Love / Polish Girlfriend gone missing [154]

What an effing story, sends shivers down my spine as I think about all these plans I've been making with my girlfriend, who's been really great to me but... shit happens as they say.

History / German POWs after WW2 - did the allies commit mass murder? [228]

I don't get how your personal experience as an american prisoner of war discredits the possible war crimes committed by the allies themselves in post-war germany...


That's the problem I' asking about. I wouldn't gamble my money on the truth of these accusations, but while real criminals were living their own destinies, average germans soldiers that became prisoners of war might have suffered inhumane cruelties under the allies' watch while average german civilians died off from starvation policies pursued by Eisenhower for example.

Then there are other crimes that might not have been official policy but are frightening to think about nevertheless. Such as the mass rape of german women by the soviets and the allies.

History / German POWs after WW2 - did the allies commit mass murder? [228]


Germans have already done that. And if the allies committed acts of genocide, we certainly should never forget!!


Well no it isn't normal, here in civilized society we imprison murderers.

when it comes to war, the nazi leadership was held accountable, but the treatment of prisoners should never compare with the treatment of the leadership, the soldiers were simply following orders.

Any way no matter what anyone says if, after overtaking the axis powers we committed the same moral crimes then we were little better and only deserved to win as a matter of survival. We'll all have a chance to explain ourselves with Hitler, Stalin et al in hell.

History / German POWs after WW2 - did the allies commit mass murder? [228]

damn this blew up. I always thought that what distinguished the Allies from the Axis powers, (in myth at least) was that the allies were humane, the axis powers, evil (hitler in particular.)

The Geneva conventions of back then required better treatment than deliberate starvation of the German population, the enslavement of all POWs, mass expulsions of ethnic germans, etc..

But my real question is how true is all this in actuality? It's a debate that's going on, it's hard to make out which side is right over the internet, the whistleblowers, or those whose heroic image of morally upstanding allied powers threatens to be shattered?

THanks Bratwurst, you seem to have known about this stuff. But I think the 2 million dead figure is the worst possible estimate. We can't know for sure what happened to whom because a huge library of files were destroyed (in France I think.)

News / March of Tolerance in Krakow [478]

wow who gives a crap who people sleep with. I lived in the second largest gay neighborhood in america, chelsea, and nothing happened to me, I'm fine, I have a girlfriend. Those people in chelsea were pretty successful for the most part, very interesting and intelligent - whats wrong with that?

two men can be friends, like brothers, but if a couple decide to go further and become intimate, they suddenly deserve hate and death? you can desire a woman and be admired, but if you suddenly admire a man... - hate and/or death?

except for people who kidnap, murder, defraud their neighbors, or cause great harm to their surroundings, no 'group' is deserving of hate. Except rich people perhaps since they're ripping everyone off all the time.

Life / 90 days soon expire - where can I go? [33]

Hey BLS, how did you pull this off exactly? is it because you applied for a residency permit? I came to Poland a while ago and have already overstayed my welcome, I'm freakin out thinking about what'll happen when I go back to NYC next spring, (will they beat me senseless at border conrtol..) but before my 90 days were up I had been told that there was nothing to do to extend my stay, I had to go back to NY, get a work visa there, and then return.

News / Poles Ranks First in Computer Coding [47]

Polish programmers are well known, it's almost a stereotype, but the reputation is a double-edged sword. I remember hearing on XBOX live for example, that the service wasn't extended to Poland for security reasons, I doubt that, but that's what these guys were talking about.

I was playing Yahoo! pool once, this guy asked me "asl" I said poland, and he said - ah you guys cheat with your hacks and all that. I kicked his ass at the game pretty bad and he got pissed, called me a cheater for being polish (i'm not polish) and booted me!

News / Should rape carry a life sentence in Poland? [146]


BECAUSE CARS ARE VERY USEFUL METHODS OF TRANSPORTATION!

