Posted tagged ‘Germany’

Report Suggests Radical Islamists Infiltrating German Military to Receive Training

April 13, 2016

Report Suggests Radical Islamists Infiltrating German Military to Receive Training, Investigative Project on Terrorism, April 13, 2016

A growing number of Islamist radicals are infiltrating Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr, with an estimated 30 former soldiers later joining international terrorist organizations, reports German press agency DPA International.

Germany’s military counterintelligence service (MAD) says 65 active soldiers are under investigation for suspected Islamist tendencies. Since 2007, 22 soldiers designated as Islamists have been discharged or left the military. Moreover, 29 former soldiers have left for Syria and Iraq to join Islamist terrorist organizations.

“We perceive a risk that the Bundeswehr may be used as a training ground for potentially violent Islamists,” says MAD leader Christof Gramm.

German intelligence believes that the Islamic State is actively recruiting operatives with a military background. Moreover, Germany’s Ministry of Defense expressed concern that no background checks are required for soldiers in unclassified positions.

“Like all armies, the Bundeswehr can be attractive to Islamists seeking weapons training…,” Hans-Peter Bartels, the parliamentary commissioner for the military, told the DPA. Bartels added that Islamists in the German army pose “a real danger that needs to be taken seriously.”

Following the January 2015 Paris attacks targeting the Charlie Hebdo satirical publication, Gramm became increasingly concerned since the terrorists appeared to have professional military training.

“It would be negligent of a MAD president not to ask what would happen if a Bundeswehr-trained Islamist did something like this, and we had failed to notice anything,” Gramm said.

In one case, a German convert to Islam, called Sascha B for anonymity, gradually began exhibiting signs of increased religiosity and extremism. He began growing his beard, wearing Middle Eastern attire, and even going AWOL at times.

Sascha B eventually refused to train reservists after soldiers in his unit were deployed to Afghanistan. He justified his position by arguing that weapons could be used against other Muslims. During interrogation by MAD officials, Sascha B proclaimed that sharia law should override Germany’s constitution.

Several prominent examples of Islamist infiltration within the U.S. military also have caused immense concern.

A Muslim army soldier killed two comrades and injured 14 others after throwing a live grenade in a tent in Kuwait prior to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. In 2009, U.S. Army major and psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hassan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood because he believed that no Muslim could faithfully serve in the U.S. military.

Hassan exhibited signs of increased radicalism for a significant period of time prior to the terrorist attack. “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” Hasan said during a 2007 presentation at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Three years later, Army Pvt. Naser Jason Abdo was arrested for planning an attack on a popular restaurant frequented by Fort Hood troops. He plotted to set off an explosives device in the restaurant, then shoot and kill as many survivors as possible.

When his mother asked her son why he would commit the terrorist attack, Abdo replied: “The reason is religion, Mom.”

Germany Arrested Two Iranian Spies

April 10, 2016

Germany Arrested Two Iranian Spies, Israel DefenseAmi Rojkes Dombe, April 10, 2016

maxresdefault_18

According to dw.com, Federal prosecutors on Friday accused two Iranian men of spying on the militant People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on behalf of the Iranian intelligence.

Prosecutors said both men used to belong to MEK. The NCRI revealed intelligence to the public in 2002 on the existence of an underground nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz.

Police Raid Apartments Over ‘Right-Wing’ Social Media Posts

April 7, 2016

Police Raid Apartments Over ‘Right-Wing’ Social Media Posts, BreitbartChris Tomlinson, April 7, 2016

(Please see also, Germany Moves To Remove Anti-Erdogan Poem And Merkel Calls Turkey To Apologize. — DM)

GettyImages-74125156-640x480Getty

Police in Berlin have raided ten apartments because residents may have posted “anti-migrant” views online.

Berlin Police completed a large scale raid on internet users Wednesday. The officers ransacked ten separate apartments in the German capital in the suburbs of Spandau, Tempelhof, Marzahn, Hellersdorf and Pankow.

The force confiscated mobile phones, narcotics and weapons. Nine suspects were arrested, aged 22-58, and are accused of posting messages critical of migrants, migrant helpers and some anti-semitic slogans on social networks like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter, reports Berliner Morgenpost.

The Berlin police have told media that they already knew of the suspects and said that many of them have what they consider a “right-extremist” background. Police spokesman Stefan Redlich said that while many of the men shared anti-migrant views, “the men do not know each other according to previous findings,” and there was no evidence of any planned conspiracy to commit crime among them.

In some of the homes searched police were forced to admit they hadn’t found anything at all, but Redlich justified the raids saying they were maybe, “people who just once expressed their hate-opinion.”

One of the raids in particular was prompted by a Facebook comment to an article regarding an Afghani migrant who was shot dead at the Bulgarian border. The incident took place in October and according to Bulgarian officials it was an accident as a bullet was meant to be a warning shot but ricochet and hit him.

The post responded to the article saying that it was unfortunate too few migrants met with a similar fate, as it might scare the rest of them from coming.

Police announced that the raids show Germans that they are not as safe online as they might think. They say that anyone who says something xenophobic, spreads hate toward migrants, or shares what they consider to be xenophobic music, may be next on the list of apartments to be raided in the future.

58 police were involved in the raids and some illegal items were found in a few of the apartments. Police found one revolver handgun, though it was not mentioned if it had any ammunition or whether or not is was deactivated. They also found an air soft gun, which requires a license to own in Germany and a stun gun that appeared to be camouflaged as a flashlight.

Spokesmen Redlich also mentioned that they had found several unconstitutional symbols but did not divulge specifics. Banned symbols in Germany include Nazi era symbols like the swastika and various Nordic runes used by the Nazis during the era.

Berlin has seen a rapid increase in prosecutions for speech on the internet. In 2014 there were 196 investigations into anti-migrant and xenophobic posts, while 2015 saw 289 cases. In the last six months there have been three raids prior to this one, but so far this has been the largest in scale. Investigators have set up a special task force who work with the organization Network Against Nazis (NAN),  headed by ex-stasi agent Anetta Kahani, to monitor internet postings across Germany.

Google and Facebook have been criticized for helping the German government crack down on speech that is critical of migrants and of the policies of German chancellor Angela Merkel. The policy led to the deletion of the Facebook account of a young girl who spoke out about the migrant crisis and how she no longer felt safe walking the streets of her town.

Redlich says that the team is constantly searching YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp and especially Facebook where most cases are pursued because users are forced to use their real names. He said the message of the raids is clear, “the internet is not above the law.”

The raids come just days after British police issued an apparently menacing tweet, warning them not to get into trouble on-line. As reported by Breitbart London, the Greater Glasgow Police offered internet users this helpful advice: “Think before you post or you may receive a visit from us this weekend. Use the internet safely. #thinkbeforeyoupost”.

Germany Moves To Remove Anti-Erdogan Poem And Merkel Calls Turkey To Apologize

April 5, 2016

Germany Moves To Remove Anti-Erdogan Poem And Merkel Calls Turkey To Apologize, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, April 5, 2016

220px-recep_tayyip_erdogan
220px-angela_merkel_2008

The enabling of an authoritarian like Erdogan is a new low for the Western nations. Not only is Erdogan destroying free speech and the free media in Turkey, but he has now found a way to enlist Western governments like Germany to embrace the same anti-free speech principles.

********************

We recently discussed how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned his suppression of critics to other countries and was demanding action from governments against his critics. At the time, I was relieved to report that Germany had held the line on free speech. My relief of premature. German ZDF public television said Monday it had deleted a poem recited by presenter Jan Böhmermann from last Thursday’s edition of “Neo Magazin Royal” after pressure from the German government. Böhmermann’s poem, containing numerous sexual innuendos, accuses Erdogan of repressing minorities, including Kurds and Christians. German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Chancellor Angela Merkel in a telephone call on Sunday evening with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had agreed that Böhmermann had recited a “deliberately abusive text.” Merkel has done precisely what civil libertarians feared: feeding Erdogan’s desire to suppress speech and affirming that he can indeed silence critics abroad.

What is truly maddening is that the spokesman insisted that none of this takes away from the “high value” the German government placed on freedoms of the press and public opinion. Unbelievable. Merkel silences Germans to appease a rising dictator while insisting that she remains committed otherwise to free speech.

Böhmermann mocked Merkel and said “Limits, at last. I think we have spectacularly shown, jointly with ZDF, where the limits of satire lie by us in Germany. At last!”

Merkel is not the only one who should be condemned in this matter. ZDF Program director Norbert Himmler insisted that there were limits to irony and satire.

“In this case, they were clearly exceeded . . . As a result, in consultation with Jan Böhmermann, we have decided to take the passage out of the broadcast. That relates to the video in the Mediathek, clips on YouTube, and re-runs.”

