I'm shutting your butt down!

Even though the police and the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) prevented him from going up in flames at Piatra Neamţ, had he turned on his ignition, which three dudes were caught placing a bomb under, Bogdan Mararu wasn't nominated for five Oscar awards in 2013, like Quentin Tarantino has been for the movie "Django Unchained", even though he would probably deserve it, even though his movies are made by the police and by TV stations.

• TARANTINO

On that same Friday, when two bomb disposal teams were detonating the bomb in Piatra Neamţ (without any damages other than the expensive car of Mararu), in London, a British reporter (of Indian origin), was on the receiving end of the anger of Tarantino: "I won't answer that question. I'm not your monkey! I'm shutting your butt down! I won't answer you. You shouldn't be asking me that".

The elegant British Indian of "Channel 4 News", who was wearing a beige suit and "high class" glasses, had asked the director whether he sees any connection between the movies he directs and real-life violence.

Quentin Tarantino is the director of movies depicting extreme cruelty (see, for instance, "Kill Bill" - young secretaries with their hands chopped off, piles of corpses, puddles of blood), so that the reporter hinted at the criticism which is being made against him, that he "aestheticizes violence", and the famous filmmaker seemed to lose his temper on that remark.

• "I AM NOT A MOBSTER" - THE OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE OF MARARU

Perhaps the Mararu family of Piatra Neamţ watches the London-based "Channel 4 News", because on the day after the event, Saturday, they issued a press release along the lines of "shutting your butt down", in which Bogdan Mararu is thanking [ed. note: - properly] those who saved his life (the I.G.P.R., the DIICOT, the DGIPI and the SRI - an honest "Bravo!" to all of them, from the editors of BURSA - a successful, praiseworthy intervention!), following which, Bogdan Mararu, who signs the press release, followed the "Tarantino model", expressing his anger at being called a "mobster".

Up until now, we had found out from the press releases of the Prosecutors' Office that the members of the Mararu family are loan sharks, and I knew that wasn't exactly a legal activity and hence there is no way for anybody to offend them by calling them "mobsters".

But the press release gave me a wake-up call: indeed, I don't know what Bogdan Mararu does for a living, perhaps he is actually a respectable person. Perhaps the bats to the head received by one of his victims, the bomb placed under his own car, the bomb which his godfather, Vasile Rodideal, wanted to place (before being convicted on February 1st, 2013, to 3.5 years in jail for influence peddling), the six bullets (the two he got and the four that killed his brother), the cars set on fire - well, all those things are normal, just like in the life of any other respectable person.

What, doesn't everybody find on Wednesdays and Fridays, a bomb under their pillow?

• A FAMILY OF PHILOSOPHERS

No, I don't really know what Mararu truly does for a living.

Maybe Bogdan Mararu is actually a professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of Piatra Neamţ.

Perhaps Gheorghiţă, his younger brother, had some Berkeleyan controversy with Cristian Chilat, on November la 14 noiembrie 2010, at Cafe Latino, claiming that the world was just a result of his perceptions, and Chilat borrowed a gun from "Puiu" Mironescu (who wasn't much of a fan of solipsism either), and put three bullets in Gheorghiţă and went back to put another one in him, because he was still moving, thus undeniably proving to Gheorghiţă that the world exists outside his perception.

About sixty bouquets were carried by those who attended the procession, and twenty luxury cars, as befits a philosopher on his path to the grave.

The band wore red hats and tunics, and the two huge white horses refused to pull the hearse, meaning that four of the friends of the deceased had to pull it instead.

Of course, in Plato's Academy, Chilat of Piatra Neamţ would have received a lot of attention, but the judges, who lacked the philosophical training, and therefore, they misinterpreted the killing as a quarrel between mobsters, and sentenced Cristian Chilat to 19 years in the slammer, even though he was obviously right from an ontological point of view: the world is not the result of somebody's perceptions.

Speaking of the mobster notion: Bogdan Mararu isn't exactly wrong when he says he is not a mobster. The word commonly used in Romanian ("interlop") is mentioned as an adjective rather than a noun, in all Romanian dictionaries, hence Romanian journalists are using it wrong. There! Doesn't that prove the statement of Mr. Mararu himself, "that they should be careful with their use of words"?

But anyway, I don't think there is actually a Faculty of Philosophy in Piatra Neamţ.

• RISING STARS

Yes, to me, Bogdan Mararu is a model - getting to be such a profound philosopher, out of a mere seller of cattle skins, is on par Socrates, who started out as a stone carver.

This proves that in Romania we have a movement of "rising stars".

Let's remind here the case of young Sebastian Ghiţă, who, from the moment when his 20 bodyguards left with their tail between their legs when the notorious Nelu "Legionaru'", an acquaintance of Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, showed up in front of the building of Realitatea TV, has risen to be "number 2" in the Commission for the Audit of the activities of the Romanian Information Service, while Vîntu, went to jail, where he first of all called "the top inmate" to his cell, asked him to get him a cellphone, and once he got it, he asked for a second one, and once the "boss" got it, Vîntu told him: "Keep it, it's for you!"

The new generation - Sebastian Ghiţă, which Wikileaks Romania suspects that he is an undercover officer of the Romanian Intelligence Service - won't be happy with just the business he does with the SRI in the IT area (in 2002, he was indicted in the "Tracia - Asesoft" case, charged with complicity to fraud and false statements, concerning oil trades which deprived the state budget of 20 billion old lei, acquitted by the Court, in 2004, and he was acquitted again in November 2011, following the appeal, by the Court of Bucharest), he is not happy with only half of the TV station of Vîntu (whom he had put in the slammer), but now, he has taken down Ion Stan, his colleague in the PSD, who had just revealed the corruption and the major irregularities of the SRI (but, I have to say it again, he did a good job in the Piatra Neamţ case, or rather, the SRI did a good job).

Sebastian Ghiţă and Bogdan Mararu look like rising stars.

Besides, judging on the income statement by Ghiţă, where it is recorded that he lent 68 million Euros to several individuals, we can tell he is in the same business as Mararu - they are both philosophers, in fact, Ghiţă is the greater one.

• THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST - NO BIGGIE

The jealous naysayers picked up on the oh-so-insignificant fact that there is a conflict of interest in the fact that being a supervisor of the SRI while at the same time owning a TV channel, Ghiţă would use that information to help his station.

Even though it may seem to make sense, that's stupid.

Come on, a philosopher wouldn't stoop that low!

The fact that his TV station was the first to report the action of the SRI which took place on Friday, in Piatra Neamţ, is just coincidence.

With justified pride, the screen displayed the following text: "We are the only TV channel broadcasting live from Piatra Neamţ!"

Way to go, Ghiţă!

You didn't come in empty handed.

With you at the top, Mararu can afford to issue his own press releases on TV!

What the hell, the Parliament issues press releases itself, doesn't it?!

• VIOLENCE

"I'm shutting your butt down!"

The violence in the reply of Tarantino serves as the best answer to the question on whether the violence in his movies had anything to do with real-life violence: yes, the director of the violent movies is himself violent.

That obnoxious British- Indian was elegant.

He was calm.

He was smiling.

Was that a confrontation between "creativity" and "conformism", or between "violence" and "decency"?

I doubt the Mararu family has such scruples.