- DHS Issues Sweeping New Rules On Deportation Of Illegal Immigrants
The Department of Homeland Security released on Tuesday documents translating President Trump’s executive orders on immigration and border security into policy, providing details on how it will prosecute undocumented immigrants and criminal immigrants, repealing nearly all of the Obama administration’s guidances, and bringing a major shift in the way the agency enforces the nation’s immigration laws.
As the WSJ notes, “almost everybody living in the U.S. illegally is now subject to deportation, and more undocumented arrivals at the southern border would be jailed or sent back to Mexico to await a hearing rather than released into the U.S.” according to the new guidance.
“The Department no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement,” the enforcement memo says. “Department personnel have full authority to arrest or apprehend an alien whom an immigration officer has probable cause to believe is in violation of the immigration laws.”
Secretary John Kelly’s two memos expand raids and the definition of criminal aliens, while diminishing sanctuary areas and enlisting local law enforcement to execute federal immigration policy.
The memos still outline priority groups, starting with serious criminals. But the priorities are much broader and include people charged with crimes who haven’t been convicted, people guilty only of immigration-related crimes such as using false documents, and anybody who an immigration officer believes is a risk to public safety.
While DHS officials said they wouldn’t target otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants and don’t plan roundups of illegal immigrants, and said their limited resources would still require a focus on those people who pose a public-safety risk, they also said that people who don’t fall into a priority group aren’t exempt from deportation, and the DHS memo says exceptions would be made on a case-by-case basis.
Previously, under Obama guidelines, undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes were the priority for removal. Now, immigration agents, customs officers and border patrol agents have been directed to remove anyone convicted of any criminal offense. That includes people convicted of fraud in any official matter before a governmental agency and people who “have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits.” The only Obama-era guidances left in place were those relating to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
According to the NYT, the policy also calls for an expansion of expedited removals, allowing Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to deport more people immediately. Under the Obama administration, expedited removal was used only within 100 miles of the border for people who had been in the country no more than 14 days. Now it will include those who have been in the country for up to two years, and located anywhere in the nation. The change in enforcement priorities will require a considerable increase in resources. With an estimated 11 million people in the country illegally, the government has long had to set narrower priorities, given the constraints on staffing and money.
Some more details from the NYT:
In the so-called guidance documents released on Tuesday, the department is directed to begin the process of hiring 10,000 new immigration and customs agents, expanding the number of detention facilities and creating an office within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help families of those killed by undocumented immigrants. Mr. Trump had some of those relatives address his rallies in the campaign, and several were present when he signed an executive order on immigration last month at the Department of Homeland Security.
The directives would also instruct Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, to begin reviving a program that recruits local police officers and sheriff’s deputies to help with deportation, effectively making them de facto immigration agents. The effort, called the 287(g) program, was scaled back during the Obama administration.
The memos were decried by immigration advocates, and face resistance from many states and dozens of so-called sanctuary cities, which have refused to allow their law enforcement workers to help round up undocumented individuals.
“These memos lay out a detailed blueprint for the mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants in America,” Lynn Tramonte, Deputy Director of America’s Voice Education Fund, said Tuesday in a statement. “They fulfill the wish lists of the white nationalist and anti-immigrant movements and bring to life the worst of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric.”
Senior Homeland Security officials told reporters Tuesday morning that the directives were intended to more fully make use of the enforcement tools that Congress has already given to the department to crack down on illegal immigration. The officials emphasized that some of the proposals for increased enforcement would roll out slowly as the department finalizes the logistics and legal rules for more aggressive action.
According to Bloomberg, the memos could further inflame tensions between the U.S. and Mexico, which has advised its citizens living in the U.S. to take precautions in the face of Trump’s new immigration policy. DHS is considering employing a rarely used law to return people who traveled to the U.S. illegally through Mexico back into Mexico, even if they are not Mexican nationals. Officials said that returning Central American refugees to Mexico to await hearings would be done only in a limited fashion, and only after discussions with the government of Mexico, which however would most likely have to agree to accept the refugees.
While nothing in the directives would change the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which provides work permits and deportation protection for the young people commonly referred to as Dreamers, officials made clear that the department intended to aggressively follow Mr. Trump’s promise that immigration laws be enforced to the maximum extent possible, marking a significant departure from the procedures in place under President Barack Obama.
That promise has generated fear and anger in the immigrant community, and advocates for immigrants have warned that the new approach is a threat to many undocumented immigrants who had previously been in little danger of being deported.
Meanwhile Trump, who said during his campaign that he would cancel the program, has since changed his stance, calling those covered by DACA “incredible kids.” “The DACA situation is a very, very — it’s a very difficult thing for me because you know, I love these kids,” Trump said at a Feb. 16 press conference. “I find it very, very hard doing what the law says exactly to do and you know, the law is rough.”
- Is James O'Keefe About To Smoke CNN? Tells Hannity He's Set To Release "Hundreds of Hours" Of Newsroom Footage "Wikileaks Style"
James O’Keefe of Project Veritas is set to unleash holy hell Thursday on #FakeNews network CNN. Well, he didn’t exactly say it was CNN, but it was heavily implied. Apparently the network has a mole…
O’Keefe is known for undercover sting operations which have led to such bombshells as the DNC’s paid agitator network, the outing of “DisruptJ20” / Antifa organizers which took place comet ping pong – and netted three arrests (including a suspected pedophile), and most recently New Hampshire election fraud.
