“Meanwhile, Rioting Breaks Out In Sweden” Zerohedge

Flag-simple-map-of-sweden

"It would appear the mainstream media (along with several celebrities and Swedish politicians) is going to be apologizing to President Trump once again.

Having spent the entire new cycle trying to ignore the immigrant crisis facing Sweden, and pin the ignorant tail on Trump, both Dagbladet and Expressen reports riots breaking out in the highly immigrant concentrated Stockholdm borough of Rinkeby, Sweden with police firing warning shots as 100s of young people throw stones and burn cars.

During the evening hundreds of young people gathered in the center of Rinkeby, well known for its high concentration of immigrants and people with immigrant ancestry."  zerohedge

————

(Irony Alert)  This can't be right!  Everyone knows that Sweden is a land of Nordic peace and tranquility, a land that welcomes one and all to share its yearly travail of light deprivation and reindeer pie.

This must be a mistake.  If this were true then the accusations of Trumps' mental instability might lose credibility …  pl

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-20/meanwhile-rioting-breaks-out-sweden

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137 Responses to “Meanwhile, Rioting Breaks Out In Sweden” Zerohedge

  1. r whitman says:

    Fake news !!!

  2. Valissa says:

    Trump may have garbled the message but Sweden IS experiencing a migrant crime wave, according to cop accused of ‘inciting racial hatred’ after online rant about ‘criminal immigrants’
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4243442/Sweden-suffering-migrant-crime-wave-says-cop.html
    Sweden Refuses To Find Statistics On Immigrant Crime http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/18/sweden-refuses-to-find-statistics-on-immigrant-crime/
    While many governments collect exhaustive data of crime trends to measure public safety, Sweden refuses to disclose any statistics on crime committed by immigrants in the country. The last time statistics on immigrant crime were collected in Sweden was over a decade ago in 2005.
    During that time, there has been high levels of migration into Sweden, with hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming from Muslim countries like Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Somalia.
    Sweden has one of the highest foreign-born populations in Europe, with 18.3 percent of Swedes being born in a different country as of 2016.
    The lack of statistics make it difficult to make informed immigration policy.
    However, other European countries’ experience with immigration, specifically from the Middle East, show generally higher rates of crime coming from Muslims. For instance, in France, it’s estimated that 70 percent of prisoners are Muslim, despite Muslims only being around 8 percent of the population.
    In recent years, sexual assault has reportedly risen 70 percent in Sweden.
    —————————

  3. BabelFish says:

    A quick scan showed only RT reporting on this. Looked at BBC, Reuters, CNN as well.
    https://www.rt.com/news/378071-stockholm-riots-police-shots/

  4. wxrlly says:

    Before the hysterics begin, i.e. “Trump triggers riots in Sweden in response to his racist comments” or “Trump ordered false flag riots in Stockholm to validate his little hands” , Here’s the police report strait from the horse’s mouth.
    https://polisen.se/Stockholms_lan/Aktuellt/Handelser/Stockholms-lan/2017-02-20-2018-Valdhot-mot-tjansteman-Stockholm/
    Google translation:
    “2017-02-20 20:18, Violence / threats against the official, Stockholm
    TB Rinkeby. People threw stones at police personnel.
    When the police personnel detained a person threw several people stones at the patrol.
    In connection with this felt patrol so repressed that they were forced to fire warning shots. A police officer was hit on the arm by a thrown stone, obscure injury at present.
    Preliminary investigation is initiated to violence against officials and rioting.
    Updating the clock 22:45
    Another riot occurred at 22:20 time. 7-8 cars have been burned in the area during the evening.
    Update 23.30.
    Police Personnel are actively working in the area to restore order and security. Unfortunately, some looting of shops occurred in the area. The extent is currently unknown.
    Update 17-02-21 at 00:15
    According to the responsible officer on the site has the order been restored in the area. Police personnel will, however, remain one more time.
    Two assaults are reported both the abused persons were taken to the hospital himself. Police will meet up in the hospital for notification absorption.
    Update 6:24 o’clock.
    It initially in our reporting given was that the police fired warning shots proved to be fired for effect. No person has been encountered injured on the spot. Police have also conducted checks in hospital but no damage to any gunshot wounds have been received.
    A large number of notifications is established among annnat: Three violent rioting, assaulting a police officer, two assaults, vandalism, aggravated thefts.
    Information provided concerning the ongoing events is preliminary and subject to change.
    Organisation
    Police Stockholm County
    North
    Published: 2017-02-20 21:34.”

  5. Bill Herschel says:

    You forgot mosquitoes. Also, it is now very evident that he was referring to the television show about violence in Sweden, not to a terrorist attack.
    Ask a French person about Chechen refugees in their schools. Refugees. I.e. the people fighting against Russia in Chechnya.
    Ask the British people why they voted for Brexit. Visit London.
    This is not black and white.

  6. Fred says:

    Isn’t this just some undocumented shopping and a few urban camp fires without permits? I’m sure it was mean tweets that made them act this way. Perhaps Twitter should ban Trump. I’m sure that will go over well. As we all know rioters have no agency and are not responsible for their own conduct. That’s why we need open borders.

  7. Eric Newhill says:

    This is not the first time Trump has something that brought a topic into the spot light, but in an odd kind of slightly “off” way that attracted an hysterical nit picky media attack; only then to have events unfold, in temporal proximity, exactly confirming what Trump said; leaving his critics looking like petty morons.
    I’m sure that “rational” explanations can be offered up. As an actuary I can see how, “He’s playing the odds well” is a good one. However, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that something else is at play here.
    I am convinced that psi and abilities like “remote viewing” are real. I’ve carefully followed the researched for three decades. I have participated in some research and I am certain that I have personally successfully produced these and related phenomena, beyond chance, coincidence, self-delusion/hallucination, etc.
    The Stargate (so called mind warriors etc) and related programs moved from the DIA to the CIA in 1995. The program produced valid, but inconsistent results; meaning that the abilities were proven real, just they couldn’t be called upon to perform as needed every time. The DIA lost interest for that reason.
    At any rate, people selected for the program as “remote viewers” were people that exhibited incredible luck; soldiers that had a knack for surviving in circumstances where they should have been killed, people whose “gut” instincts never failed them and allowed them to get through serious circumstances unscathed and/or become materially successful against the odds.
    Trump seems to have this knack. I am also thinking that his quirkiness, his seemingly disjointed speaking style – that some see as a sign of something on the autism spectrum – is actually a sign that his antenna is picking up all kinds of signals, present and future, that most of us are oblivious to. Like a savant thing.
    Far out, I know………but is it really?

  8. Tyler says:

    Reality yet again shows it has a Trump bias.
    Awaiting the fifth column around here preparing to hand wave away grenade attacks as no big deal.

  9. Cortes says:

    The latest rioting affecting the capital, Stockholm, gets coverage (and rightly so) but other cities with lower profile internationally have been fermenting for a while. See for example:
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/18/interview-retired-swedish-police-chief-says-malmo-crime-skyrocketing-due-uncontrolled-immigration-no-go-zones/

  10. Alexandria says:

    Trump’s heralded luck!

  11. JohnsonR says:

    Headline suggestion for CNN/BBC/Guardian/Times/WP/NYT etc:
    TRUMP CAUSES RIOTS IN SWEDEN

  12. A.Pols says:

    Once again, as during the campaign, all Trump had to do was dangle the hook in the water and let the MSM dupes spread his message for him. Then they go and use high school debate club tactics to go from the general to the specific so they can call him out on “last night”. So they get egg on their faces. 4 dimensional chess…

  13. Macgupta123 says:

    This article on the miserable start to the 21st century, IMO, is more important than most of the issues that twitter, media, press conferences are talking about:
    https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21st-century/

  14. jonst says:

    Stunned, once again, from this kind of thing, where they think they got em, and he vanishes like Bedford Forest, the Left will pause…grapple, flustered, for a come back, and blame the now lamented (and therefore acknowledged) trouble on Sweden on Trump. i.e. Him SAYING there was trouble, caused the trouble.

  15. esq says:

    Reality seems to have a profoundly pro-Trump bias.

  16. Cold War Zoomie says:

    My friend and I are horrified by Trump, but we were speaking the other night about how the anti-Trump media were getting it so wrong with the Sweden comments. Trump does not use precise language and too many people are paraphrasing with BS. Now is the time for accuracy in reporting, not “balloon boy” and “first scoop” slop. God help us. I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!

  17. Swerv21 says:

    There’s an prevailing theme on the Milo Yannopolis (or whatever his name is) faction of the right wing that horrible things are happening in Sweden because the wogs are here.
    Now they are surely coming after the white women.
    I’ve struggled to find where this is coming from. It seems like part of this story has to do with rape (once again with the white women) and the widely circulated claim that Sweden is now the rape capital of the world. Perhaps.
    But it is also true that feminists have been writing laws here for a long time. Any Intimate act that is in anyway nonconsensual may be considered rape here by authorities. Including married couples. The threshold is much lower here than even in the U.S. (Just ask poor Julian Assange).
    So the wogs may be at it. Or it might also be just as likely that a lot of immigrant women realize that once they get here they can ditch the deadbeat husband and get a place of their own. I think this may be just as likely a phenomenon.
    There are some segregated neighborhoods here and for some reason the boys there have a thing about burning cars. Boys will be boys.
    But in four years here I have found the levels of violence and personal risk in Sweden to be absolutely laughable. There are libraries in Atlanta that are more dangerous than inner city neighborhoods here.
    As for the immigrants and the muslims… hmmm. Many many of the Iraqi and Syrians that are here Christian, Assyrian, Chaldean, even some Orthodox. Many of the muslims here are Shia. They are very conservative when it comes to immigration policy and keep a sharp eye on their newly arrived Sunni brethren. These communities are well established here and have the most to lose if things were to get out of hand.
    I do not think they will allow that to happen.

