“All I know is what’s on the internet” -Donald Trump Since I published my two-part series in the Hungarian Free Press, (my favourite blog, the one I lovingly call the “Little Engine That Could”) my phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Some callers breathe hard and tell me to “go back to Israel” and hang up, before I can ask – why […]
This month, I was invited to watch a private preview screening of the documentary Keep Quiet, which will have its Toronto premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation Festival on May 8, 2017. The film, directed by Joseph Martin and Sam Blair, focuses on the political coming of age of Jobbik and Hungarian Guard co-founder Csanád Szegedi–a young man who represented […]
Canada’s largest French-language newspaper, La Presse, published a feature piece entitled “Michael Ignatieff engaged in a battle against the Hungarian regime” (Michael Ignatieff engagé dans un combat contre le Régime hongrois) and interviewed Professor András Göllner, a Hungarian Free Press contributor, as part of its story on proposed legislation aimed at shuttering Budapest’s Central European University (CEU). Professor Göllner told La […]
A Canadian national monument dedicated to the victims of dictatorial communist regimes moved forward in an important way this week, with the publication of proposals submitted by the five finalist design teams. The new monument differs in a number of ways from original plans submitted by the Tribute to Liberty group and approved by the previous Conservative government. The monument […]
The Red Cross has been present in Hungary since 1881 and much like in Canada, it provides important educational programs on emergency care, as well as offers vaccines, organises blood drives and trains volunteer nurses. Yet after an encounter with the Canadian Red Cross last night, I left very disappointed with their deplorable fundraising and pressure tactics and wrote them […]
A number of readers noticed Sunday evening that HFP had been hacked on two separate occasions. In both cases, György Lázár’s most recent article on opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin among some Hungarians was deleted and replaced with a note from a hacker, using a pseudonym which I will not repeat here, so as to not give him/her added […]
Chrismukkah (in Hungarian Hanukarácsony) is the merging of two holidays – Christmas and Hanukkah and it has become a tradition at the Hungarian Consulate in Los Angeles to have a Chrismukkah event to celebrate the two holidays together. This year, the first night of Hanukkah happens to fall on Christmas Eve — which hasn’t happened in nearly four decades. The […]
Ottawa-based columnist Michael Aarenau published an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin biweekly newspaper entitled “Campus Life: Bonding over Jewish victimhood” on November 9, 2016 in which he wrote: “Many of us seem to view any and all demonstrations against Israel as anti-Semitic. While there’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of the criticism against Israel is rooted […]
Hungarian, British, Filipino, Jamaican, German, Slovak, Indo-Caribbean, Syrian and Muslim–these are some of the peoples and cultures that you can explore on November 26th, 2016, at the International Day Festival hosted by St. Joseph’s Parish. The Roman Catholic community is celebrating its 160th anniversary this fall and while it was originally built on parishioners of primarily Irish and French background, […]
On November 30, 2016 the Hungarian Diaspora Council will hold its annual meeting in Budapest at the Parliament building with over 100 invitees. The Council will meet with politicians, among them, leaders of Hungary’s neo-Nazi party, Jobbik. Canadian and US citizens of Hungarian origin may end up meeting with neo-Nazis, some of whom have been expelled from North America! (One […]
