Tokyo's beautiful dull grey aesthetic marred by the garish colours of the tacky American flag
In one of the most perplexing displays of diplomacy since the Vichy French thanked Hitler for making their trains run on time, Japan has rolled out the red carpet for a large orange baboon in terminal cognitive decline.
In honour of the amber creature, the entire city of Tokyo was lit up in Red, White, and Blue (the American colours), although in a careless oversight by the Japanese Ministry of the Interior, no orange included in the subservient light show.
The tangerine thing, which is now American President thanks to a practical joke played on political elites by US voters, was then greeted by the Japanese Emperor at the Imperial Palace. However, the grunting marmalade blob was clearly unable to remember the Emperor's name or even the word "Emperor" and had to constantly point at the 126th occupant of the Chrysanthemum Throne when referring to him.
Later, the orange orangutan met the Prime Minister whom the Japanese had specially selected to please him, Sanae Takaichi, a protégé of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Here too he exposed his disintegrating intelligence, referring to his host merely as "this woman" instead of by her name or titles:
This unprecedented show of deference and humiliation of one nation to another is motivated by Japan's desire to avoid American tariffs, as the Japanese economy, which once dominated the globe, has been in a sharp decline over recent years -- paralleling that of the America President's own plummeting IQ and basic awareness of reality.
Japanese government insiders believe that such pathetic kow-towing is the only option, because if America pulled the plug, Japan would have no option left but to become a satellite of Communist China.
One of the defining characteristics of the political right in the 2020s is its seething, burning hatred of women. In fact, it is such a dominant streak in the muddled mass that can charitably be called "right wing political thought" that it supersedes almost all other tenets. Indeed, you can be black, brown, yellow, Jewish, you can be a crypto scammer, a traitor, a paedophile, you can even believe in a multiracial right-wing utopia, as long as you tick the all-important box of hating women. It is the Shibboleth of the Alt-Right.
Now, this may seem somewhat contradictory to a movement which purports to be concerned about declining birth rates, in which case all I can really say is "welcome to right-wing politics," where every deeply held, essential belief directly and flagrantly contradicts every other deeply held, essential belief. That is, of course, unless you factor in the all-important catalyst for male-female relations in the right wing mind, which is rape. The plan isn’t to seduce the women, but to subjugate them, bind them in economic (or if necessary literal) chains and rape them into glorious, birthrate-boosting pregnancies.
We can address the right-wing obsession with rape some other time. For now, I’d like to point out something that we used to know in the world before online disinformation poisoned the culture and discourse. Seething, burning hatred used to be a characteristic of one very particular, very queer group of men. In those halcyon days, we called them homosexuals.
It may seem strange to people that gay men should hate women. It is rather counterintuitive. Why should a group of men uninterested in women have any sort of hatred for women? Maybe it’s because women steal all the hot men away, but if a woman could steal your man away, he was never really yours to begin with.
The truth is that gay men resent women because of what women have: the attention of men and the equipment necessary to have sex with them.
Let’s face facts here: anal sex doesn’t exactly come naturally to human beings. The nature of the parts involved, the lack of flexibility that the anus has (relative to the vagina, obviously), the lack of natural lubrication, and of course, the ever-present bodily waste product, for which it was designed, make it a suboptimal sexual experience; especially when compared to good old-fashioned hetero-rogering. Indeed, the checklist of all the steps necessary to safely have anal sex would put the average nuclear reactor to shame. If you’re a heterosexual, it’s not worth the bother.
At the heart of every gay man’s being is the desire to be taken and roughly rogered by burly men like the delicate princess he is. Unfortunately, the realities of what men are and the nature of the mechanics involved mean that if anyone is going to get the old 'in-and-out' good and hard, it’s going to be the people who are attractive to burly men and have the requisite receptacle, i.e. women.
Right-wingers tend to have a limited awareness of this. Living as they do in suburban and exurban locales, they don’t, as a general rule, have the opportunity to study gay men "in the wild," so to speak. They haven’t witnessed the spectacle of a despondent, drunk homosexual angrily shaking his fist at the heavens, cursing God because he doesn’t have a pussy. It is quite natural for homosexuals to grow deeply resentful of women, who have what they’ll never have.
