Mr. Obama, himself.
On his European tour this year President Barack Obama chose Prague as the only city where he would do a public speech. Given that the Czech Republic holds the Presidency of the Council of the EU at the moment, this makes perfect sense. Greg and I woke up at just a little past 5AM in order to get a good spot, to be able to actually see Obama. Turns out that a number of people were given free 'invitations' to the event, randomly, and they had priority. Our spot turned out to be decent but definitely not what we expected nor deserved considering we were in the first hundred people to line up.
President Barack Obama
Obama gave a speech against nuclear proliferation, and announced a new US led initative to reduce the world's nuclear arsenal and to stop the creation of more weapons. He said that by the end of 2009 the USA and Russia will finalize an arms reduction treaty, and he will work with the international community over the next four years towards his goal of no more nuclear weapons. He denounced North Korea's earlier misslie test, calling on the world to not only condemn their actions but also to punish. We'll have to wait and see what he means by that.
His speech emphasized a peaceful solution to his goal, pointing out that the Czech Republic's Velvet Revolution brought freedom for its people without a single bullet being fired. He got a large response from the Czech members of the crowd (there were a LOT of Americans there) when he used the words 'velvetova revoluce' - that's what I heard, although he probably used the right term, sametova, and I just didn't understand it properly. The Czech came out of nowhere, and he never used any afterwards.
I liked the speech (he's a great orator) and I think he's being quite ambitious with this initiative; I'm a little bit skeptical to what results he'll be able to produce. The Czech people also seemed to like it, they were going insane trying to grab some American flags to wave, and cheered, whistled and clapped many a times. The gist of the speech was well accepted by them, although the question of the missile defense radar installations in the country is a hot topic here. Some approve, some don't.
To finish, here's an article by Radio Free Europe (based in Prague) with a few more details about the speech and the Europe trip, and some better photos and quotes from the President himself.
