Unfortunately for Cameron, who is otherwise skilled politician, he already had his ‘Read my lips’ moment because he promised referendum last time he was running for office. He even gave ‘cast-iron guarantee’ when he was climbing the leadership ladder in the Conservative Party.

There is no reason to believe David Cameron’s word today, because last time he gave a word it had no more substance than cotton candy wrapped on a stick by gypsy on a local fair. Of course, he is not the first and he will not be the last politician selling the London Bridge to get re-elected.

The reality of the British politics proves Daniel Hannan’s First law: No party is Eurosceptic while in office. David Cameron is in office which is disadvantage in time when the electorate is growing more and more Eurosceptic by the day. His party will have difficult time in the coming elections.

On the continent, Angela Merkel of Germany is in the same position after she saved the European Union during the Greek meltdown. Two years ago both Cameron and Merkel had political capital to spend defending the ‘European ideals’ (concept that, curiously, nobody can really define). After the defeat of Nicola Sarkozy of France everybody realized – defense of the EU comes paired with your own political peril.

Pre-election rhetoric in the UK appears to be very Euro-hostile. Bulgaria and Romania (joining the workforce on the great island in less than a year time) are chosen to be the Boogeymen of the campaign.

The insults toward the people of these two countries grew so nasty that the Romanian Prime Minister Ponta sent open letter to The Times defending the dignity of his people.

I would recommend next time the address to include the following Shakespeare quote (the British dig those):

O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent

To set against me for your merriment:

If you were civil and knew courtesy,

You would not do me thus much injury.

Can you not hate me, as I know you do,

But you must join in souls to mock me too?

Romania lost 3 million workers and Bulgaria about one million since they joined the EU. There is hardly anybody left there who wants to emigrate. Plus, things have changed since the fall of communism. The rosy image of ‘the West’ behind the Iron Curtain is shattered by the stories of the returning emigrants.

It turns out: the West is as corrupt as the East… only on a bigger scale.

Compared to the autocratic bureaucratic machine that governs the European Union the Bulgarian and Romanian regimes are blooming democracies.

Compared to the green energy mafia that ripped the Bulgarian and Romanian tax-payers (and for that matter the British, the German, the American, the put-your-country’s-name-here tax payers) the local thugocracies on the Balkans are like a kindergarten bullies.

Compared to the nuclear energy mafia that left Bulgaria with a 2-billion-euro mud-hole in Belene, the local corrupt government is like poetry book-club.

David Camron’s broken promise on the EU treaties referendum shows that the UK government is still planning a future for Britain as part of the European Union despite the rhetoric. The party in power is afraid to give the people opportunity to vote on the issue of this European future.

May be, it is time for David Cameron to stop lecturing Bulgaria and Romania on democracy, since he is refusing one to his own people.

First of all, when you compare the foreign investments coming from UK to Bulgaria and the money the UK companies get back from Bulgaria in return – it turns out the United Kingdom made net profit of 92 million euro last year from Bulgaria. So corruption appear to be beneficial for the British investors.

Compared to the autocratic bureaucratic machine that governs the European Union the Bulgarian regime is a blooming democracy.

Compared to the green energy mafia that ripped the Bulgarian tax-payers (and for that matter the British, the German, the American, the put-your-country’s-name-here tax payers) the local thugocracy on the Balkans is like a kindergarten bully.

Compared to the nuclear energy mafia that left Bulgaria with a 2 billion euro mud-hole in Belene, the local corrupt government is like poetry book club.

May be Bulgarian people wouldn’t be so poor, if the country didn’t have to pay racket to those.

Can Bulgarian government make decisions on energy based only on the interest of its own people? The answer is: big fat – No!

The reason is the geopolitical curse on that territory that for many centuries is considered by the world powers to be nothing but a buffer zone between the West and the East. You don’t develop the buffer zone, because it may change hands. You just keep an eye on it and if the other side makes a move you react.

Bulgaria can’t even build a tiny gas pipeline on its territory without diplomatic hell breaking loose. They start the pipeline – they stop the pipeline – they start it again – they stop it again – all according to the mood one both sides of the buffer.

Energy bills protests on the streets brought down the Bulgarian government today. The poor folks demonstrated their anger on the streets and will be rewarded with elections in a couple of months. Unfortunately for them nothing will change, because no anger in the world can move Bulgaria out of the buffer zone.

It would have been easier if the territory was just a desert with no population. Instead, God gave Bulgaria sunny beaches, beautiful mountains, rose valleys, fertile soils, bank on the Danube River. As a result since ancient time people keep insisting to live there – on the crossroad between continents and cultures.