  18. M1 says:

    Interesting that this particular round of localized civil disturbance erupted in direct conjunction with several high profile Swedish politicians’ seemingly concerted/coordinated dismissal of President Trump’s explanation of his remarks re Sweden. (Noteworthy also is how the Swedish printed MSM appears to have declared a de facto free-fire zone for raw and disparaging remarks about the current POTUS–this relative to the near absolute dearth of commentary critical of anything remotely representing American officialdom prior to POTUS Trump.)
    Similar arrests as those purported to have precipitated this round of violence are made routinely in this zone – without violence automatically ensuing. Conjecture of course, but there appears to be an element of kinetic IO involved here though it remains to be seen exactly who, if anyone at all, might have seized a golden opportunity to shape and leverage a narrative.

  19. There are rumors that the same thing is simultaneously happening in Paris; but if so, the MSM are not reporting it.

  20. Larry Kart says:

    I think to some significant degree ZeroHedge may be confusing cause and effect here. Is there anti-Muslim and general anti-immigrant feeling in Sweden? You bet. How could there not be in a ethnically and for the most part culturally homogeneous country of some 23 million, where the Muslim population is now about 600.000 (6 percent). Given that feeling (and I have a story to tell about that in a moment), Trump’s remark and the blast of publicity in Sweden and elsewhere that accompanied it, probably created what might be called a “a riot of opportunity,” in which those who already were pissed off against the aliens inside the tent took the chance to engage in some anti-alien uproar in or near Muslim immigrant neighborhoods in Sweden.
    The question, though, is in what sense these acts were after the fact, and/or after which facts. After the fact of Trump’s widely publicized remarks? Obviously. After the fact of a rise in anti-immigrant feeling in Sweden that has been building/simmering for some time. Obviously, again. (BTW, read any number of recent Swedish detective novels, and this ant-immigrant theme is a near omnipresent plot element.) After the fact of an increase in Sweden of crimes committed by Muslim immigrants? A whole lot of Swedes, inside and outside of government cum law enforcement say no — that instead what we have here is mostly a smorgasbord of ethnic-solidarity-based fantasies in search of facts that will support them.
    Be that as it may, my anecdote: I had an acquaintance, recently deceased — an American writer and record producer with all the usual liberal bohemian attitudes — who wanted to move to Sweden in 1980 after getting a nice job offer with a record label over there. Eager to become a dual citizen, he found that at that time, and also because he was far from a refugee but just a guy with a nice job offer, becoming a Swedish citizen was a fairly elaborate two-year process that involved an in immersion in Swedish language and culture, plus a stern test of those acquired skills at the end. This he and his wife passed, and they not only proceeded to split time between Sweden and the U.S. over the decades, but he also became a frquent translator of Sweden’s most famous poet (though not IMO a very good translator of him). In any case, a fruitful, mostly comfortable life was lives by this fellow.
    But when Muslim immigration to Sweden began, this guy was frothing at the mouth — retailing all sort of seemingly made-up horror stories but basically outraged because the lengthy and somewhat arduous process of becoming a Swedish citizen that he and his wife had gone through back in 1980 wasn’t being applied to these new immigrants. One could say to this guy — and a longtime friend of his who knew him much better than I did say this him — “But X, you and your wife were not refugees but fairly well-off people looking for the main chance, and you did indeed find it.” But he wouldn’t hear a word of this — the Muslim immigrants, he insisted, were not refugees in any real sense but mere grifters who were well on their way to becoming outright criminals, if they weren’t there already.
    OK, this guy was not a native Swede. But the thought process he engaged in his latter days may not be unlike those that some angry ethnic Swedes are engaging in now. Their grievances are real in that they (like my late dual-citizen acquaintance) feel mortally aggrieved in the face of Muslim immigration and may be moved to act along those lines. But how real (or if you prefer, reality based) are their grievances otherwise? Identity-based they are, for sure, and that’s not
    nothing. But if these are significantly identity-based and fueled responses, that not how they’re being perceived or sold in some quarters. Rather, we’ve got swarthy rapists running wild.

  21. turcopolier says:

    Larry Kart
    IMO you are torturing the facts somewhat to obtain a pro-immigrant result. pl

  22. turcopolier says:

    All
    The mendacity involved in trying to make Trump responsible for immigrant rioting in Sweden is breath taking. pl

  23. Karl Kolchack says:

    I’m no fan of Trump, and did not vote for him. In a perfect world, the U.S. and Europe wouldn’t be bombing, droning and invading those Muslim countries whose dictators refuse to be bought off and generating waves of refugees and tons of terrorist blowback.
    That said, Trump was smart enough to recognize just how badly the neoliberal project of breaking down national borders and slowly destroying the standards of living for the Western middle class has been inflaming public opinion. The reason why the elites in these countries keep getting “surprised” by election results such as Trump’s victory and Brexit is that their jobs are not under threat and their wages are not being suppressed. Trump’s comments about Sweden may have been as misguided as what he has said about Mexicans, but they’ve struck a chord with many voters who see him and his fellow travelers (Le Pen, Farage, Wilders) as the only ones giving voice to the anger so many distressed people are feeling.
    In the case of the refugees, it’s a no win situation. Most would probably prefer to be back home, but they have no homes to go back to, meaning they are not traditional immigrants who understand that they have an obligation to try and conform to the norms of the societies they are entering. That makes them stand out even more, and generates even more populist anger and resentment.

  24. turcopolier says:

    Karl Kolchak
    You are an apologist for insurgent violence. pl

  25. BillWade says:

    Perhaps you defenders of Swedish immigration policy will be happy to visit the proposed Camel Park in Gothenburg. It’s hoped it will provide “some” jobs and become a tourist mecca (no pun intended). However, one person believes this project is racist. Another says, “If I had wanted to work with animals or crops I would have gone back to Namibia.”
    There’s no jobs for them, I heard of 179,000 recent immigrants only a bit under 500 have found work.
    Perhaps CNN can provide us with some real news, like the riots in France, well – they don’t but plenty of citizen journalists have, just go to YouTube and search on “Paris riots”.

  26. Cvillereader says:

    I think it depends what you read. I have been seeing reports about “immigrant” attacks on Swedish women for months. That would mean way before Trump was elected.
    There is a website that thoroughly reports immigrant violence in Europe. It uses a lot of local news clips that have been translated. I won’t link it here because some may see it as unnecessarily biased, but it is not hard to find online.

  27. Fred says:

    Tell that to the rape survivors in Sweden.

  28. Cortes says:

    Seems to be a non starter, Bill, but has still mopped up plenty of krone. Saw references to this about ten days ago.

  29. Fred says:

    Swerv21,
    In the USA 1 in 5 women on college campuses are sexually assaulted every year – according to my Senator, Debbie Stabenow, along with Senators Kirsten Giidebrand, Elizabeth Warren and many, many other elected officials. Not that anyone is ever fired for allowing our colleges to become rape zones and secularism forbid we warn any of the families that are bankrupting themselves to get their daughters a nice diploma – and ensure full employment for college professors and administrators. On a bright note we don’t the wogs to blame for that, just the frat boys. Who of course are not taught by mom, dad or the public school system to do all this raping. One wonders just where those alternative, er, statistically identical, facts are coming from.

  30. Seamus Padraig,
    The Paris riots are in reaction to the “Theo Affair” where French police raped a young black Parisian wit a riot baton. The first official investigation said the rape was unintentional and accidental. The rioters have rightfully called bullshit on that excuse and have been on the street for most of the last two weeks. This is all happening in addition to the refugee-related violence.
    You’re not going to see a lot of coverage of the police-rape riots, just like there was minimal coverage of the Montreal white supremacist terror attack. Neither of these incidents fit the desired narrative.

  31. Cvillereader,
    Yes, immigrant/refugee fuels riots have been occurring in Sweden for at least the last six years. There were major riots in the Rinkeby area in 2010 and 2013.

  32. Fred says:

    Karl,
    You mean that with a lifetime ahead of them in which to build their own countries into the type of civilization they prefer to live there this is absolutely no way they could do that because…..well just because.

  33. Richardw Whitman says:

    No rape in the story

  34. Henshaw says:

    ‘Everyone knows that Sweden is a land of Nordic peace and tranquility, …’
    pl, perhaps you’re not watching enough Scandi-noir crime shows. Disturbing, bleak stuff.
    Congratulations on the 16 million- build it and they will come.

  35. Jack says:

    There are many “refugees” from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Morocco and African countries. The European elites bought PCness hook, line & sinker. Now, in a homogeneous culture like Sweden they have immigrants who have no concept of this culture nor the language skills required. They can only survive on the dole. This breeds resentment as many of these immigrants have only contempt for the host culture.

