Czech Republic – praag.org

Czech army should defend borders against migrants

The Czech Republic should defend its borders, using the army to expel “illegal immigrants” because the European Union isn’t curbing the influx of refugees into the bloc, President Milos Zeman said.

Zeman’s comments echoed those of other politicians calling for the EU to take action to stem the flood of people into the region from Syria and other conflict areas as they travel through Greece and the Balkan states to western Europe.

“Of course I would wish for the EU to strengthen its borders, but I don’t see any real action,” Zeman told reporters in Prague castle on Monday. “Therefore I believe the Czech Republic should take of its borders alone and expel illegal immigrants from the borders, including with the use of the army.”

The refugee crisis has escalated in central Europe this month, with Austrian police finding a Hungarian-licensed truck containing the bodies of 71 migrants last week. Scores more drowned when their boats capsized off the coast of Libya. Most refugees traveling to the EU pass through former communist countries as they head to Germany and other richer states.

Source: Bloomberg

‘Czech Republic is not an American protectorate’

As readers know, I have emphasized for years that European governments are regarded by Washington as vassals who behave according to Washington’s wishes. It has been 70 years–two or three generations–since former world powers, such as Great Britain and Germany had an independent foreign policy.

In addition to this ignobility, European governments are also vassals to the EU, so on the sovereignty front European countries are twice damned. They simply have no sovereignty.

This is why it is so easy for Washington to spin a web of lies and drive its vassals into a “crisis” with Russia that does not serve the interests of Europeans. Washington’s European puppets don’t count. Only Washington counts.

Next month is Russia’s Victory Day celebration over Nazi Germany. Washington has told its puppets not to attend, and many including German chancellor Merkel have complied with their overlord’s demand. But not the President of the Czech Republic.

When the US ambassador to the Czech Republic, Andrew Schapiro, advised President Milos Zeman to cancel his participation in the Russian celebration, President Zeman threw the Obama fundraiser out of the presidential castle. The Czech people, President Zeman said, were next in line for extermination by the Nazis, and it was the Red Army that saved the Czech people.

Of course Washington and its corrupt court historians are at work revising the history of World War II in order to cleanse the record of Russia’s victory over Germany. Of course, everyone in Europe knows that this is just another Washington attempt to control all explanations regardless of the facts, but vassals are accustomed to vassalage and its humiliations. Proud peoples are not what Europeans any longer are.

Petr Hajek, who served as an advisor to former Czech president Vaclav Klaus, said that the US ambassador thinks he is the governor of a conquered territory issuing orders to the locals and that previous ambassadors from Washington had the same idea:

“President Zeman’s position rejecting the advice of the US ambassador is the only possible adequate response. Our country’s leader has carried himself as the President of the Czech Republic, and not as the head of a protectorate of the United States.”

Czech officials receive poison letters

Security tightened at Czech govt offices as 2 ministries get poisoned letters. The Czech president is an outspoken critic of US meddling in Ukraine.

The Czech Interior Ministry is tightening security at government offices after envelopes with deadly doses of poison were sent to two ministries in recent days, Reuters said.

The two letters sent by mail from Sweden and Slovenia were intercepted before reaching the addressees of Finance Minister Andrej Babis and Interior Minister Milan Chovanec.

Two more envelopes, with harmless substances, arrived to the office of President Milos Zeman and a commercial television station. “We do not want to raise panic but… we need to adopt these security measures,” according to Chovanec.

Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry on Friday received another suspicious package and sent it for analysis.

‘US and West provoked Ukrainian crisis’

The West and the United States provoked the Ukrainian crisis, former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus said in an interview to Czech television (CT24).

“I think that not Russia is to blame for the outbreak in Kiev on the Maidan (Independence Square). Western Europe and the United States aggravated the situation,” he said.

“I had told them from the very beginning not to exert pressure on Ukraine, as it will only destroy and disintegrate it. Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened,” Klaus said.

