Poland's aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 13

And there will be another Russian revolution, not tomorrow, but probably in my lifetime.......

Not anymore. In 2014 natural growth goes to positive zone.




Hydrocarbons will be in demand even once last car with petrol or diesel engine will end in museum. Plastics, chemicals, etc, etc. Not so many as now, but oil will be produced and sold.

But tell me to where the world will move from oil? Solar/wind? You believe into that moronic tales? There is not enough "renevable" energy comes from the Sun to keep civilisation going even at current level.

Atomic energy? Everything is fine in Russia with this. Even more than fine.

And "humilation" is already recorded to NATO account, who supplied most of current arsenals to ukraine to avoid their crash. We will return the favor a bit later.

Kill all Western foreigners first.

Ukraine has lost two thirds of US-supplied tanks - media
The latest Abrams M1 tank has been destroyed by Russian forces in the country's Kursk Region, Military Watch Magazine has reported

...and the US MICC is grateful for it...

How much are those damn M1 tanks the US never needed and never will?

So, NATO declares that once tank is handed to ukraine it become ukrainian tank. Well, well... Once anti-ship hypersonic missile is handed to khouti, in becomes khouti missile, isn't it? ;)

This is game for two...

From Dmitry Medvedev Telegram channel:

The neo-Nazi dogs decided to completely ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

en.tgchannels.org/channel/slavyangrad?size=30&lang=all&first=106734&start=106734

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- "Please, let no Christian church be abolished directly or indirectly: the churches are not to be touched," Pope Francis said about a Ukrainian law banning the Russian Orthodox Church, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed Aug. 24.

usccb.org/news/2024/pope-expresses-concern-about-religious-freedom-ukraine

Hey, Velund, good to see you back and thanks for the TG link. Quoting:

The stinking rotting Ukrainian regime has decided to outdo the atheism of the Soviet period.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, although it was an atheist country, did not ban religions and individual creeds.

The neo-Nazi dogs decided to completely ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

To the stupid "freedom and democracy" Russia haters:

Ukraine under Zhole is now officially less democratic than the Soviet Union so stop giving me shlt how you are supporting "freedom and democracy" in Ukraine.

Today, Zland is neither free nor democratic. And there is no Santa, morons.

The Abrams tanks are being used against drunk invaders in a conventional war

The Houthi's missiles are being fired at innocent civilian shipping. No comparison. Or rather were being fired, as a few air strikes have solved that problem and they have gone back to their huts for a rethink

I am convinced that Poles and Russians are very similar people. It took me a long time to arrive at this conclusion, but now nobody will be able to change my mind.

I will try to explain in my favorite list format:

1) When you pick "The Pole" as your avatar in a video game, you get +20 to religiosity, +10 to alcohol immunity, and +10 to Szlachta chauvinism. Miraculously, it nearly matches the stats on "The Russian", except you get a different flavor of chauvinism - "Great Russian".

2) In every Russian apartment building basement there is an MMA gym. Poles also love martial arts, maybe a little bit more than Russians. Basically - both very much like fighting. Cousins!

3) A Pole's favorite activity is fighting against impossible odds, and getting very butthurt about it - whether it be against Nazis or Communists. As mentioned in previous post, this also happens to be Russia's favorite activity, just change the name of the antagonists.

4) Poles love b*tching and moaning about everything on Earth. Russians are also rarely satisfied.

5) While declaring eternal love for Poland, Poles also love massive emigration. Russians also like to play the emigration game.

6) Poles are lazy. Russians are lazy.

7) Polish women are famous for being beautiful and for being f*cked in the head. Russian women are famous for being beautiful and f*cked in the head.

8) Poles suffer from a deep seated inferiority complex towards the West. Periodically they begin to insist that they are more West, than the West itself - to loud laughter from the audience. Russians are the same, except they do not insist they are more West than the West, but rather the psychosis manifests slightly differently.

9) Polish and Russian food are practically identical. You know they say - "you are what you eat".

