Cologne Sexual Assaults IX and David Davies Web Chat

[LumelaMme]

On New Year's Eve women in Cologne were amongst those who were sexually assaulted and robbed in mass attacks.
This is a link to the last thread which has links to all the others.

Some of us have begun a petition asking the government to uphold women's rights and freedoms:

THE PETITION _ Please sign and share
The petition

We also hope that tomorrow, Monday 8th February, David TC Davies MP will be on MN for a web chat between 1pm and 2pm - it should be a sticky on either Chat or In The News. David was one of the few MPs who has shown any interest in this whole issue and who has responded sympathetically to those of us concerned about women's rights in a changing world.

I still can't get my head around MN posters defending some of these perpetrators or minimising/deflecting blame and making excuses.

Neither can many of us, HelpfulChap

Ridiculous as it sounds, sometimes I almost feel sorry for the apologists; they've been so used to having things their own way, and it must be downright inconvenient to see these appalling crimes happening again and again

It certainly doesn't help their agenda that's for sure.

The problem is when you start trying to fit human beings and their outlook etc into neat little boxes, it just doesn't tend to work. People don't fit boxes therefore a myth of a sort of person as being this or that just doesn't neatly apply. It gets even worse when you try and shoehorn the person in question and their values into the same one that you have tried to 'fit' yourself into. Therefore when they are trying to shoehorn these people into the west and make them 'fit' alongside western values it can be a shock that a) they don't understand those values b) they don't want to go along with those values c) that they might kick against those values with all their might.

Boxes are for keeping your stuff in, not human beings or values/cultures.

Helpful: I still can't get my head around MN posters defending some of these perpetrators or minimising/deflecting blame and making excuses.

I've just seen a repeat of an afternoon TV film about a man with wife and one child who is targeted for brainwashing by a cult who originally approached him as clients of his firm. They succeed with him, and an ex-cult member who now works as an interventionist explains to the wife that what cults want are people's businesses, savings, house. Sometimes the businesses are kept running but profits are pocketed by the cult leaders. The brainwashed person know,s this but does not protest and instead finds 'reasons' which fit in with his new world view - which is: cult is good and can never do bad things.

Another fascinating thread. Thank you!

Thank God we still have countries like Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania still refusing to take their 'quota'

just read this thread after seeing it linked to on the other. thanks for the breadcrumbs.

Slightly off topice but still worrying article about the dangers posed by porous borders. Any idiot who says don't vet or screen people coming into a country will have blood on their hands when the
next atrocity happens.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/05/terrorists-entering-europe-because-of-porous-borders-may-be-unde/

Jassy

As I mentioned on the EU thread. 1.8 million people entered the EU illegally in 2015, up 600% from 2014 (official EU stats) with estimates of another 3 million in 2016.

The UK prevented 100k illegal entries last year (how many made it?).

European women will soon be under siege.

More deception from the EU. I cant imagine why anyone wants to be part of a club. of, amongst other things, rape deniers . It will be interesting to see if the Guardian, Indie, Sky or BBC print this news. I'll check later when I've finished my work.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3527771/German-minister-told-police-remove-word-rape-reports-mass-migrant-sex-attacks-Cologne-new-Year-s-Eve.html

as far as i can tell we're meant to vote 'in' purely ot of fear of change. it really isn't just immigration for me but even if it was that alone it would be enough - re: we don't need crazies like merkel dictating quotas.

interesting conversaton with older male egyptians tonight about the obvious outcomes of taking in young single disaffected MENA guys in europe - no doubt they'd be called racist or xenophobic in uk but these are older males from the region.

they are a really interesting generation - if anyone gives a shit i will explain but in brief they lived in very liberal times and have had to watch preceding generations lap up extremist and backwards views and throw away the freedoms won for them.

More deception from the EU. I cant imagine why anyone wants to be part of a club. of, amongst other things, rape deniers angry. It will be interesting to see if the Guardian, Indie, Sky or BBC print this news. I'll check later when I've finished my work

It's also being reported in the independent.

link

Absolutely disgusting, and people are still trying to claim that there was no cover up attempt. Mind boggling

Honeybadger, I met a really interesting woman a couple of weeks ago. She is a Egyptian Muslim and an academic. She is distraught at the way Egypt has changed as political Islam has grown is size and influence. She never wore a hijab as a child or young woman growing up in Cairo. Now it is widely promoted as how a 'good woman' should dress.

Nick ferrari is talking about excluding the word 'rape' from cologne reports on LBC in a minute.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, where it is customary for pupils to shake hands with their teacher at the end of a lesson, a school has chosen to exempt students who are male and Muslim if the teacher is female. How much further will Sweden go to appease this misogynistic minority.

LBC now.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3528236/Male-Norwegian-politician-raped-asylum-seeker-says-feels-GUILTY-attacker-deported-man-suffer-Somalia.html

DM link (sorry) but says something about how we are often taught in the west to take the principle of "walking a mile in someonelse's shoes" a bit too far. I really understand that feeling of being relieved your attacker has beeen far removed from you but to still feel pity for the background that contributed to their mindset.

