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Looks Like Germany May Have To Pay Up
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
German magazine Der Spiegel digs deep(er) into the ‘Greece question’ this weekend, and does so with a few noteworthy reports. First, its German paper issue has Angela Merkel on the cover, inserted on a 1940′s photograph that shows Nazi commanders against the backdrop of the Acropolis in Athens. The headline is ‘The German Supremacy: How Europeans see (the) Germans’. The editorial staff has already come under a lot of fire for the cover, and I’ve seen little that could be labeled a valid defense for further antagonizing both Germans AND Greeks (and other Europeans) this way. Oh, and it’s also complete nonsense, nobody sees modern day Germans this way. It’s just that their government after 70 years is still skirting its obligations towards the victims. That’s what people, the Greeks in particular, don’t like.
Second: Spiegel’s German online edition has a sorry that claims Greek paper To Vima will come with revelations on Sunday accusing Georgios Katrougalos, Syriza’s deputy minister for Policy Reform and Public Service (I’m translating on the fly) of corruption in the case of the reinstallment of public workers that had been fired under the Samaras government under pressure from the Troika.
Allegedly, Katrougalos’ law firm (in which he has had no active role since becoming a member of the European parliament last year) has a contract with these workers that will pay it 12% of whatever they receive in back pay. Predictably, the opposition has called for Katrougalos’ firing, but Tsipras has said he talked to him and is satisfied with the explanation he was given..
It smells a bit like something Bild Zeitung (Germany’s yellow rag) would write, but there you are. Which makes the following perhaps somewhat surprising. Because:
Third: Spiegel English online edition has a long article on a report just out by a special Greek commission, instated by former governments, on the German war reparations that Tsipras has repeatedly talked about, and that German FinMin Schäuble has famously high handedly tried to sweep off the table. That may not be so easy anymore now. There are already increasingly voices in Germany itself that want Berlin to change its approach to the matter, and the report will only make that call louder. Let’s see if I can get this properly summarized:
Nazi Extortion: Study Sheds New Light on Forced Greek Loans
Last week in Greek parliament, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras demanded German reparations payments, indirectly linking them to the current situation in Greece. “After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the legal and political conditions were created for this issue to be solved,” Tsipras said. “But since then, German governments chose silence, legal tricks and delay. And I wonder, because there is a lot of talk at the European level these days about moral issues: Is this stance moral?”
[..] there are many arguments to support the Greek view. SPIEGEL itself reported in February that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl used tricks in 1990 in order to avoid having to pay reparations.
A study conducted by the Greek Finance Ministry, commissioned way back in 2012 by a previous government, has now been completed and contains new facts. The 194-page document has been obtained by SPIEGEL. The central question in the report is that of forced loans the Nazi occupiers extorted from the Greek central bank beginning in 1941.
Should requests for repayment of those loans be classified as reparation demands – demands that may have been forfeited with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of 1990? Or is it a genuine loan that must be paid back? The expert commission analyzed contracts and agreements from the time of the occupation as well as receipts, remittance slips and bank statements.
Note: the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of 1990 (aka Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany) was the result of negotiations about the reunification of the two Germany’s. It was signed by both, and by France, Britain, Russia and the US, the four nations who held former German territory at the end of WWII.
It’s noteworthy that Der Spiegel says that Greek demands for reparations ‘may have been’ forfeited with the treaty (something Germany claims), while Tsipras insists on the exact opposite: that the treaty created the legal and political conditions for the reparations issue to finally be resolved. As we will see, many experts lean towards Tsipras’ interpretation. Greece never signed, and nobody else had the right to sign in its name, that’s the crux. But there’s more:
They found that the forced loans do not fit into the category of classical war reparations. The commission calculated the outstanding German “debt” to the Greek central bank and came to a total sum of $12.8 billion as of December 2014, which would amount to about €11 billion.
As such, at issue between Germany and Greece is no longer just the question as to whether the 115 million deutsche marks paid to the Greek government from 1961 onwards for its peoples’ suffering during the occupation sufficed as legal compensation for the massacres like those in the villages of Distomo and Kalavrita. Now the key issue is whether the successor to the German Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, is responsible for paying back loans extorted by the Nazi occupiers. There’s some evidence to indicate that this may be the case.
It’s a tad strange that the magazine apparently jumps from that ‘may have been forfeited’ interpretation of the treaty to what amounts to a fait accompli, by saying the ‘key issue’ now is the forced loans, not the reparations. I would think it’s very much both. But let’s follow their thread:
In terms of the amount of the loan debt, the Greek auditors have come to almost the same findings as those of the Nazis’ bookkeepers shortly before the end of the war. Hitler’s auditors estimated 26 days before the war’s end that the “outstanding debt” the Reich owed to Greece at 476 million Reichsmarks.
First thing that springs to mind is: say what you will about Germans, but they’re fine bookkeepers!
Auditors in Athens calculated an “open credit line” for the same period of time of around $213 million. They assumed a dollar exchange rate to the Reichsmark of 2:1 and applied an interest escalation clause accepted by the German occupiers that would result in a value of more than €11 billion today.
