Showing posts with label dezbate. Show all posts

There is open season on Viorica Dancila, the losing presidential candidate from PSD and former prime-minister of Romania. Today, Monday, she has even renounced the leadership of Socialist PSD, until not long ago the main Romanian party. For a contrarian such as myself, this is the perfect moment to announce my undying love for this misunderstood and not very presentable "prezidentiable".

I probably won’t be voting this year. I’m telling you about my failed attempt to register for “vote by correspondence” or “votul prin corespondenta” as well as my passport application.

The most important debating tournament in Romania took place at the “Mihai Viteazu” high-school and the reporter summarized a debate with a BIRT on whether the Romanian government should provide reparations to the Roma community for the Holocaust. This is worth a discussion.

I have recently read an opinion by some “journo” in a tabloid on how anonymous SIM cards should be sold no more (i.e., make them available only to those producing ID). I argue that the writing privileges of this person should be suspended.

A while back, I was having an argument (well, it’s more like I was trying to have a conversation with my designated troll, banned since) about the downside of population decline (PD). He demanded to know why is it bad (which is what I was trying to say) and I thought I provided some studies, but while searching, I was unsatisfied with the quality of the studies I had found. (The title term refers mostly to economy (i.e., population drops below the level required to carry the economy or more specifically old age pensions) whereas PD refers to demographics.) Since then, I’ve found a bit more so here it is.

Those of us who haven’t forgotten the recent elections (and this includes some of those happy with the results as well as those who predicted a PSD win, were proven wrong and keep looking for a reason to save their reputation) are still somewhat surprised. I know I am. So while looking for a well laid out contrarian opinion, I discovered the blog PoliTichii, obstinately hanging on to a pro-PSD viewpoint after having [wrongly] forecasted a PSD win.

Is it fair to give special incentive to the diaspora to return home? Doesn’t that encourage more to leave only to get the money on coming back?

I try to make sense of who voted for whom in this election, and especially who voted for PNL. Surprisingly for me, PNL managed to attract a majority of women / rural / “unoccupied” voters.

As previously announced, I am presenting here the questions to ask euro candidates. I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to pose the questions, which is why I am posting them here, in the hope that someone else might help asking them and returning the answers.

So many scandals in Romania, so little time. It's hard to decide what to write about. I can't read Romanian news - everything is clickbait and when I try reading something, I invariably find grammar, spelling or logic (or all of the above) mistakes. I choose to write about a "scandal" that happened toward the end of March, because none of the opinions I've read explain what's going on to my level of perception.

#WTA has recently confused #Romania anti-#corruption #rezist #protest with people coming out in the streets to welcome and congratulate Simona Halep in her recent Grand Slam triumph (gsp-tnr). It’s not only foreigners not getting what’s going on, but even some of those protesting.

When discussing corruption, my view is that Romanian corruption is not much higher than elsewhere, when comparing apples to apples. It irks me to hear people who try to motivate their compatriots with calls to make “corruption” like and idyllic West, because in so doing, they prove they do not know much about the West (or they have misunderstood what they’ve learned), and are also selling short their own country.

Honest Ed is an iconic “Canadian Kwik-E-Mart” that will forever close its doors on December 31, 2016. If you are wondering what does this have to do with the recently arraigned Ion Iliescu, well, I couldn’t find another rhyme.

Whenever I talk to Romanians who want to come to Canada and I answer questions, I always end up being a bit upset. I find that people ask me too many simple questions they could answer themselves with Google and too few of the “important” questions. Maybe there’s a guru hiding inside of me, and here’s where I set him free.

I promised a reader to answer a thoughtful provocation on Herta Mueller and I finally keep (or try to) my word. I am replying to Mr Mihail Lungu in regards to how opportune and appropriate was my declared enthusiasm for her work and her Nobel.

The fatalities count has gone North of 30, and I try to parse all the data, info and opinions that are squirting on the Internet much like the absent fire extinguishers should have in the infernal basement.

It’s been a while since we haven’t talked about poverty in Romania and solutions. A recent “debate” caused by an over-the-top article on not giving money to the poor gives us a chance to look at it again and also address our reticence with BDSM practices.

After introducing the reader to a Tutea-like blogger (but without the mandibular shaking, and as a blogger, he writes rather than talks), today I was going to continue the cycle of Alexic Danopathy, as promised. Recently, National Geographic has written at length about Trajan’s Column (research first covered a few months ago), and surprisingly, Alexic Danopathy “scholarship” and research is nowhere to be found there. There’s more to be said, but I got sidetracked by his conversation with someone he calls Tartina Lol (caba-tl). 

A recent Op-Ed in New York Times seems to have caused a fair amount of consternation in both Romania as well as among my diaspora friends. Ion could equally be Ion Iliescu, recently green-lighted to be re-investigated in the “Mineriada” file, Adrian Nastase, the suicidal former premier and failed presidential candidate who had become the first test case of prosecutorial overreach in the case of an elite aparatchik, or even Patrick Basham, not afraid to confront the warm, fuzzy racism/scepticism/antiziganism-fuelled consensus that Romania is “doing something”.

Blegoo, previously profiled and published here, took some time off from shovelling to write an article for this blog, as a guest. I’m publishing it here as encouragement (longer version), with the spelling mistakes left uncorrected but listed at the end, and also detailing there the formatting work I (still) had to do.