It’s heartening to see how the trolls come out of the woodwork when their master, Europe’s most successful affinity fraud artist, Viktor Orbán and his enablers, such as Béla Lipták, the head of The American-Hungarian Lobby, are criticized in the media. I shall pass over the refuse these trolls leave behind them in the underpass of The Hungarian Free Press and will address only two voices that have attracted my attention following the publication of a letter to the editor of the New York Times by the well-known American-Hungarian lobbyist for Orbán – Béla Lipták.
Béla Lipták
One of the voices that reached my ear came from the HFP’s underpass and belongs to Bruce E. Woych, a commentator at the HFP. The problem I have with this voice is simple. It is unable to express itself in any other key than Classical Marxism, a key utterly useless in the age we are living in. The other voice came to my attention from a rank-and file member of Lipták’s lobby group. It belongs to a self-proclaimed Hungarian-American patriot, Peter Hargitai, a retired lecturer on Hungarian poetry at Florida International University. (His comments were circulated by Lipták to members of his group via e-mail today.) Hargitai is upset with The Hungarian Free Press, and its treatment of the latest storm in a tea-cup created by his hero, Bela Lipták. Hargitai’s views on what the world needs now,are even more surreal than those of a lonely Marxist in the HFP underpass. Here they are: “What the world needs to know in a world language is the “why” behind Hungary’s “complex web of truth,” so that the world will be able to reach out and help, if for no other reason, than for the sake of justice, morality, and a sense of humanity. That is why I valued the recent Lipták op-ed and affirmed it in The Washington Post.”
My message to Mr. Hargitai is simple. What the world needs now is a relief from the insanity being hoisted upon it by an elderly Hungarian-American poet from the Everglades. Hungary’s “complex web of truth” should not be laid at the world’s doorstep, but left to the followers of the late István Bibó, who stated over 70 years ago that the “complex web of truth” about Hungary’s past, including the Treaty of Trianon, is nothing but a lie. (István Bibó. Eltorzult magyar alkat, zsákutcás magyar történelem, 1947.) Control over the future of that “misunderstood country” should not be delegated to “the world” (whatever that may mean in this Florida poet’s mind) but put into the hands of a new generation of Hungarians who can stand up to the man that filled his pockets by robbing Hungarians of their right to justice, the rule of law and sustainable economic development.
What the world needs now is a renewed sense of realism. Authoritarian story-tellers like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Erdogan, “the Little Rocket Man who loves his people”, the “Butcher” of Saudi Arabia, the Chinese Communists (sic) are hijacking humanity’s future through an elaborate affinity-fraud that is leading us towards a global catastrophe. What the world needs now is to wake up, and recognize that the emerging technologies of our age have altered not only the economic but the political rules of the game. Liberals and Conservatives have failed miserably to manage the transition to the cyber-age. The Left has no answers either. Karl Polányi was right in telling us over 70 years ago in The Great Transformation, that the failure of Liberalism to manage change will produce Fascism rather than Socialism. He based his argument on the evidence provided by history after the start of the 20th century. It is the return of Fascism on a global scale, the return of affinity-fraud artists like Orbán or Trump that should attract the world’s attention and not half-baked fairy-tales concocted by their enablers, such as Béla Lipták, and the American-Hungarian Lobby.
Cyber-Capitalism is an entity that will be characterized by increasingly “artificial” intelligence, increasing public ignorance about the boundary that separates facts from fiction. Those who will tune into Donald Trump’s address to America tonight – Jan 8th – will receive a perfect illustration of how affinity fraudsters like Trump, Putin, Orbán, and their enablers, like Lipták, harness the emotions of the ignorant public in order to hijack the truth and our ability to discuss rationally the path towards justice, the rule of law and sustainable economic development.
The struggle ahead is not about Left vs Right, Liberalism vs Conservatism, Democrats vs Republicans, Nationalism vs Globalism, Capitalism vs Socialism. It is about how to survive the affinity fraud that is spreading everywhere in the wake of the cyber-age. I preface my next sentence with an apology to the world of academia: Béla Lipták and his patriotic Hungarians in the US are as useful in dealing with the challenges posed by cyber-Capitalism to humanity, as tits on a bull.
András Göllner
So I guess anyone who disagrees with author is nothing but a filthy troll.
He just proved his intolerance for other points of view. While he attempts to smear others, the one he is discrediting through this behavior is none other than himself and this site.
