#orban putin

[politikapolka]

1956 Orbán és Ukrajna #hazaárulás @1orbanviktor #1956hungary @1955orbán

Orbán Viktor és Putyin kapcsolata elég ironikus, ha az 1956-os forradalom tükrében nézzük. Az '56-os szabadságharc a magyarok oroszok elleni felkelésének szimbóluma, ahol a szovjet elnyomás ellen küzdöttek. Orbán, aki fiatalon éppen ezen értékek mellett emelte fel a hangját, most Putyin szoros szövetségesévé vált.

Ha valaki visszamenne az időben, és elmesélné az '56-os pesti srácoknak, hogy 70 évvel később Magyarország miniszterelnöke együttműködik egy újabb orosz vezérrel, valószínűleg hazaárulónak tartanák. De Orbán talán úgy gondolja, hogy most nem tankokkal jön az elnyomás, hanem gázzal és gazdasági függőséggel – így más a helyzet.

Orbán a békegalambként repked, és azt sulykolja, hogy Ukrajnának meg kéne hajolnia Putyin előtt, miközben szép csendben elfeledkezik azokról, akik a szovjet elnyomás ellen haltak meg '56-ban. Ez a kapcsolat inkább tűnik egy történelmi iróniának, mintsem politikai bölcsességnek, amit a forradalom eszméi előtt tisztelni kellene.

[porterdavis]

He's delivering Putin's marching orders

[kyodaina]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 10, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 11, 2024

“In 1949, when leaders of 12 countries, including President Truman, came together in this very room, history was watching,” President Joe Biden said yesterday evening at the opening of the 2024 NATO Summit, being held from July 9 through July 12, in Washington, D.C. 

“It had been four years since the surrender of the Axis powers and the end of the most devastating world war the world had ever, ever known,” Biden continued.

“Here, these 12 leaders gathered to make a sacred pledge to defend each other against aggression, provide their collective security, and to answer threats as one, because they knew to prevent future wars, to protect democracies, to lay the groundwork for a lasting peace and prosperity, they needed a new approach. They needed to combine their strengths. They needed an alliance.”

That alliance was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the “single greatest, most effective defensive alliance in the history of the world,” as Biden said. 

The NATO collective defense agreement has stabilized the world for the past 75 years thanks to its provision in Article 5 that each of the NATO allies will consider an attack on one as an attack on all, and respond accordingly. 

Biden looked back at the alliance’s 75 years. “Together, we rebuilt Europe from the ruins of war, held high the torch of liberty during long decades of the Cold War,” he said. “When former adversaries became fellow democracies, we welcomed them into the Alliance. When war broke out in the Balkans, we intervened to restore peace and stop ethnic cleansing. And when the United States was attacked on September 11th, our NATO Allies—all of you—stood with us, invoking Article 5 for the first time in NATO history, treating an attack on us as an attack on all of us—a breathtaking display of friendship that the American people will never ever, ever forget.”

Biden celebrated that the alliance has continually adapted to a changing world and noted that it has changed its strategies to stay ahead of threats and reached out to new partners to become more effective. Biden noted that leaders from countries in the Indo-Pacific region had joined the leaders of the 32 NATO countries at this year’s summit. So did the leaders of NATO’s partner countries, including Ukraine, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, and the European Union. “They’re here because they have a stake in our success and we have a stake in theirs,” Biden said.

The promise of collective defense was daunting for opponents in 1949, when the treaty had 12 signatories: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. It is even more daunting now that there are 32, with both Finland and Sweden having joined the alliance after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Together, the NATO countries can marshal about 3,370,000 active-duty military personnel and have a collective defense budget of more than $1.2 trillion. 

In addition, as Jim Garamone of Department of Defense News noted, the NATO countries share intelligence, training, tactics, and equipment, as well as agreements for permitting the use of airspace and bases. “[O]ur commitment is broad and deep,” Biden said. “[W]e’re willing, and we’re able to deter aggression and defend every inch of NATO territory across every domain: land, air, sea, cyber, and space.”

