JORGE RODRIGUES SIMAO

Blissful Inner Peace

According to my experience, the principal characteristic of genuine happiness is peace, inner peace. - His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Cultivate a sense of peace, an abiding inner peace that doesn’t depend on outward circumstance.

So much chaos, so much drama, so many emotions surge through us.

 It is so easy, so tempting to believe that once we get through this circumstance, once we achieve this goal, once we solve this problem, then we will be peaceful.

That’s an illusion.

10 conflitos que podem abalar (ainda mais) o mundo em 2016

Focos de conflitos no mundo

PERSPECTIVAS - O sonho de uma paz impossível - HojeMacau - 18.07.2016

“The crisis of the state and the role this plays in armed conflict can be precipitated by a number of processes. Corrupt governments pursue predation and clientelism in order to enrich themselves, repay supporters and pay-off potential adversaries. This weakens the legitimacy of the state because public goods are not delivered and groups that are not receiving the fruits of the government’s corruption become alienated. Consequently, these dispossessed groups on the periphery mobilize in violent opposition to the government, especially at times of crisis such as economic shocks.”

Understanding Civil Wars: Continuity and change in intrastate conflict

Edward Newman 

 Os conflitos armados em todo o mundo fizeram cento e sessenta e sete mil vítimas mortais, em 2015, sendo um terço relativo ao conflito sírio, de acordo com o relatório anual do “Instituto Internacional de Estudos Estratégicos (IISS, na sigla em língua inglesa) ”. O número é um pouco menor do apresentado em 2014, quando IISS previu em cento e oitenta mil vítimas. O conflito na Síria fez cinquenta e cinco mil mortos. As pessoas mortas na Síria, em termos relativos, representam 66 por cento de todas a vítimas do Médio Oriente e Norte de África. O relatório também indica que em 2015, foram frequentes os casos em que governos de países onde os confrontos ocorrem, conseguiram restabelecer com a ajuda dos seus aliados, o controlo dos territórios previamente ocupados pelos rebeldes.

 A Liberal History of European Integration?

Jorge Rodrigues Simao

JUL 13, 2016

ISSN 1267-5679

The Hague Summit of 1969 in Proportional Perspective

Scholarly interest in the Hague height of 1969 has newly skilled a renewal, understanding The Hague came as one of the guide events in the narrative of European integration equivalent of appendage to the ignorant Time successive from the Empty Chair Crisis to the Single European Act (1964-1985). The contention around the assessment of its achievements infects on not only the proposition of the periodization of the relation of European integration but also a more cardinal one moment its story. Expanding on Gilbert’s 2008 concern, the first part of this disquisition undertake to discover imitate of a “liberal past of European integration” that support indubitable interpretations. Concretising Gilbert’s criticism of the increasing Sunna in European narratives, the help part of this endeavor scrutinize the moment and applicability of The Hague came in 1969, and characterisations of the concomitant decades of the 1970s and 80s in both “whig” and “no-whig” narratives, with narrative to the subject that to what measure the Hague would still weigh a judicious historic seam had its prospectus faded in its consequence in the European eventuality. The third part of this disquisition transform around to accuse of the inevitableness and the politic indispensableness for “whig narratives” with a look of the legitimizing cosecant of officialising such a rehearsal force-à-force the develop quality and finalité politique of European integration.

List of ongoing Conflicts

GLOBAL CONFLICT TRACKER

Pulling together a list of the wars most in need of international attention and support in 2016 is challenging for all the wrong reasons. For 20 years after the end of the Cold War, deadly conflict was in decline. Fewer wars were killing fewer people the world over. Five years ago, however, that positive trend went into reverse, and each year since has seen more conflict, more victims, and more people displaced. 2016 is unlikely to bring an improvement from the woes of 2015: It is war - not peace - that has momentum. 

That said, there are conflicts whose urgency and importance rise above. This year’s list of 10 is weighted toward wars with the worst humanitarian consequences: Syria and Iraq, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and the Lake Chad basin. It includes those in influential and functioning states, like Turkey, as well as those that have collapsed, like Libya. It features conflicts that are already bad but are poised to get much worse without intelligent intervention, such as Burundi, as well as tensions, such as those in the South China Sea, that are simmering but have yet to boil over. The list also considers the hopeful example presented by Colombia, where considerable progress is being made toward ending a 51-year insurgency.