Hey Europe: sorry about my PM + The Unconstitutional Constitution
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/the-unconstitutional-constitution/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/world/europe/rare-opposition-protests-in-hungary.html
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mazsa
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mazsa
Fukuyama on the absent left:
[...] It has been several decades since anyone on the left has been
able to articulate, first, a coherent analysis of what happens to the
structure of advanced societies as they undergo economic change and,
second, a realistic agenda that has any hope of protecting a
middle-class society.The main trends in left-wing thought in the last two generations have
been, frankly, disastrous as either conceptual frameworks or tools for
mobilization. Marxism died many years ago, and the few old believers
still around are ready for nursing homes. The academic left replaced
it with postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism, critical theory,
and a host of other fragmented intellectual trends that are more
cultural than economic in focus. Postmodernism begins with a denial of
the possibility of any master narrative of history or society,
undercutting its own authority as a voice for the majority of citizens
who feel betrayed by their elites. Multiculturalism validates the
victimhood of virtually every out-group. It is impossible to generate
a mass progressive movement on the basis of such a motley coalition:
most of the working- and lower-middle-class citizens victimized by the
system are culturally conservative and would be embarrassed to be seen
in the presence of allies like this.Whatever the theoretical justifications underlying the left’s agenda,
its biggest problem is a lack of credibility. Over the past two
generations, the mainstream left has followed a social democratic
program that centers on the state provision of a variety of services,
such as pensions, health care, and education. That model is now
exhausted: welfare states have become big, bureaucratic, and
inflexible; they are often captured by the very organizations that
administer them, through public-sector unions; and, most important,
they are fiscally unsustainable given the aging of populations
virtually everywhere in the developed world. Thus, when existing
social democratic parties come to power, they no longer aspire to be
more than custodians of a welfare state that was created decades ago;
none has a new, exciting agenda around which to rally the masses.AN IDEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Imagine, for a moment, an obscure scribbler today in a garret
somewhere trying to outline an ideology of the future that could
provide a realistic path toward a world with healthy middle-class
societies and robust democracies. What would that ideology look like?[...] the agenda it put forward to protect middle-class life could not
simply rely on the existing mechanisms of the welfare state. The
ideology would need to somehow redesign the public sector, freeing it
from its dependence on existing stakeholders and using new,
technology-empowered approaches to delivering services. It would have
to argue forthrightly for more redistribution and present a realistic
route to ending interest groups’ domination of politics. [...]http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136782/francis-fukuyama/the-future-of-history
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mazsa
“Libertarianism presents itself as a simple, clear, and principled view. It appears to provide a moral basis, in the value of individual liberty, for a specific political program of limited government and low taxes. The moral significance of liberty seems obvious even to those who believe it is not the only thing that matters. But the claim of the libertarian political program to be founded on this value is illusory. Three lines of thought lead to conclusions that might be seen as libertarian. But none of these shows that respect for the value of individual liberty should lead one to support the political program of low taxes and limited government that libertarians are supposed to favor. [...]” http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.5/ndf_t_m_scanlon_libertarianism_liberty.php
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mazsa
Yes, It Is a Police State – A line has been crossed http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/yes-this-is-a-police-state/
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mazsa
Forget piracy, US government is going after Bitcoin http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/08/government-crackdown-on-bitcoin/ Cf. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2636078
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mazsa
U.S. Congressman Ron Paul:
The last nail is being driven into the coffin of the American Republic. Yet, Congress remains in total denial as our liberties are rapidly fading before our eyes.
The process is propelled by unwarranted fear and ignorance as to the true meaning of liberty. It is driven by economic myths, fallacies and irrational good intentions.
The rule of law is constantly rejected and authoritarian answers are offered as panaceas for all our problems. Runaway welfarism is used to benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class.
Who would have ever thought that the current generation and Congress would stand idly by and watch such a rapid disintegration of the American Republic?
