Posts
Hi FerFAL,
First of all, thanks a lot for all the info and tips you wrote about
survival, unfortunately it seems that we here in Hungary will need
them, too.
Hungary is just a small country in mid-eastern Europe, which seemingly
dropped its ex-communist government back in '89, but now is going
through the same things that lead to the Argentinean crisis in '01.
Even though our problems look similar to your ones, there are some
differences in the social and economic states, so we face a somewhat
darker future. In fact, if you are curious about what would have
happened to you if you hadn't succeeded in sacking president de la
Rua, all you've got to do is to track the news about us now.
Events here went along just as in the documentary 'MemorÃa del
saqueo': the liberation of the market, privatisation of strategically
important state-owned companies for ridiculous prices, demolishing the
local industry and agriculture by artificially low import prices,
indebting the country by IMF loans (the latest one is granted for
12300 million USD), politicians lying to their voters, rising
inflation of the currency, corruption and all the familiar stuff.
However, it seems that IMF and their staff learned some of their
failure in Argentina, and so they prepared the situation here more
precisely. They failed in your country because your people was able to
unite and stand up on behalf of Argentina as one, and so was able to
block and invalidate the deeds that would deprive the country of all
its independence and sovereignity. Precisely this is what it's
prevented here: the unity of people.
Public education and national culture was suppressed slowly and
quietly, during the last decade the requirements in schools are
decreased constantly and all efforts were taken to prevent the youth
to from knowing the local history and culture, all in order to prevent
them having some national identity feeling that could make us unite.
'Divide et impera' - the old principle is working again. Just imagine
what could your revolution in '01 achieve if entrepreneurs would have
blamed and acted against blue-collar workers, pensioners against
students, government employees against the rest, and just plainly
everyone against the others.
To add some details to the picture, we have an ethnic minority (about
10% of the people) here who traditionally have no intent to integrate
themselves to the society, 70-80% of the criminals(!) come from among
them, their unemployment rate is above 80%. Now, our jurisdiction
became so P.C., that judges charging the criminals of these people are
banned as racists, so this minority is now virtually unpunishable. The
social security system has changed the rules so that maternity
benefits are increasing by the number of children in such a way that:
- if you have no children and work hard, you can earn your living
- if you have 1..2 children, no matter how hard you work, you can't
afford a normal style of life (education for the kids, etc.)
- if you have 4+ children, even if you don't work at all, you got
more benefits than the the salary of the ones who work for it
Considering these, guess what goes on, especially in the rural parts
of the country. Our average fertility rate is about 1.9, while for
these people it is above 3.0, and this is their 3rd generation who
completely lives on grants and supports, so now more than 50% of the
children below 8 years are of them. The more of the old-style working
people retire/die, the less people are producing any values, the less
money is present for financing the benefits/supports, the more the
dissatisfaction grows, the higher the crime rate goes, etc. Now it
goes like if they stab you in the back then in the courtroom you'll be
called the one who provoked, and if you defend yourself against them
then you'll be called the racist who attacked. If you get into a brawl
with them, you'll end up either robbed/raped/injured/dead or charged
at the maximum, and your existence is just enough reason for them for
a brawl. (I know: S.S.S. - somewhat hard with bare hands :(...)
But -back to the IMF part of the story- now that it is clear that
without a nationally owned industry and agriculture only the IMF loans
are preventing the state from going bankrupt, they openly forced their
'recommendations' on us. (Well, considering the un-loyalty of our
leaders toward the country, it needn't be forced that strong...)
Among these 'recommendations' are:
- government-issued subsidies to the farmers to be ceased at once
- gov.-guaranteed price for stocks of banks that got instable due to
the financial crisis
- retirement age to be raised to 65 years (avg. life expectancy for
men is 68 years here...)
- support for young couples for buying/building houses to be stopped
- duration of the maternity benefits to be decremented to two years
- sickness allowance to be reduced to 60% of the salary
- all of these while the all-in tax rate for the average salary
(including income tax, mandatory social security contributions, VAT,
etc.) is 74% (!)
- all of these are ratified without any public voting, just as asking
for IMF loans was
The opposition in the parliament certainly does nothing against it,
they belong to the same group as the government, only the names and
the campaign slogans differ...
