A non-profit news blog, focused on providing independent journalism.

Sunday 13 September 2015

“War on Cops”? Stats show 2015 on pace to be safest year ever for police officers

Let me make this very clear up top before we dive in—I want 2015 to be the safest year ever for cops.  No part of me or any other writer for this blog ever wants to see a police officer injured in the line of duty. 

What this post is about, however, is the power of media narratives to strike fear in the hearts of ordinary citizens, elected officials, and law enforcement officers alike.

First, let’s look at a few charts…

imageimage

from AEI:

Is there a “war on police” in America today? Most Americans think so, and that’s understandable given all of the media coverage of that topic. A Google news search finds 32,000 results for the phrase “war on cops” and another 12,100 results for “war on police,” with sensational headlines like “America’s War on Cops Intensifies” and [NYPD Commissioner] “Bratton Warns of Tough Times Ahead Due to ‘War on Cops’.” A recent Rasmussen poll found that 58% of likely US voters answered “Yes” to the question “Is there a war on police in America today?” and only 27% disagreed. But data on police shootings in America that were reported last week by The Guardian (“2015 May Be One of the Safest Years for Law Enforcement in a Quarter Century“) tell a much different story of increasing police safety.

According to data available from the “Officer Down Memorial Page” on the annual number of non-accidental, firearm-related police fatalities, 2015 is on track to be the safest year for law enforcement in the US since 1887 (except for a slightly safer year in 2013), more than 125 years ago (see top chart above). And adjusted for the country’s growing population, the years 2013 and 2015 will be the two safest years for police in US history (see bottom chart above), measured by the annual number of firearm-related police fatalities per 1 million people.

The two charts above reveal a picture of increasing police safety in the US that is much different than the narrative we hear all the time in the media about a “war on cops” and increasing risks of death for America’s law enforcement. From a peak of more than 100 police shootings in every year between 1969 to 1980 (except for 1977 when there were 97 deaths), firearm-related police fatalities have been on a downward trend for the last 35 years, falling to only 31 in 2013 and now on track to reach 35 by the end of this year (based on 24 police deaths during the first 251 days of 2015). We can see the same downward trend in annual firearm-related police deaths adjusted for the size of the US population (bottom chart), which will make 2013 and 2015 the two safest years for law enforcement in US history.

read the rest

Now, this certainly to say that police officers aren’t facing a tremendous amount of animosity and pressure right now.  It also doesn’t mean that there isn’t a new specific level of danger from crazed anti-cop lunatics out there.  But these dangers are largely a created by the media who realize that “war on cops” is a fantastic narrative that sells ads and gets clicks. 

Around here, we will continue to support cops as they serve and protect communities.  We will also continue, as we always have, to call for broader accountability measures to prevent abuses of power. 

Remember, just because the media has suddenly picked a narrative and is churning out hundreds of stories about a new outrage, that doesn’t make the narrative true or anything new.  What it does, however, is shift people’s perceptions and stoke people’s fears, and doing this puts money in media executives’ pockets…

Social Engineering 101: How to Make a Refugee Crisis

Source: Tony Cartalucci, NEO

Starting in 2007, the US was already in the process of engineering the overthrow and destruction of all prevailing political orders across the Middle East and North African (MENA) region.


Image: Turkey has spent an inexplicable 6 billion USD on expansive refugee camps. Since Turkey itself has played a key role in arming and supporting terrorists devastating neighboring Syria, altruism is certainly not their motivation. Why did they eagerly take in nearly 2 million refugees and now that they are intentionally expelling them from Turkey, has NATO’s war plans changed again? 

It would be in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” that it was explicitly stated (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coƶperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Hersh would also reveal that at the time, the US – then under the administration of President George Bush and through intermediaries including US-ally Saudi Arabia – had already begun channeling funding and support to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood who would in 2011 play a crucial role in the opening phases of the destructive war now raging across the Levant.

In 2008, from Libya to Syria and beyond, activists were drawn by the US State Department from across MENA to learn the finer points of Washington and Wall Street’s “color revolution” industry. They were being prepared for an unprecedented, coordinated US-engineered MENA-wide campaign of political destabilization that would in 2011 be called the “Arab Spring.”

