Courtney McGrailDear Editor, The plug has been pulled from the continent of Africa and the flow of humanity from there to Europe will never end until the rich world realises that it is the cause of a situation so dreadful as to cause the people to risk their all, their families, their homes, their money, their very lives for a chance to find a better life.
The rich world knows that the colonisation of Africa (or any other colonisation) was not an altruistic endeavour, but rather a determined rape of the primary wealth of those countries. Of course, the source of the wealth of Europe was the product of colonisation.
When the rich world realises that European domestic pets often eat more and better food than most Africans; when the rich world realises that the economic policies it follows cause poverty, cause population growth, cause desertification, cause the environmental crisis we now face and many other of the world’s ills. When the rich world realises that this economic system founded as it is on human greed and fed on the desire for more and better, cannot bring stability or security to humanity, then perhaps we will find a new way.
Ireland and the Scandinavian countries seem to have found more egalitarian systems which could be adapted, but the blueprint for a better life was written 2,000 years ago by the world’s most famous teacher.
Yours etc.,
Michael Auret,
Birr,
Co. Offaly.