Playing the guilt game

A year ago, Prometheus published a post titled How they do the voodoo that they do so well - Part 2 ("they" are the alternative medicine practitioners). I am quoting it below:

"Eventually, even the most successful, charismatic “alternative” practitioner will have a patient who doesn’t improve enough... For those situations, there are a number of strategies that are typically used. (The first one is,) Did you follow my instructions to the letter? One of the oldest dodges in the “alternative” medicine “biz” is to prescribe a regimen of treatment that is too complicated for most patients to follow. If they get better (by chance), then it was due to the “treatment” – if they don’t get better….well, they didn’t follow all of the instructions exactly, did they?"

I wish to add that, unfortunately, some real doctors also like playing the guilt game and blaming any unfortunate outcome on the patient's non-compliance. Even when - especially when - the neglected bit of medical advice has been backed by about as much evidence as the typical alt-med "treatment".
(The events that inspired this post are too personal to be revealed here.)

Reflections on Megrahi's release

Because I am too busy these days, most of the posts I wish to write never see the light of day. However, this particular one was called to life by Highlander's post Donkeys Vs People: The Media Circus. After reading it, I immediately decided to leave aside all other matters that can be postponed and write down my thoughts.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is a Libyan intelligence officer who had become the sole convict for the 1988 bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 but was "freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government on 20 August 2009 following reports that he had terminal prostate cancer and had less than three months to live". In order to be freed, Megrahi had to drop his appeal.
The release made unhappy just about everybody. Most victims' families, US government and many ordinary Westerners are outraged that the convict was allowed to return home as a free man and received a hero's welcome, while most Libyans seem indignant because he is still considered guilty and his appeal will never be processed.
The Lockerbie bombing set a sad record in the number of civilians killed in a single terror act - 270. As far as I know, the previous record was in the distant 1925 - the St. Nedelya Church bombing in Bulgaria, by communist terrorists. So Lockerbie opened a new era in the history of terror and is undoubtedly very important. However, I must admit that I have never made efforts to be very informed about it. The details of the case are too far from my field of competence, and the information available in public space has been from the beginning too tainted with unsubstantiated guessing and apparent deliberate disinformation to be useful.
If you ask me what I think of Mr. Megrahi's guilt (or lack of it), I'll frankly say that I don't know. As I recently wrote on Anglo's blog, "I generally trust British justice, and I surely don't believe the fancy conspiracy theories circulated around. However, a miscarriage of justice can always happen, especially when a horrible crime is committed and the public insists to have somebody - anybody - punished". I would add that Britain has had sad precedents in convicting innocents after large-scale terror acts - the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. Indeed, their cases were examples of inquisitional-type justice relying heavily on confessions, while Megrahi never confessed anything. However, the little I have read about his case has left in me the impression that linking forensic evidence to him depended too much on the testimony of a single person, some shopkeeper from Malta. While this does not prove Megrahi's innocence in any way, it makes me doubt that his guilt has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt. But again, I don't know the details of the case even to the degree that has been released to the public, and so I may be wrong.
At some time after Megrahi's conviction in 2001, new arguments for his innocence began to be circulated in public space. They can be found on the Web very easily, so forgive me for not linking to them. I just don't wish to, because they do not sound to me believable at all, but rather look like a smokescreen. Briefly, it is claimed that Megrahi has been framed by CIA in order to shield the real perpetrators Iran and Syria, because Libya allegedly was a more convenient target than them. Let me quote what I wrote two years ago on Highlander's blog: "I won't bet my hand that Al-M. is innocent. If he is, I'll think this is despite the "new evidence" disputed now in all media, not because of it. This "evidence" has all the elements of the most persistent Western myths of recent time: the big bad USA deliberately (rather than by honest mistake) going after those innocents who are most suitable targets for the moment, retired CIA officers becoming whistleblowers (this agency's retirement rules definitely need scrutiny) and a conspiracy which managed to remain secret for many years despite involving dozens of people of all sorts. Not that it is impossible. No laws of physics forbid it. But it is highly unlikely. Besides, if it happened this way, why didn't CIA plant evidence also against Al-M.'s co-defendant and buy more reliable witnesses?We must keep in mind that European culture is tolerant to evil. This helps explain many things about Europe. E.g. the abolition of death penalty. I was all for it. It was said to me and others that death penalty isn't needed to protect the society from a murderer, because if the murder is a really grisly one (or more than one), he will be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. And now, after we have abolished death penalty, we are said that no European country has life imprisonment without parole. Letting a murderer walk free after several years in prison is at the basis of today's European psyche. People are conditioned to perceive this as normal. So give people the benefit of the doubt, but beware evil. Don't count on anybody else to stop it. There is nobody."
