Bravo, Greg, you quoted in accurately and precisely.  Most people
who have'nt read THE LEVIANTHAN leave out the "solitary" part as well as
the other part which shows Hobbes' feeling of desolation at the horrors
he witnessed in the English Civil War.

--
Glen D. Camp
Professor of Political Science
Bryant College
401-232-6246
>

On Tue, 25 Oct 1994  wrote:

> Hobbes wrote:
>
> No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all,
> continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life
> of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
>
> --Greg
>

Joe--

Yeah, I heard about Giuliani supporting Cuomo, but that's probably because
he's had a long feud with D'Amato, which as far as I'm concerned is a big plus
for Giuliani. Al "Pitbull" D'Amato is an embarrassment to the State of New York
as well as a crass thug and third-rate sleazebucket, and I may be leaning
against Pataki for that very reason!

I'm also not crazy about Pataki's support for the death penalty, which I find
to be too *lenient* a punishment for those to which it would apply. I prefer
life at extremely hard labor.

Cheers,
Marc Nasdor

ELECTIONS OR DEMOCRACY?

Copyright c 1994 by Miklos N. Szilagyi

        We are told that we had to go to Haiti to restore democracy there.
It would be more accurate to say that we went to restore an elected
government.
        There is a huge difference between elections and democracy.
An election is a one-time act; democracy is continuous participation
in public affairs. Elections are based on manipulated television pictures
and 30-second sound bites; the essence of democracy is information and
concern for the public good.
        There have been regular elections in the most undemocratic
countries of the world, like the communist German *Democratic* Republic.
On the other hand, Confucian China was practicing almost equal access to
public offices for 2500 years without ever holding any elections.
        Democracy is much more than elections. It is the self-government
of informed and concerned citizens. Democracy is impossible without
continuous, active participation at all levels. Democracy is only possible
in highly cultured free societies where people respect each other, the
public institutions, and the rule of law. It is based on peaceful
negotiations, cooperation, and compromise. It also includes wide-range
consultations and public criticism of both elected and appointed officials.
        Public policies should be determined by reason and argument, not by
counting noses. The number of votes for or against an idea or a person has
nothing to do with the merits of that idea or person. Elections in their
present form are as if two foxes and one rabbit were to vote on what to
have for breakfast.
        We all know that only those candidates have a chance to be elected
who have the support of the powerful special interest groups and the media.
As a result, we do not have a real choice at elections. No matter whom we
elect, the interests of the country will never be as important as the
special interests of those who select and support the representatives.
The common interest is not represented at all. As the country becomes
increasingly fragmented, it will be increasingly difficult even to define
this common interest.
        When everybody is somebody, then nobody is anybody: the right to
vote has lost its value. A narrower suffrage meant a certain prestige that
is lost now. Universal suffrage that exists today includes an unduly large
segment of the population who have little idea either about the issues or
about the candidates. According to a 1986 Hearst Corporation poll, 45% of
Americans believe that the communist slogan "From each according to his
ability, to each according to his need" is part of our own Constitution.
Such people are incapable of a rational choice; they become tools in the
hands of manipulators who try to control public opinion. The universal
suffrage would make better sense in case of an informed and educated
citizenry. Therefore, political reform should start with a reformed
educational system.
        The present system of choosing office holders is unfair, and it is
not accessible for most people. It is virtually impossible to get elected
unless the candidate is supported by one of the two big parties or some
powerful special interest group. Ideas do not count, money does.
        Campaign costs are growing like a cancer. To get elected to the
House of Representatives one has to raise about $300,000. A Senate seat
costs about $4 million. There are only two ways to raise that much money.
Either you are so rich that you can afford to pay it from your own pocket,
or you  rely on the special interest groups. Political campaigns are not
about ideas or issues but about visual images that can be manipulated at
the will of the media. The money is mostly used for polling people's
sentiments, fitting the politicians' images to the results of the polls,
and for senseless negative television commercials.
        The big campaign providers argue that by contributing money they
exercise their fundamental right to participate in the political process.
This is a hypocritical and false statement. Manipulating public opinion is
coercion, buying politicians is immoral.
        Money should be eliminated from the political process and replaced
with an independent information system to provide a broad range of political
choices. This information system should be provided free of charge to
express the views of anyone who has the qualifications necessary to run for
office. Government would have no control over the ideas transmitted.
        Paid political advertisements and financial campaign contributions
from individuals, political action committees, or corporations should be
prohibited as clear examples of coercion and manipulation. The costs of all
political campaigns should be financed by the public. All qualified
candidates must be put on equal budgets. False campaign statements should
be punished by law as any other false advertising.
        All political offices should be accessible to every citizen who
meets the constitutional requirements. Participation should be open to any
qualified person. To become a candidate for elected office, one should meet
only some elementary standards, e.g., collecting a small number of
nominating signatures, and passing a simple examination on basic historical,
cultural, and political issues.
        As an additional step, the "None of the Above" option should be
included in the election procedure. If more people vote for this option
than for any of the candidates, new elections should be held where none of
the rejected candidates could participate. This would be a powerful and
simple way to remove unfit people from political office.
        If none of the above proposals can be accepted, then even selection
of office-holders by a lottery would be a better system than the existing
one.
        We need a national commitment to political reform. When Americans
perceive the alarming extent of the system's failure and the destructive
threat it poses to the society, we must start to work to bring about the
necessary changes. This effort will require traditional American idealism,
energy, persistence, and practicality.

