Showing posts with label poland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poland. Show all posts

Monday, 17 March 2014

The re emergence of Central Europe or how the next European War started.

I hate to say I told you so, but, I told you so. Russia under the leadership of Vladimir "Rex" Putin has only gone and proved me right yet again. Years ago I said he wasn't to be trusted, years ago, when he meddled in Georgia the World was warned that the current bunch of Empire rebuilding Russians were not going to rest until they fixed the mistakes of  Mikhail Gorbachev.  There has always been a nationalist party in the Kremlin and regardless of ideology, any regional government that tried to get away from the loving embrace of Mother Russia has paid in blood and even greater loss of freedom.



 That the Crimea or Krim which is easier to say and more familiar to me, was never a part of Ukraine, really seems academic at this point, but is worth considering if only for the intellectual exercise most rational people went through as early as the emergence of an independent Ukraine in the 1990's. Firstly, the ceding in 1954 to the then wholly artificial concept of  an independent self sufficient Ukraine within the Soviecky Soyuz by an apparently drunken Soviet leader in a fit of  more than usually strong alcoholic haze, is one of the great mysteries of modern Russian history. That most regretted it almost immediately is not questioned. Roll onto the dissolution of the Soviet Empire in the wake of  Glasnost and Peristroika, and you see the rise of nationalist elements that began to clamour for the reconstruction of what had been lost. Solely in the case of the Krim was there ever a justified case for the restitution of territory to it's proper place. If people who consider themselves Russian want to live in the paradise that is the Soviet Empire redux, that I will grudgingly admit, is their  right. Where I depart from the views of both Kiyov and Moscow is the argument that you can forcibly keep people within borders that were never really yours or that you can just take back land after a sham referendum in which every rule ever written for referendums was broken. The less than subtle armed take over  followed by the "transparent" ballot boxes and annexation atmosphere that followed the occupation of the peninsula, including the unvarnished and unapologetic propaganda machine that had hundreds of thousands of imaginary refugees fleeing Ukraine, pogroms and apparent rise of 5th column nazis rising in their hundreds of thousands ready to wage terrible war on the legacy of dear old Lenin, would have been funny had it not been so earnestly taken seriously by Russians and Russian speakers in the Ukraine. Having got the required soviet style 97 % in a vote( prior to the Russian occupation , a poll had annexation at 40%) , Putin and the ultra nationalists have the needed bit of  moral justification they wanted. They would have achieved this years ago if they hadn't spent the entire time scaring the hell out of their own citizens and those of countries around them. Who knows, if Gorbachev had ultimately succeeded in creating a truly free and democratic Russia and the IMF and others not insisted on trying to recreate in Moscow what failed so miserably under Reagan and Thatcher, we'd be looking at situation where Crimea would continue to be an autonomous, predominantly Russian speaking state that could have eventually chosen in time to 1- separate from Ukraine  then 2- negotiate it's entry into Russia..... or not.  As it stands, this brutal regime has yet again shown it will do anything, as long as it can do so without fear of retribution or loss of personal power and fortune.



The fact remains that most existing sovereign states  in central and eastern Europe today live in constant fear that Russia will next target them in the never ending crusade to rescue imperilled Russians living abroad or to repatriate territory unjustly , in the eyes of Russians, given away at one time or another and most recently in the great dissolution of the temporary madness of  Gorbachev. Having successfully bluffed the West and the rest of Europe in the Krim, Putin now has his eye on the Eastern territories of Ukraine. If the current crisis can be stopped at this tipping point between all out European war and some old fashioned diplomatic tension, we and the people of the Ukraine may yet walk away from the naked territorial grab that is next in the works without thousands of Ukrainians and Russians dying needlessly when the ultimate result is a draw in which nothing changes but the formerly intact landscape of homes, factories and farms. If shooting breaks out, the inevitable outcome is the hardening of the resolve of  millions of Ukrainians, both native speakers and Russian speakers alike v the not so paternalistic Russian forces coming to take them kicking and screaming home to Moscow. As a citizen of Europe, you surely cannot be unaware that any war on European soil that involves Russia directly like this, cannot help but escalate tensions and cause every government from Warsaw through at least Berlin or even Paris to mobilize it's armed forces where  if the desired effect for Putin is pan European war, he will get his wish. The mood that prevailed last week  where economic and diplomatic sanctions on Russia and it's oligarchs was not seen to be realistic or practical has now moved into full application. Germany and a number of other nations are moving to a position where soon a defacto boycott of  many Russian products and services will occur. Sanctions on individuals and their companies so successful against the Serbs in the last Balkan war, are the first step in a long line of steps designed to stop the  naked territorial aggression and ambitions of Putin's Russia short of having to declare War. I do have one question to which even I don't have an answer.... Can The United Nations Security council survive with it's reputation intact if a permanent member is allowed to veto any resolution stopping it's own aggression on a sovereign state let alone it's own people? I'm sure like the League of Nations it will hobble along like a dying animal for a bit, but can the Security council find a way around this? I for one hope so, the vacuum it's death would cause is too dangerous to contemplate.




What are the other critical forgotten conflict zones where it could all still go horribly wrong? Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan as well as Latvia  where fully 25% of the population are ethnic Russians. If we step away from strictly linguistic and ethnic tensions, Russia has till now been, all be it unstable at times, a partner in the greater international efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and in ( he laughed with unease ) Syria, where it has so far ( rolls eyes) refrained from further escalating the civil war/revolution into a bigger unstable bloodbath. As and when Russia drops the pretence of being an honest broker and good global citizen, we will be back in the full grips of a Cold War we have not felt since the 80's.  I'm still not convinced that anybody will use nuclear weapons, and maybe because of this, I'm all the more concerned that full on conventional war will break out in Europe and drag the rest of the World into it..... again. The European Union and the effect it has had on nations in it and those wanting in is tangible and powerful proof that the last thing Europeans want is another European land war. Oh look at those words come out of hibernation  people, like tired old soldiers who thought they'd been retired for good but called out again for one last kick at the ball. Where was I? The EU, In recent elections in Serbia and Bulgaria, the political momentum has been away from isolationism and towards a greater integration into the European Union, the cleansing effect this has had on countries is in marked contrast to what they were like a mere 10 years ago. The one positive you can take from the crisis is that even in the UK, the anti European rhetoric will be falling on increasingly deafer ears as the fear of war and the destruction of Pax Europa is staring us down the barrel of a kalishnikov.



