. So i don't think the Brits, or at least its high command at the time, were caring too much about the burden on the Germans.
But yea, maybe the Brits back in post WW1 didn't mean to cripple Germany, it just work out that way. Though a few smarter Brits knew it would but weren't listened to.
I think it's public record that the British didn't want to cripple Germany and actually reworked the compensation when its predication of default became reality. Can't talk about what the various internet forums recount is, but that's as I was taught.
I think it's public record that the British didn't want to cripple Germany and actually reworked the compensation when its predication of default became reality. Can't talk about what the various internet forums recount is, but that's as I was taught.
Interesting how both Germany and Japan both came back from devastation faster than Britain because they rebuilt industries from scratch while Britain tried to repair their existing ones.
Try thinking about it this way Rumpy; that those two countries, Germany Japan were the Wests 'sandbags' on the USSR.
Luutzu, love your work bro.
Especially, the link to Bob Dylan's "Masters of War", so apt.
Get a room guys!
I fully agree with you; This is a failure of politicians which can be seen all over the world on both side of the established left/right parties;From Mish -this is my view also.
“Donald Trump’s shocking transformation from reality-show host to Republican presidential front-runner is not some random and bizarre twist of fate. It grows from the failure of our political system to adapt to demographic change, economic disruption and a reorganizing world.
Trump’s victory Saturday in the South Carolina primary appears to have cleared away the cobwebs of denial.
Rubio promises an aggressively interventionist foreign policy of the kind that gave us more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cruz pledges to double down on failed economic policies ”” deregulation, tax cuts, tight money ”” and turn back the clock on social changes such as same-sex marriage. Neither offers much that sounds new or promising.
So it should be no surprise that substantial numbers of Republicans are seduced by Trump, who proposes knocking the house down and starting over. His demagoguery succeeds not just because of his fame and charisma. In sometimes appalling ways, he addresses the hopes and fears of much of the Republican base.
His pledge to build a physical wall along the border with Mexico hits a nerve with white voters worried about the “browning” of the nation. His disparagement of free-trade agreements gives hope to blue-collar workers left behind by the flight of manufacturing jobs. His advocacy of restraint in the deployment of U.S. troops, even with the Middle East in flames, draws nods from war-weary military families and veterans.
And Trump’s diagnosis of what is wrong with our politics ”” that the politicians are bought and paid for by special interests ”” is essentially correct. His supporters may disapprove of his extreme rhetoric, some of which is racially tinged, but still appreciate the fact that he is beholden to no one.
....and don't forget Clinton is bought and paid for also. Lots of Republican money going to her now.
The American's are sick of it. Trump has a good chance of becoming President - scary as that is.
I have a lot of sympathy with that point of view. If The Donald is something of an emetic for an entrenched political establishment, then so be it.From Mish -this is my view also.
“Donald Trump’s shocking transformation from reality-show host to Republican presidential front-runner is not some random and bizarre twist of fate. It grows from the failure of our political system to adapt to demographic change, economic disruption and a reorganizing world.
Trump’s victory Saturday in the South Carolina primary appears to have cleared away the cobwebs of denial...
...So it should be no surprise that substantial numbers of Republicans are seduced by Trump, who proposes knocking the house down and starting over. His demagoguery succeeds not just because of his fame and charisma. In sometimes appalling ways, he addresses the hopes and fears of much of the Republican base...
...And Trump’s diagnosis of what is wrong with our politics ”” that the politicians are bought and paid for by special interests ”” is essentially correct. His supporters may disapprove of his extreme rhetoric, some of which is racially tinged, but still appreciate the fact that he is beholden to no one.
....and don't forget Clinton is bought and paid for also. Lots of Republican money going to her now.
The American's are sick of it. Trump has a good chance of becoming President - scary as that is.
Why angry Americans are tempted by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders
......This doesn't mean Trump is the inevitable victor. It does mean this campaign is like no other in recent history. Trump has broken every rule, shattered every convention, yet confounded every expert prediction that he would implode. And this tells us that the US itself is in a condition like no other we've seen.
Donald Trump with his family at a South Carolina primary night rally on Saturday.
The other telltale is what's happening on the other side of US politics, the Democratic one. Trump's Democrat analogue, Bernie Sanders, is enjoying a similarly flabbergasting success. He was long derided as an unreconstructed socialist in America, and almost unheard of outside it.
He's not the Democrat frontrunner, but he's not far behind. In the Nevada caucuses on the weekend, he won just 5 per cent fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, a former US secretary of state and first lady.
But how can Bernie Sanders be Trump's analogue? There are obvious differences. Trump, billionaire property tycoon, claims to be a hyper-capitalist. Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist.
Yet it's "what they have in common that's made them the men with the momentum" says the Chicago Tribune's Kathleen Hennessey.
