Eastern European Politics

The Guardian jumped the gun a bit - the bill is still on the table.

Pi S are frantically trying to reject the bill in the legislative committee though. I believe it's mainly because the number of people pissed at them enough to go on a protest in a cold rain just doubled.

A few days ago, one of the major newspapers in Hungary published some govt-critical articles, including the girlfriend of the central bank's president being paid an excessively high salary and one govt higher-up going to a public event in a helicopter.

Today, that same newspaper was abruptly shut down, with the entire staff receiving letters via courier that they're not needed to go to work from today onward. There was absolutely no signs of this coming; in fact, the staff was planning a minor celebration this Sunday. The shutdown order was declared by the newspaper's publisher company, which recently changed hands into govt-affiliated ownership. The chief editor stated in an interview that the publisher is presenting impossible conditions for continued operations; the publisher, however, claims that they're simply reorganizing things due to the newspaper having produced 5 billion in losses within the past eight years. Talks of foul play immediately started and this afternoon, thousands gathered in front of the parliament building in a mass protest. The opposition are unanimously with the protesters, with the president of the socialist party saying "Today Népszabadság, tomorrow the other newspapers, then the political parties, and then this country will be done for." Fidesz, on the other hand, is saying that it was high time it was shut down, considering that it's a remnant of the Soviet era.

Several of the protesters even burned copies of a Fidesz-owned newspaper at the protest site. Cries of "Democracy! Democracy!" and "Orbán, get lost!" are abound. At least one EU flag was spotted in the crowd. EP president Martin Schulz twitted that he's with the protesters because the abrupt closure of the newspaper is a "worrying precedent". Foreign media is making quite the noise too, with New York Times, AFP, BBC, Reuters, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Spiegel and Die Presse all publishing articles about this.

edited 8th Oct '16 5:22:26 PM by amitakartok

A few days ago, Orbán spoke at one of his stadiums' opening ceremony.

I think the audience's opinion of him is quite obvious.

FYI, the audible yell from the audience at 0:24 literally translates as "Go into the ass!", which, in Hungarian, is one level above "go to hell" in severity.

edited 15th Oct '16 10:29:31 AM by amitakartok

Another mass protest in Budapest today. People are effing tired of the blatant corruption by the government and despite a speaker saying that a revolution is unpredictable and won't be good for anyone, more than a few in the crowd are expressing disbelief that Fidesz can be removed democratically.

One opposition speaker in particular stated that the govt can get their hands on another 9000 billion in EU funds before the end of their reign, which they'll use to maintain the current system; to this, the crowd yelled that it'd be better if that money wouldn't even be given to Hungary.

The same speaker also brought up the content of my above post and asked the people to boo Orbán off whatever stage he tries to hold a public speech from; no "Orbán, get out", just booing. This includes the speech he's going to hold in front of the parliament building next week for the sixtieth anniversary of the 1956 revolution.

And in the meantime of this all, Orbán has decided that the Hungarian military needs a solid kick in the ass. NATO mandates that its member states spend 2% GDP on their military; since Orbán came to power, Hungary has been spending less than 1%. Now the military is in such a sorry shape that last year, they couldn't even build that border fence without help from police and inmates - and back in 2010, it turned out during a major flood that the number of reservists ready for mobilization in case of a natural disaster like that one is in the single digits.

So what Orbán wants now is to boost the military with twenty thousand volunteers and start patriotic propaganda in schools to encourage the youth to go play soldier.

Wow, that is a mess. How in the world did thing go this bad? This kind of mess don't happen in a matter of days. It took years or even decades. I already know Hungary is in a big mess thanks to those article about refugees and immigration and John Oliver, but I don't expect it to be this bad. It's like Detroit as a nation instead of a city.

Here I'd thought that a chest-thumpingly-nationalistic strongman would at least build up his country's military, but Orban can't even get that right?

Officially, the military has a staff of 30,000.

Of these, the active manpower is 23,000.

Of these, expert analysts say 4-5,000 are available for armed service. The rest are administrative personnel unit commanders sometimes mis-report as active in order to make the numbers meet on paper.

So yeah, those hundreds of thousands of migrants who crossed the border last summer? The military have absolutely no means of stopping them from trespassing, even if the order would've come down from the parliament itself.

edited 17th Oct '16 1:41:17 PM by amitakartok

@ Advarielle:

Decades. Probably since the end of the Soviet era.

Actually, mandatory conscription was only abolished in 2004.

