European Union Countries More Reluctant to Cut Off Russian Energy Imports (VIDEO)

Well, deal with the devil, you know?

Look how that's turning out. Under Moscow's thumb.

At Deutsche Welle, "European leaders wary of cutting off Russian oil and gas":

Quickly cutting off energy revenues with oil and gas embargoes would hit Moscow where it hurts. But European leaders have argued for a phased approach, openly admitting their dependency on Russian energy supplies.

The leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands on Monday said Europe was too dependent on Russian energy supplies to stop imports overnight as part of any eventual sanctions package in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Energy exports are a key source of income for Russia, and there are growing calls for oil and gas embargoes to increase pressure on the Kremlin.

However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that although Berlin supported tough measures against Moscow, Russian energy supplies remained "essential" for daily life in Europe.

"Europe's supply with energy for heating, for mobility, power supply and for industry cannot at the moment be secured otherwise," Scholz said in a statement.

Russia is the largest supplier of natural gas to Germany, currently accounting for more than half of imports, according to the government. Gas accounts for around a fifth of German power production.

A 'step-by-step' process

On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said cutting dependency on Russian oil and gas was "the right thing to do," however it must be done in a "step by step" process.

"We have got to make sure we have substitute supply. One of the things we are looking at is the possibility of using more of our own hydrocarbons," Johnson told a press conference following talks with his Dutch and Canadian counterparts in London.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a halt to Russian oil imports last week. However, Canada is the world's fourth-largest oil producer and its imports from Russia were comparatively negligible.

Although the UK relies much less on Russian gas than other countries in Europe, Johnson said it was important that "everyone moves in the same direction."

"There are different dependencies in different countries, and we have to mindful of that," he said. "You can't simply close down the use of oil and gas overnight, even from Russia."

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told the press conference that weaning Europe off Russian energy would "take time" and it was a "painful reality" that Europeans were still "very much dependent" on Russian gas and oil...

 

Wages Are Rising in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic

Well, you don't say?

At WSJ, "Labor Shortage Lifts Wages on Europe’s Eastern Flank":

Unlike in some Western economies, wages are rising fast as workers grow scarce in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic https://t.co/kX0itdZkNo

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 29, 2018

Unlike in some Western economies, wages are rising fast as workers grow scarce in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.

BUDAPEST, Hungary—Akos Niklai says he has increased wages at his historic restaurant in downtown Budapest by around 20% in each of the past three years. He still struggles to retain staff.

The Hungarian businessman was recently forced to stop serving lunch on Sundays due to a worker shortage. Unemployment in this nation of 10 million people is at an all-time low of 3.6%, down from 10% five years ago.

“It is very hard to find labor in Budapest,” said Mr. Niklai. “Wages are still not high enough.”

In a half-dozen countries across Central and Eastern Europe, hourly labor costs are shooting up by 9% or more a year, defying a trend of weak wage growth that has bedeviled many advanced economies for years.

The increases seem to answer a question economists have been puzzling over for several years: Does low unemployment still cause wages to rise?

In many Western economies, that notion has been tested by slow wage growth despite falling jobless rates. But in places such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, supply and demand appear to be pushing up wages as labor becomes scarce.

“These fundamental economic mechanisms are still working,” said Nigel Pain, an economist in Paris with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “If labor markets tighten we will see some pick up in price pressures.”

The wage increases are also putting pressure on Eastern European leaders—many of whom have called for stricter limits on immigration—to allow in more workers or risk lower future economic growth.

In Poland, for example, job vacancies are at a record high, and more than 40% of manufacturing firms say labor shortages are limiting production, according to a March OECD report. Poland’s ruling party has opposed immigration from Muslim countries, and the European Union has sued Poland and other countries for refusing to accept refugees under an EU-wide relocation plan.

“Wage pressure is rising,” said Andrzej Malinowski, the president of Employers of Poland, a business federation. Around 40% of large Polish companies employ workers from neighboring Ukraine, and 30% intend to hire Ukrainians in the near future, said Mr. Malinowski.

Migration patterns have been a major factor behind the wage boom. Labor is particularly scarce in the former communist states because workers have been migrating to Western Europe, where they can earn more. And limits on immigration from outside the EU add to the labor squeeze.

