The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons

I chose the above quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson to entitle this week’s blog about dishonest leaders of many differing types.

I often wonder why we have governments. For all the good they do, we might as well all just join a gang, because you can say what you like about gangs, but at the end of the day they usually look after their own. Politicians look after their own as well – but it’s their own personal and extremely vested interests.

So after they’ve robbed us all blind, how much money do these sleazy swines have? Muammur Gaddaffi the self proclaimed non-leader of Libya certainly has plenty and he is far from the only political leader to have enriched himself at his nation’s expense. Time was when I used to think these greedy bastards stole millions from their treasuries, but now I know better.

They don’t steal millions; only small fry from rogue Pacific Island states do that. These guys steal BILLIONS. Yes Billions with a B.

In the case of Gaddaffi and his cronies, at the time of writing the count is not complete, but so far the US has frozen US$32B (more than NZ$42.6B) and Britain has frozen US$19B (NZ$25.3B). By my count that amounts to US$51B which I learn is equivalent to approximately 47 percent of that Libya’s central bank reserves or if you like 82 percent of its GDP!

Now I know old Mu doesn’t personally own all of this but he and his entourage have no doubt been deriving their lavish lifestyles and buying ‘hits’ on their enemies from this bounty. The scary part is, that is only what has been found so far and it is only the proceeds from ONE corrupt regime. Imagine how much loot has actually been stashed away by dictators?

And that’s just a glimpse into the billions being ‘acquired’ by the obvious bad lots. As we know only too well, even leaders in so-called developed/enlightened/civilized (you pick your word of choice) countries help themselves to their nation’s lolly.

Yep crime is rife in high places all over the world and sadly most of the time we are led by crooks. But it’s not restricted to the politicians; leaders of industry and many senior government workers are just as bad.

The endless procession of failed finance companies led by people who hardly seem to be on the bones of their considerable bums when their companies ‘collapse’ is just one example.

But issues such as the nuclear bunfight in Japan at the moment are even nastier because they cause direct physical harm in addition to the emotional anguish. It is now revealed that Japan undertook a safety audit of their nuclear plants in 2008/9 following the fright they got when the Kobe earthquake struck in 1995. The first thing I find interesting about that is that it took them 13 years to get their fingers out.

But I digress. The committee that met to decide how to make the plants safer dismissed the need to take a tsunami into account where the Daiichi plant was concerned. In fact little account was taken of the dangers posed by tsunamis generally because they only had two tsunami experts in a group of 40 ‘experts’ who were assessing the risks. One member of the group has since broken ranks and supplied transcripts of the meetings in which he raised the tsunami danger and reminded them of the 8.9 earthquake that had struck the area in AD869.  Power plant officials dismissed his concerns saying that earthquake was ‘historic’ and implying it was of no relevance. The consequence was that no additional tsunami precautions were taken at the plant and of course as history now records; it was the tsunami and not the earthquake that damaged the plant.

So will any of these people be charged with the death of any of the citizens that perish from radiation poisoning? Get real. They still haven’t made anybody properly accountable for Bhopal unless you count the pathetic 2-year sentences and piddling fines handed out to seven officials last year. These people have escaped any penalty for nearly 30 years and they were responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 and still counting. Some of the scumbags even pulled the old Radovan Karadzic trick of pleading extreme frailty and old age as an excuse to not have to face trial. Of course they were old, because the bullock cart wheels of Indian justice had taken so long to turn.

The there were those who chose to ignore warnings about the land upon which Christchurch is perched. A TV3 documentary made and screened in 1996 warned the city was sitting on “a soft, shaky sponge of river stones and silt half a kilometre deep. In any decent quake, Christchurch will shake like a leaf.” It also pointed out the hundreds of old buildings in Christchurch that had not been strengthened.

But those responsible for building standards ignored the warning, preferring instead to play the numbers game where they keep their money in their pockets and bank on nothing going wrong. As I write, the Wellington City leaders are contemplating a similar three wise monkeys approach in our nation’s capital.

To know of a serious risk and fail to act to mitigate it in any meaningful way is criminally irresponsible and reckless behaviour which should be punished. ACC soon jumps on employers who ignore hazards in the workplace. I wonder if we could complain to them after the event.

