Towns Evacuated In Hungary As Red Sludge Fears Grow

Commenting on a few things read above:
I am a Hungarian-American who returned to live in Hungary presently.

In my assessment most people here were not happier under Soviet rule. I myself escaped ilegally with my first wife. The contradiction that some will say "it was still better under the Soviet system" comes from the fact that since that time the country was pushed into a neocolonial status of Wild West globalism - instead of the secure welfare capitalism of Western Europe most of my fellow Hungarians had wanted in 1989 when the Soviets got out. Life is decidedly much worse year by year for the masses, unemployment, environmental pollution and racially motivated skirmishes are on the increase. The middle class virtually ceased to exist, the majority of the population is poor at a third-world level (and in Hungary you basically have no functioning welfare system).

Since the Soviet-serving bureaucrats stole most of the material values accumulated by the "Socialist State" during its forty years, siphoning out most of it into private hands (mostly forming bogus companies that privatized for peanuts then disappeared or went offshore), the country was laid bare at the mercy of international - mostly EU - investors and venture capitalists. A paradise of low wages, growing prostitution and a people totally naive about the mixed blessings of neo-liberal capitalism.

Also, like Argentina, we were pushed into a rising national debt scheme. Right now the PM estimated that eight forints out of every ten go towards debt service. Very little realized of the original debts serves the interests of the very people who pay for it. Most of it was passed over to a semiprivate and private colonial aristocracy.

Now UNLIKE IN EAST GERMANY, the list of secret police agents, Communist Party functionaries and state assets played into the hands of the apparatchiks was NEVER made public to this day. The servants of the former colonial system are rich, they have the best housing, investments, education abroad, and they help one another a little bit like Mafiosi.

This disaster was handled by the same elite. Mr. Orban usually tries to break the stranglehold of these former Soviet people but since the system never really changed, it is a Sysyphusian task.

Also, people much more radical than him and his followers ("Fidesz", a moderate right conservative nationalist party that won by about two-thirds in 2010), classified under Jobbik for example, suggest openly Nazi-style solutions to the rising ethnic tensions with Gypsies and are also full of antisemitic rhetoric resembling the 30's. Luckily, there are very few paramilitary organizations in Hungary.

Ireland contemplates revision of its slurry ponds in the light of the Hungarian disaster.

reply to post by Kokatsi

In my assessment most people here were not happier under Soviet rule.

that some will say "it was still better under the Soviet system" comes from the fact that since that time the country was pushed into a neocolonial status of Wild West globalism - instead of the secure welfare capitalism of Western Europe most of my fellow Hungarians had wanted in 1989 when the Soviets got out. Life is decidedly much worse year by year for the masses, unemployment, environmental pollution and racially motivated skirmishes are on the increase. The middle class virtually ceased to exist, the majority of the population is poor at a third-world level (and in Hungary you basically have no functioning welfare system).

you contravene yourself humans Never can appreciate what they have in the hands, feeding 'emselves upon pinky dreamZ_z however, i wish to you & your country the best.
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To MODs, once more my sorries for offtopic

Yes, there is a contradiction, I grant you that. It is not in my argument though, it is in the daily life of this nation.

Most people here would subscribe to a Swedish style of Socialism or Social Democracy in their expectations towards the functions of the state. At the same time, most people give lip service to watered-down neoliberal ideas of economics. People resent the rule of foreign corporations and their domestic collaborators, at the same time they wish for a smaller state. They want stronger protection in the field of economy by the State, at the same time few question why Hungary is driving towards entering the euro zone. These are impossible contradictions.

Hence the popularity of the New Right, who implement statist and left-wing solutions (a lot of which I happen to supoprt) while being conservative in name and supporting traditional morality and symbolism as well as the Church.

After a long Western experience I think we lack dignity, standing up for issues and co-operation. The Slovenes - I experienced - are far better at co-operating with one another to fend off the sole tyrannical rule of foreign capital. But on the whole, the contradiction lives throughout Eastern Europe and the former Communist countries. If people faced en masse that the lack of financial security and industrial pollution is directly attributable to the system of neoliberalism kept up by a local layer of beneficiaries, they would have to draw the logical conclusion that left-wing and Socialist political economy would be the only workable solutions for these poor countries (most of which were in a semi-colonial status in recent history).

But the image has been tarnished for several generations by the memory of the bloody Soviet rule (Yugoslav in the case of Slovenia). So what they do now is selling left-wing ideas under the guise of "rightist" policies like national sentiments.

Anywhere in Latin America you would know that the Right co-operates with foreign - especially American - interests and the rich. Not in Hungary. Our so-called "Socialist Party" which held the government until May 2010 was largely representing the rich and foreign investors...

The only problem is that "national socialism" does not have a pretty history in Eastern Europe.
And the saving grace is that there is far less threat from effective mass violence or discriminatory legislation... After all this is the EU.