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Before the parliamentary elections: EU installs 'fact-checkers' in Hungary to combat 'disinformation'
The European Union is now also officially interfering in the electoral struggle of a sovereign member state, in this concrete case in the parliamentary elections in Hungary in early April.
EU wants to fight "disinformation in Hungary"
The AFP (Agence France-Presse) news agency, which also keeps making attempts at slander against "Unser Mitteleuropa," is starting a website to "combat disinformation in Hungary" just three months before the elections, which will decide on the re-election of Viktor Orbán (pictured).
"lakmusz.hu," the first fact-checking website in Hungary, was launched Tuesday, January 11, as the result of an initial 15-month EU project. The European Commission awarded the contract to the French state-funded news agency AFP, the Hungarian website "444.hu" and the foundation "Media Universalis."
AFP will mainly train a team of local journalists with an investigative background and pass on "know-how" to them. In recent years, AFP has built an international network of so-called "fact-checkers." In Hungary, the news agency is Facebook's leading partners in the fight against disinformation.
EU elites in the fight against Orbán
"We are proud to participate in this innovative initiative to support the fight against disinformation in Europe, a major challenge for our democracies," said Phil Chetwynd, Global News Director of AFP.
Hungarians will go to the polls on April 3. The election is likely to be the most exciting in more than a decade, when Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz came to power with a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2010.
Since then, Fidesz has passed a series of laws affecting the media, including the controversial 2010 media law. Recently, the Orbán government issued a legal ban on content that "promotes or depicts" homosexuality or sex change in minors in the media.
After the fall of the communist regime, the Hungarian media market was largely "diversified" by the arrival of international players from Germany and other European countries. The situation began to reverse after the financial crisis in the year 2008, linked to global trends such as declining advertising revenues and the surge of online platforms.
As a result, many international media conglomerates left the media market at the exact moment when the government of Viktor Orbán and businessmen closely associated with him began to reduce foreign influence on the media sector.
In recent times, however, there may be signs of a reversal of this trend, as AFP is not the only international medium that is increasingly active in Hungary. US-funded radio stations Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty began broadcasting again in September 2020. THE German broadcaster RTL, one of the few foreign providers that have not left the country, started a news program.
Soros network signals attack
It is the goal of the "fact-checking project" to investigate public statements or information that may have a significant impact on public discussion, focusing especially on politicians and persons of public life. Specifically, this will mainly mean that statements made by Orbán and his Fidesz will be labeled "Fake News," while opposition candidates will be spared this.
Yacine Le Forestier, AFP's deputy director for Europe, told "Euractiv" that "the project is not about having a conflict with the authorities or criticizing the government."
Nevertheless, the website's first articles show (as was to be expected) that she is on a course of confrontation with the Fidesz-led government, and some government-affiliated media already called her an agent of George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire, who is often targeted for conspiracy theories.
With the so-called "European legal act on media freedom," the EU will also step up its action against unpopular governments within the European Union. This should, from the end of 2022, "improve transparency, the duty of responsibility and independence in measures affecting media freedom and media pluralism."
https://unser-mitteleuropa.com..../vor-parlamentwahl-e
Finally harnessing the "skilled labor force": Bavaria wants to replace "unvaccinated" in health care with Africans
Tens of thousands of "skilled workers" from Africa and the Orient can breathe a sigh of relief in Germany: in future there will finally be adequate employment opportunities for them, where they can use their qualifications (and perhaps even their cultural customs) learned in their home countries over many years. The German state of Bavaria plans to replace unvaccinated health service employees who have been fired with vaccinations with migrants in the future.
Clinics lose hundreds of employees - North Africans already waiting
According to the latest version of the Bavarian infection protection law, employees in the health service must prove until March 15 that they have been fully vaccinated against the corona virus or cured. If they cannot, they will no longer be allowed to practice their profession and will be fired. Optimistic estimates assume that hundreds of caregivers, doctors and nurses will resign or be fired in the coming months, which could result in a collapse of the health system.
But the bill was passed without decisive migrants. For as the chief of the district clinic in Ebersberg reports, he has recently been receiving "a lot of applications from Africa and the Middle East." "The people in these regions are watching the debate in Germany very closely. We look at the applicants. If their education is recognized and they speak sufficient German, we might be able to gain new workers here," says the clinic chief.
It is highly doubtful whether the newcomers will be just as strictly enforced with regard to vaccination certificates and so on as the locals. After all, a "recognized education" including a dubious knowledge of the German language is apparently enough to be allowed to work in the Bavarian health system - at least if you come from the Third World.
https://unser-mitteleuropa.com..../endlich-verwendung-
German 'internal security service' assesses corona demonstrators as state enemies
Once upon a time the German "Verfassungsschutz" was an authority, which itself prided itself on monitoring "right-wing extremists" and "left-wing extremists" and fighting them with secret service methods. Later it added the "Islamic extremism" created by the migration policy of the rulers themselves. Recently, however, no political or religious ideology is needed at all to bring up the controversial authority and motivate an accusation of extremism.
No, now it is enough to distrust the state and accuse it of failure to be sorted into a new category of "extremists." This is evident from public statements by Thomas Haldenwang (photo), probably the greatest opportunist ever to head the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The man tells his political patrons exactly what they want to hear. About critics of the corona measures, who have been demonstrating for weeks and months, he says:
"They fundamentally reject our democratic state system."
And further:
"Whether it's corona or the refugee policy. Or the flood catastrophe: there, in part, one has seen the same people, trying to give the impression that the state would fail and do nothing for the people."
This means reasoning in reverse: according to Haldenwang, we are all obliged to assume that the state is functioning and (successfully) doing something for the people of the country. Cynics might ask whether that should seriously also apply to federal states such as Berlin and Bremen or whether exceptions may be made.
The only good thing about Haldenwang's statements is that the man thereby exposes himself, his authority and his principals to ridicule. Because in a true democracy, freedom of speech applies. And freedom of speech includes the good civil right to accuse the state and the political forces that carry it of failure. And if today's Germany were not a true democracy, what would it be?
Perhaps a dictatorship? Would not resistance to a dictatorship be expressly commanded even by the constitution? - Article 4, paragraph 4:
"Against anyone who undertakes to eliminate this order, all Germans have the right to resist, when other assistance is not possible."
https://www.pi-news.net/2022/0....1/verfassungsschutz-