Trump has started holding 2020 campaign rallies. (He filed for his re-election campaign in 2020 on Inauguration Day.) His first was in Florida. Like every demagogue, he needs to get out there in front of the cheering mobs and restate his love for them and hear them holler their love for him. So much more fun than hanging out in the empty White House surrounded by ghosts of predecessors who were mostly men of character, integrity, and intellect. None of them as great a scoundrel as Trump. So, he is #1 in that department.
At the rally in Florida, he warned that bringing in immigrants is an invitation to terrorism (does that include Melania?). He rattled off nations that have had terror attacks and included Sweden. He asked the crowd if they had heard what happened on Friday night, the very night before the campaign rally. Sweden, can you believe it!
Later when it was pointed out that there was no terrorist attack in Sweden on Friday, he said he was referring to a rise in crime in Sweden, which obviously did not happen on Friday.
John Oliver reviewed Trump’s rally here.
Others said he was referring to Sweden’s high rape statistics, which they blame on immigrants from Muslim countries. But I googled “Sweden Rape Statistics Muslim” and came up with an article in Wikipedia that said 1) each country has its own definition of what constitutes rape; what some countries call a sexual assault is classified as rape in Sweden; 2) in 1996, Sweden reported three times the average number of rapes as in 35 other European countries. That was long before the immigrant surge of the past few years.
In Sweden, a man who groped women and grabbed them by their genitals without their consent would be labeled a rapist.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Do they count Julian Assange in the Swedish rape statistics? Last time I looked, Assange wasn’t a Muslim immigrant.
Pardon me, he has only been charged by Sweden and an arrest warrant issued, not physically arrested and tried, since he is still holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11949341
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Too bad the wind doesn’t pick up that psycho by his orange hair and fling him away.
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In other words, the Swedish legal system takes sexual assaults more seriously than our own system does. Good for them!
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This should make things interesting.
Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to UN, dies suddenly at 64
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/20/europe/russia-un-ambassador-vitaly-churkin-dead/index.html
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And they immediately knew he had a heart attack. Smells fishy – or should we say Putiny.
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They need to check the surveillance tapes and see if he was around any umbrellas with metal tips. But if he was, I’m betting the camera was blocked out at the crucial moment.
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Dropping like flies these Russians who have spoken to Trump and his campaign. Two Russian hookers are looking for a witness protection program in Sweden.
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It seems to me that the Ecuadorian embassy in London would be more appropriate.
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Assange might do Putin’s dirty work.
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My much-needed comic relief Sunday came from reading the #lastnightinSweden twitter entries. For a photo showing “hordes crossing the border” (reindeer), one reply said they needed to put up a 300-mile salt lick & make Norway pay for it.
Glad Swedes have the perspective and humor to contend w. DJT. Some thought-provoking tweets noted “Last night in Sweden everyone had healthcare.”
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DHS = Department of Hysterical Scapegoating
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….so if grabbing women by their genitals and privates is considered a rape, what does that make Mr. Trump ?
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Uhhhhhh. In Sweden, he would be a criminal.
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Ask the woman who claims he raped her as a thirteen year old . Notice the dirt bag who sues everybody would not dare sue this woman. If he did he would have had to be deposed .
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Karen: good to see another fan of Ionesco—
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”
As to the subject of your query—
😡
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and he is a rapist…he is raping our country!
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Persona pro grabba
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GregB,
Your comment was very creative…I’ll have to remember that description next time there is a Trump article on this topic!
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I really like your last sentence in this post, Diane.
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Thanks!
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“At the rally in Florida, he warned that bringing in immigrants is an invitation to terrorism (does that include Melania?).”
I used to live about 100 miles from Melania. So maybe I’ll be on the boat back to Europe with her. I’ll let you guys know how it went.
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Another reason for the Swedish statistics is
“In Sweden there has been this ambition explicitly to record every case of sexual violence separately, to make it visible in the statistics,” she says.
“So, for instance, when a woman comes to the police and she says my husband or my fiance raped me almost every day during the last year, the police have to record each of these events, which might be more than 300 events. In many other countries it would just be one record – one victim, one type of crime, one record.”
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This is clearly yet another tragic case of BGMS (Bowling Green Massacre Syndrome). Since we failed to nip it in the bud, it’s spreading to other countries. Now it’s going to be far more difficult to contain. We have only ourselves to blame; perhaps we can learn from this horrific outbreak to be more vigilant in the future.
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Trim wants to do his campaign rallies (aka: Make America Great Again) and let Bannon Pence & Co go about the business of actually ruinin…I mean “running” the government.
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Does anyone have any reliable sources for Swedish crime statistics? Or how, in general, immigrants in Sweden are adapting to their new country?
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I saw this link on FB last night. One of the replies said it’s a fake photo. The guy who posted it is a Trump supporter and is solid behind this:
http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2015/10/30/a-civil-war-erupts-irate-and-fed-up-swedes-are-now-setting-muslim-refugee-centers-on-fire.html
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I dunno about these. But refugees refusing to ID themselves but still demanding to get into Hungary was real. It was misreported here completely.
