Majorityrights News > Category: Geopolitics

Robert Kuttner revealed his conversation with Bannon: “To me,” Bannon said, “the economic war with China is everything.” ... “Ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.” ...“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

Democracy Now, “American Prospect Editor Robert Kuttner on His Extraordinary Interview with Steve Bannon”, 22 Aug 2017:

Democracy Now, Juan Gonzalez: Bannon’s departure came after a series of meetings last week with billionaire funder Robert Mercer who funds Breitbart and funded Trump’s campaign. Bannon met with Mercer on Wednesday and Trump met with Mercer on Thursday. Bannon departed the White house the following day.

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now: Just before he was ousted, Steve Bannon granted an extraordinary interview to Bob Kuttner, co-editor and co-editor of the liberal magazine the American Prospect

American Prospect Editor Robert Kuttner on His Extraordinary Interview with Steve Bannon:

Robert Kuttner: “Every once in a while you get lucky as a journalist, and he never bothered to put the conversation off the record. As you know in journalism if a high public official or anybody calls you and doesn’t bother to say that its off the record it’s the default is that its on the record ...and he proceeded to say a bunch of staggeringly incuatious things; on the assumption because I had also criticized America’s China policy as having been dominated by corporations at the expense of workers; and because that sort of overlapped his critique that we were sort of old buddies and soul-mates…and he spent to first few minutes of the interview kind of ingratiating himself with me, telling me what a thrill it was to meet me after all these years, he’s been reading my stuff…

It was one part naivete (which is an odd word to use for Bannon), it was one part bravado, it was one part recklessness, and it was weird, because if he knew that he he was on thin ice, what’s he doing reaching out to me? Can you imagine Bannon trotting into a meeting of the National Security Council saying, “you’ll never guess who agrees with my analysis, Bob Kuttner’ ...that would push him over the edge and in fact it kind of did.”

... (the best explanation is that) he was on the ropes and he was negotiating with General Kelley and Trump to postpone his departure to after labor day and he thought he could rally his forces on let’s get tough with China….

....if he’d already been fired it would have been completely bizarre that he would have called me and said, ‘hey won’t you come to the White house?’ because that would have been complete fantasy land.

...this is not the world’s most stable person; on the other hand he has a very strategic analysis of how you connect ‘neo-Nazi’, ‘White supremacy’ nationalism to economic nationalism. What’s interesting here is that he’s been able to sell his boss, Trump, on the get in bed with the White supremacist parts of nationalism but he hasn’t been able to sell the rest of the administration on economic nationalism because of course they’re in bed with the corporations; its complete fake populism:

The most recent example of that is the idea that he would use crony capitalism, hiring these private armies and masquerade as isolationism. Who does he think pays for those private armies? It’s the US taxpayer and expensive as the pentagon is, these private armies are even more wasteful and more expensive; so he’s all over the map on a lot of stuff.

But on one thing he’s quite coherent and that came through in the interview: he thinks the winning strategy is, you connect racist nationalism, anti-immigrant nationalism, to economic nationalism.

The other interesting question going forward is whether Bannon is going to play a kitchen cabinet role, where he talks to Trump in the middle of the night, coaches him; Trump is famous for these midnight phone calls.

Or is he going to join a Breitbart who right now is kicking the president in the shins as kind of a sell-out.

....and in that interview with The Weekly Standard he was kind of on both sides of the question, he said that the Trump presidency that we fought for was over….so, even Bannon can’t have that both ways, especially because Trump hates being upstaged by his advisors. That’s what did in Bannon, its what did in Scaramucci.”

Amy Goodman: Talk about the other issues he addressed with you, for example, Charlottesville. ...with Charlottesville his brand of White supremacy, neo-Nazi, the whole issue of The Confederacy, he suddenly comes front and center…and this is when he’s talking to you ...in the midst of this catastrophic news conference on Friday…in fact what was the timing and Trump saying both sides were responsible on Saturday…

Kuttner: He called me about 20 minutes before the press conference started and its pretty clear that his finger prints were all over Trump’s strategy of doubling down on the racism.. there was a kind of a war between the people like Jared and Ivanka, who wanted him to back off, General Kelley, and Bannon who wanted him to double down, which makes the timing of the phone call even weirder.

Goodman: He said to you ‘the Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ‘em; I want them to talk about racism every day; if the left is focused on race and identity and we go with economics we can crush the Democrats.’

Kuttner: Yeah, and I pushed him very hard on that in the interview. I said look, even if we agree that our China policy is basically selling-out to a combination of Bejing’s economic nationalism and our own corporations who are happy to take the subsidies, happy to take the slave labor in China and then re-export back to the United States, that really does hurt American industry, hurts American workers; but, I said, even if we agree on that, why do you have to get in bed with neo Nazis on order to take a harder line on China on behalf of American workers? And that’s when he kind of drew this picture of a grand strategy where you connect the economic nationalism and the racism to the idea you box in the Democrats by forcing the Democrats to defend people of color.

You know, I was listening before we went on, Amy, to the fellow who was talking about pulling down the statue of Columbus, because it all started with Columbus. If that’s the strategy that the left adopts, it almost plays into Bannon’s hands…  I think if you took a vote and asked people do you agree that we ought to pull down the statue of Columbus because the racism and the anti-native peoples all started with Columbus, most people would side with Bannon; so he’s very astutely playing off of liberals and decent people against this idea that the White working class is beleaguered; he does this much more deftly than his boss does. You get the feeling that Trump’s default setting is now just pure racism, pure jingoism, nativism and even getting in bed with Neo-Nazis; whereas Bannon at least (((has a grand theory))) about what he’s doing.

There are two ways to look at what’s going to happen going forward, either with Bannon out Trump becomes even more unhinged, left to his own devices, or he decides to pull back and make more (((an alliance with the mainstream - laughs - far right, otherwise known as the Republican Party.)))

