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Orbus Editor in Chief


BHRT1 Teroristički napadi u Parizu


Prof. dr. Murray Hunter
University Malaysia Perlis


Eva MAURINA
20
Years to Trade Economic Independence for Political Sovereignty -
Eva MAURINA


Aleš Debeljak
In
Defense of Cross-Fertilization: Europe and Its Identity
Contradictions - Aleš Debeljak
ALEŠ
DEBELJAK - ABECEDA DJETINJSTVA
ALEŠ DEBEJAK
- INTERVJU; PROSVJEDI, POEZIJA, DRŽAVA


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Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and is
currently teaching in Bangkok.


Bakhtyar Aljaf
Director of Middle-East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) in Ljubljana,
Slovenia


Rakesh Krishnan Simha Géométrie variable of a love triangle – India, Russia and the US


Amna Whiston
Amna Whiston is a London-based writer specialising in moral philosophy. As a
PhD candidate at Reading University, UK, her main research interests
are in ethics, rationality, and moral psychology.


Eirini Patsea
Eirini Patsea is a Guest Editor in ModernDiplomacy, and
specialist in Cultural Diplomacy and Faith-based Mediation.


Belmir Selimovic
Can we trust the government to do the right thing, are they really
care about essential things such as environmental conditions and
education in our life?


Dubravko Lovrenović


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Aleš Debeljak
Obituary for Alesh -
Čitulja za
Aleša
Quantum
Islam: Towards a new worldview
Murray Hunter and Azly Rahman
Introduction
In
concluding our essay on Tawhidic-Singularity as a new philosophy of
Islam, we proposed that Muslims need to interpret the core teaching
of One-ness from a kaleidoscopic perspective. We asked readers to
reflect upon the applicability of Chaos or Complexity Theory to view
Islam as an organic and living religion inviting its believers to
look at the concept of One-ness as the manifesting of Many-ness. In
this essay, we go deeper into the discussion of the soul of the
Quran itself and how Muslims could perceive and read it as a
postmodern text with multiple-level meanings based on his/her unique
life experiences. We wish to propose the worldview of “Quantum
Islam,” as a new way looking at this cultural belief system. We
invite readers to think of Islam as more than just unquestioning
faith and rites and rituals but as an evolving text to be made
alive. The idea of a “living Quran” is a means of perceiving and
feeling one’s existence as a world of interconnectedness. This world
of deep personal connectivity is a world of the physical, emotional
and spiritual self as it exists in the realm of the Universal self
as a world designed as a Quantum being in itself.
Multiple Universes and the Quran
Islam is about what cannot at present be explained intrinsically
through the science we know today.
The Qu’ran is a deeply layered book of meaning. However, the
majority of Muslims have tended to take literal views. The Qu’ran
has also foreseen many scientific discoveries and defined the nature
of our realities. Such a view of the cognitive and metaphysical
nature of the text has been dominant at a time when Islamic
philosophy was being conceived, especially in the debates between
scholars trained in Greek philosophy with those trying to rid the
influence of rationalism in epistemologizing the meaning of
existence.
The Qu’ran and Hadiths have shaped the worldview of 20% of the
world’s population. But Islam today is viewed as a singular reality,
embedded in ‘Arabism’ and ‘hellfire’ paradigms, coercing Muslims to
follow literal views, within a ‘carrot and stick’ enlightenment and
fear syndrome.
As a consequence Islam has not been the means to a higher level
universal wisdom that the Qu’ran can facilitate, if read with this
understanding.
Allah rabb al-àlamin, the Lord of the Worlds indicates a
multiverse with parallel realities. There are parallel universes
mentioned within the Qu’ran that we don’t have access to. These
worlds are widely talked about within the Qu’ran, the world of the
jinns, as in the verse ”And the jinn race, we had created before,
from the fire of a scorching wind” Qur’an (15:27)
The 99 names of Allah also suggest multi-existential paradigms.
Challenges of constructing this multi-universal view
The first challenge is to escape the unipolar world and live in, and
transcend to the multipolar world the Qu’ran describes. i.e., atoms
can be both a particle and wave and thus be in multiple places at
the same time. True realities are multipolar dynamics, rather than
unipolar statics. Thus, to understand the complexity of the
environment, we must develop both our personal self-awareness and
social awareness. So where reality is multi-layered and
kaleidoscopic, layered and deeper meanings can be derived from the
chaotic environment we exist within through contemplating the
layered intricacies and meanings within the Quran.
Muslims viewing the text of the Qu’ran as a living and evolving one,
can find a meaningful guide to life and the universe, which we
propose is what Quantum Islam means. What one sees with the naked
eye, a phenomenon to be studied is just a level of Reality that we
construct cognitively. However as one reads deeper into the meaning
of the Quran, one may find the signs and symbols manifesting
themselves in newer ways, which we digest and make meaning of
through our self-awareness or spirituality.
The second challenge is that we must understand that we are not at
the centre of the world. We must override the assumption that modern
humankind has adopted in that humans can control nature and nature
is here to serve us. What we think and the assumptions behind our
very thoughts may not actually resemble reality, and may not be the
truth. Once we shed this egocentric view of the world, we come to
realize that we cannot control nature and we must nurture nature. In
the Quran it is said: ”Say: He is Allah, He is One, He is Eternal He
Begets not nor is He begotten and there is none equal unto Him”
Surah Ikhlas 112.
Muslims engaged in a cognitive and metaphysical reading of the Quran
may propose that human existence is both physical and conceptual,
and that as a Platonic view would content, we are both Forms and
Appearance, and that if the self is an invention/creation to
manifest the “truth”. There is a larger truth of “being and
nothingness,” in another world of the “unseen,”. This is the idea of
corresponding reality of existence. Islam proposes that this view of
Quantum state of beingness can only be understood if one understands
the meaning of “selflessness” or the “destruction of the Ego,” and
to allow the self to be liberated from the confines of a physical
and mechanistic world.
The third challenge is to read the question from a
“culturally-neutral” perspective. This means stripping the notion
that all that is Islam is Arabic and with fallacy, to believe that
religious belief is not cultural. This is to begin to believe that
to be a Muslim, one need not aspire to be or to become an Arab. If
Islam is a universal truth, it is not ‘Arab-centric’, and many of
the rites and rituals cannot be universal, if for example, Islam was
to the truth on another planet like Mars. What would Islam be like
without the cultural anchors that have grown around it and almost
strangled the truth? If, as the last message of Prophet Muhammad
would content --- that Islam promotes a universal message of peace –
and be viewed as the “final revelation,” and that only 20% of the
world’s 1.5 billion Muslims are speakers of the Arabic language,
what has been the consequence of Islam as religion that has been too
much caught in the semiotics of Arabism? Simply put, why is being
Muslim today synonymous of being or looking Arabic?
The three challenges above, namely that we are living in a
multipolar world, that our existence is not central to the Universe,
and that religion is a cultural construct to present ways for
Muslims to view Islam differently. The Quran, in its very first few
words of revelation, “Read … in the name of thy Lord who created
Thee …” is a clear enough proposition for believers in this religion
to “read oneself and to read the world on is living in.” It is an
invitation for readers to not only “read the world” but also to
“write” a story of one’s life, based on one’s own worldview and to
unshackle oneself from being defined by others.
The challenges above are existential in
nature, given by the Quran to the readers.
“Verily in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the
alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of
understanding; Men who remember Allah, standing, sitting, and lying
down on their sides, and contemplate the creation of the heavens and
the earth (with the thought) Our Lord! Not for nothing have you
created (all) this. Glory to you! Give us salvation from the
suffering of the fire” Qur’an (3: 190-191)
The Ummah as Singularity in Multiplicity
The Ummah is an interconnection of oneness, not segregated tribes
who are at war with each other.
We are left to reflect upon the multiplicity of worlds that were
created and understand that we are only a tiny part of it.
This opens up wisdom, develops humbleness, and increases empathy
towards there being something greater than ourselves. The
quintessential and foundational chapter of the Quran, Al Fatihah, or
The Opening offer this idea of mercy, peace, gratitude, and wisdom
in choosing between Good and Evil. It introduces the reader to the
idea that the path of righteousness or the “Siratul Mustaqim” is the
path of peace that will guide human beings in this journey through
the bountiful and merciful world created by The Lord of the
Universe. This path is a challenging one, as we can see that even
the world “Islam” can be used to strike terror in others as well as
create untold magnitude of destruction. The emergence of the ISIS
“Islamic State of Syria and Iraq” or ISISL, The Islamic State of
Iraq and Levant” or the Daesh (Darul Islamiyah) and the
globalization of terror has is an example of how the word of Islam
and the tawhidic message of peace can be misrepresented and be a
guide to the path of “those cursed” as the last verse of the Al
Fatihah reads.
This takes us into the “tawhidic-singularity” realm of Islam with
the idea of Gnosticism factored into the belief system – of the ‘alam
al-ghaib’, the concealed dimension of reality
We are told within the Tawhid to submit to Allah and be part of the
greater universe. Yet the behaviour espoused by Islam scholars today
tends to deem that OUR humanity is at the centre of the universe. It
puts humankind above the natural laws of the universe, in a state of
arrogance, detested in the Qu’ran itself.
Today we see many political Islamic ideologies that seek to dominate
all.
This is contrary to Allah’s scheme of things within the Qu’ran.
The continual return to referencing Allah as the Merciful and the
Compassionate reminds us of the need for humility, not hostility and
cruelty to humankind.
Choice is open to humankind within the teachings of the Qu’ran. This
implies man can choose the realities he wants to exist within:
I control what I perceive
I control what I think
I control how I act
I am responsible for the consequences.
(13:11)
This must occur beyond the bounds of ego-centric consciousness
and the assumption that there is only one possible reality.
The action upon literal translation of the Qu’ran is a denial of the
