europe's shame

as many as 700 people are feared dead after the latest in a series of tragic maritime accidents in the mediterranean. just 1 week ago another 400 died in similar circumstances as the small fishing vessel they were travelling on capsized. that said, nobody seems particularly surprised. after all we were warned this would happen when the Italian government gave up their 9 million a month mare nostrum mission last year which carried out proactive search and rescue operations over 27,000 square miles of sea. despite rome’s protestations the european union attempted to replace the italian search and rescue operation on the cheap. triton operates on a third of the budget of its predecessor and is based solely on border surveillance- operating only within 30 miles of the italian coast.

combine this negligence with the strife and instability in north africa and the middle east and you have a pretty big problem. of course the situation in north africa has been exasperated, in no small part, by david cameron’s meddling in the region with his no-fly zone over libya in 2011. as vile as colonel gaddafi was sometimes, like we found out in iraq, the alternative is much worse. despite cameron promising to stand shoulder to shoulder with the libyan’s after the toppling of the dictator, his self-appointed role as the guarantor of libyan democracy has spectacularly failed. similar to blair in iraq, cameron had not planned enough for the construction of a new state to replace gaddafi's(the invasion is the easy part). indeed cameron’s betrayal is two-fold- he has not only contributed to general lawless in libya, he is also against the renewal of mare nostrum as he feels this creates an “unintended ‘pull-factor’”. but surely it should be our moral responsibility to help save the lives of people whose country we have destroyed to such an extent that they feel the gamble of an over crowded fishing vessel across the mediterranean is worth taking.

it would be somewhat disingenuous to lay the blame squarely at the british government's door. The european union must also step up it's efforts by placing the same emphasis on the basic human rights of others as it does to it’s own citizens. the european establishment often decries the politics of marine le pen and nigel farage as regressive nationalism, however their own attitude towards ‘external immigration’ seems to be the same. The only difference is where the borders are located.