Mocking Muhammed, mercy for Middleton

When asked about his opinions about western civilization, Gandhi is said to have answered - I think it would be a good idea. A hundred years later, I agree. We should in deed try something like that. But it is still to be seen.

The last week has been revealing about the deeply hypocritical stance he so called western world takes on freedom of speech. Whereas it is deemed a constitutional right to mock the prophet Muhammad, it is criminal to publish pictures of the English princess Katie Middleton's tits. I do think both ideas are in deed sensational and unworthy of attention - what I find provoking is the difference in how the matters are handled.

Caricatures of Muhammad has become a quite boring tradition in western news outlets, as have the predictable response in Muslim countries. The way most people seem to deal with these caricatures is like this: It is bad taste, but the point of free speech is that bad taste is not illegal, therefore it is up to editors, not censors, to decide what to publish or not to publish. I completely agree. I do not think it should be illegal to publish caricatures of Muhammad.

But these caricatures should be discussed, as all published should. It is not really the same thing as Monthy Pyton did in Life of Brian, when Jesus was caricatured. First of all, one can notice that Monthy Pyton are quite kind on Jesus himself - what makes the film humorous is that one recognize modern power in the Romans, modern left wing extremism in the various Jewish liberation fronts etc. As all literature, it is a comment on the time in which it was written.

I guess the same is valid for Muhammad caricatures - they do comment something in the world we live in, presumably a political correctness that taboos criticism against minorities. Is there such a political correctness? I am not sure. What I see, living in a Swedish town with many Muslims, is that Muslims are discriminated against in almost everything except legislation.

There is also a rather murky side of this business. One has the feeling that there is some kind of hatred against Muslims hiding behind the freedom of speech, and sometimes such suspicions are confirmed. As when Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist mainly known for his Muhammad caricatures appeared on an extreme right convention about islamization in the US.

Still. Freedom of speech is important, and in a troubled democracy like ours it is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, Muhammad caricatures should be discussed, but not banned.

Which is why it is equally important that topless pictures of royalties are not banned. On the whole, I can not get what is so provoking with topless pictures. We all knew that Katie had tits, right? And in case she thinks it is a great deal, she does not need to go out topless on the French riviera in the first place. That is a life she has chosen, a life that includes papparazis, so live with it.

Here I feel much more alone, though. Most people seem to regard this as an issue of privacy, not free speech. And that the News of the World debacle has made the press wary. Please, it is quite different to steal phone numbers from crime victims than photographing people who have chosen a public life in situations they did not choose. It is very bad taste, of course, but then again - is not the whole point with free speech that bad taste?

I think sheds light on how our society uses different rules for different people. We like to pride ourselves of our liberalism and humanism, but the reality is, like Gandhi said, that the western world has never been able to behave in a civilized manner.

The Banana Monarchy

You know it already - Sweden wanted Julian Assange extradited from the UK to charge him for sexual harassment. The UK agrees, and mr. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. In the background lurks the US - the charges against Assange appeared less than two weeks after Assange had published chunks of classified US diplomatic cables. The US wowed to take revenge, but since Assange is not yet imprisoned, Bradley Manning - the true hero of this story - is tortured in stead.

This afternoon Ecuador has granted Assange asylum, and moreover accused Sweden of having a politicized juridical system, which of course has caused a lot of furore in this haven of hypocrisy. Our foreign minister Carl Bildt who is known not only to bring peace to the Balkans but also to bring death and destruction to Sudan and Ethiopia through his oil business, tweeted angrily about it. Not that I take his tweet much more seriously than al Shabaab's or Dimitry Medvedev's. I bet they are all friends on Facebook.

Please note: I do not believe that Julian Assange has harassed anyone and should get away with it. I do find the allegations against him ridiculous, and I fully agree with the Ecuadorian analysis of our juridical system. Sweden is working on behalf of the US. Most countries who show this degree of dependency are called banana republics, but since are proud to sport a royal house, Sweden must be classified as a banana monarchy.

