I´ve just heard that Vaclav Havel has died.

Someone who has made great sacrifices to make this a better world for all.
To end dicatorship in what was then chechoslowakia, to inpire the further liberation of eastern europe and to tear down the wall running through the continent.

In many ways a true liberal and a great leader.
I wish we had more of those.

May he rest in peace.

if he new what was gonna come he would never do it. the things he promised he would do for czechoslovakia never happened. I lived under the dictatorship as you call it in czechoslovakia and I say that people were much happier then. the system was pro people this system we live now is against people and pro few rich bastards.

Socialism was not perfect but capitalism is pure evil.

The things you say about Havel are things you heard from tv or newspaper. he did not liberate people in czechoslovakia he put them in prison. I would go back to socialism tomorrow if it was possible. you have no idea how good it was to live free, free from stress, hunger. always helped when needed, always guaranteed with work and free health care and education and good education.

people were happy then , they are not so happy now. I do not care that he died , he did not care when my dad died neither. he did not care when so many people lost their jobs, homes, health and roof above their heads. for me he is just another person that died and thats all. he was lied to that he can make some changes but they did not allowed him to do so. they shut him up like they shut up anyone that would want to try to do something for ordinary people like you and me.

hope you get it now my friend this system is not for us its for them. you will never be free till we bring this system down.

The majority in the current chech republic and slowakia doesn´t agree with you.

Besides...the system collapsed because people where NOT happy and because it was even less sustainable than the current form of capitalism.
The military expenses of the whole warsaw-treaty area alone where impossible to sustain..trying to compeed with NATO in an insane armsrace while having less than a tenth of the money to spent is pure madness.

The whole cold-war was pure madness. Everyone knew it was madness. On both sides. Half of the world was choking in an atmosphere of paranoia. It was so surreal and different from today, that many people have even forgotten how fucked-up those days realy where.

The west may be decadent beyond what god himself could have perceived..but when the berlin wall fell, people didn´t rush eastwards.

Must have been quite a guy....what a bio.
I had no idea.

Reading about people like that makes me remember how far I have yet to go.

Here's a BBC report from today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16236393

Yeah, his political career started as a human rights activist.

I can´t see how anyone could be against human rights.

Doesn´t matter where you live or who you are, each person deserves to be treated with respect.

There´s nothing political about that. It doesn´t matter what your political views are. Everyone should respect human rights..from christians to socialists..it´s not a matter of politic´s but of humanity.

well I do not know what planet you live on but I live on Earth do you as well ?

have you lived in socialism ? if not than you know nothing about it. what you read now and read then was and is just propaganda.

and people did not started it it was actually manipulated students I was one of them. I did not even know why I went out on the street. it is like someone turned on these mass manipulating machines and people just went on the street not even knowing why. then we were promised many things that never happened. we were lied to all the time. you can not know the truth cos the only thing you know is what you were told by media and it was not what was going on.

trust me man we were better off in socialism than we are now in this evil capitalism. note I did say that socialism was not perfect but it was better for ordinary people like you and me. if you lived it to experience it you would agree with me now like many people from czechoslovakia (people that remember how it was not very young people born just before or after revolution)

Well, given the fact that your only response on a fascist propaganda film filled with russian military bravado was..that you like russians...i do not take any of what you say serious. I hope you live happily in your fascist-communist dream that fortunately will never come true.

Wow, now I remember ... it's coming out of the fog ... I actually got to see Havel in 1994 in Palo Alto.

He said some amazing things about Western Democracy (that may be satisfying to all points of view expressed on this thread so far). The speech, fortunately, has been archived:

Havel's address ... emphasized his belief that individual rights must be anchored in moral values that transcend the individual.

... he criticized the present Western form of democracy as a "half-baked recipe" that will continue to arouse skepticism, mistrust and lip service in many parts of the world, until its Western advocates stop viewing it as "something given, finished and complete as is, something that can be exported like cars or television sets, something that the more enlightened purchase and the less enlightened do not."