The folks in Bulgaria don’t have to be poor, if only the world powers let them make the economic decisions that best suits them. However, this will not going to happen and those who believe it can happen are simply naive. Every territory on Earth lives with its geopolitical curse or blessing.  Cameron, Merkel, Putin and Obama just shed crocodile tears: ‘We are sorry for them’. Sorry? My …

It is unlikely scenario for America – with its generous food stamps, welfare checks, Medicaid, housing vouchers, free cell-phones and the ability to print the world’s currency. The above horror story, however, is the reality for majority of folks in a small country called Bulgaria – the poorest country in the European Union.

Forgive me for interrupting the Oscars buzz with a story of angry crowds on the streets of Bulgaria, throwing eggs at the parliament over poverty and misery. The protests are part of a bigger story that may rock the European markets again.

The protests in Europe go for years now, but only the Greek one came close to what is happening today in Bulgaria, where the crowds grow so bold that they are able to drastically destabilize the whole country.

Surprisingly, the European Union survived the Greek tragedy. Despite the bigoted insults flying in all directions – North-South and East-West – the EU and the Euro currency managed to hold together through the Greek (and for that matter the Italian) financial meltdown. It is clear, that exit (or expulsion) of one country from the Union or the Euro-zone would damage the image of the mega-bureaucracy that rules over Europe and the common currency. In the Greek dilemma the EU chose the Lincoln path instead of the Gorbachev failure, but the turbulence is not over.

After the Greek summer comes the next test for the EU – the Bulgarian winter. The crowds grow bigger by the day in all major cities and the police today had to confront protesters with force. The parliament in Sofia took some rocks and rotten produce, property is damaged, shots were fired. Populists demand nationalization of the energy companies. This may prove to be the real problem for Bulgaria. If the government is unable to calm down the protesters (supplied by the opposition with ala-Arab-Spring flags and patriotic talking points) the fast deteriorating situation will soon spook the markets and the foreign investors.

The Bulgarians have experience in bringing down governments. The latest example were the events in 1997 (snowy January) when the crowd was able to force its way inside the parliament. The security had to retaliate which brought even more protests and the government resigned. The opposition then came to power and carried the mass privatization, which was necessary for the economy, but is still viewed by the regular folks as mass robbery of the country.

The absurd calls for nationalization go contrary to the European path for Bulgaria. Even Putin in Russia is planning another wave of privatization.

The privatization was ‘worth’ staging revolution in 1997 Bulgaria. Greece also has stuff to sell. Bulgaria in 2013, however, has almost nothing left. All is sold and stolen and the country is left with poor people living in severe austerity.

So, the only interest groups who would benefit from the destabilizing of Bulgaria are those pushing for destabilizing of the European Union.

For months now the British carry campaign against allowing Bulgarians and Romanians to join the rest of the EU in their right to work in the United Kingdom. Spooked by the prospects of another wave of poor immigrants like the one that flooded the country after Poland joined the EU, the British count with horror the months left until they have to meet and greet guest workers from the Balkans.

Politicians in the western parts of the European realm already felt the cost of defending the EU and the Euro currency after the Greek disaster. Nicola Sarkozy waved goodbye and Angela Merkel may soon be next.

The Bulgarian winter full with fed up poor folks demanding end of austerity is a nightmare topic for every politician who is defending the continuing existence of the EU in its current form. The folks in the poor European countries are angry with their standard of living and so are the folks in the rich European counties who feel that they have to carry most of the burden.

Destabilization on the Balkans is never good news and if the Bulgarians don’t calm down and refuse to stay in the cold quietly the questions about the existence of the European Union will be soon front-page story again.

The PetraeusGate seducer Paula Broadwell instead disclosed publicly inconvenient truths about the hot issue Benghazi tragedy turning the heads away from the White House and the State Department and focusing the media hounds on the CIA practices in Libya. Madam Broadwell hinted on possible CIA detainees in Benghazi as motive for the terrorist attack on 9/11, 2012. The existence of such prisoners goes against the executive order President Obama gave on day one in office.

The same order also was supposed to close Gittmo. Last time I checked the prison is still operating and holding detainees. So faking outrage over not following the executive order in question is absurd reaction in the real world.

While issuing orders on Day One makes a great campaigning point – actually doing it may not be a wise decision. Some issues may deserve at least a couple of days of exploring before the President should pick up the pen.