Image: There was nothing “spontaneous” about the “Arab Spring.” It was organized years in advance by a corporate-government collaboration involving the US State Department, IT giants, a myriad of corporate-financier funded NGOs, and mainstream media players. 

Through the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and US State Department’sMovements.org, agitators were literally flown on several occasions to both New York and Washington D.C. as well as other locations around the globe to receive training, equipment and funding before returning to their home countries and attempting to overthrow their respective governments.

In an April 2011 article published by the New York Times titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” it was admitted:

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.

The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. 

It is clear that the political cover – the Arab Spring – and the premeditated support of terrorist groups including Al Qaeda brought in afterward, were planned years before the Arab Spring actually unfolded in 2011. The goal was admittedly the overthrow of governments obstructing Washington and Wall Street’s hegemonic ambitions and part of a much wider agenda of isolating, encircling, and containing Russia and China.

Image: The West schizophrenically claims to be “fighting” Al Qaeda and ISIS while simultaneously arming and funding them. In the mainstream media, a tenuous narrative attempts to convince the public that the West is waging war on terror, but amid foreign policy circles, terrorists are literally “cheered.”

The destruction of the MENA region was intentional, premeditated, and continues on to this very day.

As the Wave of Regime Change Crashes 

Since 2011, each and every one of the West’s “color revolutions” has predictably devolved into armies of US-backed terrorists attempting to divide and destroy each nation. In Libya, this goal has already long-since been accomplished. In Egypt and Syria, with varying degrees of failure, this agenda has been stalled.

Egypt through sheer virtue of its size and the capabilities of its military, has prevented nationwide warfare. In Syria, facing invasion primarily from both Turkey and Jordan, violence has been far more dramatic and enduring.

But despite initial euphoria across the West that their insidious conspiracy had indeed upended the MENA region entirely, Syria’s ability to resist the West’s proxy forces, and now, more direct intervention, has entirely disrupted this wave of regime change.

Image: McCain (US) with Belhaj (ISIS). 

US Senator John McCain (Republican – Arizona) who literally posed for pictures with terrorist leaders in both Libya and Syria, including the now head of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) in Libya, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, at the height of the Arab Spring prematurely taunted Moscow and Beijing with threats to bring similarly US-orchestrated chaos in their direction.  Suffice to say, Moscow and Beijing were not only ready for this destabilization, they were prepared to foil it before it so much as reached their borders.

And as momentum stalled, the US and its regional collaborators attempted to justify direct military intervention in Syria first as they did in Libya – by claiming they would be averting a humanitarian disaster and assisting “freedom fighters.”  However with the crimes the US and NATO perpetrated in Libya still fresh in the global public’s minds, this narrative was entirely untenable.

Staged chemical weapon attacks were perpetrated on the outskirts of Damascus, under the nose of UN inspectors in a bid to frame the government of Damascus and again justify direct US military intervention against Syria. Again, the global public, recalling similar fabrications peddled by the West ahead of its ten year invasion and occupation of Iraq along with expert diplomacy by Moscow, averted war.

And while it is increasingly obvious that Al Qaeda and ISIS’ presence in Syria and Iraq is the direct, premeditated result of US-NATO and their regional allies’ sponsorship of both groups, the West has attempted to use them as a pretext for direct military intervention not only in Syria, but again, against the government of Damascus itself.

Cue the Refugees 
As this last attempt to justify a final push toward regime change in Syria falters, and as European powers begin deciding whether or not to intervene further in Syria alongside the US, a sudden and convenient deluge of refugees has flooded Europe, almost as if on cue. Scenes like that out of a movie showed hordes of tattered refugees herded along various borders as they apparently appeared out of what the Western media has portrayed as a puff of smoke at Europe’s gates.

Image: MENA migrants. NATO is directly responsible for the refugee crisis. In fact, in Turkey, NATO is directly engineering it, while in Libya NATO is responsible for destroying any semblance of stable governance since 2011. 

