bbauska

As with all law; I am all for punishing those who do something wrong, and leaving the rest of the population alone

Excellent point. There are 16 suspects in the Cologne news years eve sexual assault case. I've seen reports that they were from Morroco and Tunisia. And reports that one said he was from Syria...
That would mean that 1, 099, 984 of the recent refugees landed in Germany were not guilty of any crime.

Which makes me wonder about this Sass

Evidence that there was a cover-up of the Cologne sex attacks. Merkel is in trouble I think. Difficult to see how she can hold the line against calls to scrap the madness now

Do you really think that Germans won't be able to keep this crime in perspective?

Sounds strangely similar to the millions of gun owners in the US and a large preponderance of them are law-abiding. I don't want them punished for the bad acts of a few.

You probably don't see the similarity.

Well, let's first of all punish those who took part. And make it clear that we do not tolerate such behaviour. I can see there was some slowness to react by German authorities, but that has to be the priority.

Slowness to react... Ok. What actually happened was that the police put out an announcement saying that NYE had passed peacefully. Then it become impossible to maintain that line in the face of dozens of sexual assault claims and a couple of rapes, at which point they claimed that there was no evidence that any asylum seekers had been involved. Then the facts intruded once again. One of the links I posted earlier summarises the official police report, which was leaked to Bild. That clearly indicates that of the 25 people who were initially taken into custody (before being released again), 24 were, or at least claimed to be, Syrian and one was Afghan. One man tore up his residence card in front of a police officer and told him that "there's nothing you can do to me, I can get another one of these tomorrow". Face it, the first instinct of the German authorities was not to punish the perpetrators but to cover it up and hide the fact that most of them were asylum seekers. I'm willing to bet that there will be hardly any convictions for this and that nobody will end up being deported.

And when we juxtapose it with the city of Madaya which appears to have people starving in it as the Government beseige the rebels (not ISIS as far as I can tell), I don't know that it's that easy to shut the doors. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-35250772

Yes, the real victims of the Syrian war. These are not the ones who have made the trip to Europe of course. In fact the figures are quite clear. 65% are adult males and another 20% are 'children', the bulk of which are likely young males aged 15-17. Even the most optimistic estimate says that Syrians make up only half of these people, but given the massive incentives to claim Syrian nationality and the abundance of fake Syrian passports the real number is certain to be much lower.

Excellent point. There are 16 suspects in the Cologne news years eve sexual assault case. I've seen reports that they were from Morroco and Tunisia. And reports that one said he was from Syria...
That would mean that 1, 099, 984 of the recent refugees landed in Germany were not guilty of any crime.

There was a crowd of up to 1000 men harassing women in Cologne, and similar, albeit much smaller scale, events happened in Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Zurich and Helsinki. There are certainly NOT only 16 people involved. The fact that the police (the same police who tried to cover it up in the first place) have only identified 16 suspects (which is completely untrue anyway) says a lot more about their lax attitude than it does about the facts of the situation. Seriously Ricky, it's not hard to read up on this and find out. Yes, there was a cover-up so not all the facts are out there, but enough of them are.

Do you really think that Germans won't be able to keep this crime in perspective?

I think they're doing a better job of that than you are quite frankly. What happened was completely outrageous and indicative of what their society is likely to face going forward. Hundreds of thousands of young males have been allowed into their country from regions where sexual harassment is commonplace and acceptable. They don't speak German and most of them don't have marketable skills, so they're going to end up being a permanent underclass, and because the gender imbalance is so pronounced most of them are going to find it impossible to find a partner. This is a recipe for constant sexual frustration. Germany can expect to see a sharp increase in sex crime as a direct result of taking these people in. That's the bigger picture.

sass

I think they're doing a better job of that than you are quite frankly. What happened was completely outrageous and indicative of what their society is likely to face going forward. Hundreds of thousands of young males have been allowed into their country from regions where sexual harassment is commonplace and acceptable. They don't speak German and most of them don't have marketable skills, so they're going to end up being a permanent underclass, and because the gender imbalance is so pronounced most of them are going to find it impossible to find a partner. This is a recipe for constant sexual frustration. Germany can expect to see a sharp increase in sex crime as a direct result of taking these people in. That's the bigger picture.

