Robbing the poor pensioners

The orchestrated scam on the property market resulting with the failure of the big bankls in the US last year (also known as the "crisis", "the market crash" and so forth) had wiped out $5,400 billion (€3,590 billion) off the value of the pension systems of the industrialized world. This was reported (without much fanfare) by the OECD few weeks ago.

Now, can you imagine how big pile of money in bills of $5 you would build to make $ 5,400,000,000,000 in cash?

Why bills of $5 and not larger notes, say of $20?

Because a $5 bill buys a retired person bread, milk, pasta and apples, all what is needed for a day.

Maybe that would be a small mountain-size of cash. Maybe not.

But for 1,000,000,000 people the total (?) loss IS about 1100 days (three full years) less life .

In short: a bunch of smart asses fuck-up the system out of greed and one billion people need to perish three years earlier than God allowed them to live.

If you think a little you will probably ask yourselves where the hell was that money placed to perish so quickly in such a short time? If it was in state obligations, US Treasury bills - it would have been safe. Yeah, but it was not.

The managers of the wast majority of pension funds do NOT put the cash formed of monthly contributions of millions of working people in US *or RM) Treasury bills but in equities, stock, shares traded on the stock exchanges of the world.

Why?

Because stock, shares are bigger fun and MAY produce higher return than the fixed rate of return guaranteed by the state, whether USA, China, Macedonia or another. The average pension fund manager actually plays with the savings and lives of millions of people. When those managers goof it on the stock exchange or place enormous sums of money (for retirement benefits of unsuspecting people) then those contributors are duped, stolen, robbed of years and years of savings for some latter, distant day security.

This huge loss of $5,400 billion is irretrievable.

Gone. Perished.

ONLY IN COUNTRIES where the pension funds DO NOT put all of their liquid assets in stock (Norway, Turkey, Switzerland, South Korea and Germany) the pension fund did not lose money but grew. In these countries the pension funds invest only between 10% and a maximum of 20% in shares, in equities. I do not believe that the pension funds managers in either Turkey, South Korea or Switzerland are angels guided by heavenly hand and high morals. Methinks that it is a combination of rules, laws, oversight, control and culture that saved those pension funds from the awesome loss suffered by the other pension funds.

The stupidities of David Pilling on China

The other day Lionel Barber, the editor of Financial Times, disclosed that his main job was to stimulate talent and manage large egos. Since ages ago I was (almost) in the same position as Barber I hereby dare extend an unwarranted advice in a form of a purely facultative suggestion.

Mr Barber might begin downsizing those egos of his columnists by enticing them to read my blog dedicated to quartering FT content. Take for example David Pilling. This guy says:

" If China were to continue to prosper, the dead hand of government would have to be loosened in order to give private enterprise the space to create wealth.

This is a laughable statement.

1. Mr Pilling admits that the People's Republic of China does prosper now. Most of the observers agree with that. This confirms that China has been prospering with the dead hand of the government clenched on the society and the economy. The 1,3 billion citizen have been markedly growing better off and that is not the case with the populations of the countries of the liberal capitalism.

2. Mr Pilling does not explain why it will be impossible to continue prospering with the same dead hand gripping.

3. Mr Pilling suggests that the government in Beijing should give space to private enterprise to create wealth. That is absolute rubbish because the dead hand already and continually creates prosperity and wealth. When the private enterprise gets free hand then wealth disappears in thousands of billions of dollars and other currencies. People are evicted from houses. Millions go unemployed. Pension systems are depleted. The world sinks in chaos and only the traders of Goldman Sachs get rich sucking taxpayers money.

Mr Pilling should have a miniscule ego if he reads, with my modest self next to him, his article once again. Here is another nonsense.

"State owned banks (in the People's Republic of China) which now have foreign shareholders, have suddenly decided that this is the time to lend. This year, they have increased credit in local currency by more than 160 per cent. No one can imagine this is the choice of free agents responding to market signals.

