Around the Bloc: Five Wounded in Gunfight at Besieged Yerevan Police Station
Two gunmen surrender after overnight clash; four medics taken hostage amid continued demonstrations supporting the siege.
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Two gunmen surrender after overnight clash; four medics taken hostage amid continued demonstrations supporting the siege.
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An idea of integration, understood as an advancing process of co-operation of European states on socio-economic levels, leads to a political involvement of states into development of institutions and procedures whose purpose is to provide general security internationally. Another element of this area of co-operation is fighting organized crime whose escalation occurred in the 20th century. The fact that the definition of organized crime itself has many aspects and is changeable makes it a controversial issue both in the domestic law and in the largely understood international law. Thus, the states aim at creating, both globally and regionally, a uniform definition. Tightening of the international co-operation in criminal cases is a pre-requisite for realization of procedures and reaction means to globalization of crime. For a few dozen years, the European Union has been attempting to form a legal framework for co-operation of both courts and police forces in criminal cases. Starting from the informal structures of TREVI, through the so-called acquis Schengen, until coming into force of the Treaty on the European Union, which gave rise to the institutionalized co-operation of member-states in fighting organized crime. Some structures coming into being within the police co-operation of European states, such as Europol, the Police Chiefs Task Force, or CEPOL, changed the position of a member-state in possibility of confronting their forces with the transnational criminal reality. In the face of more frequently occurring negative effects of opening borders between the EU member-states, tightening of co-operation between individual police forces became a necessity, but also a manifestation of realization of the European standards for protection of human rights, freedom, democracy, and public security.
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Ex-Serbian province faces years of difficult negotiations on full EU membership.
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The article aims to analyze the issue of respect for human rights as a general objective of the EU’s external action. It does so from a legal and political perspective, starting with a brief overview of the legal framework which firmly places human rights at the centre of the EU’s external relations. The EU’s main policy framework and main external instruments will be subsequently described. The concluding section contains some critical remarks on the EU’s aspiration to establish itself as a global promoter of values, in particular the need to improve the coherence and effectiveness of its human rights external policy. Such a need stems from, among others, a fragmentation of the EU’s competences between supranational economic actions and intergovernmental CFSP as well as the absence of clear and strong EU powers in the area of human rights. The present situation involves a paradox, because, on the one hand, there is a lack of Treaty regulations providing clearly that respect for human rights is a general and cross-cutting component of internal EU policies whereas, on the other hand, under these regulations the protection of human rights is seen as an important objective of the EU’s external action.
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The article presents the relationship between the acceptance of democratic rules and subjective assessment of the degree of their implementation in different European countries with the size of social capital at the disposal of the citizens of those countries. The data used for the analysis of comparative studies came from the European Social Survey realized in 2012. Based on the data presented three types of classification: 1) support for democracy, 2) assessment of democracy 3) the amount of social capital. Subjective opinions on the democratic system and the estimated size of social capital are additionally confronted with objective macro indicators determining the functioning of societies in the socio-political dimension: the quality of governance (Worldwide Governance Index), the stability of democracy (Democracy Index), economic competitiveness (Global Competitiveness Index), social development (Human development Index) and human capital (Human Capital Index).
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Interview with Asli Erdoğan, a renowned Turkish writer and human rights activist. Interviewers: Iwona Reichardt and Bartosz Marcinkowski
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The paper deals with the contemporary systems of government in two Sub‑Saharan African states which belonged to the French colonial empire – Senegal and Ivory Coast. The Senegalese constitution of 2001 contains regulations based on the semi‑presidential model, whereas the Ivorian basic law of 2000 – on the presidential one (although it was not adopted in a pure form). Special attention is devoted to the similarities and differences between the two systems, taking into consideration their constitutional structure (e.g. powers of the head of state, political responsibility of ministers and other aspects of relations within the executive branch, as well as between the latter and the legislative one). It is also pointed out that since the two countries gained their independence in 1960 Senegal and Ivory Coast have had quite different political experiences, which have exerted a visible influence on the functioning of their systems of government in practice. One of the key factors that deserve to be taken into account is the ability to produce democratic alternation of power between presidential candidates and political parties taking part in the electoral process.
