Equal pay, entitlement and women's soccer team -how our reality is manufactured by the media

So the news have been full of how unfairly the US' women's soccer team is treated by the Patriarchy. The poor souls get paid less than the males! How horrible, right? Sue the fuckers responsible!

And they did.

And the lawsuit was promtly dismissed by the judge.

The reasons were simple: the women actually made more than the men did. Had the situaton of the two teams been reversed, the men would have received less money than the women. Initially they were offered the same contract as the men, which they rejected in favor of a different contract, and now they realized that if they had taken the original contract they would have made even more with their present success, so now they want the original contract retroactively.

Which seems to me less than a fight against the Patriarchy, and more a case of greed. Which is fine, because you can be as a greedy motherfucker as you want to be, it is a free country after all.

However, wrapping your greed into the flags of Social Justice to press your case, well, is not cool, to say the least. It does not just make you greedy, it makes you an asshole.

And here comes the actual point of this post: the media manufactures our reality. This really is a clear-cut case. And yet, the most prominent media outlets, Biden, everyone are still pushing the social justice angle, going into tortorous arguments about how it is a clear violation of the law, even while the women did make more money than the men would have, using this case as a clear demonstration of the existence of the Gender Pay Gap. Which it isn't. But reality is defined not by facts, but by narratives, so there you go. 

Either people who are supposed to be our betters really are so simple they cannot understand this concept as they are blinded by their ideology -or they are so cynical they decided not to understand why the lawsuit was dismissed. Either way the prospects are scary. It matters not what the truth is -what matters is that you use your bullhorn to shape it to your liking. And this is scary because what started out as a fringe social studies experiment now is used to shape government policy and our culture. The most powerful person in the world (Biden, presently), should not be standing there spouting nonsense. He, of all people, should really, really make sure he has all the facts on the ground available.

Let's blame the whistleblowers, shall we?

 So there were several instances when the obvious bias of certain media outlets, or even whole "scientific fields" (I am not sure how gender studies constitute as science, but whatever) have been revealed by people who submitted fake articles and got published.

The Independent has published an outrageously, obviously over the top article about comedy and free speech (rather a call to curtail it). Got published, no problem. This is very important as it exposed how certain (if not all) media outlets do nothing but pushing agendas. When it was realized it was a hoax, people were outraged at the perpetrators -rather than actually at the obviously biased media outlet. No hard questions about how this may or may not be an endemic issue with all media printed or otherwise. Nothing to see here. After all, it is not as if it is something important, right? We only get our news from them, after all, they only shape our reality.

Same with the Grievance Studies affair- the authors managed to publish a whole chapter of Mein Kampf as a feminist manifesto, they argued for chaining white students, and talked about rape culture in dog parks -and were enthusiastically welcomed by the academic publishers. They passed through peer review, and it seems like social sciences embraced these articles wholeheartedly.

When it became clear these were fake articles, again, the outrage was not directed at the publishers (and the academics who peer-reviewed them), there were no hard questions ask how these academic fields can be biased to this cartoonish level where the Mein Kampf is actually publishable -no, the outrage was directed against these horrible hoaxers.

To this day there are no consequences of these events. None at all. The people who are responsible for these hoaxes are trying to push a conversation about them, they do appear on programs, podcasts and whatnot, but these are very much isolated from the "mainstream". The mainstream media, the mainstream conversation resolutely ignores them. If anything they only blame them for exposing this agenda-driven "science" to the whole world, giving ammunition for right-wingers, climate change deniers and so on to question the integrity and validity of science (as the above linked Atlantic article does, too). So to recap: it is not an issue if you pervert science. It is only an issue when you publicise it.

And this, again, is ignored completely. 

 

Orban and his special powers - the lack of journalistic integrity

This is going to be a difficult post for me because I do not wish to defend Orban and his government. I believe they are the very worst of the cleptocratic elite Hungary's political establisment bred over the last thirty years. Their rule is cementing a new, robber baron class in place, making the country even more nepotistic as it was before. A place where I am less and less keen to live in.

Anyhow. During the COVID-19 pandemic they voted some emergency powers for themselves, which were supposed to temporary, but they did not give an automatic expiry date. This sent everyone into panic; the screaming about dictatorships have predictably started. This situation is actually quite similar to the original dictators in the Roman sense -emergency powers granted for a person during times of emergencies, which were returned to the state once the emergency passed - so they might have had a point in this regard, but not in the sense we understand dictators today. (Do not get me wrong: Hungary really is not a well-functioning democracy. Neither is the US, but this is a different conversation.)

And now that the restrictions imposed on the country have been gradually eased, these emergency poweres were willingly surrendered, causing a serious confusion and a need to interpret this from the "Orban Is A Dictator" narrative. By large no mention is made in the usual suspects: Guardian, The Independent, WaPo, and the rest. But some do try to spin it in a new way to keep up their narrative.

Apparently it is a ploy to win by losing, and not actually doing what they said they would.