Today O’Keefe was interviewed on Sean Hannity’s radio show where he revealed that a major network has been “stung”
O’Keefe: In the next 48 hours, Project Veritas, like Wikileaks, will be releasing hundreds of hours of tape from within the establishment media. Our next target is in fact, the media.
Hannity: How long have you been working on this?
O’Keefe: We’ve had people on the inside come to us. Just like Julian Assange has people come to him, we’ve had people, sources come to us and give us information, and we’re going to be releasing it “Wikileaks Style” this week.
Moments later:
Hannity: Can you give us a hint what organizations are going to be impacted by this?
O’Keefe: It’s one that Trump has really been talking about, you can probably use your imagination.
Hannity: So, it’s CNN…
Listen here:
James O’Keefe reveals to Sean Hannity that a “Wikileaks Style” release of information is coming on Thursday. #FakeNews #CNN likely target. pic.twitter.com/fd0B2fcYz5
— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) February 22, 2017
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In other words, a closeted Trump supporter working deep inside hyper-liberal CNN just gave O’Keefe a ton of behind the scenes footage of “The Most Trusted Name In News.” My guess is we’re about to hear a bunch of establishment media puppets revealing their extreme hatred for the sitting President of the United States.
Remember that time CNN employees were laughing about Trump’s plane crashing? If O’Keefe’s release is anything along these lines, popcorn sales are about to go through the roof…
@CNN jokes about Trump’s plane crashing during the election. Stay Classy. pic.twitter.com/e4KNcQBPAj
— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) February 22, 2017
- The Conflictual Relationship Between Donald Trump And The US "Deep State" – Part 1
Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
In just two weeks as president of the United States, Donald Trump has given indications of how he intends to tackle various international political situations. So far we have observed the controversy over Iran, the events related to NATO, rapprochement with Russia, escalation in Ukraine, silence on Syria, the US special-forces operation in Yemen, verbal clashes with the EU, and the absence of further criticism of China. This first article will focus on the he US deep state’s possible sabotage attempts of the Trump presidency.
Tensions continue to rise unabated in the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, as more decisions come across Trump’s table. While we have seen many executive orders and pieces of legislation, most regard domestic politics, which is a core focus of the Trump presidency. On the other hand, in foreign policy, Trump seems to be using the common tactic of many politicians, which involves much talk and little action. Since US foreign policy has been a mess for quite some time, militating against common sense, taking little action can actually be a positive thing, the best thing a US president has been able to do in almost thirty years! If there is one thing that is clear to everyone about Trump’s way of doing things following two weeks in office, it is that it is completely different from his predecessor, especially in relation to the press and his willingness to engage with it.
The use of executive orders looks more and more like a weapon to flood the press and news agencies with talking points concerning domestic policies, leaving little room for particular pressure on foreign policy from the media establishment. It almost looks like a tactic of guerrilla warfare to overwhelm the mainstream media. It could and probably is also a PR stunt to show the American people he is doing what he promised. Stunt or not, acknowledging the power of the media in creating a pretext for war, and therefore putting a stop to the drums of war, is one of the first key marks of his success.
The main problem continues to be the ongoing war with the US deep state, something that will not be going away anytime soon, and a campaign that may have entered a new stage against the Trump presidency.
Sabotage or Incompetence?
The first two weeks of the new presidency have already provided a few significant events. The operation that took place in Yemen, conducted by the American special forces and directed against Al Qaeda, has reprised the previous administration. Being a complex operation that required thorough preparation, the new administration thereby had to necessarily represent a continuation of the old one. Details are still vague, but looking at the outcome, the mission failed as a result of incompetence. The American special forces were spotted before arriving at al Qaeda’s supposed base. This resulted in the shooting of anything that moved, causing more than 25 civilian deaths.
The media that had been silent during the Obama administration was rightfully quick to condemn the killing of innocent people, and harsh criticism was directed at the administration for this operation. It is entirely possible that the operation was set up to fail, intended to delegitimize the operational capabilities of the new Trump team. Given the links between al Qaeda, the Saudis and the neoconservatives, something historically proven, it is not unthinkable that the failure of the operation was a consequence of an initial attempt at sabotaging Trump on a key aspect of his presidency, namely the successful execution of counter-terrorist efforts against Islamist terrorism.
Another structural component in the attempts to undermine the Trump administration concern the deployment of NATO and US troops on the western border of the Russian Federation. This attempt is obvious and is one of the strategies aimed at preventing a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. The EU persists in its self-defeating policy, focusing its attention on foreign policy instead of gaining strategic independence thanks to the new presidency. It is now even more clear that European Union leaders, and in particular the current political representatives in Germany and France, have every intention of continuing in the direction set by the Obama presidency, seeking a futile confrontation with the Russian Federation instead of a sensible rapprochement.
Europe continues to insist on failed economic and social policies that will lead to bankruptcy, using foreign-policy issues as diversions and excuses. The consequences of these wrongheaded efforts will inevitably favor the election of nationalist and populist parties, as seen in the United States and other countries, which will end in the destruction of the EU. For the US deep state and their long-term objectives, this tactic has a dual effect: it prevents the proper functioning of the EU as well as significantly halts any rapprochement between the EU and the Russian Federation. The latter strategy looks more and more irreversible given the current European Union elites. In this sense, the UK, thanks to Brexit, seems to have broken free and started to slowly restructure its foreign- policy priorities, in close alignment to Trump’s isolationism.
