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folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Stockholm Syndrome?

Ami Horowitz, Sweden, Tucker Carlson, terrorism, terrorist, violence, immigrants

Can we handle the truth? Governments and media professionals don’t always think so.

Journalist Ami Horowitz, whose interview with Tucker Carlson caught President Trump’s attention last week, noted that, despite what he learned (and recorded) at street level in Sweden, Swedes in general and government personnel in particular* seem resistant to acknowledging the levels of violence in Muslim migrant communities.

The media firestorm that followed Trump’s off-the-cuff comments seemed more evidence of the same, as did the Washington Post coverage of yesterday’s riots in Stockholm, in the 89 percent immigrant suburb of Rinkeby.

“Multiple criminologists in Sweden . . . said the notion that immigrants were responsible for a large proportion of crime in the country was highly exaggerated,” the Post report explained. “Nevertheless, the integration of immigrants into Swedish society is a problem that the government has been struggling to address.”

Yet, in the wake of a 2013 riot by migrants, David Frum noted that, “Sweden does not report data on crimes by foreign-born people, only by foreign passport holders — meaning that an immigrant who has been naturalized will be counted as a Swede for statistical purposes.”

The media, like the Swedes, seem protective. Not of native-born Swedes, but of the immigrant populations.

Swedes really are well meaning. But good intentions are not enough. In Sweden, as throughout Europe, Muslim immigrants have been let in but not assimilated. Unskilled, most émigrés cannot find jobs . . . and you know what they say about “idle hands.”

Bending over backwards to downplay problems, though, isn’t the answer. It prevents Swedes and others from coming to the correct conclusion: the best way to help others is not to put them on the dole in your (foreign!) land, but to aid them close to home.

And stop bombing and destabilizing their countries, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.  

 

* The policemen interviewed in Horowitz’s video have claimed they were taken out of context. Horowitz denies that charge here.

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Categories
Thought

Lao Tzu

Tom@HK - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gracewong/2175595214/sizes/o/ Statue of Lao Tzu (Laozi) in Quanzhou

Whoever undertakes to rule the kingdom and to shape it according to his whim — I foresee that he will fail to reach his goal. That is all.

The kingdom is a living being. It cannot be constructed, in truth! He who tries to manipulate it will spoil it, he who tries to put it under his power will lose it.

Therefore: Some creatures go out in front, others follow, some have warm breath, others cold, some are strong, some weak, some attain abundance, other succumb.

The wise man will accordingly forswear excess, he will avoid arrogance and not overreach.

Lao Tzu, as quoted in the second of the Six Pamphlets of the “White Rose” Students

Categories
Today

Heroes Executed

On Feb. 22, 1943, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, and their colleague in the White Rose resistance organization, Christoph Probst, stood trial before the Volksgericht — the People’s Court that tried political offenses against the Nazi German state. Found guilty of treason by Roland Freisler, head judge of the court, the three were executed that same day.

The method of capital punishment was guillotine.

Their six pamphlets had spread throughout German-held territory before the war ended.

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folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

No-Go Zones

Trump, Sweden, terrorism, attack, immigrant, refuge, terror attack

“We’ve got to keep our country safe,” President Donald Trump said last week at a rally in Melbourne, Florida. Hardly objectionable.

It was what he said next that baffled . . . some.

“You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden — Sweden, who would believe this?”

Many news outlets ran with the official Swedish response: puzzlement. What happened the night before in Sweden? Was he suggesting a terror attack? There was no terror attack. Ah, President Trump: lying again!

Social media erupted with the usual anti-Trump mockery.

Swedes were understandably confused. As Tucker Carlson noted, “The president ought to be precise in what he says.” But Carlson added that the “analysis” of numerous network news programs was “so stupid that it’s hard to believe it made it on television.”

One key job of professional journalists is interpretation.

When Trump uttered “last night,” he wasn’t referring to what happened, he was referring to what he saw the night before on Tucker Carlson’s show: an interview with Ami Horowitz, who recently produced an exposé on the violence in Sweden’s “no-go zones,” enclaves of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.

Where even Sweden’s police fear to tread.

