UPDATE V (12/26/018): Big-On-Gun-Control Sweden Suffers “Gun Violence,” AKA Goon Violence, Or, More Accurately, A “Migrant” Problem

Crime, Europe, GUNS, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Journalism

“Acquiring a legal gun [in Sweden] requires strict screening.” Yes, Sweden has some of the strictest gun laws; and the best standard of living in the developed world. And now it’s unraveling because of what dumb American kids call “gun violence,” but is actually goon violence, better defined as Muslim-migrant violence. Not that you’d know it from reading “Why are young men in Sweden shooting each other?”

The Economist is a great source for news, global news, all news. While it coats the truth with more than a patina of political correctness, at least you get news that isn’t about Horny Stormy (CNN) or Sarah Carter and the FISA Court (at Fox News, where only Tucker rocks).

What The Economist tries to relay is that:

* The Muslim migrant violence is part of a continuum of  crime, namely nothing new. It certainly has nothing to do with the “refugee crisis of 2015.”

On the other had,

* “Most gang members are indeed first- or second-generation [Muslim] immigrants.”

* It’s the fault of the Swedes for not giving these snakes enough TLC:

… In 2011 only 17 people were killed by firearms. In 2017 the country had over 300 shootings, leaving 41 people dead and over 100 injured. The violence mostly stems from street gangs running small-time drug operations in big cities such as Stockholm, the capital, Malmö and Gothenburg. Gang members have even used hand grenades to attack police stations. Between 2010 and 2015, people were killed by illegal firearms at the same rate as in southern Italy. Though Sweden is still a relatively peaceful place, this is worrying.

Gangs are nothing new: bikers and Balkan mafiosi have traded drugs and occasional bullets in Sweden since the early 1990s. But the gangs emerging today are less organised and more prone to commit petty crime. Acquiring a legal gun requires strict screening, but Kalashnikovs from the Yugoslav wars are readily available on the black market. To sweeten the deal, smugglers often throw in hand grenades (there were 43 grenade incidents in Sweden last year). The victims and perpetrators of gang violence are nearly always young men.

How to explain the rise of gang violence? It cannot be the economy, which is doing well, or Sweden’s quality of life, which is among the best in the world. And crime in general is in decline. So what has gone wrong?

Some blame the refugee crisis of 2015, when Sweden took in the most asylum-seekers per capita in Europe. But shootings with illegal guns have been rising since the mid-2000s. Most gang members are indeed first- or second-generation immigrants—72% of them, according to one report, but they tend not to be new arrivals. It takes years for migrants to be settled enough to be sucked into crime, says Amir Rostami of Stockholm University. Sweden accepted lots of asylum-seekers in the 1980s and 1990s from countries like Iraq, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia.

Sweden built them homes and taught them its language, but it failed to integrate them into the labour market. The Swedish welfare system offers good education and generous benefits. But for immigrants there is little social mobility. Powerful unions insist on high wages for entry-level jobs, so firms often find it uneconomical to hire immigrants with limited education or not much Swedish. Today, 16% of people born abroad are unemployed—one of the highest rates in the OECD. Gangs offer frustrated young men an alternative. “They let you feel like a king, even if for one day,” says Mr Rostami.

Alarmed, the government has provided additional funding for integrating migrants, imposed harsher punishments for gun crimes and granted a weapons amnesty. Police have stepped up surveillance and co-operation with other European countries to curb weapons-smuggling. In January the Swedish government set up a centre to combat violent extremism.

Still, witnesses are scared to talk and the police are stretched. Not one firearm-homicide case in Stockholm was solved in 2016. The government hopes to turn that around: police wages have been bumped up, and officers who left during a reorganisation three years ago (which coincided with a rise in crime) have been re-hired. Preliminary results for 2017 show that the clear-up rate for firearm murders has risen to a (still woeful) 30% in Stockholm. But over 100 cases remain unsolved. …

“Why are young men in Sweden shooting each other?”

UPDATE I (3/27):

Gangs with grenades in Sweden.

UPDATE II (4/5):

UPDATE III (6/20):

“Sweden shooting: Three dead in Malmo cafe attack.” By the BBC News’ telling, the mild-mannered Swedes have taken to starting up gangs and experimenting with banned automatic weapons and hand-grenades. Immigration? Perish the thought.

UPDATE IV (6/29):

Where are the faces of true evil? Where are the state officials who import this human detritus?

 

UPDATE V (12/26/018): 
“Oslo Police Declare “We Have Lost the City”…Islam Has Taken Over.”

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NEW: John Quincy Adams is Turning in His Grave

Ancient History, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, John McCain, Political Philosophy, War

THIS WEEK’S COLUMN IS “John Quincy Adams is Turning in His Grave.” Read it unabridged on WorldNetDaily.com, The Unz Review, and the Mises Institute’s Power and Market Blog, where it’s titled “Trump’s Call to Putin.” This week’s column appears on Townhall.com, too, where it’s slightly abridged.

And excerpt:

“This is just a truly astonishing moment coming from the White House podium,” tweeted MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt. Like the rest of the media pack-animals she hunts with, Ms. Hunt had been fuming over President Trump’s telephone call to Vladimir Putin, congratulating him on winning another term as president.

