We’ve had occasion before on this blog to discuss the maverick Czech artist, David Černý, whose rosy re-christening of the Russian IS-2 tank that used to stand on Soviet Tankers’ Square in Prague made him famous, but that was in the context of one of his later (but just as wacky) artistic works. Anyway, the focus now is on the tank itself: whatever became of it? Lidové noviny provides the answer, via the Czech Twitter-news service Zpravy:

Lidovky: Růžový tank přebarvíme, plánují ruští kozáci: http://t.co/oazjtJzQ

October 24, 2011 4:51 pm via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@Zpravy

Zpravy

“The pink tank we will paint another color, plan some Russian cossacks.” Yes, citizens of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk (in Siberia, just east of the Urals) – including members of the “Cossack Tank Brigade” stationed there – are taking up a collection to re-paint it to another “special” color, presumably closer to the green of its original military purpose. They have also paid for a special plaque, listing WWII veterans’ names from the Chelyabinsk area, that they are asking the Czech government to place in front of that tank. It’s no longer at the square (now known as Kinsky Square), by the way – it was moved to become part of the collection of Prague’s Military Museum, and a series of six photos accompanying the article show the tank (still pink, and with what looks like a snorkel on top lending it a certain priapic aspect) being moved across the Vltava River that bisects the Czech capital.

David Černý, by the way, has no problem with any of this. His only question is whether the Chelyabinsk cossacks would like to hire him to re-paint the tank, or whether they’re just going to send some other Russian artist of their choice to Prague to do the job. Does he really need the money – or was he joking?

                          

Students of European history know that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was involved in World War I on the German side (the “Triple Alliance”) from the very beginning – logically, since that Empire was dominated administratively by German-speakers. However, a large part of its soldiery was made up of Slavs, with no particular affinity for things German. (Which Hungarians, however, did have – but that’s another story!) Finding themselves on the Russian front, ordered to fight and kill fellow Slavs on the other side of the trenches, many of these soldiers soon found that they would rather just desert at the first opportunity – and indeed, then form into units on the other side that would fight for the Russians.

Strictly speaking, the label “Czechoslovak Legions” also applies to units on the Western Front in France, and elsewhere, made up of Czechs and Slovaks willing to fight for the Allied (i.e. Britain, France, USA) cause in exchange for getting the right to ask for their own country after the fighting stopped. But that label is mostly interpreted as referring to the “legion” with the most spectacular escapades, namely those units fighting for the Russians – since in 1917, that Russian government for which they were fighting ceased to exist. The legions then chose to fight against the Communist regime that replaced it late that year, meaning they were heavily involved in the cause of the so-called “Whites” in the Russian Civil War. The “Whites” lost, of course, but the Czechoslovak Legion held itself together the whole time, and actually managed to make its way all the way across Asia to Vladivostok – traveling mainly by rail, it must be admitted, although it’s also maintained that they were also transporting the Czar’s gold-treasure with them (and that gets heavy!) – and thence thousands of miles more by ship to a long-delayed homecoming to what in fact had in the meantime become an independent Czechoslovakia.

It was an epic adventure, and there’s little doubt that these soldiers’ efforts did contribute substantially towards the inclination of Western political leaders at the Paris Peace Conference to give them their brand-new state. On the other hand, they did fight the Communists, meaning that when their country was under Communist rule from 1948 until 1989 any recognition of their feats, or honor shown to surviving veterans, was taboo. That was all OK again after the Velvet Revolution, though, and today there’s a commemorative statue to the Legionnaires standing in Palacky Square located in downtown Prague on the east bank of the Vltava river.

So much for that. But now the Czech Defense Ministry has a new project called Legie 100 (“Legion 100″), intended to honor the Legions further as the 100th anniversary of their exploits approaches. It wants a proper museum, or else a commemorative train; it wants further monies for the maintenance of legionnaires’ graves, it even wants to make a film.