“Sweden — they took in large numbers,” Trump went on. “They’re having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what’s happening in Brussels. You look at what’s happening all over the world.”*

The mass refugee surge into Europe is a huge problem.

But the American press assuming the worst regarding President Trump and reporting it?

It’s a problem, too.

Could reasonable interpretation itself be morphing into a “no-go zone”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Trump went on to say, “Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris.” He is referring to terrorist attacks in those cities. He may also be referring to “no-go” communities where police and non-Muslims appear to be unwelcome, as reported in Germany, Britain, France and Belgium.

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Thought

Henry David Thoreau

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Henry David Thoreau, “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854).

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Today

Three Horrors

On Feb. 21, 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto.

On Feb. 21, 1916, the Battle of Verdun began with German bombardment of the city of Verdun, France.  For ten months, the longest single engagement of World War II, German forces attacked the French along a 20-kilometer front crossing the Meuse River. When the battle ended, with no change in the strategic position of either army, the combined death toll was over 300,000 (out of over 700,000 casualties).

On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York City.

Categories
crime and punishment First Amendment rights ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Wolves Crying Wolf

By any means necessary, BAMN, protest, free speech, fascist, first amendment, censorship, violence

People have a right to defend themselves. Right? Especially against rape and murder.

“This is not about free speech,” Yvette Felarca yelled to the crowd at the University of California-Berkeley, gathered weeks ago to “shut down” a scheduled speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial Breitbart editor.

Felarca, a national organizer for By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)*, the militant group with the incendiary name, argued that Milo wasn’t “interested in any genuine debate.”

She continued, “But what they’re really trying to do is they’re trying to assert their power, threaten us, intimidate us, rape us, kill us! This is real. This is life and death.”

Given such sentiments, it is hardly surprising that the protest turned violent — leaving people beaten, bloody on the pavement, and racking up $100,000 in property damage.

Not to mention causing the cancellation of the talk sponsored by the Berkeley College Republicans. Felarca called this a smashing success. Asked by reporters how she could justify violence to squelch speech, Felarca simply dubbed Milo “a fascist.”

Yesterday, in my Townhall column, “Hate Is Our Business,” I addressed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s just-released report, “The Year in Hate and Extremism.” The report continued the SPLC’s habit of calling entirely peaceful conservative and religious organizations “hate groups.”

The man who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council in 2012, but was thankfully blocked from further mayhem, used the SPLC’s “Hate Map” to target their office.

In its reports, the “progressive” SPLC completely ignores BAMN and violent left-wing groups. And by crying wolf in mislabeling non-violent organizations as “hate groups,” it provides the unhinged — BAMN, Antifa, and lone-wolf lunatics — very dangerous ammunition.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Ms. Felarca also has a day job, as a public school teacher at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in the Berkeley Unified School District. That has generated some controversy.

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Categories
Thought

Ives on Thoreau

Thoreau was a great musician, not because he played the flute but because he did not have to go to Boston to hear ‘the Symphony.’ The rhythm of his prose, were there nothing else, would determine his value as a composer. He was divinely conscious of the enthusiasm of Nature, the emotion of her rhythms and the harmony of her solitude.

Charles Ives, on Henry David Thoreau [pictured], Essays Before a Sonata (1920).

Categories
Today

The Big Week

Beginning on Feb. 20, 1944, and lasting through Feb. 25, 1944, the United States Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF) launched a series of missions against the Third Reich that became known as “Big Week.” In six days, the Eighth Air Force bombers based in England flew more than 3,000 sorties and the Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy more than 500. Together they dropped roughly 10,000 tons of bombs. The daylight bombing campaign was also supported by RAF Bomber Command operating against the same targets at night. The campaign helped the Allies achieve air superiority, so the invasion of Europe could proceed. While U.S. industrial might could entirely replace losses during the “Big Week,” Germany was unable to do so.

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links

Townhall: Hate Is Our Business

As conflict grows week by week, month by month — left vs. right, black vs. white, insider vs. outsider — and as good will is quickly being abandoned for fear, hatred, and loathing, one American organization is dedicated solely to tracking “hate groups.”

Or is it?

Click on over to Townhall.com, where Paul Jacob looks at yet another institution completely absorbed in partisan ill-will and ideological blinders.

Then come back here for more reading.