In the US nearly $2,000 billion were (also very suddenly and also in local currency) extended by the Federal Reserve and others to save some big financial institutions while letting other sink. Those hand-outs were actually an unprecedented intervention by the dead hand of the US and other governments, money lent on a long list of conditions. Every single batch of state funds was administrative and totally flawed purchase into the ownership of the banks and insurance companies. In other words the US had nationalized the banks to save them from private enterprise and collapse.

No one imagined that those acts were the choice of free agents responding to market signals. The US market tumbled.

Everybody knew that the Big Money had persuaded the Big Politics to suck the taxpayers' money in order to save the society from chaos by forcing debt to present and future generations.

At a session of the Joint Economic Committee held this week, Republicans escalated their attacks on Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, including a call for his resignation. Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.) revealed the attitude of the House and the American people about the handling of the crisis. "I don't think that you should be fired," he told Geithner. "I thought you should have never been hired."

That is how inflated egos and plain incompetence are handled dear Mr. Lionel Barber of the Financial Times. Learn something from the communists. They, among other methods regularly applied a system of "friendly critic" and publicly expressed "self-critic" after visible blunders of individuals with inflated egos.

Herman Van Rompuy, How Could They?

woensdag 18 november 2009 10:06

herman van rompuy

if I know anything about politics this well matured provincial Herman Van Rompuy, 62, will be elected the first president of the European Union. That will be totally insane but having one Dutchman and another pureblood Luxemburgean (isn't that funny) as candidates, the prime ministers did not have much choice to oppose Tony Blair, by far the best, most global, most gifted from all of them even you put them in a bag.

So I decided to mark the event with a link to a great performance by this amazingly attractive, sensualCamille O'Sullivan who sings a song (titled Jackie( by a long gone Belgian singer-songwriter-composer Jacques Brel.

This is all inter-connected. I have a feeling that many of you have not heard of Jacques Bre. The man died some 30 years ago of lung cancer, but not before he composed "Ne me quitte pas" performed in 400 versions in 29 languages by singers like Ray Charles, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, David Bovie, Nina Simone and others. He was a superb, socially very much involved songwriter and fine composer.

I hope that you will click to hear and see Camille O'Sullivan.

She just got 5-star review for a concert in London.

You may accept this as my consolation for this idiotical attitude to elect a president from among a bunch of marginal European prime-ministers. Not members of the European academies, no professors, no philosophers, no writers but day-to-day ephemeral local politicuses of small countries with absolutely no world-stage experience or vision.

Will China Fret After the Threat of the Clenched Fist?

You most probably know that Barack Obama, president of the US, met the other day in Beijing comrade Hu Jintao, president of the People's Republic of China. It was a private meeting. Being well informed bloggers you might also know what did they talk about, though I doubt it. But, I am positive you DO NOT KNOW what was Obama supposed to tell his host during that tete-a-tete exchange of views.

Now, there is this abrasive Martin Wolf, a columnist for the Financial Times, who knows exactly, word-for-word, what should have president Obama (hissing or between glistering fangs) told his Chinese host. Wolf and Financial Times are the mouthpieces of the rotten, avaricious, international, big (dirty and all) money.

If the FT spoke for the sinking, totally insignificant UK it would have been waste of time to deliberate about this article. Those words should have been "some brutal truths" on the following lines.

At first Obama should have sweet parleyed Hu Jintao saying that US believed that "the rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations".

Then Obama should have turned more businesslike and declare that the US simply does not care what happens with its primary creditor (China) after investing "incredible" amounts into US currency.

"I am president of the US. I am not going to put our economy into a depression, to protect the value of Chinese savings. After all, nobody in the US asked you to intervene on so massive a scale in currency markets and so accumulate the incredible total of $2,275bn in foreign currency reserves by September of this year, much of it in our currency.

Then, according to Wolf, the American should have unmistakably showed his teeth and growled by saying:.

"You have, I am sure, decided that such lectures mean nothing. What you may fail to understand is the speed with which democracies can shift their attitude from the open hand to the clenched fist. If, over the next year or two, your current account surplus exploded upward, while our deficit did the same, it would be impossible for us to ignore.

