Today marks the 102nd anniversary of an unfathomable crime against humanity. The precursor to The Holocaust, the Armenian genocide involved the systematic deportation and elimination of over 1.5 million Armenian Christians living within the Ottoman Empire. The Federalist has published a useful explanation of what this series of atrocities entailed, as well an answer to the question of why the current Turkish state refuses to acknowledge its responsibility for this heinous crime. The New York Times has a fascinating article about a Turkish historian who’s uncovered documents which directly refute the concerted campaign of denial waged by his country’s government.

For more good reading material, I would recommend previous posts on this very important subject.

Update: What does the Democratic Party have against Americans? 

Pamela Geller live-tweets President Trump’s address. 

The failure of the media, explained. 

How dare you divide us, I ask in a foreign language. 

Watch President Trump’s entire speech before Congress, courtesy of the Right Side Broadcasting Network. Jim Antle explains why Donald Trump’s widely reported volte-face on immigration didn’t occur.

The big news to come out of the President’s first weeks in office is a federal judge enjoining his executive order blocking immigration from 7 nations of concern. The motion by the Trump administration for an emergency stay has been denied by the 9th Circuit, a decision which bodes ill for its ultimate fate, as Andrew McCarthy points out, although the court will hear the challenge later today. There are a number of troubling aspects to this ruling, foremost among them being the idea that a single judge can influence American foreign policy and national security based upon specious legal reasoning. This is a distressingly familiar sight for the patriotic immigration reform movement, which has seen a single judge thwart Proposition 187-consigning California to its current dismal fate-and another obstruct the implementation of SB 1070-the law which inspired this very website.

The biggest threat to President Trump’s immigration agenda, beyond the attempt by the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP to undermine it within Congress, is judicial obstruction. Immigration law is just one of many domains usurped by the federal judiciary over the past century, however it is one of the most vital to the survival of our republic. Notwithstanding the media-generated fog, this executive order is critically important, not least because it drastically reduces the number of refugees being resettled in the United States and, to the horror of the ACLU, targets criminal aliens.

The lack of reasoning that went into this decision is transparent. As Byron York points out, this injunction-relying upon a litany of unexamined open borders cliches-has been rebutted by the Justice Department, which described in painstaking detail the plenary power exercised by the Executive Branch with regard to the entry of foreign nationals into the United States. Contrary to the Obama administration, which attempted to confer a panoply of benefits upon illegal aliens without the consent of Congress, this is a measured attempt at maintaining the security of American citizens at minimal cost/inconvenience to foreigners. Even so, the same bureaucratic forces which enabled President Obama to flout the Constitution are intent upon thwarting that very reasonable aim of the current administration.

Josh Blackman has a thorough 2 part exploration of the injunction from a statutory perspective, which I highly recommend reading. These cases will set the precedent for how immigration is dealt with going forward. Therefore, we need to address and refute the myths and exaggerations which have already taken hold in large swathes of the media landscape. We cannot allow lies to dominate the narrative, because immigration is the defining issue of our era.

As most of you probably know, a federal judge has blocked portions of President Trump’s executive order pertaining to refugees from 7 Muslim majority nations. Josh Blackman has published a good summary of what this injunction accomplishes, as well as a copy of the temporary restraining order itself. According to reports, it applies to a few hundred foreigners who were either on American soil or on their way to the United States before the EO was issued. Although these individuals have temporary avoided the fate of the character portrayed by Tom Hanks in The Terminal, it’s worth noting that there are much bigger issues at stake in this debate.

The open borders know nothings have deftly exploited the ignorance of large swathes of the American public to score a public relations victory against a man whom they’ve impotently warred against for over a year. Ironically, one of the refugees Democratic partisans claimed to be rescuing was able to succinctly explain why our new President’s immigration policies were in fact pretty reasonable. Beyond the simple observation that this executive order is not a ban on Muslim refugees, we have to confront the truly bizarre notion that our current refugee resettlement policy is somehow beneficial to American citizens. While some armchair analysts on social media have made the assertion that this is not the point of refugee resettlement-a point on which we agree-others have claimed that not importing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from abroad poses a risk of future terrorism. By this token, Japan-which has a de facto ban on Muslim immigration-should be as unlivable as Afghanistan or Pakistan. Or, at the very least, have as many terrorist attacks as Turkey.

It’s a patently absurd suggestion, yet one which is repeated without shame by open borders apologists who have no rational justification for our country’s bizarre refugee resettlement program. Just as the beliefs of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande-two European leaders who have presided over an unprecedented spree of Muslim terror within their countries-is a laughable excuse to invite in potential security risks, so to is the misguided notion that we’re creating terrorists by not letting potential terrorists onto American soil. Nearly half of the refugees admitted to the United States, and over 30% of those admitted since the 9/11 attacks, are Muslim. To comprehend why this is such a problem you need only scroll through a week’s worth of posts on Refugee Resettlement Watch.

