For soccer fans from Canada, here is the printable schedule for Euro 2008 matches on TSN/RDS and SportsNet, in Eastern Time: Continue reading »

If you haven’t seen 300, grab a copy from the video store and watch it with your girlfriend, wife or daughter.

Despite all the violence and bloodshed no Hollywood movie can unfortunately miss, you may also learn about the true values a man used to be made of in other times. Just like Maximus the Gladiator, King Leonidas of Sparta is that single person people feel honored to die for. Or rather for the values embraced by King Leonidas and his Spartans. Continue reading »

We’ve seen the last couple of years this tendency of identifying some races, ethnic groups and categories of people by new different names. Black Americans became Afro-Americans, North American Indians (the few left) became First Nations, Romanian Gypsies or Tziganes became Roma… Did this solve the problem of their discrimination against? Is people looking now in a really different way at these groups?

Some of these name changes have been requested by the groups themselves, and the society and political class - in most cases - have been very glad to ascend to their demand. Why? It was the easiest way to “do something” for these groups with no cost at all. But as long as the general perception, people’s mentality and discriminatory attitude toward these groups didn’t actually change too much, the name switch is even worse for these categories than before. Why? Because they allowed the other categories to show and prove their “generosity”, when they in fact did nothing at all. Continue reading »

I was just curious, the other day, to browse the web and see what kind of people spread the excessive defamatory blame toward Romanians, for their so-called discrimination against Gypsies. It comes as a surprise that most these accusation come from simple and ignorant people, who are usually associated with Christian charities. Or lonely persons who get in touch over chats, in good faith and tones of naivety, with whoever else happen to be at the other end, a potential Gypsy friend or - why not - a pedophile or serial killer.

This article is not against Gypsies, it’s not even about them. But rather about those ignorant, irresponsible and ultimately stupid people from rich countries who, pretending they care and help the oppressed, under the cover of a charitable association or “innocent” blog, are rather spreading their negative prejudices against other groups of people they know nothing about.

While their irresponsible messages and lobbies brought to Romanians a huge and unjust negative image, I will no longer watch my language and harsh words, and point my finger to what they do and say. I’ll introduce here only two of the numerous texts so discriminatory toward Romanians as people and nation. Continue reading »

Not long ago, in 1999, I lived and worked for a few years in the United States with a temporary work permit, under NAFTA. My daughter was in a primary school and, as every year, I went with joy at her Christmas concert. I was really shocked. The whole concert started and continued for one hour or so with songs like “America is importing people / People just like you and just like me“…

I was watching my daughter and I was saying thanks God she’s only 9 and does not really understand what she is forced to sing. I was watching around: some other “imports” like myself were either confused or already accustomed with this sign of “appreciation” from the host country. The few Americans - including a friend of ours - were rather very proud of their “hospitality”. And the teacher, an old lady with very little knowledge of what other countries exist in the world beside US, Canada, Mexico, France and Mogadishu (I’m not kidding) was probably thinking those imports should feel very proud for the attention. Continue reading »