Vaclav Havel – the prisoner who became president
The author and dramtist Vaclav Havel in the mid-1970s became well-known as one of the most courageous advocates of democracy and human rights in communist governed Czechoslovakia. Havel was one of the co-founders of the civil rights movement Charta 77 and was sentenced to four and half years in prison in 1977. More than a decade later, in December 1989, Vaclav Havel was elected the first president of a democratic Czechoslovakia. After the dissolvment of Czechoslovakia, Havel was elected president of Czechia. And now he, the former political prisoner, is the president of a NATO member country!
Disney is falsifying history
In 1995 the Disney movie “Pocahontas” was shown for the first time. The story is on a beautiful young Indian woman who falls in love with the handsome Englishman John Smith. In the end Pocahontas has to say goodbye to John Smith who is sailing back to England. Now, in 1999, a Pocahontas II is distributed by video. Of course a movie maker has artistic liberty, but it should be noted that Pocahontas was no teenager – only ten years old – when she met the twenty years older John Smith. She fell in love with an Englishman, John Rolfe, but not John Smith and she moved to England (where she died at an early age). The movie shows bad colonizers and peace loving Indians. Actually the Indians were blood thirsty and unpredictable. But that is not politically correct today. Politically correct is however to describe ambitious colonizers as villains. That is however not true.
The failure of the Clinton foreign policy
“Today we are at the random of international dismembership”. US President Bill Clinton is as badly affected by all scandals that he was not even able to fire missiles against terrorist objectives, without common disbelief that he was not trying to get away from a Monica Lewinsky effect.
The Rising Sun in the West
Gunnar Palm looks at predictions for economic growth in the non-western world. Showing projected GNP distribution figures from 1979 and looking at the actual outcome is indeed interesting and revealing. Western Europe with 22.5 per cent of world production in 1975 was projected to have only 19 per cent in 2000, but the actual outcome in 1998 was 31 per cent. For the United States the corresponding figures are 28.5, 18 and 29 per cent. For Japan 7-10-15. Eastern Europe had 16 per cent of world production in 1975, was projected to have 18 per cent in 2000 but had only 3 per cent in 1998!
Never again!
A most importan book on Communism has been written by Swedish journalist Staffan Skott. Skott concentrates on Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and North Korea and gives a very comprehensive view on the evils of Communism.
The Balkan powderkeg
The background of all Balkan conflicts are given in this five page article.
Irina got new opportunities when communism was toppled
Long-time Swedish resident Irina Elkonin-Johansson (originally a Russian Jew from St Petersburg) was the only independent organizer of Russian cultural events in Sweden – before the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the Soviet embassy and the Soviet Swedish Friendship Society made every effort they could to stop her. Now she has been able to read 76 pages from her KGB file and she knows which Russians in Sweden pulled what strings. The Friendship Society has filed for bankruptcy and the former Soviet Embassy is now a Russian Embassy with limited financial resources. -I have unlimited opportunities and I can start over once more. There are as many project possibilities as you ever could imagine to start up at 75 years of age, Irina Elkonin-Johansson states.