Of Ideas and People

DUTCH OMBUDSMAN MUST DEFEND THE CITIZENS

2010-11-27T09:51:00.004+01:00

OUT OF WHIM, A CAPRICIOUS CLERC
DECIDES TO MALTREAT A SENIOR (DISTINGUISHED)
CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
AND NOT A SOUL MOVES A LITTLE FINGER
AGAINST SUCH A MALPRACTICE

In my very modest opinion this is an urgent case for the Dutch national ombudsman. The director of the CBR (drs R.A.L. Verstraeten) allows his medical counsel (X.H. Nguyen) to maltreat me while processing the extension of my driving license. I am 71 of age, have a license for the past 45 years or so, had two STAAR operations on my both eyes this summer, have a document from an eye-surgeon (d-r Floris Hageman) that my eyesight is fine and that the driving license should be extended for 10 (ten) years.

I still do not have it.
That is the caprice of the clercs of the CBR.
Such behavior is intolerable.
I am under medical treatment and must drive every workday for radiotherapy in the AMC, I have explained all that, and the director of the CBR continues to allow his medical advisor, who is NOT an eye-surgeon, to stall the processing of the extension of the driving license.

It is unhuman.
Such a chicanery of people may not be allowed in this country.
There is no point having an ombudsman who does not act upon complaints like this. The bureaucrats feel bolstered and become intolerable. That in turn undermines the legal state.

Why is "The Girl from Macedonia" pissed off?

2010-11-26T21:26:00.003+01:00

Tanja Milevska is a journalist.
Her mother is one, a very well informed and sharp correspondent for Macedonian media from Brussels.
Her grandfather and her grandmother were also big time journalists.
In her latest article she sort of whines for the missed opportunity to drag the attention of her colleagues during the recent NATO summit in Lisbon to the "Macedonian question" there unanimously pushed under the rug.
Of what I gathered, she was not given the chance to air her well prepared question at the joint press conference of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon and President Karzai of Afghanistan. Since everybody around her knew that "the girl from Macedonia" will have a rhetoric question about Macedonia - she was skipped, her risen hand disregarded.

She felt frustrated.
Eventually, latter, she had seen the light. This is how she tries to declare she is turning a new page in her work.

"There I was in a huge press room with prominent journalists from all over the world fighting to put questions about the new global security challenges, while outside the venue peace activists were demonstrating against nuclear weapons and Portugal was readying for massive protests against poverty…. and all I could think about was the negotiations about Macedonia’s name.

I’m not saying the name issue is insignificant. But it would surely be a good thing if the country were to get out of that narrow hole and take a look at what’s going on outside. If nothing else, it would take some of the drama about the inevitable change to the name of our country. "

Interesting.
I sincerely hope that she will prove with the stuff she files that Macedonia has what to say and discuss with the world apart of the issue with Greek absurd and self-destructive intransigence. She may indeed help many to follow her example.

SESELJ TRIUMPHS IN THE HAGUE

2010-11-26T10:55:00.003+01:00

THE SECURITY COUNCIL MUST SUPPORT THE TRIBUNAL
AND THE PRONOUNCEMENTS OF THE JUSTICES
IF THE UNITED NATIONS WANT TO HAVE A LEGALLY FAIR SET OF TRIALS

THE REGISTRAR OF THE TRIBUNAL IS NOT A JUSTICE,
HE IS A CLERC WHO QUESTIONS THE REASONING
OF A TRIAL CHAMBER OF THE TRIBUNAL
AND HE HAS TO BE FIRED RIGHT AWAY

The Registrar (Griffier, Bursar) an ordinary bureaucrat, a public servant of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, the ICTY, REFUSED to obey a court order of the Trial Chamber composed of three judges of the Tribunal appointed by the Security Council of the United Nations. Further to his refusal to disburse 50% of the funds otherwise allocated to all the penniless defendants brought for trial before the Tribunal - the registrar, in a brazen demonstration of arrogance QUESTIONED before the Appeal chamber the reasoning of the Trial Chamber.

For my ignorant in judicial matters - this behavior is unheard. The man, was he somebody called Holthuis or not is irrelevant, litigates the decision, the ruling of the Trial Chamber claiming that the justices trespass their authority, he also publicly belittles their reasoning, their acumen, their concern for fair justice and so on and so forth. In short, he refuses to provide the accused Vojislav Seselj the funds badly needed to cover parts of the costs for his defense.

Vojislav Seselj in turn refuses to cooperate with the tribunal untill the arrogant registrar is forced to obey the court order and disburse the allocated funds.

This situation is very indicative of the general climate within the ICTY.

Thousands of millions of dollars (that is billions) have been spent by the UN for the establishment, upkeep and the work of the ICTY. The Tribunal was scheduled to wind up its sittings and one of the reasons for its extended activity (and the fat big monthly salary plus expenses and perks for the haughty registrar) is the speedy wrap up of the trial of Vojislav Seselj. There is no doubt that the longer this trial goes - the longer will Mister Registrar collect the salary from the Tribunal.

Instead of pranking the registrar with a fine for contempt of court, the appellate justices will deliberate now (they have done so) whether the registrar or the Trial chamber were right.

The registrar claims that Mr. Vojislav Seselj refuses to provide SUFFICIENT documentation that he does not have the funds to pay for his defense counsels. The Trial Chamber overruled that excuse extended by the registrar. He has to obey and pay. But he further to refusing, enters THE REASONING of the justices. He behaves as a bully and he has to be brought up to the book. He has to be fired because he is not a justice. He is an administrator. The Security Councul MUST support the Tribunal and the pronouncements of the justices if the United Nations want to have legally fair set of trials. Screw the administration.
The reasoning of the international justices of the Tribunal is above reproach.

It quite another story how openly provocative is the registrar in his reasoning about the defendant's financial status and treshold above which a defendant cannot get financial help by the Tribunal. The registrar provides a "formula" that is composed as to insult the individual, a formula devised to mock the level of cultural and social standards of all the defendants from former Yugoslavia, a formula that is a red rag in front of the eyes of a capable, intellectually and legally literate raging bull like d-r Vojislav Seselj.
The registrar has to resign or be fired.
Right now.

BANANA AS AN ALL-ROUND CURATIVE

2010-11-26T07:56:00.004+01:00

Bananas contain three natural sugars - sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fiber.
A banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy.
  Research has proven that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder the banana is the number one fruit with the world's leading athletes.

 Depression:
According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.  

PMS:
Forget the pills - eat a banana. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.

 Anemia :
High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of haemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anaemia.  

Blood Pressure:
This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit's ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.

Brain Power:
200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school ( England ) were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert.

 Constipation:
High in fibber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.  

Hangovers:
One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey.. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.

 Heartburn:
Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief.

Morning SickneSs:
Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.  

Mosquito bites:
Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.  
style="font-weight:bold;">Nerves:
Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system

Overweight and at work?
Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and chips. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.

  Ulcers:
The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.

  Temperature control:
Many other cultures see bananas as a 'cooling' fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand , for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD):
Bananas can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood Enhancer tryptophan.   

Smoking &Tobacco Use:
Bananas can also help people trying to give up smoking. The B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal.   

Stress:
Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium banana snack.

  Strokes:
Accord ing to research in The New England Journal of Medicine, eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%!

  Warts:
Those keen on natural alternatives swear that if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of banana skin and place it on the wart, with the yellow side out. Carefully hold the skin in place with a plaster or surgical tape!

Serbs join Greeks in attack on Macedonia

2010-11-20T01:09:00.010+01:00

The alert against the Serbian kitsch in Macedonia does not have anything racial
as Latas implies because the Serbs and Macedonians are same white race.
There is kitsch everywhere all right, but Serbian kitsch is something different
The Serbian kitsch is, eh, the king of kitsch.
So why did Latas made this up?

There is no doubt that the peaceful and through the course of time stoically enduring Macedonians are again harassed, exposed to a brutal, joint, aggressive pressures and intimidations emanating from the political dens in Athens and Belgrade. This harassment is dangerous for both the region and for Europe as whole. The aim of the intentionally lightly veiled plot is to question the international legality of the Macedonian language, culture and ethnicity, the right of the Macedonian people on their hearth and home, albeit the legality of the otherwise internationally recognized territory of the sovereign countries that 129 UN member-states address as the Republic of Macedonia.

The implications of this synchronized attack on Macedonia are deadly serious.

THE UN SECRETARY-GENERAL MUST EXPLAIN, IN PAINFUL DETAIL,
HOW WAS THIS "MISTAKE" POSSIBLE, WHO'S DONE IT, WITH WHAT
EXCUSE AND AUTHORITY AND WHAT MEASURES WERE TAKEN

The Greek diplomacy and money-laden lobbying groups have succeeded to involve the United Nations administration into a dirty, illogical, losing gambit of sacrificing every single principle of the Charter of the World organization only and only to eradicate the term "Macedonian language" from the UN official ID of Macedonia absurdly referred to as FYROM. The eradication was annulled after the lightning intervention of Mr. Miloshoski, the foreign minister with the secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon. The public still awaits the detailed explanation how was such "a mistake" possible, who executed it and what or who and when with what motivation enticed the UN official to act illegally.

This affair illustrates how imperfect may be the official documents of the United Nations and how easy it is to amend a far reaching texts disturbing or endangering not groups but whole nations. Such an affair may not remain veiled and every single detail of it must be exposed to the full General Assembly of nations.

The proposed line of action is badly needed.
It will, in my opinion, point to the head of the Hellenic state as a culprit in a joint act of defrauding the international institution, the Security Council of the UN, with intention for group or personal profit in the form of influence, power, position, moneys or all of those simultaneously. Mr. Karolos Papoulias, the president of Greece, signed the Interim Accord, an obligatory document that binds Greece NOT to block the other party of that accord (the Republic of Macedonia) from accession to international organizations, But the man said today that Greece will effectively block the admission of RM in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization tomorrow in Lisbon. This is the case for the International Court in the Hague.

Greece, therefore, opposes the will of all the other NATO member-states, 129 UN member-states not out of spite but because of its interests in the future of the Balkans. Those interests are secret and obviously transformed into plans and plots. The first ally in such a scheme are obviously influential circles in the Republic of Serbia. Those circles act ever more aggressively against the stability of Macedonia, their southern neighbor. While one (the northern) part of Macedonia badly suffered more than 80 years under brutal Serbian yoke, the other (southern or Aegean) was ethnically cleansed by savage, atrocious Greek occupation. Until 1941 Greece and the Serbian (Yugoslav) kingdoms shared borders on somebody else's homestead. Both occupiers brought into Macedonia of the Macedonians their settlers, in numerous cases brigands, murderers and gendarmes ruled by a thin layer of tradesmen, bureaucrats and "educators" with nationalistic and expansionist agendas.

The remnants of those settlers are now rabidly active in and against the Macedonian definitive integration within the family of nations under the centuries old name of its population. There is no point evading the fact that a significant majority of Macedonians considered themselves (until the 19-twenties or thirties) as brethren with the Bulgarian folk. There are abundant documents that point out to the definitive formation of the national cognition as separate, distinctive ethnicity after the 19-thirties. Personally, I myself do not mind if the definitive, firm and lasting comprehension of my compatriots as Macedonians begins with the first ASNOM and I do not care of Alexander the Great, the king of Macedon or Samoil, the unfortunate Emperor with his court in Ohrid.

DRAGAN PAVLOVIC or latas, APPEARS AS A CLASSICAL
"AGENT-PROVOCATEUR" WHO ENJOYS INSULTING
THE COMMON SENSE OF THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM
ACTUALLY INCITING ETHNIC INTOLERANCE

But I do care when people today threaten the freedom of speech, intimidate editors and journalists with criminal proceedings when they publish a title pointing to the "Serbian kitsch". So, an editor of daily newspaper, "Vecer" (Evening), scared the with of the Macedonian nation by announcing he rises as a gallant saviour in defense of the Serbian nation, name and honor. The guy is a brazen type who does not mince his words. He is of course a Serb who has been living in Macedonia for years, a capable journalists who dominated the Macedonian tv-programes (he is fluent in the local language) and now edits a popular daily. So, this man, widely known by the nickname Latas, alias Dragan Pavlovic, has written and signed a threat that he will take to court a bunch of people because (according to him) they enticed ethnic hatred and racism.

Well, naives might think that Latas is fighting for larger circulation of "Vecer" or for influence through notoriety. He might. But he is actually the opening the attack from all guns against the rights of his colleagues on a freedom of speech implying that the Macedonian population of this small country is actually a crowd of ethnically intolerant racists who hate the Serbs. This stupidity will be taken up and drummed by the Serbian press. The Greeks will jump on the platform too with "it is not only us, the Serbs are endangered by the Macedonians" and so on and so forth. There are about 1,3 million Macedonians squeezed between something like 16 million Greeks and Serbs, notorious for their ancestors' role in subjugating Macedonia.

All this is synchronized and explodes a night before the NATO summit in Lisbon. Now, I will profess that NATO will disintegrate if Macedonia is not invited to join it. It will disintegrate because Macedonia cannot financially survive as an independent state without some formalized external help. Macedonia has endured 20 years of chicanery but I doubt it can hold on another 20. Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia cannot single-handedly manage Macedonia. This becomes a bundle, a Gordian knot but composed of human emotions and blood, not threads of wool to be cut without profuse bleeding all around.

If Latas files a case against enticing racial hatred, no court in Macedonia will dare dismiss it. But the alert against the Serbian kitsch in Macedonia does not have anything racial, Serbs and Macedonians are same white race. Or are they? There is kitsch all right, but Serbian kitsch is something different, recognizable. There is sure Bulgarian, Dutch, Greek and German kitsch, but Serbian kitsch is, eh, the king of kitsch. So why did he make all this up?

My educated guess is that he was asked to do so.
Maybe, if you comment enthusiastically, I will agree to disclose who do I think instructed this smart guy Latas, the journalists who so many people love to hate.

Is there a Dutch way to blatant corruption?

2010-11-02T12:44:00.004+01:00

This summer I have allowed a perfect stranger dig into my precious eyes, one after another. With a pair of pincers he took out first the left lens (the black of my eye, my window to the beautiful world and faces around) and after few weeks the right one. He implanted artificial ones. So that I can see better than the big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood and have my driving license extended (I am just over 70) these two STAAR surgeries were a necessity.

Dr Floris Hageman, a very able and highly recommendable eye-surgeon with the OPSIS center in Amstelveen worked miracles and we parted with him stating that he warrants I will have no problem getting an extension of the driving license because I could now drive without glasses at all. But then came the surprise.

The medicaLadvisor of the Dutch CBR (an acronym for Centraal Bureau Rijvaardigheidsbewijzen) sent me letter demanding that I provide a document from an ophtalmologist that my eye-sight is OK. Tthis is what I wrote back:

Geachte d-r Nguyen,

You have decided to send me a “verwijzing naar een oogarts” because, it appears, you did not trust the report from my huisarts d-r H.L. Kieviet.
That decision of yours is symptomatic. Doctor Kieviet told me that he was reporting that I had two STAAR operations on both eyes this ummer in OPSIS oogartsenpraktijk.
For your information I was operated by Drs. Floris Hageman who specialized as oogarts in the VU Medisch Centrum. Zijn bijzondere aandachtsgebieden zijn hoornvliesproblematiek en de chirurgische behandeling van staar. Drs. Hageman is lid van het Nederlands Oogheelkundig Gezelschap, lid van de European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, lid van de Nederlandse Intraoculaire Implant Club en Fellow of the European Board of Ophthalmology.
If you are an ophthalmologist and an eye-surgeon you might well know d-r Floris Hageman.

I am puzzled why do you want me to pay other €80 (you needn't care that I am a so called "minima" on uitkering by the Rijk) for a new check of my eyes when I received one document on 8 September from the OPSIS of which you have a photocopy included. In my opinion you have not read well the documents sent to you 30 days ago. I have asked the director of the CBR for a speedy processing and explained why.

I think you have done your job poorly or with caprice because you have refused to trust d-r Kiewiet's recommendation last year and after a simple check up in OPSIS which was WITHOUT any surgery, you extended the license for a year incurring only costs but not doing a thing for the safety on the Dutch roads and highways. I doubt that you understand what I am telling you. I demand a five year extension of my driving license right now.

Since I feel myself mistreated by your whimsical decisions do rest assured that I will press for a full investigation in this matter but you cannot withhold the extension of my driving license.

Sincerely
Grozdan Popov

ABN-Amro Bank lies to its clients

2010-06-07T11:35:00.008+02:00

THIS ICONIC DUTCH BANK LIES THE INSTITUTIONS TOO,
ABN-Amro Bank NEEDS A TOUGH HAND ON THE HELM
Mr. GERRIT ZALM, ITS CEO AND FORMER MINISTER OF FINANCE
HAS TO ACT AND COME TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS AFFAIRE

When a respectable bank, say a bank like De Bank, that is ABN-Amro Bank, an iconic institution, sends a Statement to a client, one is bound to take it at its face value. The trust in the bank's integrity is probably the most important, the basic understanding of a relationship between the financial institution and its client. People may suspect that their bankers are greedy, people may believe that the bank managers take huge risks, almost gamble with the assets of their clients, people may be ill at ease with the lavish remuneration of the top executives and may doubt, like the Holly Father in Rome, the bankers' moral judgment when demanding usurer's interest rates.

But people never ever doubt that the bank will lie.
It is unacceptable that the bank will write "your order was executed" the payment was completed, your so much moneys were transfered to the beneficiary you have pointed - when actually the bank did not do it. To some smart lawyers this may seem a passable mistake. But it is not.

Mr. Gerrit Zalm, the CEO of ABN-Amro Bank and former minister of finance of The Netherlands needs to go to the bottom of this post documenting that somewhere down the line in the bank he guides there are people who lie, there are people who over-ride the software and after the client had received a written confirmation, a statement that his transaction was executed - annul it, make it null and void.

The other day I went to the branch office of ABN-Amro Bank in Amstelveen and the officer on duty volunteered, after he heard a part of my complaint, to prove me wrong, that such a thing is simply impossible, that I must have guffed it somewhere. He worked for couple of minutes on my account and when he got the statement Your order was executed, told me, satisfied: "You see. It is done. You probably made a mistake".

The very patient gentleman, his name is Alex de Waart, was willing to check wheter the amount was really debited from my account. His mouth dropped when he had seen it was not. His bank cheated him too and he was embarrassed. He said he had never ever seen such a thing nor he could believe it is possible.

The legal and the practical aspects of such a complex meddling with the software and the reputation of the bank, such an outright lie thrown at the face of any client are huge. Not only individual people but institutions, like the Belastingdienst (Inland revenue) or the notorious BKR are not expected to go and check the truth of a bank statement. This means that a cheating bank can ruin the lives of people and ABN-Amro certainly did severely damage my well-being and overall life of the last ten years or so.

The last time I had differences with some rather strange people in the branch office of ABN-Amro Bank in Amstelveen, Mr. Rijkman Groenink found it necessary to personally and in writing extend his excuses for the mistakes of his staff. This means that those people remain in the branch office while Mr. Groenink is gone. Long time ago I have met Mr. Zalm who stood for the indisposed Wim Kok, the then minister, during talks with a Macedonian financiers delegation. This time I expect that he may wish to go right down to the bottom of this sickness in one of his branches because this situation is alarmingly indicative.

In any case, I would be very, very thankful to any suggestions for legal help here. Is there a watchdog over the practices of the financial institutions, over misuse of the depositors moneys, are there legal ways to bring ABN-Amro Bank to the book for if this can happen to a small one-man-firm (einmanzaak) what would stop the same people ruining a large firm or misappropriate millions or billions of euros. I do not nourish much hope that a gallant Dutch
lawyer will ride in on a white horse to help me and save the face of ABN-Amro Bank.

T-Mobile CEO handcuffed in Macedonia

2010-02-26T13:26:00.004+01:00

T-MOBILE NETHERLANDS OWS ME
COMPENSATION AND A FORMAL EXCUSE

The affair around T-Mobile Nederland pushing phantom charges on its subscribers continues.
It appears that Peter Meefout, former director of customer finances, had contracted an obscure firm (Lindorff B.V.) where he was director, to collect (by threats of court actions) bills incurred by allegedly unknown parties who were syphoning moneys from subscribers using technology gimmicks and robbing practices.
When carefully read, the Linkendin profile of Peter Meefout, shows that he used T-Mobile to pump money (from customers) into Lindorff where he was director at the same while serving in T-Mobile.
The public prosecution in the Netherlands did not so far act to either alert the public or chase the culprits.

It appears that millions of euros could have been swindled. T-Mobile seems to have been innfested with people prone to shoddy practices. The case of Rubin Zarevski, former CEO of T-Mobile Macedonia seems (only innitially) unrelated to this affair. But when a multinational corporation has a CEO who is publicly and spectacularly arrested for financial irregularities - then it is clear that one should be very careful when assessing the integrity of such an corporation.

ALL THESE ALLEGATIONS AND OUTRIGHT (well documented) COMPLAINTS ARE AVAILABLE HERE.
Described in detail and simply vying for a good lawyer!

A Dutch horror with T-Mobile

2010-02-23T06:07:00.007+01:00

.
T-Mobile Nederland made my life a misery.
Of what I have experienced, I would say that these people acted and behaved with planned, brazen insincerity to trick people into a scheme.
T-Mobile Nederland has advertised that anyone may have an i-Phone 3G for a basic tariff of €29, 95 and my family decided to surprise me with one for my 69-th birthday. They gave me the cash for 24 months and I was besides myself with joy.

Not that I was unaware of the shenanigans of T-Mobile various offices and individuals, but I simply thought that improper or outright irresponsible, improper, harmful or damaging attitude and practice by T-Mobile Nederland is impossible in this social and legal climate. Well, I was totally wrong.

T-Mobile Nedrland bullied me inflicting serious financial and health damage through the services and attitudes of a legal firm, I believe that they, the T-Mobile Nederland, must have bullied other innocent people as well. I believe that this matter must be criminally investigated and I will try to put this post right into the hands of the "officer of justice" or the public attorney who should in his or hers official capacity have to act and investigate the allegation that T-Mobile KNOWINGLY, being fully aware of a criminal situation at its own turf, maltreated, intimidated, scared and inflicted serious psychological harm to innocent customers motivated by indolence, greed, careless attitude or all of these combined.

