- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Survivors of the Greece boat disaster say an attempt by the Greek coastguard to tow the boat made it sink.
Survivors of the Greece boat disaster say an attempt by the Greek coastguard to tow the boat made it sink.
On one hand, remains of handful of people are being brought back from depths of titanic - while 750 of them are being thrown into the same depths to be lost forever.
Property > human life.
That is the reality of today we are living in.
This comparison is becoming quite tiresome, IMO.
The two incidents happened in completely different oceans, thousands of miles from each other, and involved two completely different sorts of salvage operation. The equipment used in one operation would have been basically useless in the other operation, even if it could have got there. There’s nothing wrong about carrying out two different rescue operations simultaneously in the world, it’s not some grand symbolic statement on wealth inequality or whatever.
There is absolutely something wrong spending millions on the search and rescue of a bunch of idiots who signed disclaimers and could easily have paid for a safe sub several times over. It’s not the equipment used that is the issue it’s the effort at all. Those billionaire morons simply don’t deserve the effort, nor does it make any sense to have even tried. Unless their estate is footing the bill, but that sounds far fetched.
Here’s something you need to consider though. We need a well trained Navy and Coast Guard. It’s kind of a necessity that those guys know how to perform water rescues and can perform them well. And it’s for that reason that they actually use events like this for training when they can. Obviously this is extraordinarily rare, so typically they stage trainings for deep water recoveries instead. This is more useful, more real training than the latter option. Likely no one is going to need to pay for the recovery because it’s built into the Navy and Coast Guards budgets set aside for training that would have otherwise paid for a staged recovery. Only this time, they were able to use an actual disaster as a training opportunity. They likely knew, or we’re at least confident that the sub imploded on that Sunday but still spent 4 days on the recovery effort partly to train and partly to get additional evidence to confirm their suspicions.
Okay, let’s assume for the sake of argument that it’s “okay” to just let people die because you don’t like them.
What about the 19-year-old kid who was on board the sub, who didn’t really want to be there but who was trying to please is dad for Father’s Day by accompanying him? Screw him too because you don’t like his father, I guess?
Those with the means to retrieve that property don’t consider poor people as human life.
it’s an easy mistake to make.
Weeks of coverage over a few billionaires out on a lark to view a shipwreck and this is the first I’ve heard about more than 80 people dying in another sinking.
The difference is money.
Odd, because I hear about it in nearly ever comment section on articles about the sinking of the Titan.
The difference is not money, it’s novelty. The fact that a submarine built with hubristic lack of adequate safety was lost at the site of the Titanic’s wreck is going to catch a lot of attention. It fits so perfectly into the narrative of the original Titanic’s sinking. And losing a submarine at all is noteworthy, that doesn’t happen very often.
A ship loaded with immigrants sinking in the Mediterranean is, unfortunately, a Tuesday. It’s like the Joker says, nobody panics when everything goes as expected, even when what’s expected is horrible.
While novelty is an aspect, it is not the only aspect. Racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and classicism all tie into it. This is why refugees from Ukraine and refugees from Syria experience pretty different treatment even on a governmental level.
The reason why people are talking about the sinking of this refugee dinghy in the Mediterranean is that it was a big enough tragedy that the news covered it. Usually, none of it is even covered by the news. As someone who works in aid focusing on refugees and has contacted news organizations about these things, there is just no interest. It took years of grassroots organizing and collecting evidence to get them talking about pushbacks. And even then it is mainly about the whole shebang instead of individual cases. Talking about the absolute incompetence and malice of the Hellenic Coast Guard is hardly mentioned while NGOs working with refugees in Greece, Balkan and Turkey have been talking about it for years and years.
If things go as they usually go, like with Alan Kurdi, people will talk about it for a couple of months and then it will be forgotten unless someone broughts it up.