At present, in his view, the country is undergoing a difficult satge, and it is hard to “clearly say whether it wants to rely on the West or on Russia.” However, Ukraine should independently decide its own future.

“Let them determine their future for themselves – without any interference from outside,” the former Czech president said.

Source: ITAR-TASS

‘War with Russia the only solution’

The United States needs to “write Crimea off” after the invasion of Russian troops following last month’s Ukrainian uprising, retired Maj. Gen. Bob Scales said.

“They are now part of Russia. Paint them red. They have been reintegrated into the Russian republic. And there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it,” Scales, a retired Army major general, told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Tuesday, referring to the peninsula in Ukraine.

The important thing at this point was to anticipate what Russian President Vladimir Putin will do next, Scales said.

“From a military perspective, what’s important is what happens next, because of what’s at risk now. You have Russian minorities in Eastern Ukraine. You’ve got Russian minorities in Moldova, in Estonia. And all of those central European leaders are nervous,” he said.

There are numerous options for the United States from a military perspective, but Scales said he did not think President Barack Obama had plans to use forces in the conflict.

“The essence of any type of military activity in this region is to have a viable contingency plan, to have it worked out with your NATO allies. And frankly, that simply hasn’t happened,” Scales said.

Speaking on the crisis in Ukraine, Scales argued that “there should be a military option on the table.”

“Everyone I’ve seen on the news media this whole last few days talks about, ‘well, the first thing we are going to do is we’re gonna take the military option off the table,’” Scales, a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College, said: ”Oh, really? That’s our greatest advantage right now. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin doesn’t care about economic sanctions. He doesn’t care about what the E.U. thinks. The only thing he respects is power and he knows that America still is more powerful than he is.”

“I think we can commit as a demonstration,” Scales elaborated. “For example, let’s start that AMB initiative with the Czech Republic and Poland tomorrow. We have a perfect right to put ships in the Black Sea. Let’s put some ships in the Black Sea. Poland is one of the best maneuver areas in Central Europe. The U.S. military, the U.S. Army, maybe even the Marine Corps, ought to move into Poland to do maneuvers, perhaps stay awhile. We should move tier 1 and tier 2 Special Forces into the Ukraine — if the Ukraine asks for our support — so we can train their troops. Remember October ’73 when we kept Israel from collapsing by flying in high tech gear and high tech weapons? We could do that in the Ukraine.”

Source: Daily Caller/Newsmax

Palestinian ambassador to Prague killed in explosion

Jamal al-Jamal, the Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic, died Wednesday after an explosion went off in his Prague residence.

“There has been a detonation of a so far unidentified explosive mixture,” a police spokeswoman said. “The ambassador was … taken to hospital with serious injuries.”

Al-Jamal died shortly after arriving at the hospital. Dr Daniel Langer, who works there, told public television that al-Jamal had suffered serious abdominal injuries, as well as injuries to his chest and head.

The cause of the explosion is not yet known and Czech officials said it may have been the result of an accident.

Czech police said the ambassador died of his injuries in hospital after the explosion on the morning of New Year’s Day in the two-storey suburban residence. No one else was injured, police said, although Jamal’s family was at home at the time.

The safe was recently moved from the old embassy building, but it had come from a building that used to house the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s offices in the 1980s.

Malki told The Associated Press news agency: “The ambassador wanted to know what is in the safe. He opened it and asked his wife to bring a paper and a pen to write down the contents of the safe. She left him to bring (the) pen and paper. During that time, she heard the sound of an explosion.”

Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it would send a delegation to Prague “to help with the investigation”.

Al-Jamal was born in 1957, in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp. His family is originally from Jaffa in what is now Israel.

He joined Fatah in 1975 and was appointed deputy ambassador in Bulgaria in 1979.

Starting in 1984, he served as a diplomat in Prague, eventually as acting ambassador. From 2005-2013, he served as consul general in Alexandria, Egypt. In October 2013, he was appointed ambassador in Prague.