If anyone across the globe harbored any remaining tiny seed of doubt that money rules the world, the stories surrounding this month's global maritime "disasters" should pour the last drop of glyphosate on that seed.
Three hundred Pakistani refugees perish when their over-crowded fishing boat sinks in the Mediterranean, and the world takes little notice...mirroring the response of the European agencies that could have averted the tragedy, but chose not to.
Four ultra rich "adventurers" pony up a quarter of a million dollars each to ride a demonstrably flawed and dangerous craft to a century-old shipwreck, and disappear less than two hours into their journey. A days-long, multi-million-dollar rescue effort ensues, with world press agencies providing a minute-by-minute accounting of the "drama" of a search made more urgent by the limited life-support aboard the shockingly makeshift vehicle...even though the US Navy had detected evidence of the disastrous outcome of the "adventure" minutes after the craft had ceased communication with the surface. Four days and millions of dollars invested into a "rescue" for five rich men who had catastrophically imploded in the first hours of their foolish enterprise.
And three hundred poor men, women and children in a watery grave at the bottom of the Mediterranean. No one will even bother to recover the bodies.
We should be outraged.
But we're not, are we?
Lisa, nothing changes. The same happened round the time the Titanic went down. Eight years before Titanic, an emigrant ship, called the Norge, sank 200 miles west of Scotland. Seven hundred souls perished, mostly dirt poor migrants. Loss of life was as heavy as that, because there were not enough lifeboats, according to a 1905 inquiry in Copenhagen. This was never made into law, so 8 years later, the Titanic sank with insufficient life saving apparatus and 1500 died. Because they were the filthy rich, people sat up and took notice. And the law was changed. Not fair, is it, really...
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