Life / Poles' atttiude towards broken Polish [9]

Some nations feel flattered and happy to hear a foreigner trying to speak their language and bend over backwards to understand them and compliment him on how well he is doing.

Others are resentful when a foreigner mangles their beautiful national tongue and may react by pretending they don't understand or ridiculing him for it.

What has been your experience with Poles in this regard?

Food / How natural is food in Poland? [25]

I wonder if factory-made Polish food nowadays is any less chemicalised than what is sold in the West. Reading the labels on Polish products makes one's head stand on end. It may be convneiently hiddne beneath a flap of packaging material or in very tiny print, barely legible without a magnifying glass. Then you find words such as stabilizator, regulator kwasowości, emulgator, wzmacniacz smaku, aromat B239, dioforan disodowy, wodorowęglan amonu, wodortlenek sodu, substancje spulchniające, and all kinds of ethyl phenylglycidate, ferric sodium pyrophosphate, E 503, E 500 , E 40, etc. which don't ring a bell to anyone without a chemistry degree. There are also stealth descriptions such as nature-identical, NATURAL FRUIT FLAVOURS, cotnains Real Fruit Juice, or ALL NATURAL INGREDIENTS and NO PRESERVATIVES ADDED. This does not mean there are no harmful additives in the product. By using these words, the manufacturer hopes you'll think these are healthy, natural products and buy them. NEVER FORGET - THE FOOD INDUSTRY HAS ONLY ONE CONCERN: Maximum $$$$$, €€€€€, ₤₤₤₤₤, zł zł zł zł zł...

The FDA and similar instituions ion optehr countries test these ingredients individually and approves them. They do not test interaction of countless chemical additives we ingest in different foods each day that can cause cancer and other problems. Here is a useful link:

healthyeatingadvisor.com/food-additives.html

Life / Czas honoru (Time of honoru) TV serial [38]

Anybody watch 'Czas honoru' -- a well-made and very interesting Polish historical serial. The first part was set in the Nazi occupation, and now each current episode highjlights the early year os the Soivet-installed puppet state (PRL). Interestingly, the same people who had been Gestapo informers now work for the UB. Once a snitch, always a snitch -- I reckon.

News / A new AWS (Poland Solidarity Movement)? [54]

Yestrday's Awaken Poland! march has given rise to disucssion about the country's political future. Some are mulling the prospect of creating a major formation in the AWS mode combining Soldiarnosc, PiS and theTrwam-Maryja community with room for Solidary Poland and other groupings and associations committed to traditonal values (God, honour, homeland) and hoenst governemnt. Its still too early to predict whether such thinking will coalesce into a substantive movement, but that cannot be ruled out. It would be great if Poland could be ruled by a clean-hands, honest, trasnparent and decent formation in the service of the entire nation, not just its ruthless and often shady, money and power-hungry elites.

The AWS up till then was the only governtment that lasted an entire term and succeeded in that short space of time in carrying out four major reforms. Unfortunatley, the post-commies scrubbed Buzek's (kasa chorych) health reform and created in its place the National Health Fund so it could put its party comrades into fat-cat jobs in its central and regional structures.