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Posts by Des Essientes  

Joined: 6 Feb 2010 / Male ♂
Warnings: 1 - O		 Last Post: 10 May 2015
Threads: Total: 7 / In This Archive: 7
Posts: Total: 1288 / In This Archive: 902

Displayed posts: 909 / page 1 of 31
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Des Essientes   
6 Jun 2015
News / Pro-Israel lobby to be formed in Polish parliament [29]

On May 13th the Vatican recognized the state of Palestine. Good for Roman-Catholicism and bad for the racist Zionist scum that think they can dispossess the Palestinian people and keep them stateless. Polish Christians are overwhelmingly Roman-Catholic. Recognizing the human rights of Palestinians is the Christian thing to do. Supporting the racist state of Israel is wrong.
Des Essientes   
11 Feb 2015
Genealogy / How Polish am I? What is the correct formula? [58]

the term 'ethnicity' becomes meaningless the further you go back in time or the longer someone's descendant is separated from the original group.

Ethnicities are branches of the human family tree and everyone's descent goes back to a time before current ethnicities existed, but that doesn't makes the term "Polish" meaningless for a person coming on to this forum with a Polish great-grandmother.

Ethnicity in the genetic sense and in most cases also in the cultural sense is lost over the centuries for various reasons. One being that people tend to mix.

Ethnicity in the genetic sense is never "lost" as long as the bearers of the genes continue to reproduce. Mixing doesn't negate ethnicities just as marriage doesn't negate families. I fear you are trying to understand ethnicity with some sort of creepy fixation on "purity". Are you of German descent? Maybe it is in your blood......

you are not a Polish American, but an African American. That's what I meant: where do you draw the line?

Why do you think that one cannot be both a Polish-American as well as an African-American? Why must a line be drawn? If lines are necessary then of course they are drawn nearer one's immediate descent just as is done with terms like "immediate family" and "distant cousin".

In the vast majority of cases, it's either Americans or Canadians who come up with this idea of an invisible bloodline/ cultural tie to the old countries (not only Poland) that they, their parents, grandparents, great grandparents (...) have never seen in their life.

Bloodlines are not "invisible" nor are cultural ties. People of Polish descent have ancestors that participated in the Polish experience and thus being interested in Polish history and culture is a completely reasonable thing for people of Polish descent.

. I know that people here in the US tend to define themselves through heritage, but for me personally that's a strange idea

People in the USA define themselves in myriad ways. For most of them their ethnicity is just one aspect of who they are. Pretending that one's ethnicity, such as "Polish-American", is somehow the be all and end all of one's self-identity is a severe misunderstanding of the role played by ethnicity in America and elsewhere.

You misunderstood

You set up false dichotomies, build straw men, and goosestep.
Des Essientes   
11 Feb 2015
Genealogy / How Polish am I? What is the correct formula? [58]

Are you sure about that? I've been living in Warsaw since 1997 and I have never seen a homestead here. There's a Viking village in Zoliborz and I think there used to be a Native American themed thing in the Wilanow area, but I've never heard of a homestead. Are you sure you aren't confusing Warsaw Poland with another Warsaw somewhere?

An new poster with family living in Poland chooses to refer to their abode as a "homestead" and this it the obnoxiousness she is subjected to. That really is too bad.

my great grandmother's maiden name was Florjańczyk, her whole family was from Poland.

You are 1/8th Polish.

you're wrong, saying that you shouldn't have pride of where you or your ancestors originated.

You are right.

what makes people think that ethnic Poles 500 or 1000 years ago are even comparable to the ones alive today? They have nothing in common

Ethnic Poles today are descended from ethnic Poles of previous generations. They have their genetics in common and anyone who has ever witnessed family resemblances knows that this is not nothing. What makes you want to believe that large branches the human family tree cannot be described in terms of ethnicity? You are aware that we all ultimately trace our roots back to Africa:

I hope you're a proud African lady then... :)

I hope she is too and I also hope that she is proud of her Polish heritage. Her great-grandmother was Polish and her exponentially great-grandmother was African. There is nothing wrong with being proud of one's family.

