Sunday, August 24, 2008

Filling the gap

An article from the Ovi magazine

And his name is …Joe Biden and it was like hell for all of us who don’t live in the States, not very familiar with the name and the background to find out who Biden, Mr. Joe Biden is. The US Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama announced his pick for a vice-president in the face of a 65-year-old veteran senator and expert on foreign policy making at least me …smile!

First of all, it looks like there is a new tradition in American presidential election; you pick your running mate after checking his medical file. I mean George W. Bush’s running mate Dick Cheney was touring with Bush and a group of doctors. You will probably point that nowadays 65 is not old and in the case of Obama-Biden we have experience joining forces with young passion. I totally agree with you and I really hope it is true.

But then why do I worry if experience can mean conservatism and youth passion …compromise? And please don’t argue that I’m saying all that because I was wishing Hillary for the place because I think that near the end Hillary made so many often unbelievable mistakes that it would worry me if Barack even thought the chance.

Then I read the man’s bio at least the one that was in the media and I noticed that it was extremely emphasized his experience in foreign affairs, after all, the man chairs the Foreign Relations Committee and well done and I’m really happy for him actually and I have often pointed it, the biggest problems the new US administration will have to deal with from the very beginning will have to do with foreign policy and it doesn’t matter who is going to win, Democrat or Republican; and an experience in foreign affairs vice president is good, really good, just too good to be true. Because Joe Biden is part of the status quo Barack wants to clean, so much part of it so in the beginning just like Hillary he fully supported both the invasion in Iraq and the occupation …sorry, I mean the help for security reasons.

I don’t know why but this expert on foreign affairs somehow comes weird to me, I mean George W. Bush or Dick Cheney aren’t exactly the masters of foreign policy. George W. Bush when he was still a candidate he thought that Pakistan is neighbouring Colombia and that Coventry is a city in USA. Dick Cheney with all his dividing Europe gave lessons of diplomacy, the two of them wrote the book all the mistakes a state can do to screw diplomacy and make enemies between allies. You would never from the very beginning call them experts of foreign policy.

And then there was another thing on the media that stroke me, the son of a car salesman expected to appeal to the blue collar workers. So Obama is admitting two things which oddly are the same things that McCain keeps accusing him, inexperience in foreign policy and being a white collar! I’m not going to add that he’s white because that will be the total cynicism.

Of course, it is too early to judge how this thing will work and of course it is unfair to say anything about Sen. Joe Biden before we hear him and we will have the chance pretty soon but again I have to remember an open letter a lot of US personalities signed and published a couple of weeks ago reminding Barack Obama that he should not change his fight for change in the name of the presidential seat. In that letter all these people tried to remind him that USA is in a deadlock in many, perhaps too many ways and only change can bring hope, something that is missing lately from the average US houses. Hope without guns but with dignity in their every day life, hope without cooperative financial scandals and greedy lobbies. Hope that will bring back faith to the system and not more homeless and unemployed in the streets.

I hope Mr. Joe Biden is aware of all that and not enter the campaign to fill the missing gap and most of all I hope that Barack Obama remembers his own words. Last and not least I’m waiting to see Hillary’s reaction in the Democrats convention that starts soon. From the beginning of her end I had the feeling that the former first lady hadn’t finished yet!


Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Musharraf’s end game

An article from the Ovi magazine

The first one has gone and it was about time. Pakistan’s dictator Pervez Musharraf resigned under the pressure of facing charges. Obviously he proved to have a bit of brain and just like Pinochet a few years ago he chose to leave power graciously with all the necessary compromises rather than in handcuffs.

I’m sure there was a drama in the White House when they found out and an even bigger one in CIA headquarters, but this is it, life is hard for the …allies!!! But was Musharraf an ally or just an opportunist that based his survival into the hands of Washington? I think the Pakistan desk in Washington has a lot to answer to both the president of USA and the conspiracy bosses in Langley, most likely they overestimated his power and they also underestimated his will to survive, perhaps his desperate will to survive.

Pakistan was never the perfect ally for the USA and in general the western world, and that has long and old roots. The truth is that the majority of the people are conservative religious Muslims to the limits of the Taleban, after all that was exactly what motivated them half a century ago to force split with India and nearly have a war between them. That’s exactly what separates them from the Indians despite their common battles they gave against the colonials. And the Pakistani were always suspicious towards even their own leaders when they were western educated and trained. Even towards Bhutto they were suspicious; don’t look now that Bhutto became a martyr in the fight against Musharraf’s dictatorship.

The Americans were too keen to find an ally in South East Asia, India despite the fact that it is the real super power in the area was not a trustworthy ally, too confident, too independent and often with one eye on Russia. Pakistan was the only alternative, a local power bordering with Iran and Afghanistan, not far from China, a perfect airplane carrier and the same time the perfect field for all the spy masters. And then along came Musharraf and his military coup.

No strong foundations and in need of support, strong support and he found it in the west, especially in George W. Bush, after all, their time in power started nearly at the same time. After 9-11 George W. Bush needed a good ally in the area and Musharraf looked perfect, so good that he was even invited on the ranch, called our best friend forgetting that the man had no real differences with Saddam.

When the Americans and, to an extent, the Europeans found out that the saying too good to be real worked with Musharraf it was too late. Musharraf had no real control in Pakistan, not that the people have, they are the victims but Musharraf had control only to his surroundings. The Pakistani security forces, strong elements of the state in Pakistan are shared, some of them even support the Taleban after all how can Bin Laden survive for so long if he didn’t have Pakistani help and the Americans due to their best friend Pervez might not like to admit it but the strongest cells of Bin Laden’s network work and settle in Pakistan. Most of them trained and armed from the Pakistani security forces in the same way Bin Laden himself was trained and armed by CIA.

The future of Pakistan now is a mystery, there are too many forces, a lot of them extreme that fight for power there and even Iran’s clerics dictators would like to have a bit of the country with the nuclear bombs and I have no doubts that this very moment they are having big meetings studying their next moves. But then again Musharraf was part of the problem and his presence as the head of the state made things much worse, at least now most of them will have to take off the masks and present their real faces.

Another side effect from the war in Iraq, the Americans moved all their interest to the invasion and occupation there – whatever is the name they might use now – and left the real problem in Afghanistan in the hands of a small NATO army and their hopes in Musharraf! And of course the Taleban are returning strong and with the support of the people this time! So the Americans are the next who definitely lost now with the fall of Musharraf and all their allies involved with the invasion in Iraq or not. If the Americans remember their European allies, the old Europe had often warned that we are losing focus; the war on terror is in the mountains of Afghanistan and not on the oil platforms of Iraq!!!

The only one who won in the end is again Musharraf himself because the last years the only thing in his agenda is how to avoid the court and the jail, how to come out of it gracefully and to my opinion he managed well. The reason I would like to see him in court is not revenge but justice. Because the next Musharraf must know that the will of the people and justice work in Pakistan and one way or another in the end they will have to deal with both of them. But he seems to escape at the moment and the only thing I can hope to see is for others to follow his example, like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe! As far Musharraf, his bosses might offer him a job in USA, you never know for as long he worked in Pakistan he served them well!

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Mugabe: Africa's serial killer

An article from the Ovi magazine

At this minute, supporters of Africa’s Hitler caricature, Robert Mugabe show their power by beating people in cities and villages of Zimbabwe, people who didn’t go to vote or people who showed their support to the opposition, even people who were quiet in the name of their family’s peace.


Just like Hitler’s SS teams, police and paramilitary groups that support the dictator and his murderous gang go through the streets of Harare with batons and sticks beating anybody who they don’t like because it has ended up to that - if they don’t like somebody or what he says he’s the enemy of the devilish state Mugabe has created. The incidents are in their hundreds and I’m really sorry but in the next few weeks and months they will be in the thousands; you see, there is a pattern with serial killers. In the beginning they torture and wound their victims and then gradually they start killing making the cycle one of torture and murder. This is what Mugabe and his followers are, and this is the name that can use alongside monsters and enemies of humanity - they are serial killers.

