History / Poland's January Uprisings of 1863 [86]

Poland's January Uprisings of 1863

On 5 August 1864, 150 years ago to the day, Romuald Traugutt, the dictator of the January Uprising, was hanged near the Warsaw Citadel.

Po polsku / Ruscy sieją propagandę na polskich portalach? [29]


Ale mimo wszystko mniej niż dawniej i nie takiego kalibru.

History / What Hitler really thought about Poles? Hitler's letter to Himmler 1944 [111]

Czeslaw Milosz's book for you to read

The colored peoples did not suspect, when they were subjugated by the white man, that they were already avenged at the moment of their fall. The conquerors returned home with their greed and converted it into an idea of supremacy over inferior races- even white races. That idea acquired a life of its own and was found not only among advocates of naked force but also, in a veiled form, among many democrats. In the experimental laboratory known as the Government General, the Nazis divided the local population into two categories: Jews and Poles.

Life / The Polish Dream - move out from Poland as fast as possible [73]


Joseph E. Stiglitz: Gdyby w 1935 r. zapytał pan, kiedy skończy się Wielki Kryzys, który zaczął się w 1929 r., nikt by panu nie powiedział, że w 1939 r., kiedy wybuchnie wojna i Ameryka zacznie się zbroić. Nie wiadomo, czym by się to skończyło, gdyby nie ta wojna.

Jacek Żakowski: A czym mogło się skończyć?

Joseph E. Stiglitz:: Totalną katastrofą. W 1936 r. sytuacja zaczęła się odrobinę poprawiać. W 1937 r., pod potężną polityczną presją na zrównoważenie budżetu, prezydent Roosevelt wprowadził delikatne cięcia. Recesja od razu wróciła. Roosevelt nie miał już wystarczającego poparcia politycznego, żeby uruchomić nowy program stymulacji. Gdyby nie wojna, moglibyśmy nie wiadomo jak długo tonąć w tej recesji. Jak teraz Europa.

This is an English language forum. Please translate or it go to the bin, thank you.

History / Film "Wałęsa" - historical reality vs myth - controvercies [103]



Ja panu mogie nogie podać...

Language / -ski/-ska, -scy/ski, -wicz - Polish surnames help [185]


If you're going back as far as the ancient Egypt then the Polish surnames' endings go back also the ancient time:

Proto-Indo-European *-iskos

Descendants
Balto-Slavic: *-iškas
Latvian: -isks
Lithuanian: -iškas
Slavic: *-ьskъ
Germanic: *-iskaz

Language / IS "MURZYN" word RACIST? [686]


murzyn

1. Murzyn «Black person»
2. pot. «(deeply) tanned man»
3. pot. «one who works for another without revealing his identity - a ghostwriter»
4. pot. «one who works very hard and is exploited»

It may be offensive depending on the intention of those who use it and sensitivity of those who are called by it. It is etymologically neutral as calling a white person a white man.

Life / Halloween vs All Saints' Day in Poland [48]


The Eve of All Saints, last night of October, the last night of the year in the old Celtic calendar, where it was Old Year's Night, a night for witches. A pagan holiday given a cursory baptism and sent on its way.

Thomas Cahill acknowledge that preserving in the Christendom of the "unique Irish psychological identity is one of the miracles of the Irish history". The Irish did not trouble themselves too much with eradicating the pagan influences (today's feast of Halloween is only the best know example of it), monks learned the Latin and even the Greek language, copied endangered Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian works of culture, but they also preserved their native literature. "Thanks to such copyists we inherited the rich treasure of the Old-Irish literature, the oldest preserved European literature written in the language of the local people." The Slavic Poland did not have such a good fortune as the Celtic Ireland.

The Christianizing of Ireland

Law / Weapon Law in Poland: what kinds of knives are legal? [35]


The kind you wouldn't use to kill someone despite your worst intentions.

News / Poles start to feel arrogant and superior to Southern Europeans [182]




Sandomierz blood libel legends

Also read about an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.

Does it make any sense for you?

News / Poles start to feel arrogant and superior to Southern Europeans [182]

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

News / Poles start to feel arrogant and superior to Southern Europeans [182]


For now the latest craze is is to remain on the cutting edge of debauchery.that is to sleep with 100 000 men - every one a devil of a kind.

