Slovenia Education

Lafayette's Matt Galvin, 41, has been learning martial arts since he was in junior high school. In December, he earned a seventh-degree black belt in the Shorei Goju Ryu style of karate at the Black Belt Extravaganza in Indianapolis. Galvin said he tested for the black belt under Herb Johnson, a ninth degree black who has a Shorei Goju Ryu school in Indianapolis. Galvin said he is the youngest seventh degree in the history of Shorei Goju Ryu, which is a traditional Okinawan style of karate that combines part of other styles. There were more than 150 candidates at the Black Belt Extravaganza. Galvin has had his own karate school in Lafayette since 1998 and teaches self-defense seminars. He has won three state kumite and self-defense titles and was second in the state in 1992 in light heavy kickboxing. In 1997, he took second place in kumite in New Orleans at the USKA World Championships. 'I like to teach,' Galvin said. 'Earning the seventh degree was a very fulfilling experience.' His student, Walter Donoghue, 34, has trained with Galvin for one year. He is a tech sergeant in the Air Force who is studying at Purdue University to be a registered nurse. He is a career military man who also is studying to be a lieutenant. 'I haven't had any classes in martial arts before Matt's class,' he said. 'Dealing with this is like being in the military. 'It teaches you self-discipline and how to stay within yourself.' Lafayette athletic trainer John Edwards just returned from the Hungarian Grand Prix of Greco-Roman in Szombathely, Hungary. He took care of members of the USA Wrestling team. The Hungary trip was his fourth with USA Wrestling since 2008. He's also traveled to Greece, Slovenia and Ukraine. Edwards, 44, makes his living as director of sports medicine at Lafayette Orthopaedic Clinic and is a physical therapist with Lafayette Rehabilitation Services. He treats local and area high school athletes. 'I don't have a wrestling background, but I want to volunteer and help our nation's wrestlers,' Edwards said. 'I enjoy working with athletes who are tops at what they do.' He said the guys who made the trip with USA Wrestling are 'gearing up' for the Olympic Trials. The 2012 Olympics are in London this summer. 'This all has been quite an experience,' Edwards said. 'I thought long ago that I would work my way up to the Olympics. It is still a desire.' Good luck in your Olympic dreams, John. Contact Bob Scott at Journal & Courier, 217 N. Sixth St., Lafayette, IN 47901; call (765) 420-5248; or email bscott@jconline.com.

Scientists have created a new algorithm to detect virtual communities, designed to match the needs of real-life social, biological or information networks detection better than with current attempts. The results of this study by Lovro Šubelj and his colleague Marko Bajec from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia have just been published in European Physical Journal B.

European University Sports Association is announcing its 13th EUSA General Assembly, which will take place in Maribor, Slovenia on March 17, 2012.

Ivan Cuk, Samo Penic & Dejan Krizaj at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia have been experimenting with technology for measuring springboard actions on Vault.

Interview by Jonathan Reynolds

Q: For a work of geopolitical history, I found the book a real 'page-turner'.

A: Thanks. It’s gratifying that this came across. So much of the critique of imperialism is depressing and boring, and puts the reader off. The history is fascinating, if horrifying.

Q: I was impressed by the great sweep of the argument, and how the details of the history of imperialism as you write about it are integrated so well into it.

A: Again, thanks. I couldn’t have done it without the internet. I really should have put Wikipedia in the acknowledgments, although this must be treated circumspectly – it allows you to track down hundreds of details in seconds that are essential to making a credible argument. Again, much of the literature is either too detail-heavy or too generalized. In writing both my articles over the past decade, and this (and another book) over the past four years, I developed a style where I try to include as many relevant details as possible without sinking under their weight.

I really wanted to produce something that could be useful as a textbook for an intelligent high school/university student as well as for the general reader, and with something new for all readers. The book covers a huge territory both in time and space, but I hope I have touched on the most important elements. Writing it was definitely a daunting process, but having lived in both the Soviet Union/post-Soviet space and now Egypt, and coming from Canada, I am fortunate to have had the experience of all these social formations. It’s a bit like learning to think in different languages. When I write about a particular topic, I try to put myself in the common person’s shoes and ask, ‘What motivates the particular imperial corner that I’m considering?’

Q: The book makes such a sweeping accusation about “American imperialism”, but supported beautifully by a great array of facts, citations, references that it becomes quite clear what is what.

A: Why can’t Americans see the imperial nature of their relationship to the world? For a Canadian (or anyone else), this is so obvious. A basic explanation of center/periphery makes this crystal clear in two minutes. Yes re endnotes – again, I tried to reference as many times as possible. The internet provides an unprecedented opportunity to do this. The book would have taken a decade without it.

