M.N.: A lot of Fire and Fury from a Big Gun. Nice Fireworks. (Sublimation?)
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В Петропавловской крепости Владимир Путин произвёл традиционный полуденный выстрел из пушки.
Из альбома к материалу
7 января 2019 года Санкт-Петербург
Judge in Russia probe case reprimands attorney who quoted 'Animal ...
Fox News-14 hours ago
When Concord Management pleaded not guilty in May, Dubelier said in court, “The government has indicted the proverbial Ham sandwich.”.
Russian company, accused in Mueller probe of being troll farm, pleads ...
Fox News-May 9, 2018
Published May 9 ... A Russian company accused of being a troll farm pleaded not guilty in federal court... Defense Attorney Eric Dubelier was in court to represent Concord Management and ... “The government has indicted the proverbial Ham sandwich,” ... The indictment says Internet Research Agency registered with the ...
The Judge Who Coined “Indict a Ham Sandwich” Was Himself Indicted. ... In a bid to make prosecutors more accountable for their actions, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler has proposed that the state scrap the grand jury system of bringing criminal indictments.Nov 25, 2014
“But mainly you used the grand jury to indict people,” Wolfe wrote, “and in the famous phrase of Sol Wachtler, chief judge of the State Court of Appeals, a grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted.” ... In 1993, he was indicted for extortion and other crimes.Nov 25, 2014
Animal House (7/10) Movie CLIP - Deltas on Trial (1978) HD
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WASHINGTON – A federal judge Monday reprimanded an attorney for a Russian company accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election, saying his references to Looney Tunes and “Animal House” in recent court filings are inappropriate.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich confronted attorney Eric Dubelier after his most recent court filing included quotes from the raunchy 1978 comedy “Animal House” to criticize special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
“I'll say it plain and simply: Knock it off,” the judge told Dubelier. The judge's reprimand prompted a heated back-and-forth in which Dubelier accused Friedrich of bias.
Dubelier has mounted a combative defense of Concord Management and Consulting LLC, which Mueller has accused of funding a large-scale Russian conspiracy to use internet trolls and fake social media accounts to sway American public opinion during the 2016 election. The case was the first brought by Mueller to directly attach criminal charges to Russian attempts to interfere in the election. Prosecutors say those efforts were in part aimed at helping Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
Dubelier has dismissed the case as involving a “made up” crime and accused prosecutors of misconduct.
Dubelier's past court filings have quoted the movie “Casablanca” and the Looney Tunes character Tweety Bird to slam Mueller. In his latest complaint, Dubelier insinuated in a court filing that Mueller's team had improperly obtained information that his client shared with a court-appointed attorney.
Mueller's team denied any impropriety. But Dubelier scoffed, using a quote for emphasis from character Eric “Otter” Stratton, one of the leaders of the fictional Delta Tau Chi fraternity in “Animal House.”
“The Special Counsel's argument is reminiscent of Otter's famous line, 'Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f**ked up ... you trusted us. Hey, make the best of it,'” Dubelier wrote, using stars to censor the profanity used.
On Monday, Friedrich said she wasn't amused, calling his conduct “unprofessional, inappropriate and ineffective.”
Dubelier then accused Friedrich of bias, an allegation she rejected, saying: “Mr. Dubelier, you have had many inappropriate remarks in your filings and you know it.”
“Your Honor, that's your opinion,” Dubelier fired back. He also raised the prospect of his withdrawing from the case, saying he will discuss with his client whether the company still wants to retain him in light of the judge's comments.
Concord Management was indicted last year along with 15 other defendants in the first case brought by Mueller to directly attach criminal charges to Russian attempts to interfere in the election. None of the other Russian defendants has appeared in a U.S. court to face the charges.
Concord is controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman known as “Putin's chef” for his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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· ·
A federal judge in a case being prosecuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team on Monday scolded a defense attorney who quoted a famous, profane line from the 1978 comedy "Animal House" in a recent court filing.
United States District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ripped into attorney Eric Dubelier, a U.S.-based attorney for Concord Management, a Russian company that has been indicted by Mueller.
Concord Management is one of the Russian entities accused of participating in Moscow's efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
Friedrich told Dubelier, a former assistant U.S. attorney, she had read his latest filing and "you have made many inappropriate remarks." She told him to "knock it off.”
