BG strikes back
15/9/09 16:47![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsHello, my dear masters of procrastination fun-thirsty hedonists. I hope this won't be considered as spam. I'm not sure if such kind of satire stuff is acceptable here, so dear mods please feel free to remove it if you REALLY think it's inappropriate. However I hope you won't.
It's a humoristic attempt to look on the politics of my tiny but quite colorite country. Although it's fiction, it actually illlustrates a number of issues, which are valid not only for Bulgaria, the Balkans, East Europe, but also the world. If anything, alternative history provides excellent expression tools. So if it's boring or just TL;DR for you, ignore it. If not, enjoy.
Year 2011.
At long last, after a fraudulent competition, a sub-contractor is selected for the construction of the long awaited tunnel under the Balkan mountain range. A month later, the head drilling machine suddenly hits hard rock and breaks down. The team of specialists and workers convenes on the construction site, followed by a storm of confused tongue clicking and exclamations like "Oh my God!" and "For fuck's sake!" Soon thereafter, the police arrives, along with some government special task-forces. The area is completely sealed. Everyone is following the breaking news on the TV, switching between the channels just before the sports news have started, which causes the advert market to crumble. Just in case, the tunnel project is urgently amended, and drilling starts on a new location nearby. But then a new hit on hard rock follows!
The geologists who are summoned on the spot find out the Inconvenient Truth - there can be no tunnel across the Balkan mountain range! Because the whole mountain bed is made of pure gold, with an estimated total mass of a billion tons.
On hearing the news, the Prime Minister, Mr Boyko "Super-Batman" Borisov [pictured here and here] (who at the moment has been rather busy, preparing a report which is to prove that actually the people are now living much better than two years ago), is compelled to postpone the official ceremony for opening the Sofia-Varna subway (distance: 378.96 km), and he calls the president, Mr Nobody. Since this call is a very rare precedent in recent times, the President (who at the moment has been rather busy, preparing a report which is to prove that the people have never lived worse than now), is compelled to pick up the receiver.
On hearing the news, Mr Nobody rushes to his cortege of limousines, while the leading car is sent to the Turkish market downtown to buy some imported tomatoes (which of course are the cheapest) - as bigger quantity as possible - after all, you don't find a billion tons of gold every day, right?
The world markets crumble in a day, being totally unprepared for such a blow. And, since there aren't too many countries who had been smart enough to keep their fiscal reserves in the form of yoghurt and feta cheese, there's nothing they can do on the matter. Except raging with envy of course.
Most major players on the domestic political and industrial scene (read: the grey sector of economy which constitutes roughly 4/5 the entirety thereof) get a cardiac arrest - this is not just a ton or two, this is a whole billion tons, you cannot just go there and steal it! You can't chop a whole mountain off, can you? It's impossible. This isn't some old Soviet submarine or something. Besides, the whole area is presently blocked by the military, and they have orders to shoot anything that moves without warning. Nevertheless, the price of the pickaxes rises to equal that of the flatscreen TVs, and now a luxurious pickaxe becomes the most fashionable wedding present - plus an option to make the first dig into the mountain of gold. Meanwhile, a torch-lamp can be exchanged for a SUV, although it's very hard to find the former on the market.
Year 2012.
BG has paid off all its external debt in a week, and now it's sponsoring its neighbors. The idea of the Old (Inflated) BG Lev becoming the official European currency is seriously considered now, though the National Bank is still too reluctant to take such a step - having so many poor European economies sitting on our back doesn't sound too tempting, does it? No-one ever goes to work any more, and everyone receives their wages by direct bank transfer from the government; a large part of the banks file bankruptcy as their money is not needed. All Bulgarian emigrants return home, despite the insistent requests of the First World countries that they should stay there and keep spending their Levs abroad. All border customs, as well as the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies are closed as their functions become obsolete.
Rolse-Royce opens a factory in Lovech (which used to produce the legendary Moskvich cars), aimed entirely at the domestic car market.
Year 2013.
The parties are abolished, as no-one gives a damn about them any more. Some random guy comes up with the news that his grandfather once owned the Balkan mountain range and he demands restitution, but everyone laughs at him and ignores his claims. At first, he pretends to be offended, but later he proposes that he at least be made ceremonial King. The PM says the guy would better take the Prime Minister post, and then the PM himself becomes Super-President, and the country is constitutionally transformed into a Presidential Monarchy. On the Presidential elections, there's only one candidate (the former PM Borisov; all other potential candidates are intimidated by his extraordinary karate skills). He wins the election, mainly because during his campaign, he manages to convince the public that it was him who initiated the digging of the Balkan tunnel in the first place; therefore he wins 99,9% of all votes, which means of those 3% of the entire population who bothered to bring their ass to the polls. Btw, according to the new Constitution, this isn't a problem at all - Article 1 says: "Enjoy your life and don't pretend to be smart".
