While Vaclav Klaus may not be a name familiar to most Australians, amongst the denial crowd he is a superstar.
Klaus, currently the President of the Czech Republic, is frequently touted as a world leader doubting climate change. Klaus has been a frequent guest on Andrew Bolt’s program and a regular speaker at functions hosted by the Institute of Public Affairs.
His term as President expires shortly, however Klaus has already planned out a busy retirement by joining forces with the Cato Institute, the notorious libertarian think tank and one of the principal agents in denying climate change. He is both a Eurosceptic (against the European Union) and climate change sceptic.
Klaus, a trained economist with a strongly libertarian bent, was President between 1993 and 1997. It is worth noting that he didn’t retire gracefully from the Presidency in 1997: his resignation came to an end when colleagues forced his resignation over claims of funding irregularities.
A controversial figure to say the least, Klaus claims that climate science and socialism are not merely similar, but the same thing and a vehicle for the New World Order:
“Environmentalism is indeed a vehicle for bringing us socialist government at the global level. Again, my life in communism makes me oversensitive in this respect. The argumentation of various environmentalists is very similar to what we used to know in the past.”
Now it seems Klaus is being charged with high treason. The Financial Times reports:
“Prague – Václav Klaus, the Czech Republic’s conservative president, is facing high treason charges over his amnesty of thousands of prison inmates and others, an unprecedented case that is tainting his final days in the post after a rocky decade.
Lawmakers in parliament’s upper house, which is dominated by the left-wing opposition, voted on Monday to file charges at the Constitutional Court…
Mr Klaus had already polarised opinion during his two terms in the normally ceremonial post with his strident views questioning the EU, gay rights and global warming, but frustration with him has since ballooned. About 73,000 Czechs have signed a petition backing the charges, while Mr Klaus’ portrait has been torn down in schools and offices across the country.
The anger his marred his legacy as a finance minister and prime minister who oversaw the Czech Republic’s post-communist transition to free markets in the 1990s.”
How the mighty do fall.
Imagine the outcry if Al Gore was subject to similar charges – the climate sceptic movement would be in uproar.
Here we have one of the more “reputable” names in climate scepticism, transformed into nothing more than a disgraced politician facing charges of high treason in his home country.
I’m looking forward to sceptics and deniers claiming the charges against Klaus are merely one more example of the grand conspiracy.
Hat tip: Dr No
Watching the Deniers 
Hmm – the Left dominated parliament wants him charged with high treason, because he released a few prisoners? Not because of any alleged funding irregularities, but because he showed amnesty?
As for Al Gore, he just received well in excess of $100 million from big oil, and you still think of him as an untainted climate hero?
But hey, if you say the right things about CO2, no crime is shameful, especially if it is committed against untermensch “deniers”. As we saw with the spectacle of AGU ethics chairman, identity thief Gleick being invited to speak at the last AGU conference, a crime committed against untermensch “deniers” is a cause for celebration and accolades.
To put this into perspective, Bill Clinton issued a presidential parton for Marc Rich, who fled the country to escape charges of tax evasion and illegally dealing with the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich
Noone is talking about indicting Clinton for High Treason.
Your irrelevant,false equivalence attempts are noted,Err-ic. While Gleick is a ‘thief’,FOIA is a hero apparently. Hypocritical Diversions 1.01
Does not seem to have much to do with the release of prisoners, more the get out of jail free card for the ongoing corruption charges of defrauding the state
more symbolic than anything
The amnesty was granted to people who had been in court defending against the same charge for 8 years or more.
That’s not justice, it’s a witch hunt.
Imagine how badly your life would be ruined by such a proceeding, and how unjust it would be if you were actually innocent.
Naive comment again from Eric.
One of worrals poor heros let off charges by Klaus
http://www.ceskapozice.cz/en/news/society/czech-fugitive-tomas-pitr-extradited-switzerland?showcomments=1
http://www.ceskapozice.cz/en/news/society/czech-fugitive-tomas-pitr-extradited-switzerland?showcomments=1
he let this guy off charges, eight years, pull the other one
I love it – one of the “crimes” he committed was illegal money changing under the soviet system.
His real crime was to have been a capitalist, in a place and time where capitalism was forbidden.
As for association with underworld figures in the 90s, in a place with no law, what else do you do to enforce a contract?
His mistake was he continued to live in a lawless way as the Czech Republic matured into a stable democracy. Or has it? The attack on Klaus really makes me wonder.
We all do eric
Eric “The amnesty was granted to people who had been in court defending against the same charge for 8 years or more.
That’s not justice, it’s a witch hunt.
Imagine how badly your life would be ruined by such a proceeding, and how unjust it would be if you were actually innocent”
.
