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Bombs, helicopters, people
gripped with fear. That was the situation in Olomouc
after explosives were
discovered on a nearby railroad bridge. Whoever planted
the device warned the police that other bombs would start
going off in the area unless the government forked over
10,000,000 crowns. According to his instructions, the money
was to be placed in 25 packages and dropped from a helicopter
in locations scattered throughout central Moravia. When
the extortionist failed to show up for the cash, the authorities
panicked and put the city on high alert. In the end, the
only explosions that went off were in a far away land,
but it was just another day in the life for Premier ©pidla.
He had just narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament
due in part to his image as a bungler. He had bungled the
budget vote, bungled the presidential election, and now
here his government was tossing packages of money out of
a helicopter. As expected, the mood was nasty at his party's
annual congress, with several delegates working behind
the scenes to replace him with Interior Minister Gross,
another, more dangerous, bungler. Gross' love for the media
spotlight has led him into one indiscretion after another,
chief among them his contention that there was a connection
between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the 9-11 attack. His intelligence
turned out to be so weak that the Bush administration didn't
bother to include it in its own shoddy claims of links
between the two. Gross has expressed his support for the
war in Iraq with all the confidence of a child. "It's
good that we're on the side of the United States, because
they're
going to win," he brags. ©pidla is not so sure and can't
quite bring himself to take a firm stand. Other leading
members of his party remain adamant that all wars must
be approved by the UN first. Their coalition partners in
the government have no such reservations and are strongly
behind it, as are Havel and the Civic Democrats. Opposing
them are the Communists and the man they put in the Castle
last month. President Klaus has insisted that the position
of the Czech Republic must conform to the will of the people.
And so, with both premier and president refusing to show
any real leadership on this issue, the Czechs are again
mumbling that they look like a bunch of ©vejks in front
of the world. The Good Soldier ©vejk tells the
story of a ne'er-do-well from Prague who survives World
War I simply
because he is a ne'er-do-well from Prague. Down in the
war zone, Kuwait is certainly now familiar with ©vejk.
The country had ordered several thousand gas masks from
a Czech firm, no doubt based on the expertise the Czechs
have in chemical warfare. But the masks, it turned
out, weren't even the right ones. The Kuwaitis weren't
amused, leaving the government to rant about one firm ruining
the business reputation of the country as a whole. And
it should know. An arbitration court in London has recently
ruled against
the Czech government in a case involving an American investor
in TV Nova and Senator Vladimír ®elezný, the director of
the station. The court declared that the state-appointed
Broadcasting Council had conspired to permit ®elezný to
take control of the station and leave his investor high
and dry. As a result Czech taxpayers must now fork over
10,000,000,000 crowns in damages. The official comment
of TV Nova, which got rich by aping low-life American TV,
was, "Ain't our problem." ®elezný was a bit more
subtle. "I love dumplings," he told viewers. His ludicrous
remark
underscores how important he considers this case to be
for Czech nationalism. Knedlíky, or dumplings
are as close to Czech as you can get, with the exception
of beer. Lose
this case, he warns, and we'll eventually lose our dumplings
to those American imperialists. So far he has found little
sympathy among the mainstream Czech media, but they too
have begun to jump on the bash-America bandwagon. MF DNES,
the largest Czech daily, has been offering up a steady
fare about America's arrogance, its fundamentalism and designs
on the world's oil supply. And then there are the bizarre
op-ed pieces that have lately put the newspaper in the
same league as TV Nova. One, reportedly by a nuclear physicist,
tells the story of how his father came home from a concentration
camp after World War II wearing a Swiss watch. He gives
it to his son but some bad American soldier comes along
and steals it. The soldier is forced to give the watch
back and say he's sorry. Now our nuclear physicist yearns
for someone who can make George Bush say he's sorry to
the world for all the bad things he's doing. He neglects
to mention why he doesn't have a go at it himself, like
writing a nice little letter and sending it to the White
House.
Dear
Mr. Bush,
Stop
this war and say you're sorry.
Yours truly,
©vejk
Nuclear Physicist
He should take the added expense of sending it airmail,
that way the war will be over sooner.
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