This article overall is not worthy of being published anywhere, on any site that deals with the public, for reasons that I would consider obvious, but evidently HFP editor does not. Perhaps editor should have done some editing and should have edited out the insulting remarks made at beginning of article, addressed at other readers, even if editor happens to disagree with those readers. I do respect Author’s right and effort to express his views further into the article, whether I agree with those views or not. Ideas are put out there, leading to debate, which is what a democratic society is all about. Unfortunately, room for debate is automatically shut when would-be opponents are so hatefully and disgustingly vilified, dehumanized and insulted as author did in intro. It is one thing to write such filth in the forum section and another when assuming authorship!
@ Joe
“So I guess anyone who disagrees with author is nothing but a filthy troll.”
Wrong again, Joe. You need to do more than air your ill-informed guesses down here, before I give you my time of day.
If I were you, I’d join Mr. Liptak’s lunatic asylum (aka The American Hungarian Lobby). You’ll get far more attention there. Shake, rattle and roll to the Donald’s rant tonight. Build yourself a fence to keep rational discourse out of your neighborhood. Do the Republican shuffle. In my books you are nothing but a nameless troll, and your incessant whining won’t change my opinion about you.
Thank you Mr. Gollner for your thorough, thoughtful, and factual piece. I have also been disturbed by Mr. Liptak’s writing in the HFP. Concerning Trianon, I heard at a 2015 rally in Budapest a speech by Imre Mecs who said that all the disputes concerning the Treaty should naturally fade when all countries surrounding Hungary will live by the EU charter’s gifts and obligations — in that case all Hungarians living in the Carpathian basin will find themselves in essentially the same country.
You should talk to some ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania and ask them how close to reality that rhetoric is. Romania did the bare minimum to comply with basic minority rights, up till they joined the EU. Since then, non stop abuse at the hands of the authorities. For instance, ethnic Hungarian majority towns which dare to adopt local flags, are fined and taken to court by local prefects, while just miles away Romanian-majority towns have local flags, flying right in front of prefecture. To his credit editor of this site highlighted the issue when he covered Romanian PM’s suggestion that Hungarians who dare to hoist such flags should hang. Or recently, companies which dare to label their food products along the lines of “Szekely izek” (Szekely flavors) are fined, forced to change labels, while no such similar restrictions exist on anyone else. A Hungarian language school was closed in 2017 over some bureaucratic technicalities. That was not enough, they also took in all the parents for questioning, threatening to hold their kids back a full year, and also threatening to bring in the kids for questioning as well as other abusive behavior. EU justice commissioner’s office has been alerted repeatedly about such regularly occurring abuse, and every time they told Hungarian community to take a hike, because they are just not interested. So what “EU charter’s gifts and obligations” are you talking about? The only obligation they seem to insist on is ethno-cultural suicide of the dozens of distinct native cultures in the EU, through mass colonization with ME-African colonists. Reject that as well as a few other ideological or business interests, and your country all the sudden becomes the most anti-semitic, the most abusive towards minorities, the least democratic, the most corrupt and so on and so on!
Dear Mr. Gollner,
Thank you for including me in the conversation and labeling me an elderly insane man from the Everglades. To a poet it is quite a compliment. Perhaps you ought to read some poetry if you get this excited over a simple an email. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”
Dear Mr. Gollner,
Thank you for including me in the conversation and labeling me an elderly insane man from the Everglades. To a poet it is quite a compliment. Perhaps you ought to read some poetry if you get this excited over a simple an email. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”
Joe, how much does Fidesz pay you for your writings?
I did visit Transylvanian Hungarian towns, villages, hamlets and saw that their ethnic heritage is living undisturbed by Romanian authorities. They have their schools, their university, their churches. Even ethnic Roma villages strive, unlike the abject conditions that they suffer under in Hungary. I have also seen szekely flags flying on houses, although everybody is aware of their signifying resistance to Romania.
You are also silent on the enormous sums of money Orban sends to the Hungarian communities in Romania, have given them Hungarian citizenship to increase Fidesz’s vote count (why both the Rumanian authorities and the EU allow this is beyond my understanding), and organizes yearly an openly anti-Rumanian rally in a Rumanian resort (just imagine any foreign country trying to hold an anti-Hungarian rally in Hungary!…).
So, considering you a pro-Orban troll on the pages of the fact-driven liberal media-outlet HFP is is a logical conclusion. Go continue your activities in the Orban-controlled Hungarian media where you belong.
I’m just a Hungarian standing up for Hungarians and Hungary.
As for the situation in Transylvania?
https://www.erdely.ma/marosvasarhelyi-iskolaugy-tobb-ezren-tuntettek-a-romai-katolikus-gimnazium-vedelmeben/
Here it is about the closing of the Hungarian school I mentioned. I never make claims I cannot back up with evidence.