Czech fugitive Tomáš Pitr extradited from Switzerland
Pitr was arrested in July 2010 after years on the run; the alleged mobster said he feared for his life if not granted asylum
July 2010 to Dec 2012, eight years?,
do not buy a stolen email or egg timer from this man , he cannot add up
Should Clinton also be indicted for pardoning Saddam collaborator and tax evader Marc Rich?
Or do you only indict presidents if they are also climate “deniers”?
You should reinstate Gleick to the AGU ethics committee, he truly is your moral compass.
Look Squirrel
July 2010 to Dec 2012, eight years?,
do not buy a stolen email or egg timer from this man , he cannot add up
Look Squirrel
July 2010 to Dec 2012, eight years?,
do not buy a stolen email or egg timer from this man , he cannot add up
I bet the three minute egg timer alarms at one minute fifty.
“…because he released a few prisoners”
Under cover of a wider amnesty for minor offences,he dropped prosecutions of some big money people for asset-stripping,fraud and embezzlement. Apparently this action caused genuinely widespread anger,not just because of the high-profile cases. Everyone serving under a year will be released,and everyone over 75 provided they are serving a less than 10 year term.
But,yeah,Al Gore is Fat.
Regards from a guy originally from the Czech republic. The amnesty is not all about releasing a few prisoners. The most criticized on the amnesty is the paragraph 2, which grants indemnity for many high-profile fraud cases. This is rather significant for multiple reasons. First, over the last 20 years the police was frustratingly inactive in these cases, and most people consider this to be an effect of a high political pressure on the police leadership. Indeed, the police only started to be active about 2 years ago with its new leader and many politicians started attacking the police president ultimately accomplishing his abdication. However, things started to move and those cases from the 90s as well as several more novel cases started to be worked on with fair chance for honest trial. Now, president’s Klaus amnesty put the end to these long-awaited glimpses of real justice. Further, there are some rather interesting contacts with president Klaus and some of the now pardoned defendants, with at least one being personal friend of Klaus. Also, there was a case of a major defrauder (responsible for a fraud of several billions czech Koruna) who fled the country over 8 years ago to escape justice. Now, surprisingly just before the Christmas day last year he returned to the country for no apparent reason and was put in jail just to be released several days later on the grounds of the amnesty. If he did not return prior to the amnesty, his case would not be considered. Now, no sane person believes that this is just a mere coincidence, or that a long-fled billionaire longed to spent last year’s Christmas in prison for no reason. Second, among the pardoned, there are major bankers who defrauded the money from private clients and organizers of so called H-System group who robbed thousands of people of their life savings as a ambush for family houses that were never built. Many of these people are still paying off the mortgages for houses they never even saw. In the Czech law system, these victims effectively lost chance for reimbursement and there are at least 100 000 of them. The trials was planned for January, 2013. Coincidence? Hardly so. People, who organized the transactions were closely related to Milos Zeman’s (newly elected president) primary advisor Miroslav Slouf. Now, Zeman and Klaus are closely cooperating since their so called ‘opposition treaty’ from 1998, which itself was anti-constitutional, but this would take me another hour to explain. Third, president’s Klaus behavior in last several months is disgusting. He openly entered the presidential vote with his whole family backing Milos Zeman, using disgustingly unfair arguments. Also his irrational and evil attacks on his deceased predecessor Vaclav Havel (who was a hero of anti-communist resistance movement and well acknowledged home and abroad) are very hard to digest. Klaus was always jealous on Havel, but with his recent attacks on Havel he just crossed all borders. Even Dagmar Havlova, his widow, who is reluctant to comment on political matters, had now expressed her opinion rather strongly: “My husband never stole a pen”. Just replay the youtube video about Klaus stealing pen in Chile (yes, he was stealing it – the treaty were not signed by him, so the pen did not belong to him according to protocols). I could go on and on, mentioning his incredible deeds, but I think its just enough.
Now this arrogant guy, who always dispised with the constitution and with justice at large, was finally opposed in a way that can actually teach him a lesson. Good for our country.
Well that was indeed illuminating. Thank you. Eric?
Loved this one. I must forward it to a few people I know.
Only a few days ago the climate sceptics party post
“time to jail the climate scamsters”
did not take long
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/president-vaclav-klaus-mass-delusion-of.html#uds-search-results
Monckton being ignored by all and sundry on his annual Oz holiday? Klaus being jailed? And now, Alan Jones falling from grace (“The biggest fall from 2GB came in Alan Jones’ breakfast slot, with a fall from 18.2% to 15.4%”)?
What a sad, sad time for the deniers.
You forgot one Monckton got smacked down at south newcastle leagues club by two statisticians
Trust Eric to miss the point. Funny how conspiracy theorists manage to undo themselves but always blame others.
