Hundreds of women assaulted in German NYE celebrations

[Casually Red]

I think all the rest of it is good, but minimising the event by attempting comparisons with Oktoberfest / discos was totally unnecessary far as I can see.

They notably don't compare cologne with hamburg, Bielefeld , or the Swedish assaults .
Hamburg was every bit as bad as Cologne . Bielefeld would have been worse had they got through the doors . This isn't normal. It's extremely abnormal . It's incomparable to anything which normally goes on in western Europe . And anyone suggesting it is is disingenuous to the point of being a cynical lying bastard . And also a smug one , who thinks people are so stupid their intelligence can be blatantly insulted by trotting out rubbish like that.

 

[sihhi]

Thanks, I did manage to miss almost all of those, not sure how many of them are actually about what happened on NYE but will have a real later.

This one on the coverup of the Swedish festival mass sexual assaults is interesting too:

" it is impossible either to prove or to disprove, from official statistics, the nationalist claim that the rapists are disproportionately young male migrants. Yet that claim is repeated as a fact in racist and xenophobic parts of the internet. What is certain is that you would hardly ever find it mentioned, even to refute, in the reputable Swedish media – until last week...

This is the really damaging effect of the Stockholm scandal – and it is worth noting that only one of the reported assaults at the festival was classed as rape: most were mob gropings, which are still terrifying and criminal violations.
The Swedish political and media establishment decided to deal with the threat of a nationalist and xenophobic party, the Sweden Democrats, by ignoring them and hoping they would go away. This policy was fuelled partly by wishful thinking, partly by principle and partly by self-righteousness. It ended disastrously. .
It is absolutely clear – with the publication of internal memos by the newspaper Dagens Nyheter – that the Stockholm police failed to report the sex assaults at the festival for fear of worsening ethnic tensions. And it was understood by all parties that this would lead to an electoral advantage for the Sweden Democrats. .
So teenage girls were systematically assaulted and robbed by gangs of young foreign men because too many powerful people found their suffering was inconvenient. The result of this cover-up will be far more damaging than the truth could have been."This cover-up of sex assaults in Sweden is a gift for xenophobes | Andrew Brown

Sweden is different from from Germany but I found this point interesting:

Some of the violence is closely linked to the appearance of gangs of Balkan and Middle Eastern origin among refugee groupings who fight for control of the drugs trade, among other things. There were around 40 unsolved gang murders on police files at the end of last year.

I am not going to labour the point but it seems there have been at least 40 murders in Sweden in recent years which have been committed which have also not been reported about. It appears like widespread gang criminality that's going on, but the concern is appears only when the victim is citizen and criminal is noncitizen.

If we want to look at parallels, then the steady rise of gang criminality amongst the "underclass"/"poorest" (hate the terms but can't find others) in central America - particularly El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, marginal parts of Mexico where the central Americans have moved to in search of work. Some women family members are threatened with gang rape so that membership is imposed on anyone recalcitrant, it's a spiral of festering murder and intimidation. The misogyny and harassment within the minority groups or "poorest" is normally left forgotten until the harassment affects someone in respectable society above. It's grotesque but that's where we are.

 

[Casually Red]

It's not that, just that CR is a fucking nut, so any decent points he makes tend to get lost amongst all the other noise he creates.

Your posts here have been worth reading though.

They tend to get lost among the assorted stalkers and cool kids openly denouncing me as a card carrying fronter . This week . Next week it'll be back to a paid kremlin agent again . But they're the sane ones .

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Sweden is different from from Germany but I found this point interesting:

Some of the violence is closely linked to the appearance of gangs of Balkan and Middle Eastern origin among refugee groupings who fight for control of the drugs trade, among other things. There were around 40 unsolved gang murders on police files at the end of last year.

I am not going to labour the point but it seems there have been at least 40 murders in Sweden in recent years which have been committed which have also not been reported about. It appears like widespread gang criminality that's going on, but the concern is appears only when the victim is citizen and criminal is noncitizen.

