Sam Vaknin Ph.D.
Articles by Sam Vaknin Ph.D.
November 12, 2009
He stated that the newly-minted pandemic was the outcome of a "recombinant virus has been unleashed upon mankind" by a surrealistic coalition: "the Executive Branch of our (USA) government, the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as Baxter Pharmaceutical", the latter being "involved in international biological weapons programs." The media was lying blatantly about the number of casualties.
November 03, 2009
A prediction I made in February 2009 (when the Dow-Jones was hurtling towards 6500) came true.
November 03, 2009
None of these pernicious facts was a secret. Everyone treated the derivatives markets as glorified gambling dens. Losses were expected and a Ponzi scheme fatalism prevailed long before the cash dried out in 2007. The lack of trust that manifested later and the resultant lack of liquidity were no surprise (though the financial community feigned a collective shock).
October 31, 2009
Many veteran institutions regard cyberspace as a threat to their continuing prosperity, or even existence. The publishing, music, and film industries; academe; libraries; bookstores; newspapers; and governments are all apprehensive about the Internet's culture of laissez faire, seeming encroachment on their territories, and controlled anarchy.
October 29, 2009
The evergreens - meticulously updated every year to reflect the very last and best - include: a Chronicle of Events; Prominent People; Background to World Affairs; Britain Today (the Cyclopedia being a British institution); The Historical World; Background to Economic Events; a General Compendium; a Biblical Glossary; Myths and Legends; Ideas and Beliefs (my favorite); a superb Gazetteer of the World (alas, this year, for the first time, without its attendant atlas); close to 2600 entries of General Information; a Literary Companion; an Introduction to Art and Architecture; The Worlds of Music, Cinema, Science, and Wine (in separate chapters, of course); a Sporting Almanac; Computing and the internet; The Environment; and Medical Matters.
October 18, 2009
We would do well to not consider global warming as a crisis, but as a massive change. And even if we insist on regarding it as a cataclysm, as the Chinese saying goes, there are opportunities in every predicament.
October 18, 2009
Can one really say that one has been to China, or has had sex, or has strolled along a boulevard in autumn if one has never left the comfort of one's home? If one's body is stationary and only one's mind is wandering and acting through a technological extension, does this constitute "being there" and "doing it"?
October 12, 2009
The first signs of backlash against the elimination of Man from the West's worldview appeared in the early 20th century: on the one hand, a revival of the occult and the esoteric and, on the other hand, Quantum Mechanics and its counterintuitive universe.
October 12, 2009
The sciences of ecology and climatology (and meteorology) should not be confused with the hysterical hype and interest-driven fad that is environmentalism.
October 11, 2009
The influence of the Founding Fathers does not wane with time. On the very contrary: the mold that they have forged for their successors tends to rigidify and be sanctified.
October 11, 2009
History is the record of the clashes between and within adolescent civilizations. As societies age and mature, they generate "less history".
October 09, 2009
Within a single year, Barrack Obama had been elected to the Presidency of the United States and had won the Nobel Peace Prize. While the merits of the first achievement are debatable, there is a consensus, even among his most ardent supporters, fans, and acolytes that he absolutely does not deserve the second honor. What happens to a narcissist (Obama) whose grandiose delusions suddenly come true? What are the psychological effects on a narcissist when his fantasies of success and perfection materialize, even though his real-life accomplishments do not warrant such a turn of events and are wildly incommensurate with the adulatory feedback he keeps getting?
October 07, 2009
With the demise of Microsoft's Encarta (it has been discontinued) and the tribulations of the Wikipedia (its rules have been revamped to resemble a traditional encyclopedia, alienating its contributors in the process), the Encyclopedia Britannica 2010 (established in 1768) may have won the battle of reference.
October 01, 2009
Prioritize medical treatment so as to effectively deny it to the terminally-sick, the extremely feeble-minded; the incurably insane; those with fatal hereditary illnesses; and the very old
September 26, 2009
String theories strive to get rid of infinities and singularities (such as the aforementioned infinite curvature, or the infinities in the Feynman diagrams). They postulate the existence of matter-forming, minuscule, open or closed, strings with a given - and finite - length.
September 25, 2009
Until well into the 1930s local communities in the West produced their own energy, drilled their own water and hauled it, and, in general, were self-sufficient as far as the consumption of utilities was concerned.
September 23, 2009
All of Europe's major banks offer to their customers financial services and products through the Internet. But there's a problem: computer security.
September 23, 2009
Gmail has a gaping security hole, hitherto ignored by pundits, users, and Google (the company that owns and operates Gmail) itself.
September 23, 2009
The concepts of "boundary" and "trace" are best discussed within the context of the concept of "context".
August 28, 2009
I am sorry that Wales didn't have the guts to go all the way and implement a model similar to the Citizendium and the Britannica: qualified editors to review the contributions and edits of the teeming masses and make sure that the Wikipedia is not the bloody and confusing mess that it is now.
August 04, 2009
There are as many health systems and models as there are countries. This is because healthcare is a public good and, thus, reflects the social and cultural values of the societies that design and adopt them.
August 02, 2009
"You have no choice but to take part in experiment (E) and you will likely die in anguish consequently. Knowing these inescapable facts, would you rather that we suppress the data gathered in experiment (E), or would you rather that we publish them or use them otherwise?"
July 25, 2009
Israel asked Russia not to supply Iran with strategic air defense systems "in the next 3 months" (presumably, until after Israel's aerial bombardment on Iranian facilities).
July 19, 2009
The role of the commandoes was re-defined last week to exclude the kidnapping of Iranian scientists.
July 16, 2009
An eventual attack on Iran may include ground forces. Units of Sayeret Matka"l ("Headquarters Scouts", Israel's elite special forces) have been transferred to the mock in Biq'at Hayareach ("Moon Vale"), not far from Eilat.
July 13, 2009
But, the change in the visa regime also presents multiple threats to the fragile polity. To start with, it could encourage an exodus of ethnic Macedonians from the country and alter to their disfavor the demographic balance with their Albanian nemeses.
July 10, 2009
No one knows for sure where will Israel strike. Wiping off all the widely distributed and impregnable components of Iran's capability to enrich uranium is close to impossible.
July 03, 2009
Greece is putting together a package of economic incentives to be included in any compromise regarding the name issue with the Republic of Macedonia.
June 19, 2009
Future generations possess no rights and we have no obligations towards them.
June 19, 2009
Healthcare legislation in countries in transition, emerging economies, and developing countries should permit - and use economic incentives to encourage - a structural reform of the sector, including its partial privatization.
June 17, 2009
In an open, tolerant multicultural society, the traits, skills, and capacities of members of different collectives converge. This gives rise to a Narcissism of Small Differences.
June 13, 2009
Osmani started a truly new process. Its novelty will undoubtedly sink in as it progresses. Regardless of whether this particular committee succeeds or not, it has established precedents that will be impossible to ignore.
June 13, 2009
The National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia was wrong. Between December 2008 and May 2009 the NBRM sold more than 300 million euros in a misguided attempt to keep the exchange rate of the Macedonian denar fixed against the euro.
June 05, 2009
Macedonia's only hope is to influence American decision-makers through international public opinion; to act against the Greek position in a variety of multilateral and judicial institutions; and to cooperate with core constituencies in the United States in order to change the minds of legislators and bring them to its side.
June 03, 2009
Gruevski will go to a referendum on any compromise struck with Greece. It would be an unwise move, though: If the citizenry rejects the suggested deal, Gruevski will be faced with two stark alternatives: (1) To be the Prime Minister of a disintegrating country (as the Albanians will surely seek to secede from Macedonia or to federalize it, one way or the other); or (2) To lose his job altogether (as the Americans will surely seek to change the regime and depose him, as it has done in 2001-2 when it actively and successfully sought to unseat Ljupco Georgievski).
