Why do we insult those ...

... people and institutions alien to our various cultures?

The BBC has coverage here.  to the most recent example.

In France the editors of Charlie Hebdo are preparing to cause controversy again with a issue released tomorrow. The cover shows a Muslim man in a wheelchair pushed by an Orthodox Jew with foil cap and under the title "Untouchables 2", an imaginary sequel to a recent French film.

... a user Reviews by OttoVonB of the film "Untouchable" includes the following ...

The film's simplicity is delightfully misleading: the script is a masterpiece of comedy writing, and however good the rest of the cast is, the central duo is magical. Sy's comic timing will have you in stitches, but it is his honesty and vulnerability that make you fall in love with the character. Cluzet isn't your typical sad-sack, instead, much of the finest pleasures in the film consist in watching him use his keen mind to mess with the world around him (a sub-plot about an abstract painting really takes the biscuit, you'll know it when you see it).

This is one of the most unique, beautiful and honest friendships ever committed to film. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry... a delightful celebration of everything in life that makes it worthwhile.

The two characters parodied by Charlie Hebdo are ...

... Sy, a failed robber, going through the motions and playing the stereotypical jobless émigré. Cluzet is a romantic and melancholy mind trapped in a useless body.

 

French foreign ministry's website quotes Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault as saying "freedom of expression is one of [France's] fundamental principles", as are secularism and respect for religious convictions.

 

The statement is not at all honest, the Prime Minister of France cites "freedom of expression", yet the arm of the law in France has what is known as "unapproved rallies", I guess the fundamental principles depend upon who you are and what you wish to protest against.

I must go back to the original question, "why insult those we don't know?"

 

What is the point, except in this case to provoke a particular section of French society!

 

 

... the importance of the common ...

 ... good, the common weal, in Wales, Germany, Hong Kong and the USA.

In Wales we have Jac who considers the common weal to be a narrow view of the xenophobic, the intense and irrational dislike or fear of people from England ...

In Germany there are the considerations of the Euro, is the financial rescue fund considered crucial to the future of the euro to get the green light.  A poll published on Friday on Spiegel Online showed that 54% of Germans were in favour of the court blocking the legislation, reflecting the degree to which public opposition to bailouts is increasing.  Is the common weal the good of Germany, or has the definition extended to people of one country extending their largess to other nations ?  Do the German people see themselves as kin with the peoples of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France .......


In Hong Kong it's very serious, will Beijing allow universal suffrage, even though it doesn't exist as a democratic process in China itself, universal suffrage has little value in a single party state.  The effect of extending democracy to Hong Kong which has a semi-autonomous status in China, is to open the doors to a "China Spring", in effect the demise of Communist China.  When  thousands of demonstrators protest against the plan for mandatory patriotism lessons, you know there is trouble ahead ! 

Whilst in the USA the battle between Republican and Democrats will be resolved when the peoples who vote decide who are the stakeholders, is it all the peoples of the states, or just a small group who hold the wealth, an important consideration when considering the Common Good, and lets not forget the prayers !

Back to Britain and there is a kind of hush, our politicians are driven by opinion polls rather than the Common Good, it's quite pathetic.

Blind, deaf and dumb, pathetic ..

... politics that has a system where regimes that suppress its people are allowed to condone the genocide of the Syria people by applying a veto on civilization.

... student Zaher Shehab has watched, helpless, as the uprising in Syria has torn his country apart. Then came news of a devastating attack on his family, writes Laura Pitel for today's Times

It was a Friday afternoon at the end of term. He should have been working in the university lab. Instead Zaher Shehab was standing in a corridor of the pharmacy faculty, following his mother’s funeral on his mobile phone. He had just lost seven members of his family in a single attack in Syria. His mother, Mayssa, his younger brother, two uncles, one aunt and two cousins had all been killed. They were working in their fields in a suburb of Damascus when they were hit. Two thousand miles away, the Bath University student could do nothing but try to absorb the news, powerless to help. “I can’t remember what I felt because really at that moment I couldn’t feel anything,” he says, his voice calm. “My brain stopped thinking. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. All of them together: my mother, my brother. Everything changed on that day.”

