European migrant crisis:: Shipwrecks 'kill up to 700 migrants'

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: BBC

Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for UNHCR, gave details of the shipwrecks:

Almost 100 migrants are missing from a smugglers' boat which capsized on Wednesday. Horrifying pictures of the incident and its aftermath were filmed by rescuers.

About 550 other migrants are missing from a boat which overturned on Thursday morning after leaving the Libyan port of Sabratha on Wednesday. Survivors said the boat had no engine and was being towed by a second smuggling vessel.

In a third shipwreck on Friday, 135 people were rescued, 45 bodies pulled from the water and an unspecified number of others are missing.

Meanwhile, the MSF Sea group suggested the death toll from the last week could be as high as 900.


Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36408029

[Dustlawyer]

1. More desperate victims of our imperialism and climate change all rolled into one.

Things are only going to get worse.

[Igel]

3. Extreme prosperity was not the natural state of man.

Esp. when droughts, war, famines, disease happened routinely. It's not like we invented the terms. It's just that we've given people hope that they can migrate 1000 miles and have more services, more income, better quality of life, and a lot of sympathy.


One response would be to help millions migrate. Good luck with that. After you're done stripping all the resources from the 1%, 5%, and 10%, you'd be heading down for the 20% and 30% and 40%. It's not like it's the first time that would be tried.

Another, rather harsher, would be to invest $10k in producing large posters of the aftermath of the capsizing with loudspeakers that say, "Hundreds died, don't let this your children. Be better parents: Your chances are better sheltering in place." But that must also be accompanied by more imperialism--helping them to (1) survive the current drought, (2) find ways of reducing warfare, (3) reduce overpopulation, (4) work together to become educated and better off. In many places in that part of the world even with the weather patterns that held from 1900-1950 and improved agricultural techniques with no fighting the population still exceeds the carrying capacity of the land, and the birth rate is still over 3.0 (with 2.1 or so over the long term being zero population growth).

[Dustlawyer]

4. I agree with much of what you said, but there is a difference in humanitarian

acts to achieve some of what you mentioned and Imperialism. We cannot force population control, but it must be achieved somehow. It is the key!

[LeftishBrit]

5. It's not - for most of those who try these desperate measures - a matter of 'extreme prosperity'

Last edited Sun May 29, 2016, 01:28 PM - Edit history (1)

It's a matter of escaping war and related disaster. Most of the refugees who come in these dangerous boats are Syrians escaping the twin dangers of ISIS and Assad at home (there are also refugees, like the latest victims, from other destabilized countries in the region). The dilemma for a Syrian parent is virtually insoluble: stay at home, and risk yourselves and your children being murdered, directly by bombs or indirectly by resulting civil breakdown, hunger and disease; or get onto boats and risk your entire family being drowned. Literally the devil or the deep blue sea. Actually there is a commonly-chosen third choice: move on land to a country nearer by. But that too has its dangers; and most of the nearby countries that absorb by far the largest proportion of refugees have far more overstretched resources and far more problems of their own than most of Europe does.

'when droughts, war, famines, disease happened routinely'

And so did migration. A high proportion of Americans in particular are descendants of people who escaped such horrors by migration, often under very dangerous and difficult circumstances.

Finding ways of reducing warfare - or at least not increasing it - and increasing global equality would certainly solve a lot of problems, and reduce the need for migration. And the birth rate usually goes down when the infant mortality rate goes down.

[uhnope]

6. "our"? Aren't Syrian refugees Assad's fault, just a little

The bloody dictator in Damascus slaughters his own people like they were ants, and Russia encourages him

[EL34x4]

7. These aren't Syrian refugees.

These are African economic migrants coming out of Libya, where human smuggling has flourished since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.

[uhnope]

8. thx.

Again, I wonder about the "our"

[LeftishBrit]

9. That's true of the latest cases; but a high proportion of the migrants in general are Syrians

[Dustlawyer]

10. All true but we meddled in this mess as well. It seems that we are once again fighting proxy wars

where Russia supports one side and us on the other. The poor bastards in the middle kill each other. Don't get me wrong, we didn't start this one and Assad is a power mad genocidal maniac, but there are unfortunately many very bad leaders/governments/gorilla movements around the world that we either support or don't interfere with. We choose to interfere when we have a perceived interest beyond the carnage and suffering of a people.

I am all about making a more egalitarian society around the world but the population is too great and the resources too limited to spread out to save everyone and give them the basic necessities and creature comforts of life that even most poor in America enjoy.

At this point I would be happy if we could overthrow the corporate control over our own government. Restore Representative Democracy so that our government is doing what we ask and responsive to our needs, not just for the wealthy and big business.

[6chars]

2. bummer, man