On Sunday, June 17, Antonis Samaras walked into the press centre as the winner of the repeated Greek parliamentary election. It was late at night, and the leader of the conservative New Democracy party was flanked by a gaggle of sweaty and decidedly rotund admirers. To a clued-in observer, the very girth of these men was a signal that the sordid operation jointly engineered by the international financial institutions, Bruxelles,...

Priznam. Nisem objektiven. Oseben sem in krivi smo, ker smo v prejšnjem mandatu delali državne proslave. Delali smo jih s Sašom Podgorškom in Iztokom Kovačem, Edvardom Clugom in Danilom Roškerjem, Nedo R. Bric in Iztokom Mlakarjem, bolnico Franjo in Trubarjevim Katekizmom, primorskimi partizani in Tigrovci, Igorjem Zupetom in Vladom Kreslinom, Tokcem in Tomijem, pesniki in plesalci, Juretom Zrnecem in Igorjem Gajičem, Majdo Širco in Aleksejem Loosom, s člani odbora za državne proslave in s predstavniki vseh ključnih političnih ustanov v tej državi....

izstopiš iz drvečega trolejbusa. ustaviš se na trati.
pogledaš v krošnjo.
zavzdihneš.
enonogi golob kavsne v košček nečesa.
približaš se stolpnici.
jo objameš.
objameš in previdno izvlečeš iz granitne podlage.
previdno in počasi.
bojiš se, da ne bi vznemiril stanovalcev.
spodnji vogal vtakneš v usta.
naprej ne gre.
tako je vedno....

When Stojan Pelko invited me to this event, he asked me to be provocative. And I certainly will. We started with 40 minutes of self-congratulatory ritual introductions. Not a single thing was said that was not already known. I know that this is a ritual but perhaps the time has come to change the rituals. That is where culture and ideology are: in unwritten rituals.

Let me bring up another issue....

A year and a half after the Tunisian greengrocer Mohamed Bouazizi set set himself aflame and thereby triggered the Arab spring, the democratic change in the Middle East and in Northern Africa has ground to a dramatic halt.

Two weeks ago, the Egyptian judicial system sentenced Hosni Mubarak and his former Interior Minister Habib al Adly to life imprisonment. In last January, in those dangerous days when police-employed snipers were picking off protesters in the middle of Cairo while professional thugs brutally tortured hundreds of Mubarak’s opponents,...