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Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

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Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#251

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

poisonborz wrote: post #28

If there is one single lasting international effect of Orbán and his party, it's how he demonstrated how EU is completely helpless against rouge states (as well). The delicate political balance of its parliamental politics make it impossible to react to any complex, even if lethal threats. The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime in its own heartland for a decade now, and all they can do are angry notices an…

Don't underestimate the EU. It's a slow beast but it can bear a grudge. The language used to address Hungary is slowly becoming more and more aggressive. A head of state from a small EU country explicitly called for Hungary to leave.

You also have to remember that the EU is an union of sovereign countries. Plenty can be done by EU members where the EU is powerless. History shows that messing with France and Germany can be costly.

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#252

Post by crossroadsguy »

Dah00n wrote: post #222
xiphias2 wrote: post #3

Orban used EU money to take total control of the country (media, poor voters). If EU lets China come into Hungary, it will backfire for the whole EU in my opinion.

I don't know much about Hungary so could you provide a reason why it is bad "if EU lets China come into Hungary"? Unless it is because China Bad, then I'm not interested, but I'm hoping for something more interesting than that. Personally I would hate to see EU close in on itself and so it needs to align with outsiders. China seems just as good a partner as the other big markets to me.

You want someone to explain to you why a certain wine tastes nice but you’ve added a condition that the explanation must not include the most fundamental nature of its taste.

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#253

Post by rjsw »

joelbluminator wrote: post #201
andrepd wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Iran afaik was a full blown dictatorship before the islamic revolution Yes, but he was talking about before that wasn't he? Iran was a democracy (flawed, but still) before the US–UK alliance overthrew the parliamentary system and installed a puppet dictator, to keep stealing their oil.

I'm no expert on the history of Iran, but no, it doesn't seem it ever was (Most countries in the region ever were or are one now). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Imperial_S... "The reign of Reza Shah was totalitarian and dictatorial at a time when totalitarian governments and dictatorships were common in the Middle East and the world[8] and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was some years i…

It was more of a democracy before the 1953 coup [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#254

Post by sudosysgen »

joelbluminator wrote: post #201
andrepd wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Iran afaik was a full blown dictatorship before the islamic revolution Yes, but he was talking about before that wasn't he? Iran was a democracy (flawed, but still) before the US–UK alliance overthrew the parliamentary system and installed a puppet dictator, to keep stealing their oil.

I'm no expert on the history of Iran, but no, it doesn't seem it ever was (Most countries in the region ever were or are one now). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Imperial_S... "The reign of Reza Shah was totalitarian and dictatorial at a time when totalitarian governments and dictatorships were common in the Middle East and the world[8] and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was some years i…

Again, you've got the wrong time period.

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#255

Post by giorgioz »

Found this article/podcast about how to protect itself a bit more more Pegasus: https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-s...

Isn't Android and iOS supposed to investigate what's the security vulnerability that allows the remote hacking through SMS and patch it?

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#256

Post by reader_mode »

johnnycerberus wrote: post #189
reader_mode wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU botched acquiring vaccine compares to most developed countries by months, in no small part due to the retarded mindset that pharma companies shouldn't profit off of this and trying to renegotiate prices forever (overriding some countries who tried to acquire it individually and would have gotten it faster). Measures were not dictated by EU, each country decided it's own policy.

Pharma companies should not profit off pandemics. It is an ethical thing to do. And beside that, I know that drug companies are heavily subsidised by state and their research is mostly done with tax-exempt money.

Profit is the strongest market incentive, you want them to profit and invest full on in this kind of research. And pharma profits insanely is still negligible to the loss due to delaying vaccine deployment, spending any nin-trivial amount of time negotiating prices is full on retarded from that perspective, not to mention protecting vulnerable groups ASAP.

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#257

Post by inglor_cz »

goodpoint wrote: post #228
inglor_cz wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maybe, but what "tribe" are you part of is completely fluid" There is a lot of friction when changing tribes. Especially if it means changing your religion, language and culture. Few people can make that jump. I would not call this "completely fluid".

On the contrary, studies clearly show that people are aligning themselves more and more with "tribes" that are based on a geographic area. Cheap travel and social networks made it possible. We are doing it right now on HN.

This only really concerns highly educated professionals who can speak fluent English or other lingua franca. We on the HN are precisely such a self-selected subset.

But European electorates as such (and we are talking about the EU here) do not, in the big picture, resemble this self-selected elite, and elected politicians must take that into account or risk growth of populist parties thriving on topics where the general population and the elite disagrees.

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#258

Post by pessimizer »

joelbluminator wrote: post #156
mola wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the area, I agree. But Netanyahu chose to spurn democratic European allies and allign Israel with Hungary and Poland. Basically he made western Europe an enemy of Israel because he chose settlements over a peace process, to alleviate the foreign pressure he alligned Israel with Hungary and Poland, also helping Russia with its cold European conflict. > Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia? How's that relevant…

I'm not fishing for hypocrisy, that's quite a strong word. But there is some bias I'm sensing here. You would probably never say "Obama's legacy is arming dictators" though it's part of his legacy for sure. Merkel's as well. > And a tradition of freedom and democracy The U.S was a de facto apartheid state until the 60s. The UK castrated gays up until quite recently. Liberal democracy as we know it today is quite new.…

US and UK policy isn't at all confused about that - Israel couldn't operate the way it does without our support and direct subsidy. Both countries also use Israeli crowd control and intelligence tech on their domestic populations, just like all of those Sunni royal families attacking their Shia populations. It's only the West Wing fans that are confused about how their country works.

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#259

Post by dalbasal »

bwb wrote: post #11

I always am amazed by how many people value their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them... isn't it time to up our game as humans and start thinking bigger? Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? Nationalism is an ancient mentality, get rid of it and start moving into larger groups who can do more. I keep reading about the North American Allia…

>> Nationalism is an ancient mentality

In some sense, maybe... The foundations are ancient. But...

The "world order" where the globe is divided into nation states is quite new. Before that, multinational empires were the dominant mode. We tend to think of west european empires as the canonical: french, british and spanish. These empires had clear "home countries," so the dynamic was "nation ruling other nations."

Other empires were more ambiguous. EG the Austro Hungarian Empire & the Ottoman empires. They had capitals, centres of power and such. But, geographic and ethnic national boundaries were much fuzzier within these empires.

The border changes, forced migrations and ethnic cleansing that created the modern nation state world happened mostly within the last 100 years. Take Warsaw, for example. Before WW2, ethnic Poles were about 50% of the population. Jews & Germans were the next biggest groups. This was typical of european cities. After the war, Warsaw and Poland within its new borders was/is >90% Polish. Also typical. Meanwhile, countries like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland & Belgium that didn't fit into the "nation state" template were pretty unstable.

The USSR's dissolution pretty much cemented a world order where nation states dominate. That's recent.

What you are advocating for is, by some definition, the establishment of an EU Empire. Maybe a democratic empire is possible, but we don't really have example to draw on.

Re: Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

#260

Post by egeozcan »

bluthund wrote: post #245
johnnycerberus wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it can be a federation of states. Hopefully, that will happen.

Hopefully that never happens. Hopefully more Hungary's emerge. Hopefully more Western countries start actually serving their people Hopefully nationalism crushes this perverse anti Western virus which has taken over the once greatest nations in the world

In this day and age, don't people like you read/watch some world history? What you are saying seems so narrow-minded (ignoring the racist undertone), it makes me confused.
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