Now, Orban and his cronies are definitely corrupt assholes with autocratic tendencies. However it is quite clear even to them that grabbing power using the pandemic as an excuse would be a mistake -as it can be seen from their efforts to curtail the spread of the virus. As soon as they voted more powers for themselves, the usual accusations started - clearly it would be a step over the line to make these powers permanent. However, they do not need for such a ham-fisted attempt to grab power. They already have their cake and they can also eat it, too. They are firmly entrenched in power, and they can claim to have a democracy at the same time - the best of both words. Any dictatorial power grab would make them less than desirable company for the people they depend upon: multinationals and Western politicians. No matter how they suck up to Putin they do understand that it is not actually where their future lies. But it seems to be too nuanced for journalists out for some sensational headline I guess.

Double standards in the international press - Hungary and Romania (Hang 'em up high?)

Yes I complain a lot about hypocrisy and double standards; the whole blog is about them, after all. They infuriate me, regardless of whom they are applied against; and there's a good deal of them directed against my own country, which infuriate me even more.

Enter Romania.

The PM said something non-sensical (if you take the literal translation which Romanians insist), or he threatened with violence (which is the underlying meaning of his words) -depending on how you look at it. Regardless he said something unacceptable.

He threatened Transylvanian Hungarian politicians with hanging.

Let this sink in for a bit.

This is not an isolated thing. Hungarians have been severely mistreated in Romania since Transylvania was "reunited" with Romania a hundred years ago. Anti-Hungarian sentiments have been (and still are) quite high, as we can judge by other statements and actions.

Yet, not a peep from the Western, enlightened media.

Let's see what happens when an idiotic MP (and not the prime minister) says something stupid in the Hungarian Parliament. (You actually could make a rational argument why dual citizenship is not good in case of a lawmaker, but this statement did not do that.)

The reaction? The whole world went up in protest, while absolutely misinterpreting what he said (or rather, twisting it into some sort of a call for putting all Jews in the country on a list.) They also twist and lie about other things, too, while we're at it.

Not to mention the whole silence about Romania's corruption problem. Neither the media nor the EU leadership seems to be worried about that, but they pull the "nuclear option" on Poland.

I wonder why.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the real problem here. The term "fake news" have been overused a bit lately; I strongly suspect it's because the original practitioners feel slighted that Russia and others they don't like got better at it than they are.

Dumbing down everyone- one article at a time

I guess everyone is familiar with the usual "You don't believe how Pamela Anderson looks like today", "What this father did after his wife confessed will shock you" and "Why the dentists hate this Single Mom" articles that are flooding every. single. fucking. news outlet.

They want clicks, and this is how they get them.

And now it seeped into popular science reporting, too.

"Why The Science World Is Freaking Out Over This 25-Year-Old's Answer to Antibiotic Resistance"

Let's look at the actual publication, shall we?

Fist of all, nobody is freaking out. Scientist usually don't freak out unless there's an asteroid on a collision course to Earth, or a super virus emerges that kills 100% of infected people turning them into zombies.

Second: that "25-year-old" is not some girl toiling over some high-school project in the garage coming up with a world-saving method.

She is a competent PhD student who is working under the supervision of her PI as part of a team. She was given a topic to research at the start of her program, and she is constantly getting feedback, support and whatnot from her supervisor and peers. Crediting her, and her only for this is just as unfair as giving the Nobel Price for the leader of a research team only.

Science is a collaborative effort. This infantilisation of reporting just makes things really, really bad for all parties included. Your dumbed down readers get a bit more dumb for one.

European values, West vs East in the EU, and the rank hypocrisy

It is interesting to see the contrast between reports of alleged Hungarian brutality towards migrants (with no actual proof, but in the he-said-she-said game we of course can take anything a migrant or an NGO says on face value), and the way they report on brutality by the cultured and civilised Western European countries.

Let's see...

We all remember when migrants rushed the border at Roszke, and threw stones at the border guards; the response was, not unexpectedly, some water jets to drive them back. The video footage was heavily edited leaving out the attack, and the footage of the poor kid his/her parent was dragging towards the violence, so later the child could be paraded as an innocent victim. The videos usually have shown the water cannon first, then the stone throwing, and the crying children last. (Here's the full video, by the way. You can see a child being dragged towards the tear gas at 1:29...  which makes the whole farce even more comical. Most of the condemning articles you can find in this blog, but here is a collection by a Hungarian news portal.)

International condemnations, talks of overall racism in the whole country; the furore was real. Facts were taken quite liberally, but the whole incident was used to paint the whole country as the racist black sheep of the EU. Even the UN Secretary General had some harsh words.


In contrast, this is how an Italian use of the water cannon was reported upon.

The report is more like a factual description, and the Guardian had no thundering opinion piece on it. It kind of happened, and that was that.


Same thing about alleged violence against migrants/refugees in Hungary.