If we want to look at parallels, then the steady rise of gang criminality amongst the "underclass"/"poorest" (hate the terms but can't find others) in central America - particularly El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, marginal parts of Mexico where the central Americans have moved to in search of work. Some women family members are threatened with gang rape so that membership is imposed on anyone recalcitrant, it's a spiral of festering murder and intimidation. The misogyny and harassment within the minority groups or "poorest" is normally left forgotten until the harassment affects someone in respectable society above. It's grotesque but that's where we are.

Which is why dismissing analysis that talks about criminality is a precondition for dismissing all left analysis in favour of a reactionary one

 

[BigTom]

There's no mention of hamburg there . Supposedly around 350 victims of attacks, and could have been much worse were it not for the actions of the cities bouncers .

From what I've read yet again cops were close by but did nothing . Massively outnumbered . The nightclub bouncers got together and escorted numerous women to a temporary safe zone they'd set up in a yard . Only for that it most likely would have been worse than cologne .

Eta

As would Bielefeld have been had those 500 animals made it through the nightclub doors . Again determined door staff the only thing standing in their way . Door staff who had to drag women in off the street to protect them. A number of them already stripped naked in the street .

tbf, the report quoted is from North West Rhinefeld, and Hamburg is in a different region, so wouldn't have been included in that report, but the WSWS article should have included other places too, I've lost track of all the places this happened. Have you got a link for the number of attacks in Hamburg? Struggling to find anything concrete, daily mail article from the 25th says 200 complaints of robbery and sexual assualt.
Bielefeld, where does your 500 number come from? Telegraph has police saying 150 and the only places I can see saying 500 are loony right wing sites like Pamela Geller's.

Not that the smaller numbers make much difference really but I like to be accurate - and it may change eg police response I suppose. Also I can find it much easier to imagine 150 people in a criminal organisation working together to do this than 500.

 

[BigTom]

Sweden is different from from Germany but I found this point interesting:

Some of the violence is closely linked to the appearance of gangs of Balkan and Middle Eastern origin among refugee groupings who fight for control of the drugs trade, among other things. There were around 40 unsolved gang murders on police files at the end of last year.

I am not going to labour the point but it seems there have been at least 40 murders in Sweden in recent years which have been committed which have also not been reported about. It appears like widespread gang criminality that's going on, but the concern is appears only when the victim is citizen and criminal is noncitizen.

If we want to look at parallels, then the steady rise of gang criminality amongst the "underclass"/"poorest" (hate the terms but can't find others) in central America - particularly El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, marginal parts of Mexico where the central Americans have moved to in search of work. Some women family members are threatened with gang rape so that membership is imposed on anyone recalcitrant, it's a spiral of festering murder and intimidation. The misogyny and harassment within the minority groups or "poorest" is normally left forgotten until the harassment affects someone in respectable society above. It's grotesque but that's where we are.

The role of criminal/people smuggling gangs has only been mentioned on here I think, but it's potentially important, in that migrants coming through the people smuggling gangs are delivered to criminal gangs (maybe the same gangs) in their destination country, sometimes/often forced to join by the smugglers or the nature of immigration systems that don't let people work legally.
Proper open borders would destroy people smuggling gangs. Routes would be safer, easier and probably cheaper to travel which would mean more older people, families, women and children travelling and not such a massive dominance of young men.
People would be able to work once they arrived here which would remove another layer of exclusion.
There's some big questions/issues to go onto, about how we build communities that people feel/want to be included in, and to what extent the events of NYE occurred because the migrants were not part of the German community and because they have been othered into a migrant community in which the gangs are dominant.
Secondly is how we counter the interests of capital in terms of wanting migrants for further exploitation and to drive down wages and conditions for everyone else.#
Thirdly is the problems that come with growing population and the need to build infrastructure to support everyone.

 

[bimble]

Which is why dismissing analysis that talks about criminality is a precondition for dismissing all left analysis in favour of a reactionary one

You're right about criminal gangs surely having a lot to do with what happened on NYE in Cologne, never tried to deny or dismiss that idea at all. If this had been 'just' about mass street robbery / 'steaming' the whole thing would probably be explainable in those terms alone. But it's not, and it's not the theft bit that scares me to be honest its the gratuitous sexual violence bit.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What CR has said reflects a general working class (non PC filtered) reaction to this issue. Do you know any Working class people?

