The misery of statelessness - Estonia joins the Euro
The carpenter on my first ship, in common with every vessel bearing the red ensign in 1960, was merely known as Chippie. Had he been the ship's electrician he would have been called Leccie. He had little english and no thumb on one hand, I forget which hand bore that loss, he spoke little and wore a deep melancholy, clearly disconnected from his digital impairment, as he was as dextrous as any man I have ever known.
We served together for almost nine months, myself as a lowly first tripper was frequently assigned secondary tasks themselves the main responsibility of the ship's carpenter, so we were quite frequently thrown together. It was only as we approached our home port on the final day of our voyaging together, on my enquiring if he would be taking leave like myself, that I learned he was stateless and thus condemned to stay at sea full time with only occasional breaks between ships in various missions for seamen. He showed me pictures of his family, the members of which he had not seen since before the second world war. I felt at that moment, admittedly only second-hand, but full of excitement and expectation at the prospect of a reunion with my own family, the full misery of what statelessness really meant.
What sad news therefore came at this turning of the years, when Estonia became the seventeenth member of the now clearly doomed Euro currency, itself the intended means whereby the European Union plans to cement itself together and in so doing render all its citizens both stateless, except for its own debased and useless sham citizenship, and more importantly powerless, by the deliberate destruction of 27 once functioning democracies.
The dreadful history of Europe, reflected in the Wikipedia description of Estonia in the link above, should surely be warning enough against continuing with the planned attempt to bind us all closer together, merely to save a currency which serves no useful purpose whatsoever, as is now planned for 2011.
We served together for almost nine months, myself as a lowly first tripper was frequently assigned secondary tasks themselves the main responsibility of the ship's carpenter, so we were quite frequently thrown together. It was only as we approached our home port on the final day of our voyaging together, on my enquiring if he would be taking leave like myself, that I learned he was stateless and thus condemned to stay at sea full time with only occasional breaks between ships in various missions for seamen. He showed me pictures of his family, the members of which he had not seen since before the second world war. I felt at that moment, admittedly only second-hand, but full of excitement and expectation at the prospect of a reunion with my own family, the full misery of what statelessness really meant.
What sad news therefore came at this turning of the years, when Estonia became the seventeenth member of the now clearly doomed Euro currency, itself the intended means whereby the European Union plans to cement itself together and in so doing render all its citizens both stateless, except for its own debased and useless sham citizenship, and more importantly powerless, by the deliberate destruction of 27 once functioning democracies.
The dreadful history of Europe, reflected in the Wikipedia description of Estonia in the link above, should surely be warning enough against continuing with the planned attempt to bind us all closer together, merely to save a currency which serves no useful purpose whatsoever, as is now planned for 2011.
Labels: Estonia
posted by Martin at 9:22 AM
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