Cologne attacks: mayor lambasted for telling women to keep men at arm's length

[Boiler 43,426]

Update from the Guardian, now remember this is about as hard left Islamopolgist as you can get:

Tensions rise in Germany over handling of mass sexual assaults in Cologne
Police and media accused of cover-up to avoid stoking anti-immigrant feeling after witnesses say men who carried out attacks were of Arab appearance.

A ferocious debate has erupted in Germany over the handling of mass sexual assaults and muggings carried out by groups of young males during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, amid accusations of a police and media cover-up over fears of whipping up anti-foreigner sentiment in the wake of the migrant crisis.

About 100 complaints have now been made to police, two-thirds of which are linked to sexual assault, including two rapes. According to police and witnesses, the perpetrators were of north African and Arab appearance, although neither the identity nor origin of any of them has so far been established.

The incidents have highlighted the tensions that have been bubbling in German society in the wake of Angela Merkel’s controversial open-door policy towards refugees, which has seen more than 1 million people arrive in the past 12 months, with thousands more coming every day.

They have triggered renewed calls from rightwing populists such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the anti-Islamic movement Pegida for Merkel to put a stop to the mass immigration.

As women’s groups demonstrated on the square outside Cologne’s main railway station, calling on the government to do more to tackle male violence, fury over the attacks only increased as police admitted it was unlikely they would manage to convict any of the perpetrators. Later on Wednesday the authorities said German police had identified three suspects in connection with the attacks but had not yet made any arrests.

Police in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf have also reported similar incidents but on a smaller scale than Cologne, where between 500 and 1,000 men may have been involved in the attacks as revellers met outside the city’s Gothic cathedral to see in the new year.

According to witnesses, the males, between 15 and 35 years old, tightly surrounded women in groups of 30 or 40, before groping them and mugging them and their partners. Many threw firecrackers into the crowds, adding to the mayhem that ensued, which later forced the police to clear the square.

Police have said the men appeared to have been coordinated, comparing their modus operandi to that of criminal gangs that have operated in strength for several years in the area and turning it into a place many Cologners avoid after dark. Known locally as antänzer (waltzers), the men snuggle up to their victims, often twisting a leg around them in an apparently playful fashion, which causes them to lose balance, whereupon the perpetrator uses the opportunity to whip a wallet or mobile phone from a pocket or bag.

Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, managed to stoke the anger with her advice to women to protect themselves from such attacks in future by keeping “more than an arm’s length away” from strangers. With an eye on carnival celebrations that kick off in the city next month, she urged women to “stick together in groups”. She was lambasted for the remarks on social media and later apologised, saying they had not been reported in their full context.

Manuela Schwesig, the federal minister for family affairs, condemned Reker’s remarks, saying: “The time when women were not supposed to wear miniskirts is over.”

The government and local politicians have been at pains to point out there is no evidence that refugees were involved in the attacks. “There’s no evidence that we’re dealing here with people who are refugees,” said Reker, who was stabbed in October during her campaign to become Cologne’s mayor by a man who disliked her pro-refugee stance. She told reporters that any suggestions that the perpetratorsmight have been refugees were “absolutely impermissible”.

But many on the far right were just as keen to emphasise that there was no evidence as yet to suggest the contrary. Both left and right are aware of how politically combustible it could be if there were any indication that Germans’ willingness to welcome refugees has been abused.

Cologne’s police chief, Wolfgang Albers, has also said: “So far, we have no knowledge of who the perpetrators are.”

The events have since come to dominate German media, but following a barrage of complaints on social media that the New Year’s Eve events were deliberately under-reported amid fears they would encourage anti-immigrant sentiment, Germany’s public broadcaster, ZDF, was forced to apologise for its decision not to report on the attacks until Tuesday, four days after they had occurred.

“The news situation was clear enough,” the show’s deputy chief editor, Elmar Thevessen, wrote on the Heute (Today) programme’s Facebook page. “It was a mistake of the 7pm Heute show not to at least report the incidents.”