The rest of the world is watching numb while the leaders of the democratic countries are thinking what they can do to stop the massacre. Too late? I cannot definitely answer that but they had all the time to do something instead of inviting him to summits in Rome. I hope Mr. Solana and Mr. Barroso regret every moment of that. Mugabe won the elections is his argument and I’m sure the result will reach the glorious 88% and over. He couldn’t do it 100%, he cannot be so obvious but 75% is a good number and his followers are living the illusion that they have the support of the people and that nobody can touch them. And why shouldn’t they?

The international community, except some, have done nothing. In an article a few months ago I was wondering why, I cannot understand how even neighbouring countries of Zimbabwe cannot actively do something against Mugabe and often I had to face the argument that he fought racism and sent the British away. This is a very schizophrenic situation, the man who was proud of kicking the colonist British away was proud to take a knighthood from the Queen and, at the very same time, he is a man who asked for equality between black and white people, but now he sees anybody even befriending a white as the enemy. But now the enemy is everywhere for Mugabe, and it matches what I said before about a serial killer pattern.

There is no alternative justice anymore and no negotiations for somebody like Mugabe and his gang, and I’m sorry to say there will be no forgiveness between the Zimbabwe people either and this is what saddens me much more. It might be tomorrow, next month or next year but the fall will come, it always comes to people like Mugabe. But how long will it take for the wounds to heal and how long will it take for the people to forget this is another story and I’m afraid it will not come in one day, one month or one year. Revenge is already in the minds of a lot of Zimbabweans and they are just waiting.

But what will happen when Mugabe will go over this thin line, when he will kill the wrong mother, the wrong father, the wrong child and then the first one will ask for revenge? It really takes only one to unite the others and the all the warning from the opposition will become true and another civil war will inflame this part of Africa. And please remember when your neighbour’s backyard is on fire your house is in danger. That’s how Zimbabwe’s neighbours should feel like. The fire has already started in Zimbabwe and we all know who is responsible and they power this fire with batons and long sticks in the neighbourhoods of Harare every minute.

Robert Mugabe, Africa's Hitler caricature, must go not only for the present and the future of Zimbabwe but for the present and the future of Africa and Mugabe with his gang must go to an international court to be judged for crimes against humanity not only in the name of the people of Zimbabwe, not only in the name of the people of Africa but in the name of the people of this world!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Torturing Aristotle

An article from the Ovi magazine

Is there any way to identify the meaning of the word ‘torture’? I grew up through a dictatorship and I heard unbelievable stories about torturing and methods of torturing, then after the dictatorship and all the cases came to the courts we saw pictures of the victims and their bodies, we heard detailed descriptions and we saw it in their eyes. I even have a friend who went through that during those dark days.

torture01_400But then I have another friend whose father used to beat his mother and lock him sometimes for a whole a day inside a dark closet. My friend in his early fifties and he still has nightmares of that time and when he left home at sixteen he never returned, he never spoke to his father again and, according to him, the best day of his life was when his mother left his father. Isn’t this torture? What’s the difference or what’s the distance between the two cases? I know I have too many questions but honestly I don’t know the answers. For me is just inhumane!

I have seen with my own eyes what torture means in Sudan and Sierra Leone, I saw torturing in South Africa and I saw victims of torturing in Chile. One night a very good friend of mine, a lecturer in the University of Buenos Aires, who was a political prisoner during the dictatorship, opened her heart after a few drinks and started telling me what she had gone through. In the beginning there were tears but after a bit the tears became sobs and then when she started telling me about the rapes the sobs became silence. Then I was in tears. Her words were torture for me who was just listening, who never went through the same things.

When I was fourteen the dictatorship’s police arrested me as a suspect – you see on top of everything I had long hair something that didn’t go down too well with the ethics of a dictatorship – for two hours I lost every sense of where I was and what was happening to me and the only sensation I had left was the taste of blood in my mouth. My crime? I was walking in a street at the wrong time! I’m serious, that was my crime and straight away I became a suspect, that’s how dictators think and until my family found out and until they come to save me I had two broken bones and a face you could hardly recognize that it was mine. And I was just …fourteen! That’s how dictatorships think!

torture02_400For years a family friend lived in real hell with a husband who never touched her in the sense beating her but living in constant sentimental blackmails that reached her life and the life of her own kids. The worst part was that she could never talk about them, just having to live her hell, full of threats and mental violence. Is that torturing? I don’t know and the longer I’m thinking more and more cases coming to my mind. I can only sense that torturing is not only the visual but there are many kinds even the sentimental or the blackmail, it’s all torture and it’s all inhumane and painful.

Oddly 2,500 years ago Aristotle pointed that any confession coming through torturing should not stand in any court, 2,500 years ago and in 1987 the United Nations signed a treaty against torturing to get a confession. In the year 2008 we have Guantanamo!!! We obviously learned nothing! And did they use torture all through history? The states did, the kings and the lords did, the bandits did and criminals did, dictators and warlords, even the churches did. The Inquisition, they made torturing science. In a museum in Spain I saw for the first time an iron maiden, not the rock group, and only the sight of it was enough to scare you so much to confess just anything not going through that.

And there are states that still practice torturing, George W. Bush's administration has even legalized them in Guantanamo, I’m not joking, the water torture is consider a normal practice to make terrorism suspects to confess. Aristotle didn’t know anything about George W. Bush back then, he only knew about democracy, poor chap! What remains? For me to apologize to my ancient compatriot, if he was still alive most likely he would be victim of torturing as well!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Mugabe must go

An article from the Ovi magazine

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai announced that his party is pulling out from the elections stating that this election will not be fair and free, yet he automatically hands victory to the Africa’s unbelievable Hitler caricature, Robert Mugabe!

What else could he have done? I have no idea, but others including the UN and South Africa leaders as I have often pointed in the past, could have done many things. Disappointment? No, there was no way out of what was going on in this poor country and her people, with the other option was to go for an election with a predefined result, humiliation and the risk of the lives of his followers. That’s Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and that’s what has become international responsibility.

International responsibility, instinctly and while I was writing this I was smiling. Think of what happened before the invasion to Iraq. The American president and the British prime minister spent hours and hours telling us that a vicious dictator had to end and it was the responsibility of the whole world to do that. It was international responsibility to save the people of Iraq from the dictator and gone far enough to call the sceptics of this invasion cowards and talk about the old and tired Europe. Should we expect now the same people do something similar? Should we expect this time the United Nations to join? After all it is for a humanitarian cause! Or this little element that missing from Zimbabwe and Iraq had will not let them move their ass? Of course you guessed right, I’m talking about oil!

There is no oil in Zimbabwe; there are no diamonds or uranium! There are beautiful valleys and farms, a lot of farms and most of all there poor people, really poor people and who gives a damn for the poor people but when it comes to oil tycoons, sheiks and caliphs they ready to ignore even the UN! But we should know, it has happened before and it was with Iraq all again. When Iraq invaded Kuwait all the world was ready within hours and at least for me it is a question why they didn’t finished the job but when Turkey invaded Cyprus apparently using exactly the same excuses nobody moved but again Cyprus might be a beautiful island for holidays but it doesn’t have any oil! So we won't bother with Zimbabwe!

Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is hell on earth with gigantic inflation and the people with opinion either in prison or dead. For Mugabe there is only one reality ‘my way or the graveyard!’ - what’s then the reality for the alliance against evil? If you have oil we can save you if you don’t just …die? By the way George W. Bush has another six months to prove that everything said about Saddam didn’t stop there but it can apply to Mugabe as well. There is no difference between those two even though to my opinion Africa’s caricature Hitler is worst!

