Go woke, go broke. Just ask Cracker Barrel. The irony? Reasonable people do not care about the things that drove Cracker Barrel corporate Communists to change their logo. The only way even to notice, much less care about, such things? If you have ABSOLUTELY no life. Nothing to live for except controlling others for the sake of controlling others. Corporate Communists are afraid to confront the lethal stupidity overtaking our whole world. So instead, they go along to get along and hope to be praised for it by the academic psychopaths and media morons who offer ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of virtue or value to anyone.

I hope Cracker Barrel shuts down and loses everything. We need the companies who kowtow to idiocy to perish from the scene, so our culture can start over on rational ground.

Michael J. Hurd

An economist looks at three possible artificial-intelligence futures.

Virtually every observer of American higher education agrees that it is in trouble, and most think the short to midterm future for universities is pretty bleak. Most emphasize growing disenchantment with the academy on the part of governmental funders, most conspicuously the Trump-era federal government. Still others point to both the enrollment decline of the past 15 years along with the shrinking supply of college-age Americans in coming years because of declining fertility rates.

Another factor arising that could be both a threat and an opportunity for colleges is artificial intelligence (AI). Will it magnify higher education’s troubles or help foster a period of expansion and prosperity?

Technological change until recently almost always meant that machines substituted for manual-labor tasks.Warning: I am an economist, and my profession’s record at forecasting future events is pretty dismal. An early economist, T.R. Malthus, in 1798 predicted a coming era of extreme poverty and near starvation, whereupon Britain then had the longest sustained period of rapid economic growth the world had ever seen. In the early 1940s, many prominent Keynesian economists predicted a resumption of the Great Depression at World War II’s end: It never came.

But now AI has rapidly grown in sophistication and importance, so machines using AI are replacing college-trained workers.So let me hedge my bets by offering both a pessimistic and an optimist take on the possible impact of AI on higher education’s future.

The Pessimistic Perspective

During the first great Industrial Revolution, beginning in Great Britain around 1750, new technological advances increased incomes and jobs for most people, but there were some losers, too. Most famously, in the cotton textile industry the invention of machine-based technology to spin and weave cloth (i.e., the spinning jenny and power loom) meant some home-based spinners and weavers lost their jobs to new factory-based workers operating much more productive machines. The losers were often illiterate or marginally educated, while the more educated classes generally participated in the growing income arising out of increased production.

Similarly, in the U.S. over the last half of the last century, employment and job opportunities in Rust Belt manufacturing communities declined for factory workers with modest amounts (at most, high-school diplomas) of formal education, while other parts of the country, embracing tech-heavy new industries using lots of brainy, highly educated people, seemingly prospered. Compare Silicon Valley’s robust job growth with employment in the auto and steel industries in states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, which started losing out to new foreign competition. For example, Ohio’s personal income per capita in 1940 was about 10 percent above the national average, whereas today it is over 10 percent below it, and many Rust Belt cities (think Detroit or Cleveland) have dramatically smaller populations today than they did in 1950.

Technological change until recently almost always meant that machines substituted for manual-labor tasks previously inefficiently performed by humans. But now AI has rapidly grown in sophistication and importance, so machines (computers) using AI are replacing college-trained workers. “The Bull Market for Economists Is Over. It’s an Ominous Sign for the Economy” read a New York Times headline recently. The author added, “Earning a Ph.D. in economics has long been a reliable path to affluence and prestige. Not anymore.”

Right. Why hire a bright economist for over $100,000 a year to predict, say, interest rates a year from now based on some mathematical modeling, when a much-lower-paid worker with a high-school diploma can retrieve similar results from a computer using AI?

Previously, machines replaced human physical labor; now, perhaps, they are replacing human brainpower enhanced by high levels of education—and not just in economics. For the first time in history, perhaps, new technology’s benefits are biased against the brainy and book-educated—the people who go to college.

Since college is primarily viewed as an investment in “human capital” improving vocational outcomes, AI could be devastating, since human brainpower is being replaced by sophisticated computer-based machinery. There’s the “dismal science” of economics at work!

An Optimistic Interpretation

However, the July 26 issue of the Economist offered precisely the opposite interpretation with its article “The Economics of Superintelligence.” (Gated for subscribers here.)

Productivity will explode as a consequence of this most dramatic technological advance in hundreds of years. While the owners and producers of AI technology will derive huge financial benefits, other Americans will gain, as well, from growing incomes. Moreover, AI probably is not much help in dealing with an overflowing toilet and cannot do welding or roofing. AI doesn’t do beautiful painting or, at this stage at least, write beautiful symphonic music. With rising incomes, there will be enhanced demand for plumbers, fine painting, and roofers. Indeed, AI might favor those doing some forms of manual labor or even studying the arts and humanities.