The members of the Polish diaspora that come to this forum are often quite surprised to be met by this weird gauntlet of people telling them Polish descent is a myth. It isn't.
Des Essientes   
28 Dec 2014
Life / Anyone like the Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski? [5]

I like Becksinski, inasmuch as anyone can like supremely eerie depictions of a dessicated dead world. Are his paintings visual metaphors for a morally decrepit society, or has he actually painted the aftermath of the coming nuclear apocalypse, or both?

Such contemplation may leave one in need of a laugh. Here are images, contributed to a Chicago based satirical website, that utilize some of Beksinski's most famous compositions to parody a strange Polish advertisement:

somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/invest-eastern-poland/2/


  • Palpek_06.jpg
Des Essientes   
27 Jan 2014
News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]

Christ himself was a Jew.

Christ is a name from the Greek language. There may well have been a real person named Jesus who considered himself a Jew, but the Christ of Christianity is God made flesh, and that is anathema to Judaism. If Jesus believed what Christians believe about him then he was not a Jew.

Christianity is 'Judaic' in the same sense that Mormonism is 'Christian'.

Mormonism accepts almost all of the tenets of Christianity (save for the Virgin Birth) and just adds another narrative about Christ visiting the New World. Judaism rejects Christianity's central tenet. Christianity is not Judaic in the same sense as Mormonism is Christian.
Des Essientes   
27 Jan 2014
News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]

Claiming that there is a Judeo-Christian "tradition" is very misleading. The tenets of Judaism and Christianity are incompatible. Judaism rejects the central tenet of Christianity. The Christian belief, that God became manifest as a man on earth, is heresy for Jews. Judaism insists on an absolutely pneumatic God. This Jewish rejection of the divinity of Christ is heresy for Christians, and Christianity for the vast majority of its existence has considered the Jews guilty of the crime of Deicide. What kind of "tradition" is that? It isn't one by any stretch of the imagination.

Claiming that the "Judeo-Christian tradition" is a "fact" is as absurd as claiming that there is something called the "Hindu-Buddhist tradition" which is a "fact". Newer religions that radically break with the traditional beliefs of older religions cannot rightly be claimed to be continuations of these traditions. Claiming that the pneumatic God was made flesh, or denying the authority of the Vedas, are such radical breaks.
Des Essientes   
26 Jan 2014
News / Don't let Poland become like my country, France. [630]

They call Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians "people of the book."

Zoroastrians are not called "people of the book" by Muslims. The book being referred to in that appellation is the Bible and not the Zend-Avesta.
Des Essientes   
20 Oct 2013
USA, Canada / Why do Americans (and Canadians) hate Polish people? [226]

Americans and Canadians don't hate Poles...

This is a cogent observation. The people that tease Polonians in this way are almost invariably stupid themselves. Upon learning that their interlocutor is of Polish descent, it isn't hatred that drives most of them to say something asinine, it is a sense of relief on their parts and a feeling of solidarity. Think of the scene in the film "Freaks" when the carnival workers chant "One of us!"

the best thing to do is ignore discrimination.

In the latter case one proverbial Polonian option is to wear brown shoes, so you won't have noticeable stains upon them after kicking an offender's ass.
Des Essientes   
16 Sep 2013
History / Poles and Russians -- love-hate relationship? [209]

something Slavic for DE and those who like Slavs here

Thank you for the poem Natasa.
Alas Slavophilia is in short supply here. People are free to calls Slavs racist but if anyone dares to say the same about a Western-European poster then they are threatened with suspension. The double standards of Orientalism are sadly present here.
Des Essientes   
9 Jul 2013
Travel / Rihanna complains about lack of privacy on Polish beach [150]

I take it you haven't been to Saudi Arabia. Or the part of Palestine where Hamas is in charge.

Harry don't be so stupid. Alcohol is outlawed in some places in the world, but it never reminds people of the racial classification system that existed when people of African descent were treated as chattel. Thus warszawski's analogy is inept. Your bringing up the Saudis, and the Islamic Resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, is yet another example of your creepy Arabophobic obsession. Get a life and stop making so many stupid posts on this forum, Harry.
Des Essientes   
9 Jul 2013
Travel / Rihanna complains about lack of privacy on Polish beach [150]

Maybe in your part of the world mullato/mixed race is offensive, not in my mine part of the world.

