Central Europe joins the finance crisis

Early advise by ‘experts’ that the banking crisis would not affect Poland and other countries in the region too badly is looking a little shaky.

The central bank in Hungary has put interest rates up by a whopping 3 percent to try and prop up the collapsing forint; Hungary, Belarus and Ukraine are currently in talks with the IMF in the hope of a massive injection of funds to stave off serious economic trouble; Poland’s currency, the zloty, is depreciating against major currencies - so economy minister, Wladamar Pawlak better forget about his call, earlier this month, for rate cuts.

The central bank in Warsaw has got together a “confidence package” to get banks here to start lending to each other again. Despite the fact that these banks do not have the structure of debt that lenders do in the US and much of western Europe, a crisis of confidence has made bankers over- cautious even here in Poland.

And the foreign parents of Poland’s banks - as much as 71 percent of the banking system here is owned by foreign banks - are in trouble. ING has had a bail out from the Dutch government, Fortis and Unicredito look vulnerable, too. Talk is of a sell off of Polish assets to offset massive losses elsewhere.

Getting a home-loan has become very difficult. The housing market is taking a whack.

Suddenly the finance crisis - which was a bit of a spectator sport for the average Pole, as they watched the rich bankers of America and Europe take a spanking - has got a little too close for comfort.

Poland has a deposits guarantee system that promises to cover any losses should a bank fall. Getting confidence in banks is a priority in a country where folk simply didn't have bank accounts until not so long ago. Recently banks have risen the upper limit to calm any lasting fears of losing money overnight. But as the stock market in Warsaw tumbles - the Top 20 index lost over 7 percent of its value today - investors are taking money out of the bourses and putting them in government bonds - a move that one economist recently described to me as the equivalent of sticking all your money under the bed, as the interest you will make on that investment in minimal.

Is this the end of…well, what, actually?

Of course, in the wake of the finance crisis, the commentariat have rushed out to announce the end of Thatcherism, or neo-liberalism, or the free market, is nigh. Some have blamed the “greed” of bankers who lived off the never-never for too long.

But I don’t get the impression that any ideology has ended. Neither do I think the greed of bankers is to blame. Greed thrives in certain circumstances, and those circumstances were the rancid, sluggish nature of modern day capitalism in the highly developed countries in western Europe and the US.

Even though everyone for years has talked about a “boom” in western capitalism, when you look at the growth rates - 2, 3 percent, mostly - they are not that impressive at all. The recent long period of growth in the UK, for instance - 16 years of continuous growth - was a lot less spectacular than many think. In fact, its been a long, slow growth - not a “boom”. What has boomed in those countries is the housing sector. That fooled people into thinking they were getting richer and richer, when they weren’t.

As Asia, much of South America and this part of Europe have been experiencing a high growth rate boom, with real growth in productive forces and manufacturing base, the western capitalist countries have destroyed their manufacturing bases, failed to make real investments in developing infrastructure, and relied on the finance sector - and a weird web of loans and debts between customer and bank, and bank and bank - to keep their economies chugging along.

And that chug has now ground to a shuddering halt.

So it’s not greed that's responsible for this mess, but advanced capitalism itself. That doesn’t mean a socialist revolution is around the corner, because there isn’t really a socialist movement to take advantage of the situation anymore. Capitalism is not in its death-throws. But it does mean that our rulers are going to have to ask themselves some tough questions and come up with some tough and radical remedies.

But I wouldn’t be waiting for those remedies to emerge anytime soon. Our leaders are a fearful, disorientated bunch at the best of times. So expect some kind of tinkering to try to get through and out the other side. But they will still have to ask themselves this: how can western capitalism maintain decent growth rates without a manufacturing base and no other way to keep things going than a system of borrowing that even they don’t understand?

I know! Maybe environmentalism will come to their rescue. Green capitalism!

Carbon credit bond, anyone?

President Kaczynski threatens to crush...a daisy?

Poland’s head of state screams and shouts at TV reporter Monika Olejnik in Brussels last week, says she is on his “short list”, accuses her of being a commie spy, and threatens to “crush her”. (photo: Pres. Kaczynski feels the full force of a hurricane of derision)

President Kaczynski isn’t suffering from paranoia - but they really are out to get him! The forces of evil lurk in every television studio - especially at TVN - or what Law and Justice party members refer to as “”Tusk Vision National”.

