Eastern European Politics

So anyone have thoughts on the musical chairs that is Bulgarian politics right now?

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

Bulgaria’s political turmoil continues after election fails to get clear result.

Apparently that one is worryingly common 'round these parts. We have constant grumbling of this sort over here as well, and after reading the news about how Polish workers in a Norwegian car wash were paid 20 NOK per hour even if generally the hourly wage for this sort of monkey job is 100 to 130 NOK, I'm thinking that we're not taught that we have rights, and so the employers exploit that.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

You'll also get all of that in Britain, as well.

Keep Rolling On

Same here, except with one caveat: instead of being kept in ignorance, we're just fired and replaced. Workers are near-universally considered disposable, from what I'm told.

"instead"? We're being kept ignorant and considered disposable, so even if someone smartens up, he'll get fired anyway.

Whenever I rant about the situation in Poland, I pretty much always mention "THE POLISH BUM" who is a "BUM AND A BOOR" and has to respect "THE MASTER" (the last one is hard to translate, as the word "pan" is a common honorific here, and can mean "Mr" or "master" depending on the context) or else "GIDDAFUCKOUT". Because I see it all being that dire.

edited 6th Oct '14 11:39:50 AM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Municipal elections in Hungary are over. Surprise surprise, Fidesz won again; at a 42.79% turnout, they achieved a majority in every single county plus a supermajority in the capital, helped by the fact that the left's candidate for the capital stepped back immediately before the elections, therefore quite a few of the left's supporters didn't vote at all.

So can anyone say anything about Bosnia's election aside from the fact it's not helping the countries situation? I wonder anyone could see this system would be problematic at Dayton.

Dayton was always meant to be temporary.

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

Really? Do you have a source? Regardless it struck me as odd when I realized half the country was ruled via a federation based more on geography and the other half straight up ethic-federalism. One of the two systems must be used to stop the bureaucratic mess they have now. Either dissolve Srpska into cantons or dissolve the Federation into a Bosniak and a Croat entity. I prefer the former due to the fact it limits ethnicity in the government and makes Brcko's future obvious (a canton) and if I do recall dividing Bosnia into provinces was a suggestion during the war.

edited 13th Oct '14 5:53:59 PM by Cornelli

Except the Croats want their own entity now. Eventually they'd bicker and split back up again.

Better for the Croat territories to join Croatia, Serb territories to join Serbia, and Bosnia to rule the rest. Everyone becomes that much more stable.

EDIT-

To be more precise, the Dayton Agreement was meant to just stop the fighting. Everything else was secondary.

edited 13th Oct '14 6:12:29 PM by FFShinra

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

Not a bad idea - what would the economics look like though?

Schild und Schwert der Partei

At the moment, its still transitioning from the old Yugoslav socialist model (going by the CIA Factbook and Wikipedia at least) because the ethnic groups keep bickering, particularly in Bi H. So I guess the answer would be, no idea, but they'd probably get a move on (and to EU standards) faster by themelves.

edited 13th Oct '14 6:17:03 PM by FFShinra

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

See when you do that your basically saying is 1992 except with no war. It didn't work then it wouldn't work now. Plus that leaves a rump Bosnia (Herzegovina is Croat and Serb) that couldn't stand as a state for a second.

Bosnia started fighting before the state could be partitioned and both Tudjman's Croatia and the Milosevic regime were actively instigating the war (a shame they never agreed to partition it peacefully, even though they had met up about the idea, but thats what personal hatreds can do I guess). The geopolitical situation in the Balkans is now completely different than it was then.

Now, the state is, for all intents and purposes, already split. They're being kept together by sheer momentum. And not even that because the other two want out.

Only the Bosniaks care to keep it together. Are they gonna get screwed? Not necessarily. Without the Dayton baggage, they could at the very least evolve to Albania's economic level post-communism. It can stand as a state.

edited 13th Oct '14 8:18:00 PM by FFShinra

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

Putin is guest of honor at Serbian military parade Serbia is showing it's STRENGHTH...go ahead get it out of your systems

Polan can into counter spying The authorities in Poland have arrested a Polish army officer and a lawyer for espionage, amid reports that they allegedly spied for Russia.

edited 17th Oct '14 12:16:56 PM by JackOLantern1337

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.

A bunch of high-ranking Hungarian government officials have been banned from entering the US on allegations of corruption. It's been all over the news lately.

Last year or so, there was this ex-customs whistleblower who discovered evidence of organized corruption reaching well into the billions of US Ds and narrowly evaded being skinned in court for exposing it. According to him, this latest incident was the result of "people close to the Hungarian government" asking two US companies for a bribe of two billion in exchange for tax reduction, lower VAT rate and harassing the competition via the customs office.

The US is refusing to say anything on the matter, not even an explanation.

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In related news, the Community of Democracies is doing an inquiry that might end with Hungary getting expelled from their ranks. It would be the first time a democratically elected government is expelled for being antidemocratic.

edited 20th Oct '14 4:31:04 AM by amitakartok

Next chapter in the tragicomedy called Hungarian politics: a bill for taxing internet traffic has been submitted yesterday and is expected to be voted into legislation two weeks from now. 0.62 USD per gigabyte (at current exchange rates), to be exact.

