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 just read your link January a lot of it rings true.

Emily any opinions?

Let's not allow this to happen on here.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."

• Noam Chomsky

www.spiegel.de/international/europe/closing-balkan-route-means-migrant-crisis-for-greece-a-1076232.html

Lumela, some people were refugees during WW2. Do you think they 'just ran'?

Yes, people fought the Nazis during WW2. This is a very different situation though, a complex civil war and the madness of Isis. If you look at world war two, it was very difficult for the German population to resist the Nazis. Of course there was the resistance, but not all

People often had to access the means to fight denied them in occupation, which could mean escaping the regime through France, then the UK to join the RAF and train as a pilot. To fight against the canker in their country, they had to escape their country. They could not have successfully fought from within. Similarly, Syrians will find it very hard to fight from within.

Then, in WW2, we saw clear cut alliances, at least later in the game there was support from the US. Witin Syria,alliances are ever shifting. The war is grinding on with noc lear and credible side emerging that it seems could successfully tackle what is going on.

Many don't want to join Assad's army and be forced to torture and kill their own people. There is also the sheer scale of a multiplicity of bombings. Then there is the fact that there is no food, no water, no infrastructure, no medical care.

Those leaving Syria are untrained civilians. I understand their choice to leave rather than hazard a battle they have no hope in winning. Not every man is mentally equipped to fight in a war either. Does having a penis make you more suitable for dealing with the horror of war?

'I see this thread managed a whole day more or less before you arrived to kill it. I get you're on some personal crusade here but can't you allow other MNetters to have even one thread on this matter that you don't take over, make all about you and shut down?'

Rumble, if that is the way you see things, then yourconvictionsmust be pretty shaky anyway. Mumsnet suggested a while ago that participants place future threads ina quieter part of mumsnet, OTBT. They chose not to, so if dissenting voices from the majority appear as they do on other areas of mumsnet, this is no surprise.

Sporting, feel free to start a thread on how to help Syrians, I would love that. This thread isn't really about that is it?

Ah, emily, I don't want to out myself by dumping loads of my family history on here. But I know all about refugees. Refugees can turn into soldiers. I have a photo of one up over my desk. He was my father's cousin. He fled as an 'untrained civilian'. He went back as a soldier. Nowhere did I say that refugees 'just ran'. People become refugees because they are frightened. I have talked to people who were refugees, who were bombed as they fled.

They could not have successfully fought from within. The Germans, probably not (and they mostly felt they should fight for their country, anyway). The conquered nations could and did. Polish Home Army (they did very well until the USSR did the dirty on the them). French resistance (they managed to bugger up German tank movements). Partisans in the Balkans (who had a tendency to fight each other as well as the Fascists). People could, and did, fight successfully 'from within'.
I understand their choice to leave rather than hazard a battle they have no hope in winning. So do I: after all, my relatives did. That's why I want there to be good, secure camps in Turkey and other nearby countries. But somebody has to fight ISIS. Who? The US? The Russians? It's an unholy mess, isn't it?

In any case, the situation in Syria is not comparable to Europe in 1940. You know and I know it.

Sporting, feel free to start a thread on how to help Syrians, I would love that. This thread isn't really about that is it?
No, emily, well observed, it isn't. It's a women's rights thread. Whatever shit is going on in the world, we're allowed to discuss that, aren't we? Just because people post on it and have the nerve to disagree with you doesn't mean they don't help Syrians. I'm a supporter of this organisation.

Begore I close, let me just repeat my earlier question which I note you failed to answer:
Concerns about women's safety and creeping cultural change that may limit women's future freedoms are claptrap, are they, emily?

I appreciate what you're saying about the resistance. I was thinking in terms of fighting in more conventional armies which often required escaping to join the Allies.

In some ways it is comparable, in some ways not. You made the comparison yourself when you stated that a relative fought the Nazis. He may have had very different choices to those available to Syrians.

'Concerns' are claptrap when they amplify and overemphasise certain negative traits as belonging more to outsiders. Accounts of men referring to women dressed as slags etc can be found in different cultures. The notion that it is a creepying danger, something without and not within, is false.

There can be no 'good, secure camp' in Turkey. The EU considers Turkey an unsafe country. The Turkish authorities have been unlawfully apprehending, detaining and pressuring refugees and asylum-seekers to return to war zones. Does that sound safe to you? Why do you think the EU has given so much money to Turkey when they treat refugees like this?

A women's rights thread? I thought women wanted equality but much in these threads has been about old fashioned stereotypes of men as 'fighters'. I object to the notion on these threads that men are less worthy of refugee status for being men.

Lumela Yes, and dont forget that too: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_People's_Liberation_Army

I do know that this thread isn't about helping the Syrians. Why don't you start one and go first with maybe some practical ideas on people who we could lobby for more action on that?

I do support the Syrian people's right to live a free and safe life. But I also would like a free and safe life for everyone. That includes women and gay people.

What happens if women and gay people become so limited in their freedoms that they actually become scared to go out and live their lives. It won't be a free and safe life for the Syrian women who have come here either will it?

On this thread we need to discuss how we manage keeping every one of us safe, man, woman and child, straight or gay and for us all to have our freedom to take advantage of life chances.

I don't want a future where I cannot use the swimming pool anymore or have to plan what route I'm going to take carefully, or agonise over whether I'm covered enough to not attract attention. Or have to only go out with my husband. Or have to give up my business because of all of the above.

Emily what about the Kurdish female fighters who are fighting Isis on the border? It's not just men fighting, there's definitely equality there, many of them are risking death and capture.