  36. Eric Newhill,
    So, you’re a fan/student of remote viewing. Now you’re surprising me. I met Greg Seward, a former StarGate remote viewer while at DIA. We became good friends. Since he was native American in addition to being a remote viewer, and I was a student of shamanism, we had some good discussions.
    Out of curiosity and just to prove to myself if there was anything to this stuff, I spent some time learning to remote view through an online course with the Hawaiian Remote Viewers Guild (HRVG). I learned enough to “view” at least two specific time/locations given only a target cue like XDRF-KLPO. Yep, it works, but it’s damned difficult to maintain the receptive empty mind while suppressing the conscious mind’s desire to make immediate sense of any incoming signal. Then 9/11 happened and I no longer had time for that stuff.

  37. Tyler,
    I thought your grenade attacks might be an exaggeration. Nope. They seem to be a common phenomenon in Sweden for many years, although the Swedish police consider them to be the work of organized crime intimidating/extorting local businesses or each other. Since the grenades come from the Balkans, I bet it’s Albanian Mafia. They’re known bastards all over Europe. They probably have no problem recruiting foot soldiers from the refugees.

  38. Jack says:

    All
    A story from sometime back.
    http://www.thelocal.se/20151115/swedish-city-is-largest-recruiting-ground-for-islamic-extremism
    Gothenburg, in western Sweden is, per capita, the European city from which most people have joined Islamic extremist groups, according to Swedish integration police chief, Ulf Boström. The largest of these groups is Islamic State (Isis), which claims to have carried out the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday that killed 129 people.
    Boström, who works with the Muslim community in Gothenburg, told Swedish newspaper Göteborg-Posten on Sunday that Isis “has the strength, intellectual capacity and ability to coordinate. They are no fools.”
    Previous statistics from the Swedish security service, Säpo, suggest that just over 300 Swedish nationals have left the country to travel to fight with Islamic extremist groups in Syria and Iraq.
    40 percent of those – around 120 young men – are from the Gothenburg area, primarily from Bergsjön and Angered. According to Boström this means that Gothenburg is the European city which, in proportion to its population, contributes the highest number of people to violent extremism.
    Boström says that those who are radicalised are from the same demographic that form the criminal gangs in the Gothenburg suburbs, young people who believe they have no future.
    “This really affects my work in Gothenburg as the vast majority of Muslims here hate the terrorist attacks. They sometimes ask me, ‘How do you protect the good Muslims’. They are terrified that this kind of terrorism creates a more xenophobic Europe.”
    Boström has previously been very critical of the Swedish government’s approach to returning jihadis.

  39. Karl Kolchack says:

    Why, because I’m actually trying to understand the situation rather than allow myself to be carried away by emotion? What I said was that both sides have legitimate grievances and that it would be better if the refugees were still living where they came from. Did you miss the part where I said that neoliberalism, which has been the dominant political philosophy in the U.S. and Europe for decades until Trump came along, is ultimately to blame?

  40. Eric Newhill says:

    esq,
    Actually, I think it is the other way around – or both.
    With the Borg and the left, it’s neither.

  41. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Rarely, as far as I know, do Swedes give managerial & professional jobs to non-Swedes; even those educated in their own universities.
    France and Italy are not any different either.
    Holland used to be the country that did give jobs to non-Hollanders, I do not know what the situation is now.
    My understanding has been that the in a majority of European countries, the attitude of the population towards immigrants is: “Why are you here? My ancestors built this country….”
    They are not countries of immigrants.
    And many of them: Serbia, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Italy, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Russia have had nasty historical interactions with Muslims.
    What do you expect?

  42. Babak Makkinejad says:

    That is just plain envy.
    “O God, please, could I be a refugee in Copenhagen? In the same barracks with the Danish Woman Soldiers?”

  43. turcopolier says:

    Henshaw
    I watch a lot of Scandihoovee crime TV. I am still trying to train you people to recognize irony without having to label it. pl

  44. ISL says:

    Please read Valissa’s comment (with links) and then answer if everything is so wonderful, why no statistics? One might imagine if there was good immigrant news the govt would release it. I have been reading (with video links) about problems in Sweden being overwhelmingly from immigrants for at least a year.
    Your point about Atlanta libraries is just plain bizarre. Are you arguing that all parts of Sweden should descend to the violence of an Atlanta Library? What does that even mean? Why should I care what that means?

  45. Stumpy says:

    Before my dish network pulled the channel, I lost a lot of sleep watching Scandinavian crime TV. Of note due to the thematic content based a lot on biker gangs, post-Balkan breakup criminal syndicates, and a bit of radicalized immigrant stuff. Excellent productions. I’d posit that in order to gain traction with viewers there has to be some basis in cultural “wisdom”, some reflection of actual conditions.
    With Paris in mind, it’s not a stretch to think that the gendarmerie are overstretched to the point that any latent biases combined with bad actors from the refugee countries are popping some rivets. I would imagine that Sweden’s situation is comparable.
    I cannot remember so many points boiling over since the 60s. Sad time for the press to break down.

  46. Swerv21 says:

    You can believe what you want- it’s absolutely fine with me. My point is simply this- perceptions of violence is relative. Crackheads hiding out in a library maybe routine in one place and completely terrifying in another. You cannot assume that violence in a Swedish context means the same thing as violence in another. Gun related crime here is exceedingly rare- when it does happen it is reported widely. That does not mean it approached levels that merit public alarm in the U.S.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden
    Crime in Malmo may indeed be perceived to be sky rocketing but then you would have to compare it to something- what is the baseline? Is it crime in Malmo a generation ago? Or is it crime somewhere else?
    I’ve actually been to these places in Sweden that you seem to be so worried about. In comparison to areas in any other major comparable city in the world, say London or even Atlanta, these areas are far safer.
    Click on whatever story makes you feel good. Believe and say what you want to buttress your argument. But saying it doesn’t make it so.

  47. Tyler says:

    TTG,
    Are we talking again now?

  48. Tyler says:

    Larry,
    Yea, this list is all President Trump’s fault.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Sweden
    The fact that this article exists is pretty damming and lol.

  49. Tyler says:

    Karl,
    No, because contra you trying to present yourself as a clear headed analyst, you are a ridiculous sentimentalist with no idea how real world works while you engage in fuzzy headed thinking

  50. Swerv21 says:

    Babak.
    There is a skills shortage in the Swedish economy and a lot of pent up demand because of underinvestment during their financial crisis 20 years ago. Swedes need the skills right now, particularly in tech, infrastructure, construction, engineering and management. They have low public debt and can afford to ramp up investment. The economic picture is changing here and they are more and more willing to have foreigners in charge.
    I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

  51. Eric Newhill says:

    TTG,
    I don’t want to start a hijack of the thread, but I have a lot to say about this topic. Maybe sometime when there is an open thread? I am also a fan of “shamanism” and could induce “OBEs” in which I could see events both present and future at locations distant from the physical location of my body. I “saw” the untimely death of a loved one in an unusual accident, in horrible vivid detail, three months out and tried to warn that person, but only got a response in concern for my own mental health. The loved one was killed exactly as I saw. That failure to save became a major psychological barrier to continued success or even will to continue with the whole thing. I spent time on the White Mountain Apache Res, over the course of several years, w/ a friend and sponsor who was a clan leader and considered to be a “medicine man”. I also met and had ongoing convos w/ Ingo Swan and Russell Targ. This was back in the mid to late 80s. My abilities are somewhat limited these days largely due, I think, to frequent mental exhaustion from my work, probably over use of alcohol and some other life event factors. There will be, maybe at best, a couple or three days a month when I can do this stuff, but some months when I can’t so it at all. Very limited. If there had been a way to carve out a career doing it, I would have. It fascinates me.
    Anyhow, I think Trump’s got it, whether he knows it or not.

  52. MRW says:

    maintain the receptive empty mind while suppressing the conscious mind’s desire to make immediate sense of any incoming signal.
    The crux of it.

  53. MRW says:

    Albanian Mafia. They’re known bastards all over Europe.
    No shit, sherlock. Biggest problem I had convincing others during the Kosovo War when I lost all my friends because of my objections to what Clinton was doing.

  54. MRW says:

    Or it’s the opposite: a false flagish attempt to keep Israeli issues in the forefront. Yaaas. Cynical.

  55. Cold War Zoomie says:

    “I watch a lot of Scandihoovee crime TV.” On MHz Networks? SWMBO loves their French programming too, especially “A French Village.” She grew up in France and her mother is Finnish, so it’s lots of subtitles for me!

