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Interview with László Bogár, economist and university professor, former MP and former State Secretary of Hungary, publicist: “Our region is once again becoming a buffer zone whose geopolitical value is growing steadily”.
At the end of November 2018, Raoul Weiss met with László Bogár in Budapest for a interview without taboos on economical topics. László Bogár is since the regime change a well-known Hungarian economist: he is one of the economists who shaped the Fidesz’ economical policy. Author of 28 books, László Bogár has been State Secretary for political questions of the Ministry of foreign trade relations from 1990 to 1994 and State Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister under Orbán’s first mandate, from 1998 to 2002. Very critical of the current capitalistic system and of the EU’s evolution, László Bogár is a shining example of what is a Central European “illiberal” economist.
An Intermarium “buffer zone” is none too soon as V4 nations are caught between the massive pincer action of the Russian Federation and Germany. European Solidarity? Sanctions against Russia? Germany has just opened a Mercedes factory in Moscow. Cost: 250 million euro. At the opening was Merkel, Putin and Peter Altmaier, Minister of Economy of Germany - “The Prosperity of Russia is also in the interest of Germany,” declared Altmaier.
Raoul Weiss: László Bogár, what is the economic reality of the V4? Until now, the main trade routes in Central Europe have been the East-West axes. What does Central Europe lack the most in order to assert itself also in the economic field? Are Central European economies not sufficiently complementary? Or is it the lack of North-South infrastructure – be it logistical or financial – to offset the dominance of East-West infrastructures? Finally: assuming that the V4 seeks to develop such infrastructure, to what extent do you think the West will tolerate such an evolution?
It’s all of that at once. There is an analyst of Russian origin on Bloomberg, a guy called Bershidsky, for whom I sometimes go out of my way: he’s a pure liberal, perfectly cynical, but he’s very sharp, he goes straight to the essential; he is the one who coined the phrase “foreign owned countries” to describe such countries. What he’s trying to say is obviously something along the line of:“Dear populists, what kind of game is this? We – the global capital –are your master”. Now, let’s face it: there is a lot of truth in what he says – especially in the case of Hungary. The most cautious were the Czechs. The least prudent, the Slovaks, since after all, Slovakia does not exist: it is a warehouse, partly German, partly French. The very moment these global giants collapse, countries like Slovakia, which are totally at their mercy, could disappear in a few minutes. In concrete terms, Slovakia exports all of its GDP. Of course, this is also the case of Singapore – but not under the same conditions…
In reality, all these countries are in the chains of the same plantation; in each of them, however, an awareness has arisen: they are beginning to understand the problem. Hungary is the country where the resistance is most marked, [for a good reason:] after Slovakia, we Hungarians are the most dependent in the group.
Raoul Weiss: From this point of view, the most independent country would be Poland.
László Bogár: It is indeed Poland. The first reason for that is that everyone was well aware that Poland should have emerged as a clear winner of the Second World War; however, of all the countries in this situation, it is the only one to have been totally treated as a losing country. This is partly true also of Czechoslovakia, but above all of Poland, whose suffering has been appalling, but never received the astronomical compensations to which it was entitled. But, as this implies a huge potential for revolt, we understand better that the Polish church and Poland’s rural society have been treated with more respect than elsewhere …
Raoul Weiss: Then how is it that, even though Poland has a head start in this area, the locomotive of this emancipation movement is rather Hungary…
László Bogár: It’s an intellectual difference, and it’s also about Viktor Orbán’s personality. It is linked to the fact that – even if the same could partly be said about the Poles and Czechs – the Hungarians, during the last three centuries, have been particularly forced to an optimal spiritual production. Not because they would in any case be more inclined than others to turn to things of the spirit, but because they were subjected to shocks, constraints and revolutions of such brutality, that their intellectual sensitivity must have come out of the process increased– I say this without underestimating that of the Czechs, or of the Poles, who have also been confronted with major existential challenges, bearing similar psychological consequences.
Speech by Viktor Orbán at the launch event for the Fidesz – KDNP
European Parliament election programme
Good afternoon,Ladies and Gentlemen,
As I see it I’m the odd one out, because the people who’ve spoken before me are experts in what they spoke about. Even our justice minister, who doesn’t seem at first sight to fit into that category, was an ambassador in Brussels for several years, so he can be classified as a foreign affairs expert. József Szájer is the leader of our parliamentary group in Brussels, and Péter is our foreign affairs minister. Which means I’m the odd man out. So why am I being given the chance to speak?