Now, that is all what it is, but what relevance does it have to the broader right-wing hatred of women? Dear reader, surely you jest. Surely you have noticed that the old Alt-Right, and the new Dissident Right, and the ever-newsworthy National Populist Right were heavily "manned" with homosexuals. Nonsense, you say! Surely such luminaries of 'back-door action' as Jack Donovan, Costin Alamariu (aka Bronze Age Pervert), Nick Fuentes, Milo Yiannopoulos, or even America’s favourite, couch-molesting closet queen JD Vance have not let their homosexual resentment of women define their rabidly woman-hating ideology! Obviously these individuals have not allowed their own hang-ups about women to infect the minds of their young, impressionable followers.
Indeed, the danger of homosexual leaders to the Alt-Right was always framed as the potential danger of using their authority to pressure young men into having sex with them. The thought of Greg Johnson (I refer to him as someone will inevitably bring him up, although, to his credit, he avoids the default woman hatred) running bathhouse retreats to seduce young lads haunts lots of people’s nightmares, however, this scenario was never much of a serious risk. It is actually very difficult, if not impossible, to argue or pressure a heterosexual man into accepting anal intercourse, and if force or drugs are used, well then that becomes a matter for the police. The much greater danger was always in allowing spiteful queens to imbue young minds with their own hang-ups about sexuality and especially women.
We live in a time when relations between men and women are increasingly fraught and increasingly politicised. This is an unalloyed bad and needs to be addressed soberly and rationally. The last thing we need is for frustrated right-wing gay men to pollute the discourse with their resentment of women, and we especially don’t need them to whisper into the ears of impressionable young men who struggle with dating and relationships.
For this reason, I advise all young men who’re looking for love and female companionship to distance themselves from right wing discourse and its weaponised homosexualism as much as they can.
The point of knowing things and being smart is not to just know things and be smart, it is to use that intelligence to infer things that you don't definitely know. So it is with politics. Sticking just to the known facts is dull, pointless, and all too obvious. What we can 'know' beyond what we can absolutely prove is the point.
In the case of the new Japanese Prime Minister, however, there are not only facts to build on, there are also "anti-facts," which I would describe as things that have happened that shouldn't have happened and things that should have happened that failed to happen.
Anti-facts are there whenever you feel something isn't quite right, and with the rise of Sanae Takaichi to the Prime Ministership of Japan things feel distinctly odd.
First of all, Japan is a little bit like Russia in that most of the population is relatively depoliticised and uninterested in politics. There is a lack of emotional energy in Japanese "democracy," allowing hidden elites to control things.
The difference from Russia, however, is that those elites are big business and the major Japanese companies, rather than the siloviki and their placemen. The approach of the Japanese elites to politics is determined not by what's good for the Japanese people, of course, but by what's good for Japan Inc. and themselves.
With this in mind, the rather unexpected rise to power of Takaichi is totally queer, as she cuts directly across the interests of Japan Inc. The two most obvious ways in which she does this are:
She ruffles the feathers of the Chinese and the Koreans with her performative Japanese ultranationalism. Japan Inc. reaps enormous benefits from positive business ties to China, and no major Japanese corporation can easily cut the Chinese out of its supply chains.
She makes Japan's increasing reliance on imported labour much more difficult. Japan Inc. is now addicted to the drug of ever-increasing migrant labour. In fact, the previous PM and LDP leader, Shigeru Ishiba was even talking about creating African-friendly cities in Japan.
So, to sum up, Japan Inc., which essentially controls Japanese politics, allowed or even assisted Takaichi in becoming PM. Yes, the logic is well off line here, suggesting additional facts and hidden factors.
Following the resignation of Shigeru Ishiba in September, the natural choice for PM would have been Shinjirō Koizumi, whose ascent looked at one time as all but inevitable.
The most likely explanation is that this did not happen because strings were pulled by hidden hands. But why put Takaichi in?
The answer would need to be one that made sense to Japan Inc. The only real benefit to them of a Takaichi prime ministership is that she would reduce the threat of tariffs, which has been the main obsession of Japanese elites since November last year.
Takaichi is regarded in Japan as the major politician who is most simpatico to Donald Trump. This is because she is seen as the "political daughter" of Trump's former close ally Shinzo Abe, and her "Japan first" populist schtick is a sort of 'tribute act' to MAGA.
It does not seem unlikely, therefore, that the hands that pull the strings in Tokyo decided to interrupt their default Sinophilia and love of mass immigration to put in a J-MAGA populist for a few months in order to blow smoke up Trump's ass and stave off some tariffs.
The elites in Japan follow American politics almost as closely as they follow their own politics, and they fully expect Trump to be a spent force within little over a year. Takaichi may be intended as a safety stopgap to cover this dangerous period.
