Willothewisp

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

The screaming headline on the front page of Germany’s big newspaper Bild seemed to say it all “The Greeks want even more billions from us! – 25,000,000,000 Euro !” it shouted out in huge type face.

The paper was positively apoplectic in response to alarming estimates which confirm that if Germany (and most of the EU Euro Zone) is to bail out Athens, it will have to put three times the amount of money on the table than the sum that was being discussed only days ago, and that is just for one year. A German friend summed up the German view;

“Suddenly our politicians have got billions of euros for Greece. It is a country that has been living beyond its means for decades. It has lied and cheated as a nation to get the Euro. Then it lied to hell and back to the rest of Europe.Their politicians and civil government (there is a joke in itself!) are no better than common fraudsters, and the Greek people have been their accomplices”.

• Greece’s 180,000 teachers would give it one of the world’s best teacher-student ratios but about 20,000 teachers are in administration because there are no classrooms for them.
• One small state school on a tiny island was found to have 15 physical-education teachers, while another had more teachers than students.
• A senior government official says some tax offices operate a “4-4-2 system,” a reference to soccer tactics. If an individual or company owes €10,000 in taxes, they slip €4,000 to the inspector, keep €4,000, and pay €2,000 to the state.
• In the month before last autumn’s election, the government added 27,000 people – friends of the party – to the public payroll. Many had no position to fill, and not even an office to go to.
• The health-care system is a hotbed of corrupt procurement. Many hospitals do not use proper accounting, making it hard to supervise purchases. As a result, public hospitals ran up billions of euros in suppliers’ bills they cannot pay. The previous government understated those liabilities by more than € 5 billion when it gave European authorities an overly optimistic budget forecast last fall. Think about that figure for a moment,  € 5 billion !
• Government employees can get paid 13 to 15 months salary a year.
• Parliament employees and Members of Parliament have beem receiving, in addition to the 13th and 14th salaries, a 15th and a 16th, tax-exempt salary, upon opening and closing of Parliament!
• Government employees can get a “long service bonus”
• Government employees can get a bonus for turning up to work regularly
• Government employees can get a “special holiday bonus”
• Government spending accounted for 50 percent of GDP (USA is 35%).
• Only 450,000 citizens (4% of the population) pay direct taxes, while the rest evade illegally.
• Further, only 37,000 homeowners (0.34%) pay property taxes.
• The bailout is predicted to bring down Greece’s deficit-to-GDP ratio from 8.1 percent to 2.6 percent by 2014, putting it under the Euro zone’s recommendation. But the bailout will do nothing for the debt-to-GDP ratio — except raise it, from 133 percent this year to 144 percent in 2014.
• Under the bailout, Greeks government empoyees must now work until they are 67 years old. Up until now, they have been able to retire with pensions at 53 complete with bonuses!

Bribery & Corruption

In Greece two words sum the country up:fakelaki and rousfeti.

Fakelaki means “little envelopes,” the bribes that affect everyone, police, doctors, patients, business people, everyone. Rousfeti means expensive political favors, which pervade everything. If you are a teacher and want a job, if you want to rebuild your house, get electricity connected, you name it. Together, these traditions of corruption and cronyism have produced a state that is simultaneously bloated and malnourished.

Bribery, patronage and other public corruption are major contributors to the country’s ballooning debt, depriving the Greek state each year of the equivalent of at least 8% of its gross domestic product (GDP), or more than €20 billion ($27 billion) according to the Brookings Institution. Even Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou said after he took office late last year, vowing to change a mentality that views the state as a resource to plunder. He later berated the chief of public prosecutions, saying Greeks believe “there is impunity in this country.” but in true Greek fashion the chief prosecutor continued in his delusional state and said that wasn’t so. 13.5% of Greek households paid a bribe, €1,355 on average, according to a Transparency survey published last month. Ordinary citizens hand out cash-filled envelopes to get driver’s licenses, doctor’s appointments and building permits, or to reduce their tax bills.

Incompetent & Corrupt Government

In 2007, the government was found to have sold billions of euros in overpriced, complex securities to public pension funds, resulting in large losses at the funds. Shortfalls have to be covered by the government, worsening the budget deficit. Following a public outcry, a state commission on money laundering probed some of the transactions, concluding that there were “clear indications” of bribery, tax evasion and other wrongdoing by Greek officials.Cases of corruption in public procurement are rarely resolved, thanks to a slow-moving justice system that deters people who have paid bribes from becoming witnesses. Politicians have escaped corruption charges because probes often are held up in parliament until a statute of limitations expires. The public prosecutors’ office, dismissed the findings because the report was signed only by the head of the money-laundering commission, not by every member. The head of the commission was fired, basically for telling the truth and being honest !

