Hungary supresses last democratic formalities in fascist spiral

The constitutional reform impelled unilaterally by the "liberal-conservative" (i.e. fascist) FIDESZ party of the infamous Viktor Orban, which includes all kind of aggressions to human rights, freedom of speech, secularism, etc., has also suppressed the role of the Constitutional Court altogether, leaving all power in the hands of the government and parliament, both under control of FIDESZ, removing this way the last element of formal "democracy" and "power balance" in the Central European state. 

There is no press freedom, no sexual rights, no religious rights, no human rights in Hungary anymore, as in the 1930s, Hungary, which is not even anymore a republic, has become a full-fledged fascist state where the President honors well known racist figures without any shame. 

In more "normal" times, such a fascist regime would be at the very least suspended from EU membership, as happened with Austria years ago, however these times are anything but normal: fascism, covert or open, is the new normality in Europe, it seems, under the sponsorship of "moderate" right-wing forces and even allegedly "leftist" ones, as happens in Greece, where PASOK and DIMAR support a government that promotes Golden Dawn terrorism. 

Source: Eurasian Hub[es].

Large demo in Budapest against Nazis

In a rather hypocritical act, the fascist party in power, Fidesz, led by the infamous Viktor Orban, and the social-democratic opposition have joined forces against the last provocation by the Nazis (Jobbik), who organize death squads against the Roma and now are calling for the banishment of all citizens of Jewish ancestry from public office (they are so deadly serious about it that they kicked out one of their most prominent leaders when it became known that he was Jewish by birth).

While I can't but applaud this rare gesture of rallying the nation against racism, I find it a case of too little, too later and too hypocritical. Regardless of what those brainless thugs of Jobbik say, there are many more Roma than Jews in Hungary and nobody has done anything like this to support them against Jobbik but rather the Nazis have been allowed to run amok. 

I feel that, sadly enough, this is a case of one type of fascism, which keeps the formalities of parliamentary democracy... by the moment, which does not want to be too obviously racist, notably not against affluent and influential minorities like Jews (the Breivik model) and another which is obsessed with Jews (a la Hitler).

They play each other as dummies for the same goal of oppressing the people ruthlessly for the benefit of a few mafiosi, the so called "investors". 

Meanwhile Hungary goes down the drainage in a spiral of misery that should have people longing for the welfare of the socialist past... but apparently does not.

Ref. Euronews (video and transcription).

Hungarian Nazi kicked for being Jewish

The founder of the terrorist group Hungarian Guard, infamous for its raids in Roma communities, has been expelled from the mother party Jobbik (of clear classical Nazi ideology, and disturbingly high electoral support) after it was known that his maternal grandmother was a Jewish survivor from Auschwitz. 

Source: Sare Antifaxista[es].

Concern for the use of genetic test for Nazi purposes

As Van Ardsdale explains purity is not a genetic reality, first of all because each time a new person is conceived (by the enjoyable but quite impure act of sex) admixture takes place (and if mum and dad are genetically too similar, then inbreeding happens what is generally bad). So whoever would wish to imagine themselves as pure should not look into genetics but into Platonic solids or something.

But the right tools in the wrong hands typically has the wrong results. And the tool of genetic analysis in the hands of Hitler* or the like could be used to entice racist discrimination. 

Nature reports that a Hungarian genetic testing company, Nagy Gén, has issued a certificate by which a person, a Hungarian Nazi member of the criminal Jobbik party, was said to have no Jewish nor Roma ancestry. 

Nagy Gén scanned 18 positions in the MP’s genome for variants that it says are characteristic of Roma and Jewish ethnic groups; its report concludes that Roma and Jewish ancestry can be ruled out.

It's difficult to imagine how the company could certify that because there are no absolute lines defining such ethnic categories, not in the genetic aspect either, just clinal trends.

I understand from the context (18 positions) that the test is one of those biometric AIM-based tests that police uses sometimes to attempt to guess (without any certainty) the ancestry of suspects.

