3500 migrants a year drowning in the Med is unacceptable. It's action time!

There's information on ISO certification of PFDs at http://www.satra.co.uk/spotlight/article_view.php?id=260
I encourage scrolling down to the table for a quick summary.

 

Note that these boats appear to be single chamber. ISO 6185:2014 excludes single-chambered boats and boats made from unsupported materials.

 

But do you really believe that the mafias that organize these trips care that lifejackets comply with ISO?. They use lifejakets to get more money from the "passengers".

 

You think smugglers care about whether a life jacket is ISO?

This is the root cause, corruption and one country interfering in another's affaires:

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/saudi-royals-gave-681m-malaysia-pm-scandal-attorney-040551263.html

 

No refugee will listen to your safety warnings. It‘s easy to see why: the numbers are wrong. This is a report from the UNHCR http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php Statistics for 2015 and january 2016. In 2015 we have around 1 000 000 arrivals and almost 4000 dead. In 2016 we have 46 240 arrivals and 149 dead. That means that in 2015 the rate of success was approx. 99.6%. January 2016 is similar with 99.67%. Let's say you are really ill and your doctor says "this is the cure. It works for 99.6% of the population the other 0.4% end up dead. You can spend your life in misery or risk it." What are you going to do?

Also you do not understand standard bussines practice in that part of the world. People want something, they get what they pay for. They pay crap, they get crap and the rest is in gods hands. Buyer and seller know this and are ok with it. And the statistics prove them right.

To understand the economics of the trade read this article http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...rs-how-will-they-catch-us-theyll-soon-move-on It's older but outlines the trade nicely. You put 300 migrants at 1000$ a piece on a 56 feet fishing boat boat worth 50 000$. Half is payd up front, that means that even if the boat sinks with all hands you still made a gross profit of 100 000 dollars from wich you have to pay your men and your bribes. You think somebody is going to stop and think about safety? Double the number of men double the profit. If you succeed (and you have a very good chance) double the profit again.

If you really want to make an impact you take a boat and patrool the sea in hoping to encounter and rescue the overladen boats. Than you sink the empty migrants boats.

 

In my opinion not complying to SOLAS should be internationally recognized as a crime against humanity, so perpetrators could be world wide brought to justice for this.

 

Humorous: start rumors about Megaladons having returned to the Med, that they are preying on smaller boats, produce a few "samples of their work" plucked from the ocean where the vast bite radius is all too obvious, and also build some ROVs that look like giant (50' - 70') sharks to be seen on occasion visibly patrolling the area off the African and Middle Eastern coast.

 

Yes, let's turn occasionally careless but otherwise innocent, ordinary boaters into criminals.

 

Justice should judge if it's just occasionally careless but otherwise innocent or a crime against humanity.

 

Right. So once again we need to create a vast governing agency, staffed and provided with police powers adequate to its authority, to venture forth and harass everyone ... because we all know that no agency of that sort ever is content with a relatively modest mission (and besides that, profiling is bad) when job security and power lay in being all they can be.

 

I'll borrow Sam's response from somewhere else on this one, as it seems to be quite appropriate here . . .

 

Rurudyne and I seem to have been tarred by the same brush. My thought was to charge the coyotes for getting fake news reports of drowning and abuse broadcast in the media. That way the fees will go up and fewer will try to go it alone without the coyotes. Its better than having actual abuse driving the price up (and reporting on the abuse of real people). It's basically advertising, and no different from what the drug companies are doing as far as creating demand for a product.

When you catch a smugglers boat, send it back full of life jackets. You can get stale dated but new ones from cruise ships for free (by the thousands, but you would eventually run out). Returning the serviceable jackets that have already made the trip would help. The cost of getting caught is having your life jacket profits plummet. Charging refugees $100 for a jacket that I can buy new for $5 does reveal quite a bit about this business. How do you think they are keeping the price that high?

 

There are no such people as Refugees in todays World, they are all Invaders out to crush Christion Religion which itself, is a path to self distruction and that is happening all over the World as you must be able to see for yourself.

 

Actually, it's more akin to the ability of national governments to deal with such situations without the added costs or risks associated with mad schemes new layers of government.

Let national governments enforce things like SOLAS as they please.

 

I agree that religion is one of the worst afflictions of mankind, but I don't think refugees flee their respective third world **** holes with any conscious intention to crush Christianity. I believe that they might eventually swamp Christianity and smother it with an equally absurd religious superstition of their own, but it's not the main reason for emigration.