Free Republic

As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia instead of treating it as a partner--and now, an oil-powered Russia is striking back. "Russia's litany of indignities dates to the early 1990s when the Soviet empire collapsed," Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former Barack Obama adviser, wrote in Time. "A bipolar universe gave...

"We've been looking at how we can bring back confidence in the European Union," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in Warsaw late on Monday as he arrived for a meeting of ministers in the Future of Europe Group, which he launched in March. The 11-nation group is poised to submit a raft of recommendations to Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso - heads, respectively, of the bloc's intergovernmental and executive branches, neither of whom are elected by the EU's 500 million people. "We have to understand that we are a community of values and we have to defend...

Last year, Germany went out on a limb by calling for political union in Europe. The idea was met with little enthusiasm elsewhere in the eurozone, but particularly in France. After the election of French President François Hollande in May, it seemed that views of the EU's foremost political duo could not be further apart. But the mood has since changed, and serious plans are underway to create—if not a full political union, then something close to it. … Meanwhile, EU council president Herman Van Rompuy and others are drawing up a paper to upgrade the eurozone, which will be...

Up to a million Poles may arrive as Germany allows in a flood of workers from its neighbour for the first time. Like 26 million other hard-working Germans, Stephan Walter feels he has done more than his bit for the cause of European integration. An electrician aged 23, some five per cent of his €10-an-hour wage already goes on a special "solidarity tax" to fund reunification with Germany's economically backward East. And for the next four years, another chunk will help bankroll his government's generous €89 billion bail-out of Greece, its spendthrift partner on the southern side of the Eurozone....

Silesians. They have their own language, a long history and they live in one of the richest regions of Poland. Today their calls for autonomy are echoing louder and louder. When they enjoyed unexpected success in regional elections last autumn for the first time in twenty years, Warsaw woke up to a problem in its territories along the Czech border. Katowice (Poland) A march organised by Silesian autonomists At the congress of the Movement for Silesian Autonomy, in Katowice, a triumphal mood reigns. Delegates, some hundred and thirty of them who arrived in early March, some in traditional Silesian garb,...

The Silesian Autonomy Movement has sent a petition to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk asking him to allow all regional communities to gain autonomy status. If he does not agree, the Silesians say they are ready to raise the issue of separation, according to Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. The movement officially declares its support for the autonomy of Silesia. The association was founded in 1991 and is based mainly in the Polish part of Upper Silesia. A similar petition has been sent to the Polish Sejm, the lower house of parliament, which along with the Senate (the upper house) has...

Spanish activist: oust Poland from European Union Madrid, Jun. 7, 2007 (CWNews.com) - A Spanish homosexual activist and Socialist parliamentarian, Pedro Zerolo, is demanding that Poland be expelled from the European Union if the nation passes legislation banning homosexual propaganda in public schools. Arguing that every European Union should afford equal rights to homosexuals, Zerolo said that policy under discussion for Polish schools violates that principle. He concluded his statement by inviting Poland to leave the Union, saying, “There are the doors!”

France and Germany discuss union Jon Henley in Paris Thursday November 13, 2003 The Guardian France and Germany are publicly discussing the possibility of a "Franco-German union" that would allow them to cooperate more closely in such areas as education, social affairs and the economy and even merge their defence and foreign policies, the French daily Le Monde said yesterday. The paper said that at this stage Europe's two most powerful nations, whose historic enmity has been transformed into the main driving force towards European integration, saw the project primarily as a tactic to ensure that countries such as Spain...

On the 3rd of October 1990 the former GDR officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany. Since then the country is reunited. The day commemorates that event and is therefore the national holiday in Germany.