Viktor Orban - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

Lavrov and Rubio Expected to Meet Oct. 30 – FT

The Moscow Times — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 21:59:56 +0000

Lavrov and Rubio are expected to meet in Budapest on Oct. 30, an anonymous German official told the Financial Times.

They added that Hungary’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was expected to outline plans ahead of the summit, which could include a meeting between Trump and EU leaders. The plans have not yet been confirmed.

EU leaders are set to close ranks in support of Ukraine at a Brussels summit on Thursday, followed the next day by a “coalition of the willing” meeting of European leaders in London to discuss the next steps to help Kyiv.

According to FT, EU leaders also plan to agree on loaning 140 billion euros ($162.5 billion) from frozen Russian assets to Ukraine and approve new Russia sanctions during the Brussels summit.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/10/21/lavrov-and-rubio-discuss-putin-trump-summit-a90875

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Europe News ‘Another red line crossed’: Fierce debate on Hungary’s Pride ban at the European Parliament

Sandor Zsiros | Euronews — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:46:10 +0000

Centrist and leftist MEPs called on the EU to act against Hungary over the LGBTQ+ Pride ban, while the far right defended the move of Viktor Orbán’s government. Around 70 MEPs will travel to Budapest next weekend to support LGBTQ+ rights.

European lawmakers engaged in a fierce debate on Wednesday, sparked by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government’s recent ban on the Budapest Pride event.

MEPs argued that the move infringes upon freedom of expression and called on the European Commission to take action. Iratxe Garcia, the group leader of the Socialists and Democrats at the European Parliament, denounced the move and called for the EU to take a strong reaction.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/06/18/another-red-line-crossed-fierce-debate-on-hungarys-pride-ban-at-the-european-parliament

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The post Europe News ‘Another red line crossed’: Fierce debate on Hungary’s Pride ban at the European Parliament first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – July 12, 2024

Mark Armstrong — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 23:38:23 +0000

Greetings from Tyler,

Joe Biden’s misstatements are at the top of the list. Are these merely mix-ups which happen to everybody now and again, or something more serious. You almost hate to watch him appear some-where, because you know it will be an embarrassment, but it’s like a train-wreck. You can’t look away. To say that the Democrats are in disarray would be an understatement. Good luck getting Jill out of there, and Joe would rather give up something valuable than make her mad.

So purportedly Obama is scheming with other bigwigs, wondering what they do to get him out of the race, and the sooner the better. You almost don’t want to know what they’ve decided, but it looks like they need to ditch him. But who will take his place? Everybody else is polling lower. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Have they already thrown in the towel?

They’ve already got Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon in jail, and they better be enjoying it, because they’re next, and they know it. They’ve decided to go for broke in defeating Trump. It almost doesn’t matter who they put forward, they’ve just got to beat Trump! If he stoops to the level they have in their efforts to destroy and devastate, they’ve got a lot to worry about. They’ve bankrupted Rudy Giuliani, and they still act like they can call the shots. But not for much longer. It’s almost refreshing watching them squirm.

Biden is embarrassing them every time he opens his mouth, something either incomprehensible or unbelievable comes out of his whispering mouth. Can you imagine the histrionics of his handlers? They must die a thousand deaths. Behind the curtain of course.

The leaders know they’ve got to put somebody else up, but who? You know the choices, and none check all the boxes. It’s come out that all the other candidates for the job have worse poll numbers than the pretender, so what to do?

The media is expressing shock, but they’ve been running interference since the beginning. It’s starting to look like they’re going to get their comeuppance.

The rest of the world is having a good laugh at our expense. They may be fooling somebody, but it’s so obvious that the dude can’t hack it anymore. Who’s going to tell Jill? And what happens after that? The drumbeat continues and gets louder. But Joe may be the best they can do.

