Geert Wilders: ‘We want a Europe without the EU’

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Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders was invited to speak at the Ambrosetti Conference in Italy. The purpose of the conference titled “Intelligence on the World, Europe, and Italy” was to “to discuss current issues of major impact for the world economy and society as a whole.”

If anything MP Wilders is an outlier and his remarks show him to be a truth teller among those who wish to ignore the truth about what is truly happening across Europe. As MP Wilders put it:

I appreciate inviting someone who does not share your enthusiasm for the European Union. Whether your European dream, like Euro Commissioner Frans Timmermans, just mentioned it. To be honest: His dream is my nightmare.

MP Wilders made it clear that the biggest issues facing the European Union are:

  • The European elite in our midst.
  • The mistake of European nations transferring more and more power to the EU.
  • [L]egislation has been outsourced to Brussels.
  • The lack of a “clear European identity.”
  • A EU that “is characterized by cultural relativism and hostility to patriotism.”
  • The “bitter fruits” of the EU immigration policy.
  • The EU resembling “a cartel of governments dominated by Germany and France.”
  • [T]he EU does not care for the preservation of Jewish Christian culture.

MP Wilders warned, “The problems facing Europe are existential. Non-economics, but Islamization, terrorism and mass immigration are our main problems. Existential, indeed, because it determines who we are, what we are and whether we will still exist as a free people in the future.”

Please read MP Wilder’s entire speech. His words are prophetic and sound familiar. His words are much like those of President Trump in that MP Wilders wants to make Holland Great Again.

National sovereignty, secured borders, controlled immigration, draining the swamp in Brussels and dealing with the growing threats to his culture and Judeo/Christian world view.

MP Wilders is one of a handful of leaders willing to speak out in order to save his country. The forces arrayed against him are like the forces arrayed against President Trump. But MP Wilders knows that we shall overcome those obstacles and restore our virtue and dignity as unique Western cultures and societies.

RELATED ARTICLE: Towards A Definition Of Islam And Islamism

Transcript of Speech by Geert Wilders
Ambrosetti Conference, Italy, Villa d’Este, September 2, 2017

Ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for being here today. I appreciate inviting someone who does not share your enthusiasm for the European Union. Whether your European dream, like Euro Commissioner Frans Timmermans, just mentioned it. To be honest: His dream is my nightmare.

I realize that my opinion differs from that of many members of the European elite in our midst, but I am an optimist.

I believe in a positive future for Europe as a community of independent, sovereign and democratic countries – collaborating without a supranational political union – a Europe without the European Union.

I believe that true democracy can only exist and flourish within a nation state. The national sovereignty combined with the domestic culture gives us our identity. As well as control over our own limits and budget and the right to decide how we use it ourselves as a nation.

Unfortunately, most of our governments have transferred more powers to the EU, which undermines many important things we have achieved over the past centuries.

Our ancestors fought for a democratic Netherlands. That is a Netherlands where Dutch voters and nobody else decide on Dutch matters. Democracy means that a people can decide on his own legislation.

Democracy is equal to self-government. But by the transfer of our powers to Brussels, the EU institutions and other countries decide on matters that are essential to our nation: our immigration policy, our monetary policy, our trade policy and many other issues.

A large part of our legislation has been outsourced to Brussels. Our national parliaments have become EU executive agencies. Many people object to this.

In the 2005 referendum, the Dutch voted against the European constitution, but a few years later, a slightly modified version was pushed under a new name.

Last year, a large majority of the Dutch voted in a referendum against the EU Association Treaty with Ukraine, but the treaty was still pushed. Very few people can still take the EU as a democratic institution after they have seen this happen.

Another very important thing that the Dutch have acquired over the past centuries were clear and demarcated boundaries. Boundaries are important. Because they protect us and determine who and what we are. Due to our governments that have transferred sovereignty, we are now no longer responsible for our immigration policy and even our own borders.
And the result is terrible.

If you give away the keys of your own home to someone who does not lock the doors, do not be surprised when unwelcome guests find their way in. I believe every nation is in charge of its own boundaries and must be able to decide who is welcome and who not. The Netherlands is the home of the Dutch. It’s the only house we have. And we should have control over our borders and our own immigration policy.

One of these things we also attach Dutch is our national identity. The Dutch have their own identity. And so also the other nations of Europe.

But there is no clear European identity.

The EU is characterized by cultural relativism and hostility to patriotism. But patriotism is not a dangerous threat, it’s something to be proud of.

It means defending the sovereignty and independence of the nation states, and not selling these values ​​in slight compromises to the EU and its bureaucrats.

As the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said – I quote – “Europe is a community of Christian, free and independent nations. The greatest danger to Europe’s future is the fanatics of internationalism in Brussels. We will not allow them to bitter the fruits of to invoke our cosmopolitan immigration policy. ” End quote.

I totally agree with that.

The European Commission has recently initiated proceedings against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic because they refuse to include immigrants. Two years ago, Mrs Merkel invited millions of immigrants to come to Germany.

An historical error. She not only released millions, her policy encouraged them.

Her “Wir buck tie – we can call it” call was one of the biggest suction factors in the European migrant crisis. It is impossible to maintain your identity if you are flooded by millions of newcomers with a completely different culture. A culture that – as is the case with Islamic culture – aims to dominate and refuse[s] to assimilate.

The EU resembles a cartel of governments dominated by Germany and France. These two mighty nations decide almost everything.

But the Poland, the Hungarians, the Dutch, the Italians did not choose Mr Merkel or Mr Macron.

They did not choose Mr Juncker, and we, Dutch, have decimated in the last parliamentary elections of last March, the most pro-EU and pro-ice party in the Netherlands: the social democratic party of my countryman, Mr Timmermans, next to this tomorrow I sit, lost 75% of her seats. My party, the EU’s most anti-EU and anti-icing party, won 33% more seats.

In the 13-party parliament in the Netherlands we are for the first time ever the second party, and next time we will be the biggest.

Another important issue that the Dutch is at heart is our safety. In our streets today, as in many other European cities, we can see daily that the EU and the pro-EU leaders of the national states have saddled us. In our inner cities we are faced with whole neighborhoods that no longer seem to be Dutch, and where Dutch are no longer safe. We have people in our country who are born in our country but who do not share our basic values ​​and it’s even worse.

Parts of Europe even seem to be in war zones. The EU has no war. There have been terrible murderous attacks in Barcelona, ​​London, Manchester, Berlin, Brussels, Nice, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Madrid, Amsterdam.

Terrorists have entered Europe between immigrant flows that have allowed the EU and national governments. While home grown terrorists are already one of the biggest problems facing our countries today. Thousands of them, throughout Europe, are able to travel freely and wherever they want.

This morning, European anti-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerckhove said in a Belgian newspaper that there are now 50,000 radical Muslims in Europe. They can commit a terrorist attack any time, as has happened so often lately.

Brussels, together with the pro-EU leaders in the national capitals, created the conditions that allowed these horrendous events and attacks by allowing millions of immigrants to enter Europe – often uncontrolled, by not requiring assimilation by refusing a ” search culture ‘, a dominant culture, through political correctness and total lack of leadership.

At my office in The Hague is a huge portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. In 1946 he held a speech in which he pleaded for what he called – I quote – “a kind of United States of Europe.” But he did not mean what the Eurofiles mean. He called the British Commonwealth as an example: a loose federation of nations, economically cooperative and bound to a number of principles.

But when he became prime minister in the 50’s, Churchill did not ask for membership of the EU’s forerunner. He found the idea of ​​giving up national sovereignty horrendously. Because he knew that this would lead to the end of democracy, identity and security for his people.

And the EU does not care for the preservation of Jewish Christian culture.

On the contrary, it facilitates Islamization.

Our European civilization, based on the cultural legacy of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, is the best civilization on earth. It gave us democracy, freedom, equality before the law, the separation of church and state, and the view that sovereign states are there to protect all this. The remedy against all misery and terror is clear: we need to re-emphasize what we are. Only then can we ensure our children a future in a safe, strong and free Europe.

The problems facing Europe are existential. Non-economics, but Islamization, terrorism and mass immigration are our main problems. Existential, indeed, because it determines who we are, what we are and whether we will still exist as a free people in the future.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I believe in freedom of expression. I pay a heavy price for that. I’m on killing lists of Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamic groups. I live in a safehouse of the Dutch state and I have been under the 24/7 police protection for 13 years. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. I have that too.

And I think Islamization is the biggest threat to our European future. I’m not talking about all Muslims, many of whom are moderate, but I am talking about Islamic ideology that is incompatible with freedom and democracy and we import massively.

The European Commission expresses its concern about the so-called threat to democracy in countries like Poland and Hungary, but it ignores the destructive effect that Islam has on security and freedom of Europe.

For all these reasons – protecting our democracy, our borders, our identity, our security and our freedom – we want a Europe without the EU. Sovereign democratic countries are perfectly able to work together where there are common interests – without the need for a supranational political institution like the EU.

