by Grania
By now everyone has heard of the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, although the events of that night are still being investigated and the facts aren’t yet known in great detail. On New Year’s Eve, groups of men appearing to be of mostly Middle Eastern and African origin attacked and harassed women in an apparently coordinated action. There are now, as the Irish Times reports, 379 official criminal complaints, including two rapes. About 40% the cases include sexual offences.
The German newspaper The Local reports that women were even hindered in attempting to reach police:
“We were already informed of the conditions in and around the station as we were arriving at our positions by emotional members of the public with crying and shocked children,” a high-ranking police officer wrote in a document seen by Spiegel Online and tabloid Bild.
“On the square outside were several thousand mostly male people of a migrant background who were firing all kinds of fireworks and throwing bottles into the crowd at random.”
The police vans were themselves the targets of thrown fireworks as they pulled into their parking spaces, and people immediately rushed to the officers to report thefts, violence and sexual assaults against women.
“Even the appearance of police officers on the scene. . . didn’t hold the masses back from their actions,” the report notes.
Women – with or without male companions – were forced to “run a gauntlet. . . beyond description” of drunken men to reach or leave the station.”
In some cases, reaction in the media has been bizarre. Predictably, right-wing outlets have used the event to fuel absurd anti-immigrant screeds, seeing this as all the ammunition they need to attack Germany’s recent welcoming of a million refugees.
Perhaps even more bizarre has been the reaction from certain left-wing outlets and people who have apparently been so confused by cultural relativism that they end up sounding exactly like the rape apologists they normally decry. These comments range from well-intended but inept “advice” from authorities in Germany, such as Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, telling women to keep themselves at a certain distance from men; to various talking heads in both written and video media arguing that this is nothing unusual—rape happens all the time. Click on the image below to watch The Young Turks for an interesting if eyebrow-raising 3 minutes (I couldn’t make it any further in the clip).
It’s perfectly true that this crime spree cannot be seen as a characteristic of immigrants, let alone Muslim immigrants; and right-wingers trying to hijack this for their own goals need to be confronted and combatted. But this pushback will be futile if right-wingers alone discuss the issue, and if the best that the left-wing, pro-feminist side can come up with is an appalling unwillingness to even admit that there is something worth discussing here.
Yes, this is not entirely about immigrants: it’s not yet clear how many immigrants were actually involved in the group in Cologne. But even if they were all immigrants, it would still not invalidate Germany or Europe’s immigration policies. Nor would it show that the overwhelming majority of immigrants are anything other than ordinary people looking to start a new life in a new country. However, this sort of thing cannot be ignored, nor can it be written off as just another example of the sort of thing that happens all the time to women in Europe. That attitude is clearly imbecilic and betrays the women who were targets of the abuse and violence on New Year’s Eve.
I have read two hearteningly intelligent articles on the subject. The first is from Musa Okwonga, journalist (and himself an immigrant to Europe) in the New Statesman: “How to deal with the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne and Hamburg“:
“So, what to do …? Well, it is actually simple. Let’s just keep sticking up for the women. As far as being a black man of African descent goes, the racists in Germany and elsewhere hate us anyway. They thought we were rapists and perverts and other assorted forms of sex attacker the second they set eyes on us. They don’t care about the women who were attacked in Cologne and Hamburg, except to prove the point that we are the animals that they always thought – or hoped – we were.
In return, I don’t care about them. Nor am I too bothered by the people who don’t want to sit next to me on the train. Fear of the unknown is a hard thing to unlearn. I am most concerned, by far, with the safety of the women who may now be more frightened than ever to enter public spaces. I don’t think that women have ever felt particularly comfortable walking through crowds of drunk and aggressive men at night, regardless of the race of those men. But groups of young men of North African and Arab origin, whatever their intentions, will most likely endure more trepidation from women than before.
So here’s what I propose we do. Why don’t we just start with the premise that it is a woman’s fundamental right, wherever she is in the world, to walk the streets and not be groped? And why don’t we see this as a perfect moment for men, regardless of our ethnic backgrounds, to get genuinely angry about the treatment of women in public spaces: to reject with fury the suggestion that we are somehow conditioned by society forever to treat women as objects, condemned by our uncontrollable sexual desires to lunge at them as they walk past?”
The second is a very detailed analysis by Maajid Nawaz who, with his usual refreshing candor and clarity, tackles the underlying problems head-on in The Daily Beast, “Why We Can’t Stay Silent on Germany’s Mass Sex Assaults“:
The fetishization of the female body has not led to a decrease in cases of sexual violence in societies where women cover their entire bodies. If Taliban- and ISIS-held areas are anything to go by, violence against women only increases the more women are asked to conceal and segregate themselves. This would make sense, because accompanying such attitudes is the notion that women are sexual objects to be owned and controlled, and not human beings to be respected and loved. What is infuriating is that for centuries progressives have made these very arguments against white Christian fundamentalists in the West, yet—displaying an incredible cognitive dissonance—those progressives easily abandon that position when confronted with the problem in a minority community. [JAC: here we see, again, the characteristic ambivalence of the Authoritarian Left: a dissonance between sympathy for the oppressed on the one hand and the Enlightenment values apparently violated by the oppressed on the other.]
The case of Cologne tells us that we can no longer afford this Regressive-Left double standard. The only person to blame for rape is the rapist. Employment and education among migrant males will be a more conducive and far more consistent approach than asking European women to change how they dress or when they go out.
Whatever the investigation eventually uncovers about the attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, three things will remain true: it is not the fault of Europe’s trying to help as many refugees as they can; the overwhelming majority of Muslim immigrants to Europe arrived there only to seek a new and better life for themselves and their families; and the mass attacks on women in Cologne that night were not an example of “everyday sexism”.
But surely it can be attributed to colonialism, no?
Yep, and don’t even dare to point to Merkel’s policy of accepting hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the third world with next-to-zero screening, or the Muslim perpetrators themselves.
Similar incidents happened all over Germany and Europe. One example is Bielefeld, where up to 500 men attacked a night club and sexually harassed women: http://www.nw.de/lokal/bielefeld/mitte/mitte/20674877_Boulevard-Erschreckender-Bericht-eines-Tuerstehers-zu-den-Silvestervorgaengen.html
The mood is turning. The European Union is terminally ill. Right-wing parties are on the rise everywhere. It does not matter whether most refugees are peaceful. What now matters is that the price we will have to pay for helping them is Europe’s demise and the destruction of the values that made us want to help them in the first place.
In Germany we have already seen people from the middle class with no right-wing connections who burned down refugee accommodations. We have seen refugees being beaten up and shot at. We have seen the stabbing of a pro-refugee politician.
If nothing is done to curb the numbers of refugees then Germany and Europe will experience violence and terror not seen since WW2. Europe will completely break apart and right-wing parties will be elected everywhere.
What people who are in favor of open borders, of accepting unlimited numbers of refugees, have to take into account is human nature. They have to take into account the reaction of the native population to actual or perceived danger of people that are not part of their ingroup.
