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Posts by jon357  

Joined: 15 Mar 2012 / Male ♂ 		Last Post: 54 mins ago
Threads: Total: 73 / Live: 22 / Archived: 51
Posts: Total: 24805 / Live: 14760 / Archived: 10045 		From: In the Heart of Darkness
Speaks Polish?: Tak

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jon357   
16 Apr 2012
News / Polish Silesian Autonomy movement [67]

Personally I'm in favour of autonomy

The chance of a Special Economic Zone on the model of Schleswig Holstein could bring huge benefits. The issue of that zone being administered from Berlin would set them off arguing for years.
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

I'm sorry, but it's not. Socio-economic standing is a corrollary to the practical trappings of nobility, not the definitive test. I'm sure that in England (and indeed elsewhere), there are nobles who live in penury. This doesn't make them any less noble.

It's a prerequisite - without the trappings, without the money, the status goes before the generation is out. Several times in history people have declined membership of the nobility because they felt they didn't have enough assets to guarantee that noble status is maintained throughout the generations. Somebody with a pretty coat of arms on their lavatory wall who works in the Town Hall isn't noble - they're just descended from noblemen.

All the Rights,none of the responsibilities,so,no,not Nobles just people who may or may not at one time have had a rich ancestor.

As usual, you've cut straight to the heart of the matter. They may have described themselves a 'working', 'landless', 'own-land-working', or degraded nobles, but in harsh reality, only the adjective is accurate - the noun is a mistranslation.

dietine deputies

Now you're getting closer....

. It is up to you to prove they were/are not nobles, and no, this is not a Russell's teapot type request.
Again, just because you say it is, doesn't make it so, and indeed, you are stepping into the realms of petition principii.

Proven lomg ago, and petition principii hardly fits!

It is fallacious to try to prove an argument as to the quality or otherwise of the subject based on hindsight. Be wary too of the fallacy of circular cause and consequence, vis a vis your reference to anarchy

That's pure nonsense, and you know it. The First Republic ended in disaster - you can be an apologist for it; you can talk about the avarice of neighbouring states, you can blame geopolitics, you can even look for weaknesses in the behaviour of Stanislaw August - but you can never avoid the incontrovertible fact that the First Republic had long ceased to function effectively as a state.
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

They were nobility - res ipsa loquitur.

They also had structure and responsibilities, though these principles/concepts, or lack thereof, do not necessarily serve as the litmus test for what is or isn't noble

No - the litmus test if anything is socioeconomic. Distressed gentlefolk are not nobility, and most of the Freemen were not even that.

equal legal rights

As have Freemen.

politically and legally active

To get more than a fraction of them to the Election Field would have been a logistical impossibility, so it is disingenuous in the least to describe more than a tiny number as politically or legally active.

Be wary of presentism and hindsight.

Hindsight is all we have - and the First Republic ended in disaster.
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

Actually, it is derived from Latin/French.

As is English in part.

szlachta were nobles.

No. They were without the structure and the responsibility that go with nobility, and their rights and responsibilities were analogous to Freemen in England. Whether they were or were not descended from nobility, by the Eighteenth Century socio-economically only a portion of them could aspire to gentility, much less nobility. If a genuine nobility emerged, it was no comprised no more than a fraction of the Freemen.

he only failing of the Polish body politic was not legislating contingency protocols for what was to happen if the Liberum Veto was enacted, and such enaction hamstrung the passing of other legislation.

An understatement to say the least.

At the time, it was a stupendous victory

History proves that statement to be very, very wrong. Unless you're suggesting it was so victorious it was just too good to survive!
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

Are you seriously suggesting that circumcision is a prophylactic against Bubonic Plague?

All the men the Catholic church claims as Early Saints were circumcised.

Which is no reason we should be. They also wore sandals. Maybe that's why they didn't get plague.

dawanet.com/nonmuslim/intro/misc/circum1.html

-- This site alone, by a Doctor, lists more than 40 separate sources, case studies involving thousands of men in multiple countries.
You do realise that this is a religious site? Try this:

intactamerica.org/resources/decision

or this:

butterflybirth.com/10-reasons-not-to-circumcise/

or this:

alternet.org/health/135757
jon357   
16 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

So what about Mary, the mother of Jesus?? Which one was it for her?? ...And what about Peter's mother, and all the other apostles the Catholic church claim as saints??

That doesn't actually mean they were good people or had any medical knowledge. We know almost nothing about them, nor did the people who declared them 'saints'..

I don't know if your village has access to high speed internet or not, or if you can do a Google search?

You might be surprised to know that much of Poland has probably got better internet speeds than wherever you live.

They cite multiple medical benefits of circumcision, including lower rates of cervical cancer for women in countries where circumcision is routinely practiced, and significantly lower rates of HIV among men who are circumcised.

