I had wondered if that might be the case, but I have just posted another comment on CiF (I haven’t been bothering much with it in recent weeks, having become rather obsessed with Media Lens instead), and I’m pretty sure the timestamp “33m ago” is far too long, even allowing for the time it took me to compose the comment.

The timestamp on the users end is the time that the post or reply was begun not when the user hits ‘post comment’. I’m fairly sure that is what is going on…..

— Hey ‘Slovenac’!

Slovenka. 🙂 Greetings to Macedonia.

The Guardian has a very poor understanding of the ‘Balkans’.

— I was branded a “Pro-Russian/Pro-Putin Troll”

I was branded a Putinbot. Apparently according to the Brits 90% Slovenes are Putinbots. Namely, it seems to me (judging from my conversations with others and comments on Slovene websites) that Slovenes overwhelmingly support Russia in relation to the Syria crisis.

I should say that in this case, even if tiny Slovenia is not a world player, we have quite direct interests in resolving the Syria crisis and stabilising Syria and the whole region, because the whole Balkan flow of refugees in now directed via tiny Slovenia (2 million people). Well, the migrants are also marching through tiny Macedonia with about the same population size as Slovenia, so I am sure you understand what I mean.

We have about 10,000 migrants per day entering Slovenia, which we register and fingerprint and take care of. If we extrapolate this burden relatively to the population size of other countries, this is equivalent to:

Germany (80 million inhabitants = 40-times larger than Slovenia) getting 400,000 migrants PER DAY
the UK (64 million inhabitants = 32-times larger than Slovenia) getting 320,000 migrants PER DAY

Note also that Slovenia with 0.5% of the population of the Schengen zone is now ‘defending’ the outer Schengen border and trying to keep order and prevent illegal entry of the migrants into the Schengen area.

Our land border with Croatia (the outer Schengen border) is 670 km long, and Slovenia only has about 8K police and 8K soldiers. Estimates is that even if we erected a border fence (which would be very difficult due to the terrain, and anyway we do not want it and it would not solve anything), we would need some 24K policemen/soldiers to guard the fenced border. Actually, according to our legislation the police rather than the army guards the border, so we would need 24K policemen. Mission impossible.

— (I’m Macedonian BTW)

When Yugoslavia still existed, I spent about two weeks in a summer research camp in the region of the Dojran Lake. What a wonderful place. And we, the Slovenes, also had a great relationship with the locals.

After Milošević rose to power in Yugoslavia, he repeatedly (at least four times) tried to remove Slovenia’s government/parliament via a military coup. But according to the Yugoslav constitution, to deploy the Yugoslav army on Slovenia’s territory, at least 5 out of 8 part of Yugoslavia had to agree with declaring a state of emergency in Slovenia (in which the situation was actually very peaceful). Milošević never got the needed 5 votes, also because Macedonia always stood its ground even under severe pressure and personal threats to your representatives. The voting always went 4 vs 4. The 4 parts in which always sided with Milošević’s plans for a coup in Slovenia were Serbia, Vojvodina, Kosovo and Montenegro (Milošević had previously illegally replaced the leaderships of the three non-Serbia parts with his own supporters, so he controlled these 4 votes). The 4 votes against Milošević’s plans were: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia. I am thankful to Macedonia for never giving in to Milošević’s extremely aggressive pressures. I am old enough to have lived through these events. I do not know whether you are old enough too, but anyway I just wanted to let you know in case you forgot about Macednia’s position in those times or never knew about it.

Oh, I should also say that I am grateful for having grown up in this wonderfully diverse Yugoslavia. What a melting pot of cultures.

In relation to Macedonia, I love the 7/8 folk rhytm (1-2-3-1-2-1-2) which is so very different to Slovene traditional music. So here are my timeless favourites with this rhytm:

The WWII partisan song Sivi sokole https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLlzP5K3AVU about the heroic battle on the Sutjeska river (Case Black). The video is from a wonderful concert of partisan songs in Ljubljana on 27 April 2013 (we celebrate the uprising of Slovene nation against the WWII occupiers on 27 April 1941). In this particular concert, the top Slovene politicians were sitting in the front row (the president, the president of the parliament, the PM etc.)

For those not familiar with Yugoslav languages and WWII history, see the English translation of the lyrics and the historical background of the Sutjeska battele here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Black#In_song

The ‘unofficial anthem’ of Yugoslavia in the 1980s Jugoslavijo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxdLbSqxkrc (a sort of folk pop)

English translation of the lyrics: http://lyricstranslate.com/en/od-vardara-pa-do-triglava-vardar-triglav.html

Yugoslav rock hit Lipe cvatu by Bjelo Dugme live 1987 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVC2gXTRPOY, which is actually an old Macedonian song. “Grom ga ubio” & “krvi mojom plavom seljačkom”. Ha ha ha. Just so wonderfully powerful.

English translation of the lyrics: http://lyricstranslate.com/en/lipe-cvatu-linden-trees-are-bloom.html

Hey ‘Slovenac’!

Same here, I don’t comment on the Guardian website for awhile now…must be a year (or more) since I was branded a “Pro-Russian/Pro-Putin Troll” and was pre-moderated because my comments didn’t fit the narrative that The Guardian is pushing… Finally – I just gave up commenting or even reading The Guardian.

(I’m Macedonian BTW)