News / Should Poland exit the EU immediately? [377]


Overall, yes, but I've heard at least as much anti-Euro rhetoric as pro-Euro. The continuing misery of Spain and Greece (made worse by the Euro) is not lost on many people.

it was after Merkel announced her unilateral insane plan to make German (and the rest of the EU) an open destination for anyone who could pay traffickers and say the word "asylum" that I began to hear the first real open criticism of the idea. It's still overall probably but as they say every rose has its thorn and Germany making unilateral decisions that it expects other countries to meekly follow along with is a real big thorn for most Polish people.

News / Should Poland exit the EU immediately? [377]


Oddly enough, for once Polly seems right (A festivus miracle?!?) The overwhelming opinion I get on the EU from Polish people of different generations and class is a generally positive attitude for the good it has done Poland but a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the neverending increasing integration that is priority number one in Brussels.

Merkel's Folly in inviting tens of millions of third world malcontents is definitely the first chink in the EU armor (and helped in eroding public confidence in PO).

Life / All Things Christmassy in Poland [332]

It looks like "Szopka bożonarodzeniowa bez żydów, arabów i uchodźców" (roughly: Christmas manger without jews, nobility or refugees).

In other words, it's a manger with some animals in it.

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]


that doesn't explain robić laskę komuś? (rough: give smn a bl0wj*b)

News / Should Poland exit the EU immediately? [377]


Pray tell how? They want to chase foreign employers from the country and punish those with the wherewithall to be entrepreneurs, and tighten up the money supply so that everyone will hunker down to keep from losing ground. they seem to be totally uninterested in job creation....are they going to try massive state employment as in the PRL?

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


Which the TK ruled on in an entirely predictable fashion. Had PiS waited for the system to work they could be working on their program. Their priorities however are not about impleementing their program apparently.

News / Should Poland exit the EU immediately? [377]


In some cases, yeah, that's a far throw from a single force under Brussels control.

More importantly, no one's trying to convince the public about any of this - it's the old technocractic approach favored by the communists, the leaders roll out their plans and the masses are (conventiently) satisfied and if they're not then it's their job to shut up and appreciate how well the party is working. It's one big reason that communism failed (not the only one but a big one).


That sounds like central planning (and obsession over international rankings that are mostly hogwash). I don't know how many Finnish departments there are in Poland but three would sound about right so they can both work with and compete with each other (and competing with each other is a better goal than competing internationally). Just having one is a recipe for stagnation.

The bigger problem in Poland is that universities are too insular, one of the few (very few) good things about Bologna is that there's more movement by students between universities now (though more is needed as is movement of faculty). One Finnish department and the faculty has zero options for movement, again not healthy.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


I'm sorry, since when has it been the job of the opposition to help the governing party's program?

News / Should Poland exit the EU immediately? [377]


No, it's a terrible idea the perceived need for which stems almost entirely from decisions made by leaders out of touch with their electorate.

The basic problem is that there is a political class following their own agenda with no regard for what citizens want - this is always a recipe for disaster whether it's "refugee" policy or battles over the TK.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


Enitrely their own fault for picking a fight over the TK when none was needed. Accept three judges, appoint two and go on about their business. Was that too hard? Apparently. But please stop blaming other people for the choices made by the PiS leadership. It's unbecoming of someone who wants to be taken seriously.

The big problem is that PiS remains under the thumb of one person who is a terrible, terrible administrator (he's good at doing some other things but he's terrible at running things that require dealing with people of different opinions). What's worse, he doesn't realize he has a problem and shifts blame onto others for his own mistakes - the sure sign of a terrible boss.

This is the large problem in democracy (especially in a media age). The elections select for who's good at campaigning while the skills needed to govern effectively are mostly entirely different and not usually found in the same people.

News / Should Poland exit the EU immediately? [377]

Many years ago I read an offhand remark that describes some of the worst aspects of EU officialdom. The idea is they think of the project of European integration sort of like a shark, if it's not constantly moving forward it will die.

This is why they have a single response (more integration) to any particular stimulus.

