100 posts
Ukraine has done everything for successful OSCE chairmanship - Viacheslav Yatsiuk
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The head of the working group on ensuring Ukraine's OSCE chairmanship and the director of the political department of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Viacheslav Yatsiuk, spoke in an interview with UKRINFORM about how Kyiv prepared for its chai...
The Fiscal Cliff Deal
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Fiscal Cliff Accord Cleared 1st January a compromise was voted by the House of Representatives after being passed by the Senate earlier in the day. The law: American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (H.R.8) is expected to be quickly signed by President Ba...
A purging of the pro-EU Ministers or a significant ideological split?
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Smart readers will recall I wrote this at the beginning of November relating to “Who’s in and who’s out?” – It was aimed specifically at Valery Khoroshkhovsky and Poroshenko. By 16th December, Khoroshkhovsky resigned f...
Moldova ranks first on Eastern Partnership countries' European integration index
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Moldova ranks first on the Eastern Partnership countries' European integration index, according to the study "European integration index for Eastern Partnership countries", carried out by experts from six countries and the EU. READ MOR...
In Russia ‘The governor decides everything’
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It is easy to think that Russia is only Moscow, in the way that French history has only been made in Paris. That would be a mistake. Moscow is not Russia – but another country. Statistically,Read more…...
Netenyahu and Haniyeh: The common denominator
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Re-blogged from the Israeli site, Challenge by Yacov Ben Efrat What do the top leaders of Israel and Hamas have in common? They share the same enemy: PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). Abbas embodies all that Ismail Haniyeh despises: secularism...
Eastern Congo: long-suffering, long neglected
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As the eyes of the world focus on Gaza, eastern Congo plunges yet again into a deadly conflict which threatens the lives and futures of tens of thousands of people. While hopes are rising that a ceasefire in Gaza is only hours away between Israeli fo...
Forbes contributor compares China's outgoing president with George Washington
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"A great man"?One wonders why Forbes magazine has chosen to be the "home" of fervent advocates of two of the leading authoritarian and corrupt regimes in the world, Putin's Russia and Communist China? Mark Adomanis always seems to find a w...
Obama & Hollande
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Plantu compares America's inauguration Bible with France's Gallois report on improving productivity and competition, which the French president similarly swears upon (but with less than mucho enthusiasm)• François Hollande: Uh… I'll see what I c...
Xi Jinping and Barack Obama: two leaders facing very different crises | Timothy Garton Ash
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Xi Jinping faces deeper challenges than Barack Obama. We must hope they are met: it could be a matter of war and peaceSo, in the same week, it is revealed to us who will be the next leaders of both superpowers: Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. The only d...
If fiscal conservatives can't win in the US, can they win anywhere?
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These are awkward times to be a Right-of-Centre candidate. Many voters believe they are living through a crisis of capitalism. They blame the credit crunch on lack of regulation. They believe the deficit should be filled by taxing the bankers who, th...
Bringing the US election to Berlin
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Last night, the US election came to Berlin in a big way. More than 2000 people from the worlds of politics, media and business convened in Deutsche Telekom’s historic Telegraph Building to follow the action and debate the election live - in person,...
American Election 2012: Tales of Two Americas
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This weeks US presidential election confirmed the thoughts of many thinkers. America's party system is declining faster than anyone believed. Political polarisation and bitterness is dragging the US back to mid 19th century. Issues are not about slav...
Punching out Saakashvili’s LIghts
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Georgia's new prime minister is gunning to evict the president from the country's immense presidential palace. Literally.
"The Second Coming of Barack Obama" by Kemal Dervis
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The race was tough, but US President Barack Obama has won re-election. The question now, for the United States and the world, is what will he do with a fresh four-year term? To win re-election with a still-weak economy and unemployment close to 8% wa...
Transatlantic relations under Obama, 2008-2012
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In 2008, the election of US President Obama raised hopes in Europe that transatlantic relations would improve dramatically. Four years later, most Europeans indeed consider relations to be “good” or “mixed”. However, some hope...
