I don’t really know when I’ll get back around to my usual sort of on-line fishing in these particular media-waters for interesting things to tell you about. In the meantime, though, I can recommend Pestiside, “The Daily Dish of Cosmopolitan Budapest,” in English of course, and a weblog-type publication which, however, hastens to make it clear that it is not in fact a weblog: it’s a “web-magazine.”

Whatever; it’s certainly entertaining and worth a regular cyber-visit from anyone even remotely interested in what is going on in Budapest and Hungary generally. Indeed, it’s easy enough to agree with the assertion made on that same “Welcome” page that more, many more European cities would be enhanced with a similar sort of on-line “web-magazine” devoted to them. And there aren’t even any ads on the site to contend with – yet, at least.

                          

You can get a good selection of reporting and commentary from English-language sources from around the globe here, if you subscribe to Salon. Non-English-language sources, you say? For that, you know you’ve come to the right place. But if I have to review reporting about the Ramadan bombings myself, then I think I’ll take the opportunity to return, after a long absence, to the Hungarian press. The leading Hungarian daily Népszabadság has an interesting article entitled “Why Are We in Vietnam Again?”, and sub-titled “Saddam Has Returned: He Profits from the Occupiers’ Damaging/Harmful Behavior.”

In general, this is a tale of American woe in Iraq, sub-divided with section-headings like “The Body-Bag [Will Be] ‘Problematic’ in the Election Campaign” and “Bush, Like a Cowboy, in the Valley of Death with Blinders On.” And it makes generous and direct use of sources from the American media. That “cowboy with blinders” heading is derived from last week’s New Yorker cover, which apparently depicted Bush on horseback with blinders on his head rather than that of the horse. For that matter, the very title of Népszabadság’s piece is also the title of a recent essay in the New York Times by in-house columnist Frank Rich.

That string of coordinated suicide-bombings yesterday in Baghdad was, after all, the bloodiest day in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein last April. Even before those events American doubts were emerging, as embodied in the famous leaked memorandum from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warning that US forces still had a “long and hard grind” (“hosszú és kemény gürcölés“) ahead of them. Yesterday’s tragedies bore out the fact that Rumsfeld was correct, writes the Népszabadság writer (identified only as “G.M.”), and also that the situation in Iraq has been reported rather too optimistically ever since the end of the actual war.

The parallels with the American experience in Vietnam are inescapable, and are accordingly starting to appear in the press and in American public discourse generally – just when there’s a presidential election coming up! In response, Bush seems to be playing a game of “double or nothing”; the newspaper speculates that the immediate stimulus for Rumsfeld’s written (but ostensibly secret) cri de coeur was the shifting of much responsibility for what goes in Iraq from his Pentagon to the National Security Council under Condolezza Rice. Whether that will help things or not remains to be seen, but it is at least clear (as the newspaper quotes eminent Stanford historian David Kennedy) that Bush will be in much less of a position to escape the blame if it does not.

And so on: 214 American soldiers killed (a rate of about 2 per day) since Bush declared an end to hostilities last May, more than 2,000 injured, and a bill of $87 billion that is surely not going to be the last word. Contrast this with estimates from last March that Iraq would be “child’s play” (Rumsfeld) and would demand only $1.7 billion for military hostilities and the occupation – not to mention the whole issue of the missing weapons of mass destruction – and you have an American electorate which is starting to believe in increasing numbers that it was duped into this whole affair.

But the part I find particularly interesting, and that I haven’t read elsewhere, is at the end, under the heading “While Bush’s Position Wobbles, Saddam Gains Reputation Anew” (the one down at the end that starts with Míg Bush . . .). According to this series of paragraphs, Saddam Hussein himself is the one personally directing the Iraqi resistance, making use of caches of weapons and money that were put in place over decades for just this eventuality. Népszabadság quotes a number of leading Shiite figures to this effect. What is more, he still can count on a wide network of supporters within the country, not only members of his Baath party (formerly numbering 2 million) but also foreign volunteers who have come to Iraq to fight the occupiers. If this is right, then Bush and Rumsfeld will have failed so far to even accomplish what was the ultimate purpose of the war they unleashed on Iraq: to wipe Saddam Hussein from the history books.

                          

Magyar Hírlap covers the story in an article whose title tells it like it is: Háborús helyzetben gondolnának kivonulásra, or “In a war-situation they would think about a withdrawal.” The article goes on, in its first sentence: “There is no explicit criterion as to how many explosions have to happen before the Hungarian soldiers would be withdrawn out of Iraq, Ferenc Juhász told our newspaper.” That’s good to know, but it’s also clear that one such explosion too many and they would be high-tailing it out of there. As Juhász explained directly to the paper, “We’re not sending our soldiers over there to fight, but above all to ensure the maintenance of the peace. That is what we are authorized to do under the terms of our mandate.”

