Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2001 (13. évfolyam, 2-43. szám)

2001-08-17 / 31. szám

AMERICAN Hungarian Journal MEDITATIONS by Dr. Bela Bonis Pastor (562) 430-0876 First Hungarian Reformed Church, Hawthorne The Labyrinth of Life CONTINUED from last week JOB is one of fhe most inter­esting books in Scripture. From the opening, it challenges our understanding of God as few books do. Can this be our God meeting with the members of His court, one of whom is Satan? We are taught that God is Spirit, yet in the first chap­ters of Job we see a limited, very human God, who plays with Job as a child might play with a doll. How do we recon­cile this God with the One Jesus showed us? Curiously, the God portrayed in Job is much present today. No matter how many choruses of "Jesus Loves Me" we have sung in our lives, it seems the God we honor in the deepest parts of our being, is the God who plays with humans, testing them, taking away the people they love and who love them. Too many carry with us the idea of a great potentate sending Satan (or someone) to see just how far we can be pushed before we break. A close reading of Job challenges us to ask some hard questions about the nature of the God we believe in. For Job’s friends who have come to "...condole with him and comfort him", and so they sat with him for seven days and nights, well for those friends the world was fairly simple. Good people were rewarded - materially - here and now. They were given long lives and riches. It was obvious to them that Job and his sons were not "innocent and upright." The sons were dead Job’s link to the future was broken, and his riches had been taken away. Whether he knew it or not, he had done something very bad. There was a time when Job would have agreed with Bildad. But then Job learned a hard lesson. He had not changed, but his fortunes had. Every­thing that had marked him as a good man was wiped out. The solid earth of his assurance about his own virtue split open and a chasm of doubt suddenly opened before him. He was good, yet bad things happened. Why? Perhaps it’s time to look honestly at Job and at oursel­ves. If we live well and are healthy, it is not because we are evil. As the authors of the Hebrew Wisdom literature wrote, bad things happen and good things happen and there is no way to know why. Fireworks for Hungary’s Millennial Celebration As the country prepares to celebrate St Stephen’s Day on August 20, a controversy over the extravagant costs and lack of a proper tender process continue to hover around the planned festivi­ties. This event is the official close of Hungary’s two-year long Millennium celebrations, marking the anniversary of the King- Saint’s founding of a Catholic State 1,001 years ago with the ac­ceptance of a crown from Pope Sylvester. According to Government representative Gábor Borókai, last year more than one million people watched the fireworks and vis­ited the street performances, a record number. Another record was set for the grand tally of the 2000 celebration at Ft975 million ($3.4 million). The budget was officially audited by the State Accounting Office in December 2000, according to Borókai. Altogether it is just a fraction of the amount the Government spent to celebrate a new millennium in good style over the last two years. Magyar Hírlap reported that local authorities, the Millennium Government Commissioner’s Office, and the Culture Ministry have spent a staggering total of Ft 80 billion ($284 million) over two years of Millennium commemoration, which includes concerts, commemorative statues and various publications, but excludes the millennium budget of the National Image Center. The center shaved one-third off this year’s price tag for the St Stephen’s (Szent István) program almost identical to those in 2000. This year the image center is spending just 68 forints per person, or Ft687 million ($2.45 million). Spending for the one-day event is an amount almost equal to the total budget for the entire Pepsi Sziget Music Festival, which came to an end this week. The national budget for the day covers festivities which are scheduled in three cities, Miskolc, Siófok and Zalaegerszeg, in ad­dition to the celebration in the capital. All cities include day-long family and kid’s programs, while in Budapest there will be a flag ceremony, parades, dramatic, historically themed, stage perform­ances, an air-show over Margit hid (Margaret Bridge), and concerts leading up to the fireworks at 9pm. Top DJs will play along the Danube, street festival style, throughout the night. In Budapest, the National Image Center said the fireworks would be launched, as last year, from the Danube side of the Parliament building, and suggested the best viewing points would be along the Danube between the Erzebet and Margit bridges. Celebrations in the three other cities will altogether cost $367,000. Day-long entertainment in Budapest will cost $632,000, including the fireworks show, while television and radio advertise­ments are budgeted at $562,000, with public safety and cleanup costing $879,000. But critics of the extravagant festivities see nothing to celebrate when it comes to the cost incurred to taxpayers and what they deem to be the political pork-barreling of lucrative tenders to carry out the day of celebrations. Happy End Kft won the tender in 1998 to organize public cele­brations for the Government, gamering up to 20% of the total amount budgeted for a particular celebration. Happy End’s budget was Ftl95 million for St Stephen’s Day last year. For 33 years firewprks celebrations were organized through NIKE Fiocchi Sportlőszergyártó Kft, a company based in Balaton­­fűzfő. .NIKE Managing director Péter Szabó said the company ap­plied for the tender in 1999 and 2000, but did not win. This year, he complained, there was no tender announced at all. "We would have put forward a bid of FtlOO million ($345,000) a budget