Some of you are too young to remember what it was like to live in the cold war.  Lucky you, but grab your towels fast because we're about to get another ride on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse merry go round. Sometime from the moment Russian tanks crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1957 to the moment of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Peace Dividend somewhere in  early 1989, the  world was in the cold war. From as early as aged 7, I lived in daily terror of dying from a nuclear holocaust. It coloured my view of relationships, marriage and my definition of long term planning. I had for years a recurring nightmare where I would be walking in the street near my home seeing my family walking away from me under threat and when I turned around to look at the house, there would be the unmistakable, yet silent, mushroom cloud of death rising over the city from behind our home. The wind would approach, trees would bend and buildings dissolve and just before I died....I would wake up. That was no way to live. When the nightmares stopped, we all thought that regular programming had resumed and to a great extent it has. This current crisis has however restored the previous levels of terror prior to the last cold war. Where in the rest of Europe the appetite of Germany, Austria, France and Britain has effectively gone away, Russia is still hungry.  It has never stopped and pushes up against the political and economic aspirations of a peaceful and unified Europe. The death of the so called nuclear deterrent only makes actual conventional war more inevitable in Europe and the European Union the only effective solution to the Russian threat.

 
War is neither evitable or inevitable


The first ripples of fear will manifest themselves in the Central European capitals like Berlin and Warsaw where already the new Europe is drawing up plans to put a stop to the as yet "evitable?" war with Russia. New mutual defence pacts are being drawn up or tested as we speak, gone is the hope that somehow Russians will somehow develop a healthy appreciation of  our democracy, our only desire now being to castrate the regime and it's friends enough to buy time to shore up defences, limit the damage and be clear we mean business. I would like to think that the wishes and desires of the various peoples of the emerging Central Europe that had been swallowed by the Russian Bear will be respected and encouraged to the detriment of  Soviet ambitions, but I fear at least some of the more far off western powers will still try to use us as a bargaining chip. Please be aware that once out of the bottle, powers like Poland that have joined Germany and France in the new Entente Cordiale that includes the potent mix of NATO and EU membership will be hard to break down short of the previously mentioned naked armed aggression.


Merkle and Tusk

Russia has had it's moment to be part of greater Europe and seems to have decided rather firmly that it will not even try be part of Pax Europa.  If this is the way it's meant to be for the next decade or so, then so be it, let's not drag our feet any more than we need to. No more Mr Nice Guy, time we took down the oligarchs and the dictators they are supported by.  I'm sad it's come to this, but at least I can look forward to the leadership and wisdom of Frau Merkle  who herself had to endure the horrors and deprivations of the Cold War like the rest of the new European leaders in Central Europe. There is nothing like a victim at the helm to insure the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Yet it would be foolhardy for the peaceniks too to think for a second that self defence and military alliances that mean something are a bad thing. If Ukraine asks for help from it's neighbours as it will most assuredly not hesitate to do should it come to that, be prepared to see many more millions of slavs who have tasted freedom since 1989 to stand thier ground and not roll over and die with a whimper like some in the West have done repeatedly. Some of us have lost relatives to Russian aggression and oppression in every decade since 1945, if you think  there is no stomach for a fight in Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria or the Baltic states, etc.., think again.

In my lifetime I have seen a few things I thought I would never see.

1- Polish freedom from Russia
2- The fall of the Soviet Union
3- Irish peace
4- The end of the nuclear nightmare.... literally.
5- The restoration of Europe to it's state of affairs prior to 1900

The New Europe has ignited hopes in me of standing for election as an MEP,  the House of Commons or even the Polish Sejm. I now live on the cusp of fulfilling several long held dreams, not least of which  living in Poland again at least part time on my family's own recovered lands and properties. However that and other hopes are tempered by that old familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach I still have  every time  I watch a programme about European history and they get to the part where yet again, Poland and the rest of Central Europe are engulfed in a fight not of their own making, where our young and not so young people will yet again die for the vanity of a man in Moscow. Yet again we will be forced to rebuild our cities and towns and yet again we will be bombed into an industrial stone age, our economies in ruins. Well not  this time if we can help. And if it comes to a fight at least this time we'll be ready.



Those of you in far flung places who don't think a few shots fired in the Balkans or the Crimea will amount to anything are forgetting that the recent history between 1914 and 1989 was an interlude in which Central Europe was swallowed whole by both the West and the East, made to be the pawns of powers far away and too concerned with other matters to think our people mattered. Things are different now, we have our countries back, our power back and our dignity back. Soon jobs held in near perpetuity by British, French and American politicians, diplomats and generals will pass into the hands of  those most concerned. Central Europe is back and hoping it will not require a baptism of fire to be taken seriously.

I strongly recomend you watch this instructive video of the evolution of the map of Europe. pick a spot, any spot and watch, then look at Poland, Germany, Russia and a few other states. Try to realize that through most of European history the nations some of us hardly reckon can muster so much as a veto were for the longest time huge military and economic powers with interests that reached far past their physical boundaries. Further take your modern history glasses off and realize that Russia is IN Europe, it , Russia IS Eastern Europe and all the states to the west of it form the centre along with Germany. Maybe now you'll realize once and for all that things have changed. There is no Warsaw pact, no Soyuz and no Soviet Empire, just free sovereign states that are part of the old Europe minus a few royal houses.




Late news edit: Russian demands that Ukraine create a new federal constitution, it remain neutral or in other words, not join the EU or NATO, give status to the Russian language and Lastly respect the result of the impromptu referendum in Crimea. The real news is that President Obama on the recommendation of Foreign Secretary Kerry, has accepted this. Again, the actual opinion of the legitimate government of Ukraine is to be ignored and Russia is allowed to dictate terms in order to get out of a sticky wicket. Typical, disgusting and a complete surrender by Obama. Who is he to speak for another country, who is Lavrov to demand these things of Ukraine? While on the surface some of the demands are even reasonable, but seen as a whole, similar to the attempt to humiliate Serbia in 1914. And if you need reminding, despite the total acceptance of even the most intrusive demands from Austria, Serbia still ended up being invaded. Can we expect better from Russia? Probably not. EU foreign ministers are to meet and are already rejecting some of the demands as extreme. Among the demands the creation of a “Support Group for Ukraine” consisting of the US, EU and Russia that would guarantee the military neutrality of Ukraine, the same sort of diplomatic construct that kept Belgium neutral till 1914 when it no longer suited the Kaiser. 


