Photos: Bulgaria in the EU

Just came across a Bulgarian website that has been asking people to send in photos detailing the absurdities of Bulgarian life in the supposed advanced workings and organisation of EU standards. Under the title 'BG in EU' here are some prize pics...

The sign says: Coffee, Cigarettes, Alcohol, Dog and Chinese Food, Newspapers

Proven correct about DPR Korea

Ah, the satisfaction. In the past couple of days, some of my predictions and observances about North Korea have been proven. First, the long-awaited and highly-speculated 3rd Party Conference of the ruling Korean Workers Party, which was first announced for the beginning of September, has been delayed due to flooding that affected northern regions of the country bordering China. This is something I said would be the reason for the delay last week. Since then, agenda-ridden North Korean 'watchers' have scoffed this 'excuse', dismissing it as a smokescreen for outlandish treachery of some unproven and purely speculative behind-the-scenes jostling between power sources. It makes you wonder whether these 'watchers' are living in reality, as a significant and possibly nation-changing event such as this Party Conference so soon after the devastation of fatal floods and typhoons (some 'watchers' dismissed the floods as being 'average' - I don't see anything 'average' when a flood kills people) would be akin to a major celebration being held just days after Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans in 2005.

After some speculation (yet again, quickly then accepted as 'fact') that the Conference has been delayed until October to coincide with the anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers Party 65 years ago, Pyongyang TV announced yesterday that the conference is going ahead on the 28th September. So there!

But wait, there's more. Another item of speculation about North Korea accepted as fact by the West has yet again been proven wrong (so far). Jimmy Carter himself, who was in North Korea last month to secure the release of an idiot who waltzed his way into the country and, not surprisingly, into jail, wrote that the Chinese say that all talk of a hereditary succession involving the youngest known son of Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, is false Western lie. This has led one blogger on a website devoted to DPR Korea, appeal to North Korean 'watchers' to 'cease and desist regarding Jang Song Taek as the DPRK’s jamba-suited Falstaff'. Jang, 64, who happens to be Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law and a very experienced politician, became the second most powerful person in DPR Korea when he was elevated to second-in-command of the all-powerful North Korean 'National Security Council'. By all accounts, and with a little common sense, he seems more likely to become the next leader of DPR Korea, much before any Confucian-style hereditary change occurs.

The one point I constantly stress about North Korea is that no matter what, the West has much idea of what is happening in this secretive country. However, finally, in a US senate panel meeting, Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State, East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said "in fundamental ways, North Korea is still a black box. We have some glimpses and some intelligence and the like, but the truth is often times in retrospect some of that intelligence has proven to be wrong." In other words, they have no idea. Just what I have been saying all along. When Campbell was later asked by former presidential candidate John McCain about Kim Jong-un's suspected accession, Campbell replied with 'your guess is as good as ours'. That pretty much sums it up.

Playing the 'Status Game'

Excellent article in Melbourne broadsheet 'the Age' about the pitfalls of 'middle-class welfare' and the 'status game' it fuels.

The standard case against middle-class welfare is simply that it's our heavily means-tested system that does most to make Australia a low-tax country compared with the rest of the developed world. And we should take care not to weaken it.

The more government spending is means-tested, the more redistributive the budget is without requiring high levels of taxation, then the less ''churning'' occurs - taking money from the same people you give it back to. Middle-class welfare increases churning.

But what economists call middle-class welfare I prefer to call subsidising ''positional goods'' - goods whose purchase and display is intended to demonstrate to others our superior position in the pecking order.

When, rather than buying a perfectly satisfactory locally made Toyota for $30,000, for instance, we prefer to buy an imported BMW for $100,000, we're spending $30,000 on a car and $70,000 on a positional good.

We tell ourselves how much we value the Beemer's superior qualities. But, in truth, we want to demonstrate to neighbours and relatives we're doing as well as they are - if not better.

When you remember that most people in rich countries such as Australia long ago passed the point of being able to afford the necessities of life, you realise an ever-increasing proportion of our ever-rising real incomes is devoted to buying positional goods to impress other people.

I suspect the pressure on governments to keep taxes low is motivated by our desire to spend more on positional goods. We need more and more disposable income just to keep up with the Joneses, let alone get ahead of them.

It's a free country and if people want to devote their ever-growing affluence to playing such games, that's their choice. But there are some important points to note.

First, such status competitions are socially wasteful. They're a zero-sum game: those who win do so at the expense of those who lose. What's more, it's a competition that's never resolved: if you get ahead of me in this round, I stretch to overtake you in the next.

Second, if all the angst we go through to achieve greater efficiency and faster economic growth is doing little more than supplying more fuel to a never-ending status competition, it's hardly a noble enterprise.

Third, it makes no sense for governments to be compelling taxpayers to subsidise those who want to play these status games. It's likely a fair bit of the subsidy ends up in the hands of the suppliers rather than the purchasers of the private schooling or whatever.

But get this: even to the extent the subsidy achieves its obvious (but never stated) goal of assisting those who would otherwise be unable to afford the positional good to attain it, it's actually self-defeating. Why? Because, by definition, a positional good signals your superior standing only if it's something most people can't afford.

So subsidising positional goods is a politician's con: the aspirational punters are deluded into thinking they're being helped to achieve something that's actually unattainable.

When you consider how many demands there are on government revenue - particularly the looming growth in spending on health and aged care - it makes no sense for governments to be subsidising status-seeking. Especially not when they're neglecting the provision of non-positional, public goods that would deliver greater benefit, such as reducing commuting times and improving the natural environment.

Economists need to embrace a new principle of budgeting: governments should devote whatever funds they have to delivering high-quality public services in such areas as education and health, leaving those who'd prefer to buy those services privately free to do so if they can afford it.

Some sense about Cuban changes

Thank you BBC for actually asking a proper expert about the proposed latest changes to Cuba's economic system. Stephen Wilkinson of the Centre for Caribbean and Latin American Research and Consultancy, London Metropolitan University, in an interview with the BBC explained, among other things, that:

The media frenzy that has followed the announcement that Cuba is to reduce its state workforce by 500,000 by the middle of 2011, is similar to that which followed Fidel Castro's throwaway remark last week that the Cuban model isn't working - it has largely missed the point.

This is not the end of communism or socialism in Cuba

The announcement yesterday by the Cuban Workers Confederation is highly significant and it does spell the final death knell of the old Soviet model of centrally planned socialism in Cuba, but it would be very wrong to interpret it, as some have, as the harbinger of free market capitalism and liberal democracy.

Far from it. The changes are couched in the rhetoric of revolution and the discourse is very much one of deepening the socialist character of the system rather than one of shifting towards capitalism.

Unlike the prospect of suddenly being left without work that faces many in the UK, as the present government's budget cuts loom, these cuts in Cuba are being undertaken after a long period of consultation with the trade unions and other organisations.

Workers know what is going to happen to them. The programme is to be undertaken in stages, the effect on people's livelihoods is to be mitigated and it is important to understand that the announcement does not mean that all the 500,000 workers mentioned are to become unemployed.

A large number of them will be offered alternative employment opportunities and a good many will continue in their jobs but will cease to be employed by the state anymore.

This is a far cry from the egalitarian days when workers were expected to labour for no recompense other than their own moral good and of the country and fellow Cubans”
End Quote In many cases it means that they will become self-employed or become part of a workers' cooperative.

Taxi drivers for example, or shop workers and workers in small manufacturing enterprises, all of whom are currently state employees, will essentially take over the administration of their own workplaces and earn their salaries directly from their takings or revenues rather than being a salaried state employee.

They will essentially be doing what they have always done - but they will no longer be on the state's payroll.

In cases where workers are made redundant they will be encouraged to set up new business or transfer to other sectors.

This does of course imply a huge change towards a system in which the market dictates the distribution of goods and services and this in turn also implies other significant changes.

As one Cuban economist put it to me recently, the role of the state is to be transformed from being the administrator of economic activity to the regulator.

