Posts Tagged ‘sexual harassment’

The Cologne syndrome in Stockholm as police and media cover-up sexual harassment by “asylum seeker”, youth gangs

January 11, 2016

It is a “breaking news” in Dagens Nyheter today that it is commonplace for gangs of youths to sexually harass and molest young girls at the annual “We are Stockholm” festival. It showed up clearly in 2014 and again last year. The “scoop” in DN is that the police have knowingly, and regularly, played such matters down. But what DN does not spend too much time on is that journalists (including DN journalists) were generally informed that sexual harassment by “asylum seekers” was taking place, but they and their editors chose also to play it down. What DN does not reveal is the depth to which Swedish media are blind, devout followers of the religion of “political correctness”. Normally they play up even the most tenuous cases of purported or alleged sexism. But they have also been the most ardent supporters of multicultural (as opposed to multiethnic) societies.

Thus, they automatically play up anything that follows a “feminist” line except when the perpetrators are immigrants or immigrant gangs of, usually, supposedly Muslim youth. Even in today’s stories in all the newspapers about DN’s “scoop”, none of the mainstream media refers to the ethnicity or the religion of the youth gangs. From social media, even after discounting all the idiotic blather from the usual suspects (mainly right-wing, white-supremacist, often Sweden Democrat rabble), it is fairly clear that most – if not all – of the harassment in Stockholm was by gangs of young, male, “asylum seekers”, mainly from Afghanistan. There are those who claim it is not relevant and should not be reported, but I think that it is highly relevant that the perpetrators were nearly all culturally Muslim (and culture and religion are inextricably intertwined here). Their ethnicity is, I suspect, of less importance than their culture.

It is Cologne all over again. First the police play down such events. The media acquiesce in keeping things quiet since they don’t want to disturb the multicultural narrative. Then social media pressure leads to the news “breaking” in the msm – even though they are themselves heavily complicit in the cover-up in the first place.

We are Sthlm-festivalen i Kungsträdgården 2015.

We are Sthlm-festival in Kungsträdgården 2015. Photo: Alexander Tillheden/Stockholms stad (via DN)

Dagens NyheterFor two years, youth gangs have been molesting girls at Europe’s largest youth festival “We Are Stockholm”. The official police version is that conduct at the festival was “quiet” – but the DN’s investigation shows that the internal alarm reports were silenced.

The National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson promised to investigate the cover-up.

DN has seen the daily internal memo during “We are Sthlm” that was sent to police chiefs and the Stockholm police media center. The first reports of sex crimes against female visitors came early on. “The problem with young men rubbing themselves up against young girls in the audience returned as in previous years,” it says in a memo from the first day of August last year. The problems arose as soon as the concert started.

But what DN does not mention is that they too knew about the harassment in August last year.

Expressen: Dagens Nyheter’s article about the police cover-up of sexual molestation during the music festival “We are Sthlm” has also led to a media debate.
The site, Nyheter Idag, which has connections to the Sweden Democrats has accused the newspaper of itself trying to cover-up the news. …… They claimed in an article published on Sunday that DN engaged in a cover-up and that the newspaper should have known about the molestation at the festival last summer. Information about the abuse had been received by one of DN’s journalists.

On Swedish television this morning, the journalists all pretend they knew nothing at the time and are happy to let the police take the blame. They still will not say that the gangs were mainly “asylum seekers”.

Nyheter Idag writes:

During a single night police and security guards had to intervene against around 90 younger males, but even adult men took part in the abuse, says an eye witness to Nyheter Idag. The eye witness has professional experience from working at the Stockholm Police Department as a psychologist. 

The psychologist who knew of what had happened in Kungsträdgården contacted journalist Hanne Kjöller at Dagens Nyheter, by, among other things, e-mail on August 17. The psychologist says he specifically turned to Kjöller because he knew that she had previously written about controversial topics.

“She was very interested and listened until I told her that all the boys and men that were apprehended were young asylum seekers (“unaccompanied” is the terminology used by Swedish authorities) from Afghanistan and Syria. I sensed that she changed the tone (of her voice). But she also said that she would contact the police”, he tells Nyheter Idag.

