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I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. That was the first public expression of what the new government wanted to do.

Vaclav Klaus

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Vaclav Klaus
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: June 19
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Vaclav Klaus
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I was paid to read Western economic texts. In a way, the regime paid for their own undermining.
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not a scientific body capable of accurately assessing the facts about global warming.
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The attempts to command the climate and decide about the temperature on our planet are wrong and arrogant. I wrote a book about it which was published in English under the title “Blue Planet in Green Shackles.”
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Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.
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EU didn't advance our [Eastern Europe] democracy by a single millimeter.
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Czech Republic is an important part of central Europe. It's clear that we must participate in European integration. I am convinced that the Czech Republic - or, in the past, Czechoslovakia - would have been one of the founding members of the EU if it hadn't been for the communist takeover in 1948.
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People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open dissidents who were being arrested were pursuing a common goal in different ways.
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The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity, is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.
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I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker.
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The message of [Fahernheit 9/11] is very weak and propagandistic ... We were used to such messages in the communist days. Everybody has open eyes and can understand that this is propaganda. It was a weak film that tells us nothing new.
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Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.
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My main concern is the political dimension of European integration. This is one of the most important issues of all, as far as I'm concerned. It has to do with our past, with our sensitivity, perhaps even our hypersensitivity in this regard.
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Environmentalism is a dangerous ideology endangering human freedom.
Vaclav Klaus
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Then in 1969, I spent the spring term at Cornell University in New York. The invasion of August 1968 had already happened, but the hardline regime took several months to crack down on dissidents.
Vaclav Klaus
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To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes having to teach Westerners about what the market really means.
Vaclav Klaus
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I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living (though not their own) and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries.
Vaclav Klaus
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EU expansion is, unfortunately, continuing without a constitution, as a gradual process of standardization - and that's far more dangerous. It is very difficult to slow down this process, which is being pushed forward without significant public participation.
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Common foreign policy is completely unnecessary. The various European countries have widely differing priorities, goals and prejudices. It would be wrong to force them all to follow the same course.
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I don't think there is any global warming. I don't see the statistical data for that.
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It is what makes the reform process an art, not just a science. You have to develop a strategy that tells you what reform measures you should follow and in what sequence.
Vaclav Klaus