The final cut for Morgan Tsvangirai was what happened last weekend in Harare where his party had organized a rally in a central stadium and followers or better accomplices in crimes against humanity of Robert Mugabe gathered with a lot of help from the army, the police and Mugabe’s paramilitary groups; all armed ready for a warm welcome. So it is not anymore a case of democratic dialogue, is not a case of talking is a case of gang of murderers ready to do everything just to keep their seats and it is simple as that. Is just like gangster protecting their territories.

Mugabe must go and it is the turn of the international community to do something about it, increase the pressure and stop inviting Mugabe for dinner like stupidly Barroso did a few weeks ago. Mbeki, the president of South Africa and Ki-moon the General Secretary if the United Nations must increase radically the pressure, Mugabe must go!

Latest news from Zimbabwe: Morgan Tsvangirai has spent a second night in the Dutch embassy while Ki-moon and Mbeki decided to get actively involved with the situation


Thursday, June 19, 2008

The challenge

An article from the Ovi magazine

Living in the EU I have seen refugees for decades coming not only for a better future but for the simple reason to save their and their children's lives and the bitter truth is that in the beginning of the twenty-first century the refugee reality becomes more and more challenging for all the world.

refugees01At this very moment more than forty million people all around the world have become refugees escaping from their homes, roots and countries because of violence and persecution and this doesn’t include a lot more millions that were forced to immigrate due to economic reasons. In contrast with the economic immigrants who are aiming the industrial west, refugees are often forced to escape anywhere as long they can survive away from their home violence and most of time anywhere is better than home.

refugees02_400And it is not only a civil war, warlords or a dictatorship the only reasoning, homosexuality is punished with death in most of the Middle East and Arab countries with Iran championing. And it doesn’t stop in the dark dictatorships, in Turkey to say anything about a Kurdish state or against the army means imprisonment, in Zimbabwe if you don’t agree with Mugabe you are an English spy and you endanger your life, in the ‘secure’ Iraq people sleep with a gun under their pillow.

People nowadays due to expanding information are more aware of their rights and rightfully they demand them, often having to face with a hard and injustice state. So you find people asking for the refugee’s status from the most surprising countries. The same time waves of refuges have to deal with local xenophobia and sometimes racism with latest example the embarrassing events in Soutrefugees03h Africa. The role of the hosting states becomes increasingly serious as well having except provide shelter and protection but to advocate and help to build a new life and this is were all the challenges start.

The role of the UN and the Refugee Agency is critical since they are oblige to make reality all the above, lead and help the host countries and most of all put a blueprint for all the government to secure health, education and protection for the refugees.

What we have to understand is that these people didn’t have a choice; the alternative to their fleeing would have been their life. And I have no idea how bold to make that for everybody to understand it, to tell you imagine living the circumstances that led them to their action is nothing to the reality they lived. Just think that 30,000 kids die every single day with the majority of them victims of wars and conflicts; just think what thousands of other kids have seen while our kids were playing in the park or at the seaside.

I don’t know if there is anything else to say but give a chance to these people who had none in their own homes.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Perhaps a cancer in Europe

An article from the Ovi magazine

There is something that I have often emphasized, that Africa or south-east Asia are very far away in our minds, much more than they are in reality, and we have connected the embarrassing acts of our times, like human and drug trafficking, with these corners of the earth. The connection is not entirely unfair since a lot happens and there are states like the dictatorship of Myanmar that champion human and drugs trafficking; actually, the dictators of Myanmar hold the record in both ‘sports.’

There is a saying that the camel can see the other camel’s back better than hers and somehow I have the feeling that the same comes to Europeans, we can see the ‘camel’s back’ with the African countries but we cannot see it when it happens with a country inside the European borders, a country that has been accused more and more from NGOs and organizations for human trafficking, women and children and an uncontrollable drugs trafficking. The accusations go as far as the prime minister and his inner circle, or better, say his family, since governing and family has become the same thing in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Actually, more and more countries talk openly nowadays for the situation in this country and what will happen after Kosovo will be recognized as a new democracy.

FYROM has a lot of open issues with Kosovo whether they like or not and the whole dispute with Greece, while they know that they are wrong it has nothing to do with the reality that their state is in serious dangerous to fall in non-existence in the next ten years. The borders with Kosovo are not very clear and the Albanians have dreams about the land - lands that don’t include the name FYROM. Does Nicola Gruevski, FYROM’s prime minister know all that?

Of course he does and what happened during the elections between the Albanians in FYROM was enough to make him worry, that’s why he has turned to blind nationalism, that’s why he threatens all around. But the thing is for how long this policy of self-delusion is going to continue and not to forget the other element of the equalization that keeps him in place of the Bush administration. You see, I was really careful not to use the Americans because with the end of George W. Bush administration a lot of the mysterious plans in the Balkans are going to be terminated. The word ‘mysterious’ was accurate since nobody knows what this temporary, yet best in size, American army base is doing in the area.

Suspicions? A lot! After all, the American secret services have proved often in the past that they can cooperate even with the devil himself if that serves their interests. Perhaps between Kosovo and FYROM is based the alternative, even darker Guantanamo. Perhaps the American secret services can pretend to be blind when women and children are sold like slaves and drugs change routes. Perhaps it serves when the responsible traffic policeman behind all this is accidentally the prime minister’s favorite cousin and head of the secret police. Perhaps in exchange he turns a blind eye for all that happen with the rumored planes that land with prisoners. Perhaps all the talking in the Albanian villages in FORUM is not lies! Perhaps this country is doomed by its own actions and choices.

That would explain Gruevski’s rush for FYROM to become a member of NATO and that would explain Bush’s support, CIA interest and Rice’s hysterics. When Greece vetoed this membership I’m sure it had no idea of what would soon come out, perhaps there were rumors but now these rumors have expanded into reports that increasingly become more chilling and the way Gruevski practiced democratic elections last month reminded more of a dictatorship and one of the worst kinds.

The dramatic thing is that this all happens in Europe not Africa, not in south Asia and the hypocrisy of the whole thing is that Gruevski will dare the coming December to apply for an EU membership. EU was pretty sensitive when Austria elected for chancellor somebody known for his extreme-right opinions, now is time to practice this sensitivity with FYROM showing to Mr. Gruevski that there is no place for his kind in Europe and all the human and drugs trafficking is a total embarrassment for the EU and must stop yesterday, this cancer that has grown in Europe must be terminated now!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Japan's environmental worries

An article from the Ovi magazine

Whatever logic I use I cannot understand it when countries like Japan seriously announce that they are going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 80% but all that by the year 2050! This is two generations from now and I presume my grandkids will be adults and me …well long dead!

I’m not trying to be dramatic, after all if you spend a couple of hours in the internet searching environmental issues it is enough to scare the shit out of you and start planning a shelter for you and your family, or better start praying to whatever you might believe. I think the truth is not exactly there but it is not half way either. I believe that we still have time to do something; we just need to listen to the experts and follow their advice without any hysterics and neurotic reactions. There is a problem and the last five years it has been obvious even to the nonbelievers that it’s a fact. There is responsibility for all the environmental problems we have and this responsibility is collective to all of us, from the single house hold and the way we treat our immediate environment to governments and of course international economic interests. That’s another fact!

Solution; well, this is the part I don’t feel so sure and the main reason is that the scientists haven’t manage to analyze the exact damage and calculate the timing. When the tsunami hit south Asia we were all shocked and we all pointed the responsibility of the human factor to the event. That didn’t mean that it was the first time we had a tsunami, I think Lisbon is one of the European cities that has met the catastrophic effects of a tsunami. What changed everything was the unbelievable loss of human lives. Tsunamis happened before and they will probably happen again, the thing is that in the beginning of the 21st century the loss of tens of thousands of lives is unexpected and unexcused. What caused this loss of life it was not the tsunami itself, it was the lack of natural defenses and this is a fact. It was not the lack of natural defenses but the lack of artificial ones as well. The local governments instead of protecting their own people gave license to open more and more hotels destroying an environment that was able to defend itself under any circumstances and it has done before.

