Odukun is Yoruba (African) name for varieties of very sweet yam-tubers or sweet potatoes. They look like potatoes in white, yellow or orange colour and should be boiled, cooked, smoked on coal-fire or fried in oil before eating. They are rich in carbohydrates and often have a delicious, sweet taste when well prepared. After boiling, they can be pounded into a nice smooth paste that is served and eaten with stew. When ready for serving as a meal, the paste is called fufu in some west African communities. When served as fried meals, yams are called dundu in Yoruba, and when cooked in stew with oil, pepper, tomatoes and meat or fish all mixed together in the pot, the meal is called asharo.
Emu is the Yoruba name for palm-wine drink – a yeast-rich, white sap tapped from the top of the stem of the African palm tree. It is sweet when fresh, and within a day or two easily ferments into an alcoholic drink that can intoxicate if drunk in excess.
Economic crisis or not, the CDA holds every Dutch tax-paying victim to have unlimited power to pay for CDA tricks from public funds. All it takes is a little cajoling and empty slogans using the magic words “norms and values” from Balkenende’s mouth on TV. Any information that works against that cunning end must be tempered, twisted or denied – for statistics is a political tool, not a reflection of facts. To justify the introduction of higher public transport costs, introduce OV-cards to replace regular bus cards, simply by promising now that it will become cheaper in the unknown future. It helps to hide that process in a web of technological claims and promises, but ensures that the public pays wrongly or too much for travels if you can draw the money straight from their bank accounts. Cast the net so wide, that travellers get no alternative, but must pay highly for the freedom to travel at the mercy of Christianly transporters.
Zalm Linschoten Grave VVD ministers in DSB bank:
After leaving government, VVD ministers often seek elite interest groups to lobby for. Had Heineken – the bier giant not sponsored VVD’s first rise to power to participate in a ruling government coalition? Hans Wiegel for example became the loudspeaker for the whole insurance sector, out to surpress any government measure that can benefit the general public if insurers dislike it. Unqualified to be accepted in the domain of real big-time professional bankers, Gerrit Zalm left his post as VVD finance minister (came from CPB a state-owned statistical control organ) only to take a second-best job. He joined the DSB bank – not a real bank but more an agent of insurers and mortgage credit lenders – set up by a very ambitious, young policeman Dirk Scheringa (hence the name DirK Scheringa Bank – DSB) who was out to get super-rich super-fast and become a banking magnate. As any get-rich-quick scheme calls for cutting corners, DSB bank cut too many corners to operate ethically as it targeted home-owners, life-insurance pension seekers and anyone with capital to tuck away for the rainy day. Selling dubious financial services now called woeker polis in Dutch (meaning duped contract, profiteering, usury), DSB bank promised high return to ill-advised investors and insurance buyers who found out much too late that they had been duped with worthless contracts that left them in big debts. High return went only to Dirk Scheringa who as single owner of the bank insisted on drawing a dividend of at least €20 million a year, no matter what. Zalm the VVD liberal allowed that.
That not just one but three VVD ministers and State secretaries joined DSB as directors in such a lousy scheme, does in itself say something about the mentality of the VVD clan. Zalm, as former finance minister with the responsibility to regulate banking in the country, should have known that DSB was duping hundreds of thousands of clients of their capital. Not only did Zalm not warn the authorities about this DSB scam, thereby unconcerned about the imminent run on that bank, what could trigger a run on other Dutch banks and weaken the Dutch economy further. Indeed there was a run on DSB bank when Scheringa told critics in October 2009 that DSB had €1.5 billion in cash – enough of a buffer to withstand a run on its €4.3 billion in deposits. Zalm was director with two other VVD members on the board of DSB bank: Rob van Linschoten who as state secretary was once dismissed for lying to parliament, and Grave who was also a former VVD minister. The very presence of these three previous Dutch national government cabinet VVD ministers went a long way in misleading clients to take DSB as a serious bank. For more details on DSB rise and downfall, the reader can turn to RADAR-TROS TV series on the matter or to their website tros.radar.nl.
DSB bank finally went bankrupt, Dirk Scheringa its founder lost the big brand new Scheringa museum he was building to commemorate his millionaire status, and also lost the new football stadium he was donating to an Alkmaar club to immortalise his own name and impress his fans. His banking career lived too fast and died young. Zalm in the usual manner of VVD politicians in the mean time had so sharply criticised Wouter Bos the new PvdA finance minister, that to quieten Zalm, Bos appointed him as top man for the AbnAmro which in its rough afterlife was now owned by the Dutch state. As executive director of AbnAmro, Zalm came under the authority of Wouter Bos the finance minister, and so could no longer harass Wouter Bos. Now that the DSB duping affair has come out into the open, there are calls for Zalm to step down as AbnAmro top man. Clearly stained as a DSB director, now topman of AbnAmro, Zalm’s reputation would harm the imago of AbnAmro. But in the tradition of VVD stubbornness, Zalm has dug himself in and will not consider quiting, not even if that is the honourable thing to do.
