Hooray! German chancellor Angela Merkel has come up with a solution to the refugee crisis. Unfortunately, simple math proves her alleged solution is half-baked.
The Financial Times reports EU Closes on Migrant Deal with Turkey.
The EU is close to a breakthrough deal with Ankara that would see all non-Syrian migrants reaching Greek islands returned to Turkey, marking a crucial step in the bloc’s hardening stance against the flow of people pouring into its territories.
After weeks of diplomatic pressure from Berlin and Brussels, Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish prime minister, privately signalled in negotiations on Thursday that Ankara will accept the systematic returns of non-Syrians and step up action against smugglers.
Two diplomats familiar with the discussion on Thursday said Turkey also agreed to accept all migrants rescued in international waters by a Nato mission — a sensitive issue that had held-up progress on the operation.
It came as Donald Tusk, the European Council president, bluntly warned that the doors of Europe were closing to those not fleeing persecution: “I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants wherever you are from: do not come to Europe.”
To give weight to such a warning, Europe must kick-start its system of returning migrants with no prospects of securing refugee status. Roughly 2,000 people a day are reaching Greek islands, of which around half are Syrian. Overall, 1.2m migrants reached EU countries last year by sea.
Math for Merkel
- 2,000 refugees reach Greece every day.
- 50% of them are non-Syrian.
- If all the non-Syrians are successfully weeded out, 1,000 refugees a day will arrive in Greece.
- That number will rise with better weather but let’s assume it doesn’t.
- 1,000 * 365 = 365,000 refugees arriving in Greece whose path to the North is blocked.
Those numbers are on the extreme low side as numbers are way higher than 2015. How much higher is in dispute, but here are a few ideas to put things into proper perspective.
- The Independent says the Refugee Arrival Rate so far this year is “more than eight times the rate seen during the same period in 2015.”
- The Guardian says the refugee arrival rate is “triple the rate of arrivals over the first half of 2015”
- In the same article, the Guardian says the “rate of arrivals this year expected to climb further as weather improves.
Meanwhile, the path to the North is blocked because Austria and nine Balkan countries are fed up with the chancellor. For details, please see Austria and Nine Balkan Countries Effectively Tell Merkel Go to Hell.
Merkel desperately needs a math lesson because her half-baked plan cannot possibly work.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Centuries of pride in one’s nationality and culture is now being destroyed by elite psychos like Merkel toward the agenda of One World Government. Every person on this planet should fight this.
the nationalism you describe only took root in the mid to late 19th C. Extreme nationalism in service to a centralized all powerful state killed 650,000 Americans in 1860-65, 20 million Europeans in 1914-1919, 300 million People in 1933-1946, and worse. Prior to the rise of the false religion of nationalism, the vast majority of people’s tightest bonds were with family, church, and friends. Nationalism destroys those bonds.
Could not disagree more Vooch. Those millions were killed as usual trying to defend their homeland from invaders or they were invaders trying to take over weaker countries or in the name of religion. Government and those in charge of it see another country with resources they needed, religious leaders wanted to consolidate power or spread their religion so off to war they go.
Currently most of the wars in the Middle East have nothing to do with what politicians tell us and everything to do with control of resources and the avenues used to transport these goods. Nationalism has nothing to do with this.
Governments destroy those bonds because people are basically greedy and want something for nothing. The problem is to continue to provide their citizens with stuff they must expand their territory and control trade. If you study history every empire does this.
Amen!
Let us call nation as being born into a community, a culture, a land.
Let us name state as government and centralized control of said nation.
Let us end the confusion between state and nation.
Nationalism is the defense of nation, statism is the manipulation of nation in the pretext of representing it.
People will fight and die to defend their nation, state will have people fight and die in the name of their nation.
There is a difference, and until people realize what it is, they will be slave to the dictate of a given few under the illusion that their superioirity is a natural dwelling achievable by all.
It isn’t, nor is it a natural state, it is a hypothesis designed to take advantage of those it pretends to protect, that attempts to simulate the inherent morals of a society so as to fool the common man into thinking it is both guardian and propietor of them.
