Law / Weapons laws in Poland. Carrying a concealed handgun? [918]

Is the issue here really, like the old saw suggests. that "migrants bring crime", or possibly that the arrival of migrants into countries like Germany, less so Poland, was merely the catalyst needed to unleash gun violence which might have been lying dormant all along, but was triggered by the unexpected sight of dark-skinned "foreign" faces among a populace not accustomed to such changes?

Guess I'm by nature a skeptic and don't feel comfortable with quick-fix type solutions to infinitely complicated issues, that's all.

When our president stated a week ago, that such shootings as occurred in Florida indicate what happens when the mentally ill have access to assault weapons, clearly, he was missing the point. The point is why are guns in the hands of so many "normal" people to begin with, the deranged notwithstanding!

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

Our president ought to bear the latter in mind, don't you think?

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

Mentioned on Wiki that Morawiecki's family is partially Jewish, furthermore, two of his blood relations (two aunts) were Holocaust survivors, if this info is accurate:-)

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

All this has indirectly to do with the thread topic, whether a law which criminalizes the use of a misleading term, will protect citizens from the truth or not.

Where's the problem?

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

Roosevelt saved this (once) great country from going the way of Nazi Germany. If someone is honestly entitled to gov't. aid, then by golly, they deserve to get it. If they're livin' off the dole, then agreed, they ought to get a swift kick in the butt and told to get a job.

A government is not merely a caretaker observer, but a regulatory agency which ideally was meant as a force of good, as America's Fathers, for instance (unlike Trump) knew instinctively that most people are basically lazy and swinish, quick to steal, pillage, rob, and let languish, if they had their druthers. Like the stern, but loving parent, the government was there to offer, not give out, help where it wasn't needed, furthermore, to reign in the greedy hand of the naughty child!

From around '47 - '63, it seemed as though the US government was doing her job nicely.

However, it looks as if I've run up against a bumper crop of disillusioned '60's -style idealists, suspicious of anything conventional, traditional, and workable....like our government's erstwhile role in the shaping the New Deal, a raw deal only to the Scrooges of this land.

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

Nevertheless, we see the results of ignoring crucial groups of underserved and neglected Americans; look at what just happened in Florida.

The gun nuts though will never change:-)

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

It seems, as with the electorate who sent Reagan over the top and into the Oval Office, that many misunderstand the basic rights guaranteed us as American citizens.

A historian, Michael Beschloss (??), I think, wrote a book years back, claiming that modern day Americans, Republicans above all, have warped the original meaning of the Constitution as signifying small instead of in fact, a bigger gov't. role than was previously realized.

Might be worth a read:-)

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

Even the Bill of Rights did not forego the need for a conscience, Maf! As I keep reminding folks such as yourselves, "ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL"!

You seem to advocate a sort of 'Lord of the Flies' scenario as concerns the need to protect citizens from themselves, where the kids take over and adult supervision, the guidance of wisdom is non existent at worst, at best, marginalized.

Perhaps you or I have little need for gov't. help. Well, others have and who is to say that we are superior aka more fit to live and pursue every citizen's RIGHT to happiness, free of want and fear?

This is what happens when we lose sight of traditional values and attempt to play G_d.

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

Well, Maf, I see your're what I began to suspect all along, a Social Darwinist, i.e you believe in the survival of the fittest a la the eugenics program advocated by, among others, good ol' Yankee Doodle Dandy, rootin', tootin' American, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (...geez where d'ya think the Nazis probably got the idea from in the first place??)!

You'll have to do better than that, friend.

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

@Maf, tain't a question of following "religious arguments" or not! The issue is, rather than "infantilizing adults" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean), allowing those who perhaps might know better, to weigh in on situations before they spin out of control!! Maybe you're a completely well-adjusted male, doesn't mean everybody else is, does it?

If you are in a position of authority and strength and you see someone being bullied right in front of you, being threatened with homophobic or racist threats, I'd hope you'd at least attempt to get help or express some sort of concerted outrage.

By the by, I have my problems with Israeli hypocrisy myself, so you needn't throw that example up to me. Sadly, I'd have to agree with you there.

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

You misunderstand, maf!

Say, some child is being bullied mercilessly in the schoolyard. The young boy (presumably) could try their best to fend off the bully. Then again, as with more than may care to admit, they might need some help from a school authority to protect and defend the child against such bullying! Have the kid ask his fellow pupils, "Gee, ya think I asked for it, or not?". these days, chances are the other kids would side with the bully, not the victim...the price of what is sometimes termed (in-)human nature. In addition, some out there are simply not as equipped to engage in rough housing and street fighting, no matter how hard they try to shed a nebbishy self image. Why ought anyone allow the truly deserving to suffer, penalizing them, while rewarding the wrong doer aka the bully?

