The blatant hypocrisy about refugees in the West

So Manuel Valls is now saying the refugee crisis is destabilizing Europe, and that the borders need to be protected, and that we can't just take anyone who wanders across the borders.
Other Western politicians talked about the cultural effect the large influx of refugees causes, the financial burden, the need to protect the borders.

And yet, when Orban was saying (and doing) the very same thing not 6 months ago, he was a far-right politician, a racist, and a Nazi -not to mention the whole nation of Hungary along with him.

The hypocrisy is maddening. And one of the worst thing is that from a staunch anti-Fidesz voter I have became quite sympathetic to the asshole; after all, he still looks like a better alternative than his critics. If you judge someone by his enemies, Orban is actually a pretty good guy. And for this: fuck you Valls, fuck you Faymann, fuck you The Guardian, and Der Spiegel.
You had no right to make a pro-Orban thinker out of me.

Solution for America's gun problems? MORE guns!

Last year there were more mass shootings than days in the US... which kind of sucks. It's a really horrible situation, to be honest, and interestingly, a lot of the suggested solutions are absolutely, utterly idiotic. (The more sane ones are dismissed as stupid, on the other hand; it's a kind of bizarro world there.)

Let's take one argument for having more people with concealed weapons. The argument goes that if someone starts shooting, the concerned citizenry can draw their own guns, and take care of the perpetrator for good, before the SWAT and the National Guard arrives. Kind of a "Citizen Rambo" scenario.

Now, let's just think about this. A couple of years ago there was a shooting in New York: an armed person was gunned down by the police. There were several collateral victims of the shooting, and all of them were hit by bullets fired by the police. So in broad daylight, even trained professionals do shoot innocent bystanders by accident.

Now imagine the following scenario: you are watching the next Die Hard movie (title: Die Hard with a Hard-on), and you hear shots fired in the dark... obviously you pull your piece, and start shooting back - I guess aiming for the muzzle flash. So do other people, who, until that point were munching on popcorn, and slurping beverages. (In other words: they were not in the mindset for a gun battle, even if they are Navy Seals in their day job.) Who will they shoot at? You or the original shooter?

Can you imagine the carnage? Just seriously: how do you make sure the Citizen Rambos don't shoot each other? How do you make sure someone does not start shooting because he/she mistakes a sound (like a gunshot in the movie, or a backfiring engine) for an actual gunshot, and then triggers a massive free-for-all deathmatch between the moviegoers, or shoppers?

On the other hand, it'd be amusing to watch the security footage afterwards.

I guess.

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.

The atrocity in France and the refugees

One of the most annoying thing the media does it to frame the conversations in a light they wish it to, even when it comes to straw men, or simply by ignoring facts/realities.

Case to the point? The recent massacre in Paris. Worries about the waves of incoming immigrants (refugees) suddenly flared up. There were several reasons, most of them valid, most of them should be discussed. However, any and all of these were shut down by commentators and “opinion formers” by deciding that any such worries equate calling all refugees with terrorists. So came the opinion pieces from the NYT, Guardian, etc, claiming people blame the refugees, and that most of the perpetrators were French, anyway.

Well, let’s just think about this for a second, shall we?

There are several issues at work here. First, and foremost, yes, there are morons who think it's all the refugee's fault. They are not very numerous (I hope), and they are definitely not right. So, to the reasonable argument. The first is the infiltration of these so-called “fighters” using the masses of refugees as cover. This is a possibility, it might be actually happening; or it might not. But it is a valid concern. Disregarding it is not only stupid, but criminal. You leave yourself open to a vulnerability because of your ideology. However I revile the Daily Mail, their cartoon depicted this very danger; it did NOT equate all refugees to rats, unlike the Nazi cartoon it was put next to.

That’s one issue. Another issue is more long-term, and, I think, it holds more water. It’s about integration. It’s about the question of how to integrate a huge number of people into economies which were hit by the double whammy of economic crisis and forced austerity. People who might or might not be willing to integrate. As we have seen in France for several years, their Algerian population is having serious problems with fitting in. They live in ghettos, their job prospects are much poorer than the general population’s. The young have no future, they are not accepted by the French as one of them, and they are not Algerian anymore, either. So they get radicalized.

Similar dynamics can be seen in England: populations distinct from the host’s culture tend to live in enclaves, clinging to their own ways, even if it’s conflicting with their new country’s, and holding extremist beliefs that are violating their new country’s basic values. (Just a side-note, so that we’re clear. I’m talking about trends and statistics; I’m not generalizing to every Pakistani, every Indian, every Arab, or every Muslim.)

