Biggest game

I like Rowanne, I did since the day I've met her. Despite her poor choice of a favourite team, when it comes to football she's got the right sort of passion, the passion that could move mountains and fulfil dreams. This article is for her, in response to the following facebook message:"Can I ask you a favour? One of my br colleagues is doing a piece on games from a fans pov and he's missing an Eastern European influence. Could you possibly knock up about 200 words on the biggest Steaua game you've attended?" Well, Rowanne, it's more than 200 words, I tried to give you more to choose from.

The biggest Steaua game I ever attended... this is like asking who's the most beautiful woman in the world or what's the best car. One can have favourites, but in the end you can't really tell.

The first big game that comes to mind is 1-0 against Southampton in 2003; then 1-1 against Liverpool the same year, both in the UEFA Cup. The next few years good performances kept pouring in. The UEFA Cup match against Valencia in 2004 stands out: having lost 2-0 in Spain to the trophy holders, recent winners of the European Super Cup and a team ranked at number 1 by UEFA coefficients, managed by a then very fashionable Rafa Benitez, Steaua looked like an easy prey. Despite the hopeful media hype, not a lot of people in the stands in that cold, rainy February night in Bucharest expected our guys could go past the first knock-out stage of the competition. Qualifying from a tricky group was enough of a performance and we were there merely to congratulate Walter Zenga and his players. And of course, because we were always there. However, despite not getting the much expected early goal and despite the 0-0 at half time, Steaua managed to push for extra time after two second half goals by Andrei Cristea. By the time of the penalties, the psychological gap between the teams was so big, there could only be one winner. I wonder if there's a point in saying anything about locking up down town Bucharest until morning, getting home drunk two days later, or calling all my friends in the middle of the night. Not that anyone was sleeping anyway. All of these have happened, but the emotion of the night is not brought back by merely recollecting the facts. I doubt it can ever come back.

Sure, we were knocked out by Villareal the following round, but by that woke no one up from the dream. And I bet none of the 25.000 people that waited two hours in the blistering snow for a game that was never going to happen regret it.

Things went on upping next season. The decade-old Champions League dream still eluded us, but Steaua marched gloriously through the UEFA Cup group, winning it undefeated, with a 4-0 hammering of RC Lens the icing on the cake. I remember that game well. We stopped a shooting day of a multi-million dollar budget film early to get to it. We had 11 of the English guys in the crew with us. Gary Pocock, big Spurs fan, told me after that game: “I have been to many stadiums, all around Europe, but what I have seen last night was the best atmosphere I witnessed in my life.” The next day, some of those 11 were sporting Steaua shirts.

When European spring came about in 2005 the upgrade to Ghencea Stadium forced Steaua to play on National Arena, some 5 miles away. And I remember the each of the bi-weekly 5-mile pilgrimage. 0-0 against Herenveen, followed by 3-1 in Netherlands. 0-0 against Betis Sevilla, followed by 3-0 in Spain. 0-0 against local arch-rivals Rapid on the back of a 1-1 away draw. The only win, and the most memorable game of the campaign was 1-0 against Middlesbrough in the semi-final. We could smell European glory, and the 55.000 at that game joined forces to display just one, gigantic word: THE FINAL. It was not going to happen, and after the psychological breakdown on Riverside where we lost 4-2 we had to watch FC Sevilla lifting the trophy.

Nevertheless, there were more than 55.000 trying to attend the game against Standard Liege 3 months later. So much more that about 5.000 were left at the gates. After 10 years, Champions League football was going to happen again. I remember a few things from that game. I remember one banner. They're always as funny as they are politically incorrect: “Bonjour! Belgian pedophiles on tour”. I remember our two goals. But most of all I remember the torches. Once the Champions League qualification was sealed, they started. It was forbidden, of course it was forbidden. No one protested though. The match programme, distributed for free before the game, made for some great torches. Must've been about 20.000 of them. Quite a sight.

And I remember going to the first my first Champions League game. Those Fors cardboard cutouts above the turnstiles looked like the gate to Neverland. Ce sont les meilleures equipes... We were up against the best and, by God, did we enjoy it! Sure, nothing ever came out of it, and we are still to qualify for the Champions League knock-out stage, but no one can take away the memories: visits by Olympique Lyonnais, Real Madrid, Arsenal, Bayern Munich and the likes. Record away turnout at the Santiago Bernabeu. About 25.000 Steaua fans, more than even Barcelona or Atletico produce there. One unlucky ball away from drawing with the best team in the history of the game on their turf.

Oh, there were high and lows. It's always like that. It was sad going out to Chelsea in Europa League earlier this year, but how can we not be proud after dominating the Champions League holders three halves out of four? As for that Champions League knock-out stage qualification, not to worry. It will come. There's always next year.

I know, I spoke exclusively about European games. Of course there have been memorable domestic games. Plenty of them. However, it's different in the home league. We know we're the pick of the crop. It's in Europe we can really measure our strength. And only against the very best.

The 2008 concert

10.000 people for a Leonard Cohen concert sounds a bit inappropriate. A poet of whispered riots and calm profoundities, Leonard Cohen is not a singer for a full stadium audience, I thought.

I had no idea back then about the magical powers this old man has. Leonard Cohen knows how to transform the crowds and how to convert his listeners in the same manner the ancient prophets must have done.

With his intimate poetry and interiorized music, Leonard Cohen managed to become a voice for thousands of souls, conquering an audience encompassing people of ages between his own and the one of his most recent album.

He started calmly, simple, with a famous verse that nobody had the courage to echo for fear of tainting the voice that gives the song a life of its own: "Dance me to your beauty, with a burning violin..." Had we listened to him and dance to the end of love, we'd still be there, dancing.