___________________________________
Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here(USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
Still from the video showing "King Trump" pooping on his people
In a new low for a joke country made by religious lunatics and petty criminals deported from Europe in the 18th century, its latest low-quality President has released a video on social media in which he flies over his people in a jet fighter and drops huge, unending amounts of poops on them.
This is not the first time the country, sometimes referred to as "America" after a cartological error in an old map, has completely disgraced itself.
Typical "heritage American" praying to his primitive snake gods
Back in 1812, soon after it was granted independence by its British masters, it got its ass kicked when it tried to invade its uninhabited neighbour Canada.
At the time, America had a population of 7,239,881, compared to Canada's 500,000 (mainly eskimos and caribou), but still lost. This is believed to be the first time in history that a populated country was defeated in a war by an unpopulated one.
America then preceded to attract every nutjob in Europe for the next hundred years, becoming ever more dysfunctionally multicultural and plain weird.
Europe did not send its best: US immigrant from the 1840s
As Americans became increasingly "mis-bred" and odd-looking their political system deteriorated into a clown circus that produced ever more idiotic, vulgar, and inferior leaders.
In 1933, they elected some freak in wheelchair, closely followed by a sex predator with a drug problem who tried to start a nuclear war with the tiny island of Cuba, then a senile movie actor famous for co-starring to a chimp.
One of these guys would actually have made a relatively decent President
I won't bore you with all the other shit-tier losers who got to be President simply by floating to the top of the giant human cesspool that is the United States, except to say that Trump is clearly the worst of the lot and shows it in every waking moment, word, and act that emanates from him like steam off a turd.
His latest social media post is just the shining cherry on top of the great big mountain of shit that has been accumulating and marinading in the North American continent for the last 300 years.
Wyvern the Terrible identifies the "wank-crying" cult promoted by Alt-Right "luminary" Morgoth, as he luxuriates in the impotent tears of his pathetic following of cry babies, driven to tears by his maudlin, "poor wittle wypipo" content.
Peace is the continuation of war by other means, as Clausewitz might have said.
Anyone taking this Gaza peace deal at all seriously has clearly not looked at the details of the deal and has a net negative understanding of the Middle East. So, can we all stop pretending that Donald Trump is some genius peace deal maker.
The first stage -- basically stop genociding the Palestinians, releasing 2000 randomly arrested "Hamas terrorists," and returning a few living Israeli hostages and body parts, is the easy part.
This leaves the Israeli's in charge of a depopulated part of Gaza (in yellow on the map), meanwhile a minimum of 600 trucks per day are bring in food, water, medicine, tents, and equipment for rubble removal, etc. without interference from Israel. Meanwhile attempts will be mad to re-establish hospitals, bakeries, and basic water, electricity, and sewage systems.
After the big sugar rush of humanitarian joy this brings, however, things get very shitty very quickly.
The next part of the deal is the "Hamas Disarmament and Amnesty" part. Hamas are expected to decommission their weapons and commit to peaceful coexistence, with Gaza being declared a "de-radicalized, terror-free zone" posing no threat to neighbours.
On paper is one thing, in reality is quite another, but here the two sides are not even in alignment on paper, with Israel insisting on "full demilitarization," while Hamas seeks "guarantees against re-occupation." Also, how does full demilitarization even happen without an occupying force to back it up and impose it?
It simply isn't going to happen, while among the 600 or more trucks a day bringing stuff into Gaza at least one or two of them are going to be bringing in weapons.
Then there is the "Governance and Transitional Authority" part of the plan, which stipulates temporary rule by a "technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee of qualified locals and international experts" with "oversight" by a "Board of Peace" chaired by Trump and including figures like former UK PM Tony Blair.
Yeh, oversight. What do they do when they see something they don't like?
The answer is fuck all. All its monitoring is non-invasive and relies on cooperation from Hamas. Observers cannot even enter Hamas-controlled areas without prior consent. When push comes to shove, the Board of Peace will be able to recommend targeted sanctions (e.g., financial freezes, travel bans, etc.) on Hamas leaders and suspend aid flows temporarily. Effectively toothless.
Hamas will probably play nice for a bit in order to rebuild their "human infrastructure," i.e. the physical wellbeing of the young angry population of Gaza (the ever fertile soil for their seed) and hang on until full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza by December 31. After that Hamas will resume full control and start being Hamas again, while in response Israel will continue its favourite tactic of occasional strikes on whoever their intelligence tells them is running Gaza. Hamas will then lauch attacks as usual in "retaliation."