I still have mixed thoughts about death penalty. I am concerned about the innocents that will inevitably be wrongly convicted from time to time, I worry about the reflections of the death sentence on those who pronounce and execute it, and I am just disgusted by the idea of cold-bloodedly taking the life of a person unable to defend himself. However, I must admit that my opponents were right in one thing - that abolition of death penalty will allow release of any convict as soon as it becomes politically advantageous and the public is looking aside. In Megrahi's case, I fear how easy it turned to make witnesses withdraw their testimony or bring 3rd people to testify that they have bribed the witnesses; and because, unlike Bulgaria, it is (yet) not possible to make forensic evidence in Britain disappear, then you can find a big-mouthed former CIA employee admitting that he has planted it. Don't you share my fear that these tools have the power to make anybody immune to justice?
If you ask why I think somebody in the West would be interested in rescuing Megrahi from the grip of justice, I would answer that the urge to deal with Libya can quite create such interests. First, after Bulgaria joined EU in early 2007, this created solidarity links between it and older EU members. Soon, rumours started that the Bulgarian medics could be traded to Megrahi. If Highlander, the target reader of this post, has endured to this point, I would ask her to look at this 2007 Standart News report titled Saif al-Islam: There Is a Link Between Megrahi and the Nurses. Let me quote a little from it: "There is a connection between the cases of Lockerby bomber's - the Libyan Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi - and the Bulgarian nurses, said in his latest interview the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi Saif al-Islam for the French Le Mond. "We made a link between the cases. We also agreed to discuss the issue on a bilateral level - between Libya and Great Britain. Formerly, it was insisted that this discussion should be held on a broadly European level," he added."
I would not risk to guess whether such "agreement" really existed or not. However, the common rule in deals of this sort is that they are automatically invalidated if one of the sides makes them public. So, the fact is that our medics were allowed to return while Megrahi remained in prison. However, these days we heard again from Mr. al-Islam. Let me quote the Telegraph from Aug. 21: "Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif, claimed the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, was linked to trade deals between Britain and Libya." Understandably, these statements are of little help in convincing Westerners that Megrahi and Libya had no role in the Lockerbie bombing. Personally, during the years of the HIV trial I have heard Mr. al-Islam make and then retract so many conflicting statements without a shadow of embarassment that I have stopped taking him seriously a long time ago. The only rational explanation of his behaviour that I can figure out is that he intends to perplex the stupid Western infidels and show them that their brains are absolutely useless in understanding the world.
At the end of her post, Highlander writes, "My biggest disappointment is that now that the documents have been sealed forever we will never know what really happened on the ill fated Pan Am flight..." I envy her optimism that if the appeal hadn't been dropped, we would know what really happened. However, I still hope that some day the truth may come out. There is a broad agreement that the Lockerbie bombing was state-sponsored (be it Libya or another state). So there is still chance that truth will emerge one day from the archives of the state perpetrator. This happened in the case of assassinated Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov (no relation to me). After 1989, although the archives of our Communist security services were rigourously cleared, they still revealed evidence that Markov's murder was Bulgaria's deed.
My general impression from Highlander's post is that she has fallen in the trap of equating her homeland and people with the regime, a trap too often encountered by those living under rulers similar to Qadafi. E.g. she refers to Libyan authorities that had convicted the Bulgarian medics as "those 'evil' Arabs" (from Western point of view). I guess many other Libyans are in a similar mood. Therefore, I wish to end my post with a quote from the above mentioned Anglo's post. I am finding the quoted text so important that I'll mark it in bold:
"At the end of the day, whether he did this crime or not, Al-Megrahi was working for the Libyan intelligence and I do know from people that worked for Libyan Airlines in the 1980s that he was feared and was involved in many nasty acts against Libyans, this does not make him into a hero..."

More about the ship Rudnicar and captain Gorbatenko

In my June 4 post The Rudnicar mission, I had written about the two 1939 voyages of the ship Rudnicar under the command of Anton Prudkin. The Bulgarian Jew Baruh Konfino had organized them to bring Jewish refugees from Bulgaria to Palestine. Reader Chaim left the following comment:

"Many thanks for your article regarding Rudnichar. I was among the fortunate ones to be on it. I was 2 years old then. My parents told me that they came to shore of Palestine in barges. We arrived in January 1940. What I understand is that it was the 4th voyage of the Rudnichar. I wish to know from what port did it sail and who was the captain. This link reports on 3rd voyage."