But what do these last two have to do with theft? Well in my opinion they are stealing other people’s futures for the sake of growing their own stockpile of money? Personally I’d prefer they just nicked our stuff and be done with it.

Madness – the universal malaise

Well after some of the daft things that have happened in the last week I am relieved to say it is not only Kiwis that are barking mad. The whole bloody world has lost the plot. If you think that sounds a little, er extreme then take these examples from the last week’s news.

Example number one:

The Aussies and the Chinese are getting all excited about the possibility of making an invisible cloak. Yep, that’s right the diggers have taken some time out from mopping up all that unwanted water and figured that what the nation needs right now is a good dose of invisibility. Perhaps they think they might be able to hide from the rain – or is it part of a dastardly plot to win the Rugby World Cup by fielding an invisible team. Anyway, whatever it is, they have hauled in a bunch of Chinese scientists to help them because they had nothing important to invent in China, what with it being such a great country where everyone eats and lives so well.

To be fair the Sino-Ocker partnership is not necessarily trying to make a Harry Potter cloak. They claim to have artificially reversed the Optical Doppler Effect. This effect is what scientists call the way in which light is emitted from objects so they are visible to the human eye. They reckon they have found a way to divert the light away from the human eye so the object becomes ‘invisible’. It all sounds pretty far-fetched to me, not to mention pointless, but I’ve no doubt some lab-coated genius will have a wordy, jargon filled explanation designed to make us think the entire future of our civilization depends upon it. Frankly I think it would be a damned nuisance. Let’s face it we have an aging population with failing eyesight and the last thing we need is some beakerhead making objects invisible.

Example two shows the Poms are also mad (although most of us already knew that anyway)

An apparently anally retentive football referee red carded a player from the field in a game between Dorchester and Havant & Waterlooville for a head high tackle. Now normally this would be the right and proper thing to do, but in this case the person the player tackled was not another player but a bloody stupid streaker who had charged onto the field and disrupted their game. He kept running around holding the game up while the useless officials couldn’t catch him. Then when Dorchester player-manager Ashley Vickers stepped in and dropped him so the officials could get him off the field the whistling retardate reached for his red card and banished Vickers for doing everybody a favour. What’s even worse is the score was 1-1 at the time and subsequently Dorchester was beaten thanks to Mr Dimwhistle.

I found my next example of incredible stupidity in a place that has had its fair share of that particular commodity lately; the Middle East.

After this week Muammar Gaddafi must be a shoe (or sandal) in to win the coveted misplaced trust award (Political Division). He recently held to a press conference to show how much in touch he is at which he stressed, “There have been no demonstrations” and “My people love me”. After seeing old Muammar give that interview I couldn’t help but become transfixed by his face, which these days bears a scary resemblance to Michael Jackson’s during his latter days. Has old Mu been under the knife or does he wear an old mask of the gloved one to hide his real appearance for when he has to do a runner? Given his foolishly inaccurate and complacent statements about what is happening in the country which he doesn’t lead – he makes a point of saying he is not the leader – one must wonder if he has a similar appetite for drugs to the one Jacko was alleged to have had. Wake up, Mu and smell the burning buildings – people seldom burn those they love in effigy.

The Americans, have also jumped into this week’s cesspool of stupidity thanks to their latest conference of Catholic Bishops. Their idea of a great leap forward for the spiritual health of their nation is to edit the New American Bible so that it is as PC as possible. The word ‘booty’, which is a perfectly good word for the spoils of war will be replaced by the three word definition of it, while ‘holocaust’ (Don’t mention ze war) is to be replaced by what I feel is even worse – burnt offerings. I wouldn’t be surprised if all references to asses are removed if they haven’t already been. But the one change that really could be interesting is the removal of any reference to the Virgin Mary as a Virgin. The reason given is that the Hebrew word almah doesn’t strictly mean virgin. What baffles me is why this was not realised 2100 years ago. But the worst part of all this is they feel it is more important to prevent kids sniggering in Sunday School when they come across the word booty in their scriptures than it is to prevent their creepy clergy from molesting those kids.

Madness is catching. These days you don’t just catch it off the toilet seat; you also catch it from the newspapers, the television and the Internet. It’s one of those caring sharing things that have gone totally viral as a quick skim through your newspaper will confirm.