Dear Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The reason I’m speaking to you now is because this is what we do before a campaign. We review the troops, gather our forces together, unfurl the flag and clarify our aims. If I look around me – not only in this room but around the country – I can confidently say that our political community is self-confident, strong and buoyant. There can be no room for complacency, however, as after all we’re now facing an imminent contest. It was perhaps just last weekend that we staged the Hungarian National Swimming Championships – which in some events seemed more like European championships than simple national championships. After one of the events there, Katinka Hosszú said that it’s marvellous for someone to have a few Olympic gold medals. We have a few electoral victories. It’s marvellous to have self-confidence, and we have no shortage of that. But unfortunately when you step onto that starting block for your next race, what you’ve already achieved is completely irrelevant: the only thing that matters is the race ahead of you at that moment. So this is why I’ve been given the floor: to offer this reminder to our distinguished audience gathered here. I’m happy that we’re together once again.There are many things we should talk about today in relation to Europe, but as the campaign is only just beginning we’ll perhaps have time for that later. We can’t talk about everything today: now at the beginning of the campaign we can only set about stating what is at stake in the election on 26 May. This is despite the fact that there are some exciting current issues: the relationship between the European People’s Party and Fidesz, for instance. I don’t want to talk about this at length, but here perhaps it’s enough to make it clear among ourselves that our future will be decided not by the European People’s Party, but by us ourselves. After the elections we’ll see the direction taken by the European People’s Party. At present it seems to be turning to the left, in a liberal direction: towards liberal European empire-building and a Europe of immigrants. If this is the direction it takes, you can rest assured that we shall not follow. And of course there are the statements by Weber, which give a jolt to the spirits and national self-esteem. No wonder more and more people are succinctly saying and writing what our direction should be: out. I’d like to ask for patience, and for us to decide later at the right time, based on our national interests.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let’s face up to the fact that past elections to the European Parliament never seemed to be of pivotal importance. In essence they were meant to decide whether the President of the European Commission came from the Right or the Left. This hasn’t always been as easy as it sounds. There’s this Jean-Claude Juncker, for instance: we thought he was a man of the Right, but we found ourselves presented with an orthodox European socialist, who bears decisive responsibility for Brexit, the migration invasion and the increasingly serious conflict between Central and Western Europe. What is at stake today, however, is more than the election of a single individual. Today we are indeed approaching a historic election: at the end of May Europe will choose a future for itself. The stakes are not whether there will be more conservative or socialist representatives in Brussels; now millions of Europeans will be deciding on a matter that is far more important than party politics. What is at stake is whether the leaders of the EU will be pro-immigration or anti-immigration. We will decide on whether Europe will continue to belong to Europeans, or be given over to masses of people from different cultures and different civilisations: what the French have called “population replacement”. We will be deciding on whether to defend our Christian European culture or to submit to multiculturalism. Taking all this into consideration, it’s no surprise that the fault line between the opposing sides is not defined by the classic value systems of the Right and the Left. Look at the V4 countries and their prime ministers, for example: each of us is in a different grouping in the European Parliament. I cannot even say that all four of us are on the same side ideologically. We have a liberal, a socialist, a People’s Party politician and a conservative; there couldn’t be any more than that, because there are only four of us! But we agree on one fundamental issue: we want to preserve Europe and our countries as we have always known them. As the old teaching has it: “In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity. ”On 26 May, Dear Friends, the matter we will be voting on is an essential one: at stake is the existence of our Christian civilisation. Let’s remember, when the European Union was formed – I mean let’s remember what we read about it –it had a big soul and a small body. Today the situation is reversed: it has a shrinking soul and an ever-expanding body. How did we get here? How did we get to the point at which this question would even arise? How did we get to the point at which we have to fight for our way of life, our form of existence and our natural habitat on our own continent?
This document has been updated! The most recent version of this document (v4) was posted on 2011 August 15. View the most recent version doi:10.1038/npre.2010.5003.3; IPBS, UMR 5089, Toulouse, France, PDF (2.7 MB); Document Type: Manuscript. Date: Received 25 November 2010 14:31 UTC; Posted 29 November 2010
Tags: speciation mechanisms inbreeding group level selection extinction mutation load
Abstract:
Whilst the principle of adaptive evolution is unanimously recognised as being caused by the process of natural selection favouring the survival and/or reproduction of individuals having acquired new advantageous traits, a consensus has proven much harder to find regarding the actual origin of species. Indeed, since speciation corresponds to the establishment of reproductive barriers, it is difficult to see how it could bring a selective advantage because it amounts to a restriction in the opportunities to breed with as many and/or as diverse partners as possible. In this regard, Darwin himself did not believe that reproductive barriers could be selected for, and today most evolutionary biologists still believe that speciation can only occur through a process of separation allowing two populations to diverge sufficiently to become infertile with one another. I do, however, take the view that, if so much speciation has occurred, and still occurs around us, it cannot be a consequence of passive drift but must result from a selection process, whereby it is advantageous for groups of individuals to reproduce preferentially with one another and reduce their breeding with the rest of the population.
