Thursday, June 29, 2017

made my day.

Yesterday we were bunkering a Czech-flagged tanker.

 First one I've ever dealt with- the ship was Czech-run, Czech-owned and Czech crewed.

 Coincidentally, yesterday the Czech government acknowledged their citizens have a constitutional right to bear arms.

“Citizens of the Czech Republic have the right to acquire, retain and bear arms and ammunition.”


This is certainly the most notable news of today. While this legislation still needs to pass the Czech senate, given their government's position as being broadly defiant of the EU's creeping stranglehold on members' internal lawmaking, this looks to be something that can happen, and I hope it does. Citizens of this region are very concerned about the muslim incursion into Europe, and this does come at an opportune time, with tensions so heightened. 

 Well, I wish them well, and I had a great conversation with the ships' engineer. He talked about the revolution that saw his country split into several independent states and nation-states, and how optimistic he is for the future. I thought it was interesting that while the issue forcing the Czech government to allow muslim colonization was coming from Brussels, this is only the latest source of discontent over EU rule, not a stand-alone issue, however, he also told me that he was concerned that it might happen anyway, the EU leadership being made up of people who he felt would be more than willing to invade a member state who was getting out of line. 

edit- special thanks to reader Jonathan for discreetly reminding me to read what I write and edit the dumbs out. Hopefully he was one of the first few people to read this post, which has since been corrected to reflect his reminder. 

3 comments:

Jonathan said...

Despite the weird pronunciation by English expectations, things belonging to the Czech Republic are usually referred to as "Czech". I'm pretty surprised they have a merchant fleet too, the Czech Republic is about as far away as you can get from the sea.

When I saw your post title originally, I thought you were referring to Chechnya, a state best known for being invaded in the 90's by Russia, which actually does invade places it feels are "getting out of line".

The governments of the countries of North Central Europe(the Visegrad 4) do love to blame the EU for lots of things, however they love all the money the EU gives them, and the opportunity to export cheap goods tariff free to Western Europe even more ;)

Anonymous said...

If you edit the dumb out there will be nothing left.

Capt Jill said...

one of the best things about being a seafarer is the people we get to meet from all over the world. I'm glad to hear they were able to preserve their right to self defense (it IS an inherent right for ALL people, just seems the US is the only country to recognize that the people are the ones to create the government- they are the ones with the rights- they are the supreme rulers and NOT their governments- and too bad most Americans have forgotten all that).