Until we learn a lesson that corrupts us in its experience, we will not be in a position to judge it and reject it, and that is the truth state uses to gain leverage on its subjects.
It is very hard to turn your back on all that you have been educated to respect, but if you do so you will find that reality is still there, and what is good will still be part of it , and without the distortion of falsity or imposition. Your respect will then flow to where it is deserved, not where it is stolen.
As a person, you are a world unto yourself. Your attention, your consideration, your respect, your sentiment, your dedication, count. They are all you really have, they are all you may offer in goodness to the world.
When someone tells you what those should be, they are denying you your existence, they are assuming you are worthless, they are dressing you up like a mannequin in a shop window.
Those who are selfless are like mirrors, they immediately reflect their surroundings. Vanity does not like this and will invent the most frustrated of stories to try to divert attention away from itself, to try to overcome its own failings.
As a person you are not there to disguise the failings of others, but if you are of good nature it will be understood that failure is not the end, and that recognition of a failure immediately frees all to a new beginning.
So be sincere at all times, there will be no need to judge others when we have our own existence in balance, when we are true to our origin, when we have shaken off the artificial concepts loaded upon us.
The refugee crisis is a distraction from what we should be dealing with – the cause of it. Until we are straight in that respect our opinion will not carry the respect it should deserve. Until we can say that is not our problem or doing we cannot defend ourselves from its reality. We are as caught in its creation as the refugees themselves, and we are being drawn into the conflict.
People want answers now, they do not want excuses or stories.
WHO in our nations is behind this state of affairs?
Answers please.
Whats wrong with one world government? We are all living on the same planet arent we? We are also the same race the last time I checked. Wouldnt it be nice that we would greet all people as equal and brothers/sisters?
We should have more planning towards success as a human race. Individual ambitions or national ambitions are harming us more than helping. I like peace and prosperity. I guess its not that important for all of us.
One World Government = Totalitarianism
If you think that will not lead to a small cadre of elites owning / controlling everything (ie: Police State) you are dreaming. But, maybe that is what you want?
Me? No Thanks.
One size doesn’t fit all. There are dozens of cultures, dozens of languages, multiple religions.
Equal brothers and sisters. Senator Boxer got upset when someone appearing before her, didn’t refer to her as senator. People seek superiority, not equality. Equality does not exist in nature. It is an artificial political construct, which denies scientific reality, Darwin’s survival of the fittest.
Peace and prosperity are cyclical. Everything moves in cycles. A heart beat is a cycle. Work, rest is a cycle, liberal, conservative is a cycle. Life is a cycle.
It would be great if there was always peace and prosperity, but that does not exist in nature. If it did exist in nature, it would have always existed, already.
I wan’t to think that humans have evolved with the time. If we are this magnificiently intelligent being then why is it impossible to rationalize whats best for us? Or maybe we are still more equal to chimpanzees… Equality and peace don’t sound so bad to me. Someone gets supposedly annoyed if we stop killing for example…I just can’t see the benefit for the human race as a whole to keep the system fractioned. Globalization is proceeding very rapidly…I think that the first steps toward this integration are being taken at the moment.
-pipru
Whats wrong with one world government?
Well who runs it? Me? You? Putin? China?
And do we have Chinese pollution controls or what we have here?
Do we let everyone vote? If so, China and India control the world.
A single world government is idiotic.
Mish
Well clearly this would be very complex question to solve how, who etc. I’m here at pure theoretical level to discuss this because I know that humans are intrinsically selfish and greedy. We need to evolve to accept everyone as equal. Somekind of UN/EU like governmental-body would be needed to govern it. I believe that first should every continent for example have its central government and then these continental governments would merge and form world government. Utopian idea? Sure, but who says its should be achieved during our lifetime?
