Archiv měsíce: Prosinec 1901
Ing. Petr Mach, PhDThe State should not support the Arts
"Arts don't deserve to be haggled about on the market," think many, especially those artists dependent on the government's grants or anybody who works in a government-funded, art-aimed organization. They also say: "Delivering art to the mercy of market would extinguish many precious works of art. Sure, there are some artistic products, which can work their way to the market, but then it is questionable whether they should be called art at all. They are rather products of commerce made only for the sake of money, and not from the artist's own inner impulse. Real artists must therefore be supported – this is what enlightened sovereigns had been doing since times passed. We all know that products of art are not good just for artists themselves or their passionate admirers – the ultimate beneficiary of arts is society as a whole. Modern society should therefore support independent production of art. Since we now have a democratic government, it is unthinkable to make artists beg for support from wealthy maecenases. Art must be supported through grants for artists and the possibility of writing-off of taxes for those who provide the support."
To join (EU) or not to join?
Not surprisingly, the opinions of Euro-optimist Monika Pajerová and Euro-skeptic Petr Mach about Czech accession to the EU are a study in contrasts. Their dual interview with The Prague Tribune simmered with arguments and invective.
Ten myths about the Czech Republic’s accession to the European Union
When in 1989 we called "Back to Europe!," we meant to free ourselves from the bounds of the Asian culture represented by the former Russian ruler over our sovereignty and to rejoin the democratic and capitalist Western Europe. Few years later, with the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, the European Union was established. We took it for granted that "Back to Europe!" now referred to joining the European Union. We pledged an official application in Brussels and began to amend our laws according to the European legislation. Slowly, we started to realize that the European Union was not the ideal to which we wanted to return. We started to have doubts. The European bureaucracy and European directives and regulations cannot be regarded as arguments in favour of joining the club. In spite of this, a vast majority of politicians still try to convince us that there is no reason for refusing to join the EU. Not only they use our tax money to fund the campaign persuading us about the necessity of entering the EU, but they also use many misleading arguments or myths for the purpose.
The UN will inevitably continue to fail
The war in Iraq revealed the weaknesses of the UN, which in the eyes of many is – or should be – the source of legitimacy of international military actions. These weaknesses, however, are of such a fundamental nature that we must ask whether the organisation’s further existence in its current form has any sense, or whether it has any sense at all.