And its Oracle of the Dead
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Nothing new in the Mediterranean. On the night between june 13 and june 14, a boat carrying 750 migrants sank. Apparently Frontex had already taken notice of that boat in the afternoon on june 13 but had decided it did not need help.
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The public opinion is such a faschinating thing … if you tell them that each day, in various places during the day, ten people try to cross the sea and some of them drown in different places and if you sum them up they are 750 people, they won’t give a damn and it is just another Wednesday.
However, if they are altogether in one spot, suddenly “they care a lot”.
We are odd creatures, indeed.
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Are you saying that people shouldn’t be saved because many more die elsewhere?
No, I am not.
I think that I was very clear in my observation.
The word “saved” was not in my sentences.
What “should or should not be done” was also not in any of my sentences.
All I observed was the fact that people are blissfully ignorant of the struggles or even the deaths of other people, as long as those are scattered.
If they are concentrated, even if they are fewer than the scattered ones, then suddenly “they care a lot”, at least for a few days.
Does anyone disagree with that observation?
Am I saying something controversial or untrue?
If so, do please let me know.
Here is a different example, if you would like one.
701 people died in 2018 in car accidents in Greece, according to the police.
Road safety is a known problem for which noone cares, even though every five years, a small town like the one I live in, is, actually wiped out in a country that already has issues with a declining population.
However, if there is an accident in some highway involving a truck and a few cars and, let’s say, 20 people die at the same time ( 20/701 = 2.8% of the annual deaths, for which, I will say it again noone cares ), then suddenly it is news-worthy, because it is a concentrated event, even though the reality is much MUCH worse through-out the year.
It is an odd behaviour.
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The point is that the ~750 deaths were avoidable. Saving 750 people in one place is much easier than saving 750 people scattered throughout the world.
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That is a different issue for which I expressed no opinion, since it is a very complicated matter.
That is actually not true and I can tell you this because I’ve been part of this process.
Let’s say we are on a random island, and we see in the radars a small boat with estimated 20 people. You send out a small patrol ship or even a moderate sized fishing boat and those people are saved. A relatively easy and straightforward operation that can be organised with a couple of telephones. The radars locates them, the coastguard saves them, the police can transport them afterwards in a small bus (or five civilian cars), to the local hospital and, with the same bus, to the local care centers. Four services involved in a linear fashion, one begins work, once the other finishes.
Now, repeat this process in 40 random “places of entry” accross the mediterranean sea and you have saved 800 people, without fuss or fanfare. Indeed operations like that happen every day across this vast sea.
Saving 750 people at the same time? Now that is no longer something that is simple or a “two phonecalls kind of job”. That’s a massive endeavor, even from the logicists alone, not to mention the coordination needed … you will need a lot of ships, a lot of people to run those ships along with helping staff, helicopters to locate people that fell overboard, an amassing of medical staff and equipment on the land and the ships. For the you will need to coordinate the navy/coastguard, the police, the hospitals, the ambulances, the rescue helicopters from the ministry of disaster prevension, the various brances of the ministry of defense, the volunteers, the foreign aid, the provisions, the transporation, the local authorities, the divers that will look for the missing people, the the the… an extremely complex operation where a lot of services have to operate parallel and in conjunction and coordination with each other.
If that still sounds easier than the previous case, then I’d like to know why.
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Not 750 deaths, thankfully. 750 or so were on board. Let’s not consider them all dead before their time. Searches are ongoing.
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Also, I would like to say that to me it’s very obvious that this particular tragedy gets media coverage of a certain kind because we have national elections again next Sunday.
The political machinations are very obvious to whoever follows our news.
Now our PM cares so much he declared a national mourning period of 3 days. Europe cares so much it’s saying it will help Greece help the refugees all teary and sad and serious. Those [redacted and redacted] that get rich doing this crime over and over have connections everywhere. You can’t do this successfully without certain people allowing certain access and certain information.
Europe just pats Greece on the head to keep it being the good little bulldog* that keeps their yard clean of unwanted people.
It’s just hypocrisy.
*no offence to bulldogs
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I’d even go one step further:
If there were safe, legal routes for refugees to get to Europe, not a single one would have to drown. Ever.
This is all blood on the EU’s hands. (And you might even count in those people dying in Libyan torture camps.)
And most, if not all, refugees have very legitimate reasons to flee their home countries. They’re not doing this for fun.
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Maybe. The fact is that they didn’t try seriously to save them until it was too late. Political parties have opposing views on this:
- Left-wing parties tend to say that deaths in the Mediterranean Sea are tragedies and that we should do our best to save human lives.
- Far-right parties say: “Let them die, we don’t want migrants. We are not responsible for their death, they would have survived if they had stayed in their country.”
That’s a very unfair generalization.
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This kind of “incident” has been happening for decades with alarming frequency around the Greek coast, but it only gets sympathetic media coverage when there is a reason.
This time, the media coverage is made to suit the elections and it is disgustingly sensational and misinformative (?)
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Not exclusively, btw
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This crime pains my heart deeply. Maybe because both his place of birth and his place of death are significant to me. Maybe it’s the unfairness, how society failed him and still denies his pain recognition.
As a matter of number of lives, the recent refugee deaths are more tragic. If you ask me what brings me to tears when I randomly remember it, it’s this single young man.
So, I can understand why some people may feel somewhat disconnected from the endless deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean. It’s a tragedy, but there’s an abundance of those. What infuriates me is: they pretend to be outraged from the comfort of their distance and they profit from it, directly or indirectly, just fine.
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What is unfair? Every few months I read articles in the media about migrants who are rescued (or not). Politicians from far-right parties don’t say “let them die” explicitly of course, it would be unacceptable to say such things publicly, but they constantly criticize organizations which try to save migrants from death:
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That’s the sad thing. That it happens a lot more often but we don’t read/hear about it unless it serves an agenda. Left, center or right.
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There are such “safe, legal routes”, but they take ages to get through the applicants and to fulfill the process … you might be dead of old age, by the time that process is completed and you still might be denied entrance.
Such reforms that might be needed in this aspect are, however, not in the interest of a lot of countries of the EU and most of the EU’s citizens to do not care about that problem (and a lot of those that do care, tend to have totally opposite opinions on the matter, like @jlt correctly pointed out).
Even if there was significant interest for the solution of such a problem a lot of practical issues (who, when, requirements, why, how much cost, which country would to what etc) would still turn it into a quagmire.
Thus we have a stalemate on any progress on the issue and the situation continues “as is”, with some countries taking on the unfortunate role of “the watchdog” and others the unfortunate role of the “not in my backyard”.
A much easier (or at least less politically and practically complex) - but equally unlikely solution - would be promote a benevolent external policy for the whole “West” (not just the EU) that would actually make those other countries better places to live, so that those people wouldn’t have to resort to extreme journeys that would require them to risk their lives multiple times along the way.
You know, something like a “one planet” policy, which sounds like something from the Science Fiction books, but it is actually a very reasonable thing. Alas it won’t happen, not in our lifetime at least.
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Well. I’m afraid if it doesn’t happen in our lifetime (in yours rather than mine) it might well be that our species is doomed.
If, OTOH, “we” realize that there are very real extant dangers to our whole species, i.e. if we pull our heads out of our butts, it might happen.
But TBH, I’m pessimistic, it will probably take a LOT more (i.e. a LOT worse) to convince the shortsighted money folks.
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Part of the problem is, not only the superrich think this way. The average person here, with a salary like mine, feels more threatened by an average person who is fleeing a war than their boss’s boss who blatantly steals their wages.
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