HoneyBadger and Anna - it's the same in other Arab countries. I'm in Morocco, where it sometimes seems as though the most progressive generation are the people in their 50s and 60s. Here the factors are partly the result of domestic policy, ie the decision in the 1970s to emphasise Arabic and Muslim identity by switching to Arabic-language schooling and replacing philosophy by religious education, meaning that French teachers ("coopérants") were no longer wanted in the state school system, and instead teachers were brought in from Egypt, and partly the result of external developments in the middle east and the rise of Wahabism.
Back in the 1960s and 70s children from poor families could do well in the state system, study abroad, come back to good jobs... But since the 1980s anyone who could afford it has sent their children to private schools, preferably French ones, resulting in a complete class divide in education and very low prospects for children from state schools.
Now everyone recognises that the state education system is a complete failure, but all attempts to reform it come up against the problem of religion. Any attempt at reform has to satisfy the religious lobby, and so even attempts to challenge the dominance of Arabic in the school system and give greater weight to other languages, whether that means Berber as a Moroccan language, or French and English as being useful languages in the modern world, are decried as being anti-Islamic.
Photos of Moroccan schools and students as they used to be
More photos
The way girls dress has changed completely since these photos were taken.

yes 50's, 60's and 70's are the most liberal aged egyptians i meet and i have some lovely friends of these ages. they tell me about drinks cabinets and the normality of having an aperitif in the late afternoon and how lovely life in alex and cairo was back in the day etc.

i also have a few young educated egyptian friends with very modern/secular thinking and aspirations but sadly their parents are not liberal and their lives are difficult as a result with much secrecy and lies needed to even be able to travel here for a weekend with friends despite the fact they're in their 20's and earn their own money. they are stunned looking at photos of egypt back in the 50's and 60's with women wearing western fashions and make up etc - it's hard for them to believe it was like that so recently.

one theory is it was the influence of a generation of workers who went to live in saudi and then returned with that influence. there's also the reality that ignorance is easier to control and there has been little effort to improve education and basic literacy in a massively growing population and one increasingly migrating to cairo which has grown exponentially.

it sometimes makes me quite cross how misunderstood this region of the world is and how the west goes and bloody supports idiocy like the MB declaring them to have been democratically elected without any understanding of how they did that(re: feed illiterate masses in the delta free food and cash and tell them they'll go to hell if they don't vote muslim brotherhood) or the misery they quickly created and inflicted upon the liberal egyptians of cities and educated regions who have a proud national identity rather than seeing themselves as citizens of an islamic state.

anyway sorry for long post. interesting to hear similiar of morocco. some young christian boys got sent to prison for a mobile phone video taking the piss out of isis recently that equated to the blasphemy laws and saw some young teens sentenced to what might as well have been life here as they'll miss alll education and come out to absolutely nothing. likewise a woman was jailed on account of talking about animal rights and criticising the mass slaughter of goats in the street during festivals as cruel. and this is without the brotherhood being 'in' but their supporters having to be appeased wth this kind of crap.

it sometimes makes me quite cross how misunderstood this region of the world is
Understatement of the year... there seems to be such complete ignorance of the way things work, whether it's the assumption that getting rid of a dictator is all you need for a state to become democratic, or the idea that any democratically elected government must be a Good Thing.

The other thing that makes me just a bit cross is the way supposed progressive voices in the west feel a need to support the most intolerant forms of Islam, rather than aligning with the people calling for secularism and a society in which religion is not the dominant force.

anyway sorry for long post
No need to apologise. It's good to hear from other parts of the region. I can also recognise your description of younger people having to lie in order to do things which should be perfectly normal. These are conformist societies which encourage hypocrisy as a way of life.

hypocrisy and a complete obsession with sex seems to be encouraged. and yy to supporting the most intolerant forms of islam/governance - that cannot be accidental/ignorance based surely? you have to suspect it's deliberate.

www.express.co.uk/news/world/659402/Antisemitic-attacks-Austria-Jewish-community-migrant-crisis
Anti-semitic attacks in Austria spike following unprecedented migrant crisis

LongWay your post is very interesting. I grew up in Algeria in the 70s and 80s. It was going through "arabisation" they tried to cleanse themselves of the french language, imported lots of Egyptian teachers (many of whom were not that competent), at the height of the terror in the 90s they closed the lycees down. of course those who could afford it usually wanted a Western education for their kids. I think Algerians now realise they will never rid themselves of their french heritage and that it's not even desirable to do so.
I think Islam can be a shorthand for cultural pride and identity for nations who have been colonised , let down by socialism (in Algeria's case) and need something to make themselves feel like they can stand up to an all powerful West. However it is scary to see the levels of neurotic violence this is causing in some places. Just look at Pakistan, where Christians are targeted, and Muslims are also targeted, by Muslims, for being the wrong kind of Muslim. Seems like the mentality is "my religion is the only right one, and you don't espouse it so I'll kill you". meanwhile just about all the refugees and migrants trying to enter europe through the Balkans are Muslims. Surely that says something about how unliveable these societies are.

www.express.co.uk/news/world/658597/Migrant-crisis-Germany-warns-Italy-borders-Austria-refugees-Europe?_ga=1.4802229.742860795.1452641465
Don't SEND any more: Germany issues ULTIMATUM to Italy as millions of migrants enter EU