Free Republic

In these decadent times when powerful people in the West cannot conceive of any response to totalitarian jihad other than rank appeasement, and when the name of Che Guevara, a bloodthirsty Stalinist and enemy of freedom, is synonymous with heroism, it is vital that free people be familiar with — and honor — the examples of those valiant few who, living under totalitarianism, have stood up to it with a courage that today’s appeasers of Islam could hardly imagine. Among the greatest of these heroes is Vaclav Havel. Born in 1936, Havel spent his early years under the two major...

Archaeologists have uncovered parts of Prague's oldest ramparts, dating back to the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries, thus verifying the then Jewish globetrotter Ibrahim ibn Jaqub's description of Prague as "a town made of stone and lime," the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) wrote Monday... The archaeologists uncovered the remnants of wall in the cellar of the Academy of Performing Arts building, 5 metres underground. A thousand years ago the walls were part of one of Prague's main entrance gates, though which the town was entered from the western and souther directions... Prague, including its ramparts, attracted Ibrahim...

jdkf dkPRAGUE, Czech Republic: Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil's Bible — a medieval manuscript said to have been written 800 years ago with the devil's help — has returned to Prague after an absence of 359 years. And Czechs were eager to see it, officials said Friday.The priceless piece, considered the biggest medieval book, was taken from the Prague Castle by Swedish troops at the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. It is in Prague on loan from Sweden's Royal Library in Stockholm. It was put on display under high security at the Czech National Library.Its...

Czech Parliament Unlikely to Legalize Euthanasia By Hilary White PRAGUE, August 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Czech Chamber of Deputies, the equivalent of the House of Commons, are unlikely to pass a measure that would legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Of 186 deputies from the 200-seat Chamber, 92 said they did not want physician-assisted suicide to become legal with sixty deputies supporting legalization and 34 undecided. The daily paper, Mladá fronta Dnes, reported in July that the highest support for euthanasia (70 percent) is among the followers of the rightist Civic Democrats (ODS) of Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek. ODS Deputy, Boris...

A Date Worth Remembering: August 20, 1968 by Krzys Wasilewski On August 20, 1968, the forces of the Warsaw Pact crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia to provide “fraternal help,” or rather, reinstate a hard-line communist regime. In a matter of two weeks, 200,000 soldiers from Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union quenched the liberal rebellion, burying the hopes of easing the Soviet grip in Central Europe for decades. Although it lacked the geographic importance of Poland or East Germany, Czechoslovakia still remained an important place on the map of the USSR’s influence. Shortly after the end of...

Czechs remember Russians abducted by Soviet secret police 18.5.2007 - Rob Cameron In Prague last week there was a brief ceremony to commemorate the thousands of Russian émigrés illegally abducted by the Soviet secret police at the close of World War Two. The abductions began as soon as the Red Army began to liberate Czechoslovakia in 1944, and continued long after the Soviets arrived in Prague in May 1945. It's one of the most mysterious chapters in Czechoslovakia's 20th century history, but the fate of those abducted has not been forgotten. A military band played and the wind blew through...

WARSAW, Poland - The United States has entered a decisive phase in a plan to set up missile defense sites in Eastern Europe — a system Washington says is aimed at protecting itself and its allies against potential attacks from the Middle East. But the prospect of sophisticated U.S. radar and interceptor systems in formerly communist Eastern Europe has led Russian military leaders to warn of a new arms race. The system "would create a clear threat for Russia," Col. Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, the chief of Russia's Space Forces, warned Monday. The United States told Polish leaders it wants to...

Jan Palach's suicide remembered 38 years on [16-01-2007] By Rob Cameron Tuesday marks the 38th anniversary of the self-immolation of Jan Palach, the young student whose suicide transformed him into a symbol of Czechoslovak resistance following the 1968 Soviet-led invasion. Jan Palach would have turned 59 this year he not taken his own life. His legacy, however, lives on. On January 16th, 1969, a 20-year-old student from Prague's Philosophy Faculty set off for Wenceslas Square, the city's busiest thoroughfare. The country was still under occupation by Soviet troops five months after the invasion. The purge of reformers within the ranks...

Stories of Injustice - those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it [02-11-2006] By Rob Cameron It's just a few weeks now before November 17th, the seventeenth anniversary of the beginning of the Velvet Revolution, when peaceful demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of people brought the country's communist regime to its knees. Seventeen years on, coming to terms with the past is still difficult. One problem is the country's schoolbooks, which give only the briefest glimpse of the indignities and cruelties of the communist era. But the Czech NGO People in Need is trying to change all...