The death penalty is not useful in anyway.


that's why we try and imprison them when they do, there's a benefit in imprisonment, (though we could argue about how effective the system is,)

but why do we need to kill someone for their crime?

A government can't get caught up in killing its own citizens, no matter what they'e done, and it certainly can't risk killing an innocent civilian it is supposed to protect.

Your analogy with the pianos and the cars is just wrong-headed. Killing timothy McVeigh served no purpose, but you could argue that driving to work served a purpose even if you ended killing someone by accident, you could argue that moving a piano served a purpose, even if that, too, killed someone by accident.

But driving drunk serves no purpose, so we outlaw it because it can lead to accidents, the death penalty serves no purpose,Killing Timothy McVeigh had no purpose, no positive result. So executions should be outlawed too because there could be accidents.

News / Should rape carry a life sentence in Poland? [146]


??? you think that's an appropriate analogy? One is an accident the other is deliberate. I feel silly arguing this with you but okay, pianos MUST be handled in certain ways, and when accidents happen leading to a person's death, than it's termed a freak accident, it doesn't change the fact that these pianos must be handled this way, and a person's death in this case is avoidable.

No person MUST suffer the death penalty, there's no logic leading to that conclusion because the criminal's death serves no direct and useful purpose, so the risk of executing an innocent person is unnecessary.

footnote: Amazingly, after googling "falling piano" I came up with this story, 12 deaths by falling pianos within a year...maybe pianos should be banned, people should go digital like me;)

democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x6382584

News / CNN Special On Poland [16]

They speak good Polish from what I hear though!

News / Should rape carry a life sentence in Poland? [146]


?? I don't get it. The fact that someone may be wrongly executed is already a strong argument against the death penalty. Besides that, the death penalty seems useless, it doesn't seem to be very effective as a deterrent, and it just adds to the body count.

News / US DOLLAR = 2.47 on 2 Oct 2008? [54]

this is a tragedy, I came here after being told that I'd be a king with my mighty dollar, but I came just as the exchange rates were super low, so I missed out on all that. But then I figured, oh well, I'll make some good złoty while I'm here and barely lose anything on my return to New York I'm leaving next spring/summer, and look at what's starting to happen, it better change - and it better be the Great Depression when I get back there Gahdammyt!

News / Should rape carry a life sentence in Poland? [146]

perhaps I don't get it, i'm used to measuring things. In my family it is customary to physically punish the children when they've done something wrong. So when my mother spanked me or sometimes smacked me in the face I would cry and get over it, and go back to my little drawings, but as time went by and her life got worse, she started getting abusive, and I became shocked at the violence of her punishments which were no longer mere spankings, I ended up running away from home for good at 16, and to an extent, those more severe punishments are etched in my memory mostly for their cruelty. Sometimes my cousins reproach me for this "you shouldn't have abandoned your mother, our parents hit us too, we don't run from them" but my mother would box me in the mouth! Surely that's worse than a slap on the arm!

There's a quote by Noam Chomsky I like, where, in reference to the vietnam war he says: "By entering into the arena of argument and counter-argument....by accepting the presumption of legitimacy of debate on certain issues, one has already lost one's humanity".

That's how I feel about where this 'debate' is going, and in this sense, I'm on the losing side of the argument. So even though I still believe rape should not be punished as badly as murder or some cases of aggravated assault, I don't really want to argue about it anymore because I feel like this whole argument is degrading the odium of rape. Sorry for offending you Daisy, didn't mean it.

News / Should rape carry a life sentence in Poland? [146]


well I've been in a few fights, and I qualify some as better and others as worse. I've been attacked once where some guy came, wrestled me and clocked me in the face and that was that. that's much better than this other time when I was ganged up on by a bunch of kids on a school bus, I was in much more pain, and it 'traumatized' me much more. I'm not hip to how the law works, but I believe the first case is assault, and the second, was an aggravated assault, one is far worse than the other. I think something similar should apply to rape. What were are the injuries? Some victims are severely beaten and require long stays in the hospital afterwards, while some fair off 'better' and are mostly left with an awful memory.


