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Around 7,000 migrants arrive on Italy's Lampedusa island
in past two days
The tiny Italian island of Lampedusa struggled Thursday to cope with a surge
in migrant boats from North Africa after numbers peaked at 7,000 people
– equivalent to the entire local population.
Issued on: 14/09/2023 - 13:35
Modified: 14/09/2023 - 15:52
By: NEWS WIRES; 2 min
Migrants queue in front of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa's migrant reception centre, Italy
on September 14, 2023. © Valeria Ferraro, AP; Video by: Philip TURLE
The local reception centre, built to house fewer than 400 people, was overwhelmed with men, women and children forced to sleep outside on makeshift plastic cots, many wrapped in metallic emergency blankets.
Tensions broke out on Wednesday as food was being distributed by the Italian Red Cross, which runs the facility, causing police to intervene.
Some young men later left the overcrowded centre and went into Lampedusa's historic town centre – where an AFP photographer found some of them queueing for ice-cream.
Several said they were hungry. Few had any money, and some restaurants turned them away. But other establishments offered food for free, or residents and tourists paid for them.
Migrants wait near the port to be transferred to the mainland, on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, Italy
on September 14, 2023. © Yara Nardi, Reuters
Located just 90 miles (around 145 kilometres) off the coast of Tunisia, Lampedusa is one of the first points of call for migrants crossing the Mediterranean.
Days of fine weather has seen a surge in arrivals in recent days, with more than 5,000 people arriving in Italy on Tuesday alone, according to interior ministry figures.
Most are picked up at sea from rickety boats by the coastguard, which brings them to Lampedusa port. Almost 400 arrived Thursday in nine boats from Tunisia, media reports said.
But many do not survive the journey by sea. More than 2,000 people have died this year crossing between North Africa and Italy and Malta, according to the UN migration agency.
The latest victim was a five-month-old baby, who reportedly fell into the water early Wednesday as part of a group being brought to shore.
Critical situation
For years, Lampedusa's so-called migrant "hotspot" has struggled to cope with the arrivals, with humanitarian organisations reporting a lack of water, food and medical care.
The Italian Red Cross took over in June promising to offer a more "dignified" welcome, but admitted this week it was having difficulty with the surge in arrivals.
It reported more than 7,000 people at the hotspot on Wednesday evening. Some 5,000 people were due to be transferred by the end of Thursday to Sicily, where there are larger processing facilities.
"The situation is certainly complex and gradually, we are trying to return to normality," Francesca Basile, head of migration for the Italian Red Cross, said Thursday morning.
"Despite the critical situation, we still tried to distribute cots to people to prevent them sleeping out in the open," she said.
"We provided everyone with food and distributed dinner last night and today too everyone will receive what they need."
Italy's hard-right government allocated €45 million ($48 million) to Lampedusa earlier this month to help the island better manage the migrant situation.
But Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, elected one year ago on a pledge to end mass migration, is calling for European Union help.
Almost 124,000 migrants have arrived on Italy's shores so far this year, up from 65,500 in the same period last year.
The numbers have yet to surpass those of 2016, however, when more than 181,000 arrived during a surge in irregular migration to Europe, many of them Syrians escaping war.
(AFP)
German Seniors Will Get No Pension Raise,
While 36 Billion Euros Goes to Migrants
SEP 15, 2023 10:00 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD
In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel led the way for Europe’s misguided migrant boosters, opening up Germany that year to one million Muslim economic migrants. Since then, the tidal wave has somewhat subsided, but there have still been at least half a million Muslim migrants entering the country in each of the last seven years. It has been a financial disaster for Germany, and especially for Germany’s poorer retirees. More on the parlous state of those retirees, and the amounts spent on those Muslim migrants, can be found here:
After spending tens of billions on Ukraine and migrants, German leader laughs
when asked why elderly receive no pension inflation bonus
by John Cody, Remix News, September 12, 2023:
German leader, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, laughed off the possibility of providing seniors with a pension inflation bonus, telling an audience that the cost is far too great. The claim that the costs are too great to support seniors on meager pensions follows unprecedented spending from Germany’s left-wing government on weapons for Ukraine and social benefits for migrants.
Scholz’s callous laughter was nauseating. He, of course, will never have to worry about how he will be supported in his old age, nor will any of the people who govern with him. At a time of great inflation, for retirees to not even receive a COLA (cost-of-living-adjustment), at a time of great inflation and much higher energy costs, is a grave matter, not to be laughed about by Olaf Scholz.
As poverty rises in Germany, seniors on fixed pensions, known as “Rentner” and “Rentnerinnen,” have been hit especially hard. There are different categories of pensions in Germany, with those earning a higher pension, such as doctors and professors, receiving a far higher sum than those in the “Rentner” class. Those receiving smaller pensions, which totals millions of German seniors, are more acutely affected as rising costs for food, housing and energy eat into their income at a far faster rate.
More and more people are therefore demanding an inflation bonus for this vulnerable group totaling €3,000. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz had not yet commented on these demands, but finally addressed the topic for the first time at a citizens’ dialogue in Bendorf in Rhineland-Palatinate. When asked about an inflation bonus for pensioners, the chancellor reportedly laughed. He then said: “Well, multiply the number of millions of pensioners by 3,000 – and then sit down very slowly. That’s quite a sum of money.”
