Vaclav Havel dies

[Winner]

@Winner
Very well. So I - and I think I am not alone here - would be delighted if you found the time to exemplary demonstrate how it is "baseless slander".

If Algeroth doesn't do it, I will. Just not right now. (In short, the author shows extreme left-wing bias combined with utter ignorance of how the Czech political system works, and half of what he wrote there didn't even happen. It's the sort of "commentary" that people who know something about the real situation tend to react to with phrases like "WTF?!" or other expression of stunned disbelief.)

 

[Tani Coyote]

You are entitled to your opinion, but drop that silly "Stalinist" "tyrants". Otherwise somebody might write a "some rebuttal" Thursday or Friday...

Unless there's proof Czechoslovakia was a liberal paradise with regular, free elections, I'll continue to call them tyrants. Having a socialist economy without democracy is contrary to what socialism is about - the liberation of the worker and the citizenry.

In a more sober environment I would also gladly debated with you if life is so much better in Czechia now. Here I live (Poland), quite a few had or would have an easier time back in the "tyranny" age. But nevermind that.

Oh, understandably. It was that way in most Communist nations to my knowledge - the People had no real voice, but they did have a basic modicum of services.

The good thing about the democratic governments, though, is that the People could, if they so desired, pressure the politicians to restore such social services. Embrace what Americans consider socialism, rather than what Europeans consider socialism, if you will.

Though to be fair, in some places, it's possible it hasn't changed. From all I hear in Russia, they just replaced bureaucratic oligarchs with plutocratic oligarchs, all under the guise of "democracy." In this case - a decline in quality of life, and no real improvement in political voice - the Soviet system naturally sounds better. Even moreso when one considers that post-Stalin, life in the USSR wasn't that repressive(from what I know, anyway).

Bro, if you talk about father of the Russian nation, try Vladimir I, Sviatoslav I, Ivan III, Peter I or even Catherine II. Lenin isn't, you know, trendy nowadays.

My bad, I merely couldn't think of anyone else off the top of my head.

Though Lenin himself wasn't that bad from all I know, not any worse than most revolutionaries. He overthrew the Czarist dictatorship, and had things gone differently, his system could have made Russia a better place. Unfortunately, as often happens, the movement lost sight of itself once its leader was gone...

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Seeing Richard Cribb's post makes me wonder about him. Perhaps I was too quick to praise Havel; it is not uncommon for the fathers of nations to be deified.

Thats the power of lie, it can make you doubt the reality nicely. Nothing more or less.

He nonetheless did a good deed by deposing Stalinist tyrants, and it sounds like he overall made the average Czech's life better in the long term.

I dont think you can say he deposed the Stalinist but he played admirable part in it. Without Gorbachev he would have probably get rotten in prison.

But of course, he's not a saint.

He may have come pretty close though. Or to put it otherwise. How many saints would have remained saints in his position? But you have mentioned something alike yourself...

Oh please don't sweat it for my sake. I have read enough drivel about this sanctimonious pillock and my dirty work here is done.

Well stop reading drivels so you can stop making ridiculos and ******ed posts...

In a more sober environment I would also gladly debated with you if life is so much better in Czechia now. Here I live (Poland), quite a few had or would have an easier time back in the "tyranny" age. But nevermind that.

Yeah, I have heard that after the North has beated South in Americas civil war and the slaves were granted freedom some of them wanted to go back to their old ways of life... But what does that prove?

Talk is usually cheap, how it's manifested is what important. If current Czech political system does serve the people well, then well done, Mr. former President. Otherwise, it's meh still.

Yes, talk is cheap. But compare to what? If you tell that to a priest in church he may keep his mouth shut but then who is going to think about Christ?
The fact that people hold high some ideals and do gave them great value (to what extent is personal thing and differs person by person of course) is pretty good manifestation and necessary step to even greater goal...

 

[Alassius]

Oh please don't sweat it for my sake. I have read enough drivel about this sanctimonious pillock and my dirty work here is done.

On the topic of being sanctimonious, I wrote this drivel on another site. Perhaps you might enjoy it?