true realities that the Qu’ran lays out in front of us. Literal
scholarly understanding of the Quran has shackled our understanding
to the cultural metaphors that have bounded Islam to its Arabness
that we see today. This has blinded us to seeing the deeper
dimensions of Islam and the messages of transformation towards
Tawhidness. The Quran is a dynamic book, talking about change. It’s
been interpreted as static dogma and doctrines, losing the central
message about our journal of transcendence to the state of
Tawhidness.
The paradoxes of metaphoric and material universes
The paradoxes of the Qu’ran advise humanity not to be too
self-excessive and egocentric. Our greed, and other negative
emotions, narcissism and other neurosis, addictions, pleasures,
accumulation of wealth, and how we treat others is a quantum
introspection that we are taught within the Qu’ran, in order to
assist us seeing other realities (universes), that we have choice to
enter and exist within.
Only through this open awareness can we experience the realities of
the world around us, learn to submit to the greater universe around
us, which is called Allah. Our essence of purity through the state
of spirituality is the only paradigm we can use to understand the
deep meaning of the Tawhid and its greatness, far beyond any person,
society, or time.
Thus the Tawhid provides humanity with a meaning of life; that of
being part of a greater existence; a worldview that accommodates not
only the multiple worldviews of existing belief system but also
respects the process of constructing emergent new ones.
The introspection of a literal Allah is a neurosis that blinds us to
Allah’s true greatness and our true appreciation of this. This is
the true reality.
In Islam, worldviews such as that proposed through Sufism takes
Muslims away from the ordered mechanistic world view. The world can
be seen for what it is, complex in almost mystical ways, as even the
laws of nature itself can be seen beyond cause and effect, beyond
karma which is too simplistic to explain reality. This is the
Quantum view of Islam, which can also be found in the way Buddhism
views the self, Reality, and existence. Buddhist ideas such as the
self as non-existence and constantly evolving as the “being and
becoming bodhisattva” journeys towards “nibbbana or Nirvana,” and
constantly being aware of the impermanence of the self and the
ephemerality of physical beings, and to live a principle of
“non-attachment to this mechanistic and material world,”, and
finally to view that life is a process of samsara or the evolution
towards liberation, perpetual happiness, and next to enter the realm
of “being and nothingness” – this view is where the similarity of
Quantum Islam and core metaphysical teachings of existing cultural
philosophies lie.
Perception and feeling become more important than any form of
quantitative measurement in understanding reality. The Qu’ran itself
is not a quantitative work. It is a compendium of propositions
inviting readers to think of multiple interpretations of the meaning
of texts, subtexts, and cultural contexts. It is a postmodern text
that has not proper arrangement or a sense of story of creationism.
In other words, it is not a structured story about the metaphysics
and physics of creation and Man’s place in the universe. The Quran,
in short is merely a set of annotated readings inviting the reads to
deconstruct meanings. It is a book about representations of
alternate realities in which even the “speaker” or “narrator” of
this grand text utilizes shifting pronouns in telling stories and
passing down decrees.
Reality and Quantum Islam
The perception of reality is about awareness as the Qu’ran teaches.
It is about how individuals transcend the universe through a journey
towards a destination and seek the final reality.
Mathematics breaks down in any view of reality, i.e., mathematics
cannot explain 10% of infinity. Science cannot explain reality; as
if we look at an atom we are not sure whether it’s a particle or a
wave. There is a duality to everything, i.e., atoms can be in more
than one place at the same time. Half of what we look at is in
decay, so the “Schrodinger’s cat “is both alive and dead at the same
time. There is a duality of consciousness that we must understand.
It is both psychic and physical, full of emotion and emotionless,
black and white, good and evil, hot and cold, attracting and
repelling. Reality is thus an inter-connectiveness of nature and a
web of relationships between humanity and spirituality, that makes
up a unified whole within us.
The form of our realities is the product of our observation of this.
A tawhidic consciousness is therefore so important in our
interpretation of reality.
Prof. Anis Bajrektarevic indicates that it: “corresponds with the
Buddhist Yogacara assumption that all perceptions do leave
traces which make future similar perceptions more probable/plausible
– origins of the potentialities within the quantum realm.” Finally,
professor concludes: “This is why mankind kept practicing a prayer.”
Seeing this is the order within the chaos that shrouds our minds by
focusing too much on the poles of the existential paradoxes.
Paradoxes can only be understood through balance. Then one can see
the truths within people, relationships, and events.
Many Islamic writers resorted to using poetry to enhance the
understanding of non-linear world.
The Qu’ran talks of a transition to a level where the duality of
mind and body cannot be distinguished. We shift into a singularity
where there is no time, no space, just a transcendence or universal
oneness. We transcend the four dimensions that we understand into
further dimensions which the Qu’ran speaks of but we have no direct
prior experience. This is the state called Syurga.
The direct experience of reality is a psychic and emotional
breakthrough to what Islam calls Al-falah.
The only tool needed to see reality is a tawhidic transcending
awareness, which is the key to openness and seeing something greater
than our selves.
This is why we rely on rituals such as Zikir (where prayer is
incorporated) which builds up higher levels of consciousness. Zikir
should help us create an empty mind so all thoughts are cleared to
enable us to see the greater universe free of our own egocentrism.
This is where insight come from as we experience ‘eureka
manifestations’ of both personal and universal nature. Einstein
wrote of this epiphanic moment in his journey to construct the
“theory of relativity,”
Our intellect is developed through our experience, which gathers
knowledge and interprets meaning for us. The heart of all knowledge
for a human is experience. For example, we cannot know what it is
like to scuba dive, without actually scuba diving. 100 hours in a
classroom cannot give you the same knowledge as a few minutes under
the water.
Without experiencing the universe we are blind. This blindness can
only be overcome through being open and empathetic to the world
around us. Blindness to the universe is a human neurosis.
Science, sense, and soul
A quantum view of reality puts an end to materialism. It is within
this paradigm Quantum Islam that one need to look at reality in a
different light, taking into consideration that life is not entirely
founded upon Materialism.
The Tawhid espouses us to transcend materialism. The non-physical
element of our life is our existence, not material things, only
their images and symbolic meanings within our minds. This triggers
our emotions which create Al-fasad realities for humankind, bringing
humans to a level of personal destruction through greed, etc.
This also has repercussions in thought and future actions, and can
be considered ill-intentions, contrary to what the Qu’ran espouses.
This is our mystical jihad of finding our true uncorrupted
existence.
The worldly realities mediate and shrivel over our Tawhidic
consciousness, which tells us what is right. Going against what is
right is sin and our physic destruction.
Tawhidic consciousness is the true universal wisdom, just as quarks
within atoms possess energy which has its own consciousness
described for example, by physicist such as Freeman Dyson. Like
quarks, we have the capacity to make free decisions.
The non-physical, all embracing empathetic and compassionate mind is
what we can develop through Tawhidic guidance. This takes us into
the realm of Allah and Syurga.
Allah exists within our higher levels of consciousness, as we are
told many times within the Qu’ran.
The narratives of the Qu’ran are concerned with both individual and
social (universal) consciousness, the yin and yang of our existence.
This has great implications which haven’t been discussed within the
Islamic world. Most are restricted to reading from the literal
universe of the Qu’ran, and clinging to this unipolar universe.
To see reality, we must discard the concepts of language and images.
Structure gives bias and shackles our ‘knowing’.
Higher intellect cannot be obtained through the processes thinking
within mechanistic realities. This blinds us to the understanding of
the essential nature of the universe. With a literal understanding
of the Qu’ran we are in a paradigm lock within a singular universe
of nature. Without paradox, we cannot see meaning, as paradox is the
only way we can interpret. Paradox is the language above all other
languages, the only way we can create benchmarks within our mind, in
order to interpret the universe around us.
However, these paradoxes are ruled by personal emotions, of which we
both project and introspect with the dualities that define our
world. It is within these dualities that we define ‘good’ and
‘evil’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘virtuous’ or ‘sinful’.
Islam and particularly the Tawhid is a field of potential. It is a
reality beyond our materialistic reality, and our consciousness
which is intertwined with our ego-self. The Tawhid can only be
entered into, discovered, or become an awareness through humility on
the inside and compassion filtering to the outside, without the
ego-self bounding us back to our materialistic existence. This
dimension is a field of human and universal purity, full of wisdom;
al-Falah. Islam is really about how we transcend the lower earthly
dimensions of ourselves into the higher dimension of Tawhid-purity.
This is Quantum-Islam; the potential to be, the choice that has been
given to all humanity within the Quran.
Conclusion
Exploring idea of Quantum Islam, as the name suggests, requires the
mind of the Muslim to engage in the phenomenological and
metaphysical experience of conceiving worldviews beyond the
mechanistic view of the personal and physical self and move toward a
higher plane of quantum physics and metaphysics. In other words,
Muslims should raise the level of understanding Islam from mere
doctrinal and cultural to philosophical and muti-universal and
multi-dimensional. This requires a new understanding of what god is,
beyond how this concept of a creator is understood. A Kuhnian shift
in Islamic metaphysics and ontological evolution is needed, as how
the idea of a Heisenberg Principle of observing Objectivity was
conceived. Muslims need to explore the semiotics of believing itself
and venture deeper into the meaning constructing the meaning of
reading their “book of readings”: The Quran.
About the authors:

MURRAY HUNTER is an Australian academic, entrepreneur,
researcher, and writer who has spent more than 35 years within the
region. He is a contributor to a number of international news sites
around the world.
DR AZLY RAHMAN is an academician, long-time columnist for
Malaysiakini, an author of seven books on Malaysia and the
complexities of hypermodernity and globalisation, and teaches
courses in Global Politics, Culture, American Studies, Education,
and Philosophy. He currently resides in the United States.
January 28, 2016
Currency dictatorship
– the struggle to end it
by Rakesh Krishan Simha
India and the BRICS are giving the US dollar the boot? Is it
really so?
The
last time a country decided to dump the dollar in the oil business,
the US destroyed it. Now India, the world’s third largest economy,
and Iran have agreed to settle their outstanding oil dues in rupees.
What’s more, the two countries may conduct all future trade in their
national currencies.
This follows an agreement between Iran and India in mid-2011 in
which both sides decided to settle 45 per cent of India’s oil import
bill in rupees and the remaining 55 per cent in euros. In March 2012
the two countries inked the Rupee Payment Mechanism that allowed
India to buy crude oil in its national currency. Iran then used the
funds to buy products from Indian manufacturers.
Ironically, it is the US itself which is responsible for the
dollar’s elimination from India-Iran trade. The Rupee Payment
Mechanism was set up to skirt American economic sanctions on Tehran.
Iranian oil forms a significant portion of India’s energy
requirements. Similarly, the Iranians rely upon India for steel,
medicines, food and chemicals.
Replacing the dollar
India and the US may have come closer in recent years, but that
hasn’t blinded New Delhi to the toxic nature of America’s currency
as well as manipulation by Britain.
The US is literally writing its own cheque with its unrestrained
printing of the dollar, the bedrock of America’s post-war hegemony.
It is the reserve currency status of the dollar that allows the US
to fund its endless wars and topple governments with impunity.
Across the Atlantic, the Bank of England is involved in interest
rate fixing of an order of magnitude that makes corruption in
developing countries look puny by comparison.
Such financial manipulations and currency debasements are negatively
and cyclically impacting the global economy. In fact, it suits the
West to have periodic booms and busts because it keeps the emergent
economies in turmoil. It keeps poor countries poor and the emergent
ones stuck in what’s known as the “middle income trap”.
In his luminary piece, Geopolitics of
Technology
India’s central bank has invested a significant proportion of its
approximately $500 billion reserves in dollar denominated assets.
Any sharp depreciation in the value of the dollar entails
significant losses to this massive holding. In this backdrop, the
idea of de-dollarisation has resonated with the country’s leadership
in recent times.
In 2010, the Reserve Bank of India proposed floating the rupee as an
alternative global currency. In a study titled ‘Internationalisation
of Currency: The Case of the Indian Rupee and the Chinese Renminbi’,
the bank said the dollar was likely to lose its predominance as the
global reserve currency in the foreseeable future.
"The Indian rupee is rarely being used for invoicing of
international trade," the study pointed out. It argued that India
needs to proactively take steps to increase the role of the rupee in
the region. Also, the strength of the growing Indian economy has
raised the issue of greater internationalisation of the Indian
rupee.
Group remedy
Indian negotiators have actively pushed dollar-free trade at the
annual meetings of the BRICS group. This group of five major
economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – is
actively engaged in speeding up the process of increasing mutual
trade in national currencies.
The $100 billion BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) and a reserve
currency pool worth over another $100 billion are both aimed at
weakening the western chokehold on global financial flows.
According to India’s K.V. Kamath, the first president of NDB,
exchange rate differences increased the cost of hard-currency loans
to emerging and developing countries by 15-20 per cent. In his view,
using local currencies would eliminate that risk and ease the
burden.
The BRICS have already launched a Contingency Reserve Arrangement to
enable the five member states to swap currencies. Another key
advantage of using national currencies in trade and investment is
that businesses do not have to hedge against two different
currencies. Transition to trade in national currencies will also
protect countries from the volatility of a particular currency.
China’s action plan
Meanwhile, the Chinese have surprised everyone with the speed with
which the renminbi has acquired global acceptance. In a paper titled
‘The Renminbi Bloc is Here’, Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler
of the US-based Peterson Institute for International Economics
provide a dramatic picture of how the renminbi is growing in
strength while the US dollar weakens.
Firstly, they say the renminbi is already the dominant reference
currency in India and South Africa. Secondly, since mid-2010 the
renminbi has made dramatic strides as a reference currency compared
with the dollar and euro.
“The renminbi has now become the dominant reference currency in East
Asia, eclipsing the dollar and the euro….The currencies of South
Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, and
Thailand now more closely track the RMB than the dollar. The
dollar’s dominance as reference currency in East Asia is now limited
to Hong Kong (by virtue of the peg), Vietnam and Mongolia.”
And they provide this chilling assessment: “The dollar and the euro
still play a greater role beyond their natural spheres of influence
than does the renminbi but that is changing in favour of the
renminbi.”
Why chilling? The India-Iran rupee trade, Russia-Iran rouble trade
and the worldwide acceptance of the renminbi will slowly erode the
prestige of the US dollar, which will have dire consequences for
American prosperity.
As a country that greatly benefits from – and exploits – the
dollar’s reserve currency status, the end of dollar dominance will
mean a sharp decline in American incomes and the ability to project
power overseas.
Author:

Rakesh Krishan Simha
New Zealand-based journalist and foreign affairs analyst. According
to him, he writes on stuff the media distorts, misses or ignores.
Rakesh started his career in 1995 with New Delhi-based Business
World magazine, and later worked in a string of positions at other
leading media houses such as India Today, Hindustan Times, Business
Standard and the Financial Express, where he was the news editor.
January 19, 2016
Creative Economy and the bases of UNCTAD’s Creative
Economy Programme as instrument for growth and development
by Giuliano Luongo
Firstly,
it is important to introduce the basic definitions and features of
the creative economy approach. There is no consensus in literature
around the definition of creative economies and creative industries.
Scholarly interest in the creative economy arose quite recently,
shifting the topic from a marginal position into the centre of
various analyses and statistics. Despite the definitional and
taxonomical issues, in general the creative economy concerns the
activities that generate or exploit knowledge or information.
An issue compounding the difficulty to define the creative economy
and creative industries lies in the “grey zone” between the border
of cultural and creative industries and traditional manufacturing,
which allows for the blending of artistic imagination with
handcrafted knowledge, creating unique products of renown. However,
there is consensus around the importance of the creative economy.
Over the period 2000-2005, trade in creative goods and services
increased at an average annual rate of 8.7%. World exports of
creative products were $424.4 billion in 2005 as compared to $227.5
billion in 1996. Creative services in particular enjoyed an export
growth of 8.8 % annually between 1996 and 2005 (UNCTAD, 2008).
Read more on the next page:.........
December 24, 2015
Ecological Globalistan
(From Paris COP 21, Of Nearly Everything)
Anis H. Bajrektarevic
Speaking
in Paris on 07th
December 2015, the UN Secretary General have again reminded the
world leaders that: “More than 1 billion people worldwide live
without electricity. Nearly 3 billion people depend on smoky,
dangerous traditional fuels for cooking and heating. Access to
modern, reliable, affordable clean energy is equally important for
ending extreme poverty and reducing inequality…The clock is ticking
toward climate catastrophe.” Nihilists, professional optimists, or
status quo conservators would call it ‘environmental alarmism’…
What is really the state of our planet?
* * * *
Back in 1990s, there was a legendary debate between two eminent
scientists Carl Sagan, Astrophysicist and Ernst Mayr, evolutionary
biologist. The issue was the question of all questions – is there
any intelligent life out there. Sagan – closer to mathematics, and
counting of starts and worlds attached to it – argued that out of
innumerable planets like ours, life must flourish at many of them.
Read more on the next page:.........
December 8, 2015
This is really a clash of civilizations
Vlastimir Mijovic
Samuel P. Huntington,
known for his book "The Clash of Civilizations", died in 2008 and
did not live to see him in action exercised his prophecies. He would
have been proud of some of his predictions, but - with a little
professorial self-criticism - saw order and how much was wrong with
their grades.
simply
is not good to define the concept of civilization, taking into
account solely on geography, not understanding that civilization in
the modern world are not separated by recognizable boundaries; that
within each of these pieces of the world there are at least two
separate, mutually opposed, civilized and backward world.
The clash of civilizations is well-known theory that a
civilizational identity will be the main cause of division in the
modern world. The theory was popularized by noted professor in his
article "The Clash of Civilizations", which was published in and
have since spread to the book, which has acquired a worldwide
readership.
Read more on the next page:.........
November 26, 2015
No more
War on Terror, please Europe
URGENTLY NEEDS
DE-NAZIFICATION
Prof. dr.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic
There is a claim constantly
circulating the EU: ‘multiculturalism is dead in Europe’.
Dead or maybe d(r)ead?... That much comes from a cluster of European
nation-states that love to romanticize – in a grand metanarrative
of dogmatic universalism – their appearance as of the coherent
Union, as if they themselves lived a long, cordial and credible
history of multicul-turalism. Hence, this claim and its resonating
debate is of course false. It is also cynical because it is
purposely deceiving. No wonder, as the conglomerate of
nation-states/EU has silently handed over one of its most important
debates – that of European anti-fascistic identity, or otherness –
to the wing-parties. This was repeatedly followed by the selective
and contra-productive foreign policy actions of the Union.
Read more on the next page:.........
November 1, 2015
EUROPE IN DISARRAY, AND THE BREAKUP LOOMING !?
Vlastimir Mijović
(From World War II until today, the world was
faced with a crisis of this type of refugee. But it is even more
dangerous as hints at new, with even larger scale: the
disintegration of the European Union)
Two-thirds
of our citizens favor the entry of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the
European Union. This year's survey of the Directorate for European
Integration has shown that the 78 percent of the citizens of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, if a referendum on joining the EU, supported BiH's
membership in the community of states.
The information that is published these days, however, almost no
value. The study, in fact, conducted in the first quarter of 2015.
And from then on, everything turned upside down.
Read more on the next page:.........
November 1, 2015
Nord Stream Nr. 2: The
Project’s Implications in Europe
By Vladimir Socor
Russia,
Germany and a consortium of Western European companies have
re-activated the Gazprom-led Nord Stream Two gas pipeline project.
Parallel to the existing Nord Stream One pipeline on the Baltic
seabed, Nord Stream Two would double the system’s total capacity to
110 billion cubic meters (bcm) annually, all earmarked for direct
delivery to Germany.
Nord Stream is billed as the world’s biggest natural gas
transportation project, in terms of pipeline length and throughput
capacities. Initially announced in 2011–2012 through non-binding
agreements of intent, Nord Stream Two had to be shelved for the
duration of Europe’s economic slump. The project agreement signed on
September 4, 2015, however, is binding. Gazprom’s management
anticipates economic-financial recovery in Western Europe and,
consequently, gas demand recovery by 2019, the target date for
completing Nord Stream Two. It also expects gas extraction to
decline in Norway after having been capped in the Netherlands, thus
boosting European import demand (Gazprom.com, accessed September
14).
Vladimir Socor
Vladimir Socor is an independent researcher, analyst on central and
Eastern Europe, and former diplomat.
Read more on the next page:.........
October 23, 2015
Dok Rusija pomaže
legitimne vlade
SAD-ih
uništava
While Russia
assists legitimate governments the US destroys them
by Thierry Meyssan
Moscow’s military intervention in
Syria has not simply overturned the fortunes of war and spread panic
throughout the ranks of the jihadist groups. It has also shown the
rest of the world the current capacities of the Russian army in
situations of real warfare. To everyone’s astonishment, it has
proved to possess a system of signal jamming capable of rendering
the Atlantic Alliance deaf and blind. Despite a far superior budget,
the United States have just lost their military domination.
Published first by the Voltaire news under: ‘
The Russian army asserts its superiority in conventional
warfare’
Thierry Meyssan

French intellectual, founder and
chairman of Voltaire Network and the
Axis for Peace Conference. His
columns specializing in
international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly
magazines in Arabic, Spanish and
Russian. His last two books
published in English :
9/11 the Big Lie and
Pentagate
Read more on the next page:.........
October 21, 2015
THE REBIRTH OF THE PATRIARCH OF MOSCOW
Written by Dr Filippo Romeo
The Orthodox Church and the Christian tradition have always
assumed a role of primary importance in Russian history and
tradition.
The origins of Christianity in Russia go back to 988 and coincide
with the baptism of Prince Vladimir the Great. He had come to
Constantinople, following which the evangelization of the
Principality Kievan Rus’ started. The latter included the space
currently occupied by the areas of Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus,
considered the predecessor of the Russian Empire. Formed by Igor in
882, the Principality Kievan Rus’ is the first political form
organised by the Oriental Slav tribes placed on those territories.
This gave rise to the common orthodox faith and the Russian people’s
sense of national belonging.
Dr Filippo ROMEO, Director, Infrastructure and Development Programme, IsAG Rome,
Italy.
Read more on the next page:.........
October 16, 2015
Of Europe, Syria and
antropogeographic inversion
Prof.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic
Of Europe, Syria and
antropogeographic inversion
(Unbearable pressures from the insecure edges
of a contracting civilization )
How can we observe and interpret (the distance
between) success and failure from a historical perspective? This
question remains a difficult one to (satisfy all with a single)
answer...
The immediate force behind the rapid and successful European
overseas projection was actually the combination of two elements.
Europe’s economic advancement (less the capacity to invent than the
readiness to retake from others, the so-called superior adaptive
capacity in technology, navigation, transport) coupled with a
demographic expansion – from early 16th century on. Still, is it
credible to say that European history was enhanced by a progressive
temporal linearity, whereas the rest of this planet was/is ruled by
regressive temporal circles of stagnation? Or, is – on contrary –
Gerard Delanty right when he claims that “Europe did not derive its
identity from itself but from the formation of a set of global
contrasts”?

Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic
Vienna, 01 OCT 2015
Contact: anis@bajrektarevic.eu
Author is professor in international law and global political
studies, based in Vienna, Austria. His previous book Geopolitics of Technology – Is There Life after Facebook?
was published by the New York’s Addleton
Academic Publishers. Just released is his newest book Geopolitics –
Europe 100 years later.
Read more on the next page:.........
October 9, 2015
Refugees as a means to an end – The EU's most dangerous man
One week ago we published an analysis and concrete proposal how the
European Union might deal with the issue of refugees, especially Syrian
asylum seekers crossing the Aegean to reach Greece, and then the Western
Balkans, to get to Germany: ESI policy proposal: Why
people don't need to drown in the Aegean (17 September 2015) Die Zeit, Andrea Böhm, "Zäune,
Paragrafen, Drohungen – nützt alles nichts" ("Fences, paragraphs,
threats – all to no avail") (21 September 2015).
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Michael Martens, "Auf
dem Meer gibt es keine Mauern" ("There are no walls on the sea")
(18 September 2015) There were
many reactions, in the media and among policy makers. This week we
will publish an update, assessing the still inadequate proposals adopted
in the EU. At the same time the dangers of the failure of European leaders to
address this issue are becoming clear.
While
EU institutions and governments discuss how to deal with the
consequences of this refugee crisis (how to register, allocate and
accommodate tens of thousands) or dwell on steps which have at best an
impact in the very long-term (diplomacy or limited interventions in
Syria) one leader stands out for his ability to use the refugees as a
mean to a very different agenda: Viktor Orban. So far, he has been
astonishingly successfully.
Read more on the next page:.........
For Viktor Orban, this is, so far, a very good crisis.
The most dangerous man in the EU today
The Picnic speech (5 September 2015)
Viktor Orban in Kötcse
24 September 2015
Empty Dayton straw
When you already have money for bombastic meetings, not missing any
customers for speculation, to which should be applied much more serious and
challenging themes of Dayton political corpse
Each story for your time. So it should be, but is not, and with that Dayton.
And Bosnia could disappear, but the stories about "what would happen if it
was" not ever.
On Saturday in front of the microphones and cameras Dayton's-game in Banja
Luka on Monday the continuation gatherings transferred to Sarajevo, with
dozens of politicians, analysts, historians, diplomats, statesmen closer
look (Croatia, Slovenia) and remotely (Malaysia, Turkey). And how many will
only unnecessary memorial meetings on the topic which has long been nothing
to add or take away, to be held at the end of the year, when officially the
twentieth anniversary of the fall of a peace agreement that is in our
country (1) ended the war, when the ( 2) surrounded by chains to the bar
formally keep them together, and (3) appointed supervisors (side, of course)
to worry that something gets out of their control.
These three items are essential to describe the scope of the agreement
negotiated in Dayton in 1995. Everything else was extorted recognition of
arms created "reality" on the one hand and throwing beautiful illusion in
the eyes, on the other hand. A illusions, and therefore the development
dimension of Dayton, which some see as the beginning of better days, died
before 16 years. Then the High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch put an end
to "and" a variety of hassle with the rights of displaced persons and
refugees to return to their residential property. In late October 1999, he
imposed the law, and later detailed, binding instructions which tenancy
rights in both entities turns into - ownership!
Read more on the next page:.........
September 21, 2015
Muslim
Australia and the search for a solution to the "War on Terror"
Prof. Murray Hunter
There
are almost 500,000 Muslims in Australia, with 400 mosques serving
them. According to the Australian Security Intelligence Organization
(ASIO)
2012-103 Annual Report to the Australian Parliament, there are
over 200 terror investigations going on. This infers that massive
government resources are being ploughed into monitoring and
surveillance of the Muslim community in Australia, as
four Australian Prime Ministers have admitted.
There appears to be an insecurity on the
part of lawmakers and successive governments about Muslim citizens
in the Australian community. At first it was about
immigration, and violence, which grew into terrorism after 9/11.
The
evidence used to support policy has not been accurate according
to prominent Australian Tim Costello.
Official government comment and stories
from within the Muslim community itself, indicate that the
security
services are spying on their own people in a
similar manner
they did with communist groups within the Australian community
back in the 1950s and 60s.
Read more on the next page:.........
Prof. Murray Hunter, Australia-born
notable author, innovator and entrepreneur is the MD’s Advisory
Board Vice-Chairman
August 2015
The
Rebirth of the Patriarch of Moscow:
Vladimir Putin’s politics in harmony with
the Orthodox Church
By Dr Filippo ROMEO
The Orthodox Church and the Christian tradition have always
assumed a role of primary importance in Russian history and
tradition.
The
origins of Christianity in Russia go back to 988 and coincide with
the baptism of Prince Vladimir the Great. He had come to
Constantinople, following which the evangelization of the
Principality Kievan Rus’ started. The latter included the space
currently occupied by the areas of Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus,
considered the predecessor of the Russian Empire. Formed by Igor in
882, the Principality Kievan Rus’ is the first political form
organised by the Oriental Slav tribes placed on those territories.
This gave rise to the common orthodox faith and the Russian people’s
sense of national belonging.
Retracing the path of the Principality one can indeed observe that
the Orthodox Christian Faith was immediately embraced by those
populations. It also succeeded in asserting itself in the Eastern
zones, where there was b pagan influence. This barely digested the
advent of the new creed and accompanied their evolution, acting as a
stalwart for the Country’s national and cultural identity. Orthodoxy
is even granted with Scripture, which is surely a culture’s
fundamental principle. It was introduced via the spread of
Christianity among the Slav tribes through the creation of the
Cyrillic characters due to two great saints, Cyril and Methodius. It
also constituted the prerequisite for the political and cultural
development of the Principality of Kiev, leaving a heritage that
would last even after its disintegration.
Read more on the next page:.........
Dr Filippo ROMEO,
Director, Infrastructure and Development Programme, IsAG Rome,
Italy.
August 8, 2015
SIMULTANEOUS REGIONAL HEAD ELECTIONS IN INDONESIA 2015
By Igor Dirgantara
Abstract
As one of the largest democratic countries, Indonesia will execute
for the first time the regional head election simultaneously in the
first wave. Indonesia should be recorded in the world democratic
history because there will be 269 regions consisting of 9 provinces,
36 cities and 224 districts simultaneously choose the regional head.
Of course, there will be many challenges to be faced. There are some
crucial issues on the implementation of simultaneous elections in
Indonesia on December 9, 2015, namely: the high intensity of the
conflict, the neutrality of the election organizers, list of
election voters, dualism management of political parties, candidates
dolls, dynastic politics, money politics, election offenses and
disputes.
Keywords: Regional Head Election simultaneously, Political
Party, General Election Commission (KPU), the Constitutional Court,
the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu), list of voters, (DPT),
Money Politics, Political Dynasty, Candidate Dolls, Political
Campaigns , Regional Election Conflict and Dispute.
Igor Dirgantara is
Lecturer at Faculty of Social Politics, University Jayabaya,
Jakarta, and Director Survey & Polling Indonesia (SPIN).
Read more on the next page:.........
August 1, 2015
The Future of Turkey
after the Last Elections:
the Kurdish question and
the economic outlook
Diego Del Priore
The last parliamentary
elections in Turkey mark a political and an institutional turning
point in the country's history. The importance of the vote derives
from two main factors.
Firstly, Prime Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu's Party of Justice and Development (AKP) has lost
its parliamentary majority, although it remains the largest party in
the Parliament with 258 seats and 40.9% of the votes. This is the
first time that the party has been in this position since 2002, when
the AKP swept to power and retained a majority in the Turkish
Parliament.
However, the AKP
failed to
achieve its
objective of 350 seats, as the party leader and president of the
Republic since August 2014, Recep Tayyp Erdogan, had hoped.
This 350
seats threshold would have allowed Erdogan to introduce a series of
constitutional
reforms leading to a reinforcement of the presidential system.
However, Turkish voters would appear to have baulked at this
prospect and have opted to maintain the existing balance of
institutional power. The elections were an indirect referendum on
Erdogan's constitutional intentions.
Read more on the next page:.........
Diego Del Priore is
Research associate at the Institute of Advanced Studies in
Geopolitics and Auxiliary Sciences (IsAG)
July 30, 2015
The Power of Geopolitical
Discourse
By Diego Solis
Geopolitics, as a discursive
practice, should be taken seriously. Unfortunately, sometimes we are
so busy with our daily activities and work that we tend to ignore
the fact that the media can, indeed, specialize and geopoliticize a
conflict by ‘labeling’ and ‘identifying’, thus creating a sense of
‘pertinence’ amongst us, the ‘audience’; in other words, creating a
binary world between ‘us’ and ‘them, the ‘other.’ This said, in
order to understand the power of words and images in geopolitics, we
must look back and understand how geopolitical knowledge was
originally produced and thought of.
Although at first glance, while difficult to prove, the true origin
of geopolitical theory may revolve around Darwinism and the rules of
nature—I will not delineate the rules of nature according to Darwin
but rather I will keep my argument in line with that of geopolitics
and discourse. For instance, Friedrich Ratzel (a notable geographer,
ethnographer and biologist), the creator of Lebensraum (the need of
living space), theorized and compared the state to that of a living
organism, in search of augmenting its space to support the carrying
capacity of its species under its physical environment. By the same
token, Rudolf Kjellen—who was actually the first political scientist
to coin the term ‘geopolitics’—viewed the state in a similar manner
as Ratzel: as an organic living being, with its own limbs and
personality, drawing his metaphors from poetry and prose. Friedrich
Ratzel (1844-1904) and Rudolf Kjellen (1864-1922), who were the
creators of the German geopolitical school of thought, had something
in common: they grew up between the transition of a pre-industrial
society (1750-1850) and the beginning of a new industrial society in
continental Europe. Eventually, the story is widely known: their
theories, alongside Mackinder’s, influenced the aggressive
expansionist policies of the Nazis, pushed by Major General Karl
Haushofer. (from Machtpolitik to Weltpolitik)
Read more on the next page:.........
Diego Solis Global South Advocate, Founder and chair of Geopolitical Explorers
Consulting Group,
July 30, 2015
YOGA DIPLOMACY
By Umesh MUKHI
Recently, we must have witnessed
the hype in Press about the International Yoga Day celebrations led
by India all over the world.
The event evoked mélange of reactions, while some
highly appraised the initiative there were also some criticisms as
well. Moreover analysts didn’t fall short to offer their own
analysis by analyzing the ancient Indian scriptures and offering
their analyzing in the context of present government under Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. What is the essence of Yoga?
How is it related with Religion? Is it a way to exercise India’s
soft power? How is Yoga entering the arena of Diplomacy and
International Affairs? With an intention of offering a holistic
view, I will lay down some perspectives from different angles to
enlighten our reader’s attention.
Read more on the next page:.........
July 22, 2015
Europe –
Syriza-ize or Syria-nize