The term "mixed race" is not offensive in my part of the world. Don't pretend that "mulatto" and "mixed race" have the same connotations in English now. They do not. The term "mulatto" is one of a series of racialist terms, of Portugese and Spanish origin, used in the times of slavery and segregation. "Mulatto" specified someone at least half black. "Quadroon" was reserved for people who were one quarter black and "Octoroon"for those who were one eighth black. Just as the term "negro" has been supplanted by the term "black" the term "mulatto" has been supplanted by the term "mixed-race" or "half-black". So too realize that if "black" only applies to people of purely African ancestry then few of the black people in the Americas would be "black" anymore. Caucasian and Amer-Indian ancestry is very widespread amongst black people in the Americas. Warszawski, if "your part of the world" doesn't understand that using the term "mulatto" is considered as boorish as using the term "negro" then so much the worse for your part of the world, but I somehow doubt that you're being accurate when characterizing your abode.

Just like walking the streets with a beer in Poland is acceptable, in the UK is not

Wow let's talk about an inept analogy! Using racialist terminology from the 19th Century is not at all akin to strolling the boulevard with an open container of suds, regardless of the country in which one saunters.
Des Essientes   
9 Jul 2013
Travel / Rihanna complains about lack of privacy on Polish beach [150]

What century are you posting from, warszawski?

I most certainly can be honest about my opinions as to how famous musicians react to certain situations

hahahaha harry! What a silly claim to make! You can be honest about your opinions! Indeed you can, but you cannot, as I said, be honest about how Rhianna really feels because you do not know her, and creating a class of "famous musicians" that are somehow all alike such that your contact with "more than a few of them" makes you an authority on their feelings is just a silly fantasist joke!
Des Essientes   
9 Jul 2013
Travel / Rihanna complains about lack of privacy on Polish beach [150]

firstly she is not black she is mulatto ( mixed race),

What century are you posting from, warszawski?

She, like all of the trash to come out of hollywood, loves attention.

She is from Barbados not Hollywood.
Des Essientes   
25 Jun 2013
Life / Expat, immigrant, foreigner. Not all foreigners in Poland are expats. [84]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha! I have no need to argue with Webster because Webster defines "expat" in exactly the way I have:

Definition of EXPAT
chiefly British
: an expatriate person : expatriate

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expat

Harry, the link you posted says clearly that an expat is an expatriate. Are you feeling well? Did you not read the Webster's definition you linked to? Maybe you need a nap.

"signify the same signified"? There's an interesting one.

If semantics interest you then you should study them. Such study may prevent some further hilarious gaffes on your part.
Des Essientes   
25 Jun 2013
Life / Expat, immigrant, foreigner. Not all foreigners in Poland are expats. [84]

Des Essientes: Harry your claim to know the personal financial situations of all the foreigners in Poland, who post here, is both hilarious and indicative of a delusional mind state. Can you name any foreigners living in Poland who post here and live off their parents? I certainly can't.

Hahahahahahaha! What a laughable lack of logic! Harry, you should realize that your inability to name any expatriates on the forum living off of their parents does not justify your claim that none do. You do not know the life situations of every single expatriate that posts here. Harry, stop embarrassing the expatriate community with your stupidly inductive assertions.
Des Essientes   
25 Jun 2013
Life / Expat, immigrant, foreigner. Not all foreigners in Poland are expats. [84]

Four lots of personal abuse in one post.

No, delphiandomine, my post was about the claims made in Harry's posts. I did not personally abuse anyone. I criticized Harry's performance as a public poster. I made no claims about his personal life.

Perhaps the fact that you and Harry seem to live upon this forum, as evinced by your tens of thousands of posts, has confused you regarding the difference between your personal lives and your public personas here.
Des Essientes   
25 Jun 2013
Life / Expat, immigrant, foreigner. Not all foreigners in Poland are expats. [84]

Although in our case your reference is useless, given that the word 'expat' didn't appear until 1962.

