Global heating craps Borisovs anti-crisis policy, but salvation might be imminent.

If you only will read three... eh... five words today, read these:

----The communists lost in Moldova----

If you've decided to read more, find the news on New York Times or the BBC .

The new government will have a lot to deal with, as do the new Bulgarian. And the biggest problems might not even be corruption...

In an earlier post I praised Bojko Borisov, Bulgarias new premier minister for putting agriculture on the agenda. Borisov stressed that employment in the agricultural sector is an important buffer in times of unemployment and the need to develop the Bulgarian countryside. It might be bullshit, but at least the guy has spotted an important problem.

One week the Bulgarian ministry of agriculture announced that the agriculture output in Bulgaria will be ca 20% lower in 2009 than in 2008, Noggers Blog reports. And it is not only Bulgaria...

Similar numbers are announced on marketskeptics . Argentina, Ukraine, the US, Russia... all report falling sales. Sometimes aggravated by bad politicians, but the main reason is one - heat and drought. Caused by climate change.


On marketskeptics you can see a nice graph of the sugar price hitting an all time high, so I guess food prices are set to get higher globally... but maybe we should be happy as long as there is something to eat.

As gloomy as these numbers sound, there is no reason to despair. I am sure most people who read this blog can easily consume 20% less in general. Myself I could easily eat 20% less if I had to. Maybe I should try it next week... to take a single hot dog in stead of a double, 33 cl of beer in stead of 50 cl...

Food is important. In the interconnected world it is very easy to forget that the coffe you drink actually come from a plantation, dependent on water and sun etc... Sometimes I feel the internet has only alienated us even further from this basic reality. That's why I was really happy to see the homepage of Smaka på Skåne.

Skåne is the southernmost region in Sweden, whereto I will soon move. If you write "potato" in the search field, you will get results where in Skåne you can buy potatoes produced on local farms. Food that has not travelled all over the world letting out CO2 and poison. It is just genius, a combination of internet technology and local farming.

This one is only in Swedis for obvious(?) reasons. But I guess it could be easily translated.

The picture is purely there for aestetical reasons, taken in Texas in 1955. It is taken from flickr, credits to austrini, found through creative commons

Elections in Moldova

For the second time this year, Moldovans went to the polls to elect their government. In April the communists won an election that was generally regarded as a fraud and the results were followed by massive and violent protests.

The communists were then one man short of the two thirds majoruty demanded to appoint the president, and new elections were necessarry.

The first results will be published 23:00 GMT+2. Hotnews.ro publishes exit polls that show an inverted situatuion. This time the opposition parties have the majority to form a government, but are short of the two thirds.... The man that can reslove the situation is called Marian Lupu, an economist former active in the Communist party that left after the scandalous first elections.

The opposition have been very sceptical of Lupu's move, saying that he did it to split the united front againts the communists. Time will tell, I guess...

The elections are said to have been generally calm, with a few ugly incidents, like communists shooting at opposition members in Sangera, and lots of cheating with the votes, as expected.

My guess is that the government will in deed change this time. Moldova is very dependent on a decent reputation in the West, without western NGO's, or Western funding for projects very little would happen in Moldova. I guess people with interests to lose might opt for Lupu as less provocing than Voronin, that made such a scandal last time.

Greetings Moldova! Things can only get better!

Source: www.hotnews.ro

Protest for Vitosha today

Environmentalists today will stage a protest against the looming exploitation of Mount Vitosha today, in front of the mayors office, since the locak authoritiesa are the ones to approve the so called "renovation" of the ski lifts.

Vitosha is not the only case in Bulgaria. Not so long ago the battle was about the lift in the Rila mountains. but it is not only Bulgaria, either. In India the Himalayas themselves live under the same threat as Vitosha.

The blog The Great Indian Clearing Sale has some wondreful artworks on the topic, and I would like to share one of them with my readers, as a good luck message to those figh

Publicera inlägg

ting for Vitosha. Take a look at it... it is scaringly similar to the Bulgarian situation, no? (Click to see a big picture)






Artwork credit:

The Great Indian Clearance Sale / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Uneasy relationships

The world is political. Politics is about compromises and entering uneasy relationships. Not only for tactical reasons - that are many reasons to belive that a society based on compromises* live to be more healthy.

