The Sweden story has become absolutely viral. You’ve probably read a version in a Facebook post, or heard it in a speech or debate. It is the argument-ender of the intolerant: To make the case against refugees, or immigration, or “Islam,” you recount a couple of stories about refugee-camp horrors, some random anecdotes of sex crimes involving brown people in various countries, and then drop the Sweden story.
Behind it you’ll find the resurrection of an old, deadly appeal to fear – that people of certain skin colours are natural-born predators who threaten white women. It’s a version of lynch-mob logic that happens to appeal to the liberal and tolerant as much as the hateful and intolerant.
And it falls apart as soon as you speak to anyone knowledgeable in Sweden.
“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.
Sweden does indeed have far more reported cases of sexual assault than any other country. But it’s not because Swedes – of any colour – are very criminal. It’s because they’re very feminist. In 2005, Sweden’s Social Democratic government introduced a new sex-crime law with the world’s most expansive definition of rape.
Imagine, for example, if your boss rubbed against you in an unwanted way at work once a week for a year. In Canada, this would potentially be a case of sexual assault. Under Germany’s more limited laws, it would be zero cases. In Sweden, it would be tallied as 52 separate cases of rape. If you engaged in a half-dozen sex acts with your spouse, then later you felt you had not given consent, in Sweden that would be classified as six cases of rape.
The marked increase in rape cases during the 2000s is almost entirely a reflection of Sweden’s deep public interest in sexual equality and the rights of women, not of attacks by newcomers.
But aren’t refugees and immigrants responsible for a greater share of Sweden’s sexual assaults?
In a sense. Statistics show that the foreign-born in Sweden, as in most European countries, do have a higher rate of criminal charges than the native-born, in everything from shoplifting to murder (though not enough to affect the crime rate by more than a tiny margin). The opposite is true in North America, where immigrants have lower-than-average crime rates.
Why the difference? Because people who go to Sweden are poorer, and crime rates are mostly a product not of ethnicity but of class. In a 2013 analysis of 63,000 Swedish residents, Prof. Sarnecki and his colleagues found that 75 per cent of the difference in foreign-born crime is accounted for by income and neighbourhood, both indicators of poverty. 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.
What also stands out is that almost all the victims of these crimes – especially sex crimes – are also foreign-born. But for a handful of headline-grabbing atrocities, it isn’t a case of swarthy men preying on white women, but of Sweden’s system turning refugees into victims of crime.
That is the real Swedish crisis. Refugee shelters are terrible, dangerous places, whoever is in them. When such shelters, then known as displaced persons camps, held millions of Europeans in the 1940s and 1950s, histories show they were at risk of sexual predation and organized attacks against Jewish refugees.
I know right? This is hardly news. Everyone and their brother has a wiki these days. There's a Star Wars wiki, a Muppets wiki, a Harry Potter wiki, a Lost wiki, a Spongebob wiki, and a host of others dedicated to other "verticals." Whoever wrote the article summary is a few years behind.
Wow, you have no clue about Coshocton. It's actually a pretty nice town. I've watched it grow a lot over the years, but even back in the day I wouldn't call it a pathetic poor hick town. I'd liken it more to Mayberry than Podunk. BTW, do you have any American flags? Chances are they came from Coshocton's Annin & Co, the nation's oldest and largest flag manufacturer.
Actually, linguists don't consider any language easier or harder than any other, but rather that they are all equal in structural complexity. Also, English has plenty of rules and follows them more closely than you might realize. If word order didn't matter, then you could naturally say "to my mother often talk I" and people would understand you without having to think about it. English is more analytic than one might think.
I strongly encourage you to take a linguistics class. You'd really learn a lot. It certainly has corrected a lot of my own misconceptions.
Miley Cyrus, on the other hand, tries to present herself as adult enough to design her own clothing line and publish an autobiography. She should have known that as a famous celebrity, putting risque photos of herself on the Internet would come back to haunt her. However, I haven't seen any charges filed against her, and according to the descriptions, the girls in this case didn't do anything worse than her.
Actually, what he's saying is if you want to read aloud to your son, you're fine. But if you want to have your Kindle read to your son, you should pay a licensing fee. According to him, there's a difference, and that's where his logic fails.
FTA: "For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of 'Goodnight Moon.' If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it's another matter."
I, however, see no difference. Mr. Blount is a nut.