I can see that even EU is running in to trouble and nationalism is raising its head. Everyone want’s to take care of only himself and is not ready to carry common responsibility. I think that so long the people think they belong to a specific nationality and not to EU, the problems are going to continue. I realize also the very violent nature of human species and believe that true peace is still very far away. We are propably closer to WW3 than sustainable woldwide peace…
So I think that we need presumably decades to achive this if not centuries… Still I wouldnt give up just because something seems to be complicated. Sustainable peace and equality among different races and nationalities is worth figting for. You wouldnt abandon your brother because he is handicapped and weak? This idea of solidarity between us outside the family is very rare. Why?
“I have a dream”
-pipru
One world government is an idiotic concept and those theorizing about it could use their time more productively.
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network.
Under Merkel’s “plan” 22 million more syrians would be entitled to come to EU and Turkey would obviously let every syrian to come from Turkey and through Turkey (In turkey there is about 2,5 million syrian refugees and in Jordan 1,5 million syrian refugees and in Libanon 1,5 million syrian refugees already who all would choose free apartment and free money and family re-unification straight to welfare in western europe if they could) and syrians could all claim a free apartment and free money from western european welfare countries and with family re-unifications straight to welfare if Merkel makes this “deal” and Turkey let’s them come to Greece and EU burden sharing spreads them around europe from Greece OR eu-hotspots process them in Greece and gives practically everybody asylum and then EU spreads them around europe.
Merkel is again REFUSING to accept her multiple mistakes and the fact her ideas are completely out of touch with reality.
Merkel seems incapable of admitting she was wrong and made a mistake after mistake in her handling of this issue.
Everybody in Turkey is already SAFE so there is no valid reason for even syrians to come from Turkey to Greece to seek asylum in europe because Turkey provides a tent, free food and free water to those syrians who don’t have money to rent themselves an inexpensive apartment to live.
EU should help Turkey pay for these refugee camps and EU should help Jordan and Libanon pay for their refugee camps and the borders between Greece and Greece’s neighbors like Macedonia should be SHUT completely and Bulgaria and Albania should also continue keeping their borders with Greece SHUT so nobody would come from Turkey to Greece anymore.
The only reason people come to Greece is because greece has given these people a boat ride to mainland Greece and let them go through greece and cross into Macedonia and travel through a few countries to welfare-paying europe which starts from Austria northwards and where most of asylum seekers get a permit to stay after telling a story/fairytale to bureaucrat how they are “persecuted” and after one interview they are accepted and get all the free stuff namely free apartment, free money, family re-unification straight to welfare and the goodies locals get like free healthcare, free dental, free school, mostly free university, mostly free childcare and 100-200 euros of money per month per kid from the governments to buy nice things for their kids.
If borders with Greece would be closed NOBODY would come to greece because greece offers less than Turkey and nobody wants to stay in Greece.
EU-should fund turkish standard refugee camps for the people in greece currently and tell clearly that NOBODY will be allowed to cross from Greece to welfare-paying europe anymore so the rush towards greece would STOP.
If half of the arrivals are syrian at the moment it means that the percentage of syrians is rising which means that macedonia closing their borders from everybody but syrians, iraqis, afganistanis some time ago is already having an effect and the pakistanis and assorted africans have stayed in their home countries instead of traveling to Turkey and trying to get through Greece..
Recently macedonia closed their border to afghans also so the number of afghans should start dropping when they realize there is no way through greece and decide to stay in Kabul and surrounding safe areas in Afganistan.
Next to be denied entry through Macedonia should be Iraqis because Iraq has safe areas in the south for shiites and in the north for kurdis and most of 8-million mega-city Baghdad is safe for sunnis.
When everybody else is denied entry also Syrians should be denied entry by Macedonia because they were already SAFE in Turkey and can seek asylum in Greece if they wish but Greece offers no “free everything” like countries from Austria northwards do.
If it would NOT be possible to reach western european welfre-countries through Greece NOBODY would come to Greece and therefore NOBODY would drown anymore.
“Two diplomats familiar with the discussion on Thursday said Turkey also agreed to accept all migrants rescued in international waters by a Nato mission — a sensitive issue that had held-up progress on the operation.”
I am wondering if this is a joke, correct me but there are no international waters between Greece and Turkey.
