How. Fucking. Embarrassing

Good job Italy. Now you’ve got the whole world talking about how badly you’ve just fucked this one up. The most scientifically illiterate court ruling since Galileo, people are rightly calling it, and I could not be more embarrassed for my country.

As you may have heard, my country has sentenced six scientists for manslaughter on the grounds that they did not accurately predict the 2009 earthquake in Aquila that killed over 300 people. This has people all over the world astounded, for as they obviously point out no scientist can accurately predict such an earthquake, and the one in question was also extremely out of the ordinary. This has everyone comparing the Italian court system to the likes of creationists in the US and Turkey, and Mithras do I wish it was that simple. Ignorance and illiteracy can be educated and corrected, willful corruption can not. 

I may sound a little conspiratorial here, but unfortunately this is something that we see often in this country. The fact is, there was someone who could have been to blame for all of those deaths, but it sure as shit wasn't the scientists. 

What happened to the reports that had uncovered that the buildings that collapsed were not built properly as per the laws of that time, and that reports of cracks in the masonry from the earlier shocks were ignored and the buildings were not evacuated?  

On no, but that would be complicated. That would involve looking into who gave the go ahead on the buildings, did the engineers and architects knowingly OK the unlawful structures, did they receive permission to do so in a back room deal with the mayor at the time, did the building inspectors get a payoff to look the other way, were the inspectors never sent at all out of negligence? Who, when are you ever going to get to the center of that tootsie pop?! Forget it, hey if the scientists had accurately predicted it they would have evacuated the entire area (yeah right) and hundreds of lives would have been saved, go to the source, convict the scientists, shut up the people that are crying for justice.

The scientists are appealing though, and the amount of global backlash to this decision has, I hope against hope, taken them aback. Everyone is watching, and they better listen to reason. 

We need no other encouragement to be more disillusioned with our country right now.