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Greece and Germany hardly compete with each other...after the gradual de-industrialization of Greece and the changes to agriculture imposed by EU directives. My sentiments exactly.
>EU Agricultural subsidies are premarily a gift to France which benefits most from them.
Sure. It's not just Germany that's a big fish in the Euro-centre pursuing its interests over the smaller fish.
>Russia sanctions are primarily driven by the US. Germany does brisk business with Russia and tried for a while to avoid sanctions.
In the EU, we see Germany pushing for them constantly.
>More imporantly Russia, via the Russian armed Ukrainian rebels is invading Ukraine, leading, among other things, to shooting down Malaysian airplanes. You are saying we should ignore this, and let Russia simply have its way?
I'm saying, the legitimate government of Ukraine was toppled to be replaced with some pro-West-interests friendly lackeys (and neo-nazis at that), and Russia did what it had to protect an area by its borders with 60% citizens of Russian descent -- which was in no way an "invasion". As for the "shooting down of Malaysian airplanes" that Russia had anything to do with the matter was a fairy-tale even worse than the BS pretexts of Bush and Blair during the Iraq war.
As a thought experiment, what would the US do if a part of Mexico was inhabited by 60% citizens of US ethnicity, and the legitimate government of Mecico was toppled and replaced with a, say, pro-Chinese government, with known racial hatred for that American ethnic minority among them?
Countries like Germany or the US, that ACTUALLY invaded places 10.000 miles away that had nothing to do with them and occupied them, mostly for oil and control of the area, are in a very bad place to talk about Russia and Crimea.
>Re 1) Substantially more Germans died in the last century in wars than Greeks
So? It wasn't Greeks that killed them. Plus, those Germans went looking for it, and exterminating millions of people in the process. More Germans died than Jews too, but I wouldn't make a big deal out of it.
>Re 2) The allies bombed German cities. As far as I'm aware Greece was part of the Allies.
Not the part that bombed German cities, as it hardly had an air force. Greece, utterly destroyed after the German Occupation, didn't even send any real army to Germany along with the rest of the allies.
>Re 3) You mean like the "scortched earth policy" of the Greek army when they were forced out of Turkey?
Yeah, I mean like that, but from an invading army that didn't have any place being in Greece at all (whereas Greece had around 1.5 million Greek population living under Turkish occupation in Asia Minor that it tried to liberate. An area, furthermore, inhabited by Greeks since ancient times, that was, like mainland Greece and most of the Balkans, under occupation by the expanding Ottoman Empire for a few centuries).
But even if it wasn't so, your example would just mean that the Greeks also owe to Turks, not that Germans don't owe to the Greeks for what they've done.
>As to infrastructure, Germany's was way more destroyed.
Yeah, when you declare nazi expansion war on the World, these things happen. Cry me a river.
>They rebuilt it in a decade or so.
Mostly thanks to being the new darlings of the West, in a cold war ploy against USSR/East Germany Europe. Not exactly "left to their own devices" and with hard work, as the myth says.
>Infrastructure needs continually to be modernised anyway, as infrastructure is subject to wear and tear.
A, so the occupying nazi forces actually did Greece a favor, destroying it's infrastructure so it could modernize it!
>Re 4 and 5) The war reparation have been covered by various treaties over the decades (which were designed by the allies), and long been settled.
Actually not settled at all, and with Greek goverments of the time (cold war puppets) forced to consign to BS deals unlike most of the other countries.
>Speaking of war reparations, when will pay Greece reparations for example to Turkey for the Greco-Turkish war that Greece started in 1919?
Greece went under financial supervision as a result of exactly that. But you seem to forget that Turkey started an ethnic cleansing campaign years before that, and that the Ottoman Empire had kept Greeks (and lots of others besides) under occupation for several centuries.
>A more interesting question is: why do so many Greeks leave the motherland and go to the US, the UK, Germany, Australia?
Because Greece, not a rich country to begin with, was left destitute by the nazis at the end of the war, never got the recuperations it should, and then, in the Cold war the followed, due to its lots of communist sympathizers, it was kept under close guard, including foreign powers organizing a full blown civil war, and helping establish friendly lackeys in place down to a full blow dictatorship in 1967. That's what happens to official or unofficial colonies and neo-colonies when the big players have their way.
>Re 7) I'm not sure what you are referring to here. Greece and Germany hardly compete with each other. The weakening of the Euro benefits German and Greek exporters. But not that Germany has been trying to avoid this weakening.
Germany with its already high exports had tried to deny any policy to weaken the Euro for ages, hurting EU countries with less fortunate import/export ratios.
>I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.
I mean that German companies, like Siemens, bribed Greek politicians / lackeys for decades to win huge public tenders, and when found the German government protected them, and even gave asylum to Greek representatives of the companies.