"European speech of the year"

Obama to make "European speech of the year" in Prague

Barack Obama doesn’t arrive in Prague until April 4th, but an “advance team” of advisors are already here to scout out locations for what the Czech prime minister Mirek Topolánek says will be Mr Obama’s “European speech of the year.” Quite what he’ll say in it remains to be seen, with fresh questions raised this week over the future of the planned U.S. missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Early April in Prague is notoriously fickle; some years it’s freezing and grey, others it’s spring in full bloom, with blazing sunshine and clear blue skies. Those involved in Mr Obama’s trip must be hoping for the latter, as the U.S. president could be making his keynote speech – being tipped as his “European speech of the year” – in the open air. An advance team of advisors is already checking out possible locations, with Prague Castle, the Old Town Square and the embankment in front of the Rudolfinum concert hall all apparently in play.

Just what he’ll say is hard to guess. But certainly he’ll be under pressure to say something about plans to build a radar base on Czech soil as part of the missile defence shield, an agreement that was signed with the previous Bush administration. Mr Obama seems less keen on missile defence and – unlike Mr Bush – is certainly in no hurry to start deploying it in earnest.

A progressive defend America and her allies? Such mishegas.

There were fresh worries this week for Mr Topolánek’s centre-right government after it emerged in the Russian and American media that Mr Obama had sent a secret letter to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, reportedly offering to abandon missile defence in exchange for help in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The White House has not commented publicly on the claims, but if confirmed, they would be a major political embarrassment for Mr Topolánek. He’s spent a good deal of political capital on the radar base, which still lacks approval in the lower house of parliament.

BarryO's letter to Putie's beard was as productive as his video message to Iran.

For now, though, the focus of the Czech media is on Mr Obama’s itinerary. It seems he will arrive in Prague on the evening of Saturday April 4th, to be welcomed by President Václav Klaus. Sunday he’ll apparently have breakfast with former President Václav Havel, before meeting leaders of the EU’s 27 member countries, and making his promised speech.

President Obama is due to be accompanied by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as his wife Michelle, something that could cause headaches for the prime minister’s protocol team. Mr Topolánek is separated from his wife and lives with his girlfriend, fellow Civic Democrat MP Lucie Talmanová. For the photo calls either he will appear alone alongside Barack and Michelle Obama, or with Ms Talmanová. The protocol team must decide which – in the absence of a married partner - is the lesser evil.

WTF, ask HRH Hillary how she'd handle it.

Via Radio Prague

Uh-oh. Mo' Mo'Toons Appear

Muhammad cartoons appear in Prague
Cartoons of Prophet Muhammad have appeared in Prague as a witness saw them in the Cerny Most neighbourhood and near the Florenc coach station, the server Novinky wrote Saturday.

At one of them, Muhammad is depicted with a bomb in his turban and a detonator like in the Danish paper Jyllands Posten in 2005, while the other poster calls him a paedophile.

The posters points to the Internet pages that are being constructed and that present a group of authors who feel concern over what they call growing Islamist extremism.

The posters' captions say: "Maybe provocative, but the freedom of speech is still more important !!!"

Twelve cartoons of Muhammad were published by Jyllands Posten in 2005. This sparked off a wave of worldwide protests that claimed about 150 lives. The mob attacked the Danish embassies and everything embodying Western culture.

In the Czech Republic, the first posters appeared in Brno in March. As the police did not find who pasted them up, the case was shelved.

Adam Gadahn was unavailable for comment.

Via The Prague Monitor

A little Nazi here; a little Nazi there Pt. III

Czech neo-Nazis' rally ends without incidents
Prague- A demonstration of rightist extremists at Prague's Palackeho namesti square ended without any incident after about an hour this afternoon, the police said.

Some 200-250 rightist militants gathered at the square where public rallies can take place without any authorisation, the police said.

Four of the demonstrators were taken to the police station.

After delivering some speeches, the neo-Nazis dispersed themselves at about 3:00 p.m. (Central European Time. ed.)

Two extremists were detained for the violation of the assembly law. Police spokeswoman Eva Brozova said they had been armed with nunchaku sticks and a knuckleduster.

Another two extremists were detained in order to check their identity, Brozova said.

All of them have been or will be released, Brozova said.


Some demonstrators wore balaclavas and black flags. On one of the flags, there was a logo of Autonomous Nationalists.

Some activists read speeches in which they complained about the ban of the march in Plzen, West Bohemia. They said the ban was illegal.

They also criticised the state of freedom and democracy in the Czech Republic.

The gathering in Prague was to be replace the rally originally planned for Plzen.

Chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities Jiri Danicek told ČTK earlier the date of the march, January 19, was connected with the first transport of Jews from Plzen to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp, north Bohemia, that was dispatched on January 18, 1942.

