News / How strongly are Poles sure that president Duda defend Poland's interests ? [265]

I agree, only the puppeteer has changed; pre-'89, Poland was a puppet of the former Soviets, today, Duda is correct seen as a puppet of Kaczynski's very home-grown PiS. It's all the same punch-and-judy show! The audience hasn't changed, merely the players aka puppets:-)

Work / New Job at Warsaw International School as an English teacher - Advice? What should I expect? [26]

@maf, who's lying?? Just using a little child psychology on 'em, that's all.

@roz,.....yeah, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it, I always say:-)

Work / New Job at Warsaw International School as an English teacher - Advice? What should I expect? [26]

No, not a liar, rather, as a purposely cautious educator. That's been my experience.
Tempting as it was when I was teaching in Germany to chime in interpreter-like, every bloody time a student of mine was groping for the right word,

I restrained myself as much as humanly possible. Instead, I asked their classmates to see if THEY, rather than I, could help the struggling student.

It actually worked:-)

Work / New Job at Warsaw International School as an English teacher - Advice? What should I expect? [26]

"But the students can't know I speak it."

Definitely relate, pernumba! In certain such institutions, there's an "ENGLISH ONLY!" rule and after two demerits, the instructor can be let go.
I wish you only the very best of luck and I see that you're serious because you bothered to learn the target language:-)

Have a blast!

News / Political life of Poland [135]

My point was crystal clear, Rich, simply not grasped by you in it's entirety!

Immigrants have always been a necessary evil, so to speak, the life blood of a failing corpus which found itself in need of cheap labor and quickly. Let's not mince words here; while the former are human beings, just like any other, they have indeed been turned into political footballs by our capitalist society, to be brought in or chucked out as need would have it.

Once, the newcomer was put at the back of the line until they learned our language intelligibly (nobody ever said "perfectly"), had no prior criminal record, and worked their way up to the standing they desired and contributed respectably to society.

Some countries such as our neighbor to the North administer intelligence tests to new arrivals who wish to settle in their country. Perhaps we here in this country should do the same or are we so stymied by the political correctness of civil rights that we've become socially paralyzed and therefore asphyxiated by our own public relations bull?

News / Political life of Poland [135]

Rich, nobody "wants" refugees. They are simply the cost of doing (monkey-)business in a croniest-capitalist society, that's all. Migrants are merely pawns in the chess game known roughly as "All this is Mine, while none of THIS is Yours". Get with the program.

Our own president is known for never wanting to pay anyone for anything he can (legally, though certainly not morally!!) get for free!

Love / Just started dating Polish guy - what is typical of a man from Poland? Cultural differences. [78]

...and meet somewheres in the middle, is that it?

News / Political life of Poland [135]

How can you "win" a debate on a subject which has no clear answer? Answer me that, if you can.

Love / Just started dating Polish guy - what is typical of a man from Poland? Cultural differences. [78]

Guess then you'll have to avoid most of Italy, particularly the Southern region, as even these days, unmarried sons especially, continue living at home

and their mother will typically still cook their meals, wash/iron their clothes and let them sleep in their boyhood room:-)

I see nothing wrong with that from their perspective. We Americans however, couldn't even begin to imagine such a life. above all, if the man in question can

afford an apartment of his own and is making a decent living.

News / Political life of Poland [135]

Wrong, Rich! She's a strict Catholic and hates the PiS because she finds them retrograde, wanting to turn back the clock in Poland
and revert to a single-ethnicity society. Heck, she didn't even marry a Pole, but instead a Colombian:-)

News / Political life of Poland [135]

@Dirk and Ironside,

I guess it depends on which Polish voters out there you talk to! Me? I tend to trust the opinions of an educated, thirty-something Polish woman from Poznan, who lived most of her life in Poland before marrying and coming to the States. She hates the PiS with a palpable passion, what's more, she seems to have a brain, almost as rare a commodity nowadays as water in the Sahara:-)

News / Political life of Poland [135]

@DirkDiggler & Ironside,

The NYT is only attacked for her "left-wing" bias because you both simply happen not to agree with that bias, nothing more, nothing less! Were that same journal showing right-wing bias (although bias nonetheless), you'd be applauding rather than attacking me, don't bother to deny it!!

Objective journalistic "truth"?? Show it to me, I dare ya:-))

Perhaps in an odd way, it serves the Poles right having the PiS in power! Electorates typically have an oh so short collective memory and have conveniently forgotten that it was the same Kaczynski party which nearly destroyed Poland some twenty-odd years back. How quickly they forget.

News / Political life of Poland [135]

@Ironside,The New York Times roundly condemns Kaczynski for the purge, claiming the PiS simply wants to revert Poland back to an ideological stone age, completely out of touch with modern Europe! If you don't believe yours truly, read it for yourself.....if you're able toLOL

I'm sure it's available in Polish translation. Good luck!:-)

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Quite, WielkiPolak! No argument with ya there.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

@WielkiPolak, you're correct! I ought to have written/said "certain Poles..." That is historically more accurate.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

You're referring to the gulags, essentially Communist tools of keeping their fellow citizens in line. Shameful indeed. Extermination though was not meted
out on ALL prisoners, starvation was something common to all such prison systems of that time, not merely the Soviet ones:-) One could exculpate onself from continued

incarceration, if one curried favor with the higher ups.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Come on, people! You know I'm not referring to the Polish Government in Exile, housed in London, but about any number (small number admittedly) of rank-and-file Poles who unfortunately did not show the grass roots support of most Danes, but often displayed great hostility towards local Jewish neighbors.

