This is not the first time in recent months that illegal migrants making the desperate journey to Italy have drowned on the way.

Sicily and the islands surrounding are hotspots for illegal immigrants arriving by sea from Tunisia, Libya and sub-Saharan Africa hoping for a better quality of life and employment.



Recently, following continued violence in the country, a growing number of Syrian immigrants have fled to the region hoping for protection from the raging civil war.



Often the immigrant’s desperate journey ends in tragedy.



Last month six migrants died after they jumped out of a boat off the coast of Sicily.

Some 100 migrants where aboard a boat when it hit a sandbank close to the shore.



Six perished as they tried to swim to land.

In July seven drowned after they tried to hold onto a fishing cage which was being towed to shore off the coast of Sicily.

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This is not the first time I write about this boating shame, where people, who attempt to leave their troubled impoverished countries, board ‘make believe’ boats hoping to make it to a better place, hoping to secure a life for themselves.

I have touched upon this many times and I would have skipped the article if it were not for the caption under the picture that states

‘Horror: Rescuers pause to pay their respects to the 13 victims of the tragedy’

I found this caption appalling for a few reasons, the words I want to discuss, in order are ‘Horror’ and ‘Victims of the Tragedy’ because we need to see through the words we use to stop what is going on, we can’t take responsibility for something that we treat like a ‘natural disaster’ and we must stop to treat such occurrences like a natural disaster because they are not ‘natural’ but far from it, they are man-made, avoidable circumstances that we can change, that we can address and prevent, so WHY Dont’ WE?

People are living their countries due to their miserable, unbearable conditions, I live in the entry point to Europe, Italy, we have set up special task teams to tackle ‘this problem’, rescuers that should confine those that touch land to specific places until their papers are sorted out. I won’t even talk about this because there is no way anyone who comes in without documents can get themselves effectively ‘sorted out’, that is not why we have those segregation points, we want to keep them at bay, away from the rest of the civilized society of which we are a part – apparently to make sure they don’t take anything from us. Anything of value of course, things we believe we are the only ones entitled to, like a job, food, a place to live, like a Life.

All the miserable conditions of North African and the Middle Eastern Countries exist due to this insane Global economic system, many countries are being exploited and mined for resources or have become the targets of nonsensical wars in the name of Freedom and Democracy or both.

But whose Freedom and whose Democracy is the world worried about? It must not be the one of the people coming from these abused countries, they have no freedom nor democracy, they did not vote to be exploited and what is left of their freedom, is the freedom to attempt to leave behind their lives -or die trying.

The Horror is not that those people died, many die everyday at sea and we never hear about them, many will die, many have died and yet the Horror we say we feel lasts just the time to ‘Pay our respects to the Dead’.

That’s quite Horrific.

What does this even mean? How do we respect the Dead?

Say a Little Prayer?

Ask God to watch out for them in the AfterLife?

WHY are we not considering respecting the Living, how are we not considering to turn this Horror into an opportunity for Change?

It is quite amazing to see the worship of the Dead in the face of what we do -and seem keen to keep doing- to the Living.

So, I have a humble suggestion to make, instead of Paying Our Respect to the Dead – which is as useful as praying and as pointless as being horrified, why don’t we pay a Living Income Guaranteed to All?

Why don’t we make Life the thing we pay Our Respect to, yes, changes will be required, paying our Respect to Life will mean a full-time job, we won’t be able to get away with a little ‘pause’ for respect to Life, because to turn this world into a Guaranteed Living for All we have work to do, pausing is what we have done so far, we have been pausing while we waited for an external, supernatural, alien solution and it ain’t coming, isn’t this clear by now?

So, there is no purpose or any sense in the deification of Death while we poo-poo Life away, a system change in the direction of Life was never written, it’s not written yet but it’s in the making, Stand up to give Authority to it, Authorize a different world by no longer supporting this one with its lies and embellishment of what we are doing that is wasting Life away, while we call the people we murder -within a system that is perfectly correctable- ‘victims of tragedy’, which they are in a way, they are victims of the Tragedy of our unwillingness to stand up for a Change that will benefit All, but this too can be corrected, this too can change, we can change, turn our back to the ‘respect for death’ to embrace the Respect for Life as a Human Right, the basic indisputable and non negotiable Right of every living Being.

Join us @ Living Income Guaranteed (#LIG), the Solution Exists, if you are not part of it – you are still part of the problem. Wake Up.

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