Sweden’s two worlds

The New Neo Posted on by

We’ve heard a lot about Germany and its immigration woes, but of all the countries of Europe that are having trouble with their unassimilated newcomers, Sweden just might lead the way:

While much attention was focused on Germany during the 2015 refugee crisis, in which more than a million migrants from the Middle East and Africa entered the continent at the behest of Angela Merkel, the country that admitted the most migrants per capita was Sweden. In one year alone, the northern European nation of 10 million added nearly 2 percent to its population. Most of those arrivals were young men. Tens of thousands more have continued to arrive since then…

…Rosengård, Seved, and Nydala, [are] immigrant neighborhoods in the southern city of Malmö and among the 23 “especially vulnerable” areas across Sweden. At times, ambulances and fire trucks will enter only with police protection. Desperate police have appealed to imams and clan leaders for help when they cannot contain the violence…

The on-the-ground reality I witnessed in some parts of Sweden stood in stark contrast to the egalitarian utopia I had been sold by American progressives. How did Sweden, on the whole a prosperous and peaceful nation, also develop parallel, segregated societies afflicted by criminality and violence? The starkest reminder of this reality are the numerous grenade explosions and gun murders that have become a regular occurrence across some sections of society. In fact, Sweden’s homicide rate is now above the Western European average…

University West sociologist Göran Adamson blames, in addition to poor ur­ban planning, Sweden’s state-sponsored multiculturalism for financing separatism through various ethno-religious institutions…

Sweden’s institutionalization of multiculturalism began in 1975, when a parliament led by Social Democrat Olof Palme rejected assimilation in favor of policies that encouraged minorities to keep their separate identities. “Of course, if you say these things [critically] in Sweden, you’ll be ferociously attacked by social workers and the dominating left-wing academia for being inhumane,” Adamson says.

Sounds familiar, although somewhat more extreme than what’s been happening elsewhere in Europe—and to a certain extent in the US, although America has never embraced multiculturalism to the same degree and has at least retained a small residue of devotion to assimilation.

Multiculturalism was thought to be a way to respect other cultures, and I suppose it is, but its dangers are obvious if those cultures are not compatible with (or are in fact openly hostile to) that of the host country. This is a fact that is often ignored by those who are dedicated to multiculturalism.

{NOTE: The article also mentions that the problem with immigrants in Sweden is not necessarily just with those who practice Islam:

Although Sweden’s jihadist problem intersects with immigration, evidence doesn’t support the myopic focus on Muslims in immigration discourses, according to Stockholm School of Economics researcher Tino Sanandaji. “Among migrants from the Middle East” to Sweden, most “are not Muslim but instead are Christian, atheist, agnostic, and members of other religious minorities,” he tells me. Sanandaji, a Kurdish immigrant from Iran who has written a best-selling book on Swedish immigration, says that people often confuse Middle Eastern culture with Islam. His research, he says, indicates that second-generation immigrant gangs are influenced more by gangster-rap subculture than by any religion.

There are probably many contributors to the situation, but the combination of Muslim immigrants, Middle Eastern culture as a whole, and modern trends such as gangster-rap has a lot of toxic potential.]

Caroline Glick on Trump’s Syria pullout

The New Neo Posted on by

Pros and cons. There are quite a few of each, so I suggest you read the whole thing.

It ends this way:

Time will tell whether Trump’s decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria was a prelude to disaster for U.S. allies and a boon for America’s enemies, or whether the opposite is the case. But what is clear enough is that move is not entirely negative.

Is John Roberts the new Anthony Kennedy—and if so, why?

