Mass sexual assaults in Cologne and other European cities part IV

[VertigoNun]

The reports of attacks on Women in NYE, are in their hundreds.

From DM: 'Hundreds of far-right protesters rampage through German town, destroying ethnic restaurants and takeaways - hours after Merkel admits European migrant crisis is 'out of control'

What are the odds the German authorities will interpret this as another Kristallnacht and come down even harder on the far-right.

And continue to ignore women.

EmilyTheDenier: If any country has violent criminals incl rapists you do NOT knowingly import more men esp. those who come from societies where women are barely even citizens. Only a country whose arm has been twisted or one on a suicide mission will do that. Look at the YouTube footage that was posted on thread III, a film made by a Muslim man interviewing Syrian women. And see what they have to say about their menfolk running away to Europe, leaving them more or less defenceless.

My friend was accused of racism by her teenaged DD this week when she tried to discuss Cologne with her. Her DD said she should be 'nicer to refugees' and 'try harder to understand other cultures.' (My friend is South American married to a Brit).

Oh, wow. That sounds like something out of Stalin's Russia or Mao's China, where children were rewarded for reporting their parents lack of political corr... I mean, ideological purity.

Wait, those are the same thing...

Claig,

The rise of the populist parties can be explained because they
resist curtailment of liberties? Seriously? While populist leaders can be said to be a force against the elite and what you many describe as 'the establishment', they are also a force to limit freedom and dissent. Controlled media is a characteristic of the populist government, so they don't present a challenge to media control at all.

We don't need people that will 'resist what is happening' by curtailing liberties and directing more hate to minority groups. Populism often goes hand in hand with nationalism. Is this what we want in Europe, the far right moving further toward the mainstream? Do we want a softened version of midcentury fascism mixed with intense nationalism? How do you think that will affect women or women that suffer sexual violence?

Trump is disliked because he spreads hatred. Look at his response to thefemale silent Muslim protester at his rally.

Three refugee Men are injured along with a kebab shop and Germany comes down on far right Men hard. Half a thousand Women suffer sexual assaults and robbery from a thousand Men, a dozen are questioned.

Says it all really. Note the date, Women's rights are now gone.

No, Pink, only 'hate speech' against refugees and migrants will be censored, not hate speech against women.

So this is something fairly straightforward to campaign about. What do others think? Why is hate speech against women accepted and allowed but not against migrants?

**ing hell.

Yes, Meph, this time last year i would have voted to stay in despite the monumental wastage, red tape, the olive oil fiasco etc but not now. Germany lets in over a million people, struggles to cope (surprise!!) and then expects other nations to 'help' and paints all other nations as uncaring etc when they express doubts over the wisdom of their unilateral actions.

I don't expect my neighbours to take in a few of my husbands relatives when I run out of space/patience when they are here after I've invited them.

My DD goes to a right-on girl's school. I shall be asking her wether this has been discussed.

Olive oh my god yes! This has freaked me out too. I was also discussing this with my teenage DS and said how bad it was that it had been suppressed by the media and he said "but they're right not to tell anyone about it because it will just encourage people to hate Muslims".

I was but he was adamant. I know this comes from his PHSE and RE lessons because we've discussed it before. He often says to me in drone like fashion "Islam is a feminist religion" or "Islam is a religion of peace".

Now it's not that I necessarily disagree with those statements but debate shouldn't be stifled. It seems that he is not allowed to express his opinion because if I try to say that it's a matter of interpretation he will say "you're not allowed to say that" and "if I said that in class I'd be told off".

I would love to bring it up at parents evening but I'm also afraid of appearing like a fascist!

he said "but they're right not to tell anyone about it because it will just encourage people to hate Muslims".

He often says to me in drone like fashion "Islam is a feminist religion" or "Islam is a religion of peace".

Oh God. This is what our children are being indoctrinated taught as part of the national curriculum??

It is a new generation gap I think . Lowered expectations of street life and absolutely no generalising allowed!

(Constance I thought the olive oil disgust was just me!)

Anyone else's children sharing or discussing their views?
Yes. My sixth former is absolutely steaming, horrified that it was hushed up, indignant and angry. Two girls in her friend group are Muslims (one of them, she says, 'Is just one of those really lovely people, the sort who are just NEVER nasty'). I don't know if she has discussed it with them. I don't think it has been raised at school.

Her younger sister didn't know about it until she asked me how my day had been and I told her. She wasn't exactly impressed either. I told her I'd been called a racist on the thread so was perhaps feeling a little more vocal than normal. Her reaction was
Which was comforting.

but I defy anyone to produce a sensible, reasonable, 'take at face value' and believable explanation of current events in Europe.

Humans like patterns. They see them where they are not. They also like things that make them feel good about themselves. And they can be really quite selfish when it comes to that angle. So they cherry pick "stuff I like", call it "evidence" and deny til they are blue in the face that confirmation bias has played any role in their decision making process. The longer they do that, the greater the chance that the fallacy of sunk costs will play a role in their later decsions.

Thus they have a long history of bollocksing things up, having painted themselves into corners, with fingers in ears if anybody tries to point out the angley thing they are trapping themselves in.

Humans tend to like to justify what they got wrong, and blame somebody else for it.

Humans like to take credit for anything that goes right, and are less keen on recognising the extent to which dumb luck and coincidence sometimes plays a bigger role in sucess than their towering genius/good choices.

Our movers, shakers and leaders, no matter which sphere, regardless of geographical location, of all flavours, are not immune to the human condition.

