News / New cross war in Warsaw [530]


So you're in favor of rewarding rapists with the privilege of reproducing?

Off-Topic / Are Polish Christians here? [134]

My very rough guestimates (based on many years of residence in Poland and observing people's religious behavior.

10-20 % hardcore, believing catholics

40-60 % catholic to the extent that they follow any religion, they want to get married in church and have their kids baptised but they don't necessarily attend mass every week (or month) and they may strongly disagree with church positions on certain issues.

10-20 % if you ask they'll say they're catholic, but you'd never know it from their behavior (may make it to church a time or two a year or on specific life milestones)

5 - 10 % overtly non-catholic (this includes followers of other christian denominations, non-christians, atheists, lapsed catholics etc

News / New cross war in Warsaw [530]

Random thoughts:

I'm glad this nonsense about putting aside the conflicts in Polish society has ended. Poles (especially their politicians) know one game and one game only - all hate all the time. I'm ony surprised it took so long.

It's completely normal for Polish people to spontaneously light candles and put up crosses when some kind of tragedy occurs. It's not normal for such temporary tributes to be institutionalized.

The conflict, as the lines are now drawn, has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with a minority trying to impose their will on the majority (the polls I've seen cited show something like 70 % in favor moving the cross).

Kaczyński is probably not as corrupt as Tusk and Komorowski. I don't necessarily think that's good - if fhe can't look out for his own interests how can he look out for the country's? And many of the absolute worst heads of state have been incorruptible ideologues. Give me politicians with healthy senses of self interest (who realize the better off the country is the better off they are) any day of the week.

News / New cross war in Warsaw [530]


Be very careful about what you wish for....

Law / Urząd Skarbowy, I paid too little on my last PIT? [26]

Been nice knowing ya, maybe they'll let you write from the re-education camp....

News / New cross war in Warsaw [530]


And the smae kind of boy scouts came under attack when they tried to move it to a more appropriate place.

Like so much of Kaczynski politics this is about confrontation for the sake of confrontation.

News / New cross war in Warsaw [530]


Granted, there is a large group of people who that describes neatly and we don't really have a name for them as a group (mohery, PiS voters come close but ...)

They're also a more interesting and varied group than outside sympathisers like Polonius3 or critics (most of the Polish media establishment) realize. A few things to remember:

- While they're genuinely unhappy, they're mostly unable to articulate any particular changes or alternate states of affairs that would make them happier. They're almost entirely reactive. The current cross war is more of the same. Find something someone in power is doing and oppose it. Why? (crickets chirping)

- They're full of contradicitons. Many of them support PiS (the party most into demonizing the PRL years) but will turn around and say how much better things were back in the commie times. They seem unaware that this is a contradiction too.

- It's hard to predict which way they'll jump on any issue which means they have no single leader. I remember how their reactions to the Wielgus affair weren't what anyone really expected (they saw it as the government meddling in church affairs and they. didn't. like. it.)

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]

I think from the Polish point of view the critical issue is this:

The father wants his children to speak and understand Polish (and so he wants to use that language with them as much as possible).

The German government (which doesn't have a good track record of respecting Polish) wants to prevent this.

You can argue wheher or not that's the real intention of the Jugendamt, but that's the practical effect - a parent not being able to naturally pass on his language to his children.

I doubt if a German parent in a similar situation would be happy if the Polish government seemed to be taking steps to prevent their child from speaking German. (If that's happened then the Polish government would also be in the wrong and I'd be critical of it).

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]


Tell that to Lisa Haase, oh wait .........

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]


Well most Jewish people don't speak Hebrew and a lot of Hebrew speakers are not Jewish in any real (religious) meaning of the word, but assuming you're a Hebrew speaking Israeli yeah, it's the responsibility of the government that wants to monitor your conversation to providefind interpreters to do so. That's a basic tenet of European law.

There are cases when an individual is initiating contact with a government authority where that's not the case, but in adversarial, government initiated contexts, the burden of crossing language barriers is on the government not the individual.

The German Jugendamt's refusal to adhere to this basic principle is possibly one of the reasons it has such a bad record with the ECHR.

News / Is Jarosław Kaczyński the new Lech Wałęsa? [74]


Well if he's suggesting foul play then that would be zbrodnia in the legal sense. So we're back to him not making any sense.