Even better, the original proposal had no upper limit to how much tax can be collected from one person per month. After a massive (and predictable) outrage, they quickly added a clause that set the maximum taxable traffic to 4.6 GB for common users and 30 GB for organizations.

To illustrate how out of touch these old farts are with how fast the internet grows these days, the average Youtube user can exceed their upper limit in just a few days. Or a few hours, if they watch Let's Plays in 1080p.

According to those in charge, one of the reasons for the new tax is because when they started to tax phone calls, SMS' and MMS' a while ago, many users switched over to using VoIP instead so they want to close that loophole, with expectations of raking in another ~82-103 million USD (at current exchange rates) from this new source.

As for what they're spending so much money on? Aggressive state propaganda, building stadiums... and doing "accidental" ceremonial flybys of said stadiums' opening ceremonies with military fighter aircraft.

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Oh, and the aforementioned US-banning-politicians-for-corruption bit? That one's been confirmed as true by multiple sources. Apparently, the two US companies were indeed asked for a bribe delivered as contracts and when they refused, the ringleaders tried to extort them into it via the customs office, so the companies alerted the US authorities. Fuckers deserved it.

The head of the customs office is one of those who have been banned from entering the US.

edited 22nd Oct '14 1:04:30 PM by amitakartok

I have no words in regards to the stupidity of those old farts.

Or maybe I have them, but I don't wanna get thumped.

Oh, it gets even better. Now they've announced that they're going to tax a helluva lot of stuff: plastic flowers, detergents, body wash, hair dye and office paper (defined as "paper-based medium capable of carrying information and which can be written, printed or photocopied on without additional preparations") are all going to be taxed from the beginning of next year.

And at the same time, the capital city's newest metro line that was built and opened with much fanfare back in spring (in fact, completion was rushed to get it done in time for the March 15 national holiday, one week before parliamentary elections) is getting flooded every time there's major rain. I ask thee, where the hell did all the money go if they're so much in a rush to get more?

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Two weeks ago were municipal elections, which saw a surprising number of independent representatives getting elected. Guess some of the common folk are getting tired of the parties' bullshit/incompetence [underline applicable one]. In the capital, all opposition members were summarily kicked off of the appeals board two days after the elections.

edited 22nd Oct '14 5:16:55 PM by amitakartok

What is the official explenation given for this overbloated taxation? I mean, I know that here in Greece politicians keep justifying taxes upon taxes because "we are in the brink of bankruptcy, we're gonna get kicked out of Europe, we need to regain the trust of the markets... blah blah blah."

But, what issue is Hungary facing that it can justify such an absurd tax raise? According to Hungarian & European sources, yes, Hungary was hit by the 2008-2009 financial crisis but it's on its way to recovery now. So there must be a reason, or at least an excuse, to tax the Internet.

edited 22nd Oct '14 5:50:55 PM by LogoP

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

That's what nobody can figure out. My best guess is that this money is being funneled towards large-scale construction projects for propaganda material, chief of these being the construction of multiple stadiums at once. Every dissenting opinion is quickly dismissed either as leftist propaganda or foreign conspiracy.

The government seems to have a very strong populist focus at the expense of everything else. For one, they've been running a years-long program for decreasing the cost of living via cutting into the utility bills, taxing said bills and brutally smacking down any utility company that tries to levy the extra expense onto the end-users. This has gotten them a helluva lot of public support but the utility companies are being stressed like never before, with some teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

They have similarly cracked down on banks over one-sided alterations of mortgage loans making dozens of people homeless and fleecing several hundred more to the bone with doubled or even tripled payments, to which several banks have responded by withdrawing from Hungary altogether.

Like I said above, the internet tax is justified with people switching over to VoIP stuff like Skype to dodge the telecom tax.

edited 22nd Oct '14 6:26:57 PM by amitakartok

Found out details about the internet tax: it was the PM's idea and he intends to use this money to finance the announced 30% raise of law enforcement salaries.

Opponents of the tax have organized a mass protest in the capital for this afternoon; forty thousand people have indicated on Facebook their intent of participating. The protest is currently underway, with the crowd numbering well into the thousands and spanning over multiple kilometers of city streets; they're chanting "Orbán, get lost", "You fucked up", "We won't let you" and "Free country, free internet", among other things.

The protesters gave the government 48 hours to back down, else there will be another protest two days from now. One of the organizers pointed out that if the government doesn't back down, it proves that they're not serving the public interest. He asked the people to put away all party symbols and don't hide their faces, also saying that he's not going to "pay internet tax so that a digitally illiterate Orbán can build a stadium at the back of his garden" (exact words there!). The crowd agrees with him.

edited 26th Oct '14 12:16:13 PM by amitakartok

Lithuania greets the arrival of the floating liquefied natural gas terminal Independence. The terminal has the capacity to regasify 4 billion cubic meters - or, in other words, 75% of the Baltic States' annual consumption.

The Lithuanians are delighted.

GIRFUY Putin!

edited 28th Oct '14 4:09:07 AM by Achaemenid

Schild und Schwert der Partei

So out of curiosity what would Serbian-Albanian relations look like without the Kosovo issue?