Look what happens in the rain forest in South America. Cutting the forest doesn’t destroy the environment, destroys first of all the lungs of the earth regarding filtering the air – it is funny but this is one of the things we learn from our very first years at school, trees filter the air – but these rainforest do something far more important, they are natural defenders before natural catastrophes. Or better natural catastrophes are the result of lacking natural defenses. New Orleans is the best example, don’t tell me that the biggest scientific and material power in the world didn’t have the right warning and the right equipment to prevent the catastrophe, they were just ignoring that with every new meter of concrete they destroy a meter of natural defenses.

What I’m trying to say is that our responsibility as humanity for the destruction of the environment and the coast of thousands and thousands of lives is huge and the sooner we realize it the better. We are not causing tsunamis and earthquakes but with our actions we are responsible of the human loses. And who is the best to put some rules, who is more than any other responsible to put the blueprint so we can prevent these catastrophes and this loss, the state, even better the international community represented from the UN.

Now the state has a dual role, to listen and decide which means experts advising and experts decide, politics have no room in these decisions. Actually politics was what led to those wrong decisions, politics was what made states give license for cutting the rainforest, politics was what let all this uncontrolled building areas that should be protected, politics and in extent greed was what build all these factories without any care for the damage they bring in long term. The destruction of the ozone layer is another example of this, nobody took an axe destroying the ozone layer on the earth sky, what we did it was destroying its defenses and now we are called to repair the damage. And we can do that as I said without hysterics and with a program. But this demands an active support and leading role of the states especially the ones who have the activist role in this destruction.

Don’t worry I’m not going to blame all to the industrial west, all the states have their responsibilities. Is not the industrial Europe responsible for the destruction of the rain forest it is mainly the local governments leading the Brazilian government that even now with the populist Silva sells out the last defenses of the earth to the big forest companies for just a few dollars more. The African governments have their share when they became the backyard of the nuclear waste for all the industrial countries all around the world and that …for a few dollars more. The Asian government that decided in one night to compete the industrial west using humans as slaves and ignoring any security warnings. And yes, the industrial west that seen the results of their action inside their countries they are still thinking how to react.

Japan is a beautiful and overpopulated country; I know, I lived there for a period and I learn to love this country. But in the name of the industrial revolution a country without materials, that has to import nearly everything stormed in the industrial area conquering everything but with what cost? They ignored the environment including the humans as big element of this environment. They tighten their future and their survival with the economic growth and their industry and now they have no way to escape from this path. Changing route will mean changing a way of life that has become their nature the last century. Amazingly a nation that loves so much nature, apparently worships nature has become so depending from artificial surroundings. That’s a nation that totally lost their path and they need to find their way back.

The new Japanese Prime Minister Yasho Fukuda shows that he misses the point as well. I’m not sure if that’s because of politics or because he really has forgotten and the tragic thing with the Japanese politicians is that they all stand on the need of return to traditions while they fly further and further away from the traditions that created the Japanese nation and the nature they love so much to give names from the nature to all their women.

Next month the G8 meet again and this time environment is the main agenda. The Japanese prime minister tried to show that Japan is there strong and ready to do her part. After failing the Kyoto protocol I think that this is hypocrisy and the year 2050 without any hysterics seems too far away and I’m afraid that the same way the Japanese prime minister forgot how it was to enjoy the clean nature it will be the same for my grandkids who will think that a picnic in the fields and living without an asthma mask is something ancients used to do!

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Chavez: The next American Idol

An article from the Ovi magazine

When everybody was talking about Venezuela’s Che I was a bit sceptical! When everybody was talking about the Venezuelan economic miracle I was wondering and when the Spanish king told Chavez to shut up I was relieved.

Nobody knows what would have happened to Che if he was alive and the myth of his death created an icon the size of a rock & roll star; but judging from his brief life, the things he said and the things he did, I doubt if he would have become a relic like Castro. Che always put humans before anything, including ideologies, and you might think that I am being romantic but I feel that it is sacrilege to compare Che with Hugo Chavez.

Hugo Chavez often makes me feel like he’s coming out of a reality show called the "American Revolutionary" where all the scenery and the scenario are inspired from Woody Allen’s film Bananas. I even went so far to read a couple of his speeches to find out that a big part of them didn’t make sense. He's a populist who is ready to say anything so long as the audience will scream his name happily. Of course giving petrol in ridiculous prices, especially to the poor, and the ones who needed it is good and if you put aside the greediness of the oil companies there is a reason for putting taxes on the petrol. The money the states make supposedly goes back to the people by creating schools and hospitals, but please don’t tell me that Venezuela has solved all these problems - do they have enough schools and perfect hospitals? I think Venezuela is far from having a good education and health system.

And then there is another catch that holds me back when it comes to Chavez, the man is always too ready to protect and demonstrate about USA and the EU, emphasizing their lack of respect to the poor and defenceless. He’s talking about human rights and Guantanamo, yet at the same time he’s building his own Guantanamo. Venezuela hasn’t manage to champion human rights, on the contrary, Hugo Chavez found himself a lot of times having to excuse his actions with the opposition, the students, the workers and a number of other issues but his latest decision with the law for spying he definitely touches the limits that will turn him from a controversial leader to a dictator.

His excuse was to guarantee national security, prevent assassination plots and military rebellions. Leave aside the national security excuse, it has been used so many times and for so many reasons that it has lost the meaning; in the end we will hear even bin Laden talking about Afghanistan’s national security and we will not be surprised. Prevent assassination? From the very beginning Hugo Chavez has shown signs of persecution mania and with a little help from CIA’s war games it turned into an obsession. The thing is how far it goes his feeling that he is an assassination target and how far it goes his problem in see enemies around who want to kill him.

Don’t forget that we have another contemporary example of a leader who sees enemies everywhere who try to kill him, Africa’s caricature Hitler Robert Mugabe. And Mugabe has taken it one step further, first he accuses his victims for being English spies that follows with the accusation of assassinations against him - it will end with a dead body in the wild. Is this the path that lies in front of Chavez?

And where does this enemy and spy identity stop? For a man with a persecution mania anybody who’s opposing him can easily become a spy, an instrument of the enemy and in this case anybody can be the enemy depending on the mood. In Mugabe’s case just everybody who opposes him is an English spy. This new law also demands from the Venezuelans to cooperate with the secret services and the police into unveiling enemies of the state and spies. But we have lived the same much too often in the past where a personal dispute was enough to lead people in front the firing squad.

Last, the excuse for military rebellion really made me laugh because it definitely has the flavour of South American banana dictatorship threats and I think it was mainly for internal use warning Venezuelans, it is either a military junta or me!

Sunday, June 01, 2008

The next crime of the Myanmar junta

An article from the Ovi magazine

If anything could get worse in Burma - or Myanmar as the dictators like to call the country - it just did; in the middle of a cyclone, literally and metaphorically, they announced that they are going to extend the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest!

To suppress the political and civil rights of the people is one thing but to fail them while a natural disaster happens and show how naked you are is a totally different thing. The cyclone found a country not prepared for any natural disaster, especially worrying since Burma is a country in the danger zone for earthquakes, tsunamis and cyclones, and the victims were in their thousands. Hundred of thousands because it is not only the people who died but also the ones who lost everything, it is the people left without a father, mother or a brother, there are the people who lost their homes and, as I said, these people count in their hundred of thousands.

So what’s the very first obligation of any state, even a dictatorship like the one that rules Myanmar? Reassure people that there is hope; make them feel that apart from any ideological difference, behind any corruption and crime, there are humans who cannot leave fellow humans dying, including people who might support them. This is exactly where the Myanmar junta failed and more people died. Hundreds, thousands more people. Under international pressure the junta was forced to accept the help that was being offered from everywhere.

