Trump tells lies about Germany (Moved From Current News & Events)

[helmut]

As far as I'm aware, no Nazi ever plowed his truck into a Christmas market...

22th of July, 2016, a Nazi killed 9 people in Munich, because they were foreigners (whether all were foreigners indeed is a matter of discussion, only two had German citizenship, at least the murderer thought thy were foreigners).
A Nazi gang known as he "NSU" (Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund - you can translate it into English even without knowing German!) killed 9 Foreigners and one German policewoman. As we now know, the secret services (esp. the Verfassungsschutz) had a blind eye to that - so much blind that many wonder whether this was on purpose. And there are plenty of cases which look like xenophobic hate crimes but were declared as "without political background". So much for the bias of the authorities!
Both examples together killed more than Anis Amri, the ISIS "soldier" that drove that truck (do not confuse with the Tunesian football player of the same name). And there are more examples I could cite. My statement is true: There were more foreigners killed by Germans (usually Nazis) than Germans killed by foreign terrorists.

BTW: if all Islamist assassins had access to weapon as they would have in the US, the number of victims might higher than the number of foreigners killed by Germans. But thanks God, we have a stricter control on weapons.

 

[helmut]

Violence scares me whether it comes from Nazis or from Antifa or from immigrants.

Same to me, I don't make a difference on who does it. (To the readers that don't know "antifa": self-declared "Anti-Fascist" movement known to its radical leftist standing and its incline for violence).

I moved to Karlsruhe in 1998. Back then it was no problem at all to walk through the streets in the middle of the night. I had no fear, and there was no threat. Try it nowadays. Even men don't walk through the town at night allone. A lot of men from africa use knives to blackmail mobil phones and money or to harass women. This is what I experienced. Now I live on the countryside, here it is still better.

I live in Berlin, Kreuzberg. Last night (late in the evening) I made a walk into the Volkspark Hasenheide, a park just at the border of Kreuzberg and Neukölln. Not the safest area, but I had no fear. When I walked back through the park, I was three times offered to buy "grass" (i.e. marijuana). I declined, of course, but the people (Subsaharan Africa, to judge from their appearance) didn't look aggressive, so had no cause for fear.

Those guys are also to be seen in daytime, though they are more hesitant to approach bypassers then. Some years ago it were predominantly Asian (Vietnamese?) people trying to sell illegal cigarettes (without tax on them, i.e. evasion of taxes). Well, I can't remember walking late into that park at those times, but I suppose there was not much change since them.

It is a mistake to generalize individual experience.

 

[grasping the after wind]

My concern was that Americans might believe that, and I wanted to contribute to the awareness that hat Trump says is contrary to the facts.
I'm German and I am not a fan of Merkel, I listen occasionally to foreign stations as, say, Euronews, BBC or al-Jazeera, so I can say with confidence that I know what I'm speaking about.

Interesting take on what you consider constitutes being well informed. Hearing one side of an argument from sources that agree with each other.

 

[ubicaritas]

Having sources that merely agree with each other doesn't mean they are inaccurate.

 

[helmut]

Interesting take on what you consider constitutes being well informed. Hearing one side of an argument from sources that agree with each other.

These are sources that disagree on many points of their world view. And do you neglect my personal experience?
I live in Germany in a quarter with a rather high percentage of immigrants, visiting a church with almost a dozen ex-Muslim members (and some other nationalities, from US to Thai).

If you rely only only on sources that say the earth is round, this does not mean that you are poorly informed about the shape of the earth.
And what do you recommend as the "other side"? A president tweeting "Look what happened in Sweden" after watching a fictional movie with a plot set in Sweden?

I do not say I am well-informed about everything. I do not write things like "in the aftermath of Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Americans lose their confidence in president Trump, and the NRA lost its influence altogether" - which is as accurate as Trumps tweet on Germany

I am married to a Korean and I know she is safer in Kreuzberg than she would be in rural Saxon Switzerland (ask Claudia Zimmer what she knows about these places, if you don't know about them).

