Communist @ MindSay

Accused as communists, Aileen's father, a dentist, and her mother, a successful surgeon, were dragged off from their posh house in an exclusive subdivision one night by armed men identifying themselves as members of the 76th infantry brigade and stuffed into a van. They were then taken to the nearest military camp and tortured for days. They were told by the military to confess their alleged involvement with the rebels.


Her parents' bodies were found a week later in a shallow creek just beside their house. Their bodies were naked and filled with bruises in the chest arms and legs.


When interviewed, neighbours only said that they did not have any involvement with Aileen's family whatsoever. During the funeral, a military jeep was seen regularly passing by the house.


While buying candles for her parents' funeral, Aileen was reportedly snatched by unknown people inside a black van. She was not seen for a month. when she returned, neighbours commented that she was not wearing the dress she was wearing when she disappeared. She was found wandering aimlessly in a street several kilometers away from her family's house.

Unable to speak, the neighborhood decided that a family should take her in and the people would contribute their time in taking care of her. After several days of silence, she finally told them to let her go back inside her house. She did not tell them of anything that happened while she was away.

Aileen allegedly hanged herself in their house that night. Autopsy revealed that she was pregnant.

Dienst Wonen Amsterdam uncontrollable; reconsider your real estate investment strategy.

 

The housing situation in the Netherlands has its peculiarities. Low income (and sometimes even moderate to high income) depends on renting houses from the so called Woningbouwvereniging. This is a semi governmental organization dividing accommodation to lower income people.

 

This applies also for Amsterdam.  It has long waiting lists, because there is not enough accommodation to provide housing to this group, and people stay put in a locked pricing model even if they climb the social ladder and should be moving on.

 

Unfortunately there are people that make misuse of this and illegally rent their subsidized houses to others, making a bundle of money on the difference.  Also brokers offer these dwellings and earn a commission on the transaction.

 

Therefore the city council of Amsterdam decided to pass a law which enforces rental brokers to apply for a permit. This law was passed in June of 2007.

 

The intention was to crack down on illegal rental brokerage.

 

Enforcing this law was given to Dienst Wonen, a department within the civil servant organisation of the city of Amsterdam.

 

For all intend and purpose they probably started off with success. Only after some time this department lost complete track of the letter of the law and started to impose this rule on well established expat rental brokers and even on private persons who offered their dwellings to the expat community, either through other’s internet site or their own. Keep in mind that the expat community by the nature of their limited stay, will never be able to apply for subsidized housing. Too high income and too short time. And even if they do comply, by the time their number comes up, they are probably already back home or on their way home. Meanwhile are they supposed to sleep under a bridge?

 

This was not done in the way known by the Dutch as the Polder Model, but the full fist of the law was laid down on innocent people. The traditional model -innocent until proven guilty-, was thrown overboard.

 

If you think you can post a message on the pin board of the grocery store, you’re wrong. You will be hunted down and confronted with hefty penalties. They may even prosecute the store owner, on the assumption that he is illegally brokering. Sounds crazy? Well it isn’t.

 

The style and the manner of this megalomaniac and power crazed department is unheard of.

 

It works as a police institution and does not add any value to the housing market. Hours and hours of civil servants time (and our tax money) is spent surfing the internet for people offering rentals. The whole atmosphere within this organisation resembles the story depicted in the German movie “Das Leben der Andern”. 

 

If they would limit themselves to the abovementioned illegal brokerages, then that stands to reason, but these people think they have card-blanche to grill any person.

 

So should you consider investing in housing in Amsterdam, think twice. The political climate of some parts of the Amsterdam city council organization is such that they want to determine what is going to happen to your money. Sound considerations like return on investment and long term strategies, are a great risk in such a climate.

 

What is also at jeopardy is the availability non-subsidized furnished accommodation for the expat community. Amsterdam is suffering from decreasing foreign investment and not being able to house your temporary brain workers is not going to help here.

 

So in a nutshell, if thinking of investing in real estate in the Netherlands fine, but eliminate Amsterdam of your investment list, until the political situation changes or people are corrected by their peers and made to realize for whom they work and by whom they are being paid.

 

And for those that own properties already, you might want to consider putting it on the market, now that prices are still stable. Not that the target group Dienst Wonen claims to protect can afford this real estate, but nonetheless. This way they can boil in their own misguided fat and hurting the economics of Topstad Amsterdam.

