romunov’s blog et al

This is hilarious. I’ve just read on obala.net that people from here are bothered by the loud frog songs. Now, Slovenian herpetological society and the Institute of the Republic of Slovenia for Nature Conservation are on their feet trying to solve the problem that is, in my opinion, not even there. As suggested by some readers, maybe they should live next to a disco.

Last Sunday I attended a clean up duty in Piran. It was planned by Project AWARE foundation through Project Adventure. You can check out some pictures here and here.

While we walked around Piran in full gear and sweating like mad, we finally made it to the “pipe”. We were searching for a fishing net that was dumped near the pipe years ago. While descending, the visibility went quagmire on us pretty fast. I was a hand’s reach away from the bottom and I could barely see it. I would guess that my buddy above me saw nothing. I think he was looking for the 12 m mark the organizer gave us. We swam right of the pipe, and the “smog” eventually cleared. We couldn’t find the net either because we didn’t swim pass it or it was already removed. In any case, I had a garbage bag with me, and we collected some bottles and other litter. We emptied it once and then retired to the diving base where we changed to civilian clothes and got our souvenirs, kudos of the sponsors!

Thanks to all the people who tolerated my presence while staying in Piran.

A few of presidential hopefuls have responded to a few questions from Students’ organization of Slovenia. You can grab their response here. I think Türk made best arguments. Peterle is still a sleaze bag and is lagging behind with his short-attention span answers.
(Unfortunately?), presidents hold very little power and are more or less symbolic and money holes.

You can watch an interview with Michael Moore on Real time with Bill Maher on Evil Bobby. I don’t know where they get their facts from, but according to Moore, the US is just behind Costa Rica [in health care], and right before Slovenia.
Would sure be interesting to see the study he was referring to.

Remember these guys who won MIT’s iGEM 2006?

They’ll be presenting their work on 20th of December at Biology center, Ljubljana in P2 classroom.

I never thought I would see the day. Dawn is setting in Slovenia. The debate is on about abortion. Drobnic has introduced a “Strategy to improve fecundity”, and among other measures, includes paying for abortion.

This one is also funny:

Nekateri pa so opozorili še na nekatere druge sporne dele direktive, saj naj bi se dotikala intime do te mere, da določa pravilen način oblačenja žensk.

A point in the Strategy is characterizing a “proper” way for a woman to dress.

As much as I could catch yesterday on the evening TV news, they interviewed a few medical professionals (gynecologists) and from what I recall, they all disagreed that paying for abortion will raise fecundity. They went on to say that if abortion becomes inaccessable, be that illegal or not cheap, women might grab onto “alternative” methods of aborting unwanted pregnancies.

Slovenia is turning more Christian every moment. Unless we don’t do something about it, things could get ugly… Pre-1960 ugly.

Some say life begins when n and n meet, cell division of an egg proceeds to the last stages and the nuclei merge. I say life begins when you start earning your own money and/or you gain your independece from your parents.

I realise I haven’t posted in a while. I’ll repeat my old rote - school has kept me busy. I’ve just spent the entire day servicing a PC, with no visible results. Some hardware must be messing up the system and Windows keep locking up every time I try to browse the internet.

In some recent news, Bush is has visitedVietnam (for the first time?) and the White House homepage displayed the wrong flag. Oops.

The display of the old flag is highly incendiary to the current Vietnamese government. NPR reported last year the display of the old flag anywhere in the United States — much less on the White House website — “could create tension amid warming relations between the United States and Vietnam.”

I’m not sure I would get all uppity and crying about a silly old flag. I just don’t find it important enough to hold grudges. I’m pragmatical about this, and I view it as if someone mispronounced your sirname.

Asked if the experience in Vietnam offered lessons for Iraq, Bush said, “We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take awhile.”

I think the only lesson Bush got from Vietnam was “don’t snort cocaine while taking a piss”.

In domestic news, there has been going on a bit with the Gypsy community over here (see the NYT article here).

For our Slovene speaking friends, here’s a letter I got via email, allegedly from a citizen of the village that is most affected by the Gypsy settlement.

Lep pozdrav,

Ambrus

Ime te dolenjske vasi ste gotovo slišali. To pismo
pišem, ker so skrajno neprofesionalni slovenski mediji
popolnoma izkrivili realno sliko dejanskega problema.