The scandalous certificate was first posted at a Nazi site, which praised the intent but (correctly) dismissed the scientific quality of the test. It was later republished at a Magyar-language news blog. 

The affair underlines the dangers of all kind of biometrics, be them genetic or anthropometric, when used for reasons that are not pure science. That's a reason why I do not generally favor private, commercial genetic testing but rather academic studies of populations with prehistory reconstruction intent. 

Personally I have never got myself tested nor I really care much because what matter for me is not "my" private ancestry but, if anything, the ancestry of the diverse peoples and communities, what can tell us something about their history and prehistory.

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* Incidentally, I suspect that Hitler would have got serious problems promoting his racist ideas if he would have got access to genetic analysis because his paternal lineage was quite Mediterranean and ultimately rooted in Africa (it could even be Jewish, although hard to tell ultimately). He would have had to lie even to himself, abandon his racism or maybe kill himself (mostly good results).

From the Net: 'Hungary's 'Viktator' faces tide of protest at home and abroad' (The Guardian)

I was not even aware that there were such growing protests in the midst of winter in Hungary just months after the right-wing FIDESZ was elected to power (and began an array of ultra-reactionary reforms).

Hungary's 'Viktator' faces tide of protest at home and abroad

(by Helen Pidd at The Guardian)

Viktor Orbán's increasingly authoritarian regime has brought thousands on to the streets in protest, with new political movements and even hunger strikes in progress

Surrounded by half-drunk flasks of tea and bundled up in three pairs of trousers apiece, the hunger strikers entered their 26th night of protest outside the Hungarian state broadcaster on Wednesday evening. Temperatures were hovering around freezing and icy rain had started to spit. But it had been much worse, said Balazs Nagy Navarro. "At least they have turned the music off now," he said, pointing to a sandbox suspended from an upstairs window.

(...)

On Monday at least 30,000 and as many as 70,000 people (estimates vary) gathered outside the neo-Renaissance opera house in Budapest in one of the biggest protests in Hungary in years. They were voicing their anger at the radical new constitution, which was being toasted inside at a gala hosted by Orbán.

While the masses loudly decried the "Viktator!" outside, the luminaries sitting in the gold-lined auditorium listened to a speech from the Fidesz-loyal president, Pál Schmitt. In it, he made not one reference to the street protest that had made it so hard for all the chauffeur-driven cars to arrive on time.

(...)

Read the full article at The Guardian.

Hungary to jail all homeless

The neo-fascist FIDESZ party, which already approved this year extremist changes to the constitution of Hungary enshrining Christian religion, banning the right to abortion and restricting the rights of those that are different in one way or another, has now gone a step further in the way of Hitler's Final Solution by approving a law by which homeless people will be fined €600 (a huge amount of money in a poor country like Hungary, specially for a homeless: effectively not payable) and, if they cannot pay, thrown into prison.

Forget human rights, forget "European freedoms"... yet no political scandal ensues. The same that it does not when Nazis become ministers in Greece... the offcial consensus has changed: fascism is the new norm. 

Source: Prensa Latina[es].

Nazis burn apartments of Roma residents in Germany

Four Nazis dressed in black with shaven heads set fire to an apartment building whose residents were mostly of Roma ethnicity in the city of Leverkusen (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany). Nobody was injured, as all residents could evacuate promptly but the murderous intent was clear and the homes have been destroyed with all it means. 

Source: Sare Antifaxista[es].

Some one million Roma were exterminated by Hitler's Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. The genocide continues today in some parts of Europe, notably Hungary has displayed great leniency with the death squads of the Nazi party Jobbik, which terrorize the Roma with total impunity and have murdered several already.

Sad, ugly fascist Europe

I'm trying to find the mood and time to write again on the Arab Revolution or the Fukushima threat, indeed. But while I gather intelligence to understand the multiple facets of the Arab revolutionary process and courage to face the invisible death emanating from Japan, there are some things happening closer to home, mostly bad stuff.