It took me a while to enter the STATE... I think it was after the first 6 songs, on Who by Fire, a poem sounding much like a curse.

After gifting us with the unforgettable image he speaks about as the creed of his life, but which to me appears as very sexual - "there is a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in" - the master took a break. A 20 minutes silence in a set over 3 hours long!

He then came back courageous, discovering the Truth in the voice of the two "sublime" Webb sisters singing a meaningless line: "Di dam dam dam de du dam dam...". Tower of Song, the place where he was raised by artist more successful than himslef, the humble elder who took the hat off in front of us, an audience embarassed by the undeserved honor.

He didn't act and he did not wait for a reaction to do an encore, probably because the link he was trying to establish involved Music in its purest form not us, the impious spectators of a phenomena we admired without fully understanding. "We'll keep playing... if you wish to stay" And he kept playing... exceeding expectations, the schedule and the rain that quickly ran away scared by the ease with which he took Manhattan the he took Berlin. Leonard Cohen also took the guitar, the keyboard, the mike and he sang, covering us all with just one, famous blue raincoat.

We parted friends, us singing him Happy Birtday and him wishing us a safe trip home and to keep the cold away.

I liked Cohen. I liked the way he tried to say Bucureshti instead of Bucharestand I liked how, after kneelling, taking his hat off and bowing in front of us he simply said: "Thank you, friends, for this warm welcome, of which we're deeply appreciative"

I liked the way he recounted his band, plenty of times. Eight musicians, of which maybe only two were born when Suzanne turned from a person into a poem on her way to immortality.

And I liked Javier Mas, Cohen's guitarist, band's best virtuoso in my opinion. From the way he was fighting his guitar, shaking it as if he wanted to snatch from it the sounds the instrument was stubbornly keeping to itself and from the way he caressed the strings as sweet as he was brutal with the instrument's body I saw the Music being born.

It's true I've been slightly let down by Hallelujah, but maybe it is just because I felt so brutally in love with Rufus Wainwright's cover.

Before this summer, Cohen did not play since he was 60 ("just a boy with a crazy dream" as he says). He climed a sacred mountain and descended it like a lay Zarathustra, a preacher of everything that brings man closer to animals. He started singing again after 15 years and he reached us on the exact day he turned 74. Happy Birtday, Maestro!

The Canadian Namesake

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas (2012)

It is rare that I listen to full albums. And when I do, it is always a random event. In the age of digital music, it seems to me the very concept of album lasts due to tradition rather than necessity.

But just becasue the Guradian provided a free streaming I stumbled upon, I decided to listen Leonard Cohen's new album, Old Ideas. There's plenty you can make Leonard Cohen guilty of. He never innovates, his sound is unchanged for over 40 years. His music is too slow and it has, just like Moliere's physicians used to say, sleeping properties. I don't care. He doesn't care. For a man his age and with achievements such as his, being liked by anybody else but himself is the least important thing. His fans don't seems to care either.

I suspect Cohen is not even interested in music in itself. rather, his daimon craves expressing himself in as many artistic ways as possible. Although I think his utmost expression is in poetry. Only because every time I think about Cohen's music, I can only recall images created by the lyrics first and foremost. By the words. The music is just a background, it just paves the way poetry uses to walk freely between souls. This album is no exception. There are a few great poems. My favorite is Anyhow. And some lyrics baffle me to the point that the only reaction I'm left with is cathartic ecstasy, amazement in front of the beauty of the world: "I dreamed about you, baby, You were wearing half your dress, I know you have to hate me, But could you hate me less?"

Going Home, the first track of the album, is sort of an essentialized, stylized autobiography, full of calm, detachement and slightly self-deprecating. Its lyrics are equally impressive, even more so if we believe the master when he says "He's a lazy bastard living in a suit"

The album's been on repeat for the past three days, but I am yet to listen to it enough to learn the lyrics. For all the praise my memory has received, it is rather clumsy when it comes to remembering lyrics. It surprizes me sometimes when I suddenly recall "Tell me again when the filth of the butcher Is washed by the blood of the lamb", but although captivating from the first audition, there's still some listening to it until the album gets me completely.

Reading the lyrics, I identify myself so completely with the images pictured that I internalise them and I start feeling them as being stories from my own life, stories that simply a better poet did me the favor of putting them in writing.

I cherish the memory of the 2008 gig and the big surprise I had upon learning Leonard Cohen can be a spectacular live performer. I hope this album will trigger a new tour and I hope I will get to see the master live at least once more. I am very sorry I couldn't make to his second concert in Romania.

I was hoping this will be an album review. No idea what it is. Of course I can't write album reviews, I said I don't listen to full albums. What's certain is that in January 2012 Leonard Cohen launched the album Old Ideas and it just so happens I like this album a lot. Furthermore, it left me wanting to listen again to Cohen's previous songs. What this old boy does sounds like sad music, music for the defeated, he even calls it this himself a number of times. And yet, few things make me as optimistic as these lyrics do, lyrics sounding like they speak mainly about sex, like an underlying theme poorly disguised, although to me they appear to speak mainly about love. Almost exclusively about love. I certainly am going through a Cohen period.

