Word: vaclav
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Tomas Klvana will focus on the media’s role in the recovery of civic society in the Czech Republic. He recently served as spokesperson and policy adviser to Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, and has also been deputy editor-in-chief of a leading Czech daily newspaper and a professor at the University of South Maine...
...When Vaclav Havel became Czechoslovakia's President in late 1989, one of his stated priorities was to overhaul the drab, Communist-era livery of the Castle Guard, the ceremonial troops at Prague Castle. "The green uniforms and plastic ties on a rubber band didn't give the country a good image," says Ladislav Spacek, Havel's former spokesman. Today, the soldiers wear fetching grey-and-blue uniforms, complete with tassels and shoulder braids in the colors of the Czech flag, and their changing-of-the-guard ceremonies attract scores of tourists. But last week the unit was once again...
...Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. But Paya's celebrity is beginning to rival Castro's. During his visit to Cuba last year, ex-President Jimmy Carter hailed Paya in a speech broadcast to every Cuban household. Paya won the European Union's Sakharov Prize for human rights last December. Vaclav Havel, who led the "velvet revolution" that toppled communism in Czechoslovakia, has nominated Paya for the Nobel Peace Prize. Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival last week canceled its screening of Oliver Stone's documentary on Castro, Comandante, and showed instead a film about Paya. All this attention probably...
...careful not to jail the internationally popular Payá, who likens his movement to the Prague Spring that preceded the Soviet crackdown of '68. "This is a Cuban Spring," says Payá. "It will lead to the civil rights we're demanding." Can Payá do in Cuba what Vaclav Havel did in Czechoslovakia? Castro's rule has proved more durable than the Iron Curtain. But Payá is unique, says José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch in Washington, D.C. Instead of trying to overthrow Castro - as the U.S. has tried to do with its failed 41-year...
...realism started buying his energetic novels. Did you catch his movie cameo in Bridget Jones's Diary ? The hard-partying novelist turns out to be a thoughtful and feisty essayist, if a bit of a name-dropper. There's too much "my friend Alan Yentob" and "I recently asked Vaclav Havel" in these articles, letters and speeches. And some shouldn't be here at all - including, truth be told, a moldy piece on independent India's 50th anniversary that I edited for this magazine. But he's brilliant on the real message of The Wizard of Oz , which is that...