News / Poles start to feel arrogant and superior to Southern Europeans [182]


The Christians prefer humility to supremacism of any kind.

For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

News / Poles start to feel arrogant and superior to Southern Europeans [182]


If there is a trait of character or a vice for Poles to reproach themselves with it's the mindless imitation of the way of thinking of others:

Blood libel:
bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/history/350.shtml

In 1144, Jews in Norwich were accused of a ritual murder. A rumour sprung up that a Christian child had been kidnapped by Jews, tied to a cross and stabbed in the head to simulate Jesus' crown of thorns.

While the Norwich account did not contain the accusation that the child's blood was drained and was then ritually drunk at Passover, and so does not constitute the full blood libel, it is a story of the same type and is generally seen as the entry point into England of such accusations.

The rumour was false - for one thing, the Torah forbids the eating and drinking of any form of blood - but it became the first recorded case in Europe of 'blood libel'. The accusation was enough to get Jewish leaders in the town executed.

The other main charge that early 11th-century Christians levelled at Jews was that of host desecration. The host is the wafer used during Christian communion; England was Catholic at this time and to Catholics the host is literally Jesus's flesh, so mistreating it was an incredibly serious thing to do.

Jews were variously accused of stabbing the host wafer with pins, stepping on it, stabbing it with a knife until Jesus' blood flowed out and nailing it in a symbolic re-enactment of the crucifixion.

Jews were also accused by their Christian neighbours of poisoning wells and spreading the plague. Each fresh claim gave rise to new massacres.

Accusations of blood sacrifice continued in the 12th and 13th centuries:
1181 - accusations were made in Bury, St Edmunds, Suffolk
1183 - accusations were made in Bristol
1192 - accusations were made in Winchester
1244 - London Jews were accused of ritual murder

In 1247, Pope Innocent IV ordered a study into the charges brought against the Jews. The investigation found no evidence to justify their persecution.

The Jewish community was vindicated by four more Popes but accusations, trials and executions continued to rise.

But that ancient way of thinking even among most backward looking Polish Catholics is the relic of the past mentality.

History / Film "Wałęsa" - historical reality vs myth - controvercies [103]


One of his cooperates: now politician and former trade union activist Jerzy Borowczyk

Najważniejszy strajk w historii Polski

The most important strike in Poland's history

The 39:02 time stamp 31.08.2013

Anna Maria Giza: Co z tymi postulatami: mieszkania, bezdomni, bezrobotni?

What about those strikers' demands: apartments, the homeless, the unemployed?

Jerzy Borowczyk: Postulat 19: skrócić czas oczekiwania, jak pamiętam, na mieszkanie...

The demand number 19: decrease of the waiting period for apartments, as I recollect...

Patryk Pleskot: Na ile to było wiarygodne? Na ile wy myśleliście, że to będzie zrealizowane? Bo to nie jest tak prosto? To trzeba by było wybudować te mieszkania, prawda?

How far was this credible? How far did you believe it's feasible/realistic? Because it is not so simple? Well, the apartments had to be built somehow, didn't they?

Jerzy Borowczyk: Po pierwsze, ten strajk był w innym ustroju. Myśmy tej władzy chcieli dopiec. Myśmy chcieli ją osłabić. Więc żądając 30 lat pracy dla kobiety, a dla mężczyzny 35, już wtedy wiedzieliśmy, że to jest NIEMOŻLIWE.

In the first place, the strike was in a different economic system. We wanted to hurt them to the quick, the authorities I mean. We wanted to weaken them. So by demanding the working period of 30 years for women or 35 years for men we at that time already knew that it was IMPOSSIBLE.

Anna Maria Giza: I... 50 i 55 lat emerytura.

And the retirement age of women 50 and of men 55

Jerzy Borowczyk: Wiedzieliśmy, że to jest niemożliwe, ale te postulaty były w innym ustroju. Dzisiaj takich postulatów pewnie w zakładach pracy, w firmach, ludzie nie będą zgłaszali.