After an interview (see a bit here) by Monika Olejnik - the Jeremy Paxman of Polish TV political journalism - where the, now, veteran journo quizzed and pressed President Kaczynski, the guy just lost it. After the cameras were turned off he threatened her with…well, we know not what. He said that the “secret services” (meaning commie spies!) and the “Walters” - meaning her boss at TVN (another spy!) “will not be able to save her…”. He then accused her of being …yes, you guessed it - a commie spy!, operating under the code name Stokrotka (Daisy).

Oh, dear

President Kaczynski said he had a “short list” of people he was going to “get”. But Kaczynski’s list of people he thinks are working for dark forces is hardly “short”. In fact, it’s a rather “long list”, a very long list, full of most of the people who work for private and public media in Poland.

Kaczynski isn’t a paranoiac, but they really are out to get him!!!

TVN were outraged by, what is, possibly slanderous accusations. The president - like the sodden drunk who beats his wife up, only to wake up the next day with remorse added to his stinking hangover - apologised later, sending roses, I believe.

So what led to this outburst of ungracious and ungentlemanly behaviour from Poland’s president, witnessed by both Poles and Belgians at the summit last Wednesday?

Apart from the fact that the Kaczynski twins have had a rather difficult relationship with TVN in the past, President Kaczynski had had a rather strained few days leading up to the EU summit. Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the rest of the government didn’t want Kaczynski to come to Brussels in the first place. They said it wasn’t usual for both head of state and PM to turn up at EU summits. They were there to talk about things like the “Climate Package” - which demands expensive cuts in carbon emissions, among other things - and how it was disadvantageous to Poland. This wasn’t a defence matter so the president should not be involved, said Tusk.

Kaczynski dug in, however, and said that even though he wasn’t wanted there, he was going to turn up anyway.

The government said that there would only be two chairs for Poles at the summit and they were going to be sat on by PM Tusk and Foreign Minister Sikorski. So would the president kindly butt out!

Miffed - very miffed - Kaczynski decided to hire his own plane and set off for Brussels regardless. The especially chartered LOT airlines Boeing 737 cost the country a cool 42,000 euros return trip - not exactly Ryanair prices.

When the weird coalition government led by Lech’s twin brother, Jaroslaw, was kicked out of office last autumn by a traumatised electorate - suffering over a year of Messrs Kaczynski, Giertych and Lepper running the country - I thought that Polish politics would become boring and …sensible. So let’s hear it for the continuing saga of Kaczynski and his fight with the forces of darkness, evil and...daisies.

There will be a slight delay between posting a comment and it appearing in the comment box due to temporary moderation issues. Trog attack!

Normal service has been resumed

Comment box is open to everyone again.

But, sadly, I am going to have to moderate the comments coming in to this blog for short while. That means that your comments will not appear in the comment box instantly.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Beatroot at the Vatican with Walesa and the Pope

If New York is the city that never sleeps then Rome is the city that never shuts up talking. Ever. (photo - Pope Benedict XVI...at the cinema?)

Rome is a city wired up to the eyeballs on amphetamine-strength coffee. It’s probably why Italians talk so much.

I was in a taxi yesterday with a driver who was in the middle of a long monologue that covered such diverse topics as: why the Church murdered Bruno; the egotistical nature of the modern day Italian; and the disrespect and delinquency of his 14 year old son. While he talked his eyes were not often on the road and where he was going but on me in the back seat. His arms followed the intricate patterns of his stories, waving around all over the place. At one point he was driving the car with his left elbow only - I am not joking - as he debated, with himself, the pros and cons of the, latest, Burlusconi government.

Thursday morning I went to a special mass at the Basilica overlooking St Peter’s Square in honour of the 30 year anniversary of Karol Wojtyla becoming JP II. There were thousands of people in the huge church, about one in five of the pilgrim-tourists were from Poland, many wearing Solidarnosc scarves or t-shirts.

After the mass I went for a stroll, agog at Rome’s teeming traffic. Small cars - the Smart is a particular favourite at the moment - whizzed in and out of the lines of scooters and motorbikes. Horns honked and Italians shouted and waved their arms at each other.

