Cologne: Up to 1,000 men of Arab and North African origin sexually assault women

[DavidB.]

"Wir schaffen das!"

[DavidB.]

Fortunately, Cologne's mayor Henriette Reker has a solution for this. She advised women to keep "an arm's length" distance from "strangers". Blaming the victim gone wild... I am also not sure how these women were exactly supposed to prevent these men from assaulting them by keeping them at an arm's length in a big crowd.

I truly wonder how the left will desperately try to excuse this kind of victim blaming this time, especially considering their views regarding sexual harassment, intimidation and violence on American college campuses. I expect a case of "soft bigotry of low expectations".

[DavidB.]

Some politicians' Pavlov to blame German society or "Männergewalt" is as naive and nonsensical as it gets. Sure, there are problems with domestic violence and sexism in Western societies and in German society, but you have to be pretty dense not to understand that men from Middle Eastern cultures are generally simply a lot more sexist, especially regarding women who dress in a Western way.

Göring-Eckardt's reply was just fine, but Katja Kipping's was extremely typically apologetic. Third sentence: "Sexismus ist keine Import-Ware aus dem Ausland, sondern Bestandteil dieser Gesellschaft selbst." Could be, but that's entirely besides the point in this case. Denying in the face of evidence the fact that male migrants from the Middle East, whether recent migrants or citizens, do statistically engage much more often in (sexual) violence against women is just naive. Doing so will not make anybody more accepting of migrants. Time for political parties to state that if you want to live in Germany, you need to abide the law and either leave your prejudices toward woman, gays etc. behind or keep them for yourselves -- and if not, there will be no place for you in Germany. Seems to be the only way to me.

[DavidB.]

9 months... are you kidding?  9 months for gangrape and death threats??  I can't believe that's a real sentence.

I assumed Gustaf was indicating sarcasm with the words "as much as". I hope that was true, because you are right: 9 months is ridiculous.

[DavidB.]

A thing I wondered about why is these dangerous train stations happening in Austria and Germany and not in as example Denmark? I really have no idea whether it's because of different policies toward vagrancy, different restrictions on asylum seeker or it's just purely random?

Very good question. This doesn't happen in the Netherlands either (not yet, at least...).

[DavidB.]

I really, really, really hope Europeans will remember all this sh**t when going to the ballot boxes, and I'm not only talking about Cologne. Sick and tired of it.

[DavidB.]

Today in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf: In German town Weil am Rhein, near the Dutch border, two girls of 14 and 15 years old were raped by four Syrian asylum seekers -- one of them, Ahmad O., being a 14-year old (!) asylum seeker in the Netherlands. After being raped for an hour, the two girls liberated themselves and called the police.

[DavidB.]

Amazing. A few months ago, Wilders referred to them as "testosterone bombs". Even if there was generally not much love lost between me and the asylum seekers, I must say I thought this was a rather nasty accusation, aimed at stirring up people's fears for da brown peoplez having sex with "our" Dutch women. However, unfortunately, he was proven absolutely right on New Year's Eve and I am relatively surprised to learn this, even if he'd been right on many other issues in the past and even if I'd already been a witness of serious sexual harassment in the Arab world.

[DavidB.]

Dislocated bored young men in groups => never a great thing. (compare this to armies arriving in port cities and doing their dirty deeds; or indeed a particularly boorish group of male adolescents [that crude note earlier posted struck me as something that could be replicated by groups of thick male teens worldwide]) Perhaps a more equal gender ratio is something that should be strived for in refugee acceptance. It's not the Titanic - I don't think we need to revive the Birkenhead Drill for Syria or anything - but an unequal gender ratio can lead to some pretty messed up stuff, especially as these are typically teens and twentysomethings.

It's why I've increasingly come to think that Europe etc. should keep accepting migrants but process and fly them in from migrant camps, and announce that after a certain point these refugees will be favoured over those who "jump the queue". At least then you can control the ratios, focus on bringing families and the vulnerable, and - to quote the departed Mr Abbott - Stop teh Boats.

I still am curious as the extent organised crime has in all this as well. Not like it's a very sophisticated affair, but there does seem to be a certain amount of Fagins that have taken advantage of chaotic scenes to build little yob gangs.

Good post.

[DavidB.]

Weil am Rhein is actually not close to the Dutch border. It's located at the point where the borders of Germany, France and Switzerland meet.

I stand corrected. De Telegraaf mentioned that it was a border town, and since there was a young asylum seeker in the Netherlands involved, I thought it would be a village "am Rhein" close to the Dutch border.

[DavidB.]

Example video of "well" integrated immigrants in Netherlands :

youtube.com/watch?v=8pky3WeM4tI (Convert to Islam or die)

Btw, im no xenophobe 50% of my country is muslim but they are VERY moderate mostly and even drink alchocol, so im not by any means saying the problem is in solely the religion, but if Sharia is followed by someone to the letter and if this individual refuses to be taught Western values, I'm afraid he should be denyied living in Europe.

Oh wow. Didn't even know that video, and I'm Dutch.

May I ask you in which country you live?

[DavidB.]

the chief of police is known for hating the Sweden Democrats, he has tweeted that seeing their party leader makes him wanna puke

Yes, some people within the Dutch police tried getting away with these antics too, publicly saying/tweeting stuff like that about the PVV. Most of them were fired.

Of course these were not the policemen who are actually on the streets, because it's needless to say that many of them vote for the PVV...

[DavidB.]

Despite everything else, a heinous act.

Despite what?