The discussion that follows was prompted by the article: Drowning in the Mediterranean: the ‘crime against humanity’ is capitalism. The discussion was initiated by Hawkeye.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!
21 May, 2015 - 23:32
#1
Drowning in the Mediterranean: the ‘crime against humanity’ is capitalism
Please see the second comment under 'Our Task Today' article on the Leftcom website, which argues for welcoming all immigrants into 'the first world' from 'the third world'.
It seems to me that the ICC's decomposition view is right here (tho i dont know enough to say whether its happening in the exact way that they say it is). there are so many wars breaking out and not only in the peripheral countries but places like ukraine. They cant control it and they cant control the fact that these effects are being felt in places and in ways it never was before, and the effects of these disasters cant be contained any longer. At the same time there is a breakdown in the states/capitalisms ability to provide living standards for the citizens. It used to be that when capitalism was formed it was able to provide consistently rising living standards that were better than feudalism or a pre capitalist era and now for increasing numbers of people its now even worse than what feudalism was like. I've seen it because in the last couple of years here there's been an explosion in the number of rough sleepers, there are now people sleeping under a bridge right next to a river that floods regularly near my house. Capitalism cant provide or even have any more use for these people and they're literally treated like garbage. Its a disaster in so many ways. :(
The human cargo referred to here is the Rohingya Moslem population of Burma, which is of course a largely Buddhist country though the cruel nature of its military dictatorship may do more to explain the plight of the Rohingya.
They'll be called "immigrants" like those fleeing awful conditions in countries south of the Sahara. But wouldn't the label "refugees" be better?
"The Start" reports that a new mass grave of migrants have been discovered in Padang Besar, at Malaysia-Thailand border: > 100 dead.
Source.
Among the reactions of readers:
16% said they are happy, inspired or amused,
47% sad,
32% angry,
and 5% annoyed.
Several concentration camps were discovered at the border, and inside, mass graves of Muslims migrants.
Source.
What does all this mean Tagore2? I went to your source but it's in Bahasa Malay so understood nothing.
Given that the the majority of people living on the Thai-Malaysia border are Muslims themselves it seems odd that the corpses of Muslim immigrants should be secretly buried here. Or maybe it doesn't, who knows what our rulers and their bands of murderous thugs get up to these days? And the figures quoted above are strange too and easily open to being misunderstood.
Are the 5% of people "annoyed" annoyed because the graves have been discovered or because the Migrants were murdered? The same with the 32% "angry". What exactly are they angry about?
And how come there are secret concentration camps for Muslims in a cross border region predominantly Muslim? Are the secret camps a new way of dealing with migrants rather than towing their boats out to sea and abandoning or sinking them, according to some accounts, as the Thai military are reputedly supposed to have done in the past?
Thailand and Malaysia are masters of subterfuge and misinformation even by normal bourgeois standards, I suppose should anyone ask too many questions about what has gone on here and who is responsible the idea of "dark forces" would be mentioned again.
Yes of course there are dark forces in Thailand and Malaysia, to name but two S. East Asian countries, and these forces of course are bourgeois supported just as IS is.
But if you can read Malaysian Tagore2 perhaps you could explain a bit more about what's going on here.
I cannot read Malaysian, I use an automatic translator (Google Translate).
The information seems credible because it is consistent with the drownings in the Mediterranean.
"The Start" offers the opportunity to the readers to give their feelings about the article. Currently, 9% of readers declared themselves "happy" with this new, 2% "inspired," and 3% "amused" (so currently 14%, it varies).
I think that the reactions to the article are as important as the article itself.
Believe me: there are many people in Europe who support the drownings, and there will be no alternative but submitting them by Terror during the revolution.
It seems that the mass graves are due to the increased repression against the smugglers.
Indeed the migration is caused by objective factors inherent in capitalism as persecution, poverty and war. An illegal market is created, as was the case for the Jews during the Second World War.
However the crossing is risky, as much for immigrants who may be sent back where they came from as for the smugglers who risk being jailed. In addition the risk is very variable: if the police are present at the wrong time in the wrong place, crossing may become impossible in the middle of the path.
So what do the smugglers? They save their life. They planned an escape route for them and them alone. They abandon immigrants to their fate, sometimes condemning them to a certain death.
Refugees are “in excess” in capitalist society. They can't find work wherever they are, because of persecution or war, or they live in misery. They try to find a place where they would not be “in excess”. But they are in excess everywhere. They are pushed back everywhere and by everyone. So what they do if they do not drown themselves in Mediterranean or not starve in the jungle? They will die elsewhere.
It is no wonder that the Nazis exterminate the Jews, since they could not throw them out. Nobody wanted to welcome them, and in addition, the English, the Russians and the Americans forced them to return to the Axis's territories. (see for example the MV Struma, the MS St. Louis, the SS Navemar, or the MV Mefküre histories). If the crisis and the war continue to worsen on the one hand, and if the capitalists continue to repress smuggling and immigrants on the other, then it would happen the same thing for the refugees in Syria or Iraq (or in Libya or Thailand).
Isis already has a Nazi mentality, and Islamists are the same guys as the Nazis. If refugees could not escape, they would be exterminated.
Refugees are certainly in excess already as you say Tagore, and keep increasing daily. They are not alone in being in excess however. Millions of workers are also in excess throughout Europe and in many other parts of the world. In a way people are just a tiresome embarrassment for capitalism and interfere with what it would see as its smooth running. They don't buy sufficient of the goods it produces and don't even consume all the food it has for sale even though on the edge of starvation themselves. They become an increasing inconvenience to the smooth running of capitalist society, never having sufficient money to cope with all their needs for food, shelter, health, education and so on, and frequently nowadays not having a job at all or even any money.
There are far too many people who don't properly fit in. War is the solution. During the Second World War everyone was kept busy fighting and killing each other and trying to say alive in the midst of all the necessary destruction. This was good. The world's population was both reduced and disciplined by the war and kept in an appropriate and totally submissive order. A military war discipline was maintained. Food distribution was controlled through rationing and everyone was assured of barely enough to live on but enough to keep going.
But with the end of the war, with the great blossoming of the atomic clouds over a recalcitrant Japan, like some newly discovered exotic bloom of deathly beauty, the proper functioning of capitalism was restored. The world was flooded with commodities, high tech was developing, people had TV, others had enough money to consume the tincelly goods on sale, and capitalism prospered and the world was at a kind of peace; enough at least to satisfy the needs of the rate of profit to grow. This was the good side of the coin. The reverse was the re-emergence of a perpetually discontented and ever grumbling working class internationally. The discipline imposed during the war was lost, and chaos gradually set in.
Capitalism has had problems in dealing with this. But it does finally begin to seem that capitalism has at last prevailed once more in 2015. Workers have at last seen sense and buckled under. Unemployment is falling. Discipline and control and the forces of law and order impose themselves unchallenged. Those who disagree are kept under tight scrutiny or even under lock and key. And "Order is Restored" to quote that great social democratic reformer Rosa Luxembourg, speaking at the end of World War One.
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Kill Hitler!
Fiela! Fiela! (“Clean up!”, “Sweep!”, “Clear out!”)
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“Juden raus!”
"Clean out the Rubbish"