Small cars are essential in Rome as the parking of these vehicles is …creative and inventive. Any tiny space not colonised already by one of these vehicles is backed into, with varying degrees of success. Many cars show signs of bangs and prangs, dents riddling bodywork as a testimony to past parking attempts gone wrong.

Just as parking is a mysterious Italian art so is crossing the road. There are traffic lights and stuff but they are treated as optional extras by both drivers and pedestrians. People wait at the side of the road for a moment and then suddenly dive into the middle of a stream of traffic. Some cars and bikes then skid to a stop, some swerve to avoid the person who is now in the middle of the road. It took me a while to pluck up the courage to try this, but once you take the plunge it seems to work. As you stroll - and Italians stroll everywhere, they never simply walk - through the traffic you hear the babble from within vehicles, the sound of horns and the scrapping of metal-on-metal as yet another parking stunt doesn’t quite make it.

Testimony

I was in Rome for the premiere of the film version of the memoirs of Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Testimony, recounting his 39 years serving John Paul II. The film itself is not all that great although there is a lot of good archival material I never saw before. We also get the revelation - if that is the right work in the circumstances - that JP II survived not one but two assassination attempts. Not just a mad Turk tried to have a go at him - with the help of the Kremlin, or not: who know? - but also a mad Portuguese priest stuck a knife in him, in 1982, on the anniversary of the first assassination attempt. They covered the incident up in the hope that trying to kill the Pope would not become a fashionable thing to do for the world’s loons.

But the premiere itself - in a theatre slap bang in the middle of the Vatican - was something I will never forget. Six thousand people from all over the world sat down to watch the movie in the company of Lech Walesa, Jolanta Kwasniewska, and…Pope Benedict!! I never watched a film with a pope before, just a few seats down the isle.

The photo above I took as he made a little speech after the film. He was very moved by what he saw, obviously. The movie does have a very sad, although predictable ending, and someone told me they saw Pope Benny crying at the end.

Afterwards, people were milling around outside the theatre with the Swiss Guard looking on in their fancy dress garb. One photographer saw former first lady Jolanta Kwasniewska chatting away to the woman she took over from, former first lady Danuta Walesa. When the photographer asked if he could take a picture of them together, Jolanta started to pose, while Danuta - probably under strict orders from her husband - refused and quickly moved away. Relations between the ex-Solidarity leader and ex-communist Aleksander Kwasniewski may have warmed a little since the 1990s, but Walesa still does not want it to be seen that both families are best of buddies. That’s one miracle that JP II never got around to making and won’t be used in the evidence for his inevitable canonization.

Later I went for another stroll in Rome and after 20 minutes got completely lost. I quite like being lost in cities new to me. Soon, however, I wandered into an area where a succession of African guys seemed delighted to see me. They gave me high-fives and complicated handshakes and were very keen to sell me…something, I know not what.

So it was obviously a good time to get out of there. But how to get back to the Vatican? I stopped a nice looking old lady to ask the way. Understanding no Italian I just planned to follow the direction she was pointing in. Unfortunately, being an Italian, as she described the shortcut back to the Basilica her arms waved around all over the place. If I followed the directions of both hands I would be still be wandering around Rome in ever decreasing circles. So I set off in the direction she was facing, as she talked and talked…she’s probably still giving me directions even now.

Simon Mol, dead

Simon Mol, on trial for intentionally infecting up to 40 woman with the HIV virus in Poland, died in hospital on Saturday.

He never gave evidence in the court. No case was proven, no justice was ever brought.

Whatever, his legacy on race relations in Poland has not been very positive. We will never now know what his real motives were. I suspect he was, in what they call these days, “in denial” about lots of things in his life.

It’s an awful case with many victims. But one of the nasty strands of a generally ugly reaction to the Mol case was when some showed contempt for the women who contracted HIV. “If they are so dumb to be fooled by someone like Mol, they they deserved it…”, etc.

If anyone met Simon Mol then they were “fooled”. I met him. He seemed a genuine person to me. Lots of the people thought that. Lots.

So to be accused of being “fooled” by him is ridiculous. Even Simon Mol was fooled, by himself.

If you want to see how ugly it got then have a look at, the record for this blog, 166 comments, from an early post I wrote about all this.

October 16, 1978

After the shock of the death of John Paul I - a man thought blessed with real charisma - Rome concentrated its mind on finding someone equally compulsive and with bags of people-magnetism.

