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NPR, “Could Trump ‘Undermine The Legacy Of The Obama Presidency’ With The Stroke Of A Pen?” 15 Nov 2016:

New Yorker writer Evan Osnos talks about the executive orders and other actions that Trump can use to undo existing agreements on climate change, immigration and foreign policy.

[...]

DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Well, Evan Osnos, welcome back to FRESH AIR. How reliable are campaign promises as a predictor of a president’s agenda in office, and will Trump be different?

EVAN OSNOS: I assumed that, like, I think like a lot of Americans, that campaign promises are not very valuable in terms of actually predicting the course of a presidency. We - you know, we tend to remember when campaigns say things that they don’t then fulfill. But actually, the political science on this is pretty clear, and it tells a very different story, which is that if you go back over the history of the presidency, you find that presidents tend to achieve the majority - the overwhelming majority of the things that they set out to accomplish when they were candidates.

[...]

DAVIES: Now, when people look at Donald Trump, some would say it’s not clear that he has any deeply held political beliefs. I mean, he used to be pro-choice. He used to be a Democrat. He’s kind of been all over the place over the course of his business career, and a lot of what he says seems kind of improvised, but we have some clues. I mean, there are two big appointments just announced. The Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, will be Trump’s chief of staff, and at the same time, his campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, who is from the right wing Breitbart News, will be a senior adviser with equal status to Reince Priebus. What does this tell us about Trump’s likely agenda?

OSNOS: Right. Well, I think a lot of us were very wary of the idea that Trump as president would actually do a lot of the things that he said as a candidate partly because he was, you know, obviously from way outside the mainstream and - of previous presidents. So perhaps the political science was useless. But there are a couple of things that I think are important to keep in mind. One is that the appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist and a counselor to the president is an extension of something that was very clear when this piece was written, which was that Donald Trump will move around on a lot of issues. He’s fluid, for instance, on what he would do on the technical basis of an H-1B visa, for instance, or whether or not he would allow school teachers to carry guns in the classroom.

But on three core ideas, he has stayed completely consistent. One of them is his belief that the United States is fundamentally being damaged by immigration. Number two is his belief that trade deals have done more damage to the United States than they have helped. And number three is his belief that the United States does too much for the world. As he said in 2015, I want to take back everything that the United States has given the world.

Steve Bannon, in his career at Breitbart, really transformed that organization into the principal exponent of those three ideas. So what you see today is Donald Trump is trying to balance the strategic objectives that his campaign road to victory in the form of Steve Bannon with the practical necessity of how do you actually operate within Washington. And for that, Reince Priebus, the new chief of staff, is the ultimate Washington professional. He has been here for his professional life. He has really risen to the top ranks of the Republican establishment, and he’s now in the position to be able to try to help Donald Trump achieve his objectives.

DAVIES: You know, there’s a point of view that says, yeah, ideologues can have their say, but it’s the chief of staff who controls the president’s schedule that really moves the levers of power. Do you have an opinion about whether one will be more important than the other?

OSNOS: I think if you look at the way that those two roles have been used in recent history, you find that they are both important, and in many ways, that’s the design here. Steve Bannon has called Breitbart, which was his media organization, quote, “the platform of the alt right,” unquote. And that is the previously fringe movement on the conservative far-right edge, which was founded by Richard Spencer who lives in Montana and believes in the separation of the races. And that has now moved sort of further into the mainstream as a result of Steve Bannon’s rise within the Trump campaign and now his installation in the White House. But in order to get those ideas accomplished, you need somebody who really is just as skilled as anyone in sort of managing the levers of inside power in Washington, and that’s where Reince Priebus comes in.

DAVIES: OK, I want to talk about some of the areas of policy that will matter here. And we’ll try and figure out, you know, what Trump has said, what he believes, what he is really committed to and what he can actually accomplish by himself and what he needs congressional action for. One thing that people have talked about is that President Obama has done a lot with executive orders because of the gridlock in Congress and that President Trump, once he is inaugurated, can immediately undo a bunch of stuff simply by signing executive orders, repealing President Obama’s initiatives. Is that true?