At the end of the day if Ukraine does join the EU it too will want to make military alliances with neighbours that won't threaten to invade them. Russia will have to accept at some point that they no longer can call the shots like that. This of course will take longer if people like Obama insist on telling another people that they have no free will unless he and Putin think they can have it. How very sad. Plus ça change and all that. Even sadder is it's not clear if Putin is blinking or just playing WW1, the game. Obama's words "continue to oppose any violations of Ukraine's sovereignty or territorial integrity " ring even more hollow in the knowledge that the reaction in the White House and UN are those of the old school diplomats that have blinked when they could have helped at the ultimate cost of Ukraine. The desire of Ukraine to join the EU, the very reason for the uprising in the first place now seems to be in jeopardy. Time will tell if this premature climb down by the Americans will be accepted by the European foreign ministers and Ukraine itself.




Tuesday, 25 February 2014

The EU, Central European Slavs, Russia and the upheaval in Ukraine

Rompuy
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy "I salute the will of the Ukrainian people to live in a free, independent and united country with strong ties to the EU. We stand ready to sign the Association Agreement and support Ukraine in these difficult times," Rompuy said in a statement issued in Brussels on Monday after the EU-Brazil summit, during which the sides discussed the situation in Ukraine.





RUSSIAN PRIME MINISTER DMITRY MEDVEDEV:
"Strictly speaking, there is no one to talk to there. The government doesn't exist. There are big doubts about the legitimacy of a whole series of organs of power that are now functioning there." He and other Russian officials go on to say that the place is now run by armed rebels who have overthrown a legitimate government and that the west should not interfere in the internal matters of a sovereign nation. Russia of course can do what ever it feels like as it considers Ukraine a province and integral part of greater Russia despite the small matter of it being in fact a sovereign independent nation. The fact Putin's pet seat warmer Medvedev or Foreign Minister Lavrov were allowed to say these things as opposed to the assorted wingnuts on the edges of  Russian broadcasting who are normally afforded the role of saying things the Government wishes known but cannot say, is a sign that they mean it.

Which brings me to the bit nobody outside of Central Europe seems to be aware of.

There should be a third quote, it can have come from any of the Central and Eastern European
Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski
politicians or citizens who live in the shadow of Russia . It would go something like this. "Russia will not easily let Ukraine go. They will do what ever they feel they can get away with to keep the people living in the current boundaries of the Ukrainian Republic from having free will or joining the European camp." Furthermore, the person would go on to say that Russia would not be shy about insuring this by invading countries other than Ukraine or again punishing the former satellites who have left the sphere of influence, with a cut off of gas. This mindset is not without merit as Russia has in fact invaded it's neighbours repeatedly, going as far back as Ivan the Terrible and most recently Georgia, Osetia and Abkhazia among too many other nations they have overtly attacked and others they have destabilised in a ham fisted less than subtle apparently unofficial manner. ( As I edit this, Russia has already launched a media barrage asking "On what side were you in WW 2?) As I said, subtle as a sledge hammer and probably the most innocuous thing they will do.

Central Europe
Before I go on, a little history lesson. What is Central Europe? It is what used to be part of the Great Powers.  A collection of nations that were in the you guessed it one....Central Europe. Among these nations were Hungary, the various incarnations of the Czech republics, Poland, Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia.  When the Russians finally took what they wanted in 1945, it fell into the sphere along with the aptly named Eastern European nations that were in point of fact incredibly eastern. The new politi of Europe still uses the terms of the Cold War despite the unfreezing of European history, the restart of the flowering of the legitimate evolution of the Europe that from the  Polish frontier to  London itself, represented the great civilized block that had connections to the rest of the world  by rail to Turkey and by sea to Africa.  Russia has always been on the outside looking in and like it or not that has not changed.  They are the last part of the European puzzle that needs to be integrated into the phsyche and very real thing that is Greater Europe. Those of us who consider the countries in the Centre home, by birth or by affiliation, will always be Central Europeans. The sooner you in the West recognize this and apply this to your thinking, the sooner we will cease to be such a mystery to you.

As for the Ukrainians, and for that matter the Bulgars and the Romanians and assorted Baltic states
President Woodrow Wilson
including Finland.  They are and want to be European, have always, according to even the 1918 Wilson 14 points, had a right to self determination and freedom of political and economic association. The only people who collectively and apart seem to think otherwise, are the Russians. It will take a long time for them to let go of their children, their precious babies. But when it comes to Ukraine, it is all the more difficult. Ukraine belongs to the Tsars, to Mother Russia, Ukraine is the body as much as Moscow is the brain and the soul of Russia. At least that is what Russians will tell you.  I myself coming from the toes or the kidney of Russia will tell you that Poland is and always has been an independent sovereign state that stood for and defended at various times a multi cultural collection of peoples that have been citizens of what we could call the anybody but Russia federation. Today while not nearly as large, we are still not happy being offered back to the tender mercies of Mother Russia as the kidney or the intestine  any more than the Ukrainians want to be the body of Russia.

In the most significant recent past ..... 1918 to the present, Ukraine has seen a few changes, most not of their own will or making and most designed to absorb more territory into the Russian Empire. Between the anti Ukrainian famine of the 1930's that was at least as bad  as the German Holocaust and the annexation into the Ukrainian Oblast of bit's of  Romania, Poland and the addition of the till then nominally autonomous,  Krim, Russia has by design built in a fracture factor that will produce even in an independent Ukraine, the sort of tensions that will destabilise any regime that takes hold even for a short time. Even today the vast majority of Russian speakers in the East of Ukraine and Krim as well as the bit near it, get their news direct from Moscow in Russian with all the spin and the consequences therein.

Little wonder that Russia feels it has not only a vested interest, but a right to interfere. The best thing that can now happen is in fact the fracturing of the current Ukraine. Perhaps not at first into smaller separate nations  but genuinely autonomous provinces with special powers regarding culture. This would at least preserve the economic and political union that is the current Ukraine. However if we are realistic, this cannot last long. In the Krim the long established Russian colonists  sent there to thin out the native Tartars will want out or rather in with Russia. In the East much the same will occur. As long as there is a voting block so entrenched and incapable of escaping tribalist voting instincts that work against the stability of the historic cultural core that is Ukraine, we will continue to see this sort of see saw game of  block v block  much like Thailand is currently suffering. It will require either the creation of a politi that is ideological in base and spans the complete spectrum  from left to right or the creation of constitutional guarantees that will build in a valve that bleeds the  pressure of the tribalism before it explodes yet again. I'm no constitutional expert on the complexity of  the constituents parts of the current Ukraine, but I can tell you it will be a hard sell to the country and the Russians who think none of  the current Ukrainians have a right to have a say in their future.