Q: Do you see a great breakdown coming in the center (as opposed to the periphery, perhaps, as you use Wallerstein), signaling a movement toward a new kind of dispensation…a new kind of society ultimately? I ask this aware of the enormous power the US exerts directly and through its networks and being myself very pessimistic that any kind of real change in social structure and the fundamental nature of the social transaction can occur anytime soon.

A: Absolutely. The breakdown is happening as I write. The euro is doomed, as eventually is the dollar. And, yes, we must prepare people. For all their problems, Soviet and Muslim societies provide clear pointers about the basics of an acceptable alternative.

Q: What made you decide to ‘cover this story’ – the great story you tell in the book?

A: As I say in the preface, I was struck by the injustice of imperialism while at Cambridge after the ‘first 9/11’ [the US-sponsored military coup in Chile in 1973]. Everything developed logically out of that.

Q: What’s your relationship to Islam?

A: I like Karen Armstrong’s quip, “I consider myself a freelance monotheist”. All three are fine, though I see Islam as the final corrective of the earlier versions. The true Torah Jews (Neturei Karta) are wonderful, though the inherent “exilic tribalism”, as Gilad Atzmon puts it, is an inherent problem with Judaism, the results of which we see today.

Q: Do you believe there are transcendent values, irrespective of culture, time, and history? I am thinking here of transcendent values one associates with Islam…and Marxism. I think even Marx, despite the materialist history he emphasized, saw a kind of a Hegelian ‘end of History’, for otherwise he would not have supported the phantasm of communism, nor have been unaware that all utopias are dystopias.

A: Marx is sorely misunderstood. Of course there are transcendent values and his writing is imbued with them. Even in evolutionary biology there is the nonzero sum game theory which seems to operate at a genetic level (Robert Wright is great on this) leading to cooperation and empathy. It seems you can arrive at such values even without faith.

Q: Marxists speak of the two world wars of the last century as imperialist wars, and you cite Lenin, whose dictum was that imperialist is the last, and highest, form of capitalism. What about WWII? Weren't the Allies the 'good guys' against Hitler and Nazism?

A: This was in my mind writing about Great Game I. Good people everywhere (West and East) fought Nazism as evil, but Western capitalist/imperialist governments were the source of Nazism and encouraged it to destroy the Soviet Union. Our history books distort the real origins of both WWI and WWII. I hope my book is a credible compact corrective to this.

Q: Do you, yourself, employ a kind of a dialectical analysis to your history of Anglo-US imperialism? Casino capitalism certainly seems to me to fit most aptly into Marx’s analysis of the capitalism and how it operates.

A: Marx is the alpha and omega in analyzing capitalism. His inversion of Hegel’s dialectic starts with the material-> theory -> material-theoretic. My three-part theory is really a continuation, via Marx, of Hegel’s logic of being-nothing-becoming -> being-essence-notion.

Q: Is it fair to say that Israel, today, is the only truly racist state on the planet, with its transparently clear insistence on who its citizens can be, and on the nature of the Jewish state?

A: Yes. Like the American empire – why is this so difficult to see? A perfect case of the emperor’s new clothes.

Q: With at least one gloss of history you seem to go quickly to the conclusion easier to fit into your overall argument – about Central Europe and the NATO (US) bombing that removed Milosevich, saying nothing about the terrible ethnic cleansing going on (and the moral ‘imperative’ of the West to intervene, this latter argument one which I acknowledge is at least somwhat flawed since everything large nations do geopolitically is full of ulterior self-interest.

A: History is complicated. The dialectic is only partial, as Hegel and Marx well understood. The same argument for Milosevich goes for Gaddafi, but in neither case was more western intervention the answer. The US and Europe were behind the breakup of Yugoslavia in the first place, as I point out: “The break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, along with the drawn-out campaign of sanctions and ‘no fly zones’ against Iraq from 1990, were defining moments in establishing the new GGIII. The Clinton administration ‘saved’ Bosnia and Kosovo from Serbia’s attempts to hold the Yugoslav union together, establishing NATO-sponsored Muslim statelets Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, in an eerie reversion to GGI. Bosnia is governed by High Commissioner Valentin Inzko, an Austrian national, who wields powers similar to a colonial administrator. It is occupied by NATO forces, with the central bank governor appointed by the IMF. Kosovo is nominally independent, the site of the largest US base in Europe, Camp Bond Steel, housing 3,000 soldiers, giving the US control of the Balkans, within easy reach of the Caspian Sea and Israel.” No one else benefited from the civil war in Yugoslavia (ok, maybe Slovenia, if you consider its postmodern status in the EU as desirable).

