Around the Bloc: Gorbachev Banned From Ukraine
Former Soviet leader won’t be able to visit for five years because of support for Crimea annexation.
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Former Soviet leader won’t be able to visit for five years because of support for Crimea annexation.
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Hundreds opposed to EU-backed deal with Serbia camp out in Pristina; opposition vows to block Hashim Thaci’s candidacy for president.
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Viktor Orban vows quotas that ‘could redraw Hungary and Europe’s ethnic, cultural and religious identity’ can’t be imposed on Budapest by Brussels – or Berlin.
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Orban's cozying up to Putin may prove not to be advantageous for Hungary, an amateur in power politics.
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Kremlin critics say trail of guilt leads straight to the heart of the Chechen leadership.
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Serbia’s premier voices the region’s growing ambivalence over the European project.
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A referendum could be the next step for the controversial decision to honor the late Chechen president, who fought Russian forces before switching sides.
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Not surprisingly, Turkey and Ukraine don’t fare very well either.
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But, except for baby food products, ban stays in place to punish Western countries for sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.
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Media groups also concerned over high-level support for hacker group that published list of journalists accredited by Donbas separatists.
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Starting this week, EU countries can send back non-EU citizens who enter the bloc from Turkey illegally.
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This article deals with paleoconservative attitudes toward the issue of immigration to the United States and the problem of multiculturalism and assimilation on American soil. Representatives of paleoconservatism present these phenomena as a significant threat to the American way of life. Their words are filled with anxiety for the future of American society, which is instilled with the positive meaning of the idea of open borders, and which is becoming permeated with alien cultures and losing its own cultural identity. Starting with an explanation of the essence of the American nation’s homogeneity, this article presents the threats which come with the ‘mixing’ of cultures and liberal immigration as well as phenomena directly linked to such immigration, namely the problem of terrorism and Islam.
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Until World War I, bilateral relations between the United States and Switzerland could be described as rather friendly. Often referred to as ‘sister republics,’ the two countries shared common democratic values and a sense of uniqueness with respect to their republican governments in a world dominated by autocracy. The first serious rupture between the two countries occurred during and in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The major cause of this rupture was the refusal of Switzerland to participate in the Safehaven program, designed to track down and block German assets in neutral countries and later to use them for post‑war reparations. The repercussions of the involvement of Switzerland in the transfer of Nazi gold as well as the safekeeping of German assets had profound consequences for U.S.‑Swiss relations in the 1990s, fueling a conflict over the dormant accounts of holocaust victims. All major disagreements between the United States and Switzerland are connected to the concept of Swiss banking secrecy, which is defined in a most rigorous way compared to international legal standards. The implementation of Swiss banking secrecy as defined in Swiss Banking Law facilitates tax misconduct by foreign nationals. Since 2007, the bilateral relations between Switzerland and the U.S. have been determined by ongoing IRS investigations into the involvement of Swiss banks in aiding U.S. citizens in tax evasion and tax fraud, which is facilitated by the enforcement of stringent bank secrecy laws within the Swiss banking system. The U.S. legal actions against Swiss banks proved that the American government is determined to enforce its laws in Switzerland despite it being a sovereign foreign country. The conflicts with the U.S. over banking secrecy, which, among other findings, unveiled the conduct of the Swiss during World War II, have shed light on the true nature of this phenomenon. Switzerland is struggling to defend the values so fundamental to its banking culture, but at the same time it is forced to succumb to international and especially U.S. pressure and implement various internal and international regulations, which impose a constraint on the practice of banking secrecy.
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This article is dedicated to the most prominent American commander of the Vietnam War, or to be more precise, to the treatment of General William C. Westmoreland in modern American historiography. Ridiculed and accused of lying to the American public during his lifetime, General Westmoreland still remains one of the ‘villains’ of the Vietnam War. In recent years it has changed slightly, and now on the publishing market we can find books both attacking and defending the MACV commander and his decisions. However, mainstream historiography continues to judge him through the prism of the American trauma caused by the Vietnam War, and not his real merit and achievements. This article aims to dispel at least a few myths persisting both about General Westmoreland and his strategy to win ‘an unwinnable conflict.’
