|
|
| Тема |
 Как ни честитят празника добрите хора |
|
| Автор | 3 мapт (Нерегистриран) | |
| Публикувано | 03.03.03 09:58 |
|
|
|
Bush's Warsaw War Pact
Това е статия за България публикувана във вестник "New York Times" миналата сряда. страната ни е поднесена завита в какви ли не "приятни" панделки...Какво мислите за това? Дано не се затрудните с превода...
>
> February 26, 2003
> By MAUREEN DOWD
>
>
>
> WASHINGTON
>
> The diplomatic motorcade pulled up to the White House yesterday with
> great fanfare. The two Marine guards at the door of the colonnaded
> West Wing saluted smartly. TV cameras pressed close to get pictures of
> the vital American ally alighting from the black sedan for his
> one-on-one with President Bush.
>
> It was a summit of the two great strategic partners, America and
> Bulgaria.
>
> Bulgaria?
>
> As the world's only remaining superpower was conferring honor upon one
> of its only remaining friends, America smashed through the global
> looking glass.
>
> To get Saddam, the Bush administration has dizzily turned the world
> upside down and inside out.
>
> Our new best friends are the very people we used to protect our old
> best friends from. During the cold war, we safeguarded Old Europe from
> the Evil Empire. Now we have embraced the former Soviet Bloc
> satellites to protect us from the Security Council machinations of our
> former paramours France and Germany. NATO was created to protect
> Western Europe from the Communist hordes - namely the Bulgarians, who
> tried to outdo the bizarro Albanians as the most Stalinist regime in
> Eastern Europe and were renowned for the "thick necks" who did wet
> work for the K.G.B.
>
> The U.S. is now in the process of wooing the "minnows" - as some in
> the Pentagon disparagingly call the small countries that could deliver
> the votes for a Security Council resolution on going to war with Iraq.
>
> It's the battle of the pipsqueak powers: we dragoon Bulgaria to offset
> France dragooning Cameroon.
>
> The Bulgarians used to be the lowest of the low here. In 1998, just
> before the visit of the Bulgarian president, Prime Minister Benjamin
> Netanyahu of Israel met with President Clinton. The visit was so icy
> that a Clinton aide joked to reporters about Mr. Netanyahu: "We're
> treating him like the president of Bulgaria. Actually, I think Clinton
> will go jogging with the president of Bulgaria, so that's not fair."
>
> Now Secretary Don Evans flies off to Bulgaria to discuss trade, and
> Rummy hints we may move U.S. troops from Germany to Bulgaria.
>
> In diplomatic circles, our new allies from Eastern Europe are dryly
> referred to as "Bush's Warsaw Pact." As one Soviet expert put it,
> "Bulgaria used to be Russia's lapdog. Now it's America's lapdog."
>
> The Bulgarians were such sycophants to Russia that in the 60's they
> proposed becoming the 16th republic of the Soviet Union.
>
> Mr. Bush will not be the only one having trouble with the Bulgarian
> prime minister's name. We all will. In some press reports it's spelled
> Simeon Saxcoburggotski, and in others Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The
> tall, balding, bearded prime minister was formerly King Simeon II, a
> deposed child czar. He is a distant relative of Prince Albert, Queen
> Victoria's consort, but not Count Dracula. That's our other new best
> friend, Romania.
>
> Is this a good trade, the French for the Bulgarians?
>
> Sketchy facts about Bulgaria rattle around: It has a town called
> Plovdiv; it wants to become big in the skiing industry; its secret
> service stabbed an exiled dissident writer in London with a
> poison-tipped umbrella - a ricin-tipped umbrella, in fact; its
> weight-lifting team was expelled from the Olympics in a drug scandal
> in 2000; it sent agents to kill the pope.
>
> During the cold war Bulgaria was valued by Moscow for the canned
> tomatoes it sent in winter, and by France for sending attar of roses,
> distilled rose oil that was the binding agent for French perfume.
>
> Three famous Bulgarians: Carl Djerassi, who invented birth control
> pills; Christo, the original wrap artist; Boris Christof, the opera
> singer. In "Casablanca" there was the Bulgarian girl who offered
> herself to Claude Rains to get plane tickets.
>
> Avis Bohlen, a former second-in-command at the American Embassy in
> France and an ambassador to Sofia in the late 1990's, calls Bulgaria
> "a very gutsy little country" that has worked hard to improve.
>
> Ms. Bohlen is dubious about the Bush administration's volatile snits
> at old allies. "You can't build a foreign policy on pique," she says.
>
> She says Bulgaria will be a good ally: "They're really brilliant at
> math and science, and they have famous wine."
>
> So, we don't need French wine after all.
| |
| |
| 
|
|