Finally the most obvious attempt to sabotage the administration can be seen in the events in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Senators Graham and McCain, two of the deep state’s top emissaries, visited Ukraine at the beginning of the year, prompting Ukrainian troops to resume their destructive offensive against the Donbass. The intentions are clear and assorted. First is the constant attempt to sabotage any rapprochement between Moscow and Washington, hoping to engulf Trump in an American/NATO escalation of events in Ukraine. Second, given the critical situation in Europe, is the effort to push Berlin to assume the burden of economically supporting the failing administration in Kiev. Third is the increasing pressure applied to Russia and Putin, as was already seen in 2014, in an effort to actively involve the Russian Federation in the Ukrainian conflict so as to justify NATO’s direct involvement or even that of the United States. The latter situation would be the dream of the neoconservatives, setting Trump and Putin on a direct collision course.
The new American administration has thus far suffered at least three sabotage attempts, and it is the attitude Trump intends to have with the rest of the world that has spurred them. In an interview with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, Trump reiterated that his primary focus is not governed by the doctrine of American exceptionalism, a concept he does not subscribe to anyhow. The religion driving democratic evangelization looks more likely to be replaced with a pragmatic, realist geopolitical stance.
This is how one could sum up Trump’s words to Bill O’Reilly:
«There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers», Trump said. «Well, you think our country is so innocent?»
What the deep state refuses to accept is that they have lost the leading role in educating the rest of the world on humanitarian issues related to the concept of democracy. The main actors of the deep state clearly understand the negative implications for them personally in economic and financial terms associated with the abandonment of the pursuit of global hegemony. For over a hundred years, no US president has ever placed their country on a par with others, has ever abandoned the concept of a nation (the US) «chosen by God».
In an article a few weeks ago, I tried to lay the foundations for a future US administration, placing a strong focus on foreign policy and revealing a possible shift in US historic foreign relations. In a passage I wrote:
«Donald Trump has emerged with in mind a precise foreign policy strategy, forged by various political thinkers of the realist world such as Waltz and Mearsheimer, trashing all recent neoconservative and neoliberal policies of foreign intervention (R2P – Right to Protect) and soft power campaigns in favor of human rights. No more UN resolutions, subtly used to bomb nations (Libya). Trump doesn’t believe in the central role of the UN and reaffirmed this repeatedly.
In general, the Trump administration intends to end the policy of regime change, interference in foreign governments, Arab springs and color revolutions. They just don’t work. They cost too much in terms of political credibility, in Ukraine the US are allied with supporters of Bandera (historical figure who collaborated with the Nazis) and in Middle East they finance or indirectly support al Qaeda and al Nusra front».
The recent meeting in Washington with Theresa May, the first official encounter with a prominent US ally, revealed, among other things, a possible dramatic change in US policy. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom expressed her desire to follow a new policy of non-intervention, in line with the isolationist strategy Trump has spoken about since running for office. In a joint press conference with the American president, May said: «The era of military intervention is over. London and Washington will not return to the failed policy in the past that has led to intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya».
During the election campaign, Trump made his intentions clear in different contexts, but always coming from the standpoint of non-interventionism inspired by the concept of isolationism. It is becoming apparent that these intentions are being put into action, though the rhetoric regarding Iran has become alarming. In typical Trump fashion (which contrasts with the Iran issue), the situation in Syria is normalizing and the initial threats directed at China appear to have been put aside. The case of Iran is a different and complex story, requiring a deeper analysis that deserves a separate article. What will gradually be important, as the Presidency progresses, is understanding the necessity to distinguish between words and actions, separating provocations from intentions.
Conclusions and future questions
There is a whole list of Trump statements that are seen as threats to other countries, primarily Iran. The next article will further explain the possible strategy to be employed by Donald Trump to fight these attempts to sabotage his administration, a strategy that seems to be based on silences, bluffs and admissions to counter the perpetual attempts to influence his presidency. If one wants to place weight on his words during the election campaign, it should be taken into consideration that Trump won the election thanks to the clear objectives of wanting to avoid a further spending spree on destructive wars. This priority was made clear and expressed in every possible way with the adoption of an America First policy, especially regarding domestic policy.
The bottom line is always that Trump has the ability and willingness to be resilient to the pressures of the deep state, focusing on the needs of the average American citizen, rather than caving in to the interests of the deep state such as intelligence agencies, neocons, Israel lobby, Saudi lobby, the military-industrial complex, and many more. It is only in the next few months that we will come to understand if Trump will be willing to continue the fight against war or bend the knee and pay the price.
- Irrespective Of Travel Ban, Trump Has Broad Executive Powers On Immigration Enforcement
If eight years under Obama rule, 6 of which included Republican majorities in Congress, taught us anything, it’s that Presidents have fairly broad authority to govern through executive orders and rules changes implemented at the 100’s of government agencies responsible for overseeing our every move. Fortunately for the Trump administration, this broad Presidential authority extends to immigration laws and, despite his recent defeat in the 9th Circuit, grants the executive branch of the federal government broad authority on vetting immigrants and enforcing immigration laws. Per Bloomberg:
The law vests the president with broad authority over immigration, said Austin Fragomen, whose Manhattan-based Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy is the biggest U.S. law firm focused on immigration. Trump hasn’t wasted time tapping his power.
The Department of Homeland Security oversees almost two dozen agencies that determine who enters and leaves the U.S., including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and Citizenship and Immigration Services. The agency has an annual budget of $41 billion and more than 229,000 employees. Trump has broad discretion to use the money and employees as he sees fit without seeking approval from Congress.
In the wake of the 9th Circuit’s decision to overturn his “immigration ban”, Trump initially drew a hard line via the following tweet vowing to continue the litigation of the controversial executive order.
SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017
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That said, in a fiery, surreal press conference hosted last week, he drew a slightly more subdued tone saying that his administration was working on a revised immigration executive order which would be “tailored to the 9th Circuit decision” (see “In Fiery, “Surreal” Press Conference, Trump Launches War On The Media“).
But, irrespective of how new executive actions on travel bans play out, the fact is that the President of the United States has fairly broad authority under the Constitution to vet new immigrants coming into the country and enforce federal laws once they’re here.
Of course, one option is to simply ramp up the hiring of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to crack down on those currently residing in the country illegally. As we’ve noted before, the Trump administration has already said it will hire 10,000 incremental ICE agents and utilize local law enforcement agents as well.
The president wants to bolster that force, saying he’ll hire 10,000 more agents and use state and local law enforcement as immigration officials. As part of the executive order, Trump vowed to strip funds from so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with his crackdown. Several state attorneys general have vowed to fight that initiative.
“He can essentially unleash ICE officials to enforce however they choose,” said Cristina Rodriguez, a Yale Law School professor, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Moreover, absent policies that target specific groups of immigrants based on nationality, religion, etc., which as the 9th Circuit recently confirmed becomes far more complicated, the executive branch has fairly broad authority to vet incoming immigrants as they see fit.
The president can instruct State Department and ICE officials to tighten criteria for letting people into the U.S. and to increase searches at the border, where agents have much more freedom to rifle through people’s belongings than police inside the country. Trump has said the order will hasten adoption of “extreme vetting” procedures.
Trump has “very broad authority” to tighten entry requirements, particularly if he avoids policies that unfairly single out Muslims or other groups, Fragomen said.
“The only restraint on doing that now is we want to facilitate visitors and people coming to visit the U.S. and facilitate global business,” he said. “But the U.S. could be much more strict in terms of the screening process.”
Meanwhile, just as President Obama demonstrated by raising the caps, Trump also have fairly broad authority to lower the caps on refugees admitted into the country, a power which he has already utilized by reducing the 2017 target to 50,000 from Obama’s 110,000.
Of course, no matter what powers the Constitution affords the President, rest assured that disaffected liberal lawyers, flush with cash from George Soros and others, stand ready to challenge the every move of the White House for the next 4 years.
- The valuation of financial knowledge
How does one value financial knowledge? Finance as both a topic and industry has been holding huge secrets guarded by the most rich and powerful in the world for hundreds of generations. Why don’t they teach these secrets to the masses? It’s the same reason a magician doesn’t reveal his tricks. But just like children are fascinated with the skilled magician pulling the rabbit out of a hat, adults are fascinated with the financial wizardry of financial experts. We show you in our simple to follow introductory course that finance and investing is not magic. Just like the magician, financial experts simply are well trained, and follow a financial philosophy of their choosing (there are several) such as “Value Investing.” Due to the internet, obtaining this knowledge is possible for anyone in any place at any time. It’s not necessary to go to an expensive Business school like Harvard or Wharton anymore (although, you won’t make high level connections anywhere else) to gain financial knowledge. You can do it in the comfort of your own home.
The study of knowledge is known as Epistemology, roughly defined as:
Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Much of the debate in epistemology centers on four areas: (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification, (2) various problems of skepticism, (3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and (4) the criteria for knowledge and justification.
This definition provides a great template of how to understand what is financial knowledge and how to value it. If one knows how to take a dollar and turn it into two – this certainly is priceless. But there’s a big spectrum of financial knowledge, ranging from Wall St. genius to understanding personal finance and how to properly file taxes. The problem of the valuation of an investment strategy for example, it is binary – either it works, or it doesn’t. The difference between a 15% return and a 17% return is not statistically significant. But how to look at the mathematics of a return, and determine the difference between Bernie Madoff and George Soros? That’s priceless.
The importance is to understand the ‘gestalt’ of what markets are, how finance works, that is – practically. Any system can be analyzed and understood by looking at its components and how they behave together. The specialization of finance has confused the larger view, with experts teaching micro-subjects like how to trade Candlestick patterns, or ‘how to make money’ using these simple tools. Making money is sometimes easy – many people stumble upon good luck and money falls into their hands. Not losing money, that is very difficult – something very few rich people and businesses can achieve. Only a full understanding of how markets operate globally, will make you a great trader – as well, will protect you from losing. Not losing is the big secret to financial success. It’s why investors are so concerned about risks. If one can simply not lose, ultimately what’s left will be profits and growth. Tools such as understanding risk, and even quantifying risk (as much as possible) are priceless.
Building a financial knowledgebase is like building a house; the first step is to make a blueprint (usually by hiring an architect) and laying a strong foundation. By having a strong foundation, the building materials of your knowledge (wood, stone, clay) are not as important. With a ‘basement’ which is the modern day equivalent of a bunker, you’ll be able to withstand any tornado or storm that may rock the markets and the economy. Having a defense line, financially speaking – is the most important tactic in any personal finance strategy. For businesses too, but most business does this intuitively (not relying on a single customer or single product line). Tools like hedging, even if simple – can be extremely powerful. Preppers take things to the extreme but provide a great living example of how everyone should act regarding their financial portfolio – hope for the best and prepare for the worst. A portfolio should be like a castle – capable of withstanding any disaster, war, or siege.
It’s true that the world’s Elite engineer financial disasters like stock market crashes to seize the wealth of the growing middle class. It’s like culling the herd for fresh competition. But the good news, seeded into this system are the tools to protect you and even profit. For the first time in history, anyone can access the same tools the Elite have used for centuries to maintain their wealth and seize the wealth of others. This knowledge can also help you in your career, in your business, in your portfolio, or for your retirement.