I think we’ll get an indication of this in Phoenix, if he does pardon Sheriff Arpaio, that’s doubling down on the Bannon recipe, because Bannon was the buy who really coached him, using Breitbart, about the genius of going after Mexicans as rapists, and going after anti-immigrants and building a wall, that was pure Bannon.

Juan Gonzalez: I would like to ask you about his remarks on North Korea?

Kuttner: He made it very clear that he completely disagreed with his boss and on this point Bannon was actually right, he said unless someone can explain to me how ten million South Koreans in greater Seoul are not going to be killed by conventional weapons in the first thirty minutes, this talk of war is not sensible, and of course that directly contradicted what his boss had said just days earlier.

Bannon’s view is that because the Chinese are not really helping us out with the North Koreans, they just go through the motions of that, it’s the logic of mutually assured destruction that prevents Kim from launching a nuclear attack on The United States, even Kim is not that crazy. And because that’s the reality, says Bannon, and I agree with him on this one point, we could be taking a much harder line on China. But State Department, Defense Department, U.S. Trade Rep. are all backing off on China on the belief that China is going to pull its chestnuts out of the fire with regard to North Korea.

That’s a shrewd analysis, this is not a stupid man. But its a hundred degrees opposite to what his boss says.

And iterestingly, both Trump and Kim have pulled back in the last few days and that’s also classic Trump, ‘oh, that was yesterday, never mind.’

Goodman: In fact, after pulling back on North Korea, Trump said he was going to bomb Venezuela.

Kuttner: Yeah, and what’s really interesting about bombing Venezuela is that he’s given a free pass dictators from the Philippines to Turkey to Hungary, to Moscow… but somehow..

Goodman: to Saudi Arabia

Kuttner: to Saudi Arabia, we could go on, but somehow he picks Venezuela to go after, so if you have a left wing regime violating human rights you go after them, if you have right wing dictatorships going after human rights, god bless them.

Goodman: So, he talked about the White supremacists at Charlottesville as clowns; can you talk about his evaluation of what took place there?

Kuttner: I think that was another effort in his part, completely insincere to ingratiate himself with a progressive journalist..  ...it’s like the guy who’ll say anything to get a woman to got o bed with him, so he starts improvising, ‘oh, they’re clowns, we don’t take them seriously, we’ve got to crack down on them’ ...you don’t think he believes that for ten seconds and his base knows he doesn’t believe that for ten seconds.

....it’s very encouraging to see the upsurge of activism on the anti-racist side. What is tricky is that most Americans who are not well defined left or well defined far right...

Goodman: Interestingly, the White nationalists have just cancelled a bunch of rallies after getting trounced in these organizing counter measures from Boston on…

Kuttner: I was very proud of Boston. We had upwards of 40,000 demonstrators.

The far right people who called for this rally were revealed to be the pitifully small group that they really are. And that’s what we need to show them up for.

....at the end of the day, there are not that many Neo-Nazis.

Part of the way that the way this is playing out makes it look as if a lot of American sympathize with neo-Nazis, they don’t. And they need to be contained, and the fact that decent Americans all over the spectrum are willing to come out, demonstrate, contain them, that’s fantastic.

Related article: Bannon’s disregard of ethno-nationalism is “leaked.”

        ...purposefully leaked or not, apparently kissing-up to YKW

Robert Kuttner revealed his conversation with Bannon: “To me,” Bannon said, “the economic war with China is everything.” ... “Ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.” ...“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

American Prospect, “Steve Bannon, Unrepentant”, by Robert Kuttner, 16 Aug 2017:

Trump’s embattled strategist phones me, unbidden, to opine on China, Korea, and his enemies in the administration.

You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely blamed for his boss’s continuing indulgence of white supremacists. Allies of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster hold Bannon responsible for a campaign by Breitbart News, which Bannon once led, to vilify the security chief. Trump’s defense of Bannon, at his Tuesday press conference, was tepid.

But Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury. “They’re wetting themselves,” he said, proceeding to detail how he would oust some of his opponents at State and Defense.

Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon’s assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking loose once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me.

Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon’s assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking loose once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me. I’d just published a column on how China was profiting from the U.S.-North Korea nuclear brinkmanship, and it included some choice words about Bannon’s boss.

“In Kim, Trump has met his match,” I wrote. “The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962.” Maybe Bannon wanted to scream at me?

I told the assistant that I was on vacation, but I would be happy to speak by phone. Bannon promptly called.

Far from dressing me down for comparing Trump to Kim, he began, “It’s a great honor to finally track you down. I’ve followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when it comes to China.  You absolutely nailed it.”

“We’re at economic war with China,” he added. “It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they’re just tapping us along. It’s just a sideshow.”

Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote. Given that China is not likely to do much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.

Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.” Bannon went on to describe his battle inside the administration to take a harder line on China trade, and not to fall into a trap of wishful thinking in which complaints against China’s trade practices now had to take a backseat to the hope that China, as honest broker, would help restrain Kim.

“To me,” Bannon said, “the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.”

Bannon’s plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. “We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.”

But what about his internal adversaries, at the departments of State and Defense, who think the United States can enlist Beijing’s aid on the North Korean standoff, and at Treasury and the National Economic Council who don’t want to mess with the trading system?

“Oh, they’re wetting themselves,” he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has big plans to marginalize their influence. “I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State.”

But can Bannon really win that fight internally?

“That’s a fight I fight every day here,” he said. “We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.” “We gotta do this. The president’s default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy. Don’t get me wrong. It’s like, every day.”

Bannon explained that his strategy is to battle the trade doves inside the administration while building an outside coalition of trade hawks that includes left as well as right. Hence the phone call to me.

There are a couple of things that are startling about this premise. First, to the extent that most of the opponents of Bannon’s China trade strategy are other Trump administration officials, it’s not clear how reaching out to the left helps him. If anything, it gives his adversaries ammunition to characterize Bannon as unreliable or disloyal.