Wilkinson goes on to say:

However, it would be wrong in the short term to see the reforms as leading inevitably to a change in the political organisation inside Cuba.

Cuba is to remain a one-party communist state for the foreseeable future.

This leads some to suggest that the Cubans are following a Chinese or Vietnamese model. True, there are similarities between the two Asian tigers and what was announced yesterday.
The Cubans have certainly studied both models closely. But my sources tell me that at a very high level, while the economic progress of the pair impressed, neither met with approval in their entirety.

Cuba, they say, wishes to avoid the negative social consequences of the Chinese experience.

A more laudable direction of travel is towards Latin America where Cuba recently announced that it was seeking to eventually form an economic union with Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez is leading Venezuela away from the free-market capitalist model towards what he calls "21st Century Socialism". Interestingly this includes encouraging workers' co-operative enterprises. Might this be Cuba's first step towards meeting Chavez half way?

This new system is very reminiscent with the first economic changes applied in Gorbachev's Soviet Union in the mid 1980s, which in turn was an adaptation of Lenin's 'New Economic Policy' (NEP) of the early 1920s. While NEP was quite successful until Stalin closed the shop (literally) with the first five year plan in 1928, Gorbachev's economic policies, adapted by Abel Aganbegyan, did not end up with the revitalisation of the USSR's then stagnating economy. What Cuba does have on its sides is hindsight, and a lot will depend on whether the Cubans can apply the right measures to avoid the mistakes made in places like Cuba, Vietnam, the final years of the USSR and Tito's 'self-managed' Yugoslavia. In any case, exciting times await for Cuba, whose system is proving to be more adaptable to changing circumstances than were the former Eastern Bloc economies.

DPRK party conference speculation - c'mon people!

It's now the middle of September and still no word from North Korea about whether there has been the long-awaited 3rd Korean Workers Party Conference that I have written about before. With many of the world's major media outlets having their North Asian or Korean correspondents ready to report on the speculated handover of power to the third generation of Kims, the lack of news coming out of Pyongyang is causing these reporters in Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo (note, none in Pyongyang), along with North Korean observers, to conjure up elaborate theories and intrigue worthy of a James Bond novel as to why there has been a delay.

One of the leading North Korean 'experts', Andrei Lankov, has had his speculations reported, via a posting on a blog about DPR Korea, by another blog on the Economist, while AFP likewise is quoting often unreliable (but usually accepted as fact anyway) South Korean and Japanese sources, which is like asking Syrian sources about what is happening in Israel. No source is able to give a consistent start date, reason for the delay, or any other details about the conference. Again, proof that they have no idea what is happening in DPR Korea. Still, this doesn't stop speculation of trouble in the Court of Kim being 'obviously' attributed to complex power struggles within North Korea's elite and Kim Jong-il madness from his (unproven) stroke.

There is one rather important factor curiously missing from these speculations, and there is no excuse of having no idea about this as it was widely reported and well documented with footage: How about that typhoon that devastated the Korean-Chinese border region on 2 September, leaving dozens dead and many more thousands without shelter, food and clean water? This is not some minor incident - it's a major disaster! Now, considering how much will be spent, and that some conference delegates would have been affected by the typhoon and consequent flooding, it would have been poor form of the Korean Workers Party to have gone ahead with the conference. First priority will be to ensure that the people in these devastated areas are attended to before any conference can be held. Now, that would make more sense than pure speculation of unproven power struggles. However, when it comes to North Korea, the West does not apply common sense. There's better luck spreading the lie that Kim Jong-il gave birth to alien puppies with four heads than actually saying something that could actually be real. The power struggle scenarios, consistent with the popular images of the backdoor dealings of evil structures such as the Mafia, better fits in the West's two-dimensional perception of the sinister North Koreans and their evil, non-capitalist system.

So, my word to the experts is: Keep it simple! It's not as complicated or sinister as you make it out to be.

2000 Olympic Memories... just like those clichéd postcards they show, only better

As Australia, and especially Sydney, goes into sentimental nostalgic lookbacks at the 2000 Olympics held at this time 10 years ago, here are some of my reminiscinces of Australia during September 2000. I don't think many of these will be mentioned in featured articles and reports in the Australian media

- TVs everywhere! There was no way of missing the Olympic action because TVs were even brought into shops and workplaces. There were 8 alone in our office.

- The failed major ad campaign for the post-Olympics season of Home and Away. Word spread by the end of the Olympics that the big twist to happen was Ailsa was going to die in a fire.

- Australia hated Marie-José Pérec, Catherine Freeman's main competitor. She was forced out of the country due to the pressure.

- For a certain group of Aussies not so interested in the Olympics (i.e. traitors), one of the cable stations had a Simpsons marathon showing all 300 or so episodes up until then in chronological order. Friends mentioned that they were able to watch episodes that they never knew even existed. It took 16 days, 24 hours a day to show them all, the exact same time the Olympics was on.

- Disaster reporting before the Olympics. The Australian media relished reporting about the many scandals (remember the wrong size tickets?), budget blow-outs and corruption. The games were going to be a disaster. All of it was perfect fodder for the brilliant Australian comedy series The Games, starring 'the voice of Australia', NZ-born John Clarke and Gina Reiley (Kim from Kath & Kim). Here's a clip!

I'm a bit surprised that we haven't heard of any scandals (to the same extent as Sydney's) being attributed so far to London's preparations. I suspect very good PR here could be the case.

- The great travel deals to be had to leave Sydney during the Olympics

- For years before the Olympics, all of central Sydney's pavements were dug up and fixed. You couldn't walk around the city centre.

- Aussies thrilled to have scored tickets to see any event, even if it meant a qualifier between Guinea-Bissau and Slovakia in the women's handball, and having no idea where is Guinea-Bissau or Slovakia or what is women's handball.

But the best memory goes to Australian comedians Roy and HG and their nightly Olympic show 'The Dream'. They provided a much needed respite from the hype and jingoism to satirically use the hype and jingoism to make fun of hype and jingoism. They raised the ire of the International Olympic Committee and the Sydney Olympic organisers when they introduced a new, unauthorised Olympic mascot called 'Fatso the big-arsed Wombat' who became far more popular than the official mascots Syd, Ollie and (who Roy and HG rechristened) Dickhead. They also made their own new Gymnastic terms, so popular that many Aussies to this day only know the moves by the Roy and HG terminology (flatbags, hello boys, etc.). Every night finished with the campest and most satirical display of actually rejected Olympic songs, some of which sung by their composers. Hilarious! To get Roy and HG, you have to understand the nature and discourse of your average sports commentator, complete with underlying racism, parochialism, homoeroticism, mysogny, self-importance and lack of reason. Once you get that, they are geniuses in what they do. Here are some clips...
Gymnastics commentary

Roy and HG diving commentary

Roy and HG with Fatso

The final 5 minutes of Roy and HG's The Dream. I was sad watching this that it was coming to an end.


And how did others remember the Olympics? Sydney's highest circulating newspaper, the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph has this photo gallery of 46 photos of the 'best remembered moments'. It says a lot when all but three of photos of Australia's biggest ever international event feature only Australians (athletes and people in the opening ceremonies), while the three pictures of non-Australians are two of Michael Johnson and one of the now-disgraced Marion Jones, both of the USA. And I must not forget that 2 of photos feature no other than our Dear Leader, John Howard, and Lady Macbeth herself, Jeanette Howard! Good grief!!!
Surprisingly, no Fatso the big-arsed wombat!

10 years on from Freeman's victory - 2000 Sydney Olympics

Wow, to think that 10 years ago, Sydney was hosting the Olympics and the whole of Australia was in sports and nationalistic delirium. Nick Bryant of the BBC has yet again given a perfect retrospective of the Games and its legacy, highlighting the possible scenarios that London and the UK could face leading up to, and following, the 2012 Olympics.