All this would not have been of any significance if provided by somebody else in another publication. Martin Wolf speaks for the wolfs and hawks of the international capital and therefore his position indicates the state of the collective mind of the power-shakers. This sort of reasoning is both illogical and false. The pressure on China to revalue the renminbi is more than absurd, it has no market sense. If the renminbi is so blatantly undervalued - why does not the US or the liberal capital managers simply buy as much of the Chinese currency as possible and (when Beijing eventually realizes that it is in Chinese and global advantage to revalue) make huge profit out of that?

To threaten China with a clenched fist is, mildly phrased, both laughable in the current state of affairs and idiotic as a concept of solving complex global disparities.

Do Not Cheat on the CV, it is Your Life. Don't lie. Period

My second grandson Marko (Isn't he cute?) will be four in a couple of months, is entering the great childhood phase of publicly fantasizing just about anything. Not that he is mine, but the he is a very, but very-very bright kid. He is lightning fast and loves making chaos to play a risky game of making-chaos-of the-house with me. My son and daughter-in-law, who are on a tour of duty in a foreign land, try their best to rear him up with proper manners. Failing, they jointly accuse me of inducing an absolutely awful and a very costly example at that. Marko appears to have become a menace and outright danger for theirs and other people's fine bone china and crystal.

But that is not the point of this post. His present inclination to fantasizing is.

Namely, with guests around, Marco had begun throwing innocent, loud questions like "Daddy, you remember how we dived in the backyard pool of our house in London?" or "It is boring here, when shall we go sailing on the yacht with grandpa?". If the guests would be Dortje and Mo from the Volkskrantblog, nobody would give a damn. Unfortunately, they are often very highly ranked civil servants, businessmen or diplomats who tend to take Marko literally. That is where troubles begin because silencing the kid adds oil on the fire while laughing up is tantamount to a public admission of the suggestion.

Thus, where does the money come for houses with an outdoor swimming-pool in Kensington or a yachts moored in Amsterdam? We know of the old adage that "Where there is smoke, there must be some fire". The troubles begin when people begin searching.

Take for instance this poor Patric Imbardelli, till a week ago the boss of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) for all the Asia-Pacific region, member of the Board of directors of IHG, a chain employing 345,432 people and managing 558,000 hotel rooms - without mentioning their yachts and backyard swimming pools. The man resigned because he fantasized (in his long forgotten CV) that he not only attended (a fact) but also graduated (pure fantasy) from Victoria University, Sydney and Cornell University, USA. There is no point at all discussing his particular case (the CV was old, written with a job application for another firm) because none of this would affect you even if you have booked your holidays with Inter-Conti on Bora-Bora, in the Pacific. (This, of course, is my hypothesy only: will the chambermaids of the chain have new fancy ideas after the big boss was caught lying? Or would they be aware that there will not be a golden parachute opening for them upon leaving IHG?)

Let's concentrate on those who fantasize (cheat, lie, falsify, deceit) for acquiring something (position, other power, influence or plain money) through a position in the political or corporate structure. Then, googling brought me to the facts extended by the Risk Advisory Group (specialized in employee screening) which, actually, nailed Patric Imbardelli once he exposed himself at the top. These CV fantasy-busters claim that 50% of the people applying for a job lie in their Curriculum Vitae scripts by including one or more inaccuracies. They have checked, painstakingly, 3,700 CVs during the last year only and concluded that lying spreads and becomes ever more serious.

Thus, every second captain of the industry or a top bureaucrat is like my grandson Marko. The only difference is that he really fantasizes (he is not aware of the consequences) while they lie for gain, for profit and are, therefore, crooks. One out of five CV lies about collisions with the courts, present directorship positions or academic qualifications or a mix of all those. One out of five. 20% of the people who ever signed a CV are liars or, if you are sensitive to the word, they are "rather economical with the truth". People lie telling what were their previous salaries, what are their skills, their criminal records.

