Mass sexual assaults in Cologne and other European cities part IV

[VertigoNun]

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

Bungo,

'Canada is nevertheless only accepting families'. Yes, it is unfair. The response of many countries to the refugees has been unfair, including the UK

I think it would mean a lot to see a solidarity march in the uk.

However, with a media blackout/lack of interest, how would anyone even know?

I'll bet that their response to all the letters of condemnation will be to assume that there has been a massive resurgence of the right wing, and all the meetings they hold will be about how to suppress the right wing rather than address the issue.

That thought did occur to me too, however I think it's still worth sending balanced, considered emails outlining the issues. It would be worse to do nothing.

Your posts are not consistent Emily.

'I like the idea of taking people from the camps as opposed to people using money to be smuggled into back of trucks etc which tend to be young men. Certainly driving through the French port (as fast as we could!) all I saw were young men waiting for their chance'.

In amongst all of this will be manics who would do us harm. Who hate the western ways with a passion.

Hillingdon, you are wrong. Many families have used smugglers to make made the treacherous journey across the land or sea. Families and children have suffocated in trucks and drowned because they had to pay thousands for an unsafe journey.

Help, the mobile phone argument! Surprised it's taken this long for that to come up. Some of them even bring money with them! Heavens! The Syrian refugees that got to Europe can often afford mobiles and have money. They paid smugglers to get to Europe, they're not all poor. They are fleeing war. If you think they don't sufer grief because they talk to people at home occasionally on a screen and can't see them or touch them, you're wrong. They grieve for the country they have lost.

If concerns are about male immigrants that may enter Europe with poor views on women, why the focus on those coming just from Arabic countries? What about those from Eastern Europe? This is where your racism and hypocrisy is evident.

My mother and father were both immigrants back in the 50's. They both came because their skills were in short supply. Now (probably quite understandably) people want to come to the UK and other countries who are known to be supportive to people claiming to be fleeing for their lives.

Canada has the right idea. Anyone who rips open a truck, who throws stones and bricks at lorry drivers at the ports and who assaults women in the country who have given them shelter needs to be refused entry.

Is this harsh? Yes, I think it is but its getting completely out of control. I live near a very multi cultural large town. Its largely Muslim population hasn't demonstrated on the streets about last years attacks on innocent people. Members of the family disappear and are found fighting in Syria and no one knows anything, the family the community leaders. No one...

I heard a iram on LBC last week saying that if they speak out they are found, by other members of the community, death threats are made to them, their families are threatened. No wonder they don't demonstrate against what is happening.

Really Emily. So all the young men waiting at Calais, who are on the trains pushing and shoving to get on. The men throwing stones and bricks at lorry drivers, who are throwing their papers away so they cannot be traced (probably the most suspicious of all).

They are all genuine??

Hillingdon, it is not getting completely out of control. The UK set a cap on the amount of immigrants it will recieve. They are taking a shamefully low number of Syrian refugees and already have stringent asylum procedures in place.

'I think it is but its getting completely out of control. I live near a very multi cultural large town. Its largely Muslim population hasn't demonstrated on the streets about last years attacks on innocent people'.

Why should they? I didn't either.

'Members of the family disappear and are found fighting in Syria and no one knows anything, the family the community leaders. No one...

'No wonder they don't demonstrate against what is happening'.

There have been Muslims demonstrating about extremist attacks and saying not in my name etc. They don't reach mainstream news very often sadly as they don't fit the stereotype many people are fond of. I see lots of Muslims condemning extremism. They must be frightened and I feel angry that they feel they have to defend themselves.

Hillingdon, I imagine man are genuine. I am not condoning behaviour when itis aggressive and dangerous. This is the result of laws that make legal means of getting to safety very difficult and some people are desperate.

Great feedback. Let's hope that we all make a positive difference.

Has anyone got a link to the LW programme today?

I'm watching it just now.
www.itv.com/hub/loose-women/1a3173a2452

Not sure if that link will work Vertigo?

Education for any and all male immigrants about the rights of women here

Education is a recurring theme as a solution. But you can't herd people through an IGCSE lite in " this is how it is here" and expect hearts and minds to change.

I'm an economic migrant. Left the UK just out of my teens more than 25 years ago, in search of work. I've lived in 2 countries since. Both with very different views about women than the ones I developed in my formative years.

Re education attempts haven't managed to make the smallest dent in my feminism. Despite a 1/4 of a century of fairly relentless challenge. So I wouldn't expect a re-education course upon arrival to have any impact at all on other people's perspectives from the other side of the coin.

I have observed legal and social requirements where they did not clash with my feminism. I have observed some of those that did clash, simply becuase the ramifications and sanctions were too likely and too onerous to make making a point worthwhile. Others, I wandered over those lines in the sand freely using my own cultural compass, not that of the nation I lived in.. Because the fall out was rare, or small, and I thought it was based on nonsensical principles I vehemently did not agree with. And that is pretty much what I have observed in other women who are more or less as well integrated as myself. You have your extremes, the ones who seek to assimilate ASAP, the ones who refuse to budge even a millimetre for decades, no matter the cost. But most seemed to bob around somewhere in the middle, where I was.

I know that is the mirror image of the context being discussed, but why would it be so different for the majority of men when in reverse ?

Why do we think we can re-educate people out of mysogeny when most would not believe they could re-educate the feminist out of somebody by sticking them in a classroom and providing a course pitched at wildly mixed levels of literacy and educational capacity ...right when the intended learners were deeply distracted by all the other massive changes that were going on in their lives ?

