https://hungarytoday.hu/conservatives-meet-in-brussels-amid-drama-and-intimidation/ Populist Fidesz media are whining about Brussels, the rules and laws so I have one simple question: Why don't…
25 % of FIDESZ Voters: Putin helps Endangered Russians
Time to have a look what Hungarians experience with Putin’s war. Heaviest and unbeatable argument in Hungary is “on TV has been said.” This shows how highly regarded this medium is in Hungary, only the youngest have discovered internet as main source of information, bad enough many think that facebook would be the same as news. Of course it offers a low level accessible source for opinions, especially since Unity for Hungary is excluded by most Hungarian media they use it for bringing their message to the people, but also Orbán increasingly uses it for publication of his most important official government decisions as limiting the price for chicken carcasses was done on facebook after all media outlets were informed that an extraordinary announcement would happen. Concerning TV there is the market share of last week available now, RTL has still most watched news, followed by those on TV2. The special news on M1 however surprisingly jumped on 13th rank of all most viewed programs last week, while RTL was watched 2.2 times more often.
The contradicting statements of the regime mainly have confused the FIDESZ voters. Where state TV is telling the people Russian propaganda Orbán himself has condemned Russia half-hearted. RTL has published the 1st polling about what Hungarians think about Putin’s war ►HU. The investigation was carried out in the last two days of February by Pulzus. And indeed 25 % of FIDESZ voters are convinced that Putin only helps the endangered Russian minority in Ukraine and has all right to do so. Opposition leaning voters only for 5 % think so. However, 45 % of FIDESZ voters think that the aggression of a great power led to the war. Voters of Unity for Hungary are for 89 % convinced that this is the case. Although a plurality of FIDESZ voters is able to recognise the difference between Russian propaganda and facts, there are also 30 % of confused FIDESZ voters that either had no idea or was afraid of telling. Among the opposition voters this is only with 6 % the case. 55 % of FIDESZ voters either confused or impressed by Russian propaganda is a really dangerous mass!
Among all Hungarians 52 % have concerning the war sympathies with Ukraine, 16 % with Russia, 21 % are confused, and 11 % refused to answer. Here again we clearly see that the 12 years of praising Putin has left deep problems in the society. Although this is not further broken down to party preferences regarding the percentages given for the reasons of Putin’s war it is not hard to imagine who has sympathies with the aggressor.
And of course the question of refugees. After the regime propaganda has for years used the expression migrant instead of refugee the correct term is used again, even Orbán uses it now concerning refugees from Ukraine, while the rest are still “Muslim masses” (see yesterday’s post.) According to that poll 60 % would accept refugees from Ukraine generally, 19 % would let Hungarian refugees only into the country, 5 % no refugees at all. 10 % had no opinion and 6 % refused to answer.
Republikon has published the February party preference poll on telex this morning ►HU, which was conducted before Putin started the war. The voters are not changing in masses, still a tiny lead of FIDESZ, way smaller than the error rate is, 40 : 39 %. But both camps have lost in the direction of undecided voters. The dog party and the nazi party have been polled both below the 5 % threshold, the consequences the lurching course of Orbán and the smear campaign against Márki-Zay will show result later only.
Napi.hu reported about another observation, Hungarians are buying increasingly foreign currencies. The currency exchange association MPOE said that there is no panic, but that they feel tensions. The Forint lost value and besides Euro also Dollar, Swiss Frank and British Pounds are looked for. “Have your passport valid and have enough cash if you have to leave,” Napi quoted ►HU.
More problems face the customers of Sberbank, which is not only cut off its Russian parent company, but tumbling already ►HU. To be clear: Russian Sberbank is targeted by the sanctions, the Sberbank Europe as daughter company has an own Austrian banking license, this Austrian company again owns the banks in other EU countries and none of them is targeted directly by sanctions. After both European Central Bank ECB and the Hungarian counterpart MNB have ordered special bank holidays for yesterday and today, MNB has also sent a supervisory commissioner into the bank and limited all payments to a total of 7 000 000 Ft (about 19 000 €) per customer for the next 30 days. It is already attended to the insurance funds of Hungarian banks that covers deposits up to 100 000 € according to EU rules. ECB announced that they expect the Austrian Sberbank together with her subsidiaries in Slovenia and Croatia is in serious problems ►EN. Since Hungary is in opposite to the other countries not part of the banking union Hungarian MNB has to act separately.
