Dear Colleagues,

I would like to ask for your help and advice in formulating our plans:

1) I would be grateful for information concerning the existence of any
international entity that provides standards or guidelines for the operation
of cabletv companies. I would like to learn, (if such exist), what are
acceptable (on unacceptable) basis for banning certain transmissions? What
recourses are available to the banned? What are the addresses, of such
European, UN etc. agencies?

2) Do we know of any specific case, where the transmission of the Duna TV
program has been banned? Do we have the name(s) of locations, individuals,
companies involved and any other documentation or notifications?

Best regards: Bela Liptak

A few weeks ago,in the Hungary list,I wrote to professor Bela Liptak,that
Hungary need vision of hope,not knowing that he was working on such a study
already,for this I like to apologize.I quote from my letter:
"What I would like to hear from Bela is a positive message to Hungarians.....
My critical explanation for this is,that the Hungarian government lacks a
strategic vision for Hungary's future,aside from deficit reduction,a nece-
ssary goal,but by itself an insufficient one to take us into the 21 st.
century........Where is the strategy for a better future?"

The Strategy for a better future,has been released by professor Bela Liptak.
The title is: " THE FUTURE OF CENTRAL EUROPE" This study is a comprehensive
conception for Central Europe. I quote from this study:

"It is the wrong goal for the Danubian nations to rush into NATO or the
Europian Community individually.A much better first goal is the establish-
ment of an economically self-sufficient,politically stable,militarily
neutral and geographically larg enough federation,which by itself is able
to fill the power vacuum of the region."
( I couldn't agree more.)
"The United Nation should declare that all national minorities anywhere in
the world (exceeding some minimum number say 100,000)have the right to hold
UN supervised plebiscites and receive cultural and linguistic autonomy,if
the majority so desires.It should make no difference how these minorities
evolved,how long they lived in the particular area,or what their language
or religion is.Regardless of all that,they all have the right to maintain
their heritage and the right to determine their own cultural destiny.Once
cultural autonomy is guaranteed,the main cause of tensions between Central
Europian neighbors will also diminish."

We going to hear a lot more aboute this study.I'm very excited and pleased,
that we Hungarians didn't lost the sense of excitement or potential for a
better future!
Toth Laci

---------------------
Forwarded message:
From:    (Andrew L. Simon)
To:      (Tom Angi),  (Joseph A.
Balazs),  (Marton-Erno Balazs), 
(Liptak Bela),  (Lazar Csaba),  (Csaba
L. Gaal),  (Paul Gelencser), 
(Kadar Gyorgy),  (Alexander M. Justice),
 (Dr Nagy Karoly),  (Peter Kaslik),
 (Edith Lauer),  (Sandor
Lengyelx2495),  (George Petrovay),
 (Cseh Tibor)
CC:      (Bakos Istvan)
Date: 95-11-12 10:30:00 EST

On November 15 the Slovak parliament is expected to approve the new "language
law". This will, in effect, outlaws all Hungarian schools, make it illegal to
use Hungarian between doctor and patient, even if both are Hungarians, marry
in
Hungarian in a Hungarian church is a crime, it could land an opera singer in
jail for singing in Italian. Over ten percent of Slovakia's population is
ethnic
Hungarian, according to Slovak counts.

You may note that Prime Minister Meciar is a former communist.  This is the
second independent Slovak republic, the original was set up by Hitler.

There is not much we can do, but an occasional e-mail  to a few interested
U.S.
Senators could help.  Some likely names from the Foreign Affairs Committee:

Joseph Biden    
Daniel Moynihan 
Richard Lugar   
Hank Brown      
James Jeffords  
Paul Sarbanes   
Christopher Dodd        
Paul Simon      
Charles Robb    
Larry Pressler  
Russell Feingold        
Paul Coverdell  

Fax only:
Jesse Helms     202 224 7588
Claiborne Pell  202 224 4680

Should you prefer other senators, or fax numbers of all of them, please let
me
know.
Please pass this on to others.
Good hunting!