More puzzling is the fact that Bannon would phone a writer and editor of a progressive publication (the cover lines on whose first two issues after Trump’s election were “Resisting Trump” and “Containing Trump”) and assume that a possible convergence of views on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.

The question of whether the phone call was on or off the record never came up. This is also puzzling, since Steve Bannon is not exactly Bambi when it comes to dealing with the press. He’s probably the most media-savvy person in America. I asked Bannon about the connection between his program of economic nationalism and the ugly white nationalism epitomized by the racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump’s reluctance to condemn it. Bannon, after all, was the architect of the strategy of using Breitbart to heat up white nationalism and then rely on the radical right as Trump’s base.

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: “Ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.”

“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

From his lips to Trump’s ear. “The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

I had never before spoken with Bannon. I came away from the conversation with a sense both of his savvy and his recklessness. The waters around him are rising, but he is going about his business of infighting, and attempting to cultivate improbable outside allies, to promote his China strategy. His enemies will do what they do.

Either the reports of the threats to Bannon’s job are grossly exaggerated and leaked by his rivals, or he has decided not to change his routine and to go down fighting. Given Trump’s impulsivity, neither Bannon nor Trump really has any idea from day to day whether Bannon is staying or going. He has survived earlier threats. So what the hell, damn the torpedoes. The conversation ended with Bannon inviting me to the White House after Labor Day to continue the discussion of China and trade. We’ll see if he’s still there.

Venezuela, a back door against sanctions and a foothold in the Caribbean in the face of America once again: Venezuela’s Maduro selling oil to Putin.

Venezuela tried to build their economy the wrong way, by selling oil and other natural resources rather than developing the infrastructure by which they might process the oil and other resources in order to sustain and advance their economy.

Venezuela is one of the pariah states along with Belarus and North Korea that the Russian Federation likes to play games with; the RF is now swooping-in for a foothold, for what could be increasing geopolitical control over the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

Breitbart, “Report: Moscow Takes Control of Venezuelan Oil Assets amid Socialist Meltdown”, 14 Aug 2017:

Venezuela needs cash, and Russia has it. Venezuela has oil, and Russia wants it. According to a special report at Reuters, the socialist meltdown in Venezuela is likely to end with Moscow controlling a good deal of that tormented country’s most valuable asset: its oil fields.

According to Reuters, Russia’s giant state-owned oil company Rosneft has been holding secret negotiations with its opposite number in Venezuela, PDVSA, to purchase “ownership interests in up to nine of Venezuela’s most productive petroleum projects.”

The number of Venezuela projects Russia would have substantial or ownership stakes in would jump from five to 14 if these deals go through. The new acquisitions would include projects in some of Venezuela’s richest oil and natural gas fields.

The article goes on to note that Rosneft has already floated a billion dollars to PDVSA for promised future oil shipments, and the regime of socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro used Russian money to avoid defaulting on bonds at least twice. Russia announced one of these seemingly risky advance payments immediately after the United States announced a new round of sanctions against Maduro at the beginning of August.

Barron’s explains that Russia’s advance payments for Venezuelan crude are essentially a stealth strategy for buying the oil fields themselves. Russia writes huge checks for barrels of oil, Venezuela is unable to deliver the product or pay the debt, and Russia swaps the debt for equity in the oil projects.

New York Times, “Is Putin Getting What He Wanted With Trump?” 10 June 2017:

In the Senate last week, Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, asked the fired F.B.I. director James Comey if he had “any doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections.” Mr. Comey responded with a single word: “None.”

Indeed, he went on to tell the American public that the Russians “did it with purpose, they did it with sophistication, they did it with overwhelming technical efforts.” And he warned: “They will be back,” adding, “they are coming after America.”

Vodka shots in the Kremlin, right? Not exactly.

Doubtless Vladimir Putin continues to derive satisfaction from having assaulted American democracy and embarrassed Hillary Clinton. But the Russian president had one paramount priority: to lift Western sanctions.

As MR has noted, the parasite “federation” that is the Russian Federation, works with rogue nations such as North Korea and Belarus. The Times article adds -

[ibid]

According to one estimate, a quarter of Russia’s global weapons exports in 2015 were to rogue Venezuela, in transactions predominantly effected via loans. Last week, Moscow cut $1 billion from projected state budget revenues.

The Express -

Express, “TRUMP’S NEW THREAT? US President urged to act as Venezuela forges closer links to RUSSIA”, 8 April 2017:

DONALD Trump could be forced to step in to save Venezuela amid fears the failing South American country could be about to turn to Russia or Iran for support.

The Trump administration in Washington is already dealing with a string of crises across the globe - including deadly conflict in Iraq and Syria and the fight against Islamic extremism.

But improving relations with Russia, who today claimed its relationship with the US was in “tatters”, could prove to be the government’s biggest challenge to date.

Russia has not been a threat to America since the Cold War era - yet Moscow could now have found a sneaky way to stir up new tensions with the US without even lifting a finger.

Venezuela has always enjoyed warm relations with Russia, purchasing more than £3.2billion worth of arms from the former Soviet state since 2005.

And in 2009, Russia approved a whopping £1.6bn loan for the Latin American nation as it struggled with an inflation crisis that has left thousands of people struggling to afford food.

However, experts in the US have now warned there could be more to the ‘friendship’ than meets the eye.

Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, a US top military official warned Venezuela could be a “destabilising” factor in Latin America - claiming a “regional response” could be needed following the country’s growing humanitarian crisis.

But he also warned the relationships fostered by Venezuela could pose a real threat to the US in the future.

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At a press conference at Trump Tower in New York to declare his loyalty to the Republican Party, Donald Trump was flanked by guests from Indonesia, and made a big show of announcing one very special guest, Setya Novanto.

