Pining Away For Paradise Lost

Proposal to abolish Czech totalitarian regimes institute at court

Brno- The Czech Constitutional Court (US) has received a proposal to abrogate the law on the basis of which the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has been established, CTK has learnt.

The proposal to abolish the state-established facility that is to research into Nazism and communism in Czech history was signed by 57 opposition deputies from the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM).

They say the institute could politically influence the interpretation of history.

By all means, let us not forget about the influences that stem from the political interpretation of history.

They also object to labelling the whole period of communist rule as totalitarian, it ensues from the proposal.It is difficult to say when the Constitutional Court will rule on the proposal.

The left-wing deputies fear that people will consider the results of the research conducted by a state-established institution as the "official" and sole possible interpretation of history.

"This will factually restrict the constitution-guaranteed freedom of scientific research," the proposal says.

This is beginning to smell of George Soros.

The deputies also object to what they call ideological terminology.

"The law authoritatively describes the section of Czechoslovak history between February 25, 1948 [when Communists seized power in then Czechoslovakia] and December 29, 1989 [end of communist regime in Czechoslovakia] as a period of communist totalitarian power. It does not consider the fact that the period was changeable from the point of view of ways of exercise of state power and was not compact in this respect," the deputies write.

They write that the 1950s saw a real totalitarian regime while in the 1960s the regime was gradually democratised, and they say that it did not fully return to the repressive practices from the times of the cult of personality in the 1950s even after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968.

That's why so many Czech ex-pats returned home; overwhelming the borders, just to see the 5000-7000 Soviet tanks that were now in the Czech Lands to guarantee their freedom.

"This state also carried out a number of measures that were generally positive for society, particularly in the social sphere," the deputies write.

They use as "a partial example the deepening of the practical equalisation of women in political, economic and family life, as well the abandoning of the practice of making differences between children according to their origin."

The left-wing deputies recommend to the Constitutional Court to abrogate the law as a whole, or to at least delete the words "totalitarian" from a number of passages of the law.

Nácek a komunista svině would work.

The right justified the establishment of the institute by an effort to concentrate and process the written documents of all security forces of the communist regime.

It said the processing of data and making them available should contribute to the comprehension of the communist regime and at the same time to the prevention of a biased interpretation of history.

The institute's activities will be supervised by a council that has elected historian Pavel Zacek as the institute's first head. He will formally assume his post on January 1.

David Irving was unavailable for comment.

Via ČTK

The Impeccable Conversion

What can we say?

The judge is Austrian, mein freunds.

Discredited Irving plans comeback tour
Ten months ago he was languishing in an Austrian jail, less than halfway through a three-year sentence with his career - and professional reputation - in tatters.

This week David Irving, the discredited British historian who was described by a high court judge as a Holocaust denier and a racist, says he is launching a comeback with a speaking tour of British cities and a series of new books. "I have kept a low profile for several months because I have had to sort out where to live and to address my financial situation," said Mr Irving, who was declared bankrupt in 2002 after an unsuccessful libel action over claims he was a Holocaust denier. "But now I am ready to start again."

Mr Irving's career has been littered with controversy, culminating with his arrest in Austria in 2005. He was sentenced to three years in jail after a judge ruled that two speeches he made in 1989, dismissing the Auschwitz gas chambers as a "fairy tale" and questioning the existence of extermination camps, breached Austrian law. His appeal was upheld, with the judge saying the crimes were a long time ago and that Mr Irving had undergone an "impeccable conversion".

However, drinking tea on the sofa of a 10-bedroom house he has begun renting near Windsor, Mr Irving says that his views on the Holocaust have crystallised rather than changed. He says that he believes the Jews were responsible for what happened to them during the second world war and that the "Jewish problem" was responsible for nearly all the wars of the past 100 years: "The Jews are the architects of their own misfortune, but that is the short version A-Z. Between A-Z there are then 24 other characters in intervening steps." Mr Irving was due to address a meeting in Coventry last Friday - although that event was disrupted by protesters - and held another meeting at his home on Saturday. He plans to speak in Halifax and Birmingham as well as at several unnamed universities.

Last night, news of his attempts to kickstart his career were met with disbelief and anger from Jewish groups and political opponents. Lord Foulkes, of the Labour Friends of Israel, said: "It is a frightening thought that he is still pursuing his agenda." Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies, said Mr Irving no longer had any legitimate claim to be a serious historian. However, Mr Irving still insists he is a respected academic. He says that a document, which he is 80% sure is genuine, suggests that 2.4 million Jews were killed in Poland, but goes on to claim that the gas chamber at Auschwitz was fake. "It was not the centre of the killing operations - it has only become a focus because it is the site that is best preserved. Much of what is shown the tourists there is faked postwar - watchtowers, even the famous gas chamber."