And BTW, I especially like your shameless lie about the Roma villages. I don’t think the Roma have it any worse in any country in EU than they do in Romania. Have to admit, I have never been to Bulgaria, so I could be wrong. But compared with Hungary?
Last election – 70% turn out of which Fidesz got about 50%. So, at best you are standing up for 35% of Hungarians. You are not the hero you make yourself out to be.
I am standing for the future of all Hungarians, regardless of who anyone voted or did not vote for. I look at the facts, compare and conclude that this is the best way forward. Hungarian electorate agrees with me, producing the same result three times in a row.
BTW: the 35% who did not vote cannot be counted as being opposed to Orban. That is the segment of society which mostly does not engage in politics. Not engaged enough to form any opinion, therefore really should not vote, therefore they are making the right choice by staying away. Based on your argument no government in the Western world has majority approval, therefore should not be legitimate.
Once more we can count on you to make an absurd comment!
Poor Joe, thinks he understood my argument.
Joe
“I never make claims I cannot back up with evidence ..”
This is quite thick (pofátlan) in view of your comments flying in the face of daily news about the utterly corrupt fascist regime in Budapest. But then, Orban said “I’ve never lied” and I say pigs fly.
“Physician heal thyself !” is a phrase the pro-Orbán trolls should heed in this underpass.
Hungary’s neo-Fascist leader and his enablers should put their own houses in order before lecturing their neighbors on civil rights. By all objective accounts, the Orbán regime is Europe’s leading rule of law violator (recently it has become Europe’s leader in anti-labour legislation as well). Orbán has publicly declared that the role model for his regime is Turkey, Russia, China and all those governments that make a mockery of justice, the rule of law and sustainable paths to economic development. Through an elaborate affinity fraud (coating his bait in the language of anti-Communism, Christianity and patriotism) he has stolen billions from Europe’s taxpayers, and has squandered the future of generations of ordinary Hungarians. No wonder hundreds of thousands of Hungarian young people are fleeing his “paradise”.
Dear Mr. Goller,
I am winner of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Poetry Prize (2007) and the Landon Translation Prize from the Academy of American Poets for my work on Attila Jozsef (1988). Yes, I’m elderly (72) and retired, with a limited income. All of my royalties from the translation of Antal Szerb’s “Utas es holdvilag” go directly to the St. Petersburg Holocaust Musem. In point of fact, I had the name of Antal Szerb and Miklos Radnoti, victims of the Hungarian Holocaust, inscribed on the Holocaust Memorial Wall in Miami Beach in 1995. I am a supporter of the Southern Poverty Law Center, but other than that, I do not belong to any political organization or lobby as you indicate in your article. You have not only insulted me but quoted me without my permisssion. Unless you apologize to me personally or remove the article, I will have no other recourse but to turn to the law firm of Holland and Knight LLP for relief.
Sincerely,
Peter Hargitai
cc: Peter Hargitai, Esq. Holland and Knight LLP
Liptak has expressed his opinion on the subject.
It is far out dated, but every one has that right to do .
But what is “indefensable” about it ?
Is your or my opinion any more defensable, just because it is not the same that some one might want to approve ?
Are we all suppose to think in the “box”?
Or is there suppose to be an opinion by your approval ?
Is it not any more: ‘for whom the preacher, for whom his wife’ ?
All (should) have the right to express opinion, but opinions are express reasonable, substantiated ones and some are nonsense or lies.
Lipták’s is largely a mixture of the last two, and it’s “indefensible” since it’s not supported by evidence and not built on logic.
Dear Mr. Gollner and Ms. Balogh of Hungarian Spectrum,
I need the contact info of your legal department re a claim against Hungarian Free Press for unauthorized use of Peter Hargitai’s email and for publishing excerpts therein without explicit permission of the author.
Peter Hargitai
Mr. Hargitai:
Please end this frivolity here. Your email was circulated via a mailing list to hundreds of people by Mr. Lipták. Moreover, you preface said email with the following: “Please find below a text perhaps more suitable for dissemination.”
You should reasonably expect that upon your request for dissemination, and following circulation by Mr. Lipták, your words may indeed be read and quoted. Our writers properly attribute quotes from other disseminated materials and documents as Prof. Göllner did here as well. It is not standard practice to request permission to quote disseminated material and we will not seek any special permission in the future either.
Only one question I have had before, on this Trianon issue, that I have put before all the geniuses, but no-one ever responded.
IF they are really so concerned of all those Hungarians left living in those Trianon areas, just why why they would not invite and settle them in present day Hungary ??????????????????????????