(In reply to someone who claimed "amartya sen, that well known communist, estimates that 100 million died in india as a result of their not following the maoist development path")

First, you might want to understand your source before you use it. Your 100 million figure probably refers to Noam Chomsky, who in turn quoted Amartya Sen. If you read Professor Sen's report (Hunger and Public Action, 1989), you will find that while he is generally in favour of more government intervention, he offered a much more balanced view. In particular he noted how the absence of adversarial politics and open journalism in China greatly exaggerated the scale and length of the famine of 1958-61. He most certainly would not want a Maoist political system. On the other hand, Mao's public health system was clearly better than India's lack of one. The ideal world is one with democratic politics, free speech, and some kind of state redistribution including public health care, built on a strong, open economy. That is not "the Maoist development path"; merely overlapping a bit with it.

There is no question that an authoritarian government can do selected things well if it wants to. Public health care and liberation of women were two major achievements of Mao. Cuba has health care statistics comparable with the richest countries. Nazi Germany had the best highway network of its time. That is simply because an authoritarian government can divert resources to its favourite cause, rather than because it can run everything more efficiently. The achievement in the favoured areas comes at the cost of general deprivation of everything else, such as those I have listed above. In particular, the shortage of food and consumer goods. And we are not talking about excessive Western consumerism. We are talking about basic household items and foodstuff, from cooking oil to pork, from cloths to bicycles, all of which were rationed in most or all communist countries that have existed.

Nice things such as health care and education, and, in the case of Soviet Union, tanks and rockets, are costly. Trying to keep everything running, after people had lost revolutionary zeal, meant a deficit between promises and actual productivity, which led to the Brezhnev stagnation, characterised by long queues and empty shelves in shops. Eventually, the Party could not find more corners to cut in the commoner's life, and it faced the choice of either hardening control to maintain the facade of "temporary difficulties", as in the case of North Korea, or to reform the economy, as in everywhere else, most recently in Cuba.

Ironically, the second approach is much more reviled than the first by other communists, for all their pretensions of caring for the people. But let's first look at why living standards did deteriorate under economic liberalisation:

Consider an ordinary worker who has been in a Soviet factory for 30 years. Suppose he was as labourious as his American counterpart, he would have been paid less in wages (including cash and ration coupons). The difference between the values he created and his pay is the equivalent of surplus value under capitalism, but larger as a proportion. By surrendering this difference to the state, however, he would enjoy job security, free health care, free education, and a pension, which his American brother would not get.

This was not a bad deal - while it lasted. By the 70's, he quite likely was slacking off half of the day, because 1. he had no reason to work harder; 2. nobody else cared. I saw it myself how women spent entire afternoons knitting, and men playing cards, in the office. They were all engineers. Given the poor productivity, even the much handicapped consumption was not sustainable. Nothing the Parties could do filled shops, including forcing students and young people to work in countryside. Most Parties eventually went with the last resort, economic reform. For those that didn't, Cuba endured a "Special Period" because it wasn't able to support itself without Soviet aid; North Korea managed to kill perhaps more than 10% of its population in another famine.

But economic liberalisation is not a magical wand that will transform a hellhole to a paradise in one wave. Our proletarian hero suddenly found himself losing all the benefits he had already paid for with his surplus value. Worse, he had no savings because he was never paid much cash. The free market equivalent is if he had a health insurer and pension fund that took money from him for 30 years, but bankrupted itself just as he retired / got ill. Of course he was screwed! The old model stopped working. The new model wasn't affordable because he was robbed clean.

If he were able to take back all that surplus value the state exploited from him, he would have fared better in the market economy. But as I've argued before, the Soviet system was far from egalitarian. All means of production were nominally owned by the workers, but in fact controlled by the small bureaucracy class. When it comes to privatisation, whatever that is left after decades of mismanagement naturally went straight into the pockets of that class, especially in Russia and China. From the very beginning through to the end, and then some, it was the hardcore communists who had profited so handsomely from the blood and sweat of the people they claimed to represent.

And now we have communist worshipers born in rich countries, who in all probability have never seen any real poverty or cruelty, to blame the market for communists' exploitation. A cynic could conclude that this was the most brilliant conspiracy theory ever. You can commit every single crime you accuse capitalism of, with revolutionary intensity, from economic exploitation, to abject poverty, to state repression, to mass murders, to imperialist wars, to selling out the people at the end, and still have someone to praise you as heroes fighting against the bourgeois evil.

