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Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten To be sure, the attacks meant different things in Paris and Beirut. Paris saw it as a bolt from the blue, the worst attack in the city in decades, while to Beirut the bombing was the fulfillment of a never entirely absent fear that another outbreak of violence may come. Undoubtedly, people die in such attacks around the world on a daily basis. It has to happen in some Western metropolis to reach the attention of mainstream media. In people’s minds the Middle East is where such things happen, most of…
Hey everybody, I hope you are all safe this weekend… A lot of things happened this week in terms of world affairs, from the Myanmar elections through the EU’s migration summit in Malta to the Syria peace talks in Vienna, but one sad event tops all of them. Let me just say I was worried from the very first moment that this will add fuel to the extreme opinions regarding the refugee issue, and indeed it did. In my country this is most certainly the case, and I think all over Europe they think they now have a seemingly legit…
We are not at war with Islam or Muslims. We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression. And, yes, we are at war with those people. But I don’t want us to be painting with too broad a brush. Hillary Clinton /14.11.2015. The CBS Democratic debate/
a-night-in-wonderland: Paris turned out their lights as a sign of mourning but the rest of the world lit them up again.
Happy Sunday! I have spent some wonderful days in the UK and had a fantastic time at the U2 concert at TheO2, London on Tuesday. You can check out some of my photos and videos on my Instagram. Then of course, it was back to work for the second half of the week. Well, how about this? And how about other world leaders following the example? Because it’s 2015. And for some more inspiration on gender equality you should watch Emma Watson’s interview with Malala at Into Film Festival, if you haven’t yet. Let’s see what else happened this week……
Happy Sunday Everybody! As you are reading this, I am in the UK somewhere having a good time and looking forward to the U2 concert on 3 November, which almost did not happen. (Phew, long story, perhaps many will contradict, but let me just warn you not to order tickets via viagogo.com! Well, not unless you can have them in your mailbox right away. What happened is that they kindly informed me three days prior to the concert, that the tickets I payed for five months in advance don’t exist!!! They blame it on the seller, but I suspect they…
Iran joins talks in Vienna about the Syrian civil war IT COULD have been worse. That was more or less the read-out after talks on Syria in Vienna on October 30th between allies and foes of President Bashar al-Assad including America, Saudi Arabia, Russia and, for the first time, Iran. No one walked out, even though Iran backs Mr Assad and Saudi Arabia is one of the main backers of anti-Assad rebel groups, as well as Iran’s chief rival in the region. Click the title to read more.
Happy Sunday, all! In Hungary we are past a nice long weekend that I have spent in the countryside. I am typing these words on a train back to Budapest, that was delayed 70 (!) minutes (Edit: departure time was delayed 70 minutes, and another 60 minutes was added during the train ride, so I got home more than two hours later than planned, I’m not one to complain, but I wish I could say this is not typical in Hungary…). That means I had more than enough time to catch up with my reading for this post. Hope you’ll…
Everything will be all right, when people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves. Dag Hammarskjöld /The second Secretary General of the United Nations serving between 1953-1961./ Note: People still think of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction in 2015, perhaps not so much as 70 years before, but there is still a lot of work to be done… Here’s to the next 70 years!
un-library: Digital UN Charter collection online for United Nations Day The Dag Hammarskjöld Library is unveiling our digitized collection of over 30 different language editions of the UN Charters to celebrate United Nations Day. Since 1948, the 24th of October has been celebrated as United Nations Day. UN Day marks the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the UN Charter. With the Charter’s ratification the United Nations officially came into being. Learn more about the UN Charter and UN Day UN Documentation Research Guide: Charter of the United Nations Research an Article of the United Nations Charter…