One of the most important points made by Bryant is that the Olympics signified the startpoint of Australia's ongoing jingoistic nationalism, something I have been trying to pinpoint for quite some time. Forever since blinded by the spell the success and praise the Olympics had on the nation, when Australia was overcome with immense civic pride and 'flying the flag' became second nature, Aussies have become what was previously uncharacteristically nationalistic. National symbols such as the flag and the boxing kangaroo, which were hardly to seen outside of major sporting events like the cricket, became mainstream and even fashionable. As Bryant quotes:

Struck by the new-found prominence of flags and face-paint nationalism, the journalist Jennifer Hewett pithily observed that Australia's traditional "mute stoicism" had been replaced by an "open patriotic eagerness". According to James Curran and Stuart Ward, the authors of an excellent new history, The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire, Sydney suggested that Australians "had shelved their traditional suspicion of overt nationalistic behaviour by revelling in frantic flag-waving".

This eagerness was quickly promoted and harnessed by the ruling Liberal Party under the leadership John Howard which assisted them to two further electoral victories in 2001 and 2004. The long-term effect has been that all aspects of Australian society have had to adopt and incorporate this crass form of national pride into their discourse, despite its polarising, isolationalist and underlying racist nature that it seems to encourage.

The most significant moment at the Sydney Olympics for most Australians was when Catherine Freeman was the first Aborigine to win an individual Olympic gold medal for Australia, in the womens 200 metre sprint. The moment itself is subject to much controversy and was hijacked and exploited. Nevertheless, this deep down was a great personal victory for Freeman herself.

Let's get through the muck first. First of all, Freeman, whose fascinating family history was covered in an episode of the first Australian series of Who Do You Think You Are, had her identity taken over from day one in that she is rarely referred to by her real name - Catherine, the name all of her friends and family call her. Instead, to Australia she is 'Cathy Freeman', a name she detests, but nevertheless rather symbolic of how she was subject to the whims of others. Despite much success worlwide in her talents as a sprinter, most of white Australia only found out about her when in 1994 Commonwealth Games, after winning the women's 200m, controversy raged when she celebrated her win by waving the Aboriginal flag and not the Australian flag. The then rather opinionated Head of the Australian Commonwealth Games team criticsed Freeman for waving the Aboriginal flag. Freeman drew much scorn from the Australian public and media for this, giving an excuse for many to let out their latent racism towards Aborigines. However, after she consequently won the 400ms, she waved both the Australian and Aboriginal flags as a compromise.
The Australian media later were to make much of a 'great rivalry' between Freeman and her main opponent, France's Marie-José Pérec. The French woman won the 200ms at Atlanta in 1996, but with the Olympics on Freeman's home soil in 2000, the Australian public were wanting no less than gold from 'their girl'. Such was the pressure that the Australian media went into overtime in rubbishing Pérec when she was in Sydney. The extent of Australian media harrassment and the accompanying media-generated hostility towards Pérec in the lead up to the race against Freeman was so intense that she was forced to quit the Olympics prior to the race and return to France. This was seen as a great 'victory' against the 'evil' Pérec in the eyes of many Australians. What was not widely reported that Freeman was horrified by this as, despite media reports, she was good friends with Pérec and they actually enjoyed a friendly rivalry. Freeman later ran and won the 200m, much to the joy of the Australian public.

The Australian public and media saw Freeman's lighting of the Olympic flame at the Opening Ceremony and her subsequent victory in the 200ms as a great achievement and a symbol of reconciliation. But that was just it - symbolic. By using 'Cathy' as the face of the most watched event in the world, gave the false but powerful image that Australia's Aborigines are fully integrated and respected in Australia. In other words, how could Aussies be possibly racist then... we have 'Cathy' Freeman.

But there was always someone who never bought this imposed image - Catherine Freeman herself. Freeman's articulation, on first impressions, is how many Aussies would like their Aborigines to appear - simple, naive and vulnerable. However, they are all fooled. Freeman is actually very perseptive, displays great intuition and intellect, and is extremely capable of using what may seem her outward vulnerabilities to subtely and unsuspectingly attack public expectations of what is accepted as 'correct'. One of her unsung crowning moments where she displayed this tactic was when interviewed after winning the 200ms at Sydney. In what could be best described as yet another example of 'multicultural window dressing', a fact not lost on Freeman, she was interview by the only mainstream Aboriginal TV presenter in Australia, Ernie Dingo. He did exactly as was expected from such a set-up situation - focus on how much her winning means to Aboriginal Australia and to reconcilliation. Freeman was going to have nothing of it and didn't play along with this charade of whitewashing over 200 years of the systematic holocaust of Aborigines. When asked about what she was thinking about when running the race, which Dingo encouraging her to say something of significance to Aborigines, Freeman in her own innocent style totally avoided the 'Aboriginal Australia' aspect that was expected from her and instead spoke the truth:

(To paraphrase): 'Well, when I was running, I saw my brother on the side and I saw him smiling and he hasn't smiled in years so I was happy that he was smiling'.

Catherine, I love you for that answer! What Freeman said with that answer is she ran as a human being and not as a person to be used to say that all is well with Australia's treatment of Aborigines.

Despite Dingo's many stubborn, and ultimately embarrassing, attempts to get Freeman to say something as clichéd about Aboriginal reconciliation as his questions, it was to no avail.

Freeman has also given measured but well-timed digs at her then growing personality cult. Later in 2000, at the Australian Sports Personality of the Year, as expected, she won the big gong, but when begrudgingly accepting the award, she potently said that 'there shouldn't be awards like this'.

Freeman retired in 2003 and since then has kept a reasonably low profile (especially compared to many, less-accomplished, retired Australian athletes), though she has made appearances on such TV shows as 'We Can Be Heroes/The Nominees' (a great satirical dig at the 'Australian of the Year' award, of which Freeman is a past recipient) and on Salam Café, a fringe TV show on SBS featuring Australian Muslim comedians. Her appearance on the show produced what would be the best line in the whole series from one of the comedians; when asked about her trademark running bodysuit (pictured below), based on which one of the comedians described Freeman as the first gold medalist to win wearing hijab, she was asked 'did your husband make you wear that?' Freeman's final comments on the 'Who Do You Think You Are' episode also displays her great intellect and how she is, to use the jingoistic clichés that go hand-in-hand with the Olympics, more than just gold medal material.

If only we could have more athletes like Catherine Freeman who transcend the political, social and commercial manipulation that the Olympics have been subject to since its 're-inception' in 1896. As Bryant describes:

No other event, forum or theatre, whether military, diplomatic, commercial, cultural or sporting, has presented such an opportunity for the country to assert itself so unambiguously in terms of its own choosing.

In a sparsely populated and occasionally neglected country, with a sometimes fragile sense of self-esteem, few aspects of national life have delivered more uncomplicated joy than the sight every four years of a group of athletes heading abroad and returning with a haul of gold, silver and bronze - international sport's highest currency of success.

This applies to many nations. Instead of wars, we have had the Olympics to assert national pride. I personally prefer this to warfare, but I would like to see this happen in good measure and cleanly.

Quote...

“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” – Virgil’s Aeneid II, 49:
“I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.”

Vanity Fair - Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds

In an article which has taken Macedonia by storm, Michael Lewis has written about the Greek financial crisis in October's edition of iconic American magazine, Vanity Fair. Lewis uncovers some of the most shocking aspects of Greek culture and society, the massive extent corruption reached all areas of the economy, and how almost everyone in Greece is responsible for this. Lewis's main focus is on the bizarre corruption case which acted as the catalyst to the fall of the previous Nea Dimokratia government and the revelation by the Socialists of the massive debt, involving an order of Orthodox Christian monks with a finely attuned business acumen.