I have the feeling that nobody understood what I just said; actually, I’m writing it again because I found it difficult to believe it myself. After the cyclone hundred of thousands of people lost their homes, they lost everything, even the ability of a plate with rice and some milk for their kids. People started dying and the situation was becoming critical with international organizations warning for thousands of dead, especially kids because of the lack of food. Naturally, all the countries from all around the world, even countries that survive with help abroad, started loading aeroplanes and ships ready to go to Burma and help the people, and they could start straightaway if the junta hadn’t stopped them. The criminals that rule this poor country, the drug dealers in army uniforms, most likely thought that the rice was poisoned with democracy!

Yes, they stopped all the aeroplanes, they stopped all the help, they stopped all the food and the milk for Burma’s kids because their minor brains are full of … I'd better not write it! The international pressure kept piling forcing them in the end to accept all the help but still all the help had to go through their office stamped as made and offered from them and then driven to the people. How many kids died in the meantime is a mystery and I hope we will find out soon so there will be a stronger case when it comes the time for the court. How much of this help ended in gangsters’ stockrooms, how much of this help is sold from these gangsters on the black market is another mystery but it did happen. After all, we are talking about a gang of criminals and drug dealers that rule the country, people without any conscience, people who murder and have lost count of how many they have killed.

But again, the democracy virus might have managed to go through, you just never know how their micro brains work; so they should do something about the face that represents any hope for the people of this country, Aung San Suu Kyi. And what they do? They extend her house arrest and put in prison a few people who tried to meet her and give her some news from her dying country.

What is left? The international community saw first-hand how they can press the junta and they saw first-hand how they can scare them, France at least had a taste. The next thing the people of Burma need after rice and milk is freedom and a coordinated strong reaction from all around the world can do it. Now everybody knows that these men in uniform that rule the country are common criminals the worst type, it is time to send them where they really belong, in a dark cell to rule mice and spiders!

Friday, May 30, 2008

Don't let it be

An article from the Ovi magazine

Kids live their darkest times, not that they ever lived any better times since they have been the victims all through human history, but what they have to deal with today in the beginning of the 21st century with all this social and scientific advance is nearly unbelievable. Paedophilia is nothing new and has existed since the beginning of history and in some times it was not even a taboo and a crime, the use of kids as slavery is something that we saw even at the beginning of the last century, crimes with kids as the victims are immeasurable from the beginning of history. But we thought that humanity evolved.

And when I’m talking about evolution I don’t mean the physical or the technical evolution of the society but the social evolution where humanity became better and more aware of the environment as a wide meaning. Actuality and environment, where humanity realized the crucial part it plays and its role in this gigantic chain for survival, should evolve to something better. Respect to others’ rights didn’t even exist two centuries ago and it was a case of personal honour and ethics; nowadays there are laws to protect human rights and most importantly to protect the defenceless, much more to protect the kids. But what happens when the ones who are oblige to protect the innocent and the kids turn to be the bad wolves?

A leading UK charity organization, the organization Save the Children, accused peacekeepers in Ivory Cost, Sudan and Haiti for sexually abusing kids as young as six-years-old. The dramatic part of it is that this is not the first time peacekeepers have been accused for similar cases and it still remains to find the truth what happened in the former Yugoslavia and the many places the peacekeepers where based and there is a lot of talking for similar accusations.

A thirteen-year-old girl has already described in an interview how ten UN peacekeepers gang-raped her in a field near her Ivory Coast home and I quote her own word, "They grabbed me and threw me to the ground and they forced themselves on me... I tried to escape but there were 10 of them and I could do nothing. I was terrified. Then they just left me there bleeding." Despite her testimony and recognizing her tormentors no action was taken against the soldiers. When the UN was informed and received a full report from the organization including a series of testimonies the answer was that they will study the report …closely!

According to the same organization, the testimonies they managed to collect were very few even to give an idea of the reality since most of the kids are scared to report anything in front the authority of the UN so the majority of these crimes go unpunished giving the criminals a chance to repeat their crime again and again. The UN spokesman, Nick Birnback, said to international media that it was impossible to ensure "zero incidents" within an organization that has up to 200,000 personnel serving around the world. "What we can do is get across a message of zero tolerance, which for us means zero complacency when credible allegations are raised and zero impunity when we find that there has been malfeasance that's occurred," he added.

I’m really sorry but I find his excuses very poor and sad. It's pathetic if we excuse crimes like that blaming them on …human nature and I demand a better and more careful evaluation for the peacekeepers from the UN and the responsible officers. These people are not just soldiers, they are ambassadors of peace and arguments like …zero instincts have no room here but in a mercenary army out of a Rambo film! I’m not going to go after Ban Ki-moon, the UN General Secretary, I thought from the very beginning that he was the wrong person for the seat and unfortunately he hasn’t proved me wrong; but the act and the UN’s reaction probably shows that there is something seriously wrong with our society where we can excuse acts like that arguing about human nature.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Talking to the deaf

An article from the Ovi magazine

It has been a long time since I wrote anything about Iran and that’s not because we are lacking news from Teheran or quotes from its president but because the man so often crosses the line so much that I’m speechless and cannot think of anything to write except… Man, shut your mouth, you are dangerous! The problem is that when I think of that I then read the new threats by an American politician and that makes me think that this is a totally idiotic situation.


When Ahmadinejad, Iran’s puppet president, demands the destruction of Israel you think that the man is not only an idiot but a dangerous idiot, but what can you call the US presidency hopeful Hillary Clinton when she’s warning that if Iran continues with nuclear plants she will bomb the country; she will start another war in the area? You might say that Hillary says things like this for internal use trying to attract voters who want a US international supreme police, judge and executioner. Yet, then again, how many of these people can drive a foreign policy by threatening a war that will definitely push the Middle East even further into the dark? How strong these few voters are? And if there are so many to influence foreign policy then Obama has bigger problem than he thought!

My position for this issue has been very clear from the very beginning. I’m strongly against using nuclear power for energy and that is not because I’m blinded by the dark side of the nuclear power; I have the logic to understand the need of energy in the modern world and I do understand that nuclear is one option but I'm against the use of it because there are three unsolved factors. First of all the cost is not lower, especially now we are talking about new generation nuclear plants. When governments talk about cheaper energy they mean the cost of energy after the plant is fully working but nuclear plants don’t just grow in the field one spring day, they need a huge amount of money and effort to be built and naturally all the costs lay on the consumers in the end. The use of electricity hasn’t become cheaper in Finland because there are four nuclear plants and definitely will not become cheaper after building the fifth and sixth.

The second worrying factor is the nuclear waste. Most of the countries that use nuclear power for energy have problems with nuclear waste and after poisoning oceans and African countries now they have to store this waste in their own country without been able to calculate the damage they do. Finland is using an old cave to store the nuclear waste in north western Finland but the damage which most of the scientists describe it is to be seen after two or three generations. To understand how dangerous that is you just need to look the mistakes two or three generations did in the last decades and the damage they have done to the earth today. How different things would have been if back in sixties and seventies we had done some simple things to protect environment, things we were aware back then anyway. How different would have been for metropolis like Los Angeles, London, Tokyo or even Athens cities that have become environmental monsters with their pollution and citizens with constant asthma problems.

And then it is the third factor, the human factor! All the accidents happened in nuclear plants from the Three Miles Island to Chernobyl a human error was what started the disaster and whatever they do, however much robotics develop, concrete on the cell becomes stronger and heavy water purer a human will press the right or the …wrong button in the end. Please don’t tell me that the people who work in these places are experts and fully aware of their work because the same responsible experts a few years ago sent the Challenger spacecraft to death by using cheaper material due to budgets and costs; and I’m taking the official excuse avoiding all the theories for enriching bank accounts and corrupted directors. The human error can happen in any level of the nuclear reactor and the result …well nobody knows for how long the area and the people who lived around Chernobyl when the accident happened will have to deal with and pay the cost often with their own lives. Sorry for been dramatic or cynic but nobody knows how many generations, especially young kids will have to deal with leukaemia because of a …human error.