The national anthem is changed to one of the biggest hits of pseudo-Bulgarian-Idol-pop-star Valentina Hassan. In the official version of her unique hit "Ken Lee" (a cover version of Mariah Carey), the stanzas where obscene language is used, get substituted by "Da-da-da-da". The whole nation sings in a zombified trance at the coronation of the new President.
The largest world banks take the place of the local village quasi-banks which are now bankrupt. On the location of the former Kozloduy nuclear power plant (previously closed by the EU in order to bring the country back into the Stone Age), a new, magnified version of the "Bulgarialand" amusement park is built (which mimics Disneyland, but is much more amusing).
Macedonia, Turkey and Greece all start broadcasting TV news in Bulgarian. Soon thereafter, they all become officially bilingual, adopting Bulgarian as a second language. The Macedonians are particularly privileged in this situation, as their language is considered to be a corrupted version of the Western Bulgarian dialect anyway.
Year 2014.
Tzar Kiro, the biggest producer of illegal alcohol, and most popular Gypsy baron in the country, buys 51% of FC Manchester United and hires the failed and most corrupt politician Alexander Tomov as club president. As a result, the nation's biggest football star, Dimitar Berbatov ends his contract with Manchester Utd, to return home, where he is in a fierce competition for the Number 9 shirt with his former M.U. team-mate, Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid.
The whole education system is overhauled - for instance, in secondary school, in the maths classes the only two things which are being taught are: counting to 100 (preferably in wads of bank notes), and the theory of probabilities (whose main application is in the game of roulette in the ten thousand casinos across the country). All the rest of the school subjects are dropped, because a rich person doesn't need education at all. There's still an hour of sports exercises per week though, the only sport which is practiced there being golf.
BG leaves NATO and hires the organization as a private security contractor for patrolling the borders of the country, attempting to stop the ever increasing waves of immigrants.
A re-attestation of all hotels is carried out, and any hotel which is categorized below 6 stars gets knocked down and built anew.
The descendants of Charlemagne (as well as his entire kin up to the tenth stock) apply for a Bulgarian citizenship. Most are turned back because of visa irregularities.
Year 2015.
The Kapital financial newspaper purchases 100% of The Financial Times, then adds a discussion forum to its online website, and then bans the use of the Latin alphabet in it. By the way, this is a serious issue only for the older generation of users - all younger people in the world have already been studying Bulgarian for 3 years now, as a lingua franca, so they manage with the funny Cyrillic letters somehow.
The country is flooded by Spanish, French and German immigrants, who mainly work in the area of tourism and construction.
The Microsoft head office is moved to the town of Pravetz (where the old Pravetz PCs had been produced in communist times), and Bill Gates likes to take a rest on the bench next to the monument of Todor Jivkov, the Pravetz-born long-time communist dictator from the past [pictured here in the 80's, with current PM Borisov as his personal bodyguard by the way!] A new version of Windows, called "Windows Bay Ganyo" is launched, working only with voice commands in Bulgarian. For instance, the reboot command is "Abe az shto ne ti..." [Damn you, I'm gonna .... you!]
As a sign of good will and hope for a future cooperation, all BG prisoners now staying for crimes at European and US jails, are instantly released, although no-one had asked for that. This whole gang flocks at the Sofia International Airport, from where they're instantly sent to the Belene correctional camp (now a posh resort on the Danube river). The prisoners spend their time in the SPA center, and the nights at the local casino (now the biggest in Europe). The words "amnesty" and "pardoning" are considered taboo, and no-one uses them any more.
Year 2016.
The two main football clubs, CSKA and Levski, reject all invitations for participation in the Champions League - they don't need the money, and the players don't feel like running that much. The football union makes a draw in order to select a random team to represent the country in the Champs League, and FC Kaliakra, from Division Three, draws the short straw, much to the delight of their devoted fans. However, the team bitterly curse their bad luck.