That is why I have a proposal:

Let us demand that Netherlands BV invite Risk Advisory Group to make a survey of all the CVs in storage with our national archives. Let us press Parliament invite the businesses that Risk Advisory Group will be authorized to check all the CV for comissarissen, CEOs and CFOs with Dutch enterprises. Period. Let us see where the hack are we in this jungle. Eventually, all CVs would have to carry a stamp "A public document. To be deposited with the Dutch Archives 25 years after being signed".

May be we shall be somewhat poorer for a number of colorful fantasists but will be merrier with so many liars out of our sight.

Global Warming, Bill Clinton and Al Gore

Seriously speaking, I think that this is more Bill Clinton's view of the effects of Global warming than Al Gore's. They are anyway less important than the fore-running Hillary Rodham Clinton. But one may safely guess that she would find this pun base...

The Death Toll in Iraq and President Bush

Really, what the hell is the difference between a zillion and a brazillion?

French philandering and Segoleme

French top politicians cheat on their wifes -or husbands- routinely. This implies the family may soon be finished. But then, who will take care of the toddlers, of the children, the youth, the very old, the handicapped? Me or the State? If the family is obsolete, shall we incubate the new generations?

(This madame is sexy, and she had four deliveries. Then, why did Hollande cheat on this attractive woman? A mystery? Throw him out of work, Sego, teach the bastard a lesson.)

You probably feel somewhat neglected, because of my long abscence, don't you? So sorry. Telling you that you were almost day and night on my mind wont do the trick of making it up to you, would it?

The point is that I was crushed with obligations I simply could not postpone nor handle lightly, as I prepare breakfast for my grandchildren. But then, there were so many interesting experiences that I have harvested while out there, encounters with absolutely crazy ideas and attitudes that, once sorted out and presented for your consumption, you might, just, be tempted to excuse me.

Sorry once more.

One of the last posts here was my outburst of support for Sagoleme Royal. We all know how she failed in the bid for the French presidency. Pity. But then, two days ago, while reading how badly, how cowardly she was betrayed, stabbed in thee back by the father of her four kids, I was once again, stupid me, reminded of the growing amorality among our species. Only 30 days after the night she was defeated by this guy Sarkozy, my heroine Sagoleme disclosed that she was splitting with her partner, Hollande, that she had asked him to leave "their house" (why did she use that adjective there, as in "mine and my kids' house" or something along the line of "our old family castle") and go his philandering path away from her and the kids.

There was a hint that her partner's affair with another woman was not a yesterday's shocking piece of news, something that had just happed after the presidential election. Her statement and my googling point to the fact that her parter has been cheating on Sagoleme for some time, that his new relationship was a common knowledge in France, that the media had entertained the public with the fact.

This means that she had fought for the Presidency with this big burden on her shoulders, heart and mind. Deep down she must have known that millions of French were aware that she, if they vote for her, will be either moving to the Elysee alone or her relationship with Holland would have to be renegotiated. Is it possible that she judged the French so very emancipated as to send her, together with this lying partner to the pinnacle of power?

Since Francois Hollande has been secretary-general of the French Socialist party, did the fact also imply a fundamental shift in family values and norms? Segoleme did not tackle in full the issue of the status of single mothers and their position in the society. Did she, did he, in their different political positions, imply that the private is to be individually defined, that the individual and not the family is the basis of the society.

Fine, who takes care of the toddlers, of the children, the youth, the very old, the handicapped? Me or the State? If the family is obsolete, shall we incubate the new generations? If we do, why not go into bio-engineering and produce super-kids, clean of ailments, self-supportive, self-destruct at the age of what, 90 or 110 or 75? Or different time-limits for different incubated offsprings. Then we may have the geniuses engaged in wanking their sperm all the time instead of producing genial solutions for the humankind.

That is the real topic for a French election. Forget new corporate taxes, french industry, salaries of the entrepreneurs, Airbus, TGV, NATO and the rest. Tell me about the family and my place in the society.