Any on might remember, the Finns took in ALL the Karelians before Szralin annezed Karelia.
Than, 4 million Finns, took in 400,000 Karelians, and every FINN gave up 10% of their property and income to make every single Karelian to be able to live on the same equal level and NOT as refugees !!!
How true is the saying; “put your money, (generosity) where your mouth is”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Andrew Gollner, Ms. Balogh and the Hungarian Free Press,
Dr. Gollner, do you really believe that your modus operandi of late — moderating and censoring replies to suit your agenda and your trashing personal attacks before getting all the facts is in line with the philosophy of an open society or the mission of the Open Society Foundation? There is someone at the very top of the OSF who had also attended the London School of Economics. Let’s visit that — and soon — for the benefit of your few and diminishing subscribers. If anything, you are unwittingly doing Mr. Trump, whose style you seem to emulate, and Mr. Orban a huge favor. I hope that that is not your doublespeak intention.
Insofar as your misappropriated emails are concerned, you’re not quite correct. If you had taken a careful read of the string of emails, you would have realized that the “dissemination” was exclusively to the HL membership. First of all, I’m not a member of HL as you claim; I only responded to an op-ed in a private email. In the future, please get your facts straight before flying off into your manic personal attacks. I’ve seen another side of you on YouTube — not a whole lot of energy there — or Visitors — or Likes. Maybe that’s why you’re so tempted to be the shock jock of FHP and garner more attention for yourself. But is it worth it? Is it worth to throw throw the “cause” you espouse under the bus in favor of your personal need for attention (You’re no George Soros; the “poor” man is getting more attention than he needs). Perhaps it is time to act more responsibly and to tone down your abusive rhetoric for your own good and for the good of the Hungarian Free Press.
Hello Peter I’m sitting here with popcorn and cola,
„… There is someone at the very top of the OSF who had also attended the London School of Economics. Let’s visit that — and soon — for the benefit of your few and diminishing subscribers. If anything, you are unwittingly doing Mr. Trump, whose style you seem to emulate, and Mr. Orban a huge favor. I hope that that is not your doublespeak intention. …“
Your doublespeak intention hope is childish … your wish is to be very clever, so what swells out. … do you like popcorn and cola?
To: Andrew B. Gollner and to the Honourable Jody-Wilson Raybould, Minister of Justice
Is it legal, proper or ethical in Canada to make use of private emails in a public forum without the written consent of the author? Please have your Department review a string of emails in the context of the article below written by Andrew B Gollner of Concordia University and the Hungarian Free Press.
http://hungarianfreepress.com/2019/01/08/on-bela-liptaks-defense-of-the-indefensible/
Oh come on Peter Hargitai, just who do you think you can impress here????
E- mail addresses are all in the public domain !!!!!!!
Go and spend your money on lawyers, with a minimum of 5 G’s as retainer, but sue for what ???
What evidence you may have that Gollner’s stupid remark has caused you any financial loss , cost, physical and/or emotional pain or suffering ???
When you read or comment here on HFP and KMH be ready for the rudest remarks and the most idiotic allegations.
So, just relax Peter, if you can not take the heat of this kitchen, stay out.
To: Andrew B. Gollner aka Andras Gollner
Peter Hargitai, Esq. at Holland and Knight LLP, Peter Hargitai LLP of PwC, the Honorable Ashley Moody, Attorney General State of Florida
Mr. Gollner, I posted three more times to this HFP site with the above, but you have apparently censored those out. They were about the use of my private email for your public forum without my permission, AND about fradulent misrepresenation of me as belonging to a political lobby to which I do not. You label me as “a rank-and file member of Lipták’s lobby group.” This is patently false. As for my private email, it was “exclusively” meant for dissemination to the HL lobby members ONLY, not to HFP: Let me quote from the relevant email strings:
“Dear Peter!
Can I distribute your letter to the participants of the Hungarian Lobby?
Best regards, Béla Lipták”
As the Poet Laureat of Florida I strongly object to your misrepresentaton of fact. Since you have not responded to a personal email of mine to you, I have had to write to Peter Hargitai Esq. (my son) of Holland and Knight LLP and in Canada (since your a dual citizen of Canada and Hungary) to Peter Hargitai LLP of Cooper Waterhouse, and finally to the Honorable Ashley Moody, the Florida State Attorney General to stop yor practice of vamping unatorized emails and your pension to misrepresent fact. Please govern yourself accordingly.