Operation Renewed Hope: The EU Foreign Policy Agenda After the U.S. Election
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If Europeans want to be taken seriously as partners, have a modicum of influence on U.S. foreign policy decisions, and keep the United States interested in Europe, the homework is theirs to do, not America's.
LRE Launch – Ukraine
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Language Rich Europe launches the results of its research in Kyiv, Ukraine on Friday 9 November at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology of the National Academy of Pedagogic Sciences of Ukraine. Ukraine is one of only three non-EC …...
Moving towards arming the Syrian rebels?
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As the Syrian conflict has descended into ever greater brutality the West has continued to reject arming the rebels, fearful that weapons might end up in the hands of radicals and only serve to fanRead more…...
Obama II and Europe
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Article by Daniela Vincenti published on EurActiv.com on November 7, 2012 With stratospheric popularity levels in Europe, Barack Obama – who won a second term last night – is expected to make a renewed commitment to energising the world e...
Intuition vs. statistics
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This morning Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski via twitter made a ‘political analysis’ of Barack Obama’s victory – ‘My intuition once again told me rightly that with the polls on a knife-edge the current Presiden...
Weekly Wrap Up:Obama, budget and Greece
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Obama is elected for another term as the president of the United States. What does that mean for Europe? In Greece the parliament will vote on new austerity measures. At the same time worker unions … Continue reading →...
What should we expect from Obama’s second term?
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“Forward” was one of the major slogans of Obama’s presidential campaign. This term is etymologically filled with hope, prosperity, solidarity, and, needless to say, a feeling that “we can win”. Obama has always been a po...
Five lessons from the US election
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Five thoughts on Obama’s victory (along with the gains in the Senate for the Democrats and what looks at time of writing to be further gains, albeit it small, in the House of Representatives): Women are the majority You wouldn’t notice it fro...
New government of Georgia means new strategic partners for ECMI Caucasus
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The October elections in Georgia mean new players in the field of minority issues. Paata Zakareishvili is new Minister for Reintegration. Continue reading →Source: ECMI InfoChannel @ European Centre for Minority Issues.
Obama's Re-election
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The re-election of Obama means one thing for Europe: the need for more Europe, not less.
Chronicle of a death re-told
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IN the early hours of January 28th, 2006, a young banker named Sandro Girgvliani (pictured on a poster of protestors above) went to a Tbilisi cafe to see his girlfriend. She was sitting with a group of senior interior ministry officials, includi...
Greek, British, French, German, Italian and Czech media on Barack Obama's 2012 reelection
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'Four more years', he tweeted at around 5am Paris time, although electorally speaking, the president had the cat in the bag not too far on on election night. With at least 303 votes out of 538 (the threshold was 270, and Mitt Romney won 206), he has...
U.S. Election: Relief in Brussels
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The main issue in the Brussels-Washington relationship during Obama's second term is expected to be the economy.
The 2012 Climate Disasters should wake up the USA
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2012 might become a pivotal year in US history. Never before has the country been hit by a such a devastating combination of severe droughts and hurricanes in the very same year, the economic cost of which may run up to some $ 60 billion. For the fir...
Russia Criticizes U.S. Election Process
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Russia’s Central Elections Commission has a few choice words for voting officials in the U.S.: Put your own house in order before criticizing us.
Are Republican primary voters costing the GOP elections?
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A friend recently observed, watching Mitt Romney’s campaign, that Romney was very similar to John McCain in one significant way. Neither Romney nor McCain resembled, in the final leg of the campaign, the candidates that had made them so attract...
Ukrainians Rally in Protest Over Vote-Rigging
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Online reports that have been coming in from disputed districts over the past week offer a good insight into the Ukrainian election routine and also help explain the frustration of ordinary voters.
Obama gave us 4 years of cronyism, secrecy, and deception
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Barack Obama promised to clean up government and restore Americans' trust in their leaders. He broke this promise, and instead gave us four years of cronyism, secrecy and deception. Thus writes Tim Carney.Obama's campaign rhetoric about honest...
The Chinese navy’s hidden European past
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In the fourth in the series of European Geostrategy’s ‘Long Posts’, Iskander Rehman analyses European maritime history in relation to contemporary China’s naval modernisation. What does European history imply for China’s future? Do the hist...