  56. Wunduk says:

    Two somments on Mr. Makkinejad and Mr. Kart.
    Mr. Makkinejad: European interaction with Muslims over time has not been nastier for the population than the experience with other Europeans. See the religious wars of the 16th and 17th century in comparison to the wars fought during the same period against the Ottoman Empire. Muslim prisoners made during these wars were integrated quickly – following a baptism – in the states contributing to the defense led by Austria-Hungary (Baden, Bavaria, Palatinate, Poland, Saxony). Protestants or Catholics forced out as minorities remained on the run as whole communities until they wound up sometimes in the New World. See Theodor Fontane’s “The Stechlin” to see how accepted Huguento families were in 19th century Prussia after two hundred years.
    I think Mr. Kart above has touched on a very valid point. The reaction to the refugee crisis right now is shaped strongly by the extension of elaborate social welfare state benefits to others. The redistribution of wealth through the welfare state is accepted based on the imagined community values of a shared history of each nation-state. This can be adapted to make room for new arrivals such as Pied Noirs in France, returning colonists in Portugal, Ossis and Volksdeutsche in Germany. We all saw the negative reaction to this – the ‘envy debate’ it was called.
    Sweden and Germany have probably the highest developed social welfare levels in Europe, and are now challenged to find a narrative to justify the inclusion. For the last 50 years or so this was done by stressing the political or religious persecution of the refugees. This was also accepted widely in Sweden and Germany.
    This has changed. Instead of the politically persecuted intelligenzia of the Eastern Bloc, Europe is now facing people in search of a better life, who have to invent a history of individual persecution to qualify. This is noted, if not in the asylum claims office, then certainly in the area where the refugee is settled and interacts with the population. The flights to Damascus, Kabul and other cities allegedly ‘in crisis’ are surprisingly full of local people.
    Wouldn’t it be better to get rid of the welfare state for all is a question I have heard from Swedes and Germans. One of the proposals on which Hofer ran for President in Austria was to limit accession to the welfare state to Austrians only, ushering into a two-class society. As the imagined community of a nation is the only rationale on which our peoples agree for the redistribution of wealth, Europeans might need to choose between refugee/immigration and maintenance of the welfare state. The American model of a lot of immigration without wealth redistribution looms large, but I think it’s not what people will vote for.

  57. LeaNder says:

    a target cue like XDRF-KLPO
    I could look this up of course. But? Can you help me out? 😉
    Basicially, I mainly recall premonitions when I didn’t pay attention to them. And I should have …
    Interesting:
    https://www.hrvg.org
    ******
    EC, (irony alert) “I have this crystal ball, you know, he said”, FZ, not verbatim.
    But violence against officers has been an issue over here too lately. Not that it is completely new, as some who dealt with a potential escalation explained to me, admitting overreaction on both sides.

  58. LeaNder says:

    yes, TTG, an officer dwelt on that issue in a conversation decades ago. Because of the larger extend of violence present in the context of crimes where you wouldn’t expect it. A specific signature, if you like.
    But the above police report speaks of stones. I vaguely recall Molotov cocktails already present on the riot scene in the early 70s. But grenades? Burning cars seems to be a quite frequent sport too, I cannot really understand. But never underestimate frustration.
    *****
    that said, recent EU statistics seem to show a trend in employment in Sweden. Rise in one group with a parallel decline in the other.
    Following your line of argument: There seems to be evidence over here that especially immigranted juveniles are recruited into the drug trade which links up to whatever type of Mafias.

  59. LeaNder says:

    agenda setting.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory
    To draw attention it doesn’t matter how you respond to it.

  60. Fred says:

    Richard,
    This is not the only story out of Sweden.

  61. Jon H. says:

    Come on, some people have suggested the reason for the invasion of hordes of third-world Muslims from Africa and the Middle East is due to the average Swede’s PC libtardation. Whether in Europe or the U.S. it’s due to a concerted effort by the puppet masters to de-Christianize and multiculturalize the world. Nothing makes the puppet masters more uncomfortable than white Christian societies. Trump and Russia have sent them into neurotic overdrive. This attack and subversion of Western Christian culture has going on for over a thousand years (read Chesterton or Belloc on this subject). The people behind it are the scorpion of Aesop’s fable. Here it is in Living color in a 30-second clip at the link below:
    American activist Barbara Lerner Spectre calls for destruction of European ethnic societies
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ERmOpZrKtw

  62. LondonBob says:

    I have Swedish relatives so they feel comfortable talking to me about how they feel about immigration as I am family. They are all deeply alarmed but dare not say so publicly, indeed it both does and doesn’t surprise me how fast a political party like the Swedish Democrats has grown in popularity. Although I should note my family are Smalanders so tend to the right politically anyway, they despised Olof Palme.
    The best book on Sweden is Roland Huntford’s ‘The New Totalitarians’. This ‘soft/ left dictatorship has proven so much more successful than the openly totalitarian Communist one and is I believe the blueprint for most of the modern left across the West. Although I myself consider Sweden an Eastern European country, along with Finland, whereas Denmark and Norway are Western and have more open societies where there has been a lot more open debate regarding immigration.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Totalitarians

  63. LeaNder says:

    Fred, it seems quite well on this thread (irony), if I registered the correct name in this context and/or got matters correct. Ditto Babak in one response.
    Something that more recently caught my attention, maybe since I feel more and more uncomfortable with it over the years, is to start a comment with making clear were I come from politically.

  64. Larry Kart says:

    I acknowledged that there’s lots of anti-immigrant feeling in Sweden going back for a good while — one basis for this being touched upon by Wunduk below. What I asked/wondered was whether the new riots were in large part set off in an opportunistic or semi-opportunistic manner by the blast of publicity that attended Trump’s remarks.
    That is not to blame the riots upon Trump; rather my point was to note how an already simmering set of grievances might have come to a a boil. What I was trying to get away from, or if you will talk around, is the notion that these new riots proved that there was a direct causal one-to-one relationship between these riots and a long list of Muslim-immigrant crimes in Sweden and that Trump’s remarks played no role in what happened in the immediate aftermath of his remarks.
    Is everything hunky-dory in Sweden re: the native population and immigrants? Of course not. But there some complexities involved IMO.

  65. LeaNder says:

    Fred dear, since that seems to be one of your pet topics.
    I may be one, it felt a little like surviving anyway. Considering that even the police after felt four hours told me the described scenario suggested something peculiar going on. But at that point I gave up with the vague impression of what it meant to go through matters to the very, very end. Trial? Not acting solidarily enough?
    But more basically. A crime with only two or in my case three persons present cannot be ever solved easily via legislation.
    Besides, when I gave in, I realized that police better be careful, thus nothing wrong with the time they spent on my narrative, really. Their offer to call a female interviewer didn’t really change matters for me. Neither did their statement that they wouldn’t be able to follow up on my story if I lodged a complained at the time. Although, that was what I regretted most.
    A couple of years later I encountered the peculiar scenario in a thriller. Peculiarly enough. … just as some news details I stumbled across lately would fit the larger scenario

  66. Babak Makkinejad says:

    That is propaganda; ask the co-eds in Ann Arbor about “rape zone”.

  67. Ken Roberts says:

    Try Welsh shows too — eg Hinterland.
    Ok, here’s my TV-show-influenced-maybe take on Trump baiting…
    1) Behave like high school lads, encouraging headmaster to say stuff. Record everything for later use. Sooner or later he says something incorrect, or something classified / info got to him sooner, is revealed by being necessary context for his remarks.
    2) Gottcha.
    Also, I hope someone is watching the podiums the guy is standing at. That first debate, my crazy suspicion … mist with some drug that lowers inhibitions. Oppo just waits for signs (nose, eg).
    Weird, sorry. Use as novel plot if too strange for real life.

  68. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Thank you for your comments.
    Iran, over 35 years, has hosted more than 3 million Afghan refugees. Prejudice against them has been rampant, and mind you, there is no hand-outs given to them by the Iranian Government. Only last year, a decree by Ayatollah Khamenei finally rationalized the attendance of their children in Iranian schools. Many jobs in Iran are in state sector and Afghan college graduates are denied such jobs. And twice the bill to give Iranian citizenship to their offspring with Iranian women has failed in the Majlis since the deputies are concerned about dilution of Iranian-ness of Iran; as they put it. Iranians have grumbled of their propensity to crime, etc. over the decades but the fact remains that without them, construction will come to stand still since they are willing to accept much lower wages.
    In spite of all of that, the Afghans, but by an accident of History, would have been Iranians; their religion, culture, and language are very much the same. There are no riots, and they have fitted within Iranian society and culture; largely in Eastern Iran but also in Tehran and elsewhere.
    This is not to be replicated in Europe, which – excepting places like Italy, suffers from deep prejudice against Islam. The cultures are in commensurable and those Muslims in Europe are not going to convert to Christianity, per your historical examples. Christianity, in my opinion, remains the salient civilization glue of Europe and Islam does not belong there.
    I understand your main thesis, which is that this is a struggle over money. A form of envy; like the street fights between Danish and Iranian youth in Copenhagen in 1981-1982; all those Iranian youth fleeing the Iran-Iraq War, arriving in Copenhagen, given apartment and pocket money by the Danish Government and liberated to chase after Danish young women (somethings never change).
    But I also think that you are underestimating the religious component of this. If you put 100,000 Swedes in Tehran and they try to live the way they did in Göteborg, they would clash not only with the Iranian Government but with the Iranian people – in my opinion.

  69. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Those must be skills in a very narrow range – IT perhaps?
    Because I have met Iranians educated in Sweden who left since “there are no jobs in Sweden”.
    I was also told of this African street vendor in Italy, he had a degree in Physics but professional doors were closed to him in that country.

  70. Fred says:

    LeaNder,
    LeaNder dear the pet topic is accuracy, which is not something that is present in your response. Police told you something at some point in time related to Sweden? Which police are those, or are you referring to your personal experience somewhere that may, or may not, have anything to do with immigrant violence in Sweden and Donald Trump’s misconstrued comments about that issue?

