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What with the England – Slovakia football match last Saturday and Brian Micklethwait’s visit to Bratislava, it has been an unusual period of publicity for the small country wedged between its better known Central European neighbours – the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary.
In his post What EU means to Slovakia Brian waxed lyrical about the sophistication of the Slovak high-school students and their ability to transcend the limitations of their environment. They managed to turn Brian’s perception of himself up-side down:
For the Slovaks, the Internet is the world. Suddenly I felt like a provincial oik, from a huge but basically non-central kind of place like Yorkshire or Texas, in the presence of the world’s true sophisticates.
Then we get the news of racist abuse aimed at two black players in the England team during the European Championship in Slovakia last Saturday1. Emile Heskey, along with Ashley Cole, says he was subjected to the worst racist abuse he has experienced in his career.
“We heard the racist stuff because it just wasn’t in one section of the stadium, it was virtually the whole ground… To hear it in this day and age is shocking and you would have thought that people might have moved on from that sort of thing by now.”
Quite. So what is Slovakia really like? A country of which we know little and care even less, it hasn’t yet found any symbolic associations that gets small, and big, nations through the day – Switzerland has cheese and cuckoo clocks, Scotland has whisky and tartan, Czech Republic has beer and Prague, Russia has vodka and chaos etc.
→ Continue reading: Slovakia in the spotlight
Posted from Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Yesterday and the day before, I did a couple of talks in the local high school, with my friend the teacher supplying not so much translation as translatory clarification as and when needed, because my audience had a pretty reasonable understanding�- and this is the whole point of what I’m about to write – of English. I spoke about the British attitude towards the EU, and explained why the Euro-debate has become steadily more fierce.
One of the reasons for�this fierceness is that the Internet has made the idea of participating in the�Anglosphere more appealing, and the idea of a unified Europe corresponding less appealing, to the British. But yesterday morning, before I embarked upon this bit of my talk, I asked how many of my audience had themselves used the Internet during the previous week. Most hands went up. Then I asked: how many of you used only the Slovak language? All hands went down. All of them. Not only that, there was a distinct murmer of disapproval that I should even ask such a question. Only use Slovak internet sites? What a bizarre idea. → Continue reading: On what the EU means to Slovakia
Posted from Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Here at the only Internet cafe in Bratislava that I can find, I am struggling with a crazy Eastern European keyboard and what are for me the difficulties of using�yahoo. It’s an arkward combination, not made�anz easier bz the fact that whenever I tzpe z I get y and whenever I tzpe y I get z. So it comes out as zahoo unless I concentrate verz carefullz.
But enough of trivia. I got to Bratislava last Friday and leave next Monday, and so far it’s been great. I have lucked into a classical music festival, the initials for the Slovak title of which are BHS. So when I went to the concert on Saturday, I thought, oh no, they�ve done a truly tacky sponsorship deal. But all was well.
The concert however was dull, I thought.��The solo pianist, Ivan Moravec, is world-renowned, but frankly he made his two pieces, the Franck Variations for Piano and Orchestra and the Ravel Concerto, sound to me like run-throughs. Maybe it was me. Maybe it is that he looks like a waiter. Whatever, everyone else seemed happy.
But then on Sunday, there was Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Czech Philharmonic in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. It was sold out of course, but I went along anyway, and a Japanese gent sold me a ticket, for the Slovak equivalent of about £6 sterling ($9 US). Unbelievable. As was the performance. For once all the flim-flam of classical musical ovations – a loud a pretentious ‘bravo’ as soon as the last chord went silent, vast gobs of flowers for the lady solo singers and even for the gentleman conductor, constant returns to the platform for more applause, rhythmic applause – all seemed entirely appropriate. → Continue reading: Eastern European Idylls
Is it right, on the day when most minds (certainly the minds of most Samizdata readers) are focussed on a war that is very much in progress, to think also about an earlier one, the Cold one, the one that ended, approximately speaking, around 1990? I hope so. Like everyone I have my “what I was doing”, my “how I heard about it” and my “how I felt as I watched it” stories concerning today’s recollections of a year ago. (Someone rang me. I was at my desk. I didn’t like it.) But, rightly or wrongly, appropriately or inappropriately, I choose also to ruminate today upon events from an earlier time. (And besides, I cannot possibly do better than Perry’s photos, or David’s inspired “root causes of American anger” posting of last Sunday.)
So anyway, in the latest issue (October 2002) of Gramophone, there’s a letter concerning the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnanyi (1877-1960), from Professor William Lee Pryor of the University of Houston. Here’s this letter in full (but with apologies for the absence of Hungarian accents):
In his review of some orchestral music by Dohnanyi (June, page 44), David Gutman writes, ‘I wonder how many readers are still bothered by the bizarre trajectory of the pianist composer’s wartime career.’ This is no doubt a veiled allusion to false charges brought against this greatly maligned musician during the Second World War. I knew Dohnanyi well and would like to respond.