This outstanding debt has to be paid back “with no ifs or buts,” says German historian Hagen Fleischer in Athens, who knows the relevant files better than anyone else. Even before the new report, he located numerous documents that prove without any doubt, he believes, the character of forced loans. Nazi officials noted on March 20, 1944, for example, that the “Reich’s debt” to Athens had totaled 1,068 billion drachmas as of December 31 of the previous year.
“Forced loans as war debt pervade all the German files,” says Fleischer, who is a professor of modern history at the University of Athens. He has lived in Athens since 1977. He says that files from postwar German authorities about questions of war debt “shocked” him far more than the war documents on atrocities and suffering
In them, he says German diplomats use the vocabulary of the National Socialists to discuss reparations issues, speaking of a “final solution for so-called war crimes problems,” or stating that it was high time for a “liquidation of memory.” He says it was in this spirit that compensation payments were also constantly refused.
Those are pretty damning words. So far just from one man, granted, but again there’s more:
When work on the study first began in early 2012, the cabinet of independent Prime Minister Loukas Papedemos still governed in Athens. A former vice president of the ECB, Papedemos formed a six-month transition government after Georgios Papandreou resigned. In April 2014, the successor government of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras decided to continue work on the study and appointed Panagiotis Karakousis to lead the team of experts. The longtime general director of the Finance Ministry was considered to be politically unobjectionable.
Karakousis spent five months reading 50,000 pages of original documents from the central bank’s archives. It wasn’t easy reading. The study calculates right down to the gram the amount of gold plundered from private households, especially those of Greek Jews: 7,358.0014 kilograms of pure gold with an equivalent value today of around €235 million. It also notes also how German troops, as they pulled out, quickly took along “the entire cash reserves from branch offices and regional branches” of the central bank: Exactly 634,962,691,995,162 drachmas in notes and coins, which would total about €40 million today.
Above all, the study, with some reservations, provides clarity about the forced loans. “No reasonable person can now doubt that these loans existed and that the repayment remains open,” says Karakousis.
This history of the loans began in April 1941, after the German troops rushed to assist their Italian allies and occupied Greece. In order to provide their troops with provisions, the German occupiers demanded reimbursement for their expenses, the so-called occupation costs. It’s a cynical requirement, but one that became standard practice after the 1907 Hague Convention.
Out of the ordinary, though, was the Wehrmacht requirement that the Greeks finance the provision of its troops on other fronts – in the Balkans, in Russia or in North Africa – despite Hague Convention rules forbidding such a practice. Initially, the German occupiers demanded 25 million Reichsmarks per month from the government in Athens, around 1.5 billion drachmas. But the amount they actually took was considerably higher. The expert commission determined that payments made by the Greek central bank between August and December 1941 totaled 12 billion rather than 7 billion drachmas.
As they say: before you know it, we’re talking about real money. And I see no reason to doubt Karakousis’ assertion that ‘repayment remains open’. Not only was German conduct reprehensible during the war, it remained so after. So it shouldn’t really come as surprise that Tsipras has more than once mentioned the 1953 London Agreement on German External Debts, in which Germany was relieved from much of the claims held against it. Tsipras wants Berlin to do the same for Greece now. A potential weakness is that Greece was signatory to that agreement. Still, the loans were certainly not part of it, only ‘war damage’ was included.
With their economy laid to waste, the Greeks soon began pushing for reductions. At a conference in Rome, the Germans and Italians decided on March 14, 1942 to halve their occupation costs to 750 million drachmas each. But the study claims that Hitler’s deputies demanded “unlimited sums in the form of loans.” Whatever the Germans collected over and above the 750 million would be “credited to the Greek government,” a German official noted in 1942. The sums of the forced loans were up to 10 times as high as the occupation costs. During the first half of 1942, they totaled 43.4 billion drachmas, whereas only 4.5 billion for the provision of troops was due.
A number of installment payments, which Athens began pressing for in March 1943, serve to verify the nature of the loans. Historian Fleischer also found records relating to around two dozen payment installments. For example, the payment office of the Special Operations Southeast was instructed on October 6, 1944 to pay, inflation adjusted, an incredible sum of 300 billion drachma to the Greek government and to book it as “repayment.”
In Fleischer’s opinion, the report makes unequivocally clear that the Greek demands do not relate to reparations for wartime injustices that could serve as a precedent for other countries. “One can negotiate reparations politically,” Fleischer says. “Debts have to be paid back - even between friends.”
Postwar Greek governments sought repayment early on. The German ambassador confirmed on October 15, 1966, for example, that the Greeks had already come knocking “over an alleged claim.” On November 10, 1995, then Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou proposed the opening of talks aimed at a settlement of the “German debts to Greece.” He proposed that “every category of these claims would be examined separately.” Papandreous’ effort ultimately didn’t lead anywhere.
Ergo: for a period of thirty years, the Greeks tried, but to no avail. That’s a pretty ugly record. It’s now another 20 years later, and nothing has changed. All in all, the Greeks have been stonewalled for 70 years.
What should become of this new study, the contents of which had remained secret before now? [..] the question also remains whether the surviving relatives of the victims of Distomo will ever be provided with justice – and whether there are similar cases in other countries.
