Operation underpants | 36 comments (36 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Operation underpants (4.00 / 4)

Libya hasn't been asked if they like to have their underpants bombed. And now they protest. What are they thinking they are?

timesofmalta.com - General, sporting, and business news for Malta and the surrounding region

Libya's Tripoli government will not accept Europe bombing sites presumed to belong to Libyan people smugglers and would "confront it", the Salvation Government's Foreign Minister is warning.
Muhammed El-ghirani told Times of Malta that nobody from the EU had consulted Tripoli about such plans and he insisted such action could not be taken unilaterally.
"We have been doing our best to get Europe to cooperate with us to deal with illegal immigration but they keep telling us we're not the internationally recognised government. Now they cannot just decide to take this action, they have to speak to us," he said.
Moreover, he questioned the very method being contemplated.
"You cannot just decide to hit. Let's say you strike a particular site, how will you know that you did not hit an innocent person, a fisherman? Does Europe have pinpoint accuracy? So we are saying, let's do this together," Dr El-ghirani said.

by Katrin on Thu Apr 23rd, 2015 at 04:14:03 AM EST

Re: Operation underpants (none / 1)

One day it's a fishing boat, the next day a people-smuggler buys it. You going to sink them all for that reason, putting fishermen out of business, creating more refugees?
And that makes sense to anyone?

No-one seems to be mentioning birth control. These kids didn't ask to be born. Perhaps their parents thought that some of Europe's wealth would trickle down to them, instead of their resources hoovered up and their ecology wrecked, while we keep manufacturing new weapons that always seem to get into the wrong hands.

Way to go EU... I would teach them organic farming and house restoration and let them loose repairing the land and crumbling old farmhouses that owners can't afford to keep up in the 'new economy'.

There is space (and not-very-well-paid work for them, but integration will be tricky to put it mildly.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Apr 23rd, 2015 at 10:05:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Operation underpants (4.00 / 5)

"One day it's a fishing boat, the next day a people-smuggler buys it. You going to sink them all for that reason, putting fishermen out of business, creating more refugees?"

Well, it is good for European fishing quotas. EU fishermen are emptying African fish grounds anyway, so in many parts African fishermen don't have a future except switching to the migration business. I guess suggesting another fishing policy would be called a very bad idea, though. Where would we drop the bombs then?

by Katrin on Thu Apr 23rd, 2015 at 10:26:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Operation underpants (4.00 / 3)

One day it's a fishing boat, the next day a people-smuggler buys it. You going to sink them all for that reason, putting fishermen out of business, creating more refugees?

If you're a fisherman you don't just lend your boat to a people smuggler like that. And in fact, that's not what's happening:

Prices at the local fish market in #Tripoli are rising. Fishermen are selling their boats to migrant smugglers so no one to catch fish
— Rasmus Tantholdt TV2 (@RasmusTantholdt) abril 21, 2015

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Apr 23rd, 2015 at 10:30:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Operation underpants (none / 0)

Who said anything about lending the boats?
They get offered a lot of money to buy them.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Apr 23rd, 2015 at 03:51:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Operation underpants | 36 comments (36 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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