AuthorMartin Hladík

These are 15 of the best places to spend Christmas this year.

Editor’s Note: Those who choose to travel are strongly encouraged to check local government restrictions, rules, and safety measures related to COVID-19 and take personal comfort levels and health conditions into consideration before departure.

The “most wonderful time of the year” is quickly approaching, and even though holiday celebrations might look different this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, you can still find the festive spirit in destinations across the United States and the world. The best Christmas vacations offer cheerful decorations and festive events that capture the holiday spirit, all set against the backdrop of a beautiful destination. And with many ideal holiday destinations located across the country, you’re never further than a road trip from a perfect December vacation.

Wondering where you can actually travel for Christmas in 2021? From sunny shores to winter wonderland ski resorts, these are the best places to spend Christmas this year. While some destinations and hotels have released their holiday plans, these are subject to change due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, so be sure to check before planning your trip.

See the list here.

Forty years have passed this fall since my first travel to Lebanon and it happened ever since to return there many times and to spend more than four years in the beautiful Cedars country; I had during the time the opportunity of meeting relevant Lebanese personalities such as the late prime minister Rafik Hariri, the Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, president Michel Aoun (before being elected) and many others.

Lebanon is an iconic country for the Middle East and could be considered a true barometer of the regional geopolitical situation and also for the fact that what happened in Lebanon during the last decades until now is absolutely true for numerous countries of the world, countries with no resources of their own, withstanding multiple foreign influences that are confronted with a massive emigration, have on their territories numerous refugees and are overcome by corruption.

Even if on October 31st, 2016, the Lebanese parliament brought to an end the longest period of the country’s history without a president (29 months since the end of president Michel Suleiman’s mandate – May 2014) by electing – after 45 parliamentary sessions in which no candidate could obtain the legal quorum – General Michel Aoun, the following period witnessed many political and social convulsions, numerous demonstrations and popular protests and a continuous deterioration of the economic situation. The August 4th, 2020 explosion in the Port of Beirut (the biggest explosion of the last decades in an urban area in the world) aggravated the economic crisis Lebanon is witnessing and provoked a new political crisis. It was only in September 2021 when a new government was formed under the leadership of Najib Mikati (prime minister for the third time).

Lebanon is the prisoner of a sectarian political system whereby the power is shared by the three main religious communities: the Maronites Christians, the Sunnis and the Shia; nevertheless the political system reached its limits and the present Lebanese political class proved it is not able and ready to find an alternate solution.

New parliamentary elections are scheduled for March 27th, 2022 and in the autumn of the same year the parliament is to elect a new president. It would be no surprise if the parliamentary elections are postponed and a new political crisis emerges. In fact, the politicians’ hesitations to reform the present political system are emphasized by the initial promise of granting six seats in the parliament to the diaspora (out of the more than 8 million Lebanese ex-pats, only 1.2 million have the right to vote and a record number of more than 200,000 voters registered for the 2022 elections), a promise nowhere to be found in the final form of the electoral law.

It is worth mentioning that the last official census in Lebanon took place in 1932 while the unofficial estimates of 2020 indicate a population of 6.8 million inhabitants and a research of a Lebanese consultancy of 2016, quoted by the US Department of State, shows that the Lebanese population was made up of 45% Christians, 48% Muslims and 5.2% Druze. According to some official data, almost a million Syrian refugees (944,613) and almost 200,000 registered Palestinian refugees are to be added up to the said population. Most probably, the real figures of the refugee are much bigger, at least double in what the Palestinian refugee are concerned.

From an economic standpoint, Lebanon is witnessing the most severe crisis of the last 150 years as the GDP shrunk from $ 55 billion in 2018 to $ 33 billion in 2020 and a further decrease to $ 20.5 billion is expected in 2021 (World Bank estimates, October 2021) and the per capita GDP decreased by around 40%. The unemployment increased from 28% in February, 2020, to 40% by the end of the same year. According to UN data, 78% of the Lebanese live under the poverty threshold and 36% in extreme poverty.

According to a Reuter’s research, the food index price increased in September 2021 by 557% as compared to October 2019 and the economy contracted by 30% as compared to 2017. The Lebanese Pound lost around 90% of its value as compared to October 2019.

As far as corruption is concerned, the latest data published by Pandora Papers mention the name of Prime Minister Najib Mikati, of the Governor of the Central Bank Riad Salameh and that of the former prime minister and minister of Education, Hassan Diab. The clientelistic political system and the way the public contracts are assigned domestically may be the subject of an extensive debate.

Under such circumstances, from 2019 until now only, 300,000 Lebanese citizens who lost any hope that the domestic situation could improve emigrated and were looking for a solution outside the country. Unfortunately, those who left the country and those who will, have a good professional training and a financial status that can assure them a new beginning in a new country. Such events will further diminish the possibilities of Lebanon’s recovery. A people who, for a long period of time went through serious crises and had its stamina diminished by numerous emigration waves, subjected, at the same time, to the immigrationist pressures and foreign interests is not an inexcusable reservoir and might be seriously affected by such events.

The sectarian and group interests are overwhelming and are used by foreign influences (France, Iran, Israel, Turkey, USA, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries, China, Russia) for attaining their own goals and for testing solutions for the area’s related issues. Such circumstances made the Maronite Patriarch Beshara Boutros Al-Rai to declare on August 15th, 2020 that: “We will not allow for Lebanon to become a compromise card between nations that want to rebuild ties amongst themselves”.

I consider that on a short run, the economic situation in Lebanon will continue to deteriorate – if that is still possible without a further dissolution of the state. On a longer run, the forecasts of the evolutions in the Middle East and especially in Lebanon are extremely indefensible. Yet the country of the Cedars fully deserves the characterisation of a barometer of the geopolitical developments in the area. Unfortunately, the Lebanese brought the country where it is now with help of course by foreign interests. The 2022 elections do not seem to bring in optimism and, in the spirit of the Lebanese tradition, they are to be postponed without a clear time horizon. Timing is not the issue but finding a viable solution for replacing the present sectarian political system yet I do not see a firm political will in this respect.

An improvement of the general situation in the Middle East could have a favourable influence on Lebanon but I believe it depends first and foremost on the Lebanese. Is it possible that the diaspora come with a political solution that can be successfully implemented? Does the rich Lebanese emigration want to have a country where to return fondly and with nostalgia? Or will Lebanon continue to sink itself into the conflicts without a foreseeable end of the Middle East? To use the title of today’s webinar, I do not see a change for a new beginning in Lebanon. The answer should come from the Lebanese themselves!

The text was at the Presentation in Webinar on December 2nd, 2021 “Middle East and North Africa: the Changes for a New Beginning” event organized by Bucharest-based think-tanks MEPEI (Middle East Political and Economic Institute) and EuroDefense Romania in partnership with IPIS (the Institute for Political and International Studies), Tehran.

The webinar invited speakers are experts from Afghanistan, Austria, China, Hungary, Lebanon, Iran, Italy, Malaysia, Palestine, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Syria, Turkey, UK, USA.The webinar brings together more than 200 diplomats, officials, academics, business leaders, politicians, as well as independent researchers, think-thank representatives, journalists, and other civil society representatives.

About the author:

Corneliu Pivariu is a highly decorated two-star general of the Romanian army (Rtd). He has founded and led one of the most influential magazines on geopolitics and international relations in Eastern Europe, the bilingual journal Geostrategic Pulse, for two decades. General Pivariu is a member of IFIMES Advisory Board.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.

Ljubljana/Bucharest, 14 December 2021

Original article

WASHINGTON—Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) condemned today’s guilty verdict and 15-year prison sentence by a Belarus court against prominent blogger and RFE/RL Belarus Service journalist Ihar Losik.

Said RFE/RL President Jamie Fly, “The Lukashenka regime’s treatment of Ihar Losik has been reprehensible. The closed-door trial he and his co-defendants have endured for the past five months has been an outrageous travesty of justice. We again call on the Lukashenka regime to stop their assault on news organizations and journalists and bloggers like Ihar and let him return to his wife and daughter.”

Losik was arrested by Belarusian agents on June 25, 2020, in advance of the rigged presidential election in August that returned six-term incumbent Alyaksandr Lukashenka to the presidency. He was tried on charges widely considered to have been fabricated by Belarusian authorities, including “organization and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order” and “preparation for participation in riots.” The trial lasted five months and took place behind closed doors at the prison where Losik was being held with his five co-defendants, who included video blogger Syarhey Tsikhanouski, the husband of presidential candidate and opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and prominent opposition activist and former presidential candidate Mikalay Statkevich.

Since his arrest, Losik has faced severe physical and psychological pressures, to include two debilitating hunger strikes. He has only been allowed to see his wife once throughout his ordeal, and been denied any visits at all with his parents or his young daughter. Prison authorities have also sought to affect Losik’s mental state while in detention with frequent transfers to different cells and by denying mail privileges for extended periods of time.

Losik’s wife, Darya, spoke by phone on October 20 with U.S. Special Envoy to Belarus Julie Fisher, and met the previous day with European Union representatives, the latest signs that Losik’s plight remains a priority for the U.S. and European governments. Losik’s unjust detention was prominently noted during a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on June 9, in legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on April 20, in a statement by CSCE Chairman Sen. Ben Cardin and commission leaders Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) on April 13, and by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his statement supporting the April 19 reimposition of sanctions on nine state-owned Belarusian companies. U.S. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price, the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Helsinki Commission, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, U.S. Congressman Bill Keating, Lithuanian Seimas Speaker Viktorija Cmilyte-Nielsen, and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, among others, have called for Losik’s release.

RFE/RL journalists in Belarus have spent a cumulative 688 days behind bars since Losik was arrested in June 2020; RFE/RL freelancer Andrei Kuznechyk is still in jail, serving a second 10-day sentence for “hooliganism” in what RFE/RL’s Jamie Fly described as a “state-sponsored kidnapping.” A Belarusian court on December 3 designated the Telegram and YouTube channels of RFE/RL’s Belarus Service as “extremist”. In addition, RFE/RL’s bureau in Minsk was raided and sealed by Belarusian security forces on July 16, and numerous other RFE/RL journalists on assignment to report on the election and its aftermath have been harassed, detained, and stripped of their accreditations.

About RFE/RL’s Belarus Service Despite working in what Reporters Without Borders calls “the most dangerous country in Europe for media personnel,” RFE/RL’s Belarus Service continues to provide independent news and analysis of the fast-moving events to Belarusian audiences in their own language, relying on social media platforms such as Telegram, Instagram, and YouTube, as well as mirror sites and an updated news app to circumvent pervasive Internet blockages and access disruptions.

About RFE/RL RFE/RL relies on its networks of local reporters to provide accurate news and information to more than 37 million people every week in 27 languages and 23 countries where media freedom is restricted, or where a professional press has not fully developed. Its videos were viewed 7 billion times on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram/IGTV in FY2021. RFE/RL is an editorially independent media company funded by a grant from the U.S. Congress through the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Copyright (c)2020 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Original article

WASHINGTON—Reporters from across RFE/RL’s services were awarded top honors this week for their work uncovering corruption in their home countries.

On December 7th, Natalie Sedletska, a journalist for RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, was recognized for her reporting for the program Schemes: Corruption in Details, receiving DC-based think tank Transatlantic Leadership Network’s inaugural “Freedom of the Media” award. Schemes, an RFE/RL program dedicated to investigating and exposing high-level corruption that was created in the wake of the 2014 Maidan Revolution, was previously awarded the top prize in Ukraine’s National Investigative Journalism Competition this past September. Sedletska dedicated her award to her team of investigators at Schemes, additionally bringing attention to the case of RFE/RL journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko, jailed since March 2021 in Russia-occupied Crimea:

“This award is an accomplishment that would not be possible without my colleagues from the Schemes investigative team, supported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Also I want to use this opportunity to remember my colleague Vladyslav Yesypenko, RFERL contributor, and another dozen reporters who are currently in jail in Crimea, occupied by Russia. Journalism is not a crime.”

Bulgaria’s Anti-Corruption Fund honored the work of three investigative journalists from RFE/RL’s Bulgarian Service at its annual Red Line ceremony dedicated to recognizing journalism exposing corruption in Bulgaria on December 9 – International Anti-Corruption Day. Boris Mitov’s “in-depth and consistent efforts to uncover the dependencies of judiciary, executive and legislative power,” were recognized with the Supreme Court Award. Earlier this year, Mitov investigated the rapid rise in wealth of former Bulgarian politician Delyan Peevski, amid allegations of corruption and money laundering. The Fund also awarded Genka Shikerova a Special Award for Investigative Journalism, for her reporting in February on the systematic deforestation of Bulgarian forests, while Damyana Veleva was honored in the young journalist category for her work in revealing that more than 400 villages in Bulgaria have not had regulated water supplies since the 1950s,. The ceremony can be re-watched on Facebook Live.

Also on December 9, Moldova’s National Agency for Integrity (ANI) awarded RFE/RL’s Moldovan Service a “Diploma of Gratitude” for supporting the fight against corruption through clear and thorough reporting. Part of Moldova’s renewed efforts to tackle corruption, the ANI was recently revamped to act as a check on the wealth of top public servants and politicians. The agency applauded the service for “the clarity of its reports on the changes made to the laws regarding the National Agency of Integrity, conflict of interest, and integrity [of public officials].”

— Erica Stefano

Copyright (c)2020 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Just like any other industry, human resources are evolving and advancing day by day. We’re more than ready to leave the old practices behind and indulge in new activities and methods that will improve the recruiting process, employee satisfaction, and many more. Each year talented HR specialists and generalists come together to come up with improved techniques that will not only help them but candidates as well.

Are you an expert working in the field of human resources? Then you mustn’t miss these 5 trends in the industry that are coming our way in less than a month! These trends are ready to be implemented and used to improve the company’s performance. So, where do we begin?

1. Talent wars will become a thing

Every company wants to attract top talent to work for them. However, the number of needed experts and top talents exceeds the amount of really talented individuals. Since not every company is competent enough to “fight” for top talents, they have to settle for average employees and get left behind. So, how can you ensure the company you work for wins the talent war?

You have to offer value no other company does. For instance, if you’re not able to provide employees with higher pay, offering work on interesting projects, more vacation days, a hybrid workplace, and free parking and gym pass can be more than enough to satisfy the talented.

2. Upskilling will be essential

As you’ve probably noticed, most companies are searching for experts who are immediately ready to jump to work. However, this is not such an easy task. Big companies rarely give a chance to beginners which leaves a lot of young, motivated individuals full of potential jobless! Well, this is about to change.

Besides experience, soft skills are some things to consider before hiring a new employee. If a candidate is motivated to learn, ready to try out something new, why not give them a chance? 2022 will be all about creating the ideal employee rather than finding one.

3. Increased use of data

Did you know that only a small percentage of HR experts rely on data when working? We can agree that statistics and numbers can be boring, but they are extremely useful in human resource associate’s life! Numbers, percentages, graphs, and stats can be of huge value to the company.

So, instead of avoiding this part of your job, find interest in it and make it your new year’s resolution! Besides measuring the performance, satisfaction, and similar constructs, you can include AI chatbots and digitalized recruitment process which creates a more engaging experience for both the HR and the candidate.

4. Make employees feel heard

A lot of companies try to care about their employees, but how many of them actually succeed? Making your employees feel heard and understood is part of a bigger picture called retention. If your employees are satisfied with the job, culture, and attention they’ve been getting from HR, they are less likely to leave the company.

So, instead of risking it all, work on the employee communication strategies that will help you increase satisfaction and minimize fluctuation. Adequate and honest communication with employees will also make organization and delegation much easier. So, try to engage with employees more often and focus on their needs.

5. Mental health finally gets the deserved attention

In the past couple of years, a lot of firms started talking about the importance of mental health. At the same time, they cease to notice that their employees are unwell, burnout, stressed, and depressed. Such a contradictory state only makes the company seem superficial and half-hearted. How can you prevent that?

To keep your employees happy, work on their mental well-being for real. Offer them counseling or try to educate them on the importance of mental health. Always look for warning signs and truly care for the way your employees feel. Most importantly, encourage work-life balance to keep your employees mentally and physically healthy at all times.

Final thoughts

Even though trends come and go, HR techniques are usually here to stay! HR practices upgrade and change over time, that’s why it’s important to follow new trends and keep up to date with them. So, before you start a new year, don’t forget to check out the new trends in the human resources industry!

By Peter Minkoff

Peter is a lifestyle and travel writer at Men-Ual magazine, living between Ústí nad Labem and Antwerp. Follow Peter on Twitter for more tips.

There are hundreds of variations of Czech pastries, and sometimes it is hard to choose which one to try this time. In fact, some pastries are better to eat at breakfast, others at dinner. That is why we created our list with the best sweets that you can find in the Czech Republic.

See the article here on Prague Life

Jaroslav Seifert was born and raised in Prague, a part of Austria-Hungary at that time, to a work-class family. During his time at secondary school, the future poet developed an interest in writing poetry and journalism. That was the primary reason why Jaroslav left school and started working on the communist newspaper Rudé Pravo. The publication embraced socialist ideas to the citizens.

During the 1920s, he became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) that impacted his life position and values. He became the editor of famous Czech newspapers and magazines, including Rovnost, Sršatec, and Reflector. His early poetry was mainly focused on the expectations for the future of communism and the Soviet Union. At the same time, he was working at the communist publishing house and a bookstore. In 1929, he and his fellow collegues, writers, have to left the party. The reason for this was the signing of a manifesto protesting against Bolshevik Stalinist tendencies.

Jaroslav was one of the leading participants of the avant-garde movement in Czechoslovakia. He established the journal Devětsil and continued working as a journalist during the 1930s – 1940s. In the publication, he was a critical editorial person, and he was focusing on the translation from the French language publication. He was contributing his writings in the social democratic press, such as Pestré kvety and Ranní noviny.

Source: Prague Life

In the early 1970s, I watched a British TV programme which featured the late well- known presenter, Magnus Magnusson, and which was concerned with global cooling and what actions we should take, mainly with the negative impact cooling would have on food production. We had just come off 3 decades of relatively cool weather following on from the warmest decade of the 20th century. We were not aware of population growth yet and the potential challenges that a faster increase in growth rate would mean. Perhaps China picked it up first, becoming alarmed at their own population growth which had doubled in the 30-year period from 1940 and was set to grow at an accelerating rate. Their government instituted a one child policy in 1979 to bring it under control. Notwithstanding this, the Chinese population today stands at 1.4 billion.

The population of the world is expected to top approximately 10 billion by mid-century and slowly decrease thereafter. It will reflect changes in ethnic mix, as Asia rises and the developed world declines in number, albeit this has led in part to the current concern over migration. The ‘comforting’ point is that world population is now approaching its zenith and we can plan accordingly, and not like we have done, or not done, as in the past 60 years. We seem to have been caught nodding off or even sleeping!

From the COP26 meeting there seem to be broadly two areas of concern which we can best describe by illustration. The tropical/equatorial island of Madagascar, off the southeast coast of South Africa, had a population of 5.1 million 60 years ago. Today It stands at nearly 28 million, or more than 5 times the 1960 population. The forest/jungle, which covered most of the country, has been decimated in the last period essentially to grow crops to feed the burgeoning population. The cloud cover over the forest, which provided rain, has gone, the soil has lost nutrients. And now there is a severe drought and people are starving and famine conditions loom. This is a human induced climate change, much like happened to the Easter Islanders in centuries past when they cut down all their trees and their impressive culture significantly declined from a peak population of 7,000 to just a few hundred today, which scratches a living. Madagascar is, however, a human disaster in the making, which requires immediate attention, but a broad education component must be included with the aid. We have to educate the young.

Towards the poles, the climate is much colder and much fewer people choose to live there. There is noticeable change taking place with the ice/glaciers retreating and a change to warmer conditions. This leads to an alteration in habitat and changes to the offshore and marine life that inhabit it. The sea level is rising there, as it did during the Mediaeval Warm Period (850 -1250 CE) when the global temperature rose 1.40C max. The population of the world was circa 350 million or less than 5% of that today

After the Warm Period, there was the Little Ice Age for some 500 years. During the Warm Period one could travel round the top of Canada or Russia, as Admiral Ye of China is reputed to have done. The big difference is in population and we are still learning about the impact this has on our planet on top of what the sun and other space radiation forces have done for millions of millennia.

The IPCC have taken as the culprit, the rise in CO2, and worked on an average global temperature and quite large areas of the earth’s surface, simply because anything smaller would involve an enormous amount of computer time. A criticism of their approach is that the models that they use don’t take clouds/humidity, i.e. water, properly into account and this is the most important element of the greenhouse effect. In addition, they parade a consensus view and science only deals in facts. NASA and others work to observation and they say that the IPCC forecast is overstated by a noticeable amount. They have determined the figure should be less, like 10C warmer and, if increasing, it is gradually. Besides, the Earth was a few degrees hotter in the distant past.

The COP26 conference, which was well attended by country representatives, has now wrapped up with an agreement, inevitably slightly watered down considering the very wide range of interests to be satisfied. The two most populous countries of the world, China and India, one – third of the total, insisted that the agreement document be altered from ‘phasing out’ to ‘phasing down’ the use of coal, because the growth in their economies would otherwise decline.

The COP26 as the final awakening?

Notwithstanding, whether one agrees wholeheartedly with the IPCC or not, there is a great deal to be done and the world is gradually awakening to that fact. In reality, the world doesn’t live in an average global climate. We live in regions of quite different climate as the findings of Koppen-Geiger found (Beck[2],2018). They divided the world according to regions with 5 main types of climates given– Tropical/ Equatorial, Arid, Temperate, Continental and Polar, and 32 sub-regions on the basis of seasonal rainfall, temperature patterns and altitude.

People will have gone away from COP26 slightly bemused. At its peak the crowd, outside and inside, was about 40,000, with every party wanting to be heard. Largely the demonstrators outside were good – humoured and very little trouble occurred, in view of the seriousness of the issue that was being discussed. Naturally, considering the occasion and the large number of opinions and axes to grind by inside and outside parties, not everyone was happy with the outcome. But it is an outcome and there is plenty of groundwork to do.

The very large countries and major polluters have largely signed up to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, albeit at different dates. The smaller nations, which make up most of the number may still be left wondering about what they should do to avoid disaster, for example islanders, small nations, who are witnessing sea level rise. They must, of course, first make sure that their land is not sinking as a result of land movements, tectonic plate shifts, or do they sit on atolls? They should also take note of where they are placed in the regions of the world and what sort of climate should be expected and any changes that have taken place and how their landscape would be affected by a warming world. Britain itself is tilting on a north-west to south-east axis, the latter gradually sinking, which is why the River Thames barrier was built a few years ago to protect the city of London and its invaluable infrastructure.

Two millennia ago, at the time of Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain, crossing the Channel which was easier than today, having sorted out Gaul (France), omnia gallia in tres partes divisa est, there was a large piece of land to the north, once linking up the east of England with Denmark, the Dogger Bank, the home of the Dogger people. Now that land has gradually sunk under the sea permanently, part of the land movements of this area, and a sign that the surface of the earth, the crust, is rarely still. Today Dogger Bank supports the largest offshore windfarm run by Danish company Danske, part of Britain’s and Europe’s commitments towards renewables.

Then there are the issues that we all have to face, to a greater or lesser extent; sea or land pollution, water supply, sanitation hazards, storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions – if pertinent, deforestation, urbanisation, and so on. Many of these are important civil engineering/ environmental matters.

Pollution can be insidious, depending on the waste materials to be dealt with. There is a growing awareness that most waste has to be treated appropriately and some of it may be recycled. This is extremely important as the volume of waste has escalated with population growth. Landfills should be minimised, many of them are dangerous eyesores. The issue of plastics and the harm they can do, we know about now. For the oceans also, plastic pollution is dangerous as it does not dissolve and some of it breaks down to miniscule size and fish unwittingly swallow it and we, in turn, can eat the fish. This and the next generation must have cleaner habits. If anything, COP26 raised awareness of this issue.

Clean water forms part of the UN Millennium Sustainable Development Goals but despite the 1980s being the Decade to solve the water issue it is still with us. They did not know the scale of the problem then. There are today still more than one million people without access to clean water worldwide and undoubtedly more where the supply is less than acceptable. Sometimes, an aquifer is asked to support more population than it was originally designed for, as cities multiplied and grew faster in the last period than expected. With changes in weather patterns, the issue is probably going to get worse, and forecasting the future demands is going to be a challenge, but one which will have to be met.

Sanitation is a subject that most people would prefer didn’t exist. It is a major problem in large cities and solutions become more difficult as the cities expand. The tendency by government is to delay! I have personally observed this going round Asian cities. There just needs to be a deadly outbreak in one urban environment from a new strain of disease that was thought to be conquered, and we shall have a disaster on our hands.

Severe storms cause much havoc on landfall as has been witnessed, more to property than life, sometimes devastating. In fact, the number of Caribbean hurricanes per year has not escalated over the past two decades, but the intensity may have done. The coastal population has increased with building to match, and therefore more are now affected.

Urbanisation is set to increase in the years ahead. Once the current pandemic is over, there will be a large number of new cities built in Asia, particularly in China and South East Asia. Indonesia has some 20 more urban centres planned and is eyeing more. It has to happen although the timescale will be extended, and start dates have had to be delayed largely because of the pandemic. In Indonesia’s case, the private sector is going to have to be a significant partner in building the new towns and cities the country needs. There will need to be more contractors to realise the work which has to be done. But this will be an opportunity to put some of the new ideas into the designs using ‘smart’ principles and make the new urban areas with 21st century thinking and energy efficient buildings with electric power having low to nil production of greenhouse gases.

It would be quite an exciting challenge to take part in the design of a future city, particularly if one had a green field site and strict environmental parameters to meet. Existing cities, and particularly some Asian ones, are hotspots, putting out significant amounts of greenhouse gases. These urban centres pose another level of challenge. Infrastructure exists and more people, apart from politicians, will want to have a say in decisions.

Transport is an area where there is quite an understanding of using less polluting modes. Several manufacturers have already switched to electric vehicles and we can expect to see more on the road and the majority of cars in ten years’ time. What will happen to battery charging places if there is a power cut? For heavy transport, such as large trucks, construction plant it will probably not be efficient to change to electric – battery. Still, cars are the majority of vehicles on the road.

The Amazon area has been called the ‘lungs of the world’. The rate of deforestation in the past few years has been alarming. It would seem that a ‘rogue’ politician stands in the way of doing the right thing and this has to be put right. Regreening the land rightly was prominent in some discussions at COP26. Trees require CO2, the greenhouse gas with which the IPCC were most concerned.

Something old, something new: think global, act local

In the few paragraphs above, the apparent things that we can do to the planet that will make it a better and cleaner place have been aired. These are not ‘pie in the sky’ and are all achievable. For any country in the world, they should look at their relative location, as per Koppen-Geiger, and see which of the items highlighted above they should tackle, and which prioritise for their area.

One would like to think that in two years the IPCC would have collected all the nations’ plans and to agree them or advise on alternatives. They could then have an idea on what each country needs financially to aid them in the monumental task on top of what they can spend themselves. It is appreciated that this a Level 1 look at things and there is an enormous amount of detail to follow. But one has to start! In addition, it would be easier if the nations were divided into small, medium and large because it is likely that the scale of problems will be different. It would be good to see the world unite on an issue where everyone should and could be involved in real matters.

As I sign off, the Covid pandemic has just added another twist – a new variant, the omicron. Further delay?

About the author:

Dr J Scott Younger, OBE, is a professional civil engineer; he spent 42 years in the Far East undertaking assignments in 10 countries for WB, ADB, UNDP. He published many papers; he was a columnist for Forbes Indonesia and Globe Asia. He served on British & European Chamber boards and was a Vice Chair of Int’l Business Chamber for 17 years. His expertise is infrastructure and sustainable development and he takes an interest in international affairs. He is an International Chancellor of the President University, Indonesia. He is a member of IFIMES Advisory Board. Lived and worked in Thailand from 1978 to 1983 and visited Burma, Bangladesh and Nepal for projects.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.

Ljubljana/Glasgow, 5 December 2021

[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN, New York, since 2018.

[2] Beck, H E, Zimmerman, N E, and Wood, E (2018). Present and future Koppen-Geiger climate classification maps at 1 km resolution. Scientific Data 5, number 180214 (2018)

New Year is just around the corner, and so are some fresh developments in the business arena. In addition to an increased focus on remote work, 2022 will bring a few new trends such as a continued rise of e-commerce sector, cashless payments, communication through apps and social media, and a growing importance of virtual events. Here’s a quick peek at the news that will make headlines in the business waters in the year to come.

Continued rise of remote work

With the onset of COVID-19, remote work made a huge entrance in the business arena and next year will only see a growth therein. According to recent figures, almost 50% of employees worked remotely in 2021, and the popularity of this mode of operation will remain just as high in the coming year. The advantages of remote work speak in favor of this trend, and they include increased productivity, easier access to talent, and better work-life balance. On top of that, working remotely allows brands to pick and choose staff from a much wider pool of candidates which will emphasize the trend of virtual over in-person onboarding.

Persistent boom of e-commerce

As an increasing number of customers shift to online shopping, e-commerce will continue to thrive in the year to come, and more and more brands will be going digital with their stores. The gains behind the rise of e-commerce for businesses are considerable since the need for brick-and-mortar space will further drop and customers would be able to shop at any given moment, spending more time in virtual stores. On top of that, this will slice overhead costs and facilitate marketing by means of safe SEO practices, both of which will further fuel the rise of e-commerce in the years to come.

Growth of cashless payments

Cash is no longer king in financial transactions and e-commerce is the future of shopping, which entails a shift to trade finance and cashless payments. The new shopping trend will also bring about a rise of diversified payment methods, including credit and debit cards, payment apps, and digital wallets. For this reason, if you want your brand to stay up to date with payment terms, you will need to offer your audience a wider range of options to choose from, and you should also consider granting discounts for payments conducted online.

Communication through apps

With customers switching to online shopping, communication will also take a turn for the digital, and we will be seeing more and more brands embracing smart apps for sales and customer care purposes. On top of that, a growing number of companies will be shifting to the online workplace and ushering online platforms for communication purposes, which will further facilitate operation and cut running costs. In 2022, smart messaging platforms and apps will become a must-have across industries, so if you want to remain productive and increase availability to both your team and customers, you should consider introducing new digital communication channels.

Virtual events are all the rage

Together with the transition to remote work and cashless payments, virtual events will take front and center in the year to come. Conferences, meetings, interviews, and even trade shows will be transitioning to online platforms as people remain wary of COVID-19 risks. The change will bring quite a few benefits to all the parties involved as virtual events will beat their real life counterparts as regards online versus in-person attendance. An added bonus, organizing educational or promotional activities online would slice the costs of running a successful business, so if you are looking to stay in the top tiers of your industry, you should brace your brand for some online meeting fun.

The year to come will see a continuation of the popularity of remote work and a further growth in cashless payments and e-commerce, and it will also mark a new era of virtual events and digital communication with customers and team members. Judging by the looks, 2022 will truly be a year of change so if you want to stay successful in your industry or become even more so, it is the perfect moment to make some adjustments in the way you do business. Good luck!

By Peter Minkoff

Peter is a lifestyle and travel writer at Men-Ual magazine, living between Ústí nad Labem and Antwerp. Follow Peter on Twitter for more tips.

There are thousands of ski resorts around the world, but it takes a lot to stand out from the pack. Certain spots make a name for themselves thanks to their nonexistent lift lines or inordinate amounts of snow. Others thrive because they’ve fine-tuned the on-mountain experience to the point that it’s no longer associated with squished PB&Js and cold fingers, but with flutes of Champagne and cozy chalets.

To come up with a list of the world’s most luxurious ski resorts, Oxford Ski Company, a travel agency specializing in tailor-made ski holidays, reviewed the gross revenue of each resort in their portfolio to determine where skiers and snowboarders are spending big and living large.

See the list here.

In November, the world’s attention will be focused on the proceedings and outcomes of the United Nations COP26 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting in Glasgow. We will be told, as we have been repeatedly by the IPCC, that this is the last-ditch attempt to save the planet and perhaps humanity from the catastrophic consequences of global warming and climate change (GW&CC) through the increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in our atmosphere. Alok Sharma, the British cabinet minister currently serving as president of COP 26 calls it a “turning point” point for humanity.

To that end, the world will be encouraged to abandon all fossil fuel-based energy generation, which for years has represented more that 80 percent of global energy consumption. The gathering in Glasgow will also enthusiastically and appropriately, welcome the increases of alternative energy sources in many countries, especially wind and solar, which currently provide about four percent of global energy consumption. Unfortunately, such alternative sources of energy are projected to remain modest compared to coal, natural gas and oil. This trend is compounded by rising energy demands in developing countries where fossil fuels remain a dependency.

Even developed countries such as Canada will not be able to meet the targets voluntarily set at COP21 in Paris. On October 6th the Globe and Mail reported: “Canada is on pace to fall well short of its emissions goals, according to a new government-funded report that says the country’s current strategies will reduce its greenhouse gas output by only 16 percent, relative to 2005 levels, by 2030 — a far cry from the 40-percent cut that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised.”

Ironically, the UK government (host of COP26) is permitting the first deep coal mine in 30 years to be created in Cumbria with most of the extracted coal to be exported to Europe. This underlines another misunderstanding perhaps widely held, namely, the atmosphere pays no attention to the source of GHG emissions. A ton of carbon absorbed in the atmosphere from Beijing has the same global impact as one emitted from Montreal.

The gap between climate diplomacy at COP meetings and the national energy policy decisions implemented between them has fostered cynicism about the value of targets that are undermined as much by hypocrisy as by chemistry.

Columbia Professor James Hansen, known as the “father of climate change awareness”, told the Guardian in 2015 that the talks that culminated in a deal at COP21 were just “worthless words”. Speaking as the final draft of the deal was published, Hansen said: “It’s just b******t for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.” Hansen has never been an irrational alarmist and his record of climate change prediction to date has been remarkably good.

With no sanctions and no carbon pricing agreed upon in Paris, is it realistic to assume that the world, with total primary energy consumption more than 80 percent dependent on fossil fuels in 2020, will restructure our societies and infrastructures in time to prevent CO2 atmospheric concentrations from passing the possible “tipping point” of 450 parts per million (ppm)? At the time of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, concentrations were about 367 ppm. They have now passed 400 ppm and continue to rise.

As the Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), I introduced Sustainable Development (SD) to the group’s work program in 1997 and created the OECD Round Table on SD that same year. While SD embraces a wide range of environmental, social and governance objectives (often referred to as Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG), all SD is only possible within a healthy biosphere that enhances and protects the world’s natural capital composed of the air, the water, the soil and the biodiversity of our millions of viable cohabitants. I did so because the 1972 UN meeting in Stockholm, the Brundtland UN report “Our Common Future”, the RIO Earth Summit in 1992 where the UNFCCC was created, plus the regular IPCC reports pointed to a climate change crisis in the near future.

Many argue that it is still not too late to embark upon ambitious environmental programs to ensure that GHGs decline before CO2 accumulations in the atmosphere exceed 450 ppm. This is the level the scientific consensus tells us will keep global mean temperatures from increasing above pre-industrial levels by more than 2° C with concomitant disastrous climate change far outstripping our global capacity to reduce fossil fuel emissions or adapt to a very different world. It is too late unless COP26 is courageous enough to introduce new technologies with have yet to be rigorously tested.

No alternative – no Plan B

Where is Plan B? There is none. We are simply re-embarking on the well-trodden path of consistent failure. Perhaps as a last resort, atmospheric geoengineering known as Solar Radiation Management (SRM) will be considered, at least at an experimental level to determine whether we might have a useful fire extinguisher at hand when there is a consensus that rising above 2 degrees C is inevitable.

The challenge is that, based on the last few decades of trying to come to grips with GW&CC by a few brave countries (e.g. consider Germany’s extraordinary increase to 44 percent wind- and solar-generated renewable electricity-generating capacity by the end of 2015, that still only provides about 8 percent of Germany’s total primary energy consumption), none of our alternative solution technologies, as presently configured, is capable of being scaled-up to make a significant dent in the overwhelming use of inexpensive and very convenient fossil fuels (gas, oil and coal). As strongly emphasized by the US-EIA in its May 2016 report, the massive growth of population in the developing countries, and their fast-rising standards of living and expectations are forecast to sustain the use of fossil fuels globally at very high levels for decades.

As these projections were made since the Paris COP21 targets, how can one not be skeptical about keeping CO2 accumulations below 450 ppm? In the absence of herculean efforts of unprecedented research and development to find “breakthrough” solutions/alternatives, and extraordinary global cooperation and coordination, it is too late. The process under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has delivered agreements, but only minimal results. COP21 in Paris has maintained that dismal record of underachievement.

John Maynard Keynes suggested that the master economist should examine the present in light of the past for the purposes of the future. So should we in looking at our history of fighting climate change. Some engaged in the climate change debate are surprised to learn that science has known of the characteristics of CO2 and its greenhouse effect on our planet for more than a century. What have we done about it?

As early as 1896, a Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius (Nobel Prize for chemistry, 1903) identified the warming effects of the CO2 emitted by burning coal. Alarm bells rang at the Stockholm UN Environmental Conference in 1972 — more than 40 years ago. Concern was expressed about emissions, but their measurement and impact were not yet broadly understood until the UN creation of the IPCC in 1988.

Those alarm bells grew louder after the UN Brundtland Report Our Common Future in 1987, helped to spur action with the Montreal Protocol on GHGs reached in 1987 and implemented in 1989, and mobilized political will at the UN Rio Earth Conference in 1992, where the climate change convention was adopted.

The UN General Assembly in Special Session met in New York in 1997, where we listened to statements from world leaders and others (including me) about the importance of reducing emissions. That meeting was followed by the UN Kyoto conference, where the Kyoto Protocol was adopted.

It was agreed that Annex 1 countries (37 developed) would reduce their emissions during two commitment periods on average by 5.2 per cent below their respective 1990 levels. Canada’s commitment was a six percent decrease by 2012 compared to 1990. By 2008, Canada’s emissions had increased by 24.1 per cent over 1990 and Canada withdrew from the protocol.

We have witnessed governments across the globe tailor their policies to their short-term political imperatives rather than to long-term challenges such as climate change.

For many years, we witnessed a parade of alternative energy advocates producing “possible” scenarios for reducing GHG emissions. Wind, solar, energy efficiency, tidal, geothermal and others make up that list. All great ideas, but they ignored the technical, political and economic challenges of their effective integration and weaning ourselves and our economies away from fossil fuels while meeting the world’s energy requirements in light of the short time for action. To say those challenges are daunting would be a great understatement. In 2020, total world wind and solar energy consumption amounted to less than four percent of global primary energy consumption.

The present policy paralysis illustrates our incapacity to come to grips with global warming and its impact on climate change despite the human and economic toll of the weather aberrations we witness on a daily basis.

Hopefully, as the realization takes hold that the 450 ppm threshold will be passed, an international consensus will emerge and adaptation measures will be brought forward to address some of the most damaging early consequences. If nuclear continues to be rejected as a global solution, then in the absence of some yet to be discovered “breakthrough” technological developments, a Plan B must also examine solar radiation management (SRM or atmospheric geoengineering) and perhaps a broader utilization of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

There are now calls from serious sources to a least engage in testing SRM to determine whether it could serve as a lifeboat of last resort. Serious environmentalists like Bill Gates and Richard Branson are apparently interested in climate engineering, or geoengineering. Some experts, such as Canadian Professor David Keith at Harvard, Granger Morgan and Ken Caldeira at Carnegie Mellon and others are striving to determine whether SRM could be a potential lifeboat should the failure to arrest and reduce CO2 emissions continue, as it has for decades.

A non-technical explanation SRM might be simply the following. By spreading aerosols with reflective particles in the atmosphere one could alter the albedo, i.e. the reflective capacity of the earth, thereby lessening the amount of radiation that penetrates to the earth’s surface, and as a result, lessen the heat that is trapped under the CO2 blanket. The measured reduction in the earth’s temperature resulting from the spread of volcanic ash after eruptions suggests that this would be effective and relatively inexpensive. It would not be a permanent answer and would have to be renewed periodically. The concept is well explained in a recent book by David Keith, A Case for Climate Engineering, published by MIT.

Unfortunately, there is considerable resistance to the concept, which seems to find two areas of opposition. First, we see the dedicated environmentalists who believe that exploring this technology may detract from mitigation efforts of those seeking to arrest and reduce GHG emissions, especially CO2. Second, there are some fearful of even limited testing, which they claim could result in unintended consequences, and who remain convinced that there will be technological breakthroughs that will make geoengineering of the atmosphere unnecessary. Surely it is irresponsible for this generation not to have a Plan B.

Note this comment from Gates on Keith’s book:

“The negative effects of climate change will disproportionately impact the world’s poor. David Keith’s candid and thoughtful book lays out a compelling argument about the need for serious research on geoengineering and for a robust policy discussion on its possible use”

What better place to have such a robust discussion amongst experts than at COP 26 in Glasgow?

About the author

Honorable Donald J. Johnston is former Secretary General of the OECD; senior minister in several Canadian governments; founding Director and former Chair of the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) and Chair Emeritus of the McCall MacBain Foundation, Geneva. He was a honorable gust of the IFIMES International Institute in 2020.