The missing part of the democratic solution, he suggested, may lie in the "forgotten dimension" of its transcendental origins.

"The relativization of all moral norms, the crisis of authority, reduction of life to the pursuit of immediate material gain without regard for its general consequences - the very things Western democracy is most criticized for - does not originate in democracy but in that which modern man has lost: his transcendental anchor, and along with it the only genuine source of his responsibility and self-respect. It is because of this loss that democracy is losing much of its credibility," Havel said.

Transcendence, which he defined broadly as "the respect of man for that which transcends him," is what all human religions and cultures have in common and "have known intuitively since the dawn of time," until the rise of scientific knowledge began treating it as "no more than a set of illusions or mere metaphors."

Science, he said, may have stripped away this spiritual side, but now, "it often happens that the leading discoveries of contemporary science themselves provide confirmation" of humankind's pre-scientific understanding of transcendence.

-----
A crowd of 5,000 greeted Havel with a standing ovation. He was accompanied on stage by folk singer and human rights advocate Joan Baez.

Baez, a long-standing acquaintance of Havel's, sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot before the speech and Forever Young when Havel had concluded. The singer had been invited partly because she had brought Havel and other critics of the Communist government to join her on stage during a 1989 concert in Bratislava. Havel sneaked into that concert by posing as a technician carrying Baez's guitar, he told reporters following the speech. In tribute to her, Havel carried her guitar offstage in this latest joint engagement.

well I do like russians is that something bad ? they are very nice people I met many of them have you ? and when you talk about fascist propaganda than how about talking about the whole world. if I remember it right it was not russians going to wars for the last years it was USA and UK armies invading other countries and killing millions innocent people. are you serious man that you do not see what is going on ? seriously do some proper research and than come back.

This is your US democracy. is this what you applaud to ?

[quote= I remember it right it was not russians going to wars for the last years [/quote]


Unfortunately, this is not quite right-remember Georgia 2008, Dagestan as we speak, Chechnya......?

I don't believe any nation has experienced true socialism with emphasis on workers owning the means of production, distribution, and exchange. The short-lived Paris Commune was probably as close as a nation got to implementing true socialism.

hmm so here is a bit of the story about Georgia : On the morning of August 7, the Georgian army invaded South Ossetian territory and moved on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. By the end of August 8, the Georgians controlled most of the city. When the war began, South Ossetia was defended by only 2,500 Ossetian militia and fewer than 600 Russian "peacekeeper" troops. Georgia's invasion force numbered nearly and now it gets interesting 7,500 American and Israeli-trained troops, with scores of tanks and armored personnel carriers. The well-trained Georgians also enjoyed a technological advantage over their foes; night-vision equipment and aerial drones. Georgian artillery and air strikes landed with effective precision due to their drone eyes-in-the-sky. Russian forces facing the Georgians do not have these technologies. Russian forces in South Ossetia, though aware that a conflict was coming, were caught by surprise by the timing of the Georgian assault.

Events turned against the Georgians immediately as the numerically greater Russian Army crossed the border later on August 8, and battled Georgian forces outside Tskhinvali.

So I guess it was more help then invasion from Russians. Why is it then they come to help and end up as THE EVIL in the eyes of media ? End what in the hell were US and Israeli doing there in the first place ? So its ok when US army invade, bomb and kill people ?

Should I go on with the other wars ? I don't even want to I am against the war anyway.


My point was that I lived in a society that was more people oriented than this society that is thing oriented. I hate capitalism and I wish people could see what is going on and change. I wish you experienced it also

love to you all

As you can see when scrolling upwards i have literally said within this very thread:'the west may be decadent beyond what god himself could have perceived'...so no, i don´t aplaud to the west or the US.

