Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1981. július-december (35. évfolyam, 27-50. szám)

1981-09-24 / 36. szám

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ Thursday, Sep. 24. 1981. 2. [ PRESS DIGEST \ Hungarians The protection of the environment in Hungary The protection of the environment and of nature is not only an economic problem in Hungary. As in other parts of the world, here too it is largely a challenge to society. The National Office for En­vironment and Nature Protection of Hungary is consisted in its work by tens of thousands of vo­lunteers who represent all strata of society and all walks of life. The national organization of the Pat­riotic People’s Front should be mentioned in the first place in this context. The People’s Front, - in­cluding the smallest village committee as well as the highest leadership - devotes very great care and at­tention to the protection of the environment and to leaving nature undamaged. Lectures are organized, publications are issued, appeals are addressed to the population, to mobilize society for environment protection work; volunteer inspectors are recruited and trained, bird-watching guards stationed to pro­tect the nests of rare birds during breeding time until the young have taken to their wings. The People’s Front can rely in this work on the cooperation and help of the Young Pioneers’ Fede­ration and the Hungarian Communist Youth Union. The two organizations rally tens of thousands of students and schoolchildren to contribute to en­vironment protection work. There is serious propaganda work done too. Pos­ters are put out and the support of the press is re­gularly invited. The Office has been very active to get some level of ecological information into the curricula of all types and levels of schools. Their ef­forts were not directed to make environment pro­tection a separate subject - although in certain schools and departments this may be done - but to build into the syllabus of every subject the ecologi­cal poirit of view. The staff of the Office are doing a tremendous amount of work to ensure that efforts for the puri­ty of the environment, the ^protection of nature should not get exhausted in campaigns but should go on all the time, and that all society should get used to thinking in terms of environment and na­ture protection as part of their economic interest. US Is Secular Rabbi Sherwin Wine of Farmington, Mich., in Hu­manist In Canada: “What would be the message of the Voice of Reason? ..it would be patriotic. It would be per­mit the opposition to claim Americanism. It would demonstrate that the Founding Fathers were dis­ciples of Enlightenment - not pious religionists. Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Franklin resisted the Moral Majority of their day to lay the founda­tion of a secular state.” . Non Conformist I.F. Stone, when he was welcomed back the Na­tional Press Club in Washington, D.C. recently: “The administration is recycling the Ved menace’ scare and attaining a type of economic reform that shifts more than $ 100-billion of subsidy and eco­nomic opportunity from the poor to the rich... Un­leash greed and everything will be hunky-dory.. I could never get in trouble with the Establishment by repeating the same damn nonsense everybody else repeats. How glad I’ve been over the years not to have agreed about Castro. How glad I’ve been not to have agreed about Vietnam. How glad T’ve been not to have agreed about Joe McCarthy. My proudest awards are my scars.” all, for decentralized popular control of both go­vernment and the economy. The alternative is a Reaganite form of the corporate state - a prologue, perhaps, to fascism.” Let us learn Hungarian Hotel. Lodgings 1. Hotel '.'•in you recommend me o good hotel? Which hotels provide /irst [de luxe, tourist] class accomodation? Which is the best [largest] hotel in Budapest? Can you let me have a single room with a bathroom? Can ijou let me i.ave a double(-bed) room? Have you got a nice quiet room? I've booked a single (-bed) room here. Last Monday 1 phoned you about a room. Is there a room reserved for me? 1 reserved a room by cable. Szálloda. Lakás 1. Szálloda Tud nekem egy jó szállodát ajánlani? Melyek az elsőosztályú [az osztályonfelüli, a másodosztályú] szállodák? Melyik a legjobb [legnagyobb] szálloda Budapesten? Kaphatok egy egy­ágyas szobát fürdő­szobával? Kaphatok egy kétágyas szobát? Van egy szép, csendes szobájuk? Rendeltem itt egy egy­ágyas szobát. Múlt hétfőn telefonál­tam önöknek egy szoba miatt. Van itt egy szoba számomra lefoglalva? Távirati úton foglaltam egy szobát. Economy Crutch Sidney Lens, contributing editor of The Progressive in that journal: “Militarism is the crutch that supports the eco­nomy, as well as a significant cause of inflation... The fight for jobs and peace will inspire Americans only if it is coupled to a program for democratic socialism -for economic planning, for social owner­ship of certain basic industries and social control of others, for extensive welfare measures and, above AMERIKAI V MAGYAR SZa USPS 023-980 ISSN 0194-7990 Published weekly, exc. last week in July and l$r2 weeks in August by Hungarian Word Inc. Inc. 130 E 16St. New York, N.Y. 10003. Ent. as 2nd Class Matter. Dec. 31. 1952 under the Act of March. 21.1879, at the P.O. of New York, N.Y. Szerkeszti a Szerkesztő Bizottság Előfizetési árak New Yorkban, az Egyesült Államokban egy évre $ 18.- félévre $ 10.- Kanadaban és minden más külföldi ország­ban egy évre $ 20.- félévre $ 12.- Postiqastert Send address changes to Hungarian Wbrd, Inc. 130 E 16 St. New York, N:Y. 10003. watch Poland Most Hungarians are reacting with ambivalence to the current Polish “renewal”. During a three- week visit in July to my native land, which I left as a teen-ager in 1957, I ran into the same almost schizophrenic reaction again and again. On the one hand, there is near-unanimous ac­claim for the Poles’ couragous attempt to achieve greater independence from the Warsaw Pact alli­ance. On the other hand, there is a general feeling that the Poles are asking for too much in the way of economic improvements, that through constant in­ternal turmoil they are turning Poland, always one of the poorer countries in Eastern Europe, into an economic basket case. A 40-year old electronics engineer, for instance, put the matter this way ' “if the Poles don’t watch out, they will become the Bangladesh of Europe.” Throughout history, Hungary and Poland have had friendly relations. Both nations have been con­quered and partitioned several times, and both share a ferocious dedication to their national inde­pendence. Yet this friendship is now undergoing a severe test. Economic, and particularly agricultural develop­ment in Poland has failed to keep up with popula­tion growth and thus Solidarity’s demands for hi­gher salaries and reduced working hours, especially free Saturdays, gets little sympathy in Hungary. “We like Poles”, say most Hungarians, “ but we don’t want to work more so they may work less.” The Hungarians also are afraid that the possible Soviet invasion of Poland would lead to a general Kremlin crackdown in Eastern Europe, and to the loss of the limited but considerable economic, ar­tistic, literary, religious and press freedoms that Hungary has come to enjoy since the 1956 upri­sing. Janos Kadar, who has served as first secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party for the last 25 years, is widely credited for these results. He is generally respected for his organizational ability and personal modesty. He is often seen in Budapest restaurants and cabarets, accompanied only by his wife and one or two security men in plain clothes. Kadar is about 70 now and his face is marked by deep lines and evidence of the torture he under­went in jails under the pre-war fascist and the post­war Rákosi regimes. Probably the most cherished pastime of Hunga­rians over 30 is drinking wine while engaging in lengthy talks, amply spieced by jokes and philoso­phical observations. One joke goes like this' The village party secretary has trouble getting the local residents to attend party meetings. At the same time, the village church is filled every Sunday. Eventually the party secretary goes to visit the local priest and asks him: “Dear Father, please explain to me how is it possible that, despite all inducements and deterrents to the contrary, the people will go to your meetings and avoid mine.” “Well, my son,” replies the priest, “we have been promising Paradise for the last 2000 years, but we have never actually tried to produce it.” Tom Zolnay

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