Musikmesse Warm Up Party Jon Hammond Band Jazzkeller

*WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

http://ia341335.us.archive.org/3/items/JonHammondMusikmesseWarmUpPartyJonHammondBandJazzkeller/JazzkellerPartyCZKM.m4v

http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=558692101#/video/video.php?v=223833017101

Musikmesse Warm Up Party Jon Hammond Band Jazzkeller Frankfurt
Czechoslovakian Salsa Song
Kevin Mauder (he plays louder!) tenor sax
Joe Berger guitar
Heinz Lichius drums
Jon Hammond XB-2 organ
© http://www.jonhammondband.com

jazzkeller frankfurt, musikmesse, jon hammond, band, czechoslovakia, organ, party, hammondcast, ascap, xb-2, XK-3c, XK-1, Suzuki, HammondCast, KYOU Radio

Musikmesse Warm Up Party Jon Hammond Band Jazzkeller

*WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

http://ia341335.us.archive.org/3/items/JonHammondMusikmesseWarmUpPartyJonHammondBandJazzkeller/JazzkellerPartyCZKM.m4v

http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=558692101#/video/video.php?v=223833017101

Musikmesse Warm Up Party Jon Hammond Band Jazzkeller Frankfurt
Czechoslovakian Salsa Song
Kevin Mauder (he plays louder!) tenor sax
Joe Berger guitar
Heinz Lichius drums
Jon Hammond XB-2 organ
© http://www.jonhammondband.com

jazzkeller frankfurt, musikmesse, jon hammond, band, czechoslovakia, organ, party, hammondcast, ascap, xb-2, XK-3c, XK-1, Suzuki, HammondCast, KYOU Radio

(This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75)

August 1942 – Piotrkow, Poland.

The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and children of Piotrkow’s Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square.

Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.

‘Whatever you do,’ Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, ‘don’t tell them your age. Say you’re sixteen.

‘I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker.

An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, and then asked my age.

‘Sixteen,’ I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood. My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people.

I whispered to Isidore, ‘Why?’

He didn’t answer. I ran to Mama’s side and said I wanted to stay with her.

‘No, ’she said sternly.

‘Get away. Don’t be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.’

She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her. My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.

‘Don’t call me Herman anymore.’ I said to my brothers. ‘Call me 94983.’

I was put to work in the camp’s crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald’s sub-camps near Berlin.

One morning I thought I heard my mother’s voice. ‘Son,’ she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.’

Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.

I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German. ‘Do you have something to eat?’

She didn’t understand.

I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life.

She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat – a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.

We didn’t dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn’t know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.

‘Don’t return,’ I told the girl that day. ‘We’re leaving.’

I turned toward the barracks and didn’t look back, didn’t even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I’d never learned, the girl with the apples. We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed.

On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I’d survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.

But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived.

I’m not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person’s goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none.

My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.

Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I’d opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.

One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. ‘I’ve got a date. She’s got a Polish friend. Let’s double date.’

A blind date? Nah, that wasn’t for me.

But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma.

I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn’t so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life. The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with.

Turned out she was wary of blind dates too!

We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn’t remember having a better time. We piled back into Sid’s car, Roma and I sharing the backseat.

As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, ‘Where were you,’ she asked softly, ‘during the war?’

‘The camps,’ I said. The terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.

She nodded. ‘My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,’ she told me. ‘My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.’

I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.

‘There was a camp next to the farm.’ Roma continued. ‘I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.’

What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. ‘What did he look like? I asked.

‘He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.’

My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be. ‘Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?’

Roma looked at me in amazement. ‘Yes!’

‘That was me!’

I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn’t believe it! My angel.

‘I’m not letting you go.’ I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn’t want to wait.

‘You’re crazy!’ she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week.

There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I’d found her again, I could never let her go.

That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.

Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach, Florida

This story is being made into a movie called “The Fence.”

Obama And His Appointees Dismantling US
Article: The Bulletin

President Barack Hussein Obama is proceeding to destroy America and has opened up a six-front war to do so:

1. He has a Democratic controlled Congress that is willing to rubber-stamp his wildest schemes, without even reading them…as we’ve already seen. The Democratic Party is now aiding and abetting the demeaning and destruction of America and has become the voice of leftist extremism. The moderates have disappeared or been transformed, issuing only occasional squeaking and whining before following the liberal party line drawn by Mr. Obama. Where have all the Democratic moderates gone?

Oh, this one’s easy. You see, with most politicians; they can be bought off. Millions of dollars here, earmarks there.

Mary Landrieu

Personal interests are what it’s all about; not what’s in the best interest of the nation. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, for example, got $300 million for her vote. Roland Burris has his hand out in hopes of receiving some sort of handout; even though he isn’t exactly… liked among the Washington elite. When that doesn’t work; they resort to fear tactics and threats. Example? Ben Nelson of Nebraska. The White House had threatened to shut down Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base if Nelson didn’t shut his hole and vote with the Democrats. Why? Because that’s how they roll. They can’t get this bullshit of a bill passed the right way… THE MORAL WAY…you know; everyone has a say, nobody is paid off, no threats are made… they have to fight dirty.

Another thing I want to mention is the whole “Democratic controlled Congress” thing. Everyone is so quick to point out the “fuck ups” of George W. Bush; but they so conveniently dismiss the fact that the President cannot do ANYTHING without the support of the Congress. For the majority of the end of Bush’s presidency; Congress was Democratically controlled. I’ve heard so many people dog on Republicans and Conservatives for a variety of problems they’ve had with Bush and his Presidency, but again… Democratic congress, you biscuitheads. Your fingers are pointed at the wrong source. (Yes, this means you too, Green Day)

2. Mr. Obama has immense executive authority, which he has already used to damage the country. One notable example is his decision to try terrorists in New York City, thereby giving the terrorists the premier platform to broadcast their propaganda and recruit Islamic radicals to their cause. Another example is cap and trade by fiat of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), rather than Congressional action.

Well, normally a president has to work through Congress; but not in His Majesty’s case. He can just SHAZAM his way through life. The rules don’t apply to him. The constitution doesn’t apply to him. The will of the American people aren’t important to him. The only thing that’s important to him is… well…. him. Of course he’s going to slob the knob of every Islamic radical he can. They are his people. He’s made it NO secret that he is a terrorist sympathizer. He promised throughout the campaign to close GITMO; which was a safe place to keep these Jihadist fucks to protect American citizens from another attack like the one we all witnessed on September 11th 2001.

Just a reminder. In case you forgot.

The one where 3,000 of our American brothers and sisters were massacred in the name of Jihad. But, that’s just one of many campaign promises he fell back on. He didn’t close GITMO. He moved it. To America. Right on our own soil. He’s giving NON-AMERICANS… no, worse that that, he’s giving ANTI-AMERICANS rights and liberties that we all enjoy thanks to the very document that BHussein HATES. The U.S. Constitution. Where in the Constitution does it say that we have to give enemy combatants Miranda Rights? Where does it say that non-Americans are protected by our AMERICAN CONSTITUTION? It’s NOT a WORLD Constitution. It’s the American Constitution. If other nations want to live like Americans; a life of freedom, democracy, liberty, and choice… then they can sit their asses down and draft their OWN constitution. There’s no free-riding on ours. Well, ideally anyway. Now he’s going to TRY these bastards in the very place they committed the most heinous crimes imaginable.

