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.
I’m glad this article exists; this has been bothering me. Specifically, I’m bothered that, while aljazeera featured the stories about the boat of refugees as and after it was happening, I haven’t seen it crop up in U.S. news at all. One of the deadliest disasters in the Mediterranean, and… crickets.
Then a submersible with a handful of white rich lads gets lost and it’s all over the papers and all anyone can talk about.
To be fair, part of this is the fact that the submersible story has a lot of wild and novel details to it, plus the novel “oh god imagine being trapped in a submarine” fear factor, that make it great for getting attention and clicks, but nevertheless.
The other part of it is that people see “poor, brown refugees drowned at sea in the Mediterranean, once again” and feel completely disconnected from that and glaze over. The refugees don’t get the same automatic “what would that feel like if it were me” empathizing, and the situation doesn’t get the same scrutiny of rescue details and chances and what exactly went wrong that resulted in hundreds and hundreds of innocent people drowning at sea.
And they were in a BOAT. They knew where the boat was. The boat was reachable. They just let them die.
It’s true that we’re talking about different countries and different organizations, but this is a recurring pattern. Refugees are being systematically and repeatedly allowed to drown when they are very near to people who could help them. Other people get prioritized and rescued like they’re kings.
Systematically being the key word. There is no way to claim that what keeps happening to boats carrying migrants is accidental. It’s a policy decision. So awful.
It is a policy decision. And sadly, it is a pretty popular one. Rescuing these people would mean that the rescuing country needs to grant them asylum. Doing so would incentives more refugees to choose this dangerous path as it would be a passage to Europe.
This is one of the reasons why the far right political parties in Italy are so successful. They promise Italians that they would stop this type of immigration.
It’s infuriating. I think that tacitly allowing people to be hurt or die for personal/political gain is one of the worst things a human being can do. And yet so many people - from fascists to liberals- seem to be on board. It’s so normalized. It’s the same at every border. Completely preventable. Completely unnecessary. Insane that “I don’t want those people moving here so let them die instead” is seen as a normal and politically centrist take.
You are right. The social situation with migrants ( mostly MENA ) is so bad that people is infuriating with far-right cause the number of migrants entering by sea is higher than previous government. The people read english and starting to blame european unions and mostly american government to force us to accept migrants cause their ideology. They see far-right government as a sort of a puppet of foreign interest. They say: why you send weapons to ukraine when we have an actual invasion and you help them? I understand that americans have different views, european point of view is starting to become really really different.
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Disagree. There are no adequate proper channels, and at least in my country those have been narrowed and obstructed and restricted out of existence. The process is deliberately expensive, difficult, overly beaurocratic, and inaccessible for most people - and a lot of countries don’t take disabled folks or very poor people or [insert other indefensible reason]. Governments do that on purpose to prevent people from being able to come ‘legally’ at all. But presenting yourself at a border to request asylum is always legal under international law- that is a proper channel. So countries try to create ways to make that impossible, or very dangerous, or allow bad things to happen to those people, hoping it will dissuade people from coming to exercise their human rights. It doesn’t work, and people die, and we all say “how sad but they had it coming”. They didn’t! As human beings we have a responsibility to help other human beings, even if they broke a rule we made up on purpose to criminalize them and make them seem less deserving of our help. Being personally annoyed at a group of people isn’t a good enough reason to treat them the way most governments have. If they actually wanted people to immigrate “legally” instead, they’d open the borders and staff them adequately and fund programs for people to start their lives.
Edited for typos.
while I certainly think the affluency of the victims is a factor it would be disingenuous to claim this is ALL it is.
For any regular occurrence, at some point apathy sets in. Car accidents are just not interesting to report after the hundreth time. If there were a dozen lost subs near the Titanic every year, I’m sure the story would lose it’s luster too.
There’s also the aspect that refugees are an ongoing and much more complex issue. You can’t just save one ship of refugees. There will be another one in short order. And if you do save them all the question is what do you do with them? At the very least that’ll cost you money. At worst it’ll cost you political power. Are you going to realize what these people have gone through to get them to a point where they are willingly face these risks? Realizing that maybe something should be done about that is even costlier. And depending on the political landscape in your country most will just consider this “a self solving problem” anyway.
This is not to excuse what we’re seeing. But we can’t pretend that the stories should be covered the same. They aren’t the same. One is much easier to cover than the other.
I see your point but just for the sake of discussion, try and change “refugees” with “people”.
You should notice how all the other considerations simply are not worth the electricity used to transmit them on your screen.
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I agree with that. As I already said, what I wrote was not supposed to be an excuse but an explanation.
For better or for worse, news outlets care about engagement. “50th boat full of migrants lost this year” won’t get many clicks. “Billionaires in trouble under the sea” will. If you think these type of stories are under-reported, feel free to start your own blog or discussion forum.
