Germany's Refugee Crisis

[kato]

whats the take on this one guys ?

Short version? Alexander Gauland, the one behind this, just this week was on a talk show where he was pretty much shot down from all sides as a demagogue who can't back up his "arguments". Both during the talk show and in the press afterwards. Well, except in the right-wing extremist press (and here i'm talking really extremist) - those shot him down for stating that "we can't deport muslim Germans, of course".

On a side note, one of his argument is that "Islam isn't leaving traces in Germany". The oldest minaret in my area was erected in 1795 and is still standing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Radwan

Interestingly the english Wikipedia article seems to be bent to try to hide the fact that the guy is the son of an Egyptian immigrant himself (the German article doesn't do that). Including omitting his middle name Gamal. His own citizenship at birth would have been Egyptian too under then-current German law, unless his parents weren't married.

Radwan, himself Christian, is btw more on the same path that a lot of moderate conservatives - right and left - run, that is trying to get Islam in Germany organized on similar terms and conditions as Protestants and Catholics. Including some kind of centralized interaction with the state such as collecting tithes for them from muslims, defining a central organized religious body, training religious educators at state universities, offering muslim religious education in schools. That all is currently mostly a problem because we have three competing muslim central councils at federal level, and DITIB, the Turkish state religious agency, is pretty defendant about not letting that come to pass. This is also not some recent affair, at federal level politicians have moved stuff around in the background in that direction for decades now.

My googlefu is not what t uaed to be, otherwise...

It's this thread from 2012 about the German Supreme Court declaring that circumcision for other than real medical reasons was illegal.

For an update, parliament passed a law about six months later that legalized genital mutilation of male children not capable yet of indepedent insight or decision for non-medical reasons. Up to 6 months of age by religious practicioners.

[troung]

And I am glad I missed it...

Same, seems pretty weird to be hung up on that.

[kato]

Circumcision in Germany without consent of the one operated on is nearly exclusively practiced by Muslims and Jews for religious reasons, thus providing an easy way to differentiate and discriminate. The fact that there was a relatively recent legal controversy and a special law drafted to allow it enhances it for politics.

Among adults in Germany it's somewhere around 6% circumcised for religious reasons (>5% muslims, <1% jews); 3% for medical reasons, mostly not "full removals" (there's a recent trend to cut for phimosis around age 6-10); 1% for other reasons (this e.g. includes about 0.1% US Americans cut not for religious reasons).

[troung]

Still umm not seeing the big deal about that process...

[kato]

Short recap of that thread four years ago: The German Supreme Court decided that circumcision constitutes mutilation for which informed consent of the affected person is required - which a child can't give, and which parents are not allowed to give in its place.

At the time of the Supreme Court verdict surveys showed 56% Germans agreed with that, reaching 68% among CDU and Left voters each (which are the fields that the AfD is cutting into). Only 35% of Germans did not consider circumcision a mutilation that should be illegal. Opposition among men is a lot higher than among women btw. The law passed by Merkel's coalition six months later that allowed circumcision again only had 24% support among the population in surveys, with 70% opposing it. This isn't some German specialty either, you get similar high opposition numbers against circumcision in all central European countries.

[snapper]

Still umm not seeing the big deal about that process...

And female mutilation? No big deal either?

[troung]

And female mutilation? No big deal either?

Considerably different. I would hardly call the procedure, which I went through, a mutilation. Now women know I am not a firing worshiping heretic on sight.

Very weird issue to harp on about.

[kato]

One of the guys sought in connection with Cologne was arrested in Switzerland today.

19-year-old Moroccan registered as an asylum seeker in Switzerland. Previously lived as an asylum seeker in Germany in Aachen on the Dutch border, presumably until the arrest warrant got his name on it. He was previously arrested for minor theft on January 3rd in Cologne (got a week jail for it, had already served it by the time of the verdict), and showing his arrest photo to Cologne NYE victims several weeks after his release turned up a positive ID.

Undercover security guy at a store in Konstanz on the German side of the border followed them after he saw them stealing about 25 bucks worth in groceries. After crossing into Switzerland, he alerted German police who alerted the Swiss Border Guards who arrested them at their home that he followed them to. One of the border guards then thought he'd seen that guy's mug somewhere before which turned out to be on the (European-wide) arrest warrants for Cologne.

[tankie]

This pisses me off ,,refugees welcome huh , not much in the BBC ref the protests either , aimed at ,,merkel muss weg ?


By Justin Huggler, Berlin5:51PM BST 30 Sep 2015
A woman in Germany is being evicted from her home of 23 years to make way for asylum-seekers, in the second such case to emerge.
Gabrielle Keller has been given until the end of the year to leave her flat in the small southern town of Eschbach, near the border with France.
The flat belongs to the local municipality, which says it is needed to house refugees.
“I think it’s a scandal to throw tenants out of their apartments,” the 56-year-old Ms Keller told SWR television. “I can’t see the sense of it.”
- Fleeing Syria for Europe: eight-year-old Safaa's fatal journey

Migrants sleep on camp beds by the running track at the August Schaerttner Halle in Hanau, Germany
Towns and cities across Germany are struggling to find accommodation for the tens of thousands of refugees streaming into the country.
Ms Keller’s case follows that of Bettina Halbey, a nurse who is being evicted from her home of 16 years in the town of Nieheim, hundreds of miles to the north.
• Christian and Muslim refugees should be housed separately, says German police chief
Mario Schlafke, the mayor of Eschbach, says the town had no choice but to ask Ms Keller to leave.
“The council hasn’t taken a frivolous decision,” he told Welt newspaper. “The alternative would have been to set up beds in the gym.”