German governments’ rude behavior may well stem, among other things, from that last point: that if any of the Greek claims are recognized, other countries may come knocking too.
German lawyer Joachim Lau, whose law firm is based in Florence, Italy, represents the interests of village residents of Distomo even today. Lau, born in Stuttgart, a white-haired man of almost 70, is fighting for compensation in the name of the Greek and Italian victims of the Nazis. “I am disappointed by the manner in which Germany is dealing with this question,” he says. He says it’s not just an issue of financial compensation. More than anything, it is one of justice.
In February, Lau warned German President Joachim Gauck in an open letter against propagating the “violation of international law” with careless statements about the reparations issue. In his view, the legal situation is clear: Greek and Italian citizens and their relatives affected by “shootings, massacres by the Wehrmacht, by deportations or forced labor illegal under international law” have the right to individual claims.
This perhaps clarifies the definition of ‘war damage’, the term used in the 1954 London agreement. In Lau’s interpretation, it does not include, let’s say, ‘personal suffering’.
For the past decade, Lau has been pursuing the claims of the Distomo victims in Italy. The Court of Cassation in Rome affirmed in 2008 that the claims were legitimate and that he could pursue the case. Earlier, the lawyer had already succeeded in securing Villa Vigoni, a palatial estate on the shore of Lake Como owned by Germany – and used by a private German association focused on promoting German-Italian relations – as collateral for the suit. In 2009, Lau succeeded in having €51 million in claims made by Deutsche Bahn against Italian state railway Trenitalia seized. On Tuesday, the high court in Rome is expected to rule on the lifting of the enforcement order.
Note: there could be a legal precedent here that that can serve as a ‘conduit’ to allow Greece to seize German property in its country.
Following a ruling made by Italy’s Constitutional Court in October 2014, private suits in Italy against Germany have been possible again. One of the justices who issued the ruling is the current president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella. It remains unclear whether this ruling will unleash “a wave of new proceedings” in Italy, says Lau, who currently represents 150 cases, including various class-action lawsuits.
The bones of victims of the Nazi killings in Distomo feature as part of the village’s memorial to the massacre.
Everything connects in the mountain village of Distoma – the present and past, guilt and anger, the Greek demands on Germany today and past calls for reparations. Efrosyni Perganda sits in the well-heated living room of her home. The diminutive woman, 91 years of age, has alert eyes and wears a black dress. She survived the massacre perpetrated by the Germans at Distomo and she’s one of the few witnesses still alive in the village. When the SS company undertook a so-called act of atonement in Distomo following a fight with Greek partisans, the soldiers also captured her husband. Efrosyni Perganda stood by with her baby as they took him. She never saw him again.
As the Germans began to rampage, she hid behind the bathroom door and later behind the living room door of the house in which she still lives today. She held her baby tightly against her chest. “I forgive my husband’s murderers,” she says. Loukas Zisis, the deputy mayor, silently leaves the house as the woman finishes telling her story. He needs a break and heads over to the tavern, where he orders a glass of wine.
“I admire Germany: Marx, Engels, Nietzsche,” he says. “The prosperity. The degree to which society is organized. But here in the village, we aren’t finding peace because the German state isn’t settling its debt.”Zisis admires Germany, but the country remains incomprehensible to him. “We haven’t even heard a single apology so far,” he says once again. “That has to do with Germany’s position in Europe.” This is something that he just doesn’t understand, he says.
German occupation troops in the ransacked Greek village of Distomo on June 10, 1944, shortly after 218 local residents were executed as part of Nazi reprisals.
I hope – and I think – that Germany will pay up. It seems to me to be the only way to save the European Union it has made its economy so dependent on. I don’t see the war reparations go away anymore. So either Berlin pays what legal experts determine should be paid, or it risks becoming a pariah in its own neighborhood.
That the Germans in the 1950s and 1960s, at home and in schools, chose not to tell their children anything about their crimes cannot serve as an excuse to silence the children of their victims. Germany will need to eat a lot of humble pie with its beer.
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I have Neanderthal chromosomes - pay up you modern humans. I was here first!
I have Saxon genes.
Pay up you Norman Bastards
The Saxons and Normans were both GERMANS.
Wrong, the Normans were the descendants of Vikings and French women. The coast of Normandy was bequeathed to the Vikings by the King of France in return for their defense of France proper. So Normans were half Norse, half French as far as bloodlines go.
He meant Normans are "Germanic People".
The Vikings, the Dutch, the French, the Franks were all Germanic People with a Germanic Language root.
And it seem England was never a great Kingdom or Empire until the Normans came and settled things down there.
Later what made England a Great Britain or Empire was a strong central Government. I had a link and a reference, but it escapes me now.
Anyway historically if you want to be a Super Power or an Empire you need to hold on to a Strong Central Government much like what we have in the USA. Probably this is the vision for the EU.
"whadyamean pay up, c'mon, the Acropolis looked like that when we got here"
lolz
There ain't no sanity clause
This should explain a few things, before everyone jumps on the bandwagon of what the nazis did or didnt do & who carries responsability thereafter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8OmxI2AYV8
ha ha ha
Greece is desparate; and this call for reparations is all so riduculous.