In reality, they did not appear out of a puff of smoke. They appeared in Turkey, a NATO member since the 1950’s and one of America’s closest regional allies. Turkey is currently hosting the US military, including special forces and the CIA who have, together with Turkish military and intelligence agencies, been conducting a proxy war on neighboring Syria since 2011.

Turkey has suspiciously maintained a very enthusiastic “open door” policy for refugees, spending inexplicable sums of money and political capital in accommodating them. The Brookings Institution – one of the chief policy think tanks helping engineer the proxy war with Syria – reported in its July 2015 “Order out of Chaos” article, “What Turkey’s open-door policy means for Syrian refugees,” that:

Turkey is now the world’s largest recipient of refugees. Since October 2013, the number of Syrian refugees has increased more than threefold and now numbers almost two million registered refugees.

Brookings also reports that:

The cost has been high to Turkey. Government officials are quick to point out that they have spent over $6 billion on the refugees and complain about the lack of international support.

Brooking details the vast efforts Turkey is undertaking in coordination with Western NGOs to manage the refugees. There is little way that these refugees could suddenly “disappear” and end up in Europe without the Turkish government and more importantly, European governments either knowing about it or being directly involved.

Pawns of War  

Clearly Turkey lacks any altruistic motivation behind its refugee policy. Turkey is one of the chief facilitators of terrorists operating in Syria, and a primary collaborator in NATO’s proxy war against its neighbor. Turkey has allowed literally hundreds of supply trucks a day to cross its borders uninhibited and destined for ISIS territory. Turkey has also been tasked throughout various US policy papers with establishing a “buffer zone” or “safe haven” to move these refugees into, as well as for establishing a Syrian-based stronghold for NATO’s terrorist proxies to launch military operations from.

Likely, the refugees were to serve as the initial population of whatever proxy state NATO planned to create with territory it seized and established no-fly-zones over in northern Syria.

Now it appears many of these refugees are instead being rerouted to Europe.

However, not all of the refugees flooding into Europe from Turkey are even from the Syrian conflict. Many are being trafficked first to Turkey from other theaters of NATO operations, including Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as Iraq. It appears that Turkey is serving as a central transit point, not just for terrorists it is feeding into the Syrian conflict, but also for collecting refugees from across MENA and Central Asia, before allowing them to proceed in vast numbers to Europe.

Image: Europe’s refugees did not appear out of thin air. They appeared from Turkey’s refugee camps, where admittedly, Turkish authorities are assisting migrants out of the country, onward to Europe. The crisis is a creation of NATO, by NATO, and for the purpose of justifying NATO’s next step in its faltering war against Syria. 

Some reports even indicate that the refugees are receiving direct assistance from the Turkish government itself. The International New York Times’ Greek Kathimerini paper, in an article titled, “Refugee flow linked to Turkish policy shift,” claims (emphasis added):

A sharp increase in the influx of migrants and refugees, mostly from Syria, into Greece is due in part to a shift in Turkey’s geopolitical tactics, according to diplomatic sources. 

These officials link the wave of migrants into the eastern Aegean to political pressures in neighboring Turkey, which is bracing for snap elections in November, and to a recent decision by Ankara to join the US in bombing Islamic State targets in Syria. The analyses of several officials indicate that the influx from neighboring Turkey is taking place as Turkish officials look the other way or actively promote the exodus.

Catastrophes that are meant to look “sudden” and “unexpected” as well as “unstoppable” but are in fact, allowed to unfold within an operational theater completely controlled by the US and NATO constitutes instead a conspiracy – pitting desperate and/or exploited refugees intentionally sent out of Turkey and into Europe, against a manipulated, fearful, and ill-informed Western public.

Also brought into sharp focus, are the string of staged attacks allowed to unfold across Europe – allegedly the work of “ISIS.” In every case without exception, the perpetrators had been well-known to Western intelligence agencies, including the shooters involved in the Paris “Charlie Hebo massacre.” In that incident, all members involved were tracked by French security agencies for nearly 10 years. At least one member was even imprisoned, had traveled afterward to collude with Al Qaeda abroad, and returned to Europe, all while under surveillance. “Coincidentally,” for the 6 months needed to plan and carry out their final act, French security agencies stopped monitoring the group, claiming a lack of resources to do so.

