Current

The corruption of the present Bulgarian President and government have been the main topic of most Bulgarian related news in the last couple of weeks, not to mention months. The process that began already in the beginning of this year reached its culmination last week when a comission of the European Union dealing with corruption, reported that Bulgaria has done nothing to stop corruption. The president of the Balkan nation, formerly a Communist satelite, has been linked to mafia bosses who sponsored his election campaign.

Prime minister Stanishev, who is the grandson of one of the high ranking functioners of the former Communist party, has been completely passive in curbing corruption as well.

As a result of its fact finding mission and the corruption related scandals surrounding the Bulgarian government, the EU has suspended hundreds of millions of euros Bugaria was supposed to receive in the process of upgrading its infrastructure.

Public discontent has been growing.

So what does the Bulgarian governent do? They deny all charges, they blame everyone but themselves and finally, they are presenting to the Bulgarian people an alternative scapegoat for their discontent. The scapegoat are once again the "sects".

This is not a new tactic. Back in 1994, when the former (also socialist/communist) government became mired in scandals of corruption, the "anti-sect" campaign was used to distract the general public from the real problems of society.

All of a sudden, as if at the comand of some invisible, all-present director, the government, the media and all sorts of "experts" have begun to sound the alarm of the imminent danger of "the sects". The "sects" are basically everything and anything the authors of the paid publications decide to throw in the mix. The sects are Muslim fundamentalists, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, weird cults, protestant churches, Scientology and every imaginable strange religious grouping.

That's right, protestant churches are right in the mix. What you read above is exactly how one of these "articles" in the Bulgarian newspapers might have listed Evangical churches. These articles and interviews with "experts" then end up in the hands of members of Parliament, who later end up voting based on the emotional stir the materials produce in the readers.

The stories are the same through the years: the sects kidnap kids, brain wash them, may be sacrifice them, manipulate their members in order to take their money, etc. In other words, think nazism, obedience to the leader, total destruction of personalities, etc, etc.

The new "anti-sect" campaign of the Bulgarian government and mainstream media is officially on! Starting this week, the government has cracked down on non-profit organizations who supposedly operate in the country as a front for illegal, radical Muslim groups. Such groups may even exist, we don't know. No real information and facts have been released, only official government authored statements, which reassure society of the progress the authorities are making in the fight against the dangerous sects.

At the same time, the national newspaper Telegraph is releasing tomorrow (August 1st), an interview with Desyslava Panayotova, one of the "experts" the mainstream media has been promoting in the last year. In her interview, among other things, the "expert" Orthodox theologian takes direct shots at Breakthrough (Prelom) Christian Center and pastor George Bakalov (myself). It's obvious that the purpose of this interview is to trigger the old stereotypes from the 90's in which the mainstream, government dominated media was able to typecast myself and our church as some sort of sociopaths. The purpose of the propagandists of the nationalist dominated media and ultra- Orthodox, anti-West lobbies, is once again to discredit me, our church and with that as many other Protestants as they can. They have watched us become active in society, addressing some of the hottest issues of the day such as the moral decline of the family, the failure of the governemnt in areas such as education, the fight against the legalization of prostitution, our work with refugees and ethnic minorities, religious freedom and many more.

The pundits of the state sponsored anti-sect campaign know that if they fail to discredit us through their lies and propaganda, it won't be long before we gain a permanent place and may be even a leading role in the social discourse.

The good news is that we are not the naive youths we were 15 years ago. We will not sit around and watch the lapdogs of nationalism bark under the wrong tree, diverting the attention of society from the real thieves of the day.

We will respond in every way possible - through the media, by lawsuits and extensive work against the propagandists.

The warfare has begun, it's payday!