We here in Texas got the outer bands of the hurricane that has the power out for hundreds of thousands in Houston. It’s cool here, especially for Summer. They’ve been preaching this global warming gospel for the past 50 years, and the Summer is just like I remember it as a kid. Think of it, we’ve got battery powered everything, and some of it actually works. Unfortunately transportation is not ready for prime time. They think they’ll put us all in battery cars by some chosen date? Yeah, thanks anyway. You hardly see battery cars around here, but this is Texas.

Taiwan has seen Chinese fighter jets. You wonder, with the United States in the present disarray, what will the bad guys do while we’ve got this situation? It’s a dangerous time for the United States and our allies. They must be scared to death.

The pretender is doing everything he can think of to reassure everybody, and mushes up his words too often. Everybody’s going to make a mistake sooner or later, but this guy’s making them all the time.

Have things not gone wrong? Do we not have a war in Ukraine that threatens to start WWIII? Do we not have a war in the Middle East that’s gone on too long already. Who’s running the show? Most think it’s Obama. He doesn’t think things are fair!

The next five months are a dangerous time for the United States. They think they can bring Eastern Europe into NATO? You think Russia is scared? Putin sees everything we do. Viktor Orban is making the rounds, but he supports Trump and claims his efforts are fact-finding.

We’ve got all kinds of nonsense going on in the U. S. that our enemies are wise to. Let’s pray our enemies don’t take advantage of the situation.

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – July 12, 2024 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Hungary’s Orbán meets Putin for talks in Moscow in a rare visit by a European leader

JUSTIN SPIKE AND VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV | AP NEWS — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 21:22:46 +0000

MOSCOW (AP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Moscow on Friday for a rare meeting by a European leader with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed peace proposals for Ukraine, which triggered condemnation from Kyiv and some European leaders and officials.

Orbán’s visit comes only days after he made a similar unannounced trip to Ukraine, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and proposed that Ukraine consider agreeing to an immediate cease-fire with Russia.

“The number of countries that can talk to both warring sides is diminishing,” Orbán said. “Hungary is slowly becoming the only country in Europe that can speak to everyone.”

Hungary assumed the rotating presidency of the EU at the beginning of July and, in comments at the beginning of their meeting that were televised, Putin suggested that Orbán had come to Moscow as a representative of the European Council. Several European officials — including the leaders of Germany, Denmark and Estonia — dismissed that suggestion and said Orbán had no mandate for anything beyond a discussion about bilateral relations.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://apnews.com/article/hungary-russia-orban-putin-visit-ukraine-4755f85d49703be7971b262c18707222

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The post Hungary’s Orbán meets Putin for talks in Moscow in a rare visit by a European leader first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Europe starts to fray at the seams

Melanie Phillips — Fri, 31 May 2019 22:45:46 +0000

No one can tell how this great battle for national identity and culture will end, though Jewish populations are likely to find themselves in the firing line from all sides.

The European parliament elections last week have provided further graphic evidence that Britain and Europe are in the throes of a profound political and cultural upheaval.

In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party pulverized both Labour and the Conservatives by winning many more seats than either to become the largest single party in the European parliament – within just five weeks of being created.

Since Farage’s party stands for Britain leaving the European Union with no withdrawal deal, many Conservatives rightly believe that whoever they elect as their new leader (and therefore Britain’s prime minister) in the wake of Theresa May’s resignation will need to endorse a no-deal departure to have any chance of saving the party from total destruction.

That’s because they understand from this electoral meltdown that the fury of their mainly Brexit-supporting voters over the Conservative government’s failure to honor the 2016 referendum vote, exacerbated by the refusal of the Remainer-dominated parliament to leave with no deal, is off the scale.

Among other EU countries, which are similarly witnessing a revolt by the people against the erosion of their democratic independence and social cohesion, these elections produced a parallel collapse of mainstream parties and a rise of “populist” nationalists.

Many Jews have greeted these developments with unbridled horror. In Europe, they see the “populist” tide as threatening the resurgence of fascism and anti-Semitism. In Britain, Jewish community leaders try to paint Nigel Farage as an ally of the far-right and as an anti-Semite.

