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There's actually a good quote in that article:

Asked by a journalist whether refugees were behind the rampage, Maas said police were still working to identify the attackers.

'This is not about where someone is from but what they did,' he said. 'Making an issue out of it, lumping it together with the refugee issue, is nothing but exploitation. Now is the time to determine the facts and then decide on the necessary consequences.'

The idea of "no go areas" is ludicrous and they do not exist. This happened in front of one of the busiest train stations in Germany, in front of a national monument visited by thousands of tourists a day.

Hardly a "no go area". It's an awful, worrying, hopefully one off incident, not a sign that large areas of Europe are off limits.

And it appears that blaming the victim is how Germany wishes to handle this.

Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker said Wednesday that women should adopt a “code of conduct” to discourage men from committing sexual assault. Gangs of migrants went on a crime spree last Friday night, which overwhelmed police and left scores of women at their attackers’ mercy.

The mayor suggested women keep “at arm’s length” from strangers, travel in groups, and to ask bystanders for help.

“It is important to prevent such incidents from ever happening again,” Reker said, the Independent reported Wednesday.

Reker’s comments appear to ignore the fact that victims, often traveling in groups, were systematically targeted by gangs.

“I don’t think much of the how-to-behave tips for women such as #arm’slength. It is not women who are responsible, but the perpetrators,” German Justice Minister Heiko Mass responded Wednesday on Twitter.

I'm sorry, the Mayor of Cologne is now the representative of opinion for all of Germany? All hail the new dictator?

Can I pick an american who represents the views of all americans then? Is that how this works?

I mean your statement is directly contradicted by the Justice Minister at the end of the quoted section. One idiot saying something dumb does not tar an entire country, and if it does, the US is screwed.

 Da Boss wrote:

I mean your statement is directly contradicted by the Justice Minister at the end of the quoted section.

To be fair, posting articles that say the opposite of what he thinks they say is kind of his specialty

You can't keep crowds of 10 or 100 'at arm's length' from seizing hold of people and assaulting them. Some of those attacked were already in groups.

I understand the advice of the mayor, it's akin to telling people to make sure their doors are locked to prevent burglary. It shouldn't be about victim blaming but as always it's difficult to word appropriately and easily construed in a negative way, especially as there seems a certain air of helplessness about tackling the culprits given off by those in charge. It happened a week ago and they've identified a few but made no arrests.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

That isn't really a riot, that actually looks pretty normal for German New Year. I've been in Berlin on NYE and it's literally insanity. It's like the one day a year when they let their hair down, and they really go fething mental (I wasn't sure I was going to survive). People launching fireworks at each other seems to just be normal. My ex-girlfriend who is from Berlin, was full of stories about gas grenades and blank pistols being fired off on NYE too. We were only out of the house for about 2 mins before a bunch of kids attacked us with rockets. I'm surprised the police even showed up in that video, I didn't see them at all on NYE when I was there (despite chaos like that everywhere). I figured the police just give up and hide for the night.

I'm not saying it didn't happen, or trying to downplay it, but I think there are people who are trying to suggest the NYE in Germany was some picturesque Christmas card scene before the refugees showed up. There has probably been quite a lot of fethed up stuff happening every year that we just didn't hear about, because it didn't involve refugees.

 Bromsy wrote:
Out of the twelve or so barfights I was involved in while I was in Germany, roughly one hundred percent of them were against Turkish men who thought we were making time with their ladies, and roughly zero percent of them were against German men; while this is wholly anecdotal it should help illustrate the relative belligerence of parties involved.

I got in a bar fight while I was there, with a German (on NYE incidentally), though I may have started that fight... Maybe the common theme in all these fights is English speaking people.

Drunkeness and bad behaviour with fireworks is very common (someone threw a firework at me the first year I was in Germany) , people were firing them off right outside my apartment in central Nuremberg til 4 in the morning and the street outside was trashed in the morning.

But mass sexual assault is not usual over here, not at all. Targeted bad behaviour toward women in that way IS something new, and it is associated with migrant populations.

We have to admit that and deal with it- trying to hand wave it or explain it away or ignore it will just make the problem worse.

Note that I say this as someone who is pro looking after Syrian refugees as best we can and not anti immigration by any standards. But we've got to be realistic and truthful about the challenges, and the German media and parts of it's political establishment tend to be too hesitant to tell the truth when negative things happen involving migrants (the TV channel didn't report this for days after it was known, for example, for which they've had to apologise.)

Dishonesty about this just feeds into the Right Wing populist narrative and does not help the problem long term.

Good words there.

Smacks, I never called it a riot. They ARE however using fireworks as weapons, deliberately firing them at people and local premises.

 Da Boss wrote:
Fething scum. Shoving a firework into someones clothes. It makes me so angry.

My fiancee is looking up pepper spray online. Normally, I might think that is over the top, but honestly, she has to walk home in the dark through some dodgy areas sometimes so I'm happy she's looking to her safety a bit.