This has nothing to do with Iranians capability to handle a project like a nuclear plant, first of all if you check all the scientific centres you will be surprised how many Iranian scientists you will find and Three Miles Island was not in Teheran or in any Third World country!

But human error is the choice to turn an otherwise for peaceful use nuclear reactor into a nuclear bomb - this is not literal but I know you understand what you mean. I do understand the logic behind this balance of horror, actually my generation in Europe lived it, and we were learning naively how to cover ourselves behind concrete walls in a case of nuclear war like there was any chance to be saved from the invisible power. And it did work but why do we have to continue a mistake just because it didn’t prove lethal the first and the second time? It needs only one time to destroy us all and there is no trial period in that.

The US and Russia are not the only ones living in this balance of terror, Pakistan and India do the same, Pakistan a country proved corrupt at every level from the ones we call terrorists, the Taliban. But then neither the Indians who have nuclear bombs nor the Pakistani people are worrying. Neither leader ever said that they are planning to eliminate the other country and both even in the worst of times when there were minor conflicts in Nepal tried to find ways through diplomacy.

Ahmadinejad on his side has called provocatively for the elimination of Israel; he has used the most prejudice often racist language for the people who are his neighbours damaging in the end every single right the Palestinians might have in their conflict with Israel since they are Ahmadinejad’s excuse to show his haters against Israel. The people who ruling Iran are dangerous and they are in an dangerous are where people blinded of their cause can become suicide bombers without caring how many innocent they are going to take with them. This is the human element that makes Iran a dangerous country to have a nuclear plant and in extent the ability to have nuclear weapons, the word weapons of mash distraction takes a different meaning in the hands of the Iranian cleric dictators and fanatics.

And when you feel that you made your argument and that there was logic in it Hillary comes and threatens with a war and you feel like talking to deaf for so long!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Ovi magazine, Copycats and Nokia

First of all, we want to thank reporters, journalists and bloggers because they are the only ones who have seen what Mr. Nikula missed and hopefully the legal department of Nokia Corporation will not ignore. Mr. Nikula unethically ignored that there was already an Ovi magazine in Finland that had been well-established since December 2004 well before he ever created his copycat.

Read the original story here: http://ovimagazine.com/art/926

The fact that there is an internet link with the same name was a major clue, plus when he was forced to choose a name like Ovi dash something. Actually he missed that there is Ovi Lehti, Ovi Sanomat, Ovi Junior, Ovi Cartoons, Ovi iKritic, Ovi-magazine, Ovi stories, Ovi iBite and many others that belong to Ovi magazine and are registered to Chameleon Project, never forget the Ovi Bad Boys weekly radio show that is announced to all the Finnish newspapers and magazine; none of which are for sale. Fortunately reporters and bloggers did notice and they are aware of the major ethical injustice.

We like to emphasize this ‘not for sale’ because the Ovi magazine is not just an internet magazine but it is an idea with a heart and soul that hosts from its establishment in 2004 the ideals of democracy, freedom of speech and the exchange of opinion. Human rights, domestic abuse, the plight of children have been among just a few of the worthy causes we have championed, while simultaneously offering a platform for the work of new writers and illustrators, from Finland and from all around the world. That makes us a universal family that cannot be estimated in money.

Unfortunately, through leaks to the press, we discovered that Mr. Nikula is negotiating the sale of his copycat magazine and the Ovi trademark to Nokia Corporation. We trust that this is just a wishful thought and that Nokia Corporation will search a little bit better as to what is going on behind the name Ovi magazine.

Our four years of hard work advocating freedom of speech was recognised and rewarded by Newropeans, while we have had cooperation with many national and international magazines, such as Ydin magazine, Europe & Us, Agenda magazine, Books from Finland, EU-MAN, Free magazine, Newropeans-Magazine, OneWorld, Psihadi magazine and more. We have relationships with Non-Governmental Organizations, such as Reporters without Frontiers and Finland's International Cultural Center CAISA, and the site receives well-over 20,000 visitors a week - the numbers literally increase day after day. We are considered a well-established magazine and trademark internationally and Ovi magazine has been reference for hundreds of sites and blogs from all around the world.

We have always believed that this was an issue of ethics should it ever come to a court house – where, as we are well-informed by experts, we can easily win the case – and it comes as a surprise that, according to leaks to the press, some representative of the Nokia Corporation said that they had never heard of us. It is a simple enough task for them to Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves or whatever else to locate the name Ovi and then find us straight away. Of course we didn’t financially invest in the promotion and push of Ovi magazine, like an international corporation can do, but the thousands of articles, the thousands of links and references to our work, even from Wikipedia and most of all the thousands readers keep us on the top in every search engine.

The fact that the copycats of the printed Ovi magazine ignored us, despite the fact that we could open a case anytime demanding a large percentage of their profits, which they knew, doesn’t excuse an international corporation like Nokia maintaining the same attitude. We are expecting their telephone call before investigating our legal rights on what they plan to pay the copycat because we want to know whether it is true and not a wishful greedy act of somebody who wants to increase his lost popularity.

It has been a justifiable question as to why we didn’t take the case to the court. From the very first moment, other than the support that came from every side and every corner of Finland including employees of the certain magazine, we believed that there is justice that punishes the unethical and the failure of the magazine from its second issue to reach anybody in Finland was proof.

Regarding the money behind this case, we believe that the people who read this magazine and have seen the path we have followed and the fights we have given over the last four years for democracy, for justice, against poverty and have realized the hours, the effort and the financial cost we have put in this magazine will know in their heart of hearts whether we are after the money!

The Ovi Team


Monday, May 19, 2008

The gangsters of Myanmar

An article from the original Finland's Ovi magazine

What happens this minute in Burma is heartbreaking and the only way to put the way I feel is that I’m really angry. I’m really angry with the international community that has failed to stop once more a crime against humanity. I’m sorry, there is no other way to describe what’s going on there.

The state, this miserable gang of criminals who like to call themselves the governors of Myanmar – guilty of what they are doing to the country could not even let them keep the historic name of the country, so Burma under the military boots became Myanmar; this very state announced that the number of dead has raised to 98,000. How true the number is remains to be discovered over the next few months, since the real information will not come from the officials - if you could call them that - but from the NGOs that work under incredible difficulties in the country.

burma02_400When 98,000 people are dead it make it a global issue and not a local incident, and it is natural to raise interest from all the organizations and institutes all around the world, including governments and the United Nations but there is one question behind this increasing number, how many of them got killed from the cyclone and how many of them got killed from an irresponsible state and a gang of drug dealers in military uniform who run it?

The military junta that rules Burma for decades is nothing more than common drug dealers which use a whole nation – in this case, their very own compatriots – as slaves, they have created a nation drug cartel which is included in the biggest exports of opium, heroin and cocaine internationally most of it finding its way into the European market and they have invested millions in drug laboratories leaving a nation into illiteracy, without schools and hospitals, but the worst of all without any defense against poverty and starvation. A nation under starvation that’s the reality of Myanmar.

The cyclone didn’t come to bury hundreds of thousands of innocent people but to unveil the reality these people live. For months we watch people and monks in orange and red robes demonstrating in Burma and then when the sports news starts we forget, we forget them like they are the children of another planet, of another world. The Chief Executive of the organization Save the Children UK, Jasmine Whibread visited Myanmar a few days ago and the only thing she could say was that most of the children in the suffering areas suffer of ‘acute malnourishment’, the most serious level of hunger to be followed by death. Already over 30,000 kids in the very same area were malnourished before cyclone Nargis hit the area, the number now has increased dramatically and the majority of them are under five years old. The only thing to save these children is for them to receive urgently energy-high food, otherwise death is a case of weeks.

And that would have been possible if the gangsters of Myanmar let the organizations, the nations and the UN do their job by bringing into the country everything that already waits. But they don’t, they leave limited access and that only when they can take out any sign of a foreign help and show that they are the ones who provided it, so they can show that they care. In the meantime and while they try to do all that more kids die.