Excerpted from the author's book
How To Save Our Country: A Nonpartisan Vision for Change
(Pallas Press, POBox 64921, Tucson, AZ 85728).

>Hobbes wrote:
>
>No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all,
>continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life
>of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
>
>--Greg

Thank you Greg for citing the  original quotation.

But be aware that Hobbes was wrong.  He thought that society came to be
after some mythical social contract, which institutionalized the only
propety system he could conceive of, namely, bourgeois property relations.
  Anthropology has shown that this is not only not true of homo sapiens
sapiens but not even true of homo habilis or zinjanthropus, for that
matter.  The nearest to human primate species that is not social is the
orangutan. Humans have been  social animals from the beginning, and though
Marx's notion of primitive communism is also wrong, it is closer to reality
than Hobbs' concept.  Infact, Richard Leakey points out, that one of the
distinguishing characteristics and survival advantages of the species Lucy
belonged to, was the sharing of food at camp sites, the traces of which can
still be seen in the Ethiopin desert.

>@> Tibor Benke                               (^)%(#)
>@> Graduate Student (MA program)
>@> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
>@> Simon Fraser University,
>@> Burnaby, B.C., Canada. V5A 1S6

The October 22 issue of HVG has a long letter to the editor by Pe1ter
Gosztonyi, who asks what is all this foot-dragging with the post-56 red
terror trials. (As I said earlier, I view these trials as a lithmus test for
the independence of the judiciary from the executive, and I agree with the
substance of what Gosztonyi says, but this is not why I'm posting.) The
reson for this post is that at the end he describes himself as a "veteran of
1956". What did he do?

I first came across the name of this man in the seventies, when E1let e1s
Irodalom carried a bunch of interviews with him about historical matters.
This was at a time when the name of hard-line 56-ers was still taboo, and
E1S wouldn't have touched an interview with (say) Pongra1tz with a ten-feet
pole. Cold warriors from Edward Teller to Pe1ter Kende were not to be
discussed -- if Gosztonyi was published this proves that as far as the
Ka1da1r-regime was concerned, he was not particularly active in 1956 and
afterwards. So how does he now become a "veteran of 56"? Or was the Acze1l
era's most typical periodical, E1S, a bit more tolerant than I'm willing to
grant?

On a related matter, I find the foot-dragging vis-a-vis the lustration law
even more distasteful. The law, though not perfect, is quite reasonable.  It
is in the national interest to have informers, who spied on their fellows
and might be spying on them still for all we know, removed from positions of
responsibility. As far as I'm concerned, this is a much more urgent matter
than the punishment of aging criminals, and with a great deal of current
relevance, especially with MSZP back in power.

On an unrelated matter let me thank E1va Balogh (author of an even better
letter to HVG a few weeks ago!) for her summary of the fate of Kun's
cabinet. Since she put down "must've been a real rat" to the person
preceding Gyo2rgy Luka1cs, I'm tempted to ask why not Luka1cs himself?  To
me it is one of the great mysteries how a person of Luka1cs' stature could
come back from the SU, knowing full well about the terror, the purges, the
gulag, and lend his reputation (not to speak of his organizational powers)
to the creation of the same thing. Having read two studies on the matter by
Eo2rsi, I'm still waiting for a new Koestler to get into this...

Andra1s Kornai

In article > Gabor Barsai,
 writes:

>What I underlined (underscored, whatever) is not very universal
statement, is
>it? I inserted the rest so you wouldn't complain "it's out of text".
Obviously,
>some of what ya write is unfortunately true. But some of what you write
is just
>plain old BS.

i at least would appreciate if you would be

i.    more explicit about what you accept as being true in my postings
ii.   indicate which parts you think deserve to be lebelled "bs"
iii.  indicate why you believe this last epithet to be warranted.

where i come from, it is usually not necessary to ask an opponent
in a debate to substantiate his/her points: that is considered to
be a normal part of rational discourse. most of us would be embarrassed
if such a request were felt to be necessary by one of the other
participants.

d.a.

