BALLOONS, LASERS, AND EARTHQUAKES, AND HUNGARY TELLS US AMBASSADOR ...

There was an "incident" last week where Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Foreign Minister, Peter Szijjártó, expressed some pretty clear thoughts to the American ambassador to that country.  But before we get to that incident, a bit of "backdrop" painting is in order, because there was quite a backdrop on the stage to set the context in which it occurred. Context in the case of this story is all-important, and I'm equally certain that the swamp rats in the Bai-Den Jo misadministration and their "opposition" counterparts across the aisle are all but clueless as to what it all means.

Leading the list of "other objects and events on the stage", we had of course the Chinese balloon hysteria. I for one still think is was more theater to distract everyone from the ongoing train wreck that is Swampington, DC. The Chinese certainly have better surveillance platforms than balloons, though I don't put it past them to use the latter just to increase the "irritation" factor for kicks and giggles. Another balloon supposedly appeared over Alaska and was promptly shot down, or so we're told, and after the planscamdemic and other ongoing media misrepresentations beginning with the JFK assassination, I'm not in a big hurry to accept the story and explanation at face value. Then there was the Green Laser event over Hawaii, where initially it was believed that some American satellite had fired off its (green) lasers, which were supposedly altitude determining instruments, but alas, the explanation quickly settled on those pesky Chinese once again, who appeared to be firing their lasers at Hawaii for - once again - kicks and giggles, and perhaps to send the message and to remind the USSA that it was not the only misbehaving banana republic with sophisticated "toys" in space orbit that have some nasty things pointing downward at the earth.

Then there was the earthquake in Turkey, and all its sad loss of life. Yes, I know much of Turkish Anatolia sits atop several active fault lines and that earthquakes are commonplaces in the region. Nevertheless, like many of you, the timing of the earthquake and aftershocks makes me suspicious that someone in the banana republic turned on the earthquake machine and sent another message: quit blocking Swedish and Finnish entry into NATO, rather like that unusual sequence of events involving Robert Gates and ..well... Japan, prior to the Fukushima tsunami and earthquakes. It shines and stinks like a mackerel on a moonlit beach.

In the middle of this context, we have the following story shared by V.T., about the Hungarian Foreign Minister's remarks, and his subsequent doubling down on those remarks (and then some):

Smack-Down! Hungary Pushes Back Against Obnoxious US Ambassador

Note first of all that the USSA's meddling in Hungarian affairs has been a Cold War staple. The Hungarian revolt against Soviet rule and occupation of 1955 was a mere two years before I was born. For those who know the story, the Hungarians were basically encouraged and goaded into doing so by Radio Free Europe, America's broadcast into Eastern Europe, and then, when the Hungarians actually did so, the USSA followed up and did... nothing. The Soviets, of course, crushed the revolt, and several Hungarians paid a very stiff price. Cardinal Mindzenty went into internal exile, only to reemerge later, clearly speaking under duress, and not his "normal self."

Against that backdrop, the Bai-Den Jo misadministration has rubbed salt in the open wound of Magyaro-American relations by sending a very unusual choice of Ambassador to the country:

Biden's Ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, is a particularly odious specimen in a long line of obnoxious US residents of Szabadság tér since the end of Hungary's subjection to Soviet control in 1989.

Before him, Soap Opera producer and Obama glamor-queen moneybags Coleen Bell warned Hungarians in 2016 to get on board with the destruction of Syria or face the wrath of DC.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken's own father, Donald, did the Clinton Administration's bidding - which was to promote with the entire weight of the US government the return of the communists - when he was US Ambassador to Hungary in the 1990s. I remember it well as editorial page editor of the largest English language newspaper in Central Europe, in Budapest: fielding calls from the US Embassy demanding that I tone down criticisms of "former" communists in my weekly editorials.

The US wanted an obedient Hungary, not an independent and democratic Hungary. Kind of like what the Soviet Union wanted.

...

The State Department has repeatedly meddled in the Hungarian elections, trying without success to undermine and overthrow the popular Fidesz-led government. And Washington has  habitually interfered in Hungary's domestic media market, subsidizing all manner of anti-Fidesz outlets - in the name of "independent" media.

It's OK when we do it, but even a hoax cooked up by the Hillary campaign that Russia might be trying to influence the US elections led the US establishment to spend six-years-and-counting in paroxysms of panic over the "reds under our beds."

"Tin soldiers and Putin's coming..."

The whole thing was a dirty lie, but still it managed to cripple our country.

Many of us otherwise admiring the willingness of Fidesz to stand up for Hungary's own national interest in the face of incessant US manipulations have been slightly frustrated by the extreme patience and go-slow approach of Budapest toward its wannabe new overlords in DC.

But all of that has suddenly changed.

A Hungary that has openly embraced its 1,100 year old Christian values and has, similarly to Russia, banned the aggressive promotion of homosexuality to children in schools, unsurprisingly found itself in the cross-hairs of a Biden Administration that smirks approvingly at the open sexualization of children by men dressed as women.

So what better way to get back at Hungary than for Biden's handlers to send a man married to another man - with two children - to parade around Hungary as the face of America?

In other words, "be like us in the USSA or face consequences."

But if you've been following Hungary and its Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, lately, you'll have noted that he and his country are not inclined to follow suicidal edicts and policies, regardless of whether they emerge from Brussels EU-PU bureaucrats, or from Merkel mandates in Berlin, or Bai-Den Jo and his lackeys in the Swamp.

