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RawStory, originally from Agence France-Presse.
Eight members of a German far-right group were sentenced to jail Wednesday on terrorism and attempted murder charges for a series of explosives attacks targeting refugees and anti-fascist activists.
Based in Germany's ex-communist east, the so-called "Freital group" had sought to create "a climate of fear" at the height of Germany's refugee and migrant influx in 2015, the court was told.
Its leaders Timo Schulz and Patrick Festing were sentenced to 10 and nine-and-a-half years prison respectively. The other six received custodial terms of between four and eight-and-a-half years.
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German Far-Right ‘Terrorists’ Jailed for Series of Attacks on Refugees
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Don't abandon hope. Your Captain Midnight decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by khallow on Monday March 12 2018, @04:54AM (12 children)
Another aspect that is ignored is that the town was inordinately affected by the immigration crisis. Germany accepted 800,000 refugees which was roughly 1% of the overall population of Germany just over 80 million in 2015 (with much smaller numbers in earlier years). But according to this story, dated Dec 10, 2015, the town ended up with over 5% of its population in refugees.
From other reports, it appears that the refugees make up a large majority of the non-German-born population in the town (I gather, being in East Germany, the town is probably used to net emigration). I think what is routinely ignored here is that's a very abrupt change. I don't know how many years the 2200 people above took to immigrate to Germany, but most of them probably came in 2015, just because it was such a big year for immigration and the rate had been increasing for the past few years. So here, you have an East German town that had as of a few years ago, very few foreign-born persons in town suddenly has 5% of its population as foreign-born. There would be racists anyway with a more stable and long term ratio, but they wouldn't feel the need to act now. So even if Germany as a whole isn't particularly affected (its foreign born population was about 15% [wikipedia.org] according to Wikipedia, slightly higher than the US's portion by about half a percent), Freital was strongly affected and subject to the fear that this level of immigration might continue to grow for years.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 12 2018, @04:55AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @05:12AM (9 children)
Is your "explanatory" screed an attempt to justify terror bombings of innocent civilians?
Do you recommend we do that in suburban Michigan too, since it's so obviously the right thing to do?
Or should we not limit our campaign to put things right to just muslims? Maybe terrorize some Mexican neighborhoods too? Then again, San Jose has a large Vietnamese population, why don't we start there?
The best part is that it's probably easier to get explosives (or just shoot people) here in the US.
What say you, Khallow?
#MAGA
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Monday March 12 2018, @05:15AM (4 children)
Is an explanation of gravity a justification for all the deaths from falling and being crushed by falling objects? Just because I seek an explanation, doesn't mean that I seek a justification.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @05:32AM (3 children)
I'm not hearing a 'no' there.
Which leads me to believe that's a 'yes' with a wink and a nudge. Good show!
So what do you think? Shall we start in Michigan? Or someplace warmer this time of year like Texas or Arizona?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday March 12 2018, @06:41AM (1 child)
I don't care about your stupid theater and I'm not wasting my time condemning every act of hooliganism out there. Nor do I think somehow we're going to be worse off because I didn't do that. What I am interested in is why this happens since sometimes it can have really bad consequences (such as the Second World War). Since you appear to care about persecution of immigrants, maybe you ought to care about the causes of such persecution as well.
What I think is remarkable about the whole debate on immigration is how marginalized it is. In the US, it wasn't even on the radar for most of the presidential elections of the past two decades. Mainstream candidates have ignored it, leaving it to the extreme candidates like Pat Buchanan or even David Duke, who in turn pulled minuscule vote totals. So I suppose for most of that time, they were justified in ignoring the issue. That obviously has changed in recent years.
My take is that there's a fairly simple dynamic driving most hate and fear of immigrants: economic/labor/sometimes even biological competition between the poorer of a country or region and immigrants. Most past that such as the elaborate puffery concerning Islam or concern about crime rates is merely rationalization for getting rid of the competition. You can't justify kicking immigrants out, if you think of them as nice guys. I don't think we need to look further than the lackluster economy (and elevated immigration levels in Germany and Europe) of the past decade to see why anti-immigration and the ideologies that feed on it have been thriving in recent years.
When you toss in the particularly tone-deaf EU approach to immigration which allowed for massive, uncontrolled increases in immigration without considering the concerns of its citizens, you get the sudden rise in anti-immigration crime that we see in the story. Remember, the large scale protests, that this group eventually came out of, didn't really start until 2015 (or maybe 2014). I suspect that being part of East Germany, this area is also relatively poor and hence, relatively threatened by competition from immigrant workers.
My take is that if the economy improves enough relative to the level of immigration, this stuff will fade into background noise again. But given how many countries are accumulating huge levels of debt, I think we're in for a rough ride in the long run, until the public figures out that borrowing heavily against their future is a bad deal or the banks stop lending to them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @07:03AM
The debate was very mainstream back in 1984 [youtube.com] and quite heated in fact, as I recall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @11:34PM
I don't give a fuck what you imagine you are hearing. I might actually entertain consideration of actual facts, but I should warn that my patience with you is quickly dwindling.
Likewise, what you believe in your fevered imagination means nothing to me.
Fuck off, troll!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @05:35AM (2 children)
Yep, that's our khallow! Always up for the odd violation of the laws of armed conflict, as long as he his own self is perfectly safe, because khallow is, fundamentally, a coward. He shakes in his boots when anyone here on SoylentNews dares to call him on his bullshit. And even worse when they suggest that khallow engage in unnatural or impossible sex acts upon his self. But mostly, khallow is a coward, who argues in bad faith, and whom we can expect to explode here in SoylentNews, and never return. Or, at least we can hope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @05:49AM (1 child)
Don't talk about Khallow that way! He's obviously a patriot who is deeply concerned about the insidious foreign influences infiltrating our beautiful country.
I bet you're a filthy muzzie or a beaner.
There will be no sharia law in the US! White bread, not tortillas will be what we eat while we watch you being beheaded on the local news. Freedom will reign again in my beloved country!
We'll get your kind soon enough. Sleep tight, darkie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @06:20PM
Ah, so that is what khallow's AC posting looks like. #notsuprised #alltoorealnews
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @11:39PM
Who the hell modded this troll up as "Insightful"? I think someone needs to step forward to give us an explanation.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 12 2018, @06:04PM
I mostly noticed that the worst got 10 years.
That's a good long time to think about the proper ways to be civilized about disagreements, when you haven't killed anyone.
In the US, those people would get life without parole (or death if they had killed anyone), because we love to offer lifetime room-and-board on the taxpayer's dime. Let's put God everywhere, except for that understanding, forgiveness, and rehabilitation part