Take for example terrorism. It is often mentioned how the risk of terrorism is exaggerated. Objectively this is true, no question. Yet the subjective perception of the majority is very different, as is evident from the millions who marched in France after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. And this is what really matters. What will be the reaction of the majority, or a significant part of the native population?
This irrational reaction is something we need to change by becoming more rational, but this will take time. Until we succeed at this, a few bad apples can spoil the whole bunch.
In other words, before you invite millions of people who belong to a different tribe (at least in people’s perception), you first need to make sure that the natives are ready to accept them.
Germany is, or has been, ready to accept refugees. Every year, for the past decades, Germany accepted more than 50k, and sometimes more than 100k refugees. But more than a million is still too much for the collective psyche, or at least for a significant part of the population.
“Similar incidents happened all over Germany and Europe.”
Perhaps, there was a reputedly similar small scale incident in a swedish city too.
“It does not matter whether most refugees are peaceful. What now matters is that the price we will have to pay for helping them is Europe’s demise and the destruction of the values that made us want to help them in the first place.”
Before we even get to the statistics of refugees, who are about as criminal as the rest of the population here in Sweden, they number ~ 1/10 of all immigrants and ~ 1/100 of all swedes – in a nation that has accepted more than most/capita. That is in the city of Uppsala I would expect to see 200 refugees or about 1 @ 2 city blocks. They are invisible!
“Take for example terrorism. It is often mentioned how the risk of terrorism is exaggerated.”
Not only that, but in the EU terrorist action group report of -14, terrorism is decreasing. (If you remove a recent spike in UK/Ireland.) No doubt because Spain is getting more peaceful after its fascist history. Only 2 of ~ 200 terrorist actions (going through the legal system) 2014 was on religious ground, and to tie them to immigrants is a long shot.
You would have to, like the wolf in the children story, huff and puff a lot to make the average citizen notice immigrants. And isn’t that the problem, we don’t know who they are?
Maybe we should accept more of them. I was lucky enough to have a parent that invited groups if immigrants over to have a swedish cup of coffee and typical cakes. A good way to introduce neighbor interaction.
Oops, I would expect to see 2000 refugees in Uppsala. The rest looks good though.
Ouch, still problems. The report was from -15, and this:
“and to tie them to immigrants is a long shot”
is an ever longer shot to tie to refugees, the group under discussion.
From Wikipedia:
“31 suspects were identified including 18 asylum seekers. In total among the suspects were nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, four Syrians, five Iranians, two Germans, an Iraqi, a Serb, and an American.”
I wonder, how did 4 Syrians translate into 18 asylum seekers? Europeans were asked to open their borders specifically to Syrians. Then, in a mysterious way, Syrians became a minority among the masses going north, and reporters started to refer to these migrants as refugees fleeing “war and poverty. Many Europeans would not want to accept every person able to pay the smugglers to flee poverty. When in the 1990s some of my people wanted to “flee poverty” to Germany, do you know what the German criterion for acceptance was? A certified letter from a German employer that he had a job for the candidate immigrant for which he could not find a German!
Asylum is an ongoing project in Europe.
Here are some figures from the Central Office of Statistics in the Netherlands.
As you can see, there is a constant stream of applicants and Syria, being the special case that it is, has only increased an existing phenomenon.
Keep in mind though that there is a lucrative trade in false Syrian passports, because Syrians are give priority and are treated with more leniency.
seems not everybody agrees with your assessment:
http://swedenreport.org/2014/10/29/swedish-police-55-official-no-go-zones/
somebody’s got it wrong.
Interesting that all the emphasis is on Cologne. It’s only accidentally one finds out that there were similar incidents in many other places; Wuppertal, Frankfurt, Stuttgart – even Zurich! Tends to make one think there’s some organising that took place.
I fail to see what organized criminality everyday activity has to do with the festivities in Cologne. Are you implying they were maffia too? If so, evidence, please.
FWIW, that site seems to be a toxic brew. E.g. “Feminist economics”.
Also, on the ” similar incidents in many other places” fabrication, see my other new comment. As if what happened to women isn’t sad enough, now the racists show that they couldn’t care less about either women or asylum seekers. :-/
The incidents in Hamburg, Bielefeld, Munich, Cassel, Berlin, and Frankfurt, among others, are not fabrication. They have been widely reported by reputable newspapers, even those that are strongly on the left of the political spectrum.
In the past few days it has become abundantly clear that politicians and the police have been lying about and suppressing crimes connected to immigrants. Just because this is usually a conspiracy theory told by the far right doesn’t make it false now that we have abundant evidence.
To cite just one source, so that the spam filter does not eat this comment, check the following Spiegel TV report: http://www.spiegel.tv/filme/magazin-vom-10012016/
It explicitly shows how politicians have been openly lying and police withholding evidence. You can do some research and learn that Der Spiegel is a big centre-left publication.
“Perhaps, there was a reputedly similar small scale incident in a swedish city too.”
And the days after there were two, and some “bath house” and festival incidents. They were all fabrications of course!
The two New Year’s events didn’t happen at all. The bath house incidents were mostly public sex among males. [ http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/kolumnister/oisincantwell/article22077227.ab ]
And the festival problem is several year’s old, without much statistics. (Which is the problem. The festival hasn’t been properly managed.)
TL;DR:
1. Always wait a week before summing up events.
2. The racists is out throwing non-existent dirt like never before. Brave New World!
Basically agree with the blog. But as a Dutch muslim immigrant noted in a Dutch newspaper: we also need to take action to educate immigrants in Western women’s liberties and status. If you come from a country where women are treated as secondary and your tostesteron can not be used freely, you may end up frustrated.
“we also need to take action to educate immigrants”
Why would you want to educate the immigrants? You’ve probably missed Grania’s take-home conclusion from the story: “It’s perfectly true that this crime spree cannot be seen as a characteristic of immigrants.”
“It’s perfectly true that this crime spree cannot be seen as a characteristic of immigrants.”
Why is that true?
Because connecting the mass sexual assaults with immigrants would be “gross and racist”?
I see. I missed the sarcasm in your initial comment.
Because not all immigrants are men, not all immigrants are from the Middle East or North Africa, and despite the fact that this was a very large crowd of men doing very nasty things, they still represent only a very small percentage of all immigrants in Germany.
That said I agree with the idea of some kind of cultural education for new immigrants. As an intra-EU migrant myself it would have been very handy to me. As it is there is an assumption that we all have the same ways of doing things across North/West Europe but in fact there are quite a few variables from region to region that can trip a new immigrant up.
Above comment was from me. I cannot spell my own name it seems.
“Because not all immigrants are men, not all immigrants are from the Middle East or North Africa, and despite the fact that this was a very large crowd of men doing very nasty things, they still represent only a very small percentage of all immigrants in Germany.”
As it has been reported, the vast majority of the attackers were immigrant men “of Arab or North African appearance.” So the problem is evidently tied to immigration, there’s no way around the fact. We are already talking about more than 600 victims of these mass migrant attacks.