Here is a sample of what Lewis wrote:

In addition to its roughly $400 billion (and growing) of outstanding government debt, the Greek number crunchers had just figured out that their government owed another $800 billion or more in pensions. Add it all up and you got about $1.2 trillion, or more than a quarter-million dollars for every working Greek. Against $1.2 trillion in debts, a $145 billion bailout was clearly more of a gesture than a solution. And those were just the official numbers; the truth is surely worse. “Our people went in and couldn’t believe what they found,” a senior I.M.F. official told me, not long after he’d returned from the I.M.F.’s first Greek mission. “The way they were keeping track of their finances—they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn’t even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a Third World country.”

As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,” Manos put it to me. “And yet there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.” The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland’s. Greeks who send their children to public schools simply assume that they will need to hire private tutors to make sure they actually learn something. There are three government-owned defense companies: together they have billions of euros in debts, and mounting losses. The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as “arduous” is as early as 55 for men and 50 for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than 600 Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. The Greek public health-care system spends far more on supplies than the European average—and it is not uncommon, several Greeks tell me, to see nurses and doctors leaving the job with their arms filled with paper towels and diapers and whatever else they can plunder from the supply closets.

Click here if you would like to read the whole article. Definitely worth reading!

What I can say is that Greece of the last decades sounds exactly like how Yugoslavia was in the 1970s and 1980s... and look how that ended up! Greece at least has 'European solidarity' to help it out of the mess. However, by having this support also means that fundamental changes that need to be made to Greek society will not necessarily happen, something that would need to be made from scratch.

Distance is not just geographical

In case you didn't know, US-sponsored (and that is meant in all meanings of the term) peace talks are under way in the chic Sinai beachside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, and already failure is being pre-emptied. One of the reasons given for a failed outcome is growing Israeli apathy. As Time magazine and now the BBC report, Israelis in places like Tel Aviv are more concerned about 'making money' and enjoying the good life rather than making peace. In that Western morally superior way, this is interpreted as being bad and callous. The BBC, like many Western media outlets are also quick to point out that Tel Aviv is 'less than an hour away from the West Bank'. However, what we have here are some serious double standards and a failure to understand the true implications of these attitudes.

The truth is, many Israelis are more concerned about holidays and consumerism than making peace with the Palestinians. But why would they be otherwise? Israelis are human like the rest of us - many are apathetic and it is so much easier to avoid dealing with social issues when they are out of mind, out of sight. Just like how more people in the USA are more concerned about what Snooki will be doing on Jersey Shore than the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq (ostensibly to guarantee the security of the US), or that there are far more Aussies interested in Masterchef than tackling Aboriginal health, the same goes for many Israelis with their occupation versus nice lifestyle. So why then are the Israelis portrayed as being the bad ones? Aren't we all guilty of not caring? It's from this viewpoint that accusations of anti-Semetism have been made at Time magazine for its recent story (cover below).

But what about the Palestinians? Surely they would be wanting peace? Like the Israelis, they do, but they too are human, and there are plenty of Palestinians who after many decades of stalemate are less concerned about the occupation and more with other things. For some living in Gaza, it has to do with getting food, while for others in the West Bank, their priorities mirror those of many Israelis - fashion, consumerism, cars. Likewise, there are also plenty of poor Israelis whose main concerns are similar to those living in Gaza - food, shelter, health.

Israelis and Palestinians alike have been at loggerheads now for over 60 years. Many people have died in needless acts of violence and war, and simply, people are tired. They all would like to have a quiet life that doesn't involve polemics; one that ensures that they live comfortably. The politics of the region and the promise of peace guaranteeing prosperity is now ringing quite hollow. Why this has failed, and why their is little faith in the peace talks is that they are going about it the wrong way. As has been proven in the past many times, peace does not necessarily bring prosperity, but prosperity does bring peace. When the prospect that plenty of money can be made and people can espire to living comfortably, then there's not much incentive to create other purposes in life such as the honour in fighting for a greater cause. It has been said that had the amount of money the USA spent on Vietnam War or Iraqi occupation been distributed evenly to each Vietnamese or Iraqi instead, that rather large individual amount would have guaranteed such prosperity that the outcomes in those conflicts would have been quite different. We have witnessed conflicts reduce in relation to the growth in propserity in places like Northern Ireland. Even when there is conflict, you can always count that the people making the money are usually blind to it. For instance, even that supposed defender of all things Serbian, the warlord Arkan was in close terms with Albanian underworld figures during the Serbian-Kosovo conflict in 1998-1999, despite his very anti-Albanian public stance at the time. So why would it be different in the Middle East? Or Afghanistan? It isn't.

The problem for peace in the Middle East is not apathy. I'm afraid to say it but the wall and the roadblocks which keep the Palestinians away from Israel have been so successful. The main reason why the Wall was installed was to cut the amount of terrorist attacks in Israel to zero - and that has been largely achieved. So too are the roadblocks. The West Bank may be extremely close geographically from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, however with the bureaucratic and physical hurdles in place for Palestinians to get from one part of the West Bank to the other, let alone into Israel, they are practically thousands of kilometres away psychologically. With the West Bank now contained behind a wall and no terrorist attacks to worry about, Israelis now can lead somewhat normal lives and prosper. They have found a solution to their main problem of security and as such, don't really need a flimsy peace anymore.

Governments, and kings before them, did not invest hugely into walls because they were unsuccessful. The GDR erected the wall across Berlin, dividing the city as well as Germany, as it would successfully stem the flow of much needed professionals seeking great financial and career opportunities in the West. It was so successful at first that the GDR authorities were even brave enough to launch a liberalisation of the system in the early 1960s. Much like in Israel's case geographically, even though they were the same city, East and West Berlin psychologically were worlds apart. However, the only thing which the GDR could not stop was the airwaves - West German TV and radio could be picked up throughout most of the GDR, giving East Germans an insight to a rather obviously more prosperous system. It did not matter that not everything that was on West German TV, such as advertisements for luxury goods, was accessible to everyone in the West, the fact that it existed was reason enough to show the difference. So what caused the Wall to fall was the inspiration of many East Germans (and Eastern Europeans) to be able to live like Crystal and Alexis as seen on Dynasty episodes on Western TV channels or VHS cassettes rather than a political and civic desire to be able to have a greater say in the way they are governed.

As the GDR showed, the Wall meant everything to its existence. Once penetrated, it led to the downfall of the psychological distance. The same can be said of Israel. The only way that Israeli apathy towards the West Bank and moves towards peace can significantly change is if the Wall is breached and the West Bank makes its way to the streets of Tel Aviv again. With this contained, Israel is now more focused in stopping a greater threat - missiles, either conventional medium-range ones fired by Hizbollah from Southern Lebanon or nuclear ones from Iran. So these days, Iran is a closer threat psychologically than the West Bank or Gaza, but still sufficiently distant to not be an overwhelming concern.

But what if the Wall is to be breached? Wouldn't a long-lasting peace be a better alternative? Of course it would be. However there is one psychological wall that both sides to the Mid-East conflict have yet to conquer for that to happen - one that combines machismo and honour. Being a 'man' and defending one's honour is paramount to most males in the Middle East regardless of religion. Compromise is seen as a sign of weakness, which is something neither manly nor honourable. Only once this far deeper wall has been penetrated, and not just apathy, may we see any true change come to anywhere, let alone the Middle East.

By the way, figure out where the café is up top, and where these poor people live: West Bank or Israel?

Celebrity reality TV - Serbian style

Here we go again. In recent years, reality TV, in particular shows featuring 'celebrity' contestants, have waned in ratings and the calibre of their 'celebrities' in many Western countries, where the whole 'reality TV' show concept has now been around for over a decade. Last week saw the end of the final series of Big Brother in the UK, minus much of the hype and media attention that it used to attract at the height of its popularity. The only show celebrity reality TV show still doing somewhat well is Dancing With The Stars/Strictly Come Ballroom, where the current series in the US even featuring that slut... to the camera, Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah. Palin junior, an advocate of abstinence and no sex before marriage, at the age of 17 became pregnant to Levi Johnston, leading them to be hastily forced into a marriage of convenience that never eventuated. Since going their separate ways, both Palin-lite and Johnston have been the centre of self-created media attention much to the embarassment of Mother Palin. To prevent potential further gaffes, Miss Bristol Palin has demanded that her ex be banned from being in the audience of Dancing With The Stars. Well, lucky she's in the US where such demands will be fulfilled... perhaps.

