Crazy week

Really, is this the next President of the USA?

It started out when the Catalan “parlament” voted for a “democratic separation” from Spain. The motion was able to be carried because, although the pro-independence parties do not represent a majority of voters, they do have a majority of seats in the parliament (thanks to the same crazy non-proportional representation system of election as is used in the UK).
So now, at a time when Europe needs to think seriously about becoming more unified and less nationalistic, Artur Mas and his cronies have to go and stir things up, knowing full well that their posturing will very likely lead to similar demands, not only in other parts of Spain, but in other regions of Europe, too.

Then there was David Cameron’s diatribe against the European Union. Another Wally who really should know better, but is instead kowtowing to nationalistic tendencies within the UK and, more specifically, England. The really sad thing is that, if the UK government actually do decide to pull out of the EU, it will be a decision made by the UK parliament, a parliament dominated by members from England (there are 650 seats, 533 of which are for English constituencies and only 117 for the other three countries of the UK). In other words, the opinions of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland would count for nothing.

Cameron, if you’re in a club, you follow the rules of the club. Don’t mamby-pamby about old-fashioned nonsense like sovereignty and “our way of doing things.” The UK is pretty irrelevant on the world stage, so stop listening to your aristocracy, whose heads are stuck where the sun doesn’t shine, and get on with reality. This week you sounded like a little schoolboy who couldn’t get his own way and was running a tantrum because of it. Grow up.

Thank goodness that at least a few Americans seem to have come to their senses and booed that modern mountebank Donald Trump at a meeting towards the end of last week. Can you explain how a fool such as Trump can be considered as a potential candidate to lead a nation as powerful as the USA? To be the person to decide whether or not to press the button? Okay, the Americans have made some extremely strange choices in recent history, George W. Bush perhaps being the prime example, but Trump even trumps him!

Yesterday saw the terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in Paris. Responsibility for the attacks has been claimed by Islamic State. Now, no doubt, Marine Le Pen and her Front National will be spouting out about how Moslems should be deported, immigrants returned to their countries of origin, and refugees held back at the borders. All this along with strengthening of France’s own borders and stuff the rest of Europe. Nope, that’s not the way to do it, even though such scaremongering will bring in the votes of the masses. What is now required is more tolerance, better controls at the external borders of the EU (for one thing that’s a lot cheaper than having each country control its own borders), more cooperation between the security forces of EU countries and preferably an EU-wide security force. Islamic State has little or nothing to do with true Moslems; IS is just a band of terrorist thugs that has been allowed to develop since the downfall of Hussein’s Iraq regime (thanks, USA, for leaving the vacuum that was gradually filled by the fundamentalists). I might be naive, but I just do not understand how so-called powerful countries, such as the USA and its allies, are unable to simply wipe out IS.

Crazy.