Czech Republic thread: news only, no discussion

zgx09t

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Now I read
Czech trolls! seems about right.
Czech trolls tend to be individuals who act on a voluntary basis, says journalist who analysed scene
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06-09-2019
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Just as in many other countries in the world the Czech online scene is filled with hateful comments and disinformation posing as news. The authors of this material are commonly referred to as “trolls” and their influence is increasingly seen as dangerous and divisive, potentially working on behalf of foreign actors. While this may be true in some cases it seems that the majority of the Czech troll scene is actually made up of individuals who do so voluntarily.

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A study conducted earlier this year showed that 55 percent of Czechs over the age of 15 have come across disinformation sites and so-called fake news at some point in their life.

The data, which was gathered by the agency Nielsen Admosphere on behalf of the Czech Fund of Independent Journalism, showed that the number of Czechs exposed to such manipulation has gone up by 7 percent in year-on-year terms.

The people who spread disinformation and hate on the internet are often referred to as ‘trolls’, but who exactly are they and do they belong to a uniform movement?

Journalist Ondřej Golis has taken a deeper look into the so-called internet troll phenomenon in the Czech Republic and shared his findings with Czech Radio.

“It is very hard to gauge their motivations. It is a varied mix. Often it is said that some of them are paid. While evidence for this has been found in foreign countries, we have not yet come across proof of Czech trolls receiving money.

“Most experts say that the majority of trolls are voluntary. They do this activity for a number of reasons, for example because it makes them confident. Then there are often trolls who are people in debt, or just people who are bored and find it fun.”

Golis divides trolls into three categories – influential trolls, foot-soldiers and trolls who use a fake profile. Foot soldiers are the most common type and they are often characterised by the fact that they do not consider themselves to be trolls at all. Rather, they see themselves as patriots who are merely trying to open people’s eyes to their sense of truth. This is accompanied by frequent posting of articles from disinformation sites, or graphs which they have created themselves, Golis says.

According to the journalist, trolls that fall into the 'influential' category are those who have attracted a following and they often operate their own news channels on platforms such as on Youtube and Facebook. One example of this, he says, is Raptor TV.

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A group of Czech anti-troll fighters, who call themselves “Elves”, recently came out with an observation that the Czech of certain trolls contains words and expressions based on the Russian language, so-called "russianisms". This led them to suggest that while these troll profiles pretend to be Czech, the slight nuances in their language indicate that they are in fact not.

Nevertheless, the vast majority of these trolls seem to be Czechs, says Golis.

According to him, there is still not enough data to create a completely accurate picture on the Czech troll scene, which is evolving very quickly at the same time. But there are signs that some Czech trolls get their information either directly or indirectly from Russian outlets.

“There are indications, but we cannot say with certainty. One of the indicators is the fact that these disinformers take over the agenda pushed forward by Russian media. Often we see that a specific take on the news appears in a Russian outlet and within a few days it appears on our disinformation scene.”



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06-09-2019
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© 1996–2019 Český rozhlas
 

zgx09t

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Selfie sticks and photography in general bad for church business, so let's ban it.
If they were still dead people and must be respected, then why did you let the people in the first place?
Whose bones were those in these stylish decorations? Weren't they supposed to be lying in peace?Hello? Hypocrisy?
Welcome to the 21st Century church of bones, whoever or whatever they represent there in their belief systems.

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Czech Republic's Sedlec Ossuary, aka 'Church of Bones,' to ban selfies
Lilit Marcus, CNN • Updated 16th October 2019
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  • http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F190528172639-church-of-bones---sedlec-ossuary---chandelier---getty-images.jpg
  • http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F190604113016-church-of-bones---sedlecossuary3-.jpg
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1/13
'Bone Church': Located in Czech city Kutná Hora, Sedlec Ossuary is adorned with around 40,000 human skeletons.
Michal Cizek/ Stringer/Getty Images
(CNN) — The
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chapel in the Czech Republic town of Kutná Hora has become the latest
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attraction to clamp down on photography.
The chapel, located beneath the Church of All Saints about 45 miles outside of
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, is known as the "Church of Bones" because of its unusual decor.
The bones from the nearly 60,000 skeletons discovered on the site have been used to create decorative elements, most famously a large chandelier.
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The underground chapel's nontraditional interior design has brought tourists from around the world to this otherwise sleepy town in the Czech countryside, but the visitor influx has become a double-edged sword in the age of Instagram.
Radka Krejčí, director of the Sedlec parish,
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that photography will be severely restricted in the Sedlec Ossuary as of 2020.
"We believe that our visitors will respect this decision and at the same time understand the reasons that led us to this step," she said.
According to Krejčí, half a million people passed through the Ossuary in 2017, a number that is expected to keep rising.