Sorry, Cant’ Afford It

In short, it wants Kč 600 million (€150 million) – but, as is the case most everywhere in the West these days, that sort of money is not just lying around. Quite the opposite, in fact: contemporary Czech politics is currently preoccupied not with the Legion, but with the struggle to finance ordinary government operations (plus a fresh attempt to put public pensions on a more-solid basis). In particular, the Czech government is now blazing new fiscal ground by proposing the abolition of the “reduced rate” value-added tax rate of 10% so that everything that is taxed at all when bought and sold is subject to the “high” rate of 20% – food, books, baby’s booties, you name it.

Even if you don’t follow Czech politics at all, that sort of proposal should be enough to convince you that the Gzech government feels itself in dire need of more tax revenues – meaning, on the other side, it’s not going to be very receptive to any new spending proposals. The Legionnaires – or rather, those who wish to honor their memory, since there are very few actual Legionnaires still alive – might just be out of luck. No less than the Czech Foreign Minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, has felt the need to put in his two-crowns’ worth: “The Legionnaires definitely had their significance, [but] that amount I regard as extravagant. We have problems that probably weigh on us more.”*

If the story of the Czechoslovak Legionnaires appeals to you, it’s likely you’ll have to be satisfied with setting a Google Alert for the private fujd-raising appeal for Legie 100 that will surely come soon. Also, the next time you visit Prague, do pay a visit to Palacky Square – it’s near a major tram-line intersection!

* If you’re now thinking “What business does the Foreign Minister have in making pronouncements about a domestic budget question?” then our two great minds do think alike. But there’s another angle: Schwarzenberg is actually Prince Schwarzenberg, with a personal family history that goes way back to the German-speaking nobility of the Austrian Empire. It’s even likely that, secretly, he dismisses the Legionnaires as having been no better than traitors to the Austrian cause!

                          

Rozpočtoví hříšnici v eurozóně zaplatí pokutu ve výši 0,2 % HDP: Země eurozóny, které v budoucnosti po... http://bit.ly/9X8tCn #czech #news

September 24, 2010 9:09 am via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@cznews

Czech Business News

And a scoop it truly is, for the FT journalists (Peter Spiegel and Joshua Chaffin) have unearthed proposed “legislation” set to be officially unveiled by Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn next Wednesday, which their article terms “the EU’s most ambitious attempt to reorder its economic governance since this spring’s debt crisis that nearly destroyed the single currency.” Basically, the Commission would step up to take up a role in examining the national budgets of the 16 Eurozone member-states in a big way, with the authority to impose fines of 0.2% of GDP on governments which “consistently fail to bring down their public debt levels” – or “fail to control their annual spending,” or “fail to reform their economies to improve their competitiveness.” Once having decided to fine a member-state, the Commission under the proposal could only be stopped by a qualified majority vote from the European Council within 10 days of the decision. (Similar rules for member-states still outside the Eurozone will apparently be forthcoming later.)

Even just ignoring recommendations about how to improve national competitiveness (from the Commission presumably; and so how can they really be described as “recommendations”?) could make a government liable to a 0.1% of GDP fine. And, somewhat ludicrously, the Commission would also maintain a productivity data “scoreboard,” sort of like the running list of grades on an elementary school classroom wall.

Pretty amazing – especially when those of us with any sort of historical memory (it need not go back any further than ten years or so) recall the Stability and Growth Pact that was a key component to the introduction of the euro at the end of the 1990s. That also prescribed monitoring of (Eurozone) member-states’ public finances by the Commission; and it also prescribed “sanctions” (initially fines) for those governments who continued to violate the fiscal rules (budget deficit less than 3% of GDP, national debt less than 60% of GDP or getting there) after repeated warnings.

But it didn’t work: among the first to break these rules were the giants making up the EU’s “axis,” namely Germany and France, and no one ever dared to try to punish them in any way. Besides, there was always the fundamental bit of illogic in such arrangements of trying to punish by means of a monetary fine a government which has gotten into trouble because it doesn’t have enough money available.

So Why Now?

