Lifeboat ethics

One saw, the other day, the drama in Mare nostrum:  Cross and crescent, cheek by jowl, the latter dispatching the former to Davy Jones’ locker.  This is more than a fait-divers, a police-blotter incident among innumerable others:  It is a parable, and a foretoken, a metonymy.

For Italia too is a lifeboat;  and she has latterly been importing that which someday may capsize her.

Plenty more where these came from

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Puis on se demande:   Si ces gens-là  haïssent à tel point  les croisés (pour nous servir de leur baragouin particulier), pourquoi  diable  se diriger justement vers les pays de la Croix?   Pourquoi pas vers n’importe quel pays de l’Ummah?  Ils seraient les bienvenus à  Raqqa, c’est sûr!

On a  récemment posé la questions à des immigrés subsahariennes :  pourquoi s’injecter dans des milieux où l’on ne se sent pas à l’aise, où l’on se plaint de tout, où l’on se trouve minoritaires?   Voici leur réplique:  Eh bien, ce statut minoritaire, ce n’est guère pour toujours;  patientez.

On est en train de visualiser l’auto-da-fé de la civilisation boréale …

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Weiteres zum Thema:

Cruore spumantem

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[Update 19 April 2015]   Au moins ils ne sont pas racistes, ces islamistes :  ils égorgent les chrétiens sans égard à la couleur de la peau.  Les associations devraient s’en féliciter.

http://www.lematin.ch/monde/ei-publie-video-montrant-lexecution-chretiens/story/14655398

An ISIL militant smashes a cross on an altar

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/isis-video-purports-to-show-massacre-of-two-groups-of-ethiopian-christians

http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2015-04/terrorismus-islamischer-staat-libyen-aethiopien

With video:
http://www.vocativ.com/world/isis-2/isis-video-shows-mass-beheading-of-ethiopian-christians-in-libya/?PageSpeed=noscript

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Entretemps,  l’accueil des subsahariens est bien moins tendre en … Afrique du Sud, qu’en l’Europe bisounours:

In the message, signed by several groups, including the Patriotic Movement, Pan Local Forum, Unemployed Workers Forum and Anti-Crime Movement, Nigerians and other African foreigners were warned to leave the country.

It read partly:

“Dear neighbour from Africa and other parts of the world, we have travelled the world and have not found one country that allows the floods of humans across its borders as South Africa is experiencing. Even in war-torn parts like Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and Somali.

We were seven million people in Johannesburg city in 2011. Today, we have an estimated 13 million. In Johannesburg alone, you have taken over entire suburbs: Yeoville, Berea, Bez Valley, Turfontein, among many. You have even moved into rural parts of our country that have 80-per-cent unemployment, and there are no visible signs that you have jobs either.

We want to be proudly part of the geographic construct called Africa, but we are as different from one another as Kenyans are from Nigerians; Ivorians from Chadians, etc.

We are pleading with you to return to your home countries. Go and build up those countries so that we can all live in economic, social and political prosperity and peace as neighbours. The genocide in this corner of Africa will be far worse than what happened in Rwanda in 1994. Then the entire continent will be condemned to ashes. Is that what you want?

http://pulse.ng/gist/xenophobia-our-people-are-preparing-for-war-against-all-foreigners-attackers-id3668721.html

Residents of Wolhuter Men's Hostel in Jeppestown, Johannesburg massed outside the hostel with intent to drive foreign nationals from the area.

Remarkably, discussion of what is really going on  is far franker in the African media, than in the “humaniste de salon” press of the West.

The above article is from Nigeria;  here’s one from Zambia:

TV footage it appears these brutal acts of violence against foreigners have been carried out exclusively by black South Africans.

And when the xenophobic violence bursts forth again, it is remarkable how extreme it is. These are not incidents of people being turned away from restaurants, or bigoted words on Twitter, or the makeup of a sports team.

One reason is that such an impetus runs against the grand, orthodox narrative so well entrenched in South Africa: that racism is a problem particular to white South Africans and, to counter it, white South Africans should be the focus of attention.

We can no longer afford to exclude culture from national debate. From initiation deaths to witch killings, muti murders, patriarchy and mob killings, there is a great deal about our culture we do not discuss - certainly which we never criticise.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/ilive/2015/04/19/how-many-more-have-to-die-before-we-talk-about-why-ilive

“Muti murders”?   Now there’s a new one.  Read all about it here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_for_body_parts

 “Muti” here is not short for “mutilation”; the word is Zulu:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muti

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Two surprising statistical statements appeared in this morning’s press.  No idea how much truth there is in them, but worth following up.

* “More British Muslim men have joined ISIS  and the Nusra Front  than are serving in the British armed forces.”  (NYTimes)

*  There are at present more Africans in Europe, than there ever were Europeans in Africa, during colonialism.

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[Update, 20 April 2015]   Well, no point belaboring.  People mostly have their minds made up, or don’t want to hear about all this;  and when minds do change, they will likely change in a rush, all at once, as the world goes toppling over some tipping-point.  Emotion, not reason, will rule.

But purely as a point of logical interest -- we take note of what is not being said -- what lies even deeper than taboo, since people are unaware even of repressing it.  Consider this map:

Notice anything?

