Slovenia Politics

The Government of the Republic of Slovenia discussed the handover reports and focused on establishing the financial situation in various departments.

The new Slovenian government is planning to provide a cash injection to Adria Airways Tehnika, which was left reeling after the collapse of its second largest customer Spanair.

LONDON -; Opponents of a controversial global copyright treaty counted three victories Friday as American government websites were hacked and the Eastern European nations of Poland and Slovenia ...

(AP) -- Opponents of a controversial global copyright treaty counted three victories Friday as American government websites were hacked and the Eastern European nations of Poland and Slovenia distanced themselves from the deal.

AP - Opponents of a controversial global copyright treaty counted three victories Friday as American government websites were hacked and the Eastern European nations of Poland and Slovenia distanced themselves from the deal.

Slovenia's newly appointed government said Thursday it was considering freezing the ratification of the controversial anti-online piracy pact ACTA, signed by the previous government in January.

The first post-communist country to adopt the euro, the former flagship state of the former Yugoslavia is struggling to recover from the crisis of 2009. And the new - and fragile - Government of Janez Janša is fighting get the country out of the impasse. (Article)

The following are the top stories in the Maltese and overseas press: The Times says Brussels has written to the Maltese government voicing doubts on Air Malta’s restructuring. It also reports how three men were hurt in two separate explosions yesterday. The Malta Independent also reports on the explosions in a section of a Kirkop fireworks factory and In-Nazzjon says a tragedy was avoided at Kirkop thanks to attention and precautions. It also reports that Moody's has downgraded Malta and eight other countries. l-orizzont says former PN treasurer Peter Darmanin waited months before he was given the last part of his pay upon retirement from the PN. The overseas press Bloomberg reports that Moody’s has downgraded its credit ratings on Italy, Portugal and Spain, while France, Britain and Austria kept their top ratings but had their outlooks dropped to negative from stable. Moody’s also cut its ratings on Malta (from A3 from A2), Slovakia, and Slovenia. All nine are EU member states. The agency said it took the actions due to the uncertainty over EU...

Slovenia's parliament on Friday voted in a new, centre-right government ending months of political instability in the small EU nation, newswires reported.The lawmakers approved the government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa in a 50-10 vote in the 90-member parliament, after weeks... Slovenia's parliament on Friday voted in a new, centre-right ... (more)

The parliament of Slovenia on Friday confirmed the 12-member cabinet of centre-right Prime Minister Janez Jansa tasked with enforcing budget cuts, boosting the economy and rescuing the country's credit ratings.

The one-notch downgrade of Slovenia does not reduce the likelihood of extraordinary government support we see for Slovenia-based Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor .

Almost two months after the country's December 4 parliamentary elections, Slovenian politicians have finally agreed on the composition of a new government.

The Slovenian parliament confirmed Janez Janša as prime minister on 28 January, nearly two months after an inconclusive 4 December election. Janša, who is expected today (30 January) at the EU summit, is the 19th head of state or government from the centre-right EPP family among the 27 member countries.

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Josip Broz Tito established a communist government in the country then known as Yugoslavia.

(Adds government statement) Standard and Poor's has lowered Malta's credit rating a notch to A-. The government said it noted the decision, which highlighted the fact that the international crisis was worsening. The agency downgraded France's top AAA to AA+, with a negative outlook, but left European powerhouse Germany's unchanged at AAA, stable. S&P also downgraded Italy by two notches to BBB+, negative outlook, with Spain cut two notches to A, negative outlook, as part of a major overhaul of ratings on 16 of the 17 eurozone nations, with Greece excluded. S&P said its rating actions reflected its view that "the policy initiatives taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the eurozone." S&P, one of the top three global ratings agencies, said it cut its long-term ratings on Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Spain by two notches. Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia were cut one notch while Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands all had their ratings affirmed. In December, S&P announced that...

LJUBLJANA, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Slovenia's Foreign Ministry criticized on Thursday American Ambassador to Slovenia Joseph Mussomeli for his words and actions to interfere in Slovenian politics. In response to media reports that Mussomeli tried to play a role of mediator in talks on the formation of new government coalition in the country, the Slovenian Foreign Ministry said that it had warned the U.S. ambassador that it did not approve of his conduct. Mussomeli's statements are "unnecessary ...

Slovenia had its credit rating lowered one step to A1 by Moody's Investors Service on the potential need for the government to support its banking system amid Europe's debt crisis The euro-area nation's banking industry has assets that are about 136 percent of gross-domestic product, which is "relatively large when compared to other systems in ... (more)

LJUBLJANA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Slovenia's new national assembly elected on Wednesday Gregor Virant as speaker of the legislature. Virant received 52 votes, slightly above the minimum requirement of absolute majority in the 90-seat national assembly. The 42-year-old leader of Citizens' List holds a doctorate in law. He served as the public administration minister in the 2004-2008 government led by then Prime Minister Janez Jansa. Before Virant, outgoing Prime Minister Borut Pahor of the ...

Slovenia would oppose a possible hostile takeover of food retailer Mercator by Croatian rival Agrokor, its finance ministry said on Friday, after national trade unions urged the government to prevent the sale.

