4 ms·
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
by rmc 14y ago
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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Moore ). You'll always get slimey politicians who will see oppertunity in tragedy.
- objclxt 14y agoThat'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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
- andrewcooke 14y agochile should be so fucking proud of that map.
- cpeterso 14y agoWhy is Chile such an outlier among South American countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index?
- 89a 14y agoThey corrupted the Corruption Perceptions Index
- andrewcooke 14y agoi 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).
- trhtrsh 14y agoCovering up corruption, like Councillor's Expenses, is part of corruption.