Under the title “COP26 Glasgow and the Lack of a Plan B” the early version of this text appeared in the Canadian Policy Magazine (www.policymagazine.ca). Courtesy of the author and publisher.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.

Ljubljana/Ottawa/Vienna, 4 November 2021

[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN, New York, since 2018.

These are the best places to travel this December in the United States and around the world.

There’s something magical about big cities during the holiday season. Lights strung across wide streets, store windows dressed up in colorful displays, and Christmas trees in all shapes and sizes create a festive atmosphere. Ice skating rinks pop up in parks, and in some cities like New York, Chicago, London, and Washington D.C., the weather is seasonally cold, and snow flurries might add a final touch to the scene.

Since not everyone appreciates cold weather (or needs it to get into the holiday mood), we’ve included some sunny destinations on our list of the best places to visit in December. In south Florida, Miami and Fort Lauderdale ring in the holidays in their own style, with glittering boat parades, light-strewn palm trees, and outdoor shopping. In tropical Belize, St. Lucia, and Los Cabos, travelers can stay warm and cozy in December.

See the list here.

As soon as the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, China and the Middle East faced a series of challenges. In recent years, China’s influence in the region has expanded due to its economic interests in energy, trade, infrastructure construction, and diplomatic contacts with the region’s countries. This is linked to President Xi Jinping’s Belt-Road Initiative (BRI), which was announced in 2013 in response to the increasing middle class’s needs for infrastructure and economic exchanges. As the world’s largest consumer of oil, China’s relations with major oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Iran are frequently scrutinized. However, part of the BRI involves the construction of new channels to promote trade through the expansion of existing infrastructures.

It is predicted that the Middle East will become a major region for industrial upgrading in the near future. Chinese economic interests and influence may be threatened by the region’s instability. With its dynamic structure, Iraq has been noted by Keskin and Braun (2016) as an intriguing country with implications for China’s engagement in the area. Lebanon is sometimes neglected because of its complicated political situation and the presence of international influence. As it turns out, Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, as well as Christians, and Kurds, find themselves at odds with each other.

The security situation is another stumbling block in the face of the Sino-Lebanese partnership. Foreign interventions, extremist groups, and the complexities of the Syrian crisis have all been faced by Lebanon and Syria. For the BRI, Lebanon is strategically located in the Levant region and has direct access to the Mediterranean Sea, making it ideal location for the Chinese project.

Through a literature review of academic papers, government documents, and news-paper articles, this paper aims to examine China’s diplomatic approach and interests toward Lebanon. An in-depth look at China’s relationship with Lebanon and Syria since it was established as the People’s Republic of China is presented here. It covers the period from 1949 to the present to give a greater sense of how ties and problems have evolved through time. Additionally, the non-intervention policy and the sway of other important countries are considered in Lebanon.

A Review of Bilateral Relations for the Era (1949-2000)

During the second half of the 20th century, China’s connections with Lebanon are described here. The People’s Republic of China was created in 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party seized control of Beijing and became the country’s most powerful government. China is pursuing a peaceful diplomatic strategy and openness towards Lebanon. China has always been a friend of Lebanon at all stages, despite Beijing’s little interest in the region during this time. Shichor’s works are the primary source of information on China’s early contacts with Lebanon, as he has been a pioneer in the field of Chinese relations in the Middle East.

In 1949, Lebanon did not recognize the Communist Party as the central authority of China, following the founding of the PRC. China contributed troops to the Korean War to defend North Korea and fight against US forces, prompting Lebanon to label China an aggressor in the conflict in 1951. The United States had advised Lebanon to delay a vote on a resolution that would have excluded Taiwan as representative of the Republic of China (ROC). Both the parliament and the government were divided on Lebanon’s position, which sparked a lot of discussion in both. In the early 1950s, Lebanon’s attitude toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was hostile, Lebanon was Western-oriented, and the Lebanese government extended alliances with the West, led by the United States.

Following the Bandung Conference in 1955, China negotiated ten trade agreements, including one with Lebanon, which sparked a positive shift in China’s outlook. China’s Islamic Association’s head met with the leaders of Lebanon back in 1956. In the early 1950s, Lebanon had stronger links with Taiwan than it has now. So for many years after this event, the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (PRC) in Lebanon remained low-key. There was a lack of trust between the PRC and Lebanon due to a series of incidents. China and extreme groups in Lebanon had been suspected of colluding at the time, but there was no proof to back this up.

China, on the other hand, objected to Lebanon’s 1969 measures against the Palestinians. Reactionary authorities in Lebanon were accused of collaborating with Israeli aggressors to target Palestinian guerrillas. The two countries continued to work together on trade deals despite these issues. When China surpassed Taiwan in commerce in the late 1960s, the two countries formed a tighter relationship. For a long time, diplomatic contacts between Lebanon and China were limited because of the on-going civil war and political killings in the country. During that time, the relationship was mostly founded on economic considerations.

Beijing viewed Lebanon as an export partner for Chinese commodities when diplomatic relations were established, but they also saw Beirut as the Middle East’s banking and commercial capital. In Beirut, China opened a branch of the National Bank of China in 1972; as a result of the first visit by Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Khalil Abu Hamad to China later that year, the two countries signed a new trade deal for reciprocal most-favoured nation treatment, mutual transit facilities, and an expansion of mutual commerce in the following year. However, the civil war in Lebanon delayed Beijing’s intentions in 1976. Russia has been blamed for aggravating, perpetuating and stoking conflict. China viewed the issue as one that should be settled by the people of the region, and not by outsiders. During that time, few efforts have been made to deepen ties with Beirut.

Relations between China and Lebanon have been characterized by ups and downs throughout the 20th century, but overall it has been restricted. Economic connections between Beijing and Beirut grew in the 1970s, but the country’s internal instability prevented it from expanding its cooperation with Lebanon. Although China has a long history of supporting its neighbouring countries, its policy of non-interference in foreign disputes began early on. In uncertain domestic conditions, China has not been afraid to stand aside while staying supportive.

The Post-2000 Era: Emerging Bilateral Relations

This section illustrates the increased development of relations between China and Lebanon from 2000. It emphasizes on collaboration in trade, cultural exchange, and agreements struck in recent years.

The Chinese government began to expand relations with Beirut after 2000. During a visit of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beijing to meet Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji in 2002, both countries expressed their determination to intensify cooperation on joint projects. It has led to an extended collaboration in numerous sectors.

In 2005, China and Lebanon signed a tourism cooperation deal. This deal was intended to stimulate investments in reciprocal tourism sectors and boost communication between tourist enterprises through the sharing of professional talents. The relationship also evolved to include academic and cultural exchanges, as Mandarin language courses are given at the American University of Beirut. There is also a Confucius Institute in Beirut at Saint-Joseph University.

However, exchanges in culture, tourism, and education are not the sole markers of closer diplomatic relations between both countries. In 2009, China welcomed more than 150 Lebanese professionals to attend seminars and symposiums in diverse disciplines including as business, finance, agriculture, press, and education. The website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China depicts 2014 as a year during which the relations with Lebanon advanced, resulting in stronger collaboration.

That year, the CPPCC Vice Chairman Luo Fuhe attended a reception marking the 70th anniversary of Independence Day of Lebanon. In 2015, Prime Minister Tammam Salam indicated that Lebanon aspired to be a trusted partner to China during the Arab- Chinese Businessmen Conference. Both sides consider the bilateral collaboration in culture, education, press, arts, and military as a method to extend the friendly interactions. It is important to note that the extended cooperation indicated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs came not long after the launch of the BRI.

The major interest of the bilateral connections appears to be closely connected to economic goals. A rise of economic linkages has been noted in recent years. In 2013, China became the primary trading partner of Lebanon. Beirut did making efforts to bring more Chinese investment with its participation at the Shanghai Expo in 2010. China helped Lebanon establish a mobile telecommunications network, solar heating systems, and monetary aid programs to Palestinian refugee camps.

However, efforts to boost further trades between the two nations have been hindered by the Syrian crisis, as the land routes for Lebanese exports were closed. Alternatives to establish secure and safe avenues for Lebanese exports had limited success. Out of total imports from Beijing, 73 per cent came through Beirut Port, limiting options to boost trades. The largest export product from Lebanon to China is steel. China exports to Lebanon electrical equipment, textiles, plastic items, and machinery. Lebanon imports $1.89 billion from China, representing 9.1 per cent of its total imports, while it exports to China $24.1 million, which is a little percentage of their overall exports of roughly 0.62 per cent. Even if the economic links are likely to develop in the future with the BRI, it is feasible to identify an important trade deficit between both countries.

Over the past few years, China and the United States have expanded their commercial ties. Beijing’s heightened interest in Arab countries in terms of commerce has included Lebanon. However, the BRI has the potential to exacerbate existing trade imbalances.

China in Lebanon: A Peaceful Partner

China’s policy of non-interference helped to promote peaceful development and conflict resolution at home. Beijing’s stance in bilateral conflicts is reflected in this section. Humanitarian aid and a push for quick domestic resolution were key factors in its success.

In 2006, China became entangled in an Israeli–Lebanese conflict initiated by Hezbollah. Both an Israeli anti-aircraft warship and an Egyptian merchant ship were hit by two Chinese-made C-802 missiles launched from the Lebanese coast by Hezbollah back in 2006. Hezbollah may have obtained the missiles from another source, but there is no evidence that China sent them.

A number of reasons were given by Shichor (2006) for China’s lack of interest in partnering with Hezbollah. First and foremost, it is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. As part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), China has deployed more than 1,000 peacekeepers to Lebanon, which was announced by Wen Jiabao. Beijing has been alerted to the fact that Chinese peacekeepers have been injured or killed during this operation.

Chinese Deputy Representative to the United Nations Lui Zhenmin criticized Israel’s actions in 2006 because they were violating Lebanon’s sovereignty. Force should be used less frequently and the armed blockade should be lifted, Zhenmin said. Hezbollah’s military actions of crossing the Israeli-Lebanese border and launching missile attacks on Israeli cities were also opposed by China. Hezbollah’s acts were openly blasted for the first time in China’s history. They further accused the United States of manipulating the conflict to exert pressure on Iran and Syria and to spread democracy around the world. For China’s economic benefit, the crisis has been resolved quickly by words rather than deeds. Through its involvement in the United Nations and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), China was able to play an indirect role in the Lebanon mediations. During Lebanon’s civil war, China has also provided financial assistance.

Both China’s role as a UN Security Council member and its involvement in the Syrian war had a significant impact on diplomatic ties. China has long advocated non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs and non-use of military force. When it comes to world peace and security, the United States’ vetoes on Syria resolutions are crystal apparent. In the past, Beijing rejected a resolution in Libya by exerting pressure on the Libyan government to ensure the safety of the populace. Responsibility to protect (R2P) was abstaining from voting on the resolution 1973, which triggered quick military action in Libya in 2011. The Chinese government remained, however, steadfast in its opposition to the use of force within the country. Beijing’s approach to R2P was informed by Libya. Multiple UNSC resolutions on Syria were vetoed by Beijing and Moscow together. Russia and China work together to avoid a military intervention that would topple the administration of Bashar al-Assad.

In 2011, when they rejected a resolution denouncing Syria, China and Russia exercised their first veto in their strategic collaboration on the Syrian conflict. President Bashar al- Assad’s resignation and cessation of violence against opponents were blocked by China and Russia in the UN Security Council (UNSC) in February 2012. Both countries voted against a UN Human Rights Council resolution condemning Syrian regime crimes in March of that year. Indeed, it opposed the Assad regime’s collective punishment and chose a more cautious R2P policy. Through impartial mediation, China urged all Syrian sides to stop all violence, especially against civilians.

As far as Beijing and Moscow are concerned, this posture reflects their fears of a strong military response. It’s worth noting, though, that China hasn’t always complied with Russia’s veto decisions in the Syrian issue. To strengthen its political role, it abstained on several occasions to align itself with Russia on resolutions. As in 2012, Moscow vetoed seven UNSC resolutions, while Beijing did so only twice in 2013. For the third time in as many years, China exercised its veto power over a United Nations Security Council resolution in 2017. Strategic collaboration on sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security in the region is offered by both countries.

Foreign meddling in the internal affairs of states, the use of force, and a confrontational posture were all opposed by China’s diplomatic position; as part of a diplomatic effort to mediate between Syria and the various opposition organizations, Beijing volunteered to participate. Beijing encourages non-interference in foreign disputes and a rapid return to stability. According to Sun and Zoubir (2015), China’s constructive engagement, is characterized by political involvement rather than military intervention. It supports a peaceful conversation as a solution while respecting the legitimate aspirations of the people.

A regional consensus on regional development promotes peace in the Middle East, allowing for the expansion of diplomatic discourse in the region. Acting as an intermediary and proposing constructive ideas are two of the key roles of this process. The Assad regime has received help from China. China provided humanitarian assistance to Syrians. As of 2017, Syria has the most individuals forced to flee their homes, and it received the most humanitarian aid. During the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Chinese government provided 1,000 tons of rice and signed three agreements totalling $40 million in humanitarian relief as part of an emergency food aid programme to support countries.

More than a dozen international organizations, including the United Nations (UN), the World Food Program (WFP), and the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), have already provided aid to Syria. However, China did not make the top 10 list of humanitarian aid donors, while Turkey and the United States were the first two. Many countries have contributed to the World Bank’s Lebanon-Syria Crisis Trust Fund to help those affected by this conflict. Syria received more than $10 billion in development assistance and government aid in 2017, according to the World Bank. China’s assistance appears to be limited in comparison to that of other countries.

The contributions of China to Lebanon have been minimal until recently, compared to other countries. This policy of non-intervention has resulted in good relations with all the countries of the region as well as close cooperation with Russia on the Security Council.

Lebanon: China’s Strategic Partner in BRI

With the BRI, China’s ties with Lebanon have a bright future. CCPIT signed two Memorandums of Understanding in 2017 with the Arab Chambers of Commerce to help expand the BRI to include Lebanon. Beirut received aid packages totalling more than $100 million from China as part of the 2018 China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF). China’s future bilateral relations with Lebanon may revolve around the BRI. That’s why it’s crucial to keep an eye on how things can change.

Lebanon aims to be a major player in the effort. Investing in infrastructure in Tunisia makes sense because of its strategic location and easy access to the Mediterranean Sea. Beirut and Tripoli’s port facilities might be used as a regional hub for Mediterranean Sea trade. As a corollary to this reasoning, China has made significant investments in expanding the port’s infrastructure. That the Tripoli Municipalities Union is a member of China’s Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce is worth mentioning (SRCIC). SRCIC Chairman Adnan al Kassar said that the SRCIC is willing to lend Lebanon $2 billion at reasonable interest rates, according to Lebanese-Chinese relations. China’s ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian stated that his country was willing to assist Lebanon in developing its southern cities and communities. Chinese investment in the repair of Syrian infrastructure could be facilitated by the country’s proximity to Syrian territory.

Chinese officials have made it clear that they have no intention of undermining Moscow’s position in the region. With the BRI, Chinese interest in the Middle East has risen, which could lead to a more assertive diplomacy in the region, particularly in countries with sectarian differences and political crises. Syrian and Lebanese economic investments may be better protected as a result of this. However, it is possible that China and Syria’s diplomatic relations will be based on mutual economic interests. The prolonged conflict in Syria has limited China’s ability to assist in reconstruction efforts in Syria, as it has stated its willingness to do so.

Beijing held the First Trade Fair on Syrian Reconstruction Projects in July 2017 and announced a $2 billion investment in the country’s reconstruction efforts. As a result, it’s hard to tell exactly how much of that money has been received thus far. Russia, China, Iran, and Lebanon are participating in the trade fair. At the 60th Damascus International Trade Fair in 2018, more than 200 Chinese firms signed agreements to build steel facilities and power plants and to make Chinese-brand automobiles. Syria will welcome Chinese investment in its rehabilitation, President Assad said in an interview with Phoenix Television. In the future, he sees an increase in trade between the two countries. Syria’s acceptance of China’s invitation to join the BRI was widely applauded.

In 2018, China supplied to Syria’s main port 800 electrical power generators. China’s mega-projects are jeopardized by the Syrian crisis and international intervention. The stability of Syria will be a top priority for Beijing since economic links between the two countries are expected to grow significantly in the near future. An alternative route to the Suez Canal via China, Central Asia, and West Asia is provided by the Levant. The Levantine area is an important one for the BRI because of its importance.

President Michel Aoun and CCPIT Director Jiang Zengwei met in Beirut to discuss ways to improve bilateral relations. Among other things, the relationship intends to foster cooperation in the development of infrastructure, as well as investments in new energy and other key industries. Suleiman, a former Lebanese president, believes that the country needs more cooperation in the alternative energy sector. The Chinese government’s support for private investments in the Arab East could have a positive impact on Lebanon. Chinese enterprises are indeed being sought out for the expansion of its industrial market. Prime Minister Hariri cited China as an example of modernization to be emulated. This might make Beirut a logistics, economic, and business centre for China’s BRI in the region. He brought up the subject of Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and said that China, with its policy of opening up, might provide support in this area. Suleiman made an interesting observation about how the two countries can work together in the future.

Conclusion

As Lebanon situated in a dynamic and complex region, the importance of the Lebanese-Chinese relations is increasing. Beijing has avoided direct involvement in the Lebanese civil war and other internal conflicts; using a supportive attitude to the government and a one-distance approach from all political parties. With China’s BRI program, Lebanon can be geostrategic ally, allowing for greater economic ties. Lebanese officials expressed an interest in playing a key role in the project. Domestic factors, however, still impede trade cooperation. The BRI’s expansion of bilateral ties with Lebanon could be a good opportunity for Beijing to learn more about the region. Mutual understanding could be fostered by academic and professional interactions. For Beijing to change its approach if its economic interests are put at risk, this may be a sign that the region is in danger. A prudent loan and support strategy by China is likely to take advantage of the lack of infrastructure development in Lebanon. It seems unlikely that nations like Lebanon will push China to change its policy of non-interference in the foreseeable future, despite its strategic importance to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

About author:

Dr. Mohamad Zreik has PhD of International Relations, he is independent researcher, his area of research interest is related to Chinese Foreign Policy, Belt and Road Initiative, Middle Eastern Studies, China-Arab relations. Author has numerous studies published in high ranked journals and international newspapers.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.

Ljubljana, 22 November 2021

[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN, New York, since 2018.

Babička & Kytice by Míla Fürstová

Míla Fürstová is best known for making Coldplay‘s art for their world-wide number one album, Ghost Stories, as well as the UK covers for the NY Times Best Selling series, Mortal Instruments.

Over the last 24 months, Míla illustrated two of the Czech Republic‘s most loved works of literature, Kytice (Bouquet) and Babička (Grandmother).

At this exhibition Mila‘s original artworks for Kytice, already in its fourth edition, will be shown alongside the original art for the newly released Babička, which is being exhibited in London for the first time.

The exhibition was inaugurated by the Ambassador of the Czech Republic in the UK, Mrs. Marie Chatardová.

“If you would not want to be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
– Benjamin Franklin

The legacy of Jan Jánský is a prime example of how certain inventions or findings of scientists from smaller nations got overlooked by history to make way for the findings of scientists from ‘more important nations’ in school textbooks. In 1930 Karl Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of human blood groups in his 1901 paper. He was an Austrian, living in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one of the most important countries in the world at that time. However, it seems like many omitted the fact that his findings were incomplete, describing only three out of the four blood groups. Furthermore, no one happened to think of a Prague-born scientist, who independently published the same discovery just 6 years later, and fully described all four groups: A,B,AB and 0. This is his story:

Jánský was born in 1873, in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, which was then a vassal of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the older of two sons of a soap maker. Despite his humble origins, he managed to successfully graduate at the Smíchov high school and continue his studies at the 1st Faculty of Medicine at the Charles University in Prague. There, he finished in 1898 and soon became and established psychiatrist who was well renowned both as a doctor and also an expert, providing courts with psychiatric analyses. In 1914, he even became a professor at the Czech part of the Charles University, and the deputy head of the psychiatric clinic in Prague. However, as the Great War struck, all specialisations went to the side and he was called to the front, where he served as a field medic until 1916, when he suffered a heart attack which rid him of his fighting responsibilities. However, these heart problems troubled him from then on, until his death in 1921, at the age of 48.

During his clinical work before the war, he focused heavily on the connection of blood agglutination, the ability of blood to clot, and psychiatric diseases. While we now know there is no such connection, he worked with the blood of 3 160 patients during his studies, during which he managed to stumble upon a ground-breaking discovery. In 1907, he published his finding that while psychiatric diseases can not be linked to blood agglutination, there are four distinct groups of blood in humans, which clot intensively when mixed with the wrong group, but are compatible with its own group and certain other groups. We now know this finding as the A,B,AB,0 blood system, unfortunately for Jánský, credited to someone else.

The crediting of this discovery was under scrutiny ever since then. The whole situation is a very interesting read, since Landsteiner got the Nobel Prize, but his incomplete findings led to clinical errors. The findings of Jánský were thus used clinically worldwide, despite the fact that someone else received the Nobel Prize for these findings. In the 1920’s, Jánský was widely recognized as the one who discovered blood groups throughout the United States, where his findings were built upon and a blood-group test was developed. Nevertheless, most google searches on this topic only mention Landsteiner, and medical textbooks also tend to favor the Austrian over the Czech. Thus, all that is left of Jánsky’s legacy is the medal awarded to frequent blood donors in the Czech Republic. Perhaps, it was his early death that contributed to him being almost forgotten.

Please, do not let him be forgotten.

Source

Nowadays, it really doesn’t matter at what point in your life you decide to start a business, as long as there is a need for it on a market or a strategy for generating demand. But at some point, maybe you felt like your business needs some change and that you’re falling behind your competitors.

There’s a chance that you are in a rut and you don’t notice that your company needs something new. Regardless of the industry you operate in, companies that are more agile and take smart risks can easily take your business off the market.

There are things you can improve within your business but expanding it is more complex and will demand more forward-thinking and innovation. Some of it you can do on your own but it is good to consider business consulting as well because a good consultant will first analyze your business and after that, give you proposals on what needs to be changed and optimized, and also tell you whether or not you should pivot.

Get out of your comfort zone and network

There is nothing worse for a business than the comfort zone. If you are only an administrative worker, you can stay for a long time in your comfort zone without bringing anything new to your work life but managing a business is completely different. Competitors on the market are like hungry wolves, doing everything they can to become number one. It all comes to a simple rule – eat or be eaten. Expand your connections during conferences as you can meet a lot of inspiring people there. Mingle to see how other businesses are doing and what plans they have for the future.

Invest in branding

Branding is one of the basics of any business strategy, and having that in mind, the appearance and messaging that you set is important. A strong brand can be the most valuable differentiator. It is the cornerstone of how you present your products or services to both clients and potential investors. With the help of good marketers, PR professionals, and designers, you can assess whether or not rebranding might be a smart choice for your organization.

Hire professional staff and consultants

You need modern technology, smart systems and, of course, experienced people in order to ensure your business flourishes. If you are a service-based business, having professionals on your team is important. Establish a corporate culture where sharing in-house knowledge is an integral part of it. Providing training to your staff will also help them expand their knowledge, get new ideas, and stay inspired and motivated. Having a loyal worker in your team that is going to learn and grow into a professional will pay off. Seek professionals who will offer business consulting for your company because the right advice at the right time can literally save your organization. Professionals can point out weaknesses that you might not be aware of, give you solutions, and propose a cost-efficient strategy for your business.

Pay more attention to analytics

Many software solutions can provide you with great insights into how your business is doing online. In this day and age, online presence is important, which is why relying on analytics to see how much time people spend on your website and what brought them there is essential for nurturing the data-driven business approach. Understanding how your content performs and where the most conversions drop is how you can fix things and drive more customers.

Find out what truly works

If your business has been on the market for a while, you have probably tested different tactics to achieve sustainable growth. Also, make sure to document what works and what doesn’t. Repeating the same mistakes can only harm your business or keep you stagnant. Some tactics that are used need more time to show results, so don’t neglect them only because you don’t see any quick changes. Long-term outcomes are what matter, so don’t give up.

By Peter Minkoff

Peter is a lifestyle and travel writer at Men-Ual magazine, living between Ústí nad Labem and Antwerp. Follow Peter on Twitter for more tips.

Dear ladies, Join us on Monday, 22nd November, 2021 at 5.30 PM to take part in our first open discussion meet-up on harassment of women in Prague’s public transport.

Unfortunately, there have been too many stories from women around Prague telling of their experiences of unwanted touching, grabbing or even of attempted rape.

Other examples of sexual misconduct mentioned are staring, standing too close on purpose, inappropriate comments and suggestions, sexual gestures and movements, blocking of movement, forced personal contact and indecent exposure.

According to an article published in expats.cz, a third of women (and 10% of men) experience sexual harassment in Czech public transport. Basically, 35 percent of women have recently experienced sexual misconduct. The statistics gathered from a poll by the Focus agency for the Czech government, state that nearly three out of five women mentioned instances of people staring or standing too close, while a quarter of the respondents had experienced someone masturbating in front of them and 7 percent had faced attempted rape.

In light of all this, we would love to have you join us and hear about your thoughts and/or experiences on this issue.

Venue: Kavarna co Hleda Jimeno
Time: 22. 11. 2021, at 5.30 PM

Our speakers will provide you with information regarding your rights as an expat in Czechia, where to find support and strategies on self-defence and building empowerment.

Speakers and moderators:

Amanda Mataija (CEO & Founder Prague Integration)
Paula Costa (Coach, Soul Searching)
Karolina Nyitray(Mental health counsellor, Prague Integration)
Linda Štucbartová (Self-defense and women empowerment coach)

Please note:
1.This event is free of charge, but recommended donation in order to support our speakers and organise more events in this nature is 100 CZK
2. Drinks and other options can be purchased separately at the bar. We will be sharing menu shortly.
3. To ensure your participation due to limited number of participants it is necessary to fill out our form:
4. Please make sure you come on time and respect each other’s privacy and participation.
5. In order to participate at this event you will need to show vaccination proof or PCR test.
6. There will be coffee and tea prepared for you

REGISTER HERE

Looking forward seeing you there

Prague Integration

Russia establishes its modus operandi in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The latest session of the UN Security Council only reaffirmed once again the crisis caused in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the actions of the Serb Member of the BiH Presidency Milorad Dodik (SNSD) with the assistance of the Russian Federation. At the same time, no concrete solutions and conclusions were offered nor attempts made to prevent separatist actions aimed to annul the Dayton[2] peace agreement and destroy the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is a silent generally accepted opinion that “an armed conflict of low intensity is possible in BiH”, which is an indication that the strongest global powers have already developed their military plans as well. Once again, aconflict in BiH would be an international conflict- this time with the assistance of NATO and the Russian Federation. In fact, the prolongation of introduction of concrete measures that would provide for political elimination and criminal processing of Milorad Dodik and several of his “executors” is a proof of the seriousness of the situation. Bosnia and Herzegovina could become a new hotspot, which could endanger the security of entire Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) used the last US Presidential elections and introduced the “gas-dependence” of the EU from Russia, initiated an agreement with China and sent Christian Schmidt (CSU) to the position of the High Representative in BiH, knowing that he will not get the support of the sides with which she had just previously made a deal.

Why would the US now directly engage in “unraveling“ of the position of the High Representative in BiH with Russia, when it had yielded this issue to Germany, supported it, to even sacrifice Ukraine, and gave it supremacy in the management of the West Balkans. “Thanks to” Merkel, the Balkans has been or will be handed over to Russia. Now, it is a major unknown what the US negotiators sent by the US Administration can do in BiH. The “Western powers” and NATO still have a qualified supremacy over Russia with respect to the West Balkans, and particularly in BiH. Direct negotiations taking place in Moscow between Russia and the US, including their intelligence communities, could give in the future the answers for the West Balkans as well.

Russia is establishing its modus operandi in Bosnia and Herzegovina

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia is using Milorad Dodik to lay the basis for its future operations in BiH. In fact, it is currently accelerating its respective efforts being aware that removal of Dodik by the EU and US would mean suspension of such activities for a period of time. The “Russian Humanitarian Center” from Niš (Serbia) has been moved to Republika Srpska (BiH), because Russia has obtained its military representative office within the framework of the Serbian Ministry of Defense. Therefore, the initiated infrastructure construction projects in Republika Srpska for the requirements of Russia are now being intensified. Namely, there are several infrastructure construction projects underway for which it is believe that they could be used in the future as the basis for establishment of a Russian military base in Republika Srpska. On a number of locations in Republika Srpska, the Russian Orthodox Church is establishing its infrastructure, which in many segments reminds of military infrastructure. The respective works are directly managed by the Russian Ambassador in BiH Igor Kalabuhov.

Analysts believe that with the arrival of the new Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Porfirije the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church has increased. The “visits” and travels by Patriarch Porfirije all over the territory of the independent and sovereign state of BiH are brought into connection with the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Milorad Dodik’s activities on dissolution of BiH. In BiH, Patriarch Porfirije acts as a host and does not show respect for the legal institutions of BiH and other religious communities, particularly the BiH Islamic Community. It is astonishing that Patriarch Porfirije had organized a reception in the Congregational Church in Sarajevo without having previously met with the local church/religious dignitaries in BiH, Archbishop of Vrhbosna Cardinal Vinko Puljić and the Head of the BiH Islamic Community Reis-ul-ulema Husein Kavazović and established mutual relations with them. The question to be asked is how would the Republic of Serbia respond if the Archbishop of Zagreb Cardinal Josip Bozanić and Reis-ul-ulema of the BiH Islamic Community would frequently visit Serbia without communicating with the Serbian Orthodox Church in Serbia and official Serbian authorities. The silence of the BiH Islamic Community is also surprising.

For quite some time already, Russia has also been using Dodik to establish an intelligence structure independent of Serbia. The presence of Russian intelligence officers in Republika Srpska has been noted and monitored. Their task is to prepare the ground for separation of Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The apparatus that has been established is focused, inter alia, on the defense industry in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) – specifically, the research into whether the FBiH has hidden military reserves to be used in case of a conflict. The only unknown for Russia is how NATO would respond, because the Dayton Constitution gives NATO the option to intervene. While Russia can stop EU and the US in the United Nations, as well as make gas-related conditions with respect to BiH and West Balkans, it remains a major unknown for Russia what would be NATO’s immediate response in case of attempt of secession by Republika Srpska, which is the most important assessment for the Russian policy.

Annexes 1A and 1B to the Dayton peace accords are very clear. Annex 1A, Article I, Item b) reads that it is understood and agreed that NATO may establish a military force, which will operate under the authority and subject to the direction and political control of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) through the NATO chain of command. They undertake to facilitate its operations. The Parties, therefore, hereby agree and freely undertake to fully comply with all obligations set forth in this Annex.

The termination of relations between Russia and NATO further opened the possibility for a military engagement of NATO in BiH in case of implementation of the actions that Milorad Dodik is conducting in accordance with the instructions from Russia. Russia risks disappearance of Republika Srpska not just through a military intervention by NATO, but also a return to the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is envisaged by the Dayton peace agreement. The sale of the Russian national Sberbank in the region should be viewed in the context of current developments.

Strategic move by Serbia in UN

Serbia drew a strategic move through its Ambassador to the UN Nemanja Stevanović, who at the session of the UN Security Council called on Milorad Dodik to return to the institutions of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dodik is drawing Serbia into major uncertainty and positions it as the exclusive player of Russia.

Analysts believe that in case of a conflict in BiH, Serbia would suffer the biggest damage, because it would be exposed to western sanctions. NATO would deploy its troops to the Drina River and Serbia would not be able to provide any support to Republika Srpska. However, at the same time it would be under pressure, both internally and externally, to get militarily involved in the armed conflict, which would lead to internal unrests and possible conflicts within Serbia, as well as opening of the issue of Sandžak and the Preševo Valley. The most probable option that could occur this time is that the armed conflict spills over to the territory of Serbia.

Croatia a Russian hostage

President of the Croatian Democratic Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZBiH) Dragan Čović, as well as the official Croatian policy are hostages of Russia, which masterfully uses Croatian financial dependence on Russia.

Analysts believe that the Republic of Croatia is politically closer to Russia than to the US. The Republic of Croatia currently has the strongest connections with France through which it ensures its position within the EU. It is through France that Croatia distributes its (dis)information against Bosnia and Herzegovina and scares EU members with the alleged “Islamic terrorism”, which is purportedly present in BiH.

The agreement that Čović and Dodik signed under the patronage of Russia and in which they defined their orientation “against unitarization of BiH”, is actually an agreement that is based on the Karađorđevo agreement from 1991, which had been brokered by Slobodan Milošević (SPS) and Franjo Tuđman (HDZ). Regardless of the Russian arming of Serbia, analysts believe that the Republic of Croatia is more dependent on and has stronger connections with Russia that Serbia does.

The option of formal establishment of the so-called Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia (HRHB) through the election law is a mission impossible for both Croatia and Russia. Any armed conflict in BiH would hamper tourism in Croatia, which amounts to more than 20% of the GDP of the country.

Turkish role in resolution of the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is “unnecessary”

Calls by Serb and Croat politicians for Turkey to get involved in the resolution of the crisis in BiH should be observed in the context of the conflicts between Turkey and the US, that is Turkey and the EU. In fact, such an option would suit well the Serb, Croat and primarily the Russian policy. Specifically, to have BiH discussed outside the framework of the Dayton peace accords- without the US and EU. Such calls put Turkey in a position of a neutral observer when it comes to BiH. The goal of the Serb, Croat and Russian policy is actually to involve Turkey in the negotiations without the US and EU, and/or to euthanize the Turkish policy towards BiH with the aim of easier division of BiH. Bearing in mind the power that Turkey has in the current constellation of relations, for the designers of division of BiH a political engagement of Turkey exclusively on the side of “Bosnian forces” would be very dangerous. The so-called “pro-Bosnian force”, which are predominantly Bosniak, are with no idea, concept or a clear friend in the world. The support to BiH that is unambiguous and comes from the US, Great Britain and the strongest EU members is not directly linked to the so-called “pro-Bosnian” forces, but is a product of earlier relations and the current destructive approach by Russia to BiH. The support by the “West” does not mean also support to the pro-Bosnian forces, which do not have an answer for the crisis going on in BiH. The relation of the Islamic world towards BiH is of specific concern. However, the primary concern is the absence of direct communication of the “pro-Bosnian forces” with the strongest Western leaders, who would unambiguously and directly stand in defense of BiH, and not just through conclusions adopted through the UN system and within EU institutions, which essentially mean little other than declarative support.

According to analysts, in case of endangerment of BiH and the Bosniak-Muslim population in BiH, which includes around 2 million people on the EU territory with a population of almost 450 million, dozens of thousands of fighters- stationed in Turkey and coming from surrounding states- would come from Turkey. Hence, in the future, the barbed wire towards the EU would be crossed by armed “refugees” from BiH, and not economic refugees/migrants with mobile phones and some stashed money, who are beaten up at EU borders. Re-endangerment of BiH and Bosniaks-Muslims in the heart of Europe would once again galvanize parts of Muslim societies not just on the East, but also in EU countries.

Intensive activities in the background

According to verified information, the US will try to use the UN system for the prevention of genocide, including the International Criminal Court. (ICC).

Prevention of genocide implies military actions as well, which would be supported by international and UN courts. “Upstream prevention” will be used as an attempt to avoid the previous situation, such as the one with bombing of Serbia by NATO. Hence, other UN and international mechanisms will be used, including international criminal prosecution and limited military intervention. Specifically, the Dayton peace agreement and the above-mentioned annexes provide for a NATO military operation, which would be combined with actions conducted through the UN. Primarily the use of early warning mechanisms, but also the UN General Assembly -in order to avoid the Russian and Chinese veto in the UN Security Council. In this context, the engagement of the UN and US in the documentation process for the use of mechanisms for the prevention of genocide is now in an intensive research phase. In addition to Dodik, names of individuals known for their previous crime-related and criminal activities, such as Nenad Stevandić (US), as well as some names from the region and the EU, also feature on the lists of leading global powers. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (Fidesz) is currently in the focus of the current US adminsitration.

Anticonstituional activities

Milorad Dodik violates the BIH Constitution and his current activities are anti- constitutional.

Article 3 of the BiH Constitution[3] reads “Bosnia and Herzegovina shall consist of the two Entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska”, which is not an independent country, nor had it legally existed prior to the Dayton peace agreement. As for the “transfer of competencies”, Article V, paragraph (4), related to the BiH Council of Ministers, deals with the appointment and competencies of the BiH Council of Ministers and stipulates that “the Chair shall nominate a Foreign Minister, a Minister for Foreign Trade, and other Ministers as may be appropriate,” which indicates that the number of ministries in the BiH Council of Ministers can be more than three.

Paragraph (1), Article III of the BiH Constitution lists the responsibilities of BiH institutions as follows:

a. Foreign policy.
b. Foreign trade policy.
c. Customs policy.
d. Monetary policy, as provided in Article VII.
e. Finances of the institutions and for the international obligations of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
f. Immigration, refugee, and asylum policy and regulation.
g. International and inter-entity criminal law enforcement, including relations with Interpol.
h. Establishment and operation of common and international communications facilities.
i. Regulation of inter-entity transportation.
j. Air traffic control.

Article 3, paragraph (5) of the BiH Constitution, is related to additional competencies. It provides the basis for establishment of the existing ministries in the BiH Council of Ministers and agencies at the state level.

It lists the following additional competencies:

a. Bosnia and Herzegovina shall assume responsibility for such other matters as are agreed by the Entities; are provided for in Annexes 5 through 8 to the General Framework Agreement; or are necessary to preserve the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence, and international personality of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in accordance with the division of responsibilities between the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Additional institutions may be established as necessary to carry out such responsibilities.

b. Within six months of the entry into force of this Constitution, the Entities shall begin negotiations with a view to including in the responsibilities of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina other matters, including utilization of energy resources and cooperative economic projects.

Hence, the BiH Constitution is very clear. The US and EU should, with the assistance of the BiH Office of the Prosecutor and the opposition in Republika Srpska, which believes that an attempt needs to be made to return to the entity through the prescribed procedure the competencies that had been transferred to the state of BiH, criminally process Milorad Dodik and his cronies for attempting to overthrow the constitutional order of BiH. The empty and political stories by EUFOR Commander, Austrian Major General Alexander Platzer[4], that the Dayton agreement does not envisage the Armed Forces of BiH should be a sufficient cause for his prompt removal, as these are not just political statements, but also statements that undermine the constitutional-legal order of BiH. In the opinion of Russia and Milorad Dodik, at some point EUFOR could be deployed to the imaginary boundary line with the Federation of BiH.

Ljubljana/Brussels/Washington, 10 November 2021

[1] IFIMES – The International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, has a special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)/UN since 2018.

[2] Source: Dayton Peace Agreement, link: https://propisi.ks.gov.ba/sites/propisi.ks.gov.ba/files/opci_okvirni_sporazum_za_mir_u_bosni_i_hercegovini.pdf

[3] Source: Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, link: https://www.ustavnisud.ba/public/down/USTAV_BOSNE_I_HERCEGOVINE_bos.pdf

[4] Source: Der Standard »Eufor-Kommandeur Platzer sieht stabile Sicherheitslage in Bosnien-Herzegowina«, link: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000130860114/eufor-kommandeur-platzer-sieht-stabile-sicherheitslage-in-bosnien-herzegowina?ref=rss

Whether it’s making pasta, fermenting wine, or just enjoying life, the Italians seem to have it pretty much figured out. Granted, it’s taken a couple thousand years to get it right, but today, the culture that puts food first has a way of doing things that is the envy of the world.

Eating and drinking are not just pastimes for Italians, they are ingrained in every part of the day. From the first espresso to the final digestivo, the Italian day is infused with intricate rules around how, when, why, and with whom you share meals and imbibe with on fine wine.

It’s a way of life, and arguably, the best way. These are 10 rules that Italians live by and you might want to adopt for yourself.

1. Keep it fresh.

The farmer’s market is an Italian’s best friend because they know that fresh ingredients are the best ingredients. Sure, you’ll find supermarkets in Italy, but if you want the ripest tomatoes, the sharpest cheeses, and the silkiest olive oil, you go straight to the source, and that’s the daily and weekly outdoor markets all over the country.

2. Seasons for a reason.

While some fruits and vegetables are always in season (carrots and lemons!), most crops are seasonal. There are great times for certain foods, and not-so-great times for others. You want the best tomatoes? May through October is your window for the juiciest and most flavorful. The olive harvest? That’s late Autumn. Italians know this, and they grow their crops and buy their produce accordingly.

3. Coffee rules.

Italians don’t really dawdle over breakfast. Breakfast usually consists of popping into a bar (coffee shop), sidling up to the counter, ordering an espresso, and downing a croissant. But be mindful of how you order in Italian. A caffè does mean a coffee, but in Italy that’s a shot of espresso. If you want your Starbucks-equivalent latte, be careful, because if you order a latte at a coffee bar, you’re going to get a steaming cup of hot milk. Order a caffè latte and you’ll get the frothy, caffeinated beverage you were looking for.

