Hundreds of women assaulted in German NYE celebrations

[Bernie Gunther]

I think it safe to say that tinfoil merchants are doing a roaring trade today ...

 

[bimble]

Is it too tinfoil-hat to speculate about IS co-ordination/involvement...or have we done that already?

I think yes, to both.

 

[camouflage]

The shock-waves from, and response(s) to these events will certainly play well with IS. As with Paris, they will be pleased to (indirectly?) punish Syrian migrants by stoking animosity in the receiving zones. Is it too tinfoil-hat to speculate about IS co-ordination/involvement...or have we done that already?

Apparently it's a completely bonkers idea and anyone speculating on it is completely out there, sipping cocktails on Pluto. Holographic groppers because the jooz etc.

 

[brogdale]

OK, so what do we think about Heiko Maas' statements?

"For such a horde of people to meet and commit such crimes, it has to have been planned somehow," Maas told the country's Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "The suspicion is that a specific date and an expected crowd was picked."

He added: "Nobody can tell me that this was not coordinated or prepared."

 

[bimble]

Apparently 55% of all asylum seekers who arrived in Germany during 2015 were under 25, with the majority of those being teenaged boys, who came with no family. Just saying, that’s very young isn’t it.

"As of November 2015, an estimated 30 percent of those applying for asylum this year were under 18, according to Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Another 25 percent were in their late teens or early 20s, many of them making the journey alone."
Berlin's refugee youth

 

[J Ed]

Apparently it's a completely bonkers idea and anyone speculating on it is completely out there, sipping cocktails on Pluto. Holographic groppers because the jooz etc.

If it isn't then can you give us a plausible scenario explaining both how Daesh coordinated the attacks and managed to keep their involvement entirely secret during the planning stages, execution and aftermath including arrests?

 

[BigMoaner]

I think the separation of the Left from the working class has been in process for a very long time and is a large part of the problem.

the uncomfortable thing for the much of the left to grasp is that a lot of the working class do not want to see the areas they live have a large influx of migrants. Rather than building socialist utopias, they like the towns they live in, they don't want to see their wages undercut by cheaper workers.

how the many on the left cope with that is another matter. my inkling is writing them all off as bigots is going is not going to help anyone. I like diversity, where I live is incredibly diverse, but I long ago stopped writing off complaints/worries/anxieties about immigration as always and entirely bigoted.

 

[frogwoman]

it's certainly possible that ex-daesh or ex-assad fighters were involved in this but i'd strongly doubt either organisation had a hand in the central planning

 

[J Ed]

OK, so what do we think about Heiko Maas' statements?

​

He is trying to save face. If ISIS is behind the attacks then they can be blamed, if not then it is the failure of the German state's policies and institutions.

 

[frogwoman]

the uncomfortable thing for the much of the left to grasp is that a lot of the working class do not want to see the areas they live have a large influx of migrants. Rather than building socialist utopias, they like the towns they live in, they don't want to see their wages undercut by cheaper workers.

how the many on the left cope with that is another matter. my inkling is writing them all off as bigots is going is not going to help anyone. I like diversity, where I live is incredibly diverse, but I long ago stopped writing off complaints/worries/anxieties about immigration as always and entirely bigoted.

yeah but on the other hand you do get abominations like yarl's wood and thousands of people getting deported every year who've lived here for decades, for seemingly arbitrary reasons.

 

[Greebozz]

Bet Germany weren't saying that in the 60s when they required cheap labour from Turkey, Eastern Europe etc?

Just checking, is all.

The famous diplomat Henry Kissinger was recently interviewed by Sky and he said that the Syrian migration situation was unprecedented and a new phenomenon. I agree with this, to me it appears completely uncharted territory which makes it worrying but also quite interesting and important to monitor how things work out.

Just for the record can we forget about who is on the left and who is on the right and and instead look at world situations with a clean sheet doing our best to discuss wise solutions with no political baggage from the past.

 

[Brainaddict]

I feel that what this excellent thread needs is some Laurie Penny.