“He wants it big, and overlooking the sacred Tanah-Lot.”

Trump deal in Indonesia imposes Islamic compradors over ethno-nationalism and his hotel and business upon what is sacred to Indonesian ethno-nationalists.

FOUR CORNERS, 3 July 2017:

While running for President, Trump was courting the Indonesians over lucrative resort deals in Bali and Java; and lobbying Indonesian MP’s to expedite a toll road that would benefit his development.

The secretive dealings raise new questions about Trump’s corporate interests abroad and about the unholy business and political alliances he’s forged.

While at home, Trump rails against Muslim extremists, in the world’s largest Muslim country, his allies are cozying-up to Islamists who are posing a direct threat the country’s ethno-nationalism.

Donald Trump has entered into two huge deals in Indonesia, and the first of them will land here, on the southern edge of Bali almost on top of one of the Island’s most sacred religious sites, Tanah Lot - an hour or two away from the main tourist areas, the Balanese have fought for decades to protect this temple and its surrounds.

“Not much is known of Trump’s plans but what is known that he wants it big, the biggest in Bali he says,  he wants a tower on an island that bans them, and he wants it over looking the sacred Tahan Lot.”

“It’s one of the island-wide temples that are sacred to the Balanese, its the land, pana, and lot, which means ocean.”

Donald Trump makes deal with Islamic compradors in Indonesia, imposing them against the native stasis of Left ethno-nationalism, and his hotel and business upon what is sacred to native ethno-nationalists.

80,000 Indonesians were killed by Suharto on that beach in 1965, the victims were accused of being Leftists….

When President Suharto exited power in 1998, he took three decades of loot with him, estimated at 30 billion dollars.

Trump’s business partner in the deal, Harry Tanno, was a close friend of Suharto.

Tanno welcomes Trump and Sharia

Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s man is on screen talking after 37 minute mark - his appearance was the biggest thing in the whole video:

“Is it your ambition to impose Sharia Law in Indonesia?” “It is not our ambition, but our duty.”

An abstract kind of wild quid pro quo white America has going on there.

All imagery and story, THE COMPANY HE KEEPS: FOUR CORNERS, 3 July 2017.

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Trump administration cornered by Mueller in a grand jury investigation.

Trump was not able to veto new sanctions against Russian as it would have been hapless against Capitol Hill’s unanimity on the measure, but betrayed his lack of innocence anyway by attaching a note of complaint (on behalf of his Russian friends?) to go along with his signing.

It would be a similar dead-ringer of guilt, revealing divided loyalties, if Trump tried to remove Mueller from the position of special investigation into Russian influence over his campaign, even if by the proxy of appointing someone who will do the dirty work where Sessions has recused himself - but now even that weasel-out of hiring someone to replace Sessions for the position to fire Meuller is being closed off; the Trump administration is being cornered, such that all administration personnel will be subject to appear before a grand jury and forced to present any documents, financial records, even emails that might have bearing - material evidence that they probably would not disclose voluntarily. 

Politico, “Could Trump Fire Mueller? It’s Complicated”, 3 August 2017:

But the real question is what Congress would do to stop him.

It turns out that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been calling ducks chickens all year long. In February, April and July, the Senate broke for 10 days or more. Each time, the Senate convened pro forma sessions. Subsequent reporting indicated that this was part of a plan hatched by the Senate GOP to prevent Trump from making any recess appointments at all. So it’s highly unlikely that Trump will be able to make a recess appointment during the upcoming break.

Does this mean Trump can’t ease out Sessions without sparking a messy confirmation process for his successor?

A Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing would inevitably rehash the firing of FBI Director James Comey, and even Republicans would be unlikely to confirm a nominee who didn’t pledge to protect Mueller’s investigation.

But Trump has other cards to play. He can appoint an acting attorney general and never get around to nominating a real one. By default, Rosenstein would take the helm. But Rosenstein is the one who hired Mueller, so if Trump’s goal is to get rid of the special counsel, he needs to pick someone else as acting attorney general.

But while a Grand Jury investigation is anything but good news for Trump and his administration, it is not news failing his incapacity to get rid of the Mueller and the investigation altogether - it is standard operating procedure for a special investigation of this kind:

Washington Post, “Why Mueller’s use of a grand jury confirms what we already knew”, 3 August 2017:

reathless tweets and breaking-news banners notwithstanding, reports that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has empaneled a grand jury in the ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign and potential Russian collusion are entirely unsurprising. This development isn’t a nothing-burger, but it doesn’t suggest anything we didn’t already know.

Grand juries are how federal prosecutors conduct their investigations. The grand jury has the subpoena power that prosecutors need to compel reluctant witnesses to testify under oath. Grand jury subpoenas are also how prosecutors gather documents such as bank records, emails and corporate papers from entities or people who might not produce them voluntarily.

If a preliminary inquiry suggests there is nothing to a case, prosecutors might never empanel a grand jury. They and the FBI might conduct voluntary interviews, examine readily available documents and determine that no more formal inquiry is warranted.

That quick-look, let’s-move-on scenario was never likely here. It’s been clear for months that the allegations are sufficiently serious to merit a full investigation. And in the world of federal prosecutors, that means using a grand jury.

In fact, prosecutors in this probe have been using a grand jury for some time. Grand jury proceedings take place in secret, so there is often not a lot of news about what is happening in the room.

But someone who receives a subpoena to testify or produce documents is not bound by those secrecy rules. They are free to disclose — to the media or to anyone else — that they received a grand jury subpoena or testified in the grand jury. It may be that someone who just received a subpoena contacted a reporter and that has resulted in the “breaking news” stories.

The reality is that any investigation serious enough to warrant the appointment of a special counsel was always likely to involve a grand jury. It was always going to drag on for months. In a case this complex, it takes a long time to investigate the various allegations, subpoena and review relevant documents, and put relevant witnesses before the grand jury. If there are grants of immunity or plea deals to be negotiated, that takes time as well.