May 31, 2009
Nuclear energy is a prime example of how environmental hype and spin can and does become self-defeating.
May 25, 2009
The quest for alternative, non-fossil fuel, energy sources is driven by two misconceptions: (1) The mistaken belief in "peak oil" (that we are nearing the complete depletion and exhaustion of economically extractable oil reserves) and (2) That market mechanisms cannot be trusted to provide adequate and timely responses to energy needs (in other words that markets are prone to failure).
May 22, 2009
God is omniscient, omnipotent and good (we do not discuss here more "limited" versions of a divine Designer or Creator). Why, therefore won't he eliminate Evil?
May 16, 2009
The global crisis discredited the doctrine of the free, laissez faire market. The role of governments is growing and they are assuming additional functions and responsibilities.
May 11, 2009
The Universe we live in (possibly one of many that make up the Multiverse) is "fine-tuned" to allow for our existence. Its initial conditions and constants are such that their values are calibrated to yield Life as we know it (by aiding and abetting the appearance, structure, and diversity of matter). Had these initial conditions and/or constants deviated from their current levels, even infinitesimally, we would not have been here.
May 11, 2009
Narcissists often vent their anger at "insignificant" people. They yell at a waitress, berate a taxi driver, or publicly chide an underling. Alternatively, they sulk, feel anhedonic or pathologically bored, drink, or do drugs – all forms of self-directed aggression.
May 04, 2009
If adopt an expansive view of God - one that covers all possibilities and impossibilities - we can argue that God's existence is necessary.
April 30, 2009
Some believe that corruption helps facilitate the flow and exchange of goods and services in hopelessly clogged and dysfunctional systems and markets (corruption and the informal economy "get things done" and "keep people employed"); that it serves as an organizing principle where chaos reins and institutions are in their early formative stages; that it supplements income and thus helps the state employ qualified and skilled personnel; and that it preserves peace and harmony by financing networks of cronyism, nepotism, and patronage.
April 28, 2009
In its "Report on Money Laundering Typologies" (February 2001) the FATF was able to document concrete and suspected abuses of online banking, Internet casinos, and web-based financial services. It is difficult to identify a customer and to get to know it in cyberspace, was the alarming conclusion. It is equally complicated to establish jurisdiction.
April 28, 2009
It is important to distinguish between normative and deviant abuse. A total lack of aggression is as unhealthy as a surfeit. The cultural context is critical in assessing when someone crosses the line and becomes an abuser.
April 11, 2009
A world in which energy (of whatever source) will be abundant and predictably available would suffer from entropy, both physical and mental. The vast majority of human efforts revolve around the need to deploy our meager resources wisely.
April 11, 2009
Codependence is a complex, multi-faceted, and multi-dimensional defence against the codependent's fears and needs. There are four categories of codependence, stemming from their respective aetiologies.
March 26, 2009
From the dawn of civilization, when writing was the province of the few and esoteric, people have been memorizing information and communicating it using truncated, mnemonic bursts. Sizable swathes of the Bible resemble Twitter-like prose. Poetry, especially blank verse one, is Twitterish.
March 24, 2009
The second open secret is that all modern financial markets are Ponzi (pyramid) schemes. The only viable exit strategy is by dumping one's holdings on future entrants. Fresh cash flows are crucial to sustaining ever increasing prices. Once these dry up, markets collapse in a heap.
March 09, 2009
The collapse of Communism in Europe and Asia led to the emergence of a new middle class in these territories. Flushed with enhanced earnings and access to bank credits, its members unleashed a wave of unbridled consumption (mainly of imported goods); and with a rising mountain of savings, they scoured the globe for assets to invest their capital in: from football clubs to stocks and bonds.
March 08, 2009
In the annus mirabilis of 1971, Michael Hart conceived of electronic books (e-books), open sourcing, and of user-generated content in one stroke of genius.
March 04, 2009
The narcissistic banker and stockbroker lacks empathy - the ability to put himself in other people's shoes. He does not recognize boundaries - personal, corporate, or legal. Everything and everyone are to him mere instruments, extensions, objects unconditionally and uncomplainingly available in his pursuit of narcissistic gratification.
March 02, 2009
Following are descriptions of narcissistic and psychopathic traits. They are common among people diagnosed with the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) ( http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/npdglance.html ) and the Antisocial Personality Disorder (psychopaths). Read these texts. Do you recognize Barack Obama in them?
February 25, 2009
Mutability cum portability inevitably lead to anarchy. To sort our way through this chaotic mayhem, we have hitherto resorted to search engines, directories, trusted guides, and the like.
February 25, 2009
Wealth destruction by privately-owned firms is typical of economies with absent, lenient, or lax regulation and often exceeds anything the public administration does.
February 22, 2009
Though much hyped, biofuels should not serve as part and parcel of the energy policy mix.
February 22, 2009
The current recession is merely a prelude to the depression of 2010-5.
February 19, 2009
Some people – and all narcissists – are addicted to excitement, to the adrenaline rush, to the danger inevitably and invariably involved. They are the adrenaline junkies. All narcissists are adrenaline junkies – but not all adrenaline junkies are narcissists.
February 19, 2009
Sometimes the only way to conquer our fears is to confront them head on.
January 26, 2009
Online dating is a great tool for people who, for various reasons, have limited access to other dating options or venues where you can date "real" people face-to-face, instead of mere avatars.
January 26, 2009
Soaring divorce rates and the rise of single parenthood prove that men are not good at recognizing the qualities they seek in women.
January 26, 2009
A picture is worth 1000 words. But, words have succeeded pictograms and ideograms and hieroglyphs for good reasons.
January 19, 2009
Given a high enough level of frustration, triggered by recurrent, endemic, and systemic failures in all spheres of policy, even the most resilient democracy develops a predilection to "strong men", leaders whose self-confidence, sangfroid, and apparent omniscience all but "guarantee" a change of course for the better.
January 19, 2009
A newfound predilection for cash and cash-equivalents is a surefire sign of impending and imminent economic collapse.
January 06, 2009
It is beyond me why both Macedonia and Greece wish to make a deranged mass murderer their emblem and progenitor.
January 06, 2009
If you have answered "yes" to any of the questions that follow – stay away! He is an abuser.
January 02, 2009
"But, I can't be dreaming, I am real, I am not a character in a hallucination!" - I protested, striving to raise myself off the shiny chessboard-patterned floor, supporting my mysteriously weightless body on the two stumps that were my arms.
January 02, 2009
Holidays remind me of my childhood, of the supportive and loving family I never had, of what could have been, and never was, and, as I grow older, I know, will never be.
January 02, 2009
But why must pyramid schemes fail? Why can't they continue forever, riding on the back of new money and keeping every investor happy, new and old?
December 22, 2008
It is a lose-lose situation. If he gets it wrong, the prophet or prognosticator is subject to scorn and opprobrium. If he get it right, he become a source of constant embarrassment.
December 22, 2008
Human trafficking or Trafficking in Persons should be understood primarily as a serious violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms.
December 06, 2008
As most sports are uncomplicated affairs, the barrier to entry is low. Sports are great equalizers: one's status outside the arena, the field, or the court is irrelevant. One's standing is really determined by one's degree of obsession.
December 06, 2008
In the case of pets, projection works through anthropomorphism: we attribute to animals our traits, behavior patterns, needs, wishes, emotions, and cognitive processes.
November 01, 2008
Over the last 3 years, market volatility has soared to record highs. Stock indices habitually went up and down 2-3% daily and, in the last 12 months, even 5-8% daily.
November 01, 2008
All in all, the financial scenery of 2010 will resemble 1910's more than it will 2005's. Back to basics and home-grown truths. At least until the next cataclysm.
October 26, 2008
The narcissist wants to love. In his rare moments of self-awareness, he feels ego-dystonic (unhappy with his situation and with his relationships with others). This is his predicament: he is sentenced to isolation precisely because his need of other people is so great.
