Highlights from this year's Forum 2000, which you will certainly not read in the newspapers:

Jiří Dienstbier, who still wants to be President, spent a long time sitting together on a table, while most people were inside Žofin listening to Paul Wolfowitz, trying to get KDU-ČSL's Jan Kasal on his side. Sitting with them was Ivan Pilip's wife.

Former actress and ambassador, now member of Slovak parliament Magda Vášáryová speaks very broken English, which was exposed when she was talking at the conference about Freedom and Responsibility in Media. She kept saying "were" where she had to say "was" and she could not pronounce "th", not to mention many formulations which were far from good English. I myself, being a non-native English speaker, understand that we foreigners always express ourselves in not-so-perfect English, but Magda was an ambassador and claims to speak many languages, having an aura of being such an intelligent woman... Her speech was the most boring and basically only revealed that: 1) she has been the victim of journalists for years, 2) that she will be discussing, in the Slovak parliament, whether Slovakia should have a public television service at all. She told the audience that the newscast from the Slovak public station has only 15 percent of viewers, while even Czech television stations get the same amount of viewers in Slovakia, which, according to her, shows that Slovaks are not interested in their public television! Magda is probably used to those huge ratings of TV Markiza or Nova, between 40 and 60 percent of the viewership, not understanding that 15 percent is not a bad number. Plus, public television should not be about how many viewers are watching, but about offering that, which commercial television does not offer...

Monika Pajerová had a walk with Madeleine Allbright, who seems much more frail than the last time she was in Prague. The former U.S. Secretary of State looked much thinner and more pale than usual. Václav Havel too, seems to have lost a bit of weight, which can be seen on his face. Plus, he seems also a bit shorter, probably because of his age. Last Friday he turned 71.

Michael Žantovsky also speaks English with an accent like Salvador Dalí's... For an ambassador to the United States and later to Israel, I would expect a much better command of the language. Žantovsky also presented Paul Wolfowitz to the public, although he could not resist and "licked his ass" - in a rather ridiculous way - saying that he does not like Michael Moore's films...

Wolfowitz decided to not attend the panel about media's freedoms and responsibilities, because he did not want to sit in a roundtable with CNN's Christiane Amampour. By the way, Wolfowitz is about 1,68cm tall, Christiane 1,82cm. Perhaps his problem was one of stature :-)

If anyone decided to committ a terrorist act against the likes of Wolfowitz and other controversial figures, they would have a very easy job: although some kids are supposed to check your accreditation before you enter, I brought with me two ladies who were allowed in as soon as the guy in charge heard their complicated foreign names and, instead of trying to find them in the list he was given by the organizers, he gave up and told them to enter. But even if he decided to do his job right, it would be for nothing, because anyone can enter the venue by the rear door, which is not supervised at all. A couple of onlookers realized that and came take advantage of the free food and drinks being served...

Havel has no problem in being sponsored by tobbacco companies. Not only one could be seen advertised inside the event, also 2 young ladies were distributing packs of cigarettes! In the 21st century, when we are all aware of how bad cigarettes are, Havel allows this kind of thing. He may want to fit in, by getting more people to lose part of a lung, like him, or die, like his former wife Olga...