4. Olive oil > all other oil.

If you’re cooking in Italy, it’s rare that you’ll find other cooking oils like canola, walnut, vegetable, etc. Cooking with olive oil is de rigueur (or di rigore) and can also take the place of butter. Try making cookies with olive oil next time instead of butter, they’re magical.

5. Courses matter and pasta isn’t a main course.

First, there’s lunch. A typical Italian lunch consists of a primo, usually a pasta dish; a secondo, which is usually a protein; and a contorno, which is a vegetable or salad dish. For dinner, there’s an antipasto, where you’ll find cured meats, olives, artichokes, and more followed by a pasta (primo), a protein (secondo), a side dish (contorno), and a dessert (dolce). Hungry yet?

6. Drinks are paired with food.

Italy’s drinking culture is just as structured as its eating culture, and the two are entirely intertwined. Italians look at drinking by how it can enhance the food that it comes with. You won’t usually find Italians pre-drinking their wine before a pasta dish is brought to the table as the wine is meant to complement the dish. In more romantic Italian terms, you could say they were meant for each other.

Read the rest here.

Are you interested in history? Do you like airplanes or historic vehicles? Would you like to know the secrets behind the taste of Czech beer, perhaps? Radio Prague International has selected 10 Czech museums that you may not necessarily find in your guidebooks.

See the tips here.

Europe is a forever-favorite destination of T+L readers, and they often turn to the continent’s picturesque islands when searching for their ideal getaways. Case in point: This year, eight of the continent’s islands have been voted not only the best in the region but the best in the entire world.

Every year for our World’s Best Awards survey, T+L asks readers to weigh in on travel experiences around the globe — to share their opinions on the top cities, islands, cruise ships, spas, airlines, and more. Readers rated islands according to their activities and sights, natural attractions and beaches, food, friendliness, and overall value.

Greece continued to take top honors, including Folegandros, which is No. 2 not only on this list but in top islands anywhere. Barely more than 12 square miles in size, the Cycladic paradise is only a ferry ride away from the bustling Santorini (No. 5) and Mykonos (No. 13). The same crowds have yet to discover Folegandros’s similar whitewashed architecture and aquamarine waters. One popular place to stay: the Anemomilos Boutique Hotel. An easy walk from the main village of Hora, it has 17 rooms and suites, with verandas overlooking the Aegean, perfect for basking in sunset views.

See the list here.

On Tuesday, November 2nd, the University of New York in Prague held its fourth public webinar. This time, UNYP has chosen a hybrid system, when there were guests physically at the seminar, as well as online on the ZOOM platform. The webinar focused on an important topic of Women in Business. This event was hosted by Dimana Mabhena, a Co-founder of GenWork. Our three special speakers were H.E. Ayesha Patricia Rekhi (the Ambassador of Canada to the Czech Republic), Martina Bacíková (Founder and CEO of INEV), and Linda Štucbartová (Founder of Diversio).

Over 100 people combined attended the event in person, on Zoom and on YouTube Live. Our special speakers described real-life issues that women have to deal with in the workplace and while building a business. They also proposed various ways how women can fight against this issue and how men can help with this problem.

In the end, our panelists answered dozens of intriguing questions from the audience online and in the room.

We are delighted that we were able to provide such an interesting event about a very important topic for the general public, and we plan to continue with this mission, as there are many issues and fields that we can potentially explore.

Source

On 17 October 2021, seventh local elections since its declaration of independence will be organized in North Macedonia. The second round of elections is scheduled to take place on 31 October 2021.

The National Election Commission (DIK) announced that 303 lists for mayors and 567 lists for municipal councillors had been verified.

The parties and independent candidates have 19 days for their campaigns and presentation of their programs.

North Macedonia has 1,824,864 citizens who are eligible to vote. In the first round of elections, they will elect mayors and municipal councillors in 80 municipalities and the capital of Skopje. Nineteen parties and coalitions filed their lists of candidates for mayor and municipal councillor positions, while citizen groups nominated and filed lists for 64 independent candidates. The local elections in North Macedonia will be organized at 3,480 polling stations and will be monitored by more than 300 observers from the OSCE/ODIHR.

Representatives of the political parties participating in the elections have signed a code of conduct undertaking to respect basic human rights and freedoms and thus allow for transparent, inclusive and fair elections.

A specificity of these elections is that for the first time there are two multi-ethnic pre-election coalitions featuring on the lists. On one side, there is the coalition of the ruling parties, headed by the Social-Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) and three ethnic Albanian political parties – DUI/Democratic Union for Integration/, Besa and DPA/Democratic Party of Albanians/. On the other there is the coalition of opposition parties, headed by the conservative- right wing VMRO-DPMNE and the parties from the Albanian block- Alliance for Albanians and Alternative.

Country of peace and multiethnic harmony

The Republic of North Macedonia has managed to overcome a deep multi-year political crisis, caused by the illegal tapping of more than 20,000 citizens and an embezzlement of more than five billion Euros of public money by the regime, because it organized early parliamentary elections in December 2016.

Demographic transformation and consolidation of the country has occurred. The state fought for dominance of democracy over authoritarianism, that is civic over ethnic character of North Macedonia. The difficult legacy of the rule of Nikola Gruevski (VMRO-DPMNE) left a deep mark and far-reaching consequences. The Gruevski-Mijalkov regime has not been completely dismantled, and is still present in a capillary manner in all segments of the Macedonian state. The remains of Gruevski’s regime constantly obstruct the processes and in such a way impede democratic changes and development of a functional state.

Macedonian statehood was complemented by membership in NATO. NATO guarantees sustainability and territorial integrity of the modern Macedonian state. Since it became a NATO member country, nobody can count any more on Macedonia in the context of various hegemonic projects, which is particularly important bearing in mind the turbulent regional environment and numerous threats. Democratic changes and the results achieved over the last four years have demonstrated that changes are possible and feasible, as well as that North Macedonia, and the entire West Balkans region, have the necessary potential for that. This sent a strong message and serves as an impetus to other countries in the region. It is also important to note that the official Brussels had recognized the trend of changes in North Macedonia but did not respond positively and constructively to it, although it had promised to do so. Without the democratic changes in Montenegro and Kosovo there would be no democratic changes in North Macedonia. It is expected that democratic changes will also happen in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the next parliamentary elections, which are scheduled to take place on 2 October 2022. Zoran Zaev (SDSM), together with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić (SNS) and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama (PS) launched the most important regional initiative called “Open Balkan,” which will yield many benefits to the citizens of North Macedonia and the region.

Analysts believe that North Macedonia is the most secure[2] country in the Western Balkans. Namely, not a single interethnic incident has been reported in the country since the establishment of the government headed by Zoran Zaev (SDSM), while during the rule of Nikola Gruevski interethnic incidents were a regular occurrence. The main credit for that goes to Minister of Internal Affairs Oliver Spasovski (SDSM), which is one of the reasons why he is constantly being attacked. Namely, in addition to the fight against crime and the preventive measures undertaken to increase safety in traffic, he also detected and dismantled networks of specific foreign intelligence services on the territory of North Macedonia, which is why the attacks on him are contrived as a kind of retribution for his successful work.

Local elections with historic consequences

The upcoming local elections are an opportunity for continuation of changes in the Republic of North Macedonia, which begun with the establishment of the coalition government of the Republic of North Macedonia headed by Zoran Zaev (SDSM) on 31 May 2017.

The local issues are least represented in the election campaign, although these are the issues that should be in the focus of the candidates for position of mayors, who as individuals are mainly not well known to the public at large. Leaders of political parties usually pursue approaches in which they speak about major national and strategic issues. As a result, at the local elections voters vote in favor of a political party, not the individual who is a candidate for a position at the local level. This anomaly has been present all the time in all countries in the region.

The most topical issues include the living standard of citizens, vaccination against Covid-19, ecology, urban development plan, infrastructure, average salary and economic policy, fight against crime and corruption, open issues with Bulgaria, European perspective, as well as the recent fire in Tetovo, in which 14 patients died in a temporary Covid hospital.

At the upcoming local elections, the votes of citizens will inform not just the election of mayors and councillors in municipal/city councils, but also the direction in which the Republic of North Macedonia will move. Specifically, will it continue to develop and reform into a prosperous and successful country with numerous friends at the international level or will it plunge back into the rule of Nikola Gruevski and VMRO-DPMNE, who played the card of bogus patriotism on the basis of which the country was robbed of more than five billion Euros and more than 20,000 citizens were illegally tapped. During its rule of 12 years the VMRO-DPMNE blocked the state, and now it wants to do that physically as well by organizing a number of manipulative protests against the current authorities.

Local elections- a new attempt at destabilization of North Macedonia

It is of specific importance for the Republic of North Macedonia that all those who obstruct and do not recognize the Prespa Agreement, which brought peace and stability, as well as gave Macedonia a chance to prosper, are sanctioned and “put on the blacklist” of the US Administration.

The three-year political asylum that Hungary gave to Nikola Gruevski expires in October 2021, and he had already approached Russia and Turkey to inquire about the possibility of getting political asylum in these two countries. He believes that the VMRO-DPNE could win the elections, and that then he would be able to return to North Macedonia after the local elections. They would then attempt to overthrow Zoran Zaev and his government. This scenario had already been considered within various “back-stage” activities, majority of which have been thwarted. For North Macedonia, such a scenario would mean going back to the beginning and a return to the old situation. Is that truly what citizens of North Macedonia want?

Ljubljana/Brussels/Washington/Skopje, 13 October 2021

[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN, New York, since 2018.

[2] Source: 2021 Global peace index, link: https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/GPI-2021-web.pdf

Kafka, Čapek, Kundera and Havel, these are all world renowned names, but what about all the others? How well are Czech authors actually known abroad? Can you find a bookshop in Berlin, Madrid, Moscow, Paris or New York that aside from classics such as The Good Soldier Švejk also sell the works of contemporary Czech authors?

See the list here.

Office design trends are changing every once in a while, and this year is no exception. Following the heels of the global call for sustainability, offices this year are characterized by more eco-friendly features, fluidity, modular elements, and increasingly smart features. If you are ready to remodel your workplace in line with the latest developments, here are a few trends which you should take into account when allocating the renovation budget.

Going paperless office-wise

Gone are the days when busy offices were piled with paper and plastic: with the increasing awareness of the importance of eco-friendly features, modern work areas boast a paperless design with dedicated recycling bins to match. To achieve the sleek, clutter-free look in your workplace, it might be a good idea to consider going digital with your important files and documents. This simple transition will also help you become more organized and it will slice the time which would otherwise be wasted looking for paper-based data and other relevant information. In addition to that, you can also replace paper by live plants as this is another hot trend on the office design market this year which aims to infuse the office with a dose of freshness and style.

A smarter than smart office

Smart offices made a big entrance a while ago, and as the time passes, they are becoming increasingly high-tech in terms of devices and equipment. In contemporary offices, one-touch, remote controlled and even voice-operated elements such as coffee machines and printers are a must-have. If you wish to achieve the smart office look, you need to allocate a significant segment of your remodel budget for the procurement of state-of-the-art devices, but the investment will definitely pay many times over down the road. For a neat bonus, the upgrade will also add a few points to your brand’s value in the eyes of existing and potential employees.

A touch of old-school warmth

Despite the fact that clean, clutter-free offices are here to stay, there is also a need for comfort, style, and old-school warmth which you will need to take into account when remodeling your work area. To achieve a sense of luxury and friendliness in conference rooms and other large areas in your company, you can take a look at the wide range of elegant, rich rugs in Honk Kong and choose a carpet with minimal yet suave design which will communicate the air of luxury to your associates and employees. On top of that, you should consider going carpetless in small areas in the company. Suave, barebones ambiance is always on trend, especially if coupled with sustainable, eco-friendly floor and furniture materials.

Human-centric is here to stay

With COVID-19 still in full blow, companies are rapidly becoming aware of the value of every single staff member and their safety and wellbeing. With maximum employee safety in mind, companies are now introducing features such as hand sanitizer points, handwashing stations, flow management, and built-in social distancing, as well as readily available PPE in order to keep workplace health in check and reduce absenteeism. In addition to that, the trend of ergonomic furniture and devices with wellbeing certifications such as WELL and Fitwel is still going strong, which is why you will need to put your staff’s safety wellbeing front and center when looking to remodel your office space this year.

Stylish offices in 2021 boast far more style and functionality than their last year’s counterparts. From paperless designs and sustainable materials down to increasingly smart technology features and health and wellness-centered features, head-turning offices nowadays are a testament to minimalism and comfort, with a dose of green touches and luxury details. If you are set on remodeling your workplace soon, watch out for the big trends listed above and top office style, safety, and comfort will always be guaranteed. You are welcome!

By Peter Minkoff

Peter is a lifestyle and travel writer at Men-Ual magazine, living between Ústí nad Labem and Antwerp. Follow Peter on Twitter for more tips.

Following the famous argument of prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic ‘No Asian century without pan-Asian multilateral settings’ which was prolifically published as policy paper and thoroughly debated among practitioners and academia in over 40 countries on all continents for the past 15 years, hereby the author is revisiting and rethinking this very argument, its validity and gravity.

In the XXI century, it was impossible not to notice the rapid economic growth of Asia, given that the growth rates of each of the national economies of the region exceed those of the Western countries. Asia’s economic resurgence and cumulative financial strengths over the last two decades have largely contributed to the global shift of power to Asia [Medcalf, 2018]. However, the assertion about the beginning of the Asian century is still vague.

Considering the history of the region and its current geopolitical status-quo, one should remember that Asia flourished because the Pax Americana period after the end of World War II, which provided a favourable strategic context. But now the twists and turns of US – China relations are raising questions about the future of Asia and the structure of the emerging international order.

For a long time, Asian countries have taken the best of both worlds, building economic relations with China, and maintaining strong ties with the United States and other developed countries. Many Asian states for a long time have considered the United States and other developed countries as their main economic partners, while currently they are increasingly taking advantage of the opportunities created by China’s rapid development.

Due to the new geopolitical situation, the countries of the East Asia region are concerned that, being at the intersection of the interests of major powers, they may find themselves between two fires and will be forced to make difficult choices [Rsis, 2021]. In this regard, countries understand that the status-quo in Asia must change. But whether the new configuration will further prosper or bring dangerous instability remains to be seen.

It is worth noting that Asian countries view the United States as a power present in the region and having vital interests there. At the same time, China and India are immediate and close reality. Asian countries don’t want to choose between them. And if they face this challenge – Washington will try to contain the growth of China or Beijing will make efforts to create an exclusive sphere of influence in Asia – they will embark on the path of confrontation that will drag on for decades and jeopardize the highly-discussed Asian century.

An important element that can resolve the issue of the status-quo in the region is the fact, that the largest world’s continent must consider creation of the comprehensive pan-Asian institution, as the other major theatres do have in place already for many decades (i.e., the Organization of American States – OAS (American continent), African Union – AU (Africa), Council of Europe and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe – OSCE (Europe)).

The steps taken by the countries of the leading regions of the world to create a single market and a zone of co-prosperity in recent years have given rise to a desire for consolidation among the leaders of Asian countries [Frost, 2008]. Thus, today Asia is a place of concentration of the largest integration groupings, including the Asia – Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), its’ countries are members of large organizations: the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), BRICS, G-20, G-8, E-7. These integration groupings are closely interconnected, widely diversified (Commonwealth of Nations) or specialized (OPEC). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that in Asia there is still the absence of any pan-Asian security/ multilateral structure, which leaves many issues of cooperation between countries (especially in the field of security and interstate territorial disputes) unresolved [Kaisheng, 2015]. Thus, in Asia the presence of the multilateral regional settings is limited to a very few spots in the largest continent [Bajrektarevic, 2013], and even then, they are rarely mandated with security issues in their declared scope of work (see Map 3).

Underlining the importance of the creation on multilateral mechanism in Asia, one need to analyse in details the conflicts’ map of the region.

Dividing the region to subregional level Asia as a region includes Northern (Northeast) Asia, China & Far East (Eastern Asia), South – Eastern Asia, Western Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia (see Map 1).

 – Central Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan).

Two post-Soviet Caspian Sea sub-regions – Central Asia and the South Caucasus – have experienced different conflict scenarios. The South Caucasus has been embroiled in protracted, large-scale armed conflicts, while Central Asians have managed to avert a serious armed conflict, remaining largely peaceful despite local, short-term, small-scale clashes, and the existence of factors that may have led – and still may potentially lead – to a serious military conflict (i.e., Armenia – Azerbaijan conflict (The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict). Conflict map of Central Asia (see Map 2) mainly describes the issue of border settlement is the problem of ethnic enclaves, which is a constant factor of tension in relations between Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

 – Western Asia (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, and Iran)

 – The situation in (South-) Western Asia, which covers most of the Near and Middle East, has remained very complex and explosive for half a century. This is largely due to the Palestine – Israeli confrontation in Palestine, which escalated in the early twentieth century after the proclamation of the doctrine of creating a “people’s land” for the Jews. The Arab – Israeli confrontation, which began in 1948 (the state of Israel was proclaimed), remains unresolved to this day and is a hotbed of armed conflicts in the region.

Among other main hotbed of instability in Southwest Asia for almost a quarter of a century are the forcibly divided Cyprus, disputed territories between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, dispute over Islands Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs (Iran and the United Arab Emirates), the issues of Iraq and Iran, the instability of the Caucasus (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), the Kurds conflicts.

The conflict potential of the region is aggravated by the numerous emigrations to Western Europe (Germany, France) and the United States, whose radical groups often resort to terrorist acts. Such approaches and fierce military operations complicate the overall political climate in such a volatile region (see Map 2).

– Southern Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives Bhutan, and Bangladesh)

– The area is often referred to geologically, as the Indian Subcontinent and appears to be the area with the highest conflict intensity index in the region. Thus, the biggest country of the region – India – faces territorial issues with many of its neighbours. Over the past 70 years, it has succeeded to resolve its boundary issues only with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The undemarcated boundaries with Myanmar, Bhutan and lately with China, Pakistan and Nepal have often flared up into tensions [Kapoor,2020].

The most problematic disputes of the region are between India and China along their disputed border in the Himalayan region (namely disputes over Aksai Chin, Depsang Plains, Demchok, Chumar, Kaurik, Shipki La, Barahoti, Nelang, Pulam Sumda, Sang, Jadhang and Lapthal, Trans – Karakoram Tract, Arunachal Pradesh), which have been worsening in recent years.

India – Pakistan borders disputes (namely disputes over Jammu and Kashmir, Siachen Glacier, Saltoro Ridge, Sir Creek) are the second largest in the region. With continued violence in Kashmir and a heightened threat of terrorist activity by Pakistan-based militant groups, tensions, and concerns over a serious military confrontation between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan remain high.

Third group of disputes, which is rising of the region’s conflict potential, are India – Nepal border’s disputes (namely disputes over: Kalapani, Susta, Limpiyadhura and Lipulekh of Uttarakhand). It is worth noting that the redrawing of the map covers a relatively small region high in the Himalayas, but it has stirred simmering tensions between two of the world’s biggest powers, India, and China. Thus, involving of the third party (China) into the conflicts of India – Pakistan and India – Nepal is making the tension in the region even higher (See Map 2).

The problem of Afghanistan is also one of the most explosive in the region [Larson,2018]. The war has been going on here for the third decade, it has claimed millions of lives and has long ceased to be an internal affair of this state. Till August 2021 the troops of 14 NATO countries were in Afghanistan fighting the “Taliban” [USIP,2021]. Moreover, several million Afghan refugees settled in Pakistan, Iran and other countries of Asia and Europe, in the United States.

Due to high conflicts level and political regimes of some of the countries of the region, the Western world has identified South Asia as an epicentre of terrorism and religious extremism and therefore has an interest in ensuring regional stability, preventing nuclear weapons proliferation, and minimizing the potential of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan [Rosand et al.,2009].

–  Northern (Northeast)Asia (Russia and Mongolia)

In the Far East and North Asia, destabilizing factors remain the Russian – Japanese territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands (Northern Territory), the Korean – Japanese territorial dispute over the Dokdo Islands (Takeshima) (Liancourt Rocks dispute) and the territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyutai) between Japan and China.

–  Eastern Asia (China & Far East) (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan)

Of all the disputed territories in the APR, a striking example of the high potential of a formally latent territorial dispute in NEA is the conflict over the Senkaku – Diaoyu Islands, in which Japan and China, the two largest economies and two leading foreign policy players in Northern and East Asia (NEA), are parties to the conflict. This conflict illustrates the essence of modern territorial disputes in the region and the essential information component of such processes.

However, other, equally intractable, disputes cannot be neglected. Among these cases are disputes between Japan and Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima Island and the Kuril Islands that are held by Russia but claimed by Japan. Further regional conflicts involve Korean Peninsula disputes, disputed fishing areas that frequently witness clashes between fishing boats and respective law enforcement agencies. No less important conflict areas of the region are Korean Peninsula and Chinese territories (namely China – Taiwan, the issue of Inner Mongolia, the issue of Tibet (Tibet Autonomous Region) and the issue of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region) (see Map 2).

None of the above-mentioned disputes are likely to be resolved in the foreseeable future. The worst-case scenario is that they continue to plague Japan’s bilateral relations with China, South Korea, and Russia, isolating Japan in the region, and perhaps even resulting in militarized conflict. Though such conflict is unlikely in the disputes with Russia and South Korea, it remains a possibility in the dispute with China.

Both Northern and Eastern regions are the world’s most dynamic areas in terms of economic growth and significance for global trade. While China attracts most attention, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all strong economies. Add Russia and the US in the mix and the importance of Northeast Asia cannot be overstated. These two regions are characterised by “strategic diversity” where several unresolved territorial disputes threaten to undermine the very source of regional prosperity: maritime trade.

–  South – Eastern Asia (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam)

In Southeast Asia (hereinafter SEA), compared to other regions, the numbers of unresolved territorial disputes are still considered small, and SEA is considered a relatively safe region with no significant violence going on [Jenne, 2017].

The territorial disputes in SEA consist of the following disputes: the Philippines’ Sabah Claim (The North Borneo), the Ligitan and Sipidan dispute, the Pedra Branca dispute and the South China Sea Conflict Zone also known as the Spratly Islands disputes and conflicts of East Timor and the divided island of New Guinea. Among them the last one (the Papua conflict) – land dispute in which 21 people died (last update as for April 2021[Fardah,2021]) is the latest brutal conflict exacerbated by high-powered weapons, weak governance, and erosion of traditional mores (See Map 2).

The territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea (the Spratly Islands disputes) are considered some of the most complex conflicts in the region if not worldwide. The disputed areas are abundant in natural resources such as gas and oil and carry strategic importance, as roughly half of the world’s commercial shipping passes through them. Their judicial resolution is usually unlikely, and the use of conciliation mechanisms is preferable. Despite this, there is little doubt that the conflicts in the South China Sea will dominate the region’s security agenda for years, if not decades, to come [Avis, 2020]. The intra-ASEAN disputes in the South China Sea will most likely remain dormant for a considerable time to come.

Given the growing number of military expenditures of Asian countries and the presence of many hotbeds of tension, territorial disputes of the entire region, are turning it into one of the most complex problems and potentially explosive challenges, indirectly affecting the interests of most of the states of the Eurasia.

Up to day countries of the region did not create a stable multilateral mechanism which can help them to work out a compromise solution on the issue of legal registration of state borders and territorial claims. This issue is one of the most important, since it can guarantee the territorial integrity of states and ensure non-interference in their internal affairs, as well as represent one of the barriers to external threats to their national security, such as smuggling, international crime, extremist and terrorist movements, illegal migration.

Today, the diversity of the Asian sub-regions, the differences in the political and economic systems of the states, determine the specifics of the formation of integration structures in Asia [Ayson, 2009]. A characteristic feature of integration structures in Asia – in most cases, they are created to jointly solve economic problems, achieve economic integration in the region or sub-regions, but not to solve security issues:

–  the Asia – Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)

Being an organization with the largest Asian participation, the Asia – Pacific Economic Cooperation engulfing both sides of the Pacific. While created, this forum was planned to become a mechanism for developing global rules for economic and military-political interaction between countries of the APR, but eventually organization turned into a regional integration setting of the Asia – Pacific countries, mainly involved just in economically-related issues [APEC,2021]. Even considering the shifts of the APEC towards resolving political issues (response to security threats), so far this is a forum for member economies not of sovereign nations, a sort of a prep-com for the World Trade Organization – WTO, which is not involved into the solving of security issues of the region.

– the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, created in 2001, was formed based on the previously existing political association of the “Shanghai Five”: Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan (See Map 3).

While it was mentioned that the main goals were strengthening trust between its participants in the military field, ensuring peace, security and stability in the region, criticism of the SCO largely concerns the failure of its activities, in the fight against terrorism and the protection of regional security [Weitz, 2014]. Some foreign analysts (i.e., Matthew Oresman of the American Centre for Strategic and International Studies) suggest that the SCO is nothing more than a discussion club, claiming something more [Oresman, 2005]. The same opinion is shared by the head of the Institute of Military History of the Russian Ministry of Defence A. A. Koltyukov, who claims that “the analysis of the results achieved by the SCO allows us to characterize it as a political club in which bilateral cooperation still prevails over the solution of regional and world problems. … there is no real cooperation in these areas in countering the threats of terrorism, separatism and the fight against drug trafficking at the regional level” [Kol’tyukov, 2008].

–  the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, SAARC – economic and political organization of eight countries in South Asia is the Indian sub-continent’s grouping, created in 1985.

The main goal of the SAARC is to develop interaction between the participating countries in the economic, socio-cultural, and scientific-technical fields, however, with the accession of Afghanistan (in 2007), the Association began to discuss issues of combating terrorism.

Being an organization, which helps the integrate the region and intensify mutual collaboration between countries-participants, the SAARC is practically a hostage of mega confrontation of its two largest members, both confirmed nuclear powers: India and Pakistan. Additionally, the SAARC although internally induced is an asymmetric organization, considering the size and position of India: centrality of that country makes SAARC practically impossible to operate in any field without the direct consent of India, which is not helping the organization to resolve important security-related issues of the region.

–  the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – OIC and Non-Aligned Movement – NAM

Another crosscutting integration settings of the region are the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – OIC and Non-Aligned Movement – NAM.

The development of NAM as a new trend in the system of international relations was laid by the Bandung Conference of 1955, which served as the beginning of the creation of an international organization uniting countries that proclaimed non-participation in military-political blocs and groupings as the basis of their foreign policy. The creation of the OIC in 1969 was facilitated by a series of events that shook the Islamic world, the main ones of which were the defeat in the Arab – Israeli war in 1967 and the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by Israeli extremists. Thus, initially the creation of these two settings had a security root.

However, as professor Anis H. Bajrektarevic elaborated in his work on “No Asian Century”, they are inadequate forums as neither of the two is strictly mandated with security issues [Bajrektarevic, 2015]. Although both trans-continental entities do have large memberships being the 2nd and 3rd largest multilateral systems, right after the UN, neither covers the entire Asian political landscape – having important Asian countries outside the system or opposing it.

– the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO)

The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), which existed in 1995 – 2006, which main goal was to implement the 1994 Framework Agreement between the United States and North Korea and freeze the development of a local nuclear power plant in North Korea, as well as Group 5 + 1 (P5 + 1, E3 + 3) – a forum of six great powers that have united their efforts to prevent the use of the Iranian nuclear program for military purposes, were both dealing with indeed security related issues in Asia. Nevertheless, both settings were created to deter and contain a single country by the larger front of peripheral states that are opposing a particular security policy, in this case, of North Korea and of Iran.

– BRICS

The formation of global governance institutions began with the creation of the G7 in 1975. In 2008, the first G20 summit took place, and in 2009 – BRIC (BRICS since 2011). These informal forums, focused primarily on economic cooperation, do not fully fulfil their obligations to counter protectionism, environmental growth, food security and fairness in the labour market.

These problems exist due to the inability of both institutions to create a full-fledged accountability mechanism to ensure transparency of the processes of implementation of the decisions of the summits.

Also, the BRICS and G-20 are not providing the Asian participating states either with the more leverage in the Bretton Woods institutions or helping to tackle the indigenous Asian security problems.

– the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

This sub-regional political and economic organization was created in 1967, and included Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Brunei. The main goals of this organization are the development of economic, social, cultural, and other types of cooperation between the member countries of the Association, the establishment of peace and stability in Southeast Asia (See Map 3).

This organization played an important role in the social and economic development of the Southeast Asian countries, contributed to the growth of their political influence in the region, however, regional cooperation in the field of defence and security within the framework of ASEAN has not yet been activated. Today, it can be assumed that ASEAN can evolve into a “security community” in the sense that none of its members seriously consider using force against another member to resolve contentious issues. But it will not become a “defensive community” because there is no common cultural, ideological, and historical experience. More importantly, there is no threat common to all members. The successes achieved by ASEAN – relative peace, stability, and security – still do not form the basis for broader military cooperation, but rather allow each state to develop on its own way.

Towards conclusions

The creation of sub-regional international organizations is a proof that currently Asian countries are more willing to consult and cooperate with each other on the integration and creating of the zone of co-prosperity issues. Nevertheless, in Asia, there is hardly a single state which has no territorial dispute within its neighbourhood. From the Middle East, Caspian and Central Asia, Indian sub-continent, mainland Indo – China or Archipelago SEA, Tibet, South China Sea and the Far East, many countries are suffering numerous green and blue border disputes (See Map 2).

An equally important factor is the presence in Asia of strong global geopolitical players vying for spheres of influence in the region (China, India, Japan, Russia, and USA).

Currently the APR countries today do not want to choose between centres of power, willing to develop good relations with all partners and at the same time ensure their security. In this regard, the question of the creation of its own comprehensive pan-Asian multilateral mechanism, with the help of which countries will be able to take an active part in the formation of a new world order and take a worthy place in it, is becoming more and more urgent.

The foundation on which Asia – Pacific countries now support regional cooperation initiatives, such as the various Indo – Pacific concepts proposed by Japan, the United States and others, as well as China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, is built on a policy of peaceful coexistence and containment of the emergence of one strongest leader in the region (many Asian countries believe that promoting the “Belt and Road” is a constructive way to control China’s growing influence in the region [Smotrytska,2021]). Thus, today the behaviour of the countries of the APR region shows that the development of new regional mechanisms does not mean abandoning the existing multilateral structures. These hard-won agreements and institutions continue to provide all countries, especially small ones, a framework to work together and advance collective interests.

Besides the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), there have been other emerging features of security cooperation in Asia that are not necessarily based on geographical groupings but on security concerns and capability [Pejsova, 2014]. These multidimensional developments indicate that security cooperation in Asia is far more complex today than a traditional bi-multi nexus model. The “double-track” approach is now entering into the new phase especially in the wake of various forms of multilateral security mechanisms that have been revealing in recent years in Asia – Pacific.

An analysis of the emerging alignment of forces within the international community allows us to conclude that the very formulation of the question of the Asian century suffers from unacceptable simplification and schematization that does not consider new world realities and the geopolitical structure of the region, that cannot be explained in traditional concepts and categories. And the reality is that the East has already become the supporting structure of the world community, equal in size to the West, and its’ role in the coming century will increase. Moreover, in the East itself, several centres are ripening (China, Japan, India, and a numerically growing group of smaller, but very dynamic new industrial countries), capable of competing on an equal footing both with each other and with the West, if not as a whole, then with its leading powers. But to consolidate the total power of Asian countries the largest continent must consider the creation of its own comprehensive pan-Asian multilateral mechanism. Economic and demographic parts of Asia must be accorded by the new pan-continental setting. On the very institution setup, Asia can closely revisit the well-envisioned SAARC and ambitiously empowered ASEAN fora. By examining these two regional bodies, Asia will be able to find and calibrate the appropriate balance between widening and deeping of the security mandate of such future multilateral organization.

Maria Smotrytska is a senior research sinologist and International Politics specialist of the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists. She currently serves as the Research Fellow at International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES), Department for Strategic Studies on Asia (DeSSA). She holds a PhD in International politics, from the Central China Normal University (Wuhan, PR China).

Contact: dessa[at]ifimes.org

As a part of the celebrations surrounding the 103rd anniversary of the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia, the Defence Minister Lubomír Metnar distributed a number of awards between exceptional individuals who’s devotion furthered the success of the ministry. The highest award, the Cross of State Defence, was endowed upon the legionary and resistance member Josef Jirka, in memoriam. “After the occupation of the Czech lands, he was one of the most active and important members of the military resistance organization Defence of the Nation,” announced the Ministry of Defence. He was arrested by the Gestapo in February 1940 and executed in September 1942. Another highly esteemed award, the Golden Linden, was given to the legendary football player and coach Jaroslav Vejvoda, also posthumously. This might seem like an affair of a different ministry at first glance, but the Czech military and sport elite have a close connection in the Dukla team, which is technically a part of the Czech military. “He brought Masopust, Novák or Pluskal to perfection. He led Dukla to success in the 1960s, which was recognized by the whole world, and Ota Pavel wrote poems about these victories in his books,” wrote iDNES.cz. Another noteworthy honour was assigned to the name of the Military Police member Milan Štěrba. The Military Police Protection Service Headquarters will now hold the name of this fallen soldier from the war in Afghanistan.

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If you have big dreams of jetting off to Europe, but worry that your bank account isn’t quite ready, don’t worry. For every expensive city, there are dozens of charming — and surprisingly affordable — places that offer all the European charm for a fraction of the price. Ljubljana, Porto, Budapest, even Berlin — these cities have all the rich culture, stunning architecture, and delicious food that you’d find in pricey European capitals, but they’re perfect for budget travelers.

You can even travel to some of Europe’s best (and famously expensive) destinations without breaking the bank — you just have to know how to save money without sacrificing on experiences. Travelers can often score deals on flights from the United States to major cities like Paris or London, and upon arriving, transportation within Europe can be much more affordable (hello, budget airlines). Those large cities also offer a wide range of accommodations, so you can certainly find something in your budge. You can even save money on food by hitting the local markets. After all, a bottle of wine, fresh bread, and cheese from a Parisian market make for an unforgettable meal when picnicking under the Eiffel Tower.

And you might be surprised by how many museums, churches, and other attractions are free or inexpensive to visit, too. Be sure to keep an eye out for free entry days (often one day a month) or tourist cards that offer entry to multiple attractions for one flat fee. (Do the math ahead of time by calculating the cost of every included attraction that you want to visit to make sure it’s really worth the money.)

Trimming your budget doesn’t mean sacrificing the quality of your trip. In fact, the less you spend, the less insulated you are from the local culture. Staying in a thatched Irish farmhouse, perusing old masters in Rome, or snacking your way through Spanish specialties aren’t just tricks of the frugal traveler — they’re the stuff dream vacations are made of.

Here are some of the top destinations for an affordable European vacation (and tips for saving money once you arrive).

By Reid Bramblett and Elizabeth Rhodes

See the list here.

After his death the gardener does not become a butterfly, intoxicated by the perfumes of the flowers, but a garden worm tasting all the dark, nitrogenous, and spicy delights of the soil.

– Karel Čapek

Karel Čapek is undoubtedly one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. He wrote both prose and drama, becoming famous worldwide for his science-fantasy fiction drama R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots). In this piece he was the first person ever to use the word “robot”, which quickly caught on in various world languages as the play gained popularity around the globe. He is often compared to George Orwell, since both writers often wrote about fictional dystopias with advanced technology and dictatorship. Unfortunately, Karel Čapek wrote about these topics from Czechoslovakia, right next to Nazi Germany. Right after the occupation, he soon became a ‘public enemy’. Here is his story:

Karel Čapek was born in Malé Svatoňovice into a family of a local doctor, MUDr. Antonín Čapek. Soon after his birth in the January of 1890, his family moved to Úpice, where Karel attended elementary school with his brother Josef. This elementary school is now renamed after the Čapek brothers. Karel then continued to study at a high schools in Hradec Králové and in Brno. He reportedly had to transfer all the way to Brno since his teachers discovered that he was leading a secret organized anti-Austro-Hungarian society among the students in Hradec Králové. During his University years, he travelled to Berlin and Paris, and finally finished his studies in Prague in 1915, with a degree in Philosophy from the Charles University in Prague.

Close towards the end of his University studies, he started suffering from Ankylosing spondylitis (Bechterew’s disease), which led to him being forbidden from participating in the First World War. Nevertheless, his outlook on the world was largely formed by the effects the Great War had on him and the people around him. In 1917, his writing career officially started, as he was accepted into a journalist position for the first time. In the following years, he worked for the Národní listy, Nebojsa and Lidové Noviny papers, establishing himself within the Czechoslovakian literary society. In 1921, he left journalism as a form of protest against the change of political direction of the Lidové Noviny paper.

After his career in journalism ended, he finally started dedicating his attention to writing drama and prose. First, he became a director at the Vinohrady theatre. Later on, he founded the Czechoslovak PEN club. Furthermore, he became a part of the weekly Friday meetings the Czechoslovak President T. G. Masaryk, discussing political and philosophical issues of the time with the most important cultural and political figures of Czechoslovakia. These meetings were also attended by Karel’s brother Josef, a painter, whom he was very close with, often even asking Josef to work on some illustrations in his books.

His work is often viewed as one of the origins of the modern Sci-fi genre. R.U.R, War with the Newts and The White Plague are all great reads for anyone remotely interested in early sci-fi, such as many of Čapek’s other works. Other types of readers might enjoy the noetic trilogy of Hordubal, Povětroň and An Ordinary Life, where Čapek focuses on the inner life of humans as individual beings and the boundaries of their knowledge. Furthermore, Čapek was also an avid traveler, who enjoyed writing travelogues about his travels throughout Europe between the World Wars with his wife, actress Olga Scheinpflugová.

After France and England handed over Czechoslovakia to Hitler, Karel Čapek’s world fell apart. Nazi Germans targeted him very soon, as he was one of the last Czechoslovak public figures standing up for democracy. The German gestapo did not get to get their hands on him, as he passed away just a few months before the full German invasion due to Pneumonia. His plays and books remain a key part of literary history to this day.

Please, do not let him be forgotten.

BY: DANIEL HOWARD

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Recently, yet another cigarette alternative has appeared on the Czech market. On average, up to 30% of Czechs have admitted to smoking tobacco in 2020, and many more could be smoking without admitting it. With the long-term negatives of smoking, even traditional large cigarette manufacturers are starting to offer alternatives, as medical professionals push harder and harder to eradicate cigarettes for good. Philip Morris International just launched a smokeless device on the Czech market called lil solid 2.0. Along with it, it also introduced new tobacco fillings. While it is a nice step away from some of the harmful effects of traditionally burning tobacco, these heated tobacco nicotine delivery instruments are still far from harmless for their consumers. Many even argue that replacing the systematically stigmatized form of a normal cigarette with a new product will even boost the number of smokers in the country, as it did in the vaping epidemic currently taking place among the youth in the US and EU.

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When you are running a modern business, employee retainment is very important. By ensuring that you have people who work well at your company staying as long as possible, you can make sure that your company will grow in a sustainable manner. The trick, whether you are a CEO or a HR manager, is knowing which processes to put in place to make this concept a reality. Thankfully for you, this guide has been created to outline a few key ways to make your employees happy. Read on now in order to learn all about it.

Pay a Fair Wage

One of the easiest ways to keep people happy, no matter whether they genuinely enjoy their job or not, is by paying them a fair wage. After all, people will be willing to tolerate long hours or work harder if they know that they will have enough money to live comfortably when they are not at work. This has risen in importance over the last year as the response to the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in people across the EU demanding higher wages and certain industries, such as the IT sector, are lacking in key workers.

Offer Private Insurance

While Czechia has a public health insurance scheme, this can oftentimes be replaced by a more useful private insurance scheme. As an employer, you can make sure that your employees are all covered under your company’s dollar. The benefit of doing this is that it allows them to save more money each month as well as have more comprehensive and often better health insurance. It’s worth seeking the services of a trusted provider of health insurance for companies today.

Stock Food and Drink in the Office

Simple measures can often be the most effective when it comes to keeping employees happy. For example, if you make sure that your office has lots of food and drink, as well as a great coffee machine, your employees will naturally feel that they are well looked after. Additionally, this will mean that they spend less time going out to get supplies, thus increasing their overall productivity. Make sure to have a wide range of goods and services—including fruit and vegetables and snacks when it comes to food, as well as soft drinks for working hours, and some beers (the most popular drink in Czechia) to allow people to kick back and chill in the evenings when work has finally come to an end.

Host Great Company Events

One way to make a great impression upon your employees that can last for a long time is by hosting a great company event. Try and think outside the box when it comes to these types of events and search the internet and the local area for a one-of-a-kind event that will help to stamp your company as one that is truly unique. One way to make sure that it’s a great event is to talk to your employees about the types of events that they enjoy.

