Sep 032013
 

szabad-radioI am reading a letter of resignation, written by a journalist who worked for the newsroom of Hungary’s public radio network until July this year. Unlike many of his colleagues who began their carriers in communist Hungary, Montreal-born Janos F. Antal was a Radio Free Europe correspondent. Here are some experts from this disturbing letter, in my rough translation:

“I was already working on the restoration of national sovereignty when many of you were still standing at stiff attention, listening to the Internationale […] At the time of ‘regime change’ I did not need to switch sides or become a turncoat, I just continued what I began much earlier, at Radio Free Europe…

“I am a spectator, not a participant; a chronicler, not an evangelist. A journalist – not a politician.

“All came to a head, however, when one day someone appeared behind my back and over my shoulder, staring at my monitor, began giving instructions to move this news item up, leave that one out, insert thit one, rewrite that – just like that, in such a tone.

“Moreover, this censorship brings about the growth of manipulative, propagandistic content. Once again the ‘repertoire’ includes production news of the type for which real demand existed only in the Kadar era.”

Yup, that’s Hungary’s national broadcaster in 2013.

 Posted by at 11:22 am
Jul 032013
 

Fundamental rights in Hungary

Yesterday, the European Parliament discussed a report by the EU’s Civil Liberties Committee on fundamental rights in Hungary.

 

The report was accepted today with 370 votes for, 249 against.

The result was dismissed in advance by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who basically claimed that this was a vote by “socialists, liberals and greens”, “against Hungary”.

It wasn’t. It was a vote of concern regarding the policies of Orban’s government and party. Mr. Orban should know better and remember how it was a habit of the communist leaders that he so despises to dismiss criticisms of their regimes as the work of enemies of their nation.

 Posted by at 10:35 am
Jun 092013
 

John Feffer, writing for the Huffington Post, expresses his grave concern over political developments in Hungary in recent years. He suggests that Hungary may be symptomatic of a cancer that is spreading across Europe: a rejection of liberal values, a rise of nationalism and xenophobia, combined with a growing distrust in European institutions.

I wish I could argue that Feffer is wrong. But he isn’t. Not only is some of the political rhetoric coming from Hungary frightening, but so is the attitude of ordinary people towards the country’s Roma minority, towards Europe, towards Western values.

Yet as Feffer notes, Hungary is not alone: similar sentiments are also on the rise elsewhere in Europe. And unless the EU manages to get its economy under control, things will get worse. Indeed, I have a feeling that the worst is yet to come, and that things will get a lot worse before they’ll get any better.

 Posted by at 3:56 pm
May 272013
 

Even as the Hungarian ultra-right is seeking closer ties with the Arab world, in search of an ally against a common enemy (Jews), none other than the English edition of Al Jazeera aired a half-hour documentary about the rise of the right, the rise of anti-Semitism, the plight of the Roma, and the increasingly authoritarian nature of Viktor Orban’s government.

Meanwhile, the Franco-German cultural channel Arte broadcast a 50-minute German-language documentary titled “Ungarn – Demokratie oder Diktatur?” (Hungary: Democracy or Dictatorship?) expressing similar concerns, but also providing more historical background.

Of course, apologists for the Orban government will dismiss these, like they dismiss all criticism, as liberal propaganda produced by naive (or worse, corrupt) Westerners who know nothing about Hungary, do not speak the language, and were duped by traitorous liberals, former communists, or Magyar-hating Jews. Yes, and pigs fly, too.

 Posted by at 8:33 am
May 252013
 

As I was watching the news unfold about the gruesome court case of an Ottawa husband who is accused of first abusing and then torturing his wife to death by scalding her and then denying her medical treatment, I was reminded of an award-winning Hungarian commercial about spousal abuse.

Incidents

There are uncanny similarities between some of the details of the Hutt case and this commercial.

 Posted by at 11:54 am
Apr 132013
 

So pretend for a moment the following: In Moscow, the French ambassador gives an interview to a local French-language TV program that is broadcast to the expatriate French community in Russia. As he speaks, you notice that the flag behind him is not the French tricolor but Quebec’s flag, the Fleurdelisé. How would you interpret this? Exactly what is the ambassador trying to say?

Of course France’s ambassadors are generally more diplomatic than that. Even if they were to support Quebec’s independence from Canada, I doubt they would do so in such a crudely undiplomatic manner.

