News / Poles say a big YES to our European Union [996]


Yes it is. Those have had a lot of desire, considering the difficulties of finding work despite not knowing the language or having sufficient qualifications, which also means that those who so far failed must not have necessary lacked desire to find work. But it is good to know that you have changed your views on refugees for the better.


It would have been a mistake if Germany's motivation for accepting refugees in 2015 had been economic in nature, which you apparantly believe, but that was never the case. Germany decided to not close the borders in an effort to prevent the refugee crisis from destabilizing Southern Europe and the Balkans, which would have happened if the refugees already stranded in Italy or the Balkans had been confined there. Merkel has since 2009 tirelessly worked to keep the EU afloat and 2015 was but one of the many measures taken by her. Yeah, taking the refugees was costly - but humanitarian reasons aside - watching Southern Europe collapse under the strain with a possible end to the freedom of movement or an end to the EU would have been much, much worse.

News / Poles say a big YES to our European Union [996]

Rich really likes to ask stupid questions.

News / Poles say a big YES to our European Union [996]


Indeed, that is a pretty good result given the challenges. But what interests me more, will you now stop claiming that most of them have no desire to work?


No worries, we will share them with you in time ;)

News / Poles say a big YES to our European Union [996]


Skill maybe, but most of them desire work and had been increasingly succesful in doing so until the Pandemie hit.

google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/germany-half-of-refugees-find-jobs-within-five-years/a-52251414


No, just register their names and finger prints in an international data bank to make sure that they can not apply for asylum elsewhere and there won't be any issues with that.

News / Poles say a big YES to our European Union [996]


A perfect self-description.

News / Poles say a big YES to our European Union [996]


The Taliban will be very surprised to here this.

History / Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland? [246]

The idea that 4m people were murdered in Auschwitz had been put into question by Western historians in the early 1960s and debunked by the 1970s. It was the communist government who insisted on the number because they wanted to keep Auschwitz as the symbol of the Holocaust. The scale of the Holocaust was however never affected by this, since the number of victims of at leaat more than 5m is well supported by evidence. They were just not all murdered in KZs, but also decentrally by SS, Wehrmacht, Einsatzgruppen and so on.

On how the Nazis identified Jews:

aboutholocaust.org/en/facts/how-did-the-germans-know-who-was-jewish

History / Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland? [246]


Yeah, because you were not born in Europe in the early 20th century.

History / Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland? [246]


You mean aside from Königsberg and the billions taken from the GDR as reparation?


But nowhere the extent you seem to believe


They usually checked birth certificates but if there was no documentation, particulary in Eastern Europe, they were likely to just kill anyone remotely suspected.

History / Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland? [246]


Whoever was deemed as Jewish by the Nazis.


This is actually a good example on how that does not work. Oil companies tried their best to bury the evidence, financing studies that tried to seed doubts but now global warming is accepted as a fact by the scientific community.

Holocaust denial is an exercise in futility. Because there is simply no denying the many written sources that describe it. Which is why no Holocaust denier has ever attempted this, since they know there is no good explanation as to how this could have been faked. We are talking about millions of documents, spread in various archives across all of Europe.

Letters from German soldiers to their families in which they allude to having seen mass killings in the woods. Private diaries in which they go into more details. Official division diaries in which the commander notes how they rounded up families which were suspected of being Jewish and executed them in the woods. Official letters to local authorities, telling them that the "evacuated" Jews to the Eastern Territories had perished. And so on.

History / Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland? [246]


Their is no respectable historian who would put the number below 5m victims, there is too many written evidence backing it up. Whether or not 5.5m or 6.5m were killed is up to debate, but the scale of the Holocaust does not really change either way.


Nonsense. There are few historical topics that have attracted so much attention from scholars like the Holocaust.

History / Should David Irving, Holocaust denier, be allowed to run tours to Poland? [246]

There are hundreds of thousands of documents spread across Europe telling the stories of the Holocaust. Do you think those are all falsified?

Also to answer any possible claim made by Holocaust deniers:

hdot.org/debunking-denial/

News / The Witcher 3 game - Poland's great success [37]

I am already very much looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077.

