This story is horrific, but I have managed to scrape a bit of enjoyment from watching people who don't consider groping to be a 'real sexual act' and would be writing this story off as a bunch of women who were 'asking for it' over reacting to a bit of boys-will-be-boys fun if the mob had been sports fans or frat boys or locals at a nightclub, suddenly come out screaming about what an horrific crime this is and how radical measures (close the border! deport them all!) must be taken to ensure it never happens again.

From the looks of it, it wasn't one large mob of molesters but rather a larger group of criminals (probably organized ones) mixing in with the crowd in order to steal stuff and have a little fun with the women while they're at it.

Pickpockets love crowds. This is apparently what happens when the pickpockets think they can get away with everything.

Good point. In the interest of fairness and consistency, soccer hooligans should be given a choice of Syria or Somalia.

1000 men? I wonder if anyone noticed.

Okay, let's put this into a little perspective by giving an overview of what German media are reporting:

1) On New Year's Eve, a group of around 1,000 people gathered at Cologne main station to celebrate, well, New Year's Eve. This group was comprised of mostly men, which were probably largely immigrants. Whether they were refugees having entered Germany only recently is not yet clear but rather improbable, seeing that Germany has a history of immigration.

2) During these celebrations, people launched fireworks, which was pretty dangerous considering they were launched from within that large group of people. When a few of them started tossing firecrackers around, apparently aiming for others (in what most think is still explainable by drunk people partying while owning firecrackers), the police moved in and broke the large group up in order to prevent injuries.

3) Once the larger group was broken up into several smaller ones, some of these smaller groups started harrassing others the way the report above describes it. They surrounded men and women alike, pushed the men around, groped the women and, while they were at it, stole anything of value their hands could find.

4) Of the initial crowd of 1,000, an estimate 80 - 100 engaged in that behavior.

5) From initial descriptions and from camera footage, at least some of these people were already known to the police as repeat offenders, especially regarding theft and robbery.

6) The police are reporting two of the people they could already identify were Syrian citizens. Most others are believed to be Germans with foreign roots, as witness reports describe them of speaking the German language like natives.

It seems like this must have been organized somehow. I wonder how it flew under the radar?

I'm not sure about that. If you get enough drunk men in a crowd this sort of thing seems bound to happen (actually, it happens all the time to women who have to deal with drunk men, it's the scale of this that is noteworthy, not the acts), and once it's clear nothing is being done (honestly, where were the police?) it emboldens others to get amongst it.

A mob is a dangerous thing

I saw something on facebook a while ago that said in effect; 'If lesbians can control themselves around women in short skirts, then it isn't the skirts that are the problem'

I find it impressive whenever I hear something so efficiently encapsulated in so few words.

As a personal aside, try as I might I just can't even imagine a circumstance that would lead me to touch a woman without her consent. Even during several periods of my life when I was starved for sexual companionship you'd have to hold a gun to my head to make me grope a strangers' boobs or bottom (or any other sensitive area come to that).

A volunteer at a swingers club once told me that they have more complaints of unwanted physical attention towards women from other women, than from men. He did say that the instigators were usually drunk though, and swingers clubs are rather a special case in that the men tend to be very well behaved.

EDIT: In fact, I don't like that original argument, and only partly because you only have to find one lesbian who doesn't choose to control herself around short skirts to invalidate it. The underlying moral has to be that each person's behavior is their own responsibility, so you cannot blame one person's behaviour on the legitimate behaviour of another person. I don't think the original argument as stated supports that underlying moral.

German police are currently searching social networks for any clues towards what made that initial crowd gather.

In Finland, cases of rape and women being harassed have increased dramatically after the influx of the refugees, with majority of those doing it being the refugees. This has been acknowledged by the police and politicians.

Different standards, I guess.

What's going on is that Western civilization is going through the terminal stages of cat lady syndrome. It started off innocently enough, with women's lib and civil rights, but now our brains are riddled with toxoplasmosis lesions and we can't stop extending our altruism by taking in every stray we see by the Wendy's dumpster. Given that self-righteousness acts on the brain in a similar manner to opiates, we can delude ourselves that we aren't just doing the right thing, we're making things better. In actuality, all we're doing is filling our house with cat shit and ensuring it gets condemned. If we wanted to make an actual difference for the better, it would involve a catch and release program of spaying, neutering, and euthanasia where needed.

I thought it was the other way around.