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Uh...do we need to rehash Bulgarian history here? Should we inquire ethnic Turks how they felt represented in Bulgaria before the Iron Curtain fell? Not only were they a hated minority and banished to the worse living conditions, the government even changed their surnames to Bulgarian surnames to make them true Bulgarians. Today, we have the extremist nationalist party "Ataka" pushing an increasingly popular xenophobic vision for the Bulgarian nation. Their platform openly advocates hostility and discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities complete with a large dose of vile hate speech. Interesting enough, now with Bulgaria one of the newest members of the EU they are facing some of the same discrimination in the form of richer nations like Switzerland blocking Bulgarians from working in their countries. The rich nations of Europe have a long history of xenophobia against the poor nations and the poor nations to other poor nations. Its quite a mess, but I can hardly think of very many countries that are 100% free of all that crap.


On Jan 30 01:38 PM turnkeyusa wrote:

> I own an apt in a Bulgarian ski resort and found Bulgaria to be more
> cosmopolitan, open and globalized than the American south or provincial
> northern Italy, where I used to live. Bulgaria has many problems,
> but xenophobia is not one of them.
> I have owned real estate in Latvia since 1998 and find your idea
> that the Baltic states are "fairly uncorrupt" absolutely laughable,
> except for Estonia, which is less corrupt than Italy, where I lived
> for 15 years. Even former president Freiberga used govt funds to
> redecorate her personal library; and that's the least of the corruption.
> Go and see the illegal construction along the beach in Jurmala, which
> resembles the degree of illegally built real estate in Sicily or
> Calabria, but never bulldozed by the authorities, as in Italy. The
> lack of accountability and the impunity of the powerful in Latvia
> is what led to the recent riots in Riga on January 13, appropriately
> the anniversary of the 1905 revolution in Tsarist Russia.
> Before you generalize about countries in eastern Europe, buy a couple
> of plane tickets and come visit this summer and swim in the Baltic
> under the near midnight sun.