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Mar. 31st, 2008

eye1

KG/AM


cards.yandex.ru

I found on a local newspaper and then on some Russian LJ diaries a very weird piece of news, so I tried for a good while to find and understand its sources. They claim that Romania is likely to ask NATO to support its intentions to "annex" Moldova, at this week's summit in Bucharest. The explanation would be a so-called "Balkanization" of Central Europe, with the independence of Kosovo being the trigger for other nationalistic impulses that would aim to change the map and create a "Greater Albania", a "Greater Hungary" or a "Greater Romania" (which would raise territorial claims not only against Moldova, but against Ukraine and Serbia as well!)

I'm not here to defend the honor of any politician, but I have to say that it's very annoying for me to see such fantastic lies. Of course, the yellow press can write any lie, for the sake of building catastrophic theories about any zone in Europe that is not ethnically homogenous. Maybe these theories can appeal to people that believe all sort of wrong informations about Romanians, I don't know. But who can be that unrealistic as to ignore the policy of NATO and EU? Romania is a NATO and EU member and neither of these organizations would welcome anything that can complicate further the situation in this part of Europe, economically and politically. As George W. Bush made clear a few days ago, with all his rhetoric:
"First is to continue to make our intentions clear, and that is that we want to work to make sure Moldova, which is now an independent nation, has got sovereign borders and is treated like an independent nation. Secondly, we constantly advocate for good, clean, open government. Thirdly, we're a member of a 5-plus-2, which is the process by which, hopefully, the Transdniestria issue would be solved" (5 plus 2 means the format of negotiations - with Moldova, Transdnestr, Russia, Ukraine, OSCE, plus the USA and the EU as observers).

Maybe all this story with territorial claims at the NATO summit is a joke for April Fools' Day. If so, it isn't a good one. 

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Mar. 24th, 2007

eye1

Chto takoe "vmeste"?

location: Bucharest
Predictable speeches, fireworks, pomp and circumstance marches. It's the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, when the European Union celebrates its first half of century. OK, we the Easterners are now part of the EU and it's natural to celebrate an EU holiday - like it's natural for the eurosceptics to say, with the words of a Scottish journalist, "it's our party and we'll cry if we want to".
Now my only problem is with the logo that has been chosen for this celebration - "Together since 1957", written in each of the 27 languages of the Union. Well, how were we all together in 1957? Just because "they" were there, pitying and/or despising us, and "we" were here, envying and/or hating them? I don't want to think how it might have been to live here in 1957. Not at all "the year of birth of our big European family": after all, it was the birth of the European Economic Community, with six members - France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
I read that the winner of the contest for the anniversary logo was Szymon Skrzypczak, a Polish student. Maybe this Szymon has some older relatives that told him the not-so-fairy-tale of an East being together with the West "since 1957" - and therefore he designed the logo as a subtle (even maybe gentle) irony. Or maybe simply he was cynical enough to know how to please the European jury so as to win the prize of six thousand euro. If so, well, then we have a true EU citizen, no less prepared than the officials in Brussels to celebrate the fictional birthday of the united Europe.
Oh, and our ministers! At the press conference after the Government meeting this week, they spoke in front of a desk adorned with the logo (in Romanian it's "Impreuna din 1957"). When I first saw the desk, I didn't know about the EU logo and I thought that it was an advertising banner...

 
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Mar. 6th, 2007

eye1

SMI

An excellent article about how has evolved the welfare state - in El Pais (in Spanish). In short: the state has abandoned the idea of protecting its citizens from unemployment, from abuse of the more powerful or from the juridic insecurity, choosing instead to limit to the purely physical protection of the citizens. Hence the measures against obesity, malnutrition, alcohol and tobacco consumption, mad cow, avian flu and so on. So that the social sciences and political philosophy are now concentrated around two notions: the risk and the vulnerability.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/ensayo/Cuerpos/desnudos/elpepuculbab/20070303elpbabens_9/Tes

No less interesting is the reference made by the author to the sculptor Ron Mueck. I found here a Russian link about him:
http://www.crazyrussian.com/02/entry_1872.php

 
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eye1

Rinok kapitala

mood: blah
music: The Gathering - In Motion 1
I find increasingly annoying how primitive has become here the etics of work and success. As we know, stock exchanges across the world have plunged and many predict that the plunge will continue. The Bucharest stock exchange has lost over a billion euro yesterday, and this is a huge loss for a small stock exchange like ours. On a forum of a newspaper, a guy says: well, it’s their money, their risk! Another replies angrily: sure you don’t care, you don’t bother to work, to invest, you lazy loser - you don't know how it is to have a business!
This reply summarizes a very narrow vision about our society, where the sole accepted model for success is to be a businessperson, fighting desperately for multiplying money (and "businessperson" means the opposite of "employee", in a narrow sense: not self-employed or freelancer, but owner of a business.) The one who doesn’t follow this model is automatically labeled as lazy and incapable to understand capitalism.
Firstly, there are enough good businesspeople who prefer not to invest their money on the capital market; this doesn’t mean that they are lazy or lack economic knowledge. And secondly, since when being a businessperson has become the only path to dignity in our society? Is the skill of making money the only skill that this society needs? It seems that we all must be entrepreneurs if we want to avoid becoming pariahs. There are workers who happen to be underpaid or fired and protest this (because this is a democratic right), there are farmers who struggle to work their land instead of seeking employment abroad, there are teachers who work in remote villages, because this is the best thing they know and they like to teach children. All these people are labeled as lazy and get the same advice - to launch their own business. Or to emigrate.
So the best remain here and launch their own businesses. The less good emigrate, earn money abroad and then return here to launch – easy to guess - their own businesses. And the rest are simply lazy.
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