The recent sexual assault in Cologne of women on New Year’s Eve has shocked the nation. As many as 1000 men, allegedly set upon women and made them run a gauntlet as they were grabbed, their clothes ripped, and their bodies groped. Police sources and witnesses have said that many were refugees — triggering renewed objections over a spate of rapes and assaults of women in the country attributed to recent immigrants. To make matters worse for the government, newspapers are reporting that one man told police “I am Syrian. You have to treat me kindly. Mrs Merkel invited me.” The result has been a rising tide of criticism of Merkel for her open-door policy. Yet, that criticism may now be muted by a move by the government to crackdown on anti-immigration comments as a form of “hate speech.” As we discussed today with the effort to ban Donald Trump, free speech is being rolled back in Europe under hate crime and anti-discrimination laws as an alarming rate. It is particularly worrisome when the government is under attack on an issue like immigration and responds by prosecuting people for such criticism. News reports indicate that 18 of the 31 known suspects from Cologne were asylum seekers, including “nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, an Iraqi, a Serbian, an American and two German nationals.
We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. We have seen comedians targeted with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here).
Prosecutors are charging people who are “inciting hatred” in Germany by speaking out against immigrants and their impact on German society. Prosecutors and judges are determining what criticism will be allowed and what will be treated as criminal. In the meantime, the government has reached a deal with Facebook, Google and Twitter to crackdown on Internet speech. It is an effort to create the artificial appearance of agreement and tolerance by denying free speech to critics.
While it is still not clear how many of the Cologne attackers were immigrants (as many as 22 have been identified as refugees), the incident has been a flashpoint as numerous stories of women and girls being harassed about their clothing or assaulted by immigrants. For example, a 26-year-old Berlin man’s home was raided by police, who confiscated his computer and phones after he had posted the image of a dead 3-year-old Syrian boy on a Turkish beach and wrote “We are not mourning, we are celebrating!” A disgusting comment and one that is worthy public condemnation. However, it is also an act of free speech.
Nevertheless, many citizens are celebrating the denial of their own free speech rights. So long as they disagree with the speakers, there appears little concern over the rising tide of censorship and criminalization of speech. People are now unsure what they can say about immigration, which is precisely the chilling effect that governments seek in such measure. The result is a forced silence . . . which is golden for governments like Merkel’s that do not like what they are hearing.
Olly
1, January 9, 2016 at 6:26 pm
Terrific, after 1400 years do you think it’s about time to allow the women to read?
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they are reading Olly, and they are making up their own mind that Islam is the answer for them, and they are converting en masse 🙂
And the weird thing s that the more islamophobia there is, the more they convert.
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“”(CNN)I am a Muslim, but I wasn’t always. I converted to Islam in November 2001, two months after 9/11.
I was 21 and living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was a bad time to be a Muslim. But after four years of studying, poking and prodding at world religions and their adherents, I decided to take the plunge.
Questions and answers
I am the product of a Creole Catholic and an Irish atheist. I grew up Catholic, then was agnostic, now I’m Muslim.
Theresa Corbin
Theresa Corbin
My journey to Islam began when I was about 15 years old in mass, and had questions about my faith. The answers from teachers and clergymen — don’t worry your pretty little head about it — didn’t satisfy me.
So I did what any red-blooded American would do: the opposite. I worried about it. For many years. I questioned the nature of religion, man, and the universe.
After questioning everything I was taught to be true and digging through rhetoric, history and dogma, I found out about this strange thing called Islam. I learned that Islam is neither a culture nor a cult, nor could it be represented by one part of the world. I came to realize Islam is a world religion that teaches tolerance, justice and honor, and promotes patience, modesty and balance.
As I studied the faith, I was surprised many of the tenants resonated with me. I was pleased to find that Islam teaches its adherents to honor all prophets, from Moses to Jesus to Muhammad, all of whom taught mankind to worship one God and to conduct ourselves with higher purpose.
I was drawn to Islam’s appeal to intellect and heartened by the prophet Muhammad’s quote, “The acquisition of knowledge is compulsory for every Muslim, whether male or female.” I was astounded that science and rationality were embraced by Muslim thinkers like Al-Khawarizmi, who invented algebra; Ibn Firnas, who developed the mechanics of flight before DaVinci; and Al-Zahravi, who is the father of modern surgery.
Here was a religion telling me to seek out answers and use my intellect to question the world around me.””
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/14/opinion/muslim-convert-irpt/
Established rights for slaves. That´s rich!
Terrific, after 1400 years do you think it’s about time to allow the women to read?
