Inania Solnensis

Time for a break

2007-05-11T20:30:00.000+02:00

I don't know what this site is for or where it is going any more. I think I need to take a break from the internet for a while.

Bye for now. Hope it made you smile sometimes.

Not quite ready for the knacker's yard

2007-05-10T22:13:00.000+02:00

It's sad to see an old car, which started out as the fun little runabout of some metrosexual end its days as a beast of burden. Or maybe it was never like that. When I first came to Slovakia I remember arguing to dissuade someone from buying a huge gas guzzler and they argued that while British people might like an economical car, people in Slovakia only bought small cars because they were cheap, and if you wanted to prove that you were not poor in Slovakia you had damn well better get yourself a jeep, even if you just want to pop to the shops and back.

Are Czechs bad people?

2007-04-29T17:50:00.000+02:00

So I was sitting with my son in a cafe and I was catching up on what was happening in Tyzden Magazine and my son catches sight of some people from Slovenska Pospolitost carrying a big flag. He likes flags so he asks me "Daddy, who are they?". "Bad people," I answer. "Czechs?" he asks. But after that it's just a lecture about how there are good and bad people everywhere...

But where could he have picked it up from? Or are children's brains some sort of random crazy idea generation device? (Locke vs. Chomsky anyone?)

I have to start watching it with him and politics. For example, he thinks the name Robert Fico is really funny and walks around singing it with various intonations. The PM is such a vain fellow you can imagine him having us locked up for lese majeste if he heard about it.

Luxuries

2007-04-26T22:47:00.000+02:00

Things are looking up in Zilina economically thanks to the new Kia factory. We have all sorts of foreign managers coming here to work or just take a look and they need new hotels, new restaurants and so on. The process of adapting to the new needs is still at quite an interesting stage. For example, writing an English menu is still a skill that most places are just learning, as the picture to the right shows. It reads more like a witch's potion recipe than an enticing advert:

scampi salad
crab nipper
frog-thigh
cuttle-fish
shark steak
little octopus
dish two-man

I think the last one is my favourite

Get the Facts! Potholes exclusive!

2007-04-25T10:57:00.000+02:00

If you think the Slovak political scene is a bit too exciting, maybe it's time to head somewhere more sedate.Why not give the Tiraspol Times a try. At the time of writing, the top story in forgotten Transdniester is:

"After a harsh winter, new potholes appeared in many roads throughout Pridnestrovie."

It then goes on to detail the shocking holes in the wonderfully named city of Bender.

I thought it was a joke but Radio Free Europe reckons it's a serious paper encouragin human rights and all that.

It's slightly spooky that I came to this site because Google Mail recommended it to me.

Maybe they're getting to know me a bit too well.

Slovensko.coma

2007-04-21T20:58:00.000+02:00

I think the author of this piece (one AlexW) actually thought he was helping to make the internet a nicer place but in its amazing partisan attacks on Marxists (anyone who doesn't share the author's extreme views - note the dismissive aside about global warming) and its insulting reference to drivel it's clear that it is motivated by a desire to be an internet cop. Personal attacks do ensue he writes. The queer impersonal grammar is clearly designed to disguise the fact that often it's him who's doing the attacking.

"Can anyone on Slovensko.com (traffic cop) explain why certain good posts were removed when there was no vulgarity, insults, or heavy-duty personal attacks between the participants?"

Did it ever occur to you that the deleted post have NOTHING to do with Slovakia? I think your boat landed here by mistake. Slovensko is a site for the promotion of Slovakia, to provide information about SLOVAKIA, and to help people traveling here. It is not a site for spewing silly drivel. (Speaking for myself, not an official of Slovensko)

The Internet is full of thousands of political, general interest forums, and blogs where the Marxist, anti American, anti, or pro anything crowd can feel at home. I participate in other forums where I DO talk politics, the man made global warming swindle, and numerous other topics. This forum is not the place for that.

Having been a member here for over 5 years, I have seen the Pommie fool(Pommie is a colloqial term for one clown that has posted under many names), his many clones, and other rude disruptors come and go. It has always been a problem. Personal attacks do ensue. Witness the vile Pommie attacks on Estika. Left unfettered for over a month, the site deteriorates rapidly. Last year it got so bad that the General Discussion forum was deleted.

If you want to talk about Slovakia, I am sure it would be welcomed. Otherwise, I think you should load your boat with lemons, a Marxist crew, and sail off to another port. There are so many sites where you could feel right at home.

Well, I am not going to give advice and information and do free translations to promote the talking shop of some right wing fantasists. And so goodbye to the last public Slovak forum site that I used. I'm sure there are interesting mailing lists out there, maybe some decent blogs but it looks like a lonely old Internet for me for a while. Oh well, at least I don't have to waste my energyplaying to someone else's agenda.

I think I'll open up the comments here again and see what we get. Can anyonerecommend a good Slovakia-related discussion site where I don't have to pretendthat it's some Shangri-la beyond politics and the rest of the world?

International Women's Day

2007-03-08T11:59:00.000+01:00

Prime Minister Fico's party SMER, organised a party for International Women's Day, a day that originally celebrated women's struggle for equality but in Slovakia became a mark of patronisation, as men thanked women for the hard work they did, without thinking that maybe women would rather men took a share of it. The Prime Minister took part in a number of sketches to show ~~how silly it would be if men tried to do women's work~~ how hard women have to work and how much men sincerely appreciate it:

As you can see, a good time was had by all.

I'm off to do my housework now. That is all. Thanks to SME for the images.

Strong is the stupid in Carrefour

2007-03-08T06:21:00.000+01:00

My mother-in-law had a very successful trip to our Carrefour hypermaket yesterday. First the cheese counter:

Mother in law: Don't you have maasdam?
Assistant: Yes we do, here.
Mother in law: That's not maasdam
Assistant: Yes it is. It's just pronounced differently [probably meaning that it has a different name but…]

For Slovak fans, that phrase should be len sa vyslovuje inak

Meanwhile, at the checkout the assistant insisted on reenacting the Romans go home graffiti scene from Life of Brian and made her sign here credit card slip six times until she got it looking the same to the assistant's satisfaction. Loops were in the wrong places apparently. I'm not sure you're even allowed to sign multiple times. Surely the proper procedure ought to be to ask for additional ID.

Carrefour is in a very strange situation. The French parent company wants to disinvest from Slovakia but the original plan to sell out the shops to Tesco was banned by the Anti-Monopoly Office. So the shops are sort of in limbo, waiting to see what will happen to them. And maybe this affects the quality of the staffing.

Random quotes of the day

2007-02-05T22:29:00.000+01:00

Interesting quotes of the day that may reflect on Slovakia:

Firstly, Chris Dillow on political sleaze investigations, such as the recent police inquiries regarding "cash for peerages" in Britain:

Such investigations - or even the threat of them - encourage politicians to be legalistic prigs, studying the minutiae of laws to ensure that they stay just on the right side of them.
But we shouldn't judge politicians by such low standards. You can train a scabby dog to obey rules. There are millions of people who obey laws, but you'd cross the road to avoid them, and wouldn't trust them to so much as clean your car.
He hit the nail on the head for Slovakia too. The media have got into the habit of constantly looking for corruption and rule breaking, encouraged by political opponents who throw out juicy hints. There is no question of whether any politician displays virtue of whether someone is worth trusting to clean your car. And so people like Meciar are able to continue thanks to the fiction that they have not broken any law and are innocent until proven guilty.
Secondly, A Fistful of Euros on Bosnian politicians:

I’ve known a lot of Bosnians. They’re lovely people. But their politicians are, by and large, the scum of the earth. Nowhere, not even in Serbia -- not even in Texas -- is there such a baffling contrast between likable, easy-going ordinary people and the venal, mean-spirited asstards they choose to lead them. It’s a disturbing mystery.
He could put Slovakia on that list too. I think I shall have to give up writing about Slovak politics unless I can find some guys in white hats soon.

Vecernicek nostalgia or really everything is on the web

2007-02-03T00:00:00.000+01:00

From the SME blog discussion pages, I found that Slovaks are getting into the YouTube game in a big way, not only with their wacky politicians, but also with their nostalgia. For example here is an episode of Macko Usko (Polish wikipedia page) a cartoon hero of the seventies who is still widely loved, even inspiring one of the people-who-blog-about-Slovakia-in-English. I'm not quite sure how George measures up to Macko's song:

Dobrý večer, dobrú noc
Macko z plyšu spieva vám
volajú ma Macko Uško
lebo smiešne uško mám

Huncút som a rád sa hrám
s humorom je predsa fuška
všetky deti rád ja mám
to je heslo Macka Uška.

Good evening, this bear is singing you a song so you sleep well. They call me Macko Usko (Big-ears Bear) beacause I've got funny ears. I'm a bit wild and I like to play, everything goes better with a smile. "I love all the children" is Big-ears bear's motto. I know the translation could be better (it could actually rhyme and be singable, for a start) but it's late.

I forgot to explain the title: Vecernicek is the nightly children's cartoon that Slovak television has run for many years. It is always introduced by Dedo Vecernicek (Grandpa Bedtime-story) who goes with his little dog to light the stars with his lantern.

Good and bad activism

2007-02-01T23:33:00.000+01:00

One of the things I would like to do here is to show how Slovak people take political action into their own hands to get control over their own lives. Too many people are stuck with the idea that Slovaks are still brain-washed sheep, stunted by Communism etc. and in desperate need of some foreign medicine in order to take responsibility for themselves. It’s true that the current ultra-statist prime minister, Robert Fico, doesn’t make a good ambassador in this regard, but there are plenty of everyday stories of little heroes getting things done.

Of course, when people take politics into their own hands, it’s not always pretty. Few people are model humanists. This evening I watched a report on TA3 about how a village got up a petition and hate campaign against a plan to set up a children’s home mainly for Roma children in their neighbourhood. The programme was really good, contrasting scenes from the daily life of the children (who were perfectly normal) and interviews with spluttering petitioners (“Oh yes, it’s quiet now, but what if those children start playing outside?”) who threatened to take their children out of the village school if Roma children went there and a mayor who rode into office on the issue of the petition and who now has no problem at all with the children’s home, you see, it was just a question of bad procedure. I doubt that’s what he said when he was out pressing the flesh, he looked like a weasel. But he may have had a point. If the authorities had communicated with the villagers about who these children are - normal children just unlucky - and how much better it is for the children to live in a “family type” house for eight rather than an isolated institution for over a hundred, things might have been different. Most of the bureaucrats were just shaking their shoulders and saying “Oh they’ll get used to it”. If the petition changes that, it’ll be good for something.

When the media talks about activism in Slovakia, they tend to talk most often about the Neo-Nazis like Slovenska Pospolita, and their opponents, Antifa. This is getting to the point of total absurdity. Yesterday, TA3 gave over its news discussion programme to a debate about a demonstration “for free speech” that was banned in Bratislava. Some right wingers with links to SP were upset that Archbishop Sokol had been criticised for politically incorrect talk about the fascist ally wartime regime, which Sokol thought made life good for Slovaks. This rather ignores the fact that nothing has happened to the archbishop, it’s just that most of the Slovak chattering classes don’t agree with him (and rightly so, IMHO). The demonstration was banned because of the organiser’s links to banned right wing organisations and fears that it would become a vehicle for hate speech (perhaps also there were fears of a scrap with anti-racism counter-demonstrators). In the end today, 10 rightists turned out to collect signatures for some sort of petition and 30 Antifa types came to watch them. There were probably more police by the looks of things. It is heartening that there are more anti-fascists than fascists willing to turn out on a Thursday afternoon, but was it really worth so much fuss? The police have to watch the Square anyway the same as if it had been allowed, and the organiser got attention on the news to more people than he would on some square in Bratislava, including you readers of my blog (hm, maybe that Square is more attractive…). If you have a law against hate speech, it’s easy enough to monitor what the fools say and arrest them when they say it, but banning people and harassing people for what they might say is going a bit over the top.

Another thing that bothers me is the way these issues are framed in terms of the police, who are always ready to intervene. The media likes to send the message that activism is only for nutters and that we should trust the authorities and our elected representatives to take care of things. Yes, sometimes people say things that stink but how will we learn to live for ourselves without practice?

New Forum

2007-01-29T17:44:00.000+01:00

I like the social nature of the internet, but I was unhappy that comments here tended to have nothing to do with the posts. On the other hand, a couple of people have written to me that they don't like the idea of being known to Google just to make a comment. So, what to do? As an internet-experimenter I decided to set up a forum where quite wide-ranging discussion will be possible. The structure is based on the forum at slovensko.com but it's not meant as a replacement. I couldn't possibly moderate that much traffic and I plan to keep on being an active contributor to SDC. If you want to take a look and help me experiment...

...You're out of luck [update - 23/04/2007 because the experiment was cancelled due to lack of interest last week.

Rant of the day: red panic

2007-01-28T21:36:00.000+01:00

Juraj Javorsky says the gloves are off:

[Fico’s] most recent decisions have killed off all grounds for optimism. Bans on profits in health insurance, bans on pensions companies investing in shares, the appointment of a member of SMER as the health services regulator - these are not compromises between populism and pragmatism. This isn’t the psuedo-socialism of VAT relief for medicines. Fico has dropped all pretence and begun to show the power that allows him to implement any bonkers idea he has about the state, society and people. This will do direct harm to both firms and people.

But then again, what else do you expect from a business magazine (and an author who seems to mirror Dzurinda’s talking points from the lunchtime talkshows)? When are we actually going to limit the powers of the state so that instead of having to vote that some decent party gets elected, we can actually stop worrying about this class of clowns and take control of our own lives?

Zilina in a blizzard

2007-01-26T21:52:00.000+01:00

I'm sure you've seen those humorous postcards that are all white and have the title *XY in a blizzard*. Well, Zilina looks more like this:

Quote of the day - issues in politics

2007-01-26T21:20:00.000+01:00

SME, discussing the failure of the opposition to improve their opinion poll position despite holding 89 press conferences since the election:

Robert Fico, na rozdiel od opozície, podľa Timorackého vyjadruje záujmy bežných ľudí. Za snáď jedinou opozičnou témou v takomto duchu, bola kritika SMK, ktorá išla proti úradným komplikáciám zabíjačiek, myslí si.

According to Timporacky [a marketing expert] Robert Fico sets himself apart from the opposition by discussing themes that interest ordinary people. About the only opposition theme in this spirit was the SMK’s critcism of bureaucrats who were making it difficult to organise a traditional home pig killing (zabijacka).

He did actually also hold out some hope for the SDKU campaign to protect the second pillar of pensions (funds managed by private companies, to which a fixed proportion of payroll tax is paid).

No one cares about Mr Fico’s Che fetish, because in the popular imagination, Dzurinda’s fetish for his friend George Bush is probably just as bad, and no one cares where he goes for a trip, in fact we probably hope he stays somewhere nice and exotic and remote as long as possible. And if you expect us to stick up for private health insurance companies, you’ve got another thing coming. We’ve seen The Rainmaker. But you’ll have to prise our traditional plate of home-made jaternice and klobase from our cold, dead hands.

By the way, the problem with killing your own pig is that the EU requires a veterinary inspection of all slaughtered meat and the government has so far done a lousy job of providing a clear way for people to register the slaughter without messing up a pretty major part of Slovak village life.

For Slovaks, blood really is thicker than water

2007-01-26T09:25:00.000+01:00

Everyone knows that for Slovaks krv nie je voda (blood’s thicker than water) but you can see just how important it is, or was, when start studying the language in depth. Ivan Paulicka’s blog has a fascinating article about all the terms Slovak has for identifying relationships in surprising detail (in Slovak only, unfortunately).

I’ll try and explain some of them (see his blog for correct spelling etc.):

manzel husband of manzelka
test: father of a man’s wife, testina: wife’s mother (together testovci)
svokor: father of woman’s husband, svokra: woman’s mother-in-law (together svokrovci) though in everyday Slovak these refer to all parents-in-law
zat: son-in-law, nevesta: daughter in law
a really strange idea is “co-in-laws”. After your children get married, the parents of your son’s or daughter’s spouse are your svat (man) and svatka (woman), together svatovci.
stryc: father’s brother, married to stryna
ujec: mother’s brother, married to ujcina
teta: sister of mother or father (phew!), married to svak
NB: in everyday Slovak any aunt tends to be teta and any uncle stryko or ujo, and little children refer to any grown up person by these terms.
zolvica: the wife of a woman’s brother, though they will let you say svagrina now, which is the word for other sorts of sister-in-law, and all sorts of brother-in-law are svagor.
bratranec and sesternica are male and female cousins respectively
Do you think nephew is synovec and niece is neter? If only it were so simple! sestrenec and sestrica are how you talk about the children of your sister and bratovec and bratanica should be used for children of your brother (though apparently this is dying out too…)
One last Slovak only relationship is kmotor and kmotra who are people who act as god-parents to your children when they are baptised. The children call them krstny otec and krstna mama.
Another one I like that Paulicka mentions is pobratim, a blood brother, as in the sense of really close friend.

Paulicka says that he finds babka and dedo offensive ways of talking about old people/grandparents (if you are a vnuk (M) or vnucka (F), try stary otec/stara mama), though it is rather widespread. He likes the term kmet, which means a wise old man.