In a filing last week, Dubelier referenced “Animal House” and said, “The Special Counsel’s argument is reminiscent of Otter’s famous line, ‘Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f---ed up . . . you trusted us. Hey, make the best of it.’”
“Animal House” is the cult-classic starring John Belushi, Tim Matheson, Donald Sutherland and Kevin Bacon about two fraternities at a fictional college.
In court Monday, Dubelier responded by saying the judge had a "bias" against him and said he would need to consult with his client to see if he should stay on the case.
A federal grand jury last February indicted 13 Russians and three Russian companies for allegedly interfering in the election, in a case brought by Mueller that detailed a sophisticated plot to wage “information warfare” against the U.S. Concord Management was among those entities.
When Concord Management pleaded not guilty in May, Dubelier said in court, “The government has indicted the proverbial Ham sandwich.”
Fox News’ Jake Gibson and Bill Mears contributed to this report.
The post–Cold War period in U.S.-Russian relations ended abruptly in March 2014 with the eruption of the Ukraine crisis. The United States finally abandoned the waning aspiration to slowly integrate Russia into the Euro-Atlantic community that had driven its Russia policy since the end of the Cold War. Russia demonstrated its willingness to flout the norms that had governed European security since the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975 to protect its vital national interests. Talk of partnership vanished; channels of communication were severed. Each country now clearly viewed the other as a strategic competitor. That point was made explicit in the U.S. National Security Strategy released in December 2017. Russian President Vladimir Putin had repeatedly made it with increasing vehemence since his remarks at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007.
This does not mean, as many commentators argue, that a new cold war has broken out, even if relations are at their lowest ebb since the early 1980s, one of the darkest periods of the original Cold War. The international context and the nature of relations are radically different. The distribution of power in the world is no longer bipolar as it was during the Cold War. Rather, the contours of an inchoate multipolar system are emerging. The two countries are no longer engaged in a global existential struggle of two diametrically opposed philosophies of man and the state. Rather, both countries oversee variations of a capitalist economic system and profess adherence to democracy. U.S.-Russian relations no longer structure the international system or dominate the global agenda. Rather, they are among many other bilateral and multilateral relationships that shape the system and agenda, and not necessarily the most consequential. And Russia no longer lies at the center of American foreign policy, even if the United States remains a top priority for Russia. Rather, the United States is focused on other matters, including China and international terrorism. The new National Security Strategy does not change the picture, even if it identifies Russia as a revisionist power and strategic competitor, for the strategy also identifies China in the same terms and names Iran, North Korea, and international terrorism as major threats.
As in the Cold War, however, relations will remain troubled for a considerable period, defined more by competition, at times verging on outright confrontation, than cooperation. In the near term, there can be no return to the hope for partnership of the immediate post–Cold War years, no new reset, and no rapid improvement in relations even if the intensity of estrangement might abate. The differences—over the principles of world order, the essence of regional conflicts, and the fundamental values that should inform political affairs—are too profound for it to be otherwise.
How long this period of strategic competition will last is an open question, as is the evolution of U.S.-Russian relations to mid-century. Much will depend on domestic developments and global trends. The future could bring indifference—because one or the other country ceases to figure large in world affairs—or, if both countries continue to matter, permanent confrontation, strategic competition, or strategic cooperation with far-reaching global implications.
The Burden of History
That U.S.-Russian relations are competitive should not come as a surprise. That has been their prevailing character since the United States emerged as a global power at the end of the nineteenth century. Then, the United States and the Russian Empire, along with Japan, were competing for influence in Manchuria. In 1904, in the early phases of the Russo-Japanese War, the United States in Realpolitikk fashion tilted toward what it thought was the weaker power, Japan. It shifted position only after Japan humiliated Russia on both land and sea, mediating a peace to create a favorable balance of power in Northeast Asia. After the First World War, the United States refused to recognize the new Bolshevik regime because of its subversive, anti-capitalist foreign policy, relenting only in 1933, as the Nazi storm clouds were gathering over Europe and Japanese imperialism began to threaten U.S. interests in East Asia and the Pacific. After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a bitter cold war, which brought them to the cusp of thermonuclear conflict during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Even the rare times of cooperation were less compelling than might appear at first glance. The victorious alliance against Nazi Germany, for example, was laced with deep suspicion. Russia and the United States fought not so much in common as in parallel on the eastern and western fronts, respectively. The postwar settlement divided Europe into two opposing camps that quickly found themselves in the grips of a cold war. More recently, the cooperation in the first post–Soviet decade was grounded less in common strategic interests than a weak Russia’s timid acquiescence in U.S. actions it found objectionable, such as the U.S. intervention in the Balkan wars and NATO expansion. Any pretense of cooperation began to wither away as Russia regained its strength under Putin in the 2000s, to be ultimately replaced by the present profound estrangement.
