Posted on 12/15/2011 2:21:36 AM PST by Kaslin
Some of our friends have made blanket blind opposition one of their specialities. I dislike the attitudes of German tourists and living in Poland I SEE what the Germans in WWII did to my in-law’s and friends families. But neither me nor they are blindly anti-German. Even those that distrust the euro and distrust Germany don’t go to the extents our freeper friends here do — it ruins their own argument.
What article? Germans can’t work any more hours than the laws allow. Ever heard of the Working Time Directive?
(The Article that this entire thread is commenting on. Maybe you should read it before commenting further. I base my observation on my many months spent in both Greece and Germany as well as reading. You’re the one that seems sold on propoganda.
(The Germans with their mean old bankers, made the Greeks run up massive unsustainable debt)
Greeks don’t retire in their early 50s either. Are you reading news or propaganda?
No, Greece’s debt wasn’t as bad as the news made it out to be. And frankly, Greece had initially wanted to default rather than take those loans.
Why is it that none of the loans are helping out Greece’s economy? A lot of things are happening that should be regarded as counterintuitive, that is if you are following the line that the media is spitting out.
(If the Greek debt wasn’t as bad as the news made it out to be, then why have multiple rounds of cash infusion been necesscary. And the loans were never intended to fix the Greek economy. Only Greek fiscal responsibility can do that, that is why this is all for naught. The Greek citizens still believe their governments can and should provide them more than they earn)
Well, it’s easy to call something I never said “absurd”, isn’t it? (You clerly suggested that If I didn’t want any economy to fail than I must want Communist economies to suceed. A quite logical inference from your post. Of course, logic seems lost on you.)
No they absolutely did not. You can’t make this suddenly come true by repeating it several times. The elites who run the EU foisted these bailout loans (not grants) on Greece because they were scared that Greece’s problems would reflect on the entire eurozone, in spite of the fact that Greece only represents 2.5 percent of the entire eurozone economy—which means that they weren’t looking out for Greece at all, and bespeaks some ulterior motives.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/23/greece-bailout-greeks-ask_n_549103.html This is one of about a thousand articles that any search will pull up documenting the Greek request for bailouts. Produce one demonstrating that the Greeks were forced to take a bailout.)
There’s a history there that makes such a suggestion tantamount to demand. It’s not a history that one ought to blind oneself to. How would it be interpreted if Russia “suggested” that we sell Alaska back to them?
(As a suggestion, since Russia doesn’t have any means to enforce a demand. There wasn’t any threat to use force to take the islands. Maybe the Germans were using the same invisible force that they first used to force the Greeks to run up an impossible amount of debt and then to beg for a bailout)
This is why they say never give money to relatives. They only end up resenting you if you do.
There were lots of ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland (Czech Republic), Russia, former Yugoslavia, and other Eastern European countries--greatly reduced in numbers now because of people fleeing or being expelled at the end of WWII, but there are still some. In some cases the only evidence of their German ancestry may be their surname.
The South Tyrol is a German-speaking area in northern Italy.
Take the case of Nicolas Copernicus (Mikołaj Kopernikus in Polish) -- he lived and taught in Toruń (or Thorn in German), was of Germanic origin, but thought of himself as a Polish subject and opposed the German Teutonic knights.
He spoke Polish too, though most likely his home language was Germanic (south Germanic) and all his writings were in Latin.
if you look at what is now western Poland, then the north western parts Stettin in German, Sczcecin in Polish) were German as were the south-western parts (Breslau in German and Wrocław in Polish) -- the Poles knew that and did not even want these initially but Hitler made Wrocław and Sczcecin into do-or-die forts against the Soviets and evacuated most of their people. then the cities were destroyed in the battles.
