Greek government financial mismanagement is almost legendary. Even in good times, Greek public debt sits at around 100% of GDP which puts it among the top 10 in the world, putting it behind it such luminaries in the field as Zimbabwe, Italy and Lebanon.

Now that the current government has caused even bigger problems for the nation, bringing it close to defaulting on its debt, it not only wants the EU to bail it out but also to explain how, you know, just in case the Greeks want to approve it before hand.

I suppose here’s another country ready to elect a center-right government.

The former Soviet republic of Georgia has hired Dick Gephardt’s government relations lobbying firm to represent it in Washington.

I suppose it makes sense for a losing Presidential candidate to represent the loser of a recent war.

While I wholeheartedly agree that the full face veil is detrimental to progress and entirely unnecessary, besides not being required in Islam, the government of any country does not have the right to determine or restrict the religious practices of any one group, within reason. The French Parliament is trying to do just that.

According to the French interior ministry:

… just 1,900 women in France wear the full veils.

And does the French Parliament find it necessary to pass an entire law just to restrict the religious activities of merely 1,900 women in all of France? Out of 5 million Muslims, merely 1,900 wear the full face veil. That’s 0.038% of the entire Muslim population in France. Out of a total French population of 62 million, that amounts to merely 0.003%.

Any law that applies to such a tiny percentage of the population is ridiculous. Any law that restricts religious practices is even worse. I could imagine a ban on human sacrifices by natives as something that could be acceptable, but restricting clothing choices is beyond reasonableness.

France already has a ban on “conspicuous religious symbols in schools,” which includes the headscarf, the yarmulke, the Sikh turban. It is using secularism as the excuse for restricting religious practices, just as Stalin used communism in the early 20th century.

Nanny state likes uneducated citizens…

[A recent UK education report] calls for the dropping of the ambition for 50% of young people to go to university.

BBC is reporting that another mass grave has been discovered in Poland, this time on the western front:

The remains of more than 2,000 people discovered in Poland’s largest mass grave from World War II have been reburied in a military cemetery … in north-west Poland, near the border between the countries.

The victims are believed to be German civilians who died in the last months of the conflict, in early 1945.

The mass grave was discovered in the Polish city of Malbork last October.

Because no-one was prepared to pay for expensive DNA testing, the historians’ best guess is that the victims were German civilians caught up in the Red Army’s assault on the city.

At the time Malbork was Marienberg, a German city.

Incidentally, I watched the Polish movie Katyn last night. It’s about the Katyn Forest Massacre of Polish officers by the Red Army.

The bodies were buried in mass graves in the forest and the affair was blamed on the Nazis. The Soviets finally admitted responsibility in 1990.

While there is some amount of exaggeration in any film adaption, director Andrzej Wajda has done a wonderful job exposing the hypocrisy of the Soviets, and the pain and agony of the masacred Polish officers’ families. The last few scenes showing the actual massacre are both horrifying and touching. You can connect with the Poles in the movie.

The one complaint I have about the movie is that all Russians are shown to be heartless and almost inhuman. I can understand the Polish perspective, but I am sure at least some of the Soviet officers were sympathetic. Wajda doesn’t show the Russian side at all.

Workers at a US-owned construction equipment firm in France threatened to explode gas canisters at their workplace if better terms weren’t implemented for the laid off workers.

What did the firm do? Surrender, of course! When in Rome…

Staff at JLG Industries in Tonneins, south-western France, made the threat in order to get better redundancy terms for 53 workers.

It is the third such incident in which workers have threatened violence against employers.

Elsewhere, French workers have taken managers hostage in “boss-nappings”.

Militant French workers need to be put down now! Before they start surrendering.

Couldn't the Guards Save Them?

A hijab-wearing PREGNANT woman was stabbed 18 times inside a court-room in Germany by the man who was on trial for insulting her. She died on the spot. The guards stood around doing nothing.

Her husband was then shot by the guards when he tried to save her, apparently because he was mistaken for the perpetrator. He’s in hospital in critical condition.

Their 3-year old son looked on in horror, while his parents were shot or stabbed to death and his future sibling was murdered in cold blood. Read on »