These reactions range from the grossly oversimplified, blinkered and ignorant to the grotesque.

Farage is no anti-Semite. He has repeatedly attacked the anti-Jewish policies of countries that ban Israeli Jews from entering. Remarks he has made about “globalists” and the “new world order” have been wrenched out of context to suggest falsely that he was talking about Jews rather than the EU. Other remarks about the Israel lobby in America have been similarly cherry-picked and distorted.

Farage, a friend of U.S. President Donald Trump, is himself a somewhat Trumpian figure – a loudmouth who is careless about both his language and the company he keeps,, rough-hewn round the edges.

Of course, his association with President Trump is enough by itself to finish him off in the minds of many Trump-hating Jews, for whom the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel individual ever to have inhabited the White House looms nightmarishly instead as a supposed eminence grise to the Ku Klux Klan.

In mainland Europe, however, the situation is more complicated. The mainstream media, along with many Jews, tends to view all who want to uphold their country’s culture and democratic independence as “far-right” nationalists.

Some of these upstart parties are indeed troubling. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has Nazi origins.

In Austria, a corruption scandal involving the leader of the Freedom Party, which was part of the governing coalition despite its neo-Nazi links, has now brought the government down. Yet despite the furor, the Freedom Party’s voter support has remained broadly stable.

Hungary’s undeniably illiberal leader Viktor Orbán perceives that liberalism threatens the survival of his country by undermining its bedrock values, such as the family and cultural traditions.

Both Hungary and Poland are led by nationalists who are defending the integrity of their countries that was sacrificed to Hitler and Stalin. They resist Muslim immigration because they don’t want their populations to suffer the social disruption and dangers with which mass Muslim migration is now so obviously blighting other European countries.

Certainly, Hungary and Poland are themselves still riddled with anti-Semitism; and yet, right now, Hungary is arguably the safest country in Europe for Jews.

So why are so many getting so much of this so wrong? There are a number of reasons. First, there’s the implacable refusal to acknowledge that so many Muslims refuse to assimilate into Western culture. There’s a parallel refusal to acknowledge the rampant anti-Semitism they have brought with them, which is causing violence and intimidation against Jews across Western Europe.

Second, there is the stubborn insistence that the main threat of anti-Semitism is on “the right” when all the evidence suggests that the far bigger problem is on the left.

Progressive circles are institutionally anti-Jew, often (but by no means always) expressed through anti-Zionism. In Britain, the Labour Party is now being formally investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has received thousands of examples of Jew-hatred by party members.

The Greens, those populists of the left who also did well in the European elections, have a persistent problem with anti-Jewish prejudice. Britain’s Campaign Against Antisemitism cites Green Party members airing conspiracy theories about Jewish money-controlling politics, “Zionist pedophile rings,” or links between Israel and both Nazism and the Islamic State group.

In the United States, The New York Times recently bemoaned the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, though suggested that President Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu were helping fuel it.

This was preposterous on many counts – not least that one of the institutions that can reasonably be said to be helping fuel western anti-Semitism is The New York Times.

Its international edition recently published a disgusting cartoon depicting Netanyahu as a dog wearing a Star of David collar, leading a kippa clad President Trump.

A short while before that, its literary pages published a review by novelist Alice Walker recommending a book by the virulent anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist David Icke. All this quite apart from the obsessional lengths to which the paper goes to demonize, dehumanize and delegitimize Israel, which it singles out alone in the world for such treatment.

In Germany, where the Commissioner for Jewish Life, Felix Klein, recently warned Jews not to wear a kippa in public, the huge increase in anti-Jewish attacks is officially blamed on the rise of the far-right.

Yet among German Jews who have experienced anti-Semitic harassment, many believe their assailants were Muslim extremists. According to Klein, the official line is unreliable because when it’s unclear who the perpetrators are, the authorities automatically classify them as far-right.

The third mistake being made is to assume that nationalism means fascism and anti-Semitism.