Obama repeatedly made sure that we knew that his campaign was funded entirely by us the citizens, not lobbyists or businesses. Therefore he should be using the DOJ to protect us from the RIAA, not the other way around. I sure hope he can fix the economy, because this is a strike against him.
For the browser competition, you get the computer it's running on. Or at least that's what I gather; the article accidentally a whole verb.
FTA: "CanSecWest organizers plan to Sony VAIO P running Windows 7 as the platform for the contest. The successful hacker gets to keep the machine."
"The precautionary principle is a moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action. The principle implies that there is a responsibility to intervene and protect the public from exposure to harm where scientific investigation discovers a plausible risk in the course of having screened for other suspected causes. The protections that mitigate suspected risks can be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that more robustly support an alternative explanation."
From what I've heard so far, there's a small chance that the LHC will kill us all. And they can't prove otherwise because the underlying theories haven't been proven. If the question is "should we do it?", then the answer is simple: "no." Or at least "not yet."
So the message they post is "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders"? That's not even legally sound. According to U.S. copyright law, for non-profit, non-exclusive use, it is only necessary to have permission from one co-author. So if you had permission from the songwriter (co-author of the audio) and the director or producer (co-author of the video), you could upload a music video and the record company wouldn't legally be able to do anything about it. Except they would try, and they would probably win. And that's why the system is screwed up.
It HAS been investigated, and it HAS been resolved.
The head of the Hawaii Department of Health confirmed on October 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu, saying that she has "personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."
In addition, just a few days ago the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case brought against Obama regarding his citizenship.
Slashdot Mirror
Short answer:
No.
Long answer:
The Sweden story has become absolutely viral. You’ve probably read a version in a Facebook post, or heard it in a speech or debate. It is the argument-ender of the intolerant: To make the case against refugees, or immigration, or “Islam,” you recount a couple of stories about refugee-camp horrors, some random anecdotes of sex crimes involving brown people in various countries, and then drop the Sweden story.
Behind it you’ll find the resurrection of an old, deadly appeal to fear – that people of certain skin colours are natural-born predators who threaten white women. It’s a version of lynch-mob logic that happens to appeal to the liberal and tolerant as much as the hateful and intolerant.
And it falls apart as soon as you speak to anyone knowledgeable in Sweden.
“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.
Sweden does indeed have far more reported cases of sexual assault than any other country. But it’s not because Swedes – of any colour – are very criminal. It’s because they’re very feminist. In 2005, Sweden’s Social Democratic government introduced a new sex-crime law with the world’s most expansive definition of rape.
Imagine, for example, if your boss rubbed against you in an unwanted way at work once a week for a year. In Canada, this would potentially be a case of sexual assault. Under Germany’s more limited laws, it would be zero cases. In Sweden, it would be tallied as 52 separate cases of rape. If you engaged in a half-dozen sex acts with your spouse, then later you felt you had not given consent, in Sweden that would be classified as six cases of rape.
The marked increase in rape cases during the 2000s is almost entirely a reflection of Sweden’s deep public interest in sexual equality and the rights of women, not of attacks by newcomers.
But aren’t refugees and immigrants responsible for a greater share of Sweden’s sexual assaults?
In a sense. Statistics show that the foreign-born in Sweden, as in most European countries, do have a higher rate of criminal charges than the native-born, in everything from shoplifting to murder (though not enough to affect the crime rate by more than a tiny margin). The opposite is true in North America, where immigrants have lower-than-average crime rates.
Why the difference? Because people who go to Sweden are poorer, and crime rates are mostly a product not of ethnicity but of class. In a 2013 analysis of 63,000 Swedish residents, Prof. Sarnecki and his colleagues found that 75 per cent of the difference in foreign-born crime is accounted for by income and neighbourhood, both indicators of poverty. 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.
What also stands out is that almost all the victims of these crimes – especially sex crimes – are also foreign-born. But for a handful of headline-grabbing atrocities, it isn’t a case of swarthy men preying on white women, but of Sweden’s system turning refugees into victims of crime.
That is the real Swedish crisis. Refugee shelters are terrible, dangerous places, whoever is in them. When such shelters, then known as displaced persons camps, held millions of Europeans in the 1940s and 1950s, histories show they were at risk of sexual predation and organized attacks against Jewish refugees.
