I Am Not Entirely Thrilled With Hungary's Prime Minister ORBÁN

 But this is also concerning:

EXCLUSIVE BREAKING: FACEBOOK RESTRICTS ORBÁN POSTS WEEKS BEFORE HUNGARY’S ELECTION As Hungary heads toward a crucial April election, Facebook is reportedly restricting posts from the country’s Prime Minister. The move followed a call by an opposition party (Tisza Party) member, a former Meta employee, urging supporters to mass-report his content. Meanwhile, Tisza leader Péter Magyar has disproportionately high engagement figures, outperforming global figures, despite operating in a much smaller, language-limited country Péter also used a personal “professional mode” profile rather than a political page, contrary to Meta’s long-standing guidelines, potentially bypassing limits on political content. Questions are also emerging around how Meta moderates political content in Hungary. A regional Meta official has publicly shared positions aligned with mainstream European narratives, including pro-Ukraine messaging and content seen as anti-government in Hungary. If Hungary’s largest social platform keeps restricting Orbán’s content while opposition accounts seem inflated before the election, serious questions arise about free speech and democratic integrity. This requires an urgent investigation. I’ve seen political interference by social media companies in other countries, and I really hope this is not happening in Hungary.

Others have responded that this oversimplifies what Facebook is doing and that this is in part the  consequence of new rules about political ads:

The claim of Facebook specifically restricting Orbán's personal posts lacks clear confirmation in recent reports. Instead, Meta suspended several pro-government Hungarian news pages (e.g., county newspapers) in late February 2026, weeks before the April 12 election, sparking interference accusations. Péter Magyar's Tisza Party leads polls and draws massive crowds, with high organic engagement on Facebook likely from genuine momentum against Orbán's long rule, not proven inflation. Meta's EU political ad ban (since Oct 2025) affects both sides; Fidesz circumvents via loopholes and grassroots "digital fighters." Bias concerns exist on all platforms, but evidence points more to broader moderation (including pro-Orbán outlets) than targeted censorship of Orbán alone. Urgent scrutiny of Big Tech in elections is fair democracy demands transparency from all players.

At least part of why Péter Magyar is a thorn in Orbán's side is a scandal involving child sexual abuse:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has yet to comment on the resignation of two of the most prominent politicians of the Fidesz party – President Katalin Novak and former justice minister Judit Varga –  as he continues to maintain a low profile amid the biggest scandal rocking his government since taking office in 2010.

The child sexual abuse scandal is threatening the very foundations of the regime, Political Capital wrote in a note.

 In a nutshell, the story goes back to April 2023 when Novak gave pardons to two dozen people, including convicted terrorist Gyogy Budahazy, an influential figure of the far-right and now aligned with the parliamentary party Our Homeland. Novak also pardoned Endre Konya, the deputy director of a children’s home in Bicske, central Hungary, who used blackmail to force young boys to withdraw their testimony against the director, who had abused them sexually for years.

The Dutroux scandal exposed some worrisome problems with the Belgian law enforcement agencies.

The power of really big companies to affect elections is worrying. While a defeat of Orbán would also be a defeat for Russia, I think Facebook power is also worrisome.

 

Where Worship of Anti-Racism Takes You

Long, profoundly sad, well-sourced 2/4/26 Substack article about how the terror of being called prejudiced against Muslims took Britain to a place that makes Epstein into small potatoes. It should be read in full. Just a couple of excerpts to catch the flavor:

 In September 2012, The Times published an extensive overview of the phenomenon.3 The paper reported that for more than a decade, organised groups of men had been able to groom, exploit, and traffic girls across multiple towns and cities in Britain, often operating with minimal interference from authorities....

Yet, event The Times underestimated the scale of this. By early 2015, senior police figures were publicly acknowledging the scale of the crisis. One officer spoke of “tens of thousands” of current victims of grooming gangs. A Member of Parliament, representing a constituency widely associated with the problem, went further, suggesting that the total number of victims nationwide, past and present, could reach as high as one million.4

These figures are almost impossible to comprehend. They refer to school-aged girls systematically identified, isolated, and exploited over many years. And yet, despite the magnitude of the harm, perpetrators were able to operate with remarkable impunity.....