Andreas Scheuer of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU, accused the media of exercising too much caution and forming a “cartel of silence”.

“I appeal to everyone that we report with clarity and truth,” he told the German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. He said at a time when people were concerned about the future of German society, after so many refugee arrivals, that it was wrong to “#####-foot around with the truth” rather than “reflect reality”.

Kristina Schröder, a former family minister from the CDU, said it was high time for Germany to deal with the cultural differences. “For a long time it was taboo, but we must grapple with masculinity norms that legitimise violence in Muslim culture,” she tweeted.

Sascha Lobo, a columnist with Spiegel magazine, also said it was appropriate for Germans to engage in some straight-talking. “Yes, there does exist a problematic perception of women in Islamic-oriented cultural circles. And yes, one must examine how this perception of women also results in violence in Germany,” though he went on to insist it was important to differentiate between “the Cologne perpetrators and those who apparently look like the Cologne perpetrators”.

Among the increasing number of victims who came forward to tell their accounts of what had happened to them, Michelle, 18, told the station NTV how she had suddenly been surrounded by 20 to 30 men.

“We were a group of 11 people. We held hands – simply desperate that none of us would get torn away – the men were in front of us. They groped us and we tried our best to get away as soon as possible.” Only afterwards did some of them realise their mobile phones had been stolen.

They watched as the men set off fireworks in front of the cathedral, unhindered by the police. Their attempts to re-enter the station to get trains home were blocked by police, who she said prevented anyone from entering “because of the huge crowds”.

In an interview with Die Welt newspaper, the respected criminologist Christian Pfeiffer described the men as “largely young, single men, who have arrived in this country and don’t know what to do with themselves.”

He said: “The clarification of their asylum status took such a long time that their frustrations and anger only grew.”

But he said to label them as pickpocket gangs was missing a wider point. “That is a distraction from the problem that we have seen in recent times and for which we must find an answer. This is an alarm signal that we need to do more.”

Others compared the lack of inhibition to sexually assault women in a crowd, where their actions could go largely unnoticed, to events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Arab spring, where women found themselves similarly molested. Observers also made a connection between German politicians’ reluctance to confront the issues in Cologne head-on with the nervousness of British politicians to tackle the issue of Asian sex-grooming gangs in the UK.

Police said they were still trying to establish the extent to which the attacks might have been coordinated. But Ralf Jäger, North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister, said his suspicion was the men had organised themselves via social media, though a coordinated plan to cover several cities was unlikely.

“But my own feeling tells me that they didn’t just accidentally meet up,” he said. “Rather group dynamics were likely at play” involving “inhibition thresholds, in combination with alcohol and criminal energy from some of them, that fell away”.

The federal interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, criticised police for “failing to do a proper job”, not least after they filed a report saying the night had “passed off peacefully”.

But the minister was slapped down by Cologne police leaders. While admitting the police had made operational mistakes, Rainer Wendt, head of the police trade union DPoIG, accused De Maizière of joint responsibility for what he called an insufficient police presence.

“De Maizière needs to ask where were the many federal police officers who should have been on the duty roster at Cologne station?” he told Hessischer Rundfunk radio. “For months they have been diverted to Bavaria,” he said, on border security duty linked to the refugee arrivals.

As police said they were questioning three men in connection with the events, but had made no arrests, Wendt warned that such attacks could easily happen again because those involved would have “little to fear” from the law as it was unlikely any of them would ever get caught.

“It is highly uncertain whether, in the case of the attacks in Cologne, we will see even a single prosecution,” he told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper, citing a lack of police resources. He said that if perpetrators were not caught “they will feel completely encouraged to strike again in the shadow of their anonymity”.

Wendt said analysis of CCTV footage of the events on Thursday evening and early Friday morning was not likely to deliver concrete proof of an individual’s involvement in the attacks, due to the dark and the size of the crowds.

Police chief Albers, who has called the attacks “a new dimension in crime”, rejected calls for his resignation, saying he was needed to coordinate the policing of Cologne’s carnival.

