(This article was written by Shea Bradley-Farrell and appeared in Human Events. SHEA BRADLEY-FARRELL: Kamala Harris has encouraged the largest sex trafficking operation in history)

Border security and immigration are critical issues for the November 5th election, and Americans must make an informed decision when voting. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ administration has claimed for four years that its “immigration policies” are “safe, orderly, and humane” for the millions flooding to U.S. borders. In reality, Harris presides over the largest human and sex trafficking scheme in history—and women and girls bear the brunt of it.

In 2022, eight hundred and ninety-five (895) illegal immigrant deaths on the Southwest Border (on U.S. territory) were reported by CBP , over 3 1/2 times the amount of deaths recorded in 2020, the last year of the Trump administration. Although 2022 is the last year of available reliable statistics, the numbers are sure to have risen. In addition, 22,000 rescues of individuals in distress occurred.

The majority of the deaths are due to exposure or to drowning and occurred in the sectors of Del Rio and Rio Grande Valley, Texas. And, a disturbing new trend has occurred: more women and girls are dying . In fact, the percentage of female deaths tripled , from 9 percent in 2020 to 27 percent in 2022. These figures suggest more women and girls are migrating illegally , incentivized by the Biden-Harris administration’s “catch and release” program and exploitation of U.S. asylum policies.

Alison Anderson, the wife of a U.S. Border Patrol agent of 16 years, has lived with her family on the Texas-Mexico border for almost a decade, first on a ranch near Big Bend National Park and then in Del Rio. Alison reported to me in an interview how she observes the exploitation of women firsthand:

“The groups, left on the U.S. side by the coyotes working for the cartels are mostly males…there are maybe two females in a group of forty. Countless women have been abandoned who refused to sleep with the males in the group … or because they are not physically strong enough to keep up…(and) they have no water or food … We’ve found pregnant eighteen year olds abandoned. We’ve found raped and brutalized and beaten teenagers abandoned and wandering around.”

Alison says she also sees those who “are the real victims—the women that get raped by over a dozen men and are left, and still haven’t been discovered. Their bones have been scattered by the critters and there’s nothing left of them.”

Although there is little to no data on human and sex trafficking at the U.S. border, eyewitness reports from Border Patrol, emergency medical professionals, and doctors highlight the increasing problem of females that enter the U.S. illegally—children, teenagers and women— being raped, abused, or sexually assaulted in some way.

A study done by Doctors Without Borders (2015-2016) sheds some light on the abuse migrants endure on their way from the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA) into Mexico. In this scenario, one out of three are sexually assaulted, including rape, assault and forced nudity. Over 68 percent report being victims of some type of violence.

Alison shares one of many stories where she and her husband discovered victims, this time a young child:

“My husband worked on a toddler, like eighteen months, a little girl from Brazil, who was pulled out of the river here. He was doing chest compressions on her while her ‘mother’—I use that term very loosely—was in the back of a Border Patrol vehicle complaining about not being warm enough…unfortunately we were not able to save her, she was under the water too long… she had been savagely brutalized [by rape, the horrific details of which have been left out] … It was suspected the ‘mother’ used her as payment to cross the river…These are the stories that nobody hears about.”

Little attention is given to the inhumanity of the human trafficking facilitated and encouraged by the border policies of Kamala Harris and her administration.

Few in Harris’ administration or the media even acknowledge it, an emergency medical services professional working on the border told me in an interview. He underlines with sadness how illegal immigration on the U.S. southern border, facilitated by brutal Mexican cartels, “dehumanizes” people. How many “broken young women,” who—hopeful for a new life and having paid thousands of dollars to the cartels—will comply “with anything” to be trafficked across the border. How women and children are raped, shot, and exploited in “drop houses” on the U.S. side of the border. He notes how women wear bar-coded bands on their wrists—labeled like livestock—so that they and the money they owe can be tracked by the cartels.

This EMS professional has worked at the Firefly Border Patrol Processing Center at the Texas-Mexico border (between Del Rio and Eagle Pass). He says this about the female victims that he routinely treats: “Their design is to get to the U.S., and it’s the price they pay for going through. They’re either going to pay upfront (with money), or pay afterward with indentured servitude or sex service, but someone’s got to pay. What’s strange is that our government facilitates it. Once they cross the border, they get them where they need to go.”

Alison Anderson says that the rape victims she sees are often afraid of retaliation “or worse” by the cartels if they “speak up about their experiences,” and will keep silent to protect other family members that want to come to the U.S. She describes their experiences:

“One female in particular came through the ranch and was a wreck emotionally. She did confide in a Border Patrol agent that she had been raped and the location was very close to our house … Shortly after, two teenage girls were found that had been raped and left for dead. One was barely responsive and the other, when (Border Patrol) went to help her, acted violently because of the trauma she had been through.”

Without public awareness of how these women and children are physically and psychologically damaged by being trafficked across U.S. borders, there will be no support structure for the victims.

The EMS professional warns that these “broken young women … are ‘product,’ labeled and tracked by the cartels…and now they’re ours—going to school with our grandkids, in our systems and our communities…Beyond the economic impact (on American communities) it’s going to have tremendous psychological and health impacts—for years and years.”

In addition to the tragic impact on U.S. border communities , the toll on U.S. state, local, and federal law enforcement has not been effectively analyzed or considered. A senior Border Patrol official in McAllen, Texas, reported to me in 2022, that suicide rates, domestic violence, and alcoholism are significantly higher now among Border Patrol agents than before Biden-Harris took office.

Agents have been “greatly impacted” by observing on a daily basis the abuse of illegal aliens by the Mexican cartels—the rapes, killings, and assaults in the “drop houses” located on the U.S. side of the border, where illegals await trafficking into the interior of the United States.

The past four years of the Biden-Harris administration’s willful destruction of U.S. borders have been a brutal and dark period in U.S. history, in stark contrast to the values and principles of American sovereignty, integrity, and security. American citizens must know the truth before casting their ballots on November 5th.

Shea Bradley-Farrell is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Derk Jan Eppink: Niet het kabinet-Schoof zit in een Europees isolement, maar de dromers van GroenLinks-PvdA)

Anyone listening to the delegates of the left-wing opposition and the voices of the progressive media would think that the Schoof cabinet is in complete isolation in Europe. With a prime minister who stands like a lost soul in the doghouse corner of the Council building in Brussels, outdone by his colleagues with the remark: ‘Back to the polder and shame on you’. But anyone who looks closely at the spectacle at the recent European summit of heads of government must conclude: the opposite is the case.

