RUTHFULLY YOURS

Swedish police officers were last night forced to fire live ammunition at mobs of masked rioters that hurled stones at them in the Stockholm district of Rinkeby. The vicious attacks in the migrant-dominated neighbourhood followed the attempted arrest of a wanted criminal. Only eight days ago, similar worrying skirmishes took place in Rinkeby.

The authorities had initially reported on “warning shots being fired”, but a few hours ago, police stated that the officers actually tried to hit the stone-throwers, daily Aftonbladet reports. According to police, none of the attackers was hit by the officers’ bullets.

During this night’s riots, that lasted several hours, Rinkeby not only witnessed assaults on police but cases of larceny were registered as well. Furthermore, about a dozen cars have been set alight by the local youths, that subsequently blocked roads in order to prevent fire department units getting through. Shops were plundered and civilians were beaten, some of whom were also robbed, but no arrests have been made so far. Rinkeby is considered by many to be Sweden’s most notorious no-go zone.

Yesterday’s violence started after police tried to arrest a wanted person in Stockholm’s subway system. The situation escalated quickly when “a large number” of onlookers started hurling stones at the officers. According to the detective in charge, Sylvia Odin, police “felt vulnerable” and the situation was described as “highly threatening.” Eventually, police had to withdraw from the scene.

Lars Bystrom, who is the spokesperson for Stockholm’s police, told Expressen TV that eventually police even had to withdraw their patrols from the scene and subsequently retreated to a gas station after one of the officers was hit by a stone. Bystrom calls the attacks “planned and orchestrated.”

“A number of young men appeared at the location and they started throwing stones at the police. We don’t know how many there were.”

According to a witness, at least 30 persons were involved in the Rinkeby rioting.

Previous ‘incident’ in the no-go zone

About one week ago, 3 police officers ended up in hospital after being assaulted by some 30 Rinkeby youths. This attack as well started in response to an attempted arrest of a gangster. Youngsters beat and kicked police constables, while stones and bottles were hurled at the officers of the law. The authorities then stated:

“Of course it’s serious when police officers on duty are attacked in this way. Unfortunately, this is the reality… for officers.”

Update: photographer beaten and kicked

Four months ago, when South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was nominated by the president-elect as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote that there was reason to hope she would live up to the legacies of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and John Bolton as “shining beacons in the Midtown Manhattan snake pit.”

Though at the time I could not judge whether she was the right person for the job, it appeared that she possessed the kind of moral clarity and tough skin required in an arena filled with people whose key purpose is to cloud the distinction between good and evil. Indeed, it takes a special kind of envoy to maneuver the Orwellian universe in which the international body operates, where Western values are on a lower hierarchical rung than third-world culture, and where a mockery is made of the concept of human rights, the championing and upholding of which the organization was originally established to safeguard.

One indicator that Haley seemed to fit the bill was that she, the daughter of Indian immigrants who went through legal channels to become Americans, signed a law to crack down on illegal immigration. Another was her introduction of legislation to outlaw boycotts, divestment and sanctions “based on race, color, religion, gender, or national origin of the targeted person or entity.” Since Israel has been the focus of BDS campaigns everywhere, it was clear what she had in mind. No wonder her appointment caused Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations Riyad Mansour to flinch.

Mansour was right to be worried, just as I now believe my high hopes were well-founded when Haley was confirmed.

On Thursday, after her first encounter with the U.N. Security Council, Haley told reporters that she had asked its members to help her understand “when we have so much going on in the world, why is it that every single month we’re going to sit down and have a hearing where all they do is obsess over Israel.”

Haley went on to describe the meeting, which she called “a bit strange,” as exactly what it was: a forum for bashing the Jewish state.

“The discussion was not about Hezbollah’s illegal build-up of rockets in Lebanon,” she said. “It was not about the money and weapons Iran provides to terrorists. It was not about how we defeat ISIS [Islamic State]. It was not about how we hold [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad accountable for the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of civilians. No, instead, the meeting focused on criticizing Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East.”

Asserting that the U.S. “will not turn a blind eye to this anymore,” Haley underscored America’s “ironclad support for Israel” and intolerance for the “U.N.’s anti-Israel bias.”

