How do Czech people feel about the Zeman's victory in the presidential election?

Most of the Czech people I know are pretty unhappy about it, but whie I live in a rural area (Zeman has more support in rural areas), I live in a bubble of educated, usually bi-lingual or tri-lingual, white-collar folks — the type of folks who don’t like Zeman.

The ones who support him are actually happy, of course.

About the most positive thing to take from it (for those of us who are unhappy) is that the polls had Zeman winning by a wider margin. The margin was less than two percent, and when the votes of voters overseas are counted, it may be less than one percent.

The truth is, Drahoš was not a particularly strong candidate. Personally, I think that of all the candidates, Fišer came off best, but he didn’t make it to the second round.

Watching the “debate” on TV Nova (I use quotation marks because it seemed like more of a hockey match than a debate, complete with chanting crowds and cheering, jeering spectators) earlier this week was enough to tell me that Zeman was probably going to win. He’s an ugly, sickly old man, but he has an incredibly strong on-screen presence, with a dark, cynical sense of humor; and, though his presence is aprofoundly negative presence, it is still stronger than Drahouš, who, sadly, comes off like a priss, even though I don’t think he really is.

The old TV image game.

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Going forward, I think this election has grave implications for the future: Zeman seems likely to confirm food-and-media billionaire Babiš’ hold on the country.

While at the moment Babiš is making a lot of pro-EU noises, I think that will change when the EU starts putting pressure on him with regards to his corruption scandals, which involved EU funds.

He will get his legal immunity in the country , but the whole country will pay for the illegality of his dealings. Unfortunately, he owns some of the most popular and mainstream media the Czech Republic has, which means the great majority of people will read and accept his skewed, spun version of the truth.

The Czech Republic, which has always been Euro-sceptic, maybe as much as the UK if not more, seems set to really be a thorn in its side and I can only see the relationship getting worse. This is a tragedy in my honest opinion, even though Zeman, as president does not have much power. It bodes badly for the future in Europe.

It all comes down to anti-immigrant sentiments, something I feel very strongly about as an immigrant myself and as someone who grew up among immigrants and counts some of them as his greatest friends. To be honest, this immigrant issue is tearing the EU apart and while everyone in Western Europe can deny that this is happening, or dismiss it as the unimportant opinion of some marginilized racists, it is that very attitude which helps fuel it further.

There is really only one world figure of respectability who should be rubbing his hands with glee with this outcome in my opinion and that is Putin, but the Chinese seemed to want it, too, as last week it emerged that the Chinese had donated heavily to some NGO’s that supported Zeman’s campaign.

What movies are you watching this Holiday season?

Our favorites are

• It’s a Wonderful Life. The actually incredibly dark (upon reflection) family classic about George Bailey, a man driven to literal insanity by an inhumane and crushing capitalistic system. He sees visions of the world as it really is, minus the warm sentimental delusion he has lived his life under: a cold hard, heartless world of juke joints, bitter alcoholics and washed up probably drug-addicted hookers; of homeless ever-drunken child-killers brutally preyed upon by mean-spirited blue-collar thugs. 
• 
  
• Finally, Bailey decides (SPOILER ALERT) to take advantage of his neighbors’ sentimentality by taking all of their money, thus taking his rightful place at the top of the Bedford Falls semi-feudal foodchain.
  
   One of the darkest and greatest movies every made. Seriously.

• Home Alone 2: A comic romp in which an psychopathic youngster uses his formidable imagination to attempt to murder two down-on-their-luck simpletons just trying to get by in the dog-eat-dog world of early nineties Manhattan. Featuring everyone’s favorite president, Donald Trump and tragic Hollywood icon McCauley Culkin.
  
  My son laughs and laughs and laughs at this, which brings the Christmas spirit to me.

• The Polar Express: A weird-looking fantasy about a cynical kid who has a dream that allows him to buy into a variety of Christmas myths; it ends with his admission that he hears sounds that no one else hears. He literally spends the rest of his life pathetically believing in Santa Claus.
  