Bottom line, for all the good, decent Poles who were truly Christian and helped Jews often at great personal risk for them and their family, there were also plenty of others who aided the enemy based on little else other than sheer Jew hatred. What was their excuse, huh?

News / Political life of Poland [135]

@Ironside, if I have no idea what I'm talking about, tell that sentence to the rest of your fellow Poles, who took to the streets in the thousands to protest the PiS!!!

They don't know what they're talking about either??! Even a judge, herself on the Supreme Court (Wyjszy Sad), was interviewed in the NYT as somewhat sympathetic to the protesters. And she has no idea what she's talking about as well?? You got a couple of screws loose, buster:-)

@Dirk,

"SS..." What has the Second World War got to do with it, for pity's sake?

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

Poland certainly DID play a role in the Holocaust, Maf ol' boy, albeit a relatively minor one! No more than any other European country, save perhaps for Bulgaria, Albania, Denmark and Sweden, Poland can't be let off the hook entirely. That's neither bigotry nor "fake news" on my part, that's unvarnished truth telling, much as I must admit a number of my people have (un-)successfully attempted to capitalize from fellow-Jewish suffering, shaming themselves as well as us, along with dishonouring the dead.

News / Political life of Poland [135]

Throwin' out the baby with the bathwater, Rich, that's the beef! Why hold EVERY Supreme Court judge by the same standard as though all were cut from the same cloth?

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

@WielkiPolak,

Your post was predicated, not on the truth, but on a revisionist version of the truth!!
Go back and do a little fact checking, sir.

News / Political life of Poland [135]

Any sort of purge, be it lefty libitard orAlt-righty, is WRONG! At least listen to the other side before condeming outright. Even the Holocaust itself has proven itself rarely to be cut-and-dried!! There are usually extenuating aka mitigating circumstances to be considered in a fair evaluation. Presuming some fifty-plus year-old Polish judge is an unrepenetant Communist is like the old saying "Don't trust anyone over thirty!" because they're assumed to be part of "the problem", oft repeated during the late '50's on into the late '60's.

News / Israel opposing potential new Polish law to criminalise term 'Polish death camps' [1539]

For my part, I'd be terribly curious as to how the mainstream German media, namely organs like DER SPIEGEL, responded to the Polish gov't. IPS law regarding Polish treatment of the Holocaust years!

@WielkiPolak and TheWizard, you realize of course that you're merely espousing revisionist bilge which merely plays into the hands of bigots and Jew-haters such as the David Irvings of this world!

News / Political life of Poland [135]

According to the press, Poland's clamping down on judges represents her way of getting back at a Communist-era entrenched legal system which numbered scores of

"unreconstructed" former Communists, long deemed unfit to serve on the bench.

An incredibly tricky, not to mention sheer polarizing, issue which threatens to divide Poland even further than she already is.
Duda is foolishly creating a rift with the European Union, away from stalwart partners such as France and Germany, tending instead in the direction
of Hungary!

USA, Canada / Would a Polish woman marry to get into the USA? [41]

"...in their DNA..", Rich???!!

Gettin' a wee bit nasty here, aren't we.
And so is it in our male DNA to physically abuse women??
Cuts both ways.

Life / Understanding Poland's Birthday Tradition [67]

You just mentioned that the birthday in this case is that of a teen! Surely, I wouldn't expect for such an event serious alchohol consumption.

My experience has been exclusively at adult celebrations well over thirty:-)

Life / Understanding Poland's Birthday Tradition [67]

I enjoy the too few times I've celebrated Polish birthday gatherings. As I recollect, once the birthday boy (or girl) is toasted, the whole assembled body cries in unison

"STO LAT! STO LAT!", upon which normally (at least in my experience) alchohol is promptly consumed, usually either some variety of bimber or zubrowka!

Great fun.

USA, Canada / Would a Polish woman marry to get into the USA? [41]

The number of foreign women in general who'd marry in order to come to America (legally) could fill several libraries, I've no doubt. Poles are scarcely the worst offenders in this respect:-)

History / Future of Kaliningrad Oblast - is it possible to annex by Poland or will it become an independent country? [146]

Taking your own advice, I see. Dobri brateLOL

History / Future of Kaliningrad Oblast - is it possible to annex by Poland or will it become an independent country? [146]

Exactly there Crow, old man. And so let it begin with YOU.

@Bratwurst Boy, The Carthage analogy (shades of Cato the Elder: Carthage must be destroyed!) suggests, perhaps inadvertently, almost a scorched earth type of policy on the part of the Soviets to unutterably eradicate any and all traces of anything German remaining.

Clearly, based on the bilingual place names extant, this wasn't the case.