We knew that it was impossible, but the demands were in a different economic system. Now, most probably, such demands nobody will make.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


Would you like to live in the world of the mad mathematician:

This is the world of isolated and mindless people. I'd rather live in the world of philosophers of older days, questioning and examining their lives at any moment:

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

It is better to live your own life than mindlessly follow others ideas for a good life.
Think for yourself. Poles mostly do. You are talking as if you have given up that privilege of thinking for yourself.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


Chomsky on the 500 years of western imperialism since Christopher Columbus

Communism under western eyes:

The animating concern was not Stalin's awesome crimes, but the apparent successes in development with their broad appeal, and the possibility that the Russians might be "flirting with the thought" of lending support to "aspirations of the common man" in the West, and subjugated and oppressed people everywhere. The failure of East Europe to resume its traditional role as a supplier of food and raw materials to the West compounded these concerns. The problem is not crimes, but insubordination, a fact illustrated by a host of gangsters from Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin to Saddam Hussein. It was not Stalin's crimes that troubled Western leaders.

youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BadP-1QlgVA

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]

After the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia few Poles would have condemned him for fighting the UPA.
The nationalist passions were ubiquitous at the time.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]

Jaruzelski's official website states that from the fall of 1945 until 1946, Jaruzelski took part in "fighting bandits of the armed underground and Ukrainian nationalist" in order to "defend the Polishness of Hrubieszow Land".

Let it be stated here clearly: the Party
Descends directly from the fascist Right.

And who recognized that the way to power
Was to blow on the coals of national passions?

But he was a soldier of lower rank not a general then.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


Jaruzelski's early life and military career. Something about the Home Army but nothing about Ukrainians. Where did you get it from?

He served in the Soviet-sponsored First Polish Army during the war. He participated in the Soviet military takeover of Warsaw and the Battle of Berlin, both of which occurred in 1945. By the time the war ended that year, he had gained the rank of lieutenant. He "further credited himself in Soviet eyes" by engaging in combat against the Polish Home Army, an anti-communist organization, from 1945 to 1947.

After the end of the war, Jaruzelski graduated from the Polish Higher Infantry School, an event which was followed by a graduation from the General Staff Academy. He joined Poland's communist party, the Polish United Workers Party, in 1948 and started to denounce people for the Soviet supervised Main Directorate of Information of the Polish Army using the cover name Wolski. In the first post-war years, he was among the military fighting the Polish anti-communist guerrillas ("cursed soldiers") in the Świętokrzyskie region. A BBC News profile of Jaruzelski says that his career "took off after the departure [from Poland] in 1956 of the Soviet Field Marshal, Konstantin Rokossovsky", who had been Poland's Commander in Chief and Minister of Defence.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


Excuse me, but if so, then you have been in the business too long for that shiit!

You're trying to arouse emotions in your story. Can you be more detached in telling it.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


Let's start with a warning from Jesus: Judge not, that you be not judged.

It does not matter much if they did not compromise the Christian values; in Poland it was possible because, as Polonius3 said, Poland was the freest barrack in the Socialist camp to some extent due to the Catholic Church. One of those values is forgiveness, truth and reconciliation.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


They, secularized countries, just yielded to power, they had to, just as Poland did. And there were some in Poland who collaborated willingly with the Stalinist regime although they declared themselves to be Catholics, for example Bolesław Piasecki and his PAX movement.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolesław_Piasecki

What do you think of him and his movement?

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


I do not think that those most secular countries were overcome by the religious fervour of Stalinism. As you know, the man's only education, who gave the name to the movement, was a religious one: first at the Gori church school and then at a seminary in Tbilisi.

The diary of Andrei Arzhilovsky:

The portraits of our leaders are now displayed the same way icons used to be: a round portrait, framed and attached to a pole.
Very convenient. Hoist it on to your shoulder and you're on your way. It 's just the same as people used to do for church holidays.

They had their activists then, we have ours now. Different paths, the same old bloody nonsense.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


Comparison of the so-called special lustration court in Poland and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.

The New York Times
nytimes.com/2007/01/22/opinion/22osiatynski.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0 - Poland Makes Witch Hunting Easier
By WIKTOR OSIATYNSKI

Warsaw, January 22, 2007

Politics breeds conflict. And that is why politicians should leave some sensitive realms of morality alone. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was separated from contemporary politics. In Poland, the past has became prey for today's hunters, proving again that whenever history falls into the hands of politicians, distorted truth becomes an instrument for their own goals.