But despite all the bad news, I’m, as I said at the beginning, an optimist. Everywhere in Europe, more and more people become proud patriots.

And know that the patriots will win. And also the nation state.

Nations who are naturally willing to work together where they see a common interest. There is nothing wrong with economic cooperation, on the contrary. We can also work together to fight terrorism. But everything on a voluntary basis, as sovereign nations.

And without a political union. Without the EU.

The future belongs to the Europe of sovereign nations.

Thank you.

Southern Poverty Law Center Distorts the Legacy of Confederate Statues

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In the wake of the ongoing controversy over Confederate monuments, many who would like to see them removed immediately have pointed to one chart that shows when the statues were put up, presumably to prove they are inherently hateful.

A widely cited study, created by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, claims that most of the Confederate statues were constructed specifically in the period under “Jim Crow” laws that targeted black Americans, or in opposition to civil rights.

The fact that they were erected during these two time periods supposedly proves the case that they were meant to intimidate or to “remind” Southern blacks of continuing white supremacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center then further implies that defending these statues amounts to buoying hate groups, like the one that caused a riot in Charlottesville. The far-left group then one-upped itself by warning that the continued existence of Confederate monuments and symbols could “unleash more turmoil and bloodshed.”

This is an astoundingly paranoid claim given how few people even noticed or cared about the existence of the statues until about a month ago.

Moreover, by making unverified claims about the reasons the statues were built, the Southern Poverty Law Center simplifies the meaning of thousands of monuments that were actually built for a variety of reasons, simply to impugn the motives of a majority of Americans who don’t want to see them removed.

According to a Marist poll, a large majority of Americans (62 percent) favor keeping the Confederate statues, while only 27 percent said they want to take them down. Even a plurality of black Americans also believe the statues should stay.

It would likely shock the 44 percent of black Americans who support keeping the statues to learn that they are supporting white supremacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been careless in the past about the way it labels “hate groups,” lumping in mainstream conservative organizations with neo-Nazis, which at least in one case has led to actual violence.

The broad brush with which it treats these statues is yet another example of how it muddles reasonable differences of opinion. While some monuments were undoubtedly built for sordid and ugly reasons, many others were not, or leave a more complicated legacy than the Southern Poverty Law Center wants to portray.

Rebuilding Civilization

The Confederacy died when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.

Nevertheless, the story of the Americans who fought on both sides of that conflict did not begin or end in the horrible four years of war that nearly destroyed our nation and killed 1 in 4 fighting-age men in the country.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the global consensus was that America was finished. Even after the Union triumph in 1865, there were extreme doubts that the country could reunite.

It’s a miracle that it did.

In the years immediately after the war, the period when the Southern Poverty Law Center seems to suggest erecting monuments made the most “sense,” most Americans had bigger priorities than statue building.

But as time went by, many in both the North and the South wanted to pay tribute to the generation that went through perhaps the most defining moment in our nation’s history.

Much of the bitterness toward old foes began to dissipate, and many tried to rebuild an American consensus.

The anger that existed between the North and South cooled, and the wisdom of President Abraham Lincoln’s famous second inaugural address—“with malice toward none and charity for all”—began to take hold in earnest as decades passed.

As the country began to truly heal from the scars of the Civil War, the monuments and memorials it built varied, and in spite of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s insinuations, were not all created as symbols of white supremacy or to glorify the cause of the Confederacy.

For instance, Charles Francis Adams Jr., a direct descendent of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, was born in Massachusetts and fought for the Union Army.

Adams was an anti-slavery man who had put his life on the line to destroy the Confederacy, but in a powerful speech delivered at Harvard University in 1903, he argued that it would be reasonable and positive to build a statue of Lee in the nation’s capital.

He noted that Lee was not the one-dimensional bogeyman that he and many in the North thought of when they fought his Army of Northern Virginia.

Though the war had, thankfully, banished the twin evils of slavery and secession, Adams argued that it was important to remember that good men often fought for bad causes, and to give dignity even to the defeated.

Ultimately, in the end, Lee and the boys who fought in grey “were our countrymen.” Adams argued that depicting Lee atop his steed in Confederate uniform would be educational, and show a once “dreaded and respected” opponent accepting the consequences of defeat.

Rather than a glorification of the Confederacy, some monuments are rightly understood as tributes to the greatness and endurance of the United States, which had come through a bloody trial still capable of reuniting Americans on the same side once more.

A statue to Confederate Gen. Joe Wheeler stands in the Capitol Building and was recently targeted by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi as one of the monuments that needs to go.

But, like many of the targeted monuments’ subjects, Wheeler’s legacy is complicated. After the Civil War, he rejoined the United States military and fought for our country with distinction in the Spanish-American War. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Shall Americans destroy a statue to a man buried in our most hallowed ground?

The Atlanta monument attacked by protestors in the days after the Charlottesville incident is yet another good example of how extremism and dehumanization of history leads to misdirected rage and destruction.

The monument, constructed in 1911, depicts a Confederate soldier being guided by an angel to lay down his arms in a sign of peace and unity, not glorification of the Confederate cause. The construction had been spearheaded by former Southern soldiers who had toured the North and wanted to create a symbol of healing.

It was among the many monuments built during the supposedly racist spike that the Southern Poverty Law Center pinpointed, which, by the way, also coincides with the 50th anniversary of the war. Americans wanted to pay tribute to their parents and grandparents in much the same way modern generations do for the World War II generation that is now passing on.

Is this a symbol that deserves destruction?

Adams and many others who erected or supported the statues across the battlefields and once war-ravaged cities that dot the South hoped they would stand for more unity, not less.

They knew the price of fraternal feud more than we, hopefully, ever will. But still, they chose forgiveness.

Once Confederate, Now American

The legacy of many Civil War monuments, both Northern and Southern, extends far beyond the four years of the Civil War.

Unionist regions, which recovered faster from the war, began building monuments within several decades. The massive statues to Union generals that rise over the streets and squares of New York City and Washington, D.C., are the legacy of this movement.

The South rode the coattails of Northern industrial monument construction, relying on its new and cheaper mass-production techniques to construct the monuments themselves at a more affordable expense to small groups and towns. This explains the curious fact that statues to soldiers in the North and South often look identical.

Southerners were buying statues mass-produced in Northern factories—an almost comical symbol of how the regions were rebuilding a national consensus.

It’s clear from the opinion of most Americans that our society still sees value in keeping Confederate monuments. Whether honoring fallen ancestors, seeing the humanity in foes, or in remembering the evils of slavery, they can serve many purposes to our generation, and future ones who will undoubtedly interpret the statues in different ways than we will.

A few heinous extremists don’t deserve to define the debate for the rest of the country, and the Southern Poverty Law Center does a disservice to paint Americans—of many generations—with such sweeping and one-dimensional strokes.

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Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: 

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EDITORS NOTE: Many statues of Confederate soldiers and generals were constructed out of a renewed spirit of national unity after the Civil War. The featured image of a Statue of Robert E. Leew is by Billy Tompkins/Cover Images/Newscom. Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can’t be done alone. Find out more >>

After Iran occupies Syria, it will destroy Europe and North America

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There is a long term plan at work here aimed at destroying the West and it can work.

Iran and Russia plan to destroy Western Europe, the U.S. and Canada by means of a new wave of millions of Syrian Sunnis fleeing to the West to escape the Shiite takeover of Syria.

In my weekly column two months ago, I claimed that Iran is the real victor in the Syrian civil war. Using the war against ISIS as a smokescreen, it is taking over large swathes of Syrian territory, mainly in the scarcely populated middle and eastern parts of the country. In the more fertile and densely populated west of Syria, there are Iraqi, Afghan, and Iranian Shiite militias augmenting Lebanese Hezbollah fighters who were given carte blanche to do whatever Hassan Nasrallah decides to do there.

Assad’s strength continues to increase as ISIS and the other rebel forces lose ground. The brutality of Russian involvement and the cruelty of Shiite militias overcame the anti-Assad forces, the turning point occurring when in 2015, Turkey’ s Erdogan was forced by Russia to cease his aid to the rebels and ISIS. Today, although Erdogan is an unwilling ally of Russia, Alawite Assad still sees him, justifiably, as an Islamist enemy.

The Kurds of northeast Syria, treated as below third class citizens until 2011, will never agree to live under Arab mercy once again and it is reasonable to assume that should Syria remain an undivided country under Assad’s rule, the Kurds will preserve relative autonomy in their region – or fight the regime for their rights.

That is certainly a problem, but the main issue facing a united Syria is going to be the drastic demographic changes the country is going to face.

First of all, about half of Syria’s citizens – close to 10 million – are refugees, half located in Syria and the other half in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, other Arab countries, Europe, North and South America, Australia and even Israel. Syrian refugees who reached points outside the Arab world will in all probability stay put, benefiting from the secure and orderly lives they can now lead. On the other hand, the 3.5 million now in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are awaiting the end of hostilities in order to return to their homes.

