Posted on 06/21/2007 10:54:10 AM PDT by RWR8189
The Polish PM has stunned European leaders today with an astonishing attack on Germany for starting the Second World War.
In a spectacularly undiplomatic outburst, he said his country was losing out in today's European Union as a direct result of the millions of deaths that followed its invasion by Germany in 1939.
"We are only demanding one thing - that we get back what was taken from us," said Jaroslaw Kaczynski at the opening of the EU summit in Brussels, chaired by German chancellor Angela Merkel.
"If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66 million."
The issue of population is at the heart of a heated row over voting rights that could wreck Tony Blair's last EU summit.
A proposed new system of sharing out votes rewards countries such as Germany with the biggest numbers - and Poland is angrily demanding more.
Poland's population is 38 million - implying that Mr Kaczynski blames the Germans for the loss of 28 million people.
Mr Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech, Poland's president, are said to be Second World War obsessives, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of their country's sufferings under occupation.
The identical twins, whose father fought in the 1944 Warsaw uprising, have become infamous for their unrestrained comments and dislike of EU integration.
Luxembourg's premier, Jean-Claude Juncker, said they should stop living in the past. "You have to jump into the present," he told FT Deutschland.
"You will not be happy in the long run if you are always looking in the rear-view mirror."
It sets the scene for a rancorous dinner tonight when leaders of the 27 EU states need to thrash out a series of disputes to avoid a crisis.
Mr Blair, notching up his 47th EU summit, told his Cabinet in London that he was prepared to walk away from the table unless his own demands were met in full.
Before flying out, he and Gordon Brown had telephone talks with Mrs Merkel - indicating that Mr Brown is intensely involved in the negotiations.
Mr Blair came under fire for trying to water down the EU's "son of constitution" treaty. Mr Juncker a veteran federalist, fumed: "We will not stand by and see all the substance removed from the treaty."
New French president Nicolas Sarkozy said there were multiple disputes.
"We don't just have problems with Poland," he said. "We have problems with the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, a little bit with the Czech Republic. The problems are numerous."
Privately, No 10 indicated that Mr Blair wanted his demands met "100 per cent". But European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso retorted: "All the leaders say that they want 100 per cent achievement. But in Europe you've got to be reasonable and rational.
"At the end there has to be some, let's say, agreement."
Mrs Merkel sent an 11th-hour letter pleading with the leaders to compromise, so that Europe could move on from inwardlooking disputes to pressing issues such as climate change, energy supplies and globalisation.
"The European public now expects us to put the necessary reforms of the Union in hand," she wrote. "The time has now come to set out the roadmap for the impending reform of the treaties."
Its why I said, I din't want to see it going on for infinity, and wasn't going that far, the question is what is the limitations going to be?
As the saying goes, "just cuz you lose some of your boys stealing diamonds, doesn't mean your off the hook, or get to keep the diamonds"
The purple area corresponds to the assumed Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture). The red area corresponds to the area which may have been settled by Indo-European-speaking peoples up to ca. 2500 BC; the orange area to 1000 BC.
http://www.tcnj.edu/~fickas3/index.htm
To which, an answer can never be found.
Ya gotta love Poland. They tell it like it is.
Y'know, I was buying Poland's argument, until I saw yours. You're exactly right. The time to settle up is right after the war, and events that occur some sixty years later should have had the reparations figured into them.
Poland's present day economic situation comes from its time spent under communism, perhaps there should be reparations paid by Russia to the former Warsaw Pact nations. Now that's within recent history.
As a person of German descent, I encourage Poles to get down to the business of making more Poles as quickly as possible. I hear Polish women are lovely and I’m sure that Polish men desire no help from either the Germans or Russians in this matter.
Germany and France have to worst run governments in the EU. Everyone in the EU would be better off if they had less power than say Lichtenstin or Monaco, not more power.
On the other hand, anyone who thinks Germany and France should have more votes than any other country in the EU just because they are larger needs to have their head examined. Germany and France are the worst run socialist cess pools in the EU.
Poland: Sticking with fiscal conservatism
Nearly all ethnic Germans who found themselves living on the Polish side of the post-war border moved back to Germany. Hence Germany's population did not decline nearly as much as Poland's as a result of the war, which a Germany started, I might add.
I mean, is it possible to be any more stupid than the Kaczynski twins?
Apparently yes, judging by your comments.
The Poles would have loved to have settled up after the war. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union wouldn't let them.
This is an issue about how much extra power is given to countries with larger populations. This is the same argument the founding fathers had about deciding the composition of the legislative branch. There are a whole host of reasons why apportioning power strictly on the basis of population is a bad idea (which is why we have a Senate). Kaczynski has simply used a dramatic means of illustrating this point.
Where did Kaczynski ask for reparations? He didn't, so stop acting like he did.
LOL
Actually Germany lost even more people as a result of the war than Poland did. Of cause, speaking in generalized terms Germany started the war and Poland was a victim, but the whole what-a-big-country-we-would-be-if-you-did-not-attack-us concept is fallacious and can lead only to a dead end. Past is past, and it's not about to change.
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