Kjöller got the phone number to one of the police officers who were on duty during the event in Kungsträdgården and could provide a recollection of the events. Nyheter Idag has talked with the police officer who Kjöller talked to in August, and he was eager to tell Dagens Nyheter about the massive cases of sexual assault against young girls in central Stockholm.

“She sent a text message to me once, early on, where she wrote that she was looking for me, she wanted to talk. After that, I tried to get in touch with her, but that was when things started to get awry. She answered sometimes, said she would get back to me. But it never amounted to anything. She was interested in it for half day or a day, then she wasn’t anymore”.

The officer explains that he worked for several evenings during this week in Kungsträdgården square. He tells of how he and his colleagues had to apprehend a large number of young men who sexually assaulted girls, in large part unaccompanied refugees from Afghanistan.

The fear of being labelled “racist” has led to the ridiculous consequence that “race” and “culture” have been equated. Multiculturalism has been made into a religion. Unacceptable cultural mores have been overlooked and excused – and even encouraged – just so as to avoid being called “racist”. I am more than ever convinced of my thesis that Europe’s future is inevitably multiethnic – but it is not multicultural. The integration of newcomers has to start with cultural integration not with cultural separation. And that starts with language.


Related:

A “society” – to be a society – can be multi-ethnic but not multicultural

The future of Europe is multiethnic but not multicultural


 

 

Mass sexual harassment in Germany – not race but surely due to culture or religion or both?

January 7, 2016

Keeping silent about differences due to culture or religion does not help. Pretending that the differences don’t exist won’t make them go away.

I don’t think Cologne  was an issue of race (ethnicity) but it certainly was not just due to “bad boys being bad”. Poverty and unemployment cannot be used as an excuse. The root cause was either culture or religion or – more likely – both.  I suspect it is both because the religion is Islam and here culture and religion are as intertwined as they are. Many of the religious leaders of Islam still have a world view of women and their place in it, which is a few hundred years out of date. In Germany it was thousands of young males of North African and Middle East origin behaving obnoxiously – but in a coordinated manner – across many cities. I am pretty sure that an overwhelming majority would have been Muslim. Yet the authorities kept silent until they had no choice but to respond to the anger and indignation on social media.

The Local (de)Germany’s authorities and media have been tiptoeing around the issue of sexual violence committed by immigrants and refugees for too long – giving the far right ammunition in their battle against the mainstream, argues Jörg Luyken.

The shocking sexual assaults that happened in Cologne during the New Year festivities – in which dozens of women were sexually abused and in one case raped by groups of young men – have an obvious parallel in events which took place in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during mass protests of the Arab Spring. …..

While there are differences between Tahrir Square and Cologne Cathedral – the Cologne attacks appear partly to have been diversions to enable theft – that men apparently of north African descent entered large crowds to sexually assault and even rape women – should set alarm bells ringing.

But no sober analysis of the influx of millions of people from the Middle East – the majority of whom are young men –  could fail to realize that certain behaviours prevalent there would be repeated here. ……

In the last few months, it has seemed that the authorities and the national media would rather sacrifice transparency for the sake of stability.

It was days before police gave full descriptions of the offenders in Cologne, despite a call for eyewitnesses. The national media also ignored the story until a wave of anger on social media made covering it unavoidable. …..

But there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence of sexual crimes committed by new arrivals bubbling up from Germany’s regional media.

In November a club in Bavaria started turning refugees away after a string of complaints of sexual harassment from female clients.

In Baden-Württemberg at least one hospital has hired guards to protect nurses who feel intimidated by the refugees they treat.

The Woman’s Council in Hesse claimed in an open letter to the state parliament in September that they have substantial evidence of sexual abuse, including forced prostitution, in refugee shelters.

In August a regional paper in North Rhine-Westphalia also reported police covering up a serious sexual crime. After hearing about the rape of a 13-year-old girl by a refugee, the paper enquired with police as to what crimes they knew of in the refugee shelters.

There are plenty of anecdotes about similar occurrences in Norway and Sweden. But authorities and media in Scandinavia are also in denial, and just as reluctant to openly confront the reality that Muslim youth (mainly newcomers) are more likely to sexually harass and commit sexual crimes. The reluctance is partly to protect the dead doctrine of multiculturalism, and partly out of the fear of being politically incorrect by seeming to refer disparagingly about race or religion or cultural differences.

