On Sun, 7 Aug 1994 23:54:17 GMT > said:
>i'm not sure whether we are talking about the same united states of
>america
>but when i spent some time there --- in columbus ohio, i from september
>1985 to march 1986 to be precise --- i had  the less than pleasurable
>experience
>of driving along the main road and being stopped by two policemen, and
>being
>asked for identification. that by itself would not have not bothered me,
>after
>all, growing up in a totalitarian society like australia, where police do
>make
>random checks of motor vehicles and motorists, i was accustomed to such
>terror
>tactics.
>
--Okay.  Cease and desist, both of you!  Police in the U.S. can and
do stop automobiles for a variety of reasons.  One is to check that
the driver has a driving license.  Another is to verify the automobile's
registration.  They also can stop an automobile if the vehicle matches the
description of a stolen vehicle.  They will stop cars if there is a
report that an escaped criminal has been seen in the area.  What they are
not supposed to do is to search an automobile--or someone's home or person--
without probable cause.  But that has nothing to do with their ability to
stop the car and ask to see the driving license of the driver and the
registration of the automobile.  If the driver is drunk, or if there are
weapons or contraband in plain sight, that may be taken as probable cause
to search the vehicle.

Now.  When an automobile is stopped, it is good procedure for one
policeman to interview the driver with the other policeman providing
cover.  As you know, many Americans carry guns and not all of these
people have beneign motives.  A lot of policemen  get killed because
they are not careful.

The operative thing, Imi, was that (unless you are leaving out part
of the story) you were not put in jail, but allowed to go on about
your business.  Or were you summarily bundled  off to a stark cell,
beaten with rubber hoses, and imprisioned for months without a trial?

>during my stay in columbus, ohio, i had the dubious pleasure of sitting
>in one of the establishments across on one of the main streets and seeing
>two
>members of the police force "treat" one of the down-and-outs, mindful of
>his "constitutionally guaranteed civil rights". in all my times in
>hungary,
>and other european countries, i had not seen anything like it. i
>approached
>the two officers and was tolled to stay away and forget what i had seen if
>i knew what was good for me. to my shame, i let myself be intimidated.
>
--I have no doubt that this happened, and have seen similar things
myself.  Clearly, two policemen  beating up a vagrant overrides any
good things that you might have seen other policemen do at any other
time.  If every citizen doesn't vote in every election, and if there
are two policemen in Columbus, Ohio who don't observe the very highest
professional standards, the whole country must be entirely rotten to
the core, right?
>
>many other of my experiences during my time in the u.s.a. convinced me
>that i am not ripe for "democracy and freedom u.s. style". it was quite a
>disappointment for me, because i had gone there with quite different
>expectations, and with an eye to possibly staying there.

--Again, I cannot help but wonder what on earth you expected?  Evidently,
you hoped for some level of perfect human conduct that neither we or any
other country has attained.  America is not heaven.  Freedom and liberty
are always relative.  As an earlier correspondent pointed out, you may
be confusing democracy with personal liberty.  We may have more liberty
than some places and less than others.  The existence of democratic
traditions does not mean that there is a 100% turnout for every election.
>
>of course, my experiences are not the measure of all things, and there are
>many others whose experience is different, and who evaluate their
>experieneces differently.

--And that makes the world go round.

 after all, the  united states has no lack of
>potential migrants.

--Isn't that amazing?  Why would anyone emigrate to such a brutal police
state as you picture it?  Of course, I don't particularly like Ohio,
myself, come to think of it.

Charles Atherton

On 8 Aug 94 02:14:31 GMT+0200, Imre Bokor >
writes:

>>In article > ,
 writes:
>>I forwarded Mr Kanala's postings to a Swiss citizen working here, he
>>considered it "generally accurate" as far as the voting percentages and
>>the description of the process.

[...rest of quotation of Mr. Grose's article deleted...]

>the percentages are miserable. i argued and still maintain, that the low
>participation rate is an indication of the lack of faith the citizens
>have in their democracy's being democratic, especially in view of the
>various polls of the non-voters which showed that the biggest proportion
>--- i believe it was a substantial majority, but i do not recall exact
>figures --- gave as the reason: it doesn't matter what how i vote anyway.

In my original posting, there was a severe typo that might have changed
the sense of the whole posting. Again, I apologiye for that and would
like to resume what I said, using different wording and thus reducing the
probability to write something else I want to express:

Low percentage of presence in votations does indeed mean that the citizen
does not worry about the given issue. However, my opinion is that this
does not result from a feeling of hopelessness and resignation because
"they will do what they want, anyway", as you seem to suggest, but from a
trust that "they will do what's the best, and, even if not, I don't worry
about that particular to the point to go vote instead of my weekend in
Alps". I have documented my opinion with cases where the issue was really
crucial and the participation was accordingly high. Votations on subjects
submitted to a referendum is one of the most important differences
distinguishing the "direct" democracy from a "classical" one.