At the Air Group 2000 site, I found information about the later Rudnicar voyages (after Prudkin's resignation). It is supplied by Atanas Panayotov, quoting the German professor Jurgen Rohwer. I'd immediately refer the Bulgarian reader to this site, and here I'll translate the relevant parts of the text. After the first two voyages under Prudkin's command, the Rudnicar made two more with Grigoriy (Grigor) Gorbatenko as captain.

"In Tel Aviv, our team met and talked with Baruh Konfino's younger son, Itzhak Konfino... He was certain that his father had never approved hiring Anton Prudkin as captain and fully trusted captain Gorbatenko, under whose command Struma perished... The captain's exceptional professional skills are illustrated by what happened on Nov. 7, 1939 (during the third voyage of the ship - M.M.). The Rudnicar and the Cooperator dragged by it found themselves in a heavy storm and only the navigation expertise of Gorbatenko allowed the crew to bring successfully the two ships back to the port of the Rodos Island for emergency repair...
The fourth voyage of the Rudnicar took place from Dec. 1, 1939 to Jan. 7, 1940, between the ports of Varna, Sulina and again Varna and then to Palestine. The passengers were approximately 500..."

This voyage brought my reader, then a young child, and his parents to Palestine. It was the last voyage of the ship bringing Jewish refugees to Palestine. Shortly after it, the Rudnicar was rented by a German company to be used as a cargo ship. As mentioned in my earlier post, its end came in 1942 because of captain's error.
"It is difficult to say why Dr. Konfino did not appoint Gorbatenko as captain of Salvador. The experienced navigator would have prevented the tragedy of Dec. 14, 1940, when 204 passengers, including 66 children, perished. Itzhak Konfino claims that his father had virtually no part in organizing Salvador's voyage, which explains Gorbatenko's absence from this ship." (In my earlier post, another explanation is given - that "no one serious captain agreed to take its command because everybody feared that the passengers and the crew were doomed"; however, the source used there is apparently biased against Konfino, so I would not judge without additional information.)
The Air Group 2000 site then describes the fatal voyage of Struma. According to it, Turkish authorities were not happy with the evacuation of European Jews to Palestine through Turkish waters, but did not want to openly take measures to stop it. Instead, they deliberately ordered Struma to spend more and more days in a limbo, relying on the Soviet submarines known to lurk in this region to do the dirty job. These submarines considered all ships in sight as German and had submerged the Turkish ship Chankaya only days before Struma and almost at the same spot.
Captain Gorbatenko is described by sources as "a Bulgarian of Russian origin". I suppose that he was an ethnic Bulgarian who had no Bulgarian citizenship, because he wasn't treated by the authorities the same way as the other perished Bulgarian crew members. Death certificates were issued to their families but not to Gorbatenko's family. His relations awaited the document for decades.
Struma, "the Bulgarian Titanic" as Panayotov calls it, and the people on its board - passengers and crew, are all but forgotten in Bulgaria. However, the memory is kept in Israel. The source mentions that Dr. Sonya Levi, of Bulgarian Jewish origin and researcher at the Yad Vashem memorial complex in Jerusalem, helped to find the names of Bulgarian crew members. They are:
Grigor Timofeev Gorbatenko, Lazar Ivanov Dikov, Damyan Stoyanov and Osep Garabedov.

