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

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'."

Germany Shows Signs of Strain from Mass of Refugees

At Der Spiegel, "'We're Under Water': Germany Shows Signs of Strain from Mass of Refugees":

The unceasing influx of refugees is creating tremendous uncertainty in Germany. Many towns and cities are calling for help and the government appears to be rudderless. Pressure is mounting for Chancellor Angela Merkel to act.

The road to the reception camp in Hesepe has become something of a refugees' avenue. Small groups of young men wander along the sidewalk. A family from Syria schleps a clutch of shopping bags towards the gate. A Sudanese man snakes along the road on his bicycle. Most people don't speak a word of German, just a little fragmentary English, but when they see locals, they offer a friendly wave and call out, "Hello!"

The main road "is like a pedestrian shopping zone," says one resident, "except without the stores." Red-brick houses with pretty gardens line both sides of the street, and Kathrin and Ralf Meyer are standing outside theirs. "It's gotten a bit too much for us," says the 31-year-old mother of three. "Too much noise, too many refugees, too much garbage."
Now the Meyers are planning to move out in November. They're sick of seeing asylum-seekers sit on their garden wall or rummage through their garbage cans for anything they can use. Though "you do feel sorry for them," says Ralf, who's handed out some clothes that his children have grown out of. "But there are just too many of them here now."

Hesepe, a village of 2,500 that comprises one district of the small town of Bramsche in the state of Lower Saxony, is now hosting some 4,000 asylum-seekers, making it a symbol of Germany's refugee crisis. Locals are still showing a great willingness to help, but the sheer number of refugees is testing them. The German states have reported some 409,000 new arrivals between Sept. 5 and Oct. 15 -- more than ever before in a comparable time period -- though it remains unclear how many of those include people who have been registered twice...

Astonishing, really.

As Pat Condell said recently, Germany's committing suicide to assuage its guilt from the Holocaust. It's not good.

Former English Defence League Leader Tommy Robinson Speaks at Massive PEGIDA Rally in Dresden (VIDEO)

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Tommy Robinson Speaks to 40,000 Strong Crowd at the Pegida Anti-Muslim Invader Rally in Germany."

And watch, via Ruptly:



PREVIOUSLY: "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West."

Smuggling Refugees Into Europe: The Untold Story

From Hugh Eakin, at the New York Review, "The Terrible Flight from the Killing":

The movement to Europe should not have come as a surprise. According to the UN, in 2014 a record 14 million people were newly forced from their homes in armed conflicts worldwide, and much of the staggering increase was owing to the wars in Syria and Iraq. In Syria, more than half of the total pre-war population of 22 million was now uprooted. With the ravages of barrel-bombing by the Assad regime, the terror of the Islamic State, and the growing inability of the international community to deliver aid inside the country, more Syrians than ever before sought refuge abroad.

In the first four months of 2015 alone, another 700,000 fled, many to nearby countries, the highest rate of any time during the war. Meanwhile, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, already overwhelmed with millions of Syrians, have been restricting entry, while the underfunded World Food Program has been drastically reducing food aid.

Other recent developments, though less noticed, had far-reaching effects of their own. Several countries in Africa, including Libya, and also many parts of Afghanistan, traditionally the world’s number one producer of refugees, have become increasingly unstable and violent in the months since international forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2014. At the same time, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, which had together absorbed more than five million Afghans in recent years, had begun taking aggressive steps to send them home or prevent them from staying; by this summer, tens of thousands of Afghans were joining the Syrians trying to enter Europe.

For the refugees themselves, the journey to Europe—requiring a series of up-front payments to smugglers of human beings, often amounting to several thousand dollars—is enormously costly and fraught with danger. More than 2,800 people have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 alone. Others have fallen sick or died in encampments in Greece or in the backs of trucks in Central Europe.

