Defining "terrorism" and deciding who's behind a "terrorist" attack prematurely as a form of propaganda

of course i've been following the situation in syria and the damascus suicide bombing without the slightest notion of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys (although i am strongly leaning toward the belief that both sides are pretty bad)... i also have no firm idea of who is propping up the assad regime and who is giving support to the rebels... that both the u.s. and israel have their hands in the matter up to their elbows i think is almost a given and that both of them would certainly like to see a regime emerge, no matter how brutal or totalitarian, that would befriend the u.s., tolerate israel and serve as a buffer to iran as well as turn a cold shoulder to russia and china, is hardly in doubt... it's also very interesting to note, as glenn points out, that news reports on the damascus bombing have pointedly avoided labeling it as a "terrorist" attack...

so, how utterly convenient to have the "terrorist" bulgarian bus bombing suddenly occur that, without preamble or investigation, israel can blame first on iran and, on further consideration, iran via hezbollah... israel and the israel-besotted neo-cons steering u.s. foreign policy would like nothing better than to turn loose the dogs of war in the region and will go to any lengths to make it happen... this is just another thing they can point to but, cynic that i am, would not put it out of the realm of possibility that mossad is behind it... true, it's hard to conceive of israel killing its own citizens but, given the total nutcases in charge, it's not out of the question...

glenn, as always, does a masterful job of dissecting the meaning and justifiability of terrorism in the bulgarian bus bombing in similar fashion to the job he did a few days ago with the damascus suicide bombing which, added to the analysis of "terrorism" he has been doing all along, provides a much-needed perspective on the reality of events...

meanwhile, cnn reports this...

In a televised statement Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was "perpetrated by Hezbollah, Iran's leading terrorist proxy," as part of a global campaign that has reached a dozen countries on five continents.

But he offered no evidence. Israel's U.S. Embassy said Wednesday that it had no proof that Iran was the instigator of the attack.

mmm-hmmm...

oh, and btw, will the colorado movie theater massacre be labeled "terrorism"...? somehow, i don't think so...

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Autumn scene on Mt. Rhodopi, southern Bulgaria

i haven't been posting many photos lately... guess i've just not been in the mood... anyway, this one was sent from sofia by a good friend who spent a weekend in the south of her own country enjoying some mid-autumn scenery... i'll be heading in roughly that direction myself next week to continue some work i've been doing in kosovo... i'd say that i was leaving the warm springtime weather in argentina but it hasn't been all that warm here... in fact, the temps have been pretty much the equivalent of those in the northern latitudes, altho' the next couple of weeks in those climes will see regular dips below the freezing mark and probably the first snows of the season... for that matter, reno has just had two nights of hard freeze...

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EU suspends aid to Bulgaria

the last time i was in bulgaria was in october 2006, about three months before its accession to the eu... i thought at the time that accession was premature, that there was simply too much corruption and that the eu might regret opening the door to both bulgaria and romania, although i don't have any direct experience with romania... looks like my hunch was well-founded...

The European Commission has suspended EU aid to Bulgaria worth hundreds of millions of euros because of concerns about corruption and organised crime.

Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said the EU was also withdrawing the right of two Bulgarian agencies to manage EU funds.

He said Bulgaria needed a new penal code to ensure more effective justice.

Romania was also criticised for shortcomings in its judiciary, including politicisation of cases.

Romania will escape penalties for now, but the report says reforms there are "fragile".

About 500m euros (£400m; $800m) of aid to Bulgaria is being frozen by the commission.

Both countries have been under close supervision since they joined the European Union in January 2007.

In Bulgaria, "the fight against high-level corruption and organised crime is not producing enough results," Mr Laitenberger said, presenting the reports on Wednesday.

the article goes on to say that, under intense bulgarian lobbying, the report was "toned down"... imho, that's a mistake... as much as i like the people of bulgaria, and also with due respect to my friends there who are decent, honorable people, bulgaria is a mess... i fully suspect the same hammer needs to fall on romania...

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The co-optation continues

read this carefully...

A US military base might be set up near the village of Chubra in the region of Bourgas, Chubra mayor Georgi Kendov said.

The municipality was hoping that establishing the base would lead to the modernisation of infrastructure in the region, Dnevnik daily said.

Kendov said that the money to be earned from the base could be used for a polyclinic and daily emergency centre with ambulances.

NATO asked if the former buildings of a tank brigade in the town of Aitos could be turned into a reserve storage base. NATO planned to store here the equipment for one or two battalions, which would be based in the military bases of Novo Selo and Bezmer.

The US investment in the municipalities where military bases would be set up, would be nearly $200 million, Dnevnik said.

