Eastern Europe: Olivier's sphere of influence

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Eastern Europe: Olivier's sphere of influence

«‹›2 »

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Pierogi posted:

Well then!

"Bitch I'm adorable"

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 13:26

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:38

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

They're going at it backwards.

They should keep the doctrine and avoid the bad press, while at the same time removing all regulations that make obtaining evidence illegaly illegal. "Fruit of the poisonous tree" still applies, illegally obtained evidence is still inadmissable, except all ways of obtaining evidence are legal. :shepface:

Where's my cushy government job Mr. Ziobro?

# ¿ Mar 6, 2016 11:14

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

My favourite part about this is that PIS wanted the Court to assess the new act while still following the new act. The act, I stress, changes the rules and composition of the Court.

Which means that, if the Court had still declared the act as unconstitutional (still a realistic option), this would mean that this verdict was announced by a Court that followed an unconstitutional act in their proceedings, and therefore the verdict is invalid. But if the verdict is invalid, then the law is constitutional after all. And then the verdict is valid after all, and the law is unconstitutional, but that means etc. The "four balls on the endge of a cliff" approach to law, in other words.

Of course, this is why stuff like vacatio legis exists. But the new act bypassed vacatio legis because

Fun fact: The leader of PIS is a doctor of law. :shepface:

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 19:35

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Indeed they did, the magnificent bastards.

(The context is that the PM is trying to stonewall the verdict by refusing to publish it, which is required to make it binding. So Razem decided to symbolically accelerate the process. :allears:

)

(And they even managed to get shown in the media for it, bonus!)

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 20:13

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

DrProsek posted:

Is there anything the court could do to compel the PM to publish the verdict? I guess there's the nuclear option of saying "publish it or don't, we're going forward with the assumption this verdict is binding".

Usually it's just a technicality. Keep in mind that PIS has already refused to publish once and relented eventually. For now the Chairman of the Court hasn't detailed any particular plan of action, everyone is waiting to see if it's a serious stonewall or just theatrics.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 20:41

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Birch can't break steel beams.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 17:45

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

I'm not really into Pokemon.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 18:15

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

waitwhatno posted:

What is this talk about a full NATO membership? Is it some conspiracy theory?

In the contexty of the summit, I think it's mostly a symbolic expression to make the event seem like a bigger deal than it actually is, just like hosting the Olympics makes you a real country or something.
Although you never know with Macierewicz (the minister in question), the guy is completely nuts and looks and acts like the goddamn Master.

Case in point, just one day after the aforementioned speech about closer ties with our awesome NATO allies, the guy goes on record stating that Americans have no business criticising PIS for treating the Constitutional Tribunal like a clown car, since it's absurd that "people who built their state as late as the 18th century are telling us what democracy is", whereas the Polish state totes had democratic systems as early as the 13th century (Fun Fact: There was no unified Polish state in the 13th century, as it had fragmented into a collection of Kleinstaaterei-like bickering, independent provinces).

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 13:12

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

jonnypeh posted:

What this means is if you're walking around drunk without wearing a reflector you will get fined 800 euros instead of previous 400. Without being drunk its just 40->80.

Wait, what? How is that fineable? And why is the penalty for being drunk ten times larger? You're not driving a car, it's not like your reaction time will matter when you're going 5 km/h. :psyduck:

edit - Apparently, according to Wiki, it's a thing in Finland, Latvia and Lithuania as well. What is it with the Baltics and their obsession with safety reflectors? (Replace "Baltics" with "limitrophes" if you're a Finn and you take objection to being piled together with those dirty Balts.)

Pizdec fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Mar 21, 2016

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 17:48

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Friendly Humour posted:

Yeah the thing about laws and northerners is that our cops aren't complete dickheads, so even if you broke some petty law they ain't gonna fine you unless you give them a reason by being rude. This might be hard to comprehend if you happen to live in a society where the police is the enemy of the public.

So it's basically a dead letter. Good to know it's not as idiotic as it sounds.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 19:04

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Shes Not Impressed posted:

Barring I pass all my medical stuff, I'll be heading off to Ukraine for the Peace Corps in September. Reading this thread throughout grad school has probably prepared me more for the job than anything else. One aspect of living in Eastern Europe that I don't look forward to having to deal with some of the overt anti-Semitism though.

