History (abbridged)

3050 B.C.- A Sumerian invents the wheel. Within the week, the idea is stolen and duplicated by other Sumerians, thereby establishing the business ethic for all times.

2900 B.C.-Wondering why the Egyptians call that new thing a Sphinx becomes the first of the world's Seven Great Wonders. 

1850 B.C.-Britons proclaim Operation Stonehenge a success. They've finally gotten those boulders arrange in a sufficiently meaningless pattern to confuse the hell out of scientists for centureis. 

1785 B.C.-The first calendar, composed of a year with 354 days, is introduced by Babylonian scientists. 

1768 B.C.-Babylonians realize something is wrong when winter begins in June. 

776 B.C.-The world's first known money appears in Persia, immediately causing the world's first known counterfeiter to appear in Persia the next day. 

525 B.C.-The first Olympics are held, and prove similar to the modern games, except that the Russians don't try to enter a six-footer with a mustache in the women's shot put. However, the Egyptians do! 

410 B.C.-Rome ends the pracitce of throwing debtors into slavery, thus removing the biggest single obstacle to the development of the credit card. 

404 B.C.-The Peloponnesian war has been going on for 27 years now because neither side can find a treaty writer who knows how to spell Peloponnesian. 

214 B.C.-Tens of thousands of Chinese labor for a generation to build the 1,500 mile long Great Wall of China. And after all that, it still doesn't keep the neighbor's dog out. 

1 B.C.-Calendar manufacturers find themselves in total disagreement over what to call next year.

Václav Havel: We Shall Overcome

20th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution

A concert, set up by Václav Havel and featuring Joan Baez, Suzanne Vega, Lou Reed and Renée Fleming, took place yesterday, 14 November, at the Prague Crossroads.

In the end, the two major guests, Renée Fleming and Lou Reed, sang Perfect Day together.

After that, all the guest sang together the song Freedom.

During the concert, Renée Fleming also sang the obligatory Song to the Moon

...and, correct me if I'm wrong, she sang for the first time Milada's aria from Smetana's Dalibor. I hope that will appear on YouTube, too.

Thanks for uploading to MrFrais and velehof. If you're interested in more videos from the concert, visit their channels.

21st August: Heroes and Villains

During the night from the 20th to the 21st August 1968, five armies of the Warsaw pact crossed the borders of Czechoslovakia. During the first phase of the operation organized by the Kremlin, Czechoslovakia was invaded by about 100,000 soldiers, 2300 tanks and 700 airplanes. With relation to the occupation, 290 people were killed and 577 were seriously injured. It was a reaction to the gradual loosening of the totalitarian system, called "Socialism with human face," which ultimately led to the abolition of censorship early in 1968 and the so-called "Prague Spring." It was followed by long years of "normalization," which was ended by the Velvet revolution in 1989.

"Little Brother, Close the Gate" Thanks for composing and uploading to muv69

The Czechs, in their history, learnt to laugh at tragedies they could do nothing about: "A Well Intended Advice - Go Home, Ivan!" (And never come back. Ever.) Thanks for composing and uploading to bwdbwd

Paradoxically, my heroes come from the ranks of the "villains." On the 25th, eight people made a hard choice between clear conscience and imprisonment. Eight Russians went to the Red Square in Moscow and demonstrated against the Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia. Their names were Larisa Bogoraz (whose husband, a writer, had previously been sent to Gulag for "anti-Soviet activity"), Konstantin Babitsky, Vadim Delaunay (a poet, died in Paris, aged 35 of a heart attack), Vladimir Dremluga, Pavel Litvinov Natalya Gorbanevskaya (a writer and poet, her blog is here), Viktor Fainberg, and Tatiana Baeva. Some of them ended up in jail, some of them in asylums, some in forced exile in Siberia.

For your and our freedom

The story continues. Forty years later, on the 24th August 2008 (not on the 25th, so that the police forces wouldn't be ready), seven activists went to the Red Square to remember this event. According to Novaya Gazeta, they were holding up a banner with the same slogan and were handing out leaflets: "There are again political prisons in this country [...] Love for country has been replaced with the love for leaders." The entire action (which had been authorized by the authorities) lasted five minutes. The police confiscated their banners and arrested the three activists who didn't manage to escape. They tried to confiscate the journalists' cameras and arrested correspondents of Novaya Gazeta, Grani-TV, The New Times and Vedomosti. The journalists were released the same day, the activists the following. The situation is not as bad as in 1968, but not too good, either - and could get worse. (NY Times article here)

Photos: Wikipedia and Novaya Gazeta, respectively