OSNOS: Yeah, that’s true, and that’s an explicit part of the incoming Trump administration’s plan. Campaign advisers described it to me as a first-day project, by which they meant that on the first day or within a few days Donald Trump would seek to sign as many as 25 executive orders, or uses of executive power in other forms, that would, in the words of one adviser, erase the Obama presidency.

I should point out that every president when they come in uses executive powers in one form or another. Barack Obama, for instance, signed nine executive orders in the first 10 days. Doing 25 would be ambitious. People who have been through transitions before tell me that’s not realistic. But he could do several things that would significantly undermine the legacy of the Obama presidency. His team has talked about this since Election Day, that one of the things that’s important to them is to restart exploration of the Keystone Pipeline.

They will significantly expand the pace and intensity of deportations. They will seek to, if not formally remove the United States from the Paris climate agreement, then they will be able to take steps that basically undermine it so they can make sure the United States is not enforcing restrictions on carbon output. They can restrict funding and so on. So they can do things right away with the stroke of a pen that would pretty significantly undermine the legacy of the Obama presidency.

DAVIES: Is there some fine print here? I mean, I believe I’ve read that when some executive orders have gone past the rulemaking stage…

OSNOS: That’s right.

DAVIES: ...There’s a process. What does that mean?

OSNOS: Yeah, that’s right. The hyperbole in saying that they would undermine the Obama presidency is that once an executive order has gone beyond what’s known as the rulemaking stage, then that means that in order to undo it there has to be, for instance, a period of public comment. There has to be other bureaucratic steps. And that can take as much as a year or more depending on how efficiently the bureaucracy goes about it. And that’s meaningful because I think the question of how civil servants will interpret efforts to try to undermine previous initiatives matters. But the relevant point is that by issuing the executive order the clock on that process begins.

DAVIES: OK. Well, let’s look at some specific policy areas and figure out what might happen. Let’s start with climate change. You just mentioned that. Do we - what do we know about his views on climate change and the extent to which he is committed to them based on his appointments so far?

OSNOS: Well, as a candidate and before, Donald Trump has expressed a lot of skepticism about climate change. He’s called it a hoax. At one point, he described it as a hoax that was perpetrated by the Chinese in order to try to undermine American competitiveness. He later said that was a joke. Since Election Day, some of the appointments that he’s made have made clear that he’s going to make good on his belief that American energy policy and attempts to combat climate change are going in the wrong direction. So, for instance, Donald Trump’s transition team for the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency is run by somebody named Myron Ebell who has been really one of the most outspoken skeptics of climate change, runs a program here called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and it opposes regulation. It’s not clear exactly who funds it, but in the past, it was funded by fossil fuel companies including Exxon Mobil and others.

So this would be, I think, safe to say a radical change in the way the United States has talked and thought about climate change. One of the people that he has also indicated could be powerful in terms of shaping energy policy is Harold Hamm who was a billionaire who founded the shale oil company Continental Resources. He’s been a big contributor to the Koch brothers fundraising network, and there is so far no indication that Donald Trump did not mean what he said when he talked about climate change being a hoax that has damaged American competitiveness.

DAVIES: Are there some specific things President Trump could do immediately to change the direction of climate policy?

OSNOS: Yeah, he could. The Paris climate deal is a formal matter, requires four years to unwind. So in the interim, he could immediately suspend American payments to the deal in effect. These are the payments that the United States would make to U.N.-affiliated agencies that would be in charge of both implementing the deal and then also helping developing countries pay for making some of the concessions and transitions that are required in order to implement it.

[...]

DAVIES: You talk to some experienced people in immigration for your piece in The New Yorker about what it would take to affirmatively go out and find millions of undocumented workers and get them out of the country. You want to share a bit of that with us?

OSNOS: Yeah. I spoke to Julie Myers Wood, for instance, who was the head of Immigration Customs and Enforcement under George W. Bush, and she is opposed to Donald Trump-stated policies on immigration in many ways. But she also said that it’s a big mistake to assume that his ideas are so radical as to therefore be impossible, and that was her major point to me was that there are tools that are at the disposal of a president that would allow them to do this dramatic escalation of deportation. For instance, a president could give the IRS files to ICE, to Immigrations Customs Enforcement. So IRS files are considered to be the most reliable source of home addresses because a lot of undocumented immigrants who pay taxes, for instance, put in a reliable home address so that they can receive their refund.