I live on an utterly working class council estate in Lambeth. What CR has farted out doesn't reflect the views of any of my w/c neighbours (and believe me, we don't "filter" our opinions when we air them). Still,perhaps we're all "metrosexuals" because we're Londoners, eh?
So I have to ask: Do you know any working class people, or were you just talking bollocks?

 

[BigTom]

You're right about criminal gangs surely having a lot to do with what happened on NYE in Cologne, never tried to deny or dismiss that idea at all. If this had been 'just' about mass street robbery / 'steaming' the whole thing would probably be explainable in those terms alone. But it's not, and it's not the theft bit that scares me to be honest its the gratuitous sexual violence bit.

Yeah, if it was just robbery we'd not have a 120 page thread. I don't think anyone would deny that migrants are - for structural/legal reasons rather than cultural - more likely to go out robbing and to do so in gangs. This is easily explained.
The sexual assault side of things is not, but for it to be organised around the same networks is something that makes sense to me - so they play a (potentially) important part in this happening. Whether removing the gangs from the picture would have stopped the sexual assaults happening is not something I feel I'd have an answer for.

 

[bimble]

Yeah, if it was just robbery we'd not have a 120 page thread. I don't think anyone would deny that migrants are - for structural/legal reasons rather than cultural - more likely to go out robbing and to do so in gangs. This is easily explained.
The sexual assault side of things is not, but for it to be organised around the same networks is something that makes sense to me - so they play a (potentially) important part in this happening. Whether removing the gangs from the picture would have stopped the sexual assaults happening is not something I feel I'd have an answer for.

Agreed. But one of the things that's scared me the most is the testimony of that teenaged girl who was attacked in the middle of a crowded street in Paris on new years eve. She said very clearly that, as far as she could tell, the 20 or more men who joined in the attack on her, ripped her clothes off, were not known to each other, that it just seemed to start out of nowhere and more and more people joined in.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What is your solution? Don't give it the lols and trivial stuff. I know you are capable of giving very articulate informative opinions on Urban.

How is the "left" going to counter attempts by our rulers to now ram thru a massive breach in the minimum wage, so as to "integrate" these million and a half new arrivals?

IMF recommends paying refugees below the minimum wage

No one on the left is even thinking along these lines. Class politics are dead.

I support immigration but not mass immigration. It can only benefit capital.

The problem with people like yourself - and basically anyone who rants about "the left" - is that you assume that the entire spectrum of the left is actually homogeneous in opinion. That's never been the case, and never will be. Even in Germany, the "umbrella" group for "left" electoral politics, die Linke, is made up of a variety of shades of red and pink, and is rife with disagreement on just about every "party line".
Stop carping about "the left", and start agitating about what the parliamentary opposition are doing to counter this shit, because they're the only people who currently have the tools to swing any sort of change, short of sustained mass protest - the sort of thing that most European govts have legislated against.
As for class politics being dead, if you believe that then you're already fucking lost. You've already submitted.

 

[BigTom]

Agreed. But one of the things that's scared me the most is the testimony of that teenaged girl who was attacked in the middle of a crowded street in Paris on new years eve. She said very clearly that, as far as she could tell, the 20 or more men who joined in the attack on her, ripped her clothes off, were not known to each other, that it just seemed to start out of nowhere and more and more people joined in.

I don't know how she could tell this tbh, small groups can break up and move in and out of crowds easily enough I think. Scary for it to have been tightly organised anyway.

 

[ViolentPanda]

No you aren't , you're fucking nitpicking for the sake of it . Like a bloody 5 year old .

Standard CR playground tactic. It was shit when you used it as a kid, and it's shit now.

 

[Pickman's model]

Are you talking about the time elapsed between the NYE attacks and the mainstream media running with it?

