/kc/ - Krautchan

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Fun facts about the election of Frau von der Leyen:
1. she was the only candidate to chose from, so if she had been rejected then, I dunno.
2. She's also implicated in covid vaccince scandal, where she signed sketchy deals with manufacturers. Basically a corruption case.
3. And she was also investigated in 2019 for a domestic corruption case where she handed out contracts to her cronies as a German defense minister.
The EU is in good hands.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/07/17/von-der-leyen-commission-loses-vaccines-contracts-transparency-case-on-eve-of-crucial-vote
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/corruption-scandal-hangs-over-eu-president-ursula-von-der-leyen-33871

Okay I haven't read the details of these articles, this is a quick post and I'm tired.

 >>/52223/
Have to add, that this system where they have only one candidate for the presidency is called Spitzenkandidat in beautiful German. The party or party coalition which gained the majority nominates a candidate and the EU parliament votes on this person.
What I dunno if they don't accept (slim chance since that person is the majority candidate, but still there is a chance).

 >>/52223/
It looks like she keeps her old job and it's business as usual then.

She was also the minister of Defence during the G36 affair which led to the rifle being replaced by the HK416(though that happened after she left).

 >>/52226/
> that happened after she left
She picked the people she wanted to get the dough, she had her own share, she could left the job of actually doing the thing to others.

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They announced Biden caught covid.
They confined him.
Then suddenly he announced in a tweet he withdraws from the presidential race - despite he was adamant to do it.
Now CumAllah Harris is the nominee, leftlib media behaves like nothing happened.
Did they coup the old man?
Will we see Biden ever again?

Some questioned the authenticity of his signature of the "resign" paper. Here's a cool investigation by Wyatt of DPA:
https://yt.drgnz.club/watch?v=N5-RtKQir1Y
https://youtube.com/watch?v=N5-RtKQir1Y
Interesting comment:
> Wyatt : I examined this in detail last night Apparently, all of the signatures on his executive orders (with PDFs visible on the Federal Register website) going back to 2021 are exactly identical probably being copied and pasted If the signature on the Executive Orders is something copied from three or four years ago, it is plausible that his most recent signature (on the resignation document) is both different and genuine, because of the passage of time (and of course his mental deterioriation)
Does this mean he never actually signed any executive orders?

 >>/52232/
Well it was to be expected. After all, if Biden were elected for a second term he would just get worse as he continues to age.

I don't know that she is much of a better candidate really. I heard that people actually wanted somebody else entirely but due to how campaign funding works that would be difficult because all donations are to the Biden-Harris Campaign so there would be complications transferring it to a new candidate. Plus replacing her would be a bad look when she is Vice President, particularly as she is half black, half Indian and a woman, so dropping her would offend those demographics.

So it looks like Trump will be president.

 >>/52233/
Trump has already been a president before, so I mean it looks like Trump will be president again.

 >>/52233/
Oh now that he stepped down turns out he has no covid and can return to the White House.
They detained and threatened him. Infa 100%.

One thing I heard. Here's this:
https://democrats.org/who-we-are/
https://democrats.org/2024-delegate-selection-process/
> The Democratic National Committee is committed to electing Democrats everywhere – from the school board to the Oval Office.
They have a set of rules how these officials can be nominated.
There are four documents on the second link that:
> govern the Party’s Delegate Selection process and National Convention.
Including the President of the US.
What I heard, that for a new nominate they should have kept at least some part of the procedure, "at least a hearing", but they just switched Biden - whom the delegates legally pledged to - with Harris and the delegates declared they all supporting her.
Really shows that it is not a democratic process, there is a clique that can just say:
> today you support X
< YES WE DO!
> tomorrow you support Y
< YES WE DO!

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Listening what Orbán is talking about at Tusványfürdő, like last year  >>/50735/, this is the 33rd occasion for him.
Hilarious, he started with:
> now i'm gonna redpill you
Literally citing Matrix, explaining the blue pill, red pill metaphor. He says for us the Russo-Ukrainian war is the red pill.
I won't write stuff like last year, I don't think I have time to listen the whole thing anyway. Perhaps tomorrow or next week.
I want to note one thing he said, it's fairly at the start. He say Europe's engine was the Paris-Berlin axis, now this got irrelevant, and there is a new one: London-Warsaw-Kiev-Balitcs-Scandinavia. If we remember what Szálasi said about how the Anglos fight against Europe: they build clients on the shores and periphery of Europe and they use those to defeat the stronger states on the continent. If I put together the two thought, I can make sense of it.

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Latest scandal: Hungary is causing a spying crisis with the so called National Cards

Recently our govt. added the Russian Federation and Republic of Belarus to the list of countries whomster citizens can apply for "National Card"s. This, according to a Hungarian "security expert" and some of the members of the European Parliament and the European Commission (which is the council of the head of states), is a huge security issue, which endangers the Schengen area countries, by letting in Russian spies running free. Or at least that it offers a legal loophole for people whomster on the list of sanctioned individuals due to the Russian war on the Ukraine.

I can't recall hearing this National Card before that - I probably had just did not pay much mind to it - and from the news it's not easy to solve that is that actually. So I tried to dive in.
The law that regulates this thing is the 2023/XC government statute, and is about the "entry and residence of the citizens of third countries".
> third countries
This is all the countries which aren't: Hungary and European Economic Area countries. The statute is also relevant to stateless, fugitive persons.
Now this is all the regulations about the topic, and the National Cards is only a part of it, called: "residence of specified third countries". Originally this part was only relevant for Serbian and Ukrainian nationals, but recently it was extended to a number of countries: Bosnia Horsevagina, North Monkeydonia, Moldova, Monteneger, along with Belarus and Russia - the latter two sparking the controversy.
Only those can get National Cards who come to do prearranged work, has contracts, or do some other business that constitute as work. The length of stay is at least 90 days but not more than 2 years. It can be extended by 3 years (any amount of times).
Needed:
- valid passport;
- documents that prove employment and place of stay;
- money that cover the cost of moving to another country or returning to home country;
- proof of health insurance;
- document that verifies the purpose of the entry;
Also have to pay some amount of fee.
So basically not everyone can get it, and there is some screening.
How is it differ from regular entry and residence? Not by much.
1. the aforementioned extension, for "regular third country citizens" who can also only apply for work can extend their time by 1 year;
2. "regulars" can't apply for entry and residence for different reasons (such as studies) while at Hungary (I assume they have to return and apply at the embassy or something), the National Card can only requested in the country;
3. the National Card allows them to bring their family.
That's it.
So if Russia or Belarus want to send spies they can do however they want. National Cards won't make them James Bond.

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Some of our politicians in the EU Parliament gave a press conference, talking about the issue.
They told, among other things, that at the moment 720K Russians, and 85K Belorussians live in the EU legally.
They stated that in the first month (august) of the National Card extension to the two countries, 14 people applied for it.
Despite they were asked they did not specify what work that 14 people are doing.

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Couple of things to post.
First let's talk about the Draghi-report.
Mario Draghi was PM of Italy briefly (for over a year, Meloni replaced him) and was the prez of the European Central Bank. Our dear Ursula asked him to write something that supports the current school of thought that collapses Europe plans to increase Europe's competitiveness.
His report is 400 pages, not that long, but frankly, there are many better things to read, including Adam Smith's wealth of nations. However news sources are inadequate, I found.

Shittiest one:
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-mario-draghi-report-unleashed-eurozone-debt-crisis-ecb-competition-investment/
> here are 5 points, all about investing more

This one crowns the previous turdcake:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/09/business/europe-economy-competitiveness.html
Actual quote:
> Mr. Draghi’s report was short on details about the source of the enormous investment required to reverse Europe’s economic decline.
> “Where is the money going to come from?” Ms. van Rij said.
Good question.
Good snippet:
> Cheap Russian gas is no longer available, and energy prices have soared. Those prices have come off their peak, but European companies still pay two to three times more for electricity than U.S. companies do
> the report found
Literally what Orbán is saying for years now, Jesus fucking Christ. Situation sucks in Europe because no source of cheap energy.
But this article actually lists some suggestions from the Report:
- shared energy grid
- joint military procurement
- advanced training programs for workers
All right. It also notes that:
> the bloc depends on a handful of suppliers like China for critical raw materials
so have to make:
> preferential trade agreements and investment in countries that could serve as alternate suppliers.
And he finds problems in "bureaucracy" but wants more centralization which means more bureaucracy...:
> European countries to be more coordinated
> barriers such as costly regulation can be burdensome
> Far-right parties that have been hostile to some of the European Union’s initiatives and wary of extending more power to Brussels
> Many of Mr. Draghi’s proposals would require unanimous consent from member states

This Hungarian article (of the opposition media) says the Fidesz reads the report, but they don't like it. Complements the NY Times article, makes the points above clearer.
https://hvg.hu/eurologus/20240909_versenykepesseg_draghi
Basically this article outright says have to close down the market in front of Chinese products see Chinese investments on the Hungary, battery factories. Say good bye to cheap Russian energy see Hungarian gas and oil imports. EU should give up unanimous voting to force through the decisions which some countries don't want to vote in see the muh Hungarian veto cries in past years.
Basically these are from the reports the rest of the article is various chime ins from unrelated people.

So all this bs boils down to this:
Europe has no energy and raw mats, so production is expensive, European products and companies are not competitive. With "AI industry" emerging energy demands grow exponentially. Go Green policies make everything more expensive. Can't allow China to profit because China is bad competitor of US. Can't allow Russia to profit because Russia is bad competitor of US. Expose tariff in Chinese products and sanction Russia. Africa could be a nice source except Europe (France) is getting kicked out by US, China, and Russia. This leaves US as supplier, and an insecure Middle East for energy. South America can serve raw resources, but that's basically buying from US (related topic: Monroe doctrine).
So basically Europe will turn into a market for the US, a colony, where they pump the wealth from.
What would actually help: cooperate with Russia. Russia means cheap energy and returning to Africa cheap resources, and investing there would open up markets.
What will most definitely not help: anything Draghi proposes whatever he actually wrote.

 >>/52396/
Private investors won't invest in Europe if Europe is in decline.
Europe won't be be able to invest massive amounts through public means either, given that most of those nations are in too much debt as it is, though Germany is more financially responsible than most of the others and so they have some room to move in that regard.

Energy in Europe is a huge issue and nobody in Europe seems to have a realistic long term plan to address it.

The west as a whole is worried about China's dominance in rare earths and solar panels. Australia benefits from that to a degree as we have rare earths we just aren't a major miner or processor of many of them, but that's going to change.

European industry is being strangled by China so tariffs are probably necessary anyway Electric cars are a good example of this. But the issue there is that the US is also a huge industrial power and also competes with Europe(and might introduce tariffs on Europe as well).
But tariffs are a quadruple edged sword, yes they make Chinese goods less competitive but it will raise the price of imported inputs for European manufacturing(such as Chinese rare earths), it cuts off a huge Market to Europe(China) and it will cause inflation in some goods in the EU as the price of goods that are tariffed goes up.

Africa has a lot of potential of course but it's also Africa. Rare earths won't do Europe much good if they are in a jungle with no infrastructure in an area held by separatist warlords or a corrupt government(well it's Africa, all governments there are corrupt). It would still need money to set up such operations as well.

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Second topic of the day.
Hungary makes strategic partnership deal with Chad.

Back in 2023 November the Hungarian Parliament decided to send 200 troops (with 400 in rotation) to Chad, to do various tasks, advisory, support, battlefield monitoring, protecting Hungarian citizens and local Hungarian interest, supporting fight against terrorism. Main goal is to "reduce the pressure of illegal migration on Europe".
Since the US and Western Europe destabilized all the Muslim countries of the Mediterranean with the Arab Spring, most of those still can't plug the holes. Basically making the Sahel stable reduces the migration. For the same reason went our dear Ursula went to Egypt to talk to their dictator el-Sisi this year.
Here's article about it:
https://defence.hu/news/parliament-approves-sending-of-hungarian-military-mission-to-chad.html
And another one from 2024 April, using a French paper as a source:
https://fmso.tradoc.army.mil/2024/hungary-deepens-bilateral-ties-with-chad/
This also mentions that:
> Hungary has signed military, educational, health, agricultural, and energy memoranda of understanding with Chad.
And that in Chad Hungary substitutes Russia which is busy elsewhere, and this cooperation is very anti-EU.

News from yesterday: Chadian Prez Mahmat Déby visiting the country (I think it was mentioned last week this event will happen). Sunday evening Orbán hosted a dinner for him and had a nice chat. Our foreign minister Szíjjártó told stuff about the parternship:
https://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/fm-hungary-is-building-a-comprehensive-strategic-partnership-with-chad
So the parties signed:
- strategic cooperation, 
- defence, 
- animal husbandry
... agreements. And has some type of education component. Such as:
> university scholarships to 25 Chadian students each year
> 150-200 million euro tied aid programme to support agriculture, the food industry, and the development of water supply, education and digitalisation
> humanitarian scheme is launching a one million US dollar aid programme to prevent the spread of infections and improve health care 
> transfer of a 14 million euro contribution from the European Peace Facility to support the development of Chad's defence capacities
I dunno how much of those sums in this context.
We also establish embassy in Chad, so basically open real relationships.

There are some other info here. Franc don't want to lose Chad, while Russia also tries to court them.
https://www.theafricareport.com/360934/chad-becomes-focus-of-diplomatic-and-military-attention/

I just watched the US debate. All I can say is, bleh...

It was not really a debate, they would often ignore the questions that they were asked and instead they had their own talking points that they would try to shoehorn into their answers even when it was not relevant to the topic. These talking points are the same we have heard before, Trump talks about Immigration, Harris brings up project 2025. Neither of them had anything interesting to say and neither had any real policies.

The only thing of interest in this entire debate was that apparently Harris owns guns or at least a gun(she brought that up in response to Trump saying she wanted to ban them).

But still, I don't think either candidate did well but I don't think they did terribly either, there were no Biden moments this time. So I don't think this debate well affect the election much.

 >>/52399/
Heh:  >>/qrbunker/145100/
It's not like they didn't read everything from a teleprompter in the debate with Biden...
I bet the debate was just a marketing event for these earpieces.
Finally one instance played one video:
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=VgsC_aBquUE
Randomly clicked into the middle
> Viktor Orbán said
Kek.
I'm sure some of his voterbase likes to hear about Orbán and what he says about Trump, but I'm not sure if can win voters from the middle, those who aren't committed to either side. For voters on the other end, Orbán is literal Hitler.

 >>/52400/
I think most Americans probably don't actually know what a Victor Orban is.

 >>/52402/
I dunno, he was shilled by Tucker Carlson quite a few times.
But I bet much more Americans have 0 idea than who has.

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Let's take a short look at the Orbán-government's tax policies.
In 2022 a government decree introduced a new type of tax which they call extra profit tax. They were saying that the due to the these years of crises actually resulted in profit for certain sectors of the economy, a profit that they not calculated with, so they'll take some of that.
Couple of days ago came to my attention that they are talking about this again, that the banks and insurance companies pocketed extra dough this year, so they'll have to pay the extra profit tax.
I don't know about the banks, but last year, 2023 February, our govt. issued another decree regulating insurances, giving an extra window for people to switch companies and make other insurance contracts, starting with 2024, in March-April.
So starting this year in the Fidesz-media for sure (perhaps on the other side too), there was a campaign of ads, infomertials, interviews with professionals about this opportunity - driving up attention, and demand for insurance and signing new contracts. With demand the price also got higher, and lo, insurance companies pocketed "extra profit".
And now our government, donning a Robin Hood cap, swoops in and takes the moneybags from the rich - seriously their communication very much paints this picture. Hilarious.

 >>/52436/
I don't think profits should ever be punished unless there is some kind of unfair reason for them that is damaging the country. Like if a bank had a monopoly and that was why it's making more money then yes, maybe something should be done but even then it should not be taxed more, it should be broken up instead.

The problem with taxing profits is that you scare business and disincentivise investment.

 >>/52438/
Their reasoning is something liek: the profit wasn't made by smart planning, but the crises, covid, war, whatnot, and it isn't in the calculation of those companies.
The opposition and "independent" opposition experts put forward criticism, but that's expected.
My problem in this particular case is that the unexpected "extra" profit is the result of the acts of the Fidesz government and Fidesz media. So they do tax the people essentially by making them spend on the service. It's like if they were made those companies collect the tax and then take a share from it.

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It's time for a "The Jews" post.
Maybe this would be better in the news thread, but it really is politics.
For various reasons for about a year know I have the luck to listen to the radio. Radio radio, not net radio, so the selection is quite slim. When push comes to shove I'm find listening politics and news. But that's all Fidesz media, no opposition or independent news channels.
About a year ago happened the Hamas attack on Israel and these programs broadcasted sometimes have mentioned the "growing antisemitism over the globe especially in Western Europe and how concerned the Hungarian government about this" this goes hand in hand with the questioning of Brussel's and Western European countries' migration politics during the past year. Lately, about since the beeper attack, these voices are getting stronger. People are invited into the studio talking about the situation in Israel, the views of Israel, the woes of of the Jewish people. For example a Jewish journalist or diplomat (did not payed attention at the introduction, sorry) was telling to the listeners in perfect Hungarian how clever and resourceful was the Israeli secret services with the beeper attack, and that we shouldn't be worried about the possible Hungarian involvement and its consequences. Or we were told that 200 attacks against Jews happened in Germany that lead to physical confrontation.
Most recently they were criticizing western censorship practices, how they are enforcing hate speech filtering in the West. They found it very concerning that while they censor hate speech against LGBTQ movement, they don't censor anti-Semitic statements. They were outraged how Westerners don't include Jews among the chosen ones who shouldn't be criticized or talked bad things about.
Of course they did not use the word censorship.

One good think tho.
They mentioned, that basically the Western suggestion to avoid hate and atrocities is: "don't be a Jew, or at least hide your identity". They said this is absurd and unacceptable.
I agree with this. When will the time come when they say:
> just don't be German
> just don't be French
> just don't be Polish
> just don't be Hungarian
> ...
This is really unacceptable.

 >>/52463/
> about year know
*about year now

 >>/52463/
> I'm find
*I'm fine
For fucks sake. I won't correct the rest. You know what I mean.

 >>/52463/
I don't know how I feel about this kind of thing. This has been an issue here as well. 
I think anti-Semitism is growing, the Green Party in Australia have said some pretty anti-Semitic things and they are far from far right. Both the far left and the far right seme to hate the Jews.

Maybe this make the Jews realise that Muslims and the left are not their friends and so maybe they will act differently and stop encouraging Muslim migration and the left.

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I was planning to write a short note on this for a while now. Well, I guess it was about time.
A "reallocation of voters" happened in Hungarian politics, and it feels I've seen this already a couple of times.
This year a new political party emerged with astonishing tempo and collected most of the opposition voters in half a year, from January 1st till the EU parliamentary and Hungarian municipality elections. This is the TISZA Párt, with its frontman, Magyar Péter.
TISZA is an acronym, Tisztelet és Szabadság, means Respect and Freedom. Also Tisza is the Tisa river, so it's an okay wordplay, easy to remember. I bet most people don't know the actual name of the party.
Before the start of this year, noone heard about the party and Magyar Péter, they had nothing to do with each other either. TISZA Párt was a dwarf party in the countryside, founding members toyed with the idea to run in the 2022 parliamentary elections but they did not. Magyar Péter is a lawyer, and was the husband of a the Minister of Justice who got into a legal scandal, putting her into many not too flattering articles.
Interesting is, that both the party and Magyar has conservative background, and their program and ideas has conservative elements, but perhaps most correctly takes motifs from everywhere from the political palette - since it is there to collect those voters who got enough of the incompetent opposition, and want to leave behind the ex-PM Gyurcsány, who hangs onto politics like if his life depended on it.
Previously the various opposition parties tried to create some alliance but they failed to bring results in constantly (except perhaps the office of the lord mayor of Budapest), and everyone was alienated by Gyurcsány (and the Fidesz propaganda citing Gyurcsány all the time).
Now this new formation took the wind out of the sails of this alliance, deflating them all.

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By the elections in June the TISZA Párt become the second largest party, with about 30%. Picrels are the freshest data.

Pic #1 made by a company close to the govt/Fidesz. It shows the EP election results in the first column at each party, and the current polling in the second.
- Fidesz is as popular as four months ago
- Tisza Párt's popularity has grown - remember this is a semi-conservative, pander to everyone, get the opposition together party
Between the two there's 10% difference.
- DK-MSZP-P is the remnants of the socialist party just above the 5% eligibility line (for parliamentary seats)
- Mi Hazánk, right radical party, separated from the Jobbik, from those who did not want to team up with the left-liberal opposition, again right at the threshold
- Kétfarkú Kutya Párt (KKP) - the joke party, under the treshold, perhaps they could get in perhaps not.
- Momentum - liberals, down the drain
- the rest down the drain.
According to them strictly taken those numbers 4 parties could get into the parliament.

Pic #2
From a pollster close to oppostion. They also show the preference in two columns (rows actually), but the light blue is the whole population (all voters), the dark shows the sure voters.
- Fidesz - 28% all voters, 39% sure voters
- Tisza - 26% all, 37% sure
Very small difference. They measure the governing party lower and the main opposition higher.
- DK - 5% all, 7% sure
- Mi Hazánk - 5% all, 7% sure
- KKP - 3% all, 4% sure
- the rest doesn't worth to mention.
Note: 28% of all voters seems to have no preference, well they "don't know" or "refused to answer" at least. From both groups they could go for certain parties.
So basically they measure the smaller parties similarly, but there are less numbers to be distributed anyway. Here the smaller opposition parties get buffed a bit.
Our electoral system favors the winner, they take all (well most) seats, inflating their representation in the parliament. So probably it doesn't matter if the Tisza and DK could form coalition.

