Anyone who was in distress at sea - in a sinking boat, a rubber dinghy with a dead engine, a container ship hull, or just floating on debris - and was brought aboard a rescue vessel safe enough to make landfall.

We count them. No paperwork tricks. If they were in danger and now they're not, that's a rescue. Each person = 1 point. No caps. No quotas.

The EU would call them "irregular migrants." We call them people who didn't drown today.

We didn't start this game.

The far right gamified deportation first - points for "remigration," leaderboards for how fast you can push people back out, rewards for making the Mediterranean a graveyard.

All we did was build a faster, better game on the same map. Theirs rewards cruelty. Ours rewards keeping people alive.

If you find the leaderboard uncomfortable, aim that discomfort at the system that made it necessary. The game exists because the boats exist. The boats exist because the borders exist. We're just pointing the scoreboard in a different direction.

You can sponsor gear directly to an NGO partner. Every donation buys real equipment - not overhead, not admin. A fire extinguisher keeps a vessel safe. A lifejacket keeps a person afloat. A drone finds boats that patrols want to miss.

We don't run a fund ourselves. We point you to the people who do the work, and we make sure you can see exactly where your money went.

Transparency isn't a marketing gimmick here. It's the whole point.

Then they've already won.

The league exists to support SAR NGOs - not to rank them, not to judge them, not to create competition where there should be solidarity. If a group doesn't want to be on the leaderboard, they don't sign up. If they prefer to remain anonymous, fine. If they think the whole concept is a dumb gimmick from some art collective - also fine.

But we've talked to enough crew members. Most of them are running on fumes, donated gear, and stubborn hope. If we can get them better radios, more lifejackets, and a thermal drone that lets them scan 10 nautical miles in 15 minutes instead of 3 hours - they'll take it. Even if the leaderboard makes them roll their eyes.

Action first. Optics second.

No. Smugglers exist because of borders.

Take away the walls and the checkpoints and the visa regimes, and the smuggling business model collapses overnight. You can't charge someone EUR 5,000 for a seat in a coffin boat if they can walk across the border freely. The Mediterranean death toll isn't caused by rescue ships - it's caused by a system that has criminalized movement and outsourced border control to the sea.

The question isn't whether rescue encourages migration. The question is whether you'd rather people live or die. If your policy requires drowning to be effective, it's not a policy - it's a cull.

No. The goal is to make this irrelevant.

An Open Borders League only makes sense in a world where people need rescuing at sea because safe routes don't exist. The real win is a Europe that:

• Gives anyone fleeing war, poverty, or climate collapse a legal visa, not a razor wire fence
• Has rescue coordination that actually coordinates instead of letting people die in a designated "search and rescue zone" while patrol boats watch from outside it
• Stops funding border militarization and starts funding the things that actually save lives

When that happens, the leaderboard goes dark. Happy ending.

Until then, we count.

Let's be honest with each other.

What's more cynical: a website that turns rescue into a video game scoreboard, or a European Union that pours billions into border fences, pushback patrols, and "migration management" while people drown 50 kilometers from the nearest port?

We're not the cynics here. We're just building in broad daylight what the system already runs in back rooms. Points for deportation. Bonus for deterrence. "Irregular migration reduction targets" - that's a fucking leaderboard.

At least ours gives out lifejackets.

"Open borders" doesn't mean no rules. It means no deadly rules.

It means a visa you can apply for instead of a smuggler you have to pay. It means a rescue ship instead of a coast guard that tows you back to Libya. It means the right to asylum actually functions instead of being a lottery you have to survive first.

Every country that has tried to fully shut its borders has failed. Every country that has tried humane migration management has found it works better. The numbers are not in dispute. The chaos argument is a scarecrow. The real chaos is what's already happening in the Mediterranean, and it's entirely manufactured.

At this point? Probably nothing good. But that's fine.

The EU has spent 20 years building a border regime that has made the Mediterranean the deadliest migration route on Earth. Tens of thousands dead. Zero accountability. They can call us naive, provocative, or cynical. We'll take it.

But next time a politician stands up and says "we need to stop the boats," ask them: stop them from crossing, or stop them from sinking?

Because you can only do one. If your policy sounds like the second one - you're not stopping anything. You're just counting bodies.