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a lot of talk that John Roberts is taking up where Anthony Kennedy left off, as the new “swing” justice. This is based not just on the memory of his role in the Obamacare tax vs. penalty brouhaha, but on a decision reached yesterday. As William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection writes:

Roberts…saw fit to make a public pronouncement after Trump criticized a San Francisco federal judge for a decision enjoining Trump’s new policy on processing asylum claims, which held that people who illegally crossed the border could not apply for asylum…

The injunction against the new asylum rules was upheld by the 9th Circuit, and the government sought an emergency stay. In a 5-4 Order released [Friday], the Court rejected the stay, with Roberts joining the four liberal justices…

In other words, while awaiting a ruling on the merits, a San Francisco judge had earlier enjoined the federal government from changing previous policy on asylum. When Trump criticized the San Francisco judge as being an “Obama judge,” Roberts—in a public statement unusual for a sitting SCOTUS justice—criticized Trump and stated that there’s no such thing as “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” and that judges are “an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

Translation: don’t you dare imply that judges are political; we are above all that!

Then yesterday, by refusing to stop the San Francisco judge’s injunction, Roberts became the swing vote when the same issue came to the Supreme Court. He voted with the liberals in allowing the previous injunction to remain in effect.

This was not any sort of decision on the merits; it was merely a decision not to reverse the San Francisco judge’s decision, pending a later ruling on the merits of the asylum question. It was also a defense of that judge as being a member of that “group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right.” Perhaps, to Roberts’ way of thinking, had Roberts voted to reverse the decision of that San Francisco judge, it would have lent support to the idea that the San Francisco judge had been motivated by “Obama judge” partisanship to make an incorrect ruling.

It may be that, when the asylum question is heard on the merits, Roberts will end up voting with the conservatives and uphold Trump’s position. Perhaps. But I believe that in the meantime Roberts was deeply offended by Trump’s criticism of the judiciary, even though I think Trump was absolutely correct in that criticism.

I believe that there are at least three more things operating with Roberts in handing down this decision. The first is that most people, especially ambitious people—and that includes SCOTUS justices—are attracted to power. Power is enticing, and increasing one’s own power is always tempting. So what could be more powerful for Roberts than becoming a swing justice? It would mean that a great many huge and important cases would turn on what Roberts thinks.

Secondly, Roberts was nominated by George Bush. What better way for Roberts to prove that he’s no “Bush judge” than to vote with the liberals? So that’s another motivation to do what he did yesterday.

Thirdly, I’ve noticed a tendency in Roberts—long before Trump became president—to vote in the way that is least likely to upset the status quo apple cart. For example, in the case of Obamacare, Roberts found a “creative” way to avoid a bold overturning of a bill that had been passed by Congress. In yesterday’s injunction case, the path of least resistance was to let the injunction stand rather than to overrule it. But when the case about asylum actually reaches SCOTUS, Roberts could go either way—he might rule with Trump in order to uphold an executive order already issued, or he might rule against Trump in order to support the implementation of the pre-existing (pre-Trump) policy on how asylum is handled.

The winter solstice is here

The New Neo Posted on by

The winter solstice comes tonight and I, for one, am cheering. It may not be a holiday exactly, but winter holidays cluster around it for a very good reason: the beginning of the end of the dark days.

Who wouldn’t drink to that? We who live up north are especially sensitive to the fact that the days that get dark almost as soon as they get light have finally peaked, and the lengthening of the days has begun. It’s no accident, no accident at all, that both of the winter holidays— Christmas and Chanuka—are festivals that feature (literally) light in the darkness.

This year the winter solstice has some unusual characteristics:

The longest night of 2018 will be illuminated by a full moon and a meteor shower…

This year is the first time a full moon will coincide with the solstice since 2010. The next time will be in 2094.

The full moon of December has had many names over the years. NASA refers to it as the Cold Moon. It has also gone by names such as Long Night Moon by some Native American tribes, who kept track of time by observing the seasons and lunar months, according to the old Farmer’s Almanac.

Friday’s night sky will also be shared with the annual Ursid meteor shower named after the constellation Ursa Major.

Happy solstice!

Remember Carter Page?

The New Neo Posted on by

Sharyl Attkisson does.

And you should, too:

If Carter Page isn’t the world’s most diabolical spy ever, then it could imply that the investigation itself has been diabolical.