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Those familiar with NATO’s Cold War Gladio program can see clearly that the attacks were staged to play into a strategy of tension used to produce fear domestically and build up support for wars abroad.

Image: Gladio 2.0. French security agencies followed the Charlie Hebo gunmen for nearly 10 years, arrested and even imprisoned one, knew they had contacted Al Qaeda and even traveled to train with them and that they had returned to Europe. Coincidentally, for the final 6 months needed for them to plan and carry out their final attack, French security agencies “stopped” monitoring them. 

The recent refugee crisis is being used for precisely this same purpose. In fact, while a false debate is being managed by the Western media and Western political figures to either unconditionally accept the refugees or unconditionally reject them, the only singular narrative both sides are being made to agree on is that instability across MENA is to blame and more bombing is the answer.

Debates over increased, direct military intervention in Syria are now almost entirely predicated not on supporting “freedom fighters,” stopping “WMDs,” or fighting “ISIS,” but instead on how military intervention can help solve the “refugee crisis.”

The main narratives undulating media headlines dismiss both the West’s role in devastating the MENA region, as well as acknowledging the fact that the “refugee crisis” is emanating primarily from within NATO’s borders, not from beyond them. The refugees are pawns, intentionally moved across the game board to illicit a predictable reaction from their hopelessly unskilled opponents – the public. While the social engineers are engaged in a game of three-dimensional chess, the Western public appears to be infantilely eating their checkers.

Considering this unfortunate reality, whatever justifications the West is able to predicate upon the refugee crisis will have to be confronted again by Syria and its allies alone – with the Western public hopelessly defenseless against a conspiracy they have been made accomplices of.

Social Engineering vs. the Inevitable Rot of Empire 

A refugee crisis was inevitable, regardless of the timing and magnitude of any given deluge that may have been created or manipulated by the West. Destroying the planet in pursuit of empire, pillaging nations and hauling away the wealth of the world, inevitably leads to endless streams of victims following their stolen wealth back to the thieves’ den. As an empire expands and the list of its victims expands with it, the number of those an empire is able to fully assimilate versus those who will inevitable overwhelm it eventually tips the balance against the empire’s favor.

Such was the fate of the Roman Empire, which over the course of its decline, had its institutions overwhelmed by peoples it had conquered faster than it could assimilate them.

For the West, it has chosen confrontation rather than cooperation. It has closed economic ties with Russia, alienated China, and wages ceaseless war across the MENA region and Central Asia. It pursues a now exposed campaign of divide and conquer across Southeast Asia augmented with terrorism and political subversion all while neglecting every virtue that ever made it a respected global power to begin with.

How much of the most recent refugee crisis is social engineering versus simply the inevitable rot of empire is difficult to tell – though the fact that social engineers would be tempted to use a vast number of refugees created by their own foreign policy indicates that their ploy in and of itself is indicative of immense, irreversible geopolitical rot.

Further Details Emerge on the Epic U.S. Foreign Policy Disaster that is Syria

With all the U.S.-trained fighters dead, captured or missing and their leader in the hands of Al Qaeda, top U.S. commanders are scrambling this week to determine how to revive the half-billion dollar program to create a moderate Syrian army to fight the Islamic State.

The outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who viewed the force as a critical element of the military strategy in both Syria and Iraq, is conferring with top Pentagon officials behind closed doors to figure out what options are left for what is widely considered a policy and military failure, according to senior defense officials.

Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who sits on the Appropriations Committee, returned from a trip to the region last week where he was briefed on the effort. His assessment of the program: “a bigger disaster than I could have ever imagined.”

– From the the Politico article: The Pentagon’s Syria Debacle

American “leaders” have the anti-Midas effect when it comes to foreign policy. Everything they touch turns to shit. Everything.

Yet there they remain. Firmly in positions of power, pulling the strings and goose-stepping the world into military-industrial complex oblivion. Before getting to the meat of this post, I want to reiterate my overall thesis on U.S. foreign policy and what it means for our nation. From the post, The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya:

There are only two logical conclusions that can be reached about American foreign policy leadership in the 21st century.

