The state we're in

A great European leader - and a true friend of Greece - once said that Greeks were a great nation, but their state is a mess.

The man was, unfortunately, right. We have just suffered a national tragedy. We are running around like headless chickens, making accusations and concocting conspiracy theories. We do this every time disaster strikes, but we never seem to take any meaningful action to ensure that it will not happen again.

The Greek state tends to become paralyzed by any crisis. It happened during the Imia standoff between Greece and Turkey in 1996, during the Peloponnese wildfires in 2007 and again last week during the deadly inferno that ravaged the seaside resort of Mati east of the capital.

The sight of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sitting at the fire department's operations center as though he were at a cafe while all sorts of people from his entourage...