Paulicka says that a lot of these old relationship words are dying out. In the old days people really depended on their families and there were probably customs on how to relate to all the different degrees and types. These days, when people move to cities and mix more with their rovesnici (people the same age, peers), we need different words for the new rules of relations.

Incompetents

2007-01-26T00:24:00.000+01:00

The interncional konference video that was doing the rounds of the Slovak blogosphere made it to the Markiza nightly news the other night, a Slovak first as far as I can tell. They made it into a piece about whether ministers are good enough at English. The funny thing is that Mr Jahnatek turns out to be capable of fairly fluent, if heavily accented, English. At least, he was able to answer the reporter's questions in English. So why was his performance in the video so hilariously bad? The most likely explanation is that he just read his text off paper and didn't take the time to practise it because the video was just one of those things that has to be done and no one really cares about it.

It's a common feature of Fico's government, this contempt for communications. Here's the man himself, discussing his opposition to US anti-missile radar bases in Eastern Europe:

Fico explained his stance by saying that Slovakia has the right to take such a position.

Yeah, no one's gonna tell you what to do. "Fuck you. I won't do what you tell me". Government of petulent teens:

Fico: Jednoducho, si musíme na Slovensku zvyknúť na to, že predseda vlády nie je politik, ktorému niekto niečo napíše na lístoček v nejakej inej krajine, a tento politik to potom šíri po svete. Máme vlastné názory ja ich teda mám, aj ich budem naďalej presadzovať v politike, a pokiaľ bude mať slovenská verejnosť o takýto typ politiky záujem, budem takúto politiku robiť.

My translation: We simply have to get used to the fact that in Slovakia the prime minister is not a politician who takes something that was written down on a little piece of paper in another country and then spreads it around the world. We have our own opinions, at least I do, and I will continue to promote them in my politics, and as long as the Slovak people like that sort of politics, I will carry on doing politics that way.

How can a government have so much contempt for people's intelligence? It's probably because Fico's government is full of old faces from before 1989, members of the elite who have just been biding their time, knowing that they will get their moment of power again. Even the ones who have been in business, like Paska, were in cushy businesses like pharmaceuticals where huge profits are guaranteed if you have contacts. Smer's election triumph was largely bought with a massive advertising campaign, and the Dzurinda government's determination to shoot themselves in the foot. The sooner these time-serving incompetents shuffle off the stage, the better.

The strings attached to visa-less travel

2007-01-25T23:28:00.000+01:00

SME is running a couple of stories today about the lifting of the requirement that Slovaks obtain a visa for the USA before travelling there. The changes seem to be taking place on two fronts. Firstly a bill has been introduced in Congress to make travel to the US easier for coutries that do not represent a threat to the US (Slovak language link, SME newspaper). The previous requirement that the number of rejected Visa applications be below a certain threshold is likely to be reduced in priority in favour of cooperation with the US in security matters.

A second front is shown by the meeting between a senior official of the Department for Homeland Security, Paul Rosenzweig, and representatives of 13 countries potentially entitled to Visa-free travel (Slovak language link, SME newspaper), including Slovakia. This discussed technicalities of the security situation necessary to ensure US security. For example, Slovakia would have to share its list of lost and stolen passports with the US. Sorry about the Slovak language links but neither the Spectator nor Radio Slovakia International have picked up on these developments.

While many Slovaks would welcome easier travel to the US, they should be aware that this does not mean that they will be able to travel with any more privacy than when they were previously summoned to Bratislava to explain themselves.

A recent story in the British newspaper, the Telegraph states that EU governments have agreed to provide the Department of Homeland Security with a wide variety of flight passenger information on request.

By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

No doubt, Slovakia will have to agree to the same or stricter conditions. If you dislike the US processing or storing this information, you are welcome to lodge a complaint, in a US court. By the way, the US government merely undertook to "encourage" its airlines to share such information with the Europeans rather than oblige them.

Internacional Konference

2007-01-21T09:10:00.000+01:00

Slovak politicians seek to find the best solutions for nuclear energy policy balancing needs of development with your concerns relating of the security and safety. But will there be understanding after the finding of it?

Of course, this has turned up in lots of other places, like Juraj Javorsky's blog, where I first saw it (while finding out why my bank is a bag of shite) and of course DBT was faster onto teh viral video bandwagon than me.

OK, so as not to be just another viral time waster, I do have one tiny original point to add to the excellent background and comments given above: seeing Jahnatek struggling through his invitation at the end of this reminds me of why I gave up teaching English. The minister is obviously a tough guy in his field and wrestles energy monopolies before breakfast, but when he has to speak in English he looks like a frightened rabbit and at the end he gives that "Did I do OK, can I have a sweetie" sort of smile like the whole experience carried him back to infant school. It's humiliating. Even worse is the amount of pompous show-offery that big boss English students try to bury you in (endless lists of new gadgets they got, VIPs they met, exotic locations of holidays and business trips) to make up for the humiliation they suffered by being forced to express themselves in a barbarous tongue.

Quote of the day - Spin

2007-01-20T17:09:00.000+01:00

Stefan Hrib commenting on the short last episode of his television discussion show Pod Lampou

My tu máme na Slovensku taký zvyk, že keď sa niečo stane, tak sa to potom zahovorí množstvom slov, až nakoniec nikto nevie, čo sa vlastne stalo.
In Slovakia we have this habit that whenever anything happens we explain it in so many words that in the end no one knows what really happened

Welcome to the wonderful world of spin, Slovaks!

Quoted by Shooty in his blog on the (non-)discussion of freedom on STV, the Slovak state broadcaster.

7 Years of Food Not Bombs

2007-01-19T11:36:00.000+01:00

Another oasis in our desert of Catholicism and Conservatism, Jedlo namiesto zbraní is celebrating its seventh anniversary by staging a happening, in typical style in Bratislava.

Activists will celebrate the anniversary by giving away food and clothes in front of the Old Market Hall (on SNP Square). There will also be live music and a fire show.

In the last 7 years the group has distributed 31 000 litres of soup and 75 000 pieces of bread. The group carries out its operation on foot or bicycle and everything is vegetarian. They use their activities to raise social issues such as the excessive power of the arms industry.

The group is an independent part of the international Food not Bombs network. There are other Slovak branches in Kosice and Trnava.

I would probably find all this irritatingly hippyish but I'm glad someone is doing something other than giving into the full globalisation package or being an old fashioned authoritarian. JNZ were (I think) the only group to get a demonstration off the ground when Bush rolled into town a couple of years back, even if it was just a happening a few days before he arrived and showing video documentaries in a theatre

BlogThis! back again

2007-01-15T09:40:00.000+01:00

The BlogThis! button is now working in New Blogger for faster web page commenting. Pity there's no option for labels.

The world's twelve worst ideas

2007-01-14T13:30:00.001+01:00

Fred Halliday on Open Democracy rounds up some of the stupid assumptions that are likely to mess things up for us in the coming year. Here are a couple that stand out for me.

Number five: We should welcome the spread of English as a world language
It is obviously of practical benefit that there is one common, functional, language of trade, air traffic control etc, but the actual domination of English in today's world has been accompanied by a tide of cultural arrogance that is itself debasing: a downgrading and neglect of other languages and cultures across the world, the general compounding of Anglo-Saxon political and social arrogance, and the introverted collapse of interest within English-speaking countries themselves in other peoples and languages, in sum, a triumph of banality over diversity. One small but universal example: the imposition on hotel staff across the world, with all its wonderful diversity of nomenclature, of name tags denoting the bearer as "Mike", "Johnny" and "Steve".

It's been said over and over again: the fact that other peoples speak English does not mean that we can have good relations with them, without learning foreign languages. Even though I have learned Slovak the seductions of the internet mean that I've been spending far too long in a solipistic Anglo-American dream land this winter. It's time I got back to my original idea of becoming a vector for drawing alien ideas into the anglosphere.

But as an interesting note to this, my wife and I have started going to a Korean hairdresser in Zilina. She has come over with the factory managers, probably so that the ladies in the party can keep their looks up without having to learn Slovak. She doesn't speak Slovak at all and her English isn't amazing. She asks to be addressed as Jenny though. Do all Asians adopt western names for English purposes. And when do they choose it. When they start learning or when they move abroad. I'll have to ask her. So far I've only been in once and then my hair was cut by her Slovak employee.

Number three: Diasporas have a legitimate role to play in national and international politics
The notion that emigrant or diaspora communities have a special insight into the problems of their homeland, or a special moral or political status in regard to them, is wholly unfounded. Emigrant ethnic communities play almost always a negative, backward, at once hysterical and obstructive, role in resolving the conflicts of their countries of origin: Armenians and Turks, Jews and Arabs, various strands of Irish, are prime examples on the inter-ethnic front, as are exiles in the United States in regard to resolving the problems of Cuba, or policymaking on Iran. English emigrants are less noted for any such political role, though their spasms of collective inebriation and conformist ghettoised lifestyles abroad do little to enhance the reputation of their home country.

I feel a bit like posting this to Slovensko.com but they don't take kindly to provocation there (though spasms of collective inebriation and conformist ghettoised lifestyles might entertain some people who want a new way to describe the resident anglo-troll). I must say, this does frighten me a bit about how I'll end up. I certainly am rather cut off here, spending too much time with my computer and it could well be that instead of the splendind cross-pollination of Slovak and English that I dream of, what I'll actually get is a jaundiced or rose-tinted outlook that fantasises both and understands nothing. Maybe there is a way to fly by those traps, as Stephen Daedalus thought when considering his emigration from Ireland. We'll see.

Well, I think it's a useful list that may help to clarify thought.

Reference: A 2007 warning: the world's twelve worst ideas Fred Halliday - openDemocracy

How cool is wget?

2007-01-13T17:34:00.001+01:00

I just think I managed to do something really clever on my computer, so excuse me sharing it with you. I was trying to install a new program, Mindful Clock as a way of timing my work and some zen meditation I plan to take up some time. Anyway, on their web page they had some bonus bell sounds as wav files but you have to copy them into the programme directory and I run as a limited user for security reasons and it would be a pain in the neck to save and then copy. Luckily I have Total Commander that I can use runas to give quick access to administrator rights on a folder. It also has a commandline and a while back I downloaded a whole lot of unix utilities ported to Windows, including the mighty wget. And I realised that I could just type

wget http://www.mindfulnessdc.org/sBell2.wav

in Total Commander's command line box to download the file to the directory. That saved me a step!

I know this has nothing to do with Slovakia but I thought I ought to celebrate it, and get back into the habit of doing something here regularly, even if it means nothing to anyone.

All of your Turkmens are orphans

2006-12-21T21:45:00.001+01:00

Sniff, sniff, the father of all the Turkmens is no more and all his loyal subejcts can do is give him one last puff piece to end all puff pieces. But what a puff piece (reported by Interfax, via)

"A heart failure resulted in the sudden death of President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov at the age of 66," the statement says.
The statement, which was released by the State Security Council, the Cabinet and parliament, says that Niyazov, who ruled Turkmenistan for 21 years, was "the creator" of Turkmenistan's independence and sovereignty.
"The glorious years during which the Great Serdar ruled the Turkmen people confirmed his heavenly faculty to foresee and his ability to determine priorities. His unique abilities in the art of leading the nation revealed his talent as a diplomat and a wise and humane person," the statement says.
"The objectives he set served the interests of the people, while the large-scale projects that were implemented were in harmony with the national spirit of the Turkmen people and were accepted by every ethnic Turkmen and all other people living in Turkmenistan," it says.
"Saparmurat Turkmenbashi treated representatives of all ethnicities and ethnic groups who live in Turkmenistan with equal respect. He established the principle of equality, unity and mutual trust in the country," the statement says.
"The people of Turkmenistan will continue to pursue the political course of Saparmurat Turkmenbashi at this difficult moment. The people of Turkmenistan are committed to the principles of Turkmenistan's national statehood the Great Serdar laid in the foundation of Turkmenistan's independence," it says. tm md

No doubt they wanted to show the next guy just what loyalty looks like. Mind you, no one seems to know who the next guy will be. The BBC highlights some of the difficulties of absolutist nutter dictators (via):

According to Turkmen law, the president is succeeded by the head of the legislative body, the People's Assembly. But this post was held by Mr Niyazov himself.

Meanwhile, in Slovakia, it's steady as she goes. The coalition are squabbling over a few warm seats on the boards of state controlled companies, the budget is passed unamended and the people who have money blow it all on what SME is calling the most generous Christmas ever (i.e. the most expensive, I'm not quite sure the meaning is the same) and when I read about the poor orphaned Turkmens, I'm not that sorry it's boring (Lemuel reaches the same conclusion via the study of Poland).

On the information super donkey track

2006-12-19T20:37:00.000+01:00

Why can't you download Slovak musicians' work in Slovakia, FFS? Excuse me while I pop over to the Czech Republic to set up a paypal account - we got overlooked somehow. How did we get stuck on the scenic route with the pirates (though we prefer to be called Buccaneer Central Europeans yo ho ho) while the rest of the world zooms towards the singularity or whatnot. It's enough to make me send my Person of the Year award back.

"Come together" geddit, huh huh

2006-12-18T08:41:00.001+01:00

Paul Refell and Donna Sheehan have consulted the Maya and solar calendars and announced that it is time for a Global Orgasm for world peace:

It is Reffell and Sheehan's fervent wish that on Friday December 22, "you and everyone you know" should bring yourselves to orgasm in the manner of your choosing while concentrating your thoughts, as much as possible, on peace. Their goal "is to add so much concentrated and high-energy positive input into the energy field of the Earth that it will reduce the current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world". (The Guardian)

I suppose this is one of those things that will hardly do us any harm and has a tiny chance of doing good, so why not? I may have a little difficulty keeping my thoughts focussed on peace though.

Hayek on Chile: Clean of impurities

2006-12-17T23:36:00.000+01:00

A pair of fascinating old interviews with Friedrich von Hajek on his attitude to the Pinochet regime in Chile — one, two — which he inspired and advised.

I’m really not sure what to think about this. Chris Dillow has done a good job about the rightness of Hayek’s theories on the need for markets due to the falibility of individual knowledge, but I have a hard time understanding how he could be so sure that it was worth all those Chileans who were tortured and killed to establish Pinochet’s allegedly liberal dictatorship:

I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America - is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement … As a means of establishing a stable democracy and liberty, clean of impurities. This is the only way I can justify it [dictatorship] - and recommend it.

On Pinochet's death, the worst (and the best) that Slovaks were willing to say about him was that he was controversial (as Lemuel put it). It’s not just that he killed a lot of Communists, or first introduced the famous pension reform. For the Slovak right think tanks he is the man who made the Reagan, Thatcher and their revolutions possible and they share his contempt for democracy. They worry about how to stop the people grabbbing the keys to the treasury and voting themselves a party. Not long ago, I read an article in tyzden about the prospects for liberty and their main right wing intellectual (the head of INEKO, I think) said that the one thing they wouldn’t privatise would be schools, so as to maintain a traditional culture. In other words, we must make sure the masses know their place. There is much to be said for “wisdom of the ages” and that people would benefit from established rules of thumb more than what some egotistical lefty thinks are the dictates of pure reason. But wouldn’t a market in education pick that up? It’s a pity the Hayekians don’t listen to their master instead of being in such a hurry to get to the Liberal state:

here is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people’s frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change “orderly. (Why I am not a conservative)

'Tis the season to be jolly

2006-12-17T21:23:00.000+01:00

So here are some doomy and gloomy thoughts on blogging and life, the universe and everything from the brilliant Diesel Sweeties (Click for the big version):

iCensor

2006-12-14T11:17:00.000+01:00

Thank you for the comments since I reopened the box. I read all of them. I'm not sure any of us need another example of why XY is a bad apple or introductions to people with made up names who like to assert who they are not but remain distinctly hazy on who they are not while being absolutely certain that a bunch of other people are totally psychotic. So I didn't publish them. But I also left out some random good comments because I am fickle like that and now you can give yourself the consolation that your post was great and just got overlooked.

Please do try again later!

Keep that racket down

2006-12-14T11:10:00.001+01:00

Lemuel tried to warn them but they wouldn't listen and the Slovak parliament went ahead and voted for probably the most ridiculous law of the year: Zdenka Kramplova's (pictured) attempt to outlaw noisy adverts. There's a Slovak version of the story here.

The trouble is that Slovak television companies have realised that everyone goes and makes a cup of tea when the adverts come on or else falls asleep during the boring programmes and in order to get their attention the adverts are on average 3-6 decibels louder than the programmes. Sometimes the jump is quite a shock and irritating. You can see Ms. Kramplova's logic. I guess she imagined headlines about parliament finally responding to people's real concerns. Is it really necessary to point out that parliament should only address issues that only parliament can sort out and that this annoyance might be better dealt with by people bad-mouthing tv companies every chance they got or watching other channels or giving up on the ludicrous practice of surrendering control of their eyeballs in return for low-quality, lowest common denominator entertainment? Aparently there's even a technical fix, since TVs are available that automatically adjust channel volumes to an average level. Even Fico's government, which seldom misses an oppportunity to extend its meddlesome influence threw the proposal out. But no, law makers consider meddling in a pseudo-popular cause to be doing their job.

