Enjoying the view from Limbo
It has been revealed that Viktor Orbán’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, was in regular and surreptitious contact with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, specifically tasked with undermining EU policies toward Vladimir Putin’s regime and feeding inside information about high-level European strategy meetings to the Kremlin. Furthermore, according to prime minister-elect Péter Magyar, in the hours after the Orbán government suffered a crushing electoral...
Here, from Axios, is the funniest headline I have read this year, or perhaps ever: Scoop: US suggests Cuba complicit in helping Russia fight Ukraine. No, of course, when I say this is the funniest headline of the year, I am not referring to the usual news media illiteracy that has become so commonplace that we barely notice it anymore. For does not...
The Trump administration has spent much time and energy in recent months desperately trying to prop up Viktor Orbán in Hungary, in yet another obvious self-revelation of the truth of what Trump likes to call “The Russia Hoax.” Hungary was occupied and decimated for decades by a brutal, expansionist Russian dictatorship which supported a series of Hungarian puppet regimes to oppress the people...
America Descending / Ideas and Reflections / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 8, 2026 · Last modified April 15, 2026
Here is a breaking news headline from CBS News: “Trump agrees to two-week ceasefire with Iran, delaying large-scale attack.” And from the accompanying story: President Trump said Tuesday he has agreed to a “double sided CEASEFIRE” with Iran, less than two hours before his deadline for Iran to either cut a deal with the U.S. or face massive strikes on its power plants. “I agree to suspend...
America Descending / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 6, 2026 · Last modified April 15, 2026
The United States of America, in its hapless Keystone Kops war of whim against Iran, had two alternatives for pursuing its non-mission, based on the real-life demonstration of modern warfare being played out for all the world over the past four years. She could have chosen the Ukrainian model — innovative, adaptive, cost-efficient, resourceful, sleek, dogged, and backed by a nation fully engaged...
Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published March 18, 2026 · Last modified April 15, 2026
During the absurd and wholly outrageous test-run assault on Venezuela, in which Donald Trump ordered an authoritarian president kidnapped and then “replaced” with that same president’s regime, all with the intention of grabbing control of that country’s oil reserves, though without having asked any of America’s leading oil men in advance whether they would be stupid enough to set up shop under the...
Bear with me as I meander through a few vague thoughts about the war in Iran (and by extension everywhere else) that have been swirling around in my head this past week, and which I have deliberately chosen not to catch, ground, and tie to a spot, for the simple reason that some realities are too ugly to entertain for more than a...
Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published March 2, 2026 · Last modified March 15, 2026
A text message exchange with a young friend of mine yesterday, March 1st here in Korea: She: I’m struggling with deciding how many clothes I should bring to Seoul. On another side of the earth, war is happening.I: Yes, there are now multiple wars happening, due to a few idiots who think they can do whatever they want. I hope you will be...
Ideas and Reflections / Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 20, 2026
Ted Cruz, who back in the latter days of 2016 willingly defined himself for all time as the single most spineless and snivelling anti-man in American politics, now seeks to reassert that title against increasingly aggressive competition, by stating, in support of his master’s latest evidence of mental deterioration, that it is “overwhelmingly” in America’s “national interest” to acquire Greenland. As though concepts...
Donald Trump, fresh off his great victory-that-will-end-in-quagmire in Venezuela, has instantly returned to his repeated threats to attack Greenland if Denmark does not cede that territory voluntarily. To state the obvious, it is long past the time when anyone can rationally try to explain away such threats as “trolling” or “joking.” He is saying explicitly that the United States “needs Greenland,” and that...
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