Po, are you OK? I mean, you don´t seem very happy. Did you not realise what a tyranny the US is until you got there? What´s up? I mean this sincerely. Why all the personal attacks? I thought you were way too smart for that kind of thing. You are sinking to the level of the commenters that you have proclaimed to be stupid. when was this ever a blog that was restricted to highly intelligent people? There are dogs commenting on here for crying out loud !
Don,
When ALL deserve condemning or when ALL are mistreated then I will let you know. Until then, your inability to answer my question is noted.
Now, you want to know about Islam?
Ask yourself, which holy book, 1400 years ago:
– made it clear that men and women are equal
-made it clear that human beings are all equal no matter their means and ethnicity
– offered divorce rules that protected woman through and after the divorce
– Offered marital rights to women
– Offered societal protection to women and children
– Made it part of faith to care for widows and orphans, and to manumits slaves.
– Established rights for slaves.
– Offered the original Geneva convention, that protected prisoners from abuse
-Offered the original magna carta that gave rights to everyone
– Gave rights to nature, and to animals
-Established rules of war that protected non-combatants, civilians and property.
-That prevented preemptive strikes…
– That prevented torture or abuses of any kind
-That made it part of faith to revere previous prophets, all of them?
-That allowed retribution to no more than the hurt caused…and even then, urges forgiveness?
Which book?
I challenge you to bring any holy book, any constitution anywhere, any convention anywhere that is as comprehensive in its aim to protect the natural rights of creation, man, woman, child, animals, trees, nature as the Blessed Quran!
It should be easy to do, right Ralph? Right Nick? right bambam? Right Olly?
Anything you reply with that doesn’t address this challenge is an acknowledgement of your deceptive nature and intellectual dishonesty, simply!
Right 🙂
po – try the Code of Hammurabi
Olly-
Please tell us how easy it is to prevent a train wreck when we start condemning and mistreating all members of a religion based on the actions of the extremists within that religion.
Ralph:
Wrong, as usual. The essential ingredient is authoritarianism, whether it be Nazism, Neo-Nazisim, Islamonaziism, or any of its variants. Islamopandering and appeasement of Muslims, like pandering to the Nazis and appeasement of the Nazis, will inevitably result in fascism.
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Ralph, there once was a time when the like of you would not find room on this blog, you are just not intelligent enough. Nick felt similarly boxed out, until he made a lot of room by chasing away some of he great people we had here, including at least 4 or 5 female commentators.
The women that remain are …uh…um…
You do not know the meaning of authoritarianism, otherwise you’d know that it requires first and foremost you and your like, people who see their viewpoint as the only true/valid one, and willing to upend the established social structure in order to enforce it. Everything you have called for requires first and foremost the denial of people’s natural rights (wink Olly) and necessarily the upending of the constitution you claim to support.
And since you and Nick claim Islam is incompatible with the west, you are right, for morally, Islam is miles ahead of the west, if by the west you are referring to the same west that created the weapons of mass destruction we use to massacre one another…
…the same west that tore the globe apart raping and robbing…
…the same west that caused the death of millions upon millions of people globally…
…the same west whose insatiable lust for resources and profit leads it to upend the natural order of nature, of societies, polluting everything in its wake, forests, valleys, skies, streams…
Hiroshima…Nagasaki…the Amazon…Syria…Palestine…Vietnam…Guatemala…Iran…Congo…Africa…Ukraine…
Are we talking about the same west where is this land, America, where your leaders are robbing you blind while leading you to global destruction, you lemmings? This land where 1100 people were murdered this year alone by police officers? This land where the value of womanhood can’t be determined unless she is naked? This land where to be gravely sick is to become a pauper?
And, worth repeating, this land where 22,800 violent sex crimes alleged in 2011 alone…yes, in the military!!!!
And leading cause of death for PREGNANT WOMEN? Yes, Murder!
I rest my case!
po – as usual you have deflected. You have talked about many things but not what authoritarianism is.
BTW, I remember when you were a very small frog in our small pond. You have only gotten slightly larger, not more respected.
Paul, since you seem to know exactly what my answer ought to be…how about your offer it?
Ralph ain’t complaining…but you, who posed no question, was not involved in this discussion, get to say that he ain’t satisfied?!!!
Am I supposed to teach a class on authoritarianism now?
You have stated that you are an authority on what is authoritarianism. You must be able to define it. Else you are a hypocrite.
Paul, I thought I’d repost the same comment I offered last time you lied and put your words in my mouth:
————
Paul, I used to take your statements at face value until you showed me that, yes, one can pretty much make any claim one wants and leave it up to the accused to disprove them.
