Hungary takes another step towards dictatorship

Just last week, Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party adopted a bill that would allow the government to temporarily strip dual citizens — specifically those who are also nationals of non-EU or non-European Economic Area countries — of their Hungarian passports, should they be deemed to have acted “in the interest of foreign powers” and “undermined the sovereignty of Hungary.” 

The ambitions of this bill are clear as day. This is not about national security; it’s about silencing dissent. It’s about targeting civil society, journalists and activists — both within Hungary and the diaspora — who refuse to fall in line with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

I’ve already been the subject of many such attacks. My name and my organization, Action for Democracy, have been fixtures of the Hungarian government’s propaganda machine for years.

The government has commissioned illegal surveillance, covertly recording videos and taking photographs of me and my family in front of our apartment in New York. It has published unfounded allegations in pro-government newspapers. It has launched misogynistic attacks against my wife. And it has instructed the Hungarian intelligence agencies, as well as the Orwellian “Sovereignty Protection Authority” — a body modeled on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repressive state machinery — to investigate my organization on the grounds of “national security.”

Read the rest here.

Kyrill and the Babylonian Captivity of the Russian Orthodox Church

Obviously, I would not presume to judge any individual's relationship with God. But as an institution, it is becoming clearer, almost by the day, that the Russian Church has gone dangerously off the rails. To which end I find myself substantially in agreement with this short blog post. 

Lord have mercy.

One of Putin's fiercest critics has vanished and the Russian government is not talking

After two weeks without word from Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, his lawyers and allies, fearing the worst, are running a frantic campaign to find him.

Their efforts have included requesting information from dozens of Russian prisons and taking to social media to raise awareness of Mr. Navalny’s disappearance and to call on the Russian government to reveal his whereabouts.

Many Russians living abroad have gone to their country’s diplomatic missions to protest. Some have held up posters saying “Where is Navalny?”

Dmitri S. Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, told journalists on Friday that the Kremlin had “neither the possibility, nor rights or desire to trace the fate of convicts,” referring to Mr. Navalny.

Here is what we know about Mr. Navalny and his disappearance.

The last time Mr. Navalny’s lawyers heard from him was on Dec. 5. The following day, one of his lawyers waited for seven hours outside the penal colony where Mr. Navalny was being kept but was not allowed to see him, Kira Yarmysh, a spokeswoman for Mr. Navalny, said. Mr. Navalny then failed to appear by video link at a scheduled court hearing the next day, Dec. 7.

In the days after Mr. Navalny’s disappearance, his allies grew more alarmed as letters sent to him went undelivered and the authorities declined to reveal his location to his lawyers. On Dec. 11, officials in the prison colony that had been holding Mr. Navalny — in Melekhovo, a town about 160 miles east of Moscow — told his lawyers that he was no longer listed among its inmates, Ms. Yarmysh said.

Read the rest here.

Black Ribbon Day

The anniversary of the infamous Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (August 23, 1939) is recognized in most of the EU and many other countries as a day for commemoration of the victims of Communist and Fascist oppression.

For the Record

In line with the previous post, I support the Prague Declaration.

There may be differences in details, but morally they are on the same level.

Another Article On The Greek Neo-Nazi Party

ATHENS — At first glance, the shop on a nondescript street in this chaotic capital looks standard-issue military. Fatigues. Camouflage. Hunting gear. Deeper inside, the political message emerges. Black T-shirts emblazoned with modified swastikas — the symbol of the far-right Golden Dawn party — are on sale. A proudly displayed sticker carries a favorite party slogan: “Get the Stench out of Greece.”

By “stench,” the Golden Dawn — which won its first-ever seats in the Greek Parliament this spring and whose popularity has soared ever since — means immigrants, broadly defined as anyone not of Greek ancestry. In the country at the epicenter of Europe’s debt crisis, and where poverty and unemployment are spiking, the surplus shop doubles as one of the party’s dozens of new “help bureaus.” Hundreds of calls a day come in from desperate families seeking food, clothing and jobs, all of which the Golden Dawn is endeavoring to provide, with one major caveat: for Greeks only.

Read the rest here.

Interesting that WAPO seems fixated on a small though admittedly fascist political party while ignoring that the second largest party in Greece is neo-Communist. Communism and Nazism occupy the same moral plane. And yet the WAPO seems unable to tear its eyes from a minor right wing fringe party long enough to note the presence of the huge party that espouses an ideology responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people around the world.