My best guess is that he's trying to stoke his base by rumblings about foul deeds that only he can make right and/or working off some personal guilt feelings since IIRC the alternate Katyn ceremony was at least partly his idea.

For the record for the nth time: I'm open to the idea that foul play was involved but have been unimpressed with the 'evidence' claimed so far. A person would have to be an idiot or in deep denial to believe the official 9/11 story, but if foul play was involved in Smolensk it was a lot more subtle and better carried out.

Regarding Farage, that's a far more likely scenario (is there any evidence beyond convenience?) I absolutely assume Paul Wellstone and David Kelly (among others) were deep sixed.

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]


Choice of language? Yes. And it should be the responsibility of the Jugendamt to supply interpreters if they think such are necessary.

Again, if he's such scum why does he have visitation rights at all?


I live on the local economy. By freer I mean that overall people are freer to live their lives how they want to (partly because of a healthy distrust of authority) than they are in nanny state Germany.

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]

1. No Polish ancestory (most of my ancestory is ..... Deutsch including a healthy dose of Schwabian), but I live in Poland. From what I've experienced of Germany, I definitely prefer life in Poland, it's much freer.

2. US child services are horribly corrupt. That's one reason that I don't trust any child service bureaucracy anywhere. The jugendamt has several times already been criticised by european authorities for their treatment of non-Germans (not just Poles)

3. You don't know one bit more about the specifics of this case than I do.

4. Even if the father is scum (which is a possiblity) if he has visitation rights they should be on his terms and not those of a bureaucrat. The burden of solving linguistic problems should be on the jugendamt (_if_ they're acting in good faith).

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]


That's a relief. And I'm not Polish, I'm American (mind who you're talking to, you German rabble!)

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]


I just find it funny that you have such trust int he Jugendamt (which has come in for a lot of international criticism, not just from Poles).


You're such a bootlicker! Hopeless!

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]


I know just as much as you do in your touching faith in the power of impersonal and unaccountable bureaucracy....


Did you just say that?

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]


But Poland shares a border with Germany. Polish is the fifth (or sixth) most spoken language in the EU. IT doesn't say anything good about Germany if Germans think of it like Zulu.


My point is an English speaker would never meet the kind of discrimination in Germany that Poles routinely meet.


then why does he even have visitation? If it can be proved then he should have no visitation, if it can't be proved then don't micromanage parent-child relations.

I remember a similar case from a few years ago where a judge ruled that one parent speaking Polish to the child could have a harmful effect on their linguistic development. I'll admit that that bit of ignorance has colored my view of German judicial attitudes toward Polish parents.

News / Pole loses language discrimination case in Germany; Scandalous! [97]

Leaving aside any he said/she said scenarios, the fact remains that in Germany Polish is hardly some rare exotic language like Zulu or Telugu. It's a disgrace that the office in question is too incompetent to provide Polish speaking staff (or interpreters).

Since he has visitation rights, then he should be able to speak to his children in Polish. Shame on Germany for this.

Would an English speaker be treated like this?

Life / What are the things which cause culture shock in Poland? [164]

I'd say the biggest difference and the hardest for anglophones, me included, to fully come to grips with) comes under the general heading of 'rules'.

For a Brit, according to stereotypes (mostly accurate imho at the individual level), there shouldn't be too many rules*. For Polish people (IME) there need to be a lot of rules, the more the better (which is why government efforts to trim the bureaucracy are bound to fail - despite what they say, Polish people want there to be bureacracies with lots of rules.

For British people rules need to make sense and be fair. Polish people just don't care whether or not rules make sense or are fair (the reason for this in a moment).

Brits also think everybody needs to follow the rules while Poles think other people should follow them and treat the question of whether or not to follow them themselves as one of personal discretion. If you don't like a rule and think you can get around it, more power to you!

Another area is medical care. British people think most illness will naturally work themselves out and oddly enough doctors seem to think that too. The British press is full of people dieing after 6 British doctors fail to recognize some really hard to miss disease.

That happens much less often in Poland where people tend toward hypochondria and are supported in all their most dire predictions by most doctors. Anything out of the ordinary is thought to probably be dangerous and you can go to the doctor for something minor that seems obvious and you'll wind up taking 6 tests for other things and have three new prescriptions. (post operative care is also more thorough a former British colleague had a procedure done in Britain and their Polish doctor was horrified at how little follow up there was.

