[An update to this essay]
[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 a 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.
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