Free Republic

The 2011 calendar features four women MPs from the Public Affairs party wearing little in the way of clothing in a series of images that dispatch the traditional image of staid and serious parliamentarians. The country returned its highest ever number of women MPs at the last general election.

It may seem to the world that Israel stands alone against a juggernaut of Muslim gangsters and will, in the end, cease to exist. If that happens, the Israelis will suffer a catastrophe reminiscent of the recent Hutu/Tutsi horror. The gangsters will, however, not be laughing for long as they will have lost the façade behind which they have hidden for decades. Their real war is against modernity, participatory government and the most basic women’s rights. That will become obvious. All those who failed to support Israel, particularly American Jews that let their jejune contempt for George Bush, morph into...

Results from the Czech Republic's general election suggest centre-right parties may form the next government. The left-wing Social Democrats narrowly won, with 22.1% of the vote, the Czech Statistical Office said. But Jiri Paroubek quickly resigned as leader of the party, saying the country was "on track for a right-wing coalition". The conservative Civic Democrats have 20.2%, but potential allies could boost that towards a majority. One of them, TOP09, has 16.7%, while the centrist Public Affairs party has 10.9%.

LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Jan. 26, 2010 – The Czech Republic-led provincial reconstruction team here and the provincial agriculture department completed two dairy centers in the Malak Abdullah Jan and Shikak villages in Pol-e Alam city today. Members of the Czech Republic-led provincial reconstruction team and villagers check out a newly built dairy center in Afghanistan’s Logar province, Jan. 26, 2010. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Since milk is a source of income for many in these villages, the completion of these dairy centers will benefit about 7,000 people in the area, according to a provincial reconstruction team...

Nachod - A Czech couple today entered into a marriage in a rather bizarre venue - standing in the icy water of the Metuje River in Nachod, dressed only in a bikini and swimming trunks. Both are namely enthusiastic tough fellows who love outdoor swimming in cold water in winter. "From the age of 15 I have always been swimming on New Year. Last year I joined a group of tough fellows in which I met Tomas," said the 32-year-old newlywed Tatana. Her husband Tomas Prokop, 34, is heading a club of tough fellows in Prague. They have planned the...

PRAGUE — For many Czechs, it is a historical reckoning that is 20 years too late. Two decades after the Velvet Revolution overthrew Communist rule here in 1989, a group of Czech senators is pressing to ban the Communist Party, the only surviving one in the former Soviet bloc in Europe and, to its many critics, a national embarrassment and aberration. “The Communists ruined this country and oppressed freedom and yet here they are 20 years later in our Parliament,” said David Cerny, the iconoclastic Czech artist, who in 1991 painted a Soviet tank pink, transforming a memorial to the...

<p>PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime planned to use an anti-tank rocket to attack the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, the Czech Republic's counterintelligence service said Monday.</p> <p>Iraqi spies posing as diplomats were supposed to have carried out the attack, from a window of an apartment building near the radio's location in downtown Prague, The Czech Security Information Service, or BIS, said in a statement.</p>

Who killed Czech Clyde? Bonnie or did he shoot himself? Plzeň - The runaway prisoner that the police intercepted on Wednesday night was not killed by the police. Police spokesperson Martina Lídlová has confirmed the information. "The autopsy showed that it was a different gun that killed Tauchen. The Czech police don't use such a kind of gun," said the spokeswoman. There are two possible versions at the moment: either Pavel Tauchen shot himself in the head shortly before the police opened fire at him and his wife. The other option is that Dagmar Tauchenová shot her 42-year old husband...

The president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, has signed the EU's Lisbon Treaty, the final step in the charter's ratification.

Revelling in the fuss he was causing, Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, calmly tucked into a plate of steamed shellfish on the terrace of the elegant Adriatic hotel in the Albanian seaside resort of Durres last week. In faraway Brussels furious diplomats were calling for his impeachment and even his country’s expulsion from the European Union because of his obstinate refusal to sign the Lisbon treaty. Klaus, now the only European leader holding out against ratifying the document, made it clear he did not give a damn. European leaders were told he was not available to take...

