A massive operation is under way to find and save a stricken vessel and its passengers. As time passes, anxious families and friends wait with growing fear. The US coastguard, Canadian armed forces and commercial vessels are all hunting for the Titan submersible, which has gone missing with five aboard on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the north Atlantic. The UK’s Ministry of Defence is also monitoring the situation.
It is hard to think of a starker contrast with the response to a fishing boat which sank in the Mediterranean last week with an estimated 750 people, including children, packed onboard. Only about 100 survived, making this one of the deadliest disasters in the Mediterranean. Greece and the EU blame people smugglers, who overcrowd boats and abuse those aboard them. But both have profound questions to answer about their own role in such disasters. Activists say authorities were repeatedly warned of the danger this boat faced, hours before it went down, but failed to act.
Lemmy is officially not ready to take over reddit until I see people discussing the cardi b, blink 182 loving stepson angle to this story being discussed.
Be the change you want to see in the world
Capitalist media only cares about sexy tragedies and expensive dangers. Focusing on 500 poors gasping their last breaths far from view only serves to remind viewers of how unfair things are on a basic level - and that threatens power.
The thing is, I’ve ***never ***seen such an overwhelmingly bored response from the general public to a Sexy Tragedy like this before. The only person in my life who expressed any iota of distress over the Titan is my dear mother, but she cried when we dropped off our old TV at Goodwill, so.
People are, I think, getting a little bit harder to trick with the song-and-dance of the hyper-rich dying in outstanding ways.
“When the rich are too rich there are ways, and when the poor are too poor there are ways… This is one of the ways when the poor are too poor. When the rich are too rich there is a way, and if I am not mistaken, that way will come soon.” - Pearl S. Buck
It looks like its all over now that the coast guard have announced finding a debri field on the ocean floor
One’s legal and one’s illegal?
I think you mean one is full of rich people the other not.
The submarine venture may have been legal on paper but they definitely committed some crimes, at very least negligence. $250K ticket price is a giant red flag and if it’s allowed at all it should increase their liability, with the talk of the ignored concerns it sounds like an outright grift.
The Earth belongs to every being. No one is illegal anywhere here.
I’m sure that sounds great in the sixth form common room, but it’s a woefully simplistic way of looking at the real world. Nation states, borders and immigration laws have formed over the years for good reason.
Also, governments have to take their populations wants into account. How much will it help these people if the population of where they end up votes in a far right government in a few years as a response who round them all up again?
lol, for a good reason these borders will be destroyed soon. Every year brings us much closer to the mass migrations from countries too hot and too poor to live in. It’s funny people don’t realize this and they still believe in their mighty borders, so freaking privileged and supercilious.
If govts wanted to do anything good for the people, the should’ve invested humongous money in education and try to make people immune to disinformation and brainless far right movement. They haven’t done anything. Even if they tried now, it’s too late. It should be done years ago. But greedy politicians only wants money from their billionaire bribers.
Yeah, we probably will see huge migration coming, but it’s more likely to see a strengthening of the borders than their destruction. I’m honestly expecting to see barbed wire and gun emplacements on the Med to stop these boats in my lifetime. It’s depressing to be honest, but clearly the people of Europe don’t want mass migration on these levels.
Awful, shame on you. Instead of murdering people, try to help them. Organize and force politicians to make good integration programmes in your country, also to help people in their countries so that they won’t be forced to leave their homes. I can understand defetism, cause the future doesn’t look bright, but please use the fact that we, human beings, are intelligent enough to change this future at least in some extent.
Hey, I didn’t say it’s what I want, it’s what I foresee based on current and historical events. I don’t live in any of the countries on the med so I can’t really encourage their governments to do much at all.
Sorry, I misunderstood previous comment.
Beau (of the fifth column) has a cool shirt that says something like “Beyond these borders do not lie a lesser people.”
People aren’t illegal.
It’s not illegal to seek asylum.
How can a human be illegal? And which law governs the Titanic sub’s operation?
So you should just be left to die if you get shot while committing a crime?
i fail to see why one being legal and one being illegal[1] should have any bearing on the response or treating the people with basic human dignity. committing a crime also does not make one worthy of death–and especially not when that crime is one without a victim like illegal immigration.
and i don’t think the latter should be illegal (certainly not meaningfully so), to be clear. i am morally opposed to the idea of hard borders. ↩︎
I agree with you. And I do understand why, and I don’t like it:
I think it is more about the profile of the people in need.
Wasn’t there a billionaire on board of that vessel? Their family probably got some influence to force this massive operation. And we idolize these big money havers.
