Tag: world affairs
There’s a lot going on in the world these days. I haven’t really got back to regular blogging and sharing stuff, but I feel these past few weeks (months?) deserve a summary. Well first of all, this year clearly deserves to be labeled as one of my worsts. It haven’t started out as one, just the opposite, I made a career decision last year that I felt really good about and I was working towards it. Then this year I got talked into changing course, and it felt like just a slight detour at the time, because I made a…
Come mid-September and the annual high level week at the UN General Assembly, I used to be glued to the TV or some other device on hand where I could follow the speeches. Unfortunately these days I don’t have that kind of time on any random September afternoon (I’m on CET), so I couldn’t follow everything that was happening real time, but I was still very interested in the outcomes of those high level meetings. Besides the UN webservice and the still very active international community Twitter (sorry, I can’t call it anything else), I followed the happenings of the…
I have read Tim Marshall’s first book about geopolitics, Prisoners of Geography a few years ago, this one picks up where that left off with new maps to explore and topics just as intriguing. Geopolitics and the international order might be one of my top five favorite topics to read and talk about, so it’s no surprise I love Tim Marshall’s writings. His Prisoners of Geography was a world-wide best seller, it contained ten chapters, that is ten maps of somewhere in the world starting with a brief history, then detailing all the geopolitical context down to recent day politics….
This wasn’t supposed to be one of my vacation reads, but being at my parents’ house, they had it out of the library, so I read it during the few days I’ve spent home in August. First of all, I am a huge fan of Kati Marton’s writing. I am also a huge fan of political biographies, so this book was definitely on my list for later reading. My only complaint is that if I’ve waited, I would have probably wanted to read it in its original language, and not in Hungarian (its Hungarian title is simply ‘Merkel’), but I…
Back when I started blogging, I only knew I wanted to write. After a bit of experimenting I knew I had to pick a theme I was genuinely interested in. So why indeed is it world affairs I decided to be blabbing about? Right after high school I went to learn sociology. At first it was only to prepare for law school and I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to finish it all the way through, but then I became really interested in the topics we’ve learnt about. To this day, I love reading and studying behavioural sciences, mostly…
I haven’t posted in a while, but now I’m on a new platform and full of new ideas. When I first started blogging on Tumblr (back when Tumblr used to be cool, I guess), my goal was to be able to share (reblog, mostly) the ideas and information that most inspired me in the topic of international law and world affairs. Soon, I discovered the directions I wanted to go, and started to create more of my own content. Then as my interests evolved and my free-time became practically non-existent, blogging was less of a priority and the quality of…
The full title is Prisoners of Geography: Ten maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics, and I can’t believe I only got around to read this great book now. Although I wouldn’t describe it as a summer read, I enjoyed reading it out in the sun on a long weekend off recently. 📷: Goodreads I couldn’t exactly tell what I’ve expected from this book, but it sure exceeded my expectations in many different ways. It is almost like academic writing in a journalistic style, reciting history and stories of world affairs about how much geography…
Happy Sunday, everyone! It’s been a while. A long while. Being away from this platform had nothing to do with my professional life, as I am still very much interested in world affairs, I am still reading a lot on the topic, and I really do want to blog about it again. This week’s collection is some kind of a test as I am planning to bring this blog back to life. Today’s weather in Hungary brought a strong autumn-y feeling, and fall is a good (well, as good as ever) occasion to start new things, so I will try…
Happy New Year’s Eve, everybody! This is the yearly round-up edition of Sunday Smack, with a couple of reviews of the year. I was also thinking aobut doing a more personal round-up as I did last year, but looking back this year doesn’t give me much pleasure, so I am still not sure if it is going to happen. Anyway, here’s a bit of reading before the party gets going. Key events around the world in 2017 The title says it all, some of the news stories that shaped our passing year. Ten World Figures Who Died in 2017 I…
So, as the busiest week in international diplomacy is over now, here is what I thought of the general debate this year. The 72nd session of the UN General Assembly is well underway and of course keeps going on until next fall. Its most prominent week though with high level officials representing their countries on the GA floor is over now, with the closing of the general debate on Monday. The general debate must seem boring for many. I don’t think there is any one person who sits down and listens to almost 200 speeches in a row for days….