  Featuring a Tom Waits-esque Nighthawks in the Diner snow-ghost and a super creepy talking puppet. Also featuring a character called Know-it-all, who sounds like someone attempting to sound Jewish, but who apparently is not. Tom Hanks plays literally everybody in the film except the little black girl.

Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer: An stop-motion animated fantasy about a highly unusual reindeer who learns a valuable lesson: freakishness is tolerable, as long as you can prove you can provide a useful contribution to society. Or as long as the fantastically capricious, narrow-minded red-suited grump who rules your kingdom with an iron fist decrees you are. "Then all the reindeer loved him..."

Otherwise, you are free to go out in the cold wilderness to either freeze to death or get devoured by a terrifying roaring snow-monster. Features really scary “talking toys” and a prospector from the Yukon territory so stupid that he looks for gold on drifting icebergs.

Is the Czech election result a victory for Russia?

Both the New York Times and the BBCOnline seem to sort of be saying it is, lumping it in with recent victories of far-right parties in Austria, Hungary and Poland. 

They are wrong though and plainly do not have a real handle on Czech politics. . While ANO is not a traditionally "left-wing" party, they are not really a right-wing party either. 

Ondrej Babiš,  the Slovak-born ex-STB agent who heads the ANO party and is the probable new prime minster,  for all the MANY things I dislike about him, is not a Putin-puppet, as far as I can see, nor were most of the rest of the parties that got significant votes.

Nor is he even particularly  anti-EU, which a Putin-supported leader would be. He is  anti-Euro (like most people in this country — including myself). 

He may stand for softer sanctions against Russia but that is not necessarily an unpopular stance and doesn’t mean that he is working for Russia.

He is just out for himself, first and foremost as far as I can see.

There are accusations, which I totally believe, that the populist far-right leader Tomio Okamura is supported by Putin, and certainly he is of the same ilk as other far-right neo-nationalist politicians in, for example, Hungary.

Okamura’s party did get a significant showing (for this election, anyway — roughly ten percent of votes, technically fourth place, but there is not much difference between second, third and fourth place in this election) but it is far from clear that he will be part of a ruling coalition.

And even if Freedom and Democracy Party(Okamura’s Party) does become a coalition partner, it is not at all clear that that would be good for Russia in the long run anyway, as junior partners in coalitions tend to get crucified by the major coalition partners in this country.

Now if you ask me, I think Babiš is likely to be unpopular in Brussels in the coming years, and Putin may try to exploit this to his own ends, (which are mainly the weakening of the EU and NATO and a new Yalta-style agreement of non-interference in Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine, Georgia, etc) but this is not the same as the plainly Putin controlled parties in other parts of Central Europe.

ASOIAF and GOT: Who is Quaithe? What is her role in ASOIAF? And why has the show cut her after Season 2?

Dany met from Qarth in a Clash of Kings. Since then, for some reason, she sends visions to Dany to manipulate her but no one seems to know why. Her messages and visions (which I assume are sent by by glass candle) are couched in fantasy-mystic crypto-speak that seem designed to drive Dany (and the reader) insane.

Some theories about who she really is (since she wears a wooden mask that obscures her face) include:

• Shiera SeaStar (legendary old Targaryen woman, Bloodraven’s lover. Some kind of sorceress, but would be way old by now.)
• Ashara Dayne (no evidence)
• Alleras/Sarella, using Archmaester Marwyn’s glass candle (I guess because she is called the Spinx, who speaks in riddles, as Quaithe does)
• Daenerys from the distant future. (Yes, I have read this.)
• a figment of Daenerys’s mad-Targaryen imagination.

For all I know she is none of these things, but she clearly has an agenda. But it is impossible to say what it is, or even if she is on Dany’s side or not.

As to why the show cut her out after Season 2….well.