(Key-words: Greece, Germany, ECB, Austerity,
Ukraine, crisis, Syriza, Syria, Podemos)
A freshly released IMF’s World Economic Outlook
brings (yet again, for the sixth year in a row, and for the third
time this year only) no comforting picture to anyone within the G-7,
especially in the US and EU. Neither is comforting the latest pre-Davos
summit released Oxfam study. It hints that 1% is fat and furious, as
some 99% of us are too many on this planet. Will the passionately
US-pushed cross-Atlantic Free Trade Area save the day? Or, would
that Pact-push drag the things over the edge and mark an end of the
unionistic Europe? Is the extended EU conflict with Russia
actually a beginning of the Atlantic-Central EuAnis-BTV1-300.PNG over Russia, an internalization of mega geopolitical and
geo-economic dilemma – who accommodates with whom, in and out of the
Union? Finally, does more Ukrainian (and Eastern Europe) calamities
pave the road for a new cross-continental grand accommodation, of
either austerity-tired France or über- performing Germany
with Russia, therefore the end of the EU? For whose sake Eastern
Europe has been barred of all important debates such as that of
Slavism, identity, social cohesion (eroded by the plunder called
‘privatization’), secularism and antifascism? Why do we suddenly
wonder that all around Germany-led Central Europe, the neo-Nazism
gains ground while only Russia insists on antifascism and
(pan-)Slavism?
Read more on the next page:.........
Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic Contact:
anis@bajrektarevic.eu
Author is professor in international law and
global political studies, based in Vienna, Austria. His previous
book Geopolitics of Technology – Is There Life after
Facebook? was published by the New York’s Addleton
Academic Publishers. Just released is his newest book Geopolitics –
Europe 100 years later.
July 9, 2015
The debt write-off behind Germany's 'economic miracle'
By Benjamin DODMAN
Six decades ago, an agreement to cancel half of postwar Germany's
debt helped foster a prolonged period of prosperity in the war-torn
continent. The new government in Athens says Greece – and Europe –
now need a similar deal. When discussing Greece’s whopping $310 billion debt, the country's
new Prime Minister
Alexis Tsipras likes to recall a time when Europe's great debt
offender was not
Greece,
but
Germany,
today's paragon of fiscal responsibility. The leader of
the radical-left Syriza party refers in particular to an
international conference held in London in 1953, during which West
Germany secured a write-off of more than 50% of debt, accumulated
after two world wars. Back then, with memories of Nazi atrocities
still fresh, many countries were reluctant to offer such generous
debt relief. But the US persuaded its European allies, including
Greece, to relinquish debt repayments and reparations in order to
build a stable and prosperous Western Europe that could contain the
threat from Soviet Russia.
Read more on the next page:.........
July 9, 2015
Europe
Agonistes: A Divided Continent Plays Out a Greek Drama

Jamil Maidan Flores
Prof.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic recently launched a book titled, “Europe of
Sarajevo 100 Years Later:
From WWI to www.” Only Prof. Anis, I
think, can write a book of that title, just as he’s the only
intellectual I know who argues passionately that Google is the Gulag
of our time, the prison of the free mind.
His editor tells us that in the book, Prof. Anis
makes the case that the history of Europe, perhaps of the world,
since World War I has been a history of geopolitical imperative. And
that, in the face of climate change, the crisis that grips all of us
is not really ecological, as it never was financial, but moral.
Prof. Anis is chairperson for international law and global political
studies at the University IMC-Krems, Austria. I’ve been reading some
of his recent writings. A native Sarajevan who now lives in Vienna,
he doesn’t see one seamless Europe but several.
There’s Atlantic Europe, a political powerhouse
that boasts two nuclear states. There’s Central Europe, an economic
powerhouse. Scandinavian Europe is a little of both. And Eastern
Europe that’s none of either. And beyond Eastern Europe, is a
Europe-stalking Russia.
Read more on the next page:.........
Published June 30, 2015 in the Web
Magazine "ORBUS.be"
Bosnian Myths[1]
Dubravko Lovrenović
The
continuing disasters in human history are largely conditioned by
man’s excessive capacity and his urge to identify with the tribe,
the nation, the church or a common goal, and to accept a certain
credo uncritically and enthusiastically although the postulates of
this credo are contrary to his ratio and his own interest, and may
even endanger his existence (A. Koestler, “Janus”, Erasmus 9,
Zagreb, 1994).
The Bosnia and Herzegovina war (1992-1995) was
preceded by a conflict which has been taking place on the
“battlefield” of South Slavic historiography for longer than a
century. The historiography war, along with the wider international
circumstances, led to an armed conflict transforming this country
into a Dayton assembly of ethnically homogenized entities and
corridors – the region of a blurred and relative truth, instead of
transforming it into a civil democratic country. The spirits should
have been sharpened before knives. This historiographical “grinding
wheel” for sharpening of nationalistic concepts has never stopped
revolving, indicating that, according to Ina Merdjanova, “national
ideology has remained the central part of the communism culture”, or
negating a frequently repeated opinion that the frenzy for
nationalistic movements and activities in Eastern Europe is a result
of repressed national feelings prevailing during the communist
regime.
Read more on the next page:......... .
June 1, 2015
Bosnia and Herzegovina:
The final phase of genocide?
Director IFIMES: Bakhtyar Aljaf
Recent
events in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) have once again reminded how
fragile peace and stability remain in this country. Although the
European Union (EU) has announced it would pursue a more active
policy on Bosnia and Herzegovina after the formation of new state
government, other events may prevent the realisation of that
promise. The Ukraine conflict, the situation in the Middle East and
North Africa, an alarming increase in the number of refugees from
Africa and the fact that EU still has to devote much of its
attention to Greece as one of its Member States – all these elements
represent a real threat that the West Balkans will again be pushed
down on the list of priorities of European politics.
The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina has culminated after latest
actions taken by the Ministry of the Interior of Republika
Srpska(MUP RS) to apprehend the members of marginalised Bosniak
ethnic minority living in the territory of Republika Srpska (RS), an
entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Those are the citizens who had
been expelled from their homes during the 1992-1995 war in BH. This
operation has been long prepared and represents the continuity of
activities of RS authorities led by President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik. Almost 2000 attacks have been carried out and
recorded against non-Serb returnees and their property in the
territory of RS since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement,
without the offenders having been sanctioned.
Ljubljana, 15 May 2015
Read more on the next page:
May 15, 2015
Geopolitics -
Europe of Sarajevo 100 years later by Anis
Bajrektarević
For his previous book Geopolitics of Technology – Is There
Life after Facebook, published by the New York’s Addleton,
former Austrian Foreign Minister Peter Jankowitsch has said: “Insightful,
compelling and original, this book is an exciting journey through
the rocky field of geopolitics. It is also a big-thinking
exploration of the least researched aspects of the discipline, which
will leave no one indifferent. This book, written by an experienced
lawyer and a former career diplomat, cleverly questions how we see
the world, and acts as an eye opener.”
Anis H. Bajrektarević, professor and
chairperson for international law and global political studies, Uni-
versity IMC-Krems, Austria. This native Sarajevan, besides this very
title, authors the book FB – Geo- politics of Technology (Addleton,
New York 2013), and the forthcoming No Asian century. He is both
teaching and research professor on subjects such as the Geopolitics;
International and EU Law; Sustainable Development (institutions and
instruments). On the subject Geopolitical Affairs alone, professor
has over 1,000 teaching hours at his university as well as in many
countries on all meridians. His writings are frequently published in
over 50 countries in all five continents, and translated in some 20
languages worldwide. He lives in Vienna, Austria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B61JRDWKmSE (play from: 0.35.44)
https://vimeo.com/112013062 (play from: 0.57.00)
Read more on the next page:
BOSANSKA VERZIJA UDARITE OVDJE
May 11, 2015
Promocija
knjige prof. dr. Anisa Bajraktarevića
13.05.2015. (utorak) u 19
sati u Umjetničkoj galeriji BiH, Zelenih beretki 8,
Sarajevo, BiH