Those expectations may be dashed, however, because Syrian reality is totally changed, and large parts of its cities are in ruins after six and a half years of a cruel and bloody war. Countless bombs dropped from planes and helicopters, artillery and tank barrages, mines and explosives planted by both sides have made much of urban Syria, where most of the fighting took place, unsafe to live in. In Homs, Aleppo, Adlib, Hamat and many other cities, entire neighborhoods will have to be razed and their infrastructure rebuilt from scratch.

Decades and billions of dollars are needed to rebuild the country and I, for one, do not see the world’s nations standing on line to donate the necessary funds. Refugees will not agree to switch their tents in Jordan for ruined buildings lacking basic infrastructure in a desolate and destroyed Syria.

The other reason the refugees will not return is their justified fear of the new lords of the land – the Shiites. Iran has been moving Shiites from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to Syria for a long time in a clear attempt to change the demographic makeup of the country from the Sunni majority it had before the civil war broke out in 2011. The issue could not be more clear because it is no secret that the pre-civil war Sunni majority considered the Alawite rulers heretic idol worshippers who had no right to live in Syria, much less rule over it.

The Alawites know well that the Sunnis rebelled against them twice: The first time was from 1976 to 1982, a rebellion that took the lives of 50,000 citizens. The second time, slowly drawing to an end, has cost the lives of half a million men, women, children and aged citizens of Syria. The Alawites intend to prevent a third rebellion and the best way to do that is to change the majority of the population to Shiites instead of Sunnis. They will not allow the Sunni refugees to return to their homes, leaving them eternal refugees whose lands have been taken over by the enemy. Iran, meanwhile, will populate Syria with Shiites from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

This ethnic cleansing is the Ayatollah’s dream come true, the dream that sees a Shiite crescent drawn from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea. This will cover the eastern Arab world from the north, while the war in Yemen is being fought in order to create a parallel southern crescent, entrapping Saudi Arabia and Jordan between the two. With the help of Allah, both those countries and Israel, the Small Satan, will soon fall into the hands of the Shiites, while Europe and America do nothing because who cares when Muslims fight other Muslims?

The Shiite majority in Syria will play along with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, their natural allies, and it is possible that some form of federation might be created between the two in order to push the Lebanese Christians out of the picture, “persuading” them to flee to other countries, leaving Lebanon to its “rightful” Shiite masters. This explains Nasrallah’s eager willingness to fight on Syrian soil as well as the opposition of those against Nasrallah to his involvement there.

The new demographic situation in Syria will convince the Sunni refugees that they have no place to which to return. They will try their best to be allowed to leave Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey for any country, preferably North America and Europe, willing to allow them entry. I predict a process that is the exact opposite of the one the world expects to take place when “peace” breaks out in Syria: Instead of refugees returning to their birthplace, expect the mass flight of Sunni refugees from the region, and expect a heightened incidence of Islamist terror in the countries that allow them in.

The reasons are obvious:

1. Former ISIS and rebel forces will infiltrate along with the refugees, because they, too, are Sunni. They are filled with fury and hatred for the Western countries who were part of the coalition that fought ISIS or stood by without aiding the rebels. Some of them will continue their Jihad on European and North American soil. Expect shootings, explosives and ramming attacks against citizens of these countries.

2. Some of the refugees will not find work and live on the economic and social fringes of society, in poverty-stricken Islamist neighborhoods which have already existed for years in many European cities, and where the local police fear to tread. Poverty and life on the fringe of society will turn some of the Muslim young people into easy prey for terrorist organization recruiters who arouse the desire for Jihad by describing the accepting host countries as decadent societies infected with permissiveness, prostitution, alcohol, drugs, materialism and corruption. They present the countries that allowed the immigrants entry as having done so to take advantage of them as industrial slaves, garage hands, cashiers and other degrading occupations, while the privileged citizens are lawyers, accountant, businessmen and homeowners w ho take advantage of the migrants in humiliating ways. It is only a matter of time until young Muslims, especially those who were taught that “everyone is equal” in Western schools, enlist in terrorist organizations.

3. Countries which allow in refugees will suffer a higher crime rate as a result, including violence in public places, sexual attacks and harassment, housebreaking, car theft, substance abuse, unreported work to avoid paying taxes and illegal construction. This will all occur at the same time these countries expend a larger part of their budgets on social services for the refugees, from child allowances to unemployment, health and old age benefits. At this point in time, the percentage of second and third generation immigrants populating the prisons in Western Europe is significantly larger than their percentage in the general population.

4. Increased economic, social and security problems in Europe and North America as a result of the rise in the number of migrants will lead to a rise in the strength of the right and the extreme right. This will in turn lead to more social tensions in the West. Members of Parliament whose only wish is to be re-elected will adapt their parliamentary activity – especially the laws they promote – to the expectations of the rapidly Islamizing constituencies, sacrificing their own people’s interests on the altar of their political careers. Many Europeans, aware of their elected leaders’ betrayal, will despair and leave those socially and economically deteriorating countries. This will increase the rate at which Europe turns into an Islamic region.

And that is how the agreements Iran and Russia will soon coerce Syria into accepting are going to start a chain reaction increasing the number of refugees and pulling Europe down to a point of no return, without the world understanding what is going on. The Atlantic Ocean is not wide enough to protect North America from this debacle crossing the sea.

This is how the Iranian Ayatollahs intend to destroy the heretic, permissive, drunk and materialistic West. More of the unfortunate Syrian millions will find themselves exiled to the heretic countries hated by the Ayatollahs, and Iran will operate from Syrian soil to vanquish Europe and America.

Written in Hebrew for Arutz Sheva, translated by Rochel Sylvetsky, Senior Consultant and op-ed editor of Arutz Sheva English site.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is a of Iran’s national flags are seen on a square in Tehran February 10, 2012, a day before the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl/File Photo.

Trump Signals Willingness to Trade ‘Dreamers’ Amnesty for Merit-Based Immigration Reform

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President Donald Trump signaled Tuesday that he may accept some sort of legal status for “Dreamers” enacted by Congress in return for lawmakers’ strengthening of immigration law, including merit-based reforms.

“We will resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion–but through the lawful Democratic process,” @POTUS says.

In a statement issued after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the gradual end of protections for so-called Dreamers, those brought illegally to the U.S. as children, Trump called for Congress to “advance responsible immigration reform that puts American jobs and American security first.”

The president specifically mentioned a merit-based system for legal immigration and reforms to the issuing of green cards allowing immigrants to live and work here permanently.

Currently, Dreamers are allowed to work and are protected from deportation under a program unilaterally ordered in 2012 by President Barack Obama, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

“We will resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion– but through the lawful Democratic process–while at the same time ensuring that any immigration reform we adopt provides enduring benefits for the American citizens we were elected to serve,” Trump said in the statement, capitalizing the D in democratic. “We must also have heart and compassion for unemployed, struggling, and forgotten Americans.”

DACA shields from deportation those who were minors when their parents brought them to the country illegally, a population their advocates call Dreamers. Critics slammed the Obama policy as an unconstitutional amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In 2012, while Obama was running for re-election, his Department of Homeland Security adopted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This came after Congress did not pass versions of the DREAM Act, which would have bestowed legal status on illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Trump noted that new applications for work permits under DACA–which allowed for temporary work permits, a Social Security card, and other benefits–won’t be accepted but all existing permits will be honored until they expire. Some permits will not expire for another two years, he said.

Also, the president said deportation priorities remain on security threats, visa overstays, and repeat violators.

“I have advised the Department of Homeland Security that DACA recipients are not enforcement priorities unless they are criminals, are involved in criminal activity, or are members of a gang,” Trump said.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced an “orderly wind-down” of DACA, giving Congress time to address a policy that he said wouldn’t likely survive a court challenge in its current form.

But, Sessions added during his remarks Tuesday at the Justice Department:

The compassionate thing is to end the lawlessness, enforce our laws, and, if Congress chooses to make changes to those laws, to do so through the process set forth by our Founders in a way that advances the interest of the nation. … As a candidate, and now in office, President Trump has offered specific ideas and legislative solutions that will protect American workers, increase wages and salaries, defend our national security, ensure the public safety, and increase the general well-being of the American people. He has worked closely with many members of Congress, including in the introduction of the RAISE Act, which would produce enormous benefits for our country. This is how our democratic process works.

After the Sessions announcement, the White House issued a press release saying “DACA made it impossible for President Trump to pursue the reforms needed to restore fairness to our immigration system and protect American workers,” and specifying priorities such as a merit-based system to replace chain migration, improving vetting of immigrants, and controlling the southern border. Chain migration allows a continuous “chain” of relatives to enter the country if they are related to current legal residents.

In August, Trump announced his support for legislation to establish a system that would give preference to skilled workers to fill needed jobs while also capping annual legal immigration totals.

That bill, called the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act, or RAISE Act, is sponsored by two Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia.

