Vaclav Havel's Legacy, Through The Lenses Of Friends

Something horsey and asymmetrical about his face, despite his fine features, gave him an expressive force that moved deftly from comic to tragic, from gangster to prince

~Bathroom quote

Four Corners on Gangsters in recycling industries / Krisis Vat Krrrisis

white House as Crime Scene: Detective Robert Mueller

Ms Clover Moore, of Charter of 1992 fame, called on “the Premier and Minister to do their job and provide services and supported housing for  homeless especially at the start of National Homeless Week”.

“I will not support moving on homeless without certainty they have support and permanent homes to go to,” she said.
“That isn’t politicking, it is doing my job to support society’s most vulnerable, as my community expects.” Martin Plaace as Crime Scene - Community Awareness started with a tent

Special moments occur in history when certain lives and circumstances intersect - as if ordained by a higher power - and the world is enriched because of those intersections.

This is not 1977 Pre Berlin Wall: This is 2017 AD: As Germany accuses Vietnam of abducting businessman from Berlin

CBA poached an AUSTRAC director in August 2015 who had worked at AUSTRAC for five years as a front-line director regulating anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing across a number of entities, including the banks. He left CBA in April this year.
The bank also hired AUSTRAC's anti-money laundering/counter-terrorism finance senior manager, enforcement, as head of financial crime policy and regulatory engagement, as well as the regulator's anti-money laundering/counter-terrorism finance manager, compliance.
AUSTRAC refused to comment on the cluster of departures to CBA at a critical time in its investigation. Each of the four individuals were contacted for comment but either failed to respond or passed the query on to CBA.
Banks hiring regulators isn't unusual. There is a revolving door of gamekeepers turned poachers who have left ASIC and APRA for the higher-paying jobs in the banking sector. Sometimes it goes the other way. Indeed, in April this year AUSTRAC boss Paul Jevtovic announced his resignation to join HSBC as head of financial crime threat mitigation, Asia Pacific region.
Some believe the revolving door strengthens the industry, while others believe it can create conflicts of interest or regulatory capture. Andy Schmulow, a senior law lecturer at the University of Western Australia, who had a short stint working at APRA in 2013, says his sense is the revolving door with ASIC and the banks has facilitated regulatory capture. "Whether this was the intention with recruiting staff from AUSTRAC I don't know. But if it was, it has failed spectacularly."
In 2015, the Swiss watchdog Finma introduced rules preventing senior staff working for a company they were responsible for overseeing within 12 months of leaving the regulator.
Whatever the case, the knowledge of how AUSTRAC works, the relationships, contacts and expertise in the area is undoubtedly an attractive skill set for the private sector. How effective that may be depends on the systems it has in place, as was so presciently outlined to the industry by APRA in 2001

How CBA recruited AUSTRAC executives

8 FAMOUS WRITERS’ DESKS THAT WOULD LOOK GREAT IN YOUR  LIVING ROOM

In 2084 there is a worldwide resurgence of interest in 1984 (because of That Dreadful Man and the era of Fake News), and it’s often admired as a prophetic novel.  But apparently the book was instantly popular when it was first published in 1949 because Orwell was writing about his own times, about the rise of fascism during the Depression and the dangers of totalitarianism. 1984 was a warning that it could happen again.  But on his deathbed, Orwell contacted his publisher Warburg because he was concerned that the book was being misinterpreted as anti-Communist propaganda, and he demanded that Warburg put out a statement to the effect that the book was a warning that people everywhere – including in democratic states – need to be watchful, to guard their freedoms, and that it all depends on us to do that.

1984 is both political and personal.  There are elements and experiences from Orwell’s own life, such as the naming of Room 101 as the torture room.  This comes from when Orwell had a job in WW2 writing war propaganda, where he had to attend meetings at the Ministry of Information (now London University).  Orwell found these meetings sheer torture (don’t we all?) and they were held in, you guessed it, Room 101.   There’s also the Hate scene in 1984 which comes from when Orwell attended a Mosley fascist rally as a journalist, and It is likely  that Winston’s relationship with Julia is based on his first wife, the girl from the fiction department.   Other aspects of the novel were also familiar to readers in the postwar era in England: like the characters of 1984 they were experiencing the misery of rationing  – which included some things which were not rationed during the war because after the war Britain had the additional burden of also feeding the people of Germany during the Allied Occupation.  (There was still rationing when I was born, and when my older sister born in 1949 was a baby, the family was restricted to one egg a week).  Britons were living the greyness of life under austerity until well into the 1950s.

Vaclav Havel's Legacy, Through The Lenses Of Friends
Friends of former Czech President Vaclav Havel marked his 80th birthday on October 5th with several memorial events. Havel, who died in 2011, went from being a jailed playwright to Czechoslovakia's first postcommunist leader. Two of his friends, photographers Bohdan Holomicek and Tomki Nemec, captured intimate moments from Havel's private life as he evolved from communist-era dissident to head of state.

“I am unwilling to believe that this whole [modern human] civilization is no more than a blind alley of history and a fatal error of the human spirit. More probably it represents a necessary phase that man and humanity must go through, one that man – if he survives – will ultimately, and on some higher level (unthinkable, of course, without the present phase), transcend“ (Havel 1991a, p. 286; 1999, 4, p. 507).
Vaclav Havel at age 38 outside his country cottage in Hradecek, North Bohemia
Vaclav Havel at age 38 outside his country cottage in Hradecek 


Havel at Prague Castle in the early days of his presidency, on February 25, 1990.
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President Vaclav Havel speaking to a massive crowd at Prague Castle on February 25, 1990. He had just returned from a visit to the United States, where he had addressed the U.S. Congress.

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Havel was an avid rock fan who admired the rebellious spirit of his musical heroes. On August 18, 1990, he met members of the Rolling Stones ahead of the band's legendary first concert in postcommunist Czechoslovakia.

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British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher accompanies the Czechoslovak president in Wenceslas Square during an official visit to Prague on September 18, 1990.

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On a visit to Portugal, Havel wades into the Atlantic Ocean at Cabo da Roca, near the westernmost tip of the European continent, on December 14, 1990.

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Havel and his wife, Olga, hold hands in prayer with Polish President Lech Walesa at Prague Castle on September 16, 1991.

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Vaclav Havel sitting for an official portrait as Czechoslovakia's head of state in 1992.

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A year after Olga's death in 1996, Havel married his second wife, Dagmar. The couple sits together in Hradecek around 2000.

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Havel breathes a sigh of relief after days of packing come to an end. In January 2003, Havel was nearing the end of his presidency and moving out of the president's official residence.Vaclav Havel's