October 26, 2008
Is changing Mr. Macedonia's name the only way to right the wrong and re-assert the rights of Mr. Greece?
October 25, 2008
Gossip spreads through ephemeral means, such as texting (SMS), IM (Instant Messaging), and anonymous or encrypted re-mailing.
October 25, 2008
China alone holds more than 1 trillion (!) US dollars in American debt.
October 13, 2008
"The politicians in Europe are crazy. We didn't live under communism for 40 years just to return to it on EU soil," said Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek.
October 13, 2008
The current global crisis is not only about the failure of a few investment banks (in the USA) and retail banks (in Europe). The very concept of free markets seems to have gone bankrupt.
October 12, 2008
Providential societies believe that health problems of both kinds - bodily as well as mental - are the outcomes of the intervention or influence of a higher power (God, fate).
October 12, 2008
Europe's real economy as well as its financial sector are a mess.
September 07, 2008
If we were not really attacked by Muslims on 9/11, these two wars - Afghanistan and Iraq - were equally unjustified (as well as equally illegal under international law).
September 07, 2008
Some governments like and encourage inflation because inflation masks the true situation and makes them look good.
August 29, 2008
MS Student does not spoon-feed its users. It does not substitute for thinking or for study. On the contrary, by providing structured stimuli, it encourages the student to express his or her ideas.
August 29, 2008
Don't think twice. Run to the closest retail outlet (or surf to the Britannica's Web site) and purchase the 2009 edition now.
August 26, 2008
Even in North Korea, only the Dear Leader is above criticism and reproach - all others: politicians, civil servants, party hacks, and army generals can become and are often the targets of grassroots criticism and purges.
August 26, 2008
The Plan has been hatched in a series of secret meetings between Greek and American officials, culminating in a June 2008 conference held in Washington, involving Rice and Dora Bakoyannis, Greek's feisty Foreign Minister. The Macedonian government was kept out of the loop and may still be unaware of the existence of the Plan, let alone its contents.
August 16, 2008
To withstand the coordinated onslaught of hackers and cyber-criminals, who are constantly trying to empty the bank accounts of their victims, online banking Websites must incorporate many defensive safety features.
August 16, 2008
Russia, under Putin, is resurgent: economically, militarily, and geopolitically.
August 12, 2008
The average salary in Macedonia is c. 250 euros per month and the cost to the employer - what with wage taxes and contributions to the pension and health funds thrown in - is c. 420 euros. That translates to c. 5000 euros a year.
August 11, 2008
Norway, too, has a dark chapter that ended only recently.
August 11, 2008
Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations.
July 21, 2008
Narcissism Isolates the narcissist from the pain of facing reality and allows him to inhabit the fantasyland of ideal perfection and brilliance.
July 21, 2008
The Arabs form the hard core of Al-Qaida. They are the Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi etc. professional revolutionaries and terrorists who have gathered around the figurehead of Osama bin Laden.
June 24, 2008
Tom Georgiev shot me. Not literally, of course, yet, with a weapon as formidable as any gun: his camera.
June 14, 2008
Also, the American role in NATO is pronounced. The deeper NATO is entrenched here, the larger the role of the USA. EU accession, on the other hand, means only greater Greek involvement and penetration.
June 14, 2008
I exclude the Macedonian case because I am doubtful about its future. I can compare the current Bulgarian construct with the Bosnian-Croatian federation not by way of legal status, but as a philosophy for multi-ethnic co-existence.
June 12, 2008
Colonial relationships are no longer based on bayonets and are mostly commercial in nature. Still, it is not difficult to discern 19th century patterns in these 21st century exchanges.
June 12, 2008
Countries around the world - from Vietnam to Kazakhstan - have adopted these measures to reduce their burgeoning inflation and trade deficit.
June 04, 2008
Scientific and technological innovations move in tandem with political and military realignments.
June 04, 2008
The Internet allows us to replicate ourselves and our words (through vanity desktop publishing, blogs, and posting online content on Web sites), to playact our favorite roles, to communicate instantly with thousands (narrowcasting), to influence others, and, in general, to realize some of our narcissistic dreams and tendencies.
May 26, 2008
I don't regard the disintegration of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural entities to be a risk. On the very contrary, I consider the existence of artificial entities, comprised of multiple ethnicities, to be a destabilizing geopolitical factor.
May 26, 2008
Land claims in the Arctic were the first concrete step in the process of decolonizing the North by devolving decision-making authority from what many northerners have long perceived to be far away, colonial centers of administration and decision-making to local communities.
May 22, 2008
In 1877, the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911) suggested that fetishism is the outcome of a repeated co-occurrence of an object (the fetish) and sexual arousal.
May 22, 2008
ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS? Stop everything you are doing, disconnect from the Internet, and scan the computer for malware. Examples of suspicious behavior: persistent pop-ups; the computer or connection slow down considerably; repeated re-boots; mouse or keyboard freeze; strange messages and alerts.
May 11, 2008
Why Macedonia? It is not exactly the first locale that pops to mind when hi-tech is mentioned ...
May 11, 2008
Transition is a messy affair even in the best of times and the 1990s in Central and Eastern European (CEE) history have been by far the worst in the last 50 or so years. Politics mirrored this age of mayhem and upheaval. It unfolded along several axes of conflict.
April 30, 2008
Modern eugenics relies on statistics. It is no longer concerned with causes - but with phenomena and the likely effects of intervention.
April 30, 2008
The key to our determination to have children is our wish to experience the same unconditional love that we received from our mothers, this intoxicating feeling of being adored without caveats, for what we are, with no limits, reservations, or calculations.
April 25, 2008
It is healthy to daydream and fantasise. It is the antechamber of life and often anticipates its circumstances. It is a process of preparing for eventualities. But healthy daydreaming is different from grandiosity.
April 25, 2008
Fervid protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, Cyrillic lettering is a barrier.
April 23, 2008
Media companies would do better to adopt new technologies rather than fight them. They must come forth with new business models and new venues of dissemination of content.
April 23, 2008
The narcissist's control is based on ambiguity, unpredictability, fuzziness, and ambient abuse. His ever-shifting whims exclusively define right versus wrong, desirable and unwanted, what is to be pursued and what to be avoided.
April 12, 2008
Israel may find itself ostracized by consent rather than by decree. Already a pariah state in many quarters, it is being fingered by European left-leaning intellectuals as being in cahoots with the lunatic fringes of Christian and Jewish fundamentalism.
April 11, 2008
The United States had two strategic goals as it faced its reluctant allies in NATO in the April 2008 Bucharest Summit.
April 07, 2008
The USA will, perhaps, sign a technical-military agreement with Macedonia. Such agreements are very common, mean little, and constitute NO GUARANTEE to the signatories' security. Even Serbia has a technical-military agreement with NATO! USA will then pressure Macedonia into changing its name and entering NATO.
March 30, 2008
Like dependents (people with the Dependent Personality Disorder), codependents depend on other people for their emotional gratification and the performance of both inconsequential and crucial daily and psychological functions.
March 12, 2008
The Greek stratagem is evident. Greece, as a state, gets involved in transportation and energy related projects.
March 11, 2008
Psychological laboratory tests suffer from a series of common philosophical, methodological, and design problems.
March 11, 2008
Did the Laws of Nature precede Nature or were they created with it, in the Big Bang?
March 02, 2008
If a State is made up of several "peoples", its right to maintain itself intact and to avoid being dismembered or impaired is paramount and prevails over the right of its constituent peoples to secede.
March 01, 2008
The modern armies that emerged after the Crimea War are a historic aberration. With the exception of the last 150 years, armed forces throughout history were composed of professional soldiers for hire augmented by ad hoc, short-term bodies of conscripted vassals or citizenry or militias.
