Czech Republic: Friend or foe?

A Presidential commission, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, informed president Bush on Thursday March 31, 2005 that the United States still knows "disturbingly little" about the intentions of many of its "most dangerous adversaries." Isn't that interesting?

Certainly, the commission was talking mainly about Iraq, Iran, North Korea and so on - the obvious enemies. The less obvious (but no less dangerous) enemies were not acknowledged - at least not publicly, for CNN to report about.

I of course do not know what Bill Clinton was thinking (well, take a wild guess...), when he pushed for including the former Czechoslovakia into the western world and accepting them into NATO and so on.

Take a look at the Czechoslovak/Czech Prime Ministers of the past 15 years - when the country was allegedly "democratic": Milan Cic, Marian Calfa, Petr Pithart, Josef Tosovsky, Vaclav Klaus, Milos Zeman, Vladimir Spidla, and Stanislav Gross. Out of those eight people, five were communists and the remaining three were politically so far left, that they would qualify for the communist label without any difficulty. And now, with the latest leftie Prime Minister Stanislav Gross having to resign because of corruption, we already know that the next Czech Prime Minister will be another ex-communist, Jan Kohout. It never ends..

The two main Czech political parties, CSSD and ODS, are heavily populated by ex-communists, who (after the fake Velvet Revolution) simply left their original Stalinist Communist Party and joined these two. The KSCM (non-apologetic Stalinist communists) is the third strongest party in the country. And that in spite of the fact that the country has a currently standing law (198/93 Sb), proclaiming communist ideology, parties and regimes ILLEGAL!

In the current armed forces of the Czech republic (army and air force) all senior officers (I am not talking about some junior lieutenants) are ex-communists and as senior officers they represent their country at NATO headquarters in Brussels. I doubt it would be too big of a stretch of the imagination to assume that they forward all NATO military secrets to their old buddies and schoolmates (since they all have Soviet schooling) in Moscow as soon as any such secrets reach their desks.

Very similar is the situation with the Czech justice system. Alleged humanist and former president Vaclav Havel gave lifetime tenure to communist judges from pre-revolution Czechoslovakia (to be a communist was a pre-requisite for the job), so they feel quite secure. Before they were judging according to the Stalinist rule book, now the same people are supposed to uphold democratic laws and justice. Havel's successor, current Czech president Vaclav Klaus recently refused to name approximately 36 new judges. Why? Because they were too young and lacked a communist past! The abuse of power in the Czech justice system is rampant - a perfect example would be the judicial persecution of Vladimir Hucin (www.hucin.com) who was imprisoned without charge or trial during Havel's presidency and is still being dragged through the courts just for his opposition to communism.

The situation is no better with Czech representation at the European Court of Human Rights, Council of Europe at Strasbourg, France. Czech citizens who can not get any justice in their home country turn in droves to the authorities in Strassbourg. There are literally thousands of complaints about injustices caused by currently sitting ex-communist judges mostly in the areas of human and property rights. The most frequent complaint is that the Czech government is via the Czech justice system refusing to return property confiscated by previous Czech regimes. So what is the Czech governmental solution to these complaints? They sent their own people to the European Court to act as their representatives. These 'representatives' would be more aptly called obstructors of justice - they intercept their fellow countrymen's complaints and send them back with fake documentation that their complaint was denied - while in fact it never reached the court. Neat, isn't it?
When it comes to representation at the European Parliament in Brussels, it always seems that only ex-communists are either most qualified or are elected to be representatives of their nations. Czech embassies and consulates abroad are almost exclusively populated by cronies of the last two presidents - with no regard to their diplomatic capabilities or their ability to stay sober.

It is a mystery to me why, 15 years after the country's alleged switch to democracy, the Czech Republic cannot - or does not want to - produce quality people with a clean past to represent them abroad and fill the top positions of their government. Why are only ex-communists available? Is it accidental? A freak of nature? Or worse - intentional?

I opened a Czech newspaper recently and was only mildly surprised to find what is happening this weekend in the Czech Republic. There will be a world gathering of Stalinist communist parties (including Cuba, China, Belarus, etc. - a total of 35 communist parties) in Prague's hotel Olympik starting on April 23, 2005. Communists from all over the world know very well that in the Czech Republic they are among friends and that they will be warmly welcomed. So - not in Beijing, Pyongyang or Havana - but in Prague, Czech Republic. Seems that the civilized West would be much better off if Czechs were still behind the barbed wire on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

As I see things right now, the Czech Republic is not just an enemy at the gates, it is more like a Trojan horse already inside the gates. If you paid attention during your history class, then you know what happened when the naive Trojans fell asleep...

Think about it... and do not fall asleep.

April 19, 2005