It is heart breaking.
Men, women and children drowning in the Mediteranean. Escaping war and famine in the Middle East…travelling long distances …to North Africa….paying huge sums to people traffickers …to bring them to Europe on ships and boats that are unseaworthy.
Hundreds drowning.
And Western Europe merely hoping that everything will be all right.
There is a law of the sea, a very civilised convention that sailors answer distress calls and rescue where they can. The navy of Italy, the fishermen of Portugal, the pleasure boats in Greece are doing their best. Once again, the politicians of Europe have failed.
The People of Europe are better than the Politicians of Europe.
It is a mess.
European powers have been in half-arsed and contradictory bombing in Iraq, Syria and Libya. They never thought thru the consequences. They are as culpable for every refugee death in a camp and for every refugee death at sea as the tinpot dictators they sought to overthrow and even support.
It is shameful.
But as yet…as with Kenyan Christian students massacred by Islamic extremists last month….nobody from our Golden Halo is standing outside Belfast City Hall as they did for all that “Je Suis Charlie” stuff.
“Je Suis A Drowning Baby”….our Golden Halo is far too selective.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Well said indeed. The deaths of these poor wretched people lies with those who tore Libya apart including, unsurprisingly, the United Kingdom government whose record in culpability in human slaughter in recent decades threatens to outshine the butchery of its imperial heyday.
In the second decade of the 21stCentury it is a disgrace that boatloads of people drown as they try to get to what they see as the safety of Europe. The scale of the loss of life is horrific and difficult to fully imagine. More must be done to save lives, and rescue programmes must be adequately funded by all of Europe. Our inaction is unforgivable.
The lives lost are “black” lives. Of these lives were “white” it would be completely different.
A lot of these people are fleeing from war zones that the West created.