The part played by labor in the transition to man

 (Bulgarian readers can find the same post in Bulgarian here.)

This year, our Orthodox Easter coincided with Labor Day. This gives everyone a democratic choice what to celebrate. Our family of course opted for Easter with its amusing and tasty traditions: painted eggs, baked lamb with newly harvested potatoes, sweet Easter bread, chocolate bunnies and (for the children) egg hunt in the garden or the living-room. Labor Day has something to offer only to leftists and I regret that it has driven to oblivion good old May Day. At least, after the fall of communism we have no mandatory rallies on this day anymore. Let me honor the double holiday by writing a post that will treat both religion (though not exactly Christianity) and labor.

A pet peeve of mine is that the theories of Marx, Engels and Lenin still cannot be purged out of our textbooks, and not only those of social sciences but even those of natural sciences. Bulgarian high school biology textbooks still discuss labor as one of the factors of anthropogenesis (i.e. human evolution); we even had this subject at the entrance exam of our University a month ago. The idea that humans owe their origin to labor is rooted in Engels' 1876 essay The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. To my annoyance, Wikipedia praises the work in question. The important thing, however, is that you can read a kilogram of modern scientific works on human origin and evolution without finding a word about the role of labor in this process. Actually, what distinguishes human (or pre-human) labor from the analogous activities of other animals? We don't call it "labor" when a squirrel gathers food supplies; why does the same count for labor if a human is doing it? Because the human is aware of what he is doing. In other words, it is not labor itself, it is consciousness that is important and (as we think) uniquely human.

Of course, questions about human origin have been asked for millenia before Engels. Each self-respecting religion discusses it at least briefly. In Norse mythology for example, gods have created humans in order to use them as allies in the final battle of Ragnarok that will put an end to the world as we know it. For that purpose, souls of dead warriors are collected in the hall of Valhalla. Pay attention that the Norse myth ascribes to gods selfish motivation for the creation of man and does not try to convince the human audience that the supreme god Odin loves them. The same "realism" can be found in other ancient mythologies and religions, including those in the cradle of human civilization - the Fertile Crescent.

The earliest preserved Mesopotamian tale of human creation is the Epic of Atrahasis. Preserved as a cuneiform script on clay tablets, the oldest of them dated to 17th century BC, it begins as follows:

"When the gods, instead of man
Did the work, bore the loads
The god's load was too great, the work too hard, the trouble too much."

Of course, those who could shirk the hard work, did it by forcing it on others:

"The seven great Anunna-gods were burdening
the [lesser] Igigi-gods with forced labor."

Allthough lesser, Igigi were gods nevertheless and the results of their labor were magnificent. Look e.g. at their irrigation canals:

"The Igigi-gods were digging watercourses
canals they opened, the life of the land.
The Igigi-gods dug the Tigris river
and the Euphrates thereafter.
Springs they opened from the depths,
wells ... they established...
They heaped up all the mountains."

However, after some time, they got fed up and went on strike and even something more:

"They counted years of drudgery,
... and forty years, too much!
... forced labor they bore night and day.
They were complaining, denouncing,
muttering down in the ditch:
"Let us face up to our foreman the prefect,
he must take off our heavy burden upon us!
Enlil, counsellor of the gods, the warrior,
come, let us remove him from his dwelling!"...
"Now them, call for battle,
battle let us join, warfare!"
The gods heard his words: [apparently, one of the Igigi has become leader of the rebellion]
they set fire to their tools,
they put fire to their spaces,
and flame to their workbaskets.
Off they went, one and all,
to the gate of the warrior Enlil's abode...
It was night, half-way through the watch,
the house was surrounded, but the god did not know."

And what did the supreme god Enlil do when he finally knew what was going on? He sent to the rebels a messenger with the following question:

"Who is the instigator of this battle?
Who is the instigator of these hostilities?
Who declared war,
that battle has run up to the gate of Enlil?
...He transgressed the command of Enlil."