Q: Again, for the less well-informed: Was there not ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Croatia that, if power existed to halt this, this power should have been used? Rather than consider ‘transcendent values’ as motives behind Anglo-American imperialism, then, and Clinton’s ultimate decision to join in the bombing of Serbia because of these values, might you not legitimately be accused of ‘streamlining’ your argument to avoid addressing this possibility?

A: What is ‘transcendent’ in Yugoslavia is Camp Bond Steel. I make clear in all the games that there are purported aims and real aims. I think you understand the difference.

Q: Regarding the circling project of the West and other assertions and accusations you make, is it capitalism or Anglo-American imperialism that you decry?

A: By ‘circling project’ I take it you mean containing Russia, China and Iran. Everything happening today has its origins in capitalism. The whole dialect derives from Kapital, Volume 1, Chapter 1, since imperialism is inherent in the logic of capital. Even the rise of Zionism has its own logical source there. Given an ‘exilic tribe’, its natural activity in the broader community is the profane usury, etc.

Q: Would you call yourself a Marxist?

A: I like Marx’s retort to his son-in-law: “If that is Marxism then I am not a Marxist”. I respect and use Marx as the basis of my thinking about capitalism and society. I prefer to dispense with -isms and labels given their many distortions. My title of Postmodern…Great Games is a bit tongue-in-cheek as these terms can mean whatever you define them to mean.

Q: Did Marx underestimate – hugely – the enduring power of capitalism to adapt, to transform itself, in order to survive?

A: He would surely be disappointed that it’s still alive and torturing/ enchanting us today, but he admired it, too as he wrote in the Communist Manifesto.

Q: Also on Marx: do you consider class warfare a more or less transcendent dynamic in the history you narrate from Disraeli and Victorian England – the British Empire – through to today?

A: Yes. The iPod revolutions today in Egypt and now on Wall Street only got their backbone when the workers joined in. The intellectuals and frustrated middle class have the obligation to reach out to the workers, just as they do to the Islamists today in the Arab revolutions.

Q: In other words, would you include in an analysis of class warfare, an ‘ethnicity of elites’ with regard to the leaders of banking and finance capitalism, who are ‘at war’ per Leo Strauss, with a middle class and worker/poor class?

A: If you mean Jewish/ non-Jewish, it’s no longer of much relevance. Quoting myself: ‘With the decline of Christianity, for proponents of western civilization, “we are all Jews”’. I go on to quote Vice President Joe Biden: ‘You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist’.

Q: Isn’t it true to say that, dialectically, what is sought by Marx and by communism is something opposite to materialism, a utopia that has as its defining meaning a kind of spiritual quality, in the sense that human beings, and human society, are what is important, rather than capital?

A: See what I said about Marx’s dialectic earlier: material -> theory -> material-theoretic. It’s oversimplifying to accuse him of utopianism.

Q: What should be the nature of social transaction, in an ideal world? On what should it be based? What is the good society?

A: See Robert Wright’s non-zero sum argument. Definitely, a good society should get rid of interest, or at the very least, interest and money should be controlled by a truly broad-based popular government. The logic of anti-capitalism follows from that.

Q: Economists who write about causative factors behind the ups and downs, bubbles, crises, and so forth we have seen and are seeing do not mention – at least in what I have read – this insistence on the dollar as a profound strategy by American imperialists (e.g., the bankers). You have a degree in economics from Cambridge. Did you study this phenomenon as you describe it at Cambridge?

A: I did a thesis for my BA/MA on financial intermediaries in Canada from the Depression to the 1960s. Whatever independence the Canadian government had with respect to economic policy was lost as US banks took control. Re the collapse of the dollar, many economists write about the coming demise of the dollar as world reserve currency. See Stiglitz.

Q: You describe – again, well-sourced and referenced – how American imperialism not only has condoned but participated or directed drug smuggling.

A: Shocking but true. But then the Brits promoted opium in China and no one seems to care much. The evidence is overwhelming throughout the Great Games.

Q: Your assertion about hedge fund attacks on Greece [p 111]. I had not heard of before. Is this not a big enough story to warrant insisting, if possible, that major media like the New York Times take a look at this?

