Democracy has a serious problem: it places equal weight on the opinion of an idiot and a genius, the opinion of a PhD and an illiterate man. It is of no surprise then that as democracies become more inclusive they also become more badly steered.

I think what we are witnessing is not only the collapse of the capitalist system but also the collapse of democracies.

There's so many weasels in this world. People who exploit the system and go high without having any of the presumed and required qualities. I am talking about character flaws - these are the ones that are usually beyond repair. Look at the captain of that cruise ship: disregards regulations and procedures at the expense of others who have placed their faith in him, abandons ship, lies about it, ult...imately does not care about the morality of his actions. It is all about tricking society, gaming the world - exploiting others.

According to an ex-prime minister of Turkey, some of Greece's major forest fires may have been due to arson by Turkish agents. This info appears here: http://bit.ly/v0aKlF and refers to this article by left-wing Turkish paper Birgun: http://bit.ly/sOC3uR

This is a system that I've helped develop:

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/​publications/​factsheet-ECC-Net_en.pdf

Historically, capitalism has only thrived while certain domestic social classes and/or foreign populations were being exploited. Capitalism, as a system, still needs to prove that it can create prosperous free-markets without a significant human labor exploitation aspect. I reckon this might as well be the true nature of the problem behind the Western decline we are all witnessing during the last 2 decades. Directly exploitable domestic and foreign populations have basically ceased existing in now almost fully democratized and egalitarian Western societies.

I was speaking to this 65-70 year old jewelry maker yesterday about the state of affairs in Greece. He was a ex-seaman now owning and operating this little shop. We were discussing how the center of Athens is not Greece any more - basically completely overtaken by immigrants who have turned it into a huge and filthy ghetto. I was flabbergasted with his fatalism. "Oh well", he kept saying, "what can you do?" I only mention it because I think his attitude expresses to a good extent the attitude of the average Greek.

Solutions to illegal immigration:

1. For countries that do not block deportations simply arrest and deport those who have been in the country for less than 2 or 3 years.

Friend: Knowledge is a wonderful thing. However it's nothing if not put into practice. The world we live in does not go "by the book".

Regardless of the social injustice, the various psychopathologies and the abuse backgrounds most often being behind a human being's descend to violent crimes like serial killings and serial rapes I argue that such beings have lost their humanity and should not be treated as humans any more. For these cases I advocate swift judgment and punishment by public execution with the public and especially the relatives being the executioners, if they so wish. I find this to be a very reasonable way to pursue justice while I find current practice misguided and problematic.

I was watching the talk show of that Brit that replaced Larry King last night. His guest was the always interesting to watch Michael Moore and one of the things they very emphatically agreed on was how wrong capital punishment is.