Characteristic of this epic event is the casual acceptance by the people and political leaders of the unitary presidency, which is equivalent to granting dictatorial powers to the President. Our Presidents can now, on their own:
1. Order assassinations, including American citizens,
2. Operate secret military tribunals,
3. Engage in torture,
4. Enforce indefinite imprisonment without due process,
5. Order searches and seizures without proper warrants, gutting the 4th Amendment,
6. Ignore the 60 day rule for reporting to the Congress the nature of any military operations as required by the War Power Resolution,
7. Continue the Patriot Act abuses without oversight,
8. Wage war at will,
9. Treat all Americans as suspected terrorists at airports with TSA groping and nude x-raying.And the Federal Reserve accommodates by counterfeiting the funds needed and not paid for by taxation and borrowing, permitting runaway spending, endless debt, and special interest bail-outs.
And all of this is not enough. The abuses and usurpations of the war power are soon to be codified in the National Defense Authorization Act now rapidly moving its way through the Congress. Instead of repealing the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), as we should, now that bin Laden is dead and gone, Congress is planning to massively increase the war power of the President.
Though an opportunity presents itself to end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Congress, with bipartisan support, obsesses on how to expand the unconstitutional war power the President already holds. The current proposal would allow a President to pursue war any time, any place, for any reason, without Congressional approval. Many believe this would even permit military activity against American suspects here at home.
The proposed authority does not reference the 9/11 attacks. It would be expanded to include the Taliban and “associated” forces—a dangerously vague and expansive definition of our potential enemies. There is no denial that the changes in S.1034 totally eliminate the hard-fought-for restraint on Presidential authority to go to war without Congressional approval achieved at the Constitutional Convention.
Congress’ war authority has been severely undermined since World War II beginning with the advent of the Korean War which was fought solely under a UN Resolution. Even today, we’re waging war in Libya without even consulting with the Congress, similar to how we went to war in Bosnia in the 1990s under President Clinton. The three major reasons for our Constitutional Convention were to:
1. Guarantee free trade and travel among the states.
2. Make gold and silver legal tender [cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender ] and abolish paper money.
3. Strictly limit the Executive Branch’s authority to pursue war without Congressional approval.But today:
1. Federal Reserve notes are legal tender, gold and silver are illegal.
2. The Interstate Commerce Clause is used to regulate all commerce at the expense of free trade among the states.
3. And now the final nail is placed in the coffin of Congressional responsibility for the war power, delivering this power completely to the President—a sharp and huge blow to the concept of our Republic.In my view, it appears that the fate of the American Republic is now sealed—unless these recent trends are quickly reversed.
The saddest part of this tragedy is that all these horrible changes are being done in the name of patriotism and protecting freedom. They are justified by good intentions while believing the sacrifice of liberty is required for our safety. Nothing could be further from the truth.
More sadly is the conviction that our enemies are driven to attack us for our freedoms and prosperity, and not because of our deeply flawed foreign policy that has generated justifiable grievances and has inspired the radical violence against us.
Without this understanding our endless, unnamed, and undeclared wars will continue and our wonderful experience with liberty will end.
http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-05-25/ron-paul-is-this-the-end-of-the-american-republic/
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mazsa
“Cryptocurrency brings new challenges to the table. The government can’t see the wealth of an individual, nor their inflow or outflow of funds, not with any amount of applied force.
I know a lot of individuals in government will react with normalcy bias to this statement and say “but we have to!”. It doesn’t matter if you have to. You can’t. Period.” http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/19/the-information-policy-case-for-flat-tax-and-basic-income/
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mazsa
Hungary’s parliament passes controversial new constitution: it is the government’s attempt to cement its power beyond its term, eliminates the system of checks and balances, forces its Christian ideology on the country and limits civil liberties.
“The new constitution’s preamble is laden with references to God, Christianity, the fatherland, the “Holy Crown of Hungary,” and traditional family values, raising opposition fears about the future rights of Hungary’s atheists, homosexuals and single-parent families. [...]” http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14998392,00.html
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mazsa
NYRB: Hungary has become a one party state http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/28/hungary-threat/
Free access text: http://www.scribd.com/doc/53112498/Hungary-The-Threat-by-Istvan-Deak
Summary in Hungarian: http://nepszava.com/2011/04/magyarorszag/deak-istvan-magyarorszag-egyparti-allam-lett.html
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admin
Protests ahead of vote on new Hungary constitution
“Fri Apr 15, 2011 6:56am EDT
- Parliament to vote on new [1party] constitution on April 18.