Regarding the source trail on the relative death tolls of the "Red "
and the "White",

The source both Tokes and Kovrig in his History of the Hungarian Communist
Party (published by the Hoover Institution) cite is a publication (I'm
sorry, but I left all my Hungary books in Washington, and can't look it
up myself) in Budapest in 1922 or 1923 if memory serves.  Someone with a
decent library might double check this?  I assume if it was published there
and then it might even have "semi-official" status, but who knows unless
it's further verified?

Sincerely, Hugh Agnew

Not the least tragic fate was that of the Jews in the Transylvanian
territories, discriminated against from 1920-1940 by the Romanians as
Magyars, then deported as "dirty Jews" to their deaths.

Sincerely,

Hugh Agnew

Report on Human Rights in Hungary 1993.
U.S. State Department.

Section 5  Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion,
Disability, Language, or Social Status [skip]

     National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities
[skip]

The Jewish community in Hungary, although generally well
assimilated, was the target of occasional anti-Semitic
expression, including the desecration in June of  a Jewish
cemetery in Eger, for which several youths were arrested and
charged.  Jews are well represented in politics, the media,
culture, and business.  Many Hungarians, however, are concerned
that, while the Government does not actively condone anti-Semitic
activities, its failure to disassociate itself quickly and
clearly from the anti-Semitic statements of Istvan Csurka
reflected a lack of sensitivity.  A rightwing populist, Csurka
was able to retain his position as vice  president of the ruling
party for several months after his statements were published.
Before the MDF could expel him, Csurka went on to form his own
new right wing party and group in Parliament.
Skinheads and neo-Nazi sympathizers continued physically to
assault Jews and people of color.  Sentences in skinhead attacks
are relatively light, especially wh en the defendants are minors.
In June three youths convicted of attacking and severely beating
two Pakistani men in November 1990 were sentenced to 8 months in
jail; the court then suspended the sentences and gave the youths
2 years' probation.  Although investigations of reported crimes
were usually conducted, convic ted criminals were rarely sent to
prison.  The resulting perception of the judicial system's de
facto tolerance of racist crimes creates an atmosphere conducive
to further acts of skinhead violence.  The Martin Luther King
Organization (MLKO), which documents assaults on foreigners of
color (but not anti-Semitic incide nts), recorded about 20
separate attacks in 1993, down from 78 in 1992.  MLKO sources
commented, however, that they believe many cases go unreported,
that polic e do not seem inclined to intervene, and that the
decline in the number of attacks is primarily due to the lower
number of foreign students in Hungary.  The greatest decline has
been in the number of African students; while  there were 600
Sudanese students in Hungary 2 years ago, MLKO sources say there
are now barely 60.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Zoli Fekete">
Subject: Re: Anti-semitism

> Other than beatings, there was a rather tangible kniving as
> well (of
> someone who dared to protest Jew-baiting molestation on a bus);
> however
> according to their mentors the perpetrators were not skinheads
> but rather
> national-conservative youth - who were provoked by the
> relentless
> anti-Hungarian anti-antisemitist campaign, so I guess their
> revenge was
> justified (for the clue-impaired: note my heavy sarcasm here
>;-<)...

I think, you are confusing two events. one was the attack on a
young man with a beard in - I think - 1991 at the tram station on
Dobrentey Ter. This case was periodically discussed by former MP
Bizi Kiraly. The other one happenned on the #1 subway, where two
young men tried to insult somebody, and a passenger (good
Samaritan?) intervened claiming that he was also Jewish. The
otherwise tolerant perpetrators promptly stabbed him for this
declaration. As the event happenned on evening of March 14, the
police immediately knew where to find them and arrested them at
the March 15 commemoration organized by the great Hungarian
Highwayrobber (Nagy Magyar Utonallo). Whose newspaper,
incidentally, is filled with anti-Jewish statements, as expected.
With his loss of the elections he lost any trace of decency. No
more code-words, like "agressive minority; liberals;
libero-bolsheviks; unHungarians; counterHungarians;
untrueHungarians; contraHungarians; cosmopolitans; destroyers of
the Hungarian culture/spirit/nation; Hungary-bashers; Tel-Aviv's
agents (Goncz); antiHungarians; or Antall's famous 'my
anthropological opposition'".