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This article analyzes the legal rules governing operations of the federal government of the United States during lapses of appropriations (commonly known as government shutdowns). After briefly explaining what government shutdowns are and when they happen, it presents the main sources of the applicable law, starting with its statutory basis – the Antideficiency Act. After analyzing the history, purpose, and text of that statute, the article presents two official opinions of the Attorney General which interpreted the Act to require suspension of non‑essential government operations during funding gaps. The article then proceeds to delineate statutory and implied exceptions to that requirement. Its second part consists of an analysis of actual administration practice during shutdowns. On the basis of agency contingency plans posted during the 2013 shutdown, it identifies the government activities that continued despite the shutdown, and briefly describes each activity’s scale and the legal basis for it being exempt from the generally applicable rules. It concludes that while there have been disputes about the administration’s handling of the shutdown, the agency’s practice was generally consistent with the legal rules, though the statutory framework itself would benefit from congressional revision and clarification.
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The main aim of this paper is to present the results of the study titled “The effectiveness of cooperation between Polish local governments with partners from other countries, undertaken within international associations”, prepared in September 2015 by the Małopolska School of Public Administration − Cracow University of Economics, commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As part of this study, in-depth individual interviews (IDI) were conducted with representatives of more than 50 local governments responsible for international cooperation. They supplied the characteristics of the activities undertaken by Polish local governments units in the area of cooperation in the framework of international associations. This study showed that, although according to respondents the activity of Polish local governments has increased in this regard in recent years, there are still some barriers to reaping full benefits of membership in international associations. Therefore, the developed recommendations aim at improving the effectiveness of this cooperation in the context of, among others, improvement of the quality of public tasks.
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The authors of the paper argue in favour of the recognition of the role of associations representing the interests of their members as a distinct fourth logic of social order, apart from community, market, and state. They believe that only a thorough analysis of the contribution of associations and the organized process of interest reconciliation to social order can lead to a better understanding of the operation of modern negotiation-based economies and societies. In the future, this should result in a significantly broader range of available strategic alternatives in solving problems related to the shaping and implementation of public policies.
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The aim of this paper is to analyse the public administration in Poland from the perspective of the evolution of subsequent paradigms of public administration (Public Administration, New Public Management and Governance). The general model is applied to the case study of the education sector in Poland. Special attention was paid to the issue of delegating public services by local governments to non-governmental organisations in education in Poland and the role of the state in regulating this process. According to the author, simultaneous interaction of conf licting paradigms of management has created favourable conditions for the autonomous institutional process that led to an unstable balance of power between the market and statist solutions in the Polish educational system.
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Feedback by independent institutions such as courts, auditors and ombudsmen can guide the public sector on how to improve the performance of the public sector and suppress corruption. This article underlines that rules and checks are not an effective answer to corruption and growing distrust in society. The heart of the matter is the effectiveness of feedback systems. In (complex) modern states the whole range of democracy – judicial control, audit, supervision by ombudsmen and (market) regulators, and evaluation by independent bodies, and applications in the digital world – are all important examples of feedback. Feedback depends not only on rules and the existence of legal institutions, but also on (international) cooperation. If, for instance, an audit body is working with a hostile public sector not open to critical ref lection, its effectiveness can be limited. In this respect, there is an important difference between power and authority. The same goes for (constitutional) courts and the ombudsman. Feedback systems in the public sector can only f lourish in an open and cooperative context. If not, public services have a tendency to become inward-looking and unresponsive to the outside world. To conclude, improvement of the performance of the public sector should be based on a learning process; feedback is highly relevant to this. In this context, a culture of difficult conversations is highly relevant as a part of the learning process.
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