What a jerk, wasn't he? However, the lower gods like all serious rebels knew the importance of solidarity and gave the following reply:

"Everyone of us gods has declared war;
...Excessive drudgery has killed us,
our forced labor was heavy, the misery too much!
Now, everyone of us gods
has resolved on a reckoning with Enlil."

The great gods urgently gathered in a divine council. The clever god Ea, also known by his Sumerian name Enki, said that the disaster was predictable and then proposed a solution:

"Ea made ready to speak,
and said to the gods, his brothers:
"What calumny do we lay to their charge?
Their forced labor was heavy, their misery too much!
Every day... the outcry was loud, we could hear the clamor...
Belet-ili, the midwife, is present.
Let her create, then, a human, a man,
Let him bear the yoke!
Let him bear the yoke!
Let man assume the drudgery of the god."
They summoned and asked the goddess
the midwife of the gods, wise Mami:
"Will you be the birth goddess, creatress of mankind?
Create a human being, that he bear the yoke,
let him bear the yoke, the task of Enlil,
let man assume the drudgery of the god."
Nintu made ready to speak,
and said to the great gods:
"It is not for me to do it,
the task is Enki's.
He it is that cleanses all,
let him provide me the clay so I can do the making. "

There was just a teensy, weensy problem: to create a rational being, the birth goddess (alternatively called Belet-ili, Nin-tu and Mami) didn't need only clay. She needed also the flesh and blood of another rational being, a sacrificed god. Mesopotamian gods did not age and had no natural death, but could be killed.

"Enki made ready to speak,
and said to the great gods:
"On the first, seventh, and fifteenth days of the month,
let me establish a purification, a bath.
Let one god be slaughtered,
then let the gods be cleansed by immerson.
Let Nintu mix clay with his flesh and blood.
Let that same god and man be thoroughly mixed in the clay.
Let us hear the drum for the rest of the time.
From the flesh of the god let a spirit remain,
let it make the living know its sign,
lest he be allowed to be forgotten, let the spirit remain."
The great Anunna-gods, who administer destinies,
answered "yes!" in the assembly."

The great Anunna-gods were quick to answer "yes", because they knew that the victim would not be chosen among them. One of the Igigi rebels, allegedly a leader of the rebellion, was made a scapegoat. His name is given as Aw-ilu, We-ila or Geshtu-e (the latter means "he who had intelligence"):

"On the first, seventh, and fifteenth days of the month,
he established a purification, a bath.
They slaughtered Aw-ilu, who had the inspiration, in their assembly.
Nintu mixed clay with his flesh and blood.
That same god and man were thoroughly mixed in the clay.
For the rest of the time they would hear the drum. [i.e. the heartbeat]
From the flesh of the god the spirit remained.
It would make the living know its sign.
Lest he be allowed to be forgotten, the spirit remained.
After she had mixed the clay,
she summoned the Anunna, the great gods.
The Igigi, the great gods, spat upon the clay.
Mami made rady to speak,
and said to the great gods:
"You ordered me the task and I have completed it!
You have slaughtered the god, along with his inspiration.
I have done away with your heavy forced labor,
I have imposed your drudgery on man.
You have bestowed clamor upon mankind.
I have released the yoke, I have made restoration."
They heard this speech of hers,
they ran, free of care, and kissed her feet, saying:
"Formerly we used to call you Mami,
now let your name be Belet-kala-ili (Mistress of all the gods)!""

As we see, despite the pledge not to be forgotten, the poor victim was forgotten immediately, even by his former comrades. They were just too happy to be relieved of the hard work. From his flesh and blood mixed in the clay, seven men and seven women were created to become founders of mankind. This way, according to residents of ancient Mesopotamia, labor indeed had a decisive part in the transition of less organized matter to man: it motivated gods to create man.

By the way, Hebrews who placed their Garden of Eden between the Tigris and the Euphrates, were related to the people of Mesopotamia and, like them, spoke an Afroasiatic (Semitic) language. Their tale of human creation echoes the crucial role of labor: "The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it" (Genesis 2:15, a verse considered important by a Christian friend of mine.)