Desecrations of synagogues and cemeteries are frequent,
especially on the country-side, Anti-semitic graffiti is still
rampant on the streets, walls of Budapest, as it was reported by
our correspondent Mary McKinley who lately disappeared on the
bottom of a Famous Amos cookie-jar. But my favorite incident of
the summer was an article in the Pest-megyei Hirlap before the
appointment of the new head of the radio. The governing coalition
approached Mr. Vince, founding  editor of the HVG. The article
went on to tell Vince's Jewish connections and prove thereby the
Jewish conspiracy to control the media, on as the next step  in
attempting to control Hungary. (Remember the wise men of
Zion??-i.k.) The funny thing was that Mr. Vince rejected the
offer long before the article appeared. But the editor found it
important to publish anyway. I purposely did not mention the
Parliament, because some of the statements made by supposingly
responsible politicians there would be considered as incitement
against a minority, if made outside of that building.

istvan kertesz

Adam Galambos writes:  (most deleted, but thanks for response)

Sorry. I was a dummy. I write to the Forum and to Hungary, and I mixeded up
the two addresses.
Dumm. Dumm. Dumm. :-)

It would be nice if HIX could open a special journal on prejudice. Then all
the discussion an anti this and anti that could move in that journal.
Unfortunately I cannot stop myself from reading it, but I think it is a subject
which will never end. It appears that in the last Hungary, there were 18
articles on this subject. Way too many.
:-) Sandor

Tibor Benke writes:

> But be aware that Hobbes was wrong.

What is Jeliko's mantra, Delenda est Carthago?  No, sorry,
it's That is your opinion, don't state it as a fact.  :-)

> ...which institutionalized the only
> property system he could conceive of, namely, bourgeois
> property relations.

Perhaps you should define "bourgeois property relations",
or "conceive".  I find
it hard to believe that Hobbes wasn't aware of feudal property
relations, relations during Roman time, during pre-Roman times,
and among what he would no doubt consider the uncivilized savages
of the New World and Africa.  But I could be wrong, so I'm open
to correction.


--Greg
PS hugging is OK, planting trees is better

from RFE/RL:

The Ministry of Industry
and Trade has announced that import duties on 280 food items will
double as of 1 November, MTI reported....The new duties will affect
the equivalent of some 16% of the food items imported in 1993.
Industry and Trade Minister Laszlo Pal said the move has long been
advocated by Hungarian producers and fiercely resisted by foreign
suppliers.
----

Does anyone know just who these foreign suppliers would be?

--Greg

Bela Batkay writes:

> As to America-bashing by foreign students here--I don't like it, but
that's
> the price of living in a free society, and I am willing to pay that
price.
> After all, I don't have to listen to them or take them seriously and I
have
> the option of countering their miscon/perceptions if I choose.  Big deal!

An interesting comment I have heard from State Dept. colleauges. While
working in Africa, they found that among those in higher political
positions those who studied in Russia (Soviet Empire) were generally more
pro-American than those who studied in the USA. On the basis of that it
would be better to give scholarships for thirld world students to study in
Moscow than in the US> :-). Perhaps ther maybe problem with the educational
system's effect on the students also.

Regards,Jeliko.

I am looking for information about current environmental regulations and
efforts to induce environmental technologies in Hungary. Do you have any
informations or know whom to ask, what to read ?

Thanks for any suggestions

Peter Biegelbauer


P.S.: Since the discussion of last month I seem to know (almost) everything
about Nagymaros....

PB

Tibor Benke writes:

> Eva Bokor writes, quoting me:

That should get the keyboard rolling.:-)
Regards,Jeliko.

marc wrote:

<I am so sick and tired of people who vote for politicians based on their ethni
c
>backgrounds.  That is not how democracy is supposed to work!  At least not in
>America.  We should vote as Americans, not ****-Americans.   Pataki should be
>running as a representative of the people of New York, not Hungary.  I am not
>Italian but I would vote for Cuomo anyday over Pataki and his pro-death penalt
y
>friends...marc

I absolutely agree!!  ...but do you think this is the first time a candidate
has run on his ethnicity?  Many minority candidates have done for many years
now - nothing new.  But I agree it is unfortunate.  I even got a fundraising
letter from Pataki, and I live in NJ, not NY.  'guess my name was on some
Hungarian mailing list some place.


Paul

Having worked under Margaret Mead I am persuaded that Hobbes
wrote in a pre-anthropology period, a time when only the noble savage
ruled in a strictly deductive mode of reasoning.
        Nevertheless, is his famous quotation so far off the mark in
Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Haiti, or Bosnia-Herzegovina where 200,000 have
been killed in a slaughter of the innocents in the center of Europe?
        Hobbes wrote after observing the English Civil War and his
insights still hold true in the field of international relations which
as Robert Liebherr notes, has "no common authority," i.e., the interna-
tional arena is still characterized by chaos not government.  Our gener-
ation's task, IMHO, is to extend the concept of ordered liberty to the
whole world since WWIII will be the last one the human race ever fights.