Nazi Germany effectively discharged its "debts and obligations" through the blood and treasure it lost and the near total destruction of Germany as a nation. Its leaders were all killed or imprisoned. And those, which the Nazi-hunters have captured since then, were at best low-level pawns in the nazi bureaucracy.
If anyone deserved reparations, it was the relatives of those who died waging war against the Nazis, followed by those who suffered wounds in battle against them. This should include all the saboteurs and armed resistance groups who resisted nazi occupation from the Atlantic coast to the banks of the Volga River.
The civilians who were passive in their submission to nazi occupation deserve nothing; and those who submitted passively to incarceration deserve very little if anything as well. They should instead have been paying "solatium" to the relatives of those who died fighting to free them and to those who were wounded doing the same, instead of demanding money for themselves..
Everything was fine for all these years until the Germans got on their high-horse about the Greeks 'not paying'...
Say it with me Ubermenschen, Cave! Fuck off and die!
The Greeks should send forces to occupy the Ruhr until the debt is paid.
Next thing you know is that Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Panama, Libya, Kosovo, Serbia, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Central America, South America, Japan, China and the rest of the world want reparations because we f.... them up. What is this world coming to? Geez..
Hell yes there ain't no sanity clause!!!
Yeah - well - if Greece had asked for reparations prior to joining the Euro there could have been a more-or-less straight-up dispute. How far back in history do we go? Does Alexander the Great's work warrant reparations? The point of the EU, and the EMU, was to dissolve these national boundaries once and for all. Whether that was a bad choice or a good one is an interesting question - but for Greece, having joined, it's a little late in the day to seek retroactive justice for the sovereign state.
This is my surprised face. (Those who aren't screaming can check my inferences in past posts)
Have a song.
the german must pay
like they pay the isra heil
like they fund the rabbi
like they fund free nukum submarines to zionist demonic state
the german must pay for the gas camp zion lies until 2070 or 80.
compensation for 12 million then 6
money for a fake talmudick burnt offering
the german must pay
100 billion to the greek
5 trillion for mighty russia for the wont ton slaughter
the german must get cash monies or gold from uk
for dresden
for the millions slaughtered in city and town hamlet.
the yank must pay japan man and the german for crimes.
spielberg needs to pay me for my cinema ticket for the lies and deceit of the schindler movie fella
The Jews have been paid and are still being paid by Germany. There is no reason why Germany should treat greeks any differently....pay up. After the Greeks the Serbs, Macedonians, gypsies and every other Balkan nationality needs to line up to collect what is due. When Germany is drained it will be the USA turn to pay the reparation piper.....American Indians, African Americans, Mexicans, Iraqis, afghans, Iranian.......and pretty much the rest of humanity can line up for their payday.
Wars leave deep scars that afflict generations for potentially thousands of years. My grandmother was a victim of unspeakable atrocities during WWII. She passed her emotional and psychological burdens onto her offspring. The cycle repeats. It happens on the personal, local, community, national, and global level. At what point do we try something new? I am ready for something new.
My dad had to fight them. I would have earned 5 years more wages by now if he had been at home with my mother. I want my money damn it. And if we go back farther than that, the Kaiser in 1127 came into the town named after me (well my anscestors) and killed and stole everything we had. I want my money damn it.
I want more.
I had no idea that Germany had invaded q99x2. I assume the Soviets saved you.
Looks like Germany will have to pay up? Hardy-har-har. This guy is such a one-sided partisan.
For Greece, which just recently inflicted haircuts on the people who loaned it money, to start demanding that other people honor the debts of a previous regime IN FULL is a really amazing example of effrontery.
And desperation.
What is even worse is that the 11 B euros they demand would hardly keep them going for more than a couple of months anyhow.
If I were Germany, I would say: Here's your 11 billion euros. Paid in full. Receipt please and danke. Now we want the 62 billion euros we loaned you back.
And then all of those people over there with short hair and angry looks on their faces would like to discuss a few matters with you.
Bet you love KFC, Steven King novels and tabloids...yes?
So by your logic, Greece should just "change regimes/govts" and all its debts are not enforceable.
So Greek government (A) goes away
Greek Government (B) comes in and stays in Euro
Now all the liabilities are wiped and all t hat remains is assets and equity.
BOOM
Rinse/repeat.
Fuck Germany , because of German lineage hundreds of millions of people died . . . all because of German/Jewish Banks that pushed the world into chaos.
And these same banks still run the fucking world today.
When will people learn the lesson . . . that all world wars/wars are started by banks in the first place. . . all socio economic pressure/distress/political distress is orchestrated so that the banks can STEAL from the people and then make sure that the people DIE so they aren't around to take their shit back.
There should be a new international treaty.
Anyone related to a banker who held any position of power during WWI or II should be exterminated, the entire lineage and genealogy wiped from existence.
After all , all these nazi bankers believed in eugenics. . . lets give them their own medicine and rid the earth of the plague that they are.
O but I guess only the people who steal all the money get to decide who lives and dies right? ^^ . . . since thats how its always been.