Phase three of the peace deal, namely international funding for Gaza redevelopment (the "Trump Riviera" concept), and the "pathway to Palestinian self-determination/statehood" are unlikely to materialise, and my guess is that both Hamas and Israel kind of like it that way.
The world meanwhile will continue to send in billions in aid to keep the most crappy geopolitical bum-fight in existence going.
___________________________________
Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here(USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
Everywhere we are hearing about the "peace-making acumen" of Donald Trump over the Gaza "peace deal" that has apparently been cooked up. Added to this is an additional narrative that claims Trump got this deal because he didn't listen to the experts, implying a unique genius.
Well, I'm not a sucker and I'm not buying this.
The second narrative about Trump ignoring the experts is just 'up-code' for Trump being a bumbling, stupid idiot who couldn't even place Gaza on a map of the Middle East. So, we are effectively being told that Trump pulled off a peace deal because he is so stupid. Believe that if you want. I won't be joining you.
The facts are more simple and essentially amount to this:
The USA is the main global power and is also the main global power deeply involved in the Middle East.
Whatever happens in the Middle East, good, bad, or indifferent, inevitably ends up being attributed in some way to the US administration, whether or not it is the cause.
The current US administration just happens to be that of Donald Trump.
When Camp David happened in 1978 Jimmy Carter was there to pick up the credit. But basically it happened because Israel and Egypt had grown jaded and weary of the Nasserite hysteria and constant state of Israeli tension of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Now, a Camp David in 1968 might have been something to boast about, but by 1978 it was just closing the empty kennel door on the long lost dogs of war.
Then in 1983, the flowers of Mid-East peace sprouted again. This time with Israel agreeing to pull out of Lebanon. The US incumbent at the time, Ronald Raegan, was again predictably given the credit. Sadly that didn't last too long, and the Lebanon-Israel border turned into the world's longest-running shitshow.
The difference between these two random outbreaks of peace is that massive bribing of Egypt and Israel to adhere to Camp David, sustained by all subsequent US governments, managed to make it work, whereas the May 17 Agreement was reliant on the non-existent commodity of goodwill in the Middle East and soon fell apart.
Fast forward to 1995 and you have Bill Clinton picking up the acclaim for the so-called Oslo accords. Why? Simply because he was President of the biggest country most involved with the Middle East at the time.
But if Clinton was tugging the chains of the Israelis and Palestinians, who was tugging his chain? The fact is that Oslo was the bare minimum that Israel and the US had to give away to placate the approximately 95% of the World that thought it was high time to set the Palestinians up with some kind of state, even if it was just local government.
Also, it didn't solve anything.
This is the pattern of Middle Eastern peace. It happens every now and then not because of the "diplomatic genius" (LOL) of some geopolitically illiterate American Prez, but often despite it.
The present peace in Gaza has all the characteristics of a peace of exhaustion that owes absolutely zero to the Orange Buffoon in the White house.
This is happening essentially because Israel can't bomb and starve Gaza anymore than it has already done. Every building of any note has already ben reduced to a sea of rubble, while Israel's starvation strategy has pushed over half of the territory's population to the brink of the abyss, and if continued would soon lead to a mass "die off" of half of Gaza's population, which is simply not acceptable to large constituencies in the West and even America. Some Israelis might get upset about it!
Even a jellyfish washed up on the beach could get a transient and rather meaningless "peace deal" under these condition. Trump's only skill here is his usual one of opening his big, fat mouth and claiming credit for anything good that happens, something we are all tediously familiar with.
Meanwhile one is reminded of the words that the Roman historian Tacitus put into the mouth of the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus:
I don't have smoking-gun-level proof, just my laser-beam-like logic, but one reason Jeremy Corbyn's new political party (tentatively called "Your Party") fell apart was because it simply wasn't needed. A much better alternative suddenly presented itself.
After the election of Zack Polanski, a gay, Jewish, NATO-hating vegan as leader, the Greens are in a much better position to do what Corbyn's proposed party was essentially designed to do -- namely split the Labour vote in a way calculated to weaken and destroy the establishment Left Party.
For context, here is what happened with both "Your Party" and the Greens in the past year:
September 2, 2024 Formation of the Independent Alliance
Corbyn and four pro-Gaza independent MPs (Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan, Iqbal Mohamed) form a parliamentary group to coordinate on issues like austerity and arms sales to Israel. This lays groundwork for a broader left-wing movement.
