Additionally, there were only two alleged rapes in Germany on New Year's Eve. But the two "rapes" might have been the separate Friedlingen incident where boys allegedly locked up two girls and then raped them. They boys were held in Weil am Rhein. Some articles mistakengly connect these two events with the Cologne attacks, see here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/german-po...

while some others correctly state that they are unrelated: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3390042/T...

"German privacy laws prevent the police from naming the suspects but it has confirmed they are not asylum-seekers."

"None of the suspects were asylum seekers and prosecutors have said they do not believe the incident is connected to the wave of attacks against women in Cologne and other German cities over the New Year."

The alleged rapes occurred in the village of Friedlingen which is far from Cologne.

So the rapes probably never were committed by refugees in the first place. The two alleged rapes were probably not connected to the Cologne attacks and were not committed by refugees.

See more evidence against the convention wisdom about the Germany sexual assaults here: http://pastebin.com/9Fd0vJbS

(A third comment of mine was flagged as spam probably due to too many links since that comment has a lot of links to the sources. Therefore I have to link to it rather than including it inside a comment.)

So it's not proven that the sexual assaults and robberies were committed by refugees. Some of the suspects are refugees, but none of them are suspected to commit sexual assaults, only theft and physical assaults. Instead, the sexual assaults and robberies were possibly committed by "organized criminals" (who were mostly North African (Moroccan and Algerian) but also German and American) who were not refugees. Evidence supports this as there were similar criminal organizations before the influx of refugees, the crimes follow a organized pattern (using sexual assaults to distract women when committing theft) and the firecrackers threw into the crowds beforehand may be an intentional, organized attempt to distract the police. These organized criminals possibly exploited the influx of refugees which made the German police difficult to identify offenders.

Many people join criminal gangs because they are poor or unemployed. Minimum wage and related laws cause unemployment by pricing low-skilled workers out of the market, particularly among young, unskilled minorities. Germany has high minimum wage laws and this might have caused these North African men to be unemployed (who are not merely young and unskilled, but they also cannot speak German fluently), and this in turn, cause them to join criminal gangs and resort to robbery (and to commit sexual assault to distract women when committing theft). So the root of the problem is minimum wage laws and related laws. They need to be abolished.

----

There is a popular misconception that the refugees "don't express gratitude with Germans for giving them free food, housing and education".

Still, none of the suspects who were asylum seekers were suspected of sexual assault (only theft and physical assault), and the two alleged rapes weren't committed by asylum seekers or refugees.

Think about which one of those statements will get more views:

1. "A thousand Syrian refugees who get free food and housing sexually assaulted and gang raped women in Cologne because they were Muslim and are from a culture that oppresses women."
2. "Men of mostly North African descent (including two German nationals and one U.S. citizen) who were suspected of both sexual assault and robbery in Cologne weren't asylum seekers or refugees."

Of course the first statement will get way more views. Also people will themselves promote the article with the first statement more. That's how misinformation is spread. The more biased the incident is presented, the more viral they are. I saw an unpopular YouTube channel with dozens of subscribers and once they made a highly biased video about the Cologne sexual assaults that video reached hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of days. In contrast, truthful, objective unbiased information don't have the ability to reach popularity this quickly unless they are actively promoted and funded.

Basically the more "sensational" the "crime" is reported, the more viral it would become. "Sexual assault" is more sensational than "robbery". (Even though in Cologne the robberies were accompanied by sexual assaults, sexual assaults were a way to distract women while committing theft.) In this case the "sexual assault" narrative will eventually win out because it's more sensational. "Refugees committing sexual assault" is also more sensational than "non-refugees committing sexual assaults". Therefore the sensational "refugee" narrative won out.

There was also a lie in 1990 that the Iraqi military killed babies by removing them from incubators. That was a lie. But because the lie was more sensational than the truth the lie eventually "won out".

There was a lie that Saddam had WMDs and he refused U.N. inspections. Both were lies but Bush's version of the story was more sensational therefore his version of the story "won".

There was factual evidence that the Islamic State attacked France in retaliation of France's earlier bombings. But then there was a false "sensational" version of the story that the Islamic State attacked because "they hated France because France was free". But of course this "sensational" version of the story won out.

There was the common sensational version of the 9/11 attacks: "they hated America because of their freedom". Of course this sensational version won out rather than the true story (al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. because the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iraq and bombed them even after Iraq had given up their WMD's as U.N. inspectors had confirmed, in result killing 500,000 Iraqi children. Another reason was because the U.S. has a base in the Middle East, mistakes were made like accidentally shooting down an Iranian civilian passenger jet killing all passengers (Iran Air Flight 655). The third reason was because the U.S. supports Israel even though Israel kills Palestinian civilians and shoots peaceful Palestinian protesters and displaces Palestinians of their homeland.)

Basically the more sensational the interpretation of the story is the more viral it is. The "sensational" version will therefore "win" regardless of the truth.

The claims about the IS doing "ethnic cleansing" against Christians are false. Before the IS is about to capture Mosul, the IS sent messages to all Christians that they could either convert to Islam, pay the jizya (a small tax of $750), leave, or die: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014...

The IS isn't the only entity imposing the jizya tax. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt also imposed the jizya on Christians in the village called Dalga. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/10/e...

This video of an IS judge confirms that Christians are entitled to live safely if they pay the small jizya tax. Time is at 30:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUjHb4C7b94

However, the myth that the IS murders Christian civilians persists. This has partly to do with the notion that many Christians are gone. But they are gone not because they are killed but because they have fled. This has confused many people (including prominent officials) into believing that they were massacred.