I don't get it, why do you say Greece inflicted haircuts on People? Why not Institutions or Banks or a group that created money out of thin air??
Beware of those institutions that say they are all about people or that people come first.
Now if you talk about Bailouts... those are never about people.
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Bail-Outs are Corruption -
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All bailouts benefit the corporations that were bad Capitalists.
Kapitalismus Totet oder Toten.
Capitalism where Corporations and Banks are Protected is probably an old Europe thing that just came to the USA in 2009. But it is not Capitalism.
It is Fascism, Inverted Totalitarianism, or Corporate Socialism.
Bailouts are for the Elites. Start a business you are a target of the Banks and Wall Street. You don't get a Bailout.
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Bail-Outs are Corruption -
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You don't actually think bailouts are charity do you? What at high interest rates??
Exactly 476 million Reichsmarks, hand delivered to the choosey beggars in Greece.
Edit: I guess someone didn't understand, since the German economy imploded during and after WW2 (when Reichsmarks ceased to have both monetary status and value), Reichsmarks haven't been worth the paper they're printed on. Might as well deliver 476 million Hallmark cards, "from Germany with love".
The the author...good to see you corrected your previous post on the issue of the cover of this magazine.
To the comments...Yuk..Yuk..Yuk...keep talking from your comfortable arm chairs while you obey to your banker-masters. We The Greeks, are fighting once more so we can deliver to you the lights of civilization..AGAIN.
The 11 millions are not enough for us for a month...but they are more then enough for a generation.
Do you honestly think this is about the money...think again if you do.
And please keep in mind that after we sort out the "forced loan" we had to give them during WW2...then the real issue of the "forced loans" they had to give us to save their EURO will come to hand.
Keep talking shit while we fight.
Just make the Germans pay the Greeks in gold - it's only a barbaric relic, right?
And most of the German gold today was taken when the German barbarians conquered Rome, who took it when the Romans conquered Greece!
the problem isn't reparations. it is used as a hook that everyone wants to use as a political tool.
the problem is that powerful nazi families still run the deep state of germany and the u.s. and the power world. and those deep state nazis are still hard at work trying to advance the real politique of their power behidn the scenes through the current facade of cooperation.
as in the late 30's. they are lusting and waiting for things to 'fall apart' to present them opportunities to back 'leaders' who will bring in more viciousness and megascale social rape of humanity, at every level, including the national level of social organization.
the greeks don't need reparations. they need germany's present day nazi's to be ousted from their corners of dark power and for new leadership to openly do what is necessary to figure out how to move europe forward.
the problem is that germany itself is so deep indebted that the points of leverage are simply too numerous. 'germany' isn't exactly free from nazi clutches to get rid of it's own nazis in the deep closet. maybe that even means getting america out of southern germany/austria/prussia.
agreed teslaberry.... many multinationals were either german war-machine players, or allied corporations trading-with-the-enemy. & they still exist as powerful corps today...
[hugo boss (uniforms,olympic torch etc),
BMW & MERC [mechanised production, helped by Ford, who was a personal idol of A.H.],
BASF / IB Farben,
Bank of International Settlements [enabled funding of national socialists by US & other international players... litterally moving palets of AU from 1 room to another!],
CocaCola seved its own name drink to the allies, and fanta to the axis forces while sponsoring the nazi printed propaganda [there are photos of rallies with a fanta banner then swastica flag as far as the eye can see, plenty of printed pamphlets, and images of the berlin olympics that can be easily googled.] ...
Standard OIl [g.h.w.bush], JPM & Chase Manhatton, harriman.... & plenty of others.
None of these US companies were procescuted after ww2. Despite trading with the enemy. Blatantly. they grouped together and employed William Randolph Hearst to buy up all media outlets calling for T-W-T-E prosecutions [which would have resulted in the companies being liquidated and the US taxpayer getting the proceeds.]. At this moment, america's free press was manipulated by this agenda, silencing calls for prosecution.... and it never recovered it's independant voice.., it became the homogenous mouthpiece we see today.
so yeah teslaberry, +100.
Please do some of your own homework - none of thia is difficult to discover.
Good to see some people in here know their S#$@.
Atlantic Bridge my friend....Atlantic Bridge...end of WW2...research it if you have not already.
One small detail, SYRIZA and Tsipras personally was not "approved" by USA until he realized that he needed that. So a dozen visits to the US (for 18 months) prior to his election win secured Obama's support as Tsipras confirmed that no matter what the American interest in German economy will not be harmed. And suddenly dozens of "friendly" articles in the USA paper started appearing.
game over..insert more coins
Didn't they try to make Germany "pay up" after WW1?
Here we go again!
Funny how, in the face of no more handouts, the tide shifts to reparations.
Why wouldn't Greece have raised this in 2010 when they defaulted the first time? Right, because handouts were still showing up.
It's 4th and long with 10 seconds left. Get the "hail mary pass" special teams unit onto the field.
We have since the 1950's and we are actually the ONLY country in the world that took them to court.
BUT YOU ARE RIGHT, there is opportunism in this action of ours right now. However one has to fight with the weapons he has, if need be stones and rocks or simply political issues.