The second edition of US Time magazine that October reported that the search was on for a candidate who had both physical strength and the will to carry on the work of John Paul I.

‘The search for charisma, plus the near-universal insistence on a "pastoral" Pope, concentrates continued attention upon Corrado Ursi, 70, a popular shepherd in Naples whose easygoing air and ample girth inspire repeated comparison to Pope John XXIII. Close behind him in the early discussions is Salvatore Pappalardo, 60, also an effective pastor in Sicily,’ wrote the Time journalist.

Sergio Pignedoli, 68, was also a front-runner, Giovanni Benelli, 57, an outsider. Some mentioned the possibility of a foreign pope, a non Italian! Johannes Willebrands, 68, of The Netherlands. Some Cardinals are touting Curialists Eduardo Pironio, 57, of Argentina and Villot, 72, of France, perhaps? But that was unlikely. It hadn’t happened since 1522.

And then, two paragraphs from the end of the Time article, they get to a name not widely known outside of Poland.

‘Last week speculation also ran to names rarely heard before: Paulo Evaristo Arns, 57, Brazil's brave champion of human rights; Joseph Cordeiro, 60, of Pakistan, who exudes saintly simplicity and concern for the poor; and Poland's Karol Wojtyla, 58, who is a strong leader in a hostile environment—and speaks fluent Italian.’

But it was just speculation. A non-Italian who was under 60 years old? Nah. This was still the world, before JP II.

On Wednesday I am going to the Vatican. Catch you then.

More?
A Light That Left Us Amazed, Time magazine, Oct 16, 1978.

Kidnapped Pole in Pakistan

It’s been over a week now since Piotr Stanczak was abducted by Taliban in the northwest of Pakistan, near the Afghan border. What are his odds of getting him back to Poland, as Pakistan seems to be coming apart at the seams?

Stanczak was working for a company looking for oil when three, maybe four Taliban ambushed his vehicle, killed his Pakistani driver, bodyguard and one other person, then took the Pole and disappeared into the mountains that surround the region of Attock.

Piotr follows two Chinese telecom engineers who were also abducted in the same region back in August. The two Chinese may be alive, as last week a spokesman for the Taliban said that they would exchange them for prisoners arrested by the Pakistani army - maybe over 100 of them.

Since Piotr’s abduction, a conflict has broken out between Pakistani officials and the company he works for, Geofizyka Krakow Ltd, as to who was to blame for the kidnapping. The prime minister of Pakistan and local police officers claim that Geofizyka did not avail themselves to security provided for them, and were negligent in the precautions they took before sending workers out on field trips. The Polish company and people who know Stanczak say that the security measures he left the base with on September 28 were standard and in keeping with guidelines.

There was also a nasty altercation between the Polish head of the Geofizyka base in Pakistan and the journalists who descended on the compound after the kidnapping took place.

Pakistan on the edge

The region the abduction occurred in is the most dangerous in Pakistan and is a spill over of the war in Afghanistan and the ‘War on Terror’ in general. On Sunday, the home of the North West Frontier Province's chief minister, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, was attacked by rockets, though nobody was killed.

Suicide bombers stalk the region, a haven for Islamic militants of the al-Qaida type and their whacky Taliban friends, who have regained support since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan has produced little economic fruit, and the recent incursions by American forces into the north-west of Pakistan. This is where many think Weird-Beard-in-Chief, Osama bin Laden is hanging out.

The instability in the region has been caused, in part, by Bush’s war on terror. Invasions by foreign forces usually have that effect. It’s a lesson neocons and liberal interventionists appear slow to learn. This is why the War on Terror was a mistake from its beginning.

Barrack Obama has made much in his presidential campaign of his opposition to the Iraq war before it began. Well, good - I have always opposed it, too. But where we differ is that he opposed the war in Iraq because, as he sees it, it distracted from the real objective: to go get Osama!

But does he really think that throwing more troops into Afghanistan would mean peace and security for both Afghans and Americans; that the world would be a more peaceful and happy place all round?

This is a delusion. Afghans have no trouble fighting large armies occupying their country - ask a Soviet Afghanistan veteran. The war on terror was always doomed to fail because it was trying to find the location of an abstract noun - terror.

