There's this big corruption research going on in the European Parliament at the moment, where a number of members of parliament are being investigated for receiving bribes from Qatar to influence EU legislation.  Over the weekend several offices in the parliament have been searched, as well as 19 other locations and homes.  Cash money has been found, with numbers circulating of around 1 million Euro's found in one house.  I'm quoting national news here: "... so much money that we have been told, the counting is still going on as we speak."  

So much for Qatar's big PR stunt of hosting the World Soccer Cup.

They should have realised that sportswashing only works if you're a first-world country; bribery is fine, then, too--in fact, it's usually legislated; unfortunately this legislation is designed to exclude lesser countries like Qatar, so their bribes are illegal.* In any case, it's been a great world cup. Thank you, Qatar.

*To be fair, Qatar isn't in the EU, so maybe its bribes shouldn't be accepted.

Why would Western countries want peace?

travo said:

Anyone keeping up with the Ron Desantis/Disney battle? It just turned into comedy gold.

"Particular focus was paid to one section that board members said places certain restrictions on the district until 21 years after the death of the last surviving descendant of King Charles, or until Disney abandons the resort."

I did a short read up on the Disneyn thing, and that is hilarious.

In more hilarious news: Trump, He Who Granted Us Fake News and Alternative Facts, is suing his ex lawyer for half a billion for breaking a confidentiality agreemand and spreading falsehoods.  If I were Trump, going to court of spreading falsehoods is a can of worms I'd try to keep the lid on.  

We've got this situation where a Belgian guy is being held captive in Iran since february 2022.  He was detained when he was there as a humanitarian aid and sentenced to 28 years in prison.  His condition is bad and worsening and people are asking our government to trade an Iranian spy and terrorist for his safe return.

It's a pretty transparent and predictable move from Iran to keep people in prison as bargaining chips to pressure other countries, but what bugs me most about this is that this guy travelled to Iran with a tourist visum despite our government's negative travel advice regarding Iran.  What kind of a naive idiot does one need to be to decide to go anyway, to then be surprised when you're detained?  He's obviously a moron, and I feel for his family, but he gets little sympathy from me.  I guess it's the 'right' thing to do to bring him back home safe, but I hope he does get some form of rammification from our government for his actions some way or other.

robio said:

Yeah, there's always people who travel in the countries that their own governments tell them don't go to. Yet they still go and to no one's surprise they get arrested for a trumped-up charge and now we have a hostage situation.



My personal favorite example of a story kind of like this was with a Christian missionary, John Allen Chau. He went to an island off the coast of India with a native population that has had almost no contact with outsiders in the entire tribe's history. The government warns people not to go there without expressed permission, but he still went to try and convert the tribe. After a couple of attempts, the natives got tired of his crap and killed him.

Yeah, that guy was a complete dumbass. Amazing how he thought they would all convert to Christianity.

Please tell that to the missionaries.

A lot of church goers do act salty these days.

travo said:

A lot of church goers do act salty these days.

Not sure how well churches are holding up in 'Murica, but I haven't reffered to church goers here as 'a lot' in a long, long time.