Borderless Hungary. New ethnicist based constitution.

[Magda Hassan]

Borderless Nation
2011/04/15

BUDAPEST/BERLIN
(own report) - In the midst of hefty protests, the Hungarian government is preparing to pass a new constitution oriented on German ethnicist policy. The document conjures up the "notion of the unified Hungarian nation," beyond the borders of the Hungarian Republic, to include Hungarian-speaking minorities of the neighboring countries. It bases itself on the mythical "Holy Hungarian Crown," "which embodies the constitutional national continuity of Hungary", while removing republic from the official name of the nation, as the designation of the form of state. Critics accuse the ruling Fidesz Party, of using its two-thirds parliamentary majority to constitutionally impose permanent ethnic conservative standards upon all of Hungary. This does not impede Berlin from continuing its close cooperation with Budapest. Just last week, the German Foreign Minister praised his Hungarian counterpart, for Budapest's very successful fulfillment of its functions chair of the European Council. Intensive cooperation is also planned within the framework of the so-called Danube Strategy, which is to be adopted during the Hungarian incumbency as chair of the EU Council. From Berlin's standpoint, which is itself following an ethnic based foreign policy, Budapest's ethnic escapades are no obstacles.


Ethnic Chauvinist Constitution
In various aspects, the draft of Hungary's new constitution, to be adopted by the Hungarian parliament April 18, carries the flair of the spirit of the German model. On the one hand, the material part of the text is oriented on the German Basic Law. One can recognize that German and Hungarian constitutional jurists had cooperated closely over an extended period. For example the former Hungarian president László Sólyom, a prominent constitutional jurist, had worked extensively together with Georg Brunner, professor of law in Cologne.[1] On the other hand, the preamble, the part of the draft constitution that is most sharply criticized, is oriented on an ethnic chauvinist concept shared by both Hungary and Germany. Budapest is free to develop these concepts in an EU under German hegemony. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[2]) The ruling Fidesz Party has a 2/3 parliamentary majority and, therefore, can adopt the constitution independently of all other parties' votes. The opposition parties, the Socialist MSZP and the Greens LMP have, with hefty protests, walked out of the preparatory committee, working on the draft constitution, because the Fidesz Party is using its parliamentary majority to give a constitutional rank to unprecedented, clearly ethnic chauvinist structures.[3]

Resurrection Festival
The ethnic concept of the Hungarian nation plays a central role in the future constitution. Hungarian, according to this concept, is whoever has Hungarian ancestors, which is valid also for the Hungarian-speaking minorities of neighboring countries. The new right of citizenship - corresponding to the German citizenship law - stipulating that they can apply for Hungarian citizenship is already bearing fruit. (The law took effect Jan. 1, 2011.) Budapest has already registered about 43,000 applications. Thousands more have been given to Hungarian consulates. The government is predicting that, by the end of this year, there will be about 200,000 new citizens among the "Hungarians Abroad." The new constitution stipulates that "guided by the idea of the united Hungarian nation - Hungary bears responsibility for the fates of the Hungarians living beyond its territorial boundaries, promoting the maintenance and development of their communities, supporting their ambitions in the conservation of Hungariandom and inter-community cooperation and cooperation with Hungary." Alongside the announcement of intentions to intervene in the domestic affairs of neighboring nations, the preamble - in characteristic ethnic style - declares, "one is proud that a thousand years ago, our King Stephan, the Saint, placed the Hungarian state on a solid foundation." It even promises, "to maintain the spiritual and emotional unity of our nation, which, has been dismembered during the storms of the past centuries."[4] The constitution strongly stresses, if nothing else, the conservative values of Christianity, and family. Hungary's president will sign the document into law on the symbolic date of April 25. April 25, 2011 is Easter Monday.

Made Good Progress
The ethnic oriented new constitution is the second internationally controversial measure taken by the Orbán government. At the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, the new Hungarian media law received wide attention throughout Europe. It imposed broad restrictions on the media's freedom of expression and, even after international protests forced a few light modifications; Hungarian critics still consider it very repressive. A board of the media, whose leading members are appointed by the government, has wide-ranging possibilities to intervene. Since protests have subsided, Berlin has again begun to praise Budapest for its loyal cooperation. "Europe" has "made quite a bit of progress, in key areas, under the first Hungarian council chair", declared German Foreign Minister, Westerwelle, last week, after his Hungarian counterpart, János Martonyi, visited Berlin. It is "remarkable", he said, "how successful the Hungarian government has mastered this chairmanship."[5] Nothing was said about the Hungarian repression against the country's media, despite the continuing protests in Budapest.