Monckton
how embarrassing, being ignored, best he can do is a wagga wagga high school
they should get a grade four student to debate him
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/press-release-lord-monckton-challenges.html
His tour has been a massive flop.
It’s all just evidence that those damned commies really are hiding under the bed and in each storm water drain… They’re setting up heaters next to weather stations world wide while no-one is looking. Mike, you have no idea how deep the conspiracy goes!
Why do you think there’s an urban heat island effect? They modified our DNA to make us endothermic so even each one of us would be silent heaters for their devilish plans…
Some basic science for you. Endothermic things absorb heat. Exothermic things emit heat. Humans are Exothermic.
UHI is occurring because stations are being surrounded by creeping urbanisation, and modern urban dwellers use a lot of energy – they like to heat their houses in winder and cool them in summer.
Moth “They modified our DNA to make us endothermic ”
stupid ” Humans are Exothermic.”
does he ever get anything?
They modified our DNA to make us endothermic so even each one of us would be silent heaters for their devilish plans…
endothermic heaters.
Hmm.
Good spot – thanks! I got it the other way around taking “endothermic” as internal heat, and exo the opposite. Silly mistake (somewhat embarrassing to be honest).
However, this is what it looks like to admit when one is at fault, unlike what I see from you in general – side step and carry on.
I understand UHI effect. I was making a joke (did I really sound that serious?) that those dirty commies modified our DNA, so we would produce heat, thus leading to UHI effect, thus leading to Watt’s silly claim about weather stations being manipulated to give a false rising in temp, thus the whole climate change conspiracy…
Go into the desert, do not drink water,
your core body temperature will rise until you overheat
1. Al Gore receives $100 million from big oil as his share of the payment for his failing cable TV station.
2. Al Gore is stridently campaigning against Keystone.
3. The Middle Eastern oil interests who stumped up the money for Al stand to lose $27 billion+ per year if Keystone goes ahead.
Nothing to see here, move along…
What’s your point,Eric? Al has taken money of the FF fools which he can spend on campaigning against them. He’s actually sold to Al Jazeera,whose editorial freedom sadly puts Fauxnews to utter shame.
ME oil interests will not lose that money, as Keystone’s volume is overstated,and the US’s ‘self sufficiency is exaggerated. So is the sustainability of ‘unconventional’ sources,the latest delusional bubble being talked up by the future-eaters. As well everyone in Asia is being promised a car by their feckless ‘leaders’.
I doubt very much Watts could raise his game if he got a better slice of oil money than
he does currently. It’s no good throwing more money at ineptitude.
I have no evidence that something naughty has happened, but its an intriguing combination of events, isn’t it?
You may or may not be right about overstatement of current conventional oil reserves. I personally think you are wrong, because there are so many other unconventional technologies waiting in the wings for the right economic circumstances, such as coal => oil (developed by the NAZIs interestingly – they didn’t have access to oil fields). So if tar sands proves to be a disappointment, the modern economy can run for decades, possibly centuries, using proven coal to oil conversion technology – which apparently becomes profitable at around US $150 / barrel.
And throwing unfounded accusations of Watts being paid off with oil money is falling a little flat these days, with the media questioning why Al Gore thought it OK to take a big oil cheque. After all, its Al Gore who is doing what Middle Eastern oil barons want. They don’t want America to develop unconventional oil, they certainly don’t want this practice to spread to the rest of the world, because it endangers their conventional oil exports.
Umm, Erric, the modern economy can run for ever on renewables.
And low carbon economies will last a helluva lot longer than those based on fossil fuels.
Not unfounded. Watts has had Heartland money and they have petrochemical industry donors. Thank Peter Gleick for lifting up some rocks and letting the light in…. and Donors Trust is now the vehicle of choice for the secretive interests to buy opinion.
There is no lack of FFs but most of what’s left is barely extractable. EROEI is getting crazy as well so its’ more expensive. No wonder FF people want to be able to continue to discount the true costs of FFs. It will be impossible to grow a profligate global economy on a trickle from hiccuping scattered and deep small fields. But the bubble promoters –any bubble promoters—don’t want anyone thinking ahead too far,even though enlightened folk can map a better path for energy moneys own interests ultimately. These old bastards don’t want economies to be steady,they want speculation and busts to concentrate their ownership and maintain their power.
If we don’t use what energy is available now to build the new low-energy tech in a considered way,we will be left scrambling.
Eric,coal is finite too. Coal to oil at global scale will exhaust what seem to be massive reserves quite quickly,it is death for the atmosphere, and the economy . We will tear the very Earth apart: have you compared an aerial photo of the Hunter Valley in the 1950s with today? Now go exponential on massive global strip and open cut. What do you get? tens of thousands of km2 of wasteland,rehabilitating slowly if at all. Massive water table disruption. Massive waste water management issues. Dust,venting gas. Lost agriculture and pasture. The energy demanded for rehabilitation will represent a larger slice of the energy return than you’d like,and it may be abandoned as too expensive by many sovereignties.