So then, when Hungary’s ambassador here in Ottawa gave an interview to Magyar Képek, a Hungarian-language television program broadcast on OMNI TV throughout Canada, why did he choose to do so standing in front of not Hungary’s tricolor, but the flag of Székely Land (also known as Szekler Land, or Székelyföld in Hungarian, a territory in Eastern Transylvania inhabited by Hungarian-speaking ethnic Székelys)?

I cannot help but wonder about the thinking behind this.

 Posted by at 10:27 pm
Mar 292013
 

This article appeared today in Hungarian in HVG (World Economics Weekly), a Hungarian news magazine. I felt compelled to translate it into English and publish it here in my blog.

Belated message to former young democrats from a young democrat

March 29, 2013
Author: Nóra Köves

An essay about the quarter century old Fidesz [Alliance of Young Democrats] party by one of the student protest participants. The author was overcome by a strange sensation while standing in the courtyard of the party’s headquarters, with a copy of the party’s 1989 program pamphlet retrieved from the trash.

Fidesz and I are roughly of the same age. I barely learned to speak when Viktor Orban gave his memorable speech during the reburial ceremony of Imre Nagy [Hungary’s prime minister during the failed 1956 revolution, executed in 1958 and rehabilitated in 1989], in which he stated that “in the sixth coffin lies not just a murdered youth but our own next twenty or who knows how many years.” Back then nobody thought that nearly 25 years later the last nail in this very coffin will be hammered in by the same enthusiastically orating young man. On June 16, 1989, as my parents were listening to this young man in their small highrise flat in the town of Zalaegerszeg, they most certainly did not believe that nearly 25 years later their daughter would be fighting for that free and democratic Hungary which they thought was a done deal as they leaned back in their armchairs. They did not think that the very same young democrats who fought for the freedom of a country with many others back then will attempt to take it away a quarter century later.

A few years ago I would not have thought either that my knowledge of international human rights law, which I spent long nights studying, will be used not in Africa or the Middle East, but I will have to stand up for human rights in Hungary. It did not enter my mind that one day I’d reach the point where, within the rules of active civil disobedience, I’ll be using my own body to defend democracy and a lawful constitutional state, because no other means remain at my disposal. And I certainly would not have thought that one day I’d be protesting in the courtyard of the party headquarters of Fidesz, or that I’d be sitting in pouring snow on the stairs of Parliament, demanding a constitution, democracy, and rule of law, accepting the consequences of civil disobedience with both acts, because I see no other way to save the country in which I would like to live and raise children.

Because I dream of a Hungary in which the rule of law and human dignity are fundamental values, in which all people are created equal, in which families are tied by love and not by the government’s conceptual framework. Where our homeless neighbors receive compassion and real help, not police harassment and misdemeanor fines. Where disadvantaged children can look to the future with hope, knowing that they have a chance to become what they would like to be. That this is now only a dream is a result of the fact that those one-time young democrats who 25 years ago fought for similar values forgot it all by now, and wasted away our recently acquired freedom with their tyrannical lust for power.

As I was protesting as a young democrat in the courtyard of the one-time young democrats, carrying the party’s discarded 1989 pamphlet, it occurred to me that in their one-time party office Orban and others must have felt the same gratifying excitement that we did. They must have felt that they were doing something for the rule of law, for the country in which they wanted to live. I stood there and failed to understand how this feeling, which thoroughly permeates a person and leaves a lasting memory, could have disappeared so without a trace and what may have replaced it. I did not have to wait long for the answer: it suddenly appeared in the form of several large, muscular, especially intimidating “security guards”, who were exactly like the ones who hired them: demands for “constitution, democracy, and the rule of law” meant nothing for them because they only believed in force and brutality, and considered money more important than freedom.

But I know that I have nothing to fear. I need not fear from muscular security, from the stick-wielding participants of the “peace march” who frightened others with acid, from the threatening letters, or even from the groundless accusations of the government’s smear propaganda. I do not have to fear because my trust is infinite in my own generation, in those youth who already tasted freedom, and I know that even if sometimes they awake late, in the end they won’t allow freedom to be wasted away. In this country, we will not permit the strong to oppress the weak, or to dismiss as criminals those who are poor or are different from the majority. We will not permit our universities and cultural spaces to be subject to the state’s tyranny. We will not permit them to trample on our Constitutional Court, we will not permit them to steal our future! And let there be no misunderstanding. Given enough time, no generation permits this. Members of Fidesz think that freedom is not important to the people. I think they are wrong. Voters may not appreciate the significance of specific steps, but when they feel on their own skin the harmful effects of this government, the shackles of the fourth amendment of the constitution, their attention will no longer be diverted even by reduced utility bills.