Leaving aside the potential for terrorism-both domestically and abroad-exploitation of the welfare system, and crime, there’s the fundamental incompatibility of cultures. As the economist Nassim Taleb has pointed out, Americans expect foreigners who come here to accept American values and customs-and at a bare minimum, not to impose their values upon us. Whether or not this is a realistic expectation is another matter, but the idea that every person coming here does so because they want to become part of American society-a notion regurgitated endlessly by open borders advocates-is simply preposterous.

Even those who don’t pose a direct threat to the health and safety of American citizens-who don’t engage in honor killings, as dozens of Muslims families in the United States do each year-hold beliefs that are fundamentally at odds with those which shaped this nation. While those views are normal in Iraq, Somalia, or Syria, they are not in the United States, and we should not attempt to normalize them-to borrow a phrase from the unhinged left. President Trump’s order, however crudely executed, was the right thing to do. Hopefully, it’s just the beginning of a completely new approach to this vital issue.

Update: Tommy Robinson right again, the perp arrived in Turkey via Syria. 

ISIS claims responsibility. 

Burying the dead. 

Graphic photos of the Istanbul massacre. 

A profile of the victims of jihad. 

For good ongoing overage of this attack, follow Abdullah Bozkurt’s Twitter feed.

One of the most exasperating parts of following news coverage of the latest wave of Islamic atrocities is the deliberately mendacious way these crimes against humanity are portrayed by the Fourth Estate, the Santa attack inside of an Istanbul nightclub being just the latest example of this willful deception. At least the editors of the Daily Beast had the courtesy to enclose that word in quotation marks, but people who didn’t read beyond the headline of this story would probably be under the impression that a deranged mall santa decided to go on  a bloody rampage, a la A Christmas Horror Story. No, this wasn’t a case of an otherwise non-ideological lunatic going postal, or a person cosplaying a scenario from a Batman vs. Joker film.

It was a calculated jihadist methodically mowing down Kufr and infidels-foreign tourists, but also secular Turks who enjoy living in (relative) freedom-as is prescribed in his scripture, i.e. the Koran. This terrorist was acting upon the same impulse as his fellow Turks, some of whom spent the Christmas season holding Santa Claus at gunpoint in order to express their displeasure at a religious/cultural festival which does not involve rivers of blood. When an acquaintance informed me of this massacre on New Year’s Eve, the way he described it made it seem like an utterly random outbreak of ultra-violence. This popular misconception needs to be challenged at every opportunity, because it is literally taking innocent life.

As horrifying as it is to admit that over 11,000 human beings have had their lives erased because of Islam in 2016 alone, this truth needs to be assimilated if we are to ever hope of living in anything approaching Western civilization. People need to reject the comforting delusions which have made these types of massacres more, not less, likely. We are facing a global ideology which is anti-civilization, anti-thought, and anti-humanity.

Saint Nicholas would not be allowed to live in modern-day Turkey, and if Santa Claus existed I’m almost certain he would have been quickly beheaded by one of the many Sunni terrorist groups operating within that country. 2016 should be a wakeup call to those who have been ignoring the exterminationist war being fought against crusaders and infidels. Continuing to live in ignorance is no longer an option.

The Benghazi Report has finally been published, you can read it in its entirety here, which means we’ve been treated to some predictable political reactions, including this illuminating headline from the New York Times. Leaving aside the predictable spin from Hillary boosters in the fourth estate, one of my main problems with the national debate over Benghazi is its tunnel vision, especially as it relates to the former First Lady’s shortcomings as a political leader and decision-maker.

The intentionally deceptive narrative crafted by this administration in the aftermath of the Benghazi assault is simply one of many outrages to stem from this unprecedented attack upon one of our country’s diplomatic outposts. Leaving aside the despicable treatment of the survivors by then Secretary of State Clinton, the private and public treatment of this disaster by the Obama administration demonstrates their policy preferences clearly. Namely, to exculpate Islam from blame for any and all atrocities it’s responsible for, even if the link between the two is undeniable to any rational observer.

Beyond the Orwellian whitewashing of the world’s most violent ideology, the baleful consequences of the invasion which preceded the 2012 sack of America’s Libyan compound continue to be downplayed by its unintended authors. Both by this administration and its supporters, as well as neoconservative intellectuals and politicians who would have us believe that a foreign policy disaster was a brilliant geopolitical move. The fact that a global Sunni jihadist network was given yet another base of operations from which to operate, however attenuated, seems to have made no impression upon the people who charted this catastrophic path. The fact that the invasion of Libya led directly to ISIS atrocities within the heart of Europe, as well as permanently altering the very nature of European civilization, seems to have had no discernible impact on the very people who are responsible for these horrific outcomes.

