Dear Friend,
On Monday, 18 February 8:30, another hearing will be held in court room no. 11 of the brand new Ministry of Public Administration and Labour located at 2nd district, Csalogány u. 47-49., 1st floor.
The stakes are very high. Three times, the Budapest High Court of Appeal has made a final decision declaring Klubrádió to be the winner of MHz 95.3 broadcast frequency tender, but the Media Council failed to implement the judgments. Moreover, it waited until changes were made to the Media Law dismissing the previously competent court commission and established a new court for all legal disputes affecting it. This time, a final judgment is made not in the third, but the first instance.
We are absolutely certain of the truth of our claim, which is based on the law. We can hardly imagine a court judgment unfavourable for us. Nevertheless, the whole procedure is completely scandalous.
Your presence at the hearing would help us make it clear that it is not some trivial matter, but a major public issue that is at stake.
Regards,
The Staff of Klubrádió
Kedves Barátunk,
Február 18-án, hétfőn, hajnali 8:30-kor újabb tárgyalás lesz a vadonatúj Közigazgatási és Munkaügyi Bíróságnak a II. kerület, Csalogány u. 47-49., I. emelet 11. sz. tárgyalótermében.
A tét ugyancsak jelentős. A Fővárosi Ítélőtábla korábban már háromszor hozott olyan jogerős határozatot, amely alapján a Klubrádiónak meg kellett volna nyernie a 95.3 MHz frekvencia használatára kiírt pályázatot, ám a Médiatanács nem hajtotta végre az ítéleteket. Sőt, kivárta (kezdeményezte?) a médiatörvény változását, amely feloszlatta a korábban ítélkező bírói tanácsot és új bíróságot hozott létre a vele kapcsolatos jogvitákhoz. Ezúttal nem harmadfokon, hanem első fokon születik jogerős bírósági ítélet.
Jogszabályokon alapuló igazunkban száz százalékban biztosak vagyunk. Nehezen képzelhető el számunkra kedvezőtlen bírói döntés. De az ítélettől függetlenül is az egész folyamat botrányos.
Jelenléted a tárgyaláson abban segítene sokat, hogy nyilvánvalóvá tegye: nem egy egyszerű tyúkperről, hanem rendkívüli fontosságú közügyről van szó.
Üdvözlettel
A Klubrádió
Hungarian Spectrum 
Hungarian summary (sorry folks, it is too long to translate it for you here)
http://mertek.hvg.hu/2013/02/14/hadd-szoljon/
If the Media Authority and the Orban government succeeds silencing Klubradio, it will be a
veritable judicial murder of the dying free press in Hungary.
This is a travesty, showing that the government goes after individuals and changes the laws, the constitution, the procedural rules, changes the sitting judges and so on. And they don’t let on for a second.
It is a constant reminder for everyone what yo have to endure if you are standing up for your rights. “You still wanna try? Well, just don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
But don’t for a second think that this is the only such case in Hungary.
I know this building. I was there a few times. This is not a large building, and the rooms on the 1st floor are very small.
Furthermore, parking is difficult in that area, although lately it is much easier than before, also qua traffic jams.
I believe the Canadian Embassy or something Canadian is next door.
I my opinion, they should tell the public that at 9,00 am in the morning people should honk their horns of their cars. Much more effective.
OT, does anyone know what’s going on at the Airport? Apparently the pipe supplying jet fuel has been blocked. I can’t find a good reference to this but if true that would mean trucking in Jet fuel or jets coming in would need to have enough to get home.. which I believe they do for short haul flights anyways.
OT VO just mentioned during his weekly radio talk that all is well in Hungary and the economy is strong.
Ron,
I hate it when people mention these idiotisms even when they mention them critically or sarcastically.
Because you also further the discourse of the government.
I mean yet another document in Google which contains the message of the government and uses its buzzwords and hooks (catchy words which can be debated, even ridiculed, but which will be used, so they release their dicoursive power).
The governmnet just loves, and I have to emphesasise this, if you try to ridicule or debate rationally the imaginary world it created through this triumphal language.
Because for the believers these issues are not susceptible to rational argument – your argument may have effect only to those poeple who anyway don’t believe Orbán. But then again, they, hating Orbán, anyway agree with you, so you don’t reach anything by pointing out this instance of idiotism. For the rest (the believers), you just perpetuate and reinforce Fidesz’ imaginary world.
The only thing one can do is not to mention the stupidities such as this media bullshit — to remain silent.
Only concrete issues, problems should be debated and mentioned as the topics of this blog.
