Don't Mess With Czech Ravers
On July 30 around 5,000 smart-mobbin' Czech rave kids held their annual CzechTek party out in some field in the middle of nowhere. For no good reason at all, 1,000 cops came and kicked the shit out of 'em. Because Czech ravers are several times smarter (and more fun, and more peaceful) than Czech cops, they took plenty of pictures and video, and now the country has reacted with outrage, with regular protests and calls for various government ministers' heads. Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek has done his weenie Social Democratic Party proud by warning that them dang kids were "no dancing children but dangerous people," and that "any analogy drawn with the current savagery of young anarchists [and the students beaten on Nov. 17, 1989] is absolutely wrong and expedient." More links and commentary here.
And what of the Czech Republic's freedom-loving, substance-sampling ex-president Vaclav Havel? He demonstrated with the kids outside the Interior Ministry, and said (in classic Havelese) that the crackdown
was an attack against a kind of authentic togetherness, an authentic community, ie something which in this age - filled as it is with egoism and cynicism - society desperately needs.
His rival ex-commie Vaclav, President Klaus, has also criticized the cops, but not before giving a none-too-subtle dig at his predecessor:
Klaus said the problem should not be narrowed to the debate on the possible usefulness or unusefulness of "the subculture of techno fans in our cynical times."
