In defense of Viktor Orban

Orban is one of those European leaders regularly trotted out as an example of the racist "populist" wave threatening Europe.

Why?

Because he has closed Hungary's borders to the never-ending wave of migrants coming from Syria and Iraq.

Let's step back a bit and size up the big picture.

Why is there a never-ending wave of migrants walking to Europe from Syria and Iraq?

Do you think it might be because American foreign policy has rendered Syria and Iraq uninhabitable?

While it's true that Hungary offered some token support to America's wars on those countries, it is beyond obvious that this was never a Hungarian initiative.

So why should Hungary bear the cost of feeding and housing the refugees who are fleeing American foreign policy in the Middle East?

Alas, questions such as this are never asked in your "mainstream media."

It's enough just to know that Orban is a repugnant racist.

Welcome to the empire of imbeciles

And that's where we're at, ain't it?

Imbeciles rule the world.

Who can look at American foreign policy over the last fifty years and not conclude that imbeciles rule the world?


We're done.

Not sure whether we're baked or cooked, but we're done.

The front-burner issues for the best and the brightest in the firmament of US foreign policy at this moment are a) can we stop the N. Korea nuke program and b) can we stop BDS.

The North Korea nuke program is 99% aspirational and 1% factual.

BDS is a cesspool of anti-semites...


Fashioning a peaceable world going forward is not even on the agenda.


Welcome to the empire of imbeciles.

Does anybody audit those Blogger page-view numbers?

As of right now, when I check page views for today, I've had more from Poland than I've had from Canada.

Huh?

That's never happened before. Poland might show up half a dozen times a week. Canada is my second biggest audience after the USA. When I go to check all-time page views, Poland clocks in at 1313. That's number ten on the list - over six years!

That's compared to over 90,000 from the US, and 80,000 from Canada.

What gives?

I don't even follow news from Poland. I take it their big dog has ruffled some feathers with his move to consolidate more power in the President's office. The Soros crowd will not be pleased. And the fact that Oban or Orban from next door is giving what's his name in Poland the thumbs up must grate double.

What both of these leaders have in common is that they don't seem too keen to welcome the brown-skinned refugee hoards that American foreign policy has been flooding into Europe.

What I don't get is how it becomes a matter of Polish or Hungarian "racism" that they're not welcoming these refugees from US imperialist policies, but those US imperialist policies get a free pass?

Makes no sense to me.

Shouldn't it be up to the US to accommodate all those refugees their foreign policy is creating?

Drone on; Illusionist-in-Chief unveils imaginary new directions in US foreign policy

President Obama's speech at West Point today made it clear that American Exceptionalism remains an article of faith in the White House.

"America must always lead on the world stage."

Speaking of the Ukraine situation he claimed, "Our ability to shape world opinion helped isolate Russia right away." That claim echoes the delusional analysis offered by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times yesterday, "Putin Blinked", in which Friedman makes a stout defence of Obama's "new" diplomacy the day before the West Point speech.

You'd almost think he had an advance copy...

Putin didn't blink unless you believed all the nonsense about how he was planning to seize the entirety of the Ukraine and possibly the Baltic states too. That nonsense originated with Beltway think-tanks and Western media, not with Putin.

Putin did what he had to do and nothing more. It is far more important to Russia to have a stable Ukraine next door than it is to the Western pundits commenting from half way around the world. Whereas the US and certain other NATO nations were loudly clamouring for war, it was Putin who continuously reiterated Russia's determination to resolve the crisis peacefully.

Both Friedman and Obama cling to the belief that America still leads the world. America leads the NATO gang and a few client states. Beyond that, most of the world's population now lives in states that no longer look to the US for leadership. What they look for in America is a nation that plays by the same rules as everyone else and treats other nations, large and small, with the same respect it demands for itself.

When they hear Obama's grandiose claims of leadership on the world stage and look at the international drone war and the incessant meddling in countries around the world, they know that day is a long way off.

Is Putin isolated? Hardly. Major NATO partners are more than keen to maintain good relations with Moscow. Putin is meeting Hollande in Paris next week and you can bet it's not to be harangued about imaginary Russian expansion in eastern Europe. Increasingly, developing countries world-wide are looking for alternatives to the EU/IMF/USA extortion and protection rackets that have failed them for the past fifty years.