You can see the start of this process with the newcomers as well: unwilling to learn the language of their new country, trying to ban local celebrations, living in enclaves, and being hostile to others who “intrude” to their small communities. Bulgaria has reported that not many refugees wish to stay there due to the small amount of monthly stipend they’d get there; most of the refugees also did not wish to stay in Denmark because they expected more money in Sweden. It seems to me some came with a sense of entitlement; what will they think and do when they realize even Sweden and Germany are not the lands of milk and honey? What will their children think growing up in this bitter disappointment, and harsh realities of present day Europe? These communities will be breeding extremism; and this is happening in the richest countries of the continent. What do you think would happen to a couple of hundred thousand refugees living in Central and Eastern Europe? This is a very much valid concern for those countries –and for the richer ones where this is happening now. Ten-twenty years from now there will be masses of disenfranchised young bearing a grudge against their country, against the “other people” living there. They will be perfect recruiting material for extremists. They would be what the Parisian youths were and are: burning cars, and joining Jihads. Not talking about this honestly in the name of liberal values is also criminally stupid.

So no. Expressing worries about masses of new migrants while we see the examples of previous failed attempts of integration is not racism. It’s just common sense politicians should well be heading, because their refusal to even listen and talk about these issues will only boost the support of the far right, and make things worse for all involved.

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.

Lions and donkeys

This famous line is supposed to be about the British soldiers of WWI- the poor, brave souls, who suffered through hell over and over again, and died needlessly by the hundreds of thousands because of the –perceived- incompetence of their superior officers.

This post is not about these officers, and what they could have/should have done to avoid this suffering. This post is about our world leaders: politicians, bankers, and pundits.

Christopher Hitchens supposed to have said that during his first meeting with world leaders during a dinner, he realized that we are led by people who are markedly NOT smarter than we are. In fact, he realized to his growing horror that these people were more stupid than he was.

This is a sobering thought, but, if we take a look at world events, it is very much possible that it’s true. We, the little man, Joe the plumber, the plebs, sleep well, knowing that our elected (or not elected) leaders are smart, they know what they are doing, and they are with a plan. A plan that might go wrong, but they have one nevertheless. We never actually stop and think about what they are doing. If we did that, these people would not be in power for long. The sad fact is: we are (lions or not) being led by donkeys.

We can be more forgiving towards rulers who inherited their position, or were put in place by a foreign sponsored coup. They did not get to their position of power through their merit; they were chosen by either sheer luck (they were the ones who exited through the vagina of their mothers) or by the whims of their sponsor. Wilhelm the Second was born to be a Kaiser; and nobody thought of making him pass an intelligence test before he took his throne. The Sah of Iran was put into power by a British-US lead coup; nobody stopped to think about his abilities as ruler. So when these people fuck up, we can dismiss them as the unavoidable results of a non-democratic political system. (Although we’d have harder times explaining the very much effective Chinese technocrats, who were not voted on, but who WERE selected according to their capabilities.)

But the sad fact is that our elected leaders are not much better than an inbred aristocrat. To see this, it’s enough to take a look at the politics of the post First World War world, and especially the US of A. Democracy does not mean meritocracy. Just the opposite, it seems.

The US has been consistently acting on knee-jerk reactions to perceived threats, and based most of its politics on ideological grounds, rather than realpolitics; just look at how successful they were at transforming an anti-colonial struggle in Vietnam into an anti-Communist war; or how they achieved the presence of Al Quaida in Iraq following their invasion.

And not to be accused of America-bashing: the very same thing can be said about European politics. It seems like our dear leaders either act on very short-term, short sighted policies (like the constant support for oppressive regimes and “freedom fighters” abroad), or on ideological grounds regardless of facts (the fixation on austerity above all else in British politics), or simply out of general ignorance, cluelessness and stupidity (the Ukrainian conflict or the recent issues with dealing with the migration problem).

The Ukrainian conflict is an especially good case to this point. A quick recap: Russia pulled back from East Germany and the rest of the satellite states on the condition NATO (which, we kind of need to keep in mind, is an anti-Russian alliance) does not try to move East. Fair enough; the US did not tolerate any deviation from its ways in its own spheres of influence. (Just look at how they reacted to Cuba, and the misery they wrought to Central and South America with coups, banana republics, death squads and puppet dictators.) Any sane, and reasonably informed person (yours truly included) would understand this. And in fact, did.

Yet, the EU and the US (along with the NATO) has violated this agreement over and over again. They pushed further East, which obviously distressed the Russians. Don’t forget: they are a paranoid people, when it comes to the West, and with good reason. They have about 40 million reasons to be paranoid: the death toll of the two World Wars together. The Communist takeover, which resulted from the First War also did not help to make them more trustful of our conflicts. The NATO has been edging closer and closer; there have been efforts to put a missile defence shield into place in Central Europe; and lo and behold, Germany will be hosting US nuclear weapons again. Why would the Russians NOT be worried? Wouldn't you be? So when the democratically elected (albeit corrupt) government in the Ukraine was toppled by a coup, and a coup in which the US had its hand in, the shit obviously hit the fan.