Because otherwise gener
I know right? This is hardly news. Everyone and their brother has a wiki these days. There's a Star Wars wiki, a Muppets wiki, a Harry Potter wiki, a Lost wiki, a Spongebob wiki, and a host of others dedicated to other "verticals." Whoever wrote the article summary is a few years behind.
Yes, of course he was. Or is this some sort of trick question?
Wow, you have no clue about Coshocton. It's actually a pretty nice town. I've watched it grow a lot over the years, but even back in the day I wouldn't call it a pathetic poor hick town. I'd liken it more to Mayberry than Podunk. BTW, do you have any American flags? Chances are they came from Coshocton's Annin & Co, the nation's oldest and largest flag manufacturer.
Actually, linguists don't consider any language easier or harder than any other, but rather that they are all equal in structural complexity. Also, English has plenty of rules and follows them more closely than you might realize. If word order didn't matter, then you could naturally say "to my mother often talk I" and people would understand you without having to think about it. English is more analytic than one might think.
I strongly encourage you to take a linguistics class. You'd really learn a lot. It certainly has corrected a lot of my own misconceptions.
Actually, linguists don't consider any language easier or harder than any other. Also, it follows its rules more closely than you might realize.
I'm pretty sure you can poke someone who is not your friend, as long as their profile is public.
Why is Tom Scholz (of Boston) not on that list? He plays many instruments, but you usually see him with his Gold Top Gibson Les Paul.
I'm in NC! *raises hand* Don't ask about the other hand....
Firefox 3.1 beta 3 scores 93/100.
I, for one, welcome our new volume-adjusting overlords, because it means I'll finally be able to watch Hannah Montana for free! Yee-hah!
Miley Cyrus, on the other hand, tries to present herself as adult enough to design her own clothing line and publish an autobiography. She should have known that as a famous celebrity, putting risque photos of herself on the Internet would come back to haunt her. However, I haven't seen any charges filed against her, and according to the descriptions, the girls in this case didn't do anything worse than her.
Actually, what he's saying is if you want to read aloud to your son, you're fine. But if you want to have your Kindle read to your son, you should pay a licensing fee. According to him, there's a difference, and that's where his logic fails.
FTA: "For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of 'Goodnight Moon.' If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it's another matter."
I, however, see no difference. Mr. Blount is a nut.
Jon Stewart came up with a solution a couple weeks ago. Fast forward to about 4:15 in this video.
This is why we should employ Jon Stewart's idea. Fast forward to about 4:15 in this video.
Obama repeatedly made sure that we knew that his campaign was funded entirely by us the citizens, not lobbyists or businesses. Therefore he should be using the DOJ to protect us from the RIAA, not the other way around. I sure hope he can fix the economy, because this is a strike against him.
For the browser competition, you get the computer it's running on. Or at least that's what I gather; the article accidentally a whole verb. FTA: "CanSecWest organizers plan to Sony VAIO P running Windows 7 as the platform for the contest. The successful hacker gets to keep the machine."
"The precautionary principle is a moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action. The principle implies that there is a responsibility to intervene and protect the public from exposure to harm where scientific investigation discovers a plausible risk in the course of having screened for other suspected causes. The protections that mitigate suspected risks can be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that more robustly support an alternative explanation."
From what I've heard so far, there's a small chance that the LHC will kill us all. And they can't prove otherwise because the underlying theories haven't been proven. If the question is "should we do it?", then the answer is simple: "no." Or at least "not yet."
Oh, I'm sure they don't. I wasn't criticizing the action taken, just the accompanying message. I also forgot the obligatory IANAL disclaimer. :-)
So the message they post is "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders"? That's not even legally sound. According to U.S. copyright law, for non-profit, non-exclusive use, it is only necessary to have permission from one co-author. So if you had permission from the songwriter (co-author of the audio) and the director or producer (co-author of the video), you could upload a music video and the record company wouldn't legally be able to do anything about it. Except they would try, and they would probably win. And that's why the system is screwed up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mothman_Prophecies
The list is actually 25, not 15.
Dude, you just pirated that article.
It HAS been investigated, and it HAS been resolved.
The head of the Hawaii Department of Health confirmed on October 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu, saying that she has "personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."
In addition, just a few days ago the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case brought against Obama regarding his citizenship.
It's over. Quit bringing it up.