Neglected Potentials
Instead, Berlin plans to expand cooperation - also within the framework of the EU's Danube Strategy, announced by Brussels at the end of 2010. The strategy serves further German economic development along the banks of the Danube through southeastern Europe. German authorities have systematically prepared this and it complies with the German enterprises' plans of expansion. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[6]) One is "confronted with various sorts of challenges", along the Danube, according to the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Ulm, which was primarily responsible for the formulation of the EU's Danube Strategy. In Southeastern Europe, there is a "neglected shipping potential, insufficient highway and railway networks", and "uncoordinated planning in the general and professional education, research, and innovation sectors". By 2020, freight shipping on the Danube is to be increased by 20 percent. The installation of faster internet networks throughout the entire region is also planned.[7] Above all the southern German regions Baden-Wurttemberg and Bavaria are working closely together on the project with Austria and Hungary. Even though the European Council's planned January adoption of the Danube Strategy has been postponed, it will be adopted in June 2011 - still under Hungary's European Council chairmanship.

Whips and Axes
Inside the country cooperating so closely, with the Federal Republic of Germany, the ethnic chauvinist component is not only growing in official government policies. For several weeks, the extreme right has again been intensifying its aggressions against the Roma community. The extreme right's parliamentary arm - the Jobbik Party - polled about one-sixth of the votes in the last elections. At the beginning of March, a Jobbik procession against "Gypsy Crime" through the northern Hungarian village of Gyongyospata made the headlines. In the meantime, vigilantes are patrolling Gyongyospata, with official toleration of their activities.[8] Observers point out that the justice system does apply the special "racism paragraph" of the law, in cases of violence - against the Roma. For example, recently several Roma were convicted to very long prison terms because they beat a "Magyar".[9] Human rights organizations have begun to protest the fact that the Hungarian authorities are not confronting the extreme right with anything resembling this severity and are allowing the vigilantes to patrol Gyongyospata. According to Amnesty International, for example, activists of the vigilantes stand outside of Roma homes at night "screaming death threats and threatening with weapons and dogs". Sometimes they were "armed with whips and axes".[10] Berlin is not known to have protested its friends' - the Hungarian authorities' - inactivity toward their violence-prone extreme right.

[1] see also Verdienstorden and Die zweite Welle
[2] see also Pillars of the Future, Tragsäulen der Zukunft (II), Pillars of the Future (III) and Tragsäulen der Zukunft (IV)
[3] Das erste Wort sei: Gott; http://www.pesterlloyd.net 16.03.2011
[4] Die Verfassung Ungarns. Entwurf, Budapest 08.03.2011
[5] Ungarischer Außenminister besucht Berlin; http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de 04.04.2011
[6] see also Die Donaustrategie, Mama Duna and Unter deutscher Führung
[7] Die EU-Donaustrategie; http://www.ulm.ihk24.de
[8] Neonazis übernehmen Polizeigewalt in Ungarn; http://www.pesterlloyd.net 17.03.2011
[9] Rechtsextremer Aufmarsch in Ungarn; http://www.pesterlloyd.net 08.03.2011
[10] Urgent Action: Roma schikaniert; http://www.amnesty.de 18.03.2011

[Jan Klimkowski]

Lest we forget, there were two Hungarian SS divisions:

25. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Hunyadi (ungarische Nr.1.)

26th Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS

One of their commanders, Waffen-Oberführer der SS László Deák, was executed for war crimes in 1946.

Amongst these war crimes was the massacre of at least 3000 civilians, mostly Serbs, Jews and Roma, during the sickeningly named "Great Raid", including the Novi Sad massacre, by Hungarian Axis (ie Nazi) troops in 1942.

Bertolt Brecht prophetically wrote (of Hitler/Nazism) in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui:

Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.

[Helen Reyes]

Speaking of Novi Sad, the "New Hungary" has accepted an appeal by convicted Hungarian Nazi war criminal Sandor Kepiro to reinstate his libel case against Efraim Zuroff of the Jerusalem Simon Wiesenthal Center for calling him a Nazi war criminal. An earlier court dismissed the libel case when Kepiro failed to show up, although Zuroff flew in from Israel to attend.

old news:
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishN...?id=199991

new news:
http://holocaustinthebaltics.com/budapes...peal/10426

random bits:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/14...22862.html

[Helen Reyes]

I thought about this a little more and there's an additional problem here for the other EU states. Hungary is passing nationalist legislation, for example, making it a crime to disparage or deny the Hungarian "genocide" under Communism, so anyone who says anything can be tried in absentia, sentenced to three years and then extradited from any EU country automatically under the EU arrest warrant treaties.