Media-clip: At the
occasion of a book launch
07.05.2015.
Berlin Congress of 1878
still in force in the Balkans
Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarević
Aegean theatre of the Antique Greece was the place of
astonishing revelations and intellectual excellence – a remarkable
density and proximity, not surpassed up to our age. All we know
about science, philosophy, sports, arts, culture and entertainment,
stars and earth has been postulated, explored and examined then and
there. Simply, it was a time and place of triumph of human
consciousness, pure reasoning and sparkling thought.
However,
neither Euclid, Anaximander, Heraclites, Hippocrates (both of Chios,
and of Cos), Socrates, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Democritus, Plato,
Pythagoras, Diogenes, Aristotle, Empedocles, Conon, Eratosthenes nor
any of dozens of other brilliant ancient Greek minds did ever refer
by a word, by a single sentence to something which was their
everyday life, something they saw literally on every corner along
their entire lives.
Read more on the next page:
April 26, 2015
Can we trust the government to do the
right thing?
Belmir Selimovic
Can
we trust the government to do the right thing, are they really care
about essential things such as environmental conditions and
education in our life?
First issue here is, should businesses naturally be doing good? In
the case if they have more industry agency, answer would be yes.
However, when it comes to this case, we can't trust the government
because the drilling is taking place with minimal oversight from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of course I would like to
emphasize that fracking is process of drilling and injecting fluid
into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks
to release natural gas inside. For example, Mr. Wasner lives in
Milanville but he moved away for six weeks last year while an
exploratory well was drilled nearby.
˝The noise, muddy water pouring from his taps, and chemicals that
turned up in a neighbor's well drove him off.˝ The U.S
Environmental Protection Agency did not do anything when it comes to
this problem.
Read more on the next page:
April 25, 2015
Is it time for the rise of
local currencies?
Prof. dr. Murray Hunter
It's
an almost long forgotten historical fact that most trade was
undertaken by local based currencies right into the 20th Century.
Australia had a number of colonial currencies before federation in
1901. The United States of America had a number of currencies issued
by private banks before the Federal Reserve Bank was formed in 1913,
and individual states of the European Union had their own national
currencies before the mega-currency, the Euro was launched in 1999.
However given the trend to larger and "stronger"
currencies, the hype of the Euro, the protection of the US Dollar as
the major trading currency, a very quiet trend has been going the
other way. In contrast, more than 2,000 local currencies in some
form or the other have been launched in communities around the
world.
The phenomenon of the local currency almost doesn't
exist in contemporary economic literature. Therefore the purpose of
this article is to have a look at local currencies, and try and
answer the questions; Why do communities launch them? Do local
currencies have any benefit to these communities?, and What
is the real potential of these currencies?
Read more on the next page:
April 14, 2015
Eastern Europe –
The World’s Last Underachiever
Prof. Anis H.
Bajrektarević
25 years ago, the Russian historical empire melted
down. Although often underreported, this also marked the end of
alternative society in Europe. Collapse of the II world, made the 3rd
way (of Yugoslavia and further, beyond Europe – globally, of the
Nonaligned Movement) obsolete.
That 9/11 was a moment when the
end of history
rested upon all of us, the day when the world became flat.
The EU entered East, but only as a ‘stalking horse’ of NATO. No
surprise that Eastern Europe –following the slaughter of its pivot,
Yugoslavia – has soon after abandoned its identity quest, and
capitulated. Its final civilizational defeat came along: the Eastern
Europe’s peoples, primarily Slavs, have silently handed over their
most important debates – that of Slavism, anti-fascism and of own
identity – solely to the recuperating Russophone Europe.
Read more on the next page:
Vienna, March 26, 2015
Yemenisation or Confederalisation of Saudi Arabia?
By Brian Whitaker
 Click on Picture
Read more on the next page:
March 27, 2015
Bosnia as Wunderkind –
Corruption from Kosovo to Germany
Gerald Knaus
Ugly ducklings,
fairy tales and Bosnia in 2015
ESI newsletter 3/2015 - If corruption is
serious business, its assessment should be as well.
Read more on the next page:
March
19, 2015
Imperative
of an EU-Russia strategic reset
Eirini Patsea
 Russia vs. the European Union. It is relationship
based and built upon a long history of protracted political
conflict. Lately, with the crisis in Ukraine and the subsequent
sanctions imposed to Russia, the diplomatic relations between the
two sides have reached a new historical low. But more importantly,
the mistrust among the peoples residing in both sides has reached a
new high. Unavoidably so. Since the Western and Russian media
started to be viciously launching campaign-like news reports, there
is nothing but confusion and loss of perspective by both the peoples
and their representatives. The big question is whether this would be
the case if the US politics were not involved in the game. Would
still Russia and the EU have so many excuses to be driven apart;
politically, culturally and ideologically?
After the warmhearted welcome by Peter Haider, UPF
Austria President, Prof. Bajrektarevic made more than a challenging
opening:
Read more on the next page:
March 3, 2015
All European shades
of ISIL colour black: Neonazism of Europe and Fascism in the Arab
World
By Allan Bogle
How did Europe manage to drag Arabs to the wrong side
of history – a confusion, pride, shame and denial – all which
resurfaces again, 75 years after. How is this possible that the
‘never-again’ takes place today? Do we fake our surprise? How
expensive is our European denial, and Monarchist Arabs claim of
innocence?
Read more on the next page:
March 4, 2015
Greed is good…but
only for cancer
Amna Whiston
Amna Whiston is a London-based writer specialising in moral
philosophy. As a PhD candidate at Reading University, UK, her main
research interests are in ethics, rationality, and moral psychology.
Don’t be bad with 1%, don’t accuse them for having it all
and doing nothing to earn it. 99% firmly believes that a greed is
good… Spoiling mood, but being good for your food, as it should?
**
** ** **
Amidst the many maladies of today’s global
society, a tide of optimism brought by the latest cancer research
news reflects a defiant response to one of the biggest challenges
facing humanity. But although massive investments that involve
venture capital companies and funds may be necessary for the pursuit
of current and future large-scale scientific projects and ambitions,
it is still sensible to ask the following questions: To what extent
should capitalism be credited for rapid progress in cancer research
and treatment? Moreover, can the profit motive, being an essential
feature of capitalism, justify future investments in bioscience and
related fields?
Read more on the next page:
14.02.2015
70 years after
Auschwitz – deliberate attempts to rewrite history
MD Editorial Board
The
last week’s Auschwitz ceremony marking 70 years since the notorious
death camp’s liberation had a huge turnout. Three hundred survivors
of the camp attended. Given the age of Holocaust survivors, the
importance of passing their story on to new generations has never
been greater. Comparing politicians to Hitler or countries to nazi
Germany has become a commonplace insult. But the unspeakable horrors
unleashed by history’s most vicious regime bear no comparison.
The Holocaust marked a systematic effort to exterminate entire
ethnic groups — most prominently the Jews but also the Roma and
Sinti — alongside the slaughter of homosexuals and the disabled.
Millions of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union, Polish civilians
and political and religious opponents of the nazis including
communists, trade unionists, Freemasons and Jehovah’s Witnesses were
also exterminated.
The world anti-fascist war which defeated the nazis resulted in
efforts to ensure such atrocities would never happen again. But the
collapse of the Soviet Union — which played by far the greatest part
in defeating the fascist menace, as well as being the liberator of
Auschwitz — has seen a deliberate attempt to rewrite history.
The European Parliament sponsors a Day of Remembrance for Victims of
Stalinism and Nazism, a pernicious attempt to equate communism with
fascism. As Russian communist Il Melnikov said yesterday, virulently
anti-Russian regimes in the Baltic states openly celebrate Waffen SS
veterans.
Read more on the next page:
11.02.2015
Géométrie variable
of a love triangle – India, Russia and the US
Written by the MD’s Board Member Rakesh Krishnan Simha
The Modi-Obama romance
won’t last as India’s relationship with the US does not have the
kind of strategic dimension and weight that marks New Delhi’s ties
with Moscow.
**** *****
******
Russia
is a country with which India has had a strategic relationship for
decades. America is a place where Indians migrate to for a better
lifestyle. That is how Indians view the world’s two leading powers.
It’s as simple as that. US President Barrack Obama’s recent visit to
India will not change that reality, and those speculating about
dramatic changes in India's foreign policy are either fools or
amateurs – or both.
“Good relations with the US reflect aspiration, ties with Russia are
hard reality,” says Bharat Karnad, professor of national security
studies at the Centre for Policy Research. “No substantive shift in
policy is on the anvil, certainly nothing at the expense of India's
relations with Moscow, especially because, unlike the US, Russia has
partnered, and continues to partner, India in strategically
sensitive technology projects ranging from missiles, ship
submersibles, ballistic, nuclear submarines to the Fifth Generation
Fighter Aircraft,” he told Defense News.
Read more on the next page:
11.02.2015
Europe of the human
face… with a little help from Greece
by Dimitra Karantzeni
Days
after the last parliamentary elections, something is eventually
moving in Greece. People are hesitant and restrained, do not want to
get too excited. However, one can see that a humble smile, between
hope and faith, is on faces of Greeks. For the first time in the
post-dictatorship period, a leftist government took over the
leadership of the country, insisting on its pre-election commitments
to overthrow the corrupt political system and reverse the economic
disaster.
During the pre-election campaign, voters were bombarded with
terrifying messages concerning the day after Syriza’s victory,
describing more or less a socio-economic chaos, with banks with no
liquidity, a paralyzed public sector and markets out of stock.
However, the overall propaganda of terror and intimidation of
citizens by the predominant political Parties not only failed to
limit the social impact of SYRIZA’s actions, but it also seems that
the will of determination of the new government somehow managed to
positively affect the rest of Europe.
The negotiation process is still ongoing but what Syriza has
achieved so far is that its well prepared anti-austerity plan today
gives the impression not of just a grand-standing utopic program but
of a specific project built on realistic bases.
Read more on the next page:
11.02.2015