There’s never been a better time than now to build financial knowledge for yourself. Whether you are wealthy and want to protect your wealth, or are not and want to grow your portfolio and become wealthy – a solid financial understanding of business and the markets is the first step towards achieving real financial self-actualization.
With our system as a whole, top-wards down approach, you’ll learn to understand your business better, by understanding where money comes from, how it’s exchanged, how it’s valued, loaned, securitized, packaged and repackaged. Money has become the most virulent electronic commodity in the world and is the least talked about. Learn FX, and learn how all markets work, and the foundation underpinning the global economy, at Fortress Capital Trading Academy www.fctradingacademy.com
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- The Illusion Of Freedom: The Police State Is Alive And Well
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security… This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”—Historian Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
Brace yourself.
There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.
Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware. Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware. And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.
The world has been down this road before.
As historian Milton Mayer recounts in his seminal book on Hitler’s rise to power, They Thought They Were Free, “Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people?—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the 'national enemies', without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.”
We are at our most vulnerable right now.
The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism—delivered by way of sovereign citizens or radicalized Muslims—but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
America is burning, and all most Americans can do is switch the channel, tune out what they don’t want to hear, and tune into their own personal echo chambers.
We’re in a national state of denial.
Yet no amount of escapism can shield us from the harsh reality that the danger in our midst is posed by an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution, Congress, the courts or the citizenry.
If the team colors have changed from blue to red, that’s just cosmetic.
The playbook remains the same. The leopard has not changed its spots.
Scrape off the surface layers and you will find that the American police state is alive and well and continuing to wreak havoc on the rights of the American people.
“We the people” are no longer living the American Dream.
We’re living the American Lie.
Indeed, Americans have been lied to so sincerely, so incessantly, and for so long by politicians of all stripes—who lie compulsively and without any seeming remorse—that they’ve almost come to prefer the lies trotted out by those in government over less-palatable truths.
The American people have become compulsive believers.
As Nick Cohen writes for The Guardian, “Compulsive liars shouldn’t frighten you. They can harm no one, if no one listens to them. Compulsive believers, on the other hand: they should terrify you. Believers are the liars’ enablers. Their votes give the demagogue his power. Their trust turns the charlatan into the president. Their credulity ensures that the propaganda of half-calculating and half-mad fanatics has the power to change the world.”
While telling the truth “in a time of universal deceit is,” as George Orwell concluded, “a revolutionary act,” believing the truth—and being able to distinguish the truth from a lie—is also a revolutionary act.
Here’s a truth few Americans want to acknowledge: nothing has changed (at least, not for the better) since Barack Obama passed the reins of the police state to Donald Trump.
The police state is still winning. We the people are still losing.
In fact, the American police state has continued to advance at the same costly, intrusive, privacy-sapping, Constitution-defying, relentless pace under President Trump as it did under President Obama.
Police haven’t stopped disregarding the rights of citizens. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip, shoot and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials are no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace. Indeed, they continue to keep the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.
SWAT teams haven’t stopped crashing through doors and terrorizing families. Nationwide, SWAT teams continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activities or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession. With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties continue to rise.
The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security haven’t stopped militarizing and federalizing local police. Police forces continue to be transformed into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. In training police to look and act like the military and use the weapons and tactics of war against American citizens, the government continues to turn the United States into a battlefield.
Schools haven’t stopped treating young people like hard-core prisoners. School districts continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment for childish infractions: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court. In this way, the paradigm of abject compliance to the state continues to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior.
For-profit private prisons haven’t stopped locking up Americans and immigrants alike at taxpayer expense. States continue to outsource prison management to private corporations out to make a profit at taxpayer expense. And how do you make a profit in the prison industry? Have the legislatures pass laws that impose harsh penalties for the slightest noncompliance in order keep the prison cells full and corporate investors happy.
Censorship hasn’t stopped. First Amendment activities continue to be pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country. The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”
The courts haven’t stopped marching in lockstep with the police state. The courts continue to be dominated by technicians and statists who are deferential to authority, whether government or business. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decisions in recent years have most often been characterized by an abject deference to government authority, military and corporate interests. They have run the gamut from suppressing free speech activities and justifying suspicionless strip searches to warrantless home invasions and conferring constitutional rights on corporations, while denying them to citizens.
Government bureaucrats haven’t stopped turning American citizens into criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal, while reinforcing the power of the police state and its corporate allies.
The surveillance state hasn’t stopped spying on Americans’ communications, transactions or movements. On any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether it’s your local police, a fusion center, the National Security Agency or one of the government’s many corporate partners, is still monitoring and tracking you.
The TSA hasn’t stopped groping or ogling travelers. Under the pretext of protecting the nation’s infrastructure (roads, mass transit systems, water and power supplies, telecommunications systems and so on) against criminal or terrorist attacks, TSA task forces (comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams) continue to do random security sweeps of nexuses of transportation, including ports, railway and bus stations, airports, ferries and subways, as well as political conventions, baseball games and music concerts. Sweep tactics include the use of x-ray technology, pat-downs and drug-sniffing dogs, among other things.
