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Biden Throws His Hat in the Ring
No. 45, Jan.-Feb. 2024 President Joe Biden recently announced his intention to run for a second term as President. His detractors mocked him for a message that was both alarmist and emotional, as well as for the fact that it had been pre-recorded and scripted, like most of the media appearances of the oldest American leader. However, the Biden Campaign cannot be underestimated. Despite its weaknesses, potential legal hurdles, and questionable performances, the Democratic Party will rally behind him as the only notable candidate capable of defeating Trump or a Trumpist successor like DeSantis. More
Employees Working Abroad, of Great Importance for Romania
No. 45, Jan.-Feb. 2024 For France, Romania and Belgium, the positive net balance of personal transfers and compensation of employees reduces their current account deficits significantly, according to data for 2022 published recently by Eurostat. For some countries, net inflows of personal transfers and compensation of employees are important sources of external funding and contributors to a recipient’s disposable income and GNI.Romania considerably reduced its negative current account balances through these net inflows, with €7.4 billion (see Figure 1). The current account deficit for Romania would have been €33.5 billion instead of €26.1 billion, which includes transactions related to personal transfers and compensation of employees. More
Loneliness as a Disease: A Bird in Its Cage and the Effects of Consumerism
No. 45, Jan.-Feb. 2024 In the fast-paced society we live in, the divide between generations is more pressing than it has ever been. Parents and children have always clashed, but the general saying nowadays is that “things were better in my time”. Whether you translate this phrase in Romanian, put into Japanese hiragana or find its equivalent in Arabic, the general sentiment is the same: degradation is impending and people yearn for better times, as they were before.Where does this sentiment actually come from? Is it some sort of en-masse illusion? Maybe it’s just a stage that every person goes through once they hit their midlife crisis. Is there some sort of truth to it? As humans, we compare every experience we engage in with past situations, in order to find answers. We use these models due to the fact that they are all we know and we thrive on precedents. So, when people go metaphorically back in time, they actually romanticize the sense of comfort that their youth brought them. This is done on micro-levels too. A 70-year-old always remembers his 50s fondly. A 40-year-old yearns to be 25 again. Some would say it is just the nature of man, and I tend to agree.So, where does loneliness come into play? More
Heartland vs. Rimland
No. 45, Jan.-Feb. 2024 The last decade saw more and more thoughts on, opinions, and claims that a new world order is just around the corner and the old system of bipolar and then unipolar world will belong in the history books. The “Pax Americana” period is living its final days, marking the beginning of a not so long interregnum characterized by a vaguely-defined so-called “multipolar world”. Since it is unstable in the longer term, multipolarity will most likely segregate and in the end will lead to a world dominated either by a single power, probably China, or, more likely, by another bipolar world divided on an East-West gradient politically and economically, but, more importantly, on ideology and in terms of the proposed social model. This could mean the end of globalization as we know it in its Anglo-Saxon form, but does not mean that globalization itself will be gone completely. It just may very well take another shape, under a presumable new “Pax Sinica”, or a half-half globalization in case of bipolarity, meaning one type of international system in the Western, democratic and capitalist world and another form in the authoritarian states in Eurasia. Pretty much like in the Cold War, with the main difference that these two global systems can cooperate economically much more than in the previous setting. More
Human Rights and America’s “Empire by Invitation”
No. 45, Jan.-Feb. 2024 The idea of universal human rights is part of the borrowed capital the West secularized from its Biblical origins as the eternal kingdom of Christ. Cut off from its source is becomes sentimental, utopian, ideological and sometimes apocalyptic. Most of the damage to the idea of universal human rights was done more than 75 years ago through the ideological twist which was added at the insistence of the Soviet Union after the Second World War.The first twenty-one points of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) are classified as civil and political rights: “freedoms from.” These are best regarded, first of all, as liberties which deserve protection rather than rights which have standing in courts of law. The next seven, which the Soviets insisted upon, are social and economic rights – “obligations to” – various social and economic categories. These might best be characterized as collective rather than individual rights, sometimes as claims upon the government treasury. They are rights other people – ultimately taxpayers – owe to a distinct class of people rather than liberties for all which governments are obliged to protect. More
Unsupported Sport Spirit (International Edition)
No. 45, Jan.-Feb. 2024 “The ball is round” is a statement endowed with immeasurable explanatory power, a veritable theory of general relativity of human life, since it is often used in so many extra-football justifications. It’s a statement that should be a working premise in any setup in the world, whether it’s based on rough elbows and fine ankles or anything else. The ideal of football would be for it to represent the game of the ball, played with the feet, but by people with their heads up whether on the field, the side-lines, the boards of sports clubs or associative structures. Representing a distillate of human passions, football concentrates both humanity and nothingness and it does so regardless of jurisdictions, cultures, histories and horizons. Football, as a common denominator of a huge part of the population of the world map, preserves in high concentrations everything that brings us together and divides us too: solidarity and passion, excellence and mediocrity, justice and crookedness, joy and hatred. The “Copa Mundial”, Brazil 2014, started some time ago, on which occasion we saw once again that football exhibits and exhales planetary virtues and vices. More
