http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/images/refugeeswelcome.jpgTo complicate matters even more, official Germany's welcome smiles vanish when it comes to so-called "economic refugees": many Africans, but mostly discriminated Roma people of Eastern Europe and poverty-stricken people from Albania and all of former Yugoslavia -- most of all Kosovo. Cleo, the muse of history, must again turn to irony. It was the German government (all top parties) that was most active in splitting Yugoslavia into national slivers. Germany hotly encouraged the war to "liberate Kosovo," joining in the merciless bombing of Serbia and leaving the "western Balkans" in wrecked, chaotic disarray. It promised Kosovo freedom and prosperity; what now reigns, in the presence of German and other UN soldiers, is described as "corruption, gang crime, poverty, and discrimination against the Roma." Wages average about 300 euro, youth unemployment is at 60%, the health service hardly functions. But desperate attempts to reach the promised and once so grandly promising land in the north are almost hopelessly doomed to fail. This raises a key question, almost agonizingly avoided in the media, which angrily denounces vicious, greedy "people smugglers" but not those who caused this misery in the first place. Who provoked the wars in ex-Yugoslavia? Who unleashed "shock and awe" in Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands and driving millions from their homes? Who invaded Afghanistan, as vengeance for September 11th, with a "war on terror" unleashing fourteen years of killing and destruction and forcing thousands upon thousands to flee? Who wrecked Libya -- to "protect its down-trodden" -- opening the way for anarchy and a fleet of deadly cutters and rubber dinghies? And who massively armed the destructive hordes in Syria, in part via billion-euro contracts with Saudi Arabia, the United Emirates, Qatar, and Turkey, all to fight Assad, all trying to hold or grab a bigger slice of that tragic land? True, one of those involved, Turkey, is filled with perhaps two million who fled from Syria. Another, the USA, agreed to welcome about 1,000. The Saudis, Qatar, and the UAE, so far as known, have taken none.

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