Demand for colleges might rise as more affluent Americans embrace exploring the sources of truth and beauty.Indeed, demand for colleges might rise as more affluent Americans embrace exploring the sources of truth and beauty via a liberal-arts education. Increased funding arising from prosperity can also fund more advanced high-level university research in scientifically oriented areas. Higher income-tax revenues can enhance subsidizing universities.

Additionally, as incomes rise from technological advances, more Americans will go to college for reasons that extend beyond traditional learning: Upscale residential colleges might flourish as increasingly affluent Americans use universities for an extended gap period of relaxation between the perils of adolescence and the trials of adult life. Colleges will more than ever become like country clubs, with some culture and learning thrown in.

As worldwide incomes rise, the demand for high-quality but also fun higher education in America will soar, leading to robust growth in foreign enrollments in American colleges.

Some Alternative Thoughts

Maybe we are overpromoting AI a bit, and both its impact on society as a whole and on America’s colleges and universities will be notable but not revolutionary. After all, for two or three generations, computers have substituted machines for workers performing mathematical calculations—roughly what AI purports to do. And while computers have changed our lives importantly, it is not clear what they specifically did for university growth—probably enhanced it a bit but not in a revolutionary fashion.

Alex Green, a teacher at Harvard’s Kennedy School, has argued persuasively in the Wall Street Journal (“AI Robs My Students of the Ability to Think”) that the ubiquitous presence of AI in classroom settings has meant that students have substituted the use of a machine (AI) for thinking and brain-centered evaluation of alternative ideas. Human learning therefore is being retarded. My sense is that Green is right and that students are not exerting their mental capacities to evaluate alternative approaches to ideas and problems. Thus, not only is AI substituting for human intellectual resources, it is reducing the size of those assets—turning humans into clueless prisoners of a technology they have embraced but do not understand.

If Green is right, why send kids to college if they are not exercising their human capital—brain power—to evaluate alternative solutions to real-world problems? Are humans becoming servants to machines? Why go to college if not to learn how to think?

But Angus Fletcher makes yet another appealing argument in his new book Primal Intelligence. Humans possess something called “intuition” that often guides us to doing innovative things not easily modeled by machines that think. Human ingenuity has given us an extraordinary tool, AI. Whether it is strengthening the role of universities in our lives or hastening their weakening is currently an unsettled matter.

Richard K. Vedder is distinguished professor of economics emeritus at Ohio University, senior fellow at the Independent Institute, and author of Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education.

We are living in what can be called the Third Arc of American history, a period as consequential as the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War. The threats we face today are not only abroad but also here at home: infiltration, radical ideologies, and forces working to dismantle the very foundation of our Constitutional Republic.

The most significant battle is not fought overseas with weapons, but here with courage, conviction, and truth.

This is not just President Trump’s fight, nor the fight of those who have worn the uniform. It is the responsibility of every American.

Each of us has a responsibility. Don’t simply ask what others are doing, ask yourself:

“What am I doing to serve my country now?”

Our borders, sovereignty, and freedoms are under attack, yet we are not powerless. Together, decisive action can safeguard the future of our beloved Nation.

The deep state, globalists, or foreign powers will not determine the future of America. It will be decided by We the People.

Michael T. Flynn LTG USA

The tallest of Snow White’s dwarfs is not tall. The cheapest Tesla is not “cheap.” And, moderate Democrats are not “moderates.” Not by any standard of what we used to mean by moderate.

Pennsylvania’s two leading Democrats — Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator John Fetterman — underscore it. Even if one believes they say moderate things, compared to their fellow Democrats, their votes and records prove they’re not moderates.

Any attempt to label them moderates is an attempt not only to mask their progressive views, it papers over the reality that today’s Democratic Party is built around a left-wing platform, many clicks to the left of what it was just a generation ago.

Even more than Republicans, elected Democrats vote the same way, and their activists demand unity of thought. So we take note when we hear any deviation in substance or tone (which is really important in the suburbs.).

Throughout 2024 and even during year one of President Trump’s second term, there are Republicans who publicly disagree with the President, vote against him or even try to block his policy goals. Moreover, there are elected Republicans who partner with Democrats on issues—from “libertarian” Congressman Thomas Massie to Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick; from Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski to South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, legislators who on any given issue might be Trump’s most passionate defender or his most vocal critic.

