now we can stop calling them Kraut Nazis

I like it when journalists just report events and don't use their brains to give the story significance.
Nothing helps peace and prosperity more than the paying of 92-year-old war debts. To the victor go the spoils; pillaging, that is. More analysis below.

Here, read the brainless stuff from Yahoo news:

First World War officially ends on Sunday

8 hours 37 mins ago
Yahoo! News By Gaby Leslie
The First World War will officially end on Sunday when Germany pays off the last of the enormous debt which was set by the Allies 92 years ago.
The final £60 million instalment is part of a £22 billion debt imposed for starting one of the bloodiest conflicts in history will be cleared on what will also be the 20th anniversary of German reunification.
The Allied victors - primarily Britain, France and America set the reparations in 1919's Treaty of Versailles - a peace agreement - as both compensation and punishment for waging the four year war, which left 10 million soldiers dead, and European towns and cities devastated. [good! make us hate the Germans- Costick67]
Germany's Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues said that the bond issued to pay remaining debts stemming from 'The War To End All Wars' will be written off on 3 October.

Germany's best-selling daily newspaper, Bild, said: "On Sunday the last bill is due and the First World War finally, financially at least, terminates for Germany."

The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, but was later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time.

However, the bill would have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not refused to pay the reparations during his dictatorship. The bill was also frozen again when West and East Germany split, and renewed again after reunification in 1990.

Most of the war reparations go to private individuals, pension funds and corporations holding debenture bonds.
---the end

ein klein moment, bitter.
John Maynard Keynes, whose Keynesianism is out of style (except for bank welfare), quit the committee when because the amount was too big. History's loosers, init?

Adolph Hitler didn't pay off the victors. What if you look at it the other way: the reparations, which were designed to disuade Germany from war, was so punitive (currency was worthless, people were starving in the streets) that it sped up the arrival of Hitler, and we know what a peacenik he was.
The Germans are not the only ones who don't believe they're guilty of anything. My understanding of the events prior to WW1 was that all the major countries were acting like they were intent on enforcing bragging rights as the 'greatest' nation in the world, i.e. a pissing contest was in the offing. Germany was no exception, but it wasn't the only country. So, why lay all the blame on them? Well, they lost. That's why.
If you check Wikipedia, you'll see that the discount sum was still £23 billion pounds, a staggering sum today. The sum in current £sterling is 300 billion, meaning the initial sum was over half a trillion. That's banker-size money.

The US is the only country willing to coff up that much money, today.
Banker: Stick 'em up of your country gets it!
Those silly kraut-eaters shoulda sent bankers to the frontline!
That would have killed two birds with one stone.

I've learned from history:

Once a banker makes his first million,

send him to Hell-man province in Afghanistan!

-Costick67 ~(8^P
checkitout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations

Hug-an-industrialist Day

I used to think that in the days of NAFTA and the beginnings of the WTO, that wealthy industrialists were trying to screw regular folk out of their jobs, by shipping factories overseas so as to get millions more in short-term profits.

Well, this is true.

However, these rather rich industrialists were merely the footsoldiers for the bankers.

Industry did the hard work, and the moneybags bankers and stock brokers merely asked the WTO for the freeing up of international capital flows.

Why not? What could be wrong with that?
The whole planet could benefit from US-style deregulation!
Woops! Speculators like Soros ran wild, swallowing up smaller countries.

Industrialists didn't mind. In fact, it made it easier for them to do their off-shoring business.

Now, however, these industrialists, the few brave who are left in the West, are being royally screwed by the financial crisis, which is worldwide, instead of just in the US,

BECAUSE OF THE WTO.

Loss of credit, loss of markets, loss of consumers

So, after you screwed the unions which were the first and last line of defense for your workers, and customers, I just wanted to say,

I feel your pain

and I'd like to double it, please.

-Costick67 ~(8^P

thanks for the warning about the fall of democracy

One of Obama's recent speeches said so much about the political status quo.

The president is warning that the Citizens United case means that corporations will buy all the elections in the future. This means that corp.s would take over the US.