And I think you are busy galloping off in all directions.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35241808

Based on the story above, I think you have first and foremost a policing problem. They knew that the Cologne site was a problem and would be a problem and did nothing preventative.
Second, you assume that young men can't quickly acquire the social norms that the society they live within has .. (That's a little racist)
Third, there are all kinds of similar events like this in many parts of the world. By all kinds of young men. Here's a few examples of gangs of young men acting badly ... Whats their cultural persuasion?
- Spring Break parties in Florida became known as Rape Break .
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/us/florid ... ing-break/

The Naval Academy has been singled out as a centre for this kind of activity.
http://www.capitalgazette.com/news/ph-a ... story.html

I suspect that the Cologne police failed. If they deport as many of the criminals as they can convict, I think you'll see an end to the behavior. At least by refugees. Deportation being a tougher sentence than what a native German man would get ...

rickyp wrote:sass

I think they're doing a better job of that than you are quite frankly. What happened was completely outrageous and indicative of what their society is likely to face going forward. Hundreds of thousands of young males have been allowed into their country from regions where sexual harassment is commonplace and acceptable. They don't speak German and most of them don't have marketable skills, so they're going to end up being a permanent underclass, and because the gender imbalance is so pronounced most of them are going to find it impossible to find a partner. This is a recipe for constant sexual frustration. Germany can expect to see a sharp increase in sex crime as a direct result of taking these people in. That's the bigger picture.

And I think you are busy galloping off in all directions.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35241808

Based on the story above, I think you have first and foremost a policing problem. They knew that the Cologne site was a problem and would be a problem and did nothing preventative.
Second, you assume that young men can't quickly acquire the social norms that the society they live within has .. (That's a little racist)
Third, there are all kinds of similar events like this in many parts of the world. By all kinds of young men. Here's a few examples of gangs of young men acting badly ... Whats their cultural persuasion?
- Spring Break parties in Florida became known as Rape Break .
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/us/florid ... ing-break/

The Naval Academy has been singled out as a centre for this kind of activity.
http://www.capitalgazette.com/news/ph-a ... story.html

I suspect that the Cologne police failed. If they deport as many of the criminals as they can convict, I think you'll see an end to the behavior. At least by refugees. Deportation being a tougher sentence than what a native German man would get ...

I'm gonna get a big ol' bucket of popcorn. Sass' response is going to be spectacularly entertaining.

And I think you are busy galloping off in all directions.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35241808

Based on the story above, I think you have first and foremost a policing problem. They knew that the Cologne site was a problem and would be a problem and did nothing preventative.

Ok, I've read the article. Must say I couldn't see anything in it which suggests that the police knew a gang of up to 1000 arab men were going to descend on Cologne station in order to carry out a pre-arranged campaign of groping, robbery and rape. There certainly is a policing issue though. The issue is that they made a vanishingly small number of arrests despite there being over 100 officers at the scene,did nothing to intervene and prevent the attacks from taking place and then spent several days afterwards in which their main priority was not the apprehending of the culprits but rather pretending that everything was hunky dory and certainly nothing to do with asylum seekers nosirree.

Second, you assume that young men can't quickly acquire the social norms that the society they live within has .. (That's a little racist)

Aaah, I was wondering when the good old race card was going to make an appearance

This is not actually about race so much as culture (and demographics). I don't know if you or anybody you know has ever been to Egypt or Morocco or Tunisia. I know an awful lot of women who have been on holiday to those places and every single one of them without exception has told me that sexual harassment is not just something that they occasionally experienced but something they experienced every single day while they were there. Ogling, touching, groping, lewd remarks, direct demands for sex, offers to their male partners to buy them in exchange for camels (a joke, but one which wears thin very quickly) and all the rest of it occur every day. The fact is that the dominant culture in these countries is rampantly sexist in a way which we in the west find to be utterly abhorrent. Men who grow up in these countries are taught from a very young age that all western women are whores who can be treated like sex objects. Is it any wonder that they bring those attitudes with them when they arrive on our shores ? Now come on Ricky, are you really trying to tell me that it's racist to assume that those attitudes are not just going to magically change overnight ?

And here's another thing, arab men behave that way back home in teetotal countries. Imagine what they'll be like when you throw alcohol into the mix. Oh, you don't need to imagine, you can see with your own eyes by looking at the Cologne reports.

Now for the demographics part. I've mentioned this many times before in this thread and you've conveniently overlooked it every time I do, but the simple fact is that three quarters of the migrants who have come to Germany last year are young males. That's about 750000 young men, all bringing their misogynistic baggage with them from back home. They don't speak the language and have very little to offer in the jobs market so we have 750000 young, enormously sexist males forming a permanent underclass in German cities, socialising primarily with others from their community. Since only 14% of the arrivals are women (and most of these will already be somebody's wife) then the chances of any of the arrivals being able to find a willing sexual partner has to be very small indeed unless they can somehow manage to find a partner from among the indigenous population, with whom they share neither a language nor any cultural assumptions and whom in any case they've been brought up to view as whores. It's simply not going to happen for them. What Germany now faces is the prospect of hundreds of thousands of sexually frustrated young men who all have grotesque attitudes towards women in general and western women in particular. It's a powderkeg. Sex crime is going to shoot up. Demand for prostitution is also going to soar, with resultant spikes in human trafficking and other disgusting activities.