Alas, in places like the Balkans, the opposite is happening. Celebrity reality TV is far from dying. Ratings for such shows are going through the roof and devoted much time and column space even in 'serious' media. Tonight in Serbia sees the premiére of the third season of the mega-popular 'VIP rialiti shou' Farma (Farm). I have previous mentioned this show in other posts. Last season's winner divided the Balkans, displaying how much he was the embodiment of Serbian self-imagery of the cunning peasant who believes in god and country. While some celebrities have refused to take part in this show, they are much in the minority as as the range and number of this season's contestants testify.

If you think that reality TV was low in the West, you haven't seen anything yet. The Serbian producers of Farma are really scraping the barrel. Bristol Palin should be thankful that she lives in a country that will honour her demand for her ex not to briefly appear in the audience. No such luck awaits one contestant in the Serbian Farma. Zlata Petrović, a turbofolk singer (like a majority of the Farma contestants) will be in the house along with not one but two of her ex-husbands. Petrović (pictured below with her ex-es to each side) claimed that the reason why she is going to the Farm is that her son with her first ex has racked up huge debts from his gambling addiction, and being the good mother (helping out the children no matter what the circumstances is seen as a high virtue in the Balkans), she is in the house to get the money to pay off her son's debts. Of course, you would think that with a son in his 30s he would be responsible and old enough to pay them off himself, but that would be considered 'mean' and 'unloving' on the part of the parents in the eyes of traditional Balkan morals.

But wait, it doesn't end there for Miss Petrović. Determined to make her life misery, and to guarantee as much conflict as possible, the cunning producers have called upon the services of another Turbofolk 'singer' called Vendi into the Farm outside of Belgrade. Vendi, whose rather large and often exposed chest (and trademark exposed nipple) is used to great effect to distract from her lack of singing talent, was taken to court by Petrović (who is openly Roma) after she accused her colleague of being a witch and practising 'black magic'. The case was seen to before a court in Belgrade a few years ago, only for it to be settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. In light of this bad blood, the Serbian media are anticipating (with glee) many altercations between the two foes, preferably with some girl-on-girl naked action to boot. I have to add that Vendi, who has been 'singing' for almost 20 years now with such 'klazzy' songs like 'I like it a little bit hot and a little bit cold' and 'I dress up in a modern way, but people say that they can see everything', surprisingly is also a Serbian gay icon - go figure!? OK, I can't help myself... here is the clip for the 'Hot and Cold' song from 1993. Definitely not to be seen at work.



One of the first 'stars' to appear for quarantine at Belgrade's Hotel Balkan yesterday was YouTube overnight sensation, Ekrem Jevrić. Hailing from a poor Montenegrin Muslim family, Jevrić left his home village for New York 22 years ago and had never returned back. That was until last year he decided he would launch a music career. His autobiographical song 'Kuća-pos'o, pos'o-kuća' (Home-Work, Work-Home) detailing in his own words his life abroad as being a work-only subsistence devoid of entertainment, quickly became a hit on YouTube scoring more than 5 million hits and making Jevrić an overnight sensation. The fascination for Jevrić bores out of him being an embodiment of every stereotype that urban, (self-identifying) sophisticated Balkan urbanites have of their expats - poor, uneducated and unsophisticated peasant/chav/bogan who goes to the West and becomes rich from working 23 hours a day and never visits his homeland (a traitor). Jevrić made a triumphant homecoming earlier this year when he was awaited by thousands of fans and representatives of the media at the airport. Since then Jevrić has performed his song at clubs all throughout ex-Yugoslavia and the whole Jevrić phenomenon has even been subject to reports in the Western media analysing, to a rather wanky degree, of how he has 'brought ex-Yugoslavia together' blah blah. Jevrić went into quarantine making a comment that 'he is taking in so much clothes with him that he can dress the whole of Belgrade'! He has also promised viewers sex. Eewww! Here is the YouTube clip that changed Ekrem's life:


The gamut of 'celebrities' in Serbia is rather narrow. Out of the 25 'farmers' taking part in this season, no less than 6 of them are former contestants from the popular Balkan Turbofolk talent show 'Zvezde Granda' (Grand Stars), a Pop-Idol style show that has been a cash cow for the Balkan's biggest Turbofolk label 'Grand Production'. A further 7 contestants are Grand Production singers. The rest are TV presenters, the leader of the People's Peasant Party of Serbia (she knows her electorate is watching), a writer, a sports manager and a former Miss Vojvodina.

The fact that this season has come just a couple of months following the end of season 2, and that there is plenty of competition in this concept (Serbian Celebrity Survivor will be on the air at the same time) shows that these shows are proving to be very successful and are attracting much advertising revenue for Serbia's main commercial TV networks. However, the Farma's producers have already hinted that season 4 will not be on for about a year after the end of this current season, indicating that just like how the Balkans took on the concept a few years after the West, the same could happen for its slow demise.

Castro condemned for Roma Holocaust remark

Well, sorry French government but Castro is right. Obviously the truth hurts for Sarkozy's knee-jerk government when they come up with retorts of this calibre:"That Fidel Castro shows an interest in human rights is truly revolutionary."

The fact that the French government is very publicly deporting Roma from other EU countries, making a mockery of the fundamental EU right to freedom of movement, is pandering to ingrained universal prejudice towards Roma. This comes at a time when Sarkozy is languishing low in opinion polls, especially in light of failed promises of 'getting tough' on disadvantaged French youths who rioted three years. When all else fails, let's pick on the Roma.

Castro is quite justified in describing this as a 'racial holocaust' as the moves made by the current French administration is very reminiscent of the actions taken by complient Nazi puppets during World War II when the Roma were sent to the death camps such as Auschwitz and Birkenau in great numbers for much the same reasons as the Jews.

So instead of castigating Castro, Sarkozy and his ministers should devote more efforts into solving the problem rather than adding to racism, something that EU countries like France are always quick to denounce other non-EU countries of when the opportunity arises.

What I don't believe to be a coincidence is that news of French condemnation of what otherwise were previous non-newsworthy remarks by Castro have come quickly after a the revelation of a rather suspicious media 'gaffe' involving Castro. Much was made of Castro's supposed comments to US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg yesterday that he belives that the Cuban socialist system has even failed Cubans. This was a rather bizarre comment to be attributed to Castro as the US-imposed blockade is the usually main reason given by the Cuba for its economic shortcomings and not a fault of the system itself. Apparently this was a misinterpretation, and some media outlets, like the BBC, have pointed this out. However, many others have been comparatively mute about this, yet again lending to a distortion of Western public persecption. So many people out there will continue to believe that Castro is even against his own system when in actual fact he isn't. I also don't believe that this 'misinterpretation' was as 'accidental' as it has been made out to be. I believe this is Western misconception will play a dangerous role in future actions towards Cuba in the future. For instance, when the EU condemns Cuba for anything, it will be with the full-hearted blessing of the Western public because 'hey, even Castro said he doesn't like his system'.

Knowledge and awareness is strength, so a misinformed public is easier to control and manipulate.

Shana tova & Bajram serif mubarek olsun!

Reckoning time can create great coincidences. Yesterday was both Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and Id el-Fitr or Sheker Bayram (as it is known in the Balkans and Turkic-speaking countries), the Muslim festival celebrating the end of Ramadan (or Ramazan in the Balkans and the Turkic world). To celebrate the coinciding of these two joyous events for the religions that politically don't see eye to eye, lets enjoy some clips of music performances where Judaism and Islam come together.

