Protest in Budapest!

There’s a pretty serious protest going on right now in front of the old MTV Headquarters building(Magyar Television… Magyar meaning “Hungarian”).  There’s tons of people shouting like it was a foot-ball match (that’s actually what I thought was going on when I was walking back to my flat [across the street from the Protest]) and they’re all cheering “LIAR” in Hungarian.

There’s people rushing the entrance to the building, throwing things at the SWAT members who were holding the doors.  There’s fire-hoses and tear-gas going off all over the worst parts.  By the time I left, the crowd had pushed the SWAT members back inside the building and they were smashing windows and throwing whatever they could get their hands on.  Pretty intense!

There was even a Skin-head trying to smash the plaque on the Soviet Army Memorial as I was walking away.  Tried to get a photo but it’s wicked low-light right now.

I guess what has happened is that about 4 months ago the Hungarian President was having a discussion in private and he said some things that weren’t so nice about the public, and also mentioned that he “needed to continue lying to them some more”.  Well, this discussion got leaked recently and everyone is pretty upset.

This is the gist of what I got from a young Hungarian man as he mustered his way as best as he could through broken English.

When the official news is in perhaps someone could post a link.

My name’s not Charles, and that’s the News as it happens.

Get out there with a camera and start posting photos already!

news.google.com/news?q=hungary

Here’s the BBC’s version of the days excitement there

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5358546.stm

CNN also touched on it briefly during Wolf Blitzer’s situation room. No details but a promise of more to come…

edition.cnn.com/

So what I got from the newscast here a few moment ago, the PM is heard saying on tape “I lied in the morning and I lied in the evening, to get elected”. Does that sound familiar?

I’ve always been proud of my Magyar heritage.

I know I say that every time we’re talking about an ethnic group (usually it’s “I’m very in touch with my Latino roots”), but this time it’s true.

Speaking of reaching out to ethnic types…

Here’s a side-view of the Soviet Army Memorial back on August 27th.

Directly behind it you can see the US Embassy, and follow the side of it down the street and you can see my building.  The riots were happening in this park, and directly across from the US Embassy (behind the photographer) is where the MTV Building is.

I’ll be soon posting some shots of what Memorial looks like now, so long as I can get past the Rendörség…

[original attachment deleted after 2 years]

Charles_T is an instrument of social revolution.

Here you can see what has happened to the Monument.  You can see what that Neo-Nazi group did to the plaque on the base of the statue (now missing).  That is the MTV building in the distance.  You can see the entrance where the majority of the mess was happening, and a bit to the right of that you can see where a burning car charred the building.

[original attachment deleted after 2 years]

On a very related note, I was on the Norwegian News tonight for the 7PM broadcast! You can see myself and my Norwegian friend walking across the screen at the 7:09 hour mark of the broadcast.

We met Hans-Wilhelm Steinfeld and had quite a discussion with him about current events. Very cool guy!

He’s actually quite the National figure to the Norska’s!

www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/indeks/72772