The Czech National Day: celebrating a state that no longer exists 27.10.2006 - David Vaughan The 28th October is an unlikely date for Czechs to be celebrating their national holiday. After all, it commemorates the founding of a state that no longer exists. Czechoslovakia was established in 1918 with the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, and was relegated to the history books 74 years later, when Czechs and Slovaks - or rather their political leaders - decided to go their separate ways at the end of 1992. While Slovaks quickly forgot their old...

Soviet Ghosts Haunt the World Council of Churches By Mark D. Tooley FrontPageMagazine.com | August 25, 2006 As one of his formative spiritual experiences, a top official in the World Council of Churches (WCC) fondly recalls attending a Soviet-front group’s conference in the old Czechoslovakia. In a recent official WCC news report, the Swiss-based ecumenical council interviews Rev. Walter Altmann, a Brazilian Lutheran theologian, former head of the Latin American Council of Churches, and the new moderator the WCC's totalitarian-sounding "central committee." Currently, he also heads the 700,000 member Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil. "As a young...

Warsaw Pact invasion commemorated TOP Slovak officials including MPs and President Ivan Gasparovic commemorated the 38th anniversary of the invasion of the former Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces on August 21, 1968. Gasparovic laid wreaths at SNP Square and Šafárikovo Square in Bratislava. Two people were killed by the invading troops at these locations - Peter Legner on SNP Square and Danka Košanová on Šafárikovo Square. "This event was a black day in the history of the Slovak nation and of the former Czechoslovakia," Gašparovic said. MPs from the opposition Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) were also among the politicians paying...

This Day In History SOVIETS INVADE CZECHOSLOVAKIA: August 20, 1968 On the night of August 20, 1968, approximately 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring"--a brief period of liberalization in the communist country. Czechoslovakians protested the invasion with public demonstrations and other non-violent tactics, but they were no match for the Soviet tanks. The liberal reforms of First Secretary Alexander Dubcek were repealed and "normalization" began under his successor Gustav Husak. Pro-Soviet communists seized control of Czechoslovakia's democratic government in 1948. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin imposed his will on Czechoslovakia's communist leaders, and...

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A one-legged piano and a chorus was all Jewish prisoners at the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia needed to express their defiance of the Nazis. Sixty-three years ago, Jewish prisoner and conductor Rafael Schachter gathered 150 fellow Jews in a basement at the camp to perform Giuseppe Verdi's "Requiem" for the Nazis in Latin. Throughout the piece was a plea for liberation. The prisoners felt safe singing it because the Nazis did not get the meaning the Jewish people put behind it, said Natalie Pyle, a music student who will be a junior at The Catholic University...

The struggle over Palestine, with contradictory promises made by Britain to both Jews and Arabs, fueled four Arab-Israeli wars, brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, contributed to the use of oil and terrorism as political weapons, and was used as a pretext (amongst others) for Islamists dedicated to Israel's and the West's destruction.

Strongman sorry for Prague Spring From correspondents in Prague August 22, 2005 FORMER Polish communist strongman, Wojciech Jaruzelski, has apologised to the Czech Republic and Slovakia for Poland's role in the Soviet-led invasion in August 1968 that crushed a pro-democracy movement. "I have felt bad, I have been tormented by that," said Jaruzelski during a broadcast on Czech public television, 37 years to the day after the invasion of then Czechoslovakia. Troops from the Soviet Union and four former Warsaw Pact countries squashed the so-called "Prague Spring", a movement led by Slovak reformer Alexander Dubcek that tried to put "a...

Back in the days of the Hapsburg Empire, there was a town in Bohemia called Budweis. The people in that town were called Budweisers and the town had a brewery which produced beer with the same name -- but different from the American Budweiser. Like many communities in Bohemia during that era, Budweis had people of both Czech and German ancestries, speaking different languages, though many were also bilingual. They got along pretty well and most people there thought of themselves as Budweisers, rather than as Czechs or Germans. But that would later change -- for the worse -- not...

Back in the days of the Hapsburg Empire, there was a town in Bohemia called Budweis. The people in that town were called Budweisers and the town had a brewery which produced beer with the same name -- but different from the American Budweiser.

On Sunday Aung San Suu Kyi will celebrate her 60th birthday, which in a Buddhist culture marks an important milestone in one's life. I would like to meet her and give her a rose like the one she is seen holding in a photograph in my study. Such an ordinary wish, however, in the case of such an extraordinary woman as Aung San Suu Kyi may seem a silly idea. The last time I wrote about her in The Post [op-ed, Oct. 12, 2003] was shortly after "unknown" assassins tried to deprive her of her life and Burmese generals put...