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Too much Hungarian-state TV can damage the capacity to think logically!
Vajna Tímea has suggested damage to this Kiev apartment block might have been caused by a gas explosion and not by Russian missiles (from Hadházy Ákos’ facebook page)
What do you think about this Pesti Srácok article?
The headline changed, ugly content remained
https://444.hu/2022/03/01/ukrajna-melle-allni-hazaarulas-irta-a-pesti-sracok
Unfortunately not surprised! People can’t change their mentality brought about by years of propaganda overnight (although Orbán himself is quite capable of blowing with the prevailing wind and changing his position when he thinks it’s necessary)
“Swift ban won’t seriously impact Russian banks”
https://www.thebanker.com/Transactions-Technology/Swift-ban-won-t-seriously-impact-Russian-banks?ct=true
It felt like 10 years ago when Orbán removed the Budapest cultural scene from the working world shortly after the mass dismissal of journalists, a Hungarian blogger who considered himself a man of the world and called himself Hungarianvoice said you don’t have to show naked people in the theater. I happened to see this play in Budapest about apartheid, a stirring play. The obvious “cleansing” was never the issue. You really can’t ask for more than that from a normal worker. And … at that time all information was fully accessible. I’m more surprised that there are only 25% who talk after the mouth of others.
Yet again another very good post by our host, especially the polling data. I do not know why I do this to my self, but I read one of Mgayar Nemzet’s leading supporters of Putin today Zsolt Bayer who wrote a two part pro-Russian series. Today’s is here https://magyarnemzet.hu/velemeny/2022/03/haboru-es-beke-2-resz . I had to say if EU nations are effectively banning the Russian RT news network from television how can Zsolt not be barred? My wife who speaks maybe ten words of Hungarian and is native American by ancestry seems to know when Hir Tv has Zsolt on because she can hear me ranting in our study where our big screen TV is and now says to me why do your even watch him if he makes you so crazy? Are you going to shoot our TV?
Now in his latest piece of Russian propaganda he continues his attack against the USA on the theme of the USA being a declining empire writing among other things: “Nothing shows where this empire with its expiring warrant is better than its withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has been as catastrophic, disgusting, vile and cowardly as is possible only in a mentally and morally disintegrated empire. The US is mentally and morally disintegrated, dancing on the brink of civil war, dying of the grip of the “woke” and gender ideologies (mindsets), ending its own ethos, roots, traditions and not-so-long past, its economic power and influence declining, its political influence weakening, military force (as far as the technical part of the force is concerned), but the moral decline has already reached the army, as evidenced, among other things, by the open letter sent to the government by many active and retired American generals following the catastrophic Afghan fiasco.…”
Let me first say that Zsolt lies, which comes as no surprise to the readers of this blog, no active General of the US armed forces signed on to the letter referenced. If they had done so they would have violated the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice. The actual section is Article 88 – Contempt Toward Public Officials. The letter in question was organized by the group Flag Officers 4 America. The group calling has advanced the false conspiracy theory that the presidential vote was rigged in Biden’s favor and warned that the nation is “in deep peril” from “a full-blown assault on our Constitutional rights.” Effectively this group of 120 retired officers is a pro-Trump group many of whom endorsed Trump’s rally on Jan 6 that led to the insurrection at the US Capitol complex, but not the insurrection itself. To be honest as a group they are smarter than that. I admit that within the community of retired US Army officers I am a sworn enemy of Flag Officers 4 America. Among those who deserve direct condemnation are retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who is running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire for a second time as an open supporter of Trump; retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who stirred controversy for some of his anti-Muslim views and is now executive vice president of the Family Research Council an anti-abortion group; and retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, who was the deputy national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan and was convicted in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Really Zsolt mimics RT news and much of his political line of argument flows from it. Which brings me bizarrely to my opposition of the proposed EU ban on RT news, which to be honest since I am not a citizen of the EU I have no legitimate voice in raising objection. I agree with European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, when she said: “Russia Today and Sputnik, … spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union.” Effectively it provides the official political line of march for many Putin sycophants inside EU countries.