As we discussed, Erdogan flew into a rage over a satirical song entitled “Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan,” that ridiculed Erdogan’s alleged extravagance and a crackdown on civil liberties. Here is the video:

The video is a parody of a 1980s song by the German pop star Nena, “Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann,” (“Anyway, Anywhere, Anytime”) which is changed to “Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan.” The facts that it reports however are not satirical but actual. The video details Erdogan crackdown on democracy and basic freedoms as well as his infamous intolerance for any criticism. Merkel has now added fuel to the meglomania of Erdogan in saying that certain criticism will not be tolerated in Germany. That is likely far more than the Turks ever dreamed of . . . to have a major Western nation embrace censorship.

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). In Germany, Merkel government has crackdown on anti-immigration speech as the government expands its list of permitted and prohibited speech.

The enabling of an authoritarian like Erdogan is a new low for the Western nations. Not only is Erdogan destroying free speech and the free media in Turkey, but he has now found a way to enlist Western governments like Germany to embrace the same anti-free speech principles.

‘You Are Not The People, You Are The Past’ Public Broadcaster Tells German Critics Of Mass Immigration

April 2, 2016

‘You Are Not The People, You Are The Past’ Public Broadcaster Tells German Critics Of Mass Immigration, BreitbartVirginia Hale, April 2, 2016

Not todays peopleScreengrab/Neo Magazin Royal

“You are not the people, you are the past,” was the message to German critics of mass immigration on Germany’s public broadcaster ZDF’s NEO MAGAZIN ROYALE television programme.

The message was delivered in a video featuring a multi-ethnic crowd of disabled, gay and transgender people, as well as a Muslim woman wearing a face veil and a man wearing traditional Saudi headgear, all telling a crowd of Germans that they are “not Germany”.

The video opens with a crowd of angry-looking white Germans hitting against the windows of a bus to intimidate a frightened Arab child and his father, a policeman dragging the child out and hurling him to the ground. Led by the German comedian and television presenter’Jan Böhmermann, brightly dressed people rise from graves, forming a crowd to combat the beige-clad Germans who are wielding Donald Trump placards and signs reading “Refugees not welcome.”

VH-Video-Image-2-1024x576

Condemning the German crowd as “authoritarian nationalist dorks” and telling them “you are not the people, you are the past,” Böhmermann cautions that “true Germans are coming for you, you’d better run fast.”

Warning the beige-clad Germans that “10 million bicycle helmets are in sight” Böhmermann describes the lifestyle of “true Germans” to be one of cycling, recycling and eating kebab and muesli. In what is perhaps a jab at protests from senior members of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union against pork being “quietly removed from menus” of public canteens, Böhmermann also declares that the “true Germans” eat vegan sausages.

Lambasting the crowd — which holds placards featuring politicians critical of mass immigration, such as Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany’s leader Frauke Petry, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen — Böhmermann rejects their calls for “strong leaders, fences and walls”. He explains that this is because Germans are “liberal”, “compassionate”,“temperate” and “peaceful” as the crowd on his side — which features a dog, a woman wearing a niqab, a man wearing a Saudi Arabian headdress and an elderly white woman in a wheelchair pushed by an African man — advances on the Germans protesting against mass immigration.

Showing politicians considered to be right wing, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, edited to be wearing Donald Trump’s hairstyle, Böhmermann warns against “maniacs with wicked hair” stating that Germany has “been there”, and that such politics resulted in Nazi Germany.

Employing similar tactics to Luke Montgomery, director of controversial left wing campaigns which feature foul-mouthed children, ZDF’s video shows a blonde child shouting profanities and yelling epithets at the beige-clad Germans.

As the young girl declares that because it’s 2016 “it is perfectly legal” for migrants to do “whatever the **** they want to do” because they are “******* human beings just like you and everyone else” the video shows the conservatively dressed Muslim man and the Jewish man smiling and shaking hands. There is also a white woman donning a purple hijab, a man dressed as a woman tearing his wig off, and even an elderly male Lutheran minister opening his robes to reveal lingerie and suspenders underneath.

VH-Video-Image-3-1024x457

As Böhmermann announces Germany is “open”, “multicultural” and “tolerant”, his crowd charges forward under a giant European Union flag shouting and hurling objects towards the white Germans, who flee as they are hit with food and books.

He lists what he says to be German values which includes “never forget”, referring to the Holocaust, and “diversity”. Bizarrely he also declares “freedom of speech” to be a German value despite the government’s policy of working with social media websites such as Facebook to censor criticism of migrants’ behaviour, and the obvious irony that the message of the video appears to be that critics of multiculturalism must be shut down.

Regardless of equipment, or radio and television usage, all households in Germany must pay a blanket fee of €215.76 per annum which funds public broadcasters ZDF and Deutschlandradio, as well as the nine regional broadcasters of the ARD network.

Germany’s Merkel to Voters: “No Change to Migration Policy”

March 18, 2016

Germany’s Merkel to Voters: “No Change to Migration Policy” Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, March 18, 2016

♦ Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘s migration policy is causing security mayhem in Germany, where mostly Muslim migts are raping and assaulting women and children with virtual impunity.

♦ Merkel’s party was defeated in two out of the three federal states voting in March 13 regional elections. By contrast, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — an upstart anti-establishment party campaigning against Merkel’s liberal migration policy — surged to double-digit results in all three states.

♦ Political and media elites are ramping up a months-long campaign to delegitimize AfD voters as agitators, arsonists, far-right extremists, fascists, Nazis, populists and xenophobes.

♦ Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has called on German intelligence to begin monitoring the AfD, presumably in an effort to silence critics of the government’s migration policy. Gabriel has called for Germany to take in even more migrants by airlifting them into the country directly from the Middle East.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to continue her open-door migration policy — despite heavy losses in regional elections that were widely regarded as a referendum on that very policy.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was defeated in two out of the three federal states voting on March 13. By contrast, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — an upstart anti-establishment party campaigning against Merkel’s liberal migration policy — surged to double-digit results in all three states: Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt.

In a press conference after the election results were in, Merkel remained defiant. She reprimanded German voters for questioning her handling of the migration crisis: “There are people who did not listen to us at all and simply cast protest votes. We need to solve this [migrant] problem, not through theoretical debates, but by finding a [European] solution to the problem.”

The elections were the most important in Germany since Merkel allowed more than one million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to enter the country in 2015. Merkel’s migration policy is causing security mayhem in Germany, where mostly Muslim migrants are raping and assaulting women and children with virtual impunity.

With immigration now the dominant issue in German politics, Merkel’s refusal to reverse her open-door migration policy has alienated many of her traditional supporters, scores of whom are flocking to the AfD to protest Germany’s pro-immigration, pro-EU political establishment.

The AfD was founded as a Eurosceptic party in 2013 by German economists advocating the abolition of the European single currency, the euro, and opposing financial bailouts of profligate eurozone countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

At the time, the AfD was widely ridiculed by Germany’s mainstream media. In July 2013, for example, the Rheinische Post published an “analysis” which referred to the AfD as the “unlucky professor’s party” that “does not have many chances” as a political party. Nevertheless, in 2014 and 2015, the AfD secured seats in five of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments, and seven seats in the European Parliament.

After an internal power struggle, Frauke Petry — a 40-year-old chemist, entrepreneur and mother of four who hails from the former East Germany — assumed leadership of the AfD in July 2015. Since then, Petry has broadened the party’s initial focus on economics to immigration.

The AfD — now the third-largest party in Germany — poses a significant challenge to the political status quo in Germany. If its momentum holds, the AfD is on track to cross the 5% threshold in general elections in 2017 to qualify for seats in the national legislature, the Bundestag.

1515In recent regional elections, the CDU party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) suffered heavy losses to the upstart anti-establishment party Alternative for Germany, led by Frauke Petry (right).

The left-leaning German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, long hostile toward the AfD, acknowledged that the party has achieved a “breakthrough” and called the election result “Black Sunday” for Merkel:

“For a long time she had hoped, despite considerable popular opposition to her refugee policy, to win two chancelleries in the southwest of the country. This has come to nothing. Merkel will now have to live with the accusation that she has allowed the AfD finally to establish itself [as a democratic alternative] to the right of the CDU.”

The leader of the AfD, Frauke Petry, said the fact that her party won big in two states in western Germany — Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate — showed that “the AFD is an all-German party and that citizens in all regions of Germany want a change of politics.” In a Facebook post, she added:

“Yesterday we made a first important step in the right direction to break the cartels of consensus parties. Already, it has been indicated that they [mainstream parties] will not accept the will of the people. We will probably see the most colorful combination of political coalitions, just so they can continue to stay in power and further marginalize voters of the AfD.”

Petry was referring to Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, who said that despite her electoral drubbing, Merkel will not reverse course on migration:

“The Federal Government will continue to pursue its refugee policy, with full determination, at home and abroad. At home, we will ease the path to integrate those people who have sought and found protection here. At European level, the goal must be a common, sustainable European solution that leads to a reduction in the number of refugees in all member states of the European Union.”