Problem was, as Rumsfeld said in many Whitehouse meetings at the time - according to Bob Woodward - “There just ain’t enough targets in Afghanistan…” - meaning for Washington to look like it was “doing something” about 9/11, it would need a more spectacular “shock and awe” than bombing a few, low grade targets in one of the most undeveloped and poorest nation in the world.

No, to be really shocking and awful then Iraq would have to be next.

Barrack Obama supports a policy of American troops going into Pakistan in pursuit of Taliban and other Islamists. If that happens on a regular basis then the region will destabilise still further, Pakistan will disintegrate some more, and many more foreign workers will disappear into the lawless mountains that run along a front line in America’s war on terror.

more?
‘Geofizyka’s security arrangements normal, not negligent’, thenews.pl, Oct 6

Is al-Qaeda winning?, BBC, audio, 23 minutes

Bogdan Zaryn

A very nice person died this week. I have known radio journalist Bogdan Zaryn for a long time and he was one of the most extra-ordinary people I ever met.

Grieving him are two children, a wife and many, many others. He was in hospital for radical surgery to help him walk again, freely. The first surgery was successful but an emergency surgery after was not. He died Friday, aged 51 years old.

Tragedy always seemed to follow Bogdan. His mother was a survivor of the Nazi’s Auschwitz. She moved to Canada after the war and that’s where she gave birth to Bogdan. Bogdan was born with bad legs, bad back, you name it. The family is not a lucky one.

But even though he was sick for much of the time I knew him, he was also one of the most positive people I ever met. And Bogdan had a special kind of charisma that everyone found irresistible

Even when people got annoyed with Bogdan - and that seemed to be quite often - they never could dislike him. In fact, the opposite. Even when you were annoyed with Bogdan, you always remembered the reasons why you were so, so fond of him.

Bogdan’s guide to journalism

Bogdan never did conventional research. While the rest of us mere mortals looked up stuff in boring old books and computers, Bogus - with typical Bogus logic - thought: why look something up in a book when you can telephone an expert and ask them? So that’s what he did. All day. Everyday. All the time.

After a couple of years of this he had a contact book that resembled a telephone directory for the entire New York State. Bogdan knew LOTS of experts.

Unfortunately, he didn’t just ring experts up. If he didn’t know something - even the most banal of things - he used to ring his work colleagues up, too. Even when they were in the room next door.

Bogdan used to single out individuals at the workplace as the target - victim - of his constant questioning. He phoned them at work, he phoned them at home. At morning, noon and night, Bogdan kept right on phoning.

He knew that he only had a limited time for their direct attention, as after a few days the poor hapless colleague would be such a nervous wreck that they would have to retire to a sanatorium to recuperate - by which time Bogdan had moved on and found himself a new victim to harass. Corridors were littered, at times, with the twitching, gibbering results of Bogdan’s ’special attention’. Some folk would be scared to answer the phone in case it was one of his questions on the other end of the line.

Bogdan was never the most technologically savvy person I ever met. The internet always confused him, a little. Once he was listening to us talking about what a god-send Google was - information in under 0.14 of a second, blah, blah. The next day he came into work and turned on the computer. And then, by reflex, he got on the telephone. This time it was to me. I was in the room next door, so I could hear his voice both on the phone and coming through the dividing wall between us. It was one of his classics.

“How do you spell ‘google’”, he shouted.

“I don’t know,” I said in prophylactic exasperation: “Why don’t you GOOGLE IT!”

It was like that all the time. He was a very hard person to refuse. That’s one reason why he was so good at getting people for an interview. People always stopped for Bogdan, no matter in what rush they were in. I have seen government spokesman being pursued by Bogdan down spiral staircases - Bogdan asking questions as the spokesman helped him get down the steps.

He could illicit the dumb quote from celebrities by asking a perfectly timed, cliché question. He once asked Edyta Gorniak: “So…who is the real Edyta Gorniak?”

Gorniak said: “Ooo, I really don’t know - there are so many sides of me!”

Cringe.

Bogdan had met them all. He interviewed Donald Tusk once about his Kashubian roots, before he became the current prime minister. Tusk didn’t want to speak to him in English and did the interview in Polish. But, somehow - and only Bogdan could get people to do this - he got Tusk to sing him a song in Kashubian! To my knowledge that is a world first.

