Mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Years Eve Part II

[Pinkchampchoccies]

Just in case people want to continue discussing this.

Polentapies you are so right and yet gut feeling says something is amiss - and I can't sleep! Claig's explanation makes sense but I'm happy to change my mind if a more parsimonious one comes along. As things stand, we are screwed. We need to solve this.

There are a lot of Czechs open to immigration but a lot opposed too. TV news is very biased against immigrants and refugees, so a lot of people only have access to news sources telling them all refugees are bad.

I live in the Czech Rep. A lot of people do care about race and consider non whites to be inferior. Sometimes I am also considered inferior for being a Brit and not being Czech.

'A lot of people do care about race and consider non whites to be inferior.'

There are racists and Neo-Nazis everywhere but they are in a small minority everywhere. Most people don't care about race, they see beyond it. Obama is President of America. If Muhammed Ali stood in his prime he would beat Jeb Bush. It is character, conviction and sharing the people's concerns that count, not colour or gender or age or anything else. People just want politicians that share their views and outlook.

I've been reading the threads,I've been angry, upset and scared reading accounts etc. My heart has been beating in my mouth while reading. I have wanted to comment but I'm really rubbish at being articulate, but I'll try.

Women being told to adapt their behaviour, because their safety can't be guaranteed has angered and frightened me. People I know have compared it to a terror attack and it's something that's been said in the threads often, after terror attacks there's often of carrying as normal, as staying home out of fear let's the terrorist win. That freedom is our rights, which is what angers me, because if women in Germany are told to stay away from large gatherings, drunk men, to keep strangers at arms length etc, then they are having some of their freedom taken.

It feels like they are being told it's going to happen again, that they should expect it, and take steps to stay safe themselves, rather than the givernment or those in actual power take steps to change things. It sounds like women being punished for the actions of men and if they end up not going out after dark then it has big implications for women. It limits their job choices, it limits their social life, it limits their education choices, as if they travel to uni and it's dark when they need to go home, then what can they do? I appreciate I'm probably over reacting, but I'm still speechless that this has happened at all. I'm scared that events like this should even be entertained as something to expect. We are often told that terrorist attacks are a very real threat, but people are not told to stay at home, why are women being told to do so? If men are the problem, then why are they not being told to stay home, and change their behaviour? I'd imagine it would piss a lot of innocent men off, not being able to enjoy a social life as they've done nothing wrong, but it's what they telling women to do. Would a curfew for males be bad thing until they figure out what to do?

I know this sounds silly, but do posters here think there's a possibility that our dds, or our dds dds, will live in a time where they can't be in public alone because their governments can't/won't do anything to keep them safe? I'm genuinely worried and scared for the future of my dd and her dds should she have them.

There's been some convos on Facebook, and there's this element where some local men I know are very angry, and on the surface, it looks like they are supportive, but their usual attitude towards women is dodgey, and I think they are not so much angry women have been harmed, but that they've been harmed by people who are not white, I don't know how to word it, but it's a bit like they see white women as theirs and because they are very anti immigration any way, they are using cologne as their "send them all back" evidence, with some almost gloating "told you so" type comments too.

Thank you so much for the threads. I'm not sure I'll comment much more, but I'm reading everything and wanted to thank you all.

I'm disgusted with the Guardian after 25 years of being a reader. They've been going downhill for a while - it's almost comical how out of step with their readers they've been on immigration/the recent migrant crisis/Islam for the last few years and the knots they've tied themselves into defending the indefensible. But this is a new level. I've had comments of mine disappearing into the ether when I've tried to bring up the Cologne attacks and I've seen it happening to others too. It's fucking disgraceful.

They are supposed to be left-wing but they are cheerleaders for uncontrolled immigration, which fucks over low-income native workers but cheaper nannies and cleaners for them, yay. They are supposed to endorse liberal values but are weirdly obsessed with defending Islam, an ideology which disrespects women, gays, apostates, Jews, atheists and pretty much anyone outside that ideology. They are supposed to be feminist yet their idea of feminism is some privileged ninny wittering on about microaggressions or someone looking at her oddly while she goes for a jog while ignoring a series of mass sexual assaults on women in European cities on New Year's Eve. I really can't bear them anymore.

Liesel, I know what you mean. I have a daughter and it's played on my mind recently - will she enjoy the freedom I had as a young woman, to travel around Europe and beyond? I had to exercise everyday common sense of course and encountered occasional unpleasantness but I was free and independent, and felt entitled to go where I pleased. I hate to think of her not feeling that same freedom because of the stupid mistakes of politicians.

Claig I live in the US and don't think Trump is that popular here at all. He seems to be regarded as a joke by everyone. I really can't see him becoming president. No one that I've talked to about it would even consider voting for him. Also, Carson is a fruitcake!

I agree with others about fearing for our DDs. Mine is 4 and was saying yesterday how she is going to see all the world when she grows up. I was thinking that the way things are going, it might not be possible for her and it made me feel sad.