Meanwhile, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., sponsored a bill to codify DACA, granting legal status to the illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. So far, about 800,000 illegal immigrants have benefited from DACA.

“From Sessions’ speech, the administration is seemingly open to some type of combination bill,” David Inserra, a homeland security policy analyst for The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “The RAISE Act seemed to be floated as a condition for keeping DACA.”

Elaine Duke, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, initiated the process for rescinding DACA and its protection for Dreamers, Sessions said in his announcement.

“This will enable the Department of Homeland Security to conduct an orderly change and fulfill the desire of this administration to create a time period for Congress to act should it so choose,” Sessions said. “We firmly believe this is the responsible path.”

Referring to Obama’s unilateral action allowing Dreamers to work without fear of deportation, Sessions added: “Simply put, if we are to further our goal of strengthening the constitutional order and the rule of law in America, the Department of Justice cannot defend this overreach.”

Sessions didn’t specify how long the orderly phaseout would be, but some news organizations, citing administration sources, reported it would be six months.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged an immediate end to DACA, but softened on the policy after becoming president. So the announcement Tuesday represents a compromise of sorts, pledging that the executive version of DACA will end while giving Congress a chance to codify the policy.

The decision toes a line that allows the president to keep a campaign promise, while abiding by what much of official Washington called for him to do.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Friday that he opposed ending DACA, and that he hoped Congress could have time to do a legislative fix. In a statement Tuesday, Ryan said Obama’s action wasn’t a permanent solution to the question of children brought to the country illegally:

Congress writes laws, not the president, and ending this program fulfills a promise that President Trump made to restore the proper role of the executive and legislative branches. But now there is more to do, and the president has called on Congress to act. The president’s announcement does not revoke [work] permits immediately, and it is important that those affected have clarity on how this interim period will be carried out. … It is my hope that the House and Senate, with the president’s leadership, will be able to find consensus on a permanent legislative solution that includes ensuring that those who have done nothing wrong can still contribute as a valued part of this great country.

Graham, often one of Trump’s harshest Republican critics and co-sponsor of the legislation to protect Dreamers, seemed supportive of the president’s decision.

“I have always believed DACA was a presidential overreach,” Graham said in a statement Monday. “However, I equally understand the plight of the Dream Act kids who–for all practical purposes–know no country other than America.

“I look forward to working with President Trump and my colleagues in Congress to find a fair solution to this difficult problem,” Graham said.

However, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., came out strongly against Trump via Twitter:

The Trump administration’s invitation for Congress to act did not meet with immediate opposition from immigration hawks, including the leader of Numbers USA, an organization advocating deportation action against illegal immigrants and reduced legal immigration.

“President Trump has delivered a wonderful Labor Day present to unemployed American millennials by ordering the end of former President Obama’s unconstitutional issuing of work permits under the DACA amnesty,” Numbers USA President Roy Beck said in a prepared statement. “Now it is time for Congress to focus on strong immigration enforcement measures and reforms to our legal immigration system that put American workers first.”

Key to the timing of the decision was the looming threat of a lawsuit against the federal government by state attorneys general led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The 10 attorneys general gave the Trump administration a Sept. 5 deadline to revoke DACA, at which point it either would withdraw the lawsuit or proceed with the suit. (Tennessee’s attorney general withdrew from the challenge last week, leaving nine.)

“As the Texas-led coalition explained in our June letter, the Obama-era program went far beyond the executive branch’s legitimate authority,” Paxton said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “Had former President Obama’s unilateral order on DACA been left intact, it would have set a dangerous precedent by giving the executive branch sweeping authority to bypass Congress and change immigration laws.”

Shortly after Democrats lost their Senate majority in the 2014 elections, Obama expanded the principle to include parents of the DACA beneficiaries, with a program called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA.

After states sued, courts rejected that action, asserting the executive branch doesn’t have the solitary power to grant legal status to immigrants. The Supreme Court deadlocked on DAPA in 2016, leaving in effect a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding an injunction that blocked the policy.

In June, citing the rulings, then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly revoked the 2014 memo authorizing the second amnesty program. Kelly, now Trump’s chief of staff, said at the time that DACA would remain in effect.

“If we were to keep the Obama administration’s executive amnesty policy, the likeliest outcome is that it would be enjoined just as was DAPA,” Sessions said.

Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham noted that the move could serve as a warning about executive actions, saying:

The Trump administration deserves credit for beginning the process of slowly unraveling the unlawful DACA program put in place by the previous administration. It should serve as a reminder for Republicans and Democrats alike that executive action can be reversed by executive action. Moving forward, it is imperative the executive and legislative branches work together to build a national consensus for an immigration policy that makes sense for 320 million Americans, not only a sympathetic group put into an untenable situation because former President Obama illegally bypassed Congress.

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Fred.

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A Note for our Readers:

Our society and traditional values are at a crossroads. Gender issues and the decline of marriage and family stability is threatening society.

Sensitivity and political correctness are infecting our culture and reshaping our society. Government overreach into our families, local communities, and churches threatens our ability to live productive and free lives.

That is why it is our mission to ensure you receive accurate, timely, and reliable facts impacting our society today. Culture wars dominate the news, and for good reason.

The Daily Signal gives you the facts so you can form opinions, make decisions, and stay informed. And to do that we report clear, concise, and reliable facts impacting every aspect of society today.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces the Trump administration’s decision to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama administration’s amnesty program for illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. (Photo: Xinhua/Sipa USA/Newscom). Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can’t be done alone. Find out more >>

It is Now or Never for the President’s Decision on U.S. Refugee Admissions Program

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In the month of September the President, by law, sends a ‘determination‘ to Congress about the size and scope of the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program for the upcoming fiscal year which begins October 1st.

This is the year he could really accomplish something if he suspends the program and forces Congress to review it.

(It won’t happen in 2018 because it’s an election year.)

But, those of you who follow RRW daily are probably sick of hearing about that.

I meant to write an August round-up (hope it was a good summer for you), but got lazy, so am taking a minute here to just thank you all for continuing to follow my work. And, to thank you (I don’t do that enough) for the donations you have sent my way which I take as validation that I’m providing some useful information.

(I took down my pay pal link when they began their purge of websites they are trying to kill—like my friends at VDARE!)

And, thanks too for the books, letters and notes sent to my snail mail address.

I encourage all of you to visit RRW, and not just rely on your e-mail subscription that I gather is increasingly unreliable (WordPress sends it out, not me).

(Over the years, I told people to simply “google” Refugee Resettlement Watch and my blog was at the top because it had been around for so long.  Now, there isn’t a direct link to the blog, lots of other mentions, but not the front page of RRW as ‘google’ works against freedom of thought and expression.)

If you visit RRW, see the Frequently Asked Questions in the header, see my Facebook page feed and my twitter feed.  You might wish to click on the categories tab (left hand column) and see the drop-down on subject areas.  Top most read posts in recent days are in the right hand side bar.

There are 8,672 posts (written over 10 years) archived here and the very best way to find information is to use the search window (upper left) with a few key words.

Click here if you want to see past roundups and general information from me about RRW.

Onward…

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a man protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and supporting refugees stands in front of a Trump supporter February 17th  in New York City. Photo by REUTERS/Stephanie Keith.

Media Whores

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All apologies to the hard-working street-walkers and penthouse prostitutes who, unlike the modern-media harlots and rent-boys, have no illusions and offer no excuses about what they do and why.

For well over 75 years, Americans have naively trusted that the people who bring them the news every night––and today, 24/7––are highly informed, deeply sincere, remarkably unbiased public servants.

After all, why would anyone go into a notoriously low-paying profession if he or she was not at heart an idealist?

Motives, of course, vary. Some are attracted to the “profession” because they are news junkies and want to be where the political action is. Others seek the limelight because the narcissist in them likes to be on camera. Then there are those who genuinely believe that their exposés and hard-hitting reporting can make a helpful difference in people’s lives. Finally we have aspirants with money signs in their eyes, hoping that they will be among the few who actually rake in the big bucks.

But for a public who still believe the “news” they read and hear and watch is even remotely related to “the truth,” allow me to burst that bubble.

As ace journalist Ashley Lutz scrupulously documented in a Business Insider report last year, in 1983 there were 50 media companies, but today only six organizations are now responsible for 90 percent of all the “news” we read, watch and listen to! They include:

  • GE (Comcast, NBC, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, et al).
  • NewsCorp (Fox, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, et al).
  • Disney (ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Miramax, Marvel Studios, et al)
  • Viacom (MTV, Nick Jr., BET, CMT, Paramount Pictures, et al)
  • Time Warner (CNN, HBO, TIME, Warner Bros., et al)
  • CBS (Showtime, Smithsonian Channel, NFL.com, Jeopardy, 60 Minutes, et al)

Make no mistake, the CEOs of these multibillion-dollar businesses are all leftist globalists––not a conservative among them––except perhaps for Rupert Murdoch (Fox, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, et al) who recently gave control of his empire to his leftist sons Lachlan and James, hence the distinctly leftward tilt of Fox and the WSJ.

