Letter to Online Defense: Tafazziana araba phoenix

16/05/20

Dear director, a few days ago I had the opportunity to read the editorial by Marco Travaglio entitled "All Covid is a country". An interesting editorial that starting from the proverb, a little self-absolving, "The whole world is a country", highlights how it is correct for every citizen to claim that their country can be better than others.

The history of covid-19 in our country has, after all, shown that Italy was not the disaster that some arrogant politicians and jackals wanted to believe and this in light of what happened in other countries that, let's not forget , had the advantage of having our country as a comparison element from which to take advantage. France, Belgium or the UK, despite the declarations of the Minister of Health, do not seem to have done who knows what wonders to deal with the pandemic.

Once I finished reading, I took pen and paper, as it was once said, and I thought of writing to you because it helped me to reflect, extremely, on how delicate, important, dangerous, sneaky, transparent, and we could find a ' another dozen adjectives, data and communicate information.

Marco Travaglio is a journalist with whom, often, in the past, I have not found myself in tune but who, almost always, says what he thinks, not so common. One of his "defects", a friend of mine would say, is to contest the most radical and, at times, too simplistic statements, which, by now too often, we listen to, uniting with these, on the contrary, serious and concrete proposals. This editorial highlights the two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, the comparison with other countries to highlight the goodness of what Italy is doing, perhaps in a polemical and not very constructive way, reducing the political debate to this simplification that hides, instead, the complexity that the government is looking for to deal with and to which many are contributing with serious and concrete proposals, hiding, for example, the greatest delays in the government in carrying out more massive tests that can allow companies to reopen in greater safety. 

On the other hand, instead, it focuses on the need to contain as much as possible, protecting the most fragile. Being aware that unfortunately for a while we will not completely stop this virus, and what every society has to do is find the best balance between health risk (understood as the number of deaths and not of infected people) and recovery of activity, the blockage of which is creating serious discomforts in the weaker sections of the population (let's not forget that in Italy the education rate is low, therefore people who can do 'smart working' is not that high).

Having made this premise, however, personally, I agree with Travaglio in this analysis, undoubtedly summary but which I consider effective.

Now why this long antiphon?

I want to clarify that I don't have so many elements to know exactly how things are going in other countries but I have colleagues and friends who tell me about extremely critical situations, absolutely comparable to those that we experienced between February and March. I prefer to believe these rather than what certain media tell us because the news we hear should always be taken with the benefit of inventory, often driven by media and political looting. It is a fact, however, that the situation is difficult everywhere and that nobody has the magic medicine to solve the problem. Just look at what's going on in China, in the Wuhan area, or in Korea where another outbreak has arisen.

As I got to write in another article, just on Covid-19 and on the way in which an epidemic expands whether it is a virus or whether it is a digital content, communication, alas, is the mother of all problems. Whoever communicates has a huge responsibility towards the entire universe. Communicating incorrectly or intentionally incorrectly, leads to influence for better or for worse the way of life, the feeling of people, the ability to believe or not believe, habits, ways of behaving and, in a single word, the ecosystem in which we live.

It is extremely instructive and, at the same time, terrible what he writes Brittany Kaiser, former director of business development at Cambridge Analytica, in the book "The dictatorship of data":

  • "And so, I had found myself part of the major operation conducted by Cambridge Analytica, which consisted of collecting as much data as possible about US citizens and exploiting them to influence the voting intentions of Americans. I could have realized how inadequate the rules on Facebook's privacy and the federal government's total lack of control over personal data made this possible. But above all, I understood that Cambridge had used his resources to get Donald Trump elected. "
  • "They know what you are buying. They know who your friends are. They know how to manipulate you. Seventy likes were enough to know about that person more than his friends knew; one hundred and fifty likes more than what his parents knew; three hundred likes more than his partner. Over three hundred people were able to get to know an individual better than he knew himself. "

Those who have not yet understood it would do well to speed up the process of understanding otherwise democracy and our own lives will be affected.

The influence of communication has taken on enormous levels and, in some ways, unexpected if we think only a few years ago and this is due to the fact that the population that, since it does not read, does not deepen and does not study, drinks anything, believes to those who speak in the belly, shout slogans but have no substance.

Communication on the one hand and ignorance on the other are a devastating and explosive mixture with which our country feeds on massive doses.

I like to remember a sentence from Nelson Mandela: "Education is the most powerful weapon that can be used to change the world"

Unfortunately, it seems that this is not the case because it is enough to look at the recklessness of the sexist, racist, vulgar, stinging messages that have been sent to Silvia Romano to fully realize it.

Who are we to say certain things? Who are we to scream, in a qualunquista way, that with 4 million euros you could have bought masks, assistive devices, etc. when are there political parties that must return 49 million to the Italian state? It takes judgment, respect and balance in saying and thinking certain things. Human life, from my point of view, is above all things but now, since everything is worth, we allow ourselves to write and scream anything.

In the flood of social insults against Silvio Romano, there are those who wish for her "capital punishment". The post appears on a group that collects the 'Muslims of Italy'. “This is not a religious conversion but a political attack on our nation and our Europe - reads - People like her should be executed in American states where capital punishment exists. Now the Italian sheep cheer on the return. But what a return! Do they not realize that they sent us an ISIS cell in perfect cover? ". This post also ends up being examined by the Milan prosecutor's office which is investigating serious threats against unknown persons. There are also groups like 'Silvia Romano return the money'in which the thesis, at the moment without any foundation, of the agreement between the cooperator and her robbers is endorsed.

Among the post shocks against the young Italian worker there is that of a municipal councilor from Asolo (Treviso), Nico Basso, who posted a photo of Silvia and wrote "hang her" below. Basso, a 'venetista' group leader of the "Towards the future", former councilor of the municipal council of the city of Treviso, immediately deleted the post, which was accompanied by other messages of hatred and vulgar offenses to the young Italian aid worker freed in Somalia after 18 months in captivity.

We can discuss everything but correctly and calmly and instead not. Here it would serve the state and it would be enough to enforce the law and send to jail the keyboard lions of the "far web" that insult everyone because, according to these "people", digital is a world where you can afford to say and do everything. The law also applies in the digital world, dear my keyboard lions.

Mistakes have been made and many will still be made. And not only the government but also the scientists made them because this type of science is not "exact" but it is a path that proceeds by successive approximations.

That others are better than us, I don't think. This country is an oxymoron: on the one hand it has the ability to rise from its ashes like a Phoenician Arab, as it has done so many times in the course of its history, and on the other it has a "Tafazziana" tendency to harm itself .

And we, ordinary citizens? We should go back to the origins and to what our Fathers and Grandparents taught us and left us as a legacy to be preserved for us and for our children. If we don't, we will be destined to destroy that good which is called life.

thank you

Ing. Carlo Mauceli