Casey Pops Is Back -- EU Migration Crisis and the Breakdown of Civilization

"When Civilization Ends, It Ends Fast" -- those are the final words in the new trailer for the comibg season of the TV series The Walking Dead. But the evaluation doesn't just apply to zombies. ~~~~~ On Monday, four trains with hundreds of migrants began to arrive in Vienna after Austrian authorities appeared to give up trying to apply European Union rules that would have filtered out refugees who had already claimed asylum in Hungary. It was the latest twist in a humanitarian and political crisis that is "now testing the survival of both Europe's open-border regime and its asylum rules," according to Reuters. Hungary allowed the migrants, many of them escaping from Syria's civil war, to cram into at least four trains that left Budapest for Austria or Germany. The hundreds arriving at the Vienna railway station on Monday evening immediately raced to board onward trains heading to Germany, as policemen looked on passively, preferring not to intervene, witnesses said. A train also arrived in Munich from Budapest on Monday evening. German police said there were about 200 migrants on board. An Austrian police spokesman said that they had tried to follow EU rules -- so that only those who had not already requested asylum in Hungary would be allowed through -- but the sheer pressure of numbers finally prevailed and, with few police officers or border officials reported in the vicinity, the train moved on, apparently with all passengers still on board. ~~~~~ Austria did, however, arrest five "people traffickers" as part of a new operation along its borders aimed at preventing more migrant deaths by suffocation in criminal trafficker trucks, according to Konrad Kogler, director general for public security at the interior ministry : "In the hours since we started implementing these measures that we agreed with Germany, Hungary and Slovakia, we have been able to get more than 200 refugees out of such vehicles and we have been able to detain five smugglers." Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, speaking at the same news conference, said checks being undertaken along the Austrian border were not classic border controls and so do not violate the Schengen accord. But Hungary wants uniformity within the European Union, a Hungarian government spokesman told national news agency MTI on Monday. He said under the EU's Schengen rules, migrants can only leave Hungary if they have valid travel documents and a visa from their destination country. This has resulted in masses of migrants waiting in Budapest railway stations. The Hungarian spokesman said Germany has shown a more permissive stance towards illegal immigrants arriving from Syria and news of this has "boosted hopes" among migrants. "In order to end the untransparent and adverse conditions, we ask Germany to clarify the legal position" concerning the movement of illegal migrants in the Schengen zone. However, the German government denied on Monday that there were "special trains" carrying migrants to Germany from Hungary and said that under European law asylum seekers arriving in Hungary must be registered there first. "No, there are no special trains," Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a post on Twitter. "People who come to Hungary must register and seek asylum there." Earlier, a Reuters reporter in Budapest witnessed migrants there who have gathered by the thousands in railway stations, being allowed onto trains bound for Austria and Germany. ~~~~~ What had happened? Earlier on Monday, Austrian border authorities had halted a train before it entered Austria from Hungary to determine whether hundreds of refugees who had boarded it in Budapest bound for the West had applied for asylum in Hungary, hoping not to let them continue their travels if they had, a Vienna police spokesman said. Migrants on the train who had not applied for asylum in Hungary would have been able to stay in Austria for two weeks while they decide whether to seek asylum there, the police spokesman said. Those who do not will be returned to their last transit country - Hungary. That is the EU migrant/refugee/illegal immigrant procedure -- the arrivals must apply for asylum in the first EU country they reach and that country will either issue them papers authorizing them to remain in the EU or send them back to the last non-EU country they were in. The system works well when there is the normal flow of migrants. It cannot work when thousands arrive every day in Italy, Greece and Hungary. The migrants literally pile up and choke the immigration system into collapse. That is what happened on the Austria border with Hungary on Monday. Finally, the EU abandoned its rules and the migrants streamed in. ~~~~~ In mid-August, German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised eyebrows by describing Europe's refugee problem as a bigger challenge than the Greece crisis, which had overshadowed all else in the first half of 2015. No one in Germany is questioning her assessment any longer. In the past two weeks, the refugee issue, long seen in Germany as primarily a southern European problem, has risen to the very top of the public and political agenda. "A lot will be asked of the politicians," Die Zeit said. "They must recognize that we are in a new world and find the appropriate words for it." In Germany, the problems start with towns and cities that have found themselves overwhelmed by a flood of asylum seekers who need to be housed fed and treated for health problems. Last week, Merkel's cabinet agreed to raise the level of federal support for local communities to €1 billion. And there is talk that this sum could be tripled at a "refugee summit" that the government will hold on September 24. But experts say this would still fall far short of what is required. Merkel has several clamoring sets of constituents to satisfy. She must contend with the unease of ordinary Germans who struggle with their own family needs while they see migrants being cared for with their tax money. She must deal with the fear that doing too much for the migrants will only encourage more to follow. She must find the right words to make clear that Germany does not agree with the angry hostility of neo-Nazi and right wing protesters representing the new German political scene who burn buildings and hurl rocks at police. And she must answer the concerns of her governing coalition about how treatment of the migrant crisis could impact their 2017 election chances. But, if the migrant crisis has revealed anything beyond the chaotic EU response, it is that Angela Merkel is the de facto president of the EU. And so, in addition to managing Germany, Merkel must also find a way to forge a common EU asylum policy. German politicians express exasperation at the refusal of some EU partners to accept their "fair share" of refugees. Unless this is resolved soon, they fear, then the openness of ordinary Germans could vanish quickly. The optimists in Berlin point to the Eurozone and Ukraine crises as examples of Europe defying the odds and remaining united. It will be Merkel, if anyone can, who delivers the same consensus on refugees. "The asylum issue could be the next big project where we show whether we're capable of working together," Merkel says. ~~~~~ Dear readers, in the book "1177 B.C.," Eric Cline tells the story of how marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army defeated them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt, cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell over the course of just a few decades. Gone were Minoans, Mycenaeans, Trojans, Hittites, and Babylonians. The prosperous economies and cultures of the late second millennium BC, stretching from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But, Cline says the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. He asks, "How did it happen?" In his book about the causes of thz “First Dark Ages,” Eric Cline tells the story of how the end came through multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. He shows that it was the very interdependence of the cultures that led to their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries. Eric Cline is not a doomsday eccentric. He is professor of classics and anthropology and director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at George Washington University. An active archaeologist, he has excavated and surveyed in Greece, Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and Jordan. And if you are not chastened by the stark comparisons between 1177 BC and 2015 AD, you really should pay more attention to what is going on in today's interdependent world.