Free Republic

My dear fellow citizens, For forty years you heard from my predecessors on this day different variations on the same theme: how our country was flourishing, how many million tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you. Our country is not flourishing. The enormous creative and spiritual potential of our nations is not being used sensibly. Entire branches of industry are producing goods that are...

For Vaclav Havel, and for his people, everything changed in 1989, the year of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, when he led the extraordinary display of people power which toppled the ruling communist regime. The world watched with astonishment as, within weeks, the dissident playwright became president. Vaclav Havel was born in 1936. His father was a successful engineer and, by his own admission, young Vaclav was a pampered child from a wealthy family. *Drama critic* But when the communists came to power he saw his family lose everything. The new government decided the young Havel was "too bourgeois" to be allowed...

Wednesday October 13, 2010 World’s First Global Atheistic Civilization Headed for Disaster: Former Czech President By Hilary WhiteROME, October 13, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The world’s first global and deliberately atheistic civilization is heading for disaster, the first president of the modern Czech Republic told an audience this week. Vaclav Havel, one of the most respected political and literary figures in recent European history, said that the West “has lost its connection with the infinite and with eternity,” with the result that “endless consumer collectivism is giving birth to a new type of loneliness.”The West’s disconnection from eternity, he said,...

<p>IF YOU ENJOYED the election crisis of 2000, you’re going to love what Democrat leaders are cooking up for November.</p> <p>"George Soros has purchased the Democratic Party," charges Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson. (2) Some might dismiss Miss Iverson's comment as hyberbole. However, Soros' massive soft-money contributions have indisputably given him power over Democrat strategy.</p>

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

NEW YORK CITY - Speakers at a conference on climate change are making the case that the alarmism behind the global-warming bandwagon is politically motivated, has nothing to do with science, and could affect the sovereignty of the U.S. The second annual International Conference on Climate Change hosted by The Heartland Institute is well under way in New York City. More than 700 registrants have gathered in the Big Apple to hear more than 70 scientists -- representing the views of tens of thousands of their colleagues -- make the argument that media and environmental advocacy groups have it all...

Prague (dpa) - Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a rare vocal global- warming sceptic among heads of state, is "somewhat surprised" that former US vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, the president's spokesman Petr Hajek said in a statement. "The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," the statement said. "It rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace." Klaus said in a recent speech that environmentalists' efforts to halt global warming "fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity." The Czech president publicly expresses doubt on...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and anti-communist dissident who went directly from jail to the leadership of his country in the 1989 Velvet Revolution, has kept himself busy since retiring from the presidency. For several years he has been the host of an annual conference, Forum 2000, which brings together a diverse set of public figures to debate international issues. Because Havel is one of that endangered species, the pro-American European, he invites a genuinely diverse group of debaters. Because of his vast prestige his invitations are very rarely refused. Hence the former director of the...

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...

With the European Union agreeing on January 31 to lift the sanctions that it imposed on Cuba in 2003 after Fidel Castro imprisoned 75 political dissidents, European officials will be resuming their visits to the island. Spain's government pushed for the policy switch that critics have labeled a victory for appeasement. Cuban dissidents and exiles, Spanish opposition parties, human rights organizations and former Czech President Vaclav Havel have denounced the new policy as an abomination. Still, in foreign affairs as complicated as those involving Cuba, there are rarely any clear-cut victories. Madrid's proposal triggered a welcome and enlightening debate on...

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...

It is exactly 60 years since the world first heard of Rudolf Vrba’s and Alfred Wetzler’s successful escape from Auschwitz, an escape that brought to light accounts of Hitler’s extermination camps. The testimony given by Vrba and Wetzler forced representatives of the democratic world to face facts that many did not want to believe, even after the end of the war. Thanks to Vrba, Wetzler and countless numbers of other witnesses, the horrors and extent of the Nazi final solution are universally known. Like the Nazi Holocaust, the crimes and brutal reality of Soviet communism were also outlined and understood...

The heroes of Eastern Europe's anti-communist movement yesterday denounced Fidel Castro's "Stalinist" regime in Cuba and demanded action from the West to encourage its peaceful overthrow. Lech Walesa, the former Polish president, Vaclav Havel, the former Czechoslovak president, and Arpad Goncz, the former Hungarian president, made their call in a letter to The Daily Telegraph and other leading newspapers abroad. The letter from men who were themselves victims of communist oppression will bring a furious response from the Cuban regime. It is acutely sensitive to attacks from countries which were once its closest allies. Over the past decade, it has...

<p>LONDON &#8212; The heroes of Eastern Europe's anti-communist movement denounced Fidel Castro's "Stalinist" regime in Cuba yesterday and demanded action from the West to encourage its peaceful overthrow.</p> <p>Former Polish President Lech Walesa, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and former Hungarian President Arpad Goncz made their call in a letter to the Daily Telegraph and several other leading European newspapers.</p>

Last fall, as the United States rumbled toward war against Saddam Hussein, literary reviews and higher-brow magazines wrestled with an intriguing if unlikely hypothetical: What would George Orwell say if he were here today? Christopher Hitchens, the fire-breathing British journalist who kick-started the discussion with his book Why Orwell Matters, suggested that a contemporary Eric Blair "would have seen straight through the characters who chant ‘No War On Iraq’" and helped the rest of us to "develop the fiber to call Al-Qaeda what it actually is." Washington Post book reviewer George Scialabba stated confidently that "Orwell would associate himself with...

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...

<p>OSLO, Norway (AP) — The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has received 150 nominations for the 2003 award, with a majority of nominations coming from North America, committee secretary Geir Lundestad said Tuesday.</p> <p>Nominations, which had to be postmarked by Feb. 1, are made by past laureates, committee members, university professors and select organizations. They're kept secret for 50 years, although those making them often announce their choice.</p>

Czech President Vaclav Havel spoke for the first time Monday to the man he is championing for a Nobel Peace Prize -- from a telephone behind the reception desk at the Biltmore Hotel, just before his black-tie dinner. ''I send my warmest embrace to you and the Czech people,'' Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas told Havel. ``Tell them that the Cuban people are already on the path to liberty.''Havel replied with a promise of ``my support, and that I hope that all your goals for the Varela Project come true.''Payá cousin Francisco de Armas, acting as an English-Spanish translator, relayed the exchange,...