March 01, 2008
Business, intellectual, political, and criminal elites in all three territories - Kosovo, Western Macedonia, and Albania - have a lot to lose from an Albanian Anschluss (unification): their elevated positions, access to funds and independent streams of income (for instance, from the customs and tax administrations), and their chances of upward social mobility.
February 04, 2008
According to Freud and his followers, our psyche is a battlefield between instinctual urges and drives (the id), the constraints imposed by reality on the gratification of these impulses (the ego), and the norms of society (the superego).
February 04, 2008
Symptoms are the patient's complaints. They are highly subjective and amenable to suggestion and to alterations in the patient's mood and other mental processes. Symptoms are no more than mere indications. Signs, on the other hand, are objective and measurable.
February 04, 2008
Personality assessment is perhaps more an art form than a science. In an attempt to render it as objective and standardized as possible, generations of clinicians came up with psychological tests and structured interviews.
January 22, 2008
Only narcissists, who go through a severe life crisis, tend to consider the possibility of therapy at all.
January 22, 2008
The world is sinking into one of the worst global recession ever. How will this affect Macedonia?
January 20, 2008
Narcissists adopt all kinds of defences to counter narcissistic shame. They develop addictive, reckless, or impulsive behaviours. They deny, withdraw, rage, or engage in the compulsive pursuit of some kind of (unattainable, of course) perfection.
January 20, 2008
Macedonia's Sergej is an action painter in an age of for-hire artisanship, he is an expressionist, bucking the trends of modernism, abstract and otherwise.
January 17, 2008
The measured level of inflation can be manipulated for political reasons.
June 04, 2008
The Gruevski government is business-friendly and growth-oriented. It is truly reformist. However, its policies of benign neglect and over-reliance on foreigners and their money as a nostrum and panacea threaten Macedonia with stagflation.
January 05, 2008
In the age of Web 2.0, authoritative expertise is slowly waning. The layman reasserts herself as a fount of collective mob "wisdom". Information - unsorted, raw, sometimes wrong - substitutes for structured, meaningful knowledge. Gatekeepers - intellectuals, academics, scientists, and editors, publi...
January 03, 2008
"May I borrow your peanuts?"
She turned a pair of emerald eyes at me and smiled as she handed the tinfoil packet. I have struck lasting friendships with co-passengers in trans-Atlantic flights and I had a feeling this chance encounter would prove no exception.
"My name is Sam." - I said - "I a...
January 03, 2008
Collectives - especially bureaucracies, such as for-profit universities, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), the army, and government - tend to behave passive-aggressively and to frustrate their constituencies. This misconduct is often aimed at releasing tensions and stress that the individuals...
January 03, 2008
1. The Doctor
He inserts the syringe into my jugular and draws blood, spurting into the cylindrical container. Securely seated on my chest, he then makes precise incisions around my eyelids and attempts to extract my eyeballs in one swift motion. I can see his round face, crooked teeth, and shiny...
January 02, 2008
I. The Credit Crunch of 2007
The global credit crunch induced by the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, in the second half of 2007, engendered a tectonic and paradigmatic shift in the way central banks perceive themselves and their role in the banking and financial systems.
On Dece...
January 02, 2008
Part I. The Republic of Macedonia - A Case Study (2007)
Ever since its reluctant declaration of independence in 1991, Macedonia occupied the bottom of the list of countries in transition from Communism, as far as absolute dollar figures of FDI go. At 80.6 million USD, FDI in 2003 barely budged f...
December 17, 2007
The rumors concerning the demise of maritime piracy back in the 19th century were a tad premature. The scourge has so resurged that the International Maritime Board (IMB), founded by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in 1981, is forced to broadcast daily piracy reports to all shipping comp...
December 17, 2007
http://www.doi.org/
The Internet is too rich. Even powerful and sophisticated search engines, such as Google, return a lot of trash, dead ends, and Error 404's in response to the most well-defined query, Boolean operators and all. Directories created by human editors - such as Yahoo! or the Open ...
December 12, 2007
The subprime mortgage crisis in the United States is spreading into Europe, notably the United Kingdom. Real estate values are deemed inflated throughout the continent. One exception may be Macedonia. Purchase prices here have stagnated in the last few years and rental rates have actually declined c...
December 04, 2007
The down trend in the Macedonian Stock Exchange is not a mere correction. It is a repricing of assets. It still has a long way to go. Even at 4300 - the next massive technical support - Macedonian shares are inanely overvalued.
December 03, 2007
The following steps are considered to be the "minimum package" in the strengthening of relationships between countries of origin and national diasporas:
1. The granting to the diaspora of unlimited or, at the very least, restricted voting rights in the Motherland (e.g., Macedonia)
2. The inst...
December 03, 2007
By design, both agents were shrouded in darkness. I could see their silhouettes, the army-like crew cut, the wire-rimmed glasses, the more senior agent's hearing aid. Their hands rested, lifeless and stolid, on the plain wooden conference table that separated us. They were waiting for my response, i...
November 30, 1999
Title of Book: The Way Out: Foreign Direct Investment, Economic Development, and Employment
Author: Nikola Gruevski
Publisher: Evropa 92 Kochani
Month, Year of publication: October 2007
# of pages: 210
Nikola Gruevski, the youthful and dynamic Prime Minister of Macedonia, has just published...
November 11, 2007
We often misconstrue the concept of the "rule of Law" and take it to mean automatic "obedience to laws". But the two are antithetical.
Laws have to earn observance and obeisance. To do so, they have to meet a series of rigorous criteria: they have to be unambiguous, fair, just, pragmatic, and equ...
November 11, 2007
It is a well-noted phenomenon: Macedonians behave one way at home and in another, more civilized manner, when they are traveling abroad. Most egregiously, they spit in public and trash their environment. Why the stark differences in conduct?
Clearly, Macedonians feel that they are guests in their...
November 07, 2007
A Macedonian Fairy Tale
by: guest author, Boban Karapejovski
Once upon a time there was a small country called "the Oasis of Peace". This country was Macedonia.
This fairy tale dates from the mid-`90 of the previous centrury, when Macedonia became the only country to secede from the Yugosl...
November 06, 2007
"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing – that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and ...
November 06, 2007
Your abusive ex is likely to cope with the pain and humiliation of separation by spreading lies, distortions, and half-truths about you and by proffering self-justifying interpretations of the events leading to the break-up. By targeting your closest, nearest, and dearest – your family, your childre...
October 23, 2007
Warning:
If you are a devout Christian, this article may offend your sensibilities.
Note:
Though most of the quotes in this essay are from the Gospel of Saint Matthew, I was careful to compare them with the texts of the other three canonical gospels. Where the gospels disagree, I avoided us...
October 23, 2007
Conducted October 2007
The Balkans as a region is experiencing a confluence of events of both fundamental and technical nature that augur well, as far as its economies go. Accession to the huge and unified market of the European Union (and to NATO) is closer and more realistic than ever. Two deca...
October 17, 2007
"...An experience with an adult may seem merely a curious and pointless game, or it may be a hideous trauma leaving lifelong psychic scars. In many cases the reaction of parents and society determines the child's interpretation of the event. What would have been a trivial and soon-forgotten act beco...
October 17, 2007
Question:
Are Narcissists addicted to being famous?
Answer:
You bet. This, by far, is their predominant drive. Being famous encompasses a few important functions: it endows the narcissist with power, provides him with a constant Source of Narcissistic Supply (admiration, adoration, approval...
October 05, 2007
1. The Sinking
My marriage aborted, my private practice stillborn, I packed stale possessions in two flabby suitcases and bade my sterile apartment a tearless goodbye. On the spur of the moment, I had applied a fortnight before to a government post and, to my consternation, had won it handily. I ...
October 05, 2007
Perception and Representation in Analog and Digital Cameras
The digital camera profoundly affects the way we perceive and represent the world around us on "film".