The CDU’s general secretary, Peter Tauber, echoed the view that there is no alternative to Merkel’s migration policy: “Considering what we have already achieved, I recommend that we continue on the path we are on.”

Some German commentators have tried to downplay the AfD’s gains by arguing that although Merkel lost the election, she actually won the election because the majority of Germans voted for mainstream parties. Bernd Ulrich, editor of Die Zeit, wrote:

“These three elections, which were in fact a plebiscite on the refugee policy, sent an encouraging message of approval. On average, two-thirds of voters cast ballots for parties that support the relatively liberal refugee policies of Angela Merkel.”

Writing in Der Spiegel, columnist Jakob Augstein argued:

“On Sunday Angela Merkel achieved an unlikely feat: her party was trounced, but her refugee policy was confirmed and strengthened… How did the chancellor do on Election Day? In truth, she has been strengthened. The fact is: a large majority of voters support the chancellor.”

According to Augstein, Merkel is “the right woman in the wrong party” because she has moved the center-right CDU to the left on so many issues, including migration policy, that the party is now virtually indistinguishable from its coalition partner, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). What Augstein failed to mention is that Merkel’s move to the left is responsible for creating a political vacuum to the right of the CDU — a vacuum that is now being filled by the AfD.

Other political and media elites are ramping up a months-long campaign to delegitimize AfD voters as agitators, arsonists, far-right extremists, fascists, Nazis, populists and xenophobes.

German media are also churning out stories — many of which are based on hearsay — aimed at discrediting the AfD. The magazine, Stern, published this headline: “Reports of Nazi Songs at AfD-Election Party.” The Berliner Kurier: “Former Teacher Calls AfD Leader Frauke Petry a Liar.”Die Welt: “AfD Candidate Accused of Running Escort Service.” Berliner Morgenpost: “After AfD Coup, Saxony-Anhalt’s Hoteliers Are Anxious.” Stern: “AfD and Donald Trump: Hate is the Main Issue.” Die Zeit: “AfD Principles: Not So Important.”

On Election Day, Die Zeit ridiculed the AfD’s 70-point political platform by using the following bullet points:

“More popular referendums, more monitoring of citizens, stiffer penalties for criminals, dissolve the EU, shrink the state, lower taxes, cut social spending, put women back in the kitchen, ban employment quotas for women, make it harder to file for divorce, abolish abortion, close borders, harass Muslims, ruin the climate, expand nuclear power, expand the military, more private weapons, etc.”

Taxpayer-funded ZDF public television broadcast an interview with Thomas Kliche, a German psychologist, who compared AfD voters to “children who are stubborn and unreasonable.” The only way to deal with such people, he said, is “just have patience, ignore the stupidity, and confront it with rationalism.”

According to Kliche, AfD voters are suffering from “macro-social stress” induced by globalization (i.e., mass migration):

“People react with various forms of shock management. This begins with retrograde, regressive, childish fantasies that everything can be as it was before. Some believe that by shouting ‘We are the People!’ [the main slogan of anti-government demonstrators in East Germany in 1989-1990, reminding their leaders that Germany should be ruled by the people, not by an undemocratic party claiming to represent them], the migrants will disappear…. They have no solutions, just fantasies. Building a fence — this is a fantasy. Separate yourself from the world — that is a fantasy.”

Meanwhile, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has called on German intelligence to begin monitoring the AfD, presumably in an effort to silence critics of the government’s migration policy. Gabriel — who leads the SPD, which also suffered significant losses on March 13 — has called the AfD a party of “right-wing extremists” who “use the language of the Nazis.” At the same time, Gabriel has called for Germany to take in even more migrants by airlifting them into the country directly from the Middle East.

By contrast, Horst Seehofer, the head of the Christian Socialist Union (CSU), the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria, said the rise of the AfD amounts to a “tectonic shift in the political landscape of Germany.” He warned that tectonic shifts trigger earthquakes that cause irreversible changes. Seehofer demanded that Merkel reverse course: “It cannot be that after such an election result, the answer to the electorate is: everything will go on as before.”

CSU politician Hans-Peter Uhl summed it up this way: “I expect the chancellor clearly to admit: ‘Yes, we have understood. We are going to return to the voters. Politics must move toward the voter, not the other way around. This is called democracy.'”

Merkel has not said if she plans to run for a fourth term in 2017.

Trump and the Left’s Accusations of Fascism

March 16, 2016

Trump and the Left’s Accusations of Fascism, Front Page MagazineBruce Thornton, March 16, 2016

trump

Donald Trump’s success in the primaries and his rhetoric have sparked troubled meditations about an awakening of fascist impulses among his supporters. Bret Stephens has drawn an analogy with the Thirties, “the last dark age of Western politics,” and compared Trump to Benito Mussolini. On the left, Dana Milbank, in a column titled “Trump Flirts with Fascism,” wrote about a campaign rally at which Trump was “leading supporters in what looked very much like a fascist salute,” a scene New York Times house-conservative David Brooks linked to the Nuremberg party rallies.

Much of the rhetoric that links Trump to fascism or Nazism is merely the stale ad Hitlerum fallacy used by progressives to demonize the candidate. They did the same thing when they called George W. Bush “Bushitler.” This slur reflects the hoary leftist dogma that conservatives at heart are repressed xenophobes and knuckle-dragging racists lusting for a messianic leader to restore their lost “white privilege” and punish their minority, immigrant, and feminist enemies. As such, the attack on Trump is nothing new or unexpected from a progressive ideology whose totalitarian inclinations have always had much more in common with fascism than conservatism does.

What Auden called the “low dishonest decade” of the Thirties, however, is indeed instructive for our predicament today, but not because of any danger of a fascist party taking root in modern America. Communism was (and in some ways still is) vastly more successful at infiltrating and shaping American political, cultural, and educational institutions than fascism ever was. But the same cultural pathologies that enabled both fascist and Nazi aggression still afflict us today. These pathologies and their malign effects are more important than the reasons for Trump’s popularity–– anger at elites, economic stagnation, and anti-immigrant passions–– that supposedly echo the “waves of fear and anger” of Auden’s Thirties.

The most important delusion of the Thirties still active today is the idealistic internationalism that had developed over the previous century. A world shrunk by new communication and transportation technologies and linked by global trade, internationalists argued, meant nations and peoples were becoming more alike. Thus they desired the same prosperity, political freedom, human rights, and peace that the West enjoyed. Interstate relations now should be based on this “harmony of interests,” and managed by non-lethal transnational organizations rather than by force. Covenants and treaties like the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and institutions like the League of Nations and the International Court of Arbitration, could peacefully resolve conflicts among nations through diplomatic engagement, negotiation, and appeasement.

The Preamble to the First Hague Convention (1899) captures the idealism that would compromise foreign policy in the Thirties. The Convention’s aims were “the maintenance of the general peace” and “the friendly settlement of international disputes.” This goal was based on the “solidarity which unites the member of the society of civilized nations” and their shared desire for “extending the empire of law and of strengthening the appreciation of international justice.” Two decades later, the monstrous death and destruction of World War I should have shattered the delusion of such “solidarity” existing even among the “civilized nations.” Despite that gruesome lesson, Europe doubled down and created the League of Nations, which failed to stop the serial aggression that culminated in World War II.

But the League wasn’t the only manifestation of naïve internationalism. The Locarno Treaty of 1925 welcomed Germany back into the community of nations with a seat on the League of Nations council. Nobel Peace prizes, and wish-fulfilling headlines like the New York Times’ “France and Germany Bar War Forever,” were all that resulted. The Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 “condemn[ed] recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce[d] it as an instrument of national policy” in interstate relations. The signing powers asserted that “the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts . . . shall never be sought except by pacific means.”

All the future Axis Powers signed the treaty, and they all soon shredded these “parchment barriers.” In the next few years, Japan invaded Manchuria, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in gross violation of the Versailles Treaty, and Italy invaded Ethiopia. By the time Germany annexed Austria, and Neville Chamberlain’s faith in negotiation and appeasement handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler, all these treaties and conventions and conferences were dead letters, and the League of Nations was exposed as a “cockpit in the tower of Babel,” as Churchill suggested after the First World War.

However, such graphic and costly evidence showing the folly of “covenants without the sword,” as Hobbes put it, did not discredit this dangerous idealism over the following decades. Indeed, it lies behind the disasters of Obama’s foreign policy. Just consider his “outreach” to our enemies, his acknowledgement of our own “imperfections,” his reliance on toothless U.N. Security Council Resolutions, his preference for non-lethal economic sanctions to pressure adversaries, and his belief that negotiated settlements and agreements can achieve peace and good relations even with our fiercest enemies. All reflect the same failure to recognize that our adversaries in fact do not sincerely want to reach an agreement, for the simple reason they are not in fact “just like us,” and so they do not want peace and prosperity and good relations with their neighbors and the “world community.”

