The Banality of Stupidity

Just last week, a terrible flood invested the Liguria Region in northern Italy causing about 10 victims. At that time I wrote a post in this blog evidencing that the main causes of this catastrophe are to be found in the mis-management of the territory, the speculations, the incapability of local and national authorities and institutions in designing, planning and implementing adequate strategies for land and rivers management.

While writing that post, I received the news from the weather reports about hard rains for the next week. So I deliberately decided not to write anything in this blog, leaving in evidence that post: this was just an experiment.

As expected new floods have hit Liguria in particular Genoa: everything was quite predictable, but now we have to count  4 victims more.

That's the experiment's result: without writing anything, a post written one week before (and in theory out-to-date), has become automatically a timely comment (up-to-date). This is to say that Italy (I have renamed it "The Land of Chaos") is so easily predictable above all for the stupidity of its politicians and local adminsitrators. In theory I could leave this comment  as well till the end of this winter-the beginning of the next spring to always provide this blog with a timely comment about natural disasters. The banality of stupidity.

 To do this, it is not necessary to be a magician. Everyone in Italy perfectly knows that all the regions in the Land of Chaos are so devastated that just a little shower may provoke a disaster with a large number of potential victims.

The lack of any kind of territorial planning, the myopia in land managiement ,the anarchy in constructions and in building, leaving entire areas in the hands of speculators, unskilled and unable local and national administrators maybe created a small richness in the short run, but a catastrophe in the long run.

In TV nobody talks about the real causes of these disasters which cannot be ascribed only to Nature. The main responsibilities still remain in the criminal behaviours of politicians who have the duty to foster local and national well-being. But when, under their responsibility, rivers become sewers, woods and forests are cancelled, waste are disposed without controls, everyone feels the liberty to build everywhere and in any way he/she likes without permissions and controls, in brief when everything is done with no rules, all this is just a time bomb under the bottom of the people living in that area. It's just a matter of chance and time.

We have also terrible problems about earthquakes prevention and the case of the areas near the Vesuvius where at least 400.000 people live... Another examples of the banality of stupidity.