The Six-Million Story

This week, BILD (the German daily newspaper that is fairly accurate on reporting) came out with a sensitive piece from an insider to the German government....with a BND (German CIA) report.  The report essentially says that roughly six-million migrants are massing in North Africa, and will be helped by smugglers in June, July and August....to reach Europe.

Accuracy?  Unknown.

How would this work?  I've sat and spent around four hours thinking over the process.

First, there's simply no way that the whole six-million group could be in the Libya coastal area at present.  There might be in the range of half-a-million there in some stage of waiting for the smuggler operation to start up.  The rest?  They'd have to be brought in by bus or truck from central Africa, over a period of four to eight weeks.

Second, the number of rafts required?  The smugglers tend to use 100-man Chinese-made rafts.  You can do the math....but they'd require 60,000 of these rafts on hand.  Whoever the manufacturer of the rafts might be....they'd have to have this order on hand at least a year ago, and in some process of March-April having sent the rafts into Libya for sales and positioning.

Third, the charity-rescue crowd don't have the capability of handing 750,000 people per week (my estimate in this possible scheme).  To be honest, the handful of ships in the region who are dedicated to this endeavor....at best....might be able to rescue 100,000 per week.  So, my guess is that the charity groups have insider information and have a dozen or more additional ships that they are preparing in some French or Italian port, for this massive rescue mission.

Fourth, the typical scenario of the smuggler is that they haul a hundred people out to some point near Lampedusa Island (about 300 km north of Libya).  You can figure at least 24 hours to get close to somewhat close to Lampedusa.  I suspect that the smugglers would have to run dozens of boats around the clock to dump 750,000 a week in the region.

Fifth, the 'take' for the smugglers?  If you figure the going rate of $1,000 per person and 6-million....they stand to make 6-billion dollars.  Course, you have to subtract the bribes on the Libyan officials to look the other way, the cost of the vessel operations, and the rubber rafts.  My guess is that they'd take home around 85-percent of the 6-billion dollars.

So, then you come to this odd discussion about the EU and their reaction.  Frankly, I suspect it'd take at least a month (one-million-plus arrivals) before they'd wake-up and get fairly worried.  The fact that the BND report exists, and the EU has been likely warned?  Well....I doubt if they really believe it's possible to move six-million people in this manner.

It puts the EU into a difficult position.  At best, they might be willing to go and accept maybe a hundred-thousand.  Italy?  They aren't in any position to bring in six-million migrants for some refugee-camp mega-operation.

The odds that Erdogan of Turkey will watch this develop and release his held-back migrants and refugees?  Well....it's best not to bring this topic up with German political folks.

So you turn to Merkel and the Berlin leadership.  For a long time, they've just kinda gazed at this whole migrant-immigrant-asylum thing and pretended that you didn't need to manage it.  It would just handle itself.

At this point, how do you shuffle six-million around Europe?  The answer is that while five or six countries might be willing to take on a hundred-thousand each....the idea of two-million shuffling into Germany by October is a wild scenario that no one can imagine.

You turn and look back at this BILD news report and the suggestion of this BND secret intelligence.  True or not?  How did they come to arrive at the six-million number?  Sixty-thousand rafts ordered and delivered?  Trucks and buses being positioned back in March and April for a mass movement into Libya?  People within the smuggling operations feeding information to the charity operations and the Italian Mafia?  Something of a significant nature came into view of the BND if this story is accurate.

The problem with this whole scenario is that if the six-million did make to European shores....then you'd start to interest another six million or more for the summer of 2018.  This starts to bring up political unrest in Europe and people asking stupid questions over asylum and immigration.  It's not what you'd want for a stable environment.

Starting up shortly?  If you look at weather patterns in the Med and this kind of scenario....you'd think that numbers would start to creep up over the next ten days, and be obvious by the middle of June. Settle back and see if the BILD report is true.