Bulgarian resisting corruption is punished by authorities

Architect Georgi Yanev (not to be confused with demagogue politician Yane Yanev) is well known in Bulgaria as practically the only ordinary citizen who tried to fight the massive corruption in the country. First, I am translating part of the Mediapool article Agricultural minister "forgave" architect Yanev for alleging corruption (Feb. 6, 2008), changing the order of some sequences for clarity:
"Architect Georgi Yanev filed a complaint about a 50,000 leva (EUR 25,000) bribe asked from him by two officials from the Republican Road Infrastructure Fund. Last week, a journalist asked him why he, wanting to change the statute of a piece of land, preferred to bypass the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and turn to the road administration. (Yanev) answered that "corruption in the Agricultural ministry is a nightmare". Immediately after that, (agricultural) Minister Nihat Kabil gave him a deadline until Feb. 5 (i.e. 24 hours - M.M.) to either prove or retract his words. "If I do not receive an apology, I will report (Yanev) to the Prosecutor General for libel against a government institution," Kabil threatened... Architect Yanev publicly apologized to the agricultural minister for "having delivered in public space, in a moment of stress, allegations for corruption that cannot be proved". The Minister of Agriculture accepted the apology..."
The next translation is from the June 13, 2009 article "Authorities deceived the architect whose courage they had awarded," by A. Aleksandrov in Sega daily:
"The case with the corrupted officials in the road fund will discourage even the most intrepid from testifying against corruption... The story began in 2008 when after a complaint by architect Georgi Yanev two officials from the road agency were arrested for demanding a bribe of 50,000 leva in order to manage quick acceptance of his project. The arrest of the employees as they were receiving the first half of the bribe was made in a very public way. From the 25,000 leva, 10,000 belonged to the architect and 15,000 to the police. This happened just shortly before one of the important European Commission reports warning that the European money for Bulgaria would be stopped (unless corruption is fought)... The (previous) government several times pointed this story out to Brussels as an example of successful anti-corruption measures. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecution awarded Yanev... Then-Interior Minister Rumen Petkov and Prosecutor General Boris Velchev boasted and repeated many times that they need more citizens like him...
What a surprise when it turned out that the same authorities, after forcing the architect to give his own 10,000 leva to be labeled for proving the corruption, has no intention to give the money back to him. In the beginning, we were told that the money in question was forensic evidence and could be returned only after the case had to pass through the court... Here you see the first insanity - to charge somebody with corruption, Bulgarian authorities represented by the police and the prosecution take money from the victim of the crime for labeling... Is it so impossible to take the money from the Bulgarian National Bank and later return it back there?... Police and prosecution do the same with victims of telephone frauds - those who complain are forced to give their own money for labeling. In other cases, again under the pretext of "keeping forensic evidence", authorities were holding stolen and then found cars for years... It turns out that crime victims become victims of the state as well.
However, this wasn't everything in the case of the architect. Suddenly tax authorities remebered that he owed them 4,000 leva. They even blocked his bank account, and he had no money to pay because another government institution was holding his 10,000 leva...
In the last verdict sentencing the two accused officials from the road fund (one of them got 4 years, and the other who actually took the money just a suspended sentence - M.M.), the court surprisingly ordered confiscation of the money in question. It explained that the behaviour of the witness Yanev deserved condemnation because the project presented by him for approval "had apparent flaws". Therefore, by giving the sum he actually asked the accused for assistance and they just agreed..."
According to a today's report in Trud daily, those same judges said in their verdict that Yanev should be charged as co-defendant for giving the money.
To sum up, what is the result of being a good citizen, speaking out about corruption and helping law enforcement agencies to charge corrupted officials? - A fine of EUR 5,000, the danger of being prosecuted plus the humiliation of a forced apology to a notoriously corrupted minister.
To me, the most disturbing thing in the story is that back in 2008, when it was first made public, a number of journalists and analyzers immediately predicted that Yanev would be forced to pay a high price for his courage and honesty.
You can read about the case in English at the Frog News site, here and here.

Another defender of Chechens murdered

Natalia Estemirova (photo copied from the Guardian, original source Memorial).

After Anna Politkovskaya, another brave woman campaigning for human rights and speaking out against the Chechen genocide has been murdered in Russia. Below, I am quoting her Wikipedia article:

"Natalia Khusainovna Estemirova... (28 February, 1958 – 15 July 2009) was... Russian human rights activist and board member of the Russian human rights organisation Memorial. Estemirova was abducted by unknown persons on 15 July 2009 around 8:30 a.m. from her home in Grozny, Chechnya, as she was working on "extremely sensitive" cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya. Two witnesses reported they saw Estemirova being pushed into a car shouting that she was being abducted. Her remains were found with bullet wounds in the head and chest area at 4:30 p.m. in woodland... near the village of Gazi-Yurt, Ingushetia... In October 2007 she was awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award by Reach All Women in War (RAW), a human rights organization supporting women human rights defenders in war and conflict. Estemirova worked with investigating journalist Anna Politkovskaya and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, both of whom were also murdered, in 2006 and 2009, respectively..."

"Accused stabs witness to death in courtroom"

The late Marwa El-Sherbini with her husband and son. Photo copied from Europe-Turkmen Friendships, original source unknown.

This post is a tribute to an opponent - a Muslim woman killed in Germany. Different sources give slight variations in the details of the case. The large quote below is from Wikipedia:

"Marwa Ali El-Sherbini (October 7, 1977 – July 1, 2009) was an Egyptian pharmacist... She was killed during a hearing at a court of law in Dresden, Germany, by a man against whom she had testified after being insulted for wearing an Islamic headscarf.

