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PressTV Interview with Peter Koenig and Max Civili, PressTV Correspondent in Rome

Background

Anger is simmering over Italy’s refusal to let in migrants plucked from the sea. A German rescue charity organization says it will take legal action against the Italian government for violating international law.

The organization says it will file petition in courts in two Italian cities of Rome and Catania. That after Italy barred around 200 migrants to get off a rescue ship in Catania. Prior to that, Italian authorities let in 144 vulnerable passengers on board a German-flagged vessel, while refusing to accept others. Those allowed to disembark were children and the sick. The ship was then ordered to leave the port of Catania. Italy is now facing criticism for its selective approach toward receiving migrants. Human rights groups have called on Rome to stop discrimination. They say the law of the sea requires that all rescued migrants should be disembarked in a safe place. Hello hi

Introduction

Italy is being accused of Human Rights abuse by refusing the refugees of a migrant boat – German flagged – to disembark in Catania, Sicily.

In reality, the refugee question is much more complex than just one of human rights. Yes, HRs are always used to shut up critical analysts.  Because who would dare say anything against human rights? As presented with the refugee issue, human rights is a multifaceted issue.

The Meloni government has said from the beginning that Italy would accept refugees with health problems, women, especially pregnant women, and children.

Following government-ordered summary “vulnerability” assessments by two doctors selected by the authorities, 144 people from the rescue vessel “Humanity 1” and 357 people from the “Geo Barents” were allowed to disembark in Catania. They were mainly women, children, and men with physical health problems.

Not all of the refugees have health problems; and many of the refugees pay dearly to be rescued by so-called humanitarian NGOs, many of which are Europeans, to be ferried to southern European harbors.

This doesn’t mean, they are not suffering politically and / or economically. To the contrary. And they deserve a better future. But the EU refugee system is wantonly unequal.

Many of the NGOs behind these refugee boats are not even from the countries from where the refugees come. They are Europeans, some of them Germans.

The unelected EU Commission in Brussels – a band of shady politicians – is always dancing on various fiestas at the same time, they learned well from the US.

On the one hand, they want to debilitate / punish right wing EU governments, by directing refugees towards these countries, now Italy, but also Greece — and who knows maybe soon also Portugal and even Spain.

Why?

Because these countries do not follow the “neoliberal left”, meaning the Washington and WEF-imposed globalist agenda.

The “left” in the Global North has been hijacked by the globalists, and most of the left – and the rest of the people haven’t even noticed yet.

On the other hand – the refugee issue absorbs a lot of resources, money, infrastructure, care personnel… and it is debilitating countries. And that’s precisely what Brussels want. The refugee issues have always been used to divide countries, groups of countries, in this case the EU – and even continents.

As crazy as it may sound, the EU’s agenda is to destroy the EU – to follow the globalist dictate of Washington and the WEF.

A One World Order cannot tolerate a united block of 27 countries, whose combined GDP may be competing with the one of the hegemon, the US of A.

Then, there is the controversy of the European double standard.

Look at refugees from Ukraine. They have all the rights and get whatever they want in Europe and the Global North in general. Many – of course not all, by far – flee their war-torn country in luxury cars westwards – where they are received literally with open arms. They receive free housing, food, medical care. Many are way better off, then the poor of the recipient countries.

Ukraine has just been granted an 18-billion-euro grant for “budget support” — a subsidy for the country and her citizens. This is in addition to the almost 100 billion dollars in weaponry Ukraine received from the West to fight Russia.

Compare this with the nothing, zero, zilch – the poor and often destitute North African and Middle East countries, receive from where the refugee boats arrive at southern European ports.

If the size of “subsidies” Ukraine receives, was to flow to North Africa and the Middle East, maybe the refugee crisis could be resolved.

But the north doesn’t want to resolve it.  They want to continue exploiting it.

See this interview.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video