Reliably opposed to a truce were party heavies on both sides. Sen. John McCain joined the chorus: “An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,” he intoned.

Another Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley, told a reporter testily that he “wouldn’t have a conversation with a criminal. I think Putin’s a criminal. What he did in” Iraq, what he did in Libya … Wait a sec? Remind me; was it Putin or our guys who wrecked those countries? So many evil-doers on the world-stage, it’s hard for me to keep track.

“When I look at a Russian election, what I see is a lack of credibility in tallying the results,” sermonized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “I’m always reminded of the elections they have in almost every communist country.”

Actually, what the International Election Observation Mission found in Russia’s presidential election of March 18 was far more nuanced. Why, in some ways the Russian elections were very American: In the difficulty dissident candidates have in getting on the ballot, for example.

Ask Ron Paul or all those anonymous, aspiring, independent, third-party candidates about the US’s “restrictive ballot access laws and the other barriers erected” by the duopoly to protect their “de facto monopoly in America,” to paraphrase Forbes.com.

As for jailing journalists, frequently for life: Not Russia, but an American ally, Turkey, is the world’s biggest offender. But hold on. Isn’t Trump turning on the Kurds to pacify the Turks? Maybe it’s something the Saudi’s said. Go figure.

What doesn’t change is the interchangeability—with respect to any peaceful overtures made by President Trump toward Russia—of the Stupid Party (Republicans) and the Evil Party (Democrats). And yet, the same self-interested individuals protest, periodically, that Trump’s recklessness risks plunging the country into war.

The president wants to cooperate with the Russians. International confrontation being their stock-in-trade, the UniParty won’t countenance it. Politicians in both parties have not stopped egging Mr. Trump on, rejecting the détente he seeks with Russia, and urging American aggression against a potential partner. Yet, incongruously, in October of 2017, a Republican Senator, Bob Corker, saw fit to complain that the president was “reckless enough to stumble [sic] the country into a nuclear war.” …

… READ THE REST:  “John Quincy Adams is Turning in His Grave” (Townhall.com) is also on WorldNetDaily.com, The Unz Review, and the Mises Institute’s Power and Market Blog, unabridged.

John Quincy Adams’ Memorable Speech on Independence Day

Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers

As mentioned in this week’s column, “John Quincy Adams Is Turning in his Grave,” the sixth president of the United States (1825-1829), son of John Adams, spoke truths eternal on July 4, 1821. Short excerpt:

… And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of mutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, what has America done for the benefit of mankind? let our answer be this–America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the inde-pendence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. …

… THE REST.

Didn’t Zimbabwe Just Oust A Tyrant? Yes, But There Are Plenty More Where Mugabe Came From

Africa, Economy, History, Political Economy, Racism, Welfare

Good luck in taking the tyrant out of Africa’s Strongmen. The reality is that, “in Africa, you oust a tyrant, not tyranny”.

Rhodesia was once the breadbasket of Africa. Who was the Prince among Men responsible for the good times in Rhodesia? We are never told. The phantom was Ian Smith, prime minister of Rhodesia, RIP.

Now that the wicked whites have been replaced and robbed,

“About 90% of working-age people lack formal jobs. The legions reduced to hawking on the streets of Harare and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, are preyed on by Zanu-PF thugs demanding pay-offs. Electricity and water are intermittent, even in hospitals. ATMs are empty. State workers’ wages are paid months late. In a residual population of 13m, 3m survive on food handouts from America and Britain. Perhaps 3m Zimbabweans have fled abroad.”

To guarantee the “right” outcome in the upcoming election,

3,000 soldiers have already been sent to the countryside in civilian garb to campaign and bully. Villagers fear that rural chiefs and headmen will withhold food aid if they suspect them of voting the wrong way. Zanu-PF’s national political commissar menacingly told a rural gathering that people should remember 2008, when thousands of MDC activists in the countryside were set upon by Zanu-PF militias and hundreds were murdered. Many analysts think that Zanu-PF’s rural voting bloc should ensure victory for Mr Mnangagwa, even without resorting to violence. “Just the memory of 2008 is enough,” says a former MDC campaigner.

MORE at The Economist: “Zimbabwe’s new president says he is a democrat. Is he?”

“THE land resettlement was a huge success in terms of our people, 367,000 of our people, back in possession of the land,”Says President Emmerson Mnangagwa of the expropriation of most of Zimbabwe’s white-owned farmland since 2000—a move that wrecked the economy and pushed millions into poverty. Was it fair that bigwigs of his ruling Zanu-PF party took several farms each? “No, no, it is one farm, one person,” he says. “I have 404 hectares and I paid for the equipment myself.

… his economic vision is hardly liberal. He extols a “command” model where agriculture is guided by government. He blames the economy’s collapse on sanctions, even though these were targeted on leading figures such as himself. He testily rejects a suggestion that they were far lighter than those levelled against the white-supremacist regime of Ian Smith before Mr Mugabe took over in 1980. “You are plain ignorant,” he tells The Economist.”

A good man:


Another good man deceased:

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