This is a serious allegation against T-Mobile. Despite I would have never dreamt of extending the 24-month contract with T-Mobile (at the end which the Nokia I used should have been unlocked and I could keep it even if I changed the provider) when it was announced that they had an exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone I had to chose: either t-Mobile or forget about iPhone. T-Mobile sent me the iPhone for free on understanding that I will continue the subscriber status for yet another two years.

The problems arose instantly. I have signed and written that all I want is the basic monthly subscription of €29,95. Few month latter the invoices rocketed to €89 despite I would have neither calls nor 10 SMS messages per month. When I have written that something is wrong and requested investigation - the boss of customer services of T-Mobile chose not to respond.

Then LINDORFF PURCHASE B.V. from Zwolle, the legal representative of T-Mobile, approached me (in writing) with a demand for a ludicrous payment. They wrote I responded, they wrote some more and threatened me with the courts and I responded, then they fired more threats and my nerves had begun shaking, the whole family was upset and, and this important, the iPhone went dead. Completely dead. Then it would give a sign it is alive but the SIMM would be locked. The expensive machine was (and still is) totally useless.

A friend, lawyer and ex-diplomat who I helped come and settle in this country, told me it was all my fault and I better pay. Since his wife is a big shot with a multinational telephone services provider I was guided to begin believing that T-Mobile was acting like all those other providers, that I have overlooked something.

But, eventually, an engineer in agronomy took the case and in September 2009 pressed the Lindorff B.V. to prove their claim that I was wrong and that I have actually called from the iPhone incurring costs that they claimed they were a step away from collecting through a court order. Suddenly Lindorff B.V. said (over a telephone) that there was an investigation and that T-Mobile had found out that somebody (a criminal gang I assume) was incurring costs to unsuspecting, innocent T-Mobile subscribers and therefore, all the so far demands for payment became nill and void, I owed nothing to T-Mobile and should forget the matter.

The Lindorff B.V. obviously thought that such a stance closed the whole troubled affair. They thought that all their threats and the cut services, all that relentless pressure that lasted for full six months would be, could be so easily forgotten. The Lindorff B.V. guided me to a T-Mobile store in Amsterdamse Port where upon presentation of passport and those people unlocked the blocked SIM. I wanted the same old status of a fixed number subscriber but they were not authorized for such a move.

The T-Mobile CONTINUED, despite its own and formally admitted fault to treat me *with the old, fixed subscription number, as a punished, "prepaid" customer, which is completely illogical. Namely, this iPhone does not come for free with a prepaid status. That is exactly the mess which T-Mobile created.

Thus, I made an ING bank transfer for €20 just to have the possibility to send SMS urgent messages, invitation to be called on that number and keep the machine alive. After only two SMS messages the €20 expired, were eaten up, no trace but the number of the bank transfer. I believe that the thieves who operate within the network of T-Mobile and who have stolen all that money before - are active again. I have the iPhone next to me and notice that somebody is contacting the number and trying to suck money out of it, occasionally a dozen times within couple of minutes.

At the T-Mobile shop in Amsterdamse Port I also bought another prepaid card at €20 for the old Nokia. That money was gone within a day without me calling anybody. I was robbed again. Imagine if there are one million T-Mobile subscriber and if thieves, or T-Mobile self, syphons from every singe one €20 a month? This would amount to a €120 million robbery, a criminal ring and the police should be involved.

This is a case for a very able lawyer who would like to make a big name and big money by bringing the mighty T-Mobile and Lindorff B.V. as their accomplices in what I think is a clear act of tried extortion. Unfortunately, even capable lawyers are unwilling to bring the mighty ones to the courts because of the attitude of the Dutch judges to keep the population in hopeless submissive stupor under the yoke of the financial and administrative might.

Nevertheless I am positive that one nice day, hopefully sooner than latter, that attitude of the Dutch populace will change.

A Fine Project Cut by a Civil War

2010-02-10T13:36:00.007+01:00

A PROJECT DEVISED TO TRANSFORM THE YUGOSLAV PRESENCE
ON THE DUTCH TOURIST MARKET

VISTOR SMIT, with the rector magnificus of the Belgrade Univewrsity
d-r prof. SLOBODAN UNKOVIC and my poor self IN A GALLANT EFFORT
FALLEN VICTIM OF THE CIVIL WAR

Victor Smit, an extremely intelligent, superbly well mannered man (probably the best Dutch advertising copy writer for the past 20 years) stumbled upon me the other day while doing his groceries in a local super-market. It was a great surprise for I haven't seen him in ages. After "Come for a drink, I have some vintage bordeaux, same place, same phone" we promised to get together and call each other to fix the date. He did not call, neither did I.
My excuse was this piece: I wanted to publish the story about our last project he worked (and financed) his ass on. It is so well conceived, to beautifully wrapped and (seemingly) so easy to set it going that I simply have to present it. This post, in reality, is an invitation to the world's advertising community for a case study.

The Auto-newspaper Yugoslavia (Autokrant Joegoslavie) was conceived as a carrier, the messenger for the Registration Plate Project. The vast majority of the 490,000 Dutch tourists traveling to Yugoslavia for their summer holidays used inexpensive package (mainly airplane but also a lot of bus) arrangements. With d-r ph-d Slobodan Unkovic, rector of the Belgrade University with a chair in tourism and a great friend) we have discussed, together with Victor Smit, what could we, Yugoslavia, do in the Netherlands to entice the rich individual traveller ignite the BMW, the Audi or the Mercedes and drive along the Adriatic coast. We were to offer them free (overnights only) accommodation in top class hotels in specific resorts throughout Yugoslavia.

(Above, from left: d-r prof. Slobodan Unkovic, Marija Cvetkova-Popova, Victor Smit and my son in front of the YNTO head office in Amsterdam on Jan Luykenstraat, opposite the Rijksmuseum)
The penny pinching Dutch, like most of us, like nice things gratis, free, costeloss.
So, how does one explain to 5,000,000 Dutch car-owners that IF their car has a a registration plate containing the letters ZG and if it an Audi - the owner and the family will have THREE NIGHTS gratis in a superb 5-star InterContinental in the capital of Croatia? THe Yugoslavia Newspaper was to be the vehicle that would explain how does the registration plate of a Dutch car automatically allows its owners a free 3-nites stay in places like Split (the Diocletian palace, great events) or Belgrade and so forth. The Dutch buy about 450,000 brand new cars annually. They ride them to France, Germany, occsianally to Austria and Spain, but rarely to Yugoslavia or Greece.

The connection between Dutch and Yugoslav registration plates is in a way marginal. The Dutch had two letters dash two ciphers dash two letters on a registration plate. The Yugoslav plate consisted of two letters two ciphers dash three ciphers.
With the Dutch letters were allocated irrelevant of the domicile borough of the owner of the car.In Yugoslavia the letters denounced many different towns, villages and cities within a borough territory carried the same first two letters.

The point is that the hoteliers around Yugoslavia wanted to give to a family arriving in a Mercedes SL three overnights for free expecting that with their other consumption they'll easily make up for that while at the same time pushing up the prestige of the hotel. The hoteliers were interested to see that they were to be for sure advertised for free in the Netherlands while it was not certain that any of the Audi or Mercedes owners would actually show up for a free overnight.

The Yugoslav National Tourist Office, YNTO, in Amsterdam (with an advertising budget of about 2,2 million gulden or €1 m.) would be heavily supporting a project aimed at uplifting the customer base while enticing the 5 million car-owners in the Netherlands learn more about holidaying opportunities in the foreign currency starving country.

Some of the dealers of foreign up market models showed immediate interess in having exclusive rights on the promotion and the whole campaign because they had seen it as a chance to be associated with a friendly country and one of the top 5 tourist destinations in Europe. They have seen it as instantaneous possibility to push up the value of their cars with specific registration plates.

The project, therefore, was a topper, in theory, from it very conception. It was designed to be a piece of cake for execution: the production (copy, layout and printing of some 150,000 copies) of the main vehicle of the project, the Auto-newspaper Yugoslavia, was relatively inexpensive. The only problem would be the response and the legal validity of the contracts with the individual hotels for free accommodation. But then, the YNTO was to jump in and push the project.

Advic B.V. the advertising firm of my dear friend Victor Smit, would be the sole owner of the project and would charge, modestly, all participating parties in it. We have begun work. Hundreds of special A3 cardboard envelopes were bought, postage, mock-up copies of the Auto-newspaper Yugoslavia inn full color printed and sent out out to hoteliers and borough councils, local tourist associations and so forth.

And then came the storm over Yugoslavia.
Bloodshed.
Not only regions cities against cities rose up, atrocities, shelling of resorts.
An awful, beastly civil war had begun raging across one of the most idilic parts of Europe.
That was it.
Now I keep the memory of this project and one mock-up copy of the newspaper that was to transform the Yugoslav tourist presence on the Dutch market.
And the lingering warmth of the enthusiastic support extended by Victor Smit for this project.
That is the the force of destiny.

FOUR INTERESTING VIRTUAL FARMERS

2010-01-30T00:06:00.010+01:00

This is supposed to develop into something like a review of characters cum proposal for a different game or companionship with some ideas acceptable for people with creativity and similar hobbies.
At this moment all I want is use the great pictorial facility of Blogspot.
The actual text about the authors of these farms, what do I see in Farmville and how do I judge the people who play it - will be here in the days that come.
Thus, if interested, return. Will be fun.

I am talking about
Vesna Lompar
Tim Carey
Lav MGM and
Goran Bojkovski
actually how did they inspire this project of a post.
Take this only as a trailer.

The top ranked of the farms among my 200+ friends is the one in constant transformation and upgrade by its mistress my old time friend Vesna Lompar, a graduate in italian language and literatura (used to recite Dante by heart) and latter journalist with Radio Belgrade. She has been all over the world, I met her in Amsterdam ages ago where she lived and worked with her late husband whatever seemed attractive and we were often partners in travels (Austria, Florida, Jordan, Cyprus) until she decided to return her Dutch passport and settle in elegant comfort in the heart of Belgrade.

Have a look how does Vesna imagine her farm.

Vesna has a large collection of very highly ranked Serbian painters, loves to travel and spoke to me the other day how she succeeded bringing a salaried "housmaister" in the building thus transforming the derelict pile of flats into a clean, very safe (cameras, domophones and so forth) structure.

On the other hand Tim Carey is Englishman. Somebody told me: "Of course, it shows". There is this class-division visible, the high ground for the master and the low lands for the working peasantry! This is not true because I know the guy and he is a hard working European, I think, marketing manager of British American Tobacco company in Amstelveen. We do enjoy Remy Martin and he simply happens to have a spare uncorked bottle now and again, thus demonstrating style and funds, but he is a homey person. His farm has nothing to do with the structures of Lav and Goran.
There I want to make a point.

What Tim would not disclose is how he succeeded elevating the ground and trnfrt quite a persuasive 3-D feel to a virtually 2-D environment. Anyway, here is his comment placed elsewhere about this post:

Interesting idea... Was thinking last night on why the farm looks like it does...
You will have to excuse the crops that appeared (the intention was to have a farm with no crops (ie purely a county retreat)... I needed to generate extra funds to theme for Christmas which messed things up a bit... the hovel over to the right was storing my decorations.
My mathemtical mind was interested in the way you could make 3d effects with 2 dimensional building objects... hence the raised area (which due to the graphics had to be in the top corner).
I then wanted to balance this rigid structure with random trees planted throughout (with the side benefit of hiding those areas of the 3d structure that aren't possible to create using the tools available).
Where the class / English element definitly kicked in was the house... When I first picked this frustrating application I (and a number of friends) set ourselves the goal of getting the mansion... Within Farmville there is no real end to the game and the mansion seemed like a reasonable chequered flag.
With all this in mind - I wonder if it changes perception of the character as demonstrated by the farm? I set myself a clear goal, wanted a clear (and innovative) structure but still wanted an artistic feel to the final design.
Would be intersted to see where this blog goes.... The idea of using characterisation within games sounds interesting...
And finally... ;-) Great Blog !!!

(I am blushing all over)

Now, thew farm of Lav MGM is something different. It has a villa, it has a hell of a lot of items, it is same size, but, well, there is this atmosphere of a Balkan well-off, nouveau riche owner managing it. See how many domestic animals are all over the place and just compare it with Tim's farm where there is not a single hen or pig or even horse.

They may be neighbors all right but they come from two obviously different backgrounds and different cultures. The may both be quite amiable people but their differences will not help them striking lasting friendship: they think and behave differently.

I thought of proposing to those wizards of the Farmville to allow areal views of quadruple farms, actually five would be ideal, that one owner could have a view of the properties of his or hers immediate four neighbors.

But then, they, those software wizards and the money managers behind them, could also enlarge the game towards building the environment consciousness. Like compost production, like wind energy (imagine the lamps are lighted at night time, if it is not too expensive) and the farms stay dark (relatively) during the night (of the central server) but not so if you have your own windmill electric plant.

Sorry, I am being carried away...

Finally, the farm of Goran Bojkovski. My pre-predecessor as a boss of the YNTO (Yugoslav National Tourist Office) for the Netherlands was Petar Bojkovski, a good friend, passed some years ago out of consternation I would say. Goran here would not respond whether he is anyhow relted to that Bojkovski, an ethnic Slovak from Banja Luka who soke some Macedonian because he served his military obligation in Skopje. Anyway.

In a moment I will come back to add some comment over Goran's farm.
PS
PLEASE NOTICE THAT THE PICTURE ENLARGES WHEN YOU CLICK ON IT

The Macedonian desert

2010-01-26T11:33:00.003+01:00

While cleaning the heaps of rubbish among my mountains of old clippings I have stumbled upon two items I have treasured ten years ago. Those are the first and the second in series of issued by the US Postal Service and represent the wildlife, plants and animals, of the Sonoran desert and the Pacific coast rain forest.

The prints are a small technological wizardry. Each of those is 23x17 cm and contains 10 stamps at 33 US cents each. One needs to be careful when unplucking each stamp from the adhesive surface to place it on an envelope. So the letter will go with only a sticker of unrecognizable form, totally different from the appearance of a postal stamp. There is nothing on it but
USA
33
which, I think, was a result of a compromise not to ruin the general composition of that print of 10 post stamps. (The white frame out there is placed by myself, to indicate how this surface is divided.) I doubt that people would be willing to ruin such a souvenir (it cost a fraction of $3,30) simply to stic 33 cents postage on a postcard. Thus, this is ready cash, it is like the US Postal Service printing money.

On the back side of the print there is a message and a detailed explanation of the items on the front. One can learn. A very effective way of educating and of helping the people grasp the diversity of America and, eventually, like their country better and wish to travel to those places.

WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH THE MACEDONIA?

Well, nothing and everything. The Macedonian postal service (Македонски Пошти) is practically a state owned firm. Their directors roam the world. But they have not ever risen to the level of understanding how much they could do, in the segment of philately, for example, for its country, its people and themselves.

They simply remain hopelessly provincial and do nothing to rid the Macedonian philately from the trash of corrupt practices suffocating it.

THE EXOTIC CUISINES OF THE WORLD

2010-01-06T07:46:00.021+01:00

The recipes from the ancient imperial court of Macedonia:

the delicacies of the table of Alexander the Great

Even in hindsight and from a safe emotional distance "The Exotic Cuisines of the World" has been one of the finest,very well prepared and decently supported projects that I have brought to the market. Based on food and drink. the everyday staples of the humankind winged by the enormous political drive and resolution of former Yugoslavia to "export or die" the project had everything needed not only to attract the investor and the consumer alike but to impress them with its transparent, tightly woven legal, creative and commercial structure.

In short, it was bound to be a huge success.

The basis of the project was the export of Macedonan wines to the United States.

At that time Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Eagleburger were pushing very hard every imaginable Yugoslav product to the American market. I know that among the other reasons for their involvement even in day-to-day corporate businesses was a view that without significant exports Yugoslavia could not pay for the military procurement from the United States. Keeping the Yugoslav war machine as dependent on US deliveries as possible was one of the reasons they have embarked the ill-conceived and heavily promoted project of "Yu-go America". It was a flop, of course. But cars made in a Serbia (long ago abandoned "Yugo-Florida") for the American standard is one thing and wine for the taste of millions of expatriates quite another.

Thus, since the disastrous mistakes of the Eagleburger's strategy were already a hard factual lesson it was easy to fathom that there must be a different approach in selling Macedonian wine around California and Nappa Valey. Now the late Robert Mondavi had entertained me, as favour to the State Department, in his mansion and explained very many aspects of the wine industry, his ambitions, the tastes and the whims of the American wine consumer. He knew of the wines from that part of Europe but discarded them as "ethnic" product.

That specific remark was the core of the approach in the promotion of this project.

It had to be shaped in a most presentable form for the Americans of Slavic ancestry. Its content and packaging should make them proud to consume it, to extend it as a gift to their friends, associates, neighbors and relatives. Therefore, the package, a bundle, needed to relay not only on the wine but to the food it is to be consumed with and the mere idea of the promoted food recipes had to be as far removed from the ordinary staple as possible. It had to be associated not with the beans soup or feta cheese but with the food served on the court of Alexander the Great, for example,

That sounded exotic and attractive enough.

The numbers were impressive. There are 2,3 million Americans of generally Balkan ancestry who give at least six million presents annually. A package of three bottles of wine (red, white and rose) with a video-cassette (it was 1987) full of step-by-step preparation recipes interspersed with emotional folklore and vistas topped with a game, three free nights in a resort on the majestic Adriatic.

A film star like Robert Redford would guide through the content of the video and Safeway would be distributing the package.

So, how does one wrap up such a complex project?

To start with most of the wineries in Macedonia used the cardboard gift-box of three 0,7 l. bottles of wine.

The next thing was the video content. I turned to film director Stole Popov, a friend, no relative, and persuaded him to come to the district court and sign a contract that he will produce six films featuring master-chefs from various countries, some folklore, vistas and so forth. The man is an Academy Award nominee in a documentary category and I have promoted his superb film "Happy New '49" as a Yugoslav entry for best foreign language film, an affair that made us friends.

With that contract in hand I went to another friend, now late Gavril Gavrilski, the CEO of Makpetrol or Exxon of Macedonia. He signed a document for Makpetrol to finance export of up to 10 million bottles of wine.

Then another businessman, Dancho Shuturkov, the COO of Makedonija Tabak, came in with a proposal that I accept cash from an investor and if within two months an American firm formalizes a contract about the Macedonian wines - then Makedonija Tabak will be willing to become a partner for the rest of the Exotic Cuisines of the World.

The cash from the investor was a paltry $ 1,500 or two months rent for a fine but unfurnished flat on Larabee Str in West Hollywood.

With that and double of my own money I dawned in Los Angeles with intention to settle there for some time. Only one of the few friends I had in the area and around the country knew about my arrival and he, Steve Pope, a guy desperately trying to make it in films, dully met me on the airport where a Hertz car for a long-term rental was awaiting.

Steve had picked a selection of derelict henhouses as accommodation befitting in his judgement an expatriate from the old country. the guy is rather colorful character with an Actors Guild membership card hand signed by Ronald Reagan. But he knew that he could never be an actor.
((Please click the map to enlarge))

Within a week I had rented under contract the garden-level apartment Nr. 209 at a very decent (garage with dedicated place, swimming pool, jacuzzi) address only a block downhill the tres chique section of Sunset Boulevard. The property there has a wide automatic, sliding iron door to the underground garage and airs a feel of a hacienda. The address on 950 North Larabee Str in West Hollywood, 90069 Ca. was not only respectable because of the neighborhood and all those fine tenants, mainly professionals and single, but because of the easy access to public transport and all the facilities, parks, hospitals, gig supermarkets and vfariety of bookstores, shops and restaurants.

The next day after moving in - I got a telephone 213-652.5597 with a wire extending right down to the pool. I cannot really remember whether there were no wireless machines or whether they were prohibitively expensive, which is illogical from our present feel of the market. The installation of the phone does not require any hassle because it is all done without people coming home and meddling with the line but it took me a day deciding what to phone, how long wire, a recording machine, that sort of stuff.

Since I had a credit card issued in Yugoslavia and cash and the phone number costed something nothing I decided that my own checkable telephone and address is more important for the bank, whichever I chose, than appearing with a request for an account as a stray dog, no checkable and documented fixed address and an open account phone number. So the big woman of Pacific Bell looked at the American Express credit card but opted for the cash.

By noon the next day i had 200 visit cards and decided to open an account with a branch of Bank of America where customers arriving by car could validate their tickets. A subtle message and a chance to drop a line like "Will you please validate this so that I can take this brand new Buick out". This does not seem much, but, then, it does not hurt anybody. I was left with impression that bankers like to know the basics of their clients and it helps to inquire whether they have correspondent banks in South-East Europe,that my funds will come via Stopanska Banka and while you appear to inquire you also supply information. Within an hour I have ordered personalized checks and deposited all my $4500 on it. Well, not exactly: I was left with some 2,500 DM and a handful of dinars which were left in cash.

My electricity and gas was supplied by contract with the Southern Ca. Edison Co. acc. nr. 55-42-616-1458-28 and then, with all these insignificant papers, diligent people issued me a Social Security # 563-95-7192 card (crucially important document for entering the labor market, a huge advantage over millions of people scrambling for work and residence papers. Nobody ever asked me for my coveted Californian ID.

So, within the first 10 days after my arrival, before doing anything else I was established as a perfectly legal alien residing in the USA. I am very proud of that achievement. Ten years before that not even the mighty Yugoslav federal government could influence the Greek smalltime bureaucrats to grant me a resident and working permit in Athens although I was officially elected and sent out there under UN ratified and obliging international agreements representing the Yugoslav National Tourist Office. What ambassadors and deputy foreign ministers could not do in six months with the Greeks I have singlehandedly done it in ten days in the City of Angels swarming with illegals from all corners of the planet.

The summer days in California begin at dawn with sweating the late nights out and go on for ever with almost every minute planned well in advance. My stomach churns when I see these "promoters" sent by the Macedonian government abroad and compare their exorbitantly costly (about $115,000 gross annually) incompetence and inefficiency with the simple daily output clocked by my poor self while in the US. Between six and seven in the afternoon I would have a 3-4 mile slow run along Cynthia, then Elevado, downhill Elm and then eastbound towards home by way of Carmelita till Oakhurst slowly up and dive in the pool. This strategy paid and within a week from every third or fourth porch a casual but good humored "hi there" would greet my appearance. Some of those faces Jackie SImons among others I soon begun meeting and exchanging pleasantries in the Safeway store.