A: I quote the Wall Street Journal on this (endnote 37): “Some heavyweight hedge funds have launched large bearish bets against the euro in moves that are reminiscent of the trading action at the height of the US financial crisis. It is impossible to calculate the precise effect of the elite traders’ bearish bets, but they have added to the selling pressure on the currency – and thus to the pressure on the European Union to stem the Greek debt crisis.” You just have to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Q: How do you reconcile your defense of Islam with your Marxism?

A: I think I’ve made my position as a freelance monotheist and someone who uses Marx but dislikes slots and -isms clear above. Islam is the only monotheism that firmly rejects imperialism in practice, which is why it is targeted today and why anti-imperialists must understand and defend it. It provides a vision of a coherent alternative to imperialism. As for whether Islam and Marx are compatible, in my conclusion, I point out: “The Judaic prophets, followed by Jesus and Muhammad, and the nineteenth century secular prophet of revolution Marx, rejected usury and interest, as representing ill-gotten gain, with good reason. Marx condemned this mode of extraction of surplus as the highest form of fetishism, based on private property and exploitation of labor. They all rejected this exploitation on a moral basis as unjust, insisting that morality be embedded in the economy, a principle which was abandoned when capitalism took hold. While Judaism and Christianity adapted, Islam did not.
“Interest, and today’s money based on US military might alone, are the root cause not only of the current world financial crisis, but, as a corollary to Rothschild’s dictum about money and politics, and Clausewitz’s dictum about politics and war, the primary instrument facilitating (and benefiting from) the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the world political crisis.” So Marx seems to have rediscovered the wheel. Marx is a joy to read, full of spirit and humanism, very moral.

(You can reach Eric Walberg at http://ericwalberg.com. Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games is available at http://claritypress.com/Walberg.html. Walberg contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.)

- Jonathan Reynolds, an anthropologist who writes for spikemagazine.com and author of two books on the Maya and Guatemala.

Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor , Minister of Education and Sport Igor Luksic , and Minister of Labour Family and Social Affairs Ivan Svetlik , in parliament in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 20 September 2011.

Slovenia, for long, has been a socialist nation where the state took care of everything — your education, health and jobs.

From the Departments of Medicine , Emergency Medicine , Radiological Sciences , Neurology , and Neurosurgery , David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; and the Department of Vascular Diseases , University of Ljubljana Medical Center, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Chair for Microbiology and Biotechnology, Department of Animal Science, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana , Groblje 3, 1230 Domzale, Slovenia DOI: 10.1021/es201524q Phone: +372 6398361 , fax: +372 6398382 , e-mail: monika.mortimer@kbfi.ee . Abstract In the current study, the toxicity mechanism of nanosized CuO to the freshwater ciliated ...

From the Departments of Medicine , Emergency Medicine , Radiological Sciences , Neurology , and Neurosurgery , David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; and the Department of Vascular Diseases , University of Ljubljana Medical Center, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, June 20 (UPI) -- Dishwashers in 101 cities on six continents harbored a potentially disease-causing fungi, researchers in Slovenia, China and the Netherlands say. Researchers at the University of Ljubljana, University of Amsterdam,...

On Sunday, June 12, 2011, Slovenian University Sports Association organised the Open national university golf championship in Ljubljana.

The signatories of this statement are representatives of civil society from around the world working towards the promotion of Internet freedom, digital rights, and open communication.

We understand that the French Presidency of the G8 is holding a G8 internet meeting — the “eG8 Forum” — immediately before the G8 Summit in Deauville, with a view to shaping the agenda of the G8 Summit regarding key global internet policy issues. This meeting is significant in that this is the first year that the internet’s role in society and the economy is explicitly on the G8 agenda.

As key world leaders, your policies have a major influence on internet policy globally. Regrettably, certain policies being implemented in the most developed economies are undermining the open and neutral internet — the very qualities that represent the essence of its democratic and economic potential. We believe that G8 Member States should use the e-G8 meeting as an opportunity to publicly commit to expanding internet access for all, combating digital censorship and surveillance, limiting online intermediary liability, and upholding
principles of net neutrality.

Internet Access for All

We are particularly concerned about the increasing trend of nations cutting off citizens’ access to the Internet and mobile networks in times of crisis, as Egypt, Libya, Iran, China, Nepal, and Burma have all done. In many if not all of these countries, we see how important access to the Internet is as a gateway to a plethora of others civil, political, and fundamental human rights.

Many G8 countries are actively pursuing policies that would similarly seek to restrict and control access; these policies legitimize actions of repressive regimes and threaten the core of the internet economy. As many nations endeavor to improve basic and universal access, the increase of restrictive policies in both the developed and developing world is a regressive and deeply worrying trend.