Circumcision is not a protection against HIV and the cervical cancer statistic is spurious.

the medical benefits

There are none.

it is not because we don't eat kaszanka.

???
jon357   
14 Apr 2012
Life / Why is circumcision not practiced in Poland? [701]

Some Pole, back in the day, had the sense to ignore this barbaric act of mutilation, and quite rightly so.

It's never been standard practice in Europe, except within the Jewish community.

There's no health benefit whatsoever. Only drawbacks (if you'll excuse the pun). One is that the foreskin is attached to the glans until the kid is a certain age, and circumcision causes permanent damage - the result is a loss of sensation in the one part of the body where there's meant to be lots.
jon357   
14 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

There are and were different devices and shapes of democracy.

Yes. And few have ever been what they were on paper.

That would be only byproduct of social and political system and generally speaking not a rule.

No. The reverse is true. That is the very foundation of that system. Poland is not unique in that respect.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

By saying that IRP was an example of that, you can't possibly mean three centuries of IRP?

Of course not - it worked (if not perfectly) reasonably well for much of its life - the problems came in the last few decades when it effectively ceased to function as a viable regime.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

That seems to sum up my understanding of things. You could be a citizen who owned a tavern or a citizen in the senate,fair point,the majority in rome as in Poland had none of the rights of citizens where as in other feudal sociaties rights were extended further sooner.

I agree - this seems to be a pretty good explanation. One other (that was told to me a few years ago, by a Polish academic, was that the szlachta were those who considered themselves to be Polish. The peasantry didn't have that same identity - their sphere of experience was more regional.

For fellow non-polish PF members Józef Korzeniowski = Joseph Conrad.

I suspect most people know that, but thanks for mentioning it. He took the equality thing to an extreme - refusing a knighthood around the time that the Polish state was re-established for that very reason.

For your information, the political system of I RP was Noble Democracy, not Anarchy. My point about stereotypes went straight over your head...

What on paper is called a democracy is all to often something quite different in reality - the 1st Republic is a prima facie example of this.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

which comes from Latin and means a famous person. In later times a person of high social position in society

Indeed. In English (as in French) it implies responsibility. The British nobility had a responsibility to provide soldiers and to exercise the law in manorial courts.

He didn't mean that in every element they were the same as British nobility. The common platform was a high social standing in their respective societies.

You are right - they weren't the same. But can you say the Polish Freemen always had a high social standing? They certainly had a right to vote, however more that a fraction of them turning up to the Election Field would have been a logistical impossibility.

in the first volume of French encyclopedia under the letter "A", the longest article was about "anarchy" and almost whole was about Poland. As if anarchy was a distinctively Polish "thing". It's not all

It was however a unique system of government, whether good or bad. Unfortunately as with all forms of anarchy, the powerful (i.e. the true nobility) flourished at the expense of others.

the Liberum veto was not so stupid, as some believe. The usage of this legal mean since the mid-seventeenth century, especially in the eighteenth century, was of course detrimental to Poland. But the very notion of Liberum veto had a lot of sense and it worked well till second half of XVII c.

I'd certainly agrree with that, though as time went on it became less of a benefit and more of a problem.

But I'm not using this, not because of your conspiration theory, but simply because most of the articles there were written by morons to morons.

It isn't a conspiracy theory - the Polish Wikipedia Committee is a transparent organisation, registered at the KRS, acknowledged by the Wikipedia Foundation and transparent in their aims and membership - though I agree with your second point about wikipedia ;-)
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

In "God's Playground" he is using "nobility" as an exact word to describe szlachta.

I wasn't thinking of 'God's Playground' - but herein is the problem. 'Nobility' is an English word, not a Polish word. It implies noble behaviour and certain responsibilities. So does it's French cognate. Being szlachta had much more to do with Freedom than responsibility - as one poster said 'Golden Freedon'. This is why Freemen is a much better English translation.

wikipedia

Beware of any wikipedia entry (even English language ones) about Poland - they are written or edited by a group called the Polish Wikipedia Committee (I know several) with the specific purpose of promoting a Polonocentric point of view.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
News / Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]

This is the worst thing to come from the crash, either politically or socially. Mind, this actually hangs in a church.

That is truly vile. Whoever allowed that in a church wants their bottom smacking.

where are the old, bold, ugly people?

Indeed. The picture looks more like a fart in a disco.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

You are trying to define Polish nobles by using English definitions and this is wrong approach. In case of Polish nobility you will never get the same or even close result to British, French, Spanish etc. nobility.

