+ Czech Republic - no longer communist

Unemployment up
Standard of living falling
Prostitution widespread
Military weakened to enable US troops to control country
Banking controlled by Zionist / Imperialist forces





+ North Korea - still maintaining communist revolution

Full employment
Rising standards of living
Prostitution unknown
Strong military protecting country from Imperialism
Banking controlled by the people

This was a man so determined to prevent the will of the people prevailing that he actually made the Communist Party illegal.

The Act on Illegality of the Communist Regime and on Resistance Against It (Czech: Zákon o protiprávnosti komunistického režimu a o odporu proti němu, zákon č. was an act passed in 1993 in the Parliament of the Czech Republic under the instruction of Havel. This act declared the Communist party in Czechoslovakia as illegal and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as a criminal organisation.

As a reward for his traitorous activities the Americans gave him the Kluge Chair for Modern Culture at the John W. Kluge Center of the United States Library of Congress at a salary of $200,000 a year.

Only on Indymedia...

mass famines have killed millions in North Korea, to the point of reducing the average height of the current generation. The whole regime there is a cultish lie and has NOTHING to do with communism but a ruling class gang of murders and autocratic ruling over their people with an iron grip.

Stalinists/Bolsheviks ruined the early 20th century revolutions and created absolutely disgusting totalitarian regimes whose only purpose was to maintain themselves.

From a girl I know who was 13 years old in 1984:

Accidentally tuning in to the BBC World Service on shortwave. Telling her parents. Entire family in panic for weeks in case they have a visit from the political police. She's told never to play with the shortwave again.

"mass famines have killed millions in North Korea, "

Western media bullshit that you swallow all to easily. Ever been to the DPRK ?

"On May 15, Choe Su-hon, one of Pyongyang's nine deputy foreign ministers, quantified the grim truth at a Unicef conference in Beijing. Almost a quarter of a million people - 220,000 to be exact - died of famine between 1995 and 1998. As a result, and also due to medical shortages, average life expectancy fell from 73.2 in 1993 to 66.8 in 1999. Showing who exactly bore the brunt, infant mortality (under 5s) almost doubled from 27 to 48 per 1,000 people. Choe also gave data on a related disaster: his country's wider health care crisis. In 1994, 86 percent of people had access to save drinking water; by 1996, only 53 percent did. And the rate of vaccination against polio and measles fell from 90 percent in 1990 to just 50 percent by 1997. "

"Even DPRK own figures talk of the famine"

Actually they do not, the media's reporting of what was said you stated here as fact. They are two different things. The speeches you refer to were made in Korean, how many Western journalists speak Korean do you think ? The translators at the UN are all South Korean and paid by the Seoul government and the North Korean government has repeatedly complained of its communications being mis-translated before being passed to the Western media.

The China News agency is a better source of accurate news about North Korea and it has reported "food shortages as a result of flooding and drought" something that has also been reported in 'Democratic" Capitalist countries. It is unwise to regard reporting about North Korea as any more accurate than reporting about WMD's in Iraq.

Under the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic the people had a comprehensive and universal system of social security under which everyone was entitled to free medical care and medicine. National health planning emphasised preventive medicine. Factory and local health care centers, first aid stations, and a variety of medical clinics supplemented hospitals and other inpatient institutions. The ratio of physicians to inhabitants has improved steadily, climbing from 1 per 745 in 1954 to 1 per 278 in 1985. The shift in the distribution of health resources in the 1960s and 1970s was dramatic; facilities were improved, and the number of health care personnel in Slovakia and rural areas increased in general.

Spas in Czechoslovakia were part of the health care system. In 1985 more than 660,000 people (5 % of whom were children) stayed at the 35 spas in the Czech lands and 23 spas in Slovakia. Many of them specialized in the care and treatment of particular kinds of ailments. All had either mineral or hot springs, and some also offered mud treatments. In bygone days, the spas were frequented by European royalty and the wealthy, but in the 1980s they were open to all, including foreign tourists (who made up 10 % of the patients in 1985). A number of people visited spas on vouchers provided by their trade unions.