News / Years of Poland in the EU - assessment of pros and cons [1199]

You mean someone who turns his country into a autocracy and who abused public funds to enrich himself and his family?


It is the EU that invests.

News / Years of Poland in the EU - assessment of pros and cons [1199]

Being democratically elected does not mean you are democratic.

News / Years of Poland in the EU - assessment of pros and cons [1199]

Obviously PiS in this scenario.

News / Years of Poland in the EU - assessment of pros and cons [1199]

Nope, this time we won't leave them to their opressors unlike 1953, 1956 and 1968.

News / Years of Poland in the EU - assessment of pros and cons [1199]

1. Its a constitution nevertheless and a pretty good one which is why we kept it after 1990. Besides Grundgesetz and Constitution have the same meaning. Yeah it was originally hoped that it would only be temporary, but its' authors knew that it could last a long time and thus made sure it was designed as a lon-term solution. Hell, the American founding fathers expected their constitution to last a generation but it is still holding up (though it is showing its' age).

2. There is no need for a popular vote since it was drafted by democratic legitimated politicians. In fact most democratic constitutions have never been submitted to a popular vote.

News / Years of Poland in the EU - assessment of pros and cons [1199]

Spike, you are really embarrasing yourself here to anyone who has even a modicum of knowledge on the subject.

1. Germany has of course a constitution (in fact Polish lawywrs and other Eastern European countries looked into it before they wrote their own).

2. The criticism against lay judges is just an outlier and one that is not widely shared by experts. The high hurdles to become one are of course intentionsl since you don't want anybody to decide the fate of someone.

It worst it awards undue influence to local authorities with no influence on the bigger picture . Whereas the Polish justice reform is de facto a power grab by the Polish government with serious implications for the rule of law. But don't worry, the EU will help protect Poland's democracy!

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]


The internet is full of articles describing such events.


Sadly, they are not telling the truth here, or at least not the whole picture. Yeah, those LBGTQ-free zones are not expelling those minorities, but they are doing their best to create and maintain an hostile atmosphere against them with the hope that they leave on their own. The framing itself calling it "LBGT-ideology" instead of the simple wish for equality speaks volumes.

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]


Whenever you have a gay pride parade in Poland, you have violent protesters trying to attack them with only the police holding them back.


That is textbook discrimination, particulary the latter one. There is no good reason why two gay people should not be able to raise a child as good as a hetero couple, or a even a single parten.


That is not "teaching gayism". It is just educating children that LBGTQ is a perfectly normal orientation and no foundation for discrimination as it should be.

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]

Well, two Poles recently killed a German in Berlin because he was gay.

News / New European Council's report: "Poland oasis of racism, xenophobia and homophobia" ... [343]

Well, that is the difference. In Germany you have a few isolated villages. In Poland you have 1/3 of the country proudly displaying homophobia.

History / Do Polish people in general dislike Russia or Germany more? [369]

Not sure if I agree with the article. No doubt the series helped illustrating the horros of the Holocaust, but the engagement with the past had already started in the early 1960s with several high-profile trials. This statue of limitation for murder was also for the first time prolonged for 15 years in 1965 because of this (and then abolished in 1979). The protests in 1968 was also partly motivated by the shock over the crimes of the previous generation that had come into the open.

Genealogy / Are Sorbs Polish? Does anyone know about Sorbish enthnicity? [62]

I wonder how BB feels about that.

Genealogy / Are Sorbs Polish? Does anyone know about Sorbish enthnicity? [62]


I would argue that every indicator points in the opposite direction. East Germany has a tremendous rising in living standards, income and life expectancy. Was everything handled perfectly? Of course not, but that is to be expected by a project of that scale and which is unprecedented in history. If we are looking for losers, they might be found in e.g. the Ruhr Valley, whose cities were already in debt and had to take on even more debt to finance the transfer payments, not to mention all the Western money that could have been invested in the crumbling infrastructure of Western Germany.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]


Which is why I wanted a source because every article I found indicates a reliability over 90%.