The town of just 2,400 people is under pressure to find space for refugees, and Ms Keller’s flat is one of only two owned by the local municipality. It is not social housing and Ms Keller is a rent-paying tenant.
A shipping container has already been set up as temporary accommodation on a local football field, while a family of eight are being accommodated in a youth centre.
“Our backs are to the wall,” Claudia Geiselbrecht, a local councillor, told Badische Zeitung, a local newspaper.

Migrants sleep at an improvised temporary shelter in a sports hall in Hanau, Germany
The municipality says it has offered to help Ms Keller find new accommodation, a claim she denies. She has hired a lawyer and vowed to fight the eviction.
The news came as a new poll showed the stark divide in pulic opinion over Angela Merkel’s refugee policy between the former East Germany and the rest of the country.
Only 24 per cent of those polled in the former East named Mrs Merkel as the politician they trust most, down from 32 per cent just a month ago, the survey for the Insa Institute found.

[kato]

Uh, that article is 7 months old.

On a side note, in that case: The flat she was living in has (always) been earmarked for welfare cases. She got it as a single mother with two kids and no income 23 years ago. The cancellation of her rental contract, issued in March 2015 (!) for the end of the year was recinded last November due to lack of need for the apartment on the landlord's side.

[tankie]

Uh, that article is 7 months old.

On a side note, in that case: The flat she was living in has (always) been earmarked for welfare cases. She got it as a single mother with two kids and no income 23 years ago. The cancellation of her rental contract, issued in March 2015 (!) for the end of the year was recinded last November due to lack of need for the apartment on the landlord's side.

I only just came across it kato , but the content is sickening .

[kato]

What's "sickening" about it? It's business as usual.

Back in the 50s both women would not have had their rental contracts cancelled. Instead they and their - for single people - way oversized apartments (they're both around 90 m², twice the average for Germans) would have been reused to house a dozen or so refugees without asking them. And without compensation.

[tantalus]

Europe's migrant story enters new phase

I've been reporting on the European migration crisis during the past year. In previous blogs I offered some initial impressions (see here and here). It's clear now, though, that the story has entered a new phase.

For now, the 'migrant crisis' in northern Europe is over

Full article
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36246816

[tankie]

Oh dear .Adolf merkel is dis grunt,led about it , she tweeted its bit boar,ing , but there ya go

Anti-Islam protesters dump PIG’S HEAD at Angela Merkel’s personal office
By Nathan Webber - May 16, 2016 196 0


An “insulting” message to the controversial Chancellor was attached to the severed head, but police refused to disclose what it read.

The head was found outside the entrance to Merkel’s headquarters in Stralsund, north east Germany, where she first launched her political career in 1990.

Germany has been plagued with “pork protests” in recent months as public opinion has turned against “Mother Merkel’s” open door policy on immigration.

More than a million refugees and economic migrants are reported to have entered Europe’s economic superpower in the last year alone.

And the latest polls show two thirds of Germans would like Merkel to be removed from office at the 2017 election.

Pork, which is forbidden under Islam, has been used in a spate of recent protests against the country’s immigration policy.

Two pig heads were reportedly thrown into a cafe popular with refugees earlier this month while police discovered pig remains at the entrance of a mosque in Gelsenkirchen in March.

[kato]

And the latest polls show two thirds of Germans would like Merkel to be removed from office at the 2017 election.

Which polls? Cuz there isn't a single one taken in the last couple months that showed the current coalition at under 56% of seats.

Sure, 67% wouldn't vote for the CDU or CSU. The two parties had a joint majority in parliament for exactly one year out of the 67 years since the Federal Republic was founded. And they had it during that one year because representatives of a monarchist-ultraconservative party previously in coalition with them converted after the CDU told them they wouldn't help them get their mandates again.

Support for Merkel has risen again btw. She's now scoring 1.4 on a scale of -5 to +5, after her worst result so far in April at 0.9 (she was on par with Left leader Gregor Gysi then). Ahead of her in support for May are:

• Winfried Kretschmann (Greens, minister-president of Baden-Württemberg) at 2.2
• Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD co-leader of the government coalition) at 1.9
• Wolfgang Schäuble (one of the hawks within Merkel's CDU, current finance minister) at 1.6

Couple other interesting results of the latest Politbarometer poll round:

• 49% of Germans support Merkel's refugee politics specifically (47% do not support them). Within Merkel's own CDU/CSU faction, support for her refugee politics is 69%.
• 87% of Germans believe other EU members will not take in the number of refugees that they are due. 81% of Germans would support making any such countries pay for that.
• 68% of Germans do not support the refugee pact with Turkey in which we have Greece deport their Syrians to Turkey.

Btw, the same polls showed that 90% of Germans want Clinton for next US president while 3% would support Trump.