What’s the difference this time, that makes Commission staff think that these sorts of proposals will be accepted, and that they even will work if enacted to influence member-state government behavior? Obviously it’s the big Greek/Spanish/Portuguese/Irish/etc. debt crisis of 2010, which in May prompted the panicked assembling of a €700 billion+ support fund for states in trouble with their sovereign debt. It’s by no means clear that that will be enough to head off trouble; it’s by no means clear, for example, that Greece will in fact be able to avoid default (or, probably, the same thing camouflaged as debt “restructuring”).

Neither is it clear that member-states will be at all receptive to these latest Commission proposals as they are formally presented next week (together with similar ones from Council President Herman van Rompuy). It’s hard to avoid the thought that this sort of supervision of their budget processes from an external, super-national body of experts, backed up by sanctions with financial teeth, was not what most if not all of them thought they were getting into when they joined the EU and then the Eurozone. That historical process of European integration is likely about to face a decisive “gut check” moment, coming up next week.

                          

We do have at least a start, with Marcus Ziener in the German business newspaper Handelsblatt of all places (The president’s eternal string-puller). He zeroes in (as does Rove in his book, apparently) on the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina – two of the George W. Bush administration’s biggest blunders, but not to hear Rove tell it. No, they were just unfortunate misunderstandings. Bush’s “Heck of a job, Brownie!” was nothing more than a gesture of morale support to a staff-member under pressure. And as for Iraq, the President was certain Saddam had WMD – he certainly would not have invaded the country at all had he known that he didn’t.

Up in his piece’s lede, Ziener makes the rather obvious observation that, with this book and the new publicity tour designed to sell it, Bush’s former leading political strategist is out to rehabilitate not only the reputation of the president he served, but also his own. Actually, it probably goes rather beyond that: when it comes to waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Rove (along with some other involved officials, especially former VP Dick Cheney) apparently feels the need to take some pre-emptive action to ward off a potential criminal indictment for conspiracy to torture – a crime against humanity all of us can recognize when we see it, and contrary both to the Geneva Conventions and US law. This lashing-out is what we see in his statement yesterday to the BBC in which he asserted he was even “proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists.” (You can click the video on that BBC page to hear the words come out of “Turdblossom’s” very mouth; for me, hearing his voice this morning was all I needed to quickly switch to some other radio station.)

And again, reaction in the European press is disappointing so far. (Of course, less time has elapsed since Rove went on the BBC.) What there is, is generally just a straight transmission of his remarks, suitably translated. At least we do have Lidové noviny of the Czech Republic (Waterboarding is not torture, assets former Bush advisor). Yes, the report itself (from the Czech news agency CTK) just passes on what Rove has to say. But some on-line editorial assistant has also shrewdly inserted counterpoint in the form of a brief YouTube video about waterboarding from Amnesty International. (Check it out, if you want: it’s not so very shocking, even as it makes the point.)

UPDATE: Look, I don’t intend to touch Rove’s book with a ten-foot pole. But if you’re interested, I do have to admit that it’s still available from Amazon (at that link I gave you at the top of the post) for $16.50 with free shipping and mishandling (h/t to late-night comedian Jimmy Fallon).

                          

Naturally, both Czech papers ultimately refer back to the Saudi press for coverage of this marquee event, but have to report that no Saudi paper was actually able to state what it was about Ms. Mulla* that catapulted her to victory. It was easier just to report what she won: an amount in riyals that, from the Czech-crown equivalent that is cited, seems to be just under €1,000; a pearl necklace; some diamonds (mounted on what, is not revealed); a wristwatch; and a paid vacation to Malaysia, which, although of course another Islamic land, is a pretty nice place to visit, I’ve heard. There’s also further detail here on one of the event’s key competitions, the “How much do you respect your mother?” event: apparently contestants each spend an entire day out “in the country” with their own mother, under the observation of one of the jury-members (wielding a clipboard, no doubt). I say, get coverage of that on the X-Games channel, pronto!

