Who’s we that destabilised these countries? Cos I bet you it’s is not the countries that they are sailing to.

If you want to call them refugees then take them home. They are economic migrants where “we” live.

I live were those poor people try to go, and I call them refugees. I also say we, because as a voting citizen of one of those countries that did some of said destabilazing over the years, I cannot wash myself of all responsibility.

I’m starting to think that’s the primary purpose of voting - to get people to feel complicit in actions they didn’t want by people they didn’t want in places they didn’t know existed.

In Switzerland it pretty much works exactly like that.

That, and providing legitimacy to the existing power structures, no matter how much of a say people actually have.

And delegitimising all others forms of feedback and expression.

Than you have a clearly distorted view of democracy. And I do not feel complicit, why would I? But, as part of the Western democratic world, I cannot simply ignore everything we did all over the world in the last 20 odd years and pretend it was some outside force doing all of that. Democracy, regardless of shape in form, is exactly about giving people a voice in those affaires. Which is a good thing, IMHO.

The recent boat that sank was sailing to Italy from Libya, one of its ex-colonies.

France, the UK, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy have each spent a couple centuries having fun destabilising the whole world for their own gain.

The US was a bit late to the game, but appears to have caught up quite well.

And while in Europe these people often first set sail for the western Balkans, it usually isn’t their destination.

You missed Portugal and Germany.

Yes, I did! Sorry about that.

I thought it wise to only mention those whose colonial history I knew about, and avoid exposing my whole point to criticism by over-extending myself.

"We" would be roughly the members of NATO and its allies, former colonial powers and the countries traditionally within the sphere of Catholic influence.

Where are they sailing to that this doesn't cover? The recent example being spoken about in this thread was trying to make it to Italy, which has been involved in various conflicts in the middle east since the middle ages.

All that's awful and I hope we can make it better. That said, the humans on that silly submarine have very little to do with what we are and aren't doing about refugees in the Mediterranean.