That dovetails nicely with Kosling Conspiracy Theory No.___.

He added: "In my opinion now the real killing operations took place at the Reinhardt camps west of the Bug river. In the three camps here [Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka] Heinrich Himmler's men (mostly Ukrainian mercenaries) killed possibly as many as 2.4 million in the two years up to October 1943. There is now nothing to be seen of the Reinhardt camps, neither stick nor stone, so few tourists go there. I have visited all four sites earlier this year."

Pressed as to whether this change undermined his previous stance, Mr Irving replied: "It is a crystallisation of my view." Asked if he now accepts there had been a Holocaust against the Jewish people he said he was "not going to use their trade name". He added: "I do accept that the Nazis quite definitely, that Heinrich Himmler, organised and directed a programme, a clandestine programme, for the liquidation of European Jews ... and that in 1942-43 alone over 2.5 million Jews were killed in those three camps." He added that Hitler was "completely in the dark" about the programme.

Last night Gerry Gable, of the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, said: "This man is a hardened rightwing extremist and this latest development proves he is determined to pursue his agenda."

Jimmy Carter was unavailable for comment.

Via Guardian Unlimited.

Forgetting To Remember

Civilian groups take matters into their own hands to commemorate WWII Resistance
On June 24, hundreds gathered at the former site of Ležáky village, east Bohemia, to commemorate the 65th anniversary of its destruction at the hands of the Nazis.

A week prior, on June 18, a similar group gathered at a church on New Town’s Resslová street to remember the seven Czechoslovak Resistance fighters who died there 65 years ago during a shootout with the Gestapo.

Though separated by time and place, both tragedies were the fallout from one morning in May 1942 when resistance fighters attacked a Nazi convoy in Prague 8. As a result of that day’s events, one Nazi despot died, thousands of civilians were murdered and the future of the nation was cemented.

“We are talking about the assassination of the most important officer of the Third Reich,” says military historian Michal Burian of the killing of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich. “The Czech nation paid a bloody tax for this deed, but it had declared its resistance to the occupation clearly in front of all the world.”

But undercutting both remembrance ceremonies this month was a growing swell of protest that the government has failed to properly commemorate this episode of history.

Speaking at the memorial ceremony in Ležáky, Senate Chairman Petr Pithart told the Czech News Agency that a planned memorial chapel at the site of the razed village has yet to be built.

And years of stalling mean there’s still no proper memorial in Prague 8 to the two men who assassinated Heydrich. Plans for one have snagged on disagreements over the nature of the memorial and its location.

Fed up with waiting, two citizens’ groups secretly erected their own illegal memorials June 10 and 18. The two plaques were placed near the site of the assassination.

One of the groups, an amateur historians’ organization calling itself AMEC, has been considering the move since 2005, said spokesman Filip Barták. “I am not sure if there is the political will to build a memorial,” he says. “We didn’t want to celebrate or criticize the assassination, we just wanted to commemorate this act.”

While local officials aren’t pleased with the illegal memorials, they don’t plan to take action either, says Prague 8 spokeswoman Helena Šmídová. The decision to remove them is up to the owners of the property.

Shortly after 10 a.m. May 27, 1942, British-trained resistance fighters Jan Kubiš, a Czech, and Jozef Gabcík, a Slovak, hid near a tight curve in the road in Prague 8.

In their sights: Reinhard Heydrich, acting head of the Nazi-controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Renowned for his brutality, Heydrich was close to Adolf Hitler and was one of the primary architects of the Holocaust. The plan for his assassination, dubbed Operation Anthropoid, had been hatched in the United Kingdom under the supervision of exiled President Edvard Beneš.

As Heydrich’s car slowed to navigate the bend in the road, Gabcík leaped out and attempted to shoot Heydrich, but his submachine gun jammed, says military historian Burian. Kubiš threw a grenade, which exploded near the car’s fender. The assassins made their getaway and Heydrich died a week later from an infection caused by the shrapnel.

