inhumane suffering of everyone in the world, this issue is the only one in the world treated with such deadly and disgusting bias". With some envy to the power of his expression, I copied and reposted it as my comment to the same thread. Nobody caught my irony! So I decided, instead of trolling on other people's blogs, to sit down and write a post of my own.
I agree with Karl Popper that frankly stating where you stand is better than even the most sincere attempts to be objective, so let me say right now that I am strongly pro-Israel. It hasn't always been so: in my school years, even in high school, I was strongly pro-Palestinian. I felt sympathy to the plight of Palestinians, forced to live under occupation of newcomers on their land, as we Bulgarians were "occupied" by the Ottoman Turks centuries ago. I wondered why Palestinians weren't allowed to have their own little corner, their state in the West Bank and Gaza. I was outraged by the number of children killed and maimed in the conflict. Because Israel had statehood and democracy, I held ordinary Israelis more or less responsible for every action of their army, while at the same time I didn't hold ordinary Palestinians responsible at all for the actions of Palestinian terrorists, as I wouldn't agree to be held responsible for another person's crime just because he is Bulgarian like me.
Over years, my opinion gradually changed. I learned more about the rights of Israeli Arabs and of the actually quite benign treatment of Palestinians by Israelis even in the occupied territories. E.g. look at the first image above (copied from the cited AngloLibyan's post, original source unknown) - can you imagine a Chechen boy standing in a similar way near a Russian tank and a photographer allowed to make a shot? I acknowledged the autonomy given to Palestinians by Israel. I appreciated the abolitionist position of Israel on death penalty. But what actually changed my mind was not the behaviour of Israelis but that of Palestinians. As the proverb says, nobody can do to you (a thing as bad as) what you do to yourself. I saw wide-spread Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War; wide-spread support to terrorists, including terrorists specifically targeting children; using terrorist organizations as a substitute for political parties and electing their ringleaders; widespread and public joy after the deaths of innocent people at the hands of terrorists, mainly (but not exclusively) after Sept. 11; using their own children as mere weapons in the war against the Jews, if not conceiving children specifically for this purpose. I realized that Palestinians didn't actually want their own little corner in the West Bank and Gaza but a base from where to attack and eventually destroy Israel and its Jewish population.
Let me now, without claiming any expertise in history, try and write a brief historical overview of the conflict. I won't care to find and cite every source - it would take a month. Besides, it is not so important, because there is little real contradiction between the sources. They may seem as different from each other as Heaven is from Earth, but if you remove some adjectives and other emotionally charged words, the claims of Israeli and Arab historians and even propagandists turn out to be essentially the same. E.g. if you step across any gallery of Palestinians "heroes" and "martyrs" and show curiousity what they have actually done, you will reveal stories corresponding almost word-to-word to what Israeli sources say.
The conflict prehistory begins nearly two millenia ago, when after unsuccessful uprisings most of the surviving Jews were expelled from Palestine by the Romans. Eventually, their place was taken by Arabs, although this land until recently remained scarcely populated (small wonder - as Leo Taxil noted, there seem to be few territories as hostile to human habitation as the Promised Land). Although Palestine remained through centuries a dreamland for religious Jews and a special place even for secular Jews, during the 18th-19th century it seemed that most European Jews would be content to remain as minorities in the countries where they lived. However, at the end of the 19th century it became clear that a new powerful wave of anti-Semitism was on the rise (some authors say the landmark event was the Dreyfus Affair). An increasing number of Jews accepted the idea of a nation-state of their own in Palestine - the Zionism movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism). After Ottoman rule over Palestine was brought to an end by World War I, the Zionist idea of "a national home for Jews in that country" was accepted by the League of Nations. The British were given a mandate over Palestine in order to prepare the formation of an Arab state east of Jordan river (Transjordan, now Jordan) and a Jewish-majority state west of Jordan. The exact boundaries of this Jewish state were disputed "with conflicting and shifting British promises to Jewish and Arab interests" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine), but the important thing was that Jewish families were allowed to settle and buy property west of Jordan.
As you can guess, nobody asked the locals what they thought of the idea. They surely had hoped for a self-rule after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and, knowing the strengh of (pan)Arab nationalism, I can quite believe Palestinians when they say to have opposed the idea of Israel right from the beginning. Most Israeli sources say that Jewish immigrants in fact benefited the local Arabs by creating jobs, which attracted also many Arabs from neighbouring lands to Palestine. I find no contradiction between these claims. Why not let somebody else build a factory or a farm and organize the production, then dispossess him and take the factory or farm for yourself? In fact, this is in essence what socialism is about.