Security and Exceptionalism
The reasons for this troubled history are many. At the most elementary level, competition between great powers is an inherent condition of international relations. That is all the more true for dynamic expansionist powers with major interests in both East Asia and Europe, as America and Russia have been for at least the past 150 years.
Nevertheless, the competitive nature of great-power relations alone does not suffice to explain the depth and endurance of the antagonism, which greatly exceeds that of America’s—and for the most part Russia’s—relations with other great powers, such as Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and China. Other factors—different approaches to the fundamental questions of national security and prosperity, incompatible value systems embedded in competing forms of exceptionalism and universalism—have had greater influence because they cut to the core of national purpose and identity.
With regard to security and prosperity, Russia has long been preoccupied with the challenge of securing, against external foes and internal unrest, a vast, sparsely populated, multiethnic territory with few physical barriers abutting powerful or unstable neighbors. To that end, Russia has taken refuge in strategic depth, pushing borders outward as far as possible from the Russian heartland and limiting foreign influences inside Russian-controlled territory. The United States, by contrast, once it established its dominant position in North America in the middle of the nineteenth century, has been physically secure, with weak neighbors to the North and South and vast oceans to the East and West. As a trading nation, it has, with rare exception, looked abroad not to physically control territory but rather to open up markets for American goods and secure resources for robust economic growth and well-being at home.
In time, Russian expansion in search of security ran up against American expansion in search of markets, first in East Asia and subsequently in Europe. The tension grew most acute during the Cold War, pitting Soviet autarky seeking to extend its sway against American economic dynamism seeking to expand the reach of free markets. American prosperity jeopardized Russian security, and vice versa. For that reason, since the end of the nineteenth century, each country has pursued a policy of containment vis-a-vis the other—Russia to constrain American commercial advance, America to limit Russian territorial expansion—although the United States formally acknowledged that only during the Cold War, and Russia has never done so, preferring to rail against alleged American imperialism or hegemonic designs since the Bolshevik Revolution.
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· · · · ·
Lawyer Eric Dubelier leaves U.S. District Court, following the arraignment of Concord Management and Consulting LLC, one of three entities and 13 Russian individuals indicted in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in Washington, U.S., May 9, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge said on Monday that a lawyer defending a target of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian election meddling engaged in “unprofessional, inappropriate and ineffective” conduct, prompting the lawyer to say he might withdraw from the case.
Judge Dabney Friedrich told lawyer Eric Dubelier to stop what she called “meritless personal attacks” against Mueller’s team. Dubelier is defending Concord Management and Consulting LLC, a Russian firm accused of funding a propaganda operation to sway the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor.
“I’ll say it plain and simple: knock it off,” Friedrich told Dubelier in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Sponsored
Dubelier said he needed to check with Concord to see if they still wanted him to work on the case, given that there appeared to be “some bias on the part of the court” against him.
In court filings, Dubelier has quoted movies such as “Animal House” and cartoon characters like Tweety Bird in criticizing Mueller’s long-running investigation as illegitimate and has sought to have the charges dismissed. Friedrich has twice refused to dismiss the charges against Concord.
Prosecutors contend that Concord is controlled by Evgeny Prigozhin, a businessman identified by Russian media as close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. U.S. officials have said Prigozhin has extensive ties to Russia’s military and political establishment.
Concord is one of three entities, along with 13 Russian individuals, indicted by Mueller’s office in an alleged criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper with the 2016 U.S. election, boost Trump’s candidacy and disparage his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Russia has denied any involvement. Trump has said there was no collusion between the Kremlin and his campaign, while repeatedly criticizing the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt.”
Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Susan Thomas
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Not long after Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel, Donald Trump declared it would be a “violation” for the investigation to touch the Trump Organization or his family finances. Pressed on whether he would fire Mueller if that line were crossed, Trump said: “I can’t answer that question because I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Now, it looks like it is going to happen. But the public face of the investigation of Trump’s finances won’t be Mueller. Leading the charge will be someone Trump cannot fire: California congressman Adam Schiff, newly installed chairman of the House intelligence committee and a former federal prosecutor himself.
With Democrats having taken over the House, Trump faces a pack of potential antagonists. Newly installed chairs are ramping up plans to scrutinize corruption inside the Trump administration, investigate alleged attempts to profit from the presidency, and to review policies such as family border separations.
But most threatening for Trump personally might be the investigations led by Schiff, who has said he plans to drive directly at an area the president has sought to fence off: the details of his businesses, his lenders, and his partners in the US and abroad.
“First and foremost, I would say that we need to get to the bottom of anything that could warp our national security policy in a way that is antithetical to the interest of the country,” Schiff told the Lawfare podcast. “So anything that has a continuing ability to influence the actions of the president, we need to know, as policymakers, to protect the country.
“One of the issues that has continued to concern me are the persistent allegations that the Trumps, when they couldn’t get money from US banks, were laundering Russian money. If that is true, that would be more powerful compromise than any salacious video tape or any aborted Trump tower deal.”
Schiff might break new ground by using his power to subpoena documents from banks, phone companies or other sources, said Andy Wright, a former counsel to the House oversight committee and founding editor of the Just Security blog.
“I think that there’s actually going to be quite a bit of fruitful evidence turned up,” Wright said. “I don’t know what the evidence is, whether it’s going to be incriminating or not. But I don’t think that the sort of conventional wisdom, that Trump’s just going to drag his feet or strike a ‘warlike posture’, is going to be that effective, because the smart investigators aren’t going to go directly at him. They’re going to go to third parties first.”
One of the first matters he plans to investigate, Schiff told NBC last month, is the Trump Organization’s relationship with Deutsche Bank, for a time reportedly Trump’s exclusive lender, which was fined $700m in 2017 for allowing money laundering.
“The concern about Deutsche Bank is that they have a history of laundering Russian money,” Schiff said. “And this, apparently, was the one bank that was willing to do business with the Trump Organization. If this is a form of compromise, it needs to be exposed.”
A graduate of Stanford and Harvard, Schiff, 58, began his career as an assistant US attorney in the Los Angeles district, where he successfully prosecuted Richard Miller, the first FBI agent to be convicted of espionage. As a young politician, Schiff was cultivated by Nancy Pelosi, then head of California’s congressional delegation, now, again, speaker of the House.
Schiff is a triathlete, a screenwriter and a vegan. He also likes to go on television, where he has caught the attention of the president, who last year responded to a critique with a tweet mocking the congressman’s last name and floating a misleading notion about the statute governing the special counsel:
While Schiff has shown he can fire back at Trump, he will need to steer clear of such partisan warfare to be an effective committee chairman, said Jamil N Jaffer, founder of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and a former senior counsel to the committee Schiff now leads.
“Schiff has an opportunity now to try and change that tone, because as the chairman he can set the tone,” Jaffer said. “We’ll see if he’s able to do that successfully. We’re in a very nasty environment in Washington DC right now. The atmosphere is poisonous after the 2016 election. Everyone has a responsibility to get past that.”
Schiff takes over a committee that has been badly tarnished in the eyes of the public and, significantly, in the regard of the intelligence community. Under Devin Nunes, a Trump confidant who served on the transition team, the committee raised hackles by releasing classified material describing scrutiny of a former Trump aide.
Schiff has called the episode “a spectacular breach of a compact we have with the intelligence community” and said “we’re going to have to restore that”.
“If the committee does its job in the right manner, it shouldn’t be antagonistic to any particular president or the executive branch generally,” Jaffer said. “It should be doing good, effective oversight.”
Under Nunes, the committee ended conversations with the special counsel’s office about what witnesses might be called and other matters. Schiff has said he will restore that communication.
On Sunday, he told CNN the committee would be handing over transcripts of closed-door testimony, something Republican leaders did not do. Schiff did not name names but such a move could place in jeopardy Trump aides including Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Roger Stone.
