Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

America looks destined to become not just self-sufficient in energy, but a net exporter of energy by 2020. - just as fossil fuels lose their significance?

The Americans are pushing at a door already open due to those countries' anxieties about their giant neighbour - until Trump pulled it shut.

Destroyers for Bases Agreement, autumn 1940

In 1903 America signed a treaty leasing it exclusive rights to the Panama Canal.

[Cuba controls access to the exit and entry route for the port of New Orleans]

However, in the twenty-first century, in the south-west the cultural historical memory of the region as Hispanic land is likely to resurface, as ... Hispanics will be the majority population in a few decades.

[The Monroe Doctrine] boiled down to warning the European powers that they could no longer seek land in the western hemisphere...

[In the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819] The Spanish accepted that the USA would have jurisdiction in the far west above the 42nd parallel on what is the border of California and Oregon.

It is only a century since the most recent humiliation of the rape of China by foreign powers, for Beijing, unity and economic progress are priorities well ahead of democratic principles. - Whig view of history?

Once they had pulled the peoples apart, it didn't take them much to then push them against each other. - Brexit?

Because while EU has no need to legitimise or delegitimise the orange or rainbow revolutions or regime changes outside the EU, should such events occur within the community, there is a need to address the problem of legitimacy of democracy not having a legal continuity...

In places where the community of values is lacking, it is unable to prevent the emergence of an autocratic regime.

[The advent of a two speed Europe will lead to policy change] instead of consolidating democracies in this buffer zone at a high cost, they will pacify semi-autocratic regimes at a minimal cost.

...in the European Union, no political intervention in the economy is capable of preventing firms from diverting their capital and citizens from diverting their savings abroad or emigrating in response.

"... the fact remains that Hungary has been unable to narrow its lag behind the founding EU member states over the past yerars" - the miscalculation of my life

The question is how long can the operators of the mafia state use the refined tools of repression and brainwashing to maintain the political passivity of those struggling to get by...? - longer now that Europe is climbing out of recession.

the number of crimes that were reported but later rejected by the authorities has tripled, and the rate of investigations that were started but then terminated has doubled.

the number of crimes reported between 2010-2013 for three types of criminal activities related to corruption...decreased to one-half to one-third of the amount of the preceding four years. - the level of corruption prior to 2010 was a cause of Fidesz's landslide in the election that year.

expropriating private enterprises (e.g. 300-400 private companies by media estimates...

...it is evident that the institutions of public authority are not guardians of legality and equality before the law, but just the opposite: institutionalised bodies serving the arbitrariness of personal interests. - A question of degree rather than of quality?

These aliens outside the family are rival political forces, autonomous civil organisations, competitive entrepreneurs who do not depend on the state, and the independent press.

Boston Politics - The Creativity of Power, Tilo Schabert

Of course, if you look at it from America, this is crony capitalism. Personalised tenders, rigged competitions, fixed aids. But there's no other way. Without this [the] Hungarian economy will never be strong.

the meaning of the "nation" is narrowed down to the adopted political family

in 2014 the number of Hungarians employed in western countries ran to at least 300,000 and their remittances...approx 410 million euros.

Any intellectual critical of the government of the government can become a "Jew" ... anyone poor can become a "Gypsy",

The weakness of rational criticism [is] that critics try to take the concepts used in the communication of the mafia state at face value rather than interpret them in the actual context of their meaning.

One only need to think of the Fiscal Council dominated by Fidesz, not approving the budget of a new none Fidesz government.

The votes of ethnic voters outside of Hungary cannot be verified - their names are protected by the Government,

The introduction of single round elections in place of two round elections force the democratic opposition to make their coalitions in advance, that is to share the cake before they had a chance to match their strengths by the voters.