Perhaps the worshipers bought into the "temporary difficulties" crap. Perhaps they didn't believe in stories of repression. In any case you rarely could find a communist talking about what their solution would be. They only ever complain about how other people's solutions stink. That is cheap, irresponsible, and dishonest. Given the dreadful circumstances, created by none other than the communists themselves, of course it was impossible to find a better way. Otherwise the communist leaders would have tried it. They have indeed tried different things: opening up politics first; opening up economy first; not opening up anything. The last option led to another seven-figure death toll. But that is of no concern. For armchair communists, keeping up the critiques is more important than finding a practical solution. That is the legacy they have inherited directly from Karl Marx himself.

Coming back to the issue of health care. Yes, Mao had a good public system. No, China could not afford it, not for more than a few decades. No, India could not afford it either. No, India was not a "democratic capitalist experiment" like Chomsky claimed. It was a democratic experiment without the support of a well-developed market economy; India has only started to liberalise its economy since 1991. It worked in the sense that, like Sen described, it avoided large scale famines. It did not work in that, also like Sen noted, it failed to provide in too many basic aspects of life. The historically proven way is to care less about democracy and more about economy in the beginning. When the economy develops to a certain degree, when the people have become richer, less dependent, and better equipped to resist state oppression, they will fight to take power back. That was the path taken by Chile, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain, and perhaps Egypt, all of which have seen economic liberalisation under dictatorship, followed by a peaceful transition to democracy. But there is a big if: for this path to work, the dictator must decide to liberalise first, which is far from certain, and in particular not if if he claims to be a socialist. If you look at the world map, you will notice that poor socialist countries rarely if ever develop. Socialism, as in state redistribution in a capitalist economy, is a desirable but luxury good that should only be tried when it's affordable, say in today's China. Socialism as in build everything from scratch is a daydream. That should be a concept most familiar to communists: after all the entire point of communism was that only a more advanced relations of production would suit a more advanced productive force, and vice versa.

 

[Algeroth]

This excerpt says better than I can myself how I felt about this "conscience of the nation", "champion of liberty" and "decent guy".

In short, I liked him not.
Good riddance.

Okay, let's look into this

From Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds (1997) pp. 97-99:

Must We Adore Vaclav Havel?

No, and nobody demands that from you. But you could stop lying about him.

No figure among the capitalist restorationists in the East has won more adulation from U.S. officials, media pundits, and academics than Vaclav Havel,

Probably true

a playwright who became the first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia and later president of the Czech Republic.

True

The many left-leaning people who also admire Havel seem to have overlooked some things about him: his reactionary religious obscurantism,

If this is how your kind calls someone with postmodern, slightly new-age, trandsedental religious believes, than yes, it's true.

his undemocratic suppression of leftist opponents,

Are we talking about someone who refused to ban the communist party and suffered hit in popularity because of it?

and his profound dedication to economic inequality and unrestrained free-market capitalism.

The author is either mistaking Václav Havel with Václav Klaus, or is lying. Havel was a staunch supporter of social and cultural rights, fair trade, social state, green economy...etc.

Raised by governesses and chauffeurs in a wealthy and fervently anticommunist family,

Yes, he was from bourgeois family and it could be that it was "fervently anticommunist". Probably true

Havel denounced democracy's "cult of objectivity and statistical average"

No, he denounced today global civilization's "cult of objectivity and statistical average". He said that many of democracy mechanisms are based on that and need to change.

and the idea that rational, collective social efforts should be applied to solving the environmental crisis.

Not True.

He called for a new breed of political leader who would rely less on "rational, cognitive thinking," show "humility in the face of the mysterious order of the Being," and "trust in his own subjectivity as his principal link with the subjectivity of the world." Apparently, this new breed of leader would be a superior elitist cogitator, not unlike Plato's philosopher, endowed with a "sense of transcendental responsibility" and "archetypal wisdom."

True, he was a kind of elitist. But the wording is making him look like some fascist.

