The Afgan War

US troop boost and end of US military mission

US President Barack Obama arrived at the White House vowing to refocus attention and resources on Afghanistan's failing military effort. On February 17, 2009, Obama authorized the deployment of an extra 17,000 US soldiers, in addition to the 36,000 US troops and 32,000 NATO military personnel cur‐rently stationed there. Three months later, Obama took the unusual action of transferring a commanding general from a theater of war, appointing Gen. Stanley McChrystal in place of Gen. David McKiernan. While McKiernan was re‐shaping US policy in Afghanistan, Obama and other top officials realized that a more dramatic shift was required. McChrystal was called in to conduct a new plan based after the surge approach in Iraq, in which US forces would focus on protecting civilians from insurgents rather than just killing huge numbers of terrorists. The plan also included attempts to con‐vince enemy fighters to desert, with the goal of even‐tually fostering reconciliation between the Karzai ad‐ministration and Taliban leaders. Soon after taking charge, McChrystal realized he didn't have enough troops to carry out the new pol‐icy, and in September 2009, he expressed his wor‐ries in a secret memo that was later leaked to the press. McChrystal projected that if there was no sub‐stantial military increase, the war would be lost in a year. Following an extensive Afghan policy assessment, the president made a speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point on December 1st, announcing a substantial escalation in the war effort, with 30,000 extra troops being sent to Afghanistan by the summer of 2010. The new approach resulted in a rise in US combat casualties; specifically, during the first three months of 2010, US deaths were about double what they had been during the same period in 2009. The increase in US soldiers was matched by a major increase in US drone attacks in Pakistan, including one that killed Pakistani Taliban commander Baitul‐lah Mehsud. However, the CIA paid a price in late December 2009 when an al-Qaeda double agent detonated a suicide bomb at the Bagram air base in the eastern province of Khost, killing seven CIA em‐ployees. The surge began in early 2010 with an attack on the insurgent-held town of Marja in the southern prov‐ince of Helmand. Even though McChrystal planned a more ambitious attack in Kandahar, US Marines secured a relatively fast success. On March 28, Obama made his first visit to Afghanistan as presi‐dent, telling Karzai that he needed to clean up cor‐ruption in his administration. Karzai was re-elected to a second five-year term in an August 2009 elec‐tion marred by significant claims of fraud. In his inau‐guration address, Karzai pledged to root out corrup‐tion in his government, but there were few evidence that he had succeeded in the short term. Meanwhile, Karzai declared that he would try to reconcile with the Taliban; he repeatedly invited Taliban leader Mullah Omar to meet with him, but the Taliban leader refused. Under increasing US pressure, Karzai struck out in April 2010, threatening to join the Tal‐iban if the international world did not cease interfer‐ing in Afghan affairs. Concerned over the state‐ments, the White House attempted to withdraw Karzai's offer to meet with Obama in Washington, D.C., but the visit went through as planned, with Karzai and Obama at least publicly attempting to heal their relationship. Pakistan volunteered to facilitate Afghan peace ne‐gotiations, but its eventual stance toward the Taliban remained a source of contention. Many US officials viewed Pakistan's arrest of the Afghan Taliban's sec‐ond-in-command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in February 2010 as a sign of Pakistan's determination to collaborate with the US and Afghan governments to reduce the group's power. Others, like former se‐nior UN official in Kabul Kai Eide, claimed Baradar was a major Taliban proponent of reconciliation and that his detention was meant to undermine efforts to end the war by a diplomatic, rather than a military, settlement. The military command structure in Afghanistan was abruptly changed again in June 2010, when Obama replaced McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus after McChrystal and some of his aides made disparaging remarks about Obama and other top administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, Na‐tional Security Advisor James L. Jones, and special representative to Afghanistan. The remarks high‐lighted simmering tensions between US military commanders in Afghanistan and certain civilian au‐thorities in the Obama administration. Obama ex‐plained the shift in leadership by saying, "I encour‐age discussion among my staff, but I will not allow division." Despite the shift, Obama pledged that the United States' policy in Afghanistan would not alter. Petraeus, widely regarded as the primary creator of counterinsurgency theory in the United States mili‐tary, was anticipated to maintain McChrystal's em‐phasis on protecting the Afghan people from mili‐tants, establishing Afghan government institutions, and limiting civilian deaths. Shortly after McChrystal's resignation, the whistle‐blowing journalistic group Wikileaks published a col‐lection of confidential documents pertaining to the Afghanistan War online and prereleased them to nu‐merous newspapers, including The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian. The information was mostly raw intelligence acquired between 2004 and 2009, and Wikileaks nicknamed it the "Afghan War Diary." It revealed previously unreported civilian deaths, that a US special forces unit was tasked with capturing or killing insurgent leaders on a list, that the Taliban had used heat-seeking missiles against aircraft, and that the Pakistani intelligence service had been working with Taliban forces despite sub‐stantial US aid to Pakistan for its assassination. The US government denounced the leak as a security vi‐olation, but claimed that the content of the release coincided with previous existing intelligence and did not contain any new information. In 2011, developments with several of the war's ma‐jor objectives—apprehending top al-Qaeda leaders and dealing with the Taliban—were front and center. Bin Laden was killed by US forces on May 2, 2011, over ten years after escaping arrest at Tora Bora in Afghanistan, when US intelligence discovered him hiding in a fortified complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The assault, carried out by a small crew that arrived at the complex via helicopter, resulted in a shootout in which bin Laden was killed. The following month, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates revealed for the first time that the US administration was having reconciliation discussions with the Taliban, but he cautioned that attempts to end the conflict were still in the early stages. Then, on June 22, Obama or‐dered an expedited departure of US soldiers from Afghanistan, claiming that the US had mostly achieved its objectives by disrupting al-Qaeda activ‐ities and killing many of its leaders. The plan aimed for a 30,000-strong reduction in US soldiers in Afghanistan within a year, with a full departure of combat forces by the end of 2014. Within hours after Obama's statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that France will begin withdrawing its 4,000 troops from Afghanistan. Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and major actor in peace talks, was murdered by a suicide bomber in September, putting an end to the long-running conflict. In early 2012, a number of episodes heightened re‐lations between the US and the Afghan government and sparked popular outcry. A video depicting US Marines peeing on deceased Afghans surfaced in the media in mid-January, prompting apologies from US officials. Several weeks later, Afghans rioted and demonstrated in response to allegations that US sol‐diers had burned copies of the Quran at a military installation. Then, on March 11, a US soldier al‐legedly stormed into numerous homes in Panjwai and shot dead 17 Afghans, mostly women and chil‐dren. The act sparked huge protests and drew harsh criticism from Karzai. Days later, the Taliban backed down from discussions with the US and the Afghan government. NATO's attempts to train and equip the Afghan army and police were hindered later that year by an up‐surge in assaults in which Afghan troops and police turned their guns against NATO personnel. These assaults compelled NATO soldiers to implement more stringent screening measures and to stop training for specific units.

