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I shall be uncharacteristically plain in reguards to that sort of offender; cut their cock-and-balls off. They cannot be trusted to have them. The procedure can no doubt be done, with advanced modern medicine, and is a much more reliable disarmament (in all senses of the word) than a few months of mandatory day-care with friends and drugs, at worst.

I suppose it illustrates how the individual scale of 'sufficient response' can shift. But, I also do believe that drastic time demands drastic measures. It is either very severe punishments like that, or life-long deportation, that could help now that such behaviour has begun to become normalised. Of course, on the matter of deportation, there is the discussion of how to approach a second generation immigrant, hiding behind a given citizenship. It is particularly urgent in regards to recent events.

It has dawned on me that the state of the world is at the point where I think gelding should be used to restore order. This suggestion does not say many flattering things about me. And yet, I cannot tear myself away from supporting that idea. If this is where we are, and if that is what must be done to lay down the law, then so be it.
Jolly, jolly times, aren't they?

Well. The man certainly does look the part. It is a matter of 'was', now. Luckily and regrettably. There is one less, but also one less to interrogate. It is, as always, an uneven exchange.

Oh! And while I remember, I thought it might be an opportune time for some perspective. Namely, it is now 31 years since prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated. While recent years have been worrying, embarassing and enlightening, I must say that the great, Trump-brand peril being quite efficiently marketed is somewhat over-stated, all together. It is not unwarranted questions, nor is it an unwarranted attention, but one would think that the whole of the North was in danger of falling apart at any given moment. Well, at least such it is when-ever it is Trump that has set the current tone.

Oh, pissflaps, I was about to start arranging my dinner. It will be a while before I can give anything particularly in-depth. For now, I can reveal that I have not heard of it until now, no. I have heard of the threats and the odd attack on the emergency service crews, however. I am not particularly surprised. It sounds like a very reasonable request. Indeed, I thought they already had at least some helmets and riot-shields available.

The translation in the video provided checks out very well, so it is a good source. I do not know much of DGS TV as a whole, but it appears perfectly harmless; an opinion blog and Youtube series that goes somewhat outside the fold, but does so quite well. It is not particularly political, other than in its scepticism to some established orthodoxies that they believe need probing.

I can confirm Dorsidwarf's translations above. That is effectively what they are trying to do; be a journalistic counter-force to value-journalism and current identity politics. It is harmless; it is certainly no Breitbart-esque, as it where.
It is rather interesting. I shall pick it through and see what more I can find. It is a very small site, with a small footprint, hence the lack of general dirt, I imagine. It is more of an archive of opinion pieces that up until recently would not be particularly well-seen in most papers.

This is why when you accept a bunch of immigrants/refugees, cordoning them off into their own little communities is the worst way to handle integration.

That has, more or less, happened by itself. The immigration and integration is in the hopeless state it is because of in-action, I would say. It has been a very hands-off affair; it has been far less interesting than recieving and cashing the prestige and the feelings of generousity of having a 'humane migration policy'. It has all been dreadfully irresponsible. I urge you, do not try this at home.

This has been Meatball News^TM, we will return shortly with more coverage on this story later. [Jingle, fade-out]

I was going through some papers of mine, and found that I have evidently written a song while quite drunk at some point. It is a Dwarf Fortress song, but it appears to be based on the intro of the old Winnie the Pooh cartoon. Of all things.

My Little Urist, part of Silverthrone's Greatest Hits. Coming soon, to a copyright infringement trial near you.

Anyone have a decent source or insights (hoping scriver, Silverthrone or one of our other Swedes will fill us in) about these riots in Stockholm I'm hearing about?

Can do, Sir! Well, scriver is far more quick on the ball, I must say.

It is, in all honestly, not anything particular, this riot. Not in the great scheme of things. I suppose that is a symptom in and off itself, but such areas tends to flare up rather reguraly. Usually (such as in this case) it is in response to someone being arrested by the police. They arrive, carry out the arrest, and the suspect's friends either comes rushing to disrupt the arrest, or go on a semi-organised rampage in reponse. Although it changes somewhat case-by-case, I think that it is fair to say that the main motivation is a vague "fuck da poleez". Policemen, fire engines and other authorities, as it where, get stones pitched at them, and unattended cars get torched. These flare-ups are rather short-lived, it is almost always over come morning.

It is also worth noting that there is a select group of people that are involved in these riots. It is usually young, semi-criminal (or gang prospects, trying to earn their spurs) men, and they do not have popular support in the neighbourhood. Indeed, policemen responding to a similar flare-up in another city noted that people cheered for them from windows and balconies. However, people are naturally afraid to confront the hoodlums openly, and they do affect how people live their lives. While the criminal gangs do not effectively rule these areas as they wish, they have a very large influence.

Now, Rinkeby in particular is a bit of a back-water. 'In Stockholm', as noted by the headline, is not entirely true, it is a low-market suburb at the outskirts (an old ABC suburb, somewhat equivolent to the council estate blocks in England). Other than that, the article you linked is an accurate summary. The only unusual element to this particular flare-up was that one police patrol were so seriously troubled that they had to open fire. That is rather unusual (and I imagined it stained a few pairs of 'genuine' gangzta underpants, as well), although warning shots have been fired before.
As of now, it is the usual: social agencies are running through their usual "we will focus on this, that and this" routine and the police stepping up their patrols in the area. There is, as far as I can find, no particularly different re-action to this case, and I fear it will mostly be business as usual, for the time being.