In a month, all sports media across the world are amazed by the huge heroism of FC Real Madrid, which, despite their tiny budget (compared to that of the average BG clubs), somehow manages to reach a 0:0 home draw against the star-sprinkled dream-team of Kaliakra.
The government buys the recently privatized National Communication Company, and in its turn buys its owner Deutsche Telekom, along with a few other major mobile operators such as Vodacom. As a sign of respect for the glorious past, all foreign-based personnel and management staff are obliged to use only stationary telephones. The shooting of the 5th episode of Batman commences, called "Batman - Super-Lubo".
The first illegal aliens from the US and Japan are caught at the southern border.
Year 2017.
Being now the only dominant economic superpower in the Solar System, Bulgaria realizes that it has a duty to all mankind, and it starts messing into all regional conflicts around the world. But, because due to its previous agreements with NATO, according to which BG had had to dismantle almost its entire military, now it only sends its envoys to conflicting countries, and they just declare: "If you don't do as we please, we'll stop all investment in your country". Usually, after such an ultimatum, the conflicting sides immediately hug each other, and enthusiastically open a bottle of grape rakia.
Since the country is in possession of astronomic amounts of wealth now, it sponsors countless historical and archaeological researches, and soon every student in the world is convinced that BG had won World War II on its own, against the evil alliance of Germany, USSR, USA, Japan and all the rest, and BG had prevailed despite the cowardly nuclear bombardment of the two villages Hiroshimovo and Nagasakovo (in the Sliven district) which killed a herd of goats, and a very luckless goatherd of Gypsy origin. However, there's still some debate on the question whether Napoleon was actually born in Pleven, or he was only of BG origin.
Inspired by nostalgic sentiments, all the major domestic finance gurus, such as Jorro SOROSoff, start playing funny games with the economies of Britain and Italy (just because they feel like it), logically bringing them on the brink of bankruptcy. But as soon as the local populace starts torching down their own Parliament buildings, we pay all expenses, and everyone is happy again.
BG launches its 20th consecutive space satellite from one of its 5 cosmodromes, so that the members of our Antarctic expedition could watch the CSKA vs Levski football derby live on TV.
11.09.2018
Two planes, hijacked by disillusioned American and British terrorists respectively, head straight toward Sofia, and collide into the two largest malls of the city...
...And we haven't even spent half of the gold yet.
[source]
It's a humoristic attempt to look on the politics of my tiny but quite colorite country. Although it's fiction, it actually illlustrates a number of issues, which are valid not only for Bulgaria, the Balkans, East Europe, but also the world. If anything, alternative history provides excellent expression tools. So if it's boring or just TL;DR for you, ignore it. If not, enjoy.
Year 2011.
At long last, after a fraudulent competition, a sub-contractor is selected for the construction of the long awaited tunnel under the Balkan mountain range. A month later, the head drilling machine suddenly hits hard rock and breaks down. The team of specialists and workers convenes on the construction site, followed by a storm of confused tongue clicking and exclamations like "Oh my God!" and "For fuck's sake!" Soon thereafter, the police arrives, along with some government special task-forces. The area is completely sealed. Everyone is following the breaking news on the TV, switching between the channels just before the sports news have started, which causes the advert market to crumble. Just in case, the tunnel project is urgently amended, and drilling starts on a new location nearby. But then a new hit on hard rock follows!
The geologists who are summoned on the spot find out the Inconvenient Truth - there can be no tunnel across the Balkan mountain range! Because the whole mountain bed is made of pure gold, with an estimated total mass of a billion tons.
On hearing the news, the Prime Minister, Mr Boyko "Super-Batman" Borisov [pictured here and here] (who at the moment has been rather busy, preparing a report which is to prove that actually the people are now living much better than two years ago), is compelled to postpone the official ceremony for opening the Sofia-Varna subway (distance: 378.96 km), and he calls the president, Mr Nobody. Since this call is a very rare precedent in recent times, the President (who at the moment has been rather busy, preparing a report which is to prove that the people have never lived worse than now), is compelled to pick up the receiver.
On hearing the news, Mr Nobody rushes to his cortege of limousines, while the leading car is sent to the Turkish market downtown to buy some imported tomatoes (which of course are the cheapest) - as bigger quantity as possible - after all, you don't find a billion tons of gold every day, right?
The world markets crumble in a day, being totally unprepared for such a blow. And, since there aren't too many countries who had been smart enough to keep their fiscal reserves in the form of yoghurt and feta cheese, there's nothing they can do on the matter. Except raging with envy of course.