On Day One President Obama ordered:

a) CIA Detention. The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.

b) Special Interagency Task Force on Interrogation and Transfer Policies.

c) (a) Establishment of Special Interagency Task Force. There shall be established a Special Task Force on Interrogation and Transfer Policies (Special Task Force) to review interrogation and transfer policies.

During Obama’s first year in office there was nothing set-up that is operational to interrogate terrorists. So when the Underwear Bomber attempted blowing airplane over Detroit, America realized – there is no place and no crew existing that is allowed to question him.

The alleged existence of CIA detainees in Benghazi can have only two explanations: the White House knew and didn’t mind, the same way they still operate Gitmo; or the CIA was operating behind the back of the administration.

The second possibility would reveal, what I call, “Pakistani problem” in the American government. The politicians in Pakistan insisted that they were not aware that their own intelligence crowd is harboring Bin Laden.

There is no good answer for the White House on the alleged Benghazi detainees. The President either knew about it and didn’t mind (in which case he should take responsibility); or the President didn’t know the intelligence is running wild against his orders in which case he will look incompetent.

Of course, there is always the possibility of blaming the PR disaster on the imagination of the Petraeus’s mistress in distress and sweep the whole thing under the rug.

I promised my conservative and republican friends not to write until the election is done and this was all I can do in good conscious to help Mitt Romney. The circus is over and I am back.

Republican pundits wonder why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 elections. Here is my analysis issue by issue:
1.       Voters ignored the Libya tragedy.

Americans as a mass don’t care about Libya, Egypt, Europe, Iran or any other place outside of the US. I am not saying it is the right thing to do. It is just the fact. Look at the tanking TV ratings of the news channels during the Arab Spring. Majority of Americans don’t give a damn about foreign policy and after decade of war one thing is sure – they want the US military brought home. I am not saying that it is a good policy and I understand it is not possible to retreat. I am just trying to explain to the republican elite why the Libyan tragedy was not effective campaigning point for Mitt Romney.

After the terrorist attack on 9/11, 2001 the country was united and even the politicians stood together. Americans kind of expected the same approach for the terrorist attack on 9/11, 2012. Instead, the Romney campaign went politicizing the tragedy and despite the fact that they were right about the Obama administration cowardly mistakes the Republicans failed to provide the inspiring feeling of unity in the face of horror that many Americans remember to be possible in such event.

The foreign policy debate between Obama and Romney showed that both parties agree on many things. Among those things: both parties have no clue how to handle the powder keg of a geopolitical situation that is challenging the US leadership in every corner of the world at once. The best analysis of the foreign policy debate came in a tweet from Glenn Beck: “I am glad to know that Mitt agrees with Obama so much. No, really. Why vote?”

2.       Obama succeeded in painting Mitt Romney as this rich guy with car elevators.

No kidding! He is a rich guy with car elevators, Cayman islands bank accounts, secret tax returns and no salary for the last… at least 7 years. No wonder Obama campaign succeeded in painting him that way – this is the only thing they didn’t have to even lie about.

3.       President Obama looked good during the aftermath of hurricane Sandy.

Honestly, it is not that hard to look good next to Chris Christi. The republican governor of democratic New Jersey was so huggy-kissy with the President that the impression was that only the excessively big waste line prevents him from performing a blow job. Chris Christi was probably working on his own re-election. I personally don’t care if he is re-elected and, for that matter, I celebrate the defeat of Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts. The “man with the truck” voted with the democrats on every major issue anyway.

4.       The Hispanics broke for Obama.

The disgusting reaction of the republican base over the Rick Perry’s “you have no heart” remark during the primary was probably more memorable for the Hispanics than his Oops moment. Republicans managed to portrait the hardline conservative Texas governor as a softy on immigration. The outrage of the republican base that demanded punishment for the kids for the sins of their illegal immigrant parents was so intense that even non-Hispanic legal immigrants like me asked themselves: do I really belong to this caucus of folks?

American history shows that you can win on bigotry once and while, but it will be remembered. The same goes equally for the democrats trying to divide the nation along the lines of race, ethnicity and gender.

5.       Republicans lost the women vote.

This one puzzles me, because as a married woman I am apparently in the wrong demographic. May be next time the republicans should try somebody “young” – let’s say 60-years-old instead of 70 and if they can’t find sexy at least they should go for “not ugly”.

My 10-years-old had an assignment from school to go to some political cartoon web-site and make an election video. For the kid the only video that matters is a funny video so he picked the cartoons of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul ending his work with the remark:” After the election nothing will change, but at least we made a funny video”. Ironically, this is the best comment I’ve heard so far about the 2012 election. It was billion dollars’ worth of funny videos and… no change.