Non-Syrians have an automatic right to be processed in EU. Even simpler to understand, they must be registered as asylum seekers / illegal immigrants to acertain nationality. So the conditions will be desperate non-Syrians avoiding process, or remaining in camps appealing their deportation. Note the asylum laws have not changed in this agreement, the only thing to have changed is those non-Syrians whose asylum is rejected may possibly be bussed back into Turkey… if they don’t flee somehow or push on north before capture.
They may then try again because it is possible by reaching a country further north directly they can use a different admin.
So I get the impression the new agreement is to dupe the public.
Nobody has automatic right to be processed under the Geneva convention which states that people can NOT be returned to borders where they are persecuted.
The interpretation has been made in EU that everybody has a right to seek asylum and be processed despite traveling through SAFE countries like Turkey but this is just an interpretation of the texts not the actual texts.
Change the interpretation and stick to the original Geneva convention and everybody, including syrians, can be returned from Greece to Turkey because they were already SAFE in Turkey so Geneva Conventien does NOT prohibit returning everybody to Turkey..
With this same logic Macedonia could block their borders completely and stop the movement to western european welfare-countries and tell everybody to seek asylum in Greece.
“…her alleged solution is half-baked.”
Two half baked equal a whole. The foreign intervention in Syria in particular and the Middle East in general, has been half baked, resulting in misery for many, across a wide area, which has expanded into Europe.
Is that “”Two Half-Baked” or “Too Half-Baked”
“Too Two-Half Baked”?
Where is the money coming from to finance this invasion? Who is paying for the food and transportation of a million people a year? AND, even better, nobody except me is asking that question.
The people coming from Turkey pay their own money to smugglers to get a place in a boat or buy a boat themselves for a larger group.
In greece they get food and water and greece gives them a boat ride to mainland Greece from the islands near Turkish coast where they land.
Then they are given a bus ride to Macedonian border and in Macedonia they walk and buy food themselves until reaching serbia and travel from serbia to croatia and slovenia and then they reach Austria where everything is free.
Biggest hurddle was the turkish smugglers until Macedonia and Austria strated tightening their borders.
At some point Europe will just be forced to abandon asylum rights all together and announce that no one is welcome.
War brings destruction and causes the displacement of millions of people. I agree that the underlying issues for these refugees hasn’t been addressed and the U.S. seems intent on using proxies to continue the devastation in that country. The EU will collapse under this movement and, if you are a believer in the “Change by Degrees” strategy, then the attempted melding of Christian and Islamic cultures on such a massive scale will bring a further deterioration to economic, social and political stability. I don’t necessarily immediately believe there is a united, all powerful Bilderberg monopoly pulling all the strings, but, then again, they don’t necessarily need to in order to bring overpowering waves with pebbles being dropped at the right places at the right time.
I know… I digress… The only real solution is to return the people to their country. The idea of diversity can be a good thing, but become quickly a bad thing…. when, in order to achieve the goal of diversity, it requires you to abandon all the virtues of the norms and mores which you made your culture great. We have too many historical examples proving this point to varying degrees. The argument against this is that many people will die, but the reality is that people die in war. I sound harsh and it is harsh. At what point does kindness become your undoing? When the people brought in to your culture demand their culture be the one and only left standing? Their pushing brings out a grinding level of ever moving compromises using your laws to increase their viewpoint.
Do you want Sharia Law to become how you must live? Sounds ludicrous, even to me, but you can’t deny the western world is ill prepared to defend itself when existing societal laws and standards can be used to bring it to pass. The countries waking up to reimpose their boundaries might believe they can stem the tide, but with Merkel and the EU…. how can they win or defend? This world just gets crazier.
This could be fixed very quickly and with little loss of life if the EU countries navies starting ramming boats just outside of the coastal waters of the donor countries and each country shot the first couple of border violators every day.
The nonsense would stop within a month
That is NOT necessary.
Simply closing the greek facing borders of Macedonia will end the rush because the only pull factor Greece has is the fact you can reach western europe through greece.
If only option was staying in greece nobody would come.