Now a bit more background is in order: after the Treaty of Trianon ended World War One between the Allied Powers and Hungary, Hungary was stripped of much of its territory within the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, and basically assumed its modern landlocked shape in central Europe, leaving many Hungarians as significant minority populations in Romania (largely in Transylvania), and in portions of Galicia, Ciscarpathia, and the western Ukraine.  With that background, Ambassador Pressman did what American ambassadors all-too-often do: he meddled, and bullied:

Since then, Ambassador Pressman has been endlessly hectoring Hungary to "get with the program" of the NATO/US war on Russia and has been relentless in attacking Hungary's attempts to remain neutral in the conflict.

No doubt the neoccon ideologue Pressman has no clue that hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarians were without consent placed outside the borders of Hungary in the lop-sided diktat after WWI and that those ethnic Hungarians have been aggressively pursued by Zelensky's regime to feed into the meat grinder of eastern Ukraine.

It's a win-win for Ukraine: how to get rid of your minorities "problem"? Send them immediately to the front lines to be slaughtered.

It should not be a surprise that Hungary disapproves of this policy of Ukraine ethnically-cleansing its territories of Hungarians, gypsies, and other "troublesome" minorities. So why would they endorse such a policy as laid out by Pressman and his masters in Washington?

But Pressman pressed on, demanding that Hungary abandon its own national interests in the service of neocon Washington and Brussels' interests.

Then it happened. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó finally pushed back. Hard. Responding to Pressman's meddling in Hungarian internal affairs, he released a statement:

It's completely irrelevant what he or any other ambassador thinks about domestic political developments in Hungary, because they have nothing to do with it. So, we ask for more respect for Hungarians.

But the thick-headed Pressman didn't take the hint, responding:

Respectfully, we do not consider Russia’s attempt to unilaterally redraw the borders of Europe as just a 'domestic political development in Hungary.'

[That's rich coming from a US government that has repeatedly used military force in unprovoked wars throughout the Middle East and that has redrawn the borders of Serbia by force after illegally bombing the country to smithereens and salting the earth with depleted uranium munitions.]

Rich indeed. But Pressman, as the article demonstrates, was deaf to Foreign Minister Szijjártó's response, and continued pressing:

Pressman's snark led Szijjártó to lock and load, firing off a blistering rebuke to Washington's meddling flunky:

Regarding statements of the US Ambassador to Budapest I would like to say the following: It is irrelevant - absolutely irrelevant - what he or any other Ambassador thinks about domestic political developments in Hungary because it has nothing to do with him. It's not for him to interfere in Hungary's internal affairs, and if he wishes to use his stay in Hungary to criticize the actions of a government elected by a clear majority of the Hungarian people and legitimized by the Hungarian people, he will have a very difficult job in working effectively to improve cooperation between the two countries.

Because when we welcome ambassadors we mean it literally. We welcome Ambassadors, people who we believe are sent by their host country to work on improving and developing relations between the two countries on the basis of mutual respect.

We do not accept governors or procurators sent here to say how we should live our lives. That era is over.

Hungary is a sovereign country. No one from the outside can tell us how to live. It is therefore irrelevant what a citizen of another country - even an ambassador - thinks about the internal political processes in Hungary, and it is up to the Hungarian people to decide whether the government is working well or not, whether they are satisfied with it or not.

In the forthcoming Parliamentary elections, this will be expressed, as been expressed quite clearly in recent years, even though efforts have been made to inspire and even finance contrary decisions from other parts of the world. Perhaps even from where the Ambassador comes from.

So we ask for more respect for the Hungarians, even from the Ambassador.

This is a new era in Hungarian-US relations. And I would argue that it is healthy for both Hungary and the United States.

And why am I pleased that Hungary has pushed back? American patriotism. I want the neocons, and all their works and all their pomps, to be smacked down and fully discredited forever. Washington's aggressive foreign policy does not serve America's interest, but rather the special interest of the military-industrial complex and all the cottage industries built up around it - including Congress, the media, and the think tanks/NGOs. It's all a racket that undermines our safety, destroys the economy, and rots our moral fiber.

Such language in diplomacy is rare, but when it occurs, it usually causes sane diplomats to sit up and take notice, and to at least tone down their rhetoric. But Swampington DC is tone deaf. It's no longer capable of listening. I have to agree with the author of the article, Daniel McAdams, in not only wanting the neocons, "and all their works and all their pomps, to be smacked down and fully discredited forever." I'll apply that same sentiment to American "wokery" and denial of the right of others to practice and observe any traditional virtues and ideas.

And that observation brings me, finally, to how all this - from Chinese balloons and lasers to Turkish earthquakes and a nutcase American ambassador deliberately chosen on the basis of identity politics to be as obnoxious to his host country and its cultural sentiments as possible - fits together. We might as well have invited the Saudi and Indian ambassadors to a state dinner and served them pork and roast beef.   What the Hungarian Foreign Minister is telling the Swamp is really to go away, and mind its own business.  To keep its "values" and "wokery" confined within its own otherwise porous and almost non-existent borders.  The Hungarians, after all, rose up and revolted against the Soviet occupation of their country. They were brutally crushed, but only after it became clear that the USSA was going to do absolutely nothing to help. They learned then that the vaunted military might of the western superpower was not all that it was cracked up to be, and that it was in no position to oppose the Russians... in 1955. Today, the USSA is pathetically pushing a narrative that a few specially built Abrams tanks - a battalion's worth at best - will help the Ukrainians stave off the inevitable a while longer, and at more loss of life and destruction. The Ukrainians are learning the hard way, as did the Hungarians decades ago, what it means to be a "friend" of the swamp.

Where all this will lead I do not know, but I strongly suspect that the next step will be for courageous countries like Hungary to deny the ambassadorial credentials of such creatures as Mr. Pressman, and in cases where they are already appointed and inherited from previous governments, to request their removal and replacement. Perhaps they will get together with other "small" countries to push back against Swampington's bullying.  But one way or another, pushback is inevitable.

See you on the flip side...