The Mi Hazánk brings a very typical right radical form, with the 5-7%. These voters probably those who doesn't like the Jew-love of the Fidesz, and those who have struggles with the Gypsies. They won't ever get a real voice nowhere. But this 5% is about the same since the MIÉP (the first such party) was founded 1993. Jobbik had a growth when they dialed down the rhetoric and went softer, taking many voters with conservative tendencies and aversion of Fidesz. These now vote on the Tisza.
The DK hanging on is fantastic. There are still some people who prefer them. Pensioners? I dunno. I'm fairly sure young voters would rather pick KKP, Momentum, MMN, Greens, or LMP than them. But they are probably drift towards the Tisza instead.

And back to the TISZA Párt.
As I mentioned before I "get to" listen to the radio this year, and literally all is Fidesz propaganda. If it's about the opposition then it's Magyar Péter constantly. So much shit they pour onto him, that's hilarious. And really activates those braincells. They add to the hype. And if the Fidesz really "hates" someone, that makes those who hate the Fidesz support that person. It's the "Dirty Fred effect" - as I call it, based on a character of old Hungarian pulp fiction novels, where Dirty Fred (a kind of an antihero) used his own unpopularity to influence others to help someone whom he wanted to help. We could call this reverse psychology.
I believe the reason behind the hype around Magyar Péter is that the Fidesz wants to keep the opposition afloat, so they can keep up the appearance of democratic legitimacy. The previous opposition parties just couldn't keep their voterbase.
By how much this party is "controlled" as they say. I dunno. But the voters have real antipathy towards Fidesz.

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US presidential election's gonna happen on next Tuesday. Finally ending the year long masturbation they call campaign. Then comes the tune titled The Election Was A Fraud after it - no matter who wins. Actually it was 4 year long campaign because they played that song in 2021 for a year, then in 2022 they had the midterm elections, which is another one year jerkoff, then they were warming up for the primaries for another year.
Among all this circlejerk Japan carried out a whole campaign just under two weeks, with the election on October 27th). Sure the governing party shot itself into the feet but still.
In 2021 the Liberal Democratic Party (the Jimintō) won the elections with quite the lead, although with an already dropping popularity (they gained power in 2012 the first time with Shinzo Abe, since then they had won each time, but with less seats at each elections).
The Jiminto has a 3 year cycle for its presidency, and the former defense minister, Shigeru Ishiba won in 2024 September. Starting from October he took over the seat of the Prime Minister from his predecessor Fumio Kishida. Thinking it's time to reinforce his position via a general election, where he could lead his party to victory, he announced a snap election. However the popularity of Jiminto is not so shiny due to the so called slush fund scandal (they funneled campaign funds into private bank accounts), and got less than half of the seats in the Japanese House of Representatives (the Japanese Parliament, the Kokkai, is bicameral). Now they are forced to govern from minority.
The biggest winner is the major opposition party the Constitutional Democratic Party (Rikken-minshutō) which got a whopping over 50 seats more than in previous election. However smaller parties emerged too, so now there are 9 parties in the legislature instead of the previous 5.

What are the implications?
Firstly not sure.
But.
The Far East might get volatile, with Best Korea's getting Russian support, and with the constant sabre rattling around Taiwan, god knows what will happen if the Ukraine war is nearing, or it gets finished. A strong, but at least fit to work Japanese legislation and government could mean a pillar of stability, but an indecisive one could prevent Japan from acting in time.
As for their inner politics, I dunno if they would better or worse, and with whom. Japan has its problems, but they live comfy and secure I think.

 >>/52538/
It's hard to say what this will do as they still haven't formed a government yet I don't think. Ishiba is the best candidate to deal with the geopolitical situation, that's probably why his party picked him but at the same time because of the weak position of the LDP I think he will struggle to make decisive decisions if they have to be made, he would have to work with the minor parties to do that. 

As for inner politics, I have no idea. I guess it will depend on what demands minor parties make of the LDP in order to form a government. It will means they won't be able to make any drastic changes though you would think.

Japan does alright. They are often attacked for their stagnating economy but that is complicated. Yes their GDP growth is slower than many other nations but their GDP growth per Capita is actually inline with most other OECD nations, it was fairly close to Australia before Covid and since then things have gone strange for both of us(well the whole world really but still). 
The reason Japan's economy isn't growing is because of a lack of population growth whereas most of the growth of Australia's economy comes from Migrants. If you ignore that and look at wealth growth by the individual then we are similar. Though Australia is one of the richest nations on earth per capita so we are still richer than they are in that way.

Japan has problems with inflation but the whole world does. Though in Japan's case it's largely because of a depreciating yen, so it's a bit different. But the yen should go up once the US and the rest of the world lower interest rates enough.

Japan has massive debt too of course but they have low interests rates and the debt is held by the Japanese themselves, so it's not as big of an issue as the US in my opinion(the US spends more on interest on it's debt that it does on defence).

Japan has issues but they are structural, they have a declining and ageing population and there is nothing you can do about that other than import migrants which isn't really a long term solution and has it's own problems. So they have to learn to continue with a declining population(which we all should be learning to do instead of importing migrants).

But also we don't know what's going to happen in regards to Trump, China and trade wars and how that will hit Japan if Trump gets in. Australia should be fine, the USA would be dumb to put tariffs on us, even China rethought their attempts at that. But Japan is a direct competitor to the USA, China and the EU in many ways so a trade war could do interesting things...

 >>/52539/
You are right. They are still forming the new government, probably negotiate with potential coalition partners.
> they have to learn to continue with a declining population(which we all should be learning to do instead of importing migrants).
So much this.

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Finally Burgers are voting today. Or rather finish voting.
Not sure what will happen if they elect Trump. However I hear it that things will continue how they are going now if Harris gets to be the presidentess. I'm not sure about that too. Despite the obvious continuity it is a chance to approach things differently. The Cabinet will also be shuffled, new people can bring change of policies.
I do not believe Harris will get elected. She's even less WASP male than Obongo was. Is this the time for a female president yet? I doubt it.

Can't find the spurdo comic strip I wanted to post. Oh well.

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First fucking article...
Listening Trump giving his victory speech at the moment. I'm still unsure what's gonna happen now. Ought to be interesting even if it won't be enjoyable. What the Biden administration did was just pure painful. Well at least we have this wonderful war tho, that's interesting even if it isn't enjoyable.

Here's the article itself, nothing much, just refreshing memories that Orbán is #1 Trump fan.
https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-pm-viktor-orban-donald-trump-win-us-elections-2024/
Anyway this win means some favors towards Orbán, and perhaps for Hungary too I don't think all the moves of Orbán is in the interest of the people and country, so I always have doubts. Surely it will be in the interest of Israel.
Well at least the Hungarian presidency of the EU might have a bit more weight, despite it ends on December 31 - and Trump only gets to be president from January 1st. The promise of future change will make EU officials think a bit. There is already a change in communication in the West think of Scholz and his hard facts, liek "Ukraine won't enter NATO" I assume those voices will strengthen.
End of the week (I think starting tomorrow) Hungary will host an EU summit thingy. Surely will be endorsements of Trump, and they are expecting the Georgian PM to be present - and as an unexpected visitor even perhaps Zelensky will come to Budapest.
Now this could be awkward, and communication will surely change in Kiev too. Towards Hungary as well, since at the moment Trump's little fav in the EU is Orbán.
And again my problem is if all these communication changes will actually translates to something good for our people. I dunno.

Trump is saying right now:
> promises were made, promises will be kept
Which means he'll do entirely something else, heh.

Trump has won by quite a bit it seems, he might even win the popular vote. It looks like the Republicans will get both the house and the senate too.

 >>/52546/
At the moment I think he has over 51% of the popular votes.
And I assume the electoral ones will climb over 300. He got something 305 the like in 2016.
This isn't that high. Bush senior bagged over 400 electorates.

Thinking about Trump's 5 minutes gibberish about Elon Musk's rocket. Quite an Biden-esque moment.

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It appears you can say "nigger" again. Also Im laughing at the fact that Kennedy got 600k votes despite telling people not to vote for him.

 >>/52548/
Kennedy deserved more to be honest.

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Trying to get the speech of Zelensky, but Piped doesn't allow filtering and ordering and whatnot.

Wtf. Videos of the arrivals are uploaded, the opening speech of Orbán is up there, Macron talking is up, but no Zelensky. Even the fugging sky news livestream cuts away when Orbán passes the round to Zelensky. What the actual fuck?
I can find articles with a handful of quotes of his speech tho.

Found a speech of Zelensky, but not the one I wanted to listen. And I won't listen this one either he talks in Ukrainian, no translation, subtitles or anything.

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Thinking about what this Trump victory could mean to Hungary. Fidesz/govt media sells it as the next best thing ever, here's the Canaan, hallelujah, we win and all that.
I'm skeptical about this. Orbán likes to talk about how there is a struggle between "decoupling" and "connectivity" within the EU. Former means cutting off ties to certain countries, Russia, China for starter, but essentially could mean everyone who aligned to them. And connectivity means keeping relations and trade with them, not just have a closeted gay club within The West, but to be open to The Rest.
Sidenote: Orbán and co. likes to call the first solution as "globalist", while keeping up with global trade with everyone is not it in their books.
But back to the matter at hand. Trump promoting a trade war with Chiner, does not help with the connectivity as Orbán dreams it for us. And frankly "ending the war on the Ukraine" might also not pan out how expected. Will the trade be restored with Russia? Won't be purchasing cheap gas from them frowned upon? Trump was against the Nord Stream pipeline, I'm pretty sure he won't advocate for restoring it. He wants Europe to buy American gas, or from someone that suits to their foreign politics and economy.
Russia and China remains a competitor for the US, and this Putin's lapdog stuff is just US campaign propaganda.
On the other hand, now that a pal's gonna sit in the White House, we kinda have to dance more for their tune, at least drop the rhetoric of the "rebel" and naysayer.
I'm pretty sure there will be more support to Israel. Hungary and our govt has good relations with Israel, so I'm expecting more propaganda in the media (both Fidesz/govt and opposition) that licks that Heeb hiney shiny. And perhaps more active help in some form. I dunno about that usually there is 0 mentions about various cooperations and partnerships with Israel. Sometimes they show us a photo of Orbán and Netanyahu together.
Frankly all in all that Chinese angle will be the neuralgic point. They were building battery factory here, and perhaps electric car assembly plant. And there are old plans of the Belt and Road, like the railroad between Belgrade and Budapest. And whatnot (see the Chinese university and such).

 >>/52583/
I know that people are saying it could have a negative impact on Australia. Tariffs on Australia are not such a big deal and probably will not happen but the tariffs on China would negatively affect Australia as they are our biggest trading partner and a slow Chinese economy would mean less demand for our resources which means less money for us but also means that there is less demand for the Australian dollar which would reduce the value of our currency and thus cause import costs to rise.
But then the PM has also said their may be opportunity, he said that if Trump starts scrapping funding for Green energy programmes then Australia is well positioned to capitalise on it and pick up some of these green energy industries and investments here. But he did not specify what we would pick up exactly though to be fair Trump hasn't said what he will scrap in the first place either yet.

Hungary will also be negatively impacted by sanctions too though won't you? Given that you are part of the EU. Though we still don't fully know what sanctions will be placed on the EU. A slow China might not be good for you either.

There is also something else that could affect us both, that being Trumps plans to reduce corporate tax. If the US lowers tax rates even further than it already has that's going to put even more pressure on the rest of the world to do the same to stop business relocating to the US.

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 >>/52586/
Sounds like it is have to be a balancing act.
That green energy thing: perhaps setting up solar farms in the desert. But then that's liek 90% Chinese imports. The hardware I mean.

> Hungary will also be negatively impacted by sanctions too though won't you? Given that you are part of the EU.
According to this thing US is a fairly large export destination for the Hungary, almost 4%. Well it was before the war, would be nice to see fresh data. But whatever happens it will have an impact.

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Two years late that I'm posting this, but perhaps all politics thread OP should include it. From where I see this, basically this standpoint is quite prevalent among politicians, except they careful not saying it.
Is she a brave soul to came out this openly? I doubt, probably she knows very well nothing can harm her. So basically this is just a hücpe.
She's foreign minister of Germany.

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Romanian presidential election is heading towards a potentially spicy result.
The neighbours held their presidential election last Sunday, normal schedule, happens every 5 years. It's a fairly important position, since their system is apparently a semi-presidential, their head of state holds some executive powers, and not just a figurehead, who signs the laws.
If a candidate gets 50%+1 votes, then he wins, if not the two top supported candidate will race for the office in a second round. And ofc last Sunday they failed to get a decisive result. So the two candidates are:
1. with 22.94% Calin Georgescu is the leading candidate;
2. Elena Lasconi with 19.18% is the second.

According to Politico:
https://www.politico.eu/article/calin-georgescu-romania-elections-far-right-tiktok-nato-skeptic-russia-ukraine-exports/
...Calin Georgescu is
> A Russia-supporting vaccine skeptic who praises his country’s WWII fascist leaders
Hilarious.
The authors (it needed three guys to write it! lol) of the article really like the word "skeptic":
> a far-right, NATO-skeptic Russia fan,
And even when writing about his sportsmanship we get:
> Georgescu was shown barely breaking a sweat on the running track, flipping opponents in judo — à la Putin
And they give a summary about him at the "Fascist and Communist" heading:
- he said the 1989 revolution was a coup he is right tho
- The West enslaved Romania
- Antonescu and Codreanu were heroes
- he is a conspiracy theorist who denied covid
- strong on Orthodox Christian tunes
Anyway. What I gather from this article that Western leftlib media really wants to paint him in a certain light, and considering noone ever heard of him (outside Romania), they want to give a package what the readers have to think about him.
He runs as an independent with no apparent campaign, he is popular on TikTok, had appearences with Andrew Tate. I think the article points it out correctly that his relative success is the result of the failure of the current traditional parties of Romania, government and opposition both.
What I have against him, that I suspect he has no good opinion about Hungarians. But if he'd win and worked along with our Fidesz govt, it would be okay. I dunno, I really should hear out couple of Székelys what they think.

Elena Lasconi is way less interesting. Member and leader of the third largest party in the parliament, the Save Romania Union (USR). I think they are more like a classic liberal party, similar to Macron's. They have some notion of supporting anti-corruption measures, and small farmers - okay I guess -, and they seem to align much with EU centralization and NATO yes-manning.
I think she will win, the rest of the parties will ask their supporters to vote for her, and she'll get the majority I think with over 30% of the votes while Georgescu will remain in the 20s, since in second round that is enough.

Note: turnaround was 52.56% - and we yet to know the turnaround of the US election...

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Keep postponing to write about this.
Since the International Criminal Court issue an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu our politicians did statements that cast judgement on the ruling, calling it from concerning to scandalous. Considering how strong the Jewish lobby on the Hungary this had to come as a surprise to noone. Those who ignore the impact of Israel on Hungary's foreign politics, they won't understand our relations at all.
Interesting article by NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/world/middleeast/netanyahu-orban-icc-hungary-israel.html
This quotes one of the media statements:
> The arrest warrant against the Israeli leader, Mr. Orban told Kossuth Radio, was “fundamentally wrong” and an “outrageously brazen” political decision that would only lead to “the discrediting of international law” and “add fuel to the flames” of conflict in the Middle East.
Also rightfully notes:
> the Hungarian leader has been one of Israel’s most stalwart allies in Europe
However this is a horribly false view:
> Mr. Orban’s defiance of the I.C.C. as a “continuation and expansion of his anti-establishment logic”
Even opposition here wouldn defy the ICC. It's not the result of going against the grain, and a mistake to lump it with the other contrarian behaviour.
Some stuff about Germany:
> Many are supporters of the court in general, but also allies of Israel.
> This is particularly true for Germany, where a desire to separate itself from the horrors of the Holocaust during Nazi rule has made it wary of criticizing Israel and its leaders.
Citing the instilled collective guilt this openly in one of the most notable newspaper... that's really something.
> One of the countries clearly promising to enforce the arrest warrant should Mr. Netanyahu visit was Slovenia, which in June officially recognized a Palestinian state.
Slobenia, yuo are nazi!

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Wanted to write about the crisis of the French government, after the commie coalition partner paired up with Le Pen's party for a vote of non confidence against the PM who only reigned since September after the previous government collapsed in June and Macron wanted to express with an election how the governing coalition is strong but turned out to be weak and they ended up forming a coalition with the commies instead of Le Pen... phew...
But I opened up Politico and saw so many hilarious headlines.

Romanian election, ruling elite shat itself from the result and made the constitutional court to cancel it. The explanation: Putin hacked the election with TikTok.
https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-court-cancels-presidential-election-runoff-tiktok-russian-influence-calin-georgescu/
> The unexpected ruling risks destabilizing Romania, a strategically important NATO member 
Romania is a great springboard to reach Odessa quick for NATO. And also a great springboard to quickly push north to create a NATO controlled zone in western Ukraine. With a destabilized country would be NATO maneuvers more or less easy?
The award for most retarded take goes to George Simion, far-right AUR party leader:
> Shame!!! Coup d’état in full swing, [...] We are not taking to the streets, we will not be provoked. This system must fall democratically!
1. How is this a coup?
2. "we are outraged but we won't show it"
3. demonstrations are part of democracy
4. implications they could overthrow the government with demonstration...
Really he just wanted to say they can't do shit so they won't do shit, but "look at us we are outraged".

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This year I heard lots of talks about how cheap and unregulated Sudaca agricultural products kills EU farmers who have to comply to EU regulations which inflates their expenses. Here's the latest bomb from dear Ursula von der Leyen.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-mercosur-countries-seal-controversial-trade-deal/
> The agreement [...] would create a free-trade zone spanning more than 700 million people
> opposed by France, which fears that a glut of cheap poultry and beef imports would undercut its farmers.
> Germany, on the contrary, wanted Brussels to seize the opportunity to open new markets for its flagging exporters. [...] “This agreement will provide an urgently-needed growth impulse for the German and European economy.”
What the EU will sell to South America? Tractors? Bullwhips?
Btw German ministry of agriculture is very anti-German agriculture who wants to kill farting cows in Germany and beef production. Btw...

Former European Justice Commissioner laundered money. Wow these Western Euros are not corrupt at all and they totally preach from the high ground to us corrupt Eastern Euros.
https://www.politico.eu/article/euros-cash-european-justic-didier-reynders-money-laundering-belgian-national-lottery/

More truck of peace on Xmas market in Germany.
https://www.politico.eu/article/terror-attack-bavaria-christmas-market-foiled-terrorism-isis-islamic-state-extremism-far-right-police/

EU is financing Russia's war against Ukraine.
Basically EU is buying more and more refined oil products from India. India imports more and more crude oil from Russia. The result of the equation: EU is buying more and more oil from Russia.
pdf related
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-vladimir-putin-russia-fuel-imports-india-war-in-ukraine-price-cap-sanction/
My question is: who is the buyer of that oil? Which countries?

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Lastly.
Hungarian intelligence service gathered info on EU investigators who were looking into the finances of Orbán's son-in-law's company. In 2015-2017.
https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-viktor-orban-cia-spy-wiretap-hack-laptop-eu-officials-information-office-budapest-olaf/
Essentially they investigated the use of EU funds, and how they disappear somewhere in the family of Orbán. Meanwhile the IH (the Information Office) investigated them and their findings. They wiretapped them, searched their hotel rooms, shadowed them, and such.
Then in 2018 after the new government formed, our foreign minister (Szijjártó), launched an investigation with the help of the interior ministry into the investigation of the IH! A group of 20 investigators invaded the building of the IH, searched the documents and databases, interrogated the glowies working there. They cited general screening, but they were looking for that specific case. They found little, it seems the original spying went on the down low, they did "white paper" reports, and these weren't filed as any other document. I doubt we'll ever know what was in there.
The local director of Transparency International says it doesn't matter where we look the investigation what the IH did on the EU officials, it was illegal. From his reasoning (which I won't translate I lack judicial jargon) he might just be right.
> Contacted by POLITICO, Bertalan Havasi, press chief of Orbán’s office, said: “We are not dealing with fake news reports.”
Classic. Just recently I read the same quite from an Trump lackey when he was approached by Reuters.

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Hohoho.
Scholz failed his no confidence vote. Germany's government is  past tense.
You know, Bernd, it is really reassuring that the two largest economies, and essentially the core of the EU, don't have a stable government. Actually they don't have governments at all.
Early election in February 23rd. I bet the "moderate" parties will do everything so the AfD is left out from the government, despite they are growing into one of the major parties.
Beside them on the left, perhaps radical left another group grows, whom also have anti-immigration notions, and even hit "EU skeptic" tones - their success is not being the AfD because many Germans shy away from the Nazi label.

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-olaf-scholz-lose-historic-confidence-vote/

 >>/52671/
> Scholz failed his no confidence vote. Germany's government is past tense.
This one was surprising to me though. I was not expecting that to happen.