Low unemployment has also given workers more bargaining power. In the Czech Republic—where unemployment is 2.3%, the lowest in the EU—average wages grew by around 6% year-over-year in the three months through June, after adjusting for inflation, close to a 15-year high. Workers at Skoda Auto, the Czech unit of Volkswagen AG , recently got a pay raise of 12% and bigger bonuses.

Amazon.com Inc. announced in early August that it would sharply increase hourly wages for its workers across the region—by between 5% and 11% for staff in the Czech Republic, by up to 17% in Poland and by as much as 20% in Slovakia, a spokeswoman said.

“Eastern European countries are trying to persuade workers not to leave,” said Dan Bucsa, an economist with Italian bank UniCredit who focuses on the region...

Keep reading.

Anti-Semitism and the Threat of Identity Politics

From Gideon Rachman, at FT:

Gideon Rachman: For the past 50 years, anti-Semitism has not been a political issue in the west. But that appears to be changing.https://t.co/E0ECLVO6xy

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) April 2, 2018

For the past 50 years, I have had the pleasure of living in a period when anti-Semitism was not a political issue in the west. But that appears to be changing.

Last week thousands of people marched in Paris to demonstrate against anti-Semitism after the murder of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who, according to President Emmanuel Macron, was “murdered because she was Jewish”. That same week a smaller demonstration took place in London, to protest against anti-Semitism in the Labour party. This Sunday is likely to see the re-election of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, who uses barely coded anti-Semitic rhetoric. Even the US is not immune. Last August saw the far-right marching in Charlottesville, amid chants of “Jews will not replace us”.

So are we reliving the 1930s? Not really. Contemporary anti-Semitism contains some loud echoes of the past — for example, the resurgence of the idea of Jews as a shadowy international network. But the new element is the way that anti-Semitism is now mixed in with bigger fights about Islam and Israel.

For the far-left, a key enemy is often Israel, which is seen as an embodiment of western racism. For the far-right, the main enemy is Islam, which it identifies with terrorism and mass immigration. Both far-left and far-right often claim to be immune from anti-Semitism — either because they are anti-racists (the left) or because they are pro-Israel (the right).

These complexities are embodied by Mr Orban. At a recent rally, the Hungarian prime minister used language laden with anti-Semitic imagery: “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty . . . not national, but international, [and who] does not believe in working but speculating with money.”

The bogeyman of the Orban campaign is George Soros, a Hungarian-Jewish financier. But the main accusation hurled at Mr Soros by Mr Orban is that he is planning to flood Hungary with Muslim refugees. The Hungarian prime minister’s decision to build a wall to block the flow of migrants has made him a hero of the far-right in the US and Europe.

Mr Orban’s hostility to Mr Soros and suspicion of the “Islamisation” of Europe is also shared by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who paid a cordial visit to Hungary last July. There are many on the far-right who are fans of both Mr Orban and of Israel. Their common enemy, “radical Islam”, is, they argue, the real threat to Jews in modern Europe.

Many of Europe’s Jews are, however, appropriately wary of “support” from the far-right. When Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front, tried to join the march in memory of Mireille Knoll, she was kept at arm’s length by the main French Jewish organisation.

A similar ambiguity surrounds Donald Trump. Some Americans point to his links to the alt-right and reluctance to condemn the Charlottesville march. On the other hand, Mr Trump’s beloved daughter, Ivanka, has converted to Orthodox Judaism, which is not a decision normally associated with anti-Semitism. And there is no doubt that the government of Israel is much more comfortable with President Trump than with his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The far-left in Europe could use the Trump-Israel link to argue that their rage is aimed at nationalism, not Jews. But there is an obsessive quality to their hatred of Israel that is telling. Killings in Gaza are met with outrage, while deaths in Syria or Yemen barely register. Some of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that circulate in the Middle East have also leaked into leftwing politics. One of the people whom Jeremy Corbyn, the UK Labour leader, was happy to entertain at the House of Commons was Raed Salah, an Islamist leader who peddles the idea that Jews were warned to leave the Twin Towers in New York before 9/11...

More.

This is a little too equivalent a take. I don't see Orban or European nationalists particularly anti-Semitic. In fact, the nationalist right seems to be the only faction aggressively defending Israel and the Jews. It's not the 1930s, at all. As we've seen time and again, attacks and murder of Jews is nearly a complete leftist phenomenon. Jews are leaving France because of Islamic jihad, not the National Front.

