Last Week 49/2009
St. Wenceslas’ tenth-century helmet was returned to the Prague Castle after restoration. Under the shining sun, record high temperatures were broken again. Lawyer, professor and Czech Constitution contributor Vojtěch Cepl died. Flu vaccinations began amidst heated debates for and against. The European Commission conducted raids on the offices of the state-run electricity company ČEZ and of politicians connected to the financial group J&T, which it suspects of being involved in a conspirancy to undermine fair competition.
The cartels are as adaptive as a virus we want to dispose of, said European Commissioner Neelie Kroes, commenting on the difficulty of battling firms that surreptitiously distort the environment in the Common Market. The number of people infected with the HIV virus this year in the Czech Republic reached 128. The Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) distanced itself from the cash for clunkers program. In U.S. courts, two dismissed Erste Bank executives accused their former employer of paying out massive bribes to Czech politicians when Česká spořitelna was privatized into its hands; their testimony prompted the FBI to open an investigation into Česká spořitelna’s privatization by the cabinet of Miloš Zeman (ČSSD). The first Airbus took off on a transatlantic commercial flight. A sociological study by scientists from Masaryk University revealed that 86 percent of Czechs considered themselves to be happy.
I am the happiest person on earth, Anna Siváková, a Roma mother, told the monthly Romano Hangos after learning that her three-year-old daughter Natalie, who suffered burns on 80 percent of her body in April when Czech neo-Nazis set fire to her family’s home in Vítkov, had undergone her last plastic surgery and would soon be released from the hospital to spend this Christmas with her parents and siblings in their new house, purchased with proceeds from a nationwide collection. The Czech MTV started broadcasting. A Czech soldier shot another Czech soldier during an argument in a pub in Kosovo. The business daily Hospodářské noviny discovered that the Czech health care system would run out of money next year unless there is reform.
Because no one was lending during the current crisis, there will be another recession next fall. And governments will go to war to distract the people. Listeners ask me, against whom? I respond – they will create an enemy, renowned investor and financial prophet Marc Faber said during a recent visit to Prague; Faber predicted the current crisis, and a number of his previous economic forecasts have proven true, as well. The cost of divorce skyrocketed from one thousand to three thousand crowns. Novinky.cz journalist Marek Schäferling disappeared from his home without any personal belongings seven days ago; just before he went missing, Schäferling had apparently stumbled upon the activities of a major racketeer while researching online and handed the evidence over to the police. Six people were injured when a tram collided with a bus in Prague’s Náměstí Míru. The famous Israeli band Carusella arrived in the Czech Republic and will play a concert at a junkyard on the outskirts of Dačice on December 2. An unidentified thief stole the security camera from the new cemetery in Trebíč in front of thieves.
It was helplessness, absolutely helplessness. At first I was angry, but then I learned to live with it – often the only thing I had left was consciousness, nothing else. And all the while I dreamt of a better life, the media cited Rom Houben, a Belgian man who lay in bed for 23 years, totally paralyzed and presumed comatose from a car accident; he was in fact fully conscious, which was only discovered recently after a neurological test, after which a team of doctors taught the paralytic man to communicate using a special computer. Rammstein revved up Prague. Poet, novelist and journalist Jaromír Hořec died. Austrian Ambassador Margot Klestilová-Löfflerova ended her four-year diplomatic mission in Prague. International competitions in rhythmic gymnastics with hoop, rope and ribbon were held in Třebíč. The media reported that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had come up with the idea to relocate the remains of Albert Camus from Provence to the Parisian Pantheon, but the famous writer’s children opposed the plan.
Before I flew to America, I believed in myself but my faith was weak. Now I know that everything is possible, there are no obstacles, just circumstances one must fight. And I realized that the Roma need a leader, like the blacks in America had Martin Luther King, Jr., Mižu Mižigár, business school student in Písek, told the monthly Romano Hangos upon his return from a fellowship in the United States. The band Cigánski diabli played at Django Fest in Brno.
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Translated by: Martha Joy Sullivan
