Silent Spring: The Death of 'Prague Spring'

Jan Lopatka, reporting for REUTERS and posted in The Union Tribune's SignonSanDiego.com:

PRAGUE – "Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Wednesday that fighting global warming has turned into a 'religion' that replaced the ideology of communism and threatens to clip basic freedoms." [...]

"'Communism has been replaced by the threat of an ambitious environmentalism,' Klaus wrote in response to questions from the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce." [...]

"Klaus said poor nations would also be hurt by efforts to impose limits and standards on emissions of gases believed to cause global warming."

"'They will not be able to absorb new technological standards required by the anti-greenhouse religion, their products will have difficulty accessing the developed markets, and as a result the gap between them and the developed world will widen,' he wrote."

"'This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection – similarly to the old Marxists – wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning of the whole world,' he added."

Czech President Vaclav Klaus was 27 years old in 1968:

"In 1968 relations with the eastern European satellites had flared up again when leaders of the Czechoslovakian Communist party under Alexander Dubcek initiated reforms promoting democratization and free speech. A wave of popular demonstrations added momentum to liberalization during this "Prague Spring" until, on August 20, the U.S.S.R. led neighbouring Warsaw Pact armies in a military invasion of Czechoslovakia. Dubcek was ousted and the reforms undone. The ostensible justification for this latest Soviet repression of freedom in its empire came to be known as the Brezhnev Doctrine: "Each of our parties is responsible not only to its working class and its people, but also to the international working class, the world Communist movement." The U.S.S.R. asserted its right to intervene in any Communist state to prevent the success of "counterrevolutionary" elements."1

Czech students hang their national flag on a Soviet tank in Prague. (1968)2

The Gore Doctrine: "Each of our parties is responsible not only to its working class and its people, but also to the international working class, the World Climate Crisis Movement." The Movement asserted its right to intervene in any nation or state to prevent the success of "counterrevolutionary" elements.