There are important distinctions. No one thinks Thomas Massie is a moderate. Some think Lindsey Graham is. However, neutral commentators accurately see Lisa Murkowski and Brian Fitzpatrick as moderates — working in a bipartisan way on issues.

Isolated acts of independent thought have caused many commentators to refer to Shapiro and Fetterman as moderates. It’s actually the near unanimity of priorities, votes, language and temperament among Democrats that draws attention to any elected Democrat who deviates from the script.

Ironically, moderate is a title that Josh Shapiro craves as a candidate for reelection as Pennsylvania’s governor, yet, one that he’ll reject faster than a “Schwarbomb” leaves Citizens Bank Park when campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Senator Fetterman is notable for his clarion call to protect Jewish Americans against antisemitic rhetoric, rallies and violence — and support of Israel’s right to defend itself in the face of the barbaric attacks of October 7 (hostages from which are still being tortured in captivity.)

His independence on this issue even had his fellow Democrats and legacy media allies cruelly suggesting that he has mental health issues. 

Fetterman had another episode of  “independence” during the recent riots in Los Angeles. He rightly stated that it was wrong to riot, attack innocent people, and burn police cars.

Yet, review his actual voting record. He’s for legalizing abortion on demand up until the moment of birth; allowing men to play women’s high school and college sports; legalizing recreational marijuana; and opposing school choice. He gets a 100 percent rating from the AFL-CIO. He has frequently described climate change as an “existential threat.” In his first two years, he was rated as the second most “left” freshman Senator.

Fetterman is a card-carrying progressive — with an independent streak, whether progressives want to admit it. He’s no moderate.

Shapiro. The starched shirt, tie-less, Brooks Brothers suit wearing politician — right out of suburban central casting — is often referred to as a moderate. 

Yet Shapiro supports abortion on demand and without apology. He is so pro-abortion that he is the only governor in Pennsylvania history to veto funding for “crisis pregnancy centers” — certified care centers that offer information, medical and financial support for women who are scared and feel they have no option but to abort their baby. Something that not even “Lockdown Tom Wolf” did. He’s even sued the Little Sisters of the Poor to force them to offer abortion “care” in their employee health insurance coverage.

Shapiro has introduced three state budgets. Each one planned to spend more money than the state had, and tried to raise fees or taxes. Shapiro attacked those wanting to protect women’s sports from men as “extremists.” When he’s not tweeting about abortion, he tweets about the latest LGBTQIA+ issue. In fact, he’s joining with Democrat governors to sue Trump to allow hospitals to perform gender surgery on minors — even using taxpayer funding.

Being Jewish, he has rightly spoken out against anti-Semitic rhetoric. This causes Shapiro to (sadly) stand out. Yet, he still advocates the Democrats’ “two-state solution” that even Palestinians oppose.

He says he’s for school choice, yet he vetoed legislation to enact it— Lifeline Scholarships. He attends natural gas energy conferences, yet he’s suing in the Supreme Court to defend his right to unilaterally impose taxes and regulations that punish natural gas use.

Commentators occasionally label Shapiro as a moderate. This is possibly because of his appearance and tone — or because of who he isn’t: AOC or Jasmine Crockett. But his spending, energy, education, social and cultural policies, tweets, and vetoes are those of a progressive. It’s false advertising to describe his record as moderate.

Today’s Democrats support higher taxes. They supported vaccine and mask mandates — including firing soldiers, police, and nurses who didn’t comply. They oppose school choice. They oppose Trump’s border wall and policies. They support abortion on demand up through delivery — some after delivery! They support men playing women’s sports. They support an ever-evolving laundry list of genders. They supported “defund the police.” They defended antisemitic rhetoric and rallies. They want to ban fossil fuels.

Commentators rushing to label them as moderates says more about the left-wing agenda of 2025 Democrats than it does about Fetterman or Shapiro. One may argue that they’re moderate Democrats, but one cannot accurately label them moderates.

After all, the tallest of the dwarfs isn’t tall by any measure.

Guy Ciarrocchi writes for Broad + Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. A Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, you should follow Guy at @PaSuburbsGuy.

President Trump is facing outcry from some of his supporters after saying he plans to allow 600,000 students from China into the U.S.

“It’s a very important relationship. We’re going to get along good with China,” Trump told reporters Monday during a meeting with the president of South Korea.

“I hear so many stories about, ‘We’re not going to allow their students,’” he continued. “We’re going to allow their students to come in. We’re going to allow it. It’s very important — 600,000 students. It’s very important.”

