flashpoints Korea and Iran...

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Iran is one of the biggest news stories. But it is being covered by the mainstream media in sound bites or by information disseminated by Web sites connected to interest groups, political parties and bloggers with no experience in journalism.The trend in journalism is toward specialization. But even as America’s central geopolitical position becomes ever more tied to the social, cultural and political conditions in the rest of the world, U.S. news organizations continue their contraction, closing or scaling back foreign bureaus, choosing to invest fewer and fewer resources to cultivate editorial and reporting staffs who can become, in effect, area experts.
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North Korea:
It appears that the two serious flash points for the USA is Iran as well as North Korea. To a degree the attitude to North Korea is somewhat understandable, we must remember that the war with this nation was never concluded, finalised or whatever. Where this is going, nobody knows. I found the parade of young women on TV yesterday, with machine guns as rather grotesque.
Iran:
This country under the Shaw/King was a friend of the USA. It was USA and Canada I believe who sold Iran all sorts of atomic energy junk...they probably never needed it in the first place. Mr. Carter was unable to deal with the hostage crises and relations with this country never got back on the rails. It was okay with us for Iran and Iraq to beat up on one another, the west did not care and sold arms to both sides.

America....Taryn Simon...a must see

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/643

Germany.. huge ransom paid, ten thousand tons of gold...

A brief but important item on the news here yesterday....apparently, Germany just paid off the last of the world war 1 debts, an amount set by the then allies ( France, Britain and the USA) who were at war with the Reich from 1914 til 1918. War broke out in 1914, lasted until 1918 and the settlement conditions were imposed on the new German Republic (  Weimar Republic) in 1922. The USA only got involved in1917 but President Woodrow Wilson attempted to play a large role in the settlement.

...an ounce of gold in today's market sells for between 1200 and 1300 Dollars...I believe an ounce is equal to 35 grammes...1000 grammes per kilogram or 1,000- Kilogrammes per ton (2,000 pounds per ton or is it 2240#)...you do the math...it's horrendous.

The amount set by the so called victors, mostly France and Britain amounted to trillions of Gold marks or dollars...the equivalent of 9,800 tons of gold. After over 90 years, apparently Germany just paid off the last part of this horrendous assessment.

It must be remembered that four years after the end of WW1, the victors  imposed this on Germany. It must be undersdtood  that this war was not won or lost, there was an armistice but it also was the end of the golden years for Germany, lasting from 1871 when Germany was created until 1918, the end of WW I and the turmoil that followed.
It was the Versailles Treaty which to a large extend brought about the Hitler 3rd. Reich fascism regime and the disastrous second world war. (1939-1945 ending in total capitulation and destruction of Germany,loss of large regions of the country to Poland and Russia, and finally the creation of two german countries...one a puppet state of the USA, the other an even worse puppet dictatorship of the Soviet Union)....

Back in 1870....

Prussia beat the French ( Napoleon 3rd.) and Germany was created (1871)out of hundreds of bits and pieces of German speaking duchies and communities,( Flickenteppich they called it, or Carpetpatchwork).. miniature bits and pieces of what once was supposed to have been the holy roman empire of German nations.....which was never holy or roman, or for that matter much of an empire...The largest original component was the Kingdom of Prussia..

French provinces or territories, Elsass and Lothringen became part of the newly created German Reich.