The Czech papers are able to contribute some added detail, perhaps somewhat wistfully, about another beauty pageant held in the Arab world that does actually conform a bit more tightly to what most of the rest of the world understands by the concept, namely the one for Miss Lebanon, where the girls do actually appear in swimsuits (one-piece only, though) and in evening gowns, and are interviewed in front of an audience. In contrast, returning again to Saudi Arabia, the LN article states “Beauty competitions there only have to do with goats, sheep, camels, and other animals” – despite the considerable effort required each year to get the camels into their one-piece bathing-suits!

[Cymbal crash] No, that last part I made up myself . . .

*Quite a suitable name, eh? No, I’m not making it up, click through above to the articles and see for yourself if you want. But don’t be fooled when you see the winner’s last name as “Mullaová”: that last “-ová” part is added routinely in Czech, Slovak, and some other Slavic languages to women’s last names.

                          

I first saw word about this from an on-line article of the Czech daily Lidové noviny (North Korea tests weapons on handicapped children, claim refugees), but that article in turn refers to a report by the Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera, which you can read in English here. A quote from one defector: “If you are born mentally or physically deficient, the government says your best contribution to society . . . is as a guinea pig for biological and chemical weapons testing.” As they say, Dulce et decorum est . . .

While I appreciate Petr Pešek’s item there in LN for spreading the word more widely about this – which indeed is my own intended function here, although I daresay my circulation is somewhat smaller than LN’s – I can assure you that it includes little that you can’t read in English over at Al-Jazeera. (All I could find was an additional reference Pešek makes to how it has already been known that North Korea was willing to sacrifice prisoners for these purposes.) Note however that he is notably more journalistically cautious, scattering his piece thickly with “alleged” (údajný) and “it is said” (prý) and pointed references to the Al-Jazeera account.

                          

The (eventual) metamorphosis of The Pirate Bay to legality is especially good news for the French government, which has been busy since the beginning of the year trying to come up with legal measures to pass to outlaw the sort of free downloading of copyrighted commercial material that The Pirate Bay did so much to facilitate. After modifying their legislation to meet the objections from France’s Constitutional Court, which had first thrown it out, the French Senate has recently passed it, so that it is close to becoming law. It would empower a state agency – called Hadopi – to detect this sort of activity and, if two warnings to desist are ignored, pass on to French judges information about the offense for them to assign penalties, including fines, jail, and disconnection from the Net.

Ah, but can anyone ever stop truly determined Internet “pirates”? Le Monde reporter Maël Inizan now reports on another site now arising like a phoenix from The Pirate Bay’s ashes to save the cause of free downloading (Illegal downloading: a new site takes up the torch of The Pirate Bay).

This site is called OpenBitTorrent. As you could imagine, the people in charge here have taken precautions against being as vulnerable, whether technically or legally, as The Pirate Bay turned out to be. There is little that is secret about their tactics to those ends, as Inizan point out; you can basically read it all off of the site’s very homepage. “We do not have any content. We are not a bittorrent site, we are just a tracker, we can not [sic] see what content is behind an info_hash.” In Inizan’s estimation, it’s this characteristic of serving as a decentralized index merely enabling people to find out where they need to go to download the bittorrents that they want that should keep it safe from legal challenge: “If it spreads, this system risks rendering the application of the ‘Hadopi Law’ in France even more difficult.”

Oh, and as you might also be able to imagine, there is some heavy circumstantial evidence that the people behind OpenBitTorrent are the same people who originally were behind The Pirate Bay.

The EU Is On the Case!

A national legislature determined to cut people off from the Internet for their downloads; legal assaults against notorious pirate websites; it’s clear that the whole Internet-download question, in Europe at least, has the potential to provide some excitement in the public arena even as the continent otherwise goes off on vacation. This issue is being addressed at the EU level as well, as we learn from the Czech daily Lidové noviny: European Commission wants to enable downloading of songs and films. This word comes from the relevant European Commissioner, namely Viviane Reding of Luxembourg and of “Information Society and Media.” “The European Union needs new rules for the downloading of music, films, and other files from the Internet, without that being pirate,” is the article’s first sentence. In Ms. Reding’s judgment, the way the relevant laws are now, they pretty much force people (mainly the young, of course) to become “Internet pirates” and illegally download copyrighted material. So according to the piece her “key priority” is to set up a “framework that will bring digital content closer on the united European market and at the same time will ensure compensation for the creators.”

