Fifty souls, probably migrants or labourers, have perished in the Sahara after a lorry overturned in the blistering heat. The UK, in a fit of predictable moral panic, now calls for 'urgent UN desert safety protocols'. One must admire the sheer absurdity: the same government that champions border control and offshore processing now suddenly discovers humanitarian concern for the world's harshest wilderness.
This is not tragedy; it is farce. The Sahara has always been a graveyard for the desperate. Rome had its Germanic tribes pressing at the frontiers; we have our economic refugees.
The only difference is that we pretend such deaths are aberrations, not the logical outcome of a system that treats human life as cargo. The UN will convene, issue statements, and nothing will change. Because the real problem is not the lack of safety protocols.
The real problem is that we in the West have built a world where crossing a desert is a better bet than staying home. And we call that progress.