Meanwhile, in early 2012, US and Afghan officials struck an agreement on two problems that had irri‐tated both the Obama and Karzai administrations. The first agreement, reached in March, established a six-month timeline for the transfer of Afghan de‐tainees from US military detention to Afghan cus‐tody. The second agreement, signed in April, said that Afghan troops would be in charge of overseeing and leading night raids to arrest or kill Taliban com‐manders. These attacks, formerly spearheaded by US special forces, had formed a significant component of the anti-Taliban effort since 2009. Afghan politicians, on the other hand, have long complained that the oper‐ations infringed Afghan sovereignty and that sur‐prise invasions of private houses alienated the peo‐ple and boosted sympathy for the insurgency. Fol‐lowing the withdrawal of NATO combat forces in 2014, the March and April agreements on prisoners and night raids paved the ground for the US and Afghanistan to negotiate a further agreement in May defining a framework for economic and security co‐operation between the two nations. The agreement underlined the United States' com‐mitment to maintain military support for the Afghan government until 2014, but it did not address whether some US and NATO soldiers would remain in Afghanistan as trainers and advisors after 2014. A separate agreement, the Bilateral Security Agree‐ment, was to decide this. Even while foreign soldiers remained highly unpopular in Afghanistan, many Afghans feared that a hasty exit would allow the na‐tion to devolve into civil war or chaos. The question of leaving foreign soldiers in the nation after NATO combat operations ended remained unresolved until the second part of 2014. Karzai, who was nearing the end of his presidency, refused to sign the Bilat‐eral Security Agreement before leaving office, and his successor's election was delayed by a protracted recount. Ashraf Ghani was inaugurated as president in late September 2014 and promptly signed the Bilateral Security Agreement. On December 28, 2014, the United States and NATO formally concluded their combat operation in Afghanistan, but a reduced presence of around 13,000 troops remained to support and train Afghan troops until a drawdown was finalized in 2020. A full withdrawal of US soldiers, begun in 2020 and ex‐pected to last until 2021, anticipated the end of US commitment to Afghanistan, but the return of the Tal‐iban during the withdrawal left the nation in a similar state as when US forces arrived 20 years earlier. Denmark has adopted a new law on the third of June regarding the Asylum in the European Union. What stands at the base of the Asylum in the European Union is the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees signed in 1951. Currently 145 countries have joined this Convention, meaning they accept immigrants. The Geneva Convention was signed because during the days of WWII European Coun‐tries could not protect the Jews from the Natzis, leading to a world genocide and a crime against hu‐manity. What Denmark did was the fact that they changed how things in the future would unfold. In‐stead of contacting the Danish immigration authori‐ties, immigrants now have to lodge a request for po‐litical asylum. In the first stage they will be trans‐ferred to a country from Asia or Africa. That country has already signed a contract with Denmark; these countries include Rwanda or Eritrea. What makes this topic more controversial is that in both Rwanda and Eritrea there is no democracy, and the regime in power kills or imprisons it’s own opposants. In the second stage the immigrants will wait in one of these countries for the result. If he is granted political asy‐lum, it is not certain that he will be allowed to live in Denmark. If not granted, the country that hosted the immigrant needs to send him back to his own coun‐try.

