This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Now, the Italians with their Northern League (oh yes, "anti-establishment", they love to say) firmly in government, are criminalizing people who are helping the 'boat people' sailing from Libya and other devastated African countries (mainly ruined by France and other EU nations) to reach Italian shores. Good 'working people' would rather if the refugees sank in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, as hundreds and thousands already have. And this anti-immigration rhetoric is actually being glorified as 'brave' and 'anti-establishment'. How beastly, how low, the European culture continues to be. It was always ultra-violent and aggressive, but now it is also shallow, illogical and fanatic. It is not racist, anymore. It is far beyond that. It is turbo-racist, monstrously selfish. I often describe it as 'fundamentalist', not unlike what one encounters in the so-called 'logic' of movements such as ISIS and al Nusra.
In the U.S.A., the situation is not much better. Wall on the Mexican border? Study your history! The United States robbed half of Mexico, through expansionist wars. Most of migrants who are crossing the border illegally, are actually not Mexicans (Mexico is, with all its social problems, an OECD country), but from impoverished Central American nations. And why are these nations impoverished? Every time they democratically elect their progressive governments which would be ready to work on behalf of the people, the U.S. immediately applies its fascist dictatorial "Monroe Doctrine", overthrows the government, injects right-wing death-squads, forces privatization, and strips the country of everything, like a locust. Don't the people from Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras or Dominican Republic, have the full right to follow the loot, too, and settle near it, in the United States?
*
The Western doctrine is simple and at the same time, absolutely irrational. It is not defined, but if it were, it would read like this: "We can attack, rob, migrate wherever we choose to. Because we are white, Christian people with a superior culture and much better weapons than everyone else. No other reason, but this should suffice. Other people have to stay away, far away. Or else! If they disobey, they will be sunk by the Italians, beaten with rubber hoses on the open seas by the Greeks. Walls will be built, and people concentrated in repulsive camps, like what is being done if refugees try to cross from the south to North America."
Oh, North America, where predominately first but also second and other generations of Europeans hunted down local native people like animals. Where the great majority of the First Nation died horrible deaths. Where the native people, in the U.S.A. and Canada, are often forced to live, to this day, in total destitution. North America, but also Australia the same culture, same pattern, same 'logic'.
And after murdering native people, what came next? Millions of Africans, in chains, brought as slaves by the Europeans, to build "the new world". Men tortured and robbed of their dignity. Women tied in the fields and raped, day after day, by white plantation owners. Democracy. Freedom. Western-style.
Does such a 'nation', like the United States, have any moral right to decide who should cross its borders, and who to settle on its territory?
I don't think so. Do you?
*
Things can be very different. Look at Russia during the Soviet Union. It never occupied the Central Asian republics. They joined voluntarily, and if you talk to people in Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan, a great majority would happily join Russia, again; almost all feel nostalgic about the Soviet Union.
During the USSR, Moscow made sure that the standards of living in Tajikistan or Kirgizstan were almost the same as in Russia. Instead of plundering, Russia provided great subsidies and internationalist support.
And then, after the Soviet Union was destroyed by external forces, (the arms race with the West and by Western propaganda), the country broke into several independent states. And the flow of migrants began.
Russia never closed its borders. Travel from Central Asia (destabilized by Washington) to now rich Russia is easy. Millions of people from the former Soviet republics are happily working all over the Russian Federation. And there is no 'moral obligation' that the Russian state has towards them. All this is actually just common sense, respect for shared history and values, and normal human kindness.
*
Some will say, what the West did, it all happened long time ago. But no, it did not. It is still happening now, right now.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
2
