#4
Havel wasn't too bad. He did two things that meant a lot. The first was to not contest the divorce with Slovakia, which everyone wanted, yet were amazed happened without a fight.
The second was to realize how very raped and ruined Czechoslovakia had been left by the communists, and figured the only way they had to make money was through entertainment, so he made them a very going concern and business friendly.
It will still be 200 years before they have recovered. Their magnificent forests were almost wiped out, their infrastructure collapsed and decayed, their people exhausted and sickly from the communist exploitation and pollution.
#5
"Their magnificent forests were almost wiped out, their infrastructure collapsed and decayed, their people exhausted and sickly from the communist exploitation and pollution."
Standard leavings for Marxism/communism - but let's give 'em another chance!
/sarc
Posted by: Barbara ||
12/01/2011 15:12 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Or like a certain Austrian landscape painter, TW?
He became chancellor of Germany, g(r)omgoru, acquiring Austria by Anschluss. Even then Austria was so unimportant that there was no point in going for it directly.
You are quite right, Beavis, it was indeed Jesse (Ventura, yes?) I meant. Thank you.
Anonymoose, the Slovak politicians did not actually want the divorce, because rural Slovakia survived on funds transferred from the industrialized Czech province. They were shocked and appalled when Prime Minister Havel called their bluff and sent them on their way, instead of paying them more to remain in the union. Mr. Wife was working in the area at the time, and I also had a series of lovely, bright Czech au pairs, so I got all the news as it happened. Also, it wasn't just entertainment, but all sorts of business that PM Havel encouraged -- Mr. Wife's company was allowed to paint an advertisement on the side of his apartment building (he refused to move into the traditional executive's palace as a cost saving effort) as a reward for being one of the first Western companies to start up a factory and management office there. ;-)
[Iran Press TV] Standard & Poor's rating agency has lowered the rating of Romania's currency to junk status.
The agency cut the economy's long and short term local currency rating one level to BB+, one notch below investment grade after European markets closed on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Romania suffers from high external debt, and the dominance of Greek and Austrian banks in its finance sector has put its economy at risk because of "the high level of euroization of the economy," a statement from the agency said.
"Romania is generally seen as an improving credit story given the International Monetary Fund program remains on track," said Tim Ash, the chief emerging markets strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland in London.
"This might mark rating agencies taking a more aggressive/cautious line overall with Emerging Europe [a large British investment trust dedicated to investments in emerging countries in Europe] given the concern over European bank de-leveraging," he added.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
