European News and Poland Thread

Those results were based on false promises. The creditor nations (in which Germany was usually fairly moderate inclined towards Greece) were under no obligations to suddenly offer them better terms, just because Syriza lied to their voters about the options available to them.

The creditor nations told the Greek people (before and after the elections, and later referendum) that Greece could accept austerity and keep the Euro, or ditch austerity and leave the Euro. The Greeks wanted to have their cake and eat it.

That's one of the symptoms of the natives not liking Jews. You are ignoring the root cause. Nobody gets up in the morning, has a cup of coffee and says: today, just for fun, I am gonna break me some Jewish windows. Hon, where are my stones?

The basics are that Jews, like the Amish, do not belong and identify with the natives. In fact, they make every effort to separate. When they blend it's only to be able to make a buck and no further.

My first HS love was Jewish. Yet, when I read a sentence like "Jews and Poles" I see red. What the f*ck does that mean? After ten or more generations in Poland, you are Jews as opposed to Poles?

Bottom line: Jews and Catholics - I get that. Jews and Poles - I don't.

That is utter BS Rich and you know it.

True, Tacitus. However, the Greeks have another mentality as compared with the Germans. Schaeuble understood this. Austerity policies work less well in Mediterranean societies. They function far more effectively (I hesitate here to use the word "better") in Northern West European

Protestant countries with long histories of social deprivation (for instance Germany), as compared with Greece, Spain or Italy.

All this probably dates back to the lasting effects of the Thirty-Years War on much of the German-speaking Empire at that time. They
became literally inured to such suffering, in addition to being taught by Lutheran doctrine that earthly suffering was the only true
pathway to entering heaven!

Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thinking is quite different, stressing the hedonistic enjoyment of life on EARTH rather than waiting until one is already dead to relish the fruits of the physical world.

And that somehow excuses them from their responsibilities?
Oh, you are Greek, so it's OK for you to be an a###hole because it is in you genes...... LOL !!

No. I'm speaking of nurture, not nature:-)

Sorry,but that doesn't make sense to me.
Why nurture an a###hole?

Why condemn an entire nation simply because their collective mindset doesn't seem to jive with your own?
Stereotypes cut both ways, and one can just as easily poke fun at the British or the Poles about as easily
as one can at the Greeks:-)

You know, apropos of nothing in particular, perhaps one of the reasons that Trump seems to have a singular
inability to laugh at himself or anything about himself might well have to do with a slightly misshapen torso.
Notice all photos of him reveal a long chest but rather short legs.

Perhaps too, he has something else which is small in size, but of course, best not mentioned in public, eh what?
LOL

You surely mean the "Prussian Virtues" ;)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_virtues

Austerity or Thrift (German: Sparsamkeit)
Courage (German: Mut)
Determination (German: Zielstrebigkeit)[citation needed]
Discipline (German: Disziplin)
Fortitude without self-pity (German: Tapferkeit ohne Wehleidigkeit): Lerne leiden ohne zu klagen ("Learn to suffer without complaining")
Frankness or Probity (German: Redlichkeit)
Godliness, coupled with religious tolerance (German: Gottesfurcht bei religiöser Toleranz): Jeder soll nach seiner Façon selig werden ("Let everyone find salvation according to his own beliefs")

I always loved Schlieffens: "Mehr sein als scheinen!". Makes Northerners rather hide what they have and want to appear "less" than what they are truly made off.

In the southern countries it's the contrary...to show off is all what counts, even if it's hiding only a huge void.

Hach ja...I'm a leftover Prussian by soul! Can we get it back please?

Please, tell me that you never read this: Jews and Poles.

"Prussian" virtues later became synonymous with "German" aka "Germanic" virtues:-)
Actually, "soul", "conscience", "empathy", "compassion" were seen as expendable qualities, perfect for Sunday sermons (yawn), but inadequate for putting much needed bread on the table.

The struggle of religion has always been, likely always will be, to show human kind an aspect of life higher than either the stomach or, especially, the sex organs. Were it not for religion, human beings would in essence be no more "advanced" than their four-legged predecessors!

@Lyzko
@Bratwurst Boy
@Miloslaw
Etc...

If you want to get a good understanding of different cultures and how people behave especially in business Google hofstedes dimensions and trompenaars dimensions

Spirituality was always with us, since the first time our ancestors sat around the fire and started to wonder about more than where to find the next mammoth.

It will also be part of us when we spread our wings and spread out through space.

Religion on the other hand was only a crutch, a corset mankind is growing out of. It was a way to explain the till then unexplainable. Its no longer needed anymore and will lose it's value the more mankind learns and grows.

I get very spiritual and I think a lot about life with a smile when I know where my money and my guns are.

...and not your wife? :)

But spirituality is rather about wondering what's beyond the horizon. Knowing would take all the fun out of it....

Lucky for me, she doesn't read this forum. Plus, I know where she is when I hear the list of things I didn't do yet.

Where is Weimarer?

...probably busy with his police school. He seemed really serious about it.