Havel never explained how this transcendent archetypal wisdom would translate into actual policy decisions, and for whose benefit at whose expense.

True. This is one of the criticism of Havel based in reality. He never come with a way how to transform his idealistic visions to reality.

Havel called for efforts to preserve the Christian family in the Christian nation.

I would say not true, but I'll give you a benefit of doubt here. Link it, or it didn't happen.

Presenting himself as a man of peace and stating that he would never sell arms to oppressive regimes, he sold weapons to the Philippines and the fascist regime in Thailand.

He sold weapons? That is implying that it was Havel who owned weapons factories by himself. Which is obviously ridiculous. Or it is implying that it is president who have responsibility for international contracts, not PM. As Winner said, the autor doesn't understand the Czech(oslovakian) political system.

In June 1994, General Pinochet, the man who butchered Chilean democracy, was reported to be arms shopping in Czechoslovakia - with no audible objections from Havel.

True. (But as a sidenote, he didn't buy anything)

Havel joined wholeheartedly in George Bush's Gulf War,

Undoubtedly true. But it should be noted that it was 200 members of chemical defense unit. Also, this is one of the point where I understand the leftist critique. But could I have a question: What else should be done with Saddam?

an enterprise that killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

LOL. Source?

In 1991, along with other [e]astern European pro-capitalist leaders,

Implying that he was some "pro-capitalist". Which is not true.

Havel voted with the United States to condemn human rights violations in Cuba.

True

But he has never uttered a word of condemnation of rights violations in El Salvador, Columbia, Indonesia, or any other U.S. client state.

Possibly true. But database of his articles and speeches is still not working so I cannot validate it.

In 1992, while president of Czechoslovakia, Havel, the great democrat, demanded that parliament be suspended and he be allowed to rule by edict,

What? This just never happened. Period. Unless we are talking about some alternative history.

the better to ram through free-market "reforms."

Same reaction as above. Just...what?

That same year, he signed a law that made the advocacy of communism a felony with a penalty of up to eight years imprisonment.

True. And also Nazism and Fascism. But you are not protesting that, are you?

He claimed the Czech constitution required him to sign it.

Probably true, that was in the era when Czech presidents were afraid to not sign a law and Havel really disliked the idea of confronting the parliament.

In fact, as he knew, the law violated the Charter of Human Rights which is incorporated into the Czech constitution.

And as our Constitutional court ruled, it is totally cool with our constitution, because its Article 9 says that any change of fundamentals of democratic state based on rule of law is forbidden.

In any case, it did not require his signature to become law. in 1995, he supported and signed another undemocratic law barring communists and former communists from employment in public agencies.

Not communist as a whole, but members of former State Security and high ranked members of communist party. That is one hell of a difference. BTW, what is your stance on denazification?

The propagation of anticommunism has remained a top priority for Havel. He led "a frantic international campaign" to keep in operation two U.S.-financed, cold war radio stations, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, so they could continue saturating Eastern Europe with their anticommunist propaganda.

True

Under Havel's government, a law was passed making it a crime to propagate national, religious, and CLASS hatred.

There was never anything like "Havel's government". It is PM, not president who governs and creates government here. Really, the author doesn't have a clue about how things work here. But, yes, it is True that this law passed.

In effect, criticisms of big moneyed interests were now illegal, being unjustifiably lumped with ethnic and religious bigotry.

No, it was now illegal to propagate a revolution that would dispose the rich of their money, not criticise it. And no, it was and it is justifiable.

Havel's government warned labor unions not to involve themselves in politics.

WHAT? Havel? The man who viewed unions as an essential part of the civil society and in many times negotiated with them? I really suspect the author that he is confusing Havel and Klaus. Or he is on drugs.

Some militant unions had their property taken from them and handed over to compliant company unions.

This is just a LIE.

In 1995, Havel announced that the 'revolution' against communism would not be complete until everything was privatized.

Sounds more like a Klaus not a Havel to me.

Havel's government liquidated the properties of the Socialist Union of Youth - which included camp sites, recreation halls, and cultural and scientific facilities for children - putting the properties under the management of five joint stock companies, at the expense of the youth who were left to roam the streets.