'Totalitarians cannot tolerate rival sources of authority, which is why all totalitarian regimes seek to destroy religion and the family as independent institutions...'

The headline's from Robert Stacy McCain's new essay, at the Other McCain, "It All Comes Back to Hungary: Soros, Cultural Marxism, Lukacs and Bela Kun":

What we are actually witnessing — in Hungary, in the United States and in many other countries in recent years — is a populist reaction against the elite “progressive” consensus of which [George] Soros is a prominent symbol. There is an international clique of influential people and organizations who share certain ideas about the future direction of political, social and economic policies, and who don’t want to be bothered with debating the merits of these policies. The ordinary people whose lives would be affected by the agenda of the elite aren’t being asked for their approval, and popular opposition to the elite agenda (e.g., the Brexit vote, Trump’s election, Hungary’s anti-“refugee” referendum) is treated by the elite media as evidence of incipient fascism. Never does it seem to have occurred to George Soros, or to anyone else in the international elite, that perhaps their policy ideas are wrong, that they have gone too far in their utopian “social justice” schemes. Unable to admit error, the progressive elite therefore resort to cheap insults and sloppy accusations of “fascism” to stigmatize opposition to the Left’s agenda. Why is Viktor Orban under attack by Soros-funded organizations? Why is the Left trying to depict Hungary as a fascist state?

RTWT.

Rise of the Populists: A Problem for Merkel and Germany

At Der Spiegel, "The state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania gave the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany a significant boost. It is a challenge for Chancellor Merkel and the entire country":

The rise of the right-wing populist AfD party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is a problem for Merkel and Germany: https://t.co/JSae52FwfS

— SPIEGEL English (@SPIEGEL_English) September 5, 2016

From a national political perspective, the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, with its sparse population of 1.6 million, is a lightweight and largely meaningless. Usually. But this time around, following state parliament elections held there on Sunday, the situation is different. This vote, after all, was essentially a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel and her policies, which makes it quite meaningful indeed.

The results of that referendum don't look good for Merkel. Her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lost four percentage points relative to the last time the state's voters went to the polls in 2011 for a result of just 19 percent -- while the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) brought in fully 20.8 percent of the vote. The party didn't even exist five years ago.

To be sure, the CDU hasn't done particularly well in the state for 20 years, but it is home to the chancellor's own parliamentary constituency, which means that the AfD has essentially staged a revolution in Merkel's backyard. And it did so by turning the elections into a single-issue vote: Merkel's refugee policies.

The strategy was so successful that the CDU has been relegated to being just the third-strongest party in the state, behind the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the AfD. It marks the first time in Germany that the anti-Merkel party has come out ahead of Merkel's party -- and in some parts of the German leader's electoral district, AfD was the strongest party of all.

For the chancellor, it is a political debacle. Merkel must now come to terms with a challenge at least as monumental as the one which faced her predecessor Gerhard Schröder back in the mid-2000s. Back then, the SPD chancellor found himself trapped between, on the one hand, having to explain his cuts to social welfare benefits and, on the other, the rise of the Left Party, a political movement to the left of the SPD that was fueled by exactly those cuts. In the end, he failed on both counts.

The parallels to Merkel's situation -- a CDU that has been divided by her approach to the refugee crisis combined with the rise of a right-wing protest party -- are significant. But the end doesn't have to be the same. The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania vote, after all, is only symbolically a debacle for Merkel. Her position as chancellor isn't (yet) at stake.

Emotions over Reason

But the returns on Sunday made clear that an increasing number of voters, at least in Germany's east, are turning their backs on the established, democratic party system. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to matter much if the economy is improving, cities are being renewed and the tourist sector is doing well, all of which are the case in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which has been structurally weak since German reunification in 1990. And it is possible for a party to campaign on fears of refugees even in a state that very few foreigners call home.

In short, emotions would seem to have triumphed over reason. Facts took a back seat.

It is precisely here that the challenge lies for Merkel, a politician who has always staked her political success on clear arguments based on facts and figures. She will have to do more explaining and more communicating -- and she will have to embed her policies within an approachable, meaningful framework in order to keep her party behind her. She may also have to take a few rhetorical steps toward the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which has been sharply critical of her stance on the refugee issue. That could include admitting that she has made some missteps...