I have further suggested that the low participation in elections are due
to the fact that in a direct democracy, the role of personalities have
been diminished in profit of reliable, hard-working professionals that
are, to some extent, interchangeable managers. In a direct democracy, a
politician cannot do whatever he means, because he will be quickly
stopped by a referendum. Politicians are sensible to a consensus and
equilibrium of opinions and as a rule, they rarely push things into a
confrontation. Swiss reality is thus a compendium of compromises that
everyone accepts and adheres to, because it's more advantageous than an
uncertain result of some fighting (there, of course, are exceptions, like
the communists, but they don't have much influence).

I still believe that the low participation in votation on issues that
are not perceived to be important, but high participation on important
decisions are a democratic feature and are corroborating my opinion. If
you still don't agree and would like to enter a serious debate on this
subject, please try to formulate a self-containing convex reasoning
that, if possible, can be supported by facts, be they as general as the
mine.

Roman Kanala

On Mon, 8 Aug 1994 00:14:31 GMT > said:
>
>the percentages are miserable. i argued and still maintain, that the low
>participation rate is an indication of the lack of faith the citizens
>have in their democracy's being democratic.

--Nonsense!  The Swiss answer makes perfectly good sense to me.  There
are elections that I don't vote in simply because the issue is of no
importance to me.  There's nothing about democracy that says that I
must take equal interest in every election or votation.  There are
people who take the view that it doesn't matter how they vote, but
this is often simply an excuse of people who didn't care about the
outcome.

I can't escape the feeling that you have a naive belief that somewhere
there exists, or should exist, a country where everyone is fair to one
another, everyone votes in every election, all laws are reasonable and
are willingly followed to the letter, and all the wine is good.

There are a lot of people who aren't very good with balancing their
checkbooks or understanding the Pythagorean theorem.  Therefore,
mathematics is bad, because everyone is not a good mathematician.

>"of course we live in a free and democratic society!" would be the answer
>most frequently given in countries such as the u.s.a., u.k., switzerland,
>france, germany. but if one examines critically the manner in which these
>societies, a different picture emerges.
>
--Only if one forgets that freedom is relative and democracy does not
mean perfect.

Charles Atherton

This article might be of some interest to this list and I am bringing it
here (with the authorisation of it's author:-). Technical aspects of the
dam were discussed in previous postings under this subject are not
mentioned here

Roman Kanala

------------------------ Begin of forwarded message ------------------

Newsgroups: bit.listserv.slovak-l
Path: news.unige.ch!ugsc2a!kanala
From: 
Subject: Re: Re[2]: este raz Gabcikovo
Message-ID: >
Lines: 58
Sender: 
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 1994 07:15:57 GMT

Thank, you, George, for your contribution under this subject. Indeed,
there were other reasons for the contruction.

It's in the very nature of a totalitarian regime that in the worry to
exercice an absolute control over the population, it's paralyzing all
the independent activity and tries to control even the thinking.
Therefore constructing pyramides is of higher utility than decentralized
efforts to achieve the same objective as they officially claim, in
occurence electricity production. Decentralized efforts are meaning there
is no possibility to control the system directly because it's becoming
unmanageable due to immense complexity and it's necessary to put in place
other kind of motivations when the rationally behaving individual
maximizes his own utility and at the same time is increasing the global
utility of the society. That means to leave to the individual all the
possibility of decision, a negation of the totalitarian system essence.

There was an effort to promote small hydroelectric production in
eighties, but hoping any significant effect is of course a non-sense
in an economic environment where the individual has been reduced into
materialized support of the production.  Small hydroelectric
centrales existed until fifties when the water supply trenchs have
been filled. Centralized production is easier to manage for a regime
whose key attribute is distrust of its own population. An another
possibility is to say let's leave the productivist logics and reestablish
the demand-supply equilibrium by reducing the demand. This is possible to
reach in an open society by price (taxes) regulation, marginal price
tariffs, or rewarding energy savings. My private estimation for the
potential of electricity savings in Slovakia is of 30 up to 50% just by
better use of existing resources (of course, with increasing marginal
cost). It's an unresolvable dilemma in a totalitarian regime because of
alienation of the individual. Communists have commited the intellectual
(let's call it so) sin because of pathologic optimism of the official
marxism and recurrent character of the violence, they were unable to see
the structural constraints of the collective being. Gabcikovo has deeper
roots than just the technocratic claims, it stems deeply from the very
nature of the communist system.

