There are about three people in whose shoes I wouldn’t want to step right now. The first is Francesco Schettino, yes the Captain of the Costa Concordia. Where do I even start? Captains and Pilots do get special training, don’t they? They are especially equipped to deal with accidents and emergencies. It’s not like a car where anyone can drive even without a license or in other cases, bribe to get one. It takes years before someone qualifies to run a ship. I therefore can’t comprehend how this Captain could make the string of errors he did, first veering off the charted course, failing to call for help at the first sign of trouble and then jumping ship, literally. What’s even more annoying is his line of defence. He says he accidentally “fell” into a life boat and couldn’t get back on board the sinking ship. How convenient! The leaked recording of the heated exchange between one Port Authority official and the Runaway Captain further pins the latter. He should have heeded the coast guard’s repeated calls to get back on that ship and coordinate the rescue efforts. Well he didn’t and now faces manslaughter charges for the 11-plus deaths he no doubt caused. If I were his attorney, I would advise him to stop calling on people to give him credit for the thousands of passengers he apparently helped get off the ship. An arrogant soul is hard to forgive. The second person I wouldn’t trade places with is Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez. If you wanted to do Barack Obama any harm, you’d have to be extremely smart and calculating, not an amateur like this man. Now I don’t wish Obama any harm, in fact I’m a huge fan of his but I think if you wanted to pull a stunt like that, it would make sense if you pulled all the stops, something this guy clearly didn’t do. He’s lucky the President wasn’t home. The way I see it, the Secret Service guys would have riddled his body with bullets. Now he has to spend the rest of his life behind bars and he’s just 21! Finally are those US Marines caught on camera peeing on dead Taliban fighters. That they were caught with their privies out is in itself embarrassing, unless of course we take into account the fact that most men don’t seem to have qualms about “opening” up anywhere and everywhere. More importantly though is the deplorable act they did. This case brings to mind Muammer Gaddafi’s final moments. Remember the video of the Colonel getting kicked, hit and drugged on a dirt road? There were also unconfirmed reports that he was sodomised. Not to condone abuse but we have to remember that people were angry, others wanted revenge for the years of repression, torture and the many loved ones they had lost at the hands of Gadaffi. That said, I still wouldn’t want footage of myself doing anything close to what the four Marines did doing the rounds on the Internet. Why do people video tape these things anyway? With the social media craze, private recordings can quickly become public and your life will never be the same. To be continued…nsophie77@yahoo.com