But not the stupidities of government (and government related) chatter of various spokespeople, which talk exactly aims to be ridiculous and stunningly stupid for the adversaries (in order to be picked up and to be talked about).
Try to understand that in fact you are their real target of these stupidities: in order for you to talk about it.
Benno I have no idea what you are talking about.
If you read this blog, and including the comments and not only today, you know where I and many other people of this blog stand. Our hostess since July 2007 till today wrote and hopefully continue to write very (to put it in your words) concrete issues, debate problems and sometimes come up with solutions.
A few days ago we were criticizing the economic fairy tale. And the aforementioned message of Orban is the reaction.
Unfortunately, this is the only reaction the people of Hungary hear, as many magazines, TV and Radio are in his direct/indirect control. Internationally people in the right places know what is going on.
Dear Ron,
Maybe I was not clear. For I do understand your point very well and I do understand where everybody stands. The standpoints are perfectly clear and in fact I agree with your stand point.
Having said that, I wanted to call attention to the modus operandi of the Fidesz’ media strategy.
Also, although I myself am not an expert in it either, I would like to call attention to Michel Foucault’s ideas on the ‘discourse’ and the concept of ‘power/knowlegde’. The so-called Foucauldian discourse analysis – very important. These are complex ideas, still debated, interpreted. But there are some important conclusions and will attempt to explain a bit.
Some people say bad publicity is still useful publicity, right? Celebrities are in the media with emberrassing news too, but that is still useful for them, because it is much more important for them to appear ‘famous’ and ‘admired’ then to be in a potentially embarrassing situation from time to time. Especially as average people will see celebrities as humans and not far away celebrities, average people will see celebrities who also have everyday problems and which celebrities thereby gain sympathy, all the while they remain famous and talked about which are necessary to continue to exist (and make money) a celebrity.
Similarly, the Fidesz government does not mind at all if you ridicule of criticize them as crazy. Please keep this in mind. They are the trolls who try to keep you engaged in a conversation. It does not matter that you do not agree on anything, you were never meant to. All that matters is that there is a discourse and that they have an opportunity to talk to you and repeat their massage. Because there will be third parties listening to the discourse who will not understand the sitution completely and will believe the government. All because you started to talk to them and argue with them.
So Fidesz cares only about that you talk about them, not what you talk about them. This is because if you talk about them you perpetuate a discourse in which their ideas and messages get repeated. You, just by repeating and dealing with Fidesz’ crazy ideas (even if in a critical fashion), you help disseminate those ideas, which is exactly what Fidesz wants. Access to minds. The ideas, messages, buzzwords reach more and more people by helpful people like you and many of those bystander listener people – despite your critical take – will actually interpret the message as Fidesz wanted.
You would say, “But I wanted to point out Fidesz’ stupidity, that Matolcsy is a madman, that Orbán is a liar”. However, a lot of people will not go into details, only see the repeated Orbán message once more. A lot of people will simply not get (will skip the text, will genuinly not get sarcasm etc.) the context that you wanted to put the government message in. The will only get the government message.
Therefore the only rational thing is to resist the temptation and not to repeat, criticize the idiotic ideas of Fidesz in any way. No to talk to the troll and not to react to the verbal bullies and intellectual provocators. I know this is hard because a couple of days ago, despite warning many regular commenters of t his blog continued a useless conversation with a troll. Fidesz knows that intellectuals want to win an intellectiual argument and they are very easy targets of trolls (or Fidesz spokespeople who use strange words and ideas).
They say outlandish, weird things, used weird expressions exactly because for their hardliners those don’t sound special, but the other side (like you, Ron) will get agitated and will talk about those ideas endlessly. Of course, you will be critical, but what would one expect from an “opposition person”? And meanwhile buried in the critical text is the message of Orbán. For example if someone somehow would get to this very page through Google, would only read in your comment that Orbán said that the economy is such and such. Orbán was thus successful because this comment will live forever and from time to time will dupe some superficial people (but we are all superficial, so he will dupe everyone, of course I exaggerated to stress the point). They want to disseminate the seeds of their ideas, through symbolic bees like you, which seeds will sooner or later germinate or at least exert their potential vis-a-vis other ideas.
I hope I was clearar than in may earlier post. It is important that you get it, because otherwise you will be a conduit for Orbán’s messages. You will play your role in their media strategy as they intended and ironically you won’t even get it why.
Apparently postponed until March 5.
Március 5-ére halasztotta az ítélethirdetést a Fővárosi Közigazgatási és Munkaügyi Bíróság hétfőn abban a perben, amelyet a Klubrádió indított a Nemzeti Média- és Hírközlési Hatóság Médiatanácsának egyik határozata ellen.