If 3,000 euros were now to be provided as a bonus the government provides to 4.5 million poor seniors, the total would amount to 13.5 billion euros. That amount is just a bit under what Germany has spent so far in military aid to the Ukraine.
Approximately 4.5 million seniors in the “Rentner” category survive on €1,500 a month.
As of March 2023, Germany has sent Ukraine at least €14 billion in weapons and aid shipments, which was six months ago. Since then, that figure has risen to €22 billion and is only expected to rise over time. It must also be noted that due to sanctions on Russia, which is tied to the war in Ukraine, there has been an enormous increase in the cost of energy in Germany, which has not only eaten into the pocketbooks of households but also led to an increase in bankruptcies and a recession in Germany.
The steep rise in energy prices, a result of the sanctions on the sale of Russian oil and gas, makes it all the more important for Germany to provide more money to its seniors — an increase whose mere suggestion elicited only laughter from Chancellor Scholz.
In addition, the German federal government plans to spend €36 billion on migrants in 2023, which includes housing, social benefits, and education, but that figure is likely a lowball estimate, as there are numerous hidden costs as well, such as millions more spent for police and security at German swimming pools to protect against migrant assaults and sexual violence….
And how many hundreds of millions of euros are now spent in Germany each year on more police, more detectives, more prosecutors, more court-appointed lawyers, judges, prison guards and prisons, because of the high rate of Muslim criminality?
In addition, some critics online have joked that “retirement at 30” in the form of welfare payments, known as “a citizen’s income” was just raised by approximately €50 billion.
Of course, just as soon as migrants become citizens — and Germany recently made that much easier, by reducing the number of years one had to live in Germany to apply for citizenship from eight to five years — they will be eligible for the “citizen’s income” payments.
In short, the funds are theoretically there for seniors, they are just going to other priorities. At present, Germany’s booming elderly population is suffering from poverty at a high rate. Federal government data published under a request from several Alternative for Germany (AfD) lawmakers revealed that 28.1 percent of the German elderly are at risk of poverty, a figure that is higher than the EU average of 27.4 percent and far greater than its Western European neighbors of France (19.1 percent), Belgium (17.4 percent), and Luxembourg (9.3 percent).
The Ukraine war will no doubt come to an end, and so will German aid to Kyiv, in a year or two. But the economic migrants who cost the government so much will keep on coming, and money that could be spent on elderly Germans will instead be spent on this ever-expanding population of Muslim migrants. The only solution is to halt all such migration, and impose measures that will decrease the number of Muslim migrants already in Germany. These could include immediate deportation of migrants convicted of crimes once they are freed from prisons, the denial of all state benefits to migrants during the first five years of their presence in Germany (which will discourage many from coming to, or remaining in, Germany), and a work requirement for migrants receiving any state benefits, which will also lead Muslims to leave the country. But none of those measures will be taken until the anti-Muslim immigrant party, Alternative für Deutschland, comes to power, likely not alone but as the head of a “right-wing” coalition. AfD is rising fast in the opinion polls, and is now the second most popular political party, coming close behind the center-right bloc consisting of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union. And with such policies in place, the tens of billions of euros now spent on people who have no desire or ability to integrate into Germany society, and who regard Germans, like all non-Muslims,as “the most vile of created beings,” can be redirected to the German elderly, whose desperate need for more financial support was dismissed with laughter by the intolerable Olaf Scholz.
UK, Germany, and France refuse to lift sanctions on Iran
set to expire under JCPOA
SEP 15, 2023 12:00 PM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
This is in contrast to Joe Biden and Barack Obama, who were eager to fill Iran’s coffers with money. The contrast of Germany, France and Britain with America clearly shows how low the U.S. has sunk internationally in its quest for a new nuke deal and its persistent appeasement policy with Iran. Under Biden, every enemy of America is emboldened via appeasement. This latest news further lowers international confidence in America.
Just as the Islamic Republic was mocking Biden and flaunting the $6,000,000,000 it acquired in a hostage swap deal with America, the latest news is certain to “infuriate Tehran and put the viability of the deal in jeopardy.”
Let us not forget that $6bn will help Iran draw closer to usable nuclear weapons upon which it can destroy Israel or even America.
Germany, France and UK refuse to lift sanctions on Iran under JCPOA
WION News, September 14, 2023:
Germany, France and Britain will not remove ballistic missile and nuclear proliferation-related sanctions on Iran that were set to expire next month under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Natanz nuclear facility, Iran
However, the three European nations, known as E3, wrote a letter to European Union External Affairs Chief, Josep Borell and said Tehran was in serious breach of the deal – meaning the sanctions could not be lifted.
“In direct response to Iran’s consistent and severe non-compliance with its Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) commitments since 2019, the governments of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom intend to maintain nuclear proliferation-related measures on Iran, as well as arms and missile embargoes, after JCPOA Transition Day on 18 October 2023,” a spokesperson for the three countries, known as the E3, said in a statement.
Justifying the decision, the E3 said the agreement signed eight years ago contained mechanisms in case of any dispute about whether one side was in breach of the deal.
Iran violated the deal: EU
Borell confirmed he had received the letter from the E3 with the said proposal and transferred it to the other participants of the deal. Borell added that Iran has been in non-compliance since 2019 and the issue had not been resolved through the JCPOA dispute resolution mechanism….
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