Eastern European Politics

Local press reports that support for Fidesz came crashing down after the government wasted millions of taxpayers' money on trying to bail out blatant pyramid schemes. They also attempt to compare it to a similar thing happening over here: savings and loan companies gathered under a bigger umbrella company turned out to be a cash cow for the loony rightards, with the CEO of the umbrella company being a senator from the loony rightard party. In exchange for less scrutiny from the state finance watchdog, the savings and loan companies pretty much funded the loony rightard propaganda mouthpieces and election campaigns. Then the current ruling party figured something stinks here, increased the scrutiny and defecation hit the oscillation. Turns out that after including those savings and loan companies in the monitoring and rescue scheme the loony rightards wanted to keep them away from, the senator funneled millions out of the umbrella company responsible for maintaining everything into what's pretty much his own private shell company in Luxembourg (tax haven, mind you). And that happened after one of the companies turned out to be insolvent thanks to serious (criminal even) mismanagement. The rightards are flailing in what they believe is damage control mode but it only makes them dig themselves deeper.

Also, the myth of Russian state-sponsored terror attack being the reason for the Duck Force One crash in Smolensk five years ago is cracking more and more, after the Military Attorney General finally managed to obtain copies of the cockpit voice recordings in better quality. Right in time for presidential elections and yet another anniversary march. The rightards are flailing in what they believe is damage control mode but it only makes them dig themselves deeper.

You mean the Quaestor scandal? Yup, it's a massive clusterfuck.

Also, Jobbik just narrowly won an interim election. Scroll down for the results.

Yes. On the Hungarian side, the Quaestor. Over here, it's the SKOK (some Fun with Acronyms, particularly unfortunate because "skok" means not only "jump", but also "heist").

Election vote count and recount finished; Jobbik officially won the interim in Tapolca, getting one more seat in the parliament. Massive freakout from the other parties and generally everyone; Wall Street Journal and The Economist have both penned articles about this victory.

Also, Fidesz just received another major blow by the EU having had enough and withholding 700 billion of subsidiary. Fidesz immediately blamed it on the pre-Fidesz administration's mismanagement - but the actual document acquired by news agencies had none of the sort, instead revealing that Fidesz scammed the EU out of a shitload of money by choosing project tenders for as much as 23 times the market rate, paying 7-9 times higher salaries to coordination and marketing personnel, among other things. The EU also criticizes their habit of rigging project tenders so that only a select few can compete.

Fidesz asked for a fine of 2%, Brussels says they'll get 5%; Fidesz told the media that 10% is the expected amount, which some say is deliberate misleading so that when the actual amount is specified, the PR department can then say that they successfully negotiated out a lower one.

edited 16th Apr '15 4:58:09 PM by amitakartok

OK, I've expected overinflated tenders in EU-backed projects over here too, but over here nobody was stupid enough to inflate the costs 23 times! Hell, when the tenders for second subway line over here were overinflated in order to bilk the City Hall before Euro 2012, the City Hall, in an unexpected moment of lucidity, canceled them all to repeat them next year, just so nobody would get any stupid ideas.

Anti-corruption protest today.

Translation for 2:08 - 2:30 (the speaker is a university student):

Translation for 2:42 - 3:21:

Translation for 3:27 - 4:51:

edited 19th Apr '15 3:32:42 PM by amitakartok

Polan can into righteous fuery Poland has summoned the US ambassador and demanded an apology over comments on the Holocaust by FBI director James Comey. The foreign ministry said Mr Comey had suggested in a Washington Post article that some Poles were accomplices.

Good. What an eejit.

Polan can into missile!! Poland purchases US patriot missiles in order to defend against missiles stationed by Russia in Kalingrad.

Good for Poland. This will likely spark tensions but whatyougonnado? A nation must put its security first.

If Comey wasn't enough, Mattel fucked up as well: turns out that the new edition of "Apples to Apples" describes Schindler's List as set in "Nazi Poland". Someone missed a veeeery important word there...

Also, unbelievably, the rightard presidential candidate is kicking up shit that we decided to buy French helicopters for our military instead of the stripped-down, outdated shit the Yanks and the Italians tried to peddle. Hey, if they want to license their product, invest in the aviation industry and pull a factory that hasn't seen a contract since fifteen years back up, all the better. That and the Caracal turned out to be the best offer anyway. Apparently that idiotic rightard wants to suck some Koch for dollars. Seriously, if we bought that hunkajunk from Sikorsky Industries, instead of investing in our industry we'd be watching them pull dollars from their left pocket and put them in their right one.

edited 26th Apr '15 7:15:37 AM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

"Enhanced?" As in, "Nazi-enhanced Poland"?