The law isn't even a decent piece of work. It includes no rules for measuring the "noisiness" of an advert and no penalties for breaking it.

Somewhere under this there are interesting discussions about the deal we make with media companies in return for giving up our privacy and agreeing to watch adverts, or the way the government tries to force itself into all relationships as an honest broker instead of empowering people to look after their own interests but I'm not sure I want to dignify Kramplova by associating her grab at the limelight with anything half-way relevant.

Backwards day

2006-12-12T14:31:00.000+01:00

Happy Backwards Day people!
Do it yourself with instructions from here.
I recommend the "bdo" tag.

The end of Slotaland?

2006-12-05T08:14:00.000+01:00

Most people are saying that Slota's defeat is due to vanity. He just couldn't imagine losing and he didn't bother to campaign, trusting that people would recognise what was good for them. He did nudge them a bit in this direction with the new car park that offers free parking to the end of the year and moving the start of the Christmas festivities forward so that people would be able to look at the pretty lights (including a fireworks display) before the election.

The man certainly seems to have imagined he would be mayor forever. The picture above comes from the door of Zilina's old town hall, where he carved his name in deep letters.

Harman on the other hand had a surprisingly active campaign that was almost entirely negative, full of Slota's scandals. This is rare in local politics where even the most massive campaign tends to involve simply splashing your candidate's picture everywhere. Harman also introduced door-to-door campaigning, paying student's to deliver his leaflets by hand.

So what about the future? Obviously I'm happy that Slota has been punished for the scandalous way he ran the town. The city couldn't tolerate that viscious and blatantly corrupt style any more. On the other hand, it all rather reminds me of 1998. The bastards have only left office; no death blow has been struck. Slota will continue to have business connections with many important Zilina companies. He has his Goldwing palace right in the middle of town. And of course he also has his party in government and today in the paper he was wondering how Zilina will be affected by the loss of "synergy effects" from the cutting off personal contacts with big-spending ministers. Also, as in 1998, the incoming administration has to deal with a huge debt (as big as 2 billion SKK) while having won the election by highlighting expensive charges for public services (parking, bus fares) that it will probably now have to increase too. The new administration is likely to have its own corruption scandals (it's dominated by the SDKU) and although new mayor Harman is promising investigations and audits I can't see any legal action succeeding against Slota. So he could come back in 2010, depending on whether his party survives at a national level.

Fico and Sadam Hussein's death penalty

2006-11-14T10:08:00.001+01:00

Mr Lipsic and the right are having a lot of fun with Fico's new-found opposition to the death penalty

Government Is against Death Penalty
The Slovak governing Coalition agrees with the European Union that the death sentence handed down to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein by an Iraqi court on November 5 shouldn't be carried out, Sme daily reports. Prime Minister Robert Fico said that the death penalty is unacceptable for Slovakia as a member of the EU. His stance has been backed by other representatives of the governing Coalition, but former justice minister and Christian Democrat (KDH) MP Daniel Lipsic has sharply criticised the prime minister. "Robert Fico used to be a supporter of the death penalty. He has changed his stance only to please the European Socialists," claimed Lipsic. Source: Radio Slovakia International

He does appear to have softened. Here's his programme as described in the Slovak Spectator back when he was getting started in 2000:

Direction's programme is not yet clear - "we are neither leftist nor rightist nor liberal" said Fico at the party's first rally on November 11 - although its leader's recent statements on Slovak Romanies have been criticized by government officials as bordering on racist sentiments. Fico has also come out in support of a death penalty in Slovakia, as well as restricted access to social benefits. He has said he would like prisoners to pay for their upkeep in Slovak prisons. Source: Slovak Spectator

Of course, it could be that Fico hasn't changed his opinion but is finally getting with the common European foreign policy. Most leaders oppose the death penalty so he has to go along with it. And as the chances of saving the butcher of Baghdad are minimal, it's not really anything he has to worry about. One might well snark that as a combatative puritain and eternal dissident Mr Lipsic will find it easy to stick to his principles but how else but by compromise is Europe going to get to a common policy and actually have some weight in the world.

Having said that, I think the death penalty is not necessarily bad in this case. The biggest objection to it is uncertainty as to guilt. If someone is executed by mistake we can't bring them back. But there can be no mistaking about SH. Then there is that argument about us losing our moral character through executing him. Well, considering we killed thousands of Iraqi civilians to get at him, it seems a little strange to keep the man alive (this is discussed with considerably more flair by Chris Dillow on Stumbling and Mumbling). Of course, some people think "prison for natural life" is actually the crueller punishment and there's something in that, Sadam Hussein slowly going mad in a tiny box, utterly dependent on his jailers, longing for the rescue that never comes... Brrr.

Goodbye

2006-11-09T15:34:00.000+01:00

Mad Vlado's departure from government in 1998. "S panom bohom" he said, using the Slovak for farewell for ever and then sang a folk song about how he never hurt nobody... If only.

US ambassador lobbies for Mormons

2006-11-08T20:00:00.001+01:00

Mormons check the good book for advice on how to conquer Zilina

His Excellency Mr Vallee thinks Mormons are discriminated against in Slovakia:

U.S. Ambassador Supports Registration for Mormon Church in Slovakia
U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia Rodolphe M. Vallee is trying to obtain support for the official registration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (alternatively known as the Mormons) in Slovakia, it was reported on Sunday. During talks in Trnava on November 3, Vallee presented his ideas to the Archbishop of Bratislava-Trnava Jan Sokol. Vallee says that he supports an open society that doesn't discriminate against anyone due to their religion. At the same time, Archbishop Sokol informed Vallee of his views on the registration of denominations, stating why he can't agree with the efforts of the U.S. embassy.

The Catholic Church has previously been dead set against the Mormons, telling Catholics that it would be a breach of their baptismal vow if they signed petitions for the state to accept Mormonism as a religion.

Mr Vallee is exaggerating a bit if he says Mormons are discriminated against. Mormons are perfectly free to practise in Slovakia. They are even free to try to convert people and you can often meet them and debate with them in the street in Zilina (see picture above).

It's not clear to me what they gain besides kudos from being a recognised religion. It's also not clear what not granting them recognition protects us from. I found this old freedom of religion act from Federal days (1991) on the web [pdf in English]. This law doesn't say the state that they have the right to set up schools and indoctrinate young people or the right to launder dirty money. Basically, it just says the state can't interfere in their affairs. Some things, like the right of clerics to visit the dying in hospital it seems cruel to deny to Mormons.

Of course, there is the Conservative argument that the state should grant recognition to bodies that encourage desirable characteristics. That is why they give tax breaks to heterosexual families and not to gay couples, allegedly. Mormonism isn't Slovak, so don't give it any encouragement, they will say. I don't have a lot of time for that. In any case, all sorts of weird New Age sects have no problem spreading their ideology here since they go under the radar by turning their religion into a health thing. Try yogic flying exercises to bust stress! Are the Mormons really more pernicious than that?

All that said, I find it odd that the US ambassador should be lobbying on behalf of a very rich sect. I thought these Americans separated church and state.

If there's an election coming, it's time to cut a ribbon

2006-11-07T21:53:00.001+01:00

Video report on the opening of Zilina's four-storey car park: the largest and only the second multi-storey car park in Slovakia. Comes from Slotavision, the mayor's mouthpiece, TV Patriot. What's more, As a Christmas gift, according to his honour, Zilina folk can use the car park free of charge until the new year. I hope they appreciate it, he said. Slota's folk will be able to show their appreciation on 2 December in the local elections.

Rather unfortunately, Slota's main opponent, Ivan Harman, kicked off his campaign with an interview in the non-Slota local paper where he complained about the bad parking situation in town and how noone knows what the "Zilina parking company" does with all its money. He has got a point. Zilina has the highest charges for street parking in Slovakia, and all that money goes into a private company (together with the income from fines earned by their very active wheel clampers). But now there is this car park as a sort of answer from Slota.

Some reports about Slota would have you believe we spend all our time here having torch-lit processions and burning Hungarian products, but the basis of Slota's success is a local machine politics that does deliver (at least at election time). We've got our car park, and our successful town sports teams. God knows what percent gets skimmed off in producing this stuff but at least stuff gets produced and people point to it and say but he's done a lot for the town.

The English you really need to know

2006-11-03T17:13:00.000+01:00

Back when I taught English we had a training day and the tutor asked us which phrase from the following we would probably teach to our students:

It's raining cats and dogs
It's pissing down

Of course, we all picked the former cutie. Then he asked us which one people really say...

But then, one can take things too far, like this Japanese text book (click for the big version) [via]:

My research suggests this is a weird Japanese joke (surprisingly enough) but maybe it would perk my students up a bit. And now I am really going back to work, goddammit.

Snowed under

2006-11-03T16:50:00.001+01:00

Roger prepares to clear his translation backlog

It's not often that I get to make a statement that's metaphorically and literally true. We've had pretty heavy snow all day so I don't feel like going out of my house at all (I'll leave that to braver souls) and also I've left myself with a pile of translation work to finish due to my amazing talent for procrastination (I can easily manage 6, 10, 15, 20 pages a day, no problem!). So don't expect amazing stuff over the weekend regardless of what I wrote here. If you're really bored you could always go and watch what is surely a contender for web video least likely to give anyone a heart attack: "Snow complicates traffic in Donovaly".

Snow

2006-11-02T09:52:00.003+01:00

It's here. The first snow of the new winter has been falling, throwing my wife into a panic digging out winter shoes and hurrying the children out to buy new boots. It may look like lovely icing-sugar stuff (or dandruff) at first but soon we'll be sliding through narrow ruts with walls of the stuff piled metre high on either side. And it's accompanied by the first really biting wind of the season too. Brr. Skiers will be celebrating though.

Macko has some nice snow scenes too.

This one's for the dead

2006-11-02T09:52:00.001+01:00

Wildimages has a good post about yesterday's All Saints' Day with much better pictures. Go there at once. I have to quibble a bit about language though: Všech Svätých is actually in Czech. According to my mother in law people do say it here but if you wnt to be spisovne - linguistically correct - you are supposed to call it sviatok všetkých svätých. Very often people call it Dušičky, because all the candle lighting and grave cleaning is actually in honour of All Soul's Day (November 2), though that starts at sunset on November 1 in Catholic custom (so Halloween is actually stupid on October 31 in Slovakia because after sunset it already belongs to the saints - witches etc. would be better off doing their evil thing on the night of October 30).

We went out just after sunset because that is by far the most atmospheric time when the candles are glowing in the dark and the cemetary really looks like a city. As you can see from the picture, just about all of Zilina decided to do the same and it got a bit awkaward on the cemetary's narrow paths. While a lot of the country do try to race around the country and visit all their family graves, most people don't or can't and usually there is a big cross or other monument at the entrance to the cemetary where you can remember anyone. That explains the crowd and the sea of candles in the picture above.

Happy Halloween, readers!

2006-10-31T18:56:00.001+01:00

Don't worry, it's only a pumpkin, or is it.....? BwahahaHA... I have no shame about participating in cultural imperialism. On this theme, I found this article about the economics of Halloween interesting.

Zahumensky quits

2006-10-31T17:30:00.001+01:00

Controversial deputy agriculture minister Zahumensky has resigned, only four days after receiving Mr Fico's (and, allegedly, the EU's) full support. Over the weekend, the opposition had continued to pick at the government's explanation of his conduct and fresh scandals had emerged this week of Zahumensky going hunting in nature reserves without paying the appropriate SKK 300 000 fees. He looks forward to spending more time with his sheep.

Zsolt Simon of the SMK said "Bwahahaha!" (actually he said he was glad that the truth had come out, but I think my translation captures the spirit of the remark if not the letter).

Robert Fico refused to comment and went to sulk in his room. Probably a bit tired and emotional.

This is utterly irrelevant news of course. Only relevant if you want to indulge in schadefreude as Fico has a pretty inexhaustable supply of bumpkins to replace him with.

Link to Marián Záhumenský odchádza z postu štátneho tajomníka - Politika - Domov - Aktuálne.sk

Fico's thoughts on employment law reform

2006-10-31T11:20:00.001+01:00

Here are some bullet points from what Robert Fico said to Klub 500, the grouping of Slovakia's biggest employers regarding what might appear in the review of the Labour Code next year. He refused to give anything specific:

No reduction in insurance contributions and the like
Stricter health and safety conditions
Limits on working hours - It's not right that there's a law in Slovakia that lets people work from morning to night. I think there should be a limit
Review of conditions for dismissal

Unions want:

Mainly an end to Slovakia's "trial period" law, which allows employers to retain workers on fixed contracts of any duration for up to three years.

Source: Pracovať menej, dostávať viac - Slovensko a ekonomika - Ekonomika - Aktuálne.sk

Nicholson salutes our temporary populist overlords

2006-10-30T19:48:00.001+01:00

I already commented on Tom Nicholson's article on how he learned to stop worrying and love Fico when it appeared in Slovak on Aktualne. It's now out in the Slovak Spectator, albeit paywalled. It seems to me extraordinarily badly timed since the last week has revealed the first indications of just how bad Fico's government is going to be. But it also has lots of other things about it that I disagree with.

Slovaks want a break, not a new beginning

A FEW weeks ago, a political commentator who had been fairly critical of the Fico government in its first months experienced a moment of self-doubt.

Does anyone apart from another hack care about the mental state of journalists? Worst. Start. Evah.

The cabinet had just approved its euro-friendly budget draft, the crown was at record strength against the European currency, and visiting financial investors were reporting cautious optimism about the prospects of the economy.

This is the nub of the problem. Firstly Nicholson is focussing entirely on economics, not political culture as if the two were completely separate. Secondly, what is this "the economy". There is not one "national economy" but many, many individual interactions and interests. Fico is moving around the emphasis in the economy e.g. moving advantage from the energy companies to the big industrial companies with his war on utility prices. The big industrial companies include foreign investors like US Steel and Peugeot Citroen so some foreign investors are still happy. There's a balance. Fico's not so stupid to fight two enemies at once.

Nevertheless, subsidising industry with cheap prices will probably have a long term impact on the economy different than what would have happened if he'd kept energy markets on the way to liberalisation. There will be no increase in efficiency. No new sources of gas etc. will be explored. So short term good and maybe middle long term bad.

Also, can we really trust visiting financial investors? I suspected a lot of speculators bid the crown down when Fico came in so they could quickly hoover up cheap koruna. Now they want to sell that so they talk "the economy" up. Remember these are not disinterested parties.

"Maybe we should stop scaring people about the government," he said, taking a ruminative sip of coffee.

How can you have a ruminative sip of coffee? Do you slosh it around in your mouth like a cow shifting grass between its stomachs? I suppose it's meant to be a synonym of thoughtful but rumination takes a long time, sipping coffee no time. It doesn't look like this self doubt possessed the comementator for long, which makes sense, because if a political commentator doubts himself for more than 5 seconds he has to quit his job.

Fear and a lack of charity have dominated media coverage of the new cabinet since July. Compared to the first cozy months of the preceding Dzurinda governments, Fico has been attacked with unflagging if somewhat contradictory zeal.

This is apples and oranges. Most journalists are right wing in Slovakia, probably because the newspaper owners are and Slovak journalists are a pretty servile bunch. So the newspapers are in opposition to Fico and you have to compare the opposition now to the opposition then. From day one Fico wanted premature elections and staged his referendums and theatrical votes of confidence that went nowhere, just into a lot of shouting about corruption. On the whole, the opposition (and the press) has been kind to Fico. Where criticism has been overdone (e.g. by the SMK) it has generally pointed this out. And as to lack of charity... WTF??? This is politics and journalism. Charity never comes into it.

He has been criticized for altering some reforms, and at the same time for not fulfilling his promises to dismantle them.

This is not as contradictory as it seems. Things like the tax changes are botched, rushed attempts to get more cash, which will have a negative impact. It is important to our understanding of Fico to know that he promises things he can't deliver. Has everyone forgotten the damage Dzurinda's "double pay" with "half unemployment" claim did to him. And Fico was always supposed to be about a break from that.

He has been sneered at for being a lukewarm socialist by the same people who feared a truly socialist government.

He's a liar, and a useless one. He should be sneered at.

He has been dismissed as a populist, even though what he has actually done so far has proven exceedingly popular.

Populist things are supposed to be exceedingly popular that's why politicians do them. Are we supposed to be glad that he knows how to get short term praise for things that do long term damage? Is it a case of never mind the content, admire my consumate political skill. Actually, later content does suggest that playing the game is the main thing, not what you do.

Things have reached the point that even when this government does something quite normal - like recalling political ambassadors - the story is reported as another example of political bullying. In the US, by contrast, ambassadors who are not career diplomats customarily resign following a change in government, and then are either confirmed or withdrawn by the new president.

But this is a new custom in Slovakia and Slovakia is not the United States. So the opposition press is entitled to debate it. Besides, demands to write resignation letters have a different history in Slovakia than in the US. Remember Mr Gauleider?

Despite its many flaws, the Fico government deserves more credit than it has received so far from its opponents.

Have you seen what credit Fico gives his opponents? What about the time he libelled Miklos about him having a Swiss bank account full of bribes. You want to give these people credit? They'll bite your hand off as soon as you extend it to them.

