This morning three of my favorite things came together in one place: Bulgaria, Law and Order and the New York Times.

If you've ever lived with me, you'd know that I love, love, love the tv show Law and Order.  SUV is my favorite. I like they mystery. I like the actors. I like the resolution.

As for Bulgaria, I've lived here for three years and I write a blog about my life in the country.

Then there's the New York Times. I'm not sure that I could live without the newspaper. I read the headlines every morning. It's incredibly important to me know what's happening in the world.

So when I read this article titled: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/world/europe/20bulgaria.html?pagewanted=1&amp;tntemail1=y&amp;_r=1&amp;emc=tnt" target="_blank">Law and Order, Bulgarian Style</a> this morning a few of my favorite things came together in one place. The only thing is, the article isn't really uplifting. In fact, it's pretty depressing as it highlights the intersection of big business, politics and organized crime.

Nothing in the article was really a surprise to me but it presents the history of politics and organized crime after the fall of communism and the weak judiciary in a very clear straightforward manner.

The one thing that jumped out at me from the article were these statistics:
<blockquote>One research institute, the Center for Study of Democracy, has  estimated that Bulgaria’s drug market is worth around €87 million, or  $123 million, a year, and its internal sex trade around €118 million a  year, while the profit from cigarette smuggling is around €307 million a  year.</blockquote>
The fact that organized crime is making more money on cigarette smuggling than drugs and the international sex trade combined caught my eye. In fact, I read the sentence a couple of times to make sure that I had it right. But <em>really</em> how can that be? They must be smuggling a huge number of cigarettes.

Anyhow, if you want to read more about the crazy world of organized crime in Bulgaria you should head over here to read wikileaks and their leaked <a href="http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2005/07/05SOFIA1207.html" target="_blank">US diplomatic cables on organized crime</a>.