World View: Peace Talks with Taliban Will Continue Despite Kabul Attack

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Taliban commits stunning suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan
• Peace talks with Taliban will continue despite Kabul attack
• Irish bankers sing ‘Deutschland über alles’ as they screw the Germans
• Deutschland über alles

Taliban commits stunning suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan

Smoke rises from entrance to presidential palace in Kabul on Tuesday (BBC)

The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for a major suicide attack onthe presidential palace in Kabul, and the nearby U.S. CIA office. Theattack was stunning because it occurred within the “Ring of Steel,”the highest security area within Kabul, which is supposed to beimpervious to Taliban attacks. hree security guards and fourmilitants died in the assault. Al-Jazeera

Peace talks with Taliban will continue despite Kabul attack

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that Barack Obama andAfghan president Hamid Karzai both said that this won’taffect the peace process:

“[Both presidents] reaffirmed that an Afghan-led andAfghan-owned peace and reconciliation process is the surest way toend violence and ensure lasting stability in Afghanistan and theregion.

And they reiterated their support for an office in Doha for thepurpose of negotiations between the High Peace Council andauthorized representatives of the Taliban. The two presidentsreaffirmed that free, fair, and credible elections would becritical to Afghanistan’s future.”

Regular readers know that I frequently write about the bizarrenonsense that comes out of politicians’ mouths, but this has got to bethe most farcical thing going on today. Washington is desperate toget a “peace process” going with the Taliban, but the Taliban say thatthey’re going to continue violence and suicide bombings even while thepeace talks are going on. “Oh, another suicide bombing? That’s fine,old chap. Let’s carry on with the peace talks!” BBC

Irish bankers sing ‘Deutschland über alles’ as they screw the Germans

Recordings of phone calls by top Irish banksters in September andOctober, 2008, at the height of their financial crisis, show that,like many bankers that we’ve already highlighted in the past, theseIrish bankers were cheap crooks with no morals and no ethics, ready toscrew anybody, even their own nation, for their personal gain.

The recordings, which have just been released show the following:

• Anglo-Irish Bank senior manager John Bowe, whose salary was 300,000 euros, purposely lied to government officials, employed a strategy of purposeful dishonesty in order to get a bailout and keep his lucrative job. He decided to ask for 7 billion euros, pulling that number “out of his arse,” even though he knew that wouldn’t help, because it wasn’t too little and it wasn’t too much:

  “If they (Central Bank) saw the enormity of it up front, they might decide they have a choice. You know what I mean?

  They might say the cost to the taxpayer is too high . . . if it doesn’t look too big at the outset . . . if it looks big, big enough to be important, but not too big that it kind of spoils everything, then, then I think you have a chance. So I think it can creep up. …

  strategy is] you pull them in, you get them to write a big check, and they have to keep, they have to support, their money.”

• The bank CEO, David Drumm, says to Bowe:

  “We won’t do anything blatant, but … we have to get the money in … get the f***in’ money in, get it in.”

  Drumm then starts laughing hysterically when Bowe talks about how they’re accepting deposits from Germans that will never be paid back, and then starts singing the German national anthem, “Deutschland über alles.”

The lies worked. Anglo-Irish bank received its 7 billion eurobailout, and ended up receiving a lot more — 30 billion euros– all of which was money down a rathole. Bowe and Drumm knewthat would happen, but they lied anyway to keep their lucrativejobs, defrauding the government, the taxpayers, and the depositors,including the German depositors. But of course, no one isgoing to jail. How can you send a crook to jail if everyoneis a crook?

This is just one more story in the dozens that I’ve written about. Anentire generation of bankers purposely created tens of trillions ofdollars in fraudulent synthetic mortgage-backed securities, and thensold them as AAA risk free. Bankers manipulated Libor for their ownprofit. CNBC analysts and “experts” lie every day aboutprice/earnings ratios (stock valuations). IRS employees targetpolitical enemies (and possibly personal enemies, for all we know),and the Obama administration lies about it. And of course, EricHolder’s Dept. of Justice refuses to investigate and prosecute thebanksters who created the financial crisis, and then used the moneythey obtained to make huge donations to the Obama campaign. Everyday, it’s one more sickening revelation after another. Irish Independent and Irish Independent

Deutschland über alles

I wrote an article about the German national anthem, “Deutschland überalles,” in 2006. (See “Are Germans now proud to be Germans?”) This is the song thatAnglo-Irish bank senior executive John Bowe mimicked when he talkedabout how they were screwing the Germans.

The melody was composed by Franz Joseph Haydn in 1797, and put towords in 1841, to create “Das Lied der Deutschen” (Song of theGermans). Hitler adopted the song as his national anthem. After thewar, two verses of the anthem were removed, leaving only the thirdverse, which talks about “Unity and law and freedom for the GermanFatherland.”

However, the most interesting verse is the second one:

“German women, German loyalty,
German wine and German song,
Shall retain in the world,
Their old lovely ring
To inspire us to noble deeds
Our whole life long.
German women, German loyalty,
German wine and German song.”

They really should have kept that one. Check out the 2006 article.The history of “Deutschland über alles” is really interesting.

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