Denmark turns its back on immigrants

By Victoria Dicu

Everywhere in Europe center-right countries advo‐cate this type of relocation of asylum requests. Sur‐prisingly, a center-left social democrat country has adopted it for the first time and also given it a legal status. There have been different reactions from everywhere in Europe. In France, Le Monde reacted saying that this measure is “shocking and danger‐ous”. He also affirmed that the Danish Parliament represents an unprecedented vattack on a founding principle of the European Union. From the point of view of the Danish executive and Mette Frederiksen, the measure will discourage immigrants seeking asylum from Denmark. Most of their country be‐lieves that their country has exhausted the receiving and integration capabilities. They also strongly be‐lieve that the state of origin will go bankrupt if the migratory flux is maintained. What is a little bit strange is that in 2020 only 1500 of requests to asy‐lum were submitted. What slowly becomes clear is that in some Euro‐pean countries the parties that want to come to power are feeling bound to include the principal: zero refugees. Some experts fear that after this first breach anti-immigration other countries might take the lead. Europe fears that immigration might not only change the morphology but also the deep

Marianne and The Motto of the Republic

By Antonia Pop

“Marianne is the embodiment of the French Repub‐lic. Marianne represents the permanent values that found her citizens’ attachment to the Republic: "Lib‐erty, Equality, Fraternity".” The image of Marrianne is the representation of the motherland for the French culture. The name Marrie - Anne was commonly shared by most middle class women during the French Revolution time frame. From 1789, sculptures and paintings began to use female figures to represent the values of the French Revolution. Liberty appears in the guise of a young woman dressed in a short robe, her right hand hold‐ing a pikestaff adorned with a Phrygian bonnet. She is a warrior symbolizing the idea that liberty is some‐thing that must be fought for. Equality also takes the form of a young woman, followed by children carry‐ing the symbols of the three orders of the Ancien Regime: the agricultural tools of the Third Estate, the Bible of the Clergy and the crown of the Nobility, which synthesize the old and the new France. Fra‐ternity holds a stick surmounted by a Gallic rooster and next to it there are two children leading a lion and a sheep yoked together. After 1799, the fall of the Republic and the institution of the Empire saw Marianne’s representative value weakened, even though the theme of Liberty contin‐ued to thrive. Many artists perpetuated it in their work and one of the best known of these was Eu‐gène Delacroix, in his Liberté Guidant le Peu‐

