Kleptocrats are often taking very expensive junkets, taking advantage of their positions and access to public funds to undertake pleasure trips thinly disguised as being of political importance. For example, a keptocrat might travel to Greece, claiming to attend a conference there, but leaving plenty of days to explore the Greek islands and Greek delights at leisure. http://venitism.blogspot.com
Kleptocrats, accompanied by their kith and kin, are going to junkets because they cannot miss a good party at taxpayers' expense. The worst thing that could happen in a junket is running out of caviar and hookers. Many junketeers use military jets that cost 10,000 euros per hour! Deputies of the European Parliament (EP), aka Eldorado of Prostitutes, love junkets!
NATO leaders gather in Chicago on Sunday for a junket that charts a path out of Afghanistan. Many thousand protesters have flooded downtown Chicago against the NATO junket. Confrontations took place with police using batons on activists.
Many activists were arrested, and some were charged with conspiracy to cause terror. The protest was peaceful at first, but then the crowd became a little bit unruly with some people jumping over police barricades. Police eventually used batons against the protesters injuring many.
Obama hosts the junket in his hometown. Fiscal pressures in Fourth Reich and elsewhere dwindle support for a costly campaign that has not defeated the Taliban in more than 10 years. Obama looking ahead to November presidential elections, is expected to emphasize a common alliance vision for gradually pulling most of the NATO force of around 130,000 by the end of 2014.
Hollande declares he will pull French combat troops from Afghanistan this year. Hollande declines to define the details of his withdrawal, saying this is France's business. Hollande avoids the appearance of splits with NATO partners without alienating voters who want to see a swift exit. Obama seeks promises from allies in Afghanistan to give $1.3 billion a year for Afghan forces.
A last-minute addition is President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, whose western tribal areas provide shelter to militants attacking Karzai's government and NATO forces. Pakistan is a terrorist nation. Pakistanis believe Mohammed who promised 72 virgins in heaven for each martyr! From the very beginning, the partnership between the US and Pakistan has been a marriage of convenience. Pervez Musharraf asserts it was a forced marriage. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Pakistan shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to be prepared to be bombed, to be prepared to go back to the Stone Age!
In the fall of 2001, Americans toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Pakistan had previously helped to install the Taliban in power because it viewed it as an ally against its archenemy, India. So the end of the Taliban also meant the collapse of Pakistan's defensive strategy. Since then, Islamabad has worried that the US could hand over Pakistani intelligence to India. http://venitism.blogspot.com
Zardari encounters friction in interactions with NATO leaders who are pressing Islamabad to reopen routes used to supply NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. Pakistan's strategy is supporting terrorists that attack India. Pakistan's nebulous position toward the Taliban led to circumstances in which the world's most wanted terrorist could reside safely under the nose of the military for six years. Al-Qaeda has links to the Taliban and to terrorists that target India. Thus Pakistan's soft stance toward these groups ends up facilitating al-Qaeda and its agenda. Indeed, bin Laden struck a deal with Pakistan's military leadership to ensure his safety in the country. This speaks volumes about the Pakistan's dual policies on terrorism.
The Pakistan-based Haqqani, a veritable arm of Pakistan's intelligence agency, attacks U.S. embassies. While Haqqani have conducted attacks against U.S. and NATO soldiers in the past, embassy attacks now represent an escalation against U.S. Pakistan's support of insurgent groups and terrorists is the most significant obstacle to achieving stability in the area.
Pakistan is a society based on tribal groups. Each clan maintains a complicated network of relations, like a mafia. Under these conditions, it hardly seems imaginable that Osama bin Laden could have spent years living unnoticed just a stone's throw away from Pakistan's most elite military academy, an institution as assiduously guarded as the US's West Point or Great Britain's Sandhurst. Pakistani Intelligence officers knew about bin Laden's home, but they got kickbacks to keep it secret!
Vardaska's petition to join NATO will not be discussed. Vardaskans understand the dialogue in a way that differs sharply from that of Socrates. For them, dialogue does not mean an attempt to rationally debate a topic in order to arrive at the truth. Truth is already given. It's called Tito's Dogma, and the only dialogue that is acceptable is one that will eventually lead to the implementation of Tito's Dogma of finding an exit of Vardaska to the Aegean Sea by robbing the name and heritage of Greek Macedonia.
In order to reach a compromise on the name issue, the two sides must meet in the middle by taking reciprocal steps to bridge the gap and reconcile their conflicting positions. Greece has already done its part. A fair and lasting solution can only be based on a name with a geographic qualifier, to be used for all purposes, erga omnes.
Macedonia is a large geographic region, most of which lies in Greece. A small part is in Vardaska and a smaller part in Bulgaria. The part cannot represent the whole and the Vardaska's exclusive claims to the name Macedonia cannot be allowed to fuel nationalism. Any solution must be universally implemented because otherwise today's situation will simply be perpetuated.
Global junkets of kleptocrats fail to live up to the hype and the promises made.
A lot of money is spent laying them on. Host cities are disrupted for days or
even weeks. The cavalcades roll into town. Good intentions are shared in
productive talks. Then, somehow, those intentions rarely seem to come to
fruition in real, tangible global action. When kleptocrats meet again a year
later, they find things haven't really moved on. Spending two billion euros on a global junket is preposterous.
Wow! Smart words are more effective than smart bombs! Mighty words of a charismatic keynote speaker can transform your people to a new dimension of organizational climate, efficiency, self-actualization, enthusiasm, belonging, and motivation. I would like very much to speak at your conference in order to explain critical points much further. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com
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