Czesław Miłosz w "Traktacie poetyckim":

[i]Niech tutaj będzie wreszcie powiedziane:
Jest ONR-u spadkobiercą Partia.
A poza nimi nic nigdy nie było
Prócz buntu godnych pogardy jednostek.
Któż miecz Chrobrego wydobywał z pleśni?
Któż wbijał myślą słupy aż w dno Odry?
I któż namiętność uznał narodową

Let it be stated here clearly: the Party
Descends directly from the fascist Right.
Outside of them there was never anything
But rebels whose posturing merited scorn.
Who resurrected the sword of Boleslaw the Brave?
Who drove pillars into the bottom of the Oder?
And who recognized that the way to power
Was to blow on the coals of national passions?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolesław_Piasecki - And the fascist Right was quite close to the Church, wasn't it?

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]

Who art thou, then? Part of that Power, not understood, Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good?

Faust:

Nun gut, wer bist du denn?

Mephistopheles:

Ein Teil von jener Kraft,
Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.

Maybe the other way round?

Who art thou, then?

Part of that Power, quite mad, Which always wills the Good, and always works the Bad?

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]

Just to create a diversion... and as a metaphor of games and plays of sundry people.

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


coup d'état


and GRACES OF AVANT-GARDE
nytimes.com/1986/05/26/world/1000-churches-rise-in-poland-adding-graces-of-avant-garde.html

POLISH CHURCH AWAITS POPE, BEWILDERED BY ITS NEW VIGOR

MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN, Special to the New York Times
Published: June 07, 1987

The clergy is growing here. There are now more Roman Catholic seminarians in Poland than in any country in the world. A third of all newly ordained European priests are Poles. More churches are being built in Poland than in the rest of Europe.

Jaruzelski was a communist indeed.

Kamiński told the BBC's Polish service that this was the most important meeting of my whole life. Gen Pinochet was clearly moved and extremely happy with our visit.

Having in mind of Jaruzelski's catholic education at the school of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and his positive, pro-church politics, look my previous post, he is more entitled to the gorget embossed with an image of the Virgin Mary than general Pinochet.

Moreover:

Why is this book ? Have not been said enough about martial law , its authors , or not enough of a dispute about the legitimacy of Polish pushing this tragic episode in its recent history ? Memories of the daughter of General Jaruzelski to these questions do not match . Monika Jaruzelska not take to grips with opponents of her father, defends the decision to announce against the Polish flag on television screens December 13, 1981 .

It has no ethos or pathos - Jaruzelska emphasizes in the preface to the book " The young lady companion ." - Anyone who expects a glorification or political reasons , which should be an obligation daughter communist dictator may feel disappointed - he adds.



W co się bawić? W co się bawić?
Daleka pora na pytanie to, czy bliska,
Lecz w końcu przecież trzeba będzie je postawić,
Chociaż na razie w oku tli się śmiechu iskra

Więc, chociaż wszyscy są szczęśliwi
I nic nie sugeruje zmiany,
Niech, proszę, jednak Was nie zdziwi,
Że jestem trochę zadumany

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]

The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. "Anything," he thinks, "any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose." He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom.

--George Orwell, from Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933

History / Jaruzelski vs Pinochet [120]


mediocre - 1580s; from Middle French médiocre (16c.), from Latin mediocris "of middling height or state, moderate, ordinary," figuratively "mediocre, mean, inferior," originally "halfway up a mountain," from medius "middle". As a noun, "medicore thing or person," by 1834.

middle class - 1766; as an adjective, "characteristic of the middle class" (depreciative) it dates from 1893.

bourgeois - A person belonging to the middle class

Midiocre, middle class or bourgeois, what difference? Who are you pointing at? You are pointing at yourself?


On the trail of George Orwell's outcasts
bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14372195


It was indeed an offer only and still is.
But there is a hope in the land of hope and glory:

And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_did_those_feet_in_ancient_time

youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bKaJ4b0XYmI

Dark Satanic Mills is referring to industrial revolution and its destruction of nature and human relationships.

[i]I znowuż kręcić się będą ponure szatańskie młyny
Czy zmielą też kości tych, którzy je w ruch puścili?