I think you're right, Miriam.
Both men serve the Empire. Maybe, in my opinion, I'm lashing out at
Trump because in part, I understood that Obama was bright and glib
enough to deceive the People, while the People actually fooled
themselves in their desire to believe Trump was really the Good Guy,
Outsider that he claimed to be. I guess I'm having a very difficult
time getting my head around the thought that Americans are so deceived
and so disrespected and hold such little self respect, that the Town
Clown is able to fool them.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/20/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Actually, Obama liked too. But it was a very different kind of lie. His lies
were consistent, and they were part of a well thought out government
strategy to make longterm government policy palatable to the citizenry. The
long term policy of the US is to dominate the world on behalf of business
enterprises and it is coordinated with similar strategies in other western
countries. But with Trump, you have a Narcississt with no capacity to subdue
his personal ego in order to accomplish the aims of the deep state. He also,
from everything I've read and heard, doesn't have the intelectual discipline
to focus on information and understand it in any depth. He can't absorb two
points of view on an issue and then come to a rational conclusion on how to
act. This is why Ssteve Bannon, who is so intelligent and so bigoted, has so
much influence over our policies. Trump's statements at that infamous press
conference the other day were incoherent, contradictory, and plain stupid.
There are people who think that he's actually smart and only talks like that
to appeal to the masses. But the leaks from the White House are that he can
barely function on an administrative level.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2017 12:19 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Trump Invents Sweden Terror Attack, Lies
About Immigrant Crime
For eight years I found myself disagreeing with decisions made by President
Obama. But I felt I disagreed on content. He did his best to support his
positions with the facts as he saw them.
But with President Trump, it is not that I disagree simply on content, I
actually cannot trust the man to be telling the truth. When I am unable to
trust what he says, how can I make a decision as to whether or not he has a
valid position on an issue.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/19/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Cole writes: "Trump made up another alleged terrorist attack at his
rally on Saturday, this one about a figment of his imagination that
did not actually take place in Sweden on Friday night."
Donald Trump's Florida rally. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
<http://www.juancole.com/2017/02/invents-sweden-immigrant.html>
Trump Invents Sweden Terror Attack, Lies About Immigrant Crime
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
19 February 17
Trump made up another alleged terrorist attack at his rally on
Saturday, this one about a figment of his imagination that did not
actually take place in Sweden on Friday night.
It is clear that Trump and his white supremacist mafia (Steve Bannon
et
al.)
despise Sweden and Germany for having taken in more than their fair of
refugees since the crisis began. Trump and his henchmen see refugees
and immigrants as inherently dangerous.
This allegation is not true. In fact, in some places immigrants appear
actually to cause the local crime rate to fall! A scientific study of
crime and immigration in Canada found that immigrants are less likely
to commit crimes than the native-born. Haimin Zhang
<http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/workingpapers/CLSRN%20Working%20Paper%20
no.%20 135%20-%20Zhang.pdf> of the University of British Columbia
writes,
not only do immigrants themselves commit less crimes, they can reduce
the crime rates in the long run through channels such as changing the
neighbourhood characteristics or impacting the behaviour of natives."
The same effect can be seen in the United States. Walter Ewing and his
colleagues
<https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/criminalization-i
mmigra
tion-united-states> point out,
"Between 1990 and 2013, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population
grew from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent and the number of unauthorized
immigrants more than tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. During
the same period, FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate
declined 48 percent --which included falling rates of aggravated assault,
robbery, rape, and murder.
Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41 percent, including declining
rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary. According
to an original analysis of data from the 2010 American Community
Survey (ACS) conducted by the authors of this report, roughly 1.6
percent of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3
percent of the native-born. This disparity in incarceration rates has
existed for decades."
In countries where this effect cannot be seen, i.e. where immigrants
do not reduce the crime rate, it is because of the class of immigrants
admitted.
The US mostly lets in fairly high-skilled immigrants. As for the
undocumented, who tend to do menial labor, they are careful not to
commit crimes on the whole because they don't want to be sent back. A
tiny number of gang members who are confident that their gang will
bring them back if they are deported casts a shadow over millions of
people. But only because we let the far right dominate this discourse.
Ironically, it is precisely people like Donald Trump's grandfather
Frederick who are responsible for some minor problems in Sweden.
Frederick at least allowed prostitution
<http://www.snopes.com/donald-trump-grandfather-prostitution/> in his
gold rush hotels, and indeed the prospect of a crackdown on that trade
along with other law enforcement actions caused him to try to go back
to Germany (the German government did not want him).