How did the mytho-history of man continue after his creation? Initially, Enlil was in his Heaven and all was well with the world. However, after a period of time, 1200 years to be precise, humans multiplied so much that their noise disturbed Enlil's sleep. Instead of finding some ear-plugs, he resorted to genocide: "Man multiplies rapidly, for 1200 years. Enlil sends plague to destroy Man. Enki teaches Atrahasis worship of Namtar, thus saves Mankind. Again Man multiplies 1200 years; Enlil sends drought. Enki teaches worship of Adad (rainstorm), saves Mankind. Again Man multiplies 1200 years; Enlil embargoes all goods --> famine.  Enki releases the fishes, saves Man. Again Man proliferates; Enlil sends Flood."

Ea/Enki had no room for maneuvering. He could not openly warn the humans, because he had pledged to the divine council not to reveal their secrets. So he sent a prophetic dream to his human friend called Atrahasis ("Very wise"). In the dream, Ea was standing in front of Atrahasis' house and talking not to its inhabitant but to the reed wall:

"Wall, listen to me!
Reed wall, pay attention to all my words!
Flee the house, build a boat,
forsake possessions, and save life!"

After that, there is much lost text in the Epic of Atrahasis, but the story of the flood is told in detail in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Ea gives Atrahasis instructions how to build the boat: "These are the measurements of the barque as you shall build her: let hex beam equal her length, let her deck be roofed like the vault that covers the abyss; then take up into the boat the seed of all living creatures."

Such an enterprise apparently cannot be kept secret, so Atrahasis asks Ea what to tell the people and elders of his city. The god replies: "Tell them this: I have learnt that Enlil is wrathful against me, I dare no longer walk in his land nor live in his city; I will go down to the Gulf to dwell with Ea my lord. But on you he will rain down abundance, rare fish and shy wild-fowl, a rich harvest-tide." Ea can be quite cynical when he wishes.

Everything happens as predicted. Atrahasis boards the beat together with his family and the shipwrights. The scale of the disaster frightens even the gods, who are no longer sure that the flood has been a good idea: "Even the gods were terrified at the flood, they fled to the highest heaven, the firmament of Ann; they crouched against the walls, cowering like curs. Then Ishtar the sweet-voiced Queen of Heaven cried out like a woman in travail: "Alas the days -of old are turned to dust because I commanded evil; why did I command thus evil in the council of all the gods? I commanded wars to destroy the people, but are they not my people, for I brought them forth? Now like the spawn of fish they float in the ocean." The great gods of heaven and of hell wept, they covered their mouths."

As Atrahasis tells later: "For six days and six nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts. When the seventh day dawned the storm from the south subsided, the sea grew calm, the, flood was stilled; I looked at the face of the world and there was silence, all mankind was turned to clay. The surface of the sea stretched as flat as a roof-top; I opened a hatch and the light fell on my face. Then I bowed low, I sat down and I wept, the tears streamed down my face, for on every side was the waste of water."

Another week is needed for the boat to reach dry land, the mountain of Nisir. What is the first job of Atrahasis after he disembarks? If you know the facts or at least the spirit of mythology, you can answer immediately: his first job is to make a sacrifice. Gods not only exploit the labor of men but feed on smoke from their sacrifices. They are now hungry because they have not eaten since the beginning of the flood.

"When the gods smelled the sweet savour, they gathered like flies over the sacrifice. Then, at last, Ishtar also came, she lifted her necklace with the jewels of heaven that once Anu had made to please her. "O you gods here present, by the lapis lazuli round my neck I shall remember these days as I remember the jewels of my throat; these last days I shall not forget. Let all the gods gather round the sacrifice, except Enlil. He shall not approach this offering, for without reflection he brought the flood; he consigned my people to destruction.""

