I don’’t know if our authorities love me but I definitely love them. I love the fact that they care about me. And I love their sense of humour. Especially when Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin cracks a joke, that really is something! At a recent cabinet meeting Agriculture Minister Gordeyev complained about citizens drinking less milk and eating fewer dairy products. And Putin had a joke right up his sleeve: C’mon, treat your colleagues to some milk then, don’’t be so tight-fisted! The tight-fisted agriculture minister muttered he hadn’t brought any milk as he was not prepared for this turn of […]

In covering the story of the Holocaust-denying bishop most of the media reports have focused – as usual – on a single controversial detail, missing the heart of the matter. They speculated whether Bishop Richard Williamson really was a holocaust denier, whether the Pope knew that Williamson was holocaust denier, and so on and so forth.  Hardly anyone has asked what the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, which Williamson and other bishops belong to and which has now been restored to the Roman Catholic Church, actually stands for, what had led to its excommunication in the first place, and why […]

It must truly be special if it is something to which amorous couples, governments as well as trade partners attach equal importance. Looking from afar this phenomenon appears to play an equally significant role in the lives of people but also of animals both where it exists and where it is absent.  Moreover, not only do animals and people trust or mistrust each other or the universe, they both create dramatic situations giving free rein to two of their magic skills: mimesis and mimicry. They know how to dispel the distrust of others. They know how to abuse the trust of […]

The year 1989 in East and Central Europe was the year of democratic revolutions, of reforms flowing into revolutions and revolutions infused with reforms. Ideas of national independence and sovereignty were combined with a democratic, European transformation oriented towards the West. A new history However, the first nationalist ethnic revolutions came along as early as 1990-1991, proclaiming another kind of regime change, secession and separation, and attacking national minorities. It began with a pogrom in Romania’’s Târgu Mureș, was followed by the break-up of Yugoslavia and the coarsely velvety splitting up of Czechoslovakia, and it ranged from Csurka’’s ideology of international conspiracy in […]

Is there a way of making this world hospitable to Europe? For we, Europeans, are not feeling quite at ease in today’’s world. Heidegger once said that we begin to think about a problem only when things suddenly start behaving in a surprising way. Only then do we move from the sphere of handeln [acting] to the sphere of verhandeln [negotiating]. Until that point the facts are just a part of our everyday experience and we are not fully aware of their existence. Only when things start to go wrong do we transfer them into the realm of observeable nuisances […]

Americké médiá o dušu rozoberajú inauguráciu nového prezidenta. Zatiaľ čo tanečné schopnosti a oblečenie Baracka Obamu a jeho manželky Michelle ocenili na jednotku, jeho inauguračný prejav nedosiahol očakávané rétorické výšiny a neobsahoval okrídlené slová, ktoré vojdu do učebníc a budú inšpirovať budúce pokolenia. Väčšina komentátorov dospela k záveru, že to ani nebolo potrebné, lebo inšpirujúci bol samotný fakt, že sa Barack Obama mohol stať prezidentom USA. Pozitívne bolo prijaté aj to, že sa prezident jasne dištancoval od politiky svojho predchodcu, nezakrýval problémy, pred ktorými Spojené štáty stoja, a svojim spoluobčanom dal jasne najavo, že si tiež budú musieť vysúkať rukávy, lebo sú spoluzodpovední […]

  I can’’t understand why Russia’’s turning off the gas taps sent such shockwaves through all of Europe and why even the leaders of the Old World could not understand what made the strapping, rosy-cheeked Gazprom managers take such a brutal decision. In actual fact, it’’s clearer than the Moscow and St. Petersburg sun. It’’s yet another inevitable step in the inexorable quest to promote Russia’’s unique culture around the world. A freezing calm In the early nineties the ungrateful European countries, including Czecho-Slovakia, expelled from their territories the Russian army which had been promoting peace and understanding among nations for twenty […]

The notorious stamp affair, a lawsuit against a group of people accused of forging some hundred million crowns, continues to drag on sixteen years after Slovakia introduced its own currency, the Slovak crown (locally known as the koruna). The case is shrouded in mystery, with one theory claiming that the fraud was perpetrated by the secret services on direct orders of the then Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar; one of those involved, probably a secret service stooge, was assassinated in 1996. In this case, the sluggish work of the Slovak courts has reached truly epic dimensions, and the victim of the alleged fraud – […]