Apparently guards have been taking selfies with beaten migrants. Proof of any of these are obviously missing (even though these things tend to come out as we have seen with the US soldiers who took selfies in front of corpses they tortured to death), but let's not let facts get in our way.

In contrast, there are just dispassionate descriptions of the horrors if they are perpetrated by Western countries. No broad generalisations, no bleating about "European Values", no finger pointing to the highest level of power; I've yet to see anyone accuse Macron of being a horrible human being because of the well documented brutality of the French police, and the inactivity of the French government to help these people. (Who, let's just mention it, left the migrant processing centers without registering hoping to get through a richer country.)

The point is: Western media, and the Western world in general loves virtue signalling with the Eastern members of the EU. The political elite, the media are blatantly biased. It's not exactly a big revelation, but something that is worth recording.

Racist Hungarians -Discrimination in the EU in 2015 report

Thanks to the media abroad Hungary seems to have acquired quite fame as a nation of the worst racists you can imagine. Articles, comments, reddit posts, google searches- all point to this notoriety, and none of them seem to be bothered by things like facts.

Rising antisemitism threatening all Jews in Hungary? Check. And check. And check. And check. And check. And check. (Again, which country are Jews fleeing from, and asking for special permits to carry weapons? I forgot. Perhaps someone could remind me.) It's so bad, we even need to lie about it to make it look bad.

They hate Muslims, too, of course. Who said they did not?

Racism everywhere? Check. And check.

Bigotry? Of course!

Second most nationalistic country? Check. (Even though the answers made no sense whatsoever: they asked if being born in Hungary was very important to be Hungarian in a country which is surrounded by areas where one third of Hungarians still live. There is something seriously fishy with these results when the most nationalistic Hungarians are the ones who are the most aware of -and most care about- the Hungarian minorities living outside of the country.)

Is the Far Right taking over everything? Do I hear goosestepping blackshirts every day? Check. And check.

Fascists? Of course! Are they downright Nazis? Check. Even their football fans are Nazis? Of course they are!

The question is: how deserved all this? Are Hungarians really just Nazis, waiting to fire up the ovens to destroy anyone who is not like them? (As if in such a mixed nation it makes sense talking about racial purity.)

Well, according to this survey, not very. I might point out that this was done in 2015, at the height of the migrant/refugee crisis.

Here's an imperfect map representation of the results.

As we see Hungarians are not special in any way; they fall into the middle of the pack when it comes to tolerance/intolerance; hardly the country in the brink of a Nazi takeover.


The question rather is: why so many articles pushing distorted half-facts or straight-out lies to support this agenda? Why do they spend so much time and effort to demonise a small, inconsequential country?


I have to say I have no idea. If you know the answer, please let me know.

Migrants, refugees and terrorists - and the short memory of everyone involved

During the height of the migrant/refugee crisis in 2015 many -admittedly right-wing- media outlets and politicians asked the question about how many terrorists are entering Europe with the unchecked flow of people.

Remember the rat cartoon? That is sooo Nazi! (Except it isn't, but don't let a deliberate misinterpretation stand in the way of a good controversy.)

Remember when Hungary tried to enforce the Schengen rules as a border country, and got a shit-ton of flak for that? Just remember the name "Keleti Railway station".

For this they were called Nazis. Yes, I know we don't like Fox News and the Daily Mail; however the whole point of being a rational and liberal person is to actually use, you know, reason instead of labels. Unlike those stupid right wingers who are just putting everything you say into the category of "tree hugging pinko commie", and hence ignore it. No, liberals never would do that.
Ever.

Except they did. Or many of the people who pride themselves as liberals did so. Which is a shame; a shame we would like to quickly forget. They ridiculed, they accused, and they used red herrings so that the actual issue -how many terrorists enter Europe unchecked- was never asked. In fact if you search 2015 articles, you will be reassured, how unlikely it is for terrorists to go through all that suffering just to walk into Europe; after all they can fly, right? (A BBC article talks about Schengen issues pretty eloquently, although appears to avoid some tough questions involving events a couple of months prior...)

After the wave of attacks, of course, the narrative changed; now we can read about how these pesky terrorists used the crowd to mask their presence (just like the rat cartoon suggested), how they abused Europe's naivety to enter and do their shenanigans; but no one in the Guardian, Independent, New York Times, etc. stopped and said: you know, guys? We were wrong. No; what you get is a report on terrorists using the Balkan route to enter Europe, and then an attack on the one politician who dared to mention that it is a very real danger. The terrorist in question came through the Keleti Railway station into the EU I would like to stress. He was helped by well-meaning people (or, being somewhat cynical, people who sought to get political capital out of the situation), who then marched to the Austrian border to demonstrate how evil it is to enforce the law. In other words: terrorist (well, several, as we know) did what those Nazis were warning us they would. Now what? Do we apologise? Or do we keep going on with the offensive?


