Almost every day on Facebook there's some rumor or bizarre "news story" passed on by dozens or hundreds of people and outrage takes over.
This morning I learned that Sweden is training new migrants to be snipers:
SWEDEN is funding a sniper training course for recently-arrived Third World Muslim invaders as part of their "integration program" -- despite the ever-growing Muslim migrant terrorist attacks and mass rapes across Europe.
Though some people challenged the story's veracity (including an actual Swede), many erupted with invective against Sweden, migrants and Muslims.
What's the real story? High school-age Third World immigrants are taking target-practice classes along with other courses to better integrate into Swedish society -- which means working and studying side-by-side with Swedish peers and learning the language.
It does not mean learning to be assassins, snipers or terrorists. I've taken target practice and that's hugely different from training to be a sniper, which is immensely more complicated and involves a lot more than aiming at a paper target.
Would a story like this be kept quiet by the major European media? Not one European news site like Der Spiegel, Le Monde, or The Guardian has reported it.
Because it's bogus.
The headline from a Swedish newspaper with the word prickskytte being translated as "sniping" is actually sharp-shooting in context.
But that, of course, isn't dramatic or scary at all.
Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books of fiction and nonfiction you can find on Amazon.