Hacker News Reader

Comment by kitsune_ | Hacker News Reader

I can wholeheartedly recommend a documentary called Draquila – L'Italia che trema [1] about the L'Aquila earthquake.

As many of my Italian friends tell me, Italy is an absolutely corrupt shit hole. I remember a scene where they showed recordings of civil protection officials gloating about the disaster on the phone, right after it happened. They talked about the opportunity to make money [2].

The head of the national civil protection service is / was notorious in his blatant abuse of emergency powers to give government contracts (construction) without oversight to his crooked friends.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draquila_%E2%80%93_LItalia_che_...

[2] At the end of the trailer: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/lTyjwBhD9HOI/en/...

View on HN

As an italian I can confirm this, there are many people speculating on this sad events. You can find many articles on the net about how many initiatives to send money often make those money "disappear". When the money actually arrives, the people how need to rebuild often rebuild using cheap material and take the money for them. Some of the cities hitted by quackes many years ago never really recovered and maybe after 20 years a lot of people might be living still in containers.

Whether or not the seismologists gave some kind of reassurance or not, it seems ridiculous to try them for manslaughter.

Perhaps professional incompetence or the like, but it's not as though the town would have done anything different had they said without any provable foundation "a major earthquake is imminent". Seismology is in such infancy that holding people responsible for acts of nature, which state of the art are highly unpredictable, is on the surface, ludicrous. What's next, the meteorologist on trial for getting the forecast wrong about heavy rains which cause floods and damage, etc?

It's reminiscent of the tratment of Galileo.

I agree. When I had first read the title I thought maybe they somehow CAUSED the quake. Definitely got me interested until I actually read the full article. Seems a little overboard the amount of "justice" taken upon them.

Not all of Italy, only the South. That's why the biggest party in the north is a secessionist party. A lot of cool stuff comes out of the North, like Arduino.

This is bullshit, let me tell you. Corruption is everywhere in Italy: North AND South. Public sector AND Private sector. I am Italian, from the North, I lived in Milan for years and I am married with a woman from Rome: I know what I'm saying...

Not agreeing or disagreeing with you, as I have no idea about this, but I'm not sure being Italian is evidence that you are an expert on Italian corruption...

Corruption in Italy is hardwired in the behavior of people and their approach to life. It's enough to live in Italy for a long enough time to understand how people reason and why corruption is so widespread.

Obviously, being Italian doesn't make me an expert in corruption from a legal point of view, but I am pretty positive to know a bit about Italian mentality and facts confirm that corruption is as common in the North as it is in the South (I can cite my sources, if necessary.)

"Expert" is a relative term. He may not know all the intricate details. But having to live in the system he has first-hand knowledge, and not being part of the system (apparently) he has no personal reason to hide its dirty secrets. Also, his experience is likely to be typical for other people like him. This, I would say, makes him a great source. Then if an "expert" wants to perform a scientific study or in-depth journalistic investigation or some other thing "experts" are supposed to do, the said expert would need to contact him and other like him, for knowledge. Which he, thankfully, has freely shared with us here.

Chances of an Italian being an expert on Italian corruption far outweigh the chances of other nationalities being experts on that subject.

So even if it isn't ironclad evidence it definitely moves the posterior probability towards 'expert'.

I lived in the Veneto for 4 years, and I would say the north is definitely corrupt. I've seen business people turning up at the commune to hand over bags full of cash without uttering a single word. Places of business burnt down because they the owners didn't have "approval" from the right people. Council officials just blatantly asking for money to make something happen. Try buying a house in the Veneto, you have to do it illegally.

Also, I bumped into a lot of Lega Nord people (the secessionist party) while I lived there and generally found them to be little more than racists and fascists. When I had to obtain my Permesso di Soggiorno, a group of us, all english turned up on the same day. We were all given 2 year stamps, except my black friend. They would only give him 6 months. I found the north of Italy to be jaw dropingly racist across the board.

At least, that was my experience. Don't get me wrong, I love Italy, but it's only because I let myself be blissfully ignorant of it's fundamental flaws when I'm there.

Unfortunately you are right.

I was born and still live in Veneto and the amount of racism against immigrants (lately it's common to blame the Chinese, North Africans and Romanian for everything wrong in society or economics) is depressing.

