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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

#61

Post by blocked_again »

reader_mode wrote: post #43
blocked_again wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No your logic was it's not possible to have a country with so much diversity. I just showed a counter example.

I know very little about history of India or the culture, but I guarantee you that creating such entity would result in a civil war, demonstrated throughout European history.

Yeah. I also don't think it's probably a good idea for the EU to become a country. Countries have a lot more power, autonomy etc which states lack. I think the current system of EU is pretty good.

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

#62

Post by rini17 »

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…

"Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4"

Oversimplified view. There was common interest of V4 against accepting refugees, but Czech & Slovak rep. generally support EU's side in judicial and media independence issues.

Elsewhere, German automakers have vast investments in the eastern EU and they have been holding Merkel back against Orban, together with conservative faction of CDU.

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

#63

Post by Arun2009 »

blocked_again wrote: post #27
reader_mode wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? Because outside of your bubble nobody wants this. A random person from Bulgaria is going to have a very different culture from a random person from Netherlands. What do you think happens with power in such conglomerate ? If you want to see what happens when you create a forced conglomerate of different nations (but still more simi…

India does this already. With 3x more population and probably has much more diversity and cultural differences than EU.

The world's second largest standing army that can be called to crush insurgencies also helps.

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

#64

Post by mod50ack »

paganel wrote: post #32
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…

> The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively, with no fraud allegations involved (unlike what currently happens in the US, I'm talking about election fraud allegations). What's with this "Belorussian-style regime" nonsense?

Fidesz did win the last election. Part of this has to do with a number of scandals from the previous Socialist government (before 2010), part of this has to do with the hybrid electoral system (half gerrymandered FPTF, half proportional party-list) and part of this has to do with horrendous organization of all non-Fidesz parties.

Now all the major opposition parties have united into a single electoral slate for the next election. Primary elections are being held for the first time to determine the compositions of the electoral slate. One minor problem is that the coalition would be very incongruous. But hey, still gonna vote for them (personal opinion).

But while it is not a dictatorship, it is, as Orbán himself puts it, an "illiberal democracy". And the government's attitudes and laws create a ton of problems. And that's not even getting into the corruption and so on...

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

#65

Post by ReptileMan »

tiborsaas wrote: post #55
paganel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively, with no fraud allegations involved (unlike what currently happens in the US, I'm talking about election fraud allegations). What's with this "Belorussian-style regime" nonsense?

While I wouldn't call if a fraud, but they skewed with the election system to bend it towards in their favour. They for example introduced monetary support for small parties in a way that made it really easy to commit fraud, which surprisingly did happen at a large scale. It also resulted in people voting for those fake parties and not on the opposition with real power. They won 2/3 power like this. "Belorussian-styl…

[flagged]

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

#66

Post by Hokusai »

jeroenhd wrote: post #42
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…

People are tribal by nature. They will get into fights because their neighbour supports the "wrong" sports club, and you can extend that up to any level. Within a country there's city vs city, city vs countryside, and above country level there's EU vs US, or "the west" vs "the east". People group together with others that share certain cultural values. Ever since borders, passports and standard languages have been th…

> People are tribal by nature.

Maybe, but what "tribe" are you part of is completely fluid. Your tribe can be extremely inclusive or exclusive.

> Grand unification of humanity is a good ideal, one we should work towards, but it's not something that will be possible within our lifetimes.

And it is quite of inevitable as communication and travel becomes cheaper.

> I don't want a European superstate because I disagree with most people that would live in it. My ideals would no longer be represented by my government. I think that's enough reason not to go for complete European unification.

That is easily an argument against any form of government. No country would exist this way for good or bad. But they exists. As you said, bigger communities are a matter of time. What it would have been an impossible union 100 years ago it makes a lot of sense today.

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

#67

Post by jsbdk »

dessant wrote: post #58
paganel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively, with no fraud allegations involved (unlike what currently happens in the US, I'm talking about election fraud allegations). What's with this "Belorussian-style regime" nonsense?

People voting themselves right to the edge of a totalitarian regime does not make that criticism any less legitimate.

For many people, any political change that is not a move towards an even more liberal view of the world is automatically authoritarianism.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

dstick wrote: post #5
NicoJuicy wrote: post #2

Orbán is a cancer on Europe, i really the EU has a decent response this time.

I read in the newspaper today that the EU issued an ultimatum to Poland: get rid of the unlawful special court that deems itself above the EU law, or face repercussions. Finally they're growing some teeth. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/europea... However, after Googling for an online source, I came across this article about another ultimatum for justice reform in 2017, and things only got worse…

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by mod50ack »

underscore_ku wrote: post #47
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…

EU is as helpless as USA. what would US of A do with a rogue Texas? nothing

Little-known fact, this actually occurred before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

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

#70

Post by poisonborz »

paganel wrote: post #32
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…

> The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime Afaik Orban's party has won the last rounds of elections pretty conclusively, with no fraud allegations involved (unlike what currently happens in the US, I'm talking about election fraud allegations). What's with this "Belorussian-style regime" nonsense?

Sure they did. I also think Lukashenko would have also won most of his elections if they were democratic, losing maybe only the last one marginally. Same with the Chinese communist party. To no surprise - if your people sit on all levels of the government, if you control the media and the public discourse, if you persecute anyone having any chance against you, you win. This doesn't mean other countries need to support this. And voicing an opinion against these tactics isn't "meddling in national affairs" as these governments like to tout.
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