On August 27, Austrian police found an abandoned Volvo refrigeration truck packed with the bodies of seventy-one refugees who had paid smugglers to drive them from Hungary to Austria but had suffocated en route; a day later, Austrian police stopped another smuggler’s truck containing twenty-six refugees, including three children who had to be hospitalized for severe dehydration. And yet, every day, thousands more have set out from Turkey for the Greek islands, including the young Syrian boy Aylan, whose lifeless body washed up on shore in Turkey after a failed crossing on September 2, shocking the world.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Europe of turning the Mediterranean into a giant cemetery; Andreas Kamm, the longtime director of the Danish Refugee Council, said that, without major changes, Europe’s incoherent response was headed toward “Armageddon.” For her part, Chancellor Merkel said that, unless other member states were prepared to step up and share the burden, the very basis of the EU and its Schengen system of open internal borders would be at risk of collapse...

An excellent review of the issues I've been blogging about for months.

Keep reading.

And ICYMI, "'The Invasion of Europe'."

Daredevils Charge Bulls at Festivals in Spain

At WSJ, "To These Bull Runners, Pamplona Is for Wimps: Those Looking for a Lot of Bull Stampede Into Spain's Tiny Towns":

ALCALÁ DE CHIVERT, Spain—For daredevils the world over, Pamplona’s running of the bulls is a once-in-a-lifetime thrill, a chance to charge alongside 1,200-pound beasts hurtling down narrow streets.

For Saul Boix, the annual dash is a cakewalk.

“In Pamplona, you run with the bulls for about two minutes,” the 26-year-old Spaniard said. What really beefs up his adrenaline, he said, is spending an entire day at a town festival, provoking one bull after another to charge him, or if that fails, charging directly at the bull.

“In the small towns,” Mr. Boix said, “you have hours with the animals.”

Every year across Spain, bull-obsessed adrenaline addicts seek their fix by traveling from town to town to participate in local iterations of Pamplona. They’re a haphazard group, so it is hard to hit the bull’s-eye on their numbers—at least several hundred, according to fans and some of the men themselves.

The Mediterranean coastal region of Valencia, Mr. Boix’s home turf, holds around 7,000 festivals each year that feature bulls and cows with horns, mainly in the summer and autumn.

“Where there’s a bull, there’s a fiesta,” said Francisco Miró Simó, 62, president of the club that organizes a festival in nearby Alquerías de Santa Bárbara. “If there are no bulls, only a quarter of the people would show up” at festivals, he said.

“We are always with bulls,” Mr. Boix said of his fellow itinerants. They are often called recortadores, those who intercept the bull’s path, quickly sidestep its charging horns, then use their bodies like a bullfighter’s cape to steer the animal around. They are also called corredores, or runners, when sprinting alongside the animals.

“They see risk as a kind of entertainment,” said José Ramón Caballero de la Calle, a veterinary professor at Spain’s University of Castilla-La Mancha who treats festival bulls...

I love it.

Keep reading.

BONUS: Flashback to 2010, "Julio Aparicio, Spanish Bullfighter, Gored at Feria San Isidro, Plaza de Toros de las Ventas, Madrid (May 21, 2010)."

Plus, more at my "Pamplona" search link.

'The Invasion of Europe'

I've been waiting for this video. Turns out Condell does just one video per month on average, at least according to the frequency of postings to his YouTube page. But no one speaks more forcefully on the pox of European Union corruption, and as the EU's institutional edifice has been collapsing like a house of cards, I've been checking over at his page for updates.

Here you go. The inimitable Pat Condell:

The Truth About the European Migrant Crisis

From Michael Teitelbaum, at Foreign Affairs, "The Truth About the Migrant Crisis: Tragic Choices, Moral Hazards, and Potential Solutions":

The actual numbers of people crossing the Mediterranean into European Union territory, insofar as the limited available evidence is credible, are daunting. During the first eight months of 2015, well over 400,000 people successfully made the fraught journey. In the first part of this year, about 80 percent were departing from the now failed state of Libya and landing on Italian soil  More recently, migrant smuggling activities from Turkey to nearby Greek islands have increased.

In increasingly raucous political and press debates in Europe and elsewhere, recent movements are being described as new “disasters,” “policy failures,” and even “invasions” that the EU and its member states have proven incapable of addressing effectively. In fact, such “irregular” migration across the Mediterranean is hardly new, but the volumes are indeed far larger than in prior years. So, too, are the numbers dying in the attempt. The International Organization for Migration in Geneva estimates that during the first eight months of 2015, more than 2,700 would-be Mediterranean migrants perished at sea.