I’m so tired of governments bending over backwards to help billionaires while ignoring average people
I’m so tired of valuing people based on their net worth. these double standards are disappointing and honestly disgusting. I’m disgusted by our current politics and economics
Well, on the bright side, if there is a successful rescue the rescuees can afford to pay the bill. And they should be held to it.
undefined> I’m so tired of valuing people based on their net worth.
You mean like you just did?
In case you care, which you’ve already indicated you don’t, there are more researchers on the submarine than billionbaires.You mean like you just did?
“actually, you’re the one valuing people on net worth for pointing out the things we’ll do to accommodate billionaires but not for migrants” is such a piss take it’s not even funny
From what I’ve read there’s one researcher on the sub, two members of one of Pakistan’s richest families, an “explorer” who rode with the Amazon guy into space, and the CEO of the company that thought their submarines were too advanced to get categorised/certified for the depths they visit.
Don’t forget that the CEO also bragged in a video that the sub only has one button, is controlled by a cheap wireless logitech controller and he bought parts of the sub from camping world.
There’s nothing wrong with COTS equipment like the Camping World light that’s been made much fun of. The controller either, at least in principle, though the idea of using this battery-powered wireless device specifically is maybe not smart. But the fact that the guy who built it is bragging about them as if he’s pulled one over on Big Bathyscaphe should have been a red flag about the quality and safety factors built into the rest of the thing.
Yeah, a COTS video game controller makes sense in context (though I’d have opted for a wired version, myself). I’m also pretty sure the US Navy also uses Xbox controllers for their
periscopesphotonics masts in their subs.https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/18/17136808/us-navy-uss-colorado-xbox-controller
The difference is that the Navy uses actual Xbox controllers which are very reliable. The reviews for that logitech model are filled with connection issues, which of course makes people wonder if they were doing any validation testing on the sub at all
Also the xbox controller is not controlling a critical system. I presume if the submarine loses it’s photonic mast it is not dead in the water.
You should look more into the story and into the occupancy before you start taking random moral stances cause you want to be rich one day.
One group is full of hundred-millionaires. The other group is full of destitute people fleeing their home countries due to horrific conditions.
Given that capitalism does put a price on people, that’s obviously the metric used to determine who to help.
Genuinely surprised by some of the comments here. This is worth discussing and I’m glad the writer of this article drew attention to it.
Today, you could drown an entire cruiseship of Romani and most of Europe would cheer.
On the same vein it would be very easy to say that media, the Guardian included, almost never report on the (weekly or even daily this time of year) rescues that the Greek (and other) navy does successfully carry out. Nor, of course, are the effects of the migration wave ever discussed with appropriate nuance except a one liner under a picture of a local saying “Mr Spyros the baker said he feels for the migrants but he dislikes what’s happening to his neighborhood.”
They only find space on their front page when they can point a finger at some huge disaster with a tragic photo to illustrate and shock normal people.
Pelt me with stones if you must. I am Greek and live in Athens. The amount of people that have come here and are going around downtown and everywhere else with basically nothing to do in their lives and getting by with benefits if they’re lucky (and very often resort to crime as poor people will do anywhere) is unsustainable. If you read opinion polls there is now a very large majority of the population that think this. Even those who vote left have completely come around in the last years. So don’t be too hasty with your conclusions. This is not about lacking empathy or humanity. It’s just realizing the objective reality that has taken shape around you.
Greece has been blamed for this recent tragedy because the land borders are guarded, which presumably leads to people smugglers sending more people on ships to Italy. But what are we even supposed to do? Just let the country become an open air camp of no prospect poor people, while destroying our society in the process? How does this help anyone? Does anyone think Greece, the recently bankrupt economy, can magically provide for millions of destitute people? Or that if the EU for whatever reason decides all are welcome and thus implicitly invites literally millions, it will not result in widespread social unrest? We already see far right gaining almost everywhere. Here we had literal nazis in parliament and they are currently regrouping after being put in jail.
And there are other questions on this whole issue. Look at UN statistics and see that the majority of people arriving here are not fleeing from Syria. They’re from Pakistan and Afghanistan among other places. Why is the answer to those countries’ problems to settle their populations in Greece and Europe? Why is no other place on earth willing or expected to help them? How realistic is this as a solution when the number of people who would like to move to Europe (from Asia, Middle East and Africa) is larger than the population of Europe itself? Also, is Saudi Arabia for example only able to house Cristiano Ronaldo? They have resources and are closer geographically and culturally to a lot of these people.
This is just one person’s opinion (although very common) but uncontrolled migration can yield even worse results (nightmarish in fact) in the long run than what we’re seeing right now. And what we’re seeing right now is already terrible. I wish there was a more viable solution than the people stay at home and make those places better to live in, which is just unlikely.
