Sunday, February 08, 2009

Post Democracy

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk

Then, amazingly, he told the Head of State: 'I don't care about your opinions on it [the Treaty].'

Czechs are sensitive about being ordered around by politicians from other countries.

They remember how Hitler screamed so wildly at poor President Emil Hacha in 1939 that the aged professor collapsed and had to be revived by injections. They remember Josef Stalin telling them they couldn't have American Marshall Aid, and Leonid Brezhnev telling them to strangle the Prague Spring.

Klaus struck back hard.

'This is incredible,' he retorted. He directly compared Cohn-Bendit's dictatorial lecture to the past behaviour of the Kremlin. 'I did not think anything like this was possible. I have not experienced anything like this for the past 19 years [since the Soviets left]. I thought it was a matter of the past, that we live in a democracy.'

Then he added these inflammatory words, which the EU would much rather nobody had uttered: 'But it is post-democracy, really, that rules the EU.'