July 4, 2025 Zarah Sultana announces intent to form new party with Corbyn
Sultana, suspended from Labour over her vote against the two-child benefit cap, publicly states she is quitting to co-lead a new left-wing party with Corbyn, focusing on wealth redistribution and anti-war policies.
July 24, 2025 Official announcement and launch of "Your Party"
Corbyn and Sultana jointly launch the party, temporarily named "Your Party," via a statement on X (formerly Twitter). It emphasizes grassroots democracy, child poverty reduction, and opposition to "billions for war." Early sign-ups reach 80,000 in hours, but chaos ensues over naming and leadership.
July 25, 2025 Polling shows potential impact on left-wing vote
YouGov poll indicates "Your Party" could attract 10% of the vote, primarily from Labour (reducing its share to 20%) and Greens, raising concerns about vote-splitting on the left.
To summarise, so far, Corbyn's "Your Party" was well on the way to becoming a major vote splitter on the Left, with no real function besides bringing down the Labour government in the event of an election. But, in August, things suddenly changed tack. This was because of the advent of Zack Polanski as leader of the Greens.
August 1–30, 2025 Green Party leadership election
Voting occurs for leader and deputies. Incumbent co-leader Carla Denyer steps down; deputy Zack Polanski campaigns on an "eco-populist" platform, advocating bolder challenges to Reform UK and openness to Labour-left defectors. Polanski wins, becoming sole leader with co-deputies Mothin Ali (Muslim) and Rachel Millward (posh lady).
Almost immediately following the election of Polanski, Corbyn's "Your Party" started to fall apart at record speed. How queer!
September 10, 2025 Trans rights controversy
Infighting intensifies over LGBT+ policies, pitting socially conservative Muslim MPs (allies of Corbyn) against trans rights advocates, etc.
September 18, 2025 Membership portal crisis (infighting begins in earnest)
Sultana launches a paid membership portal (£5/month) via email to 750,000 supporters, collecting fees from over 20,000. Corbyn denounces it as "unauthorized," refers it to the Information Commissioner's Office for data breach concerns, and urges cancellations. Sultana retaliates by accusing Corbyn's group (four pro-Gaza male MPs) of running a "sexist boys' club" that froze her out. End result: "Your Party" disappears up its own arse.
Now, it seems easy to infer that this is just typical Leftist shitshowery and the "internal contradictions" of the progressivist stack. But it runs a little deeper than that. The Green Party is just as Left-wing and "progressivist stack" as Your Party, and therefore as susceptible to shitshowery.
There has to be more to it than that.
None of this makes any kind sense, however, unless you recognize the wider pattern that now shapes British politics.
What we discovered in last year's general election was that it is relatively easy to destabilize mainstream political parties tied to the establishment, although that time the target was clearly the Conservative Party.
The rise of Reform UK, powered in part by "dark money" funding and by having its own mainstream news channel gifted to it as the cost of £30 million a year from more dark money based in Dubai, successfully split the right-wing vote and put Labour in.
Now we seem to be seeing something similar on the Left, with the target being the pro-Ukraine and pro-NATO Labour Party. Essentially the same methods are being used - covert backing on social media, paid shills throughout the relevant quadrant of the social media sphere, bot likes, synthetic virality, etc.
The point of these "third party" ops in a Western democracy is to cause chaos and instability by weakening the mainstream establishment parties to the point where they lose large numbers of seats. We have seen this all over Europe for the last 20 years and most recently in the frankly schizophrenic result of the Czech election.
Zack: all the empathy of a golden retriever (unless you're an 80-year-old organisation dedicated to defending European freedom)
This function of weakening the Establishment parties is what Reform UK successfully did to the Tories. Having two Left alternatives to Labour, however, threatened not to split the Left vote, but instead to split the anti-Labour Left vote, greatly weakening its effect.
One of the two had to go, and whoever gets to make these decisions -- make your own mind up -- decided that that had to be Corbyn's "Your Party." Accordingly, the switch was thrown and the controlled demolition of Your Party took place.
Whoever made this decision decided that Zack has what it takes. Maybe it's his ability in front of camera and the warm cuddly way he comes over, or it might be because he's even more solidly anti-NATO (a very odd position post-Putin's-2022 -invasion-of-Ukraine) than Jeremy Corbyn.
All very odd. Beware of the Greens!