In Hollywood one does not sell wine from Macedonia. One goes to Hollywood to buy film related services.

I have an Academy Award film director under contract to deliver me an almost edited 90 min. film within three months. I need 100,000 video cassettes of top quality. How long will it take you to deliver them, packed in sleeves and how much is the video cassete and how much the sleeve with wrapping? Here you are with my credentials and these are the people who know me in Hollywood..

So after a week, with all the documents safely in my pocket, I appear at Dan Tana's on Santa Monica Boulevard. The guy greets me, he does remember me very well from the time I threw a big lavish party (for the account of the Yugoslav Consul-general from San Frncisco) at his place. He asks what I am doing and I tell him I need two thing: one is a top-quality video-cassette producer for 100,000 copies of a special feature film and a link to Robert Redford's agent who I need for two appearances, 3 minutes introduction three minutes closing statement for a Yugoslav tourist-gastronomy item. We shall pay him with a Lipitzaner stud. Dan Tana begins asking because all this does not make much sense although he is sharp minded as a Wilkinson Sward. http://www.dantanasrestaurant.com/

-What is the film all about?

Then I see Richard Gere and with my best smile I say:

-Just to say "hi" to Richard,- and I go directly to poor Gere.

TO BE CONTINUED

Radovan Karadzic Defies the Tribunal

2010-01-06T07:33:00.003+01:00

I TOLD MY MACEDONIAN-SPEAKING VISITORS THAT RADOVAN KARADZIC

WAS GOING TO DEFY THE COURT, THE TRIBUNAL IN THE HAGUE.

WAGER WAS OFFERED.

Ви реков вчера да отвориме кладилница (мислам обложувалница) дали Радована Караџиќ ќе го спакуваат вржан како буџола (ди парма) па во судница со крпа во муцката или не. Сега го канат, бичим го молат, да се појави утре на судење. Он им вика дека милион страници обвинение не може да ги прочита, бара одлагање.

Ај сеа на бас: Јас велам дека ќе му продолжат време эа реплика на обвинителниот акт. Еве ситна фанта, по 5 евра.

ЈОХАН И РАДОВАН
Караџиќ прави шоу а мене умот кај Јохан Тарчуловски. Србите го криеја 13 години. Нашите Јохана со кебе преку глава эа 13 минути гитла у Шевенинген. Радован обвинет эа едно трилион мртви удира контри, авукатите негови такуѓере а нашине лиэно-маэно а он ни да бекне. Брат Љубе оди по венчавки го эабраи. Све чекам Дуковски да спичка драма, Љубиша да ја режира у Атеље 212 со опасен рап на Стихи.

WHAT AN IDIOT "This trial (of Radovan Karadzic) is important for the victims who will finally see justice being done,"said Serge Brammert, chief prosecutor of the ICTY z. What an idiot. The indictment (by Carla del Ponte) claims that most of those victims (14,000 in Sarajevo + 5,000 in Srebrenica) are dead. THEY cannot see or hear anything. Mислам дека энам што САКАЛ дудуков да каже. Ама не оди. Тешка глуперда

ШЕШЕЉ ИЗЛЕГУВА

Светски доктори го гледале Војкана Шешељ и потпишале наод дека може да скине секој момент.
(Овај болесник, Шешељ) ima povisene vrednosti LDL holesterola ... i znacajan rizik za razvoj ateroskleroze i svih drugih kardiovaskularnih komplikacija. Prediktivna verovatnoca razvoja ”nepovoljnih kardiovaskularnih dogadjaja” (смрт) ... je oko 30 %.
Uzimajuci u obzir vrednosti pritiska koje su se kretale i preko 175/105 mmHg. ovaj bolesnik (Шешељ) ima i do osam puta veci rizik za kardiovaskularnu smrt.

Ај сеа де. Паметен е. Ги надмудри.
Како ли ке го дочека Србија ...

THIS IS FROM 26/27 OCTOBER 2009 FROM MY FACEBOOK PAGE

Argentine Chicken in the Heart of Aksaray, Istanbul

2010-01-06T07:15:00.002+01:00

On October 21 2009 еден дамнешен, роден скопјанец, баш ефенди, ми беше домаќин на Аксарај во Истанбул. Си направивме таатли, ептен домаќински муабет. З
Значи ефенди беј Halim Ozturk, е дојден овде таму 1958 и се покажа дека ем направил мала семејна империја ем си останал еснафлија какви сега ретко се среќаваат каде и да одиш. Седевме под големите чадори на ресторанот Arjantin Pilic (”Аргентинско пиле”) и со јени раки и една маса иэгара специјалитети, го меэевме Скопје и пријателите од едно дамна минато време...
Неэаборавно гостопримство ...

Ме поткани пред некој час едно девојче од Кавадарци да кренам фотки што деновиве ги правам ниэ Стамбол. Кај неа врнело како од кабел а овде сончевина како растопено элато. Ај добро. Ама дали легендите под фотките да ги стокмам эа локална или эа светска консумација. И, реков, ај эа глобална употреба. Франгле. И така. Не се гневите эаради ова. Мојот англиски и беэ тоа е эа смеење.
Veronika Kostadinova
многу убави слики
фала Деди

My Friend Bunyamin Atik, composer, industrialist & charmer

2010-01-06T07:06:00.003+01:00

Се пакувам полека за нов лет кон Босфор и слушам некоја фина музика што ми ја препорача Bunyamin Atik, еден шармантен индустријалец, поет, композитор, бонвиван, а згора на тоа инвеститор во Македонија, ене го со Груевски потпишува договор. Летово ни направи една олта по Босфор со неговата јахта,...

Ќе заборавев за малку.
Here is one of the composed songs by our friend Benyamin Atik.
А и пее и свири покрај тоа што компонира и прави (големи) пари.
He also sings and plays instruments, sails, drives a huge Harley and runs around Istanbul as a youngster.

Е баш ова ни го своиреше, пратејки се сам на едно гитарле, тоа индустријалецот кој ни ја остави јахтата нам на кормиларење а самиот: музика и ритам.
Чудо човек, Трпе, чудо ...
You may like to hear this on a YouTube clip. Here is your link.

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN HONORS DEDI

2010-01-06T06:47:00.006+01:00

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, prime-minister of Turkey:
GROZDAN K. POPOV
(is a hell of) a
DISTINGUISHED SENIOR CITIZEN OF THE WORLD

THIS APPEARED ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE.

Ќе паднев у бесвес' кога ме проэваа да се испентарам на бината во сала со некои 1000 гости а таму ме чека премиерот на Турција Реџеп Тајуп Ердоган со една голема кутија и во неа толкаа плакета на која иэдлапчиле дека сум ”Бележит Сениорен Граѓанин на Светот” или со други эборови ”Старец эа мерак”.
Од кај нас такво приэнание доби и колегата ИЛХАМИ ЕМИН, ене го на другите фотки до мене.
Абе што да ви раскажувам, ептен екстра кобасица сум од сеа натаки ...

THE REACTIONS WERE NICE.
Predrag Terzioski
Kakov senior be Dedi, ne te davame pa ti si u cvetu mladosti.
Cestito za plaketata,ali sega za sega, zamrzni go clenstvoto.
Ismek,ismek arakdisim , rahat zaman yok.
Zvane Drnkovski
Ti lici
Boris Georgievski
skraja da e! ne te mislam jas za star, ova senior citizens sto go napisale Turcive, vsusnost znaci "iskusni" :)))
pozdrav od Keln
Aneta Sekulovska
Bravo, bravo, bravo....
Dedi. Cestitki od Sekulovski. Kolku ke bideme sega gordi i vazni sto go poznavame Graganinot na svetot
Sanja Radjenovic Jovanovic
bravo, a kako se najde u konkurencija tamo?
bas si srce, ko son koneri si sto stariji to lepsi. ama ima i eden vic ke ti go pratam na message da ne go citaat site.
pozdrav

this is a link to A BUNCH OF OTHER PICTURES OF HONOREES

A sketch for a skeleton of a CV

2010-01-06T05:41:00.065+01:00

Grozdan Koco Popov are my given, father's and family names.

Born:

11.08.1939 in Kumanovo, Republic of Macedonia

Address:

Donau 42, 1186KM Amstelveen, The Netherlands

e-mail:

grozdanpopov@mac.com

telephone:

+31206403744

cell phone:

+31642485859

citizenship:

twofold, both Netherlandse passport and Macedonian passport

Marital status:

Married since 1963 to Mrs. Marija Cvetkova-Popova, lawyer;

Son Mr. Igor Popov, born 1963 and daughter Mrs. Irina Popova, born 1967

Languages:

Mother tong Macedonian; English written and spoken; French, Dutch and Greek, reading and communicating; Bulgarian and Serbo-Croat for fluent communication;

Bankers:

ABN-Amro, ING and Stopanska banka;

EDUCATION

1954

Graduated with a final exam the elementary and intermediary school "Goce Delcev" in Scopje

1958

Graduated with a final exam the higher education at the Gymnasium "Josip Broz Tito" in Skopje;

1960

After six semesters discontinued studies at the Faculty of Economy, University of Skopje

Enrolled as a part time student with the Faculty of Philosophy begun studies of English language and Literature

with History of Arts as minor subject;

1963

Received a British Council scholarship and attended three semesters of studies in phonetics and literature at the University College, London University;

Between November 1963 and April 1964 writes as a ±special correspondent± for the newly established "Vecer" daily in Skopje; attends the Shakespeare seminar, shows and festivities in Stratford-on-Avon;

1966-1967

Between September 1966 and and August 1967 completes the the obligatory military service with the JNA (Yugoslav People's Army) as a conscript in the auxiliary communications battalion of the Yugoslav Air Force in a rank of private radio-telegraphist regiment of major Bakic;
Completes the text of a guide-book on Greece commissioned and payed by NIP "Nova Makedonija" but due to the military coup in Athens the book is not published;

1969

Graduated from the University "Kiril & Metodij" in Skopje with a major in English language and literature and a minor in History of Arts;

1979

Enrolled post-graduate studies with the Institute of politicology of the University "Kiril & Metodij" embarking a course on Ideology and the media

PROFESSIONAL

1959

Launched the first independent, privately financed publication in Macedonia, a youth monthly magazine "Tribina" which after half a year was discontinued by the authorities

1960

Employed in "Nova Makedonija" daily as a city-desk reporter;

1963-64

Correspondent from London, Great Britain for the first evening daily newspaper "Vecer" November 1963 June 1964;

1964

City-desk editor of the daily "Vecer";

1965

Arts and culture editor of daily "Vecer";

1966

Deputy editor-in-chief of "Journal" the " first colour weekly magazine in Macedonia

Feature and comics editor of daily "Vecer"

1969

Upon request from OZEHA (the largest Yugoslav advertising agency) designed and executed (in unison with the Macedonian state radio) a campaign for their prime customer, chocolate and conditionery factory "Evropa" in Skopje. It was the first ever betting game tied to a consumption of a chocolate. One million dinars were offered every week and an avalanche of reactions killed the campaign but the chocolate, known as "medallion" (it was in a form of a golden coin) was launched.
The coupons promoted Istanbul Hilton hotel and other clients. The game implied influence on the editorial policy of "3 gongs" Rather complex for execution game but huge success.

From left, the commercial director of Evropa, Mr. J. Panchevski, the editor and anchor of "3 Gonga" Gjoko Georgiev, the presidfent of the workers' council of "Evropa", the director of OZEHA Kocho Dinev control the regularity of the first drawing of the One Million Dinars prize!

1970

Special rowing correspondent covering the devastating earthquake in Chimbote, Peru that took more than 45,000 lives;

Journalism does not only need a reporter capable of writing accurate and persuasive stories. This trip was made possible by the willingness of the then BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation, now BA, British Airways) to listen to arguments about the benefits of being promoted through a small-time provincial newspaper. Please see "The BOAC to Peru project"

Covered the UK general elections and the emergence of Edward Heath as prime-minister;

Also reported from New York, about Security Council sessions in the United Nations;

1971

Elected Secretary-general of the Union of Journalists of Macedonia (Zdruzenie na Novinarite na Makednija, ZNM)

contributing greatly in the establishment of the Inter-disciplinary studies of journalism at the "Kiril and Metodij" University in Skopje, developed a network of international connections of the ZNM,

Organized the first ever medical check-up of all journalists in Macedonia;

1972

With 24 distinguished editors from around the world was a VIP guest of the Federal Republic of Germany on the occasion of the XX Olympic games in Munich, met with Willy Brandt, wrote and published extensively about the social, economic and other aspects of the Olympic games for Germany;

Organized and lead the first Macedonian basketball team tour across Canada;

Appointed deputy editor-in-chief of "Vecer" daily newspaper;

Special foreign correspondent assignment in Egypt, Cad, Zaire and Guinea;

1973

VIP guest of the US Department of State and the US Information Agency on the distinguished European Economic Journalists' Tour meeting during a 4-week long cost-to-coast sojourn for in-depth interviews with various secretaries George Schultz, Kats, of the US Government departments, the Pentagon, Mayor Daley and Milton Friedman in Chicago, John Marriott Sr.;

Launched the first tourism-only weekly colour magazine "WEEKEND" published it as a supplement to daily "Vecer";

1974

Upon Communist Party orders. submitted to prolonged investigations for ideological deviation and relieved of the duty of deputy editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper "Vecer" as "liberal";

While everybody is dead-pan serious, I explain (to the strongman Dragoljub Stavrev, far right, mayor or Skopje, prime-minister, federal minister and president of the presidency of Macedonia among other positions) the editorial policy and why we have transformed the "party directive" into a highly readable copy: printed on treble thew usual number of pages "Vecer" sold out in two hours. My friend and editor Milco Kocev, next to Stavrev, was also relieved of his duties.

Appointed editor of "Pocinka", the tourism and weekend colour supplement to "Nova Makedonija daily;

Appointed city-desk editor of the "Nova Makedonija" daily newspaper;

Special correspondent for "Nova Makedonija" during the final weeks of president Richard Nixon's Administration and the transitional period;

1975

Relieved of all editorial duties and appointed Senior correspondent on finance and banking;

Guest of the Australian Government and Quantas Airlines on a study trip on ethnical minorities, their integration in the society and role in developing trade and economic relations with expatriate countries;

Re-Elected for a new 4-year term as Secretary-general of the Union of Journalists of Macedonia;

1976

Special assignment correspondent from Jerusalem.on the late president Anvar El Sadat's peace mission to Israel.

Subsequently covered the month-long peace talks in Cairo, and president Jimmy Carter's peace initiative and Menahem Begin's visit to Egypt;

1977

Represented the Union of Journalists of Yugoslavia at the UNESCO sponsored initiative session of the Club of the CESC (Helsinki) journalists in Paris;

Organized the first session of the Club of the CESC journalists in Ohrid and Skopje, Macedonia sponsored by Blagoj Popov, the prime-minister of Macedonia;

It was a feat bringing all these KEBS (OBSE) specialized journalists, headed by Henry Schwoebel from Le Monde, fifth from right, into the southernmost corner of Macedonia to establish a Club with an ambition to promote a New Information Order for the world.

Established the basis for the Club of Journalists in Skopje crowned by acquisition through a Government grant of property as a possession of the premises инownership of the ZNM;

Was a joint manager of the Conference on the New linformation Order, organized by the Union of the Journalists of Yugoslavia in Belgrade;

Initiated the Union of Journalists of Macedonia drive to establish interdisciplinary studies in journalism at the University of "Kiril & Metodij" in Skopje, formalising the arrangement successfully.

Guest of the Swedish royal house on occasion of their majesties official visit to Yugoslavia. Extensive reporting from Sweden on economic and political topics crowned by a special interview with the King and the Queen;

Upon their majesties' invitation, over a high tea at their palace, an introductory of the record briefing before their official visit to Yugoslavia and then an interview in Ohrid after a memorable dinner and dancing shared by both King and Queen who carried home my personal gift: a book of Macedonian embroidery

1979

Resigned from "Nova Makedonija" upon appointment to the position of director of the Yugoslav National Tourist Office for Greece and Cyprus. Remained in Athens for the full four-year term of the tenure;

With d-r Milan Mazi, deputy minister for economy of SFRY, represented Yugoslavia in the bilateral negotiations for tourist cooperation signed in Athens

1983

Returned to "Nova Makedonija" daily as a foreign affairs senior editor writing on NATO and OECD countries.

1984

Guest, for the second time, of the US State Department on the occasion of the Presidential Election; a guest speaker to the Secretary's Forum during 5 weeks study trip;

1985

Guest of Information Office of Her Majesty's Government at an invitation by the British ambassador. Intensive study-trip on the question of ethnic and cultural diversity in UK and in particular Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

1986

Engaged by WDR (West Deutsche Rundfunk) as their special correspondent for Macedonia;

1986

Guest of the Ministry of culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey, a 5-weeks long educational and fact gathering study-trip for the updated edition of a guide-book on Turkey;

1987

Appointed Promotion & PR manager for the official Yugoslav entry ("Happy New '49" a Stole Popov f1lm) in the Best Foreign Film category for the Academy of Motion Pictures (Oscar) Award in Hollywood, USA; Despite all odds organized hugely successful previews, discussions (Elia Kazan, George Milkovich) and shows in New York, The Kennedy Watergate Center in Washington, Los Angeles and Hollywood.

Resigned from "Nova Makedonija" daily newspaper because of ideological differences;

Worked part-time with outdoor . advertising equipment producer in Los Angeles;

1988

Elected Secretary-general of the National Tourist Office of Macedonia;

1989

Elected representative of the Yugoslav National Tourist Office for the Netherlands, appointed director of the office in Amsterdam with a four-year tenure; Yugoslav National Tourist Office dissolves in 1991;

1991

Correspondent for the Macedonian Television, "Republika" daily, Macedonian Radio, and a stringer for the WDR and the BBC, "Zbor"

Appointed member of the Publishing Board of the "Macedonian Newsmagazine", the first English language media in Macedonia;

1992 to 2002

Running in the rat race

2003 to present

A bit of this and that

OTHER PROFESSIONAL AND CREATIVE WORK

1966

Translated the novel "To Kill The Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, from its original into Macedonian. Publisbed by "Makedonska Kniga" Publishing House;

1967

Translated the "Naked Ape" by Desmond Morris for ZID publishing house which could not publish it on grounds of "immorality";

1967

Received a commission to write a guide book on Greece. The paid text and the project frozen because of the military coup in Greece;

1968

Published, independently, a guidebook titled "Everybody's Turkey", in Serbo-Croat;

1970

Translated the novel "Rabbit Run" by John Updike for the United Publishers "ZID" which published it for the first time in Yugoslavia receiving laudatory reviews

1985

FC "Vardar" qualifies for the UEFA Cup and upon the request of the Mayor of Skopje and the leadership of the club represents the most popular soccer club of Macedonia first at the draw of the pairs and then, as the guest of the club, at the official contacts with FC Dundee in Scotland. For the return leg in Skopje conceptualizes, produces and finances the first ever "official program" for any sporting event in Macedonia. Please click here if interested in the full racount of this project;

Practically every single project I have created is a story of co-operation, expert work and complex arrangements seemingly easy to set in motion. There were less than 12 hundred people in the packed stadium of some 30,000 fans ready to shed a dollar for this souvenir edition

1988

Once elected secretary-general, revitalizes the Macedonian National Tourist Office (Turisticki Sojuz na Makedonija) by tireless work over its organizational structure, principal documents, program, delegating people from provincial offices to travel to federal level meetings, mobilizing funds, moving the presidency to action-designed conferences out of the capital, bringing federal and commercial funds into the emptied account, publishing and supporting audacious initiatives;

The project "Summer in Macedonia" results with a small info-booklet of 42 pages designed solely for distribution abroad although it was a vehicle for collecting funds from 36 advertisers. In the left bottom corner, on Lake Prespa, two close allies, Mr. Avramchev and Mr. Zarichin, members of the Presidency of TSM and bosses of the richest regional offices and Click here please if interested in this far-reaching project.

1988

Creates and designs a publicity campaign "Macedonia in a Search of a Young Rembrandt" targeted at 450,000 Dutch tourists visiting Yugoslavia every year;

1989

Creates and executes in Zagreb, Croatia, a week-long enthusiastically received presentation titled "The Herbal Holidays in Macedonia" (*) in musea and top locations of the Croat capital;
...
The presidency of the YNTO elects and appoints me its representative (director) of the Office for the Netherlands with a seat in Amsterdam.

1990
In co-operation with Victor Smit from Advic B.V. and Vincent Prange conceptualizes and executes complex most successful publicity campaigns. The number of arrivals, overnights and expenditure by Dutch tourists in Yugoslavia reaches all time high, record levels;
With d-r prof. Slobodan Unkovic, recor magnificus of the University of Belgrade, after a series of interviews in the Netherlands, co-authors a remarkable study about the specifics and potentials of the Dutch tourist market,

From top left: The office opposite the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is refurbished in style; d-r prof. Slobodan Unkovic, then rector of Belgrade University, latter president of the Parliament, ambassador to China, with Mrs Cvetkova-Popova and Victor Smit, probably the best advertising copy writer in the Netherlands; Presentations on Vakantiebeurs are full of events, craftsmanship presentations and maximum innovation; The Dutch are equestrian nation> for the first and last time ever I bring 20 famous lipitsaner horses from Lipica stud farm for the Jumping Amsterdam event attended by the crown prince; A special (please see the explanation) ad in the largest Dutch daily attracts maksimum attention. Overnights by Dutch tourist hit highest point ever.

1991

With Victor Smit who runs a fine advertising enterprise ADVIC b.v. works on a complex project envolving importers of renown carmakers, Dutch automobile association ANWB, yugoslav hoteliers and local authorities to produce in one million copies the pilot of the Yugoslav Automobile Newspaper (Autokrant Jopegoslavie) as a multifaceted vehicle for Yugoslav tourist promotion. This beautiful project is torpedoed by the looming atrocious wars on the Balkans.

