.... Who attacked all those women in Cologne and other cities? Was it refugees who came to Germany, as initially thought? Was it asylum seekers already in Germany for years, as some suggest? Was it an organised criminal network, as the justice minister hinted? It’s not clear yet.
What is apparent, though, is that the incidents highlight how Germany is now reaching a crossroads. Deep unease and fears over security and the refugee crisis that have been simmering for the past year are bubbling over.
For some Germans, it is a situation marked by a sense of vulnerability in going about one’s daily life, concerns the country is spinning out of control and worries that things are never going to be the same again.
7 January 2015 kicked this off, with the attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher grocery store in Paris. Germans always feel close to what happens across the border in France to a far greater degree than they do regarding incidents in Poland and Denmark. [959 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 119 votes] I think some of the naivete or ideological bias comes from not spending time in the countries from which the immigrants are moving. I'm female & have been going in & out of the Middle East, North Africa & the Horn since 1992, and have seen a sharp deterioration over these years, especially where women's rights are concerned.
The area has experienced a huge population spike without employment opportunities for young men (young women don't even figure here in the equation), fatally coinciding with the high water mark of Saudi-financed Wahhabi propaganda in mosques, schools and social welfare groups.
The result is a huge young, newly-urbanised, male underclass who mill around the urban cafes in a culture that anglophone Arabs refer to as "the street", where they spend hours bonding, discussing conspiracy theories (such as Mossad's attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11) and basically supporting each other in a new form of radicalisation, albeit rarely as extreme as that found in ISIL.
Women have become more and more covered on the streets of Cairo, Amman & Tunis; society is on the whole, in our terms, going backwards.
Mein Kampf in Arabic is a best-seller in many a street kiosk. Of course there are vast numbers of educated Moslems who don't like this, & indeed sometimes feel themselves under siege in their own capitals. But we are absorbing thousands of young men whose education is minimal and whose view of women is one of contempt, and we don't expect any negative consequences??
I think there are 2 groups of people who need to be very frightened by Merkel's policies: women and Jews. A dreadful irony.
[2ND 118] The guardian has no problem writing reams of articles on rape culture in college campuses. Or the horrible sexual violence in India.
But after cologne, it was obvious the guardian got it wrong.
And last few days, this paper came out with apologia.
If these were white men assaulting muslim women, the hard questions will be asked.
Guardians moral cowardice has enabled the far right to ask the hard questions.
Guardians stick your head in the sand approach to islamism has seen the far right in ascendancy throughout Europe.
When faced with a religious supremacist ideology, the cowardice by the regressive leftists, it is no wonder Pegida and its ilk are gaining traction
[3RD 113] Angela Merkel - with no mandate - invited in 1.1 million people from some of the most violent and dysfunctional regions of the world, without having any real idea as to who any of these people actually are.
Reading the above paragraph should take your breath away. And if it doesn't, keep re-reading it until it does. [Guardian Cif] Read more