Correct, but the fact that these perps were mostly immigrants does not make their actions “characteristic of immigrants”.
As far I know, wherever the mass sexual assaults occurred, the immigrants were involved. So it’s a strictly immigrant thing.
Unprecedented sex harassment in Helsinki at New Year, Finnish police report
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/finland/12088332/Unprecedented-sex-harassment-in-Helsinki-at-New-Year-Finnish-police-report.html
For some reason there is no “Reply” button below the comment from Scientifik, Posted January 11, 2016 at 9:13 am, so I am replying to that here.
I get what you are saying, and I don’t deny that immigrants were involved in all these horrible events. But I do feel that saying the crimes are characteristic of immigrants is implying that all immigrants are likely to engage in such acts, which is simply not true. These men represented only a tiny minority of all immigrants into Germany and the other countries where the assaults occurred on NYE.
I guess this hinges on how we define “characteristic of”. Do we mean something common within the specified population, or do we mean something not found in other populations (even if that trait is also very rare within the population where it is found)? I interpret it as the former, and you seem to be going for the latter.
Errr, because they come from a different society and simply may not know the rules here. You can’t hold people to rules that they may not be aware of. Which is why when you join a new company or move to a new work site you have to wade through that company’s rules and that site’s induction. No ifs, no buts, no questions. As part of that, you tick off the rules you’ve been told about and then sign a contract affirming that you’ve been told these rules and agree to abide by them. And if you don’t want to go through the induction then you get off the site and (typically) don’t come back.
FYI, I’m not against setting up some kind of re-education programs for these Arab and African migrants, however, it remains to be seen how effective such re-education efforts will be. Given how deeply entrenched the oppression of women in Muslim societies is, I’d expect the process of reprogramming these people to liberal values (such as equality between men and women, freedom of expression, etc) will be a long and bumpy road.
Oh, very likely it’ll be difficult. But that doesn’t make it any the less necessary. And it’s not necessarily going to change people’s opinions – it’s simply a question of knowing what the laws and standards are. My wife and step-daughter had to pass the somewhat similar British Naturalisation tests in about 2009.
The ones responsible need to be deported back to where they came from.
western women are told to be glad they got their rights and are shut down from talking about other cultures or else be deemed an ism for being against a culture that is against women.
this is why cultures need to not be deemed equality legit until they are actually equality internally
sometimes I think that the “west” envies the east for “getting away with” all the religious violence and terrorism of women
That is unfair to the Germans among the accused. And would US accept deportation of its citizens? The accused were a mishmash of nationalities.
And we should mind that there can be a huge risk for false positives, that innocents are accused, depending on the circumstances.
First you punish them, then you deport them if it is a repeat offense. (Or at least, that is what is done here, and I feel good about the safety of the justice system in that.)
In Canada, if a refugee or immigrant claimant does a crime, they do jail and then they are deported, it results in a denied claim. Germans who are citizens are punishable by law.
This was a planned and widespread attack on women and western values of equality of person. Each perp should be punished to the highest legal degree, including being kicked out back to the war zone they came from, where they clearly deserve to be.
Do you have evidence of that, particularly the “planning” aspect of it (which under British law would be called “conspiracy”, and typically carries the same sentence as actually committing the crime about which you conspire.
you think that that many men spontaneously and independently decided to molest and rape women?
the balance of probably suggests conspiracy.
There were groups, but there is a difference between spontaneous crimes, organized crime in general and else motivated conspiracies.
so really you are saying that men are animals who can’t control themselves in a civilized fashion but blaming the women because some men might not have been so bad…..
I would have no problem sending convicted offenders back to a war zone if what they are committing in Europe amounts to a war on women.
you don’t think a mass effort to cause sexualized terror is war? rape camps and comfort women…. “own women” are virgins and “other women” are whores and it is a disgrace to their men that they failed to protect the women.
honestly…. multiculturalism works both ways, getting along and understanding why we do not
+ 1!
I think dykewriter misread you.
Turns out I was wrong. (I lost the reference as I write this however.) The swedish policy is in accordance with what is described later, a convicted asylum seeker is deported after the other punishment.
It is then my personal opinion that a one time offence is problematic, seeing how much false positives (innocent accused) there are in severe murder cases.
I am appalled at the rape apology coming from feminists.
“But even if they were all immigrants, it would still not invalidate Germany or Europe’s immigration policies.”
I can’t fully agree with this. Ofcourse current immigration policies are ridiculously bad, regardless of the sexual abuse. Greece’s border has more holes than Leerdammer cheese. If a refugee can get into Greece, he can travel freely across Europe, thanks to the Schengen Agreement.
But we all know about the poor standards of living for women in muslim countries. This websites rightly critizes islamic countries and communities for their dreadful behaviour and lack of respect towards women. Surely the safety of women is a good reason to close the border? And it’s not just about women. It’s also about crime in general. In 2013, 62,8% of prisoners in the Netherlands were foreigners, 40% non-western and 22,8% western foreigners.* In general, foreigners are A LOT more criminal than natives, especially non-western foreigners. This is just a cold hard fact.
EU countries should either close their borders or be prepared to invest massively in the criminal justice system to keep EU citizens safe. Right now, I don’t see governments do any of those two things.
*http://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/binnenland/bijna-63-procent-van-gevangenen-nederland-allochtoon
Governments will not do any of these things unless forced by large groups of citizens. I shake my head at the state of the German civil society. It doesn’t seem to exist at all. Much smaller transgressions by ruling politicians must send citizens to the streets to riot until the transgressors resign and early elections are scheduled. Instead, Germans keep quiet, just some extremists will beat randomly chosen refugees or stab a politician.
Careful now. “Allotchtoon” does not translate directly as “foreigner”. Allochtoons are those who are resident in the Netherlands and have one or more parents born outside the Netherlands. The allochtoon themself may or may not be born in the Netherlands, and may or may not hold Dutch citizenship. The current royal family, King Willem Alexander, Queen Maxima and their children, are all allochtoon.
Just watched the TYT video, and it appears your characterization doesn’t line up with what’s actually said in the video. The commentators didn’t downplay the event or attribute it to “everyday sexism.” In fact, they spend most of the video denouncing cultural norms that facilitate the kind of abuse we saw on NYE, and at one point criticized the German police for initially downplaying what happened on NYE. They also endorse education programs for immigrants to make it clear to them that their cultural attitudes toward women won’t be tolerated in their new home country. In other words, they seem to agree with all your points. If you’re seeing a “nothing to see” attitude in that vid you might be a tad oversensitive to the problem you’re trying to shine a light on.
JAC here: I think the remainder of the video does support Grania’s characterization. Starting at 6:39, there’s a general agreement that the US (and, earlier in the video, Germany) has a “rape culture”, but then at 7:50 Ana Kasparian says, referring to the immigrants, “I don’t think that their culture is rapey.”
So Germany and the U.S. have cultures of rape but the immigrants do not. Maybe there’s a difference between “rape culture” and “rapey culture”, but I don’t know what it is.