Sincerely,
Peter Hargitai
Poet Laureate of Florida
https://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/hungarian-immigrant-is-gulfports-first-poet-laureate/2260188
Mr. Hargitai:
On 8 January 2019, your letter to Mr. Lipták was made a public document available to everyone with an Internet connection, anywhere in the world, on this page: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/hungarian-lobby/fQ420m_8a_s
You can write any number of letters to anyone, but the fact of the matter is that Mr. Lipták’s group made your email public on the hyperlink listed above.
You are really a bunch of old* clowns …
(* stuck in a time bubble on fantasy land)
Andras Gollner:
Me a pro-Orban lobbyist? Did I teach Hungarian literature at FIU in the Everglades. And elderly? Really?? Why not let your readers decide:
https://vimeo.com/241025347
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69TtNUcF3qw&t=7s
@ Peter Hargitai
My dear Pietro (this is my gesture to the abuse you subjected my name and narrative above)
Try not to believe everything you tell yourself. Poetic license is one thing. Misquoting people in public is something entirely different. Before shedding more crocodile tears in this underpass, (or in your hide-out in the Everglades :-)) please go back upstairs and read what I called you. In case the “climb” up is too taxing, here are my exact words. I would greatly appreciate it, Pietro, if in the future, you would quote me correctly:
“Peter Hargitai, is a retired lecturer on Hungarian poetry at Florida International University… What the world needs now is a relief from the insanity being hoisted upon it by an elderly Hungarian-American poet from the Everglades.”
Pietro. Listen to me now and hear me later (thank you SNL) I did not call you insane. It’s your narrative that’s full of bugs not you. Sit back, pour yourself a drink and read some József Attila, or go feed the crocodiles, instead of throwing a temper-tantrum in this underpass. Be cool. Act your age. Show us that you can cut mustard. 🙂
Best,
András B. Göllner
Honorary Hungarian Consul General to Little Italy and
Poet in Residence (retired)
Chateau Versailles
Little Italy
Oh come on Peter, while you are just crying out for recognition, you are as boreing as your body Gollner is being stated by his students in Concordia’s ‘rate your professors’. Why do not you rather try to join the bitching here and on KMH and contribute something logical???
@ Joe
You would be much wiser listening to the calm and rational comments of Mr. Divenyi than exposing your self-delusions in this underpass: (here is a sample)
“I’m just a Hungarian standing up for Hungarians and Hungary”
Joe, I don’t doubt that you are “just a Hungarian” Many of us here are of the same nationality. Nothing wrong with that. It’s your sleight of hand that is objectionable. Sticking up for a neo-Fascist autocrat is not the same as sticking up for Hungarians and Hungary. Just because you have swallowed Orbán’s bait, don’t expect everyone down here to be as gullible as you.
I suggest you go down to the Everglades and chill out with Pietro, or Béla, they also swallowed the bait, hook line and stinker. I give you my poetic license and wish you a safe trip. 🙂
“Sticking up for a neo-Fascist autocrat is not the same as sticking up for Hungarians and Hungary.”
Just because you repeat this same lie over and over again, together with the Western establishment, it does not make it true.
BTW, I do not give a hoot about Orban, Fidesz and so on. I care about the fate of the Hungarian nation. As I pointed out already, citing statistical fact, 8 years of your favorite leadership in 2002-2010 led to Hungary’s combined consumer + government debt/GDP increasing by 60% (your “sustainable” economic path). Current government oversaw debt deleveraging of 30% of GDP in 2010-2018, which I believe has been among the highest rate of deleveraging in the EU. So on this one measure Hungary and the future of Hungarians looks brighter on current path, it was a near total disaster with the other guys.
4.5 million people working, versus 3.8 million in 2007, before the global crisis, or 3.6 million in 2010, with wages currently growing at one of fastest rates in EU, people in or on brink of poverty declined from peak of 35%, to under 20%. Economic growth solid since 2013, above regional peer average. Birth rates up from low of 1.24, to 1.5.
I would add, one of the safest countries for Jews to live an openly Jewish life in the EU, one of the safest for gay people as well. And overall an improving public safety environment for all.
http://ugyeszseg.hu/pdf/ogy_besz/ogy_beszamolo_2017_eng.pdf
So yes, I support current path, which depends on current leadership remaining in power. I personally think many nations of Europe will not survive much past the century ( on irreversible path to extinction, which Greeks, Ukrainians and a few others are arguably already on) and I do not want Hungarians to be on that list. Current government is best chance, and there is no room for fuckups, to put it bluntly. The other guys already have a proven track record of screwing things up. I honestly thought Hungarians will be on the extinction list as well back in 2010, and I honestly did not believe than anyone would have been able to turn that mess around.