In fact, they still seem to be very much attacking the one guy who was right in this case. Don't get me wrong; Orban is no saint. He needs to go; this post is not about him. It's just in this one case he was right, and he was right when it mattered- during the height of the crisis, and not in hindsight. Since then his 2015 suggestions of refugee camps outside of Europe (oh, are they hellish? YOU NAZIS!), the protection of borders (I wonder how you do that without fences to force people use the border checkpoints?) -even by the Guardian, and so on have been adopted quickly by the people who called him (and the whole nation of Hungary) a Nazi; and refugees are now called migrants. (It's interesting that even the Guardian changed its tone, and nobody seems to care.)


Yet nobody had the guts to say: you know what? We fucked up. These other guys were right. They just pretend the past did not happen, and by the magic of the media, indeed it has been erased from the history books. And we're not talking about an ancient kingdom's past, or if the Black Prince was indeed such a blood-thirsty tyrant. We're talking about changing what happened two years ago. We're talking about decisions made that cost lives. Could have been some of these events avoided? Who knows? But that does not absolve people who made them, who called others trying to argue for a different approach Nazis, and then now pretend the whole thing did not happen.

It is truly Orwell's worst nightmare coming to life.

Hungarian brutality at the border

So now apparently the border guards are beating refugees, and taking selfies with them.

Allegedly.

They also commit all sorts of abuse.

Allegedly.


Proof is somewhat of a low supply in these reports; after all, who has a camera to document these things in those remote parts of the world? (Oh wait. Cellphones have cameras... Never mind.) And there is nobody else there; after all, that part of the world is not even on the maps; so there are no NGOs, other border forces, or Frontex officers present; only the wily Hungarians, and the poor, downtrodden war refugees from... Iran? Pakistan?

So. We get photos of everything. Of American guards taking selfies with Iraqis they tortured to death. Of celebrity dicks and pussies.

But somehow the security is so tight that the evil Hungarian selfies -which, by their nature, were taken to share with their friends on social media- somehow elude the heroic investigative reporters and NGOs.

Apparently Hungarians know a lot more about security than the rest of the world.

Or, but it's the unlikely possibility, is that it's all bullshit.

And these very same papers complain about fake news and Trump.

Hypocrisy at it's best.

Concentration camps and migrants

So the Hungarian government has decided to set up guarded camps for asylum seekers until their application is processed, housing them in containers. This, obviously, set off a hysterical outburst from a lot of western newspapers, and the comment section of the NYT's facebook page filled up with Americans drawing parallels to cattle wagons and containers, and also brought up extermination camps.

Well, putting aside the lack of historical knowledge, and the fact that these containers are the very same ones workers use as temporary housing at building sites (and nobody complains about exterminating them, or keeping them in inhumane conditions), and the fact that the present clusterfuck in the Middle East is principally the US' fault (Americans don't like to clean up their own mess, but are quite judgemental of people who are left with it), let's look at this issue, shall we?

First issue. A large portion of these migrants are not war refugees; this has been established over and over and over. Bangladesh, Morocco, Pakistan, and Tunis (among others) are NOT war-torn countries.

Second issue (which ties in with the whole "closing the borders" thing): Hungary is on the Schengen border. (Well, Greece is too, but nobody expects them to be able to close it.) Hence it is duty bound to protect the border. Even Merkel is talking about protecting the borders, and stopping the influx of undesirable elements, even though she also screamed murder when this protection actually was taking place. Just to recap: the borders are not closed. Anyone can go through the border control points, and apply for asylum. The illegal border crossing was stopped by erecting a fence. You come in, you apply for asylum, you wait. Whereas the 1.5 million people ending up in Germany came through the fields, and did not stop until Germany to apply for asylum. Which is not according to the rules. In fact, it's highly illegal.

Third issue: terrorism and other shenanigans. The Germans lost about 130 000 people. They don't know where they are. They can't be reached after they submitted their paperwork. A lot of rejected asylum seekers -no surprise- also disappeared. A sexual predator or two, a couple of terrorists also have known to disappear until they surfaced with their dicks in some poor kid, or behind the wheels of a high-jacked truck. So, with the knowledge that there is free movement within the Schengen zone I really, really would like to ask anyone who's complaining how they envision trying to keep the undesirables under control. Ahmed the terrorist can come in, claim asylum, and then disappear if you don't keep him in one place. During the process you might find out that he was sucking some ISIS boss' dick, or cutting heads off in his free time, it's too late; he is already in Germany or wherever, planning to do what terrorists do.

So I would genuinely be curious how you guys expect to screen hundreds of thousands of people and how you think you can deport them in case their application is rejected, if they are free to bum around the whole of EU.

Torture and international law in our little world

So Mike Pompeo and the Orange baboon are openly advocating torture now. Openly.

Newspapers report on this as if it was about discussing the weather, or perhaps some mildly embarrassing issue, like a herpes infection.