To start with, the user of the analog camera used to watch the world, however indirectly. All that stood between him and reality wa...
September 27, 2007
Conducted: September 2007
Until recently and for four years, Aleksandar Dimishkovski worked as a business and finance correspondent in Macedonia's best-selling daily newspaper, "Dnevnik". In the past year, he also served as a personal advisor to the general manager of a foreign-owned company tha...
September 27, 2007
Conducted: September 2007
Until recently and for five years, Ljubica Grozdanovska worked as a journalist in Macedonia's best-selling daily newspaper, "Dnevnik", covering issues on every level of education in the country. Three months ago, she became correspondent for the prestigious Czech e-z...
September 12, 2007
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2008 (established in 1768), both Ultimate and Deluxe, builds on the success of its completely revamped previous editions in 2006 and 2007. The rate of innovation in the last two versions was impressive and welcome. It continues apace in this rendition with Britannica Biog...
September 08, 2007
The Republic of Macedonia is 16 years old: an adolescent with the problems and promises that characterize puberty. The country now has a young and dynamic leadership which has succeeded, in one short year, to transform Macedonia's image both domestically and abroad. According to repeated polls, for ...
September 07, 2007
A kidney fetches $2700 in Turkey. According to the October 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, this is a high price. An Indian or Iraqi kidney enriches its former owner by a mere $1000. Wealthy clients later pay for the rare organ up to $150,000.
CBS News aired, five ye...
September 07, 2007
There are many kinds of narratives and organizing principles. Science is driven by evidence gathered in experiments, and by the falsification of extant theories and their replacement with newer, asymptotically truer, ones. Other systems - religion, nationalism, paranoid ideation, or art - are based ...
September 03, 2007
On January 16, 2003, the European Court of Human Rights agreed - more than two years after the applications have been filed - to hear six cases filed by Chechens against Russia. The claimants accuse the Russian military of torture and indiscriminate killings. The Court has ruled in the past against ...
September 03, 2007
There is one place in which one's privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed – one's body, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The torturer invades, defiles and desecrates this shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, repeatedly and, often, sa...
August 24, 2007
I. Executive Summary
"Voucher Communities" are communities of unemployed workers organized in each municipality. The unemployed exchange goods and services among themselves in a barter-like or countertrade system. They use a form of "internal money": a voucher bearing a monetary value.
Thus, ...
August 24, 2007
In his book, "A Farewell to Alms" (Princeton University Press, 2007), Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, suggests that downward social mobility in England caused the Industrial Revolution in the early years of the 19th century. As the offspring of peasants d...
August 24, 2007
The abuse of asset confiscation and forfeiture statutes by governments, law enforcement agencies, and political appointees and cronies throughout the world is well-documented. In many developing countries and countries in transition, assets confiscated from real and alleged criminals and tax evaders...
August 16, 2007
In in his controversial tome, "Hitler's Willing Executioners", the author, Daniel Goldhagen, posits that the Germans underwent a miraculous transformation in the wake of their devastating defeat in World war II. En masse, they have abandoned their centuries-old rabid, virulent, and ultimately lethal...
August 15, 2007
"…Many Macedonians contend they were forced to make concessions on an accelerated timetable only because of the ethnic Albanian insurgency. Javier Solana, foreign policy chief of the EU, rejected that charge saying, 'violence has not dictated the pace of progress'. Asked if the force of arms was the...
August 15, 2007
Every conflict has its economic moments and dimensions. The current conflict in Macedonia perhaps even more so. The USA and its Western allies regard Macedonia as a bridge between Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania. Hence the EU's plans for the revival of transport corridors 8 and 10 connecting th...
August 15, 2007
NATO and the EU - and to a lesser extent the USA - are committed to preserving Macedonia's stability. The main transport corridors connecting the reformed Yugoslavia to Greece cross Macedonia. KFOR's supply routes and logistical bases are in Macedonia. NATO's southern flank - comprising the ever adv...
August 15, 2007
"People make war because of: honour, fear, and interest."
-Thucydides
"(Commerce is) rapidly rendering war obsolete by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which act in natural opposition to it."
- J.S. Mill - "Principles of Political Economy" - London, 1848
"If commerce were...
August 15, 2007
Interview with Sam Vaknin, Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia during the crisis
Q1: Was there any threat of economic sanctions against Republic of Macedonia by the international mediators and/or representatives of EU/US during the crisis of 2001?Were there threat or sanctions by the ...
August 13, 2007
In an assertive, unified, and resurgent Germany, the Holocaust is now the butt of manifestly anti-Semitic jokes. This would have been unthinkable only 10 years ago. Yet, in meetings I have had over the last 4 years with young German scholars, intellectuals, artists, and budding politicians, as alcoh...
August 13, 2007
With the advent of Web 2.0 and UGC (User-generated Content), the Internet has completed its transformation into an anarchic and lawless ochlocracy (mob-rule). The Internet is a mass medium and like all media it must be regulated. The laws that apply offline must and, in due time, as legislators ar...
August 09, 2007
On February 27, 1933, the German Reichstag was consumed by an enormous blaze. Hitler, whose immense popularity was based on his promises to resurrect Germany's economy, immediately accused the Communists - his political opponents - of instigating the conflagration. He had thousands of of their leade...
August 08, 2007
"Two hundred and forty five bands were in the mountains. Serbian and Bulgarian comitadjis, Greek andartes, Albanians and Vlachs ... all waging a terrorist war."
Leon Sciaky in "Farewell to Salonica: Portrait of an Era"
"(Goce Delcev died) cloak flung over his left shoulder, his white fez, wrappe...
August 07, 2007
The Renaissance as a reactionary idea of progress
The Renaissance ("rebirth" c. 1348-1648) evolved around a modernist and, therefore, reactionary idea of progress. This statement is not as nonsensical as it sounds. As Roger Griffin observed in his essay "Springtime for Hitler" (The New Humanist, ...
August 07, 2007
Introduction to Reactionary Ideas of Progress
By definition, most reactionary ideas of progress hark back to an often illusory past, either distant or recent. There, in the mists of time, the proponents of these social movements search for answers and remedies to the perceived ills of their prese...
August 03, 2007
It is a common error to assume that the politician's role is to create jobs, encourage economic activity, enhance the welfare and well-being of his subjects, preserve the territorial integrity of his country, and fulfill a host of other functions.
In truth, the politician has a single and exclusi...
July 31, 2007
The vast majority of Wikipedia contributors and editors are under the age of 25. Many of the administrators (senior editors) are in their teens. This has been established by a survey conducted in 2003 and in various interviews with Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of the enterprise.
The truth is that...
July 31, 2007
Homework assignments are the bane of most students I know (not to mention their hard-pressed and nescient parents). This is mainly because of the tedious and mind-numbing chores of data mining and composition. Additionally, as knowledge multiplies every 5-10 years, few parents and teachers are able ...
July 15, 2007
Q. Once you became an adult, how did your relationship with your parents change? What are some of the unique difficulties of being an adult child of narcissistic parents? Feel free to give examples or describe specific situations you found yourself in.
A. Adult children of narcissists adopt one o...
July 15, 2007
Three traits conspire to render the narcissist a failure and a loser: his sense of entitlement, his haughtiness and innate conviction of his own superiority, and his aversion to routine.
The narcissist's sense of entitlement encourages his indolence. He firmly believes that he should be spoon-fed...
July 11, 2007
All the countries in the mutilated post-Communist parts of Europe inevitably ended up poor. Yet, as opposed to their neighbors, some polities failed to alleviate their misery or ameliorate their dire predicament. The denizens of these states are not only impoverished - they also feel like losers and...
July 11, 2007
Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and Religious Fundamentalism are as utopian as the classical Idea of Progress, which is most strongly reified by Western science and liberal democracy. All four illiberal ideologies firmly espouse a linear view of history: Man progresses by accumulating knowledge and weal...