The project is based on the huge number of Dutch tourists traveling for holidays by car, on the 450,00 new vars purchased annually and on the link between the lettering of the Dutch and the registration plates of the (former) Yugoslav cities, towns and boroughs. The two letters "ST" mean nothing for the Duch car owner or driver but in the republics of former Yugoslavia "ST" mean that that particular car (eventually a BMW or Jaguar) comes from Split, the city of Emperor Dioclecian. Such a link in this project implied €1500 cash value. Please see how!

1991

With d-r prof. Zlatka Popovska creates, designs and prints in Amsterdam, as a personal donation, 25,000 posters for the election campaign of the late Kiro Popovski who becomes vice-president of the parliament;

1992

Establishes Balkan-Babylon Consulting, a family partnership firm (Dutch V.O.F. or Venotschaap onder Firma) registered with the Kamers vaan Koophandel of Amsterdam, specializing in tourism, marketing, PR, investment, advertising and publishing. The Macedonian government is the first client and in cooperation with Mr. Victor Smit from Advic B.V. it produces the first tourist maps and folders for the Dutch market and despite protests by the Greek embassy designs and executes a most successful pavilion presentation during the Vakantiebeurs Utrecht in January 1993

There are people who believe that lots of billboards with a family on a sandy beach and a tiny "from" followed by a huge " €285 a week all inclusive" is enough for success. They insult the acumen of the customer. This is a different complex multifunctional project I designed and executed firmly believing in it. Please do have a look at the Aristotelian wijnplank project..

1993

Contracted through Balkan-Babylon Consulting to conceptualize and execute for the Ministry of economy of Macedonia the presentation of the tourist industry of that country at the ITB Berlin, the largest and most important tourist business-to-business event in the world

Philips Nederlandse Bedrijven N.V. becomes another customer and contracts Balkan-Babylon for its investment projects (reconstruction of the airports and PTT equipment) in Macedonia

In a capacity of Advisor for Philips on a basis of a Letter of Intent by the Macedonian Government organized a work visit for five directors of the electronics giant to Macedonia with business talks between Philips team and the prime-minister, CEOs of the largest firms, mayors, rectors and the Civil Aviation authority.

Philips directors and myself disappointed by blatant corruption. Huge complex project goes down the drain.

1994

With Zito-Luks A.D. from Skopje, the largest bakery producer in Macedonia, registers a joint-venture firm "Rovako" D.O.O. on 50:50 basis (a terrible mistake) specializing in wholesales for catering industry with an exclusive retail showroom DOM for English fine bone china.

Royal Worcester Ltd grants Balkan-Babylon a status of sole dealership for Macedonia.

Arranges a Representative status with Josiah Wedgwood & Sons. Ltd

Royal Porcelaine Limoges, Churchill China Plc. from Stoke-on-Trent, Dunoon , Wren, Royal Mosa become exclusive suppliers.

1995

The business developed and then William Turner Master Cutlers from Sheffield, Sola Zeist cutlery, Mayflower Glass Co.Ltd., the renown Royal Talens B.V., Hallmark, Wavin Trepack, R.D. de Jong Papier, produced for us under our design packaging in plastic and paper.

...

Balkan-Babylon was exclusive exporter (in our special packaging) of dry yeast for the Macedonian consumer market from Gist Brocades. the world leader in yeast and bakery additives production,

On the basis of oral, telex and phone enticements the project "SUPER KVASEC" ("Super yeast") was conceptualized and designed in-house from scratch. 250,000 sachets of 8 gr. yeast were produced and delivered with 55,000 booklets and sleeves. Please read the full account about this amazing, costly and if you ever intend to deal with Macedonian firms - dramatically revealing project.

We have designed and through Studio America executed special forms of light-truck advertising for the DAF delivery vehicles we have exported to Macedonia.

1996

Due to one of the few gross errors of judgment of characters combined with total lack of due intelligence Balkan-Babylon accepts to become the General Agent for the Benelux of MAT, now the defunct Macedonian Airlines. The significant investment of funds, prestige and the revival of Macedonia as a tourist destination is gambled away by the gargantuan duplicity and total incompetence of the owner-managerial group of MAT; Please see "The Bitter Experience of Dealing with the Macedonian Airlines"

For the Dutch market Balkan-Babylon publishes and distributes (1000 copies circulation per issue) 8-page bulletins in English and in Macedonian languages separately, about the significance and other practical information related to the Skopje-Amsterdam direct flight;

2004

Registers domains for web-portals www.albanija.com, www.britanija.com, www.germanija.com, www.grcija.com (fully operational) www.bugarija.com, www.turcija.net (fully operational)

2005

Begins blogging with the Dutch "De Volkskrant" facility as Spectator (Harvesting Dutch Absurds)

2006

Published the illustrated traveler's companion "Turcija". Lavishly reviewed by Mr. Guner Ismail, former minister of culture of Macedonia and Blagoja Ivanov, renown author and retired University professor, the book is introduced by HE Melpomeni Korneti, ambassador of Macedonia in Ankara.

The 400+ pages heavily illustrated book is instant success and second enlarged edition follows same year.

2007

Guest of the Government of the Turkish Northern Cyprus Republic on occasion of the independence jubilee with the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayup Erdogan attending.

2009

From prime-minister Recep Tayup Erdogan receives in Istanbul "Distinguished Senior Citizens of the World" award

Macedonia can outsmart its neighbors

2009-11-23T21:45:00.004+01:00

A Macedonian daily published today an opinion that the neighbors of the poor country (Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Kosovo) are tightening the noose around it with an intention to suffocate and then quarter Macedonia. The long (1506 words) article, quite above the internet patience limit, attracted 5232 visits so far and numerous, very angry comments.

One among them tells the author (Dimitar Culev) that he is wrong for blaming the government of Macedonia of confused reaction and total lack of strategy because he himself does not have a clue how to respond to this situation.

This was the straw that broke the back of my patience. I simply must speak out.

Neither the present government nor its predecessors have committed any such crimes that deserve a Balkan-type posse after this peaceful nation whose only crime is the inspiration and the courage to call itself after its own name which now they all contest and claim theirs. My suggestion is that the people of Macedonia and the government must stay calm until the 7th of December when the EU needs to decide about the beginning of the accession talks. Then, in case no such date is set by the EU - two separate actions are needed.

First, the people have to press its government to let them speak out on a referendum about this unbearable state of affairs.

Second, the government, the president, the parliament have to declare their view of the situation in a joint State of the Republic of Macedonia Declaration.

This needs to lead to a proposal for declaring the Republic of Macedonia a visa-free, sort of off-shore country, duty and tax-free entity. A sort of a mixed legislation resembling a combination of Luxembourg, Andorra, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Panama.

Let all the neighbors, Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Kosovars and Serbs travel and sojourn in Macedonia to buy Bayonne ham and Hertz salami, Rolex and Ulisse-Nardin watches, gold in bullion, olive oil, gas, tires, automobile parts and cars, Apple computers and iPhones, Zegna and Armani clothes at prices with AT LEAST 15% discount. Let the government turn Macedonia in the shopping mall of the Balkans.

How will the lost revenue from taxes be compensated?

By explosion of employment, capital inflow and - why not say it - trimming the bureaucracy and the armed forces. Transfer the pressure on the neighbors. Let them maltreat their own citizens returning with piles of purchases from Macedonia. Let them respond how is THAT phenomenon possible.

Make Macedonia the shop-window of all the attractive and necessary goods produced in the world and suddenly available at 30%-35% lower prices than in Salonika or Sofia and 20% beneath those in Tirana, Pristina and Nis where the goods are of dubious provenance.

The Parliament would have to kick upwards or sidewise the stubborn governor of the central bank and open the doors wide for foreign commercial and investment banks. There is a possibility of at least 5000 jobs to open up in that sector overnight.

The remodeling of the entertainment and tourist industry is a must with or without this arrangement. Casinos and all sorts of gambling facilities with red-light sections along the presently sleepy border communities. Legalize soft-drugs like the Dutch. Scrap the stupid law forbidding the farmers to meddle with the poppy, pass the initiative to your starved people, invite Pfizer and Novartis as consultants. SImply. No money, just use the pencil and some of your brains.

That is my proposal to evade the noose your Balkan neighbors are tightening around your neck dear Macedonia.

Robbing the poor pensioners

2009-11-21T12:47:00.004+01:00

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

2009-11-21T03:55:00.012+01:00

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?

2009-11-20T14:08:00.003+01:00

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?

2009-11-20T13:57:00.005+01:00

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

2007-06-22T22:50:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-22T14:33:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-22T14:30:00.000+02:00

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

French philandering and Segoleme

2007-06-19T13:23:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-29T10:45:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-20T11:49:00.000+01:00

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?

2007-02-18T21:53:00.000+01:00

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.

Siemens Needed €38 m. For Bribes in Saudi Arabia, Do You Think €3 m. is Enough in Macedonia?

2007-02-08T14:05:00.000+01:00

Siemens is a worldwide multinational corporation employing 450,000 people, 21st on the Fortune Global 500 list with $91 billion of revenues and Delta Holding from Belgrade, employing some 14,000, also pretending to be a multinational firm, not on the Fortune 500 list, about $2 bln in revenues, can hardly compare with it. Or so it seems at a first glance.
But, when one looks better, it appears that these two companies have something interesting in common. Both are involved in very high profile bribe cases. In strongly alleged criminal activity.
Siemens makes and sells electrical and electronic products and systems from toasters to trains, from hearing aids to power stations. It works in 190 countries round the world. Delta Holding is mainly engaged in the foodstuffs like diary products, Serbian cheese, or meat, cereals, but it also sells consumer goods others produce or services of its own. It appears that Delta Holding is an ambition-lead firm and will expand in other countries. What better than begin with the neighboring ones (Croatia, Bulgaria, Macedonia) before it makes 180-200 like Siemens.
Back to Siemens - Delta Holding "bribes for expansion" similarity.
In November last year (75 days ago) a squad of of German policemen raided Siemens headquarters, arrested several suspects, took whatever they were told was interesting and ignited a big fireball of an international bribe scandal. The Munich public prosecutor's office chases Siemens for bribing foreign citizens do things that would benefit the German multinational firm.
To-day's Wall Street Journal runs a top of the first-page story under a title Key Siemens figure talks and specifies that a $50 million bribe to individuals in Saudi Arabia was confirmed by a witness (who is also a suspect) who flew in and gave himself up to the prosecutors willing to help the investigation and get leniency in exchange. That is just a fraction of the $545 million approximated as spent on bribes during the past seven years by Siemens top executives. $420 million were uncovered so far.
Now, after a self-promoting lawyer (Aleksandar Tortevski (formerly deputy leader with the League of Democracy political party presided by his university professor) blabbed that Nikola Gruevski the prime-minister of Macedonia refused to accept a €3 million bribe - the Pandora box opened and the first question was: who extended the bribe? Before long "Delta Holding" from Belgrade and its CEO Miroslav Mishkovic were implicated. The deputy CEO of "Delta-Holding" Milka Forcan, a very charming an efficient person, demanded the allegations were substantiated with names or squashed. The macho crowd in Skopje disregarded her appeal. Then the big boss sent a growling letter to the president of Macedonia Branko Crvenkovski suggesting he intervened or a court case was in the looming. The president publicly distanced himself from any mediation. Thus, a Balkan impasse.

Or is it so?
Of course it is not.
The Serbian prosecutor has a formal statement by the Macedonian government that somebody in the name of "Delta-Holding" offered a bribe to the prime-minister of a sovereign country. If $5o million (€38 million) are needed for bribing officials in Saudi Arabia where dollar bills fly as used parking tickets, paltry €3 million for church-mouse poor Macedonia is a pile of money, more than adequate. So, the Serbian prosecutor could (following the practice of his German colleagues) give order for a raid on "Delta-Holding" in search of evidence. The fact that in this particular case the alleged bribe was not consummated - is totally besides the point. The admission (from the receiving end of the allegation) that there was an offer for a bribe indicates that there might have been other, consummated bribes by "Delta-Holding" in Macedonia or elsewhere. That would, further on, imply that moneys evaded the tax laws in Serbia, hurt the treasury, although I do not believe that the German Bundesrepublic publicly drags Siemens (Nr.1 electronics firm on the planet) in the filth of corruption only for possible $80 million of uncollected tax. I think that the principle is in question.

Thus, I can understand that Serbia does not deliver Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to this butcher of a lawyer Carla del Ponte because its constitution for the past 75 years effectively forbid any extradition of the citizens of the country under any pretext - but I cannot understand why the prosecutor of Serbia does not budge in this case? If Mr. Mishkovic is proven right that "Delta-Holding" does not resort to corruption, so much the better. The Serbian side can, at the same time, press the Macedonian legal system clarify what is what. The two prosecutors and police could cooperate. Such an event appears incomprehensible at the moment but that is exactly my point.
The Balkans needs the rule of law. The Balkans crave for honest cooperation. The Balkans plead for normality. But the Balkans also need to get rid of innuendoes and of smear, of hush-hush attacks on any public servant or individual. It is not true that "all of them are thieves".
Unfortunately, as we have seen recently, the Balkans do not forget the adage that the early singing rooster is the first to end up in the pot. Setting in motion the clogs of the justice grinder may help things to move to the better.

How d-r Devica Smilevska-Kapetanovic Became a Specialist General Practitioner with the AMC Amsterdam

2007-01-27T00:13:00.000+01:00

Do not ask me why, but doctors, especially shrinks, wizards and witches, fortune tellers, healers, vets et all , well, they are nicely listed in the ghost-busters' chapter of my simple book of professional classification. That is not derogative. The financial wizards of the Financial Times and political analysts of the Economist are irrevocably tucked in the voodoo section, right at the end. I have a feeling that this is not the right opening for this post, but this came spontaneously, just as was my first reaction (admiration) to the news that my beloved friend Devica (means "Virgin" in Macedonian, though she is the physical of two grown up charming kids and a long-time spouse of a notorious womanizer Bruno Kapetanovic presently from Heemstede, otherwise an international entrepreneur of semi-Montenegrin roots from Skopje, Macedonia.

We met the other day, I think I did mention that here already, at Sasa and Valentina Vlaski's reception on occasion of Sveti Jovan or St. John's day. There she told me, not right away, but as a reply to a question (how's medicine?) and she was besides herself out of joy, and then, slowly, my reaction gave her wings, she, always so very calm and so very shy, gave in, spilled it ll and showed it. I mean she allowed herself to express, in her own very subtle, very modest, very noble way, the quiet joy of her success.

Ever since she and Bruno came here, some 17 years ago, she toiled, she learned Dutch and Latin, passed one after another exam, rose a beautiful daughter (now their Bruna is 16, a real young woman already) gave birth to a son (Danilo, 9, baptized after her father-in-law)and went through thin and thick with her man and still conquered everything and became yet another Macedonian specialist medical doctor highly esteemed with the Academish Medisch Centrum of Amsterdam. Yeas. And Yes again. I am so very proud with Devi!

But then, of course, there is more, much more to it than it meets the eye. All it takes is patience, especially on these orthodox occasions: the most interesting stories spoon slowly and one needs to be concentrated, otherwise a carefully extended hook for catching on a reference is missed and you are off the cliff. Thus, when I ask her what was her maiden name, she smiles imperceptibly and says Smilevska and sends a quick-look sonde, a probe to sense whether that rang a bell. It did not. I make a full of myself and go on to find, eventually, out that her Dad sat in the Presidency of the Union of Journalists of Macedonia, D-r Blaze Smislevski, the chair of the Commission of working and living conditions of the journalists.
Then, only then, the big picture explodes in front of my eyes. I remember her Dad perfectly well, I know that he worked with prof.d-r Ivan Mikulcic the father of my daughter-in-law who told me stories about the guy. What a world. And all that happens in a "woonkamer" of a house in Delft of Vermeer, some 3,000 km away from her Dad and my in-law!. But I know the house where her Dad lived as a kid, an amiable guy specialist in sport medicine.
Then her husband dives in and says:
-My father was very good friend with professor Mikulcic, too.
-What, the military secret services watched over the the shoulders of digging archaeologists? Shared the spoils of science, did they?
-You are daft. They drank together.
Now, I stop for a moment and reflect: Macedonia has given so many good doctors to the Netherlands. When I came here in 1989 as the Yugoslav National Tourist Office representative, Blagoja K. Janevski was a top-ranking professor with the Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, ph.d. in medicine, world authority in radiology and one of his books (Angiography of the upper extremity) still sells all over internet (at +$200 apiece) as an indispensable tool for new radiologists! Pettish details? No, nei, nixon, non. That is quality. Now deceased, Vojkan Vuzevski was a pathology professor at Erasmus. d-r Igor. I. Tulevski not only graduated, he earned a ph.d. in medicine from the University of Amsterdam and (after B. K. Janevski is one of the most quoted Dutch medicine men for the last 10-20 years. That is how I measure quality of contribution to science, society, whatever. There are more: MD Filip B. Eftimov after graduating from UvA is working, at the AMC Amsterdam, on his specialization, I think in gynecology, dear him. MD Stefan V, Arsov (who my grandson refers to as "Frankenstein" because he thinks that Stefan gets kidneys from dead people to make a new body) has just begun his work as a nephrologyst with the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen on a most interesting project. And there is this charming pediatrist here in Amstelveen who has yet to tell me more what does she do now.

Well, I am looking for that party Devica and Bruno are going to throw soon to celebrate the big event, to meet all these ghost-busters of degrading flesh and ask Blaze Smilevski how do the journalists in Macedonia endure the run up to Europe!

Bejanovska-Levavasseur Translates Bogomil Gjuzel, Fires Flames of Painful Memories

2007-01-25T00:02:00.000+01:00

She, my friend Marija Bejanovska-Levavsseur did not know what did she was doing when she hit enter and her e-mail clinked on my iMac. Rose a fury of memories and sentiments so nicely buried away. She wrote that one of these days a publisher in Belgium will promote her latest project, translation of a book of poetry titled "Under siege" with her introduction about the author, Bogomil Gjuzel (here left). She could have just as well hit me with a baseball bat.

We were 10 or 11. We sat in the same class of Goce Delcev elementary school. We were the best. My dad and mum were in two different communist goulags. His dad was hung by the communists when we were six. He was pensive. Who would not be. I think the kids knew. There was never a hint of a comment. We played, during recesses, Vinetou. He lead. Small. Large chick-bones. Huge deep-set eyes. He was the first who read Karl May and he assigned the roles for us. He was Old Shatterhand, the blood-brother of Vinetou. I was Fat Jim. Even then, 57 years ago. We jumped over the most dangerous construction blocks with rusted, murderous irons shooting at their edges. In retrospect, he might have had enough and wanted to die. Others fell, hurt themselves badly, even seriously and eventually that game was forbidden. It, thus, became a double challenge.

Then, when the whole school went on an excursion several miles away and when we were returning, during some crimson-clouded, half-dark sunset back to Skopje, the teacher moved us two aside and told us, as delicately as she could, that we, Bogomil and I, would not go with the class to congratulate the birthday of our Dear Marshal Tito as we were earlier told we would. This is not a try-out in literature to revive the conversation but eventually we understood that the class will go as scheduled but we two will not go as scheduled.

That was it. It was dark. I let tears roll down my cheecks. I think the teacher (Milka Sekulovska) also let one or two to swell in the corners of her eyes, but it was very late and I cannot swear on it. We, me and Milka, met latter, many - 40 to be exact - years latter. For the first time we were on a social occasion in Greece, where she was visiting her daughter, now a friend of mine, and it was impossible turning withered pages of memories. All this is pointless, I have struck it out of my mind. Bogomil is alive, he can describe his emotions.
But then, after an incident or two we were both involved in that school things changed. Once we sort of led a revolt or something, there was investigation, reprimands, and soon after he disappeared. His mother or sister moved elsewhere. He moved to a different school. So, I lost sight of Bogomil Dimitar Gjuzelov, my very early, very cherished schooll-friend. He graduated, strange, also English language, at the same college, in a different period. Destiny.

Some 14 years latter, one sunny autumn of 1964, with me just back after a year of studying phonetics and literature in London, there was the reminder of some of the most tormenting and most precious memories of my childhood. Bogomil Gjuzel, the proud author of a second book of poetry, the Alchemical Rose, responding to my invitation that we chat over old times and his new, very modern form of poetry in the journalists club of "Nova Makedonija" daily. I was hopelessly unprepared for his poetry. He was mad angry, if I remember correctly, and it took us some time to socialize again.
Our daughters (On the pic up) appear to go along quite well. His Irena is quite a story because she was, for a time, the spokeswoman of the European Union rep in Macedonia. I always wandered if she was ever going to burst out. She never did.
I believe that she turned every single available piece of paper about her grand father Dimitar Gjuzelov, here left, (the link takes you to a Bulgarian source and language account of his biography) and that she knows (and understands) way more about the most delicate subtleties of the Balkan reality than the people she interprets for.

But all this has little to do with the newest translation, now into French, of Bogomil Gjuzel's poetry. I do no know whether Marija knows much about Bogomil's personal life. I got so bewildered the other day with the scenes of Saddam's hanging, I could not gather my piece for days. And my very first thought flew to Boge (that's how we called him, and those of us who are around still do) and I asked myself, how does HE take these awful pictures. Where do the surface in his poems?
On the other hand what I wanted was to laudate both him and his translator Marija Bejanovska-Levavaseur without loosing from mind the publisher, Maison de la poesie D'Amay. Wanted to help promote his poetry. And I will, eventually. This is just a beginng, because I'll continue the text. Probably here. But you will definitely find out.

The Hague Tribunal Announcement: Boskoski's Trial Begins April 17; Gotovina's May 7th

2007-01-20T13:24:00.000+01:00

Yesterday late aftrfnoon the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal fo former Yugoslavia came out with two long awaited announcements about begining of two trials. One refers to Ante Gotovina, Croatian general, the other about Ljube Boskoski, Macedonian former minister of interior. The indictment against Ljube Baskoski, 46, and Johan Tarchulovski, 32, was issued in December 2005. It charges them with violations of the laws of customs of war". That is judiciary parlance. In simple talk that means "war crimes". Boskoski is charged with "superior responsibility for the act of regular and reserve police including special police units, prison guards, hospital personnel and civilians...A superior is responsible for the criminal acts of his subordinates if he knew or had reason to know that his subordinates were about to commit such acts or had done so and the superior failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or to punish the perpetrators. Ljube Boskoski failed to fulfill his duty as a superior to investigate and punish the perpetrators of the crimes alleged below:"

And then comes the litany of crimes allegedly committed by police-squad members under Johan Tarculovski's command. Practically the text that follows is a legal and logical mess. For me, it shows how totally incompetent Carla del Ponte actually is and how prophetically right was Slobodan Milosevic who in the opening statement said: "She has a brain of a 7-year, of a 7-year old retarded child".