The polite, gently spoken 28-year-old arrived in Britain in 2010 to study for a PhD in pharmacy practice. A top-class student, he came on a scholarship paid for by the Syrian government, and was planning to return to Damascus to teach. But in November, Syrian intelligence snooped on his online exchanges and found anti-regime messages to friends. His funding was withdrawn. The university hardship fund and the Wellcome Trust stepped in. Without them he would have been forced to drop out.

His last trip home was shortly after the start of the uprising, which erupted in Syria last March on the back of turmoil across the Arab world. It was a surprise visit that delighted his parents, particularly his beloved mother. But a brush with the security forces, when he came close to being arrested, has left him unable to go back. Instead he found himself following developments in Syria from the incongruous setting of a West Country spa town.


While fellow students worried about deadlines and grades, over the past year and a half he has watched his country descend into violence. As the movement against President Assad has accelerated, he has seen protests sweep through his town, Daraya, and friends and neighbours killed. As the turmoil has dragged on the bloodshed has grown, with children massacred, whole districts destroyed and the estimated death toll topping 17,000.

Then, on July 6, the conf lict knocked on his family’s front door. He had just that is to blame. “We don’t know the kind of rocket or shelling — if it came from tank fire or helicopters,” he says. “No one could tell me if the rockets came from this side or that side. But for sure, 100 per cent we know that it is the Assad regime that owns these rockets and these tanks.”

Were they targeted deliberately or unlucky victims of random fire? It’s a question he will probably never be able to answer. The family were not politically active — they spent all their time working on the farm where they lived a simple life, growing tomatoes, aubergines and salads. “But in Syria there is no grey, only black and white,” he says. “If you are not with the government, they consider you against them.”

Friends and colleagues have been supportive and kind, putting him up in their homes so that he does not sleep alone. But they cannot compensate for being so far from Syria. “It is a hard time,” he says. “I can’t say anything else. It’s hard because I’m here, far away. I couldn’t do anything to support them. It’s difficult when one person dies ............

I guess we have to send a big thank you to Russia and China ......

...... and a big sigh of hopelessness when we see the antics of our world politicians unable or unwilling to say NO to the tyrants, thanks to the rump of civilization, UK, USA, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India, Australia .... et al.

 

behind every ...

... great fortune lies a great crime, Honoré de Balzac.


And what a crime, $21 trillion (£13tn) crime, a crime as big as the combined economies of the USA and Japan.  Fortunes created on the backs of populations pushed beyond the reach of taxation, beyond the reach of the societies that created these buckets of coin hoarded by such a very few people.

In the USA there is the Apple Corporation that holds its wealth offshore, it avoids paying the taxes that could pay for healthcare for the poorest in its society, in the UK we have similar crimes where companies and individuals establish off-shore vehicles to avoid passing back to society a share of the wealth created by the little people in the form of taxes.

The misconception is the owners of capital are wholly entitled to every penny of the surplus (profit) a business makes, this conveniently avoids any responsibility for poverty level wages that require redistributed government expenditure (taxes and borrowings) to pay for subsidised housing, healthcare, education ....... the list is endless.

All profits, as with income, should be taxed at source where it was made .... that way every fortune will have avoided the stigma that ...

... "behind every great fortune lies a great crime".

... and the taxes will help the little people that they might live without the poverty that seems to accompany great fortunes !

These crimes are not restricted to the USA and the UK, the people of Germany, Canada, France, Australia, Japan, China, India ............ are all losers in this great crime of "cheat the people of their dues".

The FBI will heed the ...

... man within, "one's conscience", whilst the British Government will sit on its hands and fail the people from all over the world.

Guided by its very un-civil service, government breasts will be beaten, sackcloth and ashes worn as a public display of contriteness by bankers, but at the end of this sorry affair unless the police arrest those responsible for fixing the LIBOR rates, and those who supervised the fixing, and those who turned a blind eye to the activities of these thieves.

... and those at the very top, nothing will change !  They rely on false compliance ...

Compliance is much more about giving senior management, and the regulators where they exist, cover from culpability than rooting out bad behaviour. “We did our best, the right boxes were ticked, how could we know?” they are able to say.

... that is not compliance, its a comfort blanket for the complicit.

We need rendition of every one of those involved in this scandal, to the only commonwealth that has both the will and the teeth to send a message of worth to the bankers throughout the world that there is "nowhere to hide".  To do this Britain need Uncle Sam like never before.

