IPFS Menckens Ghost

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German Insanity Coming to America?

Dear Thinker:  The following article boggles the mind, at least what's left of mine. It's about what has happened in Berlin as a result of Germany allowing thousands of Arab and Kurdish asylum-seekers into the country, putting them on the dole, and not allowing them to work (probably because of pressure from German unions).  Not assimilating, they have become clannish and formed violent crime syndicates that are spreading across Germany.  Apparently, no one in the German government, academia and media asked, What could possibly go wrong?  Of course, we have something similar with Latin crime syndicates.  (For an example, read the history of the Mexican black-tar heroin syndicate.)  Now some intellectuals and Silicon Valley billionaires say that we should adopt a guaranteed basic income as a way of ameliorating the effects of technological change, as if the recipients will spend their free time taking violin lessons, writing poetry and reading Shakespeare.  The West has a suicidal impulse.

Cheers,

Mencken's Ghost

An Ice-Cream Truck Slaying, Party Drugs and Real-Estate Kings:  Ethnic Clans Clash in Berlin's Underworld

By

Bojan Pancevski

The Wall Street Journal, Updated Oct. 17, 2018 2:50 p.m. ET

BERLIN—On a rainy morning in a cemetery last month, Berlin's hidden underworld briefly emerged from the shadows.

Nidal Rabih, one of the German capital's most notorious criminals, had been killed by unidentified shooters days earlier, and his funeral drew nearly 2,000 mourners from across the country. Scores of police officers watched as bearded, beefy men in tracksuits and crew cuts filed by. Luxury cars with dark-tinted windows ferried older men to the graveside.

Mr. Rabih, a 36-year-old gang enforcer, was strolling in a Berlin park with his wife and three young children when he was shot eight times next to an ice-cream truck.

Recent months have seen a rise in killings and shootouts linked to what security officials say is a gangland war among Germany's powerful crime syndicates. But for law-enforcement authorities in Berlin and around the country, Mr. Rabih's slaying was the last straw, prompting an intensified crackdown on organized crime, with raids, arrests and indictments ramping up in recent weeks.

"A broad-daylight murder in a popular park packed with families is a whole new category," said Martin Pallgen, spokesman of Berlin's interior ministry.

The violence—and the authorities' pushback—has drawn attention to Germany's burgeoning ethnic crime clans. Security officials, politicians and researchers say these groups represent an immediate security concern as well as a warning about what can happen when migrants fail to integrate into their host societies.

In the 1980s, thousands of Arabs and Kurds from Lebanon and parts of Turkey sought asylum in Germany. Unlike guest workers invited to the country, these often stateless people weren't allowed to work, instead receiving basic benefits and in many cases not integrating into their new society.

According to a 2017 government study of organized crime, some of the families stuck by tribal and Islamic codes of justice, spurning the state and its laws. Insulated from society, governed by their own rules and hierarchies, several such families turned into criminal enterprises, the study found.

Today, about a dozen predominantly Arab and Kurdish families with an estimated 1,000 criminal members dominate the German capital's organized-crime scene, police say, and have expanded to other parts of the country. The vast majority of these families' members, like Germany's immigrant population in general, aren't involved in crime.

Refugees and asylum seekers are about 2% of Germany's population of 82 million but 8.5% of all crime suspects in 2017, according to police statistics. They made up 14% of suspects for unlawful killing and assault, and a similar proportion of robbery suspects.

Most prominent Berlin clan members say they live off state benefits, authorities say, but their empires span illegal activities such as prostitution and drugs. More recently, the families have branched into legal ventures including property, gambling, fitness studios and restaurants, said Martin Hikel, the mayor of Neukölln, a blue-collar but rapidly gentrifying community that is home to several criminal clans and a burgeoning avant-garde club scene.

Since the 2015 refugee crisis that saw nearly two million mostly Middle Eastern asylum seekers enter Germany, the clans have been recruiting young refugees to act mainly as street-level drug dealers, said Mr. Hikel, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party.

"The clans have systematically been recruiting refugees for the dirtiest jobs, such as selling drugs in parks and the subway," said Thomas Spaniel, an organized crime expert with Berlin's criminal police.

As part of the nationwide push against criminal clans, police on Wednesday launched a vast operation in Berlin and the surrounding region, searching 19 properties linked to a Chechen crime ring. The previous day, investigators shut down a drug-selling operation in the capital led by two Lebanese citizens, confiscating 3 kilograms of heroin.

In perhaps the most spectacular recent raid, Berlin authorities in July seized 77 apartments owned by welfare-supported members of the Remmo family.

Issa Remmo, the family's 51-year-old patriarch, arrived from Lebanon in the 1980s as a refugee and has 15 siblings and 13 children in Germany. One of his sons is currently on trial for the murder of a rival family member, who was beaten to death with baseball bats. Another relative served an eight-year sentence for robbing a bank; the €9.8 million ($11.3 million) loot was never recovered.

In a rare interview in July, Mr. Remmo said he knew nothing of the seized properties. "Construction and gastronomy—this is my business," Mr. Remmo told the BZ newspaper. A lawyer for his family didn't respond to a request to comment.

As Mr. Remmo and his relatives attended Mr. Rabih's funeral, an imam urged the unruly crowd to stop shouting, refrain from altercations with police and observe Islamic rites. A small group of veiled women stood separately.

"Only pigs, not men, would massacre a father in front of his children," said one mourner who gave his name as Sami. "They will pay."

Sami, who said he had shared a prison cell with Mr. Rabih, said new gangs were disturbing Berlin's criminal equilibrium. "Now it's like New York here: Chechens, Kurds, Albanians, Russians, Moroccans, Turks, Gypsies," he said. "Everyone wants their share."

Strong religious and ethnic identities have helped families from Lebanon ward off outside scrutiny and enforce loyalty, according to Ralph Ghadban, a German-Lebanese scholar who wrote a book about the criminal families.

"The clans see our liberal democratic society as something to be plundered. Yet even discussing crime and ethnicity was off-limits until recently," said Mr. Ghadban, who blames political correctness for a uthorities' failure to dismantle the gangs.

Mr. Hikel, Neukölln's mayor, said authorities had allowed the clans to establish a parallel society that rejects German norms and values, initiates young children into crime, and encourages intermarriage to strengthen cohesion.

"We have literally ignored these people for 30 years and now we have a huge problem on our hands," Mr. Hikel said. "They are heavily armed…and have amassed wealth—we need to stop them before they legalize it."

Recently some families have moved into legitimate areas, including the music business. Bushido, a major rap star of Tunisian origin, was until recently managed by a member of the Abu Chaker family, one member of which was convicted in connection with a spectacular 2010 attack and robbery on a poker tournament in a luxury Berlin hotel.

In an interview with the German weekly Stern last month, Bushido said he had broken ties with his former business partner following violent quarrels. The rapper said he has since switched allegiance to a member of a rival family: the Neukölln clan of Mr. Remmo.

The clans feed on their own notoriety. "Kids see the gangsters driving Mercedeses and sporting Rolexes. They want to be like them," said Hamed Khamis, a former gang member turned author. Anti-Semitism, antigay views and misogyny are promoted as values, he added.

Better integration and tougher policing can only do so much. Many police officials say the justice system is ill-equipped to tame the gangs.

"If we find €100,000 on a gangster officially living off benefits we need to prove he earned it with crime, and that's difficult," said Benjamin Jendro, spokesman for the GdP police union. "His Porsche or his house are registered in the name of an aunt in Lebanon. Even when they get convicted they get out in a couple of years. It's frustrating."

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