--
Glen D. Camp
Professor of Political Science
Bryant College
401-232-6246
>

On Wed, 26 Oct 1994, Tibor Benke wrote:

> >Hobbes wrote:
> >
> >No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all,
> >continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life
> >of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
> >
> >--Greg
>
> Thank you Greg for citing the  original quotation.
>
> But be aware that Hobbes was wrong.  He thought that society came to be
> after some mythical social contract, which institutionalized the only
> propety system he could conceive of, namely, bourgeois property relations.
>   Anthropology has shown that this is not only not true of homo sapiens
> sapiens but not even true of homo habilis or zinjanthropus, for that
> matter.  The nearest to human primate species that is not social is the
> orangutan. Humans have been  social animals from the beginning, and though
> Marx's notion of primitive communism is also wrong, it is closer to reality
> than Hobbs' concept.  Infact, Richard Leakey points out, that one of the
> distinguishing characteristics and survival advantages of the species Lucy
> belonged to, was the sharing of food at camp sites, the traces of which can
> still be seen in the Ethiopin desert.
>
> >@> Tibor Benke                               (^)%(#)
> >@> Graduate Student (MA program)
> >@> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> >@> Simon Fraser University,
> >@> Burnaby, B.C., Canada. V5A 1S6
>

On Wed, 26 Oct 1994 19:18:40 GMT JELIKO said:
>Tibor Benke writes:
>
>> Eva Bokor writes, quoting me:
>
>That should get the keyboard rolling.:-)

--Whatever else you are, Jeliko, you are an evil, dirty old man.

Charles

Be1la ) wrote:

>now done this.  Of course, every member of Hungarian society was not and is
>not anti-Semitic, but to deny some unfortunate and wide-spread tendencies to
>persistent anti-Semitic attitudes *within* Hungarian society is to do no
>more than speak the truth, as I see it.  To compare *some* anti-Semitic
>.
>.
>lets leave that to the Third World.  *Hungarians*, however, deserve to have
>their history portrayed truthfully and fairly, and an accurate appraisal of
>the persistence of anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior within broad sectors
>of Hungarian society must be part of that portrayal.  After all, it was Hungar
y

Hmmmmm?  This sounds like the same arguements made over the past year or so
against some minority groups, which earned immediate condemnation by the
leftists on this group.  How can it be that this argument is sufficient and
reasonable when leveled against a majority group, but not when it is leveled
against a minority group?  Kornai and Fencsik, your thoughts please :-)

Paul

Be1la wrote:

>are genetically far apart.  Jared Diamond has demonstrated on the basis of
>the latest DNA research that all Jews are genetically closer to each other
>than they are to any non-Jewish group, as well as being genetically close


How can this be?  If a Christian and a Jew have a child, isn't the child
genetically related equally to each parent?  And aren't all Jews mixed with
non-Jew ancestry?

Paul

Marc wrote:

> I really do not believe that anyone on the Hungarian mailing list is anti-
> Hungarian.  The idea that someone would have their mailbox filled everyday by
> hungarian topics and be anti-hungarian at the same time is quite ludicrous.

In the US, for example, we have many folks who can always find what is wrong
 with
the country, and short-change what is good.  I propose that the same is true
in Hungary, though I am not and cannot make specific accusations
against anyone on the list - be not paranoid.

Paul

Joe "the man" Pannon wrote:

>Oh, come now Bill!  Dont' tell me that the kind of America bashing we
>have witnessed on the net from some East Europeans studying here with
>the assistance of US taxpayers does not create negative feelings in many
>Americans reading it toward East Europeans in general!  Especially if it

Cannot this be the cause of what we call prejudice?  If a significant, or
at least visible, segment of a group do something that many in another
group consider foul, would not those many develop some dislike of the
first group?  Does this not teach the second group that a larger number
than expected people in the first group are bad people?   Hence we get
bashing against the second group for applying some statistical theory.

Paul

 wrote:

: And one more thing. Since I got on this list last February we have had
: several rounds on anti-semitism in Hungary. To tell you the truth I find
: these discussions quite fruitless and boring. There are antisemites
: everywhere, including Hungary. But I would not call Hungary an anti-semitic
: country per se. Indeed, if it were, Hungary's Jewish population (quite large
: by East European standards) would emigrate in hordes. This is obviously not
: happening. Eva Balogh

does this mean that there was no racialism directed against the blacks
of mississipi, for example, because its black population (quite large
by southern standards) would have emigrated in hordes. this obviously did
not happen.


d.a.

d.a. writes:

> does this mean that there was no racialism directed against the blacks
> of mississipi, for example, because its black population (quite large
> by southern standards) would have emigrated in hordes. this obviously did
> not happen.