3. He is filling the White House, the executive branch and

Van Jones

the court system with an army of radicals, socialists, Communists, Marxists, Maoists, and America-haters. The most outrageous example was Van Jones, the avowed Communist and believer that 9/11 was an American plot fashioned by President George W. Bush. Van Jones wasn’t too much of

Valerie Jarrett

an extremist for the White House; in fact, he was loved and respected as a key White House adviser, Valerie Jarrett publicly proclaimed at the time of his appointment. But, he was too extreme even for the mainstream media to cover-upand swallow. But, don’t kid yourself – extremists like that are the rule, not the exception in Mr. Obama’s world.

4. He stands ready to commit the U.S. to radical international treaties that will bleed away American sovereignty and commit the nation to

It's a Missile.

destructive policies. Watch what happens in Copenhagen, and watch the directions of Mr. Obama in matters of international laws and treaties. He has made it obvious he is more interested in pleasing the international community than in protecting the citizens of America. Couple that with his penchant for bootlicking our enemies, apologizing for America, and kicking around and betraying our allies and you have a prescription for international disaster. Note the betrayal of Poland and Czechoslovakia by his withdrawal of missile defense from those two important allies. He did so to appease Russia, again bootlicking enemies while betraying allies.

Don’t forget his eagerness to lick the asscrack of the terrorists in Palestine; who are already laughing in the face of our douchebag of a “leader”. He turned his back on our ally ISRAEL in order to cater to his terrorist Islamic brothers.

5. Mr. Obama seems ready to do anything to achieve his ends, a la the formula of Saul Alinsky and his

Rules for Radicals

book Rules for Radicals. Alinsky believed the ends justify the means, and that means anything goes. Mr. Obama has demonstrated he is willing to lie, use fascist-style tactics to silent critics, and do what it takes to achieve his agenda. He has even expressed his disdain for the U.S. Constitution in his now infamous quote that civil rights litigation and adjudication went off track because it did not focus on redistribution. His comments, record, and policies show he believes in redistribution of wealth, and views capitalism, free markets and profit as all part of a tainted system that is unjust. One of his major priorities is “spreading the wealth around,” as he admitted to Joe the Plumber.

"Spread the wealth around..."

6. Finally, the mainstream media is sanitizing and covering up Mr. Obama’s worst excesses,

Chris Matthews

as we’ve witnessed with major stories either ignored or almost totally neglected. In recent months, the dishonest, fraudulent, and biased mainstream media virtually ignored Climategate, one of the great scientific scandals of history; the Acorn undercover scandal; and the Van Jones appointment, as well as a long list of other far-out radicals. The mainstream media has becomean adjunct of the Obama plan to destroy America, as we know it.

This column will focus on the wild leftist radicals that he is packing into the federal agencies and the unconstitutional czars he is filling up the White House with. I question, when America elects a president who spends over 20 years hanging around with terrorists, racists, bigots, anti-Semites, Communists, Marxists, and socialists, what kind of appointments do you think he’ll be making? And, when he packs the White House with such crazies, what kind of policies do you expect to be forthcoming?

For openers consider his latest appointment to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC),

Chai Feldblum

the agency that adjudicates discrimination claims. Her name is Chai Feldblum, she is a professor at Georgetown University and is a most radical homosexual activist. She has advocated polygamy and has said that “sexual liberty” trumps the Constitutional right to “religious liberty.” Of course, she underwent what is called a confirmation conversation – trying unsuccessfully to lie out of previous positions. However, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League found her newfound moderation a total “farce.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the lesbians and the gayboys, but when that becomes your goddamned identity – as in… that is ALL you are… something is horribly wrong. This woman; who is named after some sort of yuppie drink, will have left no legacy when she croaks. “Oh, that radical dyke chick? Yeah, I remember her. What a fucking nut.”. Wouldn’t it be bizarre and unacceptable if heterosexual folks went around reminding everyone else of how “straight” they are? What if white people walked around talking about how proud they are to be “white” and how they embrace their “whitehood”. 9_9 That’s right, I said it. What about those of us who are religious? “OHAI I LOVE GOD! HERE I AM!” People would think we’re nuts. Or what about those who believe in traditional marriage? Well, we all know what happens when someone goes public about their PRO-traditional beliefs. Carrie Prejean.

She is the primary author of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) now before both houses of Congress. The bill has been described by J. Matt Barber on the Renew America Web site as follows: “ENDA would force – under penalty of law – Christian, Jewish or Muslim business owners to hire people who unrepentantly choose to engage in homosexual or cross-dressing behaviors, despite the fact that these volitional behaviors are in direct conflict with every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology. … It’s a direct assault on the inalienable rights of people of faith. It pits the government directly against the free exercise of religion and is, therefore, unconstitutional on its face.” Recall, this president has announced this is not a Christian nation, contrary to American history, a history he more often deplores than proclaims.

Kevin Jennings

The Feldblum appointment is part of a larger effort to force the homosexual agenda on the American people, from the youngest school children on up. For the perfect example, take the safe-schools czar, Kevin Jennings. Here’s the way the Web site www.wordpress.com summarized his qualifications:· A former schoolteacher

· A gay

· An advocate of promoting homosexuality in schools

· A former drug user

· Dislikes religion

· Failed to report an underage student who told him he had sex with an older man.

That’s quite a resume’ there, pal. Dislikes religion? A GAY DISLIKING RELIGION? GASPZ! Could it be because every single major religion condemns homosexuality? That doesn’t mean that religious people condemn homosexuals; don’t get me wrong, a human is a human… unless they promote homosexuality in public schools and fail to report statutory rape to the authorities. This creep is a gay, and a childfucker. Hey, prove me wrong.

John Holdren

The views of Mr. Obama’s science and technology czar, Dr. John Holdren, are also bizarre. In the 1980s, in discussing population controls, he advocated compulsory abortion and sterilization as constitutional. No proposal is too extreme for the Obama team.

This radicalism pervades every corner of the White House and Mr. Obama’s appointments. Take Craig Becker, an Obama appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). He was a union lawyer, who was associate general counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The SEIU is the union with close connections to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the corrupt group of community organizers best known for voter fraud and extortion and intimidation of lenders. Mr. Becker helped lay the groundwork for the Employee Fair Choice Act (EFCA). That is the proposed law that would do away with the secret ballot in union elections and would permit federally designated bureaucrats to determine employment terms if a union and employer did not reach a prompt agreement. This act is so blatantly anti-democratic that it is even opposed by a far-left liberal, George McGovern, former U.S. Senator and Democratic Party nominee for president.

Even if Congress won’t pass the EFCA, Mr. Becker believes he can get the wildly leftist Obama agenda established by rule making by the NLRB, thus eliminating the need for Congressional action. This is characteristic of the Obama administration – willing to implement the most radical measures without Congressional approval and rule by administrative diktat.

And Mr. Becker will have plenty of support from other top Obama appointees in the federal bureaucracy. There is Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who was first elected to Congress in 2000, as the union candidate. For about 10 years in Congress, she had a perfect record of support for union proposals. And, she is likely to coddle unions and persecute employers as Secretary of Labor.

Hilda Solis

Secretary Solis has already announced her plan to give unions more power over employers and the economy. And, she has already started taking all controls off of union abuses. For example, her predecessor, Elaine Chao, took the responsibility of policing unions seriously. During her tenure, Ms. Chao obtained 929 convictions for corrupt union practices and recovered more than $93 million on behalf of union members (as reported in The American Spectator. The U.S. Labor Department unit that polices unions is the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS). Shortly after the union lapdog, Ms. Solis, took office, the Obama administration reported it was cutting OLMS’s budget by more than 9 percent. The American Spectator writes, “As a result, corrupt union bosses will have a much freer hand with which to bilk their members.”