“If the president is obstructing the democratic process and opposing the decision of parliament as well as the will of the people, he is moving beyond the law and will need to face the consequences,” a German diplomat told The Sunday Times. Jiri Oberfalzer, a member of the Czech senate and Klaus’s closest ally, said Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, had already threatened the Czechs with expulsion from the EU. “Ideas of changing the constitution just to get rid of the president only shows how weak our young democracy is,” said Oberfalzer, a Eurosceptic. The political hot potato now lands...

The Irish Yes to the Lisbon Treaty has been greeted with whoops of joy by the European establishment from Cork to Cracow. But the long battle over Lisbon is not over. The spotlight now falls on the Czech Republic and its President, Vaclav Klaus. EU elites may have successfully defeated democracy for the fifth time – they overrode the Danish No to Maastricht in 1992, the Irish No to Nice in 2001, and the Dutch and French Nos to the European Constitution (the forerunner of Lisbon) in 2005. But the Lisbon Treaty still remains unratified in two Central European states...

Thousands of believers flocked to the Czech Republic's second largest city Brno in south Moravia on Sunday to greet Pope Benedict XVI and attend a mass he celebrated out in the open. A region with the highest concentration of believers in the largely secular Czech Republic, Brno was a key stage on the pope's visit and pilgrims came from near and far to get a glimpse of him – some arriving well before daybreak to get a good vantage point. Jan Richter attended the mass in Brno and reported on the atmosphere there in the course of the morning. Pope...

Pope Benedict XVI sought to reach out to the heavily secular people of the Czech Republic on Saturday, decrying the "wounds" left by atheistic communism and urging them to rediscover their Christian roots. ...Benedict said Christianity has an "irreplaceable role" to play in their lives. The Czech Republic is one of the most secular countries in Europe, with nearly half the country professing to be non-believers.... Vatican organizers are hoping for a crowd of up to 200,000 people for the pope's Sunday Mass in Brno, in the Catholic heartland of the Czech Republic.... The [papal vespers] service was held in...

Bipartisan and Allied outrage! Poles, Czechs: US missile defense shift a betrayal By Vanessa Gera Associated PressSep 18,2009 WARSAW, Poland – Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama's decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries. "Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back," the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page. Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama's new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous "gray zone" between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere. ~~~ The Bush administration's plan would have...

CBO compares the potential cost and performance of MDA’s proposed European system with the cost and performance of three other options for deploying missile defenses in Europe... * Defense of Europe. All of the alternatives CBO considered would provide defense of most of Europe roughly equivalent to the defense provided by MDA’s proposal against most types of ballistic missiles that Iran is thought to have developed or could develop in the future... * Extended Defense of the United States. MDA’s proposed system would complement the coverage already available from U.S.-based interceptors by providing redundant defense from a third interceptor site...

Despite the outcry that President Obama has sold out the Europeans and caved to the Russians by cancelling missile defenses in Europe, it was the right thing to do. Those defenses were not going to work (or work well enough or soon enough to matter in any major crisis with Iran), and the diplomatic price we were paying for them was far out of proportion to any small gains we might have made by annoying the Russians or reassuring the Czechs and the Poles. (The stated reason for the cancellation — that we’re more worried about medium-range missile threats —...

News comes on the 70th Anniversary of Soviet Invasion of Poland in WWII!Remember all Obama's talk during last year's presidential campaign about improving our relations with other nations? Well, today, President Obama gave a huge slap in the face to Poland and the Czech Republic, two allies who went out on a limb to support U.S. plans for a missile defense shield needed ever more so in an era when Iran and North Korea are threatening the world with these dangerous weapons.The move is a transparent bid to appease Russia, which continues to refuse every plea that it help us...

PRAGUE – Czechs and Poles expressed rancor and relief Thursday that President Barack Obama had scrapped plans for a U.S. missile defense shield on their territories, reflecting deep divisions over a proposal that had also enraged Russia.

Czechs praise Kaczynski’s apology for 1938 annexation 03.09.2009 09:43 Jan Sechter, the Czech Ambassador in Warsaw, has praised remarks by President Kaczynski, describing Poland’s part in the annexing of Sudetenland just before WW II as “a sin”. “Poland’s participation in the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 was not only an error, but above all a sin,” Kaczynski told an audience of world leaders, including Prime Minister Putin and Chacellor Merkel on September 1. “This was and shall forever remain a wrong,” he added. President Kaczynski’s remarks were made in speeches commemorating the 70th anniversary of the start of WW II...