But this claim undercuts the YT’s other assertion—and that of Nawaz—that the immigrants who committed these crimes come from a culture where the viewing of women as sexual objects is more entrenched. Well, which is true?
I think the video is at once trying to indict “Western” culture while avoiding indicting the immigrants’ culture, but then getting all balled up while trying to do this. They are trying to say simultaneously, “We’re as bad as they are about rape” and also that “Their culture is worse than ours about rape and they have to adopt our values.” These statements can’t both be true.
This is the dilemma of the authoritarian Leftist, nowhere on clearer display than in this video. When you hear the claim that “things are more nuanced than that,” you have to be on your guard.
+ 1
*ducks*
Yes, after watching TYT and other ostensibly liberal outlets devolve over the past few years none of this is surprising. It’s downright embarrassing. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
Internet feminists have massively overstated the rape/patriarchy problem in the West with loud but dodgy reasoning and dodger statistics and now when confronted with actual oppressed women they get peanut butter brains.
A sad observstion: it took an actual patriarchal rape culture attacking Western women for Western women to even talk about this problem in even a slightly honest way (as Anna K does in the above video before having to back pedal to keep groupthinking with her more “virtuous” regressive leftist “journalist” colleagues.)
Internet feminist: “Forget the women living under Sharia Law! It’s all relative. Just don’t bring that crap to the West. Back to articles about manspreading. What? We can focus on problems big and small! Obviously we mostly never write about actual patriarchal rape cultures genuinely oppressing women because that would be gross and racist. 1001 Ways Your Newborn Baby Boy Is Opressing You will be live in five minutes.”
FWIW I am heartened to see more people decrying violations of human rights while simultaneously decrying the racist opportunists. The only way we are going to get through this mess is by listening to reason, not ideology. This reminds me of the late 80s and early 90s when incidents of pedophilia were used to “confirm” the depravity of homosexuals. If the regressive left had been around back then, they probably would have been saying pedophilia was natural to gays.
The only true feminist reaction to women’s oppression under Sharia is to denounce and fight it loudly and constantly. Other so called “feminists” are just pomo confetti-brains.
Yes, a thousand times.
So many of my female feminist friends, I know would be aghast at all the pomo stuff.
The fact that these immigants have to be “trained” to respect women speaks volumes about the magnitude of the problem europeans are facing now.
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It is virtually impossible for a society to avoid significant political and social disruptions when it attempts to absorb immigrants groups whose cultural values (including religion) differ significantly from those of the dominant culture. In the United States, for example, the dominant Protestant culture had difficulty absorbing the influx of Catholics. This situation existed as far back as the colonial era and, arguably, still exists to a degree today, but has diminished significantly over the last 50 years. Although Catholics did not adopt Protestantism, in most other aspects of life their behavior was indistinguishable from the Protestants.
While I have no reason to doubt the argument that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants come to Europe or America to better themselves, they will need to show a willingness to adopt the cultural values of the host countries (which does not mean abandoning their religion). In perhaps somewhat simplistic terms, the residents of the host country must look at the immigrants (or more likely the second or third generation) and say, “hey, those people aren’t very different from us.” Until that happens, social and political unrest, perhaps to a degree threatening democracy, should surprise no one.
It seems to me be a sad, but inescapable fact that people do not like associating with others that they perceive as different from them in some fundamental way. This is why racism in America has been such an intractable problem. For historical reasons, white America has always viewed the skin color of African Americans as a marker of fundamental difference with white Americans. This attitude is totally ridiculous without any scientific or intellectual foundation, but until white America overcomes it, racism will continue to scar the American landscape.
I don’t think it is simply a question of having a different religion or general physical appearance. Europeans are far more similar in appearance to people from the middle east than to Chinese and Japanese people and yet the latter groups seem to have far less trouble when they move to Western countries – at least in modern times.
My own opinion is that the big issue here is ‘honor culture’, which condemns women to remain second class citizens. Although it is not unique to Islam, the teachings of that religion do tend to buttress ideas of honor and virginity (for unmarried women) and promote violence as a means of enforcing these rules. Those who believe that such honor cultures provide the correct way of behaving towards women will find it difficult to see independent modern western women as worthy of respect.
What we saw in Cologne on New Years Eve is not new or unique. We saw the same thing just a couple of years ago in Tahrir square in Cairo – a genuine example of a ‘rape culture’.
True. And culture is the key word here… If europeans think that the majority of these immigrants will just forget their cultural “values” and just assimilate, they are being extremely naive.
Then there’s the fact that the immigrant male-female ratio is 10-1…and then…it is very possible that most of them won’t be able to get a european girl to date them… So they will have to get a woman from their own countries or remain single. Both scenarios are problematic for european countries.
But if all cultures are equally valid, as the regressive leftists like to claim, then the migrants should not have to change at all. In fact, ‘teaching them not to rape’ is an attack on their cultural values, no?
lol, true that.
Several days ago, a commenter here accused me of dishonesty for saying that military-age men now predominate among migrants. Another one lamented how migrants are falsely accused of rapes. I’m glad that these commenters are not taking part in this discussion, and I hope that they are feeling a little awkward.
I don’t know why white Americans think that racism is only theirs. Maybe gives an illusion of control. From public communication of both white and black Americans, it seems to me that racism either is more prevalent in the latter, or they make less effort to suppress its expression. Actually, some black and liberal white Americans (who are anti-self racists) have tried to convince me that a member of an oppressed minority can never be racist.
“From public communication of both white and black Americans, it seems to me that racism either is more prevalent in the latter, or they make less effort to suppress its expression.”
And from what source did you come up with this “fact?” There can be racists in all groups undoubtedly, but your assertion can be rejected out of hand unless you provide some proof other than anecdotes.
By the way, those who assert that African Americans cannot be racist do so by defining racism as to meaning one racial group having power over another racial group and who try to justify that power on racial grounds. Since African Americans have so little power, they can’t be racist. People in the powerless group may have a bias against those in the empowered group, but they would not call this racism. I do not agree with this definition. I, and I think most people, define racism as “the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.” The power ratio between the two groups is not part of the definition. Leaving aside a pedantic debate over a definition, it is undoubtedly true that African Americans, to whatever extent they are racist (using the common definition), have generally been powerless to manifest this racism in the political or economic area, which white racists has been able to do since before the country was founded. This is the important fact.
Also, I haven’t the faintest idea of what you mean by “anti-self racist.”
I have only anecdotes. Here is a discussion I took part in:
http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/08/5-things-the-ferguson-police-have-in-common-with-homebirth-midwives.html
What particularly shocked me was my opponents’ opinion that the verdict in the O.J. Simpson’s criminal trial was no indication of racism.
By “anti-self racist” – sorry for my English – I mean a white person who thinks that whites should have less rights than blacks.
I agree with you that majority bigotry has much more impact than minority bigotry, but nevertheless I think that agreement can be reached only if both sides sincerely want it.