That’s just a taste of what Mr. Obama is doing to the Department of Labor to make it an instrument of unionization and the union agenda. Two other appointments to The Department of Labor are Patricia Smith and Lorelei Boylan. Both have close ties to unions and while working for the New York State Department of Labor, they were in charge of a program in which New York state partners with unions and other liberal groups to police workplaces. The American Spectator writes, “But in practice empowering ‘regular people’ actually means that the government is deputizing unions to help police workplaces.” This is just another example of how the Obama administration seeks to control every aspect of the American economy and do so to favor their political supporters, in this case the unions. Given their way, American business will be run by union bosses and union thugs.

Another area where Mr. Obama seeks to impose government control is talk radio. There is Mark Lloyd, who was appointed to be associate general counsel and chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He is on record of favoring all kinds of regulation of talk radio, which would be designed to muzzle conservative talk radio. To show how extreme these Obama appointees are, consider Mr. Lloyd’s comments about the tyrant of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Mr. Lloyd went on record in support of Mr. Chavez who, among other things, is a sworn enemy of America: “In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.” There is a deadly Orwellian flavor to Mr. Obama and his appointees – a vicious tyrant is transformed into an instrument of “democratic revolution.”

The “Czars” are even more radical and even more out of control than members of the cabinet, who are subject to Senate confirmation. They can escape any Senate confirmation and, consequently, are viewed by some legal authorities as end-runs around the U.S. Constitution. Carol Browner, global warming (energy) czar, is typical. She is one of the leaders of the Socialist International and, as such, advocates “global governance” and maintains that developed nations must shrink their economy to help alleviate global warming. The czars and their threat to U.S. constitutional government are covered in detail in an article in Newsmax entitled “Czars: Never Elected. Never Confirmed. Too Powerful?”

Thomas Sowell, the brilliant conservative pundit, makes an important point for those who think these radical extremists somehow got into the White House because of a failure to properly vet them. Mr. Sowell writes, “Why should we assume Obama didn’t know what such people were like; he’s been associating with these kinds of people for decades. Nothing is more consistent with his pattern than putting such people in government – people who reject American values, and resent Americans and America’s influence in the world.”

Wake up America. We elected one of the most dangerous enemies of America and he now sits in the White House, filled with other enemies of America, relentlessly going about his task of destroying the country as we know it and as the Founding Fathers intended it. You better join the forces in opposition to Mr. Obama’s vision for America because if he continues unobstructed for three more years, it may then be too late to save it.

It’s later than you think. Mr. Obama can kill the economy and America with his version of ObamaCare standing by itself (See The Bulletin, “ObamaCare Spells Doom for America,” Dec. 6-12, and “Wake Up Before Obama Destroys America,” Dec. 13-19). And, he seems to be firing shots with machine-gun rapidity that have the potential to destroy our economy and our country. There’s some element of truth in talk show host Michael Savage’s assertion that we now have a dictatorship. With supermajorities in both houses of Congress and with seemingly inept Republican leadership, with free use of extra-Constitutional methods, i.e. czars, there seems to be no real checks and balances that should keep an out-of-control radical runaway president in check.

Even our Founders, political geniuses, still could not foresee and plan for the election to the White House of an America-hating radical, backed by supermajorities of the Democratic Party willing to follow him over the cliff to the destruction of America.

There’s just too, too much. No, really. Here’s your hope and change working. SUCKERS!

Fighting off the effects of jetlag and a bad cold/allergy at the same time, so this will be a short one.

- Look, I try to keep politics out of this as much as possible. But Jesus H. Christ. Joe Lieberman has GOT to go.

- For all those disaffected third party voters: the Modern Whig Party? According to Andrew Dubbins, a “Republican head with a Democratic heart.”

- Toby Young in The Telegraph: when we look back on this decade (unfortunately named by him as “the Noughties”), we will have seen a human desire for mass destruction and devastation. Apocalypse frenzy. This could either be a resurgent nihilism (not the ‘wannabe kind’), or simply humanity coming to terms with the next century. Is it really Roland Emmerich, and not Zach Braff, who is the voice of this generation? (Note: if those are the only two choices, then I hope the answer is yes).

- Flanders and Wallonia: the Velvet Divorce redux? The Weekly Standard thinks so. Wallonia as Britain sans Thatcher, Charleroi as “their Detroit.”

By Deborah Sumner

It’s now been 20 years since the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Maybe this is a good time to read or reread Václav Havel’s powerful essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” written in 1978.

I recently found my way to it via David Swanson’s Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, and his recommended reading of A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict by Peter Ackerman and Jack Duval.

What struck me hard was how closely Havel’s experience of “living within the truth” paralleled mine as a teacher.

His essential question matched the one I faced when there was a change from democratic administrators to authoritarian ones: Does the system serve human needs, or do humans serve the system?

I left teaching in 1986 because it hurt too much to care and I didn’t want to stop caring. That caring about children and wanting to do my job well had unintentionally put me in direct confrontation with “the system.”

“How can I be an effective teacher,” I wrote, “when I know that everything I believe will be held against me? Such a contradiction to me that as educators we are not expected to question when we don’t understand or say when the orders from above go completely against what we have learned from experience.

“…How do I teach children to respect each other and to be tolerant of differences when I realize that’s not the real world? Do I teach them that power lies in authority alone, not subject to question when your own life experiences tell you differently? Do what I say because I tell you, not because there’s a reason you should expect to understand.”

Enter the current and continuing debate about merit pay for teachers that now wants to link pay with how well students do on standardized achievement tests. It doesn’t matter that research and the experience of millions of educators have shown this makes no sense, given the nature of teaching and learning. Those who control the political system want it.

In addition to continuing the Teacher Incentive Fund (grants for performance-pay programs), “the best thing the previous administration did,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said recently, the new “Race to the Top” initiative includes additional incentives for states to develop merit pay plans.

States and school districts that comply will be rewarded with more money.

But here’s the basic problem.

Teachers are on the front lines every day in schools across this country. They know intimately what is happening in the lives of individual children and what can positively impact their learning. They know and have said through a variety of surveys and research reports over the years, and most recently in comments to the “Race to the Top” proposal what they need to be able to their jobs better. It’s not merit pay.

They want trust, respect, openness, honesty, a say in decisions that affect them and a sense of everyone working together for the children. They want the same things I wanted in 1986. So why aren’t the politicians listening to them?

As Havel points out, the human system, which meets real human needs, is different than the political system which sustains itself by pretending to meet human needs and using the system of rewards and punishments to stay in power. That’s not so easy for teachers who face young people every day. Children’s honesty tends to keep us honest.

No one has ever pretended that schools are democratic. And yet, if part of schools’ responsibility is to prepare citizens to participate in a democracy, teachers have to be honest about what they need to do their jobs well. They can, of course, but if their situation values appearances and public relations over truth, they will be punished.

Havel sees an individual labeled as a “dissident” as I saw myself, one who simply wants to live in harmony with his or her best self, who “is unwilling to sacrifice his own human identity to politics, or rather, who does not believe in a politics that requires such a sacrifice.”

The alternative to feeling and acting like “hired hands” as Ted Sizer feared in 1984, and feeling no responsibility for their collective work would be teachers who see themselves as fulfilling a higher calling in working for their nation and for their world. They would champion an education system that fits human needs, not the needs of the system.