A different wind is blowing through Europe and the Schoof cabinet is a trendsetter, however much the progressive family dislikes it. The previous cabinet, Rutte IV, had already set the turn in motion, even with D66 on board. The then state secretary for Asylum and Migration Eric van der Burg (VVD) signed, on 15 May, together with fourteen other European member states, a ‘joint letter’ about ‘new solutions’ to counter ‘uncontrolled migration’. That letter described the situation, with a rapid increase in the number of migrants, as ‘unsustainable’. Goal: ‘thinking outside the box’.

During last week’s European summit the heads of government stepped up the pace further, under the leadership of the Netherlands, Italy and Denmark. The latter two countries are led by women who know how to get things done: the conservative Giorgia Meloni and the social democrat Mette Frederiksen.

The three initiators brought the political leaders of Austria, Cyprus, Poland, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia to the table with them. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was also present. She directs the bureaucratic machinery, because without the Commission there is no starting point for European legislation. Coalition-building is compulsory fare in European politics. The rest is poetry.

So who is isolated then? Progressive Netherlands, which has entrenched itself in an intellectual and political self-isolation, as a bastion on the moral high plateau. In the assumption that changing migration and asylum policy cannot and must not happen. But it does happen, see the ‘Schoof table’. Europe has changed since the European elections, but that process has passed progressive Netherlands by. All the sacred cows that the PvdA and Groen Links invoke out of their merger reflex are being ‘filed vertically’ in Brussels, headed for the wastepaper. That is of course painful, but whoever, as the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev once said, is too late, is overtaken by history. In this case at the ballot box.

What is happening now is not new in Europe. The active Kati Piri, foreign affairs spokesperson for GroenLinks-PvdA, must know that too. The legal services of the European Commission and the European Council are inventive. What seemed impossible yesterday is feasible tomorrow. The Belgian prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene once said: ‘Under high pressure everything becomes fluid’. The Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, former president of the European Union, had wanted for some time for the European migration and asylum rules to be suspended for the protection of the Polish border with Belarus and Russia (Kaliningrad). Finland wants the same for the 1,600-kilometer-long border with Russia. And so it came to pass.

And what about the southern border of the European Union? Italy is moving the reception of asylum seekers and the assessment of asylum applications to Albania. Upon rejection these locations become ‘return hubs’, a system that already somewhat resembles the method Hungary applies: detention at the border, assessment and (in most cases) deportation.

The trend is: as few asylum seekers as possible within the EU, handling of asylum requests in third countries and return to a safe region outside the EU. The best thing would be to handle asylum requests in, for example, Africa and to organize reception in cooperation with local countries. That spares asylum seekers a long, sometimes deadly, journey to Europe, organized by criminal gangs.

The aim of the current talks is to bring forward elements from the Migration and Asylum Pact of May this year, which only takes effect in 2026, and to start implementing them immediately. The pressure is great and the legal services will surely find a way.

Step by step we are moving toward ‘fortress Europe’. That is not how it is sold in Brussels, but that is what it comes down to. The external border of the EU in Southern Europe will come to resemble that with Russia and Belarus. There are of course differences, but the intention is the same: a hard border. In other words, a real border.

Now progressive Dutch people will say: but Germany, France, Belgium and Spain were not at the table with Schoof. The explanation is simple. The German chancellor Olaf Scholz leads a cabinet with the greens who, after the murderous attack in Solingen, are themselves in a political death struggle. The rudder was turned among our eastern neighbors: border controls, certainly for half a year, deportation of 28 Afghans who had committed crimes, cuts to benefits and expulsion of illegals. German socialists and greens have been forced to make a turnaround that is indigestible for the merger party GroenLinks-PvdA. On 28 September next year there are Bundestag elections in Germany.

In France prime minister Michel Barnier has already announced a stricter asylum policy, although the French constitution states that asylum requests must be handled on French territory. But then again, Corsica is also France. Belgium, under the possible new federal prime minister Bart De Wever, will immediately join the ‘Schoof group’.

The Spanish socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez is the only outspoken critic, but he will not keep that up for long. Now that Italy is taking drastic measures, the influx there is falling, but it has shifted to Spain, where the number of asylum seekers is increasing sharply. Sanchez thinks the newcomers can go to work, but he does not know his own economy. Spain has the highest unemployment in the EU: 11.3 percent. Youth unemployment is 27 percent. Spanish voters are not waiting for the arrival of immigrants.

The Schoof table will get busier because the facts are imposing themselves on the heads of government. The voter is making his voice heard, throughout Europe, on the same theme. The migration pressure will not disappear any time soon. Africa now has 1.2 billion inhabitants; by 2100 that number is estimated at around 4 billion. The migration pressure will persist throughout this century and beyond. Open or even porous borders lead to the self-abolition of Europe.

What about the isolation of progressive Netherlands? All energy is directed at the fall of the sitting cabinet and that apparently feels like a warm bath. Result: an inward-looking gaze, denial of the angry outside world and for the rest willful deafness. Even PvdA leader Frans Timmermans, former first vice-president of the current European Commission, is remarkably silent. Or is there a quarrel in the merger party?

There is certainly something to improve about the Schoof cabinet, and its governing capacity in particular could be raised. But the claim that the Netherlands is isolated in Europe with this cabinet does not hold water. The Netherlands is helping to set the trend in Europe, is part of the conversation, sits at the table and builds coalitions, while progressive Netherlands has found its refuge in dreamland.

Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in Warrior Maven. OPED: What’s The Best Way to Avoid Nuclear War?)

In 1984 Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick scorched the Democratic Party for always “blaming America first” for the problems in the world. The American people took to her charge and voted fifty states to one to re-elect President Ronald Reagan.

Five years later, the USSR collapsed, all of Eastern Europe joined the free world, and freedom appeared to be on the march. In the Americas by 1991, every nation had a near democratic government with the exceptions of Haiti and Cuba.

Fast forward to 2024, now forty years later, the Ambassador could now give that speech but instead of talking just about the leftist part of the Democratic Party, she could be describing conservative members of the CATO Institute.

In a September 12 essay, Doug Bandow, a CATO Senior Fellow, writes that the United States has to avoid and not fight future nuclear wars but that to do so the United States has to recognize the wars that might reach its shores are being kindled by US foreign interventions. In short, America is the real bad guy in this narrative.

Most importantly, the US is guilty of pursuing “global primacy.”

In the Middle East, we gave weapons to Israel which were used for the “brutal destruction” of Gaza, and thus in retaliation, the Houthis in Yemen attacked commercial shipping in response.