The catalogue of Obama’s failures is long and depressing. The “reset” with Russia and promise of “flexibility,” the empty “red line” threats against Bashar al Assad, the arrogant dismissal of a metastasizing ISIS as a “jayvee” outfit, the alienation of allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, the cultivation of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, the ill-conceived overthrow of Muammar Ghaddafi, and the rhetoric of guilt and self-abasement are just the most noteworthy failures. The nuclear deal with Iran, of course, is the premier monument to this folly. Yet despite the increasing evidence of its futility­­––Iran’s saber-rattling in the Gulf, capture of U.S. military personnel, genocidal rhetoric, and testing of missiles in blatant violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution–– Obama still clings to this internationalist delusion.

A recent article in The Atlantic on Obama’s foreign policy shows, despite his protestations of hardheaded “realism,” that he has not learned from his failures. Thus he still thinks that the vigorous use of force is usually an unnecessary and dangerous mistake, and that verbal persuasion and diplomatic engagement are more effective. He also still believes that “multilateralism regulates [U.S.] hubris” of the sort that George W. Bush showed when he recklessly invaded Iraq, and that American foreign policy has frequently displayed.

Obama’s delusional faith in rhetoric, especially his own, comes through in his rationale for the infamous 2009 Cairo speech: “I was hoping that my speech could trigger a discussion, could create space for Muslims to address the real problems they are confronting—problems of governance, and the fact that some currents of Islam have not gone through a reformation that would help people adapt their religious doctrines to modernity.” The idea that Obama’s mere words could start a “discussion” that would transform 14-century-old religious doctrines fundamentally inimical to liberal democracy, human rights, and all the other Western goods we live by, is a fantasy. Obama’s self-regard recalls Neville Chamberlain’s boast after his meeting with Hitler at Bad Godesberg that he “had established some degree of personal influence with Herr Hitler.”

Or consider Obama’s take on Vladimir Putin:

He understands that Russia’s overall position in the world is significantly diminished. And the fact that he invades Crimea or is trying to prop up Assad doesn’t suddenly make him a player. You don’t see him in any of these meetings out here helping to shape the agenda. For that matter, there’s not a G20 meeting where the Russians set the agenda around any of the issues that are important.

A “player,” in Obama’s foreign policy universe, is a leader who uses “smart power” like diplomacy and negotiated deals, and recognizes that the use of force will backfire and lead to costly “quagmires.” As Secretary of State John Kerry suggested, Putin is using outdated “19th century” instruments of foreign policy like military force in a world that presumably has evolved beyond it.

In contrast, a genuine “player,” as Obama fancies himself, attends summits and conferences, such as the useless climate change conference in Paris, and “sets the agenda.” And like his rationale for the Cairo speech, as the leader of the world’s greatest power, his rhetoric alone can be a force for change. Thus just saying that Syria’s “Assad must go,” while doing nothing to achieve that end, is still useful, and refusing to honestly identify the traditional Islamic foundations of modern jihadism will build good will among Muslims and turn them against the “extremists.”

Meanwhile, Putin and Iran fight and bomb and kill in Syria and Iraq, and now they are the big “players” in a region that the U.S. once dominated, but that now serves the interests of Russia and Iran. I’m reminded of Demosthenes’ scolding of the Athenians for refusing to confront Phillip II of Macedon: “Where either side devotes its time and energy, there it succeeds the better––Phillip in action, but you in argument.”

In other words, for Obama as for Chamberlain, appeasing words rather than forceful deeds are the key to foreign policy––precisely the belief that led England to disastrously underestimate Hitler until it was too late. And that same belief has turned the Middle East into a Darwinian jungle of clashing tribes, sects, and nations.

Obama wraps his foreign policy of retreat in claims to “realist” calculations of America’s security and genuine interests, and buttresses his claim by citing his strategically inconsequential drone killings. But such rhetoric hides an unwillingness to risk consequential action and pay its political costs. And it reflects a commitment to the internationalist idealism that gives diplomatic verbal processes an almost magical power to transform inveterate enemies into helpful partners. Europe tried that in the Thirties, and it led to disaster. That’s a much more important lesson from that sorry decade’s history than the lurid fantasies about fascism coming to America on the wings of Trump’s rhetoric.

Islamic State Closing in on Germany

March 13, 2016

Islamic State Closing in on Germany Stabbing Is First ISIS-Inspired Attack on German Soil

by Soeren Kern March 13, 2016 at 5:00 am

Source: Islamic State Closing in on Germany

  • Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.
  • “Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.
  • More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal Police Office.
  • Up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. — Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

A 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover. The stabbing appears to be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic State.

The incident occurred at the main train station in Hanover on the afternoon of February 26, when two police officers noticed that the girl — identified only as Safia S. — was observing and following them.

The officers approached the girl, who was wearing an Islamic headscarf, and asked her to present her identification papers. After handing over her ID, she stabbed one of the officers in the neck with a six-centimeter kitchen knife.

According to police, the attack happened so quickly that the 34-year-old officer, who was rushed to the hospital, was unable to defend himself. After her arrest, police found that Safia was also carrying a second, larger knife.

“The perpetrator did not display any emotion,” a police spokesperson said. “Her only concern was for her headscarf. She was concerned that her headscarf be put back on properly after she was arrested. Whether the police officer survived, she did not care.”

On March 3, Hanover Public Prosecutor Thomas Klinge revealed that Safia had travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border in November 2015 to join the Islamic State, but that her mother had persuaded her to return to Germany on January 28.

Last month, Safia S., a 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent, stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover, in what appears to be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic State.

According to police, the stabbing was premeditated: unable to join the Islamic State in Syria, Safia had determined to carry out an attack against the police in Germany.

Safia is being charged with attempted murder. She is also being charged with a terrorism offense. According to prosecutors, by travelling to Turkey to join the Islamic State, the girl violated Section 89a of the German Criminal Code, “Preparation of a serious violent offense endangering the state.”

The newspaper, Die Welt, reported that Safia had been part of the local Salafist scene since 2008 — she was only seven years old at the time. She had appeared in Islamist propaganda videos alongside Pierre Vogel, a convert to Islam and one of the best-known Salafist preachers in Germany. In those videos, Vogel praised Safia for wearing a headscarf to school and for being able to recite verses from the Koran.

Safia’s brother, Saleh, is reportedly being held in a jail in Turkey, where he was arrested for trying to join the Islamic State.

Until now, the only other successful Islamist attack in Germany took place at Frankfurt Airport in March 2011, when Arid Uka, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, shot and killed two United States airmen and seriously wounded two others. Uka was later sentenced to life in prison.

On February 4, 2016, German police arrested four members of an ISIS cell allegedly planning jihadist attacks in Berlin. In coordinated raids, more than 450 police searched homes and businesses linked to the cell in Berlin, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.

The ringleader — a 35-year-old Algerian who was staying at a refugee shelter with his wife and two children in Attendorn — arrived in Germany in the fall of 2015. Posing as an asylum seeker from Syria, the Algerian, identified only as Farid A., is said to have received military training with the Islamic State in Syria.

Also arrested were: a 49-year-old Algerian living in Berlin under a fake French identity; a 30-year-old Algerian living in Berlin with a valid residence permit; and a 26-year-old Algerian, allegedly with ties to Islamists in Belgium, who is living in a refugee shelter in Hanover.

The men allegedly were planning to attack Checkpoint Charlie, the iconic Cold War crossing point between East and West Berlin. They also allegedly were planning to attack the Alexanderplatz, a large public square and transportation hub in the center of Berlin.

On February 8, German police arrested an alleged ISIS commander who was living at a refugee shelter in the small town of Sankt Johann. The 32-year-old jihadist, known only as Bassam and posing as a Syrian asylum seeker, had entered Germany in the fall of 2015. German intelligence authorities were unaware of the man’s true identity until the German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, interviewed him after receiving a tip from other Syrians at the shelter. Bassam said the accusations against him are false: “I want to learn German and work as a cook,” he said.

In a February 5 interview with ZDF television, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe. “The terror risk is very high,” he said.

On February 4, the Berliner Zeitung quoted Maaßen as saying that the BfV had received more than 100 warnings that there were Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently living in Germany. Some of the jihadists are known to have entered Germany using fake or stolen passports.

Maaßen also revealed that the BfV knows of 230 attempts by Salafists to canvass German refugee shelters in search of new recruits. In a recent interview with the Berlin newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, Maaßen said that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014; 5,500 in 2013; 4,500 in 2012, and 3,800 in 2011.

Although Salafists make up only a small fraction of the estimated six million Muslims living in Germany today, intelligence officials warn that most of those attracted to Salafi ideology are impressionable young Muslims who, at a moment’s notice, are willing to carry out terrorist acts in the name of Islam.