 

[SoldierOfTheKing]

22th of July, 2016, a Nazi killed 9 people in Munich, because they were foreigners (whether all were foreigners indeed is a matter of discussion, only two had German citizenship, at least the murderer thought thy were foreigners).

I looked up the Wikipedia article on that shooting. It appears that gunman was a foreigner himself, and while he was certainly a very disturbed individual, the motive is not fully understood.

 

[helmut]

I looked up the Wikipedia article on that shooting. It appears that gunman was a foreigner himself, and while he was certainly a very disturbed individual, the motive is not fully understood.

He had a discussion with a citizen who shouted on him from a window (I saw it in a German TV channel). This discussion made clear he blamed immigrants for him being discriminated. He was Iranian-German, considering himself as a German and developed right-wings beliefs. And it is a fact that nearly all (according to some newspapers: all) of the victims were immigrants or had an "migration background" (the conventional PC phrase for a German national of foreign descent).

As to the statement from the Munich police, it is a well-known fact that the police in Germany often cover-up racist acts as "unpolitical".

From the German Wiki I learn that Bavarian agencies judged the act as non-political, while the Munich municipality and the federal agencies considered it a politically motivated (extreme right) act, both sides offering several expert testimonies in favor of their views.

Now put the pieces together.

 

[mindlight]

Edit: I don't understand why the quotes don't work ...

you have bullet points next to the quotes. You need to delete those to make it work. Also putting quotes inside quotes does not seem to work

 

[Norbert L]

Now put the pieces together.

The western world can not solve the injustices carried out by mankind, whether it's from they're own citizens or immigrants from abroad.

I've worked with other immigrants from various nations, many of which believe more in assimilation than diversity. Where one immigrant tells another immigrant to move back to his old country if that's how he thinks about Canada.

I don't believe for one moment immigration is only just a good thing, it carries with it bad things. Most people don't like to hear bad news and it's not going away because President Trump has the facts straight or not.

When looking at the negatives surrounding immigration in Europe, Douglas Murray has a fair minded critique about it.

 

[mindlight]

Here are the official crime numbers in detail and how they developped over the years (german) BKA - PKS 2017 - PKS 2017 - Zeitreihen Übersicht Falltabellen.

If you look closely at them, you find some strange numbers and some facts that support Trump's view and others that support Merkel's view.

First: the total crime numbers went down 10% since 2016

Second: there are some incredible decreases within the last 2-3 years and you can ask yourself if that can be true.

• robberies on streets: the lowest numbers since 1990. Decrease from 21.349 in 2013 to 16.233 in 2017 (line 1667) while the percentage of foreigners increased from 32.3% to 40.2%
• The numbers for trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation went down from 284 in 2016 to 71 in 2017 (line 2452)
• professional trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation went down from 93 in 2016 to 8 in 2017 (percentage of foreigeners 94.4% – line 2491). Could it be that german authorities don’t accuse immigrants and throw those cases out of the statistics?
• a fluctuation of numbers that has never happened before is the decrease of thefts from restaurants from 35.002 in 2016 to 29.472 in 2017 (line 2920)
• numbers of load thefts reach an all-time low. Ask the shopkeepers in big towns and you will see that this is not true. They don’t tell the police about the thefts because the robbers stand in the shop again after they have been 2 hours at the police station. It just makes no sense to inform the police.

Third: If you look at the official numbers you find all-time highs of crime numbers like extortion on a sexual basis (line 6843), resistence to the state (in 2016 & 2017 – line 6873), domestic disturbances (line 6936), drug-related offenses (line 9987) and computer crime (line 11446). These are indeed frightening numbers.

Migrants historically have a large % of the total crime numbers. But regarding the headline crimes of rape and murder it is clear that the recent mass influxes have not resulted in any major changes. Indeed as you say crime declined significantly in 2017.

Most Germans I know have no issue with the asylum laws as they stand and so welcoming Syrians and Iraqis for instance is not really an issue and especially since these people are mainly well behaved even by high German standards. But Balkan immigrants e.g. Albanians and North African immigrants are a different story and seems to me most Germans want the government to be tougher here and to enforce expulsion laws when applications have been refused or are invalid.