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One of the most visited attractions in Prague was ceremoniously opened on September 28th in 1931. It was the first place in the city where the visitors could admire exotic animals that most of them had never seen before. Back then, the first director of the Prague Zoo in Troja became Jiří Janda. He was an ornithologist and a high school professor, who greatly contributed to the construction of the complex in the heart of the country. The first official inhabitant of the garden was a wolf named Lotta. For the great anniversary of ninety years, the Zoo held a 1930s themed celebration on Tuesday. All visitors were welcome to participate in several workshops and learn new skills, for instance in swing dance or take a couple of photos in the photo corner. Guests that arrived at the Zoo in a relevant costume were happy to receive a small gift at the entrance gate. Nowadays, the specialty of the Prague Zoo that distinguishes the garden from the other ones, is the breeding of the Przewalski’s horse. For a long time, the animal caretakers have been successfully returning these horses to the wild, where they naturally belong. Furthermore, the Zoo is also focusing on the protection of the Indian gavial and the Cuban crocodile in their natural habitat.

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In Prague, Kyje, a new special gas plant has just started production. It belongs to the largest technical gas producer operating in the Czech Republic, Linde Gas. 24 new jobs have been generated by the 9.7 million crown investment into a new part of the Kyje gas production complex ran by the company. Until now, the complex has already produced and sold many various gases, for example medical gases, which were vital to Czech hospitals throughout the worst parts of the covid-19 pandemic. The new special gases plant, which the company is opening after three years of preparation and a year of construction work, is one of the most automated plants in the entire Linde multinational group. According to Linde Gas, it has potential to optimize production costs and shorten delivery times. The investment plays a part in the change in the special gas supply system in Europe. The CEO of Linde Gas Czech Republic, Petr Partsch, has explained what are some of the special gasses the plant will be producing from now on: “We supply calibration gases, for example, to car manufacturers for measuring emissions, including technical inspection stations. Pure gases and certified calibration mixtures are used, among others, by units of the Fire and Rescue Services or Police laboratories. ”

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There are several factors that go into choosing a new place to live. If affordability and an abundance of outdoor activities are top of mind, these small towns across the U.S. might do the trick, while others are willing to pay more for the perks of big city living.

For those simply looking for peace of mind, Icelandair conducted a study analyzing factors such as light pollution, congestion, happiness levels, and traffic congestion to determine which cities around the world offer their residents the most relaxing environments.

Hoping to bring awareness to World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10, Iceland’s flagship airline dove into this research after a survey by the American Psychological Association revealed the deep impacts of the pandemic. According to the survey results, 46% of Gen Z adults feel their mental health has worsened since the onset of the pandemic, while 33% of Xers, 31% of Millennials, 28% of Boomers, and 9% of older adults also report the same issue.

Since the environments we live in play a large role in mental health, Icelandair conducted this study to point people to cities that may offer them more tranquility. Using a variety of resources to rate locations around the world, the airline came up with a list of the top 20 most relaxing cities.

Coming in first place is Bergen, Norway, ranked highly for its very low levels of traffic congestion (13%), low levels of light and noise pollution (25), and a high average life expectancy of 83 years.

Read the full article.

International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES[1]) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, the Balkans and around the world. On the occasion of local elections in Kosovo, scheduled to take place on 17 October 2021, IFIMES has analyzed the local political situation. We bring the most important and interesting excerpts from a comprehensive analysis titled “2021 Local Elections in Kosovo: A sort of defeat of international community.”

2021 Local Elections on Kosovo:

A sort of defeat of international community

On 17 October 2021, Kosovo will hold its fourth local elections since its declaration of independence on 17 February 2008. In Kosovo, heads of municipalities and municipal councilors are elected at local elections.

The Kosovo Central Election Commission (CEC) verified participation of 90 political subjects. Specifically, 32 political parties, 34 civic initiatives, one coalition and 23 independent candidates. There are 1,885,448 voters eligible to vote at the local elections.

Out of 35 candidates for mayors in 10 predominantly Serb municipalities, 19 are Serbs, including three women. Out of 167 candidates for heads of 38 municipalities on Kosovo, only 13 are female candidates. The CEC has also approved a list of 15,577 viters who will vote by mail from abroad.

Kosovo Serbs will have an opportunity to elect from 18 lists their candidates in 21 municipalities. Specifically, the Serbs constitute a majority in 10 municipalities, and in 11 they do not. The Serb community from the north of Kosovo (municipalities Kosovska Mitrovica, Zvečan, Zubin Potok and Leposavić) will participate for the third time at local elections organized by Kosovo authorities. The election campaign officially begun on 16 September 2021.

Kosovo still has problems with the final electoral roll, which is unrevised and not credible, as it is illogical that Kosovo has more voters than citizens.

CSM on hold

The Brussels agreement brokered between official Belgrade and Pristina in 2013, envisages establishment of the Community of Serb Municipalities (CSM) on Kosovo. The Community of Serb Municipalities would be established by a statute, but guaranteed by Kosovo laws. Modification of Kosovo laws requires a two-thirds majority. Hence, the Community of Serb Municipalities (CSM) can be dissolved only by decision of member-municipalities. Although it is established outside the legal framework of Kosovo, the CSM is an integral part of the constitutional and legal order of Kosovo, and not part of the Republic of Serbia. Kosovo authorities do not want to implement the establishment of CSM and, in this respect, refer to the decision of the Kosovo Constitutional Court, which had ruled that 24 provisions were not in line with, that constituted a violation of, the Kosovo Constitution.

Analysts believe that establishment of the Community of Serb Municipalities would be a way to finalize the dialogue and sign a comprehensive legally binding agreement on normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina.

Kosovo still without visa liberalization

Kosovo still faces numerous problems and challenges regarding its judiciary, economic development, enormous unemployment rate, emigration, dysfunctional administration, crime and corruption.

The talks on the Stabilization and Accession Agreement (SAA) with the EU, the talks on liberalization of the visa regime and the dialogue with Serbia are the processes that Kosovo has still not finalized. On the political scene, there has been a halt in the dialogue, primarily because of the failure to implement the Brussels and Washington agreements achieved between official Pristina and Belgrade. The agreements have to be fully implemented and the parties cannot take only what suits them in the signed agreements.

The Kosovo government has to invest additional efforts to achieve a visa-free regime for Kosovo citizens, because Kosovo is the most isolated area in Europe. Some of the challenges that the new Kosovo authorities will have to address include: enormously high unemployment rate, the situation regarding the respect of human rights, attracting foreign investments, relations with neighbors, stopping the emigration of citizens, fight against regional and international crime and corruption, etc. Therefore, the current Kosovo government has to ensure liberalization of the visa regime for Kosovo citizens and provide to the European Union convincing evidence regarding its fight against crime and corruption, which is one of the prerequisites for liberalization of the visa regime.

Decriminalization of Kosovo

The practice shows that political-criminal structures have never developed strong state institutions, but did just the opposite. The permanent political crisis on Kosovo was a political concept and method the current political structures pursued to remain in power. With the arrival of Albin Kurti (LVV) to power and after the political changes in Montenegro, primarily because of the uncompromising fight against crime and corruption led by the Vice-president of the Montenegrin Government Dritan Abazović (URA), the criminal structures have sought refuge elsewhere in the region.

So far, whenever a new government came to power in Kosovo it announced speedy development and promised to build strong institutions that would be a factor of internal stability and peace in Kosovo, which would contribute to stability and peace in the region. However, as the promises were never fulfilled, the citizens of Kosovo became deeply disappointed with the ruling political structures and are the only ones in the region without a visa-free regime. It is important that a visa-free regime is firstly established between Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina-if the intent is to implement the “Open Balkan” initiative.

The roots of the crime in Kosovo date back to the period of the government in exile. The nucleus of the criminal structures include commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK-OVK) and (para)intelligence service (ShIK), who act in cooperation with the political structures. The ShIK was to be dissolved back in 2008, because in 2009 the official Kosovo Intelligence Agency (AKI-KIA) was established.

It is important for Kosovo Albanians, just as it is for other peoples in the region, to properly face the past, because otherwise it is rather unlikely that they will be able to secure a better future.

Militarization of Kosovo

Despite the announcements on establishment of “reciprocity” regarding Serbian registration plates, the Kosovo government did not inform its citizens about when will that happen or what procedures will be in force. On Monday, 20 September 2021, it introduced “reciprocity” for registration plates issued in Serbia and at the north of Kosovo, started to charge fees for issuing of Kosovo temporary plates for passenger and cargo vehicles, which had registration plates issued in Serbia, and deployed heavily armed forces of Special Units of the Kosovo Police Force (ROSU). As a response to such measures of the Kosovo government, Kosovo Serbs erected barricades at border/administrative crossings Jarinje and Brnjak.

Freedom of movement was the first agreement brokered between Belgrade and Pristina in Brussels. This has been the most frequently discussed agreement and some of its provisions have even been revised. The relations between the two parties have evidently been degraded to such an extent that they can no longer agree even on the issue of “reciprocity”, which practically affects the daily life of the population.

The crux of the problem are the registration plates issued by the Republic of Serbia for municipalities on Kosovo, which were valid until 14 September 2021. The agreement specified that upon expiration of the deadline both parties would reconsider, under EU mediation, this issue. However, Kosovo authorities unilaterally introduced temporary plates for vehicles from Serbia under the pretext of “reciprocity.”

Temporary plates were introduced by the 2011 Agreement, which gives Kosovo the right to, just like Serbia, issue temporary registration plates, as well as to issue the so-called “entry/exit documents”. Although so far Kosovo did not apply the respective provisions of the Agreement, it now issues only the temporary plates, and not the entry/exit documents.

The multiyear application of such a practice on cars from Kosovo is the reason why in Kosovo the latest move was interpreted as “justified”. The problem is that this decision will not affect Serbia, but Serbs on Kosovo, as well as further complicate the lives of Albanians from Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa, whose livelihood is linked to Kosovo.

Gabriel Escobar, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and the new envoy of the State Department for West Balkans stated “I think both sides should refrain from militarizing this issue and should not send special units to a place where there is KFOR and where there is no need for that. As far as the issue of license plates is concerned, we would like to see some progress in Brussels in the next seven days.”[2]

All until the establishment of second Kurti’s government, for over a decade Kosovo had been illegally collecting fees for car insurance for vehicles from third countries, which according to some assessments generated more than 100 million Euros in unlawful revenues from car insurance charged at border crossings on vehicles entering Kosovo. Car insurance tariffs were charged as follows: 15 Euros per vehicles for a period of 15 days and 30 Euros per vehicle for a period of 30 days. Collection of unlawful revenues is attributed to the closest members of Hashim Thaçi’s family. Kurti’s government abolished this unlawful collection of revenues, which was dubbed as “the Thaçi’s tax.”

According to analysts, the current situation is a result of the wrong moves the international community has made in Kosovo and is a sort of a defeat of the international community, particularly the EU. Poor mediation of the dialogue by the EU, the failed EULEX mission and unnecessary deployment of special units of ROSU, whose composition does not reflect the demographic structure at the north of Kosovo, bearing in mind that KFOR units have the mandate to guarantee security on the whole territory of Kosovo. Unilateral moves undermine the already fragile peace and latent stability, and the reciprocity measures would make substantial sense only after the signing of a comprehensive and binding agreement on normalization of relations between official Belgrade and Pristina. It is evident that the dialogue between official Belgrade and Pristina has to be continued and become a priority. So far, the EU had spent more than two billion Euros of EU taxpayers’ money in Kosovo- mainly in vain. Most importantly at this time, Belgrade and Pristina have managed to achieve under EU mediation a provisional agreement for the next six months, which will provide for unimpeded movement of cars without removal of registration plates. Actually, this agreement has prevented further escalation of the conflict.

De- Thaçization of Kosovo

Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutors’ Office (KSC-SPO), was envisaged as the response by Kosovo to the assertions from the Report of Special Rapporteur of the Council of Europe (CoE) Dick Marty on trafficking of human organs and, simultaneously. It was also an additional impetus to embark on de- Thaçization of Kosovo, that is dismantling of Thaçi’s regime, which should pave the way to internal consolidation of the country. Therefore, it is important that the KSP-SCO has taken root, as it will enable achievement of justice, which would provide satisfaction for the victims and their families, but also relax the relations in Kosovo and provide for a better and more certain future.

Marty’s report specifies that in the period from 1998 to 2000 members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (OVK- UÇK) had committed crimes. The Specialist Chambers has jurisdiction over crimes committed on Kosovo in the period from 1January 1998 and 31 December 2000. Although it is a Kosovo court, it is funded by the EU and includes international staff. Four leaders of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (OVK/UCK), Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi i Rexhep Selimi, are tried on the basis of indictments for a number of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murders, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution and torture. Thaçi and Veseli were even involved in obstruction of justice, while one witness in this case was assassinated.

Showdown with Vučić through Kosovo

Local elections in Kosovo are once again an opportunity for a showdown between a part of Serb opposition and Albanian political parties, on one side, and the Serb List (SL), which is supported by the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić (SNS) on the other. In fact, as the Serb List (SL) is a favorite to win the local elections in the Serb communities in Kosovo, they will try to use that for a showdown with Serbian President Vučić and in such a way influence the results of the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Serbia. As the day of the local elections in Kosovo approaches, the tensions aimed against the Serb List, including threats and violence are increasing. Therefore, it is of exceptional importance to finalize the Brussels dialogue between official Belgrade and Pristina with the signing of a legally binding agreement on normalization of relations, as well as to abolish borders and eliminate barriers in the region through the “Open Balkan” initiative.

Merkel recognizes Vučić’s central role in the region

During her recent visit to Serbia, the outgoing German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) stated that Serbian President Vučić was a person who “does not make false promises, but strives to implement in practice everything that he promises.”[3]

Analysts believe that thanks to President Aleksandar Vučić Serbia has become the center of developments in the region and is of key importance for preservation of peace and stability. Economic development and establishment of “Open Balkan” are the priorities in regional cooperation, because due to the economy of scale principle small countries cannot attract global investors and therefore have more difficulties ensuring sustainable growth and development. Elimination of internal borders and administrative barriers, as well as custom fees, would definitely be more efficient for West Balkan countries if they would have a harmonized infrastructure policy and work together on economic recovery of the region.

During his recent visit to Serbia, the Austrian Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz[4] noted the excellent economic development and added that while the pandemic had caused an economic setback in many countries, Serbia did not record almost any decrease in its economic growth. He reminded that Serbia’s forecasted growth was at a level between 6 and 7%, which, as he said, was a very positive development that will have a positive effect on the Austrian economy as well, because of the close ties between the economies of the two countries. Serbia managed the corona crisis well, which is good for Austria as one of the major investors in the country. We profit from positive development of Serbia, Kurz underscored.

While Vučić is fully rebranding Serbia, Kosovo has so far constantly regressed because of the irresponsible political elites, who held public offices and responsible positions but were always focused on their parochial interests and unlawful acquisition of wealth, not the interests of Kosovo.

Local elections– chance for groundbreaking changes

After the recent parliamentary elections, one of the key players on the political scene in Kosovo is the Self-Determination Movement (LVV), which has prevailing primacy over other political subjects and enjoys major public support. So far, the central authorities at Kosovo impeded development of individual local communities and the local elections are an opportunity to end that practice.

The voters are not inclined to support a coalition of LVV with other parties, because many voters believe that the political-mafia structure had unconstitutionally and illegally removed the first government of Prime Minister Albin Kurti. This applies primarily on the younger people who perceives the LVV and its leader Kurti as a breath of fresh air on the political scene.

Victory of the LVV at local elections would further stabilize the political situation at the local level and allow for groundbreaking changes in local communities in Kosovo. However, in this context, it is important that the LVV demonstrates political sensibility towards minorities and particularly the Serb community.

The citizens want positive changes. Every second citizen of Kosovo is under the age of 30 and their future is still uncertain and sealed.

Ljubljana/Washington/Brussels/Pristina, 8 October 2021

[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN, New York, since 2018.

[2] Gabriel Escobar, Interview with VOA: “Issue of plates to be discussed in Brussels, Serbia and Kosovo not to militarize the situation,” link: https://www.glasamerike.net/a/ekskluzivno-intervju-garbrijel-eskobar-glas-amerike-srbija-kosovo-tablice-dijalog-evropska-unija-integracije/6244592.html

[3] AA: “Vučić: Merkel was undoubtedly the true leader of Europe”, link: https://www.aa.com.tr/ba/politika/vu%C4%8Di%C4%87-merkel-je-nesumnjiva-liderka-evrope-koju-su-svi-%C5%BEeleli-da-%C4%8Duju/2363822

[4] RTS – Kurz: European integration is primarily a geopolitical issue, EU has to be a reliable partner, link: https://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/9/politika/4500970/kurc-evropske-integracije-su-pre-svega-geopoliticko-pitanje-eu-mora-biti-pouzdan-partner.html

On October 14th, the 9th annual Signal Festival will begin in Prague. A week prior to the spectacular event, visitors of Prague can already observe a number of interactive virtual installations. Thanks to a special app, beautiful works of art created by six different authors can be seen in the streets of Karlín since October 7th. Anyone can download the Signal Festival application on their smartphone for free on Apple Store or Google Play. The organizers designed the app especially for this occasion, with the hope that the guests would be able to experience art in augmented reality. It also contains a programme and a map of the entire festival which takes place from the 14th until the 17th of October, every day from 19:00 to 24:00. These days, interested visitors can discover art installations with their phones at Karlínské náměstí, Negrelli Viaduct, Kooperativa Headquarters, River City Karlín, Corso Court and Lyčkovo náměstí. The best time to visit is in broad daylight from 8:00 to 19:00, according to the recommendation from the organizers themselves. The new project was developed during the pandemic situation when the Signal Festival last year had to be canceled due to the covid restrictions. The organizers aimed to create a free open-air gallery of virtual art for all Prague visitors.

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Being a businessman and being a successful businessman are two very different things. Only the latter can maximize their efforts and make the most of the time and energy they invest in their company. However, there’s another thing that defines successful businessmen – the gadgets they use and the technology they rely on. And if you too want to turn from an ordinary businessman into an extraordinary one, this is precisely what you need to start doing as well. If you need some help to make that happen, here are five essential gadgets all businessmen should own.

Phone/laptop/tablet

These things are the basic combo when it comes to modern businessmen – if you don’t own a reliable phone, a powerful laptop, and a practical tablet, you won’t be able to take your business to the next level. You won’t be able to develop your business plans, communicate with your partners, get in touch with your clients and customers, follow your company’s social media accounts, and find new marketing ideas that might help you become better than ever.

Luckily, finding these things is easier than ever, and it comes down to the amount of money you can spend on these gadgets. That doesn’t always mean that pricier models are also better, but you need to do thorough research and find phones, laptops, and tablets that might work for you the most.

Portable battery charger

Whichever phone, laptop, and tablet you’ve chosen, you need to be able to use these things as often as you need and access them whenever you want. This won’t be always possible simply because their batteries aren’t as powerful as you’d like them to be, which is why a portable battery charger is a perfect addition to every new gadget you buy.

These come in all shapes and sizes, as well as different price ranges, which is why taking your time and paying close attention to their features is so important. Unless you do that, you’ll end up with a faulty charger that costs a lot but doesn’t get the job done – and that’s an outcome all businessmen are going to hate.

Wallet 2.0

Every businessman out there already owns a wallet, but do they own a wallet that comes with a bit of technology too? Well, unless they own one of those slim RFID blocking technology-powered wallets, they don’t have the right one. The best thing about these wallets isn’t their amazing visual appeal, but their safety feature – they come with technology that makes them totally safe and extremely hard to steal.

This sort of protection is something all businessmen are going to appreciate. And if you decide to choose an elegant metal minimalist wallet, you’ll get a gadget that suits you whatever you’re wearing and whatever you’re doing, which is why these are so popular with businessmen of the 21st century.

Smartwatch

Since you’re not just a businessman, but a man before anything else, finding enough time to enjoy your hobbies is vital in this day and age. This will help you take your mind off work and relax your mind, body, and soul, which is why hobbies are important. And if you’re into sports, you can combine your favorite hobby with the latest technological developments and buy a new smartwatch.

These things combine the precision of your traditional watches with the practicality of modern computers – all while looking very appealing and attractive. Again, you’ll be surprised to learn how many models of smartwatches are there, so stick to those that come with features that work for you the most, including your business communication and your email updates.

DSLR camera

This might not seem like the most essential gadget in the world of business, but it’s an irreplaceable one. A professional camera will help you capture every important moment in your professional life – and your personal life as well, of course – and it’s a gadget you can always rely on. Whether you’re getting ready for a business meeting or developing new marketing strategies, this is something you’re surely going to use every single day.

But, with so many cameras out there, finding the right model won’t be easy. It’s not about the money or the power – it’s about finding a camera that combines everything you’ll need into one compact and practical device. So, don’t be afraid to consult a professional photographer or someone who has some experience before you make the final choice.

These are just some of the gadgets you’re going to need if you wish to become the best businessman you can become, so make sure you check them out today!

By Peter Minkoff

Peter is a lifestyle and travel writer at Men-Ual magazine, living between Ústí nad Labem and Antwerp. Follow Peter on Twitter for more tips.

Throughout this year’s Q2, the Czech trade inspection has uncovered that 4 out of 5 online stores in the Czech Republic are violating the law in some way. The mistakes most often concerned the rights of consumers and, in particular, the fact that e-shop operators did not provide customers with information regarding product returns and out-of-court settlement of consumer disputes. This information came to light in a recently released press statement issued by the Czech trade inspection. It summarizes the findings the institution made during the 371 inspections it performed between the start of April and the end of June. During these inspections, the employees of the institution uncovered law violations in 287 cases and handed out 452 fines at a total cost of 2.64 million crowns. “The results of the inspections confirmed that there is still a high number of violations of consumer rights in the area of internet sales,” said the CTI director Mojmír Bezecný. This comes after online sales have rapidly grown throughout the covid-19 pandemic, as fear and government regulations moved some of retail business to the world wide web.

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THE ECONOMIC FORUM FOR FEMALE EXECUTIVES

9th – 10th May, 2022 | HOTEL ADLON KEMPINSKI, BERLIN | GERMANY

Welcome, this moment calls on us, individually and collectively, to collaborate and accelerate bold approaches as we rebuild our post-pandemic world to be more resilient, inclusive and greener. And as we navigate the “New Normal”, it is now more important than ever to join forces and strengthen our solidarity.

Therefore, I cordially invite you to join the Global Female Leaders’ summit where you will have the opportunity to engage in in-depth discussions with a diversity of mind, personality, background and experience on a range of crucial topics of business, politics and society. Take advantage of two and a half days full of action-packed conversations, new perspectives, questions, networking, and a lot of inspiration with a community of remarkable changemakers from all over the world.

You don’t want to miss this. It has been a long time that we haven’t met so I believe that like us you can’t wait to convene in-person again. See you there!

Sigrid Bauschert
Founder | Global Female Leaders
CEO | Management Circle AG

You can find all details in the programme here.

The traditional Czech alcoholic drink Slivovice, a plum-based fruit liqueur, is likely one of the staples of a night out in Czechia for many. However, even this product could not escape the large scale increase of prices throughout retail. The main producer of this drink, the Rudolf Jelínek distillery, reports the worst harvest of plums in 10 years. This year, the farming division of this company, which takes care of its plum orchards, has reported a harvest of just 150 tons of plums. For reference, they usually get a yield of at least 500 tons of plums each year. Fortunately, that will not mean that we will have nothing to pour in our shot glasses, but plums from elsewhere will have to supplement the demand of distilleries across Czechia, and transport of fruit at such a large scale will likely come with a hefty price tag. According to the director of the Rudolf Jelínek orchards Jiří Koňařík, the company normally fulfills at least 60% of its plum demand from its own or closely affiliated orchards. “Sometimes this share can be significantly lower, which will be this year’s case, at which point we have to cover our needs from suppliers, especially from the Balkans. There are fewer plums this year, but buying the required amount will hopefully not be a problem. Due to the smaller total crop volume in Europe and the shortage of workers for the harvest, the price of plums for processing has also increased by up to 50 percent. ” he added.

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There are always at least some children in the school canteens that hesitate to finish their meal. The big pile of leftovers then just goes to waste. The schools themselves are in charge of collecting the gastro waste, usually as an additional expense in their budget. Recently, a number of Czech high schools joined a new project intended to increase the amount of sorted waste in Prague. Exactly twenty-eight schools across the city decided to be a part of the innovative idea. The project will be funded by the capital city. Therefore, it is very convenient for the schools to participate as they previously had to deal with the payment on their own. Prague decided to create the mentioned plan after the release of a new law in January 2021 which states new restrictions for all Czech municipalities regarding the exact amount of recycled communal waste. As for now, approximately thirty percent of the waste collected in Prague is recycled. The introduced law aims to reach at least fifty-five percent of waste sorted in every Czech city by the year 2025. The development is currently just at its starting point, but the specialists expect the project to cover more institutes in the near future. Hence the leftovers from school lunches should be used for the production of biogases.

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The fall of Kabul to the Taliban, pre-negotiated with the US in Doha, Qatar, has launched yet another premeditated enterprise, as fruitless as the US effort to keep Afghanistan under its own control: so many IR scholars, pundits, and journalists, in all sorts of specialized and non-specialized publications in the US and Europe, are trying to prove that the 2021 version of the Taliban has not changed in comparison to the version of the Taliban which seized control of Afghanistan in 1996 and that they will again make Afghanistan a cradle for all kinds of terrorists. If they use facts rather than phrases, they commonly seek a confirmation of this thesis in the names of the 2021 Taliban leaders appointed to the interim government, the names which are not particularly different from those of the Taliban who governed the country from 1996.

Yet, all these experts (save the notable intellectuals such as Djawed Sangdel) have somehow failed to notice that the times have changed, and so has the geopolitical environment in which the whole overturn took place. Indeed, how can the Taliban remain the same, if the entire world has changed so profoundly, comparing the year of 2001, when the Taliban were overthrown by the US forces, with the year of 2021, when the US forces withdrew before the Taliban’s advance? No matter how rigid they are in their faith as a religious movement, the Taliban as a political organization had no choice but to adapt to the tide of change, if they wanted to seize and exercise power in a changed geopolitical context.

There are many symbolic signs of this new context which are directly linked to the second arrival of the Taliban.

First, both the Taliban and the US sat down to negotiate the withdrawal of the US forces and transfer of power to the Taliban, which signals that the US is no longer the same hegemonic power that refuse to ‘negotiate with the terrorists’, as the Taliban were characterized by the US diplomacy for so many years.

Second, the Taliban have adopted a different political philosophy, which gives precedence to diplomatic – rather than military – means, whenever the former proves more efficient.

Third, the negotiations took place in Qatar, a country that used to be the most isolated among the Arab countries due to its alliance with Iran, which shows that the Americans have accepted not only Qataris, but also Iranians, as mediators and potential partners.

Fourth, despite their ambiguous relations and deep ideological differences, Iranians have also accepted the Taliban as a potential partner, which is also mirrored in the fact that their only Arab ally, Qatar, played the role of the mediator and host to the US-Taliban negotiations.

Fifth, China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan did not close their diplomatic missions in Kabul after its takeover by the Taliban, which demonstrates that two global and two regional powers intend to cooperate with the Taliban-led government; moreover, that these four powers asses that they can benefit from such cooperation and accept the Taliban as a relevant regional partner of potential strategic significance.

Therefore, at the very least, the Taliban are not going to be so isolated as they were during their first incarnation, which will certainly open them up, for the first time, to various foreign policy options.

However, there is one important question that is rarely posed by those who write and speak about the Taliban. This question is the most basic one: who are, in fact, the Taliban and who actually created them? In a recent interview, the former National Security Advisor to the US President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, proudly admitted that the US intelligence agencies inserted a number of Islamist fighters’ cells into Afghanistan by the end of the 1970s, with the task to penetrate the territory of the then Soviet Union and perform military actions, so as to provoke the Soviet regime to invade Afghanistan.

The idea was to turn Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam-like catastrophe and thus bring the communist empire to a collapse. As we all know, the Soviets had fallen into that trap and the rest is history: they were eventually defeated and expelled by the well-organized Islamist fighters, better prepared for a guerrilla war than the Soviet army. However, no matter how Brzezinski now prides himself for this idea, it is well-known that its execution and implementation were in more than 90% left to a non-American agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, the country that was the most faithful British and American ally at the time. In an exceptional analysis Forever Friends? Pakistan and the Taliban Still Need Each Other, written by Zahid Shahab Ahmed and published in the National Interest, we can see it clearly:

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Washington approached Islamabad to become its frontline ally in a proxy war against the Soviets. During the Afghan-Soviet War (1979-1989), thousands of mujahideen were recruited from around the world and trained in Pakistan, and then deployed into Afghanistan. In addition to receiving billions in economic and military assistance from the United States, Pakistan expanded its influence in Afghanistan through close relations with the Afghan mujahideen as they later united into the Taliban in the 1990s. In 1994, Mullah Mohammed Omar founded the Taliban with fifty students in Kandahar. By 1995, the group’s control increased to twelve provinces and its size to 25,000 fighters. Due to its quick territorial gains, the Taliban managed to seize control of most of the country and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996. To date, their first takeover of Kabul is attributed to Pakistan’s strong backing.

Therefore, the Taliban’s recruitment from among the Afghani and Pakistani Pashtuns and their military training for guerrilla warfare and religious indoctrination with the mixture of Pakistani Deobandi and Saudi Wahhabi Islam are to be treated as a special intelligence operation conducted by the ISI, and the same may be applied to their military victory. Of course, this operation would not have been viable without adequate coverage by the American CIA and British MI6, and assistance by Saudi Arabia’s GID (General Intelligence Directorate). Thus, the Taliban and their hybrid ideology were created for a particular purpose and their heavy-handed policies upon the seizure of power also served a particular geopolitical agenda. It would go beyond the scope of this article to analyse in detail what this agenda was or might have been. Let us only notice that the Taliban in those times prepared the ground, both ideologically and literally, to legitimize the future American ‘War on Terror’, which has brought 20 years of continuous instability to the central part of Eurasia.

In other words, there is no reason to look at the Taliban as a genuine occurrence – they had been created as a proxy and were left with no option but to remain a proxy. Whose proxy, that is the only question.

There is no doubt that the second coming of the Taliban has been prepared and backed, again, by the ISI and Pakistan. On the operative level, the Taliban have clearly remained Pakistan’s proxy. However, in the meantime, Pakistan has totally changed its geopolitical orientation and switched loyalties. Initially created by the British Empire through religious partition of the post-colonial India and secession of a great piece of the Pashtun-populated part of Afghanistan, in order to enable continuous Anglo-American control of the heart of Eurasia, Pakistan found itself abandoned and cornered by its former sponsors and allies, when they invested their capital and geopolitical weight in the strengthening and rise of its archenemy, Hindu-controlled India. Of course, this was not the first time that the British-American axis supported India against Pakistan, just as they were supporting Pakistan against India. However, this time it happened in the context of the rise of the most extreme form of religious nationalism promoted by the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, designed to eliminate Muslims as a constituent part of the Indian nation for good, which would force Pakistan to enter yet another conflict with India over a definite line of Muslim-Hindu separation. Ostensibly, it was a rational calculation by the British and Americans, to support instant economic rise of India and foster a redesign of Indian policy towards extreme, religiously based nationalism, so as to make India capable and willing to confront China, as India’s old and their new geopolitical adversary. However, such a tricky game has only pushed Pakistan to turn towards China as a potential ally and geopolitical patron. Thus the British and Americans have eventually pushed Pakistan away and lost their most faithful ally, and China has been delivered an entirely new leverage to fundamentally change the geopolitical balance in Eurasia.

With Pakistan under the US-UK patronage and Afghanistan under American control, China had a huge problem to secure its most important strategic project, the Belt and Road Initiative, in particular its China/Pakistan and China/Central Asia/West Asia Corridors. Also, the direct access of the Anglo-American intelligence agencies to the very borderland of China, through their stronghold in Afghanistan and the porous borders of the post-Soviet Central Asian republics, made it possible to instigate China’s own ‘Muslim problem’ in the form of the Islamist radicalization of Uighurs in Xinjiang. This, predictably, provoked the Chinese regime to respond in an extremely oppressive manner, which almost put in question its relations with the entire Islamic world, especially the countries of Central Asia, thereby undermining the prospects for their participation in the Belt and Road Initiative. As this problem proved to be too difficult to solve on the internal level, China’s imperative was to take Afghanistan out of the American control and reverse this trend that gravely threatened Chinese strategic interests. In these circumstances, Pakistan’s well-known proxy, the Taliban, appeared on the horizon as the best suited instrument for that purpose. In this context, it is not difficult to imagine why the Taliban were so quickly and efficiently restored by the ISI and why they suddenly became so politically pragmatic and militarily strong.

So, the Taliban’s 2021 takeover was also decisively supported by Pakistan, as it had been the one in 1996. However, this time it has all happened in a totally different geopolitical environment, with Pakistan under China’s geopolitical umbrella, which implies a totally different geopolitical orientation on Pakistan’s, as well as the Taliban’s, part. Instead of serving the goals of Halford Mackinder’s doctrine of permanent destabilization of Eurasia, so as to secure British-American control over the world’s sea-trade routes, now Pakistan and its proxies have become open to promoting the opposite geopolitical agenda, the Chinese doctrine of building Eurasian land-trade infrastructure as an alternative to the Anglo-American hegemony over sea-trade routes. Such a doctrine, embodied in the Belt and Road Initiative, requires a long-lasting stabilization of the Eurasian geopolitical space, and Afghanistan occupies a strategic place within this constellation.

Of course, most the Chinese officials could do in their public activities was to keep the embassy in Kabul open, recognize the Taliban, and send their Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, to meet the Taliban delegation in Tianjin. On their part, the Taliban described China as a ‘friendly country’ and invited it to participate in reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, guaranteeing the safety of Chinese investments. However, there is no need to make guesses about whether the new version of the Taliban will really prevent various Islamist militant groups to penetrate China’s territory, as well as the territory of the post-Soviet Central Asian republics: this time, the Taliban have been resurrected and installed as a watchdog, to serve no other purpose than this one, so as to eventually make Afghanistan a part of a potential strategic alliance of China, Pakistan, and Iran. All in accordance with the Chinese strategic vision to make the Eurasian land-mass stable for transcontinental development of infrastructure, trade, and industry, designed to lead to economic, and eventually political, unification of the Eurasian continent.

Dr. Zlatko Hadžidedić
is the founder and director of the Center for Nationalism Studies, in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (www.nationalismstudies.org).

We are thrilled to cordially invite you to join our Virtual Fireside Chat with two incredible female leaders from our longtime partner and global leader SAP.

Thursday 14th October 2021, at 12 noon (CEST) – via Zoom

Intelligent Transformation –
Becoming More Resilient and Sustainable Enterprises

Guests:
Eva Zauke, SVP, Global Head of SAP Enterprise Adoption, SAP SE, Germany
Feiyu Xu, SVP, Global Head of Artificial Intelligence, SAP SE, Germany

As businesses navigate the new normal and technologies are changing at a very fast pace, the need to become more resilient and sustainable has become paramount. Leveraging the power of AI to rethink the approach to digital transformation has given rise to ‘Intelligent Transformation’ that can help realize business value while addressing some of the most profound environmental, economic, and social challenges of our time.

In this virtual fireside chat, hear from and discuss with SAP technology leaders and experts what intelligent transformation is all about, why it is the key to the future of companies and how to enable it. Gain invaluable insights and ideas on how to accelerate performance driven by intelligent transformation strategy.

Join us and get ready for an hour full of insights and ideas. Look beyond your industry for new inspirations to give your digital journey a meaningful push into the future.

Use this code to register for free: MEET-GFL

Please register here to join

• Netflix subscribers in Japan have access to the best-reviewed and most awarded TV and film content in the world
• The Czech Republic is second, South Korea is third, the UK is fourth and Switzerland is fifth
• The United Kingdom comes top when looking exclusively at countries with the best TV series

Japan’s Netflix library contains more top-quality TV and film content than anywhere else in the world, according to a new study by Uswitch.

The research calculated which countries have access to the best-reviewed and most awarded TV and film content by totalling the IMBD scores for every TV series and film in each country’s library. This was combined with the total number of award wins and award nominations and Uswitch then converted the overall total into a Netflix catalogue score out of a possible 100.

Where To See the Best TV and Film on Netflix

With an IMDB total of 27,284, more than 19,000 award wins and over 40,000 award nominations across its entire Netflix catalogue – Japan is awarded the maximum 100 Netflix catalogue points for its total score of 86,961, highest of all countries.

The Czech Republic is second on the list with a Netflix catalogue score of 97.61. In third place is South Korea with a score of 94.02, the UK has a score of 93.78 which lands fourth place, and in fifth, it’s Switzerland with a score of 94.74.

Interestingly, 50% of the top 30 list is made up of European countries, with the United States only just making an appearance in 29th place.

Netflix first became available in Japan in 2015, and the top five IMDB rated TV series and films in Japan’s library are: Breaking Bad (IMDB score of 9.5) Shawshank Redemption (9.3), Our Planet (9.3), Avatar: The Last Airbender (9.2) and Rick and Morty (9.2).

Read the rest of the article here.

On Wednesday, the Ministry for Regional Development of the Czech Republic sent out its first reply to the EU regarding the audit that found problems in the way our government detects conflicts of interests. Much information about the contents of this letter can not be shared publicly. However, since we roughly know what the EU wanted to hear, we can make some guesses about what the Czech government likely wrote to the EU. The European Commission requested a number of preventive and corrective measures from the Czech authorities to ensure compliance with the Conflict of Interest Act. For example, keeping a list of public officials and the companies they own or control. Or incorporating a methodological approach into the procedures addressing conflicts of interest in relation to trust funds. Czechia should describe its ‘ongoing improvement of the management and control system’ to Brussels and set a deadline for the completion of a specific action plan. Furthermore, the EU requests ‘re-verifications’ to be performed on 12 past operations together with a deadline for their completion. In the past, our government was already warned that it could lose access to EU funding if it were not to follow the guidance of the EU in this matter, which would be a massive problem.

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Many patients currently occupying hospital beds or those staying in quarantine may wonder whether they can still take part in deciding the future of this country by casting a vote. The answer is yes. Any Czech citizen who is unable to make it on October 8th and 9th and throw their election ballot in the box due to a reasonable excuse, they will be provided a proper opportunity to participate in the parliament election. People who will be in quarantine have two options to let their voice be heard. They can either throw in their ballot on October 6th in several drive-in voting stations in their region that will be open from 8am to 5pm or call the regional office which will send their employees straight to their homes on the days of the election. However, if an individual chooses the drive-in option, they will be required to bring in a certificate that proves that they are ordered to stay in quarantine. To vote from home, it is possible to send a request to the regional office up until October 7th. This option is suitable especially for the immobilized. Hospitalized patients or social services facility clients will be able to vote right in the certain institution, if requested. The election committee teams will also be visiting prison cells. The detainees can request to vote until the 1st of October.

Source

In January 2021, eight months ago, when rumours about the possibility of appointment of Christian Schmidt as the High Representative in Bosnia occurred for the first time, I published the text under the title ‘Has Germany Lost Its NATO Compass?’. In this text I announced that Schmidt was appointed to help Dragan Čović, the leader of the Croatian HDZ party, to disrupt the constitutional structure of Bosnia-Herzegovina and create precoditions for secession of the Serb- and Croatian-held territories in Bosnia and the country’s final dissolution. I can hardly add anything new to it, except for the fact that Schmidt’s recent statements at the conference of Deutsche Atlantische Gesellschaft have fully confirmed my claims that his role in Bosnia is to act as Čović’s ally in the latter’s attempts to carve up the Bosnian Constitution.

Schmidt is a person with a heavy burden, the burden of a man who has continuously been promoting Croatian interests, for which the Croatian state decorated him with the medal of “Ante Starčević”, which, in his own words, he “proudly wears” and shares with several Croatian convicted war criminals who participated in the 1992-1995 aggression on Bosnia, whom Schmidt obviously perceives as his ideological brethren. The question is, then, why Germany appointed him as the High Representative in Bosnia?

Germany’s policy towards Bosnia, exercised mostly through the institutions of the European Union, has continuously been based on the concept of Bosnia’s ethnic partition. The phrases that we can occassionaly hear from the EU, on inviolability of state boundaries in the Balkans, is just a rhetoric adapted to the demands by the United States to keep these boundaries intact. So far, these boundaries have remained intact mainly due to the US efforts to preserve them. However, from the notorious Lisbon Conference in February 1992 to the present day, the European Union has always officially stood behind the idea that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be partitioned along ethnic lines. At the Lisbon Conference, Lord Carrington and Jose Cutileiro, the official representatives of the then European Community, which has in the meantime been rebranded as the European Union, drew the maps with lines of ethnic partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, along which the ethnic cleansing was committed, with 100.000 killed and 1,000.000 expelled, so as to make its territory compatible with their maps. Neither Germany nor the European Union have ever distanced themselves from the idea they promoted and imposed at the Lisbon Conference as ‘the only possible solution’ for Bosnia, despite the grave consequences that followed. Nor has this idea ever stopped being a must within their foreign policy circles, as it has recently been demonstrated by the so-called Janša Non-Paper, launched a couple of months ago, which also advocates the final partition and dissolution of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Such a plan is probably a product of the powerful right-wing circles in the European institutions, such as Schmidt’s CSU, rather than a homework of Janez Janša, the current Prime Minister of Slovenia, whose party is a part of these circles, albeit a minor one. To be sure, Germany is not the original author of the idea of Bosnia’s partition, this author is Great Britain, which launched it directly through Lord Carrington at the Lisbon Conference. Yet, Germany has never shown a will to distance itself from this idea, nor has it done the European Union. Moreover, the appointment of Schmidt, as a member of those political circles which promote ethnic partition as the only solution for multiethnic countries, testifies to the fact that Germany has decided to fully apply this idea and act as its chief promoter.

