Czechs applaud Havel commemorating November 1989 events - ?eskéNoviny.cz »
Posted By gamahuche 1 year ago in NewsPrague: at a meeting commemorating the November 17, 1989 start of the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia of which he was a protagonist, former Czech President Vaclav Havel today warned against the infiltration of mafia into politics and defended the U.S. radar plan.
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gamahuche
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gamahuche1 year ago
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17th November is a complicated date for Czechs and a complicated time - now, in 1989 and in 1939! A day of hard memories and a day of new beginnings but with controversy attached and brutal repression added into the mix.
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Starting from now..
FTA:
He also expressed concern at people's opposition to the missile defence radar base the USA wants to install on Czech soil.
"I think it is a mistake that the radar has become a national topic," he said....
"I understand young people's need to rebel against something. Now they have found the radar, which I find quite pointless," Havel said.
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It actually is not specifically an issue about "young people". 68% of the Czech population are opposed to the Radar Base and the provocation against the Russians.
I'm a big fan of Havel's but also disagree with him on this issue. He feels that he is supporting the US - I believe that he's supporting a big US mistake. -
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gamahuche1 year ago
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But lets go back in history and understand that this was originally a holiday commemorating International Students Day and 1989 was the 50th anniversary of the death of Jan Opletal, a Czech student murdered by the German occupiers during World War II.
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This day in 1989,19 years ago also marked the beginning of the Velvet Revolution and so this should also be a day to celebrate that.
However that was a day of hideous street clashes when the police savagely attacked and beat hundreds of students who were protesting peacefully on a day which was - and remains - a national holiday, actually marking
In 89: "that event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from November 19 to late December. By November 20 the number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague had swollen from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated half-million. A two-hour general strike, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was held on November 27.With the collapse of other Communist governments, and increasing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced on November 28 that it would relinquish power and dismantle the single-party state. Barbed wire and other obstructions were removed from the border with West Germany and Austria in early December. On December 10, President Gustáv Husák appointed the first largely non-Communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948, and resigned. Alexander Dubcek was elected speaker of the federal parliament on December 28 and Václav Havel the President of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989.
In June 1990 Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections since 1946." [from Wikipedia] -
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gamahuche1 year ago
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The worst thing about the most recent democratic elections, two weeks ago, is that our "unreconstructed" Communist party - that is to say that they never were obliged to denounce the travesties of the past, as they were in other countries, will have seats in 2 regional districts and will support the Social Democrats in those districts and on the others. This is indeed a poisonous situation and one that Havel is right to denounce. HOWEVER he also personally bears considerable responsibility for not helping to ensure that the Communists recanted the sins of the past.
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gamahuche1 year ago
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Meanwhile we have to put up with the intolerably arrogant Vaclav Klaus, author of a global-warming denial book, profiteer of Westinghouse largesse for a nuclear power plant in sylvan South Bohemia, who has been currently disgracing us in Ireland with his euro-scepticism which is also manifested in his unwillingness to even fly an EU flag at Prague Castle to mark our 6-month tenure of the Presidency. He has just returned from Ireland where he infuriated his hosts there by making commin cause with their resident Euro-sceptic who has, for the time-being, sabotaged the implementation of the EU charter.
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100%
Radiofreeeuropa1 year ago
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Thanks for the insight. Democracy has it's ups and downs does it not? The voice of the people can be an alien one, sometimes they are just reactionary. Complexities can urge some folks to yearn for authoritarian figures who paint a simple picture with a very limited pallet.
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The US, as you are painfully aware I am certain, is emerging from a dark era of poor leadership that was primarily the fault of the people since they sort of voted for it. Very odd dynamics occur.
The problem with enlightened eras is they tend to decay.
Has Klaus remained popular? -
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