Tag: Greece

Analyst: Europe unprepared for potential large scale exodus from Egypt

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Writing at World Review, economic analyst Bernard Siman asks whether Europe could handle a new wave of “refugees” escaping Egypt this time.

Greece and Cyprus are the closest European countries to Egypt in Africa.

There has been little, if any, public discussion of possible scenarios, let alone serious crisis planning, whether politically, economically, administratively or militarily.

This is potentially a huge scale multi-dimensional problem.

Egypt’s 82.5 million population is separated from the Schengen area’s most eastern point of entry at Cyprus by 500 kilometres of Mediterranean Sea.

Any mass population movement fleeing Egypt’s violence – and in extremis civil war – will potentially be a game-changer at a time of serious and combined financial and economic crisis across Europe.

Austerity, deep financial cuts, widespread and vocal populist discontent about multiculturalism and immigration are affecting the eurozone and Cyprus and Greece in particular – the two Schengen members closest to the north Egyptian coast.

It is hard to say whether any naval crisis-planning exists to deal with such a sudden mass influx of Egyptian boat-people in the eastern Mediterranean.

Civil War in Egypt?

Egypt is descending into prolonged instability at best and civil war at worst. Both are likely to lead to increased migration through normal individual arrangements or mass exits.

The impact will not just be Europe’s to suffer….

See all of our posts on Malta (and Italy) going back almost 6 years and the problems they face with migrants arriving from Libya to get an idea of what Cyprus and Greece might face.  The US State Department has already set a dangerous precedent by transforming Malta’s illegal alien Africans into refugees being resettled now in your cities.  What is to stop them doing the same for (Muslim Brotherhood???) Egyptians arriving on Cyprus?

Comment worth noting: expert on Texas border comments on Greek landmines post

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Readers:  Comments worth noting is a category here at RRW where we post comments that interest us and are informative that you might have missed at the time they were posted in response to a story.

Here is ‘Freshideaguy’ on the Greek border security strategy (my title for this comment—Saving lives with landmines!):

The landmines did it!

Sounds kind of cruel, but when you are trying to prevent the collapse of your country, it’s economy and the very ability to continue to exist, some type of control over your borders is a necessary restriction that must be made.

In Texas, for instance, the Rio Grande Valley area is a hotbed infiltration point for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, (read that “gimmie-grants”) that storm into the USA annually, and for those who think that we are talking about Mexicans and Central and South Americans, think again!

At last check, there are more people now coming through the Texas border turnstiles from China, India, Africa, Middle East, Asia than are arriving from Latin America!  [Then they seek asylum!—ed]

What would be the impact if it were possible to stop that flow? In Brooks County, Texas, in 2012, there were more than 120 bodies found in the ranchland, most dying a cruel death in the monstrous Texas heat and buried in mostly anonymous pauper’s graves. All were autopsied and buried at county expense, (Texas State Law), and consider what that does to the county budget. Brooks County is a very poor area.

With landmines, virtually no one would have died trying to enter the USA in this area. Lives saved, money saved, and the enormous resources necessary to service illegals could be applied more appropriately to increasing the support for needy American citizens of all colors.

Right now the “landmines” are sprinkled all over the USA in the form of 1000+ cartel drug distribution centers, and the attendant turmoil created in our towns and cities by the marketing of illegal substances made available to our young people of all colors and millions of other Americans.

Tens of thousands of Americans have been murdered by illegal aliens, killed by drunk driving illegal aliens. Millions of Americans have been victimized in many ways by the presence of the drug infrastructure, countless sex offenders, thieves, burglars, to say nothing of the tens of billions in welfare support for these criminals, money drained from the “empty” pockets of American taxpayers.

Landmines may not be your cup of tea, (they would represent a harsh, but more humane solution), and I don’t recommend them. But enforcement of our immigration laws and the penalties for hiring illegals, (and stop the Obama Cartel from encouraging illegals to come here), would go a long way towards reducing the problem by stopping the illegal immigrant flow before it enters the USA.

Face it! We are already Europe!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editor’s note:  This is cross-posted from Potomac Tea Party Report.

Your tax dollars!

How many times lately have you heard someone say, “We are becoming like Europe (meaning broke)!”  Or, “we will soon be Greece.”*    Writer Mona Charen says we are already there, but can’t admit it.

From Townhall (hat tip: Paul):

Following the fiscal cliff melodrama, Senator Richard Shelby appeared on television to declare that we are becoming European. “We’re always wanting to spend and promise and spend and borrow but not cut. We’ve got to get real about this. We’re headed down the road that Europe’s already on.”