Andrew Simon

Dear Colleagues,

1996 will the 1100th anniversary of Hungarian statehood, the 40th anniversary
of the Hungarian revolution. 1996 is also an election year in the United
States, when the 1.6 million Hungarian- Americans could exercise (for the
first time ever) some political influence.

The purpose of this letter is to improve the effectiveness of the Hungarian
Lobby (HL) by an open discussion of its methods, goals and by increasing the
numbers of its active participants.

According to the present concept, the HL has no leaders. It is the
association of people, who feel that their voice will be better heard and
their effort will be more successful if they act together. One of the areas
of HL activity is the use of E-Mail in influencing our political leaders and
the general public opinion through the media.

Our present operation (which, I am sure will change with time and
experience), is as follows:

       When a member (ANY MEMBER) of the HL feels, that we should speak up in
connection with some topic, he or she will compose a letter addressing that
issue and send it to all members of HL. All members, who agree with the
received text, will add their signatures and send the letter on to their
local papers and/or to their Senators. In other words, all members of HL can
initiate an action or can participate in an action initiated by others, (but
only if they agree with it.)

Our goal is to reach the point, where within 24 hours of initiating an
action,  we could send thousands of letters to our representatives and to the
media. In the following four(4) points, I will list the specific deeds that
are expected from anybody who joins the HL:

1) HL members in the USA agree to obtain the E-mail addresses of the two
Senators of their state and of at least two local papers. (If you do not know
these numbers, I will be glad to provide them, if  you let me know which
state you live in.) In Europe or elsewhere, I can not help, but I am sure,
that other members of the HL will be able to.

2) All HL members agree that within 24 hours of receiving a form-letter, they
will read it, and if they agree with its goal, contents and style, they will
send it (or some variety of it) on,  to the above four addresses, under their
own signatures.

3) All HL members agree, that when they initiate a form-letter, they will
carefully check the validity of its facts, will weigh the importance of the
topic and use appropriate style. When writing to a Senator, you should be
formal and brief. Two paragraphs are the best, but should never exceed one
page. You should first identify yourself and outline your concern in the
first paragraph. In the second paragraph you should outline why that concern
is important to the United States. You should always include your postal
address in addition to your title and signature. (At the end of this letter,
I am attaching a letter as an example, which I sent today to the members of
the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate. If you agree with its purpose, I
ask you to send your own letter also.)

4)  If based on the above, you want to join the HL, please send me your
E-mail address and also please ask your friends and relatives to join us.

When the list of HL participants is reasonably complete (probably by the end
of 1995), I will send the complete list to all members. This will allow
everybody to initiate actions without going through me. This is desirable not
only because this is the most democratic mode of operation, but also, because
in January-February I will spend a month in Europe working on the Danube
problem in The Hague and in Budapest and starting in September, I will be
teaching in the Technical University of Budapest. Consequently, I will not be
always available to act as a hub in this activity.

With best regards: Bela Liptak

ATTACHMENT sent to the following E-Mail addresses: ,
, , ,
, ,
, , ,
, ,


To the Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee
The Honorable Senators: Joseph Biden,  Hank Brown, Paul Coverdell,
Christopher Dodd,  Russell Feingold, James Jeffords, Richard Lugar, Daniel
Moynihan, Larry Pressler, Charles Robb, Paul Sarbanes and Paul Simon.