Sarcasm aside, while I don't agree with her whole NS article about it, I do agree with this:

So let me be clear: sexual violence is never, ever acceptable. Not for cultural reasons. Not for religious reasons. Not because the perpetrators are really angry and disenfranchised. There can be no quarter for systemic misogyny. And if we’re serious about that, there’s not a country or culture on earth that won’t have to take a long, hard look at itself. I stand with the many, many Muslim, Arab, Asian and immigrant feminists organising against sexism and misogyny within and beyond their own communities. Nobody seems to have thought to ask them how best to deal with systemic sexual violence - even though attacks on Muslim women have increased since the terrorist attacks in Paris last year.

The sensible thing to do in response to the Cologne attacks would be to call, as many German feminists are doing, for a far more rigorous attitude to rape and sexual assault across Europe. Instead, the solution on the table seems to be to clamp down on migration. That fits in with the shibboleth that only savage, foreign men and hardened criminals rape and abuse women - despite the fact that most rapes, in Germany and elsewhere, are committed by people known to the victim, and migrants have not been shown to be more or less sexually aggressive than any other group. As usual, white supremacist patriarchy only concerns itself with women’s safety and women’s dignity when rape and sexual assault can be pinned on cultural ‘outsiders’.

I also understand her tendency towards sarcasm below - I do feel there are some very simple-minded people on this thread who think that reminding people of Western misogyny is excusing Middle Eastern misogyny. When, clearly, the people pointing this out have been trying to counterbalance THE MIDDLE EAST HAS A SEXUAL ASSAULT PROBLEM that some people are yelling. Well yes, it does, but it is a little like a Labour politician shouting that the Tories have a lying problem. It's probably true that Tories lie more than Labour, or on average claim higher expenses. But surely we do need to talk about both?

Saying ‘sexism is also part of Western culture’ does not mean that the experience of women in the West is exactly the same as the experience of women in Middle Eastern dictatorships and war zones. Do you know why that is? Can you guess? It’s because the world is not divided into ‘things that are exactly the same as each other’ and ‘things that are total opposites.’

I actually can’t believe I’m having to explain this right now. I thought we covered this in kindergarten. Those of us who have moved beyond that level can, if we really try hard, understand that it’s not either ‘sexism is exclusively practised by Muslim men’ and ‘sexism is exactly the same everywhere.’ This is what we call a ‘false dichotomy’ when we get to big-kid school.

The oppression of women is a global phenomenon because patriarchy is a global phenomenon. It’s embedded in the economic and social structures of almost every nation and community on earth. Sexism and misogyny, however, look different across boundaries of culture and religion, as well as across divides of race and class and between generations.

 

[bimble]

He is trying to save face. If ISIS is behind the attacks then they can be blamed, if not then it is the failure of the German state's policies and institutions.

He did not mention ISIS but for sure, the more they can say that this was planned by some evil mastermind the more it lets them off the hook for the complete failure of the police to deal with what happened.

 

[DotCommunist]

OK, so what do we think about Heiko Maas' statements?

​

thats just 'I recon' isn't it?

 

[treelover]

'Night Of Shame,' Week Of Soul-Searching: Cologne Attacks Divide Germany

Decent summary of 'what we know' on NPR

 

[not-bono-ever]

OK, so what do we think about Heiko Maas' statements?

​

coordinated meaning a meetup of itinerant young men , almost certainly. as with meetups with groups of feckless young men everywhere.

coordinated in an orchestrated and purposeful rape and pillage orgy ? - no evidence to support this that has been presented.

 

[frogwoman]

Nigerian care workers to be deported after immigration raids

it's not as simple as the anti-immigration right portrays it and stuff like this always seems to get left out of the discussion.

A female care worker said that she was woken up in the early hours of the morning by battering on her door. “I thought there was a fire,” she said. “It is true that I had overstayed my visa but many of us have worked as carers for years and years, some for more than 10 years. In that time we have always paid our taxes, our national insurance and our pension contributions and have had all the police checks.

 

[not-bono-ever]

also its the fuckin Bild...

 

[Joe Reilly]

No. anti-racism is a bourgeois ideology and the root of the problems that many PoC face in day-to-day society. We have to be against the concept of race entirely. the anti-racist elevates race to sacred levels (reification.)

'Anti-racism is a bourgeois ideology?' Hardly news. But what isn't? Class should of course trump race as an anchor of identity. But you have to start somewhere.

 

[bimble]

But surely we do need to talk about both?