And if they don’t? A recent news article snapped me to attention and is why I’m writing this. The headline said, “Too Few Youths Eligible for Military, Leaders Say.” Retired military leaders had appeared with Duncan to influence the Senate’s vote on money for early childhood education.

What’s happening in preschools today matters for future national security, they told the Senate. “To ensure a strong, capable fighting force for the future, America’s youth must succeed academically, graduate from high school, be fit and obey the law,” their Mission Report stated. I felt a chill move up and down my spine.

Don’t get me wrong. The military is a fine profession and some of my relatives and former students have chosen to serve our country this way. But can you imagine teachers advising the military or Congress on the defense budge or how to “win hearts and minds” in Iraq and Afghanistan? That’s what good teachers do every day in earning the trust, respect, cooperation and love of their students.

As Havel and I know, these kinds of communities are full of positive energy and a creative potential that draw people because they want to be part of it. They are, he says, “motivated mainly by a common belief in the profound significance of what they are doing…” And through the trusting relationships developed in working through their challenges, a human, democratic political structure emerges.

What a different world we would have if, instead of going along with the political system based on rewards and punishments, all of us lived ”within the truth” and worked with teachers and young people to make a better country and a better world. Could we change the vision of perpetual warfare that now clouds our future or would a political system structured to meet human needs come up with a better alternative?

Since teachers’ work is so essential to our national security AND our democracy, here’s something they can do:

1) Interpret the Obama administration’s Race to the Top “assignment” as: “Linking pay to student test scores is the best idea the political system can come up with to improve student learning and get administrators and teachers to work together FOR the kids. Does anyone have a better idea?

“Specifically, there’s an additional $4.35 billion of federal money that will go to schools, maybe on a one-time basis or maybe it will continue. We don’t know yet.

1) How would your school use some of that money to improve student learning, including achievement test scores 2) How much money would you need?”

2) Share your ideas widely and apply for Race to the Top Funding.

Our students, our country and our world need teachers to take charge of our working lives and say what we know is true. We can show the political system how living within the truth provides its own rewards as we struggle with others to fulfill the potential promise of democracy.

Source: AfterDowning St.org

By N.S. Palmer, Ph.D.

Waaaay back in the 1960s — yes, during that tiresome decade of Woodstock and flower power and Vietnam — something remarkable happened in Czechoslovakia.

From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1989, Czechoslovakia was dominated by the Soviet Union, which was the 20th-century’s nom de voyage for the Russian Empire. Its official ideology was communism. Its official governing method was oppression.

In 1968, a reformer named Alexander Dubček became leader of the Czech Communist Party, which was the country’s ruling party. He wanted to keep the egalitarian goals of communism (such as equality and social welfare) but get rid of its oppressive aspects. His government allowed free speech, including open dissent from government policies. He reined in the secret police.

Dubček called his movement “communism with a human face.”

Naturally, the Russians couldn’t allow it. They invaded Czechoslovakia and put an end to that experiment.

How little things have changed. In 2009 under President Obama, the United States is now being treated to “Bush-ism with a human face.”

One must admit that it is a slight improvement. Instead of having to endure the smirking, murderous, simian countenance of Dubya Bush, we now hear very similar policies from the serious, calm, intelligent visage of President Obama. It cuts the nausea factor by quite a bit. It’s been months since I threw my shoes at the TV set.

But it’s still Bush-ism: Bail out the Wall Street sharks who wrecked the economy, but not the unemployed whose jobs and lives the Wall Streeters destroyed. Sell out health care reform to the in$urance companies, the drug companies, and their hired lackeys in Congress. Crank up the war against Afghanistan. Slow down the exit from Iraq. Beat the drums about largely imaginary terrorist threats. Provide legal defense for the Bush regime’s chief torture apologist, John Yoo. Leave in place the instruments of oppression established by the Bush regime, such as the Transportation Security Agency, no-fly lists, warrantless wiretapping, and the Department of Homeland Security: instruments that never stopped a real terrorist threat, but hyped plenty of fake ones and beat down the American people into cowed submission lest they be put on a “watch list.”

An article in today’s New York Times recalls the worst paranoia and propaganda of the Bush years, when hapless loudmouths and street thugs were framed as dangerous terrorists. The Times article, “Domestic Insecurity,” uses the same weasel-words that we saw over and over in propaganda from the Bush-Cheney regime: the supposed terrorists were “accused of being drawn into terrorist scheming,” “accused of helping plan the killing spree in Mumbai,” “accused of going to Pakistan for explosives training,” and they “allegedly participated in a rocket attack against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.”

Anyone can be accused of anything, and since the Bush-Cheney regime’s signature event of 9/11, they have been. Jose Padilla was accused of plotting to explode a “dirty bomb,” and was then tortured in an unsuccessful attempt to get any evidence at all that would implicate him in such a plot. The “Miami Seven,” who couldn’t have assembled a bomb even if they’d bought it “ready to assemble” at Wal-Mart, were led by an FBI agent provocateur to take an “oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda” before being framed for a virtually non-existent plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. There are many more such cases.

Are any of our current “accused people” actually guilty of anything? The Bush years taught us to doubt it. The Obama administration hasn’t given us good reasons not to doubt it.

I still believe that President Obama is trying to do the right things. The problem is that he’s not trying very hard. Instead, he’s “going with the flow.” Since 2001 (and even before that, to a lesser degree), the flow has been in the wrong direction.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009, Simon Mawer’s immense novel revolves around The Glass Room, or, Der Glasraum: A modernist house resulting from an architect whose maxim is ornamentation is crime.

The conception of the house happens when Victor (a Jew, who owns an automobile manufacturing company) and Liesel Landauer are gifted a plot of land by Liesel’s parents, on their wedding. The parents suggest building a good and solid house; yet, Victor, looking into the future of Czechoslovakia, a young nation of hope, conceives a modernist house, without the fortresses, and gothic windows. He actively searches for an architect to undertake this commission, and while the young couple honeymoon in Vienna, they meet Rainer von Abt, a self-proclaimed poet of space and structure, who desires to take Man out of the cave and float him in the air; to give him a glass space to inhabit. And, so the the wondrous Glass Room is born.

Once completed, it had become a palace of light, light bouncing off the chrome pillars, light refulgent on the walls, light glistening on the dew in the garden, light reverberating from glass – a masterpiece created by von Abt for the Landauers. The time is 1930s though, and the nation of hope is soon going to find out that the future is not as optimistic as they foresaw.

As history unfolds, and Czechoslovakia is invaded by the Nazis, the young couple flee the country for Switzerland, where they hope to build a stable life, with their two children. The relationships that were initiated early on in the book: Victor’s almst obsessive affair with a prostitute, and Liesel’s close friendship with Hana (a “modern” non-orthodox vivacious character), run much stronger now, as Victor and Liesel drift apart, but remain married. These intense relationships and emotions carry the book for the most part.

However, the main protagonist of the book isn’t any person, but The Glass Room itself. So, when the family flees, the focus shifts to the Nazi lab that is set up there, which runs “tests” on people, in order to prove that the Jews are indeed inferior to the Nazis. A new host of characters are introduced, who play their short part exceptionally well. Once the Nazis leave, Der Glasraum is owned by the Soviet, for their lodgings. And then, it becomes a children’s hospital, and as before, a new host of characters are introduced. Finally, the Czechoslovakian state wants to take it over, and make it a museum.

