Thursday, March 13, 2008

TheGuardian: Husak vs. Bush

Husak's Czechoslovakia and Bush's America is compared by the Guardian, inspired by Martina Navratilova's criticism of Bush (she is saying there is no difference between Husak's era in socialist Czechoslovakia and Bush's reign now, or Bush is even worse). The newspaper compares support of the presidents (Husak 15%; Bush 19-30%); health care (free; 16% without health insurance respectively); standard of living vs. freedom (low standard but want of freedom; high standard but no fight for freedom; , i.e. consumerism does not / does placate the population respectively); employment (full employment vs. recession and job loss); visa (similar approach - "arbitrary" vs. Patriot Act); torture (covert tool vs. officially sanctioned).

For me, growing up under Husak... this is quite incomparable (people did want consumerism and not everyone was ready to fight for their freedom and risk the future of their children, but I have no real experience of living in the US under Bush as Novotna does..). However, as for social rights, that seems a different story.

Guardian article here. Czech version here.
Other articles in Guardian when searching for "Husak" here.

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