To the contrary, Hillary Clinton has made the importation of tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from the Middle East-the same sort of refugees responsible for the rape pandemic enveloping Europe-a cornerstone of her campaign. Even as she seeks to displace blame for the fiascos in Syria and Libya onto her former boss, she continues to fully embrace the idiotic policies which have wrought havoc across the Middle East and threaten to devour the continent of Europe-to say nothing of the threat posed to American citizens. The grand policy of invade the world, invite the world will be continued under another Clinton administration, which threatens to make the horrific events currently unfolding around us pale by comparison.

The victims of the Benghazi stretch beyond Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty-and even their bereaved families-all the way across the globe. Anointing Hillary Clinton as the next Commander-in-Chief will not only be an insult to the memories of those victims, it will be an invitation for more chaos, bloodshed, and disasters which we cannot even envision at this point in time. Pandora’s box cannot be closed, but that doesn’t mean we should go searching for new demons and inviting them into our homes.

Update: It looks like Great Britain will have a new PM. Watch David Cameron’s resignation speech. 

A fascinating chart illustrates the difference in voting patterns between the 1975 referendum on the European Economic Community and yesterday’s Brexit vote. 

A map of how Britain voted in the EU Referendum. 

Nearly 17 and half million votes for British sovereignty. Well done, chaps. Final results. 

Brexit Live, with Sargon of Akkad. 

The Beeb has thrown in the towel. We have achieved Brexit. 

Rotherham votes for Brexit in overwhelming numbers. 

The Telegraph is mapping the results as they come in. 

Nigel Farage is not optimistic.

Courtesy of Sky News.

If you wanted to view a cross-section of the individuals whom Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are trying to enlist in their cause, you could do worse than visit a Donald Trump rally, where the hatred and viciousness of revanchist Mexicans and Hispanic gang members-or Dreamers, as Hillary calls them-is on full display. The Gateway Pundit has a post about a non-Hispanic Muslim thug who decided to join in on the action.

All of this begs the question, where is the safe space for Americans?

I distinctly remember taking part in an online discussion several years ago where one of the interlocutors warned me what would happen if Google ever became an evil monopoly. I couldn’t help but think to myself, have you not been paying attention? Leaving aside its extensive invasions of privacy, its intense cooperation with the largest dictatorship on the planet, as well as its agreements with more benighted countries which might or might not censor blasphemous search results, there is the pervasive ideological bias which infects this corporation and periodically makes itself known through heavy-handed editorial and advertising decisions.

However,  a corporation which finds itself even more powerful than Google in terms of shaping the public debate is Facebook. Thanks to Gizmodo, we now know that the militant opposition to Donald Trump among Mark Zuckerberg and his minions was simply the tip of the iceberg, and that Facebook employees had purposefully manipulated their site’s Trending Topics feature in order to suppress conservative views.  Discrimination against non-bien pensant views-including opposition to open borders, multiculturalism, firearms abolition, and using the Constitution as a leftist version of Mad Libs-is encoded in Facebook’s DNA.

In order to grasp just how pervasive this sort of viewpoint discrimination is, one need only look at the case of Lauren Southern, who was banned from Facebook for critiquing Facebook’s tendency to delete outspoken, non-leftist accounts. It’s interesting how liberals lament epistemic closure while simultaneously overlooking the stranglehold not only old but new media exercise over acceptable public debate, restricting the Overton Window to a range of issues that appeal to a small class of opinion-makers, even as forces that are transforming Western civilization are studiously ignored by the gatekeepers of permissible discourse.

Those on the left willing to admit that this is a problem are few and far between, which shouldn’t surprise you considering the fact that even ostensible conservatives can’t wait to grovel before power. Milo, as usual, has a great write-up of the Potemkin conservatives meeting with Zuck, which I recommend reading in its entirety. This is a multi-front war, where we face enemies both internally and externally, and the only way we’re going to begin to make progress is through relentless honesty, regardless of how limited our options for dissemination of the truth might be.

Update: Human remains found. 

Quelle Surprise! 

What we know about Flight 804, courtesy of The Takeaway. 

Some interesting possibilities explored by John Batchelor. 

More details about the moments preceding Flight 804’s crash. 

Terrorism can’t be ruled out. 

Transparency is not at a premium when you work for the Egyptian state, evidently. 

Egyptian civil aviation officials believe the flight has crashed. Some good info can be found on this Free Republic thread.

Live updates, courtesy of the New York Times.