One would think that the myriad of characters, plots and time-lines would make this book cluttered, and cliched; that it would run the risk of trying to be too profound; that the varying emotions and relationships would be overdone and hyperbolic. However, Mawer, via some artistry (or waving of the wand), manages to escape these criticisms for this absolutely fantastic book, with the atypical protagonist.

At the beginning of the book is an author’s note, that reads The Glass Room is a work of fiction, but the house and its settings are not fictional. A little researching indicated that the house is based on Villa Tugendhat, designed by the German architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in Brno. It was built between 1928 and 1930, and is said to be the icon of modern architecture.

Rating: A+

First the our Government abandons Poland and Czechoslovakia on the 70th anniversary of the coordinated Soviet (Russian) and Nazi invasion of Poland which started the Second World War. Now it turns out that our Government has also backed out of monitoring Russian ICBM production, a critical element in enforcing the START treaty.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/01/us-to-stop-counting-new-missiles-in-russia/

November 2009: twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolution that was velvet.

 Back in 1989 I was still at primary school.  I think I remember seeing the fall of the wall on TV but perhaps I’ve invented that later.  A boy in our class brought in a fragment of the Berlin wall to show everyone.  I remember being disappointed.  It was just a small bit of grey rock I could have picked up on the wasteground where I used to take my dog for a walk.  The dog was called Teddy.  He was a Bearded Collie and had masses of fur that I didn’t brush often enough so it matted into huge clumps I’d later have to cut off with nail scissors.

My very first Czech-related memory goes back to primary school too.  We had a spelling test and I was the only person who knew how to spell Czechoslovakia. There aren’t many words in English that begin with ‘Cz’. 

I also collected stamps.  Three pages of my album were devoted to Czechland. I still have it.  The ones from exotic places like Equatorial Guinea and Cuba and Malaysia have huge butterflies or angelfish or Disney characters launching space rockets. The Czech ones are less colourful. Some have tiny engravings of castles or a thumb sized portrait of Gottwald. Another one has a zebra; one has a Soviet red-star with a 50 in the middle. There are a couple with pictures of carp on them.  They are all very neatly arranged on the page, pasted on carefully with stamp hinges, those little strips of gummed paper.  I was that kind of child.

 According to Samuel Johnson, no-one but a blockhead wrote but for money.  Or a bloghead.  I’ve been trying to write for money recently which is partly why you’ve heard less from me here.  My recent assignment was to interview an ex-pat novelist whose last book was set in Czechland. I spent some time compiling a thoughtful and intelligent list of questions which I first saved as a Word document and then fired off by email.

‘You haven’t sent those questions yet have you?’ Czechman pipes up.  He’s been using my laptop since the graphics card in his gave up the ghost.

‘Yes, I have.  Why?’

 ‘There are spelling mistakes. Look, you’ve spelt Czechoslovakia wrong.’

Orkestar DALIBORA BRAZDE

Dalibor Brazda (September 9, 1921 – August 17, 2005), was a Czech/Swiss music composer, arranger, and conductor.

Born in Frystak, he studied at the conservatory in Brno (JAMU) and the Academy of Music in Prague (AMU). Trained in bassoon, he played in two orchestras simultaneously: Czech Chamber Orchestra and National Theatre of Prague, and later in the Czech Philharmonic and the Filmorchestra-Concert (FOK). As a student of the famous conductor Rafael Kubelik he soon started his career as conductor at Karlin Theatre Prague where he remained for 20 years. Brazda achieved great success as guest-conductor for Every Man Opera in New York with Porgy and Bess.

He became prominent in the 1950s and 1960s in Prague as an accomplished arranger for Supraphon. His lush string arrangements for popular artists including British singer Gery Scott, German pianist Igo Fischer and Czech singer Karel Gott are highly regarded. His orchestra later became known as Dalibor Brazda Magic Strings.

Brazda also conducted the German cast recording of Fiddler on the Roof in the Mid 1960s (released as Anatevka on CBS, Teldec and Decca) with the Grosses Musical-Orchester und Chor des Operettenhauses Hamburg, for which he won a Gold Record Award. Instead of returning to Prague at the end of the Anatevka-Performances in Hamburg, he emigrated to Dietikon (Switzerland, near Zurich), where he stayed till his death in 2005. In 1985 he became Swiss.

In 2001 he was honoured with the first Cultural Award of Dietikon for his work in musical education of young people and for his musical direction for 25 years of a youth wind-orchestra (Stadtjugendmusik Dietikon) and the Stadtmusik Dietikon, a wind orchestra also, for 15 years.

Till his death he worked as arranger for several orchestras (DRS Big Band, Ambros Seelos, Hugo Strasser, Original Egerländer Musikanten and Trio Festivo).

On 27 May 2006, the Stadtmusik Dietikon in Switzerland held a concert entitled The Best Of Dalibor Brazda as a tribute to his musical greatness.

We recently welcomed our first Free Climbing visitors, a group of young people from Czechoslovakia.  It was a real pleasure to have them stay with us here at “Tre Cancelle”.

Martina, Jan, Vojtech, Martin and “Barney”

The rocky coastline and formidable limestone cliffs near Sperlonga / Gaeta are indeed a paradise for Free Climbers from all around the world.

In the Sperlonga area of South Lazio there are several breath-taking rock faces such as the “Sperlonga Classica” and the “Muro Bianco”.

Also there is a stretch of beach known as “La Spiaggia Dell’Arenauta”, which is said to be the most beautiful in this region, wild and natural. This is because it is only accessible on foot, down a very long series of steps known as the “Tre Centro Scalini”. 

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Here towering cliffs with rocky crags and challenging overhangs, rise straight from the beach of fine white sand and crystal clear waters.

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There are more challenging climbs inside the cave known as “La Grotta Dell’arenauta”, which are graded according to levels of technical ability. Here it is possible to climb whatever the season or the weather.

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This is a unique meeting place for free climbers from all around the world, to share their passion for the sport, work in collaboration, share experiences and make  new friendships. 

If you are a Free Climber planning to visit the Sperlonga area please feel free to contact us.

# photos  by  m.a. la rocca 

* photo by  hyperscholar

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Remember the old  good days when Czechoslovakia still existed and tons of gipsy girls were sterilized without their consent?, yeah yeah, the old communist era………ahhh i miss that.

Well apparently  the Czech government its not giving any indemnification to all those gipsy girls that suffered the sterilization…. yeah…… but hey, its not all lost at least they apologized….. that would be enough right? I mean, at the end they made them a favor….. who wants tons of children? ….NOT………

So the Czech government is saying….. sorry girls…. we were not in power……this has nothing 2 do with us…..2 bad for them….. WTF those that mean…. come’ on guys, no one is accepting those apologies… give em some money… that will replace all psychological and physical trauma …….. I think the Czech government should do something about it, i mean the communist era ended in early 90’s but according 2 some human rights this beautiful practice has its last case in 2003…. that has to mean something isn’t it….

I wonder what the Slovakia government will do?, or the sterilization only happened in ugly Czech republic?

Go and fight for ur rights romani people  don’t let them get what they want…… make tons of babies….. and be happy

In 1943, Stanley Pisk of New Britain, Connecticut, was deployed to Europe. Pisk was a member of the Second Infantry Division, 38th Field Artillery. During his military service, he was in five major World War II battles, including Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day. Pisk battled the Nazi regime in Northern France, Central Europe, and the Rhineland. He spent 320 consecutive days in combat.