Well, Carter Page isn’t the most diabolical spy ever. Actually, he’s not a spy at all. That leaves alternative number two…

The Mattis resignation

The New Neo Posted on by

I think this is bad news:

Trump tweeting that we are leaving Syria has rocked the world…there has been pushback to Trump regarding this decision. Syria, as we all know, has been a cluster from the get go. But now it seems that Trump’s decision was the last straw for Secretary of Defense James Mattis. This afternoon he submitted his resignation.

I have never been on board with Trump’s expressed tendency and desire to withdraw (prematurely, IMHO) from places where we’ve already expended a great deal of effort and blood. Syria is an exceptionally complex problem, and I think the withdrawal will leave a dangerous vacuum—and nature abhors a vacuum. Mattis seems to be saying as much, and he knows a great deal more about it than I do:

I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions – to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

Mattis had said this last May:

What we don’t want to do, now that we are on the cusp of winning on the battlefield in terms of taking down the physical caliphate, the geographic caliphate, we do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace…So you win the fight, and then you win the peace.

Sounds pretty basic to me. It’s a lesson the Obama administration failed to learn (or wished to ignore), most notably in Iraq, and it’s one that Trump made clear in his campaign speeches that he hadn’t learned either.

More here:

The Turkish Defense Minister was already threatening to level a brutal assault on US-backed Kurdish allies and put them “in ditches” once the US pulled out. The remark set Mattis off. He had spent months trying to convince Trump that withdrawal was a bad idea and was now seeing early signs of what it could mean to US allies in the region.

A little past 3pm, Mattis was in the Oval Office, trying one last time to get Trump to change his mind about Syria. The meeting didn’t last very long. The President refused to budge, and so Mattis made the only remaining choice he felt he had left— he pulled out a two-page letter he’d brought with him and resigned on the spot. Though he wouldn’t be leaving immediately—Mattis will stay on until February— the decision was final.

Trump’s move doesn’t have a lot of support, although Stephen Hayward points out that it may help Trump in the 2020 election, and that:

…those on the left and right who cheer a shrinking American military footprint around the world give up their right to complain when the world becomes a more chaotic and violent place.

Indeed, they’ve given up their right to do it. But they haven’t given up doing it.

I repeat that this is an aspect of Trump of which I’ve always been very wary. I hope the predicted disaster doesn’t happen, but I fear it will.

What’s up now with the wall?

The New Neo Posted on by

The House has voted to approve 5 billion dollars for the border wall, but there’s basically no chance it will pass in the Senate.

When that happens, and another funding bill is passed that doesn’t include the wall money, will Trump “shut down” the government?:

But in fact it’s Senate Democrats shutting down the government in media spin. Shutting the government is not actually shutting the government, but there can be bad optics for the party that gets blamed, which inevitably is Republicans.

$5 billion in the world of federal spending is small. It’s not about $5 billion. It’s about Democrats wanting to break Trump.

But isn’t everything about breaking Trump?

However, former Congressman Jason Chaffetz has a thought on how to resolve the impasse—redirection:

Each year the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on things that are not specifically authorized by Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in this practice.

The Democrats may feign exasperation with the president potentially spending “unauthorized” money on the wall, but they have enthusiastically participated in the budgetary games that will make it possible.

…[T]he budget categories under which programs are authorized and funds are appropriated are very broad, and since Congress doesn’t pass specific language about every last dollar’s use, discretionary funds are inevitably used for things that Congress never specifically funds.

This is how the executive branch often gets the money it needs to do things that Congress won’t formally authorize. It finds money that has been either broadly appropriated or appropriated to a program that is expired and redirects it to a related program or purpose of its choosing.

I see no reason why that cannot happen. If it doesn’t happen, it would mean that the powers that be didn’t want it to happen.

Lately it may seem…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that I’m becoming obsessed with James Comey

Not really. At least, I hope not. But I’ve been focusing on him lately because he is an excellent example of the kind of person especially common in government these days. Call it the Swamp, call it the Deep State, call it macaroni—whatever you call it, it’s not a good thing.