Cologne indicates that many of the young males involved probably thought that western women were easy meat in crowds and the German authorities are soft. I believe that they are in for a nasty shock
I hope you are right, but I think you aren’t. Reports say that the priority of German authorities was to try to cover up the event.
Apparently most of them seem to think white women are whores and fair game.
Last year an afghan man raped and burned to death a 17 yo finnish girl that used to date him.
So yes, totally agree that they are in for more nasty surprises.
The way you handle these crimes is to enforce the laws that protect women. This behaviour toward women is reprehensible and they should not be made to feel unsafe let alone be assaulted. Perhaps there is a flaw in the immigration policy if indeed this was a coordinated effort by Arab men but then those Arab men should face justice.
But what if the immigration policy? That policy welcomed people who view women as second class citizens. Should we accept people into our countries if they hold such views and where is the demarcation point? Can they be a little sexist and want women to cover their hair or can they be a lot sexist and look at women with disdain?
I find the questions above important because when push comes to shove, the regressive left will always favour Arab men over European women and I have, more than once, been looked at with such hatred by Arab men, that if I had not been with a male companion, I fear I would have been assaulted. And this for simply looking like a regular Canadian. I think the solution is simple bee stick to our liberal principles.
Apologies for my autocorrect issues. I am typing on my iPhone like a lazy person.
I would tend to agree with this post as much as any and as an outsider in this thing. First and most of all, it is important that there be action to punish the law breakers. Rape, assault, robbery must be stopped and made very painful to whoever does it. There should be no need to hold training sessions for that – learn by example.
Germany is suffering from unintended consequences and they probably over did their immigration policy. Just opening the doors is no way to do this. They seemed to be treating the rescue of refugees the same as the fall of the Berlin wall. Big mistake and we hope they will learn fast or it might be too late.
How are you going to check? Without instituting a Thought Police department of the Borders service?
Which then of course begs the question of whether you’re going to apply the same criteria to all people attempting to enter the country. Including holiday makers and diplomats.
I note that there are something like a quarter-million people in Britain who have signed a petition to exclude Trump from Britain, regardless of whether he is elected president of the US or not.
Yeuch – did I just include Trump in the classification “diplomat”. Now there is a horrible idea.
To be allowed into the USA, you must declare that you have no ill intentions towards the country. This was hilariously discussed in Pratchett’s Nome trilogy.
In the bad old days, when refugees from my country and other Eastern European countries were seeking political asylum in the West, the very formula “I want political asylum” implied renouncement of communism. And all these people were perfectly aware that their countries were ruined by communism.
Today, people flee in droves from countries made uninhabitable for humans by Islam, but they fail to make the connection between Islam and the failure of society – a connection which exists even for countries like Syria, where the particular dictator for mysterious reasons is advertised as “secular”.
These migrants, as far as I know, are not at any stage required to renounce the norms and practices of the society they flee screaming and to pledge at least lip allegiance to the society that welcomes them.
Instead, what is the message they get from the current dominant Western culture? That this same culture is bad, countries having it are guilty of colonialism (even if they have never actually had colonies), this culture will benefit from diversifying with other, more beautiful cultures, read Islamic cultures; Christianity is bad, Judaism inspires the evil Zionism, atheism (both old and new) is insensitive, while Islam is the religion of peace and is beautiful.
And don’t you dare say we are violent or we’ll kill you for it.
Noel Coward beat Pratchett to it by several decades.
‘Today, people flee in droves from countries made uninhabitable for humans by Islam, but they fail to make the connection between Islam and the failure of society…’
Well, plenty on the regressive left will tell them that failures of Muslim majority countries world-wide are all to do with Western foreign policy, so why would they need to make that connection? Their failures are entirely the fault of the Imperialist West.
Currently, refugees and immigrants are asked a series of questions to make sure they can fit in a society. The askers want to make sure they are not violent. Why couldn’t we ask questions to determine if someone is sexist?
The Netherlands used to show videos of gays and lesbians kissing (same sex kissing, not a gay-lesbian kiss because that would obviously defeat the point) to desensitize immigrants. Not sure if they still do.
I think we have two different potential issues to deal with here, and we don’t want to confuse them or else we could adopt social polities that don’t help because they don’t address the actual problem.
Issue #1 would be if the immigrant population commits violent crimes at rates significantly higher than the background population. AFAIK this is not true for the US. It may be true for the EU, or it may not be, I just don’t know. But if this is the problem, then yes the EU would be justified in reviewing their immigration policy or at least trying to think about why it would be so (it could just be a matter of the age of immigrants being lower than the background average, or something mundane like that).
Issue #2 would be if groups of extremists are using social media to coordinate illegal action. If this is the primary issue (and I suspect it’s at least part of the reason), changing immigration policy won’t help much at all. Instead the EU will need to focus on ways to disrupt coordinated illegal actions.
Of course both could be true. But I would suspect that the latter is more the case than the former. I.e., I suspect that the immigrant population is no more violent than the base population, however the violent members of the immigrant population are using social media to coordinate their violence.
Agreed. I think there are several important issues here, but 2 come quickly to mind:
1. When a country, such as Norway, decides it needs to educate immigrants about attitudes toward women, that is, in itself, a worrisome sign.
2. The ratio of male to female migrants to Europe is about 10 to 1, and the vast majority of the former are young men, driven by culture, testosterone, and the economic and fleshly promises of the west. In Canada, where we plan to take in 25,000 ‘Syrian” refugees by March, we have the oceanic luxury of screening them carefully, and so no single young men are being allowed in. A good argument can be made for gay men, though doubtless there would be many fraudulent claims (think of how easy it is to acquire a fake Syrian passport).
What are those excess men going to do when they can’t find wives, or jobs?
Yes.
And this is why some of them rape.
I am reminded of the recent overthrow of president Mubarek in Egypt, and the masses of demonstrators that hit the streets during that time. Then as well young men assaulted women who also went out to join the protests/celebrations. So maybe there are parallels here, in that we have large crowds of very excited, exuberant Middle Eastern young men. They saw women, and they reacted like total jerks en masse.
Reports of the Cologne assaults suggest that they were organized and coordinated. Yet none of the analysis that I have seen seems to have considered the possibility that ISIS are deliberately promoting this. If ISIS has succeeded in recruiting thousands of young European Muslims to fight in Syria, they could surely recruit some young Muslim men to commit organized assault and rape. ISIS’ objective is to drive a wedge between European Muslims and non-Muslims, and the propaganda value of assault and rape by young Muslim men may turn out to be even greater than the violence of Paris. Most reasonable people will never believe that more than a tiny extreme minority are capable of murderous terrorism; but if ISIS (aided by the growing right wing) can promote a situation where all young Muslim men in Europe are suspected as potential rapists, that’s incredibly divisive. If this is a deliberate propaganda strategy, it’s already evident how effective it is.
“Reports of the Cologne assaults suggest that they were organized and coordinated.”