I saw what happened at railway stations. Things are not exactly all pretty. Saying “poor refugees” or “refugees are terrorists” are both inaccurate generalizations.
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It’s a terrible situation from the leaving of homes to arrivals in a strange land.
I heard one official saying that many have fled without any ID documents and how difficult it is to obtain that info from areas like Syria where the infrastructure has been destroyed.
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As I said, they wouldn’t allow anybody to ID them or make ID for them. We are talking about hundreds of thousands.
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I know, Mate. There’s no easy solution and the truth, as so often is the case, lies somewhere in between.
Wish I had the answer. I can say, though, that going to the source can often be beneficial. Where are these people coming from and why? And here is where I have a serious problem with Putin’s role in Syria.
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The vast majority of the people trying to get into Europe from the East are coming from Turkish refugee camps. They are not fleeing war. Human trafficking and smuggling is a multi billion dollar business in that area.
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“I have a serious problem with Putin’s role in Syria.”
What is the US role there?
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The area I have problem is that, even if there IS a problem in Sweden, we have a very effective vetting system already in place, here in the US. We learned our lessons well. And, contrary to Shrump’s assertion; he did not inherit a “mess”.
He wants to spread fear and cast himself and his administration as the saviors. He’s a disgrace and an international embarrassment.
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True. Orange Donnie wants to keep out even those with visas, passports, just because they are Muslims. Again, whatever is/was going on in Europe is different.
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“I have a serious problem with Putin’s role in Syria.”
What is the US role there?”
Wish I had a good answer for that one, Mate.
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Putin has been trying to maintain the power of a vicious dictator, who inherited the job from his equally vicious father. Assad decided he would prefer to level the country than give up power. Russia has given him air power. Russian jets have bombed hospitals and civilian targets. Russia helped to level Aleppo.
Obama determined to draw a line in the sand but alter the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, did little to help the Syrian rebels.
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I know, Diane. It’s a tough situation. Obama decided we didn’t have to always be the worlds’ policeman. Putin took advantage of that. Making large scale changes can have large scale consequences.
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Gitapik,
Hillary wanted a no fly zone over Syria but Obama mixed that. Russia bombed children’s hospitals, whatever inflicted max damage. Assad didn’t care. Trum wants to be Putin’s buddy. Don’t forget what Putin did to Chechnya. Scorched earth.
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Trump would befriend Russia and alienate our NATO allies. That says a lot about the man.
The Republicans are acting like whores.
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Gitapic: “Obama decided we didn’t have to always be the worlds’ policeman. … Making large scale changes can have large scale consequences.”
What is the US doing (yet again) 6K miles from home? Why is it so clear from here what needs to be done there, what’s good there, for those people in Chechnya, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc?
Is Russia behaving badly in Chechnya? Yes, but not according to the Russians living there. We love to be outraged about how people behave abroad, but how are the voting rights for Puerto Ricans and Virgin Islanders? At least Chechnyans can vote. What if Puerto Rico tried to split from the US?
What if Cuba decided, they’ve had enough of Guantanamo Bay?
What do we base our information about the events at these far away places like Europe and Asia? Newspaper articles? Watching the news? I read and listened to those news sources about last years’ refugee crisis in Eastern and Southern Europe (which hasn’t ended or even decreased). They didn’t match the reality I saw, what my family, friends saw. Not even close.
Was there, is there a clash between the Christian and Muslim cultures in Europe? Yes. Why deny it? Is there a clash simply because of the Christian right’s intolerance of other religions? I wouldn’t bet on that, because, for example, religion doesn’t play as important role in much of Europe as here. The winning theory may be closer to mutual disrespect and suspicion rooted in almost 1000 years of history.
Do the American gentle fireworks in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have anything to do with the refugee crisis all over Europe, Africa and Asia? If yes, then the US needs to take care of a major chunk of the 2 million refugees in not because “we are nice people with a nice Constitution” but because we are obliged to.
So it seems, instead of Orange Donnie working on keeping immigrants out from Muslim countries, he better to work on letting, say, one million in. Bring the problems home, not just cause them far away from home.
We certainly can agree on Trump’s or Putin’s qualification as dictator materials. But the view of who has been doing more damage 6K miles from here appears to be much more opaque.
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I am dismayed that Diane is trivializing the rise in rapes by muslim men in Sweden. Muslim immigrants are living completely off of the largess of the Swedish people and yet they call for sharia law in Sweden, insisting that the Swedish people should also be forced to live by sharia law, as well.
We need everyone, especially women, to be rational. We must look honestly on the facts not tow a party line. We must stop worrying about being politically correct and call out crimes as they are happening and hold those people accountable whoever they turn out to be.
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Fuller, I don’t trivialize rape anywhere, including in the U.S., where a certain presidential candidate said that he felt free to grab women by their private parts, which I see as rape. Were you outraged by those comments? Those are the words of a rapist.
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Fuller,
Here is the latest on crime statistics in Sweden: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/24/no-sweden-isnt-hiding-an-immigrant-crime-problem-this-is-the-real-story/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_3_na&utm_term=.71bfe20e2cc5
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