South of the Rio Grande they're called La Migra, the U.S. Border Patrol agents who intercept illegal immigrants heading for the States.
Europe will soon have its own La Migra only it's an outfit we already know as NATO. Naval vessels will patrol to stop smugglers moving migrants from Turkey to Greece. Other NATO units will step up surveillance of the Syrian-Turkish border.
NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg insisted "this is not about stopping or pushing back refugee boats." Yeah, right, Jens.
Guess whose ships have been ordered to start refugee boat patrols? You got it, Canada. We'll be joining vessels from Germany, Greece and Turkey in the Aegean. Odd that, isn't it? One of those countries is not like the others.
ReplyDeleteDoes Canada have a boat that can get that far? Does the navy have to borrow Jimmy Pattison's?
ReplyDeleteI've been mulling over whether this isn't some NATO effort to pre-position a fleet of ships toward the eastern Mediterranean in conjunction with their build-up of other forces in the alliance's show down with Putin. Frigates and destroyers seem to be a bit of overkill for the human smuggling mission.
That's just my take.
Mound, I hope you are wrong.
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ReplyDeleteSo do I. The Washington Post reported that Obama has increased the segment of the defence budget allocated to confronting/containing Russia by four fold this year. We've got the NATO sec-gen announcing a new rotating land force for eastern Europe. There's an astonishing amount of sabre-rattling in the US media lately, some even suggesting Putin will start a shooting war. And, of course, Canada has its penny packet of CF-18s carving holes in the sky over the Baltics. Meanwhile Russian submarine activity in the Atlantic is said to be at an all time high even compared to Soviet Cold War levels.
What could possibly go wrong?