They are both old, white men, the most unfashionable social group in the developed world today. They are raw and angry, utterly unlike the closely scripted, well manicured political mannequins typically sent out from central casting.
And it's the anger that is the shared, defining characteristic of both. As John Leland reported in The New York Times a few weeks ago: "Trump and Sanders voters are the likeliest among their parties to be 'angry' at Washington, according to the Times/CBS News poll, with 52 per cent of Trump backers and 30 per cent of Sanders backers identifying that way.
"Anger has risen steadily since 2010 among both Democrats and Republicans," Leland wrote, "and their anger appears to be one factor sweeping Mr Trump and Mr Sanders from the relative margins to the top of many polls."
How much anger is there in the US today? Seven Americans out of ten say they're very angry or somewhat angry about "the way things are going" in the US, according to a CNN-ORC poll from December.
What are they angry about? The same proportion, seven in 10, say they're angry because the system "seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power, like those on Wall Street or in Washington," according to an NBS-Wall Street Journal poll from November.
Sanders concentrates his anger on Wall Street, while Trump aims his at Washington. Belonging to a much-derided social group presumably lends some authenticity to their outsider status.
Trump is appealing to be the fury-in-chief. He claims that he is "very, very angry" and will "gladly accept the mantle of anger". Sanders is so angry that he daily calls for a "political revolution", no less.
If the people are so angry at the status quo, can it be a surprise that they are resisting swallowing, once more, the two political dynasties that have dominated the last quarter-century of US politics?
Between George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, those two families have occupied the White House for 20 of the past 27 years. And Americans are refusing to meekly re-endorse them, with Jeb Bush now gone and Hillary Clinton struggling to hold off the Sanders insurrection.
"America's political class is only beginning to grasp the depth of the anti-establishment mood that is gripping the US," observes Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times this month. "Almost eight years after the financial crisis, this mood seems to be growing in strength, not weakening. President Barack Obama's announcement last week that the US unemployment rate is now below 5 per cent barely registered on the campaign trail.
"Instead, all the talk is of students reeling under unpayable debts; and of parents having to work at two or three low-paid jobs to make ends meet. The idea that the economy is 'rigged' in favour of insiders is now embraced, in some form, by most of the candidates in both the Republican and Democratic parties."
The "most fundamental source" of discontent is economic, according to a Brookings Institution expert, William Galston. Middle American incomes have been stagnant for a decade and a half.
Shockingly, life expectancy has actually fallen for Americans with low education levels, by four years or 5 per cent. And it happened with startling speed, between 1990 and 2008, according to Jay Olshansky of Illinois University.
Meanwhile, the US financial system – "Wall Street" – that is blamed for the colossal economic collapse of 2008-9 in a frenzy of greed and fraud is seen to be unpunished. Not one Wall Street executive has been jailed for fraud.
So what appears to many Australians to be an inexplicable fit of American madness is actually pretty rational. If Australia had the same problems, we might have the same reaction.
Americans' financial frustration then begets the quest for someone to blame. This is where Trump and Sanders handily supply the scapegoats.
The other important feature they share is aptly described by the Washington Post's conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer: "Let the others propose carefully budgeted five-point plans. Sanders and Trump offer magic."
They do not offer serious solutions, but the force of their public support means that we have to take them seriously nonetheless.
Good article baz. See what happens when you venture away from the Grauniad? Decent articles.
Trump's victories aren't mysterious if you understand why people are angry
Jeb Lund
....And though establishment toffs like to issue signifying snorts about Trump voters being predominantly “poorly educated”, in the minutes after the caucus even CNN started to come around to the most elusive explanation: Trump’s popularity isn’t about his supporters’ education, their religion or the policies they’d like to see enacted. Trump is popular because of his supporters’ anger.
Trump and Sanders: The Political Parasites of 2016
By Jack Shafer
February 24, 2016
Think of the Republican Party as a host organism that has only now discovered the parasite it acquired eight months ago. The parasite, of course, is Donald J. Trump””no more a Republican than I””who has inserted himself into the party and appears to be on his way to winning its presidential nomination. Feeding on the Republican Party’s primary and caucus process, the Trump parasite has progressed from egg to larva and has now commandeered many of the Republican Party’s metabolic functions. But it’s been managed growth, as the smart-thinking parasite likes to keep its zombie host alive long enough to develop into the next stage and lay its own eggs and begin the process anew.
Trump isn’t the only political parasite on the hustings this season. Bernie Sanders, who never ran as a Democrat before this election, has likewise attempted to colonize the gastrointestinal tract of a major party in hopes that it will eventually deposit him at the White House.
lol. Great posts. (that last one was a bit gruesome.
Qldfrog into politics -yea why not?
Luutzu would flee in horror
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