Moreover, it should be noted that a lot of the refugees taken in by
Sweden are from Afghanistan and Iraq. That is, they are fleeing
conditions created by the United States in their countries. So
actually it should have been the US who took them, not Sweden. The
United States is responsible for the displacement of 4 million Iraqis
out of 32 million, or over 12% of the population. The US did not
displace all of them directly, but its invasion, overthrow of the
government, and abolition of the army did lead to these millions
losing their homes and being forced to try to find some other place to
live. This would be like 40 million Americans being made homeless, a
little more than the combined population of Texas and Georgia.
As for Europe, since all human populations have a certain crime rate,
if you let in more people, you are letting in more crime. But the real
question is relative. Compared to how many people you let in, is the
crime rate out of the ordinary? We have seen that in Canada and the
US, it is lower than ordinary.
In Germany, Heather Horn of The Atlantic
<https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/04/refugees-cr
ime-ru mors/480171/> points out, "Although the number of refugees in
the country increased by 440 percent between 2014 and 2015, the number
of crimes committed by refugees only increased by 79 percent. (The
number of crimes against refugees increased as well.)" Sexual offenses
are less than 1%, despite the wild allegations of the far right.
As for refugee rape
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/swedens-rape-crisis-isnt-what-
it-see ms/article30019623/> in Sweden, Doug Saunders at the Globe and
Mail quoted an actual academic who actually studies these things:
""What we're hearing is a very, very extreme exaggeration based on a
few isolated events, and the claim that it's related to immigration is
more or less not true at all,"
says Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at Stockholm University who has
devoted his career to the study of criminality, ethnicity and age."
Swedes are extremely feminist and define all sorts of things as rape
(taking off a condom during sex without informing one's partner e.g.)
as rape that would not be considered rape in other countries.
To any extent that refugees in Sweden commit petty crime, they do so
at the same rate as other people of their social class. A study cited
by Saunders shows that 75% of the difference between native and
foreign-born crime rates is accounted for by where people live and how
much they make. He adds, "Among the Swedish-born children of
immigrants, the crime rate falls in half (and is almost entirely
concentrated in lesser property crimes) and is 100-per-cent
attributable to class - they are no more likely to commit crimes,
including rape, than ethnic Swedes of the same family income."
Saunders also points out that where rapes do occur, the victims also
tend to be immigrants, so the lurid picture painted by Neonazis and
Islamophobes of white women assaulted by brown men is a fiction.
In fact, a widely reported, premeditated gang rape in Germany
attributed to Muslim immigrants never happened. I wrote Friday, "
There was, for instance, the fake news
<http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/12/11/cologne-police-ignored-new
-years -eve-migrant-rape-emergency-calls/> about the alleged Muslim
immigrant mass rapes in Cologne a little over a year ago. Breitbart
beat the drums for it, but the the story was not true
<http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cologne-sex-assaults-muslim-rape-
myths- fit-a-neo-nazi-agenda-a6872566.html> . Or then there was the
phony story about Muslims burning a church in Germany, also played up
by Breitbart and also not true
<http://www.juancole.com/2017/01/democratic-islamophobic-breitbart.html>
.
Trump is deeply influenced by Bannon's insane conspiracy theories; if
you want to know why he keeps saying false and/or unbalanced things,
consider that he gets his news from alt-Neonazi toilet paper like
Breitbart."
<http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize>
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Donald Trump's Florida rally. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
http://www.juancole.com/2017/02/invents-sweden-immigrant.htmlhttp://ww
w.juan cole.com/2017/02/invents-sweden-immigrant.html
Trump Invents Sweden Terror Attack, Lies About Immigrant Crime
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
19 February 17
rump made up another alleged terrorist attack at his rally on
Saturday, this one about a figment of his imagination that did not
actually take place in Sweden on Friday night.
It is clear that Trump and his white supremacist mafia (Steve Bannon
et
al.)
despise Sweden and Germany for having taken in more than their fair of
refugees since the crisis began. Trump and his henchmen see refugees
and immigrants as inherently dangerous.
This allegation is not true. In fact, in some places immigrants appear
actually to cause the local crime rate to fall! A scientific study of
crime and immigration in Canada found that immigrants are less likely
to commit crimes than the native-born. Haimin Zhang
<http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/workingpapers/CLSRN%20Working%20Paper%20
no.%20 135%20-%20Zhang.pdf> of the University of British Columbia
writes,
not only do immigrants themselves commit less crimes, they can reduce
the crime rates in the long run through channels such as changing the
neighbourhood characteristics or impacting the behaviour of natives."
The same effect can be seen in the United States. Walter Ewing and his
colleagues
<https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/criminalization-i
mmigra
tion-united-states> point out,
"Between 1990 and 2013, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population
grew from 7.9 percent to 13.1 percent and the number of unauthorized
immigrants more than tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2 million. During
the same period, FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate
declined 48 percent --which included falling rates of aggravated assault,
robbery, rape, and murder.
Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41 percent, including declining
rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary. According
to an original analysis of data from the 2010 American Community
Survey (ACS) conducted by the authors of this report, roughly 1.6
percent of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3
percent of the native-born. This disparity in incarceration rates has
existed for decades."
In countries where this effect cannot be seen, i.e. where immigrants
do not reduce the crime rate, it is because of the class of immigrants
admitted.
The US mostly lets in fairly high-skilled immigrants. As for the
undocumented, who tend to do menial labor, they are careful not to
commit crimes on the whole because they don't want to be sent back. A
tiny number of gang members who are confident that their gang will
bring them back if they are deported casts a shadow over millions of
people. But only because we let the far right dominate this discourse.
Ironically, it is precisely people like Donald Trump's grandfather
Frederick who are responsible for some minor problems in Sweden.
Frederick at least allowed prostitution
<http://www.snopes.com/donald-trump-grandfather-prostitution/> in his
gold rush hotels, and indeed the prospect of a crackdown on that trade
along with other law enforcement actions caused him to try to go back
to Germany (the German government did not want him).
Moreover, it should be noted that a lot of the refugees taken in by
Sweden are from Afghanistan and Iraq. That is, they are fleeing
conditions created by the United States in their countries. So
actually it should have been the US who took them, not Sweden. The
United States is responsible for the displacement of 4 million Iraqis
out of 32 million, or over 12% of the population. The US did not
displace all of them directly, but its invasion, overthrow of the
government, and abolition of the army did lead to these millions
losing their homes and being forced to try to find some other place to
live. This would be like 40 million Americans being made homeless, a
little more than the combined population of Texas and Georgia.
As for Europe, since all human populations have a certain crime rate,
if you let in more people, you are letting in more crime. But the real
question is relative. Compared to how many people you let in, is the
crime rate out of the ordinary? We have seen that in Canada and the
US, it is lower than ordinary.
In Germany, Heather Horn of The Atlantic
<https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/04/refugees-cr
ime-ru mors/480171/> points out, "Although the number of refugees in
the country increased by 440 percent between 2014 and 2015, the number
of crimes committed by refugees only increased by 79 percent. (The
number of crimes against refugees increased as well.)" Sexual offenses
are less than 1%, despite the wild allegations of the far right.
As for refugee rape
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/swedens-rape-crisis-isnt-what-
it-see ms/article30019623/> in Sweden, Doug Saunders at the Globe and
Mail quoted an actual academic who actually studies these things:
""What we're hearing is a very, very extreme exaggeration based on a
few isolated events, and the claim that it's related to immigration is
more or less not true at all,"
says Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at Stockholm University who has
devoted his career to the study of criminality, ethnicity and age."
Swedes are extremely feminist and define all sorts of things as rape
(taking off a condom during sex without informing one's partner e.g.)
as rape that would not be considered rape in other countries.
To any extent that refugees in Sweden commit petty crime, they do so
at the same rate as other people of their social class. A study cited
by Saunders shows that 75% of the difference between native and
foreign-born crime rates is accounted for by where people live and how
much they make. He adds, "Among the Swedish-born children of
immigrants, the crime rate falls in half (and is almost entirely
concentrated in lesser property crimes) and is 100-per-cent
attributable to class - they are no more likely to commit crimes,
including rape, than ethnic Swedes of the same family income."
Saunders also points out that where rapes do occur, the victims also
tend to be immigrants, so the lurid picture painted by Neonazis and
Islamophobes of white women assaulted by brown men is a fiction.
In fact, a widely reported, premeditated gang rape in Germany
attributed to Muslim immigrants never happened. I wrote Friday, "
There was, for instance, the fake news
<http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/12/11/cologne-police-ignored-new
-years -eve-migrant-rape-emergency-calls/> about the alleged Muslim
immigrant mass rapes in Cologne a little over a year ago. Breitbart
beat the drums for it, but the the story was not true
<http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cologne-sex-assaults-muslim-rape-
myths- fit-a-neo-nazi-agenda-a6872566.html> . Or then there was the
phony story about Muslims burning a church in Germany, also played up
by Breitbart and also not true
<http://www.juancole.com/2017/01/democratic-islamophobic-breitbart.html>
.
Trump is deeply influenced by Bannon's insane conspiracy theories; if
you want to know why he keeps saying false and/or unbalanced things,
consider that he gets his news from alt-Neonazi toilet paper like
Breitbart."
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socializehttp://e-max.it/posiz
ioname
nto-siti-web/socialize