Then you are in luck, the Muslims have largely replaced the Jews as the national scapegoat around these parts. Why, I haven't heard a good anti-Semitic tirade in weeks!

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 18:13

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

mobby_6kl posted:

I doubt any Syrian refugees are willingly going to Ukraine so he should be safe.

No gays in Russia either, yet anti-homonazi sentiments are on the rise!

And, in (very slightly) more serious news, some politicians in Poland want to build a wall on the eastern border, arguing that refugees will be coming through Ukraine once the current routes become impassable. Now, I'm not sure how that would work, given that Ukraine's outside of Schengen and there are border controls already in place, AND you need to consider that the politicians in question are from the Kukiz '15 party (Poland's UKIP), but the expectation is there.

edit - ^^^^^^ beaten like a Muslim wife!!!! :shepface:

Pizdec fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Mar 23, 2016

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 18:46

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Palpek posted:

Now that I checked - Poland accepted almost 90 thousand Chechen Muslims, no deal made out of it at all. But now these 7 thousand Syrians, holy poo poo those guys are all spies waiting to blow themselves up because Islam is a religion of intolerance you see .

Cultural differences, Syrians want death of mankind. Chechens hate Russians, basically Polish! :pseudo:

Actually, I had a Chechen living upstairs and he was the best neighbour I've ever had, then some 100% homegrown non-parents with their awful kids came in and everything turned to poo poo. Let the Musselman come as far as I'm concerned.

edit - Fuuuck, beaten again.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 19:36

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

szary posted:

It gets "better", apparently the proposed act penalises "involuntary prenatal murder", which means that if a woman miscarries she might be prosecuted because she didn't look after herself properly during the pregnancy and might have contributed to the miscarriage!

Having said that, I think this is a smoke screen - PiS dropped the abortion bomb, a shitstorm ensued and now barely anyone remembers about the constitutional crisis.

Fun fact - there are only six countries in the world that have a total ban on abortion, including Vatican City, and none of them to my knowledge include such a clause. Poland will be the only country in the world that penalises unintentional miscarriage. We're growing up to be such a unique, special, retarded snowflake. :allears:

szary posted:

Having said that, I think this is a smoke screen - PiS dropped the abortion bomb, a shitstorm ensued and now barely anyone remembers about the constitutional crisis.

Or, from another perspective, they're taking advantage of the crisis - the Tribunal, if it was still a functioning body, might have taken issue with the law, especially on the grounds of violating the right to equal treatment (by severely disenfranchising women).

Re: Russian relations chat - it's worth mentioning that far-right elements in Poland do have a weird Trump-like fascination with Putin, both for his specific policies towards the "Jew homonazi agenda" and in general for being a Stronk Leader. Still, even they prefer him as a role model than as an actual partner.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2016 22:19

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Doctor Malaver posted:

Just posting so this doesn't go unappreciated, thank you brother. :poland:

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 21:06

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

fishmech posted:

Actually is, according to the laws in many countries, and by many people who claim to be against "abortion".

Including the proposed Polish law. PIS politicians have repeatedly stated that they consider the morning-after pill a type of abortion, and women using them could certainly be persecuted under the current wording of the draft. Same with women with IUDs, actually.

Aside from that I just wanted to give you guys kudos for making Lucy Heartfilia mad at something other than Putin. Death to babies!

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 01:11

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

On the other hand, good news everyone! Internal struggles whithin the party have led PiS to increasingly distance themselves from the proposed total abortion ban, instead openly pleading the clergy to accept some other offering e.g. religion as a matura exam subject (matura = SAT tests, more or less).

Also, the national TV has been laughably bad ever since PiS purged all the staff and replaced them with party stooges. The Smolensk commemoration documentary they broadcast yesterday had a studio segment in a set so haphazardly made it visibly wobbled constantly, but the biggest blunder was a phone-in show using pre-recorded calls, which was revealed when someone forgot to turn off the autoloop.
Basically it's Kaczynski trying to be Putin and failing miserably.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 21:16

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

A Pale Horse posted:

I really can't believe that anyone except the absolute fringe of PiS believe that Smolensk was anything other than a tragic accident. What possible reason would Tusk have to kill the President who was 20 points down in the polls for re-election. It boggles the mind. These people are clinically insane or despicable cynical opportunists of the worst order. I mean, last I remember, less than a third of Poles believe in the Assassination conspiracy theory so what's their play here politically speaking? Who are they trying to appeal to?