Furious, Hitler ordered the killing of thousands of civilians, resistance fighters and their collaborators. The villages of Lidice and Ležáky were razed and nearly all inhabitants killed. Kubiš and Gabcík were betrayed by a comrade and died inside the Church of Sts. Cyril and Methodius on Resslová street, where they were hiding. Some of the men, including Kubiš, died from Gestapo bullets, while others, like Gabcík, committed suicide, Burian says.

Despite the bloody reprisals, the killing of Heydrich was symbolically important for a nation downtrodden after the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which the United Kingdom, France and Italy handed parts of Bohemia and Moravia over to Hitler in an attempt to slake his thirst for war.

“The assassination and the following reprisals … led to one of the most important moments of World War II from the point of view of Czechoslovakia: the renouncement of the Munich Agreement by Britain and France,” Burian says.

In the district where the assassination took place, Kubiš and Gabcík each have a street named in their memory. At the church where they died, a memorial stands. In the town of Leamington Spa in central England, where the men were trained, there’s a memorial fountain.

While in Prague 8, the bureaucrats sit with their thumbs up their brains.

Still, some local residents and historians have for years been calling for a memorial at the site of the assassination.

It’s a work in progress, says Prague 8 spokeswoman Šmídová. “We have been negotiating with military experts and historians” for nearly a year, she says. “We have to agree on the text, location and the appearance of the memorial. You can’t rush these things.”

Hell no, lady, let's not rush into any damn thing. It's been sixteen years since liberation from the damn Russians and sixty-five since the Nazi bastard Heydrich was sent to his just reward. Yet, proof that Absurdistan still exists comes from your very words.

The two illegal plaques have created more problems than they’ve solved, she says.

“The experts already argue about the text of one of them. … Also, one text contains a grammatical mistake,” she says.

My, my, my! And what does your proposed text say, sweetheart? Give me a friggin' break!

What’s more, the AMEC memorial has since disappeared, less than two weeks after it went up.

Barták is unfazed by this setback. “I think it was brought down by opponents of the assassination or by the town hall. … [But] we think that our plaque has met our expectations and completed its mission — it started a discussion,” he says.
“We hope the authorities will finally install an official one.”

Agreed, but let's not hold our breath waiting for damnable nitwits like Helena Šmídová to act. At its current pace, Prague 8's division of Absurdistan may have a decision by May 27, 2042.

Maybe.



Jean-Pierre was unavailable to demonstrate his superior level of ignorance.

Decent Book Review Goes BDS

Historian Michael Beschloss has written a new book, Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789 -1989. The International Herald Tribune published a review of the book that's by Albert R. Hunt.

To those dismayed about the state of the American presidency, which is many people in the United States and abroad, there is some small comfort: Michael Beschloss's new book on courageous leadership.

OK, a bit of a hint.

Beschloss, a leading historian on the presidency, chronicles nine acts of brave statesmanship, from George Washington and John Adams avoiding war with England and France in the earliest days of the United States to Harry Truman's recognition of Israel and Ronald Reagan's dealings with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.

The book . . . is a companion to John F. Kennedy's 1956 work, Profiles in Courage, which chronicled great acts of political fortitude by eight members of Congress.

And may have been the work of a ghostwriter.

. . . Beschloss captures the complexity and competing claims of presidential decision-making. In most of these instances, other choices would have been easier and politically safer - and devastatingly wrong.

Does the book include a profile in courage of the Hero of Tehran?

Unattractive elements abound. Those who think politics is petty today might feel reassured after reading about Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton sniping at one another in the Washington and Adams sagas, or the towel-snapping banter between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Kennedy, the patriarch of the clan, who disliked and distrusted each other.

Many of these great men were duplicitous. Teddy Roosevelt leaked a false report about John D. Rockefeller to help his war against the trusts; four decades later, his cousin, Franklin, told the attorney general to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court when ordering secret, warrantless wiretapping.

So, let's cut to the chase.

Without asking the author, I very much doubt this book is intended to give comfort to President George W. Bush's White House and its efforts to cite historical analogies to justify the unpopular war in Iraq.

I doubt Beschloss even had that in mind, asshat.

In almost all of Beschloss's illustrations, the issues were hotly debated by powerful protagonists with a deeply involved president acutely aware of the stakes. None of those elements have been present in the current crisis.

Where was the hot debate when FDR chose to ignore the Supreme Court?

It is difficult to see how in 20 or 30 years, in Beschloss's phrase, that the Iraq war will be seen "as not only daring but historically wise."

Like the predictions made by neocoMs about Ronald Reagan's decision to confront the Evil Empire?