Slovenia would oppose a possible hostile takeover of food retailer Mercator by Croatian rival Agrokor, its finance ministry said on Friday, after national trade unions urged the government to prevent the sale.

Voters in Slovenia cast their ballots in parliamentary elections that are expected to put the centre-right opposition into government.

Slovenia votes for a new government Sunday with the centre-right opposition set to return to power on a pledge of painful reforms to halt the European Union member's slide back into recession.

Slovenians go to the polls on Sunday after the collapse of the centre-right Pahor coaltion government in September, leading to the first early elections since the country's independence in 1991.

European politics has become a giant Jenga game. Since June 2010 governments have fallen in the Netherlands, Slovakia, Belgium, Ireland, Finland, Portugal, Slovenia, Greece and Italy.

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.

For the first major renovation to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry office in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the government contacted a local architecture and design firm, Sadar + Vuga.

Slovenia wants to increase the number of tourists arriving by air and plans to attract new budget carriers by co-financing the marketing budgets for at least five new routes, according to plans unveiled by the government and the Slovenian Tourism Board reports Slovenia Times.... Slovenia wants to increase the number of tourists arriving by air and ... (more)

Shareholders of Slovenia-based Adria Airways approved a cash injection of 50 million and a debt-to-equity conversion of 19.7 million against the financially troubled airline's total debt of nearly 70 million.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia - Slovenia's president has dissolved the parliament and called early elections following the government collapse earlier this month.Danilo Turk said Wednesday that Slovenia's first snap election since gaining independence in 1991 will be held Dec.

The fall of Slovenia's government could plunge the tiny eurozone country into a months-long political vacuum at a time when its economy is hitting the buffers and the single currency is in crisis.

Slovenia's government falls after losing a confidence vote but seeks to assure partners that the EU bailout fund will be ratified by MPs next week.

"Goodbye to early elections," says Slovenian daily Dnevnik on its front page illustrated by a photo of out-going Prime Minister Borut Pahor waving […] (News in brief : cover)

Slovenia's left-leaning government was ousted in a parliament confidence vote Tuesday, further complicating Europe 's debt crisis as the small eurozone nation becomes more politically unstable.

Slovenia's troubled centre-left government lost a confidence vote in parliament yesterday, an event that could lead to Slovenia's first early election since independen

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia -; Slovenia's left-leaning government was ousted in a parliament confidence vote Tuesday, further complicating Europe's debt crisis as the small eurozone nation ...

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia -- Slovenia's left-leaning government was ousted in a parliament confidence vote Tuesday, further complicating Europe's debt crisis as the small eurozone nation becomes...

Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Slovenia’s government lost a confidence vote, plunging the first former communist euro-region member into turmoil that may delay the approval of the European ...

Slovenia’s government lost a confidence vote, plunging the first former communist euro-region member into turmoil that may delay the approval of the European Union’s rescue fund amid a sovereign-debt crisis.

Slovenia's left-leaning government faced a confidence vote in parliament Tuesday that could push the eurozone nation into further political instability during Europe's debt crisis.

The centre-left government of Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor fell Tuesday after a no-confidence vote in parliament, paving the way for early elections in the small eurozone...

The centre-left government of Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor fell Tuesday after a no-confidence vote in parliament, paving the way for early elections in the small eurozone...

The centre-left government of Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor fell Tuesday after a no-confidence vote in parliament, paving the way for early elections in the small eurozone...

The centre-left government of Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor fell Tuesday after a no-confidence vote in parliament, paving the way for early elections in the small eurozone...

The centre-left government of Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor fell Tuesday after a no-confidence vote in parliament, paving the way for early elections in the small eurozone...

The threat of corruption is ever-present in areas like government spending, where miles of red tape, billions in assets, and a legitimate need for secrecy at times presents a potential trifecta for would-be defrauders. Slovenia, only a few notches lower than the of course upstanding USA on 2010's corruption perceptions index , is no nest of vipers, but as a country in transition from communism, their risk is perhaps greater. But the set of data is smaller, more manageable — which makes unified and transparent for monitoring of government spending more feasible. The country's Commission for the Prevention of Corruption has just launched such a tool, called Supervizor , and it's live right now if you don't mind operating it in Slovenian.

Three parliamentary committees have given the government the all clear to take part in the bailout of flag carrier Adria Airways , which requires a 50 million Euro cash injection to stay in the air.

Last Austrian Nazi war criminal on the top 10 most wanted list died at 98 in Austria last week, Austrian Press Agency (APA) reported on Monday. Milivoj Asner, a former police chief in Croatia, was accused of murdering hundreds of Serbs, Jews, Sinti and Roma in 1941-1942. In 2005, the Croatian government charged Asner with crimes against humanity and war crimes in the city of Pozega, Slovenia, during World War II. The Simon Wiesenthal Center rated him as the No. 3 most wanted Nazi war crim ...

Slovenias government plans to amend this years budget to ensure fiscal stability after voters rejected a key pension reform at a referendum, Prime Minister Borut Pahor said yesterday.

Tomorrow, a national referendum on the PahorA A government-proposed pension reforms is scheduled to take place, and, going by poll surveys, recent trends and a sense of melancholy gripping the establishment, the government might lose the referendum.