[B_J 2,752]

I shall invoke my esteemed former colleague Penny Lane's well-known statement: "I never said that." I believe my comments in this thread have been limited to:

A.) This is gross; women are treated like scum in some societies that also proclaim them to be domestic angels; women have a right to be people out in the world without being assaulted¹;

B) Sweet Jesus, I love the West Wing²;

C) I defer to the Patriarchy like a good little woman, and savor the irony of a demand made for my reply in a thread about how men disrespect the agency of women³; and

D) This summary.

Unless you are creeping in the little green "+1" counts to determine who likes posts that you don't. Are +1's speech? It's actually a topic that has been considered at law. In the case Bland v. Roberts, 730 F.3d 368 (4th Cir. Va. 2013), the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Facebook "likes" are protected speech under the First Amendment. Potentially a VJ +1 could then be considered speech. Under such an argument, when I gave a +1 to Rob L⁴ for his question:

it is arguable that I was endorsing this question. However, I only gave a +1 because I thought it was a relevant question to ask. I don't know you, so I don't know the answer to this question, and I think in the circumstances it can give some context. Granted, the phrasing is snarky, but hey, this is VJ. Nevertheless, I did not directly challenge you.

Most pertinently, creeping in the +1s is weird. But hey, I'm out of my depth and should go back to posting gifs.

• http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/580980-cologne-attacks-mayor-lambasted-for-telling-women-to-keep-men-at-arms-length/?p=7957085
• http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/580980-cologne-attacks-mayor-lambasted-for-telling-women-to-keep-men-at-arms-length/?p=7957249
• http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/580980-cologne-attacks-mayor-lambasted-for-telling-women-to-keep-men-at-arms-length/?p=7957316
• http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/580980-cologne-attacks-mayor-lambasted-for-telling-women-to-keep-men-at-arms-length/?p=7957207

This has to be one of the greatest posts of all time.

I still don't know how to post GIFs or videos, and you threw in footnotes! My admiration for you knows no bounds.

[ExPatty 502]

Muslim has just been shot by police in paris as he screamed allahu akbar apparently with a suicide vest on. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3388512/Man-shot-outside-Paris-police-station-terrorist-attack-anniversary-Charlie-Hebdo-shootings.html

It's okay, though, there is absolutely nothing about islam that makes people more inclined to violence than any other religion.

Edited January 7, 2016 by ExPatty

[Boiler 43,426]

Muslim has just been shot by police in paris as he screamed allahu akbar apparently with a suicide vest on. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3388512/Man-shot-outside-Paris-police-station-terrorist-attack-anniversary-Charlie-Hebdo-shootings.html

It's okay, though, there is absolutely nothing about islam that makes people more inclined to violence than any other religion.

Obviously NOT a Muslim.

Can not even go around whispering God is Great without getting shot, what are we coming to.

[ExPatty 502]

Obviously NOT a Muslim.

Can not even go around whispering God is Great without getting shot, what are we coming to.

Yep, it's like a modern day version of this not a true scotsman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman No real muslim would kill in the name of his religion.

[ExPatty 502]

muslims are crackheads?

Unwilling to divine any information at all from a person's association with a group is a hypocrisy of yours, considering you have no problem doing it with police. Why don't you judge them all individually?

[smilesammich 10,727]

Unwilling to divine any information at all from a person's association with a group is a hypocrisy of yours, considering you have no problem doing it with police. Why don't you judge them all individually?

oh dear, you have a real problem assuming you know how i think. and i'm getting tired of trying to explain my opinions to you over and over. i don't judge all cops as bad. that's absolutely absurd. why do you think all muslims are bad? that's really stereotypical, not to mention flat out stupid. how many muslims are in this country? how many are doing bad things right now? why aren't we living in total chaos and in constant fear of beheadings if muslims are all bad? watch how you twist my opinions because i can easily twist back.