 >>/52672/
His govt. cracked in half can't govern effectively from minority. If they voted him confidence that would meant he can have majority support in the Reichstag Bundestag, at least occasionally. And his work could have continued. That was denied from him the other day.

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Listening Orbán's intro for the end year press conference. So this is just him talking, not replying to questions.
He opens with three points:
1. the Hungarian EU presidency is ending soon, evaluation;
2. the situation of Hungarian and EU politics after the US presidential elections;
3. decisions the Hungarian govt. took and will influence the plans for 2025.
But all before he expresses our condolences towards the families of the victims of the Magdeburg terror attack and to the German people, "we are with them". He says such events happens now on all the Christmases, as if run on by a timetable. These events only happen since Europe is hit by a migrant crisis. Some still deny it or don't see it, but that there is a connection, a causation between migration and the attacks.

1. Hungarian presidency
EU had a summit this week, where they said we have a "successful presidency" behind us. Lots of work was put into this. We already had a presidency, had to put more work now into it. Hungary is/was very isolated in this half a year. But at the end even our opponents congratulated for the work done.
1a. War
We had no room for maneuver.
In the EU there is a deep difference between opinions what should be the strategy of the EU in the Russo-Ukrainian War. One side - which has the overwhelming majority, and their will is enforced right now - says that the war is Europe's war too, as they call it "our war as well". Luckily they don't include us into the "our" - Orbán adds. They say it's a European war and we have to participate, only the way of participation is under debated - what to send, what not, when to send, how much to send. The other opinion is ours: this is not our war. This is a war of brothers between Slavic nations, and we should isolate, and not jump into it, and escalate it with out participation. This difference between opinion is in the European public thinking since the breakout of the war.
Since as president we could only express common EU opinions, our hands were tied. Despite this we could do peace mission which we separated from the presidency. I think they did not separate it.
1b. the question of Schengen Area
Schengen Area divides the EU into full and not actually full members. Bulgaria and Romania was outside of it and they could feel they weren't full members. For 10-13 years the expansion of the Schengen Area was blocked, can be known by which countries when and for what reasons, but this "blockade" was resolved with lots of negotiations. The two aforementioned countries will join now. Life becomes very different now for them, and for Hungary as well, since we are on the border of Schengen.
Now Hungary can move border guards and police away from the Romanian border.
1c. The worsening EU competitiveness
The Dragi report describes the situation quite radically. The Hungarian presidency led the creation of a document called Pact of Competitiveness, which is a plan to stop the decline, and reverse the process. Generally these types of "pacts" only touch typically leftist issues, such as social or climate problems, far from capitalism. It is really hard to create a consensus in a lefty Europe in questions of market, capital, investment, efficiency - so we are proud we managed.
1d. the outlook of the EU agriculture after 2027
Another 7 year cycle starts then. Huge funding goes into it, and negotiations and debates already started behind the scenes. Al 27 ministries of agriculture made an agreement on how the future should look like. This doesn't mean that debates end, they start now in earnest, but now everyone can see what are we debating about, and what goals we want to reach.
So as for the EU presidency, all in all it is worth to pick fights, and struggle, because results are showing.

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2. US presidential election
Is there a new life after the US election? In Brussels they think: there is none. He says he experienced that in Brussels they behave nothing changed, they do what they did up until now, and continue. European elite did not noticed anything - he says legally this is right, since Trump is not sworn in yet. He noted the promised tariffs.
Europe should realize we will live in a new world, the Western approach to migration, family, traditional values, gender problems will change drastically. Economic ties will change, the view of the war will change, and the sanctions against Russia as well. He says we will move from war times into the period of peace. We are glad about it. We, Hungary can only lose on war. This is why we gave all the humanitarian help to Ukraine, but did not sent weapon. We secured the entry of 1.5 million Ukrainian citizen, most of them crossed the country, freshest data says 80 thousand live still here. We helped Ukraine with energy, electricity, training of doctors, saving of lives, and we continuously giving peace suggestions, right now there is a Hungarian suggestion on the table for cease fire and exchange of prisoners.
The war has economical impact, war means war economy as well. He says we can close this now and a new era can come. War can end, peace can begin. With the peace the embargo that plagues the European economy can end. The sanctions have to be lifted as much as possible. If this is managed successfully, the period of inflation will end as well, economic boom can start and prosperity can return to Europe.
We represent this standpoint in the EU debates. We always hit wall for now, because only a few small countries see this similarly, all the big players not recognized this yet. The majority block in the EU Parliament made a pact to keep everything how it is now as long as possible, and they decided to pressure all the countries to accept that in the next 5 years they all pay the GDP's 0.25% into the coffers for Ukraine's war support. According to us this point now is superseded, this is the past, we should talk about the next step. We should decide instead how to put this money not into the prolongation of the war, but into its closing, we should invest in the peace.
The US presidential election is in accord with the change in the EU Parliament and formation of the Patriots group (Patriots for Europe, PfE). All the offices were denied from the members, and now the liberal Brussels elite has an opposition in the Patriots (and with them, us).
Meanwhile we are punished with a €1 million per day because we defend the borders and don't let migrants into the EU.

3. Outlook and plans
We had another "national consultation".
If Bernd doesn't know what is this, it's liek an opinion research, they plan a number of questions with prepared answers, and they mail it to citizens, who can fill out the form and mail it back. The questions and answers are written in a way, that no man in his right mind would disagree with the answers that supports the Fidesz' opinion. An exaggerated example: "Do you want more money? 1. Yes. 2. No, in fact we want to pay more!" This opinion polling is used as a legitimization tool by Orbán and our govt. and it replaces plebiscites.
He says the participation shows that people want to be involved. He says this "national consultation" is always criticized, but for "us" it is important.
He lists some domestic economic measurements the govt took/takes. I won't type 'em in. No consequence for Bernd.

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So while EU is preparing to enact tariffs on cars manufactured in China one of the Chinese companies, the BYD Auto, opens a factory on the Hungary. They'll employ ~10K people with €1800-2000 average salary which is a pretty good number hereabout. They're gonna produce electric and hybrid cars. BYD has an electric bus assembly plant in the country already.
I heard gossips about opening new factory(ies) for a while now, but this is the first actual news with concrete facts.
This has the obvious advantage of the cars being manufactured within the EU so no tariffs on them. Probably can't manufacture as much as China does at home, but it's just a first plant, perhaps they'll open more in other EU countries. Northern Hungary, Czechia, Poland, Croatia, Romania, perhaps even the Baltics would welcome them I'm sure if they see benefits from this example here.
https://index.hu/gazdasag/2024/12/29/kina-byd-szeged-kecskemet-fizetes-nyelvtanulas/

On a related note, how much more Chinese surveillance will find their way into our country?

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Hah, Wikipee.
This is their production outside China. I'm pretty sure their factory here won't produce 150K yearly.

Listening to this:
Rhetoric vs Reality: The Geopolitical World in the Age of Trump
by Michael Rossi
https://youtube.com/watch?v=g34fXJJAdiM
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=g34fXJJAdiM
Posted three weeks ago, so quite some water flowed down the Danube since, but still (there is still no meeting between Trump and Putin, so his intro is still valid).

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> [...] if you can really tell me who is the new leader of Europe today, I mean I'm willing to, you know, hear you out, but if your answer is Emanuel Macron, I got some bad news for you. If he is the best you can think of, Europe is in sort of dire straits these days

:^)

The screenshot he uses is obviously from twitter, but I found part of the quote in an article, about the Israel-Hamas war.
https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-hamas-war-europe-eu-power-irrelevance/

Listening the Trump speech in the Congress. Mostly it's airy bullshit, but this:
> You should be hired and promoted based on skill and competence

How people anywhere in the world can't agree with this statement? This is such a nobrainer. Ofc reality doesn't work like this (see nepotism and cronyism) but the notion should be universally accepted.

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> Governor

Ebin banter.
Can view his truths here, no need to sign up or anything:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump

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Quick post. I hope this will upload.
Interesting thoughts from this Infantryman: Total Democracy.
Assume along the lines of totalitarian dictatorship. I actually searched a bit and found two essays on democracies "defending" democracy by banning/silencing political opponents.
I might reflect on this sometimes.

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It is customary to create an even lamer Hungarian version of lame western products and services and whatnot.
The Fidesz-aligned Századvég Foundation founded by a minister of the first Orbán government 1998-2002  opened a fact-checker website, first in the country. Now they claim control over the facts and the correct interpretation of them.
They say they don't just fact check, but also offer a "barometer" which shows if a statemen, an article is "factual", "partially factual", or false. And the example was that the opposition said that the birth rates are low despite what the government say how their family supporting measures are successful. According to the fact-checkers this statement is partially true because the correct thing to state would have been: birth rates are low since the 70s...
So yeah. They are taking over the propaganda-control idea of the left-libs of the USA. I bet previously they published articles and did statements about their blatant fact falsifying technique.

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 >>/54153/
Three main thoughts he has:
1. total democracy
2. woke imperialism
3. might not makes right, but morals don't win wars

1. Basically limiting democracy in the name of democracy. Especially in the name of liberal democracy. Banning parties, restricting speech, labeling political opponents, arresting them.
Not without precedent. From the top of my head in ancient Athens it happened they declared politicians as enemy of their polity and democracy (labeled them as tyrannos) initiated ostrakismos against them. I bet there are other examples, from various republics, like Rome, tho they weren't actually democracies (they were oligarchies).

2. Western institutions exerting cultural and ideological domination over other sovereign nations, trying to influence their social policies towards what Westerners think is right.
How I see it, this is the global scope of #1, total democracy applied in foreign politics. It is essentially the same, labeling opponents as something undesirable, and punishing them, trying to silence and ostracize them.
I think the root can be found in the Liberal school of thought of international relations - but explained by Constructivism. I'd suggest Matt (and ofc, Bernd) to get Introduction To International Relations by Oxford University Press (2022 is the latest I think), or for a quick reference Michael Rossi's videos, here's playlist, look for Liberalism and Constructivism:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCFS2rj-qIVZLbIVLrUx8cXEDAn4RgGVB
He gives really good explanations.

3. Good quote: "we are morally right - therefore we shall win"
They (western - typically left-liberal - politicians, thinkers, and their main audience) live in a Lord of the Rings fantasy, and ignore that in a conflict all sides consider themselves morally right (probably even Sauron did), they disregard objective truths like firepower superiority, and shoot themselves in the foot if they lose, since that should prove them that they were wrong (since they lost).

 >>/54169/
Some stuff to add.
Quick sum of Constructivism:
How states (and other participants) behave in international relations stem from their view of themselves and the others. How they see themselves, how they see others.
So we can observe me adding this liberals see themselves as the morally right, the champions of freedom, democracy, and socio-economic welfare. They see others as dictators, oppressors, racists, imperialists, slavers, ethnic cleansers, etc. Danger in short. And no matter how awful those regimes are which liberals support all around the world they'll find a way to spin the narration to their favor.

As for liberalism in international relations. For liberals states - and indeed nations - are things of the past. For them states are surpassed and they should not exist. They say the actors of international relations are institutions, companies, and even individuals. In their mind they already live in this world, so it is natural for them, that while they live and are citizens in country X, they feel they have the right to tell the citizens of Y country what to think and how to behave. They see themselves as citizens of the world, a cosmopolitan.
I want to refer to my Theory of Power, you can find it somewhere on these pages if you look hard enough. People want more power and keep power reminder: power is the ability to make decisions. So liberals are all for freedom while they want others to share the power with them, but when they get into the position of power they turn authoritarian. They want to tell others what to think and do. Simple. There is a tyrant within every liberal.
Liberals are very militant and belligerent. Unlike Realists the classic school of international relations, who are pragmatists essentially, Liberals have an ideological and emotional bias, they feel right and they feel very strong about it. Liberals in international relations will seek out differences with others and they will clash with them about it. Realists who see interests and are willing to compromise are way, way less belligerent.
Liberals also believe in democratic peace theory. They believe democracies don't war each other. If they see the living example which refutes, dispels this flawed opinion, they will argue that one side (whom they label as aggressor) is not a real democracy. That is usually a liberal democracy.
Moreover they feel justified by democratic peace theory to launch and provoke wars against those whom they consider enemies. They want to turn them to democracies "democracies" to achieve this global peace.

 >>/54172/
I think to finish this, I want to add examples of individual actors in foreign politics.
Think of Elon Musk offering Starlink to Ukraine. He is a private person who mobilized the resources of his companies to intervene in a war of two states.
Or that tard who banned Russian IPs to download his software which was necessary to some crap, I don't recall the exact detalis anymore.
Institutions are more obvious: UN, NATO, EU, BRICS, etc.

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Greenland held election, the great question was if they should secede from Denmark or not. Poor sods, little they know they are rightfully Turkish.
I feel this question of independence isn't really a question, since all but the smallest party is unionist. Apparently the current winner, the Demokraatit is also pro-independence, except they wish to take gradual steps in that direction, whatever that is.

Thing to know: Greenland is an autonomous region of Denmark, they have their own legislative and executive branches. Not sure about judicial one. Anyway they are quite independent and basically share head of state with Denmark, the Danish king. Should we call this a personal union?

31 seats in their parliament, and here's the result:
Demokraatit - 10 seats - gradual independence, liberals
Naleraq - 8 seats - pro-independence, orange populist
Inuit Ataqatigiit - 7 seats - pro-independence, soc-dems
Siumut - 4 seats - pro-independence, soc-dems
Atassut - 2 seats - unionist, conservatives

They need 16 seats for majority, I guess if the Dems want a balance they could involve the two smallest parties. I don't think there is any real difference between any of these parties, just shades of the same. The labels I wrote above feel quite "generous".

The spice of the election was Trump and his rhetoric of taking Greenland. I'm not sure if any of these would want a union with US after they left Denmark.
But I do see them making a deal, US getting basing rights if they don't have already. If they do have one perhaps some expansion of that.

What a travesty.
Our government is initiating a "opinion expressing vote" about Ukraine's EU membership. They don't do a proper plebiscite, a referendum, but an advisory caricature of the institution which has no legal background in our Constitution, it specifically talks about only binding ones.
The Fidesz govt. made extensive use of this so called national consultations I already wrote about, where they send a list of loaded questions to the citizens who should fill the form and send it back to them. Now they take this one step further. I highly suspect they will twist the actual question Do you want Ukraine in the EU?/Do you agree to take Ukraine into EU?/Do you agree to give Ukraine EU membership? - or something similar that make you look like crazy if you want Ukraine in the EU.
We are further and further to actually have a say in our politics, and people are getting used to it.

 >>/54174/
> secede from Denmark
This sounds like a collective joke. Nobody seriously believes Greenland can survive on its own as a sovereign state. Maybe if they ejected all of Denmark's privileges while still receiving Danish subsidies.

 >>/54186/
I assume that's where the blonde prince on white horse from Washington would swoop in with the basing rights offers and whatnot.

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So Marine Le Pen was banned from running for presidency in 2027.
Banning prez candidates is the new black. Perhaps Ukraine is Second France, but France is Second Romania is Ukraine Third Romania now?
tl;dr
She got EU funds to pay EU staff for her EU parliamentary membership. She payed staff for her French party who did little to no work related to EU. Essentially this is embezzlement.
She got 4 years of prison, 2 she'll spend in house arrest with ankle monitor on, 2 was suspended. And as a bonus she was banned from politics.
Oh this sentence is just as long so she can't run for the presidency. Oh well, coincidences.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250331-france-s-le-pen-faces-verdict-that-could-end-presidential-hopes

So.
1. What I don't understand. We have this thing that legislative members and such has immunity. And not just Hungary, Netanyahu can't be prosecuted for decades now for the same reason. What's up with this?
2. I assume this was the "court of first instance" or whatever it is called in English. They appeal against the decision.
3. This is feeding munitions to Russia. When criticized for Georgia, or the Donbas, Russia could point to Kosovo and said: USA does the same. Now when criticized for not being democratic, Moscow can just point to France or Romania and say: EU ain't really democratic either.

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Now. About the aforementioned corrupt politician.
Netanyahu arrived to Hungary for a lengthy visit, he stays till Sunday.
Weird tho. They said he's gonna arrive on Wednesday evening. And then the story is now that he arrived this morning. On the other hand the photo was done in dark. Did he arrive during the night? Before dawn?
The spicy thing is that the International Criminal Court has an arrest warrant against him, and despite Hungary participates in that our govt. denied to do such thing.
https://magyarnemzet.hu/kulfold/2025/04/netanjahu-budapesti-latogatasa

Anyway what is he doing here? He won't just talk to Orbán this much we know. I assume he'll meet various representatives of the local Jews and I expect some meetings with EU officials, I assume they'll come here too. Bibi hasn't been in the EU for quite a while, over ten year or so. Relations strained, all these nonsense about the Palestinians, you know.
Our news says nothing, they make big fuss about traffic restrictions, some roads will be barred.
https://dailynewshungary.com/israeli-pm-netanyahus-four-day-visit-to-budapest-huge-traffic-restrictions-icc-arrest-warrant/

Trying to find the Orbán-Netanyahu press conference. There are quite a few long ones. Dl'd an over 3 hours long video and even that's cut.
And I'm not sure the language. Do they speak Hungarian and Hebrew? I found a 4 minute slice, Bibi talks in English.
I don't have the time now, but I'll try today.
I know from the news that we announced Hungary's exit from ICC. Does this mean Putin will visit too? Trump meets Putin on the Hungary would be a banger.

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It's kinda hard to assess what Netanyahu's visit was about.
He visited the shoes at the Danube ofc, Holocaust is always part of the ritual, and I assume he met the representatives of various Jewish/Israelite communities of the Hungary, I did found any mentions in the news about this, but it feels like a given.
Articles write about a phone call, between him, Orbán, and Trump, and they note he flew straight to Washington from here, to talk about the new tariffs of Trump.
But here he gave a speech at a university, talked to Orbán, and met with our foreign minister with his delegation.
What were the topics? Beyond our exit from the International Criminal Court.
Economy and security for sure. As Bibi said: Israel needed a strong economy and strong military to stay alive.
I heard/read mentions about car industry, Israeli companies on the Hungary and the thousands of jobs they offer, and tourism.
As for security, Szijjártó, our foreign minister, said that security is a technological challenge these days. No details. So here's couple of assumptions:
I assume our govt. buys more snoop tech from Israel and will use it against Hungarian population in the name of "rising anti-semitism in Europe cause by illegal migration". After all they were the ones who acquired and used a spyware Pegasus by NSO Group to wiretap journalists, businessmen and related persons.
Just recently, a month ago perhaps, bomb threats were sent to over 250 schools in email. Long drivel about Allah and such. I'm sure they want to read emails and check logins and whatever.
And ofc we have to remember the explosives beepers were assembled on the Hungary...
Lotsa stuff to cooperate about in the future. I'm sure these things will get more ridiculous by the day.

One thing have to be noted.
This political alignment of conservative populist leaders. A French news source pointed out that both Orbán and Bibi are looking for allies, since both are fairly isolated. And for sure the "right wingers, unite" tune is popular these days. Trump rounding up the Trio. We host a CPAC conference in each year now. And within the EU too, see the formation of the Patriots group the European Parliament. And all these "hardliner" "far-right" parties are very much anti-muslim, anti-immigrant, but pro-Israel types. But I don't see how the other arm of the horseshoe, the leftists and liberals are against Israel, beyond lukewarm sympathy towards the Palestinians. Not Sholz, nor Macron would arrest Bibi if he visited their country.

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Reading U.S. Foreign Policy in Perspective: Clients, enemies and empire (by David Sylvan and Stephen Majeski) these days, I already recommended it on various boards, and usually post picrel too. I really should write  up a series posts about it, but so many ways to approach this, seems like a complex task, and I'm not the most active these days.
We'll see. It could be a good to really engrave it into the brain.

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 >>/54223/
The book has a companion website which features "intervention" cases, basically examples of US foreign policy actions. The book itself features others. These examples demonstrate how US acts and what policies it has.
https://www.us-foreign-policy-perspective.org/

So.
Since the Spanish-American War of 1898 the United States started to build her client empire. The book was published in 2008, but the list of clients they give is dated to 2005. Since then 20 years passed and I'm sure some changes happened, like the failure and withdrawal in Afghanistan, or that Hungary got on the list too.
Picrels show four points in time how this client empire grew.
Here's the list:
Africa: Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia. It's not a lot, but most countries there are clients of US clients', such as France. This is a multi-level clientèle.
The Americas and related islands: all but Cuba. I wonder how they'd rank Venezuela these days.
Europe: Austria, B&H, BeNeLux, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK. Long list of non clients, I assume that list got shorter.
Middle East and North Africa: Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates. Noteworthy: Lebanon was on the list for a while back.
Caucasus, Central and South Asia: Afghanistan, Pakistan. The first one is not anymore obviously.
Asia Pacific: Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, New Zealand, Palau, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand.