It is the same toxic mix of religion and culture which can also be seen in the UK. It shows up in the grooming of young vulnerable girls, in”honour killings” and the treatment of women (especially vulnerable women) as “objects”, which are all not uncommon, even today, in many – supposedly devout – Muslim societies. In the UK it is more often Muslims of Asian rather than Middle East origin. But it is a similar behaviour as exhibited by the spoilt young oil-brats (male of course) who prey on women outside their own countries. Of course the treatment of women as objects happens with other religions and cults as well but usually only in fairly backward societies. For example it still happens in some parts of rural India where casteist racism, mixes with culture and Hinduism to create a most poisonous mix. (Casteism in India can be more virulently racist than any white supremacist movement). It happens even with the polygamous cults – ostensibly Christian – when they pop up from time to time. The common factor is a religion which views women as objects under the authority of a man, and a culture built on that foundation. But it is particularly Muslim cultures which seem to permit and legitimise violence by men against women.

It is my thesis that Europe has to have multiethnic, single culture societies, though the resulting culture prevailing will be dynamic and will change as newcomers are absorbed. Demographics require the influx of new ethnicities into Europe, but it is a fatally flawed concept to imagine that a society without a single overriding culture can avoid being a fractured and splintered society. Playing down the differences due to culture and religion contributes nothing to the creation of new viable societies.

What cannot (or will not) be seen, cannot be addressed.

Pachauri’s home institute finds him guilty of sexual harassment

May 31, 2015

RK Pachauri (he of IPCC infamy) has TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute, formerly called the Tata Energy and Resources Institute) as his “home institute”. They have, in an internal investigation, found him guilty of sexual harassment.

(I am not Pachauri’s greatest fan since I consider him something of a charlatan. I met him once a long time ago but was not too impressed. But he did fit in very well in the IPCC where – as a non-scientist doing science by authority – he found himself very much at home).

First Post: RK Pachauri, former TERI chief, has been found guilty of sexually harassing a junior colleague by the organisation’s internal panel.

According, to a report on The Hindustan Times, the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) also noted that when the woman resisted, Pachauri had retaliated by ‘taking away her work’.

The panel’s conclusion is damning evidence of the fact that Pachauri was indeed in the wrong and this development will make it impossible for him to assume charge back as TERI chief anytime soon. 

After the allegations of sexual harassment had surfaced and a criminal case filed against him on 13 February this year, Pachauri had initially refused to step down, saying that he wanted ‘the truth to win’. However, following pressure from activists, he had to quit. He also had to quit from the UN panel on climate after he was implicated in the case.

….. The Hindustan Times report: “Several of Pachauri’s emails, as attached by the woman in her complaint to TERI, go “beyond the professional space,” found the ICC, that comprised three women. Upon a detailed review of all messages exchanged between Pachauri and the woman, the ICC found that the accused’s behavior was “causing her discomfort and harassment.”

A case has been filed against him and he is on bail.

Deccan ChronicleLast week, the Delhi High Court refused to cancel immediately the anticipatory bail granted by a trial court to Pachauri.

The matter has been posted for July 16 after the counsel for Pachauri sought more time to file response to the application move by the 29-year-old woman, who has alleged that “free and fair investigation” cannot be carried out if Pachauri is “allowed to roam around freely.”

The complainant had moved the High Court seeking cancellation of the anticipatory bail granted to Pachauri by the trial court in the case. The complainant’s counsel alleged before the court that Pachauri was “dictating what needs to be said to witnesses” in the case.

He claimed there was “overwhelming evidence” against Pachauri that he misused the bail conditions. A criminal case on charges of sexual harassment, stalking and criminal intimidation was registered against Pachauri on February 18 by the police.

Now it only needs to be admitted that the IPCC, including during Pachauri’s tenure as Chairman, has raped and discredited science in general and “climate science” in particular..

Patchy’s gone – joins the growing line of privileged sexual predators

February 24, 2015

There will be those who say that Pachauri’s resignation from the IPCC for sexual harassment charges will not hurt the IPCC. After all the transgressions of the Chairman are not necessarily those of others in the IPCC.

But they would be wrong.