10) Both Poles and Russians hate Jews and Black people, despite their being practically none of either in their countries.

11) Anybody who earns more than a Pole is a thief. Anybody who earns less than a Pole is an idiot. The average statistical Russian has literally the exact same belief.

12) Both love listening to music, which causes rapid onset of psychosis in other, more normal nationalities.

I think this is enough for now.

You forgot one thing, when two Poles discuss a topic, it turns out that they have three different opinions, when two Russians discuss a topic, the FSB appears there.

There are many more things, like the Cult of Adidas shared between your dresy and our gopniki, or the seeming inability to explain anything meaningful without copious use of curse words.

Fighting impossible odds ?

The North Nigerians ?

Yes like invading Ossetia or bombing a few desert tribesmen.

That's a few times you have mentioned this bizarre theory that the NNs are underdogs in a colonial war they started. But in the early days of the war the Ukies were taking down drones by throwing jars of ogorki at them, tractors were towing tanks away. The Ukrainians are the ones who had true underdog spirit and once the world saw that, they decided to arm them properly.

... поживём - увидим, as ancient Romans used to say. ;)


We are similiar indeed and the similarities are multitudinous, it's true.

There are, however, notable differences.

1. Poles are madly in love with freedom. I pity any Polish government or a dictator, if there ever appears one, who have to try and control our unruly mob. There is nothing in Poles even remotely resembling Russian awe and submission for authority. We generally despise our politicians and if anyone tried to hang a portrait of a living politician in his home, office etc., he would be mocked and generally considered a retard (dead politicians, like Piłsudski or Dmowski, are acceptable if they signify a larger idea).

2. Poland, these days, is by and large a national* state whilst Russia is still pretty much imperial. Our traditions are imperial but our present day is that of a middle-sized, middle-modern and middle-powerful country, and most people have enough common sense not to deny reality.

3. One thing where we absolutely refuse to accept reality is our roots. A Russian generally accepts his humble roots and doesn't have any personal delusions of grandeur (those are left for the state-level psychosis); a Pole - on the other hand - will rarely perceive his lineage as coming from anyone lesser than hetman Żółkiewski ha ha
In this regard we are similar to the Japanese, also a society with overwhelmingly peasant roots, who believe themselves to all be descendants of the Samurai. Poles are all Szlachta. :)

---

* - reservation to point 2:

Poland might be a national state at present but Polishness - in its very core - is hardly a nationality or an ethnicity. Polishness has always been an idea and an ideal, adapted as their own by people of various nationalities/ethnicities. Damn it, our greatest poet and national bard started his cult epic poem with "Litwo, ojczyzno moja", the greatest Polish-American military leader and war hero was, by today's standards, a Belarussian; the greatest Polish scientist spoke German more often than Polish (just like our greatest sculptor or a general memorized in our national anthem)... *sighs*... I could go on but my point is that silly foreigners accuse us, based on what I mentioned, that we steal the heroes of other nations, that we were only simple peasants and if there ever was a great Pole, all you had to to was to scratch him and underneath appeared a German, East Slav (of various ethnicities), Lithuanian or a Jew. But it's a lie - they all felt Polish and were just as Polish as our arch-Polish modern poet, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, who himself admits that he has not a single drop of Polish blood in him but is still considered a horrible Polish nationalist by liberal-leftist "elites". :)

Polishness is a collective madness, a holy mental disorder, a sacred ideal. Difficult to explain.

Unfortunately for you, half a million men of peak breedng age have been eaten by household pets in Ukraine.


Indeed, however it only takes a tiny amount of crude oil to make a hell of a lot of plastic. This is the field I work in.

The economic future of r*SSia is bleak.

By the way, the word 'wojenka' (affective diminutive of 'wojna') itself shows one aspect of Polish collective madness. Are there tender loving diminutives of the word 'war' in other languages? I know Russians have 'войнушка' but isn't the meaning different - a war game for kids (zabawa w wojnę)?