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 >>/54224/
So what's this client empire?
Traditionally an empire conquers and annexes new clay to grow. But not always. Even Rome had some Greek polities as clients in Hellas. Before incorporating them into the empire, but still. The British colonial empire was similar to this important to note: clients aren't colonies, they organized new states subordinated to Great Britain, instead of annexing them. Another example is the contemporary Franceafrique.
A client is not simply a tributary, who pays tax to their bully. A client's regime regime =/= leadership, regime is the system, the people running it can and do change consciously agrees to be subjected to the surveillance of the patron, who gives them advice, helps keeping the regime in power through maintenance and if necessary intervention. Important to note: clients don't have to follow the advice, tho the patron might pressure them into doing how they were told. In the British colonial empire there wasn't any choice, there were officials - I think the Brits called them "inspectors" - whom when they said something it was expected the colony to obey.
What the patron gets in return? In Realpolitik terms the patron state gets to raise power and security, the two things it concerns with. Essentially clients help the US to project her power all over the globe. If we view it in more liberal sense, then we can say the US state does what a state should: create opportunities for its citizens and the companies of the citizens all over the world, it ensures that they can conduct their business safe and free. The patron expects the client to keep the patron's interests in mind.
The patron relies on the clients, draw on their resources, be it economical, political, or militarily. Of course it is often not granted (just as listening to the advice), but they always can get an open door and mind to negotiate. The US relies on the clients to get aid to other clients, or use them as a proxy force in conflicts, or to bully enemies with embargo, or strengthening Washington's voice in questions of international politics.
I think we can describe the position of a client as closer than an ally, but farther than a colony. And this is to that particular one way surveillance the patron does, the client has nothing similar to that.

picrel
French foreign legion embarks to intervene in Zaire in 1978. The US had barely anything to do with the conflict, according to the book:
> Morocco stepped into the breach, sending a 1,500-man paratroop brigade, assisted by Egyptian pilots and mechanics, paid for by Saudi Arabia, and flown in by France, which added additional weapons and paramilitary advisers.

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 >>/54225/
In general three federal executive departments are busy with building this client empire:
1. State
2. Treasury
3. Defense
For certain tasks other departments might get involved, but these three runs the institutions runs the bureaucratic structure that does the surveillance, writes the reports on other states, suggests policy instruments to deploy, and does the maintenance.
In the international relations the US busy herself with three things:
1. opposing enemies;
2. taking on new clients;
3. maintain clients;
One would think that interacting with "neutral" states is way more prominent. But apparently not. Basically the fact that like half of all the countries are US clients, and a large chunk is the clients of clients, and then there are the enemies and the clients of the enemies... By now barely any "neutral" countries left, even less to worry about them.
Tho it wasn't like that in 1898 when they started out. But the book doesn't tell us how the US dealt with countries in their sovereign times, like France. Although the mindset, the "clientelist ideology" - how the book calls it - comes natural for all the diplomats, elites, and even to the general populace, it evolved gradually. I suppose it had an opportunist nature until all the policy tools which are available today formed.

picrel
One of the oldest client. Along with Cuba, but Cuba ain't a client no more.

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 >>/54232/
What are the ways the US acquires new clients? The book gives the following "contexts" country acquisitions fall within:
- post-occupation;
- switching;
- danger;
- prewar planning;
- postwar planning;
- special access.

Post-occupation
Oldest and simplest. US fights a war, occupies some land, releases them as a new client state. Cuba is the OG example (see the Platt Amendment), which was a client between 1902 and 1959. Most recent was Afghanistan, 2001-2021, except when the US troops left, the country ceased to be a client.

Switching
When an enemy state goes through such a fundamental change, without being occupied by US troops still the US might have something to do with that change, that the new regime accepts the US as its patron.
Iran, 1953-79, with the help of CIA a coup removed the PM.

Danger
US officials perceive a country to be in some kind of a danger and the US has to swoop in and help out. The British client, Greece was in the danger of a communist takeover in a civil war (1946-49), the Brits had to abandon them, so the US stepped in with economic and military aid, effectively starting in 1947. With the same swoop they acquired Turkey as well, for the same reason: they feared Turkey will get in the hands of communists - so Turkey was US client 2 years before NATO was created. Also see the Greek and Turkish Assistance Act.

Prewar planning
Pre- and postwar planning is one group in the book I took 'em apart for readability. Both decides the fate of whole regions.
The US officials see that a military conflict is coming up, so they get clients as part of the preparations, to gain strategic advantages and deny these from the enemies ahead. Pre-WWII Latin America except Argentina, 1939-40. And Canada too.

Postwar planning
War is over have to decide how the peace will look like. Plethora of Western Euro countries after WWII (1948), depleted, fatigued, destroyed. Argentine too (1946) - although it was the same agreement as the other Sudacas got.

Special access
This access is "access to Washington policy makers". These countries falling in this category has some special ties to Washington, either due to lobbying or various historical circumstances. Half a dozen countries are in this list. Ofc, Bernd might have guessed it, Israel is one of them (1948). Saudi Arabia might not be surprising (1953), but Poland might be (1998).

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 >>/54236/
The Platt Amendment is quite interesting. Full text here:
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/platt-amendment
It was named after the Chairman of the Cuban Relations Committee, senator Oliver H. Platt (from Connecticut), and was accepted first in 1901. It regulated the US-Cuban relations. The Cuban assembly also included it in their Constitution. Since their island was under US occupation did they really have a choice?
Anyway. The most interesting parts.
"III. That the government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the treaty of Paris on the United States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the government of Cuba."
This paragraph above essentially mirrors what the book says. The authors aren't taking these ideas out of their own arses.
"VII. That to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified points to be agreed upon with the President of the United States."
Guantanamo base sounds familiar? Having various basing rights is one major point in the US-client relations. They established this practice in the first years of client empire building.

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So they started to post the thingies for the "opinion expressing vote" mentioned here  >>/54185/
It contains a paper that says:
> Do you want Ukraine in the EU?
And to circles for yes and no to mark... and a return envelope is included.
This wole thing is just "national consultation" rebranded.
Two more papers are included that informs people about how bad would be if Ukraine joined, fake, twisted arguments, like
> oh no all the job seekers of Ukraine will take away the job from Hungarians
And the like.
Thank you Fidesz, thank you Orbán.

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Let's go back, have to continue this:  >>/54236/
I wrote the context in which the US acquires new clients. There are contexts for maintenance too. Maybe we could call these "cases".
One important thing to remember is, that decision makers don't look at a client, classify into one from the possible cases, and apply policy instruments, but reports coming in about the clients and with the reports suggestions what should be done. There is a palette of policy instruments available, decision makers apply these - based on the suggestions or later evaluations, etc, and life goes on. The authors of the book examined the clients and the applied policy instruments and they created these cases as abstractions.

From routine maintenance point of view, we can see economically deprived and wealthy clients, the US offers them economic, military and political "help". The authors use a different word depending how well of a client is. In case of poor countries it's "assistance", but with rich countries it's "contributions". I don't think the difference is in the amount of help, but in case of poorer countries, the US has to act more dirty and in a more direct but more covert fashion. For example:
In Ecuador, for example, the CIA had on its payroll in the early 1960s the chief of the intelligence and personnel departments of the national police, the vice president of the Senate, one of the leading political journalists, leaders of several political parties, a cabinet minister, the manager of one of the largest banks, labor leaders, and an important figure in the federation of university students.
Or:
In some cases, heads of state or government themselves were recipients of regular payments from the CIA. [...] regular stipends went to the leaders of Jordan ($750,000 per year to the King), Cyprus, Kenya, Zaire, Guyana, South Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, Thailand, and Panama.

picrel:
Anastasio Somoza, dictator of Nicaragua. His rise was a direct consequence of US military training programs. In some of the Caribbean countries, where the US sent her marines to intervene, they had to organize a new armed force after the military was defeated or disbanded. Nicaragua was the same. They created the National Guard, with Somoza in the helm, and he simply took the power over (with rigged election after he forced the prez to resign).

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 >>/54268/
cont.
The larger topic in maintenance is the maintenance by intervention.
Sometimes situations arise which may cause the loss of a client, so the US have to intervene. This can range from economic crises to insurgencies. In these situations Washington has to be directly involved and take over certain functionalities of the regime from the client, and has to intervene in the affairs of the client. The book defines intervention:
It involves any policy in which an activity by a regime, essential to its survival, is taken over by an outside actor.
In this case the outside actor is the US.
In the client-patron relationship the client accepts surveillance and problem solving by the patron. This ensures a presence in the internal affairs of the client states. Intervention, ie. taking over specific activities, is a step beyond of this. It's not just about providing aid (economic, political, military), which the client uses, but do stuff instead of the regime.

There are obviously non-military and military intervention situation. First the first:
1. Emergency economic assistance.
Taking over the financing of the client. The US govt. can give money directly, but most often relying on loans, from banks or other clients, or most notably for the IMF (which was set up precisely for these things it also does economic surveillance of clients). The 1995 Mexican bailout is a good example (Mexican Debt Disclosure Act of 1995).
2. Emergency covert political assistance
Typically intervening elections due to the fear that the "wrong" party will come to power. Since this is a covert activity, usually the CIA does this and finances the propaganda of the chosen parties and paying various organizations and individuals. Example Chile, they sponsored Allende's opponents, even a party which was seen drawing votes from him too.
3. Jettisoning the president
The leader of the regime loses political support in the country, and the military has to be maintained to keep the regime in power as long as the unwanted politician can be "jettisoned" to appease the masses. Example is the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos.
4. Losing the client
Compared to the previous case, in this situation the military could not be maintained, held together, to keep the regime alive. Only one example: Iran in 1978-79 when the Islamic Revolution happened. They not just failed to create a military government, but the Iranian army literally melted, 500-1000 soldiers deserted each day.

picrel:
Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran from exile in 1979 February.

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 >>/54270/
cont.
Here are the military intervention situations, these are the cases when the US takes over some of the military side of things to solve a crisis threatening to overturn the regime. When emergency arises there are other means to intervene besides sending the troops, this is the first case.
1. Emergency military aid and advisers
When the client has sufficient manpower sending equipment and advisers might just be the thing to do. Now these things they do as part of routine maintenance, the difference is in this case the US trains (via "advisers") whole units for imminent combat, in the size from battalions up to corps. 'member the NATO trained Ukrainian brigades, this is it. Advisors also can advise the high command on strategy and whatnot. 'member Ukraine? As for the equipment the ones given in routine context can take years to arrive, since usually they are produced after orders placed, in this case however the US ships from existing stocks - payments postponed or waived entirely. This also really sounds liek Ukraine, no? Anyway as the book says classic example is South Vietnam in the early 1960s, initiated by Kennedy. Another example is Nationalist China during WWII.

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 >>/54271/
cont.
In the next cases combat troops are involved. These aren't always own troops, can be a proxy's as well.
2. Competent clients: open-ended combat
When the client deemed competent enough, but the troop pool is getting emptied (by enemy attacks) the US is willing to get into a conflict where no clear end or even a victory in sight. They commit troops, even in growing fashion. One example the authors found: South Vietnam in 1965-68. The VC was annihilating battalions of the ARVN, so the US decided to take over the role of military in two provinces and fight the VC.
3. Competent clients: life preserver
The decision makers are optimistic the local military can be built up and become competent, so the US troop commitment has a near end. Sometimes they miscalculate ofc. South Korea 1950-51, when South Korea was barely more than a puppet for the US it's really interesting what they write about this. Nicaragua 1927-33, although events starts earlier. And Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom...
4. Incompetent clients: easy wins
The client is not and won't ever be competent, but the enemy is not formidable. When combat troops deployed, a relatively rapid and low-cost victory is expected. The US bothers with training and creating a local force, but it's more symbolic, they aren't really expected to do any lifting. Lebanon 1958. Zaire 1978, not to mix this up with the 1977 Moroccan (US client) intervention. In 1978 the US herself flew in French Legionnaires and and Belgian paratroopers. Then came the Moroccans again and some other African contingents.
5. Incompetent clients: basket cases
So the client is not and won't ever be competent, essentially no local forces, but the enemy is formidable. The victory is neither sure or rapid. Would the US public support sending their sons into a war like this? Nope, and the US does not send them. The US organizes proxy forces instead, covertly. Via the CIA. In Laos, 1962-73, a parallel war raged on, separate from the Vietnam conflict, between the US and North Vietnam. The communist was countered by a Hmong army, brought in from Thailand, and bombing, launched from Thai airfields.

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Now we are arrived to the point when the combat has to end and liquidating a troop deployment comes in.
Combat deployment means an escalation of the situation, since previously the country they sent the troops was either a client maintained routinely or a client maintained by non-combat intervention.
Note: as a third case it can-be a non-client where the troops are, not discussed at the maintenance topic but the process of liquidation of the deployment is fairly the same.
US decision makers very easily ramp up the efforts and commit more money, troops, support when they see they don't make progress (eg Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq), they have to arrive to the point where they decide they should stop. This point comes when the situation changes and they realize the it isn't at all how it looked like in the beginning. For example it started as a "life preserver" commitment, but it looks like an "open-ended combat" and they'd need a lot more troops but it might not be available for years. Or they are having an open-ended conflict which turns out to be a basket case, and have to set up a proxy force but it's impossible. They can escalate vertically from non-combat intervention to combat one, but they don't (can't) escalate horizontally from one combat intervention case to another.

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 >>/54273/
cont.
So the alternative is walking out. This can happen slowly or rapidly depending on how much political support (time) they have at home.
1. Political support: drawdown and negotiate
The book puts forward three usual reasons why political support for the commitment still could exist: the "rally round the flag" effect, the arguments about sunk costs, and preserving national honour - as the book puts it, the public is "susceptible" to these types of arguments. The political support allows time to maintain the combat while preparing for the US troops to withdraw and for negotiations with the enemy. It is very interesting what they write about the negotiation, I'll quote it in full in the next post. The example here is the Korean War. In 1950 November the Chinese entered, and Washington briefly entertained various ideas, including invading China and using nuclear weapons. Then it was decided they'll negotiate peace with the Chinese and decide the fate of Korea together. It took 6 months until the negotiations could start after sufficient bloodletting. And another 1,5 years until they reached peace. Well cease fire.
2. Lack of political support: rapid liquidation
This usually happens in case of small troop deployments or proxy forces. In 1982 a multinational force intervened in the Lebanese civil war, and the US found itself in escalating fire exchanges with Syria. After two American planes were shot down, both Democrats and Republicans started to demand withdrawal and in the end Reagan was pressured into doing so.
3. Military defeat
Sometimes...
As in previous cases the client faces a military problem, that elicits intervention, but in this case new or further intervention seems pointless, and they know it would make no difference. The US might intervene if they see that defeat can be postponed to later time, and perhaps situation changes during that time so it can be turned to a win, or at least leave the defeat to the next president to deal with who cares. But in the cases which fall into this category they don't even see these possibilities, now they just hope they can do a "soft landing", where they might preserve a foothold, or save, rescue some of the key members of the client regime. They hope they can salvage what's possible.
These military defeats can occur when the US not intervening, just doing routine maintenance. They see the military problem rising which will topple the client regime, but they don't lift a (military) finger. Cuba, 1958, they saw Batista is in trouble, they offered him an exile in Florida, they tried for a "third force" to step in, but was no way of leaving Castro out.
Nationalist China in the 40's was a client of US, and they intervened by sending weapons and advisors (non-combat military intervention). The 1947 communist campaign occured and they considered sending combat troops, but Washington rejected the idea, and by 1949 what they could salvage was Taiwan where the KMT had to withdraw to.

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 >>/54274/
cont.
As promised here's the quote from the book about negotiation:
the only alternative to current policy is to reduce the number of U.S. troops. Ideally, this would not be done until the client’s capabilities had been built up; to gain time for that to happen, negotiations would have to be undertaken with the enemy. In principle, the client should also be a party to these talks but as it is likely to see them as an American betrayal, the U.S. will probably to take over entirely the task of negotiations. (A consequence is that, when an agreement is reached, the U.S. has to apply great pressure to the client for it to be accepted, going so far as to contemplate a coup d’état against the country’s president.)
I see some relevance to the Ukrainian "peace negotiations", how Trump started to handle it, and how they pressured Ukraine to agree.
As for Ukraine the US does intervention there in the form of:
1. economic aid;
2. military aid via weapon transfers and advisers these advisers and "advisers" - like HIMARS crews -, advice and "advice" - like guiding rockets to targets
How much role they had in setting up the AFU as a "proxy force", I dunno, but it is a legit view to consider the conflict as a proxy war.
How I see it the war is in the phase of "Political support: drawdown and negotiate" because Washington fears a "Military defeat" situation.
This quote really hits home:
> the U.S. will probably to take over entirely the task of negotiations
...when we consider one of Trump's latest: that this won't end until him and Putin don't sit down and discuss it together.

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 >>/54274/
cont.
There is a third type of intervention group besides the non-combat and combat, the interventions against unacceptable leaders. This is the case when the US has a client regime but the leadership (usually one particular person, like a president) is not acceptable for Washington for various reasons, which we can sum up as the leader endangers the client status in some way. No ideological reasons.
Previously the book established that with an intervention the US takes over certain tasks of the regime. It occurs to me that in this case they take over the role of the constituency and choose a new leader... Tho the US not always has a say who the new leader is.
Have to stress: this is about the leader, not the regime, the regime - serving as a client for the US - is just fine.
The key question is: does the military supports the leader? Four possible cases arise.
1. Military supportive, fighting feasible: overthrow by U.S. combat forces
The US military, especially the marines were among the earliest available policy tools. They can be used when the client military supports the leader, but they are weak. Literally all the examples are from the Caribbean and Central America. Honduras 1911, Haiti 1994
2. Military supportive, fighting not feasible: long-term pressures
When the US can't just curbstomp the client's military. Might not be the question of might, but logistics, large landmass, difficult topography. Time would be a factor in this group of interventions, the US just wants to flip to another, more acceptable leader, without losing the client, and don't want to be bogged down by long campaigns, or drained by cost. So no combat troops, no coup, they stuck with the leader. Then the US essentially Cold War them, deploys economic and diplomatic tools to make their lives hard, indefinitely if it's necessary. The only two examples are Allende's Chile and Chavez' Venezuela.

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 >>/54290/
3. Military neutral: proxy forces and psychological warfare
When the military is not that interested, the US tries to turn them against the leader, corner him. They can (and do) use any policy instruments, everything short of US ground combat troops. Deny economic help, starting propaganda campaign (in the client country, at home in the US, or anywhere else), isolate the states from other countries, organize a proxy force, use bombing raids to help said proxy force. And then they do a demo of strength, send some ships with troops on deck and imply that they'll invade the country. At this point the leader resigns. Guatemala 1954, unfortunate Jacob Arbenz got on the shitlist of the United Fruit Company by enacting agrarian reforms.
4. Military opposed: coups d'état
Ah, qudetah. The optimum for the US. When the military wants the leader gone, the same person whomster the US wants to go. Nothing to do, just contact the military to do something, or encourage them, sometimes it's the military's idea to begin with. The US can give aid of course, send more arms or other materiel. But the main thing in this case to acknowledge the next leader who comes to power via the coup. Give him legitimacy. Usually the new leader(s) goes on giving a bit of arse licking to the US, to let the US know they are still the faithful servants of theirs.
Brazil, 1964, against Goulart. US sent help by ship, but the coup won just in a couple of days way before it could have arrived. Also Allende's mysterious suicide.

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 >>/54291/
cont.
For routine client maintenance I can separate three tools the US has:
1. economic assistance, advisors, often loans, from banks or multilateral ones, World Bank and IMF;
2. military assistance, basically equipping and training client militaries, sending advisors;
3. political assistance, advisors, propaganda can think of as low key as publishing nice news about the client regime in Reuters, CNN, etc regularly, telling how great relations are, and how well the client regime is doing, which the client's media can take and essentially translate; these days, especially with social media, everything is more connected then ever
For client maintenance interventions the book lists five tools (and now I'm quoting the followin):
1. emergency economic aid, mostly in the form of emergency loans and advice;
2. emergency covert political aid, mostly in the form of propaganda, material assistance to political parties, and encouragement of coups and insurrections;
3. emergency military aid;
4. U.S. ground troops;
5. proxy military forces (perhaps aided by U.S. air power).
The first three are essentially the same as above, except in a short term, quick, emergency form.

One point of the book is that the US has limited set of means to use in foreign politics. She really does.

For interventions the book gives the following summary and statistics:
Out of 89 current or former clients in 35 the US had to intervene, all in all 68 times. Certain countries seen more than one interventions. These numbers are conservative, and don't cover all the instances of emergency aids, excludes cases when the US only encouraged others to intervene, or when the actions were too covert to know about. So this is a minimum number.
From the 16 types of interventions:
- 3 emergency assistance;
- 4 combat forces;
- 5 overthrowing or jettisoning leaders;
- 2 client lost or intervention wasn't feasible;
- 2 liquidating troop deployment.
From the 68 interventions:
- 33 nonmilitary;
- 8 emergency military aid and advisers;
- 28 US or proxy combat forces.
From this 28, in 24 cases the US used her own ground combat troops overtly.

The other point the authors make is that they explain the US actions by the available tools. In many cases the US intervenes militarily, she does it because that is the available tool. The army was always something they can use to solve a certain problem, so the US policy makers take it "off the shelf" and use it.
Especially in the early days when they have little else but the marines to send into small southern neighbours. They opted with military solutions because they only had that.
In the past 100 years, since they started out, they developed new tools, such as economic assistance with IMF, or with the CIA covert operations and such. But all in all the number of tools is small.

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Polonia had presidential election on Sunday.
I think turnout was relatively high, 71,63% in the second round, and the results are close, the PiS backed Karol Nawrocki Gzegorz I beat his opponent, Rafal Trzaskowski Gzegorz II, who was the governing coalition's candidate, for 50.89% vs 49.11%.
Btw I and II aren't Roman numbers but weird Polish letters.