Congress hasn’t stopped enacting draconian laws such as the USA Patriot Act and the NDAA. These laws—which completely circumvent the rule of law and the constitutional rights of American citizens, continue to re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the rule of law, our U.S. Constitution, becomes the map by which we navigate life in the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t stopped being a “wasteful, growing, fear-mongering beast.” Is the DHS capable of plotting and planning to turn the national guard into a federalized, immigration police force? No doubt about it. Remember, this is the agency that is notorious for militarizing the police and SWAT teams; spying on activists, dissidents and veterans; stockpiling ammunition; distributing license plate readers; contracting to build detention camps; tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices; carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities; using the TSA as an advance guard; conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners; carrying out soft target checkpoints; directing government workers to spy on Americans; conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers; carrying out Constitution-free border control searches; funding city-wide surveillance cameras; and utilizing drones and other spybots.
The military industrial complex hasn’t stopped profiting from endless wars abroad. America’s expanding military empire continues to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.
The Deep State’s shadow government hasn’t stopped calling the shots behind the scenes. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government continues to be the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our so-called representatives. It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.
And the American people haven’t stopped acting like gullible sheep. In fact, many Americans have been so carried away by their blind rank-and-file partisan devotion to their respective political gods that they have lost sight of the one thing that has remained constant in recent years: our freedoms are steadily declining.
Here’s the problem as I see it: “we the people” have become so trusting, so gullible, so easily distracted, so out-of-touch and so sure that our government will always do the right thing by us that we have ignored the warning signs all around us.
In so doing, we have failed to recognize such warning signs as potential red flags to use as opportunities to ask questions, demand answers, and hold our government officials accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law.
Unfortunately, once a free people allows the government to make inroads into their freedoms, or uses those same freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a slippery slope to outright tyranny. And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican at the helm, because the bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody the same philosophy of authoritarian government.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is what happens when you ignore the warning signs.
This is what happens when you fail to take alarm at the first experiment on your liberties.
This is what happens when you fail to challenge injustice and government overreach until the prison doors clang shut behind you.
In the American police state that now surrounds us, there are no longer such things as innocence, due process, or justice—at least, not in the way we once knew them. We are all potentially guilty, all potential criminals, all suspects waiting to be accused of a crime.
So you can try to persuade yourself that you are free, that you still live in a country that values freedom, and that it is not too late to make America great again, but to anyone who has been paying attention to America’s decline over the past 50 years, it will be just another lie.
The German people chose to ignore the truth and believe the lie.
They were not oblivious to the horrors taking place around them. As historian Robert Gellately points out, “[A]nyone in Nazi Germany who wanted to find out about the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the campaigns of discrimination and persecutions need only read the newspapers.”
The warning signs were definitely there, blinking incessantly like large neon signs.
“Still,” Gellately writes, “the vast majority voted in favor of Nazism, and in spite of what they could read in the press and hear by word of mouth about the secret police, the concentration camps, official anti-Semitism, and so on. . . . [T]here is no getting away from the fact that at that moment, ‘the vast majority of the German people backed him.’”
Half a century later, the wife of a prominent German historian, neither of whom were members of the Nazi party, opined: “[O]n the whole, everyone felt well. . . . And there were certainly eighty percent who lived productively and positively throughout the time. . . . We also had good years. We had wonderful years.”
In other words, as long as their creature comforts remained undiminished, as long as their bank accounts remained flush, as long as they weren’t being discriminated against, persecuted, starved, beaten, shot, stripped, jailed and turned into slave labor, life was good.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
As Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor observed, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
Freedom demands responsibility.
Freedom demands that people stop sleep-walking through life, stop cocooning themselves in political fantasies, and stop distracting themselves with escapist entertainment.
Freedom demands that we stop thinking as Democrats and Republicans and start thinking like human beings, or at the very least, Americans.
Freedom demands that we not remain silent in the face of evil or wrongdoing but actively stand against injustice.
Freedom demands that we treat others as we would have them treat us. That is the law of reciprocity, also referred to as the Golden Rule, and it is found in nearly every world religion, including Judaism and Christianity.
In other words, if you don’t want to be locked up in a prison cell or a detention camp—if you don’t want to be discriminated against because of the color of your race, religion, politics or anything else that sets you apart from the rest—if you don’t want your loved ones shot at, strip searched, tasered, beaten and treated like slaves—if you don’t want to have to be constantly on guard against government eyes watching what you do, where you go and what you say—if you don’t want to be tortured, waterboarded or forced to perform degrading acts—if you don’t want your children to grow up in a world without freedom—then don’t allow these evils to be inflicted on anyone else, no matter how tempting the reason or how fervently you believe in your cause.
As German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
- Dear Disaffected Hillary Protesters: Michael Moore Really Wants To Lead Your "Resistance"
Michael Moore, the ultra-liberal documentary filmmaker who infamously predicted a Trump victory well before election night last November by stunningly calling Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania for the Republican nominee, has since had a noticeably difficult time processing the victory that he, himself, predicted long before anyone else. Meanwhile, Moore’s inability to come to terms with Trump’s presence in the White House has since resulted in his very public broadcast of multiple nervous breakdowns over various social media outlets for all to see.
In fact, his latest “episode” came just last week when Moore lit up the Twittersphere asking Trump “What part of “vacate you Russian traitor” don’t you understand?” while threatening that “We can do this the easy way (you resign), or the hard way (impeachment).”
Um, @realDonaldTrump — It’s now noontime in DC & it appears you are still squatting in our Oval Office. I gave u til this morning to leave.
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) February 14, 2017
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What part of “vacate you Russian traitor” don’t you understand? We can do this the easy way (you resign), or the hard way (impeachment).
