Barbecue

What the–?
> Berlin police chief Dieter Glietsch has triggered a storm of outrage from politicians after he warned owners of Porsche and Mercedes cars not to park their fancy rides overnight in the city’s left-wing Kreuzberg district after a rash of car arson incidents. In the past year, dozens of cars have been gutted in the immigrant-dominated neighbourhood with Mercedes and BMW’s the prime targets of suspected left-wing radicals.
Berlin doesn’t have any so-called “no-go areas,” but the police have managed to designate “no-drive areas”… Members of the Berlin government — a coalition between Mayor Klaus Wowereit’s Social Democrats (SPD) and the socialist Left Party — backed the police chief. Glietsch’s department said their chief’s remark should be seen as “assisting crime prevention.” Motorists could park where they liked, but it was sensible to take the possible consequences into account. After all, standard police advice to cyclists losing their bicycles to theft is: “Don’t park it on the street,” the police department said. <

Not leftie activists, actually stag partygoers:
http://northbriton.com/2009/02/stag-dos-and-donts/

Motorists could park where they liked, but it was sensible to take the possible consequences into account.
Shouldn’t the police be stopping these crimes rather than telling the victims to suck it up? And given this is Europe, are the perps really “left wing radicals” or is that the new euphemism for “Muslim”?

Reminiscent of inner-big-city America in the late 60s through the 80s, perhaps? How do you like your new multiculti, politically correct society now, Europe?

carbon based,
(1) Leftist radicals set fire to nice cars. (2) People with nice cars stop using the shops. (3) The shops lose business and maybe close down. (4) The area becomes poorer.
(5) More squats for the leftist radicals.

It would be interesting to hear from any readers in Germany, but from what I can make out, the leftwing group claiming responsibility for the arson attacks is “Bewegung für militanten Widerstand” (“Movement for Militant Resistance”). The attacks are supposedly “a protest against the world economy and rising rents,” though one might regard them as something less grand and flattering:
“Right after the [Berlin] wall came down, there was an abundance of cheap living space, especially in the East, where dozens of abandoned apartments — and even entire apartment buildings — were just waiting for squatters to move in. Today most of the squats have been renovated and transformed into legal, more upscale housing.”
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1881451,00.html
Several years ago, I lived in a pokey flat above one of the more agreeable side streets of central Nottingham. The area was slowly being transformed, with restaurants and trendy bars replacing the old and run-down shops. Inevitably, the rent increased significantly and I didn’t have a lot of money. Should I therefore have felt *entitled* to start setting fire to people’s cars? Or should I merely have smashed a few windows? Some mugging, perhaps? You see, the rules of this “radical protest” business aren’t terribly clear…