A statue of Imre Nagy was erected on the southeast corner of Kossuth Square in 1996, to commemorate the 1956 Revolution he led as the Communist leader of his country and for which he gave his life. He is standing on a bridge looking towards the Parliament building. That bronze sculpture stood there until the fall of 2018 when Viktor […]
Blikk is a popular Hungarian language tabloid and Prime Minister Orbán recently gave them an “exclusive” interview about the importance of wearing the mask. Hungary has a serious uptick in Covid19 infections. “I always have a couple masks in the car and in the office, these are medical grade,” he explained. Orbán says that the masks are inconvenient and uncomfortable […]
Steve Bannon has been arrested. He and three associates were indicted in the U.S. Southern District of New York and charged with defrauding donors through a campaign called, We Build the Wall. The group raised “more than $25 million to build a wall along the southern border of the United States” and it is suspected that hundreds of thousands of […]
Mr. Zsolt Németh, a founder of Hungary’s Fidesz party and leader of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee has published an unusual English-language essay entitled, Hungarian foreign policy after Covid-19. It appeared in the pro-government daily Magyar Nemzet and it seems that it is intended to be Hungary’s new foreign policy “manifesto.” (Read Németh’s thesis in English here) In the past […]
Seventy-three year-old former Attorney General and friend of the Orbán government, Jeff Sessions failed to reclaim his old Senate seat. He lost to former Auburn University football coach, Tommy Tuberville in the Alabama GOP runoff. It was a bitter defeat to Sessions a native Alabaman; Tuberville just recently moved to the state and will face incumbent Democrat Doug Jones in November. This was the first […]
PBS NewsHour is one of the most widely watched news program in the US. In the July 8 program the host, Nick Schifrin asked – among others – Hungary’s ex-Ambassador to the US, Réka Szemerkényi about foreign perception of the US during the coronavirus pandemic. Here are Szemerkényi’s responses from the edited transcript. We publish them without any further comment. […]
Steve King of Iowa, one of the most controversial members of Congress has lost his bid for re-nomination. King, a nine-term Republican suffered one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 Republican primary season. The defeat will most likely end his political career. 71-year-old King is openly racist. He has befriended European far-right leaders, among them disgraced far-right Austrian politician, […]
Large crowd demonstrated against racism and police brutality in Liberty Square (Szabadság tér) in front of the US Embassy in Budapest on Sunday. Participants declared support for the Black Lives Matter movement and pledged “to stand together in solidarity with all victims of racism globally, for justice and unity, for systemic radical positive change.” David Cornstein, US Ambassador to Budapest issued […]
Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s young minister of foreign affairs & trade is responsible for purchasing protective gear for his country’s fight against the coronavirus epidemic. Szijjártó organized an air bridge to China and over 100 WizzAir flights brought back gear for the “battle,” as he calls it. According to government sources Hungary has so far received over 131 million masks, 1,928,695 protective […]
In a speech on the Day of Victory over the Nazis, in the city of Uzhhorod (Ungvár in Hungarian) Ukraine’s young and photogenic president sent a not so subtle message to Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Volodymyr Zelensky talked about the “expulsion of invaders” from Zacarpathia, a clear reference to the illegal 1939 occupation of the area by Hungarian ruler […]