 

[Norbert L]

My concern was that Americans might believe that, and I wanted to contribute to the awareness that hat Trump says is contrary to the facts.
I'm German and I am not a fan of Merkel, I listen occasionally to foreign stations as, say, Euronews, BBC or al-Jazeera, so I can say with confidence that I know what I'm speaking about.

There are good reasons why mainstream media is distrusted by people. Many people go to private journalists to hear the news, journalists who do their job correctly and present the complete news story. They also tell their audience when they say "their opinion", something which is often lacking when major news stations tell you their version of the news.

Here's one such journalist and he finds Merkel saying there are no go zones in Germany. He also explains many things about what Trump said and what he didn't say about Europe's problems.

 

[USincognito]

It is not propaganda if the facts support it--which they do.

Citation?

But if you are especially concerned that lies are being told about Germany, I would recommend that you check out the claims made in the past several days by opposition politicians here in which it was claimed that holding unescorted children in schools and dormitories is like the Holocaust! Now, that's both a lie and propaganda!

Red herring. How about actually supporting your contention that you know more about the situation in Germany than the OPer does?

 

[helmut]

you have bullet points next to the quotes. You need to delete those to make it work. Also putting quotes inside quotes does not seem to work

It was not the bullets (I took them from the qoted text), I deleted a quotation mark without noticing ist, and then this error got to all quotes by copy&paste.

But thanks for your remarks! Indirectly, it helped me to find the reason and to correct the post.

 

[helmut]

There are good reasons why mainstream media is distrusted by people. Many people go to private journalists to hear the news, journalists who do their job correctly and present the complete news story. They also tell their audience when they say "their opinion", something which is often lacking when major news stations tell you their version of the news.

You are right that journalists make mistakes, sometimes don't do their job properly, out of PC and/or laziness.

But by and large, professional journalists are better that "private journalists" that have an agenda and often misrepresent the facts by purpose.

Here's one such journalist and he finds Merkel saying there are no go zones in Germany. He also explains many things about what Trump said and what he didn't say about Europe's problems.

Of course there are no-go-zones, especially if you are colored or from the middle east, you should avoid entering a zone dominated racists. Officially these national befreite Zonen do not exist,

Interesting, but since I pressed the answer button too quickly, I will comment on this in a separate post

 

[helmut]

Well, your journalist (what's his name?) bases his statements on Wikipedia's definition of No-Go-Area (or no-go-zone). But on a closer look, even the Wiki version he uses has more than one definition, he only uses the first one. Burt as it happens, the text on Wikipedia has changed. In today's Wiki version, the first definition given is
A "no-go area" (or "no-go zone") is an area in a town barricaded off to civil authorities by a force such as a paramilitary, or an area barred to certain individuals or groups
which is exactly the definition used by Snopes ("are there areas in Sweden where the police cannot enter?") criticised by this journalist. The second one is
The term has also been used to refer to areas undergoing insurgency where ruling authorities have lost control and are unable to enforce sovereignty
which is quite similar: then police may enter, but has no more control than the local gangs (or whoever controls this area).
Only in the third place comes the definition comes
but also to areas that have a reputation for violence and crime which makes people frightened to go there.

So, whether there are no-go-zones exists is a mater of definition. Using first definition, I don't think that there is any no-go-area in Germany besides some very small zones where someone has declared "independence" and made his house and garden into a small "state" (kingdom, republic or whatsoever). Until recently, these people were almost ignored as odd, but since one of them shot at the police when they wanted to get his firearms, they are taken more seriously. Close to this definition (but more like the second one) are the national befreite Zonen ("national liberated zones") where no leftist, colored person or immigrant from the middle east should enter, where normal people don't dare to speak out openly, and in some cases a brave mayor had to resign (I remember one case where he said that he would have gone on, if it only were about him, but he did not want to risk the lives of his wife and children).