  71. Fred says:

    Babak,
    I’m now a resident of Ann Arbor, Republic of. De-Nile is not a river in Egypt and this talking point is quite effective in silencing critical thinking. See my post “Precious Snowflakes”. The latest hate hoax is the random email: “Forged racist emails cause stir at University of Michigan” It is yet another effort to ensure the beat goes on and the thinking does not.
    http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/01/precious-snowflakes-by-fred.html

  72. LeaNder,
    Don’t bother looking for that particular target cue. I just made it up without any reference to a target. It was just an example. Explore the hrvg.org site for an explanation of their methodology. You will see that neither the viewer or the targeteer (the one who gives the viewer the target) knows what the target time/location/event actually is. This is the double blind methodology that is key to achieving any real results. A few very experienced, very disciplined viewers can do this with a specific target in mind. I could never do that.

  73. Tyler,
    Sure. I’ll also lift the ban I put on you for my posts. Fire away.

  74. Eric Newhill says:

    TTG,
    The double blind methodology is only needed to prove to skeptics that the thing is real and it impairs results, IMO. I argued that with some people involved. They, quite reasonably argued back that without proof, there’d be no funding. No funding, no development…so on and so forth. Also, repeatable and teachable techniques had to be developed for military applications. I appreciate all of that. If one is seeking to prove something to one’s self, then one must maintain the highest standards of personal objectivity, but can dispense with most of the protocols developed by the military. BTW, IMHO, doing this stuff for one’s personal gain is akin to a lawyer representing himself in court – not a wise idea. Objectivity in interpretation goes right out the window.
    My own approach, which developed spontaneously, is more like something you’d learn at the Monroe Institute. I wasn’t seeking to do this. It just happened one day and it scared the bejeebus out of me. An initial experience similar to that described by Robert Monroe – though I hadn’t heard of him at the time and only learned of him a few years later. I reference Monroe only to save me us all a long multi-paragraph screed on my approach. Obviously, I have my own nuances in philosophy and metaphysical interpretation as well as technique. In short, read what Monroe says and then imagine how using what he teaches could be controlled to “remote view” (actually Robert Monroe is deceased now, but his institute continues).

  75. Swerv21 says:

    Construction sector- but I have also heard it applies in IT.
    I have met Iraqi’s here who moved here as adults and can not find work. But many of the Iranians and Iraqis I meet are dentists, pharmacists, some are small business owners- one guy I see st the gym owns a ‘traffic school”, where they give driving courses. Getting a drivers license in Sweden is more difficult. They usually have excellent Swedish language.
    I will say this- genrally, if you do not speak ‘good Swedish’ and do not fit in socially, it is more difficult to hold down a job, especially white collar. This is a very conformist society.
    If you are in a technical field, software and engineering or certain areas in the construction sector it is easier to find work even if your language skills are poor. It is even easier if you are American because Swedes are extremely pro American, even now. I understand Swedish but choose not to speak it. My colleagues are happy to have an American in the office and many prefer to practice their English rather than use Swedish.

  76. Swerv21 says:

    I would generally agree with this. Right now in Sweden a booming Economy has masked the tension. There is still a lot of room before they get to a two tier social welfare system, but i suspect that there will need to be an adjustment in the future.
    It all depends on how many they can get employed and paying taxes to offset the aging population. Construction is an easy way to spur employment in semi skilled workers, and there is a lot of this going on. It is helping juice e system and offsetting the grumbling by the native born.
    If there is a nasty crash to the real estate market here, then i think things will get very interesting very quickly. I think then you will see REAL tension between the native born and the newly arrived. The welfare model will be only one source of conflict.

  77. I do not think the terms in which the above debate has been conducted are the terms in which many people in Europe see demographic change in Europe.
    The crime rates at the stress points are of course high. Very high and they’ll go higher – it’s foolish to pretend otherwise. But that’s not the point. What we are seeing in many areas in Europe is one population being replaced by another. It’s head in the clouds thinking to assert that the population being displaced should approve of the process.
    I live in a rural area so in this debate I find myself yet again an outsider. Not quite – the population replacement of the indigenous farming community of my boyhood by city dwellers moving to cheaper country property is now nearing completion, so I suppose I have a little insight into the loss such a wholesale displacement entails. But the old lifestyle was fast on the way out anyway so I detect little resentment of the change among the few remaining.
    The population displacement resulting from mass immigration is by far a more brutal and dramatic change. I notice that most of the people I meet who express the received opinion on mass immigration are in no danger of being displaced, have little fear of being personally disadvantaged by this demographic shift, and sometimes live quite happily and securely in mixed areas themselves, often employing the incomers as domestic staff and glad to do so. I’m not convinced that these are the people who should be laying down the law as to how the people in the thick of it should be feeling.

  78. Dr. Puck says:

    Thanks for the primary report.

  79. turcopolier says:

    English Outsider
    Does this apply to Sweden as well as England? pl

  80. bks says:

    Death toll approaches zero …

  81. Re says:

    An honest prespective, from a young man in Sweden, on the impact of refuges in Sweden.
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y1_viPSD-bY

  82. Fred says:

    English,
    “What we are seeing in many areas in Europe is one population being replaced by another.”
    Here in the US part of what you describe we call Urban sprawl and has been going on since immediately after WW2. That is migration, not immigration. Those people are culturally Americans. The other part is a direct replacement of US population “the legacy demographic” as a University of Michigan history grad now teaching in Florida put it. The “legacy demographic” being those who do not or will not adapt to the new world Utopian order best exemplified by the cultural changes since the late ’60s, the immigration act of ’65 and the capstone being the last 8 years under Obama. The majority of “replacements” are either South Americans, many fleeing failed states like Mexico or Cuba, or most recently, those from Africa and the MEA. The missing piece of this is that those newer immigrants do not wish to become Americans at all. To use Steve Sailer’s term they act as “Extended Stay Americans” since they want to use the artifacts of the civilization they find here – first world standard of living, housing, medical care, social services; but they have zero intention of integrating into our Westernized civilization -starting with learning the English language and the forms of our government and civic responsibility.

  83. Larry Kart says:

    And these grenade attacks in Sweden were perpetrated primarily by Muslim immigrants? I don’t see where the article says that.

  84. turcopolier says:

    Larry Kart
    You seem to believe that the Muslim immigrants are the aggrieved party. pl

  85. jerseycityjoan says:

    “The American model of a lot of immigration without wealth redistribution looms large, …
    While that may be how we look to many inside and outside of the US, I think that’s because the ultimate cost of mass migration to the US since the 1980s — and of a high number of low income people — is far from known yet.
    What we are familiar with is a high number of recent immigrants being here illegally and a low number of adult immigrants receiving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
    That will change as we legalize the illegal immigrant population (which I am sure we will do). That will change as immigrants retire. Lower income people are much greater users of social benefits. We have been importing poverty for years — and not just via illegal immigration, but through the allowing the poor immigrants to bring over hundreds of thousands of their poor family members. That includes brothers and sisters and in-laws who in tern sponsor additional poor family members.
    I predict a massive First World backlash against mass migration once the true cost of all this becomes apparent. I don’t think a two-tiered system will work though.

  86. Cortes says:

    The phenomenon you describe is largely the UK equivalent of “White Flight ” combined with cashing in on the gross disparity in house prices between metropolitan and sparsely populated areas. The NW Scottish locals refer to “white settlers ” who can easily outbid young local people when property is sold and whose options in many cases are (1) live with parents at a time when families should be being made (2) live in shoddy fixed caravans ~ trailer parks (at 56+N) (3) house sit or (4) migrate to cities. Meanwhile the blow-ins live large and cannot fathom why they’re well and truly hated.

  87. Larry Kart says:

    No, of course the party that’s aggrieved clearly is the Swedes. The question to me — not the only question but I think a not unimportant one — is what their grievances are based on/arise from. The uncomfortable presence of Muslim immigrants on the home turf of an ethnically and culturally homogenous people? Yes, that would be something to feel aggrieved about to some degree. Or is it a host of truly dire acts that those immigrants have perpetrated/are perpetrating? That, I think, would be something to feel aggrieved about in different ways and to a much different degree.
    That’s why when Tyler cited that Wikipedia post about all those grenade attacks in Sweden in recent years, I asked if those attacks were perpetrated by Muslim immigrants rather than, as seemed to be the case, criminal and/or hoodlum elements from Albania and the like who have got their hands on leftover munitions from recent conflicts. I will of course defer to those who know Swedish society much better than I do.

  88. Tyler says:

    Larry,
    I know you’d love to insinuate that Swedes are lobbing hand grenades at each other, but dig into the footnotes. Also note that the Swedes, as a policy, tend not to report if the perp is Muslim/immigrant.
    They also will jail you for talking about statistics.
    Reality is not “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.

  89. Colonel – it was, I believe, a Norwegian politician who remarked that the Norwegians must treat the immigrants well so that when the immigrants became the majority they should treat the Norwegians well. The cliche of the death wish Scandinavians has become so established that there is perhaps a danger of accepting it at face value and looking no further. In addition the gang violence within immigrant communities might easily make it seem that that whole areas are in turmoil when in reality it’s only a few gang members settling scores. Possibly there’s a parallel with London, where the Russian gangs have a fearsome reputation but don’t, I believe, amount to much in terms of numbers or in terms of the danger they pose to the general public.
    Nevertheless there is population displacement under way in Sweden and this process is not at all agreeable to the communities being displaced. I no longer follow the Swedish news but when, a few years back, there was a spate of reports and videos showing the conditions in which the Swedish police and firefighters worked it was clear that there were no-go ghetto areas. It was also clear that the poorer Swedes have a rough time near these areas, particularly the women. I assume that things have not improved much since.

