Charter 77

Reading Vaclav Havel In Havana

Yoani Sanchez | Posted 02.24.2012

Read More: Milan Kundera, Charter 77, The Garden Party, Fidel Castro, Vaclav Havel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Perestroika, Czech Spring, Raul Castro, Granma, Civic Forum, Kim Jong Il, North Korea, Czech Republic, World News
Yoani Sanchez

Last weekend Vaclav Havel died, just at the time when he was most read in Cuba. He left and we can't hear his voice in a classroom of our University, nor listen to his extensive collection of anecdotes about the years of Soviet control.

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Remembering Vaclav Havel

Todd Brewster | Posted 02.20.2012

Read More: Charter 77, Vaclav Havel Dead, Arnost Lustig, Prague, Velvet Revolution, Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic, World News
Todd Brewster

With the news this past weekend that Vaclav Havel, the one-time Czech president, had died, I found myself recalling a scene back in 1989, when I was lucky enough to spend a week in Prague with the leader of what eventually became known as the "Velvet Revolution."

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Havel the Dissident: A Legacy Worth Claiming

Richard (RJ) Eskow | Posted 02.18.2012

Read More: Frank Zappa, Charter 77, Neoconservatism, Plastic People of the Universe, Economics, Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic, Politics News
Richard (RJ) Eskow

Today we're told that the Occupy movement is too idealistic, too naïve. Naïve? Try Havel's words if you want naïve: "May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred."

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China, the Nobel Prize and the Road to Freedom

Dan Siegel | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Charter 77, I.F. Stone, Vaclav Havel, Burma, Nobel Peace Prize, Charter 08, Aung San Suu Kyi, Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Poland, Eastern Europe, Chinese Government, Liu Xiaobo, Czechoslovakia, Chinese Censorship, China, Impact News
Dan Siegel

Americans and the global community must keep its pressure weighing on Chinese officials to free Liu Xiaobo.

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'Soul Of A Citizen': Barack Obama, Vaclav Havel, And When Small Steps Yield Unforeseen Fruits

Paul Loeb | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Communism, Nelson Mandela, Social Change, Hope, Vaclav Havel, Wangari Maathai, Health Care Reform, Apartheid, Barack Obama, Books, Soul of a Citizen, Charter 77, Books News
Paul Loeb

We never know how the new-found involvement of those we engage will play out in the rest of their lives, but if we inspire enough people to take those first steps in speaking out for justice we can sometimes transform history.

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1989 And the Fall of the Wall: Did Reagan Do It?

Jesse Larner | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Czeslaw Milosz, Charter 77, 1989, Ronald Reagan, Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, Plastic People of the Universe, Leszek Kolakowski, Jacek Kuron, East Germany, Andrei Sakharov, Imre Nagy, Lech Walesa, Aleksandr Dubcek, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Moscow Helsinki Group, Bronislaw Geremak, Yelena Bonner, Berlin Wall, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ddr, World News
Jesse Larner

Regan probably hastened the fall of the Wall by a few years, but it could have fallen without him. It could not however, have fallen without the sacrifices of those living under Soviet Communism.

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