"during the last show" in English, and a few other phrases. It's done lexically since grammatical diminutives of one syllable words tend to sound frivolous in English.


A very conformist culture in PL nowadays. Then again, many people's great grandparents, especially in the countryside, didn't consider themselves Polish.

Hehehe, the Japanese example was a great one.

Russians love maybe not freedom, but independence. We will insist on living in squalor, and defending our cannibalistic leaders, as long as nobody is puppeting those as*holes. As soon as Russians start thinking that their leaders serve foreign gods, those leaders lose their heavenly mandate.

Admittedly more conformist than in the past but nowhere near the western level yet. This gives me hope that Poles will one day tell the EU to go f*** themselves when they push their anti-cultural leftist agenda too far. The first signs of it begin to appear already, but shhh... let's not alarm the evil ones just yet.


Hmm... this is also a good survival tactics. Maybe even better than ours.

Where'd you get that from? Maybe in the far east where Polish/Ukrainian/Belarusian blend into each other but elsewhere?


I always understood wojenka as ironic and not tender, loving

Anyway, there's Spanish 'guerrilla' (lit. war 'guerra' + -illa dim.) Which isn't really tender loving....

And I just found out that there's a German punk song called 'Kriegchen'.... (you're welcome)

youtube.com/watch?v=kERj_g64J18

English is a bad language for diminutives... they mostly either don't exist and/or are extremely limited in scope and

In Europe languages are divided between those that like to stick diminutives anywhere they can and those with heavily restricted use... non-natives are advised to not try to make them up as they sound odd or are even incomprehensible (like pawian's translation of 'ziółko' as 'herby' in the idiom thread... 'little herb' would be about as close as English can get)

One way to see which is which would be to see what word was used for 'mask' during the pandemic

w/ dim
Polish - maseczka
Spanish - mascarilla
Italian - mascherina

without
English - mask
German - Maske
Hungarian - maszka
Maltese - maskra

are examples I'm aware of....

A Russian saying about domestic abuse is... "If he beats you, that means he loves you".

Russian love is wild, brutal, and for most people - incomprehensible.

So in this way, Russians will come up with all sorts of excuses why things in Russia work the way they do, but as soon as they descend on foreign shores they become complainers number 1.

I'd say that it's more conformist than the UK, especially in cities and the 'burbs. Back in Stan Wojenny and the period before, until the mass arrests, people who came over the radar for opposing authority were feared and shunned by most. Even now after several decades in PL, I'm surprised how bland and cowed some people are compared to what I was used to before. Not as bad as Jerries who fear chaos and worship 'ordnung' but definitely getting there.


A truly meaningless phrase.


Norman Davies has written quite a bit about that with primary sources who discussed life in the immediate post-independence years.


That's not a plus.

As in "kolejna wojenka w partii rządzącej"? Yes, it's possible but the original connotation of the diminutive is definitely tender-loving.

For a native Pole this affective connotation is natural to understand. According to Marzanna Uździcka of Uniwersytet Opolski the use of this diminutive "allowed to talk about war with the same gentleness as about women and to emphasize the glorification of the specific kind of life and war deeds, as well as specific kind of joy and excitement in the fight for freedom of homeland, which was enslaved for 123 years".


Lovely word, but I don't think it functions nearly as widely in popular culture and collective German consciousness as our 'wojenka' ("cóżeś ty za pani?" comes to mind, another song and also a film based on a novel from 1960s). I know it's difficult for a non-native to understand but the diminutive in question is actually a tender-loving one.


Maybe that's what most Poles find fascinating about Russia (even if they will refuse to admit it). In our soul there is a bit missing... a tiny bit, difficult to pinpoint, difficult to name. I believe that Russians are still in possession of this little bit.

If we could only regain it, we would be whole again.


Aaaah... Satan's favourite trick - convincing people that he doesn't exist. Nice try :)

I never said it was a plus. Our women certainly don't think so.


Relying on Norman Davies to get an accurate impression of Eastern Europe, is like relying on CMS Neuf for an accurate portrayal of Russia.