The privileged arrogance of Pachauri parallels the privileged arrogance of the IPCC. Pachauri’s sleaze is now being exposed. The IPCC sleaze was revealed with Climategate. And glaciergate and global-ice-gate and global-warming-hiatus-gate and Kilimanjaro-gate. But with so many people in the IPCC the sleaze was spread thin. And we hear now that much of the supposed “global warming” is due to the use of “adjusted” temperatures to cool the past! The sleaze increases. Now even climate itself is denying the global warming /climate change creed.

pachauri grapples mail today  http://epaper.mailtoday.in/443860/mt/Mail-Today-February-21-2015#page/2/1

pachauri grapples mail today

I remain hopeful that wallowing in the IPCC sleaze will eventually reach a critical level and become unacceptable. The Mail Today carries details of the “creepy” nature of Pachauri’s harassment. He sounds like a love-sick teenager.

(I met him a few times back in 2000 when we were considering engaging TERI for a project. Partly because of the lack of impact he had, we engaged another party).

FirstPost:

The Daily Mail (Mail Today), has published a detailed report on the interaction between Pachauri and 29-year-old research associate who has sued him for sexual harassment. The several text messages and emails exchanged suggest that Pachauri was relentless in his pursuit of the woman, and had on one occasion embraced her and even tried to kiss her.

When the woman ticked him off saying that such behaviour would not be entertained, he played a miffed teenager complaining that an act spurred by ‘love’ has been misunderstood by the victim as a case of sexual misdemeanour.

“Please you are not to grab me and or kiss me,” the complainant told Pachauri in a text.

To which Pachauri replied, “I wish you would see the difference between something tender and something tender and loving and something crass and vulgar. So I shall slink away and withdraw.” 

It’s a bit of a horrifying image, but you can almost picture Pachauri pouting and crying ‘not fair’.

In another email Pachauri says, “I find it now very difficult to hug you. What haunts me are your words from the last time that I ‘grabbed’ your body. That would apply to someone who would want to molest you. I loved you in the soul, mind, heart…”

While you might be shocked at the audacity of a man, who has been asked to back off by a woman for sexual misbehaviour, Pachauri’s defence will probably strike a chord with many in India.

Bora’s gardening leave ends in resignation from Scientific American

October 19, 2013

Following the noise and the revelation that his sexual harassment was not just an isolated incident, Bora Zivkovic’s position was no longer tenable. The resignation from Scientific American was almost inevitable but editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina cannot escape some reprimand. Both she and the magazine need to make some kind of public statement and acknowledgement that their support for their own DN Lee was wanting. The Press release about Bora’s resignation contains nothing about her initial censorship “Following recent events, Bora Zivkovic has offered his resignation from Scientific American, and Scientific American has decided to accept that resignation”.

IndyWeek:

Scientific American has an anti-harassment policy. We offer live and online anti-harassment training to those who manage employees. We’ve recently begun providing such training to individuals who work with freelancers and contractors as well. We take allegations, such as those that have appeared online this week, very seriously. When Monica Byrne contacted Scientific American a year ago, we investigated her report, offered the Company’s apologies and Ms. Byrne acknowledged in her blog that she was satisfied with our response. We were unaware of any additional allegations until this week.

Zivkovic, who lives near Pittsboro, has admitted to engaging in inappropriate and unwanted sexual advances toward Byrne. However, he claimed it was an isolated incident. In the last week, at least a half-dozen women have come forward with similar accounts of interactions with him.

Scientific American sends Bora on “leave”

October 18, 2013

One thing is clear after this last weeks’ convulsions at Scientific American. Breaking the silence can have an effect in the face of wrongdoing but it requires a society prepared to listen.  In the face of wrongdoing, silence is not always golden, silence is acquiesence, silence condones. But breaking the silence does not always end well for whistle-blowers  and breaking the silence requires taking some risk. Edward Snowden can testify to that.

The fall-out at Scientific American continues and Bora Zivkovic has been sent on gardening leave. But the behaviour of Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina for her initial knee-jerk censorship and then her attempts to explain away her initial untruth has yet to be fully addressed. The Editor’s Note accompanying the reinstatement of the censored blog post does not carry much credibility and – in my opinion – seeks to establish a blatant untruth as real. There is no apology to the blogger for the censorship, no expression of regret.