Across policing, social services, local government, and related professions, many officials felt unable to speak frankly about the defining characteristics of the problem. Not because those characteristics were unclear, but because acknowledging them carried perceived risks, to careers, professional standing, and social legitimacy. The boundaries of what could be said narrowed to the point where silence became the safer option.

This produced a self-reinforcing cycle. As fewer people were willing to speak openly, institutional inaction deepened, and the cost of dissent appeared ever higher to colleagues and peers.

In some instances, professionals were directly cautioned against drawing attention to ethnic or cultural patterns. In most, it appears such warnings were unnecessary. The fear of being accused of racism ensured that, for decades, there was little formal recognition of the grooming-gang phenomenon as a distinct and systemic form of abuse.

That the victims were overwhelmingly young white schoolgirls, while the perpetrators largely muslims with darker skin, proved decisive, not in prompting action, but in paralysing it. This dynamic allowed abuse networks to operate with remarkable freedom, even as evidence accumulated.

So again, to ask the central question: how could an abuse network of this scale persist for decades without decisive intervention?

The answer is stark in its simplicity. It was not fear of the crime that silenced authorities, but fear of a word: racist....

To understand the scale and nature of the grooming gang scandal, one must first confront the cultural context from which the perpetrators emerged. The statistical overrepresentation of men from Pakistani and other South Asian heritages in these specific group-based exploitation networks has been documented by multiple inquiries and judicial remarks.6 The abuse is rooted in a specific worldview imported from rural, patriarchal societies where the status of women is determined by rigid codes of honour (sharaf) and where non-Muslim or “out-group” women are viewed through a lens of religious and racial contempt.7

Central to this incompatibility is the existence of a dual morality within the perpetrator networks. While the women within their own communities are often cloistered and protected to maintain family “honour,” Western women, particularly those who are liberated or vulnerable are viewed as “immodest” and therefore “fair game” for sexual predation.8 This perception is reinforced by the use of dehumanising language, such as the term “kuffar” (non-believer) or “khal” (black/outsider), which serves to strip the victims of their humanity and justify their exploitation.9...

Perpetrators in Rochdale were explicitly told by Judge Gerald Clifton that their treatment of victims was influenced by the fact that the girls were “not of your community or religion”.10 This judicial acknowledgment confirms that the selection of victims was not random but was driven by an “us versus them” mentality that prioritised tribal and religious identity over the laws of the host nation. The victims were not only objects of sexual desire but symbols of a “conquered” or “inferior” culture to be dominated.11

The frequent use of racial slurs such as “white trash,” “white slag,” and “white meat” indicates a racialised hierarchy in which the victims were viewed as having no inherent value.12 In Keighley, a victim reported that when she attempted to stop working as a drugs courier for her abuser, she was called a “little white slag” and a “little white bastard” while being raped.13 These terms are ideological markers that define the victim’s place in the perpetrator’s worldview, a place of total subservience and worthlessness.

It is an article of faith in some circles that "outsiders" are only a small part of this problem. The vast numbers in Britain argue otherwise.  Hat tip to Small Dead Animals.

I Smell a Deal

7/22/25 Politico:

"The Justice Department is seeking to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, the co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday."

If anyone has access to a clients' list. It would be her.  She has a 20 year prison sentence.   If she can provide evidence and not just whatever pops into her head at the moment,  I could see a deal with her turning State's Evidence for a shorter sentence. 

If a Republican Said This...

5/30/24 New York Post:

"California state senator fighting to throw pedophiles into prison for longer has blasted progressive members of her own party for trying to water down the new law, declaring: “I’m done with us.”

"Democratic Sen. Susan Eggman, who reps part of San Joaquin County just outside San Francisco, gave the fiery speech on the Senate floor last Thursday when lawmakers were weighing legislation that would make it a felony to purchase or solicit a minor for commercial sex in the Golden State.

“I’d like to say as a progressive, proud member of this body for the last 12 years, I’m done. I’m done with us protecting people who would buy and abuse our children. I’m done,” said Eggman, 63.

"“I don’t want to send more black and brown men to prison. I don’t want more people in prison, but I don’t want people buying girls. I don’t want people buying little girls anymore. I’m tired of saying it’s okay and that we have to protect the men who do it.”"

I am increasingly of the opinion that along with the Hamas and Green factions of the Democratic Party there is an Epstein faction as well.