There are only a few objections to all of this that the LN article does not bother to go into:

1. “Closer” (i.e. more available) digital content for consumers, yet reward for creators: that’s certainly the desired Holy Grail here. But those objectives are to a great degree mutually antagonistic, so that it seems Ms. Reding will truly need the Wisdom of Solomon to ever come up with any legal solution that will work.
   
2. On the other hand, that’s probably really not her business anyway! Within the European Union it is still the national governments that have jurisdiction over media and Internet questions (as we see reflected, for example, in the widespread attention being devoted to the French legislature’s recent efforts in this regard).
   
3. Ms. Reding might well not be Commissioner for Information Society and Media for very much longer! This is by no means any reflection on her competence; rather, the five-year term-of-office for all European Commissioners comes to an end this fall. Sure, it’s possible that she might remain in the post, although that would require 1) That the Luxembourg government again name her, not somebody else, to be a Commissioner, and then 2) That whoever turns out to be the Commission President re-appoints her to that particular portfolio. It’s therefore very possible that she will not – so is she really willing to tackle this complicated question as her “key priority” with only the summer months (vacation time!) and a couple of months after that left to her?
   

                          

Now the Czech daily Lidové noviny brings word today of a new gastronomic challenge along this line: camelburgers! A fast-food restaurant in Saudi Arabia’s own capital, Riyadh, is now offering its customers hamburgers made from camel-meat, and owner Saleh Kuvaisi is happy to explain to the press why he thinks this will be a big hit. “It’s all about the love people here have for camel meat,” he declares, and indeed the article notes that upper-scale restaurants in the Kingdom have long offered their customers camel “delicacies” (pochoutky) such as livers. Still, the article does give the impression that this rather has more to do with the regard Saudis have for camels per se, namely as fond tokens of the Bedouin existence from the good old days that they harken back to as the origin of their Arab culture, even as at present they are much more likely to get around in some sort of Toyota pick-up.

In any event, camel burger (that is, ground camel-meat), is still something new, but you wonder how it is that nobody ever thought of it before. The meat is said to be particularly low in fat compared to other animals (the same goes for camel milk, by the way); one camelburger customer is quoted in the article as approvingly noting that aspect and also praising the meat’s “refined taste.” And a certain Walid Sanchez, who according to the article runs a popular Internet guide to Saudi Arabian restaurants*, asserts to the reporter that camelburgers are bound to be popular, because Saudis generally are open to new things gastronomic – but then again, of course they will like them all the better if these things have local origins.

There you have it, then, another gourmet experience to put on your personal bucket list. This one might pose a particular challenge, though: there’s no such thing as a tourist visa to Saudi Arabia, you either need to be a Muslim going there on pilgrimage to Mecca or else have some other practical reason to be allowed inside the Kingdom – and I don’t think “having a camelburger at Saleh’s joint” will cut it!

* I have to note with disapproval here that this LN article mentioned Sanchez and his website, but only generically and without providing the URL; that I had to go find for you, dear readers, using the power of Google.

                          

OK, maybe the local Czech press is overstating somewhat the general interest in what the Senate has before it (although the Czech Senate Press Office does report the presence today of seventy journalists and eleven foreign film-crews, including one even from Hong Kong.) Still, the fact remains that, three months after the lower house of the Czech parliament approved the Lisbon Treaty, today the vote is to be held to see whether the upper house does the same (which is required, of course, along with the presidential signature, for the Czech Republic formally to approve it).