June 28, 2007
My grandfather sat on a divan, back stiff and eyes tight-shut, when the news arrived. At the age of seventy, his body still preserved the womanizer's tensile, proud, virility. He dyed his hair jet black. Original Moroccan music, wistful and lusty, the desert's guttural refrain, poured forth from a p...
June 28, 2007
In an article titled "Places Far Away, Places Very near - Mauthausen, the Camps of the Shoah, and the Bystanders" (published in Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck (eds.) - The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined - Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana U...
June 22, 2007
GDP (Gross Domestic Product)
The formula to calculate GDP is this:
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) =
Consumption + investment + government expenditure + net exports (exports minus imports) =
Wages + rents + interest + profits + non-income charges + net foreign factor income earned
But th...
June 21, 2007
From Venezuela to Thailand, democratic regimes are being toppled by authoritarian substitutes: the military, charismatic left-wingers, or mere populists. Even in the USA, the bastion of constitutional rule, civil and human rights are being alarmingly eroded (though not without precedent in wartime)....
June 21, 2007
Short selling involves the sale of securities borrowed from brokers who, in turn, usually borrow them from third party investors. The short seller pays a negotiated fee for the privilege and has to "cover" her position: to re-acquire the securities she had sold and return them to the lender (again v...
June 11, 2007
There is no source of reference remotely as authoritative as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There is no brand as venerable and as veteran as this mammoth labour of knowledge and ideas established in 1768. It numbered the likes of Einstein and Freud among its authors. Dozens of classic articles writte...
June 11, 2007
Mother tells me not to say anything at school about what is happening at home. Nothing is happening at home. Come morning, I wake up from my restless sleep and either I wetted my bed or I didn't. If I did, mother silently packs off my soaked pajamas and the damp sheets, casting a harsh glance at the...
June 04, 2007
"When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery."
Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), Russian novelist, author, and playright
Airplanes, missiles, and space shuttles crash due to lack of maintenance, absent-mindedness, and pure ignorance. Software support personnel, aided and ...
June 04, 2007
I was shown the same book in Yugoslavia, in Macedonia and in Bulgaria - "The World Conspiracy" - a shabby tome written by an ageing "scholar". The main, unabashedly anti-Semitic, hypothesis (presented as undisputed fact) is that the Jews rule the world supreme - always have, probably always will. Li...
May 28, 2007
"Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine."
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Complexity rises spontaneously in nature through processes such as self-organization. Emergent phenomena are common as are emergent traits, not reducible to basic components, i...
May 28, 2007
Cabinda is a member of the Hague based UNPO - the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. Among the dozens of other members are Abkhazia, the Albanians in Macedonia, Bashkortostan, Gaguzia, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Some erstwhile members became independent states - including Estonia, East Timor,...
May 28, 2007
On November 11, 2002, Sweden expelled two Russian diplomats for spying on radar and missile guidance technologies for the JAS 39 British-Swedish Gripen fighter jet developed by Telefon AB LM Ericsson, the telecommunications multinational. The Russians threatened to reciprocate. Five current and form...
May 15, 2007
Sam Vaknin is Former Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia
The Workforce Survey
Macedonia has executed a workforce survey for the first time in 1996.
In this survey the following definitions were used:
Economically Active
The combined numbers of the emp...
May 15, 2007
Sam Vaknin is Former Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia
Unemployment and Inflation
Another common misperception is that there is some trade off between unemployment and inflation. Both Friedman and Phelps attacked this notion. Unemployment seems to have a ...
May 15, 2007
Sam Vaknin is Former Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia
I. The Facts
Labour Mobility, Unemployment Benefits and Minimum Wages
We are all under the spell of magic words such as “mobility”, “globalization” and “flextime”. It seems as thou...
May 15, 2007
Sam Vaknin is Former Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia
Macroeconomic Policies
The macroeconomic policies of Macedonia are severely constrained by its international obligations to the IMF and the World Bank. Generally, a country can ease interest rates, or pro...
May 15, 2007
Sam Vaknin is Former Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia
Administrative Measures: Public Education and Dissemination of Information – The Functioning of the Employment Bureau
The dissemination of information regarding employment practices, opportunities, market...
May 15, 2007
Sam Vaknin is Former Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia
Encouraging Employers to Hire the Unemployed
The principle governing any incentive scheme intended to encourage employers to hire hitherto unemployed workers must be that the employer will get increasing ...
May 15, 2007
Dr. Sam Vaknin is Former Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia
Skopje, Republic of Macedonia
April, 2007
Contents
I. Recommendation
II. The Facts
III. Bibliography
I. Recommendations
Get the Real Picture
No on...
April 28, 2007
The role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in promoting growth and sustainable development has never been substantiated. There isn't even an agreed definition of the beast. In most developing countries, other capital flows - such as remittances - are larger and more predictable than FDI and ODA (Of...
April 24, 2007
Interview with Sam Vaknin conducted by Balkan Devlen
Sam Vaknin served as Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia and to its Minister of Finance, Nikola Gruevski (the current Prime Minister) during the crisis in 2001
Q1: Was there any threat of economic sanctions against Republic of Ma...
April 24, 2007
Personality disorders are not only all-pervasive, but also diffuse and shape-shifting. It is taxing and emotionally harrowing to watch how a loved one is consumed by these pernicious and largely incurable conditions. Victims adopt varying stances and react in different ways to the inevitable abuse i...
April 18, 2007
Michael Hart's reply to Sam Vaknin's article
"Web2.0-Hoarding, not Erudition"
It is the last sentence in Sam Vaknin's article that I reply to in the greatest spirit, no matter how his earlier, important, and well-taken points might be.
Sam might well call me one of the hoarders, except that...
April 17, 2007
By Sam VakninAuthor of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
Interview (High School Project of Brandon Abear)
1 - Are most serial killers pathological narcissists? Is there a strong connection? 5 - Is the pathological narcissist more at risk of becoming a serial killerthan a person not ...
April 08, 2007
Hoarding has replaced erudition everywhere. People hoard e-books, mp3 tracks, and photos. They memorize numerous fact and "facts" but can't tell the difference between them or connect the dots. The synoptic view of knowledge, the interconnectivity of data, the emergence of insight from treasure-trov...
April 08, 2007
Lest you hold your breath to the end of this article - the answers to both questions in the title are no and no. Capitalism cannot be "learned" or "imported" or "emulated" or "simulated". Capitalism (or, rather, liberalism) is not only a theoretical construct. It is not only a body of knowledge. It ...
March 30, 2007
"From the beginning, people of different languages and religions were permitted to live in Christian lands and cities, namely Jews, Armenians, Ismaelites, Agarenes and others such as these, except that they do not mix with Christians, but rather live separately. For this reason, places have been des...
March 30, 2007
"In accordance with this [right to act], whenever some one of the infidel parents or some other should oppose the giving up of his son for the Janiccaries, he is immediately hanged from his doorsill, his blood being deemed unworthy."
Turkish firman, 1601
"...The Turks have built several fortress...
March 30, 2007
"There are two maxims for historians which so harmonise with what I know of history that I would like to claim them as my own, though they really belong to nineteenth-century historiography: first, that governments try to press upon the historian the key to all the drawers but one, and are anxious t...
March 26, 2007
Shabtai Kalmanovich vanished from London in late 1980's. He resurfaced in Israel to face trial for espionage. He was convicted and spent years in an Israeli jail before being repatriated to Russia. He was described by his captors as a mastermind, in charge of an African KGB station.
In the early ...
March 26, 2007
According to David McClintick ("Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal"), in the late 1980's, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs. They funneled into these corporate fronts money from drug-related asset seizures.
The idea was to infiltrate global crime ...