In an annual report, the BfV described Salafism as the “most dynamic Islamist movement in Germany.” It added:

“The absolutist nature of Salafism contradicts significant parts of the German constitutional order. Specifically, Salafism rejects the democratic principles of separation of state and religion, popular sovereignty, religious and sexual self-determination, gender equality and the fundamental right to physical integrity.”

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Maaßen warned: “Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.”

On February 16, more than 200 German police raided the homes of 44 Salafists in the northern city state of Bremen. The Interior Minister of Bremen, Ulrich Mäurer, said he had ordered the closure of the Islamic Association of Bremen (Islamischen Fördervereins Bremen) for the alleged recruiting of jihadists for the Islamic State:

“It is rather apocalyptic that we have people living in the middle of our city who are prepared, from one day to the next, to participate massively in the terror of the Islamic State.”

In December 2014, authorities in Bremen shut down another Salafist group, the Culture and Family Association (Kultur- und Familieverein, KUF), after some of its members joined the Islamic State.

More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, according to Die Welt, based on the most recent data compiled by the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. Around 130 others have been killed on the battlefield, including at least a dozen suicide bombers.

In a February 19 interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, the head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, said that up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. He added that further jihadist attacks in Europe were to be expected:

“Europe is now facing the greatest terrorist threat in more than ten years. We expect that ISIS or other Islamist groups will carry out an attack somewhere in Europe, with the aim of achieving high losses among the civilian population. In addition, there is the threat posed by lone-wolf attackers. The growing number of foreign fighters presents the member states of the EU with completely new challenges.”

A recent poll conducted by YouGov for the news agency, Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), found that 66% of Germans expect the Islamic State to carry out a jihadist attack on German soil in 2016. Only 17% of those surveyed believe there will be no attack; 17% said they did not have an opinion.

Speaking at a gathering of international police in Berlin on February 25, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the spy chief, warned that Germany is not an island: “We have to assume that we will become the target of jihadist attacks, and we need to be prepared.”

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in 2016.

Germany: Migrant Rape Crisis Worsens

March 5, 2016

Germany: Migrant Rape Crisis Worsens, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kernn, March 5, 2016

♦ Sexual violence in Germany has skyrocketed since Angela Merkel allowed more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into the country. The crimes are being downplayed by the authorities, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.<

♦ “The moment they [male migrants] see a young woman wearing a skirt or any type of loose clothing, they believe they have a free pass.” — Restaurant owner at a mall in Kiel.

♦ “Every police officer knows he has to meet a particular political expectation. It is better to keep quiet [about migrant crime] because you cannot go wrong.” — Rainer Wendt, the head of the German police union.

♦ Police are warning about a potential breakdown of public order this summer, when women who are lightly dressed are confronted by young male migrants.

♦ Jakob Augstein, an influential columnist for the magazine Der Spiegel, says that Germans worried about migrant crimes are motivated by racism. His views shed light on the worldview of German multiculturalism: Migrants who assault German women and children are simply rebelling against German power structures. Germans who criticize such assaults are racists.

♦ Police in Cologne received more than 1,000 complaints from women, including 454 reports of sexual assaults, related to New Year’s Eve. Police in Hamburg received complaints from 351 women, including 218 reports of sexual assault that took place on the same evening.

A mob of asylum seekers from Afghanistan assaulted three teenage girls at a shopping center in the northern German city of Kiel. The attack — which occurred over two-hours on the evening of February 25, and mirrored the mass assaults of German women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve — shows, once again, that public spaces in Germany are becoming increasingly perilous for women and children.

Police reports show that sexual violence in Germany has skyrocketed since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into the country. But the crimes are being played down by German authorities, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

Police in Kiel say the assault began at around 5:30 pm, when two Afghan males (aged 19 and 26) began stalking and photographing three girls (aged 15, 16 and 17) at a food court in the Sophienhof, a large shopping center near the city’s central train station.

After posting photographs of the girls on social media, the two men were quickly joined by at least 30 other migrants who began collectively to harass the girls in a Muslim “rape game” known in Arabic as “taharrush” (al-taharrush al-jinsi, Arabic for “sexual harassment”).

When police arrived, the migrants, rather than running way, began verbally and physically abusing the officers, some of whom were injured. It took police two hours to restore order. The initial two perpetrators, asylum seekers from Afghanistan, were arrested; the other migrants involved in the incident remain at large.

At a news conference on February 27, police spokesman Oliver Pohl revealed that more women are now coming forward to report similar experiences at the Sophienhof.

The owner of a restaurant at the mall said:

“Groups of young men gather at the Sophienhof every evening. What they do here is unacceptable. The moment they see a young woman wearing a skirt or any type of loose clothing, they believe they have a free pass. It is about time migrants are made to understand: things in Germany function differently than in their home countries.”

In an interview with Kieler Nachrichten, the local leader of the Free Democrats (FDP), Wolfgang Kubicki, expressed dismay at the deteriorating security situation in Kiel:

“It cannot be that girls and women, as well as their parents or spouses, should be afraid in public spaces. People are asking: If you are no longer safe in Sophienhof, where then?

“The perpetrators must be brought to justice. We must not create the impression that perpetrators will go unpunished for such assaults. … Turning a blind eye to such incidents is the opposite of integration and ultimately leads to the creation of parallel societies.

“It starts with small things. Time and again I keep hearing from the police how disrespectful young migrants are towards the officers. We have to support our security forces and reverse the loss of confidence in the police and judiciary. Otherwise we risk citizens taking the law into their own hands. I do not want to see vigilantes patrolling our streets.”

Kubicki was referring to revelations that politicians in Kiel ordered the city police to overlook many of the crimes perpetrated by migrants. A document leaked to the newspaper Bild in late January showed that the orders were given in October 2015, when more than 10,000 migrants were entering Germany each day. According to Bild, police in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony have also been instructed to be lenient to criminal migrants.

Meanwhile, the raping and assaulting of German women and children by migrants and refugees — German police often refer to them by using politically correct euphemisms such as “southerners” (Südländer), men with “dark skin” (dunkelhäutig, dunklere Gesichtsfarbe, dunklem Hauttyp) or a combination of the two: “southern skin color” (südländische Hautfarbe) — continues apace (See Appendix below).

1496Left: At least 30 male migrants assaulted three girls (aged 15, 16 and 17) at the Sophienhof mall in Kiel, Germany, on February 25. Only two of the men were arrested by police. Right: In the first two months of this year alone, there have been dozens of reported cases of migrants sexually assaulting women and children at public swimming pools across Germany. In some areas, authorities have distributed cartoon guides, to “educate” migrants that sexual assault is not acceptable.

Reliable statistics on sexual crimes committed by migrants are notoriously elusive. German authorities have repeatedly been accused of underreporting the true scale of the crime problem in the country. For example, up to 90% of the sex crimes committed in Germany in 2014 do not appear in the official statistics, according to André Schulz, the head of the Association of Criminal Police (Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter, BDK).

On February 25, the newspaper, Die Welt, reported that authorities in the German state of Hesse were suppressing information about migrant-related crimes, ostensibly due to a “lack of public interest.”

On January 24, Die Welt reported that the suppression of data about migrant criminality is a “Germany-wide phenomenon.” According to Rainer Wendt, the head of the German police union (Deutschen Polizeigewerkschaft, DPolG), “Every police officer knows he has to meet a particular political expectation. It is better to keep quiet [about migrant crime] because you cannot go wrong.”

On January 22, the newsmagazine Focus reported that the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency (Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes, ADS) put pressure on police in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) to remove a reference to “North African criminal groups” in a press release. According to Focus, the ADS wrote: “There is a danger that people from these countries are placed under a general suspicion. We encourage you to delete the reference to the North African origin from the press release.” NRW Police later removed the offending words because “it could not be excluded that our formulation in the press release could be misunderstood as a discriminatory statement.” Interestingly, the original article by Focus has since been removed from the magazine’s webpage.

Some German commentators are downplaying or rationalizing the growing sexual violence against women and children. According to Jakob Augstein, an influential columnist for the newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Germans worried about migrant crimes are presumably motivated by deep-seated racism.

Shortly after the attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, Augstein ridiculed the idea that Muslim migrants were targeting German women. On his Facebook page, he wrote:

“We are so racist. Everyone immediately wanted to believe that 1,000 North Africans were committing mischief. One thousand: this is a fairy tale figure. Just like the three golden hairs of the devil. Or the seven dwarfs. Or the thirteenth fairy.

“One thousand Tunisians who attacked ‘our’ women. That is just what we needed. The foreigner and his menacing sexuality — this is the oldest prejudice of racism.”

Now Augstein says the sexual assaults committed by migrants are a form of social rebellion.

