New Observer, “Orban: Hungary is a “Refuge for Europeans,” and Uses Tax Money to Boost Birthrate”, 24 July 2017:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced that his nation will “remain a place where Western European Christians will always be able to find security”—and that his government is using taxes on multinational companies to fund social policies to spur families to have more children.

Speaking at a cultural festival in Baile Tusnad, Romania, Orbán also said that the European Union, together with Open Society founder—and Hungarian Jew—George Soros was seeking a “new, mixed, Muslimized Europe.”

He went on to say that Hungary’s border fences, supported by other Central European countries, “will block the EU-Soros effort to increase Muslim migration into Europe.”

While Hungary opposed taking in migrants “who could change the country’s cultural identity,” Orban said under his leadership, Hungary would remain a place where “Western European Christians will always be able to find security.”

He also said that Hungary’s opposition parties were no match for his government, and that he would win the next election in April 2018.

“In the upcoming campaign, first of all we have to confront external powers,” Orban said.

“We have to stand our ground against the Soros mafia network and the Brussels bureaucrats. And, during the next nine months, we will have to fight against the media they operate.”

Recent legislation in Hungary seeks to close or expel the Budapest-based Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991. There are also new rules about non-governmental organizations funded at least partly from abroad.

Orban reiterated his charge that Soros-funded NGOs want to weaken Hungary’s security with their advocacy for asylum-seekers and said Hungary had managed to stop the “migrant invasion” with razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia.

In the speech, broadcast by Hungarian state media, Orban repeated his claim that the EU leadership was encroaching on member states’ rights and trying to apply policies, such as increased immigration, which he said were opposed by most Europeans.

Orban said Poland, which is under pressure from the EU because of attempts to put its Supreme Court under political control, had replaced Hungary as the target of the EU’s “chief inquisitor,” whom he identified as European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans.

“The main target of the inquisition, the example of national governance to be weakened, destroyed and broken is Poland,” Orban said, vowing to defend the Polish government. “Hungary will use every legal possibility in the European Union to be in solidarity with the Poles.”

Finally, Orban said Hungary’s low birth rate made the country an “endangered species,” and that the government was using taxes on multinational companies to fund social policies that would spur families to have more children.

However much of a taboo one is breaking by saying it, there is no cultural identity in a population without a stable ethnic composition

Visigrad Post, “Full speech of V. Orbán : Will Europe belong to Europeans?” 24 July 2017:

Viktor Orbán’s speech at the 28th Bálványos Summer Open University and Student Camp, 22 July 2017, Tusnádfürdő (Băile Tuşnad, Romania)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: “First of all, I’d like to remind everyone that we started a process of collective thinking 27 years ago in Bálványosfürdő, a few kilometres from here. That is where we came to a realisation. Just think back: at that time, at the beginning of the nineties, most people – not only in Hungary, but also across the whole of Central Europe – thought that full assimilation into the Western world was just opening up to us again. The obvious approach was adjustment to that world: to in a way shed our skin and grow a new, fashionable Western skin. From this it followed that in our politics we would simply need to copy what they were doing in the West. Back then – 27 years, 28 years ago – we came together here, and we thought that we freedom fighters living on this side of the Iron Curtain could also have something valuable to say to a Europe which had by then been living in peace, freedom and prosperity for forty years. Back then we weren’t surrounded by television cameras, and our words commanded no attention whatsoever.

Now, however, they do. And if I were to name the most important event, the most important Hungarian and European event of the past year – the twelve months since our last meeting – I would say that it is the strengthening of the Visegrád Four. Although there was a presidential election in the United States, and not so long ago the French presidential and parliamentary elections swept away the entire French party system – which are both important things – I’m convinced that the most important development of the past year has been the Visegrád Four cooperation becoming closer than ever before. We can say that Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava and Budapest are speaking with one voice. This is a great achievement, as these are countries which are very different in their characters. Here we have the enthusiastic Poles, the ever-cautious Czechs, the sober Slovaks and the romantic Hungarians; and yet we are able to speak the same language. We can be truly proud of this.

It is customary for the Open University presentations to seek to give an account of the extent of change over the past year, also in a broader civilisational context. Certainly not everyone remembers that in 2009, after his election, President Obama made his first important speech abroad in the city of Cairo. This year the newly-elected US president delivered his first important speech abroad in the city of Warsaw. To illustrate the extent of the changes, it’s enough to quote a few sentences from the speech made by the American president in Warsaw. I’ll quote from it now:

“We have to remember […] that the defence of the West ultimately rests not only on means, but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. […] Our own fight for the West does not begin on the battlefield. It begins with our minds, our wills and our souls. […] Our freedom, our civilization and our survival depend on these bonds of history, culture, and memory.”