Well, seeing how he's writing about "Havel's government", I really think he mistake Klaus for Havel. Which means he's an idiot.

Under Czech privatization and "restitution" programs, factories, shops, estates, homes, and much of the public land was sold at bargain prices to foreign and domestic capitalists.

No, under restitution programs, it was returned to previous owners before communist government nationalized them. Under privatization, it was (bar few exceptions) sold do domestic citizens. You may criticize Klaus's voucher privatization for many thing, but it was sold not to capitalist, but to ordinary citizens.

In the Czech and Slovak republics, former aristocrats or their heirs were being given back all lands their families had held before 1918 under the Austro-Hungarian empire, dispossessing the previous occupants and sending many of them into destitution.

WHAT A BLATANT LIE! Anybody with the slightest understanding of Czech history or some common sense that isn't blinded by Party's propaganda must see that this is utter bullc*ap.

Havel himself took personal ownership of public properties that had belonged to his family forty years before.

True. So what?

While presenting himself as a man dedicated to doing good for others, he did well for himself.

Like with what?

For all these reasons some of us do not have warm fuzzy feelings toward Vaclav Havel.

You mean for all these lies, misunderstandings of how Czech political system works and lies?

Look, there are many things for which he can be criticized from the left. The Old Left will never stomach his mysticism. Some parts have problems with his bourgeois uprising, some are upset that he helped to break their favourite toy. He considered himself socialist before 1990, but possibly never read a Marx. They have a point that Havel and others were promising democratization, not (market) liberalization. And of course he was an elitist that never really understood the plight of a common man and prefers environment before creation of new jobs.

And new left could add that in foreign policy, he made some very controversial steps - support for both gulf wars, or for attack on Serbia in last Balkan War.

But much of the things in this article are either lies or are carefully worded to make him look like a monster with the help of omitting context or some important data. Take for example your statement that from the all countries of OECD it was Czech Republic and Slovakia who undergone that greatest rise of income inequality. That sounds terrible, doesn't it? But for some reason, you have forgot to mention that both countries have still the same level of inequality as Norway. I hoped that this ilustrated the kind of bias that is present in this article.

Merry Christmas to you all.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Under Czech privatization and "restitution" programs, factories, shops, estates, homes, and much of the public land was sold at bargain prices to foreign and domestic capitalists.

No, under restitution programs, it was returned to previous owners before communist government nationalized them. Under privatization, it was (bar few exceptions) sold do domestic citizens. You may criticize Klaus's voucher privatization for many thing, but it was sold not to capitalist, but to ordinary citizens.

In the Czech and Slovak republics, former aristocrats or their heirs were being given back all lands their families had held before 1918 under the Austro-Hungarian empire, dispossessing the previous occupants and sending many of them into destitution.

What a blatant lie!

So, the property was returned to owners before 1945, not 1918? If yes, this mistake sounds like typical from Parenti.

That same year, he signed a law that made the advocacy of communism a felony with a penalty of up to eight years imprisonment.

Are we talking about someone who refused to ban the communist party and suffered hit in popularity because of it?

So, did he refuse to ban the Communist party, or did he sign that law? You can't have a Communist party that doesn't advocate Communism.

That same year, he signed a law that made the advocacy of communism a felony with a penalty of up to eight years imprisonment.

True. And also Nazism and Fascism. But you are not protesting that, are you?

Is Communism ban-worthy? What's the history of Czech Communist Party post-1991?

I really suspect the author that he is confusing Havel and Klaus.

Sounds like Parenti, again.

 

[Winner]

So, the property was returned to owners before 1945, not 1918? If yes, this mistake sounds like typical from Parenti.

Yes. Restitutions were granted to people who lost property after the WW2 (because expropriation started right away, before the Communists seized all the power in the state).

It was (still is) controversial in many cases since some of the people who want their lands and castles back are Sudeten Germans, who were expelled on the basis of the so-called Beneš's decrees, which unfortunately still are a part of our legal framework. However, many Sudeten Germans were expropriated and expelled illegally even under these decrees.