As for said Enlil, he is still in denial of his mistake and eager to find out how a bunch of humans have survived:

"When Enlil had come, when he saw the boat, he was wrath and swelled with anger at the gods, the host of heaven, "Has any of these mortals escaped? Not one was to have survived the destruction." Then the god of the wells and canals Ninurta opened his mouth and said to the warrior Enlil, "Who is there of the gods that can devise without Ea? It is Ea alone who knows all things.""

The divine savior of humanity, however, is also unrepentant and launches a counter-attack:

"Then Ea opened his mouth and spoke to warrior Enlil, "Wisest of gods, hero Enlil, how could you so senselessly bring down the flood?
Lay upon the sinner his sin,
Lay upon the transgressor his transgression,
Punish him a little when he breaks loose,
Do not drive him too hard or he perishes,
Would that a lion had ravaged mankind
Rather than the f loud,
Would that a wolf had ravaged mankind
Rather than the flood,
Would that famine had wasted the world
Rather than the flood,
Would that pestilence had wasted mankind
Rather than the flood.
It was not I that revealed the secret of the gods; the wise man learned it in a dream. Now take your counsel what shall be done with him.""

Enlil relents, makes Atrahasis and his wife immortal and sends them to live far away from other humans. As for mankind, the Epic of Atrahasis describes how the gods led by Enki make a plan to ensure that the noise will remain within limits: they introduce limited life span, infertility, infant mortality and celibacy.

"Enki made ready to speak,
and said to Nintu the birth goddess:
"You, birth goddess, creatress of destinies,
establish death for all peoples!...
"Now then, let there be a third woman among the people,
among the people are the woman who has borne
and the woman who has not borne.
Let there be also among the people the pasittu (she-demon):
let her snatch the baby from the lap who bore it.
And etablish high priestesses and priestesses,
let them be taboo [celibate], and so cut down childbirth."

This way, human condition was settled and Enlil could sleep at last. Did you like the story? And another question: would you like to believe that all this is true? There is beauty and majesty in myths... but nevertheless I am glad that we have outgrown them.

April 6, 2016: the day when Europe died

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, an appropriate day to think of Ukraine and of unintended consequences of rush human actions. However, I am now thinking of another, more recent sad date for Ukraine and Europe: April 6, only twenty days ago. This was the date when a referendum on the proposed Ukraine - EU Association Agreement was held in the Netherlands. The referendum was valid because over 30% of voters (to be precise, 32%) turned out. Of them, only 38% supported the agreement while an overwhelming majority of 61% were against it.


I have had a soft spot for the Netherlands since childhood, when I first read Anne Frank's diary and was moved by the quiet heroism of the unremarkable people hiding Anne's family, and of other Dutch. "All college students are being asked to sign an official statement to the effect that they 'sympathize with the Germans and approve of the New Order." Eighty percent have decided to obey the dictates of their conscience, but the penalty will be severe. Any student refusing to sign will be sent to a German labor camp." Once I discussed this excerpt with a teacher at school, admitting that I do not think I would behave like the eighty percent under the circumstances. (I had actually just been accepted to the Young Communist League, for which I had applied despite my hate of communism in order to be allowed to study and live without political problems.) The teacher replied, "The Dutch are different from us. Their country had been free for centuries, and this affects how people think and act."


Through the years, the Netherlands retained for me this image of a free, enlightened, civilized and now prosperous place - a golden aura that of course required some distance and idealization, but nevertheless was based on reality, or at least I thought so. My husband briefly visited the country several years ago and liked it so much that named the project of his life after a Dutch town.


The Apr. 6 referendum was a reality check for me. The proposed association agreement with Ukraine did not bring any risk for EU - it just allowed easier trade, something the Dutch have always valued, and opportunity for Ukrainians to travel to Europe proper. Nevertheless, the proportion of ordinary Dutch supporting it was nowhere near 80%. It was only 12%, that is, 38% of the 32% who participated in the vote. I guess, you can find a similar if not higher proportion of enlightened, compassionate and freedom-loving people in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. So what was the centuries-long history of freedom about? At the end of the day, it amounted to nothing.