Would that chronology go to explaining the silence almost one month later?

come on then, i thought you were going to tell me more about how la merkel had brought every single migrant to europe. but we both know that's bollocks, and i suppose that's why you've gone so quiet on the subject.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Wanting to understand phenomena, that includes criminal gangs as well as self-defence gangs in opposition to them or any type of social reality is not mental. Similar things happened in the early 1990s in Germany with refugees from the war in northern Kurdistan and the Balkans. The absolute degradation of people and morality, heroin sales, sexual assaults, arson, murders. Wanting to understand how people ended up in these situations - and that goes for any situation be they the tops or the dregs of society etc is not mental.

Time and again it has been repeated to you that the comparison is not to claim elsewhere and Cologne are the same. But to draw out the differences in official and cultural response depending on the citizenship component of sexual crimes.

You're not allowed to want to understand. You must simply stand up and participate in CR's two minute hate, or you're utterly beyond the pale, and are an apologist for any sort of act he wishes to accuse you of.

 

[bimble]

I don't know how she could tell this tbh, small groups can break up and move in and out of crowds easily enough I think. Scary for it to have been tightly organised anyway.

Yes, she may have been wrong in her assessment, I hope she was.
But also, Tahrir Square. The reason it's relevant is that the harrowing descriptions from women there, not just those two foreign journalists but the hundreds of reported cases of violent sexual assault against Egyptian women who were out to join in the protests and then the celebrations the night of Morsi's forced departure, sound like the same thing, or worse than NYE, and I don't know whether street-robbery gangs can help us much with trying to understand that.
ttps://www.facebook.com/notes/op-anti-sexual-harassmentassault-قوة-ضد-التحرشالإعتداء-الجنسي-الجماعي/testimony-from-an-assaulted-opantish-member-january-25th-2013-code-taeng/200432453433988

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes, she may have been wrong in her assessment, I hope she was.
But also, Tahrir Square. The reason it's relevant is that the harrowing descriptions from women there, not just those two foreign journalists but the hundreds of reported cases of violent sexual assault against Egyptian women who were out to join in the protests and then the celebrations the night of Morsi's forced departure, sound like the same thing, or worse than NYE, and I don't know whether street-robbery gangs can help us much with trying to understand that.
ttps://www.facebook.com/notes/op-anti-sexual-harassmentassault-قوة-ضد-التحرشالإعتداء-الجنسي-الجماعي/testimony-from-an-assaulted-opantish-member-january-25th-2013-code-taeng/200432453433988

i am not sure that the use of tahrir square advances your analysis.

 

[Casually Red]

I live on an utterly working class council estate in Lambeth. What CR has farted out doesn't reflect the views of any of my w/c neighbours (and believe me, we don't "filter" our opinions when we air them). Still,perhaps we're all "metrosexuals" because we're Londoners, eh?
So I have to ask: Do you know any working class people, or were you just talking bollocks?

As you are someone who shouts fascist and racist at anyone " farting out " outrage at mass rape I'm hardly surprised

Last time I checked UKIP were hoovering up votes by the thousand in traditional working class labour strongholds . Ditto le pens FN . Drawing a massive vote from former solid communist party strongholds . Pegida were attracting 100,000 plus at their waves of demos well before NYE. The vast bulk of its support and even leadership is solidly working class in composition .

Plainly, without a shadow of a doubt, the populist right and far right have exploited working class fears and grievances to great effect .Griffins BNP were doing the same until their usual implosion . Same with the likes of the EDL . Gordon Brown lost an election after he called a life long labour voting pensioner who politely brought up mass immigration as " that awful racist woman " , which is pretty mild compared to the shit gets thrown round here . And the " narzi scum " insults shouted in Calais .. And yet again we have yourself announcing " no..it's all bollocks....nothing to see here...move along . It's all wrong, you're only imagining it "

It's fucking inescapable there's massive working class concern over these issues . And that it's almost overwhelmingly from that demographic the right are being bolstered . If you've not met any working class people who are fucked off about this stuff I suspect it's got a great deal to with your habit of dismissing them as " farting out " stuff.