Most major players on the domestic political and industrial scene (read: the grey sector of economy which constitutes roughly 4/5 the entirety thereof) get a cardiac arrest - this is not just a ton or two, this is a whole billion tons, you cannot just go there and steal it! You can't chop a whole mountain off, can you? It's impossible. This isn't some old Soviet submarine or something. Besides, the whole area is presently blocked by the military, and they have orders to shoot anything that moves without warning. Nevertheless, the price of the pickaxes rises to equal that of the flatscreen TVs, and now a luxurious pickaxe becomes the most fashionable wedding present - plus an option to make the first dig into the mountain of gold. Meanwhile, a torch-lamp can be exchanged for a SUV, although it's very hard to find the former on the market.
Year 2012.
BG has paid off all its external debt in a week, and now it's sponsoring its neighbors. The idea of the Old (Inflated) BG Lev becoming the official European currency is seriously considered now, though the National Bank is still too reluctant to take such a step - having so many poor European economies sitting on our back doesn't sound too tempting, does it? No-one ever goes to work any more, and everyone receives their wages by direct bank transfer from the government; a large part of the banks file bankruptcy as their money is not needed. All Bulgarian emigrants return home, despite the insistent requests of the First World countries that they should stay there and keep spending their Levs abroad. All border customs, as well as the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies are closed as their functions become obsolete.
Rolse-Royce opens a factory in Lovech (which used to produce the legendary Moskvich cars), aimed entirely at the domestic car market.
Year 2013.
The parties are abolished, as no-one gives a damn about them any more. Some random guy comes up with the news that his grandfather once owned the Balkan mountain range and he demands restitution, but everyone laughs at him and ignores his claims. At first, he pretends to be offended, but later he proposes that he at least be made ceremonial King. The PM says the guy would better take the Prime Minister post, and then the PM himself becomes Super-President, and the country is constitutionally transformed into a Presidential Monarchy. On the Presidential elections, there's only one candidate (the former PM Borisov; all other potential candidates are intimidated by his extraordinary karate skills). He wins the election, mainly because during his campaign, he manages to convince the public that it was him who initiated the digging of the Balkan tunnel in the first place; therefore he wins 99,9% of all votes, which means of those 3% of the entire population who bothered to bring their ass to the polls. Btw, according to the new Constitution, this isn't a problem at all - Article 1 says: "Enjoy your life and don't pretend to be smart".
The national anthem is changed to one of the biggest hits of pseudo-Bulgarian-Idol-pop-star Valentina Hassan. In the official version of her unique hit "Ken Lee" (a cover version of Mariah Carey), the stanzas where obscene language is used, get substituted by "Da-da-da-da". The whole nation sings in a zombified trance at the coronation of the new President.
The largest world banks take the place of the local village quasi-banks which are now bankrupt. On the location of the former Kozloduy nuclear power plant (previously closed by the EU in order to bring the country back into the Stone Age), a new, magnified version of the "Bulgarialand" amusement park is built (which mimics Disneyland, but is much more amusing).
Macedonia, Turkey and Greece all start broadcasting TV news in Bulgarian. Soon thereafter, they all become officially bilingual, adopting Bulgarian as a second language. The Macedonians are particularly privileged in this situation, as their language is considered to be a corrupted version of the Western Bulgarian dialect anyway.
Year 2014.
Tzar Kiro, the biggest producer of illegal alcohol, and most popular Gypsy baron in the country, buys 51% of FC Manchester United and hires the failed and most corrupt politician Alexander Tomov as club president. As a result, the nation's biggest football star, Dimitar Berbatov ends his contract with Manchester Utd, to return home, where he is in a fierce competition for the Number 9 shirt with his former M.U. team-mate, Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid.
The whole education system is overhauled - for instance, in secondary school, in the maths classes the only two things which are being taught are: counting to 100 (preferably in wads of bank notes), and the theory of probabilities (whose main application is in the game of roulette in the ten thousand casinos across the country). All the rest of the school subjects are dropped, because a rich person doesn't need education at all. There's still an hour of sports exercises per week though, the only sport which is practiced there being golf.
BG leaves NATO and hires the organization as a private security contractor for patrolling the borders of the country, attempting to stop the ever increasing waves of immigrants.
A re-attestation of all hotels is carried out, and any hotel which is categorized below 6 stars gets knocked down and built anew.