I'd love to speak with Leonard [ENG]

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas World Tour 2012, Wembley Arena, London, 2012-09-08

Leonard Cohen is obviously not as popular in England as he is in Romania or - I imagine - in other parts of the world.  This concert was almost not at all promoted on the mainstream media channels and was vastly overshadowed by Noel Gallagher's flying birds who played at the same venue the night before. Around me I saw mostly middle aged and elderly people, quite a different crowd than the standard concert-goers. Otherwise, the wicked tongues would be mostly right in saying the whole tour, just like the last one, is only made so that an old guy who took a 15-years break from his musical activity can financially secure his pension years. But has Leonard Cohen anything left to prove at 79? The venue was packed anyway, and in the end the people in the audience looked charmed and all the faces I've seen were smiling. Besides, this old guy has just released a new album last year, and I was very curios about listening bits of it live.

Supported by a 9-people band, Leonard Cohen came onto the stage bouncing, as usual, and his playful attitude turned into one of humble gratitude only when he got in front of the microphone and he stopped there to receive the applause that the public welcomed him with. Then he started: „Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin...”

Who is the love of his life for this poet of love, I wondered? Is it Heather, to whom he dedicates the 2004 album? Is it Suzanne, the crazy woman dressed in rags and feathers? Marianne, from which he takes such a sad goodbye? Janis, who he disses in two of his most famous songs? Last night, in the beginning of the show, after the first 5 words he sang knelled in front of Javier Mas' guitar, I realised whose beauty this song is about: Music, she's the one Cohen sang to last night, she's the one he was trying to caress as it went out of the Spanish master's strings and it's probably his most stable love, regardless of them being apart for over a decade.

Initially I thought Leonard Cohen's voice is not at its best, I thought it's far from the musicality of the original version of Dance me to the End of Love. If this were the first time I see him live, I would've though it's because of his age. But I saw him 4 years ago and I know that's not the case. How big a difference is there between a man at 75 and at 79? I imagined he's tired or that he has a bad day, which are both very possible. At the same time, I remembered how Tudor Gheorghe answered the critics questioning his guitar playing abilities: "To me, the guitar is just props. I am not a virtuoso, I am just a messenger. I am just trying to pass on the poetry." The same relationship, it seems, is established between Cohen and his voice. The voice is merely an instrument, it might as well just not be there, it is just an aid in the act of transmitting poetry. And if, at 79, Leonard Cohen's body is allowed to have a bad day every once in a while, his soul is arguably stronger and filled with poetry more than it ever was.

I remembered in Bucharest 4 years ago I needed about 5 songs to totally give in to the music coming from the stage. It happened on Who by Fire and because last night Who by Fire was again the fifth song of the set I smiled and lived the Bucharest concert again in its five minutes. This time though, Going Home was the song that hit the bull's eye, the song by whose end I woke up flabbergasted, without realising whatever happened. Leonard Cohen was still on the stage, singing, the people around me were still there, the hall and the whole world were never moved from their place and my body was still there, but somehow I felt different. Like I went through the strangest journey, just like the Prophet of Islam, up to the ninth heaven of music, like I was face to face with Poetry itself. „I'd love to speak with Leonard...” I understood this. I'd love to speak with Leonard too, a lazy bastard that's not even willing to wear a suit.

Covered by his excellent backing band's music on I Can't Forget, the master said: "I used to live in London a long time ago, back when Hampstead was not yet fashionable... I lived there with Paul and Linda and their son... did this really happened? I can't remember..." It happened to me as well, at his concerts and at the very good gigs in general. I can't tell which one is the world I really live in, what is reality, what actually happens and what's imagined, just like a junkie whose addiction is music...

„He's so respectful with his musicians” the lady to my left told me at one point. By the look of it, she had dragged her daughter and two of her daughter's friends to this concert. The girls didn't seem particularly thrilled before the show started, but their state visibly changed by the end of it. Leonard Cohen is indeed, extremely respectful with his musicians, and he's got plenty of reasons to be. He presented them all for about 4 times, slowly, in detail, and gave each of them the chance to a solo. He would start from the left: "From Barcelona, maestro Javier Mas..." Aha, so there is something good coming out of that city after all! I remember being impressed by master Javier Mas in Bucharest 4 years ago as well. He didn't seem to fight the guitar as much last night, but the music coming out of the strings of his 12-string Spanish guitar sounded at least as charming. I was surprised and very happy to find out Cohen's violonist, Alexandru Bublitchi, is from „Kishinev, from the Republic of Moldavia”. I thoroughly enjoyed the bass player too, Roscoe Beck and his full of attitude custom-designed bass. And the backing vocals girls are excellent, better than Cohen at times. I wasn't particularly extatic about Sharon Robertson singing Alexandra Leaving, but "the sublime" Webb sisters, Charley and Hattie, from Kent, did an extraordinary job with Coming Back to You and generally all throughout the show that included a synchronized back flip, guitars, harps and mandolins. "Thank you for backing me. If you wouldn't back me, nobody would buy a ticket" was the recognition the master gave them.

But one thing you don't see everyday, Leonard Cohen did not stop after thanking the band. He mentioned the sound engineer. "Nobody ever mentions the sound engineer" I told myself. Next was the guy setting the mikes. The monitor engineer, "if it wasn't for him we wouldn't hear each other". "All these lights and curtains and everything you see behind us... they don't hang up there by themselves. They are put there by the rigger, the man known as Charlie Hot-pants." A lot of decency and lots of common sense in Leonard Cohen, levelled only by the contained contempt felt for the ones turning art into a business, "the invisible hands I never get to shake, nevermind crush, for that matter." It was them, these invisible hands, „the higher powers” that decided the concert should end at 23.30, before Leonard Cohen had the chance to finish the last song, Save the Last Dance for Me. Leonard Cohen thanked us and obeyed. He probably didn't want to pull a Bruce Springsteen.