 

Tip: use these funds to buy short term rental real estate in Florida e.g. in the Orlando region. Enough people to visit the theme parks around Orlando (Disney World, Magic Kingdom, MGM Studios, Seaworld, Bush Gardens, etc.) Dollar is cheap, housing prices low, and the political and social climate favours investment opportunities and entrepreneurship.

 

If you put it on a saving account in the Netherlands, you want to have a interest rate of at least 4% (very unlikely currently), for the Dutch tax authorities will charge you 30% tax on 4% return on capital (Box III).

 

This underlines the wrongness of council politics wanting to limit your return on investment. And you thought the Berlin wall had disappeared?

 

Good luck with any decision you make,

 

Kind regards

 

For the past few years, I and many other ppl have been feeling like we have been living in a increasing Communist Country.  Our various freedoms and the right to do the most basic things has become illegal or taxed the hell out of.  Did our Founding Fathers NOT start this country to get away from gov't rule and stupid assinine lack of common sense?

 

But US Citizens do not dispare!  We are NOT alone in how our gov't is becoming a Communist Rule and telling us what we can do, how to do what they tell us we can do, and all that jive!  The Britions are no better off then we are!  Only difference is their anal retintive gov't calls their taxes and stupid ass laws "Sin Taxes".

 

The UK not only went after smoking but now they are going after drinking.  And cars!  Hey at least they are being fair if you ask my opinon on that!  Not only are they making it illegal to kill oneself with smoke by making it almost unattinable to smoke anywhere but your house, now the UK is hiking their already HIGH booze tax up another 6%.  They are now trying to do away with the "pub" scene.   The car issue is along the lines of SUVs and bigger vechiles.  For many US Citizens they have no clue exactly how expensive it is over in the UK. 

 

Case in point when us US Citizens were bitching about paying 1.70 plus a gallon on gas the UK Citizens were already paying about 3-4 bucks a gallon for gas.  So just imagine what they are paying now with US Citizens paying about 3-4 bucks a gallon for gas.  They are looking at almost a 10 dollar a gallon gas fill. 

 

Many British Citizens are speaking out on these "Sin" Taxes.  Baisc enjoyment for many ppl of drinking, smoking, and driving vechiles they already paid otu the ass on are now "SINS" and they will be taxed for it.  Citizens over in the UK have pointed out that their ecomony is just as shitty as the US's and the gov't is stupid ass hell for hiking these taxes because it will NOT stop ppl from drinking or smoking.  If a person wants to drink and smoke they are going to.  It won't stop them from driving their vechiles anymore than US Citizens have stopped driving big vechiles.  All it is going to do is cost the Gov't money by loss of revenue. 

 

And once our lovely gov'ts tax basic enjoyments to death and cause the majority of citizens in their country to stop doing what they enjoy, and cost the gov't revenue they will start taxing to death basic everyday living items even more than they already do.  Because we all know that it isn't the gov't that keeps our countries running.  It is the citizens and how they are taxed to death and then told we have no say in anything.  We are told how to live our lives, what we can and can't do.

 

Saying this to anyone in our gov'ts can consitute a treason act if we act against it.  Even when the US Consitution says the US Citizens have the right to rise up and clean out our own gov't.  If we should do this we are committing a treasonist act even though we have a consitutional right to do so.  In otherwords, if the Citizens of the US finally wise up and stop their bitching and act, we are dayumed.  If we continue our bitching and do nothing we are dayumed.  At least the US Citizens have a small recourse with our Consititution.  I am not sure what the British Citizens have for recourse. 

 

Got to love our Communist Gov'ts that use the guise of democrocy to beat down their citizens.