There is also no evidence that the IS kills other religious minorities. The IS is allied with the Sufi and pro-Saddam secularist militias.

The IS actually saved the lives of some Indian nurses. They warned the Indian nurses that a hospital is about to be bombed and they have provided protection, food and shelter for the nurses until they safely migrated to India: http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/freed-kerala-...

The media also has stated that the IS had killed Yazidi civilians. But this claim is being disputed. The Yazidis attempted to flee from the IS but they were trapped in the mountains with no food or water. However, the blame of their deaths have been attributed to the IS, even though the IS fighters said that they respect Yazidi civilians in an interview. An person posted this on Twitter:

"Good news: almost certain there was no massacre in Hatimiya. The Iraqi minister disseminated a false report. Will have more updates soon."

"But on Wednesday, an “emir” of #IS came to Hatimiya & Kucho, delivering a convert-to-Islam ultimatum. He told the villages: “We’re not after your $ or women; we just want to inform you that you’re now part of the Islamic State and anyone in it must be Muslim.” [...] Hatimiya decided to flee anyway, did so on Sat night. All the families made it to the mountain alive, luckily not encountering jihadists. The village of Hatimiya is now empty, but because of the communal escape—not because of a massacre."

A Yazidi woman was killed by her own Yazadi people for marrying a Sunni Muslim Boy. When the IS captured the city called "Bashiqa", an IS representative on Twitter twitted that the city was renamed to Dua in honor of the Yadzi who was murdered. ("Dua" means "prayers".)

There are videos of the IS killing their captured enemy fighters, but there are no videos of the IS killing or beheading civilians, except few beheading foreign hostages. But those beheadings were intended to be retaliations against earlier Coalition airstrikes and Coalition financing against the IS. Two Japanese hostages were executed because the Prime Minister of Japan promised to donate $200,000,000 to finance military intervention against the IS but has refused to pay ransom to release these hostages.

Sources state that the IS has executed only 2,000 civilians. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/is...

Many of the people that has been executed were prominent leaders of the former administration, alleged spies against the IS, people who were fleeing from the IS (it's illegal to flee from the IS unless you pay), civilians who are killed accidentally during mutual warfare, and people who died from IS-perpetrated terrorist attacks abroad.

There were reports of dozens of Yazidis and Christians being "chased and shot to death". However, it's illegal for people to flee from the IS unless they pay a fee. Their deaths might be punishment against them for fleeing.

(Source stating that fleeing is illegal: http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/middleeast/raqqa-is...

The IS executes captured enemy combatants instead of imprisoning them. The IS is a small and unstable state that poses a high risk of their land being recaptured by their Syrian and Iraqi adversaries thereby freeing any potential prisoners-of-war. Their policy of executing enemy military captives is to prevent the captives from being redeployed in case their land and prisons are recaptured by their enemies.

Why are there so many false claims about the IS? One reason is that false claims are more sensational than truthful claims. Sensational claims are spread faster to a larger population and they may even be viral. Another reason is that a lot of people are biased against the IS so much that they believe in any claim against it regardless of the truth. People may hate the IS so much that they do not care about finding any truthful fact that may "legitimize" the IS.

It's delusional in the first place that defeating ISIS or the Taliban will end terrorism. Even if defeated, these organizations will just remain underground.

The article is just a transcript of the video.

"The author should read more of what his subject, Trump, said."
"obviously anti-Trump."
"obvious Trump bashing."

This is just proof that most Antiwar.com commenters are not just pro-Putin but they are also pro-Trump. No wonder Trump and Putin like each other. http://news.yahoo.com/trump-putin-crush-grown-lon...

Most of the commenters here at antiwar.com applaud Putin. In reality Putin is a mass murderer just like Obama.

Putin’s air force just used its nuclear bombers to lay waste to the capital of the ‘Islamic State.’ But they also hit areas that have little to do with ISIS.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/17/...

These bombs could be from Russia, but it's not verified:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/12/09/19/2F36...
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/12/09/19/2F36...

Not just antiwar.com but most mainstream Americans like Putin way more than Obama on his "handling" of foreign policy issues and think Obama is "too weak". Most Americans support carpet-bombing or napalming ISIS even though they don't want to deploy American ground troops because they don't want American troops to be killed. Yesterday a suicide bomber blew up an American base in Afghanistan and Americans were REALLY upset for the six Americans that were killed. But way more Muslim CIVILIANS are being killed every day but Americans don't even bat an eye. Probably because they think "Americans are more important because of their cultural beliefs". "Muslims are less valuable than Americans because Islam is violent and they are strongly against female promiscuity which is oppressive to women".

Russia military kills innocent civilians.

Both Russia and USA are evil.

Legit. "on the whole Americans have good intentions"? It's a meaningless statement.

Everyone thinks they have "good intentions". Even ISIS thinks they have "good intentions".

It ordered the killing of newborn infants (between one week and three months old) with Down Syndrome, other congenital deformities and disabilities. Nowhere it advocated killing toddlers and older children. The news source misinterpreted it if it thinks they advocate killing toddlers and older children. The news industry has a habit of misinterpreting stuff and coming to conclusions.

Americans abort 8 month old fetuses with Down Sydrome all the time and people don't give a shit.

In addition, countries in the Middle East do not have the technology to prescreen fetuses of any defects. Down syndrome tests are expensive like $2000. It's unimaginable that a poor country like Iraq with very high unemployment could afford it.