Over the years, these globalist business titans have all made massive investments in the global economy, thanks largely to the leftist con men and women––the Clintons and Obamas; the communists, tin-pot dictators and America-haters of the United Nations; the leftist billionaires who thrive on and denounce capitalism at the same time––who wined and dined and charmed them into believing that America was on the decline and that the open-borders, one-world-government crowd was in imminent ascendance.

But big ideas, like the notion of a diminishing America, are never successful without the full-time help of a media that is run by––ta da––the globalists themselves!

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS

Ms. Wide-Eyed idealist and Mr. Upwardly-Mobile go-getter apply for jobs at their local or national radio or TV stations or newspapers. Or they “know someone” who facilitates an interview that leads to being hired. A good example of the latter is the nice-enough but remarkably untalented Chelsea Clinton, who landed an astronomically high-paying job with NBC that, mercifully for viewers, lasted about a minute.

Once hired, these wannabe journalists are thrilled to be on their way, until it dawns on them that their bosses don’t give a damn about anything they think or believe or want to convey to a hungry public. For most media employees, it soon becomes clear that they are expected––indeed, mandated––to reflect and convey the belief systems of their employers. And unless they do that, they are completely DISPENSABLE!

My favorite example is Alysin Camerota of CNN. When she was at Fox, she was Ms. Reliable Conservative, or at least fair and balanced. But the very millisecond she moved to CNN, she became as rabidly partisan as any leftwing fanatic has ever been.

Why? Because Ms. Alysin knew immediately that she was dispensable. That’s how big business works. Toe the line or you’re out! The same can be said of all of the self-important newscasters who are literally given their marching orders––or more accurately, their talking orders––by their media bosses.

Not just talking orders, but word-for-word memes, which is why no matter which lefty network or cable show you turn to, they’re all using the same vocabulary, expressions, key words. I first noticed this when Dick Cheney was chosen as a VP candidate by George W. Bush. All of a sudden, the media talking heads discovered the word “gravitas”!

Today, vis-à-vis Hurricane Harvey, the buzz word is the “empathy” that President Trump supposedly lacks––this in spite of an entire nation watching the people of Houston embrace and thank him. But objectivity has never been part of the media whores’ repertoire, only slavish obeisance to their bosses.

Watch for yourself… in fact, take notes. There is a remarkable absence of originality in today’s political reportage; it’s all an echo chamber of talking points and leftist propaganda that the anchors and reporters have received beforehand and literally been commanded to utilize at risk of their job.

And watch these [dispensable] media whores try to impress their bosses by competing in the categories of “best gotcha question,” “most [feigned] outrage,” most blank-faced faux objectivity,” “most vilification toward President Trump,” who these disrespectful [dispensable] employees insist on calling “Trump.” Again, watch for yourself.

But the question still remains: Why the ferocity against President Trump? Why the fanatical mission to depose him from office, to bring him down? The answer is quite simple: in every single case of what used to pass for politics as usual––he has single-handedly destroyed and brought down the prevailing powers-that-be: the Democrat Party, the Republican Party, the globalist agenda, treaties that were bad for America, the open-borders fetish, and the monolith known as the American media.

How? By giving voice to what the American people have known and been angry about for decades, i.e., that they are all corrupt, permeated with bribes and payoffs, self-serving, and in too many cases anti-American, anti the U.S. Constitution, and anti the Judeo-Christian ethics upon which our exceptional nation was founded.

PAYING THE WHORES

What we’ve been witnessing since June of 2015, when billionaire real-estate mogul and TV celebrity Donald Trump announced for the presidency is a three-part phenomenon.

The first gear was based on the arrogance of the establishment media poohbahs––the globalists––who spent over a year believing that the directives they gave to their [dispensable] media whores to deride, insult, sneer at, defame, vilify and laugh at candidate Trump would destroy him.

But they failed! And as candidate Trump succeeded in vanquishing not five or 10 or 14 but 17 formidable opponents and gaining the nomination, the globalists shifted into second gear.

Second gear involved the vast expenditures the globalists were willing to make to stop Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign in its tracks, the kind of money––including, I suspect, huge payoffs––to polling firms to literally lie about the numbers.

Every poll showed the worst candidate in American history, Hillary Clinton, ahead of the charismatic Mr. Trump. And every poll in every state that historically has been a reliable slam-dunk for Democrats––Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, etc.––showed Ms. Hillary far ahead. And let’s not forget that every lying poll was reported earnestly as the gospel truth by the globalists’ reliable but [dispensable] media whores.

I don’t have to guess about the, ahem, contributions made to the poseurs who call themselves Republicans but who we now know are really in the thrall of anyone who puts money into their bottomless pockets. Those windfalls include––according to opensecrets.org and Matthew Boyle of Breitbart.com––the hefty largess from hedge-fund billionaire and mega-funder of all things leftist, George Soros, whose name is attached to no fewer than 206 left-wing U.S. organizations, according to Dr. Eowyn. Here is the short list of sell-out Republicans who accepted Mr. Soros’s, um, influential money: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, presidential candidates former governor Jeb Bush and current governor John Kasich; senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Ron Johnson, Chuck Grassley, and senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio, the list goes on.

It is noteworthy that, as reported by Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, Mr. Soros has also funded every major protest since the November 2016 election, including the Women’s March on Washington (see my article, “The March to Nowhere”), the protests in front of Trump Tower in NY City, the thug-fests at Berkeley College and elsewhere, and of course the fascists-on-display demonstrations of the anti-American, anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter and Antifa, where bought-and-paid for miscreants––dressed up like and imitating ISIS terrorists and Hitler’s Brown Shirts––proceeded to smash windows, light cars on fire, and brutally attack supporters of President Trump.

All the while, the media honchos have kept up the negative drumbeat to defeat the president––to find something criminal to pin on him, to impeach him––even exhorting their [dispensable] media whores to ramp up the attacks.

In fact, a Harvard study released in May by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy revealed that in the president’s first 100 days in office, 10 major TV and print outlets reported negatively 98 percent of the time!

Third gear is what we’ve been witnessing since the election on November 8, 2016, when the globalists and moneybags who control both the media and the politicians realized that all of their efforts to stop the Trump Triumph had failed miserably. Every last dollar down the drain. Every “news” report for naught. Every article worthy only of lining a thousand birdcages.

DESPERATE MEASURES

What to do? First the media whores created the colossal fiction that the Trump camp had colluded with Russia to rig the election. For days and weeks and months on end, these [dispensable] prostitutes studiously eschewed actual news, instead robotically intoning their anesthetizing talking points: Russia-Trump, Trump-Russia, Russia-Trump, Trump-Russia. That was it. No evidence, no first-person testimony, just the feeble attempts by their supposedly intelligent bosses to accomplish what they had failed at in the first place––getting rid of Donald Trump.

After that huge fizzle, the now-desperate get-Trump cabal trotted out the über-corrupt head of the FBI, James Comey, who astonishingly admitted that he used a Columbia professor to plant an article in The New York Times so that President Trump would be forced to appoint a Special Counsel. Sure enough, it was Comey’s close pal, former FBI director Robert Mueller, who got the job and has now appointed 17 attorneys, seven of them contributors to Ms. Hillary’s Presidential campaign and/or the Clinton foundation.  

But again, this witch hunt went nowhere, and so the [dispensable] media whores launched into their next mantra. While both domestic and international news demanded coverage, the American media’s globalist bosses ordered their lackeys to keep up their anti-Trump mantras in the preposterous form of Breaking News: “obstruction of justice,” Jared Kushner’s ‘illegal’ business dealings with Russian companies,” the supposedly nefarious goings-on of POTUS advisors Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, Charlottesville and their bogus claims of “racism, racism, racism,” and now Melania’s stilettos!

THE NET RESULT

Adding it all up, we have a president who is zooming along at warp speed, amassing unprecedented accomplishments for the American people (See my articles, “The Juggernaut & the Jerks” and “The Unstoppable Trump Train”).

The [dispensable] media whores have had zero effect on President Trump’s performance or his continuing popularity with the American public, as attested to by the huge and enthusiastic audiences he attracts wherever he goes. Or, for that matter, his mood, which is clearly and consistently ebullient, upbeat, enthusiastic, and optimistic about America’s future.

In addition, the mass gatherings of thugs, malcontents, anarchists, and basement dwellers have had zero effect on convincing our citizens that the left’s fairy-tale vision of America––a free lunch (and breakfast, dinner, education, housing, cell phones, etc.), socialized medicine, open borders, sanctuary cities, high taxes, a nanny government, et al.––is even palatable, much less preferable.

