Quote from: Marianne Skanland on February 10, 2015, 05:20:02 PM

The president has been interviewed by the Czech media house Blesk. He says the foster places where the boys have been put resemble the Lebernsborn program. The boys are being de-nationalised (away from Czech) and being raised to become young Norwegians.

I have seen it, but I would correct the information. It was only reprinted in Blesk ( Blesk is not a serious newspaper).

It is exactly what I said. This is not going away. Czechs are not Russians.

a) It is true that the Russian family is different. Russia is eastwards from the Hajnal line and the Russian family was form by slash and burn agriculture. You can see it very easily if you open Russians fairly tales. A father and a mother and tree sons, all of them with wives living under one roof. You will not find this in Grimm's fairy tales. Czech families were often forced to adopt Russian model under the communist, but the Czech family is an European family, that is, it is a product of a manorial system of land ownership. It is a nuclear and neolocal family, and Czechs returned after the fall of the communism to this model very swiftly. But there is difference between the Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Great Britain. A child is not required to leaf the family at age of 18. Very often the parents support their child. If it is a middle class family, which has a space, the child can live with parents and paid some symbolic sum for the upkeep of the home on the condition that he/she put some money aside for the own flat. The property ladder is not known and the family and friend are seen as very important.
http://girlinczechland.com/2013/03/13/death-to-dishonesty-3-ways-czechs-reject-the-fakery-of-modern-life/
According value survey (1995) 83,7% of Russians said that the family is very important, 12,6% agreed that it is very important. Czech numbers were 90,8% and 7,2%. So if for Russians is the family important, for Czechs is important even more.
Horizontal mobility is small. People will commute, they will accept a pay cut, but they will not move. Austrians and Czechs are two nation in the EU which are the least wiling to move abroad to get a very well paid job.
If there is a problem in a family - an unknown father + an alcoholic mother - the children will go to the grandparents or an aunt.
Also if the parents do not have money to support their children, the grand parents must step in, they can be sued for support. On the other land, the grand children must support grand parents.

b) It is true that 20th century was not very kind to the Central Europe. It is true that Czechs as a nation emerged from years of communism and occupation as on of the most damages nations, if not the most damages one. A low trust society, a parochial and an intolerant society, a society of cynics, egoists living according "he who does not steal from the common, steals from his family". A society which was very aptly described as a society where is nothing shameful, a society which is sometime nicknamed "Chechnya under Bohemian forest". It is also true that the economic transformation was a bit disaster and country is ruled by peoples born in 1950s or 1960s, that is by the most damages generations. But there are first green branches on the scorched land, a new free generation was born, generation which is not taught to say one thing at home and an another in school, a generation of open borders, a generation of the internet, a generation which is less materialistic (it does not remember empty shops) and less obedient. So there is slow revival of civic society and if you have a look at Inglehat's map, you can see that self expressions is more valued then self-survival. It means Czechs are more ready than Russians to sign a petition ...to do something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart%E2%80%93Welzel_cultural_map_of_the_world#mediaviewer/File:Inglehart_Values_Map2.svg
In this case
- there were collecting money for a lawyer, there was few demonstrations and petitions, there is a constant pressure on the government, ministers Diensbier and Marksová-Tominová are criticised for not doing enough.
- CPS has a new page in Wikipedia
- Dominik Haek - promised his golden medial from Nagano to person who will get the children back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominik_Ha%C5%A1ek

c) there is the question that the boys are Czech citizens and the same goes for their parents. Also it is not only one case, they are minimally five cases (Gabriela Lode..) So Norway is sorting a Czech family? Hu?

d) there is the language question. I am not sure if you understand it. I think Peter the Great prohibited to use Ukrainian for printing books in 1720, the prohibition was repeated. Lithuanian were prohibited to print anything in Lithuanian, but few church books and they had to be printed in Russian alphabet. "What the Russian bayonet didn't accomplish, the Russian school will." Austrian post offices did not accept a telegram in Czech or in Slovenian in 19th century. The first Czech high school was open 1848 (I think), the University in Warsaw was closed by Russians. Prague university got its Czech branch only in 1882.
If your mother tongue is Estonian, Czech, Polish, Lithuanian it is for you not a self evident fact, but a result of a long fight for every Czech school, every Polish book, for every child.
Look the anthems - it is nothing along the line Rule Britania. It is Poland is not dead yet, Ukraine is not dead yet, Slovaks will be reborn, Where is my home ? (the Czech anthem)
If you open autobiographies of local "saint" , you will find a constant motive - how they were humiliated, getting beating, being punished and mock for crime of using their mother tongue. I suppose for you is Rosa Luxemburg a German socialist, but she was from a Polish, Jewish family and in her youth she used to pick her friends for their ability to speak French, to avoid conversation in occupants languages (German and Russian), to use Polish was a punishable offence.
The best book written about the Czech language is a book written under Nazi occupation, it was written by a Prague German speaking Jew and it name is "Czech as a temple and a fortified house. The language is sacred. It is a heirloom. To prohibit a Czech mother to speak with her children in Czech is something comparable with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Maybe worse. It is an attack on the whole community. It got people to switch in a short thinking mode.
Poles compared CPS in Norway with Hitlerjugend, in the Czech republic are they compared with Lebensborn. On the Czech blogs (no it the press) are people asking why the hell is Norway not nuked yet, nuke the Nazi. There is believe in Lithuania, in the Czech republic in in Poland that the goal of CPS is to steal others people children, because children are valuable resource.

e)also it sells newspapers and brings points to opposition.