This is an important result I think. The previous President was also the PiS' man. In 2023 the opposition could form a government, tho the PiS got the most votes. This generated butthurt all around. Plus the new Tusk government started a... let's call it a purge... which was called unconstitutional, undemocratic and so on. I really can't judge this, I only know what I heard from Fidesz media...
Details I forgot, the PiS is considered conservative, the coalition liberal. Whatever this means in our time and age, in the EU parliament they sit with the EPP which is conservative but count as leftist now.

Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik Gzegorz III looks cute. She has nothing to do with the presidential election.

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Another sidetrack before I get back to the US client empire thingy.
I already posted about these guys once. I watch these videos on Michael Rossi's youtube channel, but I assume they can be found on the two other dude's as well. The other two being Pyotr Kurzin and James Ker-Lindsay. As they apostrophe themselves as the "two liberals and a marxist".
Listen to the segment related I want to type about, Bernd.
They talk about the US AID, and how these were spent on silly crap like tranny rights on the Afghanistan, and how third worlders don't appreciate that various Western investments are tied to the liberalization of their countries. Not just US AID aims to advance certain social changes, but IMF loans come with conditions such as they have to give rights to women or they should stop beat up gays on sight. They also point out the contrast that these countries rather accept Chinese loans, which although are used by China to push them into debt slavery, but at least they don't want to meddle with their customs, traditions, religion, and society.
Kurzin starts to get it, but Ker-Lindsay is totally oblivious to the reason why.
The ex-colonizers can't fathom that their ancestors went to the 3rd world with the mindset that they are civilized and they have every right to create colonies, exploit those lands, and enslave the population, because they are enlightened who bring the blessings of culture to those savages - and now their descendants again come with the mindset that they know better than these savages who beat up gays and oppress women and they talk down on them high and mighty from their moral high-ground. They again think of the third worlders as retarded children, acting condescending towards them.
> it's for your own good...
In contrast the Chinese are all business, simple.

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 >>/54293/
cont.
And here come the states/regimes that the US considers as enemy. The US does two things, routinely hostile activities and hostile interventions. As Bernd can see these are the inverse of routine maintenance and maintenance interventions.
Enemy can be defined as a non-client regime that deliberately chooses to oppose the US in key issues, in their foreign and domestic policies both. They are considered to be a threat for the US and her clients, physically and ideologically. Sometimes they are recently lost clients, I can describe this as if they were essentially gone through a reverse-switching  >>/54236/. The US can be real obsessive about these, think of Cuba.
Not all the wars the US wages are against enemies - not enemies in this sense at least. And not all enemies gets into a war against the US. So war isn't a real measurement of an enemy.
If we try to grab the essence what an enemy means, the book quotes a State Department "thinker" who described the Soviet Union after WWII:
our free society finds itself morally challenged by the Soviet system. No other value system is so wholly irreconcilable with ours, so implacable in its purpose to destroy ours ... and no other has the support of a great and growing center of military power.
Very picturesque.

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 >>/54313/
cont.
Routinely hostile activities aren't directed to overthrow a regime, but as the book says, they express displeasure and that the regime is somehow unfit for regular relations, too abnormal to deal with. The US does the reverse of maintenance. They hamper the target economically, militarily, politically/diplomatically. As the authors detail it:
The U.S. may withhold diplomatic recognition, block UN membership, decree or intensify a trade embargo, vote against multilateral loans, forbid normal travel by citizens of either country, offer asylum to immigrants from the enemy, attempt to restrict weapons and technology transfers, verbally support exiled opposition leaders, electronically broadcast propaganda, and, of course, denounce the enemy as illegitimate and a violator of basic norms (e.g., human rights).
Have to note, we are talking about enemy regimes. The US has nothing against the population and they try to project the idea, that the population should get rid of the regime and everything will be better. From what I've seen with the routinely hostile activities they could cause suffering in the country, like famine in North Korea North Korea is under constant embargo. They hurt the country and they say it's their fault for not ejecting that regime. The abusive partner: Why do you make me do this to you????
The US tends to utilize her client empire and international institutions (such as UN - and it's predecessor the League of Nations -, IMF, NATO, etc.) for these activities.
This is the standard way how US deals with enemies. If a country gets on the shitlist, it gets the routinely hostile treatment. If a regime decides to change their stance on an issue they differ with the US, the US takes it as a positive sign that these routinely hostile activities work (they experience it as a positive feedback), and they keep it on, or even add more. If a regime gives up all their stances then the US will label them as neutral and will try to acquire them as a client, see again  >>/54236/.
While I was reading about the hostile interventions I found a great example for routinely hostile activities: Japan from the Manchurian Incident (1931) and the invasion of Manchuria to Pearl Harbor attack (late 1941) where they effectively cornered Japan with these activities, and by choking her economically they pushed them to initiate the war with the US.

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 >>/54314/
cont.
On the other hand if actions against the regime's military seems promising the US will start a hostile intervention, overt or covert, usually depends on how internationally acceptable the enemy regime is. If they are recognized and other states have relations with them, seen as legitimate, the US will try to avoid the blowback and act from the position of plausible deniability. But if the enemy does something outrageous or the US can pin on them something (eg. human rights violation), the state becomes a pariah, then no obstacle for the US to act openly.
Note: circumstances change and depending the US can launch hostile interventions, then stop them and only run routinely hostile activities, then if circumstances allow then start another hostile intervention, etc. Routine activities and interventions can run parallel.
The chief goal of the interventions can be the overthrow of the enemy regime, but often it's forcing them to withdraw from a satellite (a client) of theirs, or a region they occupy, or stop a war against a US client, or such.

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 >>/54315/
cont.
Covert interventions. Two main questions divide these interventions: can the military detached from the regime, turn against them; and if there is an internal front or only exiles are available?
1. Coups d'état
This is different somewhat to the client coups, since in case of an enemy it's rare the US has direct ties, relation to the enemy's military. In fact they usually see that the military backs the regime, so they aren't suitable to foment a coup. So there are two situations when this can happen: if the regime just came to power, not solidified yet, or if the regime consists of a shaky coalition where the members are at odds with each other, which allows the US has some way to drive a wedge between them. Indonesia is the second type, starting in 1958 and culminated in the anti-communist massacres.
2. Punctuated military operations
These are a form of utilizing proxy forces. They organize raids with the promise of building a resistance, a guerilla activity, a rebellion, etc. If an exile or emigrant group already planning this then the US is likely to take over the organization, their training. They provide them plans, equipment, weapons, and transport. Very typical example is Albania after WWII (Operation BGFIEND). From the examples: typically these raids are huge failures, the volunteers are sent to their death, and achieve no results. However this does not stops the US to continue as long as there are people who are willing to go. The Brits are also practiced in this type of operations, in fact they got the US into the business (with Albania and some other). Frankly this really reminds me of the Krynky operation in Ukraine...
3. Aid to internal armed opposition forces
Proxy forces again, except they are in the country controlled by an enemy regime, or in a country where enemy military is present (they are occupying it or the client of theirs). Some sort of internal group has to be present, which could be propped up. In these cases the help the US can offer is either monetary or material (equipment, weapons), since training and/or organizing these movements aren't really possible. So the US acts from one step further and easier to stop and/or disassociate from these groups, if situation changes or becomes necessary. In this case the proxy will most likely claim they were sold out to the enemy. Good examples are the Kurds, who are present in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It seems they were supported on and off by the US. The book's example when they were used against Iraq in the early '70s - US got Israel and Iran to send weapons to them, and they compensated these countries for the help. And in the end US shut down relations with the Kurds. Now in Syria similar happens, they were used as proxies against ISIS, and to corner Assad (not to oppose him directly), and now they are getting abandoned in the face of Turks.

pdfrel: synopsis of bgfiend by the CIA

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 >>/54316/
cont.
Overt interventions - when the open use of US combat troops are justified, and can be widely accepted by US citizens, diplomats, the mass public.
1. Large-scale combat
If the enemy is at war, or occupies a state "illegally", and the US judges that the enemy forces are sufficiently anchored, they are too strong, this is the only option. Ground combat troops has to be deployed. Germany WWI, Germany WWII, Japan WWII are the classic. The bonus is the Soviet Union in North Korea 1950-51. The US viewed that the SU acts through a puppet, as NK was not viewed as a legit government (according to UN only SK was legitimate), the US aimed to expel the Soviet from Pyongyang.
2. Sustained and asymmetrical attacks
Bring 'em freedoms in the form of bombs. Essentially the modernized versions of sending ships to bombard enemies into submission - or as the book puts it use of airpower as an instrument of coercive diplomacy. Typically used to pressure enemy to give up some land or give up on a military campaign. "Typically" since only two examples exist: North Vietnam (1965-72) with Rolling Thunder and Operation Linebecker to get them to stop backing insurgents in South Vietnam; and Serbia (1999) to pressure them releasing Kosovo. This kind of intervention is a strategic bombing campaign to break their morale, where strategic target list is given to the military which they should hit. The effectiveness of this form of intervention is debatable. They will still use it since it is an available option.
3. Combat operations alongside local insurgent forces
If there is a local opposition to the enemy, and the enemy regime acquires the pariah status, the US props up the insurgents and also sends some type of own ground combat force in support. This is one of the oldest type of tools against enemies. Nicaragua 1909-10, a rebellion broke out against president Jose Santos Zelaya, the US supported them, and sent some forces too after Zelaya executed two US citizens who fought with the rebels.
4. Invasion by U.S. troops
This is quite new policy tool. Deployed when an enemy regime has to be overthrown, it does not occupy anything and no local proxy force is available. Grenada in 1983 and Iraq in 2003.

 >>/54308/
Hmm. I want to rephrase this. Or make it more precise.
So what choice is presented to an average 3rd world shithole like somewhere in Africa? Three power comes and each says:
West:
we give you money/help, but you have to be our bitch plus give up age old traditions such as beating up gays, oppress women, and have to chop of the peepee of little boys and dress them in girly clothing
Russia:
we give you money/help, but you have to be our bitch
China:
we give you money/help, but you have to be our bitch
So when faced the choice what would countries such as Mali pick? Hard decision.

Problem is Westerners Western liberals don't see it like this. They see themselves as good who wants to save these countries from evil Russia and China. What they can't process that they save these countries how one horny man wants to save a hot chick from another horny man...
> I want to save her from his exploitative boyfriend... for myself

> oh no chiner will own the airport and 50 meters of beach

Ben Shapiro made an interview with Orbán. It's on Orbán's youtube channel, but not on Shapiro's. Was it made for Hungarian audiences? Will he just release it later? Mystery.

 >>/54317/
Am gonna try to finish this tomorrow. There is one major way of US "liquidating" enemies. Quite surprising.

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 >>/54317/
The authors talk briefly about assassinations. Sometimes these happen, the US make attempts, some are successful some aren't, they train groups that potentially can execute these. In itself it is not a policy tool, but can be included into others. There were plans to make it institutional (create official CIA branch a "Health Alteration Committee"...) but these were discarded supposedly and they are careful that neither US Presidents and top decision makers never presented with written or explicit oral proposals.

Couple of things to close hostile interventions.
Numbers.
Covert: 7 successes - 17 failures 
- coups: 5 success vs. 3 failures
- exile raids: 1 success vs. 8 failures
- internal armed movements: 1 success vs 6 failures
Overt: 9 successes, 4 failures
- bombing: 1 success vs 1 failure the success is debatable tho
- proxy assistance: 3 success vs 2 failures
- invasions: 5 success vs 1 failure I think they lumped large-scale combats and invasions together
Summed up: from 37 hostile interventions 16 succeeded and 21 failed.
It seems overt interventions when the US herself goes into action are more successful. However there is a clear contrast between the coups and other interventions. The authors differentiate between non-military and military operations. Coups being the non-military, succeeded 5 times vs 3 failures, and all the rest are military with 11 successes and 18 failures, which means the non-military routes more often reach their goals. The book makes a point here that in client interventions again non-military responses work better. And again, the US herself has a better chance to get to the desired outcome, when they turn to use proxies.
My impression is that the US uses proxy forces either when the situation is dire, or when a proxy force is available and with low cost they can cause some inconveniences to US enemies. The US seems to not care what happens with these proxy forces. They treat them like this:
> they know the risks and they volunteered to do it, who are we to stop them, and with our help they have a better chance than without anyway so we do good to them

see picrel for more text

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 >>/54431/
Two more ways of "liquidating" enemies left
Enemies sometimes collapse by themselves (see Soviet Union), or caused by other states. Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was deposed by Vietnam (1978-79), the Kahlq regime in Afghanistan was removed by the Soviet Union. Sometimes other changes occur within a country, or with the country. In Egypt Sadat changed the game, and South Yemen disappeared when it merged with the North (1990).

picrel: Hafizullah Amin, the leader of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, probably put on ice by the KGB when the Soviet intervened.

 >>/54432/
And lastly negotiations can end enemy status.
The US negotiates with enemies all the time. In most cases it's fairly inconsequential, about details in whatever questions, and status doesn't change, they do their routinely hostile activities in the background. The US might stop intervention, or start new one if these negotiations fail. But there are notable cases when negotiations led to the end of enemy status. This usually happens when another enemy with a more immediate or larger threat arises - so when an outside pressure forces the US to stop being a hardass in certain questions, and give up from their stance, in short: to be reasonable...
In 1933 Japan became such a threat, that Washington sat down with Moscow and made a deal. Similarly the rise of the Axis in Europe, and the start of the war there motivated the US to change her stance on Mexico.
One major example is rapprochement with China, a the start of the 70s. Important example since there wasn't a new threat, since the Soviet Union - whom the US tried to isolate with this move - existed for quite a while now. What changed was how the US viewed China. They thought up a different approach to the Chinese question, they saw an opportunity and a situation which a friendlier China could fit into. So they went and made a deal. Ofc they did not do this from their good heart, but because they gained a better strategic position during the Cold War. I don't think Taiwan was happy about it (it led them out of the UN and state status) but the US had to break their eggs so they did.

picrel: Zhou Enlai, Chinese Premier under Mao, and Kissinger when the American security advisor sneaked into China from Pakistan in 1971 July.

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 >>/54433/

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 >>/54433/
There were other successful negotiations - eg. Libya and Sudan - but there were bunch of failed ones, that went on and off, they opened talks but things got derailed over and over: Cuba, Syria, Iran, North Korea. When failure occur it seems the blame is always on both sides, but it seems to me from the American side, they usually don't see the strategic advantage to see through the change. For example in case of China the whole process was supported by three consequent presidents, it was just too important. So if there is no immediate threat, then it will depend a lot on how the various power blocks within the US see the enemy and the benefits.

picrel: Muammar Gaddafi, how I see it they negotiated his weapons away, the US and Western Europe made him give up aspirations for nukes, and his chemical weapons, and then they killed him off with the Arab Spring. I bet Iran learnt a lot from this lesson.

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All in all 15 enemy regimes left that status as result of either negotiations, or by actions that the US has little to do with - so hostile interventions aren't more effective than these. Literally just waiting the enemy to collapse might be more effective than... let's say bombing them.
As the book puts it:
Since most U.S. enemies eventually leave that status (in 2008, only five states were still enemies), this calls into question the utility of hostile intervention.
And again they drive their point home, US foreign policy is means driven. They have tools to deal with situations and they apply them, no matter of the cost:
When to these considerations are added the enormous potential human costs of those interventions for both target states (combat deaths, civilian casualties, deliberate massacres) and the U.S., not to mention the budgetary implications, such operations appear even more means-driven than their client counterparts.

The book talks about the future of client-state imperialism, the possibilities if it could stop. Their conclusion is unlikely. Since the publication of the book things doesn't seem to change, if we look closer, we can see the behavioural patterns.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to see the US foreign policy in a different light, and to get some insight how it works. And how it doesn't.

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Orbán's gonna do his traditional yearly speech at Tusnádfürdő in Erdély on Saturday. Right now I think I will write something, I won't translate it, but I might give summaries of each point he talks about, as I did at least once in the past.
I'm actually curious now that Trump changed his peace tune to support Ukraine to continue the war, and the Iranian stuff, since Bibi and Orbán are great pals (and Israel has great influence on our foreign politics as well). Surely he'll talk about the Hungarian who died due to the press-gang treatment when they tried to mobilize, about migration, about Brussels, Chiner, agriculture, EU moneys to Ukraine (they are planning to give 25% of all EU subsidies to Ukraine), Ukraine's EU membership, and the Fidesz government's successes as usual.

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So, Orbán at Tusnádfürdő. I'll add my comments with italics. This will be very long, many posts, spent most of the day doing this. Not sure anyone will read. Time spent well.
Says this speech closes a governmental cycle, he's planning this speech next year will be the opening for the next governmental cycle. We're gonna have legislative election in 2026.
He wants to talk about the current events first, then dive deeper.

Says the first "current event" is the elections of next year.
No guarantees for victory, it will happen how the people decide. According to their own inside assessment that if they held election this Sunday then from the 106 constituencies the Fidesz would win in 80. In 2022 they won in 87 so the goal is that.
The greatest risk in all elections is for the Hungarians living outside of Hungary, have to pick from two fates. When the members of the opposition went to Nagyvárad, they just said: Romanian land. Everyone with an ear knows what this means, we (Orbán and the Fidesz) represent the other way around, the state has borders but the nation does not. They can count on the national government which will struggle for all Hungarians. He asks the audience to stand up for themselves too.
As I pointed out in previous post this event takes place in a town in Erdély.

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Second current event: on Wednesday evening he met the new Prime Minister of Romania.
He says he is the 24th colleague of his. This PM is the 24th PM while Orbán was a PM. He adds that the stability of the Romanian system does not come from the stability of the government and the PM, but the President. He says this PM is a heavyweight politician from Nagyvárad, who moves in the same code system and cultural patterns as us, who is a Romanian patriot who will fight for the Romanian national interests, and who wants common Romanian-Hungarian successes, and who has interest in these, and who will act for these. But Romania has to get a grip on the economy.

Third. He says we (Orbán and Fidesz) banned an anti-semitic and terrorist glorifying rock band.
He says here noone can be hurt for their origin or religion, not even verbally. Seems like he blames the opposition for the incident.
I have not heard of this before. Sounds like censorship to me. Where we draw the boundaries? I hear Hungarian and "Hungarian" politicians verbally abusing Muslims all the time. Now I'm speculating: something like there was a festival and they invited a band whom our govt deemed anti-Semitic and supportive to terrorists. Did they criticize Israel for Gaza? Did they call for an independent Palestinian state? I might look this up.

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Fourth. He introduces the "Digital Civil Associations".
These will play role in the next election, but they want them for the long run. The virtual space is a hostile environment for the "civil christian conservative nationalist right" community. We (Orbán and Fidesz) need a digital civil force. For all around the world we switched the cafés to webcams, meetings of friends to forums, we moved conversations to chat windows, and if something doesn't start on the internet it will fail. This change went through all the Western world, there is nothing inherently Hungarian in this. However there is something that inherently Hungarian: rudeness, insults, trolling, and digital violence.
I don't see how these are inherently Hungarian, I see these from just about anyone.
He says those who commits openly to their civic non-leftlib non-progressive convictions, they get attacked, ridiculed. Trolling communities rule the digital space.
A community can only work if it has one leg in the cyberspace, so we have to create the opposing pole of the destruction, we need to create the culture of work, building of a country, and patriotism in the digital space too. To counter the Tisza Party's aggression they created the Fight Club previously, but the fight is not for everyone, many has enough of conflicts. So this new place for those who doesn't want to participate in direct political clashes, but want to build the country.
These give support in the question of the national sovereignty too, so on international level. Have to make an immune system against the globalists, the leftlibs, those who are on the side of war, and are there in digital space already.
The "Civic Associations" was a movement created by Fidesz next to the party, to do grassroot propaganda and help out in various tasks during campaigns and elections to unburden the party and save some bucks. For me it seems they want to do the same but on facebook, forums, and comment sections. The Fight Club is essentially a trollcommando which gets various messages and has to seek out the nests of opposition and write those as comments there. Eg. open up Magyar Péter's (the leading face of the opposition) or Karácsony Gergely's (the mayor of Budapest) facebook profile and troll the commenters with political messages.

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Fifth. What did Hungary gain with the victory of Trump?
Avoided WWIII - for now. Ended the political discrimination against Hungary. Ended the economic sanctions against PaksNPP - we can finish the enlargement. American investments: 4 new R&D investments for now, and another 3 from September.

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Now the deep dive.
Is a world war coming?
No sure answer, Trump made the world more secure. What the fuck. 
He cites a study which asked people all over in the West if there will be another WW in the next 5-10 years, here's the percentages of the yes side:
France: 55
Spain: 50
Italy: 46
US: 45
UK: 41
Germany: 41
He says authors and analysts publish stuff about WWIII by the dozen these days.
He collected bad omens indicators of a world war and processes leading to one, based on the history of the interwar period:
- Rivalry strengthens between the great powers. This guy is a genius. He says 3 Suns are on the sky now: USA, Chiner, and Russia.
- Number of armed conflicts rises. In 1990 there were 111 armed conflicts all over the globe, in 2024 184. Since 2010 armed conflicts between states - not just simply between armed groups - doubled. He wisely keeps quiet about the actual numbers here. I wonder where an armed conflicts starts according to him and the lackeys who collected the stuff for him. When aunt Mary beats uncle Joe with the rolling pin?
- Before great wars arms race gets stronger. From 1990 to 2025 military spending grew to 1,5 times of the original. I wonder if this has something to do with Trump demanding that 2% spending from NATO cunts. Most investments into arms are financed by loans, and loans can only be covered if the investment pays off, ergo the weapons have to be used, wars have to happen. I don't get this, but okay.
- World economy gets ordered in power blocks. The big geopolitical blocks close down the markets from each other. In the past 10 years the number of policies that restricts global trade grew by 5 times.
- The rise of migration. Global migration doubled, it effects 300 million people.
So, he says, chances for another WW grows continuously.

