Václav Havel

Václav Havel
Born	1936-10-05 Prague, Czechoslovakia
Died	2011-12-18 (Age 75) Vlčice, Czech Republic
Alma mater	Czech Technical University, Academy of Performing Arts
Spouse	Olga Šplíchalová
Member of	"The New Humanitarians", Bohemian Grove, European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, Prague Security Studies Institute, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Party	OF
President of the Czech Republic  In office 2 February 1993 - 2 February 2003  President of Czechoslovakia In office 29 December 1989 - 20 July 1992

Michael Parenti

In 2011, Michael Parenti wrote an essay "Must We Adore Vaclav Havel?":

No figure among the capitalist restorationists in the East has won more adulation from U.S. officials, media pundits, and academics than Vaclav Havel [...] Havel called for efforts to preserve the Christian family in the Christian nation. Presenting himself as a man of peace and stating that he would never sell arms to oppressive regimes, he sold weapons to the Philippines and the fascist regime in Thailand. In June 1994, General Pinochet, the man who butchered Chilean democracy, was reported to be arms shopping in Czechoslovakia – with no audible objections from Havel.

Under Havel's government, a law was passed making it a crime to propagate national, religious, and CLASS hatred. In effect, criticisms of big moneyed interests were now illegal, being unjustifiably lumped with ethnic and religious bigotry. Havel's government warned labor unions not to involve themselves in politics. Some militant unions had their property taken from them and handed over to compliant company unions.

Havel joined wholeheartedly in George Bush's Gulf War, an enterprise that killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. In 1991, along with other [e]astern European pro-capitalist leaders, Havel voted with the United States to condemn human rights violations in Cuba. But he has never uttered a word of condemnation of rights violations in El Salvador, Columbia, Indonesia, or any other U.S. client state.

In 1992, while president of Czechoslovakia, Havel, the great democrat, demanded that parliament be suspended and he be allowed to rule by edict, the better to ram through free-market "reforms." That same year, he signed a law that made the advocacy of communism a felony with a penalty of up to eight years imprisonment. He claimed the Czech constitution required him to sign it. In fact, as he knew, the law violated the Charter of Human Rights which is incorporated into the Czech constitution. In any case, it did not require his signature to become law. in 1995, he supported and signed another undemocratic law barring communists and former communists from employment in public agencies.[...]

Under Czech privatization and "restitution" programs, factories, shops, estates, homes, and much of the public land was sold at bargain prices to foreign and domestic capitalists. In the Czech and Slovak republics, former aristocrats or their heirs were being given back all lands their families had held before 1918 under the Austro-Hungarian empire, dispossessing the previous occupants and sending many of them into destitution. Havel himself took personal ownership of public properties that had belonged to his family forty years before. While presenting himself as a man dedicated to doing good for others, he did well for himself.

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End
Jiří Pehe	Director of the Political Department of the Chancellery	1997	1999

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Democracy & Security International Conference	5 June 2007	6 June 2007	Czech Republic Prague	The "Neoconservative International" that reports it was intested in "building a world of free and democratic states"

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References

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