1) American leadership is ruthlessly pursuing immoral wars all over the world with the intent of creating outside enemies to focus public anger on, as a conscious diversion away from the criminality happening domestically. As an added bonus, the intelligence-military-industrial complex makes an incredible sum of money. The end result: serfs are distracted with inane nationalistic fervor, while the “elites” earn billions.

2) American leadership is completely and totally inept; being easily manipulated into overseas conflicts by ruthless corporate interests and cunning foreign “rebels” in order to advance their own selfish interests, which are in conflict with the interests of the general public.

I can’t come up with any other logical conclusion. Either way, such people have no business running the affairs of these United States, and their actions are merely increasing instability and violence across the planet. The longer they remain in charge with no accountability, the more dangerous this world will become.

In charge they remain, which is why we continue to be tortured with fiction-esque stories of incompetence such as the following.

From Politico:

With all the U.S.-trained fighters dead, captured or missing and their leader in the hands of Al Qaeda, top U.S. commanders are scrambling this week to determine how to revive the half-billion dollar program to create a moderate Syrian army to fight the Islamic State.

The outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who viewed the force as a critical element of the military strategy in both Syria and Iraq, is conferring with top Pentagon officials behind closed doors to figure out what options are left for what is widely considered a policy and military failure, according to senior defense officials.

Just the latest failure in an endless string.

But a year after Congress authorized the Syrian train and equip program, to the tune of $500 million, even Republican hawks are no longer willing to throw their support behind it — including some who think it should be scrapped altogether.

“It’s a bad, bad sick joke,” Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters, calling the decision to authorize the program in the first place a mistake.

You know it’s bad when one of the biggest proponents of arming and supporting Syrian “moderates” in the first place, Crazy John McCain, is against it.

Screen Shot 2015-09-12 at 10.22.13 AM

Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who sits on the Appropriations Committee, returned from a trip to the region last week where he was briefed on the effort. His assessment of the program: “a bigger disaster than I could have ever imagined.”

After nearly 12 months of extensive international outreach, the program has so far yielded only 54 fighters — all of whom were killed, captured by terrorists in Syria or scattered when they came under attack this summer. 

The White House’s original goal for the first year was for more than a brigade’s worth of combatants — about 5,400 — who would be able to push the Islamic State out of the villages it controls in northern Syria and then go on offense against the terror group. 

“Hundreds” more fighters are in training as part of a second cadre, defense officials say, but it isn’t clear whether when they’d enter Syria or even whether they’d be held back until the Pentagon decides how it might try to overhaul the program. 

Yeah, I mean why would they learn from their mistakes and stop acting like imbeciles over and over again.

Now here’s the money shot. What’s the brilliant solution? More of the same, just bigger. Which will naturally lead to further unmitigated disaster, a result American leadership consistently achieve with remarkable consistency.

So Dempsey, leaders of the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in the Middle East, and other top officials are considering a number of options. 

One is to evaluate the idea of fielding a much larger force this time,according to the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Another option is to pair a cadre of trained Syrian fighters with a force of Kurdish fighters like those who helped push the Islamic State out of the town of the Syrian town of Kobani. And the Pentagon is studying ways to better prepare future trainees in the so-called New Syrian Force with better intelligence, air support, and to keep closer control of them.

A touch of Khorasan group, a dash of al-Qaeda, two tablespoons of ISIS, and presto! Another Pentagon funded and created terrorist group is born.

Carter, in brief remarks to reporters Wednesday, insisted that “the underlying concept of trying to find capable, motivated ground forces that we can enable, who are local, who can sustain the defeat of extremism on territories, is fundamentally the right strategic principle.”

If that fails, we can always try the General Petraeus strategy: Team Up with al-Qaeda.

With this group in charge, it will take a miracle to escape WW3.

Germans, Czechs Return To "Border Controls" With Austria, Riot Police Dispatched To Contain Refugee Crisis

Two weeks ago, in what was the first official shot across the bow to Europe's long-standing "Schengen" customs union, we reported that the Italian province of Bolzano across from the Austrian border announced it is willing to "temporarily suspend Schengen" and "restore border controls" following a request by the German state of Bavaria.