Why in the name of fuck would anyone want to talk to someone if your and your mates type of shitty attitude is all they're going to get thrown back in their face ? It's a question that needs putting to the wider left . Because its fucking abysmal behaviour .

 

[bimble]

i am not sure that the use of tahrir square advances your analysis.

why? To deny the striking similarity just seems dishonest :Egyptian women have been talking about and dealing with mass violent sexual harassment by mobs of men in public space for years, do we just ignore that ?

 

[ViolentPanda]

So the Guardian or Independent didn't cover this story? Have you got any evidence that liberal/left media haven't covered this story?

Perhaps you (or treelover/Annuder Oik) could actually name some of these groups that have ignored this issue. Or you could just post another 60 pages of vague shitty smears.

IIRC, The Morning Star first covered it on Monday the 4th - The first day they published after the New Year.

 

[Pickman's model]

why? To deny the striking similarity just seems dishonest :Egyptian women have been talking about and dealing with mass violent sexual harassment by mobs of men in public space for years, do we just ignore that ?

why? there are any number of reasons 'why', which if you gave the matter a moment's consideration you'd appreciate.

for example: the possible use of undercover police / police assets / government loyalists in these assaults.

for example: comparing the situation in egypt a few years ago to germany today is comparing apples to pears. are we having a european spring? eh? what's that? no? there isn't the sort of political upheaval in western european countries there was in the maghreb?

for example: the possible use of sexual assault in egypt to get women off the streets, to throw discord among the demonstrators.

but obviously the parallels between two dissimilar situations require their equivalence.

 

[bimble]

why? there are any number of reasons 'why', which if you gave the matter a moment's consideration you'd appreciate.

for example: the possible use of undercover police / police assets / government loyalists in these assaults.

for example: comparing the situation in egypt a few years ago to germany today is comparing apples to pears. are we having a european spring? eh? what's that? no? there isn't the sort of political upheaval in western european countries there was in the maghreb?

for example: the possible use of sexual assault in egypt to get women off the streets, to throw discord among the demonstrators.

but obviously the parallels between two dissimilar situations require their equivalence.

Better than comparing it to Oktoberfest though, shirley. The worst night for assaults on women was apparently the night of celebration, when Morsi was out, it was meant to be a party, like new years eve.

 

[BigTom]

I think the potential of security services in tahrir square make it difficult to compare but it looks/feels like the same kind of shit to me

 

[Pickman's model]

Better than comparing it to Oktoberfest though, shirley. The worst night for assaults on women was apparently the night of celebration, when Morsi was out, it was meant to be a party, like new years eve.

no it was not meant to be a party "like new years eve". nye traditionally an annual event. morsi's overthrow by the army not some gentle democratick ousting, was it, but a military coup. different political situation altogether, different social situation altogether.

 

[bimble]

no it was not meant to be a party "like new years eve". nye traditionally an annual event. morsi's overthrow by the army not some gentle democratick ousting, was it, but a military coup.

Yeah, ok, women should have stayed well out of it at home.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yeah, ok, women should have stayed well out of it at home.

i am surprised by your change of heart. i didn't think someone like you would be so craven.

 

[ViolentPanda]

As you are someone who shouts fascist and racist at anyone " farting out " outrage at mass rape I'm hardly surprised

Hook, line and sinker.

I don't shout out "racist" and "fascist" at "anyone" who's outraged, that's a fatuous fib by you that's of a piece with your attempts to lie about other posters' views on other threads.

Last time I checked UKIP were hoovering up votes by the thousand in traditional working class labour strongholds . Ditto le pens FN . Drawing a massive vote from former solid communist party strongholds . Pegida were attracting 100,000 plus at their waves of demos well before NYE. The vast bulk of its support and even leadership is solidly working class in composition .

Last time I checked, UKIP were garnering votes - but never enough to win a seat in Parliament - in communities with all sorts of class compositions, and that they'd won council wards in as many middle class areas, as in working class.
As for PEGIDA, unless you're a complete knobber, you're well aware that the dynamic that's seen the rise of PEGIDA in Germany is at least half down to the issues in the East following reunification, and the economic and social problems that has caused.