If the president allowed it, that would then make it much easier for enforcement agents to be able to go out and find people. Another thing that would be at the disposal of a President is what’s known as 287-G of the Immigration Act which would allow the local and state agents, basically cops of one kind or another, to be enlisted in service of the deportation project. So that’s how you begin to see, for instance, local police being brought in for the purposes of raiding farms or factories and beginning to achieve the deportation numbers that he’s talked about.

But in order to do so, it would take a significant escalation of manpower and also of resources. But what came clear from my reporting on the subject was that it’s a big mistake to assume that it’s - this is binary that you either will have the system as it exists today or you would have some completely unimaginable system that Donald Trump has talked about. There is in fact a spectrum in between that Trump could move fairly substantially down the road to achieving his objectives on immigration.

[...]

DAVIES: Let’s talk about trade and the economy. You know, one of his core principles you said is the belief that trade deals have harmed America’s economy and killed jobs. What authority would he have immediately to remake or undo American trade policy?

OSNOS: The president has broad authority on trade. So, for instance, right away, the president could end American participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I think it’s fair to assume that the TPP as it’s known is now dead. But beyond that, he could also force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from it eventually.

There is a process in the case of NAFTA. He couldn’t just do it immediately. But when it comes to slapping tariffs, for instance, on other countries, there’s two ways to do it. One requires Congress and one doesn’t. If he goes after specific categories of goods - so if he says, for instance, that, you know, Chinese exports of one specific type, let’s call it, you know, chicken or tires or something like that, then he can use his own presidential power to do that sort of on an emergency basis. But if he’s going to try to impose a broad-based tariff against a country, that would actually require the consent of Congress.

But I think the important point is that he has the ability to change the tenor of the trade relationship with a country by talking about it in other ways. And as we all know, you know, he talked about China in very harsh terms during this campaign. My own sense based on talking to his trade advisers and his China specialists was that that was a kind of theater. I don’t believe that Donald Trump is prepared actually in any way to go to a trade war with China, I think, meaning that, you know, one of the things that his advisers said to me was that Donald Trump’s persona that he - you know, he’s confrontational, he says outrageous things, that that would have a chilling effect on the other side and that China would then fall in line. That’s their theory. They’re not actually prepared for the full economic consequences, which would be severe and profound, of a trade war with the world’s second-largest economy.

DAVIES: Well, this is an interesting and important question. And you can’t predict the future, but if, in fact, one of his core beliefs is that this is a big problem, we have to fix this to rebuild the American economy, what do the economists you talk to expect to happen? Are we going to have a trade war? What would it do?

OSNOS: A trade war could be a really dramatic turn in American economic history. If you talk to independent analysts, people who are not involved in either campaign, somebody - there’s a guy, for instance, named Mark Zandi, who’s an economist at Moody’s Analytics. And he’s worked for Republicans and he’s worked for Democrats in the past. And what he says is that Trump’s plan, if he actually did the things that he said he would and triggered a trade war with China that that would put probably somewhere around 4 million Americans out of work. And then over the ensuing recession that it would also cost the economy another 3 million jobs that would have been created otherwise.

Most economists broadly agree that a trade war would be hugely damaging to the United States.

[...]

DAVIES: One of the things he also says he wants to do is immediately cut the regulatory burdens on businesses on Wall Street. Can he do that himself?

OSNOS: He can. The president has authority, ultimate authority over 15 executive agencies. And he would be able to direct them to change the pace and spirit in which they are issuing regulations. He has said - I’m not clear on whether this is legally possible - that he wants to do a version of what Vice President-elect Mike Pence did in Indiana.

Pence created an agency that was dedicated to suspending the creation of all new regulations except for public health and safety.

[...]

DAVIES: He’s promised big tax cuts. Will they really happen?