Writing on his Facebook page on February 23, Augstein argued that the true victims in all of this are the migrants, because of their low rank in Germany’s social hierarchy. He wrote:

“The victims of Cologne were inferior to their perpetrators only in the immediate moment of the attacks. Those women were powerless and helpless at the moment they were assaulted and robbed. But before the attacks and after, they were and are superior to their attackers.

“For the victims of Clausnitz [on February 18, an anti-migrant mob tried to block the arrival of 20 asylum seekers into the town] it is different: they were inferior to their attackers before, during and after the incidents. They are always inferior.

“The lawbreaking in Cologne brought a brief rupture in the established hierarchy, a reversal of the true balance of power. The reason is that in this moment, the relationship between victim and perpetrator was reduced to physical strength. In all other respects, the victims of Cologne are superior to their perpetrators: language, nationality, education, social status, wealth, legal certainty, self-confidence. …

“In Clausnitz, the strong subdued the weak. This makes the attack in Clausnitz so repugnant. And — if you really want to draw such comparisons — this gives the attack on Clausnitz a different moral quality than the attack on Cologne.”

Augstein, whose opinions have not been seriously challenged by the mainstream media, sheds light on the upside-down worldview of German multiculturalism: Migrants who assault German women and children are simply rebelling against German power structures. Germans who dare to criticize such assaults are racists.

Meanwhile, on February 24, a court in Cologne handed down the first sentence related to the mayhem in the city on New Year’s Eve, when more than a thousand migrants sexually assaulted hundreds of German women on a public square in front of the Cologne Cathedral. A 23-year-old Moroccan migrant was given a six-month suspended sentence and fined 100 euros ($108) — for stealing a woman’s cellphone. So far no one has been charged for sexual assault.

In an interview with the television program, Kölnische Rundschau, Cologne’s chief of police, Jürgen Mathies, admitted that most of those who committed the assaults will never be brought to justice. He said the surveillance videos are too fuzzy definitively to identify anyone.

Police in Cologne say they have received more than 1,000 complaints from women, including 454 reports of sexual assaults, related to New Year’s Eve. Police in Hamburg say they have received complaints from 351 women, including 218 reports of sexual assault that took place on the same evening.

Police are now warning about a potential breakdown of public order this summer, when women who are lightly dressed are confronted by young male migrants.

Appendix

Sexual Assaults and Rapes by Migrants in Germany, January-February 2016.

Gatestone Institute first reported about Germany’s migrant rape epidemic in September 2015. The problem has now spread to cities and towns in all 16 of Germany’s federal states. Following are a few cases from just the first two months of 2016:

January 1. More than a thousand migrants sexually assaulted hundreds of German women in the cities of Cologne, Hamburg and Stuttgart.

January 4. A group of migrant youths sexually assaulted a handicapped girl in Bielefeld.

January 5. An Afghan migrant attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl in Burghausen.

January 7. A 36-year-old asylum seeker was arrested for raping a 16-year-old boy inside the city hall of Wolfsburg. A “southerner” (südländisch, arabisch) sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl near a train station in Ellwangen.

January 8. A 17-year-old Syrian migrant exposed himself to women at a swimming pool in St. Ingbert.

January 9. A 48-year-old woman was raped by three migrants in Dresden. The perpetrators have not been arrested. Also on January 9, a 45-year-old woman was sexually assaulted by an “Arab-speaking” man in Gleidingen, a town near Hanover. A group of five North Africans (Algerians, Moroccans) sexually assaulted five women in Oldenburg. Two North African migrants (Libya, Tunisia) sexually assaulted a 31-year-old woman at the main train station in Leipzig. A migrant attempted to rape a 46-year-old woman in Saarbrücken-Altenkessel.

January 10. A group of “southerners” (südländisches Aussehen) sexually assaulted three girls at a public swimming pool in Ansbach. A 21-year-old West African was arrested for raping a 15-year-old girl at a train station in Wuppertal. A 36-year-old Syrian migrant sexually assaulted a 20-year-old woman in Bornhöved. The woman was showing the man an apartment that had been advertised for rent.

January 11. A 35-year-old migrant from Pakistan sexually assaulted a three-year-old girl at a refugee shelter in Kamen. Eight migrants attempted to rape a woman at a grocery store in Ampfing. She defended herself by using pepper spray. A 20-year-old Moroccan assaulted a 24-year-old woman in Frankenberg.

January 12. A “southerner” (südländisch aussehenden) raped a 16-year-old girl in Wuppertal. Two “Arabic speaking” men assaulted a 37-year-old woman in Fröndenberg.

January 13. Four migrants (südländisch aussehen) attempted to rape a 13-year-old girl inGelsenkirchen. Three migrants sexually assaulted a 31-year-old woman in Oldenburg. A migrant attempted to rape a woman at a train station in Altötting. She defended herself by using pepper spray. Three “southerners” (südländischer oder arabischer Herkunft) assaulted a woman in Bad Münstereifel.

January 14. Three migrants (südländische Hautfarbe) sexually assaulted a 47-year-old woman in the Bavarian town of Dingolfing. Three “southerners” (Südländer) assaulted a 22-year-old women on a train in Bremerhaven.

January 15. A 36-year-old migrant sexually assaulted an eight-year-old girl at a public park in Hilden near Solingen. A 31-year-old migrant from Tunisia was arrested for attempting to rape a 30-year-old woman in Chemnitz. A 31-year-old migrant from Morocco appeared in court for raping a 31-year-old woman in Dresden. A migrant sexually assaulted a 42-year-old woman inMainz. A migrant (dunkleren Teint) sexually assaulted a 32-year-old woman in Münchfeld. An African migrant sexually assaulted a 55-year-old woman in Mannheim.

Also on January 15, all male migrants over the age of 18 were banned from a public swimming pool in Bornheim, near Bonn, after assaults against female patrons at the facility. The measure was branded as racist by German media outlets.

January 16. A migrant from Syria sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl in Mudersbach. A 36-year-old migrant sexually assaulted an eight-year-old girl in Mettmann. A 36-year-old migrant assaulted an 8-year-old girl in Hilden. A 19-year-old migrant from Afghanistan sexually assaulted four girls between the ages of 11 and 13 at an indoor swimming pool in Dresden. The migrant was arrested but then released. A 25-year-old Moroccan migrant assaulted two woman at a grocery store in Zeithain.

January 17. Three “southerners” (Südländer) attempted to rape a young woman in Kiel. Two migrants (19 and 38 years old) sexually assaulted a 21-year-old woman at a restaurant in the main train station in Nuremberg. A 19-year-old Afghan migrant assaulted four girls (aged 11 to 13) at a public swimming pool in Dresden. Migrants invaded female changing rooms at a swimming pool in Burghausen. Two “southerners” (dunklen/südländischen Typ) attempted to rape a 42-year-old woman at a pharmacy in Altötting.

January 18. A 43-year-old Syrian migrant assaulted a 63-year-old woman in Wetzlar. Police say the man also assaulted two other women (aged 62 and 74) in Wetzlar.

January 19. A 17-year-old Eritrean migrant attempted to rape an 18-year-old woman in a parking garage in Bad Oldesloe. After police intervened, the man head-butted an officer, who was hospitalized.

January 20. Migrants invaded female showers and changing rooms at two public swimming pools in Leipzig.

January 21. A “black skinned” (schwarz glänzende Hautfarbe) man attempted to rape a 13-year-old girl in Langenfeld. Two migrants assaulted an 18-year-old woman in Dingolfing.

January 22. A migrant (südländisches Äußeres) attempted to rape a 16-year-old girl in Feuerbach district of Stuttgart, and in downtown Stuttgart, four “Arabic looking” (arabisches Aussehen) men sexually assaulted a 23-year-old woman. Migrants harassed women at public swimming pools in Zwickau.

January 23. Migrants sexually assaulted two 11-year-old girls at a public swimming pool inWilhelmshaven. Two asylum seekers from Afghanistan assaulted two 17-year-old women at a public swimming pool in Straubing. Three 16-year-old migrants from Afghanistan and Syria assaulted two 13-year-old girls at a public swimming pool in Hachenburg.

Also on January 23, a 35-year-old migrant sexually assaulted a woman in a restroom on a train inDüsseldorf. A 22-year-old Syrian migrant exposed himself on a train in Hanover. An 18-year-old Syrian asylum seeker raped a 17-year-old woman in Straubing. Two unidentified men sexually assaulted an 18-year-old woman in Wiesbaden.

January 24. Two men speaking “broken German” attempted to rape a 25-year-old woman in Lehrte as she was walking home from the train station. The men pulled a knife on the woman and ordered her to “spread your legs.”

January 25. A 30-year-old migrant from “North Africa” (nordafrikanischem Erscheinungsbildexposed himself to a 19-year-old woman on a public bus in Marburg, and then to passersby at the main train station.