El-Sherbini was... daughter of chemists... In 1995 she graduated from the El Nasr Girls' College, where she also acted as a student speaker. She was a member of the Egyptian national handball team from 1992 to 1999. From 2000 to 2005 she studied pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Alexandria University, obtaining a bachelor's degree.

In 2005, El-Sherbini moved with her husband to Bremen in Germany. In 2008, the couple and their two year old son moved to Dresden, where her husband Elwi Ali-Okaz, a lecturer at Minufiya University, obtained a doctoral research position at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. At the same time, El-Sherbini worked at the University Hospital Dresden and at a local pharmacy, as a part of an accreditation scheme to practice pharmacy in Germany. Together with others, El-Sherbini founded an association (Eingetragener Verein) with the aim to establish an Islamic cultural and education centre in Dresden. At the time of her death El-Sherbini was three months pregnant with her second child.

In August 2008, Alex W. (a German citizen, born in Perm, Russia of German ethnic origin) shouted abuse at El-Sherbini in a public playground for children in Dresden, in a quarrel over the use of a swing by his niece and El-Sherbini's son. El-Sherbini, wearing an Islamic headscarf, was called an "Islamist", "terrorist" and "slut". Others present tried to intervene, but Alex W. continued the verbal abuse for several minutes until the police arrived at the scene...

Alex W. was charged with defamation, pressed by El-Sherbini, and found guilty by the district court of Dresden, issuing a fine of 780 Euro. During the trial Alex W. claimed mitigating circumstances for the act of insulting El-Sherbini, suggesting that "people like her" were not real humans and therefore cannot be insulted. The Public Prosecutor successfully appealed the verdict to achieve a higher conviction due to the openly xenophobic character of the incident.

At the appeal hearing at the regional court in Dresden, 1 July 2009, eight persons were present in the courtroom: a panel of one professional and two lay judges, the prosecutor, Alex W. as the defendant, his defence counsel, El-Sherbini as witness for the prosecution, and her husband and son as members of the public. No security personnel was present and no security searches of individuals and their possessions were carried out, common in cases without anticipated security concerns and with no persons under arrest present.

After El-Sherbini had testified, Alex W. strode across the courtroom and attacked her with a knife, by stabbing her 18 times while allegedly shouting "You don't deserve to live!". El-Sherbini's husband, Elwi Ali-Okaz, attempting to protect his wife was stabbed to the lung and hip area. A police officer, who was in the court building testifying in an unrelated case was called to the scene to intervene, but mistook Elwi Ali-Okaz for the attacker and shot him in the leg. Elwi Ali-Okaz... was in a coma for two days... El-Sherbini died on the scene... Alex W. is currently held... on suspicion of murder of Marwa El-Sherbini and attempted murder of Elwi Ali Okaz...

The killing was reported on 1 July 2009 in German radio and television and in print media on the following day. In line with common media practice regarding crime victims, due to stringent privacy laws in Germany, El-Sherbini was in the initial media reports only referred to as "a 32-year old witness". The Minister of Justice for Saxony... who had visited the crime scene on the same day, publicly expressed condolence to the "young woman and her family"... The Association of Judges in Saxony (Sächsischer Richterbund) demanded a review of security procedures in court buildings. According to the British media, the German media initially reported on the case at "the back page", and only in the light of the vociferous protests by thousands of Egyptians in Cairo against an apparent "Islamophobia", the German federal government, which had kept silent for nearly a week, issued words of sorrow...

On 6 July 2009, at El-Sherbini's funeral, in Alexandria, mourners referred to her as a "martyr of the head scarf"... Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the German goverment for El-Sherbini's murder and called for international condemnation of Germany.In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded firm action against Germany and stated that "there is a strong view that the crime was a pre-planned attempt engineered by the judicial system and security forces"."

Now, my thoughts about the case.

In line with the good tradition not to criticize the dead (especially if they have suffered a horrible and violent death), I won't comment on Ms. El-Sherbini - not in this post at least. However, while I may disapprove the victim's behaviour, I am utterly disgusted by the murderer. (May I omit the mandatory "alleged"? Thank you.) Not only because he is a murderer, and motivated by hate, but also because he is a narcissistic psychopath feeling entitled to decide who deserves to live and who doesn't. And what disgusts me even more (though I may show sexism here) is that he is a man and he chose a woman as his victim. I strongly hope and expect him to receive the maximum sentence existing in German law.