The international press depicted the situation in a very pro-NATO, pro Ukraine (even going as far as ignoring the influence of the far-right light in the new Ukrainian government) - but it’s just as false as their reporting about the Georgian conflict in 2008. Both journalists (if you can call them that) and politicians ignored the crucial fact: the Russians reacted to a situation the NATO/EU has helped to create in both cases. In Georgia the NATO emboldened Georgians shelled Ossetia to try to conquer the contested territories, to which the Russians reacted with force. You did not have to be a genius to see the Russian reaction coming; yet it took both the NATO and the Georgians by surprise. In the Ukraine they reacted when they saw that the possibility of Western military bases close to their Western border –and the loss of access to the Black Sea- was becoming a reality. Again; no great surprise here. If you poke the bear, you have to expect that the bear will not roll over. In fact, you can expect just the opposite.

You can decry the Russians to be evil, to be Hitler, but the fact remains: the US would not have tolerated the presence of a Warsaw Pact nation in Latin America, either. In fact, you only need to look at Nicaragua or El Salvador to see what happens when a mildly socialist government is elected there –democratically. Or how they reacted to the presence of Russian missiles in Cuba –even though they already had more missiles in Turkey at the time.

And so we have it: the EU “sleepwalked” (not my words) into a volatile situation with Russia. A situation which did not need to happen, a situation which you could foresee –even if you are a lowlife little guy, like me, with no access to classified intelligence and international experts. And yet this shitstorm happened nevertheless, because the politicians in charge were absolutely, completely retarded, and were unable to behave like responsible adults. The same case can be made about the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the way Merkel and others dealt with the refugee situation in 2015… it all shows an utter inability for logical thought and planning. I cannot believe but it seems like that in the Ukraine situation only Putin had shown the slightest shred of intelligence… and unfortunately in many other cases there were not even a Putin around to act as a grownup. And this is not limited to politicians. Billionaires, CEOs and other, supposedly smart people sacrifice long-term benefits on the altar of extremely short-term profits. They are happily amassing wealth, creating incredible inequality (something they mustknow will create political instability), fight the acceptance of climate change, hence delaying action, so that they get some more money (something they also must know will impact their own children, like it or not), or work hard to dismantle the welfare state, even though they must know a happy and healthy workforce is more productive than a sick and demoralized one. You can’t export all jobs to China. It seems like the “elite” is far from the evil, scheming overlords many people would think them to be; there are no Illuminati, no Free Masons or Conclave of Rabbis. They are more like egoistic, infantile little fucks, who have no real idea what the long-term consequences of their actions are.

I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to have people who are intellectually vastly superior to me to lead us, even if they are schemers, and not bleeding heart liberals. I would prefer to have the Illuminati to these bunch. The sad fact is, we’re in no better situation than the Tommies in 1915; only our problems are not as acute as theirs were. Perhaps this is why we let these morons run amok: we don’t perceive the problem either.

How to argue as a Hungarian

It’s quite simple, really. You call your opponent a Nazi or a pinko liberal Commie, and boom, you don’t actually have to argue with them. After all, who in their right mind would start arguing with a Nazi? Or a Commie? From this point, you don’t actually have to take anything they say into consideration. You have a right –what right? you have an OBLIGATION!- to disregard the facts your opponent comes up with, and you can simply ignore anything he says. All you have to do is insulting him; that’s it.

This is the sad state of affairs right now. People shout at each other without actually listening to what the other has to say, because deep inside they already know. Except, of course, they don’t. But it does its job: it effectively shuts down any conversation. This mentality makes discussions, clashing of differing ideas impossible. It’s us versus them. If you are not in my team, you are playing for the enemy. If you don’t agree with me, you ARE the enemy; no ifs or buts about it. You are either a traitor to the motherland, or you are a Nazi, so you’d better be in my echo chamber or else... Trolls are tolerated if they play in your team. This is, of course, an intellectually lazy solution: you don’t actually have to think for yourself: your opinions are premade for you.

I’ve ran into this many times either online or during personal conversations. Depending on your differing opinion, you can be labelled a Nazi or a dirty liberal (well, looking at how intellectually corrupt the Hungarian liberal political and intellectual elite is, I can’t fault people to dislike liberals). In fact, you can be both at the same time saying the same thing to different people. It’s insane.

So this is what lies behind all the political discourse, all the personal discussions; this is how the country operates. This is why it is impossible for a member of the opposition actually agree about anything with the ruling party, even if they would do the very same thing once in power –or agree with them in person. This is why friendships break up, this is why family members refuse to talk to each other. You can’t discuss your differing point of view. If you don’t agree with me, you are no friend of mine. The country is incredibly bipartisan. No wonder nothing gets done.