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The phenomena of radicalisation today develop and change at high speed, with their extreme forms manifested globally. The destructive dimensions of (violent) Islamist or right-wing radicalisation have become dramatically visible in Europe posing serious challenges to European societies at large. This report aims to address a knowledge gap with regard to how and to what extent internationally observed radicalisation processes are manifested in Bulgaria. Four different forms of radicalisation are investigated, including Islamist radicalisation, right-wing and left-wing radicalisation, as well as football hooliganism. The report provides policy makers and the expert community with a systematic overview of the main risks to which the Bulgarian society is exposed, as well as of the main actors and ideas, the repertoire of actions and the groups at risk associated with radicalisation. The report outlines recommendations for improvement of the policy and institutional response with regard to radicalisation by way of monitoring and prevention measures as well as multi agency collaboration and community engagement.
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The phenomena of radicalisation today develop and change at high speed, with their extreme forms manifested globally. The destructive dimensions of (violent) Islamist or right-wing radicalisation have become dramatically visible in Europe posing serious challenges to European societies at large. This report aims to address a knowledge gap with regard to how and to what extent internationally observed radicalisation processes are manifested in Bulgaria. Four different forms of radicalisation are investigated, including Islamist radicalisation, right-wing and left-wing radicalisation, as well as football hooliganism. The report provides policy makers and the expert community with a systematic overview of the main risks to which the Bulgarian society is exposed, as well as of the main actors and ideas, the repertoire of actions and the groups at risk associated with radicalisation. The report outlines recommendations for improvement of the policy and institutional response with regard to radicalisation by way of monitoring and prevention measures as well as multi agency collaboration and community engagement.
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Extortion racketeering has been long pointed out as the defining activity of organised crime. Although in recent years this crime has not been among the top listed organised crime threats in the strategic EU policy documents, it still remains ever present in European countries. The seriousness of the phenomenon has been recognised at the EU level and the crime has been listed in a number of EU legal acts in the field of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. The report Extortion racketeering in the EU: vulnerability factors analyses extortion racketeering forms and practices in six EU member states. The analysis disentangles the risk and the vulnerability factors for enterprises in two business sectors – agriculture and hospitality – as well as in the Chinese communities. Drawing on the results of the analysis, the report suggests new policies for tackling extortion racketeering in the EU. This report has been produced with the joint efforts of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Instituto de Ciencias Forenses y de la Seguridad – Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Transcrime – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano and Vitosha Research and with the support of Guardia Civil in Spain.
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Radicalisation processes impacting on disaffected and indoctrinated persons and the later involvement of some of them in acts of terrorism are of growing concern for European citizens, their governments and the wider international community. Addressing this threat requires effective prevention policies which some EU member states have been proactive in developing. Effective policies need reliable diagnostic tools designed to identify individuals and groups who might pose a threat. The publication provides a review of existing approaches and tools to identifying, monitoring and assessing radicalisation in Europe and beyond. It further offers a conceptual framework of radicalisation risk and vulnerability indicators and their interpretation as a basis for developing early-warning mechanisms for frontline practitioners in countries which are yet to develop specific prevention and counter-radicalisation policies. The target group of the guide are policymakers at national and EU levels, as well as practitioners directly involved in the prevention of radicalisation in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.
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Violent extremism is one of the major challenges Europe is currently facing. The threat is both external as well as internal as indicated by the rise in home-grown Islamist terrorists, as well as of nationalistic and anti-immigrant movements and far-right aggression. An accurate picture of the spread, nature and trends in the extremist and terrorist activity and actors is paramount to formulating strategic policy approaches and effectively allocating available resources. This publication provides a methodological framework for the establishment of a viable mechanism for monitoring and assessment of the state and developments over time in extremist acts and actors on the national level. The situational assessment is an instrument for systematic collection and analysis of statistical data, open source data and intelligence information pertaining to extremist actors and activities, for the purposes of developing regular situational reports of the spread, nature and trends in extremism and violent radicalisms. Following the application of the situational assessment tool, the publication presents main findings on extremist trends and monitoring capacities in three countries from Central and Southeast Europe: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Greece.
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Iz ove vremenske perspektive odbrana Gradske galerije čita se kao podvig ogromnih razmjera koji zaslužuje određeni spomenik, tj. simbol šireg društvenog značaja nad kojim je moguće prisjećati se te velike i značajne bitke. [...]
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Lisbon Agreement on Dec 1st, 2009 has remarked the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) of EU instead of European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). European Union has suffered from vital incapabilities in her defense structure although took part in some military operations in World wide such as peace keeping in Africa and police missions in Afghanistan. Hard power gap between EU and USA has drastically widen in recent decades. EU countries provided modest contributions into NATO operation in Afghanistan. EU makes much more effort to develop her soft power and aims transformations in near geographies. However, it is fact that EU system is bulky as witnessed in Arab movements. NATO and EU have to reconsider their defense policies in common understanding.