So, the original indictment (the trial will go on the basis of the second and amended indictment, a bigger mess than the original one) shows that:
1. Ljube Boskoski did not kill anybody;
2. Johan Tarculoski did not kill anybody;
3. He, Tarculovski, did not order anybody to shoot;
4. Both could not have known that people were killed;
5. Some armed thugs or rebels were pursued in their escape (point 22 of the indictment): two ran away (one wounded one unharmed) while three did not share that luck. They, allegedly, were 150 meters away from the place where the the police was and eventually got shot down.
Legally, the defense claims that the prosecution is wrong on form and fact, that changing the indictment is tantamount to an abuse of process

How can this constitute a war crime?

CARLA PAINTS THE MACEDONIAN POLICE AS A BUNCH OF LUNATICS
This Swiss stubborn nit-wit drives me mad with what she stutters with the context of the indictment produced in the name of the United Nations.
She pictures an outlandish situation: she does not herself explain what happened on August 12, 2001 around Ljuboten, a village not far from Skopje, near Tetovo, I personally have known as a thriving agricultural community for more than a half of a century. She does not tell the court why did a police unit of the Macedonian ministry of interior appear there. Why indeed?
How many policemen were in the unit?
How were they equipped?
Who sent them there?
She does not say that John Tarculovski ordered his favorite seargent: "Shoot him". She produces an indictment in which a faceless policeman or two, shoot without orders.
Why were they, the police, sent there then and not a year, three years or 23 years before that?
Does this idiotically stupid indictment want to say that the Macedonian police is a bunch of disorderly men who are allowed to go out on shooting sprees whenever they chose?

FIRE AGAINST ARMED "THUGS AND MURDERS" or "UNARMED CIVILIANS"?
Why was Ljube Boskoski guilty of not listening to her while he (Boskoski) and prof-d-r Gjorgje MarjanoviK, my schoolmate and European legal authority, had hear the secretary-general of NATO, Lord Robertson stating that there were armed thugs and murderers gone amok around Macedonia and that such a situation should not be tolerated?
Was Ljube Boskkoski expected to read newspapers and her while disregarding NATO secretary-general?
Is it possible that ANY of the individuals that day located in or around Ljuboten were illegally armed?
If so - what sort of arms those were, how were they acquired, why were they used?
Did she, this CArla del Ponte ask herself where, for how long and with what purpose were the farmers trained to use the arms? Did they import them from the EU (Macedonia does not produce any arms at all) or from somewhere else?

How (this is a rhetoric question, it means no-how) can one believe into the impartiality of a court that accepts this crap as an indictment? The justices were obliged to throw it out because Carla del Ponte had to produce the names of every single policeman in the unit. And then pin the ones who pulled (if they did pull) the triggers.
Triggers of what? Did they use bazookas? Machine-guns? Cross-bows? What, dammit?
Eh my Carla, my Carla.
Slobo was right, you know.

FORTHCOMING DEFENSE OF THE INDICTED
The Office of the Prosecutor was earlier disqualified (by a renown, internationally recognized, Tribunal-paid lawyer) to have compound indictments with a shot-gun like (spray-pellets) ammo. She produces 15-20 counts to support her main case and one of those will do the trick. Furthermore, she calls to the stand every possible prosecution-friendly individual who may coraborate to her fancy theory that idiotic Macedonian were out on an unprovoked attack of peaceful, law-abiding ethnic-Albanians. Some of her witnesses in other cases were evidently proven to have lied, but there is no threat of perjury or lying under oath in this Tribunal. Thus, if the defense is not extra-carefull - a false witness-statement can ruin any of the indicted.

The justices did not publicly or otherwise, warn the Chief prosecutor that she willingly tries to interfere with the course of the trial no judge (but the Chinese) dared bring her to senses and tell her that what she is doing is wrong.

This time she deserves to be quartered, covered with tar and feathers and dragged around the world legal community as an example of a lopsided, shamelessly biased prosecutor who begins to believe in her messianic role. The poor woman is nuts.

I expect that Boskoski's defense will have some tough time ahead.
The trial chamber is composed of judges Carmel Agius from Malta, O-Gon Kwon and Kimberly Prost. IN the pre-triel appearances judge Albin Eser was involved. The prosecution is represented by Dan Saxon and Anees Ahmed, but also `Keneth Scott and William Smith. Counsel for Boskoski is Ms Edina Residovic (previosly, till 13 April 2006, Dragan Godzo) , while Johan Tarculovski has Antonio Apostolski as his defense counsel.

(To be completed: defense costs / which witnesses to cal and grill / political repercusions in Macedonia and Croatia)

Ghastly Beating Results With 80 Police Summons in Skopje, Macedonia; New Developments

2007-01-18T13:58:00.000+01:00

Now, full five days after the ghastly incident in Skopje (when organized thugs have beaten up peaceful elderly people commemorating a historic event of 79 years ago) the police in Macedonia was pressed to do something while some of the local media, most unwillingly, have begun reporting instead of commenting about it by pouring new anti-Bulgarian oil on the already high fire. The "+++flash+++" news about six arrests published here yesterday now appear insignificant.
Not six but EIGHTY members of the Vardar soccer club supporting Komiti associations were summoned to a central police station "for informative talks". Many were kept there more than 12 hours. (Strange link appears under "Komiti.com" doesn't it? Obviously a mix-up, but quite appropriate for the siuation, eh?)
Komiti were Macedonian armed "rebels" or "revolutionaries" -depending on the position one looked at them- who fought against the rule of the Ottoman empire over Macedonia more than 100 years ago. Now they are an unruly, incident provoking, mostly poorly or not educated mass of youngsters composed of
allegedly patriotic, mainly nationalistic gangs.

FUCK YOUR MACEDONIAN MOTHER"
The daily Utrinski Vesnik after two consecutive texts silenced its editorialist Victor Cvetonvski, a proven anti-Bulgarian, hate-spreading journalist and gave its column to Ljubisa Stankovic, an ethnic-Serb reporter, probably with intention to further perfidiously enrage the local and the international public. Stankovic tells a story that the thugs (now referred by him as "Komiti" and "soccer supporters") were revolted with the attitude of the police. Now the public understands that the thugs have their legitimate office space where they were gathered to plan details for forthcoming sport events, not related to soccer but to handball. Their legal counsel (this group is obviously well funded) Vanco Shahtanski was quoted stating that the thugs were provoked by the people who latter called the police to defend them. This bright Macedonian patriotic lawyer is further welcome to tell the readership of Utrinski Vesnik were chanting slogans like "(Fuck) Your Macedonian mother" and "This is Bulgaria, the other side is Albania".

DEFENDERS OF MACEDONIAN HONOR
The smart whatever, continues claiming that his clients found about the commemoration from the media. This lawyer Shahtanski is quoted by Stankovic as claiming that among the group that was attacked were four Macedonian secret-service officers and officials of Macedonian political parties.
Now, how do naive soccer or handball supporters know the faces of various secret-servec officers of Macedonia is another story, but as they say in Macedonia: "Skopsko (beer) and everything is possible". What secret service when their faces are publicly known?

It is very interesting that the editors of Utrinski Vesnik chose to use this quote by the capable lawyer Shehtanski: Whatever the story, those who took part in the incident in the heart of Skopje only defended the Macedonian honor. This sort of go-jo legal capacity protagonis, somebody with a different name but with the same acumen to make stupid outings, appeared a year ago before the Tribunal in The Hague to defend Ljube Boskoski, the former minister of interior. The lawyer (praised by his professor G. Marjanovik) was so confused and told so incredible stuff that the presiding justice Carmel Agius laughed him out. Nobody needs to that with Shahtanski.

SOCCER FANS AS A COMPANY OF FOUR PLATOONS
If the summoned crowed in the police station in Skopje wore uniforms, they would have been enough to form a company as a military unit with 3-4 platoons. Just in case that not all of those who participated in the grisly incident were summoned, but every third of the crowd that had beaten up elderly people, it means that the melee at Mara Buneva plaque in downtown capital of aspiring EU candidate-member country, a force of a battalion of thugs were quickly gathered to defend the "Macedonian honor". Hey: a full battalion-size crowd wielding bats and hurling cement blocks and no police around. And Why on Earth would they do it? You might not have known, but here is their lawyer. To defend the honor of the nation!

Shahtanski says that "Mara Buneva is a Macedonian and a part of Macedonian history" . Then people who place flowers on the place where she fell showed respect. Why beat them up?
Because of what they chanted, says the lawyer. But did they?

Anyway, what excuse there can be for the chief of police when a company of thugs runs amok through downtown Skopje beating people and screaming while the patrolmen idle around? Why all this post-festum now? Why doesn't he resign before the minister fires him. because that is where the whole story will have to end.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA OR THE PLAY OF SRDJAN KERIM
It is obvious that the police in Skopje has goofed it big. Spectacular and well executed apprehension of a well loaded single courier of an international drug-smugglers chain cannot balance this gaffe. Eventually, the administration in Skopje will easily find out a way out on the police side of the story about public safety, law and order stuff. The problem, though is elsewhere.
The present and former Bulgarian ambassadors, the media in Sofia and the minister of foreign affairs himself claim that the media in Macedonia have hiked the anti-Bulgarian campaign and that the incident was a direct result of such an attitude. Utrinski Vesnik and its op-ed vizard Victor Cvetanovski have a prominent role in that campaign. The problem is that the administration cannot do a thing: the freedom of the press shelters the attitude in question. Plus one more tiny element: the printed media are practically in the hands or owned by German Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) group. That one is run by three directors or "Geschäftsführers". The last one of the three here is allegedly a friend of Srdjan Kerim: Dr. h.c. Erich Schumann, Dr. Detlef Haaks, Bodo Hombach, And kerim is director of "influential" Utrinski Vesnik, of pop Vest and the largest circulation of all dailies Dnevnik.

A bird tells me that there is always a higher ranking priest: if the Macedonian government cannot do a thing, the Bulgarian, according to that bird, will remove its consent for Srdjan Kerim's candidacy" as president of the next year session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Period? No, no period.
I have also heard that there will be a tacit little campaign that Srdjan Kerim had transgressed on borrowing intellectual property and plagiarized large chunks of somebody else's text to get hold of a "master of arts" (magisterial) diploma from Belgrade University. Kerim would be a very unlikely person to sit in the chair now held by H.E. Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, expert on intellectual property protection.
Whether the Bulgarians do it or whether Nikola Gruevski the prime-ministers of Macedonia helps Kerim realize that his name can always be recalled upon revelation of unseemly facts in his biography - that's a technicality really. In any case - one can fool another person all the time, one can fool some people some of the time but one cannot fool all the people all the time. An old adage, and it does not come from a bird.

Macedonia: Fuck Carla del Ponte, the ICTY, the EU & all the Rest; Save the World and the Concept of Sovereignty of Nations!

2007-01-18T01:09:00.000+01:00

The other day Sylvera Padori, once a potential journalistic discovery of the tabloid Vecer, told the Macedonian radio-listening public that top-ranking government delegation (lead by the vice prime-minister Gabriala (like my grand-daughter) Konevska-Trajkovska) arrived in The Hague to coordinate the future law of independent and sovereign Republic of Macedonia with the whims and wishes that day ruled the attitudes of one Fausto Pocar and internationally notorious Carla del Ponte. The vice-prime minister was flanked by an old governmental hand, Mr. Mihailo Manevski, the minister of justice and by a novice, Ms Gordana Jankulovska minister of interior of Macedonia.
(The pic above: former prosecutor of Macedonia Stavre Dzikov, left, and his deputy Marko Zvrlevski during a stormy night in Gouda, before the next morning hearing in the Tribunal about the four cases Carla del Ponte wanted so badly)
Since (according prof. d-r Gjorgje Marjanovik, a friendly acquaintance from high-school days) I am an ignoramus in the artistry of interpreting legal procedures, the mere reason that brought this power to The Hague - baffled me. I have not heard of the chair of US Senate Commitee on Judiciary send Patrick J. Leahy flanked by Edward M. Kennedy (that's The Kennedy, you know) and the presidential hopeful Joseph R. Biden down to The Hague to discuss how should the United States of America phrase the law that forbids US citizens tried for war crimes by the ICTY or prevents or most effectively unilaterally (without any negotiation with the ICTY) conditions US present and former officials appearing as witnesses in cases brought before the Tribunal against foreign citizens (as was president Slobodan Milosevic) indicted for war crimes.

It is unthinkable that President of the United States would send Dick Chaney with a bunch of secretaries of departments to discuss with Pocar and Carla how should US laws be written. And now we hear this chick Padori bullshit that "the text of the law must be made befitting the Tribunal and the European standards".
I was amazed that nobody in Macedonia exploded when SIlvera Padori told the radio-listeners that "the draft text of the (future) law was put together under the magnifying glass of the Tribunal".

Since I believe that the prime-minister Nikola Gruevski is an honest and proud man, it is normal to reflect upon the forces that drive him act the way he does in this this case. Everybody knows that the ICTY or the Tribunal in The Hague has degraded into a an ugly and lame duck. It will be dissolved in two or three years. It cannot open up new cases. Why is Macedonia pressed to pass a Law on cooperation with the ICTY? Why indeed?
Macedonia did and continues to cooperate with the Tribunal despite Carla del Ponte's and Tribunal's absolutely arrogant, viciously biased and perfidiously contemptuous attitude towards Macedonian government and the judiciary.

I believe that only the US and their friends in Brussels could have led the administration in Skopje believe that "cooperation" (albeit self denigration) was the right dosage of humility in pursuit of otherwise evading EU or NATO membership. That at the same time when Macedonia was pressed by the US to sign a bilateral agreement that it will not deliver to the Tribunal any US citizen found in Macedonia even if the Tribunal wanted them.

(Here, on the pic left, a paste-up with prof. d-r Vasil Tupurkovski, an old friend who missed a perfect chance to testify at the Tribunal -as witness in the case of Milosevic- during a relaxed New Year dinner not far away from the Capitol; Reminds me of so many missed opportunities.)

So, why not kick their asses? Why should Macedonia play a fool on the international stage? Why prof. d-r Ljubomir Frckoski does not tell his dear compatriots what is all this about? Why miss a chance to make history, to light a match if not a big pyre of light in this dungeon of legality? See what courageous people tell the US Senate Judiciary Committee:
Prof. Laurence Tribe, Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School appeared to extend his testimony about a Military Order issued by President Bush on November 13, 2001, while the rubble of the TWorld Trade Center twin towers was still smoking. He said:
I hope we share the belief that the war against terrorism does not require us to sacrifice constitutional principles on the altar of public safety, We know what is the result of that sacrifice. .. But liberty, properly understood, requires both protection from government and protection by government.
As promulgated, the Military Order, by its express terms, is a direct threat to some 20 million lawful resident aliens in the United States. Almost any act by a resident alien, anywhere, could in some circumstances lead the President to believe the alien has or had some form of involvement with a terrorist organization. Hiring a car for a friend could be a terrorist act ...
The November 13 Military Tribunal Order, despite Bush administration efforts to describe it as more like a mere press release, than a real order,...suffers from the compounding vice that it violates the separation of powers required by our Constitution of the federal government....It installs the executive branch as lawgiver as well as law enforcer and law interpreter and applier...
This "blending of executive, legislative, and judicial powers in one person or even in one branch of the Government is ordinarily regarded as the very acme of absolutism...
Ours is "a government of laws, not men." It is offensive to our founding values to have the powers of drafting the laws, and then prosecuting and adjudicating violations of those laws, embodied in one agency—here, one man.

Very important observations by prof. Tribe, you'll be impressed. I mean, you should read the whole testimony: it is amazing. THAT is real America, that is the Spirit of America that gave me wings. The other stuff, say one or another administration or event - all that passes. And if you can - do suggest Mr. Mihailo Manevski also read this.

Let me go back to the Tribunal in The Hague where people rather die than endure the whims of prosecutors and prejudiced justices. This is what Honorable Pierre-Richard Prosper, Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, U.S. Department of State, had to tell the senators:
International tribunals are not and should not be the courts of first redress, but of last resort. When domestic justice is not possible for egregious war crimes due to a failed state or a dysfunctional judicial system, the international community may through the Security Council or by consent, step in on an ad hoc basis as in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. That is not the case in the United States.
My, my. But then he concluded:
Because justice and the administration of justice are a cornerstone of any democracy, pursuing accountability for war crimes while respecting the rule of law by a sovereign state must be encouraged at all times.
That is what the Chinese justice told Carla del Ponte when he allowed her to demand those four cases from Macedonia and when he ruled (that means when he ordered her to return them without any meddling back to Macedonia within a fixed poeriod of time, a period long passed now. So why discuss anything with her? Why not approach the Court directly? Why not raise the subject in the UN?
(My poor self impressed with the performance of Stavre Dzikov at the Tribunal) Prof. Cass R. Sunstein, a Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence Law School and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago testified before the senators that:
History suggests that war crimes tribunals do not always provide fair procedures and indeed that there is inevitably some danger of a miscarriage of justice.

The most scathing remarks were pronounced by Mr.Timothy Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute in Washington D.C. who said: On November 13, 2001 President George Bush signed an executive order with respect to the detention, treatment, and trial of persons accused of terrorist activities. The president declared a national emergency and claimed that Article II of the Constitution ...empowered him to issue the order... Because Article I of the Constitution vests the legislative power in the Congress, not the Office of the President, the unilateral nature of this executive order clearly runs afoul of the separation of powers principle.
President Bush would like to be able to issue his own executive arrest warrants...Under the order, the person arrested cannot get into a court of law to challenge the legality of the arrest. The prisoner can only appeal to the official who ordered his arrest in the first instance, namely, the president. The whole purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to make such procedures impossible in America.
Thus, Congress cannot authorize the use of executive warrants with mere legislation.
President Bush would like to be able to seize and deport people without any hearing whatsoever. As noted above, under the executive order, the president can have people arrested outside of the judicial process and held incommunicado at military bases.
The problem, as Justice Robert Jackson once noted, is that "No society is free where government makes one person's liberty depend upon the arbitrary will of another."

Article III of the Constitution provides, "The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury." The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution provides, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury."
Like to read the full text? OK, Here is the link

Thus, this is what the US Senate was told be knowledgeable people when they discussed powers of the President of the US versus the Constitution of the US when America was under a heinous attack by foreign terrorists short six years ago. We know what happened as a backlash. If, say, the pilots of the two airplanes full with unsuspecting passengers parachuted seconds before the impact and landed in Central Park, these experts on Constitutional law argued before the US Senate and all the country that when captured the attackers would have had a Constitution-clad guarantee to have a public trial by jury.
How miserable (in this context extended so far here) appears this minister of justice of Macedonia who is dictated (by a stuttering legal mind like Carla del Ponte) a draft-law text as if a schoolboy sitting his spelling exam. But then, this is a clear signal for all the judiciary in Macedonia:
If useless laws are created and passed in this way - then you better expect that the justices will fool around and fuck-up every other law of the country. Irrelevant what the European Union or anybody else will think about that.

And finally, it is the big bad wolf from Brussels who needs to howl and show teeth instead of poor aspirants like Macedonia, molested by every other bully on the dark road to full membership. Stop that Carla del Ponte blackmailing the Balkans into unseemly submission. She so visibly failed to come close to prove her own indictment against Slobodan Milosevic that there is nothing she can do now. Let her better try establish police force and see how does she really rate with the international community.

A $717 Billion Big Bloody Shark Circles My Blog: Will AllianceBernstein LP Bite?

2007-01-12T10:03:00.000+01:00

Now and then I look at the addresses of providers of the visitors to my sites. Today www.webstats4u.com showed that people from AllianceBernstein LP (formerly Alliance Capital Management) have been checking my stupid texts. They have begun reading at 04:11 (that is CET, Central European Time) this morning and they were still on at 07:17. Some seven visitors all in all. Since these people from AllianceBernstein LP administer about $717 billion of assets of more than 100 mutual funds - I was very much impressed.
I woke up my wife to tell her how important was what I published on the Volkskrantblog!

-You are nuts,-she said.-You must be dreaming.
-Come and see for yourself,- I retorted.
-Why? It probably is some poor Macedonian cleaner who sweeps the floors in that firm in New York after everybody had gone,- she said turning her back.

My optimism was torpedoed.

(Left pic: US Policeman books for wrong parking. Can I book AllianceBernstein LP for unanounced parking at my site? No? OK. Just kidding)

There are 4,588 employees with AllianceBernstein LP. A hell of lot of them small fry. But then, if the firm manages nearly as much money as the accumulated foreign currency reserves of all China, it should know better than leave the computers accessible to Macedonian floor-cleaners in New York City. Then I got enraged: why the floor-cleaner should be a Macedonian? What's wrong with a hard-working Portorican, a pedant German or Swiss?
And then, how can a floor-cleaner sit on a computer for three full hours? Who will do the cleaning? The CEO or the VPs?
No, the time spent on my blog indicates that it must have been a bigger fish. The conclusion boosts my self-confidence.
My bitter attacks on hedge funds and the IMF is paying off: they begin to notice.Germany may have chickened out and given up clipping the wings of those birds of pray - but not me! They are all after the pension funds of hard-working people, after unsuspecting firms that amass cash for growth. The hedge-funds of the US insist to have the right to enter any financial market (to buy out a firm in Sweden or Russia or anywhere) while they keep the borders of America closed for the employees of those countries to compete on the labor market of the US.
So I decide to dive in into the waters, with this shark still around, and see who it actually is.
I am stunned with what shows up.
Florida (that the retirement paradise of the United States, also home of the scandal after the mess with the votes that buried Al Gore's near Presidency) has a State Board of Administration (SBA) that manages public fund mandates. Florida law specifies that the Governor, (that was the brother of the President of the USA when this happened), the Chief Financial Officer, and the Attorney General constitute the Board of Trustees for the SBA. So, that body filed a lawsuit against Alliance Capital Management for a $334 million loss Florida’s pension plan suffered under Alliance’s financial management. Oh la-la! It is not an individual, not a fellow fund-manager who sues, it is a key state of the USA that is after AllianceBernstein LP that boasts with managing $717 billion!
That is why, then, these people are interested in my writing against the hedge funds stomping and snatching pension funds around the world.
It appears that this $334 million loss the lawyers representing the State of Florida believe must be payed back to the SBA - is peanuts for AllianceBernstein LP. Between January 11, 2005 ($40,79) and yesterday Its share price more than doubled ($86,86). How wouldn't it, with such losses on their customer's side! But then, the practice to deal on the brink of the legal obviously leads to slips.