This is exactly my point. However the szlachta can't be considered nobility - there were simply too many, and the socio-economic situation in Poland allowed a system to perpetuate over a century after it ended in the UK. That's why I drew an analogy to today's Mauretania - a stratified society with one principle caste who are considered free.

Szlachta (nobility:) within it's class was very democratic. The principle of equality within the nobility was almost sacred

Szlachta weren't nobility - they were Freemen.

Szlachta is nobility in Poland, end of story.

Very far from it. They may have been descended from a nobility (though most weren't) they may have aspired to nobility (though most didn't) they may have drawn a distinction between themselves and their ziemianin neighbour - but to describe them as nobility implies that there was a sense of nobless oblige, a noble code governing behaviour and a socio-economic distinction between themselves and those around them. It's tempting - especially for someone today whose ancesters were szlachta (Freemen) to draw that distinction, however it is essentially imposing a comparison with other cultures who have a genuine nobility and romanticising a past that was far from romantic. Norman Davies describes the situation rather well.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

Szlachta means nobility

It isn't a perfect analogy - for this reason:

The difference between Polish and other European nobility is that it was not wealth or lifestyle that constituted nobility, but hereditary juridical status. Nobility belonged to those of "noble birth" that is those whose parents were of the same noble origin (since 1505 at least the father had to be a noble).

Even 'gentry' is stretching it - Freemen is a better translation - the ones in the UK had (at the time Poland had its 1st Republic) an analagous legal status to Polish szlachty, were often affluent in relation to their neighbours and during that same period were gentrifying.

Polish nobility can't be compared to it's counterparts in other countries.

Exactly - nobility is the wrong word and the wrong concept.

He clearly had no idea about Polish nobility.
Read something else, preferably something written in XX or XXI c.

Carlyle was pretty definitive, however Norman Davis compares them to a caste rather than a stratum - this is perhaps the best analysis of the situation.

A little learning is a dangerous thing.

For disgusting maybe you should do some research on the percentage of Freemen in the respective countries.

This is spot on - the best way to describe them is as Freemen who due to an antiquated system surviving developed entrenched customs and marriage rules - there are interesting parallels with Mauretanian society today.

As far as surnames go, it was possible to join the szlachta - even foreigners could join, like the British Makalski family - the name doesn't necessarily give a clue to origin, nor does the ending -ski imply that the holder's ancestors were Polish Freemen.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
News / Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]

The day I take notice of even one word that Antoni Macierewicz comes up with will be a bloody cold one. The man is paranoid and unstable in every sense. It still seems like yesterday that he handcuffed himself to the Marszalek's chair then went on a hunger strike locked in his office. With of course a TV crew present.

Over the Smolensk issue, I'm surprised he doesn't hire a jester's outfit and lie down across the threshold of the sejm.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Language / It is not possible to translate names into English or Polish! [52]

!jacek means hyacinth?

Yes. It surprised me when I found out. Apparently there was an early Christian martyr called Hyacinth. I suspect the flower is named after him.

why have you changed your name?

I just fancied a change - It's the 4th name I've had over the years.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Language / It is not possible to translate names into English or Polish! [52]

jacek ( jack ),

beata ( betty )

Beata translates better as Beatrice (Ela is closer to Betty) and Jacek, believe it or not, translates as Hyacinth.

A few names - especially better known Biblical ones have a clear translation - as do many surnames.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
Life / Do Polish names generally have a meaning to them or a particular structure?. [88]

The szlachta were all nobles.

No they weren't. They were between 12 and 18% of the population - too large to be a nobility. They were farmers. Very few could be considered noble in any sense.

Too bad for you. You just don't understand the meaning of the First Republic's Golden Freedom.

Golden Misgovernment and Self-destructive Chaos might be a better description. Read Carlyle on the matter.

Going back to the topic - surnames in Poland don't really give any indication of social status. I know people with illustrious surname's from history who are as rough as a bear's arse and penniless with it and people with the most plebeian sounding names who are perfect gentlemen in every sense.
jon357   
13 Apr 2012
News / Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]

now imagine that the Smoleńsk crash was actually a Russian terrorist act

This is the problem. People 'imagine' a bit too much without going straight to the bottom line. The Russian government had no reason whatsoever to cause a plane crash. Nor did anybody else.
jon357   
8 Apr 2012
Life / Lodz vs Wroclaw - difference in mentality of people? [53]

£ódź is the most depressing city I have ever been.

If you're looking for quaint and colourful, Lodz isn't the place to be. Nevertheless, it has a unique atmosphere and there is something special about the centre.
jon357   
8 Apr 2012
Travel / Any Anglican churches in Poland? [35]

Many Brits worship only self-indulgence: me, myself and I!

You can say the same about 'many' Poles, or your nationality, Americans.

And most any deity is better than that innit?!

Only if that deity actually exists.