And because the British Government is a gutless body when addressing issues of morality and ethics amongst its own, and for Bankers read the Bank of England read British Government (of every flavour), people turn to the champion of law and order in the USA, the FBI.  It is time to repay those little people who rarely ask for favours, help clean this cesspit of banking criminal who laugh at the law, people without a conscience, people who cheated every little person with a bank account ...

... and in Europe ... France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, and the other countries that have banking links with London, you have been affected by the scum of LIBOR, its time the call to fix this scandal of morality and ethics was pan-European ......

... (update) every German should read ...

... the Times Sam Fleming: Economic view ...  Published at 12:01AM, June 4 2012 

Hank Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary, got down on bended knee to plead with congressional leaders to prop up America’s banking system in 2008. His Democrat successor Tim Geithner is not the type for such flamboyant gestures, but last week there was mounting desperation in the Obama Administration as it urged Europe to summon up the political will to save its single currency.

Only five months before the American presidential election, economic frost is spreading its fingers across the globe. Weak hiring figures in the United States, poor factory data in China and dismal production numbers in Britain were merely three snapshots from what might be turning into a synchronised global economic downturn.

The bickering and dithering in the eurozone are playing key roles.  Lars H. Thunell, chief of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, told me last week that the malign influence of the euro crisis was being felt in Africa and Latin America. European banks are curbing the provision of trade finance and cross-border lending as they prepare for further turmoil at home.

Last week’s evidence of accelerating capital flight from Spain raised the stakes dramatically. In Athens a gaggle of feckless politicians are openly toying with Euro exit, in the full knowledge that their tiny country could destabilise not only Europe but also the world economy.

It will not take much, it seems, to persuade increasing numbers of savers in Spain to decide that if Greece is heading for the exit, it would be rational for them to move their euros out of their own country, too.  As we saw with Northern Rock, once bank runs start they have a terrifying momentum. If Spain suffers a full-blown banking collapse, things will move into fast-forward mode. Italy will not be far behind. The Euro could begin to unravel quickly, in an event with far more momentous consequences than the Lehman crash of 2008.

At that point, a new Great Depression could be on the cards, according to one former central banker. A full-blown collapse of the Euro might well be welcomed by Tory backbenchers as vindication of their well-founded suspicions of European federalists, but it is of little use critiquing a skyscraper’s girders when it is collapsing with you in it.

After more than two years of failed summits, the region’s leaders are well aware that they are entering the last chance saloon. Eurocrats are working towards the European Council summit on June 27-28, pitching it as the decisive moment. In Brussels, plans are afoot to put forward what is being called EMU-Two — a radical reboot of the single currency project.

Critically, this will begin to pave the way to a banking union, one of the glaring pieces of unfinished business that has left the Euro so dangerously ill-formed. The elements include a European facility to recapitalise banks, a bank resolution regime, integrated regulation and a Europe-wide deposit guarantee scheme. Notably, this plan is likely to exclude Europe’s financial capital, the City of London, even though it is the home of the region’s bank regulator.

The trouble is, of course, that a month is a long time in a financial crisis. Before the summit we have the twin hurdles of the Greek and French elections on June 17. The latter is no less significant than the former. If President Hollande is confronted by a badly fractured National Assembly, with the extreme Left and Right heavily represented, it will be even more difficult for him to drive through the economic reforms that France needs so badly.

And Germany is deadly earnest when it says it will not hand over its credit card to France, Italy and the rest without strict curbs on how the money is spent. France is going to have to venture a huge surrender of sovereignty as a precondition to fiscal burden-sharing initiatives such as eurobonds. Selling this to the French public will be an historic feat, even for a committed Europhile such as Mr Hollande.

More imminently, Europe faces the threat of accelerating flight from the periphery banking system. Spain urgently needs to be convinced to accept a European bailout of its banks, given that the cost is too much for Madrid alone to bear. It is a measure of the gravity of the situation that policy-makers are talking about capital controls and bank holidays in periphery nations as a way of stemming any full-blown bank runs.

European ministers may have to stand together and make a blanket declaration that they will keep depositors’ money safe, given that a deposit insurance scheme will take a long time to set up. Whether Europe’s citizens would find this convincing is anyone’s guess.