Out of 2605 Jews on the transport only 112 survived the war.

On Thursday, Plzen mayor banned the planned extremists' march.

About ten followers of extreme right met at the Plzen Emila Skody square today.

They were prevented from marching to the local synagogue by the police vans that barricaded the streets.

Several hundreds of opponents of fascism gathered outside the Plzen synagogue and remembered the Holocaust victims.


Via ČTK

The Czech news server is reporting that, "A protest rally of anarchists was also to be held in Plzen. However, it was banned. Nevertheless, there are about 100 leftist militants with the banner "No Nazis in Plzen" there. Around 800 opponents of the neo-Nazis have come to the remembrance event for the Holocaust victims outside the Plzen synagogue."

David Irving & Dr. David Duke were unavailable for comment.


Also at A Tangled Web

Keeping History Alive

Stránský honors comrades in arms
Former prisoner keeps friends' memories alive at communist-era grave

It has been 48 years since someone last heaved an anonymous body into one of the 5-by-2-meter ditches on the outskirts of the Dáblice cemetery, but the convex partitions between the mass graves still remain visible.

Walled off from the rest of the graveyard by a row of rosebushes and hedges, a neat grid of headstones now covers the mossy patch of earth that once served as a dumping ground for 207 tortured and executed political prisoners.

On the 18-year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, 84-year-old Stanislav Stránský saunters through the abandoned burial ground, picking up overturned flowerpots and adjusting the flickering candles near the headstones.

“When I first came here in 1989, this place was a bush,” he says, motioning to the dense thicket behind the cemetery wall. “There was nothing here, just holes in the ground where our friends were deplorably deposited.”

Stránský himself is no stranger to the Orwellian treachery of Stalinist-era prisons. For 10 years, he braved brutal beatings, interrogations and backbreaking work in forced labor camps. To this day, he calls himself a MUKL, an acronym for “man designated for liquidation” and a term political prisoners in the 1950s used to describe themselves.

Since 1990, he has been chairman of the Association of Former Political Prisoners (SBPV) and the chief force behind the rehabilitation of the Dáblice burial ground for the victims of the 1950s Czechoslovak communist regime.

[...]

A narrow path separates the mass graves from another haunting memorial: The meadow here is also dotted with flower pots, and the dates of birth and death on the minute, white headstones are often just days apart. They mark the graves of 37 children born in 1950s communist prisons.

“Not all of these children are the babies of political prisoners, but that doesn’t matter,” Stránský says. “We took them under our wing because they were born behind bars — in captivity.”

Preserving the past

Although mass graves first came to his attention nearly 40 years ago, Stránský wasn’t able to begin mending the burying ground until after the fall of communism.

“We had to tear through the brambles to get here,” he says. “Some of the victims’ relatives that heard about this place had placed makeshift crosses from rags and twigs in the ground.”

Even after the Iron Curtain fell, Stránský struggled to obtain the permits and funds to rehabilitate the area.
“After 1989, the government was still full of Bolsheviks, so I went through a lot of trouble to prove to public officials that doing this made sense — that it was something worth preserving for future generations,” he says. “The [cemetery keeper] wanted to bulldoze the place.”

[...]

Extraordinary circumstances

Stránský describes himself as an ordinary person.

“I’ve always done simple, honest work to make a living, which is the greatest capital a person can have,” he says.

Born in Bratislava and “christened by the Morava River,” he was forced to move to Prague with his Czech father in 1938, when a fear of Hitler caused Slovaks to distance themselves from their “Czech brothers.”

They certainly did 'distance' themselves.

At 15, Stránský attended an International Students’ Day protest against Nazi occupation that left Jan Opletal, a medical student, dead.

“We were flipping over cars and trams to barricade ourselves so the Nazis couldn’t get to us,” he recalls.

During World War II, Stránský was drafted to join the Protectorate government, where he remained until 1946. That year, shortly after the end of the war, the Communist Party emblem started appearing on military uniforms. Appalled by the political affiliation of the traditionally neutral military, Stránský, a 24-year-old sergeant, told his men to tear the symbols off.

“If they would have listened to me and just taken them off, it would have been fine,” he says. “But they didn’t just take them off — they destroyed them, and that’s when the trouble started.”

Stránský was immediately stripped of his rank and court-marshaled.

“I didn’t want to leave the service, but when a superior told me I had lost all chances of promotion, I realized I had no choice,” he says.

Upon returning to civilian life, Stránský worked for the Health Ministry, participating in international campaigns to prevent infant mortality and tuberculosis.

“In 1948, the local branch of the [Communist Party] accused [United Nations aid group] UNESCO of vaccinating people against communism, and the Danes and Norwegians that were working here with us were forced to leave the country,” he says. But the damage was done — Stránský now had contacts in the West.

