Twisting the Dagger of Truth
"I was invited because I'm an expert. I illustrated how situations of panic should be managed discussing the human element in these situations. After all, I've sailed across every sea in the world. I know how one should behave in cases like this, how one needs to act when there are crew members of different nationalities."
"How come that after the attacks on the Twin Towers, people were throwing themselves out of windows, while during the capsizing of the Concordia nobody did anything like that?"
Captain Francesco Schettino, Costa Concordia
"Captain Schettino is a very able person and fully capable of managing difficult situations of panic, as he amply demonstrated [on the night of the disaster]."
Domenico Pepe, defence lawyer
A group of Italian senators issued a statement, saying that it "offends the memory of the victims, and the image of Italy in the eyes of the world. It seems an insult to assign to him any capabilities of managing panic", they said, writhing in the agony of the knowledge that reading a newspaper account of Captain Schettino being invited to teach students at a distinguished Italian university how best to handle "situations of panic and crisis", would focus negatively derisive attention once again, on this unspeakable buffoon, and their country.
On trial he may be for multiple manslaughter and for abandoning the Costa Concordia hours before its emergency evacuation had been completed, but he was invited nonetheless to deliver a lecture to postgraduate students at Rome's La Sapienza University on July 5. His trial is in recess, but it will be reconvened in several months' time, and he will most undoubtedly be found guilty of all the charges levelled against him, but this university felt it appropriate to dredge this man's expert knowledge from his experiences relating to firm control of emergency situations.
So firmly in control was he of the Costa Concordia as it smashed into a protruding rock astride the Island of Giglio, running aground and capsizing, that he "accidentally tripped", my goodness, into a lifeboat before all the passengers and crew of the ship he commanded had been brought to safety and those who lost their lives were adequately accounted for.
Captain Schettino, like the proud professional he is, made use of a three-dimensional graphic of that fateful night when his neglect caused the Costa Concordia to run aground, in a demonstration of how he so ably manoeuvred events from there, and managed the evacuation of his ship, as he was duty- and honour-bound to do. It was his expertise and quick thinking that managed to have the cruiseliner capsize in water a few hundred metres from shore rather than allowing it to drift into deep water.
An absurd reversal of events and causalities that suit his purpose very well in assuaging his conscience and persuading the gullible that the investigating authorities and witnesses had it all wrong. Perhaps he just wasn't aware of desperately fearful passengers and crew leaping into the sea as the ship was perilously listing...? Oblivious to any reality that didn't suit his version of events completely exonerating him from self-guilt, and restoring to him his sense of seacraft and honour.
The education minister, Stefania Giannini stated that Captain Schettino's appearance at the university as far as she is concerned is "baffling", with the capsizing of the Concordia "an open wound" for Italy. But goodness gracious, Captain Schettino received an "academic recognition" for that lecture, part of a course by the department of forensic psychiatry.
Italy, heal thyself!
Labels: Disaster, Human Fallibility, Italy
posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 08, 2014
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