[smilesammich 10,727]

Unwilling to divine any information at all from a person's association with a group is a hypocrisy of yours, considering you have no problem doing it with police. Why don't you judge them all individually?

eta, while i appreciate your exercise in creative writing, your story - which read more like an attempt for you to dumb down bigotry into a tale of human resources for my benefit, lol - was quite unrelated to the topic at hand. you essentially compared drug addicts to muslims and countries to shop keepers. while a little funny, pointless.

Edited January 7, 2016 by elitesthuglib

[smilesammich 10,727]

Obviously NOT a Muslim.

Can not even go around whispering God is Great without getting shot, what are we coming to.

with all the muslims in france, and all of them being prone to violence and wanting to kill infidels, it's amazing that only ONE GUY rushed the police station. they must all really be plotting, biding their time.

[ExPatty 502]

why do you think all muslims are bad?

Link to where I said this?

eta, while i appreciate your exercise in creative writing, your story - which read more like an attempt for you to dumb down bigotry into a tale of human resources for my benefit, lol - was quite unrelated to the topic at hand. you essentially compared drug addicts to muslims and countries to shop keepers. while a little funny, pointless.

It was an analogy intended to demonstrate a truth even you hold dear (despite arguing to the contrary here for argument's sake) which is that one's association and inclusion into a classification can hint at how they may behave.

with all the muslims in france, and all of them being prone to violence and wanting to kill infidels, it's amazing that only ONE GUY rushed the police station. they must all really be plotting, biding their time.

You think all muslims are "prone to violence and wanting to kill infidels"? The way you worded it hinted at sarcasm, but nobody else here has said it so I guess you have had a change in heart and that's the view you're adopting.

[smilesammich 10,727]

Link to where I said this?

It was an analogy intended to demonstrate a truth even you hold dear (despite arguing to the contrary here for argument's sake) which is that one's association and inclusion into a classification can hint at how they may behave.

You think all muslims are "prone to violence and wanting to kill infidels"? The way you worded it hinted at sarcasm, but nobody else here has said it so I guess you have had a change in heart and that's the view you're adopting.

oh you mean we can't put words in each other's mouths without links? damn. guess you have to stop.

yeah, i get what you were trying to do. you're so busy twisting what i've said and assuming i hold opinions that i do not, that you fail to see that you've no point to argue "one's association and inclusion into a classification can hint at how they may behave"

with me. you want to go on and on about how a person's religion can predict their behavior. keep going. what can be done using this knowledge?

oh yeah, you know it.

really sucks having your opinion manipulated and thrown back at you with an expectation to defend unrecognizable garbage huh. maybe answer my question, so islam is the culprit. are you for rounding up muslims? spying on mosques? infiltrating mosques and setting up attacks? inclusion or exclusion, that's what it really comes down to.

[Darnell 8,478]

whoa - there's a level of profiling that's useful. Just reminding anyone reading today.

[smilesammich 10,727]

whoa - there's a level of profiling that's useful. Just reminding anyone reading today.

the problem comes in when you consider who is setting the boundaries of profiling and what is done with the information gathered. the science of profiling works wonders, but when dealing with actual people not so much.

[Darnell 8,478]

thats ok too, as the underlying data for profiling is a moving target, over time.

[ExPatty 502]

oh you mean we can't put words in each other's mouths without links? damn. guess you have to stop.

yeah, i get what you were trying to do. you're so busy twisting what i've said and assuming i hold opinions that i do not, that you fail to see that you've no point to argue "one's association and inclusion into a classification can hint at how they may behave"

with me. you want to go on and on about how a person's religion can predict their behavior. keep going. what can be done using this knowledge?

oh yeah, you know it.

really sucks having your opinion manipulated and thrown back at you with an expectation to defend unrecognizable garbage huh. maybe answer my question, so islam is the culprit. are you for rounding up muslims? spying on mosques? infiltrating mosques and setting up attacks? inclusion or exclusion, that's what it really comes down to.

Since you seem unwilling to even acknowledge that one's association with a religion can influence their behavior I see no point in going further down the road about what I would do about it.