News / Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 23 [136]

It is really incredible that some people still bring up that long-debunked "BJ talked Ukraine out of a deal in Istanbul".

As if the Ukrainians needed someone else to point out that e.g. reducing the Ukrainian army to 90k soldiers was completely unacceptable... .

News / The Iran war and Poland [807]

You need help.

News / The Iran war and Poland [807]


And if their prefered candidate doesn't win, they'll just falsify the elections like they did in 2009.

And that is for the presidential office, which has very little actual power.

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [455]


This kind of rhetoric is really the problem.


Can't wait to see which party they would support.


* Looks at the president-elect, a self-confessed former hooligan.

News / Polish PM Tusk- dictator or not? What Poles think? [455]

The political discourse in Poland has really been poisened by PiS in the last 10 years... .

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [864]

Austria has very liberal gun laws by European standards. Will be interesting see how they react to this tragedy.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]


He wouldn't, because he has followed Macron's initiatives so far, in the full knowledge of the limits that he can do himself.

I get it, you don't like Macron, but look at it objectively. He is now the longest serving leader of a mayor European country, in charge of the most powerful European army, and he has made the European deterrence against Russia his priority, to the extent that there are now talks about a French nuclear umbrella for the rest of Europe. He is currently setting the agenda for Europe.

More: https://polishforums.com/news/poland-karol-nawrocki-new-president-88922/

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]

All jokes and domestic issues aside, Macron is currently leading the European effort to deal with Putin and Trump. Closer cooperation with Poland would have been an important part of this plan.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]

Shame. Poland had the chance to elect a president who would have allowed Tusk to undo the damage PiS has done to the country. Now he goes into rest of his term greatly weakened, and this will also affect Poland' a role im Europe. Just when one hoped that Poland could finally wield the influence it deserved.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]

Maybe you should create a dedicated thread for discussions about Israel/Palestine?

Polonia / Elon Musk tells Germans to "move on"! [247]


Governments who actually take the threat of climate change seriously?

Musk has helped brought a government into power that is now hell-bent on undoing the progress the previous government has achieved on this front.

In Europe he is giving voice to parties that embrace climate change denial.

He is creating more problems to those who try fighting climate change than he contributes to its' resolution

Polonia / Elon Musk tells Germans to "move on"! [247]


From the provided article

Germany is not alone. According to the latest EU monitoring, published last week, the outlook remains positive in Europe for most crops. But drought concerns stretch across Central and Eastern Europe breadbaskets.

In Poland, where 13% of EU cereals were harvested in 2024, experts see "cause for a degree of concern." The country has seen significantly reduced precipitation and warmer-than-average temperatures this spring, leaving riverbeds and soils visibly parched.

Polonia / Elon Musk tells Germans to "move on"! [247]

It is even happening on our side of the sea.

Farmer vs. sand: Spain's fight against desertification

If climate change models are correct, much of the country's fertile land could transform into desert.

politico.eu/article/farmer-sand-spain-fight-against-desertification-soil-degradation/

Parts of Spain, Southern France and Italy. All regions that produce a lot of food, all threatened by Climate change.

We have had an unusual warm amd dry May this year in Central Europe (following several unusual dry years in this decade).

Drought fears for grains growing season mount in Central Europe

euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/drought-fears-for-grains-growing-season-mount-in-central-europe/

We are fortunate to live in a region which is likely to stay somewhat stable for people to survive there. But one can imagine that if Central Europe is becoming increasingly dry, how bad things will be in Africa and thr ME... .

Polonia / Elon Musk tells Germans to "move on"! [247]


Yep.

India and Pakistan's Water Wars Are Just Beginning

bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-05-27/india-and-pakistan-shift-from-kashmir-to-water-wars


Which region are you talking about? When we talk about a region becoming inhospitable, we are not talking about there possibly being more crimes, rising rents and strains on the infrastructure. We are talking about people having to leave because there is not enough water and food there to survive.

Polonia / Elon Musk tells Germans to "move on"! [247]


I'd rather see it goes on with us.

There is no way to stop man made climate at this point. All we can do is to midigate the consequences by keeping it at a manageable level. Which is still going to take a lot of effort.

Something to keep in mind. The refugee situation right now will look downright trivial if large parts of the Middle East and Africa end up inhospitable due to climate change.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


The radicals in the AfD purged every moderate who tried to reign them in. Afterwards they purged those less-radicals in leadership position who wanted to keep them somewhat respecteable. Frauke Petry and Meuthen fell victim to the plots of their fellow party members, not from some outsiders. Petry tried to exclude of Höcke from the party, and ended up forced out herself. The AfD didn't start promoting those extreme positions because they were "mocked" or "ridiculed" but because they elected officials who shared them. That is their responsibility.

News / European News and Poland Thread - part 4 [528]


Typical mob "justice". And sadly all too human. Getting those dark urges under controle is one achievement of modern states, and not one we should surrender easily.

I recently read a fascinating book called "The man from the train" that puts the theory forward that a serial killer was responsible for many gruesome axe murders in the USA in the early 20th century. The local response to those murders (and the failure of officials to identify the culprit) led to various mob lynching, with the victims often being from minorities.

It is a good thing that those days are behind us and the UK (and other countries) are well-advised to discourage any behaviour that could lead to them resurfacing,

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


Just to clarify. Adenauer opposed Hitler, was persecuted and imprisoned by the Nazis, rebuilt democracy in West Germany and pushed for the repayment of reparations towards Israel. Calling him a fascist or Nazi was and is patently absurd. The GDR was a state built on opression, full of hypocrisy and contradictions and it encouraged lies about its' opponents.

That is not comparable to what is happening here. Do you think the people working the KZ Sachensenhausen memorial are all crazy leftists who used lies to justify their position towards Höcke?