ple aux Barricades (Liberty Leading the People), painted in 1830 When Napoleon III proclaimed the Empire in 1852, he replaced the figure of Marianne that was dis‐played on the coins and postage stamps with his own effigy. But the emerging opposition groups, de‐sirous of re-establishing the Republic, rallied around the figure of Marianne. With the institution of the new Republic, the Paris Commune encouraged the cult of the bare-breasted freedom woman coiffed with the red Phrygian bonnet of the sans-culotte. Paris never called her Marianne, however, this was the name given her outside the Capital. Every town and village had its statue or bell bearing the name that recalled the great revolutionary moments of 1789, 1830 and 1848. Over the twentieth century, every town hall acquired a bust of Marianne, now systematically wearing the Phrygian bonnet and stripped of her other attributes: bundle of arms, builder’s level or scales. Marianne now appears in an expurgated version. The latest figures most popular with today’s town halls are modeled on the features of Brigitte Bardot, Cather‐ine Deneuve and Laetitia Casta. Alongside the offi‐cial imagery, there is also a growing number of pri‐vate representations and political cartoonists have seized upon Marianne as the image of the Nation. The assimilation of the French Republic to La Mari‐anne is now a fact. Marianne has survived five re‐publics and the vicissitudes of history, and her sym‐bolic capacity has increased as the idea of the French Nation has become more firmly established.

The Evergrande collapse in China and its effects

By Radu Anghel

Evergrande, a Chinese real estate company many of you may never have heard of, has recently made a name for itself all over the world as the most in‐debted real estate company with an incredible debt of 300 billion dollars. Yet over the past couple of days it’s stocks have skyrocketed after the crushing debt was lifted off the companies shoulders by the Chinese government. A bit of history of how this company came to be where it is today, it all started off when businessman Hui Ka Yan founded Evergrande, in 1996 in Guangzhou, southern China. He was then able to turn the formerly known Hengda Group into a real estate giant who currently owns more than 1,300 projects in more than 280 cities across China. The group is now involved in far more than just real estate with its businesses ranging any‐where from wealth management, making electric cars and food and drink manufacturing and even the counties most dominant football team. The rapid growth and takeover of the Evergrande Group helped Mr Hui once become Asia's richest person and, despite seeing his wealth plummet in recent months, he still has a hefty personal fortune of more than $10bn , according to the latest Forbes list. The question begs to be asked how did a company that rose to dominate its market in such a short pe‐riod of time fall just as fast. Well in order to assure the capital needed for such rapid expansion the company borrowed $300bn. After last year Beijing implemented stricter rules regarding how much real estate companies can owe. These new guidelines forced Evergrande to sell its properties at lower costs in order to keep up with interest payments and keep the business afloat . But eventually that all caught up with them leading to them now struggling to make payments furthermore leading to the com‐panies share to decrease by 80% and even a down‐grade in its bonds by global credit rating agencies. Why would it matter if Evergrande collapsed? Well the answer to that is rather simple, not only would many be left without a job but many customers would be left empty handed, as they bought property before it had been put into construction. Apart from these many suppliers and design firms would be af‐fected by the collapse of such a big client. The Econ‐omist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Mattie Bekink told the BBC. “The financial fallout would be far reaching. Ever‐grande reportedly owes money to around 171 do‐mestic banks and 121 other financial firms,". Fur‐thermore if Evergrande folds without paying back it’s loans banks may choose to lend less money and at less favorable interest rates. This can really affect businesses just starting bup or even big businesses looking to expand. And although Evertgrande is a gi‐ant in its industry it only makes up 10-15 percent of the total market. So this could lead to the rest of the industry suffering due to their mistakes. And finally has Evergrande simply reached a point where they are simply too big to fail. Many analysts such as the EIU's Mattie Bekink thinks so: "Rather than risk disrupting supply chains and enraging homeowners, we think the government will probably find a way to ensure Evergrande's core business survives." Others are not of the same opinion and have said that businesses should not be bailed by the government. Overall I believe that it is better for the overall econ‐omy that the company is bought by the government so that more companies and investors don’t have to suffer due to the mistakes of a single organization.