January 26. A 35-year-old migrant attempted to rape a young girl in Bochum. Two female passersby intervened and called police.

January 27. Two “southerners” (dunklem Teint) sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl at a bus stop in Überlingen. A 21-year-old asylum seeker assaulted an 18-year-old woman in a female changing room at a fitness studio in Lahr.

January 28. A migrant from Sudan sexually assaulted a female police officer in Hanover as she was attempting to arrest him for theft. Two “underage refugees” (minderjährige Flüchtlingesexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl at a shelter for children in Düsseldorf. It later emerged that one of the perpetrators was a 22-year-old migrant from Iran who claimed he was 16 years old to gain access to the shelter. A 17-year-old Afghan migrant assaulted a 14-year-old girl in Frankenberg. A “southerner” (Südländer) sexually assaulted an 18-year-old woman in Backnang.

January 31. A 30-year-old German, originally from Turkmenistan, raped a seven-year-old girl inKiel. The man kidnapped the girl from a school playground at 11 AM, took her to his apartment and, after abusing her, set her free. It later emerged that the man had been accused of sexually assaulting a five-year-old girl at another kindergarten in Kiel on January 18, but due to insufficient evidence, the public prosecutors failed to pursue the case.

Also on January 31, four unidentified migrants (ausländischem Aussehen) sexually assaulted a 17-year-old woman in Vilshofen. An unidentified “dark skinned” (dunkelhäutig) man assaulted a woman in Villingen. Two North African migrants sexually assaulted two 15-year-old girls inSalzgitter.

February 1. A 40-year-old asylum seeker from Syria kissed a 7-year-old boy at a bus stop inGaildorf.

February 2. Two “dark skinned” (dunklere Gesichtsfarbe) men assaulted a 31-year-old woman, who was nine months pregnant, in the parking lot of a supermarket in Schweinfurt. A 26-year-old migrant using several different identities assaulted three women on a train in Berlin. Two “dark skinned” (dunklem Hauttyp) men assaulted a 14-year-old girl on a school bus in Eslohe.

February 3. Three Afghan migrants sexually assaulted two 14-year-old girls from France at a public swimming pool in Munich. A 16-year-old migrant assaulted a 16-year-old girl at a swimming pool in Heidenheim. An 18-year-old Libyan migrant attempted to rape a 25-year-old woman in Leipzig. A “southern looking man” (südländisch aussehend) exposed himself to passengers on a regional train in Harburg.

February 4. A 29-year-old migrant from Nigeria raped a 21-year-old woman at a carnival celebration in Schloß Holte-Stukenbrock. A 25-year-old asylum seeker from Syria assaulted  two women at the same carnival. More than 20 women were sexually assaulted during carnival celebrations in Cologne. A Syrian migrant sexually assaulted a 49-year-old woman after a carnival in Bad Reichenhall. A 29-year-old migrant assaulted a woman after a carnival in Dinslaken.

Also on February 4, an African migrant (Schwarzafrikaner) assaulted a woman at a supermarket in Lörrach. When police arrived, the man assaulted the officers, who needed backup to subdue him. Police have been unable to determine the man’s identity; he was carrying a fake ID. An Eritrean migrant who assaulted two women in Zeithain was freed after a judge determined the man was drunk when he committed the crimes. A “southerner” (Südländer) assaulted a young woman in Elsfleth.

February 5. Groups of North African migrants assaulted women at carnival celebrations in downtown Cologne. Two migrants sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl in Straubing. A migrant assaulted a 19-year-old woman in Villingen-Schwenningen. Two “Arabic looking” (arabisch aussehend) men assaulted a 13-year-old girl in Klietz.

February 6. A group of 30 migrants attempted to rape an 18-year-old woman in Mühldorf am Inn, a town in Bavaria. Three Afghan migrants were arrested for sexually assaulting several women at a carnival celebrations on in Laufenburg. A 28-year-old Iraqi migrant assaulted a woman after a carnival in Bocholt. A 24-year-old migrant assaulted two 15-year-old girls at a carnival celebration in Badorf. A 48-year-old Jordanian migrant assaulted a 16-year-old girl at a carnival parade in Frankfurt. “Five or six” migrants assaulted a 25-year-old woman after carnival celebrations in Cologne. Several “foreigners” (Ausländer) assaulted “numerous” women at a carnival in Konstanz.

Also on February 6, a “southerner” (südländisches Aussehen) sexually assaulted a 19-year-old man in Ravensburg. Four “southerners” (südländisches Aussehen) assaulted and robbed two girls (13 and 14 years old) near the main train station in Bochum. A migrant (dunklen Teint) assaulted a woman in Friedrichstadt. Five migrants sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl at a public swimming pool in Celle.

February 7. A 24-year-old Algerian migrant assaulted two teenage girls at a carnival in Rietberg. Three “Arab looking” (arabisches Aussehen) men sexually assaulted several women at a carnival in Mainz. Two “dark skinned men” (dunkelhäutige Männer) sexually assaulted a 31-year-old woman at a carnival in Gütersloh. Four Afghan migrants were arrested for assaulting two 14-year-old girls at carnival celebrations in Erfurt. Four Afghan migrants sexually assaulted a 17-year-old woman in Heppenheim. Several women were assaulted at a carnival in Hardheim. A 21-year-old Moroccan migrant sexually assaulted a woman at a carnival in Kranenburg. Two “dark skinned” (dunkelhäutig) men assaulted two women at a carnival in Flieden.

Also on February 7, a 17-year-old Afghan migrant sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl at a public swimming pool in Landshut. A 16-year-old migrant from Afghanistan sexually assaulted several women at Schillerplatz, a large public square in downtown Mainz. A “dark skinned” (dunklem Hauttyp) man sexually assaulted a 17-year-old woman in Backnang. Three “southern looking” (südländischem Aussehen) assaulted a woman in Offenburg. A group of “dark skinned” (dunklen Teint) migrants sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl in Ochtrup.

Also on February 7, a “dark skinned” (dunkelhäutig) man sexually assaulted a 24-year-old woman in Mühldorf. Five migrants assaulted a 15-year-old girl in Bernburg. A “southerner” (südländisches Aussehen) assaulted a 37-year-old woman on a bus in Bochum. Two “southerners” (zwei Südländer) sexually assaulted an 18-year-old woman on an express train in Stuttgart. A “southerner” (südländisch Aussehen) assaulted a 39-year-old woman near the train station in Dresden. A migrant assaulted a 46-year-old woman in Eppelheim.

February 8. A 35-year-old migrant sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl at a carnival in Siegburg. Two Moroccans assaulted a 36-year-old woman at a carnival in Brilon. Three migrants assaulted a 49-year-old woman in Andechs.

February 9. North African migrants assaulted a 19-year-old woman during carnival revelry in Opladen, a district of Leverkusen. Several “southerners” (Südländer) assaulted a 23-year-old woman in a supermarket parking lot in Göttingen. Four migrants sexually assaulted three 13-year-old girls at a public swimming pool in Borghorst.

February 11. A 36-year-old asylum seeker raped a 14-year-old girl in Braunschweig.

February 12. A “dark skinned” (dunkle Teint) sexually assaulted a boy at a swimming pool inNordenham. A migrant assaulted a boy at a swimming pool in Nordenham. Three “dark skinned” (dunkle Hautfarbe) men assaulted a 16-year-old girl in Füssen.

February 13. Several migrants assaulted three girls (aged between 10 and 11) at a swimming pool in Norden. A migrant assaulted a 49-year-old woman in a bakery in Gütersloh.

February 14. Two migrants from Iran and Syria assaulted two girls (aged 10 and 11) at a public swimming pool in Dresden. Four migrants assaulted a 19-year-old woman in Duisburg. Migrants assaulted several women at a discotheque in Mengeringhausen.

February 15. A 17-year-old North African assaulted several women at the main train station inBremen. A 23-year-old Algerian migrant assaulted a 14-year-old girl on metro train in Frankfurt. Four “dark skinned” (Dunkelhäutige) men assaulted a 35-year-old woman in Künzelsau.

February 16. An “Arabic looking” man assaulted a 14-year-old girl on a bus in Dörzbach.

February 17. A man with a “dark complexion” (dunklem Hautteint) exposed himself to passersby in the Biebrich district of Wiesbaden. A “14 or 15-year-old” boy with “dark skin” (dunkler Teintexposed himself to several women at a traffic light in Hörstel. Two “southerners” (südländischem Aussehen) assaulted a 25-year-old woman in Dresden.

February 18. Three “southern looking” (südländische Erscheinung) men attempted to rape a woman in Uelzen. At least one of the men was attacked by the woman’s Rottweiler.