Not the men in Chelsea (the homosexual neighborhood I lived in for a while.)

News / Should rape carry a life sentence in Poland? [146]


I can't say what the psychological damage of being raped is, maybe it's much worse than I believe, but I remember a few girls who claimed they were raped and talked about how their life was ruined forever, and perhaps this is true, but then I've come across some men who've been raped by other men, and they're attitude was obviously not happy, but still completely different. They were talking about it the same way they would talk about a mugging or something. I wonder if it's because female rape is so often dramatized in debates and on tv etc, whereas male on male rape is far less discussed. Than again, the stoic way these guys had of dealing with what happened to them might have been specific to them, and I just happened to meet those particular characters...

News / Should rape carry a life sentence in Poland? [146]

Yeah he suffered brain damage as a result of being beaten not raped. anyways, I never said that rape is okay, it's obviously very bad, even horrible, but not even closely comparable to murder in my opinion, and still not as bad as being severely beaten. But it is true that rape victims are often beaten, which is more unfortunate than a simple rape.

I lived in a gay neighborhood for a while where stories of rape circulated all around me, I once ran from a pack of gay men who were drunk or high and luckily escaped, when I did some modeling, I saw all these little boys getting coaxed into sexual adventures with men, and sometimes, they were raped outright - one of the reasons I quit that business. I don't wish it upon anyone, but it's often made out to be as bad as murder, which is completely off in my opinion.


Yeah ok it looks bad now that I read it again, I'm used to being a tad offbeat but I don't want to belittle the crime that is rape. My point was that there are some things in society that must be treated much worse than they actually are, in order to discourage their occurence on a large scale. And I say this because I think murder is far worse than rape.

News / CNN Special On Poland [16]

My friend saw this program from Tokyo and was telling me about it this morning, up until seeing it he thought of Poland as some bombed out communist nation.

News / Should rape carry a life sentence in Poland? [146]

I have this controversial opinion which I submit freely, but I think that rape is one of those things that are not good of course, but not as horrible as society makes it out to be. However I understand why it needs to be frowned upon so vigorously, because if it weren't then ******** and drunkards would be more prone to do it. Rape is forcing someone to do something they often do, but rather not do with you, so I don't think it warrants a penalty anywhere close to murder for example, since the vast majority of the public does not want to die no matter what the circumstance.

I say the same thing about hygiene. It's not that bad to take a **** and not wash your hands, but for the sake of general hygiene, it's good to frown upon those who don't and discourage that kind of care-free attitude on a large scale so as to preserve a general standard of hygiene.

Life / 90 days soon expire - where can I go? [33]


Hey BLS I'm in the same situation, except that I've overstayed my welcome by a year almost. There's apparently no way to escape the Shengen zone, which is basically Europe as a whole, so there's nowhere to go.

My 'solution' was to get a new passport, which I will do shortly before I plan on leaving. But that could misfire of course.

Love / I'm a turkish guy who thinks that polish girls are slutty [113]

Why have so many people replied to this guy, he was obviously going out of his way to be insulting. I didn't bother to read everything, but to add my two cents, this guy is probably comparing polish women to Turkish women, who will get beat to death - in court - if they flirt with other men. This guy must not have traveled much, compared to New York, or Paris, or Geneva, I'd say the exact opposite, that Polish women are very conservative, non-flirtatious, etc, maybe I'm just not their type, but then again, maybe, just maybe, these generalizations are pointless.

News / Why the American economy is not going to fail - take a lesson from Poland [48]

Anyone notice I changed my avatar, can anyone guess the symbolism behind it?

Life / Nasty polish guys in Bialystok [36]

the other day some Big hooligan walked down my block followed by two middle aged drunks, he walked my way with a menacing grill but then said "witam" I said "dzien kuje" and that was that,

News / Why the American economy is not going to fail - take a lesson from Poland [48]


What does everyone mean by fail?