The stark and widely disseminated images of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children transiting the Mediterranean in crumbling boats, and of the resulting humanitarian disasters at sea, are impossible to ignore. The heart-rending photos of a drowned three-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach were highlighted in print and online media worldwide. Such deeply disturbing images create daunting daily challenges for an EU already struggling with deep recessions, sustained high unemployment, terrorist attacks, economic and political instability in Greece, and challenges to the euro currency system. They provide useful political fodder for the strengthening populist and anti-EU parties and movements that have appeared in most of the 28 member countries. And they have stimulated a rising tide of violent attacks on facilities housing migrants—more than 200 such attacks in Germany this year, described by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as “unworthy of our country.”

TRAGIC CHOICES, MORAL HAZARDS

As they consider responses to these challenges, European government, advocacy, and media leaders need to keep in mind two important concepts: tragic choices and moral hazards.

The recent mass migrations pose deep moral dilemmas for European societies, of a kind that moral philosophers and theologians call “tragic choices.” These are decisions that bring into conflict the ultimate values by which societies define themselves, such as how to allocate scarce resources among very large numbers of desperate people.

The numbers of potential migrants now are exceptionally large. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that by the end of 2014, nearly 60 million had been forcibly displaced owing to persecution, conflict, and human rights violations—the highest level on record—and of these, it classified nearly 20 million as “refugees.” To these huge numbers may plausibly be added tens or even hundreds of millions more who would likely be attracted by any available option to migrate away from conditions of deep poverty, starvation, or environmental disaster.

In a world of widespread tragedy, what choices should humanitarian societies make to allocate assistance among these potential migrants? Are they obliged by international law and their own values to admit all who wish to come, whatever the effects? Must they give priority to resettling refugees, as defined by international law, over other migrants? And if so, are they obliged to admit all the 20 million counted as “refugees” by the UNHCR? If not, how should they deal with mass casualties among others who risk their lives to gain access to European countries?

In fraught debates about such moral dilemmas, the legal definitions and everyday usage of “refugees,” “asylum seekers,” and “migrants” have become profoundly confused. There is a vast literature on these definitions; suffice it to say that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention defines a “refugee” as a person outside of his or her country of nationality who is unable or unwilling “to avail himself of the protection of that country . . . owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” An “asylum-seeker” differs from a “refugee” only by geography, having already entered the country in which asylum or refugee status is being sought; those who are approved are called both “refugees” and “asylees,” injecting yet another source of confusion. Contrary to common usage, under the Refugee Convention, people who flee failed states, conflicts, or desperate economic conditions do not qualify as refugees or asylees unless they have a legitimate fear of persecution based on one of the five grounds listed above. But such desperate migrants certainly still deserve humanitarian concern.

On top of tragic choices, European officials must contend with moral hazards. In finance and economics, these arise when incentives or guarantees provided by governments or insurers have the perverse effect of encouraging banks, corporations, and individuals to take dangerous risks such as high “leverage” through heavy borrowing, risks that most would otherwise prudently avoid.

International migration itself should now be understood as a highly leveraged phenomenon. Many millions migrate and settle lawfully each year, but they are dwarfed by the dramatically larger numbers of potential migrants created by immense global economic inequalities and the proliferation of failed states and civil wars. These realities, coupled with nearly global access to modern media and transportation, mean that the option of migrating to more peaceful and prosperous countries is increasingly both known and attractive to potentially massive numbers of people—as but one incomplete measure, more than 1 billion of the 7.3 billion human population currently live on less than $1.25 per day.

With such a large pool of migrants waiting in the wings, even small policy shifts on the part of countries seen as desirable destinations—admirable statements of humanitarian welcome for migrants or policy changes intended to provide migration benefits to smaller groups—can cause great swings in the movement of people. To this may be added the perverse incentives facing people who are able to meet the UN refugee definition but unable to obtain visas to be resettled as refugees in a European country. At risk of their lives, they can force the issue by paying smugglers to transport them to that same country in order to claim asylum. Indeed, several EU governments have formally stated that even the humanitarian sea rescue missions are encouraging greater numbers to pursue such high-risk journeys...

