Category: Public Policy and National Security

This article published by an American information blog is interesting because it shows how national interests lead to “biased” conclusions.

Indeed, as the author of the article points out, the “generosity” of China towards Italy is far from disinterested, but from here to hypothesize that China has even first promoted the contagion by pushing Italians to hug the Italy-resident Chinese and then send aid to strengthen control over our country there is a huge logical and factual gap.

Although the Italian Government is not proving to be in its finest hours, it is fractiously “questionable” to say that

It wasn’t chance. It wasn’t age. It wasn’t overall health, and it wasn’t the good-hearted nature of the Italian people that caused the virus to ravage their nation. It was a leadership who are now under the thumb of the Chinese government.

The entire focus of this analysis is the relationship between “bad Chinese” and “Italians sold by the Government to the foreign powers”. Still, it fails to evaluate the outcomes of the USA strategic choices based on “disengagement” from the EU and the adoption of aggressive behaviours – such as customs duties – towards Countries like Italy which are (still) allies of America, but of which America is no longer.

If the concern that China may take advantage of Italy’s miserable economic and political conditions should rightly be exposed, it should also be made clear that this has been – or will be – possible also thanks to the American administration’s “disengagement” from the European and Italian scenarios.

To look at the issue from a philosophical perspective: when somebody creates a void, he cannot complain if someone else fills it.

Power, like Nature, is haunted by horror vacui.

The management of an emergency relies upon hope because hope is what drives people not to “give up”. It is, therefore, essential to intervene on the unscrupulous behaviour of those media which, with the excuse of “inform”, foment anxiety and confusion.

Fake news aside, which by now like bacteria have permanently installed themselves in the body of social networks, the negative role embodied by “professional” information and entertainment is becoming increasingly apparent.

Despite the invitation – that nothing more than this could be – of the Communications Authority to talk about COVID-19 using authoritative sources there is a proliferation of television broadcasts providing unreliable data or feeding debates whose only purpose is to raise controversy. Continue reading “COVID-19 and morbidity in professional information in Italy”

In Italy, a “snobbish” conception of the right to privacy and the protection of personal data are about to cause a sensational mistake in the fight against COVID-19: that of destroying (or not collecting) the geolocation data of infected subjects.

The right to privacy can certainly be limited for higher interests, as was the case with freedom of expression, freedom of movement and public gathering and economic freedom. Moreover, the GDPR, if applicable in an emergency regime, would impose nonetheless to protect ALL fundamental rights and freedoms, therefore, life first, and not only “privacy”. Continue reading “COVID-19: destroying (or failing to collect) geolocalization data of the infected people harms Science”