You really have to wonder: why is the vote being brought up just now? You see, there’s a knotty problem for any vote, which is namely that for a foreign treaty like this to pass it needs to win at least a 3/5 vote of all Senators present and voting. But precisely when a vote is scheduled for any measure before the Czech parliament is presumably up to those heading the current government, mainly the prime minster, So we have an important clue in the fact that in a few days the current prime minister, Mirek Topolánek (having lost a vote-of-confidence in the lower house a little over a month ago) is going to have to make way for Jan Fischer, who is supposed to be a non-political technocrat but who many fear will merely be a political puppet of Czech President Václav Klaus.

I think that pretty much explains the timing, then: while Topolánek may not have considered this to be the ideal time to bring up the Lisbon Treaty in the Senate, it was at least better than anytime after he had to leave office, when there could be no assurance that it ever would be brought up at all. Of course, the outgoing prime minister was also on-hand to urge its acceptance before the Senators, as recounted in a further article from LN with an arresting title: Stop any further shame, Topolánek lobbies. “Shame”? Certainly: Topolánek’s point was how doubly-embarrassing it would be for the Czech Republic to reject the Lisbon Treaty not so long after voting out its government just as it was in the middle of the country’s first opportunity to serve as the six-month EU president. He termed that last action an “irresponsible and cynical step,” and as its main victim he would, but his main point was a good one nonetheless. A “no” vote would consign the country to the EU’s “periphery,” he claimed before the assembled Senate; what’s more, “it would threaten all lands to the east of Germany and Austria with a weakening of their ties to the West and move them into the arms of the Russians.”

While that last point is debatable, it’s still true that rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Senate would unleash a whole new set of problems for the EU (while at least rendering irrelevant – for a while, at least – the issue of when and how to hold a second referendum in Ireland about it). If the past is any guide, the immediate issue then would become how to maneuver so as to get the Senate to vote on the treaty again sometime in the future and, this time, to return the “correct” answer. While on the one hand such a process would seem to be a bit easier and less-ostentatious than repeating a whole referendum (the remedy for the previous Irish “no”), on the other hand it would still be very difficult to pull off against the Euro-sceptic resistance to be found throughout the Czech government, including most especially in the president’s office.

In any case, Topolánek’s main point is certainly valid: the Czech Republic would suffer a big blow to its European reputation. This point is reinforced by another LN piece (sourced to the Czech press agency ČTK): They say the Czech presidency could have been worse. The point of this article is, on the occasion of the last legislative session of the European Parliament in its current form (i.e. before elections coming up on June 4), to go around and ask MEPs what they think of the Czech presidency so far. The bottom-line is that no one is yet ready to provide a firm answer; the general attitude is “Let’s see them finally ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and then we’ll see what we think about them.”

Ratify it is what they’re going to do, though, at least according to Josef Kolina in his article The Czechs are fans of “Lisbon,” but they aren’t familiar with it, who cites a insta-poll carried out over the past couple of days that cites 51.2% of respondents for the Lisbon Treaty and only 29.2% against. So that means the Senate should accept it, right? is what Kolina seems to be saying, even as that poll further reveals – and it’s no big surprise – how lacking the Czech man-on-the-street is in familiarity with the changes that treaty will bring about.

Rate Yourself: Lisbon-Fan or No?

I know: that’s a rather naive attitude. But one of LN’s competitors in the market for Czech daily newspapers, Mladá fronta dnes, comes out seemingly in answer to Kolina’s concerns with a helpful and informative article, by one Zuzana Kaiserová: Fill out the quiz: Are you a fan of Lisbon, yes or no? It’s not really a “quiz” as you probably think of the word, i.e. it’s not some sort of test to see how much you know about the Lisbon Treaty, but is rather a self-evaluation questionnaire – you know, along the lines of “Are you really good in bed?” and other such articles you see all the time in women’s magazines – that is supposed to help you decide in the end whether you are “pro” or “contra.” Of course, these things can never truly be as non-partisan as their authors claim them to be; it generally does not take too much ingenuity in slanting the questions to ensure that the reader comes up most of the time with the answer that you prefer.

