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    Why no mention on the disaster in the Channel?

    So 31 people drowned in the English Channel yesterday (or possibly 27, depending on your sources) and not a mention on OTF? I have a few views on this which I would like to share.

    Firstly the people traffickers are utter scum of the earth. According to reports they are making anything up to £300k per boat they send out into the English Channel. They are trafficking in human misery taking their money and then sending them out into choppy seas in small ridged inflatable boats totally unsuited to the conditions. The lifejackets you see so many of them wearing have been provided by the RNLI (they have full-time crews at Dover at the moment such is the extent of the crises) and they are being sent out into cold waters without warm kit, adequate clothing and left to fend for themselves. The people responsible for this should be found and given long prison sentences.

    Secondly this has been a disaster waiting to happen. The warning signs have been there but the deaths of one or two people doesn't seem to register and gets ignored. They're migrants so they get ignored, it serves them right say way to many people. France is as much to blame as the people smugglers for washing its hands of the problem. The disaster occurred in French waters and happened as the French Police watched on and did nothing.

    The migration problem is a big one and I don't have the solution. I don't blame these people for looking for a better life, I would do the same if in their situation. But the World's population is on the move and we have to deal with that. I just wonder how many people will be sent out into the Channel today into cold winds, choppy seas, with the police looking on and nobody seeming to care.

    #2
    Originally posted by Paul S View Post
    France is as much to blame as the people smugglers for washing its hands of the problem. The disaster occurred in French waters and happened as the French Police watched on and did nothing.
    Do you have any evidence for this?

    I'd be inclined to put more (or at least as much as) blame on the UK government and the vile Patel's hostile environment policies

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      #3
      Reckon the people who stop migrants getting a 50 euro train are bigger scumbags than those who charge them thousands for a berth in a dinghey.

      "People trafficking" is essentially an industry that arises due to border enforcement. "Migrant crises" stem from border enforcement, not the other way around. There are a relatively small number of people trying to get to the UK and the UK could easily accommodate them if it set up safe passage from the continent.

      Instead the UK government chooses to force migrants to take incredibly unsafe routes, by blocking off all the safe ones. This is a crisis that the UK government has deliberately engineered - all the blood is on their hands.

      Freedom of movement is a human right. Yet while next week I will be able to board a train in London and alight in Paris at very low cost, with minimal friction, Syrians, Afghans and Yemenis who have far more reason for leaving their homes are forced to make dangerous sea crossings in poor weather.

      There's no such thing as illegal immigrants, only illegal governments. The UK and the EU are illegal.
      Last edited by Bizarre Löw Triangle; 25-11-2021, 09:59.

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        #4
        People want to come here, let them come here, safely. That's on this government.

        The French state is horrendous and racist and treats these people appallingly. But with safe open routes to come here, these people wouldn't have died.

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          #5
          This isn't a Britain v France issue. They're both racist states and racist governments with a centuries-old history of being racist states and racist governments. The EU is scarcely any better.

          If you view humans travelling in search of safety as merely "a migrant crisis" (a crisis for who?) and a negotiation over numbers, then horrific tragedies like this will happen.

          In a humane society Priti Patel's position would be untenable and she would resign.

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            #6
            In a humane society Priti Patel would be [redacted]

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              #7
              Originally posted by TonTon View Post
              People want to come here, let them come here, safely. That's on this government.

              The French state is horrendous and racist and treats these people appallingly. But with safe open routes to come here, these people wouldn't have died.
              Completely this.

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                #8
                However outraged people get about this, referring to people as "migrants" robs them of their identity.

                30 people drowned.
                30 men, women and children drowned.

                Also, Paul, what do you want OTF to say? This government is full.of racists who demonise anyone wanting to move to the UK. That's been said numerous times on here.

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                  #9
                  Yes, the persistent repetition of the word, not here but in much of the media, always feels to me loaded with accusation - mainly of the 'their choice' variety.

                  Like any of this is remotely that.

                  (And yes, what TonTon said.)

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                    #10
                    Something that's worth addressing in the initial post is that attempts to crack down on "human trafficking" (I use inverted commas cos Eurostar is also human trafficking, just legal and safe) makes human trafficking more dangerous, but you also increase the concentration of people at borders seeking to cross, which means that human trafficking becomes more necessary.