In late December 2007, at a public discussion, experts explained that the bases would remain Bulgarian, under Bulgarian flag and command. The villages near the bases would benefit from infrastructure development. The US planned charity for the social institutions in the region of the bases, Dnevnik said.

Sungulare mayor Georgi Kenov said that the bases were a possible way to solve some of the problems in the municipality, including unemployment.

i've driven through many small towns in the balkans, bulgaria included... the same thing is happening to them that is happening to small towns all over the world, only with an additional twist... small towns in hundreds of countries are being essentially abandoned as community residents move to urban centers in search of employment and a better life, leaving the community's poor, children, and elderly with diminishing or non-existent services and a rotting infrastructure...*

in the former socialist countries, there's an extra twist... prior to the socialist collapse, many small communities in countries like bulgaria relied on some form of manufacturing, food processing, agriculture, military activity, or other economic base to sustain them, all of which were placed there by the command economy of the socialist state... with the fall of socialism and the mad rush to privatization, much of that local economic base disappeared, virtually overnight... driving through these small towns, you can often see massive factories, shuttered, looted, and empty, broken windows everywhere, surrounded by apartment blocks filled with people barely making it... by contrast, capitals like sofia are bustling and apparently prospering, that is unless you consider the shanty-towns springing up all around the outskirts...

is it any wonder communities like the ones described above, notwithstanding bulgaria's new status as a member of the european union, are susceptible to the blandishments of nato and the united states when their very survival is at stake...?

* as an example, i am currently typing this in buenos aires, argentina... the city proper, capital federal, has approximately 5 million residents... the metro area, gran buenos aires, has roughly 17 million residents... argentina, in terms of land mass, is the 7th largest country in the world, and has 35 million people in TOTAL, which means that more than half of the people live in a single urban area...

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The EU, Germany and Bulgaria show how diplomacy is done

from spiegel...


The accused -- five Bulgarian nurses
and a Palestinian doctor -- appear
in the dock of a Tripoli court.

The legal drama over five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor -- earlier condemned to death in Libya for supposedly infecting hundreds of children with AIDS -- could be nearing its end. After months of tough negotiations, a diplomatic offensive by the German government and the EU has led to a breakthrough.

[...]

Not only has a crisis task force in Bulgaria been working for the nurses' freedom, but so too have high-ranking negotiators from the European Union and Germany. And the deal that could soon lead to the release of the Bulgarians is a textbook example of effective European diplomacy.

something bush should read and learn from, but of course he won't, or, more likely, can't...

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"This thing that has happened to America was planned for a long time."

i remember back last september sharing a post that maccabee had put up on daily kos about a romanian immigrant he had a long conversation with... it was as chilling it its way as this one...

from joey picador at justice for none...

One of our neighbors is moving. I've been in this neighborhood for about six years now, but didn't really know them very well at all - just waves and nods, mostly.

So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this evening I happened to spy my neighbor (he's like 85 years old - I don't know exactly, but he's old, talks and moves very slowly) standing on the sidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving, and he said, "Back to Germany."

I had been stationed in Germany for two years while in the military, so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and inquired if he was going back because he missed it.

"No," he answered me. "I'm going back because I've seen this before." He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler's government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority "as if they were starved for it" (his words).

He said he was too old to see it happen right in front of his eyes again, and too old to do anything about it, so he was taking his family back to Europe on Thursday where they would be safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.

I gotta tell you - it was chilling. I let him talk, and the whole time, my gut was churning, like I had mutated butterflies in my stomach. When he was finished, he shook my hand, gripping it really hard, until his knuckles turned white and he was shaking. He looked me in the eyes, hard, and said, "I will pray for your family and your country." He let go of my hand and hobbled away.

it sure reminds me of the bulgarian immigrant...

It starts with fixed elections. First the 2000 election was fixed and then the 2004 election was fixed. It happened in Communist elections just like it happened here. The people who count the votes are all in the government that's in power. And even when it seems like people have had enough, the tyrant will always somehow come out winning just enough to make your conspiracy theories seem ridiculous. Just like in Romania and Bulgaria of the sixties and seventies, the press may even report problems with elections, but Bush knows that Americans are lazy.

[...]

It may take about ten years. But it will be very much like the old Soviet Union. Incompetent government. Walls will appear around you. On the borders. Your internet sites will be scrubbed or monitored or may suddenly disappear. A government will control everything from one branch, businesses too will be in bed with the government. One day you will see your boss have the power to go through your bags. One day your corporation will have more rights than you have. Just like in Romania, we had conspiracy theories. One nuttier than the next. It turned out to be mostly true these things. This thing that has happened to America was planned for a long time.

yep, it's been a long time in the works... a long time... and we either put a halt to it soon or it will no longer be possible...

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