- Civil society groups plan protest in Budapest
- Rights groups say new law will weaken checks and balances” http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/15/hungary-constitution-idUSLDE73D11420110415
Video [in Hungarian]:
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mazsa
“The Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom)”: http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html
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mazsa
Online Cash Bitcoin Could Challenge Governments and Banks http://techland.time.com/2011/04/16/online-cash-bitcoin-could-challenge-governments/
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mazsa
“How should libertarians frame government?
(a) as a criminal enterprise; or
(b) as a service provider that does a bad job, largely because it is a monopoly, with too many restrictions on entry and exit [...]” http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/04/two_questions_f_1.html -
mazsa
Don’t Tax the Rich “[...] some on the left are better at posturing than thinking.” http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2011/03/the-intelligent-question-posed-by-saturdays-march-is-what-alternative-is-there-to-osbornes-spending-cuts-theres-on.html
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mazsa
The Rise and Fall of Neoconservatism: http://www.cato-unbound.org/march-2011-the-rise-and-fall-of-neoconservatism-2/
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mazsa
OPINION ON [...] THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF HUNGARY, EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR DEMOCRACY THROUGH LAW (VENICE COMMISSION):
“[...] IV. The process of the adoption of a new Constitution
14. At the date of the visit of its delegation, the text of the draft Constitution had not yet been
released. The Commission was informed that the draft was being finalised and it was
envisaged to present it very soon to the majority’s parliamentary group (FIDESZ) and to
subsequently submit it to Parliament (by 15 March 2011). The adoption of the Constitution
was foreseen for 18 April 2011. – 5 – CDL-AD(2011)00115. The Venice Commission notes that, while initially associated to this process in the
framework of the Ad-hoc Committee for Drafting the Constitution, the opposition forces were
for several months not participating in the elaboration of the draft and that there was no longer
a dialogue between the majority and the opposition in this regard. It understands that the
opposition’s decision to withdraw from the process was in particular linked to the limitation of
the powers of the Constitutional Court with regard to the constitutionality of Acts and Bills on
state budget and taxes, adopted by the Hungarian parliament in November 2010.16. Moreover, concerns have been raised within the civil society over the lack of transparency
of the process and the inadequate consultation of the Hungarian society on the main
constitutional challenges to be addressed in this context. Since the draft was only submitted to
the Parliament on 14 March 2011, only limited public debate could take place on the changes
and novelties that the future Constitution might introduce.17. The tight schedule established for its adoption is also a serious source of concern and has
been raised by most of the interlocutors of the Commission.18. The Commission would like to recall that transparency, openness and inclusiveness,
adequate timeframe and conditions allowing pluralism of views and proper debate of
controversial issues, are key requirements of a democratic Constitution-making process.19. In its opinion, a wide and substantive debate involving the various political forces, nongovernment organisations and citizens associations, the academia and the media is an
important prerequisite for adopting a sustainable text, acceptable for the whole of the society
and in line with democratic standards. Too rigid time constraints should be avoided and the
calendar of the adoption of the new Constitution should follow the progress made in its debate. [...]” http://www.venice.coe.int/docs/2011/CDL-AD(2011)001-e.pdf -
mazsa
Taxes & Voting: “[...] Thoreau [...] argues that people should be allowed to decide to not pay their taxes if they decide to withdraw from the political system. He does, however, make a point of saying that people should pay for what they use, such as paying the highway tax if one uses the highway. [...]” http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=2695
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mazsa
“[...] The problem with the U.S. government is that its allocation of resources is highly inefficient. We spend vast amounts of money on subsidies for housing, agriculture and health, many of which distort the economy and do little for long-term growth. We spend too little on science, technology, innovation and infrastructure, which will produce growth and jobs in the future. For the past few decades, we have been able to be wasteful and get by. But we will not be able to do it much longer. The money is running out, and we will have to marshal funds and target spending far more strategically. This is not a question of too much or too little government, too much or too little spending. We need more government and more spending in some places and less in others.