Today, none other than Europe's master state, Germany itself, is about to launch an ICBM at Schengen when, as BBC reports, "Germany is to reintroduce some form of controls on its border with Austria to cope with the influx of migrants, German and Austrian media report." While the BBC said that it is not clear what measures would be introduced, it is likely that a full return to the pre-Schengen era, with extensive customs checks of every border crosser is imminent.

BBBC further reports that"more than 13,000 migrants arrived into Munich alone on Saturday. Germany's vice-chancellor said the country was "at the limit of its capabilities". Germany's Bild newspaper and Austria's Kronen Zeitung said controls would be in place on the Bavaria-Austria border. Germany expects 800,000 migrants to arrive this year."

Also, according to Germany's Spiegel, German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, would make an announcement in the coming hours. Since last month, Mr de Maiziere said the Schengen agreement, which allows free movement between a large number of European countries, could be suspended, it is quite likely that as of today, Europe's customs union will officially be halted if only temporarily.

Kronen Zeitung said that Bavarian police will begin to carry out checks "to determine immediately who is entitled to asylum", but it is not clear how such checks would be made.

Earlier on Sunday, Germany's Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, who is also economy minister, warned the country was being stretched to its limits by the new arrivals.

"Europe's inability to deal with the migrant crisis has brought even Germany to the limit of its capabilities," he told Der Tagesspiegel newspaper. "It is not just a question of the number of migrants but also the speed at which they are arriving that makes the situation so difficult to handle."

Which is somewhat ironic considering the full-court media propaganda press eager to make Germany seem like the promised land for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees: just ealier today CBS had an article on "Angela Merkel: From debt villain to migrant heroine" in which it said "In the space of two months, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone from being portrayed as the heartless villain in Europe's debt crisis to the heroine of those flooding in to find refuge on the continent."

Her insistence that Germany and its fellow members in the 28-nation European Union all have a duty to shelter people fleeing civil wars has cemented something similar among hopeful migrants. Some have held aloft pictures of Merkel, and she was greeted with applause and cheers at a Berlin refugee home Thursday.

Oops, may want to rewrite that one quickly, especially following a report from Bild that the German government "will send 2,00 riot police to the Bavarian border, where they will "help the State to secure the border."

Not only that but Express reported that the "German Defence Minister has admitted that the country verges on "an emergency" after cracks have begun to emerge in the 'German generosity' and that some 4000 German troops have been put on standby.

Germany has been viewed as a leader on Europe’s worst refugee crisis for 70 years, with Chancellor Angela Merkel's expectation that the country will take in 800,000 this year alone."

However, the move appears to have backfired as German towns struggle to process the unprecedented number of arrivals.

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said: "For this weekend alone we have put 4,000 soldiers on standby." 

He added that the troops would be able "to pitch in in an emergency".

Putting Germany's generosity, which just ended in perspective, "More migrants have arrived at Munich's train station since the start of September than in the whole of 2014."

The good news for Germany is that at least the tens of thousands of Muslims migrants will have a place to pray: just as "generously" Saudi Arabia - in lieu of actually accepting any asylum seekers - offered to help Germany cope by building at least 200 mosques.  The Gulf state said it would build one mosque for every 100 Middle Eastern refugees who entered Germany. It will be busy building a lot of mosques.

The bad news for Germany is that not only will the migrant situation not improve any time soon, but it is now in a lose-lose situation, with the facade of its former faux generosity crumbling, just as countless more migrants are set to lose their lives on their way to a promised land that no longer is.

And confirming just that, moments ago Xinhua reported that 28 migrants were killed as a boat capsized off Greece.

For now, however, one thing is certain: Europe may still have the Euro now that Greece is a permanent German debt colony, but the true heart of Europe, its customs union, is about to go on into indefinite V-fib as nation after nation follows in Germany's footsteps and closes its doors to all those refugees it so generously welcomed until now.

* * *

Update: just minutes after we wrote the following, we got confirmation we may have been on to something. Oh, and goodbye Schengen.