Mueller has already hired more than a dozen prosecutors to staff his investigation. Anyone who thought this was going to be over quickly was kidding themselves. The “news” confirms what we already knew.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the existence of a grand jury investigation does not mean criminal charges will necessarily result. Especially in white-collar cases, it’s not unusual for grand jury investigations to close with no charges being filed. The grand jury is the investigative tool that prosecutors use to determine whether charges are warranted – and sometimes the answer is no.

In the past weeks, there have been a number of startling and significant developments in the Russia probe. News that the special counsel is using a grand jury is not one of them.

Blacks aren’t natural allies of Asians and neither are Jews, with their propensity to impose Abrahamism, its liberalism, Christian submissionaries and Muslim compradors over Asians

Salon, “Donald Trump’s Justice Department is fighting affirmative action for hurting white people”, 2 August 2017:

Attorney General Sessions is furthering an anti-civil rights agenda by investigating affirmative action.

I’m going to begin with an unusual order in approaching this article and surrounding discussion - viz., I will begin by looking at some comments on the matter because they throw light on how the YKW are misleading and manipulating people with a concept of “the left” - not letting it be properly understood as discriminatory social unionization and coalitions thereof, but rather having it oxymoronically accepted as liberalism for all but those unionizations circumscribed and actively represented inasmuch as they are good for YKW interests - themselves stealthily behind the scenes of the unionizations, markedly of the black interests that they have represented - viz., especially as it serves to rupture the effective patterns of their perceived enemies: would-be unionized White and Asian power.

Until recently, around 2008 with the subprime mortgage crisis; and the re-branding of (((Frank Meyer’s paleoconservatism))) as the “Alt-Right”, the YKW had not been so ardent nor effective in getting the public to argue that THE Left was the great problem of our times.

But looking at the essence of “the left” as the YKW have permitted it to be spoken of in the public domain, what we’ve had is Jewish led coalitions, internationally, of Jewish interests and crony capitalist interests; and domestically, in The U.S., primarily Jewish led coalitions of Africans, sundry Mulattoes, where convenient, gays, lesbians and feminists where they might perceive a common axe to grind against White men ...at the same time these Jewish led coalitions have not been organized for sympathy or fairness to Asians interests either.

After this point, 2008, when the YKW and complicit right-wing sell outs had presided over the boom bust cycle to where they stood firmly atop, they no longer had any use for advocating left coalitions of unions against the power - because the YKW had crossed the intersection, they had become the predominant organized power. Suddenly, “the left” became the pervasive enemy. ...and in the background, only one social unionization was tolerated by them - though not called “the left” - it was, of course, the union of Jews; and it became more brazenly right wing and supremacist with regard to other peoples, seeking only to cooperate with their right wing sell outs against those who might collectively organize as leftist coalitions against their elitism, supremacism and imperialism.

Thus, Gavin Chan has been maneuvered by Jewish journalese, a disingenuous framing of discourse, into talking in terms of “THE left” being antagonistic to his interests, without recognizing that this is neither a White Left, nor an Asian Left, but Jewish organized black and other PC left that has been used to attack those who most threaten the YKW - viz. Whites and Asians - as they threaten, especially in coalition, the only social unionization that the YKW want to remain effective - their own.

Gavin Chan · Dallas, Texas
Affirmative action is in fact the biggest middle finger to Asians. But the left leaves this detail out in most affirmative action discussions because Asians don’t fit into the leftist racial narrative.

Affirmative action in place to pay historical reparations, sure, but why at the expense of Asians? It’s absolute bs.

It’s time to end this super racist policy.

Gavin, they’ve given you the middle finger indeed with unions of blacks et. al, represented against you. But, where Elizabeth says..

Elizabeth Rodriguez · Ledyard, Connecticut
Sorry, but I don’t think Trump and Sessions are doing this to fight for Asian rights.

...that is true, they are not. They are doing this as a part of disingenuous quid pro-quo between Jews and complicit White right/alt-right wingers. I.e., they are not doing this for a White Left nor an Asian Left, but for a system controlled by (((the invisible hand))) in cooperation with whomever will take their deals, take their side and share their enemies where they might have the nerve to organize against their supramacism and imperialism.

The proper response is to recognize that a repeal of the Consent Decrees of the 1964 Civil Right Act would help alleviate some of the pressure of active enforcement of reverse discrimination, but it does not go far enough, it is not the White and Asian unionization and necessary coalition thereof - which would constitute, in the case of America, ethno-nationalisms in diaspora.

When you criticize “the racism” of affirmative action you are, in effect, criticizing group genetic unionization, the capacity for accountability thereof and thus to discriminate necessarily in group interests - that is not necessarily the same as being unfair and impervious - and leaves us only the fall-out of a civic nation, its muddles and deleterious demographic mixing - which will be horrifically unjust and destructive to systems- a destruction imposed by cultural Marxism these last 70 years, which operates irrespective of objectivist rules such as civil rights, by whatever stealthy social organization that remains effective behind the scenes, largely YKW.

Let’s focus more on the Salon article(s) now:

Some background: The Consent Decrees are effectively a scheme devised for U.S. Courts to stipulate and oversee enforcement of various concrete measures that must be taken over time to implement reverse discrimination, for all practical purposes, against White people (it eventually worked against Asians as well).

At first blush it appears to be simply good that this reverse discrimination of affirmative action might be overturned - and it really is good to an extent: at least it would repeal oversight of strict and punitive enforcement of (((Red Leftism))) and its defacto imposition of Mulatto supremacism over Whites (and Asians, Mestizos and Amerindians). It would curb the imposed liberalization of White (and Asian) boundaries in force since court decisions and consent decrees of the 50’s and 60’s; and make way for a return to a more generally liberal direction of civil individual rights, on the basis of civic nationalism - that, however, is always disingenuous. Who believes that the system is “objectively” backed?. What is the demographic make-up of this civic nation, where is it headed and which people have the invisible hand that is pulling the socially orchestrating strings that are not acknowledged?