And this is why I keep coming back to Mumsnet: because in between the trolls, the tapeworm threads and rants about mother-in-laws, I know I can always rely on MN-ers to keep up a frank debate on news stories like this.

I feel the same way as you, Liesel. I have been reading a lot of the German media and posts shared by German friends on this and it is truly alarming how the events were minimized, covered up and now are still being ignored by mainstream media outlets. I found this news article in a reputable German media source Die Welt and it says that:

'Bei den durchgeführten Personalienfeststellungen konnte sich der überwiegende Teil der Personen lediglich mit dem Registrierungsbeleg als Asylsuchender des Bundesamts für Migration und Flüchtlinge ausweisen. Ausweispapiere lagen in der Regel nicht vor. '

This means that the majority of the men, when checked by police, were found to be recent immigrants with no permanent ID for living in Germany. The only ID they could present was a receipt for an application for asylum from the federal immigration ministry.

And still the mainstream media doesn't want to cover the story.

This is exactly like the Rotherham sex abuse cases and in general I am seeing a trend in public life where it is becoming acceptable to sacrifice women and children's welfare to appease violent men. It is really disturbing and I genuinely do fear for my daughter's future.

When I lived in Germany, one of the thing I loved about life there was the way I could walk down the street in safety at any time of the night. I've been out in Hamburg and Cologne late at night as a young woman and never had a peep from any man, apart from a rare catcall or shout now and again.

Now I do worry that Germany is so anxious to overcome its war guilt and racist history that it is willing to sacrifice women's safety on the altar of liberal tolerance. I hope not but it really does worry me.

I just read Nick Cohen's book "What's Left?"

It was published in 2007, but is a rare and remarkable example of a book which actually seems to be even more relevant 10 years after the date of its publication than it was at the time. Seriously prophetic.

We are headed down a dangerous path right now.

If we carry on with this mass immigration Europe as we know it will be dead.It will be awful for women. Why do these men want to come here anyway when our culture is so different and they hate us? Why do they leave their mothers, wives, sisters behind?Whybh have the politians been so stupid not to recognise this and allow a gender imbalance to develop. A least Cameron's policy is better. Angela Merkel has a lot to answer for with her open door policy.

"They are supposed to be feminist yet their idea of feminism is some privileged ninny wittering on about microaggressions or someone looking at her oddly while she goes for a jog while ignoring a series of mass sexual assaults on women in European cities on New Year's Eve. I really can't bear them anymore."

Maybe we should start using the term "macroaggressions" to describe these kinds of assaults.

Western countries weren't always so great for minority women when all the men were superaryan types either though... We knew all too well who did well out of WW2 when a certain type suddenly had pots of money and the rest had major PTSD. If anything, mass immigration has kind of made things quite a bit safer from them. The father of the man I was molested by was a known pedophile (parents found out years later) and 'protected'. This was happening on a HUGE scale and when there was very little immigration. If this turns into a race/religious war, a lot of us are in trouble, not just Muslims..

It's not just White European women that suffer this abuse. Did anyone else read about the refugee who pimped out his wife in order to pay for their trafficking to Europe and how he would join in. Then the reports of the women in the asylum centres in Europe (Germany I think), who are under constant fear of being raped, and the things they do to avoid it. I don't think they had it particularly very fluffy back home pre-war either.

I do think we are going to to see some major problems in the next few decades caused by the recent influx of young men whose culture does not value women. We are going to see a rise in sexual assaults. I also worry about long term integration. Where are these young men going to find employment? Where are they going to live? Who are going to want to marry them and start a family with them? They are going to remain frustrated for a very long time. Ideal candidates for criminal gangs and terrorists to exploit.

I would much rather we took vulnerable women, disabled and young children from the refugee camps. People the most likely to die in horrid conditions. I don't know if that makes me sexist, but I don't care anymore. Women of the world need to stand together to overcome this culture. It is not right that anyone has to suffer under it be it here or the Middle East. And by culture I don't mean religion.

Just catching up on this thread ( thank you for continuing it )
I've never been a guardian reader, but always thought they were on the side of women & promoting women's rights. I wonder what their real agenda is?

liesel you articulated very well how I feel. My heart has been racing too and I have been unable to sleep.

I completely agree about the concern for DDs and their DDs.

My own view about immigration was that we should always have take the most vulnerable directly from the camps. The women and the children and elderly and disabled. But the reverse has happened

And yet STILL no discourse about it in mainstream press.

What on earth can we do?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

Apparently comments for this article will be turned on later.

Just referencing a pp, I don't think the mayor of Cologne said women should cover up. It was basically arm's length, stay in groups, call for help. Bad enough but she didn't say anything about attire.

I've been discussing this a lot here in Germany. People are generally as angry as everyone on this thread and there is a fear that the police and authorities are not up to dealing with it and the realisation that the avoidance of racism trumps women's rights.

Re the mayor's advice, quite a few (men) have suggested to me that this is the same as saying you should lock up your house to avoid being burgled. I know it's not, but I'm struggling to counter it affectively.