Nah, I do agree it’s a much more common take than people realize. Another POV I’ve seen was on the other end of this spectrum, when Malaysia actually offered to open up their borders to refugees years ago and the refugees…refused lol. Apparently they prefer to get into South Korea instead. I’ve never seen a faster 180° change in opinions regarding refugees like that time.
The so-called “refugee problem” would not exist if countries with means would actually deal with the root causes of people fleeing countries without means. In the US it’s much the same with Mexico and other countries south of us.
Their countries are going to shit because of the accumulated circumstances of centuries of colonialist exploitation, and people there are forced to take their lives into their own hands and try to go somewhere else, because staying isn’t an option for them anymore.
Refugees are just a symptom. We need to address the illness itself, or it will never go away.
Sadly, the symptoms make for an easy political wedge issues to score cheap points, and so it remains beneficial for certain politicians to continue ignoring the illness.
Everything you’ve said pretty much exactly describes the homeless situation in Seattle, in that there are so many with great needs, but only so much one city can do. Meanwhile, the people living in Seattle and paying taxes are seeing their city deteriorating around them.
Here in Australia, honestly, it’s disappointing that we’re still treating refugees as criminals and turning them back. Who cares if people visit the country. It shouldn’t be too much work to identify them
Our civilization doesn’t value human life. It values capital. Capitalism turns us against one another.
This is a summary of the posted article (I’m a bot).
US coastguard, Canadian armed forces and commercial vessels are all hunting for the Titan submersible, which has gone missing with five aboard. 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. Greece and the EU blame people smugglers, who overcrowd boats and abuse those aboard them. Both have profound questions to answer about their own role in such disasters.
I see the reddit bots have started migrating
Report ‘em and carry on.
yeah we banned this one
Thank you!
Good bot
Billionaires lives matter more, obviously /s
Lemmy is officially not ready to take over reddit until I see people discussing the cardi b, blink 182 loving stepson angle to this story being discussed.
Be the change you want to see in the world
Shame on the US coast guard for failing to help in the Mediterranean.
this is an incredibly comical misinterpretation of what the article is saying, and i’m sure you realize that.
Absolutely.
I just find this sort of article kind of pointless. Response to a situation in one place was drastically different than a response in a completely different place involving completely different people and agencies with their own different priorities. I don’t think it’s all that illuminating in any global way, except it shows the priorities in one of those places aren’t great. A commentary on the same agency (or even country) responding differently to rich and poor would be more meaningful, but I think the US Coast Guard was pretty proactive when Cuban refugees were crossing in makeshift rafts (a commentary on the difference between US and Greece in those much more similar situations would be interesting).
That’s fair as far as it goes, but there are analogous behaviors on the US side of things as well. This is just another instance in which the US government has gone to incredible lengths to rescue tourists who got in over their heads (Wendover Productions touched on this in recent video about the National Park System, if you’re interested) at the same time that Border Patrol and local vigilantes have been recorded sabotaging water caches left as life-saving measures for migrants crossing arid parts of the southern border. That’s a pretty clear indication of which sorts of lives out society thinks matter, and just as in the Mediterranean it more or less comes down to “which ones look and talk like I do?” rather than “which ones are most deserving of the limited resources available to help them?”
I don’t think it’s all that illuminating in any global way, except it shows the priorities in one of those places aren’t great.
but that unto itself is kind of important, is it not? these are social tragedies which do not need to happen–but they’re basically allowed to happen by a mixture of social apathy, lack of scrutiny, and inhuman social and political incentives. you’re demonstrating why this is illuminating, and why we should talk about it: because the alternatives you describe can happen and are happening but don’t with certain groups, or from certain countries.
We are a global people. We could do more, and we actively don’t. We should all be ashamed and just because it makes you feel uncomfortable or helpless doesn’t mean you have to rationalize the shame of our species.
We need to face it if we’ll ever change it.
We are not a global people, we’re citizens of various nation states. Many people are vehemently opposed to a one world government.
this is an incredibly spot-on description of most banger comments on read-it sorts of sites
It’s simple human psychology. We get all excited about a child that fell into a well but when it’s 10 children or 100 we just care less and less even if the group includes the one kid we started with. I guess it’s kinda sad but also not at all surprising
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.
People aren’t illegal.
Is it really a crime to be human based on geo location and net worth? To me it doesn’t make any sense.
How can a human be illegal? And which law governs the Titanic sub’s operation?
So you should just be left to die if you get shot while committing a crime?
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.”
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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.
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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.
Typical garbage take by the Guardian. It used to be a good paper.
And not news. This is an opinion piece/diatribe.
It’s marked as an editorial. What do you think an editorial is?
… Newspapers have always had opinion pieces in them?