First set:

Dance me to the end of love

The Future

Bird on a Wire

Everybody knows

Who by Fire

Darkness

Sisters of Mercy

Amen

Come Healing

In my Secret Life

I Can't Forget

Going Home

Waiting for the Miracle

Anthem

Second set:

Tower of Song

Suzanne

Night Comes On

Heart with no Companion

Gypsy's Wife

The Partisan

Democracy

Coming Back to You

Alexandra Leaving

I'm Your Man

Hallelujah

Take This Waltz

Encore:

So long, Marianne

First we take Manhattan

Famous Blue Raincoat

Save the last Dance for me

No ire

Laura (US, 1944), Directed by: Otto Preminger

A.S.: To my Romanian readers, I beg your pardon for writing in English. The vast majority of you can read it anyway, which is not what I could say about my English readers and Romanian

If it’s by mere face-value, I would say Laura is quite a silly movie. But having saying that I made it obvious that it is not by mere face-value that this film should be judged. The first thing we should look at is the time it came out. It was 1944, and the movie public was different than what it is now. Noir was a well-established genre, with its own rules and dogmas, much in the same manner as poetry. So as a filmmaker you had to be catchy, spectacular, innovative and creative while at the same time, more or less consciously you had to comply with the genre norms. Even more so as this was the studios era, most of the creatives were on a studio paycheck so there were a severe supervision over taking creating risks.

That is why, as a 40’s noir, Laura’s got all the ingredients, and a few extra as well: the crime plot is right there in the beginning, the badass trenched detective is the all-knowing hero saving the day, everybody is lying and doing a double game, we’ve got the necessary plot twist and even the grand finale, with the suspects all in one room, with all but one still wondering who the killer is.

In the past 60 years though, we’ve seen all these tricks pulled over and over again so many times and in so many times that all what’s left of Laura is a black and white feature that’s the laughing stock of the 21st century movie viewer. It is packed with stereotypes, only they didn’t know what was about to become a stereotype back then. Besides, it still holds some entertainment value even for the blased viewer of 2012, so it’s safe to assume it was a pretty entertaining movie in its time. Dissing Laura due to changes in esthetical evaluation that are none of its making would be like mocking Shakespeare for writing crowd-pleasing cheesy stories.

The same is true on a technical level. So much has changed in movie making by now that trying to compare Laure to a recent action movie is a logical non-sense. They hardly use the passing from one room to another straight through the fake wall now. Or the sourcy rain, or the snow-storm following the on-screen character wherever he goes. But this is how they worked back then. And they’re using conventions now as much as ever, it’s just that they’re different. But the directors of the 40’s didn’t need a realistic rain or an equally dense storm on the entire screen. They’d just get shitloads of water on the actors out of some rough pipes, and the spectator would understand it’s supposed to be raining. Just pull your hat on the side, plant a cigar between the lips and say you’re the police, and the viewers would now you mean business.

And there’s a certain feel to the 40’s movies that gets me regardless of the story. It has something to do with the body of the image, although I’m not sure what it is. The way they light faces, always along a vertical line across the nose in a confrontation scene or along a horizontal light ray when there’s just one individual in the shot and the suspense is supposed to accumulate... Or the costumes and haircuts that make all the stars of the era look pretty much the same... Or the music pointing out the most important moments of the action, no doubt a remnant of the mute era...

It’s interesting and refreshing to see the director not shying away from what have come to become tabus on film nowadays, such as everybody over-smoking, or the cop being an intrusive prick. I was a bit surprised the movie was shot in 4:3 format, but I guess Cinemascope was reserved for the big historical productions. It also makes more sense, but it’s good to notice how we’ve grown the habit of seeing everything in 16:9 format ever since HD cameras and flat-screen TV’s took over.

So if you plan on seeing just one 40’s noir, there are certainly better ones than Laura out there. But if you’re a 40’s regular that saw most of the noirs ever in existance and you’ve still not had enough, Laura is certainly worth a shot. 01:58

The Viking Suicides [EN]

Valhalla Rising (Denmark, 2009), Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

The Vikings have a widely respected name. A thousand years ago, it was probably also a feared name in most of the known world. I'm guessing that's because they conquered most of the known world. As such, it was only natural they would stretch a bit towards the unknown world. That's why I'm saying, without knowing to much about their American expedition, that they were the outcome of a planned politics rather than accident.

But when it comes to vikings, I wouldn't dare contradict a Danish. And Nicholas Winding Refn, the director of Valhalla Rising, seems to disagree with me. His vikings, or at least a group of their Christian minority, are going on a crusade on their own. Only instead of Jerusalem they get to New Foundland. Common mistake...

The story unwhirls around a character with no name or lines of dialogue. He's called One Eye because he's only got one eye. But the guy depriving him of his eye must've been a hell of a fighter, as One Eye is a clear winner of all the fights he gets in throughout the movie. And there are quite a few. Some of them organized, although I failed to see the purpose, others spontaneous, started by dudes learning nothing from seeing One Eye killing the ones before them. Not only is he a good fighter, but the guy seems to do better than everybody in all areas. So much better it makes you wonder if mistaking America for Jerusalem is really accidental. Because, come on...

The theme of the non-speaking hero seems to be catchy for the critics. It's an idea imported from far-eastern movies (Japan and Korea) and these movies are successful with a certain section of the public. I don't like saying "with hipsters", but I think I just did. I agree images express more than words, but saying this I'm thinking the mute cinema, City Lights, Gold Rush or The Great Train Robbery. Their gestures were much ampler and the attitudes much more theatrical. Simply because there were no other means of telling the story. Whereas the long shots or slow pans don't seem to grip me in the same way. I just feel they're robbing minutes out of my life. There are plenty of methods for creating character depth or adding intensity to the action, and using lenghty shots is just the most unfortunate. Specially since most of the time they only get the spectator bored. As for the non-speaking character, I love the Patrick Swayze vs. Orange board commercial. I'm with the board guys.