The US is regularly attacked by Iranian militias in Iraq, but it is our fault for being there in the first place. The US “enables” Israeli attacks on Iran which “triggers” retaliatory strikes. Overall writes Bandow, the US does much to “encourage” conflict in the Middle East.

In Europe, the US has “recklessly violated” assurances to Moscow including that NATO would not expand following the unification of Germany. Ukraine engaged in a reckless act of sabotage against the Nord Stream pipeline, so why shouldn’t Moscow attack Ukraine? As for Russia, they were never interested in threatening Europe even throughout the Cold War, and their interest in Ukraine is to establish a protective sphere of interest while the US is risking nuclear war to oppose.

And in the Pacific, Taiwan is an existential interest to China and being only 100 miles offshore from the mainland, is hardly of any real interest to the United States. The PRC disputes with the Philippines are only territorial and about small islands and similarly should not be of interest to the United States. The US commitment to the Philippines causes unnecessary concern in China and could lead to armed conflict. After all the US was wiling to go to war over Cuba in 1962 so we should understand why China is so concerned with Taiwan. As for North Korea, Bandow asserts that North Korea is “perpetually threatened” by the United States: and quips Bandow, every time the US flies a strategic bomber over the Korean peninsula, Kim Jong In probably adds a few nuclear bombs to his inventory.

Defending our allies with an extended deterrent in all these cases risks bringing nuclear retaliatory attacks onto the US mainland. And given the “aggressive US policy” says Bandow, none of these nuclear armed nations can afford to back down.

During the early years of the Cold War the US could threaten nuclear destruction without consequence. That all changed in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Today, the US is the one threatening the core interests of contending great powers including maritime control in the case of China, a buffer zone with respect to Russia and territorial integrity of North Korea.

Writes Bandow, all three—Russia, China and North Korea– have no designs on the United States. They pose no threat and have no territorial disputes with the United States.

However, putting more countries under our nuclear umbrella, does make the US a threat to China, Russia and North Korea. See defending our allies from invasion is bad form.

In reality, these three axis of evil simply want the right to invade and kill their neighbors, but Bandow cleverly says well there is no reason China should be “penned” inside its territory or that Putin’s Russia should not also “influence” its neighbors, and North Korea be free to terrorize the ROK.

So, Bandow thinks it would be better for the US to simply drop its extended deterrent strategy and avoid unnecessary war and bring its troops home. After all, he says the oceans are big and wide and the US has friendly neighbors.

The result could of course be that our allies such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Ukraine all build their own nuclear weapons and protect themselves.

Then the US can pretend that through surrender, the world will be safer and the United States would successfully safeguard its homeland.

As we contemplate NW Asia with China, Russia, the NPRK, the ROK, Japan and Taiwan all with nuclear arsenals.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. Will Harris’ campaign strategy lead her to electoral success?)

Kamala Harris’ campaign team is employing different strategies in the final weeks running up to the 2024 US presidential election. Two prominent tactics are distancing herself from President Joe Biden and borrowing themes from Donald Trump’s campaign. This raises several questions. Why is Harris’ campaign pursuing these strategies? Will they help her win the White House on Nov. 5?

Many Democratic leaders believe that President Biden has hindered rather than helped the party’s prospects in 2024. Among them is former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who reportedly pressured Biden to exit the race after his poor performance in a debate against Trump early in the summer. His economic record is not impressive and several wars have occurred during his presidency, such as the conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and between Russia and Ukraine.

Historically, friction often arises between the staff of a sitting president and their vice president when the latter runs for president. This occurred in 2000, when Vice President Al Gore distanced himself from President Bill Clinton, particularly after Clinton’s involvement in several ethical scandals. In 2024, a similar dynamic is playing out. Harris recognizes that Biden’s approval ratings are low, so she is seeking to differentiate herself from him, especially in style. She aims to restore confidence among Democrats who have lost faith in Biden. Her campaign portrays her as a change-maker, conveying that the old guard of the Democratic Party is fading and that she represents the new face of change.

Additionally, political observers have noted that Harris is borrowing several themes from her opponent’s campaign. For example, she has adopted Trump’s idea of eliminating taxation on tips for restaurant workers. Republican strategist Frank Luntz commented: “Harris is taking pages out of the Republican playbook … There’s an important use of language, especially her focus on small business issues and describing herself as a capitalist. If you listen to these general statements, she sounds like a moderate Republican. The challenge for the Trump campaign is to move away from character attacks and focus on specific issues and her claims.”

On national security, Trump criticizes Biden and Harris for emboldening America’s adversaries, such as China, Russia and Iran. Harris has used a similar tactic by accusing Trump of being a weak leader that no foreign head of state respects. She said last month: “It’s well known that Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy. He admires dictators and wants to be a dictator himself.”

However, these tactics are not necessarily winning over the American public. A political strategist noted that borrowing from an opponent’s playbook and relying on personal attacks can be tiresome to voters, who are “tired of the same old playbook, filled with lies, grievances and name-calling.” A complete political separation between Harris and the Biden White House is impossible, as she still needs the Democratic base to win the election. For millions of voters, she represents the preservation of Biden’s legacy. Moreover, Harris cannot fully agree with Trump on economic policies. For instance, while Trump intends to interfere in Federal Reserve policy, Harris firmly disagrees with this approach.

Ultimately, the scope of issues in any presidential campaign should surpass policy differences between a sitting president and their vice president when the latter is running to succeed them. It is also unlikely that voters will see little distinction between two presidential candidates simply because one borrows some themes from the other.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. La razón frente a la histeria)

Last Wednesday, at the midpoint of the rotating Hungarian presidency of the EU, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán came to the European Parliament in Strasbourg to lay out its guiding lines. A debate on the grave problems afflicting the EU — problems that have already produced serious effects of impoverishment, the collapse of industry and agriculture, insecurity and regression in freedoms — proved impossible. The MEPs of the majority of the People’s Party, Socialists, Greens and communists turned the plenary into a grotesque farce.

Some brainless people in the hemicycle went so far as to compare Orbán to Hitler. There followed one intervention after another by deputies of parties with barely any representation, some of whom take part in governments as failed as Olaf Scholz’s German one, lecturing a ruler who has three absolute majorities behind him. Who governs successfully and with ever greater influence abroad. And who has predicted for years the problems that have been accumulating in the European Union because of the policy of greater centralism, greater socialism and greater arrogance which of course, under Ursula von der Leyen, has reached never-before-imagined levels. But no one wanted to hear about the real problems and the feasible solutions.