Yesterday my own little world shaked, as two such uneasy relationships cracked. The Blue Coalition announced that they will not vote for Borisovs cabinet. As I wrote earlier, most of the new ministers are rather respected, but one of them - Bozhidar Dimitrov did not appeal to the liberals. He has been working for the Communist secret police, and will now sit as minister without portfolio. The cabinet will be accepted in the parliament anyway, since Borisov can count on the less picky support from right wing RZS and ultra-right wing Ataka.

I think the Blue Coalition has right also here. On the other hand... Bojko himself used to be a body guard of Todor Jivkov, so... is there reason to be surpirsed? I don't know.

Meanwhile, in another side of town...









... Richard Stallman, the guru of open source, published a blog post, critizising the Swedish Pirate Party's view on copyright. Simply lowering the period of copyright til 5 years, as the pirates propose will not do good, Stallman says. It will give Microsoft the right to use open source code in its products without restrictions. But it will not force Microsoft to reveal the source code of its own products, only make them legal to file-share.

Stallman gives some reasonable proposals on how to deal with the situation, as does the pirate paty on their home page. (Link in Swedish)

None the less... I think this is more about a culture clash than juridical details. While I admire The Pirate party for their work for civil rights and privacy, they does not speak much about open source. In fact they speak very little about open source, considering that they speak much about computers...

On the other hand, within open source, filesharing is a kind of avoided topic. The technology is embraced, and most distros offer torrents of their distros. But there is not much discussion about the moral aspect of ripping my new bought CD and share it as a torrent.

The BBC also recently had an article on the Swedish Pirate Party.

Picture by Si1very , creative commons

Bojko appoints new ministers

Bojko Borisov, Bulgarias next premier minister, has today appointed the ministers to sit in his government. In case you need an introduction to Bojko Borisov, make sure you don't miss BBC presentation of him.

While the names might be unknown for those with only brief knowledge of Bulgarian politics, like me, there are no huge surprises.

The appointments seem to be technocratical rather than partisan. In general the apontees seem to have a considerable experience form political work, and to be respected also outside the party GERB.

Sofia News Agency have comments from European/Bulgarian pundits on the new government

Ecologists seemed to have welcomed the appointment of Nona Karadjova as minister of ecology. She has a good reputation form many active years. Among other things she hav organised waste separation and recycling of plastic and glass. In the linked article she gets some kudos from the package business that she managed to cooperate with.

In deed - this is no time for surprises. GERB are very vocal with their aim to turn Bulgarian into an European state, an eye is carefully kept on Brussels (and the EU funding). Also in the parliaments declaration of what it intends to work for, European interation is the top priority now.

All this written from a netbook over a wireless connction in Sofias Starbucks. Like a real blogpost should be...

Musing about green Bulgaria

The American Radio Show Living on the Earth has published a nice piece about Zelenite. It is available both as text and as streamed audio :)

The MP3 is also a free download.

From For the nature I also got to know that a new Wind-power park is planned in Bulgaria, which of course is a good thing. We were in the mountains in the weekend, and it was truly a sign of hope to see tow wind-generators on mountain tops.

On the other hand, I am increasingly sceptical towards ´this kind of huge project in general. It will cost  80 Mn Euro, and involve 20 generators. Big investments mean centralised governance and conentration of power.

As the text on Living on the Earth points out, democracy and environmentalism goes together. I think as much as possible of the new clean energy projects should be "outsourced" to private or local initiatives. Sun cells on roof tops, powering up nothing more than the house, is acutally a much better idea I think. At least as an ideal, of course bigger investements might be needed also.

More ski lifts on Vitosha

Vitosha is the mountain overlooking Sofia. On it, there are already a number of Ski lifts, but the company running the business (Vitosha Ski) have now admitted a new plan for legal approval. The new plan suggests 7 times more Ski lifts, and 260 hectares of protected land exploited.





Picture from wikipedia commons. Lincense: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

This amount of ski pists involves numerous other installations, such as parking lots, an artificial lake for artificial snow for artificial skiing in artificial winters etc.

The investors have used a Gallup poll, to find that the Sofia population favours "clean paths" on Vitosha, whatever that means. The documents have not been published online but have been written about on e-vestnik.bg and the blog Spasi Vitosha (Save Vitosha).

Potential critics, like environmentalists or organisations representing other mountain activities than skiing, (e.g. hiking) have not been invited to comment on the plan. but they do, on the internet.