Still, President Trump––an upright citizen his entire life, an incredibly successful businessman, the bestselling author of over a dozen books, a philanthropist, the father of five respectful and loving children the eldest of whom are also impressively contributory members of society, the representative and now enactor of every value Republicans and conservatives traditionally stand for (low taxes, fewer regulations, secure borders, a strong military, strict conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, et al)––continues to be the target of a “system” that clearly prefers their longtime habit of cozy corruption.

The fact that he CANNOT. BE. BOUGHT. drives them crazy. And the fact that the entire media establishment, for all their blitz-like attacks, has not dented his energy, resolve, or the respect of our nation’s citizens, is clearly too much for them to take…hence the continued onslaught of lies, defamation, and attack.

This, of course, is where the media whores differ from the more respectable prostitutes in our culture, who simply do their job, collect their fees, and express their personal opinions and biases to their friends, colleagues and families.

The media whores could learn a lot from them.

EDITORS NOTE: The author may be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com or via her website is www.joanswirsky.com.

Sign the petition to declare anti-American billionaire George Soros a terrorist

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Last fall, Donald Trump condemned “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.”

He said, “The only force strong enough to save our country is US.”

President Trump was taking direct aim at political entities that do not have our best interests at heart, many of them founded and/or supported by anti-American billionaire George Soros. 2ndVote’s research has found Soros, through his Open Society Foundations, provides funding for organizations supporting abortion, same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, extreme environmentalism, opposition to school choice, and attacks on religious liberty, the freedom of speech, and 2nd Amendment rights.

The world over, Soros has waged ideological battles by funding left-wing activists, anarchists, and radical movements that have allowed him to financially gain from the turmoil.

A current petition at whitehouse.gov asks the Trump administration to “Declare George Soros a terrorist and seize all of his related organizations’ assets under RICO and NDAA law.” The petition is only a few thousand signatures short from the 100,000 needed by September 19, 2017 to elicit a response the White House.

Click here to read, sign, and share the petition.

Thank you for lending your voice and for your support!

Almost Everything the Media Tell You About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Is Wrong

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A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

Co-authored by two of the nation’s leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific research shows and does not show about sexuality and gender.

The major takeaway, as the editor of the journal explains, is that “some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence.”

Here are four of the report’s most important conclusions:

The belief that sexual orientation is an innate, biologically fixed human property—that people are ‘born that way’—is not supported by scientific evidence.

Likewise, the belief that gender identity is an innate, fixed human property independent of biological sex—so that a person might be a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’—is not supported by scientific evidence.

Only a minority of children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood. There is no evidence that all such children should be encouraged to become transgender, much less subjected to hormone treatments or surgery.

Non-heterosexual and transgender people have higher rates of mental health problems (anxiety, depression, suicide), as well as behavioral and social problems (substance abuse, intimate partner violence), than the general population. Discrimination alone does not account for the entire disparity.

The report, “Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” is co-authored by Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh. Mayer is a scholar-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University.

McHugh, whom the editor of The New Atlantis describes as “arguably the most important American psychiatrist of the last half-century,” is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and was for 25 years the psychiatrist-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was during his tenure as psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins that he put an end to sex reassignment surgery there, after a study launched at Hopkins revealed that it didn’t have the benefits for which doctors and patients had long hoped.

Implications for Policy

The report focuses exclusively on what scientific research shows and does not show. But this science can have implications for public policy.

The report reviews rigorous research showing that ‘only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.’

Take, for example, our nation’s recent debates over transgender policies in schools. One of the consistent themes of the report is that science does not support the claim that “gender identity” is a fixed property independent of biological sex, but rather that a combination of biological, environmental, and experiential factors likely shape how individuals experience and express themselves when it comes to sex and gender.

The report also discusses the reality of neuroplasticity: that all of our brains can and do change throughout our lives (especially, but not only, in childhood) in response to our behavior and experiences. These changes in the brain can, in turn, influence future behavior.

This provides more reason for concern over the Obama administration’s recent transgender school policies. Beyond the privacy and safety concerns, there is thus also the potential that such policies will result in prolonged identification as transgender for students who otherwise would have naturally grown out of it.

The report reviews rigorous research showing that “only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.” Policymakers should be concerned with how misguided school policies might encourage students to identify as girls when they are boys, and vice versa, and might result in prolonged difficulties. As the report notes, “There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.”

Beyond school policies, the report raises concerns about proposed medical intervention in children. Mayer and McHugh write: “We are disturbed and alarmed by the severity and irreversibility of some interventions being publicly discussed and employed for children.”

They continue: “We are concerned by the increasing tendency toward encouraging children with gender identity issues to transition to their preferred gender through medical and then surgical procedures.” But as they note, “There is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of interventions that delay puberty or modify the secondary sex characteristics of adolescents.”

Findings on Transgender Issues

The same goes for social or surgical gender transitions in general. Mayer and McHugh note that the “scientific evidence summarized suggests we take a skeptical view toward the claim that sex reassignment procedures provide the hoped for benefits or resolve the underlying issues that contribute to elevated mental health risks among the transgender population.” Even after sex reassignment surgery, patients with gender dysphoria still experience poor outcomes:

Compared to the general population, adults who have undergone sex reassignment surgery continue to have a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes. One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about five times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.

Mayer and McHugh urge researchers and physicians to work to better “understand whatever factors may contribute to the high rates of suicide and other psychological and behavioral health problems among the transgender population, and to think more clearly about the treatment options that are available.” They continue:

In reviewing the scientific literature, we find that almost nothing is well understood when we seek biological explanations for what causes some individuals to state that their gender does not match their biological sex. … Better research is needed, both to identify ways by which we can help to lower the rates of poor mental health outcomes and to make possible more informed discussion about some of the nuances present in this field.

Policymakers should take these findings very seriously. For example, the Obama administration recently finalized a new Department of Health and Human Services mandate that requires all health insurance plans under Obamacare to cover sex reassignment treatments and all relevant physicians to perform them. The regulations will force many physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers to participate in sex reassignment surgeries and treatments, even if doing so violates their moral and religious beliefs or their best medical judgment.

Rather than respect the diversity of opinions on sensitive and controversial health care issues, the regulations endorse and enforce one highly contested and scientifically unsupported view. As Mayer and McHugh urge, more research is needed, and physicians need to be free to practice the best medicine.

Stigma, Prejudice Don’t Explain Tragic Outcomes

The report also highlights that people who identify as LGBT face higher risks of adverse physical and mental health outcomes, such as “depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and most alarmingly, suicide.” The report summarizes some of those findings:

Members of the non-heterosexual population are estimated to have about 1.5 times higher risk of experiencing anxiety disorders than members of the heterosexual population, as well as roughly double the risk of depression, 1.5 times the risk of substance abuse, and nearly 2.5 times the risk of suicide.

Members of the transgender population are also at higher risk of a variety of mental health problems compared to members of the non-transgender population. Especially alarmingly, the rate of lifetime suicide attempts across all ages of transgender individuals is estimated at 41 percent, compared to under 5 percent in the overall U.S. population.

What accounts for these tragic outcomes? Mayer and McHugh investigate the leading theory—the “social stress model”—which proposes that “stressors like stigma and prejudice account for much of the additional suffering observed in these subpopulations.”

But they argue that the evidence suggests that this theory “does not seem to offer a complete explanation for the disparities in the outcomes.” It appears that social stigma and stress alone cannot account for the poor physical and mental health outcomes that LGBT-identified people face.

One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about five times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.

As a result, they conclude that “More research is needed to uncover the causes of the increased rates of mental health problems in the LGBT subpopulations.” And they call on all of us work to “alleviate suffering and promote human health and flourishing.”

Findings Contradict Claims in Supreme Court’s Gay Marriage Ruling

Finally, the report notes that scientific evidence does not support the claim that people are “born that way” with respect to sexual orientation. The narrative pushed by Lady Gaga and others is not supported by the science. A combination of biological, environmental, and experiential factors likely account for an individual’s sexual attractions, desires, and identity, and “there are no compelling causal biological explanations for human sexual orientation.”

Furthermore, the scientific research shows that sexual orientation is more fluid than the media suggests. The report notes that “Longitudinal studies of adolescents suggest that sexual orientation may be quite fluid over the life course for some people, with one study estimating that as many as 80 percent of male adolescents who report same-sex attractions no longer do so as adults.”

These findings—that scientific research does not support the claim that sexual orientation is innate and immutable—directly contradict claims made by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in last year’s Obergefell ruling. Kennedy wrote, “their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment” and “in more recent years have psychiatrists and others recognized that sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable.”

But the science does not show this.

While the marriage debate was about the nature of what marriage is, incorrect scientific claims about sexual orientation were consistently used in the campaign to redefine marriage.

In the end, Mayer and McHugh observe that much about sexuality and gender remains unknown. They call for honest, rigorous, and dispassionate research to help better inform public discourse and, more importantly, sound medical practice.

As this research continues, it’s important that public policy not declare scientific debates over, or rush to legally enforce and impose contested scientific theories. As Mayer and McHugh note, “Everyone—scientists and physicians, parents and teachers, lawmakers and activists—deserves access to accurate information about sexual orientation and gender identity.”