Here are some clips of a talented Oriental singer Yehuda Zeitoun. Yes, he's an French-Israeli Orthodox Jew of Tunisian background and he sings Oriental songs in Hebrew and Arabic to an appreciative Jewish crowd

Here is Yehuda Zeitoun performing the classic Arabic song Walla Mara at a celebration in Israel

Turkish Jewish band Sefarad with their rendition of the 19th century Istanbul favourite 'Galata Lordu'

The great voice of Bosnian sevdalinka, the late and sadly missed Safet Isović, sings the unofficial hymn of Sarajevo, Kad ja podjoh na Bembašu, which originally was a Sephardic Jewish song.

A clip dedicated to Allah to the sound of Ishar Alabina and Los Niños de Sara's hit Choukrane (Thank You).

Of course, Ishtar Alabina, who is hugely popular and famous throughout the world for her songs in Arabic, was born in Israel to Egyptian and Iraqi Jewish parents. Here she is performing with Israeli singer Kobi Peretz their hit Yachad (Together) sung in Hebrew and Arabic. Interesting how this was shown on BBC Arabic TV

One of the greatest stars of the golden age of Egyptian cinema was the fabulous Layla Murad, who was Jewish.

The grand master of Iraqi traditional music of the early 20th century - the Jewish Saleh Al Kuwaiti

Traditional Yemeni dancing performed at a celebration of Yemenite Jews in Israel

Legendary Bukharan Jewish singer Muhobbat Shamayeva singing popular Tajik songs on Soviet TV.

Turkish bellydancers moving their hips to Chava Nagila


It may be clichéd to say, but music does bring everyone together. Shana Tova! Bajram serif mubarek olsun!

Will it break a record?

The Economist recently has published a few articles in the past few months relating to Macedonia. What no one expected was the response. The latest article, about the cosmetic transformation of Macedonia's capital Skopje and the controversy arising from the use of ancient Macedonian figures such as a statue of Alexander the Great, has been groundbreaking. Not so much the article itself though. What has been significant is that it has been one of the most commented Economist articles ever - 1250+ comments so far! Most of which made up of multiple rants by myopic Greek nationalists. This leads to wonder... why are they wasting their time? I mean, what makes them think that it will suddenly dawn upon the Macedonians who even happen to read any the comments (very few) that they have lived their whole lives as a lie and realise, like an epiphany, that they are not Macedonian because of some comment they read on an Internet forum? Plus, the rest of the world don't bloody care, so who in their right mind would bother reading through this all unless they are truly mad. A complete waste of effort that could be better used in doing things that many Greeks otherwise don't seem to have time for, such as paying taxes or obeying anti-smoking laws.

In the end, the last time I checked, I still have a passport that says 'Macedonia' on it, and there is still a country called Macedonia full of Macedonians speaking Macedonian. Therefore all those comments on the Economist forum has led to nothing except wasting the Economist's Internet band length. This is the main reason why I don't get myself bogged down into these pitiful Internet forums. What also makes the whole Economist comments saga even more ludicruous and ironic is that the news magazine even documented about these ethnic conflicts waged on the Internet in an article titled 'You say Lwów, I say Lviv (and don't mention Lvov)' - A guide to Eastern Europe's most tedious arguments, complete with tortured facts, rage, arguments and syntax. The article finishes off with what has to be the best observation about these Internet-waged polemics:

Outside pressure has mostly calmed these arguments within formal politics. But on the internet the rows still rage, with tortured facts, arguments and syntax, all mixed with vituperative insults, phoney politeness and seemingly RANDOM Use Of Capital letters. There is a whiff of pyjamas-at-noon, and of people who check their emails in the small hours. Time to get a life?

Despite this description, the article still attracted 306 comments, many of which fitting the bill. You don't know whether to laugh or cry... or just scratch your head in dismay?

By the way, I am very much looking forward to seeing the Alexander the Great statue going up in the centre of Skopje. There has been one in the Macedonian city of Prilep now for about 15 years (pictured above), though as it is not a place known to nationalist Greeks, they haven't discovered it yet to make much fuss about it (yet). You'd think they could at least be consistent in their ire.

This also reminds me of the Macedonian town located near the Bulgarian border called Novo Selo (translated: New Village) that wanted to change its name as there are about a dozen places in Macedonia, let alone many more in Serbia and Bulgaria, with the same name. Novo Selo is quite the misnomer as it is hardly 'new', and with 3000 residents, no longer a 'village'. So a competition was launched in 2002 for a new name for the town. A local referendum was called for September 2003 and 90% of the residents voted the new name for the town to be... Aleksandrija (Alexandria), named after 'you know who'. After a year of going through slow bureaucratic channels, the decision to rechristen the town was put forward to the Macedonian Parliament for final ratification. However, while some ex-Communists who still see all Macedonians as pure Slavs (more in common with Russians and Poles) were not so keen about the name change, it was the ethnic Albanian politicians who were most vociferous against the proposal and promptly voted against. So thanks mainly to these Albanian politicians, against the wishes of its residents, the old town of 'New Village' remains to this day 'Novo Selo'. The irony is that no Albanians live in Novo Selo (pictured below).

OK, back to the pyjamas-at-noon for me :)

What you see and what you don't

Yesterday was the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, more commonly known as 'North Korea'. Here is a picture from that day back in 1948 of that event posted on a pro-DPRK Russian website. There are several things interesting about this photo. First of all, the slogans in the background are partially written using 'Hanja' or Chinese characters, a practice no longer in use in North Korea and rare in the South.

Second, there is a picture of Lenin in the background, next to a young Kim Il-sung. It was noteworthy to point out that this picture was posted on a Russian website that supports North Korea's ruling ideology, Juche, which combines superficial elements of Marxism-Leninism with extreme nationalism and cultural purity. Many Russian neo-Communists particularly like Juche as it allows them to espouse Russian nationalist elements that Soviet communism eventually co-opted while, using the cultural purity aspescts of Juche, gives them the excuse to ditch international solidarity among the peoples of the world and be as racist as possible towards Caucasians and Central Asians. With this in mind, the website deliberately picked a picture showing Lenin so as to draw a nationalist/patriotic Russian link to North Korea (it's all parochial). Had it been a current North Korean source, not only would have the Chinese letters been gone but so too would have Lenin. No images and very little mention of Communist icons such as Marx, Engels and Lenin have been made in North Korea since at least the 1980s. But wait, there's a third picture which has seemingly been deliberately cut. Who could that be of? Well, let's see the same scene but from a different angle, shall we?
Oh yes, it was disgraced Stalin. This photo is a valuable insight into the DPRK nascent past that shows what ideological changes have been made since then.

Now, to the right of Stalin, a suspicious flag is flying. Why... that couldn't possibly be the South Korean flag waving there? Well, yes... and no. The flag next to Stalin is the original flag of DPR Korea, which is identical to the current flag of the southern Republic of Korea. In any case, it happens to be the historical flag of Korea, the taegeukgi, below. The North Koreans adopted their current flag, below, very soon after declaring their state. Seeing that the South declared its nationhood before the North, legally the South was entitled to keep the old flag.

This situation where a divided country used the same flag is not unique. Both East and West Germany had the exact same flag, the current German flag of black red and gold horizontal bars, from their inceptions in 1949 until 1959 when the GDR authorities added the state's coat of arms to the centre of their flag. Even for their first few years of existence, both states had their own 'Deutsche Lufthansa' as their national air carriers, though the East Germans lost out on use of the Lufthansa trademark in a court case in Switzerland in the 1950s.

Back to the photo... now, are they're North Korean soldiers? They look like they're wearing Japanese imperialist army uniforms. Well, that's correct! Korean People's Army soldiers then wore, as do some divisions to this day, the same style of uniform that their arch-nemesis, the Japanese 'imperialists' wore. Considering how much the Koreans despise the Japanese for their occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945, it's rather bizarre that they would wear the same uniforms as their oppressors. It would be like the Israeli Defence Force wearing Nazi Wehrmacht uniforms. However there never is complete logic whenever there is historic antagonism between neighbours or foes.

