News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Freedom. The French should take his belated advice, thou it was originally directed at Poles.

Wolność jest pożywna, ale trudno strawna, trzeba bardzo zdrowych żołądków, by ją znieść. Śmieję się z tych upodlonych narodów, które podburzane ośmielają się mówić o wolności, nie mając o niej pojęcia, i pełne wszystkich wad niewolników wyobrażają sobie, iż wystarcza buntować się, aby być wolnym.

History / Walesa says without meeting Mrs Thatcher in Gdansk Solidarnosc wouldn't have won [51]


The proof of a good piece of propaganda is in the feeling of revulsion it evokes in the majority of people; there come the times when the official story will be more to the likings of the common people. So you'll just have to wait and see.

History / Walesa says without meeting Mrs Thatcher in Gdansk Solidarnosc wouldn't have won [51]

Strange was that love of the Polish trade union leader with the British PM who brutally crushed trade unions in her own country more or less in the same fashion as Jaruzelski did at the same time in Poland.

A separate document reveals that the prime minister, who survived the Brighton bomb in the same year, secretly considered calling out troops and declaring a state of emergency amid mounting concerns that her government was facing defeat in the epic 12-month strike over plans to close 20 loss-making pits which sparked brutal picket line clashes such as the infamous "Battle of Orgreave".

The Independent Wednesday 15 January 2014
independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/margaret-thatcher-nearly-sent-in-the-army-to-crush-miners-secret-papers-reveal-9034934.html

History / Communism, was it the best form of government Poland ever had? [68]


Did you experience it all yourself? I mean the communism, regime, slavery and the like?

Language / Is Polish an easy language to learn and is there a way of learning it easily? [105]

Is Polish an easy language to learn and is there a way of learning it easily?

The easiest of them all. Even toddlers can learn it - and you can find many living examples of that fact.

News / Lech Walesa vs Immigration: Brits humiliated him at London Heathrow Airport [105]


You're wrong. The quoted words are not of Józef Beck but of Stefan Starzyński.

Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Józef Beck, 5th of May, 1939:

Pokój jest rzeczą cenną i pożądaną. Nasza generacja skrwawiona w wojnach na pewno na pokój zasługuje. Ale pokój, jak prawie wszystkie sprawy tego świata ma swoją cenę wysoką, ale wymierną. My w Polsce nie znamy pojęcia pokoju za wszelką cenę. Jest jedna tylko rzecz w życiu ludzi, narodów i państw, która jest bezcenna. Tą rzeczą jest honor.

Peace is a precious and desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but measurable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of men, nations and countries that is without price. That thing is honour.



President of Warsaw, 1st of September, 1939: - Stefan Starzyński:

Halo, halo. Tu Warszawa i wszystkie rozgłośnie Polskiego Radia. O godzinie 5.40 oddziały niemieckie przekroczyły polską granicę, łamiąc pakt o nieagresji. Zbombardowano szereg miast. Za chwilę usłyszą państwo komunikat specjalny - mówił spiker.

Po chwili do słuchaczy przemówił prezydent Warszawy Stefan Starzyński.
- A więc wojna. Z dniem dzisiejszym wszystkie sprawy i zagadnienia schodzą na plan dalszy. Całe nasze życie publiczne i prywatne przestawiamy na specjalne tory. Weszliśmy w okres wojny. Wysiłek całego narodu musi iść w jednym kierunku. Wszyscy jesteśmy żołnierzami. Musimy myśleć tylko o jednym: walka aż do zwycięstwa - powiedział Starzyński.

News / Lech Walesa vs Immigration: Brits humiliated him at London Heathrow Airport [105]


Take it easy.

The Limey won't spit in Lech's face, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rota_(poem)#Text
Nor let him go with socks to race - As he did with everyone but those intended
His mob will rise in his defence
The Man of Hope will jump the fence - As we all know he just jumped over the fence and the communism collapsed as the result of that;

Btw, The Man of Hope is the name of the latest film about him, the one which Walesa promoted in London.