After the State of Florida lawsuit the almighty Securities and Exchange Commission of the USA announced (three years ago, in December 2003) a settled enforcement action against Alliance Capital Management L.P. for defrauding mutual fund investors. The Commission ordered Alliance Capital to pay $250 million, consisting of $150 million in disgorgement and $100 million in penalties. All of the money was to be distributed to the shareholders harmed by Alliance Capital's market timing arrangements.

Why should AllianceBernstein LP enter in those deals if not for greed or extra high profit? They administer more than 100 mutual funds, many specialized for health care and technology, but also pension funds, corporations, and not-for-profits. But then - they are not epitome of a Wall Street merciless profit-hunter: the French insurance giant AXA owns more than half of the company. OK, they are headquartered in New York City (on the 1354 Avenue of the Americas - that's Sixth Avenue actually, not far from EXXON) but have offices in 47 cities in 24 countries! My visitors from AllianceBernstein LP could be from any of those cities and I cannot really say which one. But that does not matter. I doubt they were after the contents of my post about Speculative Selling of Copper Hits Radovis, Macedonia because they were not interested whether that Makes Me Sad and Angry.

Whatever the reason for their visit, I need to say that the information by Sootle that this site is worth $527 does not indicate the selling price. After the visits by AllianceBernstein LP-Alliance Capital Management L.P. personnel, well, the selling or leasing price would be closer to $52,700, We know to make money too!

Speculative Selling of Copper Hits Radovis, Macedonia and Makes Me Sad and Angry

2007-01-10T22:44:00.000+01:00

Tosko called me the other day to say "Hi" after returning from his New Year's trip to Macedonia. We blabbered about Esther (his wife) and Katarina (his daughter) and about Zvanko (my best man in Skopje who invited them for a great lunch) and eventually he asked:
-Don't you miss Macedonia? You haven't been there for eight months.
I do not keep count how many times people go where, but this question struck a note. Somewhat gloomy, depressing and annoying note. It was useless to begin telling dear Tosko that I just came back from Radovis, where the people bake one of the best "pastrmayliya" in the country. (Pastrmayliya is something like pizza, but then different, it is made of chunks of pork meat, chunks of lard and several freshly broken eggs over round pieces of home-made dough which is baked at the lokal bakery.) He would not have understood.
The Financial Times took me yesterday to Radovis. The news (Please see the illustration here with my comment interpolated within the original text) that speculative selling had put the prices of commodities under further pressure meant that the people in and around Radovis must have had a rather gloomy Xmas and New Year. Between December 7, 2006 and January 4, 2007 the prices of copper have tumbled from $6,800 per tone down to $5,800 per ton.
The VakantieBeurs has just opened its doors and it was Ruzica Panevska my old, ailing colleague in tourism, who used to come and who is a native of Radovis. Then, my friend's Ratko Radjenovik, an architect, had a bos Risto Gusterov, one of the few richest people in Macedonia comes from Radovis, the only copper mine in Macedonia. We have not met, but he was so often in our conversations (not about Radovis where he donated money for a church to be built AND decorated by Ukrainian artists) about life in Macedonia and Russia, that I feel as if I know the guy. Zvonko Cipusev, who was two or three times my host in New York, albeit his dad Iliya, comes from Radovis.
Radovish is on my mind al the time. It is almost like Georgia.
But then Sveto Hadji-Jordanov the brother of my class-mate Marika Hadzi-Jordanova wrote a remarkable study about the waste-waters from the copper-ore field. Bunches of other friends come from that south-eastern corner of Macedonia. These several days I continuously contemplate how much damage will they suffer, the people of Radovis without the speculators, greedy ogres with claws tearing the lives of the innocent people, ever knowing that Radovis exists..
And Tosko tells me I do not visit Macedonia!
I daydream that there would be smart Macedonians or Turks, who live around there, who would put all their moneys to stockpile for themselves the copper at $5,800 and sell it when it goes back to $6,800 or $7,800. Then I begin to devise complex loans: what they actually need is the $1,000 per ton to obtain the command over the production. The banks should follow them because they will have had the collateral, the $5,800 value of copper per ton.
Radovis, actually Buchim, the mine, has been operating since 1979. It was 82 % Government owned and had approximately 800 employees. The mine produces about four million tons of ore per year and a similar quantity of tailings. Now the mine is private. It was bought two years ago by a businessman, Aleksander Borstein, who says he is Russian, though he does not sound so.

Concentration of copper, gold and silver is achieved through a flotation process using sodium- and potassium-alkyl-xanthates, sulfuric acid and a bacterium (Bacillus ferrooxidacae). Cyanides were formerly used in the flotation process, but this practice ceased long time ago.

During the first years of Buchim I was shocked to see how much is 70,000 tons of solid waste that is spat by the exploitation every year. And then so much next year. And next again. And it had been in operation ever since 1979! My first door neighbor in Skopje retired as a chief technology engineer from Buchim. I know the ills of the enterprise.

The waste contains heavy metals from the flotation and all that rubble goes into a huge dam not far from there. People get sick out there from inhaling the dust from the 30-hectare hydro-tailings dam. Many mineworkers suffer joint ailments and silicosis. Actually, all local citizens. will suffer sooner or latter. Trees that are planted take time to develop and people live on hope and high price of the copper. Not any more.

The waste waters are another problem. The stream from which cattle drink appears bluish on the surface but it is from the copper-hydro-xy-carbonate that is discharged at the rate of 10 liters per second and settles on the bottom.
Surface water samples point to contamination with heavy metals while analyses show values for copper concentrations between 50 and 200 mg/1. That is 50,000 times higher than the surface water quality standard in Germany . If you transfer that in percentages, the water around the mine is 5,000.000% worse in Radovish then in Dusseldorf. Here, around my Amstelveen, according Dutch standards, they would have a general alert if the values for copper in groundwater are 0.015 mg/1 and 0.075 mg/1, respectively. Out there in Radovis - 50 mg/1 is "normal".
That is - If there is water.

Open pit mining, ore dressing and flotation in Bucbim mine are accomplished by using vast amount of water. The
complex water circulation scheme means water losses. In this process, part of the flotation waste water enters the nearby watercourses, thus contaminating them with heavy metals, organic tensides, etc. Resulting contamination is further spread up to the Vardar River and Aegean Sea.

Smaller part of the ponds and other out-of-pipe water reaches the underground aquifers and lowers the
quality of water used in nearby village-wells. Acid mine leaching of copper minerals in the overburden disposal site as well as the waters from the mines - also contribute in stream pollution. The waste waters from overburden leaching are extremely concentrated and contain up to 840mg/L cuprum-dioxide in an average flow of 2 liters per second.

Republic of Macedonia has some poly-metallic complex sulfide ore deposits. They are used for production of metals like copper, zinc, lead, silver and even some gold. The exploitation of sulfide ores requires a complex treatment during which the low-grade ore is enriched. copper concentrate is produced by flotation and is later transformed into blister copper and finally into electrolytic copper of 99.95 purity.

The exploitation of copper ore deposits, together with metal extraction that follows, causes severe environmental pollution problems. Yeah, that's a problem, but the open pit exploitation still employed 480 people and left the owner with $20 million annual profit... depending whether copper was in the cross-haires of speculators or not. A hell of a lot of work. There are many Turks around, old Turkish villages, right up in the mountains. Most picturesque. And very, very bitter. They feel neglected: the Albanians and the Roma get most of the attention. But that is not right. I know through my late friend, an ethnic-Turk, d-r Halit Shaban that not a single one of the Turks in Macedonia is actually forgotten. They are so desperately few.

Both the director and the editor of the most influential daily newspapers are ethnic-Turks. One of them, Srdjan Kerim otherwise a crook in the eyes of people who think plagiarism is tantamount to theft, may become the next president of the General Assembly of the United Nations. So, they are not forgotten.

Tosko is wrong, I do think of Macedonia without being there.

Kerim's right-hand man, a sort of grand-vezier, Erol Rizaov is also an ethnic-Turk from Eastern Macedonia. Rizaov is a crook too, but an influential one as well. He did rise (once) his voice about neglected cultural aspects of the Turkish heritage in Macedonia but would have exploded a campaign about the conditions (miserable) of these Turks here.

Copper works in Buchim, has been in operation 25 out of the 27 years since 1979. Open pit mining is applied with a capacity of some 4 million tons a year ore. The average content of copper in the ore is low: a quarter of one percent (0.25% Cu) but for poor Macedonia that is a boon even without the one gram of silver per one tone of ore. How much silver from 4 million tons of ore? Flotation efficiency is 1.2% (m/m) and the separation of useful components is 85, 35, and 60% respectively, for copper, gold and silver. After metallurgical treatment, that takes place elsewhere, annual metal production averages 8,000 tons of copper, 800 kg of gold (Aurum) and 800 kg of silver (argentum).
How much does this cost? With the prices under speculative pressure you need to see for yourself. Take gold for instance: Now gold is traded around $616 an ounce, highest price in maybe 20 years!. Who knows how will the slide affect the Russian (?!) owner of the ore and, then, the people who work for him? Silver sells at about $12,4 an ounce in new York bidding.

Strange - all this runs in front of my eyes just because of the news of the speculative selling of commodities on the stock exchanges around the world and my reflections what misery it will bring, unexpected, to the people around Radovis...

Joseph Biden Has Fooled the US Senate, Jon Arda the President of the US - Kick the Bigger Jackass out!

2007-01-09T09:13:00.000+01:00

Democratic Sen. Joseph -Joe- Robinette Biden Jr. (that's awkward: he is 65, must be Sr. ;-))), announced his intention to contest the Presidency against potential high-profile Democrat rivals as Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama, senator for Illinois. ``I am running for president,'' he said Sunday (January 7th) on the NBC ``Meet the Press'' show. I would not have bothered you with that: a Biden candidacy is an anachronism. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of potential Democratic candidates, Biden won the support of just 4% percent of respondents, trailing Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee. In that context Joe is a lightweight. (NATO went to bomb military installation in Kosovo, but civilian targets 400 400 miles north were burning; photo by Jaroslav Pap)

Biden has been a senator (longest ever serving Delaware (with Rhode Island the two smallest states of the Union) for the past 34 years. He was away from the floor of the Senate on Capitol Hill for seven months in 1988 after undergoing surgery for brain aneurysms. His earlier efforts to win the Democrat Party primaries failed in scandal: he was accused of plagiarism (by the Doukakis camp) and had to step out of the campaign in disgrace.

Unfortunately for me, lightweight or not, Joe is also the brand new chair of the Senate Committee on foreign relations and he had chosen to announce the fact by producing (for the Financial Times, on January 2d) a rather disturbing article titled "Opponents of New Kosovo Must Be Stopped".

Does this statement actually express readiness for war? Must! Well, in this context, this must obviously is a declaration of war. What happens if somebody else thing otherwise: that Kosovo must not be given independence, when the must and the must not clash with each other? How do you stop an opponent?

These questions are purely theoretical: I do not care this little bit whether Kosovo gets now or waits (patiently) for independence. What happens if the people of Florida, or New Mexico, or Hawaii declare they want independence?

He wants Kosovo independent although he says that Kosovo is not ready for full sovereignty. Even after independence, Nato and the international community will need to provide security guarantees for Kosovo’s minorities and strengthen its economy and institutions. He insists on this fake arrangement because of perverse reasons: The people of Kosovo – already the most pro-American in the Islamic world – will provide a much-needed example of a successful US-Muslim partnership.

(Delaware is a tiny red dot, the 49th state of the union, smaller than Kosovo, and Biden is one of the two senators of the stte to Capital Hill)
How come Kosovo, a pocket on the Balkans, for some 500 years the treasury and patriarchal seat (established and recognized by the Ottoman empire) of the Serbian Orthodox Church, suddenly constitutes a part of the Islamic world? What is the territory of the Islamic World? Only 3,000 web-pages or millions of square kilometers, billions of adherents? How is the Islamic World organized, does it have a khalif or other joint head to represent it entity, what are the formal relations between various religious communities of sovereign states with muslim population? There are between 1,600,000 to 4,700,000 muslims in the United States and probably not more than 1,7 million on Kosovo. That obviously does not make the Union, America, a part of the "Islamic world", does it?
(Strange, there is no mosque on this idylic pic of a village on Kosovo)
The senator and aspiring president of the United States implies that the Sunni muslims in Iraq will be so very much impressed with an US-suported independence of Kosovo that they will begin putting roses and carnations down the mouth of the patrolling GI's rifles. The problems of the US with the Islamic World are different, they lay elsewhere and whatever this charlatan wants to do on Kosovo will bear no effect on US standing with the muslim world. Therefore this position is outright stupid and counter productive. It proposes yet one showdown with Serbia and Russia because it is not a solution through a political dialogue. Biden should think how to extract the US forces from Kosovo. He should open venues of communication between ethnic-Albanians and Serbs. What will Kosovo produce, with what resources, who will it trade the goods and services with? Why would anybody anywhere in the world listen to him?

Is he going to appropriate funds to keep Kosovo financially afloat or is he call more help from the US Army? Or is this recipe for toughness a consequence of those brain aneurysms?

Biden was expected to seek a nomination for the the White House race in 2008. The media reports that he has about $3.5 million in his campaign account.

this is a YouTube slip titled "Joe Biden's racist slip"

I have a feeling that Biden (he chaired the Senate Foreign relations committee from June 2001 through 2003 during the US-NATO intervention over sovereign Serbia) who traveled a lot to the Balkans, itches to somehow iron-up the job so hopelessly muddled. He called the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic a "war criminal" but he did not help Carla del Ponte prove that in court. All he did was watch while Milosevic, claiming he was maltreated, was kept in his prison cell to die instead of being treated in Moscow. I think that Vladimir Putin had a cunning plan when he swallowed the insult of the refusal by the court to accept the Russian Federation guarantee that Moscow will return Milosevic after a medical treatment. Russia has nothing more to offer related to Kosovo.

Kosovo does not need NATO or US troops. It needs continuous heavy subsidies to perform as an independent state. Somebody has to come two steps forward and extend a solution for that problem. Even if there is not one single Serb left on Kosovo - the territory, independent and sovereign, will have to be indefinitely financially supported while at the same time it has to behave in accord with the international norms.

Serbia is not a part of that riddle. I have a feeling that Serbia only wants that people like Joe Biden force a solution which will prove itself untenable and will eventually allow this once proud country come in terms with this rapidly changing world. Serbs should be thankful to the first senator for the First State because they will have yet another fool who does not know what is he talking about but still commands the rostrum of the US Senate.

And then, there is this Jon Arda. I cannot figure out how could Arda pass by Joshua B. Bolten, the President's chief-of-staff, "The Second-Most Powerful Man in Washington" and got a seat on the President's council of Environmental defense? The man (also in the Financial Times) claims that the market forces are best qualified to take acre of global warming. I do not remember such a plain stupidity from the mouth of a Presidential adviser for decades.

Not even Google takes this man seriously: try search for "Jon Arda, Financial Times" and see what you get. A mess.

The market forces did not puzzle themselves with questions about chemistry, how gases interact with each other, market forces are not scientist who labour years hitting their heads with formulae and calculations before they come out with a small item in Nature for dumbs to get it all in an instant and then figure (in an instant) a global solution for global warming: let it go on, the market forces will take care of it.

There is no point asking "how". The market cannot take care of itself, to begin with. There is no market unless the society brings in laws, unless it imposes them with army, police, inspectors, judges, medics, lawyers. A lawless market is a grab-and-go, it is a jungle, it is a permanent tribal war, continuous disorder. Jon Arda arduously tries to attribute to the market the capacity of reasoning, of scientific discovery, of concluding. Arda attributes to the market the capacity of the human brain, of vision. The market does not care what will happen to the humankind when all the oil is spent. It is non-market capacities that tell the market (tiny bits of information) what is what and what will happen in one or another scenario and then the market reacts with establishing specific price tags to goods and services.

But global warming is something that is beyond price, beyond that sort of reasoning. How much will it cost DuPont the mere 12" rise of sea-levels in the Lowlands from where this blog comes? Will the global market decide about it and what will be, in such a case, the influence on the price of those 12-inch-higher seas by the economy of Tibet or Kazakhstan? Or they will have no say? Will the Dutch market get money, incentives or lose anything? I do not see the stock-exchanges bother about all this genuine panic, the alerts disturbing the world. The markets grow, new records are being established as the screams that we are late are fake. The markets, actually, do not care what happens ten years from now.

Take this Dutch government, the Parliament, for example. Half the Lowlands is under sea-level and the market of markets, the Damrak or IEX index, rises as if Al Gore came to tell them that his people have discovered a lift to heaven or an ocean of oil under The Hague. Prices of the property which will be flooded in no time - rises sky-high, acually even higher than in Denver, Colorado! Not a word abou new taxes for dams or other protection - if there can be one. That is how the markets regulate the issue of global warming.

If the science tells the market that an asteroid is going to hit and break to pieces this magma-filled, egg-shelled planet in exactly 19 years - do you think shares will tumble, electricity will go for free, deep-space vehicles with messages about our existence, screams for help will be sent out to unknown destinations by the market forces? I cannot accept that this sort of chicken brain roams around the mightiest office on Earth.

Kick the jackass out of the White House, Joshua. And press the President toward that Kyoto deal. Now.

The Future of Macedonia Described by the Owner of Mysterious Piece of Scroll Called Firman

2007-01-08T12:30:00.000+01:00

The more one knows , the more one suffers,- goes an old dictum that, I do not know why, I have embraced it as Serbian. Well, there probably will be consequences, but, after reading Firman by Stefani Sen Senar I have just learned yet few new things. At this moment I do not have a clue how ominous will this freshly acquired knowledge prove to be, but I will immediately spread it - to distribute as evenly as possible the potential collateral damage.
Stefani Sen Senar embarked on a story about centuries old magic upon which to support her intricate plot for her second novel related to Macedonia. There is this scroll of devastating, magic power. Actually - this scroll is a firman (in Farsi) or ferman (in Turkish). It carries a royal order. She develops "Firman" in series of flash backs and she uses and abuses the technique abundantly and at will. If Stefani read more of the legendary queen Scheherazade (Shahrazada) stories (you know that they were bundled into the Book of One Thousand and One Nights) she might have produced a remarkable piece of somewhat strange melange of literature. Since she was more exposed to dry history texts, language lessons and down to earth journalism - her 194-page pocket-book novel is differently shaped.

Although Stefani deals with a very complex story - it is easily readable. The ext may pass as a police intrigue around a mysterious document, the ferman, but it is not that simple. Stefani swaps swift, once romantic other times outlandishly brutal actions between the real and the world of her burning imagination. She does it with ease, and that ability I find the strongest aspect of this novel. It is not a rocket flying out up in the skies. It is more of a ominous meteorite spewing long trail of fire and debris behind it and one, eventually, towards the end, realizes that by its dreaded impact with Macedonia it will have probably fizzled. None of those worlds she creates (the imaginary is hellish, much worse than the real one) is comfortable for either her heroine or the social environment in which she moves. That sort of position is troubling: the author (half-Macedonian, by her mother's side) packs her heroine, Pela, for a trip, in a search of the murderer of her parents, to Turkey but allows that such a determined search of a most bloody mystery is cancelled in five minutes at a table of a spiritless Skopje railway-station buffet by a potential adulterer and derailed to Ohrid with an incentive of free accommodation.

(That on the left is a royal firman - Sultan Selim the First, and next to it - Stefani)
The charm of "Firman" is that of a polished jigsaw puzzle. The building of the final picture is interspersed with varying levels of intrigue and statements reflecting Stefani's heroine's opinion about the potentials (meagre) of the Macedonian soil, about the competence (very poor) of its police, about the chances (minimal) of the young authors to be translated or the possibility (non-existent) of true emancipation. What is evident and guaranteed is an onslaught by merciless, head-cutting savage muslims who appear and disappear at will, terrorize and keep the population subdued. I do not know what significance to ascribe to the torture-cum-murder camp for the Macedonian prisoners dragged by the mystic army from Galichnik right to the outskirts of Solun. The the rich herdsmen of Galichnik did posses large pieces of property around Solun but it is all gone now. Affluent shoppers from Skopje tend to go to Solun over the weekend - is this a message that there will be their undoing? All that is Pela's last nightmare. She is miraculously waken up and thus saved from the executioner's hand. Back in reality she sees the old man with the lion-head penchant on his necklace. She goes to him and he reveals the last piece of the jigsaw-puzzle. This old man reveals to Pela that she needs to burn, destroy the firman she had inherited from her great great-greatmother and prevent the realization of the prophecy. If she does not do it - everything, herself too, may perish.

Thus, a well-educated, affluent Parisian mademoiselle, half-Macedonian by her father's side (the novel somewhat rearranges the used autobiographical elements) rows to the middle of Ohrid Lake and burns the magic firman, which we knew for some time, was a key to the great mystery.

There may be a piece (even two or three) missing or not nicely fitting here and there, but that one, the destruction of the firman, the finite severance with the past, is the last item needed to understand (any way you may want to) the jigsaw puzzle that Stefani Sen Senar has produced for us.