The tragedy is that Washington knows this. For all the partisan polarization there, most Republicans know that we have to invest in some key areas, and most Democrats know that we have to cut entitlement spending. But we have a political system that has become allergic to compromise and practical solutions. This may be our greatest blind spot. [...]” http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2056610,00.html
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mazsa
“[...] get rid of the power. Political power is, in fact, the source of the wealth concentrations that fund the industry lobbyists and the campaign contributions. The wealth of big business and the plutocracy is funneled to them by subsidies, protections, oligopoly markups on state-cartelized markets, scarcity rents from artificial property rights, etc., none of which would exist without the state.
Getting rid of the power seemingly involves a Catch-22: How can you dismantle the state policies underlying the political means to wealth, when you’re outspent and outgunned in the policy-making process by those who profit from it? How do you change the system to prevent their making money off it, in a system rigged in favor of the big money?
The answer: Get rid of the money. At first glance this seems to be a circular argument, since — to repeat — we can’t challenge their control of the political means to wealth.
No, we get rid of the money in politics by undermining — at the economic level — the means by which the plutocracy makes its money. For example, we destroy the proprietary content industries’ ability to make money — not by contesting their power in the political arenas where legislation like the DMCA is passed — but by combating their ability to enforce the copyright laws they make money from. We’ll probably never secure the repeal of DMCA in Congress. But we can destroy the record and movie industries’ profit economically, with weapons like torrent download, strong encryption, and proxies — and laugh ourselves silly at the blustering of clowns like Lieberman and Biden. [...]
We solve the problem of money in politics, not by contesting money’s control of the political process — but by economically destroying the political profiteers’ power to make money, and rendering their political power useless.” http://c4ss.org/content/6416
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mazsa
“[...] Bradley Manning, directly and indirectly, has probably done more for freedom than any single human being in years.
His exposure of war crimes by U.S. forces in Iraq, and his exposure of how the sausage of U.S. foreign policy is made, benefit freedom in their own right insofar as they undermine — to whatever extent — the global and domestic credibility of the United States government.
But more importantly, the cables Manning leaked — which were published on Wikileaks — played a central role in triggering the so-called Twitter revolution that started in Tunisia, spread to Egypt and much of the Middle East, and is now striking Qaddafi with hurricane-force winds of freedom. Among the cables which Wikileaks published were detailed descriptions of the Tunisian regime’s corruption, which galvanized local dissident groups into launching the movement that overthrew the government. [...]” http://c4ss.org/content/6386
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mazsa
The democracy of the state will always be of the state, by the state and for the state.
David D’Amato -
mazsa
Revolution U: “[...] Facebook could bring together tens of thousands of sympathizers online, but it couldn’t organize them once they logged off. It was a useful communication tool to call people to — well, to what? The April 6 leaders did not know the answer to this question. So they decided to learn from others who did. In the summer of 2009, Mohamed Adel, a 20-year-old blogger and April 6 activist, went to Belgrade, Serbia.
The Serbian capital is home to the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS [ http://www.canvasopedia.org ], an organization run by young Serbs who had cut their teeth in the late 1990s student uprising against Slobodan Milosevic. After ousting him, they embarked on the ambitious project of figuring out how to translate their success to other countries. To the world’s autocrats, they are sworn enemies — both Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Belarus’s Aleksandr Lukashenko have condemned them by name. (“They think we are bringing a revolution in our suitcase,” one of CANVAS’s leaders told me.) But to a young generation of democracy activists from Harare to Rangoon to Minsk to Tehran, the young Serbs are heroes. They have worked with democracy advocates from more than 50 countries. They have advised groups of young people on how to take on some of the worst governments in the world — and in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria-occupied Lebanon, the Maldives, and now Egypt, those young people won. [...]” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/16/revolution_u?page=full
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admin
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admin
Daniel A. Nagy Resource curse is actually the least of Ukraine’s problems. In case of Ukraine, the three main problems are democracy, nationalism and delusional geopolitics.