Not only has it not (yet) done significant damage to the country's economy or moral fibre,

Isn't it better to criticise him before he does damage rather than after? That might be expensive.

but it may actually be just what Slovaks needed after the past eight years - a break from "integration correctness".

And now ladies and gentlemen, the patronising pay off. Slovaks cannot bear very much reality, poor little fools.

Like its political namesake, integration correctness is an emotional hair shirt that countries occasionally feel the need to remove. It too requires that people behave and speak in an exemplary way, which quickly proves exhausting, and then starts to cause resentment. In the name of securing membership in the EU and NATO in 2004, for example, Slovaks were asked to accept many things - foreign capital, US influence, less job security, greater tolerance for minorities, reduced sovereignty - before they were ready for them, while they had to reject national passions just as they were finding out what it meant to be a nation.

And what was the purpose of all this accepting, adapting, repressing? Isn't it precisely the fact that Dzurinda and co. sold us a bill of goods that has put Fico in charge rather than mere fatigue. Here's Duzrinda again: People thought there was something like a Marshall Plan for the eastern part of Europe that would automatically allow us to reach the richest countries in the union. Now I wonder how people came to think that. But in fact it was Dzurinda who promised to wring out the European Social funds. Dzurina couldn't think how to sell the European ideal, cooperation, etc. to the Slovak population so he sold them a goose that lays golden eggs.

Those parts of Slovak society that are more Western-oriented, which includes mainly the current political opposition, NGOs, the media, and university-educated urban residents, supported integration correctness enthusiastically, and punished any deviation from it.

Well yes, they wanted to integrate with the west because they were western oriented. This doesn't answer the question of what the point was. Were we integrationally correct just for its own sake?

In doing so they performed a service to their country, for there was never any real alternative to joining Western alliances.

Apparently yes. There was no alternative. Resistance is futile. Nicholson of Borg.

But now they have to learn to give way for a season to people with different political convictions - graciously, and without fear.

And now Tom is the engineer of Slovak society. It puts me in mind of someone opening a safety valve. A dangerous pressure has built up and so he has to let it out for a while. Let people play with their Christmas bonuses and have Hungarians on the two minutes hate instead of Al Qaeda. Then we'll put the toys away and get back to work.

There will be plenty to criticize under the current Fico government, because the people who find themselves in power are certainly no better than any to date.

Politicians, eh. Can't live with 'em. Can't live without 'em.

But there is a lot less to fear than some of us originally believed.

I for one salute our temporary populist overlords.

No, Fico didn't mean all of his pre-election promises seriously, nor did voters take them seriously, and in this harmony of supply and demand lies the secret of the prime minister's popularity.

We have come so far from Havel living in truth. In fact, we're back to the good old days when the greengrocer does not worry to hang the Soviet flag outside his shop because he knows he doesn't really mean it, and the government doesn't really mean it. Society will proceed according to plan and democracy is just a show where words mean nothing, giving variety. But maybe the whole Velvet Revolution was just a break too.

Yes, people want a break from relentless energy price rises,

Especially US Steel.

from the widening gap between rich and poor,

Just a break from the widening gap? Maybe they don't want a gap at all.

and from small-shouldered international policy.

I have no idea what this means. Can anyone help?

But a break is all they want - not a new beginning.

How does he know that? There's no evidence of what Slovaks want. The only people who speak out are the journalists and the politician-actors. And they are not the controllers, just a part of the machinery that must go here for a time, there for a time.

And that is the worst thing about it. Fico is nothing but a valve being released before the machine of Slovak society continues its inevitable progress to a more beautiful tomorrow. There's a lack of the sense that politics is about dialogue, that it involves rhetoric, over-egging your pudding while no one's looking and catching out the other guy. Instead it appeals to a sort of technocratic "objectivity", of following the way to which there is no real alternative. (Of course, I'm leaving aside the question of whether Fico really is just for a season and people can be brought back to the one true path, as Nicholson glibbly assumes).

Wouldn't a better reaction to the failure of integration correctness be to offer people real alternatives, real debate, real choices rather than this stupid holiday season? Otherwise, you might find people choose without your consent, and then they might decide to make the holiday permanent.

Source: The Slovak Spectator - Slovakia's English Language Newspaper

It just picks out the first 8 people with glasses...

2006-10-30T06:55:00.001+01:00

I can't resist internet memes, and this one came out quite satisfactory for me. If my blog was a blend of Kahneman, Chomsky and Colbert instead of just my stupid photo with a bit of a tilt, big specs and lot of chin I'd be a much happier man.

Ageism in Slovakia makes business sense

2006-10-29T10:35:00.000+01:00

The sad thing about this story is that the man who wrote it seems like a bit of a lefty (for the US - see his politics links), who wanted to break down ageism and do the decent thing (though it's a bit worrying that people my age are now older candidates) but got disillusioned:

One older candidate (thirty-four) who I interviewed turned out to be a catastrophe with made up stories of employment and perennial conflicts with his boss. A slightly older candidate (just over thirty) whom we took on a short trial didn't turn out well either: competent but very inflexible in her way of doing things with no inclination to learn new things. In the social scene, I've noticed similar traits as well in the different age groups. The people who are inclined to work hard and learn here are the young.

Is it really the case that my generation can't change or should we be whacked with electric cattle prods until we get as flexible as the young? Can we make the young accept that the best thing for them to do is to go all out for economic growth and pay us lot off while accepting low benefits and security themselves?

The trouble is that the young can't accept that the old should have benefits they don't. The French proposed precisely such a two-speed system and got massive protests. But there are lots of us inflexible old ones, and few young people... Maybe there will be a compromise. Also on Uncoy, secrets of IT company pay in Bratislava. Will everything turn up on a blog if you wait long enough? Like monkeys with typewriters...

Source: uncoy.com | la vie viennoise : Ageism in Slovakia: Recruitment

Sexy Silvia Glendova?

2006-10-28T23:49:00.000+02:00

I signed up for Google Analytics to see what sort of people were coming here. It tells you referring google searches too and apparently I am the number one site for people who fantasise about Mr Fico's spokeswoman. So, here you are, all fans of "Fico's right hand"

Hot or not? Maybe you'll agree with Tomáš Tišťan that:

Mne sa páči hovorkyňa Smeru Silvia Glendová. Vypadá neskutočne dobre. Vyžaruje z nej obrovský sexappeal.
I like the Smer spokeswoman Silvia Glendova. She looks really good. She glows with enormous sex appeal. Source

Oh well, at least that gives you something to suggest for love sick people on the Slovensko.com translation forum. Just remember to change it to the second person.

Plane crash all wrapped up?

2006-10-28T23:06:00.001+02:00

For the Slovak air force this is the end of the investigation:

Human Factor Confirmed as Cause of Military Plane Crash

The most likely reason for the aircrash of an AN-24 military plane in January, was human error, as the flight crew were not using flying instruments; instead, they were relying on manual controls, according to the Slovak Army General Staff.

It strikes me as more like the beginning of one. The main thing is to stop this happening again, so we need to know who made mistakes. Why were the crew not using instruments? I can think of a few hypotheses:

overconfidence - the flight crew thought it was just a routine hop and didn't bother to use instruments. Big mistake. Air traffic control needs to enforce correct procedure, planes should be checked on landing that safety equipment was used. Pilots who act like gods should be punished. In fact, I heard that Slovak air force pilots get much fewer hours in the air than commercial pilots so they are probably under-trained. Maybe they need more.
drink - the soldiers were going home. It was a big party for them. Maybe a bit of vodka got into the cockpit. Then it's the same as over-confidence.
saving money - maybe the ground radar uses too much power and fuel, so they have a policy of cutting corners for a few crowns. This needs to end. Modern soldiers are not like the canon fodder of thirty years ago. They are not just going to do human waves against the imperialists' tanks or machine gun protesting students. They're supposed to know languages, chemicals, build bridges, do police work. And Slovakia has a declining birth rate, so you can't just wait for a few more to come along. You have to keep your troops alive at any cost. And if you don't have money then send them on SkyEurope or a bus. I mean, there are hardly suicide bombers lining the roads in Hungary and it wasn't like they were going to do anything urgent in Kosice the next day.

No way does "human error" clean up anything. Of course, the cabin voice recorder was destroyed so it's difficult to say any more but they need to inquire about what goes on on other flights, how people were behaving before take-off. But I doubt we'll get any of that. The press were happy to have someone to blame and got into a completely irrelevant discussion about whether the pilot's family should get compensation. So we will probably have to wait until it happens again for a proper report.

Dissolve the people, elect a new one...

2006-10-28T22:48:00.000+02:00

Tom Nicholson has discovered that Fico is not the devil incarnate. In a Slovak language opinion piece for Aktualne, he writes that Fico is actually just what the people need:

Fico nemyslel všetky svoje predvolebné sľuby vážne, a ani voliči ho vážne nebrali - v tejto harmónii dopytu a ponuky tkvie tajomstvo premiérovej popularity. Áno, ľudia si potrebujú oddýchnuť od neustále stúpajúcich cien energií, od zväčšujúcej sa priepasti medzi bohatými a chudobnými a od úzkoprsej medzinárodnej politiky.

Fico didn't mean all his pre-election promises, but voters didn't take them seriously either - this harmony of supply and demand is the secret of his popularity. People need a rest from ever higher energy prices, from the increasing gap between the rich and poor and a blinkered foreign policy.

This fits in with other ideas that blame the people of Central Europe for recent victories by populists. Here's our own ex-PM, Dzurina, talking to the AP:

Mikulas Dzurinda, the former prime minister of Slovakia, oversaw major pro-market reforms including a flat tax that created strong economic growth.

He acknowledges that voters are disillusioned to find themselves still lagging so far behind the West.
"People thought there was something like a Marshall Plan for the eastern part of Europe that would automatically allow us to reach the richest countries in the union," Dzurinda told the Associated Press. "Now I notice something like frustration."

The Washington Post has a similar piece about "Backsliding in Central Europe" which also says voters are taking a break, indulging their base instincts but the Post is optimistic that it'll all soon be back to the serious business:

It may be satisfying for Polish nationalists to pretend that Germany is an antagonist or for Hungarians to try equating their current Socialist leaders with the Stalinists of 1956. Yet after 45 years of bitter experience under despotism, Central Europeans won't quickly abandon Western-style democracy or its alliances.

What a comforting vision this actually is for the right! They don't have to do anything, just wait for the people to get this need for a populist bender out of their system and come to their senses. No wonder no party in Slovakia is changing its leader. But they are all making a mistake, at least as far as Slovakia is concerned. Here's psephologist Kevin Deagan Krause:

Along with many others, I have noted elsewhere that even though Slovakia exhibits considerable variability in electoral results (it has one of the highest average levels of volatility in the region) there is actually a significant degree of continuity within electoral blocs.

Krause divides Slovak politics into three blocks: the Right (SMK, KDH, SDKU and their splinter parties), the Left (Smer, the Communists) and the Nationalists (HZDS and SNS). Although there are huge changes between parties, people stick within their block. In fact, in this year's election, the vote of the "responsible" right actually went up very slightly and the main switch was from the nationalists to the so-called Social Democratic Smer (though that may be because the Slovak people worked out Fico was a nationalist long before the Eurosocialists did).

The Slovak people have not changed how they vote, what has changed is the politicians. The defeat of the right is a result of the anihilation of the liberal ANO and the centrist SF, just as the miraculous victory of the right in 2002 had nothing to do with the people recognising the need for reform and everything to do with the schism in the SNS that kept them out of parliament.

In 2002 all the parties were very serious about getting into the EU, especially the right and they surpressed their disputes, by and large. I even think the SNS schism can be tied to the EU, as Anna Malikova tried to move the SNS away from Jan Slota's heavy anti-Roma racism and introduced the Anti-SMK policies which were originally supposed to be more moderate and pro-European. Once Slovakia was safely in the EU the politicians started settling their scores. Dzurinda ejected the SF lobbyist group from his party. The KDH tried to start culture wars and Pavol Rusko and ANO grabbed any money left in plain view. There was also a sense that EU membership must be made to work for the nation. Dzurinda talked about Slovakia "wringing out every last penny" from the structural funds. Fico, of course, let himself completely off the hook, pushing the rhetoric of national salvation and the government as traitors, which raised the SNS along with his boat.

So why does Fico have 50% approval? Because he has done nothing left wing. He hasn't attacked the church or brought in civic partnerships. He is giving extra money to pensioners, teachers and doctors, not the Roma. Social conservatism, welfare and down with the enemies of the state: he could have been in Tiso's cabinet. Fico has made a national(ist) socialist alliance. If he can hold it together he can rule for a long time because the odds are that Dzurinda and friends aren't going to break their 30 - 40% (with Hungarians) without a radical change.

Washington Post, Dzurinda, Nicholson, the people aren't going to come back to you, because the people haven't gone anywhere. Time to prepare that universal solvent...

An interesting blog find

2006-10-27T22:16:00.001+02:00

Edward Lucas, the Economist's Eastern Europe correspondent (yes that covers us too, Slovak heart-of-Europists) puts all his articles and some other stuff on blogger. it would appear that he knows his stuff but he is a bit gloomy. Here he is on Slovakia post election:

All that [the Czech deadlock] seems benign compared with next-door Slovakia, where a majority government of racists, populists and authoritarians is beginning to undo the work of the past eight years. Under the rule of the authoritarian populist, Vladimir Meciar, Slovakia had become a playground for crooks and spooks. The government that ousted him in 1998 flattened tax rates, liberalised the labour market, and won billions of dollars of foreign investment.
Elections in June produced an ambiguous result. A reformist coalition was possible, but instead the largest party, Smer, a populist outfit calling itself social democrat, teamed up with Mr Meciar's party and the outright racists of the Slovak National Party. On paper, the government seems committed to free-market policies. In practice, it sounds muddled—and clumsy. At a foreign investors' conference there last month, a senior government figure, Peter Ziga, addressed a roomful of bewildered foreign executives in Slovak, without translation. Worse, public institutions are again being politicised.

Funny Slovak names?

2006-10-27T21:17:00.001+02:00

Chris Dillow blogs about a search engine in America that can tell you how many people have a given name. He found that there is no one called Hugh Jass but that there is one Seymore Butts. Slovak doesn't seem to lend itself to funny names. When I was an English teacher, some prat once wrote a test featuring a woman called Ivana Bendova but is there anything else? Is there anything that would work in Slovak?

Update... Ivana Bendova actually exists...

Fico turns tables in Zahumensky scandal

2006-10-27T17:16:00.000+02:00

Robert Fico has acted quickly to reverse the scandal over Zahumensky's tobacco subsidies. He has already received an answer to his question to the European Commission as to whether it is legal to give subsidies to farmers who purchase a licensed quota for production as well as the original licensee. This says that it is legal (no surprise - EC representatives had already said subsidy conditions are an internal matter for countries) and he claims that Zsolt Simon acted illegally in blocking the subsidies. Apparently someone in the agriculture ministry wrote a letter to Zahumensky during Simon's term in office saying Zahumensky's firm should get its money, but Simon blocked the sending of this letter. For this reason, the government intends to make an official complaint to the police. Fico compared the case to that of Hedviga Malinova, saying that once again strong accusations had been made and that in the end the truth had turned out to be the opposite. TA3 has a report (in Slovak) here. The video of the press conference is on the government web site here.

It's hard to say how much of a case Fico has since the letter is not yet in the public domain. On past form he is likely to have overstated the case against Simon but the "Hungarian trickery" mind virus will be even more firmly fixed in people's heads already so it won't matter. By amping up the nationality issue again, he avoids awkward questions about whether a minister of state should be writing laws that benefit his own firm, especially when Fico used to think it was a textbook case of corruption if a farming minister benefited from subsidies.

I wish they would shut the ministry down then we wouldn't need to worry about such stupid questions. Why does this branch of industry need so many experts and so much complexity. We don't have a "ministry of tourism" or a "ministry of textile firms employing illegal Ukrainian imigrants" but I bet these industries contribute more to the economy (maybe they do so precisely because they don't have a ministry full of bureaucrats trying to "help" them, of course).

Jan Carnogursky: A KDH pragmatist?

2006-10-26T23:25:00.001+02:00

The return of Jan Carnogursky to front line politics (TSS, but not paywalled) has rather surprised me. I think it's going to make quite a change in the KDH. The Lipsic/Palko dominated KDH was always more about the KDH being super pure and winning voters with its amazing values. Carnogursky is interviewed here (Aktualne, in Slovak) and it looks like he is going to try the way of winning concessions on Catholic policies through compromise. He rejects Lipsic's approach of rejecting cooperation with parties like Smer because their members have contacts with the mafia. Money quote:

Keď budeme týmto spôsobom vylučovať väčšinu relevantných strán, kto bude na Slovensku vládnuť? A aká pevná bude takáto vláda? Pevnosť vlády je pritom etickou hodnotou, ktorú potrebujú najmä ľudia zo slabších sociálnych vrstiev. Len pevná vláda im totiž zabezpečí akú-takú istotu. Sociálnu aj bezpečnostnú.