Just like evidence of non-Muslim terrorism is a possible evidence of Muslim terrorism, your no longer teaching is a possible evidence of your having been fired due to your inability to discern facts from inventions 🙂
po – I know this is going to bother you, but I worked as a fact-checker for the world’s largest textbook manufacturer. Other than that, I am retired, that is why I no longer teach.
Paul, why did they fire you?
Based on your inability, on this site at least, to check your facts, I have a suspicion 🙂
po – as I have told you before, I have never been fired from a teaching job.
Paul, I sure want to take your word for it… but you see, though my heart says “”believe him””, my brain says, “”come on, he says he was a fact checker, do you really believe that???””
po – you are going to believe what you want.
Paul, WE are going to believe what we want…
You are really bored, aren’t you?
Unh? Says the one playing rhetorical footsies one sentence at a time?
In an effort to dispel myths, stereotypes and anger toward & about the perceived benefits going to the (massive wave of) refugees, a group of Berlin illustrators is using a cartoon-style art. The cartoon-style art to attempt to allay common misconceptions and fears. You can see the cartoon art at their web link below (“Bildkorrektur: Pictures against citizen-Angst”). The website is attracting both good and bad attention. At their website, the intro reads (my loose translation)…Fear is a bad advisor. Our motto for 2016: Have less fear – more knowledge.
http://bildkorrektur.tumblr.com/
SHELLY; “Our motto for 2016: Have less fear – more knowledge. ”
WOW It’s very serendipitous that you post this comment right as I’m looking at this:
Reported violent crime rate in the United States from 1990 to 2014
http://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/
A crime puzzle: Violent crime declines in America (GRAPH AND IT’S VERY GRAPHIC) from 2010
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a-crime-puzzle-violent-crime-declines-in-america
If these two graphs don’t ease your mind about violent crime in the U.S. nothing will. Yet the fear campaign grows exponentially upward at the same rate that actual violent crime plummets. Some of us know why that is. Some of know why the powers that be want us disarmed. Do you?
” I don’t consider it appropriate, however, to condemn all Muslims or all Christians for the views of those people shown speaking on the videos or writing the advice at the link above.”
Don,
Of course it’s not appropriate.Please point to the ideology that comes in 2nd place to that of Islamic Extremism’s abuse of women?
If we showed a video of Pat Robertson spouting some of his “wisdom”, should we ascribe his views to all Christians?
Better yet, let’s look at this: http://christwire.org/2009/04/is-it-ok-for-a-christian-husband-to-gently-beat-his-wife/
I’m wondering how what is said at this link is different than what is on the videos linked by bam bam.
From my perspective, it is wrong to beat your wife (except at Monopoly). Doesn’t matter what your religious/spiritual views are. I don’t consider it appropriate, however, to condemn all Muslims or all Christians for the views of those people shown speaking on the videos or writing the advice at the link above.
According to AFP, the number of reported attacks has reached 379.
Let that sink in for a minute……..all that in one night…….at one train station. These poor women must have been horrified. My heart truly goes out to all of them. May they get the justice they deserve.
It’s like the old saying, “no good deed goes unpunished”.
@randyjet
1, January 9, 2016 at 12:38 pm
“Po I am astounded at your lack of honesty in your posts. In reply to Karen you mention the innocent Palestinians who have been killed by the IDF as though the IDF DELIBERATELY targeted them. Then you go on and admit that they do this just because of some ROCKETS, as though such rockets matter not. One has to remember that those rockets are DELIBERATELY AIMED at civilians of Israel, while the IDF attacks are aimed at legitimate military and political targets. BIG DIFFERENCE there.”
Randy, here’s some eyewitness testimony from a Norwegian medical doctor who treated the victims of four separate Israeli government assaults on Gaza, the largest open-air prison in the world. What follows is quoted verbatim from the site linked to below:
According to UN figures, 3000 children were wounded, 20,000 houses were destroyed, and 500,000 Gazans were displaced. The UN puts the number of children killed at just under five hundred.
Like so many critics of Israel, Dr. Gilbert is quick to point out how disproportionate the casualties are when the massive Israeli military, with an arsenal more powerful than most of the rest of the countries of the Western world, faces off with the locked-down, mostly unarmed Palestinian population living under a difficult occupation in Gaza. “Now, one Israeli child was killed in the 2014 siege, that is one Israeli child too many,” said Dr. Gilbert. “No Israeli children should get killed. Civilians should not be attacked. I condemn any Palestinian attack on civilians, as I do with Israeli attacks on civilians.