According to the attorney, Assange during a brief stay in Sweden stayed in some female aquintancies' apartment, and coerced at least one woman into having sex against her wishes. A truly disgraceful behavior, true, but do not think it is illegal in Sweden, unless you are wanted by the US. There have been several cases during the last year where our highest judiciary signalizes one thing - men's violence against women is not a crime. Hovrätten is the highest juridical instance for this type of crimes in Sweden and its judgings are considered predicative.(Links below are in Swedish)

In February 2011 four men, four men who had been convicted at lower court for prostituting a 14 year old girl had their sentences amended - two of them were freed. The girl got no compensation whatsoever.

In a case from 2005 which is more similar to the allegations against Assange, a 40 year old man also got a leaner sentence in the Hovrätten than in lower courts, for sexually abusing a 13 year old girl. Specifically, the Hovrätten did not want to charge him with rape, but with sexual harassment, and lowered the compensation to the girl.

Earlier this year two men were found guilty of luring women from Romania to Sweden to prostitute them here, but alas the Hovrätt did not find it proper to call it trafficking. These men were sentenced with 9 months and 2 years in jail.

Ultimately, a patriarchal society rests on a reliable hierarchy within the family - a drunk paterfamilias attacked his woman with a Samurai sword and almost took her life. Not enough to charge him with murder, said the Hovrätt and lowered his sentence form 8 to 5 years in jail. This happened earlier this year.

In this context, what sentence would a crime like the one Assange is accused of get? If found guilty he would maybe have to pay a few thousand Euros in compensation - after all the victim is neither trafficked, nor under aged or anything, and he didn't use a samurai sword to get into her pants.

The thought that any Swedish man would be searched for abroad for a crime that our judiciary finds so utterly unimportant is ridiculous. And quite frankly I would be glad if the resources spent on trying to convict Assange were spent on some other male suppressing women around him. They are not so hard to find, actually. There must be some other reason Sweden wants him extradited.

And what reason might that be? Ask Bradley Manning, who is bearing Assange's cross. The US wants him, of course. But our media are so lame. Ecuador have publicly stated that they have asked both Sweden and the UK for guarantees that Assange is not extradited to a third part. Carl Bildt did not comment on that, and no reporter made him say if Sweden has received such a proposal, if it has denied it and why, if that is the case.

All in all, it is a pretty nice example of the decay in morals and politics in Sweden. If Julian Assange should go to court, he should at least be allowed to do it in a country with a working judiciary.

Naivities and failing empires

While making a raspberry tartellette, I was listening to an interesting but slightly enervating discussion on the public Swedish radio about private security firms. The most (in)famous such firm is the American Academi , formerly known as Blackwater and known for doing dirty work for the Americans in Iraq. But there are several other firms, also Swedish.

To sum up what was said in the discussion: such firms do work that the state has not resources to do, e.g. protect NGO's, which is a good thing, but they do wage violence in the name of the state beyond any political control and compete with the national armies for competent staff, which is bad. All of this is something that is almost never discussed in public.

What struck me most about the discussion was the lack of any historical perspective, and the naivety about our democracy.

First history. Are these firms a neo-liberal phenomenon, typical for our time? Not so much. Outsourcing violence has been, and is being done done before  in many different contexts. Who is doing the massacres in Syria? Not the Syrian army but the Shabiha militia. Shabiha is a pretty new name - a few years ago it was the Janjaweed militia that were talked about. Almost 150 years ago, when the Ottoman empire was unraveling, the Bashi-bazouk were famous for brutality against Christians on the Balkans, notably the Batak massacre in Bulgaria.

The Wikipedia article on Bashi-bazouk notes that "Although Turkish armies always contained bashi-bazouk adventurers as well as regular soldiers, the strain on the Ottoman feudal system caused mainly by the Empire's wide expanse required heavier reliance on irregular soldiers".

I believe this is the key insight - when states and empires crumble, as the US and Syria are today, they are forced to rely more heavily on irregular forces. When the Ottomans conquered the Balkans they did it with a very loyal force of Jannisaries, controlled directly by the Sultan. When they lost it they did it with self-sufficient Bashi-bazouks. Which of course undermines the very essence of the state - its monopoly on violence.

Thus, the rise of private security firms, is a strong indicator of an empire in decline. And these days anyone can see that the West's grip on the world is weakening.

