Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Zero Summit Game

Bucharest is being flooded with loads of violent, aggressive and corrupt criminals. Any sane immigration policy would have kept these people out of the country and turned them back at the airport, but Romania instead is welcoming them and even cleaning up the city before them to make their stay a happier one. "How many deaths are you responsible for, sir? Certainly, of course you may come in"

I'm talking of course of the various world leaders converging on Ceausescu's delightful Palace of the People to talk about expanding NATO or not expanding it or (in the case of Greece) to once again get pissed off about Macedonia being called Macedonia. Bush, Brown, Sarkozy, Putin. They're all here (I think Putin isn't here yet, but he's on his way).

In order to welcome these people (and I use the word reluctantly) the city has been tarted up a bit (new pavements have been laid, stuff has been painted, and the stray dogs have been ... well, I'm not sure what has happened to the stray dogs, have they been rounded up, shot, shipped off to somewhere else in Romania, painted a more pleasing colour? It's not clear to me). Roads have been closed all over the city - even to pedestrians, and schools and various organisations have been given the week off, so that the children and employees don't upset Laura Bush by being dressed better than her. One of the airports has been closed so that all the fancy aeroplanes can park there for the week, while the other one just has fewer flights, and heavy security. I think if I lived in Bucharest I'd be tempted to go out and demonstrate against all this stuff even if I didn't have any axe to grind with NATO.

Maybe they'll organise a trip for the assembled dignitaries to the airport at Constanta which was used as an impromptu torture camp by the US and its allies in its euphemistically named "extraordinary rendition programme". Allegedly.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it smells like rat, then it must be a rat. You're a Hungarian and quite jealous on some achievements or Romania, of course. You and you anti-Romania campaign. I believe you should first see your problems in Hungary and then talk about Romania, or, if you don't like Romania, why don't you just leave and escape all these problems you have so eloquently described here?
I suggest you should just take some pills and get well soon.
Kindly,
Dorian

Andy said...

What are you on about Dorian?

(a) I am not Hungarian
(b) I am not jealous (If I lived in Bucharest I'd be pissed off by all this upheaval. I don't see that as being somehow nationalist)
(c) I don't live in Bucharest, so am not affected by the upheaval
(d) What anti-Romania campaign?
(e) I think you are the one who might need pills. Or a straightjacket.

Anonymous said...

Then, by any chance you should be from Miercurea Ciuc... why would you post the weather in Miercurea Ciuc, right?
Honestly, I'm not going to go on a flaming polemics about Anti-Romania campaign, you know what I'm talking about. I can give you at least ten obvious acts of such campaign, with proofs and even papers. I monitor a lot of international media, and trust me, I never intended to only look for what Hungarian people post on the internet and newspapers, and I'm sure you will not be overwhelmed. Send me your email address and I will reply with what I stated here, real proofs of Hungarians acting like Transylvania belongs to Hungary and having lousy words and dirty mouthes when speaking of Romania, the land that feeds some of them.
It's a shame that neighbors cannot leave in relative peace and harmony.

Don't worry, I have my straight-jacket already, you're safe, it's even ironed and smelling nice, waiting for people to ask me to borrow it.

Gadjo Dilo said...

Dorian, Andy is an Englishman living in Miercurea Ciuc/Csikszereda; if you're interested, I'm also an Englishman, living in Cluj. He's married to an ethnic Hungarian; I'm married to an ethnic Romanian. My wife and I have Hungarian friends and I'm pretty sure that Andy has Romanian friends. I think we both know that, in this land, the Romanians were oppressed by the Hungarians and, more recently, the reverse was somewhat true. But now it should be time to move forward, surely. Many countries in the world are successful examples of multiculturalism - for example, India has 1576 languages. I think that Romania can live with this too - I love this country and it's people. I think if you look soberly at Andy's blogging you'll find that he's not an anti-Romanian partisan. Noroc, pace și sanitate.

Andy said...

I am sure you can find evidence of |Hungarians being anti-Romanian on the internet, just as you can find evidence of Romanians being anti-Hungarian on the internet. I suggest you go and find those people and hassle them rather than losing your rag at something which is in no way anti-anything (exceopt possibly the disruption caused by the NATO summit)

You're not really helping your cause by having such an itchy trigger finger

Anonymous said...

hi. i think you're exagerating in a manipulative way. it wasn't that bad. actually, the traffic in bucharest during summit days was one of the best ever. and whatever the event (not necessarily a nato summit) the romanian authorities have a deep rooted propensity to triumphalism and also a strong fear that something might go wrong. that's why they acted how they acted. they also don't realize (or don't care) how ridiculous they are.

Andy said...

I'm glad, Macaque, that in fact the upheaval was much less than it was implied on the TV news.

I'm less glad that you accuse me of being manipulative, since I cannot for the life of me work out where such an accusation comes from.

Since this post seems to have incurred lots of wackos coming out of the woodwork trying to make it fit their agenda (or make it fit their idea of what my agenda must be), I'd just like to make it plain that i posted it (a) to express my continued belief that certain of our planet's most powerful people are utter scum; and (b) to express my sympathy with the people of Bucharest (the vast majority of whom are, last time I checked, Romanians) with the chaos that seemingly surrounded their visit.