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Relevance to Hungarians:
- Keep calm, strategic patience. Do not allow Ukraine in the EU coz that would bring the war in. Clapping in the crowd, up until now they sat like a dead fish.
- Have to act for the peace, but our limitations and lack of impact are clear.
He saw this when he visited Zelensky and told him that time is not on their side they should try settling, he got told by Big Z that he is wrong, time is on Ukraine's side, they have to continue the war and they'll win.
We have to concentrate on our region and create "Regional Peace Alliances". We did this with the Serbs, Northern Hungarians. We can hope for one with the Romanians, after the elections the Czechs will be probably in, and Poland is returned by half already, and we can't resign from one with the Austrians.
We have to prepare to stay out of a war if one breaks out. Staying out is not a declaration, but an ability.

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5 pillars of Staying Out:
1. Lessen vulnerability, create good relations with all the centers of powers.
He lists 6 such center and says only one is problematic: USA, Russia, China, India, and the Turk/Altaic world. All is fine except Brussels. Under good relations he doesn't mean declarations of theoretical friendships while drinking, not even sympathy for political attitude. He says he means that we have to make the interest of all the economical success of Hungary, to make our success their success, so neither of them has interest in the destruction of Hungary.
This is a basic thought in the liberal school of foreign politics. If countries satisfy their needs with trade there is no need for war. If they create economic interdependence, a war would be detrimental to the participants. I have to point it out: this is a very globalist thought!
2. Have strength to defend ourselves.
Our defense spending at 1750 billion Hooves. We created a chain of arms industry centers: Győr, Zalaegerszeg, Kaposvár, Várpalota, Kiskunfélegyháza, Gyula. 4 west, 2 south, nothing in north east. I'm not sure about the actual products. There is one new factory for the Rheinmetall Lynxs. We bought bunch of some helicopters, we developed the army, we entered international miltech development. The Hungarian army has to reach a technological superiority versus who the fuck???, we have to build a kind of "precision army".
Yeah. Defend from whom? And the war next door shows that tech is highly overrated, cheap uncomplicated mass produced weapons trumps it. If we faced Ukraine or Russia, they'd just stroll through the country after BTFOing our 25K soldiers - probably not even 10K at actual frontline units. What the fuck do we prepare for? Because we rely on NATO and the "Peace Alliances" above not to get into war. What this spending for? Ofc NATO participation for we have to do stuff within NATO. Especially spend more on US weapons now. But how this helps us staying out of a war if WWIII breaks out? We can't deter shit. This is so stoopid.
3. Recession proofing, self-sufficiency in four fields: arms industry, energy, food production, digital capabilities. The last one is highly related to LLMs/AI, for it will change everything from work, through governance to wars. We have to do this AI work ourselves, for the EU counts nothing on this field. The whole thing how to reach this seems very unclear. Do we create LLM ourselves? Do we at least train open source LLMs, like the Mirage, ourselves? Or we just include ChatGPT in everything? Clearly he knows the audience has 0 idea about these beyond some sensationalist articles, and I see he also has only some vague ideas.
4. Superiority in human resource. The oldtimers called it cultural superiority. We spend the most percentage of GPD in Europe on education. Says him at least. There are 3 Hungarian universities in the top 2% of universities of the world, and 9 in the top 5%.
5. Long-term plan for political stability, a plan that overarches political cycles, and even generations.
He says this one thing should be common understanding in all the parties: we can't close in ourselves in no closets blocks. We are part of the Western alliance but we have to be there in the eastern economy too. This isn't openness, but balance. We have to reach balance if we want to live as a nation in the next decades.

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Back to Europe.
Will there be a European war?
This is already reality. The Russo-Ukrainian war is a European war. Europe plays with fire since 2014.
Western politicians describe this conflict as the clash between democracy and authoritarianism. He says he doesn't know if they believe it or they just saying so but this has nothing to do with reality. He says even if this was real it won't be relevant at all. It's about the balance of power. As Ukraine moves towards a side it will create an imbalance. He says it's perfectly fine if Ukraine wants to join NATO or EU, and it's fine if these accept Ukraine, but the moment Ukraine moves to that side, this will change the balance and create an existential threat to the other side which will react so. Even good will can start wars, if applied at a bad place, with bad timing and bad methods.
He refers to the security dilemma of Realpolitik ofc. But he doesn't go there explaining.
He says the European war wasn't a result of a decision, but it was a consequence. The same with world war. He says they have an inside joke: those who invent the global order they invent the global collapse too, as those who invented the train, they invented train crashes.
He says if the global order collapses there will be regional survival zones. And the big question is how the European will look like and how will fit into that. Especially that Europe got into this war.
He says he has the experience from the meetings of the heads of states and governments of EU member countries. He says the EU decided to go to war, that will continue to support Ukraine even if the US leaves. The peace project of EU became a war project. Hungary decided not to go to war. The EU decided Hungary has to as well. The EU decided that Hungary has to have a pro-Ukraine and pro-war government, they are entering into our internal politics. Orbán and the Fidesz decided it won't be so.

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EU presented the budget of the next 7 year budgetary cycle.
This is a war budget, everything is centered around the logic of war. 20% of all the spending will go to Ukraine. The rest won't be spent on agricultural, economic development, but military preparations. This is about an EU in war against Russia. It fights a war against Russia on the soil of Ukraine, in the hope that a defeat of Russia will collapse the system, open up liberalism, and the Yeltsinian times will return which they think will be good for business.
Hungary needs a budget that needs a development budget, and we won't accept this budget as the foundation for negotiations. Other EU leaders won't even talk to the govt. they expect a new one in 2026 anyway. 
BUT.
He says we already got half of the EU gibsmedats from this cycle. The EU holds back the other half. A new EU budget needs unanimous vote, and as long as we don't get the dough there won't be new EU budget. We will bring home this money and we won't make concessions from our sovereignty.
So basically the EU buys our vote for this "war budget" with the money that's ours - they just hold it back - and our Party and Government tells us that this is somehow a great victory for us. Orbán does this with everything. He tells us he'll veto everything, then for something symbolic in return he doesn't and we have to celebrate. With the latest 18th sanction package against Russia was this: we got a paper guarantee that ensures us we shouldn't need to worry about energy prices. What the fuck.
After this he talks about how the opposition parties were promised they'll get the money if they manage to win in 2026 and do bunch of stuff for the EU (like accepting migration pact or supporting Ukraine and such).

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About Europe's reasons of her actions.
EU decided that they accept the role of the supporter of progressivism or wokism, now that Trump made the US quit with. So now Europe got herself into a position what the US President doesn't just see annoying, but as a political opponent. The current leaders of the EU placed the EU on a forced trajectory, and they'll make the worst deals in the worst time with the US, and this will lead to a trade war which we can't win. These leaders also thought if we confront China along with US, that will help with the US. They were wrong, and they spoiled relations with China too. The latest Trump offer was to sell weapons to Europe what they can give to Ukraine. Brussels tries to fill the vacuum as a supporter of the war, which also makes impossible to make amends with Russia.
So Brussels now is in a trade - and quasi-cold - war with Washington and Beijing, while participates in a hot war against Moscow, and wants to deepen this participation more.
He asks: why? What is the reason behind all these, especially now that most Europeans, citizens, don't support this.
He has a couple of ideas:
1. Federalist master plan. At every crisis they look at a chance for centralization. Raise the jurisdiction of the centralized EU governmental bodies, and cut back the powers of the state governments.
2. EU budget can only be kept up with wartime budget and war economy because it lost the competitiveness. No idea what he really means.
3. Getting Ukraine into the EU they could create a personally managed region within the EU which could prove quite profitable for some participants in the economy. There was a discussion something along the line of this between the European Commission and Zelensky. He means that Ukraine is basically in the pocket of some corpos, it is so indebted and bought up, the local government wouldn't have any real say in anything, they could govern it directly from Brussels.
In the past 10 years we let UK out but want Ukraine in. The UK is anti-federalist, but Ukraine is.

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What is Hungarian grand-strategy?
In 1920 we got defeated. Our enemies decided about us: Hungary will be small and poor. They made this our fate. The point of our (Orbán and Fidesz) grand strategy to change that: Hungary will be great and rich. Before all our neighbours grab the pen to draft a formal protest against this, he suggests to the translators to use the word "great" what the President of the US uses in the Make America Great Again, and not the big.
I think he dun goofed with the explanation since Whole Hungary is called Greater-Hungary customary, he should have emphasized the spirit of the quote not the word.
These are the key questions of our grand-strategy:
1. Where do we get the people?
2. Where do we get resources and energy?
3. Where do we get capital?
4. Where do we get knowledge?
5. How will we be capable for self-defense?
6. How to stop them leaving us out from the international decisions?
He says to explain it it's a separate lecture, but he reflects some on the first question:
We won't import people, we support families. European statistics only shows direct monetary support and doesn't calculate with tax cuts and such. And we are leading in these type of supports, such as women who give birth for two children get immunity for income tax for the rest of their lives. They also starting a new a system that helps young people acquire property with low interest loans.

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Why the future belongs to Central Europe?
Basically migration flooded Western Europe with non-Europeans, for now various Muslims, but Africans will arrive soon in a great flood which the West won't be able to handle.
Statistics:
Germany: 42% of students have migration background.
France: 40% of 4 year olds and below has migration background.
41.2% of the Viennese students are Muslim. Christian is only 34.5%. This is our neighbour.
Western countries now are irreversibly mixed countries. The cities will have Muslim majorities in the forseeable future.
Western Europe will stay migrational destination. They have ready made admitting communities, the newly migrating don't come into the nothing, but they go for specific people who receive them.
About in 10 years we'll have to defend our western borders not just the south.
Why westerners could not defend themselves?
Their last clash with the Muslim world in Western Europe was the battle at Poitiers over 1300 years ago. This is the last experience of the Franco-German Europe that reinforced that national survival and the Christian faith goes hand in hand. By today this is not in their national instinct. Our Constitution says: we acknowledge the role of Christianity in keeping our nation and national character. He says when he tells this in the west, they don't understand. Their history did not teach them this historical lesson. So now their old, well known countries don't exist anymore.

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Will Christianity keep us?
He talks about the relations between Christianity and politics. He talks about three stations:
1. When people still had a "living" belief. People weren't simply religious, or church-goers, but their beliefs permeated through their lives. It was kind of an innate state. He calls this Faithful Christianity. Secularism however destroyed this and we slipped down on the slope to the next one:
2. The living belief shrinks but the culture which grew out of it still remains as a coordinate system, that helps to differentiate between good and bad, what we should think of man and woman, children, family, responsibility, punishment and forgiveness etc. For all these questions we give answers according to the Christian culture. He calls this Cultural Christianity. Central Europe is still here.
3. Zero Christianity. Even as guide Christianity is ceased to exist. Here people give up the culture, and there is a point: when they accept same sex marriage. Westerners are here, and mass migration caught them in this state.
I understand what he talks about and tried to not sure it will make any sense for the reader.
Is there a lower state? Can we hold on to ours and stay? Can we climb back to the living faith? He says he does not know the answer, this will depend on our children. Have we taught them that our duty as Hungarians? Keep what we have, get what we don't have but we need, reject what we don't even need. We'll see what kind of parents we were.

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After this long talk there are some questions and whatnot, there's a bishop next to him, who also talks. One thing that might interest us is a short sketch how the EU can survive.
He says it would be important to restore the balance in the jurisdictions if member states and the EU.
He also draws up a picture of a "Concentric EU":
1. circle of Security (security of energy too; even Turkey and Ukraine fits)
2. circle of Free Movement (unified market, Schengen)
3. circle of Common Wallet (Eurozone)
4. circle of Constitutionalized Institutions (for those who wants United States of Europe)
All the nations have their own needs and all the nations can decide which circle they want to belong, and not to force them to wear the same sized shoe.
This is the only chance to save the EU.
Pic not entirely related but depicts soemtin similar.


All right. This concludes his speech. I got tired and commented less and less I think. Really should have came up with some funny stuff, but this is all I could muster.
Perhaps one day someone will Google something and find it and get something out of it.

Huh... Intresting...
He does realize that Hungary actually is in Nato and the EU right?

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 >>/54489/
Well he noted it at one point. I think I noted it he noted it.
I think he is trying to create the illusion that whatever happens it's part of some plan they have in motion.
We are in the situation where EU multis rule the market, but we have to rely on the Russians for energy (gas, nuclear), while the gas is true to Turkey as well, but the Chinese build their battery and car plants in the country, and now we have to take American investments to satisfy Trump's trade balance demands or whatever probably part of being a good client for Washington.
So Orbán just claims that this is their the master plan, we are doing "connectivity". But we are on a path with hard constraints.
And there is a thing that too many masters as a great author once wrote. Kek.

Frankly he talked a lot, but he touched on many topics and spent 2-3 minutes on most, and even where he talked more, those raise more questions, than gives answers. I got the feeling the whole thing was very shallow. I hoped for something more substantial.

Now media is reiterating his talking points over and over. I had little time to listen this morning, but caught some of it, about the gibsmedats:  >>/54483/
So, for each budgetary cycle the EU parliament votes on the budget, this budget also decides how much funds each country gets. These funds what the EU holds back from Hungary citing various reasons, like corruption, freedom of speech apparently the opposition has no voice in the country - this is false, there are some funky stuff, but most of the largest media outlets are all pro-opposition and human rights violations such as not allowing gay marriages or not letting in the migrants just like that and not accepting the "migration pact". This money also plays role in various negotiations related the the Ukrainian war.
So Orbán and govt media says Hungary will get this money. I'm fairly sure the EU has to give it to us by the end of the cycle... this needs some research, how long they can hold back transferring it??? these funds are specifically for spending. But - they say - how we get it back will depend on the next government elected in 2026.
According to them Magyar Péter and the Tisza Party made a deal with Brussels, that they get the money when they get elected if they start supporting the war in Ukraine, let in the migrants, deconstruct the family supporting policies of the current govt, etc, etc.
And they say that the Orbán government can get it back the money while not compromising the country's sovereignty, while staying out of the war.
Weirdly enough Orbán said we won't accept next EU budget until they give us the money. He also said that budget is a war budget and its baed, and we have to veto it, because we have to stay out of the war. But if we don't veto it, this means we enter the war, and they are willing to trade our entry for that money.

 >>/54491/
This is the same thing with the sanctions, funds for Ukraine, and weapon shipments.
We are after the 18th sanction package. Which one of these was vetoed by Orbán? Which funds were denied, and weapon shipment torpedoed?
There is this alternative fantasy universe created by the media and the politicians, foreign and local both, opposition and governmental both, where Orbán stops EU support. The reality is that all passes. And not against Orbán's will, but with his cooperation.
There are some bartering going on for our consent, yes. I remember three occasions:
1. When they sent out Orbán for a coffee and they voted the motion in without him. The genius idea attributed to Scholtz.
2. One of the sanctions introduced price cap on Russian fossil fuels. We "successfully managed" to get exemption from this so we could buy those on any price. We were allowed to pay more.
3. When they wanted to send money to Ukraine and we got some of the EU funds allotted to us for our signo.
Must be other occasions, but these I can recall.
Does this means things stop? Well maybe like at a stop sign at a crossroad. But traffic goes on, sanctions goes on.
Vetoing means denying. Full stop. There would be a list of sanctions that failed to pass. Not failed in their effect, but which never were implemented because Orbán said: no!
And back to the fantasy world. One side is angry because Orbán prevents the support of Ukraine, the other side is delighted by it. Meanwhile no such thing happens.

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Our dear Ursula made the best trade deal ever.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250727-trump-eu-chief-seek-deal-in-transatlantic-tariffs-standoff
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5422634-trump-eu-trade-deal-tariffs/
15% tariffs on European goods (including cars)
EU purchases $750 billion worth of energy from the US (forbids buying gas from Russia, in the name of "energy independence")
EU invests $600 billion more than planned in the US (not sure about the full amount, the news carefully keeps quiet about it)
EU buys arms from the US, coincidentally the military budget was recently raised to 2% and from there to 5% there will be money to spend.
I heard there will be zero tariffs on US goods arriving to Europe. The articles I checked have not wrote anything or I'm just blind. Asked grok and chatgpt and I found most likely there won't be any tariffs on US goods. There was a zero-zero proposal tho, that's out of the window.
> It's a good deal for everybody," Trump told reporters
Well as long as EU doesn't count as everybody. It doesn't matter who sits in the White House, if the US gets horny, EU has to bend over.

Check out the politico article. How they hiding the sad fact of getting robbed is an art in itself.
https://www.politico.eu/article/us-and-eu-strike-trade-deal/

 >>/54493/
Not great.
Interestingly the Japanese deal was a 15% tariff both ways but the EU one is not. Hmmm....
EU already buys energy from US.
I also don't know how those investment deals work. Who is investing? The government or Private organisations?
In Saudi Arabia's case it was simpler as they have a state investment fund. But even then I heard they didn't have enough to invest what they promised.

 >>/54495/
> Who is investing? The government or Private organisations?
Orbán asked similar things.
> Who buys the gas?
> Who invests the money?
> Who buys the weapon?
The EU can't do any of that. About the tariffs, they can talk about it due to the single, unified market, but beyond that it's either the member states, or the companies. And here it gets more difficult for - as you pointed out - how Leyen can negotiate on behalf of private organizations? In case of member state perhaps they can force them to do things, or at least make things "for the willing".

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So.
Which Path to Persia?
I wanna go through the book's list of paths in short, and take a look at it through the lens of the other book I just wrote about above, the US Foreign Policy in Perspective.

The book was published by Brookings Institute, supposedly the US's most cited think tank, so this might be the closest to get to a publication that was made along the debates politicians and bureaucrats, and a publication that is read by politicians and bureaucrats - especially by those in the State, Treasury and Defense departments of the US government, the three departments that conducts US's foreign relations. And the President.

The book reviews of the policy options to the problem Iran embodies. But what is the problem with Iran?
A. Iran tries to acquire nuclear weapons, but at least a nuclear program.
B. Iran supports various violent extremist/terrorist groups (eg. Hamas, Hezbollah, Talibans update: Houthis)
C. Seeks to disrupt Arab-Israeli relations and Palestinian peace process
D. Destabilizes the Middle East
Well one could point out Israel is doing great job in disrupting her relations with the Arabs and preventing peace with Palestinians, and that the greatest threat to the stability of the Middle East is the US herself, but this is about US's point of view.

Quick rundown of the options ("contents" essentially):
I. Diplomatic options
1. persuasion
2. engagement
II. Military Options
1. invasion
2. airstrikes
3. airstrikes by Israel
III. Regime Change
1. revolution
2. insurgency
3. coup
IV. Containment
1. containment
2. containment
3. containment

These options were all discussed by US administration, at the time of the writing of the book Obama's govt. put forward its strategy consisting of many of the options above, but mainly focusing on persuasion. The book criticizes the Bush administration's approach which also followed persuasion. The book actually makes difference between the two they are quite biased towards Obama, calling Bush's implementation heavy-handed, I don't think that actually mattered any.

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I think I have to start with the last option. The Containment is what the US Foreign Policy in Perspective calls routinely hostile activities. This is a quite important one too, if not the most important, which is essentially responsible for the situation we are currently in. The authors of Which Path to Persia has a confusing take on this with contradictory statements.
Let's quote some. On one hand they say it's the last choice for the US:
> Containment is always America’s last policy choice.
> When a state proves too hostile for Engagement or a diplomatic compromise, when it is too strong to be invaded or otherwise attacked, and when it is too repressive to be overthrown, only then does the United States opt to contain it as best it can.
> Containment may become the U.S. policy of last resort toward Iran
> [...] must be addressed before the United States adopts the Containment policy.
On the other hand it says it's the normal practice:
> Containment has been the default U.S. policy toward Iran since the Islamic Revolution
> the constant in U.S. policy toward Iran over the past 30 years has been Containment
> Except for those moments when Washington was attempting to engage the Iranian regime, the United States typically was trying to isolate it
> Containment may also be the easiest policy option toward Iran to conceptualize, both because it is effectively what the United States has pursued for most of the past 30 years and because it would be roughly congruent with how the United States contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and has contained a host of other antipathetic regimes such as Cuba and North Korea
It is a mistake to consider Containment a policy the US has to adopt, since even the authors point it out that it was used constantly. It is the backdrop for the US to implement the rest of the policies in front of. It permeates all the actions done by the US from the first day the Islamic Revolution came to power.
And indeed it was used against all the enemies of the US! As the other book says this is the default way the US behaves when an enemy emerges: she starts doing her routinely hostile activities.