They did not dig into it. She did not. Hollande did not outline his party's position related to those questions. So why trust them with this affair growing as a malign tumor between them? Is it possible that all of France is well aware of such a problem and allows it to simply grow? And this Hungarian immigrant Sarcozy. His wife leaves him for a sex fling with somebody then comes back than says will not move to Elysee, will be "independent". How independent can be the official wife and the mother of a child of the President of France?

Then, totally by itself, the picture of Hillary Clinton, hours after the Monica Levinsky affair, surfaces in front of me. She stood by her husband. I think I understood her explanation. She did not do it for him as Bill. She did it for her her husband who was the President of the United States. She did it for those two institutions and, a little bit, for her ambition to run for president herself. Hollande behaved differently.

Personally, I like womanizing. I love women. Period. I think sex is the greatest thing around. Period. By I am not the secretary-general of the Socialist party of France, neither I am the partner of a woman who delivered me four children out of love through quarter of a century of sex. Dammit, you are a promiscuous pig, Francois.

And you deserve that Sagoleme kikcks your ass out of that office. And Sarcozy's too. Everything in its due time.

Ashkolsun Segolene Royal, You Deserve the Élysée

Now that she declared her support for Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, Ségolène Royal fully qualifies to enter the Élysée Palace as the next president of the French. Untill now she appeared a confused Socialist, almost as bad as this poor Dutch Jan Marijnissen who (with his anti-Turkish position and attitude toward historic responsibility) does not understand what Socialism is about.

The first word in the title derives from "Ashk olsun" and originally meant "May it become love". This is a declaration of someone's best vision of the fate of any sustenance. Back in Macedonia we understand it as a praise. Like when you say "bravo" and applaud someone's achievement. Something like "congratulations". Madame Segolene Royal fully deserves a huge "ashk olsun" for her decision to support Turkey.

Now there is a glimmer of chance that there may be somebody to tell Angela Merkel to shut up her big mouth, to refrain from throwing her Teutonic weight around and behave. There is nobody better qualified to that against the quickly inflating ego of the bundeskanzlerin. A firm French Madame seated in the Élysée Palace. I have no doubt that Segolene will find a well-staged showdown on this subject more than welcome opportunity to demonstrate the specific political weight of France and in the process open up wider horizons on world politics in general, dialogue among the civilizations, religions, economic blocs and so forth. She will have pleased the US with such a no-cost gesture and earned herself a significant number of muslim votes.
But this is not related to electioneering. Segolene Royal final position on Turkey is right as a principle. If Cyprus is in - Turkey must be a member now, even without any negotiations. This is a beautiful opportunity for whatever dialogue related to the future of the EU Segolene may wish to open and pursue in the remaining four weeks or so before the first round of the presidential elections.
Well done gall, keep up!
I am thrilled, elated with the way Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan slammed the European Union for giving mixed messages concerning Turkey's membership. He criticized (needlessly) Germany for not inviting Turkey to the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Angela Merkel and Deutschland auto-portraid themselves in such a poor light and in the process pushed all the other leaders in the mud of vulgar arrogance. Angela, well, that is her poor upbringing, so very base. Distasteful.

Of course that Erdogan was irritated, who would expect such a vulgarity from a woman with so high ambition. Do you know that this Schwaben-frau Angela Merkel chose a beer mug as her official good-buy present for the outgoing French President Jacques Chirac? A beer mug for the President of France. I do not know what she wanted to achieve? That half the French choke dinning while watching the TV-news? If she is so rude - how much worse are those under her? One stupid Munich beer-halle mug. As if he were a bachelor. And then, do you know that the mug has a relief of the little Corsican, Emperor Napoleon. For the President of the Fifth Republic. She is really nuts, this Angela. Napoleon, beaten so often. All Europe against him. Exiled, the prisoner of Elba and St. Helena. Is it possible that Angela was refering to the forthcoming court proceeds against Jacques Chirac and the eventual outcome of the conflict with Madame Justice? Is that an indication for a new chapter in German-French relations? I do not want to even contemplate whether Napoleon on a beer mug fo Chirac may have any other reasonable reference although I know them all.