And where, pray, did Northen blacks come from?

--Greg

In connection with Pamlenyi's figures on the White Terror, Charles pointed
out the following:

>--It may be of some curiosity for you to know that the Federal Research
>Division of the Library of Congress's area handbook series has a volume
>on Hungary, edited by someone called Stephen R. Burant.  On p. 37,
>the book evidently follows Pamlenyi's lead.

Typical. Most people simply copy from other secondary sources. In certain
cases it is unavoidable. Let's say you are writing a general history of
Hungary from St. Stephen to Kadar. You must rely on other historians' work
for 90 percent of your book. One just hopes that the books one relies on are
accurate. Unfortunately, a lot of those books published in the 1970s were
shoddy. I am hundred percent sure that no one has ever tried to establish the
figures accurately. It was not in their interest.

Eva Balogh

In today's *New York Times* (October 26, p. A14) there is one of the very few
articles which have appeared on Hungary since the elections. The title is
"Once-Promising Hungary Struggles with Economic Slump." The reporter is Jane
Perlez. I would like to quote the article in its entirety.

Budapest, October 25--Hungary, once viewed as Eastern Europe's beacon of
economic hope, is facing a slump unknown since the country started on its
journey toward capitalism.

Export earning have crashed. Inflation is on an upward trend. And Hungary
continues to have the highest per capital foreign debt in Europe.

Simply put, almost everyone, including senior members of the new Government,
acknowledges Hungary is living beyond its means.

But what to do about it presents a political conundrum for the resurrected
former Communists who came to power three months ago. Their supporters,
disgruntled by the tough times of the last four years, are alarmed by the
prospect of cuts in social benefits, which are among the most generous in the
region.

During a visit last week, the director of the International Monetary Fund,
Michel Camdessus, bluntly told the Government it must curb social spending.
The country, he said, could not sustain its "serious" balance of payment
deficit which stands at 9 percent of economic output and a budget deficit at
7 percent of gross domestic product.

Among the benefits the fund says must be reviewed are the three kinds of
child support payments families receive on the birth of a child; pensions
starting at 55 years of age for women and 62 for men; unemployment benefits
that begin immediately upon leaving school and last for one year of
joblessness and generous payments for medicines.

But restricting the social welfare net during a period of 12 percent
unemployment does not sit well with voters who fondly recall the Communist
era of full employment and no inflation. The inflation rate is edging over 20
percent, economists said.

"I would be hard hit if they cut the allowance,'' said Etelka Kiss, a
37-year-old divorced mother, as she picked up her 4-year old daughter, Virag,
from kindergarten. "When she was born I had 7,000 forints (qbout $70) a month
to live on. What would I have done without the 3,000 forints (about $30)
family allowance?''

Prime Minister Gyula Horn has acknowledged that fiscal austerity was needed
but also reassured his constituency that the social net would stay intact.
The Government retroactively raised pensions across the board by 8 percent
and deferred increases in value added tax and energy prices until next year.

By delaying the inevitable, some political analysts said the Government was
heading for trouble. "In almost all countries that have come successfully out
of a crisis like ours, governments started doing things right away," Laszlo
Bruszt said. "Neither in budget reform, nor in public service reform nor in
privatization do I see a long-term strategy."

When Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, foreign investors poured most
resources into Hungary--the economy was more open than others in the region
and the country is strategically well placed as a gateway to Western Europe.
Budapest, with modern international hotels, scores of fast food outlets and
plenty of fancy restaurants, looks more like a Western city than other
capitals in the region.

But foreign investment has slowed in the last year.

Hungary has the highest monthly average salary in Eastern Europe,--about $300
a month. But employers must also pay the highest taxes on wages in the
region.

This months, the financier George Soros withdrew an offer to invest up to $80
million in Hungary's largest bank.

End of article.

Tibor Benke says:

>Eva Bokor writes, quoting me:

First of all, my name is not Bokor but Balogh. Second, I am afraid your
explanation of pogroms and serfdom in "Eastern Europe" as the cause for the
Red Terror of 1919 in Hungary didn't sway me. The pogroms and serfdom in
nineteenth-century Russia had nothing to do with the establishment of the
Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. NOTHING! (I am somewhat of an expert on
the Hungarian Soviet Republic; so believe me.) I am not going to go into the
details of how Bela Kun and the Communists managed to form a government, how
they lost popularity and why Tibor Szamuelly and the Lenin Boys committed
their atrocities, riding the trains in the countryside, stopping here and
there to put down rebellions. Szamuelly was a newspaperman, came from a
middle-class family; the Lenin Boys were mostly sailors from the lowest
echelons of society. They wouldn't have even known what the word pogrom
meant. The real question is why so many young Jews of middle-class background
were attracted to such extreme political group. Their parents were at least
middle-class--sometime upper-class (for example, Gyorgy Lukacs (Gyorgy von
Lukacs, as he used to call himself before 1919 because his family was
ennobled.) That is the real question. And there is no good answer, although
several people tried to answer it. So, forget about pogroms. Not applicable
to the Hungarian case.