Anyway, during the 1930s the Palestinians were surely seeing the writing on the wall. So they began to seek allies to help them get rid of the Jews. Of course, this brought them to Nazi Germany. "Within weeks of Hitler’s coming to power in 1933, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem got in touch with the German consul general in Jerusalem, Doctor Heinrich Wolff, and offered his services" (Bernard Lewis, The New Anti-Semitism, http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/21832.html; this is a must-read article). I have myself seen a photo of German Army officers with their Arab allies in a World War II-dating newspaper. Nazi Germany was eventually defeated, but not before it managed not only to carry out the Holocaust but to infect the Arabs with the virus of the new anti-Semitism. Although the Koran demonizes the Jews, the Jewish minorities in Arab lands enjoyed considerable tolerance through the centuries, at least compared to the ruthless persecutions in Christianic Europe. According to Lewis, it was the Nazis who, after reviving the medieval Christian concept of the Jews as carriers of "cosmic, satanic evil", introduced it to the Arab world.
A characteristic and somewhat puzzling feature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the readiness of non-Palestinian Arabs to get involved into it. When in 1947 UN approved a partition plan separating Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, it was rejected not only by Palestinians but also by Arab states. (I wonder why they rejected it; you can see the map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Plan - the territory given to Jews is quite meager.) After the rejection, Israel declared independence in 1948 and was attacked by Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and Lebanon. In this war, Jews received about as much support from the world as they had received during the Holocaust. Still, they won. The real losers were those Palestinians who became refugees. Some of them were expelled by the Israeli army or forced to flee after finding themselves too close to the battlefields; but the majority were lured to leave by the invading Arabs so that to allow unrestrained campaign against the Jews. The large Arab minority of today's Israel proves that Arabs haven't been victims of true ethnic cleansing. An additional proof came in 2006, when Hezbollah commander Nasrallah warned Arab residents of Haifa to leave the city. Rejecting the idea, one of their leaders said, "The Palestinian people are especially unwilling to be refugees of any kind again" (http://themiddleeastnow.com/category/israeliarabs). However, while generally not expelling Arabs, Israel didn't allow the refugees to return. This shouldn't surprise anybody. By this time, it was clear that those Arabs who had fled, and too many even of those who had remained, were committed to the task of destroying Israel by armed struggle, terror and, let's say it, demographic stealing of the country from the Jewish majority by a birth rate typical for non-primate mammals. So it was a bingo for Israel that many of its Arabs escaped and I believe every Israeli statesman who would discuss their return should be sent to mental health counselling.
As I hinted above, the Palestinians were wronged by the creation of the Jewish state, facing the choice either to leave their historic land or to leave there as a minority. However, I think that sometimes justice isn't the most important thing and isn't even achievable for all sides. What is most important and achievable in all cases is life. I disapprove the fact that at the end of World War II millions of Europeans were forcibly expelled from their homes and driven to an exodus (the Germans from Sudetenland and East Prussia, the Bulgarians from Greece etc.) However, I tend to think that the victors, standing on the ruins of Europe, knew how to save the continent from an otherwise inevitable demise. They decided that it is better to do injustice to a minority by deporting it, rather than let it stay and be a potential casus belli in the future. Perhaps they were right.
However, soon after these mass deportations, in 1949, the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibited any future actions of this kind. In particular, its Article 49 states, "Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive." So, while European countries only years ago had conviniently deported populations regarded as security threat, Israel was not allowed to do so. In fact, as new states emerged in the post-colonial era, Article 49 was often violated. E.g. the number of Hindus forced to flee Pakistan is estimated by some to equal the entire Bulgarian population - 8 millions. But everybody turns a blind eye to such violations, unless Israel is doing them. The sense of collective guilt in Europeans after the Holocaust and the increasing power of Arab countries based on their oil reserves led to a special status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is regarded as different from, and more important than, any other conflict. Israel is scrutinized, its right to defend itself is denied, while Palestinians and their representatives are exonerated of whatever they do and meet no demands. This is indeed a "deadly and disgusting bias" - disgusting because it is deadly and deadly in the literal sense, because it has caused the death of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians and other human beings.
After losing the 1948 war, Arab countries expelled their Jewish minorities to Israel. While this wrong done to the Jews could not undo the wrong done to the Palestinians, it presented the opportunity to end the conflict in a relatively decent and respectful way for all parties involved. Let's sign a "population exchange" treaty, we take your unwanted Palestinian refugees, you take our unwanted Jews and everybody goes back to business. However, the Arabs didn't want it that way. While happy to get rid of the Jews, they refused to integrate the Palestinians and preferred to keep them in refugee camps for indefinite time as a weapon against Israel. I think this sad development is due to the famous Arab honour, more disastrous and lethal than any other honour known to me.
The United Nations Organization did what it could to make the matters worse (it is good at this, although hardly at anything else). Neglecting outrageous human rights abuses and outright genocides done by other countries, the UN produces one after another resolutions against Israel. In fact, Israel has a second-class status at the UN (http://christianactionforisrael.org/un/status.html). While refugees of other conflicts are cared for by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNRA), which helps them integrate and find new homes when return to the old homes is impossible or undesirable, for the Palestinian refugees a special agency was created - UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). Even if the claims that it has become heavily infiltrated by terrorist organizations aren't true, it is true that this agency does nothing to help Palestinian refugees integrate anywhere. Some of them are already a third generation of refugees.