The national sport is bribery of tax officials allows individuals and companies to bribe inspectors and evade taxes so there is a dearth of income into the state. Couple this with truly massive overstaffing in public administration, the result of decades of both major political parties creating unnecessary posts for their supporters, saddles the state with a high wage bill.

In short Greece is a nation steeped in state malfeasance populated by amoral fraudsters and theives, one in which every single citizen must bare their share of responsibility, protesting the measures now needed to correct their collective mess just shows how immoral they are in that they cannot recognise their own guilt. The international banks undoubtedly have a measure of guilt but it pales in comparison to that of the entire Greek nation.

But we should not think that Greece alone is to blame. The political class of the EU are equally responsible, driving as they have the continued hurried growth of the EU in the face of common sense, and probity.Not only is Greece a complete basket case it is one that should never have been allowed admittance to the EU, and now it should be thrown out in disgrace. It should also show the rest of the EU the idiocy of unfetted expansion. Sadly the EU political elite will now close ranks and pressure the media into the deflection of their own guilt.

It is Germany and France who really stand to loose out if Greece goes under because French and German banks have been the prime buyers of Greek Government bonds and the biggest lenders. This of course raises the question of the banks competence. Deutsche Bank, Hypo Real Estate, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, and Societe Generale all have a great deal of explaining to do about how their “due diligence” failed to spot Greece’s financial black hole for so long.

Once again the so called “financial experts” have been shown for what they are, a bunch of monkeys with a gigantic bunch of over ripe bananas !

TSA

Want to hear a funny story of “Law Enforcement” falling foul of the very hysteria they created – then read on.

The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created as part of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Chimpanzee Bush on November 19, 2001. The agency is responsible for security in all modes of transportation and given the idiocy of it’s employees the travelling American public should be scared witless.

At the Bakersfield airport in California USA, TSA authorities recently shut down the entire airport after finding what they thought was a container of liquid explosives. Luggage screeners discovered five Gatorade bottles full of an “amber” liquid. TSA agents then opened the bottles and complained they smelled “a strong chemical odor.” They then complained of nausea and were rushed by paramedics to the local hospital for treatment. Then the whole “security” apparatus swung into action as County Sheriffs deputies, fire crews, FBI agents and members of a joint terrorism task force responded to the scene and spent the day questioning a farmer, Mr Ramirez before further tests showed that the liquid was natural, unprocessed HONEY,

Let us be clear here, Mr Ramirez was interrogated by the FBI for hours while being presumed to be a terrorist – not a case of innocent until proven guilty, those days have gone.

An important question is just how did TSA agents smell chemicals in an all natural substance when clearly there were none, So convinced were they that this was an “explosive amber liquid”, cued no doubt by their agencies own rhetoric, that they were overcome by fumes from possible chemical explosives. Clearly they were also budding actors because they started acting like they’re experiencing nausea to be rushed off to the hospital. Either that or they were just bucking for the day off !

I have visions of those overfed macho men hold a limp wrist to their forehead and exclaiming in a feminine southern belle accent “ Why I do declare I feel an attack of the vapors a comin over meeee!” before swooning gracefully to the floor.

Personally I think they acted just like teenage girls sometimes do, and developed a form of hysteria. Primed by years of their own “terrorism” propaganda they have ended up swallowing what started out as a lie. Add this to their “obey all orders without thinking” institutional mentality, and the famous “you must respect my authority!” US law enforcement mindset and you have set the stage for some unbelievable stupidity.

The TSA cannot catch actual terrorists, despite the vast monies thrown at them. It is really good at flagging innocent people as terrorists and wasting thousands of hours of time and millions of dollars by declaring bogus terrorists emergencies that only serve to inconvenience everyone and give them a stage on which to display the all Peacock the plumage of US law enforcement.

In the last few years they have managed to arrest innocent people when the tests they use cannot tell the difference between natural chocolate (cocoa) and cannabis resin or when their tests flag natural soaps as containing cocaine. Now their tests cannot tell Honey from explosives. Some how I think that given the right emotional cues there is not any food or liquid substance that is safe from being declared a bomb by the stupid and incompetent TSA employees.

As I have stated before the real mission of the TSA and other US law enforcement agencies has nothing to do with security. It has everything to do with brainwashing Americans to surrender to police state searches while living in a never-ending state of extreme fear of terrorism.

Americans, you are following a herd mentality on the road to a police state, you need to wake up.