As you can also see in pau´s post..havel also critisised the west. I find his speech above very beautiful. It eminates a very deep and profound wisdom to me. I wish i where so eloquent as that man. How could anybody hate a person who has said such wise things, that expresses such a deep solidarity with all human beings, regardless of their nationality, religious background, etc?

Who said this:

"Ah, hate. You gotta love it!"

I don't hate him I just don't care about him. What he said are just a words that did not materialised not because he did not want to do it but because he was not allowed to. So as you can see to have a big mouth does not give people food and roof above their heads. Its the actions that matters to me not the words.

I think Havel was just used by west to destroy and bring "democracy" to east. As a dissident he had some power and people followed him but as a president he lost it all. That's what I think my friend and what I also think is that he died as a very sad man cos what he fought for never really happened. He died as a west puppet. Where do you think he got all the money to pull the revolution off ? All was planed by west not by people in czechoslovakia. Do you understand it now ?

Anyway lets not argue about it any more. You like him and I used to as well but now I just don't care about him and that's it. Maybe I should not have jump into this thread like that.

So Mr. Havel journey well

This is a video from al-jazeera...hardly to mistake for western propaganda i would say.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/e...0111218113932120566.html

The collapse of communism has lead to great turmoil, but you can´t blame those who opposed the regime. If western capitalism would collapse..wich may very well happen..no-one can blame the people from OWS either for the poverty that would follow.

In some nations, the transition didn´t went peacefully at all. And in some nations including chechoslowakia, it did.

I would challenge your first statement. Is that your general impression or have you read any research that compared both eras in terms of satisfaction ?

I agree that the socialism wasn't a sustainable idea.

I also agree with smokerx that you don't have a real perception of what socialism was since you stated "but when the berlin wall fell, people didn´t rush eastwards". Of course they didn't, "west" was like the holy grail. You could get 4634 kinds of laundry detergent, new electronics, you could buy gas without coupons, cars without insane waiting lists, etc. Consumerism was not a virtue of socialism but is the system really worse because of that ?

Media was controlled, artists fined and jailed for their anti-regime messages but that didn't matter to an average Joe. You worked, you got payed, you could built a house and buy yourself a car. That's what the charm of socialism was. I'm not saying that's enough for everybody, especially here on Nexus, but I would say that it was for the majority of people living in socialism. And why did the choose their new country ? Because they were feed dreams of some sort of magical mixture of east & west which of course never happened.

I hate how this has become a political thread. The collapse of eastern european was innevitable. Men like Havel, Corbachov, Walesa and Kohl, though they had their flaws and weaknesses, have done what they could, to make the transition go as peacefully and with as little losses for the ordinary citizens as possible.

Given the state of the eastern european economies back then, that was an almost impossible task.

But look at it like this: the current problems of greece, portugal, etc, are dwarfed by how large the problems in most of the eastern european economies where in those days..but in spite of that, most of those problems got eventually solved. Compare that to the current situation where the problems are actually smaller than back then, but don´t get solved because of lack of will and solidarity between nations...Wich can eventually bring the whole of europe down.

That´s a telling difference and it shows the greatnes of many people in those days, who wheren´t afraid to lose their popularity, to lose elections.

You also have to remember that on both sides, the cold-war paranoia was actually worse than the current anti-islamic/terrorism paranoia. It was institutionalised madness and everybody went along with it...fully aware of how insane it all was, because there realy was the threat of a total nuclear war that would lead to the total destruction of everything we know.

the cold-war was a sureal nightmare. We all lived in a prison of fear.

Every single person who has helped ending it is a hero IMO. From the borderpolicemen who decided not to open fire on citizens, to the people tearing down the wall, to the leaders who managed to avoid bloodshed.

Havel is one of the people who gave all of those hero´s a face.

^^^That , everyone were lied to by WEST even Havel , everyone were lied then, are now and will be if we do not stop it.

you can not combine society pro people oriented with society pro things oriented , it will not work. you either like your car or your neighbour what you gonna choose ?