I'm not going to describe in detail how the conflict developed over the years. The Palestinians seem to have very perverted ideas of how newcomers to a country should behave. After Jordan accepted them, they tried to take the power, Jordan expelled them, Lebanon accepted them, they tried to take the power again and this destroyed the democracy and prosperity of the country. Arabs continued making wars with Israel and after one of them, in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Those pro-Palestinian forces that don't dare to call openly for destruction of Israel insist that it returns within its pre-1967 borders. However, these borders are from military point of view indefensible - a fact which deserves more publicity and explains Israel's reluctance to withdraw from these territories. When Israel does withdraw, however, as in the recent disengagement from Gaza, it is not rewarded with peace. The Palestinians always use whatever land Israel gives away to them as a base for more terror.
I don't know what the collective Palestinian psyche was like at the beginning of the conflict, but now it seems even more degraded than this of the Nazi Germans. The latter at least made their living themselves while Palestinians are fed by UNRWA, by Arab countries, by the EU, by USA, by everybody. Nobody seems to think that Palestinians should make a living and raise their children on what they earn, like all normal people. Remember the discussion after the Hamas election victory: "Should we stop feeding the Palestinians to punish them for electing Hamas, or we should go on feeding them whatever they do?" In fact, the aid may be discontinued if Palestinians STOP doing things like electing Hamas (or al-Fatah - there is hardly much difference). Arabs pay Palestinians so that they continue their "freedom fight" (read: to finish what Hitler begun), while Westerners give money on the premise that Palestinians would become even worse if not fed, similarly to a friend of mine who, although very poor, always had a bisquit for her landlord's dog so that to bribe it into not attacking her. So the situation with the Palestinians is best described by the expression "Killing for a living" (the title of Animal Planet series devoted to predation). If they embrace peace, starvation is likely to follow.
With time, the problem is getting only worse, because the number of Palestinian refugees is growing (and also the number of Gaza and West Bank residents who are also committed to "freedom fight"). The 1948 war produced several hundred thousands of Palestinian refugees, now they are estimated to be about 4 million. Part of this unsustainable population growth is the direct result of unearned incomes: when people make a living on what they produce, there is no premium on reproduction and the size of the family is naturally limited; aid, on the contrary, is distributed based on the number of family members, so encouraging the least productive to have more children.
There is also another, more sinister reason behind the large Palestinian families: children are regarded as a means to achieve the society's major goal - destroying Israel; and alas, it is not only about outnumbering the Jews. Let me cite Leilouta, who is a witness rather than an Israeli supporter: "One of my mom’s Palestinian friends was in her early thirties at that time. She had 6 kids. She told me she was planning on having a few more. I looked at her with a surprised look thinking that she already had her hands full. She noticed my surprise and told me that she and her friends wanted to have as many kids as they could so they could go fight for their land" (http://leilouta.blogspot.com/2006/07/wein-el-malayeen_16.html). Another piece of evidence is the second image shown above - the so-called "Baby bomber" (copied from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2075072.stm, original source AP). This photo of a boy less than 2 years old dressed as a suicide bomber was found by Israeli troops searching a house in Hebron. The baby's grandfather said it was taken "just for fun". To me, it is scary. It means to tell the child, when he grows older, that Mom and Dad will be happy if he blows himself up among some Jewish pizza eaters.
Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? I don't see it. At any rate, it is not the idea of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. These two small pieces of land, separated from each other, couldn't produce an economically viable state even if populated by educated and skilled workers, not by people whose only area of expertise is terror. They would suffer economic hardship, would blame guess whom and resume their attacks. In fact, Gaza already is an experiment of Palestinian self-rule and shows its failure (e.g. read what it means to be ale-less in Gaza). Nor is there any reason to lump together West Bank and Gaza residents in one nation - what is common between them and separating them from other Arabs, except that their anti-Semitism is really at an extreme level?
My personal opinion is that Israel must decide what parts of the West Bank it wants to keep for security reasons, the rest of the West Bank must go to Jordan and Gaza - to Egypt. Other countries must also help by donating funds and taking some Palestinians. Personally, although there is no group of people whom I like less than the Palestinians (and this post shows it), I would welcome several hundred of them as immigrants in my city. During the last year cartoon crisis, when masked Palestinian gunmen were showing muscles in the quarters of European institutions feeding them, I was very angry and thought that if it depended on me, I wouldn't let a single Palestinian set foot on European soil. But meanwhile the emotions have cooled and my intolerance has dropped back to its background level. So I realize, again, that principles must sometimes be put above interests and that, if we want a just and lasting peace, everybody must make some sacrifice or at least contribution.
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