There’s no “heading” about it. We’re there. Prof. John J. DiIulio, writing in “National Affairs”, outlined the true size of American government. When state and local government expenditures are added to federal outlays, government spending as a share of GDP easily competes with European nations. In fact, per-capita government spending in the U.S. is higher than in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and our debt to GDP ratio is higher than most European states.

The Obama administration has set records for deficit spending in peacetime, but there is no question that the growth of government at all levels has been a decades-long process. In 1960, total government spending (local, state and federal) amounted to 27 percent of GDP. In 2010, it was about 42 percent. State spending has been almost as irrepressible as federal, leaving only nine states that can now boast AAA credit ratings. Many states are facing crises over unfunded pension liabilities that have the capacity to engender strikes and social unrest in the not too distant future.

We lie to ourselves about the size of government spending and hide the fact that we spend through NON-PROFIT organizations that couldn’t survive without the constant infusion of taxpayer dollars—LIKE CATHOLIC CHARITIES for example!

The difference between Americans and Europeans is that we aren’t honest about our appetite for big government. We hide it through a variety of proxies, private contractors, and public/private partnerships.

[….]

Most non-profits receive few government subsidies. But the largest ones with the biggest budgets are heavily government-dependent. One-third of all non-profit dollars come from government. Catholic Charities USA, for example, a marquee “private-sector” charity, received two-thirds of its funding in 2009 from Uncle Sam.

What galls me so much about the taxpayer cash flowing to groups like Catholic Charities (a supposed non-profit AND a government contractor) is that they use that money to import more immigrants (refugee resettlement) and also lobby on issues as diverse as amnesty, global warming and gay marriage.  Then they have the audacity to scream about their religious rights when it comes to the government telling them what to do.  You take Caesar’s money and you deserve to be under Caesar’s thumb!

We are Socialists now!

Americans prefer small government to big government — in the abstract. But 60 million receive Medicaid benefits, 54 million collect Social Security, 48 million participate with Medicare, 45 million receive Food Stamps, 7 million are in prison, jail, or on parole/probation, more than a million have de facto government jobs working for defense contractors, nearly a million children participate in Head Start and about 40 percent of K-12 students receive free or reduced price meals. There’s some overlap in those categories, but it still adds up.

[….]

We are, in short, a socialist-style society just like Europe.

Related?  Here is a scary story I came across the other day.  Germany, the country that imported tens of thousands of Turkish Muslim workers in a ridiculous scheme to bring young workers into Germany to pay into their social welfare programs, are now shipping their elderly Germans out to Eastern European countries and Asia where it’s cheaper to house the elderly pensioners in need of nursing home care.

* On Greece, readers here know that Greece is SERIOUSLY closing its borders to try to stem the tide of economic migrants many believe are helping sink that country.

Greece sealing its borders; dramatic decrease in ‘asylum seekers’ results

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Operation Xenious Zeus began in August and shows it can be done!

Greece, the European country whose name we invoke when we worry about financial chaos coming to America has one up on us with its newest strategy to seriously close the border.   Most Greeks blame the flow of illegal impoverished migrants into Greece in the last ten years as the source of much of its financial ruin.

But, check this out!  Some sections of the Greek border are now sealed!

From EU Observer:

Orestiadas, Greece – A chief of police in a border town in northeastern Greece says irregular migrants are no longer crossing into the country from its land border with Turkey.

Barbed-wire fences, landmines, thermal night vision cameras and regular patrols are among the tools used to stop a phenomenon the Greek state considers a national security threat.

Some 55,000 people were detected attempting to wade across the Evros River into Greece from Turkey in the region in 2011.

The figures have now dropped to near zero, says Pashalis Syritoudis, director of police in the run-down Greek border village of Orestiadas.

“In July 2012 we had 6,500 illegal migrants who passed the border. In August, we had only 1,800. In September, only 71 illegal immigrants, in October only 26 and now there are none,” he told EUobserver on 22 November.

[….]

He says the trend stopped since Greece launched Operation Xenious Zeus in early August.

Migrants are now targeting the more treacherous sea crossings near Lesvos, Sumos, Symi and the Farmkonis islands instead.

“We have given a very clear message to the facilitators [migrant smugglers] and their source countries in North Africa and other countries that Evros is no longer an easy passage to enter Europe,” Syritoudis noted.

There is more, read it all.

We have reported on struggling Greece, here, many times over the last few years.

Here is an idea!

Remember those Libyans who came to Texas recently to see how we seal our borders?  They should be going to Orestiadas, Greece to see how successful professionals get it done!