RE: Language-Police in Slovakia

Dear Senator,

November 15, 1995 is expected to be a day of shame in Slovakia. On that day
the Slovak Parliament is expected to approve a law that would authorize the
use of the "language-police" in Slovakia. As an American-Hungarian of Slovak
ancestry and as a former Yale professor, I ask you, as a member of the
Foreign Affairs Committee to try to prevent this outrage. If passed, this law
would make it a crime for a German doctor to speak in his native tongue to
his German patient. This law would make it a criminal act for a Rabbi to
speak Yiddish or Hebrew in a synagogue. It would outlaw the use of Roma when
two Gipsies are getting married. It could throw an Italian opera singer into
jail for singing in Italian. And it would outlaw the total educational system
of the 600,000 indigenous Hungarians, whom the former Communist Prime
Minister, Vladimir Meciar considers to be a "problem to be solved."
          While Meciar objects to cultural or collective rights, he approves
of collective guilt of minorities and therefore he keeps the  Benes Decrees
 on the books. These decrees made it possible to deport members of the
Hungarian minority and to confiscate their property. Because the United
States supports the rights of minorities, Mr. Meciar's paper SLOVENSKA
REPUBLIKA, has started an attack on the USA. On June 3, 1995 it wrote:  ...
20 million blacks, 6.5 million Mexicans, 1.5 million Puerto Ricans, half
million Native Americans... have virtually no rights in the United States.
Compared with those minorities, the half million Hungarians in Slovakia,
perhaps one third of whom are Romanies, are only a drop in the Sea.
           In the name of the 1.6 million American-Hungarians and in the name
of American respect for freedom of speech, freedom of religion and human
rights, I  respectfully ask the Foreign Affairs Committee to advise the
Slovak Government, that  our ambassador can be recalled, if this fascist law
is passed.

Respectfully yours,
Your name, address, title

I just received a private letter in which one of Hungary's readers
specifically said that she wanted to hear more about 1956. I pretty well
predicted that she would hear a lot on the subject in the near future. The
interest in 1956 is not surprising because it was, after all, a very
significant event in the history of modern Hungary.

I also welcome a discussion on the subject because I am coming to the
conclusion that some people have only very fuzzy notions about what this
revolution was all about. One of the topics currently discussed on the Forum,
for example, is the nature of the student demonstration which triggered the
outbreak of the revolution. Some people are comparing that demonstration,
quite light heartedly, to the student demonstrations of 1995. No matter how
often I repeat that the two cannot be compared because the former was
organized not in the name of narrow group interests but having the plight of
the whole nation in mind (in addition to the the plight of the Poles), it is
to no avail. They are now equating the idealistic demands of 1956 with the
rather grubby protests against the introduction of a very minimal monthly
tuition.

That is bad enough but I read something in the Hungarian press which was even
more blood boiling. An article about the peaceful demonstration of October
22, 1995, said the following: "the Hungarian people really learned the
lessons of 1956 and in the autumn of 1995 they decided against affecting a
change in government from the streets!" As if the two existing regimes had
anything in common. In fact, if they had been an identical political
situation in 1956 and in 1995.

But to return to Andras's note:

>I claimed in the FORUM debate that the Nagy government was legitimate, and
>was in power by "the will of the people" however hazy these concepts might
>be.

I would agree with that in spite of the fact that there was no formal
legitimization. But at least for the time being, the population was ready to
return to work and began a peaceful transition, obviously culminating in
democratic elections. Moreover, one could even argue that some of that
legitimacy derived from the presence of the pre-1949 parties in the Nagy
government.

However, I can't agree with Andras when he comes to the discussion of the
nature of the revolution itself; i.e., just because only a small portion of
the army joined the revolutionaries it was not a war of independence or a
"freedom fight." I think that Andras is defining this "war of independence,"
too narrowly.

Andras:

>The only battle ever reported was at Nagykova1csi, a remarkably
>isolated place with no strategic value whatsoever. As it happens,
>residents of Nagykova1csi (a friend of mine lives there) tend to deny
>that any confrontation such as depicted by Be1la Kira1ly took place
>there.

Again, I think that Andras's definition is too narrow. He is defining war as
a series of pitched battles. But there is such thing as guerilla warfare, or
urban guerilla warfare. And considering what Budapest looked like even before
November 4 it was a fairly serious encounter.