During the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, Pisk and his fellow soldiers suffered through freezing temperatures and battle injuries. While on Elsenberg Ridge, Pisk spotted something embedded in the mud and snow – a catcher’s mitt.

Pisk carried the glove in his pack until the war ended. At that time, Pisk was in Pilzen, Czechoslovakia. Pisk spent time in Pilzen where he volunteered to help the Czechs recover from destruction of war.

Pisk returned home to his wife and young son, Ted. Pisk gave the mitt to his son. In 1961, Pisk died unexpectedly at the age of 46.

Slovak student Katarina Micatkova (Photo: mjj)

GLOBAL JOURNALIST MAGAZINE

Nov. 22, 2009

By Michael J. Jordan

I got my first whiff of the problem two years ago. That’s when I started teaching journalism at the University of Saints Cyril and Methodius in historic Trnava, Slovakia.

Eva Pelyova was among the most enthusiastic of my students, one of the few willing to speak up in our journalism discussions, to at least practice her English. These 30 bright students each had a reporting project with a seemingly simple task: explain why exactly any situation is the way it is.

Eva was gung-ho for her project, exploring the lousy traffic situation in Trnava, her hometown. Forty minutes outside the sedate capital, Bratislava, Trnava is renowned for its golden honey wine, 13th century town wall, and ample church steeples—so many, in fact, Trnava is dubbed “the Slovak Rome.”

Yet since communism’s collapse in 1989, soaring car-ownership and trucks belonging to the new Peugeot factory on the edge of town combine to clog the city’s single-lane streets.

Yet Eva’s first draft revealed a pattern that would repeat again and again in Trnava and likewise among my students at Masaryk University across the border in Brno, Czech Republic. Gritting my teeth, I found that although Central European students like Eva do a fine job of describing what the situation is, they press no further. Why exactly is traffic so bad? Why exactly didn’t city officials anticipate the problem? Why exactly didn’t they respond sooner? What will officials do now … and why?

“Why?” represents a real psychological hurdle.

That my students are hamstrung by this issue came as a revelation to me as someone who has reported from the region most of the past 15 years for the Christian Science Monitor and others. One would think the generation born amid the epic dissolution of Communist Czechoslovakia might be a blank slate of sorts, untainted by an authoritarian past in which any challenge was ruthlessly repressed.

One would be wrong.

And here’s why it matters: this year, as we commemorate 20 years since the Iron Curtain was lifted from Central and Eastern Europe, this struggle to ask the most fundamental of journalistic questions speaks volumes about the current quality of democratic culture here. What a Polish dissident once told me back in the 1990s certainly rings true today: “If it took 40 years to create this mentality, why shouldn’t it take 40 years to undo it?”

In the West, the roots of democracy have grown deep and are in many ways unshakable, precisely because many in the media demand transparency from elected and appointed officials, holding them accountable for their words and deeds. Central and Eastern Europe, though, has little to no democratic traditions. So the roots are shallow—and more easily uprooted.

Sure, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic today boast all the trappings of democracy, and groups like Freedom House rank each as “Free” in annual surveys. Yet there’s cause for concern. Slovakia’s press rating has slipped over the past two years with Freedom House noting that its “media are largely free but remain vulnerable to political interference.”

Indeed, democratic Slovakia, which joined the European Union in 2004, last year passed a curious law known as the “right of reply”: If a media report criticizes a public figure, no matter how justified, that “touched” person has a right to reply with precisely the same visibility as the original report. If it was on the front page, the riposte must appear there as well.

The law’s intent is clear: intimidate reporters to not investigate sticky subjects, deter the tough questions, squelch debate. Ostensibly injured parties have already taken action, most recently this spring against the country’s leading daily, SME.

“The government must take action to ensure that the media are allowed to do their jobs independent of political interference and that laws are not used to harass and abuse journalists,” David Dadge, director of the Vienna-based International Press Institute, protested earlier this year.

It’s difficult to pinpoint anything uniquely “Slovak” or “Czech” about such behavior. Instead, I look at two clear facts common to Central and Eastern Europe—and to the entire ex-Soviet orbit.

The first is that young people here, though reared during “democracy,” are still a product of their parents and grandparents: generations conditioned to keep their heads down, not question anything.

There was one and only one truth—the Communist Party’s. If the factory boss, school director or city official—all of them Party members—said do something, it was unthinkable to challenge with “But why?”

You wouldn’t even dare criticize them behind their backs, say, in the local pub. You never knew who might inform on you, whether the waiter who just served a beer, a neighbor, a colleague, a friend. Marked as a malcontent, you could wind up in jail or worse. It could even affect your children’s future; it could keep them out of a university.

It’s understandable, then, how uncomfortable they might be to approach authority today.

The situation is far worse in the Balkans, bits of Eastern Europe like Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, and especially farther east, in ex-Soviet Central Asia, the Caucasus and in Russia itself. Journalists who probe too deeply are often thrown into prison, sometimes even wind up dead.

The journalism often scratches the surface only, says Ky Krauthamer, senior editor of the Prague-based Transitions Online, a non-profit, region-wide magazine working with young local correspondents across the ex-Communist world for the past two decades.

“Some reporters have this belief that simply by listing a ministry’s actions, or only quoting what an official said, they’ve done their job,” Krauthamer says. “Sometimes you can just tell that they’ve reached the end of their comfort zone and don’t want to push any farther.”

However, today more and more students are ready to speak up. Libuse Valentova, Prague professor of Romanian literature, says that amid the old pedagogical habits of rote memorization, she can even learn something from her students.

“They don’t have fear,” Valentova says. “They have a self-confidence and ambition that our generation lacked.”

I see only flashes of it. I try to engage my students in class discussion about, say, press freedom or interview techniques. Time after time, it’s the proverbial pulling of teeth. It’s not that they’re shy or bored. But as they often admit to me, they just aren’t used to teachers who ask for their opinion—and ask them to defend why they think what they think.

I recently asked one student, Katarina Micatkova, about the reticence to challenge anyone in a position of power as we drank mugs of kofola, a Czechoslovak-era cross between cola and root beer.

Katarína hails from northwest Slovakia, the same farming village where her mother grew up as one of 12 children. When Katarína recently had a gripe with a local store about pricing, she decided to object through a new customer-service hotline. When she saw no response, she told her mom that she’d try again. But her mother was afraid, saying, “No, don’t. Everyone will see you as a chronic complainer!”

This way of thinking is easily transmitted in the school.

“It was quite automatic for me to obey my teachers and not question them,” Katarína says. It’s rare for a teacher to relish marking up papers, she says, as I do, line by line. In my humble opinion, this helps explain why I believe that these interviewing skills are bolstering the foundation of democracy itself.

Student Tomas Dzurenda admits that the problem cuts both ways. He and his partner pursued two projects: first a personality profile of a local taxi driver who left his family behind to make more money as a cabbie in England, then an exploration of how entrepreneurship had evolved from two decades ago when the state controlled all business.

“I don’t know why we have this habit, but many people don’t want to give their opinion, or they’re not specific,” he says. “When you ask why the system is this way, they’ll say, ‘Because it is.’ Or if you ask questions really deeply, ‘Why are you asking me so much?’”

I wonder if he’s blaming the subject a bit too much. So I press Tomas on how often he gets to that point. “Yeah,” he admits, “I also felt uncomfortable asking questions that were too personal.”

Nevertheless, there are signs of hope.