Is Segolene Royal going to pay back Angela Merkel with some French subtlety or will she decide on a broad swing?

I am glad that today, in Istanbul, had opened a symposium on “Inter-religious and Intercultural Dialogue in Youth Work”. The event is jointly organized by the Council of Europe and the Directorate General of Youth and Sports of the Republic of Turkey. You may find this a superfluous info, but the Islamic Conference Youth Forum for Dialogue and Cooperation together with the European Youth Forum are also supporting the event. There are some 240 participants who discuss topics like “Religion and Human Rights,” “Racism and discrimination,” “Islamophobia,” and “The consequences of terrorism on inter-religious and intercultural dialogue” among many others. Council of Europe runs this “All different-All equal” campaign in more than 40 European countries and this is one outlet..

Furthermore - the EU - Turkey accession talks reopen today in Brussels. And that is also a small, almost marginal, but a needed signal, inspiration for some more endurance.

Segolene, you could not have decided better. Ashkolsun for the perfect timing too.

The Madonna With the Big Boobies Hits Branko Trickovski for Mobing

You will not be interested in the biography of Branko Trickovski, (here,left) a journalist with a Macedonian daily owned by the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. It costs me an itch to tell it, digested, but never you mind.I will not say a word. The guy writes columns and the latest illustrates the paranoia spreading through the capital of the EU candidate-country like a bush fire. It also depicts the early morning atmosphere in the leading political newspaper at odds with the ruling parliamentary majority of the country. This is how he opens up on a very serious issue, blaming the present government of employing secret service Stalinist methods in chasing officials and other people suspected of taking bribes.

+ + + + +
She appeared somehow swollen in the tits while she was leaving the spinach pie (bourek) on the small table next to my desk and the change of twenty denars (€0,30) over the newspaper I was reading about the detention of Dejan Dokik. I told myself: Trickovski, the money is only small change, but in the bra of the cleaning woman, further to her tits, there must be something else.

With a Christopher Dean olympic repertoire triple axel I placed myself behind the petite woman and had begun to press her first towards the oily paper with the pie and then towards the bank notes of ten denars.

-Take pictures, take pictures, take your picture, you damned provocateur. You want me sent to jail for a quarter of pie and twenty denars of bribe from my own money, you female spook, fuck you damn spy...the pie-shop notes smell on oil, not paint.

But, the woman did not remain more than five seconds in that position. In a bolero-style swing she delicately turned towards me as if Jane Torvill in Sarajevo, pushed herself softly from my chest and walking towards the door, threw at me, over her shoulder, the following words:

-I take pics of you, idiot, but my cameras are not in my bra, and I do not take pics because of the bribe but for mobing. Can't stand your every morning routine of pie without yogurt. I'll send you to court, you crazy madman, I'll send you to Strasbourg if needed.
+ + + + +

This is how Trickovski, an old colleague and a friend (till this piece hits the fan) opens up on the allegedly wide-spread police method in Macedonia to plant agent-provocateurs who entice people in accepting bribes while the uniformed arresting unit waits in front of the door to jump in and handcuff (cameras rolling) the corrupt recipient of the bribe. Trickovski develops the story effectively as always (he is the best author of the newspaper) and has not a shred of doubt that tempting poor people to accept bribes is immoral. He implies that all the two million Macedonians would accept a bribe because of latent, dismal poverty. The most controversial proposal by the man is his claim that "A society in which there is nothing else but crime and the fight against crime - cannot exist".

But, after 30 plus years in journalism Trickovski knows that there are many other things in Macedonia than the present effort to eradicate corruption. He choses to disregard everything else but the crime and the fight against it. That is rather distorted picture of Macedonia.