6.       The senate republican candidates were not good quality candidates.

… and so were your presidential candidates.

Finally, I apologize, to my conservative and republicans friends for the language of this post. Yes, I am disappointed, because the Republican Party nominated a candidate that agrees with President Obama on every major issue that matters to me – from bushevist federal control of education ideology and mandatory health insurance to mumbling domestic and foreign policy. So for me there was no choice in this election and I stayed home.  And so did 13 million Americans – the difference between the 2008 and 2012 national turnout. They stayed at home for different reasons, of course, but neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney was able to get their vote. And that is a lot of votes out for grabs…

Imagine the riots in that hypothetical day in the future when California casts its fat 55 electoral votes for Republican who won the popular vote.

Until the last night Democratic activists could not imagine that to be possible. Things changed, though, in the Election 2012:  Republican Mitt Romney came very close to winning the popular vote against President Obama. That demonstrated the consequences such liberal legislative activism can produce. The popular vote totals are not certified yet, but President Obama is projected to carry it by 1% or so.

Late in the night yesterday the legislators in those nine activist states were probably shaking in fear while watching Romney leading in popular vote total.

Driven by emotions caused by one lost election in 2000 the Democrats in charge of deep blue states set a powder keg that last night was very close to explode into spectacular political crisis. In the 2012 elections the Democrats were holding the lighter ready to flame unbelievable social unrest in the event of the Republican winning the popular vote.

In 2012 Democrats have charismatic candidate as President Obama – that may not be the case in 2016. America has four more difficult years for the economy as the US struggles to get the national debt under control. The measures that President Obama will be forced to take will be unpopular.

In 2016 Democrats will face the popular vote after eight years of nightmare economy with the tax-hikes of the ObamaCare fully implemented and the IRS chasing middle class in effort to collect health insurance penalties. Frankly, by 2016 the democrats will run out of excuses. Then what?

Are the people of California and Vermont really ready to see their state electoral votes being cast for Republican winner of the popular vote?

If not, these states should repeal the dangerous legislature they produced and pledge their fates and fortunes to the United States of America, not to the United Mob of America.

Health Insurance is now mandatory in America. Middle class people who cannot afford to buy it soon will have to pay extra tax for being not poor enough and being not wealthy enough.

Look at these leaders.

He signed the idea as Governor.

She passed it through Congress as Speaker of the House.

He approved it as President.

He let it stand as law of the land as Chief Supreme Court Justice.

They are different in name only. United they stay in power.

Among most popular illustrations in the Voynich book is fol.86v . Let me introduce you to the circle of tents that may be represented in the VMS nine rosette medallion.

This illumination is held in Bibliothèque nationale de France. It is made by the same master that worked on Christine de Pizan’s City of the Ladies manuscript. It depicts the “Princes of the East” during the visit of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II to Paris where he stayed at the Louvre from 1400 to 1402. The guest from Constantinople took a short visit to England, but stayed mostly in France where he dealt with the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy while the King of France was mentally unstable.

This circle of tents may have inspired the Voynich ‘medallion’. Imagine looking at those structures from above. Notice how the rectangular ones kind of ‘bridge’ with the round tents to form a canopy fortress inside which the participating Kings would discuss the matters of the world.

It was the fact that the Byzantine Emperor stayed at the Louvre that helped me decode one of the rosettes of the medallion.   The Tuileries gardens were place where French monarchs met with ambassadors. As you know from my previous post the illustration gives the instruction about how to count the letters and I use the EVA to identify separate symbols. This rosette was easy pattern: every other letter.

EVA, however does not represent the non-Latin sounds correctly. To adjust it, the researcher has to observe the performance of the symbols in a meaningful phrase. There may be more than one language in the Voynich manuscript, but I was able to read only the Slavic so far.

Extracting every other letter from this rosette (as shown on the picture) gives me the following string of Slavic (Slavonic)

Opreta sad v lvr prpd oot pdoa cilveo ? prsvdo ekvezeece тie odpe tocd revlot / voi sledoatl PDREVL

In English: Outside garden in Louvre reverent from Padua Silveo Holy Inquisition who ?!?drank tost revlot?!?) / Your Follower PDREVL

It is clear that the author signed his name in the smaller segment between the markers. What PDREVL (padreVL?!? patriarhVL petervl) means can become clearer if experts on old Slavonic can adjust the above translation and the EVA transcription.

Better EVA would help with the other languages that may be encrypted in the Voynich manuscript.

At least we already know that one of the authors left his autograph 600 years ago for us to discover.