High tech to the rescue of Germania women

Hi tech notwithstanding, Kirk advises caution.

"German intelligence warns of IS ‘hit squads’ among refugees"

"Official says country has to accept it is home to terror ‘sleeper cells.’"

German intelligence services have evidence that “hit squads” from the Islamic State terror group have infiltrated the country disguised as refugees, the deputy head of Bavaria’s spy agency told the BBC Thursday.

“We have to accept that we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany,” Manfred Hauser, the vice president of the Bavaria region’s intelligence gathering agency, BayLfV, told the Today program.

“We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads. There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves. We are still following up on these, and we haven’t investigated all of them fully,” said Hauser.

In other words, the risk incurred by the current policy is worth it. Just because we don't understand it, doesn't mean it's not a sound policy. We are just telling everybody now, so that as the attacks continue and/or intensify, fingers are not pointed in our direction, accusing us of missing it or whatever.

Policemen escort a group of refugees after their arrival in Hanover.

"Merkel admits EU is being RAVAGED BY TERROR but says Germany should welcome MORE refugees"

Express:  In the wake of the killings, Mrs Merkel said Germany now needed a better “early warning system” to spot radicalised Muslims among the newly-arrived migrants.

She said: "The terrorists want to make us lose sight of what is important to us, break down our cohesion and sense of community as well as inhibiting our way of life, our openness and our willingness take in people who are in need.

"They see hatred and fear between cultures and they see hatred and fear between religions.

“We stand decisively against that.”

She added that Germany would "stick to our principles" and "give shelter to those who deserve it".

ISIS train axe attacker may have lied to obtain refugee status

The terror group released a video yesterday featuring the attacker, who is claimed to be 17, who was shot dead by police after the attack, which left four people critically injured near the city of Wurzburg.

ISIS used the name 'Mohammed Riyadh' to describe him, however, sources close to the investigation in Germany said that he registered in the country as Riaz Khan Ahmadzai.

Germany train axe attack

Teenage refugee shouted 'Allahu Akbar' and hacked passengers

A 17-year-old Afghan refugee believed to be behind the attack was shot dead by police as he reportedly charged at them following the incident at Würzburg-Heidingsfeld station.

18 people were injured after a man armed with an axe went on a bloody rampage after storming a train in Germany.

Armed police swarmed the area soon after receiving reports that a man hacked at passengers on board a train close to Wurzburg in southern Germany.

Aftermath video at the link. Motive is said to be unclear.

"German train operator introduces women-only carriages amid fears over 'migrant sex attacks'"

Mirror:  The carriages will be next to the train conductor in a bid to make women feel more safe.

A spokesman for the railway said: “The local proximity to the customer service representative is chosen deliberately.”

In total more than 800 complaints were made to police and the incidents have sparked criticism over German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to refuse to limit the number of refugees allowed into the country.

The idea of gender segregated carriages was suggested by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last year...

He said: “Some women have raised with me that a solution to the rise in assault and harassment on public transport could be to introduce women-only carriages.

“I would consult with women and open it up to hear their views on whether women-only carriages would be welcome – and if piloting this at times and on modes of transport where harassment is reported most frequently would be of interest.”

"Green energy policies bring power giant to €7 billion loss"

The Local Germany News In English:  Germany's number one power supplier, said in a statement that massive writedowns on its electricity plants pushed it deep into the red, but at an underlying level, operating profit was "in line with expectations."

"We posted solid operating results in a very difficult market environment," said chief executive Johannes Teyssen. "Our numbers reflect the far-reaching structural transformation that our industry is experiencing and that continues unabated in the current year....

But despite the difficulties, the company said it had succeeded in reducing its net debt "significantly to €27.7 billion."

"The Moral Rot at the Heart of “Refugees Welcome”"

The American Interest via Instapundit:  Chancellor Faymann may just be acting politically to defend a policy that polls well, rather than having had a moral epiphany. But his comment cuts to the heart of the moral and intellectual hypocrisy of the “Refugees Welcome” policy: the pro-refugee factions, which see themselves as humanitarian paragons, have nonetheless managed to devise a program which in reality boils down to “if you survive the trip here, you’re welcome to stay.” . . .

If you don’t want to use ships and ferries, then feel free to fly the refugees. A direct, one-way plane ticket from Istanbul to Berlin this Friday can be found for as little as $44. People smugglers, on the other hand, will charge between $800–$1300 (and up) for a seat on a rubber raft from Turkey to Greece. Then there’s the $335-435 charge to get between certain countries in the Balkans and southern Europe. And at each leg, there’s a chance of death—by drowning, by suffocating in a truck.

So if it’s true that “refugees welcome”, why not just let them fly? Because an increasingly restive German public would go ballistic—but also because even the supporters of Angela Merkel’s policies know that Germany does not have the means to house and feed, much less employ and integrate, the numbers that would then come. Yet until recently, speaking of restrictionism was taboo among the German and European elite; even now, movement toward embracing deterrence—toward sending real signals that the journey north won’t be worth it and so not to come—progresses only slowly and haltingly in Berlin and Brussels.