Izseljeni Romi niso bili edini prebivalci tabora v
Dečji vasi. V tem taboru so se kar naprej
menjavali najrazličnejši ‘civili’, povečini
z zločinsko preteklostjo. Ker je lokacija tabora
dokaj na samem, je bila idealna za neke vrste azil z
vso mogočo sodrgo. Prav zato krajani ves čas
poudarjamo, da ti ljudje niso bili izseljeni zaradi
svoje narodnosti – to bi bilo skrajno
nepravično(!) – oditi so morali, ker so gojili,
zganjali in prikrivali kriminal. K razrasti le-tega je
med drugim pripomogla tudi velika oddaljenost
policijske postaje. Dogodki zadnjega tedna so bili
tako ukrep krajanov iz obupa, ki je sledil
stopnjevanju strahu do vrha. Veste, osnovne kulturne
razlike so bile s strani vaščanov sprejete pred
40 leti, ko so se Romi trajno naselili v Suhi krajini.
‘Razlike’ s katerimi pa ti ljudje danes tako grobo
kršijo zakon, še posebej tiste, ki predstavljajo
kršitev osnovnih človekovih pravic, niso bile in
nikakor ne smejo biti sprejemljive! Tekom let so se
poleg običajnih kraj pridelkov in živali, vrstile
tudi hujše protizakonite aktivnosti: vlomi in kraje,
najraje v hiše starejših ljudi, ki živijo sami,
več vlomov v okoliška župnišča, cestne
blokade z ostrim kamenjem ali deskami, polnimi
žebljev, kraja mobilnih telefonov, napad na gobarke,
grožnje z uperjeno puško v mimovozeči avtomobil,
izsiljevanja, podkrepljena z grožnjo, do boš ubit ali
posiljena, lansko leto je policija zasegla večje
število strelnega orožja in mamil, nedaven napad na
Jožeta Šinkovca pa je bil že drugi poskus umora v dveh
letih. To in podobno je krojilo naše vsakdanje
življenje. Zadnjo žrtev tega tabora so mediji
prikazali kot pretepaškega moškega – resnica pa je, da
je branil svojo zidanico pred dobro znanimi
vlomitelji. S tem si je nakopal maščevanje in
skorajšnjo smrt. Jožetu so se na glavni cesti v
blokado postavili trije avtomobili, za njim še dva,
tako da je bil ukleščen mednje ter na milost in
predvsem nemilost prepuščen Čmaku in
njegovim romskim kompanjonom; kaj je sledilo veste. Na
dejstvo, da ti z njive zmanjka kakšna glava zelja smo
se kar navadili, nihče pa se nikoli ne bo navadil
na to, da ti strežejo po življenju. Živeti v nenehnem
strahu je sila mučno. Če tega niste
doživeli, si ne morete predstavljati, kaj se godi v
človeku, ko med vožnjo ugleda uperjeno cev puške.
Jaz sem jo. Občutek tesnobe je nepojmljiv; Naj
ustavim? Peljem naprej? Naj kličem policijo? Ne,
kaj pa če me naslednjič ustavijo?! Gotovo
bodo vedeli, da sem jaz klicala…

Neverjetno kako hitro se je slovenska policija
organizirala za zaščito in varovanje tabora in
njegovih prebivalcev. Sprašujem se, kje je bila ta
javna služba med padanjem kola po Jožetovi glavi, kdo
je varoval njega, kdo je varoval domove, avtomobile,
njive in življenja vaščanov? Varuhu
človekovih pravic pa vse skupaj kar nekako ni
jasno. Ne samo, da ni bil v Ambrusu, ob nepreverjenih
dejstvih in opazovanju od daleč si drzne dajati
nekakšne pavšalne izjave in s tem grobo zavajati širšo
slovensko javnost. Ali pa preprosto ne loči med
etničnim sporom in bojem proti leglu kriminala.
Veste g. Hanžek, nihče od Romov ni bil napaden,
nihče ubit. Napaden je bil Jože Šinkovec iz
Ambrusa! Ko smo izvedeli, da bo do izselitve
končno prišlo, nismo čutili zmagoslavja. Ne.
Čutili smo veliko olajšanje. Zato je zadonela
Zdravljica. Naj rojak Suhokrajnčan prost bo vsak,
ne vrag zločinski, le pošten sosed naj bo mejak!

Da izseljeni skupini življenje v Postojni ne odgovarja
je razumljivo, saj nimajo raziskanega rajona,
»poslovnih« poznanstev in informacij o imetju
okoliškega prebivalstva. Medijem pa se bolj
problematična zdi skrb za perjad, ki je ostala v
taboru, kot Jožetovo zdravje. Močno upam, da
zaradi težkih poškodb glave ne bo imel trajnih
posledic. V kolikor preživi.

Dragi bralci, Ambruška zgodba je dolga več
desetletij, ne en teden. Zadnjih 12 let je potekal boj
za osnovno človekovo pravico – za mir. Za mir, ki
upam da ga bomo končno deležni. Žal pa se še
vedno bije še en boj – Jožetov boj za življenje. Zato,
Jože, drži se! Mi smo s tabo! Bog je s tabo! Drži se!

(zaradi varnosti) anonimna Ambrušanka

In a nut shell, this letter re-enforces what I’ve concluded on my own accord. Talk about convergence!
The last murder attempt wasn’t the cause that made the village rise up against the “Gypsy settlement” (Gypsies weren’t the only residents), it was just the last straw. The state failed to protect Ambrus villagers for decades and they of course had to take matters into their own hands. Then you have people from all over the place standing on both sides. People with my kind of experience with criminal tend to side with the people of Ambrus Fundamentally, only one side has to be right.

I watched a brief exerp from national assembley’s meeting, where they discussed various laws and knit picked on some of the more stomping points. I’m glad to see some people still using their heads. A number of parties pointed out that new tax law would overwhelmingly favour the Roman catholic church.

I wish they finally estabished a slovene “c-span”, where one could download sessions and listen to them on an iPod or an mp3 player. We finally have the technology to check on these crooked liars.

And I flipped throught the pages of a small local news paper, when I noticed that quite a few of candidates for major (local elections in a few weeks) beat the retired drum, flirting with elderly voters who constitute about 33% (I could have forgot the figure - I’ll check and correct if needed) of the current population. I just hope they realise that this may distance some of the potential younger voters (like myself).

A “traveller” Tomo Križnar (Kriznar) was arrested in Sudan, and Slovene president Drnovšek (Drnovsek) sent a special delegate down there to get him out. Apparently, they stuffed Kriznar into a car and left the delegate (Bekic) at the airport.

This is turning into one Charly Chaplin movie.

link

I thought I’d report some local stories to peeps outside our borders. That’s why I’ve created a new category, just to keep things tidy.

A bunch of Slovene citizens decided to build a small-ish house on the Croatian sea side (mostly Istra), or near it. The Croatian government has decided that they were build illegal, as most didn’t bother with building permits. They’ve been forced to tear them down. And I say, good!

Some 15yo kid shot at a cop and wounded him, and now the cops are getting threats. I have no sympathy for one or the other. No one is as good or bad as they say.