*I know this is not backed up by UK governments over the last 15 years or so, but I'm pretty certain that UK governments over the last 15 years or so have been purposefully trying to destroy the British state and build something different so I'm not sure if that counts.

Study / Learning Polish at Adam Mickiewicz University [11]

Neither a native speaker _or_ a philologist is a good teacher of a particular language for beginners unless they have some training or particular skills in teaching that language for beginners.

Native speakers with no training and philologists with no training in foreign language teaching can be very useful to learners (much) later on with more specialized kinds of tasks but in the beginning you need someone with a particular set of skills that neither is likely to have without that training. AFAIK the Poznan program doesn't realize (or care?) about that.

I've heard good things about the £ódź, Kraków and Toruń programs (Warsaw's also kind of not so great for other reasons).

I had a friend (pretty fluent) who went for some summer program in Cieszyn a number of years ago and they weren't that happy with the program (they tested at a lower level at the end than at the beginning). This is someone who was transcribing Marek Grechuta songs by ear and trying to translate the lyrics (for fun on their own) so they might not have found a level advanced enough.

Study / Learning Polish at Adam Mickiewicz University [11]

To be honest, AMU doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to teaching Polish to foreigners. Most of the teachers are from Polish philology and don't necessarily have any special training in teaching Polish as a foreign language, they just don't understand some of the problems foreigners have and can't explain things in a way that foreigners can understand.

I haven't taken courses with them, but I known a number who have and weren't satisfied.....

Law / How can I get Polish citizenship after been married to a Polish spouse [75]


So, how much did she charge you? Do you get a refund if the whole EU thing doesn't work out?

Work / Mechanical engineer born in Poland, grew up the States. Go back to PL. How? [29]


A good paying job in the US is nothing to spit at, they don't make so many of those anymore. My advice would be to avoid personal entanglements (no whoops! pregnancies) reduce expenditures and save up some bank while becoming literate in Polish. It's easy to find Polish newspapers on the web, start reading them every day. Start listening to Polish radio over the internet (esp talk radio). Maybe borrow some books of famous Polish literature in Polish from relatives. Keep it up until you can easily read newspapers like Rzeczpospolita and/or past and current authors and understand Polish financial news.

After a year or two of polishing your formal, professional Polish (as opposed to informal dinner table Polish) you might be in shape to actually find or start a business here and you'll have some resources so that you don't have to teach (if you don't want to).

UK, Ireland / Are the working class in the UK now shunned in the 'new' Poland? [53]


The only way JK could 'redress' the imbalance would be to impoverish the west. He knows (and cares) nothing about the creation and maintenance of wealth.

Kommie has his faults, but his ultimate goal seems to be to raise all the boats, while the Duck wants to drain the harbor.

Life / As EuroPride visits Warsaw - is it the start of overdue social change in Poland? (homosexuality promotion) [144]


That's really got to be just about the stupidest thing you've ever written. And it's not like there's no strong competition either......

Language / Do Poles prefer US American or UK English language? [147]


I would be completely okay with calling my language American (and tweaking the spelling to make it more distinct). I feel about spoken British English roughly the way Norwegians probably feel about written Danish - yeah, I can understand it, but it's not really my language.

Life / Second hand English bookshop in Warsaw [7]

There's a Polish used book store (antykwariat) on Ujazdowska, just a little south of Plac 3 Krzyży. There are two entrances and I forget which has an English section but it used to cover almost a whole wall (though I haven't been there in a long time).

There's also another Polish used book store with a lot of English books near Plac Konstytucji (maybe on piekna or koszykowa?) near lwowska and poznanska.

News / New cross war in Warsaw [530]


For Polish politicians, absolutely.

News / What awaits Poland after EU surrender [14]


No, because the threat comes from a finite set of private individuals who would be acting against the laws of the country they're in.

Laws that make homosexuality a punishable crime are a different matter entirely.

Is there potential for abuse of granting asylum to homosexuals from countries where it's illegal? Yes, there's potential for abuse in any kind of situation regarding asylum, that's no reason to vicariously support barbaric legal systems like those of Iran or much of Sub-Saharan Africa.