"Romania will remain an under-developed country, without foreign power". Elsewhere in the news, Romania absorbed less than 3% of the European structural funds made available. Last but not least, arms for the underworld: the Romanian press reads about the arrest of leaders of the underworld, suspect of involvement in one of the biggest Romanian arms theft.
Cotidianul reads anthropologist Claude Karnooun, specialist in social anthropology, sociology and linguistics, believes that "Romania will remain an under-developed country, without power overseas". Claude Karnooun taught students in universities from France, US, Italy, Romania and is a member of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. He first came to Romania in 1971 and in 1973 he carried out several ethnographic and folkloric studies.
Asked which the sins of Romanian capitalism are, Karnooun says it does not differ for the main sins of any capitalist society: the only Weltanschauung is the profit. But in Romanian capitalism, the citizen has no legal protection. And according to the EU, the existent laws fail when faced to the huge amount of corruption. He believes that the elites are blinded by their immediate interest.
Karnooun said that Western countries had no interest in interfering in the way capitalism was implemented in the ex-communist countries because the East-European countries "behaved well, like good slaves, without contestations. By paying generously several tamed elites, like circus dogs... everything is like the West wanted".
Talking about Romania right after the 1989 Revolution, the anthropologist believes that "in the beginning of the 90' much seemed possible, but the West played its game and those planning the state blow immediately took hold on the economical-political power, with the West's blessing. Even if the crocodiles left the na