OSNOS: That, I think, is one of his better bets. He’s got a Republican Congress on his side. And at this point, it’s hard to see them not doing it.

DAVIES: And what kind of tax cuts are we talking about? I mean, for those of us who haven’t carefully followed his campaign positions, are they upper income, middle income, everybody?

OSNOS: They provide the greatest relief to the upper stratum of the tax base, so the highest earners will do best. There is also tax relief for the sort of upper-middle-class. Then corporate tax rates will be substantially relieved.

[...]

DAVIES: Let’s talk about foreign and military policy. He’s criticized the deal with Iran. Can he scuttle that deal by himself?

OSNOS: Yes, he can. What he has said he wants to do is renegotiate the deal with Iran, and renegotiate is a sort of a flexible word. It’s not clear what he means entirely. But were he to try to reopen that deal, that could actually - that could really change the course of things more broadly beyond just the Iran deal because at that point what happens is that Iran - and Iran specialists told me as much months ago - would regard the United States seeking to renegotiate the deal as an abrogation of the deal.

At that point, they would say that the United States has basically not held up its end of the bargain, and they would have the right - the legal authority and the right - to restart the development of nuclear energy. So I think he’s going to find once he begins to get into the details of this that by simply announcing that he’s going to renegotiate that might not achieve the effect he has in mind. It might actually hasten the restart of the Iranian nuclear program.

[...]

DAVIES: When you wrote about Donald Trump and his policies towards the military and towards foreign affairs, the issue of temperament comes up. This is a loaded word. He hated being criticized for his temperament. But you have - you found a quote from his book “Think Like A Billionaire.” It can be smart to be shallow, that he has a penchant for making big decisions quickly, that he trusts his gut. Share what - some of what you learned about what that might mean from your conversations with military and intelligence officials.

OSNOS: Yeah. When you talk to a broad range of people who have been involved in the most sensitive national security questions, you know - these are the people who’ve been in the Situation Room at crucial moments particularly from Republican administrations what they’ll tell you is that the crucial ingredient is whether or not a president is impetuous, whether or not the president makes decisions before they have as much information and as many competing points of view as possible. And often as one - James Woolsey who is a former director of the CIA is now an adviser to the Trump administration - before he became an adviser to Trump, he said to me in an interview that very often the first information that a president receives is wrong. And we’ve seen that beginning all the way from Vietnam up to the present day. And part of the sort of crucial patience that’s required is the ability to both wait until you have a fuller picture and then also be prepared to act. But if you act on the basis of limited information, history suggests to us that we would have made a lot of catastrophic choices.

[...]

DAVIES: You know, last year, you wrote about white nationalist groups that have embraced Trump, and they feel he’s expanded their reach, given them some legitimacy and, of course, since the election there have been some very troubling cases of swastikas, racist graffiti, some assaults racist hate speech. You know, some would see this as just a fringe that is an embarrassment to most Republicans and conservatives I’m wondering what you make of this and what the impact will be of Trump being in the White House?

OSNOS: Well, in some ways, this was a storyline that I think people who generally covered politics didn’t initially embrace, you know, the idea that somehow the alt-right or the white nationalist world would be even talked about in a discussion of an incoming presidential. It was so ludicrous that we didn’t even really do it. And then it just became very clear early on in the Trump campaign that they were a part of this phenomenon. The neo-Nazi website endorsed him for president 12 days after he announced. And later you follow it all the way through 20 months later. He was endorsed by the newspaper the KKK. Steve Bannon has been - who is now chief strategist in the White House - has been really the sort of principal thinker in terms of how do you take ideas that exist way out on the far right and get them in front of people’s eyes that are more conventional readers?

And at Breitbart, that’s really what he did. He sort of - it became the platform for the alt-right. When I spoke on Election Day to a white nationalist leader named Matthew Heimbach as the sort of results became clear, I said, you know, how are you feeling? And he said vindicated. And what he said was that this campaign and that the victory of Donald Trump has shown that there is an appetite out there for his ideas, even if people can’t quite bring themselves to say so.

