The bl**dy UNHCR

[Workingman]

Another boat, this time with 700 on board, has capsized. Twenty ships of varying types and three helicopters are involved in the recovery.

The coastline of Libya is about 2,000km long, but we do not have to patrol all of it. We could easily identify where these rickety craft are leaving from and set up a no-sail zone so that once the craft leave territorial waters they are picked up and sent back. If the traffickers move the departure points we move the no-sail zone.

It would be simpler, cheaper, and a better use of resources than the current methods. It would also save lives.

[KateLMead]

The thought of what is happening world wide mortifies me. Murder death and destruction
and along with the destruction,the fear and cold hearted abuse perpetuated by the sub humans who murder and cause the deaths of thousands
The answer in my opinion is to get the gang masters there and here and put them out of action in whatever way is necessary, no one can tell me they are unknown? You cannot blame the people trying to escape from the horrors they are experiencing and fearing. And to carry babies and children onto these death boats shows how desperate they are.. I am anti the influx of thousands of immigrants entering this country, but my heart bleeds for the children and their futures, tell me what is the answer.

[Workingman]

Last night, around midnight, Sky News website was reporting that possibly 700 people had drowned.

Reports from Italian and EU representatives were that "It was a plague on Europe" and that "We need to stop the boats leaving". There was talk of a blockade and intervention in Libya to halt the people traffickers - in other words going in and taking them out.

Today all that is gone: missing. We are now back to a meeting of Ministers in Luxembourg and plenty of European "Mea culpa" nonsense. Total rubbish! It is time for our politicians to realise that prevention is better than the cure.

[pederito1]

You would think that with the democratic paradise created by Cameron`s and the yanks bombing at vast cost to us, no one would want to leave Libya.

[KateLMead]

There was no unrest on the surface but it was certainly there when we lived in Sirte, Europeans and Libyans worked as a team.we knew what Gaddafi expected there were rules and we obeyed them..

[cromwell]

Some of the hand wringing is imo, just down to the politicians we have now.

They have never done anything; the only thing they have ever done is talk. So when a problem comes up that needs action, they are flummoxed.

I wouldn't let one of these boat people in. Not one. But that approach would mean physically putting them back in the boat and pointing them back to Libya; and our politicians just won't do that, because they recoil from the though of actually having to do something unpleasant and confrontational.

[KateLMead]

Inspite of my radical opinions. I don't think I could turn a boat back with children in it to risk being killed on their return there.

[victor]

so exactly how many is Europe supposed to absorb? 5/10/100 milion?? turn them back


if they are poor how are they paying the people smugglers?

[Suff]

Inspite of my radical opinions. I don't think I could turn a boat back with children in it to risk being killed on their return there.

And there is the problem. These are the very hard decisions that governments have to make. The hardest of all. Because if we do not, then these people who won't stay in their own country and do the very hard work to make it better (which we had to do in our own), will totally destroy our own countries and our families lives. They are not coming to make Our lives better. They are coming to make Their lives better on our effort to create a society which works.

Today it may seem like a humanitarian decision. But in the future these decisions will be weighed on survival. Australia is well aware of this which is why they have such a totally hard nosed attitude to people who try to gate crash their country. The Aussie position is this. We didn't ask them to come and we don't want them, so the country to which they belong to has a responsibility to rescue them and to succour them.

I have the same position. When faced with this I cannot look at the fate of those who brought their own children to this state. I look at my own children and the state they will be in if I do not do MY job and stand firm.

That is the moral dilemma today and it's all backwards. It is not my fault that these children are there dying. It is the fault of their parents! That is what I have to keep in mind.

That is why my post signature says what it does. Freedom is not a right and it doesn't come "Free". It has to be worked for. This is one of the times where our right to freedom and liberty comes with "work". IMO the work is to tell the UN to go take a hike.

If we really have to pull them out of the sea, fine. Then we take them to the first Libyan port and unload them. Or a beach if the Libyan's get testy. Job done, not drowning, not our problem.

[Workingman]

I wouldn't let one of these boat people in. Not one. But that approach would mean physically putting them back in the boat and pointing them back to Libya; and our politicians just won't do that, because they recoil from the though of actually having to do something unpleasant and confrontational.

But in the heat of the moment, when the enormity of what was unfolding before their very eyes in real time sunk in, we did hear, as I pointed out earlier, "It was a plague on Europe" and that "We need to stop the boats leaving". There was also talk of a blockade and "intervention". So we do know that, when off their guard, some of them are thinking what to some is the unthinkable. It is criminal that they do not lay their true hearts on the table once the talking shops open.