G7, a meeting in which the 7 presi‐dents of the most rich and powerful countries discuss the problems we are facing. In this 47th edition, held in the UK, the most discussed top‐ics were the pandemic and climate change. Taking advantage of this meeting, Emmanuel Macron (the president of France) presented its country’s diplomatic priorities. The first thing he talked about was the COVID-19 vaccine. Repre‐senting the beliefs of France, the president maintained the idea that they will donate more vaccines mostly to Africa and the poor coun‐tries, an idea that has already started to be put into practice. CO‐VAX, a vaccine-sharing scheme co-led by The World Health Orga‐nization (WHO) aims to donate and deliver 2 billion doses of the vac‐cine to low and middle income countries before the end of the year. The idea behind the program is that COVAX would pre-purchase huge quantities of vaccines from the major manufacturers. Then as they come off the production line, dole them out globally in a way that every country gets an equitable share based on the size of their population. Until now, only France and Sweden started to donate shots for this project. He also men‐tioned that the pharmaceutical lab‐oratories play an important role and that they should also help and give away vaccines. You may ask yourself: How do the pharmaceuti‐cal laboratories have enough money for making so many vac‐cines? Well, they received huge funds from different states. With respect to the NATO sum‐mit, the second thing on which he insisted was that a big analy‐sis of the strategic places had to be done. He also mentioned that NATO must know with whom they are collaborating and who are their enemies. He expressed his opinion about Russia and China, mentioning that “with Russia, a destined, but demand‐ing framework must be built. For example, we must not compro‐mise when it comes to raids, in‐timidation or cyber attacks.” He made it clear that we should not be vassalized by China, nor to align ourselves with them.

Diplomatic priorities for France in 2021

by Patricia Gîrbovan

The third thing that Em‐manuel Macron mentioned in the NATO summit was that he would like some “rules of conduct” to be established in NATO (this being a signal to Turkey), but this will be fixed at the summit in Brussels. Last, but not least, repre‐senting the France position, France made it intelligible that Europe is not an object or a place to share influ‐ences, that we should stand up, be responsabile and make decisions.

source: www.downtoearth.org

G7: Confrence in a moment of crisis

By Radu Anghel

The recently renamed Group Of Seven or G7 is an international political forum currently consist‐ing of Canada, France, Ger‐many, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Although in the past, Russia was also part of this group, compris‐ing G8, it is currently facing an in‐ternational embargo due to its at‐tacks in Ukraine. These coun‐tries assembled this group as they represent the global super‐powers as far as economic pros‐perity. The G7 countries alone account for 60% of global net wealth ($317 trillion), 32–46% of global gross domestic product (GDP) yet for only about 770 mil‐lion people or 10% of the world's population. This year, on the 4th and 5th of June, these seven international giants have met in Cornwall to discuss drastic economic re‐forms that need to be made in or‐der to help the world’s economy bounce back from the hit it has taken during this pandemic. To quote the leaders of G7 directly, the meeting’s main purpose is “to ensure long term public fi‐nances” Among other very important top‐ics, one of the main points of concern of the summit was the creation of an international taxa‐tion level for multinational com‐panies in order to no longer allow these companies to open up bank accounts in tax havens and only pay a fraction of the tax that they would have paid in their re‐spective countries. These new laws want to implement a mini‐mum taxation of 15% with the possibility for it to increase later to 21% as proposed by US Pres‐ident Joe Biden. Another problem that the G7 summit tackled was the lack of Covid vaccines available at the moment. Their plan to solve this issue is to apply for a loan from the International Monetary Fund in order to be able to boost the production of vaccines and ac‐quisition. Besides all of this, the countries have taken a stand to work against the pressing issue of cli‐mate change. And in order to counteract this evermore appar‐ent issue, these nations have agreed to step up action on cli‐mate change and have renewed a pledge to raise $100bn a year to help poor countries cut emis‐sions. The G7 nations have all committed to no longer using coal power stations and after the summit in Britain, G7 leaders also promised to help developing countries move away from coal, whilst also encouraging China to do the same. At this summit the economical, fi‐nancial, and climate issues were all approached in a holistic man‐ner. "We are committed to properly incorporating issues related to climate change and biodiversity loss into the economic and finan‐cial policy-making process," the statement read. In conclusion, this summit will without a doubt impact the life of everyone around the globe for the foreseeable future by ad‐dressing many pressing issues. It remains to be seen how these changes will be implemented and the repercussions that they will have.