Sources : @zelenite

Vote for Kostov, you get Borisov...

Before the elections, a for me completley unknown party called Nova Zora (New Dawn) ,bought advertisements on Youtube, saying "If you vote for Borisov, you will get Kostov". Ivan Kostov is the leader of DSB, one of the leading parties within the Blue Coalition. He was also Bulgarias premier minister 1997-2001. He is a highly controversial person, a fact that this video tried to exploit to prevent people to vote for Borisov.

The video failed, as we all know, and GERB won 40% of the Bulgarian votes. Since minority government is not typical for Bulgarian politics, observers expected Borisov to seek coalition partners, and most expected these to be the blue coalition. After all it would be rather difficult to regain European confidence in Bulgarian politics with RZS or Ataka as coalition partners.

Since the elections negotiations have been going on. Eventually Borisov published memorandum that he wanted all parties except for the socialists and the turkosh DSP tio sign, to guarantee support in the parliament, but to form a GERB minority government, open for individuals from other parties in case they have special competencies.

Today Bulgarian media announce that the blue coalition as well as RZS refuse to sign any agreement with GERB, but  say that they will vote for proposals that go along with their politics in the parliament... (eh? Would they vote against them otherwise?) Ataka gladly signed GERB's memorandum, though...

This might not mean anything in real politics, since Borisov will be more careful with support form Brussels than from Ataka, and all parties will likely support anything else than BSP+DSP. But online the discussion is rather hot, see for example Dnevniks discussion about the news and I would guess that tensions are rising between GERB and the blue coalition. It is just a guess, though...

I would be a little sad if I had voted for the blue coalition. You vote for Kostov (and SDS's Martin Dimitrov) but get Borisov... personally I would prefer Kostov.

Invitation to climate action

For the nature invites to informal workshops on climate change. The workshops will focus on what you as a citizen can do, and will take place 24/7 in Smoljan and 1/8 in Stara Zagora. It is all part of the European Commission's climate change program that you can read about here. (English site)

Wired has a nice post on the topic... appearantly strange light phenomena, similar to Aurora Borealis are visible over the northern hemsphere. Beautiful, and most likely man made.





Sources: For the nature , Wired , Youtube

The fifth European Eco-Festival "Green Wave - 21th century" is finished

In Koprivshtitsa, Bulgaria an ecological festival with pariticpants from Europe and even further away have been successfully closed. The topic of the festival was garbage, a hot topic in Sofia during the last year, and participants claimed that a closer cooperation between politicians and experts were needed.

The German journalist manfred Ladvig showed his newest film about illegal/legal but immoral exploitation of woods, a fact that concerns not only Europe, but the whole Europe, and countries like Kambodja, Laos and Vietnam.

I wish I was there :)

Source: For the nature

About my government

As Klasa today offered pictures of Reinfeldt on the second page, I thought I might as well waste some words on my Swedish government.

I was slightly surprised when I saw that the Swedish government alarm about climate changes. High time, of course, but from what I remember from living in Sweden, no-one voted for Reinfeldt because he was an ecologist... In deed his party, Moderaterna, have been vigourously objecting everything said from ecologists since the environment became a political question back in the 70's. If that has changed, all is well, but I dubt it... I guess fight against climate change a'la Reinfeldt will mean money spent on nuclear energy.

Anyway, the reasons that one (I) actually could love Reinfeldt for was his pro-European stance. But how does this run with his support for Barroso. As you might know, the question about Barroso is not so much a question about values, after all Tony Blair is not radically different, but if the European Parliament or the National Governments hold the power in the EU... Personally I don't think Tony Blair would make a big difference. What would make a difference would be if the top EU positions are fought over in European elections, not appointed by governments, themselves appointed by parliaments.

Reinfeldt suddenly seem reluctant to hand over power to the parliament... And the formerly anti-european left are crying for more power to the European Parliament... Isn't ironic?



Happy charimanship, Reinfeldt!

Bulgarian feminism

Feminism might be one of the values where Bulgaria and Sweden differs most. Women are not neccesarily more opressed here. Quite on the contrary i have seen many women in Eastern Europe in positions preserved for men in Sweden, like conducting orchestras, trams or families. But it is rather hard to find Bulgarians that are outright feminist. In Sweden, on the other hand, even the christian right calls themselves feminists. Anyway, the newly elected Bulgarian parliament will, for the first time in the country's history be headed by a woman - Tsetska Tsacheva from GERB .