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Since the 1990s, the “multi-polar world” doctrine that is implemented by the Kremlin has been reduced to attempts at halting the spread of the western powers. The dominance of the West has significantly limited Russia’s influence in the world. As a result, the Kremlin has been increasingly showing signs that it wants to create its own model, which is a hybrid of the western one mixed with “traditional” Russian society.
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As the war in eastern Ukraine reached its peak in 2014, 157 of the 442 people seeking refuge in Portugal were Ukrainian. In 2015 at least 368 Ukrainians followed suit, making up around 42.4 per cent of all asylum requests in Portugal that year. Only a few of them are granted refugee status, but almost all receive at least some humanitarian protection. Emine Shykhametova was one of them. This is her story.
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An essential element for the functioning of the international system is idea forming the basis for creating rules and institutions ruling political and economic interactions of international actors. With the crisis of the position of the West since 20083, one can observe non-Western actors’ narrative pointing a need for a new international order in the twenty-first century. Behind that lies the idea of a “fair and reasonable international order” supported by the developing countries, and especially by the so called “emerging powers”. The most important role plays the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which reached the status of the second world’s well-developed economy, aiming at strengthening its political position and seeking adequate justification for this process.
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The article presents an analysis of the most favoured nation (MFN) clause in the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) as an instrument aimed at protecting relations between states and investors. The author examines the decisions of arbitration courts and compares ECT provisions with those included in bilateral investment treaties. Focusing on the recently much discussed question of resorting to the clause in order to safeguard more favorable jurisdiction rooted in another treaty, he points to a measure that could be helpful in resolving the ongoing dispute in the doctrine.
More...A CASE OF INTRODUCING BODY SCANNERS IN CIVIL AVIATION
Changes in security environment after the end of Cold War and 9/11 have strongly affected our security concepts and paradigms. In the field of counter-terrorism, a serious conceptual and practical debate on the relationship between security and human rights and freedoms has begun. The goal of this paper is to reflect on this complex relationship at the conceptual level and introduce the empirical debate on this relationship in the field of civil aviation (case of introducing body scanners). The paper’s results show that the concept of human security usefully integrates the care for human rights and security of individuals. The debate on the potential introduction of body scanners on the European airports was actually a debate on the ways of providing individual human security on the airports with simultaneous concern for other human rights. The output of this debate was a compromise: body scanners can be used at the discretion of individual airports and member states, but are not an obligatory measure on all European airports.
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U septembru 2014. objavio je Dejan Jović, u to vrijeme savjetnik hrvatskog predsjednika Ive Josipovića, u Političkoj misli komentar s naslovom “Samo u mitovima svaki narod želi državu. U stvarnosti — ne”. U komentaru, napisanom povodom škotskog referenduma o nezavisnosti, Jović je iznio niz zapažanja o nacijama i njihovom državnom samoostvarenju, usredsređujući se na jednu posebnu formu ovog potonjeg: referendumsko izjašnjavanje o državnoj (ne)samostalnosti. Tim povodom, Jović je konstatirao da su, za razliku od škotskog, referendumi koji su posljedovali osamostaljenjem nekih republika bivše Jugoslavije bili vrlo neliberalni (“osim crnogorskog iz 2006”).
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Despite the geographical proximity the political systems in Poland and Ukraine are quite significantly different in perception of the role of the Executive Power in the creation of law and the assessment of individual types of activities. In the western doctrine of constitutional law, the system of normative acts of the executive branch is accepted as almost natural. For this reason, quite simply, we cannot see any, even minor, derogative constitutional regulations on this matter. In this article, I would like to draw proper attention to only one issue concerning the law-making activity of the executive power in Ukraine, namely the forms of these acts and focus on the creating sources of the natural law ”erga omnes” by the two state bodies: the president and the Cabinet of Ministers. The aim of the article is to emphasize the diversity of the Ukrainian system of legal sources based on a relatively narrow example of acts of supreme organs of the executive power.