  90. Babak Makkinejad says:

    It has been my observation that educated Muslims in France “fit-in” well within France; at least in larger cities.
    I do not know the cause.

  91. Ulenspiegel says:

    ” Not quite – the population replacement of the indigenous farming community of my boyhood by city dwellers moving to cheaper country property is now nearing completion, so I suppose I have a little insight into the loss such a wholesale displacement entails. But the old lifestyle was fast on the way out anyway so I detect little resentment of the change among the few remaining.”
    Yes, the old population dies, their kids move into cities and some urban folks move into rural districts but are not compensationg for the losses. That is quite common in Europe. But this is not caused by immigrants.
    However, the people in rural districts, where usually no immigrants live, vote anti-immigration, i.e. they projects their troubles caused by domestic politics in the past on newcomers.
    In contrst, in cities, where we see a very high percentage of immigrants the anti-immigrant political parties struggle.
    If you do not understand this obvious contradiction then a proper solution, if it exists, will not be found IMHO.

  92. Wunduk says:

    You’re right. Even if there would be no envy, a sudden arrival of Göteborgers bent on maintaining their lifestyle would lead to clashes with the Tehranis. That’s why you got New Julfa back then.
    I don’t want to be monocausal on economics. My argument is that the economic and social envy can be lowered if you have narrative that stresses a common bond (religious, ethnic, historical, ethic even).
    I saw Afghans in Iran quite welcome and well integrated, primarily because these factor existed. Maybe the Asiatic-looking Hazaras are getting a worse welcome. But as you say it could all have become the same country. Without them the Iranian economy would collapse. And don’t forget the supply of nan-e babari!
    Students are an interesting group, I like the 1980s reference. The Afghan students I knew also clashed with the komite (Western pop music tapes and wodka was an issue) and fellow students regularly. Lot of envy at that time between many Iranian students who had come from the front and the coddled foreigners who had access to dollars and not only to these wretched ration stamps the locals got (khwabgah-e Amirabad 1369-71).
    A large proportion of the Afghans who arrived in Europe (and Sweden in particular in 2015 and 2016) are Afghans from Iran, who have not been in Afghanistan for a long time, maybe since they were born.
    Repatriating them to Afghanistan is not going to integrate them back into anything they left behind. It’s rather a new beginning. There are three major cities in Afghanistan (e.g. Kabul’s Daht-e Barchi) where they can integrate into existing urban settlements with a large part of Iranianized people. But this will require an economy. These parts are really quite different from the rest of the cities (and the country) and I believe it might even work. Lots of small enterprises, metal and electrical workshops, some internet technology. So I am hopeful, and I think it will be better to integrate them into these emerging economic nodes in Afghanistan than into Europe. Trouble is they prefer the easier road.
    From what I see here (SW Germany on the Swiss border), almost every asylum seeker from this demographic (Iranian/Afghan) is already more busy sorting out the job offers than paying attention to their stories, which is a shame as most do not seem to me to have a history of personal persecution or threat. Explains the quite low acceptance of asylum claims (below 50%).

  93. Dante Alighieri says:

    Reportedly three people were lightly injured, ten cars were set on fire, a couple of stores were looted, police took control, and end of story. Just to put the reality of this particular incident into its minuscule perspective. To turn this dime-a-dozen affair into an issue about Trump only testifies to the madness currently prevailing in America.

  94. Lars says:

    From my Swedish sources, it now appears that the original story was largely manufactured in the editing room to adhere to a specific political view. The larger problem is that we now have a president with an extensive information effort at his disposal but prefers to get his news from a tv.
    I returned to the US yesterday and non-citizens are subjected to increased harassment that will eventually have negative economic consequences.

  95. turcopolier says:

    Babak
    IMO Muslim permanent immigrants arrived in France in waves. some are clearly deeply French in culture. Just look at the “crawl” for French TV and you will be surprised how many there in the French arts. pl

  96. Fred says:

    Lars,
    “I returned to the US yesterday and non-citizens are subjected to increased harassment that will eventually have negative economic consequences.”
    Which city was this? Who is doing the harassment? Police, border patrol, mail carriers, baristas at starbucks? Just how are they identifying people as non-citizens so as to inflict this harassment upon people?

  97. LeaNder says:

    Fred, I was once successfully outed as a structuralist here. Maybe more outed myself. You may not have noticed.
    Whose ‘truth will set you free’? Whose me, beyond religion? Whose omniscient, all-knowing point of view? Thus whose accuracy?
    Correction, I guess strike doesn’t work. Does it?:
    if I lodged nono complainedt at the time.
    Oh, it does. At least in preview. … Anyway that’s the only thing I regret about not following through.

  98. turcopolier says:

    lars
    “largely manufactured in the editing room” Where? Who? pl

  99. Babak Makkinejad says:

    Germany designates Afghanistan as a “safe country” and wants to send these people back.
    But that demographics is precisely the one which can integrate well with Germans – better than Turks or anyone else, almost as good as Serbs.
    Sending the Afghani in Germany back to Afghanistan is an evil act, it is like taking a Honduran who has grown up in Boston and repatriate him to that gang-infested country.
    If the US Army War College study from 2016 be believed, Afganistan is on her way to partition (likely along the Seljuk boundary) and these people will be displaced again and have to flee back to Iran.
    Which brings me to the nub of the Fortress West position:
    She strives to wreck Iran and build Afghanistan, aide Georgia while telling her when and how to trade with Iran and on and on and on; being oblivious to the centrality of the health of Iran to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia.

  100. Tyler says:

    Johnson,
    Google “Robert Reich Trump Sweden” for a real treat.

  101. Tyler says:

    Lars,
    This is the delusional, self serving BS the Swedes have been feeding themselves for decades to avoid facing the reality of their country crumbling around them.
    Not surprised you’re engaged in it.

  102. Swerv21 says:

    The poorer Swedes are treated in exactly the same way as the “deplorable” and are routinely shouted down if they question conventional thinking on immigration. Hence the popularity of the Sweden Democrats.
    I should point out that while I do not there is a crime story in Sweden (yet) I would not defend the immigration model as well thought out and responsible, even to those it is designed to help.
    However- unlike the US and the U.K. Sweden remains far more homogenous, affluent and the labor movement far stronger than in either of those countries. I also think that although inequality is rising, it is also much lower here among the native born than in the US. To me this means that the elites (while often still ridiculous) can not afford to be out of touch. This is why the current labor government was able to slam the brakes on immigration policy last year and will continue to tighten the rules- i think I saw an estimated goal of 80000 deportations for unapproved asylum seekers- but I would need to look that number up again.
    Also the native born birth rate is rising once again.
    The big difference is that they still do social cohesion well, here. It can be frustratingly hard to get a Swede to disagree with you. This may be what will keep the situation glued together for a long while.

  103. Larry Kart says:

    “largely manufactured in the editing room” Where? Who? pl
    By filmmaker Ami Horowitz, the fellow Tucker Carlson interviewed, which interview was seen by Trump and which inspired his remark about Sweden.
    Two of the Swedish policeman Horowitz interviewed claimed right away that their words were taken by Horowitz in the course of editing from the context in which they actually were spoken by the policemen in response to some questions Horowitz asked and were later on tacked onto other questions — ones that Horowitz asked during the interview that the policemen answered differently or not at all. There’s also the possibility that some of Horowitz’s questions were ones that he filmed himself “asking” after the actual interview took place, and that he then tacked on some of the policemen’s words so that they seemed to be answering questions that they had never even heard,
    At this point, it’s a they said/he said matter, but the sort of manipulation described above is child’s play for anyone who knows how to handle videotape or film. And if it’s done well, no one ever would be the wiser, this side of some sort of forensic investigation of the original tape/tapes, which I assume could be done.
    A crude example: in the course of a video interview about a child abduction, I’m asked two questions: 1) “Did you find the missing little girl attractive?” and 2) “Do you find movie star X attractive”? My answers are 1) “What? She’s a little girl.” and 2) “Who wouldn’t?” Take answer 2 and tack it onto question 1) and Kaboom.
    Or. even simpler: 1″ “Did you have one-on-one contact with enemy agent X?” 2) “Did you have social contact with X?”
    Same answer to both “Yes, on numerous occasions.”

  104. Larry Kart says:

    “largely manufactured in the editing room” Where? Who? pl
    By filmmaker Ami Horowitz, whose interview with Tucker Carlson was seen by Trump and inspired his remarks. Two of the Swedish policemen that Horowitz interviewed said right off that their actual words had been taken by Horowitz from the context in which they were uttered and were tacked on by him to other questions Horowitz had asked that they had answered differently or not at all. Doing such things is child’s play for anyone who knows how to handle videotape or film.
    As for how such rearrangements can change things, two probably needless crude examples.
    Question 1) “How often have you been in one-on-one contact with agent X?” “Question 2: “How often have you been to parties when Mr. X was present?” Your actual answer (to question 2, or so you think): “On many occasions.” Tack that answer onto question 1) and down the primrose path you go.
    Or, in the course of a child abduction case: Question 1) “Did you find this little girl attractive? Question 2: “Do you find starlet X attractive?” Answer 1): “What? She’s a little girl.” Your actual answer to question 2): “Who wouldn’t?” Tack your answer 2) onto question 1), and there you go again.
    I assume that such edits can be detected by some sort of forensic analysis of the actual tape or film.