Hahahahahahaha! What a stupid claim! "Expatriate" is from the Latin "expatriatus" it means quite simply "out of ones fatherland" and it has existed for centuries. If you want to claim that its abbreviation, "expat", is a new word from 1962 then you are, once again, the laughing stock of this forum! Hahahahahahahahahaha!

I do hope that you aren't trying to insult any foreigners in Poland with your reference to 'lost generation'; from memory most of the "Lost Generation" were living off their parents, which is not a statement which can be made about any of the foreigners in Poland who post here.

Hahahahahahaha! Referencing the Lost Generation was the giving of an example of expatriatism, if you believe that this was somehow a slur directed at you, and your gang, then you truly are paranoid. Harry your claim to know the personal financial situations of all the foreigners in Poland, who post here, is both hilarious and indicative of a delusional mind state. The fact is that you do not know the personal information of all the expatriates on this forum and your claiming otherwise is very stupid and indicative of the megalomaniacal gangster mindset that your clique plagues this forum with in your posts.

Des Essientes: These two answers above, to the OP's query, are the most correct. No they are not, but thanks for your input anyway, always nice to hear people who have never been an expat or lived outside their home country telling other people that they are or are not expats.

Harry, you need to stop making claims about posters' personal lives. You do not know whether or not I have ever been an expatriate or lived outside of my home country. Your claiming otherwise shows the forum, yet again, that you are delusional and very rude. Stop making claims about other posters' personal lives and stick to the topics of the threads here. PF has had enough of your idiotic gangsterism.
Des Essientes   
25 Jun 2013
Life / Expat, immigrant, foreigner. Not all foreigners in Poland are expats. [84]

An expat is someone posted by his or her employer for a fixed term.

This definition of "expatriate" is not at all exhaustive

an expatriate is any person living in a different country from where they are a citizen.

immigrant is someone that made his mind as to which country he wants to live in, while expat is not fully committed.

These two answers above, to the OP's query, are the most correct.

The reader may remember the so called "Lost Generation" of the decades between the two world wars. They were expatriate American artists living in Europe, but they were not there at the behest of any employers.
Des Essientes   
19 May 2013
News / Negative Polish stereotypes in US 'changing for the better' [20]

when you feel the need to post on the topic rather than the person who originated it i shall alert the media. the whole of Poland awaits a reply with something relevant to the actual topic.

Wroclaw, the two conditional statements that I made in my post are absolutely on topic. Your claim otherwise is very disconcerting. How can you be a proper moderator here if you cannot understand that logical analysis of a thread's OP is what a discussion forum is all about? The idea put forth in the OP, that Polonians on this forum may be hurting Poland's image in the USA, is absurd and stupid. My post rightfully points this out. I think that you may actually understand this because my post hasn't been binned.

Wroclaw, the reader is left to wonder why you wrote what you did above. I think that it may have something to to with a feeling of solidarity you have with the threadstarter, because he is an expatriate like yourself, and so you are upset that my post exposed the stupidity contained in his OP.

Wroclaw, I am a Polonian. I feel a sense of solidarity with my fellow Polonians on this forum, and now most especially since we are being singled out as being bad for Poland's image. I will not stand idly by and allow such balderdash to be spread upon this forum unchallenged.

Wroclaw, if you want to make stupid sarcastic posts that asininely claim on-topic statements are off-topic then you may do so, but, in my opinion such posting makes you look like an idiot.
Des Essientes   
18 May 2013
News / Negative Polish stereotypes in US 'changing for the better' [20]

Hopefully the posts made here by certain persons who claim to be Polish/Polonia and to speak for Poland/Polonia will not do too much damage to the improving reputation of Poles.

If the threadstarter honestly believe that comments on this forum have any appreciable affect on the perception of Poles in the USA then he is mistaken. This is an internet discussion forum that 99.9999% of Americans will never see.

If the threadstarter is just pretending to believe that comments on this forum may actually have an appreciable effect on the perception of Poles in the USA, so that he may continue his campaign against certain Polonians on this forum that he has taken a dislike to, then the threadstarter is being insincere.
Des Essientes   
30 Apr 2013
Life / Poles In Eldritch Arkham [8]

There's nothing in the link you provided that suggests to me that Lovecraft was particularly xenophobic

The link I provided is to the text of The Dreams in the Witch House. Did you read the entire story, Pam? If so what did you think of Lovecraft's characterization of the Poles in it?

without having read any of his earlier work, I can't comment on whether he'd become more tolerant or not.