If we're going to exclude the vast majority of relevant parties like this (because of alleged mafia contacts) who will govern Slovakia? And how strong will that government be? The strength of the government is an ethical value that benefits in particular people from the weaker levels of society. Only a strong government can give them any sort of security, both socially and against crime and terrorism.

He also repeats his ideas (which I more or less agree with) that it's not worth talking about prosecuting Meciar because it would have a huge negative effect on political stability. He's also glad Slovakia is leaving Iraq and he thinks Fico's economic policies are OK because it's Christian to take a middle way (remember he said that after Communism was defeated, the greatest danger facing the world was the liberals).

All this sounds like sense, and may get the KDH out of the isolation they've fought their way into by falling out with everyone. But he doesn't say what the KDH really stand for except this compromise.

Small parties seem to be rapidly losing their sense in Slovakia, if they ever had any. All the KDH are saying is "Give me a vote and I, the wise one, will choose who should govern Slovakia." though, of course, what they really mean is "Give me a vote and I will bargain with it to try and get the best deal for me and maybe a little something for you if I'm lucky." Somehow I feel democracy ought to be about something else.

Update: I should perhaps explain why a KDH pragmatist is something strange. In fact in Slovakia they are often known as the Slovak Taliban, ridiculously uncompromising. In 1992, they wanted to exclude Meciar and Fico from possibile coalition partners. In 1996 they added Dzurinda to the list of people who had lost their trust, meaning that they would have to move into some parallel world where they and the SMK would have over 50%. Recent reports associated Carnogursky with the Palko-Lipsic Taliban wing (whereas leader Hrusovsky and some others had wanted to go into government with Smer) so it's a surprise to see him talking like this.

Palova Buda, a Zilina curio

2006-10-26T17:30:00.001+02:00

One of the most curious buildings in Zilina. Today, this wooden building is on the edge of the fairly shiny modernist university campus and serves as a student centre run by the Catholic church (atheist students have to go to town to do their photocopying and drink coffee - that'll teach them to follow godless ways)

The name means "Paul's Shack" based on the name of its builder, Pavol Folkmann. Originally it was a cafe serving Sunday strollers in Zilina's forest park when built in the 1920s. By 1938 here was no more strolling for anyone and the house was taken over by nuns. After the war the Communists nationalised it and made it a sanatorium, later handing it over to the university. After 1989 it was run down and went unloved until the Catholic church saw its potential.

Palova Buda is still a good destination for a stroll. The views across to the Mala Fatra mountains are lovely. There's a useful map of how to get up there here. There's a better picture in the Zilina photogallery here.

In which your author falls into a fit of Liliputian regional jealousy

2006-10-26T17:13:00.001+02:00

A road building company has actually managed to hand over 10km of dual carriageway a day early, which makes up for some of the disappointment of not getting our motorway on time, though only a very little because its those greedy folk in Pazrava nad Hronom (Greedytown on the Hron - Banska Bystrica) who are getting everything now and not us. Maybe BB will flower again once Fico's sock puppet Mr Saktor is installed as mayor, especially if we don't vote for Hizzonah Jan Slota this December and his miraculous ability to wring out subsidies disappears. These are the sort of high level considerations that we really have to take into consideration in local elections.

Obligatory motorways link.

Modern and functional vs. art nouveau

2006-10-26T16:47:00.001+02:00

It's been a slow day, so I think I'll bore you with my phone cam stuf...

This is not a bad bit of planning, really. In place of the old car park in Zilina town centre we have a new one that is mostly underground leaving the surface flat so guests at the new four star Dubna Skala hotel (the restored building in the background) can enjoy the view of the church and the old town. I am rather taken with the car park's ventilation pipes which are huge and erupt in the full view of everyone. Luckily they're still switched off at the moment. I've no idea how it will be to walk there when the fans are roaring and exhaust fumes are spewing out.

There's clearly a race on to get the car park finished before winter sets in (or, more likely, before Mayor Slota's bid for a fifth term in December). Here's everyone looking busy:

Fico's first clientelism scandal

2006-10-25T21:48:00.000+02:00

Where there's muck there's brass.

One of the state secretaries (a sort of minister of state) at the Ministry of Agriculture, Marian Záhumenský changed the rules for subsidies to tobacco farms so that tobacco farms that had been taken over by another company could receive EU subsidies too. Coincidentally, his firm had taken over a toboacco farm and it earned an extra SKK 4 million in EU subsidies as a result of the change. According to Zahumensky and his boss the minister, the change was in fact necessary to comply with EU law. Fico is dithering and has asked the European Commission to say whether the change was necessary or not. The Commission doesn't seem to know what to make of this. The Slovak Spectator is covering the story here and here.

As far as I can tell, even if the law did have to be changed, why did Zahumensky change this one first? He can't escape the whiff of clientelism and surely a decent person would resign. The opppositions traction on this issue is limited because the former minister Zsolt Simon also had an interest in agricultural firms that profited from subsidies. At that time Mikulas Dzurinda said it was an ethical problem that Simon's party should sort out. Surprisingly enough they didn't. One KDH state secretary resigned so as not to give up his subsidies. SME has a quote from now deputy PM Dusan Caplovic In Europe politicians resign for less serious ethical problems than Simon's, which shows how things look different from the government benches.

Why do they insist on making farmers ministers of agriculture? No normal country makes a general the defence minister and look at the mess you get when judge Harabin gets appointed minister of justice. Ministers are supposed to exercise control over their field, not be advocates for it (Lemuel has a great quote from the new agriculture minister advising farmers to boycott banks that criticise agricultural subsidies - so he'll not be dfending our tax money much). I suppose the counter argument is that only farmers know how agriculture work. Personally, I'd like to appoint some ecological activist, who would waste all her time writing regulations for conditions in hen houses and not write manuals for lobbying for subsidies. While farmers have large machinery that can block motorways and manure to dump on your doorstep I suppose we will have to keep paying these gangsters off, but goddammit, we need to put up a fight.

Hedviga Malinova: stitched up?

2006-10-25T12:04:00.000+02:00

OK, now a serious post. Hedviga Malinova had her claim to have been beaten rejected by the police and on appeal and now faces prosecution for wasting police time, or perjury or bearing false witness as the Slovak Spectator put it, revelling in the language of the ten commandments.

In fact, it turns out that the government has been bearing a fair bit of false witness as it uses the rubbishing of this case to prove that all is well in Slovakia. Worse than that, Radio Slovakia International has been putting about the story that the whole thing was a plot by the SMK to bring down the government:

Thanks to the overtime put in by Bela Bugar and his ethnic-Hungarian SMK party, Malinova appears to be the victim of "Slovak extremism", and not of a "Hungarian game." At this stage, we can only forgive Hedviga, but not forget those who were standing behind her the whole time.

On Monday, STV's "Reporteri" broadcast an investigative report on the case challenging many of the claims Robert Kalinak had made in his famous press "someone is lying (and it's not the police)" press conference when the case was closed. You can watch the piece here (click on the link "Hedviga"). It doesn't present any new evidence that Ms. Malinova was telling the truth or who beat her up if it happened, but it does suggest that the police and especially politicians went out of their way to make her a liar and the villain of the piece. You can read the details in Slovak in this story from SME.

The programme was criticised for showing Kalinak's original press conference and answers to it Malinova gave a month later, with no further comment from Kalinak. SME publishes Kalinak's response today, and it's rather weak. He appeals to other bits of the case file and the ongoing state of the police investigation and what seemed obvious to him. The money quote is I wanted to make the situation clear. Well, yes, we all want that but you were in a hurry to get your opinion across before you suffered political damage. And to do that you don't care how many young women you crush and turn into the laughing stock of Slovakia. Twat.

Of course, while the original press conference got top billing on the news this is in graveyard shift shows for new junkies and the bottom of page 2 of SME so few people will think about clearing Ms Malinova's name or cutting her a little slack. Fico will probably conclude that he can get away with any lies if he just tells them bombastically enough. The same as Slota, who grabbed the headlines when he accused Bela Bugar of organising a plot with foreign organisations to make up propaganda against Slovakia. Two weeks later he admitted he had no evidence, but that was hardly reported at all and where it was it was overshadowed by Slota's bombastic and hilarious joke that he'd like to buy Bugar a one-way ticket to Mars.

I know this is the same everywhere in the world, but in Britain politicians usually lie about their opponents spending plans, not another ethnic groups lies and betrayals. The twats here are waving a blow torch in the gunpowder stores.

Mr Slota has left the building

2006-10-24T18:21:00.000+02:00

Jan Slota loses his temper and stomps off a talk show while discussing with former Justice Minister Lipsic whether or not the Special Court should be shut down. Via

An earlier tankie

2006-10-24T14:43:00.000+02:00

Before the Hungarian protesters captured the world's attention with their tank ride, there was Citizen "Wolfie" Smith, the seventies radical with a dream of liberating Tooting from capitalist oppression

"The Glorious Day" which Wolfie was always plotting came at the end of the third series, in an episode of the same name, in which the Tooting Popular Front 'liberate' a Scorpion tank and use it to invade the Houses of Parliament. Source

I can't find a clip with the tank, but here's the title sequence to remind you of the time when people meant it maaaaaan.

Tankisti!

2006-10-24T11:26:00.000+02:00

One of Jan Slota's most famous remarks was that Slovaks should get in tanks and reduce Budapest to rubble. It's often forgotten that the Slovaks were only supposed to do this if Hungarian teachers tried to make them say the Lord's Prayer in Hungarian (like they did to Slota's grandfather, allegedly) so Slota was never extremely likely to have to carry out his threat.

Anyway, it appears that the Hungarian football hooligans turned political commentators saved the Slovaks the trouble yesterday, in their altercations with the police they managed to commandeer an old T34 from an exhibition and push the police lines back a bit. Attacking the police with a tank does put the previously wussy Hungarian rioters into a higher league (forcing the French rioters to burn a bus to maintain their lead). Previously Hungarian rioters had managed to invade a TV station and not broadcast anything, which is rather like invading the brewery and not getting drunk.

It was lucky for the police that they stole a tank with exposed air vents, otherwise they might have needed something more than tear gas to stop it. But what were they doing leaving the keys in the tank?

Update: Lemuel links to SME page with a video of the famous tank. This video turned out to be really easy to steal from the source code so I present it also here. By the way, at the end of the video, you can see a sort of grille on top of the tank behind the turret. Are those the air vents? It really wouldn't be that hard to lean out of a window and drop a petrol bomb through them as the tank went past in street fighting would it? Well, assuming the big Russian on the turret with the machine gun was looking the other way I suppose...

"Communism was good to us"

2006-10-23T18:09:00.001+02:00

There appears to be some kerfuffle going on in Hungary at the moment about some old revolution or other. As an alternative to which, I submit the following for you to decide whether Mrs Clark is out of her box or refreshingly taking her hammer to our Neo-Liberal icons:

When people ask me what it was like growing up in Hungary in the 1970s and 80s, many people expect to hear tales of secret police, bread queues and other nasty manifestations of life in a one-party state. They are invariably disappointed when I tell them that the reality was quite different and that communist Hungary, far from being hell on earth, was in fact a very good place in which to live.
Viktor Orban, the conservative politician and staunch anti-communist has described my generation - those whose fate was sealed by the "failure" of the 1956 uprising - as "the lost generation". But what pray, Mr Orban was lost to us? Drugs, social breakdown and Thatcherism? Hungarians like myself, who grew up in the years of "goulash communism", were actually the lucky ones. Popularly portrayed in the west as a heroic defeat, the Hungarian uprising was in fact nothing of the sort. The shockwaves of 1956 bought home to the communist leadership that they could only consolidate their position by making our lives more tolerable. Stalinism was out and "Kadarism" - a more liberal brand of communism (named after its architect, Janos Kadar)- was in.

And so it goes on, state supported arts, the pioneers promoting community togetherness, when there was no money people liked you for who you really were and so on. Read the whole thing to see the world upside down.

I think the main thing she misses (apart from the fact that Kadar financed the whole thing on the never never) is that people don't seem to happy to know that they're being bribed to accept the suppression of their wishes. In today's Guardian Tibor Fischer reviews the glumness of Hungarian postwar cinema and concludes

I could easily have chosen another set of six films on the subject of the 1950s or the 1956 revolution, but after that I would have struggled to pick any worthwhile films - because there aren't any.

...

When I think of Hungarian films I think of despair and bleakness, and what's more, despair and bleakness of indefensible duration.

Still, he manages to get a good article out of it, including handy tank fighting advice:

I can assure you of the following: you didn't run up to tanks, because they would shoot you. Molotovs were only effective against the old T-34s, and you didn't throw them at the tracks, you aimed for the ventilation grilles and prayed that the burning petrol would get sucked in and the tank would "brew up". Against Bereményi's T-54, petrol bombs were as useful as custard pies.

If only they'd had shaped charges and garage door openers in 1956!

Source: Neil Clark: Hungarian legacy

They seen their opportunities and they took 'em

2006-10-23T14:28:00.001+02:00

From the insults Slovak politicians hurl at each other, you would think the country was utterly overrun with ideology. We have dead-ender communists, Clero-fascists and Neo-conservatives duking it out, at least in the distorted mirrors of their opponents speeches. But lately not much struck me as a model of Slovak politics as Plunkitt of Tammany Hall at least as represented in the extracts here (via):

George Washington Plunkitt (1842-1924), long-time State Senator from New York's Fifteenth Assembly District, was for forty years a Tammany sachem and something of a power in New York City politics. He became wealthy by means of what he called "honest graft," but continued to hang on to political power because he enjoyed it.

What is good honest graft?

Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say, that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place.

I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before.
Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that's honest graft.

And this rings true with the situation after a Slovak election:

...when a reform administration comes in and spends a half million dollars in tryin' to find the public robberies they talked about in the campaign, they don't find them.
The books are always all right. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right. All they can show is that the Tammany heads of departments looked after their friends, within the law, and gave them what opportunities they could to make honest graft. Now, let me tell you that's never goin' to hurt Tammany with the people. Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn't isn't likely to be popular. If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend. Why shouldn't I do the same in public life?

And here's Fico's electionwinning strategy in a nut shell:

Tammany has raised a good many salaries. There was an awful howl by the reformers, but don't you know that Tammany gains ten votes for every one it lost by salary raisin'?
The Wall Street banker thinks it shameful to raise a department clerk's salary from $1500 to $1800 a year, but every man who draws a salary himself says: "That's all right. I wish it was me." And he feels very much like votin' the Tammany ticket on election day, just out of sympathy.

So here we are at the level the USA was at back in 1901? What happens next? Is the USA somehow less crooked? Blood and Treasure quotes this:

The ongoing bureaucratic drama surrounding procurement for [the F22 Raptor fighter] is a kind of fairy tale for the system of legalized corruption in this country, in which taxpayer money is basically stolen and shot into space by an open conspiracy of legislators, defense contractors and Pentagon officials, colloquially known as the "Iron Triangle."

which is a story about a bit of good honest graft costing US tax payers upwards of USD 60 billion. So it doesn't look like we'll ever get rid of our crooks and grafters. They just go on to bigger and better things and when you play for such high stakes you can pay for a fancy democratic system, quite a few media and a whole lot of checks and balances to verify that the books are always all right.

Creating an air travel hub on the cheap

2006-10-22T17:06:00.001+02:00

Yet another profile of the Sikh businessman who's taken over Air Slovakia. Apart from confirmation that the cabin crew are going to be Punjabi rather than the tasty poly-lingual Slovak girls suggested earlier this titbit caught my eye:

Why would they want to travel via Bratislava? “It is well connected to the rest of Europe by Ryanair and others, to Vienna, to Germany. Customers pay £20 for a ticket to Bratislava and then get a direct flight to Amritsar for £200-£300 return,” he said.

It's an interesting spin off that the stag tourist trade may yet make Bratislava a hub for inter-continental travel. TSS Oscar used to go on about the runway being too short for big planes like that new Airbus, but what about the long distance Boeing 787? could that cope with Bratislava runway?(you can land a 747 at Bratislava - at least Airforce One managed it).

Source: Air Slovakia ... the Sikh airline - Sunday Times - Times Online

Fico's coalition

2006-10-22T15:22:00.000+02:00

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Fico said that his aim in making the current coalition was to make it easier to carry out his programme. It seems to me that the point was that it made it easier to get out of his programme. By co-opting everyone from the old opposition or to his left there would be no one of substance to criticise him for not keeping his promises.

Had he gone with SMK + KDH you can bet the SNS would have been all over him for letting poor decent Slovaks down, exploiting an idea that he spent the whole of the last parliament pounding into people's heads.

Let's speak Meciar: a phrasebook

2006-10-21T17:21:00.000+02:00

Excerpts from Meciar's speech to parliament on the scandals of the 1990s. Source. Listen and repeat with this video. More here and here. In the cartoon by SME's Shooty, Meciar, in the form of Grandpa Storyteller (Dedo Vecernicek), a character from the nightly children's cartoon, calls for his dog to come back. The dog is screaming "No more Remiaaaaaas!" in reference to the interminable uncloseable murder investigation.

SK – Vážení, vám drblo. Má byť právne stíhaný mŕtvy (Jaroslav Svěchota) – smrťou podozrivého trestnosť zanikla, nikde na svete mŕtvych neodsudzovali.
EN - Gentleman, it's got out of your hands. Are you going to prosecute a dead man (Jaroslav Svěchota - Lexa's deputy in the SIS) – you can't try a dead man, no court in the world would convict a corpse.