So much about history. Then there was the naivety. It is true that the outsourcing of violence is a democratic problem. But it is not strange that it is not discussed. Since when do we discuss fundamental issues? When did you last see a government official including climate change and peak oil in economic forecasts? Still the same politicians will acknowledge these problems when discussing environmental policies. We live in a state of official denial about the future of civilisation, so why on earth would we discuss this matter?

The eternal crisis

Humanity has become its own greatest enemy. We have made progress, and improved the lives of millions, but at a high price. Our progress has been economical, not spiritual. We have chosen to exploit the earth, rather than to learn to live with it. We have pursued profit up to a point where we are depleted of resources, and not only those profits but our very survival is threatened.

These words are my own, and they all ring true to me. It is not a controversial statement - it is a more or less well formulated sum up of what ecologism stand for in today's debate.

Empirical data seems to support such a vision - no other animal has ever treathened Homo Sapiens. In the first quarter of 2010, 314,7 mn mobile phones were sold, which indicates the enormous scope of economic development. In spite of this, no one would argue that art or litterature has reached a higher level of development. As for how we treat the earth, think about the river Titas in Bangladesh or deforestation in the Amazon (or are we bettering?). Where there ain't much rubber left, anymore. In stead we have to make rubber from petroleum products. I guess you haven't missed we are running out of oil? It is hard to see how we will live in a world without oil, even harder in one more than two degrees warmer, the scenario that we should get used to.

The odd thing is that writing this feels relevant. A few years ago, when I was competition-blogging about climate change, I could easily have written something like this and being praised for it. But it is an old story, and should be so even to my grandmother. Earlier today I finished a neat litte book by the Swedish writer Elin Wägner - Fred med Jorden. Where she writes exactly the same thing. The book as written during the second world war. But the same idea, clad in better words, is easy to locate also in Gandhi's or Tolstoj's writings from the late 19th century.

Isn't is strange, how we can live a hundred year under an immidate threat to our existence? It is easy to think that the ecological question is maybe not so urgent after all, if we have managed so well until now. On the other hand a friend just yesterday told me how fast he had seen the glaciers in the Alps dissapearing, and there is a lot of hands-on information about the loss of ice in the arctic and antarctic regions as well. To presume that a world without ice will be a similar word seems to contradict physics.

Well, maybe there will come out something from the Large Hadron Collider that changes all we know about physics, and explains why ecological crises do not really affect us.

Or maybe this is a political question, as much as one about science. Maybe it is about the clash of two ideologies - one seeing man as master of the universe, and the other one seeing man as a species among others. A clash that has been raging since the beginnings of industrial society.

That is almost certainly a valid description of reality. Somewhere out there there is a reality - less ice and less life, but it is interpretated through our pre-determined minds. I guess that is why we can not really discuss climate change, or environment politics - such topics are most often perceived either as political correctness or as ill-guided radicalism.

The C-word

The inhabitants of the Danish capital Copenhagen are shocked. Flash floods in the weekend unearthed the invisible urban dwellers, roads were closed, and insurance claims are the highest ever. One wish only that such extreme weather had occurred at another time.

The S***t hits the fan

Peak Oil has been discussed on-line for quite some time, but while you are reading this, the thing is actually happening. A number of countries dependent on oil-imports headed by the US were so worried about the effect of high pill prices on the economy that they have decided to tap their emergency oil reserve to the market in order to lower prices by political intervention. Prices have, of course, fell, and as could be predicted, another group of countries dependent on oil-exports, OPEC - Saudi Arabia are obviously infuriated. Such a development is almost sure to have geopolitical consequences, but I predict that it will not be the winner of this battle, but the country that first breaks it dependence on oil that will be the next world leader.

When bad news are the good news

It is horrifying to read about the natural disasters that torment country after country. But maybe disasters like these is the only thing that can make our politicians wake up?

The conflicts that are not

The arab spring and the greek crisis has brought street protest back to the TV screens. But if we don't realize the threat of climate change, democracy won't do us much good.

Was this ever our land?

As a novice gardener I have been reading up on organic gardening lately, and managed to grasp a basic tenet - don't nourish the plants - improve the soil. That will benefit an entire eco-system. Besides, it is the soil, not the plants that we pass on to future generations.

Once you manage your own garden soil depletion becomes emotional - and maybe it is first when you try to grow something you realize how dependent mankind is on fertile soils. Unfortunately there are as many ways to destroy soils as to improve them.