Do you advocate that we should put the "performance" of the Wehrmacht in the spotlight of our remembrance instead of the various crimes they commited? Should we, as a consequence, put e.g. emphasis in the future on how swiftly the Wehrmacht overran France and how well executed several encirclement campaigns in the Soviet Union have been? I can understand the desire to feel proud about one's history. There are in fact many things in our history one can feel proud about. But nothing about waging a war that killed millions and millions of innocent is something to be proud about.


There are certainly some people who drive it too far. It is not so lang ago that Wolfgang Schäuble was called a Nazi for his positions in the Euro debt crisis.

But this isn't the case with the AfD. When the New York Times writes that AfD is echoing Nazi messages, then that is not a political statement, but simply a description of reality. There are plenty of examples from the AfD to support this view. Höcke has been convicted for deliberately using the slogan of the SA. How do you call that?

And this is my final, most important point: Nobody is forcing the AfD to go into this direction. There was an alternative for the "Alternative". They could have followed the examples of Le Pen and Meloni: Advocating conservative values and very strict anti-migration measures, while throwing out the really crazy people (like e.g. Le Pens' own father). Instead they went the opposite route and purged those politicians who tried to reign them in. To the degree that "Melonisierung" is now a derogative term in the AfD for a process that needs to be avoided at all costs. That was not inevitable, but a conscious decision of those within the AfD.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


Do you think it is the same when the GDR propaganda called Adenauer a fascist and when the KZ Buchenwald bans Höcke due to his positions?


Which has nothing to do with what he did. Nobody is blamed for being interested in the history for his family.

His father was part of an illegal invasion whose regiment was directly involved in numerous war crimes. Many years ago I was in Crete and visited a museum which described what the Wehrmacht did there. That suffering the Germans inflicted there is the reason why we don't put the spotlight on the "performance" of the paratroopers there as he demands.

Do you really not understand why this is wrong?


Of course not. Or are they praising the combat performance of (literal) Nazis while downplaying or failing to mention the crimes of Nazis?

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


Of course, the main difference here is that those warnings had no base in reality.

Whereas pointing out what the AfD is all about is simply judging them by their actions and rhetoric.

Have you heard what AfD politician Rüdiger Lucassen has recently written about German paratroopers who conquered Crete, mentioning how his father and others won against a "superior" enemy. What he fails to mention of course is that the regiment his father served him was involved in several war crimes, including the murder of civilians.

That is not "normal". And hopefully will never be considered as such.

derwesten.de/politik/afd-kreta-lucassen-id301589832.html

And as long as people as that are prominent members of the AfD, any warning about them is justified.

Nobody is forcing them to push those revisionist agendas.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]

From the same article:

The Alternative for Germany, a far-right political party, is among the world's most extreme major parties. It echoes Nazi messaging. It has ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and it traffics in anti-Muslim and antisemitic language. The party - known as the AfD, an abbreviation of Alternative für Deutschland - is so extreme that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far right, broke with it.

News / Presidential elections 2025 - the race has commenced!!! [665]

Trzaskowski has been the mayor of Warsaw for many years. I doubt he needed much introduction.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


You can tell the truth but still distort the picture of what really happened by leaving out important parts of it.

Like: "The SU invaded Poland weeks after the Germans attacked and the parts they occupied were spared from the Holocaust until 1941."

Which is true, but leaves out a couple of things which I suspect many would find important to mention.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


You left out the part in which he insulted the Holocaust memorial and wanted to move away from teaching children about this and other crimes commited by Germany.

If you don't learn from history you are doomed to repeat it. Putin has undercut remembrance of Russian and Soviet crimes and tragedies, and instead implemented education that glorifies Stalin and the SU. That kind of mentality led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with 950k+ Russian dead or wounded and country that has been robbed of its' future.

I'd rather not see the same happening to my country.

@Torq

Do you have anything to say about Kant?

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


You assume they view Russia as a threat. Many inside the party believe that Russia should be a strategic ally and partner, that supporting Ukraine is wrong and that the Eastern Europeans are at best misguided in their warnings against Russia.

In February, German parliamentarian Steffen Kotre, from the far-right party AfD (Alternative for Germany), was interviewed on Russian TV by the propagandist Vladimir Soloyvov. Kotre accused Western media of stirring up their populations against the Russian regime.

aspistrategist.org.au/how-germanys-far-right-politicians-became-the-kremlins-voice/

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


It wouldn't surprise me if many inside this AfD follow this outdated theory.

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


I am sure they believe it. I am not aware that Höcke disputes that 6 millions jews have been murdered either. He just doesn't want any attention on that (and probably other crimes).

Some of them would probably argue that the Third Reich was just a small part of German history that receives undue attention

Alexander Gauland, the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has described the Nazi era as a brief stain in Germany's otherwise grand history.

google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/afds-gauland-plays-down-nazi-era-as-a-bird-****-in-german-history/a-44055213

So why would they agree with another monument that puts the spotlight on another crime?

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


But not democratic.


I mean yeah, what is the worst thing that could happen?

"In two months time we will have squeezed Hitler into a corner until he squeaks"

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


Well not quite but still.

Krzysztof Walczak, he is an AfD politician in Hamburg

de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krzysztof_Walczak_(Politiker)

News / Will PiS be happy if AfD wins elections in Germany? [1301]


A party can try to win power through democratic means while planning to abolish the democratic order afterwards. Our concept of a wehrhafte Demokratie was born out of the need to deal with that kind of forces.


It is not the government that'll have the final say, but the courts. That is the difference between the GDR and FRG (that and others of course).


Not yet but one is planned. Of course, those plans will never materialize if the AfD had anything to say... .