1. Democracy
Since the so-called Orange Revolution, people in Ukraine sincerely believe in people power. That is they believe that by rallying, demonstrating and campaigning, they can achieve certain goals. For example, you would see young, healthy, and even reasonably intelligent people demonstrating in Kiev on working days, during business hours. All year around. Basically, instead of engaging in productive activities, people spend enormous resources in political battles. Hungary also has a bit of this problem, but it is nowhere nearly as bad as in Ukraine. There, politics-related emotions are running so high that it’s fairly normal to hear otherwise intelligent and educated people fume in murderous rage about their political opponents or even the entire political class.2. Nationalism
This is also a big one. For example, pushing the ethnic language in every walk of life causes a non-trivial drain on human and material resources. Many business activities are hampered by the requirement to do the legal and marketing work in the ethnic language instead of whatever language people would prefer (Russian in most cases, but it also applies to Hungarian and English). And the language is just the tip of the iceberg. Because of overflowing nationalism, many people wish to solve their problems on the national level even though they would be perfectly manageable in their personal sphere of responsibility.3. Geopolitics
Ukraine’s ruling elite as well as a significant part of the population lives in this completely imaginary world where they have to “choose” between “Russia” and “the West” (sometimes referred to as “Europe”, which may include the U.S. but definitely excludes Russia in Ukrainian newspeak), which is a completely absurd proposition, if examined objectively. Thus, many lucrative opportunities are wasted, unnecessary barriers to trade are created out of nowhere and in general, many expensive activities are motivated by reasons based on completely false assumptions and grand delusions.
In reality, Ukraine’s big neighbors are Poland and Russia, both of which are roughly at the same level of economic development and in terms of culture have a lot in common with the Ukraine (and each other, of course). Ukraine is much poorer than both and objectively has much closer ties (economic, personal/family, linguistic, etc.) with Russia.
19 órája · Nem tetszik · 1 személy
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mazsa
The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament (in Strasbourg) no one other than its members wants to have power (which must subtract from the powers of national legislatures), a capital (Brussels) of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist (a European central government), and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring.
George Will -
mazsa
Censorship law, Hungary: Letter to Neelie Kroes, European Digital Agenda Commissioner
The HCLU [Hungarian Civil Liberties Union] wrote a letter to Neelie Kroes to express our grave concern about the amendment proposed to the Hungarian Press and Media Act and the Media Services and Mass Media Act by the Hungarian government which it has been said is supported by Commissioner Kroes.
The HCLU’s position is that Hungarian media laws constitute violations of European Directives in many details as well as that of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Furthermore some points of the proposed amendments are even more restrictive on freedom of the press than the earlier versions. http://tasz.hu/en/freedom-of-speech/letter-neelie-kroes-european-digital-agenda-commissioner
Letter to Neelie Kroes download: http://tasz.hu/files/tasz/imce/kroes_letter_0223.pdf
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mazsa
Download: From Dictatorship to Democracy – A Conceptual Framework for Liberation http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html Cf. Egypt’s revolution vindicates Gene Sharp’s theory of nonviolent activism https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=egypts-revolution-vindicates-gene-s-2011-02-11
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mazsa
Mass Atrocity Prevention and Response Operations: “The new initiative aims to retask the military’s massive fleet of overhead-surveillance gear — drones, blimps, spy planes, satellites — to place watchful eyes on the perpetrators of mass atrocities. And that’s just the beginning. Jammers might stop the radio transmissions of aspiring genocidaires. Text and social media could alert the American forces about civilians at risk of being slaughtered.” http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/drones-vs-darfur/
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mazsa
How states can amend US Constitution to limit government
1/3: http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/5007
2/3: http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/5353
3/3: ?
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mazsa
“Up to now, the world has been divided into two camps: “complicated” countries where the government represents the public and every decision is subject to public oversight, and “easy” countries where business is conducted at the top and the public is just window dressing. The dividing line between the two has always been starkly clear. Everything north of the Mediterranean belonged to the first group and everything to the south and east to the second.
The north had political parties and trade unions, a left wing and a right wing, important intellectuals, celebrities who shaped public opinion, and of course, there was public opinion itself. In the south the division was simple. It was the distinction between moderates and extremists, meaning pro-Westerners and anti-Westerners. [...]
And when Al Jazeera’s cameras come close to the demonstrators, it also becomes clear that these are not religious radicals. Lawyers, journalists, university students, women with their heads uncovered, high school students, the secular and the religious are taking to the streets. They’re not shouting “God is great,” but “corruption out,” “dictator out” and “we want jobs.” Such nice slogans make you identify with them. In the words of “The Internationale”: “arise ye workers from your slumber.” It makes us want to join them until we remember that, as U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt described Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, he “may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” It’s disrupting the order of things.
