Update: CIS has published a backgrounder on this agreement. 

Whatever adjectives can be used to describe our new President, ‘diplomatic’ is not one which springs readily to mind. His phone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull merely serves to reinforce a reputation for bluntness that was already solidified within the public imagination. In this case, however, I think his impolitic speech is actually beneficial for American citizens. For the refugee resettlement swap cooked up by his predecessor, which involves the exchange of non-Muslim Central American refugees for Muslim boat people currently being detained at the behest of the Australian government, is another disastrous scheme to further erase our borders.

The ordinary refugee resettlement process is almost completely insulated from the democratic process. Seemingly benefiting everyone from United Nations functionaries, to bureaucrats in the federal government, but especially VOLAGs whose survival depends upon a constant stream of clients, refugee resettlement takes no account of the feelings of ordinary American citizens. The people whose lives could be ruined by the decisions made hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away by unelected officials.

The last-minute decision of President Obama to craft a backroom deal with his Australian counterpart, in large part as a means of papering over his own catastrophic failure to enforce this nation’s immigration laws, merely highlights the lack of accountability and fundamentally anti-democratic nature of this entire process. Naturally, open borders fanatics are using this incident to parade their virtue before the benighted American public, condemning the philistinism of the Australian and American governments, as well as the people who insist that their representatives protect the internal security of their nations.

Nevertheless, this is a reminder that who lives in our country is not a matter for international plebiscites or social justice campaigns. Thousands of Muslim foreigners being transferred to the heart of this country as part of a sleazy quid pro quo is not what what Americans voted for in November, and simply because it has the stamp of approval from our outgoing President and Australia’s current Prime Minister-the sixth in less than a decade-doesn’t mean the American public should sit back and accept it. It is the current year, and the powers that be should get used to it.

Update: Mr. Rahami was a busy jihadi, it turns out. 

Rahami charged. 

It turns out that CNN is good for something after all. 

Surrender and think of diversity. 

The man who shot the now deceased jihadist in Minnesota was a competitive shooter. Perhaps, contra Maddow, guns aren’t the main culprit in Islamic terrorism? As an aside, in the past 3 years 9 Somali-Americans have been convicted of trying to join ISIS. 

Free radicals. 

Footage of the shootout in Linden before Rahami’s apprehension by police. 

The war on noticing proceeds apace. Lionel has the perfect solution. 

Ahmad Khan is now in custody, according to CNN. 

CAIR has its priorities in order. 

You can’t make this up. 

More Ahmad Khans on the way thanks to the clever folks in the federal government. 

Thieves cracked the Chelsea bombing case. 

Hillary’s boffo refugee resettlement plan. 

The woman who gave us Libya-and all its bitter fruits-explains why Donald Trump is the real terrorist. After all, there are literally millions of Muslims who aren’t trying to blow you up at the moment. 

 You can’t make this up. 

Governor Cuomo has deployed the National Guard. 

A suspect in the terror plots in New Jersey, as well as the Chelsea bombing, has been identified. Authorities are now seeking the whereabouts of Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized alien from Afghanistan. It would appear that this is the work of  a terror cell, not the ubiquitous lone wolf of so many prior jihadi assaults. After decades of thoughtless third world immigration, New Jersey finds itself with an entrenched Islam problem, as Chris Christie’s short-lived presidential campaign illustrated. The idea that this threat was erased with the conviction of the Blind Sheik is foolhardy, as this weekend’s attacks demonstrate.

Update: There was evidently a lot of preparation that went into this rampage. 

More info on the suspected shooter, who’s now believed to have killed himself after a confrontation with police, courtesy of Deutsche Welle. 

Islamic State supporters hail the Munich attack, naturally. 

A firsthand account of distraught Munich residents searching for answers by Rukmini Callimachi. 

9 fatalities have been confirmed. 

History repeats itself. This attack took place near the former Olympic Village, which was the sight of the Munich massacre, an Islamic terror attack financed by Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO.  

Follow live coverage on Sky News.

More details about the fake refugee who went on a jihadist spree yesterday.

Update: The State Department has no records of a meeting with the father of the shahid. 

The killer’s slightly less insane father visited Congress and the State Department. So perhaps they are assimilating after all. 

A horror for one woman, via text. 

Despite her SIOA Facebook page being restored, Pamela Geller has been banned from Facebook for a month. Reddit also seems to be under the impression that if you don’t mention Islamic terrorism, its victims are still alive. 

An exceptional essay by Bruce Bawar on the hard truths our leaders categorically reject. 

John Schindler examines our country’s most pressing epidemic, Jihad Denial Syndrome.

Today it’s worth remembering those who were the first to expose the deep connections  Islamic immigrants living in central and southern Florida had to international jihadism. Adnan Shukrijumah was not the first, and unfortunately, Omar Mateen will probably not be the last.

A co-worker complained that the guy who just murdered 50 people had threatened to kill people. Sound familiar? It should. 

Obama’s America, isn’t it grand? 

As a bonus, Mateen’s firm provided security to federal buildings. 

The first victims have been identified. 

What’s Facebook’s response to a Muslim jihadist murdering 40 innocent people in a gay night club? Banning a page critical of Islam, natch! Looks like the Merkelization of the Internet has begun. 

Proud Afghan immigrant and Taliban supporter Seddique Mateen.

