Stories about Eastern & Central Europe from February, 2013
When Uncle Matt Went to Albania
Matthew Pointon of Uncle Travelling Matt shares this detailed, six-part account and photos of his travel in Albania in 1996 and 1999: […] The Land of the Eagle is little known even in Europe and that’s a shame since it has some incredible scenery, friendly people and fascinating history. […]
As Pope Resigns, Russians Resigned to Putin
Without any real interest in the repercussions of Pope Benedict's resignation for the Catholic faith, the RuNet defaulted to its favorite pastime, humor.
Crowdmapping Ukraine's Wheelchair Accessibility
At BiggggIdea.com (uk; “Velyka Ideya” – “a platform where people present their projects, and the community funds them”), Oleksandr Telyuk draws attention [uk] to Wheelmap.org, a crowdmapping project that allows users to evaluate and mark wheelchair accessibility of various locations worldwide. Telyuk notes that 96 percent of public places in...
Students to Protest Constitutional Amendment
The Hungarian Student Network and the Hungarian High School Network posted a declaration [en] “about the rule of law” in Hungary – and are planning yet another protest rally [hu] in Budapest on Monday, Feb. 11: Today’s proposal for a constitutional amendment has made it obvious – even for those...
Bureaucracy and Motherhood in Serbia
Marija Janković's photo of her 3-month-old baby sleeping peacefully next to the 52 medical and administrative documents has received 942 ‘likes’ and 826 ‘shares’ on the Facebook page of Status Magazin [sr], a Belgrade monthly, and was awarded the first prize in a photo contest run by the publication. It...
The Bobs 2013: Now in Ukrainian, Too!
Deutsche Welle's 9th annual The Bobs online activism awards are now open for nominations of Ukrainian-language blogs [uk]. Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayyem, who is on this year's international jury panel, noted [ru, uk] on his Facebook page that in the previous years Ukrainian bloggers could only take part in The...
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...
“Pedophile's Guide” Lands Russian Blogging Platform on Blacklist
Russia's Federal communications monitors have tagged blog-hosting portal lj.rossia.org as illegal, after discovering an account that publishes translations of the American book "The Pedophilia's Guide to Love and Pleasure" by Phillip Greaves.
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...
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).
RuNet Freedom: a Pirate's Revenge
Amid brazen attempts to censor the RuNet, one group is fighting back. On February 4, the Pirate Party of Russia has announced a new specialized internet hosting service, called the PirateHost, created in retaliation to attacks on Russian internet freedoms.
Open Access and the Complexity of Digital Rights
How do ways of thinking change through time and space? Today, this problem concerning the way the human intellect works is compounded by a new method of transmission - digital. Open Access are calling for free availabilty of digitised publications from publicly-funded scientific research.
Human Rights Group Maps Russian Internet Censorship
On February 1, the Russian human rights group Agora released a report [ru] on RuNet censorship in 2012, titled “Russia As a Global Threat to a Free Internet,” documenting various limitations on Internet usage in Russia, including violence, administrative pressure, and other forms of intimidation and punishment used against netizens by...
Russia's Internet Censorship “Experiment”
A Russian federal region is about to embark on an "experimental" project aimed at censoring the internet. A joint effort by the Kostroma regional government and an NGO called the League of Safe Internet, it is similar in spirit to Russia's new internet blacklist.
The End of Russia's Thaw Hurts Medvedev, Navalny, & Friends
Earlier this week, Russia's lone liberal governor, Medvedev appointee Nikita Belykh, had his offices searched by federal investigators. The move indicates a new low for fortunes of a "thaw" instigated by Russia's former president, and adds a fourth criminal probe to the legal troubles of anti-corruption netizen and political oppositionist Alexey Navalny.
About our Eastern & Central Europe coverage