The day before, Viktor Orbán gave a two-and-a-half-hour press conference such as no European ruler dares to give today. He answered with patience, seriousness and good humor dozens of questions, the vast majority of them vitriolic and hostile and in large part coming from Hungarian media. Anyone who heard the journalists of the Hungarian media put questions of unusual aggressiveness to their prime minister will never again believe the lies of those who say that Orbán has the press under his thumb. What a joke to think of the press conferences at the Moncloa with Sánchez’s three obligatory henchmen facilitating, with their questions, the dissemination of the official lies.

The already very long campaign against Hungary for its firm conservative policy and its rejection of illegal and Muslim immigration has been exacerbated to unheard-of levels of aggressiveness by its disagreements with the way the EU is handling the war in Ukraine. That, no sooner had he assumed the presidency, he undertook on his own initiative a tour to meet with Zelensky first, then Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, generated infinite fury in Brussels and Berlin.

It was then that Orbán began to be treated as if he were an agent of Putin, which is a rigorous falsehood. The Hungarian leader has made clear that those who say Ukraine has to win without negotiating should have given it the weapons to do so much earlier. However, the large Western European countries and especially France and Germany, which egg the Ukrainians on to persevere, have always denied them the weapons to do it successfully. Orbán made clear once again in Strasbourg that if the EU and NATO — of which he declared himself a proud member (fortunately, Hungary was a member of NATO) — want Ukraine to win, they have to change strategy, because the current strategy, which is von der Leyen’s, is, he said, a resounding failure, a losing strategy in which Hungary does not want to take part.

On Wednesday the reputation of a parliament hit rock bottom, a parliament that looked like an assembly of leftist adolescents competing to be the author of the worst rudeness, insult or slur against Orbán. He came to propose changes that are increasingly necessary in European politics and in the way the European Union functions. They are the changes that Europeans are demanding, as was seen clearly from the results of the elections. But he ran into a president of the Commission who from the very first moment treated him as an enemy and who violated all parliamentary decorum, procedures and logic with a grotesque attack on the country that presides over the European Council for these six months. Von der Leyen has grown accustomed to despising and ignoring all the procedures that circumscribe her action and mandate. She arrogates to herself competences she does not have and behaves as the supreme authority in the EU, which she is not, with punitive powers over the nations, which she does not have.

Orbán once again displayed not only the seasoning of the most veteran head of government among the 27 current member states. Also his proverbial humor and how much he enjoys seeing his enemies unhinged. And in the hemicycle it was clearly perceptible how things have changed. It was no longer a small minority that applauded Orbán but a very substantial part of the hemicycle, in which the Patriots group — which includes Fidesz, Orbán’s party, and also Vox — is the third-largest in size. All the forces to the right of the PP were applauding.

Meanwhile, the PP and the left called him every name, accused him of everything and invented a nonexistent Hungary, little short of a concentration camp. The ridicule that so many made of themselves was cringeworthy, and there are many who suffered catastrophic reputational damage among the deputies. And Orbán, with all calm, not only responded with rationality to the cascades of ridiculous sentimentalism, pathetic anger and litanies of lies about Hungary that have become the “official truth” of the Commission. Beyond that, he responded, naming names, to some of the aggressors, in certain cases with refined cruelty, as with Manfred Weber. The latter, head of the European People’s Party — of which Fidesz, Orbán’s party, was a member until a few years ago — had permitted himself a perfectly contemptible intervention against a prime minister with an absolute majority and the overwhelming support of the Hungarian nation for fourteen years.

Lamentable and out of place was the speech of Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission who has already forgotten that she is at the service of the rulers of the EU’s member nations and is not the queen of Europe who can devote herself to disparaging and attacking her provincial governors. Von der Leyen has managed to keep the presidency of the Commission by leading the People’s Party to embrace all the losers of the elections and to persist obstinately on the failed course of the past legislature with its green and socialist social engineering. That is what the 188 seats of the European PP, harvested thanks to the general turn to the right across Europe, have been used for.

The parties that have grown the most are in the three groups to the right of the PP and make possible that new possible majority which needs neither the leftists and supposed liberals of Renew nor the Socialists. The alternative majority took shape in the resolution on Venezuela last month in Strasbourg. Since then the People’s Party seems to have entered a hysterical phase, aggravated by the elections in Austria where its people’s party lost 20 seats and the party to its right, the FPÖ — a member of Patriots along with Fidesz and Vox — grew by 26. European politics has entered into motion and the PP is sinking into a dilemma that will soon lead to internal tensions. The confrontation is scheduled between those who want to cooperate with the conservative and national parties to their right, where a viable majority exists, and those who want to continue with the left and the Greens down a path that has already proven to be a generator of poverty, socialism, massive interventionism, a legislative and regulatory jungle, bureaucracy, censorship and, as a reaction, every time there is a national election in a member country, massive growth of the parties to their right.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Shea Bradley-Farrell and appeared in Human Events. SHEA BRADLEY-FARRELL: VP Harris’ legacy is convicted murderers and sex offenders roaming U.S. streets)

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris repeatedly points to her record as a prosecutor “taking on predators” to mark a sharp contrast between her and her opponent, former President Donald Trump. But not only did crime rise by 41% during her administration, under her border policies, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants with criminal histories –including murder and sexual assault – may right now be freely roaming U.S. streets.

As a result of her administration’s policies like “Catch and Release,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports that it has (as of July 2024) released over 640,000 illegal aliens with criminal histories. This number includes over 425,000 convicted criminals and 222,000 with pending criminal charges.

Of the number of convicted criminals released, 13,099 were convicted of homicide, 62,231 of assault, 15,811 of sexual assault, and 14,301 of burglary. Shocked? What’s more, there is no publicly available data describing their current custodial status or whereabouts.

ICE uses custody “ detainers ” to identify and remove criminal illegal aliens who are in local, state or federal custody. However, ICE also maintains a “non-detained” docket which describes the aliens released into the U.S. under a “case-management” process of (hopeful) compliance while their removal processes are pending. Because of an overwhelming workload on border security enforcement, who are now vastly undermanned compared to the number of immigrants flooding U.S. borders, the ICE non-detained docket has more than doubled since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office in 2021.

At that time, the non-detained docket had only about 3.7 million cases; it now includes about 7.5 million . Contrast that with ICE’s current detention capacity at only 41,500 beds for Fiscal Year 2024, and only 34,000 in FY 2023.

