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I hope you all had a great weekend! This one is a short Sunday Smack… Can the Government Compel Apple to Speak? This is a though one, right? I mean the “should” and not the “can”. Is one party “righter” than the other? Probably not. It will be tremendously exciting to see how courts would decide it solely on the grounds of law. And even then, how to “compel” a company like Apple to come up with something they don’t want to come up with? Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the 2016 Presidential Elections This is about how much US politics matter when electing a UN…
united-nations: #ThrowbackThursday Today we remember Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The Egyptian diplomat served as sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations (1992-1996). He guided the organisation through a tumultuous early 1990’s and helped shape the UN response to post-Cold War realities, drafting a seminal report on preventative diplomacy, peacemaking and peacekeeping. Boutros Boutros-Ghali died in Cairo on 16th February 2016, aged 93. See his tenure in this UN Photo gallery.
Happy Sunday Everybody! Happy Chinese New Year, happy Valentines Day, happy long weekend in the US, and happy whatever you are celebrating around this time. I hope you have some time for today’s posts. Thoughts on the North Korean Nuclear Test and Satellite Launch This post elaborates in detail on my own opinion that what happens in the Korean Peninsula time and again seems to be on repeat. The beginning of the end of border-free Schengen? This is an ever more probable threat as time goes by since the beginning of the migration crisis in Europe. Today is the Day…
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland took place from 20 to 23 January under the theme “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. I am a regular follower of the World Economic Forum’s website, which – regardless of this one week per year in Davos – is a constant resource of informative and inspirational articles for not just economists, but all types of modern professionals. It is also on my bucket list to one day be an attendee of this one week buzz in the life of Davos, Switzerland. Now that I have put it in writing, the…
You might have noticed that despite my promises there was no update on the blog this week. I have several unfinished posts and a bunch of excuses that I will not bother you with. So, no promises this time. Let’s all just accept whatever might come. Like these readings now to finish off your Sundays. ISIS Was Born In An American Detention Facility (And It Wasn’t Gitmo) This is equal parts interesting and disturbing. Julian Assange and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention This was pretty big news this week, with people speculating whether it has any implications for…
Happy last day of January, everybody! For me it feels like New Year all over again or instead of the one I kind of missed a month ago. One of my monthly goals was to reach a professional decision by the end of the month and that I just did on the last workday of it, although kind of reluctantly. Whether it was a good decision, time will tell, I sure will have to live with it for now. On that same note, hopefully this was the last dreadful week for me, at least I refuse to suck it up…
Happy weekend, people! I hope everybody is safe, whether you are affected by severe weather or other dangerous conditions wherever you are. As you might have noticed, this blog might as well be dead if it wasn’t for these Sunday round-ups. But I am bringing it back, I promise, I have at least two posts scheduled for this next week, which according to my favorite boss is going to be “an important week”… So, stay tuned. And thank you for sticking with me through this long hiatus, I hope at least you enjoyed the weekly readings. Let’s see what we…
Happy Sunday, everybody! I know, another week passed without any posts, it is not intentional, I am working on it. My work problem is about to be settled in the coming weeks (one way or another), and then I will hopefully be able to concentrate on creative stuff. At one point, I should probably write a post about it all, but it involves other people, so I will have to figure out some unharmful way to share it. Now let’s see what happened in the world this week. Syria: Starvation as a Tactic of War and A Syrian Response to Obama’s…
Hey everybody! How was you first workweek of 2016? I hope it was better than mine. This is now officially the longest time with no posts at all on the blog, except for all the Sunday Smacks. Which obviously is a must, missing a week would feel like breaking a circle or something – this is now the 143th Sunday Smack and this is really saying something. Even though I had lots of plans for 2016 (with the blog and a lot else), I am just not there right now. Actually, if there ever was a time when I would…
Happy New Year, everybody! A photo posted by Katalin Tarjan (@katalintarjan) on Jan 1, 2016 at 9:55am PST I hope you are content with how you have spent your holidays and ready to get back in the saddle for a fresh new start. For me, it was more work and less rest than planned, but in all, I have spent a pleasant one and a half weeks “holidaying”. I know I have promised a separate look-back post which never happened, so I incorporated the half done pieces of it to this post (after I finished them, of course), you will find…