Yep. But we don't want to talk about both, it seems we'd prefer to just say it's a universal problem etc. I'm going to brazenly say (again) that I thought that article was really good, anyway, regardless of who wrote it.

 

[not-bono-ever]

ISIS are smart. they however are not fuckin SPECTRE , with criminal tentacles in every city. All this IS linking to randoms is rather like the furore and hyperbole aroud thr tora bora caves and OBL.


which turned out to be ..er... a fucking cave rather than a command centre for GLOBAL TERROR

 

[hot air baboon]

....plenty of research gone on into prisons as a prime venue of radicalisation...there may well be a "link" between crime gangs & the jihadist movement that doesn't neccessitate direct orders being received from ISIS HQ in Raqqa...that's hardly how Al Queda worked either post 9/11...

http://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads...alisationandDeradicalisationin15Countries.pdf

 

[bimble]

....plenty of research gone on into prisons as a prime venue of radicalisation...there may well be a "link" between crime gangs & the jihadist movement that doesn't neccessitate direct orders being received from ISIS HQ in Raqqa...that's hardly how Al Queda worked either post 9/11...

http://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads...alisationandDeradicalisationin15Countries.pdf

I don't think religion / Islam is the best way to think about this. Because don't think groping and raping and street robbery have much to do with anyone's idea of piety.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Read some German history. They've had waves of mass immigration of millions as recently as the late 1940s, and several times in the 2nd half of the 19th century.

From the Middle East?

 

[not-bono-ever]

looking for patterns that probably dont exist.

im going to drop out of this thread for a while.

 

[frogwoman]

....plenty of research gone on into prisons as a prime venue of radicalisation...there may well be a "link" between crime gangs & the jihadist movement that doesn't neccessitate direct orders being received from ISIS HQ in Raqqa...that's hardly how Al Queda worked either post 9/11...

http://icsr.info/wp-content/uploads...alisationandDeradicalisationin15Countries.pdf

its a source of far-right radicalisation as well.

there might have been people there with daesh sympathies, there might have even been a few ex-fighters. i still don't see any evidence of central coordination by isis.

 

[frogwoman]

i think some people really want it to have been them though.

 

[camouflage]

If it isn't then can you give us a plausible scenario explaining both how Daesh coordinated the attacks and managed to keep their involvement entirely secret during the planning stages, execution and aftermath including arrests?

Sure, apparently North African/Middle Eastern criminal gangs were involved... Daesh doubtless have contacts of that kind due to drugs/weapons smuggling links. Fuck knows what the conversation would look like, but yeah... there's a thing we'd like you to arrange, just for a laff like, here's bag of money. Only needs to be a handful of personalities around the table in that smoky room- but a sense of obligation to 'gather the boys' can probably be leveraged off the back of whatever volume of usual day to day trade. What does it involve anyway, it's a flash mob ffs, the bulk of participants don't even need to know of any deeper game.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Good of you to take the time to reply to my post. You certainly laid out very clearly your thoughts and it's interesting to hear where you're coming from. I endeavoured to be as wise and compassionate and honourable in every aspect of my life. I respect all people from every race colour creed background sexual orientation. In my own possibly deluded mind everything I write here is the best analysis I'm able to produce. I'm very interested in sociology my joint degree was psychology and historic socialism. When my intelligence was last measured I was in the top 5%.

Never even mildly boast about your intelligence, because people may think you're a MENSA member. Why would that be bad? Because MENSA comprises the biggest bunch of apartheid-loving racist cunts - dressed up in sociobiological clothing- that I've ever had the misfortune to meet. Horrible people in the half-dozen regional branches I visited. People bang on about Freemasons, but they should be keeping an eye on MENSA members. People who recall Project Coast fondly need kneecapping.

That doesn't mean my opinions are correct or I am more or less valuable than any other human being. But I cannot tell a lie, a lot of the criticism my get does seem rather dumb. I wouldn't mind getting a little more respect, that would be much appreciated.

One doesn't garner respect just because on has a joint bachelors degree, or even multiple postgrad degrees. One earns respect through one's thoughts and actions.

 

[DotCommunist]

i think some people really want it to have been them though.

you can bet its gospel truth already on any up and coming far right agit prop