But the gangsters of Myanmar are not alone in this crime, they have confederates or at least some who wittingly close their eyes in front the reality and especially one very powerful ally, China. How dramatic ironic, China suffers the very same moment a natural disaster and has welcome help from every nation from all around the world trying to save the lives of thousands of people. China has long supported in many levels the gangsters of Myanmar and truth is that during the Cold War many countries did so, never forget how many banana dictatorships were supported from the American administrations included J.F. Kennedy period. But things have changed and nowadays the Chinese support to the Myanmar regime makes them accomplice in a crime against humanity and I presume that’s one of the problems China can live without at the moment.

But then who? The United Nations is one thing but the General Secretary Ban Ki-moon has been proven incapable of the responsibility to lead a global organization, what is left is the nations' themselves. The United Nations is an organization that includes nearly 150 nation and these nations have an individual voice as well. France has loud complained already and threatens the gangsters’ regime, what will happen if the rest of the nations follow the example forcing China to join? Wouldn’t that mean the beginning of the end for these criminals?

Last but definitely not least, I have said it before, democracy doesn’t feed people but doesn’t kill either and definitely saves lives. Burma is the best prove for that!

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

The psychotic excuse

I’m returning to the same subject after a very brief time from my last article but with all the news agencies full of reports I cannot avoid it and I’m referring to the unbelievable Austrian father and the two families that grew under his tyranny. What triggered me this time was a report that his attorney is planning to ask psychiatric care for him instead of any other punishment and definitely avoid imprisonment, and to strengthen his argument he says that if the state’s specialist doesn’t confirm his psychotic status he's going to ask help from experts outside the state psychologists and psychiatrists.

When I read things like that I understand all the arguments psychologists and experts have made for the last forty years over televised series and films that show a twisted view of the investigation work. I am personally a fan of those films but I have the ability to understand and separate reality with Hollywood and by Hollywood I mean this entire fake world these series and films create. There are thousands of crimes happening every day in all the big cities all around the world. Thousands of them are solved one way or another but thousands more are not; and are not solved due to a series of reasons including state responsibility, police inability, misunderstanding or mistranslating the law and even because of luck.
But crimes are not solved in CSI laboratories, for example. CSI laboratories are there to assist the detectives in solving a crime and they work under the directions of the police. Profilers don’t transform in seconds into criminal minds that can understand how a criminal is thinking and solve crimes in hours or even worse, prevent a crime. The process to solve a crime is slow if there is no obvious proof, tracks or eye witnesses and it demands a lot of work, time and research and it is not solved in an hour’s episode including the adverts.

What happened in Austria will take time to unveil in full reality despite the fact that the crime is known, the criminal to start with confessed – doesn’t matter what his attorney says afterwards – and all the proof is there, including the results from the laboratories that proved that the man has fathered all the kids. You see, as I mentioned in my last article, in this crime the victims are not only the imprisoned daughter and her three kids but all the family including the mother and wife who was a prisoner of his the last forty years.

Social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, profilers, criminologists and any other expert you can imagine will want to examine the family and hundreds of essays are going to be written especially about the father and I’m sure somebody will base their career on this family. But for the ones who will succeed in reaching the family and the father will mean two basic things: first of all, a very slow process with countless interviews and, secondly, more seriously, these people will be interested in the 'why he did what he did' and not to prove that he is not guilty. His guilt is a fact, his crime is a fact.

Returning to the beginning and the attorney’s remark that his customer is psychotic and that his place should be in a hospital and not in a prison I turn my remarks to how much television series like "C.S.I." has twisted the way people see a crime and the investigation. I have to admit that I would never expect a remark like that from somebody who has been at least educated to understand the law and if this is his line of defense he’s hurting more his customer than helping him and finally he should stop watching so much television and start reading his law books.

The only reason a court would ever accept that defendant should be hospitalized instead of imprisoning is if the defendant cannot distinguish the difference between bad and good. This means an individual with serious brain handicap and there are cases like that where the defendant had the reactions of four or five years old. In this case the defendant knew very well the difference in such level to organize his acts a decade before actually acting. The man knew very well how to distinguish bad and good by using every possible way including his mind power over the family and his despotic behavior to hide the truth from them. He even used contemporary events the excuse of a cult where his daughter had supposedly joined, remember that the whole event is going on in mid-eighties where cults had become fear and passion for a lot of young people in central Europe. The man had every sense of good and bad and even his latest act to stop talking to the police and the investigators without the presence of his lawyer and not admitting anything shows that he’s been …watching a lot of television also!

Last and not least is the lawyer’s remark that his customer is …psychotic! The man should have done at least some research before saying that, just think how many times a day we call somebody crazy because of the way he/she drives, because the way they eat or the way they hold their handbag or newspaper. As I mentioned before if that’s his line of defense he has definitely chosen the wrong way, he has better advise his customer to admit his crimes and help the experts help a traumatized family – including his wife and his other kids – to recover at least partly of this nightmare!

Monday, May 05, 2008

Ovi iBite

An article from the original Finland's Ovi magazine

There has been outrage in Italy after the outgoing government published every Italian's declared earnings and tax contributions on the internet.

They were trying to spot Mafia godfathers!

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Haiti faces a "major crisis" if the international community does not increase food aid to the country, the UN's food agency has warned.

It is coming closer! Washington D.C.: The Homeless Capital.

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The US has ordered the expulsion of the remaining six Belarus diplomats in Washington and New York, the Associated Press news agency has said.

The good old days of the USSR return! The spy who came from the …Caspian Sea!!!

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans are attending a May Day parade in Havana honoring the world's workers. President Raul Castro, who succeeded his ailing brother Fidel in February, is attending the celebrations. He did not address the crowds.

Sorry to say but a May Day without a seven-hour speech from Fidel is just …not the same!

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Officials in Texas have found signs of injury among children removed from a polygamous sect and are checking for possible sexual abuse of boys.

What bruised knees or egos?

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The EU has described a vote by the Turkish parliament to soften its controversial law limiting free speech as a "welcome step forward".

Yeah right, just now they have to let people practice it!!!

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Scientific tests have confirmed that bones found last year in Russia belong to the two missing children of Tsar Nicholas II, Russian officials say. DNA tests carried out in the US showed the remains are those of Crown Prince Alexei and his sister Maria.

No more Anastasia legends and theories? Are they going to tell us that E.T. is not real also?

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Tehran has complained to the UN about remarks made last week by Hillary Clinton on the circumstances under which the US might attack Iran. The Democratic presidential hopeful said last week the US could "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel.

I really don’t get this, has George W. Bush or Barack Obama said anything different? It must be some kind of feminist issue!

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The trial of Iraq's former deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz over the deaths of a group of merchants in 1992 has opened in Baghdad.

Another lynching on the way?

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Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission has started to verify the results of the disputed presidential election, more than five weeks after the vote.

For others ‘go home’ might apply, in Mugabe’s case the magic phrase is: go to your cell!!!

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Sir Ian McKellen has confirmed he will reprise his role as Gandalf in the film version of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. "Yes, it's true," he told Empire magazine. "It's not a part that you turn down. I loved playing Gandalf."

There is no sarcastic comment here but the news is so exciting I could not avoid mentioning it!

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Veteran singer Tina Turner has revealed plans to tour the US, despite announcing her retirement from performing on the road eight years ago. The 68-year-old pop legend told TV host Oprah Winfrey the tour would kick off in October in Kansas City.

Here I will not try to be sarcastic but who’s next? The Egyptian mummies?

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Microsoft has yet to decide if it will up its $41.8bn (£21bn) bid for Yahoo, go hostile or walk away from the deal. A meeting of the Microsoft board on Wednesday ended without any decision, according to the Wall Street Journal.

And talking about mummies here is …Bill Gates!