The descendants of Charlemagne (as well as his entire kin up to the tenth stock) apply for a Bulgarian citizenship. Most are turned back because of visa irregularities.
Year 2015.
The Kapital financial newspaper purchases 100% of The Financial Times, then adds a discussion forum to its online website, and then bans the use of the Latin alphabet in it. By the way, this is a serious issue only for the older generation of users - all younger people in the world have already been studying Bulgarian for 3 years now, as a lingua franca, so they manage with the funny Cyrillic letters somehow.
The country is flooded by Spanish, French and German immigrants, who mainly work in the area of tourism and construction.
The Microsoft head office is moved to the town of Pravetz (where the old Pravetz PCs had been produced in communist times), and Bill Gates likes to take a rest on the bench next to the monument of Todor Jivkov, the Pravetz-born long-time communist dictator from the past [pictured here in the 80's, with current PM Borisov as his personal bodyguard by the way!] A new version of Windows, called "Windows Bay Ganyo" is launched, working only with voice commands in Bulgarian. For instance, the reboot command is "Abe az shto ne ti..." [Damn you, I'm gonna .... you!]
As a sign of good will and hope for a future cooperation, all BG prisoners now staying for crimes at European and US jails, are instantly released, although no-one had asked for that. This whole gang flocks at the Sofia International Airport, from where they're instantly sent to the Belene correctional camp (now a posh resort on the Danube river). The prisoners spend their time in the SPA center, and the nights at the local casino (now the biggest in Europe). The words "amnesty" and "pardoning" are considered taboo, and no-one uses them any more.
Year 2016.
The two main football clubs, CSKA and Levski, reject all invitations for participation in the Champions League - they don't need the money, and the players don't feel like running that much. The football union makes a draw in order to select a random team to represent the country in the Champs League, and FC Kaliakra, from Division Three, draws the short straw, much to the delight of their devoted fans. However, the team bitterly curse their bad luck.
In a month, all sports media across the world are amazed by the huge heroism of FC Real Madrid, which, despite their tiny budget (compared to that of the average BG clubs), somehow manages to reach a 0:0 home draw against the star-sprinkled dream-team of Kaliakra.
The government buys the recently privatized National Communication Company, and in its turn buys its owner Deutsche Telekom, along with a few other major mobile operators such as Vodacom. As a sign of respect for the glorious past, all foreign-based personnel and management staff are obliged to use only stationary telephones. The shooting of the 5th episode of Batman commences, called "Batman - Super-Lubo".
The first illegal aliens from the US and Japan are caught at the southern border.
Year 2017.
Being now the only dominant economic superpower in the Solar System, Bulgaria realizes that it has a duty to all mankind, and it starts messing into all regional conflicts around the world. But, because due to its previous agreements with NATO, according to which BG had had to dismantle almost its entire military, now it only sends its envoys to conflicting countries, and they just declare: "If you don't do as we please, we'll stop all investment in your country". Usually, after such an ultimatum, the conflicting sides immediately hug each other, and enthusiastically open a bottle of grape rakia.
Since the country is in possession of astronomic amounts of wealth now, it sponsors countless historical and archaeological researches, and soon every student in the world is convinced that BG had won World War II on its own, against the evil alliance of Germany, USSR, USA, Japan and all the rest, and BG had prevailed despite the cowardly nuclear bombardment of the two villages Hiroshimovo and Nagasakovo (in the Sliven district) which killed a herd of goats, and a very luckless goatherd of Gypsy origin. However, there's still some debate on the question whether Napoleon was actually born in Pleven, or he was only of BG origin.
Inspired by nostalgic sentiments, all the major domestic finance gurus, such as Jorro SOROSoff, start playing funny games with the economies of Britain and Italy (just because they feel like it), logically bringing them on the brink of bankruptcy. But as soon as the local populace starts torching down their own Parliament buildings, we pay all expenses, and everyone is happy again.
BG launches its 20th consecutive space satellite from one of its 5 cosmodromes, so that the members of our Antarctic expedition could watch the CSKA vs Levski football derby live on TV.
11.09.2018
Two planes, hijacked by disillusioned American and British terrorists respectively, head straight toward Sofia, and collide into the two largest malls of the city...
...And we haven't even spent half of the gold yet.
[source]
(no subject)
Date: 15/9/09 14:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/9/09 16:05 (UTC)This reminds me of the Tiny Revolution...
http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/20192.html
Can you bail us out please?
(no subject)
Date: 15/9/09 18:02 (UTC)