Reports: Truck runs into crowded Christmas market in Berlin

[TomSea]

Latest:Full story at USA Today.

I just heard about this too.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/europe/berlin-christmas-market-truck/index.html?adkey=bn

Man was arrested with forged documents, judge let him go.

[mountaineer]

Here we go again – but this time, Je suis Berlin
Douglas Murray
 20 December 2016  10:09 PM
Spectator (U.K.) - excerpted

Well the year isn’t finished, but thanks to what looks to be the combination of the world’s most peaceable religion, a truck and a temptingly bustling Christmas market in Berlin I’m going to have reprise my most frequently written piece of recent years. So here we go again.

On Monday night a truck was driven into a busy pedestrian area in Berlin. In the immediate aftermath the media were understandably wary. It could be a Glasgow-like accident or it could be a deliberate act. Struggling with this conundrum the BBC plumped for ‘Lorry kills nine at Christmas market.’ Naughty lorry.

To date the attack still doesn’t have a hashtag that’s stuck. There was an early push for ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’, but for some reason it didn’t catch. Perhaps it would be better to simply add Berlin to that growing list of cities we are meant to urge other people to ‘pray’ for (Paris, Brussels, Paris again, Orlando, etc, etc.)?

Happily for some, there was a glimmer of hope on Monday night when it transpired that the guilty truck had a Polish number plate and a Polish registered driver. But then it turned out that the Polish truck appeared to have been hijacked and the driver was lying dead in the truck with a bullet wound to the head among other mortal injuries so he couldn’t easily be blamed. You almost felt bad for all the ‘anti-fascist’ groups gearing up to blame all Poles, white people in general or perhaps Donald Trump supporters in particular for their nascent racism, poor driving and the like. Alas they had to look away. For it soon appeared that the suspect was a Pakistani migrant who arrived in Germany last year. At this stage any normal person would ask why a Pakistani migrant should have ended up in Germany in 2015. Were there too few Pakistani migrants already in Germany? Did the country need more? And why Pakistan? Is the country a war-zone like Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, Nigeria, Morocco and Burma, to name just a few of the countries that Europeans have been told are our responsibility and whose populations as a result deserve assisted passage into our continent?  ...

At the present moment the Pakistani migrant has been released and seems to have been arrested because he ‘fitted the description’ of the attacker. Meanwhile Isis, or ‘so-called Islamic State’ or ‘so-called Islamic, so-called State’ as our broadcasters and media like to call the terror organisation, has claimed responsibility for the attack. We shall see whether this was directed or inspired by them.

If it is then we will all have to watch out closely for the swiftly ensuing ‘Muslim good news story’. I haven’t seen one yet.  ...

All this is not to say that the political class will not go into action. If this does prove to be an Islamist attack then in the coming days I would expect Angela Merkel to reiterate her recent call to ‘ban the burka’. The Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, will also doubtless once again back up this call. Meantime, most of the candidates for the French Presidency will publicly ponder whether the Berlin attack might have been stopped if the driver of the lorry had been banned from wearing a burkini.

At the same time the non-violent Islamists who work in European politics and the media will insist that we look at the root causes which make people drive trucks through Christmas markets in Berlin (‘Islamophobia’, Germany’s brutal foreign policy, trucks of certain designs) while non-Muslim commentators who haven’t paid attention over recent decades will insist that we find out ‘what the terrorists want’, with the unmentioned follow-on that once we work this out we can give them some of it. So drive enough trucks into crowds and sooner or later we can whittle down the number of Christmas markets, Jews, gays, polytheists, etc.

Of course for the foreseeable future anybody suggesting that importing millions more Muslims into Europe isn’t wise will continue to be regarded as a way-out-there crank who is in a very real sense actually causing the trucks to go into the Christmas markets. Leading us back once again to the logical conclusion that the only respectable response to importing millions of Muslims into Europe is to import millions more Muslims into Europe.

[Restored]

I think the phrase the liberals will use(without using it) is "acceptable losses". So long as the "numbers" stay relatively low, they will not elicit much of a response. Drop the matter quickly.

Remember, the narrative is that these are Syrian families fleeing a war. Families don't commit terrorist acts therefore.......

Aside: One of the Syrian families was placed in our small town.

[Sanguine]

Here we go again – but this time, Je suis Berlin
Douglas Murray
 20 December 2016  10:09 PM
Spectator (U.K.) - excerpted

That is brutal, @mountaineer.  Great piece.  And, he's right, as bizarre as it is. 

[sneakypete]

Lots of very popular music came out about the fall of the Berlin wall.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KcRl1p2waM

@Cripplecreek

The original "Winds of Change" was by Eric Burton and the Animals. More than a little bit complex and spooky. Had it on a big Teac reel to reel when I was in VN. Starts a little slow,but give the whole thing a listen and you might be surprised. Pretty complex and innovative music for it's time. One of my favorites on it is a song based on social commentary about the Black Plague in Europe and how it was handled. The hook in the song is the chant "Bring out your Dead"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c81BjiTB_zE

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I hate when the press releases statements like, "There are nine dead at the scene." and they do not mention until later that one of the 'nine' they are referring to is one of the terrorists. So, there were really only eight actual human beings killed, plus one filthy terrorist.

The news media does the same when they report on 'gun violence' statistics.

Anyone killing someone and either kills himself or killed by police are included in the statistic of 'gun violence'.

[the_doc]

Does anyone have a transcript of Mark Levin's guest host's comments about the characteristics of the truck versus instructions for jihadists on an ISIS website?  It's stunning stuff.

You know, I am beginning to think this was an attack by a terrorist.  (Just sayin')

[Fishrrman]

Sanguine wrote:
"Frau Merkel has had absolutely no compassion for the little people - the men and (mostly) women who would predictably be impacted by her actions.  No compassion whatsoever.  In fact, it's almost as if she hates them."

Sounds remarkably like another leftist woman who until early November, was grasping for the reins of power right here...

[TomSea]

Firshrrman wrote:

Sounds remarkably like another leftist woman who until early November, was grasping for the reins of power right here...

Yes, she was going to increase it by maybe 500% or something? How dreadful.