that covers the day-long entertainment, fireworks show and security." The National Image Center’s response addressed the 33-year monopoly, saying that NIKE’s history would not guarantee its con­tinued work. "They have no given rights to organize the fireworks just because they did it for that long," said Borókai. "Happy End Kft chooses to work with Pyro-Technic Kft to sup­ply the fireworks since it is 100% Hungarian, and NIKE is 50% Italian ownership," he continued. But, Cameron Starr, CEO of US- based manufacturer Wizard Works Inc, the company that supplies fireworks for Disney World, said that if the full budget were allo­cated to just fireworks, the display would be "wondrous, fabulously wondrous for that kind of money," adding that such a budget was well beyond his company’s capacity. Starr said the amount was equal to the half year budget of Dis­ney World for its nightly fireworks. Within the US, the standard price mark-up between manufac­turer and client was 10 to 15%, with $25-50,000 a typical budget for a national celebration, Starr said, given his 54 years of experi­ence. The official spokesperson for Happy End could not be reached by press time due to holiday travels. (TO BE CONTINUED) (Budapest Sun) Pilot flies into history (Budapest SunJ HUNGARIAN ace pilot Gyula Vári has won the world’s biggest air show for the third time, a feat never before accomplished in its 30 year history. Vári, of the Kecskemét flying group, won the Royal Interna­tional Air Tattoo in his MiG-29 the past weekend. Ironically, the plane beat examples slated to replace it in the Hungarian Air Force. In addition to the overall prize, he also received Lockhead Martin’s Cannestra trophy, awarded to the best foreign presentation. The Hungarian pilot was celebrated as a hero at the Cottesmore base of the British Royal Air Force where around 200,000 people gathered to watch the show. "I felt love from the audience. This was not the first time that I took part in the competition, it feels like I went home there and they welcomed me as if I had come to be friends," he said. Vári’s Rus­sian-developed MiG-29 was up against glittering Swedish Gripens and American F-16s. The show also featured the recently premiered B-2 "stealth" air­craft. "Many people love MiG 29s and regard it as a unique plane. It flies very well and I have a team that perfectly prepares the machine every time," he explained. He is now concentrating for another air show in Ancona, Italy, but has not decided yet whether to take part in the program in England next year. A total of 350 aircraft from 30 countries took part in the event. Hungarian Hauliers Complain of Lost Markets Due to Russian Visa (MTI) - Hungarian road hauliers have lost 20 to 30pc of their market over the past two months ever since Russia set stricter con­ditions for obtaining visas compared to other European truckers, a leader of the Union of Hungarian Road Hauliers (UHRH) told MTI. Sándor Horcsoki, UHRH director of freight transport, com­plained Russian authorities were discriminating against Hungary when granting visas. To make things worse, Slovak, Polish and Ukrainian truckers are taking a major part of the orders from Hun­gary to Russia, because -- unlike their Hungarian colleagues - they do not have to wait three weeks for a visa, but can proceed onwards immediately after loading. Horcsoki said they had sent the Russian Foreign Ministry a list with the names of 430 Hungarian hauliers, asking for them one-year entry permits for an unlimited number of occasions. So far, 360 people have been allowed to apply for a one-year visa at the Rus­sian Embassy in Budapest. It costs USD 150 and they are also re­quired to produce the results of an AIDS test costing USD 30, he added. The market loss mainly affects some 500 haulage companies in the north and east of the country. Horcsoki noted that Hungaro­­camion Rt., with a fleet of 1,100 trucks, suspended its services to Russia two years ago because of Russian customs procedures and poor public security. Nearly 150 Police Attacked This Year (MTI) - This year, 146 police officers were assaulted while on duty, including 18 armed attacks. Four died as a result of violence, Thursday's Magyar Nemzet newspaper reported, quoting a survey of the National Police Command's control division. The last three years have seen a total of 154 attacks against po­lice, involving 20 deaths and 64 light injuries. There were 157 men and 17 women among the attackers, who included four foreign citi­zens. Police mortality was the highest in 1999, when seven police were killed in the streets, and the lowest (2 deaths) in 1997. Experts say some people tend to react very aggressively to police action. In other cases, the affected police were not sufficiently prepared to handle conflicts, the paper reports. News In Brief Napi Gazdasag writes that for quite a few years Hungary's trade balance with Ukraine has been deeply in the red. In 2000, Hungar­ian exports to Ukraine were valued at USD 166m, while its imports amounted to USD 234m. Hungarian exports consist of pharmaceu­ticals, textiles and food, while major imports are chemical products, steel, natural gas and electric power. According to the business registry court, Ukrainian's have stakes in 1,100 businesses operating in Hungary while Hungarian foreign direct investment in Ukraine is minimal, writes Napi Gazdasag. * Mol, the Hungarian Oil and Gas Company, and NIS (Nafta In­dustrie Srbije), Serbia's oil and gas monopoly, have reached an agreement on transporting Russian natural gas through Hungary, writes the economics daily Vilaggazdasag. Under the three-year ac­cord, this year some 1.5bn cubic metres of natural gas will be trans­ported to Yugoslavia through Hungary, an amount to go up to 1.7bn in 2002 and to 2bn in 2003. * mmwmmwwwmmmmmnnm CSARDAS HUNGARIAN RESTAURANT The Place To Be At Dinnertime! 2001.

Next

/
  • Layout
  • Zoom
  • Rotation
Thumbnails
Contents