Bosnia and
Herzegovina:
German-British initiative overshadowed by
party political games
JOINT ACTION BY SNSD AND SBB
A delay in setting up the government in Bosnia and Herzegovina
following the general election that took place on 12 October 2014 is
mostly the result of obstructions caused by Milorad Dodik's Alliance
of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) from Republika Srpska (RS)
and Fahrudin Radončić's Union for a Better Future (SBB)
and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) from the Federation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina (FBiH). While SNSD is aguishly trying to enter the
government at the state level, SBB – being excluded from the
post-election coalition forming – is concocting plans to get hold of
power, even using its Avaz daily newspaper to create a negative
political atmosphere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, inciting riot among
the citizens and preparing last year's February protests scenario.
Clearly SNSD and SBB are making a joint action - their delegates
carried out a joint attempt to overthrow the President of the House
of Representatives of the
Read more on the next page:
January 31, 2015
On history and humility: What students need to know ?
Rattana Lao
Rattana
Lao holds a doctorate in Comparative and International Education
from Teachers College, Columbia University and is currently teaching
in Bangkok.
BANGKOK – Not so long ago, some Thai university students used
Hitler image as the poster child for superhero and just recently,
the Thai state used Nazi symbol in their propaganda for education.
This short documentary intends to promote the 12 values of
education. These values include respect seniority, desire for
knowledge and understand democracy.
Democracy and Hitler?
To make things worse, the director of the film gave public interview
seeing nothing wrong with it.
Kulp Kaljaruek, the director, said to Khaosod, one of the Thai
newspapers that “ I didn't think it would be an issue. As for
Hitler's portrait, I have seen so many people using it on T-Shirts
everywhere. It's even considered a fashion. It doesn't mean I agree
with it, but I didn't expect it to be an issue at all."
Seriously?
The Ambassador of Israel to Thailand, His Excellency Simon Roded,
issued a public statement on the 10th
of December 2014. It read:
Read more on the next page:
January 24, 2015.
GLOBAL MARKETS OF MISERY
Marján Attila[1]
– Szuhai Ilona[2]
Is our
The global humanitarian system in
transition? If so, what are the key issues b – Before the 2016 World
Humanitarian Summit
"Today's needs are at unprecedented levels and without more support there simply
is no way to respond to the humanitarian situations we're seeing in region after
region and in conflict after conflict."
António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Abstract
The international community is preparing for the World
Humanitarian Summit. The United Nations will host the event in Istanbul, in
2016. Before the meeting, regional consultations are held in several parts of
the world. Expectations are high since the historical moment of changing the
twenty-five-year-old humanitarian system is approaching. Growing conflicts
demand growing funds for humanitarian action. The change in the trends of
conflicts demands more effective humanitarian solutions. 2014 was a dramatic
year in the number of people affected by conflict and of being forced to flee.
Unprecedentedly, more than 100 million people became dependent on humanitarian
aid for their survival. This rise is reflected in the inter-agency strategic
response and regional response plans as global financial requirements to cover
humanitarian needs rose to the highest amount ever requested in a single year.
The study forecasts how the EU can continue the donor activities in the future.
Read more on the next page:
January 24, 2015.
Human rights violations inside EU
What is the Ostrich Protocol?
H.E. Dr. Walter Schwimmer

How the EU member states play ostrich when it comes to
human rights violations inside EU?
H.E. Dr. Walter Schwimmer -
Vice Chair of the Modern
Diplomacy Advisory Board, Former Secretary General of the Council of
Europe -
Chairman of the International Coordinating Committee of the World
Public Forum – Dialogue of Civilizations
The
Treaty on the European Union, in its current format also known as
the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
claim to establish an area of freedom, security and justice, founded
on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy,
equality, the rule of law and the respect for human rights[1].
That sounds perfect. After centuries of inhuman treatment of people
very often by their own governments, culminating in the tyrannies of
communism and Nazism in the 20th century, EU citizens should be able
to feel safe from brutal attacks and illegal operations of a violent
state, if not ....If they are not refugees from another EU member
state and they do not try to look for protection because they were
subject in their own state to political persecution, inhuman
treatment or even torture.
Read more on the next page:
January 19, 2015
FUTURE OF DAVOS IS IN
KYRGYZSTAN
Francesco Brunello
Zanitti
Francesco Brunello Zanitti,
Southern Asia Research Program’s Director, and one of the Scientific
Directors of the Italian Institute for Advanced Studies in
Geopolitics and Auxiliary Sciences (Istituto di Alti Studi in
Geopolitica e Scienze Ausiliarie – IsAG, Rome). Member of Editorial
Committee of “Geopolitica” (IsAG’s journal) Rome.
Is the new Russian
approach towards China and India, vector for a multipolar world
order? Will the new Davos – gathering between vanity fair and summit
of the mightiest – in future take place in Kyrgyzstan – Central
Asian country surrounded by the most prosperous and promising
powers?
The last months of 2014
were marked by a series of significant bilateral agreements and
summits involving Russia, India and China. According to many
international analysts, the research of better relations with the
two Asian giants by Moscow represents another further step towards
global transformation from an unipolar order ruled by United States
to a multipolar one.
Read more on the next page:
January 14, 2015
The Paris Killings: Who
Are the Real Heroes of Press Freedom?
By
Jamil Maidan Flores
 |

By
Jamil Maidan Flores |
Placards are seen placed amongst other tributes to the satirical
magazine Charlie Hebdo on the statues at the Place de la Republique
in Paris on Saturday. (Reuters Photo/Youssef Boudlal)
Read more on the next page:
January 12, 2015
Denazification – urgently
needed in Europe
Anis H. Bajrektarevic,
There
is a claim constantly circulating the EU: ‘multiculturalism is
dead in Europe’. Dead or maybe d(r)ead?... That much comes from
a cluster of European nation-states that love to romanticize their
appearance thought the solid Union, as if they themselves lived a
long, cordial and credible history of multiculturalism. Hence, this
claim is of course false. It is also cynical because it is purposely
misleading. No wonder, as the conglomerate of nation-states/EU has
silently handed over one of its most important debates – that of
European anti-fascistic identity, or otherness – to the
wing-parties, repeatedly followed by the selective and
contra-productive foreign policy actions.
The Paris shooting, terrible beyond comprehension,
will reload and overheat those debates. However, these debates are
ill conceived, resting from the start on completely wrong and
misleading premises. Assassins in the Parisian Satirical Magazine
are Islamofascists. The fact that these individuals are
allegedly of the Arab-Muslim origins does not make them less
fascists, less European, nor does it abolish Europe from the main
responsibility in this case.
Fascism and its evil twin, Nazism are 100% European
ideologies. Neo-Nazism also originates from and lately unchecked
blossoms, primarily in Europe. (Some would say, über-economy
in the center of continent, surrounded from all sides by the
recuperating neo-fascism.) The Old continent tried to amortize its
deepening economic and demographic contraction by a constant
interference on its peripheries, especially meddling on the Balkans,
Black Sea/Caucasus and MENA (Middle East–North Africa). What is now
an epilogue? A severe democratic recession. Whom to blame for
this structural, lasting civilizational retreat that Europe suffers?
Is it accurate or only convenient to blame a bench of useful idiots
for returning home with the combating behavior?
Read more on the next page:
http://moderndiplomacy.eu/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=481:den&Itemid=569
January 8, 2015
PUBLICATIONS: 2016
Key to Stop Refugee Flows: Unique higher education programme for
Conflict zones - Prof. Dr. DJAWED SANGDEL
Quantum Islam: Towards a new worldview - Murray Hunter and Azly
Rahman
Currency dictatorship – the struggle to end it - by Rakesh
Krishan Simha
Creative Economy and the bases of UNCTAD’s Creative Economy
Programme as instrument for growth and development - by
Giuliano_Luongo_200

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Maasmechelen Village

Maasmechelen Village


Adria


BALKAN AREA


prof. dr. Anis Bajrektarevic
Editor - Geopolitics, History, International Relations (GHIR) Addleton Academic
Publishers - New YorK
Senior Advisory board member, geopolitics of energy Canadian energy research
institute - ceri, Ottawa/Calgary
Advisory Board Chairman Modern Diplomacy & the md Tomorrow's people platform
originator
Head of mission and department head - strategic studies on Asia
Professor and Chairperson Intl. law & global pol. studies

Critical Similarities and Differences in SS of Asia and Europe - Prof.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic

MENA Saga and Lady Gaga - (Same dilemma from the MENA) - Anis H. Bajrektarevic

![Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Assos. Prof.[1] Nguyen Linh[2]](images/Prof_Dr._Nguyen_Anh_Tuan_140.jpg)
HE ONGOING PUBLIC DEBT CRISIS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: IMPACTS ON AND
LESSONS FOR VIETNAM - Dr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, Assos. Prof.[1]
Nguyen Linh[2]


Carla BAUMER
Climate
Change and Re Insurance: The Human Security Issue SC-SEA Prof. Anis
Bajrektarevic & Carla Baumer

Igor Dirgantara
(Researcher and Lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Politics,
University of Jayabaya)


Peny Sotiropoulou
Is the ‘crisis of secularism’ in Western Europe the result of
multiculturalism?


Dr. Emanuel L. Paparella
A Modest “Australian”
Proposal to Resolve our Geo-Political Problems
Were the Crusades Justified? A Revisiting - Dr. Emanuel L. Paparella


Alisa Fazleeva earned an MA in International Relations from
the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom in 2013. Her
research interests include foreign policy decision-making, realism and
constructivism, and social psychology and constructivism.


Corinna Metz
is an independent researcher specialized in International Politics and Peace
& Conflict Studies with a regional focus on the Balkans and the Middle East.

Patricia
Galves Derolle
Founder of Internacionalista
São Paulo, Brazil
Brazil – New Age


Dimitra Karantzeni
The political character of Social Media: How do Greek Internet users perceive
and use social networks?


Michael Akerib
Vice-Rector
SWISS UMEF UNIVERSITY


Petra Posega
is a master`s
degree student on the University for Criminal justice and
Security in Ljubljana. She obtained her bachelor`s degree in
Political Science- Defense studies.
Contact:
posegap@live.com


Samantha Brletich, George Mason University School of Policy,
Government, and Intl. Relations She focuses on Russia and Central
Asia. Ms. Brletich is an employee of the US Department of Defense.

Interview on HRT-Radio
Prof. dr. Anis Bajrektarević


Dr Filippo ROMEO,

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