Eastern European Politics

Honestly, (this is gonna sound terrible and I admit it) the "bring/let other people in to solve demographic issues" feels so bizarre as a solution. Is it that hard to establish proper funding, taxes, benefits or whatever to make actually having kids not a financial drain?

I don't think that this is really the issue. People who see the pyramid as a desired model for society tend to forget that the pyramid means, that a LOT of people die before the tip of the pyramid is reached. A lot of the demographic "problems" of the rich countries are based on the fact that people are getting older and older. Sure, there are also less children born, but we aren't really in a situation in which it would be wise to get more children either. That we don't might be partly instinct. We know that our children will most likely survive long enough to become parents themselves, so most people stop with two, which is exactly replacement level.

In any case, Hungary shouldn't have a demographic problem. While it isn't the richest country, it's proximity and shared history with Austria should have made it easy for Hungary to catch up with the rest of the EU to a degree which would not just encourage people to stay in the country but also to come and study there. It is really Orban's politic which makes it so difficult for Hungary.

Finance has very little to do with it. The wealthiest countries tend to have fewer kids in general. Two or less is common. Replacement rate, like Swanpride just said. Some don't bother even with that, for one reason or the other - which can be (heavily) oversimplified as "Well, there's no real danger of me going hungry in my dotage, so why do I need kids again?"

Poorer countries, not so much. There, three or four is common, because of a brutal calculation that one or more are going to die before they'll be of any use, and if all four survive, more hands to work (or if you want to be cynical, more people without work and hungry).

Problem is, the wealthy countries need someone to pay taxes, clean the roads and sewers, run the office desks and do the hundreds of seemingly little things to keep everything running. Even in paradise, someone's gotta scrub the toilets.

The locals wont do it (beneath them), so cheap foreign labour will. Not to say that all foreign labour is lower-skilled (quite the opposite) but it's what people perceive.

Well, the way to solve this question is to extend wealth to your neighbours (and stable states in general) and then build on this.

Demographics are a problem, but not an unsolvable one. A lot of the lower skilled jobs will soon be done by machines anyway. There was a time in which the majority of people in the rich countries had to work the fields. Nowadays machines has reduced the number of people needed considerably.

Even for the healthcare sector they are working on technical solutions. Who knows, Baymax might be our future….

Netanjahu recently visited Poland. According to an Israeli newspaper, at the end of his visit the PM stated that the Polish have cooperated with the Nazis in the Holocaust.

The Polish govt immediately summoned the Israeli ambassador for explanation and clarification, who officially denied that Netanjahu said that. Shortly afterwards, the newspaper in question published a redaction of that quote.

"Poland cooperated in the Holocaust"

Wha?

This is the same asshat who claimed that a Palestinian leader during WW II convinced the Nazis to enact the Holocaust.

So yeah, he probably did actually say that.

Edited by M84 on Feb 15th 2019 at 11:25:00 PM

Poland didn't have much of an opportunity to cooperate, being attacked and all that. Thus said...Polands relationship with Jews is questionable at best. Historically mostly there to milk them for money, and past WWII, well, there was a pogrom in Poland.

I can completely imagine that someone along the line might have been said during the visit, since Netanyahu loves to bring up everything any remotely questionable which has ever been done to the Jews. And I am equally completely sure that the Polish government is not interested in having any hint of those less nice parts of Polish history in a major newspaper, since they prefer the narrative of the completely innocent Poles who were always on the defence just as much as Natanyahu loves to extend the sadly mostly true narrative of the never completely save and hunted Jews to the state of Israel as a whole.

V4 meeting is off. The Polish PM refused to attend after the Israeli foreign minister declared that the Polish people "suckled in the antisemitism along with the milk", to which the Czech PM added that if the Polish won't attend, it's best if they call the meeting off altogether and postpone it to the latter half of this year (when the Czech are getting their turn at V4 presidency).

Polish PM reacted positively to the decision, stating that it's a sign of unity among the V4 that they don't take this kind of racist shit directed at any of the member states.

Edited by amitakartok on Feb 18th 2019 at 6:29:17 PM

...I like Poland's response, and not even in a "let them fight" way. Just this once.

Israel badly needs countries that are willing to call them out for claiming antisemitism everywhere.

Eh...nope. There is nothing applaudable about it, because the polish government and state controlled media will most likely use the incident in a way which will be anti-Semitic. A measured response would have been to acknowledge the own dark past and then point out that every country should strive to no repeat the kind of mistakes and that nobody should ever supress another group of people within their own country.

Would have been perfect, because if the government of Israel had wanted to react offended, they would have had to admit that they actually do supress another group of people within their own country.

As it is, both parties can now be happy in their own victimhood.

Edited by Swanpride on Feb 18th 2019 at 11:41:17 AM

Netanyahu needs to come off his high, corrupted horse. I've little positive to say about our gov, and even this came too late, but it's something at least. It's true that it is likely to be used in an antisemitic way, unfortunately, but these days it seems like there's no difference between "an asshole to Jews" and "a critic of Israel's rampant policies"; we'll be showcased as antisemitic either way.

What I'm more worried about is the torpedoing of our relations with Iran for no reason other than to please Uncle Sam. "Peace conference" my butt.

I’m just throw by Netanyahu suddenly having a problem with authoritarian right-wing governments that preach anti-semitism, like he’s happily allied with actual Nazis in Hungary and neo-Nazis in the US, but the Polish right-wing are a bridge to far all of a sudden?

He's a politician. What did you expect from him, moral integrity?

Something that might've been in foreign news in the past year. Elios Innovative Ltd. is a street lighting company who, in the past years, won tender after tender for modernizing street lighting in multiple cities, only for their lights to end up so faint as to be barely worth anything at night (to such an extend that a pedestrian was killed in a hit-and-run last week because of Elios' street lights).