In Switzerland for example, electricity companies have an obligation to
buy back the electricity from small producers, many people who have a
ravine near to their alpage are producing small amount of electricity
when they are not there and consuming electricity when present. There also
are many forms of tax encouragements to save energy.

Yet another reason is claimed by Magyar nationalist circles both in
Hungary and in Slovakia. There is a parallel between this phenomenon and
the Anti-Czech paranoia certain Slovaks are cultivating. Gabcikovo would
be constructed to beton the boundary, so that it would be more difficult
eventually to claim the territory back. (Remark the conditional mode I am
writing about this, it's an information and not a sign of taking any
position;-) From the European Union perspective, it's increasingly
becoming clear that such considerations are becoming a non-sense. It
also seems that the new Hungarian government is taking a more pragmatic
approach to address this issue.

There are even more reasons one could write long articles about - sorry,
I have no time. Thank you again, George, for hitting the clue.

Roman Kanala
--------------------------------- End of forwarded message ------------

Roman Kanala writes:
>Yet another reason is claimed by Magyar nationalist circles both in
>Hungary and in Slovakia. There is a parallel between this phenomenon and
>the Anti-Czech paranoia certain Slovaks are cultivating. Gabcikovo would
>be constructed to beton the boundary, so that it would be more difficult
>eventually to claim the territory back. (Remark the conditional mode I am
>writing about this, it's an information and not a sign of taking any
>position;-) From the European Union perspective, it's increasingly
>becoming clear that such considerations are becoming a non-sense.

Roman, just a footnote to your EU perspective.
President Clinton has recently made a reference to the conditions to which
the signatory states of the partnership for peace have acceeded to.
Clinton referred to the sovereignity and territorial integrity of the
signatory states and the rejection of _any_ territorial claims upon any
other signatory state to the PFP and wherein Hungary and Slovakia are
signatory states to the PFP, your EU perspective appears closer to be
closer to the consistency of swiss cheese, than of the the PFP accords ;-)

Tony

Imi Bokor wrote about American democracy:


>>i'm not sure whether we are talking about the same united states of
>>america
>>but when i spent some time there --- in columbus ohio, i from september
>>1985 to march 1986 to be precise ---i had  the less than pleasurable
>experience
>of driving along the main road and being stopped by two policemen, and
>being
>asked for identification. that by itself would not have not bothered me,
>after
>all, growing up in a totalitarian society like australia, where police do
>make
>random checks of motor vehicles and motorists, i was accustomed to such
>terror
>tactics. i *did* become frightened and apprehensive when of the two
>policemen
>only one approached the vehicle while the other drew his service
>revolver.

Obviously, we do. The United States of America you went to was a police
state; the one I live is not. Eva Balogh

On Sat, 6 Aug 1994, Charles wrote:

>   But then, how much do
> >Hungarian kids know about -- say -- Paraguy's history?
> >
> --Well, sure, but the history of Hungary is a lot more important in
> the development of civilization (whatever that is) than the history
> of Paraguay.

Point well taken. I think a historical moment when the U.S. President was
asked by some advisers to drop a small atomic bomb on Ungvar and Cob
(Chob) area to privent Soviet military build up and logistics in the area
with the general history of Paraguay.

> There are American kids dumb enough to believe that
> Michael Jackson actually drove the Soviets out!  Happens I was in

No way!!! You mean those American kids who asked in 1991 who is Barbara
Bush, they answered, "She is the one who designed the American flag".?


                                                Attila


P.S. I should make a video where Lenin, Horthy and O.J. throws the British
out of the 13 colonies.

On Sat, 6 Aug 1994, Joe Pannon wrote:

> > Budapest just before the Soviets left.  I didn't see Michael anywhere.
>
> Maybe he was there in disguise.  No fedora, etc.

Yes, he was there only he had a pants on which was his size. That did
throw of everybody.

                                                        Attila

P.S.    Why does M.J. has a pants on which is too small for him.
        He picked up the wrong pants by accident.

On Mon, 8 Aug 1994 08:54:54 -0700 Attila Gabor said:
>
>> There are American kids dumb enough to believe that
>> Michael Jackson actually drove the Soviets out!
>
>No way!!! You mean those American kids who asked in 1991 who is Barbara
>Bush, they answered, "She is the one who designed the American flag".?