Huffington Post has posted a video from the Environmental Working Group, reporting that soil erosion in Iowa is much worse than official number say. There is no reason to believe that it looks otherwise elsewhere in the US the video says. Neither in Europe.




The video starts out with Woody Guthrie's classic words - “this land was made for you and me”. The video rethorically asks: If that is true, then how comes farmers are allow to poison and destroy it? By over-using land and demolishing traditional soil protections like bushes along rivers, industrial agriculture is destroying the land we thought was ours for quick and high profits.

The problem is obvious for everyone - even the European Commission. But agricultural policies on both sides of the Atlantic plays a pivotal part in keeping soil depletion profitable. How? Through subsidies to agriculture, based not on how the land is worked, but how much it yields. Which is an incentive to any farmer that is financially dependent on his land to over-use it.

It is easy to understand why states sould want to subsidise specific kinds of farming - be it traditional farms kept for the sake of the landscape (they sometimes get subsidies), experimental eco-farms (they never get subsidies) or other cases. It is harder to understand why commercial agriculture needs to be subsidied. We all need food, so in a working market economy it should be the easiest business to make money form.

Outside books, there is no such thing as a working market economy (even though it sounds nice). The 21th cenury world is designed by political influential people. Some are elected, some are not.

For various reasons, these people like to see us drive cars and go shopping in malls. To do that we need to be working 8-5 in industries and services and buy our food in stores. Whichis dull, so our loyalty to the system must be bought with cheap food. Which is why agriculture is subsidised. It is not about supporting farmers, it is about keeping the consumer society running. If you find it hard to imagine the political implication of high food prices, just take a look at Tunisia and Egypt.

This might sound radical and bitter. The real picture is more complicated, of course, but it is not any different. This is the how the world looks, and everybody knows.

But since we, also the environmentally aware of us, are the one's who eat this cheap subsidized food, we reap the profits of the system, and leave future generations to pay the bill. We have no incentives to change anything, and nothing changes.

Which is why soil depletion may be a good thing - if it gets serious enough to affect food prices, we will have to face the problem we have created, and ultimately save our selves with organic agriculture. There are plenty of ways to grow food without depleting the soil. We just don't have the incentives to use them yet.

Fotball fans in Eastern Europe

I was shocked to hear about the racist riots in Moscow last weekend. A hooligan supporter of Spartak Moscow was shot by caucasian men, and footbal fans retaliated with a mayhem that ended with two people dead. I am no good at russian, but I think it is a good thing that Gazeta.ru dares calling the beast by its name - pogroms.

In the Guardian article above western commentators and russian liberals sees the Russian authorities as partly responsible for fomenting xenophobical feelings to divert frustrations over social and economical woes.

Making a political connection is probably correct. For all I know about Russia, it would be impossible to imagine any other kind of organised people than football fans to cause such havoc in downtown Moscow.


And Russia is not alone. Football fans are pivotal actors on the political scenes in many post-communist countries, not least on the Balkans. In the book This is Serbia Calling, Matthew Collins mentions how it was the fans of Red Star Belgrade that both brought Milosveic to power, and fought the decisive battle against his police when he fell.


Fan's graffiti from Beograd

The football fans of Bulgaria are not any more pleasant than the Spartak Moscow ones - they were probably the only kind of people that truly scared me while I was living in Sofia. In the beautiful film Eastern Plays they are depicted as doing the dirty work for politicians. Something that is easy to believe but maybe harder to prove.

But after all, who was it that decided the course of events on 14/1 2009? The people I talked to after the riots all said that football fans came uninvited to the protests, to fight with the police. For the fun of it? Or did someone want them there?

I don't know. Their presence turned the demonstration violent, and changed the political dynamics into something that was impossible for the Stanishev government to manage.

Someone who wants to really understand the politics of Eastern Europe should make reasearch on the violent football fans. maybe someone has already done it - if you know of any such work, please let me know!

Sverigedemokraterna - more important than the suburbs?

Sweden is head­ing to­wards elec­tions, and a few minutes ago I watched the tow main con­tendands for the prime min­is­ter post, the socialist Mona Sahlin and the right wing Fredrik Reinfeldt de­bate our coun­try's fu­ture. It was a nice de­bate, where the journ­al­ist brought up a num­ber of in­ter­est­ing sub­jects. Half an hour in­to the pro­gram, she raised the top­ic of the situ­ation in the poorest Swedish sub­urbs.