Many of the resistance in WW2 were women, I don't feel that only men can fight, if you read a fair bit of military history women crop up more than you'd think!

I don't think anyone here would be limited to the notion that only men can fight anymore than only women can clean and wash up properly.

Rumble, if that is the way you see things, then your convictions must be pretty shaky anyway.

If I don't want to engage in round 345 of The Emily Show while you say the same things over and over again and basically prevent any meaningful discussion, it's because my 'convictions are shaky'?

Nope, I'm just bored of (endless) boorish behaviour thanks, my convictions are just fine.

You made the comparison yourself when you stated that a relative fought the Nazis
I never said he fought the Nazis. They weren't the only Fascists knocking around in WWII. There's generally a very Eurocentric view of World War II in, well, Europe. It's understandable, so I won't hold it against you.

'Concerns' are claptrap when they amplify and overemphasise certain negative traits as belonging more to outsiders. Accounts of men referring to women dressed as slags etc can be found in different cultures.
This is a point where we seriously differ. There are negative traits in every culture: the Brits, for example, are notorious for not saying what they mean, to the profound confusion of people who come to the UK from abroad. I'm sure a lot of people find that a 'negative trait'. We have others, too.
We Brits are also perfectly capable of producing our own sex offenders. We all know this. And homophobes. We know that too. But, generally, women in Britain are seen as equal to men before the law, and most people (at least, the vast vast majority of people I know, even the ones over 70) really couldn't care less if someone is gay or not. I'm going a loooong way back through these threads now to point you, once again, at this study from the Pew Research Center, which investigated what Muslims thought in a wide cross-section of countries.
93% of Muslims from MENA thought homosexuality was wrong.
87% of Muslims in the same area think a woman should obey her husband.
25% of Muslims from MENA think daughters should have equal inheritance rights with sons.

So, in this case, 'certain negative traits' - or, as I would prefer to put it, certain beliefs with which I profoundly disagree - are very clearly much more common amongst Muslims from MENA than amongst the general population in the UK and Europe. This is the area from which the majority of migrants and refugees seem to be coming. It's fair to extrapolate that most of them think homosexuality is wrong, and that women should not have equal rights. But worrying about this, and saying so, is producing claptrap, according to you.

Mari, yup, them too. And the Italian partisans. And so on.

Many of the resistance in WW2 were women
iirc, the ones who fouled up the Panzer movements just before D Day were a couple of teenaged girls. The Panzers were loaded ready on railway wagons. The girls used a special grease on the Panzers. When they were unloaded, and began to roll, the bearings in their axles ground to dust and they came to, um, a grinding halt. Don't quote me on that, though: I might not have all the details right.

Oh, and because I didn't say it in my previous post, Not All Muslims Are Like That. I know some lovely Muslims. But I feel the need to keep on saying it, before emily starts calling me bigoted again.

Believe the some of the partisans in Yugoslavia were women too. The role of women fighters of course goes back centuries. Women have fought in many conflicts and I suspect some of them are part of the undercover resistance in Syria too.

I'm wondering when emily is going to call me a bigot too...

A little jokette to lighten the mood, oui?

ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?

WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

Nice Britt, shall tell that to DH

Britt, we learn more about your thinking with every post.

Seriously, Britt?
FFS.

Sport there was fascism and resistance in Italy too with Mussolini. Terrible tortures and disappearances and executions. Dictaroships were established in Spain with Franco and in Potrugal with Salazar as well and there was resistance there too. There are many sources of womens resistance during the War II and libraries in UK will have material and you can google. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_French_Resistance
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_resistance_members_of_World_War_II
Do you know the opera Tosca? by Puccini? it is interesting to see the story.

Yes, I've met many people who were involved in resistance in Portugal, some of them women. It is still something that many find difficult to talk about. We were also lucky enough when I went on my French school trip to meet a French resistance fighter from WW2 and we visited a village where all the men and boys were killed by the nazis. I posted back a while ago that I saw on bbc a news programme about what resistance there is in Syria, people filming what IS are up to, trying to get the message out to the world. I said I thought these people were brave. Emily said I was trying to say that I felt these people were better than those who were fleeing - not so, not everyone has the skills (filming with cameras hidden well) or is in a position to do so. Some of these people doing this have in fact had to flee too (there was an interview with one young man) as IS have found out who they are. Even after they flee to Europe and Turkey they are still not safe, IS sends people after them and they are killed. The young man in the interview said he thought it inevitable he would be found and killed even in the west of Europe.

It doesn't negate the plight of genuine refugees it merely highlights that we need to give help at an earlier stage in their journey and make sure that it's the most vulnerable that are prioritised. All these economic migrants from other places are taking away resource from those people, they are making things more difficult. Of the men caught so far for inolvment in Cologne, very few are Syrian, so we are not making it about genuine refugees but the chancers who are coming in because they saw a way of piggybacking on this. It is maybe these who Emily should direct her ire at.

I don't think I got Brits joke btw or that it was inappropriate, my excuse was I was halfway through trying to untangle a clients attempts at copywriting, always fun. Shouldn't post when I have my eye off the ball so to speak.

sport you can form your own opinion on the Resistance. You may read widely on the Resistance during Spanish Civil War and War II. You can do so from the free Wiki source and then borrow books from a library. Every country of Europe and many towns and villages are proud to have monuments to the Resistance. Its fighters who sacrified all to freedom were honoured. Resistance were predominantly left. Read Hemingway. An overview is in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_during_World_War_II
In that chapter there is a section on Resistance Movements by country and you can click on any name to see. There were more than a dozen anti-Nazi resistance movements in Germany. There were also Chinese resistance movements.

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