Religion And Conflict: Religiously Driven Violence

We are witnessing several trends in the post-modern world: Immigration and alienation in big cities, inadaptability at the second and third generation immigrants and some new forms of radicalization in Germany, France, the US. The second would be the phenomenon of convertion to either radical forms of religions, Jihadist ones – or so called “new religions” – Apocalyptic, Hedonistic or Satanist ones. The problem still stands in the hands of the big religions of the world. They became more and more commercial institutions – selling faith and moral comfort, and less – and less moral references models. That leads our citizens to move to find other alternatives, and falling in the hands of radical Islam, Jihadist sects and crocs in other types of cults and newly born religions

Return to the Basics: Societal, Value and Public Ethics Reform

The changes occurring now at the international level and the large chronic instability are going to define the decades to come. The global crisis as well as the European sovereign debts crisis are affecting Romania which has adopted austerity measures but without any complementary programs of development. Since we have our own problems of development and adaptation to the current world, important efforts to creating societal cohesion, to reviewing the system of values and moral references and to „through away the sellers from the Temple” are totally needed

Post-Communist Identities In The Republic Of Moldova

The study begins by referring to the group identity need of any human being and studies the large group identities when it comes to nation formation, ethnical references and political abuses in nation building in the post-communist era. The study refers specifically to the post-Soviet identities, the struggle of the Soviet elites in the new born independent states to maintain their privileges. In the particular case of the Republic of Moldova, there is more confusion coming from the name of the new identity, with a reference to Moldova – the former region of Romania and former Middle Age proto-state – and the ideological approach by Stalin who invented a new state in 1924, The Soviet Socialist Autonomous Republic of Moldova, and forged a „Moldavian” identity „from the ethnic family of the Slavic identities”, different from the Romanian one, to help explain the rapt and occupation of the region on the Eastern shores of the Prut river

SMART DEFENSE: AN EMPOWERED AND UNITED NATO PLAYING A STRATEGIC ROLE

Between the 20th and the 21st May this year the NATO summit took place in Chicago, in the presence of heads of states or governments of over 50 countries and international organizations

Impact of Direct Taxation on Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence Based on Panel Data Regression Analysis at the Level of Eu Countries

Through fiscal policy, the government can influence businesses and individuals in order to regulate their behaviour. The research used panel data from all 27 EU countries covering the period 2008–2020 to investigate the impact of direct taxation on economic growth at the level of two main clusters of countries concerning fiscal efficiency. Therefore, the analysis employed cluster methods to classify the main EU countries in both groups of countries with a high level of fiscal efficiency and those with a rather limited level of fiscal efficiency. The study employs fixed effect models and dynamic GMM methods to investigate the effect of direct taxation components (personal and corporate income taxes) on economic growth. The analysis also considers the informal economy’s role in relation to the official economy. The empirical results revealed that corporate income taxes significantly negatively impact economic growth for both clusters of high- and limited fiscal efficiency countries. Additionally, personal income tax was associated with lower economic growth for countries in the limited fiscal efficiency group. Thus, from the perspective of policymakers, lowering direct taxation can increase disposable income, stimulate consumption and economic growth, encourage investment leading to job creation, increase competitiveness, and reduce tax evasion and avoidance, thereby leading to a more efficient tax system