Saturday, November 22, 2008

Iceland, not funny at all...

...and whilst on the subject of the attractions of alcohol-induced oblivion in troubled times, there's an 1/2 hour BBC podcast entitled 'Iceland after the Crash' which is worth a spin for anyone who fancies a taste of what might be in store for certain countries considerably larger than Iceland (direct link to the MP3 here - it'll probably only stay live for a few days)

see also a worthwhile, but curiously titled, piece in the Times-




Personally, I haven't encountered that many people having a laugh at the economic implosion of an entire nation. Maybe I don't mix with the right kind of people. Most of the people I speak with are afflicted, to one extent or another, with a niggling sense that something similar might be headed our way sooner rather than later

I can't resist a link to this though




Reading around a bit I'm also detecting that Icelanders are starting to realise that their country didn't implode because of, outrageous as it was, the UK government's use of anti-terror legislation to seize assets but because Icelanders and corrupt Icelandic institutions spunked an awful lot of money they had not earned up against the wall. That particular distractive deceit did, however, work a treat for a useful amount of time

- and I haven't half ploughed through a colossal amount of bollocks written by very Net savvy, very intelligent, very articulate Icelanders who persisted in deluding themselves that the recent economic boom was somehow based on something that wasn't insane

Of course, none of this could ever happen again anywhere else

.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile, the other Steph reports Bush’s Surrender in Iraq

(apologies for that misspelling a while back, Stef).

When did the Roman Empire collapse, again? Anyone know?

Anonymous said...

Of course, it always only happens some place else. And mostly it happened only in the past, as you rightly have written many times.

And what's funny: We can all look back at those idiots way back in some distant country and tell ourselves: "Isn't it fucking unbelievable how stupid these people were!".

There is a nice saying here (not very widely known however): "After the first German tank comes the Dresdner Bank". Well today, it seems to be the Deutsche Bank instead of the Dresdner and the US tanks instead of the Wehrmacht, and the good Deutsche Bankers (Can you call a multi-national corp "German" anymore?) don't even need to do the dirty work and chase after these pesky US tanks. They sit right in the eye of the storm, boosting it actually with their naked short selling, and telling everybody "Storm? What storm? Here, everything is quiet. That storm is your problem, not ours!"


Born and growing up in West-Germany, I was raised under the impression that Germany payed a high price for WW II. And until recently I expected that we Germans would pay a high price (as everybody else) for the latest financial shenanigans. Well, this is and was true for most of the population (as always), but it is definitely not true for those who understand that you need rather cheap labour to exploit to build those nice Mercedes limousines to drive around. It seems like the Germans didn't loose the second WW after all and have hidden around 3 Billion US $ (as in 1945 US $) of money, gold and machinery looted from German Jews and the east European Nations they have occupied, to transfer to Germany after the end of the war. And nobody seems to have noticed (at least nobody in the broader public). So it seems fitting that today the Deutsche Bank seems set on victory lane and nobody seems to notice.

Anonymous said...

And oh, you are going to like this! The author (Gaby Weber) who has written about this Nazi-Argentine-Mercedes connection has investigated Eichmann's life in Argentine. And her opinion: Israel spies (not from the Mossad) where in Argentine to get some German scientist, who worked with Otto Hahn previously and found "refuge" in Argentine, to supply nuclear bomb technology to Israel. Eichmann, who found shelter at Mercedes Argentine, like so many Nazis, became disgruntled that nobody seems to work for the resurrection of the Nazi-Party, as was the plan during the war. Or maybe being a electrician at a Mercedes plant in Argentine was more boring than sending Jews to death camps - who knows. So he talked to everybody about the good old times. As he was very well connected (every Nazi was back there) the Israelis were afraid he might attracted to much attention - so they took him with them when they flew to Israel.

Now, the Ex-Nazis doing the post-war laundering of the WWII loot in Argentine had good friends in the West-German government, which was full of people with ties to good old Ex-Nazi budies. So everybody helped everybody and the money not only went the Mercedes Germany, but all kinds of German companies, of which some had realised in 43 already that the war might not end as scripted in Berlin. And the thing is: The Israelis knew. The knew bloody well. And why didn't they call "NAZIS!"? Well, they rather called shotgun. Never let somebody into power, who you can not blackmail. So the Israelis had a little incentive for the German government: We don't talk about the connection of the past and of the current German government, and you send us some money and some military goods.

And now they have fucking Adolf Eichmann in their custody, ready to name names. I guess they made him believe to the last minute of the trial, that he is going to get out of it somehow, when in fact they planned to kill him from day one - making him the only person actually sentenced to death in Israel in court, not that he didn't deserve him.

And right now I am thinking about the East-Germans communists: Their communist buddies slaughtered in Buchenwald, Ex-Nazis in the government in West-Germany and Israel is best friends with them. I think they never had a clue...

Stef said...

When did the Roman Empire collapse, again? Anyone know?

1453

The Muslims dunnit