Another theme worth mentioning in the movie is the expansion of Christianity in spite of the old Gods. The title brings the idea forward, it is the topic of the opening dialogue and it is a common topic of this kind of stories (Beowulf, Die Niebelungenlied). Interestiung to note that, when confronted with other faiths, the Christians usually end up looking bad. They even made comics about it.

I'm curios about how the Valhalla Rising script must have loooked, because the dialogue lines wouldn't fill more than three pages. I wonder if there were detailed descriptions of what the characters were supposed to be doing or it was a lot of improvising going on. Anyway, if they'd have gone with the American rule of 1 minute per page, this would have been a short film.

To conclude, the movie gets minus marks for story and documentation. The image is sharp and crisp, and the dominant tones are dark. It was probably shot on digital, but I'm ok with that, it's not disturbing. The acting gets a big "meh!" from me. I liked the kid the most, he's a nice dissonance. The amerindiands at the end are actually sino-indiands, they look like native Brazilians and have some suspiciously looking outfits.

And if I am to judge the entire Danish cinema by this unique movie I've seen... it would remain unique.

Kissinger Cake

YoungDiplo London Conference: Romania's Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World, 2012-02-04, ICR London

Sursa foto

During the last few years, I have developed a real passion in attending conferences if there is the smallest glimpse that I might find something interesting. I just see it as a better way of learning things. Over time I have learnt a great deal of thing from attending conferences, I have exchanged a lot of ideas, some of which very fruitful, and I have met enough people to understand the value of networking.

YoungDiplo conference last Saturday looked like a very interesting prospect, if only for seeing the ICR London building from the inside. As it turns out, it was more than just that.

The argument for the conference was kick-starting Young Diplo, a formal para-educational programme for Romanian undergraduates interested in political sciences and international relations. The way it started, I thought I was going to spend the rest of the day in Boreville. I don't mean to sound rude or mean by any chance, but the way Eliza Gheorghe carried out her speech was so plain and bland that it could be used to put ADHD kids to sleep. As honored as I felt to see the Romanian ambassador in England in person, mr. Ion Jinga's speech went on in the same manner. I extracted some interesting bits of data from HE's readings, though:  38% of Romanians in the UK are college-educated (highest of all the foreign ethnic groups here), unemployment rate of the Romanians in the UK is 4.4% (lowest of all the foreign ethnic groups) and there are over 3.000 Romanian professionals working in the health care industry in the UK.

Mr. Jinga spoke a lot about the dream of an united Europe, a dream that Romania likes to cling on to maybe a bit too much. And in our ecstasy about sharing the same table with Europe's greats and expecting them to solve some of the internal problems that are of our own making and should be ours to solve, we sometimes forget the values of de-centralisation and find ourselves lost in cliches like "finding common solutions to common problems" in a time when it is obvious that Germany's problems are different than the ones Greece faces, for instance, and when there's a growing concern that maybe we entered the European project with an East-West axis too heterogeneous.

Mr. Dorian Branea followed and his so-called "escape speech" drew some nice parallels between the diplomatic role of the Ancient Greek Olympics and this year's London Olympics, a great opportunity for increasing the international standing of a country, both through sporting results and diplomatic PR.

I didn't understand much of mr. Nicolae Ratiu's speech, but it was mostly a lesson about Ratiu family's history and about the efforts Ion Ratiu did of promoting Romania's cultural values in the UK ever since the 40s. Perhaps this speech would have been of good use some 22 years ago in Bucharest.

HE Dr. Emil Brix, the Austrian ambassador in UK opened the first of the two panels of the day with a much more realistic and grounded speech. Taking the dream of a united Europe for granted, mr. Brix underlined the challenges presented on the way from where Europe is to where Europe wants to be and some ideas about how to tackle them. Without being afraid of delivering some very blunt and maybe not so pleasant truths, mr. Brix talked about a series of UE failures of the last five years, the most interesting of which I remember being the failure to develop an emotional component of the union, the lack of an "European identity" of the kind the revolutions of the modern age created for the modern nations. Another very interesting idea HE surfaced was the development of local, smaller-scale transnational alliances, such as Romania-Bulgaria, or Romania-Hungary. This worked for the Balkans in the early 20s with the Little Entente and I've been wondering ever since 2005 or so how come no one thought about the number of advantages such an enterprise has. I guess there haven't been that many great diplomatic minds in the Balkans of late, have there?

"Truism Parade" are the words I wrote next to mr. Dan Berendel's name in my notes, and such was his speech. Representative of an oil company, mr. Berendel delivered us success stories from the wonderful world of petroleum and natural gas extraction. Otherwise an interesting and well-articulated speech, mr. Berendel's considerations were - in my humble opinion - based on a very flawed assumption: oil is a resource for the future. I can agree with the fact that we don't really know how much petrol we have left and that the development of oil-extracting technologies can give us access to currently unknown deposits, but I know one thing for sure: there is only a finite amount of oil left. While we might just get away and not run out of oil in our lifetime, the end of oil isn't far off. On a historic scale, we are dread close to it, actually. There's still some good money to be made out of it though, so there's no real point in caring about anything else, apparently. I can also take mr. Berendel's point about keeping oil extraction going for reasons pertaining to national strategy, but when he speaks about billions of dollars being spent on oil-extracting technologies, then  minutes later says green technologies are expensive, something just doesn't fit. But hey, all that money we can get from under the sea at the sole cost of our planet's health have to belong to somebody, right?

