Refugee situation / EU response - rolling news

The good news is, there's a massive feminist backlash against people making this a race issue. Massive as in "crowds of young women standing around in public spaces, having spontaneous debates concerning the menfolk." Because if it hadn't been for the theft and pigmentation, the victims would have been expected to laugh it off.

It was my impression that the victims were being expected to laugh it off because and not despite of the "pigmentation" involved. It's a very inconvenient story for Merkel's policy goals.

The reporting on this "assault" -- which is basically a series of unrelated crimes in the middle of a shitshow near the Bahnhof and made possible by some very shitty policing and crowd control -- has been awful. I have yet to read an entirely coherent description of the night's events -- much contradiction everywhere, including what the police say and what has been attributed to police sources. The Pegida crowd of course attributed reticence to report on an as-yet-unclear story as part of the massive Gutmenschen media conspiracy to thrust Sharia law upon us, and the media has since been responding as stupidly as you'd expect.

I don't think you need a Sharia law conspiracy to understand motivations to ignore this story -- they aren't trying to establish Sharia Law but Merkel does believe that bringing refugees into the country is both a compassionate policy and a productive one. This kind of thing undermines that policy. You don't need to be a conspiracy monger to understand why this might be an inconvenient story.

And it's not a coincidence that at least 18 asylum seekers were tied to the assault. They are coming from a region where the oppression of women is pandemic. You can't bring in a large number of people from a vastly different culture w/ vastly different values and then act surprised when they don't immediately sign onto egalitarian Western values. It's not a series of unrelated crimes (which isn't to say there's a refugee conspiracy) and it's not the fault of the police and crowd control. That's just more shifting the blame to avoid the awkward facts.

xxxpost - This was p much business as usual for a NYE, groping, rape and all. Only news is, they weren't drunk white guys.

Egalitarianism does not apply to girls in Germany btw. Pretty much everyone accepted this until NYE.

Acc to the NYT German police called this an unprecedented number of reports for NYE.

Taking advantage of the New Year’s Eve street party, hundreds of young men broke into groups and formed rings around young women, refusing to let them escape, the authorities said. Some groped victims while others stole wallets or cellphones.

Witnesses described the atmosphere around the city’s central train station as aggressive and threatening, with firecrackers being thrown into the crowd. The women who were attacked screamed and tried to fight their way free, a man who had struggled to protect his girlfriend told German public television.

The Cologne police added that they had received 90 complaints from victims, including one who said she had been raped. No arrests have been made.

like if this is a normal NYE in Germany the country is far more fucked than i realized

I am saying, Mordy, that there is very little evidence that this was AN assault, and very little evidence that there is any connection among the various assaults except time and place (and when the time is New Year's Eve and the place is the Domplatz, that's less of a connection that you normally think), and very little produced in the way of comparisons to last New Year's Eve in Cologne (my friends there tend to get the fuck out of Dodge), and to run with this as if there are policy questions to be analyzed and fought over before the facts are at all clear is, well, entirely modern and still dumb.

x-post: German papers, especially the local ones, have not been very good at distinguishing official sources from "my cousin Larry the racist cop" sources in reporting what police say, and the Times prints All The International News We Can Translate In Time.

Again, victims of sex crimes are, or feel like they are, routinely shamed into not reporting assaults. If they get mugged or assaulted by foreigners, they ARE expected to report the crime. Feminists claim that's why the number of reports is so high, and not because of immigrants' exuberant criminal and sexual energy or w/e.

Again, it's not about the immigrant's exuberant criminal and sexual energy. It's about them coming from a culture that regularly degrades women - forces them to cover themselves sometimes from head to toes, that has honor killings, that does not believe in marital rape, that allows children to be married off, etc.

What, every single one of them comes from the same place? Do we know where they come from yet?

xpost - Apparently the ladies feel like things aren't going so well regarding the domination of women in our own culture?

The 31 people linked to the violence in a police report have been identified by name and include nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians and four Syrians, said an Interior Ministry spokesman, Tobias Plate. Two German citizens, an Iraqi, a Serb and a United States citizen were also among those linked to crimes that night, Mr. Plate said.

xpost, You're right though, they need to see things in perspective :3

A US citizen! Bro culture!

At last carnival in Aalborg, much smaller than Köln, there were four attempted rapes over a couple of hours, two succesfully. This wasn't really groping attacks, but organized burglaries / assault, it seems to me from reading. Gangs from Düsseldorf. To put it on different cultural values seems massively simplistic, though of course debating the problems of women in MENA along with our problems is always good.

Wes, I will not deny that Western culture is far from ideal in terms of full egalitarian rights and protections for every member of our society. But comparing women in the West to women in the Middle East as though to suggest there's some kind of parity is slightly disingenuous don't you think?

comparing "the treatment of"*

It's about them coming from a culture that regularly degrades women - forces them to cover themselves sometimes from head to toes, that has honor killings, that does not believe in marital rape, that allows children to be married off, etc.

This covers all of those countries of origin, does it?