You know, I just have to say, I mean, this was so preposterous that we’d be talking about this a couple of years ago, that it’s a reminder of how much politics have changed and been changed by the candidacy of Donald Trump. Now, look, how that actually translates into a White House, we don’t yet know. But Steve Bannon is now a couple of steps from the Oval Office, and that’s - we’re in uncharted territory there.

DAVIES: Evan Osnos, thanks so much for speaking with us.

OSNOS: Thanks for having me, Dave.

“This year, the organizers of the March of Independence, which commemorates the independence regained by Poland after November 11, 1918, against Germany and Bolshevik Russia, invite the Europeans to join them in Warsaw to assert their patriotism and protest against the “Islamization of the continent” (Video seen by clicking here or the image above).

On 11 November 1918, Poland reclaimed its independence after 123 years of occupation. Every years on the 11th of November, hundreds of thousand of Polish patriots celebrate their Independence Day. This year we are dedicating our independence to all of Europe. Now is the time when patriots of our whole continent must unite and fight together. We must defend our nations, traditions and culture. We must say no to multiculturalism and the dangerous experiments being conducted on the peoples of Europe. We see what radical Islam really stands for. Corrupt politicians and the establishment media are trying to make us believe that Europe must accept millions of immigrants. It is simply impossible to accept such numbers of people who do not understand or respect our cultures or obey our laws, and there are many terrorists among them. This is an invasion.

...join us in Warsaw on the 11th of November for the largest patriotic march in Europe.We invite you to the demonstration of freedom in Europe for the people of Europe. We are waiting for you. Tomorrow does belong to us.

READ MORE...

Iranian, Mishcon de Reya, leads case to derail Brexit, claims racial harassment.

DM, “Top City law firm Mishcon de Reya who led the High Court bid to stop the PM triggering Brexit still won’t reveal the fat cats they’re working for”, 3 Nov 2016:

‘Hundreds’ claimed to have backed London law firm Mishcon de Reya

Litigator Kasra Nouroozi led ‘dream team’ who won in High Court today

Mr Nouroozi and others believed to have received threats from critics

The top law firm who derailed Brexit is still refusing to name the rich clients behind its ‘arrogant’ legal bid.

Former model Gina Miller, 51, was the face of the campaign but ‘hundreds’ of businesses, entrepreneurs and academics were claimed to be working with Mishcon de Reya.

British Iranian Lawyer Kasra Nouroozi, Mischon’s most senior litigator, is understood to have received threats and racist abuse for helping run the case.

Today the London firm was accused of ‘treason’ by Brexiteers saying they helped ‘trample’ over the will of the people.

A spokesman said today, aside from Mrs Miller, no clients will be named, adding: ‘We are pleased that the Court has upheld our client’s argument that Government does not have the power to trigger Article 50 under the Royal Prerogative’.

In July Mishcon launched action to ensure MPs have their say before Downing Street invokes Article 50 of Lisbon Treaty.

The Lawyer, ‘Brexit legal challenge: UK Government defeated and poised to appeal to Supreme Court,” 3 Nov 2016:

The UK Government has been defeated in the landmark Brexit High Court challenge over whether Article 50 can lawfully be triggered without a vote by Parliament.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas handed down the decision in the Royal Courts of Justice this morning.

His verdict read: “The court does not accept the argument put forward by the Government. There is nothing in the text of the 1972 Act to support it.

“In the judgment of the court the argument is contrary both to the language used by Parliament in the 1972 Act and to the fundamental constitutional principles of the sovereignty of Parliament and the absence of any entitlement on the part of the Crown to change domestic law by the exercise of its prerogative powers. The court expressly accepts the principal argument of the claimants.

“For the reasons set out in the judgment, we decide that the Government does not have power under the Crown’s prerogative to give notice pursuant to Article 50 for the UK to withdraw from the European Union.”

The Government will appeal the decision, with the appeal heading straight to the Supreme Court in early December. The case is understood to have been fast tracked following Prime Minister Theresa May’s pledge to trigger Britain’s exit from the EU next spring.

South West Forum: White British Nationalists, Max Musson, Ian Fotheringham and Jez Turner.