I expect her to double down, and she may well decide not to seek reelection, leaving office satisfied that her administration did the humanitarian thing. She'll leave to her successors to clean up the mess. Fortunately, Germany's wealthy and prosperous. It'll work out for them. Perhaps not so much for all the other European countries who were brought along for the refugee ride, largely against their interests.

More.

Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union Finishes Third in Regional Elections (VIDEO)

I've been waiting for this, and believe me, it's just the beginning.

German federal elections are scheduled for next year.

Meanwhile, from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "UNEXPECTEDLY. German Electoral Shocker: Merkel’s Party Finishes 3rd in Regional Election."



Flashback: From August, "Angela Merkel's Popularity Plunges After Wave of Jihad Attacks in Germany — Unexpectedly!"

ANGELA MERKEL: I want a border control system 'modeled on the U.S. ...'

Now this is interesting, from Fuzzy Slippers, at Legal Insurrection, "Merkel: We Have to Demand Integration of Refugees."

Angela Merkel's Popularity Plunges After Wave of Jihad Attacks in Germany — Unexpectedly!

Well, this is a total surprise.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Merkel’s Popularity Plunges After July Attacks":

Support for Angela Merkel drops 12 points, to 47%, after July attacks in Germany: https://t.co/FR7iBTaBuh

— WSJ Think Tank (@WSJThinkTank) August 5, 2016

BERLIN — Mounting concerns about terrorism, migration and relations with Turkey are eroding support among German voters for Europe’s long-dominant leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, as she decides whether to run for a fourth term.

A poll released late Thursday showed Ms. Merkel’s approval rating plummeting 12 points in the space of a month and confidence in her handling of refugee policy at a new low.

It was conducted Monday and Tuesday, following a wave of violence in southern Germany in late July that included two terrorist acts by migrants, allegedly linked to Islamic State, that injured 20 people.

“Of course we can do it. The country won’t collapse,” said Karl-Georg Wellmann, a lawmaker with Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, referring to the chancellor’s slogan regarding the recent wave of around a million migrants.

“But people don’t want to hear this anymore,” he said. “They want to hear that we have things under control.”


The poll conducted by Infratest Dimap found Ms. Merkel’s approval rating at 47%, down from 59% a month before. Nearly two thirds said they disapproved of her refugee policy, the highest level since the pollster started asking the question last fall. The poll had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

In addition to terrorism fears, recent polls register deep discomfort with Ms. Merkel’s bid to keep working closely with Turkey to stem the tide of migrants and refugees trekking to Europe, especially in the wake of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on domestic opponents after last month’s failed military coup.

Germans follow events in Turkey closely, in part because of worries that tensions there could spill over into Germany’s large Turkish community.

In the latest poll, 88% said the German government should be more assertive in confronting Turkey.

“The German people clearly believe that Germany should be tougher towards Mr. Erdogan,” said Oskar Niedermayer, professor of political science at Berlin’s Free University. “If Mr. Erdogan moves even more towards dictatorship than he is already doing,” and possibly calls the migration deal with the European Union into question, “this would of course be a very difficult situation for Ms. Merkel,” he said.

A top aide to Ms. Merkel said neither the attacks in Germany nor events in Turkey would affect the basics of the government’s migration policy...

I guess the German government's never heard of the first rule of holes.

More.

500 Migrants May Have Died After Boat Sinks in Mediterranean (VIDEO)

That's a horrific toll.

At Time, "500 Feared Dead After Migrant Boat Sinks in Mediterranean."

Germany Plans New Law to Require Migrants to Integrate and Learn German – Or Get Deported

At Blazing Cat Fur:

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maziere said he is intending to implement a new law that will require migrants to learn German and be part of society - or lose their permanent right of residency.

Many people in Germany have turned their backs to Chancellor Angela Merkel following her open-door refugee policy and turned towards the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany.

The Alternative for Germany party (AFD) has developed an anti immigration stance over the past year, the party has made huge gains in popularity since the refugee crisis hit the EU and the group powered into three state legislatures...

Thousands of 'Refugees' Stranded in Greece (VIDEO)

At the New York Times, "European Union Plans Emergency Aid to Help Trapped Refugees."

They're bottle-necked, heh.