  105. Fred says:

    Cortes,
    I’m sure English Outsider can correct me if wrong but I believe all of the UK was “white” even before the arrival of Ceasar’s legions a couple of millennia ago. Now it appears that being white is apparently a bad thing.

  106. Larry Kart says:

    P.S. Admittedly, at this point, things are at the “They said/he said” stage and may never get any further than that — again barring possible forensic analysis of the original videotape or film.

  107. Ulenspiegel says:

    “In recent years, sexual assault has reportedly risen 70 percent in Sweden.”
    Yes, but sexual assault is much much broader defined in Sweden than in the USA. With the same metrics the USA would be (much?) worse and the whole sexual assault argument is often bogus as long as you use a faulty methodology.
    It is undisputed that immigrants commit in some countries more crimes than the domestic population, however, I do not find an correlation with muslims. You see a clear discrepancy between share of population and share of criminals for Christians too. E.g. Polish immigrants have a double murder rate in UK, a similar picture for Christians from Yogoslavia in Austria in respects to crimes.
    Whether a society is willing to accepts

  108. Tyler says:

    Dante,
    Your bubble is thick enough to survive a direct hit from a high yield nuclear weapon.
    This kind of denialism, the insistence on doubling down on suicidal idiocy despite what reality may be, is the reason that Pinochet resorted to hurling communists out of helicopters.

  109. Ulenspiegel, I’m not sure about this – “In contrast, in cities, where we see a very high percentage of immigrants the anti-immigrant political parties struggle.”
    If I might say first of all, I don’t know of any “anti-immigrant” parties of any significance in England. Sooner or later “anti-immigration” will morph for some into “anti-immigrant” but that has not happened yet in the case of any political party that can muster a decent number of votes. It will for a certainly if we keep on packing people into these islands but we haven’t reached the stage that was reached in, say, late nineteenth century Vienna, where anti-immigration sentiment resulting from speedy demographic change turned rapidly into anti-antisemitism and that turned again into overt personal hostility against Jews on the party political scene. It was quick there because there was already a tradition of antisemitism to latch on to. Here there’s a tradition of tolerance that militates against such extremes.
    Maybe in Holland,say, we’re starting to see the start of such a progression, Moroccans rather than Jews becoming the target of the PVV, but we don’t see it here. Yet.
    That out of the way, I think you are saying that non-immigrants in areas with high immigrant populations don’t vote for immigration restrictions.
    Two points:-
    1. The English inner city constituencies where much of the displacement occurs are, or were, consistently Labour. That loyalty to the Labour party used to over-ride all else.
    2. I recollect one high immigrant constituency where the BNP, a party that was riding high a little while ago and that was certainly anti-immigration, collected relatively few non-immigrant votes. At the time, however, the BNP leadership was being outed as being inclined to Neo-Nazism and the general reluctance to vote for a party associated with Neo-Nazism also over-rode other considerations.
    Apart from such circumstances as those I think you may find that urban working class whites, who are after all the people who bear the brunt of mass immigration, do tend to vote for anti-immigration parties if they can find them.
    As for rural areas, those I meet cast their vote on what they think about the EU, not on what they think about immigration. The position may be different in other parts of the country, especially in those rural areas where there is a large Eastern European immigrant component.
    On this – “Yes, the old population dies, their kids move into cities and some urban folks move into rural districts but are not compensating for the losses. That is quite common in Europe. But this is not caused by immigrants.” – the process is as you describe and it’s seen often enough, young people moving away from the family farm. But many rural workers don’t want to move away and still have to because the houses rural workers used to live in have all been bought up by city dwellers. Though the mechanism is different, that resultant displacement of the rural work force changes the fabric of rural society just as the displacement of urban working class whites as a result of mass immigration changes the fabric of their society. Same phenomenon, different scale.
    I hope that answers your points. It’s a tricky subject because there are always suspicions of “racism” hanging around whenever mass immigration gets discussed. Tricky or not, I get the feeling it’s a subject that going to have to be openly discussed in fairly short order, because if we moderates shy away from the subject the extremists certainly won’t.

  110. Keith Harbaugh says:

    Hi LondonBob.
    Feel like answering the question I pose at the following location?
    http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/11/httpswwwtheguardiancomcommentisfree2016nov09donald-trump-putin-russia-kremlin-obama.html#comment-6a00d8341c72e153ef01b7c8d917bd970b
    (That’s my comment located at the end of the comments on Pat Lang’s 2016-11-09 post titled “Hating the Bear”.)
    If so, thanks.
    Keith

  111. Cortes says:

    Gosh, Fred, there was me thinking that the UK dates from the Treaty of Union, January (?) 1707.
    The influxes of ” white settlers ” produce the results in rural areas outlined by English Outsider infra.
    Incidentally often the newcomers migrate to take advantage of better care of elderly people than available in the London area, so not only are young people displaced but greater demands are placed on social services. Moreover incomers rarely have any respect for local customs or languages (Welsh or Gaelic).

  112. Wunduk says:

    English Outsider,
    I think there is a difference, though I base this on visits and exchanges with friends coming from Sweden.
    England it seems to me brought immigrants into de-industrialised urban areas, from where they gradually took over neighbourhood by neighbourhood.
    Swedish immigration has from the 1970s onwards been alost exclusively directed towards newly constructed suburbs. Rather grey high rise complexes on the edges of cities.
    First came the Fins in large numbers. But they – remembering the colonial heritage – returned in large numbers to Finland once in the 1980s the economy took off over the border. Or became Swedes. Or were part of the Sweden-speaking part of Fins who felt less well in a more nationalist Finland. The there were the migrant workers from italy Greece and the Balkans like everywhere in Europe. Almost all of them started in these newly constructed neighbourhoods.
    Chileans and other refugees from the murderous civil wars in Latin America stayed and became the face of the 1980s refugee/immigrant as far as I can remember, and from the 1980s it was also a lot of Iranians. Both groups stuck to the pattern set by the Fins, worked hard and integrated. One very beautiful Iranian young lady at that time was kind of Mulla Fatema from Rustam at-Tawarikh in Swedish (in case Mr. Makkinejad is reading this).
    In the 1990s Muslim Yougoslavs / Bosnians were apparently the biggest group. This was when I started to remember that at the same time Albanians were showing up in sizeable numbers. With the opening of the Eastern European Mafia-States for business organized crime shot up. Oh yes and Somalis came too.
    The housing estates had depreciated, sizeable numbers of the Chileans and Iranians had moved to more upscale housing areas. I no longer visited these areas. I guess a lot of the housing estates was vacant. To be correct to English Outsider’s statement: I do think there are no Swedes left living in these estates, but it cannot be a lot.
    I think this is where the caseload from Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Caucasus for the 2013 riots accumulated. There was strong competition among youth for jobs, about 25% under 25 have no job in the 2010s. Among the immigrants this percentage was much higher, above 50%. 40% of those aged 20-25 years in these communities had neither a completed education nor a regular job.
    Maybe as a response to the lacking integration into the job market, subcultures dominate now the 1970s neighborhoods like Husby, where a younger cohort of migrants had failed to integrate and is in conflict with the remnants of earlier migrants. So could not see a replacement of a Swedish population, rather the problem is that for a very long time both the indigenous population and the immigrant population did not see each other as these neighbourhoods are far out of town, and contact is made more on the edges.

  113. Tyler – don’t you go getting yourself banned again, you hear? Forthright sanity is always in short supply these days.
    And while we’re having this chat, this business of throwing communists out of helicopters. Not quite sure how to put this, but you’ve got to stop doing it. It’s not good for them. Just thought I’d mention it.

  114. Fred says:

    Cortes,
    What color were they in 1706?

  115. Tyler says:

    Larry,
    Yeah I bet they recanted under zero duress in a country that throws you in prison for “inciting racial hatred”.

  116. LondonBob says:

    I am no expert, and this is just the impression I got, but I would say that Putin is aware of the interests of Russian people and does seek to advance them, whereas in the West we are not allowed to acknowledge such interests even exist. In general I would say Russia, like many Eastern European countries, avoided the 60s experience and as such don’t embrace the post 60s ‘liberal’ consensus. So Russia will always offend Borgist ideology, look at the trouble the Visegrad countries get into with the EU elite, and as such these countries are labelled nationalist.
    I can only go by my limited experience but the Russian friends I had who really hated Putin were actually the ones who were nationalists. They disliked the Eurasian Union, Central Asian migrants in Moscow, Russian aid to the Caucasus (stop feeding the Caucasus) and Putin’s focus on Russian speakers rather than ethnic Russians. Putin is more a Tsarist Imperial Russia nationalist rather than an ethnic nationalist. Putin also knows the nationalist cause has far more appeal to the Russian people than the liberal opposition and is thus his real threat.
    Anyway better off asking a Russian like Anatoly Karlin to explain the difference on his blog.