There are also suggestions from Scandinavia that this is the case. There are also previous events in Germany, such as the existence of a “religious police” who harass and attack Muslim women going out by themselves, or having hair sticking out or ankles visible. Also, one of the meetings of a secular progressive organisation, called “Club Voltaire” in Germany has been invaded a few years ago by a group of about 20 young people who beat up the members at the meeting. This organisation in that city has since then ceased to exist, and the assailants have never been found.
Another problem, especially with German Protestants, is that they welcome the influx of religious people, no matter the religion, as long as they believe in a god, this because of the increasing secularization of society (and in Germany, a decrease of income from tax leveled from people who declare themselves members of a religion).
And finally, returning to point one, about a million people paid 6-7 thousand dollar, or even more for luxury yachts, to make the passage across the Mediteranean. So all these people had the money to pay these sums? Unlikely, I think these 6-7 billion dollars come from a specific source, paying an efficient “travel agency” equipped with Chinese built dinghies.
“about a million people paid 6-7 thousand dollar, or even more for luxury yachts, to make the passage across the Mediteranean.”
Luxury yachts? Where did you get that from? the boats that appear on the news don’t look very luxurious.
I’m not sure how reliable this site is, but it gives an answer to where migrants get the money to pay people smugglers: http://openborders.info/blog/how-can-migrants-afford-huge-smuggling-fees-three-answers/
1. Personal and family savings back home
2. Financing by family members already in the destination country
3. Loans from outside the family
To me this seems more likely than an ISIS conspiracy, although point 3 does allow for that possibility.
I don’t remember where I read/heard about the luxury yachts, but you wouldn’t see them on the news. They generally are not checked at sea, are seaworthy and according to the news item they are packed with people who pay much more for the passage.
Whether it’s an ISIS plot or not, the fact that the attacks were apparently co-ordinated is a good reason to pull back from the assumption that this behaviour is just part of the general culture of the attackers, as some people above seem to be insinuating.
When co-ordinated groups of white, Christian heritage, men cause trouble — e.g. football (soccer) hooligans — this isn’t used to condemn white, Christians heritage people in general. When it’s middle eastern, Muslim heritage men, it’s a different story.
I don’t see anything comforting in your argument. Rather, it could provide a rationale for Muslim statesmen not to accept large masses of white Christian-heritage immigrants from countries plagued by football hooliganism, but they would never do it anyway.
Press reports certainly suggest that. But I’ve not actually heard the police making that suggestion.
As I pointed out above, under British law a group of people acting together to plan an illegal act are guilty of the crime of “conspiracy” [to whatever], which typically carries the same penalties as performing the illegal act. I’ve had friends do jail time for conspiracy to trespass, conspiracy to affray and similar charges arising from undercover police officers penetrating a hunt sabotage group (and despite the fact that the appropriate discussions were actually about how to avoid trespass, how to avoid affray, how to respond to assault by hunt followers and members. But that’s not what the pigs wrote into their notebooks the next day ; you’ll note that such hunts are now illegal).
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
It is not just a Middle East issue. Women in India are assaulted in crowded mass transit as well.
Prosecute, jail and then deport those responsible and make sure immigrants get acculturated.
From the Guardian:
Some of what is surfacing is pure poison. Police found a crib sheet on one of the detained men with phrases such as “great breasts” and “I want to f*** you” translated into German.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/angela-merkel-deport-migrants-cologne-sex-attacks
Not merely a crowd of ‘exuberant young men’
It is not in the article.
[Are you reading the comments for unsubstantiated, typically made up ‘factz’?]
I read *multiple* articles on the Guardian this morning, regarding Cologne.
Linked the wrong one.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/10/after-cologne-attacks-british-politicians-show-share-merkel-values
A very confused note with badly translated contact attempts. E.g. ‘I remember me’ et cetera. [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12088994/Cologne-sex-attacks-Two-immigrant-suspects-arrested-carrying-note-in-German-and-Arabic-saying-I-want-to-have-sex-with-you.html ]
I wouldn’t draw any conclusions based on that among the other circumstances.
What are you getting at with all of your comments?
It seems like you desperately want the migrants to be innocent? That this was all cooked up by racists to discredit Muslims?
This BBC interview with Swedish police shed’s some light on the culture clash.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35300266
That would be a very significant finding, if substantiated.
<P.which in itself makes it suspicious. Any copper worth his salt would be very well aware that releasing information like that before a trial could fatally flaw a prosecution and make it impossible to secure a conviction. And what coppers want above all are convictions.
I don’t think they want convictions.
They’d be bloody weird coppers if they didn’t.
It’s stuff like this that leads the Sherlock Holmeses of the world to deduce that the simultaneous attacks across multiple major European capitals were planned in advance. What other explanation is there?
Wait, how is that supposed to be defending the migrants again? Wouldn’t it look better for them if the attacks were planned (as I think they were) than spontaneous and random acts? The latter would indicate there is a much bigger problem than the former!
Once again, stinking thinking.
I’m not sure what all the fuss is about and we should be honest with ourselves that all this was totally unnecessary and could have been avoided entirely has the women covered themselves respectably. In burquas.
The law requires all of us to wear a seatbelt to avoid injury so it’s perfectly logical for the law to require the use of full body covering to protect against sexual assault.
Can you spot the non sequitur?
I read about a young Syrian woman who became a refugee on her own (I mean, without any companion). She was aware that she would be at great risk of sexual abuse by male fellow refugees. She was a make-up artist, so she new how important appearance is. Did she put on a burqa? Nope. She put on male clothes and pretended to be a teen boy. She even relaxed her hygienic habits during the journey. I was impressed by her intelligence and resourcefulness.
One of these?
Feminist website Jezebel has only one single story about this, Feministing has zero. Gawker has two.
Isn’t it strange that the largest single sexual assault on women in recent Western history is getting basically zero coverage from feminists? It’s funny how many articles and tweets they devoted to the fake rape at U.VA, fake rape of mattress girl, Duke Lacrosse scandal, etc. but this? Mostly just silence.
It’s almost as if they deify oppressed people.
If you are oppressed, you are above reproach.
I guess they do this because they themselves claim to be oppressed, and also want to claim the mantle of being saints who can never do any wrong, provided, of course, they have the right ideology. RW women/POC/etc need not apply,.
Humans tend to respond more strongly to incidents ‘close to home’ than to incidents that happen far away or to different peoples. Add to that natural bias, culturally USAans tend to be more self-absorbed than most.
So IMO it’s not strange at all if US feminists are not responding to overseas incidents as strongly as one might hope. It certainly doesn’t paint them in a good light, but I don’t think we have to attribute this to malice or extra-special-ignorance or anything. It’s just that American liberals are still culturally Americans, with all the plusses and minuses that that implies.
Incidentally, while I’m not a large consumer of news, I do check WashPo and NYT every few days. I didn’t see much about this. So I suspect one reason the incidents didn’t get much play by US liberals is for the simple and mundane reason that our media did a crappy job of covering it.
