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Purvo - izvinjavam se za latinitsata, no njakoi hora njamat dostup do takova blajenstvo kato kirilitsata...
Vtoro - poluchih po poshtata link kum statijata, kojato predostavjam na vnimanieto vi. Komentarut kum linka be - 'Tazi statija mi razvali sedmitsata'. Az sum suglasna... No... sami shte prochetete...
"Bush's Warsaw War Pact
By MAUREEN DOWD
ASHINGTON
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. "
Редактирано от Stella на 28.02.03 17:51.
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off-topic - fantastika v New York Times