Freedom from Online Censorship & Surveillance

Simultaneously, repressive regimes are harnessing the internet’s power for their own purposes, often with the help of multinational corporations based in G8 countries. We urge you to end the sale of these technologies both at home and abroad, and put an end to these gross invasions of user privacy and security.

Online Intermediary Liability and Intellectual Property

To defend freedom of speech online it is critical that we resist mounting pressure from the entertainment industry and other sectors to impose greater intermediary liability on online service providers for the actions of their users through instruments like HADOPI and ACTA.

In this regard, we urge you to follow the example of the Brazilian government’s Principles for the Governance and Use of the Internet, specifically #7 which reads: “All action taken against illicit activity on the network must be aimed at those directly responsible for such activities, and not at the means of access and transport, always upholding the fundamental principles of freedom, privacy and the respect for human rights.”1

Net Neutrality

We further call on you to commit your nations to protecting net neutrality — the principle that all web traffic should be treated on an equitable basis no matter where it originated or the type of data being transmitted.

These are some of the key Internet governance issues which we feel merit and require the attention of the G8. We also draw your attention to two comprehensive declarations of principles we believe should guide nation states in Internet governance:

• The 10 Internet Rights and Principles developed under the aegis of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition.2
• Assembly Declaration of the right of Communication, written at the World Social Forum 2011.3

We would also like to highlight our concerns regarding the planning of the e-G8. We join our voices to the Internet Governance Caucus4 which expresses our collective concern about the lack of representation of civil society at the e-G8 and G8 meetings this year.

Contrary to current best practices in policymaking, the invite list has been limited primarily to representatives of government and corporate leaders, who already enjoy disproportionately large influence over Internet regulation. Specifically, we are deeply concerned that corporate interests will dominate discussions at the e-G8 and G8 summits; issues like strict intellectual property enforcement and increasing online intermediary liability seem likely to take primacy over citizen-centered policies like net neutrality, Free Software, and combating online censorship.

As corporations pay $100,000 for seats at the e-G8 table, few representatives of civil society are present to advocate for the priorities of citizen-users of the world. We are at a critical point in the history of the Internet and the struggle for human rights. As the elected leadership of some of the world’s most powerful nations, we urge you to act now to uphold and defend the principles of digital rights and internet freedom, not just for your citizens, but for people all over the world.

Signed,
Access - www.accessnow.org
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) - www.apc.org
Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financière et l'Aide aux Citoyens (ATTAC) - www.attac.org
Center for Internet and Society - www.cis-india.org/
Citizen Lab, Munk School of Government, University of Toronto - www.citizenlab.org
Communication Is Your Right! – www.communicationisyourright.org/
Digital Democracy - www.digital-democracy.org
Digitale Gesellschaft – www.digitalegesellschaft.de
Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi) - www.effi.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - www.eff.org
European Digital Rights (EDRi) - www.edri.org
Fédération SUD-PTT (syndicat poste et télécommunication) http://www.sudptt.org/
Fundacion Escuela Latinoamericana de Redes (EsLaRed) -- www.eslared.org.ve/
The Guardian Project - www.guardianproject.info
Instituto Nupef - www.nupef.org.br/
Internet Rights & Principles Coalition - www.internetrightsandprinciples.org
The Julia Group/Juliagruppen - www.juliagruppen.se
La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) - www.laquadrature.net
May First/People Link - www.mayfirst.org
MobileActive.org - www.mobileactive.org
Movements.org - www.movements.org
Net Users’ Rights Protection Association (NURPA) - www.nurpa.be/
Open Rights Group (ORG) - www.openrightsgroup.org
Open Source Initiative (OSI) - www.opensource.org/
Panos London - www.panos.org.uk
Privacy International - www.privacyinternational.org/
Progressive Technology Project -- www.progressivetech.org/
The Public Sphere Project - www.publicsphereproject.org/
Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) - www.rsf.org
Tactical Tech - www.tacticaltech.org
WITNESS - www.witness.org
WLAN Slovenia, Open Wireless Network -www.wlan-si.net/
Van Reepinghen & Simon - www.ip-web-law.com
VECAM - www.vecam.org
Virtual Activism - www.virtualactivism.org
10 COM - www.10com.eu/

1. 1. The full document of which is available at: http://www.cgi.br/english/regulations/resolution2009-003.htm
2. 2. The English version is available here: http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/node/397 and in French here: http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/node/400
3. 3. http://fsm2011.org/en/the-right-to-inform-and-be-informed
4. 4. http://www.igcaucus.org/open-letter-president-sarkozy-eg8-meeting-plan