Like Pelyova, who bounced back, leaned on local officials and extracted meaningful responses. Now 26 and doing public relations for an information technology firm, she says that experience has stuck with her.

“I’d never had the opportunity to talk to people like that, asking them a million times, ‘Yes, but why?’” she says. “It forces me to look at situations differently, to look at them more deeply.”

Michael J. Jordan has reported from 25 countries over the past 15 years. He is a visiting journalism professor at Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong, the University of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Slovakia, and Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.

View the original article

Socialist Republic of CZECHOSLOVAKIA

stamp: 3 korun

year: 1989

amphibian: frog – Bombina variegata

After the end of WWI, and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a new state called Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, consisting of the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia, and Carpathian Ruthenia. Many different ethnicities resided within this newly formed country, including Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Ruthenians, living alongside the majority Czech population.

In the western-most region of the country, in the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, there lived a majority German-speaking population, many of whom had been former subjects of the Kaiser before the fall of the Second Reich. This region was known in German and English speaking countries as Sudetenland, named for the Sudeten mountain range that ran thru Silesia along the Polish border.

At the end of WWI, these Sudeten Germans, known as Sudetendeutsche, pushed hard for unification with Austria, in the ultimate hopes of being incorporated into Weimar Germany. The Czechs, however, pushed US President Woodrow Wilson equally hard for the annexation of Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia. Wilson responded by sending an ambassador to the region to access the situation. At this time in European history, oppression of ethnic and religious minorities was common, and the situation was no different in a figurative melting pot like Czechoslovakia. After witnessing a violent crackdown on Sudeten German protesters by the Czech authorities, Wilson’s ambassador suggested that most of Sudetenland would be better off under German or Austrian rule, but his suggestion was ignored. Those observing the situation knew that Sudetenland would one day become a problem in the future, either for the Czechs at the hands of Germany, or for the Sudeten Germans at the hands of Czechoslovakia, but given the region’s ample resources, and massive industry, which the Czechoslovak State would come to depend on, the Prague government insisted that Czechoslovakia could not survive without it.

During the years after the end of WWI, the Czechoslovak government undertook a massive program of fortifying the Sudetenland along their border with Germany, in fear of invasion. Many of these fortifications were nestled into the Sudeten mountains, and were thought by most military analysts at the time to be even more formidable than the infamous Maginot Line in France. Naturally assuming that any German invasion would have to come thru Sudetenland, the Czechoslovak government didn’t spend nearly as much time, money, or resources fortifying the rest of the country, although there were a similar, though less formidable set of defenses along the Hungarian border as well.

When the Great Depression devastated the worldwide economy in the 1930’s, Sudetenland was hit particularly hard by the downturn, as most all of Czechoslovakia’s industry was located there; armaments, textiles, glassworks, etc… Many ethnic Germans lost there jobs when the factories were forced to lay off workers, and a majority of them blamed the Czech government for their problems. Given their newfound hardships, they became all the more susceptible to communist and socialist messages. Marxist and Fascist parties gained popularity amongst the Sudeten Germans and many Pan-German organizations were formed. One party in particular, called the Sudetendeutsche Party (SdP), an ultra-nationalist/separatist group led by Konrad Henlein (ironically an anti-Nazi until the pro-Nazi element within Czechoslovakia attained power), gained a rather large following amongst Sudeten Germans, after aggressively agitating for union with Nazi Germany and making impossible demands that the Czechoslovak government couldn’t possibly accept. His philosophy was summed up by the following statement; “We must make demands that cannot be satisfied”. Adopting the Nazi phrase “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (one people, one empire, one leader) as his own, Henlein’s SdP attained a majority vote in Sudetenland by the late ’30s, and was behind a number of terrorist attacks and coup attempts against the Czechoslovak government. These attacks failed and Henlein was forced to flee to Nazi Germany in 1938, where he then became a guerilla leader and launched covert attacks on Czechoslovakia from the north. He was instrumental in influencing Hitler’s enthusiasm in regards to the Sudeten Crisis and also played a major role in shaping the Munich Agreement. 

On Sept. 30th, 1938, Hitler signed the Munich Agreement, or Munich Pact, with a number of other signatories, including British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Fascist Italian leader, Benito Mussolini. After making numerous threats against Czechoslovakia, demanding the handover of the Sudetenland, the major European powers, England, France, and Italy, moved quickly to appease Hitler, as they had done only months earlier when Austria was annexed to the Third Reich in “Anschluss” (meaning link-up). A conference was held in Munich, as the title Munich Agreement would imply, in which the fate of Czechoslovakia was to be determined, yet Czechoslovakia had no say in the matter. Their ambassadors were barred from the conference altogether, at the behest of Hitler, and were forced to sit by quietly as their country was mutilated by Nazi daggers wielded by the very countries (i.e. Britain and France) who had guaranteed to protect Czechoslovakia from the very actions their own statesmen were undertaking. With a stroke of the pen, and a friendly handshake with der Führer, Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier signed over virtually all of the Czechoslovak defenses and industry to Nazi Germany. In addition to the formidable mountain fortifications, which Hitler personally inspected after the pact was made, the famous Škoda Works armaments plant, which was responsible for the production of most all of Czechoslovakia’s armaments, was ceded to the Nazis as well. In fact, the Škoda Works was responsible for the production of the LT-35 and LT-38 tanks, more commonly known by the German name Panzer 35(t) and the Panzer 38(t), which were originally Czech creations. Both models would ultimately serve as the foundation in the invasions of both Poland and France. 

After the Munich Agreement had been signed, Czechoslovakia lost all faith in the West, and would not forgive the governments of Britain and France for their backstabbing until many years later. Oddly enough, Hitler was just as angry. He reportedly loathed the diplomatic dealings of Chamberlain and felt he had been made to act like a democratic bourgeois, threatening that “If that silly old man (Chamberlain) comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers”. Fearing war might result if nothing could be agreed upon, the British population received the pact favorably and felt they had dodged the bullet, literally and figuratively. In what has become one of the most infamous moments in history, Chamberlain returned to London waving around Hitler’s signature in his hand, exclaiming that he had delivered “peace for our time”… which, in retrospect he most obviously did not. The French ambassador to the conference, Édouard Daladier, however, sensed that the worst of it was yet to come, stating that he believed Hitler’s aim was, “domination of the Continent in comparison with which the likes of Napoleon were feeble”. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, Daladier was right and Chamberlain was wrong. 

By signing the Munich Agreement, Britain and France neutered Czechoslovakia by handing their most formidable defenses to Hitler. This laid the groundwork for the total annexation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi forces, which would take place the following year when the Wehrmacht entered Prague. In addition to this, virtually all of Czechoslovakia’s industries, including the Škoda Works, were made part of Hitler’s war machine, and many of the Panzers that came off of the Škoda production lines were responsible for the deaths of Allied soldiers, in addition to the capture of Paris and Warsaw. Without a doubt, the Munich Agreement set the Allies back for years in terms of their struggle with Hitler. The pact strengthened Hitler’s hand, and weakened the Allies all in one fell swoop. While the goal of “peace in our time” was a noble one, Chamberlain’s dreams of a pacifist Europe were not met by reality. Hitler was very clearly on the warpath and had Britain and France recognized that before it was too late, and had they actually lived up to the obligations they made with countries like Czechoslovakia, Hitler’s war machine may have been stopped years sooner than it was, and millions of lives would’ve been spared. The Škoda Works alone were responsible for untold carnage within the Allied ranks… the same Škoda Works that had belonged to the Allies prior to 1938.

