Tag: rights

Justice for everyone, sort of

The more I think of it, the more it looks wrong. The current proposal against irregular immigration aims to deter immigrants from committing crimes by increasing the punishment by one third if the criminal is an irregular immigrant. If we start from the ones damaged by a crime – the damage is the same regardless to whom committed it. Regardless he is Italian or Rom, regardless he is rich or poor, regardless everything.
According to this proposal it is like Italians (or regular aliens) are somewhat more entitled to commit a crime than others. It doesn’t make any sense.
The real problem is how justice is clobbered and ineffective in Italy. It is clobbered and ineffective to everyone, not just non-regular people. Way too often Italian can’t see their rights acknowledged just because of byzantine laws, never ending trials (that could last decades!), expensive lawyers, ineffectiveness of class actions. The only chance we get is lower the head and carry on (or migrate to a more ethical country).
Therefore the real solution would be to empower courts and lighten up procedures so that we can get real justice for everyone, not just against a class of people – that’s called racism.

African Roses

I would like to write about the Hungarian notation, the good (not much) and the bad (quite a lot) of this source coding convention, but I really can’t. This matter sounds quite silly and irrelevant. My mind is still full of the images and the implications of the documentary I watched Saturday evening on La7. The title is “Rose d’Africa” (African Roses) and the author is Daniela Grandi. Unfortunately I cannot find the video on youtube nor google video, neither a summary on La7 website.
Well, what impressed me so much? The documentary brings hard evidence about the deep injustice affecting the African continent. An injustice that European and American corporations are feeding actively.
In Africa people actually die of starvation, sadly no news, but they are prevented from exploiting their fertile lands (such as near Tana River) because these lands are planted with roses (and other flowers) greenhouses. Flowers are grown and then sent to Netherlands for world distribution. Inhabitants, mostly women, are exploited in the greenhouses under terrible working conditions. The wages are incredibly low (basically we could pay for a pizza and a beer what they earn in a month), while they have basically no right. If they got pregnant, they work until the last day and then are fired. They are requested to enter the greenhouses just a while after the chemicals have been sprayed on the cultivations.
Moreover the remaining chemicals are dumped in the river, poisoning and polluting the environment.
Just outside of Nairobi (the Kenya capital) there is a huge slum where 2 millions of people live from what they can find in a nearby giant dump. That’s two millions! The slum has no sewers, no electricity and no water. The air is polluted by the dioxin coming from the dump.
All this is heartbreaking for me, deeply saddening, I can’t stand the idea of such suffering and waste. And I’m asking myself what can I do for helping…