Sunday, January 22, 2012

equality and the Costa Concordia

Per Steyn there are reports of some of the men, including crew members, using their size advantage to jostle and push their way ahead of women to get to the life rafts. Well what do you expect in a culture where the captain himself scooted off early and left his crew and passengers to fend for their own lives, in some cases unsuccessfully.

At some level this seems wrong, at least untraditional. Then again going back to the 70s with feminism and the demands for equality, affirmative action, pay equity etc. All of these demands have been met. Then you could see equality means equal opportunity to fight for places on the lifeboats. The men could rationalize that you can't have it both ways. And there has been very little pointing out how the men behaved. Perhaps this is the manifestation of political correctness.

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Speaking of political correctness. There is a dramatic distortion of proportion of expected value in the handling of the search and the gigantic full oil tanks on the ship. It is criminal that gear is on site ready to defuse the potentially devastating situation with the ships fuel hold, and they are told to delay while divers continue an incredibly inefficient and ineffective search for survivors.

Given the situation with the oil bunker and the damages that would occur if it erupts, versus the expectation of finding anyone alive in the vessel at this point, then quite obviously someone should have had the courage to stand up and call off the search days ago - by far the greatest priority at this point is to move swiftly to protect the environment and the thousands of people and wildlife in that area.

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