Also at NBC News, "Refugee Crisis: EU Leaders Meet on Migrants as Thousands Wait in Greece."

Plus, watch via Euronews:

Angry Mob Cheers as Huge Blaze Rips Through Migrant 'Refugee' Shelter in Saxony, Germany (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Angry Mob Threatens Migrant 'Refugees' in German Town of Clausnitz (VIDEO)."

There's more, at BNI, "GERMAN patriots cheer and try to stop firefighters as Muslim illegal alien invader center burns in Saxony."

And at London's Daily Mail, "Anti-migrant mobs cheer and try to stop firefighters getting to planned refugee shelter as it goes up in flames in Germany."

Angry Mob Threatens Migrant 'Refugees' in German Town of Clausnitz (VIDEO)

Here's the video, "Refugees cry as they were welcomed by neo-nazis in #‎Clausnitz near #‎Döbeln #‎Germany last night..."

Watch also at Euronews, "German police defend their handling of migrant bus unrest."

More, at the BBC, "German police justify handling of migrant bus incident."

Europe's Civil War Breaks Out: The Battle for Stockholm's Train Station (VIDEO)

From Pamela Geller, on Twitter:

In an event that may very well be the spark to the outbreak of Europe’s civil war, a young, beautiful social worker, Alexandra Mezher, 22, was brutally stabbed to death by Muslim migrants at the child migrant centre where she worked.

Swedish police warn that Stockholm’s main train station has become unsafe after being “taken over.” A mob of Swedes took matters into their own hands.

As I predicted for months, the Europeans will either go quietly into the dark, destructive night, or they will fight back. The weak, the scared are hiding in their homes, and then there are the fighters.

Swedish towns have become terror hubs. Lawlessness is rampant, violent crimes skyrocket. There is this now constant state of violence, terror and fear.

It begins, appropriately enough, at a major train station. I say appropriately, because it was at scores of railway stations in Europe that the New Year’s Eve terror attacks took place. Mass sexual attacks, raping and robbing of non-Muslim women. Christians in Sweden have been warned, in blood-chilling messages, “convert or die,” with beheadings threatened; “We will bomb your rotten corpses afterwards.”

Swedish police warn that Stockholm’s main train station is now overrun by migrant teen gangs “stealing and groping girls.” Hundreds of Muslim migrant youth are living on the streets in Stockholm. They attack security guards at the main station. Police say they sexually assault girls and “slap them in the face when they protest.”

“Gangs of young, male refugees over-powered women and children at a train station in Stockholm, Sweden in recent days, and then robbed and groped them. Some of the migrants, who may be as young as 9, roam the streets day and night, according to Daily Mail. They have been offered help from Swedish Authorities, but have refused it, living in the streets instead.”

More at Pamela's blog.

PREVIOUSLY: "Alexandra Mezher, 22, Swedish Social Worker, Stabbed to Death by 15-Year-Old Muslim 'Refugee' (VIDEO)."

Alexandra Mezher, 22, Swedish Social Worker, Stabbed to Death by 15-Year-Old Muslim 'Refugee' (VIDEO)

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Teen Refugee Stabs Swedish Social Worker."

And at Bare Naked Islam, "SWEDEN: ‘Teenage’ Muslim migrant stabs refugee center worker to death."

Still more, at RWN, "Liberal Volunteer Savagely Stabbed to Death at CHILD Migrant Center by 15-Year-Old Muslim ‘Refugee’."

And watch, at CNN, "Police say teen refugee kills Swedish woman."

Angela Merkel is TIME's Person of the Year

Well, she gets this accolade right before the CDU (and the voters) throw her out on her ass.

See, "Chancellor of the Free World."

Angela Merkel is TIME’s 2015 Person of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/Be7EjFlRS2 pic.twitter.com/3YLPZJYSlq

— TIME.com (@TIME) December 9, 2015

Stopping the European Migrant Invasion

This is good, "How to Solve the European Migrant Crisis in 5 Steps":

Via Bare Naked Islam, "HUNGARIAN Prime Minister accuses George Soros of stoking the Muslim invasion to weaken Europe."

Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban Rejects Angela Merkel's 'Welcoming' Ideology of Unchecked Immigration Suicide

Well a right-wing party, and apparently anti-immigrant, just won the majority in Poland's parliamentary elections this week, so perhaps we're witnessing a major shift in European politics. Or at least, in East European politics.