A slight change in direction, and a little cropping and editing, can make a whole difference in historical perspective - Winston Smith from Orwell's 1984 would be familiar with this.

To congress or conference? A matter of costs in the end.

Today, 9 September 2010, is the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which came about a month when the Americans founded the Republic of Korea from Seoul within their area of occupation. Today supposedly was also going to be the final day of the unprecedented 3rd Party Conference of the ruling Korean Workers Party (KWP). Much has been speculated that this would be the occasion that Kim Jong-il would introduce his youngest son Kim Jong-un into a public political role, much like how his father did with him at the 6th Party Congress in 1980. However, due to a Pyongyang-imposed media blockout, there have been no reports about this conference, nor has there been even any confirmation that it has even taken place! This pretty much is proof of how isolated North Korea is, and the fact that there have not even been intelligence reports about what is happening in Pyongyang shows how much the West has no idea about what actually occurs in the reclusive country.

What has created much commotion and confusion is what is the significance of a 'Party Conference'? How come a 'Party Congress' like in the old days of the Cold War was not called? What is the difference between the two? Andrei Lankov, an eminent expert on Korea, and backed with his first-hand experience of having grown up in the Soviet Union, is able to give a valuable insight into answering these questions and providing clarification and implications.

In an article he wrote for the Asia Times Online, Lankov explained that since the fall of Leninist states in 1989-1991, the Western media are no longer familiar with the various strata of Leninist party structure and function, thought he adds that younger journalists are now probably better informed about the specifics of various Muslim sects.

Lankov goes on to describe that:
In the Cold War era most communist parties once every few years staged a large and pompous convention that was known as a "party congress". This was where the new central committee was "elected". Some of the representatives were prominent bureaucrats and officials, but a majority came from the party rank-and-file. Exemplary milkmaids and steel workers were dispatched to the congress to demonstrate the broad support communist rule allegedly enjoyed among the ''masses''. Nobody expected from them any meaningful discussion of political issues, and in most cases any attempt at such discussion would be promptly suppressed.

It should be added that footage of these party congresses, in the USSR and China in particular, along with the milkmaids and steel workers, usually also prominently showed ethnic minorities arriving in national costume.

Party Congresses were set a fixed 5-year terms, however North Korea was unique in not following these statutes. Lankov said that:
In the Kim Il-sung era, North Korea, however, was remarkable in its relative disregard for legal niceties. The KWP's statute has all the necessary articles, copy-pasted from Soviet regulations, but these have been ignored. Throughout its 65 years history, the KWP has had six congresses, but none of them ever met within the officially prescribed interval. The last KWP congress took place in 1980, and was the venue at which Kim Jong-il was officially and publicly proclaimed the successor to his father. The next congress was supposed to meet five years later. It has never met (and the coming convention will be not be a congress, but a humbler conference).
So it should be added that the congress prior to the last one in 1980 had happened in 1970, a ten year difference much at odds at the congress intervals rigidly applied in other Eastern Bloc countries such as the USSR and the GDR.

What is supposedly is happening in Pyongyang now is a 'Party Conference'. As Lankov describes: Party statutes also stipulated that a minor version of a congress could be convened if the party leadership considered it fit. The minor version was known as a party conference. Officially, a party conference met to discuss peculiar questions of current policy, but in real life it was, essentially, a minor version of the party congress. Generally speaking, the conferences were much less common then congresses.
This explains why many Western media reports have been stating that this has been the first party conference since 1966, insinuating that such gatherings should be more often and regular. However, it would be more correct to say that this 'party conference' is the first gathering of its kind since the 1980 Party Congress 30 years ago.

So this opens the question why a party conference now and not a party congress? Lankov responds by suggesting that it could be for economic reasons:
In North Korea [as was somewhat the case through the former Eastern bloc] it has become an established tradition that a party congress should be accompanied by lavish celebrations and expensive gifts to both the elite and the general public. This tradition was burdensome, therefore a conference, on the other hand, is not expected to be celebrated on such a lavish scale. These economic considerations seem to be the reason why in Pyongyang we are going to see the third KWP conference, not the seventh KWP congress. Nonetheless, in practical terms, the difference between those two events are negligible.

Once today's celebrations are over, we will await and see whether Pyongyang will confirm whether the conference was on at all, let alone any possible new developments for this unique society.

They can pay their own debts!

Iveta Radičová, the Slovak premier, in an interview with the Athens daily Ta Nea yesterday explained why her country refused to contribute to a 110 billion euro package to save the basket case Greek economy. 'This was not a package in solidarity with the Greek people but with the banks of Europe that were responsible for the crisis in that country'. Radičová insisted that Slovakia did not violate any agreement requiring it to pay its share and that it is past, irresponsible Greek governments that are to blame for the crisis. She also went on to make the point that it would be impossible for her government to convince the Slovak public of having to pay to assist another ostensibly richer country of their recklessness when Slovaks went through greater austerity in order to achieve EU and Eurozone membership. You say it, Iveta!

CIA's 'Red Cell' Hypocrisy on Terror

From the Consortium News blog, by Robert Parry. Interesting reading about US government hypcocrisy about its role of exporting terrorism and harbouring terrorists. Remember, unlike Putin who was just a KGB agent, Bush senior actually headed the CIA!

The Central Intelligence Agency has scoffed at an internal memo that cites a few terrorist acts by some American citizens as possibly causing foreign nations to see the United States as an “exporter of terrorism.” The CIA notes that the paper came from its “red cell” analysts who are assigned to “think outside the box” to “provoke thought.”

However, what’s most striking about the secret three-page memo, dated Feb. 4 and disclosed by WikiLeaks last month, is how it reflects CIA self-censorship regarding the agency’s own long history of supporting acts of terror and protecting terrorists.

Cases of terrorism that implicate the CIA or its operatives, such as the blowing up of a Cubana airliner in 1976 or the arming of Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s, are ignored by the “red cell” analysts even though many of the alleged perpetrators and their funders are still harbored in the United States – and include current and past U.S. government officials.

Yet, instead of citing these well-documented terrorism cases, the “red cell” memo references a few cases of individual Americans who have gone abroad and committed terrorist acts as well as some distant history of terrorism linked to U.S. immigrants.

The “red cell” memo notes that Irish-Americans have supported the Irish Republican Army back to the 19th Century. The analysis then skips to Zionist terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who murdered 29 Palestinians as they prayed at a mosque in Hebron in 1994.

In sketching this background, the analysts jump over a lot of blood-soaked history of CIA-connected terrorism. Though assigned to “think outside the box,” the “red cell” analysts apparently knew better than to open a can of worms that they might have found inside CIA’s document vaults.

So, instead of noting the obvious truth – that other countries might view the United States as “an exporter of terrorism” because the U.S. government and particularly the CIA have had a long history of exporting terrorism – the “red cell” analysts confine their study’s frame to some individual Americans with no connection to the U.S. government or the CIA.

Thus, terrorists who have ties to Official Washington are left outside the frame.

For instance, there is no mention of Luis Posada Carriles, the alleged right-wing Cuban mastermind of the bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed 73 people, nor to any of the former Nicaraguan contras who slaughtered civilians as part of a bloody campaign to destabilize the leftist Sandinista government. Yet, Posada and many ex-contras still openly live in or visit Miami.

The CIA files are surely filled with data about Posada and the contras because the CIA worked closely with and provided material support for them.

Not that self-censorship by the “red cells” is all that surprising. It’s been practiced by U.S. government officials and the Washington news media for decades now.

Otherwise, the American people would have been confronted with the uncomfortable reality that many esteemed U.S. government officials, including Republican icon Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidents, had their hands dipped in the blood of innocent victims of terrorism.

What if ex-President George W. Bush’s dictum – that a government that harbors or helps terrorists should be punished as severely as the terrorists themselves – were applied to the United States or even to his own family? Maybe the “red cell” should have asked that “out-of-the-box” question.