In this process, the neighbouring countries, Serbia and Croatia, with their extreme nationalist policies, can only act as the EU’s proxies, in charge for the physical implemenation of Bosnia’s pre-meditated disappearance. All the crimes that Serbia and Croatia committed on the Bosnian soil – from the military aggression, over war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide, up to the 30 year-long efforts to undermine Bosnia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity – have always had a direct approval and absolute support of the leading EU countries. During the war and in its aftermath, Great Britain and France were the leaders of the initiatives to impose ethnic partition on the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and now Germany has taken up their role. In such a context, the increasing aggressiveness of Serbia and Croatia can only be interpreted as a consequence of the EU’s intention to finish with Bosnia for good, and Schmidt has arrived to Bosnia to facilitate that process. Therefore, it is high time for the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina to abandon any ilussions about the true intentions of the European Union and reject its Trojan Horse in the form of the current High Representative.

Dr. Zlatko Hadžidedić
is the founder and director of the Center for Nationalism Studies, in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina (www.nationalismstudies.org).

In today’s hypercompetitive digital marketing landscape, increasing brand visibility can be challenging. To put your website in front of the right audiences, you need to optimize it for search engines.

Before you invest in SEO, it is vital to understand what exactly it involves. In this article, we cover the SEO basics every business owner should be familiar with.

1. Getting External Backlinks from Relevant Sites is Essential

Off-site SEO tactics, such as guest blogging or local listings, are a crucial part of your SEO strategy. They increase website relevance, authority, and exposure. By writing guest articles on relevant websites, you also get noticed by wider audiences. That is how you increase organic website traffic.

Off-site factors heavily impact your rankings on Google. That is why you should assess every link-building opportunity. Whether you are outsourcing off-site SEO or handling it in-house, there are several factors to check. Some of them are the site’s popularity, domain authority, content quality, link freshness, and industry relevancy.

2. Quality Content and SEO Go Hand in Hand

A decade ago, SEO professionals did not care much about the quality of website content. They published keyword-stuffed articles without considering the actual quality of content. However, that trend has changed over the past few years.

Search engine algorithms are evolving at an astounding pace, and their primary goal is to deliver valuable results in a fraction of a second. They rank search results by their usefulness and relevancy to online searchers. In other words, if you want your content to appear high in the SERPs, make it beneficial to searchers.

Your blog content needs to be fresh, authentic, and informative. While it should be optimized for your top keywords, avoid keyword stuffing. Focus on delivering value to your target audience.

Finally, choose content marketing professionals strategically. They should understand the basics of SEO. They should know to perform keyword research and, based on it, choose the right phrases and article topics.

3. On-Site Optimization Boosts Rankings and User Engagement

When creating a website, hiring someone to handle your on-site optimization is essential. On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing web pages for specific keywords to improve search visibility and traffic.

On-page SEO includes practices, such as structured data, writing headers, internal linking with keywords, and meta tag optimization. They help you increase the site’s crawl rate, boost your rankings, and improve your visibility in local searches. That way, search engines will better understand the subject matter of your pages and rank you higher.

4. SEO Takes Time, so Combine It with PPC

SEO is an invaluable aspect of your online presence. It is an investment in the long run. However, keep in mind that it does not promise overnight success. It takes a lot of time, strategizing, and attention. While your success depends on a wide range of factors, SEO strategies usually show results within a 6- to 12-month period. That does not mean you will have achieved your SEO goals within this timeframe. However, you will see some measurable progress.

For new businesses aiming to boost brand exposure, combining SEO with PPC may be a logical move. While PPC carries no direct SEO benefits, it lets you cast your net wide. With it, you can appear in the SERPs faster and grab the attention of the right audiences. Once they land on your site and see the value of your content, they will remember you and keep coming back.

5. SEO Is an Investment in the Long Run

According to statistics, businesses allocate different sums of money to SEO. While some invest less than $1,000, others spend more than $20,000 monthly on SEO. The cost of SEO depends on the scope of the project.

Many small business owners consider SEO an unnecessary expense. However, observe it as an investment in the long run. By hiring SEO professionals and optimizing your website for search engines, you will boost your online visibility. Over time, you will attract new website traffic, boost conversion rates, and encourage repeat purchases.

Conclusions

Any decision you make regarding your company’s SEO strategy may make or break its success. So, choose the right techniques and hire industry professionals to help you boost your online presence right from the start. I hope these insights will help you!

By Peter Minkoff

Peter is a lifestyle and travel writer at Men-Ual magazine, living between Ústí nad Labem and Antwerp. Follow Peter on Twitter for more tips.

The unemployment rate in the Czech Republic has lowered to 3,6% during August 2021. At this time of the year in 2020, unemployment was reaching 3,8%. The statistics from the Czech department of Employment Matters show that the number of unemployed individuals applying for jobs has decreased, while the number of work positions keeps increasing. The analysts estimated an opposite trend as the economic situation in Czechia is still somewhat inconvenient after the pandemic. The further development of unemployment will be determined by the coronavirus situation throughout the upcoming months, but the rate is expected to stay the same or lower due to new graduates filling out job applications. The highest unemployment rate of 5,4% was experienced by the Moravian-Silesian Region. The Ústí nad Labem and Karlovy Vary Regions were also ranked high in the August unemployment research. As in the past years, the overall economic situations in these parts of the Czech Republic correlate with the number of jobless citizens. Pardubice region, on the other hand, shows the lowest unemployment in the country with 2,3%.

Source

Throughout the fall of 2021, prices of all baked goods in Czech supermarkets and bakeries are expected to rise at least by a few percentage marks. There are a number of reasons for this trend, mainly the rising cost of flour, transport and energy. The fact that bakers are demanding higher wages, since many other products are also getting more expensive, is at play too. This information was shared by bakers during the annual Days of Bread and the Bread of the Year competition, currently taking place in Pardubice. According to Petr Šedivý, the head commissar of the Bread of the Year competition, “As the price of wheat rises, millers increase the price, which ends up reflected in the price of bread. This also includes the flour required for organic products, cereals grown for organic products are already significantly more expensive. Yet, organic products will also increase in price.” He estimates that the prices of bread could rise by up to 10%. However, some small bakery owners are planning to increase their prices by at least 15%. One of these small bakers is Petr Křivka from Southern Moravia. According to him, “The price increase had to come, we want to pay the employees well, so we must reflect the prices of flour and energy in our pricing. Prices of pastry have to increase. “

Source

Historical circumstance left this colorful city remarkably intact. Thanks to first-class restaurants, outstanding hotels, and beguiling architecture, it’s become popular with visitors, who arrive in search of its ineffable magic.

With its obsidian-lined walls that narrow to a high, vaulted ceiling, the six-seat tasting room of the tequila company Casa Dragones feels like a sleek, pocket-size chapel from the future. Since it opened in 2016, it has become an essential stop in the Mexican colonial town of San Miguel de Allende, so I headed there my first night to pay respects to the tequila gods. Now I was sitting at the altar-like bar, admiring a long-stemmed crystal glass of Casa Dragones Joven, which the brand bills as a “sipping tequila.” Admiring her own glass was the manager, Eva Corti, an effortlessly stylish Italian with straight-cut blond bangs. “See how clear it is?” she asked. “No imperfections.” We passed our noses from rim to rim, searching out fragrances of citrus and spice, flowers and wood. Then we sipped, and warm tequila fuzzies floated through me.

After we’d done some more sipping, Corti told me about herself. Since moving to Mexico six years ago, she has lived in Mexico City, Oaxaca, Puerto Vallarta, and the Yucatán, but she said it wasn’t until arriving in San Miguel that she felt like she was home. The place has that effect on people. In fact, San Miguel de Allende was just named the world’s best city in the 2021 World’s Best Awards, topping the travel charts thanks to its exceptional architecture, revelatory hotels, and infectious sense of community.

Read the rest here.

As the population pyramid charts of 2nd world countries are starting to look less and less like pyramids, Czech Republic should start solving the many issues connected to this trend. Mainly, there should be an increased focus on pensioner housing, as the capacity of nursing homes and similar facilities in Czechia has been stagnant at best in the last few years. However, the number of potential customers is increasing each year. So, while the around 600 existing Czech facilities are almost permanently at 100% capacity, the government will have to start looking for new social care facilities for the elderly. While some such institutions are being built, keeping up with the demand through building requires long term dedication. Most of our readers surely know how a 1-year construction project can easily become a 5-year one in this country. Instead of letting their elderly loved ones wait years for a spot in a public social care facility, some families opt to enroll their mothers, fathers, grandmothers and granddads into privately ran care homes. Some experiment even further, and use smart technology to monitor their loved ones at their current place of residence to postpone their move to a dedicated facility. Nevertheless, both of the aforementioned methods are just quick fixes, which only a certain part of the wealthier population can afford. Hopefully, the government will shortly come up with a futureproof plan for preserving the dignity of those, who paid taxes to the state for much of their life, expecting a social security net at the dawn of their life.

Source

Weekly swap from 13th to 19th September in the Prague market in Holešovice

Are your closets brimming over but you are still convinced you have nothing to wear? Don’t want to spend much money on clothes? If you like to be supertrendy but at the same time you care about the environment and the impact of fast fashion on the climate, we have a solution for you: a new trend, the so-called swap (exchange of things). Come to the Prague Holešovice Market from 13th to 19th September and explore the First Sustainable Mall: Weekly Swap!

In Hall No. 17 you will find goods of high quality verified by the previous owners. You can get clothes, household items, books, and plants here. There will also be a variety of accessories, toys and children’s or sportswear. Besides all the original pieces, the whole week is full of very interesting program e.g., inspiring workshops and lectures.

This is not only a bazaar, but much more! On Monday 13th the launch of the new Czech board game Terra Futura will be held. The game was created as part of the cooperation with the international Game On project and Albi. All the visitors will also be able to play on site. The game takes players into the future, where they build cities and industry and strive to achieve the greatest possible balance between production and sustainability. At the end of the week, you are also very welcomed at a screening of the British documentary The Great Green Wall from the menu of the World on Plate festival.

“Terra Futura is a minimalist and pretty fast board game that has simple rules and a brisk pace, so no one will be bored playing it. You can play the game in a group of two to five players aged at least ten years old,” presents Viktorie Tenzerová from the organization Na mysli, which stays behind the Game On project and World on Plate festival. “Throughout the week, we will also organize guided tours for students from Prague schools. We want to show them how the swap works and that it is a funny and sustainable alternative to buying new things. The aim is also to point out how fast fashion is linked to climate change and why it is good to prolong the life cycle of the products. On Saturday, September 18th, from 6 PM, we will present the documentary The Great Green Wall as part of the program, in which the Malian musician Inna Modja and the audience starts an epic journey along the future Great African Green Wall. This is an ambitious project that aims to prevent the further desertification of Africa through greenery, which will restore the soil and secure the future for millions of people,” adds Viktorie Tenzerová.

Take what you need

As it was proposed, the largest part of the program will be one of the largest swaps in the world: the visitors themselves will bring things they no longer need and can please someone else. The organizing team will sort things out so that all visitors can choose things smoothly. It’s a playful way of getting things. One big advantage: you don’t pay for individual pieces. You simply buy an entrance fee, which covers organizational costs and the weekly program.

“The atmosphere at the events supports sharing, experience and bringing individuals and whole generations closer together. That is why the trend of swaps is reaching the hearts of the general public and those who do not know swap yet will sooner or later hear about it,” says Kristýna Holubová, co-founder of the non-profit organization SWAP Prague. “There are plenty of things everywhere, let’s finally be responsible to each other and to the environment and the resources we share, and finally to ourselves.”

❖ EVENT DECRIPTION ❖

★ The biggest swap ever, workshops and discussions on smarter consumption habits! This is the opening of the First Sustainable Mall!
★ We dreamt of a place where everything would be different from the traditional shops when we read articles about similar places in Sweden or Germany. That’s also why we introduced swap culture in Czech and Slovak!
★ Besides the main part – the biggest swap in our country ever – you will find lots of workshops, a programme connecting generations and showing solutions NOW AND HERE.
★ Are you ready? It’s up to us what the future looks like.

❖ WHAT IS SWAP ❖

Most of you already know:
Swap is about changing inappropriate gifts, good clothes, great books, preserved household needs. Throughout the SWAP we will receive good and function things! The better things you bring the more you can anticipate that someone will bring something you’ll appreciate and need too!

❖ HOW SWAP WORKS ❖

You get the ticket (https://bit.ly/30YemaO) and then you bring clothes, accessories, jewellery, small items and household items and you can take whatever you need or like for FREE. The number of pieces is not limited but be reasonable and get what you really like and need because that is the only way it can work.

❖ ENTRY ❖

190 CZK / 1 day
400 CZK / 3 days
600 CZK / 5 days

When:
September 13. – 19. 2021 everyday from 10.am to 8.pm

Where:
Pražská tržnice, hala číslo 17 https://goo.gl/maps/ZaLHgnB9qx4zDBtFA

Tickets:
https://goout.net/cs/jine-akce/tydenni-swap-prvni-udrzitelny-obchodak/mcevf/+gcetq/

International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES[1]) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, the Balkans and around the world. Dr Mohamad Zreik, PhD of International Relations prepared comprehensive analysis entitled “Afghanistan 2021: China’s Reaction to the US Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan” in which he analyses the reactions after the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan 2021:

China’s Reaction to the US Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan

US President Joe Biden has made a strategic decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, after twenty years of military presence under the pretext of eliminating terrorism and spreading democracy. Twenty years later, the Taliban has become more powerful and influential and has seized all the joints of the state and major cities easily and in a record period, which leaves many questions about the role that the United States was playing in Afghanistan and its relationship with the Taliban. Paradoxically, the superpower, accompanied by an alliance of powerful armies, could not eliminate an armed group not too numerous.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was one of the political promoters of the US (Western) intervention in Afghanistan, has expressed his shock at the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw military, and considered this decision “tragic, dangerous, unnecessary and idiotic.” Tony Blair led Britain to participate in the US campaign against Afghanistan in 2001 under the administration of President George W. Bush. In a scathing statement to the US leadership, Blair said, “the absence of consensus and cooperation and the deep politicization of foreign policy and security issues clearly weaken the power of the United States.”

Consequently, US allies feel mistrust in the absence of coordination and political and security cooperation on international issues of common concern. In the end, Blair recommended the US administration to develop a strategic diplomatic plan to put “maximum pressure” on the Taliban, and said: “We need to make a list of incentives, sanctions, and actions that we can take, including protecting the civilian population, so that the Taliban understands that their actions will have consequences.”

Some political analysts have argued that “US blood and money is wasted in the quagmire of Afghanistan.” Others view the decision to withdraw the military from Afghanistan as a terrible blow to the credibility of the United States: its credibility as a partner, and its moral standing in global affairs. However, President Biden indicates that the United States has returned with force again to the international arena. Will President Biden find a door for the United States to exit peacefully from the thorny issues that successive administrations have been involved in twenty years ago?

The current international scene is much different from the era of the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has become more powerful and possesses the second economy in the world, Russia has regained its strength and is working to form a Eurasian alliance, and Iran is expanding rapidly in the Middle East despite US sanctions. President Biden is aware that the United States will lose time and money in futile wars in the Middle East, because the imminent danger to the United States comes from East Asia and more specifically from China. Therefore, the United States seeks to increase its military presence in the Asia-Pacific and South China Sea, and establishing more political, economic, and military alliances in Asia with the aim of undermining Chinese progress.

International newspapers published pictures of evacuating Americans by helicopter from Saigon, Vietnam, fifty years ago, and recently from Kabul, Afghanistan, indicating that the US strategy has not changed since then. The context of international events today is fundamentally different from what it was in the 1970s. The United States – indeed, the West in general – is involved in many conflicts, but it is not the clear winner. The Afghan collapse could be a disaster, in the war known as the War on Terror. But Washington’s failure in the broader struggle between democracy and authoritarianism can be seen only as a serious setback. The main question is whether the allies of the United States, such as Israel, Japan and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, will feel reassured about the recent US decision, or will they be afraid and insecure about the future of their country, which is closely related to US foreign policy.

The Western model that promotes the spread of democracy in the world has proven its failure, which increases the chances of the Chinese model based on cooperation, partnerships and a common destiny without interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. Therefore, it seems that the Chinese model, one of its tools, the Belt and Road Initiative, is more attractive, has many economic benefits, and brings security stability. The US withdrawal may turn into an opportunity for China to fill the void and build strategic partnerships with this country rich in natural resources and with a distinguished geographical location between South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East.

US President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan in his address to the American people last week. For him, this decision reflects the rearrangement of US interests, and gives it a better position to deal with the new challenges of the twenty-first century, as he makes clear to allies and adversaries – on both – its priorities that determine if it will spend its resources here or there. Following the American decision, the foreign ministers of the European Union held an emergency session and criticism was directed at Washington, which is one of the rare times that Europe blames the United States publicly and explicitly, because what it did in Afghanistan may cause an influx of refugees to European countries, as it would return Afghanistan a platform for terrorism in Central Asia. “This era is over,” said the Latvian defense minister, “and unfortunately the West – and Europe in particular – is showing its weakness to the world.” German politician Armin Laschet, a candidate to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel, described the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan as “the biggest disaster that NATO has seen since its founding.”

The Taliban’s control of Afghanistan may bring to light the project of laying gas pipelines from Russia through the Black Sea to India through the territory of Turkmenistan and then Afghanistan. This gigantic project may change the world’s energy map, which may severely affect fuel prices. The danger here lies in the ability of the Taliban, if the pipelines pass through its territory, to control international energy prices to some degree, and to exploit this by manipulating the oil exchanges to their advantage. After talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Moscow last Friday, Putin said the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan shows that efforts by the West to impose democracy are futile. “It is necessary to end the irresponsible US policy, which aims to establish democracies in other countries according to principles that are incompatible with their societies, without taking into account historical, national and religious characteristics, and in complete disregard for the traditions in which other people’s live” Putin added.

The Chinese government has not yet taken a decisive position regarding what is happening in Afghanistan. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the Chinese government will take its position after the formation of a government in Afghanistan, but the Chinese government is open to communication and dialogue with the Taliban. The two sides showed their goodwill when a Taliban delegation met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tianjin. In this context, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that her country “maintains contact and communication with the Afghan Taliban.”

This US decision will have long-term repercussions and impacts on security and stability in Central Asia, Pakistan and the Middle East, and may affect the narrow Chinese borders with Afghanistan, which has a Muslim majority of Uyghurs. The effects may extend to the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. China is focusing on enhancing economic connectivity with Afghanistan by building the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, from which Kabul will eventually benefit. China-Taliban cooperation will deal with security, border protection with China, and non-use of Afghan territory for actions that endanger China’s security.

Geng Shuang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said several terrorist organizations, including the “East Turkistan Movement”, have gathered and developed in Afghanistan, hoping that Afghanistan will not become a “terrorist paradise again.” Through its contacts with the Taliban, China will seek to draw red lines, and confirm that the development of any relationship in the future depends on maintaining China’s security. The Taliban described China as a “friendly country” and welcomed it for the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan. The movement’s spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, said in a press statement that his movement will ensure the safety of Chinese investments in Afghanistan. For his part, the editor-in-chief of the Chinese newspaper, Global Times, Hu Xijin, believes that China establishes its relations on the basis of mutual benefit, noting that if China goes to Afghanistan, it will not seek to fill any void, based on its foreign policy, which raises the slogan “respect for the choices of the peoples of all countries.”

During an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council, China’s envoy, Chen Xu, said, “the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries should take responsibility for the human rights violations committed by their armies in Afghanistan,” adding, “under the banner of democracy and human rights, the United States and other countries are carrying out military interventions in other sovereign countries and imposing their own model on countries with a vastly different history and culture,” noting that this brought “great suffering” to the peoples of those countries.

The West considers the countries neighboring Afghanistan to fall into the trap sooner or later. British analyst Richard Kemp, a former commander in the British army, likened Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia to a flock of vultures, which will fall on the Afghan carcass after the withdrawal of the United States. For its part, China considered that it would not allow itself to fall into the trap of military entry into Afghanistan, which was the graveyard of three empires: Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. China considered that the arrival of the Taliban to the north-eastern province of Badakhshan, which is located on the mountainous border with Xinjiang province; estimated at 80 square kilometres, may provide a safe haven for Uighur Muslim separatist rebels. This prompted China to recognize the Taliban and hold talks with them with the aim of security coordination in the future.

The relationship of the Taliban with the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” and its successor, the Turkistan Islamic Party, is solid since the 1990s. They have established training camps in Afghanistan since the “jihad” against the Soviet occupation, and it remained strong after the “Taliban” took control in 1996 of 90% of the territory of Afghanistan. What increases China’s concern is that in 2020, the United States removed the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” from its list of foreign terrorist organizations, after the Security Council had designated it a terrorist organization under Resolutions 1267 and 1390 on September 11, 2002, for its association with Al-Qaeda. China considers that this organization may have increased its logistical and financial resources, manpower and weapons since Washington removed it from the list of terrorist groups in 2020. A report issued by the United Nations Security Council indicated that the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” is not only present and operating in Afghanistan, but also has a “transnational agenda”.

China will not neglect Afghanistan, as it is a strategic region on the Silk Road and a major economic partner, since the meeting of the Chinese ambassador in Kandahar with the leader of the “Taliban” movement Mullah Omar in December 2000, Chinese investments in Afghanistan began to increase and multiply dramatically, there are more than 100 Chinese companies, all affiliated with the Communist Party in various fields in Afghanistan, including oil and gas exploration, mineral sectors, communications, transportation and military supplies. In 2008, two Chinese companies obtained mining concessions in the “Mis-e-Ainak” mine, which was said to contain the second largest copper deposits in the world. China plans to build road and rail infrastructure projects between Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, and the Afghan capital, Kabul. So, the consolidation of China’s presence in Afghanistan will depend on Beijing’s success in reaching an understanding with the “Taliban”.

China will not fall into the trap of military entry into Afghanistan, which was the tomb of the three greatest empires, but will seek to intensify political communication and economic projects. China needs the Afghan land, which is rich in mineral deposits of copper, iron, sulphur, bauxite, lithium and rare earth elements necessary for the technology industry. On the other hand, the presence of the Taliban in power may threaten the security of the Silk Road, despite the Chinese communication with this group. The former commander of Indian forces in Kashmir, Deependra Singh Hooda, notes to the Washington Post that the resurgence of the Taliban is boosting the morale of Pakistan-based armed groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Pakistani Taliban. This makes Islamic militant groups more powerful and violent from Kashmir to Xinjiang. To reassure China, Taliban spokesman Muhammad Naim pledged that “the territory of Afghanistan will not be used to harm the security of any country.”

About author:

Dr. Mohamad Zreik is a PhD of International Relations, a researcher specializing in China’s foreign policy towards the Arab region, with a special focus on the Belt and Road Initiative, and has many writings and publications.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.
Ljubljana, 26 August 2021

[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN, New York, since 2018.

Human progress has always gone hand in hand with our energy development. However, it is nowadays unequivocally considered that our energy development and particularly our energy consumption is gradually leading more and more to the phenomenon of climate change. Looking at various studies, we can see that in the last 150 years, as our energy consumption has gradually been increasing, our global surface temperature over land and water has also risen by about 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In the last couple of years, these developments have rung several alarm bells internationally, so that as a result, various treaties, agreements, etc. have been concluded on a global stage. One of the best known and most extensive ones is probably the Paris Agreement. Following its magnitude and ambitious realization, the European Union then concluded the Clean Energy Package in 2019, in order to help push the implementation at the Union level.

The core content of the Clean Energy Package

Already in 2016, the European Commission presented the “Clean Energy for all Europeans Package” for the first time. It consists of four regulations and four directives, each of which were adopted by the European Parliament in the time frame from the end of 2018 to early summer of 2019. The package aims to make a significant contribution to stopping climate change, but above all, to usher in a new era of energy policy and to focus on individual citizens, by giving them a great deal of flexibility but also an impetus to take action themselves.

Among other things, the Clean Energy Package should simplify the process of switching electricity suppliers (in up to 24 hours). In addition, dynamic pricing and intelligent electricity meters will help to save costs and energy. However, in the event of impending energy poverty – quasi-droughts – the member state should then have the authority and it should also be able to regulate market prices at short notice and actively support and protect affected households. Furthermore, a support cap for environmentally harmful power plants in Europe is to apply from 2025. This measure will include all power plants that use fossil fuels.

The member states are also instructed to assess the risk of capacity bottlenecks, draw up national plans and to cooperate and support each other on a regional level.

Thus, ultimately, by 2030, in addition to the goal of gaining 32% of energy demand from renewable sources, greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 40%. At the same time, energy efficiency should increase by at least 32.5% and at least 15% of the networks should be interconnected on a Union-wide level.

However, in achieving these ambitious goals, the European Clean Energy Package envisages that one of the key segments should be the new format of so-called energy communities – which have been defined in the Renewable Energy Directive 2018/2001 and are to be implemented nationally in the same way as the other directive topics according to Art 288 TFEU.

Two concepts of energy communities

The EU has set two similar concepts of energy communities through its directives – the “renewable energy communities” (Renewable Energy Directive (EU) 2018/2001) on the one side and the “citizen energy communities” (Internal Electricity Market Directive (EU) 2019/944) on the other side. The idea behind both of them is to push the creation of communities that organize collectively and of citizen-driven energy actions, which will help to pave the way for a much-needed clean energy transition while moving the individual citizens to the fore. Let’s take a deeper look at their respective structure.

Art 2 sec 16 of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) defines a renewable energy community as a “legal entity”,

• which, in accordance with the legislation currently in force, is based on open and completely voluntary participation, is autonomous/independent and is under the effective control of the members or shareholders established in the immediate vicinity of the renewable energy projects owned and operated by that legal entity,
• whose members or shareholders are natural persons, local authorities or municipalities, or small and medium-sized enterprises,
• and whose aspiration is not primarily based on financial gain, but is to provide economic, social community and/or environmental benefits to its shareholders or members in which it is active.

Those communities have the right to collectively generate, consume, sell and store renewable energy. In addition, those entities shall generate a wider adoption of renewable energies, active participation in the energy transition, local investments, a reduction of energy consumption, lower supply tariffs, an improvement of energy efficiency and, in view of that, lead to the elimination of any energy poverty.

On the other hand, there is the citizen energy community, which was introduced by the Electricity Directive (ED II). It is defined in art 2 sec 11 as a legal entity,

• which is based on open and completely voluntary participation and which is actually controlled by its members or shareholders, who may be natural persons, but also legal entities (like local authorities or small businesses);
• whose main focus is not based on a financial return, but rather on offering community, economic or environmental benefits to its members/shareholders or to the local areas in which it operates;
• and may additionally operate in the areas of generation, supply, distribution, consumption, aggregation, storage and services (in the energy sector) for its shareholders/members.

At first sight, they both seem quite similar, but there are some fundamental differences. In short, citizen energy communities are communities that operate on a supra-regional basis and jointly use, store or sell their generated energy, and are not limited to renewable sources. Additionally, any actor can participate in such a community as long as shareholders or members, which are engaged in large scale commercial activity and for whom the energy area is constituting a primary field of economic activity, do not exercise any decision-making power.

Renewable energy communities, on the other hand, are regionally active players that are spatially limited to the generation, use, storage and sale of renewable energy, but will additionally benefit from lower local grid tariffs and presumably from a tax exemption, as they can operate on lower levels of the grid due to their geographical regionality. The renewable energy communities must be capable of staying autonomous, and also the participation of the members mustn’t constitute their primary economic activity. As a practical example, one could outline the following simple scenario: If 10 households in a locality join together to form an independent society, invest jointly in a suitable photovoltaic system and use the energy generated from it together, this will be known as a renewable energy community.

The idea behind the energy communities seems promising on paper, but the EU`s goals behind them are ambitious and require, in addition to the legal framework, a social rethinking of the European population, a steady backing of the state (at least initially) and, last but not least, the support of power-generating companies, without which the plan to generate 100% of the total electricity demand from renewable energy sources in the near future (and fulfilling the goals set for 2030 and 2050) will not be feasible.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges in this regard will be solving the question on how to create as many incentives as possible for every individual to ensure the establishment and participation in energy communities, since they are expected to hold a large share in the energy transition.

One of these incentives could be that the energy communities would also be regarded as companies for tax purposes and thus become entitled to deduct input tax. The rules for when a community is considered a business / or has entrepreneurial status for tax purposes vary somewhat from state to state. However, most of them follow the principle of the three fundamental pillars – permanence, self-sufficiency and intent to generate revenue. The new energy communities are fulfilling all three of these conditions. Especially the critical third point, namely the intention to generate revenue is met, since an energy community is subject to an exchange of services – electricity for reimbursement of costs – which altogether should ultimately suffice for the status of entrepreneurship, regardless of whether the revenue generation is in the foreground or not. So in my opinion the option for input tax deductibility should be affirmative. In such a scenario, a community could at least be reimbursed, (depending on the respective state) in Austria or Germany, for example, with 20% of the costs for maintenance, repair, purchases and thus make the model of energy communities even more economically attractive.

Another issue is the choice of the corporate form. When the EU announced the Clean Energy Package including the energy communities, it also stipulated that an easy entry and exit from the community must be possible for each individual. Of course, this also raises the question of which legal form to choose. The choice of legal form ultimately determines the organizational effort, the costs and the liability regime to a large extent. The legal form of public limited companies will probably be too expensive for small energy communities of private means and superstructure. In the case of limited liability companies, the strict formal requirements could result in difficulties with flexible changes of members, and in the case of associations and cooperatives, the ideational purpose must be clearly in the foreground, which could also become problematic in the instance of larger communities. Here, I think that real-life practice will show which legal form will prevail.

Likewise, the question of benefits vs. expenses is a valid one. From a purely economic and technological point of view, the entire power grid benefits from the fact that local energy communities are to consume the electricity where it is generated. This means that the electricity does not have to be transported over wide and higher-ranking network levels. This should also save the customers/members of such local energy communities a significant amount of money in grid fees for higher-level grid tiers. However, the question that is actually arising during the first implementation, is who and how exactly one would set up a simple, functioning platform where everyone from young to old, from technology aficionados to technology muffles can participate in this new way of energy consumption and exchange.

Several research projects are currently underway to solve these initial problems. It is already clear that a separate support and funding office is to be set up nationally (maybe even on a European stage), which is to serve as a kind of contact point for any questions from interested parties and is also to help and encourage the founding of energy communities in this regard.

With this in mind, many countries are considering the use of additional limited funding, for example, through special quotas and funding opportunities that are only granted for a limited initial period. In this way, first movers would ultimately generate advantages and, as an additional effect, it would likely be possible to achieve a greater influx to the energy communities right from the start.

Opportunities

Energy communities will allow us to combine technological innovations. The goal is to turn a user not only into a consumer but also into a producer, a so-called prosumer. Energy communities could soon be expanded to include other energy services, such as e-mobility concepts, where electric cars could also be used jointly as part of a car sharing system. In a further step, these e-cars could also serve as additional electrical storage units that can be supplied to the community via an intelligent e-charging station in the event of energy shortages.

Blockchain is also currently experiencing a big buzz in the energy sector. Just to name one example: This technology could be combined with digital platforms (apps) for energy communities in order to achieve better traceability and documentation by visualizing individual energy consumption, for example, and to create an additional incentive for the individual members of an energy community to save energy (competitions, prizes).

Through the implementation of energy communities on a large scale, the cityscapes will also have to change so that the broad masses will be involved as well. This opens up an opportunity to develop new innovations through broad public input and, subsequently, to work as a community on a sustainable city, community and region of the future.

Lastly, it is important to note that the Clean Energy Package and the goals it enshrines will also create many new jobs. Installations of megawatt solar farms on rooftops over agricultural land or between crops will provide additional revenue streams for farmers. The recycling of photovoltaic systems with a service life of 20-30 years will also offer a large, yet almost untapped, market of considerable potential. Experts expect up to 4 million new jobs created in the next 15-20 years in connection with the energy turnaround in the European Union alone.

As one can see, the goals are set high – it remains to be hoped that as many of these subpoints as possible can be implemented to finally achieve the great goal of the energy transition and the associated reversal of climate change in the upcoming decades.

About the Author:

Mak Bajrektarevic of the Vienna University of Economics. Besides researching legal and energy aspects of the contemporary world (authoring numerous articles and co-authoring the book on the topic for the US publisher), he is a cofounder of the largest university sports platform in Europe, ACSL.

References

• Aura Caramizaru, Andreas Uihlein, JRC Science For Policy Report, Energy Communities: an overview of energy and social innovation, (2020=.
• J. Kalkbrenner und J. Roosen, „Citizens’ willingness to participate in local renewable energy projects: The role of community and trust in Germany“, Energy Research & Social Science, Nr. 13, (2016).
• Kampman, J. Blommerde, und M. Afman, „The potential of energy citizens in the European Union“, CE Delft, Delft (2016).
• Bauern Zeitung, EAG soll Biomasse-Ausbau und Energiegemeinschaften ermöglichen (11. März 2021).
• Bernd Rajal in Der Standard, Stromerzeuger in Energiegemeinschaften willkommen, Der Standard (02. Dezember 2021).
• BMK Infothek, Mit Energiegemeinschaften werden Bürgerinnen und Bürger Teil der Energiewende ( August 2020).
• Boss Hummel & Wegerich, „Europäische Förderung von kollektiver Eigenversorgung und Erneuerbare-Energie-Gemeinschaften. Rechtliche Stellungnahme im Auftrag von Bündnis Bürgerenergie e.V.“ (2019).
• David Kotrba in Future Zone, Erneuerbare-Ausbau-Gesetz: Energiegemeinschaft mit Tücken (19.03.2021).
• Fellner Wratzfeld Partner, Das Gesetzespaket zum Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien – großes Potential für Energiegemeinschaften (24. März 2021).
• Friends of the Earth, „Unleashing the power of community renewable energy“, (2019).
• V. Nysten, „Die neuen EU-Regelungen zur Eigenversorgung aus Erneuerbaren Energien“, Magdeburg (2019).
• Jakob Pallinger In Der Standard, Regionale Strommärkte: werden wir bald alle unsere Energie teilen? (19. Oktober 2020).
• Jakob Steinschaden in Tech & Nature, WIR Energie: Kärntner bauen größtes dezentrales Sonnenkraftwerk Österreichs (20. August 2020).
• Jakob Steinschaden, „Tickende Zeitbombe“: Solaranlagen können zum Müllproblem werden (14. August 2020).
• Michaela Plazzo in EUWID, Clean Energy Package: EU Parlament beschließt neue Vorschriften zum Strommarkt (27. März 2019).
• Paul Nimmerfall, Bernd Rajal in der Standard, Schwierige Wahl der Gesellschaftsform für erneuerbare Energie (18. Februar 2021).
• eu, „Europe’s new energy market design: What does the final piece of the Clean Energy Package puzzle mean for energy democracy?“ (2019).
• Ruppe/Achatz, UStG Kommentar5 2 UStG (2017) Rz 20 mwN; Wind-steig in Melhardt/Tumpel (Hrsg), UStG2 (2015) § 2 Rz 74.
• Sara Grasel in Tech & Natur, Ourpower: Hier kannst du den Strom vom Dach deines Nachbarn kaufen (14. Februar 2020).
• Schönherr Newsletter, Neues EAG: Update zu Energiegemeinschaften ( März 2021).
• Stephan Cejka, Energiegemeinschaften im Clean Energy Package der EU, ecolex 2020, 338

If you prefer to pay in stores by swiping the magnetic strip of your bank card through the machine, you will probably have to find a new way to pay pretty soon. One of the main producers of credit and debit cards, Mastercard, is planning to completely stop adding magnetic strips to their cards in the next 10 years. According to the company, the main reason for this is the fact that magnetic strips were added to cards as the first prototype of a faster way to pay. Now, there are the much more secure contactless payments through a microchip, which are harder to abuse or tamper with. Thus, the company views the swiping of a card as an obsolete type of payment. Consequently, the company plans to slowly stop using magnetic strips from 2024, and completely halt the production of cards with them by 2029. The first market on which they are planning to roll out this change is the European market, which also includes the Czech republic. Since more and more people have started paying with cards, especially as stores preferred contactless payments during the pandemic, an evolution of this payment device will likely be a welcome addition.

Source

Before the new academic year managed to start, the Czech School Inspection released a report, focusing on the last year. That year of education was considerably affected by the pandemic, which forced students in and out of schools, while many of their families were also destabilized by the crisis. This shows in their results, as tens of thousands of students seem to have such problems with the material they were supposed to learn last year, that it will take more than a year for them to catch up, which could drastically hinder their academic abilities. According to the report, there are 14.5 thousand elementary school students, 22 thousand middle school students and 18 thousand high school students in this situation. During the inspections, the Czech School Inspection questioned school staff on what they think could be the reason for poor results. Almost always, the answer was ‘distance-learning’. The report elaborates on this by stating that while some students got worse, others also got better. This is further explored, when the report lists the possible reasons for this. While some students did not have the proper equipment or environment for online study, many just experienced apathy towards having to listen to a computer, and felt disconnected from their education.

Source

International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES[1]) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, the Balkans and around the world. Mak A. Bajrektarevic of the Vienna University of Economics, Austria prepared comprehensive analysis entitled “Decentralized energy supply systems of the EU” in which he analyses challenges and opportunities and of the energy communities in EU.

Human progress has always gone hand in hand with our energy development. However, it is nowadays unequivocally considered that our energy development and particularly our energy consumption is gradually leading more and more to the phenomenon of climate change. Looking at various studies, we can see that in the last 150 years, as our energy consumption has gradually been increasing, our global surface temperature over land and water has also risen by about 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In the last couple of years, these developments have rung several alarm bells internationally, so that as a result, various treaties, agreements, etc. have been concluded on a global stage.

One of the best known and most extensive ones is probably the Paris Agreement. Following its magnitude and ambitious realization, the European Union then concluded the Clean Energy Package in 2019, in order to help push the implementation at the Union level.

The core content of the Clean Energy Package

Already in 2016, the European Commission presented the “Clean Energy for all Europeans Package” for the first time. It consists of four regulations and four directives, each of which were adopted by the European Parliament in the time frame from the end of 2018 to early summer of 2019. The package aims to make a significant contribution to stopping climate change, but above all, to usher in a new era of energy policy and to focus on individual citizens, by giving them a great deal of flexibility but also an impetus to take action themselves.

Among other things, the Clean Energy Package should simplify the process of switching electricity suppliers (in up to 24 hours). In addition, dynamic pricing and intelligent electricity meters will help to save costs and energy. However, in the event of impending energy poverty – quasi-droughts – the member state should then have the authority and it should also be able to regulate market prices at short notice and actively support and protect affected households. Furthermore, a support cap for environmentally harmful power plants in Europe is to apply from 2025. This measure will include all power plants that use fossil fuels.

The member states are also instructed to assess the risk of capacity bottlenecks, draw up national plans and to cooperate and support each other on a regional level.

Thus, ultimately, by 2030, in addition to the goal of gaining 32% of energy demand from renewable sources, greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 40%.

At the same time, energy efficiency should increase by at least 32.5% and at least 15% of the networks should be interconnected on a Union-wide level.

However, in achieving these ambitious goals, the European Clean Energy Package envisages that one of the key segments should be the new format of so-called energy communities – which have been defined in the Renewable Energy Directive 2018/2001 and are to be implemented nationally in the same way as the other directive topics according to Art 288 TFEU.

Two concepts of energy communities

The EU has set two similar concepts of energy communities through its directives – the “renewable energy communities” (Renewable Energy Directive (EU) 2018/2001) on the one side and the “citizen energy communities” (Internal Electricity Market Directive (EU) 2019/944) on the other side. The idea behind both of them is to push the creation of communities that organize collectively and of citizen-driven energy actions, which will help to pave the way for a much-needed clean energy transition while moving the individual citizens to the fore.

Let’s take a deeper look at their respective structure.

Art 2 sec 16 of the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) defines a renewable energy community as a “legal entity”,

• which, in accordance with the legislation currently in force, is based on open and completely voluntary participation, is autonomous/independent and is under the effective control of the members or shareholders established in the immediate vicinity of the renewable energy projects owned and operated by that legal entity,
• whose members or shareholders are natural persons, local authorities or municipalities, or small and medium-sized enterprises,
• and whose aspiration is not primarily based on financial gain, but is to provide economic, social community and/or environmental benefits to its shareholders or members in which it is active.

Those communities have the right to collectively generate, consume, sell and store renewable energy. In addition, those entities shall generate a wider adoption of renewable energies, active participation in the energy transition, local investments, a reduction of energy consumption, lower supply tariffs, an improvement of energy efficiency and, in view of that, lead to the elimination of any energy poverty.