Now that the demographic situation is muddled among the masses and unionized resistance appears near futile as it has been conflated for years with civic liberalism, Jewish interests are entrenched on top with the help of right wing sell outs they’ve bought off. They are now consistent in opposing “the left” - viz., unionized groups of people which might otherwise hold them to account. What they offer instead is civic nationalism and the mechanism of civil rights with no account to systemic backing other than the invisible hand that they, the YKW, and to some extent complicit right wing sell outs, control.

The initial financial boosters of the Trump administration, the people who made Trump’s presidency possible, are Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. They fall into the complicit with Jews category, at best, they work things out with Jews. Witness their having put Judeo-Christian Steve Bannon (who believes “the dark frorces of the far east are the greatest threat to Western civilization) in charge of the Trump campaign as a condition of their backing. Nevertheless, Robert has long been an opponent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; and Sessions has obviously been tasked to set about deconstructing the 1964 Civil Rights Act; he was installed along with Bannon into the Trump administration apparently in large part with that aim.

Rebekah and her father Robert Mercer

NPR, 22 March 2017: “Jane Mayer - Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.”

Jane Mayer writes in the New Yorker about Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, who have poured millions of dollars into Breitbart News, and who pushed to have Bannon run Trump’s campaign. Robert and daughter Rebekah’s dark money is behind Bannon, Sessions,.. they were behind Flynn as well, would have been for Cruz, Bolton, almost anything but the Clintons.

Robert Mercer’s Opinions on 1964 Civil Rights Act:

According to a March 2017 New Yorker article by investigative journalist Jane Mayer, David Magerman, a former Renaissance employee, said that Mercer called the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark federal statute arising from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, a “major mistake.” According to Magerman, Mercer said that African Americans were economically better off before the civil rights movement, that white racists no longer existed in the United States and that the only racists remaining were African American. Mercer vigorously denies being a white supremacist.

It remains true that White people, including ‘lower class White people” NEVER needed such black unions having their interests imposed upon them, as they were imposed by Jewish legalists, right wing sell outs and liberal stooges.

Thus, a repeal of the Consent Decrees could relieve Whites some - but only after untold damage has already been done to human biological systems and the demographic situation is hideously muddled and swamped - leaving the only one apparent way out in systemic support - through dealing with the YKW: an option that right wing sell outs and the Alternative Right have already exercised.

While they may have some problems with blacks that they may not want to own up to, but would rather look upon as the unfairness of affirmative action according to pure objectivist criteria and civic nationalism, none of these people behind and in the Trump administration have any great affection for Asians either. None of these people are anti-Semitic. The circumstance has all the hallmarks of a continued program of collaboration of elite and Zionist Jewry and right wing sell-out Whites: i.e., now that these folks are on top of the seven power niches, who needs left coalitions, unions of people discriminating in their interests? Especially not against Jewish supremaicism and elitist right wing interests.

The YKW, you see, are the only systemic union allowed in the end, by the cause of Red Leftism. Ever since around 2008 “the left” has been popularized as the great villain by the YKW in power - largely by means of the popularization of the (((paleoconservative underpinned))) Alternative Right.

But, in a word, the liberalism that they offer - even if they would repeal the Consent Decrees (which they will probably not succeed in implementing to any great effect for White interests free of Jewish instigation of pan mixia) - does not go nearly far enough: Systemic White interests need to be unionized such as to afford discriminatory accountability in the interests of our social capital - that is what is called an ethno-nation - and it must exclude the YKW from any pretense that they are White as well. Jews being considered “White” and a part of “Western Civilization” is obviously a key to the Session’s deal that they are floating to repeal the Consent Decrees. Jews cannot be trusted as part of our interest group for their manichean cunning and inevitable destruction to our people, any more than blacks can be a part of our people for their genetic distance and inevitably destructive biopower where it is allowed cohabitation and mixing.

The undoing of the Consent Decrees would be the theoretical ending of a Jewish led implementation of imposed black unionization and extortion against us all.

What we mean by unionization here is what we mean by ethno-nation on the broad scale and genetic interest groups on the subsidiary level - in our exclusionary interests.

The problem arises then with he fact that you still have to live in the world with other people as cooperatively as possible. Drawing upon friend enemy distinctions, most sane people would say Jews and blacks should be first to be most perfectly excluded; as people coordinated with at best, but not cooperated with in expectation of reciprocal good will.

Our best hope is in cooperating with coalitions of Asians, Amerindians and Mestizos against blacks and YKW.

Asian - Mestizo - White interaction is nevertheless, problematic and nobody wants to be naive - but if there is some way to coordinate our unions as a coalition against Jewish and other right wing supremaicsm, and Muslims and against black biopower, then we probably have the best possible coalition.

Of course the trick is how to manage these coalitions with Asians, Amerindians and Mestizos, without us getting abused - particularly with the Alt-Right, Right and Jews ostensibly representing us - The Asians, Amerindians and Mestizos might simply react by trying to swamp us in population if we let them, glibly citing historical grievances that we especially would have had nothing to do with, even historically; or they could do worse, taking guerilla tactics against us as if we are immune to cooperation, perhaps sicking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wvy5jXXg-E tuck ms 13”>the likes of MS13 on us if we don’t like their taking advantage, etc.

Some people would say that we do not have to coordinate with the better elements of these people; but in a world where we are faced with Jews, Muslims and Africans, and naive and disingenuous Whites, Jewed-out by Christianity, indeed we must try to coordinate with these peoples as left natonalist allies as best we can.