March 17, 2007
The authors of a paper published by NBER on March 2000 and titled "The Foundations of Technical Analysis" - Andrew Lo, Harry Mamaysky, and Jiang Wang - claim that:
"Technical analysis, also known as 'charting', has been part of financial practice for many decades, but this discipline has not rece...
March 17, 2007
In American novels, well into the 1950's, one finds protagonists using the future stream of dividends emanating from their share holdings to send their kids to college or as collateral. Yet, dividends seemed to have gone the way of the Hula-Hoop. Few companies distribute erratic and ever-declining ...
March 15, 2007
"It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as in the end his response is aiming at."
Ludwig von Mises
Economics - to the great dismay of economists - is merely a branch of psychology. It deals with individual behav...
March 15, 2007
Economies revolve around and are determined by "anchors": stores of value that assume pivotal roles and lend character to transactions and economic players alike. Well into the 19 century, tangible assets such as real estate and commodities constituted the bulk of the exchanges that occurred in mark...
March 02, 2007
I. Introduction
The words "supernatural", "paranormal", and "parapsychology" are prime examples of oxymorons. Nature, by its extended definition, is all-inclusive and all-pervasive. Nothing is outside its orbit and everything that is logically and physically possible is within its purview. If som...
February 24, 2007
Speech delivered at the AIESEC congress in Skopje, 1997
Nikola Gruevski, then a junior banker in a minor bank, and currently the Prime Minister of Macedonia, was present in the audience
Many Macedonians ask me: why do foreign investors refrain from investing in Macedonia?
This reminds me of...
February 22, 2007
In July 2002, Christopher Deliso recounted in antiwar.com that Dutch Radio, based on reports leaked by a Dutch military analysis firm, accused the US government of aiding and abetting terrorists in Macedonia. Not for the first time, the Americans were rumored to have hired the services of MPRI (Mili...
February 22, 2007
The Web site of GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) lists 18 "state of the art equipments (sic) used for advanced spying". These include binoculars to read lips, voice activated bugs, electronic imaging devices, computer taps, electromagnetic induction detectors, acoustic stethoscopes, fib...
February 22, 2007
"Sustainable Development" is a worn out cliché - but not where it matters the most: in developing countries. There, unconstrained "development" has led to inter-ethnic strife, environmental doom, and economic mayhem. In the post Cold War era, central governments have lost clout and authority to thei...
February 22, 2007
Based on a presentation by the author (then Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia) in a forum of international investors, 1999.
Ten Questions You Wanted Answered About Macedonia - But Never Dared to Ask
1. How Big is the Macedonian Market?
2 million consumers
10 million cons...
February 06, 2007
In the near past, Macedonia seemed to have been bent on breaking its own record of surrealism. While politicians in other countries in transition from communism and socialism strive to be noticed for not stealing, their Macedonian counterparts, without a single exception, aim to steal without being ...
January 26, 2007
The five ghastly "Jack the Ripper" murders took place in an area less than a quarter square mile in size. Houses in this haunting and decrepit no man's land straddling the City and metropolitan London could be had for 25-50,000 British pounds as late as a decade ago. How things change!
The genera...
January 26, 2007
Claud Cockburn, writing for the "Times of London" from New-York, described the irrational exuberance that gripped the nation just prior to the Great Depression. As Europe wallowed in post-war malaise, America seemed to have discovered a new economy, the secret of uninterrupted growth and prosperity,...
January 26, 2007
The recent implosion of the global equity markets - from Hong Kong to New York - engendered yet another round of the semipternal debate: should central banks contemplate abrupt adjustments in the prices of assets - such as stocks or real estate - as they do changes in the consumer price indices? Are...
January 26, 2007
Asset bubbles - in the stock exchange, in the real estate or the commodity markets - invariably burst and often lead to banking crises. One such calamity struck the USA in 1986-1989. It is instructive to study the decisive reaction of the administration and Congress alike. They tackled both the ensu...
December 26, 2006
The syntax is tortured, the grammar mutilated, but the message - sent by snail mail, telex, fax, or e-mail - is coherent: an African bigwig or his heirs wish to transfer funds amassed in years of graft and venality to a safe bank account in the West. They seek the recipient's permission to make use ...
December 26, 2006
I. OVERVIEW
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the USA, attention was drawn to the age-old, secretive, and globe-spanning banking system developed in Asia and known as "Hawala" (to change, in Arabic). It is based on a short term, discountable, negotiable, promissory note (or bil...
December 20, 2006
Is there any necessary connection between our actions and the happiness of others? Disregarding for a moment the murkiness of the definitions of "actions" in philosophical literature - two types of answers were hitherto provided.
Sentient Beings (referred to, in this essay, as "Humans" or "person...
December 20, 2006
What are friends for and how can a friendship be tested? By behaving altruistically, would be the most common answer and by sacrificing one's interests in favour of one's friends. Friendship implies the converse of egoism, both psychologically and ethically. But then we say that the dog is "man's be...
December 04, 2006
The unpalatable truth is that falling in love is, in some ways, indistinguishable from a severe pathology. Behavior changes are reminiscent of psychosis and, biochemically speaking, passionate love closely imitates substance abuse. Appearing in the BBC series Body Hits on December 4, Dr. John Marsde...
December 04, 2006
The Western press casts him in the role of an African Saddam Hussein. Neighboring leaders supported his policies, but then succumbed to diplomacy and world opinion and, with a few notable exceptions, shunned him. The opposition and its mouthpieces accuse him - justly - of brutal disregard for human,...
November 07, 2006
"The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so."
Henry Wheeler Shaw
Do stereotypes usefully represent real knowledge or merely reflect counter-productive prejudice?
Stereotypes invariably refer in a generalized manner to - often arbitrary - gr...
November 07, 2006
The Negativistic (Passive-Aggressive) Personality Disorder is not yet recognized by the DSM Committee. It makes its appearances in Appendix B of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, titled "Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study."
Some people are perennial pessimists and have "negati...
October 31, 2006
From the comfort of their plush offices and five to six figure salaries, self-appointed NGO's often denounce child labor as their employees rush from one five star hotel to another, $3000 subnotebooks and PDA's in hand. The hairsplitting distinction made by the ILO between "child work" and "child la...
October 31, 2006
Their arrival portends rising local prices and a culture shock. Many of them live in plush apartments, or five star hotels, drive SUV's, sport $3000 laptops and PDA's. They earn a two figure multiple of the local average wage. They are busybodies, preachers, critics, do-gooders, and professional alt...
October 31, 2006
Growing up in Israel in the 1960's, we were always urged to conserve precious water. Rainfall was rare and meager, the sun scorching, our only sweet water lake under constant threat by the Syrians. Israelis were being shot at hauling water cisterns or irrigating their parched fields. Water was a mat...
October 25, 2006
Before we proceed to outline the psychological profile of the stalker, it is important to try and gauge the extent of the problem by quantifying its different manifestations. More plainly, studying the available statistics is both enlightening and useful.
Contrary to common opinion, there has bee...
October 25, 2006
"[In]... the brothels off Wenceslas Square, in central Prague, [where] sexual intercourse can be bought for USD 25 - about half the price charged at a German brothel... Slav women have supplanted Filipinos and Thais as the most common foreign offering in [Europe]."
The Economist, August 2000, p.18
...
October 19, 2006
A recent (late 2006) study by Heather Hopkins from Hitwise demonstrates the existence of a pernicious feedback loop between Google, Wikipedia, MySpace, and Blogspot. Wikipedia gets 54% of its traffic from Google search results. The majority of Wikipedia visitors then proceed to MySpace or Blogspot, ...
October 15, 2006
Are personality disorders the outcomes of inherited traits? Are they brought on by abusive and traumatizing upbringing? Or, maybe they are the sad results of the confluence of both?
To identify the role of heredity, researchers have resorted to a few tactics: they studied the occurrence of simil...
