An Oasis of Wealth

The article The European Union Is Deliberately Leaving Migrants Abandoned at Sea recounts some horrifying behavior on the part of the people tasked with patrolling the EU borders, especially the southern maritime border in the Mediterranean. According to a surviving witness,

“[…] the waves were generated deliberately, thrown up by the maneuvering wake of a Greek coast guard boat at the borders of the European Union (EU). “They intended to kill us,” says Jeancy. Even in the most generous interpretation, the coast guards were indifferent to the deadly danger their actions posed to the men, women, children, and baby on board the dinghy. Jeancy recalls the guards watching in amusement as his friends drowned. Their laughter may have been the last thing he heard. The guards made no attempt to retrieve the body.”

The survivors were packed into a dinghy with nearly no maneuverability and basically left to die on the high seas. After having been abandoned by the Greeks (the EU), they were eventually rescued by Turkey.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this happens, of course. It’s far, far away from view.

Europe is an oasis of wealth amid a desert of inhospitable climates, of regions on which the scars of colonialism, far from having faded, still glow lividly.

The article Roaming Charges: Up in Smoke, Down in Mirrors by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch) writes,

“Meanwhile, Bangladesh suffered its worst blackout in 8 years, when half of the country (nearly 100 million people) lost power. The country, like Pakistan and India, has been struggling to import enough LNG to keep its power plants running, after getting priced out by European nations.”

Small wonder that people want to flee wherever they live and go to Europe, a place whose propaganda about being a bastion of moral rectitude had well-preceded it. Not only that, but Europe is also the place that continues to “price out” nations on essential supplies, like food and energy. You can either get angry about it and try to get them to stop doing it—leaving your own country without food and electricity—or you can just accept that that’s how it’s going to be, and try to go live where the bounty of wealth is.

It’s piracy, pure and simple. You can call it the globalized market, if you like. You can pretend that it’s fair to have countries with vastly different buying power all competing for the same resources in the same market. But it’s not. The countries with the most buying power have that buying power because of all of the resources that they stole from those who have little buying power. This is the way of the world and so has it always been.