Damn...I don't know what else to say about this. So these are climate change refugees only...due to drought? You would think in places like Afghanistan that it would have something to do with our military campaigns during the last 14 years. I suppose it's just irony at work. I don't even know to what extent we are in Afghanistan now.
Anyways, this makes me wonder how much longer BAU continues in places like Greece? Not that BAU is still the case there. I don't see how it could be. How do you ship 1000 refugees a day back to a land that can't support them? Yet where they land can't support them. These our the first stirrings of too many mofo's on planet earth it would seem. This is the beginning of a trend that's only going to get worse as the days go by.
I also wonder what the sentiment is for the Europeans with this invasion of climate change refugees. Do they see them as climate change refugees? Or do they seem them as refugees that are collateral damage do to the USA's foreign war policy? Syria, Afghanistan? Damn if it doesn't look to me like WWIII is just about baked into the cake at this point. In 1984 the three world powers were at war all of the time. Which power was allied with which power shifted as did the chocolate rations. The older I get the more Orwell looks like a profit. I've long contended that our future will be something between A Brave New World and 1984.
Indeed. These are refugees of western imperialism. Although climate change is a contributing factor calling them climate refugees is misguided and deflects responsibility from unrepentant westerners for the immiseration of whole continents just so Happy Motoring can persist here for a little while longer.
Talk about cognizant dissonance. I was born in the USA and have lived here my entire life (outside of the 6 months on an air craft carrier). I have no desire to be poor. I have no desire to immiserate whole continents for my way of life either. I have no choice in any of this (outside of gaming the system like I'm doing). I have children. We do what we have to do where we are I suppose. I'd rather my country live honestly, but that option got chucked out the window a long time ago...if it ever was an option. I mean the US did start off by doing it's level best to exterminate the "savages." I guess if there is any honesty to us we can find it there. At least we can say we started off as a seedling nation by exterminating millions of natives.
Still, there is a small part of me that wants to be proud of this nation. What I thought it used to stand for at least. Justice? I think that's always been a philosophical idea that our human nature will not allow for.
As far as the people who currently live in Italy and Greece are concerned, I doubt they think of these folks as EITHER Climate Refugees or victims of Western Imperialism. To them, they are just boatloads of poor people who they can't support.
The truth of course is that both are contributing factors. Western Imperialism is the product of the industrial revolution, climate change is partially the result of the industrial revolution also and so is population overshoot. The latter is the real issue at work here of course. Too many people for a given area of land to support.
Sadly, the places they are trying to migrate to also are in a situation of population overshoot, though not quite so bad as Syria of course. You do know I trust that drought has been ongoing in Syria so long now that many towns inhabited since Biblical times have had to be abandoned. Those people migrated into Syrian cities, where there were no jobs for them. Then their own Civil War breaks out, and they try to escape that.
As far as what the FSoA ever "stood for", there is what you were taught in school as to what it stood for and then there is REALITY. All you have to do is read Smedley Butler's War is a Racket to know that going well back into the 1800s all the FSoA ever stood for was conquering other lands and killing off anyone standing in the way. Manifest Destiny was all about wiping out the Native population, which was pretty well done by 1900, then the army and navy headed down to South America. We got a foothold in Asia when Matthew Perry brought his gunboats to Japan in the 1850s.
Basically from the moment it was founded as a separate entity after the Revolutionary War, the FSoA has been on a constant expansionary expedition, using the military power of industrialization to capture the resources found everywhere else in the world it could control. After WWII, the FSoA gained hegemony over the global monetary system as well, and essentially turned the Chinese into slaves utilizing that method.
Far as your complicity or my complicity in this goes, we are just passengers on the Titanic, we're not in control of the rudder or the engines or the navigation as we move toward the iceberg. The Syrian Refugees are stowaways who get pitched off the Titanic with no Life Preserver even before it hits the iceberg.
RE