The Rada or Parliament is now operating under the 2004 constitution that declares that cabinets must
Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov
be made of and be supported by deputies of the body. Furthermore the post of President is not the sort of all powerful American model but closer to that of Ireland. As it stands, that is a good thing. For as long as the Rada is elected in free an fair elections and the seat spread regarding regions is fair, we can hope for a responsible Government that will not fall into bad habits. The real danger occurs as I said earlier, is when the regional blocks come back like a bad cabbage roll and start the trouble boiling over again.

Poland and other other nations that have adopted democratic and western models want this revolution to succeed, they want it so badly they will do what they have to to keep Ukraine such as it is in the sphere of  Europe. Central Europe, the historical Central Europe, wants to recreate the buffer zone of  safe, non belligerent nations to their East that used to exist. We will never be rid of the threat of Russian expansionism I suspect, but to ratchet down by several degrees to a point of mild constant irritation is something we can all live with.  Russia's direct neighbours, Poland included , (cos who's kidding who, until Belarus rids itself of the last Stalinist dictator in Europe, it is the de facto Russian border with the rest of Europe) will always feel nervous when it comes to Russia. Unlike Germany, Austria , France ,Turkey or Rome, the Imperial appetite in Moscow hasn't at all gotten smaller or measurably subtler in any way.

On the one hand the Russian finance minister tells the IMF and the EU to take up the challenge and
Lavrov
Lavrov the foreign minister says they should not interfere  just as Russia will not interfere. Allow me a moment to laugh  nervously and make incredibly rude gestures at the thought of a lie detector at that very moment trying not to dissolve from the deep suspension of disbelief required to stay intact. .  The interim Ukrainian government, including protesters, elements of the left , the right and even sadly some anti Semitic, Anti Polish ultra nationalists, have their ofjary....martyrs. They are doing what they can to cobble together a stable civil society that can withstand the pressures of the massive Russian self defence knee jerk reaction that is even now moving to crush them.

Why is it important that we help the Maidan and Rada survive? It's simple, this is the way it should have been in Syria, but people held back, people allowed a dictator and his outside support enough air to breathe and stay standing. Fewer than 300 died that we know of, a few thousand are injured some, terribly, but nothing like the numbers in Syria  precisely because the neighbours gave a damn. Poland Germany and France headed the EU response and made sure Russia and Yanukovich blinked first ( see link below). Massive bloodshed and destruction of infrastructure has been avoided by direct and early interference by outside powers in what is technically an internal conflict. Because of this, the previously mentioned fascist, anti Jewish, anti Polish, anti Russian militias will have no air, no place to expand or to grip onto. Already the acceptable face of Ukraine is making sure these elements have to give back to proper civilian government controlled forces and offices, the power to keep the peace, prosecute, and carry out the orders of the new legitimate government. It will take time, but unlike Syria, there is no massive schism that has led to more bloodshed, there are no outside agencies infiltrating the struggle.

The larger point of course is that for all the right reasons and for some of the wrong ones, finally, Europe and more to the point the European Union stepped in and said to a people who crave to take their rightful place in the greater European family .... Yes , we'll have you. There are stories in the news today that Iceland has angered it's own people by withdrawing from it's electorate the right to vote on joining or not the EU. While currently the polls are not so strong in favour of the EU in Iceland, it is clear that in the long run, the EU is the structure that is keeping Europe from stumbling into WW 1(redux), furthermore, the greater the success of EU diplomats in such conflicts as the current Ukraine crisis, the better the EU looks to most people, especially those wondering how long before Russia once again casts a hungry eye westwards. In addition the EU with a dynamic Ukraine included, has to find a way to heat and power the great beast that is European industry and general infrastructures. Only a strong EU will achieve this. Being a part of the solution affords us ( those in the UK included)  and others, a voice in how this will be resolved.

Lastly I ask you to listen to the voices of the people on Maidan online, these are not the voices of
Vitali Klitschko speaking to the Maidan live as I wrote this
extremists, or of armed revolutionaries bent on destroying all around them. They are the people who live there, who are asking us to allow them the same thing we take so much for granted, that some of my own educated acquaintances speak with derision of democracy, not knowing just how much they would miss even the unethical, cold hearted tories and their banker friends if they had to swap out living in Putin or Yanukovich land. We have an election in 2015, and it can't come soon enough,  we will vote the bums out, these people have not had that kind of luxury. Nobody is telling us we belong to America, Russia , England ,France or China, and yet in 2014 we allow precisely this sort of dialogue to inform our decisions about faceless, powerless people who think what we have is something worth cherishing.





View the interactive map



Breaking news from the various Polish and Ukrainian feeds we've been following: The general feeling among those interviewed was that there was a pressing need to sort which army units were loyal to the revolution; ordinary people need to be trained and armed for the defence against the Russian tanks that are inevitably headed towards Kiyov. If you paid attention when I explained how Slavs think and particularly Slavs under threat of loss of life limb and liberty, you'll see how perfectly sensible this thinking is. And be assured they will be ready. I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it's right, we'll know soon enough, and that my friends is how we think.

Edit 18:00 26/02  Russia calls war games claims it's nothing to do with unrest in Ukraine

Support the EuroMaidan online 

Why Yanukovic fled

How Poland came of age in the Crisis

The job that has been left to the West in rescuing the Ukrainian economy

The sort of act I expect from a less uptight Ukraine at Eurovision

Next.... How Poland has reacted to the crisis from the ordinary person right through to the media and Government.





Monday, 27 January 2014

The Holocaust: Views of the children of survivors

On Holocaust memorial day we should remember the relatives and friends who died or were permanently affected and those who would have lived had the others not been murdered. The Holocaust affected not just Jews, but Gypsies, other Poles and the generally viewed as useless or different by the Nazis. We must never forget, we must never stop being vigilant to racism and hatred in general, be it social or government sponsored. If we do stop, it will happen again and again and again. The official numbers put the toll at between 11 and 12 million, but the truth is closer to 15 to 20 million.

 The Holocaust wasn't just another genocide, it was the the consequence of forgetting about or ignoring the Armenian genocide. It happened because Hitler saw the world pretend the Armenian genocide never happened. NEVER FORGET, NEVER IGNORE, NEVER DENY. 


And yet there is more to the day than just that sentiment .

There is a permanent black spot on the heart of every Armenian regardless of where they live now. It affects generations who otherwise grew up like anybody else, much like my family who have those who died in Katyn, Siberia, the camps or right where they stood. We'll never be quite the same and sometimes it seems like we're the only ones who see the ghosts and what could have been. 