The following essay has been cross-posted from Samizdata to here, by kind permission of the author.

Adriana Lukas

It’s been twenty years since my firm belief in a better way of life was vindicated. 17th November was the beginning of the end of an era shaped by collectivism, brutality and industrialised inhumanity. I have written about my experiences of communism on Samizdata before. Today I’ll use someone else’s words to describe the wasteland communism leaves behind.

In 1992, Peter Saint-Andre has written a disturbing, brilliant and accurate description of what communism does to the soul:

…the hunger that I found most disturbing was not of the body but of the soul. [...] The socialist state cared nothing for the life of the individual, and this was driven home in innumerable ways.Yet the overall effect was not merely physical — it was a deeply spiritual degradation. It is difficult to put that degradation into words. To me, the most striking sign of it was what I called “Eastern eyes”. I could see and feel the resignation, the defeat, the despair, in the eyes of people I knew. It was an all-too-rare occurrence to come upon a person with some spark of life in his or her eyes (the only exceptions were the children, who had yet to have the life beaten out of them). If it is true that the eyes are windows onto the soul, then the Czech soul under socialism went through life all but dead.

It is tough for me to come up with something to say 20 years on that is not tinged with bitterness and disappointment and if not for the significant anniversary, I would have left this memory unturned. Despite the amazing change 1989 and its aftermath brought to my life I feel no closure over the past and a sense of proportion in the way the fall of communism has been ‘handled’. Today we should be looking back at the last 20 years counting the many communists who died in prison or are still rotting there… I can only hope that future generations will revisit the past and will have far lower tolerance of collectivism and totalitarianism. It may be a futile hope as today’s teenagers have little knowledge of the world my generation grew up and my parents lived in. And so I am bitter and disappointed that people can say the word “communism” without spitting.

I am also bitter and disappointed because those who opposed communism have not won. It is still with us, in the idiotic juxtapositions of Nazism and communism, or socialism and free-market, used by those who aspire to communism and justify it by positing Nazism as the greater evil. It still raises its ugly head in those who despise free-markets and attempt to put a human mask on socialism by pointing out ‘failures’ of capitalism. Rather hard as socialism, like all totalitarianisms, has no face. It is the ultimate denigration of humanity, destruction of individuality, and subjugation of human beings to the vast merciless machine of control and power.

Communism is still with us in China and North Korea. One befriended by the West, the other frowned upon… but neither is ever challenged because of the oppression of its people, and only when it manages to ‘inconvenience’ the rest of the world. Once it falls, it will be horrifying and beyond belief to examine the monstrosities committed by the communists in the light of day. Again, I can only hope that the world will be shamed and aghast at letting this happen for so long. Until then, we only have testimonials such as this: Undercover in the Secret State

I am grateful to those who remember, struggle to understand and explain communism, and especially to those who have managed to capture something of the nature of the beast. Here are the ones I found. Please feel free to share yours.

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression – the reference book of the communist evil with a tag line “Revolutions, like trees, must be judged by their fruit”

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

The Lives Of Others captures the paranoia and danger of an Orwellian world where everyone is monitored and, unusually for such world, shows impact of the individual as making a difference. Here is my review.

Burnt By The Sun (Unaveni slnkom) from a sunny day to Stalin’s terror… One of the most powerful films I have seen for a long time. Possibly ever.

No End (Bez konca) – a complex, subtle and haunting film set in Poland 1981.

Repentance (Pokayanie) – for the more surreal amongst us. The first ‘anti-stalinism’ film I have ever seen and will never forget. I remember sitting through the entire credits at the end, stunned and shaken. For context, this was screened in Czecho-Slovakia, publicly, in a cinema in 1987!

The Voices of the Dead: Stalin’s Terror in the 1930s – from the book review:

It is impossible, of course, to undo the tyrant’s crimes. But one of the tasks writers have set themselves, in the last 50 years, is at least to preserve the memory of the dead, and so to resist the tyrant’s historical arrogance.

The book’s opening paragraph makes the history come the full circle, back to the suffering of the individual:

The dead cannot speak. Can one retrieve their voices? Death under I.V. Stalin, the ruler of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1953, has been written about but the dead themselves remain elusive because their voices have been lost to us. The present book is an attempt to recover the voices of those executed under Stalin.

Well there was not much coming in today, so I have a few more pictures of that bilateral from the morning which I am sure you will find cute and fun for the always fascinating facial expressions the SOS makes. There are also a few photos from the state dinner reception at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. I would LOVE to know what was going on in this first picture!

In addition, and on a completely different note, Secretary Clinton issued some remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. As I mentioned in relation to the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, that event touched off a series of collapses of Soviet Bloc governments. It seemed that every week another Eastern Bloc government fell, the people took over, and the Iron Curtain ripped and disintegrated. More remarks like these will be issued, as we progress through anniversaries of that fall of the Soviet Empire.

For many of us,  this one in Czechoslovakia was especially sweet since we had seen an earlier effort in 1968 that was mirrored by a tipping point in our own anti-war movement here and protests in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. It was wonderful to see these brave people finally free.

Here are the Secretary’s remarks.

Statement on 20th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
November 17, 2009

Twenty years ago, the people of Czechoslovakia carried forward the wave of freedom that began in the Polish shipyards, surged over the Wall in Berlin, and ultimately liberated millions of people across Europe. Americans prayed for the students in Prague who faced down an oppressive regime and propelled a dissident playwright from prison to the presidency. We cheered for a nation that had grasped for liberty in the spring of 1968 and seen its dreams deferred for decades. And when democracy finally came, we welcomed new partners committed to building a free and unified Europe and a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Today we celebrate the vibrant democracies of the Czech Republic and Slovakia and salute those who worked to bring freedom to their land — the dissidents and activists who risked all they had to demand a free and better life, the mothers and fathers, workers and students who never lost faith that a system built on tyranny and oppression could and would be overcome. Thanks to their sacrifice, Tomas Masaryk’s vision of a democratic society thrives today in Middle Europe.

On this historic occasion, I congratulate the Czech Republic and Slovakia on twenty years of democracy and reaffirm the commitment of the United States to our strong alliance as we work together to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of the 21st century.

If Berlin and Prague saw the birth of democracy and Seattle its coming-out party, then Copenhagen will see its coming of age.

1989 was a year of momentous change, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution. Across Europe, country after country sought freedom and sovereignty. With the exception of Romania, the changes were peaceful, not a shot was fired, though the aftermath was not so pleasant with the violent implosion of Yugoslavia. It was not the politicians that forced these changes, change never does come from those in power, it was the people on the streets.

Ten years on the people took to the streets again, this time Seattle and the WTO was shut down. Talking to a friend from Bolivia who had shown footage back home in Bolivia of what was happening in Seattle, she said the Bolivians were amazed. Beating of protesters was the norm in the Third World, but in the rich Capitalist West?

As we commemorate twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the people are converging on Copenhagen for the COP15 climate talks. The demands are simple, the solutions many. We have to cut our carbon emissions. It can no longer be business as usual. Whilst the corrupt politicians fiddle, the planet burns. The message to Copenhagen is simple, it is the people who will decide the agenda, not the politicians. World leaders had better sit up and listen.

Also see

The day the wall came down

The Shape of the Table

Prague marks Velvet Revolution

The theatre behind the Velvet Revolution

Berlin and Prague through Seattle to Copenhagen

Climate rage

Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up