But the role of Congress is fundamentally different from the special counsel’s job, Schiff told Lawfare, especially given concerns that a report issued by Mueller might in some way be suppressed in a justice department run by Whitaker, apparently a staunch Trump loyalist.
“I think ultimately it will fall on Congress to make sure that the American people will get to hear the full story,” Schiff said. “Either through our own investigation or Bob Mueller’s or a combination of both.
“The American people have the right to know, and I think in many cases the need to know, what happened.”
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· · · ·
The link between Crime, Terrorism, and Migration is very real!
"Washington Post", get rid of your obvious and misleading liberal bias and face the truth. There is no doubt, in my very humble opinion, that in the present circumstances the borders (all of them, physical and virtual) have to be strengthened. "Wall or no wall", this country has to protect itself from this pre-orchestrated, planned, hostile "invasion". This issue, in a long term perspective, affects the demographic composition, and, inevitably, the mind, the soul, and the essence of this country. The comprehensive immigration reform is needed to bring the order and sanity into this system. It is a bipartisan issue. The best way to deal with it is to assist the future migrants at the places where they already are, be it their own or the third countries, and to help them with the adjustment and making the rational and orderly plans for emigration or non-emigration. It will also be much more efficient, including the comparative costs of the prospective interventions vs. non-interventions options for the migrants' assistance.
In its present state, the dysfunctional US Immigration system does breed crime and definitely linked to it, the courtesy of the various Intelligence Services, among the other factors, the terrorist activity.
Do the methodologically correct studies to reveal these connections!
It is also difficult not to see the larger and the deliberate design (I wish I would know, by whom) which can be described by this imaginary phrase: "You, Americans, deal with your own problems at your southern borders, and we will make sure that you continue having these problems; and we: the Germans, the New Abwehr, the Russians, the "Europeans" will deal with our own problems at our southern borders, which includes the Middle East, Syria, Afghanistan", etc., etc. Very straightforward and clear, almost German in its artificial simplicity and squareness, design.
The Strasbourg attack was the latest demonstration of the "Terrorism - Crime - Migration Nexus", as it was aptly described and defined.
The Strasbourg attack was the latest demonstration of the "Terrorism - Crime - Migration Nexus", as it was aptly described and defined.
The recent events (US withdrawal from Syria , (even if largely symbolic but telling: "А вас тута не стояло"), and the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan confirm this line of thought further.
"Theories of a crime-terror nexus are well established in the literature. Often conceptualised along a continuum, relationships between organisations range from contracting services and the appropriation of tactics, to complete mergers or even role changes. Recent irregular migrant movements have added to the nexus, providing financial opportunities to criminal enterprises and creating grievances and heated debate that has fuelled the anger of ideological groups."
This pattern is reported for Europe but there should not be any significant reasons to believe that this constellation of forces and factors and their dynamics are any different in the Western hemisphere.
The Statistics should help to clarify the issues, not to obscure them. And the reporters might be tempted to spin the numbers into any direction they want, just like anyone else. Let the specialists, including the statisticians, comment on these matters.
The incompleteness and narrowness of the press reports like the one linked above only throws more oil into the flames and allows if not justifies the Trump's criticism of his press coverage as the "Fake News & totally dishonest Media" and the "crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!".
(What a horrible crime! Right out of the mouth of The TRUTH Teller In Chief!)
As far as "the enemy of the people", this might be the more debatable attribution. So far. (The New Abwehr's control of the Global Mass Media notwithstanding.)
"Theories of a crime-terror nexus are well established in the literature. Often conceptualised along a continuum, relationships between organisations range from contracting services and the appropriation of tactics, to complete mergers or even role changes. Recent irregular migrant movements have added to the nexus, providing financial opportunities to criminal enterprises and creating grievances and heated debate that has fuelled the anger of ideological groups."
This pattern is reported for Europe but there should not be any significant reasons to believe that this constellation of forces and factors and their dynamics are any different in the Western hemisphere.
The Statistics should help to clarify the issues, not to obscure them. And the reporters might be tempted to spin the numbers into any direction they want, just like anyone else. Let the specialists, including the statisticians, comment on these matters.