                    The only proven way to crack down on human trafficking is to open the borders and let people cross safely. We know this. The home office know their border infrastructure kills but they carry on because the Home Office is and always has been a killing machine and the UK always has been a fundamentally racist endeavour.

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                      #11
                      Asylum seekers don't vote. People who live on the Kent coast do, and invariably they vote for Tories. People who live on the Kent coast and vote Tory invariably don't like Asylum seekers and don't care what happens to them as long as they don't turn up on Kent beaches. Current Tory policy has been hardened against Asylum seekers ever since UKIP showed that people who live on the Kent coast will turn on the Tories if there is an even more racist alternative courting their support.
                      People who live on the Kent coast are invariably racist and this country would be a nicer place if they were driven into the sea. And Tories.

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                        #12
                        No one who supports tougher immigration controls has any right to call people-smugglers evil. They are, entirely, the creation of said controls.

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                          #13
                          People smuggling is a more accurate and direct term than human trafficking, which has its roots in USian anti-drug hysteria, though I still have issues with BLT's claim that the latter is part of Eurostar's business.

                          As a number of posters (including BLT) have pointed out, people smuggling can only exist under closed borders.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            As E10 perceptively remarks, the EU has ample form in terms of "management" of immigration flow, between literally paying Libya to detain Sahelians in detention camps, similarly bribing Erdogan to confine Syrians within his borders, and leaving Greece and Italy to effectively fend for themselves rather than assist with redistribution of Aegean refugees. Even so, the individuals attempting to reach Europe pale by comparison to those currently classed as refugees in the Middle East or Pakistan, and it would behoove Brussels to enforce an equitable quota on those members reluctant to take an adequate share, which in turn would ease the issues at the Channel.

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                              #15
                              Yeah the EU's policies are racist too, the combined racism of its member governments

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                                #16
                                I've seen on Twitter that those poor souls that perished were Kurds.

                                Every single Tory voter is to blame, every one of them. And many of them seem happy for this to have happened.

                                It's only by an accident if birth that it's not you or I on that boat or fleeing for their lives because of UK made armaments propping up regimes we regard as our friends.

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                  People smuggling is a more accurate and direct term than human trafficking, which has its roots in USian anti-drug hysteria, though I still have issues with BLT's claim that the latter is part of Eurostar's business.

                                  As a number of posters (including BLT) have pointed out, people smuggling can only exist under closed borders.
                                  What's the differnence between what Eurostar do and what people traffickers do then, beyond one being criminalised and the other being legal? Border crossing is selectively criminalised and that is what leads to safe cheap routes for people already documented in the global north and dangerous, expensive routes for those who are undocumented or whose documentation is deemed worthless because it's from the global south.

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                                    #18
                                    In order for irregular and dangerous migration pathways to be reduced, there needs to be many more regular migration pathways. This government has for years subscribed to the highly skilled 'brightest and the best' system of migration control, which only reinforces serious brain drain and an elitist form of mobility mangement. We need regular, low skilled regular pathways to encourage regular and safe migration journeys, much more work to be done on stabilisation in vulnerable states (like not supporting invasion and further miltiary actions) and for this bunch of absolute cunts to be voted out at the next election.

                                    These poor souls were desperate people, pushed into an action that cost them their lives because they had no choice. Shame on us.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                      People smuggling is a more accurate and direct term than human trafficking, which has its roots in USian anti-drug hysteria,.
                                      I can give you the exact definition of smuggling versus trafficking, but in a nutshell the difference between the two is that smuggling is technically where two parties agree to an action across a border. Many of the acts in getting across the Berlin wall were smuggling actions. Trafficking is where there is expoitation of the person - and it does not need to happen across an international border. Most cases inviolve exploitation by use of force, threats or violence against the person or the family back home. It's a vile business.

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                                        #20
                                        Thank you.

                                        I wasn't aware of that and it makes sense to me for there to be a distinction, though it seems to be to me lost in much of the popular discourse.

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                                          #21
                                          It's worth saying that most "anti-trafficking" campaigns make no distinction between forced and voluntary trafficking.

                                          It's also not clear that there's a huge distinction - the "innocent victim kidnapped and taken across borders" is vastly less common in reality in the UK than in the popular imagination (largely because anti-trafficking groups stock in trade is this sort of lurid fantasy). The vast majority of "modern slaves" do not want to be "rescued" because even an extremely exploitative job in the illegalised economy is better than deportation and combating modern slavery is anti-immigration round ups by any other name.