The problem is that all across the continent the momentum among citizens is moving and growing in the opposite direction. This leads to one of my rules for understanding politics and the world: When the agenda of political leaders is too far away from the mood on the ground - then bad things happen. You're already starting to see this in normally staid populations turning to violence (like the Dutch recently). I don't condone violence but unless the leaders of EU countries start giving priority to what citizens want then it will just get worse (what I expect to happen). Sermonizing about fascism and calling people bad names won't work to stop it either.

If these Brussel-sprout headed idiots don't back off then the whole thing will be rejected and sooner rather than later.

Life / Comparing Poland and Romania [108]


Well in terms of music what very often happens is that music from one particular region becomes the generic folk music for the whole country, such as Andalusia in Spain or Appalachia in the US or (a region whose name I forget) in Bulgaria.

Withe the górale one problem is that there just aren't enough of them to be a good model and on the other hand they're spread over a couple of countries.

There's also the idea (according to a paper in ethnology I translated years ago) that in a lot of Poland urbanization happened more suddenly and differently than in some countries and there wasn't time enough for an idealized vision of life away from the city to develop of the type needed for a folk music to talk hold in an urban environment. Instead rural life was all too close and they wanted to distance themselves from it.

A frustrating aspect of Polish arts for me is that many people don't know what they like, they want to like what other people (esp UK US) like.

Life / Comparing Poland and Romania [108]


What I was told was that most attacks were against children who were trying to play with them - it's a bad idea to play with street dogs.


The Bucuresti metro is very, very weird, especially the narrow platforms where your back is to the wall and the train seems like 20 centimeters away.

Life / Comparing Poland and Romania [108]


IME they leave you alone if you leave them alone (and many are partly adopted by people or businesses that regularly feed/water them).

The packs apparently were created in the poorest times of the 1990s when people couldn't afford their pets and abandoned them.

Life / Comparing Poland and Romania [108]

Random observations from a few visits (more Bucuresti, Timisoara might be different)

Romania is a lot behind Poland in terms of infrastructure. It was damaged more by communism and afterwards was preyed upon by a real oligarch class (not the puny simulation of same in Poland). So it's poorer with worse infrastructure. The quality of construction in housing is clearly worse than Poland and a lot of could be /would be nice areas are neglected.

Knowledge of English is similar though not the same (IME Romanians lapse into Romanian a lot when trying to speak English though very fluent speakers can be found as well).

Food is really interesting, like a combination of Hungarian and Turco-Bulgarian (kind of equidistant to both.)

Romanians are mostly pretty friendly and open (more so than Polish) but small scale scams are more widespread keep your wits about you and learn the numbers in Romanian and you'll be fine.

The gypsy population is larger than in Poland and full of typical Romani pathology.

If you know a Romance language well you'll start to understand bits and pieces of Romanian very quickly and Romanians are very nice about providing good language models.

Romanians culivate their folk culture esp music, unlike Poles who are embarassed by and alienated from theirs.

News / Throwing away the constitution in Poland? [626]


When your only tool is a hammer.....

Life / All Things Christmassy in Poland [332]

Actually the American version is probably most closely based on the Dutch Sinterklaas but as imagined by Washington Irving who wrote a lot about the descendents of Dutch settlers around New York. But he described an almost troll like short squat figure, rather like a Dutch Burgher. IIRC an anonymous author added the reindeer and sleigh (instead of Sinterklaas's white horse). The elves are probably a reimagining of Zwaarte Piet the blackfaced companions of Sinterklaas.

Others brought him up to normal height but kept the rotund figure. Thomas Nast was most responsible for creating the visual image of the American Santa starting in the 1860s.

News / Throwing away the constitution in Poland? [626]


Yes, you are. Picking and choosing which laws to follow is a very dangerous path for a government to follow.


perhaps in your fevered, partisan imagination I am, back here in reality no.

Part of the rule of law, means that a new party in power can't make a running start changing everything it might like to, inconvenient but probably for the best, overall. It frustrates revolutionaries, but revolutions are proven to be a terrible way to try to improve society, incrementalism works a lot better in the long run.

