Muslim migration and our incurious press

Fences are going up all over Eastern Europe. This is ironic, since we in America know that fences don’t work. That is agreed to by both the Democrats and Republicans, with the exception of Donald Trump. As with all rules, there is an exception. For us it is the White House. There, unwanted people are kept out by a fence, and those who get over it are ejected. But we are to draw no conclusions from that. The Europeans are being contrary, and in their ignorance, they are putting up fences to keep unwanted people out. But who are these unwanted people? There are so many of them that nobody seems able to identify exactly who they are. Allegedly, they are refugees from the war in Syria, but non-Syrians have been identified among them.

Where did these hordes come from, and how did they get to Europe? Isn’t it amazing that in this interconnected world, where everybody with a smartphone can take not only pictures, but videos, and upload them instantaneously to the web, the provenance of the migrants is an unexplored mystery? Let’s just take a look at the logic of the situation for a second. To get from Asia to Europe, you have to cross a body of water, unless you are going to walk around the Black Sea, and nobody has suggested that the migrants are doing that. Let’s assume that the migrants are not crossing at the Bosporus, because if they were, they would be going through Istanbul, and we would have heard about that. Lord Byron swam across the Hellespont, also known as the Dardanelles. But they are almost a mile wide at the narrowest point, and the water flows through them with a current of about five miles an hour. You have to be a very strong swimmer to get across that way, and what about the gear you are carrying with you? So the migrants are crossing a body of water in boats. Where? How many boats? Who is running the boats, since they have to go back and forth? Who is supplying the fuel – i.e., who is paying for the use of the boats? Where did they come from? Here is a typical journey taken off the Web: Key: A June 14: Aleppo, Syria C Izmir, Turkey E July 24: Mytiline, Lesbos Six weeks to get from Syria to a Greek island in the Aegean. G Athens, Greece I Thessaloniki, Greece K Macedonia M Serbia O Belgrade, Serbia Q Subotica, Serbia S Kanjiza, Serbia U Horgoš, Serbia W Hungary Y Győr, Hungary a Austria c August 4: Munich, Germany Two weeks to get from the Asian side of the Adriatic to Munich. e Hamburg, Germany Eight weeks, or two months, to get from Aleppo, Syria to Hamburg, Germany. Whew! A long way! Just getting across Turkey is 600 miles. Then they have to get across the Adriatic and another 600 miles to Hungary. Farther to get to Germany. This works out to walking 20 miles a day. What do they live on? They can’t carry that many supplies, so they have to be available on the route. From whom? Who pays? What are the conditions they are fleeing, and where are those conditions occurring? The migrants are overwhelmingly young men. Are they cowards? What about their families left behind in conditions allegedly so hideous that they are forcing the migrants to migrate? Are their families being left to the mercy of a merciless foe? Their wives? Their babies? Their aged parents? I.e., what is the real motivation of the migrants? How was this route established? Who suggested they use it? How much money does it take for a migrant to make a transit? If it is free, who is supplying the resources? Shouldn’t Europe block this migration at its source, or at some early point along the trek, or block the resources supporting it? We are seeing churches in Germany converted into refuges for the refugees. That makes good press, but it is a consequence of the story. What about the story itself?