• They really cut out a LOT of MUCH MORE IMPORTANT things than that.
• I assume that whatever Quaithe is, and whoever she is, her role in the books dovetails with something they have cut from the show, thus rendering her character and its role meaningless. Back in Season 2 they had not planned so far and didn’t quite know what they were going to cut: I don’t care what they say, that is obvious.
• Also they seem to have some kind of hangup with characters seeing visions, having dreams or flashbacks other than Bran. They’ve had a few, but for the most part they think that kind of storytelling is “lame” even though it is used in most shows and stories.

GOT/ASOIAF: Why has Arya suddenly changed in Season 7? She seems so psychotic and unreasonable

 I think this has always been the hidden dark side to Arya’s arc.

The audience may cheer it when she cuts the eyes out of a pedaphile like show-Meryn Trant and tortures him before killing but when you think about it, it is pretty fucked up. You have to be in a very, very, very dark place to be able to do that. Even to a pedaphile.

Arya is traumatized. This is a little more clear in the books.

She has seen members of her household slain for no reasons: even the Septa who helped bring her up. She has survived on the streets. She has seen her father beheaded. She has starved and eaten insects to survive. She has witnessed atrocities right in front of her face on the road to Harrenhal: rapes, murder, child-killings, dismemberments, baby killings, horrific and unspecified torture for no reason at all; things that made all human existence seem completely meaningless, destitute and utterly bestial. In Harrenhal she was was physically and psychologically abused, and threatened with sexual abuse more than once; she witnessed gang rapes on women who had been put in stocks naked for anybody to have. She got to a point where she hid her personality down deep and became uncharacterisitically “mouse”-like and reticent. All this in the huge, dehumanizing expanse of the gigantic mega-fortress of spooky-ass Harrenhal.

The only thing that gave her a sense of confidence and control over her uncontrollable situation was murder, which she chose to exercise her uncompromising sense of justice.

But then she went to Braavos and was subjected to brainwashing and training that made her a literally supernatural killer, but also warped her way of looking at the world.

Meanwhile, Sansa has been on a different voyage: one less physically brutal, but psychologically tough: but one which has seen her getting a political educaton from Cersei, Joffrey, and Littlefinger.

Sansa also has a sense of justice and good but she thinks like a politician; inherently dishonest, in which compromises are made on the way to a greater goal.

Arya is not equipped to think this way. She is younger, she sees things in black and white.

She is not equipped to understand the kind of compromises that Sansa has made; the kind of compromises that any effective leader has to make. She reacts in an extreme and violent way

(Granted, she is coming off as stupider than in former seasons. Perhaps she is playing a subtle game in order to fully gauge Sansa’s intentions and she is not so stupid. But mostly, I think that the show has done a poor job earlier in letting is in on the dark side of Arya’s psyche, painting her instead as a humorous hero who kills the baddies without much repercussion for her soul or character.)

ASOIAF: Why is there so much emphasis on the stench of Tywin's corpse in A Feast For Crows?

It works on several different levels.

But it should be clear: it is a mystery. Pycelle claims to have removed many of Tywin’s organs, to stave off the rot, and I believe him. But it’s not only the smell…it is the fact that he is literally decomposing at a faster than normal rate…his mouth twisted into a hysterical grin, his skin splitting and oozing fluid….

I mean, the metaphor is clear. Tywin Lannister stinks. Tywin Lannister was rotten.

And I actually think that is the main thing.

GRRM is showing his personal contempt for a character who forced his own son to participate in the gang rape of his own wife.

It’s not that subtle, either: just as Arya Stark is constantly associated with water and baptismal imagery, Tywin Lannister is consistently associated with shit in the books.