We stand on the brink of a new, 2008-style financial disaster. As Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank president, told the European Parliament last week, it is up to Europe’s politicians to fill the vacuum at the heart of the single currency. With a chill descending on the world economy and the panic in the periphery escalating, the fear is that they have left it too late.

 ... and consider a very bleak future of Germany hog-tied by the ne'er-do-wel of Europe, those who will hang onto the heels of Germany at work.

Update ...

HSBC is testing its cash machines in Greece to ensure that they can cope with a return to the drachma, if the country pulls out of the Euro. Britain’s biggest bank is taking the precaution because of concern that Greece could pull out of the 17-nation currency bloc amid political chaos. HSBC is understood to have conducted tests on the machines to establish whether they could be adapted to disgorge banknotes of a different size and texture.  

... a warning if ever there was !

Germany calling ...

... we can't prop them all up Angela !!!!!!!!!!

doesn't like the rich' ...

 ... and said " he loathes financiers ", this from the man that would lead Europe's 2nd largest economy that is spending 54 cents in each Euro created by the businesses of France.

This French political messiah is reminiscent of our Denis Healey, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer during the 1970's, who once said "tax the rich until the pips squeak", some might remember this socialist who heralded the Winter of Discontent into Britain which came to a virtual standstill by endless public sector strikes.

So with 54% public spending what does he promise, more public servants, higher wages, retire two years earlier;  all to be paid by businesses and the rich who will have their "French pips" squeezed, unless of course they hop on the Eurostar Express to London which I am sure will open its business as usual arms in a generous welcome .........

The people of France could be served better, but not by an administration that will bite the hands that feed its citizens, and the questions uppermost in my mind ........

............. who will lend Francois Hollande the money at affordable rates ?

............. how can Francois Hollande work with Madame Guillotine  Merkel ?

Will the Chancellor of Germany set aside the German economic ethics on the pyre of the Euro I wonder, what is more important to Merkel, Germany or France or the Euro ?

Has France become unbalanced, did Nicolas Sarkozy tip the citizens of France into an abyss of despair ?

Interesting days ahead, how long before Hollande discovers a note from the outgoing president ....

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité ...

... the cupboard is bare !

Dutch courage, the French connection and California ...

... will plough its own furrow in the greatest melting pot since the Roman Empire, Scotland on the other hand has sent a member of its administration to have talks with "Parti Québecois" the Quebec separatist party, the brief was "learn how not to gain independence".

In Europe the realisation that government spending has been out of control for decades is now "de facto economics", the German political powerhouse is setting its own economic standards as the European model for members of the Euro club, Germany takes 40.6% of GDP as taxes and currently spends 43.7% of GDP, it borrows 3.1% of GDP (figures from the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom).

The Netherlands currently takes 39.8% of GDP as taxes and currently spends 45.9% of GDP, it borrows 6.1% of GDP.  Its Prime Minister resigned from Government yesterday because the elected representatives chose not to support measures to reduce government expenditure by 16bn Euros.  At stake is the prized AAA credit rating status and the low yield on government bonds.

It's not all rosy in garden across the pond in the USA, the US government takes a tiny 26.9% of GDP as taxes and currently spends 38.9% of GDP, it borrows 11% of GDP, so whilst the tax take is very modest the spend is probably dishonest, I'm sure a more balanced revenue stream could be calculated, but better the USA than the Netherlands or France, which brings me to the European bag of ferrets ....

France currently takes a massive 44.6% of GDP as taxes and currently spends a huge 52.8% of GDP, it borrows 9.2% of GDP, it taxes its citizens until they squeak and then borrows more to fund the most generous welfare system (probably) in the world.  To cap it the current presidential elections is a two way race between the poltroon socialist Francois Hollande who declares his true enemy to be "the world of finance", and the current president Nicolas Sarkozy I'm guessing he could make it big in reality TV.

To put France into perspective its borrowing is projected to be double the borrowing of the UK for years to come whilst the UK borrowing will fall, if we consider the promises being made by the mad-cap president elect Francois Hollande France is probably hypnotised by the abyss of Friedrich Nietzsche, is the 5th republic about to spawn another French revolution as a precursor to a 6th republic.

No matter, my money is out of the Euro zone, even with the German economic model underpinning this experiment, it really is a basket case, my money stays with the London Stock Exchange, New York, and the emerging markets.