In 1984 life expectancy in Czechoslovakia was 77 years for men and 85 years for women. In 1950 women's life expectancy was approximately 4.6 years longer than men's; by 1983 this difference had increased to nearly 7.5 years. Infant mortality stood at 4.5 per 1,000 live births in 1984, down from 15.6 per 1,000 in 1975. As with medical care, the gap in life expectancy between the Czech lands and Slovakia was narrowed during this period.

Pensions

In 1985 slightly more than 88% of the Czechoslovak population received some kind of pension; the elderly, the disabled, widows, and orphans were all entitled to extra assistance. Social security benefits (primarily retirement and disability) were equal for all wage earners.

Maternity and childcare benefits

Women workers had a full complement of maternity and childcare benefits. Maternity leave (at 90 % of full pay) was forty-six weeks in the 1980s; an additional nine weeks were available for single mothers or for mothers having multiple births. Employers could not deny a woman's request for an additional year of unpaid leave for child rearing (without loss of job seniority). A system of child allowances and maternity grants also assisted women who took unpaid leave. Women were allowed twenty days of annual leave in case of illness within the family. There were substantial family allowances, in addition to direct grants, to single parents or families with handicapped children. An unmarried mother, widow, or divorced mother could not be fired if she had a child under three years of age; if she had children between three and fifteen years of age, her employer had to find her another job before dismissing her.

Facilities for younger children

Nursery facilities for younger children were very well equipped and in 1984 they could accommodate more than 75% of children under five years of age. Kindergartens were in even better supply, and nearly 100% of children between the ages of three and six years could be educated in these schools.

I can't imagine why my father and mother did so much to get us all out and to the West. It seems they were living in a people's paradise all along.

For those not familiar with my beautiful country Václav Havel is viewed as a hero for his never ending fight against Socialist oppression and corruption.

The role of the CIA and MI6 in the fall of the Socialist State is very well known in Czech and Slovak Republics. The infamous death of 'Martin Šmíd' is now recognised as a classic MI6 operation that used CIA agent Petr Uhl to spread the fictitious story via the western media along with Israeli spy Drahomíra Dražská.

Both London and Jerusalem had been spreading false rumors of student deaths for months before they got the media to swallow this fish primarily because the CIA provided the funding to push the story harder.

* Elimination of unemployment
* Low crime rate
* Construction of world-class highway system
* Radical social health campaigns, promotion of vegetarianism and anti-smoking

Blah blah, I guess I don't have to dig out the exact figures and specific examples as my post is of course a parody of the one above.

The Czechs old enough to remember whom I've met are extremely glad those days no longer exist, for all the many faults of the system that replaced it. I've never yet met anyone who grew up in the old Soviet bloc who genuinely mourns for its loss. Czechoslovakia may not have been quite as bad as the DDR but from what I have heard life was grim.

"""" I've never yet met anyone who grew up in the old Soviet bloc who genuinely mourns for its loss. """""

Well I suggest you get out more and talk to some of them, universal health care, zero unemployment, generous pensions, free heating, homes for all, well funded cultural and arts projects, banking under State control, extensive free sports facilities.

The list goes on and on. Spend a little time in Cuba to see how a modern Socialist State provides everything its citizens needs without being in debt to Zionist bankers.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_dissidents

Not much freedom there me thinks.

First we have some nutters defending Communist Czechoslovakia as some sort of people's Socialist heaven, then along come the North Korean defenders and useful idiots followed by the ever ready band of happy campers still clinging to the Castro fairy story.

What a funny old day it's been.

I will remember Havel with respect, the bravery he showed and the dedication to the Czech and Slovak people he displayed all his life. I will remember the dancing bear of North Korea as a buffoon. I will remember the people of Cuba as they seek freedom and hope they too have a Vaclev Havel one day.

I suspect this whole thread is some kind of attempt at trolling, 'socialist and proud' sounds like a teenager and s/he may be more at home on 4chan.

