OmarsCominYo
Member
Was going to post something about an Ali G sketch from that pic but don't want to get the Qataris offside too 
It's hard to get a handle on just how in-grained and shameless this sort of behaviour is over there and in trying to understand how they can get so bent out of shape when called out on it, I came across the following article. 20 years old and a fairly long read, but perhaps offers some insights into what feels a bit like pushing the proverbial up hill, if anyone feels like cheering themselves up.
https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item:2888341/view
"...The word “corruption” implies deviation from a norm, a falling away from accepted standards. Hence, when certain types of illicit transactions become normal to the point that people do not bother to hide them, it is not satisfactory simply to label them as “corruption” or even “crime.” This is especially so when the people who run the state are themselves the main organizers of such activity. As we have seen, evidence from Nigeria and Kenya suggests that outrageously corrupt practices have become routine at the very heart of government in some of the continent’s most important countries...."
"...The problem is that the laws in Africa’s dysfunctional states are rarely enforced, or only very selectively. Worse, the authorities theoretically responsible for their implementation may themselves break these same laws continuously and routinely. This is really what Africa’s so-called failed states are—not so much places where the state has ceased to exist, but where the formal trappings of statehood serve purposes of strategic deception, rather like the stage-sets in a theater. In one of these countries, you would have to be naïve to believe that the law, the police, or the central bank really fulfills the role in theory allotted to it. The Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, GuineaBissau, and dozens of other African states cannot be regarded as functioning according to international norms. But each one nevertheless has an actual, substantive system of politics and governance—not to be confused with the formal system, although the real and the legal are intertwined. Anyone who wants to live or do business in a failing state needs to learn the real rules. In each case, the actual conventions of economic, political, and even social life will certainly involve patterns of activity regarded by many international observers as corrupt. In broad swaths of Africa many types of corrupt practice are not the deviant behavior of a small minority—they are a standard mode of transacting political and financial business...."
It's hard to get a handle on just how in-grained and shameless this sort of behaviour is over there and in trying to understand how they can get so bent out of shape when called out on it, I came across the following article. 20 years old and a fairly long read, but perhaps offers some insights into what feels a bit like pushing the proverbial up hill, if anyone feels like cheering themselves up.
https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item:2888341/view
"...The word “corruption” implies deviation from a norm, a falling away from accepted standards. Hence, when certain types of illicit transactions become normal to the point that people do not bother to hide them, it is not satisfactory simply to label them as “corruption” or even “crime.” This is especially so when the people who run the state are themselves the main organizers of such activity. As we have seen, evidence from Nigeria and Kenya suggests that outrageously corrupt practices have become routine at the very heart of government in some of the continent’s most important countries...."
"...The problem is that the laws in Africa’s dysfunctional states are rarely enforced, or only very selectively. Worse, the authorities theoretically responsible for their implementation may themselves break these same laws continuously and routinely. This is really what Africa’s so-called failed states are—not so much places where the state has ceased to exist, but where the formal trappings of statehood serve purposes of strategic deception, rather like the stage-sets in a theater. In one of these countries, you would have to be naïve to believe that the law, the police, or the central bank really fulfills the role in theory allotted to it. The Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, GuineaBissau, and dozens of other African states cannot be regarded as functioning according to international norms. But each one nevertheless has an actual, substantive system of politics and governance—not to be confused with the formal system, although the real and the legal are intertwined. Anyone who wants to live or do business in a failing state needs to learn the real rules. In each case, the actual conventions of economic, political, and even social life will certainly involve patterns of activity regarded by many international observers as corrupt. In broad swaths of Africa many types of corrupt practice are not the deviant behavior of a small minority—they are a standard mode of transacting political and financial business...."
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