Nobody screams their bloody heads off about the "Freest Country" on earth advocating torture. I find this incredible. Apparently rules do not apply to some. International laws do not apply. The previous round of war criminals are still living their lives in complete safety and without being bothered by sharp questions (and I don't even mention tribunals), and here we go, the next round comes about. In other words: the US -don't forget, they are the "torchbearers of democracy, equality, whatever" can without any consequence break the law that governs international relationships. It should be discussed, it should be talked about: if the strongest nation decides the rules does not apply to them, they are essentially jeopardising the whole international legal framework, even if the whole Western world seems to do its best to ignore this. (As they undoubtedly realize this issue.) Keeping up the illusion of strong international laws does not help actually making them strong. It only shows off the hypocrisy and utter lack of moral principles of the West, enabling others to do whatever they wish to -after all, if the US does not care, why should they? Nobody is fooled by this display. You may pretend the US, the UK and other paragons of democracy are governed by laws, the stink of torture chambers and bombed weddings is still permeating every meeting room you are discussing these high-minded ideals of international law.


So let me say it again: the USA has broken, admitted breaking, and openly considers breaking international law. The perpetrators were not and are not being investigated. And the media reports it without even raising a single fucking eyebrow, as if torture was not really a big deal.


I guess you really should not be surprised that people tend to be cynical when it comes to the "bad Ruskies" or "bad Iran" routine, and cannot be adequately bothered to be outraged. I have to say I myself start to feel sorry for Milosevic and other small-time war criminals.

All this crying about fake news and the post-truth world...

Since Brexit and the Orange Wonderboy there has been much lamentation about all the fake news on Facebook, the Evil Russian Misinformation Factories, and in general, how inaccurate and untrustworthy the information is you get from social media. We live in an era when facts don't matter anymore; when not a couple of well-dressed talking heads are giving out the information, but the rabble makes it up for themselves.

If only everyone stuck to the real journalists is the unspoken (or spoken) conclusion. You know, the real McCoy; guys (and gals) in trench coats and sharp pens, investigating leads, running around and striking fear into the heart of the Establishment.

There are two problems with this. The first is: they lie as much as the "fake news" does. (I have no idea how the Independent dared to publish this article; it discredits them and every other news agency in the Free World... It's something we knew, but seeing it in print in a large -well, relatively large- newspaper is nothing if not miraculous. And this is the second time...) This has been quite obvious in the case of Aleppo, the Iraq War, the migrant crisis, the Russian hacks (I've still not seen anything that can constitute as proof of the accusations), or anything, really. It's not hard to see them; you just have to spend five minutes to find ample proof of the media being dishonest either by withholding information or by straight-out lying to the reader/watcher. They don't report, they manufacture facts to conform their agenda. We always have lived in the post-truth world.

The other is this. So here we have a very brazen (but not unique) example where a "real" journalist simply stole something from the social networks. It seems like there's a positive feedback here: something gets posted or Reddit (or Digg or Facebook or whatever), this gets nicked by the "real" media, and gets posted on Reddit again, which, in turn, gets reported in the media. They do it so shamelessly, they even quote reddit users. It's a self-sustaining perpetual machine that produces an endless stream of shit.

These people are part of the problem; the people who are supposed to be doing the journalism became simply content-thiefs. They killed journalism by replacing investigation with "cats that look like Hitler" (yes, a Bridget Jones reference; figure that, the movie actually had something meaningful to say), and "you would not believe what happened after this man told a woman not to apply makeup on the tube". Guess what I don't give a fuck. I would have, however, appreciated an honest assessment of the situation in Aleppo. As in: why did certain politicians call the members of Al Quaida "moderate rebels". And maybe a mention of how people of Aleppo did not support them to begin with; this kind of puts their heroic struggle into a different light. But we got "she did not know why the crowd was cheering her", and "can you go through all 10 of these horrible photos".

And, ladies and gentlemen, this is why the system is rotten to the core. This is why we have Brexit, why the Right is getting stronger, and why the Orange Ape (sorry, apes, I know I'm smearing your reputation) got into the White House.

Interesting look on "collateral damage"

Weird. The media and the political machine is still raging about how the Syrians and Russians are monsters and war crimes for bombing hospitals, and operating in a heavily populated area against the moderate rebels. (Which is, admittedly, a horrible thing to do. I'm not trying to say that it's all daisies and rainbows; it is a brutal and quite frankly, hard to justify thing to do.)

However... let's see what the very same people say about doing the very same thing when they themselves are doing it. (I've already written about the interesting contrast about Mosul and Aleppo, so let's leave that part out for now.)

Bombing hospitals - Russia vs USA. (Or Saudi Arabia, but they did bomb a school, so it's not the same I guess.) Mind you, bombing hospitals (and their parking lots) is against the law even IF enemy combatants are hiding in it, yet Israel is quite happy to do so; again, no angry accusations of war crimes there. (Even though in this case it is a deliberate action. As is using white phosphorus in built-up areas against humans.) It seems like you cannot avoid making mistakes when fighting in a city; and the Russians hit a hospital by mistake. Still a war crime, I guess, right?