My point is that gov't. in most civilized societies is, at least SHOULD, be there to protect and defend citizens from hatred, bullying, and violence against the weaker of this world, born through no choice of their own, less burly, tough-looking or physically intimidating than certain others. The average person usually falls short of their responsibilities to follow the Bible's guidelines; they need a higher force to intervene. We are all commanded to do so. Like the proverbial traffic signs, it's not a suggestion, it's the unspoken law.

Got it??

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

@Maf, where humankind errs, it clearly needs government to firmly step in and set things right, that's only common sense.
Remember the old wisdom "Man proposes, God disposes" (Czlowiek strzela, Pan Bog nosi kule)!

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

@Maf, you asked before concerning who determines what is hate speech?! Seriously??

Human decency determines such, not governments!

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

@Gregy,

The Holocaust is considered to stand alone among history's worst massacres, including those which you mention as well as the mass slaughter over the decades of Native Americans, for the reason that never before did a single gov't. of a modern, industrially developed nation, singly and without significant foreign aid, methodically, calculatedly, and consistently make it their ideology to destroy root and branch an entire peoples within that country's midst, exclusively based on biological reasons!

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

@Maf, I see you've never heard of either slander or libel, apparently! That's "free" speech too, yet clearly (and justifiably) punishable, as it can damage another's reputation, livelihood etc. As I pointed out, "FREEdom" is never free, it must be jealously guarded in order that the needs of all are served who seek truth.

You seem super mired in '60's lefty, socialist-type garbage, don't you!

@G(undercover), Jedwabne investigation "evil"?? Something to hide here, have we?

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

My "estimates" are that comparing Jews killed by gentiles or vice versa is an insultingly ridiculous exercise in futility. Say you're just walking along the street and six guys jump you and try to kill you, you're not merely going to let them do so, are you? 'Course not! You'll fight them off tooth and nail.

Sadly, in such a situation as the Jews often found themselves, it was only a matter of kill or be killed.

Survival cannot and should not be reduced to an intellectual exercise for the purposes of mere parlor games for the idle bored among us.

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

Anyone denying the historical authenticity of the Shoah, should in fact be punished, at least fined substantially, for spreading lies.
Hope David Irving still has his hearing to listen to what the Polish law means for the dissemination of facts.

The point here really is that, while the Camps were operated and conceived of by Germans, representatives/henchmen of Hitler's authority throughout Occupied Europe, they were still (technically) situated in Poland. Hence they are German camps which were in Poland.

Jedwabne and Kielce though cannot be whitewashed.

@Maf, free speech doesn't mean hate speech. Irresponsible speech, like liberty itself, is never free!!

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

Frankly, the punishment fits the crime! Denying factual history should be subject to getting one's just desserts.

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

Error! Cornelius was the son (who died recently). Hildebrandt was the father known as "Hitler's Art Dealer".
Apologies for the confusion.

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

Therefore, what a cruel irony that the man known as "Hitler's Art Dealer", Cornelius Guerlitt, was in fact half-Jewish!

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

Indeed. Furthermore. much of that looted art ("Raubkunst" in German) belonged to Jewish families. There remains ongoing litigation, as I'm sure you're aware.

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

@Maf, I'm only reporting on Jewish survivor testimony in this instance.

Genealogy / Legnica - Lignitz and von Liegnitz history [7]

"Liegnitz", I believe, was the Germanized place name for a city in the former Czechoslovakia, before and during WWII.

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

Many Polish-born Jewish Holocaust survivors have testified that their Polish gentile fellow prisoners were often most unkind to them in captivity, principally because they weren't Christians, thus perceived as "Christ killers" and other malarky!

The truth cuts both ways, as I've reiterated here numerous times.

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

Spot on, cms:-)

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

If Biblical Law existed, it might prove a very different story.

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

The history is complicated, since the role of primogeniture plays a significant part in all this going back to Biblical times, actually, pre-dating recorded history of the period.

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

These supposed counter arguments don't exactly equate in magnitude! Always easy to blame the victim for the act of the perpetrator.
@Maf, no need to try again, pal! Whether it's a few million vs. several hundred at Jedwabne, it was several hundred too many!

Study / British School of Warsaw in Wilanow [73]

Liberalism was more "in" fashion than it has become, soon as folks out there realized that much (though admittedly not all) progressive liberalism actually required work:-) Then, they jumped whole hog on the conservative/Republican bandwagon and decided to trade in their conscience for peace of mindLOL

How can peace and happiness be built on others' misery? Answer: It can't!

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

While even Ambassador Azari and even Netanyahu both agreed separately that Poland never "instigated" the events leading up to or during the Holocaust, there were numerous Poles who gladly turned in Jews (both partisans and others) in exchange for the peace of mind of payment, much of it generous indeed:-)

The Nazis counted on this, therefore led a successful Poland Campaign, and in fact, exterminated the bulk of Polish Jewry.

Poles SHOULD feel at least historically, if not collectively, responsible for such events as wartiime Jedwabne, but especially post-War Kielce.