Now, I have no idea what mr. Hugh Ward is doing at SAAB, but I sure hope he's getting good money for it. Given that he's in the weaponry industry, he probably is. He might put those presentation-delivery skills to better use, though. His was by far the best presentation of the day and one of the best I have ever seen. Dynamic, methodical, aesthetically pleasing, with just about the right balance of graphs, information, emotional bondage and trivia, his presentation had it all. I am eager to find his presentation online. When a man is sent to tell you about strategic weaponry of the 21st century and he gives you bits of Fenimore Cooper, Kolb's learning cycle, Plato's Republic or Horace's Odes, you don't question the man. You just listen!

Mr. Seth A. Johnston, sir!, was the most honest speaker of the panel. A captain of the US Army working in the military intelligence, the guy's as close to a real life Bond as it gets. A Bond with an Oxford Ph.D., though. Young mr. Johnston shared with us some of his first hand experience from the NATO mission in Afghanistan. He flattered us with a fact that, whilst not unheard of, we are reluctant in believing: one of Romania's greatest resources is the people. Human intelligence, as he called it. When exchanging professional experiences, Romanian often tend to end up having the upper hand. Same happened in Afghanistan he said, and he also had a glaring smile while saying it. He also told us how the Romanian mission in Afghanistan was entrusted with the command of the entire Zakul province. Which is a big deal, apparently. Nice kid, cpt. Johnston. He probably could've killed us all faster than blinking.

Before heading for the break and for the absolutely delightful lunch generously offered by our host, the Romanian Cultural Institute, Diana was about to start an international diplomatic incident during the Q&A session. She asked speaker's opinion about the Romanian civil unrests. "What civil unrests?" was largely the speakers reaction, in line with Tugurlan's reaction I mentioned a while ago. After learning about them, mr. Brix delivered another blunt opinion, putting things in perspective and metioning the Greece protests, the London riots of last summer, the "Occupy..." movements and a few more. Something along the lines of "Of course our system is not perfect. Of course democracy is flawed. Of course some people will be unhappy. But, please, do protest all you want. It's not like The Man cares, anyway."

It wasn't much, but it was enough to activate mr. Jinga, who felt compelled to interfere and reassure our dear guests that it's really nothing and that Romania will behave as long as you call us "Europe". His tone borrowed something from Batista's dissing of the 1958 Cuban revolution. There was also another intervention from the public, not a real question, but a comment (the long, empty ones everybody loves) from a girl that felt the urge to explain how the protests are actually fueled by the media and the freezing bonkheads in Bucharest's University Square are nothing but manipulated sheep. Because, you see, she simply KNEW.

I would've stayed for the afternoon panel, as well, but my allegiance is to Diana rather than GRASP, so I left right after abusing the hosts' kindness by stuffing some delicious, untranslatable mici. Congratulations are in order for ms. Eliza Gheorghe though, I thought the conference was great, and the effort she put in it is not to be taken lightly. My respects for her drive, her relentless work and her good intentions. Some credit should also go to mr. Dorian Branea and the way he is leading the ICR in London. After my second visit there today, the Institute looks more and more respectable, and I sense there could be a lot more good things coming from them in the future.

A good learning experience, overall, a new word in my dictionary, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which is an acronym for "too big to be ignored, to weak to have a say yet" and plenty of new lessons to learn. We might be getting somewhere, after all.

Ethics 1/0

Bucharest Conference in Applied Ethics 2011, 4th edition, "Ethical Aspects in New and Emerging Technologies", 2010-10-28, Amfiteatrul Mircea Florian, Facultatea de Filosofie, Universitatea din Bucuresti

Just like Cristi Ducu promised, the 4th edition of Bucharest Conference in Applied Ethics (BCAE) went big. It had international attendance and the promise that over the years BCAE will grow in importance as the event gathering ethicians from all across Europe (maybe even the whole world?) and establishing a communication and partnership network between them. This time the use of English all throughout the conference was a must, as almost half of the audience was foreign. This blog post is also in English to respect and reflect the international aspect of the conference.

Just like every year, I attended less than I would've liked of the conference, so I will only speak about the panels I've witnessed. Also, since a few days have passed already and since I would not be able to compile a consistent and unitary report, my coverage will only consist of very specific ideas I found worthy of mentioning.

The first panel I attended, "Privacy vs. Democracy" addressed the ethical dilemmas arisen from the moral obligation of granting free access to information and the right to free speech and the need of maintaining control over the level of privacy for the information shared. I was quite surprised no one brought up WikiLeaks, it is probably the most illustrative case on the matter. Instead, the panel opened up with Adrian Florea's presentation of the NetCity project of providing underground broadband internet coverage to the whole of Bucharest. No ethical dilemmas here, as it was rightfully pointed out from the audience, but somehow the discussion was drawn towards sensible topics such as: how does NetCity establishes the rental cost of its network or whose responsibility is to fix the glitches in the internet coverage provided to the end user.

It is possible that Mr. Florea felt a bit cornered, since he rather swiftly directed the conversation towards more neutral topics, such as online's corporations attitude towards individual privacy. And so we got to facebook, the port of choice for internet moralists, and to the way in which user data can be used either by facebook or by third party applications without user consent. And this is a tricky one: the user consent is there, embedded in the terms and conditions of subscribing to the service that nobody reads. While this is true, one might say, it serves the corporation just right to hide such sensible points inside a 20-page document that nobody will ever read. My take on this is that, whatever the default settings are, the service you subscribe to will make some decisions for you via these default settings. The internet service, has thus two options: either getting awfully boring by forcing the user to make all the privacy (and usage) choices required and to lose business by this decrease of usability or go into the ethical grey area. The business choice is obvious. However, the moral and responsible company will strive to clean the ethical aspect of its business which, in this case, can be done by increasing users' awareness on the service provided. This can indeed be costly and, while it may look like a bad economic solution on the short term, on the medium and long term the benefits of having more and more educated clients creates a basis of trust and healthy economic choices that I think is essential for a sustainable economic environment. And this is true for all industries and all segments of the product supply chain, not only online enterprises.