Russia not only dont pay reparations for its crimes in WW2 but even has not apologise for this:
http://youtu.be/oVZjyyAE-78
But in a few years after putin regime collapse will pay dearly reparations to Georgia & Ukraine for war it has brought and occupation & annexation done to these countries.
And when Russia Federation say but we are not USSR than rremember Germany is not Nazi also and Russia has taken over automatically USSR seat in UN Security Council and always saying and celebrating that they won Nazis in WW2 which where USSR at that time (but doesnt tell that USSR occupied other countries and deported & killed in gulags millions of people).
Now its time for putin payed trolls to line up for registry after this comment:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31962644
Why dont you as an American set the example and get you country to pay its reparations for all wars and countries it has invaded, annexed and occupies as we speak. I can probably count one war and country per years of your existence as a Nation...go on..set the example.
I am from Latvia:
https://youtu.be/-PDSSoqaCp0
https://youtu.be/LDtMTcmmZL4
Ah, ah, viedoklis_lv, see picture of you in recent Latvian gay pride parade:
http://www.ibtimes.com/hundreds-participate-annual-nazi-veterans-march-l...
A question hangs: how many potato do you are now owe Greece?
Maybe chapter 2 of this saga can be suing Greece for cooking its books in order to fraudulently join the EMU
In case you did not know (because FOX TV did not tell you) we were amongst the first 6 that established EU so we have the right to whatever we want within it.
The famous media crap of us cooking the books is partially correct, but what you need to think and doubt is...we must be Einsteins in maths and accounting to be able to fool all of Europe's financiers for 30 odd years.
stupid Greek.
In case you haven't noticed: There's a thing called wikipedia, and it tells us you're full of shit. Greece became member in 1981, loooooooong after the EU was founded (by Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands).
Always wondered: Why don't you Greeks seek retribution and money from the Turks? In case your knowledge of Greek history is as good as of the EU:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide
Surely there's some money to be made, eh?
Always about money, never forwardlooking. 'Avrio', always meaning "not today".
Live long and prosper!
So the hunter becomes hunted. Nice job Greeks.
Thanks bro.
Fuck "paying up". Germany should start building more Panzers, then aim due south. A little refresher course on the Law of Jungle might be good for Europe.
In case you dont know (because FOX TV did not tell you) in Greece we have many cemeteries that are called "German Cemeteries" or Deutscher Soldaten Friedhof , we keep them in good nit, better then we keep our ordinary cemeteries...do you know why?
As a reminder to Germans and other invaders that when they come to take over our land we will be happy to give them a piece for their graves...take that to your banker master.
here is the best one we have, read the numbers below and also know this is where Germany lost all its paratroopers never to be seen again
http://www.ww1cemeteries.com/other_cemeteries_ext/maleme_german_cem.htm
I salute your ancestor's valiant courageous struggle for freedom from invading Nazis, Ottomans, etc. Something to be deservedly proud of as a Greek.
Now, Greece must pay back ALL that it defrauded EU and bondholders out of - Something to be deservedly ashamed of as a Greek.
If Greece wants to try to get payments from current Germans for the crimes of their dead ancestors, then that is a separate UNRELATED issue and process from honoring the debts that the Greeks VOLUNTARILY committed to.
Bit of a double-standard there, heh? Why should "the Greeks" be be held responsible for debts they themselves never signed on to, when it was their government that did the agreeing and signing? (with some helpful bookeeping from banksters..)
Under the same argument you use to defend the Germans who are being held responsible for Nazi war crimes, they can't be.
"The Greeks" (as if any nation acts in lock-step unity..) are no more responsible for the debts their governments took on than modern day Germans are for concentration camps.
One cannot 'sign on' for debts that are to be paid by others, and the debts of fathers do not get transferred to their sons and grandsons. Except in "Banker World" of course. Which is kinda like West World, but with Lloyd Blankfein instead of Yul Brynner.
Fuck "paying up". Germany should start building more Panzers, then aim due south. A little refresher course on the Law of Jungle might be good for Europe
Yezzz zat worked really wellz for zee Germanz lazt time round...
3
Vote down!
0Greece is bringing freedom to Germany !!!!
Yes, bring it on Greece !!!!!! Then it would become clear that "Germany" as it exists now is no souvereign nation nor the legal follower of the Third Reich ; its just a territory governed by the US and UK. The Greeks will find out quickly that German politicians (be it Frau Merkel or anybody else) are not in the position to make decisions or promises, simply because the real government of the occupied German territory is a special comitee in Washington. Merkel is just doing administrative jobs, she is the Procurator of the US empire in Germany.
Greece has touched the most important topic, which is peace in Europe. The theme WWII and its consequences when it was over needs to be brought into full daylight. One of the most important consequences is, that there exists no peace agreement between the former nation German Reich (or a legal follower) and the other war parties. Germany is occupied and outgoping from the territory of Germany the US is carrying war and warlike activities into the Middle East and into Africa as well as the activities in Ukraine, Romania etc are managed from there. Not to mention the "drone war" which is relayed and maybe also executed out of Ramstein airbase (Germany). The Germans nor the other Europeans of "Euroland" have a saying in this.