News / Lech Walesa vs Immigration: Brits humiliated him at London Heathrow Airport [105]

Nie będzie Angol pluł nam w twarz
ni w majtach nam buszował
orężny stanie hufiec nasz
Lech będzie nam wodzował

And how do you like this one:

The Limey won't spit in Lech's face,
Nor let him go with socks to race
His mob will rise in his defence,
The man of hope will jump the fence.

UK, Ireland / And you wonder why there is Anti-Polish feeling in the UK [187]

When a Pole in the UK gets beaten up for being Polish he is a victim of the locals and when anybody anywhere does anything bad to a Polish person because that person is Polish then one who's done this may be called a thug, a hooligan, a bad guy, a brute, a criminal, a crook, a cutthroat, an evildoer, a hoodlum, a monster, an ogre, a ruffian, a scoundrel, a terrorist, a thief, a vandal - a wrongdoer of a kind, anything but a racist. It seems to me such a strange concept that racism and seeing it as a reason for beating someone even stranger.

It requires your explanation.

UK, Ireland / And you wonder why there is Anti-Polish feeling in the UK [187]


Propaganda does not have to be biased and/or misleading - that's for definition.

And the point of view was the one of the BBC journalist making a programme with one theme: Stadiums of Hate

UK, Ireland / And you wonder why there is Anti-Polish feeling in the UK [187]

But was it not a propagation of information or ideas by an interested party, esp. in a tendentious way in order to encourage or instil a particular attitude or response?


Either your No means that the BBC programme is not a piece of propaganda
or Barney's Yes means that it is. You both at least agree to measure the BBC programme by the same standard.

Is then a way to make an objective judgment?

UK, Ireland / And you wonder why there is Anti-Polish feeling in the UK [187]

I simply said that the BBC broadcast a sensationalist programme that was effectively a piece of propaganda.


But was it not a propagation of information or ideas by an interested party, esp. in a tendentious way in order to encourage or instil a particular attitude or response?

UK, Ireland / And you wonder why there is Anti-Polish feeling in the UK [187]


Would you be so kind and share your insight into...?

News / Ania Lisewska, Polish Woman, Wants To Have Sex With 100,000 Men for Guinness World Records. [55]


What a pity that she did not invite some belligerent Polish feminists - do not afraid of Polish feminists and make your show a really good one and at the same time combat stigmatized - yet visually powerful - stereotypes of American idiocy.

History / Khazars and their crimes in the Slavic lands of Poland [63]

All this stinks of too much beer, stupidity and Hitler quotations fitting a vandal and a hooligan of the worst kind.

Genealogy / Do you think all Slavs are white? [178]


To the mod: How come that Idiot's post do not go to the bin and mine do?

And mine was:


The author (not an obscure Eastern European racist), original language, and source of the passage call attention but you would be misled if you would "sense a Jewish signature".

Postcolonial Poland
muse.jhu.edu/journals/ckn/summary/v010/10.1cavanagh.html

Clare Cavanagh

News / Premier says no recession for Poland [148]


Yes . Only in Poland employment in these more efficient , technologically advanced industries is much smaller than in Germany.

Goods manufactured in Germany have the reputation that German companies can sell them more expensive , and still find no buyers for . The high German labor costs do not interfere so in the competitiveness of German products.

Polish companies are only building for themselves a position . The challenge for us is to develop a modern , technologically advanced sector in which products are made with high added value and buyers located worldwide markets.

News / Poland's universities go up in world rankings [23]


MIT's most famous.... Noam Chomsky on races.

Race to the top: it kills interest, deadens the mind, but makes students more passive and obedient and less trouble.

News / Poland's universities go up in world rankings [23]


How to measure the quality of higher education?

If the ranking will promote effectiveness of the business sector model then how not to compromise the educational mission in favour of marketable position in the ranking?

Does the ranking mean introduction of a rat-race, this time in the higher education?

Life / What makes a man a Pole? what does it mean to be a Pole? [187]


But that was the stuff of Polish literature, mostly romantic, which fed on the stereotype of martyrdom - the view about Poland's innate moral superiority and being unblemished by any evil, and the equally innate, complete bestiality of Poland's Russian and German persecutors.

Imre Kertész said something that could I think apply to Poland as well.

