Football, Stadiums and Orban

Looking at the recent success of the Hungarian football team I developed a theory. Perhaps Orban and Co. are not a bunch of corrupt crooks, but misunderstood geniuses. Perhaps there was another reason behind building all those stadiums.

Maybe, just maybe football is like a nuclear chain reaction: once you reach the critical stadium/capita ratio, your team performance exponentially improves. Only time will tell.

Peter Griffiths and the weird twist of events in the UK

So this respectable gentleman said the following in the '60s:  "if you want a nigger for your neighbor, vote labour".

The whole campaign for Brexit is essentially hinging on the hatred and suspicion against immigrants (or expats as I like to call us, as the British living in Spain are called).

This got me thinking: we got to the stage where I, as a white male from Central Europe, became the "nigger".

I feel strangely accomplished.

King Leopold the Third, and historical amnesia

Recently I’ve been to Belgium on a meeting. The place looked nice and affluent, and in general, a pleasant country overall. Except for one thing. I’ve seen King Leopold III’s photos in my hotel and in a restaurant I've visited framed.

This got me thinking (after I calmed down). Here we are, in the 21^stcentury, and we can see a mass murderer’s picture displayed openly. This person was responsible for the death of about ten million people in the Belgian Congo. This makes him one of the worst mass murderer you have never heard of. While we know about Hitler, Stalin, Saddam and other monsters (although Saddam’s worst acts were committed under US protection in the ‘80s, and they have only become publicized in the media when he became a “bad” dictator after ’91), somehow the less-than-savoury acts of Western politicians are less advertised. We don’t read much about the engineered famine in India, which killed about 3 million under Churchill. We hear about the approximately 60 thousand US causalities of Vietnam, but not the 1-4 million (nobody knows for sure exactly how many) Vietnamese dead; we don’t read much about the Latin American death squads, the School of Americas, the genocide in East Timor... It seems like history really is written by the victors. And it makes the constant finger-waggling, and moral superiority of the Western powers sound a little hypocritical. You’d expect people who demand constant historical retrospection a little bit more eager to follow their own advice.

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.

The Guardian, the refugee crisis and Hungary -again

The current editorial of the Guardian really shows something incredible: a complete 180 from what they have been preaching before.

They claim the solution has been laid out for this crisis, and then list the following:
1. pan-European resettlement efforts
2. strengthening of the EU's external borders
3. to make a deal with Turkey
4. negotiated repatriation of economic migrants who are not entitled for asylum


Well, guess what. Point 1 is absolutely unenforcable; no country who is not volunteering can be forced, and no refugee who is unwilling to receive less benefits can be forced into this arrangement. The Schengen borders make sure of that. As soon as you drop your refugee in Hungary or Bulgaria, they'd get on the road again towards Germany. (As they did the first time around, instead of claiming asylum at their points of entry, like the law requires. If they had not respected the law then, they'd probably ignore it again.)

But points 2-4... really? This was exactly what Orban said for which he was called an extreme-right wing leader, a xenophobe, and a Nazi. The Guardian -and the rest of the Western media- was very critical of everyone who dared to suggest that perhaps the borders needed to be strengthened, that perhaps we should talk to Turkey (if we're fucking up countries in the Middle East), and perhaps there ARE people who are not war refugees, but economic migrants. To this day this is a contentious point; this is the first time I've ever seen the Guardian admitting to this possibility that not all refugee are fleeing war an persecution.

This leaves us where, exactly? Orban -who is not exactly your model politician, and would be quite nice if was voted out of power- got a tremendous boost of prestige for the way he handled the crisis. (The only political figure in the whole of EU who did not run around like a chicken with his head cut off. How scary is this thought?)
The Guardian essentially vindicated him. His suggestions are accepted -but at at time when it's way too late. You can close the barn door, but the horse has already bolted.

The Guardian talks about bridges to be mended, yet it does not acknowledge that it had not only slandered Orban over this year, but the whole of Hungary, depicting the population as the collection of some backwards xenophobic barbarians, saying this flat out, or simply implying. How do you expect cooperation after this?

The "EU" is not a rich block; the Central and Eastern European member states cannot deal with an influx of unemployable migrants (according to the Germans only 10% if the refugee population is employable), even IF there were jobs to be filled. However, unemployment and poverty is high; you can't expect these states to add extra burden. So that is a blatantly untrue statement... another little slip in the truth. Yes, it would be desirable if you could convince these countries, however, the way they were treated (Greece and Hungary in particular) will make sure that they will not be open to persuasion.

So again -we have too little, too late. Even The Guardian realized not all was perfect in their own little world, and now it proposed solutions to a problem that has increased in proportion hundredfold since these solutions were proposed by those evil Nazis, The Guardian now parrots.

Separate moves do make things worse -if only the Western media's and political establishment's refusal to face reality had not forced countries to act separately. Good job, guys. We can always trust you to do the right thing after you have exhausted every other choice.

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.