Just like they planned it...

Damn you Hawkins....don't you know we have a reputation to uphold?

For the past few months, and I'm sure for many more months to come, the United States, and much of the rest of the world, too, has been fixated on what Donald Trump and his band of merry men have been up to.  Is Putin using a condom?  Where are Prez Trump's tax returns?  Did he lie?  On and on. 

And in other Breaking News, we're still all hot and bothered about which bathroom transgender people can use, whether same sex marriage should be allowed or smacked down, whether Black Lives Matter more than any other lives, whether or not Kim's butt is getting bigger, whether you pronounce Qatar "Cut-er" or "kuh-Tar", etc.  All those things together pretty much take up all 24 hours of our modern 24 hour news cycle.

But SURPRISE...there's more going on in the world than they've told us about we've been allowed to know, namely that the BANKS have been scheming relentlessly behind the scenes to get control of what little money they DON'T already have.  Example in point, from today's BBC news:

"An international group of bankers, lawyers and stockbrokers - reportedly with links to the City of London [Europe's major financial center]- appears to have fiddled the tax system, employing practices which were at best unethical, at worst illegal [italics added].  Ultimately they may have deprived the state [Germany] of nearly €32bn (£28bn; $36bn)."

And they almost got away with it, until a young administrative assistant in Germany's central tax office noticed that she was receiving claims for huge tax rebates from a single US pension fund.  BUSTED!

Closer to home, the US House of Representatives last week voted to gut most of the Dodd-Frank banking reforms put in place after the financial meltdown back in '08.  The banksters have pretty much already poked D-F full of holes anyway, but this is just their way of kicking the rest of us in the teeth.  While we were all looking left, they quietly ran right for the win.

If you're keeping count, since 2008 the 20 largest international banks have been fined over a  QUARTER TRILLION DOLLARS for their illegal activities....and they're not the least bit ashamed of it!  

Meanwhile we sit here glued to the TV wondering whether Trump's Atty Gen, Jeff "Goober" Sessions, had grits for breakfast this morning?  *sigh*

Let that soak in for a minute.

S

I'm beginning to see a pattern here...with EDIT

I've said for a long time, particularly after watching news clips showing rioting mobs in Muslim countries, "Those people just don't think right." A like comment yesterday on my blog from PT Dilloway, referring to the violence in Libya, said, "In what freaking universe does that make any freaking sense?"

This brought to mind an article I once read that pointed out that in the Muslim world marriage between cousins (known as "consanguinity"), and even brothers and sisters, is common.  A little online research found many credible sources confirming this and offering these statistics:  

Thirty-three percent of all marriages in Egypt are consanguine, as are 48 percent in Libya, 60 percent in Iraq, 70 percent in Pakistan, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 40 percent in Syria, 34 percent in Algeria, 63 percent in Sudan, 46 percent in Bahrain, 64 percent in Jordan, 42 percent in Lebanon, 54 percent in Qatar, 45 percent in Yemen, and 54 percent in the UAE.

This has been going on for 1,400 years in the Mideast, and is done in order to keep wealth (?) and power "within the family".   This is why it's so hard for sovereign countries to command the loyalty of their citizens.  People's loyalty goes to their "clan", not their arbitrarily cobbled together "country".

Not surprisingly, research has shown that children of consanguineous marriages have 10-16% lower IQ's.  Can you imagine the consequences of this generation after generation after generation?  Well, they might be able to keep all the camels in the family, but they also have a mighty polluted gene pool!

We (the West) keep trying to lead the Mideast towards our version of how things should be....democratic, governed by rule of law, peaceful, respectful to all, including women, etc.  I'm wondering if their average citizen can even comprehend those concepts?  

Thousands of years of tradition and ignorance and inbreeding are hard to overcome.  IMO we're beating our heads against a brick (or in their case mud) wall.  

S

EDIT:  Oh, the insanity....now they're burning the KFC in Cairo!  Is nothing sacred?