Looking at the questions making up this “quiz,” I’d have to think that Kaiserová is not a fan of Lisbon. Like, for example: “Does it bother you that [the Treaty] will weaken the role of the Czech Republic?” Or: “Do you want one more – European – president?” Or this: “Would it bother you if the Czech Republic no longer had Vladimír Špidla in the European Commission?” (I guess there the answer would depend on your opinion of Vladimír Špidla; he was Czech prime minister earlier in this decade, and is now European commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs & Equal Opportunities.)

UPDATE: There’s one more EU crisis avoided: the Czech Senate did pass the Lisbon Treaty.

                          

OK, so Bilefsky has his NYT account. (And what luck that he ran across one “Martin Kotas” – last name probably really spelled “Kotaš” – who provided so many pungent opinions about the Americans and enabled him to use the phrase “literally cried into his beer”! But I would counsel Bilefsky to avoid the cheap-but-tempting one-person anecdote in favor of consulting, say, the many polls available that can clearly show how attitudes in this country of 10 million people are against the installation of American radar on its soil, rather than regarding it – as Kotaš seems to – as some “essential bulwark against Russia.”) But the leading Czech business newspaper Hospodářské noviny already had a piece yesterday (Obama cuts consultations with Czechs to a minimum) about Obama’s Prague dilemma, which of course provides further details – like that the EU initially was fighting hard to stage this US-EU summit back in Brussels rather than in Prague. EU leaders don’t like President Klaus much and had no desire to reward him with this summit, but in the end it seems Prague’s sheer “picturesqueness” factor won out. (E.g. fantastic scenery – like Prague Castle, pictured above – in front of which to stage events like a major public speech. And remember that, until the events of this past week, there was no reason to regard Mirek Topolánek as the sort of “toxic” Czech leader that Obama would have to maneuver to avoid, as he always would have to do with regard to President Klaus.) And while there will be a busy schedule of bilateral meetings on Sunday for the American president, the one with Czech representatives will involve President Klaus, Premier Topolánek, and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg all at the same time yet last only a few minutes. Much more time has been put into the schedule for talks with EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and the leaders of Poland and Spain – as well as, at the end of Obama’s visit, with former Czech president Václav Havel, who nowadays fills no explicit official or political role and, indeed, has not been in the best of health.

“Undisclosed-Location Restaurant”? No Way

By the way, about that “secret location” for Barack and Obama’s romantic Prague dinner tonight? Remember that this is the Czech Republic and that Central Europe especially has always been a difficult region in which to keep secrets, from way back at the beginning of the Cold War and even before. The Czech daily Lidové noviny has all you might want to know about that romantic evening (Obamas’ dinner? No secret). The restaurant that won the prize of hosting the First Couple turns out to be Terasa U Zlaté Studně (“Terrace at the Golden Well”), rated by the English-language Prague city guide Prague.tv as an “Upscale restaurant, with excellent views” (indeed, see for yourself at their homepage), and located at the bottom of the massive Castle Hill where on Sunday morning Obama will deliver his speech to the gathered masses at the top. (Yes, a “Sermon on the Mount,” you could say.) As restaurant manager Michal Motyčka was glad to reveal to the inquiring LN reporter (and, no doubt, whomever else), “Yes, it’s confirmed. We have Obama and Michelle registered for dinner Saturday evening.” Interestingly, Motyčka went further: “The restaurant is not closed to the public. Obama will be there normally, with other people who come to eat with us that evening.” But don’t go rushing to make your own reservations: they’re already all booked-up. (This probably in itself provides a bit of further commentary on the “secrecy regime” in Prague.) Oh, and on the menu? It will be modern Czech cuisine, so such things as tenderloin and duck with sauerkraut.

* A better translation of Topolánek’s criticism of Obama is probably “highway to hell” – a remark apparently influenced by the Czech Prime Minister’s attendance at the AC/DC concert in Prague shortly before! I ran across this interesting tidbit while scrounging recently through the on-line Czech press, encountering it in someone’s editorial piece. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to go back and track it down to get the reference or the link, so for this I’ll just have to draw on whatever reserves of credibility I have on account with the honored readers of this site.