American Airport Madness

• TSA agents confiscated three bags of Gummie Bears from the children of a family stating that they were “gel like” and wouldn’t be allowed because regulations stated no “gel-like substances”.
• In training exercises where fake bombs are put into luggage to test the TSA’s x-ray screening machine operators it seems that the boys of the TSA miss a staggering 75%.
• An airport manager had her Dr. School’s taken by the morons at the TSA. They had a gel in-sole to help her walk, this lady was unable to work shoeless & had to go home.
• Two days after serving two journalists with subpoenas demanding that they reveal a confidential source, a move that prompted widespread backlash among frequent fliers, the Transportation Security Administration has withdrawn the subpoenas and returned a damaged laptop to one of the blog writers. A TSA spokesman claimed Thursday that its investigation into who leaked a December 25 security directive was nearing completion and the subpoenas were no longer necessary, they should admit that they were simply caught out be very stupid and employing bully tactics.
• A Texas woman was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane. The lady called for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation. TSA officials said they are investigating whether the agency’s policies were followed. “Our security officers are well-trained to screen individuals with body piercings in sensitive areas with dignity and respect while ensuring a high level of security,” the agency said in a statement, Sorry guys but your agents are poorly trained, and for the most educationally challenged.
• Let us be clear; Shoebomber failed because he was taken by force on the plane. The liquid bomb plot failed because someone turned them. What has the TSA caught?
• The American taxpayers have paid out billions for the TSA to remove tooth paste, bottled water, and your grandmother’s sewing needle from your person. Because if there really was a bona fide terrorist arrested at the security checkpoint, we’d be seeing news bulletins about how Bush’s/ Obamas’s increased security saved Americans from a second 9/11.

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Steven Weinberg.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

So another idiot, one Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was known to US and British authorities – whose brain has been eaten away by the delusion inherent in religion has tried to destroy an airliner and it’s passengers. The law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the USA must be jumping up and down with glee at the opportunity to justify the introduction of yet more powers over the lives of the public, despite the fact that this incident should be putting the spot light on their own utter incompetence despite being in possession of what twenty years ago would have been considered draconian powers.

We all have to understand a simple fact – that complete security is a chimera. It’s a monster that emerges only after all our liberties have been lost, we must wake up to this and understand that freedom carries with it some risk, we cannot be risk free and still travel.

If he had suucced Abdulmutallab could have killed some three hundred people and devastate the lives of relatives of his victims, perhaps an additional five thousand people. It would have been appalling for those involved but the pain would one day ease. The real damage to society will be done not by Abdulmutallab but by those politicians, intelligence and law enforcement officials who will use this failed attack as yet another excuse to further erode civil liberties and bring in yet more laws and regulations, handing them even more rights to control and oppress ordinary people, you and me. They will use it to further expand their numbers and their empire, which in turn will increase their influence and their ability to remove yet more of our rights. It is happening right now, before our very eyes.

Despite the fact that Abdulmutallab’s OWN father had reported their son to the US authorities in person his trouble son was still able to gain a US visa and travel, showing very clearly that security is not being tackled at the correct level. In my opinion Abdulmutallab’s parents were very, very brave people in reporting their own child to a government known to use torture and imprisonment without trial, they are the real heroes here.

Airport security is in fact a mirage. You could publicly strip search every passenger, force them to wear paper jumps suits issued to them at the boarding gate and remove every item of personal property, handcuff each one to their seat and still it would not work. It would not work because flying is a business and business wants to make money so they will continue to employ the cheapest labor to handle baggage and ground duties. For years we have seen airport staff turning out to be illegal immigrants, criminals and others with motivation enough to be a security risk and yet these security risks fail to be addressed, clearly the authorities do not wish to really address the issue so airport security is just a mirage, a gloss to impress, then subdue, control and oppress the travelling public.

In late August this year Abdullah al-Asiri passed through many security checks, searches and even airport style body scanners to gain an audience with Prince Muhammed bin Nayef, a Saudi anti-terror chief in Jeddah. Al-Asiri then detonated a bomb consisting of about half a kilogram of high explosives hidden inside his rectum. The prince escaped with very minor injuries as the blast vented largely downwards rendering the bomb ineffective. On the surface it was a bizarre incident, even more so when you consider the rampant homophobia of islam but as any Western woman who has spent time online will tell you a great many muslim men do seem to have a never ending fascination with that area of human anatomy !

Of course it goes deeper than this. If you really wanted to address to terrorist threats you would tackle the problems that cause it at their roots. You would be serious about addressing the grinding poverty and inequality around the world, you would stop corporations exploiting the poor and most important of all you would tackle the ideology of religions and demand that they adjust to the times we live in and not remain rooted in the fourteenth century. But as we know few have the true courage required to even raise their voice on these issues, let alone actually try and do something about them. It much easier to hide behind the politicians ability to legislate and the law enforcement officer’s gun than really act to address the problem, in the mean time we are slowly loosing our civil rights to those originally tasked with protecting us.

