two weeks ago 14 branchlines were switched from trains to buses.

Sure, I can see why they did that in the 50's and 60's around here, but NOW with oil at $60?

Just make sure they don't tear up the rails and it will only be a temporary setback.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

This is perfect occasion for the governing 'Socialists' and 'liberals' to push police state measures in advance. There has been discussion of a general permit to police to use rubber bullets. More alarmingly, as a bizarre 'solution' to the police 'mistakes' of last year that non-protesters were beaten up and arrested too, passers-by have been 'warned' in advance that they are subject to police action.

It's interesting that this is exactly the atmosphere and the rumors (rubber bullets, no bystanders etc)  that are circulating in Greece as the (massive) student protests over proposed university reform continue for the third month (actually for 9 months on and off). There has been a frightening display of police brutality, probably unprecedented in scale since the days of the dictatorship, against what is only on the surface an education-related uprising and has many of the characteristics of a youth-revolt (yes, I know, I should have posted a diary about this). Today was the big demonstration day everyone was afraid of, but Mr. Putin's presence here for the signing of a big pipeline deal, might have discouraged large scale police violence...

Here, of course, it's the (beyond-the-socialists) Left that's marching with the demonstrators and seems to support the protests ideologically (but only up to a a point).

I wonder if harsh police-state measures are part of some sort of paneuropean understanding as to how social unrest should be dealt with, or simply a case of an unorganized convergence of repressive measures, given the general economic path we're all heading along on...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

I look forward to the update.  

The Fates are kind.

So I helped packing & cleaning at a house in the outskirts of Budapest. In the morning when I got there, the city was empty -- I forgot to tell in the diary that Budapest hotels had record low, hotels around Budapest record high reservations.

I ended 3 pm, a bit earlier than planned. So I thought: what the heck, I won't be scared neither by rioters nor by police, and capitalise on the emptied city by going to watch a movie.

I should have suspected something already on the bus: half the passengers wore a dreamy look to their national-colours cockade, like cult followers about to meet their guru. In the metro, even more of them. So is main opposition party Fidesz (right-populist) holding a rally? I figured they must be on a certain main street, so hoped I can just pass them to the cinema I chose.

But when I get out, there were masses of flag-waving people just in the directrion of the cinema. No way to pass between them.  So I circled a block, passing thousands, me being the only one not in national colors. At the edge of the crowd, dozens of sellers of 'national' merchandise. While I circle the block, a pickup truck passed us, with a man shouting from the platform with a megaphone, denouncing Fidesz leader Orbán for not overthrowing the current government. (He got no reply from the crowd.)

But while some far-rightists denounce Fidesz, and no one from this crowd insulted me for lack of national colours, the seamless union of center-right and other parts of the far-right was plain to see: every third flag was the 'Árpád-stripes' flag. This flag used to be a royal flag, but during WWII, the local fascists (the Arrowcrossers) used it, giving a far-right association to it like the Nazis to the Swastika. The far-right, then the 'normal' right began to use it increasingly in the last few years. Many of them protest the far-right association, calling it an old Hungarian symbol only misused by the Arrowcrossers, but please: Hungary is no more a kingdom and it has another flag!

...when I got to the cinema, I got a strong sense of normality and madness existing side-by-side: outside, tens of thousands of flag-waving idiots, inside, the same cosmopolitan artsy people as everyday (only fewer). But The Faun's Labirynth already ran since 15 minutes. So I battled my way across the sidestreets again, to a second cinema, and watched Clint Eastwood's remarquable Letters from Iwo Jima.

Going home, I hopped on a tramway. Which stopped for ten minutes: the far-right motorists' club I wrote about a few times, now apparently counting hundreds of members, zoomed along the cross street with police escort.

A few stations later, what looked like departing protesters hopped on the tram. But still a few stations further, I saw a police cordon, and behind that a few hundred people, the now familiar mix that took part in riots, from skinheads to university student types. And then I see that the guys who hopped onboard a few stations before hopped down, unfurled flags and other paraphelia, and turned out to be football hooligans (another part of said mix).

Then I got on my train and now I'm at home. I'll report what's in the domestic news in an hour.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Early today, police finally caught the 'hero' of the far-right rioters, György Budaházy (a guy who already tried an idiot's revolution five years ago, took part in last autumn's first riots, then fled into the woods from police, who since didn't want to risk spontaneous new riots by catching him).

At the 15 March commemoration of the capital, the (liberal) mayor of Budapest was pelted with eggs. Later the Fidesz mayor of the inner-city district (where the incident happened) unambiguously denounced the egg-pelting -- this is something new.

Indeed I stumbled into a Fidesz rally, in fact it appears to have been one of the biggest yet with 200,000 people. On it, Fidesz leader Orbán (below in front of an oversized cockade) made politics not commemoration. He chose a wording to give something both to his more peaceful and his revolution-minded followers: he said that it's now up to the people in the referendum Fidesz wants, and after the referendum, if the government doesn't abide by it, the people "can hunt them away".

Meanwhile, the youth wing of the Socialists organised a press conference before the "House of Terror" -- a museum in the house that was successively the seat of the Arrowcrossers and the Stalinist communist secret police, but which focuses mainly on the latter era, as it was opened as part of Fidesz's 2002 election campaign --, where they wanted to hand over an 'Árpád-stripes' flag (see at bottom right above: the red-white-red-white... one) to the museum.

In the afternoon, starting from the rally (an impression above) of small far-right party MIÉP (which broke with Fidesz) at Heroes' Square, which is some 2 km away from where the Fidesz protest was, the rioters (about a thousand -- less than last autumn) began action.

The squirmishes spread inward along a boulevard that was modelled on the Champs Elisées, and reached the stage of arson (of public banks and rubbish bins) near its inner end, at the Opera.

The fires were now quickly estinguished by the water cannons -- almost routine...

A new weapon: sling-shots, shooting screws at police. But police was apparently effective in containing and then dispersing them twenty minutes ago, and currently there is no report of assembled people.

One policeman's skin ripped on the head when a stone hit him, one protester was hit by a tear gas grenade on the head, and three protesters are treated for too much tear gas. Some rioters kicked a freelance photographer until apparent gangleaders stopped them. Firefighters were also pelted with stones.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}