Blogging the democratic revolution
Under Ceausescu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej regime (Dej was the political mentor of Ceausescu) 250,000 Jews have been sold by Romania. The German ethnics who held the Romanian citizenship were also sold to the West Germany. Aside from the financial transaction, Ceausescu asked Israel to smooth the relations of Romania with the United States. This is just one more despicable act of the Romanian communists. Israel paid cash for the Jews who wanted to leave Romania, but also with technology and by lobbying in Ceausescu????????s favor in Washington DC. After 1967, Romania was the only communist country who did not…
In Hungary over the past 48 hours it’s the Nika riots all over again. Sort of. First, political parties in Hungary do not immediately line up into conveniently-intelligible left-wing/right-wing definitions, though some are easily mappable for Americans (the SZDSZ are basically libertarians). See my previous posts here and here for some quick shorthand. What do we know? We know that Prime Minister Gyurcs????ny shot his mouth off at a private meeting of the Socialist Pary (MSZP), which was then leaked to the press, and the entire country fell into political paroxysms. But that’s what happens when the Prime Minister publicly…
Pestiside is a zippy, if probably left-leaning, blog that really makes you feel like you’ve got your hand on the pulse of Hungary. It’s full of the lowdown and fun to read. On this great day that George Bush visited and honored the Hungarian Freedom Fighters of 1956, Pestiside put in a delicious item that I enjoyed reading: Pestiside writes: A big shout out to reader J. for sending us the subscription only MTI story about yesterday’s demonstration organized by Amnesty International Hungary to protest alleged abuses of suspects in the “war on terror.” (Wait – we forgot – is…
Hungarian freedom fighters atop the jackboot remains of the Stalin statue Source: 1956 Hungary President George W. Bush, in Europe today, remembered some of the bravest democratic revolutionaries in all history, Hungary’s Freedom Fighters, who stood up to Soviet tanks in the name of democracy. It’s the fiftiest anniversary of that stunning struggle in the name of freedom. Source: The Menzies Era In the aftermath of World War II, half of Europe was enslaved by the Soviet Union. The communism it imposed was a truly terrible kind, disallowing all free thought as the Stalinist colonializers stamped their deadening blotting-paper-gray imprint…
This would be the first time that any party has managed to hold power for two terms. As previously discussed, the political parties don’t quite conform to typical expectations as understood in the US, nor even as they would be understood a hop, skip, and jump away in Italy. If you’re not familiar with the scene, you’ll want to hit the link and jog your memory. Results here are as follows: MSZP 43.21% FIDESZ 42.03% SZDSZ 6.50% MDF 5.04% This is a strong showing for the Free Democrats (SZDSZ – mild minarchists, sort of libertarian lite), and a truly unexpectedly…
I don’t have an awful lot that I can add to this, but it needs to be noted. If I’d set out for the library a half-hour earlier one day, I’d have wound up either in or walking right past where the Aranykez bomb went off — it is a REALLY central location in downtown Budapest. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed, but unless there’s some corruption issue going on, it’s hard to see what these yahoos would have to gain by threatening election violence.
This would be a completely irrelevant toss-off post except for its potential significance. The MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum) is raising some eyebrows with a couple pieces of news lately. It needs to, because as discussed before, the MDF is in a fight for its life when it comes to parliamentary representation. If it cannot make 5%, and that’s looking increasingly doubtful, then it’s out there with the also-rans. Which makes it significant that the MDF: 1. Has said they will neither enter into coalition with FIDESZ, nor support them with second-round votes. FIDESZ, whose proposals are increasingly self-contradictory, is no…
Putin has okayed the return of the Sarospatak Library, seized by the Nazis and then by the Russians in WWII. Of course, this raises some eyebrows over the larger repatriation issues, even if the Russian official media feel the need to demonstrate that no new repatriation precedents are being set with the move. Given this, it’s no big surprise that Hungary has agreed to pay the Russians for “storage costs” that Putin’s buds can then turn around and tout as a foreign-policy success. So, what’s going on? A couple of things, as I see it. One, Putin is getting set…
As part of my previous explication of the Hungarian political parties, and in order to convey how the parties involved are pretty counter-intuitive to American standards, I????????m presenting excerpted transcriptions of speeches regarding the upcoming elections. The first is by Viktor Orb????n, head of FIDESZ, who is presenting his eighth ???????state of the country??????? address ???????? looks and sounds a little like a more-populist, slightly sexier Al Gore. The second is a reply to Orb????n the following day by Ferenc Gyurcs????ny of the MSZP ???????? imagine a sort an even-more-bloodless Bill Gates figure, prone to seriously stick his foot in…
In the Bucharest Daily News, a little item pops up: the Hungarians want the Romanians to pass a minority status law. Yawn. What else is new? Oh. Yes. That EU thing. Speaking in Targu-Mures on Saturday during a two-day visit to Transylvania, Szili Katalin also spoke about cooperation between Hungary and Romania in view of the latter’s upcoming EU accession. Ms. Szili sounds very much as if she’s trying to play hardball, or as hardball as Hungary, with its ridiculously weak international position, can play.(FN1) One can see that Hungary would be interested in the position of Hungarian minorities involved……
Index recently ran a condensed political analysis from financial analysts at Erste Bank, entitled The Market doesn’t care for Grand Coalitions. The upshot of the article is that across Central Europe, the political scene is characterized by weak parliamentary majorities. The writers give a general overview of East-Central Europe, which is unfortunately so severely condensed as to be nearly unusable to a foreigner, as the writer has conveniently renamed the Czech, Slovak, and Polish political party names into Hungarian equivalents that do not always translate well… but it backs up the general unease felt by the markets at the thought…