A Nobel Prize goes to a Chinese: Peking’s revealing reaction. Charging Geert Wilders. The schnitzel tax. A tale about ecological Socialism and dirty capitalism.
 
1. The Nobel committee gave the prize to a Chinese dissenter. One is reminded of the choice of the Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn. In this case, however, the Committee faced more than it did in the 70s. Already during the assessment stage, China aggressively warned against giving the award to its trouble maker-in-residence.
 
As we all know, Liu Xiaobo is in jail and his wife under house arrest. Norwegian –Chinese relations arte characterized by winter conditions in Norway’s north. The Nobel Committee has nothing to do with the country’s government. Typically, totalitarian Peking cannot believe that in a democracy institutions could be independent.
 
The real significance of the treatment of the laureate, his wife and of Norway’s government is that Peking has smashed a myth. The comforting theory has been that China’s economic rise will subtly civilize her policies. You might say the hope was that accumulating some fat would make the PRC relaxed and as easy going as a smiling Buddha. Now it seems that the firming of China’s economy enables her to pursue a harder course. Internally, a larger dividable cake increases the portions handed down for good behavior. Concurrently, greater wealth and better technologies make for enhanced instruments of power. These upgrade the means to deal with the outside world. China’s assertive approach to disputes in the Pacific and for the control of its resources is a symptom. The attitude provokes the question whether there is a coming conflict with China in the making. The signs point to a conclusion. Progress and success has not led to a détente. They produced intransigence in areas that seem important to whoever calls the tune in Peking.

 
 
2. Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician. Since the 17th century, the world is not quite used to famous public figures from the Netherlands.  Wilder’s fame is due to his depiction of the Islamists as threats to our way of life. Although he has been successful in recent elections, Wilders is now in court. Anti-Islam hysteria is the charge. One this will be easy to prove. Wilders’ media message that caters to the man-in-the-street’s concerns which staid parties “solve” by ignoring them, is damaging for political Islam.
 
The case should not rest on whether Wilders judgments are right or wrong. This leaves us with the real substance of the charge, which is that he publicized disturbing data. In the comparable Sarrazin controversy, Chancellor Merkel called his presentation as “not helpful”. Wilders’ guilt can only be that he deals with unpleasant, non-PC-conform phenomena. Condemning Wilders for making a case that is inconvenient is easier than to prove that his facts are inventions and that his conclusions amount to libel. If found guilty, it will be for presenting an inconvenient truth in a convincing, and interesting manner.
 
The echo and the support will serve to prove the charges to be additionally compromising. If so, the conclusion will be that, tackling what the establishment’s consensus declares to be a taboo subject is unsuited for public scrutiny. Therefore, doing so is a crime that makes its insolent source into a rabble-rouser.
 
 
3. The schnitzel tax. To the sane reader the title, through the implied absurdity, might suggest a joke.  Presenting it after the Wilders case will only strengthen the impression. Actually, the title and the case are lifted from the German “Spiegel” a once left-leaning weekly that is shrewdly moving toward the center.
 
The story is about someone in what has been Eastern Germany who escaped unemployment by going into business. Mr. Kaltscheuer created an establishment that serves “schnitzel”, which is a piece of fried breaded meat. The entrepreneur thrived because his offerings satisfied the demands of the local palate. The generous servings and the reasonable price were components of the success strategy.
 
His success got the entrepreneur into trouble with the “state”. The tax Sherlocks’ figure that a schnitzel has 165 grams of meat. Sausage with noodles has 200 grams of pastry and 50 grams of sausage. To Mr. Kaltscheuer’s misfortune, his schnitzels have 200-230 grams of meat –he also serves these with more cheese and pineapple than “planned”. His sausage, he claims, is 180 grams and they come with 350 grams of noodles.
 
The taxman in charge warned the culinary artist that he should not “dare” to transgress his calculations for the portions he offers. The way the innkeeper reports it, the suggestion included a warning. The official claimed that he has already “destroyed” other restaurants in the district. By the calculations of the angered internal revenue, the difference, once expressed in profit against expenditure, amount to a huge sum. (160 grams of meat results in more meals served than 200-gram portions.) The calculated revenue on the assumed greater number of small portions served is more than the profit declared. The difference is considered fraud against the treasury. Mr. Kaltscheuer is trying to organize vilage protest against what is being done to him. He has sympathy but, revealingly, many customers do not dare to go public. They say that they have government jobs. Their fear is that, if they take a stand, they will be fired.
 
 
4. More unpleasant truths follow that deserve exposure to sunlight. The case: The red sludge disaster in Hungary. For days now, the media reports on an accident that is said to rival BP’s record in the Gulf of Mexico.
 
In all fairness, excusing BP’s rating is that this one was hardly an accident. If you chamber your gun, aim, and then pull the trigger the result is not an accident. We get a pre-programmed event. What is the story behind the story of a bursting damn that discharged a poisonous sludge that was not supposed to be there?
 
When democracy was introduced in 1989, at a discount of 1 HUF for 490, the Socialists privatized the enterprise to help a good comrade. Part of the payment had been a promised ecological investment. The project was not executed and the new owners merrily paid a fine amounting to 10% of the sum. The protection of nature was under an old Party-hand who found the measures to be adequate.
 
At the same time, the aluminum plant made a deal with the state to dispose, at Western rates, of dangerous substances. The job was carried out inventively by sinking the poison in the sludge. The governing Socialist-run state’s agencies duly certified that all is well. The silent treatment of the warnings of overwhelming problems to come - such as the dikes incontinence - lasted until the tragedy. There is an added delicacy. The old Socialist PM, Mr. Gyurcsàny and his mother-in-law are involved in the enterprise. Alas, shortly before the burst of the damns, the Socialists were kicked out of the power that protects by 80% of the electorate.
 
It was before the demise of the Communist system that the original dikes were constructed against the warnings of the geologists. The ground’s instability would not support the pressure of high dikes. As time passed, the problem of growing storage needs was solved by raising the damn and not by constructing new sludge pools. In time, the embankment grew to an unforeseen thirty meters. When the sludge-level reached –and blocked- the pipes emptying slime into the reservoir, the pipes were raised. The predictable consequences support that “accident” is the wrong term for what happened.
 
The press reports that the enterprise, respectively the elements behind it, is shoving funds offshore to escape liability.
 
A lesson is embedded in all this. Especially the outwardly Greens and internally Reds are telling us that Capitalism despoils nature. Therefore, Socialism equals ecological procedures. In this case, too, cruel reality proves the opposite to be the case.