If this path is “neo-Fascist”, while your path is the “correct” liberal-globalist path, then I will choose the first path.
Joe, I wish you got your information about Hungarian economics and life in general from sources other than those controlled by Orban. Does it bother you that all printed media and essentially all radio and TV channels are in the government’s hands? Do you know of any other EU country where the government spreads fake news over billboards? Does it bother you that the judicial system has been taken over by Orban? Does it bother you that an overwhelming portion of private enterprises is in the hand of Orban’s close friends and allies? And what do you think of the massive demonstrations (ignored by the official media) against the imposed unremunerated overtime work? Do you know the poverty rate in the country? Are you aware of open and tolerated (if not encouraged) manifestations of antisemitic and anti-Roma sentiments?
I would like to encourage you to visit that country and talk to “the men on the street” or simply the taxi driver. You would get a picture of Hungary very different from what you are presenting in your latest post.
I did not know that Orban controls sites like Trading Economics, or Eurostat (EU government)
Thanks for “enlightening” us all!
Joe
Where is your 30% debt deleveraging? Lies again?
Hungary’s Gross Gov Deb peaked in 2011 at 80.5%.
thttps://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&plugin=1&pcode=tipsgo10&language=en
Now it is officially 74.2%
BUT in reality the debt position is much worse as the Orban regime swallowed HUF 3 000 bil. of private pension funds in 2011, equal to 11% of GDP.
Not to mention the tricks with hiding debt at the lower levels ie. in the education and health care systems, or the “as of Dec. 31 only” method where the gov and Matolcsy in the central bank play with securities holdings, defered payments, etc. and where the GGD figure immediately jumps in late Jan.
https://bbj.hu/economy/hungary-state-debt-742-of-gdp-at-end-of-q1_149479.
https://tradingeconomics.com/hungary/government-debt-to-gdp
2010-2017 government debt/GDP declined from 81%, to 74%. It is currently down to about 72%, but official stats pending.
https://tradingeconomics.com/hungary/households-debt-to-gdp
Household debt down from over 40%/GDP to 18% same period.
So government + consumer debt combined amounts to 30% of GDP less debt compared with 2010. Not to mention that % that is toxic FX debt is down drastically at consumer & government level.
The link you provided is interesting and you are either ignorant or ill-willed. My guess? Both!
Given average maturity of Hungarian debt of about 7 years, every year Hungary has to turn over debt to the tune of about 10% of GDP. In addition to that, there is the 2% deficit. So, total debt issuance per year is about 12% of GDP. In other words, if Hungary were to hold a giant auction in January, it would see a spike in debt/GDP by 12%, and if you ignore that proceeds are used to pay down maturing debt throughout the year, than you can claim that debt spiked. Hungary tends to front-load auctions, in other words it sells more at beginning of year. Many governments do that, so if you take a mid-year reading, you will see a temporary spike. For this reason, it is common practice to refer to year end numbers every year.
Kedves Bendeguz,
Try writing in Hungarian because your English makes no sense. A boar has a pretty sharp snout.
Don Kichote,
You’re no Don Quixote either. The word play on your name doesn’t really work, does it? Why don’t you read my book “Who Let the Bats out” if you want to get a hard on? Better than watching your life waste away knee-to-knee with Andrash ……..with coke, just so you can pop the corn. Warch it, boy. With Andrash, you’re liable to get a rash. Have you seen his video? The poor man is wasting away.
Wow Peter got it, Don Kichote is not Don Quixote, I would not have believed you that. That tells nothing about me, but a lot about you. And no I do not read your Books because your Komments are arrogant, who wants to read an arrogant writer. That leaves only the Hungarians. Yes it works.
Dear Andras B. Gollner, Pierre, Joe, Bendeguz, Don, Andrash,
It’s been a blast. Thanks for the sport, but I have to get back to some real writing. Let me leave you with a little Attila Jozsef to put you in the mood for waht promises to be a lonely evening for you:
Andras B. Gollner,
Dr. Gollner, your statement in your article that I am “a rank-and file member of Lipták’s lobby group,” is patently false with malicious politically misleading ramifications. I actually look forward to sorting that out in court. Canadian jurisprudence will learn a great deal about the Hungarian Diaspora. Lovely thing, that! In short, your erroneous text needs to be corrected. Otherwise the lettres WILL go out. All of them. It’s just a matter cut and paste. They will first go to the Procureur général du Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, then to Peter Hargitai LLP, attorney at the Canadian firm of Price Waterhouse & Cooper(Toronto office).
