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Germany
Oct 27, 2015 The German health service has been completely overwhelmed by the influx of Muslim asylum-seekers who are refusing to be treated by female medics. Doctor's outrage at 'refugees pushing German hospitals to breaking point'. A doctor working in German hospitals has revealed the horrifying chaos which could face the NHS if thousands of migrants from the Middle East manage to reach Britain.The hospitals simply cannot cope because so many of the migrants require treatments for diseases long since eradicated in Europe. Migrant parents are abandoning their children at pharmacies across the country after being told that they have to pay a prescription charge for lifesaving drugs.Huge numbers of the asylum-seekers have Victorian diseases including TB, which they risk passing on to locals. German authorities have been forced to post police at hospitals around the country after others got involved in angry clashes with medics over cultural differences. Many migrants have AIDS, syphilis, open TB and many exotic diseases that we, in Europe, do not know how to treat them. Migrants stabbed the doctors who tried to save a tiny eight-month-old baby which had been "dragged across half of Europe for three months. The physician had to undergo surgery and two nurses are laid up in the ICU. Nobody has been punished. The local press is forbidden to write about it. A WHO spokesman said there were some concerns about cholera coming to the West from Iraqi and Syrian refugees, particularly because in 80 per cent of cases it does not show symptoms, but that in a normal, Western city, cholera would not be a big problem because cholera spreads through the water system and Western cities have safe supplies with sewage and drinking water pipes completely separate. (Source: Express): http://tinyurl.com/pntgwpj
October 26, 2015 The end of the Merkel era is within sight. As the placid surface of German society is disturbed, the positives of immigration are hard to see. The trouble is that Ms Merkel’s government has clearly lost control of the situation. German officials publicly endorse the chancellor’s declaration that “We can do this”. But there is panic just beneath the surface: costs are mounting, social services are creaking, Ms Merkel’s poll ratings are falling and far-right violence is on the rise. Meanwhile, refugees are still heading into Germany — at a rate of around 10,000 a day. (By contrast, Britain is volunteering to accept 20,000 Syrian refugees over four years.) Nonetheless, Ms Merkel was widely seen as having announced an “open door”. That impression persists, making Germany (along with Sweden) the EU country of choice for asylum seekers. The only way to turn this situation around quickly would be to build border fences of the kind that the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán has constructed. Some German conservatives are now calling for precisely such measures. But Ms Merkel is highly unlikely to embrace the Orbán option. She knows that such a policy could sound the death knell for free movement of people within the EU, and would also seriously destabilise the Balkans by bottling up refugees there. Instead, Ms Merkel wants an EU-wide solution. But German plans for a compulsory mechanism to share out refugees across the EU — and for an emergency fund to share the costs — are encountering stiff resistance. As a result, Germany’s relations with its EU partners, already strained by the eurozone crisis, are worsening. The election of an anti-migrant government in Poland this weekend will not help. However, if the number of refugees heading into Germany continues at its present level for some time, and Ms Merkel remains committed to open borders, the pressure for her to step down will grow. There are, at present, no obvious rivals. But a continuing crisis will doubtless throw some up. (Source: FT): http://tinyurl.com/qay4tw3
Greece
Oct 26, 2015 Greece's foreign minister says the European Union needs to fork out money to improve conditions in camps housing refugees fleeing Syria in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, in order to stem the flow of people heading to Europe. Kotzias says that there indications that 300,000 people now living in these refugee camps are on the move and heading to Greece. He said action must be taken to avoid destabilizing other countries in the region like Egypt, which could make the migration problem much worse. More than 500,000 migrants have entered Greece so far by sea from Turkey, and more than 120 have drowned. (Source: AP): http://tinyurl.com/nko8alv
Europe
26 Oct 2015 We are watching the death of open frontiers in Europe. The endless wave of migrants - for which we have utterly failed to prepare - will unleash extremist politics throughout the Continent. It is hard to comprehend the stupefying naivety of those, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who thought it a good idea to send out an utterly self-serving signal a few weeks ago inviting anyone who could make the journey to head for Europe. This was ostensibly aimed at Syrians who had fled the civil war in their homeland; but the exodus has been swelled by migrants from many other countries looking for a better life. Arguably a transit centre in Europe might be preferable to a refugee camp in Jordan or Turkey, though the latter at least has the merit of being close to Syria, where there are finally tentative signs of some political progress being made. But having encouraged people to move, the Europeans are now pulling up the drawbridge because they have found dealing with the influx overwhelming. Where were the preparations? Why were fleets of buses and trains and boats not laid on at the borders of the EU to bring people safely to Germany, which is, after all, where most people are headed? At an ill-tempered summit in Brussels on 25 October, European leaders belonging to the borderless Schengen area blamed each other for the crisis before finalising a 17-point plan to be foisted upon countries that don’t agree with it. The countries that are in the front-line of this crisis are understandably seething: Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, accused the German chancellor of “moral imperialism”. This will unleash extremist politics in Europe. In Germany, the anti-immigrant Pegida movement is attracting thousands to its rallies and in France the Front National continues to gain support. Elsewhere, Eurosceptic parties are making inroads. In Portugal, a Syriza-style leftist minority government has taken office opposed to the eurozone’s fiscal rules; and in Poland, the Law and Justice Party is back in power, pledged to oppose any Brussels diktat on migrant quotas. Against this backdrop, which can only darken, Britain has to decide over the next two years whether to remain part of an increasingly unstable organisation. The advantages of staying in are diminishing rapidly. If anything, the migration crisis has made this less achievable: why would countries forced to take migrants against their wishes agree to let Britain off the hook, even if we are outside the Schengen system? Sooner or later, the million or so new migrants will be allowed to move around Europe and many may want to come here. In the early stages of this crisis, the rationale ascribed to Germany’s policy was that they need people because of a falling birth rate and dwindling population. Britain, by contrast, is growing rapidly. Indeed, on the continent, the era of open frontiers is drawing to a close amid political acrimony and human misery. (Source: TheTelegraph): http://tinyurl.com/ofodazy
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