From the reactions to the murder, most impressive is the grotesque cynicism of the Iranian regime and its leader Ahmadinejad. Apart from the above mentioned official letter to the UN, Iranian authorities allowed and encouraged (if not ordered) public events to commemorate El-Sherbini and progest against Germany. You can see e.g. a photo of a symbolic funeral of Marwa El-Sherbini in Tehran on a post by German immigrant blogger Rose-Anne Clermont. In other words, anti-government protests are banned, but if you folk still feel like protesting, you are welcome to rally in front of the German embassy... I wonder, do Ahmadinejad's thugs really think that if they shed crocodile tears about Marwa, this will make their people forget Neda and all other innocent, freedom-loving Iranian women and men murdered by the regime? I fully agree with Azarmehr that this is hypocrisy beyond belief.

Most of the reactions in Egypt were also, to my opinion, far-fetched (to say the least). However, I prefer not to report them here. I hope that Egyptian people were just venting their shock, grief and anger in words without contemplating any actions. And as days are passing and we aren't hearing of any revenge against Germans, this explanations seems more and more probable. I hope also that I won't have to correct myself here.

Briefly, the weird accusations and conspiracy theories rotate around two facts - that nobody stopped Alex W. from stabbing Marwa 18 times and that the policeman shot Marwa's husband instead of the attacker. I would ask Muslims and their Western leftist friends (e.g. at the Guardian) to lighten up a little and call their common sense. Few are the heroes who, seeing an armed homicidal maniac in action, would rush to stop him and risk becoming his next victim. And it is so natural for police to make mistakes in disastrous, split-second situations. I have heard of quite a few hostage release operations where police have shot bystanders and hostages instead of the kidnappers.

However, there is a point where I fully agree with my Muslim opponents and wish to give them a shoulder. This is the way the crime was initially reported - at the back pages of newspapers, with headlines that didn't mention a word that it was a hate crime and the victim was a Muslim. I borrowed such a headline from Die Welt, Accused stabs witness to death in courtroom, as a title for this post. Doesn't it sound absurd? I found it in a post by a blogger trying to prove that German media did report the case timely and properly. If you are defending the wrong opinion, the usual result is that the more you put "arguments" for it, the more its wrongness is exposed.

Muslims and Leftists were quick to say that the murder of a Westerner by a Muslim would receive far more publicity, and cited the case of Theo van Gogh. To me, this example is irrelevant because van Gogh was already a celebrity when he was murdered. When the Western or "Western wannabe" victim has been an ordinary person, I have observed absolutely the same pattern of ignoring the case and its hate motivation, sweeping it under the carpet and reporting it in the back pages with the smallest font available. Just remember Kriss Donald, Ilan Halimi and Aqsa Parvez. In fact, the headline from Die Welt immediately brought to my memory the (in)famous Washington Post headline about Aqsa Parvez's murder: Canadian teen dies; father is charged.

Hate crimes are an important thing, especially during a global war. And they must be reported. At least I think so. One can say that straight reporting of hate crimes may perpetuate the hard feelings, trigger revenge actions or make some people emulate the culprit. All this may be true, but still I think that sweeping such cases under the carpet does more harm. And I would appeal to all my opponents to defend free speech and honest reporting. Because you never know when you will be the person needing it.

Let's not take eyes off Iran

Left: photo of Neda Agha-Soltan, from Wikipedia. Right: photo of Taraneh Moussavi, from Azarmehr's blog.

Today, July 25, is global day for solidarity with the people of Iran (hattip: Azarmehr). I do not know what we can actually do to help them, but I am sure in one thing: we must not forget them, we must not let Iran step down from the news headlines. We must keep eyes on Iran, because when eyes and cameras are turned away, darkness falls and all imaginable and unimaginable outrages can be done under its cover.

The photos above show the faces of two beautiful young Iranian women who were recently murdered by the criminal Iranian regime. Neda Agha-Soltan was a 26-year-old philosophy student who went out to take part in the protests against the fake elections, although she wasn't a very political person. On June 20, she was shot by a sniper in the chest and died within minutes. She became a symbol of the protests after her death was recorded on amateur videos and uploaded in the Web by witnesses. Authorities did not allow Neda's parents to hold a proper funeral service for her and forced them to vacate their home.

Taraneh Moussavi (age unknown to me) was arrested when supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi (apparently no relation to her) gathered at a mosque to hear him speak. Then, she went missing. At one moment, she was hospitalized unconscious with injuries indicating rape. On July 16, Taraneh's burned body was found in the outskirts of Tehran.

These are just two of the many fallen freedom-loving Iranians.