News / Abkhazia and South Ossetia are independent states now! Poland reaction? [236]


Thanks Seanus, but really? New Yorkers aren't that patriotic, there are tons of anti-war anti-everything organizations. I was at the 2003 february 15th protest against the iraq war - up to 500'000 people in the streets!

I don't know what the general mood is concerning this Georgia thing, my friends say that it isn't really big news. I think it's very interesting in light of the western reaction. GeoLawyer is a perfect example, trying hard to make the Russians look like Stalin incarnate, while showing zero interest in the actions of Georgia - even though they may have committed serious crimes.

News / Abkhazia and South Ossetia are independent states now! Poland reaction? [236]

wow Bratwurst boy, did you read some of the other articles in SpiegelOnline? this is probably the best reporting on this Georgian conflict I've seen so far.

spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,574516,00.html

News / Abkhazia and South Ossetia are independent states now! Poland reaction? [236]


Oh that's nice thanks...!

If you're interested in possible arguments against Georgian actions then let me know and I'll reiterate them for you, if you're not, then let me know and we'll have hit the nail right on its head. I don't think you're open to the strengths of of anti-Georgian arguments. Perhaps you are Georgian and you feel that it is your duty to be biased in Georgia's favor. You haven't shown the slightest bit of interest in the negative affects of Georgia's actions. and I don't understand this statement you made:

"nobody except Russian bias Media could get into the city of Ckhinvali."

then how come most of the international press coverage is pro-georgian? how did you get those pics of Russian destruction? they're all over the press. So clearly, the Russians let many anti-Russian journalists in and out of the region..?

Love / Tricky situation, should I refuse or accept? Forced to be an English teacher in Poland. [23]


Well it's nice to offer and accomodate us anyway. I wouldn't come here expecting it. They could have said no, in which case we would have had to move to her parents house in Zamosc immediately.


Well It's not a matter of it being difficult to find work, it's a matter of offering your help and asking all your friends if they need english teachers and just helping at all in the first place, rather than not helping. It was a nice thing to do.


although it's (again) not a matter of doing something difficult but of doing something that was nice and useful, you are wrong here. She made time to go and visit the apartment and when she got there, there was a line of about 60 people waiting to see it, some with sleeping bags thinking they would have it that night and sleep there. Instead of seeing the big line and walking away, she skipped everyone, went to the man and offered a bunch of money in advance, and she got the apartment. that was nice. And we are greatful.

News / Abkhazia and South Ossetia are independent states now! Poland reaction? [236]


Am I sure that what was destroyed by "Georgian police forces"?

that's not what I said at all, I think you misunderstood me, so I'll apologize for not being clear.

What I said was that you only posted pics of the destruction caused by Russian forces. But let's remember that this conflict started on August 7th, when Georgian forces preemptively attacked S.Ossetia while the Olympics were getting under way in China. So my question to you was, and still is: Could you please post pictures of the destruction caused by Georgian forces, (the ones that invaded and started this whole mess?) And my second question is why wouldn't you post them in the first place, instead of only posting the damage caused by Russia?

Imagine if I only posted pictures of the destruction caused by US forces in Iraq, without posting images of the damage wrought by Iraqi insurgents. that would paint an incomplete picture wouldn't you agree?

Again I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. But I'm interested in your answer.


There were ongoing skirmishes but the real war started the morning of August 7th, when Georgia decided that it was time to re-take South Ossetia - an absolutely mad, insane, and criminal move by any standard - Even Hitler would have been justified in responding to such a move with force were he the ruler of Russia - anyone would have, so the actual Russian response was predictable and the only rational one. Of course, we can lament the subsequent damage caused by the fighting, but while Russia should be held accountable for this, those who gave the orders from Georgia are particularly responsible for bringing this conflict into the heart of the civilian population.