Tag Archive for 'English'

“Comeback” Experiment/ “Poate” m-am intors

Published on February 8, 2010 in Miscellaneous. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Do not jump to conclusions. I am not sure I will start being an active blogger again. It’s just that sometimes I read and/or listen to things I want to share, and, even better, I work on some exciting projects and papers. Before we can all declare a comeback, let’s just be patient and walk the walk.

Cum zic si in engleza mai sus, nu sunt convinsa ca voi deveni din nou un blogger activ. Din cand in cand insa, citesc, aud sau fac lucruri despre care vreau sa vorbesc si altora. Deci sa nu zicem inca hop pana nu trecem pragul. La recitire placuta! 

Obama – The Catch-phrase

Published on January 21, 2009 in Miscellaneous. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

It seems that Americans (and people in general, I believe) are very sensitive when it comes symbols and quotes of all sort. Rhetoric drives a lot of what we do, after all. It also seems that most memorable American presidents had at least one phrase in their inaugural speech that become a global symbol of what America stands for. For instance, Kennedy uttered the world famous ”Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” in his inaugural speech, while Roosevelt cornered the equally famous “There is nothing to fear but fear itself”. I wonder what Obama’s historic catch-all phrase will be:

I have three candidates so far:

1. The world is changing and we are changing with it.

2. You will be remembered not but what you destroy, but by what you have built. (I have to pay royalties to somebody else for spotting this one)

3. In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. 

Any more ideas?

2008: Honour Killings in Turkey

Published on December 10, 2008 in Miscellaneous. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

womeninthefrontlineYesterday, I attended one of the events of the campaign of combating violence against women launched by the United Nations Organization in Romania. I had written about the campaign at its inception, but it was only yesterday that I got to see two movies of the campaign. They were both part of a wider UN campaign titled “Women in the Frontline”, with Annie Lennox as front cover. The first of the films I saw explored one of the many forms of violence against women, namely human trafficking. Viewers were confronted with the bleak realities of Nepal, were thousands of women are smuggled overborder in Indian brothels, by their brothers, fathers or husbands, sold and turned into prostitutes, ostracized in their home communities, and all these happening sometimes to girls as young as 10 years of age. With incredible levels of poverty and virtually no way of feeding their children, women are simply trapped in a society that has found very few solutions to breaking the poverty cycle.

However, for me as an European the second film showed yesterday – portraying the situation of women in Turkey – was the one that really had me going. Apparently, in South-Eastern Turkey women are still brutally killed by their closesest male relatives in the name of honour. Dressed in black, they are taken in remote places of the village, shot at or simply stoned to death by their fathers and brothers. Because of European Union pressures, Turkey has modified its penal code and increased sentences for crimes of honour to life imprisonment (until 2001, evoking the family’s honour was a circumstance that could reduce one’s conviction in front of the court). However, 40% of men in rural areas are still supporting honour killings, which indicates that legislative measures were not supplemented in any way by cultural and educational changes. I’ve always spoken not necessarily against Turkey’s accession in the European Union (I am not against enlargement per se), but I’ve always warned that Turkey still has unsettled issues that will remain unsettled for a long time. However, I was simply baffled by yesterday’s movie. Really now, how can the Turkish government pretend Turkey is a modern, 21st century Westernized country? And by this, please don’t understand less terrible phenomena occur in Western Europe…

Facebook Political Protest in Croatia

Published on December 4, 2008 in Miscellaneous. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

I have visited Croatia and I have a couple of very good Croatian friends. To me, their level of development seemed quite high and they seemed rather Westernized in everything from economics to political views. Thus, I always thought the fact they were left out of the European Union was merely bad timing and that things will be sorted out soon. Latest news was that they were scheduled to join the EU as early as 2009.

However, a couple of days ago worrisome events occured in Croatia. Political opponents of the current regime (Prime Minister Sanader) were arrested by the Zagreb police for political protests via Facebook. A Facebook group called “I bet I can find 5,000 people who dislike Sanader” became the main proof of anti-establishment behaviour :)   I believe such judiciary practices are obviously not fit for an EU member, to say the very least. I’m curious on the results of the investigation commissioned by PM Sanader…

Government Pending

Published on December 3, 2008 in Miscellaneous. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Sunday was parliamentary elections day in Romania. Few Romanians left their cosy apartments for a trip to the ballot box (a bit less than 40% of them , to be more precise), and there’s worrisome statistics indicating that only 15% of the voters had higher education. This year we’ve also had a new voting system – a mixed member proportional representation, supported by a fairly large majority of the political spectrum (the liberals and the social-democrats), and opposed by the President’s party. As any proportional system, there were quite a few dissatisfactions with the way mandates were redistributed, but overall the system seems to have achieved its purpose.

