Comments on: Mugabe: Not As Black As He’s Painted http://insite2out.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/mugabe-not-as-black-as-hes-painted/ comment on current affairs Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:01:07 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: HAbjeosse http://insite2out.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/mugabe-not-as-black-as-hes-painted/#comment-91 HAbjeosse Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:55:34 +0000 http://insite2out.wordpress.com/?p=65#comment-91 Thank you Thank you

]]> By: Dick W. Speekman http://insite2out.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/mugabe-not-as-black-as-hes-painted/#comment-89 Dick W. Speekman Sun, 13 Jul 2008 07:09:56 +0000 http://insite2out.wordpress.com/?p=65#comment-89 Not even the Netherlands is as democratic as its government wants every other country to be. There seem to be plenty of political parties, to vote for. However, nobody seems to actually vote for any particular politician, who somehow rises from within such a political party. Some political parties within several months or an election seem to come to some sort of coalition agreement that creates a government which manages to hang on only for as long as no coalition member breaks the agreement. In the end, the country seems to be hobble along by a succession of compromises initiated by ministers or their assistants who don't even have to be elected themselves, culminating in legislation that manages to stay on the books only if it is not too rigorously carried out or enforced. This policy is known as 'gedoogbeleid', which essentially adds up to looking the other way if someone offends, lest the offender gets offended by being punished. Somehow, the Dutch allow all this to happen and to be perpetrated in their name. Whenever something particularly objectionable or obnoxious now occurs, it is blamed on even more nameless European bureaucrats in Brussels or Strassbourg, many of whom have on several occasions been proven to be as corrupt as some members of regimes they so vociferously criticise. Due to the scale of the European economy, such corruption is on a scale more grandiose than in the dreams of even the most corrupt African dictator. As for practical considerations and help to less well-off nations, why not - for starters - abandon the hugely expensive and corrupt common agricultural policy? This would stop the insane overproduction of food in places or climates which are not naturally suited to such production and which is then dumped as 'development or humanitarian aid' on less well-off countries, in the process preventing their farmers from making a living and the populations of this largesse even more dependent on it. As for exporting democracy to Zimbabwe or any other country, if simply left alone they will in time either pull themselves up by their bootstraps or go asunder until they learn how to run an economy. Not even the Netherlands is as democratic as its government wants every other country to be. There seem to be plenty of political parties, to vote for. However, nobody seems to actually vote for any particular politician, who somehow rises from within such a political party. Some political parties within several months or an election seem to come to some sort of coalition agreement that creates a government which manages to hang on only for as long as no coalition member breaks the agreement. In the end, the country seems to be hobble along by a succession of compromises initiated by ministers or their assistants who don’t even have to be elected themselves, culminating in legislation that manages to stay on the books only if it is not too rigorously carried out or enforced. This policy is known as ‘gedoogbeleid’, which essentially adds up to looking the other way if someone offends, lest the offender gets offended by being punished. Somehow, the Dutch allow all this to happen and to be perpetrated in their name. Whenever something particularly objectionable or obnoxious now occurs, it is blamed on even more nameless European bureaucrats in Brussels or Strassbourg, many of whom have on several occasions been proven to be as corrupt as some members of regimes they so vociferously criticise. Due to the scale of the European economy, such corruption is on a scale more grandiose than in the dreams of even the most corrupt African dictator.

As for practical considerations and help to less well-off nations, why not – for starters – abandon the hugely expensive and corrupt common agricultural policy? This would stop the insane overproduction of food in places or climates which are not naturally suited to such production and which is then dumped as ‘development or humanitarian aid’ on less well-off countries, in the process preventing their farmers from making a living and the populations of this largesse even more dependent on it.

As for exporting democracy to Zimbabwe or any other country, if simply left alone they will in time either pull themselves up by their bootstraps or go asunder until they learn how to run an economy.

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