She makes it even more twisted because her Pela moves in the past and the present too. Then - nothing is actul or real: this is a sort of day-dreaming or, I would say, nightmarish pseudo-historic session burdened with pretty rigid, so very Slavic (and obviously French too) and quite heavy prejudices against muslims. In my view the introduction of medieval barbarism in the plot is superfluous and results with rather gloomy thoughts that the author reveals an actual rather appalling prophecy for Macedonia and the Macedonians. The text sort of transcends from one to another shape, it is a travelogue and then dives into historical topics and an evocation of items that are not only as complex as terrorism, individual and collective violence and cultural intolerance but are quite contemporary. Stefani Sen Senar produces an accurate and touching (although somewhat laconic and summarizing) evocation of the social network in which Pela tries to accommodate herself slowly coming to terms with the “Balkan way of life”. But her Pela (probably from Pelagija, a rare feminine name, after the saint Pelagija of Tarsus) is, unlike my rigid Balkan self, an adaptable person. She takes people's names as granted. One needs to be nuts to let an unknown giddy man calling himself Jesus-the-Philosopher sit on one's table and accept a drink from him. names are revealing: there are real people in Macedonia called Tito (like Tito Petkovski, the former speaker of the Parliament of Macedonia) or Stalin (like Stalin Lozanovski, the former secretary-general of the Union of Journalists of Macedonia) and it does not take much brain to conclude that they were given those names by their parents willing to send a message about their credos, family political, moral and so forth preferences which, in turn, reflect as specific upbringing that eventually exposes itself in the character of the innocent. If this Stefani's character Jesus-the-Philosopher was set as painter in Bronx, I could swallow him as a Portorican. But in Ohrid? Zivko Chingo, a very special writer, native of Ohrid, used to invent those strange surnames to his characters and places. Stefani does it with Belakulakovska, the surname Pela carries now, untransformed, battered during a century of use in France. Or Milbogovski (Dear-to-God). My stomach revolts against those names but, eventually, that is totally marginal.

I cannot help feeling that the author was not quite clear whether she was going to re-work this piece of narrative into a differently shaped novel or a screenplay for a first-rate action-movie. A sort of "Indiana Jones" type of plot, bloody mysterious butchery in a plushy Parisian XVI arrondissement takes a young woman to a derelict Ohrid house with a creepy cellar full of hallucinants, magic words, total solar eclipses over Macedonia, party infighting and splits within the VMRO top, head-cutting in public by ninja-type gangs and the lot - well, quite a story for the first novel in French.

"Firman" remains on my night-table. Now it is in a phase of second and eventually a third reading. I have a feeling that Stefani had done injustice to Abdul-Hamid (he was in Skopje on a tour of Rumelia) of whom my recently deceased father-in-law, an economist, said "He was OK". He had personally seen the sultan in an open carriage then, adding: "All the town went out to cheer the sultan. We had no problems with the Turks. The real problems had begun latter". Stefani's problems will begin the day some producer asks her to make a synopsis out of the "Firman". But those would be sweet pains of creative writing.
If you understand French, this is a link to an oral review by Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine. It is pleasant to listen to and quite lavishing for Stefani Sen Senar.

Financial Times predicts that NATO can survive Afghanistan. True or False?

2007-01-01T19:28:00.000+01:00

To start with - this question is wrong. It pretends that NATO ship-shape forces have just stormed into the far-flung land and now face crucial encounter on which depends the Alliance's future.
First of all NATO is practically comatose. From a defense organization against a potential Soviet (Warsaw Pact) attack on the so clled Western Democracy the US led, supported and commanded Alliance is in disarray. There is no Warsaw Pact any more: who is NATO potential attacker? None of the NATO member-countries borders such. (Do not sping-jump here - this statement is a trap!)
The Supreme commander cannot get a response from any of the founding-member countries to his plea for one thousand more soldiers in Afghanistan.
NATO is now described as "expeditionary force". This attribute is not a lapsus lingue. it to fake being "a global police-force" without global (United Nations) consent?
Since when Europe needs an expeditionary force? Why send armies out to other continents to impose Anglo-American interests?
The first military intervention by NATO - being idle for decades - was to bomb a legal president out of office, the center of Belgrade, hit civilian installations, a TV station and the Chinese Embassy. Serbia or Rump Yugoslavia were not a threat to the western world. It is so sad that literally ALL military operations in the 58-year long history of NATO were led against rump Yugoslavia. NATO and the US have more heavily armed troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo NOW than anywhere else excluding Iraq. Full 16 years after the Yugoslav wars NATO-US Army keep military guard over poor Serbia!
Now Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (of all thinking people) has to re-invent NATO! My people retort to such an proposition: "C'mon grandma, conceive and deliver a baby-boy". The guy is the third Dutchman on the watch in NATO: full 20 out of 60 years of the Alliance its General Secretary is a Dutchman. This Dutchbat that ran away abandoning 6.000 men and boys be butchered by Mladic's forces - is now expected to eradicate the Afghani fierce warriors! That assumption is comic. Two dozen Macedonian soldiers help them do it although all of the Macedonian army could not subdue what former secretary-general of NATO, Lord Robertson, said were "thugs and murderers" in the hills around Skopje!
I mean, NATO is a cover-up for the US military engagement around the world.
One may expect that NATO troops be sent to topple Juan Evo Morales Ayma in landlocked Bolivia, by the Pacific, if a city-mayor of Santa Cruz there asks the Alliance for help to proclaim independence from La Paz. The Alliance might negotiate a corridor through Peru to the ocean.
This hypothesis may sound ridiculous but it is not.
NATO needs votes, not soldiers and arms. half of the EU countries do not produce bullets, least of all sophisticated arms. There is no credible enemy around the Solar system to invent for justification of NATO existence as military force to be engaged in defending its members from an armed military attack. Even worse - there is not a "potential" threat to pointed to.
If the world, the planet needs anything - that is a UN police force to disarm those nations that produce, carry, tinker and trade with specific weapons of mass destruction. But then - we talk of a UN Police Force or UN Peace Keeping Force, we talk of something totally different from NATO. Such a notion is unnerving: When a UN secretary-general Butros-Butros Gali dared mention such a necessity - he was banished from the world and the US vetoed his re-election. Butros Butros Gali coined the term “micro-disarmament” to refer to efforts to remove arms from civil conflicts, to disarm rebels and insurgents. But imposing this would have meant that the US could not stage the "Albanian rebellion" in Macedonia and US Army military instructors, allegedly secret agents, would have been exposed when they were all rounded in Arachinovo near the capital Skopje.
That is why the Financial Times is wrong when it says that NATO will survive Afghanistan. NATO is useless.
To alter this plain fact somebody has to either create even a theoretical danger to European security, dismantle the EU own military force or change the statute and revamp the reason for NATO further existence. The suggestion that NATO is an "expeditionary force" is therefore the first sign that the US may have succeeded in transforming NATO into its auxiliary armed muscle which it flexes at will at the expense of other taxpayers.
NATO's expansion policy is seen by Russian Federation as a continuation of a Cold War attempt to surround and isolate Russia. In February 2003 France and Belgium vetoed the procedure of silent approval concerning the timing of protective measures for Turkey in case of a possible war with Iraq. Germany did not use its right to break the procedure but said it supported the veto.
But the Alliance did achieve the dissolution of the socialist-communist world. Not it has to make sure it remains so for ever. The 26 heads of the member-countries concluded (in Washington D.C.) that The Alliance has an indispensable role to play in consolidating and preserving the positive changes of the recent past, and in meeting current and future security challenges.
I think that China, Russia and India on the East and Latin America in the West will be those challenges (not military but economic, which is worse because NATO was always about economy, capitalism and supremacy not actual military conflict) for the Alliance. It can have ten times more member-countries like Slovenia, Slovakia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg but it will matter nothing. NATO, obviously, is an absolute ZERO without the USA fighting machine. NATO cannot exist one day without effective US presence, coordination and command.
The world will be much better off if the US transformed the NATO into a French Foreign Legion type of lean, mean fighting machine payed for by the member countries, commanded from the Pentagon and stationed wherever necessary. The national armies would be for display and honorary shows only. Screw the military establishment - see Malta, Iceland, Luxembourg, Slovenia. Too costly and obviously useless...
If the world situation arrives at the doorsteps of a real military conflict - then NATO will be dismantled by the event self. That is why it, the Alliance, as it is - NATO is as virtual as this blog. Can disappear without anybody but the big fat cats in uniforms and their pussies in Brussels noticing...

Mark Mazower presents a distorted, biased history of Salonica based on trash and wrong on fact

2006-01-02T18:41:00.000+01:00

If there would be anything positive i could say about the text Mr. Mark Mazower, a presssor of history, titled Thessaloniki, City of Ghosts, it would be to promote it as an instant self-reliance building placebo. Once safely behind the first couple of paragraphs even the shakiest of scribes must sense a tide of creative powers and an urge to sit, write and publish something. Anything. There are piles of other poorly written and hopelessly biased titles around. Many are built on historic trash which irresistibly fascinates gaudy, bullying authors supported by cabals. Most of them reflect the murkiest interests of donors to the academe and the media. But this one outshines them all. Simply put, one cannot trust a word Mr. Mark Mazower writes on the subject.

The reason for such a statement is that he is wrong on facts. A history book wrong on facts (we shall not accept bidding here: fifty, fifteen or five) is all wrong. There are those who tend to group faults of fact relative to their sizes like XS-S-M-L-L-XL-XXL and XXXL as if writing a history book is like producing underware. Some of those reviewers and editors would forgive tiny and small (XS-S) lapses of fact but will be embarrassed with medium (M) or large (XL) ones. In my view a history-book which opens up with even a tiny error or two momentarily qualifies as a discard. Mr. Mazower, his many editors and reviewers have allowed scores of mistakes of all sizes.

Then, a history book spotless on fact while wrong on interpretation is not much better either, but at least the work may be useful provided it unmistakably separates what is factual from what is explanatory or a personal view. When one is presented with unattributed comment on something which is treated as a fact but is not tagged properly, when qotes have neither name or a year, when there are absolutely no coordinates to fix the story to and when on such a rubbish the author, a professor, adds up his own conclusions - then one, in this case my very modest self, is tempted to ask: How is it possible the alumni of Columbia to tolerate such a garbage?

To begin with, the author himself is in tatters. He is confused with odds and bits and does never come close to present a coherent story. Mazower does not understand Balkan history and he has not got a clue how to tell what he knows. He probably is a well connected pushy person; otherwise not a single editor would consider publishing this. In the very first paragraph of the first chapter (begins with the fall of the city to Mourad II in 1430) he speaks about ousting the Ottomans in 1912 and does not even dream of setting the scene and describing what was that place Salonika, who ruled it, how did it fall, who lived there, what happened once the Ottomans rode in, what changed. Nothing. Then, of course, after pages, he tells a selective approach and does bring some of the detailes which should have been chronologically built in the story. As if writing for the EOT (that is the Greek Nationational Tourist Office) he rushes to expose his ignorance and to claim that the city (now) has one of the most exciting collection of "early christian" frescoes and mosaics on par "to rival those in Ravena and Istanbul". When Mazower arrived in Salonica for the very first time in 1984 the church of St. Demetrius was completely reconstructed after 22 years (1926-1948) of extensive meddling by various craftsmen who in their own part wiped out whatever was left from the original after the extensive (or total) reconstruction in the XVth century. Long before them, in the middle of VII-th century, the iconoclast emperor Leo III first detached Salonica from papal jurisdiction and then, like his successors, insisted on destruction of absolutely all icons, frescoes and image-rendering elements in the churches of Salonica, including St Sophia which was eventually, after four years of painstaking effort, turned into a mosque in 1589. One recognizes an adventurer but not an historiographer here: Mazower does not believe that if he wrote "one or two frescoes may rival those in Ravena" is strong a statement enough. He decides to add mosaics too, which obviously is not enough for him and he makes it "a collection" (of mosaics and frescoes) which is again bland and then he finalizes the pronouncement describing them as "early christian". Well, full 1467 years after Christ nothingcan be called 'early-christian". Why read more? Because it is fun to see a strip-teese show of a Columbia professor of history.

Salonika is totally irrelevant here: it is an ugly place of newly composed profanity. (Another author, equally praised as Mazower, strongly recommends that "it better be avoided at all costs". Sincerely speaking Mark Mazower would be and actually is marginal here too, unless he is taken as a measure of distance from scientific or educational integrity. You could say, for instance, something like: "Mark Mazower is 23,75 mazowers away from science".

On page 22 he says that "most of the inhabitants next to Turkish, Greek and Bulgarian knew Hebrew because they had day and night contact while trading with the Jews". On page 277 he subscribes to a "local savant" that "the city was not one whole. Jews, Orthodox, Doumehs, Muslims lived next to each other without mixing... Every single one closed up in their own community".

Now, which of these is the truth?

Hardly anything. Everything is twisted, everything is distorted. Although recognizable those reshaped elements serve to cast a specific light to fit the background for the main scenes of this farse of a history. On page 25 he kind of blames the Turks or the Ottomans for leaving the place without a trace of their 487 years of rule. He does not give a sec that the official and only recognizable symbol of the city is the Beas Kule (Bela Kula, Levkos Pyrgos), built at the end of the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent, about 1560. He does not have the lucidity to ask what happened with all the mosques used by some 40,000 muslims until 1912, what happened with their schools, palaces, baths, bazaars, burial grounds and monuments, hospitals, prisons, fortifications, army headquarters and the like. Or he accepts that we shall meekly go along with his nonsensical statement that "there was a fire" in 1917 which whipped out the old center!. As if those were cardboard structures and all went up in flames. (He does say, somewhere, that the minarrets were destroyed. But then, what the heck you need a minarret when all the mosques conveniently perished and there are muslims no more?) Oh my, oh my. I would imagine that the janitors of Columbia university know better than this guy.

Mazower quotes "two British tourists" (anonymous, no reference, no time-line indication) as historically relevant sources when the back-packer sides with their views. Such an approach is ludicrous: a testimony about Atahualpa on a horse among the Incas near Machu Pichu in 1530 would differ from a statement that francisko Pizzaro was on a horse in Cuzco in 1532 because the first is false and the second is totally irrelevant. Of course he knows that. Mazower uses every single dirty, slimy trick of the trade to build a case while trying to joggle with whatever comes his way to build an outpost or at least a buffer for further advancement of his slanted views on the history of the region. The two British tourists reappear as pejoratively labeled "slavofile ladies" (in the sense Dutch use "dames" and with a message - untrustworthy because they are slavofile) although they are much more than that. The two are the joint authors of the book Travels in the Slavonic provinces of Turkey-in-Europe. If a dumb American back-packer can allow himself such a brazenness against two ladies, why could not anyone label Mazower as "a Greek-payed ass-hole" or worse?

Mazower must have read the nicely written and most authentic book (published 1876) by Lady Adelina Paulina Irby and baroness Georgina Mary Muir (Sebright) Mackenzie.Their work is a well of most interesting, relevant and revealing information about the region. The two volume book (it costs $1200 to buy) was published with an introduction by the Right Hon. William E. Gladstone, M.P., latter O.M. of the british Empire, the man who actually said "Macedonia to the Macedonians". (This is not a quote from the book, mazower would not attribute those words to Gladstone, no.) But this guy Mazower carefully picks up some totally en-passant comments (never the "heavy facts") and places them under a chapter titled "Oriental Fantasies of European Tourists (sic). With perfidious "subtlety" like that Mazowe wiches to discard the bulk of the testimony provided by the two eye-witnesses of the life in Salonica and des environs around 1860. He cannot. There is no need to be tactful or well-mannered with a a dirty player like this. One can pick any paragraph to illustrate the actual reason Mark Mazower pushes aside the testimony of "the two "slavofile" ladies who in 1863 conclude that:

...All that is of the pagan period has been byzantinized, and all that was Byzantine has been mahommedanized; so that while much may be traced to interest the antiquary, there is scarce beauty enough left to delight the unprofessional... But the real curiosity of Salonica is its population, that strange medley of antipathetic races. The Therma of ancient history yields at present the curious instance of a city historically Greek, politically Turkish, geographically Bulgarian, and ethnographically Jewish. Out of about 60,000 inhabitants the number of Jews at Salonica is estimated (1863) at 40,000, but with their usual astuteness they contrive to avoid being taxed individually, and the community bribes the Turkish officials to let them pass without scrutiny for no more than 11,500...

Mazower, then, stealthily borrows from them at will without ever quoting or attributing but he will never pass on testimonies which say that: "The Hebrews settled in Salonica are handsome, many of them auburn-haired, and their women often delicate, and even fair. In beauty the latter exceed the Hellene, which now-a-days is not saying so much, for, at least in Europe, the modern Greek woman falls short alike of the softness and fire of the Oriental and the refinement and loftiness of the Western lady"...

He simply cannot be trusted.

Here are some factual mistakes. I have used the Dutch translation and the quotes are in Dutch.

17 p. "wat ik enkele uren geleden in Athene achter me had gelaten."

The train ride from Athens to Thessaloniki takes 7:22 min provided the train is on time. Seven hours twenty two minutes is not "few hours ago". If a historian is elastic with such interpretation - beware the rest and read very carefully. Our familly reccords show that some of us had three rides of over 9:22 in the period 1979-1983 when the back-packer traversed the stretch Athens-Salonica in "a couple of hours". The worst, slowest railway network in Europe is run by OSE and they should sponsor mazower for his claim. Columbia back-packers read your professor carefully and check his words twice!

17 p. "ruim twintig jaar geleden...lagen het het Joegoslavie van Tito en de greenscontroleposten bij Gevgelija of Florina"

Well, 20 years ago (july 1984) to begin with, this was not true and it is not true now. Josip Broz Tito died 4 May 1980. Screw the historian who in the first sentence related to the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia uses "Tito's Yugoslavia". Screw the backpacker too. There is a border crossing near Florina (Lerin) by the name of Niki, and it is definitely not one hour from Salonica. It takes 2:30 minutes by car, if it is rented and you doi not care much how you drive (Route 66, Guide Michelin) but if you do care, then it would be a minimum of three hours. During 1984 the road conditions were for about four hours ride by bus (backpacker's preference) or car. A neat 300%-400% discrepancy with Mazower's facts.

17 p. "richting Ijzere Gordijn"

What Iron Curtain? Yugoslavia had the most open borders of ALL countries in the world at that (and earlier) time. What is this historian talking about? How could this region of Greece been much more interconnected with the neighboring peoples, languages and cultures if there was an Iron Curtain between them? And how did they communicate: whistling Morse code messages? Or the Bulgarian, Macedonian and the Albanian neighbors across the Iron Curtain were fluent in Greek and exchanged local radio-programs, huh?

33 p. Toen Thessaloniki in 1430 viel had de staad 1700 jaren leven als hellenistische, Romeinse en Byzantijnse metropool achter de rug.

This is the laughable forgery. It is so sad when after only 14 lines of totally empty words the author says "After the Ottomans were ousted". As if he had already set the scene in detail and completely described 500 years of Ottoman rule over Salonica! Is it sickness which reduces individuals to openly degrade themselves in public? Probably. Although Mark Mazower is a huge anti-talent, remember this, nowadays it is easy, even with a modest or low IQ, to produce a patchwork of a decent story. If only one has a tiny bit of taste or a gift to weave several sentences together. Tenacity does not help here: you can write ten times 585 pages, every single one will tell whether you can write or not. I have met superbly funny, entertaining raconteurs with great oral skill but who were incredibly dull when writing. This appears to be the problem with Mazower. Well, let me return to Salonica. The place has never been (despite the efforts of Mazower and the EOT) a metropolis. Provincialism depresses the place and pettishness reeks at you. Even today. Therefore - it has never been a metropolis. And it has not been established as a hellenistic city either.

Philip II, king of Macedonia, upon his return from a victory over the Greeks in Thessaly had learned that he got a daughter. He named her Thessaloniki, for Thessaly and Niki for victory. A military post was erected near Pella in 316 BC and dully named after her. Thus, Thassaloniki was originally a Macedonian and definitely not a hellenistic dwelling: it was a border camp full of those barbarous Macedonian soldiers and not a single Athenian, Theban or Achaian soul there. It cannot be that Mazower does not know this was so.

The famous orator Demostenes in 351 BC delivered the first of his Philippics, warning the Greeks about the Macedonian menace to Greek liberty. His three Philippics and his three Olynthiacs were all against the Macedonian king. Demostenes spoke of Philip II as of: "not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honors, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave".

These words echo the fact that the ancient Greeks regarded the ancient Macedonians as dangerous neighbors, never as kinsmen. They viewed them and their kings as barbarians (non-Greeks), a manner in which they treated all non-Greeks. Numerous Roman and Greek historians, consider the battle of Chaeronea, on August 2nd, 338 BC as an end to Greek liberty and history. The Macedonian ‘barbarian’ king defeated indeed the united Greek army. Among the Greeks the biggest losses were suffered by the Athenians, Thebans, and the Achaians. What in anglo-saxon terminology (or parlance) is used for the various city-states of the tip of the Balkan peninsula as Greece - will not regain its freedom from foreign occupation until early 1832 which is full 2170 years latter. (Only tiny part of Peloponnesos, Sparta, will refuse (with one single, laconic word) to submit itself to the Macedonians who never dared (neither father nor son) to venture a fight with the Spartans.

172 p. Bekir Pasha , die in augustus 1813 arriveerde, "heel erg rijk" was: hij bezat grote landgoederen op de Peloponnesos.

All the land in the Ottoman Empire belonged to the Sultan. Thus it could not be that this Bekir Pasha arrived somehow on Peloponnesos some three centuries after the complex system of timars and iktas was established to purchase or in any other possible way acquire the smallest piece of land which belonged to the sultan. In the Islamic empire of the Caliphate, "timar" was the piece of land granted to army officials for limited periods in lieu of a regular wage. The spahi (from Farsi for "cavalryman") was the holder of the timar granted directly from the sultan in return for military service. The timar system was abolished in 1831 because the spahis performed so deplorably during the Greek rebellion (1821-1832) for independence but mazower does not point to dose nuances.