Paradise Island, A Parable by Max Musson which discusses the advantages of in-group preference.

TNO, “White British: Minority within 50 Years” 2 Nov 2016:

Mass nonwhite immigration, explosive immigrant birth rates, and declining white reproduction will have ethnically cleansed white people in Britain into minority status within the next 50 years, new statistics have confirmed.

A new report has revealed that white populations in towns and cities are dwindling at record levels and in many cases have halved over the past ten years alone.

       
A street scene in London, near the iconic “Gherkin” building in the background.

The report, issued by a UK government adviser on “community cohesion,” Prof. Ted Cantle, and Eric Kaufmann, Prof. of Politics at Birkbeck College, said that many towns and cities, such as Birmingham, Leicester, Slough, Luton, Bradford, and London, have seen areas develop where the white British population is “increasingly dwindling” as minorities increase.

Professor Cantle cited the Yorkshire town of Blackburn as one of the most segregated towns in Britain, whose Whalley Range area is now 95 percent Asian.

According to the report, the white population of England has dropped to 79 percent of the total, down from 86 percent just ten years ago.

The city of Slough has seen its white population drop from 58.3 percent to 34.5 percent;

Birmingham from 65.6 percent to 53.1 percent;

Bradford from 76.0 percent to 63.9 percent;

Leicester from 60.5 percent to 45.1 percent;

Luton from 64.9 percent to 44.6 percent;

Blackburn With Darwen from 76.0 percent to 66.5 percent;

Coventry from 78.3 percent to 66.6 percent;

Brent from 29.4 percent to 18.0 percent;

Tower Hamlets from 43.1 percent to 31.2 percent;

Newham from 33.6 percent to 16.7 percent;

Hounslow from 55.7 percent to 37.9 percent; and

Redbridge from 57.2 percent to 34.5 percent—all in once decade, from 2001 to 2011.

All these figures are, the report fails to point out, already more than five years old, so the situation in 2016 is likely to be as much of a gap again, compared to 2011.

DM, “A final insult from the murderer who stabbed his housemate and the man’s girlfriend to death in a row over a hot shower. Killer raises his middle finger to victims’ families as he is jailed for life”, 26 Oct 2016:

Violent grandfather was living with one of his victims when they argued

He stabbed man and his girlfriend to death before claiming self-defence

Killer was jailed for life today after he was convicted of the double murder

He raised his finger at the public gallery as he was handed 30-year term

Christian, who grinned as his victims’ families’ statements were read to court, raised his middle finger to the public gallery today as he was ordered to serve at least 30 years behind bars. He swore at his victims’ families as he was led away to start a life sentence today…

Naomi Toro, who hid the knife for Christian, was handed a one-year sentence.

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While Duda and Orbán’s invocation of the centrality of Christianity to the nationalist cause will be disconcerting to many of us more wise to the fact that it is a Jewish Trojan horse, we should be charitable enough to understand that it has been, and remains still, a culturally habituated way of saying “not Jewish.”

It is up to us to support native European nationalist efforts by pointing-out that this is a provisional distinction at best, albeit a 2,000 year old provision, which has had a way of binding nationalist masses and yoking their identity with Noahide laws (as Kumiko astutely observes) - thus, ultimately, to Jewish control if we do not successfully liberate ourselves from the false identity that is the “Gentile” (as GW astutely observes) - an “identity” which knows no distinction other than “the undifferentiated other” to Jews and its beholdenness to its Jewish forebears for its messiah and its law.

Enough sour grapes for now. There is certainly hope in Duda’s concordance with Orbán in furtherance of the Intermarium project on display at the commemoration of the 1955 Hungarian Uprising -

Visigrad Post, “Duda and Orbán against Brussels’ sovietisation”,  24 Oct 2016:

               

Hungary, Budapest – On Sunday, October 23, Hungary celebrated the start of the ’56 uprising. In front of the Hungarian parliament, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Polish President Andrzej Duda gave a strong speech against the current policy of the European Union, about Christianity and about the deep friendship between Poland and Hungary.