Given our global history (and much of the present world) we should probably expect things to go bent more often than they go right. Going bent is our normal. Cos we are human and fucking things up is what we do.

We suck.

But we also do great stuff and impressive things, and huge leaps forward have been achieved.

So we shouldn't give up on trying to unfuck the fucked up as much as we can de-fuck it. Because we do get blips of relative peace and prosperity between the FuckUp period and Era BuggerEdUP

Just not sure we'll be well placed to tidy up the mess if distracted with scurrying around, checking behind the curtains for the shadowy people who control everything !.

It's tempting to think it's all a huge, deliberate conspiracy. Not least becuase it makes us seem more competent as a species than we actually are.

IMO

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth

Safeguarding lessons given to my children have left me.

Theydon'tknow why don't you write a well-worded, considered letter to the school instead? And send one to whoever came up with this curriculum too?

Sonya "I don't understand the economic benefits to anyone not running a company!"

No, none of us do because it does not make sense financially nor for the good of any host country. That very question is what is blocking all of from seeing the full picture. As someone once said, "Follow the money ...."
But even with huge pay-offs, Europe is going to be shit for Merkel's grandchildren as well. No amount of money will be sufficient to keep them shielded from a lopsided population where too many males will compete for too few females to breed.

Oh, yes, she - the younger one - said, unprompted, 'But if ordinary people don't talk about it, then the nasty extreme people will.'
The quote is not exact, but that was the sense of it.

On today's Daily mail article about Cologne, there are already over 2,300 comments and scores more being added every minute. And, on the first page, the comment that gets the most 'likes' by far is one which asks why the BBC hasn't reported on this story fully and accurately.

"What are the odds the German authorities will interpret this as another Kristallnacht and come down even harder on the far-right."

Gosh no, this could not be associated with Kristallnacht i don't think. However your comment reminded me of the Kristallnacht book burnings when books viewed as un-German and subversive or as representing ideologies opposed to Nazism were destroyed publicly.

I do not wish to make light of something so horrific but merely point out that banning hate speech against (Muslim or all??) migrants but not women is extremely ideological.

I don't think Merkel has any children.

That was to helptheanimals

Ok, it's taken me days to get to this point of the thread, and I've been trying to collect my thoughts on it, I hope people don't mind if I use this space to help that. I would also like to say thank you for all the thought provoking posts there have been on these threads. I think I've taken everyone's 'side' at some point, even though it all got a bit heated.

Firstly, the religion vs culture argument is a bit too much like the old chicken and egg thing to me. Culture influences the religion, the religion influences the culture. We could be here for a long time arguing that. I spent time in Saudi whilst a teenager, being told to cover my legs when younger and then to cover my hair. A few years ago, I worked with a North African woman and she had her own opinions on the Saudis. But whilst we can all agree that not all Muslim people believe exactly the same things, I think we do also need to look at shared aspects of their individual cultures.

I'm normally the first one to say that you can't assume things about 'Muslims' based on the actions of a small proportion of them, but we know that social norms and expectations have a big effect on people, and I believe it is right to examine these in the same way we examine stereotypical gender roles (for example). It's looking at the bigger picture, of the effects that religion AND culture have on individuals. IMO that's not racism/xenophobia, and in fact maybe part of the 'solution' should be looking at our own society too - partly because I too am annoyed at the way women's rights only seem important to some because 'Muslims/immigrants/foreigners' are doing it (allegedly, of course). Even if it turns out that all the assailants were German citizens, I would still say that we should examine the culture that led those people to think this was an acceptable thing to do.

What can we do? If we stop immigration, we give ISIS what they want - so-called 'proof' that the West hate the refugees. If we don't stop immigration, this will probably continue, which will also give ISIS what they want. I think the Canadian approach is a start, and agree with others that we should be working with refugee camps to take families from those. I also enjoyed the education post by iPost (I think - apologies if I'm wrong!).

Ok, time to stop the mind dump and see how many posts I've missed whilst typing this.

Sonya, yes, sorry should have pointed put you raised it first. Some things are just ripe for a well produced satire. Do you remember that? Satire? Don't think we go in for it much now, after all, someone will be offended for sure and, I don't know, whT if they don't understand it? Scepticism seems dead in the water, especially reading prev posts about children's indoctrination, for want of a better word.

Olivepip "My friend was accused of racism by her teenaged DD this week when she tried to discuss Cologne with her. Her DD said she should be 'nicer to refugees' and 'try harder to understand other cultures.' (My friend is South American married to a Brit)."

You know, the brainwashing of our young is what has frightened me the most. Firstly, with uni nonsense in banning well-known feminist Greer, and woman speak from the ME and now the kneejerk reaction you speak of. Being PC is now so inculcated - and it happened in a matter of three decades - that I fear there is no critical thinking in the young.

Even David Starkey the historian was booed on QT -it's ridiculous. Where has having a different opinion gone?

Emily, I don't wish to repeat the fact that people on here are not tarring all followers of Islam with the same brush because obviously it's been said before and you seem unable to take it on board.

And of course the vast majority of followers of Islam and any other religion are as peace loving as the average atheist...that goes without saying.

But if you were to ask the people who perpetrate hideous crimes such as gunning down abortion clinics, bombing civilians etc they would attribute it to their religious convictions. And if you asked those right wing fascists who attacked those poor girls on NYE why they thought it was OK to do what they did then I bet their reasoning would point to what they consider to be rooted in their religion.

I think that makes it worth discussing don't you?