TSMC 53.9% Samsung 17.4%

Others 10.2%

Global Founderies 7%

UMC 7% SMIC 4.5%

The global chip shortage is an ongoing crisis in which the demand for semi‐conductor chips is greater than the supply, impacting more than 170 industries and has led to major shortages and queues amongst consumers for video cards, video game consoles, cars and other electrical devices. Chips are made of semiconductors and they are made from silicon and germanium Almost everything we own is powered by semiconductors. These chips were associ‐ated with computing for a time, but nowa‐days even fridges and vacuum cleaners are becoming increasingly complex requir‐ing more chips. Essentially everything in this world that was made in the past 5 to 10 years that uses power also uses semi‐conductors for example cars, light bulbs, kid toys, and doorbells. Not only these products require semiconductors, even the stuff that makes these products require semiconductors

Why?

Contrary to popular belief the chip shortage is not only due to the pandemic, it is a perfect combination of the pandemic with fires in Japan, drought in Tai‐wan, hoarding, cryptocurrency and more. Although there are many players in the semiconduc‐tors industry who design chips there are only 3 who manufacture them: Intel, Samsung, and TSMC (Tai‐wan semiconductor manufacturing company) which manufactures 54 %. One company makes half the chips for the other major companies so almost ev‐erything rests on the shoulders of TSMC. This was a supply disaster waiting to happen There is an ongoing drought in Taiwan where TSMC is located. Chip production requires a lot of water to clean the wafers that go into many tech devices. Tai‐wan is supposed to be one of the rainiest places in the world and typhoons are a common occurrence but in 2020 no typhoon arrived. This is the worst drought in 56 years and the primary water source for Taiwan’s 100 billion dollar semiconductor industry is only 7% full and all-time low. The government has demanded that TSMC reduce its water consumption by 15%. Car Industry: When the pandemic hit different con‐sumers reacted in different ways. For example sales of personal electronics rose as people upgraded their home offices. Companies like Apple, AMD, and Nvidia would make more sales, but automotive man‐ufactures saw a drop subsequently companies like GM and VW canceled or delayed chip orders. Chip manufacturers focus moved from the auto industry to other areas. When the sales started again the auto industry asked them to ramp back up, but it takes months to ramp up the silicon productions be‐cause these facilities are very delicate and even a speck of dust could cause massive problems in the manufacturing process of a chip. Even a power out‐age at a chip manufacturing plant will require weeks of careful inspection. Chip manufacturing is left to run 24/7 so TSMC and others had to keep their com‐panies running so when car manufacturers canceled or postponed their orders they thought it was going to be as simple as flicking back on a switch when the demand returned but there were left in the cold as chip manufacturers sought to accept work from other companies to keep their factories running and now is going to take months to retool. This is led GM, Ford, and Honda to idle their factories. Meanwhile, in Japan, a coincidental fire at the Rene‐sas plant the number one producer for the automo‐tive sector caused another supply shock over there. Pc gamers and enthusiasts are struggling to get parts. With cryptocurrency hitting record highs all the miners were avidly searching to pick up as many GPUs as they can. The prices for pc parts are going up every day straight from the manufacturers Holding: If the wait time gets any longer buyers might amplify the crisis by holding. If you cannot make a 50k car because of a $5 chip you are going to get a lot of them even if you need them or not and this puts more strain on the system. For companies like TSMC, it is very difficult to tell real demand and this could cause a massive overcorrection. Back in 2017 and 2018 car companies pressured chip man‐ufactures to increase production. In 2019 the indus‐try realized that demand was not as great as they thought. There were a lot of chips with no products to put them in. Renesas one of the biggest automo‐tive chip manufactures had to halt production and lay off employees.

The Future

Analysts predict that the shortage will continue. Nvidia’s CFO, Colette Kress told investors that “we ex‐pect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year”. Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger said “I don’t ex‐pect the chip industry is back to a healthy supply-de‐mand situation until 2023,” The way industry leaders have rested the global economy on the shoulders of one manufacturing plant is a mistake that we should learn from.

What is the value of your life?