Trump’s comments marked a shift from earlier in the year, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he planned to “aggressively” revoke visas from Chinese students, particularly those “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

The president’s openness to welcoming hundreds of thousands of Chinese students did not sit well with some members of his base, who questioned how it aligned with Trump’s “America First” mantra.

“We should not let in 600,000 CHINESE students to attend American colleges and universities that may be loyal to the CCP,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted on the social platform X.

“Why are we allowing 600,000 students from China to replace our American student’s opportunities?” Greene added. “We should never allow that. And we need more trade school graduates.”

Laura Loomer, a consevative activist and staunch Trump ally who has influenced policy and personnel decisions in the administration, also expressed her displeasure with the move in a series of posts on social media.

“Nobody, I repeat nobody, wants 600,000 more Chinese ‘students’ aka Communist spies in the United States,” Loomer posted on X.

“China murdered 1.2 million Americans,” she added, a reference to the COVID-19 virus that originated in China. “Now they get to replace us? This cannot happen.”

Michael Flynn Jr., the son of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, posted online that Trump’s comments were “Not what I voted for.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham raised the issue with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during her show Monday night.

“Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, how is allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?” the Fox host asked on “The Ingraham Angle,” noting it’s been a long-running issue for conservatives.

Lutnick argued without the 600,000 Chinese students, U.S. students would go to better schools with openings created by the lack of foreign students, and “the bottom 15 percent of universities and colleges would go out of business in America.”

Trump’s comments came as he has touted the relationship he has with Chinese President Xi Jinping during trade negotiations between the U.S. and Beijing. The two sides levied huge tariffs on goods earlier this year, but brought the rates down significantly amid ongoing talks.

Trump told reporters Monday that he hoped to visit China later this year or “shortly thereafter.”

Brett Samuels, The Hill

Bezalel Smotrich was right: The term “Palestinian People” was created especially for us, only following the Return to Zion. It migrated here en masse from the end of the 19th century, unaware that it was either “Palestinian” or a “People”.
By Nadav Shragai. ILH. 03-28-2023

Israel’s minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, who only a few days ago shoved a similar historical truth in the face of the Palestinians – “There’s no such thing as the Palestinian People” – is in good company. Voll might have opted for a gimmick, but Israel’s late prime minister, Goldar Meir, used the exact same words fifty years ago, as did Newt Gingrich, a former Republican politician and speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Gingrich referred to the Palestinians as “an invented people who want to destroy Israel”, “Arabs who migrated to Israel during the Ottoman Empire period…”. When US President Obama disagreed with him, Gingrich scoffed at him, describing the administration as: “so out of touch with reality that it would be like taking your child to the zoo and explaining that a lion was a bunny rabbit”.

Even Arab and Palestinian leaders have been known to admit the truth in a slip of the tongue. Perhaps the most outstanding example of this is that of Zuheir Mohsen, one of the leaders of the as-Sa’iqa faction of the PLO, who was targeted by the Mossad, but left us with an unparalleled heritage: “The Palestinian people do not exist,” Mohsen explained to the Dutch newspaper Trouw back in 1977. “The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity…. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.”

And so Smotrich, even though his name is Smotrich, is absolutely right. “The Palestinian People”, as he put it, “is an invention less than one hundred years old”, and if anybody is genuinely entitled to the title of being Palestinian, then that would be his grandfather, a 13th-generation resident of Jerusalem, along with a number of other grandfathers and grandmothers with whom I am personally acquainted. The imaginary, or more correctly the late, or extremely late “Palestinians”, migrated here en masse in the late 19th century and throughout the years of the British Mandate, and they had no idea at the time that they were “Palestinians” or that they were a “People”.

From Egypt to MasterChef.

At the time, not a single one of them claimed, as did former Palestinian politician Saeb Erekat (who passed away two years ago) who lived in Jericho together with his family 3,000 years before the People of Israel came to the city under the leadership of Joshua. None of them regarded themselves as the descendants of the Jebusites or the Philistines. Many of the “Palestinian” migrants recognized the Jewish history surrounding the Land of Israel and the Jewish birthright to the land. At that time, they did not turn Jesus into a Palestinian preaching Islam rather than Christianity, as their current counterparts’ nonsensical claims would have us believe, and they never even contemplated making claims to be the original natives of this land.

How do we know this to be the case? It’s simple. They themselves talk about this on a thousand and one random and sometimes less random occasions. Take for example Ms. Salma Fiomi, a resident of the Israeli Arab town of Kafr Qassem, who demonstrated her culinary skills on the popular TV competitive cooking show MasterChef. On the show, Fiomi proudly presented her version of Koshari – a popular Egyptian dish of rice and lentils. “My family”, explained Fiomi, “came from Egypt, from Al-Fayoum, and I, Salma Fiomi, come from Al-Fayoum.”

