Kurhhan on 15/12/2015 at 17:57
Quote Posted by Judith
As demonstrated above, when Poles don't have a common enemy to unite against, they hate each other's guts, whatever the reason. And I hate those Poles ;)
And I hate guys like you who overall characterized compatriots in bad way. From small exchange of words above, making big overall bad words about nation. Only looking for an opportunity to kick compatriots.
Queue on 15/12/2015 at 18:48
How many Poles does it take to make a forum thread obnoxious?
bukary on 15/12/2015 at 18:58
Quote Posted by Queue
How many Poles does it take to make a forum thread obnoxious?
Two.
Voltaire: 'One Pole - a charmer, two Poles - a brawl; three Poles - ah, that's the Polish Question.'
;)
Tony_Tarantula on 15/12/2015 at 22:57
Quote Posted by demagogue
I think some of the reaction was the fact it was the West's Golden Child that had this that made it seem so bad. Compare Greece which also had a kook rightist turn, and people were practically expecting it, of course it would, lie it had already become unhinged as it was.
First off: be a bit careful believing what Zakaria says. He has a very pro-USA establishment mindset and it shows. Actually scratch that. If there's a conflict between what you read in American press and what you read in the EU press, go with what the EU press says...all other things being equal of course.
Secondly the "kook rightism" was the natural outcome. If you look at things from a long term historical perspective governments typically enter a growth phrase mid-late into a country's lifecycle. A public sector waves looks like a growing government with what would typically be described as "left wing" policies, and at the end of the cycle the system goes through an economic implosion. People's natural reaction to that is to blame the establishment which is typically exarcerbated because governments react by attacking their own economy. The counter-reaction is always a right wing nationalist movement:
Short version: kooky right wingers are the usual outcome of liberal government.
There's a very good Atlantic article that describes some of the phenomenon here: (
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/)
Does this snippet seem like its describing anything familiar?
Quote:
Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or—here's a classic Kremlin bailout technique—the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large.
That said I still need to visit Poland...and more of Eastern Europe in general. I have a few misfit acquaintances who went over there and had nothing but positive things to say about the people, their experience at work the food, and the entertainment. They also lvoed the women, which might mean more to some of you all than it does to me.
Tony_Tarantula on 15/12/2015 at 23:10
Quote Posted by Melan
Ultimately, beyond the usual political horse race, one of the root causes the voters are punishing establishment parties is that the advantages and disadvantages of transition have been shared very unequally in the last 25 years. Urban elite groups in large cities have reaped the benefits, while the social and geographic peripheries have lost out, and have no realistic hope of catching up to a desirable "European" level of development and standards of living. That's not just true in post-socialist countries, since we live in an era of super-concentrations where metropolitan areas emerge as the big winners, and smaller cities as well as rural areas are left behind, but it is a very pressing concern in Central and Eastern Europe. Even in a relatively successful country like Poland, the divisions between "Poland A" and "Poland B" are striking. In Hungary, the downfall of the elite was even more severe due to their catastrophic mismanagement of the economy and the abandonment of the areas outside the capital - the symptoms are different in each country, but the root causes are similar. Dissatisfaction with one's lot, alienation, a feeling of not being represented, etc.
It is easy to write off disappointed people as misinformed, ignorant or plain evil (as it goes in various newspapers), but the voters have legitimate concerns that were not being addressed, and exercised their right to choose a different group of crooks to represent them. Whether the new government can and will change things for the better is another question - maybe they will, maybe not. I have no great illusions. But there is a deep social discontent lurking within people, and until it is somehow addressed, we will see more challenges to the political consensus. In Hungary, there was a young politician in 1989, who coined the slogan "
To Europe, but all of us!" He was called a populist and a naive dreamer by the various experts of the time, and died shortly afterwards under suspicious circumstances (after calling for the accountability of the former secret service apparatus), but I think he was onto something.
Thank you Melan, at least someone out there understands whats happening. It's on a global scale too: there's a reason why the leading candidates in America are Donald Trump on the Republican part and Bernie Sanders on the Democrat part. Both of them are running an strongly anti-establishment platforms. In both cases they're free to say relatively outrageous things(although the nod goes to Trump here) secure in the knowledge that the resulting attacks from establishment media outlets will be beneficial. People hate the establishment so much that they interpret establishment attacks on a candidate as the good thing.
The scary part is that we're not even done yet. Wait until we see the combined effects of US deflation and rising interest rates: it's going to utterly devastate debt investors, which is already a shaky platform to begin with. A few months ago I talked to a European bond trader who mentioned that it can take days to offload a portfolio of EU bonds and it's not getting any better.
van HellSing on 18/12/2015 at 12:00
So, in the news, the current defense minister (nutjob and conspiracy freak) pretty much broke into a NATO counterintelligence center under cover of night using a copied key. Yeah.
Manwe on 19/12/2015 at 10:39
Good for them. This should be the priority of any sovereign nation. NATO, the US and the UN should be classified as terrorist organisations and kicked the fuck out of our countries. These things have no place in a democracy. If only our people weren't so brainwashed here and we could do the same.
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242 on 19/12/2015 at 14:10
Quote Posted by Manwe
Good for them. This should be the priority of any sovereign nation. NATO, the US and the UN should be classified as terrorist organisations and kicked the fuck out of our countries.
WTF. You're even don't understand how lucky you are. Look at us, Ukraine I mean. No NATO, no any substantial presence or interests of the US. It simply made us an easy prey for the eastern imperialists. I'd prefer to live in a country under those "terrorist organisations" you hate.
North Korea is another example of your ideal of a sovereign nation it seems. You endorse a world order where the whole world can't do anything with a small clique of crazy degenerates and sadists who literally torment millions of people.
