Stories about International Relations from February, 2013
The Idleness of African Leadership in Mali
Ousmane Gueye on the site Mondoblog writes [fr] about the slow deployment of African troops in northern Mali : If we were to judge the impact of the intervention in Mali by the jubilant euphoria of liberated populations, then it should be obvious that by deploying so slowly, African countries failed Mali...
European Regional Differences
Slovak NGO/think-tank Conservative Institute [en] blogged [sk] about the results of a study of 270 second-level EU regions (NUTS 2). Comparing changes in unemployment, they found that during 1990-2011, despite the growing amount of Euro-funds, the differences between the regions grew by about 4 percentage points. In more than 50...
YouTube Removes North Korea Propaganda Video
The latest North Korea propaganda video that shows an animated version of New York city in flames, had been removed from YouTube as a video game maker, Activision, filed a copyright infringement complaint. North Korea Tech explains more about the video.
The Romanian-Hungarian “War of the Flags”
Hungarian Spectrum writes about the ongoing diplomatic confrontation between Romania and Hungary, sparked by the Romanian authorities’ ban on flying the flag of the Székely Land, an ethnic Hungarian enclave currently demanding territorial autonomy within Romania.
Protesting Cyrillic, “Collectivising Guilt” in Croatia
Balkan Anarchist weighs in on the protests against the use of the Cyrillic script in Vukovar‘s public spaces: […] I believe that we, decent and honest Serbs, should be ashamed of what was done in the name of Serbdom during the '90s and condemn it all unequivocally! And I also...
For Chinese Cinema, the Japanese Invasion That Never Ends
With China and Japan currently sparring over islands in the East China Sea, the Chinese entertainment industry has upped its production of films about Japan's World War II-era invasion of China. TV extra Shi Zhongpeng made headlines in China last week for reportedly having acted as a Japanese soldier more than 200 times last year.
Europe's Frozen Conflicts
Black Sea News publishes Natalya Belitser's paper [en] – “Transnistrian Conflict: State of Affairs and Prospects of Settlement” – written for the international conference on “frozen conflicts” in Europe, which was held in September 2012 in Bled, Slovenia (via Andrei Klimenko).
Stormy Waters? The Maritime Border Disputes between Bolivia, Chile and Peru
The International Court of Justice is due to make a ruling on the longstanding maritime border dispute between Chile and Peru. Pablo Andres Rivero explains why the dispute has not boiled over into conflict and what the final outcome might mean for landlocked Bolivia’s maritime aspirations.