But it wasn’t nationalism that led to Nazism. A lethal cocktail of resentment, humiliation and racial theories fueled not German nationalism but Nazi imperialism, the desire to subjugate or destroy other countries and cultures.

If Britain hadn’t had such a strong sense of national identity in 1940, it would never have stood alone against Hitler.

It’s where national culture and identity are weak or denied altogether that anti-Semitism roars out of control. Far from the EU being a bulwark against all this, its erosion of national identity and democracy are actually incubating it.

The desire of the vast majority to uphold their nation’s culture, with democratically elected legislatures passing laws reflecting that shared national project, is not a route to the destruction of liberty, tolerance and decency. It is, in fact, the only way to defend them.

No one can tell how this great battle for national identity and culture will end. But in the all-too likely chaos, the Jews, alas, are likely to find themselves in the firing line from all sides.

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/europe-starts-to-fray-at-the-seams/

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PM Netanyahu Meets Hungarian PM Orban

Israeli PM — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 12:02:17 +0000

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Angela Merkel failed, and history won’t judge her kindly for it

Jan-Werner Mueller, Foreign Policy - Business Insider — Sat, 03 Nov 2018 09:33:17 +0000

Merkel had a last chance to leave behind a coherent union — she has failed. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Angela Merkel has had a profound influence on German politics and could get away with radical changes because she tightly controlled her own party
However, Merkel’s inability to explain her actions during the 2015 refugee crisis helped fuel the Alternative for Germany party — a radical-right populist party whose only policy plank is hostility to immigrants and minorities.
Merkel had one last chance to leave behind a coherent union— but with her allies demanding “less Europe,” it is clear that she has failed.

The British politician Enoch Powell famously observed that “all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to defy this rule.

The present is hardly a happy juncture for her, yet her October 29 announcement that she will step down as leader of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has been lauded by observers as both dignified and elegant.

Whether she can continue as chancellor until 2021, as she has said she would, is de facto not in her hands: Were the Social Democratic Party to leave the ruling coalition before then, prompting elections, she would not run again.

Still, she is perceived as supremely in control, just as she has always seemed in control since heading her first government in 2005 — with the fateful exception of the fall of 2015, when many citizens felt that the German state was no longer in charge of its own borders, as hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed into the country.

‘You know me’

Conventional wisdom has it that her decision to let in refugees might mar her legacy; in reality, historians might well celebrate her for this moment of courage and compassion.

She once suggested to German citizens that they should re-elect her because, “You know me” — In actual fact, most Germans will feel precisely the opposite.

Sebastian Widmann/Getty Images

It is the long-term effects of her reign on German politics and her evident inability to create a lasting architecture for European integration that make a straightforwardly positive assessment of her tenure more doubtful.

Merkel has had an even more profound influence on German politics than the oft-discussed fragmentation of the party system suggests.

As the German political scientist Philip Manow has argued, she was less a chancellor with a strong party behind her than a president, or sometimes even something like a civil servant-in-chief, floating above parties in an era when a succession of crises — starting with the financial crisis — made concentration of power in the executive more legitimate.

Contrary to the cliche that strong political leaders must be charismatic, she often appeared passive or even impersonal. She once suggested to German citizens that they should re-elect her because, “You know me.” In actual fact, most Germans will feel precisely the opposite: They see Merkel as an eminently reliable and highly analytical civil servant, but not as a politician who has ever systematically staked out a vision for the country.

She could govern smoothly, because for most of her time in office, public coffers were full. (Whether Germany’s boom is the result of the harsh labor market and welfare state reforms undertaken by her Social Democratic predecessor Gerhard Schröder remains disputed; what cannot be disputed is Manow’s insight that, unlike previous chancellors, she had to contend much less with the checks and balances built into the German political system, because rising tax revenues made compromises easier.)

