Hungarian Politics

[Tamas]

There has been a continuous tiny protest at a Budapest park where a bunch of people oppose the cutting of century old trees for some kind of government building projects. There have been constant clashes with the security personnel there and numerous occasions of the police acting as bystanders. There's even a video footage of the security guard's leader shouting with the police officer in charge of the cops on the site and the officer standing there like he is one of the privates in Full Metal Jacket's famous scene. In other words, it's very fishy and a good example of the mafia state that Hungary has become.

But the latest incident is extra precious. There was one of this pre-arranged demonstrations at the site when the security guards started dispersing the little crowd - not exactly legal. Police didn't care until actual brawling began.

But when one of the gorillas literally knocked out a girl about 10% of his weight, it was the girl who was taken to the police station - to be interrogated as suspect of attacking the security guard. You can see the hit a few seconds from this video's start point: https://youtu.be/kQdIQ4tu0Q8?t=100

[Admiral Yi]

She flopped.

[Tamas]

Orban's personal oligarch, childhood friend and until a week ago mayor of his home village (he resigned because of "running his business"), Lorinc Meszaros, is now the richest man in Hungary.

A plumber/gas worker, he now owns powerplants, a TV station, countless businesses, factories, etc. He matches in wealth the owner of the bank OTP which is by far the biggest Hungarian bank with several international business interests.

He had about half a million dollars worth of wealth in 2010 (already a massive sum in Hungary for a village plumber/mayor), now he is a dollar billionaire.

If he continues to accumulate wealth at the same rate, he becomes richest man of the world in 2022.

[Syt]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/13/viktor-orban-moves-ban-gender-studies-courses-university-dangerous/

Viktor Orban moves to ban gender studies courses at university in 'dangerous precedent' for Hungary

A proposal by the Hungarian government to ban gender studies at universities in the country has been criticised as a "dangerous precedent" for state interference.

Hungary's ministry for human capacities said the proposed ban, which would come into effect at the start of the 2019 academic year, had been introduced because employers showed no interest in graduates from the subject.

But critics say the ban is part of a campaign by Prime Minister Viktor Orban to attack NGOs or institutions that oppose his Fidesz party's socially conservative narrative.

Andrea Peto, a gender studies professor at the Central European University, one of the two universities that could be affected, said the proposed ban violated the Hungarian constitution, which protects the freedom of scientific research and learning.

"Never before has the government sought to legislate the curriculum of universities without consultation with the appropriate university institutions, Hungarian Accreditation Committee and the Higher Educational Planning Council," Professor Peto told The Telegraph. "It also sets a dangerous precedent for state intervention in all other university courses."

The Central European University, and Budapest's Eotvos Lorand University, the other institution teaching gender studies, were given just 24 hours to respond to the proposal.

The explanation from the  ministry for human capacities has failed to quash suspicions in Hungary that the government has turned on a subject it believes poses a threat to the traditional Christian and family values it claims to protect and uphold.

Bence Retvari, a state secretary at the capacities ministry, has questioned whether gender studies is a legitimate academic field of study.  Earlier this year Mr Orban said that the "Christian democracy" his government was creating in Hungary protects the "traditional family model of one man one woman".

A ban on gender studies could deepen the anxiety in the EU over the direction Hungary is taking.

Mr Orban has declared his intention to build an "illiberal democracy" in the Central European state and has mounted a fierce challenge to the multi-cultural liberal democracy he believes the bloc encourages and promotes.

Last month Brussels stepped up a legal battle with Budapest over migration laws, and declared as illegal new Hungarian laws that make it a crime for organisation or individuals to support illegal migration.

[Tamas]

Well the King is on holiday, there are no migrants at the gates, they had to thematise public discourse until main season starts in the Autumn again.

Plus they get to act like they have an ideology driving them instead of rampant pillaging.

[Tamas]

Finally somebody coined a term for what I've been talking about going on in Hungary: refeudalisation

Agnes Heller's full interview is here: http://politicalcritique.org/cee/hungary/2018/agnes-heller-orban-is-a-tyrant/

But the best bit:

Everyone who is under Orban must serve him and must agree with him. No counter opinion is tolerated because this is a mass society, not a class society. In a mass society, there are no class interests. Even the poor people have no class interest.

In a mass society, a new thing appears, which we call refeudalization. It means that corruption is different from traditional corruption. Traditional corruption is that rich people corrupt one or another politician, they buy a politician in order to serve their economic interests. In refeudalization the opposite is true. The rulers of Fidesz and Orban in particular create their own oligarchy, and the oligarchy depends on politics, and not politics on oligarchy. Take the mayor of Felcsut and a childhood friend of Orban, Lorinc Meszaros. He was a nobody but in a few years he amassed enormous wealth and now is one of the richest people in the world. He basically has half of Hungary under his control. Of course, everybody knows that this is Orban's money, not Meszaros' but this cannot be proven.