Editor’s note (10/14/13): This post was originally published on Friday, October 11, 2013, at 16:58, and taken down within the hour. As fully detailed here, we could not quickly verify the facts of the blog post and consequently for legal reasons we had to remove it. Email to the editor referenced in this post to elicit his comments has gone unanswered. Biology Online would not disclose his identity or give out additional contact information and other efforts to identify him to solicit a response have been unsuccessful. Biology Online has confirmed the exchange. This post is therefore being republished as of October 14th at 4:46pm.

Whether Zivkovic was sent on leave or asked to go on leave is moot.

NASW:

Bora Zivkovic, who has admitted to sexual harassment and resigned from the board of ScienceOnline, has now taken a break from his duties as blog editor at Scientific American, according to Philip Yam, Scientific American’s news editor.

In an email this morning, Yam confirmed the news that was making its way around Twitter–that Zivkovic was taking a break from his duties at his request. Alice Henchley, a spokesperson for Scientific American, said in an email, “Bora Zivkovic is on personal leave at the moment.”

Bora! Bora! Bora! Could this be SciAm’s Pearl Harbour?

October 17, 2013

This is a sorry tale. And Scientific American and their Blogs Editor, Bora Zivkovic are covered in the proverbial effluent. Scientific American’s editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina has not covered herself with very much glory. Biology Online has tarnished what little reputation it had.

It all started as an unpleasant little incident when DN Lee, a scientist and a blogger at Scientific American, was called a “whore” by an “editor” at biology-online because she declined (very politely) to contribute free material for that site. She took exception to being called such names and blogged about it at her SciAm blog. The idiot who had referred to her in such terms was dismissed.

Then Scientific American made a fool of itself.  It removed her blog post. (All the rest follows only as a consequence of that one action).

Scientist and science communicator @DNLee5 declined an offer to blog for free from biology-online.org and got called a ‘whore’.  @DNLee5 posted a thoughtful response on herScientific American‘s blog The Urban Scientist.  A short time later, her response vanished

Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina also made herself out to be very economical with the truth. First she explained that the post was inappropriate and then – when the noise mounted –  said it had been removed for legal reasons. After the fire storm the post was reinstated.

But that was not all. Monica Byrne recounted her story. This Happened by Monica Byrne. The apparently well respected (in some circles) Bora Zivkovic, Blogs Editor for Scientific American, was a regular wolf in sheep’s clothing. His reputation in the blogosphere as being very helpful to women bloggers now seems to have been built on a hidden agenda. (Zivkovic is known as being hypocritical in other circles).

Priya Shetty was astonished at the silence on the blogosphere and was scathing in her article. Silence she argued was condoning the behaviour (as it was).

Bora apologised  – but not before the critical comments had escalated to a level which made it impossible to stay silent. This was when DN Lee’s post was reinstated by Scientific American.  And then further details emerged that this was not just some isolated incident but appeared to be a pattern in Bora’s behaviour.

(UPDATE!  And yet another “But he didn’t just make a mistake, apologize, atone and change his behavior. He harassed, and kept harassing”)

Andrew Maynard performed some ethical calisthenics and suggested that Bora had done so much good that he didn’t deserve to be named and shamed. He deserved “compassion”! He only managed to come out as an apologist for Bora — but his ethical standards came up rather short (in my opinion). The use of positions of power (actual or implied) for sexual harassment cannot be excused – I think – in any circumstances. Greg Laden is another blogger who tries to appear objective but comes out as an apologist for his friend Bora. (I recall that he tried in a very similar style to excuse the disgraced Marc Hauser – also apparently a friend). So I think Greg Laden’s excuses for the wrongdoings of establishment figures are to be discounted.

But the bottom line is that it took much too long for SciAm to show any kind of support – if it could even be called support – for DN Lee. The grudging reinstatement of her post hardly redresses the balance. The many friends of Bora are either silent or are drafting carefully worded apologia in his support. SciAm is now contorting itself to ensure that Bora’s position at SciAm is not jeopardised. I don’t see how SciAm can avoid a public rebuke for Bora.

Shades of Pearl Harbour! Bora! Bora! Bora! will be etched in SciAm’s psyche for some time to come.

(For those who can’t remember the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!  is the Japanese code-word used to indicate that complete surprise had been achieved at Pearl Harbour)

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