Fidesz and I are approximately of the same age. We are of the same age as this fragile democracy, which they right now are doing their best to tear apart, just so that they can stay in their comfortable velvet chairs longer, forcing onto us their misguided fantasies. I repeat, our generation as democrats will not permit this. We will respond to the government’s infinitely violent and aggressive, exclusionary and legally depriving policies again and again with determined – ever more determined, but nonviolent – action and we will show that freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance and love are the only way to lay down the foundation of a functioning, democratic, lawful state. In 1989, Fidesz also knew this. This is why I promise that we will continue showing them a mirror until the Hungarian people choose to replace them, or until they acknowledge their former selves and ideals, and the fact that they betrayed every single one of them.

 Posted by at 11:20 pm
Feb 272013
 

It didn’t take very long for Hungary’s far right to turn the Canadian government’s giant billboards into a fascist meme.

 

Reacting to comments by Jason Kenney about the plummeting numbers of refugee claimants from Hungary, the infamous far-right Web site kuruc.info responded with a twisted version of the giant billboard placed by our ever so compassionate Conservative government in strategic locations in Hungary… namely, places with a high percentage of Roma population. The original billboards advised would be refugee claimants about the accelerated claims process. The version of kuruc.info is slightly different. It reads:

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE HUNGARIAN PEOPLE

Gypsies! We have had enough of you! Get out of here!

This is not your home!
To facilitate faster processing, we would rather pay!

Budapest – Delhi: only HUF 166,500

Don’t laugh, Jew, this also applies to you.

In the lower right, the official logo of Canada’s government is replaced by a map of “greater Hungary”.

I hope Messrs. Harper and Kenney are proud of the fodder they provided to these proud protectors of the Hungarian nation.

 Posted by at 8:51 am
Jan 202013
 

This giant billboard was spotted in the city of Miskolc, Hungary:

In English, the billboard reads:

ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

To reduce abuse, the refugee system of Canada has changed.

Refugees whose claims are found to be without grounds
are sent home much more quickly.

Further details: valtozas.kanada.hu

What’s wrong with this billboard, you ask? Perhaps nothing. It is, after all, important information. And it is located in a Hungarian city that, according to the Government of Canada, is the source of most unfounded refugee claims.

But it also happens to be a city with a high Roma population.

Still, it is not an easy black-and-white issue. It is true that Canada receives a disproportionately high number of false refugee claims from Hungary, an EU democracy, and many of the claimants are Roma. But it is also true that the situation of many Roma in Hungary is more like what one expects to see in sub-Saharan Africa, not in an EU country. And while many Hungarians readily blame the Roma for their own economic plight, it is hard to argue that the palpable fear they feel when a right-wing paramilitary unit marches through a Roma village is of their own doing.

Curiously, the Hungarian ultra-right is not happy about Canada’s toughening stance on Roma refugees. They’d much prefer to see all Roma leave Hungary and settle in Canada.

 Posted by at 11:14 am
Sep 122012
 

Seen on a Hungarian auction site, here is a used but functioning Whirlpool microwave oven, for the modest price of HUF 8,500 (about 40 bucks):

The picture looked a little weird, but I wasn’t paying it much attention until I read the first few buyers’ questions and the answers:

  • Dear Gaborka460! Do you happen to have a full-size mirror? Greetings, – Marci502
  • Dear Marci502! I don’t understand exactly, what do a full-size mirror and a microwave have in common? – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! :D:D Full-size mirror – the front of the microwave served as a mirror! :) – Police198
  • Dear Police198! I am really sorry, you are right, the reflection was a mistake by the person who took the picture. – Gaborka460

Person? Wait a cotton-picking minute, let’s look at it a bit more closely:

Yikes. That’s not some freakish, malformed turkey. It is a human alright. Once seen, it cannot be unseen.