From James Traub, at Foreign Policy, "The Fearmonger of Budapest":

BUDAPEST, Hungary — The European response to the refugee crisis that escalated this August has two poles: Germany’s Angela Merkel and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Merkel has consistently maintained that the immense flow of refugees from Middle Eastern war zones constitutes a collective moral obligation for Europe; Orban has called this view a species of madness. Orban is as powerful a spokesman for nativism and xenophobia as Merkel is for universalism.

And Orban got there first. In mid-January, after attending a mass rally in Paris honoring the victims of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket, Orban said in an interview, “We should not look at economic immigration as if it had any use, because it only brings trouble and threats to European people. Therefore, immigration must be stopped.” Orban was quite explicit about the kind of immigration he especially opposed. “We do not want to see a significant minority among ourselves that has different cultural characteristics and background,” he said. “We would like to keep Hungary as Hungary.” That was the lesson he took from Charlie Hebdo.

Orban is fully prepared to wade into the darkest pools of the Hungarian psyche. In April, still well before the refugee flood, Orban’s government distributed a questionnaire to all adult Hungarians which stated, among other things, “Some people believe that the mishandling of immigration issues in Brussels and the spread of terrorism are connected.” It then went on to ask, “Do you agree with this opinion?” Citizens were also told, “Some people say that immigrants threaten the jobs and livelihood of Hungarians,” then asked, “Do you agree?” The U.N.’s human rights commission condemned the questionnaire as “extremely biased” and “absolutely shocking.” Nevertheless, most of those who bothered to answer did, of course, agree. Having thus manufactured a show of public support, Orban’s Fidesz party posted billboards around the country with messages like, “If you come to Hungary, you cannot take the jobs of Hungarians.”

Orban had prepared the Hungarian people in advance for the Biblical tide of refugees who began pouring through Hungary on their way to Germany or Sweden. The fences he ordered built at the border with Serbia and then with Croatia; his use of the army to turn back refugees; his scathing rhetoric; his passage of emergency laws that criminalized the very act of seeking asylum — all have been denounced across Europe, but they’ve done wonders for his standing at home. In recent years, support had been steadily draining from Fidesz to the ultranationalist Jobbik party, but by September of this year the trend had begun to reverse.

Why is Hungary different? To be fair, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have all resisted the idea of accepting Muslim refugees, but unlike Hungary they don’t have to deal with 300,000 refugees crossing their territory and overwhelming their infrastructure. Yet both Croatia and Slovenia, which have had to deal with refugees diverted from Hungary, have behaved and sounded more like Germany than Hungary. In Slovenia, the army fed the refugees and walked them to the Austrian border. Croatia’s interior minister explained his country’s policy by saying, “Nobody can stop this flow without shooting.”

That is not the view I heard in Budapest, including from people otherwise suspicious of Orban. Istvan Gyarmati, a retired diplomat who now runs a democracy promotion institute in Budapest, told me that “now everyone agrees that Orban was right about the refugees.” It would not be long, he predicted, before Merkel realized that she had a policy and political catastrophe on her hands. I asked Gyarmati how he thought the problem should be resolved. That was easy: “The alternative is to keep them out of Europe.” Once they had fled the war zone for the safety of Turkey or Jordan, they no longer needed asylum or could legally claim such status. They were just migrants. I heard the same argument — which does, in fact, correspond to the letter, if not the spirit, of the Geneva Conventions — from several government officials. When I pointed out that this meant building a wall around Europe, they shrugged...

Traub talked to all these people and he still doesn't get it, marinated in his "welcoming" collectivist ideology that both Poland and Hungary are rejecting.

Put a wall around Europe? Yeah, you think?

Still more.

Drone Images Show Flow of Migrants Crossing Into Slovenia (VIDEO)

Via France 24:



BONUS: At Atlas Shrugs, "MIGRANT VIDEO: 'They are sitting in our backyards'."

Sweden Strains to Handle Massive Influx Muslim Migrants (VIDEO)

The video's at PBS News Hour, "Migrant-magnet Sweden strains to shelter unexpected influx." (Transcript.)

And see this devastating report at the Gatestone Institute, "Sweden Close to Collapse."