From Budapest to Bangkok

from FPF-fwd. Stan Goff - FTW -

While extremely important events are taking place in the United Nations, such as Venezuela’s acquisition of a seat on the Security Council, two explosive international events provide mainstream media with ample distraction. Thailand and Hungary.

THEY ALL REALLY DESERVE TO PAY A HEFTY PRICE FOR THEIR WAR CRIMES

FPF COMMENT: To save the rest of us in the world from the deadly 'liberation/occupation' by the US/Israeli war machine and it's NATO mercenaries, it shows that resistance is not only necessary but growing everywhere. By treating the troops which return alive, belied veterans wounded in body, soul and mind, the way the warmongers do now, is asking for the tax paid weapons to be turned around in their direction. - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ej4rn

In Bolivia for instance, like in many other countries formerly bled by the cabal, the 'US made' president was forced to leave - [ http://www.americas.org/item_63] - and the resistance keeps mushrooming all over the globe. Not only in L-America and not only among muslims: everywhere - in all 189 countries surrounding the US - where people understand that US/Israeli torture, secret jails and genocidal wars can and will NOT be accepted from anybody on earth.

The tide has turned, the global tsunami of revenge is swelling, and the US cabal and it's parrot propagandists that spread the lies via the warmongers media will face the consequences of their misdeeds. They lied and millions died? Now their number is coming up, slowly but surely. And they deserve every inch of the punishment. - HR

"Always holding his finger on the pulse of geopolitics, Stan Goff comments on the eruptions taking place in Hungary and Thailand." - CB

FROM BUDAPEST TO BANGKOK

by Stan Goff - FTW Military/Veterans Affairs Editor

September 20th - 2006 - When a system goes haywire, it doesn’t do it like a children’s story with a good protagonist and a bad villain.  It is a lot messier than that.  And the symptoms are often far more visible than the causes.

I am writing this on September 20, 2006.  As I write, there are riots in Hungary, and an apparent coup d’etat in Thailand.*  What could possibly tie together these two social crises, on opposite sides of the geographic and cultural world, one in a former Soviet satellite and the other in a long standing US satellite?

In Budapest, Hungarian economist Laszlo Andor said in 2005, that while Hungary’s rich have become considerably richer over the last 15 years, for the average Hungarian the situation “can only be compared to the Great Depression of the 1930’s.”

DEVASTATING

In 1997, when the Clinton administration unleashed currency speculators organized as hedge funds on Asia to force conformity with the neoliberal Washington Consensus, Thailand was the first on the target list.  The Thai currency (the baht) was devalued by 20% almost overnight, and the effects on the most vulnerable in Thailand were devastating.

The ostensible “socialist” Hungarian leader, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who models himself after Tony Blair, has been an avid supporter of neolibertism in Hungary. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was elected as “the billionaire populist” (he is a cellular telephone tycoon), is reputed to have calmed a restive population down through savvy PR and a few policy bones to ameliorate the misery of Thailand’s poorest.  He is also sometimes compared to Blair.

GIVEN BLAIR’S FORTUNES OF LATE, THIS HAS PROVEN DECIDEDLY INAUSPICIOUS.

The politics of both Hungary and Thailand are both especially Byzantine, and in today’s world that is surely saying something.  What catalyzed these simultaneous events was Gyurcsany getting caught on tape stating that he has lied his ass off about the nation’s economic figures to get elected, and Shinawatra trying to purge the Army of unreliable officers and replace them with his own.  Surely these are not alike, except that in both cases, the countries are deeply insecure and polarized, thrashing from one political demagogue to the next.

The rest of this story is two-fold.  One, each of these countries is geographically situated adjacent to strategic hotspots:  Hungary next to Ukraine, and Thailand smack-dab in the middle of the Indo-Chinese archipelago.  Two, each of these societies is now deeply criminalized, with foreign Mafias (Ukrainian in Hungary, and Chinese in Thailand), a conduit for foreign drugs and a production site for others (both are suffering domestic crises of methamphetamine production and consumption), underpaid and corrupt police forces, and rampant sex trafficking and prostitution.

The beneficiaries of the current crises in Budapest and Bangkok are likely to be reactionaries.  Certainly, the military coup in Bangkok is made by conservatives.  In Hungary, the rightist Fidesz opposition will not only try to capitalize on the incriminating broadcast, but many suspect that Fidesz operatives may have acquired and leaked the tape that exposed Gyurcsany.

In either case, the masses of these crisis-wracked nations are trapped like bees in a bottle, that bottle being today’s Washington Consensus -- to which both sides in both countries are slavishly attached. 

Perhaps we can give this a new name for future political sociologists. 

The Blair Syndrome.

Stan Goff

[andend] - FTW story at - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/l7z8y

From The Wilderness Publications - Url.: www.fromthewilderness.com

FPF - RELATED:

Hungary an eyewitness account - Url.:  http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2006/09/38948.shtml

Demonstrators arrested in Hungary - US info agency AP (Assorted Propaganda) - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/n5chu

FPF - Ukraine: ''The US lost an important country today" - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ekko9

UN speech: Hugo Chavez - President of Venezuela - says what 99% of the world knows too ''Bush is a devil'' - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/hfe8y

Google's biased mainstream web selection concerning Hungary - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/oamal

Google's biased mainstream web selection concerning Thailand - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/sxdb3

* CONCERNING A CHANGE OF REGIME - "Brothers and sisters, if you and I would just realize, that once we learn to talk the language that they understand, they will then get the point. You can't ever reach a man if you don't speak his language. If a man speaks the language of brute force, you can't come to him with peace. Why goodnight! He'll break you in two, as he has been doing all along. If a man speaks French, you can't speak to him in German. If he speaks Swahili, you can't communicate with him in Chinese. You have to find out, what does this man speak? Once you know his language, learn how to speak his language. He'll get the point." - Malcom X - on defending human rights. - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/zoora

* CHANGING A REGIME: Throw out war propagandists like the BBC, FOX, CNN etc.! - Url.:   http://www.cemab.be/news/2006/07/1632.php

* The Dutch author this far has worked abroad for more than 4 decades for international media as an independent foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb - including cluster bombs! - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/gzsz7 - breeds more terrorism!

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Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
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