And the comments continued relentlessly. Here are some of the best questions and answers:

  • Dear Gaborka460! Your microwave is now famous! :) – Police198
  • Dear Police198! Weeell, I really didn’t mean it. – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! Is the person squatting inside just an illustration or does he come with the microwave? Thanks in advance for your answer. Greetings, – Setfly
  • Dear Setfly! The squattttting person is just an unfortunate, accidental image confusion. – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! Can we have this with a front panel depicting a female??? If so, does that change the price? – cukormeister
  • Dear cukormeister! Unfortunately not! Is this really important? – And then the darkness. – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! Would you please provide exact measurements as it is difficult to decide just by the picture alone if the male figure is hiding inside the microwave or just a reflection? And does the male thong come with the winning bid? Thanks: – retrobudai
  • Dear retrobudai! Is this really important? – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! A gym pass in exchange for the microwave. – gyuribacsi87
  • Dear Gaborka460! How much for the briefs+slippers, I offer a razor in exchange! – gyuribacsi87
  • Dear gyuribacsi87! I really don’t want to be vulgar! – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! Forgive me, but do I see this right, is it really a broiled chicken in clogs sitting in the microwave? – NVShop
  • Dear NVShop! The picture is really bad, the question, dumb! – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! No, of course it’s not a bad picture, quite the contrary. It made many people smile today. It’s my heartfelt wish that this famous microwave soon be sold. – BudaiBrigi
  • Dear Gaborka460! 50,000 is my last offer. – seftelo1
  • Dear seftelo1! I don’t really understand?! My asking price is 8,500 for the microwave. – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! Sorry, you’re right. My mistake. Forgive my miserliness. I’ll give you 100,000 if we can hire you as a product photographer. – seftelo1
  • Dear Gaborka460! Nearly 150,000 views, that’s something:-) – Sikiferrari
  • Dear Sikiferrari! Weeeell; This is how to advertise! And it’s not even my expertise, and I didn’t mean to. – Gaborka460
  • Dear Gaborka460! Now that the microwave has sold, I’d like to know what you ask for the garden gnome in the swimming trunks that was inside? – RGgabor
  • Dear RGgabor! Asshole – Gaborka460

Even with this last comment, one has to admire the remarkable restraint of the seller, Gaborka460, and the overall civility of the discussion. Some of it may be due to vatera.hu’s commenting system or their moderators, of course. Still… it gave me a good laugh today. And the broiled chicken in clogs is well on its way towards becoming the newest Hungarian Internet meme.

 Posted by at 6:25 pm
Aug 292012
 

Rapper Curtis James Jackson III, aka. 50 Cent, was apparently in Hungary a few days ago. While in the country, he must have visited a grocery store, where he took a picture of something that, to him, obviously looked horrendously offensive: a product carrying the name “Negro”, with what appears to be the stylized image of a hanged black man on the plastic bag.


Except that it isn’t. While racism and the rise of the far right are increasingly troubling issues in Hungary, in this case there is a completely innocent explanation. The packaging in question contains candy, throat drops to be precise, made using a nearly century-old secret recipe. And while Negro lozenges are traditionally black in color, the name has nothing to do with the candy’s appearance either: reportedly it is named after its inventor, Italian confectioner Pietro Negro.

And what about the image of a hanged black man? Not exactly. The classic Negro advertising slogan calls the throat drops “the chimney sweep of the throat”. And what may appear as the silhouette of a black man in a noose is, in fact, a chimney sweep doing what chimney sweeps usually do: sweeping a chimney!

In any case, it’s not like it’s hard to find truly offensive product names in Hungary. Like this one:

The Hungarian-language label reads “Negro kiss, vanilla flavored”. But although in this case, the word unambiguously refers to black people, there is again no offensive intent: this is a traditional product name that has been in existence for decades.

 Posted by at 1:42 pm
Jul 302012
 

I read about it in a Hungarian political blog, so I gave it a try: I entered the word “kurvák” (Hungarian for “whores”) into Google.

The first hit is the Web site of Hungary’s governing party, Fidesz.

The second hit is the Web site of the Catholic Church in Hungary.

Is this a failure (feature?) of Google’s algorithms or is it a not so subtle message from Google’s (or Google Hungary’s) people?