http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F190529113618-church-of-bones---sedlec-ossuary.jpg

The Church of All Saints dates from the 14th century.
Courtesy Sedlec Ossuary
This isn't an outright photography ban. Instead, visitors who wish to take snapshots will need to get permission from the parish three days ahead of time.
A major issue for the ossuary -- which is currently undergoing renovations that will help manage the flow of visitors to the site -- is the epidemic of inappropriate selfies.
Despite signs in many languages asking guests to be polite and remember that the skeletons are still dead bodies, many tourists have removed bones from the walls, attempted to touch or kiss skeletons, put hats or sunglasses on skulls for photo purposes or committed other disrespectful acts.
In addition, preservation is crucial, since
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is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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The nearby Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, both managed by the Sedlec parish and part of the UNESCO designation, will also be subject to the new photography guidelines.
It's as yet unclear what the new restrictions will entail beyond the three-day rule.
Some popular sites around the world, like Mexico City's Casa Azul, the home of artist Frida Kahlo, charge an additional fee for visitors who want to take pictures.
Others only ban selfie sticks or limit photography to certain less-busy times.
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© 2019 Cable News Network.
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All Rights Reserved. CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.
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zgx09t

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Registered Member
A little fun with Czech police.
I thought I heard a few loud bangs of tear gas going off, but caption said stun grenades.
That was used to control a few dozens drunken hooligans just before the game.
It was described as wink wink violent.

England fans clash with Prague police before defeat to Czech Republic - video


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England fans clashed with police in Prague on Friday prior to their team’s to Czech Republic – the first time England have lost a qualifier for a major tournament in 10 years. The violence erupted when bottles were thrown towards armed officers in riot gear, with police then advancing and firing stun grenades
 

zgx09t

Junior Member
Registered Member
yin and yang, so here go some yang.

That building looks interesting to say the least.

Shipwreck tower set to become Czech Republic's tallest building

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A red shipwreck crashes into this
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, which Black n' Arch and sculptor David Černý have designed for developer Trigema on the outskirts of
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.

The shipwreck will envelop the 135-metre-high building, named Top Tower, which is expected to become the tallest building in Czech Republic and contain a mix of housing and office spaces.

Its striking form is designed by
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and sculptor
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to serve as a stark reminder of climate change – imagining a future where a shipwreck has collided with a building during an apocalypse caused by storms and rising sea levels.

top-tower-shipwreck-black-n-arch-architecture-prague-czech-republic-high-rise_dezeen_1704_col_1-852x1136.jpg

ower, the building has been commissioned by Prague developer
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, and is currently undergoing planning permission for a site close to the capital city's metro station Nové Butovice.

Trigema has projected that construction will begin in 2021, with the building set to take less than three years to complete.

It is hoped that the tower, which is outside Prague's urban conservation area, will revitalise the public pedestrian zone outside the metro station.

"The project under preparation will be outside the protected zone of the urban conservation area and outside the area prohibiting high-rise buildings," explained Trigema.

"At the same time, it is located far enough away from the Prague, so that it will not be visible from the vast majority of places in the centre of the metropolis and will not disturb the historical city skyline."
top-tower-shipwreck-black-n-arch-architecture-prague-czech-republic-high-rise_dezeen_1704_col_2-852x852.jpg


Though little detail has been disclosed about Top Tower's structure, the shipwreck is expected to be made made of red-coloured steel and wrapped with climbing plants – standing out from the pared-back rectangular tower.

At its highest point, the shipwreck will enclose a public observation deck that is accessed by an external lift. The main building will also feature a rooftop garden offering visitors panoramic views of the city.
top-tower-shipwreck-black-n-arch-architecture-prague-czech-republic-high-rise_dezeen_1704_col_3-852x400.jpg


Inside, there will be approximately 250 small apartments available to rent, alongside offices and a cultural centre, and shop units on the lowest two floors. The entrance will be marked by a giant sculpture of a propeller that appears to have broken off from the submarine.

Black n' Arch is not the first architecture studio to have modelled a building on shipwrecks. In 2018, Namibian studio
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strewn along the country's Skeleton Coast when designing a group of remote lodges.