Just remember that it confined spaces the spray does not discriminate between attacker and defender.

 CptJake wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Fething scum. Shoving a firework into someones clothes. It makes me so angry.

My fiancee is looking up pepper spray online. Normally, I might think that is over the top, but honestly, she has to walk home in the dark through some dodgy areas sometimes so I'm happy she's looking to her safety a bit.

Make sure you guys understand local laws regarding pepper spray. I know here my wife works on a federal installation and pepper spray and tazers/stun guns are considered weapons and not allowed.

I was wondering about rape alarms and sprays when I heard about these attacks.
They were talked about a lot some years ago, and I didn't think anyone carried them any more.
But, if they're needed, carry what you can.

This is both disgusting and disturbing. Degenerates. There is something inheritly sick with a culture that thinks it's acceptable behaviour to do this in a country hosting them.

A few people do it - they're likely acting individually and outliers.

For so many to do it? - it's engrained in the culture.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Smacks, I never called it a riot. They ARE however using fireworks as weapons, deliberately firing them at people and local premises.

I was referring to the video having "riot" in the title.

 Da Boss wrote:
Drunkeness and bad behaviour with fireworks is very common (someone threw a firework at me the first year I was in Germany) , people were firing them off right outside my apartment in central Nuremberg til 4 in the morning and the street outside was trashed in the morning.

But mass sexual assault is not usual over here, not at all. Targeted bad behaviour toward women in that way IS something new, and it is associated with migrant populations.

We have to admit that and deal with it- trying to hand wave it or explain it away or ignore it will just make the problem worse.

Note that I say this as someone who is pro looking after Syrian refugees as best we can and not anti immigration by any standards. But we've got to be realistic and truthful about the challenges, and the German media and parts of it's political establishment tend to be too hesitant to tell the truth when negative things happen involving migrants (the TV channel didn't report this for days after it was known, for example, for which they've had to apologise.)

Dishonesty about this just feeds into the Right Wing populist narrative and does not help the problem long term.

I think you are absolutely right, but honesty goes both ways. Some people will use this as bias confirmation to support their view that refugees are all degenerate criminals. And the media is going to stoke that fire by reporting an army of a thousand rapists, and rioting. When really, there was one reported rape (you'd think a thousand rapists would be more effective?), 8 people arrested, some criminal gangs certainly, and probably a few hundred people who were just milling around getting drunk on account of it being NYE.

What isn't clear from the videos, and something which is worth debating, is how many people in those crowds were local Germans and how many were non-native immigrants?

Is there anyone here who was present in Cologne or knows the city? Is this normal for NYE in Cologne city centre, with such huge crowds and dangerous misuse of fireworks?

Theres been a couple posters ITT from Germany.

I've been in Cologne for NYE visiting German relatives, few years back.

Idiots with fireworks - you get them everywhere, every year.

Mass sexual assault - it's a new problem.

London 2009 - 2011 was kinda dull, just standing on the bank of the thames - after the fireworks everyone just kind of shuffled away home.
Geneva last year was wonderful (2014) and happy.
Edinburgh New Year this year - not a single arrest. Amusingly the crowd seemed to be 15% Japanese, 78% Scottish and 4% other EU countries and 3% non EU (excluding Japan mentioned above). There was lots of dancing and cheering and I found an awesome folk band called the Peatbog Faeries who had some serious bass speakers going on.

None of the problems on the scale in Cologne this year.

A couple of years ago Edinburgh changed their city centre Hogmanay celebration to paid ticket entry, in order to limit numbers. This would affect the make-up of the crowd.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
A couple of years ago Edinburgh changed their city centre Hogmanay celebration to paid ticket entry, in order to limit numbers. This would affect the make-up of the crowd.

Yea I had one of those on. Maybe that's what they should do in other countries - keep the underisables away from good natured celebrations.

I spent three years living in neighboring Dusseldorf and I know Cologne and especially the area around the Hauptbahnhof reasonably well.

The entire region is full of small and medium sized cities and towns - it's a pretty large conurbation and is one of the most densely populated regions in Europe. It's consequently got a higher percentage of immigrants and second - third generation immigrants than any other part of Germany. With this comes a fairly high level of inequality.

The entire Lander is fairly underfunded due to the huge population and needs infastructural investment, but it's a nice enough place to live anyhow. Cologne is a bit poorer than Dusseldorf but also more vibrant and culturally active. However when I have been there it has always seemed to have more punks, antisocial people and generally seemed more run down.

Giant crowds of people with fireworks are not unknown, and arseholes with fireworks are an unfortunate fact of the German New Year - I believe it's the only night when fireworks are allowed, and people tend to go a bit nuts. In my experience, the worst offenders do tend to be Turkish Germans, but I've seen plenty of non-Turkish Germans being idiots as well.

However what happened this year is unprecedented in it's scale and the nature of what happened, and the migrant element to it is definitely new.