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) February 14, 2017
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But apparently random social media rants and continuous calls for Trump’s resignation are no longer sufficient for Moore who has unilaterally taken it upon himself to organize “The RESISTANCE”, a very ‘clever’, crowd-sourced calendar featuring all of the anti-Trump rallies being organized by disaffected Hillary supporters all around the country.
A few minutes ago, I launched RESISTANCE CALENDAR! A one-stop site for all anti-Trump actions EVERY DAY nationwide: https://t.co/c0W7beDdzF
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) February 20, 2017
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Meanwhile, in Facebook rant announcing the project, Moore describes the calendar as a “24/7 clearinghouse of the already MASSIVE resistance to Trump, to the Republican Congress, and, yes, to many of the spineless Democratic politicians out there.”
GOOD NEWS FRIENDS! I’ve promised you a one-stop site, a clearinghouse of all actions — a RESISTANCE CALENDAR — where you can find EVERY upcoming action, protest, march, sit-in, town hall, anti-Trump, pro-democracy event in all 50 states! A site where YOU can post your own action so all can see it. A place where you can quickly go and check it daily, ensuring that you don’t miss any event in your area to stop the Trump madness.
So, right now, I and a team of graphic designers are launching the RESISTANCE CALENDAR!
In addition to you finding events in your area, we want you to be able to post any local actions you’re aware of. So much is happening so fast it’s hard to keep track of all the actions popping up — but our intention is to do just that. Every day. A 24/7 clearinghouse of the already MASSIVE resistance to Trump, to the Republican Congress, and, yes, to many of the spineless Democratic politicians out there. We welcome all resisters across the movement to use this tool. It’s completely free. There’s no big “funder” or group behind it. There will be no ads, no commercialization, no fundraising lists — all the stuff we hate. Just you, me, the volunteers donating their time to keep it going and the World Wide Web. BOOM!
I sincerely hope this is a huge help and that all of you use it! Sign up on Facebook and Twitter now — and please tell your friends about it. Take a moment to add all the local events you know of. And remember — All hands on deck! It’s the only way we’re going to beat him and lessen the damage he’s doing. Our goal is his removal from office — and the defeat of any politician who isn’t with us. WE ARE THE MAJORITY.
We must admit that we were previously somewhat dismissive of Moore’s 2AM twitter rants calling for Trump’s resignation. That said, now that he has a calendar, we clearly see that he means business…
- Break Up The USA?
Submitted by Llewellyn Rockwell via The Mises Institute,
Some of our assumptions are so deeply embedded that we cannot perceive them ourselves.
Case in point: everyone takes for granted that it’s normal for a country of 320 million to be dictated to by a single central authority. The only debate we’re permitted to have is who should be selected to carry out this grotesque and inhumane function.
Here’s the debate we should be having instead: what if we simply abandoned this quixotic mission, and went our separate ways? It’s an idea that’s gaining traction — much too late, to be sure, but better late than never.
For a long time it seemed as if the idea of secession was unlikely to take hold in modern America. Schoolchildren, after all, are told to associate secession with slavery and treason. American journalists treat the idea as if it were self-evidently ridiculous and contemptible (an attitude they curiously do not adopt when faced with US war propaganda, I might add).
And yet all it took was the election of Donald Trump for the alleged toxicity of secession to vanish entirely. The left’s principled opposition to secession and devotion to the holy Union went promptly out the window on November 8, 2016. Today, about one in three Californians polled favors the Golden State’s secession from the Union.
In other words, some people seem to be coming to the conclusion that the whole system is rotten and should be abandoned.
It’s true that most leftists have not come around to this way of thinking. Many have adopted the creepy slogan “not my president” – in other words, I may not want this particular person having the power to intervene in all aspects of life and holding in his hands the ability to destroy the entire earth, but I most certainly do want someone else to have those powers.
Not exactly a head-on challenge to the system, in other words. (That’s what we libertarians are for.) The problem in their view is only that the wrong people are in charge.
Indeed, leftists who once said “small is beautiful” and “question authority” had little trouble embracing large federal bureaucracies in charge of education, health, housing, and pretty much every important thing. And these authorities, of course, you are not to question (unless they are headed by a Trump nominee, in which case they may be temporarily ignored).
Meanwhile, the right wing has been calling for the abolition of the Department of Education practically since its creation in 1979. That hasn’t happened, as you may have noticed. Having the agency in Republican hands became the more urgent task.
Each side pours tremendous resources into trying to take control of the federal apparatus and lord it over the whole country.
How about we call it quits?
No more federal fiefdoms, no more forcing 320 million people into a single mold, no more dictating to everyone from the central state.
Radical, yes, and surely not a perspective we were exposed to as schoolchildren. But is it so unreasonable? Is it not in fact the very height of reason and good sense? And some people, we may reasonably hope, may be prepared to consider these simple and humane questions for the very first time.
Now can we imagine the left actually growing so unhappy as to favor secession as a genuine solution?
Here’s what I know. On the one hand, the left made its long march through the institutions: universities, the media, popular culture. Their intention was to remake American society. The task involved an enormous amount of time and wealth. Secession would amount to abandoning this string of successes, and it’s hard to imagine them giving up in this way after sinking all those resources into the long march.
At the same time, it’s possible that the cultural elite have come to despise the American bourgeoisie so much that they’re willing to treat all of that as a sunk cost, and simply get out.
Whatever the case may be, what we can and should do is encourage all decentralization and secession talk, such that these heretofore forbidden options become live once again.
I can already hear the objections from Beltway libertarians, who are not known for supporting political decentralization. To the contrary, they long for the day when libertarian judges and lawmakers will impose liberty on the entire country. And on a more basic level, they find talk of states’ rights, nullification, and secession – about which they hold the most exquisitely conventional and p.c. views – to be sources of embarrassment.