So, he insists that the police allegedly used inadmissible evidence to fight corruption. But then, for the sake of what he believed was a successful introduction to a burning theme - Trickovski described himself as a villain. He described how he jumped and pressed the poor female employee of the newspaper, the cleaning hand, after sending her on a private errand as if she were his serf. He admits swearing at her, scaring her wits. The woman was molested. Rud Lubers was expressly thrown out of the UNHCR for much less. Or was all this hyperbole, a matter of speech, a journalist fancy? So, the top columnists can scare the employees out their minds, "fuck you female spook", but the police cannot, may not send an agent-provocateur.


(Here left, the daily Utrinski Vesnik, then edited by Trickovski, published over the front page that my insignificance (Grozdan Popov) was the newspaper's correspondent from The Hague. It was not so. The paper refused to pay for my articles shamelessly claiming that it "promoted me". The director of the newspaper, Srdjan Kerim refused to respond. He does not think much of intellectual property. That is a scandalous behaviour for somebody who may preside the UN General Assembly where so much was done to protect intellectual property. There are people who see this affair as a scheme to rob someone for individual or group advantage.)

I am ready to buy even such a nonsense. Now. In advance. But on one condition: that the police tries persuading the prosecutor to indict the individual arrested for accepting a bribe. I would await the judge or the court to throw the case out. So what. And I would do it again if I were the the prosecutor. Again and again. I would insist that the clever lawmakers amend the laws on corruption so that it becomes easier to prove. I would arrange that the cooperating bribers be pardoned after a short time in the clink: so many of those witnesses who had stricken deals with Carla del Ponte were brought against Slobodan Milosevic. Nobody uttered a word. If such an arrangement is possible with the UN Tribunal, why not with a court in Skopje?

Take China, the most numerous (1,3 billion people) country and the fastest growing economy on the planet. A super-power. Its highest legislative body, the National Congress had just wound up its session for 2007 the other day. On occasion of the event the prime-minister of China Wen Jibao met the press. The media was reminded that China's road to democracy is specific. The media was reminded that: quote, Democratic government is the Chinese communist party governing on behalf of the people...while upholding and perfecting the people's democratic dictatorship".

That is democracy the Chinese way.

The Chinese prime minister admitted that corruption has spread and got its roots deeper in the social tissue. To eradicate the corruption China will engage in establishing stricter control over the officials. Hundreds of top party leaders were arrested in the fight against corruption, but it did not bother Chine destroy and launch satellites and amass 1,100 billion dollars of foreign reserves, prepare a for glittering summer olympic games and set in motion 350 km/hour trains. So, where does one look for examples?

And one more thing.


Branko Trickovski was a part of a plot that was, in my view, designed to rob a colleague of intellectual property. His present bosses, Srdjan Kerim(here, above) the director and Erol Rizaov, the present editor, have in one way or another, taken part in the affair. Srdjan Kerim was singled out by a Belgrade weekly "Student" as a plagiarizer. Many people confuse plagiat with theft of intellectual property.

Srdjan Kerim is a candidate to become the next president of the General Assembly of the United Nations. That is what is badly wrong with the Macedonian government. It pushes a crook like Srdjan Kerim to succeed the lady, Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa who is specialist in fighting intellectual property thefts!

That is what Macedonia needs to pay attention to.

Lustration Laws in Europe are Unconstitutional: Why Macedonia Wants One?

The other day the Macedonian parliament passed the initiative to open up (urgent) legislative work that will result for the first ever Lustration Law of the small Balkan state. Since the poor country had been under concentrated and daily growing pressure by all sort of domestic and international thugs - I was shocked with the news. I though that my people have lost all orientation and that Barosso should better summon this guy Olli Rehn and warn him that he scared the Macedonian government out of its wits.

I have a feeling that the aspiring candidate-member countries are squeezed into submission and faced with some rather ugly and totally arbitrary choices. Thus - the Lustration Law. (Here: the Speaker of the house tries to bring some order in the Parliament -Sobranie- in Skopje)

I would extend a wager that less than 25% of my visitors know what lustration actually stands for now. We have learned, ages ago, that the Romans used the word to denote purification by ablution in water. the lustrations are always connected with sacrifices and other religious rites, and consisted in the sprinkling of water by means of a branch of laurel, olive or basilicum. In ancient Greece, and probably at Rome also, the acts (they called them catharsis here (cannot write in greek alphabet) were performed by private citizen when they felt they had committed (polluted themselves with) a criminal act. After the Cylonian massacre Epimenides of Crete made Athens engage into catharsis.