You'll note I said have not had;  in dying in the manner they did, those people became permanent individual black marks on the hearts of millions of people. They live still in the moment they died  and in the lives they led and in the lives they would have led. The children they would have had, the words and actions they would have given us had they lived. Where some of you see ruins and anonymous bodies or piles of shoes and suitcases  or just an empty space, we see the people, the villages and towns, the homes, the churches and synagogues and shops and schools that were forever wiped out. We hear them talking to themselves, to us. They tell us to live like nothing is impossible, they tell us to beware of  the signs of danger and treachery  but to never stop being kind, never stop protecting the weak and to never stop laughing. Because when we stop laughing and caring, Hitler and Stalin and all the other haters win. 

They tell us to never stop trying to succeed, never stop learning, never stop living, because in doing so.... they too still live. You may not see them, but they are there and every time somebody acts like none of it mattered, they kick us in the shins and we try harder still. 

Every family has a roll call of the dead brought up at supper, in school, while making breakfast, when we have a moan about having to wait for something  or not having our way NOWWWW. 

There are survivors of the Holocaust: Jews of every European nation, Gypsies, Polish Catholics, political prisoners etc, survivors, anonymous faceless historic figures, we called them Father, Mother, Uncle, Auntie, Babcia, Zaydie. To us they are our relatives. Some have tattoos with a number, some have a triangle, some have nothing, but all of them played a role in raising us. Guilting us, teaching us, making us who we are, and in turn we have passed this on to our own children. The effects of the Holocaust did not end when the last camp closed or when the last bullet was pumped into an innocent brain, it is a scar on humanity that keeps on affecting generations for decades after the event. 

Some of the signs are the ability we have acquired to spot bullshit when it takes ages for others to see it. Our fight or flight instinct is more acute and we are far less innocent than the doe eyed prophets of love and mushiness. As well, we cannot and will not tolerate the kind of political expediency that sweeps under the rug the building blocks of fascism and hatred up to and including when it's done by our own kind, be they Catholic, Jewish or some kind of patriot  speaking for the good of the nation, regardless of how they frame the nation. 

You'll find we're also a lot less tolerant of ambivalent overly emotional reactions. We are blunt, life is short and cruel and if we stop to waffle about so as not to offend somebody, we waste precious time. We don't have time to debate when  the truth is plain, we don't have the  patience or the ability to wait for cooling off periods if that means something bad will happen like it has in Syria or just in our own neighbourhood. 

As for the act of  mourning, unlike those who have never had to have the complete and unadulterated effects of total war and genocide personally delivered on them and their families and communities, we don't cry nearly as much as accepted social norms require of us. We don't break down in quite the same way other people do. We bottle, we don't do emotion, we don't feel that dying at the age of 87 or 90 is a great tragedy for which we need to tear our shirts and weep bitter tears. For us it's a chance to celebrate that this person didn't die of natural causes like the rest of his or her generation did. They lived long enough to have children, to laugh , to cry, to teach and not die from a bullet between the eyes or the back of the skull or worse. 

In my family, my step mother who finished the war in Ravensbruck, witnessed appalling horrors as a 12 year old, I know because she told me.  As a catholic girl she was taken to the walls of the Warsaw ghetto and forced to watch as they slaughtered babies, old people and dangled the dead from windows as dogs ate them. If  anybody flinched, they were shot on the spot or arrested. 90 % of the people in my parish who survived the war were in the camps or lost somebody in the camps and the firing squads and the Soviet Horror that is Katyn, I know because I was told by the time I was 7.  The fact that my father views the time he spent in Siberia and the subsequent death march of the Poles to Iran where 80 % died on the way as "being lucky", speaks volumes. My wife's grandfather was given a full crucifixion by Ukrainian partisans for being Jewish  but somehow survived, survived three separate firing squads, was interned but escaped Treblinka, was the only person to survive his village untill we learned  thatt some of his siblings were saved by the catholic church. Uncle Abie  shovelled corpses into the furnaces. Her Bubbie was in Bergen Belsen and was so desperate to die by the end she punched out in SS Guard in order to be guarantee a quick death, as her two older brothers had been killed earlier in the war, after being arrested for blowing up train tracks in the village so the Germans couldn't transport  munitions or people to the camps, and were thanked by being sent to Warsaw to brick up the Jewish ghetto,  when that finished ,each received a bullet in the brain. One aunt was sterilized in the camps so she could never have children, another was implanted with cancerous cells and died in the early 1950s from the disease. Another uncle was saved by being arrested by the soviets first and sent to Gulag in Siberia instead of a death camp. I could go on and on but the crimes are gruesome and not for the faint of heart.
 
These people long after the war, found coping mechanisms and habits we take for granted but you would find odd and strange. These people gave us a sense of humour and irony that you just don't get. These people have taught us that nothing is ever as bad as it seems if you're still breathing the next day. These people taught us to not waste the time we have on Earth as it may end tomorrow and we should not be an afterthought but something that stands out as special , important and relevant. To never forget that it's a fucking miracle some of us were even born at all. 



Of course that makes us a bit fucked up too, and that is the point, we are not like you, we will never be. That's why when you go to the ceremonies today and in the next few days you'll see the survivors, the children and the grand children up front. Not because they are somehow more important than the dignitaries or the rabbi or the priest or the organizer, but because they will react in ways that are nothing like the rest of the room. Where you think we're covering our faces in sorrow, we're actually hiding the fact we've heard these stories before, we're sometimes smirking, laughing, we are immune to the emotional button pushing of the words and take comfort in the company of others like ourselves. It makes us feel 8 years old again and we're being scolded for wanting to skip on our veg or something. And the fact is that what you will hear is nothing compared to what we heard at home or read in the books readily available on the shelves of the house library. Through books and testimony we see the Europe that was erased, we understand why we were scattered all over the planet and Poland emptied of it's jews, aristocrats, intellectuals, scientists, merchants, it's political and mercantile classes. In fact , some of us even create the lie that our families were humble farmers back in Poland  when in fact we were all of those things and the loss is too much to bear or think about and maybe also the knowledge that we are here and not others is down to some survivors having had to sell their souls or bribe others to live another day. Country by country, you can do this if  you make the effort, or you can just pretend that no lasting effect aside from a few million dead ever happened. You'll never know of the courageous gentiles ( priests, policemen, teachers, neighbours) who saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives and paid for it with their own, you'll forget that being one of those unwanted people worthy of being exterminated was good enough for Hitler. It didn't matter what you thought you were, in fact that holds true today even, of all intolerant racist xenophobic fascist scum.