Another prime example that doesn’t really leave much room for interpretation can be seen in the words of Fathi Hamad, the former minister of the interior in the Hamas government, who urged Egypt to provide help during IDF Operation Returning Echo in the Gaza Strip in March 2012. “When we call for your help,” he explained, “It is with the aim of continuing the jihad. Praise Allah – All our us have Arab roots, and every Palestinian in the Gaza Strip and throughout Palestine is able to prove his Arab roots, whether from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or anywhere else. We have blood ties… Personally, half of my family is from Egypt. Where is your mercy? More than 30 families in the Gaza Strip are called Al-Masri. Brothers, half of the Palestinians are Egyptians, and the other half are Saudis.”

Dozens of books and records left behind by visitors to the Land of Israel clearly illustrate that at the turn of the last century, the land was desolate and empty, and the alleged “Palestinian People” migrated here only following the renewal of Jewish settlement in Israel as part of the modern Return to Zion in the 19th century. This is the case in the famous research of Israel’s former President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi on the Ottoman period. This is also true of American journalist, Joan Peters, author of the book From Time Immemorial, who estimated that at the beginning of the First Aliyah in 1882, there were some 141 thousand non-Jews only living in the Land of Israel. The works of the Hebrew University’s Professor Moshe Ma’oz also support this view, underscoring the fact that for centuries the number of Arabs living here in Israel never exceeded 100 thousand.

Ze’ev Galili’s research further develops this approach, as he arrived at the following, logical conclusion: if towards the end of the 19th century, there were about 100 thousand Arabs living in Israel, this means that in the seventy years that elapsed from that point to 1948, the Arab population increased twelvefold, and the only way to explain such an increase is that it was the result of mass immigration from neighboring states.

Nations that must invent.

Anthony Smith, the renowned sociologist and Professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics, once distinguished between two types of national identity. The first type includes nations with a core identity based on culture and history, and the second – nations without any such nucleus that are required to invent everything from nothing.

We belong to the first type while the Palestinians belong to the second type. It is as simple as that. This is essentially what Smotrich said, and Smotrich, even though his name is Smotrich, was right on this occasion. The Al-Masri clan migrated here from Egypt, the Al-Mughrabi clan from Algeria, Al-Turki from Turkey, Al-Iraqi from Iraq who settled in Taibeh, and the Al-Ajami clan from Iran. The Kna’an family in Nablus does not hail from the historical Land of Canaan but rather from Aleppo in Syria. As the renowned researcher, Pinhas Inbari, has suggested, the Erekat family from Jericho originates from the large Al-Huwaytat tribe that moved from Medina and then settled in Jordan, as well as in Abu-Dis and in Jericho. Thus, it is clear that they all came from the immediate “neighborhood”.

The term “Palestinian People”, in relation to the Arabs living in Israel, appeared for the first time in 1964, in the PLO Charter. The outrageous UNRWA definition, according to which the minimum seniority required in Israel in order to define an individual as a Palestinian refugee (both him and his descendants) amounts to two years, still does not qualify to turn the Palestinians into a people.

The Palestinians have almost no unique defining trait. Neither religion nor language, and no common ethnic background or history and shared homeland. If you take the trouble to examine the long-winded, multi-clause definition that UNESCO contributed to the term “people”, you will also discover that the Palestinians do not meet the majority of them.

“The Palestinian People” was created especially for us, only following the Shivat Zion (“Return to Zion”) movement and the subsequent renewed Jewish settlement in Israel, in an attempt to wipe us off the map along with our unbroken, thousands-of-years-old bond with this land. There is really no need to waste any words on our roots to the Land of Israel, in stark contrast with the fake roots that the Palestinians have tried to put down. Our history is manifestly documented in the chronicles of history, in the Bible, undeniably etched in archeology and research. We have no need for inventions and historical forgeries. As the 19th-century British statesman and social reformer, Lord Shaftesbury, so aptly put it 180 years ago, we returned as a “people without a land to a land without a people”.

An American tourist stabbed by a suspected migrant in Dresden is speaking up about Germany’s dangerously lax migration policy.

Europe’s open-borders catastrophe has claimed another casualty. Last weekend, an American tourist was stabbed in the face by a man suspected to be a Syrian migrant in Dresden. John Rudat, a 21-year-old newly qualified paramedic and part-time model, was brutally assaulted when he stepped in to protect two women who were being harassed on a tram. Rudat got into a heated argument with the two male passengers, who first beat him and then later returned to attack him with a knife. 