Of course, a withdrawal would be a final, worst-case step towards solving the eventual problem of attacks on Hungarian forces. But such attacks would necessarily call an end – if only temporarily – to the execution of the peace-keeping missions those Hungarian troops would be in-country to perform. And if they persist: “After this, on the basis of very serious diplomatic and other understandings it could come to the point where [we say]: this far, and no further.” What’s more, such a decision would ultimately be the matter only for Hungarian authorities: “whether others like it, or whether they don’t, it is the [Hungarian] political leadership which has to know how to decide what the right thing will be to do in such a situation.”

But, Minister, it’s also true that all the troops that the Hungarian army is sending to Iraq for peace-keeping are volunteers. Shouldn’t they already know that the mission could be dangerous? No, Juhász replies, it’s more a matter of Hungarian public opinion. Although it’s true that Parliament voted to authorize this deployment without any dissenting vote, Hungarian public opinion does not support it unconditionally. In the current national political climate, if the deployment seems to be turning into a useless exercise – Hungarians being wounded and killed for no seeming purpose – then the government will have to weigh the domestic pressure for such a withdrawal against the inevitable loss of prestige for Hungary and its armed forces that would result.

Apparently Hungarian military authorities have already been in contact with the Polish officers who will be in charge in the sector. If such a withdrawal back to Hungary should happen, it has already been agreed that the Hungarian government will be fully liable for the costs involved – which I suppose must be some sort of a relief for whoever is bankrolling the operation (it’s mainly the Americans, I suspect).

Magyar Hirlap covers the issue well in this article, but that doesn’t mean that the story was anywhere near the top of domestic news coverage. In particular, from Magyar Nemzet – the opposition newspaper – I found only this brief mention, taken from the wires of MTI, the Hungarian Press Agency, entitled “Ferenc Juhász on the dangers facing the Hungarian peace mission to Iraq.” This article merely (if more briefly) restates Juhász’s message: “In Iraq there is gunfire everyday,” he reminds us, and “we don’t intend to be sending heroes over there.” Not a hint of criticism, even from the FIDESZ opposition who are behind Magyar Nemzet – not a hint that maybe there are troops from other nations over there who will be relying on the Hungarian troops to do their assigned job and not just run back home if/when things get a little dangerous. No hint of a reminder that, if every national military contingent over there were to take this attitude, then the situation in Iraq could turn very messy indeed.

                          

To which you might respond “Point taken.” Or you might reply instead “Don’t give me any of your windy pontification, you pompous on-line $&*&^%#$$! To my understanding your function is not supposed to be standing up on a cyber-soapbox to cyber-nit-pick, but rather to give us some idea of what the European media is writing in languages we don’t understand – and you’re awfully late in getting to that here!” Right then – let’s take a look . . .

Since you asked . . . the leading ongoing controversy being tracked by the Hungarian press involves the Hungarian nuclear reactor located at Paks. Nuclear reactors are in-and-of-themselves very good candidates for generating controversy, particularly Eastern European nuclear reactors (for the Czech Republic, to cite another example, see “Temelin”; the problem is that most of these were built according to what can be labeled “Chernobyl-grade” former Soviet safety standards, but that at the same time these rather poorer countries still need the cheap power they generate), particularly Eastern European reactors which have suffered a recent serious accident, as apparently happened at Paks last April 10. The Népszabadság headline succinctly gives what’s going on now: Paks: folyik a vita a felelõsségrõl – “Paks: the conflict continues over responsibility.” Already there have been serious personal consequences to many working at the Paks plant as a result of an internal investigation undertaken immediately after the April accident: the director of plant safety resigned, and lower-level officials were transferred to other departments and had their pay cut and their bonuses cancelled.

But when it comes to the man at the top, plant director István Kocsis, consequences have not yet ensued – because he disclaims responsibility. As he stated yesterday (May 21) in an interview for Hungarian State Radio’s news channel (Kossuth Radio), the director for plant safety is not under the authority of the plant director; he’s just expected to adequately deal with any threats to the plants safety on his own, independently from the plant director. To which József Rónaky, head of the National Atomic Energy Office, replied that, according to Hungarian legislation, the company running the atomic plant (the “Paksi Atomerõmü Rt.”)responsible for it’s safety, and that responsibility is of course located in that company’s director, namely in Mr. Kocsis. But, Rónaky added, the company director could then delegate that responsibility to others; in any case, he said, he was talking about organizational responsibility, and would not comment on questions of Mr. Kocsis’ personal responsibility.

But of course the opposition party, FIDESZ, is glad to do so. One of its parliamentary representatives, Zoltán Illés, called for Kocsis to be fired and for the National Atomic Energy Office to withdraw the Paks plant’s license. That was in his comments to Népszabadság; predictably, the FIDESZ newspaper Magyar Nemzet was more scathing: Elvtársi vizsgálat történt Pakson az atomerõmüben. This headline depends heavily on the world elvtárs, the Hungarian for “comrade,” as in how good party-members were supposed to address each other in the bad old days that ended in 1989; it’s perhaps best translated as “An investigation in the old ‘comrade’ style occurred at the Paks atomic plant.” It seems that, in an impressive investigative-reporting manner, Magyar Nemzet has discovered that that initial committee investigating the accident and who was responsible was stocked with members with ties to the MSZMP – that’s the Socialist Party which runs Hungary’s government today. It’s no wonder, then, that they have punished the little fish but let the big fish go free (so far), namely Kocsis and his subordinate Péter Tilky. The above-mentioned FIDESZ member of Parliament Zoltán Illés is heavily involved in this affair, because he’s the one initiating an appeal to Hungary’s highest court against the Paks plant management.