But taking the bait:
I've got friends who grew up in Poland, Czechoslovakia, the DDR and many parts of the former USSR during the 1970s and 1980s. The comment about "well funded cultural and arts projects" particularly sticks in the craw due the number of stories I've heard about secret police trying to bust up things like punk gigs (no, not nationalist or pro-capitalist ones, just non-state approved fun).

All I really know about Vaclav Havel to be honest is that the bloke was well-inown for having unusually broad-minded taste in art and music for a politician. Comments about being a close friend of a rabbi and 'Zionist bankers' really say more about the troll's agenda than anything else.

I can't afford a holiday to Cuba and I'm not sure if my sexuality would be welcomed there anyway.

"secret police trying to bust up things like punk gigs" - so just like the UK then ?

People of all sexual types are warmly welcomed in Cuba.

I notice these friends of yours (who may or may not exist in reality) have little to say on the other advantages of living under the protection of the USSR at that time such as, universal health care, zero unemployment, generous pensions, free heating, homes for all, well funded cultural and arts projects, banking under State control, extensive free sports facilities.

Do they deny these things existed ?

I will take the bait and answer you.

-------------------------------------------------------------

universal health care - in theory, in reality ill funded and bribes were needed to get major treatment.

zero unemployment - true but in jobs designated by the State with limited opportunity to move to another.

generous pensions - the value of which never kept pace with inflation

free heating - true for about three hours of the day

homes for all - small, noisy soulless high rise boxes

well funded cultural and arts projects - for State approved projects only.

banking under State control - meaning you could not get hold of your money

extensive free sports facilities - providing you towed the line and were a member of a Trade Union or the Party.

Whatever scumbag wrote this article in no way speaks for the Czech or Slovak people. I'm as staunch an anticapitalist as anyone on here but 99.9% of Czech or Slovak people would be livid to read this Stalinist propaganda, as to them Vaclav Havel was the number one hero of the Velvet Revolution, which was a popular uprising with near universal support.

It's devastating to see McDonalds set up shop next to the National Museum on Vaclavske Namesti (the site of the Velvet Revolution) but after nearly 2 years living and travelling all around the Czech Republic here I've yet to find a single person who would like to go back to how things were, or who speaks of Vaclav Havel the way this article does. On the other hand my girlfriend without thinking once pulled out a Che Guevera zippo in a pub and had it forcibly taken off her and was nearly chased out by fuming locals.

We don't need your lies to justify our opposition to Capitalism. Fuck off to the gulags with your Mao-love, I really really despise apologists for a regime that claimed more lives than Hitler could've dreamed of.

Please please Indymedia moderators. This posting is all communist stuff. We can't have all that on here. We cant have communists and bloodthirty Bolsheviks being allowed to express thier views. Why cant you censor it or have this removed. I am an anarchist and still think there needs to be control over what these stalinists do or say. I'd rather live in america and set up a little community of middle class middle thinkers than live under socialism and starve. Ban all the commies i say.

If ever there is a group that want to control every aspect of everyone's lives - its the communists

I am delighted that Indymedia mods are allowing stories like this to be published, I shall immediately tell all my Stormfront chums that the floodgates are open and this site now allows opinions of all kinds however 'abhorrent' they may be.

(FWIW, this was almost certainly a far-right troll, the comments on the rabbi and 'zionist bankers' are a rather smelly giveaway. I've met a few dimwitted communists in my time but there are simply none around who would defend the vile capitalist bureaucracy of the Soviet bloc).

"Vaclav Havel was the number one hero of the Velvet Revolution"

Was he fuck, a CIA paid trouble maker who was loathed by the people he claimed to 'lead'. The so called 'Velvet Revolution' had very little to do with the Czech or Slovak people, it was a Western Imperialist land grab funded by Washington and with paid agitators trained to overthrow a popular and well supported Socialist government.

The last time I was in Prague all I heard was calls for the return to Socialist principles and the social justice that was a part of them.