NATO chad Sir Keir Starmer
___________________________________
Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here(USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
The leader of ANO is the spitting image of one of the legendary Chuckle Brothers
The Czech election results are in and, as is increasingly usual these days, they make absolutely no sense, with an anti-EU, pro-Russian billionaire winning in a country that absolutely loves the EU, hates Russia, and is less than enthusiastic about people with too much money.
Despite this, the biggest winner on election day was ANO (literally 'Yes'), often described as a "right-wing populist" party, led by businessman Andrej Babiš, which is basically just a gang of idiots and scumbags covered in Putin's pocket fluff. Boosted by odd activity on social media platforms, they went up from 27% at the last election to 35%.
This result, however, is not typical of Czech attitudes. For example, a 2021 survey conducted before Putin's 2022 invasion of the Ukraine found that 78% of Czechs viewed Russia unfavorably, with only 12% expressing a positive view. Meanwhile, according to the most recent Eurobarometer survey, conducted in May 2025, 62% of Czech respondents believe their country benefits from EU membership!!!
Also, making this election even more doolally, a party led by Japanese man who wants to kick out all the immigrants got 7.8% of the vote!
Czechia's leading anti-immigrant politician
Despite coming first, ANO will be 20 seats short of a majority in the 200-seat Czech parliament, so will struggle to form a stable government.
The anti-immigrant Japanese-led party, the SPD, can only throw 15 seats into the pot, so Babiš will also attempt to attract support from "Motorists for Themselves," a party that opposes green politics, liberalism, and progressivism, and which wants to abolish all bicycle lanes. They have 13 seats.
A populist party led by a dodgy billionaire, an anti-immigrant party led by an actual immigrant, a single issue party of angry boomers, and a totally crazy result -- Czech politics certainly displays all the classic signs of being seriously fucked with for a long time by various Kremlin ops. No wonder Czech politics is so schizo!
Keeping the trains running on time is a byword for good governance for a good reason. Train networks are complex systems which include lots of intersecting, path dependent and variable moving parts, employ large numbers of people and can provide enormous returns on investment which are not immediately visible to the eye. The state of a country’s rail network is often a good measure of that country’s government. Well governed countries have functioning railway networks which add to the national economy. Poorly governed countries have rail networks which are a burden and an embarrassment to the nation.
I am writing these words from a city with one of the best public transport systems in Europe, which is located in a country which has the worst train network in Europe. The city is Budapest, and the country is Hungary.
This is not my first visit to Budapest. I’ve been coming to this city for some time now, but this is my first time where I’m not staying in the city centre. Not to be feared, because thanks to the efficiency of the BKK (Budapest Public Transport), I am only two comfortable train rides away from anywhere I want to go. I hop on the suburban train (running every 7 minutes), which connects to the metro line (running every 5 minutes).
The four metro lines have amazing coverage. There’s rarely a place worth visiting which is more than a 15 minute walk away from a metro station, but even for those few, the city is criss-crossed with a veritable spider web of trams, streetcars and buses meaning that no part of it is inaccessible due to distance or remoteness.
The trains and buses are universally clean, safe, comfortable and on time. Some, especially the suburban lines, are showing their age, though this has not really disrupted service. Fare enforcement is thorough, but not overweening. Train conductors and BKK inspectors are likelier to be middle-aged women with stern looks rather than the burly men who usually enforce fare payment in my long-suffering homeland. Fare evasion seems to be rare, due to a sense of civic duty among travellers. As a general rule, taking the trains in Budapest is a pleasure I’ve been delighting in with childish glee for the past 2 weeks. I particularly enjoy changing metro lines and taking in the station architecture.
Considering all the praise I’ve given to the BKK, you’d imagine that at least some of this glitz and glamour would rub off on MAV, the Hungarian national rail company. If the Budapest public transit system can flow like goulash (which is a soup, not a stew), then surely some of that efficiency and glamour will rub off on MAV. And the answer is a rancorous “hell no!”
MAV is consistently rated as the worst rail carrier in the European Union. Whereas other rail carriers maintain statistics on late arrival percentages, MAV has better luck counting its on-time arrival percentage, which stands at an ignominious 32% (disregarding arrivals which are five or fewer minutes late), although this percentage also includes the Budapest suburban lines which are jointly run with the BKK, and in fact, given their penchant for arriving with Japanese precision, I suspect they’re predominantly BKK-run with MAV only figuring in the mix because the lines terminate outside the Budapest city limits.