Quote from: Covenant on February 21, 2017, 12:32:49 pm

Anyone have a decent source or insights (hoping scriver, Silverthrone or one of our other Swedes will fill us in) about these riots in Stockholm I'm hearing about?

These riots are happening in a government-built district called Rinkeby (more like a self-contained mini-city, really) that was built in 60s-70s without a police station for unknown reasons and is populated mainly (80-90%) by immigrants, which ensued in a stable criminal presence in the area, especially after most of the other government offices and banks in the area have been shut down due to budget cuts. Recently, police has been trying to reintroduce themselves by patrolling the district and building up a police station, and as a result, there's some conflicts going on.

All of that is from a Swedish forum person, and are sourced to a Swedish newspaper DN, which has its own website apparently. I did not check it, but the whole "district without a police station" seems to be something that's very easy to fact-check and is something outlandish enough to be hard to invent out of whole cloth.

At least now I understand from where the persistent "no-go zones" rumours appear. This "district" is technically not a "no-go" zone, the police does try to enforce law over there, but the whole "no police station" aspect makes it de-facto as if it was a no-go zone, for the majority of the time.

Yes, it can be a rather confusing misunderstanding, and I was rather confused about that, myself. As a special treat for the thread; A Very Brief Run-Down of the Swedish Suburbian Districts.

These areas (Rosengård, Hammarkullen, Husby, Rinkeby, Hjällbo, I shall be making a riot bingo one of these days, you see) are very similar. They are in different cities, but have the same properties; they are mainly areas of low-income and low-education. They tend to be mainly populated by immigrants, first to third generation, usually of the same or similar ethnicities. Actual local conditions differ, but it is a good average.

They are rather like self-contained mini-cities; that was the idea when they were built during the 1960's to the 1970's, in a massive government construction effort named The Million Programme (named after the ambition of building one million new dwellings). The idea was to provide most of the services an average citizen could need in one area, with good public transport routes to the city proper.
Unfortunately, that only works for as long as authorities (civil and state) remain a presence in these centres, and there has been an awful lot of ill-advised centralisation in the last decades. Most cities only have one central police station, for instance, and many other government offices of various sorts, like social offices, simply are not available in many suburbs any more. And, as noted by Sergarr, neither are other important institutions, like banks and special retailers. This creates a very real sensation of isolation, and creates an estrangement with other parts of the city and of society.
That is not to say that it is the same in all areas. Some are recovering, as this isolation is becoming more known, and more is being done to re-bind these neighbourhoods back into the city. Indeed, repairing the cracks in the old Million Programme is, if not well under way, at least on-going.

About No-Go Zones: As far as I know, there are no zones where the police simply will not go for fear of being hurt, but there are areas where they know they are not welcome, and will need to be careful.

Quote from: Frumple on February 19, 2017, 04:14:14 pm

Though speech wise... good gods. Actually skimmed over/read one or two of the recent speeches. Tighter grip nothing, the man's incoherent better than half the time at this point. Paragraphs worth of verbal diarrhea that are as nonsensical as they are empty if anything but the most shallow of platitudes. Guy either needs to hire better speech writers or just hire them at all.

And abandon the free-wheeling unrestrained speeches that propelled him to the Presidency? Pfft.

@silverthrone: If the Swedish embassy has to ask "what the heck are you going on about?", then he is definetly isn't clear. Sure, people can speculate, but only Trump knows what he means because he is so vague and the speculation could be wrong. Or maybe ask a Trump supporter, but you're likely to get many answers from there too.

Well, yes. He is not being clear, and I think that is quite arrogant and careless of him. It is not worthy of a president. Nonetheless, I do believe that this is a case of a lot of clever people playing dumber than they are. The embassy, however, were quite right to ask. "We do not know what is being alluded towards, and that is why we have posed the question" was the statement, I believe. It is quite easy to guess what the president did mean, but until he deigns to explain, it is impossible to know. That is, know precisely what he meant and have it confirmed by himself or his staff.

I doubt it will go anywhere, but I am quite happy with the fact that they ask. If nothing else, it should be standard procedure when a head of state effectively talks shit and declines to clarify.

One of my favourite beer halls burned down that day. I can only assume that he meant that. (Well, it appears to have been an electrical fault, rather than kebab arson on haram property or anything particularly exciting). While I certainly do appreciate his concern, there are other venues available while they rebuild it. Still, they ought to put it up over the door, that the president of North America himself keeps them under his wings, as it were.

That said, it is quite typical of president Trump to have a relatively reasonable point to make (careless immigration leads to quite serious difficulties, Sweden being an example thereof), but fail to express it clearly enough. Instead, he made some vague bayings on the subject and then declined to clarify. While one cannot accuse the media of helping to clear it up, the truth of the matter is that president Trump was unclear, and carries most of the blame for being misunderstood.
Indeed, it has given the media and authorities of the kingdom concerned charte blance to ignore his point entirely, and claiming that he is lying again. So the great, big elephant with a sex offender's record gets to remain in the room for a bit longer.