Merkel’s sharp policy turns, on nuclear energy and the draft, for instance — which actually outright contradicted the “you know me” claim — could only have been pulled off by someone who was seen as more of a civil servant-in-chief, someone who simply chose the most seemingly reasonable course of action, quite beyond partisan commitments.

Something like technocracy

In fact, she raided the policies of her competitors, the Social Democrats in particular, thereby systematically demobilizing the party’s voters. At the same time, the decision to abandon nuclear reactors after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster opened the possibility of coalitions with the Green party — thereby increasing the room for strategic maneuver of the CDU.

Merkel could get away with such radical changes partly because she tightly controlled her own party, sidelining potential competitors in a Machiavellian manner. But the other reason was that she convinced many Germans that there was a reasonable center over which she presided, where partisan differences did not matter all that much.

It is not an accident that the far-right party that was created in response to Merkel’s leadership is called Alternative for Germany.

Christian Hartmann/Reuters

A less polite way of saying this is that Merkel’s default way of governing was something like technocracy. Especially during the euro crisis, she claimed that there was no alternative to her solutions to policy challenges. All who disagreed effectively revealed themselves as irrational — and bad Europeans, as well as, by implication, bad Germans to boot, because the definition of a good German is being enthusiastic about European integration.

As in other countries, technocracy actually paved the way for populism. It is not an accident that the far-right party that was created in response to Merkel’s leadership is called Alternative for Germany (AfD). Populists can (correctly) claim that democracy without choices makes no sense; there is always an alternative, and it is up to voters whether they prefer it or not.

Migrants weren’t the crisis

In retrospect, the initial reaction of many centrist politicians to the AfD, then still mostly led by respected conservative professors and businesspeople, was probably a mistake: All criticism of measures to rescue the common European currency was condemned in highly moralizing terms, which arguably contributed to the radicalization of the AfD.

Refugees and migrants sleep on the railway tracks close to the borders of Greece with Macedonia, near the village of Idomeni, September 6, 2015. Greece is struggling to cope with the hundreds of migrants and refugees from the war in Syria making the short crossing every day from Turkey to Greece’s eastern islands, including Kos, Lesbos, Samos and Agathonisi.

Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters

In 2015, the Euroskeptic party still seemed likely to disappear, as many right-wing challengers to the CDU had done in the past. After all, Merkel took a very tough stance on Greece in the summer of that year and thereby satisfied voters who (wrongly) believed that Berlin was giving money to Athens for free.

Yet, soon after, the decision to take in refugees revived — and further radicalized — the AfD, making it what it is today: a radical-right populist party whose only real policy plank is hostility to immigrants and other minorities (and which, alas, is now represented in all German state assemblies, as well as the federal parliament).

It was Merkel’s inability to explain her conduct in 2015 — and the fact that all parties represented in parliament at the time supported her, alongside many in the media — that probably helped to solidify the image on which all populist parties crucially depend: that of an homogeneous elite that is in all likelihood corrupt, but at the very least not acting in the interests of ordinary people.

To this day, many Germans find it hard to understand whether the temporary opening of the borders was a matter of hard-nosed strategy to prevent a collapse of the European Union or humanitarianism. The answer that there was no alternative proved insufficient then and is insufficient today.

Democracy is not just talk, but politics can also never stay silent. Merkel’s pronounced pragmatism — combined with a discourse so noncommittal that it would drive journalists crazy — has contrasted sharply with, for instance, the sometimes sentimental conceptions of Europe put forward by her Christian Democratic predecessors, most notably Helmut Kohl. And Merkel’s aversion to anything like visionary leadership has certainly made it more difficult now to build a proper structure for the EU in the wake of the euro crisis and what is often misleadingly described as the “migrant crisis” — as French President Emmanuel Macron pointed out, migrants weren’t the crisis; it was a crisis of the European political order.

‘Less Europe’

While many Europeans (not least in Brussels) are allergic to talking about the EU as a state in the making, the obvious fact is that at least parts of the union by now have two of the essential attributes of statehood: a common currency and a common border. The challenge after 2015 would have been to make both function properly.