This is another good thing Havel did - he went against pretty much all the other Czech political leaders and apologized to the Germans for what happened to them in this country at the end and after WW2 and called for these decrees to be officially repealed.

So, did he refuse to ban the Communist party, or did he sign that law? You can't have a Communist party that doesn't advocate Communism.

AFAIK the law was never even drafted. Havel believed that if we banned the Commies, we'd be doing the same thing they did. Which was one of his mistakes, I believe, but at least he did it because he believed in the ideal of a free, pluralistic society.

Is Communism ban-worthy? What's the history of Czech Communist Party post-1991?

It still exists and consistently wins 12-15% of votes in parliamentary elections. It's become more of a populist anti-system party that thrives on protest votes. Nobody will make a coalition with them, but the Social Democrats sometimes toy with the idea of forming a minority government backed by the Commies.

Sounds like Parenti, again.

Sounds like the guy is a typical American idiot who knows nothing, but likes to write about it a lot.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Havel believed that if we banned the Commies, we'd be doing the same thing they did. Which was one of his mistakes, I believe,

<sigh> Winner, you're at it again

 

[Winner]

To supplement what Algeroth wrote:

Must We Adore Vaclav Havel?

No figure among the capitalist restorationists in the East has won more adulation from U.S. officials, media pundits, and academics than Vaclav Havel, a playwright who became the first president of post-communist Czechoslovakia and later president of the Czech Republic. The many left-leaning people who also admire Havel seem to have overlooked some things about him: his reactionary religious obscurantism, his undemocratic suppression of leftist opponents, and his profound dedication to economic inequality and unrestrained free-market capitalism.

Havel advocated the exact opposite of these things. These accusations are nothing but baseless slander. Havel was in fact lambasted by the economically liberal right wing for not being committed enough to free market capitalism. Havel's views were actually close to that of centre-left, meaning he supported very much restrained capitalism that never puts profits above moral values and ethics. For that he was often scorned and sneered at. Also, he was a supporter of the Green party which he even endorsed in their election campaign a few times.

As Algeroth said, the author probably mistook Václav Havel for Václav Klaus, who's the president now. Oh yes, all these weird central European names, one can't expect an American scholar to distinguish between them...

Raised by governesses and chauffeurs in a wealthy and fervently anticommunist family,

Which apparently made him - a child of 12 years of age by the time the Communists seized power in an unconstitutional coup - a class enemy for all perpetuity. Because of course, bourgeois oppression is a genetic trait inherited from parents to their children. The regime thus barred Havel from any form of higher education.

So, it's not like Havel was raised as an anti-communist. The regime made him into one.

Havel denounced democracy's "cult of objectivity and statistical average" and the idea that rational, collective social efforts should be applied to solving the environmental crisis. He called for a new breed of political leader who would rely less on "rational, cognitive thinking," show "humility in the face of the mysterious order of the Being," and "trust in his own subjectivity as his principal link with the subjectivity of the world." Apparently, this new breed of leader would be a superior elitist cogitator, not unlike Plato's philosopher, endowed with a "sense of transcendental responsibility" and "archetypal wisdom." Havel never explained how this transcendent archetypal wisdom would translate into actual policy decisions, and for whose benefit at whose expense.

Havel called for efforts to preserve the Christian family in the Christian nation. Presenting himself as a man of peace and stating that he would never sell arms to oppressive regimes, he sold weapons to the Philippines and the fascist regime in Thailand. In June 1994, General Pinochet, the man who butchered Chilean democracy, was reported to be arms shopping in Czechoslovakia - with no audible objections from Havel.

Coincidentally, Havel's pressure for a morally accountable foreign policy ruined many arms-exporting companies...

Havel joined wholeheartedly in George Bush's Gulf War, an enterprise that killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. In 1991, along with other [e]astern European pro-capitalist leaders, Havel voted with the United States to condemn human rights violations in Cuba. But he has never uttered a word of condemnation of rights violations in El Salvador, Columbia, Indonesia, or any other U.S. client state.

Havel supported the international effort to punish an aggressor denounced as such by the UN security council. Imagine that...

In 1992, while president of Czechoslovakia, Havel, the great democrat, demanded that parliament be suspended and he be allowed to rule by edict, the better to ram through free-market "reforms."