Back in 2006, the socialist govt's military spending was 1.24% of the GDP, increased little by little every year until peaking at 1.31% in 2009. When Orbán and co. came to power, they dropped the defense budget every year until reaching 0.79% last year, which is almost equivalent to the 2011 budget when adjusted for inflation.

'56 anniversary today.

A couple of counter-protesters attempted to disrupt Orbán's speech by blowing whistles; more than a few of these were attacked by the crowd. One in particular was smacked by at least ten people, including pensioner-age grannies (!) hitting him with their bags and canes, shoving him to the ground and kicking him there (!!) while demanding him to tell who paid him for this because there's no way someone would do this on his own (!!!). The guy was ultimately saved by the local security people and he's saying that he won't sue anyone (Americans, are you taking notes?) because these grannies aren't who he has a problem with, it's the regime he has a problem with.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Orbán's core voter base. The man didn't have to say a single word, his fans assaulted his detractors completely on their own.

The opposition parties held their own gatherings with speeches, but the topic is the usual: everyone must unite to chase Orbán off, but it's not going to happen because the opposition hate each other too much to cooperate.

Reading the German news right now - did Orban really compare the EU to the Soviet Union? How delusional can you get?

Meanwhile a Russian news channel called the 1956 Hungarian Uprising the "first color revolution" in that the CIA was behind it, and I wish I were making that up.

Like hell did any alphabet agencies have anything to do with it. They promised assistance but left us hanging out to dry because Suez was more strategically important.

They aren't serious about those accusations, they're saying them because they know that the sheep will take it at face value purely because of it coming from higher in the social food chain.

Interesting, so they admit that the 1953 uprising in East Germany was genuin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprising_of_1953_in_East_Germany

As they did with the British and French at Suez.

Could they really have done something though? Hungary was isolated behind the iron curtain, and even disregarding the logistical problems, would it really have been a smart move to seek a confrontation with the SU over Hungary. I mean a few years later the world barely avoided the outbreak of WWIII.

And yet Europe seeks to wrest Ukraine from Russia, which is far more important to Moscow than Hungary ever could be.

Point being, practical concerns like that don't always matter with these decisions.

Now, Ukraine was part of the USSR's heartland then. The current Russo-US geopolitical safeguards against MAD also barely existed in 1956.

In essence, openly aiding the Ukrainians today means an escalated non-nuclear armed conflict with Russia at the most. But openly aiding the Hungarians risked The Endof The World As We Know It.

edited 25th Oct '16 8:52:02 AM by FluffyMcChicken

In 1956 Crimea was still part of Russia .

I don't think there could've been anything they could've done. Trying to interfere in Hungary would've resulted in the USSR declaring that the US are interfering in a sovereign ally's internal matters and would've come running to "help".

They might've done a lot of proxy wars, but the US weren't stupid enough to start a direct confrontation.

No, what pisses me off more isn't that they didn't help because they couldn't, but that they lied about it for false hope.

Oh, I'd have thought it was widely known that the West played—at best—a very peripheral role in all the Eastern Bloc uprisings, whether it's 1953 Berlin, 1956 Hungary, 1968 Czechoslovakia, 1980 Poland, or the big 1989 revolutions. The individual countries involved should claim full credit.

No, what amuses me is that just as Orban is busily using it to fan the nationalistic flames (he first came to public attention in an event commemorating Imre Nagy), his BFF Putin is blaming it on...non-Hungarians.

At this point neither one really gives a fuck.

Actually, from all I hear of Orban, I think he arrogant enough to see Putin as a useful idiot...a feeling that I'm sure is useful (and reciprocated) in Moscow.

Actually, the ministry of foreign matters called in the Russian ambassador to discuss Russia's recent... reinterpretation of the '56 revolution, with the stated reason being that The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified.

edited 25th Oct '16 4:35:32 PM by amitakartok

...I think I need a moment.

I might have mentioned earlier that Kaczynski has expressed his desire to see every child - no matter if disfigured, dying or dead - born so it can be "given a name and christened".

So now they went further. There's a plan to "reward" women that will give birth to irrevocably disfigured or terminally ill children, dead or alive. 4000 PLN (roughly 1000 $). Once. For the record, that's literally nothing.

And it doesn't stop there. Rape pregnancies might also be included in this equation. This is bound to accelerate rape apologists ("She provoked a guy to rape her to get more money"). I can't begin to explain how wrong all of this is.