The incompleteness and narrowness of the press reports like the one linked above only throws more oil into the flames and allows if not justifies the Trump's criticism of his press coverage as the "Fake News & totally dishonest Media" and the "crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!".
(What a horrible crime! Right out of the mouth of The TRUTH Teller In Chief!)
As far as "the enemy of the people", this might be the more debatable attribution. So far. (The New Abwehr's control of the Global Mass Media notwithstanding.)
Michael Novakhov
7:01 AM 1/7/2019
Links:
Links:
The Trump administration’s misleading spin on immigration, crime and terrorism
PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 12, Issue 5
Migration, Transnational Crime and Terrorism: Exploring the
Nexus in Europe and Southeast Asia
by Cameron Sumpter and Joseph Franco
October 2018
Migration, Transnational Crime and Terrorism: Exploring the
Nexus in Europe and Southeast Asia
by Cameron Sumpter and Joseph Franco
October 2018
Volume 12, Issue 5
Migration, Transnational Crime and Terrorism:
Exploring the Nexus in Europe and Southeast Asia by Cameron Sumpter and Joseph Franco
Abstract
Theories of a crime-terror nexus are well established in the literature. Often conceptualised along a continuum, relationships between organisations range from contracting services and the appropriation of tactics, to complete mergers or even role changes. Recent irregular migrant movements have added to the nexus, providing financial opportunities to criminal enterprises and creating grievances and heated debate that has fuelled the anger of ideological groups. In Europe, terrorist organisations have worked with and sometimes emulated organised crime syndicates through involvement in the trafficking of drugs, people, weapons and antiquities. In Southeast Asia, conflict areas provide the backdrop for cross-border drug trafficking and kidnap-for-ransom activities, while extremist groups both commit crimes for profit and target criminals for recruitment. Keywords: Crime-Terror nexus, organised crime, terrorism, migration, Europe, Southeast Asia
-
Fake News & totally dishonest Media concerning me and my presidency has never been worse,” Trump said in the first of the tweets. “Many have become crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!”
‘Crazed lunatics’: Trump again attacks the news media as ‘the enemy of the people’ - WP - 1.7.19
Crime[edit]
There is no empirical evidence that either legal or illegal immigration increases crime rate in the United States.[169] Most studies in the U.S. have found lower crime rates among immigrants than among non-immigrants, and that higher concentrations of immigrants are associated with lower crime rates.[1][170][171][172][173][174][175][176][177][178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191][192][excessive citations] These findings contradict popular perceptions that immigration increases crime.[1][193] Some research even suggests that increases in immigration may partly explain the reduction in the U.S. crime rate.[8][194][195][196][197][198][199] A 2017 study suggests that immigration did not play a significant part in lowering the crime rate.[200] A 2005 study showed that immigration to large U.S. metropolitan areas does not increase, and in some cases decreases, crime rates there.[201] A 2009 study found that recent immigration was not associated with homicide in Austin, Texas.[202] The low crime rates of immigrants to the United States despite having lower levels of education, lower levels of income and residing in urban areas (factors that should lead to higher crime rates) may be due to lower rates of antisocial behavior among immigrants.[203] A 2015 study found that Mexican immigration to the United States was associated with an increase in aggravated assaults and a decrease in property crimes.[204] A 2016 study finds no link between immigrant populations and violent crime, although there is a small but significant association between undocumented immigrants and drug-related crime.[205]
A 2018 study found that undocumented immigration to the United States did not increase violent crime.[206] A 2017 study found that "Increased undocumented immigration was significantly associated with reductions in drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and DUI arrests, net of other factors."[207] Research finds that Secure Communities, an immigration enforcement program which led to a quarter of a million of detentions (when the study was published; November 2014), had no observable impact on the crime rate.[208] A 2015 study found that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized almost 3 million immigrants, led to "decreases in crime of 3–5 percent, primarily due to decline in property crimes, equivalent to 120,000–180,000 fewer violent and property crimes committed each year due to legalization".[24] According to two studies, sanctuary cities—which adopt policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being an illegal alien—have no statistically meaningful effect on crime.[209][210] A 2018 study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that by restricting the employment opportunities for unauthorized immigrants, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) likely caused an increase in crime.[28][211]