While trying to be optimistic, I fear that the Old Continent is exhausted and is making periodic suicide attempts since 1914 that will at some point be successful. When an important transition is brought about by a long process, people facilitate their perception of it by setting a focal point for the transition, a particular event that may not be of high objective importance. So while I know that the decline of the ancient Graeco-Roman civilization took many centuries, I take the lynching of Hypatia in 415 AD as official beginning of the Dark Ages. The same way, I take April 6, 2016 as the date printed on Europe's death certificate. Because Europe is not a collection of people, a creation of material culture or a set of institutions. It is a complex of values, an idea; and on this day a core European nation by popular vote renounced the idea of Europe.

Dear Dutch, please support freedom and humanity!

Tomorrow, the Netherlands will hold a referendum about the proposed Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement.


The Dutch who want to thwart the agreement are actually driven by their own Euro-skepticism rather than true concern about Ukraine. However, their act of protest against the EU establishment will make the Ukrainians colateral damage.


For centuries, this European nation has been subject to systematic oppression, assimilation and outright genocide by Russia (not counting the 1941 merciless aggression of Nazi Germany). Two years ago, the Ukrainians toppled their "democratically elected" Russian puppet president because he was isolating them from Europe. More than a hundred of peaceful protesters lost their lives. But this was just the beginning. The Russian dictator Putin punished the Ukrainians for their European dream by attacking Ukraine, grabbing Crimea and waging a war in the eastern regions. This war took the lives of some 5,000 Ukrainians - and also of 193 Dutch citizens, passengers in the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shot down by Russian illegal combatants in July 2014.


A Duch vote against the Association Agreement will stab in the back the heroic Ukrainians and reward their butcher Putin, ultimately responsible also for the deaths of Flight 17.


Dear Dutch, you have a reputation of enlightened and brave defenders of freedom and humanity. Please confirm it at tomorrow's referendum!

Retribution

The quote below is from a Feb. 26 AFP report:

"Palestinian wanted by Israel found dead in Bulgaria

Sofia (AFP) - A Palestinian activist wanted by Israel over the killing of a Jewish settler 30 years ago was found dead Friday in Bulgaria, local police and the Palestinian Authority said. Omar Nayef Zayed, 51, was discovered in the courtyard of the Palestinian embassy in Sofia, police said. Bulgarian radio reported that he had fallen from the fourth floor...

The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), of which Nayef was a member, cited in a statement his family as calling his death an "assassination". It said that Nayef, originally from Jenin in the West Bank, had sought refuge in the Palestinian embassy in Sofia two months ago and had "received threats"...

Nayef was convicted in 1986 over a murder case but escaped in 1990 during a visit to a Bethlehem hospital. He fled to Bulgaria in 1994 and married a local woman with whom he had three children.

Late last year Bulgarian authorities agreed to examine an Israeli extradition request, but a December 14 hearing was postponed because Nayef was not at his address, the Bulgarian interior ministry said. His death came a day after Prime Minister Boyko Borisov returned from a trip to Israel. Borisov said he discussed Nayef with both Israeli and Palestinian officials during the visit."

Please mention how the the ATP describes Zayed's victim as "Jewish settler", as if rationalizing the murder. Al Jazeera, in a March 2 report, gives more details: "Zayed was sentenced by an Israeli court to life in prison after being charged with killing a yeshiva student in occupied East Jerusalem in 1986. Four years into his sentence, he managed to escape Israeli custody during a hospital visit. He ended up in Sofia in 1994, and was granted residency, starting a family. Zayed's quiet life running a grocery store with his wife and three children turned upside down a couple of months ago, when the Israeli embassy in Sofia requested that the Bulgarian government extradite him on December 15."

I had to to turn to an Israeli source to find the victim's name: Eliyahu Amedi.

Zayed's family, the PFLP and the Palestinian community in Sofia are praising him as hero and demanding "the truth" about his death. Bulgarian sources are more elaborate about these reactions than English-language media, but I prefer not to translate. This support of a murderer is just pathetic and paints a nihilistic picture of the human race. These arrogant, despicable Palestinians should be thankful that we in Europe do not follow Mr. Zayed's example and do not rush to murder "settlers" whom we do not like.

