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Re:Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement by yummyfajitas on Tuesday January 26, 2016 @03:44PM (#10975911)
No, I don't suggest it's higher. I suggest that there is no obvious correlation between religion and crime rate...

Sorry, I misinterpreted this phrase as being a suggestion that it's higher: "Note that this does not mean that immigrants do not commit less crimes than residents."

So what are the numbers, for immigrants and Germans?

The racists don't have a plan to prevent another Cologne. Not a credible one, anyway. They live in a fantasyland where you can just push a button and immigration stops.

Most politics is pure fantasyland. Consider Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders here in the US - both are spouting pure fantasy that appeals to the emotions of their base.

In the end, what happened in Cologne is like a mass shooting in the US: individually, a horrific event, but one for which there is no quick and easy public policy response, and in the end, does not pose a much bigger statistical risk than being hit by lightning.

Eyeballing the numbers, this seems unlikely. As far as I know, tens to hundreds of people were not struck by lightning in Cologne, and similar numbers at the Swedish music festival "We Are Sthlm" every year since 2014.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/its-not-only-germany-that...

So on the one hand, we've got left wing types denying reality as you do above. Then we've got right wing types at least acknowledging the problem and proposing to do something about it.

Unless left wing types can compromise on ideology and actually acknowledge reality (Muslims raping women is a vastly larger problem than lighting strikes), people will turn to the racist right for solutions.

Re:Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement by rbehrends on Tuesday January 26, 2016 @05:05PM (#10976519)
> So what are the numbers, for immigrants and Germans?

I don't know of any recent study, as I told you?

> Eyeballing the numbers, this seems unlikely. As far as I know, tens to hundreds of people were not struck by lightning in Cologne

But you need to amortize the numbers over time and the population of the country. The biggest problem in Cologne was that the police got caught flatfooted, something that's unlikely to happen again (German police normally have plenty of experience of dealing with nasty crowds, see the hooligan problem). 9/11 was also a horrible event, too, but there's pretty much zero chance that any terrorist will ever again be able to fly a passenger plane into a building, so the statistical risk of experiencing that when boarding a plane is essentially nil (and was extremely low even beforehand).

> So on the one hand, we've got left wing types denying reality as you do above

First of all, I'd be careful with categorizing me as a "left wing type" (except by US standards, but David Cameron would probably count as a "left wing type" there now). In this area, my stance probably comes close to classical liberalism, which is traditionally considered a centrist position (plus, my overall positive view of law enforcement tends to not win me many friends on the far left). More importantly, I like to base my judgement on facts, not anecdotal media reports.

Second, I'm the one who has cited actual statistics that at least so far seem to disprove your thesis that Muslims seem to be disproportionately prone to crime and to which you haven't offered a counterargument (remember that a single counterexample disproves a universal thesis). Conversely, you seem to base your claims solely on anecdotal evidence (the plural of which, I remind you, is not data).

Note that I haven't disagreed that immigration will likely negatively affect the overall crime rate in a measurable way (if only because of the low SES of these immigrants; other factors may come into play, too, but that would be pure conjecture at this point). I have also pointed out that it is likely to cause social problems in general because of the known difficulties with integrating a large foreign population with limited resources across a language and culture barrier with (often) considerable skill gaps.

> Unless left wing types can compromise on ideology and actually acknowledge reality (Muslims raping women is a vastly larger problem than lighting strikes), people will turn to the racist right for solutions.

I did not make a statistical comparison between Muslims raping women and lightning strikes; I referred specifically to the events in Cologne, which do not appear to have had a religious motivation or cause.

Re:Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement by yummyfajitas on Tuesday January 26, 2016 @05:26PM (#10976694)
You explicitly disclaimed the idea that you disproved my hypothesis in a previous post: Note that this does not mean that immigrants do not commit less crimes than residents.

I'm glad you've provided stats, I just unfortunately don't read German.

Re:Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement by rbehrends on Tuesday January 26, 2016 @05:48PM (#10976856)
Your other thesis, that this was due to Muslim immigrants. Of which there is no evidence.