BNP Paribas (a French bank) was recently in a lot of trouble for banking within Cuba, Iran and Sudan, all countries subject to economic and trade sanctions at the moment. I wholeheartedly disagree with sanctioning countries. If you don't like how a Government is behaving, why are you punishing its innocent citizens? Most of the time, it's places with corrupt political systems (and who says democratic countries aren't as bad), so the people don't even popularly vote for whoever is in power anyway! Yet people are dying from starvation and what not because they can't get supplies in. The bank was fined $9 billion USD by an American (!) court for banking with these countries. Okay, I'll understand if they were dealing with the Governments, to prop up dictatorships or deal with weapons and all that, but if it was dealing with private citizens or on positive initiatives, then how disgusting! That's no crime, it's almost pragmatic (in a heavily disjointed way). And the nerve of it to be tried in an American court! That's the thing, if you don't play by their rules, they will want to punish you. Why don't the Arab countries band together and put an oil sanction on the Americans? Or an Arab-Chinese alliance? Woo, there's something to think about for future reference!
The Prime Minister recently made a gaffe regarding foreign investment in a speech. Let's ignore the fact he said Australia was unsettled before the British invaded (ummm what were all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders doing here for the 40,000 years prior?!), because it sets a dangerous precedent about what that means for Indigenous land rights, but it just goes to show how dangerous and racist and unhinged these conservative people are. They don't regard native populations as civilised or as humans. They pass these ideas on to their children and the cycle of discrimination and hate continues. But anyway, that's not the point I want to make. He said that he has selfish views on foreign investment. If he wanted to sell his property, he wouldn't mind selling to foreign investors, but if his neighbour wanted to do the same thing, he would take issue with that. That right there is the epitome of conservative thinking and what's wrong with the Liberal/National Party Coalition in Australia. One rule for them, another rule for everyone else. Pure selfishness and greed. Let's read between the lines here, he's referring to Asian foreign investment. The Asian dollar is going a long way in Western countries because they are experiencing a great boom and the West is just commencing its slide into obscurity. So Asians are buying large swathes of land in Australia and America and this has annoyed many local residents, as they are priced out of areas they used to be able to afford. The Prime Minister doesn't want people to benefit from the same opportunities that he would have, and on top of that, he doesn't want to see Asians in his neighbourhood. Well it works both ways, there's a lot of foreign investment running the other way. Westerners are buying up large tracts of land in developing nations, often at a premium, and subject to shady practices from the local populace. They're pricing the local population out of homes, and what happens when a local land developer just grabs the land, sells it to a Westerner for a tidy sum, and then somewhere down the line there's a local person who has a real claim to the land? What happens then? Ahh the unfairness of the system, but I've gone on enough about that for one week.
Goddamn, this has seriously been a productive week blog wise. I'm very proud! Cause at least I know not every week (or month, or even year) is going to be the same. Got around to tabbing some of my new ideas last night, and a bit of guitar. I'll need to cut my nails this weekend so I can get some good playing in next week. I've also got a bit of work to do today, so I'll turn some attention to that and see what happens by the end of the day.
Only 2 hours to go until I can get out of here, yes! I can't wait. TGIF and all that stuff! I'm running out of things to say, but I'm also running out of time. I think today I'm just going to go home and sleep. I never really buy anything online except for books, but I do enjoy window shopping online. It's amazing to see how much cheaper it is to purchase something online, compared to the rip off merchants operating in malls, especially in Australia! I don't care if they all lose business and go bankrupt, in this crazy system, I'll decide who my money goes to. And you can bet your ass it's going to be to the person charging the least amount for the same product.
Sigh, it's never quiet around here, is it?
None of this was an accident. It couldn't be. But what could be driving it?
I think I'll call it a day, if not a week here. It's been fun.
Joaquin out.