ICE cites sanctuary city policies as another barrier to detention. ICE obviously relies on the cooperation of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to gain custody of an illegal alien. However, it cites that some “jurisdictions have reduced their cooperation with ICE, to include refusal to honor ICE detainer requests, even for noncitizens who have been convicted of serious felonies and pose an ongoing threat to public safety.” Ironically, these criminals often turn around and commit crimes in those same communities.

At the same time, crime in the United States has hit record levels. Recently, the Department of Justice (DOJ) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) uncovered a significant increase in violent crime under the Biden-Harris administration as compared to when former President Donald Trump left office.

According to the NCVS survey , total violent crime increased by 41% (2023) in the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration (since 2020, the last year of the Trump administration). It is “by far the largest percentage increase over any three-year period on record, more than doubling the previous record.” Violent crime actually fell 17% under the Trump administration, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Contrary to mainstream media reports, the NCVS survey gives a more accurate number of total crimes committed in the U.S. as compared to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the report referred to by moderator David Muir, during the Trump-Harris debate on September 10th 2024, in his attempt to prove declining U.S. crime rates under the Biden-Harris administration.

Here’s why: the UCR measures the numbers of crimes reported to police each year, while the NCVS survey actually reports the number of people who have been victims of crime. The UCR is flawed as an indicator of actual crime because crime victims only report about 40% of violent crime and 30% of property crime to police.

In fact, the less faith that crime victims have that law enforcement can be trusted and criminals will be caught and punished, the less likely they are to report crime to the police. Ironically, the UCR shows that Americans are reporting less crime during the Biden administration, during a time of actual rising crime as reported by the NCVS survey, suggesting that crime victims have less faith today in America’s justice system under the Biden-Harris administration and Democrats’ “soft on crime” policies .

But is record-level crime under the Biden-Harris administration connected to the current mass illegal migration in the U.S.? Although U.S. crime statistics do not give researchers the information to determine how much illegal immigrants affect the rise of violent crime in the U.S., the answer is most likely yes. Besides the fact that over a half a million aliens with (known) criminal histories were released into the U.S. by ICE, European research shows a clear link between rising immigration in Europe and rising crime rates.

Has the U.S. ever had an administration that knowingly allowed mass illegal immigration with an increasing number of convicted burglars, rapists and murderers to walk U.S. streets? As Mark Green (R-TN), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee remarked: “DHS law enforcement has been directed to mass-release illegal aliens whom they know have criminal convictions or are facing charges for serious crimes … How many more Americans need to die or be victimized before this administration is forced to abide by the laws they swore to uphold? This is madness. It is something no civilized, well-functioning society should tolerate.”

It is madness, indeed. God save this country from the administration that has tried to destroy it.

Shea Bradley-Farrell is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Derk Jan Eppink: Schreef doctor Thierry Baudet zijn proefschrift wel (helemaal) zelf?)

On 11 March 2022 a remarkable video by FVD appeared on social media. Party leader Thierry Baudet described his mentor, the British academic Dr. John Laughland, as a ‘unique figure’ and ‘a visionary man’ who writes ‘brilliant books’. He then said: ‘I am in the fortunate position of having come to know him in my life. That I was able to write part of my dissertation with him, and at his side’.

On 21 June 2012 Baudet obtained his doctorate at Leiden University with a dissertation titled The Significance of Borders: Why Representative Government and the Rule of Law Require Nation States. His supervisor was Paul Cliteur, professor of the encyclopedia of law. In the acknowledgments Baudet mentions Laughland among 39 others.

Laughland’s best-known book dates from 1997: The Tainted Source: undemocratic origins of the European idea. In 2007 he published the book Travesty about the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević. Laughland advocates full sovereignty of nation states and, according to him, the European Union and tribunals such as those of Tokyo and Nuremberg do not fit that vision, nor does the international prosecution of Milošević and Saddam Hussein.

In this Baudet follows Laughland completely. They are in very regular contact, calling each other all the time. But of course a doctoral candidate must write his dissertation himself. It is not a co-production with scholars, neighbors or friends. Advice is always welcome but the doctoral candidate must be the ultimate author, in every respect.

An English-language dissertation is unusual for a doctorate at a Dutch university. Laughland is a ‘native speaker’, writes a fine ‘Oxford English’: short, compact, accurate. It is an English that Baudet does not command.

In the dissertation there are clear stylistic breaks between Oxford English and the Dutch-English of a non-‘native speaker’. The first is academically outstanding; the second is grammatically correct but often with a Dutch way of sentence construction. On the basis of those stylistic breaks (Oxford English versus Dutch-English) you can go through the dissertation with a fine comb and see which ‘part’ Baudet wrote with Laughland, or was written by Laughland.

It is striking that Part I (‘The rise of borders’), from page 7 to 77, has all the characteristics of Laughland’s style: clear, academic English. All the parts that have to do with tribunals (Nuremberg, Tokyo, Yugoslavia) but also the International Criminal Court in The Hague are virtually anthologies from the works of Laughland.

There is a stylistic break with other chapters. Thus we read on page 109: ‘Nevertheless, as I said above, all such use of the term human rights is metaphorical’. This is a form of Dutch-English. Moreover Laughland does not use the word ‘I’ in his reasoning. ‘As I said above’ would become ‘aforementioned’. The stylistic breaks show that several pens made their contribution, instead of the one pen of the doctoral candidate. The ‘multiculturalism’ part too shows forms of Dutch-English: ‘Nevertheless, the debate goes on’.

I knew both Baudet and Laughland and also their different writing styles. My conclusion is that around 130 of the 245 pages of which the dissertation consists flowed from the pen of Laughland. That may have escaped everyone’s notice because no one knew Laughland. He was, however, the ‘missing link’.

The doctoral defense in the Academy Building of Leiden University in 2012 did not go smoothly. Professor of legal philosophy Andreas Kinneging called the dissertation ‘too journalistic’. He said: ‘Since when can you obtain a doctorate on opinions instead of facts’. Baudet dismissed some questions with a single sentence or a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Professor Tom Eijsbouts reproached Baudet for ‘a lack of knowledge’ and an ‘essential violation of the procedure of his doctorate’. In his column in NRC Handelsblad Baudet had written that his doctorate was ‘a formality’.

Baudet’s video of 11 March 2022 therefore raises questions.

• What do the terms ‘with him’ and ‘at his side’ mean regarding the writing of a dissertation?
• Which ‘part’ is permissible? Or should one say: no part at all?
• What was Laughland’s role, and given the Oxford English in the dissertation, was his contribution not rather a matter of ‘parts’ written by Laughland?
• What role did Cliteur play? Baudet kept both Laughland and Cliteur close to his chest within FVD. Why?