It actually does, because in a proper democracy, the majority can not impose every kind of law on the minority without restriction, otherwise we have a tyranny of the majority. Laws need to be justified and provided with proper arguments, not just with something one may call a superstition.


None of those points are related to forcing someone to carry a child against their will.


I really wanna see you try that.

The foundation of your argumemts appear to be really poor if you have to use such false equivalences and exaggerations.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]


I would like a source for that.


This is easy to say from a position of someone who never faced the consequences of doing so, or ever will.


Indeed. Religion should not have any place in setting laws since not everybody believes in it and expecting non-believers to carry a baby becausw of religious sentiments is wrong. In question of moral, it depends on whether someone believes that a lumb of celle can already be considered human and whether it is justified that the state gets so much power over the female body. In my opinion, forcing women to carry children against their will is only befitting a dictatorship.We allow contraception, we allow people to prevent sperm and egg from meeting each other, but immediately after they do it this is supposedly a different story?

Banning abortion is wrong, both ethically and practocally (nvm cases where it should be available without discussion e.g. rape or birth defects). It allows the state control over womens' bldy to an undue degree and it forces women into illegal abortions that may endanger their life.


Wait, this is debateable in your opinion? I mean even Aristotle pointed out before the birth of Christianity that this is indeed possible.

News / Abortion still under control in Poland [2986]

I can understand the reasoning behind banning abortions for healthy babys. I don't agree with it but I can see why people would see it as wrong.

However forcing mothers to carry baby's to term who might have severe birth defects seems wrong to me. Because in the end, this is not just a question of convenience. Having healthy children is a large commitment, but it is one that can be calculated and usually has a happy ending once they move out when they are old enoguh. Depending on the kind of birth defect, this is far from guaranteed for children who are born with them. They might remain in need of care for their entire (hopefully long life) which often falls to the responsibility of their parents. The problem is in my opinion, that often people who are against abortions might do so on sound principles, but don't have any experience what it is like to raise a child like this. They have no idea what it may mean for everyone involved. It can become a rewarding experience, but it can also utterly destroy a family.

I'd like to share a personal story regarding this.

Two friends of my parents - who were very religious - decided to have a baby that was predicted to have severe birth defects. The doctors told them that children like this one have an average life expectancy of 10 years, but they nevertheless wanted one. The conditions were seemingly good. Both were teachers, thus had a secure job, and one son already. The mother decided to stay mostly at home for a few years and care for the child. The first months were rough, the baby needed several surgeries, but it recovered and developed decently (under those conditions, it still needed around the clock care) for the first few years until it was old enough to go to school. The parents had hopes that it might have a relatively normal childhood, and thanks to medical advances, it might even become an adult. But than it started to regress. The parents had to watch as their child declined steadily, it stopped walking, speaking, became almost blind and so on. It spend the last two years in a hospital until it finally died before its' tenth birthday. It was a horrible time for them. I've met them only a few times, but as their boy grew worse, so did they. Especially the mother looked at the end as if she had aged twice as fast, and the father developed an alcohol problem. Their older child became troubled, partly because their parents were forced to divert their attention almost exclusively to their youngest child, and partly because it was also horrible for him watching his younger brother slowly die. He managed to turn it around and now goes to university, but he lost his faith in god and e.g. refused to have a confirmation ceremony. He supposedly told his parents when asked "There is no god, because why would a benevolent god make my poor brother suffer like this? And if there is one, he must be pure evil and does not deserve my worship." An understandably point of view from his perspective if you ask me.

Bottom line, the decision to have this baby not only caused the child a lof of suffering, it also destroyed their family and marriage. Again, this was not even a matter of finances, but the stress and emotional pain to have a child and watch it suffer and die. If a family has the courage to take on such a burden, they are deserving of any praise and assistance one can offer. But nobody should be forced to do so.

Off-Topic / DALMATIA - How much Poles love Dalmatia ? [123]


What is that supposed to mean?


Croats are first mentioned in ancient Byzantine sources from the 7th century as part of the Byzantine Empire. An independent duchy of Croatia is confirmed for the 9th century, more than half a century before the same is known about Serbia. Croats precede Serbs by all accounts.