Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/11/italy-gives-boot-to-629-desper.html
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Spain is a beautiful country, and I’m not talking about their cathedrals.
Sympathies to the Italians who didn’t vote for xenophobic assbags. I know the feeling.
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Mussolini would be proud.
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The terrible crime of being born in the wrong country.
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About par for the human quality of Salvini and the Lega Nord for the Independence of Padania. They have a long, infamous history of racism, first against Southern Italians, then against Eastern European immigrants, now against migrants from Africa and the Middle East. A thoroughly detestable party, likely voted by the original deplorables of Italy
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Ironically some of those folks are from countries which were once colonized by Italy under Mussolini.
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Right-wing populists seem intent on giving us a re-run of the 1930s.
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Time to cancel their program, and make sure it never hits syndication.
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it’s “under the yoke”, not “yolk” lol
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I keep hoping the echoes are faint ones but it gets hard some days.
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Populists gotta pop.
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Indeed, Spain is a lovely country full of lovely people. I heartily recommend spending a vacation there.
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And I wonder why that happened.
That account is posting names and pictures of the entire passenger manifest.
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FDR was responsible for that. A Liberal Democrat.
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Give it another thirty boats or so.
Apparently it’s not that simple in practice.
“Lack of food, bad weather conditions, Spanish harbor too far away: in the face of emergency, the executive council of Corsica offers @SOSMedFrance to welcome the #Aquarius in a Corsican harbor.”
Might be political posturing, of course, but in the current climate, that’s bold.
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Seems they will reach Valencia after all, just not in the Aquarius. They will be transfered to other ships.
If I may digress a little…
I was born in Venezuela. My parents were Spanish inmigrants. At the time they decided to leave Spain, it was a dictatorship, but dont kid yourself; almost nobody on my parents’s generation migrated due to political issues. They were fleeing the misery and poverty that was the daily life in rural Galicia at the time.
A lot of our neighbourghs and friends were Italian. Even if Italy was a democracy at the time, they also decided it was a better idea for them and their families to flee poverty in Italy to the golden promise of tropical Venezuela.
They prospered (with, as it is logic, a few exceptions). They managed to send money back home when needed. They kept dreaming of coming back till they realized they had too much ties, too much time, too much life lived as to be able to move away easily.
And now with the awful situation in Venezuela, they and their sons and grandsons are leaving, again, for Europe. Like me. With the great gift that it is to have a Spanish, Italian, Portuguese… passport. But with a pain in their hearts. Because now they are in Europe, feeling for Venezuela the same painful longing they felt there for their homes in Europe.
That we, as a people, Spaniards, Italians, Europeans, cant look at our past as economic migrants and feel, deep in our hearts, that those coming to our shores now are the same as we were, moved by hope and fear to try, with pain in their hearts, to find a new decent life far away from home. That we cant remember how a letter from abroad with money and news was such a bitter sweet thing for many families in Spain or Italy, thankful for their loved ones efforts but sad to have them so far away. That we who where insulted for being job-stealers and bumpkins that were lowering the life of the countries we were reaching, and yes, that happened, even if not as sharp as it happens now with this people from Africa and the Middle East (being white always help, but it was precisely may very white people that decided that somehow I was to be ashamed to be called a gallego), that we who saw and lived that or know relatives who did, are now empowering pieces of shit fascist like the Lega and screaming about how inmigration is destroying our countries…
That is so shameful I just cant deal with it.
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Yes. Liberal democrats have learned about the wages of xenophobia since then; right-wing populists, not so much.
The latter group is more likely to see reason and take a more moderate and internationalist approach than is the former. Western countries electing right-wing populist governments that exploit and stir up xenophobia help no-one* and sow the seeds for a future refugee crisis originating closer to home.
[* no, not by scaring moderates into action; “the worse the better” requires a lot of needless misery]
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Spain not being “on the migration path” is a bit misleading.
We have been on the “migration path” before - we arent now because the “launchpad” is Libya, which of course mean the closest destination is Italy.
Interestingly enough, the fascist Italian Minister was refering to the “heavy handed” approach of Spain… because we actually have a land frontier at Ceuta and Melilla. And our conduct there has been less than good. Another thing the Sánchez government should change, IMHO.
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