But there is absolutely no question of the disproportionality between the attacks from the Israeli army on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the meager attempts from the Palestinian people to defend their people. How can you say that you bend over to protect the civilians when more than 50% of the Palestinian hospitals were damaged from the breaking of glass and falling down of the ceilings, some completely demolished, like the rehabilitation hospital, and the Rafah hospital,” he said. “How can you say that you protect the civilians when 60% of the primary health care centers were destroyed and many of them had to close? How can you say that you protect the civilians when 47 ambulances were more or less destroyed? How can you say that you protect the civilians when more than 100 health care workers were killed or injured? These numbers all from the UN report.” (My emphasis)
And Dr. Gilbert believes that this is not collateral damage, not an accidental killing of civilians, but rather a real attempt by the Israelis to punish the Gazans for the slightest bit of resistance. “There is no doubt in my mind, and I’ve seen this, that the Israeli attacks during the last assault on Gaza were directed at the civilian population as well as against the Palestinians trying to defend their people,” said Gilbert. “More than 140 families had three or more family members killed in the same attack. It was as if the Israeli army were trying to eradicate the DNA of the Palestinian resistance. It was just horrible.”
Dr. Gilbert has published scholarly papers in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet on everyday life and medical care in the occupied territories and in Gaza. He says nothing can compare to the brutality of an Israeli attack on the Gaza strip. “What I mean by that is when you pound a civilian neighborhood with tons of high explosives and one-ton aerial bombs, and you know this is one of the most densely populated places on earth, you know you are bound to kill civilians: old women, children, civilian men. Whoever lives there, they cannot escape. There are no shelters in Gaza, there is no safe haven in Gaza, there is no way to get out of Gaza because of the siege.” (My emphasis)
Dr. Gilbert is very clear when he talks about war crimes and slaughters, and he does not believe he is engaging in hyperbole. “When I say slaughter,” said Dr. Gilbert, pausing for emphasis, “I actually base it on what I saw…. You know the Israelis use the term ‘We are mowing the lawn’ when they attack Palestinians in Gaza. But it is a slaughter. We saw it. We saw the kids. I received families of four with children without heads, with their heads shot half off. All killed. And I have no other word for it than a slaughter of the civilians.
They dropped leaflets to say they should run. Where should they go? They did their knock on roof with the drone rockets saying ‘Leave this house, because we’re going to bomb them.’ Where should they go? Out in the streets where the artillery shells are exploding? It’s almost impossible to describe this horrible feeling, this feeling of being in Hell when you are exposed to the Israeli rage, the military machine. It is so powerful and it’s so small a territory that they’re bombing, that this huge civilian loss is unavoidable. Seventy percent of those killed on the Palestinian side were civilians. (Emphasis mine)
Like in 2009, like in 2012, like in 2006. And I have been working at Shifa hospital during the last four Israeli attacks on Gaza. And it’s been a mounting brutality. It’s been a sharp increase of the amount of shells, bombs and the types of weapons used.”
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34287-focus-slaughter-through-a-stethoscope
See also: http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2014/07/25/pkg-penhaul-gaza-hospital-emergency-room.cnn
Olly, She taunts like a girl.
Of course I could be wrong. I don’t have Nick’s skills but my first clue is how she has taken a special dislike to the various women on this blog. The second clue was when she called me dear. Then again those clues could mean something else altogether. 😉
Bam Bam,
I’m not so sure Po isn’t the wife.
Tin,
You can discuss and rationalize all day long but if the birthrate remains in a “death spiral” in America, Germany, Europe, et al., there won’t be any “Western” nations to worry about.
Europeans generally will be diluted out of existence in little more than the lifespan of the American Constitution.
Question: What do women, AKA females, have to do with the birthrate and its attendant “death spiral.”
We all know that women are great, superior, wonderful, stronger, etc., etc.,
but if women don’t bear them, who the hell is going to have babies and nurture them?
It’s a bad job but somebody’s got to do it.
Maybe we could give out “Mom” medals.
It’s OK. It’s moot. It’s over.
More information about how Islam condones beating women. I suppose that po is missing this–probably in the middle of a smack down with his wife.
“There are and have been many roads leading to fascism in Germany.”– Ralph Adamo
Response from “Po”: “And each always requires men like Ralph, eager to call for, and support dividing people into groups of better and lesser.”
Wrong, as usual. The essential ingredient is authoritarianism, whether it be Nazism, Neo-Nazisim, Islamonaziism, or any of its variants. Islamopandering and appeasement of Muslims, like pandering to the Nazis and appeasement of the Nazis, will inevitably result in fascism.
And you thought that our programming was bad, here’s a blow by blow instructional on how to beat your wife according to Islam. Can’t wait to hear the apologists explain this $3it away as something created by the Jews.