I love the Greeks, that they bring now this theme on the table, this is going to bring "all options on the table". Following formal peace negotiations and after the signature of a peace treaty, the occupying forces (US and UK military) have to leave Germany. This would open the door for a "real" democratic EU, which is now under US rule not possible.
The reparations Tsirpas is taking about are only hot air to kick start this theme. There will be no substantial reparations because this would open a Pandoras box. Modern Germany is not the legal follower of the Third Reich simply for the fact, that half of the former German Reich territory is now located in Poland or part of Russia (east Prussia).
Read what a competent Russian, PROF. ALEXANDR DUGIN says about the German Question - "Occupation is Occupation": http://manuelochsenreiter.com/blog/2013/11/26/occupation-is-occupation
PROF. ALEXANDR DUGIN IS A PHILOSOPHER, AND A PROFESSOR AT MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY
Greeks are like firecrackers: noisy, but mostly harmless. When Cyprus was broke and needed a bailout, the same thing happened: clamor of German war reparations, and claiming that as-yet-unexploited gas fields were going to make Cyprus rich. In the end, neither happened. The noise was just Cypriotic politicians giving their voters a show.
The Greeks are not going to be much different.
Hey, then Italy, Albany, Macedonia and Turkey should receive some reparations for the centuries spent under Greek military occupation (some 2500 years ago).
Jokes aside, if Germany pays up it would be just an elegant way of elemosinating those stubborn Greeks, who seem uncapable (as in mental-deficit-uncapable) of running a country responsibly.
If one earns less, one should spend less, as simple as that. Don't wanna cut welfare? Fine, cut defense or infrastructure (temporarily), make some goddamn reforms of public emloyment, but for fuck's sake do something! Complaining while you beg won't fix any problems...
Yeah, the Greeks should be more like the USA.
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2014 = $3.5 Trillion (B. Obama)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2012 = $3.54 Trillion (B. Obama)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2010 = $3.45 Trillion (B. Obama)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2008 = $2.98 Trillion (G.W. Bush)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2006 = $2.65 Trillion (G.W. Bush)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2004 = $2.29 Trillion (G.W. Bush)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2002 = $2.01 Trillion (B. Clinton)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2000 = $1.79 Trillion (B. Clinton)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 1998 = $1.65 Trillion (B. Clinton)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 1997 = $1.6 Trillion (B. Clinton)
yes, but you're describing 'countries' that can create an unlimited(?) supply of 'money'. In other words they do not live within their means, rather future generations means.
Will these reparations be paid to people ......or 'government'?
Follow the wealth trail.
people (greek) -----> government (greek) ------> government (german) ---> people ? (german)
and all the way back again...... and the banco-politicians take (steal) a slice each stage.
tey paied to Jews.
They have to pay to everybody, especially Russians, they have to pay for 20.000.000 de3ad Russian citizxens. USD 10.000.000 for everyone of them. This is
10.000.000 * 20.000.000=200.000.000.000.000=2*10^14 usd.
10.000.000 come from USA, where the judges rule a 10million a compensation for homicide reguralry.
Here another German newspaper to cite:
"Griechenlands 476-Millionen Anleihe gibt es nicht"
http://www.welt.de/geschichte/zweiter-weltkrieg/article138498430/Grieche...
Translation: "Greek 476-billion bond doesn't exist"
The long-gone Nazis did not make the current Greeks into the lieing, cheating, defrauding, hyper-corrupt socialist parasites and thieves that they truly are.
The Greeks must be forced to pay reparations to the citizens of the EZ and all the holders of Greek bonds for all the loot that they stole under deceit of borrowing.
The UK only finished paying its war debts back to the US in 2006.
The Greek's have a case.
The UK has only just paid back it's first world war debt, Monday 9 March 2015.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chancellor-to-repay-the-nations-first...
Do the German's like the idea of debt jubilees or not?
Repayment is about practical politics.
The choices for the Euro are stark. Either Greece leaves or Germany pays. That is the only way that the Euro can survive.
Given this, the political ground needs to be prepared for both those possibilities. Arrangements have to be made for an orderly currency swap transition if Greece leaves, and politicians have to reverse their statements that it would be a 'disaster'. They will probably start presenting it as a 'holiday' in order to sell it to the people.
Similarly, the German establishment need to reverse their refusal to pay money. A good way to do this would be to pretend that extra money is a 'loan repayment' - this can be sold to the German people more easily than simply a continuous funding of the Greeks.
What we are seeing is the early shift to allow that new presentation. So it looks as if the Germans will pay after all...
The whole system degenerated into a farce in 2008.
The bankers, the purveyors of debt and whose business is debt, couldn't manage their own debts.
Why are we giving Greece such a hard time?
When bankers can't handle their own debt, a global reset is in order.
There is no real debt. Only fiat currency loaned out. The bankers print money from nothing, loan it out and expect full repayment and interest. Nice little gig they have there.