I will throw into that mix Timothy Snyder, Anne Applebaum, Robert Conquest, Orlando Figes, Stephen Kotkin, and anybody else for whom writing about the region only means writing about "blood lands", rape, and famine.

Who said "relying'???? Who said "impression"????

Anyway, he's a historian of Poland rather than Eastern Europe and happens to be the preeminent one.


How daft.


I like all their stuff. I'm surprised you didn't slag off Simon Sebag Montefiore as well.

Exactly.

There were, of course, local identities (górale, kaszubi, poznaniacy, ślązacy) but the prevailing and overriding identity in most of pre-war Poland (not to mention the post-war one), even among the groups mentioned, was Polish. It is quite often that PF's resident son of a Brit talks nonsense and then replies with "no, there aren't", "meaningless", "yes, it is", "how daft" etc.

In such cases he is best ignored. He is a marxist version of Novichok.

That Russians believe that they are usually fighting against overwehelming odds is honestly amusing.

To be sure, it is smart to pick fights you have good chance of winning, but the last time Russia fought a war against superior foes was the Crimean War - in which they had home advantage - and lost.

The Russians started the war against Ukraine with every conceivable advantage. Even now the Ukrainians are fighting with one arm behind their back, due to thr ban of striking deep into Russian territory with Western weapons.

WW1

Civil War

WW2

@Bobko


Leaving aside that a country can not lose a Civil War( and the Redals controlled the startegic rail roads), Russia was in a prime position to win both WW1 and WW2. Russia had the numerical advantage, was allied to countries that controlled the vast majority of the world's economy, and fought foes that were caught in two-front wars.

Bad planning and terrible generals cost Russia WW1, and the Wehrmacht only came as close to Moscow as they did because of the many blunders of Stalin and his clique.

Imagine how both wars had developed if the Russian generals had not blundered into Tannenberg and later the Masurian lakes. And if Tzar had not made one strategic mistake after another, with Kerensky sealing the breakdown of the Russian army.

Or if Stalin had been less trusting in Hitler, better prepared Soviet defenses and not caused the biggest encirclement in military history in Kiev.

None of that was inevitable. The war was strategically lost for the Central powers after the battle of the Marne and Italy joining the Entente while the failure of Barbarossa doomed the Axis. That Russia managed to lose WWI and came relatively close to in WWII is not something to be proud of, or use as a basis for an underdog story.

The Ukrainians managing to stop the Russian army at the gates of Kiev, defeating them at Kharkiv and Kherson and taking parts of Kursk... Now that is an underdog story.

That's an incredibly.... stupid idea. That might sound a bit harsh but it's the word that fits.

What's really going on.

A lot of western countries have given financial and technical aid to Ukraine and made a lot of big talk about arming Ukraine. Meanwhile... the support has dripped out at an agonizingly slow pace (only around half of promised support has ever appeared) and often with crippling restrictions on the use of the weapons that do show up.

Western strategy (in case it's too subtle for mere russians to understand)....

one: western support is as message to russia that it will not be allowed to 'win'... it's not, for the most part, real commitment to Ukrainian victory, it's a hint of what the west _could_ do to russia if it really wanted russia to badly lose (multiply proletarsk by about 100).

two: it's counting on russia to take a rational look at where things are and to stand down and back off and make whatever excuses to the 'russian public' (to the extent that there is such a thing) that are needed

russia, being russia and only understanding brute force rather than diplomacy or rational messaging.... keeps doubling down

the western strategy is very flawed because, as I said, russia operates on the principle of brute force 'violence = attention' and/or some deluded souls are still hoping to be able to do business with russia even though russia has made it clear that it's an unreliable partner.
Ukraine has systematically crossed one red line after another that terrified western leaders.... to no special effect.

Ukrainians know russians better than westerners and so they need to be trusted and given the support they need to drive russians out of Ukraine. It could be done very quickly but waffling weak leaders are.... weak and waffling.