Comey channels Alfred E. Neuman

The New Neo Posted on by

James Comey seems to be in “what, me worry?” mode.

Lat Monday’s statement of note from this wise public servant was as follows:

Mr. Meadows: All right. So, when you saw [that the Steele dossier was funded by a private client], who did you think the private client was?

Mr. Comey: I don’t know that I knew. [see NOTE below]

Mr. Meadows: I didn’t say you knew. Who did you think it was? Obviously — are you saying you’re so intellectually not curious that you would not say, “Who’s the private client?”

Mr. Comey: Show me where the word “client” is. I’m struggling a little. I see. So the sentence reads, “The source collected this information on behalf of private clients and was not compensated for it by the FBI.”

I don’t remember asking — other than knowing it was political people opposed to Trump, I don’t remember asking which firm, which law firm, those kinds of things. And I don’t remember being told.

Mr. Meadows: So you’re trying to share with this committee –and I want to take you — and that’s why I was asking you to verify this. You expect us to believe that you got notation that a private client is there and that you didn’t — you weren’t inquisitive enough to figure out who the private client was?

Mr. Comey: Who cares? It was Republicans —

Mr. Meadows: Well —

Mr. Comey: — opposed to Trump —

Mr. Meadows: — it makes a big difference. I mean, if you —

Mr. Comey: Let me finish my answer. It was Republicans opposed to Trump, and then it was Democrats opposed to Trump. There was potential bias in this information. That’s really important. Whether it was Sally Smith or Joe Jones, Republican, or Sally Smith, Democrat –

Mr. Meadows: Director Comey —

Mr. Comey: — to me, it didn’t matter.

Rep. Meadows objected, saying it is of great importance, given that the information was used to gain court permission to spy on an American citizen:

“It does make a difference. If someone is paying for this and you’re actually using that information to surveil American citizens with a FISA application, it does matter to me and most Americans.”

Here Comey is repeating MSM and Democratic talking points about Fusion which have been shown to be untrue. Republicans had zero to do with the funding of the dossier, as Comey either knows or should know if he’s at all competent. What he probably does know, however, is that Republican involvement is the fiction the MSM was pushing and that many many Americans probably believe that to be the case, so Comey’s answer will appear to make some sense to those people even though it is based on a falsity.

Comey’s lack of specific interest in who funded the dossier (if he really didn’t know and didn’t ask, which may or may not be the case) would have come from his need to get that investigation going and to use the dossier to jumpstart it no matter what. Why question its provenance if you’re already dedicated to using it despite the fact that Trump’s enemies paid for it, which should have made it highly suspect as a source?

Of course, it turns out that Trump’s oppponent’s campaign funded it, which if anything would make it even more suspect than if other Trump enemies had funded it. But to Comey, all of that was irrelevant (or at least he’d like us to think it was irrelevant). In his previous career, had he really lacked curiosity to that degree? I doubt it very much. But he’s a clever enough lawyer to use it as an excuse now. He’d prefer that we think him a fool rather than a knave, if he has the choice of shaping our opinion.

I say “knave.” The man is no fool, not by a longshot.

[NOTE: Let’s look at this exchange a bit more closely:

Question: So, when you saw [that the Steele dossier was funded by a private client], who did you think the private client was?

Mr. Comey: I don’t know that I knew.

Isn’t that quintessential Comey? “I don’t know that I knew.” The question was not, however, whether Comey knew who the client was. The question was who Comey thought funded it. His answer was that he doesn’t know whether he knew or not, and yet later in the exchange he seems to be saying he didn’t know and what’s more was not the least bit curious about it.

That seems to contradict his earlier response about not knowing (or not remembering?) whether he knew or didn’t know, although it’s all so slippery it’s hard to even say. Statements that are so equivocal are deliberately difficult to contradict, because they essentially say nothing. But Comey is quite practiced at that sort of thing.]