We all must work to foster a culture where such information can be rigorously pursued and everyone—whatever their convictions, and whatever their personal situation—is treated with the civility, respect, and generosity that each of us deserves.

COMMENTARY BY

Ryan T. Anderson

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, where he researches and writes about marriage, bioethics, religious liberty and political philosophy. Anderson is the author of several books and his research has been cited by two U.S. Supreme Court justices in two separate cases. Read his Heritage research.

A Note for our Readers:

Our society and traditional values are at a crossroads. Gender issues and the decline of marriage and family stability is threatening society.

Sensitivity and political correctness are infecting our culture and reshaping our society. Government overreach into our families, local communities, and churches threatens our ability to live productive and free lives.

That is why it is our mission to ensure you receive accurate, timely, and reliable facts impacting our society today. Culture wars dominate the news, and for good reason.

The Daily Signal gives you the facts so you can form opinions, make decisions, and stay informed. And to do that we report clear, concise, and reliable facts impacting every aspect of society today.

We are a dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts funded solely by the financial support of the general public. And we need your help!

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RELATED ARTICLE: More CNN Bias Exposed: Unbalanced Coverage of Transgender Issues

VIDEO: A Progressive’s Guide to Political Correctness

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Is there a point where the “P.C. Police” are satisfied? Are there ever “enough” rules governing the jokes we tell, the mascots of sports teams, or the symbols on city seals? Or should we want a society as non-offensive as the American college campus?

George Will, Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, imagines what an idyllic politically correct universe would look like.

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Multiculturalism, Immigration, Political Correctness Responsible For Nice Attack

EDITORS NOTE: Please consider donating today to PragerU: http://l.prageru.com/2eB2p0h

The ‘Broken Window’ Democrat Party and Rise of ‘Political Crime in America’

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James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982 wrote in The Atlantic an article titled “Broken Windows.” Wilson and Kelling introduced the Broken Windows Theory (BWT) which used broken windows as a metaphor for disorder within neighborhoods. The theory links disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent occurrences of serious crime.

Wilson and Kelling wrote:

[A]t the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.) [Emphasis added]

Read more.

The Rise of Political Crime

The key notion put forward by Wilson and Kelling is that “at the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence.” Once order breaks down you have a growing number of people committing more and more serious crimes.

We are seeing the rise of “political crimes” in our neighborhoods, towns and cities.

Occupy Oakland riot.

In 2011 Democrats began encouraging people to “break windows” by supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement. Senator Bernie Sanders stated, “The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America.” Actor Woody Harrelson said, “I’m an anarchist and I do think things such as Occupy Wall Street are about getting a little closer to the solution.”

In a Weekly Standard column titled “Pelosi on Occupy Wall Street Protesters: ‘God bless them’,” John McCormack wrote:

During a press conference Thursday afternoon, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi praised those participating in the “Occupy Wall Street” protests. “God bless them,” Pelosi said, “for their spontaneity. It’s independent … it’s young, it’s spontaneous, and it’s focused. And it’s going to be effective.”

Read more.

Occupy Wall Street began breaking windows, literally.

The Democrat Party, and then President Obama, failed to repair the broken windows beginning with the Occupy Oakland riots in California, which inextricably lead to the 2013 riots in Sanford, Florida, 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri and most recently the 2017 riots and death in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In fact, the Democrats are encouraging breaking windows, because “it has always been fun” so long as its the other party that gets hurt.

Violence begets more violence: From Sanford, Florida to Ferguson, Missouri

Ferguson, Missouri riot.

Fast forward to Ferguson, Missouri which experienced protests and riots that began the day after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. Officer Wilson was acquitted of any wrong doing, which lead to more protests and riots.

This incident coupled with the shooting on February 26, 2013, in Sanford, Florida, when George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old mixed race Hispanic man who was a neighborhood watch coordinator, fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American high school dropout. Zimmerman, under Florida’s stand your ground law, was acquitted of Martin’s shooting. The Obama Department of Justice reviewed the case for any civil rights violations but this was dropped citing “insufficient evidence.”

After the Trayvon Martin shooting former President Obama on July 19, 2013 said:

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.  And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.

These remarks by former President Obama inextricably led to Ferguson and the empowerment of the Black Lives Matter movement which was created on July 13, 2013.

Charlottesville, Virginia and beyond

The Black Lives Matter website states:

Black Lives Matter is a chapter-based national organization working for the validity of Black life. We are working to (re)build the Black liberation movement.

This is Not a Moment, but a Movement.

#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17-year old Trayvon was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder. Rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country who actively resist our dehumanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society. Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes.

Antifa face off against neo-Nazis as cars plow into the crowds.

August 12, 2017 saw riots, mayhem and a murder committed in Charlottesville, Virginia when two extremist groups faced off one against the other. Disorder and incivility were on full display near the home of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democrat Party.

Since the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump we have witnessed a coalition of Democrats, the anti-Fascist (ANTI-FA) movement, neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter working to cause discord and incivility. Calls for the death of politicians and their supporters are part and parcel of the daily news.

Even Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Democrat member of the Missouri State Senate, openly hoped for the assassination of the President of the United States.

These are all broken windows leading to more broken windows and eventually leading to more violent crimes, destruction and even death.

Why we must fix, not break, windows!

Is it too late to fix these broken windows? No. Not if the Democrat Party stands firm against anymore breaking of windows. Let’s all pray that they come to their senses and call for windows to be repaired, not broken.

When people see it’s alright to break windows the question is: What will they break next? We know that violence begets more violence. Where will the Democrat Party, and its base, break the next window?

We must be window lovers and resist the window breakers.

Remember …if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.

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VIDEO: Mark Schneider, President of Palm Beach ACLU, says ‘Nazis are Christian Terrorists’

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If you don’t think we are in a cultural battle, a battle that seeks to destroy the very heart and soul of Western Civilization, then you have been locked in a broom closet for the past ten months!

Not content with just getting high and living in squalor, the rag-tag group of disgruntled children, wearing Halloween masks, donning Marxist clothing and calling themselves, ANTIFA, have organized to such a degree that the dopey Democrat elected leaders now praise this gang of terrorists as the second coming of America’s Founding Fathers!

We only have two problems with that arrangement. First, the Antifa scum are truly dedicated to violent overthrow of capitalism and will “jump-the-shark” to use any event to shock America into listening to their disturbed voices. Second, the Democrats are endorsing this insanity, thus a full-frontal attack against the foundations of American culture, social organization and political stability is developing right before our eyes.

In this video I issue a warning to all REAL Americans to understand that this Modus Operandi of the progressive left will actually cause their own political demise. Moreover, great damage can be done to our country unless our leaders, especially all law enforcement agencies return the rule of law to the First Amendment RIGHT of free assembly, without the threat of physical attack.

Please watch, LIKE, SHARE this video and make a donation to help keep The United West in the fight.

VIDEO: Antifa shuts down San Francisco public prayer meeting Democrats cheer

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During a Patriot Prayer event at Crissy Field in San Francisco, California, ANTIFA and their supporters shut down the religious freedom and free speech of those gathered for to pray for peace and brotherhood.

Read more at Infowars

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Man On the Street: Income Inequality

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We know progressives deplore income inequality and believe the idea of income equality will bring about a better world, one that is more “socially just.” But do they know anything about what actually happens when their dream comes true?

Like, what do “income equality” societies (like Venezuela) look like?

Which society should the U.S. model itself after?

Documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz asks progressives what they know about income equality. Turns out, not that much. Watch Ami’s video here.

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‘Perpetually-Offended’ ESPN’s Latest Facepalm

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Robert Lee

“On Tuesday evening, ESPN (AKA MSNBC with footballs) went full-on parody when they pulled an announcer named Robert Lee, an Asian man, from a game at the University of Virginia because the network thought his name, apparently too close to dead Confederate general Robert E. Lee, might offend their viewers,” writes The Daily Wire’s Amanda Prestigiacomo.

“For real.”

Clay Travis of Outkick the Coverage originally broke the story, which appears to be another misstep by the Disney-owned sports network that continues to hemorrhage viewers. From firing (then rehiring) country music legend Hank Williams Jr., to censoring conservative employees’ Twitter accounts, to excessive off-the-field coverage of Michael Sam and Colin Kaepernick, ESPN appears completely out of touch with it’s customer base, the American sports fan.

2ndVote’s research shows ESPN’s political activities are certainly out of touch with conservatives. Parent company Disney supports liberal environmental groups like Ceres and The Nature Conservancy, radical LGBT advocacy organizations like GLAAD, and leftist organizations that lobby for sanctuary city policies like LULAC and UnidosUS.

That may be why Fox News’s Todd Starnes calls the decision makers at ESPN “perpetually-offended snowflakes” in his latest column. Of the removal of announcer Robert Lee from the upcoming broadcast, Starnes writes:

It’s only an issue because the politically-correct pinheads at ESPN made it an issue.