In another bit of (not strictly related to but certainly influenced by) PiS news, a civil court rendered a verdict denying citizenship to four children of a gay couple living in the U.S. one of whom is Polish and has Polish citizenship (as well as American). Now the law in terms of citizenship is that as long as one of your parents is a citizen of Poland, you as their child have a right to citizenship. The hangup in this case is that the children's birth certificate lists both fathers as the birth parents and Polish courts refuse to accept that. They demanded to know who the children's mothers were and when they were told that would be impossible to provide because they were surrogates and didn't want their information given, the court denied the citizenship saying that it could not accept a birth certificate with two men listed on it.

Sounds like a job for the Constitutional Tribunal.

Oh.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 21:25

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

chitoryu12 posted:

We're due soon.

Wait, is this suggesting a period of non-aggression from USSR during Actual Goddamn Stalin and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then a period of aggression during the detente?

I mean it's just a cartoon I know but do some bloody research.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2016 14:14

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Xerxes17 posted:

Dammit guys, just have preferential voting for gently caress's sake

This is basically true for most of the world.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 07:24

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

cargo cult posted:

Russians were supposed to be given vouchers in state owned industries that were being privatized but of course the only people with any business experience were literal gangsters and smugglers, and welp, here we are.

Didn't Czechoslovakia get the same treatment with better results?

Dwesa posted:

I read somewhere a conspiracy theory that current popularity of beards can be attributed to secret attempts to make Europeans comfortable with muslim immigrants (and then something about muslim takeover, NWO and blah blah), because apparently beards = muslims.

What current popularity of beards?

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 16:24

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

steinrokkan posted:

The same model was used also in Poland and elsewhere, but universally it was... Problematic. There were always scammers, and even in more successful countries the losses incurred by common citizens went into the billions. The idea was to give everybody a chance to invest into select national corporations (not all businesses were offered in exchange for vouchers), but people were gullible, and often put their vouchers into mutual funds schemes whose managers took off with their money. Nowadays it's one of the privatization methods that the World Bank advises against.

I don't think it was ever used in Poland, which is why I was curious about it. I remember reading some economic papers that cited it as a factor in the Czech Republic being the success story among the EE post-communist countries, so I was wondering if there are any estimates on how many people actually kept their vouchers away from the scammers.

HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:

What is the Polish government doing now?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35581708

The best part is that one of the greatest Polish heroes, Jan Karski, used the phrase himself in his first reports about the camps, and would get 5 years were he still alive (since the law now also works retroactively for some reason?).

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 08:11

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

A White Guy posted:

I had a Polish Jewish holocaust survivor speak at my middle school when I was a wee lad, guy by the name of David Faber if you want to look him up. He was very bitter about how the Poles did absolutely nothing to help the Jews. It's important to remember the holocaust was the worst in Poland, and that wasn't just because it was the first nation occupied. The Poles may not have helped the Nazis, but they sure as poo poo didn't help the Jews.

uh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Righteous_Among_the_Nations

Wikipedia posted:

The citizens of Poland have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jews from extermination during the Holocaust in World War II. There are 6,620 Polish men and women recognized as Righteous to this day, over a quarter of the total number of 26,120[1] awards.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Poles concealed and aided hundreds of thousands of their Polish-Jewish neighbors.[2][3] Many of these initiatives were carried out by individuals, but there also existed organized networks of Polish resistance which were dedicated to aiding Jews � most notably, the Żegota organization.

Not denying the pogroms, the collaboration, all the other awful poo poo, and even that some of those who helped the Jews did so for material rather than altruistic reasons, but you may take a little less one-sided view there.

e: beaten like a Jew in Pilsudzkiland

Pizdec fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Aug 25, 2016

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 12:47

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

The Uzbek talk is fascinating, if depressing because I now have to add another black hole of misery to my metal image of the world.

Rinkles posted:

Smalec, Szmalec was another. (Lard spread is the English term?)

Sounds like something from a schmaltzy rom-com.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 04:12

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Pierogi posted:

I've watched Smolensk the movie! My review:

This was the IMDB page for it for a while:

It's been changed, though. :sigh:

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 13:34

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Friendly Humour posted:

Ah,

A reminder that Finns are Slavs after all.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 13:23

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

With how huge post-nuclear media are in EE you'd think the guy would at least have the good sense to name it the New California Republic.