...Too soon?

...Yes.

If you need me I'll be standing in the corner, contemplating what I've done.

Is your dog ashamed too?

The word I had in mind was "occupied".

Something people always forget in the "Polish death camps" controversy: Auschwitz, which was to be the center of the extermination of European Jewry, was not in Poland. The town we now know as Oświęcim in Lesser Poland was considered by the Nazis to be part of the German Gau of Upper Silesia and lay within the borders of the Greater German Reich during the war. It was inhabited, from 1939-45, almost exclusively by Germans, after the Polish population was expelled. Kulmhof - now Chelmno - was in the Wartheland, another example.

What is it with people always acting like the Nazi's were from Poland? Is it just a frequently occurring gaffe,or just a normal gaffe that only gets in the news because of how frequently the Poles go berserk about it, or is Europe working off some issues. I have heard it said that Poles and other Eastern Europeans are insulted more frequently by xenophobes in western Europe, because it is not considered politicly correct to be racist towards immigrants from the Middle East or North Africa. Is that true?

It's done because the Poles don't want to be associated with one of the greatest crime in European history, and because its a depressingly common mistake. It's also a literal neo-Nazi plot; the term was promoted by the cohort of former Third Reich intelligence officers and bureaucrats who dominated the German intelligence service in the early years of the Cold War.

As for racism towards Eastern Europeans: yes, it happens, probably less so now that ten years ago, but its there. Doubt its because people feel bad about being racist towards BME people though.

edited 26th Apr '15 10:35:44 AM by Achaemenid

They also forget that a lot of Slavs, mostly IIRC Poles and Czechs died in the Holocaust as well.

I was not asking why it offends the Poles, but rather why do so many people make that gaffe.

I can't imagine anyone saying that the Nazis were Polish; but some of their concentration camps were in Poland. I don't think I've met anyone who thought all of them were in Poland, though. There are some fairly famous ones in Germany and Croatia, as well. The most famous one, though, was in Poland. (Well, as pointed out above the Germans didn't consider it Poland but it's Poland now.)

Some might think that Poland was the main country of origin of the Holocaust's victims, but that wouldn't be correct, either. Poland did suffer huge casualties in it - including about 3 million Jews - but there were also millions of Soviet citizens killed (mainly from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia) as well as people from France and the Low Countries and - well, basically anywhere that Germany invaded, as well as countries that aligned with Germany, such as Hungary, Romania, Italy, and Bulgaria. EDIT: And here I neglected to mention Germany itself - and Austria, which was annexed before the War began in Europe. Of course they were the primary long-term targets of Hitler's effort to "cleanse" of country of groups he didn't tolerate.

Similar to my post above, though, people sometimes make very dark jokes about the recent history of countries that have had it tough. Germany gets a lot of this for Hitler, and the USSR for Stalin. France gets ridiculed for surrendering (which, of course, is absurd) and Poland gets reminded of how everybody's always invading it because there have been so many imperialistic superpowers expanding in that area basically since the Middle Ages, if not before.

Usually the intended joke in remarks like mine is that the person making it is making a fool of themselves (on purpose) by bringing up something that is taboo for a very good reason, but of course there are also those who use it as a means of punching down, which is never OK. That's why it'd be smarter to avoid that kind of joke altogether but for fans of dark comedy the temptation can be too great. One will just have to trust the audience to see through it, rather than assuming that the joker genuinely considers a horrible period in another country's history hilarious.

edited 26th Apr '15 1:47:08 PM by BestOf

Lithuania will probably be the only EU state to fully boycott 9 May celebrations in Moscow.

Not quite. The Polish parliament approved a resolution that moves the Victory Day from May 9 to May 8. After all, in our timezone it was still May 8.

It's petty. So petty it's hilarious, actually.

Orbán is thinking of restoring the death sentence. Unofficial EU reaction from multiple representatives can be summed up as "Dude. Don't even fucking try."

Makes sense. According to the article, it would go against the human rights bill we signed too, to say nothing of abolishing the death sentence being one of the requirements of admission into EU. Doing it anyway would mean sanctions, including the suspension of Hungary's voting rights in the European Council.

edited 29th Apr '15 12:11:25 PM by amitakartok

I've heard it suggested (when the idea has come up of the UK bringing it back) that doing so would either require leaving the EU or could result in us being kicked out.

Is there really no crime so heinous as to kill the perp in return? Especially when its costly to keep them alive in austerity-happy Europe?

Not that I'm necessarily in favor of the death penalty or anything, but exactly why is reinstating it so bad as to be auto-banned from the EU?

It's part of our humanist ideology. Don't question it.