It has also been discussed what attitude governments should have towards the online information flow and the risks attached to it and the auditorium seemed to agree on the fact that somehow, the government should interfere. I tend to disagree, or at most concede that, should a governmental intervention appear as necessary, this should be minimal, at most. My view is that the governments, the corporations and the civil society share the decision power on the market, and any increase in the authority of one of these actors means a decrease in the authority of another, or of both others. It is thus natural that an increase in authority of the civil society, of the individual (obvious after the informational boom and obvious in the online environment) is perceived as a threat by the government, so the government tends to interfere to preserve its status quo. If it does it by enforcing any kind of laws over communication, this is, in my opinion, censorship. Instead, should the government be sincere about wishing nothing but the well-being of its citizens (which equals a quantity of bullshit the size of Himalaya in my opinion), it should strive for increasing the educational level, the (computer) literacy of the individual. This way, the market regulates itself. Again, this is true for a lot more aspects of the economy (as well as politics, for that matter) than the ICT.

An interesting parallel has been drawn between the way the banks are managing customer money and the way the online corporations are managing user data. While each of the two has its specifics, it is true they confront a common set of risks associated with asset management. Therefore, management of this risk should be their concern, with the governments as the watch dog making sure the corporations don't lose sight of the customer's best interest. When the corporations will realize the risk decrease brought about by a more educated pool of clients, increasing education will be a very viable business decision, and the proactive stance will be the new competing environment Warren Buffet predicted.

Professor Vasile Baltac was the next speaker, speaking about a digital agenda for Europe which is apparently a current EU concern. He touched some interesting theoretical points, such as the four pillars of internet usability (infrastructure, affordability, content quality and ability to use, or knowledgeability), or the four user skills levels (awareness, literacy, competence and expertise). I feel the need to alter professor Baltac's view on "good" and "bad" content and to adjust his affirmation that the Bible is a "good" book, while Mein Kampf is a "bad" book. Beyond the highly debatable sentence, I strongly believe the valuation of things as "good" or "bad" is always subjective and should be the exclusive concern of the affected group (the stakeholders). Online ethics and the privacy issues have been reiterated, with a short glimpse at professor Baltac's belief that low quality online content should be "moderated". Whilst I agree to the freedom of an online enterprise to keep or throw away the content that it sees fit (including user-generated content), I will say again that moderation is a form of control and the first step towards downright censorship, and should only be used with great caution.

Last panel of the day had the building of an ethical infrastructure as a starting point, with an emphasis on the health care organizations. Led by a very pessimistic professor Valentin Muresan, the panel showed the increasing preoccupation of addressing the ethical issues in health care and research. It was the foreign guests who were the most active here, pointing to either the increasing importance of bioethics and the increasing number of bioethicians in the US, to the increasing request for ethical expertise in fields such as nanotechnology or to the development of the interdisciplinary academic programs providing both medical and ethical qualifications. Professor Muresan's pessimism looked a bit out of place in this context. There is, I agree, a lack of interest towards ethics, and the applied areas of philosophy in general, and a philosophical project, as applied as it might be, is a harder sell than the more lucrative ones. But this went on for some millennia already and complaining about it will do little to change it. Should be noted here that when forming bioethicians, the path followed is usually by giving ethical training to a biologist rather than giving biology training to an ethician. This is another source of frustration for ethicians, but the matter will fade along with the establishment of bioethics as a distinct domain, equally distanced from both biology and ethics. Religion would also have something to say to the future bioethics specialist. Emanoel Roman noted as bad the influence of a strong Romanian Orthodox Church over the field, as the church claims some sort of monopoly over deciding between good and bad. However, I believe a responsible bioethics study program should be closely related to axiology, and the official opinions of the churches should not be neglected. By the way, but for some semester courses in the first philosophy years, I have no idea about axiology being studied anywhere in Romania, which I think is a real shame.

The panel ended with Mirela Nemtanu's presentation on L'Oreal best practices. I thought it was a great intervention, both dense with information and with an easy to follow dynamics, supported by a very well-documented and carefully crafted presentation and delivered in the most corporate correct manner. Here's the points I extracted:

• "not knowing the law is not an excuse for not applying the law"
• Mrs. Nemtanu said - and probably believes - L'Oreal has a healthy organizational culture. I am just curios on how or if this is tested in any way
• the concepts of green chemistry, label ethics and ecodesign and the Ethisphere Institute
• L'Oreal's strive to stop tests on animals and the obstacles that, paradoxically enough, come from the legislative framework of some countries
• L'Oreal ethical department is ISO9001 certified (!) I find this both admirable and a waste of money.

On Saturday I only attended one of the four afternoon panels, namely the one started by Diana's presentation on Privacy vs. Sharing in Online Mentoring. I've met Diana at last year's BCAE and during the year passed my admiration for her has grown exponentially. I am proud to be able to call her a friend, and I didn't want to miss her presentation by any means. My view will therefore be biased, more biased than usual, as I never pretended objectivity anyway.