He then went on to say: “So together let us all fight like the Poles: for family, for freedom, for country and for God.”

Ladies and Gentlemen,

These words would have been inconceivable anywhere in the Western world two years ago. This is the extent of the change that is taking place around us. This, perhaps, is the point at which I should greet Piotr Naimski and the Polish delegation led by him. He is the President of the Hungarian-Polish Parliamentary Group in Warsaw. Welcome, Dear Polish Friends.

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The New Republic, “Trump’s Russian Laundromat” July 2017:

How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.

In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.

A monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. From the day it opened, the building was a hit—all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.

If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.

Semion Mogilevich.

In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. His family ties, in fact, led straight to the top: His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America.

In 1987, on his first trip to Russia, Trump visited the Winter Palace with Ivana. The Soviets flew him to Moscow—all expenses paid—to discuss building a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin. Maxim Blokhin/TASS

Full article at New Republic

        Rubrics:

- Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

- Throughout the 1990s, untold millions from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s luxury developments and Atlantic City casinos.

- Trump Taj Mahal paid the largest fine ever levied against a casino for having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering rules.

- The influx of Russian money did more than save Trump’s business from ruin—it set the stage for the next phase of his career. By 2004, to the outside world, it appeared that Trump was back on top after his failures in Atlantic City. That January, flush with the appearance of success, Trump launched his newly burnished brand…

- Russians spent at least $98 million on Trump’s properties in Florida—and another third of the units were bought by shadowy shell companies.

- In 2013, police burst into Unit 63A of Trump Tower and rounded up 29 suspects in a $100 million money-laundering scheme.

- In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings.

        Concluding paragraphs:

Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob’s “boss of bosses,” also declined to respond to questions from the New Republic. “My ideas are not important to anybody,” Mogilevich said in a statement provided by his attorney. “Whatever I know, I am a private person.” Mogilevich, the attorney added, “has nothing to do with President Trump. He doesn’t believe that anybody associated with him lives in Trump Tower. He has no ties to America or American citizens.”

Back in 1999, the year before Trump staged his first run for president, Mogilevich gave a rare interview to the BBC. Living up to his reputation for cleverness, the mafia boss mostly joked and double-spoke his way around his criminal activities. (Q: “Why did you set up companies in the Channel Islands?” A: “The problem was that I didn’t know any other islands. When they taught us geography at school, I was sick that day.”) But when the exasperated interviewer asked, “Do you believe there is any Russian organized crime?” the “brainy don” turned half-serious.

“How can you say that there is a Russian mafia in America?” he demanded. “The word mafia, as far as I understand the word, means a criminal group that is connected with the political organs, the police and the administration. I don’t know of a single Russian in the U.S. Senate, a single Russian in the U.S. Congress, a single Russian in the U.S. government. Where are the connections with the Russians? How can there be a Russian mafia in America? Where are their connections?”

Two decades later, we finally have an answer to Mogilevich’s question.

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Maplewood, lower left, highlighted in red. It is manifesting “hoodie” sprawl amidst what was exclusively middle and upper class White suburbia - e.g., Short Hills and the west side of Montclair, along the Watchung Mountains - White areas uncomfortably juxtaposed to what would be shockingly black areas for those unprepared for the transformation that encroaches: Newark, Irvington and East Orange have been predominantly black since the riots of the 1960’s.

The Intercept, “U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel”, 19 July, 2017:

The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The U.K. has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the U.S., governors compete with one another over who can implement the most extreme regulations to bar businesses from participating in any boycotts aimed even at Israeli settlements, which the world regards as illegal. On U.S. campuses, punishment of pro-Palestinian students for expressing criticisms of Israel is so commonplace that the Center for Constitutional Rights refers to it as “the Palestine Exception” to free speech.

But now, a group of 43 senators — 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats — wants to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country’s decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

The proposed measure, called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720), was introduced by Cardin on March 23. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the bill “was drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.” Indeed, AIPAC, in its 2017 lobbying agenda, identified passage of this bill as one of its top lobbying priorities for the year:

The bill’s co-sponsors include the senior Democrat in Washington, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, his New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand, and several of the Senate’s more liberal members, such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Maria Cantwell of Washington. Illustrating the bipartisanship that AIPAC typically summons, it also includes several of the most right-wing senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Marco Rubio of Florida.

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Technology Decisions, 12 July 2017:

“Donald Trump threatens net neutrality, says academic”

Internet neutrality and freedom of speech are under threat by Donald Trump’s administration, according to a QUT academic.

Matthew Rimmer from the Faculty of Law said that the Trump administration has been seeking to dismantle network neutrality rules as part of its deregulation agenda.