I’ll give 48 hours to fix it before I start to cut and paste and stamp.
Best Wishes,
Pietro
Everglades City
HARGITAI;
You and Gollner have locked horns here, because you are both ‘cut from the same cloth’. Even your vocabulary is 100% the same. You just called me “boar”, Gollner called me before a “vaddiszno”.
How true is the old saying; two kondas have no room in the same herd.’ (shell I spell it for you in Hungarian?)
As a friendly reminder, even if you feel 10 foot tall, and the greatest muchissimo, clime down from your high horse and get real.
P.S.
According to the article from the TBT, that you attached earlier ,if in Jan.2016 you were 68 years old, you were just a kid in 1956, likelyhad some memory ,but little understanding of 1956 revolution. So, today to support a government that again has eagerly allied the nation with foreign powers, and follow socialist ideology, hardly could be considered partiotic.
Would you agree with that ???
P.P.S.
Thanks for adding humor to this dry and boring political hate-mongering !!!!
It’s a riot coming down to this underpass. Anyone for some Indian leg wrestling Hungarian style ?
On a serious note: I’m delighted to learn that the man from the Everglades (aka Peter (Pietro) Hargitai) is not a rank and file member of Béla Lipták’s Hungarian Lobby Group, but a solo artist, blowing his own horn.
There is a saying: If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it must be a duck. I guess Pietro is just a cunning linguist. I suggest he should wax Poetic. She needs it 🙂
Dear Bendeguz! I was 9 and in Budapest, in the 4th grade. Witnessed most of the demonstrations and saw lots of dead bodies, many of girld. Horrible stuff. Got PTSD from it I feel even today. Even wrote a book about it from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl, my cousin, Izabella Barna. An award-winning documentary was made out of it. I’m happy to share it with you to prove that –yes– I was there as a child witness.
https://filmfreeway.com/1330726
https://filmfreeway.com/peterhargitai
p.s. I also wrote a book about Bendeguzaand Attila in “Attila Kurtje”. Here’s a short promo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i3fnySdPgo&t=15s
and finally a tribute to the fallen martyrs of 1956 Budapest:
Dr. Gollner:
Thanks for making the correction. I’m glad I don’t have to send all those letters and climb all those stair to the post office. Thanks for saving and elderly Hungarian. Here’s a radical idea I ralk about in a doc umentary made about my life during the 1956 Hungarian revolution. I talk about the need to unite all Hungarians irrespective of democrat, republican, liberal /conservative, etc. Why not work on establishing a dialogue. It may be rocky at first but well worth it, no? We gave it a go today, sort of. Gotta find a common denominator instead of riding our hobbyhorses till its ashes and we all fall down. Dialoue, baby, DIALOGUE, without namecalling. No wild boar for Bendeguz, no trolls, no labels, please. We dont have to buy the world a Coke, but we can build a better city.
“Ó, borzalmas így: útfelen heverni,
Ha bennünket nem épit városokká
Gránithalmokba semmi épitő.
Hiszen kölyökkorában az időnek
Egymást-karoló barlanghegyek voltunk,
Hol békesség és szeretet lakott.
Széjjeltördelt a bölcseség s a bomba,
Szétbomlasztott a gejzirlábu vér
S nyomoruságos könnyekbe merülve
Száz megváltó agy forr már, mint a mész,
Hogy értelmes várossá magasodjunk,
Mert most minden s egyetlen értelmünk
Az úton heverő kövek fájdalma,
Mely porban és piszokban taposódva
Templomtorony kupolájába vágyik!”
Jozsef Attila
PETER HARGITAI’s responses to Bendeguz and Gollner;
Dear Peter;
The interest you expressed to Gollner is a sign of getting real. Hope you’ll follow up with it here and on KMH.
Yes, I am aware who you are, have checked out your bio quite some time ago.
You need not to advertise yourself here, nor your ego.
Like the saying; “the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it”. Hope you’ll do that.
Sorry to read you suffered and now a victim of PTSD. You need to get in therapy to get helped.
I like quality poetry, but not the wan-a-bees.
As of your admired Jozsef Attila I can only pity, not admire nor credit him for anything.
He was a nut-case and a mixed up communist, even if he became an informant on them.
They thru his body on the railroad-tracks to look like a suicide.
Very dramatic, but not heroic. Well fit for their kind.
Like I said, pitiful, but not admirable !
P.S. “Attila kurtje”, was not the legend about Lehel kurtje ?