I distill these questions from an analysis of the text of the dissertation, of the use of the English language and also in view of the intensive bond between Baudet and Laughland. It concerns, however, an academic matter about which I should not pass judgment. It is up to Leiden University to shed light on this issue.

Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

When we talk about the IRGC, we should separate its activities inside and outside the borders of Iran, or in other words, domestic and international terrorism, as it was intended when it was established by Ruhollah Khomeini’s direct order after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Domestic terrorism

As the name of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps indicates, its creation was seen as the protection of the Islamic Revolution, and the name of Iran is not even mentioned in the title of this organization. This terrorist organization views the Iranian people as a threat to the survival of the Islamic Revolution, which it believes will continue until it conquers the entire world and seeks to keep the regime alive through organized domestic terrorism inside Iran. Domestically, the IRGC plays a central role in the violent repression of Iranian citizens, systematically suppressing protests and dissent through brutal measures. It has been involved in the killing, kidnapping, and disappearance of thousands of protesters and opposition members over the past 45 years. Its subdivisions, such as the Basij and the IRGC Intelligence Organization, are instrumental in maintaining a regime of terror within Iran.

· IRGC and its Proxies in Domestic Terrorism

Iran has witnessed numerous bloody uprisings since the Islamic Revolution. The IRGC and the Basij, the IRGC’s domestic paramilitary volunteer militias, have always suppressed protests in Iran as long as they were confined to a few cities. The IRGC’s regional proxies, such as Hezbollah, Hashd Al-Shaabi, and Fatemiyoun, have contributed to the suppression of nationwide protests such as the Green Revolution, the 2018 Uprising, the 2019 Bloody November Uprising, and the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising. These proxies have been involved in regional conflicts and terrorist activities, spreading the Islamic Republic’s influence through violent means.

International Terrorism

The international terrorism of the IRGC itself is divided into two main branches, which are closely related to each other.

1. Regional Proxies

The IRGC has invested large amounts of money and energy in training its proxies in the Middle East, which began at the end of the Iran-Iraq War with a direct order from then-President Ali Khamenei to send IRGC forces to Lebanon to train the Lebanese Hezbollah. The main objective of creating the proxies under the Quds Force was to carry out the terrorist operations outside the borders without being mentioned in order to keep the name of the Islamic Republic clean and leave room for diplomacy. In the first decade of the Islamic Republic, the very existence of the Quds Force was denied. The proxy presence in the Israeli-Lebanese 1982-2000 war and the Lebanese civil wars 1975-1990, as well as the equipping and training of the Lebanese Hezbollah, should be considered among the first missions of the IRGC’s overseas branch. Although the Islamic Republic tries to deny its role in recent conflicts in the region, such as the October 7 massacre, Ezzatullah Zarghami, a former IRGC officer, discussed on Iranian state television how the IRGC provides military support to resistance forces and admitted to providing military training to Hamas, including the use of rockets, and that he himself spent some time in the underground tunnels in Gaza teaching Hamas how to build rockets.

The IRGC’s terrorist actions over the past four decades, especially the elimination of its opponents, have always been among the Islamic Republic’s priorities around the world. The Quds Force has established several bases in Iran and even in some neighboring countries, where it provides training in terrorist and espionage operations to facilitate intelligence cooperation with the Islamic Republic’s security institutions. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has its independent training bases in Iran and around the world to train its forces and proxies.

Meanwhile, some of its bases are specifically responsible for training non-Iranian forces for terrorist operations on the soil of other countries, forces selected from Iran’s proxy forces in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain and Afghanistan. IRGC Intelligence is responsible for the final selection.

2. Worldwide Proxies

Since the IRGC is the most powerful entity inside Iran in various fields, whether it is financial or military, the Quds Force should be considered as the intelligence executive arm of the IRGC to establish companies to evade sanctions and finance terror operatives especially in Europe and America which also leads to terror attacks. It also establishes companies that operate in various fields from shipping to import and export. In essence, the Islamic Republic has found a new way of doing business to evade sanctions through the IRGC.

Terrorist attacks, especially on European soil, by the IRGC is a very clear issue. If we want to examine it more closely, we come to Unit 400 of the Revolutionary Guards. Unit 400 of the Quds Force is responsible for carrying out terrorist operations outside Iran by hiring local criminal gangs, drug cartels and other third parties who can be considered as members of its proxies living abroad to carry out its assassination plots. The establishment of Islamic centers to gather its agents abroad under the cover of religion has been one of the achievements of the IRGC, especially in European countries such as Germany, to carry out the operations organized by the military branches of the Islamic Republic in its embassies. Most of the kidnapping and physical extortion operations in Europe, America and other parts of the world are carried out through this method of the Quds Force’s Unit 400.

The Islamic Republic poses political, security, and economic threats to Europe. The Islamic Republic’s extensive network of proxy forces is believed to have sleeper cells in Europe capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. In recent years, the Islamic Republic has sponsored terrorist activities and assassination plots on European soil. In 2018, European intelligence agencies foiled an Iranian plot to bomb opposition groups gathering in Paris. In 2023, German police arrested an Iranian man suspected of planning a chemical attack motivated by Islamic extremism.

Iran’s nuclear program must be considered the most important threat specifically to Europe. Iran has long sought access to advanced European technology for its nuclear program. According to European intelligence agencies, much of the technology Iran has sought is classified as dual-use, it can be used for civilian purposes but also for military or nuclear weapons development.

The IRGC is the root cause of regional conflicts and exacerbates instability that directly impacts Europe, leading to the refugee crisis that has both economic and security implications for Europe. Millions of Syrian refugees have fled to Europe because of the IRGC’s involvement in Syria and its support for the Assad regime. Another economic threat to Europe is the IRGC’s ability to destabilize the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of Europe’s oil imports pass. Disruptions to global oil supplies could affect energy prices and economic stability in Europe.

The U.S. State Department officially announced in a May 2020 report that the Islamic Republic has carried out more than 360 assassinations and terrorist operations in 40 countries over 40 years. According to the State Department, “senior Iranian officials have stated that Iran tracks and constantly monitors Iranian dissidents in other countries in order to ‘crack down’ and ‘strike decisive blows’ against them.”