And what money do the immigrants have? It is an ongoing issue for the EU (as an example). It looks like the EU doesn’t even want these people. Sure, they begrudgingly accept people, when they arrive. Sure there is an effort to safe them… But if some are lost on the way. Less mouth to feed.
Once again: my pessimistic observations. Personally, I feel ashamed of this whole thing.
The Titan sub has a dude who went to space with the Amazon guy along with two members of one of Pakistan’s richest families who are heavily involved in a petrochemical company.
Fucking agree so hard.
Is it really a crime to be human based on geo location and net worth? To me it doesn’t make any sense.
What law did the migrants break?
Does the Coast Guard do a thorough investigation of anyone that is in need of their services and establish everyone is innocent of any potential crime before rescuing people
The US Coast Guard doesn’t do a whole lot in the Mediterranean.
They never said “US”. Other countries have Coast Guards too.
The US isn’t the only country with a Coast Guard.
Regardless people deserve to be rescued if possible.
I’m so tired of governments bending over backwards to help billionaires while ignoring average people
I’m so tired of valuing people based on their net worth. these double standards are disappointing and honestly disgusting. I’m disgusted by our current politics and economics
Well, on the bright side, if there is a successful rescue the rescuees can afford to pay the bill. And they should be held to it.
undefined> I’m so tired of valuing people based on their net worth.
You mean like you just did?
In case you care, which you’ve already indicated you don’t, there are more researchers on the submarine than billionbaires.You mean like you just did?
“actually, you’re the one valuing people on net worth for pointing out the things we’ll do to accommodate billionaires but not for migrants” is such a piss take it’s not even funny
From what I’ve read there’s one researcher on the sub, two members of one of Pakistan’s richest families, an “explorer” who rode with the Amazon guy into space, and the CEO of the company that thought their submarines were too advanced to get categorised/certified for the depths they visit.
Don’t forget that the CEO also bragged in a video that the sub only has one button, is controlled by a cheap wireless logitech controller and he bought parts of the sub from camping world.
There’s nothing wrong with COTS equipment like the Camping World light that’s been made much fun of. The controller either, at least in principle, though the idea of using this battery-powered wireless device specifically is maybe not smart. But the fact that the guy who built it is bragging about them as if he’s pulled one over on Big Bathyscaphe should have been a red flag about the quality and safety factors built into the rest of the thing.
Yeah, a COTS video game controller makes sense in context (though I’d have opted for a wired version, myself). I’m also pretty sure the US Navy also uses Xbox controllers for their
periscopesphotonics masts in their subs.https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/18/17136808/us-navy-uss-colorado-xbox-controller
The difference is that the Navy uses actual Xbox controllers which are very reliable. The reviews for that logitech model are filled with connection issues, which of course makes people wonder if they were doing any validation testing on the sub at all
Also the xbox controller is not controlling a critical system. I presume if the submarine loses it’s photonic mast it is not dead in the water.
You should look more into the story and into the occupancy before you start taking random moral stances cause you want to be rich one day.
Typical garbage take by the Guardian. It used to be a good paper.
… Newspapers have always had opinion pieces in them?
It’s marked as an editorial. What do you think an editorial is?
Today, you could drown an entire cruiseship of Romani and most of Europe would cheer.
This is a summary of the posted article (I’m a bot).
US coastguard, Canadian armed forces and commercial vessels are all hunting for the Titan submersible, which has gone missing with five aboard. The UK’s Ministry of Defence is also monitoring the situation. It is hard to think of a starker contrast with the response to a fishing boat which sank in the Mediterranean last week with an estimated 750 people, including children, packed onboard. Greece and the EU blame people smugglers, who overcrowd boats and abuse those aboard them. Both have profound questions to answer about their own role in such disasters.
I see the reddit bots have started migrating
Report ‘em and carry on.
yeah we banned this one
Thank you!
Good bot
Here in Australia, honestly, it’s disappointing that we’re still treating refugees as criminals and turning them back. Who cares if people visit the country. It shouldn’t be too much work to identify them
Billionaires lives matter more, obviously /s
That mass drownings have become so common – more than 25,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014 – is shameful in itself.
Over 25,000 have drowned since only 2014?? Holy Christ.
One group is full of hundred-millionaires. The other group is full of destitute people fleeing their home countries due to horrific conditions.
Given that capitalism does put a price on people, that’s obviously the metric used to determine who to help.
Genuinely surprised by some of the comments here. This is worth discussing and I’m glad the writer of this article drew attention to it.
It’s simple human psychology. We get all excited about a child that fell into a well but when it’s 10 children or 100 we just care less and less even if the group includes the one kid we started with. I guess it’s kinda sad but also not at all surprising
Our civilization doesn’t value human life. It values capital. Capitalism turns us against one another.