I already mentioned (too briefly probably) on Wednesday how the Hungarian Nazis are terrorizing the country, specially the Roma community, and how the Tories have provided it with a brand new fundamentalist constitution out of the blue.

In relation with these religious fundamentalist neo-Medieval nonsense, we have a positive note from Franfurkt, where the local youth organized a "silent dance" for the so called Good Friday, when local rules of favoritism to the Christian sect forbid dancing.

However in Spain the KKK-looking ritual demonstrators still can take the streets impunely, often participated by fascist elements of the military, who blur the supposed division of religion and state. Among the many residues of fascism that pester the Spanish streets, this Easter you can find yet another one: the idol of the Virgin Macarena wears these days the strip of the fascist general Queipo de Llano, as if reminding everyone that fascism never really ended in Spain, where no revision of the crimes of the dictatorship ever happened and where many of the monuments erected by them still stand.

But that's not all: for example a Barça supporter was murdered by stabbing to the heart by a Madrid Nazi supporter in Valencia after the Coup's final match. The incident will pass maybe as a football fight but it is clear that the Nazi was looking to murder someone, as he was going around with a hidden butcher's knife. One wonders if some Nazi sects asks their members for human sacrifices... I would not be surprised, really.

In Italy, the right-wing Catholic Fundamentalist major of Milan forbade a demonstration against homophobia on a pretext.

In Russia instead, the mayor of Moscow, authorized a Nazi demonstration under the slogan Stop feeding the Caucasus. Russian Nazis (Russian Civic Union) do not just want to keep their military and political conquest in that region but want to exterminate all the people living there and, I imagine, replace them by ethnic Russians.

In Britain, the fancy marriage of the crown prince (who was more than once in the past spotted making fascist remarks or dressing as nazi officer) is not absent of fascists from around the World. Notably all the bloody dictators from the Arabian Peninsula, representing Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, who are as we speak murdering and torturing civilians just because they demand transparency and democracy.

So that's our Europe: that's what its doing before the indifference of most. It really sucks.

Hungary gets new fascist constitution

The new constitution was approved single-handedly by the conservative party Fidesz (once a liberal party which did not allow anyone older than 30 in its ranks), which enjoys a 2/3 majority in the country's parliament, enough to radically change the first law of the republic.

The new constitution seems redacted in the darkest dungeons of the Vatican, with continuous references to something they call "God", that cult of child abusers known as Christianity, the long vanished Crown of Hungary and traditional family. 

As you can gather from such fascist preliminary rantings, it goes on to absolutely forbid abortion and to restrict marriage and adoption to heterosexual couples.

In addition to this abhorrent sectarian and ultra-patriarchal first law, the old boys of Fidesz are also planning to fundamentally alter how normal democracy works by giving extra votes to mothers, according their number of children. This is so weird and, admittedly, original that I'm not even to comment on it. Just to say that it'd be a lot better if they would guarantee housing and a basic living to all mothers.

This new constitution will come to effect in January 1st 2012 and has caused many protests already. In my understanding it is the kind of constitution that should guarantee that Hungary's membership in the EU would be at least put on hold, as happened with Austria when it was under Neonazi rule. It has indeed raised eyebrows in Brussels but it is not clear, much less with so many Tory governments all around EU, that measures will be taken. 

Last year, a  highly restrictive law on free expression was rejected by Brussels because it fell short of EU standards (however notice how Berlusconi is still not ostracized). Thereafter the Orban cabinet made cosmetic changes but that was it. 

Nazi militias terrorize Hungary

Further to the right the Jobbik Neonazi is doing the dirty work for Fidesz, deploying terrorist militias all through the country and attacking minorities like Roma and immigrants. Worst is that local and state authorities collaborate with them. 

In general, all this underlines the fascist evolution of Hungary, a EU member state which should be at least put in quarantine and probably even kicked out altogether from the confederation. 