There is a further poisonous legacy that I have seen with my own eyes and saddens me deeply. There are some small but vocal parts of the Orthodox Jewish communities that have decided they and they alone can determine who and and what is a Jew. There was a boy, raised catholic at a thing we attended last week. He had Pearlmans and Bergs and others as relatives who'd died in the camps. Why was this boy who in the US or Canada would have been proudly Jewish and incredibly modern, a Catholic?  Because his parents drifted away from a faith structure that was too specific in it's definitions and was not open to the massive wave of reform that still defines 90% of Jews in North America.  Where the Catholic Church seeks to bring people home from wandering away through pope Francis, and Chabad and other brands of Judaism welcome home and educate lost Jews, here the leadership has closed the doors. My friend the Catholic, who's parents are Jewish, who is married to a Jewish woman , A Cohen no less, and wants to become educated in the ways of his lost faith is forced to  wander in ignorance and joins millions of Jews in the UK who are not counted as such and so are allowed to drift away from a culture and faith that gave humanity so much.   The survivor at our event is not an orthodox Jew and so by some, not a Jew.  Both that boy and my friend are the children of survivors, they know where the still missing mass graves are, but are not good enough Jews for some. In this small sad way, Hitler has won. 


Eugene Black - Survivor

When the last survivor dies in the next ten years or fifteen years, there will only be us left to carry on the message. And if you are smart, you'll listen to us, we are them, we speak for them, they speak through us, the 15 to 20 million dead speak through us. And wherever we are in the world, events like those of today will not be complete or true if they ignore the reasons why the Holocaust happened or what it did to us as people and to the shape of humanity today.





Monday, 14 February 2011

The genie is out of the bottle: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Iran & Israel.

Having been forced to watch from afar in the relative safety of my home, I saw from 1980 the birth of Solidarity in Poland, the imposition of martial law and the advent of Peristroika from Moscow as of 1985, through to the semi free and fair Polish elections in June 1989 that led to the round table talks and the first non communist government in September 1989. And before you go reaching for Google, The Berlin Wall fell on the 9th of November, well after the rest of Central and Eastern Europe shook off the dictatorships. So please in future years when the historian's tomes on the new North African era have got dusty and we revert to trite throw away clichés, please remember that in Europe, Poland came first and in North Africa and the Arab world, Tunisia came first, possibly even the green revolution protesters of Iran in 2009.

I of course bring up Poland, because the similarities to Egypt at the minute are similar and not by coincidence. In both cases the authorities in place have been there for about the same time, apx 40 years and in Egypt, 50 years. During that time an increasingly well educated and young citizenry saw it's hopes and dreams crushed and dampened to a point of nearly giving up. But being stubborn and determined, given the chance to push back, they did.  In Poland they even prevailed after 9 long years of struggle. But the problem with declaring symbolic victory is that you choose an iconic moment and it becomes tradition while the reality is that the old regime is not entirely swept away. In fact that would have been a bad thing, stability is the sort of thing that saves the furniture. The lessons Egypt and other such countries, post revolution, need to take from Poland are many and important. Not least of which is the lesson that it takes time to build a new politi in a population that hasn't had a history of real democratic parties since September 1st 1939. In the case of Egypt it can be argued that party politics is even more alien to the culture than it was in 1990's Central and Eastern Europe. It's one thing to want to "Throw the bums out", but when the dust settles, you have an entire population that hasnt experienced real political debate of the boring day to day nature we have come to take for granted in the west. Once the novelty of voting for the party of revolution wears off, the reality of running a country has to be accepted and the possibility that even the most popular party won't always get it right. Solidarity splintered into at least 10 separate ideological and regional interest parties. What emerged was the normal spectrum of left to right with a sprinkle of religion and commercial interests. The reason Poles today accept and albeit grudgingly praise the current set up , is that it does produce the reflective compact that was struck in the early 90's Poland  mixture of urban, agricultural, intellectual and industrial civil society that emerged.

Tunisians and Egyptians will have to take the time to find out just exactly what it is they stand for and what they are prepared to accept in their politicians ideologically and practically. The one real asset in the North of Africa today  is the high proportion of young well educated future workers and middle class citizens they are ready to become. Their hopes and aspirations haven't been stomped into the earth like those of their parents and grand parents. They are in a position to establish new parameters based loosely on what they see and have experienced in their closest neighbours in Europe. Beyond that, I cannot tell you what the future shape of the North African Arab states will be, but I can tell you it will be as secular as Ireland or Italy in 2000 and sometimes as radically anti G-d as France or Britain seems to have become today. It would be fool hardy to expect perfect parties and perfect government from any elections that take place in September 2011. It will be years before the new republics emerge as stable recognizable systems.  Poland took a decade to come to a point where you cannot tell the difference from them and say the German Reichstag. As History started moving again in Europe in 1989, so it will in North Africa. But like anything frozen in the ice of dictatorship and regional interests for over 50 years, it will not happen overnight.

The next problem, if you choose to see it that way, is the fact that the government apparatus that collects the rubbish, sets curricula in schools, funds museums & culture and also regulates the economy , is used to a certain way of doing things. It's been doing  it for 50 years after all. To be clear, sometimes the old ways aren't all bad ways and some others just need a tweak. These bureaucrats will be there till they are replaced in the fullness of time by a new generations of equally convinced technocrats educated in the current methods en vogue in the capitals of Europe and the region. The Army, especially one as big as the conscript Egyptian army will eventually develop an officer corps  that will not interfere in the nation's affairs, but this too will take time. Because however,  the army will now be cut off from the old boys club that has till now run the country, it will have no choice but to reform.Where immediate steps need to be taken is perhaps a wholesale replacement of the police by serving Army personnel who are less inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.

The all powerful elites in the country will also retain a lot of influence before they are well and truly flushed. In Poland in the 10 years since the peaceful fall of the Communist government, the number of old technocrats who have become industrialists and businessmen on the back of the soft landing given them in the early years, remains high. Former state enterprises have continued in many cases to stay in the hands of the same sterile old minds who over the years moved from  an imperative to keep people working despite non existent markets for the goods,  to  making as much money as possible with as few workers as possible. It took several years for the Central and Eastern European governments to get out from under the IMF monetarist orthodoxy and regulate in a more normal way these situations. In the new North Africa, there will surely be a similar readjustment in the economy that will take many years and will not go anywhere near as smoothly as anybody with a magic wand called democracy would like it to go.  It will however be easier if you have a stable hand on the reform process. Iran showed how you don't change a country, Russia trusted it's citizens and politicians who had no choice but to come from the old system to make it a better place. 10 years on it's not perfect, but still better than it was or would have been if they had just changed the system 100% in the space of a week.