RT news has to in my opinion be vigorously and continuously attacked in Europe for its lies and distortions. In fact just this morning I heard on the BBC a brilliant discussion by a number of historians of modern Ukrainian history of the direct falsifications made by Putin in his now infamous speech announcing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What I liked the most was their honest discussion of the fascist movement in Ukraine “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” led by Stepan Bandera, the infamous Nazi collaborators who actively fought against the Soviet Union and engaged in some of the worst atrocities committed by any side in World War II.
The power of Bandera according to these historians was driven by Stalin in many ways and these historians discussed the crimes of these Ukrainian fascists in the context of Stalinism intelligently. Here in Chicago where I grew up there were links between old members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, the Ukrainian supporters of Bandera who actually became SS soldiers during WWII, old Croatian Ustaša members, and other Central European anti-communists. In fact I was raised in the boiler of anti-communism of that community where these hidden fascists played a big role and I joined the fight against the spread of international communism by going to Vietnam as a young officer and was lauded for it as where other Central European kids here in Chicago.
But Putin’s lies about what his war against Ukraine is about need to be fought on every ideological level in every country including here in the USA. Banning the lies does not work, now only bullets and presenting the truth as honestly as possible can work.
This story https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-fighter-jets-ukraine-russia-invasion-b2025470.html actually is amazing and I hope these planes while not up to the task of intercepting modern Russian fighter bombers could prove very important in attacking Russian artillery and rocket positions assaulting Ukrainian cities.
But the Ukrainian commanding these older Russian planes also know the Russian fire bases beginning to level cities and massively kill civilians will be protected by anti-aircraft missile batteries. So to some degree such missions could be missions of no return. To say that these Ukrainians are heroes is an understatement if they are able to carry out air offensives they will find themselves listed in history with the pilots for the UK in the Battle of Britain or the few US pilots who manage d to get in the air in Hawaii to fight Japanese planes in their Pearl Harbor attack, also with the Hungarian soldiers who died in defense of the Kilian Barracks in 1956, along with many others. God bless them all.
Poland and Bulgaria have just denied the warplane story, hopefully they are protecting themselves with their own deception.
Putin has called the West an “empire of lies.” In the case of the MiG fighter jets I hope Putin is correct.
“how can Zsolt not be barred?” I am sure that you don’t really ask, why the EU doesn’t ban a Hungarian from Hungarian TV. But it clearly shows the problem the country is in, who the boss of Orbán and this other founding member of FIDESZ is! The story that the West would be in decline is the story we here hear from Orbán already since before he took power. He saw the crisis caused by collapsed banks and that was the end. Now the only Russian bank in the country offering general banking services is next to collapse, but still this is not the end of the East. Obviously Orbán and his propaganda machine did not understand the fact that EU, NATO, the West in general, only went much closer together. Closer than it had been expected by those who pushed these states to closer co-operation. While I hear from all directions that Putin did not succeed to archive the military aims at least in time, getting the West together he succeeded in – although this is definitely not what he expected. And now Orbán has to decide. Half-hearted statements against the war are not enough, Bayer’s crude statements are showing the direction we are heading instead. To be honest, I have no idea what the reaction of the people will be. Do they understand where the Putin lovers brought us? Or do they believe the hateful lies? The EU can ban RT, but we must ban the minds of Bayer. And shooting the TV wouldn’t help! The only weapons we have are X and X on April 3rd.
Here is the result of a survey about undecided voters and their motives.
Analysed by 444
https://444.hu/2022/03/01/a-bizonytalan-es-titkolozo-szavazok-jobban-haragszanak-a-teljes-elitre-mint-az-orban-kormanyra
Ukrainian atomic power stations:
Netyshin: 2000 MWe
Varash: 2880 MWe
Yuzhnoukrainsk: 3000 MWe
Enerhodar: 6000 MWe
March 2: 10h00
The mayor of Energodar says Russian troops approaching the city. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe is placed in this city.
March 2: 10h15
“A group with Russian paratroopers has headed to Voznesensk,
“Information has been received from the National Guard of Ukraine that a group of more than 20 invader helicopters with paratroopers has flown from the Mykolaiv region towards Voznesensk, 10 km from the South Ukrainian nuclear power plant. There might be an attack on the nuclear power plant,”
Today, Russian troops will take over 9000 / 13880 = 64.84% of the atomic electricity production , i.e. more than 1/3 of the electricity production of Ukraine.
I just got a mail from our friend Jan and I can confirm that HN is up and running. It was yesterday in the evening and today I woke up very early and it was as well.
good, thanks for the reply