The Salon Article. An ostensible victory to unburden White servitude to blacks, but at what (((price))) and to what real effect, in whose “objective” interests?

Salon, “Donald Trump’s Justice Department is fighting affirmative action for hurting white people”, 2 August 2017:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is furthering an anti-civil rights agenda by investigating affirmative action.

The bromance between President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions may have soured, but that doesn’t mean the president isn’t supporting the most reactionary aspects of Sessions’ policies.

The Justice Department’s civil rights division is going to have some of its resources allocated toward lawsuits against universities over affirmative action policies perceived as hostile to white people, according to a document reported by The New York Times. The Times also reports that the internal announcement to the civil rights division explicitly asks for lawyers who would be willing to pursue “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

This policy exists as part of a larger anti-civil rights agenda being pursued by Trump and Sessions. In May, Sessions doubled down on the drug war by instructing prosecutors to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.” In June, Sessions discontinued the use of consent decrees in civil rights cases, which goes against traditional Justice Department practice as it makes civil rights rulings more difficult to enforce. Last month the Justice Department argued that Title VII protections don’t apply to the LGBT community.

Despite these social justice policies, Sessions has mainly been in the news for his deteriorating relationship with Trump. Although the two were reported to be close friends for years, and through the 2016 election, things soured between them when Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation in March. Trump has blamed Sessions for what he perceives as a showing of weakness and said that he wouldn’t have selected Sessions as attorney general if he’d known he would do that.

Salon, “Trump Administration quietly rolls back Civil Rights efforts across federal government”, 15 June 2017: Previously unannounced directives will limit the Department of Justice’s use of civil rights enforcement tools - Consent Decrees

Topics: Civil Rights, Department of Justice, Jeff Sessions, ProPublica, Trump Administration, Politics News

For decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious.

Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the DOJ appears to be turning away from this storied tool, called consent decrees. Top officials in the DOJ civil rights division have issued verbal instructions through the ranks to seek settlements without consent decrees — which would result in no continuing court oversight.

The move is just one part of a move by the Trump administration to limit federal civil rights enforcement. Other departments have scaled back the power of their internal divisions that monitor such abuses. In a previously unreported development, the Education Department last week reversed an Obama-era reform that broadened the agency’s approach to protecting rights of students. The Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have also announced sweeping cuts to their enforcement.

“At best, this administration believes that civil rights enforcement is superfluous and can be easily cut. At worst, it really is part of a systematic agenda to roll back civil rights,” said Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama.

Consent decrees have not been abandoned entirely by the DOJ, a person with knowledge of the instructions said. Instead, there is a presumption against their use — attorneys should default to using settlements without court oversight unless there is an unavoidable reason for a consent decree. The instructions came from the civil rights division’s office of acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore. There is no written policy guidance.

Devin O’Malley, a spokesperson for the DOJ, declined to comment for this story.

Consent decrees can be a powerful tool, and spell out specific steps that must be taken to remedy the harm. These are agreed to by both parties and signed off on by a judge, whom the parties can appear before again if the terms are not being met. Though critics say the DOJ sometimes does not enforce consent decrees well enough, they are more powerful than settlements that aren’t overseen by a judge and have no built-in enforcement mechanism.

Such settlements have “far fewer teeth to ensure adequate enforcement,” Gupta said.

Consent decrees often require agencies or municipalities to take expensive steps toward reform. Local leaders and agency heads then can point to the binding court authority when requesting budget increases to ensure reforms. Without consent decrees, many localities or government departments would simply never make such comprehensive changes, said William Yeomans, who spent 26 years at the DOJ, mostly in the civil rights division.

“They are key to civil rights enforcement,” he said. “That’s why Sessions and his ilk don’t like them.”

READ MORE...

Rob Goldstone, left, shown in contact with Trump prior to his son’s meeting with Goldstone that promised high level Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Oh, Wait. Maybe It Was Collusion.

New York Times, Op-Ed Contributors JOHN SIPHER and STEVE HALL, August 2, 2017:

Did the Trump campaign collude with Russian agents trying to manipulate the course of the 2016 election? Some analysts have argued that the media has made too much of the collusion narrative; that Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Kremlin-linked Russians last year was probably innocent (if ill-advised); or that Russian operatives probably meant for the meeting to be discovered because they were not trying to recruit Mr. Kushner and Mr. Trump as agents, but mainly trying to undermine the American political system.

We disagree with these arguments. We like to think of ourselves as fair-minded and knowledgeable, having between us many years of experience with the C.I.A. dealing with Russian intelligence services. It is our view not only that the Russian government was running some sort of intelligence operation involving the Trump campaign, but also that it is impossible to rule out the possibility of collusion between the two.

The original plan drawn up by the Russian intelligence services was probably multilayered. They could have begun an operation intended to disrupt the presidential campaign, as well as an effort to recruit insiders to help them over time — the two are not mutually exclusive. It is the nature of Russian covert actions (or as the Russians would call them, “active measures”) to adapt over time, providing opportunities for other actions that extend beyond the original intent.

It is entirely plausible, for example, that the original Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers was an effort simply to collect intelligence and get an idea of the plans of the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate. Once derogatory information emerged from that operation, the Russians might then have seen an opportunity for a campaign to influence or disrupt the election. When Donald Trump Jr. responded “I love it” to proffers from a Kremlin-linked intermediary to provide derogatory information obtained by Russia on Hillary Clinton, the Russians might well have thought that they had found an inside source, an ally, a potential agent of influence on the election.

The goal of the Russian spy game is to nudge a person to step over the line into an increasingly conspiratorial relationship. First, for a Russian intelligence recruitment operation to work, they would have had some sense that Donald Trump Jr. was a promising target. Next, as the Russians often do, they made a “soft” approach, setting the bait for their target via the June email sent by Rob Goldstone, a British publicist, on behalf of a Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov.