→ Continue reading: Not a Nazi and not an anti-semite – just an anti-communist
The Blogger Bash is tonight, so I got myself in the party mood this morning by reading how David Farrer of Freedom and Whisky had responded to Adriana’s griefometer posting.
He tried it on Soviet Communism, but deliberately took it all a bit seriously and tastefully, ignoring for example how very uncute lots of the victims of Soviet Communism were.
Now, this griefometer is just a silly game, isn’t it? A bit sick perhaps? Well, consider this: 100 million killed over 80 years is about 3,422 per day.
Or one “World Trade Centre”.
Every day for 80 years.
What’s really sick is that the communists’ ideological soulmates infest almost every academic institution in the western world. And I am still waiting for them to apologise.
Have a nice weekend.
Although Prague has been hit hard by the worst flooding of the Vltava in a century, at least there has been some good news for the despondent staff at Prague’s zoo. After having been forced to put down several highly prized large animals when it became clear they could not be moved to higher ground in time to avoid drowning, returning zoo employees were astonished to discover Slavek, an 18 year old hippo, waiting for them on the second floor of a zoo building in an exceedingly bad mood.
 Don’t just stand there gawping, feed me, damn it!
It seems that Estonia is well on the way to becoming a shining example of robust capitalist virtues… and high tax Finland is concerned it will turn into a tax haven (article will only be available on-line for a short time for non-Baltic Times subscribers).
In Finland, corporate income tax is 29 percent while in Estonia it is 26 percent and there is no tax on reinvested corporate profits. The personal income tax rate is progressive in Finland and may reach up to 60 percent; in Estonia it is set at 26 percent.
[…]
“Estonia certainly wants to preserve the comparatively low taxation level for a long time,” Kallas said. “I suggest other countries move toward decreasing taxes rather than pressuring others to increase theirs.”
[…]
But it is hard for Finland to decrease the tax rate while trying to uphold a social-welfare system, he said, and so it is difficult for the country to compete internationally on low tax levels. He suggested that the EU set tax standards to avoid harmful competition between member states.
[…]
Viialained said that taxation was an internal matter for Estonia, but EU negotiators should have considered the issue more carefully.
[…]
“When Estonia is a member of the same union, then the common internal market is not totally (the country’s) own business any more,” he said. “That is why I hope Estonians understand our criticism.
Of course they understand EU criticism, a simpleton could understand it! The political classes in places like Finland (and France and Germany) do not want the owners of capital to have access to less kleptocratic taxation within the EU as that would endanger the system of pork barrel and kick backs they depend on for their perks. Oh if only more former communist nations would follow Estonia’s brave example and turn their back on the toxic social democratic model of the European Union.
I have read Perry’s link to the checkered history of the UPA with great interest (see previous Samizdata.net article). There is much students of the period miss simply because of the vastness of the Eastern Front and the greater perceived relevance to our own history of the Western.
Most striking in the Weisenthal Centre’s brief history of the hatreds, treacheries and double-dealings of the period and area is how well it is brought to life in the guise of real people in Harry Turtledove’s wonderful alternate history series, “World War“. I won’t spoil any of it for those who have not read the books, other than to say he puts human faces and motives to the many players of that vast historical drama of the twentieth century.
I highly recommend the books to anyone and particularly to those interested in WWII. Not for the history itself – it is an alternate reality – but to get inside the heads of the people behind the facts.
No one is a monster in their own mind – and sometimes not even in their own time.
Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who opposed both the Nazis and the Red Army (whom they regarded as occupying Russians) from 1942 until they were largely crushed by the communists in 1953, are to be accorded the same rights as former Red Army veterans by the Ukrainian government. It is interesting that the Russian government regards this as an affront even after all these years, calling the UPA ‘bandits’ for having the audacity to defend the Ukraine against all comers.
However although the UPA opposed both the Soviets and Nazis, they were also implicated in the mass murder of Poles and Jews and do not really fit comfortably into the ‘clearly-the-good-guys’ category, a fact surprisingly absent from several reports on the recent hostile reaction by the Russian government to the Ukrainian decision to grant surviving UPA veterans full military pensions.
