Forty years ago Prague Spring gave the world the idea of "socialism with a human face," until its hopes were crushed by Soviet tanks.  One of the student rebels of the time, Jan Palak, burned himself to death to protest the Soviet invasion.

Today two other Jans, Jan Tamas and Jan Bedner, are risking their lives in a hunger strike to protest the incursion of another foreign power, the United States, whose insistence on basing its "Space Shield" on Czech territory not only violates national and popular sovereignty--since the Czech people were not consulted and most of them oppose it--but is a starting signal in the race to militarize space. US citizens need to give all the support we can to the efforts of these 21st century dissidents to resist the pressures of the US military juggernaut and demand accountability from their own government.  In fact, we can profit from their example.

Meredith Tax is the author of Rivington Street, among other books, and President of Women's WORLD, a global free speech network of feminist writers.

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