Vote to Approve Migrant Relocation Tests Limits of European Unity (VIDEO)

Things are coming to a head.

At the New York Times, "Plan on Migrants Strains the Limits of Europe’s Unity":

LONDON — After weeks of indecision, the European Union voted on Tuesday to distribute 120,000 asylum seekers among member states, a plan meant to display unity in the face of the largest movement of refugees on the Continent since World War II.

Instead, the decision — forced through by a majority vote, over the bitter objections of four eastern members — did as much to underline the bloc’s widening divisions, even over a modest step that barely addresses the crisis.

Nearly half a million migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe this year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a number that is only expected to rise.

The crisis has tested the limits of Europe’s ability to forge consensus on one of the most divisive issues to confront the union since the fall of Communism. It has set right-wing nationalist and populist politicians against Pan-European humanitarians, who have portrayed the crisis in stark moral terms.

“We would have preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that,” Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, said after a meeting of home affairs and interior ministers.

Leaders from across the 28-member bloc will meet in Brussels on Wednesday for further discussions on how to respond to the crisis.

Mr. Asselborn said even countries that voted against the distribution of asylum seekers — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia — must comply. “I have no doubt they will implement these decisions fully,” he said.

But with the prime minister of Slovakia immediately threatening to defy the plan, the outcome was more than an example of the bloc’s inability to coordinate its policies — formidable enough through the long crisis over the euro and Greece’s debt.

The response to the refugee crisis so far has also raised profound questions about a failure of European principles, a trembling of the pillars on which the bloc was founded more than 20 years ago.

The European Union’s reputation, and its faith in Brussels, have suffered in the past few months, with sharp and vocal divisions among member states and continuing doubts about Greek economic sustainability.

The migrant crisis “risks bursting the E.U. at its weak seams,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former senior Italian ambassador now based in Brussels. “It’s more dangerous than the Greek drama and more serious than the euro, because it challenges fundamental European accomplishments and beliefs.”

With Tuesday’s vote, he said, “the cleavages only get deeper.”

Keep reading.

BONUS: At the Los Angeles Times, "Refugee crisis exposes a deep divide in European Union."

Europe's Huddled Masses Yearning to Break Free (VIDEO)

Awful conditions in Europe. Fortunately, summer's winding down and the flow of migrants will ease a bit as the weather turns nasty. That'll give European countries time to figure out what to do. If they're smart they'll deport all of those who're not really facing certain death upon return.

At CBS News:

Unending Flow of Migrants Cross the Greece-Macedonia Border (VIDEO)

A refugee crisis can't go on forever, and frankly, it won't. There'll be a political backlash, sooner rather than later.

Watch, at AFP, "Hundreds of migrants were pouring over the frontier between Greece and Macedonia on Tuesday as they made their way towards the European Union following a day of tensions with police."

Also, at NBC News, "Thousands of Migrants Still Streaming Into Hungary Despite Maltreatment."

BONUS: At Moonbattery, "End Times: Europe Crumbles Under the Devastating Impact of Mass Immigration."

Arrests Made as Death Toll Rises in Migrant Truck Trafficking Atrocity (VIDEO)

At the Wall Street Journal, "Four Arrested in Hungary Over Migrant Truck Deaths":

Hungarian police said Friday they arrested four men in connection with the scores of migrants found dead Thursday in a truck in Austria, a discovery that deepened the debate across Europe about how to accommodate or stem the biggest inflow of migrants in its post-War history.

The men, three Bulgarians and one Afghan, are suspected of being part of a clandestine migrant smuggling network, the Hungarian police said.

Austrian police said earlier Friday that the bodies of 71 migrants had been removed from an abandoned delivery truck on a highway some 20 miles from the Austrian-Hungarian border. The migrants were thought to have suffocated or died of thirst, the police said.