Right now, a series of do-gooder decisions have turned the journey from Syria and Africa to northern Europe into the Hunger Games. Is that really what moral policy looks like?

Instapundit: Virtue-signaling is never about real world consequences. And the more people virtue-signal, the less virtuous they tend to be.

German feminist welcomes refugees: ‘Better rapists than racists’

Link to story

"Some Migrants in Germany Want to Go Home"

Via Tweet: "Sex, drugs and rock & roll may save us from Islam."

WSJ: “I came to Germany because everyone was saying it was heaven. Now I regret that decision,” said the 30-year-old from Damascus. Last year, 1.1 million migrants—mainly Arabs, Afghans and Africans—came to Germany to escape war and hardship, many of them risking their lives to make the dangerous journey.... 

[M]any who arrive find the country doesn’t match their often inflated expectations. They balk at modest benefits, poor job prospects, and harsh treatment at immigration offices, and voice other complaints ranging from bland food to Germans’ open attitudes about sex....

Abdullah Alsoaan, a 51-year-old dentist from Deir Ezzour in eastern Syria, said he came to Germany 10 months ago with the help of the United Nations to receive treatment for complications of diabetes. Now he is waiting for a new passport to return to the 10 children he left behind in Syria. The reason: After seeing teenagers kissing in public, he said he couldn’t raise his daughters here. “The problem isn’t with the Germans or Germany, people are very nice,” said Mr. Alsoaan. “But they have their way of living their lives and we have ours.”

Others have reached similar conclusions. When Amer found his 5-year-old son stumbling upon an erotic program on television recently, he saw it as confirmation that he would never be able to adapt to a new life here. (read the whole thing)

"German leisure centre ban all migrants..."

"...after a schoolgirl was sexually assaulted in a public swimming pool by Syrian teenagers"

Three Syrian boys were arrested earlier this month over the attack at a leisure centre in Munich...

The ban also follows an attack by an 18-year-old refugee on a 54-year-old woman in Bornheim, where he had grabbed her by the private parts and tried to kiss her...

Bornheim currently has 300 refugees living in accommodation who have been told that the ban will be lifted when the message has been received that women need to be respected.

In the Munich attack, the three boys are alleged to have surrounded the 17-year-old girl in the pool before one of them groped her underneath her swimming costume in an offence deemed rape under local law.

When the girl's sister, 14, tried to make them stop, she too was groped by the trio of teenagers, who were all aged under 15.

The girls managed to flee and raise the alarm with the lifeguard at the swimming pool, who called police.

It comes after more than three hundred women reported being sexually assaulted by groups of mostly Arab or North African men in Cologne during New Year celebrations.

Hundreds of criminal complaints have been filed by police, with about 45 per cent involving allegations of sexual offences, and most of the suspects identified so far are foreign nationals.

The attack have been seized by right-wing groups as evidence that chancellor Angela Merkel's open door policy is a failure.

"Reports: asylum seekers among Cologne attacks suspects"

"According to the newspapers' reports, citing officers on duty on New Year's Eve, officials checked the IDs of at least 100 people present at Cologne's central station on December 31 after their behavior became conspicuous. Seventy-one people were identified, 11 people were remanded into custody and 32 criminal complaints were registered, according to the Welt am Sonntag (WamS) report."

"There were, quite to the contrary of what was said publicly, identity checks on numerous people," the WamS quoted an unnamed officer as saying. "Most of them were recently-arrived asylum seekers."

"For the mostly Arabic offenders, sexual assault was the priority, or, to express it from their point of view, their sexual amusement was the priority. A group of men would encircle a female victim, close the loop, and then start groping the woman," WamS quoted the officer as saying.

Meanwhile, the German government, in charge of protecting their citizens, (I'm assuming) most of all the physically less capable, like the women, is cracking down on "anti-immigration speech."

Prosecutors are charging people who are “inciting hatred” in Germany by speaking out against immigrants and their impact on German society. Prosecutors and judges are determining what criticism will be allowed and what will be treated as criminal. In the meantime, the government has reached a deal with Facebook, Google and Twitter to crackdown on Internet speech. It is an effort to create the artificial appearance of agreement and tolerance by denying free speech to critics. While it is still not clear how many of the Cologne attackers were immigrants (two of the suspects have been identified as Moroccan citizens), the incident has been a flashpoint as numerous stories of women and girls being harassed about their clothing or assaulted by immigrants. For example, a 26-year-old Berlin man’s home was raided by police, who confiscated his computer and phones after he had posted the image of a dead 3-year-old Syrian boy on a Turkish beach and wrote “We are not mourning, we are celebrating!” A disgusting comment and one that is worthy public condemnation. However, it is also an act of free speech.

Nevertheless, many citizens are celebrating the denial of their own free speech rights. So long as they disagree with the speakers, there appears little concern over the rising tide of censorship and criminalization of speech. People are now unsure what they can say about immigration, which is precisely the chilling effect that governments seek in such measure. The result is a forced silence . . . which is golden for governments like Merkel’s that do not like what they are hearing.