Very depressing, the more that comes out the more it seems like many were actually recent migrants - police reports seem to mention syrian papers at least.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35256576

Earlier Ralf Jaeger, interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, said police had to "adjust" to the fact that groups of men had attacked women en masse.

He also warned that anti-immigrant groups were trying to use the attacks to stir up hatred against refugees.

"What happens on right-wing platforms and in chatrooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women," he said. "This is poisoning the climate of our society."

I'm having a pretty hard time accepting that anything written, however unpleasant, on right wing sites and chatrooms can be 'at least as awful' as (and by inference very possibly worse than) women being physically assaulted and actually raped in the street.

Not in the first instance, of course, but where will it end?

I'm not saying that Germany is going to start rounding up the Libyans and Syrians next week, but all over Europe we have been seeing increased hate crime towards various minority out-groups such as Jews and Muslims for some years. Here we are right now with people accusing "North African" man of hate crimes against women.

(Godwin...)

Here we are right now with people accusing "North African" man of hate crimes against women.

Because that is how the witnesses and victims described their attackers?

I don't understand what you're trying to say here...Are you saying that you don't believe the eyewitness and victim reports? Or are you saying that innocent people are being accused as well?

but all over Europe we have been seeing increased hate crime towards various minority out-groups such as Jews

And how much of that can be attributed to the large influx of Muslim immigrants?

and Muslims

Oh gee, I wonder why.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Its still ridiculous though, the idea that nasty words on the internet however racist, can be 'as awful as' actual real life sexual assault and rape.

German paper Welt am Sontag reported today that the police identified most of the perpetrators as Syrian refugees while few were north Africans, which has been confirmed by police unions. Apparently the heads of police suppressed this information out of fear of stigmatizing immigrants. The scandal continues.

Everyone is afraid of being labelled racist or xenophobic, and the people carrying out these crimes are afraid of nothing.

"In other news, calling a spade a spade is now problematic".

 Antario wrote:
German paper Welt am Sontag reported today that the police identified most of the perpetrators as Syrian refugees while few were north Africans, which has been confirmed by police unions. Apparently the heads of police suppressed this information out of fear of stigmatizing immigrants. The scandal continues.

Yeah, just read it myself. It gives me a weird feeling when the policemen on the streets have to speak out and directly contradict what our interior minister said - was there a loss of information, or was this deliberately suppressed? I'm also very interested to see how fast the policemen on duty that night will be called racists for stating so openly what they saw - that many of the suspects controlled or taken in had refugee and asylum seeker papers on them.


(For German speaker/readers http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article150735341/Die-meisten-waren-frisch-eingereiste-Asylbewerber.html )

or was this deliberately suppressed?

Bingo! Yahtzee!

It took nearly a week for the mainstream media to begin widely reporting it, apparently. I was astounded that Dakka Dakka was the first I heard of it. Come to think of it, I still don't recall seeing it on the Sky News headlines.

I'm also very interested to see how fast the policemen on duty that night will be called racists for stating so openly what they saw - that many of the suspects controlled or taken in had refugee and asylum seeker papers on them.

We're going to see days if not weeks of equivocation from political leaders, trying to redirect the narrative.

Hence the remarks from the Mayor about native German women taking steps to avoid offending migrants, or the remarks about "online hate speech" being 'at least as awful' as rape.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

or was this deliberately suppressed?

Bingo! Yahtzee!

It took nearly a week for the mainstream media to begin widely reporting it, apparently. I was astounded that Dakka Dakka was the first I heard of it. Come to think of it, I still don't recall seeing it on the Sky News headlines.

I'm also very interested to see how fast the policemen on duty that night will be called racists for stating so openly what they saw - that many of the suspects controlled or taken in had refugee and asylum seeker papers on them.

We're going to see days if not weeks of equivocation from political leaders, trying to redirect the narrative.

Hence the remarks from the Mayor about native German women taking steps to avoid offending migrants, or the remarks about "online hate speech" being 'at least as awful' as rape.

A friend of mine just posted an article on facebook where the author was roughly referring to this incident, but also explained that Western media oversexualizes women so that all the young men from middle eastern countries are, naturally, thinking that all Western girls are easy and like a rather aggressive approach. It's another weird...discussion point I have not heard before.

Clearly Cologne needs a slut walk, in full view of said migrants.

Don't like it? Welcome to Europe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

also explaning that Western media oversexualizes women so that all the young men from middle eastern countries are, naturally, thinking that all Western girls are easy and like a rather aggressive approach.

So they're all addicted to western porn?

That argument might seem credible on the face of it...Women do tend to be sexualised in western media. But that also implies that middle eastern men are weak willed and easily influenced. Which is of course racist. Right?

Ugh, its so hard to keep up to date with modern definitions of racism...

I don't believe the problem has anything to do with race, or think that racism is applicable as a term for the resentment as it's not a race causing the trouble.

The issue is Islam.

There. I said it.

Islam and the barbarism is brings to any place it rules over