Hungary is a small country and now the Orbán government has picked a fight with Joe Biden. In a decade Viktor Orbán has transformed Hungary. He commands blind trust from his officials, dissenting views are not tolerated. Bellicose rhetoric is commonplace and his lieutenants are ready to pick a fight with anyone, at any moment, to “defend” Orbán. Speeches are […]
By now you have all heard about Hungary’s recent attacks on American film star George Clooney. Just as Clooney suspected, tightly controlled Hungarian media did not print his full response and we thought that it would be important to publish the full text. Just a brief background. In November GQ Magazine interviewed Clooney who spoke about his movie The Midnight Sky and […]
Antonia Eliason is the Democratic candidate in Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District. Since 2013 Ms. Eliason has been a professor at the University of Mississippi, School of Law. She is the state’s first ever Democratic Socialist candidate focusing on environmental justice, universal healthcare and workers’ rights. I called her on the phone because I discovered in her CV that she speaks […]
A 66-year-old Republican, Agnes Gibboney is running for the Congressional seat in District 31, Rancho Cucamonga, California. Gibboney is an Angel Mom who supports President Trump and has appeared with the President on several occasions. (Angel Moms: a group of mothers whose child was killed by an undocumented immigrant.) Gibboney speaks Hungarian and travelled to Budapest to appear on Zsolt […]
Namedropping, exaggerating influence and political connections are hallmarks of Hungarian foreign policy. Let’s face it, Hungary is a small country with less than 10 million people; it is one of the poorest countries in the European Union with a GDP close to Cincinnati’s. Hungary’s political gravitas and strategic importance are insignificant. (And please don’t be offended.) Yet, according to its […]
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is blackmailing the rest of the European Union, but MEPs and EU leaders must call his bluff to hold up the COVID-19 recovery fund if rule of law criteria are included. This may be the EU’s last chance to crack down on his rogue regime. Orbán is threatening to withhold Hungary’s agreement to the EU’s […]
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 […]