The gruesome discovery in the heart of the continent shocked European Union countries, which have struggled to address the crisis sparked by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and the western Balkans since the start of 2014.

As they scramble to house and process the newcomers, national governments, often under pressure from hostile or fearful electorates, have also sought to stem the influx, beefing up border controls and debating cuts to the handouts some argue have acted as a magnet for economic migrants with unfounded asylum claims.

An EU initiative to distribute migrants, now concentrated in a handful of countries, more broadly across the region has faced stiff resistance in several key countries.

The bodies of 59 men, eight women and four children were discovered in the refrigerator truck on Thursday, Austrian regional police chief Hans Peter Doskozil told a news conference Friday. Based on travel documents found in the truck, the police assume that most of the victims were refugees from Syria.

Police and forensic medical examiners in Vienna are working to ascertain the migrants’ identities, as well as the time and cause of their deaths. Investigators believe the migrants had been dead for at least one-and-a-half to two days when they were discovered.

The highway where the truck was discovered is one of the main migration routes from eastern to western Europe, Austrian police said Thursday.

Many migrants are now traveling from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans to Hungary, a course considered less risky than the often deadly sea route across the Mediterranean.

Around 3,000 people a day are currently being moved through the Balkans, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates. The route has been used by roughly 10 times as many migrants so far this year as over the same period in 2014, according to the EU border agency Frontex.

Smuggling has become a lucrative business for criminal rings in Europe as more migrants have converged on the continent and tougher controls at the EU’s borders have made it more difficult to enter the region without outside help. The Austrian police estimate migrants pay between €3,000 ($3,370) and €5,000 for the trip from Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq.

Prosecutors in Italy, which has faced a large inflow of migrants coming by sea, say one of the main challenges is catching the masterminds behind smuggling rings—small groups that operate through a web of contacts mainly in Europe, Libya, Turkey and the countries of origin of the migrants and refugees...

Earlier, "Up to 50 Migrants Found Dead in Refrigerator Truck in Austria (VIDEO)."

Western Balkan Exodus Puts Pressure on Germany and European Union

They won't be allowed to stay.

At Der Spiegel, "Mass Migration: What Is Driving the Balkan Exodus?":

More than a third of all asylum-seekers arriving in Germany come from Albania, Kosovo and Serbia. Young, poor and disillusioned with their home countries, they are searching for a better future. But almost none of them will be allowed to stay.

When Visar Krasniqi reached Berlin and saw the famous image on Bernauer Strasse -- the one of the soldier jumping over barbed wire into the West -- he knew he had arrived. He had entered a different world, one that he wanted to become a part of. What he didn't yet know was that his dream would come to an end 11 months later, on Oct. 5, 2015. By then, he has to leave, as stipulated in the temporary residence permit he received.

Krasniqi is not a war refugee, nor was he persecuted back home. In fact, he has nothing to fear in his native Kosovo. He says that he ran away from something he considers to be even worse than rockets and Kalashnikovs: hopelessness. Before he left, he promised his sick mother in Pristina that he would become an architect, and he promised his fiancée that they would have a good life together. "I'm a nobody where I come from, but I want to be somebody."

But it is difficult to be somebody in Kosovo, unless you have influence or are part of the mafia, which is often the same thing. Taken together, the wealth of all parliamentarians in Kosovo is such that each of them could be a millionaire. But Krasniqi works seven days a week as a bartender, and earns just €200 ($220) a month.

But a lack of prospects is not a recognized reason for asylum, which is why Krasniqi's application was initially denied. The 30,000 Kosovars who have applied for asylum in Germany since the beginning of the year are in similar positions. And the Kosovars are not the only ones. This year, the country has seen the arrival of 5,514 Macedonians, 11,642 Serbians, 29,353 Albanians and 2,425 Montenegrins. Of the 196,000 people who had filed an initial application for asylum in Germany by the end of July, 42 percent are from the former Yugoslavia, a region now known as the Western Balkans.