1. First of all, there is the infamous “Tywin Lannister shits gold” meme, that Tyrion reflects upon in Game of Thrones and comes up here and there throughout the series. And ends up being an elaborately set up punchline to his death.
2. When Arya first approaches Harrenhal ,she is assaulted by the smell:
   
   'The stink of the Lannister host reached Arya well before she could make out the devices on the banners that sprouted along the lakeshore, atop the pavilions of the westermen. From the smell, Arya could tell that Lord Tywin had been here some time. The latrines that ringed the encampment were overflowing and swarming with flies, and she saw faint greenish fuzz on many of the sharpened stakes that protected the perimeters."
   —A Clash of Kings
3. After the Battle of the Blackwater, Tywin’s ceremonious display of majestically entering in full panoply and honour as the “saviour of King’s Landing” is marred by the horse he rode in on shitting on the floor. (Fuck them both, by the way.)
4. And, of course, most obviously, there is the fact that he is killed on the crapper in the midst of a leisurely shit by his son —fitting, since he had shat on Tyrion all his life; and seeing as how he had made Tyrion clean out and unclog the plumbing system at Casterly Rock, I am probably talking literally.

(There may be more: I remember reading a list once compiling the associations.)

Beyond that, if you’re looking for a non-meta-explanation, there is the theory that Oberyn Martell may have poisoned him at the dinner he had with him, using the poison that basically constipates a man, until he dies from a build up of…foul substances. It is a plausible theory that MIGHT explain the smell: I am not a medical doctor so I can’t be sure if this is how it works, but, you know, maybe the built-up shit permeated him on a molecular level or something.

It’s one of the best minor theories and is well-liked by many fans, even it it’s ultimately unnecessary for the story.

Or perhaps the gods are subtly making their opinion of the Lion of Casterly Rock known.

Tywin’s spirit ought to be grateful for his rot. Weird things happen when Lannisters lie dead in state: at least the stench kept Jaime and Cersei from getting blood all over the coffin.

ASOIAF: How was the Red WEdding kept secret?

The whole society is built on the oath you make to your liege lord. You swear to do his bidding; in return he promises to protect you.

It’s not the best system in the world, but it is what you got. At least you’re not a slave in Essos.

You might argue that Robb was the King so his will mattered more than your liege lord.

But then you might argue that Robb was not a legitimate king, but that Joffrey was the legitimate king and Robb was an accursed rebel.

This would, of course, get tied up in the courts for years, as counter-suits followed suits. And it takes a keen legal mind to parse out what is legally right and wrong, and then you realize the court system in Westeros is pretty crap, so you have wasted all this thought on it for nothing.

But these people are not a collection of the finest legal minds WEsteros has to offer. They are a bunch of superstitious illiterates with crotch-rot so they don’t even think about it too much. Hell, they’d just as soon have Mad King Aerys in charge.

So you just do whatever the guy above you says, because after all there are repercussions if you don’t. Plus you hear that weird Stark kid is one of them wargs.

You don’t mess with Roose Bolton when he is your liege lord.

Seriously. That guy flays people for the hell of it. He rapes his subjects’ wives and has their husbands killed. If you talk to him when he doesn’t want you to he will just rip your tongue out. And he doesn’t even get off on it. He is mean, yes but he just doesn’t care. He would yawn while your tongue was getting ripped out. He’d probably just toss it in the fire when he was done.

He holds meetings in bed with leeches hanging from him. He has eyes like chips of ice. He speaks so quietly you have to strain to hear him and he says things like “I am not a man to be undone.” Which is creepy in and of itself.

The Freys, by contrast, just smell bad, because their clothes are always damp, but they doesn’t mean they won’t hang your ass if you disobey them. Worse — Old Man Frey might get a hankering for your daughter.

Heh, heh, heh.

The good Freys, like Olyvar, were kept away…possibly sent to another castle so that they wouldn’t snitch on their damp-clothed brethren.

The rest of the Freys were just following orders. Who knows, some of them might have hung back and watched instead of comitting the vile crime. Maybe a few even did snitch.

Not enough.

Written Feb 21