This is a stark warning, coming from the Presidency of the US, an institution which seemed to have historically been in favour of gifting itself and its various parts, not to mention the other 197 countries of the world, to their friends in business.

The business of America is business

Firstly, let's look at the context. When he says 'corporate' as a scare tactic, he's speaking to Democrats and like-minded Republicans who are rightfully scared of a corporate takeover.

So, his main message is:

DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN IN NOVEMBER

OTHERWISE, WE'RE GETTING OUR ARSES KICKED, DIG?

That's it. That's his only message. There is no other.

Now for the status quo. Obama's victorious election was funded by bankers and stock market financiers. So, essentially, the corporations put him in place, to do nothing.

If it weren't for them, the world would be run by a Vietnam vet, with a side order of Turrets.

[said his own wife dressed like a call-girl]

I would have been waiting for him to flip out under pressure,

flip a conference table on its side and

start screaming about the 'gooks'.

'Follow the Ho Chi Minh trail'

At least that would have been entertaining, in a Bushian sort of way. It's better than being lied to.

Secondly, Obama's advisors are all from Wall Street: Geithner, Summers, Emmanuel.

Thirdly, the military-industrial complex is out of control and one of the forces pushing for the US to keep fighting and finding new wars,

as a form of advertising for their 'smart' armaments

(unfortunately handled by dim-witted drop-outs).

Final analysis: Citizens United is just the completion of the takeover.

Next step: Terminator cyborgs as 'election' 'volunteers'

[this story below misses the credible angle that Obama might be lying]

Here's the analysis from Alternet:

Obama Warns of ‘Corporate Takeover’ of American Democracy
Posted by stevebenen on @ 9:49 am
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/09/17/obama-warns-of-corporate-takeover-of-american-democracy/
This post originally appeared at the Political Animal

We talked earlier this week about far-right interest groups collecting millions for attack ads, all in support of Republican candidates, and financed through shadowy groups awash in undisclosed donations. The NYT raised the specter of “a relatively small cadre of deep-pocketed donors, unknown to the general public … shaping the battle for Congress.”
It’s not an issue Democrats spend a lot of time talking about — they have plenty of other items they’re trying to emphasize — which is why I was glad to see President Obama take some to talk about this at an event last night in Connecticut.

“I want you to consider this — right now, all across the country, special interests are planning and running millions of dollars of attack ads against Democratic candidates. Because last year, there was a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. They’re allowed to spend as much as they want without ever revealing who’s paying for the ads. That’s exactly what they’re doing. Millions of dollars. And the groups are benign-sounding: Americans for Prosperity. Who’s against that? Or Committee for Truth in Politics. Or Americans for Apple Pie. Moms for Motherhood. I made those last two up.“None of them will disclose who’s paying for these ads. You don’t know if it’s a Wall Street bank. You don’t know if it’s a big oil company. You don’t know if it’s an insurance company. You don’t even know if it’s a foreign-controlled entity. In some races, they are spending more money than the candidates…. They’re spending more money than the parties.

“They want to take Congress back and return to the days where lobbyists wrote the laws. It is the most insidious power grab since the monopolies of the Gilded Age. That’s happening right now. So there’s a lot of talk about populist anger and grassroots. But that’s not what’s driving a lot of these elections.

“We tried to fix this, but the leaders of the other party wouldn’t even allow it to come up for a vote. They want to keep the public in the dark [that's rich! I thought that was your job-Costick67]. They want to serve the special interests that served them so well over the last 19 months [once again- pot & kettle language- Costick67].

“We will not let them. We are not about to allow a corporate takeover of our democracy.”

Voters may not mind a corporate takeover of our democracy; at this point, it’s hard to say. But given the number of attack ads the public will see from these “independent” groups, it’s a message voters should probably be aware of.

---end of story text

Reader Comment:
The natural outcome of our pay to play political system is plutocracy. "Our" representatives openly solicit bribes and our courts sanction there duplicity under the guise of free speech. These are high crimes in any legitimate representative democracy.

---the end

At least one reader is not being fooled.

-Costick67 ~(8^P