Banksy buys a "rescue boat" to save migrants in the med

Banksy has funded a rescue boat to save refugees encountering danger in the Mediterranean Sea.
The boat, named the Louise Michel, was bought with proceeds from some of the Bristol street artist's works.
It has already carried out a number of rescue missions, taking on board 89 people from a rubber boat on Tuesday, according to its Twitter account.
The vessel features a painting depicting a young girl holding on to a heart-shaped safety float

Banksy repainted the former French Navy boat in distinctive white and pink and launched it under its new guise last week.
The Louise Michel is named after a 19th Century French anarchist and is captained by a professional crew with a "flat hierarchy and a vegan diet".
The vessel's mission statement is "to uphold maritime law and rescue anyone in peril without prejudice".
"We on board the Louise Michel believe we are all individuals, nationality should not make a difference to what rights one has and how we treat each other," it says on its website.
"We answer the SOS call of all those in distress, not just to save their souls - but our own."

According to UN data, 443 people have died or gone missing attempting to cross the Mediterranean from north Africa so far in 2020.
Just over 40,000 have arrived in Europe by sea during the same period.
Banksy's representatives have been contacted for comment.

How do you have a captain in a flat hierarchy?

It could certainly prove amusing when someone needs to decided which way to steer the boat, or which migrant taxi to rescue . It all sounds like a frightfully middle class sjw endeavour that will be doomed to failure from the outset. Not least because an artist is not exactly a font of knowledge on sea rescue outside of cutting a cheque.

The vessel's mission statement is "to uphold maritime law and rescue anyone in peril without prejudice".

Michel is rolling in her grave.

An amusingly bland publicity stunt, if nothing else.
Naming the boat after a terrorist ally and putting such emphasis on the crew being 'vegans'


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-53949831

It does sound awfully like something that middle class kids will start doing with their gap year instead of finding themselves in Asia or South America

Better than no boat possibly saving 89 people.

True this is the wrong end of the problem to be solving, these are the consequences of terrorism and foreign military intervention and economic migrants using people smugglers

The milk has been spilled already. The only way now to stop this is to send back absolutely anyone who has not come from a real war region, and make sure such person loses money on the whole journey. If you make the effort up to them I've heard of a scheme of sending people back with money so could come back with honor to their neigbourhood- absolutely wrong! They indeed should lose their honor, so noone else from there would try the same idea!

I'm not exactly sympathetic with real war refugees either. I know sometimes there is such a great confusion and such a huge mix of fighting parties you can't really do anything, but it's not the case for all these wars. Not even in Syria. It was only possible to push back ISIS, because some people stayed there and fought back. In case of Kurds, even women and elderly people. Guess you all heard of Kurdish female soldiers. Fewer people heard of the Immortal Uncle from Kobane, a 70 years old who's all sons were killed and he still fought back with machinegun in his hands, or an elderly Albanian, Rifat Horoz, who went to Syria to fight against ISIS and gave his life repelling their attack on Kobane.

I am fully in support of controlled immigration. I am not in support of some virtue signalling ‘celeb’ taking it upon himself to help out. What does he suppose will happen when they get to this country? That’s what annoys me the most about this. All these left wing idiotic celebrities are all well and good preaching about letting immigration happen, however then wash their hands of it once people get here. I suppose Banksy was going to put them all up, was he?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53959554
Update on the Louise Michel's 'adventures.' 4 dead.

I can't believe that the people behind this don't know exactly what they are doing.

They need to tell people the truth though, that while there is a really good and logical case that removing borders will make the world more equal and fair, it will do so by lowering the living standards in the developed world, to raise them in the developing/3rd world. The west comes down a step, everywhere else comes up a step, and equality is achieved. They know what will happen when they tell people this though.. so they don't.

Really?

In fairness to this i dont think most people really care about equality and fairness in this regard. Nobody wants hordes of foreigners marching into the country to, in this case, literally take peoples jobs, destroy the social welfare system and public utilities and bring all sorts of problems with them.
Borders might well be a modern invention but the world has changed beyond recognition since then, not least due to the population explosion. The people in the west don't want to lose their standard of living (a completely reasonable position to take) but there are more realistic ways that wont end up with pogroms than welcoming the worlds masses through the front door.
I would be interested to hear how these sorts try to justify their view point, outside of some weird moralising though.

I dont disagree with you but the highlighted could be problematic as much of the ME, Asia and Africa these people come from is indeed in a state of conflict, if not open war then most have some form of ongoing insurgency.

Personally i'd want to see a bit more clarity added, i.e. those coming from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Libya and those in that vein be allowed in (after all we have a moral duty on those ones now) and the ones seeking economic gain from Africa, SE Asia and so on be put on the next plane back.

That all being said its damn tricky deporting people back as many don't come with documents and, not to put too fine a point on it, it tends to be tricky to guess where someone comes from based solely on looks.

I can't believe that the people behind this don't know exactly what they are doing.

They know this will cause more people to attempt to cross.. they might not say it on TV, but they know it - and that's fine. The people at the top of this ideological chain are hardcore no-border types. I've a few friends who are in this camp, lovely people, but they fully support the idea of a border-less world. I must admit, the it is an interesting arguement, and on a hypothetical level it raises a lot of good questions...