On the other hand, there is the citizen energy community, which was introduced by the Electricity Directive (ED II). It is defined in art 2 sec 11 as a legal entity,

• which is based on open and completely voluntary participation and which is actually controlled by its members or shareholders, who may be natural persons, but also legal entities (like local authorities or small businesses);
• whose main focus is not based on a financial return, but rather on offering community, economic or environmental benefits to its members/shareholders or to the local areas in which it operates;
• and may additionally operate in the areas of generation, supply, distribution, consumption, aggregation, storage and services (in the energy sector) for its shareholders/members.

At first sight, they both seem quite similar, but there are some fundamental differences. In short, citizen energy communities are communities that operate on a supra-regional basis and jointly use, store or sell their generated energy, and are not limited to renewable sources.

Additionally, any actor can participate in such a community as long as shareholders or members, which are engaged in large scale commercial activity and for whom the energy area is constituting a primary field of economic activity, do not exercise any decision-making power. Renewable energy communities, on the other hand, are regionally active players that are spatially limited to the generation, use, storage and sale of renewable energy, but will additionally benefit from lower local grid tariffs and presumably from a tax exemption, as they can operate on lower levels of the grid due to their geographical regionality. The renewable energy communities must be capable of staying autonomous, and also the participation of the members mustn’t constitute their primary economic activity. As a practical example, one could outline the following simple scenario: If 10 households in a locality join together to form an independent society, invest jointly in a suitable photovoltaic system and use the energy generated from it together, this will be known as a renewable energy community.

The idea behind the energy communities seems promising on paper, but the EU`s goals behind them are ambitious and require, in addition to the legal framework, a social rethinking of the European population, a steady backing of the state (at least initially) and, last but not least, the support of power-generating companies, without which the plan to generate 100% of the total electricity demand from renewable energy sources in the near future (and fulfilling the goals set for 2030 and 2050) will not be feasible.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges in this regard will be solving the question on how to create as many incentives as possible for every individual to ensure the establishment and participation in energy communities, as they are supposed to have such a large contribution to the energy transition.

One of these incentives could be that the energy communities would also be regarded as companies for tax purposes and thus become entitled to deduct input tax. The rules for when a community is considered a business/or has entrepreneurial status for tax purposes vary somewhat from state to state. However, most of them follow the principle of the three fundamental pillars – permanence, self-sufficiency and intent to generate revenue. The new energy communities are fulfilling all three of these conditions. Especially the critical third point, namely the intention to generate revenue is met, since an energy community is subject to an exchange of services – electricity for reimbursement of costs – which altogether should ultimately suffice for the status of entrepreneurship, regardless of whether the revenue generation is in the foreground or not. So in my opinion the option for input tax deductibility should be affirmative. In such a scenario, a community could at least be reimbursed, (depending on the respective state) in Austria or Germany, for example, with 20% of the costs for maintenance, repair, purchases and thus make the model of energy communities even more economically attractive.

Another issue is the choice of the corporate form. When the EU announced the Clean Energy Package including the energy communities, it also stipulated that an easy entry and exit from the community must be possible for each individual. Of course, this also raises the question of which legal form to choose. The choice of legal form ultimately determines the organizational effort, the costs and the liability regime to a large extent. The legal form of public limited companies will probably be too expensive for small energy communities of private means and superstructure. In the case of limited liability companies, the strict formal requirements could result in difficulties with flexible changes of members, and in the case of associations and cooperatives, the ideational purpose must be clearly in the foreground, which could also become problematic in the instance of larger communities. Here, I think that real-life practice will show which legal form will prevail.

Likewise, the question of benefits vs. expenses is a valid one. From a purely economic and technological point of view, the entire power grid benefits from the fact that local energy communities are to consume the electricity where it is generated. This means that the electricity does not have to be transported over wide and higher-ranking network levels. This should also save the customers/members of such local energy communities a significant amount of money in grid fees for higher-level grid tiers. However, the question that is actually arising during the first implementation, is who and how exactly one would set up a simple, functioning platform where everyone from young to old, from technology aficionados to technology muffles can participate in this new way of energy consumption and exchange.

Several research projects are currently underway to solve these initial problems. It is already clear that a separate support and funding office is to be set up nationally (maybe even on a European stage), which is to serve as a kind of contact point for any questions from interested parties and is also to help and encourage the founding of energy communities in this regard. With this in mind, many countries are considering the use of additional limited funding, for example, through special quotas and funding opportunities that are only granted for a limited initial period. In this way, first movers would ultimately generate advantages and, as an additional effect, it would likely be possible to achieve a greater influx to the energy communities right from the start.

Opportunities

Energy communities will allow us to combine technological innovations. The goal is to turn a user not only into a consumer but also into a producer, a so-called prosumer.

Energy communities could soon be expanded to include other energy services, such as e-mobility concepts, where electric cars could also be used jointly as part of a car sharing system. In a further step, these e-cars could also serve as additional electrical storage units that can be supplied to the community via an intelligent e-charging station in the event of energy shortages.

Blockchain is also currently experiencing a big buzz in the energy sector. Just to name one example: This technology could be combined with digital platforms (apps) for energy communities in order to achieve better traceability and documentation by visualizing individual energy consumption, for example, and to create an additional incentive for the individual members of an energy community to save energy (competitions, prizes).

Through the implementation of energy communities on a large scale, the cityscapes will also have to change so that the broad masses will be involved as well. This opens up an opportunity to develop new innovations through broad public input and, subsequently, to work as a community on a sustainable city, community and region of the future.

Lastly, it is important to note that the Clean Energy Package and the goals it enshrines will also create many new jobs. Installations of megawatt solar farms on rooftops over agricultural land or between crops will provide additional revenue streams for farmers. The recycling of photovoltaic systems with a service life of 20-30 years will also offer a large, yet almost untapped, market with considerable potential. Experts expect up to 4 million new jobs to be created in the next 15-20 years in connection with the energy turnaround in the European Union alone.

As one can see, the goals are set high – it remains to be hoped that as many of these subpoints as possible can be implemented to finally achieve the great goal of the energy transition and the associated reversal of climate change in the upcoming decades.

About author:

Mak A. Bajrektarevic of the Vienna University of Economics. Besides researching legal and energy aspects of the contemporary world (authoring numerous articles and co-authoring the book on the topic for the US publisher), he is a cofounder of the largest university sports platform in Europe, ACSL.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.

Ljubljana/Vienna, 24 August 2021

References

• Aura Caramizaru, Andreas Uihlein, JRC Science For Policy Report, Energy Communities: an overview of energy and social innovation, (2020=.
• B. J. Kalkbrenner und J. Roosen, „Citizens’ willingness to participate in local renewable energy projects: The role of community and trust in Germany“, Energy Research & Social Science, Nr. 13, (2016). 
• B. Kampman, J. Blommerde, und M. Afman, „The potential of energy citizens in the European Union“, CE Delft, Delft (2016). 

• Bauern Zeitung, EAG soll Biomasse-Ausbau und Energiegemeinschaften ermöglichen (11. März 2021).
• Bernd Rajal in Der Standard, Stromerzeuger in Energiegemeinschaften willkommen, Der Standard (02. Dezember 2021).
• BMK Infothek, Mit Energiegemeinschaften werden Bürgerinnen und Bürger Teil der Energiewende (28. August 2020).
• Boss Hummel & Wegerich, „Europäische Förderung von kollektiver Eigenversorgung und Erneuerbare-Energie-Gemeinschaften. Rechtliche Stellungnahme im Auftrag von Bündnis Bürgerenergie e.V.“ (2019). 

• David Kotrba in Future Zone, Erneuerbare-Ausbau-Gesetz: Energiegemeinschaft mit Tücken (19.03.2021).
• Fellner Wratzfeld Partner, Das Gesetzespaket zum Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien – großes Potential für Energiegemeinschaften (24. März 2021).
• Friends of the Earth, „Unleashing the power of community renewable energy“, (2019). 

• J. V. Nysten, „Die neuen EU-Regelungen zur Eigenversorgung aus Erneuerbaren Energien“, Magdeburg (2019). 

• Jakob Pallinger In Der Standard, Regionale Strommärkte: werden wir bald alle unsere Energie teilen? (19. Oktober 2020).
• Jakob Steinschaden in Tech & Nature, WIR Energie: Kärntner bauen größtes dezentrales Sonnenkraftwerk Österreichs (20. August 2020).
• Jakob Steinschaden, „Tickende Zeitbombe“: Solaranlagen können zum Müllproblem werden (14. August 2020).
• Michaela Plazzo in EUWID, Clean Energy Package: EU Parlament beschließt neue Vorschriften zum Strommarkt (27. März 2019).
• Paul Nimmerfall, Bernd Rajal in der Standard, Schwierige Wahl der Gesellschaftsform für erneuerbare Energie (18. Februar 2021).
• REScoop.eu, „Europe’s new energy market design: What does the final piece of the Clean Energy Package puzzle mean for energy democracy?“ (2019). 
• Ruppe/Achatz, UStG Kommentar5 § 2 UStG (2017) Rz 20 mwN; Wind-steig in Melhardt/Tumpel (Hrsg), UStG2 (2015) § 2 Rz 74.
• Sara Grasel in Tech & Natur, Ourpower: Hier kannst du den Strom vom Dach deines Nachbarn kaufen (14. Februar 2020).
• Schönherr Newsletter, Neues EAG: Update zu Energiegemeinschaften (19. März 2021).
• Stephan Cejka, Energiegemeinschaften im Clean Energy Package der EU, ecolex 2020, 338

According to economist Štěpán Křeček, this year’s holidays will very likely be the most expensive ones in history for Czech families. Inflation is high, Chinese ports are on the verge of collapse, and shops are increasing their margins. Those are just some of the reasons for these unfortunate news. The clogging of Chinese ports is probably the most important problem, as some goods are already begging to be very hard to obtain. This is happening due to the spread of the Delta variant, which has resulted in limited working hours throughout Chinese ports. These ports are a vital source of toys, clothing and electronics for Czech shops. Low supply and high demand is simply bound to make these items more expensive as the Holidays will approach. Also, after the pandemic, Czechs are expected to spend more on Holiday gifts, since the purchase options of many were very limited last year. Thus, the biggest shortage is expected in the electronics department, where chips are used, which are in shortage for over a year now. Ultimately, anyone who can is advised to buy their gifts as soon as possible.

Source

Together with the delivery of cooked meals, the industry of delivering separate ingredients for customers to cook themselves has grown massively throughout the last 17 months. Supermarkets were, are and probably will be considered one of the more dangerous places to visit for a person during the pandemic. All sorts of people from the nearby area visit there, they all touch the same things, and then some proceed to ingest them into their bodies. This can be very dangerous during the pandemic, especially if government safety regulations are not followed. Thus, people shop online more and more, and the Czech company Rohlík.cz seems to be catering towards this trend across Europe. Recently, they have officially entered the German market under the adapted brand name Knuspr.de. They now deliver groceries in Munich, and are set to start delivering in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dortmund and Koln throughout the next year. They work every day except from Sunday, and deliver between 7:00 and 22:00. On top of that, most products are sourced directly from farmers and other producers, skipping many middlemen. Apart from Germany, they already deliver in Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria. They plan to continue expanding across the EU, and with frequent multi-million euro investments, the company might be on the right way to becoming the number one grocery delivery service in Europe, despite being just 7 years old.

Source

Independent workers who rely on the tourism industry in Prague, like driver Valey, are struggling to recoup economic losses suffered during the pandemic, even as travellers slowly return to the city.

The father of two chauffeurs visitors around Prague’s Old Town Square in a vintage luxury car. For him, the lack of tourists has had a devastating financial impact on his family.

“I didn’t have a job for a year,” Valey said.

Prague was the fourth most visited city in Europe in 2019, according to Euromonitor International, with tourism activities generating more than half of the city’s income. The travel restrictions established last year because of the coronavirus slashed the number of visitors to Prague by over 73 percent, official city statistics stated.

The Czech government “told me to find another job” outside of tourism, Valey said. He added that he did not receive any financial support from the state during the pandemic.

Country officials approved 500 million crowns for travel agencies last year. However, the Czech Tourism Union said that the compensation wasn’t enough to support all 240,000 workers employed in the industry, many of whom are independent workers that earn money from commission.

Hash, a tour guide originally from Egypt, had to borrow money from friends and relatives to support his three children when the tourist company that employs him closed down due to pandemic restrictions. Now that he is working again, he is using his earnings to repay those debts.

See the rest here.

By: Sofie Kodner, Martina Kroa, Mihail Petrov, and Tereza Anna Štegmannová

In 1912 Czech Art Nouveau and cubist architect Emil Kralíček designed the Cubist Lantern during the rebuilding of Adam’s Pharmacy, whose facade overlooks Wenceslas Square. The one of a kind street-lamp is hidden on the secluded corner of Jungmann Square. Indeed, it is hidden in the very heart of Prague, and many tourists unfairly overlook it while visiting Prague.

The architect chose his favourite style, creating a lantern column of artificial stone in the form of truncated pyramids with a geometric pattern, and the metal base was designed as a figure with cubic facets. Trying to meet investors’ demands to spruce up the area and come up with a lightening solution near the Gothic arch that leads to the garden behind the church of Our Lady of the Snows, Kralíček designed the sculpture that turned out to be completely different from traditional city lanterns made of massive cast iron.

The street-lamp became a symbol of the popular cubism movement in Prague. Czech Cubism was developed in the beginning of the 20th century. The main source of inspiration for the Czech Cubists was French Cubism, represented primarily in the works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Many young Czech artists of the early twentieth century learned the latest trends in painting and sculpture while traveling to Paris and drew inspiration for their own work from them.

Read the rest here.

By Anastasia Linevich

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization associated with the countries of the United Nations, just released a report that confirms that human actions are major contributors to climate change. Although it was only the first of three parts of the report that came to light, focused on the physical basis of climate change, it already set in motion people who were until recently strongly opposed to climate change. And how does this affect the Czech Republic in particular? A lot. For instance, with lack of rainfall in the spring and too much rain during the harvest season, Czech farmers are already facing difficult times. This weather pattern is becoming more common in Czechia and it causes severe damage to agricultural crops. Furthermore, according to the report, the Central European region (including Czechia) is expected to experience extreme periods of drought and floods due to climate change. Czech Republic is positioned on the border of continental and oceanic climate regions, so weather fluctuations are rather usual, but they have never been as dramatic and frequent. The recent tornado that devastated South Moravia in June 2021 is most likely an outcome of climate change. Events like these are expected to start happening way more often in the near future. The melting of glaciers in the Arctic could also negatively influence the European climate. The warm Gulf Stream is the reason why Europe experiences a much milder climate than Canada on the same latitudes. The colder water from the icebergs suppresses the Gulf Stream and that could soon result in a complete absence of the stream. Consequently, that would greatly affect the weather of Europe – the temperatures would generally decrease and in some areas, the conditions might not be as suitable for living anymore.

Source

The past year has been a difficult one for many small businesses around the world, but the effects of the COVID-19 crises have been felt by companies of all sizes. Business leaders have been hard at work throughout 2020 and 2021 to stabilize their companies in the new normal and allocate financial resources towards survival, but some were able to direct resources towards innovation and growth.

Regardless of the industry you’re in, though, there’s no denying that now is the time to invest in new solutions that will solidify your position in the post-COVID-19 world and help you achieve better results. That said, it’s important to note that not all business-boosting solutions require grand monetary investments, and that you can achieve many great things even if you are working with a limited budget.

Let’s explore these opportunities and take a look at some of the key steps you can take to improve your business and achieve success in 2022 and beyond.

Adapt to the demands of the new normal

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the business world in many ways, but that shouldn’t matter so long as things return to normal. The problem is that the pandemic has changed the definition of normal in the business sector, and we can expect many trends that rose throughout the pandemic to prevail in the post-COVID world. For example, remote work was a business model that the majority of companies needed to adapt to in order to stay afloat, and we can expect it to persevere in the years to come.

Your focus should be to enable and empower your remote teams to do better work, and capitalize on the technologies and solutions that make remote work lucrative for your business. Now is the time to introduce better communication and collaboration tools that will allow you to run a seamless remote operation, which will also help your employees deliver better results while working from home.

Boost efficiency and output with automation

Automation is a broad term encompassing various software and hardware solutions that aim to simplify and streamline processes in a company, and lift some of the weight off the shoulders of your employees. While there are many advanced automation solutions out there that require significant financial investments, there are some basic ways you can introduce automation to boost efficiency and output in your organization.

The focus here should be on automating as many menial and repetitive tasks as you can, in order to alleviate some of the pressure off your employees and enable them to allocate their time and effort towards complex tasks. A clear example here would be to automate parts of your customer support department by introducing a conversational AI tool that will handle simple customer queries while your human staff handles the more complicated issues.

Migrate your operation to the cloud

Cloud technology has been around for a while now, but in recent years it has reached a level of sophistication and accessibility that allows businesses of all sizes to capitalize on this groundbreaking tech. There are many benefits to migrating your business to the cloud, ranging from better collaboration and communication, all the way to reduced operational costs and maintenance, as well as elevated security that’s offered by leading cloud providers like Amazon.

However, the biggest advantage right now is that you can outsource cloud management and get professional AWS cloud services from expert teams without having to build an in-house IT team and put numerous IT experts on payroll. This way, cloud computing becomes even more financially sensible, especially for small businesses operating in the post-COVID world.

Invest in your employees

One of the best things you can do for the future of your business right now, aside from investing in the right technologies, is to invest in your employees. Whether you are hiring new employees or empowering your long-term staff, you should prioritize employee development in your organization in order to build value for your business.

Keep in mind that your employees want and need to advance their careers, and if you invest in their professional development, you will set them up for success in the long run. Most importantly, they will be able to leverage their new skills and knowledge to take your business forward.

Build a positive company culture

Another great investment you can make is to build a positive company culture that will inspire and empower your employee collective to achieve better results. Employee retention has become a real issue nowadays for companies of all sizes, and while a decent paycheck and various perks tend to solve that problem over the short term, your company culture is what will inspire your best employees to stick around for the long run.

Over to you

Now that the pandemic is dying down around the world, it’s important to direct our efforts and resources towards business growth, expense optimization, and innovative solutions. Be sure to take these crucial steps to future-proof your business in 2022 and the years to come.

By Peter Minkoff

Peter is a lifestyle and travel writer at Men-Ual magazine, living between Ústí nad Labem and Antwerp. Follow Peter on Twitter for more tips.

Fights and injuries occurring inside large groups of people could soon be easier to detect, thanks to a new Czech-developed crowd surveillance system that analyses drone footage via the use of neural networks.

The innovative new system was developed through a joint research programme between the Brno University of Technology and the Czech Police, who have increasingly turned to drones to monitor large crowds in recent years.

Existing drones, however, are nowhere near as efficient as they could be, according to David Bažout, a fresh graduate from the university’s Information Technology faculty.

“Police drones that are currently used above areas of interest do not have any training data. No one is able to assess what is normal behaviour and what not.”

Bažout therefore decided to develop a neural network system that analyses drone footage in a way similar to the human brain.

Video footage recorded by the drone is divided into several smaller “cells” that are then analysed by the network which establishes a general picture of what is going on. A model of standard behaviour in the given environment is then developed, and any anomalies to the pattern are reported to the observer by highlighting the area in red colour.

Read the rest here.

Authors: Tom McEnchroe, Barbora Kroutilíková

International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, Balkans and also around the world. General Blagoje Grahovac is member of the IFIMES Advisory Board. In his article entitled “Europe is entrapped” he is analyzing the global trends facing Europe and the world today.

Europe is entrapped

1. Introduction

It is less important whether in appraisals of the new social-political processes there is more scientific ground or the laic comprehension thereof. It is important that the rate of those processes is far higher than the referent theoreticians have been predicting. Different kind of conclusions can be made today about the world as a “global village”. I am pointing out four of those which can have a great significance in consideration of geopolitical processes. Firstly, new technologies have made all the civilisation achievements in all fields accessible to almost the whole mankind on the planet. Secondly, the achievements in the field of democracy are intriguing to everyone, disregarding of the real value thereof. Thirdly, globalisation side effects are expanding and connecting faster than anything else. Typical globalisation side-effects are organised crime and corruption, neoliberalism as fascism and armed religious fanaticism. Fourthly, in the past times the role-models were in our surroundings. The role-models today are the ones from greater distances. Social networks are becoming the means in this conclusion. All of the aforesaid becomes a parameter of strategic significance in disclosure of geopolitical processes.

Based on the above, I repeat the thesis of this text saying: “Europe is fixed between three tsunamis: the first – neoliberalism as fascism; the second – organised crime and corruption, and the third one – armed religious fanaticism.”

2. Social-economical context 

The biggest advocates of globalisation were saying “Privatise, privatise, privatise!” Today, they admit they have been wrong. Here are few parameters of strategic significance which accelerate geopolitical processes on the planet. In the 1973, daily turnover of capital was 15 billion USD and today it has over 1.5 trillion USD; 47 multinational companies possess 40% of the global capital; 1800 billionaires keep 8% of the global GDP; 4 world’s richest men have more wealth than 57 poorest countries together; less than 1% of the world population has access to over 90% of the global capital; the number of inhabitants living from 2 USD a day has increased from 2.5 to 2.7 billion for the past 20 years; 1 billion people goes to bed hungry every night; one billion people has lost employment based on automatization and robotisation for the past 40 years, the second billion will become unemployed for the same reason in the next twenty years and the third billion within the ten years after; global GDP amounts around 80 quadrillion USD and the global debt is 175 quadrillion USD.

2.1. Lobbying as the most dangerous corruptive action 

Since the oldest legal theories until the recent time, lobbying has mostly been avoided as a term. The reason is very simple – its essential designation means “bribery”. Opposite to lobbying, all legal theories are very much dealing with bribery, which is sanctioned by criminal codes.

For decades, lobbying as the way of bribery has been very efficient means either in protection or in destruction of some companies. Bribery (better said “corruption”) becomes transnational by overgrowing of certain companies in multinational ones.

There is no dilemma if organised crime and corruption today are upper form of endangering most of the countries and that it has taken transnational dimensions. Lobbying has shown up as very successful means in different placements. In order to place themselves on the position table, it is inevitable to destruct someone or to weaken his position. From that point of view, in open and market societies lobbying is no other than irregular, amoral and even hideous act.

Nepotism as a corruption network has grown into political-party corruption network in non-democratic and partocratic societies. The question is whether in such societies an eminent expert in any field can become employed, if he or she is not a member of one of the ruling parties. Different from the political-party nepotism which has become the most dangerous intrastate corruption, lobbying is becoming a dangerous and a very erosive transnational corruption network. It is moving from the field of economics into the field of political interests. Inasmuch as the officials even admit lobbying, they always justify it by state and national interests. The actual truth is that their political survival depends on allowing lobbying, mostly from the tax payers’ money.

I do not have any dilemma that all of those from the Western Balkans, who are paying lobbyists, as well as their own lobbyists are part of the transnational network of organised crime. It applies to all officials from the USA and the Brussels administrations who accepted to deal in any way with hazarders and pests from the Western Balkans.

2.2. The origin of organised crime and corruption

Basic mark of military doctrines of the former Soviet Union was arming of military forces of their friendly countries through selling the weapons and along with it the Soviet ideology, too. Those doctrines had always been facing the resistance of organisations and movements fighting for greater democracy and greater human rights. Former KGB was the power which was clearing the path for Soviet politics to its final destination. The breakdown of the Soviet Union brought the biggest change, which has not been sufficiently analysed. Basically, several hundred thousand disciples of a robust and brutal KGB were suddenly left without both their country and employment. They were ready to cause large quakes. At the same time, in a very short period a large number of overly wealthy tycoons appeared, who objectively had fear from the cruel KBG. The “formula” was discovered – fearful and overly rich tycoons were connected to the cruel but impoverished KBG operatives. That was how oligarchy was created. Instead of export of ideology and weapons, they expansively directed themselves to the export of suspicious and filthy capital, and they have nowhere found resistance anymore. “Domestic” tycoons (especially in transitional countries) were expanding their space. Networks of organised crime and corruption were multiplying. Armed forces of those countries were becoming a burden to the new authorities. All the army property was first exhausted from them, and then they have become insignificant empty shells.

Former ideological Russian-Balkan-South American transversal has grown into a transversal of organised crime and corruption. It has connected to the leg leading from Afghanistan through Iran to the Balkans, and it has outgrown into Asian-Balkan-South American transversal of organised crime and corruption. In order to survive on that space, the mafias (as the army of organised crime and corruption) have built political ambient suitable for them. Filthy and suspicious capital moves offensively towards the space of Western Europe and North America, it is being registered in different manners, and then as the “Western capital” comes back to the Balkans, primarily to the countries with mostly Christian Orthodox citizens. The organised crime and corruption have developed a very strong lobbyists’ network from afore mentioned transversal. That network has become the most dangerous corruption network on the planet. It lobbies for political personalities which have matured exactly on organised crime and corruption. New politicians quite knowingly promote the new political doctrine, whose primary sign is loud narrative of Euro-Atlantic integrations, beneath of which the owners of filthy capital are performing occupation of economic resources of the Balkans. During the same time, the policies of the USA and the EU are being exhausted by how to reform the armies of transitional countries which are, essentially, serving corruption. A conclusion can be made with certainty that the policies of the USA and the EU on the Balkans have been outwitted in geopolitical sense.

The countries of the eastern hemisphere, among which the countries of the former Soviet Union stand out, are the largest generators of organised crime and corruption. Today it is ravening the whole planet as the Eastern Tsunami.

2.3. Neoliberalism is fascism

Neoliberalism is social-economical surrogate of the liberal capitalism. It has been organised in an oligarchic manner, planetary. The owners of large capital, non-democratic regimes and mafias are completely coupled. That fatal trinity has become the hardest protector of neoliberalism. Banks and financial funds all over the planet are mostly owned by that same fatal trinity. For the first time in history, the banks are more motivated that the debtors do not pay the debt off, but to service it tidily. The reason is simple – banks have safe mechanisms of credit insurance, so they enter into the rest of the property of the poor debtors through their uncleared debts. Debt has become means of control and domination over the impoverished. Saving of fallen banks has become a systematic killing of society, because that too burdens the citizens. Currency clauses in crediting are striking debtors as epidemic tumours. Debtors enter into a slavery relationship.

Troopers of neoliberalism permanently explain that the sudden world economical crisis should be blamed for everything and they constantly promise that the situation will get better. This phenomenon has been best explained by the Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman. Asked what he thought would have happened had we known all the issues related to the crisis in advance for years, he replied: “Nothing, it would have been all the same.” That exactly is the tragedy of neoliberalism. Even when you know something, you are drifting into your own illusion.

The madness of market economics has an epidemic ratio, wherein democracy, confiding in government, confiding in people and egalitarian solidarity suffer. Beside antifascism, those are exactly traditional European values. Saving, saving and only saving has become a motto of the occupant’s both political and economical doctrine, so the rich could exhaust even the last “pennies” left to the impoverished, in the fastest way. Neoliberal ideology has produced the manlike “beast” which you do not see, but you feel how it takes away your body and soul.

Audits and reprogramming of debts are being promoted as charity of creditors, and that essentially is nothing else but strengthening of their Superego. Sigmund Freud discovered the paradox of Superego – the more you conform to its demands, the more you feel guilty. Unfortunately, legalisation of all of the above stated is conducted through the parliamentary democracy, which is not able to protect the endangered majority from the ruthless minority. Self-organisation of the majority (in order to protect its bare life) is nothing else but desisting from representative democracy and is an introduction to the suspension of parliamentarianism. That is exactly the fascisamation of society. Max Horkheimer wrote in 1930 that the ones who did not want to speak of liberalism in critical manner should be silent about fascism.

In the history of human society there have never been less interstate wars but so many stormy social turbulences, in which an impoverished man is jeopardised in various ways. The planet today is not ballasted by wars between countries, but wars between the impoverished labour force on one and a brutal, vulgar, decadent and neo-colonial neoliberalism on the other side. Everything looks like revolutions, but formally there are not any. Walter Benjamin wrote long time ago that each fascism was the surest confirmation of unsuccessful revolutions.

The demise of majority in neoliberalism grows into an uncontrolled enrichment of the minority. A planetary war in which confronting sides cannot be detected has opened. In the defeated majority, people are largely suffering as individuals, but cannot realize who makes them suffering. Suffering of an individual grows into a collective frustration and the aggressor cannot be detected. The system is, actually, that vicious, invisible aggressor, which has generated different forms of radicalism. The ones who bribe or tolerate bribery are the greatest leeches of people’s blood. Worse than that is when you are fighting against the corruption through the system institutions and in a “democratic” procedure and then, through elections, you support that same party being embodiment of that corruption again. Formally, everything has passed through democratic procedure, but the “killers” of peoples remained as the authority. Corrupted Brussels and Washington bureaucrats mostly do not notice that.

Neoliberalism as fascism has been primarily been generated in the countries of the Western Hemisphere, but today is ravening the whole planet as the Western Tsunami.

2.4. Armed fanatiscism

The absolute authority on the planet today is in the hands of the above-mentioned fatal trinity. Conducted fascisation of society is a mechanism for maintenance of balance between the cold war and the hot peace. Religion has been very skilfully embedded into the mechanism of their absolute ruling. The politics has been elevated to the level of religion and the religion has become politics, whereby secularism of countries is directly collapsing. Both politics and religion are a true opium for the impoverished populous and it is easy to rule the intoxicated populous, all until the moment when some version of extremism does not boil out of it. The religious but armed one always grows into fanaticism. Unfortunately, we have already gotten it.

Neoliberalism has produced a planetary fascisation of society. Terrorism, as the largest visible problem of today, is being debated about with a reason and a worry. Different kinds of prefixes are being given to it. It has not been noticed that even higher evil than terrorism itself has appeared – it is the group or collective armed fanaticism with different ideological and religious backgrounds. Social hopelessness overgrows into a mass revolutionary riot. The armed one cannot be excluded. The cause to it is fascistoid neoliberalism, which has a systemic nature. To start resolving this evil, it is necessary to strike the most powerful ones, which prevailingly live a double life – the public one, mostly flawless, and the semi-public or the secret one, being characterised by their Superego, i.e. morbidity.

If an urgent, deep and wide change of social-economical systems do not get approached to, it will be difficult to avoid planetary cataclysmic changes.

The fatal trinity has succeeded in mixing politics and religion in most countries of the Southern Earth Hemisphere. When they inserted that mix into a socially endangered and frustrated mass, the armed fanaticism happened inevitably. Unfortunately, now as the Southern Tsunami it ravens the whole planet.

3. Implications

According to most parameters, the USA as the representation of the North American civilisation is still the wanted and promised land. If we analyse the foreign policy of the USA, we can come to the conclusion that it was both the inspirator and the creator of many democratic changes on the planet. West-East was the prevailing direction of that policy, and its reach was the whole planet. The foreign policy has always had a favourable reflection to the domestic policy of the USA. What has globalisation brought? Organised crime and corruption as one of the globalisation side effects do not bypass the space of the USA. On the contrary, from all the corners of the planet those too hit the vital national interests of the USA. The rate of changes in globalisation is such that the foreign policy of the USA does not have any more strength and means to follow the chain revolutionary processes. The USA today has become the most usual suspect for many issues. Some are charging the USA that (due to their own interests) they produce new crises, and the others that they do not provide enough support to the accelerated democratisation processes. For the first time in their history and due to too fast globalisation process, the domestic policy of the USA is more and more visibly bearing the consequences of the international processes.

I do not have dilemma that, beside all the difficulties, (after NATO) the European Union is the best product of all civilisations. If someone blames the USA policy to have the elements of imperialism or hegemonism, it is not to be said for the policy of the EU. The EU does everything to democratise the old continent, to make it safer for the people and to integrate it by the best democratic standards. Along with all problems, the results are there. But although the organised crime and corruption are the oftenest tools of non-democratic regimes, we can state with certainty that nobody is endangered as the EU is endangered by organised crime and corruption and by neoliberalism as fascism, as well. The EU politicians have not timely perceived that the organised crime and corruption (coupled with large capital) have become the top geopolitical means; that even small non-democratic countries have access to those means, and that some political circles outside of Europe are using those means for geopolitical aims. For their own “business”, those circles will in the future produce both terrorism and wars, which becomes the first-class threat to the EU. A model of the EU being arranged and organised as a multi-layered or multi-ring organisation is to be considered.

Russia is the space for which it can be said that has never in its history had democracy suitable to the man. Its policy has been evenly hideous for its own people, as well for the others. It has not been established whether more human casualties there was in all wars together (fought by Russia) or through the historical processes of disciplining its own people. I do not exclude a possibility that exactly the citizens of Russia could pay the biggest price of globalisation. When such (traditionally closed) state systems start opening, it usually happens through a civil war. Russia is in great lack of democracy, but has plenty of all resources. Resources aplenty can have beneficial effect to the authority (in transitional societies), but only until the moment when the impoverished and disempowered start noticing the output of the organised crime and corruption, and all kinds of injustice. Confronting that reality has always been revolutionary. Russia still has not found its state and democratic identity.

The countries which are systematically socially regulated and socially responsible have been left out of state property at one moment, by a too fast privatisation. The other aspect of this problem is contained in the fact that, in pursuit for a cheaper labour force and energy, the companies from those same countries have relocated the production to other and distant spaces. That is why the socially responsible countries have also remained without the fiscal (i.e. tax) profits, beside the loss of profit based on property ownership. The consequences are visible – regulated and socially responsible countries have significantly remained without mechanism for social reacting. Based on the relocation of production from the space of European countries to other spaces of the planet, the European work force, which can be deemed as the most trained one, has lost its work place. This also becomes the huge risk. Countries of Europe must preserve the higher level of independence in leading their economical policies.

Mafia clans today have more trained “headquarters” than the official ones are in many countries. The aforementioned fatal trinity does not lack money, and especially not the filthy one. They manage to penetrate any state systems, even those ones in North America and the EU. That “trinity” today both throws down governments and appoints governments to be political structures suitable for them, and then disciplines those same structures according to their needs. The fatal “trinity” is becoming the bearing architecture of intelligence work over the planet today. Instead of neutralising the intelligence work of the fatal “trinity”, the official intelligence agencies of many countries start to lean on the intelligence structure of the same “trinity”. That was how a very malefic inversion deranging the official authorities has been entered into. The mentioned “trinity” is the biggest threat to democratic countries and to the ones regulated by law. In the future it will appear as the producer of terrorist acts. They know that when an act of terrorism happens somewhere, the result is always the same: the authority is confused, citizens are scared, and the outcome of the fight is uncertain. That is exactly the most suitable ambient for mafia functioning.

There are no reliable parameters which could assure us that the process of globalisation can be controlled. The interest and only the interest is the proclaimed principle, which has become the foundation of all doctrines in the 20^th century. “There is no eternal friendship or hostility, only interests are eternal” was the ground in leading political doctrines of the 20^th century. It remains the matrix also in this 21^st century. This can be very dangerous. If it does not become understood as soon as possible that big social and political breakages can be precluded only by friendship between nations and countries, the civilisation cataclysms will be very difficult to avoid. Due to this, the principle that friendships between nations and countries (especially the regional ones) are the greatest value should be affirmed.

I am persistent in proving that the unmilitary challenges, risks and threats are, actually, the biggest ones. People who are performing high level of state duties still do not realize this. The proof for this claim is visible, because all the defence concepts and army models are adjusted primarily for defence from military forms of endangerment.

The issues are complex and have only been initiated. I will state my belief – there is no stable Europe without the Balkans integrated into Europe; there is no stable Balkans without stable Serbia integrated into Europe. Yugo-Region (countries of former Yugoslavia plus Albania) as one of the regions in the European Union is the best possible format of strategic significance as for the EU, also for the Ex-Yu countries separately.

4. The Conclusions

4.1. The whole planet is endangered by uncontrolled globalisation and Europe is fixed between the Eastern, the Western and the Southern destructive tsunamis. They are not confronted between each other, yet they act synergistically. After Europe, the whole North Hemisphere will be in the firing line thereof.

4.2. Monopolisation, unfair competition and uncontrolled globalisation can be stopped only on condition that the countries (as employers) return to the space of equal, open and market economics, in all fields of social and economical life. That goal is achievable only if the states (as employers) participate with at least 25% in all of those fields.

4.3. In case of larger economical crises, the states will be capable to socially protect their citizens only on condition that they achieve the goals from the clause 4.2.

4.4. Strong American-European-Russian partnership is necessary for defending the planet, but on new grounds. For saving the planet, this is of fateful matter.

Published in the July 2021 issue of the Revista ORBE – YAGU (Youth Association for Geopolitical Understanding) scientific magazine, Portugal. Published in the weekly magazine Monitor, Montenegro, in September 2016 

Ljubljana/Podgorica, 29 July 2021

Source: here

International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES)[1] from Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses developments in the Middle East, Balkans and around the world. Dr Maria Smotrytska is research fellow at IFIMES/DeSSA, a senior research sinologist, specialized in the investment policy of China. In her comprehensive analysis entitled “IFIMES Analysis of China’s “Belt and Road” Initiative: Genesis and Development” she emphasizes the importance of the initiative and its contribution to the cohesion of the countries of the 3 main continents (Asia, Europe, Africa) and the disclosure of their economic potential.

● Dr Maria SMOTRYTSKA, Research Fellow at IFIMES/DeSSA

IFIMES Analysis of China’s “Belt and Road” Initiative: Genesis and Development

Understanding the foreign policy and geo-economic strategies of countries, especially in such a difficult time when national borders are closed and the “militarization” of cybersecurity (Hopkins, 2012), becomes an important, if not vital, task for each individual country in its attempts to take its rightful place in building a new world order and development economy.

In the XXI century, it was impossible not to notice the rapid economic growth of Asia, given that the growth rates of each of the national economies of the region exceed those of the Western countries (Mudbhary, 2006).

For a long time, Asian countries have taken the best of both worlds, building economic relations with China, and maintaining strong ties with the United States and other developed countries. Many Asian states for a long time have considered the United States and other developed countries as their main economic partners (US Dep. of State, 2020). But now they are increasingly taking advantage of the opportunities created by China’s rapid development.

Moving away from Asia, let’s have a quick look what is happening in East Europe, or Central Asia, or Latin America, or even Africa. Most of the countries in these regions are struggling (Nedopil, 2021) to take their place in “the geopolitical game” in pursuing of the benefits that Chinese investment can bring. But what is the main core and nature of Chinese Investments or Chinese geoeconomic “One Belt – One Road” project? The answer to this question is still unclear for most countries seeking to join (Jiang, 2021). To understand the Belt and Road Initiative, let us also take a brief look at 10 key basics of this initiative:

1. Why and when was the “Belt & Road Initiative” (BRI) created?

The Belt&Road Initiative (BRI) – is an umbrella initiative spanning a multitude of projects designed to promote the flow of goods, investment, and people. The new connections fostered by the BRI could reconfigure relationships, reroute economic activity, and shift power within and between states.

The Scope of the Initiative is very big which makes it difficult to clearly identify the main initiative’s goals. Thus, the best way to understand the purpose of the BRI – is to have a quick look on its development phases, each of which has its’ own aim and perspective:

1. Preparation period (1990s – 2000s)

After fruitful economic reforms in China (1970 – 1980s: during Deng Xiaopin’s reforms which pushed forward the transformation of China’s economy), in 1990s with the implementation of the concept of “one country, two systems” (biggest offshore zones Hong Kong and Macao returned under Chinese jurisdiction), the strengthening of Chinese geoeconomics became even bigger. As a result, during 1990s – 2000s financial crises China was the only country with steady currency (while regional stock markets collapsed), being able to provide to the region a platform for further economic boom (Sharma, 2002).

After 2008 global financial crisis it became clear that Chinese stock market is stable and can protect the development of regional economies (Wayne, 2009). China is starting to play a dominant role in the region (shift from “country with closed policy” into regional leader).

2. Conceptualization (2000 – 2012)

While 2000 – 2010 were accompanied by stable economic development (export oriented), the development gap between Chinese regions was getting bigger, weakening the status of a strong regional (and further global) economic power (OECD, 2010). Due to these Chinese administrations was trying to work on ways to develop less developed regions of the country – started to think on creating a regional integration mechanism within Asia, where China would play the key supplier role. Starting from 2004 China is getting more involved into supplying activities in the region, expanding the production and manufacturing, logistic facilities in low-developed areas of the country (2004 – opening of TRACECA transhipment line; 2008 construction of the transcontinental highway “West Europe – West China”; 2009 construction of gas transportation infrastructure between China and Iran; the early-mid-2010s large-scale transport and infrastructural projects in Central Asia etc.).

In 2011, when US Secretary of State H.Clinton proposed the development of a New Silk Road with Afghanistan as a centre (US Dep.of State, 2011), Chinese leadership decided to step in and to move from individual projects to a large-scale Eurasian strategy (Wade, 2016). This decision led to the creation of the BRI.

3. Implementation (2012 – 2017)

The main role of this stage was to build a stable basis of the Initiative, which could guarantee stable economic and infrastructural development. While promoting the BRI, Chinese were concentrating on diversification and facilitation of regions logistics system. Another important element of this stage was the creation of economically strong financial base of the initiative (2013 – launching of the BRI initiative (starting budget USD47 billion) (Page, 2014), October 2014 – creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Silk Road Fund etc.). and Initiative’s promotion (by May 2015 about 60 countries joined the AIIB (decision to join BRI project).