When NATO formed, the main concern of the countries backing it was resisting Soviet aggression, but with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin, NATO turned to resisting Russian aggression. “[H]istory calls for our collective strength,” Biden said. “Autocrats want to overturn global order, which has by and large kept for nearly 80 years and counting.”

Biden called out Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine and recalled that NATO had built a global coalition to stand behind Ukraine, providing weapons and aid while also moving troops into the surrounding NATO countries. He announced that the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Italy are donating more air defense equipment. 

“All the Allies knew that before this war, Putin thought NATO would break,” Biden said. “Today, NATO is stronger than it’s ever been in its history.” Biden noted that the world is in a pivotal moment, and reminded his listeners: “The fact that NATO remains the bulwark of global security did not happen by accident. It wasn’t inevitable. Again and again, at critical moments, we chose unity over disunion, progress over retreat, freedom over tyranny, and hope over fear.

Again and again, we stood behind our shared vision of a peaceful and prosperous transatlantic community.”

He assured the attendees that an “overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans understand that NATO makes us all safer…. The American people know that all the progress we’ve made in the past 75 years has happened behind the shield of NATO,” understanding that without it, we would face “another war in Europe, American troops fighting and dying, dictators spreading chaos, economic collapse, catastrophe.” He assured allies that Americans understand our “sacred obligation” to NATO, and quoted Republican president Ronald Reagan, who said: “If our fellow democracies are not secure, we cannot be secure. If you are threatened, we are threatened. And if you are not at peace, we cannot be at peace.”

And then Biden surprised NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister who is stepping down from his NATO position after serving since 2014, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Today, NATO is stronger, smarter, and more energized than when you began,” Biden said. “And a billion people across Europe and North America and, indeed, the whole world will reap the rewards of your labor for years to come in the form of security, opportunity, and greater freedoms.”

Today, Biden reiterated the theme that alliances happen not “by chance but by choice.” Before the attendees got to work, he explained that the NATO countries must strengthen their home industrial bases and capacity in order to produce critical defense equipment more quickly, a deficiency made clear in the struggle to get armaments to Ukraine. Such readiness will strengthen security, he said, as well as creating “stronger supply chains, a stronger economy, stronger military, and a stronger nation.” 

The Washington Summit Declaration released today reaffirms NATO as “the unique, essential, and indispensable transatlantic forum to consult, coordinate, and act on all matters related to our individual and collective security,” saying “[o]ur commitment to defend one another and every inch of Allied territory at all times, as enshrined in Article 5…is iron-clad.” 

It warns that “Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security” and pledges “unwavering solidarity” with Ukraine. It says that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” and calls out Belarus, North Korea, Iran, and China for enabling Putin’s war. Indeed, the declaration calls out China even more directly, warning that it “continues to pose systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security,” especially by flooding other countries with disinformation. 

Russian aggression is a deep concern for NATO countries; so is Trump, who worked to take the U.S. out of NATO when he was in office, vowed he will accomplish that in a second term, and in February 2024 told an audience that if he thought NATO countries weren’t contributing enough to their own defense he would tell Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.” (Biden noted yesterday that when he took office, only nine NATO countries met their target goal of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on their defense, while this year, 23 will.) 

Biden was key to rebuilding the NATO alliance after Trump weakened it, and the leaders at the NATO summit told foreign policy journalist for The Daily Beast David Rothkopf that they were “not concerned with Biden’s ability to play a leading role in NATO during his second term.” They “express confidence in his judgment” and “have a great deal of confidence in the foreign policy team around him.” But they worry about Trump. 

Shortly after Biden gave his powerful speech opening the summit, Trump had his first public event since the June 27 CNN event, at his Doral golf club. It was a wandering rant packed, as usual, with wild lies, but he did touch on the topic of NATO. “I didn’t even know what the hell NATO was too much before, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out, like about two minutes,” he said. Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton told a reporter that Trump’s willingness to undermine NATO is “a demonstration of the lack of seriousness of the way Trump treats the alliance, because he doesn't understand it."