"Germany rejects Germany's criticism of Saudi Arabia"

"Spy agency releases damning report on Saudi Arabia; government says its job is not to provide journalists with information."

The German government on Friday rejected the findings of a damning report on Saudi Arabia by its own spy agency and called Riyadh a key partner in regional conflict resolution.

 Does this sound familiar?

BREAKING: Reports that German police have discovered a truck bomb disguised as an ambulance near football stadium in Hanover (UPDATE)

“Serious plans for explosions” forced the evacuation of a stadium in Hannover, Germany, on Tuesday night before a Netherlands-Germany friendly soccer match, the police chief for Germany’s Lower Saxony region told Germany’s public broadcaster NDR.

“We had concrete evidence that someone wanted to set off an explosive device inside the stadium.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and at least three other top government officials were expected to attend the match, Merkel’s office said.

OFFICIAL: Police announcement: "Move away from the stadium. Do not stand still." #GERNED— DW Sports

One of these days that climate change is going to be the end of us all.

Tweet from Australia...

Tom Steinfort ‏@tomsteinfort  57m57 minutes ago57 minutes ago BREAKING: Hanover's chief of police has just confirmed "There was a device intended to be detonated inside the stadium."

UPDATE: 

There was no confirmation of rumors that an explosive device was placed in an ambulance or another vehicle inside or outside the stadium.

8.20am: No explosives have been found in the Hannover football scare, says the German regional minister.

It appears to have been a false alarm, but they still cancelled the game.

'Merkel Entthronen!': Druck Auf Bundeskanzlerin Wächst Weiter

I like the headline because it makes for good philology. An English speaker can almost glean the entire meaning with a few reminders of long-lost English cognate words.

Entthronen: "Ent" is a prefix corresponding to our prefix "ant-" roughly meaning "opposite." Thronen is a verb and pretty much means what you think it does -- "to throne." So entthronen means "dethrone."

Druck: The noun Druck means pressure. The word is now lost in English except for the family name Drucker (Druker) which meant printer. Print being synonymous with Press.

Auf: The word is a preposition meaning both up and upon. Believe it or not, the two words auf and up are related in the murky roots of both languages.

Bundeskanzlerin: A Bund in German is related to our word "bond" in the sense of bonded together as in a federation. Kanzlerin is a female Kanzler and means chancellor.

Wächst: The verb wächst means wax in the sense of "to grow" (cf. waxing moon). This is like old school English!

Weiter: This one is obvious and just means "wider." Taken together, wächst weiter also means "spreads further."

"German nurse shocked after being forced out of flat to make way for refugees"

“I was completely shocked and I can’t even begin to find the words to describe how the city has treated me,”Halbey told the German publication. “I have had to go through a lot of difficulties recently, and then I get this notice. It was like a kick in the teeth.”

The mayor of Nieheim, Rainer Vidal, which has a population of just over 6,000, defended the decision to send the nurse packing, saying converting the building would be “the cheapest option.”

“A new residential unit for 30 refugees in Nieheim would cost €30,000 ($33,600). This solution will cost me nothing,” he told Die Welt.

The new normal.

Islamist recruiters target asylum seekers, German intelligence says http://t.co/FU9iUwuQ8c pic.twitter.com/itLBvDvn0Z

— RT (@RT_com) September 22, 2015

"Germany refugee riot over torn Koran"

"Twenty people tried to lynch an Afghan man of 25 after he tore pages from the Koran and threw them in a toilet, according to reports in the town of Suhl."

When police tried to intervene they also came under attack. Germany says it is expecting 800,000 people to claim asylum this year.

State prime minister Bodo Ramelow, from leftist party Die Linke, suggested that part of the problem was housing different nationalities together.

I know this is not the first time I've heard of a Koran flush down a toilet.

"At a Berlin church, Muslim refugees converting in droves"

"Zonoobi, a carpenter from the Iranian city of Shiraz, arrived in Germany with his wife and two children five months ago. He is one of hundreds of mostly Iranian and Afghan asylum seekers who have converted to Christianity at the evangelical Trinity Church in a leafy Berlin neighborhood."

Like Zonoobi, most say true belief prompted their embrace of Christianity. But there's no overlooking the fact that the decision will also greatly boost their chances of winning asylum by allowing them to claim they would face persecution if sent home.

Martens recognizes that some convert in order to improve their chances of staying in Germany — but for the pastor motivation is unimportant. Many, he said, are so taken by the Christian message that it changes their lives. And he estimates that only about 10 percent of converts do not return to church after christening.

"I know there are — again and again — people coming here because they have some kind of hope regarding their asylum," Martens said. "I am inviting them to join us because I know that whoever comes here will not be left unchanged."

Being Christian alone does not help an applicant, and Chancellor Angela Merkel went out of her way this week to reiterate that Islam "belongs in Germany." But in Afghanistan and Iran, for example, conversion to Christianity by a Muslim could be punished by death or imprisonment, and it is therefore unlikely that Germany would deport converted Iranian and Afghan refugees back home. (read more)

Better make that conversion authentic then.

Try not to get the prickly things in your socks.

Imagine the tableau surrounded by security just out of frame.