While putting enormous amount of investments into regions’ (mainly ASEAN, Russia, Central Asia) transportation systems, Beijing decided to spare a profit and export products outside using already existent transhipment routes (through TRACERA, Suez, Malacca straights etc.). As a result, in 2013-15, 348 international projects were started, while volume of USD 24.7 bln., in 2015 Chinese investment increased of 37% compared to 2014 and BRI became a “process – brand”, the period 2016 – 2017, total cost of infrastructural projects is estimated at USD 60 billion (Korolyov, 2019).

4. Expansion (2017 – ..)

In May 2017 radical changes in the dimension and nature of the initiative happened (Liangyu, 2017):

• initiative is based on transport corridors leading from China to Europe and Africa;
• Continuous flow of FDI to Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East;
• launched the creation of new markets in countries along transit routes;
• radical changes in approach to FDI protection (Sejko, 2019).

These changes brought certain results into the development of BRI and China itself:

• in 2017 China put an additional USD15 billion to the Silk Road Fund (Jie, 2017).
• by the end of 2017 China’s trade turnover with partner countries increased annually by an average of 6% (WITS, 2017).
• 2019 – 2020 additional USD8.7 billion has been allocated for the needs of developing countries that were involved in the project (Lee, 2020).
• Estimated that USD 4 – 8 trillion will be invested in the BRI project by 2030 (BRI, 2020).

Thus, 2017 played a crucial role in turning the “regional integration initiative” into a new global level one.

To sum up, during Initiative transformation, its’ aims were gradually transforming as well:

• First Phase – to develop an approach for stable economic development of China;
• Second stage – to guarantee country’s positions as stable strong regional leader;
• Third stage – regional integration with expansion to neighbouring countries;
• Fourth stage – global expansion and occupation of the geo-economic space of minimum three continents.

Nevertheless, few general aims, which were there from the very first day of BRI’s implementation, can be identified:

• improving intergovernmental communication to better align high-level government policies like economic development strategies and plans for regional cooperation;
• strengthening the coordination of infrastructure plans to better connect hard infrastructure networks like transportation systems and power grids;
• encouraging the development of soft infrastructure such as the signing of trade deals, aligning of regulatory standards, and improving financial integration;
• bolstering people-to-people connections by cultivating student, expert, and cultural exchanges and tourism.

The end result of BRI should be the creation of a “Community of Common Destiny for Mankind” (人类命运共同体), defined as a new global system of alternative economic, political, and security “interdependencies” with China at the centre (zhongguo, 中国). For this reason, Chinese leaders describe BRI as a national strategy (zhanlüe, 战略), with economic, political, diplomatic, and military elements (综合国力), not a mere series of initiatives (People’s Daily, 2017).

Thus, BRI directly supports many elements of China’s national security strategy. At a macro level, it seeks to reshape the world economic order in ways that are conducive to China’s drive for Great Power status.

2. What does the creation of the BRI mean in terms of globalization?

While talking on the role of BRI in Globalization trends, its’ global and national scopes (impacts), should be empathized:

Contribution to the “world’s” Globalization:

• Transport and infrastructure development increases trade;
• increasing of connectivity;
• stabilization in monetary policy;
• stabilization of the level of security in the region;
• contribution to the cultural exchange.

Responding to global trends in globalization, based on the principle of mutual benefit and having a far-sighted perspective, BRI has several foreign policy strategic advantages that can contribute to the cohesion of the countries of the 3 main continents (Asia, Europe, Africa) and the disclosure of their economic potential.

Contribution to the “country’s” Globalization:

• BRI is intended to support the development and reform of all provinces and regions in China through involving them into global cooperation with the worlds regions;
• development and connectivity of China’s provinces and neighbouring countries;
• contributing to continued strong and sustainable growth in China while simultaneously benefiting from new commercial opportunities (See Attachment 1 below).

Attachment 1: Strategy on “Globalizing” of China

3. How does BRI relate to Xi Jinping`s government’s characteristics?

While thinking on BRI as a new trend in Chinese foreign policy, it is worth noting that it was the new way of thinking (and developing of the policy strategy) of The 5^th generation of the P.R.C. administration (Administration of Xi Jinping). His predecessors were mainly concentrated on inner policy of China (namely strengthening of Chinese inner market, economy and reducing the “development gap” between the Chinese provinces and cities) and further strengthening of China as regional player (late years of the Administration of Deng Xiaoping). New Administration (Xi Jinping since 2012) decided to take Chinese foreigner policy to next level, announcing the conversation of the doctrine of the “Chinese Dream” (improving of well-being of Chinese people within China) into proper international status (first regional leader, then expansion of BRI into at least 3 continents).

What’s more, no Chinese leader has done more globe-trotting within such a short time (first term 2012 – 2016, second term 2016 – …). Since 2013, president Xi has logged 28 overseas trips that brought him to 56 countries across 5 continents, as well as the headquarters of major international and regional organizations.

As a result of BRI implementation, at least in terms of two of China’s policies – bringing in (qingjinlai) and going out (zouchuqu) – Xi’s first term (2012 – 2016) already marked a new era in Chinese foreign policy. But there was much more to the new era than the flurry of diplomatic visits. Xi introduced four new concepts into Chinese foreign policy: a new type of major country relations (P2P diplomacy, bilateral diplomacy approach, hub-regions integration (ASEAN, CEE etc.), major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics (strategy of “blue water” (Koda, 2017), “diplomacy of straights” (Smotrytska, 2021) etc.), a global community of common destiny (strategy “Chinese dream” (BBC, 2013), and a new type of international relations).

Further, in 2017, while announcing the start of the expansion phase of BRI, Xi Jinping underlined again the importance of the balanced development of both China and BRI: “Chinese government seeks to

• “ensure and improve living standards through sustainable development”;
• it condones market “reform and opening” (gaige kaifang 改 革 开 放) and
• encourages Chinese enterprises to “go out” (zou chuqu 走出去) especially along the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (and Polar Silk Road in near future) (Smotrytska, Jul.2021).

Thus, it can be seen, that in 2012 new Chinese Administration (Xi Jinping) noticed that China’s relatively slow growth rate since 2009 has required a rebalancing of its economy away from investment-led growth and towards a more consumption-driven economy (SRS, 2019). The realization of this fact forced new Administration to think on other possible ways to sustain and develop Chinese economy, which further turn into idea of the creation of new economic integration mechanism in the region (and further continent) – the Belt and Road Initiative. The further phrases of its development have been commonly used in China to indicate the importance of this recalibration.

Meanwhile, because of Xi Jinping new approach of the development of China, the country gained a profound impact on global economic development (which, is safe to say, China has never had before).

4. Why does China seem to be focusing on African countries?

China is both a long-established diplomatic partner and a new investor in Africa (Wade, 2019). Chinese interests on the continent encompass not only natural resources but also issues of trade, security, diplomacy, and soft power. China is a major aid donor, but the scope, scale, and mode of Chinese aid practices are poorly understood and often misquoted in the press (since they mainly analyse Sino – African relations only in terms of “what does China gain out of these relations”). It will be fair to emphasize, that few analyses have approached Sino – African relations as a vibrant, two-way dynamic in which both sides adjust to policy initiatives and popular perceptions emanating from the other.

While analysing the main reasons of the development of Sino – African ties (within BRI or not), it can be underlined that China has four overarching strategic interests in Africa:

1.   China wants access to natural resources, particularly oil and gas. It is estimated that, by 2025, China will import more oil worldwide than the United States (Moran, 2010). To guarantee future supply, China is heavily investing in the oil sectors in countries such as Sudan, Angola, and Nigeria.

2.   a huge market for Chinese exported goods, might facilitate China’s efforts to restructure its own economy away from labour-intensive industries, especially as labour costs in China increases.

3.   China wants political legitimacy. The Chinese government believes that strengthening Sino – African relations helps raise China’s own international influence. Most African governments express support for Beijing’s “One China” policy (HK and Taiwan, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region are fully Chinese territories), a prerequisite for attracting Chinese aid and investments.

4.   China has sought a more constructive role as contributor to stability in the region, partly to mitigate security-related threats to China’s economic interests.

At the same time, African governments are counting on China to ensure political recognition and legitimacy and contribute to their economic development through aid, investment, infrastructure, and trade. To some degree, many African leaders hope that China will interact with them in ways that the United States and other Western governments do not – by engaging economically without condescendingly preaching about good governance, for example, or by investing in high-risk projects or in remote regions that are not appealing to Western governments or companies. Some Africans aspire to replicate China’s rapid economic development and believe that their nations can benefit from China’s recent experience in lifting itself out of poverty.

As one of the interviewers from African country noticed: “we (Africans) prefer to work with China, because if it (China) promises us (Africa) something (i.e. to build a highway or a plant, to invest in solar power facilities etc.) – it will do so, but if the same is promised by the US or Western Europe – we (Africans) will never see the results and furthermore will pay huge percentages and loans for nothing”. Afterall, it makes sense, as Central – East – European countries are mainly willing to cooperate with China because of the same reasons. Thus, it’s not surprisingly that not very high-developed (in terms of economy and infrastructure) countries are tempted to choose Chinese investments, over the Western countries or the WTO.

Thus, BRI, which mainly focuses on the development of large infrastructure projects, is a real hope for many African countries to fill their own infrastructure gap, with less cost and in a more efficient way (so far Chinese companies are top in logistics and infrastructure development and improvement) (Teixeira, 2019). As a result – as of September 2019, 40 of 55 African countries had signed some sort of memorandum of understanding or other agreement on the BRI (Development Reimagine, 2019).

Africa is also an important end user of China’s industrial overcapacities, particularly coal, cement, steel, glass, solar, shipbuilding, and aluminium, for use in BRI projects.

Also, it must be emphasized another, not necessarily official goal of BRI in Africa – geopolitics and geo-economics. Thus, with the help of African continent, BRI also increases China’s control of critical global supply chains and its ability to redirect the flow of international trade in the world’s sea. Central to these efforts are steps to open new sea lanes and expand China’s access to strategic ports around the world. Thus, while The Silk Road Economic Belt establishes 6 land corridors (or high-speed train and highways networks, oil, and gas pipelines), connecting China’s interior to Central Asia and Europe, The Maritime Silk Road (and possible Polar Silk Road) further establishes 3 “blue economic passages” knitted together through a chain of seaports from the South China Sea to Africa that also direct trade to and from China. (See Details in Attachment 2).

Attachment 2: Transhipment lines from Far East to Western Europe and Africa

African continent is of great importance to the implementation of China’s 13th Five Year Plan, a document adopted in 2016 that provides long-range implementing guidance in five-year increments, which calls for the “construction of maritime hubs” to safeguard China’s “maritime rights and interests” as it embarks on laying a “foundation for maritime Great Power status” by 2020 (GT, 2020). The centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, 2049, has been set as the year when it will become the world’s “main maritime power” (海洋强国). Accordingly, China’s drive to acquire port access and secure supply lines are likely to intensify alongside the expansion of the Maritime and Polar Silk Roads.

The Maritime trade routes help China diversify its supply chains and create a China – Indian Ocean – Africa – Mediterranean Sea Blue Economic Passage to connect Africa to new maritime corridors in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. (See Details in Attachment 2).

But it worth noting, that China’s return on investment from increased port access and supply chains is not only about economics. In five cases (2 of which are in Africa) – Djibouti, Walvis Bay (Namibia), Gwadar (Pakistan), Hambantota (Sri Lanka), and Piraeus (Greece) – China’s port investments have been followed by regular People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy deployments and strengthened military agreements. In this way, financial investments have been turned into geostrategic returns. (See Details in Attachment 3).

Attachment 3: Global BRI strategy: roadmap

Within this scenario one can trace the implementation of well-known Chinese geopolitical strategy “string of pearls” and “blue waters”, which is primarily aimed at protecting China’s oil flows, establishing the country as a global Maritime power with diverse interests around the world, and overcoming US attempts to block access to China or its access to the world’s oceans (Smotrytska, 2020). Due to this strategies Africa (namely Djibouti and Walvis Bay) have a crucial role in this strategy in terms of security.

In this aspect we can see that the African vector of Chinese “diplomacy of straits” is playing a significant part in Chinese foreign policy. In 2016 it was stated that in Djibouti (the African side of the Bab el – Mandeb, connecting the Gulf of Aden (and hence the entire Indian Ocean basin and the Asia – Pacific region) to the Red Sea and further, through the Suez Canal, with the Mediterranean Sea), in the port city of Obock, work on the construction of a naval base of the PRC began. This base will not only enable Beijing to control the Bab – el Mandeb Strait to some extent, but also will serve as a military guarantee of Chinese interests on the African continent, which is (for 2014) USD 210 billions of trade turnover and USD 20 billions of FDI (Wang, 2007).

The base in Djibouti allowed the Chinese Navy to increase its presence in the Indian Ocean and became a stronghold in the event of an emergency evacuation of Chinese citizens from Africa (TRT, 2021).

In addition to purely security issues, Africa is also a market for Chinese weapons (Hruby, 2016). From 2013 to 2017, exports of Chinese weapons to Africa grew by 55% compared with the previous five years. From 2008 to 2017, China exported USD 3 billion worth of arms to Africa. Algeria already purchases 10% of all exports of Chinese weapons, including warships.

Thus, Africa’s importance to China in this regard stems from its location in the maritime zone, in which Beijing hopes to expand its presence and project its power. Indeed, ten years ago, China could not penetrate the adjacent waters of Africa. Today, it is estimated that the PLA Navy maintains five battleships and several submarines on continuous rotation in the Indian Ocean. This is set to increase in the coming decades as Chinese rival – India – ramps up its own presence in the area.

5. What is the significance of the Belt & Road Initiative in Europe?

When the policy of US Presidents D. Trump and later Joe Biden has brought uncertainty to relations between the world’s three largest economic partners – the US, China and the EU, collaboration between official Brussels and Beijing remained one of the most important factors in world politics. Thus, Sino – European relations are one of the primary factors determining the development of the entire system of international cooperation in Eurasia.

Modern relations between the European Union and China are characterized by a comprehensive content of the bilateral agenda, which includes issues of investment, trade, economic, political cooperation, environmental protection, etc. Same principals can be applied when analysing Sino – European collaboration within BRI (EP, 2020).

An important role in these relations is played by the countries of the Eastern borders of the EU – the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. As a kind of geopolitical bridge between Asia and Europe, the CEE countries providing the Chinese side with large platforms for investment and development of trade and economic collaboration. Despite the geo-economic prospects, however, the CEE countries also pose as a considerable threat to the promoting of the BRI project to the West (economically unstable, lack of reliable infrastructure and logistics, high level of political instability and conflicts) (Smotrytska, Sep.2020).

Also, providing a strong basics for development of China – EU ties, Sino – CEE relations, at the same time, bringing higher level of uncertainly and fears to European business and political circles. Thus, while implementing BRI in CEE region and hence strengthening economically and infrastructurally countries of the region, China contributes to shifting of “political preferences and support” of these countries from EU-oriented trends to East-oriented (which in some point can damage European identity and unity) (Smotrytska, 20.9.2020).

An important characteristic of Sino – EU relations (which the EU leadership is not fully supporting), is that instead of seeking a “block-based” approach with the whole of Europe, China develops multiple arrangements and memorandums of understanding, resulting in a certain East – West divide, with more Eastern European countries being BRI members (Lucas, 2021). This complicated puzzle of bilateral arrangements ultimately favours a hidden growth of Chinese continuous influence in Europe.

Nevertheless, it can be underlined, that the improving of Sino – CEE ties within BRI requires deep collaboration on the principle of mutual complementarity of economies of the region. Such complementarity provides an important basis for long-term business cooperation, because only in the process of joint efforts to create the BRI will it be possible to fully overcome the underdevelopment of infrastructure in the region. The cooperation between China, the EU and CEE countries can also contribute to the balanced development of Europe.

While talking about BRI from European perspective, the most relevant infrastructural projects of the Initiative are railways and ports. The BRI’s investments in railway and port infrastructure will certainly influence trade relations between China and Europe by lowering transportation costs and increasing trade volumes. New connections will develop trade and have an impact on each European country’s trade turnover with Asia. Thus, it is estimated that “a 10% reduction in railway, air, and maritime costs increases trade by 2%, 5.5% and 1.1% respectively” (Wade, Nov.2016). Nevertheless, the effects of new connections should also be analysed regarding the specific composition of trade flows.

The maritime route of the BRI then is going to be the most relevant component of BRI both in terms of volume (93% of total trade in 2016) and value (61% of total trade in 2016) of goods in the Sino – European trade (Smotrytska, Feb.2021). This will reinforce the status of the Mediterranean and Southern Europe as the terminal point of the main BRI shipping route. (See Details in Attachment 4).

Also, the new shift in Sino – EU relations within BRI were intensified by the parallel impact of three concurrent factors:

• expansion of the Suez Canal in August 2015 that doubled the daily capacity of cargo transit;
• emerging “naval gigantism”, or the strategic use by the main shipping companies of huge vessels (between 13,000 and 22,000 TEU) that can only be hosted by the Suez Canal;
• acceleration of global alliances made by shipping companies to reinforce their economies of scale, as in the case of the Ocean Alliance, consisted of the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), CMA CGM from France, Evergreen from Chinese Taiwan, and OOCL from Chinese Hong Kong, which controls 35% of the Europe – Far East route trade and 40% of the transpacific route trade (Prodi & Fardella, 2018).

These three concurrent phenomena (i.e., Suez enlargement, naval gigantism, and global alliances) are progressively reinforcing the competitive advantage of the Europe – Far East route, making it even more convenient than the transpacific route for the Chinese cargo directed towards the American north-eastern coast. These processes provide the European Mediterranean with an unprecedented “centrality” within both of China’s most important trade segments with Europe and the US.

Attachment 4: Projects presented under the EU – China Connectivity Platform. Projects in EU Member States

6. Why are there concerns about the expansion of Chinese trade routes? What threats BRI poses to other countries?

As any other project, global scope of the BRI reserves not only big number of opportunities, but also high level of uncertainly and challenges. Thus, the main groups of risks are as follows:

1. Environmental risks:

• BRI transport infrastructure is estimated to increase carbon dioxide emissions by 0.3 % worldwide – but by 7 % or more in some countries as production expands in sectors with higher emissions (Raiser & Ruta, 2019).
• creating bottlenecks in cold waters (Straits of Malacca and Singapore, Suez, Gibraltar, Panama, etc.;) (WowShack, 2017)
• interferes in Arctic and Antarctic circles (melting of ice, global warming);
• oil spills (mainly Indian ocean);
• biodiversity loss (mainly South-Asia waters) (Eldridge et al., 2014).

2. Social Risks: 

• An influx of workers related to an infrastructure project could create risks of gender-based violence, sexually transmitted diseases, and social tensions.
• Increasing of development gap (between world regions and countries).

1. Monopolization risks: 

• There are examples of Chinese companies using the terms of a contract for financing the construction of infrastructure facilities to obtain, if possible, control over the recipient companies. For example, under the terms of the financing agreement, if the construction and commissioning of the facility is delayed, control of the foreign partner company passes to the Chinese company.
• countries’ technologies degradation (while implementing projects China prefer to use its manpower, raw materials, and technologies).

4. Governance Risks: 

• Moving toward international good practices such as open and transparent public procurement would increase the likelihood that BRI projects are allocated to the firms best placed to implement them;
• absence of clear and stable policies transparency;
• interfere in territorial sovereignty of the countries (best example – countries of South-East Asia, Pakistan, Ukraine);
• inconsistency in legal and financial policies due to political instability in countries participants (best example – Myanmar, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Kashmir).

5. Business risks: 

• BRI countries have more restrictive and burdensome FDI policies than high-income OECD countries, in terms of starting a foreign business, accessing industrial land, and arbitrating commercial disputes (Ruta, 2018);
• Risk of losing control over project (if country can’t cover the dept – construction company (China) can take over the facility/project/profits);
• corruption risks.

6. Debt Sustainability Risks: 

• Among the 43 corridor economies for which detailed data is available, 12 – most of which already face elevated debt levels – could suffer a further medium-term deterioration in their outlook for debt sustainability;
• FDI to projects exceeds country’s GDP (Best examples: B&H, Cambodia, Laos, Greece, Djibouti)

And the last group of risks can be identified in its geo-economic and geopolitical scope (should be noted that this group is a basic of majority of fears about the expansion of the BRI (especially from the EU, the US, and Indian perspectives)):

7. Geopolitical and geo-economic risks:

7.1. Geostrategic aspect:

–     the project is consistent with the logic of the classical geopolitical Formula: “…who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world”;

–     creating “fulcrums” within strategical transportation hubs (CEE, ASEAN region, Gwadar, Djibouti etc.) through over the world;

–     takes control over Indian Ocean: the realization of the idea of building the Kra – Canal (The Thai Canal through the Malacca Peninsula of Thailand), connecting the Pacific (Siamsky Bay) and the Indian (Andaman Sea) oceans.

–     according to the long-standing tradition of the “Chinese box” (foreign policy strategies “string of pearls”, “blue water”, etc.), the main geopolitical goal of the Chinese project is gradually revealed to the outside world:

• 2013 – 2017: gradual opening of foreign policy and economic objectives;
• 2017 – …: entering the path of reaching the main goal (creating a large Eurasian multidimensional space with a huge consumer market)

7.2. Resource’s aspect:

–     within Maritime Silk Road (MSR) the construction of oil and gas pipelines from the coast of the Arabian Sea to China’s Xinjiang provides stable oil imports bypassing the Strait of Malacca (hence not controlled by the US and India);

–     within Polar SR get access to resources-rich Arctic region (gas and oil);

–     within land BRI get access to resources of Eurasia and receive massive discounts on the import of gas (from Central Asia mainly);

–     within Polar SR along the Northern Sea Route in the Arctic, facilitate increased resource extraction and cargo deliveries, as well as tourism and scientific opportunities;

–     As a result, second quarter of 2021: Total FDI Energy – 44 %, transport – 30% (considering Pandemic impact) (UNSTAD, 2021).

7.3. Military aspect:

–     Within MSR places military bases and electronic intelligence facilities in friendly Southeast Asian countries (Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh) ;

–     the deployment of a naval base and electronic intelligence station in Gwadar (on the Makranska coast of Baluchistan (Pakistan)) will ensure the security of oil imports from Iran and control the transportation of oil from the Persian Gulf zone to India;

–     Development diplomacy of Straights (strategies “string of pearls”, “blue water”, etc.);

–     the construction of a naval base in Djibouti allows to take under control imports of oil (the Bab – el Mandeb and Hormuz Straits) and gives military guarantees of Chinese interests on the African continent;

–     control over South China Sea and partially Indian Ocean (to control oil/gas import) (Smotrytska, 2021).

7.4. Geo-economic aspect:

–     A multidimensional model of regional cooperation will expand the geo-economic space for development by forming the following areas (corridors):

1. Transport Corridor,

2. Energy Corridor,

3. shopping corridor,

4. Cyber and Information corridor,

5. Scientific and technical cooperation,

6. Agricultural development,

7. Cultural exchange

8. Increase educational and career opportunities,

9. Tourism Development,

10. security and political interaction.

–     BRI, MSR and Polar SR along with the creation of Port outposts in ASEAN, Africa and CEE indicates intentions to take soft “economic” control over the whole of Eurasia and Africa.

8. Which BRICS members will take more advantage of the new BRI structures?

An obvious winner (from BRICS) of new structure is China. Thus, few aspects can be underlined during the analysis of an impact of BRI on separate nation:

• A large global economy such as China will almost inevitably gain market power through its economic size and its importance as a trading partner;
• Increasing the speed of the extension of use of Chinese goods, technologies and investments abroad (export not only of goods, but factories), gaining power through FDI and “shares” approach;
• In the last quarter of 2020, China’s trade with Belt and Road countries increased by 3.2%, almost 10% points higher than the overall negative growth rate of China’s foreign trade volume (Kuhn, 2020);
• BRI is expected to boost China’s GDP by 0.3% every year over a 10-year period, and provide access to new resource-rich markets and trade routes, and reduce its reliance on existing ones (UN, 2020);
• Chinese companies are entering the banking, technology, and retail sectors in BRI markets through 3 continents. Globalizing their economy and extending borders of country’s geoeconomics influence.

And that’s only talking in economical aspect, without mentioning the infrastructure, geopolitical impact, and geo-economic and cultural expansion.

Even though it is worth noting numerous benefits for Russia, South Africa (especially considering countries’ poor economic development, unsatisfactory logistics and Russian – Ukrainian crisis), outcomes for Brazil (which is rather distant player) and India (which rather loses than gains from the BRI), China remains the main “BRICS beneficial” of the BRI. 

9. Which countries will benefit the most from the BRI?

As BRI became a “process – brand”, the number of countries which could benefit from the Initiative grew gradually:

• Western Europe (Brattberg & Soula, 2018) and Latin America (Boo & de Los Heros ,2020) are expected to gain significantly in terms of economic development. Local companies, especially those involved in trade, logistics and construction, stand to benefit as the region begins to recognize the benefits of being a BRI hub;
• Central – East Europe: Development of energetic, logistics fields allow the region to strengthen its’ position within the EU as an important logistics hub of Europe, at the same time bringing energy Independence for majority of the countries of the region (Smotrytska, 20.9.2020);
• in Africa, as of late 2020, over 90 BRI-linked projects were estimated to be in the pipeline; the USD3.2 billion railway line linking Kenya’s capital Nairobi with its port city of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean is one example of the impact BRI is having on the continent (Smotrytska, 2021);
• China’s trade with the Middle East has grown over 10-fold between 2000 and 2016 to USD114 billion. And the BRI is expected to further strengthen this relationship, helping raise Dubai’s status as a key access point into the region for Chinese businesses (Sidło, 2020);
• In the Central Asia, China is investing USD4.5 billion worth of road, power, and gas pipeline projects in Kyrgyzstan alone. One of the routes through region is a 12,000km-long freight train line that connects China with the UK via Kazakhstan and Belarus, with the potential to cut cargo transit times by half, the China – Europe Railway Express service is already linking dozens of cities across Europe and Asia (Taliga, 2021);
• Major projects in the South Asia include upgrading Bangladesh’s transport links and building ports and power plants in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Other sizable investments include projects in Mongolia that are worth nearly as much as the country’s 2017 nominal GDP (USD3 billion) and USD5.2 billion to build three airports across Cambodia (Yuan, 2019);
• In ASEAN region, China’s FDI nearly doubling between 2014 and 2017. South Asia and Southeast Asia have received the lion’s share of Chinese outbound FDI to B&R countries. Countries such as Laos and Philippines are expected to benefit significantly – for example, from Chinese funding and technical know-how for the construction of rail links (Tritto & Sejko, 2021).

Thus, much of the increase in outbound greenfield FDI to BRI countries is concentrated in South Asia, Africa, and Central Asia, while the increase in construction projects is concentrated in South Asia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Even though, so far, the main beneficiary remains ASEAN region, as it is expected to require USD26 trillion in infrastructure investment between 2016 and 2030, or USD1.7 trillion a year, to maintain its growth momentum and BRI helps fund a sizable portion of that.

(See Details in Attachment 5 and Attachment 6)

Attachment 5: BRI’s impact on worlds regions

Estimated BRI investments across 150+ countries from 2020 to 2030. Forecasting model includes core infrastructure, including power, rail, road, ports and water, as well as related activity, including export manufacturing.

Attachment 6: Main beneficials of BRI

10. How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected the progress of the Belt & Road Initiative?

When the whole world can see how a pandemic can change and affect people’s lives, one needs to understand that in politics, its consequences vary slightly from country to country.

In China they managed to take an outbreak under strictest control relatively fast, but it obviously influenced (and influences) Chinese economy and foreign policy significantly (especially in “lowest” level, considering that country strictly closed its borders to all the foreigners and limited to minimum inter-countries connections).

Moreover, due to the Pandemic restrictions China had to adapt the new BRI strategy in a way, the initiative can still fulfil its mission. Thus, the country implemented a new post-Covid-19 domestic strategy, which further was expanded on big implications for China’s trade with BRI countries. The new strategy was called “dual circulation” (strategy, which envisions a new balance away from global integration (the first circulation) and toward increased domestic reliance (the second circulation)) and implies several simultaneous shifts (Blanchette & Polk, 2020):

• Strengthening Chinese domestic consumer markets as a source of economic growth;

• Prioritizing domestic high-tech manufacturing and associated services for export;

• Reducing dependency on income from exporting low-value manufactured goods; and

• Reducing dependency on singular sources of imports into China.

This shift could benefit BRI countries, at least in the short and medium term. For instance, currently providing just 4% of China’s imports, African countries may gain from the import diversification and consumer market growth the policy implies.

Thus, the biggest impact pandemic had on the BRI – is an access to Chinese marked and access to China itself. From March 2020 it is extremely difficult to get even the most astute and innovative foreigner businesspeople and their new products into China, especially value-added products (Xiaolong, 2020). Entrance into China will require considerable relaxation of China’s immigration rules and non-tariff trade restrictions with BRI countries, both of which have yet to be seen in (hopefully) 2021.

But the impact was not only limited to an “access” restriction. Thus, in June 2020 China revealed that 20% of BRI projects had been “seriously affected” by the virus, with up to 40% being “somewhat affected” (Zou, 2020). That meant that the overall BRI investment dropped by a whopping 50% in the first half of 2020, down from USD46bn in the same period in 2019 (Shehadi, 2020). Due to this numbers (and since China’s internal economy is under great pressure because of Covid-19), Chinese leadership decided it is smarter for the time-being to concentrate more on inner development, rather than massively investing money overseas, so further investment is likely to be thought out much more carefully with a particular focus on profit, something that many BRI investments currently lack. (See Details in Attachment 7).

Attachment 7: Number of construction projects owned by Chinese corporations, 2010-2020

But this data does not mean that China could not keep BRI lending in high gear, however. BRI loans are just a small part of China’s overall lending portfolio, and China’s main policy banks have enough political backing to bear the cost of upcoming (and those “frozen” due to the pandemic) projects.

Additionally, in addition to the supply shock, Covid-19 has reduced the demand of many countries for BRI investments, not least due to falling energy needs and a decrease in the ability to borrow money.

Worth noting the current usage of BRI transhipment roads to supply other countries with medical technology and medicine to help fighting the Covid-19 outbreak outside of China. Starting from January 2020 government took “medicine field” (especially technologies that use AI and other innovations that monitor Covid-19 carriers) under the strictest control, giving “export rights” only to those enterprises which are checked (quality standards) and authorized (Shehadi, 2020). Meanwhile, international e-commerce initiatives in the field of MedTech are also being prioritized to help accelerate economic growth in China.

Investments on energy-related projects outside and inside China were influenced by Pandemic the most (Tu, 2020). Thus, the drop has hit traditional fuels the hardest. In fact, the first half of 2020 was the first six-month period in which non-fossil fuel-related energy investment (including large hydropower and solar power) dominated BRI energy investments, which further helped to implement the “Greening of BRI” strategies (Cell Press, 2019). The turn into “greening” became very resultative in long-tern run point of view (i.e., the EU always underlined that “the BRI is not green enough” to be safely and successfully implemented within Europe). But these trends will become clearer once the dust settles and a global Covid-19 vaccination programme begins.

As for current way to further maintain and develop the BRI, China seeks to share its valuable experience of battling Covid-19 with other BRI countries, one key area of potential will be in projects focused on strengthening the health systems of low-income countries, even if focused on soft processes rather than hard infrastructure.

Also, beyond the short-term, changes to global supply chains will bring new opportunities for diversification through joint activity with other countries. There is also potential for accelerated digital BRI (Digital Belt and Road) activity in relation to Chinese tech companies and private players may now become more active in the BRI (Lewis et al., 2021).

11. What are the long-term prospects for BRI? Can the Chinese Belt & Road be considered the beginning of the Asian century?

Exploring the nature of the new geopolitical project, it should first be emphasized that it is aimed at radically changing the entire economic map of the world. In addition, many economic experts consider this project as the first shot in the struggle between East and West for influence in Eurasia.

Belt&Road Initiative, based on a multidimensional approach (“five connections”) is promoting mutually beneficial international cooperation. Thus, in contrast to the United States, which relied on the path to world hegemony for neoliberal globalization, China’s foreign policy has taken a course to regionalize international economic relations.

Economically, China will remain the engine of growth for Asia and the world. Its contribution to global growth will rise to over 28% by 2023 (a compound annual rate of 6.1 per cent), according to IMF projections (Huiyao, 2019). However, the nature of China’s economic role will evolve along with domestic rebalancing.

The initiative is also projected to boost global trade by 12% impacting more than 65 countries and nearly two-thirds of the world’s population (Konings, 2018).

Short long-run Sum up:

• BRI is estimated to provide (Globe):
  • to raise global GDP by about 4.2 % in 2040, or 9.3% of GDP in 2019 – 2021 (Cebr, 2019);
  • up to 56 countries forecast to have their annual GDP in 2040 boosted by more than USD10 billion as a result (Cebr, May 2019);
  • establish over 35 economic corridors to include the following strategic distribution lanes, which will impact the future transport of commercial goods (OECD, 2018).
• A targeted completion date (100th anniversary of the PRC (2049)):
• China would make several trillion USD dollars’ (4 – 8) worth of investments – in ports, airports, roads, railways (including high-speed routes), bridges and tunnels, as well as power plants and telecommunications networks (OECD, 2018);
• One of the more notable examples included a clean energy “super grid”, consisting of ultra-high voltage electricity networks linking China and much of the Eurasian continent (Zhang, 2018).
• BRI is estimated to provide (China):
• a competitive advantage in the processing of vessels in the world’s major canals, processing of goods at the major ports of entry;
• the prioritization of the ground transport of goods in key countries’ economic zones;
• ability to leverage port economics within BRI participating ports provides it with a commercial advantage in the global market;
• as China’s industrialization and GDP grow, its exports will start levelling with US exports in the commercial market.

Thus, we can forecast 5 main scenarios (models) of the further development of the BRI:

1. Baseline Model: Continuing the current trajectory equals an estimated USD 940 billion in BRI infrastructure investments

If BRI infrastructure investments stay on their current course, the original 65 core BRI countries will continue to see significant investment, as will the recently joined Latin American countries. In this model, while the number of BRI projects will continue to increase, many projects will be of average size and smaller value, which is a trend already in evidence. (See Details in Attachment 8).

Attachment 8: Baseline Model 

2. Global Cooperation Model: Collaboration wins big, totalling USD 1.32 trillion in BRI investments

Lessons learned so far, point to collaboration as the win-win BRI solution that reduces political opposition and ensures the highest long-term success rate for infrastructure projects and better access to ongoing multilateral funding. This scenario is based around more formal partnerships between China and external 3rd parties, including other governments and private capital, and BRI-project alignment with the multilateral development banks. (See Details in Attachment 9).

Attachment 9: Global Cooperation Model 

3. Global Sustainability Model: Sustainability becomes a key driver, pushing future BRI investments to USD 1.2 trillion

If China adopts a policy of even closer alignment between its BRI goals and sustainable initiatives, it is very likely that it will gain access to new streams of multilateral funding for BRI projects. It will also make Chinese engineering and construction companies more competitive globally to win major clean energy and water project bids as part of BRI. (See Details in Attachment 10).

Attachment 10: Global Sustainability Model 

4. Supply Chain Relocation Model: With tariffs remaining high over a longer-term period, BRI infrastructure projects can still garner an estimated USD 1.06 trillion

Ongoing trade tensions between the US and China have led to the partial relocation of manufacturing away from China, including by Chinese companies, to low‐cost countries in Southeast Asia and South Asia. In this scenario the influx of manufacturing sees renewed interest in BRI infrastructure investments in these countries (private and through state-owned enterprises) to support the production relocation. (See Details in Attachment 11).

Attachment 11: Supply Chain Relocation Model  

5. Uni-Polar Model: Global protectionism dampens down future BRI investment, totalling USD 560 billion.

Fierce, politicized and protectionist competition among countries will almost halve global BRI investments when compared with the Baseline Model (Forecast 1). Of all the five forecasts, this one offers the most modest benefits to all stakeholders. (See Details in Attachment 12).

Attachment 12: Uni-Polar Model 

If we are talking about possible Asian Century, lying at the heart of the regional economy, China will undoubtedly play a central role in Eurasia. Implementing BRI and hence recognizing that multilateralism is the only way to meet our transnational challenges and sustain an open, inclusive global economy, China’s role in Asia and the world will be to uphold the international order while offering innovative solutions to global governance, in line with its responsibility as a major global player.

In the previous phase of globalization, Chinese exports drove global trade as foreign investment came in to help modernize the economy. In globalization 4.0, Chinese imports will play an ever-larger role as Chinese multinationals invest across Asia and the world. From now until 2030, Asia’s consumption growth is expected to exceed that of the US and Western Europe combined (Huiyao, 2019).

It is estimated that if fully implemented, BRI transport projects could increase trade between 1.7% and 6.2% for the world, increasing global real income by 0.7% to 2.9% and helping to lift 7.6 million people from extreme poverty in the process (Pazarbasioglu, 2019). To truly fulfil BRI’s potential, over the coming years, the BRI will shift towards a more multilateral approach.

But to discuss whether BRI’s implementation is the beginning of the Asian Century is not quite right. Moreover, it is still too early to talk about the existence of such at all (ADB, 2019).

Chinese economy and potential are strong, BRI’s and Asia’s are even bigger, but one needs to understand, that being a locomotive of the new era is not only about having strong economy and development, but about having the high level of stability and security. While some countries in Asia (i.e., China, Japan, South Korea) boast stability, the level of security and stability in the region as a whole is still low compared to the old world (Europe).

Moreover, BRI can be also considered as a new approach of Chinese foreign and domestic policies to adapt to the new trends in worlds geopolitics and disproportionate development of the country itself. In 21st Century, when Chinese Political Economy is observed, it is to be seen that engines of the economy that once led China to development become the very problems that are distorting the development and growth today. Those problems make the “challenges of China”, and they are deeply connected to each other making local operations ineffective in long term solutions. Hence, China needs a restructuring in social and economic architecture of the country that will not only enable a grand solution to those challenges but that will also guarantee the stability in domestic affairs. By employing BRI, China aims to achieve peace and harmony in its’ domestic structures regarding economy and society. Therefore, China’s domestic challenges render BRI essential for the survival of a stable China.

Referring to the global scale and importance of the BRI for current China’s existence, it should be noted that the BRI represents a possible integration mechanism in Eurasia, led by China, which unites Asia within its borders, but also has a dangerous asymmetric structure (the size of China’s huge economy and the smaller economies in most of the receiving countries along the BRI). It brings us to the issue of the creation of stable multilateral setting which can tackle not only economic, but security issues in Asia.

History shows that, unlike Europe, Asia was never forced to create a culture of negotiation: while the whole of Europe was twice involved in devastating wars in which it could not win, countries were forced to sit down at the table of diplomacy and negotiation, which ultimately led to the creation of a compromise – Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The countries of Asia, on the contrary, have never been on the brink of survival in recent history, which, as a result, has not forced the countries to create a pan-continental union or a single pan-Asian integration mechanism.

Up to day countries of the region did not create a stable multilateral mechanism which can help them to work out a compromise solution on the issue of legal registration of state borders and territorial claims (Bajrektarevic, 2014). Even despite the fact, that Asian countries today are more willing to consult and cooperate with each other on the integration and creating of the zone of co-prosperity issues, nevertheless in Asia, there is hardly a single state which has no territorial dispute within its neighbourhood. This issue is one of the most important, since it can guarantee the territorial integrity of States and ensure non-interference in their internal affairs, as well as represent one of the barriers to external threats to their national security, such as smuggling, international crime, extremist and terrorist movements, illegal migration.

Numerous integration mechanisms such as ASEAN, APEC, SAARC or BRI in most cases, are created to jointly solve economic problems, achieve economic integration in the region or sub-regions, but not to tackle security issues.

Economically and potentially strong East today lacks stable political integration and is unable to capitalize (on) its success. To consolidate the total power of Asian countries the largest continent must consider the creation of its own comprehensive pan-Asian multilateral setting, without which it is impossible to establish an Asian century.

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About the author:

Dr Maria Smotrytska is research fellow at IFIMES/DeSSA, a senior research sinologist, specialized in the investment policy of China; BRI-related initiatives; Sino – European ties, etc. She is distinguished member of the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists. She has PhD in International politics, Central China Normal University (Wuhan, Hubei province, PR China).

Ljubljana/Shanghai, 3 August 202

Source: here

No matter your age or stage of life, every birthday can be celebrated with a big trip. Some exciting destinations are perfect for visiting in your 20s, like backpacking through Southeast Asia or road tripping the Pacific Coast Highway. Others, like a relaxing beach vacation in Hawaii or Thailand, might be better suited to those 50 and over.

We asked our trusted A-List of top travel advisors for their recommendations on the best places to celebrate a milestone birthday, whether you want to go alone or with a larger group, stay in one place or visit multiple locations. Here are their suggestions for over-the-top destinations to celebrate your big day.