Since all these bills have passed our legislation, I have to phrase in
past tense: my country has lost the sovereignity of controlling the
finance, the industry, the agriculture, the legislature, the
education, and so is deprived of any means of supporting even the
basic needs of the people - the most important task of any government
structure. What we became here is called 'colony', only that it isn't
declared as such in the public.
Attempts were taken in the last 3 years to overthrow this system by
public force, however it soon got evident that the only expenses the
government didn't reduce was for the riot control equipment and
personnel of the police... Btw., owning small firearms is completely
forbidden for citizens here (2..8 years of prison if caught having
one), even knives longer than 7 cm are considered as 'especially
dangerous' and so carrying of them on you is illegal also...
Chances for an effective uprising is pretty low because the local
internal intelligence service had its agents in most of the organising
public groups, so there is a widespread distrust even among the
discontent people. As individuals we can't do any useful, but as soon
as more than 100 people join together, the whole group is lead astray,
sometimes even against other groups.
Peaceful demonstrations are meaningless, and even so, on every one
there are agent provocateurs who will evidently 'attack' the cops in
order to provide legal ground for disbanding the demonstration and
arresting people at random.
To make things even worse, the 20% of the population lives in the
capitol and the rest gets the news about the situation only through
the TV box and so they are completely mislead about the situation by
the manipulated media.
No matter how wrong it gets, it is simply impossible to get even 50000
people to stand up for any goal and keep them up for even a week, the
society is completely individualised, with noone trustworthy enough
for being a leader to be followed.
To sum the things up: it looks that our colonial status is getting
clearer and clearer and I frankly see no solution for it. Anyway, if
you are interested in the outcomes of this little social experiment
here, just keep an eye on the news, but have a tight filter of mind
because most of the information gets through only in a heavily
manipulated way.
Well, at worst we may provide some bad examples for a future book of yours :)...
Regards,
xxxx xxxxx
Ps.: Please remove the name; since now our cops already seem to be
able to read :), and our government even managed to have
trans-continentally hosted news sites shut down, I just don't trust
them even this much.
First of all, thanks a lot for all the info and tips you wrote about
survival, unfortunately it seems that we here in Hungary will need
them, too.
Hungary is just a small country in mid-eastern Europe, which seemingly
dropped its ex-communist government back in '89, but now is going
through the same things that lead to the Argentinean crisis in '01.
Even though our problems look similar to your ones, there are some
differences in the social and economic states, so we face a somewhat
darker future. In fact, if you are curious about what would have
happened to you if you hadn't succeeded in sacking president de la
Rua, all you've got to do is to track the news about us now.
Events here went along just as in the documentary 'MemorÃa del
saqueo': the liberation of the market, privatisation of strategically
important state-owned companies for ridiculous prices, demolishing the
local industry and agriculture by artificially low import prices,
indebting the country by IMF loans (the latest one is granted for
12300 million USD), politicians lying to their voters, rising
inflation of the currency, corruption and all the familiar stuff.
However, it seems that IMF and their staff learned some of their
failure in Argentina, and so they prepared the situation here more
precisely. They failed in your country because your people was able to
unite and stand up on behalf of Argentina as one, and so was able to
block and invalidate the deeds that would deprive the country of all
its independence and sovereignity. Precisely this is what it's
prevented here: the unity of people.
Public education and national culture was suppressed slowly and
quietly, during the last decade the requirements in schools are
decreased constantly and all efforts were taken to prevent the youth
to from knowing the local history and culture, all in order to prevent
them having some national identity feeling that could make us unite.
'Divide et impera' - the old principle is working again. Just imagine
what could your revolution in '01 achieve if entrepreneurs would have
blamed and acted against blue-collar workers, pensioners against
students, government employees against the rest, and just plainly
everyone against the others.
To add some details to the picture, we have an ethnic minority (about
10% of the people) here who traditionally have no intent to integrate
themselves to the society, 70-80% of the criminals(!) come from among
them, their unemployment rate is above 80%. Now, our jurisdiction
became so P.C., that judges charging the criminals of these people are
banned as racists, so this minority is now virtually unpunishable. The
social security system has changed the rules so that maternity
benefits are increasing by the number of children in such a way that:
- if you have no children and work hard, you can earn your living
- if you have 1..2 children, no matter how hard you work, you can't
afford a normal style of life (education for the kids, etc.)