As for the holocaust deniers, most of them are descendants of former Nazi war criminals who passed down lies to their children and grandchildren about their involvement in the war. They make claims like bodies were dragged from bombed buildings into the prison camps and propaganda photos were made to show mass murders. They told their kids it was all fake. What a joke. Those aholes, along with thr Russian aholes, murdered tens of millions of people all in the name of Marxism, fascism and whatever kind of ism you can think of.. When war broke out, their number one priority was feeding their soldiers and conveniently slaughtering jews and other non-Germans. The amount of guilt the German people have for thos atrocities is unbeleivable. I have personally stood in those concentration camps. The German people do not want to discuss anything Nazi.
They have had exibits trying to show the history and truth to the German people and when they open the exhibits, they need ript police to keep tensions down.
No holocaust my ass. It happened. Period.
There is no real debt. Only fiat currency loaned out. The bankers print money from nothing, loan it out and expect full repayment and interest. Nice little gig they have there.
As for the holocaust deniers, most of them are descendants of former Nazi war criminals who passed down lies to their children and grandchildren about their involvement in the war. They make claims like bodies were dragged from bombed buildings into the prison camps and propaganda photos were made to show mass murders. They told their kids it was all fake. What a joke. Those aholes, along with thr Russian aholes, murdered tens of millions of people all in the name of Marxism, fascism and whatever kind of ism you can think of.. When war broke out, their number one priority was feeding their soldiers and conveniently slaughtering jews and other non-Germans. The amount of guilt the German people have for thos atrocities is unbeleivable. I have personally stood in those concentration camps. The German people do not want to discuss anything Nazi.
They have had exibits trying to show the history and truth to the German people and when they open the exhibits, they need ript police to keep tensions down.
No holocaust my ass. It happened. Period.
This smells like propaganda to me. At the very least, that part about Germans being antisemitic, it's laughably incorrect.
All German school children are extensively taught the history of Nazism, all symbolism linked to Nazism is banned and there are heavy financial and legal penalties for being neo-Nazi.
Now, if you want a more fun topic, look into the Baader-Meinhof revolutionary groups and the whys to their existence: a large chunk of it was due to the blanket silence post de-Nazification and a cultural shift against this in the 60's. Try Baby, it's cold outside to get a picture of this.
Now, if you're really kinky, you might want to look into neo-Nazi groups in Germany and their extensive links to the German intelligence agencies, and just how far down the rabbit hole goes.
For years, Michael von Dolsperg provided German intelligence with information from the neo-Nazi scene. But when the NSU terror trio came to light, his file was shredded. Why? Could details he provided have prevented the murder spree?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/former-neo-nazi-informant-sh...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/national_socialist_underground...
If you're outright insane, you'll probably want to look into just how much the US intelligence service knew about such goings on, and were actively encouraging them. Allegedly. But expect being put on the naughty list.
Thank goodness we have a European Union.
Without it, we'd all be killing eachother.
Be greatfull you're a slave.
That will teach those nazi's to fuck with Mr. Panos, malaka.
Figures this article would bring out the holocaust deniers. Downvote away you misanthropes.
This is Germany's chance to get out from under the sticky issue they have been stonewalling Greece over for decades, with appalling behavior to boot. But of course nobody sees that.
Just some junk angry rants about 'I don't owe for my fathers' crap. Had they succeeded though? You'd be celebrating your father's victories, and enjoying the spoils and gains from them, while spitting on anyone that wasn't "Aryan blood".
Nevertheless, I do see the other side's point, and recognize there is a certain sense of injustice that spurs that line of thinking. Which is why the best remedy to all of this is a debt jubilee for all sides, and finally bury the hatchet.
Pastel androgyny as the "leader" of Deutschland. THAT is what Germany should be ashamed of.
And I would have bombed Brussels back to the, ah yes, "stone age", to quote (ironically perhaps) those Neanderthal Americans. And speaking of the Americans, I am astounded they haven't been invited to unoccupy Deutschland.
I don't think that today's German taxpayer is liable for something done by people now dead. It makes no sense. How many generations of innocent Germans are responsible for the deeds of the dead nazis? Does this go on forever?
What's the statue of limitations on reparations?
10 years? 100 years? 1,000 years? No limit?
If there is no limit, then there are hundreds or thousands more scores to settle.
Nonsense
There's no such thing as collective guilt.
The vast majority of Germans living today did not perpetrate these crimes and the vast majority of Greeks living today were not the victims of these crimes; hence the vast majority of Germans do not owe a debt, and the vast majority of Greeks are not owed a debt. If you want to make the handful of geriatric NAZIs pay reparations to the handful of geriatric Greeks who were alive in 1945, fine, but that's it. Same with the slavery nonsense in the United States. All slaves and slaveholders are long dead. Reparations now would be from innocent "criminals" to undeserving "victims," a terrible crime in itself.
Moreover, the Greek demands have nothing to do with some burning sense of high-minded justice. They just want to extort money from their neighbors to keep the tottering free shit machine running. Fuck 'em.
If Germany caves into these demands I'll be horrified. They might as well just commit mass ritual suicide and get it over with, rather than letting their neighbors perpetually rape them in the name of past crimes they were not even alive to commit. Grow some balls Germans. Or, if you want to get cute, ask the French for reparation for Napoleon's invasion, or the Swedes for their part in the 30 years war, etc. See how they like that.