Cayo Espanto, Belize

Three miles off the coast of Belize, this private, luxury Robinson Crusoe-style island offers just seven villas. Each one is luxuriously furnished with hardwood floors, mahogany beds, and crisp white bed-linen. Enjoy panoramic views from your private pier and plunge pool, and world class diving and snorkeling.— Will Bolsover, Natural World Safaris

Havana, Cuba

Start with a sunset convertible car ride through breezy Old Havana, soaking in the culture, colors and sounds of this enigmatic island destination. Then, have dinner at a private table at the city’s best rooftop restaurant with 360 degree views of the city—start with a rum and cigar tasting then dive into fresh fare caught locally. After dinner, head to the Tropicana nightclub for a taste of 1950s era cabaret, or ask for front row seats to a sold out live local music concert.— Chad Olin, Cuba Candela

Patagonia

Renting an authentic Patagonian Estancia with gauchos and all, and crossing the Andes on horseback, is a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. — Maita Barrenechea, Mai 10

Kenya

A private ranch in Kenya hands down would be my recommendation, something like Ol Jogi or Arijiju, they provide the clients with everything they need at their fingertips, from tennis courts, wildlife interactions, ATVs, to private chefs. You name it they have it here.—Leora Rothschild, Rothschild Safaris

See the rest here.

On 7-8 August, you can take part in guided tours and marvel at the palace’s interiors

This weekend, residents and tourists in Czechia will have the opportunity to visit one of the most beautiful buildings in Prague: the Liechtenstein Palace. Although this palace is typically off-limits, the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic will make it open to the public on 7 and 8 August. The government’s action is part of its participation in the Open House Festival which seeks to make inaccessible buildings open to citizens and tourists.

What can visitors experience?

According to the government’s website, the Liechtenstein Palace dates back to 1555. Although it has had several owners over the years, the palace became the property of the Municipality of Prague in 1897. Now, it is used by the government for various official purposes and events. Thus, the public will be able to see and walk through halls and rooms which are currently used for conferences, state delegations and protocol events.

Expanding on this, the government disclosed that numerous influential individuals have stayed and/or visited Liechtenstein Palace. Some of these include King Juan Carlos of Spain and Queen Sofia, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, as well as the Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.

In addition to this, visitors will be able to view an exhibition of the gifts and donations received by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. The items which will be on display have been accumulated by Babiš during his time in office and while visiting other countries. As such, the collection is constantly growing and expanding.

Read the rest here.

Author: Svilena Iotkovska

“Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians & Other Regions of Europe”. This is the latest addition to the UNESCO natural world heritage locations list. One of the locations covered with this umbrella-term inscription lies in the Czech Republic. It is the “Jizerskohorské bučiny”, a beech forest located in northern Czechia.

While Czech Republic is certainly not new to UNESCO’s list, the addition of this forest to the natural world heritage list marks the first mention of the Czech Republic in UNESCO’s natural section. The Czech Minister of the Environment Richard Brabec has proclaimed that this news makes the Czech Republic “A part of the heritage of all of mankind”.

Furthermore, he shared that he believes that the addition of the 27km2 forest is a recognition of Czech efforts to preserve the nature on a global scale. Together with the addition of the latest of the 15UNESCO cultural heritage sites, this achievement gives the Czech Republic a boost in tourism appeal according to him. Overall, Minister Brabec views this as a great success. Now, a natural site in our country gets the same recognition as natural wonders such as the Yellowstone National Park, lake Baikal or the Great Barrier Reef.

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It is 100 years since we were supposedly getting over the war to end all wars, World War I, and forming the League of Nations with the purpose of preventing such a conflict and slaughter happening again. Regrettably, the only good that came out of it was the proposal to form the League of Nations; it was not much more than an idea though otherwise stillborn and we needed another World War before something solid resulted, the United Nations with some teeth, although they need sharpening. It was the time that the Chinese Communist party was formed and has just celebrated its centenary. What have we done in the time, apart from multiplying ourselves by a factor of 3, and perhaps upsetting the planet on the way. There are exciting scientific advances, of course, some of which we must use to address the wasteful manner in which we live.

The 1920s and 1930s were times of turmoil, new ideas. Socialism in the forms of nationalism and communism, each with an end result of forming a ruling elite, who would brook little or no interference from their perceived mission. The damage from WWI caused a Depression in the developed world, many of them democratic in form, and this meant they paid not or were not able to pay enough attention to the looming Nazi power growing in Germany. In China, the communist movement was putting down roots, establishing itself and, in the Far East the colonies of British India and the Dutch East Indies, the elite of those nations were listening with sympathy to the socialism that was being preached in Europe.

The end of WWII saw the proponents of each doctrine, social/communism and free market capitalism/democracy sharpen their dividing lines which led to the Cold War between east and west. However, this is too simplistic; Britain, for example, after WWII voted in a Socialist Labour government, which promptly set about nationalising key industries and created the National Health Service, all the basics of socialism, central government control. The key industries didn’t prosper, lacking accountability and arguably fleetness of the free market and in time, after Thatcher, were returned to the private sector. This was not entirely successful as times changed, but the National Health Service has been deemed a success in the overall scheme of things, looking after a nation’s health. Perhaps it was different because it only required a social accountability.

Returning to the division of doctrine, emerging from WWII, this saw the sharp divide of Europe between, on the one hand the Lenin/Stalin communist, centrally controlled regimes of the USSR which had gathered within their scope, whether they liked it or not, many of the countries of Eastern Europe. On the other hand, there were the democracies of Western Europe, which were bolstered by the USA. Germany was divided into two parts but Berlin, the capital, which lay in the Soviet jurisdiction, was a separate entity managed by the four allies who had together opposed the Nazis, namely the USA, the USSR, Britain and France. This arrangement continued, not without its problems, until the new president, Kennedy, in 1961 made a declaration against communism which alarmed Kruschev, the Soviet leader by now since Stalin had died. A Wall was put up by East Germany/ USSR in Berlin in 1961, which became a symbol of the freedom of the west against the restrictions that the Soviet Union enforced. The East German communist government was alarmed at the very large number of their skilled citizens who were defecting to the west; the Wall brought the number down to a trickle, lasting until 1989 by when times had changed.

In the East, China at war end was in the grip of a communist movement that was fighting to overcome the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai Chek. The communists prevailed and the nationalists departed for the island of Formosa, today Taiwan, taking with them the Emperor’s ancient, valuable signatures of office, a bone of contention. Meanwhile, Japan was healing from the bitter defeat inflicted on it from WWII with the help of the USA and was showing its resilience in recovery towards becoming one of the fastest growing economies.

The first test of the new communist China came in the early 1950s in the Korean peninsula, where they wholeheartedly backed the forces of North Korea in their fight against the armies of the south, backed by the USA and its Allies from the western democracies, including Australia. A truce was signed after a few years of hard fighting, with no side obviously prevailing, and Korea was divided between North and South. To this day they have entirely different styles of government, the communist north being dependent on China with the people languishing in poverty while their ruling elite are well off, and the South being one of the Asian ‘tigers’ and one of the most successful democratic economies. The difference is glaring.

The next conflict between communism and a semi pro-democratic form of government, the Vietnam War in the 1960s, had different origins. It was originally part of an anti-colonial struggle to depose the French from their Indo-China possession, which also included Laos and Cambodia. The defining moment came when the French forces were beaten by the N. Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which was a signal for the French to withdraw. The North Vietnamese government was led by Ho Chi Minh, who had also studied communism in Europe and been persuaded by its ideas.

The American government had been watching closely and were very worried that if all of Vietnam were to fall to communism, it would lead to the rest of Southeast Asia in time succumbing also. As the leader of the ‘free’ world the USA stepped in and gradually increased its presence to the point that it was perceived as full-scale war. The North Vietnamese devised a way in which they could frustrate the American troops by building a network of underground tunnels from which they could appear unexpectedly and avoid direct confrontation with the better armed American troops. The war did not seem to have an end, and either it had to be escalated or the troops withdrawn. The former route would require going to Congress in Washington and, since the war was becoming increasingly unpopular with the public this was not something that the US government would want to do. The Nixon government of the early 1970s decided on a strategic withdrawal and so the whole of Vietnam was taken over by the communist government of the north, the condition which the US had feared. But times had changed. The world was changing. Some countries were prospering and trading. The old communist guard was getting on, some dying.

In the meantime, India and Indonesia, each with current large populations and significant colonial histories, had leaders who had learned in Europe about socialism/communism. However, the countries they would be serving had large other complex problems to resolve. In India’s case they had to deal with its partition with a mainly Islamic country, Pakistan, on each flank. The Nehru led, mainly Hindu, faction had much sympathy with socialism and were suspicious of the west and western aid agencies such as the World Bank, which were not allowed in to help develop the country. India, for the rest of the century, moved slowly but did not make a move to either communism or the western democracies, perhaps because it inherited a system in which much power rested within the state governments. The national or federal government operated from Delhi in the form that the British left behind.

Indonesia spent the first few years from independence in 1947, establishing itself as a whole. Soekarno, the first president, was a gifted orator, and was a firm believer in socialism/communism, but was a poor administrator. The country had to fend off two break away actions in the 1950s in North Sulawesi and West Sumatra provinces, which were put down with some ferocity. An interesting development was Soekarno’s leading with the 1955 Non- aligned Movement which was held in Bandung. This firmly put him in the neutral camp, although his time in Europe had imbued him with left leanings. His inability to take the country out of poverty was greatly frustrating the political elite in Jakarta and when he was deemed to show his leanings towards communism, the Army with the elite had had enough. He had to go and forcibly resigned, bringing Soeharto to power. The USA, who had watched the moves carefully while, at the same time, being involved in Vietnam, were much relieved.

Soeharto made it clear that he had no liking for a communist form of government. He was also quick to realise that he needed the brains from the private sector to handle the economy. He appointed the Berkeley ‘mafia’, UC Berkeley trained economists to deal with the major problems of food, water and education to lift the country out of poverty which they did very successfully for thirty years. The country was run as a benign autocracy with a guided parliament which re-elected Soeharto every 4 years, until the Asian Financial Crisis struck and caused him to step down. However, well by then it was aligned with the western powers and was invited to join the G-17, the organisation of the world’s richest economies.

It should be added that the grouping of Southeast Asian nations – region that my colleague prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic calls “the most multilateralised portion of Asia – future of that continent” – as it formed an alliance, ASEAN, in August 1967, to establish itself as an independent bloc, headquartered in Jakarta. Currently, there are now 10 countries in the bloc, originally five, with widely differing forms of government.

Come the latter part of the last century, other feuds, some centuries old, reared up to cause some alarm. They were not ostensibly part of the main struggle between rigid rules, centrally controlled communist regimes and the free market western economies, but the one of the Middle East involving several differing elements, on the face of it based on Judaism and its three offset branches, Jewry, Christianity and Islam. On his occasion the struggle had some of its roots in the Balfour declaration of 1917, endorsed in 1926 at a commonwealth conference, and the contrary non-acceptance of Israel after WWII, as a homeland for the Jewish people, by the Palestinians. It has widened out in a determination by a right-wing Islamic fundamentalist group to form a purely Islamic country, a caliphate. It fed off old rivalries and brought differing factions into conflict. It is not settled to this day, and Syria, a land of ancient civilizations, has been torn apart with a refugee crisis that has caused much discomfit in Europe. The politics of the Middle East are very complicated, variations of squabbles centuries old, and possibly unresolvable at this time. They, however, don’t seem to directly affect the main thrust of the proponents of the secular division between the democratic approach and communism to government. Although both the USA and Russia have an involvement, it is not their most important issue, although takes up time.

There are other disruptions in Africa and South America, but not greatly affecting the outcome of the main struggle between left and right. In much of Africa, where colonial power had held sway for many years and where a huge number of slaves had been shipped across the Atlantic to support the American and Caribbean plantations, little had been done to prepare the indigenous peoples to govern themselves. The extractive industries that were put in to take out minerals needed in Europe had systems in place which were devised to ship out the minerals to the controlling country. There was little or no attempt to better the country, in terms of education, infrastructure and skills development, where the extraction had taken place. The result was that the elite of the country, gaining independence, carried on the way things had been before independence and became hugely rich, while the poor just became poorer and poorer. A terrible legacy of colonialism! And certain countries in the north have, in the past few years, been severely affected by fundamental Islamic factions.

In the case of South (Latin) America, we have a mix of countries and the way they are run, significantly influenced by their Spanish or Portuguese legacy. The main problem is the growing and manufacture and the export of drugs and the emigration of people to the USA to get away from poverty. There is no major war ongoing although there have been attempts by some internal factions to take over a specific country for personal gain, which meets with the people’s resistance.

However, China is a large country with a centrally controlled communist regime in charge. In the past 30-40 years, with the passing of Mao Tse Tung and the accession of Deng the strict rigidity of the rules of government were eased and the economy started to grow. As a result, their economy has grown steadily, if not spectacularly at times, albeit from a comparatively low base and is now one of the largest in the world. They are not averse to taking new ideas from the west, sometimes openly but other times by stealth, which is of considerable concern to the west, which have established the norms, rules and rights of business. There was hope in the 1980s that they were changing and welcoming some democratic freedoms, but this altered in 1989 when a student demonstration was brutally quashed at Tienmanman square. The leaders had taken fright, things were getting out of control, and freedoms had to be curtailed and brought back under control. This was also a warning to the western democracies; there was only one way to do business in China and that was the Chinese way.

In 1997, the lease that the UK government held over the territories that encompassed Hong Kong was coming to an end and the territories were due to be handed back. There was some discussion on trying to extend the lease but this was really a non-starter. One of the terms that the British extracted in the departure agreement was that for the first 50 years the conditions which had been set up for the citizens of Hong Kong would be honoured. China agreed to approve the idea of ‘’one country and two systems’’. However, in recent times with Comrade Xi Jaoping feeling that his and the Chinese government’s power is on the increase he could ignore the agreement. There have been unsettling very large demonstrations in Hong Kong as Beijing turns the screw on democratic freedoms, and Hong Kong is brought in line with direct central government policy.

Furthermore, the government is trying to bring the Uighur people, who are of Islamic faith and live in Xinjiang to the west of China, the largest province, into line by brainwashing them. The Uighurs have been treated to genocide, and are also used, not much better than slaves, to pick Xinjiang cotton, which is a significant and high quality product of this region. This is another worrying example of communist control, as George Orwell highlighted in his book entitled 1984. The UN and the American government have raised the issue strongly, but have been told it is a matter of terrorism!

In the past two decades or so the Chinese have ‘made’ small islands in the South China sea expanding their territorial waters illegally. The ASEAN countries have wakened up to this and showing signs of alarm as China are using these islands as military outposts. In short, they are testing the reaction of the Eastern ASEAN countries, who realistically are not strong enough to resist. The USA are aware of this and watching carefully. It is still China’s government’s aim that Taiwan, R.O.C., comes under Beijing control.

The Chinese government would appear to have a policy to ensure that the country has the ability to widen its borders and, further afield, to secure by whatever means is most suitable the resources that the mother country requires. This would put it in a very strong position among all nations and supersede the work of past dynasties, justifying its central control. A communist Empire.

The other main country which espouses communism as per Leninism is, of course, Russia, which has always vied with the democracies of the west, unlike China which was rather left on its own, distance being a factor, until recent decades. After Kruschev, in the 1980s there was a time for a modicum of ‘honesty’ from the Russian government. They could not keep up with the economy of the USA with which they were attempting to compete. They released their hold on several European countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and withdrew their border to a north-south line bordering Belarus and Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia and into the Black Sea. They retained a small piece of territory next to Lithuania which gives them a better outlet to the Baltic Sea and recently they took the Crimea illegally to secure a position in the Black Sea.

A few of the ‘freed’ countries have adjusted themselves in the years that have followed, for instance the peoples of Czechoslovakia decided to split along nationalistic lines into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. One has to draw attention to the former Yugoslavia, formed as a country of the southern Slavs, which was not part of the Soviet hegemony, which separated somewhat bloodily into its discrete parts, with the demise of Tito. This was the strongman who emerged from WWII and kept the disparate parts of Yugoslavia together and prevented the Soviets from adding it to the total taken. The countries that evolved from Yugoslavia were Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo.

The European Union has greatly enlarged since these countries became independent, could exercise their freewill, and confirmed their willingness to join the EU after invitation. The bloc now adds up to 27 member states and the centre of gravity which was firmly in the west, has shifted eastward significantly.

Russia has to deal with a significant, admittedly rather unwieldy, EU, as well as the powerful alliance, NATO, The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which was set up at the end of WWII to protect the western democracies with the involvement of the USA from any potential aggression of the USSR. Since the partial rapprochement of Russia in its adjusted format, over the past 3 decades, there is much less pressure on NATO. It doesn’t stop Russia trying to meddle with the former countries of the Soviet on their borders. Belarus has a regime that is close to the Russians, not necessarily the will of the people, and Ukraine, while looking west towards the EU, has had to fend off Russian aggression in recent times in which they lost Crimea. In the complex Middle East situation Russia offers support to parties that are opposed to western supported ones, for example Assad’s Syria. But overall, Vladimir Putin’s Russia does not pose as much of a long-term threat as the apparent threat offered by China. There is, from the people themselves, a wish to open up the country. However, this can be expected to take some time; change will be slow.

To return to the east, ASEAN as a bloc, partly modelled on the EU, is still feeling its way. In recent times, the military coup occurring in Myanmar has taken ASEAN by surprise. Their offer to mediate has been firmly rejected at the ASEAN annual meeting. This was to be expected as the military have been involved in actions against some of the Myanmar people almost continuously since Independence and in recent years the military have exercised utmost savagery against the Rohingya people. The country is of great strategic value to China and hence the Myanmarese can rely on their backing. Its value, apart from Myanmar’s considerable resources, e.g. the Jade mines of Kachin province, a nice earner for the military elite, lies in the fact that Myanmar provides a gateway to the Indian Ocean and thence access to China’s significant resources in Africa, where they have been slowly entrenching themselves for the part of half a century.

Looking ahead

Taking note of President Xi’s recent upbeat speech at the Centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, it is clear that the government of China feels confident that they are now in a strong position to push on with expanding their strategic aims. These will be pushed ahead by fair means or foul, honestly or not, by stealth if need be. If anyone dares to oppose them will get a ‘’bash’’ on the head! It is a warning to the western Allies. ASEAN should be concerned about the South China Sea.

Russia, in the next phase, will want to not upset matters too much and be reasonably content to have matters stay as they are. A significant revenue for them is oil supply to the EU. They have a growing mood in the populace that wants more freedom. This will be difficult to resist.

The Middle East has rumbled on for centuries. A solution does not appear to be likely in the short term although the majority of people just want peace so that they may live with a feeling of security. They cannot reach this position because the leaders feel they have some God-given mission to achieve first. There are pockets relatively peaceful, e.g. The Emirates.

The Liberal democracies of the west have some internal voices of dissent, but at the moment their biggest problem is dealing with a refugee crisis caused by the Syrian mess, and the peoples coming from Africa running away from poverty. These are all heading for Europe. The other area where there is a significant problem is the southern USA where there is an unrelenting movement of peoples coming from Central and South America, trying to escape poverty and/or poor government.

The problem has become larger in the past half century; the population has tripled without our becoming aware. The CO2, not surprisingly, has also increased which has alarmed some scientists, and the two issues may be related, because we breathe out CO2 as well as significantly use up more resources some of which, in turn, generate CO2. We must remember, however, that carbon dioxide is a building block of life; below 150 ppm the world starts dying, both flora and fauna. The world, whatever political persuasion, communist or democratic, has to take notice of the climate issue which is to be highlighted at the COP26 conference in November this year. It is interesting that the leading countries espousing these opposite forms of government, China and USA, are responsible for 36% of the CO2 output of the world, each of them, so far, shy of taking a leadership role. Will we see much progress on this issue if they don’t take a leadership role?

The Future

Science, building on what came before, has achieved almost unbelievable advances in less than a century. One of the foremost of them was finding the properties of the silicon chip, which led to the computer, becoming commercially available from the 1960s and thereafter aiding all aspects of scientific endeavour. Now we are looking at the digital age, and on into quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence. We have broken the barriers of space and there is a veritable limitless opportunity to be explored.

On the other hand, there are many more of us, 8+ billion as against 3- billion in the 1960s and we haven’t yet resolved the problems of poverty, pollution and paucity of some of our key resources, such as water, or why we have an apparent climate crisis. The problems have only become bigger, which means the millennial and subsequent generations who will be brought up with the new sciences from a young age will have plenty to do. What sort of government will they have dictated to them or will they resolve a better system that embraces the better points of each, so long as there is adequate freedom of action?

The world is changing; almost two thirds of its population already live in Asia and there is a shift in the ethnic balance. The United Nations is more important than ever; it has disappointed in not getting involved in a positive and robust way in certain disputes where a form of genocide has taken place, but they are constrained by their remit. Perhaps it requires a change of location from NY to reflect the changing population distribution and a time to review their raison d’etre.

The new generation have inherited a number of problems but, at the same time, they have the skills and tools to deal with them. One can but hope they do use them and with common sense.

Dr J Scott Younger OBE is a professional civil engineer who spent 42 years in the Far East undertaking assignments in 10 countries for WB, ADB, UNDP. Published many papers and columnist for Forbes Indonesia and Globe Asia. Served on British & European Chamber boards and Vice Chair of Int’l Business Chamber, for 17 years. His expertise is Infrastructure and Sustainable development and he takes an interest in international affairs. Dr. Younger serves International Institute IFIMES as its Board member.

Air travel can be stressful, so we’ve rounded up 25 things you should do before your next flight so you can relax.

Between making sure your suitcase isn’t an ounce over 50 pounds and rushing to your gate before the doors close, air travel can be a stressful experience — but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve rounded up 25 things you should do before your next flight, so you can relax and know that you’re totally prepared.

Note that some airlines’ guidelines and policies have changed due to the coronavirus pandemic, so be sure to check their websites for the most up-to-date travel information.

Read the article here.

Lately, some would even go as far as to suggest that there is an overflow of statistics and data about Covid-19, but thanks to the Mobilní Rozhlas tool, it is now possible to find specific data about any location in the country. Thanks to the artificial intelligence developed by the Mama AI company, it is now possible to obtain data from 1743 local governments with daily updates. Whether you live inside or outside the Czech Republic, the app allows you to search for the local government of your choice and see how the statistics evolve on a daily basis. This covid report takes both the data collected from the local government itself, as well as data collected from the surrounding area into account.

It also covers the country’s major cities. To find the information about your selected locality, you must first visit the website where the reports are generated: https://www.mobilnirozhlas.cz/cr-covid-report#country-search. Once there, you can search for the city or town you want to know about. Once the location has been selected, there are multiple ways in which this tool offers various data points. The percentage of citizens vaccinated with the first dose, the vaccinations that have been completed in the citizens of the district, the new cases or even the place that the locality occupies in the national order of worst struck regions are just some of them. Additionally, graphs are also displayed. They compare the situation of the selected place with its surroundings and provide visual information about the rest of the territories in the country in a very intuitive way.

Source

It is 100 years since we were supposedly getting over the war to end all wars, World War I, and forming the League of Nations with the purpose of preventing such a conflict and slaughter happening again. Regrettably, the only good that came out of it was the proposal to form the League of Nations; it was not much more than an idea though otherwise stillborn and we needed another World War before something solid resulted, the United Nations with some teeth, although they need sharpening. It was the time that the Chinese Communist party was formed and has just celebrated its centenary. What have we done in the time, apart from multiplying ourselves by a factor of 3, and perhaps upsetting the planet on the way. There are exciting scientific advances, of course, some of which we must use to address the wasteful manner in which we live.

The 1920s and 1930s were times of turmoil, new ideas. Socialism in the forms of nationalism and communism, each with an end result of forming ruling elite, who would brook little or no interference from their perceived mission. The damage from WWI caused a Depression in the developed world, many of them democratic in form, and this meant they paid not or were not able to pay enough attention to the looming Nazi power growing in Germany. In China, the communist movement was putting down roots, establishing itself and, in the Far East the colonies of British India and the Dutch East Indies, the elite of those nations were listening with sympathy to the socialism that was being preached in Europe.

The end of WWII saw the proponents of each doctrine; social/communism and free market capitalism/democracy sharpen their dividing lines which led to the Cold War between east and west. However, this is too simplistic; Britain, for example, after WWII voted in a Socialist Labour government, which promptly set about nationalising key industries and created the National Health Service, all the basics of socialism, central government control. The key industries didn’t prosper, lacking accountability and arguably fleetness of the free market and in time, after Thatcher, were returned to the private sector. This was not entirely successful as times changed, but the National Health Service has been deemed a success in the overall scheme of things, looking after a nation’s health. Perhaps it was different because it only required a social accountability.

Returning to the division of doctrine, emerging from WWII, this saw the sharp divide of Europe between, on the one hand the Lenin/Stalin communist, centrally controlled regimes of the USSR which had gathered within their scope, whether they liked it or not, many of the countries of Eastern Europe. On the other hand, there were the democracies of Western Europe, which were bolstered by the USA. Germany was divided into two parts but Berlin, the capital, which lay in the Soviet jurisdiction, was a separate entity managed by the four allies who had together opposed the Nazis, namely the USA, the USSR, Britain and France. This arrangement continued, not without its problems, until the new president, Kennedy, in 1961 made a declaration against communism which alarmed Kruschev, the Soviet leader by now since Stalin had died. A Wall was put up by East Germany/ USSR in Berlin in 1961, which became a symbol of the freedom of the west against the restrictions that the Soviet Union enforced. The East German communist government was alarmed at the very large number of their skilled citizens who were defecting to the west; the Wall brought the number down to a trickle, lasting until 1989 by when times had changed.

In the East, China at war end was in the grip of a communist movement that was fighting to overcome the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai Chek. The communists prevailed and the nationalists departed for the island of Formosa, today Taiwan, taking with them the Emperor’s ancient, valuable signatures of office, a bone of contention. Meanwhile, Japan was healing from the bitter defeat inflicted on it from WWII with the help of the USA and was showing its resilience in recovery towards becoming one of the fastest growing economies.

The first test of the new communist China came in the early 1950s in the Korean peninsula, where they wholeheartedly backed the forces of North Korea in their fight against the armies of the south, backed by the USA and its Allies from the western democracies, including Australia. A truce was signed after a few years of hard fighting, with no side obviously prevailing, and Korea was divided between North and South. To this day they have entirely different styles of government, the communist north being dependent on China with the people languishing in poverty while their ruling elite are well off, and the South being one of the Asian ‘tigers’ and one of the most successful democratic economies. The difference is glaring.

The next conflict between communism and a semi pro-democratic form of government, the Vietnam War in the 1960s, had different origins. It was originally part of an anti-colonial struggle to depose the French from their Indo-China possession, which also included Laos and Cambodia. The defining moment came when the French forces were beaten by the N. Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which was a signal for the French to withdraw. The North Vietnamese government was led by Ho Chi Minh, who had also studied communism in Europe and been persuaded by its ideas.

The American government had been watching closely and were very worried that if all of Vietnam were to fall to communism, it would lead to the rest of Southeast Asia in time succumbing also. As the leader of the ‘free’ world the USA stepped in and gradually increased its presence to the point that it was perceived as full-scale war. The North Vietnamese devised a way in which they could frustrate the American troops by building a network of underground tunnels from which they could appear unexpectedly and avoid direct confrontation with the better armed American troops. The war did not seem to have an end, and either it had to be escalated or the troops withdrawn. The former route would require going to Congress in Washington and, since the war was becoming increasingly unpopular with the public this was not something that the US government would want to do. The Nixon government of the early 1970s decided on a strategic withdrawal and so the whole of Vietnam was taken over by the communist government of the north, the condition which the US had feared. But times had changed. The world was changing. Some countries were prospering and trading. The old communist guard was getting on, some dying.

In the meantime, India and Indonesia, each with current large populations and significant colonial histories, had leaders who had learned in Europe about socialism/communism. However, the countries they would be serving had large other complex problems to resolve. In India’s case they had to deal with its partition with a mainly Islamic country, Pakistan, on each flank. The Nehru led, mainly Hindu, faction had much sympathy with socialism and were suspicious of the west and western aid agencies such as the World Bank, which were not allowed in to help develop the country. India, for the rest of the century, moved slowly but did not make a move to either communism or the western democracies, perhaps because it inherited a system in which much power rested within the state governments. The national or federal government operated from Delhi in the form that the British left behind.

Indonesia spent the first few years from independence in 1947, establishing itself as a whole. Soekarno, the first president, was a gifted orator, and was a firm believer in socialism/communism, but was a poor administrator. The country had to fend off two break away actions in the 1950s in North Sulawesi and West Sumatra provinces, which were put down with some ferocity. An interesting development was Soekarno’s leading with the 1955 Non- aligned Movement which was held in Bandung. This firmly put him in the neutral camp, although his time in Europe had imbued him with left leanings. His inability to take the country out of poverty was greatly frustrating the political elite in Jakarta and when he was deemed to show his leanings towards communism, the Army with the elite had had enough. He had to go and forcibly resigned, bringing Soeharto to power. The USA, who had watched the moves carefully while, at the same time, being involved in Vietnam, were much relieved.

Soeharto made it clear that he had no liking for a communist form of government. He was also quick to realise that he needed the brains from the private sector to handle the economy. He appointed the Berkeley ‘mafia’, UC Berkeley trained economists to deal with the major problems of food, water and education to lift the country out of poverty which they did very successfully for thirty years. The country was run as a benign autocracy with a guided parliament which re-elected Soeharto every 4 years, until the Asian Financial Crisis struck and caused him to step down. However, well by then it was aligned with the western powers and was invited to join the G-17, the organisation of the world’s richest economies.

It should be added that the grouping of Southeast Asian nations – region that my colleague prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic calls “the most multilateralised portion of Asia – Asia’s hope” – as the formed an alliance, ASEAN, in August 1967, to establish itself as an independent bloc, headquartered in Jakarta. Currently, there are now 10 countries in the bloc, originally five, with widely differing forms of government.

Come the latter part of the last century, other feuds, some centuries old, reared up to cause some alarm. They were not ostensibly part of the main struggle between rigid rules, centrally controlled communist regimes and the free market western economies, but the one of the Middle East involving several differing elements, on the face of it based on Judaism and its three offset branches, Jewry, Christianity and Islam. On his occasion the struggle had some of its roots in the Balfour declaration of 1917, endorsed in 1926 at a commonwealth conference, and the contrary non-acceptance of Israel after WWII, as a homeland for the Jewish people, by the Palestinians. It has widened out in a determination by a right-wing Islamic fundamentalist group to form a purely Islamic country, a caliphate. It fed off old rivalries and brought differing factions into conflict. It is not settled to this day, and Syria, a land of ancient civilizations, has been torn apart with a refugee crisis that has caused much discomfit in Europe. The politics of the Middle East are very complicated, variations of squabbles centuries old, and possibly unresolvable at this time. They, however, don’t seem to directly affect the main thrust of the proponents of the secular division between the democratic approach and communism to government. Although both the USA and Russia have an involvement, it is not their most important issue, although takes up time.

There are other disruptions in Africa and South America, but not greatly affecting the outcome of the main struggle between left and right. In much of Africa, where colonial power had held sway for many years and where a huge number of slaves had been shipped across the Atlantic to support the American and Caribbean plantations, little had been done to prepare the indigenous peoples to govern themselves. The extractive industries that were put in to take out minerals needed in Europe had systems in place which were devised to ship out the minerals to the controlling country. There was little or no attempt to better the country, in terms of education, infrastructure and skills development, where the extraction had taken place. The result was that the elite of the country, gaining independence, carried on the way things had been before independence and became hugely rich, while the poor just became poorer and poorer. A terrible legacy of colonialism! And certain countries in the north have, in the past few years, been severely affected by fundamental Islamic factions.

In the case of South (Latin) America, we have a mix of countries and the way they are run, significantly influenced by their Spanish or Portuguese legacy. The main problem is the growing and manufacture and the export of drugs and the emigration of people to the USA to get away from poverty. There is no major war ongoing although there have been attempts by some internal factions to take over a specific country for personal gain, which meets with the people’s resistance.

However, China is a large country with a centrally controlled communist regime in charge. In the past 30-40 years, with the passing of Mao Tse Tung and the accession of Deng the strict rigidity of the rules of government were eased and the economy started to grow. As a result, their economy has grown steadily, if not spectacularly at times, albeit from a comparatively low base and is now one of the largest in the world. They are not averse to taking new ideas from the west, sometimes openly but other times by stealth, which is of considerable concern to the west, which have established the norms, rules and rights of business. There was hope in the 1980s that they were changing and welcoming some democratic freedoms, but this altered in 1989 when a student demonstration was brutally quashed at Tienmanman square. The leaders had taken fright, things were getting out of control, and freedoms had to be curtailed and brought back under control. This was also a warning to the western democracies; there was only one way to do business in China and that was the Chinese way.

In 1997, the lease that the UK government held over the territories that encompassed Hong Kong was coming to an end and the territories were due to be handed back. There was some discussion on trying to extend the lease but this was really a non-starter. One of the terms that the British extracted in the departure agreement was that for the first 50 years the conditions which had been set up for the citizens of Hong Kong would be honoured. China agreed to approve the idea of ‘’one country and two systems’’. However, in recent times with Comrade Xi Jaoping feeling that his and the Chinese government’s power is on the increase he could ignore the agreement. There have been unsettling very large demonstrations in Hong Kong as Beijing turns the screw on democratic freedoms, and Hong Kong is brought in line with direct central government policy.

Furthermore, the government is trying to bring the Uighur people, who are of Islamic faith and live in Xinjiang to the west of China, the largest province, into line by brainwashing them. The Uighurs have been treated to genocide, and are also used, not much better than slaves, to pick Xinjiang cotton, which is a significant and high-quality product of this region. This is another worrying example of communist control, as George Orwell highlighted in his book entitled 1984. The UN and the American government have raised the issue strongly, but have been told it is a matter of terrorism!

In the past two decades or so the Chinese have ‘made’ small islands in the South China sea expanding their territorial waters illegally. The ASEAN countries have wakened up to this and showing signs of alarm as China are using these islands as military outposts. In short, they are testing the reaction of the Eastern ASEAN countries, who realistically are not strong enough to resist. The USA are aware of this and watching carefully. It is still China’s government’s aim that Taiwan, R.O.C., comes under Beijing control.

The Chinese government would appear to have a policy to ensure that the country has the ability to widen its borders and, further afield, to secure by whatever means is most suitable the resources that the mother country requires. This would put it in a very strong position among all nations and supersede the work of past dynasties, justifying its central control. A communist Empire.

The other main country which espouses communism as per Leninism is, of course, Russia, which has always vied with the democracies of the west, unlike China which was rather left on its own, distance being a factor, until recent decades. After Kruschev, in the 1980s there was a time for a modicum of ‘honesty’ from the Russian government. They could not keep up with the economy of the USA with which they were attempting to compete. They released their hold on several European countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and withdrew their border to a north-south line bordering Belarus and Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia and into the Black Sea. They retained a small piece of territory next to Lithuania which gives them a better outlet to the Baltic Sea and recently they took the Crimea illegally to secure a position in the Black Sea.

A few of the ‘freed’ countries have adjusted themselves in the years that have followed, for instance the peoples of Czechoslovakia decided to split along nationalistic lines into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. One has to draw attention to the former Yugoslavia, formed as a country of the southern Slavs, which was not part of the Soviet hegemony, which separated somewhat bloodily into its discrete parts, with the demise of Tito. This was the strongman who emerged from WWII and kept the disparate parts of Yugoslavia together and prevented the Soviets from adding it to the total taken. The countries that evolved from Yugoslavia were Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo.

The European Union has greatly enlarged since these countries became independent, could exercise their freewill, and confirmed their willingness to join the EU after invitation. The bloc now adds up to 27 member states and the centre of gravity which was firmly in the west, has shifted eastward significantly.

Russia has to deal with a significant, admittedly rather unwieldy, EU, as well as the powerful alliance, NATO, The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which was set up at the end of WWII to protect the western democracies with the involvement of the USA from any potential aggression of the USSR. Since the partial rapprochement of Russia in its adjusted format, over the past 3 decades, there is much less pressure on NATO. It doesn’t stop Russia trying to meddle with the former countries of the Soviet on their borders. Belarus has a regime that is close to the Russians, not necessarily the will of the people, and Ukraine, while looking west towards the EU, has had to fend off Russian aggression in recent times in which they lost Crimea. In the complex Middle East situation Russia offers support to parties that are opposed to western supported ones, for example Assad’s Syria. But overall, Vladimir Putin’s Russia does not pose as much of a long-term threat as the apparent threat offered by China. There is, from the people themselves, a wish to open up the country. However, this can be expected to take some time; change will be slow.

To return to the east, ASEAN as a bloc, partly modelled on the EU, is still feeling its way. In recent times, the military coup occurring in Myanmar has taken ASEAN by surprise. Their offer to mediate has been firmly rejected at the ASEAN annual meeting. This was to be expected as the military have been involved in actions against some of the Myanmar people almost continuously since Independence and in recent years the military have exercised utmost savagery against the Rohingya people. The country is of great strategic value to China and hence the Myanmarese can rely on their backing. Its value, apart from Myanmar’s considerable resources, e.g. the Jade mines of Kachin province, a nice earner for the military elite, lies in the fact that Myanmar provides a gateway to the Indian Ocean and thence access to China’s significant resources in Africa, where they have been slowly entrenching themselves for the part of half a century.

Looking ahead

Taking note of President Xi’s recent upbeat speech at the Centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, it is clear that the government of China feels confident that they are now in a strong position to push on with expanding their strategic aims. These will be pushed ahead by fair means or foul, honestly or not, by stealth if need be. If anyone dares to oppose them will get a ‘’bash’’ on the head! It is a warning to the western Allies. ASEAN should be concerned about the South China Sea.

Russia, in the next phase, will want to not upset matters too much and be reasonably content to have matters stay as they are. A significant revenue for them is oil supply to the EU. They have a growing mood in the populace that wants more freedom. This will be difficult to resist.

The Middle East has rumbled on for centuries. A solution does not appear to be likely in the short term although the majority of people just want peace so that they may live with a feeling of security. They cannot reach this position because the leaders feel they have some God-given mission to achieve first. There are pockets relatively peaceful, e.g. The Emirates.

The Liberal democracies of the west have some internal voices of dissent, but at the moment their biggest problem is dealing with a refugee crisis caused by the Syrian mess, and the peoples coming from Africa running away from poverty. These are all heading for Europe. The other area where there is a significant problem is the southern USA where there is an unrelenting movement of peoples coming from Central and South America, trying to escape poverty and/or poor government.

The problem has become larger in the past half century; the population has tripled without our becoming aware. The CO2, not surprisingly, has also increased which has alarmed some scientists, and the two issues may be related, because we breathe out CO2 as well as significantly use up more resources some of which, in turn, generate CO2. We must remember, however, that carbon dioxide is a building block of life; below 150 ppm the world starts dying, both flora and fauna. The world, whatever political persuasion, communist or democratic, has to take notice of the climate issue which is to be highlighted at the COP26 conference in November this year. It is interesting that the leading countries espousing these opposite forms of government, China and USA, are responsible for 36% of the CO2 output of the world, each of them, so far, shy of taking a leadership role. Will we see much progress on this issue if they don’t take a leadership role?

The Future

Science, building on what came before, has achieved almost unbelievable advances in less than a century. One of the foremost of them was finding the properties of the silicon chip, which led to the computer, becoming commercially available from the 1960s and thereafter aiding all aspects of scientific endeavour. Now we are looking at the digital age, and on into quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence. We have broken the barriers of space and there is a veritable limitless opportunity to be explored.

On the other hand, there are many more of us, 8+ billion as against 3-billion in the 1960s and we haven’t yet resolved the problems of poverty, pollution and paucity of some of our key resources, such as water, or why we have an apparent climate crisis. The problems have only become bigger, which means the millennial and subsequent generations who will be brought up with the new sciences from a young age will have plenty to do. What sort of government will they have dictated to them or will they resolve a better system that embraces the better points of each, so long as there is adequate freedom of action?

The world is changing; almost two thirds of its population already live in Asia and there is a shift in the ethnic balance. The United Nations is more important than ever; it has disappointed in not getting involved in a positive and robust way in certain disputes where a form of genocide has taken place, but they are constrained by their remit. Perhaps it requires a change of location from NY to reflect the changing population distribution and a time to review their raison d’etre.

The new generation have inherited a number of problems but, at the same time, they have the skills and tools to deal with them. One can but hope they do use them and with common sense.

About the author:

Dr J Scott Younger, OBE, is a professional civil engineer; he spent 42 years in the Far East undertaking assignments in 10 countries for WB, ADB, UNDP. He published many papers; he was a columnist for Forbes Indonesia and Globe Asia. He served on British & European Chamber boards and was a Vice Chair of Int’l Business Chamber for 17 years. His expertise is infrastructure and sustainable development and he takes an interest in international affairs. He is an International Chancellor of the President University, Indonesia. He is a member of IFIMES Advisory Board. Lived and worked in Burma in 1980s.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IFIMES official position.

Ljubljana/Glasgow, 21 July 2021

Dr J Scott Younger, President Commissioner of Glendale Partners and member of IFIMES Advisory Board