Since the company has strong Fidesz ties (formerly owned by Orbán's son-in-law, he quit in 2015) and operated primarily on EU tender money, OLAF (the EU's anti-corruption investigative body) got involved and in early 2018, issued a report after two years of investigation that there were a lot of irregularities with the tenders, including several cases of the tenders seemingly being tailor-made for Elios (that is, one of Elios' co-owners' company made some of the tender proposals for the municipalities involved). The Hungarian attorney office started an investigation but refused to release the OLAF report to the public in its entirety (some details were leaked due to the opposition's insistence to air out the dirty laundry to the public) and refused to comment on anything until in November, the Hungarian police closed the case with a claim that no crime was committed.

A while ago, the govt wrote off the 13 billion that went into Elios and did not include these items into the appropriation summary submitted to the EU, evidently feeling that doing so would be political suicide of the "provoke the EU into cutting Hungary's central funding in retaliation for blatant misappropriation" kind. Still, Brussels decided to summon the attorney general for an explanation but he's declining to attend, claiming that Elios' govt connections and the upcoming EP elections make this into a political issue, thus he cannot comply because the constitution forbids him from getting involved in politics by openly taking sides.

Eh, some politicians have more moral backbone than others. Not Netanyahu though. He's scummy on just about every level.

Well, the ability to compromise is one of the most important to a politician, so you don't want one who's completely inflexible.

Regardless, this is tge first I heard of Netanyahu and I can't say he made a good first impression.

Oh, it gets worse when you start digging. Suggestion: have a bucket nearby. Netanyahu is a piece of work.

Speaking of blatant financial corruption and book-cooking... Isn't that whole caper a classic? Down to the whole "oh, I'd love to declare everything, but, oh my stars, it appears my hands are conveniently tied by convention — oh, woe".

Also, Orbán and co. are pulling out the migrant card for propaganda again. This time in the form of billboards stating "You have a right to know what Brussels is up to. They want to introduce the compulsory settlement quota. They want to weaken the member states' right to protect their borders. They want to ease immigration with migration visas.", accompanied by the grinning faces of Soros and Juncker.

The European Commission's response was a quick and dry "The people have a right to know the difference between fact and fiction as well. Not only none of these are true, everything is voted on by member states, Hungary included, with nobody being forced to do anything against their will.", dismissing the propaganda as fake news and disinformation.

The president of the EPP also criticized the propaganda campaign among similar lines. Not that it really means anything, mind you: the EPP have proven time and time again that maintaining their power in the European Parliament via Fidesz' seats remaining in their fraction takes priority over standing up for the values the EPP allegedly represents. It doesn't matter how much Fidesz is jumping up and down on said values with both feet, the EPP won't go beyond token condemnation because they want those seats - and Orbán and co. are fully aware of that fact and abusing the shit out of it. It's basically the same scenario as the one the US has with Turkey: Erdogan gets complete free reign with whatever he damn well pleases to do with his people because the US wants them in their camp no matter the cost.

Edited by amitakartok on Feb 19th 2019 at 11:27:38 AM

Our strategic planners really need to downgrade Turkey's importance. It made sense during the Cold War, but it doesn't make sense now.

Actually, even I see that it does. 1) it keeps Russian naval assets on the Black Sea from reaching the Atlantic and 2) it's in a prime position to launch aerial interception of Russian airlift aimed at the Middle East region. Israel cannot do either because they're too far away from the Dardanelles for naval interdiction and they're completely surrounded by hostile airspace.

I mean, you can't just replace Incirlik with Taszár.

Turns out that the Hungarian Maltan Charity Organization worked together with the govt to quietly immigrate and settle over 300 Venezuelans with Hungarian ancestors into Hungary. Mind you, it's not the immigration itself that's the problem, as these poor bastards deserve the help and are happy to have escaped from Maduro's madhouse, the problem is that the govt is doing exactly what they made a legislation for to penalize and fine just last year, and doing so in complete secrecy.

The govt PR spokesman stated in a press release that there's nothing wrong with this because "these people aren't migrants" but ethnic Hungarians, seeing how citizenship is automatically extended to descendants of citizens and a 1949 piece of legislation removed the automatic loss of citizenship if a citizen doesn't return home within 10 years.

Except the 2018 anti-migration law does not make a distinction between those of Hungarian descent and those without... "When the president does it, it's not illegal", anyone?

Fair enough, but its strategic importance is still in decline compared to the Cold War, and it might be time to remind Erdogan of that.

As expected, the EPP is not doing a thing about Orbán and co.'s latest shenanigans.

Strong condemnation is coming from the CDU-CSU duo in Germany. A minor Croatian party has announced that they are leaving the EPP, partly because of Orbán being allowed to run amok (and partly because they feel their opinions are being ignored by the EPP just because they don't currently have any EP seats).

Another four EPP member parties are demanding Fidesz' expulsion from the EPP.

Fidesz' representative to the EC was recently interviewed about the whole thing. He explicitly stated that Fidesz' goal with this is getting votes (because in case you hadn't heard, Fidesz' official response to the EU's denial of Fidesz' allegations was "denial is evidence and admission"), as well as that although he dismissed earlier allegations that he's been sent there as punishment, now he's not sure anymore.

Edited by amitakartok on Mar 1st 2019 at 11:18:01 AM

A Greek party joined the fray as well, so that's now seven parties calling for Fidesz' expulsion, which is the minimum number the EPP's rules require for an expulsion process to be initiated.

It's extremely unlikely Fidesz will be expelled, however, as doing so directly goes against the EPP's own interests due to Fidesz being the third-fourth biggest member and thus bringing too many EP seats to be worth cutting loose. Accordingly, Fidesz' opponents are in a minority within the EPP.