Police arrested one man following the incident, a Syrian migrant with previous convictions for theft and assault. He was thought to be one of Rudat’s attackers, but not the man who actually wielded the knife. The stabber himself is yet to be apprehended. 

In a video posted to Instagram, a heavily bandaged Rudat claimed that his attacker is a notorious drug dealer in the area and is already known to the police. The other suspect was released from jail just 12 hours later because “there were insufficient grounds for detention” and “the knife attack cannot be attributed to him.” 

In a refreshing change from the usual ‘don’t-look-back-in-anger’ type responses from victims of migrant crime, Rudat took to social media to explicitly attack Germany’s lax immigration laws. “If y’all didn’t think Europe had an immigration problem, especially Germany, let me drop some knowledge on you,” Rudat said on Instagram. “It is 11:57 a.m. right now. In three minutes, that man that assaulted that young woman will be released from custody. He’ll be released from custody because he’s not a citizen of Germany, he’s not a citizen of the EU for that matter.” He went on to criticise the fact that “these people could just come in, swing knives and hurt, abuse, terrorise and oppress citizens of Germany.” The U.S. Embassy in Germany has echoed these concerns, calling on the German authorities to bring Rudat’s attackers to justice. “Safety is a collective responsibility—no one is safe until all are safe,” the statement said. Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for ‘special missions,’ also came down hard on the German authorities’ lack of action. Writing on X, he said, “Friedrich Merz must understand that the German people are sick and tired of this weak and woke response.” 

John Rudat is just the latest victim of Germany’s open-borders policy. In February, a Spanish tourist was stabbed by a Syrian asylum seeker at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, leaving him severely injured and in a coma. The Syrian man later revealed he had been motivated by a desire to “kill Jews.” One month before that, an Afghan national had allegedly targeted a kindergarten group in a Bavarian park, killing a two-year-old Moroccan boy, as well as a German man who tried to intervene. Another Afghan man went to trial earlier this year after he allegedly attacked an anti-Islamist political rally in Mannheim last year. Motivated by Islamist extremism, the man is thought to have injured five attendees at the rally and killed a police officer. Not to mention the Solingen terror attack last year, in which three people died at the hands of a suspected Syrian Islamist, or the purposeful car ramming by an alleged Afghan terrorist in Munich last year, which left a two-year-old girl and her mother dead and 37 people injured. 

The whole picture is equally grim. Germany is experiencing an alarming rise in violent crime, and many public spaces no longer feel safe. Migrants are overrepresented as perpetrators in practically every category of violent crime in Germany. In knife-related crimes, foreigners accounted for 37% of suspects, despite making up 15% of the total population. Syrians specifically comprised the largest number of suspects in knife crime cases. 

Nor is the carnage restricted to Germany. Across the border, Austria is suffering its own knife-crime crisis, recording the highest-ever number of such crimes this year. As in Germany, foreigners are massively over-represented among the perpetrators of violent crimes, according to unofficial prison statistics. Over half of inmates in Austrian prisons are non-nationals, while accounting for just one-fifth of the general population. 

In the Netherlands, the story is the same. Migrants make up twice the proportion of violent- and sex-crime suspects than they do of the overall population. Here, a 17-year-old girl was stabbed to death just last week by a suspected refugee. The girl was cycling home from an evening out in Amsterdam when she was attacked by a man thought to be residing at a local asylum centre. The man is also a suspect in a separate rape case. 

John Rudat is unique in that—aside from thankfully living to tell the tale—he has a government that is willing to stand behind him. The same cannot be said for Germans and many other Europeans who fall victim to migrant crime. Their governments are quite happy to see them as ‘acceptable’ collateral damage in the open-borders project. German politicians, for example, are still determined to ignore the consequences of uncontrolled migration. This week, the former socialist mayor of Frankfurt (Oder), Martin Patzelt, dismissed the prospect of tightening border controls as “nonsense” and suggested that young Germans should take a year abroad in the home countries of refugees to “create an understanding of the problem.” For Patzelt, it apparently isn’t enough that Germans accept hordes of undocumented young men into their country—they ought to send their children off to the very countries these refugees have fled from. 

It’s time for Germans—and all Europeans—to get seriously angry. Governments are failing in their most basic duty of protecting their own citizens, allowing asylum seekers to take priority over natives. In attempting to create a safe space for refugees fleeing war, persecution, and disasters, European states have ended up turning their own countries into hotbeds of sexual assault, violent crime, and terrorism. 