In other words, the U.S. political/media system – including these “red cell” analysts – continue to view the world through a cracked lens that focuses outrage on “enemy” regimes and groups while refracting away a comparable fury from similar actions by U.S. officials.

So, for instance, American officials, pundits and journalists rage against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for allegedly assisting Colombian guerrillas, but are getting ready for a year-long celebration of Reagan’s centennial birthday in 2011.

Yet, not only did Reagan arm the Nicaraguan contras, but he continued the covert war after the ruling Sandinistas won an election in 1984 that most outside observers praised as free and fair. He also wasn’t deterred by disclosures of the contras’ human rights abuses – kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering civilians – even when those acts were acknowledged by some senior contra leaders.

Reagan was well aware of the contras’ cruelty (he privately called them “vandals” in a conversation with CIA officer Duane Clarridge), while he hailed them publicly as “freedom fighters” and equated them with America’s “Founding Fathers.”

Reagan kept arming the contras even after Congress ordered him to stop and the World Court denounced the CIA’s secret mining of Nicaragua’s harbors.

Reagan also backed vicious rebel forces in Angola and Afghanistan (including foreign Islamic fundamentalists who later coalesced into al-Qaeda), and he supported state terror against civilian populations in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, killing hundreds of thousands.

By any stretch of the imagination – if any other country had so brazenly violated international law and human rights standards – that government would be condemned by civilized nations and would be treated as a terrorist pariah.

But the vast majority of Republicans and many Democrats view Reagan as a political hero. In a ceremony last year, President Barack Obama feted former First Lady Nancy Reagan at the White House for the signing of a special law to commemorate Reagan’s 100th birthday.

To suggest that the late President was a war criminal or a sponsor of terrorism is unthinkable within the U.S. political mainstream.

Similarly, it is unacceptable to note how the Bush Family has protected Cuban-American terrorists – from 1976 when George H.W. Bush ran the CIA to 2008 when George W. Bush balked at extraditing Posada to stand trial in Venezuela. At times, the hypocrisy was staggering.

On May 2, 2008, more than six years into Bush-43’s “war on terror,” there was a remarkable scene in Miami as Posada, then 80, was feted at a gala fundraising dinner. Some 500 supporters chipped in to his legal defense fund.

Posada arrived to thundering applause. Then, in a bristling speech against the Castro regime in Cuba, Posada told his supporters, “We ask God to sharpen our machetes.”

Venezuela’s Ambassador the United States, Bernardo Alvarez, protested the Bush administration’s tolerance of the dinner. “This is outrageous, particularly because he kept talking about [more] violence,” the ambassador said.

Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen who worked for Venezuela’s intelligence agency in the 1970s, masterminded the Cubana Airlines bombing in 1976, according to an overwhelming body of evidence compiled by the U.S. government and in South America.

Despite the strong evidence against Posada in U.S. government files, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush made little effort to capture Posada when he sneaked into Miami in 2005. Posada was detained only after he held a news conference.

Then, instead of extraditing Posada to Venezuela to stand trial for a terrorist mass murder, the Bush administration engaged in a lackadaisical effort to have him deported for lying on an immigration form.

During a 2007 court hearing in Texas, Bush administration lawyers allowed to go unchallenged testimony from a Posada friend that Posada would face torture if he were returned to Venezuela. The judge, therefore, barred Posada from being deported there.

After that ruling, Ambassador Alvarez accused the Bush administration of applying “a cynical double standard” in the “war on terror.” As for the claim that Venezuela practices torture, Alvarez said, “There isn’t a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela.”

The kid-glove treatment of Posada and other right-wing Cuban terrorists stood in marked contrast to George W. Bush’s tough handling of Islamic militants. While Posada was afforded all U.S. legal protections and then some, suspected Islamic terrorists were locked away without trial at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In a further ironic twist, the Bush-43 administration allowed Venezuela to be smeared about torture while Bush and his top aides were concealing the fact that they had authorized extensive torture on suspected Islamic “terrorists,” including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other brutal torture techniques at CIA “black sites.”

Posada also made no apologies for his long terrorist career. In 1998, in interviews with a New York Times reporter, Posada admitted a role in a wave of Havana bombings, citing a goal of frightening tourists away from Cuba.

Similarly, his alleged co-conspirator in the Cubana Airlines bombing, Orlando Bosch, showed no remorse for his violent past. In a TV interview with reporter Manuel Cao on Miami's Channel 41, Bosch justified the mid-air bombing that killed 73 people in 1976.

When Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the Cubana plane crashed off the coast of Barbados, Bosch responded, "In a war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.”

“But don’t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?” Cao asked.

“Who was on board that plane?” Bosch responded. “Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese.” [Officials tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]

Bosch added, “Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our enemies…”

“And the fencers?” Cao asked about Cuba’s amateur fencing team that had just won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in Caracas. “The young people on board?”

Bosch replied, “I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. … She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant.

“We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.”

[The comment about Santo Domingo was an apparent reference to a meeting by a right-wing terrorist organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976 and which involved a CIA undercover asset.]

“If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn’t you think it difficult?” Cao asked.

“No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba,” Bosch answered.

Though Bosch and Posada have formally denied masterminding the Cubana Airlines bombing, Bosch’s incriminating statements and other evidence make the case of his and Posada’s guilt overwhelming.

Declassified U.S. documents show that soon after the Cubana plane was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the CIA, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the bombing.

But in fall 1976, Bush’s boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a tight election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford administration wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the newspapers. So Bush and other officials kept the lid on the investigations.

Still, inside the U.S. government, the facts were well known. According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP.

The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late September 1976 under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close Washington ally who assigned his intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia “to protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela.”

On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor. “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’” the CIA report said.

“Following the 6 October [1976] Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory.”

In South America, police began rounding up suspects. Two Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb. They named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack.

A search of Posada’s apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez.

After President Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush took power in Washington in 1981, the momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of anti-communist terrorist plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any concern about right-wing terrorism.

In 1985, Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, reportedly with the help of Cuban-Americans. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban activist Jorge Mas Canosa for the $25,000 that was used to bribe guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison.

Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who was close to then-Vice President Bush. At the time, Rodriguez was handling secret supply shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, a pet project of President Reagan.

After fleeing Venezuela, Posada joined Rodriguez in Central America and began using the code name “Ramon Medina.” Posada was assigned the job of paymaster for pilots in the White House-run contra-supply operation.

By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela’s jails and back in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30 violent attacks, was facing possible deportation by U.S. officials who warned that Washington couldn’t credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a terrorist like Bosch.

But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida politician, led a lobbying drive to prevent the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying paid dividends when Jeb's dad, President George H.W. Bush, blocked proceedings against Bosch, letting the unapologetic terrorist stay in the United States.

In 1992, also during the Bush-41 presidency, the FBI interviewed Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6 ½ hours at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras. Posada filled in some blanks about the role of Bush’s vice presidential office in the secret contra operation.

According to a 31-page summary of the FBI interview, Posada said Bush’s national security adviser, former CIA officer Donald Gregg, was in frequent contact with Felix Rodriguez.

“Posada … recalls that Rodriguez was always calling Gregg,” the FBI summary said. “Posada knows this because he’s the one who paid Rodriguez’ phone bill.” After the interview, the FBI agents let Posada walk out of the embassy to freedom.

The double standards on terrorism are now so deeply engrained in Official Washington that the well-established history of U.S. government officials collaborating with terrorists is not only kept “outside the box” of the city’s conventional wisdom but is ignored by the CIA's “red cell” analysts who are assigned to “think outside the box.”

So, the “red cell” analysts may take note of Irish-Americans filling coffee cans with cash for the IRA, dating back to the 1880s, and of individual Americans conducting outrages on their own, but the analysts know better than to look into their own agency’s files for the real reasons why foreigners might “see the United States as an ‘Exporter of Terrorism.’”