                                          If you can afford extortionate passage and you pay it is trafficking?
                                          If you can't afford extortionate passage, and so you agree to work as a farm labourer in the UK to work off your debt, is it trafficking?
                                          If you can't afford extortionate passage, and so you agree to work in a brothel in the UK to work off your debt is it trafficking?
                                          If you can't afford extortionate passage, and so you agree to work as a farm labourer in the UK but you're misled about the pay and how long your debt will last is it trafficking?
                                          If you can't afford extortionate passage, and so you agree to work in a brothel in the UK but you're misled about the pay and how long your debt will last is it trafficking?
                                          If you can't afford extortionate passage, and so you agree to work as a farm labourer in the UK but you're told when you arrive you'll actually have to work in a brothel and the choice you have is comply or be deported is it trafficking?
                                          If you can afford extortionate passage and you pay but can't get legitimate job so end up working in a brothel under exploitative conditions where you're threatened with deportation any time you try to improve your pay it is trafficking?

                                          In all of these cases, the chains that bind these "modern slaves" (the UK government's term) to their masters are legislation of the UK government. Undocumented people can't work, find housing or access healthcare except through the grey economy - so even if they aren't actually forced to work by their traffickers, they'll still end up on the shitty end of those exploitative relationships.

                                          This hyper-exploitation in work and housing is a feature rather than a bug, of the UK border industrial complex.
                                          Last edited by Bizarre Löw Triangle; 25-11-2021, 16:37.

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                                            #22
                                            I've got nothing to add except every time a couple pop out of a trailer or a lad appears from under an artic or a family are found squished in behind a false panel in the back of a van I feel nothing but sadness at how scared they must have been and what they have gone through. I feel sad and I feel helpless, it's horrible and it happens way too often.




                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by Sean of the Shed View Post
                                              Asylum seekers don't vote. People who live on the Kent coast do, and invariably they vote for Tories. People who live on the Kent coast and vote Tory invariably don't like Asylum seekers and don't care what happens to them as long as they don't turn up on Kent beaches. Current Tory policy has been hardened against Asylum seekers ever since UKIP showed that people who live on the Kent coast will turn on the Tories if there is an even more racist alternative courting their support.
                                              People who live on the Kent coast are invariably racist and this country would be a nicer place if they were driven into the sea. And Tories.
                                              It's not just the Kent coast though. People managed to get sufficiently freaked out about freedom of movement within the eu to herald a new age of kleptocratic creeping fascism. Seemingly, below eu average levels of net migration was too much for a lot of people to handle.

                                              There's a pleasing elegance about the idea of open borders, and a strong element of how would I like to be treated if I found myself as a refugee, or simply wanted to live somewhere better. But do you think the proposition "I believe that there should be completely free and unlimited migration to my country, and I'm prepared to pay the necessary level of taxes, and forego the necessary amount of spending on me, in order to make this work" would receive more than 2 or 3% support in any country in the world?

                                              Direct Provision in Ireland, is the system whereby we stash people waiting for their asylum application to be heard, in old closed down hotels, for years at a time. It's an incredible and absurd scandal. Everyone wants to end it. It's a stain on our society, and is inevitably going to wind up with tribunals of investigation like the mother and baby homes etc of days of yore. My neighbour tony and his family went through the system. lets just say he didn't enjoy it. The problem is that while everyone is in favour of closing it, No-one is in favour of putting these people right at the very top of the social housing queue, which is compounded by the direct refusal of people to pay the extra tax required to build any social housing in the first place. So the scandal keeps going on. ​
                                              Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 25-11-2021, 18:12.

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                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post

                                                It's not just the Kent coast though.
                                                Of course not, but this is where the worse outcome of the migration scandal takes place. It's the source of the vox pops of hateful racist gammon. It's where Farage stands looking out to sea imagining he is Francis Drake and jumping up and down and screaming when he sees the slightest flash of orange on the horizon. It's where some of the nastiest Tory cunts such as Gale, Henderson and Green are elected time and again, as well as the abominable Elphicke cunts one after the other. It's the prism through which the rest of Europe looks at Britain and makes an already spiteful bigoted country look even fucking worse.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Originally posted by TonTon View Post
                                                  People want to come here, let them come here, safely. That's on this government.
                                                  .
                                                  That's my view too but out of interest are there any island nations that operate open borders? Or as TAB says ^ allow free and unlimited migration?

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