SK – Rozhodnutie je, že skutok sa nestal. To znamená, že žiadne ovplyvňovanie, objednávanie vraždy nebolo. Rozhodol o tom ten, kto je oprávnený rozhodnúť. Ostatní ste táraji, gágaji a pre mňa prďúsi.
EN - The proper authorities have decided that the crime never took place, that there was no tampering, no order for the murder. As far as I'm concerned the rest of you are just making stuff up or quacking like geese. For me you're a bunch of fartbags.

SK – Prečo ste mi tie svinstvá robili?
EN - Why did you pull all these dirty tricks against me?

SK – Lipšicove vystúpenie mi pripomína Hamleta – slová, slová, slová.
EN- Lipsic's (the former KDH minister of justice) performance reminds me of Hamlet - words, words, words

SK – Existuje dôkaz, že jediným cieľom únosu bolo zbaviť Mečiara moci.
EN - There is evidence that the whole point of the kidnapping was to remove Mečiar from office.

SK – Robili ste všetko pre to, aby ste to vyšetrovanie znemožnili, najviac ho maril Ján Čarnogurský a Milan Kňažko. Amnestia pomohla Michalovi Kováčovi staršiemu aj mladšiemu, iným nie.
EN - You did everything to block the investigation. The biggest meddlers were Ján Čarnogurský a Milan Kňažko (opposition leaders). The amnesty helped Michal Kovac snr. and jnr. (the ex-president, and his son who was kidnapped. Meciar believes they set the kidnapping up themselves to discredit him, hence the phrase "samounos" - self kidnapping), no one else.

SK – Vo všetkých prípadoch Lexu ste kričali vinný. To kričali aj na Krista. Dneska ho prosíme o odpustenie všetci. Kto Vám dal zmocnenie na to?
EN- You declared Lexa guilty of all charges. They did the same thing to Christ. Today we all ask him for forgiveness. Who gave you the right to do what you did?

SK – Teória výbuchu nástražného výbušného systému v aute Roberta Remiáša je neobhájiteľná.
EN - There isn't a shred of evidence that Robert Remias's car was blown up by a bomb.

SK – Sú komunisti z 50. rokov horší ako vy? Ste rovnakí. Zneužívali ste moc na boj s politickým protivníkom, klamali ste a robili ste to vedome. A chcete v tom pokračovať aj v roku 2006.
EN - Were the communists of the 1950s any worse than you? You abused your power to fight your political rivals; you lied and you did it on purpose. And you want to go on like that in 2006.

SK – Druhý svedok utajený - Mikuláš Černák – dostal ponuku na pobyt na slobode, za predpokladu, že povie, že počul, že si Lexa vraždu Remiáša objednal, Černáka prepustili, Dzurinda o tom nevedel, keď doňho „narazil“ Černák na lanovke, išiel späť.
EN - The second secret witness - Mikuláš Černák (a gangster from Banska Bystrica) - was offered his freedom in return for saying he heard that Lexa ordered Remias's murder. They let Cernak go, Dzurinda didn't know and when Cernak"bumped into" him at the ski lift, Cernak went back inside.

SK – Celé montovanie plynového zariadenia do auta bolo v rozpore so zákonmi a laicky zbabrané tak, že bolo zárukou, že to exploduje. Teória výbuchu je neobhájiteľná, na mieste ani výjazdová skupina polície ani nikto druhý nenašiel absolútne nič.
EN - The whole installation of that gas equipment in the car was against the law and so fundamentally screwed up that it was sure to explode. The idea that it was a bomb is indefensible. Neither the police nor anyone else found anything.

A joke, and rather like the pot calling the kettle black.

Update: If you don't know who Meciar is, I'm tempted to echo Lemuel and say you don't know how lucky you are, but Macko Usko has a nice bit of background.

Meciar in action on TA3

2006-10-20T20:57:00.001+02:00

He said he wasn't "emotional". What do you think? [via]

New productivity killer

2006-10-20T20:36:00.001+02:00

Vybrali.sme.sk, a Slovak clone of digg.

Rob Fico's schooldays

2006-10-20T16:32:00.001+02:00

TSS is quoting a story from somewhere that Robert Fico went back to his old secondary school and tried to humanise himself by remembering his boyhood japes, the most beautiful time of his life (yawn). The most interesting for me is his exam revision technique:

He told the students that the most frequently used crib sheet he used had a shape of half-circle that was pinned underneath the desk. Fico thinks that writing crib sheets is the best way to learn.

There is something to be said for that. Selecting the most important points out of a sea of information and compressing that down onto a tiny piece of paper will help to fix that information in your head. On the other hand, it says something that this is what Fico thinks is best: it suggests that there is one perfect answer, that all that is necessary to is to collect and filter sufficient material. The PM seems to still go through life like a swot, trying to please some invisible examiner with his amazing performance in producing an election-winnning synthesis of nationalism and socialism. Of course, no one ever wants to be accused of being what they are, so Fico was (over) eager to demonstrate he had a life besides studies:

The class would go on trips, usually to the Low Tatras. “There was drinking and going after girls. I don’t need to tell you about that or else I would probably turn red,” said the PM.

The PM also mentioned disliking maths and physics and hating chemistry. Ah yes, subjects where facts sometimes get in the way… In other news, Fico’s transport minister wants to sell something he doesn’t own. I wonder if he also disliked maths at school.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was also a show off swot at school and dropped sciences and maths at 16. But I content myself with running a snarky blog, not a country.

Amnesty Irrational - Meciar's scandals still closed

2006-10-20T14:21:00.001+02:00

Parliament went through another of its quadrennial rituals yesterday when the KDH tried to persuade MPs that they should pass a constitutional law overturning Vladimir Meciar's amnesties in relation to the great scandals of his third term as prime minister in the mid-nineties: the kidnap of Michal Kovac jr., the investigation into the murder of Robert Remias and the cancelled referendum on entry into NATO / direct election of the president. In the end, parliament didn't even vote on the KDH's effort to cancel the amnesties.

The coalition voted to end debate without a final vote. The KDH battles alone on this issue now. Dzurinda's followers and the Hungarian coalition stayed quiet. Prime Minister Fico made a rare appearance as the voice of moderation. He said that he had always been of the opinion that Meciar's amnesties were morally indefensible but that cancelling them would be legally indefensible. The debate was trailed in the media as Meciar telling his side of the story, but as you might expect, what he spoke about, for over an hour was insults and the unsubtantiated claims he usually trades in. The highlight was calling the KDH "prdusi" (fartbags). Considering this was a debate about murder, kidanapping and justice it was all rather undignified (yes, the KDH gave as good as they got, challenging Meciar's sanity and so on).

I can't entirely understand why this should be. Amnesties are useful ways of ending a war without fighting to the last man and it would make the tool rather less effective if the amnestied thought that at some point in the future their case might be reopened. That fear would increase their will to fight on. Meciar's case is strange because he effectively amnestied himself when he took on presidential powers in 1998. It's fairly obvious that he puts so much effort into protecting Lexa precisely because Lexa is protecting him (multiple witnesses report a private meeting between Lexa and Meciar on the morning of the Kovac jr. kidnapping). The fact that the outcome isn't the result of a specific deal means there is always an anxiety that Meciar will come back into full power. Meciar would certainly like that. Note his bizarre call for Lexa to be rehabilitated this summer (Slovak Spectator, paywalled):

"Ivan Lexa deserves social and civil rehabilitation, because the acts he was accused of committing never occurred. The accusations were false, the evidence manufactured, and the witnesses perjured,"

Yesterday he compared Lexa to Christ and threw all the dirt he could on Remias, whose death he continues to insist was an accident.

We waste a lot of energy on the populism of Slota and Fico, but it seems to me that in pursuing Meciar, the KDH is also populistic. Their agenda depends on identifying enemies who are holding Slovakia back: Meciar, Harabin, Slota. But it's dishonest. A final defeat of Meciar would cost too much energy and create too much disturbance. The Guardian wrote in relation to the troubles in Poland and Hungary:

The new right wing is increasingly calling into question the historic compromise that underpins the democratic gains of the past 16 years and the legitimacy of former Communists playing a prominent role in the young democracies. But analysts say its diagnosis is simplistic, dishonest and dangerous.

However, while compromise is necessary, it needs to be put on a more formal level somehow. I dislike the way Dzurinda pretends Meciar can be dealt with without us knowing what's on the table. Presumably there is plenty that could be investigated even without the amnesties, such as his famous villa, Elektra. A "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" is probably too much to hope for but an undertaking from Meciar that he wouldn't spout lies and nonsense in public in return for a real guarantee of no prosecution, would help quite a lot.

Fico isn't a socialist

2006-10-18T23:03:00.001+02:00

The aim of socialism is not to give the poor money. Any lord from time to time would throw out a few pennies so the plebs could toast his honour. Good slave owners kept their captives well fed and well cared for, but they were slaves all the same. The aim of socialism is to give the poor power.

Slota looks east, joins energy mafia?

2006-10-18T22:45:00.001+02:00

Oh my God, they got Johnny...

Energy mafia isn't a word I've heard for a while but last year when Robert Fico was still going to parties at the Belarusssian embassy and lobbying for the nuclear power plant at Mochovce to be completed, it was on everyone's lips. The idea was that he was going to increase the dependency of Slovakia on Russian energy sources, and other Russian interests would probably come into Slovakia with the oil, gas and uranium.

Well, here is Fico's government and Minister Jahnatek is talking about diversification (Slovak Spectator, paywalled):

Take the Transpetrol pipeline company, for example. It [a 49-percent stake in the company] was sold for very little, $74 million [to the Russian Yukos Oil in 2001], and at the same time the state gave up any say in the exercise of shareholders' rights. The government completely failed to realize what a huge impact the piece of pipeline controlled by Transpetrol could have on the diversification of oil supplies in Central Europe. They did not consider the possibility of linking up with the southern Adria pipeline [through Hungary and Croatia]. They did not look into the possibility of a future connection with Schwechat [refinery] in Austria, which would have allowed other customers to import heavy Siberian oil and light Caspian oil [through Transpetrol], as well as a reverse flow for the purchase of Venezuelan oil if supplies from Russia were reduced.

Diversification is the key to cutting prices. One reason the Czechs have cheaper gas than us is because they built a pipe that allows them to import Norwegian gas when that offers a better price. Slovakia is still totally dependent on one Russian supplier.

But the Russians have a new friend - His Honour Jan Slota. Today he hosted a meeting for Slovak and Russian entrepreneurs in Zilna (Slovak link, webnoviny) and said:

Our market is mainly with the east, and what is more important, all energy comes from the east.

A fine example of Slota's inability to distinguish between what is and what should be. The meeting included representatives of Russian banks, transportation companies and energy giant Gazprom. Here are some more of Slota's remarks:

I have a feeling as leader of the SNS and a member of the government coalition that we are not focussing on the Russian market like we should. The English, all Western Europe, the USA will eventually want to do business with Russia, and we have such a good position but we're giving up and letting our country get full of westerners.

He also had a dig at the (Hungarian controlled) Slovnaft refinery and speculated that Gazprom should set up a refinery to compete with it.

There's going to be another meeting in February, when Slota plans to talk about "specific projects".

It's no wonder Slota can so cheerfully say that Le Pen is the past. Now he can model himself on Putin, someone who's really achieved something.

My reforms will go on.... (no, not Celine Dion, Mikulas Dzurinda)

2006-10-18T22:03:00.001+02:00

Macko Usko reports on an interview with ex-PM Dzurinda where Slovakia's longest serving PM appeared to suggest optimism about the prospects for Slovakia's future, under new PM Robert Fico:

Dzurinda told The Associated Press that, as the new government approaches four months in office, he has grown increasingly optimistic that Fico will leave in place the bulk of his pro-market policies.

This all makes quite a refreshing change from the last two elections where the opposition was proposing votes of no confidence and early elections as soon as the government sat down. Dzurinda wants to look like a statesman who puts the country first. He's also blowing his own trumpet by (rightly) claiming responsibility for all these good things that Fico is just maintaining. I wonder if he hasn't worked out that attacking Fico does no good, because Fico can always spin his enemies as enemies of Slovakia:

Moreover, tension with Hungary has also rallied voters to the government rather than turned them away.

"It [tensions] was proof for them that Smer and the Slovak National Party are parties that will defend the interests of the Slovak majority," Gyarfášová said.

Presenting Fico as a friend, a member of the club, someone who agrees with Dzurinda on most things, is probably a good way to drag him down then.

So there are good political reasons for optimism but I'm less sure how waranted they are objectively. Fico might preserve the form of Dzurinda's new institutions. I bet that at the end of his government there will still be something called the flat tax; there will still be private pensions; local government will have powers on paper; there will probably even still be the special court (contra Harabin). But Fico will gut whatever independence these institutions had, inserting his own people and making them respond to his need for power.

Source: AP Interview: Slovak ex-Premier Dzurinda optimistic his reforms will continue - iht,europe,Slovakia Dzurinda Interview - Europe - International Herald Tribune

Punjabi Air Slovakia on video

2006-10-18T16:50:00.001+02:00

It does indeed exist. Still no sign of those Slovak girls who speak fluent Punjabi unfortunately.

More about Punjabi Air Slovakia

2006-10-18T13:43:00.001+02:00

Well it looks like Harjinder Singh Sidhu is doing wonders for Air Slovakia since he took it over (previously mentioned here):

The flight came in from Cologne in Germany. Passengers were thrilled to experience the Punjabi fare onboard, including Slovakian airhostesses articulating fluently in Punjabi.Senior Akali leaders from Amritsar warmly welcomed the passengers at the airport. A team of Bhangra dancers greeted the passengers with a performance on their arrival. Air Slovakia now has three planes-two Boeing 757s and one Boeing 737.

Slovak airhostesses articulating fluently in Punjabi I would love to see that on YouTube. Shame that it sounds from the punctuation like these girls were part of the fare. Surely they didn't eat our lovely girls, these barbarians (see definition n.3).

Food and drink; diet: simple home-cooked fare.

Of course, it turns out this is just the press release. I wonder how it really went.

Source: Aviation India: Air Slovakia's Punjabi owner returns home

Web rage!

2006-10-17T22:56:00.001+02:00

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

Fico's savings: a promise not meant to be kept?

2006-10-16T23:29:00.001+02:00

Everyone's cheering the government for making a budget under 3% and being on track for the Euro. Personally I'm sceptical because it depends on promised savings that haven't been made yet. And there are serious questions about whether the government is tough enough to push it through. This might be one of the first cracks in their resolve:

Slovak Science Academy Avoids Redundancies

At the urging of the Slovak Academy of Sciences think-tank, the Government relaxed its decision to sack 20 percent of employees of all state organisations by allowing exceptions with "an eye on individual needs," Pravda daily wrote on Monday. "Twenty percent dismissals would literally spell disaster. We would have to sack close to 700 scientists," said Science Academy deputy chairwoman Viera Rosova. According to her, Slovakia, in so doing, would go against the European Commission's requirement to have eight scientists per 1000 workers. Redundancies would hit young and prospective scientists, forcing them to move abroad or move into the private sector, she said. (Souce: Slovak Radio International)

So now they have to sack more than 20% of the staff somewhere else, somewhere I'm sure they seem just as essential and there are all sorts of Eurostandards.

The new face of Zilina?

2006-10-16T22:23:00.001+02:00

Ivan Harman is the strongest candidate to remove Jan Slota from the position of mayor of Zilina, which he has occupied for 16 years. In the municipal elections on December 2, there will be just four candidates, down from eight at the last election, and of them only two are serious.

Slota is backed by the current government coalition - his own SNS plus Smer and the HZDS, while Harman has the support of the opposition SDKU and KDH, plus minnow parties SF and OKS. The appearance of the SF (Free Forum) here is a surprise, considering they split from the SDKU, but their local leader sums up the "Anyone but Slota" mood affecting many townspeople:

"The town needs a change of leadership because when one person does the job for many years, their creativity runs down and a new person can bring new ideas." (MY, local paper)

Harman's greatest advantage is that there is no other serious non-Slota candidate. He also has the support of the main opposition to Slota in the town, the citizen's group "Za Krajsiu Zilinu" ("For a prettier Zilina") whose manifesto he displays on his website. In the last regional parliamentary election, a similar coalition to Harman's beat Slota's alliance with Smer.

His main disadvantage is that not only is Slota much better known, Harman has no tradition in the town. He is the General Manager of the SDKU (something like the party chairman in Britain) and so he is susceptible to all those old scandals from Dzurinda's days. When party bigwigs go to the regions, it is often because they have fallen out of favour with the rest of the elite, so it will be interesting to see if the party's stars give him much support.

Well, I've got my fingers crossed for him. Slota has said of his opponents who signed a petition against him "if I'm returned to office I'll want those hundred people to leave town" and he doesn't like "intellectual scum" so you see, it's something I can take personally.

Keeping Slovakia's troubles in perspective

2006-10-16T20:16:00.001+02:00

This story in the Guardian shows how we're doing rather well.

