This
website is a forum for all those who
would like to invent themselves, their
communities, villages, cities, countries,
or their region: Central Europe.
IDENTITIES AND COUNTRY BRANDING
The search for, and development, of ‘brands’, ‘trade-marks’, logos and symbols for companies, commodities, services, cities, and countries is feverishly going on around the world. The Central European countries, cities, and regions, too, need to pass through this process if they want to project positive images of themselves. What should they do to achieve this goal? How could they help one another in this process?
A discussion may also start about how people around the world see this part of Europe. Is there a common Central European image? If there is, what is it like? Should it be changed? If it should, how could this be done?
This paper offers a brief outline of the attempts at interpretation of the transition process that took place in Hungary – and, with some variations, in the other Central and Eastern European countries – over the past decade and a half.
To whom are we trying to prove our national identity? To whom do we address this current campaign of the public demonstration of our ages-old culture, by displaying various proofs that on this soil there were numerous developed cultures and civilizations, of whom we are allegedly an inseparable part?
The problem with US aid programs is that they do not follow up on the successes. There are really big successes and they do not seem to notice them, which I consider quite bizarre. There is a lot of insecurity among the local staff people, and if they fail in something, then the failures have nothing to do with the locals. It has to do with the US people working on these projects.
The question is not whether multi-ethnic Bosnia can be reinvented together with Republika Srpska, but rather whether multi-ethnic Bosnia can be reinvented divided as such.
The image of the Croatian Prime Minister playing soccer in an EU capital, while other members of his party are left in Zagreb to discuss how to resolve some of the darkest chapters of our (rather short) Croatian history is, in my opinion, a fruitful metaphor for the relationship between Croatia's facing the past and its joining the EU.
Up to now, the Kyrgyzstani people have been taught about democracy by the West, but I think that we should not follow this type of democracy altogether. We should implement that type of political system which will be most relevant in our context. So far, democracy has brought us anarchy and instability.
It is considered that Kosovo will attain “conditional” independence, meaning that some sovereignty will be “owned” by the international community that will oversee the protection of the minorities, especially that of the Serb minority in Kosovo.
The Orange Revolution was a breaking point in the independent history of Ukraine. The society will not go back into the past no matter what happens with its politics. There will be long term improvements in public affairs - it won't happen soon though.
What were the reasons and mobilizing forces that provoked Ukrainians to awake from a deep dream and to act? What was the Orange Revolution about? In this article I would like to find the answers to these questions for myself, a Ukrainian of a new Ukraine, and to share my orange spirit with you.
Mountains
cannot be surmounted except by winding
paths.