Sources[es]: Público, Un Desmemoriado, Sare Antifaxista.

Hungary does the right thing after toxic flood

Zoltan Bakony, chief executive of the factory that caused the mass poisoning has been arrested and the company, MAL Hungarian Aluminum, intervened by the state. PM Viktor Orban declared that those responsible for the catastrophe will bear the financial consequences. The temporary nationalization of the company has two objectives: to preserve the jobs and to make sure every damage is paid.

Now please compare with the attitude of the USA after the much larger and much worse environmental catastrophe caused by BP in the Gulf of Mexico: no arrests, BP put in charge of "cleaning"  and "managing" (i.e. hiding and causing even greater damage), hiding the true dimensions of the disaster from public scrutiny, allowing increased poisoning of the coasts and waters with the use of extremely poisonous dispersants, minimizing the costs for the culprit corporation, etc.

All life in the Marcal river downstream the toxic dam seems to have been extinguished. Much of the same can be said from vast areas of the Gulf of Mexico, however the information arriving from the USA is very fragmentary and most of the time unofficial. Research is being hindered by the authorities, which in most cases cannot be taken apart from BP private security.

Source for Hungarian events: BBC. For the Gulf of Mexico see for instance Florida Oil Spill Law or Project Gulf Impact.

Hungary toxic sludge reservoir was damaged before it broke

While MAL company remains in stubborn denial, the images now available at Al Jazeera show that the chemical waste's reservoir dam was already leaking before it broke, killing many and destroying a whole river:

Hungary is now working as fast as possible to restore the broken dam before more toxic material (extremely alkaline, arsenic, heavy metals) is released to the environment.

I already commented how weak regulations may allow companies to get away with such criminal disasters, caused by negligence and irresponsible and inadmissible cost cuts. And how this situation of corporate irresponsibility cannot be tolerated by any healthy society.

Another murderous corporation evading responsibility

While I am still outraged on how BP is getting away with the Louisiana oil catastrophe, a similar case seems to be happening in Hungary with the chemical sludge that hit a couple of days ago at the town of Kolontar, destroying several villages, killing four, critically injuring 11 and potentially damaging the downstream waters of the Danube river.

The sludge, which has an ochre color because of harmless iron oxide, is extremely hazardous because of two reasons: on one side it has an extremely alkaline pH of 13 (in a scale of 14, similar to pure bleach) which is totally caustic and is probably behind the deaths and injuries, on the other hand it contains many heavy metals which are extremely carcinogenic. It seems that when the sludge dries up, the danger will be increased because the dust will be able to reach the lungs. 

Most worrisome is anyhow that the corporation in charge (MAL, a Hungarian firm) is trying to get away as not responsible. They claim that they made all compulsory checks in the chemical residue reservoir and they have offered to pay a ridiculous compensation of 504 USD to each family affected. Obviously this is mere peanuts, when you have lost your home and probably also all your way of life (jobs, community, etc.), not to mention health issues. 

It is simply outraging and the logical reaction should be to intervene the company and possibly sell it out so it pays its debt with society. When such a catastrophe happens, it is only penally relevant if the company abode by the rules or not, it is still civilly responsible for all the damage caused. And the corporation is responsible with all its assets, regardless that managers or workers are also responsible for manslaughter or other crimes if it can be demonstrated they failed to stand up in their work to legal security standards. 

It is critically important to make corporations pay for catastrophes like these, specially because if they are not held fully responsible to the last penny, they will repeat. However in our decadent late Capitalist society it is becoming outrageously normal that companies get away after paying just a minor fine. It happened in Bhopal, it is happening in the Gulf of Mexico with the insulting complicity of the White House and the corporate media and it may happen at the heart of Europe again unless the Hungarian government takes a strong stand. 

Luckily it seems that the government is indeed pissed off and willing to take action. But from words to acts there is a long walk. We'll see. 

Ref.: Al Jazeera.