A massive operation is under way to find and save a stricken vessel and its passengers. As time passes, anxious families and friends wait with growing fear. The US coastguard, Canadian armed forces and commercial vessels are all hunting for the Titan submersible, which has gone missing with five aboard on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the north Atlantic. The UK’s Ministry of Defence is also monitoring the situation.
It is hard to think of a starker contrast with the response to a fishing boat which sank in the Mediterranean last week with an estimated 750 people, including children, packed onboard. Only about 100 survived, making this one of the deadliest disasters in the Mediterranean. Greece and the EU blame people smugglers, who overcrowd boats and abuse those aboard them. But both have profound questions to answer about their own role in such disasters. Activists say authorities were repeatedly warned of the danger this boat faced, hours before it went down, but failed to act.
One’s legal and one’s illegal?
i fail to see why one being legal and one being illegal[1] should have any bearing on the response or treating the people with basic human dignity. committing a crime also does not make one worthy of death–and especially not when that crime is one without a victim like illegal immigration.
and i don’t think the latter should be illegal (certainly not meaningfully so), to be clear. i am morally opposed to the idea of hard borders. ↩︎
I agree with you. And I do understand why, and I don’t like it:
I think it is more about the profile of the people in need.
Wasn’t there a billionaire on board of that vessel? Their family probably got some influence to force this massive operation. And we idolize these big money havers.
And what money do the immigrants have? It is an ongoing issue for the EU (as an example). It looks like the EU doesn’t even want these people. Sure, they begrudgingly accept people, when they arrive. Sure there is an effort to safe them… But if some are lost on the way. Less mouth to feed.
Once again: my pessimistic observations. Personally, I feel ashamed of this whole thing.
The Titan sub has a dude who went to space with the Amazon guy along with two members of one of Pakistan’s richest families who are heavily involved in a petrochemical company.
Fucking agree so hard.
It’s not illegal to seek asylum.
I think you mean one is full of rich people the other not.
Is it really a crime to be human based on geo location and net worth? To me it doesn’t make any sense.
What law did the migrants break?
Does the Coast Guard do a thorough investigation of anyone that is in need of their services and establish everyone is innocent of any potential crime before rescuing people
The US Coast Guard doesn’t do a whole lot in the Mediterranean.
They never said “US”. Other countries have Coast Guards too.
The US isn’t the only country with a Coast Guard.
The Earth belongs to every being. No one is illegal anywhere here.
Beau (of the fifth column) has a cool shirt that says something like “Beyond these borders do not lie a lesser people.”
I’m sure that sounds great in the sixth form common room, but it’s a woefully simplistic way of looking at the real world. Nation states, borders and immigration laws have formed over the years for good reason.
Also, governments have to take their populations wants into account. How much will it help these people if the population of where they end up votes in a far right government in a few years as a response who round them all up again?
lol, for a good reason these borders will be destroyed soon. Every year brings us much closer to the mass migrations from countries too hot and too poor to live in. It’s funny people don’t realize this and they still believe in their mighty borders, so freaking privileged and supercilious.
If govts wanted to do anything good for the people, the should’ve invested humongous money in education and try to make people immune to disinformation and brainless far right movement. They haven’t done anything. Even if they tried now, it’s too late. It should be done years ago. But greedy politicians only wants money from their billionaire bribers.
So you don’t think Ukraine should be fighting this war because they shouldn’t habe borders? You think people shouldn’t have a government that works for them because it’s not in their interest to flood their countries with migrants. I bet you feel there should be doors and you should have some say who comes in your house. That is the borders writ small.
The other hard problem is, if we drop a million Pakistani refugees here, and we’re a democracy and we all vote that population might well vote in Islamic law. How’s that fair to the people who were just living here minding their own business? If we for whatever reason don’t let them vote, great. Now we have new apartheid.
Just because there are a lot of people who would like to come tell me how I ought to live, people who don’t live here, just would like to move here… Why do they rank above people already living here?
Yeah, we probably will see huge migration coming, but it’s more likely to see a strengthening of the borders than their destruction. I’m honestly expecting to see barbed wire and gun emplacements on the Med to stop these boats in my lifetime. It’s depressing to be honest, but clearly the people of Europe don’t want mass migration on these levels.
Awful, shame on you. Instead of murdering people, try to help them. Organize and force politicians to make good integration programmes in your country, also to help people in their countries so that they won’t be forced to leave their homes. I can understand defetism, cause the future doesn’t look bright, but please use the fact that we, human beings, are intelligent enough to change this future at least in some extent.
Hey, I didn’t say it’s what I want, it’s what I foresee based on current and historical events. I don’t live in any of the countries on the med so I can’t really encourage their governments to do much at all.
Sorry, I misunderstood previous comment.
How can a human be illegal? And which law governs the Titanic sub’s operation?
People aren’t illegal.
So you should just be left to die if you get shot while committing a crime?
The submarine venture may have been legal on paper but they definitely committed some crimes, at very least negligence. $250K ticket price is a giant red flag and if it’s allowed at all it should increase their liability, with the talk of the ignored concerns it sounds like an outright grift.
Regardless people deserve to be rescued if possible.