In this essay, I propose a model whereby new species arise by “budding” from an ancestral stock, via a process of inbreeding among small numbers of individuals, driven by the occurrence of advantageous recessive mutations. Since the phenotypes associated to such mutations can only be retained in the context of inbreeding, it is the pressure of the ancestral stock which will promote additional reproductive barriers, and ultimately result in complete separation of a new species. I thus contend that the phenomenon of speciation would be driven by mutations resulting in the advantageous loss of certain functions, whilst adaptive evolution would correspond to gains of function that would, most of the time be dominant.
A very important further advantage of inbreeding is that it reduces the accumulation of recessive mutations in genomes. A consequence of the model proposed is that the existence of species would correspond to a metastable equilibrium between inbreeding and outbreeding, with excessive inbreeding promoting speciation, and excessive outbreeding resulting in irreversible accumulation of recessive mutations that could ultimately only lead to the species extinction.
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Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 06 April 2019 09:19.
Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen had a cordial meeting earlier this week, in which they discussed their ‘common sense revolution’ to overtake the EU for native European nationalist purposes.
The leaders are thinking about holding a joint rally to close the campaign for the European elections and “announce the start of a new Europe”, according to the sources
White children and nothing but in a (still) White city, Warsaw, Poland. 3 April 2019.
Father who escaped Sweden with daughters allowed to stay in Poland
A Russian father escaped Sweden and traveled to Poland with his three children after they were given away to a Muslim foster family. A Warsaw court has given the family the right to stay in Poland until they have been granted refugee status.
The drama of 41-year-old Denis Lisov and his three daughters started in Sweden when his wife fell ill and had to be taken into hospital. The Swedish social services took the Russian man’s daughters away and gave them to an Arabic foster family.
Lisov could only visit his daughters once a week and only for a few hours, despite having full parental rights. All three of his children have Russian citizenship.
The Swedish social services took the Russian man’s daughters away and gave them to an Arabic foster family
Swedish authorities refused to give Lisov his children back and he decided to return to Russia with his family despite the ban. The girls were inserted into the Schengen Information System (SIS) as missing persons, which is why the Polish border guard had to detain the family when they arrived at Warsaw Chopin airport.
The Polish Ministry of Justice and the Polish proponent of children’s rights were informed of the issue. The representatives of the Swedish social services, the Arabic foster family and the Russian consul arrived at the airport.
Thanks to the help of the proponent, the Russian father agreed to apply for asylum for himself and his children in Poland. Owing to this decision, the family could not be given back to the Swedes.
“The court cannot send the minors to Sweden which they entered under their father’s care,” decided judge of the regional court in Warsaw on Wednesday afternoon. “Following the father’s hearing and due to the lack of proof confirming restriction of parental rights, as well as having in mind the minor’s well-being, the court has decided that they should remain in their father’s care.”
The notion of rules about foster families not respected
The Ministry of Justice also reminded that due to the efforts of Polish authorities, in December 2018, the Council of the European Union for Justice and Home Affairs passed the notion which foresees a uniform rule of respecting the cultural, religious and lingual identity of a child when it is given to a foster family.
The Ministry informed that so far, the law has not been respected and there have been situations in which children were given away to families of vastly different beliefs or from different cultures, as had happened in the case of Denis Lisov.
“If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound,
Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank will compound,
And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors who invest as propriety demands.”
— “Mary Poppins,” 1964
When “Mary Poppins” was made into a movie in 1964, Mr. Banks’ advice to his son was sound. The banks were then paying more than 5% interest on deposits, enough to double young Michael’s investment every 14 years.
Now, however, the average savings account pays only 0.10% annually—that’s one-tenth of 1%—and many of the country’s biggest banks pay less than that. If you were to put $5,000 in a regular Bank of America savings account (paying 0.01%) today, in a year you would have collected only 50 cents in interest.
That’s true for most of us, but banks themselves are earning 2.4% on their deposits at the Federal Reserve. These deposits, called “excess reserves,” include the reserves the banks got from our deposits, and on which they are paying almost nothing; and unlike with our deposits, there is no $250,000 cap on the sums banks can stash at the Fed amassing interest. A whopping $1.5 trillion in reserves are now sitting in Fed reserve accounts. The Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, and interest paid to banks is one of those costs. That means we, the taxpayers, are paying $36 billion annually to private banks for the privilege of parking their excess reserves at one of the most secure banks in the world—parking them, rather than lending them out.
The banks are getting these outsize returns while taking absolutely no risk, because the Fed, as “lender of last resort,” cannot go bankrupt. This is not true for other depositors, including large institutions such as the pension funds that hold our retirement money.
An Intermarium “buffer zone” is none too soon as V4 nations are caught between the massive pincer action of the Russian Federation and Germany. European Solidarity? Sanctions against Russia? Germany has just opened a Mercedes factory in Moscow. Cost: 250 million euro. At the opening was Merkel, Putin and Peter Altmaier, Minister of Economy of Germany - “The Prosperity of Russia is also in the interest of Germany,” declared Altmaier.
White children and nothing but in a (still) White city, Warsaw, Poland. 3 April 2019.