At this rate, Germany will be more known for mass rapes and terror attacks than for beer and Lederhosen. Western Europe is already on the way to being globally shunned for its lax approach to crime and border control while ruthlessly persecuting right-wing dissidents. Europe can be safe again only when its leaders start taking their duty to protect citizens seriously. 

Lauren Smith is a London-based columnist for europeanconservative.com

• Tags: Germany, Germany knife crime, John Rudat, Lauren Smith, mass migration, migrant crime, Syrians

Until a few weeks ago, you were more likely to see a Palestinian, Ukrainian, or LGBT pride flag flying in London than to see any of the UK’s own colours. Now, thanks to a grassroots movement called Operation Raise the Colours, that could be changing. 

Union Jacks and St. George’s flags have been cropping up across the country over the last few weeks, being hung on lampposts by groups of patriots. The movement appears to have begun in Birmingham, organised online, before spreading to Norwich, Bradford, Newcastle, Swindon, and even London. 

As you might expect, the flags are being swiftly removed by local councils. Birmingham’s Labour-run city council started pulling them down last week, citing health-and-safety concerns. The flags, fixed to lampposts 25 ft in the air, apparently put the lives of motorists and pedestrians “at risk.” This might have been a believable, if idiotic, excuse had the same council not allowed Palestinian flags to fly across the city—which is almost 30% Muslim—unhindered since October 7th, 2023. This is also the same council that, just last week, lit the city’s library up in green and white to celebrate Pakistan’s independence day. Birmingham City Council officials were even caught admitting in leaked emails earlier this year that they were too scared to take down the Palestinian flags without police assistance. 

This week, the flashpoint for the flag wars was the East London borough of Tower Hamlets. The local authority, run by the pro-Gaza Aspire Party, has promised to remove any Union Jacks or St. George’s Crosses from council infrastructure “as soon as possible.” Tower Hamlets and its mayor, Lutfur Rahman, are certainly in more of a hurry to remove flags representing this country than they were to take down the many Palestine flags that lined the streets for months following October 7th. The council only (somewhat begrudgingly, it feels) removed these after Jewish residents complained the flags made them feel unsafe. 

To the annoyance of Tower Hamlets, Birmingham, and many other local councils, the British and English flags tend to go back up almost as quickly as they can take them down. They are being hung on lampposts, displayed out the windows of private homes, draped over motorway bridges, and even painted onto roundabouts. Over the last few weeks, a genuinely grassroots movement has sprung up, led by Brits who are tired of being told they should hate their country and their culture. 

not difficult to see what led us to this point. Our flags have become demonised and denigrated. The Union Jack has been turned into a symbol of impotent British twee at best and colonialism and empire at worst. St. George’s Cross has suffered a much worse fate, being written off as outright racist. Today, there is only one socially acceptable use for the English flag. As Keir Starmer’s official spokesman, when asked what he thought about the ongoing flag wars, said, “We put up English flags all around Downing Street every time the English football team, women’s and men’s, are out, trying to win games for us.” Outside of these permitted contexts, UK flags are considered by the great and the good to be a kind of right-wing dog whistle. Black studies professor Kehinde Andrews appeared on national television this week to explain that the St. George’s Cross apparently “represents racism” and is intrinsically linked to colonialism and oppression. 

No wonder Brits are fed up with having this nonsense rammed down their throats. For the best part of a decade, British people—like practically all other Western Europeans—have been taught to hate themselves. They have been lectured about their nation’s historic evils and the supposed worthlessness, even nonexistence, of their culture. It is impressed upon us, without any regard for historical accuracy, that practically everything Britain is today was actually built by foreigners. 

Celebrating diversity, we are told, doesn’t apply to the many regional and national identities native to the British Isles. Just last month, a young girl was sent home from her school’s Culture Celebration Day because she was wearing a dress with the Union Jack on it. Pupils were encouraged to come dressed in cultural costumes, with the aim of “recognising and celebrating the rich cultural diversity within our school community.” Except, the native British apparently weren’t included in that. The girl wasn’t allowed to give a prepared speech on British values and was told that her outfit was “unacceptable.” Other pupils were also sent away for wearing clothes representing various British cultures, including a boy with a St. George’s flag, a boy with a Welsh flag, and a boy sporting a traditional flat cap. Some cultures, it seemed, were more multicultural than others. 

