Events in Cologne and other German cities

It's worth taking time to read the whole article. This seems to me to mark the beginning of a fundamental shift in Europe's responses to the immigrant problem.

It might have been helpful to provide the link.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cologne-attacks-trigger-raw-debate-on-immigration-in-germany-a-1071175.html

Interesting . . . and it took a long time to read, while doing other things online. There is a definite anti-right wing bias in the article, though. I don't know the players, so i can't comment on them--but that should not matter. They quoted one Björn Höcke as saying that hundreds of women were victims of a 1000 young men of North African descent. Well, the article quotes one police officer estimating the crowd at 1000 to 1500. But the author of this piece complains: "Yet the inaccurate, exaggerated numbers have found their way into the global press." Huh? Sloppy,tendentious work on the part of that journalist, which would just play into the hands of any right-wing rabble rouser. I sometimes despair of our world precisely because journalists are the bottom-feeders of the literary world.

Björn Höcke is a German politician for the right-wing-populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
So far about 120 women in Köln and 50 in Hamburg have gone to the police and told about what happened.
All the time there has been talk about 1000 to 1500 drunks and aggresive men.
From the beginning is looks like the top people in Köln did not tell the truth about what was going on. And to mention that a person is from another culture is not PC and if you do you might be looked upon as a racist.
These things took place also in a small city Kalmar in Sweden.
It also happened in Finland.
Der Spiegel is a high level weekly magzine. More to the left than to the right and often read regularly by "intellectual" more left and liberal well educated people.

That's the kind of information one needs to evaluate such stories. The author of the article is talking about exaggerations, when Höcke was just saying what the press and the police were saying. That kind of thing makes me mistrust journalists. I have no opinion on Höcke, because i don't know him nor anything about him--but he should not be criticized as he was for saying what so many others who are not right-wing were saying.

Höcke is an extreme right-winger, his language is similar to that by some around 1933.
(Actually, he is so right wing that it's even for the right-party AfD too much.)

That's why sloppy journalism is a problem. The author of the piece condemns a man for saying what others who are not far right-wing were saying. Things that people in the article he wrote were saying. So how is an outsider to know what to think?

I appreciate the information, Walter.

Spiegel-online has reduced its English website since last year. This report was co-written by 21 persons (if I counted correctly).

Today in Cologne:
- noonish, there had been a demonstration by about 2,500 women, between the cathedral and the main station. It ended with the singing of carnival songs in local Cologne dialect. (Most have been quite spectacular since that happened at the same time, when Cologne was testing their sirens over 13 minutes ... and the church bells ringing the Angelus)

Just now, there's a demonstration by the right and extreme rightparties plus the usual counter demonstration. The right than does two marches, the others one, through the city.

1,700 far-right protesters were confronted by an estimated 1,300 counter-demonstrators in Cologne this afternoon.
About 2,500 state and federal police were tasked with keeping the two groups apart.
Police moved to disband the crowd of protesters in the inner city after bottles and crackers were thrown - mainly by PEGIDA and other right extremists - at officers. Water cannons were used as well.

The earlier flashmob was called by women's groups on the Internet.
Some 1,000 people demonstrated against both racism and sexism, with speakers warning against exploiting the New Year's Eve attacks to fuel xenophobic sentiments.

It's a mess, and looks hard to sort out. Thanks again for the information, i've learned s good deal today.

It really is a mess.

Positive, however, is that all (parliamentary) parties now want to ratify the 'Istanbul Convention' (a Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence).

Plenty of support now for the proposal that offenders, if they are immigrants, should be deported. But most of them arrive without papers, so their country of origin cannot be verified. And they won't tell. So deport them to where?

The discussion is not about (all) immigrants but refugees and asylum seekers.
Expulsion of convicted offenders is already possible - it's done, however, mainly in those cases with a prison verdict - nearly everything below two years prison is a suspended sentence.


Conservatives and especially the right wingers want Germany to become a kind of police state again - not regarding their behaviour, of course not, but for the others ... and with no idea how to get there (police personal, laws, ....)

That'll be tough to implement.

Well, populism isn't a topic only a topic here

Pity the polarisation makes dealing with these criminals even more difficult.