Most commentators suspect that Mossad is responsible for Zayed's death. However, I would not exclude the Palestinians themselves from suspicion. According to Al Jazeera, "neither Zayed's family, nor the PFLP, spared the Palestinian Authority from blame. Besides failing to save his life, they claim Omar was under pressure from within the Palestinian embassy to leave its premises." The fugitive was clearly a liability for the embassy, exposing the true face of "Palestine" as a terror organization rather than a state, complicating their relations with Bulgaria and using their coffee, toothpaste, blankets, shower etc. So I find it quite possible that someone in the embassy decided to get rid of him in the same manner as the Islamic State deals with suspected gays. 

Al Jazeera also reports that "a few dozen Palestinians protested outside the Bulgarian Representative office in Ramallah amid a heavy security presence. The protesters held a banner threatening that "the crime of assassinating Al Nayef (Zayed) won't go unpunished"..."We came here to deliver a clear message to the Bulgarian representative; that they are responsible for this heinous crime," Ahmad Zayed, Omar's brother told Al Jazeera." (This brother was an accomplice in the 1986 murder.) I find it possible that our authorities turned a blind eye, but I don't think they assassinated Zayed - they are usually not so proactive.

Anyway, whoever did it, I like this ending of the case.

I wish to live in a world in which the life of each human being is valued by all others, and murder is never considered by anyone as a solution to any problem.

But, because I am not granted this, I want the next best thing: a world in which murder brings retribution.

I hope that Eliyahu Amedi's parents are alive and have heard the good news.

Pros and cons of emigration

(Bulgarians can read this post here.)

Let me first copy parts of a March 7 report by Balint Szlanko, Associated Press:

"Iraqi migrants return after Europe disappoints

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) — Surkaw Omar and Rebien Abdullah quit their jobs and spent their life savings to migrate to Europe, only to find crowded asylum camps, hunger and freezing weather. Now back home in northern Iraq, they describe their quest for a better life as a disaster.

Many of the hundreds of thousands of people heading to Europe have no choice but to brave such hardships because they are refugees from places gripped by war, where their lives are in danger. But Omar and Abdullah come from Iraq's northern Kurdish region, which has been largely spared from fighting with the Islamic State group.

They each spent some $8,000 on the trip, much of it on smugglers, only to get stuck in asylum-seekers' camps in Germany and Sweden for months on end, where they say they were given very little food or money.

"It was very bad," Omar, 25, said of the German camp. "Honestly, we were starving there. We ran away because of hunger. They gave us only cheese and tea, and our weekly allowance was 30 euros."

They decided to try their luck in Sweden instead, but that didn't work either. "When we arrived there, it was winter. It was freezing. They put me in a room with three Syrians. I couldn't speak Arabic and they couldn't speak Kurdish. We were communicating like deaf people," Omar said. After trying Germany one more time, they gave up.

"We said to each other, let's go home. It's better than anywhere else," he said.

They are among what experts say is a growing number of migrants who are returning home because of the difficulty of finding housing and employment in Europe...

Maurizio Albahari, an anthropology professor at Notre Dame University who studies migration to Europe, said a number of European countries are "actively seeking to discourage asylum-seekers from staying, at least indirectly."...

Omar had worked as a day laborer in restaurants and supermarkets, while Abdullah had driven a taxi, which he sold to help finance his trip. They say their decision to migrate was mainly driven by peer pressure.

"I saw that everybody was leaving and they were saying, 'It's like this and that (in Europe).' But when I went there it wasn't like that at all," Omar said.

"Life in Europe is really hard," Abdullah said. "You have to wait. And we couldn't wait. We couldn't wait because we were so attached and loyal to our land, our families, to our mothers and relatives. And honestly, Europe and a residency card are not worth leaving your family and risking your life for."

