Houndreds of eggs welcomed Paroubek

Houndreds of eggs welcomed Paroubek

by Larisa

During a meeting of a leading czech political party CSSD in Prague on Wednesday afternoon, members of the party were welcomed by a barrage of eggs flying on the stage. Several large groups of youngsters started throwing hundreds of eggs on the stage as Jiri Paroubek, the party's chairman, and other members started their speech regarding their political programme for the European parliament.

This incident was however only the climax of a serie of similar protests at CSSD's meetings which took place in various cities across the Czech republic for the past month. Everything started with the creation of a facebook group on internet called «an egg for Paroubek in every city». This group encouraged opposers of CSSD and communism, which author of the group presents as ''two equal threats'', to protest against the party by throwing eggs on Paroubek during his speeches. The success of the group however grew surprisingly large: it started with one thrown egg and escalated into CSSD members having to protect themselves with umbrellas from hundreds of eggs.

Pictures and videos from the Prague meeting could be seen in following days in news from all over the world. Indeed, the view was rather disturbing since it were primarely young students who were throwing the eggs and members of the party were simply standing on the stage in a line, refusing to leave. This definitely did not give a good impression about Czech republic to the world, especially since it currently precides the EU. Another sad fact is that most of the protesters were young people who presumable know very little of politics and thus the motivation seemed not to be concerned with the politics but rather with the want to rebel without an actual cause. It is not surprising then that this incident was condemned by large numbers of the public, leading domestic and foreign politics, the Czech president and even the oposition party ODS as well as by me.

"We're not scared of you!"
"You're unable to discuss!"
"This is disguisting and cowardly!"

Equitation by Magda

I hesitated for a long time about the theme of my article. Finally Larisa told me, that it could be an article about my hobbies, my interests , not just about about serious themes . Finally I decided to write about my big hobby – equitation.

I think that most of you – readers of my blog, are not interesting for horses, but you can change your opinion :-) .

I started riding on horseback 6 years ago in a small, family stable with 10 horses. That is where I started. It was really great stable, with good people. But I found with my friends a new stable near Nymburk. That is where I really learned ride on horseback.

There I spend my holidays every year and either my free time in a school year. Like a discipline I practise the show-jumping- you can see in the photos.

Now I can tell you some “technical information”. To protect your head you must wear riding cap. Is a most important object in horseback riding. Then to protect others parts of your body you can use the breeches- special pants for riding. I can tell you all the instruments, but it is not so interesting, so I will show you some pictures.

And now some photos: summer 2008

Entropa is a sculprute created by Czech artist David Černý under commission for the Czech Republic to mark the occasion of its presidency of the Council of the European Union. The sculpture was supposed to have been created jointly by 27 artists and artist groups from all member countries of the EU; but in a hoax, Černý and his three assistants created the satirical and controversial work depicting pointed stereotypes of European nations and fake artist profiles complete with invented descriptions of their supposed contributions. The piece was unveiled on 12 January 2009. Moving and multimedia components were activated on the formal "launch date" of 15 January 2009. It is on display in the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels; a copy of it may appear on the wall of the New Scene of the National Theatre in Prague.

The Council of the EU has a rotary presidency system, whereby the governments of member countries exchange leadership every six months. It is customary for the presiding country to place an exhibit in the Justus Lipsius building, which are normally uncontroversial. France which held the presidency before the Czech Republic, had simply erected a large balloon in the French national colours.

Here are some countries:


Romania



Poland



Netherlands



Luxembourg












Bulgaria



France



Germany



Italy

Google research :) Find Chuck Norris

http://www.nochucknorris.com/

Slumdog Millionaire Trailer

Slumdog Millionaire Review

Danny Boyle couldn’t have timed his resurrection as a populist director much better than this. Half the planet is desperate to enjoy a feel-good hit that doesn’t involve Abba songs.
The other half will be astonished by his chutzpah. Slumdog Millionaire is exactly the kind of exotic, edgy thriller that the new generation of Academy voters on both sides of the Pond absolutely adores. The rags-to-riches story is set in the grubby backstreets of Mumbai. Half the script is delivered in Hindi. And the plot is impossibly shallow.
The film starts at the end. Dev Patel’s 18-year-old Jamal is just one correct answer away from winning — or blowing — a 20 million rupee (£280,000) fortune on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

The handsome and terrified youth is an orphan from the gutters of Mumbai. Jamal’s unexpected success on the show over two intense days turns the stuttering youth into a national sensation.
When the programme breaks for the night before the all-important final question, Jamal is bundled through the back door of the television studio, whisked to the nearest police station, and beaten to a pulp by corrupt and jealous cops who want to know how he cheated. This is where the film actually begins.
“What the hell can a slum boy possibly know?” barks the irritated police chief (Irrfan Khan) as a plump minion clips a pair of electric cables to Jamal’s big toes. “The answers,” spits out Patel’s bruised hero. The plucky martyr reveals how each loaded question asked by the slimy host of Millionaire unlocks a seminal childhood injury.
This being a Danny Boyle movie the precious answers are nailed to brutal scenes. They involve frantic sprints through Mumbai’s crowded markets and grisly flashbacks to medieval slums where the nine-year-old Jamal, and his slightly older psychotic brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal), spend most of their childhood fleeing the clutches of sinister pimps and hungry gangs. It’s terribly Dickensian.
The fairytale power of the film is the way Boyle manages to capture the evolution of the city through the eyes of a child. It’s visually astonishing. The film gets under the skin of the city on every imaginable level. The cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle is an insouciant genius with a camera. You could hang his lush stills of garbage heaps, frowning waifs and skeletal tower blocks in any respectable art gallery. By the same token the film must have been murder to edit.
Jamal’s shocks of growing up alone unfold like dreams: the death of his mother, murdered during a riot; a comic shaking of hands with a Bollywood legend, and then a long litany of ghastly wounds inflicted on fellow urchins by smiling pimps and lethal Fagins.
The rift between the sensitive Jamal and his increasingly domineering brother is the rip that hurts the most. The adolescent orphans barely understand the pain that they inflict on each other. Boyle uses this simmering tension to turn up the temperature at critical moments.
The director has never been shy of manipulating emotions and characters to crank out the maximum screen emotion. The scented backdrops and flavours of Mumbai dilute the crude liberties that Boyle occasionally inflicts on the melodrama.
The fact that these memories stack up into neat answers is spookily inconvenient if you’re a poisonous bastard such as Anil Kapoor’s deliciously smug television host. Or an emotionally detached viewer. Indeed Slumdog Millionaire is guilty of all sorts of implausible twists, not least a thundery long-distance romance between Jamal and a sultry captive beauty (Freida Pinto) forced into prostitution. It keeps pulling at your sleeve like a needy child.
Despite the wobbly structure, Slumdog is a far more sophisticated film than the plot suggests. There isn’t an inch of Merchant Ivory on view. And, like the best parables, Slumdog doesn’t simply plunder India’s troubled past and a boy’s bitter-sweet memories in order to look forward.
What’s great about the film is that it looks sideways as the past and future grind past each other like tectonic plates. It’s the kind of dynamic that Robert Lepage explores so brilliantly on stage. Here, Boyle takes on a bewildering mess of contradictions to make a surprisingly pure point.
Mumbai’s brand new skyscrapers sprout out of patches of mud; Jamal’s old-fashioned principles will forever be out of synch with the slick, nightclub world that his older brother Salim inhabits. And so it goes. The romance? Fear not. It’s fabulous icing.