Perhaps it’s the former. After all, the other day Google had trouble loading people:

 Posted by at 8:07 pm
Jul 262012
 

Here are some recent gems from my country of birth, all uttered this week by Hungary’s ever so democratic prime minister:

  • “[C]ounterrevolutionary attempts are under way in the higher education establishment” – July 24, in a speech to leaders of his party’s youth organization.
  • “We hope that it will not be necessary to introduce a new political system in place of democracy, but new economic systems, new concepts are necessary.” – July 26, speaking to the National Association of Entrepreneurs and Employers.
  • “Unity is not a matter of intent but a matter of strength. Perhaps there are countries where it doesn’t work this way, for instance in Scandinavia, but such a half-Asian rabble like us can only unite when there is strength. This does not exclude consultations, debate and democracy, but we need a central unity, which can be deduced from the country’s historical experience.” – July 26, as above.

It must be great to know that the future of democracy in Hungary is in such committed, firm hands.

 Posted by at 1:02 pm
Jul 202012
 

I just came across a photograph of a building that looks like one of the abandoned edifices in the ghost city of Prypiat, right next to the Chernobyl nuclear power station. Indeed, the picture appeared in a Facebook blog that features many pictures from Prypiat… but this wasn’t one of them.

Instead, the picture was taken in Hungary, on the south shore of Lake Balaton. The building is an abandoned hotel that before the collapse of Communism served as a resort, owned by the Hungarian Industrial Association. I spent nights at that resort. In particular, I spent nights in this very building shown in the picture.

What I found most striking is that the building looks exactly the same as it did 30-odd years ago (except for the decay, of course). It was apparently never modernized. Never really renovated. Presumably, it was privatized some time after 1989, served as a hotel for a while, and then it was abandoned… but it still looks exactly the same (insofar as I can remember) as it did back in the late 1970s.

I guess I now have a better appreciation of how residents of Prypiat feel when they come across present-day photographs of their once proud town. It is an eerie feeling.

 Posted by at 10:42 am
Jul 102012
 

According to a recent survey, Hungarians believe they are a minority or threatened majority in their own country. They believe that Hungarians represent only 46-58% of the country’s population, with the rest being mostly Roma (14-21%), Jew (10-12%) or other foreign nationalities (10-11%).

In reality, according to the 2001 census (the latest available), the population of Hungary is 93.2% Hungarian. Roma represent 1.9%, the number of Jews is not known (Jew is not a recognized ethnicity in Europe) but the number of practitioners of Judaism is around 0.1%; and people of foreign nationality (e.g., Arab, Chinese) represent only 0.16%

It is not difficult to guess that quite likely, this cognitive dissonance is closely related to the alarming rise of right-wing nationalism in my country of birth.

 Posted by at 3:33 pm
Jul 042012
 

Sometimes one comes across Internet gems just as they are about to disappear.

Just south of Budapest, near the expressway that leads to Lake Balaton, there is a small village by the name of Tordas.

Tordas has had a small community radio station for the past 12 years. For the first decade, it was a pirate station, broadcasting without a license, but as of 2010, they are officially licensed to operate their 1 W (!) transmitter.

Alas, not for much longer. They are about to go silent this weekend, buried by bureaucratic requirements imposed by Hungary’s new media authority.

I read about this today and tuned into Radio Tordas over the Internet. I was in for a treat.

For instance, I heard a version of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, sung in Latin (!) by the late British MP Derek Enright.

I heard a cover of These Boots Are Made for Walkin’, sung by songwriter Lee Hazlewood, with alternate lyrics that end with the words, “this is the part of the record where the engineer Eddy Brackett said if we don’t fade this thing out, we’re all gonna be arrested”.

I heard an wonderful song, Guns of Brixton, by the French band Nouvelle Vague.

I heard a rather unusual and humorous cover (mostly vocals and acoustic instruments) of Jean Michel Jarre’s electronic composition Oxygen, by the Hungarian band Zuboly.

I heard an amazing cover of The Rolling Stones’ Play With Fire. I have no idea who was singing, which is a pity, because he almost sounded like Tom Waits. (No, I don’t think it was Tom Waits.)

I heard many other things, including two rather unusual children’s tales from the immortal Ervin Lazar, known in Hungary for, well, his rather unusual children’s tales.

And this radio station is about to go off the air for good. Perhaps they’ll survive on the Internet. If so, they’re on my list of stations worth listening to.

 Posted by at 4:49 pm
Jun 302012
 

My country of birth, Hungary, is rapidly deteriorating into the kind of surreal place more familiar to fans of Terry Gilliam films.