Polish President Duda greeting the crowd. MTI Fotó: Szigetváry Zsolt

In front of thousands of people gathered on the place Kossuth, in the center of Budapest, Hungarian PM Orbán and Polish President Duda made a speech welcomed by Hungarian and Polish citizens. President Duda first talked in front of the crowd. The Polish President started his speech by saying few words in Hungarian. Hungarians “have always been friends” and they can always rely on Poland, “even in difficult moments of the future,” said Andrzej Duda.

Poland is “proud and grateful” that it was able to provide aid to the Hungarian revolution, Duda said, and noted that his people had sent 44 tonnes of medicine and medical equipment as well as 800 litres of blood to Hungary shortly after the uprising broke out. “Poles are proud that the grandchildren of 1956 heroes have, symbolically, Polish blood in their veins”, the president said. In Hungary’s freedom fight “thousands died, but after some decades, finally, you recovered your freedom through much suffering and sacrifice,” Duda said. He also voiced his conviction that “through hard work both Poles and Hungarians will achieve the living standards of western societies”, reports Hungary Today.

Concerning the traditional friendship between the two countries, Duda said that they together “carry on the thousand-year-old Christian tradition in Europe”, and insisted that those traditions were just as important as freedom. “God bless Poland and Hungary, glory to the heroes of the Hungarian revolution,” Duda said concluding his address.

Viktor Orbán during his speech on Sunday, October 23

“Protect Brussels against Sovietisation”

Then, Prime Minister Orbán gave his speech. The European Union must not be turned into a “modern-age empire”; the community must not be replaced by a “United States of Europe”, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Sunday. Viktor Orbán said that “freedom-loving peoples of Europe must save Brussels from Sovietisation”.

“We, Hungarians, want to remain a European nation, rather than become an ethnic minority in Europe,” Orbán insisted. “It is only our national independence that can save us from being devoured by an empire,” Orbán said, and argued that it was that very “national idea” that had saved Hungary from being integrated into the Soviet Union. As descendants of 1956, Hungarians “cannot let Europe cut the roots that had once made it great and also helped us survive communist oppression,” Orbán said. He added that Europe could not be “free, strong, and respectable without the revitalising power of nations and two thousand years of Christian wisdom”. The prime minister insisted that Hungary had chosen “the hard way” when it “preferred children of its own to immigrants, work to speculation, earning a living to becoming a slave of indebtedness, and protecting borders to surrendering”.

Hungarians will always fight for freedom and will achieve it “even in the most hopeless of situations,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the state commemoration marking the 60th anniversary of Hungary’s anti-Soviet uprising of 1956. “We, Hungarians, have a talent for freedom, we have always known how to use it. He warned that freedom is “not a final state but a way of existence; just like swimming: you stop doing it and you will sink”. The question is always this simple: whether we decide on our own fate or other people,” he added. October 23 is a day on which Hungarians should be proud, the prime minister said.

History puts Hungary in the mainstream of disputes on the future of Europe every 30 years, the prime minister said. He argued that in 1956 Hungary attempted to “shift the Iron Curtain east of our borders”, then in 1989 the country opened its western borders “so that Germans could find a way to Germans”. And most recently, Hungary “had to close its borders to stop the influx of migrants from the south”, he said. Hungary will not falter “even if those whom we are trying to protect attack us from behind”; we have “the courage to face injustice… and Europe can always rely on us,” Orbán said.

TNO, “Italy: More Invaders than all 2015”, 25 Oct 2016:

More Africans have now invaded Italy this year than the total number who did so last year—and there are still over two months of 2016 to go.

Official figures show that over 153,000 nonwhite invaders have landed in Italy as of October 24, 2016. The figures were released following the landing of over 4,000 sub-Saharan invaders over the past weekend.

       

One of the invaders, Alhaji Kutubu Sankoh, from Sierra Leone, told an AFP reporter on the Norwegian ship, Siem Pilot, that he had left his home and set out for Europe after his father died of Ebola—raising the real possibility that the invaders are bringing that disease with them into Europe.

Meanwhile, residents in the northern Italian town of Gorino, Ferrara, successfully prevented the authorities from “placing” a number of invaders in their town by physically blockading all the public roads.