News / Poland to reject Snowden asylum bid [55]


Behind what?

News / American SM-3 ballistic missile site in Poland by 2018 [86]


The only ones who think Iran's nuclear threat is real is the US and its allies, not the rest of the world, the rest of the world regards the US as the greatest threat.

The only reason the US has named Iran's nuclear program as the threat is that the US is afraid that Iran may be the first country that would oppose the right to threaten anyone with destruction, anywhere without threat of retaliation.

History / Comparing Poland's communist-era slogans and propoganda with modern day concepts [23]

Propaganda: Power and Persuasion - a major British Library exhibition lifting the lid on the ways governments across the planet have attempted to influence your thoughts for over 100 years.

Noam Chomsky: That's our version of socialist realism; it's basically the same.

youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I

News / American SM-3 ballistic missile site in Poland by 2018 [86]


Oil's Critical Leverage and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

India and Pakistan are now joint observers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which, if it works, will tend to bring about closer integration of the Asian countries altogether. So is Iran, and the Central Asian states, China of course, and Russia too. So it's basically the whole region except for South Korea has joined. And Japan probably won't join.

Asia and Pacific

UK, Ireland / Study about Polish immigrants in England [29]


When I think of Polish, I think of:

Wouldn't it be better if you would phrase your question like this?

What do you think about the Polish migrant workers?

UK, Ireland / Scots better than Poles? [41]

...These people are simply believing what they have been told-that the kilt is a medieval garment-and accepting that at face value. We cannot blame people for suffering from these misconceptions. It is what they have been taught by the poorly researched "myths" that pass for Scottish history.


Al-Khwarizmi also wrote a treatise on Hindu-Arabic numerals. The Arabic text is lost but a Latin translation, "Algoritmi de numero Indorum" in English "Al-Khwarizmi on the Hindu Art of Reckoning" gave rise to the word algorithm deriving from his name in the title as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately the Latin translation (translated into English) is known to be much changed from al-Khwarizmi's original text (of which even the title is unknown)."

BBC Science and Islam 1 - The Language of Science

Abu Ja'far Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi was an Arab, probably from what is now Southern Uzbekistan, who taught at the Caliph's Palace of Wisdom in Baghdad in the 9th Century, and is one the most important mathematicians in history. Through Latin translations of his work, al-Khwarizmi introduced to Europe the Hindu-Arabic base 10 numerals - the use of which came to be known as algorithm in English. He is also considered the 'inventor' of both zero and the decimal point.

UK, Ireland / Scots better than Poles? [41]

The History of the Kilt stretches back to at least the end of the 16th century....
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_kilt

The Encyclopædia Britannica says the word is Scandinavian in origin.

The Scots word derives from the Old Norse kjalta, from Norse settlers who wore a similar, pleated garment.

Language / Tusk's uvular 'r' when speaking in Polish [49]


I couldn't agree more. He could have been an excellent professional soccer player. Being a politician, he wasted his talent.

Language / Tusk's uvular 'r' when speaking in Polish [49]


Uvular R is not one of the phonological and phonetic characteristics of Kashubian.
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Język_kaszubski#W.C5.82a.C5.9Bciwo.C5.9Bci_j.C4.99zyka_kaszubskiego

It must be about Mr Tusk's fatuously haughty, aristocratic air he is exuding.

Language / Tusk's uvular 'r' when speaking in Polish [49]


nonsensopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Donald_Tusk

Language / Tusk's uvular 'r' when speaking in Polish [49]

a false track

That's the official version of Tusk's unsavoury first name:

Julianna Tusk (babcia) wyjechała w młodości za granicę i ponoć zachwyciła się pewnym brytyjskim lordem o imieniu Donald. Dlatego tak dała na imię swemu synowi, który z kolei przekazał je własnemu dziecku.

So we are once again on the aristocratic track.

Language / Tusk's uvular 'r' when speaking in Polish [49]


To roll one's "r's" as the French do was once considered an aristocratic preserve, so-called grasejowanie. Watch the video making fun of this pronunciation, particularly Ludwik Sempoliński's (starozakonny książe) part faking that mania: żądam satysfacji z bRonią w Ręku...

Watch from 7:00 time stamp:

UK, Ireland / Why can't unemployed Polish people on benefits just leave UK and go home please? [240]

Why can't unemployed Polish people on benefits just go home please?

Because as Walter Benjamin wrote at the beginning of the fascist era:

Nur um der Hoffnungslosen willen ist uns die Hoffnung gegeben.
It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

So if you deport a bunch of Romanians who were not working and then a bunch of Poles then you will find themselves at the beginning of the fascist era. So keep the Poles as your most precious treasure - a gift from Poland.