The exodus shows the wounds of the Balkan wars have not yet healed. Slovenia and Croatia are now members of the European Union, but Kosovo, which split from Serbia and became prematurely independent in 2008, carves out a pariah existence. Serbia is heavily burdened with the unresolved Kosovo question. The political system in Bosnia-Hercegovina is on the brink of collapse, 20 years after the end of the war there. And Macedonia, long the post-Yugoslavia model nation, has spent two decades in the waiting rooms of the EU and NATO, thanks to Greek pressure in response to a dispute over the country's name. The consequences are many: a lack of investment, failing social welfare systems, corruption, organized crime, high unemployment, poverty, frustration and rage...

Keep reading.

Hungary Accused of Treating Refugees Inhumanely as Migration Crisis Worsens

Oh man, this is just awful.

At the Telegraph UK, "Refugees left to bake in the heat for hours without food, shelter or medical aid on Hungary's border with Serbia."

Up to 50 Migrants Found Dead in Refrigerator Truck in Austria (VIDEO)

Horrific.

The migrants likely suffocated in the back of the truck, which was probably locked on the outside so the refugees had no way to open to door for air.

At Russia Today, "20 to 50 migrants found dead in truck in Austria, suffocation likely cause."

And at the Wall Street Journal, "Austrian Police Find Up to 50 Migrants Dead in Truck":

Europe’s migrant crisis took a deadly turn far from the continent’s coasts Thursday with the discovery in Austria of a truck containing up to 50 decomposing corpses.

The bodies were found in an abandoned delivery truck parked off a highway outside of Vienna, on one of the main migration routes from eastern to western Europe, Austrian police said Thursday.

While more than 2,300 people died this year trying to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration, the gruesome discovery in inland Europe cast a sharp light on the European Union’s struggle to deal with increasing numbers of refugees crossing its borders.

The quickening flow and its consequences have sparked a debate about whether and how the influx of migrants into border states should be shared among all EU countries.

Many migrants are now traveling from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans to Hungary, a course considered less risky than the often deadly sea route. Around 3,000 people a day are currently being moved through the Balkans, the United Nations’ refugee agency estimates. The route has been used by roughly 10 times as many migrants so far this year as over the same period last year, according to the EU border agency Frontex.

The truck with Hungarian license plates was found near the Austrian village of Parndorf, the site of a popular outlet shopping mall about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Hungarian border. It had been left by the side of the highway for more than 24 hours, Austrian police said. Late Thursday they said they couldn’t yet determine the migrants’ cause of death, adding that preliminary inspection suggested the people suffocated or died of thirst.

Austria’s police said they were in contact with their counterparts in Hungary regarding ownership of the truck, which appeared to be a refrigerator vehicle previously used to transport chickens.

Separately, Janos Lazar, minister in charge of the Hungarian prime minister’s office, said the vehicle had been purchased from a Slovak firm and was registered to a Romanian national in Hungary.

“This shows once again that we need to take responsibility and offer refugees asylum,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said at a conference on the Western Balkans in Vienna on Thursday. Mr. Faymann emphasized the need for European countries to cooperate, secure the union’s borders, and “fairly share” the refugee burden...

More.

Migrants Mass at Serbia-Macedonia Border

They're moving through Greece to Macedonia, pretty much with the green light from Greek officials.

Remember, the first-contact nation is responsible for refugees under EU rules, so if initial receiving states let refugees pass through with a wink, then migrants will move on to next door neighbors and start a border crisis there. This is why some consider the migrant crisis an existential threat. No nation has an unlimited ability to continue to accept outsiders.

Rinse and repeat.

At the Wall Street Journal:

Thousands of migrants gathered at the border between Macedonia and Serbia on Sunday, after Macedonian officials allowed them the day before to cross into their territory following days of high tension and clashes.

The move is likely to add to the pressure on Serbia and Hungary, two main transit countries for Middle Eastern and African migrants attempting to reach Northern Europe.

During the night, about 40 private buses ferried the migrants from the train station in Gevgelija, near the country’s southern border, to Tabanovce, at Macedonia’s frontier with Serbia. In normal driving conditions it takes around two hours to cover the distance.

Authorities had also set up at least two trains to cross the country. In recent days, at the Gevgelija station, taxi drivers were available to take people north for about €100 ($114), according to migrants interviewed there.