For the past month, thousands of Hungarians have been demonstrating on the square in front of parliament in an attempt to bring down the centre-left government of Ferenc Gyurcsany, a self-confessed liar who admitted he cheated his way to a second term in April.
Up the Danube next door in Slovakia an improbable alliance of leftwing populists and extreme rightwing nationalists holds sway, following years of radical reform by a liberal administration that took the country into Nato and the European Union.
In Prague, politics is so precariously polarised between left and right that neither side is able to form a stable government. The Czech Republic has effectively been without a government since June, when a dead-heat election left conservative Eurosceptics victorious but unable to muster a parliamentary majority.
And in Poland this week, parliament is mulling the need for early elections following the collapse of a prickly coalition of conservatives, extreme-right reactionaries and leftwing demagogues.
"Things have become much more complicated than we expected," sighed Pavol Demes, a former Slovak foreign minister. "People are tired and frustrated and politicians are using and abusing these feelings."

At least we have a stable government, however improbable. Actually, the Slovak articles I've read where they comment on these Western attempts to lump all Central Europe's current troubles into one bag tend to roll their eyes and emphasise the different conditions in each case. In particular I'd be wary of claims of democracy fatigue. It often seems like people still have too little say over their day to day life here rather than too many confusing choices. In particular, the last Slovak election,which boiled down to shall we spend the money or leave it in the bank has to be one of the most dreary anywhere, ever.

How do you feel? Is Slovakia a welcome oasis of calm or would you rather people took to the streets more often? Will Slovakia continue to avoid the big trouble elsewhere or is something like that coming?

Source: Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Populists seize the moment as discontent grips central Europe

Comprehensive Zilina photogallery

2006-10-16T12:23:00.000+02:00

I no longer have to worry about collecting lots of photographs of Zilina. Needless to say, there are plenty of other Zilina-documenting obsessives on the web and here's a very comprehensive gallery of the town that I came across this morning. He's managed to get pictures of lots of beautiful things that I wouldn't have a clue how to photograph, like the lovely stained glass in the booking hall at Zilina station, shown above. The only problem is that there's no English version. Found via (which I found via).

Mood swings

2006-10-15T18:24:00.001+02:00

The trouble with this time of year is that there's a huge temperature span in the day. The photograph above on the left was taken in the morning, when it was pretty chilly and misty, the one on the right, the same day just before sunset when it was warm, sunny and I had shed two layers from the morning (coat, sweater).

The temperature shifts gave me a pretty bad cold.

Fields of Shame: torture seen in Zilina town square

2006-10-15T18:18:00.001+02:00

The Fields of Shame exhibition recently passed through Zilina before moving on to a few other towns in Slovakia. It presents graphic evidence and testimony of human rights abuses in a number of countries: Burma, Belarus, Cuba, Chinese-occupied Tibet and North Korea.

What was interesting about the exhibition was its use of materials: wire fencing used to protect building sites, industrial lighting, waterproof posters held to the fencing with plastic tags. On one level it was all very grim and depressing, not unlike a totalitarian prison camp. On another level, these materials are ready to hand just about everywhere these days (except the posters, which could be rolled up and hidden quite easily). It could be a recipe for a DIY protest in Belarus that radicals could set up in minutes, and hopefully show off to a few punters before the security forces showed up.

I wouldn't suspect this of being out of the organisers minds since it was sponsored by the Pontis Foundation, the Slovak organisation set up by various American bodies to export democracy to Belarus and elsewhere. It was no surprise that allies of the US like Uzbekistan failed to get into the exhibition. Another point was that I don't recall the exhibition advising me to do anything. The Amnesty International materials I remember from my youth were always full of earnest invocations to write letters and so on. On their website FOS have a link to Amnesty but all they seem to want to do is raise awareness. The conspiracy wing nut cynic in me wonders if this isn't just a ploy to get people in a depressed mood where they will support the next US/UK call for humanitarian intervention, rather than, heaven forbid, actually having a sort of "personal foreign policy".

Slovak Spectator redesigned

2006-10-14T16:03:00.001+02:00

Slovak media trainspotter alert! Have you noticed the redesign of the Slovak Spectator? They've finally got rid of the serif fonts on their pages, which improves consistency. It's a pity that they didn't take the opportunity to fix the bug that exists in Opera and Internet Explorer 7 browsers, where normal text is underlined like a hyperlink when you move the mouse over it. Luckily, my browser of choice, Firefox, somehow fixes this problem.

The other, more important change is the masthead. In the early days of the Slovak Spectator it declared itself, fairly meaninglessly, an International Weekly, and more recently it was Slovakia's English language newspaper. The new text (which is no longer text on the website but part of a graphic - rather a bad idea as regards accessibility) is Slovak news you can trust. This fairly begs a couple of questions:

Which Slovak news can I not trust?
Why is the news from TSS especially trustworthy? TSS has been cutting back on its original reporting staff for a while and relies on the same agency sources as everyone else. They have access to right wing think tank people like Ivo Samson and Grigorij Mesezhnikov but these people provide interpretation not the news (though the Slovak newspapers often forget that).

I'm going to go on a paranoid flight of speculation now: what if this is part of the preparation for the next stage in a Fico = Meciar = Lukashenko campaign, to bring back the truly pro-Western parties. Stage one was the Hungarian "attrocities" protests, which fell to pieces in the mysterious Hedwig Malinova scandal. Stage two could be about media manipulation. We have already had big news about Fico calling the state TV station to manipulate its news. Soon a new board of directors will be elected and a new director general will be appointed and then the broadcaster will be fully his responsibility, to preserve its independence or use as his media. No doubt the state news agency, TASR, can expect to get leaned on a bit.

When that happens, TSS will be in position to become a source of reliable samizdata. It'll be so exciting.

I hope this is just my paranoid imagination, but it's more interesting to daydream about than the idea that it just struck Mr Nicholson as a sexy slogan (or that he paid some consultant a pile of cash for it - even more likely).

How does a Slovak airline end up being bought by British Punjabis?

2006-10-14T09:02:00.001+02:00

I'm tempted just to shake my head and say, "globalisation eh" when I read this:

An Indian-born businessman has purchased a private central European airline for an undisclosed amount.
Harjinder Singh Sidhu, who lives in UK and is a British passport holder, bought Air Slovakia, a small privately owned airline based in the capital, Bratislava last week, it has emerged.
His son, Riqbal 'Rocky' Singh, told the BBC News website that his father wants to transform the 60-employee Air Slovakia into a "Punjabi experience".
That means using crew, food and in-flight entertainment from the northern Indian state of Punjab and using regional headquarters based in the Punjabi city of Jalandhar.

The airline's been doing the Birmingham - Punjab run for quite a while. A friend of mine went with them more than a year ago and found it rather overwhelming. The really weird thing is how they ever got the idea, but maybe this is proof that in a free market everything will find a niche. Take note Mr Fico.

Of course, no story about Slovakia would be complete without service issues (See also this):

Mr Singh admits that there are "service issues with passenger satisfaction" that need to be addressed.
"I think the Slovakians did not fully understand the needs of Punjabi passengers. But things have improved after we took over the airline."

NB: Despite its bombastic name Air Slovakia should not be confused with Slovak Airlines, which is the real descendant of the old Czechoslovak Airlines (CSA), now owned by Austrian Airlines. The biggest and most successful airline in Slovakia is the budget carrier SkyEurope. Of the three, they're the only one I've flown with, and I've always found them perfectly fine.

Source: BBC NEWS | South Asia | Fly Air Slovakia for Punjabi experience

Ein Fico, Ein Volk

2006-10-13T22:05:00.000+02:00

Just to be really over the top. I would like to suggest the following logo if Mr Fico fancies a change to go with his new old nationalist look. I think you'll find it combines the touchy feely modern with respect for tradition:

It's ages since I played with the Gimp. Well it beats working or worrying about that Lancet report on deaths in Iraq or British gulags in 1950es Kenya. I mean, I'm British. We're good. That's what gives us the high moral superiority to laugh at you funny foreign fellows.

New logo options

2006-10-13T21:22:00.000+02:00

Someone ought to tell Smer. Their web page is still showing the Party of European Socialists as their ally. And they're going to have to clean up their logo.

which leaves us with an arrow (or maybe just the thorns from the rose)

Now, it's a very nice arrow, in a tasteful colour and modern blobby shape, but there's something about an arrow that makes me uncomfortable

Maybe the joke about people who think nationally and feel socially being national socialists is getting a bit uncomfortable, especially when they justify anything by saying they do it in the name of the volk.

Smer want to look like modern socialists in public and indulge in nationalist orgies behind closed doors

2006-10-13T17:10:00.001+02:00

Boris Zala talks about Smer's membership being suspended from the Party of European Socialists only until July 2007. However, while the suspension will be reviewed then, they say it won't automatically be cancelled and everything depends on change in the SNS or the SNS's exclusion from government:

In 10 months the European socialists will again discuss the future of Smer, but renewal of its membership will not be automatic. Already yesterday, the PES said that Smer will be able to return to the grouping only if the SNS leaves the Slovak government, the Sme daily wrote. (from the Slovak Spectator)

Neither of these things seems likely to happen, not even at the level Zala proposes of taking back some silly old words in a letter to Jean-marie Le Pen. Smer have said they're not going to put any pressure on the SNS to change pretože rešpektuje suverenitu každej politickej strany (because they respect the sovereignty of every political party) and the SNS... well heeeeere's Johnny:

pre TA3 povedal, že jeho socialistická internacionála nezaujíma, nikdy ju neuznával a že preňho a jeho stranu znamená asi toľko, ako Eskimáci v Grónsku.

he told TA3 (news channel) that the Socialist International is nothing to him, he never recognised it and they might as well be eskimos from Greenland for all the impact they have on his party.

And of course let's remind ourselves of the real reason for all this as stated by our oppressed and misunderstood prime minister:

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico believes that the Party of European Socialists (PES) leadership that suspended Smer-Social Democracy˙ membership, punished his party "for its policy to the benefit of people," government spokeswoman Silvia Glendova said Thursday. As the reason for the suspension the Socialist leadership pointed to the Smer-SD˙s cooperation with the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS). "According to Robert Fico, Smer-Social Democracy was punished for pursuing a policy in the interests of people, for its fight against monopolies and for its failure to take the Hungarian Coalition Party (SMS) in the government," Glendova said. She said that Fico had no other comments on the matter.

The first English report of this bizarre rant came out on Radio Slovakia International a day late. It'll be interesting to see if any foreign commentators react to it, because it's quite different from the sort of oil that Zala was trying to pour on troubled water in Brussels. Fico is copying Meciar here: saying one thing for the foreigners and another for his nationalist home audience. Eventually he'll get caught in a contradition and then what will become of him. He's already lost my trust.

It would be a fine koan for zen master to ask is Fico a socialist flirting with nationalism or a nationalist who sometimes dresses up a socialist. No one else need bother. Perhaps it is time to see him as a pragmatist in the Putin mould who will say anything as long as he stays in power. The question is, how far will he go?

Fico strikes back

2006-10-12T19:33:00.001+02:00

Here's Fico's answer to the Eurosocialists in response to his party's suspension, who are apparently, a bunch of Magyar-loving, elitist, corporate whores, and liars to boot:

Strana európskych socialistov (PES) potrestala Smer-SD za to, že robí politiku pre ľudí. Myslí si to premiér a predseda Smeru-SD Robert Fico, ktorého stanovisko agentúre SITA tlmočila hovorkyňa. Podľa Fica Smer-SD eurosocialisti potrestali aj za to, že bojuje s monopolmi a za to, že nezobral do vlády SMK.

My translation: The Party of European Socialists (PES) punished Smer-SD because it works for the people. That is the opinion of Prime Minister and leader of Smer-SD, Robert Fico, as presented to the SITA agency by his spokeswoman Silvia Glendová. According to Fico, other reasons for the suspension were the fact that it fights against monopolies and did not take the Hungarian Coalition Party into government.

The lying Magyar-loving, elitist, corporate whores themselves have this to say (press release):

The Presidency of the Party of European Socialists today decided to suspend the membership of Slovakian Party SMER from the Party of European Socialists – which brings together all socialist, social democratic and labour parties in the European Union - for entering a Government coalition with extreme nationalists SNS.

PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said “It is with a heavy heart that the PES must suspend SMER from our political family. But basic political principles cannot be sacrificed. The PES does not believe that its member parties can enter Government at any price. Slovakia needs social democracy, but not at the cost of compromising with extreme nationalism and xenophobia.”
The resolution adopted by the PES Presidency states “The PES Presidency ….decides to suspend the provisional membership of SMER-Social Democracy” and that the PES Presidency “will reassess the situation in June 2007”.
The resolution refers specifically to the Declaration “For a modern, pluralist and tolerant Europe” adopted by PES Congress in 2001 in Berlin which states “all PES parties adhere to the following principles… to refrain from any form of political alliance or co-operation at all levels with any political party which incites or attempts to stir up racial or ethnic prejudices and racial hatred.”

See what I mean about looking for fights. Lock up your crockery.

Source: webnoviny.sk - správy a informácie - ekonomika, politika, spoločnosť, šport, zaujímavosti, šoubiznis

You're out

2006-10-12T18:45:00.001+02:00

This morning SME was talking up Smer's chances of staying in the European Socialist Party but now this via AP:

pan-European bloc of Socialist parties on Thursday suspended the membership of Slovak politicians to protest the formation of a governing coalition in Slovakia that includes an ultra-nationalist party.
The largely symbolic suspension, which will be reviewed in June 2007, does not remove Slovak lawmakers from the European Union's legislature, but it will prevent them from participating in meetings or other business of the European umbrella group of Socialist parties.
The decision marks the first time any major pan-European political grouping has suspended a national party's membership, and it appeared to be designed to push Slovakia to expel the ultra-nationalists from the government.

So the only person with anything to celebrate is that freshly minted dissident, Monika Flasikova Benova, who decided to kick up a stink about her bosses right wing friends about the same time her businessman husband lost his influence in the party.

Apparently, the Eurosocialists were not sufficiently impressed by Jan Slota's ringing denunciation of extremism:

According to the Pravda daily, Slota will declare that the SNS respects democratic values and send it to the PES by October 12, the day the PES is to decide whether to suspend Smer.
"I am surprised that I have to declare something like that, but we want to accommodate our coalition partner. We have no problem making such a declaration," Slota said.

Fico didn't go to the meeting, sending his pet intellectual Boris Zala instead. (Zala was recently asked if Smer was a one-man party, and replied that there were lots of good men in Smer, including Boris Zala, which should go down in the books of how not to answer questions). I think he can speak English (I once heard that he was in the USA or preparing to go to the USA when the November 1989 revolution began and this caused him "not to notice it" - bizarre man) so the problem is that he doesn't know how to take his disappointments.

We have to be careful with these supermen. When Meciar realised he would never rule in Prague, he split Czechoslovakia and turned Slovakia into his private fiefdom. Fico deprived of a European dimension will probably take comfort in seeking out enemies to fight with at home. More nationalism, more attacks on greedy monopolies who "throw down the gauntlet":

Fico did not restrict himself to politicians in his search for enemies, adding that the government had taken up a fight with the foreign shareholders in the SPP gas utility. The PM claimed that the SPP's demand for a price rise is groundless, and that therefore "it was a political gesture. Someone wanted to send a message to this government to the effect - do what you will, we are going to have our way with you."

By saying that "we are going to pick up this gauntlet", Fico included SPP in the ranks of the enemy. (Marian Lesko of SME, quoted in TSS here [behind the paywall])

So Robo, I know you could take the lot of them if you wanted but come on lad, they're not worth it. I'll buy you a pint...

First 100 days of the Slovak opposition

2006-10-12T02:03:00.001+02:00

I was going to write a post about the first 100 days of the Fico government but Lemuel had a post out before the hundredth day was even finished and it covers more or less all the bases (if you don't mind the swearing). However, the person who got it all into one phrase for me was Robert Zitnansky in .tyzden who said: Fico's government ignores the fact that the rules are more important than the rulers. Best example being Judge Harabin and his determination to get rid of the Special Court pretty much because his arch rival Daniel Lipsic thought of it, but there have been countless other cases where the government have not only stuffed their representatives into state and former state companies (par for the course here) but even into so-called independent regulatory and supervisory bodies.

The really interesting question is what are we going to do about this band of pseudo-socialists? Zitnansky was pessimistic. He mentions that a lot of people were expecting the government to collapse very quickly, especially when placed under pressure about Slota's vulgar, hateful remarks. The trouble is that it seems thieves are able to divide the spoils to their satisfaction. I think they're aware this is their last chance so it's better a little than nothing. Zitnansky also frets about the popularity of bulldozer characters like the former Czech prime minister Paroubek. He is able to maintain popularity on the level of Fico's despite endless vulgarity, corruption charges and his plan to do deals with the taboo, extremely unreformed Czech Communists — all because he is defending the people (Fedor Gal told a story about Paroubek: the police stopped him for speeding and he told them that they should leave him alone when he is hurrying to do the people's business. They should go and arrest some capitalist exploiters instead). Fico will do the same: promise his promises and lenty of people will lap it up. And even some smart people will say that it is good, that at least we are independent of those vile Americans, and so on (I have been guilty of this myself in the past). The danger for Fico is that he will make himself ridiculous, like that forgotten champion of the people Rudolf Schuster. And that is Zitnansky's rather pessimistic conclusion:

until the opposition comes up with a really interesting idea, Fico's most dangerous oppponent is himself.