“There will be a massive online protest by a wide array of companies, including Amazon, Netflix, Shapeways, Kickstarter, Twitter and Reddit, along with organisations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Greenpeace and the American Library Association,” said Rimmer.

  Ajit Pai: the man who could destroy the open internet

“July 12 2017 is a Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality in the US, an event responding to plans by the Federal Communications Commission under the leadership of President Donald Trump’s chair, Ajit Pai, to repeal government rules which established net neutrality.”

Network neutrality started out as a philosophical concept, developed by Professor Timothy Wu from Columbia University, to address discrimination by broadband service providers. It was designed to preserve a free and open internet by preventing broadband providers from blocking, throttling or slowing internet services.

It ensures consumer rights are not undermined by internet service providers and that they do not suffer a dystopia of slow lanes and fast-paid lanes on the internet.

It also helps ensure the internet is a free and open platform which supports innovation. In particular, it ensures that start-up companies and new market entrants have an equal playing field. Without such protections, internet service providers could use their role as gatekeepers to reinforce their monopolies.

“We have not seen such a massive online action since the protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act, in which Wikipedia and other online sites staged a blackout against draconian copyright laws,” Rimmer said.

However, while the United States debates network neutrality, Australia still has not had a proper conversation about network neutrality.

“The issue has been periodically raised in the context of debates over the nbn, media convergence and competition reform. There are, though, concerns about the speed of broadband services in Australia and the problem of the data drought,” said Rimmer.

“At a time at which it is modernising its media laws, Australia would benefit from the introduction of the principle of network neutrality. The public interest doctrine would boost consumer choice, competition and innovation in Australia.”

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Oxygen Crime Time, “Man Accused Of Killing Girlfriend Over Cheating Accusations, 13 June 2017:

When arrested, the boyfriend’s car reeked of bleach.

On Sunday, state police arrested a Pennsylvania man accused of killing a missing woman. Ishemer D. Ramsey, 21, has been arrested on a homicide charge, and police believe he fatally shot his 26-year-old girlfriend.

According to the Butler Eagle, police believe they found the body of Melissa Barto on Monday night. Police suspect she was killed Thursday, allegedly by Ramsey.

“The body was burned rather badly,” said Trooper James Long said. “It was a pretty horrific scene.”

According to court documents, Ramsey allegedly told a witness the shooting happened during an argument in the defendant’s car after Ramsey accused Barto of cheating.

When police took Ramsey into custody following a traffic stop, they stated that his car reeked of bleach, and the passenger side seat was missing. In Ramsey’s possession, a .45-caliber pistol in a drop holster, police say.

On Friday morning, Barto’s mother reported her daughter missing, according to the report. She told police she last spoke to her daughter on Thursday.

On Saturday, a witness told police they saw Ramsey “cleaning and cutting the carpet” of the passenger side floor of his vehicle.

Two police officers interviewed Howard George, 23, on Saturday who told them that Ramsey confessed to him that he had killed the woman.

“Ramsey believed she was cheating,” the police affidavit said, “and stated that he wanted her gone.”

According to the Butler Eagle, Ramsey told George that he shot Barto in the head two times, and she said ‘you shot me,’ so Ramsey shot her a third time.

[Butler City Police Department]

The End, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington

When false opposition forces you to imagine lyrics/text different than theirs and supply protest lyrics authentic to your interests:

Back in the days before Internet, decades before in fact, we young folks didn’t have much outlet for protest via the media - TV, movies, newspapers and magazines, book publishing (((all controlled))). Music, concerts and festivals were ostensible outlets of protest expression - and even they were so (((controlled))) by pervasive liberalism that I had to change lyrics in my head to de-liberalize them and make them properly aligned to my grievances. Neil Young’s “Alabama” is a classic example of a song that had righteous passion totally misdirected into liberalism. Lynard Skynard noticed it in their song “Sweet Home Alabama”, citing Young and his song “Alabama” directly for criticism. But it wasn’t only they who objected and I could not relate to their southern patriotism either. No, I had my own protest lyrics in mind - lyrics, wouldn’t you know, that I can’t even spell out today, this protest remains so forbidden by the powers-that-be and their do-gooders mulatto supremacist gate keepers: it goes to show HOW FAR we have NOT come in some ways - ridiculously, you can’t even say the N word:

“Alabama”, Neil Young - Lyrics

Oh Alabama N-lover
Banjos playing
through the broken glass
Windows down in Alabama.
See the old folks
tied in white ropes
Hear the banjo.
Don’t it take you down home?

Alabama N-lover, you got
the weight on your shoulders
That’s breaking your back.
Your Cadillac
has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track

Oh Alabama N-lover.
Can I see you
and shake your hand.
Make friends down in Alabama.
I’m from a new land
I come to you
and see all this ruin
What are you doing Alabama N-lover?
You got the rest of the union
to help you along
What’s going wrong?

