People’s acceptance of corruption never ceases to amaze me. I guess they think it’s in some way “sophisticated” or “necessary.” The French even went so far as to elect a President it was widely suspected would have been indicted if had he not won. Maybe they all secretly want a chance to be corrupt, to be Don Corleone. But it is pretty clear this is a prescription for nothing but misery as this excellent article on the Pursuit of Happiness reminds us.

And speaking of born for misery, how about the porcine Suha Arafat, who, according to Debka, has made off with the following settlement in return for allowing the dictator husband she never sees to be declared dead and returned to Ramallah for a funeral:

Last July, Arafat sent his wife $11 million to cover her living expenses and those of their daughter for six months – $1.8 million per month. The new accord guarantees her the same allowance from the Palestinian Authority as a regular annual remittance, i.e. $22 million per annum, for the rest of her life. Abu Mazen and prime minister Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) signed on the dotted line, although they have no notion how the penniless Palestinian Authority faced with a people in dire poverty can possibly stump up this kind of money.

Well, “laisser manger humus,” I guess we could say. I wonder how many of those starving Palestinians are aware of this settlement and, if they are, why they put up with this? It is a Stockholm Syndrome larger than Sweden itself. Instead of following the rais‘ funeral bier down the streets of Ramallah, they should be tearing him limb from limb, pissing down his mouth and tossing the remains in one of those HazMat recycling bins.

Of course, despite their well known proclivity for conspiracy theories, you can’t expect the poor Paleos to know all that much about how they have been raped when the details are continually softened by European and even American news organizations. It was almost other-worldly listening to Juan Williams on Fox News last night calling Arafat a symbol of his people’s liberation movement. I guess Juan confused liberation with enslavement. He’s not the only one. The biggest enablers in this sadistic game are the Swiss (and other) bankers with their unmarked accounts, which allow dictators to rob their people blind, often with the tacit permission of their supposed “charitable” donors. Isn’t it about time these accounts be opened up and declared illegal? Why don’t we ask Kofi Annan’s help with that?… Oh, yeah, forgot, sorry…