This latest example of ESPN’s inability to get beyond politics and stick with sports coverage is likely to cost more viewers as the networks’ ratings continue to spiral, especially as more and more viewers decide to “cut the cord” with cable. And what are the additional benefits of cancelling cable for conservatives? 2ndVote Members who are informed consumers know it means fewer dollars for the liberal agendas funded by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Comcast, AT&T, TimeWarner, and more.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the 2ndVote.com website. Readers may help 2ndVote continue creating content like this and educating conservative shoppers by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

The pilgrimage and the struggle for Islamic Hegemony

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Wednesday, August 23, 2017, was the first day of Zhu–l-Hijjat, the Muslim month in which two important events take place: The pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the most central of the five Islamic commandments, and the Holiday of the Offering, Id al-Adha, with which it comes to an end.

This month is notable in the Muslim world as a result of its religious content, but also due to the political aspects that accompany that content. It is well known that in Islam there can be no separation between religion and state, between religious factors, public issues and politics.

The Hajj ceremonies in Mecca and its environs last for nine days, from the first to the ninth of the month, with each day having its own specific rituals. The tenth day marks the start of Id al-Adha, the holiday of the offering, which lasts for four days, until the 13th. The House of Saud appointed itself “guardian of the holy places” in 1925 when it took over the Hajj. It manages the Hajj with a powerful hand, making sure that all pilgrims observe the rituals in the traditional Islamic manner as interpreted by the Saudi monarchy. This fact is of great significance, because it proves that the Saudi ruler, and no one else, is the most important figure in the Islamic world.

The decision about when the month of the Hajj begins is an example of this power. The first day of each of the months making up the Islamic year is set by the Sharia court in each country, using the testimony of witnesses who see the new moon with their own eyes and testify to the court.  That naturally leads to the months and the 30 day Ramadan fast beginning on different days in various countries, because if it is cloudy and the moon cannot be seen in a specific country, the month is 30 days long, while somewhere else it might be of only 29 days duration. That is why Ramadan, which begins on the first day of the ninth Hajjidic month, does not start on the same day everywhere in the Islamic world.

In addition, there are cities, such as Bagdad, where there are both Sunni and Shiite residents with separate courts. Sometimes the Sunnis begin a new month while it is the last day of the previous month for the Shiites living in the same city and sometimes it is the other way around due to the different decisions of their separate courts. This is most conspicuous during Ramadan, when one sect begins to fast while the other is still eating; then at the end of the month when the Eid al Fitr holiday begins, the first group celebrates with food and drink while the second is still fasting.

The month of Hajj differs from other months because the entire Islamic world takes part in the pilgrimage and has to accept the Saudi calendar in order to participate in the date-dependent ceremonies. This includes the Shiites, who refuse to recognize Sunni hegemony over holy Islamic sites, but have no choice but to accept Saudi dictation. The Saudis take advantage of their power and stress the unity of Islam achieved during the period of their control. There were years when the Shiites, mainly Iranians, refused to accept Saudi rule and carried out rituals foreign to Sunni tradition, leading to riots and the death of a large number of pilgrims.

The rising tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia as a result of their major conflicts over Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, caused Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah ali Khamenei to fear a bloodbath at the Hajj of 2016. He accordingly moved the pilgrimage site to Karbala, Iraq, where in 680 C.E. Mohammed’s grandson Hussein ben Ali was beheaded by the Sunni Caliph Yazid ben Mu’awiya’s army. One million Iranian pilgrims arrived in Karbala and celebrated the holiday in memory of  Hussein ben Ali.

Sunni elders, including Egyptian Sheikh Alazar publicized opinions criticizing the Iranian move, accusing Khameini of deepening the schism in Islam. Other Sunnis, mostly Saudi, said that Shiites followed the devil, not Allah, in moving the Hajj from Mecca.

The import of this remark is that it implies that the Shiites are not part of Islam and their blood can be spilled with impunity  Last year’s dispute poured oil on the fire of inter-Islamic hate and on the wars between Saudi Arabia, representing the Sunnis, and Iran, representing the Shiites.

What can we look forward to this year when the Hajj to Mecca approaches?  I do not know, but I will not be surprised if the political tension between the Saudis and Iran, particularly after the Sunni ISIS defeats, Shiite Hezbollah victories and Iran’s moving into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, finds an outlet during the Hajj. It could be in the form of a Shiite boycott of Mecca or Saudi violence against any Shiites who attempt the pilgrimage to Mecca.

In June, Jerusalem became the site of the struggle (“Ribat”) between Islam, the religion that expects to take the place of Judaism and Christianity, and Judaism, which is in the midst of a return to its former status as a living, worthy religion. The background of the struggle is the renewal of Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount. During the short period of Muslim demonstrations for the right to enter the Al Aqsa Mosque without “Jewish” security checks, Saudi Arabia’s voice was conspicuously absent.

The reason for the Saudi silence was the fear that the Muslim Brotherhood and those over whom they hold sway would raise the Al Aqsa Mosque to a level of importance that  could contest the centrality of Mecca in Islam.

This plan was heard in Muslim Brotherhood media pronouncements. In 2012, for example, Safwat Higazi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief spokesman in Egypt, said that the capital of the Islamic Caliphate that can unite all the Arab nations “is not Mecca, not Medina, not Cairo, but Jerusalem.”

A similar pronouncement was made in 2014, at a demonstration in Jerusalem, by Kamal Khatib, Deputy head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, headed by Sheikh Raad Salah,

Sheikh Raad Salah himself declared that he intends to bring water from the Zamzam spring in Mecca to pour into the cistern on the Temple Mount in order to sanctify the Al Aqsa Mosque with the holiness of Mecca. The Saudis see this as unacceptable competition and did not permit Salah to attend the Hajj in Mecca. Jerusalem’s challenge to Mecca is also evident in the boycott the Saudis declared on Qatar, a country which publicly supports the Muslim Brotherhood’s offshoots, such as Hamas, for whom the struggle for Jerusalem and Falestin – which they call Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis – the sectors of Jerusalem – is the raison d’etre.

Qatar has even set aside half a billion dollars for the purpose of removing Jerusalem from within Israel’s boundaries. It is using them to buy the media, political figures and organizations like UNESCO.

Turkey’s Erdogan is playing a role in the struggle for Islamic hegemony by working ceaselessly to strengthen his status as the all-powerful Sultan bringing Turkey back to its status prior to WWI. Erdogan’s hegemonic aspirations clash with the Saudis on points of Muslim memory, because they know full well that for 400 years, Turkey ruled the Hijaz, the territory that included Mecca and Medina, until defeated by the Christian heretics – that is, the British. The victors promptly handed over Islam’s holy land, the Hijaz (Iraq and historic Palestine which includes today’s Jordan) to the Arab friends who had cooperated with them, stabbing the Turks in the back. Today, unsurprisingly, Erdogan supports Qatar, the country the Saudis are trying to bring to its knees.

Saudi sensitivity to the Hijaz stems from the fact that the ruling Al-Saud family is not originally from the part of the Hijaz in the western Arabian peninsula, but from the centrally located Najd Heights. The fact that they conquered the area in 1925 from the Sharif’s Notables who claim to be direct descendants of Mohammed, casts a shadow on the Saud family’s legitimacy. This is the reason the Saudi king calls himself “Protector of the holy sites,” intending for that title to grant him “kosher” Islamic status. However, many people in the Sunni world do not buy that and do not entirely accept the Saud family’s right to rule and force their Wahabee Islamic traditions to be the norm at sites that are holy to all Muslims.

The Sauds invest large sums of money to maintain the sites so as to gain legitimacy for ruling over Mecca and Medina, building roads, bridges, railways and amenities that make it easier for the two million Muslims whose annual pilgrimages they allow, to be comfortable and secure. Saudi Arabia imports hundreds of thousands of sheep, mainly from Australia, handing them out to the pilgrims for the holiday celebrated on the tenth of the Hajj month.

Next month, the Hajj is likely to bring the tensions over Islamic hegemony to a boil, when the internal Islamic rifts described above threaten to destabilize the present situation during the Hajj and due to the Hajj: The ethnic Sunni-Shiite rift parallels the Saudi-Iranian political rift, the Wahabee-Muslim Brotherhood ideological rift, and the historic rift between Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Hopefully, these deep differences will not lead once again to dead and wounded pilgrims, most of whom come only in order to be close to Allah, keep the fundamental commandments connected to the Hajj and obtain forgiveness for their transgressions. They are not interested in all the ethnic, political, ideological and historical considerations involved; all they desire is to come closer to the heavens, keep Allah’s commandments and do Allah’s will.

I wish the pilgrims to Mecca: Haj mabroor wa-saiy mashkoor wa-dhanb maghfoor – a pure holiday, hearts full of gratitude and forgiven sins. May they return safely to their homes.