February 20. A 34-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker assaulted two girls, aged 13 and 14, at a supermarket in Rotenburg. Two “dark skinned” (dunklen Teint) men speaking broken German raped a 49-year-old woman near a cemetery in Biberach. A 51-year-old Bosnian migrant was arrested for repeatedly raping a 17-year-old woman in the Feuerbach district of Stuttgart. Two “dark brown skinned” males sexually assaulted a 19-year-old woman in Trier. A 28-year-old Afghan migrant attempted to rape a woman in Blankenburg. A “dark skinned” (dunklen Teint) man sexually assaulted a 23-year-old man in Greven.

February 21. Seven migrants from Afghanistan and Iran invaded female changing rooms at a public swimming pool in Aurich. A 35-year-old Syrian migrant assaulted a 14-year-old girl at a pool in Eckernförde. An unidentified migrant raped a 21-year-old woman at the train station inBad Schwartau. A 44-year-old migrant sexually assaulted a 29-year-old female volunteer at a refugee shelter in Großenlüder. A “southerner” (südländisches Aussehen) assaulted a 14-year-girl on a train in Neubrandenburg. Several days later, the same girl was attacked by the same suspect at a playground in the city.

February 22. A man “speaking German with a foreign accent” sexually assaulted a 20-year-old woman in Asperg. A “southerner” (südländischer Typ) assaulted a 16-year-old girl inFeldkirchen. Two “Turkish or Arab” man attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl in Brandenburg.

February 23. A 16-year-old migrant who raped two boys (9 and 11 years of age) in the town ofGlöwen was released from jail. A judge ruled that because the suspect lives with his parents and has no money, he does not pose a flight risk. A 34-year-old Algerian migrant assaulted two women (17 and 22 years of age) at a subway station in Berlin. A migrant touched himself in front of a 19-year-old woman on a public bus in Chemnitz. A migrant touched himself in front of a 21-year-old woman on a subway train in Chemnitz.

February 24. A 31-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker sexually assaulted a 21-year-old woman in a church in Weilheim. Police say the man previously assaulted another woman in the same church. He also assaulted two women in the town hall and another woman at a nursing home. A “southerner” (südländischem Äußeren) assaulted an 18-year-old woman in Kassel.

February 25. A dark skinned (südländische Hautfarbe) man assaulted two girls (13 and 15 years of age) on a city bus in the Mockau-Nord district of Leipzig. An “African” (afrikanischen Typ) man assaulted a 48-year-old woman on a tram in Leipzig.

February 26. Two Afghan migrants were accused of raping a 24-year-old woman in Magdeburg. A 29-year-old man was arrested for assaulting several women at the train station in Mülheim an der Ruhr. A 20-year-old asylum seeker assaulted a 20-year-old woman in Landau.

February 28. Two Afghan migrants (aged 14 and 34) raped two girls (aged 14 and 18) at a public swimming pool in Norderstedt. Two Afghan migrants sexually assaulted a 19-year-old woman in Mannheim. A “southerner” (südländischer Typ) assaulted a 46-year-old woman in front of the city hall in Schwarzenbach. A 19-year-old Algerian migrant assaulted a 21-year-old woman in Hamm.

The Women-Hunt in Germany

March 3, 2016

The Women-Hunt in Germany, Front Page MagazineStephen Brown, March 3, 2016

germany-cologne-train-station-1000-arab-mobs-molest-rape-sexual-assault-women-illustration1

“If a woman gets raped walking in public alone, then she, herself, is at fault. She is only seducing men by her presence. She should have stayed home like a Muslim woman.” – Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan, Professor of Islamic Law, Saudi Arabia.

Many Germans welcomed with open arms the million, mostly male and Muslim, migrants Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel invited into Germany last September. At train stations, they handed out water bottles to the newcomers, while holding signs stating: “Willkommen!” At first, everything was, as the Germans say, “Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen” (“peace, joy and happiness”).

But the good feeling these greeters created, especially among themselves, has somewhat dissipated, primarily due to the increasing number of reported sexual assaults by migrants against women and children. The best known incident was the sexual molestation of hundreds of women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve by about 1,000, mostly North African men that included migrants.

The latest such multicultural enriching incident to create similar outrage occurred last Thursday in Kiel, a northern German city in Schleswig-Holstein, a state bordering Denmark. Three teenage girls, aged 15, 16 and 17, were visiting a central shopping mall, the Sophienhof, in “broad daylight” when two young Afghan asylum seekers, aged 19 and 26, began to follow and film them with their cell phones.

“Evidently, the criminals then posted these films on their social networks with the result that more and more men came to a restaurant area of the Sophienhof in order to persecute, sneer at them and to frighten them,” reported the newspaper, Die Welt.

Like the women in Cologne and those participating in the anti-Morsi demonstrations on Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2013, the three Kiel teenagers were at first probably unaware they were being hunted, and that a pack of hyenas was slowly surrounding them.

In total, between 20 and 30 men of “migration background,” as German papers described them, were involved. Police report there were no acts of sexual violence, but papers state the teenagers were “very hard pressed.”

But if no sexual molestation did occur, it is probably only because it was in the middle of the day, in the middle of a shopping mall. Outside and at night, this story most likely would have had a much sadder and more tragic outcome. As it was, it was reported the girls received psychological counselling after their ordeal.

The teenagers’ torment finally ended when passersby noticed their plight and notified security, who in turn notified police. Police then took four men, including the two Afghans, into custody, but not without difficulties.

“As a consequence (of their arrest), the suspects fought fiercely, also at the police station,” Die Welt reported. “The talk is of massive insults, threats and bodily injuries. At the suspects’ medical examination, the police doctor was also threatened and insulted.”

However, thanks to Germany’s “cuddly” justice system, as law-and-order Germans derisively call it, all suspects were released by the following day. Police are currently evaluating mall security videos to lay charges.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect surrounding this awful incident is that Germans are so surprised.

But why, one wonders, are they so astonished when such occurrences as this one and the mass sexual assault of women in Cologne have been going on around them for years in Sweden, France and England?

In England, Muslim men associated with the rape of hundreds of girls in Rotherham, were recently given heavy prison sentences. And Muslim rape gangs in Sweden have contributed to giving that country the second highest rape rate per capita in the world. Only one African country, Lesotho, has a higher rate.

The whole world also witnessed this tactic of surrounding women by large numbers of men in order to sexually molest and/or rape them in 2011 on Tahrir Square in Egypt during Arab Spring demonstrations. CBS’s Lara Logan was its most famous victim. Part and parcel of the culture, it even has a name: “taharrush gamea.” So if some Muslim men behave like this in their own countries, why wouldn’t they do so in other countries, especially in ones full of infidel women?

The Cologne police chief called “taharrush gamea,” a completely “new phenomenon,” one never encountered before. Besides terrorizing women, since the Cologne event it is responsible for turning many against Merkel’s migrant policy.

Also unsurprisingly, after the Kiel incident became known in the city, the local newspaper, Kieler Nachrichten, reported more women came forward to state they had had “similar experiences” at the Sophienhof. A police spokesman said this is “quite typical for this kind of crime marked by shame.”

The Nachrichten states, however, that the hunting of girls is “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Business people in Sophienhof report an increasing number of thefts,” the paper reports. “Again and again customers are bothered.”

A mall worker, who emigrated to Germany “decades ago” from the Arab world, said young migrants are at the mall practically every evening and that he can tell by their accent that “they are almost all Syrians.”

“What they do here is not right,” he complained to the Kieler Nachtrichten. “As soon as they see a young woman wearing a skirt or some way or other open clothing, they believe they have a free pass.”

At a neighbouring department store, the situation is perhaps even worse. A store clerk there states they have been “experiencing difficult situations here since the end of last year.”

“Sometimes, young foreigners jostle old people,” she said. “They bother young women…, grab them, smack their behinds. They have also shouted abuse at people and spit at them. When they appear in a group, they display a disrespectful approach to others.”

Due to their understandable fear, many women in Germany have changed their behaviour since last September. Some do not go out alone, or only in a group with female friends, in the evening any more. The risk of harassment, or worse, by migrant “street terrorists,” as they are called in Holland, is deemed too great.

However, when women disappear more and more from public, this will have the negative effect of gradually giving Germany the appearance of an Islamic society. In some Muslim countries, women can only venture outside properly covered and with a male relative. Which could be Germany’s future, if the current trend is not reversed.

And with women becoming more hesitant to venture evenings from their homes because of fear, more and more German public space, also like in Islamic countries, will be left to men. In this case, Muslim men. All of which represents a further Islamisation of German society and another step downwards toward dhimmitude status.

After the tormenting of the three teenaged girls, a female journalist reported that last summer in Kiel people “smiled mildly” at several young, male migrants who were standing at a tennis court near their refugee hostel, watching the girls training there. This was just something new to them, they thought.

“However, there were larger numbers every day,” she related. “They filmed them (the girls) with their cell phones.”

After last week’s incident at the Sophienhof, it is doubtful anyone is smiling any more.