Well...

What happens when the US and its allies kill people?

Well, of course, it's unintentional, so it's not a crime. It's a kind of weird logic, since you normally can't claim this in front of a court, but let's just think about this. The US and its allies conduct operations in a sovereign country against the wishes of its legitimate government, and kills the soldiers of said government. (The US also supports "moderate" rebels fighting said government, let's add hastily.) But it was unintentional, so it's cool. It's also regrettable when they unintentionally drone weddings and innocent people in general, who happen to be in the wrong place (in their own country) at the wrong time. While we KNOW that any collateral damage the Syrians and Russians cause is absolutely intended and should be condemned.

Interesting.

How Trump is already betraying his voters

So the Independent (among others) is already loud with articles about how Trump is already backtracking on his campaign promises, and betraying his voters. Ha-ha. What an asshole- already betraying everyone.

Can I ask you a question? Would you like him better if he actually meant all the shit he said? Count your blessings, you idiots, that he might not be as crazy as he seemed...

Some people...

So Sebastian Kurz told Profil that only the best educated migrants should be allowed in Austria.

(Could not find the original German article, and strangely no English reports are available on this interesting take on helping war refugees. If it helps, here's a Hungarian report of the interview.)

Let's ignore the fact that had Szijjarto said something like this on behalf of Hungary, the whole Western media would be screaming about racism and the rest.

Let's just think about the implication of this statement a bit, shall we?

Option #1: we are talking about war refugees. The Austrian minister essentially says that we only should help the well educated, rich refugees, and leave the rest to their fate.
This, if you ask me, is an insanely un-European attitude; I'd hazard to say it would justify a little international uproar. After all, this is a very cold-hearted, and frankly evil stance. We can safely say it reminds us to the darkest moments of European history.

Option #2: we are talking about economic migrants. In this case it's a fair stance, however it ignores a lot of things that should have been discussed before even one economic migrant was let over the border.
These things are:
1. why are we allowing in millions of economic migrants in the first place?
2. why did the mass of people start walking towards Europe last year?
3. why are we trying to impose hypocrisy costs on countries who refuse to allow economic migrants into their countries? You have no right trying to shame and coerce countries to accept economic migrants, after all.
4. Why nobody's talking about the costs and benefits of taking millions of economic migrants?

These question, obviously, will not be asked either by the media or the politicians. They seem to be quite content on using this sliding scale of "war refugees" and "migrants" whenever it fits their narrative, trusting that the average reader is an idiot who cannot see how he or she is manipulated. And the worst thing is that it seems to be working. Nobody stops to think about these issues; they read a short article, they take up the war cry, then move on. A couple of days later they repeat the same process with another article which is diagonally opposing to their previous opinion. It works with everything; even when these two opposing things happen at the same time: take the war crime that is the siege of Aleppo, and the heroic liberation that is the siege of Mosul.

Austrian election fraud

It seems like nobody's bothered that there was an election fraud happening in Austria in 2016. Not 1939; we're talking 21st century here. In the middle of Europe. People celebrated it as "far right thwarted", but really? In a delicious twist of fate the Washington Post declared that the results were clean - on the same day the Constitutional Court decided to annul the results...

If the electorate votes for someone you don't like or approve, then democracy is not as sacred as you would have thought. Isn't it a dangerous path to take? Don't take me wrong, I'm not defending the far right; it's the principle that matters - democracy. You can't just cheat if you don't like the result; you'll cause more damage on the long run if you go down this slippery slope.

Yes, there are new elections to be held, and no more "sloppiness", but for Christ's sake... 77 000 votes manipulated is not sloppiness. Sloppiness is not washing your hand after peeing, or not locking your door; manipulating 77 000 votes is fraud. You can't do that by accident. If it does not work for cheating wives (oh, I slipped and fell on his dick), it sure as hell should not work for elections.

What would happen if the far right was found manipulating the results? Why isn't Austria ostracised as a country where democracy is in danger? Why isn't there an international outcry?

I guess we know why, but it's still galling; the conspiratorial silence is deafening.

Cologne and the press

There were a series of mass attacks on women during New Year's Eve; attacks which were coordinated, committed by people who "look African and Middle Eastern", and attacks which did not really get a lot of attention from the media for a long time. Even the police reported initially that all was well... The very first thing that came to my mind was the fact that the far right was actually using this as a warning cry to whip up the fear: they are coming to rape your daughters... we came to an age when closet Nazis are more dependable source of information than the mainstream media. The second thing actually reinforced this notion: it took an awful lot of time and misinformation for the facts to come out: it was not committed by Germans, or by people who have been living in Germany for decades. These attacks were prominently committed by newcomers, who were arriving as refugees.

