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The world is talking, are you listening?

On January 23, 2013, amid rising tensions with the Spanish government, the regional parliament of Catalonia approved by majority vote a Declaration of Sovereignty [ca] — seen widely as a prelude to a referendum on independence, expected to be held by 2014. Thanks to a diverse team of collaborators, the online Catalan-language publication Vilaweb [ca] has been able to offer the document in thirty-six languages. More »

At BlogActiv.com, Kader Sevinç shares highlights [en] from her interview [hr] with the Croatian daily Slobodna Dalmacija, in which she talked about Turkey’s accession to the EU and the Croatian model for the EU negotiations – “a multi-party model overcoming deep political fractures over the EU membership target.”

In “Libricide,” Ante Lešaja has documented the process of “purging” of “unsuitable” books from Croatian schools and public libraries by the right-wing HDZ government in the 1990s. According to a Jutarnji List interview [hr] with Lešaja, the “purging” was based on ideological and ethnic criteria and affected books “written in Cyrillic [script], [Ekavian dialect], books by Serbian authors and publishers, by ‘suspicious’ Croats, by leftists…” As a result, 2.8 million books (13% of all the library material) and 3,000 monuments of the anti-fascist struggle were obliterated. Comments on the link by Macedonian Facebook users suggest that similar processes are taking place in other ex-Yugoslav states, with janitors throwing “obsolete” books into trash.

Serbia Insajd, a Hungarian blog about South-Eastern Europe, reports [hu] that the Rijeka Court has banned Franjo Jurčević, a Kastav-based Catholic priest, from writing homophobic blog posts [Jurčević's blog, hr: http://zupnik.blog.hr/]. The court has also ordered Jurčević to publish the court decision in two national dailies at his own expense.

Bojana Jankovska blogs [MKD] on how she deals with the economic crisis at a personal level: make a deal with family members to use electrical appliances during “cheaper” hours of the day, possibly cancel central heating, locate the cheapest neighborhood store for regular grocery shopping, and lock your credit card in a drawer. Influenced by the Croatian self-help book, “Financial Rebirth,” [CRO] she considers canceling the credit card, so she would “no longer pay interest on things she can comfortably live without.”

Via Dr Sean's Diary, “a series of maps of Europe mapping the (supposed) prejudices of various nations [...] and, for some reason, also of gay men” by “Bulgarian visual artist, graphic designer and illustrator Yanko Tsvetkov.” Also, “What European Tribes Think About One Another” – at eXile.ru; a similar map of Europe as seen by Croatians (HRV); and by Ukrainians from Western Ukraine (UKR; via Lyndon of Scraps of Moscow).