Beyond Borders: An In-Depth Exploration of the Implications of the Dispute between Venezuela and Guyana Over the Essequibo Region
This article provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over the Essequibo region, capturing its historical roots, evolution, and current situation. The research focuses on the influence of natural resources discovered in shaping the politico-economic interests that perpetuate instability, employing a multidisciplinary approach that unveils diplomatic interventions and the dynamics of international involvement. The article specifies the economic implications for each state and offers a perspective for a peaceful resolution, emphasizing regional stability, economic development, and bilateral cooperation. The conclusions of the article highlight the necessity of resolving this dispute, providing an analysis with practical implications for decision-makers, diplomats, or international organizations addressing similar challenges in other disputed territories. More
Neighbourly Bickering: The Argentine – Chilean Dispute for the Southern Patagonian Ice Field
Over the past two hundred years, Chile and Argentina have developed a fruitful bilateral relationship, marked by ups and downs, where any conflict was resolved through agreements and negotiations. However, the greatest difficulties have arisen in delimiting the borders for the Southern regions, specifically the Campos de Hielo Sur/ The Southern Patagonian Ice Field, where each state mapped out spaces that overlapped graphically. There have been multiple attempts to solve this issue by establishing a definitive limit, engaging in high-level conversations between the governments involved. Despite numerous territorial concessions from Chile, there still remain unresolved aspects and unjustified decisions. More
Small Island, Huge Stakes: the Dispute between Iran and the UAE for Abu Musa
Abu Musa is a small island situated in the Persian Gulf whose strategic position allows the power that controls it to influence the maritime traffic that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. This characteristic made it the point of contention between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, both states actively claiming their sovereignty over the island along with its sister islands of the Greater and Lesser Tunb.Iran is the de-facto ruler of these important islands since 1971, when it orchestrated their invasion at a time when they were in the possession of the Emirate of Sharjah, now part of the United Arab Emirates (Mobley, 2003). Regarding the island of Abu Musa, Iran maintains that the territory is an inalienable part of the state, refusing any kind of negotiations that imply otherwise. In turn, the UAE continues to claim the islands as part of the Emirate of Sharjah, which is one the Emirates composing it, and alongside other actors, advocates for negotiating a diplomatic solution to this dispute. More
Romania, Second Lowest Price Level in the EU for 2022
Romania had the second lowest price level in the EU for the year 2022, with a value of 59.3% relative to the European average. Bulgaria was first, with an index of 58.5%, and above our country were situated Poland (60.7%), Hungary (67.7%), Croatia (73.5%), Lithuania (78.8%) and Czechia (84.3%).*In 2022, the highest price level for consumer goods and services among the EU Member States was observed in Denmark (49% above the EU average) and the lowest in Bulgaria and Romania (41% below the average). More
The Trump Storm
2022 and 2023 saw a large number of suits brought against Trump, some of them legally and others still in the court of public opinion, from where his critics hope they will move into the courthouse. These cover a bewildering array of charges, ranging from rape to defamation to campaign finance fraud, and from improper use and storage of classified materials to insurrection. What are the charges? Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying documents related to payments made to women with whom he had sexual affairs in order to buy their silence. The main woman involved was the porn actress Stormy Daniels, whose case has been discussed since the beginning of Trump's tenure. The payments were made by Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, and were reimbursed from Trump organization funds marked as legal expenses. Normally, such actions, however disgraceful, would constitute a misdemeanor for which Trump would be fined, but Cohen was also well-positioned in Trump's campaign, and a visionary prosecutor made him declare, as part of Cohen's 2018 agreement with authorities regarding his personal financial crimes, that those payments represented a campaign contribution because Stormy Daniels' silence and the silence of the rest of Trump's “harem” facilitated his election as President, not just savi More
Let’s Not Let the Politicians Play Bits and Bytes!
Before the political elections (about a year or so before), on the day of the vote and a little while after, the citizens remember the values of the Polis: the social contract (a subtle notion), democracy (more declaimed than digested), the rule of law (or the primacy of laws, which become frail when legality does not rhyme with justice). In the rest of the time between electoral cycles, we find ourselves, usually, in the posture of citizens nursing a profound displeasure towards the elected, who either forgo the promises for which we voted, or they deliver precisely the promises we did not vote for. Somehow, in between elections, power becomes something wielded by a few of “us”, as is the case on election day, when a majority of a narrow minority wins the day and decides the collective future. It leads to many people being in hock to the opposition, which is waiting for another turn of the wheel in their favour. This is the curse of the “social contract”, the high priests of the status quo assure us a bit cynically! More