The 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, the 1992 Mykonos terrorist operation in Berlin, the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina, and the 2012 bombings in Bangkok and New Delhi that killed Israeli citizens all have Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps footprints, according to documents released by security agencies in those countries. It is worth noting that the IRGC’s global terror campaign is not limited to eliminating the Islamic Republic’s opponents, assassinations, and bombings; these are not the only areas of IRGC terrorist activity in Europe. In recent years, this organization has planned several projects to kidnap opponents of the regime, which, although many of them failed, revealed that the terrorist operations arm of the IRGC has spread from neighboring countries to Europe. Recently, information leaked from the IRGC revealed another unit specializing in crimes abroad, Unit 700. According to the leaked information Unit 700 has extensive connections with senior officials in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. This unit was established secretly by the Quds Terrorist Corps overseas. Unit 700 provides supplies and military equipment to Quds Corps-affiliated forces in the region.

In early 2021, the U.S. government revealed that the Islamic Republic’s proxies and its operatives were actively plotting against U.S. military personnel and diplomats in the Middle East. This was not limited to the Middle East, however, and most recently, former U.S. President Donald Trump was briefed by the ODNI on suspected Iranian assassination plots. To date, the Islamic Republic has planned several plots to assassinate or harm current and former U.S. officials. These plots reflect the IRGC’s strategy of using proxies and covert operations to target individuals it considers enemies.

The Islamic Republic no longer tries to hide its terrorist nature. The IRGC commanders and Islamic Republic security officials have repeatedly and proudly mentioned this widespread influence in European countries, America, and the countries of the region. Therefore, the European Parliament can push for the official designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, like the U.S. designation, in response to its involvement in terrorist attacks and regional instability.

Strengthening sanctions against the Islamic Republic by targeting its key sectors to limit its access to international markets and financing, including companies or countries that facilitate the Islamic Republic’s arms smuggling or missile development and expanding sanctions against individuals and entities involved in human rights abuses, terrorism, and regional destabilization, such as the IRGC and its subdivisions are some of the most important steps the EP could take. The EP should crack down harder on Islamic Republic agents involved in terrorism, arms smuggling, and espionage in Europe. The European Parliament can increase its support for civil society organizations and NGOs working on human rights and democracy in Iran. Engagement with Iranian civil society, particularly the Iranian diaspora in Europe, would strengthen grassroots movements challenging the authority of the regime. The EP should recognize Iranian opposition groups in exile to gain a deeper insight into the regime’s internal weaknesses and ensure that these voices are reflected in international diplomacy.

Sheina Vojoudi is an associate fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, DC-based, foreign policy and national security think tank.

(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Derk Jan Eppink: FPÖ trekt met zege in Oostenrijk Europa verder naar rechts)

The leader of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), Herbert Kickl (55), has dealt ‘the system of established parties’, as he calls it, an enormous blow with his election victory. Above all the Christian Democratic ÖVP, in power for 37 years in various coalitions, is up against the wall. Team up with the FPÖ, against the wishes of the established powers, or team up with the socialists and greens, with the danger that the party ends up in a CDA scenario.

For Europe the signal is clear. With the FPÖ, Austria will lean more closely toward the policies of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, on immigration and the war in Ukraine.

Profit warning: Kickl may be the big winner, but whether he also becomes chancellor is another matter.

On the Friday evening before the elections Kickl gave a speech during the FPÖ’s closing rally, right next to the Stephansdom of 1578, the cathedral that defines Vienna. Before a crowd of several hundred people he sketched his political agenda. He sees himself as an ‘anti-system’ politician who puts an end to the backroom dealing of, above all, Christian Democrats and socialists who still control a real ‘pillar’, as once existed in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Through cronyism with the business world, the ‘Freunderlwirtschaft’, the steering of the media and the system of clientelism in the distribution of government jobs. The right party membership can be decisive. Kickl wants to break that system. ‘The other parties have the wind of the system at their backs, but feel the headwind of the population’. He sees the FPÖ as leader of a ‘war of liberation’ and himself at the head of Austria as ‘Volkskanzler’ who ensures the ‘Festung Österreich’.

Immigration is the FPÖ’s trump card. Kickl: ‘We demand zero tolerance for immigrants who commit crimes’. And he advocates remigration. FPÖ policy barely differs from the policy Hungary already has: handling asylum requests at the border, deportation upon rejection.

Austria is not a member of NATO, neutral like Switzerland. Kickl: ‘Neutrality is a model for the future, no weapons deliveries to Ukraine.’ This too means that Kickl has the same position as Hungary, which is a member of NATO but received an ‘opt-out’ on Ukraine in exchange for its consent to Mark Rutte as secretary-general of NATO.

In style Kickl differs greatly from his notorious predecessors Jörg Haider and Heinz-Christian Strache. Both were glossy narcissists, eloquent and extravagant. Kickl comes across as a grey mouse, does not immediately stand out at 1.72 meters, has a bearded face and dresses ‘not elitist’. That outward dullness is his weapon. But his inner conviction is tenacious, terrier-like.

Kickl comes from the southern state of Carinthia, where he was born in 1968 in the village of Radentheim, of, as he himself says, ‘modest origins’. At the gymnasium in Spittal an der Drau he became impressed by the coming ‘strong man’ from the region: Jörg Haider, founder of the FPÖ and for years its figurehead.

Kickl studied politics, philosophy and history at the University of Vienna. But he never finished his studies. When confronted about this his answer is invariably: ‘I may not be able to do anything, but I can learn everything’. The real reason is that in 1995 he came to know Haider, and joined his party’s ‘Akademie’, the think tank. Kickl became a speechwriter for Haider; he stood out for his knowledge of marketing, especially the devising of slogans.

The two were totally different. Haider brazen and provocative; Kickl rather calm and level-headed. Haider loved parties with young men, the ‘Buberl parties’; Kickl a devout Catholic, a family man about whose personal life little is known. In 2005 it came to a split in the party, because a new star appeared on the firmament: Heinz Christian Strache (55). Only one rooster could rule the dunghill.

Because of the unpredictable conduct of Haider, who spoke apologetically about the Waffen-SS (‘no collective guilt’), the FPÖ was excluded from participation in government. Haider had brought his party from 5% in 1983 to 27% in 1999, but became a stumbling block himself. He left and founded his own party. Haider assumed that the loyal Kickl would come along. That did not happen. Kickl stayed and Strache made him secretary-general of the party. Thus he maneuvered himself into the center of power. In 2008 Haider died in a traffic accident, returning under the influence of alcohol from his notorious party.