Soran Omar, head of the human rights committee in the Kurdish regional parliament, said their experience is not uncommon... But he said the greater exodus from the region shows no sign of slowing down. "A lot of people may be coming back. But the opposite current is much, much bigger," he said..."


Let me first mention that Soran Omar is 100% right. Once a herd behavior gains momentum, it perpetuates itself even if it brings no advantage. So Europeans should not hope that they can reverse the flow of migration just by "indirect discouragement". Instead, they must think how to guard their borders, which has been a prerequisite for the long-term survival of any human community since prehistoric times. However, the purpose of this post is not to remind a forgotten banal truth.

If English is a foreign language for you, as it is for me, the above report may string a familiar chord. People emigrate because everyone is emigrating or planning to. They are carried away by the wave. Those who remain in their homeland are looked upon as foolish, lazy and good-for-nothing, until they finally believe it themselves. My Bulgaria has suffered from the same malaise ever since 1989, when communist dictatorship was dismantled and the borders were opened.

Many people have tried to persuade me to try to live in the West. "Go and see for yourself, and you will like it; and if you do not, you can always return." To me, this sounded like, "It doesn't matter that you do not like Peter. Marry him and you will begin to like him, and if you do not, you can always divorce!" The weak spot of this logic is that we have only one life, and it is not long enough to be wasted on such experiments.

In 1997, I was invited by a cousin in America to stay with her for a month. When I returned, a lot of people asked me why. I picked the easiest answer: "I had no permission to stay longer." Then most of them hinted that in this situation every remotely intelligent and decent Bulgarian, instead of returning home, would overstay her visa, remain illegally and wait in mile-long queues to ask immigration officials for mercy.

We who opted to remain in Bulgaria did not brag about our choice. How could we defend it? We were ruled by notoriously incompetent and corrupt governments, worked for meager wages and could not buy shiny cars. We were indeed good for nothing! A friend has told me that her fellow students, when they saw her by chance, looked at her disparagingly and asked, "Are you still in Bulgaria?" I have even heard a theory that we are bad parents because we conceive children without trying to give them a nice future, that is, a future abroad.

Today, a quarter of a century after the borders were opened, I can say that those members of my generation who remained are, on average, better off than those who left. I try to share this precious knowledge with young people, but they do not believe me. And how could they? The most prestigious secondary schools in Bulgaria are the "language secondary schools", where all subjects except Bulgarian language and literature are taught in English or another Western language. A friend whose daughter is attending such a school told me, "Most students in her class are ambitious and want to emigrate." This is not my idea of ambition. As some commentator said, mass emigration is inevitable when you have reporters asking 16-yr-old kids what keeps them in the country.

I am glad for Surkaw Omar and Rebien Abdullah, the Iraqis featured in the AP report. They have "seen world", as we say, and have returned poorer but wiser. They have realized that thinking with your own head if far better than letting peer pressure drive your life. Especially if peer pressure tells you to turn your only life upside down, move to a foreign place, leave your loved ones behind, disconnect from your native language and bend over backwards to convince locals to accept you. Unfortunately, the two young men haven't had the opportunity to see the best of Europe - I suppose they haven't visited even a single museum. I hope that they have at least photos of nice facades and shop-windows, and these souvenirs will last longer than the unpleasant memories of their adventure.

Better late than never

(Firework image from Wikimedia.)

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

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

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

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

Bad countries persecute atheists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Planned Parenthood sucks

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

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

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

Here are some screenshots from that booklet:

 


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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian terrorist kills three in Colorado

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Jerusalem Post:

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

by Caroline Glick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bulgaria with decent stance about trade with Israel

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


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


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


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


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

Compassion to France

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

Princess mermaid

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

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

Last week, I found the drawing shown above.

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

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

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

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

Honoring Taurian Bulgarians and Misho Hadjiyski

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drowned while seeking a better life

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ugly Animals by Simon Watt

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

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

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

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

Kangaroo court of Ukrainian film director in Russia

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

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

Update: Oleg Sentsov was sentenced to 20 years.

Striving for excellence versus free speech

How free should our speech be?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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