Whither the wall?

The New Neo Posted on by

As presidents go, Trump is harder to predict than most.

Will he veto the continuing resolution budget bill? The Freedom Caucus will support him if he does:

…[W]e’re going to back you up if you veto this — back you up,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said. “If you veto this bill, we’ll be there. More importantly, the American people will be there. They’ll be there to support you. Let’s build the wall and make sure we do our job in Congress.”

Here’s a report timestamped 42 minutes ago (as I write this, anyway) saying Trump is “abruptly” threatening to veto it. I don’t see what’s so abupt about it, since he’s been threatening that sort of thing off and on for quite some time. Trump likes to keep his options open, you might say.

It would not surprise me if he doesn’t veto it and it would not surprise me if he does. How’s that for a definitive statement? Trump is indeed unpredictable and I believe that’s one of his strengths in fighting the Democrats and those Republicans who oppose him. As I wrote yesterday, however, Trump’s supporters will not like it if the wall doesn’t get built, and if he has any desire to be re-elected (and I think he does have that desire) he needs to find a solution.

Here’s a description of another possible approach from Trump to tackling the problem:

“It’s not a retreat, it’s actually a bigger attack,” said a Trump adviser,

The shutdown date OK’d in the Senate-passed legislation was pushed back to Feb. 8, after Trump is scheduled to give his State of the Union to a joint sitting of Congress. It is always the biggest speech of the year.

“The date after the State of the Union gives the president the biggest visible platform,” said another source familiar with the plan today. “This positions us to have the fight when we have the most visibility,” added the source.

Visibility is one thing, but results are what people want, and with the Democrats and Pelosi in control of the House there is little chance (IMHO) of getting any wall funding passed. I think this particular anonymous source is blowing smoke—but hey, as I said, Trump is unpredictable.

Then again, if the American people wanted the wall, why did they elect a Democratic House? My sense of it is that people don’t think that way when they vote. Most people are thinking locally—as in, “this person is nicer than that person, this person will get my district more perks than that person.” The entire picture—“if I vote for the Democrat then the Democrats might control the House and we can kiss the wall goodbye”—just isn’t that common a perspective.

Thinking about Comey once again: on getting away with it

The New Neo Posted on by

Reading this commentary by John Hinderaker on Comey’s most recent testimony reminds me what an arrogant guy Comey is, among his other flaws—not that we really needed reminding.

And Andrew C. McCarthy had this to say about the FBI’s questioning of Flynn and Comey’s commentary on it:

…[T]there are innumerable fact patterns in which law-enforcement agents acquire incriminating evidence through sharp tactics…But those tactics, even though lawful, are often overkill when police use them against people who are not dangerous, hardened criminals.

The Flynn interview is troubling. He should not have been under investigation. If the FBI wanted to interview him on January 24, 2017, a request should have been communicated to the White House counsel by the Justice Department. The FBI decided to bypass both DOJ and the White House. The Bureau exploited the chaos of the second full work day of a new administration, contacted Flynn directly, and actively discouraged him from notifying the White House counsel. They intentionally avoided going through proper channels.

If properly advised that the FBI wanted to interview Flynn, the White House counsel would have asked why…On what basis did the FBI seek to interview the national-security adviser about conversations he appropriately had with a foreign government while Flynn was a transition official designated to become the president’s top adviser on foreign threats to U.S. interests?…

The FBI did not treat Flynn fairly. It is breathtaking to hear former director Comey brag about how he “got away with” dodging protocol in order to interrogate him. Nevertheless, while the Bureau’s situational ethics leave much to be desired, their aggressive tactics did not violate the law.

Comey isn’t alone. He’s merely one in a long line of supposed public servants, originally highly-praised as smart and full of integrity, who have either been revealed as quite the opposite or who have turned into quite the opposite. Their motives include one or both of these reasons: (1) partisan politics (and for those who would argue that Comey was a Republican and therefore can’t have had a partisan political motive, please read this); and/or (2) becoming drunk with power as a result of being given more of it.

