A Right Old Mess!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

It seems there is no end to the political hypocrisy that has taken over our well surveilled world.

I wrote a post a few days ago about the Belgian government wanting Skype to hand over confidential customer data. I called it ‘Taking A Swipe At Skype’ (if you want to read it click here )

In a previous post called, ‘What Is The German Word For Hypocrite?’ (if you want to read that one click here) I had a bit of rant against the hypocrisy of Germen Chancellor Angela Merkel who professed great anxiety publicly about the Americans snooping in on her phone calls while she and her intelligence agencies were in cahoots with the US to spy on other European countries.

Now a week or so later the two stories have merged with yet another piece of hypocrisy, this time by the Belgians who have announced that they are starting an official investigation into allegations that Belgium’s telecommunications networks were spied on by a consortium of German and American intelligence agencies.

In other words, it is okay for the Belgians to snoop on Skype users, but not okay when someone else wants to snoop on the Belgians.

If that’s not another good example of hypocrisy I don’t know what is.

Specifically the targets in Belgian sights are the United States National Security Agency and Germany’s Bundesnach-richtendienst (BND) and an operation that they referred to as ‘EIKONAL’.

The Belgians found out about the snooping when Austrian politician Peter Pilz blew his whistle at a press conference in Bern, Switzerland, saying that EIKONAL had targeted European telecommunications carriers for at least four years, from 2005 to 2008.

Spokesmen for the Belgian government have said that if the alleged espionage is confirmed, it would have “not only legal implications, but will also affect relations between Belgium, Germany and the US”. It also threatened to “take appropriate action” but didn’t specify what that would be – they probably don’t know yet.

Needless to say, the governments of Switzerland and the Netherlands were not amused by the revelations either and immediately launched their own investigations into this thing called ‘EIKONAL’.

It’s all turning into what they call “a right old mess”.

.

==================================

.

Whoever Invented The Selfie Needs To Take A Good Look At Themselves.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

And since it’s pun day again you need to take a good look at this latest batch.

Enjoy or endure!!!

.

.

What do you call

a German on speaker phone?

Hans Free

.

.

‘Sugar’

is the only word in the English language

in which the S, is pronounced ‘sh’.

I’m sure of that.

.

.

My brother has had to

close down his archery business.

In the first 12 months 

he didn’t hit any of his targets .

.

.

Ten years in the same job and

not once have I been in the boss’s office.

That’s what got me fired as a cleaner.

.

.

Just been mugged and beaten up.

I tried to defend myself with a drawing pin.

Turns out a tac isn’t the best form of defense after all.

.

.

Before we split up, my wife

was obsessed with horoscopes.

I’m sure that’s what Taurus apart.

.

.

I was on the freeway when a guy driving in the other direction

started flashing his lights, beeping his horn and screaming,

“You’re going the wrong way!”

What an idiot.

He didn’t even know where I was going.

.

.

What has a pee at

the end of a tram?

A tramp.

.

.

Breaking News:

Man arrested over missing woman

Imagine if he’d hit her???

.

.

Adoption jokes –

There’s never a good time to tell them.

.

.

I don’t approve of my girlfriend’s one night stand.

Why should she be the only one with

somewhere to put a bedside lamp.

.

.

I threw three DVDs at exactly the same time

to see which one would hit the wall first.

It was a discrace.

.

.

My wife called me into the bathroom

and asked me to wash her back.

I don’t remember her

washing me in the first place.

.

.

Erectile dysfunction;

just when you thought

it couldn’t get any harder.

.

.

My wife, Lorraine, has just found out that 

I have been cheating on her with Clara next door.

Last night, she packed her things and left.

I can see Clara now, Lorraine has gone.

Take it away Johnny….

.

.

==============================================

.

Shock Headline – The President Agrees With Me!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

The Sunday Sermon

.

I’ve been saying it for a long time – and now the President of the United States agrees with me – he doesn’t know WTF he’s doing!

I can’t say as I take much satisfaction from his admission though.

The US President is the most powerful man in the world and he has at his disposal the most powerful military organization in the world.

Yet he doesn’t know what to do with it, when to do it, or even who to aim it at!

A bit of it, belatedly and half-heartedly, is now pointing at ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. Yes, you’re right, they are the very same Islamic terrorists he was funding for a while in Syria! He says he wasn’t, but in practice he was.

Confused?

You should be.

Because the Obama Administration certainly is!

Indeed Obama’s team of idiots have confused themselves to the degree that they don’t know what to do and are afraid to do it even if they did!

The situation is not being helped by the noise coming from the equally ill-informed politicians in the Republican camp either. Some cynics would say they are doing a lot of it with the November elections in mind!

As I’ve said before on this blog, America has never been good at foreign policy. There are so many examples over the years to prove this beyond any and all doubt (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, now Syria). But this latest debacle could turn out to be foreign policy failure on a grand scale.

This is simply down to the fact that, even yet, the Obama administration clearly does not understand the severity of the problem. They haven’t managed to process the long term threat that a well armed, well supported and well funded group like ISIS can become.

Everyone – except the President and his people apparently – knows that these terrorists will not be content even if they are allowed to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state in the Middle East. Their hatred of anything and everything in the West is total.

In fact, as we have seen in Iraq and Syria, their hatred even extends to fellow Muslims who they do not consider to be ‘militant enough’ and they have attacked and murdered them in just the same ways as they have attacked and murdered Christians.

In Syria, which is none of our business, the Obama team thought they wanted the Assad regime removed, and to get that done they thought they could support ISIS (or the anti-Assad fighters of whom ISIS were always destined to be a big part).

Now the US may well find itself on the same side as Assad in a fight against the terrorists. And that may be the crux of the US Administration’s problem. They made the wrong move, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, for all the wrong reasons and correcting the mistake will require a major volte face and sizeable portion of humble pie.

Are they big enough to swallow it?

We’ll see.   

.

==================================================

.