I have gone straight from the buzz of London to the grey nostalgia of Prague and am now sitting in an internet cafe named appropriately Globe. I can hear English being spoken as this is a favourite place for the English-speaking ex-pats and my inner Anglospherometer is telling me that it’s time to blog. I have been in Prague for two days now and given that this place is in a different world in terms of mentality and time, please take the following comments as potentially confused ramblings of a travelling blogger…
In the short time I have been here I have managed to cover a multitude of activities – checked out (no pun intended) what is new in Prague since my last visit two years ago, visited a monstrous museum of modern art (previously communist archives, the building, not the pictures, obviously…), had a blazing row about nationalism and political discourse in the Mittel Europa and managed to send two Jehovah’s witnesses on their way amicably and within twenty seconds! I am particularly proud of the last one…
I have been thinking about the best way of debating in a place like Central Europe where a Western style of discourse does not create the expected responses. Roll on the popularisation of shared meta-contextual discourse…! The usual evolution of an argument from a thesis through antithesis to a synthesis, does certaintly not apply here. A statement is made, often categorically, so a thesis is born. However, presenting an anti-thesis is dangerous as the aforementioned blazing rows are certain to ensue….What is needed is some kind of validation of the grains of truths carefully exctracted from the original statement. This is interesting (and frustrating) but I think it springs from the need of the Central Europeans to assert their intellectual identity by having it first recognised by their debating opponents. Then, perhaps, room for sneaking an anti-thesis in is created, en route to a wonderful and all encompassing synthesis, providing ample justification for gallons of lovely alcohol to be consumed. As a second thought, who needs shared meta-context when you have alcohol?
On my wanderings through Prague I have been walking along Wenceslas Square, the main square where the 1989 demonstrations of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ took place. I noticed that some shops are hiring people to walk around holding large placards to advertise their wares. This is a familiar sight in the West, especially in Oxford street, the main shopping street in London and I have often looked upon these as another sign of ‘unbridled’ capitalism. Here the locals tell me in a voice dripping with moral satisfaction that such advertising is going to be banned soon as it insults the human dignity. Mindful of my debating experience in this place, I meekly pointed out that perhaps these people may be quite content to earn some money by an activity that does not involve much effort and that by banning it, they will be deprived of the opportunity to have their human dignity offended at a price they are prepared to be paid… As expected I did not get far but I have acted as the lone voice of free market and capitalism. Today, I have seen a girl reading a book whilst at the same time holding a large sign advertising an Irish Pub… So much for insulted human dignity!
I have another three days to go and depending on my ability to access the internet and my mental stability, I may blog again. If not, once in London I will no doubt find plenty to write about privacy and security, computers, markets and other far less nostalgic topics.
The sterile environment I refer to is the mind of Jaroslaw Kalinowski, the leader of the Polish Peasants Party, junior partner in the ruling centre-left coalition currently de-structuring Poland’s economy. Yet much to my delight he is calling for the complete abolition of the EU agricultural subsidies that suck up 80% of the EU’s stolen budget.
Naturally this is not because these barely reformed socialists have suddenly become converts to real world economics but because they are starting to realise that they are going to be wiped out by subsidized Western EU agriculture and if the primitive and inefficient Polish farmers cannot get the same subsidies, they it is better to eliminate them for everyone in order to level the playing field where far lower Polish labour costs can off-set the large and highly mechanised Western European farms advantages even without subsidies.
Of course as that is such a utterly rational course of action, there is no chance whatsoever that the EU will adopt it. If not even the USA can bring itself to treat farmers like everyone else I suppose the whole world is doomed to eventually vanish under a mountain of unwanted food that is paradoxically over-produced and yet over-priced to the consumer. Madness.
See how eager people are to demand that they have a right to your money? Polish farmers are upset because they are not going to get to steal tax money from the rest of Europe the moment they join the European Union. They will have to wait until 2013 to join the undead legions of European subsidy vampires.
Poland�s agriculture minister Jaroslav Kalinowske has declared “It is about ensuring guarantees for an equal partnership for Polish garniture. If we don�t all play under the same rules then our farmers will vote against European Union membership,” reports the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten.
Yes! It would be wonderful if that happened and Poland did not sign away its future. Of course if the farmers do indeed scupper Polish EU membership, they will be doing so for all the wrong reasons but as anyone who has lived through a war will tell you, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Whilst nothing the EU does ever surprises me, it often amazes me that even in the USA the farmers can rob the rest of the country not only in terms of subsidies but in terms of artificially inflated prices. How can the ‘left’ who claim to have the interests of the common people at heart accept that food should be made more expensive by government action? For rich and bourgeoise people, the cost of food as a proportion of their wealth is utterly trivial. Yet for the poor, that is obviously not the case and so various forms of state assistance becomes important to avoid going short of food. In a democratic nation or super-nation, this naturally produces a dependent class who will always vote for the people who provide that state assistance, even though in reality those self same people are actually the ones responsible for the food being so expensive in the first place. The vampire bites and produces a mindless legion of bloodsucking followers.
About this funny vampire picture: I think I might have gone out with this guy a few years ago. I find this on Communist Vampires website that Perry mentioned in earlier posting.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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