Lured by rumors of a foreign-based resistance movement against the communist regime, he was able to cross the border and arrange a safe passage to West Germany, where he was placed in a refugee camp. After a two-month screening process, Stránský received political refugee status and a job at the International Refugee Organization.

But his life in exile was not to last. After spending months in limbo, he began to grow restless.

“I couldn’t just sit in Germany with my arms folded,” he says. “It was time for me to act.”

Thirsty for action, Stránský chose his own mission: “My assignment was to return to Czechoslovakia, find my contact and hand him secret information. And I completed it.”

But it would be decades before he would be able to return to Germany. In what would prove to be a life-altering mistake, Stránský made a stopover at his parent’s apartment, where he was arrested by the secret police (StB).

[....]

There's more at The Prague Post.

See also Graves of Heydrich's Assassins Found.

Also at A Tangled Web

Neo-Nazi Losers Lose Again

Police clash with demonstrators
At least 30 arrested, blood left on streets
Police clashed with demonstrators in a ritzy shopping street of Old Town Saturday near the Old-New Synagogue, throwing sound grenades and erecting metal barricades to control them.

At least 30 people were arrested, most of them neo-Nazis, according to a Vladislav Bernášek, a police spokesman. Others were injured in scuffles between rival groups and taken to the hospital.

Two groups of demonstrators faced off against each other on Parížská street at one point, which caused riot police in helmets to barricade the street. Some demonstrators carried flags that said “Good night, White Pride” in Czech. Others wore an unofficial uniform of ski masks and black clothing, while others had shaved heads and wore combat boots with white laces.

Incidents continued throughout the afternoon and evening. Squads of police remained around the synagogue late into the night. A white cloth banner with a pig's head drawn on it remained hanging on the metal security grill in front of the door of the Hugo Boss women's clothing store.

Members of the Young National Democrats extremist group vowed to march after the Prague Municipal Court ruled they would not be allowed to. Members of the group had said they wanted to march to protest Czech involvement in the Iraq war. Nov. 10 is the anniversary of the Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany in 1938 in which thousands of windows of Jewish shops were smashed and many Jews were rounded up and taken to concentration camps.

A heavy police presence throughout the day at the synagogue, in Old Town Square and at Námdstí Republiky several blocks away, included dogs, air patrol, armored vehicles, and many in riot gear. Police said before Saturday that they would deploy 1,400.

In contrast to the violence, the day was also filled with scenes of solemn remembrance.

Earlier in the day, an estimated 1,000 people gathered in the rain outside the synagogue to commemorate Kristallnacht victims. Many of them wore yellow stars on their coats, a sobering reminder of how Jews were treated in Nazi Germany and elsewhere.

At 3 p.m., another such gathering was held by the Jewish Liberal Union in Old Town Square, drawing hundreds of observers wearing stars and holding Israeli flags. Speakers ranged from politicians to Holocaust survivors, many of whom talked about the importance of remembering Kristallnacht, and their opposition to the neo-Nazis' activities.

At one point late in the afternoon, a group of about 20 demonstrators chanted “Antifa”, the name of the group. One said his “anti-Fascist” group was rallying to “take back our streets” and called the group's protest an “anti-Nazi” action. A banner posted on the group's Web site calls for supporters to come to an “anti-Fascist blockade” against a neo-Nazi march.

Some shops closed throughout the day. Some bystanders looked bewildered by the turmoil, while others looked on with interest. Some residents stood on high ledges outside their apartments or opened their windows to the drizzle to see what was going on.

Les Moules, a Belgian restaurant across the street from the synagogue, had closed and waiter Vlada Mistrit said mournfully that the only customers were about 50 police officers who had come in to use the bathroom. Restaurant workers ate lunch at a front table next to a plate glass window they had shuttered as a precaution. Mistrit estimated Les Moules would lose “thousands of crowns” (dollars) in business.

At Alberto Guardiani, a shoe shop directly across from the Old-New Synagogue, Artyom Ivanov stood in front of the plate glass window, his arms crossed, watching the heavy foot traffic outside.

“I don't think they'll do anything bad. People are only walking by right now, they're not breaking windows.”

Via The Prague Post

Also, a report from Radio Prague

Earlier

Photo: The Prague Post

Scattered Protests Reveal Uncertainty

Curiously, the Bush is Eeeevil US media didn't report this one.

Despite pledges of mass protests, only several hundred opponents of the planned U.S. missile base in the Czech Republic briefly gathered at key sites in Prague Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

[....]

Monday evening, some 200 protesters, most organized by the Communist Youth Union, waved flags and chanted slogans in front of the U.S. Embassy but promised mass demonstrations like those that filled Wenceslas Square with 2,000 people May 26, never materialized.

With no mass uprising of the proletariat, Soviet Russian president Vladimir Paranoid must be --- seething.