A 2018 paper found no statistically significant evidence that refugees to the United States have an impact on crime rates.[212] A separate 2018 paper by scholars at the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University found that Trump's refugee ban (which caused a 66% reduction in refugee resettlement) had no impact on crime rates.[213]
One of the first political analyses in the U.S. of the relationship between immigration and crime was performed in the beginning of the 20th century by the Dillingham Commission, which found a relationship especially for immigrants from non-Northern European countries, resulting in the sweeping 1920s immigration reduction acts, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which favored immigration from northern and western Europe.[214] Recent research is skeptical of the conclusion drawn by the Dillingham Commission. One study finds that "major government commissions on immigration and crime in the early twentieth century relied on evidence that suffered from aggregation bias and the absence of accurate population data, which led them to present partial and sometimes misleading views of the immigrant-native criminality comparison. With improved data and methods, we find that in 1904, prison commitment rates for more serious crimes were quite similar by nativity for all ages except ages 18 and 19, for which the commitment rate for immigrants was higher than for the native-born. By 1930, immigrants were less likely than natives to be committed to prisons at all ages 20 and older, but this advantage disappears when one looks at commitments for violent offenses."[215]
For the early twentieth century, one study found that immigrants had "quite similar" imprisonment rates for major crimes as natives in 1904 but lower for major crimes (except violent offenses; the rate was similar) in 1930.[215] Contemporary commissions used dubious data and interpreted it in questionable ways.[215] A study by Harvard economist Nathan Nunn, Yale economist Nancy Qian and LSE economist Sandra Sequeira found that the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1920) had no long-run effects on crime rates in the United States.[216]
Terrorism[edit]
According to a review by the Washington Post fact-checker of the available research and evidence, there is nothing to support President Trump's claim that "the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country."[217] The fact-checker noted that the Government Accountability Office had found that "of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since Sept. 12, 2001, 73 percent (62) were committed by far-right-wing violent extremist groups, and 27 percent (23) by radical Islamist violent extremists".[217] A bulletin by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security also warned in May 2017 "that white supremacist groups were “responsible for a lion’s share of violent attacks among domestic extremist groups".[217] According to a report by the New America foundation, of the individuals credibly involved in radical Islamist-inspired activity in the United States since 9/11, the large majority were US-born citizens, not immigrants.[217]
A 2018 paper found no statistically significant evidence that refugee settlements in the United States are linked to terrorism events.[212]
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Immigration and crime refers to perceived or actual relationships between crime and immigration. The academic literature provides mixed findings for the relationship between immigration and crime worldwide, but finds for the United States that immigration either has no impact on the crime rate or that it reduces the crime rate.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] A meta-analysis of 51 studies from 1994–2014 on the relationship between immigration and crime in different countries found that overall immigration reduces crime, but the relationship is very weak.[11] The over-representation of immigrants in the criminal justice systems of several countries may be due to socioeconomic factors, imprisonment for migration offenses, and racial and ethnic discrimination by police and the judicial system.[10][12][13][14] Research suggests that people tend to overestimate the relationship between immigration and criminality.[15][4][16] The relationship between immigration and terrorism is understudied, but existing research suggests that the relationship is weak and that repression of the immigrants increases the terror risk.[17][18]
Analysis: Strasbourg attack fits previous model of criminal-terror nexus ...
The Jerusalem Post-Dec 12, 2018
The problem appears to be the gap between surveillance of members of the criminal-terrorist extremist nexus, and prosecuting perpetrators for ...
Strasbourg attack fits previous Model of criminal-terror nexus in Europe
Weekly Blitz-Dec 13, 2018
Seth Frantzman. On Tuesday night a man shot at a crowd in central Strasboug. Three were killed and 12 injured in the attack that took place ...
Terror Strikes France: Strasbourg Christmas Market Attack
The Cipher Brief-Dec 12, 2018
Terror Strikes France: Strasbourg Christmas Market Attack ... which suggests another European terrorist plot with a crime-terror nexus.
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Scholarly articles for crime terrorism nexus |
A crime–terror nexus? Thinking on some of the links … - Hutchinson - Cited by 129
… between transnational organised crime and terrorism - Makarenko - Cited by 394
… terror and organized crime: blurring the lines - Sanderson - Cited by 224
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