By Victor Pavel

Have you ever encountered a life or death situ‐ation? Have you ever cheated death? Life is a privilege. Life is like a game that goes on until the main character dies. You don't know how much you need something until you are close to losing it. You can't comprehend how lucky you are to be alive until you overcome a life-threatening situation. But just how lucky? Well, that is a very complex and gruesome question. Since we are little, we are told that life is priceless. Life can't be bought. Life is our most valuable pos‐session. “You can't put a price tag on someone’s life“, they say. The sad truth is that you can. You can put a price tag on your mom, you can put a price tag on your dad. The price varies depending on the fi‐nancial situation a person is in. For example: A stable man that has no debt, a stable income, a residence with no mortgage, life insurance, and a family is more valuable than a guy with no family, a 100k debt, and a mortgage. After the 9/11 attacks, in 2002, a group of lawyers and economists were handed a task that could break ordinary people. They had to evaluate and pay compensation to the 9/11 victims and their fam‐ilies. Basically they had to put a price tag on life, in a moment of crisis. The state allocated 7 billion dol‐lars for compensations. The fund compensated 5560 cases. That's an average of 1.3 Million dollars. They concluded that an average human life is worth 1.3 Million dollars (2 million after inflation). Of course not all victims were compensated equally, like I said, some people are more expensive than others.This led to many disagreements.Why would a corporate employee that only sits at a desk be worth more than a firefighter that died risking his life, going in the rub‐ble saving others? The average was 1.3M, but the lowest was 200k. It was a horrible task for the group of economists and lawyers but they managed to sat‐isfy, at some degree, almost everyone. In the present, in the U.S, studies have shown that 1 in 25,000 people die at work. As a consequence, the companies need to pay 400$ extra as an incen‐tive for that risk. So basically nowadays our life is worth 10 Million Dollars. That's how much human life is worth, but how much is the human body worth?

The human body is one of the most complex studied creatures.It possesses the most complex structure in the known universe called “the brain". Unfortu‐nately for us, the brain is so complex that humankind didn't find a way to transplant it. On the flipside, you can get any other body organ transplanted, tho you need to keep in mind that some parts come with a hefty price tag.For example: The heart, one of the crucial organs of the human body, can cost you up to 1 Million dollars, while the eyes only cost 23k a piece. Yes, the eyes are way less important than your heart if we consider the fact that you can’t live without your heart, but without your eyes you can't see anything. Another relatively cheap body part, which in fact is the biggest organ, the skin, only costs 10 dollars per square inch.The average human has about 3200 square inches of skin (32k dollars per human). Another very expen‐sive, but very overlooked organ, the small intestine. This organ can get you 1.5Million dollars. The kid‐neys on the other hand, are a fraction of the price, coming in at just 200k Dollars. We need to keep in mind that the kidneys are one of the most hardwork‐ing organs. Their neighbour, the liver, costs 250k dollars. All those organs summed up still don't even come close to the crown jewel of the human body. While it's not an organ, it's still very important. It is the stuff that lies inside our bones called “bone mar‐row”. Only 1 gram of this stuff can get you 23k dol‐lars.The average human body can produce up to 2.6 kilograms of bone marrow. That means that our body has 60M dollars worth of bone marrow lying around in a lifetime. In total, the human body, theo‐retically, is worth over 65 Million dollars. You, your body, and your life are the most expensive things that you will ever own. No matter how wealthy you are, you will never find something more valuable than your life, your freedom, your health and your body. Just like seeking to be richer, you should al‐ways want to be healthier. Just like you try to find more ways to make money, you should always look for ways of improving your lifestyle. Life is every‐thing, once you lose it, there's nothing.