In California the people are to be asked whether they want to abolish the state's death penalty law .... I am glad that I am not a resident of "The Golden State", I am not at all sure which way I would vote, one side tells me we must rise above the barbarism of execution whist the other calls for retribution for the more Heinous acts perpetrated by people, I would probably vote ...........

........ to send Scotland packing, separatism is for me little political fish wishing to appear large in a shrunken pond, this sums up my feelings about Scottish separatism, the likes of Alex (little but large) Salmond is not about to go away, the UK only caused the union with Scotland because Scots rulers were unable to manage their affairs, time to kiss our neighbours a fond yet firm farewell, David Cameron might consider joining the SNP crusade in its march towards the setting sun, he would do us all a service by setting them free unilaterally, that would be novel and a message to all the other political misfits across the world, but has he the balls ...........

We want an elected government ...

... is the call by the people of Bahrain, the response by the ruling club (the kingdom) has been repression.

Described as a "constitutional monarch" Bahrain is lives a lie, the country is an absolute monarchy in which the monarch serves as the source of power in the state and is not legally bound by any constitution and has the powers to regulate his or her respective government.  In Bahrain this is Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa with his eldest son Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa supported by the unelected Prime Minister His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa.

In 1775 the war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America kicked off, the result was the birth of a new democracy of the USA, with its own peculiar warts, that is an example of how people can expect to influence their governance;  the other combatant took another 150 years before it resembled a democracy.

The dreadful circumstances in Bahrain are supported by both democracies from that auspicious war of independence, both countries that have supported the other recent North African revolutions and struggles, both countries that fought alongside each other to topple the hideous regime of Saddam Hussein, both countries that are fighting the oppression of the Taliban in Afghanistan, yet not a whisper in support of the call for an elected government in Bahrain.



Obviously it's not convenient for our governments at this time, the people of Bahrain will need to bleed more before they have the support that the people of Libya was given by both Britain and the USA, the quest for democracy is for the faint of heart in the face of hypocrisy, and where are the voices of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, it must be to difficult a choice .... repression versus democracy.

Myself, as an ardent fan of Formula 1 racing, I will give today's race a miss for the second time, has it been a whole year ............

I guess Vodafone is amongst the robber ...

... baron companies of the world that steal taxes from countries in which they operate.

Nicholas Shaxson in his "Treasure Islands" (£8.99 from Amazon), subtitled "Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World", explains what is wrong with global finance  ...

... he write, while many might dismiss tax havens as offshore homes for spivs, money-launderers and the odd celebrity, in fact they help big companies and the super-rich to avoid paying tax, tax that totals "$1000 billion" each year.

... that's a trillion dollars, a trillion dollars unspent in the countries that the wealth is created, a trillion dollars that should be underpinning the health and welfare of the little people who have no voice in this unjust world.

Update on my entry for yesterday ...

The dispute has severely dented India’s reputation as a safe place for foreign companies to do business. Many are facing similar tax cases that could be affected by the judgment, including Cadbury, GE, Vedanta, AT&T, Sanofi-Aventis and SABMiller. The companies declined to comment on the decision, although one representative said: "Clearly, it does provide some encouragement."

... recognise the household names that are siphoning off the taxes from India through the use of offshore tax havens or countries that give advantage to business.

Time to create a level playing field that includes "justice" in the rules of the game.

The Hellenic Republic has no clothes ...

... can no-one see it.

When Greece was provided with a second huge rescue deal of €109 billion (£95 billion), including €37 billion from the private sector and a significant lowering of interest rates, the circumstances changed not one jot, the country that is Greece does not have the wherewithal to support this European Union largess. 

In the grand scheme of things, would it be such a disaster if Greece defaulted and left the Euro, well individual banks would feel the effect, but so they should, loans were given to a country without a real economy.  Greece is a country that suffers from high levels of political and economic corruption and low global competitiveness relative to its EU partners, were the banks asleep when money was thrown around like so much confetti at a wedding.

I wonder if the Euro is a busted flush, it has all the hallmarks, a family at Christmas coming together to celebrate despite being of different religions, including the atheist step-brother who only pops in to exchange gifts, or in the case of the United Kingdom giving support through the proxy that is the IMF.

Do the people of Germany and France realise how their hard work is being used to support the grand scheme that is the "United States of Europe".