In Rome the lustration had completely different meaning. It was performed to obtain the blessing of the gods upon the persons or things which were lustrated. Get it? Fields were purified after sowing (for better harvest), Roman armies were lustrated before departing to war. When a Macedonian army was lustrated, a dog was cut in two pieces in the place where the army was to assemble, and one half of the dog was thrown at a distance on the right and the other to the left. The army then assembled in the place between the spots where the pieces had fallen Forget the Macedonians of 2200 years ago. We have to deal with the contemporary ones, equally fierce at fighting each other as the troops of Alexander.

February, in Rome, used to be the lustration period of the year. The god of the underworld and the judge of the dead Februus (therefore February) was accepted as the supreme potens lustrationum and thus all he solemnities wre performed in his honor. The deity latter took another name (the big and mighty always did what they want to: he was the son of Saturnus) and became Pluto but the Romans did not change the name of the month into Plutoary. Found it too much, I believe, too demeaning for themselves to play is the deity fiddled. Strange, it was at the beginning of this February that the Macedonian parliament passed the resolution opening the road to the Lustration Law.

I am totally baffled with this attitude. The Greeks should have imposed on themselves catharsis laws in 1977 after the dictatorship of Papadopoulos, and in 1949 after the fiercest Civil war - but they did not. Or the Spaniards: why they did not pass any lustration acts after the fascist butcher Franco died?

(Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, 96, died this Saturday insisting he was doing his duty as a civil servant.)
Do you remember any such laws passed in France after the WWII against the Vichy regime? I do not. And still, yesterday passed away a French guy who climbed up the ladder of the civil service in France ALTHOUGH he unlawfully helped a number of people be arrested during the WWII. He sent Jews to the camps without knowing what was happening there He was convicted, few years ago, without any lustration laws. It is a most intriguing story about a Nazi collaborator who said he did his duty as a public, civil servant These people in Poland and in Macedonia simply have to read this.

It is useless explaining that lustration laws around some eastern-european countries are legally totally groundless because they collide head on with the dictum that a retroactive law is illegal. Generally speaking, retroactive or ex post facto laws are seen as a violation of the civil state, of any rule of law as it applies in a free and democratic society. Most jurisdictions do not permit retroactive legislation. Period. The US Constititution, article 1, section 9. Article 7 of the Convention on Human Rights bind the EU to prohibit ex post facto laws.

So, why tolerate this charade?

In Macedonia it somebody called Stojan Andov who is the driving force of this late, bad and out of order initiative. I know the guy. Once I met him on the secluded Brioni islands (private residence of President Tito) where the brains of the self-managment, socialist federation were gathered to deliberate further market approach of the economy. He was the least engaged of all and had ample time to give me an interview full of crap. Him and the others did not need to tell the small spooks what did I think: those people would stick a label of "technocratic tendendencies", or "anarcho-iberal" essays in the society, of "dogmatic" forays in this or that field of the society and then hundreds of people would have to defend themselves of this sort of denouncements would do much more harm then when somebody would tell an agent that "Mickey is an enemy, he'll send his son to study in Prague".

This sort of legislature is obviously demeaning after 15 years of new, obviously democratic, multicultural Macedonia with an earned status of EU candidate-country. It speaks volumes about the moral profile of the Parliament in Skopje. There is still time to squash the initiative and simply forget the proposal, let it wither, just the way the Bulgarians did.

I am amazed that this Olli Rehn does not tell the Macedonian government that these laws are useless: they shake the civil state further into insecurity, that all it takes is keep to the Constitution and do not do anything that collides with it.

That is law. That is stability.