They then employed a cover story — adoptions — to make it believable to the outside world that there was nothing amiss with the proposed meetings. They bolstered this idea by using cutouts, nonofficial Russians, for the actual meeting, enabling the Trump team to claim — truthfully — that there were no Russian government employees at the meeting and that it was just former business contacts of the Trump empire who were present.

When the Trump associates failed to do the right thing by informing the F.B.I., the Russians probably understood that they could take the next step toward a more conspiratorial relationship. They knew what bait to use and had a plan to reel in the fish once it bit.

While we don’t know for sure whether the email solicitation was part of an intelligence ploy, there are some clues. A month after the June meeting at Trump Tower, WikiLeaks, a veritable Russian front, released a dump of stolen D.N.C. emails. The candidate and campaign surrogates increasingly mouthed talking points that seemed taken directly from Russian propaganda outlets, such as that there had been a terrorist attack on a Turkish military base, when no such attack had occurred. Also, at this time United States intelligence reportedly received indications from European intelligence counterparts about odd meetings between Russians and Trump campaign representatives overseas.

Of course, to determine whether collusion occurred, we would have to know whether the Trump campaign continued to meet with Russian representatives subsequent to the June meeting. The early “courting” stage is almost always somewhat open and discoverable. Only after the Russian intelligence officer develops a level of control can the relationship be moved out of the public eye. John Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A., recently testified, “Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.”

Even intelligence professionals who respect one another and who understand the Russians can and often do disagree. On the Trump collusion question, the difference of opinion comes down to this: Would the Russians use someone like Mr. Goldstone to approach the Trump campaign? Our friend and former colleague Daniel Hoffman argued in this paper that this is unlikely — that the Russians would have relied on trained agents. We respectfully disagree. We believe that the Russians might well have used Mr. Goldstone. We also believe the Russians would have seen very little downside to trying to recruit someone on the Trump team — a big fish. If the fish bit and they were able to reel it in, the email from Mr. Goldstone could remain hidden and, since it was from an acquaintance, would be deniable if found. (Exactly what the Trump team is doing now.)

If the fish didn’t take the bait, the Russians would always have had the option to weaponize the information later to embarrass the Trump team. In addition, if the Russians’ first objective was chaos and disruption, the best way to accomplish that would have been to have someone on the inside helping. It is unlikely that the Russians would not use all the traditional espionage tools available to them.

However, perhaps the most telling piece of information may be the most obvious. Donald Trump himself made numerous statements in support of Russia, Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks during the campaign. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his team have gone out of their way to hide contacts with Russians and lied to the public about it. Likewise, Mr. Trump has attacked those people and institutions that could get to the bottom of the affair. He fired his F.B.I. director James Comey, criticized and bullied his attorney general and deputy attorney general, denigrated the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and assails the news media, labeling anything he dislikes “fake news.” Innocent people don’t tend to behave this way.

The overall Russian intent is clear: disruption of the United States political system and society, a goal that in the Russian view was best served by a Trump presidency. What remains to be determined is whether the Russians also attempted to suborn members of the Trump team in an effort to gain their cooperation. This is why the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is so important. It is why the F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation, also quietly progressing in the background, is critical. Because while a Russian disruption operation is certainly plausible, it is not inconsistent with a much darker Russian goal: gaining an insider ally at the highest levels of the United States government.

In short, and regrettably, collusion is not off the table.

John Sipher (@john_sipher), a former chief of station for the C.I.A., worked for over 27 years in Russia, Europe and Asia and now writes for The Cipher Brief and works for CrossLead, a consulting company. Steve Hall (@StevenLHall1) is a former C.I.A. chief of Russian operations and a CNN national security analyst.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

New Observer, “Orban: Hungary is a “Refuge for Europeans,” and Uses Tax Money to Boost Birthrate”, 24 July 2017:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced that his nation will “remain a place where Western European Christians will always be able to find security”—and that his government is using taxes on multinational companies to fund social policies to spur families to have more children.

Speaking at a cultural festival in Baile Tusnad, Romania, Orbán also said that the European Union, together with Open Society founder—and Hungarian Jew—George Soros was seeking a “new, mixed, Muslimized Europe.”

He went on to say that Hungary’s border fences, supported by other Central European countries, “will block the EU-Soros effort to increase Muslim migration into Europe.”

While Hungary opposed taking in migrants “who could change the country’s cultural identity,” Orban said under his leadership, Hungary would remain a place where “Western European Christians will always be able to find security.”

He also said that Hungary’s opposition parties were no match for his government, and that he would win the next election in April 2018.

“In the upcoming campaign, first of all we have to confront external powers,” Orban said.

“We have to stand our ground against the Soros mafia network and the Brussels bureaucrats. And, during the next nine months, we will have to fight against the media they operate.”

Recent legislation in Hungary seeks to close or expel the Budapest-based Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991. There are also new rules about non-governmental organizations funded at least partly from abroad.

Orban reiterated his charge that Soros-funded NGOs want to weaken Hungary’s security with their advocacy for asylum-seekers and said Hungary had managed to stop the “migrant invasion” with razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia.

In the speech, broadcast by Hungarian state media, Orban repeated his claim that the EU leadership was encroaching on member states’ rights and trying to apply policies, such as increased immigration, which he said were opposed by most Europeans.

Orban said Poland, which is under pressure from the EU because of attempts to put its Supreme Court under political control, had replaced Hungary as the target of the EU’s “chief inquisitor,” whom he identified as European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans.

“The main target of the inquisition, the example of national governance to be weakened, destroyed and broken is Poland,” Orban said, vowing to defend the Polish government. “Hungary will use every legal possibility in the European Union to be in solidarity with the Poles.”

Finally, Orban said Hungary’s low birth rate made the country an “endangered species,” and that the government was using taxes on multinational companies to fund social policies that would spur families to have more children.