That Dutch regulatory authorities should never have allowed such a weak bank as DSB to be set up, is obvious as was concluded by a commission that conducted an enquiry into these unholy affairs that first came into the lime light through a TV coverage by RADAR. Yet, the chairman of the Dutch Central Bank Nout Wellink who failed in this respect, still insists that he did nothing wrong. For his professional lack of judgement, Wellink has been called incapable and there are calls for him to step down as head of the Central Bank. Unfortunately, he is a PvdA party member in a key public seat. Hence, the PvdA minister of finance who should have fired him – Wouter Bos – insisted on protecting Wellink despite all the turmoil and despite the devastating opinion of the AFM – Dutch Financial Markets Authority on the sordid deeds by DSB.
DSB specifically targeted home owners having mortgage loan payment problems, and posed to help them out by substituting their unbearably heavy loans with a new one from DSB bank. Hundreds of thousands of such victims seeking to escape from other unfair banks fell prey to DSB, only to see their financial burden worsenhomes auctioned considerably rather than be relieved of past burden. Many of the victims saw their off under DSB’s hammer. Others had to borrow more money elsewhere to give DSB, thereby tying themselves into financial bondage almost like in the middle ages.
Typical of Dutch-style help, financial advisory foundations propped up overnight, promising to come to the aid of these victims if these each paid a seemingly low contribution. The idea of course was to collect small contributions from each of hundreds of thousands of victims, and take home in total millions of euros. These pretentious helpers then turn round to negotiate with DSB or its executors after its went bankrupt, accept a kickback from these, and advise the poor victims to accept a lower settlement than was otherwise achievable. The DSB bank affair has now smoulded on into the AbnAmro bank if only because the position of DSB’s former director Zalm as new top man of AbnAmro is tarnishing to the image of AbnAmro bank. Even now, Nout Wellink of the Central bank openly protects Zalm who he really should fire as AFM has rightly argued.
For years, Dutch motorists were over-charged for road tax ever since it was instituted by Calvinist government. Drivers remain banned from using specific long stretches of the highway lanes built with that very tax money. Dutch vehicle buyers are forced to pay an almost exclusively Dutch bully-tax called BPM on all vehicles, and Dutch tax on car fuels is so high that gasoline is more expensive in Holland than in the neighbouring countries which import that very fuel from the Dutch.
Why not? After all, the CDA is too full of tricks; it cannot be toppled from its lock unto power. So confident is the CDA of its cunning ability, it is still busy massaging the public into accepting a new more expensive scheme called rekening rijden or payment per kilometre, even after the recent fall of the government makes it difficult to continue with it. Why should road users not vote foolishly to support the CDA? Because it calls itself Christian.
The Dutch CDA party leads the move to stop tax deduction of mortgage interest costs for home owners, thereby ending an age-old fiscal tradition that was originally designed to enable workers to afford own housing. Now, the CDA is using that same argument to end it.
Daily.co.uk poor web hosting
Daily.co.uk – poor web hosting – How not to host domains.
If you want good hosting service and you know how to manage your domains and adjust all necessary hosting settings (DNS records, and nameservers, mailbox and website configuration), your choice of hosting provider boils down to selecting between cPanel, Plesk, and DirectAdmin as your control panel, at least for Linux . Most websites are served from Linux systems. Plesk seems most versatile in that it is used for Linux and Windows server systems alike, and also combines webhost manager’s and domain manager’s menus in the same screen with tab pages on one single log-in access. cPanel is specifically meant for managing Linux hosting servers and is superb. At its main log-in entry, cPanel gives much flexibility in configuring your websites and mail boxes, but separates domain management (DNS zone records, nameservers and account details) into another log-in entry called the Client Area. DirectAdmin is the least flexible, cheapest but simplest, and thus most limited.
Most webhosting companies are resellers, meaning that they subscribe as users to some webhost with all features enabled for them. From their licence they then allow you as customer to share their disk space, folders, IP addresses and whatever features they decide to package together under their brand name. Differences between webhosting companies with their hosting packages therefore boils down to differences in the specific features they turn on or off (enabled/disabled) for you at what price, and the quality of the supporting service team.
What Daily.co.uk and some hosting providers do is to turn on (enable) many features for you initially to lure you in at low price, and then when you are unaware, reset some features to constrain you either to buy more features, or to deter you from transferring to another provider. Daily.co.uk is particularly adept with such monkey tricks. When you raise a complaint ticket, Daily’s support team members give you superficial answers and watch from their end to see what settings you change to correct your problem. Once you finish and go, they are able to reset the features to their own standard defaults. They kept resetting my MX records and zone files, name servers and locking my domains to their own default settings when I needed to point my domain settings to my own servers too. This makes Daily a most unreliable hosting company. In fairness, it must be added that at least one of their support team – Doran – is reliable if you are lucky to get her and if she does not refer your complaint to someone else. As experienced webhost manager and domain manager, I will advice everyone to steer far away from Daily.co.uk. They are monkey tricksters.