If we're talking like that, doesn't south Italy get Redis?

for the record: the last major of milan was, for lack of better word, "impeached" after it was found out her son had built an abusive "batcave".

The current governor of lombardia and the whole council is in a corruption and vote marketing scandal.

The head of the secessionist party for the last twenty years left his role after it was found out he and his son had been using the party as a revolver bank account.

And, noticeably, the Dear Leader Silvio Berlusconi is from milan.

There is a lot to say on the north vs south in italy, but saying "northern italy is not corrupted" is as silly as it gets.

Holy cow, the plot of Sin City (Politician's son builds a rape/torture chamber, and the son is protected from punishment because the politician wants him to produce an heir) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/) actually really happened in Milan?

ah I'm very sorry for the misunderstanding, no.

I meant abusive as in "abusive financial practices", a synonim for illegal (per merriam webster), not abusive as in "physical abuse".

Please excuse this non native speaker for making something look worse than it was :)

Isn't Berlusconi from Milan ?

what "biggest party", the one which was allied with Berlusconi?

Italy is an absolutely corrupt shit hole. I remember a scene where they showed recordings of civil protection officials gloating about the disaster on the phone, right after it happened. They talked about the opportunity to make money

Just as another data point, lots of countries have corrupt and self-centred politicians. A spin doctor the UK government, on September 11th 2001, between when the towers were hit and when the fell, wrote an email to their staff saying "It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses?" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Moore ). You'll always get slimey politicians who will see oppertunity in tragedy.

That's a little different. What you're talking about is burying bad news, which is indeed standard political practice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

What it's not is corruption, which is what the OP is talking about.

For what it's worth, I would say Italy does have a perception of being more corrupt than its fellow European counterparts. This may or may not be true - it's obviously a little difficult to objectively measure corruption, but the Corruption Perceptions Index[1] has ranked Italy as one the most corrupt countries of Western Europe.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

chile should be so fucking proud of that map.

Why is Chile such an outlier among South American countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index?

They corrupted the Corruption Perceptions Index

i don't know. i do believe it is true (chileans i know that have lived in argentina are mortified by the corruption there), and the country is very isolated culturally (by the andes in the east and desert - and poor relations politically - to the north). so it's reasonable for it to be different, but i don't have a good explanation for why it is.

whatever the reason, it seems to be quite deep, culturally. anecdotally, i was shocked just a couple of weeks ago when i went to get a picture framed and the people doing the work lied to my face (they said between themselves that they didn't have the material i wanted; when i questioned that they promised they did; the results were not what they promised). that was very odd for chile (sorry, i didn't make it clear above - i live there), but the shop owners were argentinian immigrants... it is normal, culturally, here (speaking in broad terms) to speak "optimistically" of the future (so if you ask whether a shop will have something in stock next month, they will - usually, in my experience - say yes), but not to directly contradict what was said a moment earlier without batting an eyelid (i should perhaps add that i suspect i missed something myself in the exchange in the picture shop - perhaps the expected way i should have behaved was to offer an acceptable compromise instead of directly questioning what was happening - i am aware that cultural distinctions are not absolute judgements).

Covering up corruption, like Councillor's Expenses, is part of corruption.

The italians on HN might find this interesting: http://evasori.info/ it aims to crowd source tax evasion in Italy.

Their mobile app has recently won an award: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...

(Disclaimer: I've worked directly with several of the people involved.)

I gather from the website that this app is trying to discourage tax evasion by exposing evaders. Your sentence "it aims to crowd source tax evasion in Italy" gives the wrong impression.

Sorry that's what I meant. It should be "crowd source tax evasion detection" :-)

Should be

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draquila_%E2%80%93_L%27Italia_c...

> absolutely corrupt shit hole

While it's corrupt, labelling it a 'shit hole' is going way too far.

For those interested in a detailed book about what's good and bad, and what needs to happen, I'd recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F86HBK/?tag=dedasys-20

> I remember a scene where they showed recordings of civil protection officials gloating about the disaster on the phone, right after it happened. They talked about the opportunity to make money

Actually they where enterpreneurs

Reply on news.ycombinator.com