BTW Agnes Heller is a kind of philosopher I guess. Because of this interview some government officials labelled her as an old communist, to be ignored on that merit.

She was an early member of the communist party indeed, in 1944, but left it fairly quickly, disillusioned. In fact her and her husband's career and life was ruined subsequently by the Party.

The persons calling her communist though, were all local or higher functionaries in if nothing else the communist youth organisation right until the very end when they switched to be democrats.

[Tamas]

The Hungarian joke/parody political party ha repaired a pothole in Orban's home village as a political stunt.

Now they have received an official notice from the local council that they have 8 days to "restore the road to its original state" or they will be billed for the "repair works" carried out on it to "fix" what they have done.

[garbon]

I'm now trying to think about how you unfix a pothole.

[Tamas]

International scandal that's getting WAY more public attention in Hungary  (judged via Facebook shares etc) than any of the mind-boggling corruption cases:

Orban's eldest daughter (and, I am fairly certain, heir apparent) was photographed leaving a used diaper on the side of a petrol station parking lot in Croatia:



The Croats are not amused either.

I think at any case its a great indicator of the kind of class that family is. She is married to a billionaire (made into one post-marriage to be fair), there was a fucking petrol station with bins.

[Valmy]

Something about the Orbans stinks

[The Brain]

Well, it depends.

[Tonitrus]

Well, it depends.

She has probably lived a pampered life.

[Solmyr]

Well, it depends.

She has probably lived a pampered life.

No shit.

[garbon]

Diaper puns.

[The Larch]

Hungary Intentionally Denying Food To Asylum-Seekers, Watchdog Groups Say

Hungary's government has stopped providing food to adult asylum-seekers who have been denied but have appealed their cases, prompting outcry from human rights groups and intervention from the European Court of Human Rights.

Authorities have not only refused to provide food to those asylum-seekers, but also denied them permission to buy their own food and blocked attempts by outside groups to donate food, according to the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog group based in Hungary that has provided legal assistance to the asylum-seekers.

András Léderer, information and advocacy officer for the HHC's refugee program, tells NPR that the policy appears to be designed to "force people to abandon their asylum applications."

The European Court of Human Rights has stepped in repeatedly to order Hungary to provide food to the asylum seekers — one case at a time.

"Basically, you have to go to court in order to get a slice of bread," Lydia Gall, a Budapest-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, tells NPR. "It's completely absurd and inhuman."

"This latest antic of depriving people of food is just the latest in a row of various measures that the government has taken to [persuade] people to leave," she says.

Hungary's immigration service did not respond to an email from NPR requesting comment. The office told Hungarian media earlier this week that it is not explicitly obligated to feed asylum seekers whose claims are rejected, Human Rights Watch says.
(...)
Hungary's current government is extremely anti-immigration — Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has called refugees "Muslim invaders" — and earlier this summer, it passed a group of laws called the "Stop Soros" package that further intensified anti-immigration policies.

One of the laws prohibited nonprofit organizations from providing aid to undocumented immigrants. Another measure altered various elements of Hungary's immigration and asylum laws.

One of those changes led to the denial of food to asylum-seekers. The rule change — which went into effect in early July — specifies that when an asylum claim is rejected, a would-be refugee in a transit zone is subject to "alien policing procedures," even if they've appealed their cases.

And under "alien policing procedures," the government maintains, it has no obligation to feed adults.

Since then, eight asylum-seekers have been rejected and appealed their cases, Léderer says. While they waited for the results of their appeal, Hungarian authorities stopped providing them with food.

Court orders that asylum-seekers be fed, one case at a time

The European Court of Human Rights confirms that it has stepped in with "interim measures" in four cases this month. Another case is currently pending before the court, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee says.

Until the court steps in, that asylum-seeker in question — a young woman from Afghanistan — is not being fed, the organization says.

Children and breastfeeding mothers have been provided food, the HHC says, but they were prohibited from sharing it with family members.
(...)
Some of the asylum-seekers who have been denied food have had cash on them and have asked permission to buy food, "but there is no option for them," Léderer says.

According to Hungarian media outlets, a pastor named Gábor Iványi, who runs a prominent charity, collected food for refugees and attempted to deliver it to the transit zone. He was turned away by authorities, Léderer confirmed. Iványi has been a vocal critic of the Hungarian government.

Gall and Léderer both say the policy seems designed to pressure asylum-seekers to turn away of their own accord.

"A person who's been deprived of food for two or three days [will] start looking around for options to get that food," says Gall, the Human Rights Watch researcher. "And the only way that they can do that at the moment is to abandon their claims and walk out the door back into Serbia. But then, legally speaking, they will abandon their asylum claim."

If they want to file another claim, she says, they have to get at the back of the line to enter one of Hungary's transit zones — and the wait is more than 18 months.