Today August 29th is a holiday in Slovakia as we celebrate the anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising of 1944. And then Monday, September 1 is the day the Constitution of the Slovak Republic. We therefore leave for four days, but above all it allows me to remember an anniversary unjustly forgotten and I could not speak before the events of Lebanon (who else but continue to give me your attention, we hear about ♠): the Prague Spring, which does has not spared Bratislava. And so, forty years ago, Czechoslovakia intends to practice "socialism with a human face" with Alexander Dubcek, who came to power, wants to provide some flexibility in monolithic communism practiced previously by Brezhnev. The idea is to preserve the ideology imposed by Moscow but to guarantee citizens' rights including decentralization of the economy and easing restrictions on the media or the movement of people.
Started January 5, 1968, the Prague Spring was crushed Aug. 21 when the forces of the Warsaw Pact (Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary) invaded the country. 200 000 troops and 2000 tanks in Czechoslovakia enter and occupy the airport first, then the major cities including Bratislava. Of course, the Soviet press published an immediate appeal of Czechoslovak imploring the assistance of the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact in order to justify the invasion. The victim of barbarism itself has asked his executioner's ax. 76 dead Czechoslovak addition, we retain the history of student Jan Palach, born August 11, 1948, and himself on fire January 19, 1969 in Wenceslas Square in Prague in protest against the brutality of the Soviet Union and brotherly countries. Two other students, signed a suicide pact, follow him in his desperate act: Jan Zajic February 25, 1969, and Evzen Plocek in April.
If I was a student, I raise a T-shirt from Jan Palach rather than Che Guevara. Or this one, I have gained in Bratislava, which commemorates the storming of the city by the Red Army. I'm surprised there was no discussion over this horrible anniversary, and at the same time, there were other fish to fry, including the size reconstruction of the "Spring" in Georgia. The Red Army showed that it had retained reflexes invasive, including claiming to rescue people in danger Ossetian and Abkhaz, and looting and destroying everything in its path without any qualms. It's nice that term "mood". Do states have a soul? If Russia is the mother of the Russians, I think the father has long been barred from buying cigarettes. History repeats itself? Not really, she never really interrupted. The end of the first Cold War or World War III did not terminate the old reflexes of binary opposition, and the United States continues to be criticized by the same useful idiots, or against all odds applauded by members of CIA. Choose your side, comrade! The world is still divided in two, and nobody seems able to escape. Lebanon not only is no exception to the rule, but he seems to embody. Two irreconcilable camps are always face-to-face. Yesterday, Hizbullah fired at an army helicopter and killed an officer. Yesterday, Chronicles of Beirut has closed before the rise despite Hate rampant on blogs. Yesterday, nearly forty years, Jan Palach committed suicide to protest against barbarism. Unlike the geniuses packed belief, I have no solution. I just know that mankind still has much work ahead of her, and she'd better get started rather than replay the past.
But do not forget. Neither Jan Palach, or Lebanon.
