9/11

Stamp of the Greater German Reich, depicting A...
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On the anniversary of 9/11, my sympathy goes to victims and families who suffered such rerrible losses and traumas.

I’d also like to propose the following reflection.

Terrible as it was, 9/11 was not an act of war. Nor was it a unique event. If John Paul II was right in describing 9/11 as “one of the darkest moments in the history of mankind” what infernal degree would he assign to the other atrocious moments which produced a total 185 million deaths in that century alone? This is what Piergiorgio Odifreddi, mathematician, writes today quoting himself as he wrote this 9 years ago: “Quanto non-senso, sull’11 settembre!” If America speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese, it’s just because europeans have massacred (with arms and bacteria) between 75 and 100 million indigenous people, the astonishing 25% of the whole world population. Wasn’t that perhaps one darkest moment in the history of mankind?

Odifreddi the logician follows with extreme clarity: If Saddam and Bin Laden have been equaled to Hitler, then (symmetric property of equals) Hitler must be the equal to Saddam or Bin Laden, which is to say two meager and sad little dictators. But we know instead that Hitler was a fericious fanatic who actually thought of world domination. Now, the only state on earth capable, and with the will and power to effectively do that are the US, who have attacked year on and year off, quite a few countries in the past. Yesterday Serbia and Panama, today Iraq and Afghanistan, …”und Morgen die ganze Welt”.

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About Antonio Vantaggiato

Professor, web2.0 enthusiast, and didactic chef.
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