October 15, 2006
Ever since Freud, more women than men sought therapy. Consequently, terms like "hysteria' are intimately connected to female physiology and alleged female psychology. The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the bible of the psychiatric profession) expressly professes gender bias: personality dis...
October 09, 2006
According to MSNBC, in a May 2005 Senate hearing, John Lewis, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, asserted that "environmental and animal rights extremists who have turned to arson and explosives are the nation's top domestic terrorism threat ... Groups such as the Animal Liber...
October 09, 2006
Pedophiles are attracted to prepubescent children and act on their sexual fantasies. It is a startling fact that the etiology of this paraphilia is unknown. Pedophiles comes from all walks of life and have no common socio-economic background. Contrary to media-propagated myths, most of them had not ...
October 09, 2006
"I believe that when man evolves a civilization higher than the mechanized but still primitive one he has now, the eating of human flesh will be sanctioned. For then man will have thrown off all of his superstitions and irrational taboos."
(Diego Rivera)
"One calls 'barbarism' whatever he is n...
September 28, 2006
(The use of gender pronouns in this article reflects the clinical facts: most narcissists are men.)
Anxiety Disorders – and especially Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) – are often misdiagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
Anxiety is uncontrollable and excessive apprehension. A...
September 28, 2006
(The use of gender pronouns in this article reflects the clinical facts: most narcissists and most Asperger's patients are male.)
Asperger's Disorder is often misdiagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), though evident as early as age 3 (while pathological narcissism cannot be safely ...
September 28, 2006
The use of gender pronouns in this article reflects the clinical facts: most narcissists are men.)
The manic phase of Bipolar I Disorder is often misdiagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
Bipolar patients in the manic phase exhibit many of the signs and symptoms of pathological ...
September 25, 2006
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2007 (established in 1768) is again a completely revamped product. The rate of innovation in the last two editions is impressive and welcome. Its interface is intuitive and uncluttered and it is great fun to use. For instance, it offers a date-based daily selection of re...
September 25, 2006
Tom Panelas is the Encyclopedia Britannica's Director of Corporate Communications
Q. Is the Wikipedia an encyclopedia in any sense of the word?
A. I don't think it's crucial that everyone agree on whether Wikipedia is or is not an encyclopedia. What's important is that people who might use it un...
September 20, 2006
As Aristotle and John Stuart Mill observed, the private sphere sets limits, both normative and empirical, to the rights, powers, and obligations of others. The myriad forms of undue invasion of the private sphere - such as rape, burglary, or eavesdropping - are all crimes. Even the state - this mono...
September 12, 2006
In a paper, published in "Science" in May 2005, 25 scientists, led by Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University, confirmed that they were able to clone dozens of blastocysts (the clusters of tiny cells that develop into embryos). Blastocysts contain stem cells that can be used to generate replaceme...
August 22, 2006
Islam is not merely a religion. It is also - and perhaps, foremost - a state ideology. It is all-pervasive and missionary. It permeates every aspect of social cooperation and culture. It is an organizing principle, a narrative, a philosophy, a value system, and a vade mecum. In this it resembles Con...
August 09, 2006
The self-identity of most nation-states is exclusionary and oppositional: to generate solidarity, a sense of shared community, and consensus, an ill-defined "we" is unfavorably contrasted with a fuzzy "they". While hate speech has been largely outlawed the world over, these often counterfactual dich...
July 28, 2006
Barry Chamish is convinced that Shimon Peres, Israel's wily old statesman, ordered the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, back in 1995, in collaboration with the French. He points to apparent tampering with evidence. The blood-stained song sheet in Mr. Rabin's pocket lost its bullet hole between the ni...
July 22, 2006
The previous versions of Encarta included a host of homework tools. Last year, these have been made into a separate product called Microsoft Student. It has now been gainfully repackaged and very much enhanced. Among the new or revamped features: free online access to MSN Encarta Premium, Step-by-St...
July 22, 2006
While Microsoft Encarta Premium 2006 marked Microsoft's commitment to the Web - Microsoft Encarta Premium 2007 marks its commitments to its own technology. The new Encarta relies on Microsoft's powerful, flexible, scalable, and adaptable .Net Framework 2.0. There a price to pay, of course: the time ...
July 20, 2006
James Cook misled the British government back home by neglecting to report about the aborigines he spotted on the beaches of New Holland. This convenient omission allowed him to claim the territory for the crown. In the subsequent waves of colonization, the aborigines perished. Modern Australia stan...
July 13, 2006
Three years ago I published a book of short stories in Israel. The publishing house belongs to Israel's leading (and exceedingly wealthy) newspaper. I signed a contract which stated that I am entitled to receive 8% of the income from the sales of the book after commissions payable to distributors, s...
July 13, 2006
I. Practical Considerations
The problem of the "ticking bomb" - rediscovered after September 11 by Alan Dershowitz, a renowned criminal defense lawyer in the United States - is old hat. Should physical torture be applied - where psychological strain has failed - in order to discover the whereabou...
July 12, 2006
I. The Three Intuitions
IA. Eidetic Intuitions
Intuition is supposed to be a form of direct access. Yet, direct access to what? Does it access directly "intuitions" (abstract objects, akin to numbers or properties - see "Bestowed Existence")? Are intuitions the objects of the mental act of Int...
July 12, 2006
The Wikipedia was touted as the greatest reference work in history. A collaborative effort of contributors and editors across time and space, it bloated into hundreds of thousands of articles on subjects both deserving and risible. Anyone with a connection to the Internet and a browser can edit the ...
July 11, 2006
The perpetrators of the recent spate of financial frauds in the USA acted with callous disregard for both their employees and shareholders - not to mention other stakeholders. Psychologists have often remote-diagnosed them as "malignant, pathological narcissists".
Narcissists are driven by the ne...
July 11, 2006
Well into the eighteenth century, the only types of mental illness - then collectively known as "delirium" or "mania" - were depression (melancholy), psychoses, and delusions. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the French psychiatrist Pinel coined the phrase "manie sans delire" (insanity wi...
July 02, 2006
Rabid anti-Semitism, coupled with inane and outlandish conspiracy theories of world dominion, is easy to counter and dispel. It is the more "reasoned", subtle, and stealthy variety that it pernicious. "No smoke without fire," - say people - "there must be something to it!".
In this dialog I try t...
July 02, 2006
It is a question of time before the Wikipedia self-destructs and implodes. It poses such low barriers to entry (anyone can edit any number of its articles) that it is already attracting masses of teenagers as "contributors" and "editors", not to mention the less savory flotsam and jetsam of cyber-li...
June 07, 2006
Jean-Marie Le Pen - France's dark horse presidential contender - is clearly emotional about the issue of immigration and, according to him, its correlates, crime and unemployment. His logic is dodgy at best and his paranoid xenophobia ill-disguised. But Le Pen and his ilk - from Carinthia to Copenha...
May 27, 2006
Most politicians bend the laws of the land and steal money or solicit bribes because they need the funds to support networks of patronage. Others do it in order to reward their nearest and dearest or to maintain a lavish lifestyle when their political lives are over.
But these mundane reasons fail...
May 26, 2006
"It was precisely that evening in Lodi that I came to believe in myself as an unusual person and became consumed with the ambition to do the great things that until then had been but a fantasy."
(Napoleon Bonaparte, "Thoughts")
"They may all e called Heroes, in as much as they have derived their...
May 25, 2006
Freud coined the phrase "narcissism of small differences" in a paper titled "The Taboo of Virginity" that he published in 1917. Referring to earlier work by British anthropologist Ernest Crawley, he said that we reserve our most virulent emotions ? aggression, hatred, envy ? towards those who resemb...
Articles by Sam Vaknin Ph.D. From Other Sources
January 17, 2008
published in United Press International (UPI)
January 17, 2008
published in Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited
January 17, 2008
published in Central Europe Review