An American Traitor: Guilty As Charged By Henry Mark Holzer and Erika HolzerFrontPageMagazine.com | June 10, 2005For three decades Jane Fonda obfuscated, distorted and lied about virtually everything connected with her wartime trip to North Vietnam: her motive, her acts, her intent, and her contribution to the Communists’ war effort.  With the aid of clever handlers, she so successfully suppressed and spun her conduct in Hanoi that many Americans didn’t know what she had done there, and, more important, the legal significance. Three years ago, our book, “Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam (McFarland & Co.), laid bare...

Based on what you'll read in this report, we can clearly establish that not only Havel was privileged to receive certain favors from the communists [his frequent visits of the capitalist West Germany, Austria and so forth - ordinary people would not be allowed to travel there during the openly communist era], but also Havel was glad to co-operate with these communist criminals...

Payouts due for Prague victims Soviet tanks remained in Czechoslovakia until 1991 Victims of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia are to receive compensation from the Czech government. President Vaclav Klaus approved a law allowing descendants of those killed to ask for a one-off payment of up to 150,000 koruna (£3,400 or 5,000 euros). Those injured or raped by members of the invading armies between 20 August 1968 and 27 June 1991 can claim around 70,000 koruna (£1,587 or 2,331 euros). The 1968 invasion put an abrupt end to the "Prague Spring" liberal reforms. Moscow feared liberalisation in Czechoslovakia would...

  For Immediate ReleaseMay 7, 2005 President's Radio Address      Audio THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. On Sunday and Monday, I will attend ceremonies in The Netherlands and Russia, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of V-E Day. These events will celebrate a great triumph of good over evil. We will never forget the acts of courage that made possible the liberation of a continent, or the heroes who fought in the cause of freedom. And we honor the brave Americans and allied troops who humbled tyrants, defended the innocent, and liberated the oppressed. By their courage and sacrifice, they showed the...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. .................................................................. .................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should...

Archbishop Was Allegedly Agent Thu Feb 10 By ANDREA DUDIKOVA, Associated Press Writer BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - A Roman Catholic archbishop was listed as an agent for the former communist-era secret service, according to an official from a government institute that is making the service's files public. Jan Sokol, now the head of the Bratislava-Trnava archdiocese, was registered by the secret service as an agent in the spring of 1989, just months before he was appointed archbishop in then-communist Czechoslovakia, Miroslav Lehky of the Institute of the National Memory said in a telephone interview Thursday. Prior to that, the service had...

...Vladimir Putin... has again exhibited his contempt for democratic rule and his tin ear for the angry opposition in the world's democracies.... Ukraine was starved into submission by Stalin 72 years ago, but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence. It was not, however, an independence willingly accepted by Russian hardliners.... The massive outpouring of demonstrators in what they call the "Orange Revolution" is an attempt to replicate the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia... Serbia... the Berlin Wall, the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity victory in Poland. There was one significant failure too,...

...In Iraq, John Kerry — who used to say that Saddam Hussein posed a genuine threat to America because he surely possessed weapons of mass destruction — would have imposed a "global test" before committing forces to protect U.S. security... [H]e would not be prepared to act until nations like France and Germany gave the go-ahead. Indeed, he stresses the infinite value of conversation — calling for "a summit of all our allies," much as he once begged the first President Bush to send someone to Baghdad in the firm belief that Saddam Hussein could be talked out of Kuwait....

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...

Vaclav Havel has opened an international conference in Prague on promoting democracy in Cuba. He told delegates that Cuba's situation would change soon and that opponents to Fidel Castro's 45-year rule should prepare for the end of "dictatorship". The meeting is also attended by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and former Latin American leaders. A Cuban diplomat told the BBC that the US was behind the event, which she called an unwanted meddling. In the 1970s and 1980s Mr Havel was one of the most prominent dissidents within Europe's communist bloc. He was in office for 12 years...

Dozens of people have been killed in a massive military clampdown in Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact countries. Several members of the liberal Czechoslovak leadership have been arrested, including Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek. The Soviet news agency, Tass, claims "assistance" was requested by members of the Czechoslovak Government and Communist party leaders to fight "counter-revolutionary forces". But in a secret radio address, Czechoslovak President Ludvik Svoboda condemned the occupation by Warsaw Pact allies as illegal and committed without the government's consent. US President Lyndon Johnson said the invasion was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter and that the...

Holocaust survivor Sol Rosner leads those who attended the Holocaust remembrance service Wednesday on Fort Huachuca in the Mourner's Kaddish. The traditional Jewish prayer was recited to honor the more than 6 million Jews who were killed by the Nazis during World War II. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review) FORT HUACHUCA - For Sol Rosner, leading a group of people in the Mourner's Kaddish was difficult. Standing on the stage of the post's Cochise Theater Wednesday, he spoke the traditional Jewish prayer in honor of the more than 6 million Jews who were murdered by Nazis during World War II. "It is...

