Comments by mikeinwarsaw

The non-eurozone members of the EU, but especially the ex-communist ones all suffer from the spendthrift policies of the Mediterranean zone EU member states, despite the fact that their own economies are doing well, have little interconnection with the spendthrifts and necessary structural reforms have been forced through over the past 20 years. But then they don't have the direct backing of the ECB and their government borrowings are at much higher interest levels. Provided the exchange rates to the Euro stay stable and given that the main trading partner is Germany, then any drop in value of the Euro (specially against the US Dollar) actually improves their trading position as it makes their exports to non-Eurozone countries more competitive.

Just how long will it be before President custard has to go on a strict diet?

A more appropriate choice would be Jaroslaw Kaczynski! I cannoot see Stan Poniatowski as Putin's lover!

I agree with your arguments and presented facts except that V. Putin and the Russian Establishment for hundreds of past years have claimed Kievian Rus as their own! The 18th century definition of "Russia" was "The Principality of Moscow and Kievian Rus' (the Ukraine)". In that respect nothing has changed.

Same old France: lovely country, wonderful food and wine, striking public sector employees, street demos in Paris (the rest of the country doesn't count!), establishment politicians (caviar and pink champagne "socialists).
"Plus ca change , plus c'est la meme chose" : Le Roi Francois III.

Is Putin Tsar Vladimir V or VI or both? Will he, like his namesakes, die in post? He follows on from Vlad IV (Lenin) and the early Kievian Rus rulers Vlad I, II, III.

What if DSK had run instead of Hollande, as was originally planned? Would Sarkozy have won against the exposed DSK? I wonder!

Re Sarkozy is it "adieu" or "au revoir"? After all, that other immigrant leader of France also attempted a comeback (until he met his Waterloo)!

Death is death, whether it be by "natural causes", murder or execution. In all cases not a single Russian Tsar abdicated or voluntarily left his/her throne early. The point is that its only Putin's "passing away" in the next 12 years which will make discussion of any successor interesting. Otherwise we all have to wait at least to 2024 and quite likely to 2030!

How long will Vlad stay in power? Another 12 years? What, afterall, are his alternatives, if any? To retire and move to Londongrad or one of Berlusconi's residences? I can envisage him remaining in power for the next 18 years ( with an interim 6 as Prime Minister again). He will have to "die in office", like all Russian Tsars.

If Yanukovich can't tolerate Tymoshenko in the Ukraine, he can always give her a one-way passport to the UK, Russia or wherever else she stashed her ill-gotten gains as an oligarch in the gas-petroleum transit industry.....
Frankly, the hypocrisy spouted by Europe's politicians is incredible. They suck up to Putin and his ilk, as well as to the Chinese leadership. Clearly economic muscle makes the latter acceptable while Yanukovich, an ex-con with zero economic clout can be leaned on...

All power corrupts. Its just that someone has to govern. The choice is between the lesser of two evils?
Hollande as an ex-ENArch and SciPo graduate is a member of the French admiistrative elite. So his policies will most likely be trimmed to the realities of the 21st century, as he will be collaborating with the professional civil servants who, in France, all have the same training/academic background. Very similar to the Prussian General Staff of the 19th and early 20th century!

I don't understand your comment as its written in poor English. Please elucidate.

Yanukovich was democratically elected. The elections in the Ukraine were less "fixed" than the recent ones in Russia. Putin is never ever boycotted and has a disgraceful track record re his political opponents be they individuals such as Chodorovsky or the Chechen people. But western political leaders are only too happy to be seen meeting him. Will the Sochi Winter Olympiad be boycotted? Of course not! Economic and political power is everything. The blatant hypocrisy of western leaders ref the Ukraine is appalling...

The hypocrisy of democratic politicians (maybe with the sole exception of President Glauke) is unbelievable: they are all only too happy to consort with the current political leadership of China and Russia and to participate in the Chinese Olympiad and various sporting events in Russia (or previously in the Soviet Union). As the Ukraine does not carry any political or economic weight, its an easy soft target unlike China or Russia......

As to Yanukovich, he's a typical Ukrainian politician in the hands of the local oligarchs. Tymoshenko herself was/is one! The problem will be when he wants to publically shake hands with his European counterparts but then they are only too happy to cuddle up to Putin who is much, much worse! WIll they boycott the Sochi Winter Olympiad? O course not!!!!

Please do not confuse cause with effect:
1. Germany declared war in 1914 as the Central Power. It lost and the effect was loss of territories and a reduction in army size as well as financial reparations (which hyperinflation reduced).
2. In 1932 the German voters democratically voted Hitler and the Nazi party into power. Choosing a band of criminals to run the country meant democratically choosing a criminal government.
3. Hitler was enthusiastically supported by the mass of German voter right through the recovery of the Rhineland, the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, the occupation and carve-up of Czechoslovakia in 1938-9 and on through the attack on Poland in September 1939 and the European conquests of 1940-1941.
4. Support for Hitler and his party only started to decline when he started losing!
5. The effect of Germany starting World War II in 1939 was that when it lost, its territory was reduced (as compensation for war damages and losses) and various German communities were expelled by force from central-eastern Europe on Great Power orders as a direct result of the Potsdam Conference of 1945, where all the key decisions about post-war Europe were made by Stalin, Truman and Churchill. That German civilians suffered in 1945 expulsion from their homes (on Soviet, USA and GB orders) is a direct effect of German aggression from 1939 onwards.
Cause and effect. Please do not confuse them. Germany sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.....

Where Murdoch has led, others have followed. Whilst the profit motive/increased sales is an obvious business objective, the media in all countries have a particular responsibility to be responsible in what they publish. My point is that Murdoch, ever since entering the UK media market as a media baron, has been particularly irresponsible in his various publications, and his own workforce has clearly followed his leadership example. That he has thereby increased sales and profits in no way excuses his methodology. And his competitors have mostly followed in his footsteps. The man is looking for convenient scapegoats within his businesses when fundamentally he himself is to blame.

It was Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill who did the carving (at Potsdam) and ordered the population transfers (expulsion of all Germans) across central-eastern Europe. The Poles got those lands as compensation for German aggression and its nightmare consequences of over 6 million Polish war dead (half of them Christian, half of them Jewish), the destruction of its cities and the loss of Poland's eastern territories (which Stalin had taken as a result of his alliance treaty with Hitler in August 1939).

Dismembering the German Reigh was a striclt Great Powers decision. There was even considered the splitting off of Bavaria and Baden Wurttenburg from the Prussian rump, to revert Germany to its pre-1871 status.

From August 1939 to June 1941 the USSR led by Stalin was Hitler's most loyal and effective ally. They split up eastern Europe between them and only Hitler's decision to attack his best ally upset the cosy relationship. Poland, together with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania were the unfortunate victims of the Hitler/Stalin alliance (initiated by Stalin!)
Would Hitler have attacked Poland on the 1st September 1939? Unlikely with Soviet support as the latter guaranteed him a deal in the East thereby removing the risk of a war on two fronts, the latter being completely against German war doctrine.

Exactly to whom are they to refer to as their political ancestors: the communists of 1944-1989? 123 of Russian/Prussian/Austrian occupation and the post 1944 communist rule clearly limits the options to 1918-1939, and even there the choice is very limited, given the extreme political views of the interwar Polish political spectrum...