Elsewhere in Prague,
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and architects including Eva Jiřičná, Richard Meier and John Pawson are currently designing
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.
 
thanks for this thread
zgx09t
LOL we love humor here, several years ago I saw an Internet text like

25 Most Upsetting Things Czechs Hear From Tourists

I'll try to pull some from memory; the story starts with a tourist arriving to Prague, The Czech Republic today, and

1. asks "How are things in Czechoslovakia?" [Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist January 1st, 1993]

2. then "How is Václav Havel?" [he passed away in 2011]

later they walk to a pub and the tourist says (personally I like most this one, LOL!):

3. "Prague is nice, but I just came from Vienna, and that's something." [Budapest would work the same -- local competitors]

in the pub the tourist starts like

4. "Beer can't be that cheap."

but drinks one after another, and

5. "I didn't know a Bud could be that good." [related to
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]

and after more beers

6. "I saw plenty of your girls." [many of them are successful in p0rn]

as far as I can go here
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
thanks for this thread
zgx09t
LOL we love humor here, several years ago I saw an Internet text like

25 Most Upsetting Things Czechs Hear From Tourists

I'll try to pull some from memory; the story starts with a tourist arriving to Prague, The Czech Republic today, and

1. asks "How are things in Czechoslovakia?" [Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist January 1st, 1993]

2. then "How is Václav Havel?" [he passed away in 2011]

later they walk to a pub and the tourist says (personally I like most this one, LOL!):

3. "Prague is nice, but I just came from Vienna, and that's something." [Budapest would work the same -- local competitors]

in the pub the tourist starts like

4. "Beer can't be that cheap."

but drinks one after another, and

5. "I didn't know a Bud could be that good." [related to
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]

and after more beers

6. "I saw plenty of your girls." [many of them are successful in p0rn]

as far as I can go here
The bud in Czech is indeed very good, because it's not the watered down crap in the US. And Prague is way better than Vienna, Vienna got no soul.
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
Prague is better than Vienna ? .. are you dreaming? :eek:
I hated Vienna. Everything in Vienna is about living in the glory of the past but made commericialized and tacky. Vienna had also felt run down outside the center.

My favorite European city is actually Munich or Edinburgh.
 

zgx09t

Junior Member
Registered Member
A long winded liberal apologist elitist take on eastern and central Europe current political situations. Again "the base" was only worthy of indirect mention.
Meanwhile, China is blazing her own path with her own "Chinese characteristics". Insofar as the last 30 years went, it's abundantly clear everyone has to figure out what works best for oneself given the local realities and all.



How liberalism became ‘the god that failed’ in eastern Europe
Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images

After communism fell, the promises of western liberalism to transform central and eastern Europe were never fully realised – and now we are seeing the backlash.

By Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes

Thu 24 Oct 2019 01.01 EDT
Last modified on Fri 25 Oct 2019 12.28 EDT

In the spring of 1990, John Feffer, a 26-year-old American, spent several months criss-crossing eastern Europe in hope of unlocking the mystery of its post-communist future and writing a book about the historical transformation unfolding before his eyes. He was no expert, so instead of testing theories, he buttonholed as many people from as many walks of life as possible. The contradictions he encountered were fascinating and puzzling. East Europeans were optimistic but apprehensive. Many of those he interviewed at the time expected to be living like Viennese or Londoners within five years, 10 years at the most. But these hopes were mingled with anxiety and foreboding. As Hungarian sociologist Elemér Hankiss observed: “People realised suddenly that in the coming years, it would be decided who would be rich and who would be poor; who would have power and who would not; who would be marginalised and who would be at the centre. And who would be able to found dynasties and whose children would suffer.”

Feffer eventually published his book, but did not return to the countries that had briefly captured his imagination. Then, 25 years later, he decided to revisit the region and to seek out those with whom he had spoken in 1990. This time round, eastern Europe was richer but roiled by resentment. The capitalist future had arrived, but its benefits and burdens were unevenly, even crassly distributed. After reminding us that “For the World War II generation in eastern Europe, communism was the ‘god that failed’”, Feffer writes that “For the current generation in the region, liberalism is the god that failed.”

The striving of ex-communist countries to emulate the west after 1989 has been given an assortment of names – Americanisation, Europeanisation, democratisation, liberalisation, enlargement, integration, harmonisation, globalisation and so forth – but it has always signified modernisation by imitation and integration by assimilation. After the communist collapse, according to today’s central European populists, liberal democracy became a new, inescapable orthodoxy. Their constant lament is that imitating the values, attitudes, institutions and practices of the west became imperative and obligatory.