Also, according to a UK Indpendence Party webpage,

http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/...lice-state

...
In October 1999 in Tampere in Finland a summit of the European Council decided to create an area of so-called freedom, justice and security'. The British Government's representative might have pointed out that we already enjoyed one, but never mind nothing was to stand in the way of the harmonisation of our legal systems.

The Tampere summit decided the milestones needed to create an EU system of criminal law. Key to this is, was the doctrine of mutual recognition' of judicial decisions. This is the fiction that says that all the judicial and legal systems of member states are equally valid merely by virtue of their being members of the European Union. So a decision taken by a court in Romania or Bulgaria for example is as equally trustworthy as one taken in the Old Bailey. To deny it would probably result in an accusation of xenophobia.

The Tampere programme also set up mechanisms for greater so-called co-operation' between member states in criminal matters; to extend the powers of Europol, the EU's nascent police force; and to abolish formal extradition between member states and fast-tack the extradition of criminal suspects.

Interestingly one of the bodies set up under Tampere was a European Police College, situated in Hampshire, to train senior European law enforcement officers. The new Director of the College is a Hungarian, Mr Ferenc Banfi. He reportedly wants to see the creation of a European-wide FBI style police force.

Mr Banfi was a member of the Hungarian Communist Party and a policeman under their murderous communist regime. Speaking of Europol he reportedly told the Daily Express on 29th August that, "It is only a question of time before Europol will have executive powers; it maybe five or ten years but it will happen". Europol doesn't yet have the power to arrest anyone directly but Mr Banfi thinks they soon will, and he's an expert so we should pay attention. Remember that under Europol's legal basis its officers have almost complete immunity from anything they do or say in the course of their duties. A privilege not even extended to the Soviet Union's NKVD during the height of Stalin's terror.

According to this webpage
http://en.ura-inform.com/politics/2010/06/09/komunisd
the Hungarian parliament made punishment for denying Communist atrocities life in prison.

Hungary pretty much has the EU by the tail and can pass any crazy law they want, then enforce it on the whole of Europe. The only way out is for an EU boycott of Hungary a la Austria a few years ago. That, or the entire project falls down.

http://www.politicalforum.com/western-eu...urope.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/euro...71,00.html

04-19-2011, 11:18 AM

An attack on pluralism, legislated intolerance, a crippling of checks and balances: Critics of Hungary's new constitution are not hard to find. The country's neighbors are also unhappy. German commentators say it is a scandal for Europe.

The ruling Fidesz party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban used its two-thirds majority to whip a new constitution through parliament on Monday, and critics across Europe are in uproar. The move, they fear, will convert the party's conservative, nationalist ideology into a state doctrine, cement its power well beyond the end of its term and upset the democratic system of checks and balances.

German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said the constitution was even more worrying than the controversial curbs on the media that came into force in Hungary at the start of the year. "The media law testifies to a view of basic rights that is hard to reconcile with the values of the European Union," Hoyer said in a statement on Monday. "Our fears in relation to the media laws have been heightened rather than allayed by the constitution and by the way it came into being."

Critics say Fidesz should have consulted far more widely when rewriting Hungary's basic law. The Venice Commission, the EU's constitutional law advisory body, has questioned the transparency of the process.

Worrying the Neighbors

The new constitution curbs the powers of the top court in budget and tax matters. Analysts say a major problem is that it would allow Fidesz appointees to control key public institutions -- such as the budget supervisory Fiscal Council -- well beyond its government term, which ends in 2014.

Over the weekend and on Monday, thousands of people protested in the capital, Budapest, against the new basic law. But Fidesz has said that with its big parliament majority, it has the authority to enact changes.

The law is also worrying neighboring governments because it claims Hungary is responsible for Hungarians living in countries bordering Hungary. A quarter of all ethnic Hungarians live in neighboring countries, mainly in Slovakia, Romania and Serbia.

Several German commentators are fiercely critical of the new constitution.

German public television network ARD commentated on its late-night news program Tagesthemen on Monday night:

"It's strange, the more some countries profit from the European Union, the more prone they are to anti-European sentiments. The constitutional state has largely been abolished, future elections are efrfectively meaningless, the media are being whipped into line, as are theaters and museums and everything else that could shape the nation's culture."

"Barely a trace remains of pluralism, of variety, of the basic features of a free society. If you talk to people in Hungary about politics these days, you're confronted with fear, like in the days of East Germany. In this state, Hungary no longer belongs in the EU. It is a disgrace for Europe. But Europe is saying nothing."