Goldman Sachs accused of fraud
Goldman Sachs accused of fraud See Banks
Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street powerhouse, and perhaps the world’s most prestigious investment bank, is under fire from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) for charges of defrauding investors. This case may explain how this bank escaped relatively unscathed from the global financial meltdown. Goldman failed to disclose conflicts of interest while marketing sub-prime mortgage investments just as the US housing market was falling.
The SEC is pressing civil fraud charges against Goldman and one of its London-based vice presidents, Fabrice Tourre for not disclosing that Paulson, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, had bet that the value of some securities would fall. Unknown to investors, Paulson & Co stood to benefit if the securities defaulted, did in fact play a significant role in selecting which securities should make up the portfolio.
The SEC says that investors in the mortgage securities, packaged into a vehicle called Abacus, lost more than $1bn (£650m) in the US housing collapse. On the other hand, John Paulson owner of Paulson & Co. made billions of dollars in profits in the financial markets by betting against sub-prime mortgage securities.
The SEC found that in effect, Goldman Sachs arranged a transaction at Paulson’s request in which Paulson heavily influenced the selection of the portfolio to suit its economic interests. They also found that Mr Fabrice Tourre, Vice President of Goldman Sachs was principally behind the creation of Abacus, which agreed its deal with Paulson in April 2007. Mr Tourre knew the market in mortgage-backed securities was about to be hit well before this date. In an email from Mr Tourre to a friend in January 2007, he said “More and more leverage in the system. Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre]… standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!“.
This heavy blow to the reputation of Goldman Sachs – the bank through which 30 to 40% of the trading volume on Wall Street runs, is the more disturbing because Lloyd Blankfein the bank’s CEO insists that he sees no wrong-doing in betting against the very mortgage his bank sold to its clients; what was followed by a collapse of the housing market.
CDA messes up health care
Thanks to US president Obama, the American public has now entered the age of wide-spread health cost coverage which Europeans have enjoyed for decades even in the last century. Dutch families, young and old have enjoyed that most essential health-care opportunity for ages too, thanks to age-long social negotiations and arrangements in the workplace and centrally at the plea of the labour party. The Dutch called it Ziekenfonds or funds for the sick because it enabled those unable to pay to still get treated when sick.
Then under Balkenende, the CDA came with a trick to cover not just those unable to pay doctor’s fees, but also those rich enough not to need public funding of health care. In short, the CDA got the poor to cover the rich using tax-money. Whereas ziekenfonds was free for the poor, CDA managed to impose a mandatory own-risk contribution by everyone amounting to €150 per person at first, and now being raised to perhaps €750 per person per year. On top of the basic health coverage so insured, individuals with more need have to buy separate extra insurance from the confusing wild forest of myriads of Dutch health care insurance contracts offered at high expense by insurers.
To ensure that health-care money gets into the pockets of their rich elite interest groups, the CDA divulged the privacy of Dutch burgers to the insurance companies, gave insurers full access to burger tax registration, and placed the sick directly at the mercy of health-care insurers, even above the hospitals and clinics that normally professionally decide the course of treatment for the sick. Now in many urgent cases, Dutch chronically sick are refused treatment by their insurers, and have to rush to German clinics at own expensive just to get treated. For the CDA, insurer’s profit motive is clearly above citizen health.
Similar favouring of interest groups above public interest was demonstrated in the handling of Q-koorts (Q-fever) and Mexican flu when the interest of pharmaceutic producers was allowed to dictate policy, and concern for public health was claimed only as a means to massaging acceptance of sector-imposed policy. CDA minister of agriculture Gerda Verburg rather than be concerned about public health, was too busy launching her own magazine GERDA in her own name at public expense, with her pictures as glamour star with a lock of blond forehead hair amidst her black coiffure. She was too consumed in self-aggrandisement to note that Dutch animal farms and veterinarians were endangering the health of consumers of chicken, pork and beef by using too much anti-biotics.
MRSA bacteria from chickens are increasingly resistant to anti-biotics and do get transmitted to consumers of meat. Meanwhile, 38 % of all chickens, 68% of all pigs and 88% of all cows and cattle on farms that supply meat, dairy and poultry products for consumers are already infected. The bacteria are transmitted by contact even via doorknobs. Dutch farm consumption of anti-biotics increased sharply by 83% in just a few years, making it the highest in all of Europe. Yet it was the Dutch Dr Andre Ross of Radboud University Hospital, Nijmegen who discovered MRSA bacteria. And it was clearly shown to be similar to the deadly ESBL bacteria transmitted by chickens and causes 8000 deaths a year in Europe.
Each Dutch veterinarian earns some €284,000 a year extra by supplying these antibiotics to farms. It is now known that 400 vets representing only 5% of Dutch vet practices prescribe over 80% of the anti-biotics. When medical experts raised alarm requesting drastic immediate cutbacks in antibiotic consumption on farms, agriculture minister Gerda Verburg responded too late and too little, curtailing the cutbacks to be enforced by health inspectors to just 20% over two to three years. The free market for drug sales has clearly become a deadly market in Dutch CDA hands. (see Political Parties)
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