Mordy conveniently forgot to include the following paragraph from the same article:

He said that a vast majority of the 32 criminal acts documented by the federal police on the night had been linked to theft and bodily injury. Three were related to sexual assaults, but the police had no names of suspects tied to those acts, Mr. Plate said.

Wes, I will not deny that Western culture is far from ideal in terms of full egalitarian rights and protections for every member of our society. But comparing women in the West to women in the Middle East as though to suggest there's some kind of parity is slightly disingenuous don't you think?

Do you share those egalitarian values? Do they apply to all human beings or just Westerners? Or just your favorite Westerners?

What are you arguing? That this isn't a real issue? Merkel thinks it is. Norway thinks it is. I suspect anyone who isn't ideologically committed to avoiding it thinks it is. It doesn't mean that the borders need to be closed, or that the refugees all need to be shipped home, but it does mean that there's an issue that needs to be addressed even if it's inconvenient.

Wes, please be more specific about what you're asking. I share egalitarian values. I think they should apply to all human beings, including Westerns and including my favorite Westerners. Who do you suppose my favorite Westerners are, though? John Ford?

I was hoping it would be Hawks.

If you were truly egalitarian, you wouldn' try to separate people by ethnicity, nationality, or behaviour at all. Period. Because treating people different makes them different, and nothing else.

If you can't think that way, please don't call yourself an egalitarian. It's misleading.

That's silly. Egalitarians favor equality for all people. Being egalitarian doesn't mean ignoring the very real differences in various cultures and communities.

They are less serious than you think.

I'm a freshly converted Christian nutjob, so don't mind me.

For instance: "Everyone should have the right to perform their own cultural practices." Excellent egalitarian statement - everyone should be equal to behave according to their traditions. Except that some of those traditions include honor killing which isn't an egalitarian practice at all but rather a horrifically misogynistic one. So in cases where two aspects of egalitarian faith collide (belief in respecting all traditions, belief in women not being murdered to cover the shame of their being raped) a real egalitarian picks the one that fits their values.

xp oh well that makes sense then

fwiw South Carolina doesn't believe in marital rape, not sure about honour killings.

So what do you think should be done, Mordy?

I think there a few things. I think that programs like Norway's to educate refugees as a way to speed up the acculturation process are essential. I think allowing refugee communities that are distinct from the general pop is a disaster and new arrivals should be seeded into a variety of already established communities, also to speed up that process. I think that on the deterrence side host countries need to aggressively investigate + watch recent arrivals, both before they come (w/ the understanding that intelligence gathering on refugees coming from a war torn country will be difficult) and certainly after they arrive. I think there should be a no tolerance policy for anyone convicted of a crime (or at least certain kinds of crimes should be cause for immediate deportation). I'm sure there are other good ideas as well. Ultimately if you're going to accept refugees into your country - something that is morally desirable (and possibly even desirable from an economic/demographic pov) you need to be v hands-on in how you integrate them into your society.

All that said, I don't think there's a bulletproof answer. There will always be tensions - but the current gov has an obligation both to its citizens and to its refugees to reduce those tensions as much as possible. Otherwise the right-wing /will/ come back into power and that won't be good for anyone, least of which the refugees.

of all the things to throw money at wrt refugees, surveillance is quite low down the list

I disagree. Even if it is a tiny minority of refugees who cause problems that is sufficient to poison people against them as a group. It's not fair but you can't make policy based on how you want people to act but on how they actually do act. Another incident like the recent Paris attacks could be extraordinarily dangerous to European politics.

how you want people to act but on how they actually do act

I am utterly convinced these are one and the same. I guess it won't help my argument if I start dropping bible quotes?

You're convinced that people act the way you want them to act?

I mean this is all putting aside the fact that there may be motivations for keeping Paris style attacks from occurring besides just fear of radicalizing the polity.

xpos - They become like we as a society subconsciously want them to become. Because people always pick up on some level if you like them, or if you're afraid of them. So if you act warily around $group, they become wary themselves.

And my English is getting worse.

Let me put it this way: There may be objective differences between people, but you must never, ever allow yourself to differentiate subjectively between people. You can do it, of course, but you need to catch yourself doing it every time.

This will get easier over time.

I think those are pretty good answers Mordy even if I take issue with some of the things you say, particularly around deportation

The reason I ask is that this is the challenge of this generation of European politicians: can they rise to it? Or will they just point fingers?

I'm not sure what link is being made between the drunk mobs in cologne and the paris attacks carried out by french nationals. increase spending on security if you want, but why would you target refugees as a group? have people follow congolese women who don't leave the house because they don't speak english, whose children are all officially born on the 1st of january. you could make exactly the same arguments re: public opinion for general surveillance of muslims

also how do you surveil hundreds of thousands of people? where do you deport a refugee?

Right

There is a law and order issue here, not an immigration issue

I want to believe that, but I can understand why right wing politicians would disregard that idea as humanist bullshit

There are certainly infrastructure and integration challenges to mass immigration but the question is, is Europe up to it? Does it have the imagination and generosity to make this not a problem but an opportunity? Or will it hide its head in the sand?

Now I can't figure out if you're being sincere or mocking clichés?

Why would I be mocking that?? Jesus you people