    Anger is a gift says Malcolm X. Well then I must be the most gifted Filipino around. Arriving from class today, I passed by the communal television lounge and saw the failed attempt of the protesting farmers to gather at Mendiola. A wall of policemen armed with shields and clubs and anti-riot gear blockaded the mass of farmers wielding banners of red and shouts of land and justice. Tierra y Justicia, just like the cries of the indigenous in Southeast Chiapas Mexico, the same cries uttered by the same people victimized and massacred by their respective countries. Then the pretty, trustworthy-looking, serious-sounding newscaster comes in view and tells us that the farmers are already starting to disperse and go home. Back to their homes in Central Luzon barefoot and wet from the slight rain this afternoon. And then pretty newscaster tells us about the news we have to watch later: the dance showdown between two competing groups of sexy dancers, and then a footage showing barely-clothed women doing something to chairs and various furnitures in the stage.
    I hurried on down the corridor to my room and all the while my head feels like its going to explode. I have read all about these, about how the media portrays disjointed narratives on television, about how it lumps side by side events as if they are of the same level, as if farmers shouting for justice is the same as naked women dancing on stage. I have read all about the agrarian problem in the Philippines, about the neocolonial nature of our country, about the various attempts by the various people to seek the right to their land all through the years, about the communist problem, about the Muslim insurgency problem, about the corrupt politicians who run this stupid government, about the oligarchies in the various provinces of the country, about Jose Maria Sison exiled in the Netherlands, about the Alex Boncayao Brigade, I have read all about these, and still the hatred remains, the feeling remains, the feeling of anger over the stupidities and heartlessness of the Military and Government Bureaucracy remains. I never seem to get bored about all these things and this is the cause of my problem.
    What's your major malfunction, barks the Sergeant. My malfunction sir, is that I care too much.
    I open the door and dump my bag on my typhoon-ravaged bed, the bed that creaks and squeaks at night, I change my shirt and contemplate things, which is a bad way to deal with headaches by the way, contemplate about what exactly I don't really care. Just let your anger run wild and let your imagination loose. If I had my way, If I am the ruler of the universe, what would I do?
    I would be, as Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes be, one of those Older Gods, pitiless God who demands sacrifice and even that doesn't satisfy me. Even that doesn't quench my anger. I would periodically destroy the earth and watch the human race evolve again and again and again until I get bored. And then I'll destroy the entire universe and then rebuild it just for the sheer fun of it. I will show these ignorant creations of mine who's boss and right then and there I would have solve all these petty problems about social inequality and injustice. Everyone would be the same. Everyone is the same piece of shit that comes out of my powerful, immortal ass. There would only be one oppressor and that oppressor would be me.
    But time to get back to reality.
    Seen from several millions of miles away, the earth is but a tiny speck of blue in a vast universe of galaxies and stars. Talk about the ego of a man who considers himself an important creature of greatness blessed by God for he is created, as is claimed in the Bible, in HIS own image. Let's take a look at a picture of the most powerful person in the whole world today, George Bush, are we to believe that this self-righteous piece of shit is the most prized and important thing in the entire universe?
    I am tired and sleepy and my thoughts are far from clear, let alone bearing any resemblance of sanity. I am anxious and worried about what exactly I don't know. The things that I fear have all lost their shapes because of repetitive thinking about them, which logically should make me happy. But no, I sense that there is something really wrong with the world today, or maybe I'm just paranoid or maybe I don't know.
    I'm tired, I'm going to sleep.
    Fuck you all.

Nonviolence is as close as I come to dogma of any kind, and though it comes close even it is not absolute. My wife sometimes calls herself a pacifist atheist who prefers her nonviolence uncontaminated by religious dogma, and I sometimes borrow her line. As Bertrand Russell and others have pointed out, people of all religions—hindu, buddhist, jew, christian, moslem, jain, taoist, shaman—and of no religion, too—like Einstein, Russell, Hubble, Krishnamurti—have had mystic oceanic experiences just as some zealous reborn christians have and they, too, have described them. Some of these nonchristians are just as certain, just as devoted, just as convinced, just as dedicated, just as sure as the christians that their experience is the true one, the real one, the only one. Their remarks all follow the same formula; one need only plug in the variant brand name, the variant deity or ideology. Russell (and I and others like him) is more interested in the generic archetype than in the brand names the zealous, awed experiencers inevitably promote. They confuse the message with the messenger, the teaching with the teacher, the lesson with their system of belief. Their sincerity is not in question. But their eminently understandable misunderstandings of their mystic experiences foster division and suspicion. Selflessness, peace, honesty, compassion, generosity, kindness, mercy, love—if they would simply promulgate and foster this message there would be real hope for our deluded, lost, suffering, divided human family but, no, each must package and wrap the message in his own special box, ribbon, and bow, and attach a card: "My way, this way, the only way!" This is the problem in a nutshell.