Oh, wait, sorry, then it wouldn't have been taken seriously.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2016 01:53

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Volkerball posted:

https://twitter.com/marta_ter/status/782867256824979456

Anything new on this?

cyberbully posted:

And in Hungary, the Magyars held their referendum

if they think this will make any difference, any refugees assigned to that shithole would immediately migrate to Germany and other sane countries. I guess that's just another bout of the weird trend of using referendums on random legislation as political posturing at the EU (see also: Greece, Netherlands).

# ¿ Oct 5, 2016 00:28

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Discendo Vox posted:

I read a headline today about how the total abortion ban failed?

As the previous posters said, the ruling party is backpedaling hard, and it's most likely they'll drop the project or try to push through a watered-down version. The ban is political poison - support for PiS is at a new low at 29%, while the two liberal parties have 38% between the both of them. PiS likes to dismiss polls in geenral, but there's no doubt the Great Leader is pissing himself (hah!) behind the scenes at the merest chance of losing power.
The next vote will commence in about 8 hours, so we'll know more then.

However, keep in mind we've already been through this poo poo 6 months ago. Even if the thing fails to pass as it did then, there's nothing stopping the party from dipping into this well every time the ultra-conservative elements of the party or the electoral base start getting fidgety and hungry for liberal tears.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2016 01:32

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Yeah, the abortion ban was trashed. Even the ruling party voted overwhelmingly against it - out of 234 PiS MPs, 186 of them voted nay. For comparison, just two weeks ago 230 of them voted for pushing the project further down the legislative trail. It's a wonder what 2 points down in the polls do for your personal beliefs. :laffo:

However, the party has already announced that further down the line they will prepare their own bill to establish tougher abortion restrictions (the recent proposal was a citizens' initiative), so see y'all in 6 months I guess? :T

# ¿ Oct 6, 2016 11:25

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

A couple months back, before the matter became hot, PiS was a bit more forthcoming with the details i.e. that Airbus was trying to weasel out of installing the navigational systems. They've gone tight-lipped since, though.

Rinkles posted:

Somehow missed this:

Wajda died yesterday.

poo poo.

I guess tonight would be a good time to watch Kanał and raise a glass.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2016 07:15

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

A Pale Horse posted:

Its an excellent and deeply disturbing film about the cruelty and evil that nationalism spurs men to.

In that case I can't wait for it to get released in the West with the disclaimer "BUT THERE WERE GOOD POLES TOO JUST SO YOU KNOW"* like Ida was.

* I mean of course there loving were, but it's like prefacing Downfall with "KEEP IN MIND HOWEVER THAT THE CURRENT GERMAN LEADER ANGELA MERKEL IS NOT ACTIVELY KILLING JEWS AT THIS POINT IN TIME".

# ¿ Nov 4, 2016 16:35

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Grouchio posted:

I think he was joking by interpreting 'essay' as literally 'an essay for school' and referencing the fact that Poland is so hosed that such an essay would've been way too long for you to ask someone else to do it.
:goonsay:

i.e.

Baronjutter posted:

Catholicism + Nationalism + Historical Trauma + Lack of Regard for Fundamental Rights due to the Constitution Having Been Written Barely 20 Years Ago by a Commie + 90s Mass Selling of National Assets to Western Companies Now Conflated with the EU + Disillusionment with Failing Neoliberal Policies + The Entirety of the Left Being Branded Communists + Mass Emigration + ...

edit - Also, what's the latest on the Romanian situation? The last BBC reports are from around mid-February, but they mention continued protests and a failed no-confidence vote.

Pizdec fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Mar 10, 2017

# ¿ Mar 10, 2017 19:16

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

vyelkin posted:

They undermine the traditional patriarchal structure of the family and society by weakening traditional masculinity, since in this framework masculinity is most of all about power and dominance, and gay men subvert that both by making men the objects of seduction (rather than purely the subjects) and by making men the submissive partner during sex (as well as the dominant partner). That's why guys like Kadyrov don't just say that being gay is bad, they say that homosexuality literally doesn't exist in their proper traditional masculine society, because their masculinity is so strong that it could never be undermined like that.