Freedom of the press and culture will also undergo a strange and sometimes clunky process. At some point, even quickly, the press and the news will readjust, it will do things it hasn't done in the lifetimes of most people in North Africa, it will tell the truth. There will however remain the question of how much liberalisation will be tolerated by the population in various parts of the country. You cannot expect the same open society in Egypt as say in France or Holland or even Lebanon or Turkey. These limits and value judgements will ultimately be done by the people. A word of warning to the old theocratic and moralistic leaders inside and out of the dictatorships, the power you had before will be limited entirely by the willingness of the population to accept what you say as the absolute unchallengeable truth. In a multi party, socially diverse culture, the power of one set of value givers and enforcers will be tempered by the right of people to NOT have to share the same opinion on everything, just as that right will be tempered by the responsibility of the citizen to not trample on the next person's set of rights. For example, some might say that certain Irish twins of recent fame should have been locked up for bad taste, but they have the right in a free society to be complete divs. They aren't actually harming us are they? We can as active citizens, use the levers of commercial power and our voices in regulatory bodies to limit these sorts of things. We can only do this because we trust our leaders and regulators to a great extent to get it right, to understand the difference between what's good for us and what's just imposing one set of standards and values on the rest of the country. Over time, democracy will pollute the telly of Egypt with the same brain dead content some on ITV2 seem to like, but because of democracy, you'll also get the truth of what happened, you'll get protest in the form of drama and satire and you'll get thought provoking programmes that engage the population in the process of reform,  sometimes even against the  wishes and desires of some who prefer you weren't asked. For example, you can no more force an omnivore to stop eating meat than that omnivore can force meat into a vegan. It's free will , tolerance and compromise. The moment you believe you have a monopoly on the truth, you become part of the problem and should you have the power, no better than the dictators. Most recently a vegan football club owner banned meat in his club's park. His right to do so I suppose, but highly insulting and presumptuous to assume he can force his individual beliefs on his staff, the players and the entire season ticket holding supporter base.  Besides probably breaking several commercial laws and agreements designed to keep all of us from coming to blows, he has taken on the mantle of preacher with a bit of power... never a good thing. In a free press and free culture this will be discussed and the pressures of real debate and the weight of law will resolve this, precisely because we accept the rules of the society we live in. 

Protests and strikes are here to stay people, it's a curse and a gift. I love how even the most timid of Egyptians on the news, are protesting bad housing, the cost of petrol and low pay.  It's their right so long as they do it peacefully. Authorities need to respond not by arresting these people, but sorting out their legitimate demands and reasonable concessions requested, if the authorities expect people to go home. Once let out of the bottle, the genie of dissent in a reasonable society must be tolerated if free speech is to flourish and keep the lines of communication open between the governed and  those who govern them.  Mob rule, which of course is the extreme end of protest, is what happens when you deny the vast majority the possibility to make their concerns and wishes heard and acted upon. Peaceful articulate and sometimes loud protest and strikes are a natural vent for the frustrations that will regularly come to a boil, to close dissent down too much is asking for trouble.

The ability of the big powers to dictate to other nations what is good for the big powers has by and large ceased to be relevant in the new democratic Europe. Many of the agendas finding voice in New Europe are now derived from the environmental movement, trade unions and  local economic imperatives. Clearly the effect of 10 years of pan continental stability is a model North Africa and the Middle East can look forward to as well. Suddenly powers like Israel and Iran won't be able to hide behind ideoligical or regional interests real or imagined to protect their particular and peculiar versions of the Garden of Eden . In Iran  protesters demand the democracy won in Tunisia and Egypt, that was denied them under the Shah as well as the Ayatollahs and are accused of being spies and trouble makers in the pay of the Americans.  When Iran is the last theocracy standing,  they won't be able to sing that song any more. Israel on the other hand has a fluctuating voter turn out that has plumbed as low as 42% and as high as 63.2% in the past few years. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the pure rep by pop system that produces ever more conservative and radical governments that reflect the vast majority of Israelis ( Jewish, Muslim and Christian) about as well as having the KKK the Nazis and the ultra orthodox religious establishment set government policy. Is it really ok to stall while entire neighbourhoods of Palestinians are cleared for radical Jewish settlers? Actual Israeli born Jews living in Tel Aviv and Jaffa have become irrelevant in the process and see the wishes of the radical immigrants from outside (mostly the USA and Canada)  as well as US self interest reflected in the domestic policy of the nation. Powerless to act, the apx 70% of native Jews who are agnostic, going to Shule three times a year, or are only culturally Jewish, stay at home or more and more emigrate to Europe where the old powers are wanting their Jews back. As the rest of the region opens up and democratises, the increasingly sterile and cut off regimes, including Israel, Syria and Iran will find themselves having to give in or face the kind of bloodshed they are trying so hard to avoid. When you strip away the bogey men of  Hamas or the CIA or the g-dless west, you are left with people like you and me who only want to get on with their lives and get back to the sort of world where we used to just argue over the price of olive oil and who invented Humus. As and when the only real difference between  Europe and North Africa and the Mid East are the holydays and the bank holidays, then the radicals blowing themselves up for Islam, killing school girls for G-d and the nutcase Jewish settlers shouting shite about how it G-d's gift to them and they mean to take it any way they can no matter what, will be made to look like the ignorant unrepresentative dangerous subsection of humanity they are.

You might task me if it's better to have a Bathist regime that sends people to school regardless of sex and treats people appallingly based on ethnicity and disagreement, over a religious state that keeps people ignorant and poor, and I would say yes, as long as it's eventually swept aside. At least the secular state produces an educated middle class that is ready to take up the modern pressures of the world and still retain the reasonable peaceful message of Islam, should one choose to practice. Given the chance, the people of the region will find a happy medium where the extremists of any side will find little apatite for their message.  With a great deal of patience and encouragement the situation will come to pass that even the hold over resentment and mistrust towards authority and the outside press will evaporate like the old regimes that created them in the first place.  As the closest neighbour and biggest trading partner to the region of North Africa and the Middle East, Europe must help when asked, prod as gently as possible when it can and be patient. Not only is the prospect of avoiding the big war in the Middle East as real now as the eradication of the multiple regional tensions that used to send Europe into war on a regular basis, the creation of a single region of equally concerned governments willing to act in the name of environmental issues that are bigger than any ideology or religion is a very real probability. When you create a place where the people feel they are part of the process you can actually get things done.