Operation Raise the Colours is a genuinely brilliant initiative to fight back against this pathetic pit of self-loathing the UK has fallen into. For starters, it normalises the sight of the Union Jack and St. George’s Cross—something that, frankly, shouldn’t be unusual to begin with. An American walking down the street in his home country wouldn’t think twice about seeing the Stars and Stripes flying outside homes, on government buildings, or in public spaces. So why is it that a Brit daring to display the flag of his country so often provokes horror and outrage? Why is it easier to hang the flag of another nation, to express allegiance in a foreign war, than it is to show our own? 

That is the second victory of Raise the Colours—it forces the weirdos who hate Britain to explain exactly why this is the case. It’s a good thing that Kehinde Andrews has to go on TV and say outright that he thinks any display of the English or British flag is racist, because anyone with half a brain can see that this is an insane position to take. No one involved with Raise the Colours has declared this to be an exclusionary or hateful movement. The only people making this about race come decidedly from the woke Left. 

The saddest part about the flag wars is that they shouldn’t exist in the first place. It should never be controversial to fly your own country’s flag. Taking pride in where you come from and who you are should not be a privilege afforded only to those who come from certain approved, non-Western cultures. And yet, here we are, witnessing patriots play whack-a-mole with hostile local councils for the right to hang the national colours. 

Hopefully, Operation Raise the Colours wins and makes the Union Jack or St. George’s Cross a common sight in Britain once again. Normal Brits are sick and tired of all this self-loathing. 

Lauren Smith is a London-based columnist for europeanconservative.com

• Tags: British patriotism, Lauren Smith, Operation Raise the Colours, St. George’s flag, UK, Union Jack

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Trump administration continues to focus on apprehending and deporting the ‘worst of the worst’ illegal migrants.

In recent days, ICE officers arrested aliens who included “pedophiles, drug traffickers, abusers, and other violent thugs,” a senior Department of Homeland Security official told The Federalist in a statement.

“Day after day, ICE is going after the worst of the worst because under President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem DHS will always put AMERICANS first,” the senior DHS official said in the statement.

A DHS release provided exclusively to Newsmax last week said ICE had arrested Alejandro Lima-Ramirez, 46, a Mexican national and member of the violent Florencia 13 street gang.

Lima-Ramirez’s record includes 24 arrests across California and Oregon and 16 convictions for crimes ranging from drug trafficking and robbery to fraud and weapons charges.

Now comes news that ICE arrested Jung Choi, a 53-year-old California resident and South Korean national convicted in 2020 of voluntary manslaughter, according to DHS documents exclusively provided to The Federalist.

In 2017, Choi assisted a male companion who murdered his wife.

Choi was paroled Friday, when ICE agents apprehended her to begin the process of sending her back to South Korea.

“We are not going to allow this murderer and criminal illegal alien to remain in our country,” the DHS official told The Federalist.

DHS pointed out several other “worst of the worst” illegal migrants arrested during the past several days. They included:

• Marion Andres Gomez-Arenas, 41, from Colombia. His rap sheet includes 23 criminal arrests and 18 convictions in the state of Georgia, according to DHS. Charges against Gomez-Arenas included fraud, forgery, shoplifting, driving under the influence, and obstruction of a law enforcement officer.
• Zoilo Holguin-Tavarez, from the Dominican Republic. Convicted of possession of illegal substances with intent to deliver and carrying a firearm during the commission of a drug trafficking crime in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, according to DHS.
• Rigoberto Morales Hernandez, from Mexico. Convicted of illegal migrant smuggling in Albany, N.Y., according to DHS.
• Madai Perez-Perez, 33, from Guatemala. Convicted on a charge of willful poisoning of food on a person in Placer County, California, according to DHS.

Charlie McCarthy ✉

Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics

David Harriman writes

The Democratic Party has become the Lunatic Party. Membership in the Party is evidence of a mental disease. The problem is more psychological than political.

We are witnessing hostility, envy, guilt, paranoia, and above all, indiscriminately directed hatred, on a scale that is shocking. If a person blames Hurricane Ian for “disproportionately affecting communities of color,” claims that “racism causes climate change,” that “white people have never invented anything,” and that “ownership is socially unacceptable,” are we supposed to debate these “issues”? Or should we simply recommend a therapist? When they advocate the sexual mutilation of children, transsexual strip shows for kindergarteners, abolishing fossil fuel energy, supporting militant Islam and MS-13 gang members, and defunding the police, are they expressing political views or hatred of America (and more generally, hatred of human life)?

I can’t believe that they will win future elections by public displays of hateful lunacy. But I’ve been wrong before.

I entirely agree. Only a therapist will not help. The lunatic will immediately fire any therapist who states or implies anything against the lunatic leftist Narrative. We cannot save the leftist. We must save ourselves.