It seems to me that there is an element in all this of the fact that these people are newly arrived immigrants. They have not been schooled or indoctrinated in European norms. And they need to be! I think it would be a distinct improvement if, as a condition of remaining in Germany, for some period of time e.g. 2 years, any such behavior if proven would be grounds for irrevocable expulsion. What is lacking in all immigrant programs is the recognition of a reciprocal obligation on the part of the newcomer to abide to at least some minimal extent by local norms.
Yes native Germans might similarly transgress without the threat of deportation, but it seems to me that immigrants have a special duty to be cognizant of and to abide by local norms, and requiring the same might still a lot of the negative commentary about immigrants. Rightly so.
“Whatever the investigation eventually uncovers about the attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, three things will remain true: it is not the fault of Europe’s trying to help as many refugees as they can;”
They could have helped in other ways, ways that would not put in danger their own citizens.
No sensible person would help homeless people by inviting them to live in their own homes, that’s just insane. Merkel just f**ed up and that is the truth. So, no, not europe’s fault just Merkel’s.
“the overwhelming majority of Muslim immigrants to Europe arrived there only to seek a new and better life for themselves and their families”
At this point no one can say with certainty that that is actually the case. According to italian newspapers, last year ISIS warned it would send 500,000 migrants to Europe as a ‘psychological weapon’.
I disagree that this is “not Europe’s fault just Merkel’s”. Europe failed to deal with Merkel, so Merkel’s fault grew into Europe’s fault. Merkel is still in power and, by all outlooks, will complete her term!
Otherwise, I agree with your comment.
What do you suggest? A military intervention?
Last time I looked,the European Union was not in the habit of unseating democratically elected politicians in member states. It does not even know how to deal with those countries in which right-wing conservatives are threatening democracy.
The refugee crisis and current events are very likely forestalling the re-election of the current German government. As a German citizen I deplore that, even so I did not vote it into power. Right-wing parties are now on the rise instead. “Europe” might soon long to return to the times of Merkel.
I live in a part of Munich with a very high percentage of migrants – many of them Muslims. There are lots of refugees as well. In my personal experience, most of these people are both law-abiding and friendly. When I was pregnant last summer, the young men so many are now generally condemning were often the first to offer me a seat on the subway.
I do not say that there are no problems. What happened in Cologne and elsewhere is awful and cannot be tolerated. Yes, integrating all those people from very different cultural backgrounds into German society will be very hard.
But I am less afraid of Syrians or Iranians than of those of my fellow citizens who throw stones at or shot refugees, or burn down their homes.
The EU has some leverage to press member states into measures their rulers either don’t want or say they want but actually do not implement until forced to. I don’t know the details of these procedures, but they have repeatedly been applied to my country, generally with good results. I think that when there is a community, all members of the community must be kept in line with its rules and not only those that are new, small and poor.
There are also other measures that could be taken, such as to prevent migrants from entering EU in the first place, instead of hypocritically paying Turkey to do this. It is clear that Turkey will take the money and not do the job.
I know that what you are writing about the nice migrants is true. Besides the native population, the decent immigrants are another reason to be cautious about whom to let in. Media reported about a Syrian woman named Rockstan who was murdered when the people she fled followed her to Germany.
This is why I’m ambivalent about the hijab in “conservative” areas and the rule that women can’t go outside without a male relative. It speaks to the true problem – that men can’t be trusted to behave themselves. Men are the problem, not the hijab. Can women in these areas unilaterally decide they don’t have to be slaves to ridiculous rules without men agreeing to a social contract that makes them accountable for their behavior?
#NotAllMen
What is a matter of concern is the male dominated asylum intakes in Europe, creating abnormal male/female ratios amongst the new arrivals and in the case of Germany which has taken in 1 million refugees, in the wider society.
What research into gender imbalances in society has found is that abnormal male/female ratios(e.g. as in China, and now in Sweden) results in a rise in crime, particularly violent crime, a more constrained lifestyle for women and there’s also a significant rise in demand for trafficked women, either as ‘brides’ or prostitutes”.
See http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4386499.htm
The point is that the police should better control public order, but that the police has been ‘economized’.
The truth is that these were mainly North-Africans, and that Islam culture is to blame.
But that’s because people want lower taxes.
Germany is not known for low taxes. However, there are many application of tax money other than policing, e.g. the support of the very people who inspired this post.
Thanks for writing about this, Grania.
The thousands of sex crimes committed by Muslim Pakistani gangs against adolescent English girls over the decades have been largely committed by 2nd and 3rd generation men, so I’m skeptical that education or prolonged exposure to European culture is going to change their behavior.
Morover, many of the terrorist attacks in Europe have been conducted by 2nd and 3rd gens.
They are confident in their culture, they like it. On the other hand they see in Western culture a great deal of self criticism and weakness. We talk about how bad we’ve been to other peoples and how bad we continue to be. We endeavor to give advantages to minorities for our offenses, whether they are real or not. They see a great deal of our social and cultural norms and traditions as degenerate and I doubt they will change. Why would they embrace something they view that way?
Essentially what you have is a transplant of the foreign countries into Europe. These foreign communities are self sustaining and maintain their ways. They like being around their own and continuing their ways. The reason they like Europe is because of the prosperity, a great deal of which is from welfare. They are not in Europe because they like Western values.
This probably won’t resonate with many here but Muslims tend to be fairly devout and I have to assume they see a great deal of symbolism in European churches opening themselves up to Muslim immigrants. The churches are taking down crosses to appease the immigrants, they are removing pews to appease the immigrants. The Muslims are sleeping in the churches. I can’t help but assume that they see this as a surrender of Christian houses of worship.
The immigrants have shown themselves to be very demanding, such as refusing food from the Red cross due the Saint Georges cross. At Calais a great deal of food was thrown out by immigrants because they past the best before date. The food was fine, but that didn’t matter. At every turn Europe has accommodated their demands.
As to the sex mobs on NYE. The story didn’t get out until days later indicating that the authorities sat on it and now that the story is out the authorities are attempting to limit the discussion on various social media platforms.
There were more police at the Pegida protests on Saturday than at the Cologne city square on NYE.
Add all of that up and what do you get? You get an immigrant population that sees Europe and Germany in particular as doormats and they are wiping their feet on them.
A few more things:
“But Bild quoted a senior police officer in Frankfurt as saying it was standard policy to keep offences by asylum-seekers from the media.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12090750/German-law-should-be-toughened-to-ease-deportation-of-migrants-says-Angela-Merkel.html
Committing a crime and noticing that it doesn’t make the media must be emboldening. Opposite for Germans, however, they see they’re being deceived.
“What happens on the right-wing platforms and in chat rooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women”
said Ralf Jaeger, interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35248601
Again, I have to think immigrants are seeing this and laughing at the naive Germans.
Northwestern Europe seems quite tolerant, but they can only take so much and I think Merkel made a massive blunder by opening the border. Germans are likely to go to the other end of the spectrum fairly soon unless Merkel takes extreme measures to correct her error. It’s puzzling really, I would have thought that she would have known her people and the immigrants well enough to see that her open border policy was a bad idea.