Across central and eastern Europe, many of the democracies that emerged at the end of the cold war have been transformed into conspiracy-minded majoritarian regimes. In them, political opposition is demonised, non-government media, civil society and independent courts are denuded of their influence and sovereignty is defined by the leadership’s determination to resist pressure to conform to western ideals of political pluralism, government transparency and tolerance for strangers, dissidents and minorities.

No single factor can explain the simultaneous emergence of authoritarian anti-liberalisms in so many differently situated countries in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet resentment at liberal democracy’s canonical status and the politics of imitation in general has played a decisive role. This lack of alternatives, rather than the gravitational pull of an authoritarian past or historically ingrained hostility to liberalism, is what best explains the anti-western ethos dominating post-communist societies today. The very conceit that “there is no other way” provided an independent motive for the wave of populist xenophobia and reactionary nativism that began in central and eastern Europe, and is now washing across much of the world.

When the cold war ended, racing to join the west was the shared mission of central and eastern Europeans. Indeed, becoming indistinguishably western was arguably the principal aim of the revolutions of 1989. The enthusiastic copying of western models, accompanied as it was by the evacuation of Soviet troops from the region, was initially experienced as liberation. But after two troubled decades, the downsides of this politics of imitation became too obvious to deny. As resentment seethed, illiberal politicians rose in popularity and, in Hungary and Poland, acceded to power.

In the first years after 1989, liberalism was generally associated with the ideals of individual opportunity, freedom to move and to travel, unpunished dissent, access to justice and government responsiveness to public demands. By 2010, the central and eastern European versions of liberalism had been indelibly tainted by two decades of rising social inequality, pervasive corruption and the morally arbitrary redistribution of public property into the hands of small number of people. The economic crisis of 2008 had bred a deep distrust of business elites and the casino capitalism that, writ large, almost destroyed the world financial order.

Liberalism’s reputation in the region never recovered from 2008. The financial crisis greatly weakened the case, still being made by a handful of western-trained economists, for continuing to imitate American-style capitalism. Confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they did not. This is why 2008 had such a shattering ideological, not merely economic, effect.

Another reason why central and eastern populists have got away with exaggerating the dark sides of European liberalism is that the passage of time has erased from the collective memory the even darker sides of European illiberalism. Meanwhile, the ruling illiberal parties in central and eastern Europe, such as the Civic Alliance (Fidesz) in Hungary and Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland, seek to discredit liberal principles and institutions in order to deflect from legitimate charges of corruption and abuse of power. To justify dismantling the independent press and judiciary, they claim that they are defending the nation against “foreign-hearted” enemies.
A float featuring an effigy of Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, overpowering ‘the liberal Poland’, at a parade in Düsseldorf, Germany in March this year.

Yet focusing on the corruption and deviousness of illiberal governments in the region will not help us understand the sources of popular support for national populist parties. The origins of populism are undoubtedly complex. But they partly lie in the humiliations associated with the uphill struggle to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. Discontent with the “transition to democracy” in the post-communist years was also inflamed by visiting foreign “evaluators” who had little grasp of local realities. These experiences combined to produce a nativist reaction in the region, a reassertion of “authentic” national traditions allegedly suffocated by ill-fitting western forms. The post-national liberalism associated with EU enlargement allowed aspiring populists to claim exclusive ownership of national traditions and national identity.

This was the mainspring of the anti-liberal revolt in the region. But a subsidiary factor was the unargued assumption that, after 1989, there were no alternatives to liberal political and economic models. This presumption spawned a contrarian desire to prove that there were, indeed, such alternatives. Take Germany’s far-right populist party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). As its name suggests, it was launched in response to Angela Merkel’s offhand claim that her monetary policy was “alternativlos” (“without alternative”). By describing the government’s proposal as the only available option, she provoked an intense and implacable search for alternatives. A similar backlash, provoked by the assumed normality of post-nationalism, gave birth, in formerly communist countries, to an anti-liberal, anti-globalist, anti-migrant and anti-EU revolt, exploited and manipulated by populist demagogues who know how to demonise “inner enemies” to mobilise public support.

According to George Orwell, “All revolutions are failures, but they are not all the same failure.” So, what kind of failure was the revolution of 1989, given that its aim was western-style normality? To what extent was the liberal revolution of 1989 responsible for the illiberal counter-revolution unleashed two decades later?




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