Third, there are all kinds of similar events like this in many parts of the world. By all kinds of young men. Here's a few examples of gangs of young men acting badly ... Whats their cultural persuasion?
- Spring Break parties in Florida became known as Rape Break .
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/us/florid ... ing-break/

The Naval Academy has been singled out as a centre for this kind of activity.
http://www.capitalgazette.com/news/ph-a ... story.html

Shameless whataboutery of the first order. I never said that arabs are the only men who ever raped a woman, so this is utterly irrelevant. Neither of those things are 'similar events' in any case.

Look, the point here is that yes, groups of young men do sometimes behave very badly around women. Groups of young arabic men do it much more frequently than most. Given that we know these things, was it really sensible to invite so many of them into the country ?

I suspect that the Cologne police failed. If they deport as many of the criminals as they can convict, I think you'll see an end to the behavior. At least by refugees. Deportation being a tougher sentence than what a native German man would get ...

Nobody will be deported over this, or at best it'll be one or two token suspects. German law only allows the removal of asylum seekers if they're convicted of a crime carrying a prison sentence of more than one year while their claim is being heard. How are they going to get those convictions ? There's no CCTV evidence to work with and eye witness accounts from the victims are hardly going to be reliable. How do you positively id one of your attackers when you were surrounded by dozens of similar-looking men at night all grabbing at your clothes as you desperately struggled to get away ? It's going to be impossible to convict. Don't you think these men might have known that ? Keep in mind that this was organised. They knew that if there were enough of them the police would not be able to intervene and would struggle to identify any of the perpetrators. They also quite clearly view the German police as being a soft touch and have no respect for them, and it seems they're right to do so.

You also need to understand how cumbersome and difficult the deportation process is. It can be tied up in appeals for years once the human rights lawyers get their hands on it, and this is exactly what will happen. Not that deportation to Syria is even possible right now. This is one of the things I warned about way back when this thread began. Onc you allow so many people through the door you're going to find it almost impossible to get rid of them again. Fact is that the attackers from Cologne and elsewhere are in Germany for good now, and they know it.

Just a brief update. It turns out I was wrong about German law on deporting asylum seekers. In actual fact they can only be deported if they're sentenced to three years imprisonment and if their lives are not in danger back home. In other words, there's absolutely zero prospect of any of them being deported, or not the Syrians anyway. Oh, and although 31 suspects have supposedly been identified, all of these are for theft or causing bodily harm offences. None of the sexual offenders have been identified. I'm guessing that theft at least does not carry a three year jail term. ABH might do, but I doubt it. I know that it's very rare for that offence to be so harshly punished in the UK.

So yeah, first they have to be identified, then they have to be apprehended, then they have to be convicted, then they have to be sentenced to more than 3 years inside, then they have to do their time, and only then can deportation proceedings begin. These would involve convoluted asylum processes and be subject to legal challenge on human rights grounds. Oh, and you won't be surprised to hear that there's an enormous backlog of deportations already in Germany, which is certainly not going to get any better any time soon.

Nobody is going to be deported.

I thought Sas's response was excellent ... very professional and fact based.

Merkel's decision to accept close to 1 million refugees is going to have huge implications throughout Europe. She made a heart based decision. Laudable from a humanitarian perspective, but the implications are not pretty, and it's not clear how you solve them and retain high minded ideals. Already countries are examining their border policies. Security, social, and economic policies will all be impacted by this.

Ray Jay wrote:I thought Sas's response was excellent ... very professional and fact based.

Merkel's decision to accept close to 1 million refugees is going to have huge implications throughout Europe. She made a heart based decision. Laudable from a humanitarian perspective, but the implications are not pretty, and it's not clear how you solve them and retain high minded ideals. Already countries are examining their border policies. Security, social, and economic policies will all be impacted by this.

And, will be for decades.

Ray Jay wrote:I thought Sas's response was excellent ... very professional and fact based.

Merkel's decision to accept close to 1 million refugees is going to have huge implications throughout Europe. She made a heart based decision. Laudable from a humanitarian perspective, but the implications are not pretty, and it's not clear how you solve them and retain high minded ideals. Already countries are examining their border policies. Security, social, and economic policies will all be impacted by this.

Well said. This is the crux of the matter. Should a government make decisions that involve domestic security based upon the heart or the brain? (emotion vs. fact) I would like to hear what others think.