History / FDR and Americas communist insurgency affecting Poland [35]


You mean Immigration Act of 1924 and immigration restrictions postulated by the United States Immigration Commission also called the Dillingham Commission.

You mean not FDR but Theodor Roosevelt and he rather stayed cool and rational in all this madness. "He advised against discriminating on the basis of national-origin or religious beliefs, instructing both Houses to judge immigrants on the "individual quality of the individual man."

A quote:

The directory expounded undesirable qualities of southern and eastern Europeans. Slavs possessed a fanaticism "in religion, carelessness as to the business virtues of punctuality and often honesty, [and were prone to] periods of besotted drunkenness [and] unexpected cruelty." The classification of Jews emphasized facial characteristics to denote race, a propensity to live in cities, non-Aryan ancestry, and, incorporating the Shylock stereotype, "millions in wealth."

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4501]

Siejka - 1430 w grupie nazwisk pochodzących od podstawy siej-, por. staropolskie siejać 'siać', sieja 'ryba łososiowata'.

from root *sæ- "to sow," from PIE root *se- "to sow"
etymonline.com/index.php?term=seed&allowed_in_frame=0

The suffix -ke/ka—as in Rilke, Kafka, Krupke, Mielke, Renke, Schoepke—hints at Slavic roots. Such names, often considered "German" today, stem from the eastern parts of Germany and former German territory spreading eastward from Berlin (itself a Slavic name) into today's Poland and Russia, and northward into Pomerania (Pommern, and another dog breed: Pomeranian). The Slavic -ke suffix is similar to the Germanic -sen or -son, indicating patrilinear descent—from the father, son of. (Other languages used prefixes, as in the Fitz-, Mac-, or O' found in Gaelic regions.) But in the case of the Slavic -ke, the father's name is usually not his Christian or given name (Peter-son, Johann-sen) but an occupation, characteristic, or location associated with the father (krup = "hulking, uncouth" + ke = "son of" = Krupke = "son of the hulking one").

UK, Ireland / London is Poland's 24th largest city [78]

Chronicle of the deeds of Richard I
Richard of Devizes

UK, Ireland / London is Poland's 24th largest city [78]

When you reach England, if you come to London, pass through it quickly, for I do not at all like that city. All sorts of men crowd together there from every country under the heavens. Each race brings its own vices and its own customs to the city. No-one lives in it without falling into some sort of crime. Every quarter of it abounds in grave obscenities. The greater a rascal a man is, the better a man he is accounted... Behold, I prophesy to you: whatever evil or malicious thing that can be found in any part of the world, you will find in that one city... You will meet with more braggarts there than in all France; the number of parasites is infinite. Actors, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, Moors, flatterers, pretty boys, effeminates, pederasts, singing and dancing girls, quacks, belly-dancers, sorceresses, extortioners, night-wanderers, magicians, mimes, beggars, buffoons: all this tribe fill all the houses.

Miasto to zupełnie mi się nie podoba. Mieszkają w nim ludzie najróżniejszego pokroju, którzy pochodzą ze wszelkich możliwych krajów, a każda rasa przynosi własne przywary i obyczaje. Nie można w tym mieście żyć nie splamiwszy się jakimś występkiem, niezliczeni bowiem są w mieście pasożyci: aktorzy, błaźni, zniewieściali młodzieńcy, ciemnoskórzy pochlebcy, efebii, pederaści, śpiewające i tańczące dziewczęta, czarownicy, ludzie trudniący się wyłudzaniem pieniędzy, lunatycy, magowie, aktorzy mimiczni, żebracy.

History / Polish Food Stamps of the Communist Era [13]


"To co było to się nie zdarzyło choć w pamięci mojej trwa...."

Memories of Things that never happened

tekst 21 postulatów do przeczytania.

Language / How would you say "I like ____" [8]


Lubię....

The Polish language is so-called pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping"); i.e. personal pronouns are omitted in normal unmarked use - in this case I can infer the pronoun from the first person ending "-ę". If I'd say "Ja lubię" than what I really say is "I do (really) like it".

Life / era chamstwa - era of boorishness? [5]

Diary: 1957-1961 - page 118

The idol of the people is utility, and the idol of the aristocracy is pleasure. To be useful and unpleasant- is the goal of every robot and specialist. To be so useful as to be able to be unpleasant- is their dream. The dream of aristocrats is the diametrical opposite: to be so pleasant as to be able to be useless. As for me, I claim and record this as one of the canons of my knowledge of human nature: he who wants to please people has easier access to humanity than he who merely wishes to be a useful servant.