China and U.S. face mirror-image leadership challenges
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Although they look like opposites, the United States and China suffer from the same problems: They are introspective, self-destructive and interdependent. China’s ying is often the cause of America’s yang. The big question facing the world this w...
Ivanishvili on Foreign Policy, Territorial Integrity
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video 'We won't be able to be a neutral state'; NATO was the best option for our security; ‘I hope chance to j...
Greek Cyprus ignores Turkey’s gas resistance
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Greek Cyprus says it will continue natural gas talks with large companies despite Turkey’s strong opposition, blaming it with ‘showing its true face’ READ MORE...
Yes We Jerrycan
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Plantu on America's elections while New York is still in waiting• Yes We Jerrycan!
There is no force on Earth like American democracy
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You wouldn’t stay up to see who had been elected to China’s National People’s Congress, would you? Or tune in to watch the nomination hearings for European Commissioners? We are luckier than we sometimes realise in our superpower. Whatever happ...
U.S. Deficits: Reflect Virtue or Vice?
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Chronic government fiscal deficits, and thus debt, may suggest that a people is not up to self-governance. Moreover, the imbalance may be a drawback of democracy itself. That is to say, a people may not have sufficient will to constrain its own consu...
In the mean time, Turkey is into a “show trial” on the Mavi Marmara case… a FP roundup…
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The Mavi Marmara was headed towards the Gaza coast when Israeli commandos boarded it Turkey seeks 18,000-year jail terms for flotilla raid from Yahoo news Turkey put four former Israeli military commanders, including the head of the army, on t...
Human rights 'invisible' in US election campaign
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It should be a cause for concern around the world that human rights have not been on the agenda for either candidate throughout the US presidential election campaign, writes Kate Allen...
Fighting violence with hope and care
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With joy and relief, today I welcomed to the European Commission Dr Denis Mukwege. Medical Director at the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Dr Mukwege has an immensely difficult and important job – to save, heal and return...
Russia needs a plan for modernising its economy
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Russia’s economy is not performing badly. Thanks to the high oil price, economic growth is likely to stay at 4 per cent or a little less for the next few years – respectable by West European standards. The problem is that Russia’s rulers do not...
“Even In Social The US Election Is A Close Call” -another election roundup #benceamerikanbaskani
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Even In Social The US Election Is A Close Call from Sysomos Blog by Sheldon Levine Today is a very important day to the people of the United States of America. It’s election day. A day that has been four years in the making. As I sat down to collec...
American Presidential Election Day: The Winner 2012 Will Be? Do the Odds Tell Us?
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On this Election Day, U.S. Presidential Election betting odds at OddsChecker make the incumbent President Barack Obama the prohibitive favorite to win the election, as President Obama goes off at ca. 1/6 odds to win, while challenger Mitt Romney goes...
Advocates of change – dr. Mukwege and his support for Congolese women
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Number of Views :87I met today with Dr Denis Mukwege, a doctor from the DR Congo who founded a hospital for rape victims and is a fierce advocate for women. Few weeks back I was shocked to learn he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Today, hi...
Zakaj bo zmagal Obama
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Zelo kratek komentar za Večer o tem zakaj bo Obama ponovno izvoljen za ameriškega predsednika tukaj.
How bad were the Ukrainian elections?
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The Ukrainian authorities expected a relatively clean bill of health for the parliamentary elections held on 28 October. Voting day itself was fairly peaceful; there were 3,800 internationalRead more…...
EU-Russia/CIS relations: Bridging the gap in cross-border electricity trade
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Although different in terms of electricity market design, the EU and Russia are both moving towards the establishment of more open and competitive electricity markets. Nevertheless, more needs to be done to improve cross-border trade. This finding is...
Turkey Goes Cool on U.S. Election
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Four years ago when Barack Obama won the U.S. presidency, Turkey was captivated by the election of a man with Muslim heritage that they believed would make a positive contribution to regional security. Many Turks now feel less enthused with this elec...
Europe’s Mini-pivot to Asia
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An impressive array of European top politicians – including the French President Francois Holland and spearheaded by the top brass from Brussels (Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso) -Read more…...