She is a lawyer from the beautiful city of Pleven, where she has a disputed track record. Pleven's mayor Najden Selenogorski from the liberals SDS claims that she failed to defend the public interst in favour of private interests in her positions as juridical consult of the community. the case is not settled, though.


Some more polticians from the former powerholders are being sentenced for corruption. Today ex-deputy Fidel Beev from DPS have been senteced to three years of jail by the city court of Sofia. The process has probably not ended.
Guilty as he might be, I am a little worried about this newfound zeal. I really hope that Borisov and the new politicians can separate betweeen bad, or even disastrous politics from criminal activities.

The support behind GERB seems to be big right now, in the political class at least. Even DPS, Beev's party and GERB's arch enemies, have stated that they might support a GERB government.

Source: mediapool.bg

Environmentalists can't sleep...

While political Bulgaria is more silent than ever, everyone is awaiting the new government that Bojko Borisov will announce 27th of July. maybe we should be thankful that zelenite did not enter the parliament, because the environmentalist on For the nature are as active as ever. Among today's news we find that:

A coalition of 30 NGO's are asking the Administrative Court to stop the building of ski pists on the Vitosha mountain next to Sofia

The European Coalition has publshed a report, stating that Europe will most likely to continue lose its biodiversity, most of all due to a contra-productive agricultural policy.

Also in Paris, people are protesting against exploitation of the Rila mountians. Pictures can be seen here.

Let's hope

I just finished reading yesterdays issue of Kapital, a newspaper I admire for its flawless journalism more than the somewhat naive faith in market liberalism. Of course the entire newpaper this week is about Bojko Borisovs new government. Kapital's hopes are: a) that Borisov will keep his promises and b) that he will cooperate with the blue alliance and noone else to gets support in the parliament.

Many Bulgarians I meet would agree... after all the previous government was vry corrupt, and any politician who can deal with the corruption is welcome. Let's hope Borisov can do it. They sem to agree with the Economist's catchy phrasing: "EXASPERATED voters boot out a bad government and install an unknown one."

Borisov is not very unknown. As Kapital points out, Bulgarians have been able to follow him for a ong time, as head of the ministry of interior and as mayor of Sofia. But the party GERB is new,and most of its deputies are not known faces. In deed, this parliament will ahve more first time deputies than any previous.

But there are also quite some Bulgarians who have seen Borisov, and don't like him at all. The city is right now filled with posters indicating that GERB are mutri the bulgarian word for mafiosi. Borisovs history of as a body guard of communist and post communist leaders, in the ministry of interior etc. might indicate something more like Putin (ex-KGB) than Barack Obama.

Maybe the crucial dilemma is this: in order to clean out corruption a very strong leadership will be neede, one that can ignore the parliament when needed. But what happens to democracy?

Kaptial seemed pleased with Borisovs initial moves, and confident about the people he has appointed to reform justice and get the budet in order. Me mayself I can't really come to terms with Borisovs "unconvential" behavior. Being an Eu memeber might prevent him from beocoming a Putin, but not from becoming a Berlusconi. But sure... let's hope!

An epiphany

I usually take a walk around the office building for lunch. It is really too hot for that now, as the latter part of the walk is an uphill concrete landscape in burning sun.

Today I noticed that there was something strange going on. Cars were parkeed along the road, and there was a traffic jam, and plenty of policemen. And there were lots of busses parked. Old bussed. I asked one guy, a driver for a tv tema what was going on, and... Bulgarias new Prime minister, Bojko Borisov, had descended on our street to inaugurate a plenty of new busses.

The busses are suposed to replae the dead old buses on almost every line, I don't know how many they are, but I saw at least 30 with my bare eye, and a pleased bus driver said there was plenty. I asked him what he thought about Borisov and he said that new powers are almost welcome.

There was no doubt about the joy in the audience. A cleaning Roma laydy was so glad, she even told me it was the happiest day in her life "This is my boss! (She works for Sofia Municipality, Borisov was the mayor) "I have only seen him on TV, and now he is standing right here in front of me!"

New busses are badly needed, of course. It's a pity they were all diesel buses. I don't know Borisov's view on climate change or peak oil.

