The Cologne attacks

Marc Champion of Bloomberg writes:

Germany is reeling from the news, hidden for several days because of its political sensitivity, that as many as 90 women were sexually assaulted by a crowd of young men of Middle Eastern appearance outside Cologne’s majestic Cathedral on New Year’s Eve.

This is, as the local police chief put it, a “whole new dimension of crime” for Germans to confront.

No woman in North Africa, however, would be the least bit shocked.

There is a lot we still don’t know about the Cologne attacks, including whether they were organised ahead of time on social media and whether the actual culprits were refugees, petty criminals who have been plying the area around Cologne’s train station for years, or both. All the police have said is that the complaints were made, in one case of rape, and that the men were aged 18 to 35, many of them drunk and of “Arab or North African” origin.

The attacks are not a reason to not take in refugees. They are a reason to be selective of which refugees you take in, and vet them through the UNHCR system rather than just let them stream over the border.

No matter what the details, this will be political dynamite for Chancellor Angela Merkel. The new mayor of Cologne, who was stabbed in the neck during her election campaign over her support for Merkel’s pro-refugee policies, is already being hounded on social media for absurdly advising women to keep “an arm’s length” from strange men during the city’s carnival season next month.

Almost the ultimate in victim blaming.