To understand what is wrong with the content Mazower dumped on pages 166-172 you need to read this lot:

Pasha, the highest title for a person or an office in the Ottoman Empire, is originally persian word, derives from padshah padeshah meaning "king". It was typically granted to governors and generals. "Pasha" is roughly equivalent to "Sir" which in turn was attributed to knights. Only the sultans and (by delegation) the khedoves of Egypt had the right to bestow the title of Pasha, originally exclusively reserved for military commanders. The generals with a title of Pasha, when on campaign, distinguished among themselves by the number of horse-tails (three, two and one respectively) which they were entitled to display as symbols of rank. Latter the title went to high officials, but also to unofficial persons as a sign honor. Pashas ranked above beys, below viziers and governed territories named pashaluks or eyalets. The title was conferred upon both Muslims and Christian, frequently to foreigners in the service of the Empire and very rarely to women too. One of the most illustrious example of the Devsirme (devshirmeh) system of all time was Mehmed Pasha Sokolou (Sokolovic) who excelled in battles and during the Siege of Vienna, ascended through the ranks, and in 1546 was promoted to High Admiral of the fleet. He became the governor-general of Rumelia (the European part of the Ottoman empire). While he was visiting Visegrad near Sarajevo in Bosnia, where he was born, his mother recognized him by the birthmark on his face and once again embraced her child after more than thirty years. Mehmed Pasha Sokolović donated a bridge to his people. This is the topic of the well-known book by Ivo Andric (Na Drini Cuprija) which brought the guy the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1557 he (the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed pasha Sokolou) renewed the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Pec Patriarchate with his brother Makarije Sokolovic as a Patriarch.(Needs careful reading to grasp the magnitude of the job done). After Suleyman Magnificent died, his sons, Selim and Bayezid, fought for the throne. Mehmed Pasha led Selim's army and won. In 1562 he married Sultan Selim's daughter. Among the 219 Grand-veziers of the Empire more than a dozen were christian kids from the Balkan countries. The highly intelligent, honest and courageous reached the top through the devsime system. Any from Greece or Salonica, Mr. Mazower?

281 p. Voor de Osmaanse autoriteiten waren religieuze verschillen altijd veel belngrijker geweest dan verschillen in nationaliteit of taal.

If this statement is correct (it is not) then it has to relate more to the Sublime Porte than to a provincial ("cosmopolitan") town like Salonica. The Ottoman empire was an umma or "community of muslims" or just "community of peoples". Risen on that level - the statement is absurd. How could the confessional differences be more important in 60,000 population Salonica with 40,000 Jews than those of the language the administration communicated with its taxpayers? What "ease of administering" an Empire of some 200 million people was the fact that they were muslims when actually the population understood either Azeri or Turkish, Kurdish or Arab, Albanian or some other 40-50 languages? The administration cared to collect the taxes and run the empire, command troops while it did could not care less how the different denominations arranged their religious affairs. It was the christians who pressed the Sublime Porte to interfere and take sides in their ecclesiastic matters, not the other way round.

281 p. "oongeletterde Slavischtalige keuterboeren die de akkers in Thessaloniki's achterland beverkten, voelden zelden enige band met Griekenland of Bulgarije"

This is such a preposterous arrogance that one cannot believe could be uttered by a scientist. He implies that the smal-time poor illiterate Slav peasants were the filth while in Salonika proper lived (out of thin air or borrowing from the Jews on account of future EU-subsidies ) the illustrious Greeks busy devising micro-chips, building engines for T-Ford cars, constructing Eifel-towers, composing symphonies, experimenting in impressionism and exporting shiploads of silk to Japan, cotton to China and olives to Spain. He does not know that the "Greek" peasants were more than illiterate: they did not understand the language used by their own priests but used "dimotiki" while the "learned" and the "ecclesiastic" used "katharevusa" - a totally different language.

282 p. "magnaten"
So the "magnates" (in the sense: tycoon, millionaire, multimillionaire, mogul, captain of industry, baron, lord, king, magnifico, industrialist, proprietor) were abstract people. Mazower does claim but implies they were either Greek or Jewish. Mark let the reader assume that they (the magnates) got their wealth while selling imported luxuries to those dirt-poor illiterate peasants because the titular power, the pasha of the region, was as poor as a mosque-mouse. And that is the picture of "a cosmopolitan imperial city"!
To be "cosmopolitan" the city must be multicultural, multiracial, global, unprovincial, cultivated, sophisticated, urban, suave, glamourous. Salonica (as described in the chapter about Pashas and Beys) around 1850 was desperately dirty, infected with bandits, thieves, and cut-throats, it stank, it was ghettoized, it was not policed and the authorities could not do a thing to improve the quality of life.

283 p. "Het pan-Slavisme, dat wellicht ook door Russische spionen werd verbreid, maakte hen trots op hun ongeschreven familietaal en zorgde ervoor dat de Griekse culturele arrogantie voor het eerst als vijand werd aangemarkt"

The Kremlin power is notorious with great spies. Vladimir Putin, the president of All Russia, being one of them, is the foremost promoter of Slav values, but other elements of his biography shine on his reputation of a master-spy. In this context Mark Mazower amazes me: a Scotsman preaching protestantism around Salonica in the late XIX century is a missionary. A Muscovite promoting pan-Slavism at the same time and place is a spy. That is what you call historic science a la Columbia University!

284 p. In oktober 1880 verteelde het Griekse nieuwsblaad Ermis het Osmaanse Turks verplichte behoorde te zijn op scholen van de Griekse gemenschaap
It is not the point here to illustrate how far did the Greeks go astray. The point is to ask Mazower "What other kind of Turks but Ottoman, there were in the Ottoman Empire of the time?" American Turks? Columbian Turks? One learns till one is alive...

312 p. "De Bulgaar Vlachov had op de PEV-lijst gestaan en was tot 1912 afgevardigde in het Osmaanse parlement". ... 313 p. "Van de socialisten van de staad publiceerde de voormalige IMRO-activist Dimitar Vlachov in zijn ballingsoord in Weimar-Duitsland artikelen over een Balkanfederatie, terwijl..."

Now, if interested, Mazower could easily find out who was Dimitar Vlahov and why was he important. The man Mazower mentions twice as much as he does josip Broz Tito (who influenced the remodeling of the Balkans of today) did not allow any speculation about his ethnicity or nationality. He wrote and signed (Memoirs of Dimitar Vlahov, Nova Makedonija, 1970; Speaches and Articles 1945-47, 180 p. Skopje, 1947) that "I myself am purest Macedonian and nothing else". Vlahov (born in Kukus or Kilkis, like Gotse Delchev) was one of the most daring young commanders or a VMRO regiment and indeed a member of the first and only Ottoman parliament where he represented the "Bulgarian community" of the district of Salonika. In his long life he was not only Consul-general of the Bulgarian Empire in Odessa but also the chief administrator of Kosovo during the Bulgarian occupation (1915-1918) of the present UN-protectorate which is crudely being carved-out from Serbia. Vlahov enthusiastically supported the creation of israel and Theodor Herschel personally. He lead the group which formed VMRO (united) in 1924 in Viena. Its main objective was to free Macedonia within its geographical and economical borders and create an independent political unit that will become an equal member for a future Balkan Federation. Some 20 years latter he became the first president of the Democratic Republic of Macedonia, plus, vice-president (Josip Broz was the president) of AVNOJ (Anti-fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia) the highest legislative and executive organ of the country which will become a federation and a beacon of worker's self-managment and of the non-alignement movement. Prof. Georges Haupt, a French historian, claims that Dimitar Vlahov's Memoirs are "of great use for the study of social developments on the Balkans". It is pointless to blame Mark Mazower for not being capable of figuring out this complexity better than by labeling Vlahov as "the Bulgarian". If he tried he would have unravelled the documents for the heinously atrocious practices and general genocidal attitude nourished by the Greeks against everything of Slav, Jewish or Muslim origin in the region. While he was alive partizan battalions were named after him and today in Macedonia (rabidly sensitive on everything Bulgarian) hundreds of streets, schools, institutes, establishments carry his name Dimitar Vlahov, absolutely unthinkable if he was considered a "Bulgarian".

In the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) that followed World War II, the Macedonians of Aegean Macedonia fight on the side of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) as it promised them their rights after the war. About half of the 35,000 soldiers of DAG were Macedonians. On the liberated territory in Aegean Macedonia 87 Macedonian schools were opened, newspapers in Macedonian were published, and cultural and artistic associations created. But after few years of KKE's success, the communists lost the war, and the Macedonians were once again stripped of their human rights. 28,000 Aegean Macedonian children, known as 'child refugees', were separated from their families and settled in eastern Europe and Soviet Union in an attempt to save them from the terror that followed. Thousands of Macedonians lost their lives and great numbers of the Macedonian villages were burned to the ground.

Thus: he is wrong, Mazower is, labeling Dimitar Vlahov as Bulgarian. Such a mistake indicates Mazower's dilettante perception and understanding of the history of Salonika and its natural background.

It will be waste of time pointing and illustrating the factual errors, the prejudices, the perfidious selectiveness of sources or disregard of others, the sloppiness of chaotically presented text, the confusion of the historic composition and lack of time-line perspective, the technique of bundling sub-chapters into "themes" which are totally obsolete. In this depository of all sorts of trivia Mazower hides bits of significant grains of truth. He is careful, though, to cover with dust of explanatory blubber those bits which shed a light on horrible Greek practices in systematically burying if not totally destroying evidence of the existence and contribution of other cultures to what was Salonica of yesterday. That is not his fault as a historian. It is his complicity in a crime to human history committed on the pretext of building a myth of a new Greek metropolis. It is a work of a Sisyphus because the curse of the civilization eventually results with establishment of the principle of universal equilibrium which in turn settles all accounts among nations and social communities irrelevant how big or mighty they may have once been.

THE RISE AND RISE OF FARAHNAZ KARIMI IN THE HAGUE COMPARED WITH THE EVER GROWING DANGERS FOR ISRAEL

2005-12-16T01:12:00.000+01:00

When I disregard my personal motives for the mistrust in Mrs Farahnaz Karimi's integrity to fit the role of a representative of the Tons and Jans of this land I fall into a morass of inconsistencies which other people might be tempted to name lies, a chilling space where with little or no imagination at all one can literally sense (for me same as "see") tarantulas of terror comfortably webbing their networks. Faranhaz Karimi, 45, is a (Persian-born) member of the lower house of the Dutch parliament (Tweede Kamer) and is the spokesperson on foreign affairs for the leftist Groen-Links party. She is busy (a Dutch euphemism) with international co-operation and development (in Dutch: Ontwikkelingssamenwerking, a part of the Ministry of foreign affairs which spends some 8% of the budget on projects in various countries), European affairs and defense (military and strategic aspects of the kingdom inclusive NATO and other EU-force activities).

Neat, is it not, for someone who between 1981 (say March or May) until late 1983 was an active member of the Mujahedien e Khaiq, a notorious terrorist organization. This may be so and then it may not be so at all. Tell me if you have heard that the Mujahedien e Khaiq used to issue admission slips or membership cards. If they did that, they might have also issued dismissal or acceptance of resignation letters with signed and stamped document for returned books, codes, technical or other equipment, solemn vows and oaths. I do not believe that Mrs Karimi has any of those.

We arrived here the same year, 1989, when Ruhollah Khomeini died. I came in this country legally: a journalist who was appointed representative of the Yugoslav National Tourist Office for the Netherlands. My obligation and aim was to spend 2,3 million gulden every year on promotion of the physical beauty and the hospitality awaiting the Dutch in places like Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia. She came in this country, of what I know, illegally. Her aim was to get into politicsbecause as a child she had seen poor people on her way to school. She succeed.

Now, I bring this because, as a journalist (I still carry the cards of both the macedonian and the International Federation of Journalists) I continued to write about various events and people around me. When Desmond Morris, then the director of the London Zoo, wrote the preface to his "Naked Ape" book, he decided to make an interesting remark. He said something along these lines: "There are 267 apes and monkeys. One of the apes is naked and boasts with being the "homo sapiens". Nevertheless, naked or not he still is an ape. I am a zoologist and I will treat him for what he is". Thus, Farahnaz Karimi is a public person and I will write what I think about her behavior as such.

Morass of inconsistencies
Of what she let it be known, Mrs Karimi family background is well above average. Her father was a landowner around Garros (a place which I cannot find on the maps nor on all of the Internet) where she was born on November 15th, 1960. By the time she was six she said she went to a primary school in Tehran. One would imagine that a rich father who strongly supported the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would be very strict in raising his offsprings whether male or female. The member of such a family would be devoted muslims I reckon. Young Farahnaz could do little, if anything, to oppose such an education, way and philosophy of life. Thus, she must have been formed as a devoted Shia muslim. Her father who was a staunch supporter of the Ayatollah would not have been worth his salt if he would have allowed his family to disintegrate from inside. Or young Karimi was a natural into disguising her real views, her true self in the society swarming with the spying eyes and ears of the SAVAK, the mullahs, the family and the school?

Or was there another reason for her being so successful in shading firs her newly found revolutionary flames and allegiances? Could it be that she left the strict and sheltering home of her father? How, under what conceivable circumstances would a rich landowner in Iran allow, out of a sudden, somebody, actually anybody to take astray his (no adjective here) daughter? By the summer of her last year in high school Iran was in frenzy. The end of her first semester at the Technical University of Isfahan (she chose Industry Design) was the end of the last emperor on the Peacock throne. Mrs Karimi is proud of claiming she did fight against the shah of Iran and his "White Revolution" her landlord father hated so much because among other things it also meant redistribution of land to nearly 3 million landless peasants. We know the consequences of the overthrow of the monarchy. By February 1st Ruhollah Khomeini was the first Muslim cleric in modern times to create an Islamic government based solely on his personal conception of what such a government should entail. Descended from the Mussavi Sayyeds, a family tracing its lineage from the Prophet Muhammad through the Shiite seventh imam, Musa al-Kazem, Khomeini became an architect of late twentieth century Islamic "revolutionary" thinking.

Soon after she was with the Mujahedien e Khaiq. There is not a hint who financed her between 1978, after leaving high school, till 1983 when she married and eventually ran out of Iran. Nor there is much about the sources of her existence for the next six years, when she came to The Netherlands. She covers some 14 years of her life being enrolled as a student following "industrial design", "math", "policy-making and administration of international organizations", "general studies" while she was also a mother, a wife and a revolutionary I believe. This last activity is particularly interesting but you will not find a word about it. Her prominence to politics must have invited at least some of her former Khaiq friend to turn to her to say "hi" if not ask for a favor. Did she, does she keep any contacts, discuss the old times, the ideas they shared?

Interrogative style
Mrs Farahnaz Karimi enjoys phrasing her questions in the shape of a circus knife-thrower and then hurls them at her victims whenever she sees fit to do so. Of cours, she refuses to answer the question send to her (repeatedly) by this journalist, To illustrate her manners and style I will use a fraction of your time. This is how mrs Kartimi approached Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, now the Secretary-General of NATO, then the minister of foreign affairs of the Netherlands:

Question
In which framework the president of Kazakhstan visits the Netherlands? Who had invited the president of Kazakhstan? Is that op Dutch initiative? If so, why?
Answer
Upon an invitation of the "regering" President Nazarbayev of Kazachstan will make an official visit to The Netherlands on 27 and 28 november.

Question
Which members of the government will have talks with the president of Kazachstan?
Answer
The president will have bilateral talks with the prime-minister. The delegation talks will be attended by the ministers of foreign affairs, economy, finances, agriculture, environment and fisheries and transport and chanal-network. the ministers of foreign affairs will have separate talks. In the preparation of this visit the Ambassador for human rights had met with a delegation of Kazakhstan opposition.

Question
Are you informed about the international controversy of the detention of the journalist Duvanov in Kazakhstan
Answer
During the visit we shall point to the human rights sphere within which a number of specific cases including the detention of Mr. Duvanov.

Question
Do you share the opinion that the human rights in Kazakhstan are not respected and that the visit under whatever excuse is not wanted?

If I were the minister (and a rich man) my secretary would have sent Mrs Karimi a short letter stating that the minister is very busy for this set of interrogatory questions and let her better wait till the visit is over and make sure she is in parliament when His Excellency will brief the members about this visit by a very, very important head of state she should best show maximum respect while he is official guest of Her Majesty's Government. And then my secretary will be free to call her secretary for coffee and use the opportunity so say that she has a hunch that the minister and all around him find Mrs. Karimi a (and here you can feel free to put any depletive if you are badly mannered).

The point, though is not in throwing insults. The point is why should she be in advance informed who will meet the guest? Why? What does she want to use that sort of information for? Exert pressure? The only use of such an information is to approach or threaten those who will meat the president of Kazakhstan if they do not comply with what? Where is there her role as a policy maker? She thinks that the invitation sucks, stinks should not be there. Fine. Let her go to the parliament and speak up. Or that is not what she had learned while among the Mujahedien e Khaiq?

Then her interest in Sergey Duvanov's case. Sergey Duvanov, the journalist. As if "a student" or "a teacher" or "jobless" would be less important. Probably 90% of his fellow-journalists out there are trying their best to climb as close to this mogul in Alma Ati as it is imaginably possible. Being journalists does not make them saints and freedom-fighters, does it? The guy was detained for screwing a minor. In the netherlands only girls under 13 are safe from predating PE teachers who like to cajole them into sex. Everything above that rape age of womanhood goes and Mrs Karimi had probably voted with both hands to pass that stance into law. He was sentenced and after a year or saw was banished to live in a village with a restricted radius of travel. Of what I recollect she intervened because there was this guy who was a rep out there of a Dutch NGO called MilieuKontakt Oost-Europa. That NGO MilieuKontakt used their rep in Macedonia to trick me into translating something for them and refused to pay the hard-work. I tried to have mrs Karimi put two and two together and see that defending these people from MilieuKontakt is a tricky business - but she refused to even answer. Why? Because the boss of that MilieuKontakt is some Jerphaas Donner who may be and then may be not connected with the important Donners around here. He revealed himself to me as a guy I would never like to meet and would not accept even a painted walnut from his hands. I do not care whether you know what do I mean to say, but I mean it.

Thus: these alliances make the backbone of Mrs. (what was her name) ah, Farahnaz Karimi. The Groen-Links spokesperson on foreign affairs, defense, international money assigning and the rest. She is probably the most significant Iran-related power-broker out of the ruling circle in Tehran. That is how we come to the hottest issue for world peace.

Ahmadinjead and Faranhaz
Just before last year's Christmas recess the parliament in The Hague went along with Faranhaz's lobbying and allocated €15 million ($20 million) for Iranian TV-program from the Netherlands. Despite alegedly "strong" opposition by the Ministry of foreign affairs, the parliament supported the bill (Groen-Links are NOT a coalition party) for a ludicrous project pushed singlehandedly by Mrs. Karimi. The money and the basics behind the project are such that the whole concept speaks (to me) volumes of disturbing stories about the climate in the Dutch Second Chamber. First of all the money is not under Government control but is given to Iranians (in The Netherlands) to produce a TV program (in The Netherlands) which will be transmitted (from The Netherlands) for Iranians (in Iran and elsewhere around the world) or, better, those Iranians who speak Farsi. Get it?
Do not say "yes" if you are not sure. Ok, that is better.

Farsi is only ONE of the 71 languages registered in Iran. Full 69 of them are actively spoken nowadays and 2 are extinct. The most widely spoken language is Azerbejdjani or Azeri (23,5 million) then Farsi (nearly 22 million) Luri and Kurdish (6 million each) Gilaki and Mazanderani (3,2 million each) Turkmen or Turkish 2 million and so forth. You remember that Iran has a population of 78 million. So, who is it possible that the clever people we have elected to the Tweede Kamer did not place some amendments to the bill and asked, say, equal time for Azeri and Farsi, one third of that time for Luri and Kurdis and so on? Or the reps did not even care what languages were spoken out there? Or they trusted Faranhaz Karimi knew what she was doing or what she was telling them? Or they simply throw taxpayer's money away because Faranhaz's spell over them or what?

Now, that is finished. With a TV-station which is everything but her own, with her hand-picked staff and program directed to Iran, Mrs. Karimi is obviously somebody with power. There are not very many of those individuals who can wield a $20 million media hurricane at a country. My father used to say: "It is not responsible the one who eats the pie but the one who gives it". The point is not so much how did she persuade the parliament to give her the money as much how can it be that the parliament does not ask her to explain what did she do with the $20 million? Was shem with her two years "Industrial design" in Isfahan some 20 years ago, the warranty for professional TV-programing? How many professional iranian journalists live and publish TV-content in this country?
Since Mrs Karimi will not, is there anybody to enlighten me about journalism as a profession? If you believe that anybody can step in front of the TV lights and cameras, just tell me and then we can cut the subsidies for this SChool for Journalism where (i hear) Volkskrant former editor is a professor. This whole question is fully public domain because I can plead or scream for all I want Mrs Karimi and the Tweede Kamer will simply ignore me. There is not much sense telling the parliament that they should have spent the money on establishing personalized service for coping with the electronic maii sent to the members by the taxpayers. And maybe the representatives of the people are right. Once you give in to popular demand there is no going back. The voters will ask for more.

So, what is the connection with this Farsi-spoken Dutch-based/payed TV with this alarmingly dangerous statement, Ahmadinjead's call for annihilation of the state of Israel? the connection is Faranhaz. She declared that “The project is not political, but concentrating more on human rights, freedom and democracy” stressing that the new television would not be against the Iranian regime. And furthermore, quite along the perverse standards of any school of duplicity she added the project has “nothing to do with the (Dutch) government”. This means that she takes me for an idiot.

The minister-president could abort the bill (if he only wanted to) by counter-weighing it with a confidence-vote. It cannot be that his own majority in the parliament will throw him out on that issue. If he knew that they would do that - he would resign and there could be no vote at all but he would carry on as a demised, caretaker PM with a fine election issue: how far will these immigrants push the patience of the Dutch? And he could in one go sweep both sides - the left and the right muslim and christian radicals. What Azeri, Luri, Kurdi, Mazanderani or Farsi for that matter when we live here on 6,85 euro a day!

Thus, this Dutch-tresury-financed Farsi program which will not be against the Iranian regime will keep silent about the call by this president for annihilation of Israel: people, culture, all? On "Roozonline" mrs Karimi will meekly say that "Even after the passage of two weeks, Ahmadinejad’s comments continue to reverberate around the globe. At a seminar in Tehran last month, he called for the removal of Israel from the face of the earth....Such a hard-line stance angered many, even those who are known to be critical of Israel’s policies. ... A look at the personalities and world leaders who condemned Ahmadinejad’s stance on Israel demonstrates how widely such remarks and ideas are unacceptable. Oh, that is what worries Mrs Karimi: not the idea itself but how widely it is unacceptable?

Is that so, Faranhaz of the Groen-Links? (You, geachte lezers, know that this was a rhetoric question I could not resist, didn't you!) I have read Faranhaz's text We all need to take some solace that eventually no one can full the world all the time. And concentrate on solving this immediate danger for our future. A bloody or totally unpredictable nuclear confrontation may be in the offing.