Sure, the army more or less remained neutral. The officers often sent the
recruits home, instead of sending them against the Russians or the secret
police. But again, I think Andras's definition of the word "hero" is too
narrow. According to him only those were heroes who fought arms in hand. But
I agree with Peter there are other ways of fighting, for example with pen in
hand and most of the people who were hanged after the revolution were not
hanged because they killed their fellow men. To be precise out of 229 people
who ended up in front of a so-called judge and who were sentenced to death
only 29 were hanged for taking part in the actual fighting before November 4
and 28 afterward. So, all told, only 57 people were sentenced to death for
their participation in the actual fighting. The rest were hanged for other
kind of participation.

I would also like to call Andras's attention to something else. In November
martial law was introduced: if you were caught with a weapon in your pocket
you could be executed on the spot. And many were. I really don't know what
you could call people with pistols in their pockets under these
circumstances: foolish, stupid, heroic. Take your pick. But practically all
of us had a pistol in our pockets in November and were ready to use it. At
every street corner you were newly afraid of being caught. Or I don't know
whether you could call it heroic to remain in the dormitory instead of
getting home somehow into the relative safety of provincial Hungary and
publish an underground paper when every night the Russians came to search the
dormitory from top to bottom. And going to illegal student organization
meetings in the dead of night while you surely knew that if they caught you
you may end up dead. Or, those brave students who during the martial law
period were distributing illegal newspapers while if they were caught they
most likely would have been killed. Or, was it foolish or heroic, to go to
the Writers' Union and the Union of Newspapermen and the Union of Actors
asking for stencil paper when you had no idea whether you were confronting
friend or foe. Maybe it was foolish, maybe it was heroic.

Andras:

>Well this is the central element of the 56 emigre myth that I'm
>questioning.  The mere fact of having left the country after the
>revolution does not turn one into a hero, to the contrary, chances are
>they left because they weren't heroic enough to stay and fight.

Well, I don't quite know who was spreading this "emigre myth," I always
thought that everybody admitted that only very few people left for strictly
political reasons. But there were quite a few of us who did. Maybe they
wouldn't have sentenced me to death but I somehow didn't cherish the idea of
ten years in jail either. And yes, in this sense I wasn't heroic. But I think
there were moments when I was. Or foolish, take your pick.

Eva Balogh

News IN HUNGARIAN:
>
>* Batthyany Foundation (daily) <http://www.hungary.com/bla/sajto>;
>* Magyar Narancs (weekly)
><http://hix.mit.edu/cgi-bin/ekezet.html/hix/narancs>;

writes Tibor Szendrei. What about the *Hirmondo*? Address:


Eva Balogh

Laci Toth feels very strongly about MVM, and he is convinced that it is not
in the nation's interest to sell it. I feel differently. I want the Hungarian
government to stop being the owner of companies, especially companies which
are in the red. As the MVM is. Moreover, why on earth should the government
be worried about the striking workers--as is the situation is now. Let the
capitalists worry about them. The workers of the atomic plant at Paks, for
example, are threatening to strike because they are not satisfied with their
salaries. This year the average monthly salary of a worker at Paks is
100,000. A doctor, or a university professor, or a high school teacher would
be happy to get half of this. And these salaries are coming out of the
infamous budget. If Laci Toth is so upset about the financial situation of
the Hungarian population as he seems to be, he should not insists on state
ownership of companies which cost the country billions. The sooner the
government gets rid of them the better off the country is.

Eva Balogh

Subject: anything

"Nemzet" is distributed by e-mail for those who are not equipped with
web-connection.

This "Magyar Internet Vilaglap" excerpts the excellent Hungarian Press
Review every workday by Batthyany Foundation. It also gives you "regional
news"
by OMRI in English. Beyond regular news, Nemzet brings you "Special Reports".
Nemzet was the only Internet medium which reported *on the same day*
"Alternative Peace Plan" by Bishop Tokes in full, and e.g. the full text of
the "Open Letter" by 17 leading economists to World Bank President
Wolfenshon (in the original Hungarian language).

On Sun, 12 Nov 1995  wrote:

> the "Open Letter" by 17 leading economists to World Bank President
> Wolfenshon (in the original Hungarian language).
>                    ^^^^^^^^

Gee!  Is Wolfenshon Hungarian???  News to me.
                ^^^
Martha