eroakirkosta.fi

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Ecuador

BBC (13th December 2008):

Ecuador is to default officially on billions of dollars of foreign debt it considers "illegitimate", says President Rafael Correa.

Mr Correa said he had given the order not to approve a debt interest payment due on Monday, describing the international lenders as "monsters".

The Economist (January 2010):

To finance its budget, the [Ecuadorean] government is likely to have to borrow more than $4 billion this year. Sine defaulting on a third of its foreign debt in December 2008, it has scoured the world for cash, without much success. It was late in paying legislators' salaries last month.

Hah! Another Latin American country exhibiting the wonders (and the impossibility) of building a welfare state at the expense of free-market capitalism (or without free-market capitalism). Like Venezuela, another Latin American country run by a socialist madman, Ecuador went on a spending spree when the price of oil was high. Oil revenue was then allocated to social spending, i.e., buying votes and turning people dependent on the government. Anti-West rhetoric and threats to private companies have not exactly helped government finances, unless you count Hugo Chávez's support, which is not really a good bet in the long run.

Labels: , , ,

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Rape in Finland - a Case of Welfare State Morality

Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's understanding. -Ra's al Ghul

A 51-year-old policeman uses his badge to lure a 16-year-old runaway girl to his apartment where he then rapes her. Being a stupid piece of human trash, the "policeman" even takes pictures of her, pictures he then stores on his computer. He was given a two-year suspended sentence. Also, charges for misuse of an official position and violation of official duties were dismissed (he was off-duty at the time of the rape but that should be irrelevant).

This is not an exception to the rule. In Finland, this is the rule. Less than half of rape convictions result in any actual jail time and those who do serve time (a year or two) get away easily, considering the fact that our prisons are closer to hotels than actual prisons. The severity of a sentence has to do with your criminal background and the level of violence used during the rape. This is of course ludicrous. A couple of days ago a 30-ish man was given a six-month sentence for raping a 15-year-old. The reason why he has to spend any time in jail is because of his criminal background. Also, he wasn't even convicted of rape but of coercive sexual contact. Why? Because the level of violence involved was low. (Of course it was! How hard can it be to restrain a 15-year-old girl?)

What is going on? Nothing should compel our judges to hand out such lenient sentences and yet the practice is systematic. Maybe law students are forced to go through some kind of an operation before they graduate, an operation that removes their ability to separate just from unjust. This results in sympathizing with the offenders, the genetic trash that should be of no consequence to anyone. The welfare state has no respect for individual liberties and as such it fails to understand the concept of individual responsibility. According to the welfare ideology, the society made you and therefore you cannot be held fully responsible for your actions. By handing out lenient sentences the society puts a big part of the blame on the victim.

Sources:
-HS 1, 2, 3, 4
-Freodom

Labels: , , , ,