The media outlets took up this story very slowly. The Guardian specifically was silent for five full days; even though they were really fast to comment on the Shirtgate, or on Mattelgate (the missing female figurine), and were really eager to jump to conclusions on refugee matters as well previously. But now they were taking their time. Suddenly everyone is surprised, as if this was not predicted before. Well, guess what. It has. Cairo and Sweden had experienced similar attacks (which was promptly covered up by the police); it was not really difficult to imagine something like this can happen in areas where refugees/economic migrants were present en masse. Suddenly people are surprised about the skewed sex ratio- oh, my, there's a lot of men in the crowd! Too bad, though they called everyone a Nazi who said the very same thing before; and interestingly this fact did not register for the photographers, either, who spent a year trying to pick up the odd little girl from the crowds of young men for emotional photos about the plight of the refugees.

The Guardian's rich and very excitable feminist writers are also silent; as if actual attacks of women's basic rights were not worth the effort. Even the victim-blaming from the Major of Cologne was left unmentioned... This cartoon sums up everything nicely.

But the Guardian was not silent on other matters. It was running a really long feature on the Two Tailed Dog party, in which they equated Orban with the Far Right (which he is not), and that idiot who charged a police station in France and got shot was featured prominently on the front page, too. It took five days for articles on Cologne to appear. One even called for asking for tough questions, but then avoided to do so.
One genius piece managed to have the following two quotes in the same article:

Abroad, Merkel will work for burden sharing, tougher measures to patrol Europe’s borders and seek solutions to stop the refugees at source

Already the venomous Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán is calling for tougher border controls,

Really?

It seems like the media by propagating the idea of uncontrolled migration boxed itself into a corner it cannot come out of without looking foolish or criminally negligent. And what they are doing now is just as bad.

The main problem is: this sort of behaviour completely surrenders the issue to the far right. It only gets stronger when the media does not report, lies, when the media and the police covers these things up, when you label everyone with concerns racist... you are responsible for turning away from the victims (the women who were assaulted), and you are responsible for the strengthening of the far right, and the gangs who mete out their own justice, and beat up Middle Eastern people on the street.

Double standards, the Media, Migrants, Refugees and Hungary

This is what really infuriates me: when people/journalists/politicians (I don't think the latter two are actually full members of the Homo sapiens species) blatantly lie (you can lie by not talking about something, too) just to uphold a pre-conceived ideological stance regardless of facts. This leads to the incredible double standards the international media and politics treat Hungary in general, but the way they have been treating it since the whole issue with the refugees finally made it into international news. (Because it has been going on for a while before; first in the countries surrounding Iraq and Syria, and also with the people trying to cross the Mediterranean, and then it slowly edged up the Balkans to Hungary.

So if you have read the news over the last half year or so, Hungary has been an unworthy member of the Union because she wanted to suspend certain parts of Dublin III due to the high volume of the immigrant influx, and let people through without registration, then it was a Nazi regime full of racists for NOT letting people through without registering first. And then they became villains again when they let the trains through due to Germany unilaterally suspending the Schengen agreement, which has allowed them to let the refugees through without registration. Then they decided to build a fence on the border to protect the Schengen borders as it was their duty as a Schengen country (which DOES NOT mean they closed the borders, regardless of what the media or certain organizations say; it means they cannot enter whenever they wish to, but have to use the proper border crossings), despite of the fact that several other EU members already had fences in place. It's rich, when a French politician is condemning Hungary for building fences, when they themselves had been fencing off the Channel tunnel and Calais previously. Or when the same douche is condemning police violence when they used riot police to clear out camps.

When Orban put up the idiotic anti-immigration posters, the whole world was up in arms; when the Danish publish similar adverts in the Middle East, it's fine.

When Croatia boasted they'd be more humane than those bestial Hungarians, and then not two days later closed their own borders, sent armed people over the Croatian-Hungarian border to dump refugees there, and channelled refugees through Slovenia, nobody bat an eye, though. (In fact, the Guardian was still praising them for being humane while they were already doing much worse than anyone in the EU has so far; their behaviour might not have matched the image the Guardian was building, but the facts did not deter them.) When the refugees who refuse to get registered (and being urged not to do so by certain organizations) on their own decide to occupy a railway station, it's Hungary at fault. When they decide to go on foot to the border, because -guess what- without valid papers you cannot just cross borders, it's Hungary at fault. I guess if they were taken off the streets by force, and made to stay in camps, it would have been Hungary's fault, too. (By the way, nobody mentioned how disruptive a lot of these people were around Debrecen and other places where refugee camps were built. Mentioning it would have been politically incorrect. The resulting animosity -which has not turned into violence, unlike in Germany-, was, however a sure sign that all Hungarians are Nazis. Nobody mentions that they refuse to obey the laws of the European Union; the same laws Hungary was trying to enforce, for which she was condemned -even though she would have been condemned if she had NOT tried to enforce them, too. )

When several people broke through a razor wire fence, and the riot police had to intervene, the images were of weeping, scared children with water cannons in the background in the international news, and came the usual condemnations. Never mind that if you watched the very same footage in its entirety, you'd have seen that the police reacted to a crowd storming the border, AND the child in question was dragged in front of a water jet against her will. Same thing with the policemen-throwing-food-at-the-masses video: the first few seconds, where the crowd loses patience and rushes forward the tables where the food is being distributed, are lost somehow. And now, the Austrians building a fence (which is not a fence, apparently), and employ the riot police to force back a violent crowd, and no international finger-wagging, and nobody is calling then Nazis. Neither were any objections when the French, Macedonian and Bulgarian riot police treated the refugees with appalling brutality. If the Slovenians use tear gas, that's fine, too... it only merits a small article, not the whole treatment. That does not count, apparently.