- if you have 4+ children, even if you don't work at all, you got
more benefits than the the salary of the ones who work for it
Considering these, guess what goes on, especially in the rural parts
of the country. Our average fertility rate is about 1.9, while for
these people it is above 3.0, and this is their 3rd generation who
completely lives on grants and supports, so now more than 50% of the
children below 8 years are of them. The more of the old-style working
people retire/die, the less people are producing any values, the less
money is present for financing the benefits/supports, the more the
dissatisfaction grows, the higher the crime rate goes, etc. Now it
goes like if they stab you in the back then in the courtroom you'll be
called the one who provoked, and if you defend yourself against them
then you'll be called the racist who attacked. If you get into a brawl
with them, you'll end up either robbed/raped/injured/dead or charged
at the maximum, and your existence is just enough reason for them for
a brawl. (I know: S.S.S. - somewhat hard with bare hands :(...)
But -back to the IMF part of the story- now that it is clear that
without a nationally owned industry and agriculture only the IMF loans
are preventing the state from going bankrupt, they openly forced their
'recommendations' on us. (Well, considering the un-loyalty of our
leaders toward the country, it needn't be forced that strong...)
Among these 'recommendations' are:
- government-issued subsidies to the farmers to be ceased at once
- gov.-guaranteed price for stocks of banks that got instable due to
the financial crisis
- retirement age to be raised to 65 years (avg. life expectancy for
men is 68 years here...)
- support for young couples for buying/building houses to be stopped
- duration of the maternity benefits to be decremented to two years
- sickness allowance to be reduced to 60% of the salary
- all of these while the all-in tax rate for the average salary
(including income tax, mandatory social security contributions, VAT,
etc.) is 74% (!)
- all of these are ratified without any public voting, just as asking
for IMF loans was
The opposition in the parliament certainly does nothing against it,
they belong to the same group as the government, only the names and
the campaign slogans differ...
Since all these bills have passed our legislation, I have to phrase in
past tense: my country has lost the sovereignity of controlling the
finance, the industry, the agriculture, the legislature, the
education, and so is deprived of any means of supporting even the
basic needs of the people - the most important task of any government
structure. What we became here is called 'colony', only that it isn't
declared as such in the public.
Attempts were taken in the last 3 years to overthrow this system by
public force, however it soon got evident that the only expenses the
government didn't reduce was for the riot control equipment and
personnel of the police... Btw., owning small firearms is completely
forbidden for citizens here (2..8 years of prison if caught having
one), even knives longer than 7 cm are considered as 'especially
dangerous' and so carrying of them on you is illegal also...
Chances for an effective uprising is pretty low because the local
internal intelligence service had its agents in most of the organising
public groups, so there is a widespread distrust even among the
discontent people. As individuals we can't do any useful, but as soon
as more than 100 people join together, the whole group is lead astray,
sometimes even against other groups.
Peaceful demonstrations are meaningless, and even so, on every one
there are agent provocateurs who will evidently 'attack' the cops in
order to provide legal ground for disbanding the demonstration and
arresting people at random.
To make things even worse, the 20% of the population lives in the
capitol and the rest gets the news about the situation only through
the TV box and so they are completely mislead about the situation by
the manipulated media.
No matter how wrong it gets, it is simply impossible to get even 50000
people to stand up for any goal and keep them up for even a week, the
society is completely individualised, with noone trustworthy enough
for being a leader to be followed.
To sum the things up: it looks that our colonial status is getting
clearer and clearer and I frankly see no solution for it. Anyway, if
you are interested in the outcomes of this little social experiment
here, just keep an eye on the news, but have a tight filter of mind
because most of the information gets through only in a heavily
manipulated way.
Well, at worst we may provide some bad examples for a future book of yours :)...
Regards,
xxxx xxxxx
Ps.: Please remove the name; since now our cops already seem to be
able to read :), and our government even managed to have
trans-continentally hosted news sites shut down, I just don't trust
them even this much.
Thank you so much for your email. It's sad to see what is going on around the world.
Seems its always the same mechanism, to keep countries poor and the population divided and ignorant so they can't even tell the difference.
Be strong and dont give up!
FerFAL