Sure, this is simply a fishy judicial/investigative matter in a small country that may be far away from you, but accidents at nuclear power plants can also ultimately have serious consequences far, far away downwind – if you get my drift. Chernobyl showed us that most infamously, back at the end of April, 1986. In my view this affair is demonstrating how far Hungary has proceded away from the Chernobyl/Soviet pattern when it comes to demanding explanations and accountability for nuclear accidents, but also how far it has still to go to what (we assume) would happen in the event of similary-serious incidents in the USA, the UK, and Western Europe generally.

(Oh, and what exactly happened at that Paks nuclear plant accident in April? A couple of readers have already faulted me for not mentioning this, especially in view of my last comments above about how nuclear plant accidents can potentially effect us all, and thus this addition to today’s entry. It seems that radioactive gases escaped from the plant, in connection with cleaning of the fuel rods in the second reactor block. Serious, of course, but apparently nothing to spark any international incident – this time.)

                          

Coverage of this issue in Hungary has not been so extensive. In Magyar Hirlap‘s article Powell felülvizsgálná a francia viszonyt (“Powell would re-examine French relations”) the essential elements of the ongoing flap are presented to the Hungarian public: the interview on the Charlie Rose show in which Powell said there would have to be consequences for France, the Monday meeting of high-ranking officials to determine what those consequences could be, French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin’s response during his visit to Ankara, etc. In this newspaper’s view, France also offered two significant concessions in the dispute, in the form of the French UN ambassador’s proposal to suspend – but not definitively cancel – economic sanctions against Baghdad, and his second suggestion to wind-down the UN’s “oil-for-food” program. But Magyar Hirlap takes a novel view of the affair as an outgrowth of recent direct criticism of Colin Powell and the State Department he heads by former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Although the White House has stood by Powell against these attacks, they are said to be at least partly responsible for the administration’s new tough line against its international opponents.

                          

Of the candidate member countries, Malta is of course insignificant – in population, in economic and political significance. (Cypress would be equally so, but for the complication of it’s being a island divided between Greek and Turkish parts, and the political repercussions on EU relations with Turkey stemming from recent attempts to bring about a reconciliation between these two halves of the island so that they can unify to receive EU membership next year together. The prognosis for that happening is not good.) Slovenia is a bit more important – the first part of former Yugoslavia to become a candidate for the EU, and quite possibly the only one to do so for a long time, given how far Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro are from political acceptability because of those of their nationals who are wanted at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. And as for Bosnia-Herzegovina – apart from its own candidates to go to The Hague – it is a bastardized sort of state, made up of ethnic enclaves, that has a long way to go before European Union nations could even consider admitting it to their club.

With Hungary, the membership-referendum process has proceeded to one of the key Central European states which in 1989 actually overthrew its Communist regime and replaced it with democratic rule. At the top of this process will be Poland – another state that made a clean break in 1989, and by far the most important of the candidate states at all in terms of population/economics/politics. The accession process there – which is supposed to culminate with the Polish referendum June 8 – is not going well, in the face of serious governmental instability, but for now that has to be put of to a future post – stay tuned.

Hungary’s EU accession referendum on 12 April, whose result was binding on the government, brought good news and bad news. The good news was the overwhelming predominance of “yes” votes over “no”: 83.76% to 14.24%, respectively. (That’s right, there were no disputed/spoiled ballots, according to the OVB, the state election commission.) The bad news was that only 45.62% of eligible voters bothered to show up to cast their ballot, meaning that, all told, 38% of eligible voters demonstrably supported Hungary’s joining the EU.

This immediately led to recriminations from FIDESZ the “young Democrats” right-wing opposition party, who, according to Népszabadság, blamed the low turn-out on the government’s “poor and insincere” referendum campaign. But such sniping was only to be expected from FIDESZ, a rather sore loser since it was unexpectedly voted out of power a year ago.

More to the point was why most Hungarian polling organizations, before the referendum, were forecasting 60% to 80% voter participation. An interesting article by Ákos Jezsó in Magyar Nemzet – widely considered to be FIDESZ’s flagship newspaper – goes into this question: Ismét melléfogtak a közvéleménykutatók – “The public opinion researchers blundered again.” Strangely, these public opinion companies, by and large, also blame the government for the low turnout: “it didn’t emphasize enough the binding nature of the referendum”; “people got the feeling that ‘yes’ was such a sure thing that they didn’t need to show up at the polls.” Whatever the reason, for what Hungarian president Ference Madl termed “Hungary’s most important decision of the 21st century,” the low turnout cannot but be disquieting.