Havel did actually play with that idea, but not for the reason given. He was dismayed at the post-revolutionary political bickering and constant political deadlock, especially since it was undermining the federation with Slovakia. He believed the system should have been adjusted to restore trust and direct relationship between parliamentarians and their voters and to make it work better. Nothing came out of it, and as a result this political bickering led to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

How can anyone blame Havel for wanting to preserve the country he as the President was sworn to protect is beyond me, but I am probably too bourgeois and fascist to understand Parenti's enlightened logic.

That same year, he signed a law that made the advocacy of communism a felony with a penalty of up to eight years imprisonment. He claimed the Czech constitution required him to sign it. In fact, as he knew, the law violated the Charter of Human Rights which is incorporated into the Czech constitution. In any case, it did not require his signature to become law.

No such law has ever existed here.

in 1995, he supported and signed another undemocratic law barring communists and former communists from employment in public agencies.

That's strange, because our previous prime minister was a former Communist party member...

Of course, I know what the author thinks he's talking about - there is a law preventing former members of the Communist secret police from serving in the government - for a bloody good reason, since they were the scum of the highest order. If I were in charge after 1989, I'd send them all to prison camps to work in uranium mines, which is what the Commies did to their opponents in 1950s.

The propagation of anticommunism has remained a top priority for Havel. He led "a frantic international campaign" to keep in operation two U.S.-financed, cold war radio stations, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, so they could continue saturating Eastern Europe with their anticommunist propaganda.

Oh yes, supporting democratic opposition around the world counts as "anticummunist propaganda". Speaks volumes about the author's agenda.

Under Havel's government, a law was passed making it a crime to propagate national, religious, and CLASS hatred. In effect, criticisms of big moneyed interests were now illegal, being unjustifiably lumped with ethnic and religious bigotry. Havel's government warned labor unions not to involve themselves in politics. Some militant unions had their property taken from them and handed over to compliant company unions.

1) That is a lie, you can criticize big moneyed interests as much as you want, and indeed Havel was doing it repeatedly, as a president and after he stepped down. Class hatred in the law means advocating violence to overthrow the democratic political system. It's not in any way different from advocating violence to get rid of an ethnic minority, so the law is perfectly OK.

2) There was no "Havel's government". Unlike in America, the Czech president doesn't hold actual executive powers. If Parenti fails to understand even the very basics of our political system, how dares he write about it?

3) Trade unions exist in the Czech Republic and the right of employees to form them is enshrined in the constitution.

In 1995, Havel announced that the 'revolution' against communism would not be complete until everything was privatized. Havel's government liquidated the properties of the Socialist Union of Youth - which included camp sites, recreation halls, and cultural and scientific facilities for children - putting the properties under the management of five joint stock companies, at the expense of the youth who were left to roam the streets.

Unlike in America, we actually don't leave young people to "roam the streets" - we have a social security system in place and a moderately effective education system, thanks for looking it up before writing lies, dear author. The SSM was an organization designed to brainwash children into obedient little Communists, and in principle it was similar more to Hitler's Youth than, say, boy scouts or similar organizations. Of course it was dissolved after Czechoslovakia transitioned to democracy.

Under Czech privatization and "restitution" programs, factories, shops, estates, homes, and much of the public land was sold at bargain prices to foreign and domestic capitalists.

No. He's mixing up restitutions with privatisation.

In the Czech and Slovak republics, former aristocrats or their heirs were being given back all lands their families had held before 1918 under the Austro-Hungarian empire, dispossessing the previous occupants and sending many of them into destitution. Havel himself took personal ownership of public properties that had belonged to his family forty years before.

What previous occupants? The property returned was owned by the STATE, together with everything else - that was how the Socialist system worked, and it's amusing that someone who advocates it doesn't know that. Again, the ignorance of the author is stunning.

While presenting himself as a man dedicated to doing good for others, he did well for himself. For all these reasons some of us do not have warm fuzzy feelings toward Vaclav Havel.

Havel was one of the most selfless, down-to-earth politician this planet has ever seen, and I am not exaggerating here.

 

[RedRalph]

Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Cool it, you guys.