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What is Containment?
U.S. efforts to discourage arms sales, trade, and investment with Iran by other countries. [...] trying to isolate it — diplomatically, economically, militarily, and in every other way conceivable.
So basically sanctions, sanctions and more sanctions. Get the clients to do sanctions. Barter with non-clients to implement sanctions. But we really can recognize the routinely hostile activities  >>/54314/
> The U.S. may withhold diplomatic recognition, block UN membership, decree or intensify a trade embargo, vote against multilateral loans, forbid normal travel by citizens of either country, offer asylum to immigrants from the enemy, attempt to restrict weapons and technology transfers, verbally support exiled opposition leaders, electronically broadcast propaganda, and, of course, denounce the enemy as illegitimate and a violator of basic norms (e.g., human rights).
And yes, this is the standard way of the US when dealing with enemies.
This isn't really to make the enemy do something, it's just for containing and hampering them in every way possible.

So keep in mind that the other options try to achieve something, to make Iran give up aspirations to get nukes, or stop supporting non-state actors, or whatever the US doesn't like, and in general to make Iran to do what the US wants.
They examine each policy thoroughly. They introduce it, describe the goal, the possible timeframe it can be initiated and the time it takes to achieve the goal (or fail), they write an overview, requirements, pros and cons. I won't do all that, just give a summary.

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I. Diplomatic options
These have too many moving parts not entirely dependent on only the USA, but on other countries.
1. persuasion
Carrot and stick. The book says so. But they add shouldn't use the term because Iranians might find it offensive. Kek.
Anyway.
Carrot: good deals, offering lifting sanctions, allowing them to get cool stuff and wealth.
Stick: sanctions.
As the book notes, Iran is sanctioned to the point where not much more sanctions can be placed on her, and in fact more sanctions would be detrimental to everyone else. So good luck with this. Still consequent Presidents use this doomed to fail policy over and over.
I have to point out that all these sanctions was put in place by the US's containment policy which runs in the background.
2. engagement
No sticks just carrots. Total rapprochement. Like how the US made neutral state out of China. See "ending enemy status: negotiations"  >>/54433/
Frankly this is the actual liberal approach: lift everything, and integrate Iran into the global trade to eliminate the need for Iran to be hostile.
Problem is noone in the US sees any great opportunity in Iran, no new role they could integrate her in. Not much to gain. And even if one President thought it's a good idea, next could just revert it before the policy bears fruit.

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II. Military options
These are all hard to sell without Iranian provocation. And Iran's history shows they don't do much of such at all. If they act they do covertly to have some plausible deniability - just like how the US likes to act if has no justification.
1. invasion
Going gung ho all in AMERRRICA, FUCK YEAH! style. Invade it like Iraq or Afghanistan. They say the only obstacle is the terrain. Iranian military is weak indeed, for all the anti-coup redundancy measures, see Luttwak. The book says just to dismantle the nuke program and such, not to reform the country how they tried in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US is great overthrowing regimes, but setting up working ones instead is a harder question.
High cost, high manpower needs which the US might not has. Very few would support this. Back then it was true and it is true right now. Even the airstrike got flak this year. Since the publication of the book they failed in Afghanistan. No appetite now.
Neighbors might not help either so limited way of entries.
2. airstrike
They mention two types. A "coercive" bombing campaign - like Rolling Thunder or Linebacker - to bend Iran to will, which is less feasible, and one that aims to disarm Iran, trying to destroy the nuclear program with bombings. The latter being in the realm of possibility.
They write about the difficulties and tasks to solve - but all within the capabilities of the US. Can be initiated any time and could take from a few days to several weeks, but they need intelligence on the targets which could take some time to gather. They need to dismantle or suppress air defense first, next they have to target the components of the program: the facilities, the researchers, ballistic missile program. Targets are numerous.
Scaled down and up version exists, depending on what they wish to achieve, the limited version would only target key facilities.
Back then in 2009 they estimated Iran will acquire Da Bomb sometimes in 2010-2015. They also estimated that if they did an air campaign against Iran it would delay them by 2-10 years - lower numbers being more realistic, and even 5-7 years would make everyone ecstatic. They had no illusions they can stop it once and for all.
The model was the Israeli strike against Syrian (Deir ez-Zor) and Iraqi (Tuwaitha/Osiraq) nuclear facilities, with the caveat that it wouldn't anything be like those.
They note such an attack might solidify Iran's resolve to acquire nukes, could spark the rally around the flag effect, Iran might strike back with covert tools, and make them more radical in general.
This policy can be repeated as many times as necessary.

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3. Lave it to Bibi
As noted still within the military options the airstrike has a variation when not the US does it, but a proxy: Israel.
It is a recurring theme at almost every policy that if it doesn't work, or not work fast enough, Israel's palm can start to itch, and make a strike against Iran. As one point the authors put it, there are three clocks ticking:
- Israel's the fastest, they want to shut down Iran's nuclear program ASAP;
- Iran's the slowest, they want to gain time to build that weapon, they will stall and delay;
- US's clock in the middle, they have to find a way to slow down Israel and prevent them mucking up the whole thing, and hasten Iran to do what's told.
So it could happen that this "policy" won't be deployed by the United States, but Israel decides unilaterally to go ahead, and then the US have to react. As they put it:
under the right (or wrong) set of circumstances, Israel would launch an attack—principally airstrikes, but possibly backed by special forces operations — to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
So the US has decisions to make: green light, yellow light, red light, or no light the attack. These are the combinations of encouragement/discouragement and opening Iraqi and Jordanian airspace. Mostly doesn't matter, unless the US sends her own aircrafts to clash with the IAF the whole world would think the US encouraged and helped Israel to do the strikes, consequences remained the same anyway. So the only option is green lighting it, at least that would give the sense of control...
Btw the hope is that both blame and retaliation would be put on Israel, as the authors noted, slim chance.

BREAKING NEWS：... mp4
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Since Israel did strike Iran, now in the history books, have to spend more time on this.
Circumstances changed a lot since 2009.
Back then it was a danger that Iran might strike back via her proxies. Today, Hamas is in hiding, Hezbollah got pushed back and decapitated temporarily, and the Houtis attack Israel occasionally anyway.
On the other hand Iran developed serious missile capabilities. This was tested in the past year, on a tit-for-tat basis, a salvo of missiles and drones in return of an assassinated general. Israel defensive capabilities were also tested. And US's and UK's too - if they can (and will) jump in the way.
Back then Syria also posed a threat. Now after Assad was ousted and gone, the country lacking strong central leadership, divided, still bogged in a civil war, not so much. In fact it became an opportunity.
Back then the range of IAF planes and the route they could take looked like a problem. Jordan and Iraq was "friendly" thanks to US if the US wished too. But during the days after the fall of Assad the Israelis destroyed much of Syria's air defense capabilities, so they had a whole country to circle over and refuel their planes to solve the range problem. Jordan could be left out.
Back then Israel didn't have the capacity to harm the nuclear program much. They could destroy facilities on the surface, kill some eggheads and whatnot. But the core of the program was hidden below back then. Today it is more true.
Now here comes the real difference.
The US got involved to do that, Trump initiated II/2's scale down version, to put the dot onto the "i".
In fact it looks like Israel did an elaborate operation with forces on the ground, drone strikes (Spiderweb style I would not be surprised if that were also Israelis) in combination with the air strikes. They had to utilize the agent networks they built in Iran through the decades, to gather intel and paralyze air defense and disrupt the chains of decision making. Tho some of that might be the result of Iran's anti-coup measures.
It seems to me Israel did the heavy lifting from option II/2 and took the Iranian retaliation on the chin.

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Now did they do it after US encouragement? Did the US allowed them through Iraq? Or Turkey let 'em to fly in? In this case was US made Turkey to allow them? Or they just did and everyone stood by like some dicks?
'member how giddy Netanyahu was when he announced the American intervention? He has this sideways face structure but he almost smirks here. Check vidrel.
Now he had reasons to be happy, but which one was it? For the whole operation was a success, that the US could destroy the facilities? Or because he managed to pull the US into action, and finish what IDF could not do? Or because Trump managed to save their asses from prolonged Iranian rocket salvos?

We also have no idea about the effect. Trump ensured us about the total success. I have me doubts.
All right, let's move on.

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III. Regime change
These are what the US Foreign Policy in Perspective calls covert actions. When the US doesn't have a good justification for the world and her own citizens to act overtly. This part discusses how to seed local movements to topple the current Islamic revolutionist regime. One main problem: there is no real candidate, a charismatic leader to rally support around, and put forward as an opposing pole to Khameini and the supporting structure.
1. popular uprising
Since the Iranian Islamist regime is widely despised by the whole country, it seems possible to fan these negative emotions and spark a revolution. Iran has her revolutionary past too. The book notes that while many revolution happened in history, it is really not clear what leads to them, and even less clear how to reproduce the process "artificially". So it is more theoretical than anything.
This was in 2009 but how I see it, compared to US Foreign Policy in Perspective (published same year), in the meantime the US developed a new policy tool. Even back then they surely experimented with this. I try to list some:
Bulldozer Revolution (Serbia 2000), Rose Revolution (Georgia 2003), Orange Revolution (Ukraine 2004), Tulip Revolution (Kyrgyzstan 2005), Arab Spring (Middle EAst, 2011), Maidan (2013-14) - as far as I know all had some level of US/Western meddling. At the least via USAID and NGOs.
I think if not by 2009, but by today, they have a procedure to follow if they want to push a revolution in a country. Even here, opposition is/was hoping a colour revolution would happen which removed the Orbán government.
Anyway possible groups in the country: reformists, intellectuals, student, labor, civil society organizations. Maybe put forward Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah.

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2. insurgency
Supporting an insurgency of minority or opposition groups.
Iran is a multi-ethnic state, Persians little more than half of it. Kurds, Baluchs, Arabs, Azeris and others populate the country. Khameini has Azeri origins for example. It might be possible to turn against the regime one or many. Kurds are a convenient example - but these days I heard (on Caspian Report) that even Azeris could be played against the government.
Beyond them they could form external opposition groups from Iranian expats ("punctuated military operations"  >>/54316/), or prop up the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) or the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Or anyone else who is willing.
One real question: could they initiate a regime change? While a revolution certainly does that if successful, but an insurgency might be better for distraction, or as an option to put pressure on in a "persuasion" policy.
3. coup
A timeless classic. Probably this has the shortest chapter. Would be most convenient for the US if the Iranian military couped the regime. But the US has no good way in to engineer it. As here I wrote  >>/54316/ based on the US Foreign Policy in Perspective, this is pretty much impossible.
Imagine what would an Iranian officer (a colonel or a general perhaps) would think if a stranger approached him and hinted that he should do a coup. Will he think:
> yeah this is a legit CIA agent I should start organizing
or:
> fuck me, the regime is testing my loyalty, best report this highly irregular event, and pray to Allah I won't be taken in the middle of the night
?
Exactly.

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So what options the US really has?
They always do the Containment in the background, but beyond that...
In my opinion real solution would be the Engagement, this most likely would work, and this would pull the poison teeth out - even if they acquired nukes.
But the US would not do that, unless circumstances change a lot. What she is willing to do is just Persuasion, and as recent events proved: they found a way to do an airstrike (probably result of decades long preparatory work) which was a combination of Israeli one with a fly-in fly-out US participation. So it was barely a US airstrike.
Anything else don't seem to be a real possibility. Invasion? Revolution? Insurgency? Coup?
In the past 45 years this is what the US did: containment and in the layer above trying to persuade Tehran occasionally. And now the airstrike - which is a huge exception, like a rare astronomical event, and only good for delaying the inevitable.
Will things change? Did recent events opened up some of the paths - like an insurgency of a minority? Did it closed surely other options - such as the rally round the flag effect blocked a chance for a revolution?
And put it in global perspective: how feasible would be to do some other moves: consider the threat at Taiwan would the US spend resources on an invasion?
And in more local perspective, would a larger turmoil in Iran shift the stability in the Middle East in the right or the wrong direction? And the book also points out: Iran acquiring nuclear weapons could also cause proliferation, if they have that, some neighbours at the gulf would also want 'em Pakistan already has.

Lot of interesting things in this book. I want to note another one: it seems the US finds everyone with nukes reasonable and trustable. The Russians, the Chinese, the British, the French, the Indian, the Pakistani, the North Korean and the Israeli are all fine but surely the Iranians the irrational ones who'd launch 'em. The authors do ask, would Iran really do? Or would Iran give nukes to her terrorist proxies? They have not gave even chemical weapons. Is there a real threat there?
Ofc it's more about that pesky proliferation. They don't mind those who have nukes, since can't do much about that, it's not a good idea to fuck with them either. But they could try prevent others to get it. If everyone had nukes, there won't be any county whom the US could bully.

 >>/54532/
Serious omission. I noted how they here  >>/54316/ call "punctuated military operations" but forgot to note that other parts is the policy tool called "aid to internal armed opposition forces".
So what the Brookings' authors wrote was essentially checking all the options of the other book.

I wanna add some stuff, again from the morals we learnt from US Foreign Policy in Perspective.
I can see their point on the US foreign policy being means driven. They have tools and they are put forward to use them even if:
- the chance of success is slim to none;
- they are sure they won't use them;
- they don't suit the job.
First as we saw at the example of Brazil the US doesn't start invasions against large countries with difficult terrain.
Afghanistan is 650K sqKm with an estimated population of 36-50 million people. Iraq is 440K sqKm, with 46 million, but the terrain is much more forgiving in the sense that it's not hilly. Compared to these Iran is 1,65 million sqKm large, 'bout three times of the average of the previous two. Population 95 million, about twice. Terrain is also difficult. It doesn't look like a country the US would invade.
Punctuated military operations are doomed to failure and not suitable for a regime change at all. Supporting internal armed oppositions isn't suited to bring regime change about. Still both are/were proposed for that reason.
The book doesn't contemplate airstrike as a possible regime change tool (although can be used in combination of a regime change tool to support the effect), but when the happening happened this year in the media analysts and propagandists speculated that the air campaign is done to cause regime change. Even tho Bibi said clearly they started them to destroy the nuclear program. Still the speculation was put forward over and over, that it might be in the background - I guess on "surely the Jew is lying" basis.

Still meditating on Which Path to Persia.
The authors say that Iran is a totalitarian hellhole, but it's hard to predict what they will do, and how they react, and they can change their position a lot, because one can never know whom they'll elect as a president and there are many interest groups and cliques and whatever.
So democracy is bad now, and Iran is not centralized?
But turn this around and let's take a look as Iran at the US. They see a fickle country with you can make a deal today, but the next POTUS could throw the deal into the trash tomorrow. Would Iran listen to the promises they make? And why would she listen?

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During the Cold War the United States followed the Containment policy to isolate, limit, bind, and strangle the Soviet Union. They even made a deal with China to do that. This policy played an important role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In a multipolar world this does not work.
For now we have three powers leading this emerging world order: USA, China, Russia. If one tries to Contain another, then the other two just plays this out using each other. For the Containment to work two powers have to decide to isolate the third.
If the enmity between two powers gets to strong, that is a golden opportunity for the third to corner one of them by offering a helping hand to the other. Not one of them can afford to this to happen.
All three powers are rivals and potential allies for each other.
The new world order won't be a cold war, it will be a balancing act between the three until a fourth or a fifth emerges, then we'll see, they will continuously approach and push away each other, they will try outbid each other for the favor of each other. It will be a difficult courtship.

However this will be influenced by their power ranking. The the weaker powers see the most powerful more of a danger than each other. So whoever leads (now the US) will be on less favorable terms with the other two than they are.

Firstpost reports revitalization of Indian-Russian and Indian-Chinese relations.
Dunks on Trump.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=SjezdUHrhg8
https://youtube.com/watch?v=SjezdUHrhg8

What the hell, Trudeau isn't the Canadian PM anymore! Why noone told me???

A Chinese, an Indian and a Russian walks into a summit.
The Chink is the tallest.

Putin press conference after the summit in China.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=iF01AN9rSi8
https://youtube.com/watch?v=iF01AN9rSi8

 >>/54624/
> this will create competitive advantages for our Chinese friends because [...] they will receive the product at balanced market prices, not inflated prices, as is the case in the eurozone
Europe is buggered against

This is interesting, a journalist says:
> the EU is turning from an economic union into a military-political bloc
Anyway, Putin says they never questioned that Ukraine can do economy and business however they want, including joining EU. This feels weird because the root problem was Ukraine dropping (couping) pro-Russia govt, and elevating a pro-EU one into power.

He talks about the legality of Zelensky. At the end he says Zelensky can come to Moscow, and then they can have a meeting.

That is interesting as well what he says about multipolarity. That these aren't new hegemons, but equals with same rights and position from the standpoint of international law. He seems to be talking about sovereign states. But what about not so sovereign states?

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Orbán had a speech at Kötcse, a village in South Western Hungary. It's a season opener jamboree of the Fidesz, "political season" they call it. They have this on yearly basis as well.
In parallel the opposition held something similar the same settlement.

What Orbán spoke of?
Next year we're gonna have legislative election so lots of stuff revolves around this and the opposition. My comments will be in italics.

He talks about that the opposition losing trust, so they try to create scandals and outrage. Orbán calls it the "little cock" politics - refers to cockfights, kinda. He makes fun of the opposition.
Says last year he stated the "Western Civilization" can only be found in Central-Eastern Europe. He says this civilization is based on the fusion of reason and faith. In the west they built their liberalism and they Islamise, and they have no turning back to this civilization.

He goes through the questions they had as open ended last year, and answers them based on what happened in the year since.
Will there be new US Prez and politics? - Yes.
New German govt? - Yes.
Can France deal with the governmental crisis? - No.
Will Poland see the rearrangement of power or at least rebalancing? - Yes.
Can V4 return? - Yes.
Will there be a Russian military victory? - Yes.
Will they partition Ukraine? - Yes.
Will the BRICS strengthen more? - Yes.
Can the EU solve the base dilemma embodied by the Euro? - No.
This is how he sees the time behind us from 2024 September till today.

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 >>/54631/
cont.

Says the rivals or the US will pass the US if they remain unchecked and the global trade system continues to evolve as it did earlier. He says they recognized this in the US Trump has his politics for this reason. These are the realities they have to face:
- China has advantages in demographics, tech, capital. Their military disadvantage is less. The US economy does not work without Chinese suppliers, and with time they become more and more the creditor of the Western world.
- Russia won the war. Without deploying troops, in the number of hundreds of thousands this victory cannot be reversed. And they don't want to send troops.
- It is possible to do business with Russia, but they cannot be separated from China in the coming decades.
- The US losing space in the Pacific region. China pushes them out. China without firing a shot, slowly but surely integrates the countries into her own economy.
- The EU is weak and will stay weak.
So based on these facts they decided:
- The US have to concentrate home and collect herself, and collect resources.
- Self-reliance in energy, raw materials, forcing investors to put their money into the US, tariffs and tariffs - lowering the deficit.
The US deconstructs the global economical order and regional economies emerge all around the globe.
They also stop exporting Democracy. They don't want to lecture anyone lol they still do all the time - I'm looking at you JD!. Everyone should do at home however they want, along their nature and culture, do whatever politics. But the US also returns to Great Power politics, there are no international rules everyone has to conform to.
So he talks a about Realpolitik vs Liberalism in international relations. What we can expect: might does not make right, but might make things happen. Woe to the weak and vanquished.

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 >>/54632/
cont.

Says EU economy won't recover.
Germany declared the end of the welfare state, but they have no idea how to solve the problem.
Consecutive French governments collapsing, even today - literally today https://www.politico.eu/article/france-francois-bayrou-no-confidence-vote-live-updates/
V4 returns, both Czechs and Poles seems willing to cooperate again.
Says the EU and Russia are in a financing race: they compete which one can finance the war. Russia gets weakened, but we are getting broken.

Ukraine is getting partitioned. Right now. Ukraine was a buffer zone between the West and Russia. Everyone had 50-50 influence. This was the situation until the war started. 
Now Westerners talk about security guarantees - in reality this means paritioning. Westerners already accepted that a Russian zone exists. This was the first step. The debate is how large this zone is - Crimea or 1-6 oblasts - but they don't argue that it does not exist. They debate how wide should be the second zone: the De-Militarized one. The third will be the Western zone - the one of the Westerners, which we still can't say anything sure about - beyond that they want to create it.

Europe's future.
In 2008 the world's production: 23% US, 25% EU. 2024-25: 27% US, 17% EU. He blames this on the incompetent EU leadership.
EU is heading to fregmentation. In the future we'll see the era of EU as the era of Europe's decline and becoming insignificant.
When the EU was created these were the goals:
- the EU should be a factor in global politics and global economy
- build the greatest free trade zone in the world, from Lisbon to Vladivostok, inlcuding UK, Balkans, Turkey, Russia, Caucasus he criticizes the EU a bit that they pushed Russia to China and says that the Chinese and Russian economies aren't competitive but complement each other - frankly the Russian could have complemented Europe...
Why this plan failed?
Simple:
The EU wasn't EU 30 years ago. It was the Common Market (ECM/EEC). Then they decided to create a market and political union out of this. The tool was the Euro(€). If we have common market we can have common money. If we have common money we can have common budget. If we have common budget then we will have a common state. The United States of Europe. This failed at the common budget step.
Next EU budget cycle is 2028-2035. He says if they'll be able to accept the budget (questionable) this will be the last budget. If things continue as is. If continue, the Eurozone will break apart.
There is a way out, not impossible.
But the EU has to be reorganized. He presents the "Concentric Europe" again, I already wrote it here:  >>/54488/

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 >>/54633/
cont.