The weird part is that some ancient societies like Rome (and modern subcultures like the prisons or the Army) have the exact same view without denouncing homosexuality as a phenomenon - gay sex is fine as long as you're the fucker rather than the fuckee.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2017 22:29

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Osmosisch posted:

I think Poland is more the anomaly here, possibly due to its relative cultural & linguistic stability over a long time, imperialistic partitionings notwithstanding. Even my tiny country has sections that just straight up don't understand each other, with one area (Frisia) being so weird that their dialect is officially a different language:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_dialects

This is from a couple of pages back, but yes, Polish is incredibly homogenous compared to most languages. This is basically due to massive resettlements of the population by the USSR after the Second World War. This created a sort of a Tower of Babel scenario, so the next generations increasingly drew upon the standard Polish variant featured on the radio and television (sometimes, the goverment's policy of normalization is cited as well). Nowadays, linguistic variation among people is mostly limited to a few linguistic quirks, and is only loosely connected to their geographical area of origin. For example, a friend of mine, who is from Łomża (Eastern Poland), uses both "prawilny" (from Russian 'pravilny' - 'right/good') and "ban" (from German 'Bahn' - 'train'). Historically, as would be expected from the geography, the former would be relegated to the eastern and Warsaw dialects, whereas the latter would be characteristic of the western Poznan dialect. Nowadays, however, it's basically random.

This means, for example, that translating a piece of media that features multiple dialects (i.e. Australian English, Cockney, Bronx) into Polish would be a huge challenge, since the only variants available to the translator to convey those differences would be standard Polish, Silesian, and the aforementioned hodgepodge of dialects which would come across as non-descript rural/folsky speech.

One could always draw upon historical sources and use specific pre-1945 dialects, but they wouldn't carry any specific connotations to the modern speaker, geographical or otherwise.

(Is this a :goonsay:

or a

? Oh well, I'll put both just in case.)

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 13:51

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Podhale dialect. I sort of mentally conflated it with Silesian, even though they only thing they have in common is being spoken in the mountainous South. Chalk it up to me being a Mazury boy. :tipshat:

While it's true that Stalin's relocation efforts were quite specific (get the folk from the lost territories in the East to the new territories in the West, done) and, in theory, should have only resulted in an emergence of a new mixed dialect in the West while preserving variation in the rest of Poland (and this is how linguistic maps compiled in the 60s and 70s present it), in practice, further population movements and the influence of the mass media diluted the language to the point where everyone except the Silesians and the Gorole speaks in a "new mixed dialect" with some individual quirks.

(There's also Kashubian and things like the Wilno dialect, but the former is basically a distinct language, the latter is spoken outside of Poland, and both are pretty much unrecognized by the Polish collective consciousness.)

Aside from that, we seem to be saying basically the same thing. :shobon:

edit - To keep it from being a Polish-centric discussion, perhaps the other former Soviet Bloc posters could chime in on how the other CE languages survived the communist regime in terms of diversity? It's barely a political topic, but I'm a sucker for linguistic stuff like this.

Pizdec fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Apr 30, 2017

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 17:43

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Tevery Best posted:

This is also something every kid who tries to translate anything for the first time in their life thinks makes perfect sense, and something you should never, ever, ever do

Why? It happens all the time in professional translations.

Flipswitch posted:

I've been learning Polish with my girlfriend to better interact with her family (and because I find it interesting and enjoyable), I do like that spelling and pronounciation seems to be consistent so far.

Treasure this one boon, and godspeed, you brave, brave man.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 12:51

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

Tevery Best posted:

Yes, bad ones. Although I honestly can't name a single one off the top of my head.

It's a choice between removing a distinction and replacing it with one that's not 100% concordant. Both aren't perfect, so I think the choice should be made on an individual basis. Stiller's translation of The Clockwork Orange and the movie Frozen (where the shop owner speaks like a Gorol) are two examples of dialect-dialect replacement that IMO worked. (also might be an interesting thing to check out for the Polish-learning goons!)

This school of translation is also practiced in other countries that dub most of their movies. I don't know how widespread it is, but I do remember reading about the Russian dub of Deadpool giving Colossus a Siberian accent.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 14:55

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

What are the actual questions?

# ¿ May 3, 2017 17:38

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:38

Pizdec: Dec 10, 2012

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Oh god, I used to be quasi-conversant in Polish and never got this.

In the same vein, as 'pić/пить' means 'to drink', then 'piwo/пиво' ('beer') literally means 'the drink'.

# ¿ May 9, 2017 08:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Eastern Europe: Olivier's sphere of influence

«‹›2 »