How are they going to rub elbows with the Fed chairman if they’re associated with ideas like these?
Of course we would like to see liberty flourish everywhere. But it’s foolish not to accept more limited victories and finite goals when these are the only realistic options.
The great libertarians – from Felix Morley and Frank Chodorov to Murray Rothbard and Hans Hoppe — have always favored political decentralization; F.A. Hayek once said that in the future liberty was more likely to flourish in small states. This is surely the way forward for us today, if we want to see tangible changes in our lifetimes.
Thomas Sowell referred to two competing visions that lay at the heart of so much political debate: the constrained and the unconstrained. In the constrained vision, man’s nature is not really malleable, his existence contains an element of tragedy, and there is little that politics can do by way of grandiose schemes to perfect society. In the unconstrained vision, the only limitation to how much society can be remade in the image of its political rulers is how much the rubes are willing to stomach at a given moment.
These competing visions are reaching an endgame vis-a-vis one another. As Angelo Codevilla observes, the left has overplayed its hand. The regular folks have reached the limits of their toleration of leftist intimidation and thought control, and are hitting back.
We can fight it out, or we can go our separate ways.
When I say go our separate ways, I don’t mean “the left” goes one way and “the right” goes another. I mean the left goes one way and everyone else — rather a diverse group indeed — goes another. People who live for moral posturing, to broadcast their superiority over everyone else, and to steamroll differences in the name of “diversity,” should go one way, and everyone who rolls his eyes at all this should go another.
“No people and no part of a people,” said Ludwig von Mises nearly one hundred years ago, “shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.” So much wisdom in that simple sentiment. And so much conflict and anguish could be avoided if only we’d heed it.
- "It Looks Like A War Zone": Trump Vindicated After Violent Riot Erupts In Swedish Suburb
As we reported last night, just days after the media mocked Trump for his allegations of major problems with Swedish migrant policies, the president was vindicated after a violent riot broke out in the borough of Rinkeby, also known as “little Mogadishu.” Now that the incident is over, in their “post-mortem” Swedish officials confirm that riots erupted in the “heavily immigrant Stockholm suburb” Monday night, as masked looters set cars ablaze and threw rocks at cops, injuring one police officer, Swedish officials said.
The violence erupted just days after President Trump was ridiculed during a Saturday campaign rally for mentioning Sweden alongside a list of European targets of terror. Trump later said his “You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden” remark was in response to a Fox News report on the country’s refugee crime crisis that aired on Friday evening.
“Sweden. They took in large numbers [of refugees],” Trump added at the Florida rally. “They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
Sweden’s official Twitter account – which is operated by a different user each week – tweeted at Trump on Monday morning: “Hey Don, this is @Sweden speaking! It’s nice of you to care, really, but don’t fall for the hype. Facts: We’re OK!”
Events just hours later refuted that optimistic assessment.
The violence in Rinkeby began around 8 p.m., when officers arrested a suspect at an underground station on drug charges, The Local reported. A group soon gathered, hurling rocks and other objects at officers and prompting one cop to fire his gun “in a situation that demanded he use his firearm,” police spokesman Lars Bystrom said.
Swedish press photographer assaulted in Rinkeby riots https://t.co/0VBQ9eezIR pic.twitter.com/T03q5PyOb4
— The Local Sweden (@TheLocalSweden) February 21, 2017
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Hours later, the Rinkeby riots began, with a second wave starting around 10:30 p.m. Seven or eight cars were set on fire and many stores saw looting, The Local reported. A photographer from media outlet Dagens Nyheter said a group of 15 people beat him as he tried to document the chaos. Swedish Police were forced to fire warning shots at the unidentified group of rioting protesters, who set cars on fire, throwing stones at police and looting local stores.
A police officer was injured during the clashes, forcing law enforcers to fire several warning shots at the crowd, Swedish public service broadcaster SVT reported, citing a local police spokesperson.
A policeman investigates a burnt car in Rinkeby, Sweden February 21, 2017
The silver lining is that “nobody has been found injured at the scene and we have checked the hospitals and there hasn’t been anyone with what could be gunshot wounds,” Bystrom added.
“I was hit with a lot of punches and kicks both to my body and my head. I have spent the night in hospital,” said the photographer, who was not named. “It looks like a war zone” he added.
The rioting ended just after midnight.
No arrests were made; however, reports were filed on three violent acts, violence against a police officer, two assaults, vandalism and aggravated thefts, authorities said.
As we reported last night, Rinkeby is the same area where an Australian “60 Minutes” crew was attacked by a group of men in April 2016. The film crew was attempting to enter a so-called “no go zone,” which authorities deny they use as a label. Rinkeby, however, has been officially classified as one of 15 “particularly vulnerable” areas across Sweden.
The country’s prime minister, Stefan Lofven, said Monday, “Yes, we have challenges like all other countries. There’s no doubt. We have a situation in the world where 65 million people had to flee their countries last year, the year before that. 65 million. So that’s a war for us together.” He also said Sweden was investing more in housing, technology and its welfare system.
Reports of rapes in Sweden jumped 13 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year, and reports of sexual assaults were up 20 percent, according to preliminary data from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. Recent migration to Sweden hit its peak in 2015 with more than 160,000 asylum applications. It dropped to almost 30,000 in 2016.
The mainstream media, so eager to mock Trump’s “error” on Saturday, has been oddly delayed in reporting on last night’s Swedish violence.
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