Now, compared to Diana's last year presentation - which was truly great, this one is quite disadvantaged. The thesis is weaker and it looks like a particular case of an ampler area, the documentation was less adequate and one could read between the lines that it was an ad-hoc, hastily compiled intervention. Plus the corporate smell that came with the WYGU logo, Diana's tribute to her employer. Nevertheless, it was the best presentation of the panel and, although I felt the need to challenge Diana's take on things almost every step of the way, there was plenty to learn from it. The ethical issue: how much you need to share, how much you want to share and how much you should want to share both as a mentor and as a mentee for an online mentoring relation to be functional and gain maximum efficiency.

Sursa foto

Then came the porn guy. Marco Annoni, from the University of Milan, who felt the need to pull a high-school prank by bringing forth a subject provocative enough in itself (pornography), so that there will be no real need for a strong thesis or a crafted argumentation. He was even half right, as his presentation drew quite some discussions around the subject. Here's why I thought it was weak, though:

• one of the strong arguments in defending pornography was that it can grow money for charitable causes. While this is true in theory, I'm guessing the possibility to actually happen is very low, as pornography entrepreneurs have quite a different profile than people engaging in charities. Also, charity does very well without porn. Also, Mr. Annoni couldn't name one case of a pornographic enterprise fueling money to charity. Rare as it might be, I'm sure it exists and his inability to name one shows a lack in documentation. I see nothing wrong with charities being funded by the porn industry. I just doubt it will become common ground.
• In defense of porn, Mr. Annoni invoked the harm principle. Quite handy, the utilitarian view in this case, quite inconsistent as well. It is hard to say if there is any harm done by porn consumption to children, psychically unstable adults and porn actors or how much, but this is a task for psychology, that Mr. Annoni made no mention of, like a good corporate marketeer of the early corporate era.
• Saying "porn is just as bad as a lot more socially accepted industries" is a highly flawed argument in defense of porn. If nothing else, it is an argument against the other industries. Yet this is how most of the body of Mr. Annoni's presentation was built.

I believe myself to be fairly open-minded. I have nothing against porn (on the contrary) and I'm an occasional consumer. I have quite a libertarian stance on it. But there are plenty of moral issues to be addressed in regards to the porn industry. The ethicians should bring porn to the ethical debate table, but it should be done in a serious and responsible manner. If, from the ethics standpoint, we treat porn like horny teenagers, we will get the results horny teenagers do. Namely, chuckles.

Quite appropriate, the presentation on porn was followed by one from a military background. Mr. Victor Greu from the Military Technical Academy. I will be harsh on him, and this should not be taken the wrong way, but his presentation was one of the most boring I've ever seen, checking most of the items on the list of things to avoid when making a presentation. All throughout what seemed an infinite number of slides the same static, standard layout template was used. All slides were made up of walls of text so long that it was hard enough to read them entirely at the speed of Mr. Greu, and any attempt in doing so would have resulted  in at least double the amount of time reserved for the presentation. This is way a big part of the presentation was simply skipped. Oddly enough, the most intelligible parts were leapfrogged, the ones not containing formulas with insufficiently detailed variables. The subject of the presentation, if I understood correctly, was the paradigm shift brought about by the information age, when information is becoming an essential commodity, substituting the fixed means of the industrial age. This leads to a so-called Knowledge Based Society (KBS), which will eventually require every individual to increase his technical abilities to fit in this new scheme. That's pretty much all I could extract from Mr. Greu's PowerPoint, I stopped following somewhere between slides 3 and 4.

The last presentation of the panel belonged to Mr. Vlad Niculescu Dinca and talked about a case study for the implementation of a Geo-spatial Information System in a local police department and the challenges arisen in the process. It was the most interesting subject, and it was well worth knowing more about how new technologies are accepted and gain their place in our daily lives or in our professional lives. It is the encounter between "the way it has always been done" and "the way it could be done better, but with some additional effort", always a fierce one. It was maybe Mr. Greu's anticlimactic presentation that almost emptied the room and sucked all of the attendance focus, or maybe Mr. Niculescu Dinca's way of speaking about his subject, but somehow the subject, albeit interesting, didn't stir the amount of debate it would normally have stirred. Me, for one, I was dying for a break. I got the parts of a script, I liked the idea of a script of any kind being composed of description, inscription and prescription, all of which cannot be normative.

I want to draw attention on one very interesting article from Mr. Niculescu Dinca that I've just found here. This is in line with the Post-phenomenology and Technology Ethics presentation that Robert Arnautu held last year in the Phenomenology and Ethics conference and, given that Mr. Niculescu Dinca and Mr. Arnautu were together, I would assume technology ethics and design-embedded ethics are subjects of a common research program.

That was it for me, I'm sure I've missed some very interesting presentations but it was impossible to see them all, as Saturday's 8 panels, went on simultaneously in two separate halls. One solution to this would be recording of the entire conference and uploading it online. This is a promise Cristi Ducu made last year as well, but so far I haven't seen any podcast of any of the presentations from last year.

As a general impression, the conference was bigger and better than all the previous ones. It had real depth and amplitude and it showed. The variety of speakers increased and the international coverage was real this time. The logistics part was flawless, and even the dialogue ethics, a shortcoming last year, was resolved. The start and end times were respected and the Q&A sessions were a lot more organized than last year. The subject of the conference drew plenty of interest, as well. It looked, overall, a grown-up and mature event, organized in the highest professional manner. From here on, there is only place for growth.

My sincere congratulations to Cristian Ducu, professor Muresan and the ethics department of the Faculty of Philosophy for this event. For me it is another confirmation that a combination between the right drives and an appropriate amount of passion is unstoppable on the way to success.