Who are gangs that kidnap and kill in Syria?

I am watching Romanian television B1. A woman refugee says that suddenly gangs have started to kidnap and kill people.
The kidnaping is done for money, so it could be that the terrorists are financing in that way their attacks.
Also a sniper shot at her bus driver when she returned in Syria, also a motorcycle followed them taking pictures and filming.
Very unlikely that the government wants to make the situation instable.

'We are the Millers' a comedy that shows a grim reality

I watched yesterday "We are the Millers" a very good comedy, despite their lousy trailer.
The comedy shows the habits of some American families while following the adventures of a marijuana dealer,a stripper,a nerd and troubled teenage girl, disguised as a normal American family in order to bring 2 tonnes of marijuana from Mexico.
This bunch of misfits succeed to create a normal family by helping one each other, and staying together against adversities while they entertain us with humorous situations.

Usually comedies are taking an average person, and putting it in a abnormal situation, and for this reason Julius Caesar's life cannot be a comedy.(But if you put  Julius Caesar in a normal situation it will be a buffoonery.)
So who are the normal guys from this comedy ?
Bored moms and dads that are indulging casual consumption of drugs or group sex.
College graduates that  are dealing drugs for living.
I don't know how easy is to get marihuana in US, or how often it is consumed, but the film shows that something is happening because US is leader in marijuana consumption.And this could lead to the increase of stupidity or as a World Health Organization report puts it:
"selective impairment of cognitive functioning which include the organization and integration of complex information involving various mechanisms of attention and memory processes;"
Stupidity is a disease worse than cancer, because it affects others as well. Especially if you drive an SUV and have a firearm. A sober stupid man should be feared more than a drunk Einstein.
I think not enough funds are allocated for fighting stupidity.

Some people argue that marijuana should be legalized because it is widely used and the police cannot enforce restrictions, and they give as an example the prohibition that failed to deter people from drinking.

In fact if you compare the alcohol consumption before and after prohibition, you will see that after the prohibition the alcohol consumption didn't rise to previous values until 1970.
An enforcement no matter how small will  stop the drug to become mainstream,widely used and consumed in large quantities.

Both Prohibition and Legalize marihuana movements have same argument: if the other are doing it it is ok, it is safe.If the others are not drinking it this means you shouldn't drink, if others smoke some plants it is safe to do it also.
People should be learned to think for themselves if it is ok to ingest an substance that can give you pleasure now but can harm you later.
In stone age the people were smarter, they didn't eat something that didn't know, and those who did eat something toxic died. But it seems that today we must explore the full potential of the medical science and invent new cures for alcoholism and drug addiction.

What they want in Syria?

I don't understand what the NATO, wants from Syria.
Officially they say that will shoot some rockets and that's will be all. No toppling of the regime.
Assad in this case will duck from rockets and will continue to kill his people.
If islamists will win in Syria  will be bad for West, if Assad stays in power is bad for West. It is a lose lose situation.
The only win-win situation will be to freeze the conflict and to allow development of a democratic society.
By democratic society I mean, the people should struggle for power with peacefull means.
A good solution is to sent UN troops to provide a barrier between combatants.

I think that either the western politicians are liars, and their purpose is to topple the Assad regime, and they want to escalate slowly the conflict, either they are stupid and they think they can solve the Syrian problem with some rockets in matters of days.They think that we are idiots, and we will buy this.
These politician have forgotten that World War I should have lasted few months, and the Afghan and Iraq wars should have ended few years ago.

Gypsy king

If you lived in a cave the last days, maybe you didn't heard that his majesty Florin Cioaba II passed away in a Turkish hospital.
For 3 days all the TV stations mourned the death of the the great king Cioaba.
If all the most praised Romanians  would die tomorrow,in a plane crash (as happened in Poland), maybe the TV station will speak 15 minutes.
But maybe Florin Cioaba is a special man. Maybe he reduced illiteracy in the gypsy community, maybe he helped other poor gypsies.
When asked what king Cioaba has done for it's community, the only thing that came in Mr. president Basescu mind, was: "He christened a lot of gypsies".
We have a saint among us and we didn't know.
After saint apostles Peter and Paul, we have saint apostle Cioaba of the gypsies.
Anyway in order to sanctify Cioaba, he must perform a miracle. He can start by giving 300000 dollars to the Turkish doctors, who tried to save him.
Till his sanctification maybe we should bury him, in Aachen near Charlemagne, another monarch that christened people.
Till now I underestimated the influence of some gypsy leaders on the Romanian politics, but when I saw all the televisions bowing to their money and their influence, I realized that they have penetrated deeply the political environment.
The connections between Romanian politicians and gypsies stretched back in communist era, when the party officials sold protection against the law, and gypsies provided money from black market.
These fruitful connection was maintained, gypsy leaders providing now votes from their community, and politicians providing laws:
-The gypsy gold confiscated by communists was given back very fast but the buildings confiscated are still not given back.
-Some gypsy groups own now the historical center of Timisoara, using false claims
-At the past referendum, some politicians from Cluj's National Liberal Party branch were accused of negotiating vote selling with some known criminals. The criminals were not gypsy, but there were cases when poor gypsies were rounded up by some leaders and sent to vote for a certain party in exchange of some meager sum of money.

If the gypsies will be educated and well off, the authority of these kings will fade, and they will not have political power to trade with politicians.And politicians will find hard to obtain majority in some electoral colleges, without the help of gypsy leaders.
So the politicians have all interest to support the authority of these kings.