Neil did a bit better with the lyrics to “Southern Man”, particularly in the last stanza, although I don’t think Neil was looking at it from the same angle that I have… that’s my imagination supplying the protest angle once again.

Southern Man, Neil Young – Lyrics
Southern man
Better keep your head
Don’t forget
What your good book said
Southern change
Gonna come at last
Now your crosses
Are burning fast
Southern man

I saw cotton
And I saw black
Tall white mansions
And little shacks.
Southern man
When will you
Pay them back?
I heard screamin’
And bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?

Southern man
Better keep your head
Don’t forget
What your good book said
Southern change
Gonna come at last
Now your crosses
Are burning fast
Southern man

Lily Belle,
Your hair is golden brown
I’ve seen your black man
Comin’ round
Swear by God
I’m gonna cut him down!
I heard screamin’
And bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?

Neil Young’s politics are well off the mark; no need to belabor that, but I’d like to caution that anybody trafficking in the emotion of sadness as much as Neil Young has is promoting a neutering kind of propaganda in that very sadness - it’s better to veer in the direction of anger.

Now, a primary outlet for rebellion against political tyranny has been largely co-opted again, this time it is the (((alternative-k*ke er, alternative-right))) that’s doing much of the co-opting.

And unfortunately, they are putting their (((brand))) on to some intelligent text, you might say, protest lyrics text.

I feel the same yearning as co-opted passions and thoughtful consideration could be deployed for our authentic protest, and not for the (((alternative-k*ke))), when I read Melissa Meszaros’ article about the suicide of Linkin Park frontman, Chester Bennington.

The strikeouts of “alt-rights” and “the left” in one place are strictly my wish and of course not how Melissa wrote the article - as she did, in order to brand it for the (((Alt-Right))). In one place I have to comment where, typical of right wing misguidance, the negative significance and anti stance she registers for the homosexual issue is disproportionate. Everything else remains as she has written it.

Melissa Meszaros

Alt-Right, “What The Alt-Right Can Learn From The Death Of Chester Bennington, 24 July 2017:

Linkin Park touched the millennial generation’s frustrations with modern society like no other band could. For this reason, it’s worth spending a few moments looking into the life of frontman Chester Bennington and seeing what we can learn after his suicide.

Sexually molested from the age of seven, divorced parents, a steady cocktail of drugs from the age of eleven, with alcoholism and depression entering later on — these are the things that framed the childhood of Linkin Park’s frontman Chester Bennington.

Unable to overcome his traumas and subsequent addictions, he chose to use them as a painful source of inspiration in his lyrics. His suicide is unfortunate, especially for his children and wife, and whether we listened personally to the band or not as we were growing up, Linkin Park held a central position representing the millennial generation’s frustrations with life and all the associated mental effects relating to the increase of broken homes and fragmenting communities. The band spoke of problems most of us experienced as teenagers, back when we were confused and distrustful of the direction our supposedly fantastic and free society was heading. Now, as adults in the Alt-Right, with infinitely more resources and knowledge at our fingertips, we are dedicated to overcoming and fixing these issues within ourselves and our societies. But still, for many of us, Linkin Park was the herald awakening millions of teens to the realization that the world is messed-up and it was time to prepare for a long battle. For this reason, I believe it’s worth spending a few moments looking into Bennington’s life of inescapable addiction and seeing what we in the Alt-Right can learn from it.

For me, I remember Linkin Park being the most popular band in my freshman year of high school in Central New Jersey. It was the last year I’d spend in the United States before moving to Hungary with my parents. My friends would carry around the Hybrid Theory CD and hold it reverently during recess while talking about the lyrics. We’d sit with crossed-legs in a circle in the shady corner of a grassy lot while spawns of diversity hollered and beat each other on the nearby basketball courts.

I only got into the band later, for a few months when my father was in the hospital in Hungary, dying from terminal lung cancer. The music is not positive and it does not remind me of a good place. Rather, I envision a constant delirious struggle with myself, getting caught in a loop over thinking various problems and feeling uncertain of ever being able to overcome the odds and live in peace. These are the very thought processes Chester Bennington described himself dealing with, in an interview with 102.7 KIISFM radio in February of this year. After a while, I realized the music was keeping me from moving past my own issues, so I grew out of it.

When it comes to Bennington himself, there are three things worth highlighting. First, there is the molestation by an older male friend. In his own words, Bennington described:

“It escalated from a touchy, curious, ‘what does this thing do’ into full-on, crazy violations. I was getting beaten up and being forced to do things I didn’t want to do. It destroyed my self-confidence. I didn’t want people to think I was gay or that I was lying. It was a horrible experience.”

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