And when McCarthy writes, “It is breathtaking to hear former director Comey brag about how he ‘got away with’ dodging protocol in order to interrogate [Flynn].” I’m pretty sure McCarthy’s shock isn’t just because such a thing happened. It’s also because it was McCarthy’s old buddy Comey who did it. As McCarthy wrote back in April:

I am fond of Jim Comey and have been for 30 years. I vigorously disagree with both his handling of the Clinton emails investigation and the manner in which the FBI has conducted what is supposed to be a classified, counterintelligence probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — not a public, government-orchestrated campaign of insinuation that Trump was complicit in Russian perfidy.

McCarthy also writes this in his more recent article, “The FBI did not play it straight with Flynn, and it worked.” And therein lies a clue as to the mechanism for this whole process: a person and/or an agency has power, and when the boundaries of that power are pushed and yield a payoff, then it is done again and again because it is found to have worked. If there is no punishment, and the goal is reached, nothing but some sense of fair play will hold people back, and apparently that is often a very weak type of restraint indeed.

As commenter “huxley” wrote:

I’ve been having a hard time understanding what the rule of law means in America since Obama was elected in 2008.

Victor Davis Hanson files everything away and can pull out a long catalog of pertinent examples at a moment’s notice. I’m too lazy to do that now, but most readers here are aware of all the wacky legal stuff which has gone down since 2008 — the soft Trump coup being the latest and greatest.

For ten years I’ve been wandering around in a fog, mumbling to myself, “Can they really do that?”

The answer appears so far to be “yes, they really can.”

And if they really can, they really will.

Alan Dershowitz on the Flynn case

The New Neo Posted on by

Another smart piece from Dershowitz, who says it’s certainly possible that Flynn lied to the FBI and that the FBI acted improperly. Here’s how he describes the latter:

The FBI knew the truth [about what Flynn had actually said, and to whom]. They had recordings of the conversations. Then why did they ask him whether he had those conversations? Obviously, not to learn whether he had them but, rather, to give him the opportunity to lie to federal agents so that they could squeeze him to provide damaging information against President Trump. If you do not believe me, read what Judge T.S. Ellis III, who presided over the Paul Manafort trial, said to the prosecutors: “You do not really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud. What you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”…

Defenders of the tactics used by special counsel Robert Mueller argue that his potential witnesses are generally guilty of some crime, such as lying to FBI agents, and that may well be true. But they are targeted not because of what they may have done. They are targeted for what they may know about what the real target may have done. Then they, and their relatives who may also be complicit, are threatened with imprisonment and bankruptcy unless they plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors.

So the real question, which transcends the Flynn, the Manafort, and even the Trump investigations, is whether these tactics should be deemed acceptable to use in our justice system. Is it the proper role of law enforcement to conduct criminal morality tests to determine whether citizens will tell the truth or lie when given the opportunity to do either by FBI agents? Is it proper to target individuals for such tests for the purpose of pressuring them into becoming witnesses against the real target?

Dershowitz goes on to add that anyone concerned with liberty should have the same attitude about such tactics no matter which party they’re used against. But few people have that sort of consistency—although Dershowitz does, and that’s why I admire him.

And these points of Dershowitz’s are exactly correct:

The function of law enforcement is to uncover past crimes, not to provide citizens the opportunity to commit new crimes by testing their veracity…

When questioning any suspect, officials should not ask questions whose answers they already know, for the sole purpose of seeing whether the suspect will lie. If they do ask such questions, untruthful answers should not be deemed “material” to the investigation, because the FBI already knew the truth. The FBI should not discourage the suspect from having his lawyer present during the questioning, if a false answer will subject him to criminal liability.

It is even worse when this is done in order to “get” an elected president. But the practice is wrong in the more general sense.

I’ve written a great deal about the Flynn case, and that’s because I think it is a highly important demonstration of a deep flaw in our system of justice, one that needs correcting but is unlikely to get it.