Of course, true incompetence is rarely limited to numbers and statistics. Sometimes there’s simply no substitute for the visual horror of the MAV’s Frankentrains - trains composed of mismatched cars because the rolling stock is simply not there. Nor can a spreadsheet explain the sickening sound of a loose wood sleeper moving under the weight of a 100 kg man. Such horrors and more can be seen in this informative video.
It is rather notable that MAV manages to be one of the worst European rail carriers while operating under ideal geographic conditions. Hungary is notoriously flat, with wide open spaces which seem almost destined for rail transport. Its cities are well integrated into the network - Budapest’s three railway stations are also metro and tram hubs. Contrast this to the countries bracketing Hungary to the east and west. To the east lies Ukraine, where rail transport is reliable, comfortable and on time even under conditions of war. To the west is Austria, whose mountainous terrain has not deterred it from developing one of the finest rail transport networks in Europe.
Now, what is the cause of this discrepancy? It’s simple, really. Budapest is not Hungary. While Hungary is governed by world famous “illiberal democrat” Viktor Orban and his right wing populist Fidesz party, Budapest is run by a Green Party mayor and a Green-Social Democrat city council. The city of Budapest is run by civic-minded people who are accustomed to using the government to accomplish goals in the public interest. Hungary is run by degenerate criminals who consider state capacity inimical to their core ideological project, which is the ever greater enrichment of oligarchs.
As Americans are rapidly learning under their very own national populist federal government, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a right-wing populist to actually do something in the public interest. Fidesz has so completely neglected MAV in its 14 years of power precisely because investing in the railroad would mean growing the economy - providing much needed transport to both people and goods which would allow them greater and better division of labour.
When your goal is self-enrichment through graft and facilitation of a corrupt oligarchy, a railroad is precisely what you don’t want to build. It would entail spending public money for an investment that’d produce returns for the economy as a whole - a good so abstracted away from the private sphere that we can only call it "public." Stealing from a railway project, like Fidesz likes to do with public works generally, usually results in horrifying PR, such as Orban’s Serbian friend and fellow Chinese vassal Aleksandar Vućič suffered when a shoddily constructed rail station canopy crushed 14 people and kicked off a wave of massive, nationwide protests which continue to this very day.
Compare that to the relatively simple grift of building highways. The state gives the building contract to oligarchs, oligarchs steal the money, lay inferior asphalt and build a subpar road, and the consequence are increased traffic accidents, which can be safely ignored, as our society is as a general rule inured to road fatalities.
As an even bigger bonus, roads built with the shoddy, two layer Chinese-made asphalt preferred by Hungary’s oligarchs tend to warp after only two years, necessitating repair and rebuilding works which are another fortuitous occasion for graft. Externalise the costs, including the scandal, privatise the profits. What’s a corrupt gang of degenerate paedophiles (oh yeah, did I mention? Fidesz is also lousy with paedophiles) not to like?
Indeed, the very logic of right wing populism, which is pro-corruption, pro-oligarchy and as a general rule pro-crime and dysfunction goes against a well-functioning rail system. Rail systems require professionalism in the workforce, high levels of investment, foresight and strategic vision to function. Using them as patronage parks for party members or as a means of enriching your oligarch cronies results in horrifying rail accidents which cannot be readily tucked away from public eyes.
The benefits of a functioning rail system, whether national or urban are widely distributed. They give people of all ages the ability to access areas which would otherwise be out of their reach. This has some easy to understand economic benefits, as distance ceases to be a limitation to economic activity, without the need for ugly and expensive parking lots to accommodate the personal vehicles. Others are more difficult to quantify. How much better is a society where people read books while commuting on the train instead of listening to brainrot podcasts in the car?
The ability to conceive, however vaguely of these benefits seems to be a test not only of intelligence, but civic-mindedness and breadth of vision, three elements crucial to understanding and maybe even some day practicing good governance. Little wonder that the small minds of Fidesz and the even smaller minds of right wingers everywhere are so hostile to the train track as a technology.
A major pop star, entering the "post-35 fertility desert," after nearly two decades of "putting her career first" and being "dicked around" by Limey chads, has released an embarrassingly self-indulgent and broody 12th album.
The album, which can be ordered anonymously on the internet, appears to be aimed at her 13th boyfriend and fiancé, an American beta male, whom she is attempting to cajole into marriage in a desperate attempt to "get with child" and join the "pudding club."
The album, The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift, is the up-beat but still psychologically manipulative follow-up to her previous break-up album Tortured Poets Department, regarded by critics as a blatant attempt to air dirty laundry in public.