Claig, the eu quotas proposed for Eastern Europe were tiny and unlikely to have much of an impact on life here. Hysteria in the press, stoked up by Zeman and Konvicka, has led to attacks on Muslim women in public and arson attacks on mosques. It has been used to stoke up natiolism and divert attention from corruption that is rife in the Czech Rep.

Whilst you may percieve the Nazis to be a minority in most countries, very far right politics and their ideas are being used by the mainstream now. As stated before, the President, Zeman celebrated the Velvet Revolution here by joining far right leaders Martin Konvicka and Tommy Robinson publicly and spewing hate speech against a minority that have been barred from coming here anyway. This is akin to David Cameron appearing publicly with Pegida member and criminal Tommy Robinson and Britain First's Paul Golding to spout anti Muslim rhetoric.

It IS more racist here than in the UK. Within schools there is a system of educational apartheid where Roma children are sent to 'special' schools purely on the basis of ethnicity. My husband has been threatened with shooting for helping refugees. Activists helping them have been portrayed in the press as the enemy and it is reminsicent of the Communist days of dissidents.

Again, this is pandering to the far right to stoke up popularity, rather than meeting anyone's values.

Czech society is not based on Christianity at a deep level.

There is no challenge to 'Merry Christmas' in the UK. In the US 'Happy Holidays' is used so that it fits everyone ćelebrating a holiday around that time.

Donald Trump's 'success' lies in his appeal to poorly informed idiots, as Konvicka does here. Carson is an idiot that believes in creationism. Trump thinks Paris is in Germany. These fools struggle to think, imagine them let loose in office, they would certainly not act in the best interests of anyone. Have a word with yourself.

I believe there are grave dangers in the Christian Europe myth. Eight thousand Muslims were pushed into mass graves at Srebrenica, while the local UN commander accepted a glass of champagne from the victorious Serbian general, who then went off to church. Serbian forces placed religion at the very centre of their hardline national vision. The leader of the White Eagles militia, Mirko Jovic, called for, as he put it, ‘a Christian, Orthodox Serbia with no Muslims and no unbelievers.' So notions of Christian Europe can be very harmful. During this war, thousands of people women were raped by the 'Christian' Serbs. I am sure atrocities were carried out by the other side too.

As stated before, in Hungary the myth of Christian Europe is used to hide the atrocities of the holocaust and stoke up anti Muslim hate. Muslims are treated badly in Czech detention centres, woken routinely each night, children included, by armed masked men.

Mimishimmi, this is why I and many people in the Czech Republic want to help refugees and fight anti Muslim hatred. It is a case of the old, 'then they came for me.' In the Czech Rep, Poland andHungary, there exists anti Jewish sentiment, anti Roma sentiment and now anti Muslim sentiment. These countries are also increasingly undemocratic with increasingly restrictions on free press and silencing of political opponents. Often the politicians are seek to exploit dangerous views and outlooks for their own popularity and to restrict freedom.

Shins, no, David Cameron and the Conservative government fuck over low-income workers. The balme lies with the government, not immigrants. Not all followers of Islam disrespect women, gays, apostates, Jews, atheists and pretty much anyone outside that ideology. If you support freedom, then you support the right to religious freedom. The right to religious freedom has to apply to all, Muslims, Jews, Christians, everyone else. I think supporting that is important. The right to religion freedom must coexist with the other rights we enjoy and should not restrict them, but sometimes it does raise challenges which are not limited to Muslims. I have heard a number of times when orthodox Jews have refused to sit next to women on planes, for example.

Jane Jefferson, the UK has restrictions on immigration already.

Mimi, I agree with what you said about paedophiles. It was covered up in my family too. I agree with you re race war too.

WEP fb page is silent on this matter.

I have been following this thread from the beginninng, thank you for all your articulate thoughts on this. I wonder if you've seen the article from Allison Pearson in the Telegraph tinyurl.com/j5nn5qx "cultural difference is no excuse for rape".

Do you think she's on Mumsnet?!

Liesel, my thoughts exactly. I am very very angry at my and my daughter's freedom being eroded.

Let's curtail the men's freedoms rather than the women's. So for Karnival for instance, do as certain clubs do ie 'no single men or male-only groups'. Sure its harsh, but no worse than telling women to stay away from public spaces with large groups of men.

Marking my place.

Hear hear basement. Maybe when men's freedoms are curtailed, we will see something being done about this. Breaking up male only groups at large events puts to curtailment of freedoms back on the perpetrator rather than the victim. We need to stop tolerating the intolerant. Where has our appeasement led? To us exporting murderers to Syria and our governments willingly sending us back to the middle ages.

Shins : readers comments on line at The Economist have echos of that mismatch you describe at The Guardian between editorial and readership views on the wisdom of mass immigration.

Well done Allison Pearson. Do like her.

Watching They all follow Mumsnet. Then they plagarise and paraphrase

Franke Thanks for linking the article, although I'm more mad than ever re this apologist pish...need to go to the gym to punch something