Following the NATO summit, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who remains an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, will visit former president Trump at Mar-a-Lago, just days after meeting with Putin in Moscow and with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. There is speculation that Orbán is acting as an intermediary between Trump and Putin, for whom the destruction of NATO is a key goal.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[merrymorningofmay]

you know if ukraine really was the evil far-right dystopia some people imagine it is we'd have actually been better off because fascists seem way better at sticking together and helping each other out than normal countries are

[odinsblog]

Lithuania suggests Orbán and Hungary leave the EU

Arnoldas Pranckevičius, Lithuania's permanent representative to the EU, addressed the authorities of the only EU member state that did not support the allocation of 50 billion euros to Ukraine.

“I would very much like to wish this EU member state to never experience the war that the people of Ukraine are going through now, that its cities are not bombed, its citizens are not killed, that the aggressor country does not occupy its territories. I wish that this state would not have to ask others for solidarity and face vetoes from allies for vital assistance in moments of the most urgent need,” he said.

Pranckevičius added that the EU is strong because of solidarity and mutual trust: “If you are not ready for either, there is only one right solution - to leave,” he concluded.

[otthonzulles]

[kaoszkutato]

benny orbán

[simply-ivanka]

Hungary summoned the US ambassador over comments by the US president, Joe Biden, who said the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, wants a dictatorship.

The Hungarian leader traveled to Florida on Friday for talks with Donald Trump during a visit in which he did not meet with anyone from the Biden administration.

During a campaign event in Philadelphia, Biden referred to his rival’s meeting with the Hungarian politician: “You know who he’s meeting with today down at Mar-a-Lago? Orbán of Hungary, who stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship.”

Rights groups and European capitals have repeatedly raised concerns that Orbán and his Fidesz party have undermined checks and balances in Hungary. In 2014, Orbán memorably announced that he was building an “illiberal” state.

And Hungary’s western allies have also grown increasingly worried about Hungary’s ties with Moscow and Beijing, while relations with Washington have reached a low point.

But Biden’s comments have met with outrage from Hungarian officials.

Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, dismissed the American president’s words as “lies”.

In a press conference on Tuesday, he said the American ambassador in Budapest, David Pressman, had been summoned and met with a senior Hungarian official earlier in the day.

“We asked the ambassador to show us the quote, with location and time,” Szijjártó said, denying that Orbán ever said what Biden described. “This is a very serious insult.”

Szijjártó continued: “We are not required to take such lies from anyone, even if that person is the president of the United States.”

[gwydionmisha]

This interview is from just before Hurricane Milton, so some references early on in the first section are out of date. I still think this interview is important, so it's here:

"Have You No Empathy, Man?" - VP Harris On Trump's Lies About FEMA's Hurricane Helene Relief Work

"I'm Not Joe Biden" - What VP Kamala Harris Would Change If Elected President

"Donald Trump Gets Played By These Guys" - VP Harris On Trump's Relationships With Putin, Un & Orban

VP Kamala Harris Shares A Miller High Life With Stephen Colbert

[tilbageidanmark]

I came back a second time just to snap a photo of this.

A good billboard design about October 7th, "We won't forget - It's your fault", where his head stands for Zero.

[politikapolka]

[misskremlintsarina5294]

Vladimir Putin met with Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban at his residence outside Moscow. Mr Orban is in Russia on a working visit. This occurred on February 17, 2016

[kyodaina]

Na hál istennek, már féltem hogy a BÜDÖSKURVANYJÁTENNEKAGECINEK!

[dragoneyes618]

[lgbtally4ever]

In case you’ve been living on Mars—

NEWS FLASH:

Trump admires dictators and covets their dictatorships!

And, PS:

NATO is the only thing standing between these dictatorships conquering Democratic countries outside their boundaries!

For Putin, Ukraine is only the beginning!

Xi Jin Ping would take over Taiwan (next).

Kim Jong Un wants to attack S. Korea and Japan.

These are dangerous times when an American ex-President, (and current, Presidential candidate), would end our ties with NATO, if he gets into the White House, again!