She pointed out that, “incredibly, the U.N. Department of Political Affairs has an entire division devoted to Palestinian affairs,” while it has “no division devoted to illegal missile launches from North Korea … no division devoted to the world’s number one state-sponsor of terror, Iran.”

Late-night television hosts got another gift from President Trump over the weekend, but it turns out the incident wasn’t so much comedy gold as it was an illustration of everything that is wrong about the colloquy between Trump and his critics on immigration and refugees.

On Monday evening, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers made a meal out of the latest Donald Trump gaffe. Trump was lambasted for saying that there had been a terror attack in Sweden on Friday night. Since there had been no such attack, it prompted the usual avalanche of mockery in the president’s direction. But while Trump’s vague language and willingness to fabricate facts to suit his talking points often justifies the brickbats thrown in his way, in this case there were two problems with the hilarity: Trump didn’t actually claim there had been a terror attack, and the facts about Sweden actually do back up his claim about a surge in violence by Muslim immigrants in Europe.

During the course of his campaign-style rally in South Carolina on Saturday, Trump said:

We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what’s happening in Brussels. You look at what’s happening all over the world. Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris.

Given the context, in which he appeared to be referencing violence in Belgium, France, and Germany, it sounded as if Trump was saying there had been an attack the previous evening in Sweden. Except he wasn’t. In typical imprecise Trumpian fashion, he was actually referring to a segment broadcast on Fox News in which Tucker Carlson interviewed filmmaker Ami Horowitz about a video he had made about Sweden, which had been originally posted on YouTube in December.

Trump’s fan base may not care, but we still live in a world in which the words uttered by the leader of the planet’s sole superpower are a matter of great import. There’s a reason why presidents shouldn’t make offhand remarks about what’s going on in other countries. A more diligent commander-in-chief would first listen to information and advice from his staff and the intelligence community. Although we are getting used to government by tweet, there is a serious problem with Trump’s reliance on cable news channels as his sole source of information before he starts shooting off his mouth.

But as much as we should be appalled by the slapdash manner in which the leader of the free world spouts off about what he saw on television in his typical ordinary-guy manner, in this case Trump wasn’t playing the fabulist.

Horowitz is something of a film provocateur, and he may not have the prestige of a mainstream liberal documentarian, but he isn’t a liar. His short deals with the fact that a massive infusion of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East has created problems for Swedish society. Despite claims made by Trump’s detractors, sexual violence has spiked in the Scandinavian country, and the immigrant population bears a good deal of the responsibility. The culture clash between liberal Swedish society and the misogyny of some of the immigrants, combined with the creation of no-go zones there, bears all the signs of the same serious problems that have arisen in France and Germany, where it is no longer possible to pretend that nothing is wrong.

ARIS—Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate for France’s far-right National Front, seized on a trip to Lebanon to showcase her hard line on Islamic custom, refusing Tuesday to wear a head scarf and upending her plans to meet with the country’s senior Sunni Muslim cleric.

On the final day of a three-day visit, Ms. Le Pen refused to take a head scarf before meeting with Grand Mufti Sheik Abdel-Latif Derian at his office, saying Sunni officials hadn’t demanded she cover herself in meetings with Sunni leaders in the past.

Ms. Le Pen was making the visit to Lebanon in a bid to raise her international profile in a country at the doorstep of Syria’s war and its resulting refugee crisis.

“It doesn’t matter. Pass on my considerations to the Grand Mufti but I will not veil myself,” Ms. Le Pen told reporters before turning back to a waiting car.

The press office of Dar al-Fatwa, Lebanon’s highest Sunni authority, said it had informed an aide to Ms. Le Pen on Monday that she would need to cover her head for the meeting.

“When she arrived, the [staff] were surprised by her refusal to abide” by the protocol, Dar al-Fatwa said in a statement carried by the National News Agency.

In France, full-face veils are outlawed and headscarves are banned from schools and public-sector workplaces.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-isnt-the-eus-problem-1487723421 Vice President Mike Pence spent the past few days trying to reassure Europeans about America’s commitment to NATO, but in some continental precincts that isn’t enough. Europe’s mandarins are sore that Mr. Pence didn’t embrace the European Union with similar enthusiasm, as if an American Administration is responsible for the EU’s fate. Mr. Pence […]