SOVIET TERROR LINKS FOUND IN LEBANON Our major media have long ignored or downplayed evidence linking the Soviet Union and its satellites to international terrorism. When Robert Moss, co- author of The Spike, told an international conference on terrorism held in Jerusalem in 1981 that the PLO had become a Soviet surrogate in the Middle East, the reaction of the representatives of the press was one of cynicism mixed with hostility. Wall Street Journal correspondent Susan Weaver explained the negative reaction to Moss's statement, saying that linking the KGB with world terrorism through the PLO "cast a dark shadow on...

PRAGUE, Nov. 6 - Czech police said on Thursday they were holding three men who had attempted to smuggle 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) of the plastic explosive Semtex, a gun and other items into neighbouring Austria. Experts said the amount of Semtex -- a highly potent Czech-made explosive with a record of being used by guerrilla groups -- was enough to bring down an aircraft. A police spokeswoman said the group tried to cross the border in a car late on Wednesday evening. All were carrying Czech passports. "The behaviour of the driver was very unusual during customs clearance and...

BAMBERG, Germany — A new training area provided new opportunities to soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 33rd Field Artillery Regiment. The unit, which normally holds exercises at the Grafenwöhr Training Area in Germany, began training April 30 in Czech Republic. The exercise, which ends Wednesday, involved about two weeks of preparatory training before the soldiers got the opportunity for some live-fire exercises, according to Lt. Col. Michael Miklos, 1st Battalion commander. The exercise at the Hradiste complex allowed the unit to expand its training, Miklos said. “With the live fire on [Saturday], we were able to mass the entire...

WASHINGTON - Somewhere in the United States live a few former spies from the communist government of Czechoslovakia, which passed into history in 1989. When officials of the new Czech Republic tried to recall them, they simply refused. They had grown accustomed to their lives in America, they said, and did not want to abandon their families. The Czech government decided to leave them alone. The spies were sleeper agents who had never been activated. The communist government, a hard-line treaty ally of the Soviet Union, had planned to order them to duty in the event of a crisis or...

Czech television has marked the May Day holiday, international workers’ day, by broadcasting 24 hours of communist television in a mocking and nostalgic retrospective on the country’s years of Marxist-Leninist rule.The holiday coincided with the 50th anniversary of the establishment of television in the former Czechoslovakia.While 10,000 diehard communists rallied under the red flag at one of Prague’s parks - where they were pelted with eggs by opponents - the absurdities of communist-era propaganda were pilloried on television.Uncut film of the 1989 demonstrations which toppled the communist government was followed by the censored version shown to television viewers in the...

Toogood Reports [Weekender, February 23, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ When I lived in then-West Germany from 1980-1985, my German girlfriend's father, Alois, was a (conservative) Christian Democrat and union man who had originally been a farmer in Bohemia. After centuries as a German province, after The War Bohemia (Boehmen) was awarded to Czechoslovakia, a nation which had itself been slapped together out of parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which the Allies dismantled after World War I. My girlfriend's mother, Ingrid, was a farm girl from Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien), which likewise after the war was awarded, after centuries as a...

http://ToogoodReports.com/ Call me a Cold War sentimentalist — but smile when you say it. I never felt so alive, as when I was passing through Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall, my heart in my throat, between free, West Berlin, and its garrisoned sister city in the East.And how I lived, with a few American dollars in my pocket, on the other side of The Wall. Two weeks ago, on Joe Millionaire, I saw golddiggers and the ditchdigger spend nights in the sort of four-star hotels I once stayed in. In June, 1989, just months before The Wall fell, I...

While discussing an upcoming article in the December 2002 Vanity Fair, David Rose (senior editor/VF) tells Katie "The Affable One" Couric that a New York Times article from October 2002 about Czech President Havel's remarks on Iraq and hijacker Mohammed Atta is a "fabrication".

Bush urges NATO to stand against Iraq President says it's possible to avoid war 11/20/2002 By G. ROBERT HILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News PRAGUE, Czech Republic - In this locked-down Bohemian capital patrolled by U.S. F-16 jets, President Bush exhorted NATO allies to stand with him in a "coalition of the willing" against Iraq's Saddam Hussein so that war might be averted. During a news conference with Czech President Vaclav Havel, Bush said it is possible to avoid war. "If the collective will of the world is strong, we can achieve disarmament peacefully," the president said. But, Bush...