In letting the migrants enter relatively freely, Macedonia reversed an earlier decision to effectively seal the border with Greece, leaving thousands stuck on the Greek side in difficult conditions.

Tensions rose so high that police used stun grenades, batons and tear gas to control the crowds late last week. Authorities then tried Saturday to regulate the flow, but were quickly overwhelmed and decided to open the border, allowing as many as 2,000 people to cross.

“On Saturday the migrants [at the southern border] managed to put so much pressure that they got in,” said Ivo Kotevski, spokesman for the Macedonian Interior Ministry. “But we aren’t letting everybody in, and we won’t.”

Indeed, Macedonian authorities again tried to regulate the flows on Sunday, allowing only about 50 people at a time to cross. More than 1,000 migrants have crossed the border so far, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The flow of migrants toward Macedonia’s southern border is likely to continue, the Macedonian government and aid groups said. The number of migrants, mainly fleeing war and persecution in Syria and Iraq and entering Greece from Turkey, has shot up in recent months, making the country the main entry point into the European Union.

Nearly 142,000 seaborne migrants have arrived in Greece since June 1, according to the International Organization for Migration.

According to the U.N., some 124,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Greece by sea between January and July this year, a 750% increase from the same period last year. The vast majority aims to cross the so-called Balkan corridor—an area stretching from Greece to Hungary—to reach Northern Europe.

“We are trying to let the people in according to our capacity,” said Mr. Kotevski, the government spokesman. “But I am very worried because the migrants’ pressure from the Greek border will continue to be high.” Aid groups expect thousands of seaborne migrants to arrive at the southern Macedonian border in the coming days...

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Greece Kos Refugees Receive Little Help and No Shelter

The Greek communists would make the Nazis proud.

At Der Spiegel, "Migrant Misery: Greek Island of Kos Makes Refugees Fend for Themselves":

Up to 600 people arrive each night on the Greek island of Kos, fleeing wars, oppression and hunger. When they arrive, they are often made to sleep outside with not sanitation facilities available. Greek authorities seem uninterested in improving the situation.

Along the beach promenade on the island of Kos, a small settlement of tents has sprung up. Colorful clothing flaps in the breeze, hanging from a palm tree after having been washed in the sea. In the shade beneath the tree sits a 14-person family from the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo. Children, the 65-year-old grandmother, the pregnant aunt: They're all there.

The women don't want to give their names or be photographed. But they do have something they want to share. "Will you just look at that!" says the grandmother, pointing to the broad, black overcoat that covers her body. It is covered in light-colored dust -- the product of having to spend the night outside, sleeping on a patch of dried-out grass.

The family's home back in Aleppo was destroyed just a few days ago after fighting in their neighborhood flared up again. Now, they are camped under a palm tree on a Greek vacation island with nothing to eat or drink. There is no toilet nearby, much less bathing facilities.

The grandmother once again points accusingly at the spot on her overcoat. Up until 10 hours ago, before her first night under the stars on the island of Kos, she was a proud woman. After leaving Aleppo with her children and grandchildren, she found hotel rooms in Turkey for the family and paid traffickers for the trip across the small strip of the Aegean Sea that separates Turkey's west coast from Greece's easternmost islands. Once they arrived, the family did what they could to find a hotel room on Kos, but nobody wanted to rent a room to them.

Suddenly, on the Greek island, the 65-year-old matron is someone who is unwelcome in the homes of respectable people, someone who the police drive out of the city center at night, someone who is beginning to smell due to a lack of facilities to wash. Someone whose clothes are dirty. "Are we really in Europe here?" she asks. She had expected respect and human dignity.

Like other Greek islands near the Turkish coastline, Kos has for months been experiencing a huge number of new arrivals. Around 600 people land on the shores of the island every day, says the Greek coast guard, in addition to those arriving on Chios, Samos, Lesbos and other nearby islands. The European Union's border agency, Frontex, announced last week that nearly 50,000 migrants arrived in Greece in July. That would be an enormous challenge for any country. But one gets the impression that Greece isn't even trying...

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