Clearly, Merkel’s attempts to forge a common European approach to refugees became more difficult as an increasing number of politicians, from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to Austria’s Sebastian Kurz and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, discovered that xenophobia could make their political careers.

Still, Merkel had a last chance to leave behind a coherent union when Macron launched his plans for a renewed EU in 2017 and when she was forced into a coalition with the Social Democrats earlier this year.

Emmanuel Macron in April 2017. –Sylvain Lefevre/Getty

Rather than simply muddling through in yet another grand coalition, Merkel and her defeated opponent, Martin Schulz (who had spent most of his political life in the European Parliament), could have provided a real rationale for their cooperation by laying out an ambitious plan to remake the EU — which would have justified the two largest parties working together to maximize backing from German society.

None of this has happened, and it is now unlikely to happen, as Macron is losing momentum and even nominal Merkel allies such as Dutch leader Mark Rutte mechanically demand “less Europe.”

Perhaps one day Germans will blame Merkel for not having used excellent economic conditions to dare to do more. They might also wonder whether the creation of an eminently reasonable, technocratic center was not ultimately detrimental for democracy — and if the fragmentation of the party system, while making political life more complicated, was actually also a way to re-establish a sense of democratic choice.

In any case, they will think of Merkel as embodying a fundamental decency — an especially important contrast with certain other leaders today.

Read the original article on Foreign Policy.

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Hungary is a threat to international order. The US must act — Now

Action News Now — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 15:03:03 +0000

When I addressed Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, I did not go so far as the late, great, John McCain, who once described Orbán as “a neofascist in bed with Putin.”

However, I certainly would not have disagreed with Mr. McCain’s analysis in 2014. If anything, the situation regarding the rule of law and democracy in Hungary has since deteriorated.

In a historic vote on Wednesday, over two-third of members of the European Parliament voted to trigger soon Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty, which starts the process of sanctioning the Hungarian government in light of its growing authoritarian and anti-democratic behavior, which could eventually lead to the suspension of Hungary’s voting rights in the European Union.

In an extensive analysis of the situation in Hungary, the report by European lawmakers expressed serious concerns about the deterioration of the rule of law and democracy in the country, marking the culmination of years of futile dialogue between the EU and Hungary.

Since 2010, Viktor Orbán has passed laws that suffocate the free press, politicize Hungary’s judiciary and demonize nongovernmental organizations. Shamefully, he has echoed anti-Semitic themes and targeted the international, highly respected Central European University.

On Tuesday, Orbán defended his actions by arguing that he has an electoral mandate to roll back democracy in Hungary. Yet international observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) delivered a damning verdict on the recent parliamentary elections in Hungary, warning of “intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing.”

In the OSCE’s assessment, Hungary’s recent elections may have been free, but not fair.

An ongoing investigation by Unhack Democracy Europe is uncovering allegations of widespread evidence of fake voter registration, forged polling station vote records and intimidation of ballot officials.

With state support, rhetoric similar to that used by the former leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Nigel Farage, to scare voters about mass migration during the Brexit referendum has been deployed across Hungary, seemingly with the sole aim of whipping up racial tension and hostility to migrants — and to demonize George Soros, a tactic laced with anti-Semitism, now being used by the alt-right globally.

Orbán is quite open about his goal to build an illiberal democracy in Europe. More than that, he wishes to spread illiberalism to other countries in Europe and beyond, teaming up with the white nationalist Steve Bannon and Italy’s far-right Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini.

Like Donald Trump, Orbán does not conceal his disdain for the international rules-based order and admiration for authoritarian strongmen like Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Along with other far-right political parties in Austria, Italy and France, Orbán’s party signed a cooperation pact with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia in 2016.

In another worrying sign that Europe’s far right is undermining cooperation between national intelligence services in the West, the agreement provides for information sharing with the Kremlin on issues relevant to bilateral and international relations.