Tibor Benke also mentioned the following:

>Also if my older brother had been a draftee
>noncombatant (munkaszolgalatos) taken to the Russian front and killed or
>crippled there, I might even feel vengeful.

At least let's keep the chronology straight. Labor batallions didn't exist
before the late 1930s. We were talking about 1919.

Further Tibor Benke says:

>Further, I spoke of a number
>of generations, pointing to the possibility that those young men may have
>had ancestors further east

You really think that Jews from the Pale came to Hungary and therefore
Hungarian Jews had scores of cousins in Russia. Well, that's wrong too. Most
Hungarian Jews came from Bohemia during the 1850-60s. After 1867 they came
from Galicia, which was then part of Austria-Hungary.

Eva Balogh

Jeliko wrote:
>George Anthony writes in response to Joe Pannon:
>> Well, maths does not seem to be one of your strong points.  Assuming that
>5 per
>> cent of the Hungarian population consider themselves Jewish, only another
>5 per
>> cent of the Gentile Hungarians need to be sufficiently relaxed about
>'mixed'
>> marriages for all Jews to end up in a mixed marriage.  This could still
>leave
>> 90 per cent of the population not wanting to marry a Jew.  Ergo, your
>statement
>> above about the accuracy of the poll is a non sequitur.
>
>Yeah, but a little probability theory will tell you that your derivation is
>incorrect also. The matching up of those two 5%s is not automatic either.

And a little more probability theory will equip you (and Joe Pannon, falling
in the same trap) with the capacity to distinguish between random and non-
random events.  The selection of mates by humans is not a random process.

>Sometime ago I have read an article in the "World and I" (start bashing),
>that the most intolerant society is Japan

I do not think you need to be that defensive about your source, especially
that Japanese racism is fairly well documented.  Nowadays it is non-violent,
though.

>Thus, I am not sure that E-C Europe is at the
>bottom of the league.

Currently it is, considering the ethnic wars and lesser ethnic quarrels
going on.  I do not think that xYugoslavia is much better than Rwanda.

>However, even if for the area you are correct, it is
>something to be proud of. If at the educational and economic level of
>similar places, there is more tolerance toward each other, then that
>society is going in the right direction.

We, Hungarians, cannot have it both ways.  Many, if not most, Hungarians
consider themselves a cut above the neighbouring peoples, except Austrians,
and on par with Western Europe in terms of being  'cultured', 'educated',
'civilized' and 'European' in general.  For the 'aberration' of the
economic situation the commies can be blamed, so that is not something
that needs to be considered according to this line of thought.

However, when it comes to comparisons, we tend to fall back to comparing
ourselves with the same unwashed neighbours and then pat ourselves on the
back for having come out on top.  I repeat, we cannot have it both ways.

George 'look, ma, no h' Antony

Joe Pannon wrote:

>George writing to :
>> You might have a hard time to believe that minorities would be hated
>> so much for no reason at all in Hungary, but the facts are that Gypsies,
>> Jews, Slovaks, Romans or Svabs were discriminated against in this century.
>
>George,
>I think you make a lot more sense when commenting on economics than on
>social issues.

I have a feeling that this was addressed to me, not to the author of the
post that was not the undersigned.  Perhaps if you took more care and used
surnames (invented to distinguish between people with the same given name),
such misunderstandings could be avoided.

George Antony

Marc Nasdor asked about using Hungarian characters with the standard version
(presumably) of Windows.  There are two main types of solutions: (1) using add-
on programs of which Sandor Lengyel already mentioned one, and (2) twiddle with
Windoze itself.

Doing the latter, one obtains a number of files from the Hungarian-language
version of Windows.  Two are used to overwrites the same files in the standard
version, the others contain additional information.  Then it is possible to
choose the Hungarian keyboard driver from the Control Panel/International/
Keyboard Layout menu.

The files to be replaced are SETUP.INF and KEYBOARD.DRV .

KBDHU1.DLL drives the Hungarian 101-key keyboard, and various sources
have *.TTF files with Hungarian founts that have the accents.

The only down side is that the Keyboard Layout listing will be in Hungarian.