Finally the Soviets threw out Poles from the formerly Polish cities of Lwów (L'vov in Ukraine, formerly Lemberg in Austro-Hungary or Leopolis in Latin) and Vilnius (Wilno in Polish -- now it is part of Lithuania but before the war was about 5% lithuanian and 40% Jewish and 40% Polish and the rest were Ruthenian) and Minsk and other places in Kresy (the former Eastern lands of Poland.
the Poles were pushed west by Stalin into these "Recovered territories"
anyway, I digress -- in the case of much of western Poland and what WAS Eastern Poland (now Western Ukraine, southern Lithuania and western Byelorrussia), the ethnic situation was complex: in the Western parts you had cities dominated by Germans and GERMANIC Jews (assimilated to a large extent), in the towns there were Jews and Poles and Germans while the farms were Polish largely
In Kresy the opposite happened -- Lwów was a purely Polish city in terms of culture and language while the surrounding countryside was purely Ruthenian and lets not forget the sizable Jewish and Armenian and German minorities there (Jews of course were larger -- maybe 10 to 20% of the population) -- even Warsaw was 40% Jewish. The towns were mostly Jewish -- take Pinsk in modern day Byelorrussia -- it was 90% Jewish before WWII. In what is now Lithuania the Lithuanian elite due to 500 years of union with Poland (read the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth from 1300 odd to 1795) became heavily polonised -- they practically became one people -- Poland's national poet, Mickiewicz was of Lithuanian origin and Poland's national poem starts with "Litwo, oczyzno moja" -- "Lithuania my fatherland" -- and it talks about love for Lithuania's wild forests. The complictation was that prior to the commonwealth the Lithuanians were barbarians -- pagans and with no literature or even a script. They were rulers over a Ruthenian population and Ruthenian (old Byelorussian) was the language of state. But they absorbed the higher culture of the Poles up to the extent that even Piłsudski, the guy who recreated Poland in the wake of WWI
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In the case of the Sudentenland, the problem is really on the side of the victorious allies and to some extent the Czechs post WWI -- Sudentenland was essentiatlly German and had been for thousands of years. Forget essentially, it WAS German and post WWI it along with Austria wanted to become part of Germany, but the allies did not want this and (I think the French) preferred that this went to Czechia. The reasoning was clear -- the same reason that Israel holds the Golan hieghts -- for defense. however in the case of the Sudentenland Germans, the problem then occured that they were discriminated against in a new Czechia which wanted to promote its own culture which had been yoked to the Germanic one for 500+ years.
The Czechs were over-zealous and this led to most of the Sudentenland Germans supported the Nazi's idea of Anschluss.
As an aside, the port of Danzig, which had originated as Polish was by the late 1800s purely German and wanted to be part of Germany post WWI, and the Poles were ok with this, but the allies didn't want a strong German port so despite a plebiscite that favored that result it was instead made a "Free city" -- this angered BOTH Germans and Poles and quite a lot of Danzigers became Nazis.
The ethnic Germans in other parts of Poland -- Warsaw, Łódż etc were in fact ANTI-nazi and when the Germans came to Łódż and expected support, they found none. That's a testiment to these people. however they, along with the Germans in the other parts of Eastern Europe were kicked out under Stalin's grand plan.
Many of the Germanic families in Poland(like my wive's family which has a polonized German name) became heavily Polonized thanks to Bismark's anti-Catholic Kulturkampf when Bismark tried to stamp out Catholicizm and Polish culture. What happened instead was that Bismark strengthened the Catholic Church and made the Catholic Germans in Polish areas feel closer to their Polish Catholic friends than to the Protestant German relatives. Many of the Germans who opposed the Nutzies were of these German Catholic families. Names like Wedel etc. felt more Polish than German despite their roots.
South Tyrol is another relict of WWI -- this was awarded to Italy post WWI by the allies despite it being a Tyrolean German (South German speaking, closer to the Bavarian-Austrian dialect than to northern Germanic) people. This caused a lot of anguish, but it was confirmed by Hitler to not antagonize Mussolini.
The South-tyrol problem was finally solved thanks to the EU (yes, thanks to the EU) which set up a shared region where both German and Italian are respected and en par.
I don’t dislike the Greeks, but their reaction was similar to someone winning the jackpot — you don’t appreciate it and you spend the money like water and you don’t learn good working habits.
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