Hardly surprising, I would say I am fact based. (And that is not always a good thing in every situation.)

bbauska wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:I thought Sas's response was excellent ... very professional and fact based.

Merkel's decision to accept close to 1 million refugees is going to have huge implications throughout Europe. She made a heart based decision. Laudable from a humanitarian perspective, but the implications are not pretty, and it's not clear how you solve them and retain high minded ideals. Already countries are examining their border policies. Security, social, and economic policies will all be impacted by this.

Well said. This is the crux of the matter. Should a government make decisions that involve domestic security based upon the heart or the brain? (emotion vs. fact) I would like to hear what others think.

Hardly surprising, I would say I am fact based. (And that is not always a good thing in every situation.)

I think it depends on the situation. It is too complicated to make a hard and fast rule.

Ok, I've read the article. Must say I couldn't see anything in it which suggests that the police knew a gang of up to 1000 arab men were going to descend on Cologne station in order to carry out a pre-arranged campaign of groping, robbery and rape

First, the events at the train station were not the first new year where this kind of thing happened. Its an escalation from previous years but the cologne police should have been aware of the potential for trouble.
Crowds in many places can become unruly, and dangerous. Times Square in New York on New Years once had that reputation.
If the Cologne Police had the force in place, with adequate direction, would this event ocurred? Doubtful?
Do young men in groups become dangerous, especially after heavy drinking? yes. Just about anywhere. It isn't a rare event caused by sexually repressive socialization. Its regular and occurs in places where honor and responsibility are top priorities and trained into men.
So don't accuse me of what aboutery... Justify why this particular incident is a result of inadequate socialization but the high incidence of rape in the US military isn't... (Or fr that matter college dorms, or spring break in Florida)

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011 ... s-military

And by the way: there weren't just refugees arrested in Cologne.

Plate said the suspects consisted of nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, two Germans and one person each from Iraq, Serbia and the United States, according to The New York Times.

Sass

Now come on Ricky, are you really trying to tell me that it's racist to assume that those attitudes are not just going to magically change overnight ?

No. But young men of almost any culture can become utter pigs in gangs.
I agree that in the Middle East they do get away with behaviors that are less prevalent in other parts of the world. But as soon as young men understand that there are consequences for their behaviors most manage to reign in their base instincts.
If the Cologne police had prepared and responded correctly then there might not have been an incident.
There was. Their cover up was appalling. But then its the nature of cops everywhere to cover up their failings.
I will say that i assumed that any immigrants involved could be deported. And they apparently can't. That's pretty stupid and I understand laws will change. If you allow young men anywhere to believe they have impunity they will act .
There is a reason that landed immigrants and illegals in the US are less likely to commit crimes than the average citizen. Deportation occurs. And that penalty is severe.
It will be difficult for 1.1 million immigrants to be settled into Germany. And its unfortunate that some of them were represented in this reprehensible violence in Cologne. But to paint the refugee community with a broad brush, and assume this is the going to representative of their behavior going forward is hysterical.

When the rape crisis in the US military has been solved, then maybe we can think about this as a cultural problem and not just a problem endemic to drunken, irresponsible young men around the world. You remember Tail Hook? Was that scandal something that all Christian Men shouldbe represented by? All Naval Officers?
At what point do you take individual incidents and paint the broad community?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailhook_scandal

Here's the thing. I strongly suspect that well publicized deportations of perpetrators of crimes like this will have an immediate effect on how immigrant men behave.
But in systems where rape is not confronted or punished ... the behaviors will continue. And I think it will be easier to change the behavior of immigrants in Germany than a lot of indigenous in other societies. Since 92, not much has changed in the US military.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/boomi ... video.html

"Look, over there !"

Classic whataboutery.

Ray Jay wrote:Hardly surprising, I would say I am fact based. (And that is not always a good thing in every situation.)

I think it depends on the situation. It is too complicated to make a hard and fast rule.[/quote]

I don't know. I think we need to make decisions based upon facts, but enact them in a heartfelt manner. Perhaps we are saying the same thing.

bbauska wrote:Hardly surprising, I would say I am fact based. (And that is not always a good thing in every situation.)

Ray Jay:

I think it depends on the situation. It is too complicated to make a hard and fast rule.

bbauska wrote:I don't know. I think we need to make decisions based upon facts, but enact them in a heartfelt manner. Perhaps we are saying the same thing.

I interpreted your question as reason v. emotion, not fact v. fiction. Yes, facts are always important.

I think in matters of family one should make decisions 90% heart (which I imagine is hard for the left hemisphere brained males who post here).... in matters of statecraft, I think 90% rationality. Your primary function is to defend your people. But you do have to empathize with non-citizens and your own cultural prerequisites.