Update:
Cioaba's family after claiming that it didn't have money to pay the medical bill, had obtained now the release of Cioaba's body in exchange of 15000 $ instead of 300000$. Before that they requested help from romanian goverment.
The rest will be payed later.
Anyway if they want to pay back the money, the could sell the funeral television rights to television.
I could list some interested televisions:
-Manele TV for the funeral concert of Adrian Minune, si Nicolae Guta
-History Channel for a documentary on Cioaba dynasty.
-Discovery Channel for the making of a gypsy funeral.

Despre oamenii simpli

Ion Iliescu ii lauda pe oamenii simpli, ca ei sunt coloana vertebrala a societatii si ei trebuie sa conduca.
Am vrut sa vad ce inseamna prost in ruseste (adica прост). Surpriza, inseamana simplu.
Acuma stau si ma intreb: Iliescu gandea in ruseste?
O fi incurcat limbile si vrand sa spuna oameni prosti, o fi spus oameni simpli?

Rich countries Achille's heel

The Stanford marshmallow experiment states that if we delay our immediate rewards in order to obtain later bigger rewards, we would have bigger success in life.

A man or a woman from a poor country is forced to delay the immediate rewards in order to obtain gain later. 

In childhood he or she didn't get what all he/she want, and it is used with frustrations and delayed gratification.

On the other hand people from rich countries get always what they want, and they are not used with frustrations, and delayed gratifications, and it is hard for them to follow careers which require long term effort.

The ease of emigration drains the motivated individuals from poor countries into rich countries, taking jobs of the least competitive locals and keeping the advantage of the rich countries, at the expense of the least qualified locals.

These least qualified locals if they will not acquire new skills they will be marginalized, and they will increase the ranks of extremist parties.

De ce Omar Hayssam a ajuns asa tarziu in Romania?

Unele ziare/site-uri zic ca Omar Hayssam a venit in Romania deoarece cei de la Bucuresti l-au santajat pe socrul unui var de al presedintelui Bashar Al-Assad.
L-au santajat ca ii inchid toate afacerile din Romania.
Daca puteau sa-l santajeze asa usor, de ce nu au facut-o mai devreme? Ce au asteptat?
De ce sirienii nu au raspuns la santaj mai repede?

National pride will ever boost the economy?

After the fall of comunism in '89, the national pride fell sharply in Eastern Europe and in my particular  case, in Romania.
If before '89 the propaganda led people to believe that you live in best country of the world, and it would be better if the imperialist enemy would not sabotage our efforts to create a better world, now people are depressed by the comparisons with western Europe, and they have an underdeserved low self esteem.
Some people argue that if we will rebuild our esteem and national pride, we will be mobilize together our energies and we will change things.
I don't agree with this because as the proverb says:"Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.", this will makes us arrogant, and not willing to change.
Usually the pride comes after a success and before a long slow fall, and not before a success.
Spaniards conquered America, and they became proud and arrogant and they didn't adapt, then they lost Holland, who became succesfull in creating an comercial empire. Then Holland became proud and arrogant and lost it's empire to the british.
France under Napoleon conquered half of Europe, became proud and arrogant, and then lost all.
Britain freed from the problems with France, created it's empire, became proud and arrogant, and lost all.
Germany became proud and arrogant, and lost 2 world wars.
Now USA is proud.(Not the proudest, as you will see below.)
But many nations remained just proud without any significant success.
Some will argue, maybe the spaniards,the netherlanders,the british,the french,the germans were proud before and that drived their expansion.
If the national proud is the main driver for the economical development, then we should see a direct corelation between and economic indicator such as GDP per capita and national pride.
I started to search some data, and I found a study from University of Chicago regarding the national pride.

Then for each country I have search the GDP per capita, and Gini index.
(I wanted to use Gini index of inequality of incomes to compensate for GDP information.)

And the prize for the proudest nation on Earth goes to (drum beat): Venezuela.

As you can see from the graphic below the people from Venezuela are a little bit prouder that the USA despite the fact that they produce per capita 4 time less.
As the study says: "National pride is shaped by the unique societal and historical circumstance existing in each country and by ones socio-demographic position within each society." (In Venezuela case: who wants to leave a warm climate country filled with beautiful women?)

But if we explore the boring data's we observe that to the same GDP per capita, Hungary,Uruguay and Russia are more proud than Latvia.
Also Austria,Canada and Denmark are more proud than Germany,France and Sweden at the same GDP.
Why Austria is more proud than the Germany? And why Denmark is more proud than Sweden?
It is clear that not the economic differences are determining these differences.

The diagram of proudness vs inequality index shows that national pride increases a little bit with income inequality:


In conclusion the national pride doesn't ensure economic welfare. So fuck off nationalistic politicians, try to come with some solutions not with demagogic speech.
And romanians,keep the low esteem, this will not affect the economy but it wil determine you to change.
In order to survive you must adapt and change.

 PS.The data I used for diagrams, you can find it under the following link.

Rasism a natural evolution of the nation state?

The idea of nationalism appeared because a wider national teritory had to be controlled, and it wasn't enough fot this the loyalty of the local lords. The nation state, had to have the loyalty of the people in order not to fell in civil war.
So a bond of common history,mithology and blood was created in order to maintain the loyalty of citizens towards the nation states.

When nation state became colonial empire,the need for a stronger support for this new political conception grew.

But the colony was something new, it wasn't the land of the ancestors that had to be defended against enemies, so the history and mithology could not justify the effort to conquer the new colonies.


And what was left in the concontion of nationalism was only blood.
So men were united only by their genetic traits, and their blood line, became their new home land that had to be defended against foreign invadors.