'night

Ditto. The economic indicators are the same. Difference is that unlike Germany, Polands tax revenues are increasing while Germany's is declining. Poland has plenty of room for programs for citizens.

And regardless 25 bill (official figure) is a ton of money to spend every year on coddling turd worlders.

The figure I am referring to is the federal ministry of education budget:

The German Parliament, the Bundestag, has adopted the Federal Government's 2017 budget, increasing the financial resources available to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research by almost 1.2 billion euros to about 17.6 billion euros.

@Dirk diggler


And as pointed out to you, education is the part of government in which the federal states have the most power. Each state can set their own educational agenda, and consequently funds their own schools and universities. The federal government only contribites special programs and accounts for only 10% of the educational budget. Hence the figure I posted.


Not really, given Germany's other welfare expenses (1tn per year). It is also hardly possible to spend money more effective. The money stays in Germany and goes to German contractors who provide for the refugees. It is in an investment into our future, because the refugees and their children will help us with our demographic problem, and they are a consequence of Merkel saving the EU in 2015 with her decision to take responsibility for the refugees. Better to spend now money fpr their integration that to repeat the mistakes of the 1970s.

I take it, B.B., you're referring to "(dis-)organized" religion LOL vs. true inner faith?
In Germany, as I've been clobbering you to death re: Herr Prof. Dr. Plessner's little volume, spirituality in and of itself was seen as a disposable luxury by the poor and starving Germans, all to ready for a surfeit of good food and drink aka booze, ready, willing, and able to abandon the sweet poetry of "Love Thy Neighbor" etc. in favor of some good sex and a hot meal:-)

The deep-seated cynicism in the German culture proved rife ground for Hitler and his talk of a Master Race, pure social Darwinism, which plunged Europe into a second Dark Ages and transformed ordinary citizens into sadistic monsters such as the world had never seen, even during the scourge of Genghis Khan.

No...not really...spiritualism is about questioning, wondering, asking...religion and a "faith" are anything but!


Well, if that's about questioning the "truth" then I'm glad about it...

You forgot smoking dope, snorting, and singing kumbaya. Since I already know everything - 50 years should be enough - I am incapable of spiritualism. Plus, there are too many crooks on TV and elsewhere selling spirituality for 10 bucks per session to get you on the hook. In same cases, the victims of spirituality were left with just their underwear or dead as in Jonestown. Spirituality is for the confused and the naive idiots.

Nah...that's the Hippies...they too believe to much. Their vision is other peoples nightmare...they only exchanged one religion for another, that's not spiritualism.

Try to think outside of the box!

PS: That word spiritualism is probably to burned, to often abused....maybe there is a better one.


TV Preacher getting off and rich with selling "the word of god" to masses of dumb believers is probably as far as you can get AWAY from spiritualism...


I honestly doubt that Rich! :) You too are born with a brain and a free will...with that comes the questioning and wondering quite naturally. You are most probably just disappointed and heavily disgusted at the many "truths" people wanted to sell you your whole life...that is totally understandable but something else.

The problem with spiritualism is that it implies, or outright claims, the existence of something separate from the chemicals and the electrons that our bodies are. Which, of course, is a total bs invented to manipulate humans by the charlatans, popes included. End of the story. The most laughable is the so-called near-death experience as if our vision of bright light or strange colors was proof of anything.

Life is not a binary on-off phenomenon. Even my old tube-type TV died slowly until the last couple of seconds when to showed the strangest of images. Then, I hit it and, a miracle, the picture came back for a month or two.

"End of story" as we now it YET! :)

Already tomorrow a new discovery could make all the news headlines that turns our understanding of the world around on it's head.

It is neither spiritual nor scientifical to think that we know all the stuff YET! Only dogmatists do that, it's a kind of belief too....just saying...


Talking to it sometimes helps too...

But all within the laws of physics. Any proponent of "new" - spiritual or physical - has an obligation (not the opponents) to prove (1) that his idea is consistent with these laws or (2) that some laws of physics have to be amended, why and how. Period, again.

What the "spiritualists" do so well is turn the tables of the debate around and demand that the other side proves them wrong. Wrong! I have no such obligation as it is impossible to prove that something DOES NOT exist. Just as I can't prove I didn't do whatever they want to charge me with.

I agree!

It's just that I very much doubt we know all about physics YET! ;)


Nah....I want to be convinced by facts and experiments and PROOF too...

The thing is, do I research with an open mind or am I a dogmatic and deny even the possibility and with that any research?

We agreed twice! Let's celebrate!

I'm not ready yet....I still search for a better word than "spiritualism".

It can't be right if it implies doped, kumbaya-singing Hippies and TV preacher...

@B.B.,

Your own homegrown Immanuel Kant confessed in his Critique that one could never know the absolute Truth, much as it was impossible to
prove the existence of G-d.

Remember also, as I've said before, many educated Nazi high rankers were well-schooled in Kant's writing, some of it disturbing in that it disconnected empathy with obedience, following one's conscience even at the expense of disobeying the "higher will!.

We all know what that lead to, don't we.