I cannot predict which leader and which systems will fall next, but we have to trust these people to do it themselves, just like Central and Eastern Europe did starting in 1980, it will take time but the result will be a better place. It may not look like our personal vision of perfection, but it'll be close enough to make it work.

Wednesday, 22 December 2010

Germany to re-arm, Russia reacts, Poland wishes it were somewhere else

A few days ago the BBC announced that Germany was going to re-arm. As a person born to parents who lived through WW2 and Poles to boot, I had that feeling you get when a shadow crosses your path for no apparent reason. My father made a face and whispered "Not again" and my wife got very agitated. While the rest of you sit safe in your homes, in some cases thousands of kilometres away from Germany,  those of us who's souls and in some cases current property still reside in Poland along with a lot of relatives, that combination of words makes us have an  instinctive knee jerk reaction that says "You what?".  Early on about two years ago now, Russia quietly started spending money on arms and rebuilding it's professional standing army. In such a world, it was only a few minutes after this German announcement  we were laughing at a joke that goes "If a German Tank and a Russian Tank start moving at the same speed, which one will get to Warsaw first?". Some of you will recall the Top Gear ep where Jezza was road testing a Mecedes S class and the default destination setting on the satnav was Warsaw. This kind of gallows humour reminds us of our history and keeps  us on our toes, but is it a fair reaction in December 2010?

And while I still think I shouldn't trust a Russian leader as far as I can spit, I have to suspend my own prejudices when it come to Germans and Germany.  Lets review a few historic facts

1- France and Germany were enemies for several centuries and fought several devastating wars.
2- England and France were enemies for several centuries and fought several devastating wars.
3- Holland and Germany were enemies for several centuries and fought several devastating wars.
4- England and Spain were enemies for several centuries and fought several devastating wars.
5- Most recently.....Most Irish Catholics and most Irish Protestants were enemies for several centuries and fought several devastating wars.

And yet all of these nations now consider themselves good friends diplomatically, commercially and culturally. In fact if we were to draw up a list of most dangerous countries  in our respective states, we would all lead with Russia, China and various terrorist organisations and rogue states whose sole aim is to destabilise the current peace. I recognize that the person born in 1960, as I was, but in Germany, and their children, are not the same people their predecessors were. These new citizens are on the whole, law abiding, freedom loving, eco aware, open minded, well educated, tolerant people who vote pretty much like most every other Western European living and breathing today. People  with whom I would naturally have more affinity with than the modern day Russian who is just waiting for Czar Putin to crown himself and re-establish Greater Russia and wipe the bothersome dissidents out of the way, along with gays, artists, editorialists and satirists. Why should I fear a re militarized Germany? Isn't it time that Germany was fully re integrated into the great circle of Great  Nations it used to belong to? It has since WW2 rebuilt itself and and it's economy and rapidly regained it's pre-eminent role in world markets and monetary policy, welcomed it's Jews back, It has made room for the largest group of Turks and other asylum seekers in Europe,  it has become the World leader in the fight against green house gasses, it has led Europe in it's support of every Peace initiative going,  and  has led Europe in establishing norms that will stabilise the Euro and trading relations among member states and other trading partners. Germany was one of the first economies to come out of recession and not harm workers in the way that far right regimes around the world have. If anything, Germany has been a good and loyal member of Nato since 1955 often outstripping other member states in their contributions.

Why wouldn't I sleep well at night knowing that German soldiers were at the ready to defend me and my neighbours from outside aggression? The last time I was nasty to Germans, was about 4 years ago. To my shame, I reacted badly, along with it must be said , the rest of the pub, to a group of Austrians in Lederhosen. It was well into to the evening and most of us had been onto our 4th or 5th pint, being of sound mind and judgement, we started quietly at first making sieg heil noises and pretending we had tiny moustaches, building up to a low murmur they could not have helped hearing. These people just came in wanting a drink and some camaraderie and we were hostile. Otherwise rational men and some women of mixed English, Irish and other assorted Guinness appreciating peoples, allowed drink to cloud our minds and revert to instinctive tribal memory. In the end, they were served and most of us, myself included realized just how stupid we had been, some even went over to talk to them.  And that is the point. These people are not the bogey men they used to be.They are more like us than not like us. Germans and Germany should be trusted to be allowed what all other mature allied nations have taken for granted for decades.

As a person of Polish descent, I cannot help but have a reactions long engrained in tribal memory, but as a modern European and open minded person, it is my duty to set aside these feelings when I recognize the irrationality of them. This is not to say that I won't ever give up my bullshit meter and built in alarm that warns me long before the rest of you ever see it, that something dangerous this way comes. That would be irresponsible. But it is in fact this same detection system within me that tells me despite my previous views, these people are my friends and I should trust them.

While I may have reservations about giving up whole sections of sovereignty to the greater European dream, I cannot fault the goal of the dream. It says we are what we are, but we are also Europeans and if we fight each other we will fall into conflict again, if we cooperate, we will rise above the petty squabbles and achieve the unfulfilled  historical evolution we were headed towards before WW1 broke out. I would like to think that my children's children will live in a peaceful safe and prosperous Europe, precisely because we have taken the step to finally trust each other. Greece, Romania and other nations with dodgy banking practices have much to learn, but at least the tools to deal with the situation are not tanks and guns and bombs any more. It's only fair to allow Germany to achieve the same level of security Great Britain, France, Italy and others take for granted today.

I much prefer to recall the Germany of Frederick the Great over that of the Mad Adolf Hitler and his immediate predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm the II. Today's Germany is a Right of Centre coalition led by Angela Merkel, a Government  that should it loose favour, is more likely to be replaced by left of centre elements than fascists. Her Government and most parties in the Bundestag are strongly opposed to the rise of the extreme right in some parts of it's territories and is aware that the problem of the far right is a greater threat in the old Slavic Central and Eastern Bloc of nations. Even in the Simon pure West, fascist parties are on the rise, surely something we should all fear and fight against. Germany has long ceased to be an implacable enemy or even a niggling problem, they are a full ally and friend we cannot allow to be held back by old prejudices. Great Britain, France and the rest of the European Union recognize that Germany is one of the pillars of a viable modern Europe and one of the few states that has the moral authority to dictate public policy without having to blush every few weeks at the latest antics of its politicians and merchant classes.


The Only place I want to beat up on Germany, is the Football pitch.