I am not sure if this is legal in your country/state, but it must be rather
borderline even in the litigious US.  It beats me why Microsoft do not give
this flexibility in the first place - I prefer using the standard version
with extra character sets rather than going over to the Hungarian version
(which is not available here anyway) altogether.

George Antony

Tibor Benke that Hobbes was wrong in his assumption of an original "social
contract," an error he shares with Locke and Rousseau (J.-J., not Henri).
Yet as a description of the real world in which many, many of our fellow
humans live, and expecially of the "war of all against all" that passes for
international relations, I'm not sure that Hobbes' aphorism is so far off the
mark, after all.

Udv.,
Be1la

With his masterful comments about the applicability of Hobbesian notions
to international relations, Glen Camp is back on the political science
track, and I feel better.

Regards,
Be1la

Paul quoting Be1la:
>
> >are genetically far apart.  Jared Diamond has demonstrated on the basis of
> >the latest DNA research that all Jews are genetically closer to each other
> >than they are to any non-Jewish group, as well as being genetically close

Paul himself:

> How can this be?  If a Christian and a Jew have a child, isn't the child
> genetically related equally to each parent?  And aren't all Jews mixed with
> non-Jew ancestry?

My susprise is from another angle, the Khazar connection.  If it's true,
as some say, that the Ashkenazi Jews are really descendants of Khazars
than they are only related to other Jews through religion, not
genetically.

Joe

Paul asks incredulously about Jared Diamond's assertion in a recent *Natural
History* article that all contemporary Jews are more closely related gene-
tically to each other than to non-Jews, despite millenia of intermarriage,
conversions "in", and the like.

You've got me, Paul, as my understanding of genetics is about on a par with
my understanding of mathematics.  But I would guess that Diamond is talking
about the collectiviy of 13 million or so Jews in the world today, not about
any individual Jewish person.  And no, not "all"  Jews are mixed with nont-
Jewish ancestry--why would you think so?  Finally, it may have been just a
typo, and it may just be my over-sensitivity, but my understanding is that
one does not refer to "Jew" or "non-Jew" ancestry unless one is deliberately
trying to be insulting.  The correct (and I don't mean "politically correct")
term is "Jewish" or "non-Jewish".  They mean exactly the same thing of course,
but in civilized society nuance is everything.

Udv.,
Be1la

I wrote to George Lazar:

> >George,
> >I think you make a lot more sense when commenting on economics than on
> >social issues.

Then the other George, Antony, wrote:

> I have a feeling that this was addressed to me, not to the author of the
> post that was not the undersigned.  Perhaps if you took more care and used
> surnames (invented to distinguish between people with the same given name),
> such misunderstandings could be avoided.

Well, I thought the "right" George was obvious from the quote, but now I
see that the allusion to economics was misleading.  True, Antony is
known here as economist, but I have read some good economic analysis
from Lazar, too.  So that's what I was referring to.
Otherwise I tend to agree with both Georges when it comes to economics. ;-)

So, sorry for the confusion,
Joe

Joe has injected the Khazar connection into the issue of the Jewish genetic
base, intriguing but unscientific.

The main proponent, as I understand it, of the Khazar origin of *East*
European (Ashkenazic) Jews was the late Arthur Koestler, in his contoversial
book, "The Thirteenth Tribe."  Whatever the merits of Koestler's thesis, and
they are apparently many, it is not based on DNA samples, nor does it apply
to what was, until very recently, the majority of Jews, the Sephardim.  One
other point, although most non-Jews fail to appreciate it--regrdless of
whether Jews are closely related genetically, as Diamond maintains, they
are not related to other Jews through religion, either, but through a more-
or-less common sense of "peoplehood," a vague term, but one apparently re-
dolent with meaning for many of today's Jews.  It is certainly not a
racial category (witness the Beta Israel, or Falashas, from Ethiopia), nor
is it simply a version of nationalism.  Oh, well, Jews have always defined
themselves as "different," and been so defined by their neighbors, so why
shouldn't the bonds that unite them be of different order, as well?

Cheers,
Be1la

Be1la writes:

> Tibor Benke that Hobbes was wrong in his assumption of an
> original "social contract...

If we grant that this is a proper subject of philosophy,
then consider:

Of the subjects that concern me nothing is known, since there exists
nothing in writing about them, nor will there ever exist anything
in future....For there is no way of putting these things in words
like other things that one can learn.

(Plato as paraphrased by Arendt)

To me there is a danger when we say there was, or wasn't a
contract.  It seems to me that we can model our own (or our
ancestor's) political reality as we choose, but it'd
be folly, IMHO, to say we "know" even our own situation, much less
one a few thousand, or more, years old.


--Greg