The Mediterranean is becoming the new Dead Sea. Dead, not because of a lack of fish, but because of an abundance of human corpses. Hundreds of refugees from the Middle East and Africa try to cross into western Europe every day on unseaworthy traffickers' boats and many of them drown: 1500 so far this year.
One irony of not being able to swim is that, if you drown, your body decomposes and gases inflate your stomach. This then makes you lighter than water. So, after failing to stay afloat alive after many hours in the cold sea, you end up being able to float, dead, and coloured a little more grey and blue than a European beach tourism brochure would want to have on its front page.
Italy and Malta have raised the alarm about refugees crossing the Mediterranean, and this week European ministers will decide what to do about it. But they have a problem, since European politics is at the centre of the trouble. The UK and France promoted the intervention in Libya to unseat Gaddafi; France has screwed up its colonies in Tunisia, Mali and Chad; Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia have been on the receiving end of many powers' interests; Syria has been undermined by the western powers, while Israel, a key force of instability in the Middle East, is persistently backed by the Europeans as well as by the US, something adding to the Palestinian contingent among the refugees.
The political trouble for Europe is exacerbated by a chronic economic crisis that means it is even harder to maintain the veneer of supporting 'human rights' and all the other verbiage. So, their policy will probably target the symptoms, ie the traffickers. The cause, their role in the oppression of the Middle East and Africa, will obviously not be considered.
Tony Norfield, 22 April 2015
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6 comments:
Should Europeans commit the last of their pension money, destroy their social democacry, extirpate their cultures, genetic identity, etc., to facilitate invasion of their countries? Would mass-suicide be a proper move, speeding the process up a few years?
Your blog is very vocal about 20th Century colonialism; why are you silent on this matter here? Do you know how much wage suppression causes, extending capitalism by keeping profits at that sweet 12 percent/year it demands? Do you know how the accelerated the destruction of social services are, a combination of right-wing cuts and over extension from millions of illiterate, intolerant peasants? Do you know the hundreds of millions in remittances the immigrants send home, further eroding the domestic economy in an age of austerity?
If you are so pro-migration, please show you are not racist in only championing anti-Western migration and shine your stern Victorian light on the non-Western world, which has no immigration policy, only barriers to migration...
You are a real anti humanitarian anonymous, as well as being incredibly ill informed, almost to comical levels. But given human history your sort of absurdity can never be taken lightly, even though that is how it should be taken.
Please see my reply to Anonymous, Imperialism and Social Democracy, 29 April 2015
Can you shine that stern social liberal light of moralism on atrocities in other lands, such as the rape epidemic in Africa, or the forced labor in the third world, or illegality of homosexuality in the Muslim world? Or is your stern Victorian moralism singularly applied to the Western male patriarchy, lol?
My reply to social identity politics Norfield were censored. For similar content, just check into any corporate liberal website.
A note: None of the comments by 'Anonymous' has been censored, deleted, whatever. They have just been destroyed in my reply on 29 April entitled 'Imperialism and Social Democracy'.
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