One more thing, in early February, Cologne celebrates Carnival, a massive drunken party in which tradition allows women to kiss any man they want. They will be more restrained this time around I imagine. They get up to a million people celebrating over the several day party. I expect the police will be stretched to the absolute limits and from what I’ve read they’re already there.
+ 1
Discouraging
Our customs are degenerate say the serial rapists.
Your post is more true than I’d like to admit. There seems to be this assumption that Muslim migrants will come to Europe and automatically recognise that secular democracies are superior to theocracies. Sadly this has been proven false for a good many of them. There is a strong tendency to form parallel societies which are quite culturally isolated from the broader community, and often these societies produce violent extremists that terrorise (ie, religious police) women, apostates and gay people and try to push their brand of Islam onto others. The problem is growing. We can’t ignoring it and hoping it will get better.
Women should be able to dress how the hell they want and walk about in Safety in Public without being molested, the males responsible for the attack should be arrested and suitably punished, don’t put the onus on the Women.
What I find decidedly peculiar is that this appears to have only happened in Cologne.
New Years Eve attracts crowds. Crowds attract pick pockets, muggers (individuals and gangs) and gropers. So the police anticipate (correctly) a certain amount of disorder on New Years Eve – and on other similar celebrations. More than a few wallets get lifted every Bonfire Night, for example.
But it is very peculiar that in one city there appears to have been a lot more crime at one or a small number of loci. That is, as has been speculated a lot in the press (without being flagged as “speculation,” but being presented as “fact”), suggestive of some particular degree of organisation. Which I am sure the police are investigating. The report above of a “crib sheet” would, in such an investigation, be a highly important piece of evidence. But, of course, if this report is true, then that is evidence which is now of very limited use – possession of such a “crib sheet” by someone arrested next week could be defended as being the result of following the news, not “guilty knowledge” which would be evidence of involvement in the conspiracy to perform these crimes. Well done to the copper hwho released that information. You deserve at the very least a demotion, if not the sack and a trial of your own, you bloody idiot.
My bet : at this very moment, the mobile phone records of the whole area are being searched to identify “networks” of phones who called each other during the crimes. It’s called “traffic analysis” – it’s been an old game since the development of long-distance communications. See all the Snowden stuff about the NSA. Once a list of phones with suspicious patterns of traffic are identified, then they’ll work on the movement patterns of the phones (one person can, of course, carry several phones), and that will then lead to the identification of associated phones which are not “burners”. And that’s when the sledgehammers go through doors at 5 in the morning.
But hey, that’s just boring police legwork. It’s much more fun to speculate wildly. And to try to prejudice prosecutions before they start, which is a good way of getting people off.
“What I find decidedly peculiar is that this appears to have only happened in Cologne.”
Unprecedented sex harassment in Helsinki at New Year, Finnish police report
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/finland/12088332/Unprecedented-sex-harassment-in-Helsinki-at-New-Year-Finnish-police-report.html
“Asylum seekers who met in central Helsinki to celebrate New Years’s Eve “had similar plans” to commit sexual assault and other crimes as those who targeted women in the Germany city of Cologne, Finnish Police have reported.
Three Iraqi asylum seekers have been arrested for committing sexual assaults during the celebrations in the city’s Senate Square, where some 20,000 had gathered.
Security personnel reported “widespead sexual harrassment” during the celebrations, police added, with women complaining that asylum seekers had groped their breasts and kissed them without permission.”
Also, not a new phenomenon. There is no denying that there is something wrong with the way most muslims percieve women.
Here, Check the link for complete story:
Sweden and Denmark have highest number of sexual assaults in Europe
According to the Institute, the fact “in 1975 the Swedish parliament unanimously decided to change the former homogenous Sweden into a multicultural county” was of relevance when discussing why the number of rapes had increased.
It said: “Over the past 10 to 15 years, immigrants have mainly come [into Sweden] from Muslim countries such as Iraq, Syria and Somalia. Might this influx explain Sweden’s rape explosion?
“It is difficult to give a precise answer, because Swedish law forbids registration based on people’s ancestry or religion.
“One possible explanation is that, on average, people from the Middle East have a vastly different view of women and sex than Scandinavians have.
“And despite the attempts by the Swedish establishment to convince that everyone setting foot on Swedish soil becomes exactly like those who have lived here for dozens of generations, facts point in an altogether different direction.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-and-denmark-have-highest-number-of-sexual-assaults-in-europe-a6800901.html
Please watch the video below to see what a Pakistani rapist told to a teenage Norwegian girl he had raped…
Oslo, Norway – ALL Sexual Assaults Involving Rape In Past 5 Years Committed By Non-Western Males
Just awful.
To add insult to injury Merkel said yesterday that “they [germans] are vulnerable” and that the migrant situation is “not in control”.
Aaand the cherry on the cake.. According to the Dailymail (I know) a counterterrorism expert says 2015 was nothing in terms of terrorism in Europe, that they are in for a 9/11 type attack involving multiple cities and multiple targets.
Soo…
Some people say this is the new normal. Btw, did anyone here watch Homeland season 5? There’s an episode “The New Normal” so bizarrely similar to what is going on right now. A must watch.
“Oslo, Norway – ALL Sexual Assaults Involving Rape In Past 5 Years Committed By Non-Western Males”
Unless I’m reading it wrong that strains my credulity beyond the breaking point. Not so much that a significant number of rapes are committed by non-westerners, but the idea that none are being committed by westerners.
What you should also find peculiar is that the Cologne Polizei originally reported that they had a quiet New Year’s eve.
That is very peculiar indeed. Cock up or conspiracy?
Just found on Yahoo news:
“Swedish police faced allegations of a cover-up Monday for failing to inform the public of widespread sexual assaults against teenage girls at a music festival last summer.
Police hadn’t mentioned the August incidents at the “We are Sthlm” festival until newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported on them this weekend following a string of sexual assaults and robberies on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany…
Roger Ticoalu, who heads the city government’s events department, told the AP that a “large part” of those detained were from Afghanistan, many carrying temporary ID-cards issued to asylum-seekers.
He said about 20 teenage girls filed complaints of sexual assault…
Ticoalu said organizers received reports already in 2014 of groups of young men and boys groping girls in a systematic manner. Efforts were put in place, including more security guards, to prevent a repeat in 2015 but instead the problem got worse, he said.
“We’ve always had individual cases” of sexual assault, he said. “But here we have a larger group doing it almost in an organized way. It’s a completely new level of obscenity.”
“You have a large group of boys surrounding the girls,” he said. “They pretend to dance. They come closer and closer. Then they start touching their breasts and genitals. In some cases in combination with theft.”
Dagens Nyheter cited police officials saying Swedish police are reluctant to speak publicly about crimes linked to migrants for fear of playing into the hands of the far-right Sweden Democrats…”
http://news.yahoo.com/swedish-police-accused-covering-sex-crimes-festival-111511174.html
Yes, I saw that news report this evening too.
Multiple cities in Germany had attacks, Finland and Sweden too.