  117. BKS – I find I’m guilty of imprecision. When I referred to “Death Wish Scandinavia” I wasn’t suggesting that Swedes are wandering around looking for someone to put them out of their misery. Not at all. It wasn’t the loss of their lives I was remarking on so much as the loss of their country.
    A loss that doesn’t necessarily go by numbers, more by the size and cohesion of the various voting blocs. Demographics can be a real pain that way sometimes.
    In general, a loss the prospect of which is welcomed by many Europeans, particularly Europeans who’ve been properly schooled. Welcomed with enthusiasm by cronies whose bonuses go up as labour costs go down. Not welcomed by others. That’s all there is to it, really.

  118. Dante Alighieri says:

    Tyler, I respect your opinion but not its poorly argued form.

  119. Larry Kart says:

    Tyler — Yes, that’s certainly possible. OTOH, Horowitz’s track record is that of a free-form provocateur who in his work pretty much decides beforehand the slant he wants to take and then takes steps to make things happen that fit his agenda. See, for example, the stunt where he had people wave the flags of Israel and ISIS on the UC-Berkeley campus and filmed the results (or “results”).
    http://www.jta.org/2017/02/21/news-opinion/world/meet-the-gonzo-jewish-filmmaker-behind-trumps-fake-news-on-sweden

  120. Tyler says:

    Dante,
    The guy handwaving away crimes by Muslim immigrants with “no big deal, eventually the sun will explode” lawgic has no legs to call anyone else’s argument bad.

  121. Tyler says:

    EO,
    I wasn’t banned, just busy with life.
    As to your second, you’re right of course. Communists today usually top about three bills (or around 150kg, in the spirit of entente cordial). Their poor engines are gonna be strained.

  122. Tyler says:

    Larry,
    If by “slant” you mean “facts that are unappealing for the Left to face”, than yeah.
    In this case it was to show the difference in reaction. Also bad form on linking to a leftist opinion piece.

  123. Larry Kart says:

    Tyier — If by “this case” you were referring to Horowitz’s UC-Berkeley venture, where students (at least in Horowitz’s film or video) reacted to the Israeli flag with hostility and to the ISIS flag with indifference, I think the most likely explanation is that while most or all of those students recognized the Israeli flag and applied their pro-Palestinian leanings to its presence (no surprise there), they were indifferent to the presence of the ISIS flag because most of them had little or no idea what that flag stood for. Hey — I’m not sure myself what the ISIS flag looks like.

  124. Larry Kart says:

    Tyler — And Zero Hedge, an article from which began this thread, isn’t rather firmly over to the Right?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge
    As for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, where the article about Horowitz came from, it’s political coloration is ostensibly neutral, with a focus on Jewish interests of course, though for sure that article casts aspersions on Horowitz.

  125. Tyler says:

    TTG,
    Honestly that sounds like more of the Swedish Police engaging in ABM thinking: Anyone But Muslims.
    As one wag put it, there’s lies, damned lies, statistics, and Swedish statistics.

  126. Valissa says:

    Oddly the word “libertarian” is nowhere to be found in that the Wikipedia article, because I think that more accurately describes the political component of their viewpoint. After all it is primarily a financial news website, and there are libertarians in finance. It is anti-liberal but not really right wing, IMO. It is anti-Borg when it shares article on geopolitics.
    ZH is a mixed bag… which makes it hard to characterize in a few words. They often share good articles from other news and blog sites, and some of those outside articles come from liberal or left sources as well as from the right. The key being that they are critical of the status quo/establishment and trying to look “behind the curtain” of that establishment. ZH seems to pride itself on being rebellious, and suspicious of authority, and there is a certain conspiracy theory aspect as well. You can see that in some of the sensational headlines. Of course, just because something is labeled a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it’s not true.
    As with all news sites these days, discernment and circumspection are warranted. The comment section is very rough and tumble, with an obvious alt-right presence (heavy on snark). I read it when I want a laugh (though mostly I don’t bother)… not a place with many thoughtful or educational comments.

  127. ex-PFC Chuck says:

    There have been bomb threats to two Jewish community centers here in the Twin City area recently. Today a coalition of local Muslim groups placed an ad in the Star Tribune expressing support for the Jews and against the threatened violence.
    http://www.startribune.com/in-large-ad-muslims-in-twin-cities-send-prayers-to-jews-affected-by-bomb-threats/414719323/

  128. Tyler says:

    Larry,
    Wikipedia couldn’t even be bothered to post who was throwing grenades at who.
    Again, look at the references.

  129. Larry Kart says:

    Tyler — Will do, later on today probably.

  130. Larry Kart says:

    Tyler — I’ve now read all the references in that Wikipedia article that are in English (I don’t know Swedish). The only ones I found that seem relevant to what we’ve been talking about are:
    1) ”These attacks are creating terror and it plays into the hand of the far right” said Joakim Palmkvist, a Swedish journalist and author of Mafia War. “The general effect is scaring the public to an extent that has been unknown before.”
    While most Swedes are open to immigrants, the far right Sweden Democrats became the third biggest party in parliament in last year’s election, in part by demanding a clampdown on immigration and crime.

       “This [wave of grenade attacks] is because we have segregation in Sweden and most of it is in Malmo,” said Jorgen Grubb, Sweden Democrats chairman in Malmo. “It’s always people from other countries that do these things. What Malmo needs is to put up a red stop sign.”

    But the city’s most infamous killer was Swedish-born — Peter Mangs was arrested in 2010 for three murders and 13 attempted murders over a seven-year period, a string of shootings in Malmo targeting immigrants.

    
2) Gothenburg has a long history of gang-related violence dating back to the early 1990s. Amir Rostami, a leading authority on Sweden’s organized crime groups, who is based at Stockholm University told The Local in March that organized crime remained a persistent problem.


    3) Malmo: While not as well known internationally as troubled neighbouring district Rosengård, violence in Fosie is regularly linked to gang crime and ethnic segregation.

The typical Malmö gang, according to Karlsson, is not really a gang at all. He says there are fluid constellations of young men, aged 20-25 or younger, of various ethnicities – Swedish and non-Swedish – with ever-changing loyalties. Most of them are known to the police. Although there has been a spike in gang-related violence this summer, it is not a new phenomenon, neither to locals nor to officers.
    

4) Many of the hand grenades are believed to come from former conflict zones in the Balkans. Police have previously linked some of the unrest to an increased import of illegal weapons and recently called for tougher border controls on the Öresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark in a bid to tackle the problem.
    

Now some or all of the above may be mere pussy-footing on the part of Swedish journalists, but I don’t see in these stories anything like “Muslim immigrants are behind these grenade attacks.” 

Yes, a leader of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party does say, “It’s always people from other countries that do these things.” Another story lists “ethnic segregation” as a cause of violence, though it doesn’t say whether the violence is coming mostly from the immigrant side or is mutual. Others say that it’s a matter of organized crime and gang activity — Swedish gangs being “fluid constellations of young men, aged 20-25 or younger, of various ethnicities – Swedish and non-Swedish – with ever-changing loyalties.”


    Again, that Muslim immigrants are involved in those gangs and also in organized crime is far from impossible, but given your injunction to check the references, I was expecting more than what I’ve found. What am I missing?

  131. If you examine the comments on Zero hedge you’ll find, apart from the impossibly foul language and all the rest of it, a strong contingent whose ideals are unexceptionable. They dream of grabbing a sack of wheat and a bag of gold and a long gun and heading out for Montana, there to hole up in case the world falls apart.
    It’s a quite impracticable dream, and I suspect some of them are looking forward to the world falling apart whereas most of us are earnestly hoping it won’t, but we’ve got worse dreams plaguing us.

  132. “Again, that Muslim immigrants are involved in those gangs and also in organized crime is far from impossible, but given your injunction to check the references, I was expecting more than what I’ve found. What am I missing?”
    Were you Swedish I’d say your country, by the sound of it, if you hold to your present course. This comments section has been something of an eye-opener.

  133. Valissa says:

    English Outsider… I think you taking the comments too literally.
    My take is that it is fantasy escapist talk of (mostly) urban dwellers with a libertarian bent many of whom are employed in the field of finance… in some ways these fantasies not so very different from my friends on the left that fantasize about living on a farm or somewhere in the countryside where they can escape the horrors of city living (/snark) and “be in nature” but will never really do it. And not just because the countryside is full of deplorables, it’s an issue of where the jobs are, and the good restaurants, and the boutique grocery stores, and a major airport, etc. Btw, since The Donald was elected lots of liberals have become doomers and preppers too.
    The fact that the main nom de plume of the blog is Tyler Durden (a fictional movie character) of Fight Club fame (a movie) should is a big clue as to the mindset of the commenters.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club … the unnamed protagonist, referred to as the narrator, who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a “fight club” with soap maker Tyler Durden, played by Pitt, and they are joined by men who also want to fight recreationally.
    —————-
    Zero Hedge: Wall Street’s daily dose of doom and gloom http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/25/investing/zero-hedge-wall-street-blog-finance/index.html
    Sometimes the site gets it right before everyone else. Zero Hedge is credited with flagging financial issues like high-frequency trading before they became sexy mainstream stories.
    “It’s extremely influential in the New York, London and global hedge fund community. I meet clients in London and they mention it, and I meet regulators in Washington and they mention it,” said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, a brokerage firm.
    —————-

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