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The subject of my considerations is the position and role of an intellectually disabled character in literature for children and youth. By presenting selected works of two generations of German authors in Das war der Hirbel by Peter Härtling and the series Rico, Oskar and… by Andreas Steinhöfel I try to answer the following two questions: whether the writer, burdening his character with all kinds of dysfunctions associated with intellectual disability, should present all aspects of the disability and illustrate it in a realistic manner, describing the accompanying physical limitations and physiological arduousness, or rather to idealize it and present in the form of a metaphor so as not to alienate and scare the small recipient and whether the character who, due to their limitations differs from the common perceptions about the protagonist in a book for children, has a chance to become the hero of the young reader or will his presence in this type of literature condemn the book to failure.
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Lviv (Ukraine) is an Eastern European city with a history dating back to the 13th century. It could be imagined as a palimpsest-like place of different architectural, social, and cultural heritages. However, the majority of current Lviv’s population lives within an urban environment designed and constructed during the second half of 20th century. Based on sociological data (in-depth semi-structured interviews, survey, and unobtrusive observation) article reviews the specifics of places for community in the largest mass housing estate – Sykhiv. Author shows what areas are perceived by inhabitants as the locations for social life and what types of social cohesion could contribute to the urban transformations.
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The 2019 Alternative Report on the Application of Bosnia and Herzegovina for European Union Membership: Political Criteria is the result of the work of an informal coalition of forty (40) civil society organisations under the Initiative for Monitoring the European Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The report primarily refers to the political criteria for EU membership, but also includes Special Reports on 2018 General Elections, the situation with respect to migrants and refugees in BiH, and on citizens’ protests in the Republika Srpska. In the European integration context, Bosnia and Herzegovina is constantly lagging behind other countries of the region and the lag is becoming evidently bigger with time. By the disorderly and untimely fulfilment of fundamental obligations in the European integration process, Bosnia and Herzegovina fails to demonstrate a true commitment to reform processes on the European path and for now keeps such a commitment at a declarative level. Three years have passed since the submission of the application for the membership of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the European Union, whereas three and a half years have passed since the Stabilisation and Association Agreement between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union. From that time to the present day, Bosnia and Herzegovina did not manage to put in function all the bodies envisaged by the Agreement, as the Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee has not yet adopted its Rules of Procedure. The process of answering the European Commission Questionnaire, presented to potential candidate countries, was only coming to an end in the time of the finalisation of this Report. The coordination mechanism, which was supposed to establish a functional decision-making process in the European integration, proved inefficient and remains equally non-transparent as the process of its establishment. [...]
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The most difficult subject that many politicians evade, as well as the people at large, are the problems of young people today. The problem of drug consumption presents the greatest danger of all. My personal belief as regards this is simple and clear. I’m not like the “others” who “don’t know” or “don’t see” what is going on with young people. I don’t take it as a taboo subject and don’t run away from it. In the following, I want to explain that the use of narcotics by young people brings about their ruin, as well as that of the society as a whole and, finally, of the state in which drug addiction is of a mass scale.
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After the dissolution of the USSR, Russian cities are popular destinations of labor migrants from the former Soviet republics, especially Central Asia and the Caucasus. One can observe a monopolization of particular sectors in the labor market and entire branches of petty trade by different ethnic and national communities. At some open-air markets, it is now the Russians who comprise the minority. Markets constitute a borderland which appears in the middle of a city – they serve as an important meeting place of people and cultures. The appearance of so-called ethnic entrepreneurship, ethnic economy and trade minorities, ethnic or otherwise, has been widely investigated in various parts of the world and in different times. It was, however, questioned whether one can speak about their existence in post-Soviet Russia. In this paper, I argue that trade minorities do indeed operate at Russian open-air markets. However, they do so in a specific manner that stems from the historical and cultural conditioning of petty trade in the former USSR. This study shows the development of ethnic entrepreneurship and appearance of different stereotypes that are tied to it. What is more, it analyzes some ways in which different minorities coexist. In general, the study deals with the extremely complex issue of interethnic relationships in post-Soviet Russia.