Plainly, without a shadow of a doubt, the populist right and far right have exploited working class fears and grievances to great effect .Griffins BNP were doing the same until their usual implosion . Same with the likes of the EDL . Gordon Brown lost an election after he called a life long labour voting pensioner who politely brought up mass immigration as " that awful racist woman " , which is pretty mild compared to the shit gets thrown round here . And the " narzi scum " insults shouted in Calais .. And yet again we have yourself announcing " no..it's all bollocks....nothing to see here...move along . It's all wrong, you're only imagining it "

Where have I said anything of the sort, jug-ears?

It's fucking inescapable there's massive working class concern over these issues . And that it's almost overwhelmingly from that demographic the right are being bolstered . If you've not met any working class people who are fucked off about this stuff I suspect it's got a great deal to with your habit of dismissing them as " farting out " stuff.

Except that I didn't dismiss Anudder Oik , did I? I dismiss most of what you say because in my opinion even when what you say has a modicum of truth to it, it's still tainted by the aggressive steam-rolling you attempt on anyone who disagrees with you, and the way you manipulate facts to fit your thesis.

Why in the name of fuck would anyone want to talk to someone if your and your mates type of shitty attitude is all they're going to get thrown back in their face ? It's a question that needs putting to the wider left . Because its fucking abysmal behaviour .

Ah, the old "obviously your friends don't tell you the truth because you're a cunt" gambit. Tired even when the Swappies used to use it in the '80s.

 

[sihhi]

Agreed. But one of the things that's scared me the most is the testimony of that teenaged girl who was attacked in the middle of a crowded street in Paris on new years eve. She said very clearly that, as far as she could tell, the 20 or more men who joined in the attack on her, ripped her clothes off, were not known to each other, that it just seemed to start out of nowhere and more and more people joined in.

The Paris event broadcast by the BBC 'I was stripped and assaulted in Paris attack', 14/01/2016, Victoria Derbyshire - BBC Two they spoke no French at all - we also don't know their heritage if they were Moroccans, Algerians or not. It's monstrous.

Darkness and party atmosphere of people mean sexual harassment in groups can happen inside the pockets of large crowds, the outer edge of a group of 20 shields what's happening from the view of others.

For Cologne, the police logs leaked to the press detail a series of N African or Mediterranean attackers, and phones and money are stolen in most of them alongside the groping/sexual harassment.

Sexual violence is inflicted in a big way on refugee routes, both victims and perpetrators foreign heritage, that's why some try smaller boats - lorries no longer work - with people they trust and why movement often happens at night away from people, allowing harrassment to occur.
According to FRONTEX which met on on Monday, the number of people since New Years Day who have died trying to reach EU Greece from Turkey was 149 counted as dead or missing was 149. Apparently on the night of 22 January, 42 - men and women - including 18 children drowned.
A BBC report today has this

"Two hundred people have drowned trying to get to Greece this month and more deaths were reported on Thursday. Twenty-four bodies, including those of 10 children, were recovered by the Greek coast guard after a boat sank off Samos, officials said."

 

[ViolentPanda]

Socialist workers party. The article they ran was written by an ostrich. you know? Evasive, far right scare mongering. Socialist party has nothing. Die Linke, in Germany has nothing.

Can you tell me which other sources of organized left I can consult?

die Linke is a coalition. Part of the reason they may "have nothing" is that like anything managed by a committee, they can never fucking agree on anything.

 

[bimble]

The Paris event broadcast by the BBC 'I was stripped and assaulted in Paris attack', 14/01/2016, Victoria Derbyshire - BBC Two they spoke no French at all - we also don't know their heritage if they were Moroccans, Algerians or not. It's monstrous.

She says she thinks they did speak some French, but none of them actually spoke much whilst they were doing what they were doing, and not to her at all. She says the worst thing was how come so many men 'unfamiliar with eachother' could behave in this way.