Unfortunately, Zitnansky stops there and we don't get to find out what he thinks the really interesting idea could be. Judging by the first hundred days of the opposition, I suspect that none of them knows.

The most active opposition party has been the SMK. They've bashed away at Jan Slota and his extremism until everyone is sick of them. I suppose they've shored up their monopoly position in the Hungarian community but they've probably sabotaged their chances of getting any Slovak to vote for them. 10% forever is better than a chance of 15%.

After them, battling for the SDKU, comes Ivan Miklos, a man who should watch out because he got more preferential votes than his boss, the quiet but deadly Mikulas Dzurinda. Miklos is a fantastic smoothy, very clever who week after week demolishes the useless economics of the flacks that Smer throw at him. If you lived in Bratislava and had a job as a bank analyst, you would be sure he would be the next prime minister of Slovakia. Unfortunately, most Slovaks prefer watching comedians imitating a Hungarian accent or doing transvestite acts in Uragan so he will never be prime minister. The SDKU's other big vote winner, Mrs. Radicova, has had a quieter time and has been more in the social pages. Mikulas Dzurinda himself has pretty much dropped out of sight. But never write him off. But whatever this gang has done since June, it has been just to defend their achievements, which Fico is in danger of ruining blah blah blah. There's no idea for moving forward (to come over all Blairish, ugh).

Actually, maybe there's no need to. Slovakia probably does need a bit of a rest without revolutionaries turning everything over and then the counter revolution coming and striking vengence etc. Maybe the next big idea could be doing nothing? I'd vote for it.

Here's a British writer with a similar view.

A higher spiritual level

2006-10-11T20:26:00.001+02:00

Overheard in Zilina: I was in one of those tea shops where intellectual young people who reject alcohol, and comfortable furniture like to sit on the floor and talk loudly. There was a student couple behind me reviewing their lecture notes and engaging in a hot tonguing session when they were pretty sure I wasn't looking. Then an old friend of the girl arrived and on hearing that she was now studying philosophy launched into a rambling lecture on the renunciation of sex. Apparently it's not just the Catholic church that rejects sex but also "some Eastern philosophers" who "have reached a high spiritual level" and give sex up because it can't compare to the high spiritual pleasures they enjoy.

A few minutes later I heard this spiritual young man telling his favourite jokes:

- How do you say "one hundred dead gypsies" in two words?
- Not enough. (the Slovak version works with one word: malo, but I hope you won't use it).

A high spiritual level indeed.

Slovak police set target for fines - 107 koruna per person

2006-10-11T20:02:00.001+02:00

Ever wondered why there are so many police checking cars in Slovakia? They've got targets make. One of the curious features of the Slovak state budget is that it includes an item for expected income from fines and every year they set the police tougher targets. This year's targets have just come out:

Slovak: Ministerstvo vnútra by v budúcom roku malo na pokutách zarobiť 578 miliónov korún, čo je o 52 miliónov viac ako v tohtoročnom štátnom rozpočet.

English: Next year the Ministry of the Interior should earn SKK 578 million, which is 52 million more than in this year's state budget.

So, nearly 10% more, with inflation running at 5%. It's been calculated at SKK 107 per head. Enough gawping, get out there and find some criminals!

Plus, this gives me the opportunity to quote that hoary joke about the driver given a fine by the police in Moscow. "What did I do wrong, officer?" he asks. The policeman replies "Wrong? You expect my wife and children to wait for you to do something wrong?"

Source: Vláda rozhodla: na pokutách každý Slovák zaplatí 107 korún - Politika - Domov - Aktuálne.sk

Engaging in politics can seriously damage your health

2006-10-09T19:46:00.000+02:00

Then (the image Slota still uses to welcome you to his homepage):

and now :

Even Anicka recoils from the fumes!

That last link being the Joj news video where Slota shows how well he takes his ale. Highly recommended.

Are Slovaks still so touchy?

2006-10-09T17:30:00.001+02:00

A bit of a Slovak language class. What's missing from this:

Eric Assimakopoulos: Bratislava - Place of New Investments

The busines environment is quite strong here. This of course depends on the point of view one has towards investing. We predominantly focus on emerging market investing where an opportunity exists to create value and benefit from a markets transition from a early stage to a more mature investment market. Slovakia has one of the best locations in Central and Eastern Europe!

Slovakia has small but very stable market for investing. Its business environment is young and is growing rapidly. Slovakia has made giant leaps forward in the tourism business over the last couple of years, still it cannot compare to other European countries. We are lagging behind in many fields, especially, customer service.

We hope to help the market transition into a investment destination for some of Europe large investment funds. These groups will put huge amounts of money in a market with rather modest return expectations and this will help stabilize Slovakia as a location for long term investing. I came to Bratislava specifically because of the opportunity to purchase the Carlton Complex. Since then we have made a number of strategic investments in infrastructure for example our airport company with over 30,000 m2 of aircraft hangars, cargo, logistics and office facilities. We have purchased an important former bank building in SNP square and have invested in the country’s leading sport as a shareholder in HC Slovan Bratislava hockey team.

in this Slovak version of the same text:

Eric Assimakopoulos: Bratislava miesto nových investícií
Slovensko má jednu z najlepších lokalít v strednej a východnej Európe.
Podnikateľské prostredie v Bratislave je dosť silné. Závisí to samozrejme aj od uhla pohľadu. Venujeme sa investíciám na nových trhoch, kde máme možnosť vytvoriť hodnotu a získať výhodu zo zmeny na viac rozvinutejší trh.
Prišiel som do Bratislavy najmä preto, lebo som mal možnosť kúpiť Carlton. Odvtedy sme spravili niekoľko strategických investícií do infraštruktúry, napríklad získali získali leteckú spolocnosť s rozlohou takmer 30 tisíc metrov štvorcových, kde sú hangáre, preprava, logistika a kancelárske priestory. Kúpili sme dôležitú bankovú budovu na Námestí SNP a investovali ako akcionári do najlepšieho hokejového klubu na Slovensku, do HC Slovan Bratislava.

Well, for example, this:

Slovakia has made giant leaps forward in the tourism business over the last couple of years, still it cannot compare to other European countries. We are lagging behind in many fields, especially, customer service.

Weirdly, the text that is destined for outside readers, which should be advertising, ends up being more negative than the one for the locals, who need the incentive. But then you have to take into account the omnipresent inferiority complex. Usually when you mention an inconvenient fact like the low level of services you get an earful of how it's all the fault of the communists and loads of Slovaks get bad service in Britain so who are these Brits to judge, eh.

Source: FINANCNIK.sk, Eric Assimakopoulos: Bratislava - Place of New Investments and FINANCNIK.sk, Eric Assimakopoulos: Bratislava miesto nových investícií

By the way, I'm curious who is the "we" in Assimakopous' sentence (We are lagging behind in many fields, especially, customer service.) Is it his company or all Slovaks? He's not a Slovak. He's an investor from Florida of the keep growing or die sort. A few years ago he nearly bought the new Slovak National Theatre but a mass campaign saved that particular jewel for the state. I don't mind him doing his risky business with stuff like the Carlton, which mostly fleeces foreigners, though, and I'm kind of touched that such a colourful character is still around when so much else changes. Could I ask for investors whose names are easier to spell though?

A classic Slovak fairy tale in Zilina, traditionally un-PC

2006-10-06T23:08:00.000+02:00

0610 Three pigs

Oct 2, 2006 - 4 Photos

The new theatre season has just started in Zilina and so I went with my son to the first premiere of the season at the Puppet Theatre. It was a classic fairy story told by master story teller Jozef Ciger Hronsky (the author of my wife's favourite Brave Rabbit). There is a pig keeper with three clever pigs who trades them to a princess in return for her secrets. Later he is able to use these secrets to win her hand in marriage, and his skill with pigs to defeat an evil gipsy who is a rival suitor.

Technically, the performance was very clever. There were just two actors with the pigs being controlled by wire and the gipsy represented by a grotesque mask. They used backdrops hung from a revolving umbrella to change scene and also as a screen for shadow puppets. The umbrella also provided a space for costume changes. A weird thing was that for no conceivable reason the whole thing was accompanied by Abba tunes (with Winner takes it all for the wedding music at the end, which seems not quite right somehow).

Obviously, being such a PC prude, the thing that rankled with me was the gipsy. He obviously is a stereotypical gipsy, going on about how he's cleverer than the gadges (non-gipsies) and he's given outlandish "racial" features (see the photoset above). The character got the most laughs and my son loved him (probably for the whacky mask and the squeaky voice). Most anti-PC people will think this is ridiculous. It's just a literary character after all, like poor old Golliwog in Noddy, and cutting him out won't make people better and leaving him in won't make them worse. Nevertheless, it gave me a bad feeling.

Still I recommend you go and see it if you're in town and you get the chance. In the age of digital trickery, it's great to see what actors can do with minimal props and direct contact. We need to support these theatres as much as we can now, since the Fico government has transferred responsibility for funding them to towns and regions, without providing any money of course, a change which will probably end in closures.

Darling fascist SPP, give me some more money you bastard

2006-10-06T17:17:00.000+02:00

Reading news of Fico's plan to pay for his promises through creative accountancy ~~made me think of~~ gave me a flimsy excuse to quote one of my favourite scenes from eighties comedy series the Young Ones. At the weekend PM Fico was complaining about SPP picking a fight with him and how "we" will sort them out. Today he's asking them for a special dividend to cover his budget hole. I'm sure they'll be delighted to comply. But enough politics, enjoy:

Neil: Guys, guys, guys, I think I've solved our money problem. I'm writing to my bank manager. See what you think... "Dear Bank Manager."
Mike: Yeah?
Neil: Well, that's it. I'm quite pleased with it so far, though.
Mike: Oh, well, it's a strong opening, certainly.
Vyvyan: I don't like the "dear." Sounds a bit too much like, "Will you go to bed with me?"
Mike: Well spoken, Vyvyan. What do you think instead?
Vyvyan: Uh, what about..."darling?
[everyone concurs]
Neil: [writing] "Darling Bank Manager..."
Rick: No, no, no, no, no, not "Bank Manager," it's far too crawly bum-lick. Tell it like it is, put "Fascist Bullyboy!"
Neil: "Darling Fascist Bullyboy..."
Mike: That's nice, yes, so far so good. So what do you want to say?
Neil: Well, basically, I want to ask him if I can have, like, an extension on my overdraft, but I know there must be a better way of putting it than that.
Mike: Well, what about, "Give me some more money"?
Vyvyan: ..."You bastard!"
Neil: Don't you think that's a bit strong?
Mike: Ah, Neil, people like that respect strength.
Neil: Yeah, you're right. Uh, "Darling Fascist Bullyboy, Give me some more money, you bastard..." Uh... "Love, Neil."
Vyvyan: Not "Love, Neil"! That sounds far too much like, "Come and get it like a bitch-funky sex machine!"
Neil: Yeah, you're right...Uh, what about, "Yours sincerely"?
Rick: Oh, come off it, Neil. If you're going to be that sycophantic, why don't you go 'round there now and stick your tongue straight down the back of his trousers?
Neil: Oh, look, I know, I know, why not "Boom Shanka"? It means, "May the seed of your loin be fruitful in the belly of your woman."
Mike: He'll never understand "Boom Shanka," you'll have to write the whole thing out.
Neil: Right, okay, here we go. "Darling Fascist Bullyboy, Give me some more money, you bastard. May the seed of your loin be fruitful in the belly of your woman, Neil."
Rick: Well, if that doesn't work, I don't know what will.

Divide and rule time

2006-10-04T17:15:00.000+02:00

Looks like Dusan Caplovic wants to set Slovakia's minorities against each other:

The 500,000-member Hungarian minority in Slovakia will receive less money from the state in the future, Deputy Prime Minister in charge of human rights and minorities Dusan Caplovic said today.
On the other hand, the government intends to increase financial support for all other 11 ethnic minorities that are officially registered in Slovakia, and particularly for Romanies, he said.

And someone is telling porkies:

Caplovic pointed out that the Hungarian minority was receiving, for instance, 99.9 percent of the proceeds from lotteries and gambling. Last year, the Tipos company that operates lotteries and gambling games sent about 700 million Slovak crowns to the state budget, he said.

versus

Csaky [The Hungarian who used to hold Caplovic's job] today rejected Caplovic's statements. He said that the Hungarian minority received 180 million crowns from the state budget last year. The money from Tipos was part of the package of budget incomes and it cannot be said therefore for what specific goal it was used, he said.

The journalists didn't turn up any actual numbers so I guess everyone will believe according to their prejudices.

By the way, I do hate the way Czech and Slovak journalists use "pointed out" in their English to mean "claimed" rather than "drew attention to some piece of information".

Source: Hungarians to receive less money from state-deputy PM - www.romea.cz

Slovakia's auto-industry masters demand corporate welfare

2006-10-04T10:26:00.000+02:00

There's an extraordinary story in the Slovak Spectator (subscription only) which shows what Slovakia has let itself in for by purchasing foreign investment from the motor industry. The problem is that there are not enough workers for all the plants that have come:

"We now have four companies in Slovakia [in the Matador group] operating in the automotive sector," Rudolf Rusnák, vice-president of the automotive division of the Slovak-owned Matador company, told The Slovak Spectator. "We feel a great shortage [of labour] mainly in the western part of the country, especially in Bratislava, and especially in trades such as metal workers, welders and technical engineers."

Matador is actually a Slovak company but they work very closely with the investors. Their solution is to increase imigration:

"The cabinet should adopt an immigration policy allowing for the import of labour. Given that our people are leaving to western countries, we could be importing labourers from countries to the east, such as Ukraine,"

Wonderful! We tax payers pay out vast subsidies to investors on the understanding that it will create jobs but all the jobs end up going to foreigners. The big foreign investors - Volkswagen, Kia and Peugeot Citroen have not explicitly endorsed this policy, but they are putting it into practice:

Milan Weit, the first secretary of the Polish embassy in Slovakia, said that HR agencies in Slovakia have contacted the Polish embassy in their search for professionals from Poland who could work in Slovakia on the basis of personnel leasing.

Although Poland has a higher average monthly salary than Slovakia (about Sk20,000 compared to Sk18,300), Poles do not turn up their noses at the idea of finding work in Slovakia.
"Poland also has a high unemployment rate of around 18 percent and in some eastern regions up to 20 percent. For people who don't have work, any opportunity is at least something. On top of that, the free accommodation and food allowances that are offered are usually very attractive for them," Weit said.
According to Weit, the agencies that contacted him were looking for people for the Volkswagen plants in Bratislava and Martin. He believed that Kia, which is located near the Slovak-Polish border, also employs Polish citizens.

The investors have also decided that they are going to run Slovak education policy:

Volkswagen Slovakia spokeswoman Silvia Nosálová told The Slovak Spectator that a labour shortage in the technical professions was now apparent, and that the current education system was partly to blame.
"We think that the decision to expand the network of academic stream secondary schools at the expense of secondary vocational schools was unfortunate," she said. "The wishes of the parents [as to which school their children should attend] should not determine the labour market. On the contrary, companies and the Slovak economy should dictate the market.

That last sentence is extraordinary. It sounds like the car companies want to tell people which schools they have to go to. It's clear from this that businesses throw away their Hajek as soon as they win arguments with leftists because there's a clear way in which they could sort out their problems: the price mechanism.

If car firms want more workers they should offer better wages, with some sort of bonus system to increase productivity. If they want people to study in technical schools, they can offer scholarships conditional on you serving x number of years in their company (that's what changed the minds of my friends who became chemical engineers once upon a time). It's no wonder that parents choose schools that offer their children at least a chance of a good job, especially when there is no difference in cost and the parents have seen what happened to job security in industry in the creative destruction of the 1990es.

Dzurinda's government prided itself on being pro-business. What we need is a government that is pro-market and doesn't allow any particular participant to dictate anything.

Ach, those talking heads

2006-10-02T11:18:00.000+02:00

I'm glad someone else finds this annoying:

väčšinou ide o to, že redaktor použije z vyjadrení experta, čo sa použiť dá. Keď sa nedá použiť nič originálne, tak použije hocijakú trivialitu, veď aspoň vytvára zdanie objektivity spravodajstva.

in most cases the journalist uses any statement by an expert that seems to fit. If you can't find something original then any trivial stuff will do, as long as it creates the impression of objective journalsim.

Source: Mediálni a iní experti - SME online

But will SME start to practise what it preaches?

Sobotňajší snem ešte viac upevnil Ficovu pozíciu v strane, hovorí politológ Grigorij Mesežnikov. Rozhodnutie snemu Smeru ho vôbec neprekvapilo.

Saturday's congress strengthened Robert Fico's position in the party, says political scientist Grigorij Mesežnikov. Congress's decision didn't surprise him at all.

Source: Robert Fico je v Smere najsilnejší - SME online

What does Meseznikov's name add to these conclusions? What should I care whether he is surprised or not? Aspoň vytvára zdanie objektivity spravodajstva.