I feared that I was posting this thread on a forum in which no one has read Lovecraft, but it is Walpurgis Night so I said "What the Hell!"

Lovecraft does have avid readers worldwide. Here is an eerie looking Polish site devoted to him:
hplovecraft.pl
Des Essientes   
30 Apr 2013
Life / Poles In Eldritch Arkham [8]

Walpurgis Night is here and it may interest you to know that H.P. Lovecraft's supremely weird Walpurgis Night story contains several Polish characters. Set in Arkham, the fictional New England college town in which Lovecraft placed most of his stories, The Dreams in the Witch House, is the tale of a student, named Walter Gilman, who studies mathematics and folklore at Arkham's Miskatonic University. These dual concerns have lead the student to rent a room in Arkham's "Witch House" so named because it had harbored a reputed sorceress, named Kesiah Mason, who'd escaped from her Salem jail cell during the infamous witch trials, before the pious townsfolk were able to set her alight. The circumstances of her liberation were very mysterious:

That was in 1692-the gaoler had gone mad and babbled of a small, white-fanged furry thing which scuttled out of Keziah's cell, and not even Cotton Mather could explain the curves and angles smeared on the grey stone walls with some red, sticky fluid.

At the time of Lovecraft's story, presumably the mid 1930's when it was authored, the Witch House is owned by a Polish man and peopled with some Polish tenants. Readers familiar with Lovecraft's xenophobia may expect to find the Polonians less than favorably characterized in the tale, and I heartily invite them to read it at the link provided below, and to decide for themselves, if it is true, as many critics have alleged, that Lovecraft had indeed become far more tolerant during the last years of his life.

As April advanced Gilman's fever-sharpened ears were disturbed by the whining prayers of a superstitious loomfixer named Joe Mazurewicz, who had a room on the ground floor. Mazurewicz had told long, rambling stories about the ghost of old Keziah and the furry, sharp-fanged, nuzzling thing, and had said he was so badly haunted at times that only his silver crucifix-given him for the purpose by Father Iwanicki of St. Stanislaus' Church-could bring him relief.

/writings/texts/fiction/dwh.aspx
Des Essientes   
20 Apr 2013
History / How I blew a 6 figure grant for my charity because of my appreciation of Polish history... [77]

The noun Holocaust has been used throughout the centuries to name such similar acts perpetrated against other peoples, be it on racial or religious grounds.

The term is from ancient Greek. It originally referred to an exceptional sort of sacrifice to the gods in which the entire sacrificial victim was burnt up. Usually the skin and bones of the sacrificial victim were burnt up, for the gods, while the meat of the victim was consumed by the people present. This arrangement was ascribed to the action of humanity's patron Titan, Prometheus, who tricked Zeus into accepting this portion of the victim by hiding it under a rich layer of fat. Holos = whole and kaustos = burnt.
Des Essientes   
5 Apr 2013
News / Barbara Piasecka Johnson, Maid Who Married Multimillionaire, Dies at 76 [57]

I've always said that the guy who invented the band-aid did know what he was doing. lol
You're not trying to equate marrying into money as being the same as inventing something, are you?

Barbara Piasecka Johnson's obituary in the LA Times today notes that she received a degree in Art History before emigrating to the USA from Rome. For some of us being versed in Art History is an extremely interesting and attractive quality. Barbara Piasecka Johnson was already an accomplished human being before she "married into money".
Des Essientes   
4 Mar 2013
Life / Do Polish people like Turkish people? [66]

During the long years of partition the Turkish sultan continued to call for the ambassador from Lechistan. Poles have not forgotten this.

white trash

Yes, white trash, namely the stinking Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Romanovs. They were the scum that partitioned Poland, their fellow Christian country, despite all the blood the Poles had shed to protect them from Eastern expansionists. Poles have more in common with noble Turks than they do with Germanic scumbags. Poles should have let the Turks take Vienna and then maybe this forum would have more gracious Turkish posters and less German garbage.