7/8 of the Earth’s surface is ocean – so there are vast areas of untapped resources which haven’t even been touched.
And we will never run out of hydrocarbons. The reason is in a few decades they simply wont be good enough, and will be replaced by other technology – nuclear power, nuclear fusion, or whatever technology a couple of decades of frantic advance can conceive. It might even end up being cheaper to synthesise them than to dig them up.
Look how power hungry our electronics is today, and project that forward a few decades – even with efforts to increase efficiency, civilisation in a few decades will be a blazing glare of energy. No civilisation that rich and powerful will tolerate the vast clouds of choking smog which powering all this with carbon based fuel would create.
And guess what – the wind turbines wont be able to keep up either.
You got something substantial to back that up or did it come straight out of your arse (as usual)? Oh, I’m being unkind. Reverend Watts probably has a sermon on it somewhere.
And note for slow learners: “renewables” does not equal “wind turbines”.
Sorry,Eric, we WILL run out of hydrocarbons in any meaningful sense. Not all reserves are equal. Low grade deep deposits are just numbers in a prospectus,not something realistically extractable. We are in the final decades of viable large scale production of all forms of fossil fuel. If we piss it up against the wall getting Joanne Public into a car she doesn’t need,I’ll be a little disappointed . And that leads to the point: free markets are not the best mode of ‘planning’ a civilisation can devise because they are trying to maintain a dream bubble world view that is sixty years out of date. The dream bubble is that growth is essential and without alternative,that the planet still scales the way it did in 1900,unrestrained unheeding consumerism,the idolatry of the made but disposable object,and speculating on transient fads. It is not viable anymore ,the scale of energy use has outstripped supply,the planet is too small to hide the waste and the social casualties. Just like Rapanui.
It may be “cheaper to synthesize hydrocarbons” You are joking if you think we can grow enough algae or cook enough coal to seamlessly take over supply. EROEI We will be on photosynthesis based generation,geothermal,solar and nuclear with a bit of wind and wave. There will not be room for Disneyworld impulse consumption. Stuff will be built to last.
“7/8 of the Earth’s surface is ocean.”
Umm, no. 71% is ocean.
Eric just flooded an area equal to all of Asia, Africa and Australia. That’s a pretty alarming sea level rise he’s working on!
Cluck cluck cluck. Excuse me ladies, but he was charged by his own parliament, not by the police. A verdict by the constitutional Court is expected in weeks but the worst punishment Klaus faces is the loss of his job — and his final term in office ends in two days. That’s pure Czech politics, nothing more.
You can all go back to clucking about something else now girls.
cheers
Klaus’ crime was obstructing the policies of the hard left, and annoying Eurocrats by comparing their cherished dream to the failed Soviet experiment.
He never “obstructed the policies of the hard left”,since communists were never in government since 1989.He did obstruct left-center,right-center and right governments(even governments lead by party he founded) by refusing to accept appointments/resignments of prime minister/ministers/judges for example.This once caused the Czech Republic being without government for almost year.
Take his obstructions of international treaties.Like when it took 9(!) years to him to sign human rights declaration,or comedy around his signature on Lisbon treaty.It’s funny coz Czech president is largely ceremonial post but one thing he’s responsible for,and has control over are negotiations of such treaties.So,he didn’t use his rights to interfere while treaties were negotiated,leaving all to PM but when it’s done,all of sudden he refuses to sign what he basically negotiated.
This is also part of charge btw.
And ya,he did compare EU to USSR.He also praised his closest adviser’s opinions that 9/11 was US inside job,Osama was just media fiction,Evolution is fake,”in today’s world is good to be black,atheist,gay” etc.
Gee,that’s a desperately simplistic view,but I suppose unsurprising from you.. The guy was increasingly autocratic and cronyist. Sanctioning a kleptocracy. All you could hear was the shiny ‘free-market’ crap.
No one said he was charged by the police, Impeachment by parliament is a pretty significant censure even if you haven’t a f**kin’ clue.
Btw,there’s mistake in text.Klaus wasn’t president between 1992 and 1997 but Prime minister.He’s president since 2003(2x5years).
To be exact,he was Minister of Finance of Czechoslovakia(10 December 1989 – 2 July 1992),Prime Minister of the Czechoslovakia(2 July 1992 – 1 January 1993),Prime Minister of the Czech Republic(1 January 1993 – 17 December 1997).
Czech republic didn’t exist till 1 January 1993.
Just FYI.
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