Well of course, the floundering boats are nearly always closer to Libya than to Europe;  but nobody ever suggests that Libya has any responsibility for saving their co-religionists  just offshort (even though, additionally, Libya is responsible for launching these assault-boats against European shores).   Yet that is not what I mean -- everyone knows that Libya is a failed state and always has been.   No, I mean -- look at the map.  That's Tunisia, just to the left.

Tunisia is a reasonably well-functioning country, and indeed a tourist resort for Europeans.  Yet no-one suggests -- it never occurs to anyone to suggest it -- that Tunisia might have any responsibility, equal to or greater than that of Europeans, in rescuing their fellow-Muslims.

[Update 22 April 2015]   Mais -- rappel à l’ordre.  Ce n’est pas dans nos rayons, que de critiquer la politique comme telle.   Si la culture d’Europe désire se donner la mort, en s’africanisant -- c’est leur affaire.   Nous, en tant qu’observateur de la psychologie linguistique, on n’a que faire en la matière.   Ainsi, ne commentons que la côté “rhétorique publique”.

Donc:  Il y a un décalage entre le discours médiatique, et le vox populi.

Celui-là ne faisait guère mention de l’expérience australienne, qui a réussi, à la fois, à juguler l’afflux tiers-mondiale, et à réduite la mortalité en mer des impétrants à zéro.  En revanche, les commentateurs grand-public la signalent à haute voix.

Finally the European media had to pay attention, after Aussie PM Abbott referred to his country’s success.   The response of European politicians and talking-heads (those gleichgeschaltet to The Narrative), was flustered, and resembled the magician’s distractive patter.

A logical parable:

Elbownia is considering sending a vehicle to the Moon.   The idea is shouted down:  It would never work -- the ship would have to escape our planet’s gravity, which is impossible;  moreover the asteroids whizzing around just above the Earth’s atmosphere  would quickly bash the ship to bits;  plus the Moon has no atmosphere, so the ship would explode were it ever to arrive.

Then someone says:  But, umm, … the United States already tried it;  and it worked.

(Elbownian politicians clap hands over ears and chant LA LA LA LA ….)

 

[Update 23 April 2015]  In this whole Mediterranean melodrama, there is one thing that every faction, of whatever shade of opinion, unanimously agrees upon.   And that is, that the  “smugglers” -- the “Human Traffickers” -- are the bad guys.  They serve the convenient role of “Neo-Nazis” for Hollywood studios that want to make an international thriller without offending any group:  Just make the bad guys Neo-Nazis.  (Or, in pinch -- just German will do.  The Germans themselves will never object:  whipped curs.)  The Italian Prime Minister came up with a metaphor that has been enthusiastically embraced by everyone:  the “Traffickers” are the contemporary equivalent of … Slave Traders!   (All in unison:  Booooo, slave traders!  Kumbaya.)

That comparison is, however, nonsense.   The négriers, after all, kidnapped their victims;  whereas the would-be migrants themselves come forward and solicit the traffickers’ services.    As for the traffickers, you can’t really even call them smugglers, since their SOP is the opposite of clandestine:  Send out a rafiot;  then call the Italian sea-taxi service for free-of-charge rescue and pizza  (200 mushroom, 400 anchovies, 12 sausage -- no, cancel that last order, those were the Christians, they just got thrown overboard).  A closer historical parallel to the traffickers would would be … the Underground Railroad.   (Albeit one that charges for its services.)   Or, from another standpoint:  A sort of mirror-image of Club Med.

Francois Hollande, for his part (less imaginative, that man) calls the traffickers “terrorists”.   -- Umm… No.  How are they terrorists?  They just want to make a buck.  -- True, some proportion of their cruise passengers are likely terrorists -- ISIL has promised as much -- but that no more makes the cruise operators terrorists, than the airlines were, when they carried the 9/11 hijackers, or the shoe bomber, or the underwear bomber, etc.

[Update 24 April 2015]  Another cockeyed but widely-repeated argument from the Ostrich Lobby (as we might dub them) runs thus:  By defending your borders against the traffickers, you would actually be … helping the traffickers, see, because, see, you’d be raising the price of passage.  (High-fives among the bisounours for having thought up this one.)

Now, that is true in the same sense that, by making heroin illegal, scarce, and hard to come by, we force up its price:  If the authorities were simply to hand out heroin free to every schoolchild beginning with kindergarten, the dealers would be out of business.   An analog of this latter policy is, in fact, the program of those who say that borders are inherently a bad thing.   To which we respond, with the poet:  “Good fences make good neighbors.”

[Update 3 May 2015]  The flood continues, unabated -- nay encouraged, by stepped-up European ramassage -- 4000 and counting, in a single day.

Different publications spin the story differently.  Thus, Le Figaro (centre-right) tops its article with a brooding busful of all black adult males:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/05/03/01003-20150503ARTFIG00056-des-milliers-de-migrants-secourus-ce-week-end-en-mediterranee.php

while CBC  (Care Bears Canada), reporting the same incidents, offers a jolly portrait of a manageable handful of only women and children, smiling, flashing peace-signs, as though enjoying a picnic at sea:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/migrants-at-sea-italy-says-3-690-rescued-from-mediterranean-in-single-day-1.3059121

Oddly, though, the readers are not fooled by this prepackaging.   Read the comments.  Taceo.