A concise, digital text/audio "pamphlet" that is informative, entertaining (so it gets read/listened to) that is available in the mother tongue of the intended readers/listeners is helpful. Because not everything is obvious if you are a new arrival. Anything else above and beyond that sounds like the stuff of wishful thinking with a high price tag that might be better off spent elsewhere, given how limited funds are.

If concerns are about male immigrants that may enter Europe with poor views on women, why the focus on those coming just from Arabic countries? What about those from Eastern Europe? This is where your racism and hypocrisy is evident

I have personally had to deal with sexism and rudeness from males from Eastern European countries living en mass on my road.

I have mentioned it before and been screamed down as a rascist.

I had to get the police to intervene once and I didnt dare mention their race or what they said to me. The police themselves said " in other countries men dont like being told to do anything by a woman, but this is the UK and they have to adhere to our laws and values."

I am sorry buy have to reply to a post late on in the previous thread.

Twisted, you constantly misrepresent what I have said. My point, and the Toivi quote's purpose, is this: a great many people will commit violence in circumstances where they are free to do so. They need not have any epigenetic damage. They need not have had traumatic childhoods. Their violence need not be the result of complex agents and factors. They do it because they have been enabled to do so.

This enablement to violence has been explored time and time again. It's the reason why Lord of the Flies was on school reading lists for years. It's the reason behind the abuse at Abu Ghraib. It's the reason why the Stanford Prison Experiment is so notorious. It's the reason behind Hannah Arendt's lifetime work.

It is this truth that you willfully ignore. Instead, you muddle the waters by asking whether I think that everyone in North Africa is identical in how they behave. In no post have I stated anything of the kind because the concept is ridiculous. Then you carry on talking about childhood development, and genetic vulnerability or particular environments.

What I am saying to you is that once the leash of retribution disappears, huge numbers of people have the capacity for violence. And I say this because what we saw in Cologne on NYE was the existence of a large number of young men who did not fear the leash of retribution, they did not fear the German State's forces of law and order, they did not recognise the German state's authority, jurisdiction, power or rule of law -- and they were willing to declare this publicly en masse before state agents and citizens, and commit violence against "the other" with believed impunity.

THAT is the most troubling aspect of this incident. The mass public rejection of state authority, a statement underscored by multiple acts of violence against others that do not share their creed and beliefs.

There is a word for this: insurrection. And this truth would become clear to you if, for just one moment, you could see beyond the shibboleths of race and citizenship status, and envisioned the perpetrators of NYE Cologne as ethnically German males.

I was talking to my DH last night about Cologne, and he said something startling. He said that if the perpetrators of Cologne had been white Germans males, the incident would have been seen as an extreme far right mini putsch to gain power and control over the streets of Cologne.

And you know what? He's right.

Willbeat,

Men from any country can be sexist and rude, and disrespect women, that is all I am trying to say. Many will not. The sad truth is that misogyny exists in many countries.

Can someone post the link of whatever it was that needed to be translated from Arabic, please (I can't find it!)? TIA

Oh my goodness I haven't been on mn since Friday and there are three more threads since then! I have spent all afternoon (when I should really be working!) catching up, and I am so happy that there are sensible women out there with good ideas, well excluding Emily and her ilk!

I am going to write to my MLA though I doubt any of them could identify Germany on a map, and they'll probably have little to no interest unless the perpetrators are arguing about flags or religion. But it is always worth a try.

hefzi - pol asked what the Arabic term was and how it translates, and I posted this reply:

"Taharrush gamea is the word for it (Arabic تحرش جماعي‎). Taharrush means sexual harrassment, gamea (which is the Egyptian pronunciation - standard arabic would be jamaea) means in a group, mass.

There is currently an entry on this in the German version of Wikipedia, but there is a request for it to be removed. Discussion about it is here:
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:L%C3%B6schkandidaten/11._Januar_2016#Taharrush_gamea

If you look on Youtube for taharrush gamea you get a few German clips, all of which seem to have been posted in the past few days. If you enter the Arabic as a search term, it brings up clips from the past couple of years of assaults on women in various North African countries. Unfortunately my Arabic isn't good enough to be able to understand the commentary on these or I could give more information."

I'm not sure whether anyone has specifically asked for translation of what's being said in any of the Youtube videos on the subject.

Good article here from New York Post.

nypost.com/2016/01/10/europe-is-enabling-a-rape-culture/

"In the wake of horrifying tales of sexual assault perpetrated by potentially up to 1,000 men on New Year’s Eve, German officials have made two stunning decisions.........."

Ah, sorry, LongWayRound - I just saw something asking for a translation, and missed the bit where it had been done!

There's a video posted also hefzi, with commentary in Arabic. Do you speak it?

www.libdemvoice.org/farron-we-must-not-pull-up-the-drawbridge-because-of-the-cologne-attacks-48956.html
This came up in a Google search about cologne
Quite interesting reading the discussion by libdem supporters

here's a link to the video hefzi. I presume it's in Arabic anyway?

I couldn't see anything from that video but the comments were horrific - blaming women and feminists for letting immigrants in.

It's awful that this has been painted by some in such a black and white manner, framing pro-migrants as pro-rape or anti-cover up as pro-racism.

Even the Guardian are feeding into the racism vs women's rights dichotomy by playing it so low key. And whilst they all fight each other the victims suffer.

Very good article Wilde, I think the lady who wrote it must be one of us!