UK, Ireland / Polish in Uk are some of the hardest working and nice people [37]


How being called an Easter European can be an insult?

UK, Ireland / Are british getting ready to expell "Eastern Europeans" ? [16]


It is outdated, 18th century concept:

The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners in his The Outline of History of Mankind (1785). In Meiners' unique racial classification, there were only two racial divisions (Racen): Caucasians ("white and beautiful") and Mongolians ("brown and ugly"). These terms were used as a collective representative of what Meiners personally regarded as good looking and far less attractive, based solely on the appearance of the skin of the face, for example the Germans and the Tartars he considered Caucasian, and the best looking, while Jews, Slavs and Native Americans as Mongolian, and ugly in the face.

If you want to know something about the ethnogenis of Slaves just read what Walter Pohl, ethongenesist himself, is writing on the subject:

Traditional Germanic societies had virtually split up into an active, aggressive part that stimulated - and fulfilled - the Roman demand for military manpower on the one hand; and those staying behind as deprived peasants, unable to cling to the ancient rural traditions that gave their existence a name and a meaning. This gap was filled by the Slavs. They re-established the old bipolarity between a more or less self-sufficient "barbarian" periphery and the Roman world.

kroraina.com/bulgar/pohl_etnicity.html

News / British senior politician compares Poland to South Africa during apartheid [129]


Not true. Only part of Poland is like that, that which is full of infiriority complex, which seems to me the real question to be addressed and nobody has done it yet.

News / British senior politician compares Poland to South Africa during apartheid [129]


You are preaching to the pope. Tell me how could I more agree with you.

News / British senior politician compares Poland to South Africa during apartheid [129]


He is right!

Racism in Victorian Britain - Professor Richard J Evans, Gresham College history lecture
youtube.com/watch?v=i81r_Wj-90s

News / British senior politician compares Poland to South Africa during apartheid [129]


You may be right. Let's make a deal now, you will be saying your mea culpa, the Poles theirs. OK?

News / Don't go to Poland ... because you could end up coming back in a coffin [313]


Donald Tusk, our PM, a soccer player himself should sacrifice his hobby for the better side of life - reading books, singing songs, not all patriotic ones and the like; some day there will be people ruling Poland more of that kind I hope.

BTW, that soccer disease came from England. Am I right?

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


Give us some sense what is like for Greek people to consistently and constantly for the past couple of years hear themselves refer to by many people in the rest of the world as freeloaders and tax evaders and that kind of thing?

This is the one thing that unites all Greeks - a distaste for being painted as the overreachers, the spendthrift, insufferables of the world who are bringing the global economy, at least the European economy down with them... The dignity - this is the greatest deficit that the Greek people feel in their bones - the fact that they are not feeling dignified any more that their sense of dignity has been taken away from them.

You know the players though; is there any out there who you think could restore Greek dignity?

I think that there are very few politicians in Greece, active politicians, who have the guts, to put it bluntly, to do the only one thing that could restore dignity. And the only one thing that could restore dignity is to look into the eyes of Mrs. Merkel, look into the eyes of German hardworking tax payers and say: No more loans to a government because those loans are not being used in order to reenergize our Greek economy, they are being used in order to pay bankers. Bankers are insolvent, and your money is being thrown into the black holes of a banking system that is insolvent.

We are comatose, don't follow us down that road. A politician that does say that of behalf of the Greek people to our northern European brothers and sisters would restore Greek dignity and I can't see such a politician emerging as a leader in our country.

Yanis Varoufakis: The Greek Gauntlet

youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C0JkSmoyYIY

News / Should Poles care who becomes French President or is it irrelevant? [45]


Yes, sure. Here goes the summary:

Mr Hollande is as cynical as his 'socialist' predecessor. And the gist of what has been written above about Mr Mitterrand can be shorten to what he said about himself: born a conservative and would die one, but managed to become a Socialist in the meantime. What Mr Hollande is saying that he is going to do after the election is not only irrelevant to Poland but to France as well.

Sorry, but to get to know something about history even my long post is much too short.

History / Origins of Polish Slavs [138]

I find an interesting article[/url] by Walter Pohl, an Austrian historian, who is an expert in ethnogenesis:

Traditional Germanic societies had virtually split up into an active, aggressive part that stimulated - and fulfilled - the Roman demand for military manpower on the one hand; and those staying behind as deprived peasants, unable to cling to the ancient rural traditions that gave their existence a name and a meaning. This gap was filled by the Slavs. They reestablished the old bipolarity between a more or less self-sufficient "barbarian" periphery and the Roman world. It has often been argued that their apparent "primitiveness" made them a victim to any foreign intervention.

kroraina.com/bulgar/pohl_etnicity.html