--Probably the same ones.  Americans are not noted for their interest
in history, either their own or that of the world at large.  Sad, but
true.
>
>P.S. I should make a video where Lenin, Horthy and O.J. throws the British
>out of the 13 colonies.

--Sounds like a winner to me!  Throw in a little nudity, some rock music,
and maybe a shooting or two, and I think your fortune will be made.

I fired off my two-liner too early. Here is something else:

Imi Bokor writes:

>there were
>even
>eight hungarians there, all of whom had gone to the u.s.a. to study with
>the
>intention of *not* returning to hungary. seven of the eight did as soon
>as
>they had completed their studies. the eighth was looking for jobs in
>canada, england, australia or new zealand.

You must have met an unusual bunch of Hungarian graduate students, studying
in the United States. Most those I knew tried to find a job in this country
and settle here. I am pretty sure that some of our fellow list-members who
live in the United States came here exactly this way. They came to study for
a higher degree, Ph.D. most likely, and managed to wiggle a job somewhere in
order to get a green card. But undoubtedly, there are some people who find it
difficult to adjust, who are homesick, who don't want live away from their
families, and so on and so forth. I lived in Canada for my first seven years
after leaving Hungary--the first five years were miserable but gradually life
got better. Some people are not willing to wait. Eva Balogh

Ken,

>30% of Jews marry non-Jews, and the children are raised in neither faith.
>>Do you see this as a problem?  What do you think abouth the prospect of
>>the disappearance of American Jews due to this development?

> I don't see this as a problem...  My mother has been raised as a roman
>Catholic 40 years later she decided to join the Protestant... It's all
>a matter of choice!  Everyone has freedom to choose his/her religion
 This is not true!!  No one can convert to Jewdiism (spelling?), since the
Jews are an ethnic group, and consider their group to be chosen by God
and therefore to be a Jew you MUST be a decendent of the Jewish people.

>American Jews will not 'disapear' just cause they decided to marrry
>outside their religion.  It's like saying they will be no more white
>if 30% marries blacks or vice-versa...  IMHO, those statements can only

I strongly disagree with this!!!  The will in fact be no more white/European
people if over generations all (30% per generation for example) intermarry
with other racial groups - this also applies to Africans or Asians, and would
by a tragedy of the same magnitude, in my view.  If, say, 200 years from now
every person on the Earth could identify recent (2-3 generations back)
ancestors from several ethnic groups/races, there would in fact be not
such person as a Chinese, Indian, Polish, etc.  I have had conversations
with European friends on this same topic, and most, but not all, do not
see this as a problem.  Granted, most of my European friends are German,
and therefore may feel obligated to take that point due to historic
reasons (while my friends from France and Greece where in ther US, I
did not ask them this since this has only recently become a concern
to me).  What I cannot accept, however, is the notion that one can
join an ethnic group simply by choice - can I become Nigerian my
moving there, getting citizenship, and learning the language?  Ofcourse
not, but some folks on this net believe ethnic groups cannot die so long
as someone choses to join them.  It seems this is a fundamental difference
which cannot be reconciled.

>I believe life will be a better
>place through interaction/integration rather then exclusion\conservation
>through one idealogy.

But this point of view can only lead to uniculturalism, or to a close
approximation.  Certainly the great variety of cultures will be lost.
What you call 'exclusion\conservation' is actually true multiculturalism,
since the result would be the maintainance of a variety of cultures, and
racial/ethnic groups.  I think people get nervious by the ideas I'm promoting
since in the past, efforts to prevent intermarriage have been motivated by
racism and a feeling of superiority (Hitler, American rasism against Africans,
 etc)
by one group.  My motivation is not that I think one group is superior, but
 rather
that all groups are worth maintaining - a multicultural world is a gooding
 thing,
if it is based on localized uniculturalism.  The same is true of ethnic/racial
groups.

I think people who promote total multiculturalism are doing it out of good
intensions, but they do not understand that the world society they propose
 -the multicultural world society they propose - is not sustainable.  If you
do not mind the idea of a world-wide melting pot, then we see things
fundamentally differently.

Paul Gelencser

On Fri, 5 Aug 1994  wrote:

> Scott Mincey writes:
>
> [...]
> >          Sections of Budapest, including a downtown bridge and a main
> > thoroughfare, will be cordoned off over the weekend for the
> > video shoot, Budapest police spokesman Tamas Pohl said.
> [...]
> >
> >         Is this ridiculous or what?
>
> Oh, I don't know, I assume the city collects some fat fees for all of this, n
o
?
>
> --Greg
>
...but the fat fees can move everything ?!
..even hold a whole country to ridicul?