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The adoption of new normative documents in the field of education in Bulgaria determines the inclusion of children with special educational needs in general education schools. The significant and integral role which physical education plays in the educational process poses the question of the inclusion of children with impairments in motor activity training as well. Teachers implementing it contribute greatly to its positive effects. The main features of physical education include active motor activity and the related physical workload. In order for them to be adapted successfully to the specific needs of children with different disabilities, more specialized training is required. The analysis of the curricula of the faculties of education in Bulgaria shows that future pre-school and primary school teachers who will be responsible for the physical education of children in kindergartens and primary schools respectively do not receive appropriate training in adaptive physical education. The aim of this article is to present a concept for introducing a training programme on “Motor Activity Training and Inclusive Physical Education”, intended for students of the specialty Preschool and Primary School Education at the Faculty of Education, Trakia University, Bulgaria.
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The paper focuses on the issues of philosophical foundations of science policy theoreticians, experts and educators. These persons eagerly contain human prosperity within a (quasi)scientific agenda. The paper contends that this universal techno-scientific approach is not directly connected with and owes very little to the socio-political arrangements of certain governments or agencies. Therefore, the claim that societal challenges ought to be dealt with scientifically should be separated from the claim that the techno-scientific problem-solving is the only virtuous way to human enhancement. Consequently, the issues of scientific autonomy and representationist and nonrepresentationist paradigms of scientific knowledge are considered and their brief conceptual assessment is proposed.
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If one extrapolates present social circumstances, one comes to the conclusion that much more emphasis should be placed on health and physical activity, possibly through the life-span development of younger generations, in order to avoid the negative influences of civilization. Otherwise, humans will not be able to compensate for the absence of health even with an enormous aggregation of financial and cultural goods. In other words, accumulated knowledge and capital are worth little without health. To deal with the new challenges of sport, health, and physical activity on their merits, the old-fashioned mode of thinking should be refashioned or should be replaced. This process is possible only with a number of substantial changes that will be able to influence common knowledge in order to educate an active, creative, healthy, and self-confident society. Today, in an economically and culturally unstable environment, the smallest effects can cause a number of unpredictable (favorable or unfavorable) changes in our everyday life due to negative feedback. For this very reason, in our knowledge-based society, optimal physical and mental health and their practical applicability in everyday life should be an achievable goal for the individual. This paper is addressed to explore the thinking of secondary school students about social regeneration in Hungary by asking them what kind of tools they can imagine which could help them achieve an optimal physical and mental health and how they can apply the knowledge in their future adult life. The young people involved in this research claim that physical education (PE) in secondary schools can provide an acceptable tool for the required regeneration and it can prove to be adequate in the formation of a health-confident society as well. The present paper claims, however, that physical education is able to fulfill this role only if it goes through massive structural changes taking the demands and claims of the younger generation into consideration.
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The consequence of the military aggression of the Russian Federation is the loss of control over part of the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Eastern Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimean peninsula. The events are accompanied by the objective processes of migration of persons who were forced to leave their permanent residence and move to other regions of Ukraine or abroad. As a result, a new category of citizens who are the internally displaced persons (IDPs) has arrived in the country counting for millions of people. In such circumstances, the study of the interdependence between gross regional product (GRP) and the IDP migration is topical and reflects the ongoing social and economic processes in a big European country. As a result of the study, a two-layer neural network with an error back-propagation model that simulates the nonlinear impact of the number of internally displaced persons on the dynamics of gross regional product has been constructed. According to the number of IDPs, regions such as Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv, including Kyiv city, are among the first ten regions of Ukraine. Based on the data from the abovementioned regions, we have formed a statistical sampling in order to formulate and test the prospective economic and mathematical model. The study of mutual correlation function graphs by regions has allowed justifying the value of the time lag, which shifts an array of explanatory variables along the time axis, on average, into nine periods (three quarters). According to the results, only for Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv regions, there is a significant correlation between the studied indicators. This conclusion is substantiated in view of the fact that the number of IDPs, in the structure of which only about 23% represents the working age population, impacts the size of the gross product growth in the regions. The abovementioned regions account for 75% of the total number of internally displaced persons. The estimation of the forecast reliability, based on the 2017 data for Dnipropetrovsk region, points to the high accuracy of the developed model. The author of the article has identified specific features that accompany the processes of internal migration of the able-bodied population. In particular, based on the correlation function, the value of the time lag, which is shifted by the effect of IDP movement into a separate region, has been substantiated. The author has developed a neural network which establishes nonlinear regression dependence between the number if IDPs and the dynamics of GRP with high reliability.
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This research takes the form of an essay with two-folded goals: to bring further clarifications on the concept of brand equity, as it was discussed in the branding literature, while at the same time presenting the frameworks that could help both practitioners and researchers to measure the power of a brand. For this purpose, the authors have reviewed the existing literature, and discussed the most important perspectives on the topic: the financial-based and consumer-based brand equity, while at the same time debating the limitations of each one. The findings have implications for future research into a holistic approach to brand equity, that should see an increase of the customer’s perceived brand equity.
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