Had PiS accepted the original TK ruling then they'd be able to be working on implementing their program, but now they're stuck in place and alienating many of the swing voters that put them in power. An absolute own goal.

News / Throwing away the constitution in Poland? [626]


So what do you propose to use instead of the rule law? The unquestioned authority of the party?

What about education? Correct ideology or impartial reality?

Life / All Things Christmassy in Poland [332]


Many people fail to realize that complete non-use of alcohol and being falling down drunk are not the only two options.

One family I had wigilia with produced a bottle of vodka about halfway through, people had a couple of shots over the course the rest of the meal and that was that. With all the food the effects were pretty minimal.

Another produced an aperitiff, a nice white wine during the meal, and a digestiff at the end. Again, nice and civilized and no one got even tipsy.

Life / All Things Christmassy in Poland [332]

Not drink on wigilia? AFAIK wine or vodka with the wigilia meal is pretty common now, not hardcore drinking but sipping wine or a few small shots though the meal.

Maybe this is like the no-dairy rule that few people follow anymore (since herring in cream is pretty common).

News / Throwing away the constitution in Poland? [626]


So... you don't care about rule of law _or_ education. Just how do you expect Poland to prosper? Magic beans?

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


Just as the vast majority of grass-roots PiS demonstrators sincerely believe they are marching for the future of Poland and not to benefit some shady pseudo-nationalist power mad elite....

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


No hyperbole here..... Is it impossible for you to grasp that many Polish people sincerly think that PiS is not the best option for the country? Do you always have to demonize a third (at least) of the population of the country?

Challenge: Think of a political language that proposes what you want and doesn't insinuate that somewhere between 25 and 60 per cent of Polish citizens are diabolical plotters or hapless victims of smooth talking shysters.

I don't agree with the PiS platform but that doesn't lead me to despise everyone that's ever voted for them.

News / Throwing away the constitution in Poland? [626]


This is a big problem in Polish politics, there's no political language that can unite Polish people. All parties are based (in part) on despising a large segment of the Polish public. They're all alike in that, they just despise different large segments so Polish politics will remain a war of all against all for the foreseeable future.

News / Throwing away the constitution in Poland? [626]


This sounds like PiS. Care to address things they've actually said or are you happy just to echo the correct party line?

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


It was possibly a trap set up by PO with bait they knew Kaczynski could not resist, and.... he couldn't. Are they to blame for knowing their enemy's weakness?

But if he had simply accepted the three legitimately selected members of the TK and chosen two of their own then PiS would be able to try to implement their program. How much of their program is against the constitution, anyway?

My new theory - JK is deathly afraid of success and keeps sabotaging himself so that he can retreat back into the warm safety of failure that he can blame others on (aided by a network of enablers). Now the PiS program is stalled (due to a major own goal) and Polish society is more divided than ever and Poland's economic progress (clear to anyone who actually lives here) is threatened.

Many supporters of PiS seem to be like the dog in the manger (or gardener's dog in Polish) they'd rather everbody was equally poor than have a society where some are more successful than others.

News / Poland's post-election political scene [4080]


This implies that anyone who has been successful over the last 8 years is a criminal enriching themselves at the expense of other people - vulgar marxism.


And what will she ask forgiveness for?

News / Throwing away the constitution in Poland? [626]


By this point you think that PiS's plans are any different?


Kaczynski hates democracy and rule of law and the idea of civil society. He wants a society with an unaccountable government (I think his term is 'silne państwo' or some such rot) that can dole out rewards to the good kids and punish the bad kids (the stern father) and a strong church to be the kind mother.

It's a fundamentally non-western, non-democratic tradition that is outdated by several hundred years. He can't achieve this goal because it's impossible but he can do a lot of damage trying.

PO aren't much better but at least their goals are sort of doable, Kukiz is a rebel idiot who will not be able to transform from being against the system to part of it (which he has to do if he wants to achieve any of his goals, though since his goals are so puerile I really hope he fails spectacularly).

Language / Short Polish<->English translations [1049]


google translate does not deal well with very informal or slang usage....