Watch the live press conference held by local officials. 

A word of caution from Rita Katz of the SITE Intelligence Group. 

Through the looking glass.

Heckuva job, FBI!

Mateen was a licensed security officer who claimed ties to international jihadist groups. Unsurprisingly, his wife was the victim of spousal abuse. 

Some of the mosques surrounding Pulse Orlando. I wonder how many vigils they’re going to hold in the week ahead? 

The official news wire of ISIS has taken credit for today’s jihadist attack. 

The perpetrator allegedly recited Islamic prayers during the attack. 

The Daily Beast has published an exclusive on  Omar Mateen, the son of Afghan immigrants-previously investigated by the FBI-who was responsible for the Orlando massacre earlier today. Read it in full.

Father Mir Mateen told NBC News that the sight of two men kissing angered his son.

“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident,” the father added. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”

The attack, he said, “has nothing to do with religion.”

A Twitter user raises an interesting point about how gay-friendly Orlando truly is, at least within its Islamic precincts.

I’ve always loved memoir as a art form, chiefly because it captures universal emotions through the expression of unique experiences and observations. It allows someone who had a completely different upbringing-from being raised as a child, to schooling, to language-to empathize with the life of the author. It also reveals to us how variegated humanity is, even as it recognizes the universality of certain reactions and feelings.

Some of my favorite autobiographies were written by immigrants to America, from individuals that come from nations which no longer exist to those whose families left behind countries which are no longer recognizable. A remarkable story I’ve come across recently is that of Shireen Qudosi, an Afghan refugee whose circuitous journey took her to the United States by way of Pakistan and Germany. Along the way she became a writer and activist who challenged the religious and cultural precepts that have kept so many Muslim woman-both in her homeland and in the West-figuratively and literally enchained.

You can read about her fascinating evolution as a human being on The Qudosi Chronicles, which tries to bridge the gap between the new world and a very old, and oftentimes inflexible, religious dogma. It’s a tale of journeys both internal and external, which is well worth reading.

Update: A message of peace, hope, and determination from one of the leaders of the global anti-jihadist community, Pamela Geller. 

It turns out that the Religion of Peace isn’t through culling apostates and infidels this Easter Weekend. A breakaway faction of the Pakistani, i.e. the good, Taliban have claimed responsibility for the bombing of a park which has resulted in the deaths of over 60 people, most of them women and children.

The city of Lahore has a long, illustrious history of jihadist-inspired pogroms, including a massacre which took place at an Ahmadi mosque, much like the one the departed Shah Assad probably attended, nearly six years ago. There have been more than 30 major terror attacks of this kind in the city since 2004, to put into context how dangerous it is to a be a religious minority in that city, although the rest of Punjab is not exactly a pleasure trip.

To get an idea of how warped the garden variety views of most Pakistanis are, you should read the op-ed written by the son of Salmaan Taseer, the former governor of Punjab province who was murdered by his personal bodyguard for holding heretical views, i.e. believing that non-Muslims should be treated like human beings. What an incendiary concept!

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of the latest brutal, yet sadly typical, assault by the ideology whose name we dare not speak. May their deaths not have been in vain.

Update: Ex Cathedra.

The obliviousness of Europe’s rulers, encapsulated in one tweet.  And the anti-European ruling class is still baffled by the popularity of Alternative for Germany. For a fascinating look at class and immigration-as well as how globalization has reshaped European politics-read Christopher Caldwell’s great essay in The Weekly Standard. Loathe though I am to recommend anything from TWS, Caldwell, once again, nails it.

Nigel Farage sets the record straight. As usual, we are being fed a steady diet of lies about this 21st century invasion of Europe, and there are only a few courageous voices willing to speak the truth. Congratulations to Mr. Farage for standing up to the calculated deception and emotional manipulation of the Beeb, one of the most powerful institutions encouraging the destruction of the continent under the auspices of humanitarianism.

A nation without borders is no longer a nation. Now the citizens of Europe must ask themselves if their continent, which has become a transit hub/social welfare agency for those fleeing the Islamic south, is still Europe in any meaningful sense of the word. Naturally, the cheerleaders for European self-immolation oppose any effort aimed at maintaining sovereignty. The question is whether or not Hungarians, who have faced down invasions of similar scope in the past but who are also aware of the dire consequences should their fellow Europeans let them down, are willing to preserve and protect their identity in the face of overwhelming opposition from the likes of the EU and its apparatchiks in the press. 

The answer will have enormous ramifications for the future of Europe.

Western civilization, after half a century of unrestricted immigration from the Islamic world, has become a platform for enterprising jihadists, as this very abbreviated list of Islamic terror attacks illustrates. Although most of those murdered by Muslims come from the third world-including predominantly Muslim nations-admirers of global terrorist networks like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have not relented in their quest to spill the blood of infidels on Western soil, as the most recent jihadist assaults in France make clear.

Unfortunately, the ostensible leaders of Europe refuse to acknowledge the destructive capacity of both multiculturalism and unfettered immigration. Even going so far as to condemn patriotic citizens who want to preserve the Enlightenment values that forever transformed their continent. Europe is once again undergoing a radical transformation, although I suspect this time it is returning to a state of affairs resembling the worst aspects of the Dark Ages. Therefore, the title of one of Mark Steyn’s more recent works seems to be apt in a number of ways. Lights out indeed.