Cowardice in the face of religions and the self interested pursuit of power by politicians and law enforcement bodies are the real threats to us.

Author: Nonke

In Europe we often wander just why we are invloved in fighting in Afghanistan but now we know, it is to allow muslim men to rape their wives.

A law that lets Afghan husbands starve their wives if they refuse to obey their sexual demands has been quietly slipped into effect, despite promises from Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, that it would be reviewed and rigorously debated in the country’s parliament.

A law that lets Afghan husbands starve their wives if they refuse to obey their sexual demands has been quietly slipped into effect, despite promises from Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, that it would be reviewed and rigorously debated in the country’s parliament. Our suspicions that Karzai was liar have been shown to be correct, like so very many men raised under the yoke of islam he has been indoctrinated to be a misogynist. Karzai has previously claimed to be a moderate in the area of human rights for women, well if this is an example of a moderate muslim’s approach to women’s rights it goes an awfully long way to explaining the problems at the heart of islam and it’s conflict with human rights. He has abandoned human rights for women in a bid to appease hardline muslim clerics who wanted the law, in exchange for votes in the presidential elections.

This law removes the need for consent within marriage, provided the husband with a licence to rape his wife while she has no legal protection. The law included a requirement that a wife have sex with her husband at least every four days, as well as a range of other measures that imposed drastic restrictions on the freedoms of Shia women. When hundreds of Afghan women took to the streets to protest against the legislation they were met by mobs of angry men outside parliament who pelted them with spit and stones. It seems that the Islamic mans connection with stoning women is a deep and abiding one, normally they bury the women to the waist before stoning them so at least this time I guess we can be thankful they gave the women a sporting chance !

Human Rights Watch demanded that Afghanistan’s international paymasters intervene to protect the country’s oppressed women. Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of muslim fundamentalists in the August

The law, which regulates the personal affairs of Afghanistan’s minority Shia muslim community, still includes clauses which allow rapists to marry their victims as a way of absolving their crime. This is the sort of sickening solution that only a religion could produce. It also tacitly approves child marriage.

Afghanistan is a stone age country ruled over by a medieval religion with a severely misogynistic society and its only useful purpose is that it so clearly show the world what life for women would be like if islam ever came to dominate the world.

Author: Judith.

Sharia Law - The monkey on the back of women

A judge in Saudi Arabia has told a seminar on domestic violence that it is “OK” for a man to slap his wife for lavish spending. He said “If her husband slaps her……..she deserved that punishment” said judge Hama al-Razine.  “If a person gives SR 1,200  to his wife and she spends 900 riyals to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment.” Were his exact words, keep in mind he is a judge !

Saudi women’s rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider tells us that Saudi women routinely face such attitudes.

“This is how men in Saudi Arabia see women, it’s not something they read in a book or learned from a friend. They’ve been raised to see women this way, that they’re less than a person.  I’m not surprised to see a judge or a religious man saying that – they’ve been raised in the same culture – a culture that tells them it’s ok to raise your hand to a woman that this works.”

Another Saudi judge, in the city of Onaiza, was the source of a separate recent controversy: he twice denied a request from the mother of an 8-year-old girl that the girl be granted a divorce from her 47-year-old husband. It was only after human-groups condemned the union, the girl was granted the divorce, left to Saudi Sharia religous law she would still be married and facing a future of legalised rape.

I have long said that no religion should ever be allowed to have anything to do with the administration of law because such power in the hands of misogynistic religions can only lead to abuses. Statements such as those made by “men” like al-Razine (my curses be upon him) only reinforces that view. If islam is ever going to progress from the stone age, stone throwing stage it remains at today then Sharia has to be abolished as just one of the many reforms it needs. This would go a long way to erode the misogyny at the heart of muslim society.

Here in The Netherlands there is an endemic of domestic violence against women in muslim households. If you try to raise the issue and highlight the plight of Dutch muslim women you can be sure of one thing, you will receive threats of violence, even death threats, from various of the crazy muslim groups. One film maker, Theodoor “Theo” van Gogh, was shot, stabbed & hacked to death for making a film trying to give a voice to this issue in 2004. The 10-minute movie Submission turned out to be a death sentence in a world where many muslims live in fear of any criticism of their mighty religion and the shedding of light on the systemic, legalised abuse of muslim women. Clearly they also feel that any such criticism warrants the death of those making it and so after incitement from Imam Fawaz of the as-Sunnah Mosque in The Hague Mohammed Bouyeri went out to do “god’s work”.

Author: Judith