Elections and foreign influences

We are all up in arms about how those dastardly Russians dared to -allegedly- influence the US elections directly and indirectly. 

After all... Freedom! Democracy! Whatever! True, western, democratic countries do not do such a thing as we all know. Not at all.

So how dare the Russians?

Anyhow. This is not what we're here to discuss... This is. And this, and this, and this. A shameless exploitation of terrorism to achieve political goals. Whose goals, though, I would ask.

So, where's the outrage now? Who exactly owns The Sun and the other filth? Could it be a foreign billionaire? Is it possible that his paper is breaking UK electoral laws, and exerting an enormous influence on British politics, and yet nobody is upset about it? That he's been doing this for decades now, contributing to the clusterfuck that is Brexit, and all the shitty things that are happening in these beautiful, rainy isles?
Oh, my.

It's quite predictable what will happen: a bunch of the uninformed masses will read this before they turn to the boobs on page 3, and will not even think of voting anyone else, but May, paragon of competence and morality. The Sun might be fined a hefty fine, but the damage will be done, and the goal will be reached; the fine will be looked at as a campaign contribution.

Perhaps we really should take a look at what interests are influencing our country's politics and policies; it would probably help making sense of why things happen the way they do- why the NHS is being privatised behind the scenes, why the UK intervenes where it should not really be doing interventions, and why the political elite clings to austerity like a bunch of priests to religious dogma, even though it has proven to be counterproductive, and even the IMF does not recommend it any more. (Which in itself is a miracle.)

So yeah.

Perhaps it's not just Putin who is the problem here.

2017 French elections

The news has been full lately about how Le Pen wants to "exploit" the latest terror attack in Paris; also a lot of lamenting is about of how the Far Right is surging ahead. (Although it seems like these news outlets like to blame Le Pen herself, as if she was doing everything on her own, and the French had nothing to do with the whole thing, unlike those pesky Eastern Europeans, who are en bloc racist, and that's why they keep reelecting Nazis. Interesting contrast.)

This amount of blindness is simply astonishing.

If the Far Right wins in France, they win because they were handed the election on a golden plate. They were the only ones who expressed any unease about the increase of Islamic fundamentalism (and terrorism) in France; they were the only ones who dared to say anything about uncontrolled immigration. If the electorate shares some of these worries, some of these opinions, and nobody else picks them up, what do you think will happen? Sure, you can come up with statistics about how many more people die of other acts of violence than terrorism, but you'd miss the major point: most of those acts of violence happen between people who know each other. They don't involve thinking about speeding trucks when you take a stroll in a Christmas market, or gunmen when you're attending to a rock concert. You can say that if a drug dealer is murdered that it has nothing to do with you, and in some respect you'd be right. If you don't mix with the bad sort of people, in general, you have a good chance of avoid being beaten, knifed or shot. You can't say the same thing about terrorism; it's random, and it can kill you. The last couple of years have shown how inept security services are identifying individuals who may be planning acts of terrorism. Politicians have been shown to be delusional of what their electorate thinks about the influx of large number of largely uneducated Muslim migrants, and quick to condemn anyone who does. There has been an incredible amount of accusations of racism, xenophobia and Fascism for everyone who dared to voice any worries, devaluing the meaning of these words. In Western Europe only the Far Right was willing to address these issues, and now it does not shock anyone if you call them racist or Fascist; these words just don't mean anything; not really, not any more. Judging by the comment sections your average reader of even the Independent and Guardian will just think that people called racist merely did something that displeased the establishment.


If you ignore what people think don't be surprised if they vote for someone who they think does not ignore them; I think this is the take-home message.


In some respect it is beautifully democratic.


Let's just hope this time France does not elect a Far Right party, and let's hope the "mainstream" political elite gets their shit together before the next general election. We have had enough Trumps and Brexits already.

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.

Terrorism and the Balkan route -perceptions last year and today

So it seems like Abdeslam did use the Balkan route for smuggling terrorists into Europe. So did others.

Let this sink in for a while. Even though it seems like people have a memory of a goldfish (not to mention politicians and journalists, who are entirely possible that not members of the same species as the rest of us), let's just recall a couple of things from last year. Like that infamous cartoon with the rats. (Let's forget that the whole outrage was manufactured since the cartoon did not suggest what the outraged journalists said it did.) Or that the EU's counter terrorism chief said there was unlikely to be a connection between migrants and terrorists. Or ask the UN High Commissioner for refugees. Or the fact that the entire Left in Hungary (and the international press) used this as a political tool against the Hungarian government instead of actually recognising the threat unchecked migration (or worse, if they did, they used it as a weapon against Orban nevertheless. Priorities, I guess.)

Curiously all these people are silent now. The news that terrorists indeed used the Balkan route is quietly dropped and forgotten. No mea culpas, no retrospective analyses how they could been so wrong, how the others who were right were painted as the villains... No; this whole business is best left forgotten, and move on to the next shouting campaign without any lessons learned.