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...

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.

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

Syndicates demonstrated in Sofia

Yesterday, KNSB, the Bulgarian Association of free trade unions organised mass protests in the center of Sofia. The formal demands, as I understand from KNSBs website, was increased salaries for public employees.

The protests were huge by Bulgarian measures, 10 000 according to Darik, and an (un)educated guess is that there is a growing discontent in the working classes, due to the economical crisis that is starting to hurt also in Bulgaria by now. Another even less educated guess is that there are only two weeks until the parliamentary elections, and the trade unionists want to make themselves seen by whoever wins.

They are also not alone in the streets. Today hobby fishermen demonstrated, they want more influence over the legislation regarding fishing. Tomorrow other groups with an interest in using Bulgarian nature are to demonstrate. Natural allies to zelenite I would say...

What's political?

The personal is political. In the sixties the (american) left redefined what politics are - in the timespan between 1964 and 1974 being black, being a woman, being an american indian became political. Identity politics were born. The left might have faded, but identity politics have remained. How many of us who cheered for Obama know, or even care, what concrete matters he plans to use against the financial crisis? We gladly forgive him for continuing all George Bush's wars, we forgive him because he looks like one of us, because he is saying the words we want to hear - Yes We Can!

What can we? Doesn't matter! We can, we are young, we drink Starbucks coffe and we use Twitter! We want a president who uses Blackberry!

I am an everyday Linux user, who compensate lack of knowledge with passion for the potential impact of free software. As a member of the Linx User Grup Bulgaria's mailing list I got an interesting mail a few days before the EU elections. Bogomil Shopov, the prominent blogger who candidated to the EU elections for Zelenite, asked the group members to support his campaign. As the mailing list is usually about some concrete network management problem, I was more than pleased to read something that actually interested me.

Bogo is also a very prominent figure in the Bulgarian Open Source community. I would guess that zelenite is one of the biggest parties in this community, but within a few hours I got another mail, from a user who politely pointed out that zelenite are very nice, but the Linux User List was not the place for political propaganda.

Which raised the question: What is political? Is Linux political?

On the one hand it is. I think almost any Linux user will try to convince you that the world would be a better place if official institutions applied open source solutions. On the other hand - while you find few Socialdemocrats in the open source community, you do find some. You find even more from the far left, libertarian rights or greens. So whatever is political about Linux doesn't separate thinkers of contrasting ideologies... Just like you will find all political convictions represented in any minority community.

To separate the political from the non-political is an outmost delicate matter. Identities, like being black, are political. Choices, like using Linux, are political. Identity, and values are highly political. But they only might, or might not turn into politics...

To maintain an un-political sphere of life, without falling into apathy, is maybe the greatest challenge of democracy.

Democracy is coming...

Democracy is a strange thing, in deed. Svetla Dimitrova, head of the election authority ЦИКЕП (read TsIKEP), have written a letter to the Parliament, expressing her discontent with a statement from the parliament dating to the 13th of April.

The parliament was not pleased with ЦИКЕП's proposal to raise the barrier for coalitions to 8 %, and as I understand this is what this is about.

The parliament which is increasingly defiant since the third government party, the conservatives, tend to go against their coalition partners in the parliament, and rather vote with the parties in the blue coalition.

With an 8% barrier, the blue coalition would risk ending up outside the parliament. According to the last polls* I've seen the blue coalition have around 6%. Most analyst's sees this proposal as a try from the government to unduly use their legislative power agianst the opposition.

ЦИКЕП's decision was eventually faulted by the administrative court, which is the highest instance in this case.

One could quite easily see a pattern here: The government parties and certain authorities vs. the parliament, the local authorities in Sofia and the administrative court. the pattern i strinkingly similar to the situation in Republic of Moldova, but there the parliament is under control by the communist government.

For sure there are also business interests tied to the government, I would guess that there are interests tied to the opposition as well. The economedia group, which published the high class newspapers capital and Dnevnik, are very close to the blue alliance opposition.