All the squabbling did the FPÖ no good. The FPÖ is a party whose fortunes are very dependent on the migration question. In 2015 it was boom time when a wave of asylum from the Balkans appeared at the Austrian border. Strache and Kickl smelled their chance, because voters flocked en masse to the right. In the 2017 elections the FPÖ was back in the league of the big parties. The Christian Democrats, with their young lead candidate Sebastian Kurz, achieved 31.5%, the socialists 27% and the FPÖ 26%. Kurz entered a coalition with the FPÖ, Strache became vice-chancellor and Kickl came silently into the cabinet, as minister of the interior.

Then the hard side of Kickl also became visible to the outside world. He says little, but what he says counts. Kickl has something ascetic about him: he once completed an extreme triathlon in Scotland – 2.4 km swimming, 200 km cycling and a full marathon: in 16 hours. Few Austrian politicians will match him at that. During the Austrian presidency of the EU he launched proposals for a stricter asylum policy, supported by Italy and Hungary, such as the handling of asylum procedures at the external borders, including on ships off the coast. He spoke reproachfully about ‘die deutsche Dummheit in der Mitte’.

But the FPÖ ruined everything in 2019 when a video appeared showing Strache speaking at a holiday location in Ibiza with a supposed niece of a Russian oligarch, who also claimed to hold Latvian nationality. She wanted to do business with Strache, who floated an idea: to buy the Kronen Zeitung, by far the largest newspaper in the country, and prompt it toward positive coverage of him and his party. The video dated from 2017, but its makers released the footage just before the elections. Kurz broke the coalition, Strache left the cabinet voluntarily, but Kickl was thrown out immediately. Kurz continued to govern with the Greens. The FPÖ was back to square one.

After much internal turmoil Kickl became ‘Bundesparteiobmann’ of the FPÖ in June 2021, after he had campaigned fiercely in the Austrian parliament against the Corona policy of the Kurz government, which he called ‘criminal’. Kickl turned out to be a dogged fighter, a persister who wanted his revenge. Slogan: ‘Kurz muss weg’. The apple fell ripe into his basket when it became known that Kurz, as prime minister, had also been guilty of bribing the media in the so-called ‘Inseraten affair’. Once again: extra government advertisements for certain media, in exchange for positive coverage and favorable polls. Kurz left.

Kickl stands at the top of his power, made the FPÖ the largest party in Austria for the first time. Breaking the Austrian system is not easy and he remains dependent, above all on the ÖVP. The left already demands a ‘Brandmauer’ against the FPÖ, the exclusion of that party from coalition negotiations. That forces the ÖVP to become a prisoner of the left. The sitting Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) does not want to team up with Kickl. But what will his party do?

Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. El trauma de Estrasburgo)

The European Parliament resolution on Venezuela approved in Strasbourg last week has had collateral effects of great impact. Of shock. Certain political groups are traumatized by what happened. But let no one believe it is because of the content of the resolution. It is because of the majority that made it possible. The majority that formed changes the outlook of many for the entire legislature. Because they now see that Ursula von der Leyen’s operation — to ignore the result of the elections and, in the PPE’s alliance, embrace the whole of the left that lost the elections of 9 June — has an enormous Achilles’ heel. True, it served her to shape a European Commission tailored to her own measure, hijacking the vote received by no fewer than 188 People’s Party MEPs with the intention of continuing the centralist, socialist and radically ecologist social-engineering project of the past five years.

But, as is now evident, she cannot deactivate a new reality that has emerged all at once in this Strasbourg plenary and is already shaping up as the great threat to those plans of von der Leyen to go on making left-wing policy with right-wing votes as if nothing had happened.

Many things have happened on 9 June and afterward, and it was seen in that vote on Venezuela. The composition of the majority that managed to impose the original text — once the attempts of the European People’s Party to water down the content of the first points and to seduce the Renew group to its left had been frustrated — represents a resounding message that terrifies both the left and many within the European People’s Party.

The resolution, which demands the recognition of Edmundo González Urrutia as the democratically elected and legitimate president of Venezuela on the grounds that his victory is considered proven, was approved by 309 votes in favor and 201 against thanks to all the forces of the right, from the European People’s Party, the Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), Patriots for Europe (PfE), to Sovereign Nations (ESN), which includes the German AfD. From the PP to the AfD. It will frighten some, but it is a fact. And, as the resolution demonstrates, a very positive one. The attempts of the Socialists, Greens and communists to protect the criminal dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro and his electoral fraud were frustrated.

And the fact is that the European People’s Party, in the Venezuela resolution, blew up that so-called “cordon sanitaire” — rather an anti-democratic harassment — that has been self-imposed from Germany and France especially and that obliges the People’s Party always to ally with the left. Because while the Socialists can always ally themselves even with the most criminal extremists, the People’s Party cannot ally itself with those who occupy the space that the People’s Party fertilized in its eternal drift toward social democracy.

The reality is that there exists a majority that is an alternative to the de facto “single social-democratic party” made up of the People’s Party, Socialists, Renew liberals and Greens, which has always governed in a fusion of the two-party system with add-ons. And the alternative is a strong majority of the right, from which the People’s Party will not be able to withdraw in the legislature that is beginning. Many of its members are going to try. But it will prove impossible for them, and quite a few others will be glad that it is so. In fact, as soon as the legislature began, it became clear.

When the People’s Party feels committed to certain principles for some reason of opportunity or necessity, they will find themselves forced to be in that majority which breaks the cordon sanitaire and creates the real majority that the European elections have generated. In the case of Venezuela it was the necessity for the Spanish PP to maintain a firm policy in the face of the obvious complicity of socialism, shepherded by the PSOE, with Maduro’s dictatorship. Because it could not leave Vox as the solitary defender of the cause of María Corina Machado, which this party had been until little more than a year ago. The PP had always preferred other, more “flexible,” negotiating and less “Trumpist” opposition figures.

In spite of everything, the PP tried to lower the tone when it got vertigo on seeing that the so-called Renew liberals, who are in reality social democrats and radical wokeists, were staying with the Socialists, communists and Greens. That morning they came to think within the PP that the resolution would not be approved. And it was the Patriots group, whose relations with the ECR are excellent, that also managed to mobilize ESN, a group that on principle tends to ignore these resolutions on political questions foreign to the EU. The PP’s attempts — with its legs trembling — to water down the resolution on Venezuela were knocked down, that majority was won by blowing up the cordon sanitaire, and it was shown to Europeans and to the world that there is now a conservative and national majority in the European Parliament. And thus was managed the first appearance of a reality that, much sooner than some believe, is going to pull the EU out of its suicidal drift, restore common sense, sobriety, rationality, competence and freedom to political discourse, and change the future of Europe. For the better.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.