The Efficiency of the Cross

By Ioan Pristavu

“This article came to fruition in June 2021, to provide some insight to younger generations about some of the actions of one of Romania’s biggest institutions. However, since June, there have been multiple negative public comments addressed towards the Church, with the latest actually triggering a wave of solidarity with the Church, after many unjustified attacks. This article Does Not specifically address the latest topics, as it refers to events pre June 2021, but provides a holistic reality upon a phenomenon. In a society, the successful and adored are the ones who do the most good, fight for benevolent causes, those who are most efficient and moral in what and how they do. One might categorize the post decem‐ber 1989 period in our nation as a fresh start, an op‐portunity we could have taken to mold the nation and state into our image, freshly freed from the tyranny of a suppressive regime and economic hardships, be then internal or external. However, the opposite occurred. After years of pres‐sure on the “pot”, we burst out into a state of “inebri‐ety” on freedom. The discipline before December 1989 was generally (circa 70%) beneficial for the growth of society in general and in concept. Truly there was an iron hand that was the start of a domino effect of a system imposed, but there was a pres‐ence that was respected to an extent. Jumping to nowadays, we have passed through 31 years of crisis after crisis, in which all parts of society (economic, social, territorial, military, political) are in pretty much a state of pandemonium, except one which manages to maintain a healthy discipline and is quite effective in its objectives, the Romanian Orthodox Church. In the pre-december 1989 period, the Church was always in a stalemate as the governing power at that time had it’s core theory against religion of any kind, yet the diplomacy and keen tactics of the Church's leaders managed to steer the ship in such rough storms. Once liberty has been restored, the Church had a huge mission to repair the damage caused by such an atheist and oppressive regime to a nation which has Christian values cemented deep in it’s na‐tional identity. For decades, the Church was publicly left out of the development of Romanian society, but it was present and alive among its people, in better or in worse, and now it had to come back publicly in different sectors of society. The objective of a government is to serve its people, as it is the central organism that runs the modern state, in an ideal society, however, the post Decem‐ber 1989 Romanian state failed in many areas, in which the Church had to intervene, for the sake of our people. One big example is our Diaspora. After Syria, the Romanian nation has the largest migration in the world, which is shocking as most nations on that list are either in total war or in utter destruction. For 31 years, the Romanian state has not acted or implemented a policy to repatriate our citizens, to support them, and to keep their identity alive. There are cases in the hundreds of thousands of children not knowing their mother tongue, losing their identity, cases of brain draining important sectors in our economy, not to mention the decrease in population, workforce and the millions of families separated. A true national catastrophe. Since the great exodus to the west, the Church was alongside Romanian na‐tionals living abroad, bringing them together, assist‐ing broken spirits, by uniting the communities through culture, education, volunteering and through faith. 5 million people Romanian citizens, to which we add about half a million citizens of the republic of Moldova, who are taken care of and treated the same as Romanians, of which they are. 5.5 million souls, united through struggle and iden‐tity, towards a better future. Still, many of us are still left here, on Romanian soil, but not all of us are lucky enough to have good lives. Sadly, in the turmoil of the exodus, many were left alone with elderly relatives, many were orphaned, or in dire need of familial care, which again, the state hardly acted upon. Currently, in the perishes of the Romanian Orthodox Church are functioning 718 in‐stitutions and social services of which: 159 soup kitchens and bakeries, 38 medical institutions that offer medical and pharmaceutical services for the poor, 93 daycares for the young, 47 educational cen‐ters, 12 day centers for the elderly, 51 residential centers for the elderly, 22 offices for social rehabili‐tation, 15 centers for mental disorders, 65 centers for adult education and counselling, 21 emergency centers, for victims of human trafficking, and domes‐tic violent, plus anouther 118 social insitutions. Phi‐lanthropy and helping those in need is one of the churches biggest objectives, yet over 90% of all the help given was without any major governmental as‐sistance, as most aid was collected through dona‐tions of parishoners. And these impressive numbers are attributed only to parishes, without taking into consideration the National Missionary center, and Monasteries, true bastions of culture and altruism. These are two examples which are most visible in our day to day lives, as there are many accomplish‐ments which are less visible due to their nature,such as in diplomacy, heritage, the arts and so on. If we form opinions on gossip, uninformed sources and hatred filled dialogue, we get a distorted image of reality, and generally, an ill based opinion, which should be different to a personal point of view on a topic. Manipulation surrounds us all the time, be it in the media, in our schools, work or home, but the best weapon and cure for it is intellectualism. I shall leave you with saying of Nicolae Steinhard, a Romanian Jew who converted to Christianity in the communist internment camps, who later became a monk beau‐tifully said: “Nowhere and never does Christ ask us to be stupid. He calls upon us to be good, kind, fair, humble with heart, but not fools”