Fifteen years ago

The latest release from the National Security Archive contains 10 cables from the US embassy in Prague to the State Department during the Velvet Revolution. Maybe you have to be a bit of a geek to appreciate recently declassified documents; I don't know. I find them pretty fascinating anyway, but heck, I am a geek.

I especially liked this from a November 18, 1989 cable:

There is a final bit of cruel irony to last night's events. Started officially to commemorate a heroic student act of protest against the brutality of Czechoslovakia's Nazi occupiers, they ended yesterday in brutality and apparently at least one student's death at the hands of the Czechoslovak authorities.