He talks about how Hungary differs and why Hungary doesn't collapse unlike the EU. I don't think it's important for us much, he is basically fluffing the Fidesz govt. policies. The context is: the opposition wants to take it all away - as goes the Fidesz campaign message.

Europe doesn't try to reform the system (to concentric Europe), they try to keep the current up. They take on loans to keep financing this. The name of this process is "Common Indebtedness". They pull everyone into debt so this common debt keeps the debtors together - keeping the EU together. He says the United States of America was created this way - the Hamilton Moment, see these:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2020/05/26/europes-hamiltonian-moment--what-is-it-really/
https://www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/blog/a-second-hamiltonian-moment/
And they think - Orbán continues - that the best tool for the mutual indebtedness is Ukraine. This is the reason they can sell the easiest to each member state. The war and the Ukrainian EU membership will create this debt, since no money for these.
Orbán opposes this. Not just for the debt, but this will enter us into the war in the most literal sense.

Because of this in the next years:
- The EU will remain marginal.
- Germany tries to dismantle their welfare state, but this will result in government crisis so no govt will be able to do anything
- The undermining of Democracy will continue, he brings the example of Le Pen in France and AfD in Germany. They'll prevent rivals to run or govern.
- Due to multiculti and islamisation in the west the concept of the unity of legal system ends, since they are getting sharia, next to the original legal systems. The public order will dissolve.

He lists what should have been done. I don't think this is interesting much for us. It's like: create the Lisbon-Vladivostok market union, don't let the muslims in, don't let Britain leave, etc.

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 >>/54634/
cont.

The War.
He tries to draw up the goals of participants. His interpretations as he puts it.
The key to understand the war: a process is going down, where the global market turns into competing regional markets, blocks, great power politics returns.
The leaders of the EU think: if they can strengthen the central bureaucracy of the EU, then the EU can be a leading power. He says this is false and mistake, but it will result in centralization. 
Russian goal: restrict Western influence growth
Chinese goal: change the US dominated world order into a multipolar one, privileged access to Russia's economy for China
Ukrainian goal: avoid economc collapse by getting more Western funds, without it the Ukrainian state would go bankrupt within a day
European goal: keep Ukrainian military capabilities on, keep the US in the conflict
US goal: this is going under a change from Biden to Trump, make trade agreements with Russia, subordinate EU to US economically.

The EU is a lame duck while this war is on. The EU is totally reliant on US military help, we are defenseless. And since EU can't defend itself, it can't enact independent economic policies (see tariff negotiations).
Europe should make a security agreement with Moscow. Not just for herself, but for Ukraine too.
Europe also can't open towards China and India, for the Ukraine war is the reference point. Can't make trade agreements with them while accusing them financing Russia and the war.
Continuation of the war is a losing European strategy.

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 >>/54635/
cont.

After this he talks about Hungarian events, politics.
Choices:
- join the Brusselsian politics as the opposition suggests, get Euro and such, give Ukraine money, let them into EU, abolish all Fidesz policies - the campaign message is that the opposition is run by Brussels;
- keep at the Fidesz model they built in ten years and continue;
Related to this he describes their campaign program essentially:
- state based on work;
- common market but national economic policies;
- staying out of the war;
- staying out of the common debt;
- no Euro - he doesn't say this within the list but when he summarizes it;
- no to EU membership for Ukraine, just strategic partnership;
- national energy policies;
- rejecting migration;
- no to open society;
- child protection;
- V4 reorganization;
- special relations with US, China, Russia.

He talks about targeted economic policies they enacted. I won't type in these.
Ah they're gonna make "national consultation" again.

That's about it. Shit. I wrote way more than I intended.

Ursula wonder Lyin' is giving an evaluation speech of the past year today... I'm sure it'll be great. Her approval rate dropped to like 25% or something. 75% of EU citizens (as per 5 countries opinion poll says) want her gone.
Meanwhile new French PM Lecornu has no idea how he'll form a government.

 >>/54644/
She started out great:
> erry tiem they told me EU is not capable of doing things
> covid, supporting Ukraine, energy security
> but erry tiem we made it
1. EU covid handling was ineffective, and frankly not even EU's competence but the states'
2. most support was given by the US still highly questionable if EU can do it alone
3. energy security is nowhere in sight, EU pays way more than anyone for energy as well
So yeah. A past failure, a current unsure but probably failure, and a future unknown (but probably failure). And according to her We Made It!

She says "Russia's war, Russia should pay". Her plan:
1. the basis of financing Ukraine will be the mobilized Russian assets
2. "with the cash balances associated to there Russian assets" EU can provide Ukraine with a reparations loan
3. the assets themselves won't be touched
4. the risk will have to be carried collectively
5. Ukraine will only pay back, once Russia pays for the reparations
What. The. Fuck.
So if I understand it correctly:
EU will pay Ukraine and Ukraine will pay it back when Russia pays. Nothing will happen the mobilized Russian assets.
My guess: Europe will never see this money.
Bonus content: the money has to be financed by every member state of the EU as per #4
I love it.

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> we are on the path of energy independence
> we know what drove prices up: dependency on Russian fossil fuels
1. Russian fossil fuels were the cheapest solution for Europe. Literally just flowing through the pipes.
2. We switched to US LNG and Chinese solar panels. Shackles to chains, or reverse.
How can one person lie so shamelessly and daring? Or she does really live in an alternative fantasy.
Seriously. One can debate if what Orbán says makes sens or not. And the Fidesz govt. lie all day about obscure data they present in various ways to make it look a good thing when it's bad. But this shamelessly telling blatant lies, which literally "the sky is green, the grass is blue"... this... goddam.

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We're getting parenting advice.
> I firmly believe that parents not algorithms should raise our children
> so we will tell social media what they can display to kids
Yeah, like just don't give smartphones to kids. Or if they really want to give them phones so they can be called any time, do it with simple mobiles.
And use that damn parenting filter the router has n shiet.
This is not parenting. This is giving the responsibility of parenting to people and organizations who shouldn't do the parenting, like social media.

And here it is  >>/54648/
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-frozen-russian-assets-war-in-ukraine/
They can't take Russia's frozen assets so they issue bonds (= take loans) and they pretend this money backs it by allowing Ukraine to pay it back when Russians pay war reparations for Ukraine.
I bet Orbán is right here:  >>/54634/ they are planning to indebt all the member states on purpose. They play on the "Ukraine will win" angle and that they can force Russia to pay somehow, while they know very well this is a mirage.

The Patriots party block initiated no confidence vote against our dear Ursula. The Left supports it. The current leading block is attacked from the both sides, not just for different but opposing reasons...
After her speech some MEPs could tell their opinion and the leftist lady was very belligerent, shrieked like a furie dont mistake this with furry, this is from Greek-Roman mythology.
What's gonna happen if they succeed? I've no idea. I don't think there is anyone they could agree on. Not sure if no leadership would be worse than what we have now.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-eu-no-confidence-motions-scheduled-for-early-october/

Draghi says there is no money for the EU to fix the economy. According our Ursula taking on loan and giving it to Ukraine will fix everything.

In other news USA lifts the visa barrier for Hungarian citizens, because we are good boys who defend our borders and check who enters. Biden admin enacted it for whatever probably we were bad boys for some reason or another.
I wonder if the US can make an offer that the Orbán govt can spin as gains in return of cutting gas and oil bought from Russia.

https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-mep-ilaria-salis-immunity-vote-brussels-hungary/
> Salis, 40, was arrested in February 2023 at a far-right rally in Budapest. She was charged with attempted assault on a far-right activist and was accused of being part of an extreme left-wing organization. She was also accused of brandishing a hammer in the attack, a claim she has always denied
Lol. She was part of an organized crew of antifas who traveled to Hungary in order to attack nazis (I think there was a memorial for the attempt of breaking the siege of Budapest in WWII, they do this every year, or did for a long time) then they ended up beating some rando older dude in military style clothing.
I'm not sure where the legal procedure was when she was saved by the immunity how she was even allowed to run as a MEP candidate it's beyond me, I did not follow it closely.

I see this as part of what I wrote here:  >>/54652/ related to Charlie Kirk. Individuals waging their own private wars because they think they can - and it's getting proven right now that they can.

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Was thinking about the erratic behaviour of Trump when it comes to Russia and the conflict in Ukraine. He goes round and round bashing and polishing all the participants alternately, Ukraine, EU and co., Russia...
Some call this "pendulum" as he swings back and forth between the two poles, from the nice words and everything great to the blaming and harsh words.
Only the "not my war biden war never have happened if i was in power i gave the javelins i helped the most" mantra is the same. But this is the least relevant part to anything, just noise, just fogging up the lense.
What he is doing is the Persuasion policy, the carrot and the stick. On everyone, but first and foremost on Russia.

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Look at this again:  >>/54523/
Russia is perceived an enemy and, such as Iran, is treated as an enemy.
First and foremost a containment policy is in place, all the sanctions are part of it. This is the background for every other policy.
The US has policy options to pursue, however the possibilities are more limited than in the case of Iran.
I. Diplomatic options
1. persuasion/carrot and sticks - he promises some he threatens some - promise great deals and threaten with stronger sanctions, frankly this is the most digestible to all onlookers
2. engagement - dropping all the sticks, lifting sanctions, stop containment, reintegrating - war would stop right away since this would end Ukraine's support too - some of his voters would cheer, some in EU too, but lot would be angry, a lot would feel he betrayed Ukraine, and his ego can't have this
II. Military options
There is none that could involve direct confrontation with Russia. He won't start a nuclear war.
III. Regime change
With sanctions generated economical collapse and a Ukraine war fiasco Washington tried to spark popular revolt in Russia, initiating essentially all three options: revolution, insurgency, and coup. Sanctions failed to do that and Russia is winning the war currently. Putin is quite safe for now.
IV. Containment
I started with this, it's on.

We can conclude the US has two options really, one is openly betraying Ukraine, or pretending they can do something.

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There is another approach which is both similar and different to the above. It's on the lines of U.S. Foreign Policy in Perspective: Clients, enemies and empire the book I started to talk about here  >>/54223/

Based on that we could divide the military options to over and covert. The US can act overtly if the enemy disgraced herself properly in the eye of the international community. If not then uses covert tools  >>/54316/
1. Coups d'état
2. Punctuated military operations
3. Aid to internal armed opposition forces - ie. Guerillas
Basically all means proxy forces in different roles. I do think a coupist group within the army can be considered as proxy force - it acts on behalf of the US.
Already a proxy war is going, but there is no such tool as using proxy and start a war against an enemy. And this is not what happened, since Russia was cornered in to the point Moscow had no option but to start a war themselves. Ukraine became a proxy for military operations after the war started.
What they do is #2 - punctuated military operations: they organize raids with the promise of building a resistance, a guerilla activity, a rebellion, etc. These aren't really successful.

In another context, drawn up in the same book, the US is doing client maintenance via intervention: Ukraine is a client which needs help to maintain the regime because she faces an outside attack. Relevant starts here:  >>/54271/
They get emergency military aid and advisors. So that's one box to tick.
But what to select from here:  >>/54272/ ???
Since the others involve US troop deployment really only one left: Mambo #5 Incompetent clients: basket cases. Not very flattering title. But this is about proxy forces and as situation evolves it might not have started like this maybe it did tho... right now it gets more fitting by the day.
And we arrived to this  >>/54274/ post, and as I pointed out in the next  >>/54275/ it's drawdown and negotiate.

So right now the US is doing the Persuasion approach which includes elements from other policies. Washington's aim from collapsing Putin's regime went to making peace in Ukraine ofc dealing with Russia can be part of a larger policy directed against China, but that's a different scope..
Containment's sanctions is part of the stick, the same as maintaining support to Ukraine, that is running a proxy force.
On the other hand it has elements of the Engagement policy, that is making various deals, and probably offering the lift of sanctions. This is the carrot.
He looks erratic because he has to court and reprimand Putin at the same time, which can only be done alternately. And due to the large publicity it happens in front of everyone - unlike the execution of the policies of previous Presidents (such as the case of Obama's Persuasion policy of Iran).

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How Russia Plans to Rule Eurasia by River - by CaspianReport
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=VtE5sTpkn7k
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VtE5sTpkn7k
Basically the Siberian South-to-North flowing rivers can be used to haul resources and goods from north to south.

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France recognized Palestine today!
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250922-france-officially-recognises-palestinian-state
> The French recogition came a day after Australia, Britain, Canada and Portugal also took the largely symbolic step of recognising Palestinian statehood.

Meanwhile Israel reintroduces settlement scheme to scuttle the Palestinian state.
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250814-israeli-minister-smotrich-announces-settlement-plan-bury-idea-palestinian-state

More meanwhile:
pic #2
Last time I checked Hungary was solid green. I think the withdrawal of recognition should be done in the UN assembly. It sounds like the whole thing is just for creating controversy.
I would not be surprised tho if the Fidesz/Orbán govt would step back.

 >>/54685/
I think what Israel doing is a Cain and Abel moment.
They have the same roots, leading back to thousands of years, Levantines are all brothers essentially. Now they are killing off Able just to be condemned for eternity.
But Cain will always kill Abel because Cains don't know better. It's the same with Romulus and Remus.

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Listening Trump droning in the UN.
> US is greatest
> best investment
> I did everything that made America great

Taking credit for stuff he didn't actually did, and telling the UN didn't help. He saved millions of lives and the UN weren't there...
He questions the UN. Now that Israel is criticized by everyone and all permanent members but the US acknowledged Palestine as a state... suddenly the US has no purpose and a failed institution.

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Look at that faggot grinning.

The whole point everyone who hypes this Trump speech up will miss is:
The UN is as strong as the strength the UN members give to it. If the largest of the participants don't act along, don't support of keeping the rules they had founded the UN for, themselves don't keep these rules, then yes, the UN turns into an empty shell.
The failure of the UN is a failure of the United States.

Trump designates antifa as terrorist organization.
Suddenly Fidesz govt. is setting up a terrorist organization list with the first priority to put antifa on it.
Such is the life on the client state.

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In other news:
The election campaign chugs forward with full force. All the main issues are EU related, no real domestic policy questions.
So now they came up with this:
The opposition (meaning Magyar Péter and Tisza Party) in a private intra-organization meeting talked that they will introduce progressive taxation for income tax (we have a flat 15%, very low in the EU, for all income brackets) but "they won't tell it in their campaign for they'll lose the election surely". A video was made about this and was leaked. Orbán said he saw the video himself.
With this finally they generated a domestic policy issue: how to tax income.

Along the US "who is violent, the left committing political violence" circus we also started ours. Apparently opposition politicians shoving Fidesz media journalist and propagating the culture of violence in politics.
It also turned out that one of the main faces of the opposition: lieutenant general Ruszin-Szendi Romulusz, the previous chief of the Hungarian Defense Forces, a career soldier... well it turned out he likes weapons, that he has a sidearm, and that he wears it in public, even on political events. And this is apparently a huge problem.
This year - since he started to support the Tisza Party as a political expert on military matters (and a possible defense minister I guess) - other vices of his were aired:
- he built an expensive house;
- he got liposuction;
- he is too friendly with the Ukrainians.
Lot to feed to the peasants to be angry about.

 >>/54694/
And like that, antifa is a terrorist organization on the Hungary starting today. Just like at our Big Brother in the US. So happy...

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I have to defend the expression "The Rest" and its expressive correctness/preciseness when we talk about our divided globe, about The West and The Rest polarization.
Indeed it sounds quite rude to that 7.5 billion people that placed in The Rest, but the intention of its use isn't humiliation, but to express that Western arrogance and ego-centrism in the way how they treat The Rest, which is indeed humiliating towards that 7.5 billion people. The Westerners treat them like nothing, they don't take into consideration their viewpoints, interests, opinions, wishes, faith, culture, way of life. Westerners think they know better and that they can tell how they should live what they should think, how they should behave. Not just the liberals, but just listen to Trump's speech in the UN just the other day, or how he used the term "shithole", which fits well when it is used on an imageboard, but from someone in the White House...
So yes. They are The Rest.

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 >>/54708/
Just compare Trump's speech with Lavrov's:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=FBfWUqj-y6Y
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FBfWUqj-y6Y
Starting about 1:30 he talks about the UN and the challanges. Very different tone, even when he arrives to what happens in practice at about 2:01.
> picrel
Russia has good relations with Israel, but they know how to play for the ear of the majority of the world's population.

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No digital id petition.
Numbers are continuously growing. By the time I post this it'll be 200 more.
UK govt. doesn't give a shit. They'll introduce it.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194

Starmer's popularity is down the shitter. Something like 25% approval rating. They should overturn this government.

 >>/54716/
Also:
> help tackle illegal immigration
Stop letting them in. Get the fugging human traffickers, shut down those institutions which finance the whole thing. Those poor sods have no money to travel, while this whole thing is a huge public transportation network that can only run with money.
No. Ofc the solution is digital police and surveillance state.
I would say such is the UK, but this is the future for the EU too. How these people want this? How can all those low level functionaries implement the whole thing who know they also get fucked by the system? I do not know.

Could be tech, but fits here just fine.
Afghanistan was cut off from the internet. Quite literally. The Taliban cut internet cables to disconnect Afghanistan in order
> to tackle “vice” and immorality
As the UN article puts it.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1166002
Listened Some Ordinary Gamers talking about it too.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=t1EzBICxyI4
https://youtube.com/watch?v=t1EzBICxyI4

Back when the Talibans took over I read Afghanistan exported two things: smartphones and electricity to power these smartphones. I assume smartphones need internet too.

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Czech parliamentary election just went down.
Turnout 68,95%
34.5% ANO - literally Orbán I
23.4% ODS/SPOLU - previous winner, wikip says center-right, conservative
11.2% STAN - liberal but in the EPP
9% Pirates - liberal, "civil rights in the digital age" - I think I'd agree on a lot with these guys, I assume they are against Chatcontrol and such.
7.8% SPD - literally Hitler
6.8% AUTO - literally Orbán II

Big win for the opposition and the "sovereignist" group of parties, win for our Orbán. Now they can hope there will be another country next to the two Hungarys that's gonna start veto and shit.

Next one is Netherlands on the 29th.

Shitting meself. Latest French prime minister resigned, just after he revealed the list of his ministers. He was the 7th.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/10/06/french-pm-lecornu-resigns-hours-after-naming-government_6746132_7.html

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Trump is on suicide watch.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2025/press-release/

He made a number of claims in his UN speech where he made peace. He might stretched the truth here and there.

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 >>/54742/
Tried to found some audio/video proofs of this, but yt if full of trash, and can't sort the noise from the real thing. I found vidrel but that's not it.
> Venezuelan opposition leader and the newly awarded Nobel Peace Prize winner has dedicated her win to Donald Trump for his “decisive support” in her country’s fight for democracy. 
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-nobel-peace-prize-maria-machado-b2843631.html

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On Neutrality Studies an Italian political analyst Thomas Fazi talks about his paper and research about the Jean Monnet program of the EU which supports European academics with grants to be "ambassadors of the EU" and spread the current talking points of the current elites.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=aZrHFF1VXDM
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aZrHFF1VXDM

The paper dl-able from here. Or check pdf related. 70 pages, yet to read.
https://brussels.mcc.hu/publication/professors-of-propaganda-how-the-eus-jean-monnet-programme-corrodes-academia

Note. Thomas Fazi works for MCC Brussels, a think tank, which is a branch of Mathias Corvinus Collegium a private education institution financed by the EU via the Fidesz. I bet there are some other maecenas' but I'm not going to research that. I just wanted to point out that while Fazi speaks about interesting stuff, he also has his own bias. I don't think he is a muppet for Orbán tho.

 >>/54799/
Some quotes from the summary:
The Jean Monnet Programme channels around €25 million per year to universities and research institutes globally and reaches around 500,000 students annually across more than 70 countries. This is not for open-ended research; it's an investment explicitly designed to influence academic curricula, align educational content with the EU’s political agenda

The EU’s own directives require Jean Monnet Centres of Excellence and Designated Institutions to maintain ‘continuous and frequent alignment’ of their teaching and researcs with EU policy priorities

funded projects openly aim to ‘promote EU integration’, ‘foster European identity’, ‘enforce EU values’, and ‘challenge the rise of euroscepticism and of populist, extreme right parties’.

Recipients of Jean Monnet funding are not just expected to produce EU-aligned research, but to act as ‘outreach agents’, organizing public events, engaging with media and NGOs, and disseminating EU-approved narratives to the public. This creates a ‘self-reinforcing feedback loop’ where EU-funded research legitimizes EU policies.

This ‘undermines the Humboldtian principles of academic autonomy’ and transforms students into ‘subjects to be moulded into “right-thinking” citizens’.

While the EU claims to combat ‘disinformation’, our report demonstrates that this is often a strategy to curtail dissenting views, narrow the spectrum of public debate and consolidate institutional control over the flow of information.
We highlight how this provides academic justification to the EU’s increasingly pervasive online censorship framework

Orbán and a full delegation travels to Washington on Friday.
Most important agenda: the "energy-cooperation package". The US wants everyone to drop Russian fossils. So either we get an exemption for a huge favor in return do something for Israel?, or somehow we'll buy US gas and oil. Perhaps the US will buy Russian stuff and sell it to us, and that will launder the dirty Russian fossils clean. But at least acceptable for Trump.