Attila was known of eating from wood plates, drinking from wood-cups, while all his guests served on gold-plates and drank from gold cups. (Priscus)
Dear Mr. Hargitai, I enjoyed your video presentation and the animated film you made with Tunde Talas about 1956. I find it fascinating that you felt important to share that you are 11% Ashkenazi Jew but mostly Croat… You also talk about the fact that your film with Tunde was censored by the Orban government, if I remember correctly, 3 minutes were cut out… It is my understanding that you received money from Budapest to make this film, and Talas was also salaried by the Orban gov.. and you never protested that they censored you and cut out part of your film. Why do you tolerate Orbán’s censorship? …you had harsh words of Communist censorship.. I’d love to read your thoughts.
Mr.Lazar;
As you stated by your own words that the Orban regime paid for Hargitai’s video.
That simply means one, and every one need to accept, that “the costumer is always right”.
Or have to comply,deliver what the costumer has paid for !!
How is that censorship?
Censorship is denial or prevention of free expression !
I received no money from the Orban governtmen, nor did I expect any. I traveled to Budapest at my own expense with my son to show him the sites of the revolution and to participate in the shooting of the film. I paid for my own hotel, etc. It is Tunde Talas and Budapest Film Studio that received a grant. It seems that Budapest Film studio is kind of shut down. I have not seen the documentary on their website. The censorship of the film is information that came to me second hand, not from the director or the producer, but by a reliable source whose name I dson’t want to disclose. The whole thing is academic becauzse the film is not or cannot be shown in Hungary. http://mandiner.hu/cikk/20171211_gagyor_peter_a_forradalom_lanya
I’m told that some of the crew have yet to be paid. The gov’t expected a doc of nationalistic propaganda and that is not what the documentary was. I’m an American of Hungarian heritage, but not a dual citizen. Only the Hungarian horseman can get away with riding two horses at once. It saddens me that Hungarians are so divided. Theshowing so much animosty toward each other , all because of political. In my documentary I speak about a wishful vision in a quest for Hungarian unity. Here’s a poem of its inverse by Janos Lackfi. Sad but true:
A SZÉTHÚZÁS HIMNUSZA
Isten, áldd meg a magyart
Belső széthúzással,
Nem kell ágyú, puska, kard,
Végez enmagával.
Összetart, mint folyós pép,
Megtölti a bendőt,
A múlt megvolt, most meg épp
Elbaltáz jövendőt!
Nem nézi, hogy honfitárs,
Hátbadöfi menten,
Ellenségnek, nem vitás,
Van hely a cementben.
Három pártot alapít,
Pedig nincs, csak ketten,
Okosban leboltol itt
Bármit, csak hadd menjen.
Egyik szerint áruló,
Ki nem kormánypárti,
Itthon minden ragyogó,
Megnézheti bárki!
Másik szerint gyáva szenny,
Ki nem ellenzéki,
Ez mindig lop, az sosem,
Vesszen, ki nem érti.
Mind, ki emerre szavaz,
Csupa agysebészek,
Aki más jelöltre, az
Félkegyelmű féreg.
Az egyik ezen rugóz:
Fuj, ti mocskos nácik,
A másik bőszen zsidóz,
Élvezi is, látszik.
Egyik szidja Trianont,
Gázkamrát tagadja,
A másik meg nekiront:
Te büdös parasztja!
Itt egy kicsi komcsizás,
Ott kis bőgatyázás,
Ami régi, mind csodás,
Ami régi, csámpás!
Itt: a magyar mind gyökér,
Faluszéli prosztó,
Szerencse, hogy erre él
Néhány fő-észosztó!
Amott: vesszen jövevény,
Csak a magyar éljen,
A tiszta vér szép igény,
Elleszünk majd négyen.
Vár állott, most köpködés,
Marakodás, dúlás,
Pár jelszót bedobnak és
Rajta, kötélhúzás!
Gondolkodni bonyolult
Egynél több nézetből.
Vagy a jövő vagy a múlt!
Vagy euró vagy pengő!
Isten áldd meg a magyart,
Ki-ki túr magának,
Örökké semmi se tart,
Csak a magyar bánat.
A belharc nem hagy alább,
A múltunk már eldőlt,
Ne baltázzuk legalább
El még a jövendőt!
Dear Mr. Hargitai, Thanks for the information. I happen to know that your film with Tálas got an award in a festival here in California. It must be frustrating making a film, which was paid (and censored) by the Orbán government and afterthat they don’t even want to show it… It seems that they expected something different. Why don’t you write a story about this?I’m sure that the Hungarian Free Press would publish it… I’d love to learn what happened…
Let’s see the film, let every one decide for him/herself !!!!!