The social democrats scored 33.6%, the democrats (allegedly a right-wing party, though their political programme seems to be the opposite) 33%, and the liberals 18.7%. The new voting system – with a 5% electoral threshold – eliminated extremist parties from the Parliament, which is great news. However, Sunday’s results leave us with a huge dilemma, as we do not know who will form the Government. Most probably, intense political negotiations will last till the end of December and our President will definitely take advantage of our semipresidential political system to veto plenty of government formulas that don’t suit him.

Unfortunately, the end of the year also reminds us we’ve done too little to curb corruption (one of the elected MPs this Sunday is actually in detention for fraud) and to absorb European structural and cohesion funds properly. With political strife prevailing over efficient administration, there are chances we will end up in the same situation of aid freezing as our Bulgarian neighbours…

The Non-Profit Crunch (European version)

Published on November 22, 2008 in Miscellaneous. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I borrowed the title of this post from my friend Ben – a non-profit strategist and consultant based in the US, with over 10 years of experience in managing non-profits. I also borrowed the theme of this post from his most recent op-ed, but I know he will forgive me. Ben talks about the way the recent financial and economic crisic will impact non-profits, but he does that from an American perspective. I intend to do the same (much briefer though) from a European/ Central European/ Romanian perspective, taking into account my 2-3 years of experience in non-profits (working/ consulting). Continue reading ‘The Non-Profit Crunch (European version)’

Obama Plays on Feelings

Published on November 5, 2008 in Miscellaneous. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

obama economist coverAs I’ve commented on several Obama-related blog entries today, it will be long before we see  a fundamental change in policy following the much acclaimed victory, but a permanent change in the political discourse has occurred, which will come to affect everybody in time – Americans and non-Americans, and yes, even Romanians.

Saying too much about all this as a Romanian living in Romania is somehow dishonest. Instead, I will dare copy-paste an email that I received today from a girl I worked with in New York, from whom I haven’t heard in two years. It’s touching, beware: Continue reading ‘Obama Plays on Feelings’

November 4th: My Birthday and Obama’s victory?

Published on November 5, 2008 in Miscellaneous. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

obamaI love it how Romanians realize the importance of public issues that surround them only when they are hit hard and heavy by them. There have been very few public debates, either on TV or in the blogs, about the US elections in Romania. This last week however, Hotnews (one of the most popular news portals in Romania) was packed with articles and more or less intelligent analyzes about the American elections. A very interesting debate – “The American Night” – is broadcast on TV as we speak, with influential Romanian opinion makers discussing the US elections. Before this nonetheless, few Romanian bloggers discussed this subject – a rather trivial indication of this is the absence of any category titles “elections”,”Obama” or anything similar in Zelist’s tag cloud (a Romanian version of Technorati).

I wonder whether this is because Romanians simply don’t care about international politics or because international politics doesn’t affect Romania. On a first glimpse, I’d tend to stick to the first version. However, over the last couple of months it became consistently more obvious to me that Obama’s stand on Europe will not change transatlantic relations in any way, hence won’t impact Romania. I discussed this topic a couple of months ago on Blogactiv, and later on with some American friends and we all concluded Obama won’t change in any fundamental way the current status quo. At least not as rapid as we’d like to see it changed.

In order to fundamentally change America’s position in the world, the President has to be backed by Congress, by a prosperous economy, by interest groups and, of course, by the American people (which is far from being as web 2.0 as we imagined :) . Surely, he is charismatic, surely I would vote for him, surely I’d never prefer a Republican over a Democrat, but still it takes more than one American president to change the world. Also because the world has dramatically changed:

Whoever wins the US Presidency today will be facing the ultimate challenge: steering a self-destructing Western-based economic growth model through a painful transition towards a new global sustainability. This is a task far beyond any past Apollo project. (Willy de Baecker on Blogactiv)

Overall nonetheless, Go Obama! Anxiously waiting for the victory speech…