Many bulgarians engaging in the politics expect some kind of silent revolution from the elections, by voting in new voices in the parliament. The defiant parliament is already now appearing as somehow less corrupted than the institutional establishment.

Now, the point of Svetla Dimitrova's letter is that ЦИКЕП is the responsible authority in this case, and that it is not the parlimentary majority's role to mix up in her work... this is a point that can be argued I think.

The Bulgarian constitution prescribes a very high degree of independence for different institutions, much higher than in Sweden for example. Much critique has ben aimed at the juridical system, but in fact the Bulgarian politicians have very small power to change anything, since they are banned form interfering with the courts.

In this case one democratic principle - the power comes from the elected parliament is ocunteracted by another principle, fundamental to liberal democracy - the independence of courts and other instutions. Democracy is a complex thing. In deed.

How much does an election cost?

Social struggles turn into political, as Bulgaria rapidly moves towards two elections: to the national and the European parliament. The ecologists are focusing their work on the party Zelenite. At the moment the movement is looking for funds.

To register a party, or a coalition, you need to deposit 50 000 Leva per election (25 000EUR) To participate in both, Zelenite thus need 100 000 leva. Llast thing I heard, they had managed to collect more than 30 000 leva. Oddly enough, after deposing these money, the electoral campaign is not allowed to cost more than 200 000 leva.

For the blue coalition, it is still unclear whether SDS will be registered alone, or in coalition with DSB in the Europan elections. The legislatve authorities are still pondering.

While they are thinking, the campaign has started. Here is one poster from the blue coalition, depicting the socialists, DSP and the kings party as the losers of a football match. The poster is signed by the blue coalition.









Today is St George's day, a public holiday in Bulgaria. I am writing from a park where kids and parents enjoy the mellow May weather. Before we all watched the Bulgarian army on parade. The best part was, no doubt the orhestras, Bulgarian and international. International guests were foremost NATO partners, but also Russia, Ukraine and... The Republic of Moldova...

Politics worthy of the EU?

The Bulgarian has set off in a Balcanesque manner.

As I think readers of this blog have understood, to two main liberal parties SDS and DSB are entering the campaign in an alliance, called the blue alliance.

The alliance was not very popular with all members in the parties. I am not at all well informed in this question, but they are obviously two parties, and there is some reason behind this.

SDS, which is the most vocal part in the coalition, headed by Martin Dimitrov, claim that the ruling coalition of DPS (Turkish minority party) and BSP (Socialists) fight the coalition with ALL. forces. This is inetselg quite natural, but according to Dimitrov and other liberal voices, the ruling parties do not abstain from using state institutions to remain in power.

Recently, the ex-leader of SDS, Plamen Jurokov, registered SDS as running for elections ALONE, i.e. against the will of the current leader Marin Dimitrov.

The story has of course angered the liberals. Martin Dimitrov has described the situation as a war between the blue alliance and DPS and BSP. He sees the hands of DPS/BSP behind Jurokov's odd behavior, and say that if the Blue Alliance is not registered immediately, Bulgaria is not a worthy EU member.

Plamen Jurukov, and nine other SDS members have been excluded from the party following the story.

Sources: This is my recalling of numerous sources I've read during the last days. See mediapool for Bulgarian, novinite for english

If you're worried about this, Hungary seem to have entered an even more dangerous path. IN response to the police's inability to curb violence from right wing groups, rroma peolpe have organized self defence groups patroling the streets of the ghetto.

Rromas in Czech republic also witness about increased violence as the country suffer from econonmical crisis. Yesterday rromas around the country gathered to protest in the wake of an attack with molotv cocktails that nearly killed a two years old girl.

Soruce: Cotidianul.ro

New opinionpoll show strength for liberals

On his blog, the leader of liberal SDS martin Dimitrov, published a new opinion poll, conducted by the Open Society Institute.

The interesting thing with the poll is that it compares the general population (the first number) with those that actually plan to vote (the second number).

GERB (Right wing populists)	20.5	33.3
Socialists	12.5	20.3
Атака (Extreme nationalists)	8.6	14
DPS (Turkish minority party)	7.2	11.7
SDS+DSB (liberals)	6.6	10.7

On Forthenature.org, you can now find more pictures, from the celebrastion of the Earth Day in Plovdiv.