The Western press has been flooded with the reports ont he Russian mafia, and the corruption scandals of the highest echelons of the Russian bureaucracy. This is not exaggerration. It is strange, however, that the Western press only discovered the scale of Russian corruption after the collapse of the Rouble in 1998. We have reason to believe that the experts had been in the knowledge of the dark side of transition before the financial crisis as well.

In Romania, the widespread description goes that there is no anti-Semitism, while there are anti-Semits. Commonplaces and popular judgments about Jews and other aliens remind us the traditional anti-Semitic ideology. Nevertheless, contemporary anti-Semitism is shy: it knows that after the Holocaust, open anti-Semitism is not acceptable.

The recent months show how the various global issues fall into boxes and receive uneven attention. The cinicism of the summits indicates how the hierarchies of knowledge contribute to the maintanance of the divisions of the world.

British prime minister Tony Blair is the most well-kown representative of the third way idea. We cannot forget, however, that the third way has had many other variations in Europe and America. Its contemporary form is fundamentally different from the earlier approaches under the same name.