This vote proves that the march of the illiberals in Europe will no longer go unchallenged and that there is a strong majority of parliamentarians in the European Union still willing to fight for democratic laws and values.

In the coming weeks and months, the international community — and the United States in particular — must heed our warning and act: Hungary’s government is a threat to the rules-based international order.

European governments and the US have a moral obligation to intervene. We cannot stand aside and let populist, far-right governments drag democratic European states into Vladimir Putin’s orbit and undermine the postwar international norms.

Political and financial costs must be attached to governments pursuing an authoritarian path and support provided to civil society organizations and the citizens of Hungary, who deserve much better than this.

The inconvenient truth is that under the current circumstances, it would be impossible for Hungary to join the European Union today. Orbán has openly said he wants to destroy the project.

This is not in the interests of the people of America or Europe. We need to stop him — now.

‘He NEEDS the UK’ Macron FEARS Brexit chaos will SPARK populist TAKEOVER of EU by next May

Oli Smith — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 17:52:44 +0000

Emmanuel Macron will desperately need Britain on his side as a political ally in the run-up to the European Parliament elections next May, amid fears among Brussels establishment that anti-EU forces could take over the bloc’s institutions.

Emmanuel Macron is terrified of an alliance of EU populists, nationalists and eurosceptics taking over the European Parliament next spring.

The Europhile French President believes the potential power shift would torpedo his plans for further European Union integration, according to French journalist Agnes Poirer.

Mr Macron “needs Britain” as an ally in the run up to the vote, amid fears that a no deal Brexit could push the British Government into his European opposition.

The French leader views the vote, which takes place in May 2019, as a battle between populists and progressives.

The election, which is scheduled just two months after Britain officially leaves the EU, could determine the fate of Mr Macron’s long-standing European ambitions.

Poirer, who reports for the French magazine Marianne, claims that this fear will push the French president in offering Britain a good Brexit trade deal.

She told the BBC’s Dateline: “There is a slight change of mood, and that has happened over the last few weeks.

“I am going to give the European view here. It has been very tempting for the last two years to let Britain sink, or drift into oblivion.

“For many in Europe, Brexit is a shambles and is probably a historical mistake.

“But, Macron is developing this idea that the next European elections, in just a few months time, will be between progressive and nationalist-populists.

“We need Britain on our side, we can’t let Britain drift away.

“It is not practical. We need Britain, We need a deal. We need to help May save face.

Macron is terrified of an alliance of EU populists taking over the European Parliament (Image: GETTY)

“A no deal would be bad for everyone, and not just the UK but the EU as well.”

Mr Macron has increasingly confronted the more Eurosceptic elements of the EU, such as hitting out at Hungary and Italy.

He said that Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini were “right to consider him a threat”.

The enraged French president said that he would never “cede any ground to nationalists and those who advocate hate speech”.

Earlier today, former Labour MP Gisela Stuart predicted that the Europeans will back down over their Brexit deal stalemate before Britain leaves next March.

She explained: “The Sweden election does not bode well for the European Parliament elections in May, so the pressure to come up with a deal before March is very useful for us because the next Parliament will be by far more eurosceptic than the current one.”

Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1015147/Macron-Brexit-no-deal-populist-victory-European-Parliament-France-EU

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Analysis: Putting the Western Wall on the itinerary for world leaders

Herb Keinon — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 18:40:31 +0000

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will be the latest leader to officially put the Western Wall on his itinerary on Friday.

For world leaders, visiting the Kotel (Western Wall) is becoming the new normal.

That, at least, is the perception that will be further advanced on Friday when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a two-day visit, will be the latest leader to officially put the Western Wall on his itinerary.

When Orban – whom critics have accused of fanning antisemitic flames – puts a note in the crevices of the Kotel on Friday, he will be following US President Donald Trump, US Vice President Mike Pence and Prince William, who did the exact same thing before him. Trump was the first sitting US president to visit the Kotel when he did so in May 2017.