The first song on the new album, "The Fate of Ophelia" is an embarrassingly sickly-sweet, gushy song about being "saved" by her latest beau, Travis Kelce, which could be even more embarrassing if he ends up dumping her.
Meanwhile, all the other songs on the album subtly reinforce the idea of "settling down" with Travis into a life of "domestic bliss."
On "Wi$h Li$t," Swift clingingly croons:
"I just want you, huh, Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you, We tell the world to leave us thе fuck alone, and they do, wow, Got me drеaming 'bout a driveway with a basketball hoop"
It is not yet clear how Travis, who is merely an American football player, feels about his prospective marriage partner installing a basketball hoop in their matrimonial home, as this is a device which, in American culture, is generally thought to "invite" the presence of large unruly, black men.
One untested theory is that she may be trying to activate Travis's "sub-racism" in a covert attempt to make him extra "protective" towards her.
Whatever the exact story behind each and every lyric, an album this clucky can only be explained by Taylor's ever-ticking biological clock. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, a woman's fertility essentially drops off a cliff at the age of 35, which just happens to be the exact age that Swift as reached. Coincidence? I think not.
The synagogue attack in the UK could have been a lot worse than it was. But the simple fact is that the synagogue expected to be attacked and was taking a lot of extra precautions. These included security guards, who played a key role, and an extra-fast response by armed police, which clearly was according to a pre-existing arrangement with the police.
Here is the BBC explaining how this worked out:
Police responded to reports of a car driving towards members of the public and a man stabbed at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue at 09:31 BST on Thursday. Officers declared a major incident and arrived at the scene in north Manchester within seven minutes, shooting dead the suspect at 09:38. A large number of people were worshipping at the synagogue at the time, and were held inside while the surrounding area was made safe.
Seven minutes! That's a blooming Olympic record for serious crime in the UK! In fact, the police must have been parked round the corner in a panda car.
Also, the attacker was confronted by the synagogue's own intensive security arrangements and reinforced building:
"Worshippers and security staff demonstrated "immediate bravery" and helped stop the attacker from entering the building, Greater Manchester Police said. In an update on Friday evening, police said witnesses had described seeing a man "acting suspiciously" outside the synagogue before the attack, who then walked away after being confronted by security. The police said it do not believe that incident was reported to them, but about 15 minutes later "the individual returned in a vehicle and began his horrific attack" ....
...another eyewitness who was driving his delivery van near the scene, told the BBC he saw a man "bleeding out on the floor".
"Then as we looked over the guy had a knife and he was just stabbing the window, trying to get in [the building]," he said.
Inside the synagogue, Rabbi Daniel Walker described running into the foyer and seeing "a terrorist trying to batter his way into the synagogue".
He told the BBC the attacker was "body-charging the doors, throwing heavy plant pots at the doors, doing everything he could to get in", as he and others held the entrance doors shut.
But the Jews at the synagogue were not just disconnected adherents of a religion that has a tentative link with a country that is engaged in genocide. In fact, it could be claimed that they were actively engaged in "hate washing" Israel's genocide against the Palestinians by pushing the "blood libel" that people just irrationally hate Jews.
Grok:
"There is no evidence that the Holy Law Synagogue in Manchester, England—an Orthodox Jewish congregation—has issued any statements denouncing or criticizing Israel's military actions in Gaza. As an Orthodox synagogue, it aligns with traditional Jewish support for Israel, and broader community responses in Manchester, including from the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester, have instead condemned rising antisemitism linked to the Israel-Hamas war while expressing solidarity with Israel."
While irrational hatred of Israel and wider Jewry is definitely a thing, and something I have denounced and ridiculed in the past at great length, there are also legitimate reasons to hate Israel and distrust the wider Jewish community, based on Israel's actions and the way it tries to weaponize the Jewish diaspora to promote its geopolitical goals in states like the US and Britain, often to the detriment of those countries.
But these malicious actions are not guiltless. Those doing them and supporting them know that they are "wrong" on some level, or at least likely to provoke an extremely negative reaction. They also know that these negative reactions can themselves be weaponized as "evidence" that Jews are "innocent" victims, something else very tempting but which may provoke a few extra qualms of guilt.
However, truly innocent victims don't expect to be attacked and therefore seldom take the kind of extensive precautions that proved generally effective in limiting the carnage of this particular attack.
___________________________________
Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here(USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.