When a Hungarian camera-woman trips and kicks people in a crowd that's rushing her (who knows, she might have been just panicking; let's give her at least the benefit of the doubt), suddenly the whole country is composed of Nazis and racists. (Depending on who you ask.) But the fact that in Germany Neo-Nazis are actually demonstrating, setting fire to buildings housing refugees on a daily basis, and commit other acts of violence is somehow not advertised, or condemned the whole German nation as a bunch of Nazis. (Obviously they are reported, but  You only see the welcoming German crowds, as opposed to those barbaric, Nazi Hungarians. Never you mind that there were thousands of volunteers helping, and only very sporadic acts of violence (I can recall two, which includes the camerawoman).

And the Hungarian political left (and the so-called intellectual elite) happily assisted to drag the country's name in the mud for their own petty political purposes, forgetting that the only thing they can actually achieve is to strengthen Orban's position, which is NOT something I (and many other Hungarians) wish to see. They live in this strange, alternative universe, where Hungary is a Fascist dictatorship, and only they represent the worthy elements of the non-racist Hungarian population... It's bizarre.
Whatever the motivation of the writers and commenters are, the sad fact is: so far, in this whole mess, only this asshole (Orban) behaved with consistency, in line with the legal obligations, AND with any form of foresight. If it was up to Gyurcsany or any of the other douches, the country would be full of people it is not equipped to feed and house. Unlike Germany, Hungary is low on resources, and does NOT have a workforce shortage. In fact, there's a horrible unemployment right now, despite of all the hundreds of thousands who left the country to find work somewhere else in the EU.

 It seems to me the whole European Union has been running around like a headless chicken in the last six months. Certain politicians called Hungarians Nazis and racists because they tried to avoid drawing attention to the fact that they're half-way into prison already, and their population is very receptive to anti-Hungarian sentiments; others played the Nazi card because it made them feel warm and fuzzy about themselves (after all, they might have screwed over the Greek, but they are accepting a million refugees! Never you mind the issues of integration of such a large number of people, of how this does not actually solve any of the issues, and so on). The racist/Nazi card was played to the death by others as well: the Swedes, who are just hypocrites, and others because they were simple cunts, and thought they'd be safe on the Western side of the Hungarian border. (Which they were not, as soon as Merkel ignored the laws, as the recent events with Slovenia has demonstrated. So they started to build a fence, while claiming that Europe is no place for fences in the same time...)
Interestingly sometimes, someone actually gets it. But it's a rare occasion. Most of the time the voices of sanity are drowned by the self-righteous, self-serving condemnation of the "other".

I think what the original intention from the richer part of the Union was to let the poorer EU border countries become gigantic refugee holding camps (after all Dublin III serves this very purpose in this case), and when the Greek first, then Orban showed them a middle finger, they panicked, and did not know what to do. Now they have a gigantic mess in their hands, something they themselves created by

1. supporting the idiotic US/British/French interventions in the Middle East/Africa
2. relaying inconsistent messages about their refugee policies. Oh, poor Palestinian girl, we like you, but we can't have everyone come here. Oh, if only those Hungarians would let you, we'd have you all! Oh, even MORE is coming?? Who the fuck would have thought? Why are more people coming? Why aren't the border states doing something? Shit, put up the border control!!

So all in all. If you work for the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, Der Spiegel, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or really, any other news organization, OR you are a politician, I have one thing to tell you: go and screw yourselves you hypocritical douchenozzles. Go and look up the definition of "journalism", and of "integrity", and then really, really think about what you have done. And if you have ever believed even one word of these amoral idiots, then wake up. You have been lied to. They take you for a fool, manipulated you, as they have been doing for generations now. This case angers me for one obvious reason: they dragged my country's name into the mud. But the other reason I'm mad is a less selfish one: this case is a prime example how politics and the media fabricates the world around you. They don't report on events; they MAKE UP the world around us. They can make millions of people demonstrating disappear (just think of the 2003 anti-war protests, and their media coverage), and can fabricate outrage at will about anything. Facts matter not; they will make sure facts will not stand in the way of their agenda. They give you shit, and they tell you it's caviare; and you have been eating it up without a question in every single case you can think of. This is a prime example how those in power will play those without power against each other. Congratulations.