So what does GERB want?

I have, like most outside observers, routinely described the winners in the Bulgarian elections as "right wing populists". Since they will be the dominating force, I think it is time to look into what they actually want, and what politics they see fit for Bulgaria.

On their site gerb.bg, a Crisis program is published, declarating how GERB will face the looming economical crisis.

First of all GERB do acknowledge that there is a sever crisis. This has been one point of the debate - the right said that the crisis is much more sever than the socialists accepted.

Here is a quick translation of the programme. My comments in italics.

Public dialogue about the crisis management.
GERB wows to invite trade unions(!) and business interest to discuss the politics needed with the political leadership.
This can of course mean anything between empty words and corporativism... everything depends on who attends these meetings, and who decides in the end. Will environmental organisations participate, for example?

Immediate actualization of the state budget
GERB wows to look over the budget and stop wasting money on stupid projects, to redirect them to where they really help. Everything of course depends on what projects are cut, but under the current circumstances my guess is that it means less social spending.

The Euro-funds, a sure way to deal with the crisis
Bulgaria lost billions of promised EU money due to corruption last year. GERB wows to fight corruption and clean up in the administration so that the money can return. Succeeding with this would obviously mean a lot to Bulgaria. It will take both guts and intelligence. I say good luck, and note that the "right wing populist" seem to trust state intervention more than free markets.

Agriculture - lets revive traditions and create work places
GERB should have praise for realizing the importance of the agricultural sector. Three ways to support this sector are pointed out: Monetary support/credit help to farmers, an animal identification system that makes possible European subsidies per animal and a petition for extra support money from the European commission 2010-1023. All these involve European money which makes me worried. First of all, if GERB for some reason doesn't manage to restore European trust these money don't exist. Second of all, European agricultural policy is horrible, and is built to help agricultural enterprise out-compete local competition.

Tax stimulus - let the money stay with people and businesses
In normal English this means tax cuts, and less state spending. I fear cuts will come in the social sector because...

Infrastructure policy
under this point, further down in the document, GERB wows to invest heavily in infrastructure projects like highways. Unlike the agriculture, these investments don't seem to depend on EU funding, and the money must come from somewhere... obviously not from increased taxes.

Improved business climate
Measures here included less red tape, lowered registration fees etc. There is probably much to be done, aide! GERB, start working!

Incentives for investments
Among other things GERB wants to give local authorities a stronger mandate to attract investments. I can not say much about this, it can be anything to me. No doubt investments are needed... but the bigger the money, and the more hands that deal with it, the more corruption, as the story with the EU money shows.

Education and social help
GERB sees a need of better education that is more fit for business needs, and opens for letting business finance students that study things that are relevant for their needs.
GERB wants to stimulate unemployed to start their own business, and mentions support to civil initiatives for poor and elderly. Less state intervention here, thus... but it is probably also a sheer necessity, as the Bulgarian state is unlikely to cover these needs.

Bulgaria is not alone
Bulgaria is not alone and GERB wants to fight the crisis together with European and International institutions. This might mean applying for an IMF loan, like Romania recently did.

More ideas are to come as we fight against the crisis, GERB promises. We look forward to that.

Minister of extraordinary situations is arrested

The minister of extraoprdinary situations , Aleksander Filipov has been arrested early this morning, for vote-tradeing.

There have been many reports about trading with voices, about voters coming by bus from Turkey etc. Very rapid justice it seems.


Source: Dnevnik

Bulgarian election results

According to Darik the results are now:

GERB          116 deputies   Right wing populists
BSP              40 deputies   Bulgarian Socialists
DPS              38 deputies   Turkish minority party
Ataka            21 deputies   Extreme right wing
Blue Coalition 15 deputies   Liberal/right wing
RZS              10 deputies   Right wing populists (Law and order party, similar to the party with the same name in Poland)

GERB will invite the Blue coalition for diuscussions and I guess this is the most likely outcome. In any case, GERB will be the dominating power in Bulgaria in the years ahead.

Bulgaria votes

Bulgaria votes today. The first exit polls indicate a very strong result for GERB, who might be able to form a majority government.

I was with my girlfriend voting in Copenhagen in the morning, in the embassy with a very friendly atmosphere and lots of Danish Bulgarians present to vote. Now we areheading back for Bulgaria, and I expect lots of things to write about in the autumn :)