We don’t have to wait for other regimes to fall to understand that the revolution is happening before our very eyes. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will not fall due to demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and Yemen’s ruler will also continue to rule by force. But it’s a revolution of awareness and of the fundamental notions of what the Middle East is. Most importantly, we need a revolution in the way the West views the region.” http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/an-arab-revolution-fueled-by-methods-of-the-west-1.340079
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mazsa
Guardian: Orban was threatening the EU “Orbán made clear he would cause maximum embarrassment if Brussels insisted on meddling in his domestic policies. “If you mix up the two, obviously I am ready to fight … It won’t just be detrimental or damaging to Hungary alone but … to the EU as a whole,” he said in Strasbourg. It was an extraordinary statement: in effect, the EU’s standard-bearer was threatening the EU. [...]
The impact of Orbán’s behaviour on EU influence in the world is another worrying issue. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, has warned Europe’s collective authority in dealing with abusive regimes could be undermined. If Hungary’s flouting of EU standards goes unpunished, other EU states with questionable human rights and civil liberties practices may feel encouraged to persist. And what is EU candidate Turkey, often accused of curtailing media freedoms, to make of it all? [...]
The controversy has sparked an overdue discussion about maintaining common standards, Dennison said. “Until recently EU governments and the Commission have found it inappropriate to discuss domestic affairs at a European level, and certainly not in public … Instead they operate a gentlemen’s club …” she said in an ECFR analysis. But now, outrage over Orbán’s antics suggested “the long-standing civil society message [is] finally being heard: that breaches of the EU’s fundamental values, even in only one member state, are still a source of collective shame.” ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/20/hungary-eu-media-law
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mazsa
“
If corporations must be treated as “persons” for the purpose of campaign contributions – as the Supreme Court mandated last year in the infamous Citizens United decision – why shouldn’t they also enjoy “personal privacy”? [...]
[...] we should ask about the social functions served by privacy protections. Yes weaker privacy protections make it easier to hold firms accountable, but that applies to individual humans as well. And if stronger privacy protects folks more against abuse by governments or others, that benefit should apply to firms as well. Yes people may just have a direct preference for privacy, but such preferences may be weak, and perhaps people working at a firm feel similarly about the privacy of their firm.
For most definition disputes, pretending to resolve it via conceptual analysis just isn’t very honest. It is more honest to argue about the desirability of various consequences of alternate social conventions.”
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/01/define-via-consequences.html
admin is discussing. 
Daniel A. Nagy In my personal opinion, these are evil and dangerous people, driven primarily by greed and an insatiable thirst for political power. The kind who spend their university years awarding each other fat stipends in the student-government. If you want to know, what democracy’s young nationalist shock-troopers become in their forties, look no further than Hungary’s current government.
Also, for a re-calibration of your sense of reality, look up the objective social and economic indicators of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and compare them to Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan. The first three former Soviet republics these guys have won, the the latter three they have been (so far) kept at bay. CIA World Factbook is a good place to start. Of course, nothing beats a personal visit at your own expense.
9 órája · Tetszik
Mázsa Péter I cannot deny the relevance of your approach. FYI: http://amexrap.org/fal/egypt-yuppie-revolution-is-over-islamist-revolution-has-begun
2 órája · Tetszik
Daniel A. Nagy Well, that is one example of things turning out badly. But perhaps with the sole exception of Serbia, all these manufactured “color revolutions” turned out to be disasters of epic proportions. The fact that despite her advantages in mineral wealth, access to sea, vast natural and human resources people are fleeing Ukraine en masse as her GDP per capita is about half of that of Europe’s Last Dictatorship™ (which has a positive migration balance, BTW). Even though the latter has been considerably poorer when both were part of the same Evil Empire™. Of course, “Putin’s Mafia State™” is much richer than both on a per-capita basis, being second to only Estonia among the former Soviet republics. Go figure.
kb. egy órája · Tetszik
Mázsa Péter 1amendment: “despite her advantages in mineral wealth, access to sea, vast natural and human resources”: not “despite” rather “because of”, cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse Of course resource curse isn’t the whole story (resource curse works in Russia as well). What do you think: what are the underlying reasons?