Take the following letter that was sent, among other places, to all hospitals (hospitals!) in Hungary. This is my translation; I tried to be as literal as possible but of course bureaucratese is not an easy language to master.

Ministry of Human Resources
Budget Department

File Number: 29482-I/2012-KTF

Administrator: Ildikó Bátri
Attachments: Forms, 2 pcs.

To the chief financial officers of all budgetary institutions under the management or maintenance and management of EMMI

On location

Subject: Call for reports for the National Equestrian Sector Registry as specified under Government Decree 1061/2012. (III.12.)

In accordance with the text of paragraph 9 of Government Decree 1061/2012. (III.12.) about the duties and the regulations needed to carry out priority duties in the National Equestrian Program, to facilitate unified asset management goals, the affected ministers must provide recommendations for the creation of a national equestrian sector registry.

Even in these days, significant assets are present in the equestrian sector. Assignment to accepted strategy is an essential condition for responsible asset management in this sector. A first step in this direction is to create a sectoral state asset inventory.

This requires a full survey and census, based on unified criteria, of all state asset elements related to the equestrian sector (real estate, land, related fixed assets, movable assets, horses, immaterial goods, etc.), a determination of asset values, and on the basis of this, the creation of an asset register (inventory) that forms the basis of asset management.

On the basis of the above I request that, by completing the attached forms, exclusively via electronic transmission – also indicating negative answers – no later than

Monday, July 9, 2012, 4 PM,

please return your responses to the e-mail address ildiko.batri@****.gov.hu.

I bring to the attention of intermediate managing agencies with respect to institutions under their management that they should arrange for the collection of the data and its timely submission.

Budapest, June 26, 2012.

With regards,

Tamás Móré
Head of Department

 
Signed and sealed, of course, with a very official-looking stamp.

The mind boggles.

 Posted by at 9:45 pm
Jun 182012
 

Elie Wiesel is a well known Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate.

Wiesel was also a recipient of the Grand Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary.

Not anymore. He decided to repudiate the order. This is his means to protest the participation of László Kövér, Speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly, in a ceremony in Romania honoring the author József Nyirő, a member of Hungary’s national socialist Arrow Cross parliament in 1944-45.

Elie Wiesel had enough and I can’t blame him.

 Posted by at 1:52 pm
Jun 142012
 

One of Hungary’s greatest poets in the 20th century was Miklós Radnóti. As a Jew, he was conscripted into a forced labor batallion during WW2. He was tragically murdered in late 1944.

Three years prior to his untimely death, Radnóti wrote the following entry in his diary about the then celebrated Transylvanian author József Nyirő:

“The Third Reich once again organized the Weimar Poetry Day on October 31 this year, with participants that included invited poets from eleven Central and Eastern European nations. Hungarian literature was represented on Poetry Day by the Transylvanian author József Nyirő. Nyirő told the UFA, among other things, that: ‘In these days, Europe is experiencing a cultural rebirth. I am glad, literature in Hungary is glad that it can participate in this cultural rebuilding. I just saw a beautiful picture in church a short while ago, in which Luther points at the Bible passage that speaks about us being cleansed by blood. Blood cleanses Europe. The peoples of Europe, united under the sign of peace, spirituality, and the new culture, find one another. With all our hearts, all our souls we wish to take part in this joint enterprise. Long live Adolf Hitler! Long live Germany! Long live the society of German authors!’

“Now, as I copy this news item (Monday morning, November 3) I am left wondering… Is it an accident that I don’t have a single line from him on my shelf? Not even in an antology…”

The sad part? Nyirő is again celebrated in Hungary. As a matter of fact, the mayor of the Csepel district of Budapest is organizing a literary evening tomorrow night, dedicated to the writings of Nyirő. To be held… wait for it… in the Miklós Radnóti cultural center.

I can only think of one word to describe this: Disgusting.

 Posted by at 8:02 pm
Jun 082012
 

Although my comment is about the Web site of Hungary’s new President, this post has nothing to do with party politics in Hungary. It is about political correctness run amok.

On the President’s new Web site, there is a helpful link for an accessible version of the site, which is of course commendable. What seems somewhat pointless, though, is the presence of a Braille version of the linking text… appearing on a computer screen.

 

 Posted by at 12:17 am