It is not Putin's Russia that is becoming isolated; it's the USA.

John Kerry's shit 'n shinola tour of Egypt

Here's what Professor of International Studies at Georgetown, John Esposito, has to say about the military dictatorship that over threw the democratically elected President Morsi a few months ago;

The interim government, an illegitimate product of a military-backed coup, is acting very much like the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the past, seeking to crush and destroy the Brotherhood. It has massacred large numbers of the Brotherhood and other opposition in the largest bloodbath in modern Egyptian history. The security forces have deliberately used violence and killing to provoke pro-Morsi non-violent demonstrators to take up arms and fire back, and it has declared its intention to outlaw the MB (as Nasser did, but neither Sadat nor Mubarak did).(AJE 3.11.13)

That's harsh condemnation indeed!

"illegitimate"...

"coup"...

"massacred"...

"largest bloodbath in modern Egyptian history"...

But John Kerry pops in for a meet 'n greet and sees democracy just waiting to blossom forth!

John is one helluva glass-half-full kinda guy. I guess you'd have to be, if you're the public face of America's convoluted, contradictory, and self-defeating foreign policy.

Kerry's next stop is Saudi Arabia, where he is expected to congratulate the rulers of the Kingdom on their great progress on human rights.

Syrians take to streets in show of support for al Qaeda

The mis-handling of the Syrian "spring" has to be one of the greatest US foreign policy debacles of our times. Or is it?

It's been clear that American policy has been to lead from behind the scenes as proxies Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia took the lead in importing and arming the anti-Assad forces. And it's been clear to most of the world for well over a year that the "foreign fighters" who have been converging on Syria have what might delicately be termed "al Qaeda affiliations."

Recently there have been indications that Washington too is aware of this. First the charade of re-jigging the "Syrian National Council" into the "Syrian National Coalition" to make it more "representative". When the Syrians duly jumped through Hillary's hoops on that count, the US suddenly realized that the single most effective fighting force in Syria was in fact the Jabhat al-Nusra, aka al Qaeda, and promptly added them to their official list of terror groups.

This is all in the context of explaining why the US cannot directly arm the  "rebels", and the people of Syria took to the streets to make known their displeasure.

In terms of a Syrian spring, a Syrian liberalization, a democratic Syria, etc, none of this makes any sense.

Can American foreign policy really be that inept and self-defeating?

But what if this entire Syria exercise is just preparing the ground for an invasion of Iran? Suddenly a Syria in ruins is not such a bad thing. Plenty of good excuses to drop tens of thousands of American and/or NATO troops in to restore order/ deliver humanitarian aid / secure the weapons of mass destruction / etc etc.

And those tens of thousands of Sunni fundamentalist fighters on the ground in Syria? I'm guessing that America will permit herself just enough of an accommodation with "al Qaeda" to hand those lads maps to Tehran.

Suddenly it all makes sense!

How to tell who's who among America's Middle East allies

Ain't that a brain teaser?

First question is, what allies do we have in the Middle East?

Well, one of course. Our best friends in the Holy Land.

Then there's our besties in Saudi Arabia.

Any others? Well, there's all those Gulf statelets. They don't really count as independent countries. They are essentially Saudi protectorates.

Egypt? Guess that went down the drain with Mubarak.

Jordan? Hmm... maybe. But their poor King is busy trying to be friends to everybody all the time, and when push comes to shove he's not going to be a very reliable ally. Besides, what does Jordan bring to the table besides a vote at the UN?

So America has two allies in the Middle East.

Israel and Saudi Arabia. The only democracy and the biggest oil exporter.

The only democracy costs America an arm and a leg and a prothesis every year just to keep them on the friend side of the ledger. They cost the US a lot of money.

We need them to keep an eye on our only other ally, the House of Saud. We love the Saudis. They rob us blind with their over-priced oil but at least they're decent enough to buy a lot of weapons from us, and that's one of our few viable exports.

If America could break its addiction to Middle East oil we could unfriend both of them.

And America would be a better, richer, safer place.