War dead

Dead in the Italian military missions abroad are remembered and celebrated the day of the funerals, but the missions themselves are often ignored by media and public opinion. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Italy already had 54 deaths. But there aren't so many if we consider the other war being fought for decades in some regions of our country, causing 200 to 300 deaths per year. It's the gangs war of mafia organizations.

Not all victims are criminals as people generally think. Many are innocent people, even children, who were on the site of a shooting. Others are people who were somehow involved with crime, but didn't deserve the death penalty. It's a war a lot more bloody of all our missions abroad and yet the italian media and the public don't care. This war comes on the spotlight only when are threatened or murdered judges, journalists, priests, policemen. But the war goes on every day, even when no one pays attention. And since the Italian public opinion doesn't address it nobody ever investigates the roots and causes of this war, which continues unabated.
It must be said anyway that the yearly deaths in Mafia murders is relative: other European countries with a population comparable to ours have no strong organized crime as the Italian one, yet the number of annual murders is higher than ours. Not to mention traffic accidents in Italy that left more than 5000 deaths a year. And the dead at work that are about 1000 per year, yet make news only when die at least 3 or 4 people at once. The same rule also applies to traffic accidents, murders of mafia and fallen soldiers.

But if the media and the public are very little concerned about road accidents, deaths at work, Mafia murders and international missions, then what do they talk about? They talk of "crime emergency" but not the real one, the mafias, the fabricated one. They talk about immigration, which is the least of our problems but is useful as a scapegoat. They talk about politics but not about real political issues. The real political issues that policy should address are the ones mentioned above: work, traffic accidents, foreign policy, crime, reception of immigrants. But most of the media space instead is devoted to political fighting and quarreling. Or to the personality cult of the supreme leader and all other less known political chair occupants. For the real problems of the country nothing is practically done apart from the occasional publicity stunt. But to solve complex problems advertising is not enough, we would need real solutions that tackle every problem at its root. Draconian laws against alcohol did not resolve the tragedy of traffic accidents, only controls and prevention could decrease the number of deaths. Occasionally sending the army to Southern Italy doesn't solve the problem of the mafia if we don't address situations of degradation and restore the presence of the State where it's missing.

But the Italian policy in addition to not addressing the problems of the country is a problem in itself, because of a premier who tries to destroy democracy and liberty and the general inability of most of the parliament. How we could expect serious policies from someone who spend half the time to organize parties and the other half to insult those who criticize him?
Italian politicians have shown many times that they are interested only in their power and not in doing something for the country, but Italians continue to vote for them. Because the majority of italians knows nothing of our missions abroad, of traffic accidents, deaths at work and the murders of mafia. And doesn't want to know anything because is too busy watching the last fake story of some gossip tv star.
It's Italy. There are people dying, politicians who are having fun, tv viewers who don't care at all. Everything fits.

Francesco Defferrari

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