Left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes:

"The good Hungarian as the right-wing ruling party of Viktor Orban sees him is a strangely anachronous being: Christian to a fault, awed by his nation's heroic past, more sympathetic to monarchism than republicanism. The good Hungarian sees his place between God -- the first word in the constitution -- and the mythical holy crown. He must be heterosexual and family-oriented in order to live up to the constitution."

"The Orban government wrote, debated and whipped this new Hungarian constitution with its florid, ideology-soaked preamble through parliament on its own. All it needs is the signature of the president who -- how else could it be -- was guided into office by Orban. He has succeeded where the Kaczynski brothers failed in Poland -- to elevate national-conservative ideology to a doctrine of state."

"But the constitution doesn't just postulate an intolerant ideology. The government has also rid itself of central elements of the separation of powers, by weakening the powers of the constitutional court, for example. Around Europe, many people were appalled by the Hungarian media law. The Orban constitution is a much greater scandal."

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"The constitution enshrines a spirit of ideological, ethnic intolerance, both externally and domestically. Some are being reminded of the fascist rhetoric in Europe between the world wars. Neighboring countries are getting unpleasant memories of the cultural arrogance and power of the Hungary of old, whose Magyarization programs they were subjected to. The new constitution claims that the state of Hungary represents all other Magyars, meaning the three million living in neighboring countries."

Conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has no problem with the new constitution:

"The preamble may seem antiquated to Western observers. But for the big majority of Hungarians in the country and for the Hungarian minorities abroad, the references to a 'national statement of faith' and a holy crown' are values as worthy of the constitution as are references to God and Christendom and the emphasis on marriage and family as foundations of society and state. There is no evidence in the text that the amendments are not in line with basic European values, as Orban's opponents are claiming."

[Helen Reyes]

The Hungarian judge dismissed the libel case against Simon Wiesenthal Center Jerusalem director Efraim Zuroff and praised him for contacting Hungarian prosecutors before outing Novi Sad massacre perpetrator Sandor Kepiro to the Hungarian media.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/05/...f-of-libel

[Magda Hassan]

Thanks for the follow up Helen :tea: And good to know not everyone in Hungary has turned into a raving loon.

[Magda Hassan]

Anonymous hacks Hungarian court website, rewrites new Constitution

Submitted by l33tdawg on Mon, 2012-03-05 09:25

Credit: Your Anon News

Hacker group Anonymous changed passages of the new Hungarian constitution on the website of the Constitutional Court, internet portal Index reported on Sunday.
According to Index, the hackers added several passages to the basic law, such as stipulations that those working in IT jobs could retire at age 32, and should be entitled to pensions equal to 150 percent of their salaries. Another new section said that Anonymous and other grass-roots IT groups should fight internal or external threats against the country.
"Ideals and rulers of tyranny, or dictators represent but short periods of history. The people have the right to eliminate tyranny or rebel against it," said the "revised" version of the constitution. The hacked text has now been removed from the court's website, the body's press chief Andras Sereg told MTI.

[Magda Hassan]

Anti-semitic leader resigns after he is outed as Jewish

Embedded radio link here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19286023
16 August 2012 Last updated at 13:07 GMTHelp
A leading figure in Hungary's far right Jobbik Party has been forced to resign after being exposed as Jewish.
Csanad Szegedi's grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor and his grandfather a veteran of forced labour camps.
5 liveUp All Night heard more from Krisztian Szabados, a political analyst and the director of Political Capital Institute based in Hungary.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Of course, some of the Gladio/Opus Dei operatives in Bolivia, including leader Eduardo Rosza-Flores , had links to Jobbik.

[Peter Lemkin]

Anti-semitic leader resigns after he is outed as Jewish

Embedded radio link here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19286023
16 August 2012 Last updated at 13:07 GMTHelp
A leading figure in Hungary's far right Jobbik Party has been forced to resign after being exposed as Jewish.
Csanad Szegedi's grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor and his grandfather a veteran of forced labour camps.
5 liveUp All Night heard more from Krisztian Szabados, a political analyst and the director of Political Capital Institute based in Hungary.

I find myself almost without words......as a student of the Holocaust. As the nephew of the man who wrote the Genocide Convention; coined the word 'genocide' and was a legal expert at Nuremberg,this this is one of the more amazing outings [not the most extreme] I have seen. OBSCENE is the only English word I know that does it justice...an archaic term no longer recognized by any politically powerful countries nor entities.