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You might see a copycat Ovi magazine

Remember that whoever copycats Ovi magazine shows how limited and untalented some parasites can be! But the legal system prevails, even the Mexican one!

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

By example

An article from the original Finland's Ovi magazine

It sounds ironic that Syria is building a nuclear reactor, especially after finding out that North Korea is helping them. It’s coming as a bigger irony if you remember all the fuss about Saddam’s nuclear reactor and the WMD and the continuation with Iran and its cleric dictators. After literally screwing Iraq, this American administration had to compromise on many levels with North Korea to find out in the end that they are selling nuclear knowledge to anybody who will declare anti-American feelings and be willing to pay the high cost of the work to be done. However, more and more countries are trying to get nuclear knowledge with doubtful aims - I’m not saying that Syria is trying to create nuclear missiles, but, then again, can you trust them?


But, who can you trust? Look what happens in general with all these WMD, there are whole groups of really highly-educated scientists working in multi-billion laboratories to discover and produce new viruses that kill humans instead of putting all this effort and money into discovering vaccines and cures for viruses that already exist and kill thousands year after year. Why would they stop in front of creating another bomb?

I grew up in the '60s when naively they were teaching us at schools how to 'duck and cover' in a case of a nuclear war, as if you had any chance of survival hiding behind a concrete wall; we were acting just like the ostrich that buries her head in the sand, and I feel that nothing has changed today. During that period we were all balancing dangerously on the horror of who may pull the trigger first and we are doing exactly the same today with only one difference.

Back then there were only two players, now there are tens with some independents fooling around as well. Syria and Iran don’t do anything different to what this American administration was trying to do by putting missiles around Russia. A Russia that wants to solve too many problems before starting playing war games again and it may sound very simplistic but this is a golden chance to stop all these dangerous games.

I do understand the connection between war and economics and I do sense the games behind the oil prices but obviously some don’t see the reality. The reality has people forced into rebelling violently because they cannot get the basics anymore, because while we are talking about missile umbrellas there are people who can't afford a plate of rice and they start looting markets to survive. Over the last few months, incidents such as those in Russia are appearing more on the news. So instead of trying to help the 85% unemployed Palestinians, the hopeless people of Zimbabwe and the starving people of Argentina we talk about the danger of Syria building a nuclear reactor and its future possibility of creating nuclear bombs.

How long will it take for us to learn that humanity lives by example? With nearly 3.5 million homeless, nearly 1% of the population and 40% of them children, the only thing we hear from George W. Bush’s administration is more money for security, more money for a still unexplained invasion, more money for a continuing and unexcused occupation. When George W. Bush is talking about democracy while drinking with the Pakistani dictator Musharraf and when laboratories in USA are doing research for more lethal viruses in a case somebody else finds them first, when every American administration the last thirty years covers Israel for having all kind of WMD, including nuclear bombs, why should North Korea and Syria act differently? The USA shows every understanding when Turkey is talking about a nuclear reactor but they have none for the neighboring Syria?

Actually, all these things make you feel really stupid; it is as though every American administration wishes for Syria to create a nuclear bomb so they have a good excuse for more money from Congress to create more powerful and better bombs, more viruses and more destruction. Syria has a dictatorship, not much different from Pakistan, yet Musharraf is a good guy and Asad is a bad guy. However, having seen what each of them did for their country Bashar al-Asad has been a much better Syrian than Musharraf will ever be a good Pakistani.

Syria has every right in energy and producing energy, just like Pakistan with its nuclear reactors and just like Iran and its nuclear reactors. If, in the end, they are going to use them to create nuclear bombs it’s like everybody else, in this balance of horror Pakistan needs nuclear bombs for India, North Korea for South Korea, USA for Russia and Syria with Iran for Israel, which apparently already has one.

Unfortunately for all of them there is one enemy they cannot vanquish with nuclear bombs, it is the starving people who have already started rebelling and when the 3.5 million will be 5 million then they will start rebelling inside the USA also!

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Turkish hopes

From the Ovi magazine

Perhaps all these, often difficult to understand, actions of the Turkish establishment and their army will be proved constructive for Turkey’s future one day. Turkey today, whether they want to admit it or not, is somehow the continuation of the Ottoman Empire and this is natural. One of the strong points of this period was the complicated but capable bureaucracy that gradually became a ruling factor for the empire. Very cleverly, Kemal, the founder of Turkey as we know her today, kept this establishment and made it part of the new Turkish democracy.

Everything is semantics of course, but the truth is that Kemal created a state example for the Middle East and the Arab countries and perhaps he looks like a dictator from our side. However, he was a huge step from the Sultan to a President and all that during the times the Ottoman Empire was losing, not only the occupied lands, but also any power and influence on the international scene shrinking to a small country between west and east often balancing between powers and interests.

As I said, everything is semantics and the idea of democracy at the end of the nineteenth century has very little to do with the very same concept at the beginning of the twenty-first century - it was much more a country at the crossroads between Europe and the Arab world, in a surrounding where religion can hold back progress, unreachable places with parts still living in different centuries, some even in the dark ages. Kemal created a circular state with European behavior and orientation understanding that Turkey could not be estranged from her past and traditions, which often meant that he had to use force and naturally nationalism became one of his weapons to keep the country united.

And that was fine for the beginning of the twentieth century but it cannot work at the beginning of the twenty-first century, especially with things changing so fast in the area and the geopolitical interests of the powers shifting from one place to the other or changing; Turkey is one of the countries that paid for these changes. Having borders with the old mighty communist Russia for a great part of the twentieth century became one of the defense points for the Americans and the Americans wanted the state to be governed not by an anti-communist government, but, according to the '50s dogma, by extreme-right governments, keeping any left voices shut. Apparently the Americans often used Turkey as a banana dictatorship often mixing with the internal affairs to a scary level, especially through the army.

The army played a huge role for Kemal - he was an army man himself, after all - and the army became his stronghold to establish and to preserve his work and the western style of democracy he was dreaming. However, during the years after the death of Kemal the Turkish army evolved just like the Mafia. They became the establishment controlling the bureaucracy and, in extent, the state behind the curtain, which is something often called the deep state.

As I said earlier, they evolved just like Mafia because in the '80s they began laundering all these funds they were secretly getting from the government and from abroad – remember it was one of the strongholds against the expansion of communism south-east with borders with Russia, so secret services and ‘institutes’ were sending a lot, literally, a lot of money. In the '8os came the time to invest this money, it was good timing as well and the army gradually got involved with civilian businesses, with investments that amounted to billions of dollars and profits that escalated in the millions. So now the army, except Kemal’s dream, had other interests to protect as well and they did so in any possible way, such as imprisoning, torturing and killing. The Kurds and the communists were always the good excuse until the mayor of Istanbul became a force they couldn’t stop.

Erdogan was part of the establishment and, simultaneously, he was at the edge of the circular state, a faithful Muslim and proven democrat politician who had great support from the people, people who had got tired of corrupt politicians, so corrupt that some of them, despite their positions in the government, were dealing with drugs and arms sales. Erdogan somehow took them by surprise, they used all the tricks to stop him and he survived to become prime minister with many hopes to be the next president and, to their greatest surprise, he seems to be the only one who can make Kemal’s dream reality. Erdogan put Turkey literally on the European map with their application to become a full membership in the EU - their only hope is also their nemesis.

Things have definitely changed in the west after 9-11, but somehow the west has to show tolerance to the Muslim world and Erdogan became the best way to do it. By defending and supporting a 'west friendly' Muslim politician, the west proves tolerance and makes the Turkish army feel even more uncomfortable and Erdogan is cleverly using it to advance towards the army and return them to where they really belong, their barracks. It is time to strip them from all their civilian involvements and return the state to where it really belongs. As odd as it might sound, the only hope for democracy in Turkey is Erdogan and, as crazy it might sound, the man is Turkey’s only chance to keep the country away from the religious freaks that are expanding fast from the Middle East with a …little help from Iran!