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The text „Politics and Discourses of Contemporary Feminisms: the Modalities of Perhaps“ researches some new possibilities of achieving a difference within the feminist politics and strategies after their three- phased development, and also after the postfeminist time of autoreflexive critic and recontextualization of feminist theses. Using the poststructuralist, text-oriented and already present feminist platforms, this text points to the necessity of rethinking and reconfiguration of the questions of feminist issues, as well as the issues of gender, sexuality, identity and also the issues of political itself which has to be rethought outside of the „community“ dynamics that too often slips into the friend: enemy tension. In the end, this text considers and theorizes the potential of the modality perhaps, which unravels itself in openness towards the dialogical relations of feminisms with the systems of language, writing and social/ cultural realities inside which it exists and (re)acts.
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This paper develops the concept of a posthumanist, more-than-human collective by focusing on conflictual relationships between humans and sewer rats. I propose to look at the absence of empathy in urban rat control programs through the framework of a necropolitics of war and colonization. I seek to examine how an interspecies community may be organized to simultaneously protect human interests and meet the requirements of animals' well-being. I analyze the reasons why the idea of a reduction in animals' suffering does not exist in public discourses on rat eradication. I claim that to create an interspecies collective composed of populations in conflict it is necessary to consider ideas of animal liberation and reconstruct cultural codes concerning rats.
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The study examines the stages in the evolution of global strategy in the global and regional dimension. The thesis on the inadequacy of political and economic activities in today’s international reality is sad but true. The hotspots in world politics are not becoming less numerous, and new ones keep appearing (e.g. the conventional arms race). Given their complexity, the problems that plague the world cannot be solved using the ideas and tools of the past. The cornerstone of global strategy is security. The seemingly remote threat of a world conflict that may be preceded by regional conflicts is a bit more real today. The identification and description of threats will not suffice; specific and effective measures must be taken. This makes the work of analysts of and experts in contemporary strategy approached in a multidimensional manner even more important.
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The article concerns the Three Seas Initiative, proposed by Poland and Croatia in August2016 at the i Summit in Dubrovnik. The author focused on the results of the SecondSummit of the Initiative, which took place on July 6-7, 2017 in Warsaw. The origin ofThree Seas Initiative and its main goals are explained. In the Author's conviction, theyoscillate around socio-economic issues, especially the development of the transportnetwork, which may positively affect the development of economic and trade links andsecurity - in this context it mainly focused on the diversification of energy resources,especially natural gas and oil supplies. The mentioned diversification is a condition ofeconomic security, and in the long run also of economic and political sovereignty of IPTcountries. This is particularly important in the circumstances of the aggressive policy ofthe Russian Federation towards Ukraine and the terrorist threat in Western Europeancountries, whose sources should be sought in the armed conflicts in the Middle East andthe migration crisis that they caused. In this context, it should be noted that the IPTcountries must cooperate in the field of security and counter-terrorism.
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This article discusses the offence for the Institutional Roles (Policies) as a fundamental characteristic of the populist discourse by the Prime Minister Boiko Borisov. Disregard for the Institutions means in a way a disrespect for the institutions as being instruments for legitimate policy decision making. A subject of analysis here are three key events. The first two refer to the direct involvement of the Prime Minister in the activity of the independent Judiciary. The first one respectively is when he requests the assistance of the Sofia City Prosecutor Nikolay Kokinov in order to suspend the ongoing trial against the minister of the Agriculture Miroslav Naidenov. The second one involves his attempt to influence the Prosecutor General Sotir Tcatcarov to undertake repressive actions against the Chairman of Sofia Sity Court Vladimira Yaneva. One can clearly notice here a violation of the principle standing for the division of powers (“trias politica principle”) and of the illegal appointments by the prime minister in the Judicial Branch. The third event refers to his try to stop the customs inspection against the owner of the beer manufacturer “Ledenika”-Mihail Mihov and it clearly shows the disturbed balance in the institutional coexistence in the Executive itself.
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Leader approach is growing continuously since its creation in 1991 until today. This article analyzes the Leader approach as a management tool. Examine the characteristics of the Leader and the synergy of their combined action. Briefly developed its application in the EU. Analyze the preconditions for the implementation of the approach in the Bulgarian conditions.
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