For the safety of NATO

This week the NATO ministers are having an “informal” meeting here in Sofia. What is the difference between a “formal” NATO meeting and an “informal” NATO meeting? I have no idea. The informal meeting probably means they can meet and spend their taxpayer’s dollars without needing to make any real decisions. The meeting is being held at the National Palace of Culture (or NDK, as the initials are translated in Bulgarian). NDK is a large conference center and auditorium in Sofia. They have everything from rock concerts to trade shows there. In fact, it was voted as the best convention center in Europe last year. This honor can mean one of two things – 1) the Europeans felt sorry for Bulgaria and decided to give them an award, or 2) the Europeans who voted on the award have never actually been inside NDK. NDK is the most confusing, poorly laid out convention center in the history of convention center architecture. That maze in the movie Labyrinth is about 10 times easier to navigate than NDK. I will not be surprised if there are dehydrated and malnourished NATO ministers straggling out of the structure for weeks to come due to becoming disoriented and lost within its maze of rooms and levels.

Anyway, because of the NATO meeting they have turned the area around NDK into a demilitarized zone. There is a large plaza in front of the building which is now blocked off. Several roads around the building are blocked off. There are also two tram stops near the building which have been closed. Unfortunately, both of these are stops that I regularly use. This does not mean the trams are not running, it only means they do not stop at the stations near NDK – instead going straight through to the next stop. When you think about it, the reasons for such precautions are understandable. I will explain why it is necessary to not allow trams to stop near NDK.

1. Terrorists are extremely lazy. If the public transportation does not stop directly in front of the intended target, terrorists will 9 times out of 10 just give up and go home. We know this because most terrorists are caught on small motorized scooters, Segways, wheelchairs and, occasionally, pushing themselves around in shopping carts. In fact, if your neighborhood has reported a large number of missing wheelchairs – there is probably a terrorist cell operating nearby.

2. Terrorists have extremely poor eye-hand coordination skills. This is why terrorists do not play ping-pong. If fact, if you play ping-pong with someone and they suck – they are probably a terrorist and should be reported to the appropriate authorities for a full body cavity search. Since the tram maintains a high rate of speed of at least 1 km/hour while passing through the closed stop, there is no way a terrorist would be able to time his detonation correctly. By the time the terrorist saw the structure and tried to detonate any bomb, NDK would be a mere speck in the rear view mirror.

3. Terrorists cannot read Bulgarian and are extremely short sighted. All the tram stops are labeled in Bulgarian so terrorists would likely need to keep a count of how many stops go by before they must detonate a bomb. By removing one stop the terrorist will usually detonate the bomb one stop too late and safely out of proximity of NDK. Ironically, the location one stop past NDK already looks like a bomb went off, so in reality the landscape would change very little after the detonation. Because terrorists are also extremely short sighted, there would be no way they could see a 75 meter high white superstructure at the now-removed stop to indicate that their plan has been foiled.

As we see, it is very important to maintain security around any event important VIP personnel are attending (can anyone name a single NATO minister from any country? Anyone? Neither can I, but I assure you these people are more important than you are – do you have tram stops removed for you? I didn’t think so.). It is also vital to secure the public transportation system by removing any stops from the area under protection. In this way we thwart any possibly terrorist action and ensure freedom and democracy reign.

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