Those three very high-profile visits gave the impression that world leaders – who had in the past avoided the Western Wall – had all of sudden discovered it. But a representative for the Western Wall Heritage Foundation said that leaders have visited in the past as well – it’s just that the media started to pay much more attention to these visits once Trump went there.

One Israeli government official said, however, that there are more formal visits to the Western Wall as part of the leaders’ official visits to Israel now, as opposed to what was characterized in the past as “private visits.” He attributed this change to the Trump visit.

“This gave legitimization to these visits,” the official said.

He also added that the Foreign Ministry and the government now encourage more strongly than in the past putting the Western Wall on the itineraries of visiting dignitaries.
“We don’t say that they have to go, or that it is an obligatory stop such as Yad Vashem, but we certainly encourage it more now,” he said.

He added that this reflects an Israeli attempt to push back against decisions such as those taken at UNESCO in recent years denying a Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, saying that these visits are “important” because they demonstrate that those who go to the site “recognize the connection between the Jewish people and the Kotel, and the Old City.”

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation has a website that includes an events calendar, where pictures of high-profile visits are posted. A look at the nearly 14 months of visitors highlighted on that website since Trump’s visit in May 2017, compared to the 14 months before his visit, shows some interesting trends.

First of all, there were slightly more high-level visits – meaning, visits by heads of governments, heads of state, foreign ministers, other cabinet ministers and US governors – during the 14 months before Trump’s visit (35), compared with after it (32).

What has changed significantly, however, is where the visitors are coming from.

If, in the 14 months before the Trump visit, only three high-level US officials – the governors of New York, Michigan and Massachusetts – visited the Kotel, since Trump’s visit there have been visits by the US vice president, two cabinet ministers, and the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley. In addition, seven US governors have visited, meaning that over the last 28 months, one-fifth of all of America’s governors have visited the Western Wall.

Regarding leaders from other countries, what is striking about the list is that it is dominated by leaders from Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America and Africa, with a smattering of leaders from Asian countries (China, Singapore and Mongolia).

And this is true both of the periods before and after Trump’s visit.

For instance, Orban will join the prime ministers of Romania, Moldova, Macedonia, Ukraine, Croatia, Russia, Jamaica and Ethiopia as prime ministers who went to the Wall. The presidents of Panama, Guatemala and Mexico have gone there, as have the presidents of Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia and Bosnia, as well as the presidents and foreign ministers of the Central African Republic, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is greeted on arrival at Ben-Gurion Airport, July 18, 2018 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

What is striking about the list is the nearly complete absence of leaders from European countries that were not behind the Iron Curtain before it fell in 1991. The only exceptions are Austria, whose last two chancellors have visited the site; the Spanish interior minister, who visited last month; and the Portuguese foreign minister, who visited after going to the Temple Mount in December of 2016.

Orban, meanwhile, will not only be visiting the Western Wall, but will also be meeting Chief Rabbi David Lau, something that is rare for visiting prime ministers to do.

One diplomatic official said Orban is doing this to combat accusations that he is soft on antisemitism, and that he has even encouraged it through his campaign against Hungarian- born Jewish financier George Soros.

Though Orban’s visit to Israel might be met by some scattered protests – and even as some opposition MKs have denounced both the visit and Netanyahu’s close relationship with the controversial right-wing, anti-immigrant prime minister – the Foreign Ministry issued a statement Wednesday afternoon welcoming his arrival.

“The visit will advance the good bilateral relations which are manifest, in part, by [Hungarian] support for Israel’s positions in European and international forums, and an emphasis on the importance of the continued struggle against antisemitism.”

Orban – accompanied by his wife, Aniko Levai, and a number of ministers, including Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó – was greeted at the airport by Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis.

On Thursday he is scheduled to meet separately with Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, as well as meeting Lau and visiting Yad Vashem. In the evening, Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, will host the Hungarian premier and his wife at their residence for dinner.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Analysis-Putting-the-Western-Wall-on-the-itinerary-for-world-leaders-562901

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