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(Photo source) Last night, I watched the first of the three-part documentary 'The Romanians are Coming' broadcast by Channel 4 and 4Seven which has caused a great deal of controversy since its airing on 17th February. To quote from an article in Huffington Post since I couldn't have put it better myself, 'The whole thing started off like a Romanian equivalent of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. A horse and cart trundled into view across a post-apocalyptic looking street, a bare... [Lire la suite]

Photo source BREAKING NEWS!!! Chevron is pulling out of Romania! Yes, the American oil giant is ending its exploration efforts for shale gas in the country of my heart following announcements that it had also stopped shale-exploration in Poland. There has been no elaboration on the decision from Chevron so far, although PM Ponta said last November that Romania didn't have any shale gas to speak of after all. "It looks as if we don't have shale gas. We fought very hard for something that we do not have. I cannot tell you more,... [Lire la suite]

(Image source) At noon today, Klaus Iohannis was sworn in as President of Romania replacing Traian Basescu, almost twenty five years to the day the communist regime fell. The ceremony was attended by MPs; former presidents Ion Iliescu and Emil Constantinescu; Patriarch Daniel; Roman-Catholic Archbishop Ioan Robu; Prince Radu and a host of others. The role of the President in Romania is for the most part ceremonial, but he has the power to appoint the PM, oversee foreign policies and veto draft laws. "Today I stand here before you... [Lire la suite]

(Image source) And so, pontaur has 'given up' the title of "Doctor", renouncing his controversial 2003 PhD in Law awarded by the University of Bucharest, comprising of a thesis whereby almost a third was nicked from two Romanian scholars, though how he can actually 'give up' something that was never his in the first place beats me. 85 out of the 307 pages (or 115 out of 297, according to the University of Bucharest's Ethics Committee) were lifted with no reference or credit given to the original authors. Marius Andruh, head of the... [Lire la suite]

(Image source) Blimey... scapă cine poate! It's all happening in PSD's wide-screen Caragiale-flavoured version of "The Titanic", and it would be a great black comedy if we weren't talking about such dispicable acts of scheming and venality within the political class. There is no respect, no conscience, no dignity. Encouraging though it is to watch the cracks begin to form in the PSD hull, it's painful to see the extent of ponta and co's contempt for an entire population as the stories leak out. Following the news that UDMR was... [Lire la suite]

(Photo source: Romanian diaspora Munich prepared for a night in the cold) It's really something when the government of an EU member state that calls itself a democracy forces its diaspora to spend the entire night queueing in the cold (Munich: 4°C; London: 9°/rain) to be sure they'll not be denied their RIGHT to vote, but that's exactly what happened on Saturday night. Anyone saying "yeah, but they left", just remember where a LARGE percentage of Romania's GDP comes from (not to mention WHY the hell they left in the first place).... [Lire la suite]

(Protest 8th Nov., Cluj - Photo: Andrei Avramescu) It's only been a week since the first round of Romania's presidential elections left so many of us gob-smacked. What an exceptional performance of PSD fraud, obstruction, illegality and merciless slaughtering of democracy it was. The last seven days have been a constant stream of the kind of stories one would expect to find in a predictable telenovelo with the most lamentable of scripts. I don't think I'll even bother to go into them since you must be as sick to death with the lack of... [Lire la suite]

Just back from the Romanian Embassy here in Paris on the eve of the country's Presidential Elections... I have to say that never, EVER did I imagine I would witness such a travesty of democracy with my own eyes. Having heard voting had stopped due to an absence of declaration forms to register, I printed out a bunch of them received from a FB friend in Bucharest thinking maybe it could help, and headed off to rue St Dominique to see what was going on. Arriving at around 20h, there were hundreds of people both in the street, the... [Lire la suite]

(Image source: Sfantul Dumitru by Romanian painter Gheorghe Tattarescu) Today, Orthodox Christians observing the Gregorian calendar celebrate the feast day of St Demetrius (see HERE for procession in Thessaloniki). One of the most important military saints often paired with Saint George, Demetrius is regarded as a protector of the young, the patron saint of crusades, is invoked by those struggling with lustful temptations and is also known for an impressive number of miracles. Our spelling of Demetrius (or less commonly Demetrios) is... [Lire la suite]

(Photo source) In May this year, Razvan Anghelescu of Vax Populi ventured out into the Romanian countryside to ask people what planet we were on. I have to admit I often wonder about that myself, and a few of the responses he got were literally out of this world. An earlier video where people were quizzed on the name of Romania's national anthem was an eye-opener too - so much so that this time he probably thought he'd make his question a bit easier... Two days ago, he returned to the sticks with another conundrum: "What is the... [Lire la suite]