There are also some problem zones where the police usually only enters by dozens, because one or two policemen cannot stand an attack which will almost certainly start if the police troubles the leftists and/or some foreign clan. The number of such areas is rather small, and AFAIK no one is related to refugees, and certainly no one with people from Syria.

As to the third definition (people are frightened to go there) there are certainly such zones in every country, sometimes they are only so because of ill-grounded believes, sometimes there is real danger.

 

[ananda]

...there are ethnic group with a relative high percentage of criminals (e.g.Northwest Africans, Albanians)...

... this sounds xenophobic ...

 

[helmut]

... this sounds xenophobic ...

Maybe it sounds so to you, but it is a fact: there are groups that have a higher criminal rate than others. To mention some examples that are not "racial": younger men are more criminal than elderly women, poor people more than rich ones (well, if you ever have enough money to buy your food, the temptation to steal your breakfast is rather low). Such statements are quite empirical.

And one should be cautious: It is no good idea to set some inner (or even innate) factors to explain such data. In many cases other explanations are more probable (see my explanation to the difference between rich and poor above). Others may include reaction to discrimination (or something like "self-fulfilling prophecies). But there are cases where you can hardly escape the conclusion that (culturally based) education plays a role ...

The statement you quoted had the objective to show that Islam is not the factor that makes people criminal. I did not plan to start a discussion why some groups have a higher criminal rate than others, but if you think such a discussion is necessary, we may start a new theme about that question.

 

[EastCoastRemnant]

Evidence? Yes. For starters, read the book the Strange Death of Europe. It's probably been translated into German. Beyond this, the mass rape of German women in Cologne on New Year's Eve in 2016 has been discussed in numerous videos. This is one.

That's really only the part of what is happening. One problem is the police only report migrants that are actually charged. With Muslim migrants, the government doesn't want to file any charges. Or in certain cases, it suppresses the fact the immigrants are Muslim. Criminals appear in the press as "Asian gangs" or by some other vague designation in some parts of Europe so the government can mask their Muslim identity.

Sounds like the illegals and how they are being protected over here... catch and release... heads up when ICE agents are on there way etc.

 

[Yekcidmij]

I'm German, and in our media there are occasionally news about some tweets from president Trump. In the last days it were tweets in which he talks about Germany.

It's true that we got some problems with migrants. In 2015, almost one million refugees came to Germany, and there have been several thousands criminal among them. It took some time until these subjects were known to the police, so there was a time when the number of criminal actions increased.
But now the situation is under control, last year the number of criminal acts decreased about 10%. By and large, people requesting political asylum are no more criminal than the Germans - there are ethnic group with a relative high percentage of criminals (e.g.Northwest Africans, Albanians), while other groups (Syrians and Iranians) are less criminal than the ordinary German.

When Trump says that people of Germany are turning against their leadership, this is a half-truth. There is xenophobe propaganda against immigrants (denouncing them a criminals and so on), there is political trouble because the CSU party goes right-wing in an attempt to chase voters from the radical right-wing AfD, rocking the coalition. And there are people who swallow racist or hate speech against refugees. But if you look to the facts, there is no reason to turn against the leadership because of immigrants.
Up to now, there have been more immigrants killed in Germany by Nazi mob than Germans killed by immigrants (terror attacks included). This is fact.

So the bubbling about "Crime in Germany is way up" is propaganda, presumably taken from some radical right (half Nazi or worse) website. In wonder whether Trump is so naive to swallow such propaganda or whether he lies intentionally.

PS: Any hints how I can improve my English are welcome.

Keep in mind that Trump's pronouncements were intended to feed certain narratives to a particular domestic audience. They weren't intended to persuade German audience or necessarily reflect nuanced particulars of German and EU immigration policies and effects.

 

[helmut]

Keep in mind that Trump's pronouncements were intended to feed certain narratives to a particular domestic audience. They weren't intended to persuade German audience or necessarily reflect nuanced particulars of German and EU immigration policies and effects.

And my intention was to tell this audience that Trump is simply lying.