The issues with DEI - the Secret Service edition

DEI prioritizes diversity over competency- this is a well known problem with it. Or rather, this is a feature, since this is precisely what it is meant to do. Let's not talk about how unfair it is towards people who are not in the "protected characteristics" groups, and get left out despite being more competent than the people who get in. Let's forget about the competency crisis DEI causes. Let's talk about briefly what happens when a person, who is not an evil white cis heterosexual male (I hope I covered all here), fucks up. Because people do fuck up, even the competent ones. Well, the first reaction when Trump got shot was a gleeful laugh at the female Secret Service operatives and boss, because people assumed they fucked up because they were DEI hires. Yes, white cis heterosexual males would not have been lampooned like this, but since DEI is in place, it made those agents a free game. Who knows? Maybe they really were incompetent. Maybe they were not. But they sure as hell got a rough treatment because of DEI. (And not because they were women.) DEI puts the people it is supposed to help in a much worse situation than the white cis heterosexual male. Their sole presence will come with the assumption of being helped there instead of having worked to get there, and every time there is a fuckup, they will be under even more scrutiny. I am not sure who the winner is here.

Finding your backbone

So apparently White House reporters now started to ask difficult questions from the President. Like why he was lying during Trump's presidency. (Sorry for the belayed post, life and all takes precedence.)

 Which is all nice and everything, however, where were these very same reporters in 2002 when a different president (who was then looking like an absolute dolt, but compared to this one he was an intellectual giant) was lying about the reasons of a war of aggression - you know, something international law recognizes as a war crime. Only a comedian had enough balls to say uncomfortable things in front of the president.

There has been a really pathological interplay between politicians and the journalists who were supposed to keep them on their toes: in exchange for access, they agreed not to ask them difficult questions. This abandonment of their duty, this perversion of everything what journalism stands for had a major role in the rise of Trump.

So I guess congratulations, Huffpost reporter, you are awesome, but don't suck your own dick just yet. Your whole profession has failed in their one role that mattered (and no, it was not "make money for investors"). You are about fourty years too late.

 

So Trump said something remarkable: ‘states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote’


Interesting. When the shoe was on the other foot, things went a bit differently, even though in that case the above sentiment would have been a little bit more than justified. 


Some tact and empathy would have been useful, but then again: what can you expect of the Orange Baboon? In a way he is a great representation what the US foreign policy is about.

Anti-Hungarian bias in the media

Yes, I write a lot about it. Because it annoys me. Because it is present, and it is frankly strange, that the Western media would pick on a shitty little country that matters to no-one. Since I happen to be from that shitty little country, it annoys me. It also worries me, since the reason Hungary got the short end of the stick after WWI (and was punished way more than anyone else on the losing side) was one part due to the incredibly anti-Hungarian press in the UK and elsewhere. While British and Russian football hooligans were fighting on the streets, the British newspapers were worried about Neo-Nazi Hungarians who did not actually do anything- showing the photo of a Hungarian fan who happens to live and teach in Spain.

This is especially prominent during the times when the center-right is in power; during these times the cries of fascism, the return of the ovens and whatnot are always the loudest. One reason is simple: the Hungarian Left loves to complain about the destruction of democracy, the free press, and the inherent racism of Hungarians which can clearly be seen by them electing the wrong people. (They are fine of labelling their own people genetically inferior, too.) Also: antisemitism is on the rise, obviously. Even though facts and statistics don't really show it -especially comparing Hungary to France, the UK or the US, Hungary is clearly on the verge of firing up the ovens. Interestingly, when they don't get the stuff they want, they just bury an interview. 

The last couple of years of migrant crisis was also a great demonstration of this. They were complaining about closed borders (even though anyone is still free to pass through the actual border crossings, and ask for asylum), the brutality of Hungarian police (with carefully edited footage and no proof whatsoever), the chaos at the Keleti Railway station (as if the government could be held responsible for people striking up camp in the middle of Budapest...), and for not letting the migrants on the train (even though the Schengen Agreement kind of forbade letting this happen), where Jews are in danger (yet interestingly French Jews are fleeing to Israel), and so on and so forth. When the government's propaganda (which was quite inappropriate) mentioned no-go zones in the UK, the BBC and others jumped on it; even though the BBC four was airing "No go Britain" at one time, and there are issues with the whole thing. Sorry, guys, if you make documentaries like these, people will believe them, regardless of what the actual situation is... so you really should not complain. If you made a misleading documentary, then the onus is on you for the mistake. And if all else fails, just do the old guilty by association smear quoting some BNP nutjob. Suddenly his delusions mean that Hungary, is in fact, Nazi. Don't get me wrong: it's not about how innocent and pure the government is. It's about how biased the western media is, regardless of what the government does. 

The whole of EU used Hungary for their virtue signalling exercise, meanwhile quite content in the knowledge that someone else -that someone they are condemning with the strongest words- are doing their own dirty work. Once the migrant flood rerouted (even though, if they really wanted to keep to the law, they still could have applied for asylum), they themselves started building fences- which, apparently, are not that big of an issue. Only the Hungarian fence hurts these paragons of morality. The ones built before or after are fine. A fence between two EU nations (Slovenia and Austria), does not offend anyone, either. (Oh, but it's not a fence at all... it's a "gate with wings".)

Hypocrisy much?

Three more examples demonstrating the blatant anti-Hungarian bias in the Western Press.

Example number 1.

The recent shift to the Right in The Netherlands filled a lot of people with worries until the election. So what was the reaction? Did we read angry editorials that would shame OId Testament Prophets about the inherent Nazism of the Dutch?

Did we?

Well, not exactly.

We read a couple of lamenting articles on how we need to respect the differences in the EU project, and how not respecting them could lead to a powerful push-back.

So when populism makes way in Western Europe -you know, the civilized folks- then we need to consider the reasons, and gently ponder on the solution. When populism -and not even as extreme as the Dutch- is making way in Central -sorry, Eastern- Europe, then it's those unwashed barbarians are tainting our sacred European project!!

Example number 2.

Gabor Vona, the leader of the actual far right, the Jobbik  Party (think of Hungarian Ukip or Tea Party) went to London. Now, you don't have to make facts up to write bad things about this guy. You don't need to lie -there's enough bad things for everyone to choose from. Yet, the BBC did just that. For some reason which I cannot fathom, an ortodox Jewish organization actually demonstrated for him. The BBC simply edited the photos so that the signs were not visible, and then claimed that they were demonstrating against him.

It took a while -and some serious complaints from the group involved- to correct the mistake, but the first iteration of the correction was to simply remove them from the article altogether. Only in the next version did they get back in, with the correct caption this time.

Example number 3.

And then there's when the stars align and you can smear Trump and Hungary at the same time.

We're talking about Sebastian Gorka here. Who is, apparently, a Nazi. Let's just ignore everything about the case that might prove us wrong; we finally can call Trump a Nazi, since he is employing one.

Interestingly, the Jerusalem Post -of all newspapers- came up with a long analysis of the case, doing actual journalism. Journalism, which only required about 30 minutes of google searches, but apparently was not a feasible option for The Independent.

Talking about the JP... you know when foreign and domestic press is writing about Horthy as a rabid Nazi intent on exterminating all Jews? Well... 

It is indeed astonishing that aside from modern historians (whose work nobody reads) only the JP came up with a factual description of Horthy. Again; it's not to say he was a blameless saint with a halo; it's about not lying about the past.

This should really tell you something.


Addendum: after an extensive email correspondence with the Independent (because I honestly thought they'd need some information so I shared the JP article with them), this was published. The article is far from coherent, but hey! We can cry Nazi!

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.

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...

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.