If we put in place of "Hungarian" "Polish" we can identify the identity of a Pole:

It seems that the soul of a small Eastern European nation, the soul that suffers from the father complex and is immersed in sadomasochistic perversion, is unable to exist without a great oppressor, whom it could blame for its historic failures, nor without a national minority, this scapegoat, on which it could vent, releasing the surplus of hatred and resentment, which accumulated in the course of daily defeats. Without anti-Semitism, what kind of identity would a person have who is incessantly preoccupied with his or her specifically Hungarian identity?

Back to topic people. The rest will end in the bin.

Genealogy / Polish blood only makes up 1% of your "Polishness" [77]

Oh, just a fraction for the royal babe, a babe in arms in a coat of arms. I'd pay any money to be a Royal.

Genealogy / Polish blood only makes up 1% of your "Polishness" [77]

A practical advice as to the learning of Polish

I've just bought the Polish baby to teach me Polish - this is the easiest way if you do not have the pure Polish blood.

News / American SM-3 ballistic missile site in Poland by 2018 [86]


The only ones who think Iran's nuclear threat is real is the US and its allies, not the rest of the world, the rest of the world regards the US as the greatest threat.

The only reason the US has named Iran's nuclear program as the threat is that the US is afraid that Iran may be the first country that would oppose the right to threaten anyone with destruction, anywhere without threat of retaliation.

History / Comparing Poland's communist-era slogans and propoganda with modern day concepts [23]

Propaganda: Power and Persuasion - a major British Library exhibition lifting the lid on the ways governments across the planet have attempted to influence your thoughts for over 100 years.

Noam Chomsky: That's our version of socialist realism; it's basically the same.

youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I

News / American SM-3 ballistic missile site in Poland by 2018 [86]


Oil's Critical Leverage and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

India and Pakistan are now joint observers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which, if it works, will tend to bring about closer integration of the Asian countries altogether. So is Iran, and the Central Asian states, China of course, and Russia too. So it's basically the whole region except for South Korea has joined. And Japan probably won't join.

Asia and Pacific

UK, Ireland / Study about Polish immigrants in England [29]


When I think of Polish, I think of:

Wouldn't it be better if you would phrase your question like this?

What do you think about the Polish migrant workers?

UK, Ireland / Scots better than Poles? [41]

...These people are simply believing what they have been told-that the kilt is a medieval garment-and accepting that at face value. We cannot blame people for suffering from these misconceptions. It is what they have been taught by the poorly researched "myths" that pass for Scottish history.


Al-Khwarizmi also wrote a treatise on Hindu-Arabic numerals. The Arabic text is lost but a Latin translation, "Algoritmi de numero Indorum" in English "Al-Khwarizmi on the Hindu Art of Reckoning" gave rise to the word algorithm deriving from his name in the title as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately the Latin translation (translated into English) is known to be much changed from al-Khwarizmi's original text (of which even the title is unknown)."

BBC Science and Islam 1 - The Language of Science

Abu Ja'far Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi was an Arab, probably from what is now Southern Uzbekistan, who taught at the Caliph's Palace of Wisdom in Baghdad in the 9th Century, and is one the most important mathematicians in history. Through Latin translations of his work, al-Khwarizmi introduced to Europe the Hindu-Arabic base 10 numerals - the use of which came to be known as algorithm in English. He is also considered the 'inventor' of both zero and the decimal point.

UK, Ireland / Scots better than Poles? [41]

The History of the Kilt stretches back to at least the end of the 16th century....
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_kilt

The Encyclopædia Britannica says the word is Scandinavian in origin.

The Scots word derives from the Old Norse kjalta, from Norse settlers who wore a similar, pleated garment.

Language / Tusk's uvular 'r' when speaking in Polish [49]


I couldn't agree more. He could have been an excellent professional soccer player. Being a politician, he wasted his talent.

Language / Tusk's uvular 'r' when speaking in Polish [49]


Uvular R is not one of the phonological and phonetic characteristics of Kashubian.
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Język_kaszubski#W.C5.82a.C5.9Bciwo.C5.9Bci_j.C4.99zyka_kaszubskiego

It must be about Mr Tusk's fatuously haughty, aristocratic air he is exuding.