Guess what. This is what gave you Brexit and Trump. This is why the Far Right is getting stronger everywhere. You can't just call everyone you disagree with a racist neckbeard, and you especially can't do that (and keep doing it) when they are right and you are wrong. You might have the bullhorn to shout, but the credibility deficit is growing. You probably should have noticed after the Brexit vote or Trump's victory that things are not so swell outside your bubble, but you apparently have not.

I guess we're all going to suffer for it.

What difference a year makes...

So the Daily Mail (a delightful paper aimed at well-informed, affluent readers  disgusting tabloid) has published a cartoon last year.

Just to be clear: the cartoon does NOT say the refugees are rats. It says that rats -terrorists- enter with refugees undetected. Yes, the Daily Mail is not a very respectable newspaper. No, even they can have a valid point now and then.

That did not stop the outrage machine starting up. From the Huffington Post to the Guardian people were up in arms comparing this to the Nazi cartoons depicting Jewish people as rats. The comparison is very much flawed (as I said: the refugees are not depicted as rats; the ISIS terrorists are, which, frankly, is not very nice to the rodents.) Some people were claiming it was racist because "Syrians don't dress like that", but that really is scraping the bottom of the barrel... it's a cartoon about migrants from the Middle East. It has to make a point in one frame.

Orban got a lot of flak for linking terrorism to uncontrolled migration; he has been called a xenophobe and worse by the Hungarian opposition, and by the foreign press.

Fast forward 2016. In July Merkel said the following: 

  
terrorists entered into Europe last year with the migrants.  

She did not draw a picture, true.
So... saying it in 2015 made you a Nazi (when you could have done something about it), saying it today (when it's too late) is fine. I have not read anything about Merkel being a Nazi. Why do you have to jump off a cliff first, and then say it was a bad idea, to be politically correct? Why are people who say it is a bad idea to jump off to begin with are labelled Nazis? I'd think they'd be called smart to foresee problems -with uncontrolled migration in this case. The people who warned about the dangers were proven right in every single issue so far- even with the rapes... which frankly I thought was just demagogic populism appealing for the xenophobes. It turns out I was wrong. Apparently a lot of the newcomers have issues with not assaulting women sexually.

But no, the Huffington -and Der Spiegel, the NYT, and all the rest (Mama Merkel included)- were huffing and puffing about Nazis and xenophobes when people asked these questions, or warned about this. Now, a year later it's all forgotten, and the very same people who huffed and puffed are talking about the same things for which they labelled others Nazis. Orban and others -who, let's make it clear, who are corrupt cleptocrats and populist asswipes- in this case actually had a point: before you let in millions upon millions from a different culture, let's take a look at how similar groups fared in Europe (Paris, Belgium, even the UK). For this they -and the entirety of their countries- were labelled xenophobes. (Instead of asking them about untold millions of EUROs disappearing... it seems like corruption is encouraged.) For once, Orban actually had Europe's best interest in mind, and papers derisively quoted "experts" saying that he was trying to present himself as visionary. Guess what. He WAS one. And not because he is so smart. These things were clear for anyone with an iota of brains. He was a visionary, because all the others were blinded by dogma.

Today all that's forgotten. Today those enlightened Western countries are talking about strengthening border controls, talking about terrorists sneaking in, and all the rest; as if they had no memories from last year. (One thing you do have to give them: they still insist on letting millions more in as a solution to a problem that can only be solved where it comes from.)

Incredible.

Molenbeek and the problem of terrorism in Europe

It seems like Western Europe has become an exporter of Islamic terrorism. France, Belgium, the United Kingdom have all had their share of radicalization, and their citizens joining ISIS... and committing acts of terror in their native lands where they grew up. There are no-go areas in these countries where it's surprisingly easy to get weapons, where the police and ambulances don't really dare to go, where the population is isolated by their choice and by their will from the rest of the society. These areas (Molenbeek is one example), with the very effective help of Saudi Arabia which does its darnest to export their brand of fundamentalist Islam, have essentially became breeding grounds for home-grown terrorism.

But it seems like nobody really cares. There are the usual talk about the victims, about how bad these terrorists are, but nobody really looks into their communities where they found shelter. Like it or not, the Muslim communities in these regions did nothing to expose these "few bad apples", which makes them accessories to these acts; they even attacked the police when they arrested Salah Abdeslam. Like it or not, these countries, by letting these no-go areas form and grow without intervention, allowed these communities to develop. You can use all the feel-good messages that #notallmuslims and that "they are not real Muslims", you probably should look into how the mastermind of the Paris attacks managed to evade detection in Belgium for four months before being captured. He was not living in some cave, or some isolated safe house. He was living in the heart of Belgium in a metropolis. Apparently in the very center of Europe, the fact that sizeable communities reject the values of the majority, and even commit violent acts against them, is something you are not supposed to mention in a polite company. In this light Orban's speech sounds like a wake-up call that nobody's going to heed. Perhaps because the Eastern part of the EU lacks the white guilt of the former colonial powers, they don't bind themselves into knots they cannot escape from. Who knows.

But one thing is for sure. I think in order to tackle this threat you really, really should address this issue. Before, you know, the far right grows strong enough to try to tackle it themselves both on the political arena and on the streets; because at this point it's going to be even less pretty.