Even when he was in hospital he was on the telephone the whole time, ringing colleagues up.

After the first, successful operation to help him walk again, he decided that he absolutely must get an interview with his, rather good, surgeon. For two whole days he harassed a couple of colleagues, night, day and very early morning, to get them to send him some recording equipment. Finally, they relented. So a special company car was sent to take to the hospital, not a person, but a small recording device and a microphone. I wonder if the driver made it wear a seat belt?

But you just could not refuse Bogdan, when his mind was set on you doing something for him. And that’s quite a talent he had. A people talent. Bogdan had lots of people-talent.

What a sad day Friday was. It was made all the sadder, for everyone who knew him, for the fact that Bogdan had never been happier. His operation was successful, he was moving house, he had two gorgeous young children. And then one day he went into an operating theatre and never woke up again.

The memories of him will be made up of all the mad stuff he got up to in his life, his wheezy laugh …and maybe his constant questions. But in my mind I will always remember Bogdan’s last masterpiece.

After Bogdan’s operation, the 24 hour news station - TVN 24 - got to hear about this new and risky surgery he had undergone. How they got to know about this is still a mystery to me. Maybe Bogdan rang them up? Anyway, a film crew went down to the hospital in Constancin, on the outskirts of Warsaw, and did an interview with Bogdan. It’s a moving, short piece of film, which you can see here.

I am going to miss him so much.

Who does Sepp Blatter think he is?

FIFA president Sepp Blatter (pictured right) has warned the Polish government that if they do not reinstate the suspended board of the Polish football association, the PZPN, then nasty sanctions could follow - meaning he will not just take his ball home with him in a sulk, he might also take away Poland’s chance to co-host the Euro 2012 soccer championships.

The question on many a lip in Poland is this - does Sepp Blatter - and his sidekick at the European governing body UEFA, Michel Platini (pictured sitting, coquetishly, on the left) - think that they are above the wishes of a democratically elected government?

Another question footie lovers here are asking is this: what exactly is the relationship between Sepp Blatter and the now deposed head of the PZPN, Michal Listkiewicz?

I was asked to comment today on this issue by RTE radio in Ireland - the programme was 'Sports Drivetime' - so there is a lot of international interest in this strange affair.

When the Sports Ministry wound up the present board of PZPN this week they also did what many wished they had done years ago - got rid of Michal Listkiewicz, who has been in the job since 1989 - a rare feat in a country which gets tired of its officials after a few weeks, at best. Listkiewicz has long, then, presided over a football association that has sat on its hands - when those hands are not busy taking a few bribes and greasing a few palms…allegedly - at a time when over 100 football officials, referees, managers and players have been arrested in Poland on charges of being involved in the wide spread sleaze which appears endemic within Polish football.

Sepp Blatter - more powerful than God, more sexy than...Brad Pitt?

The Polish media today is full of reports on the close relationship between Sepp Blatter and Michal Listkiewicz. Sepp said yesterday that Listkiewicz was the only man in Warsaw that he could do business with. What's more, national sports institutions, says Sepp, should be completely independent of government, and elected politicians should keep their nose out of PZPN’s business. If not, then “there will be consequences”.

Blatter and Listkiewicz do seem unusually close. The Dziennik newspaper carries allegations today that they share girlfriends! Allegedly, Listkiewicz’s long time lover, the 40 year-old Ms. Ilona Boguska, is now the 71 year old Sepp Blatter’s new flame. I suppose she loves him for his…understanding of football, who knows. Sepp and Michal are very good friends indeed, evidently, and if you mess with Listkiewicz then you are gonna have to get past Blatter first.

Which is… nice.

Normally I would agree that national sports associations should be completely independent of government. But these are not normal times in Polish football. Sponsors are loathed to get involved with a game that, quite frankly, stinks. So cleaning up Poland’s football industry is a legitimate area for government to be involved in if - and this is a big if - the current football association has been negligent.

And the kindest thing one could say about the current losers in the PZPN is that they have been ‘negligent’.

By the way, four names are in the hat to take over from Sepp’s Listkiewicz as head of PZPN - one or two of them you might of heard of: Grzegorz Lato and Zbigniew Boniek. Boniek was a fine, fine footballer, of course. But do fine footballers necessarily make good sports administrators?

The best way to answer that question is to just name one high profile football politician who is now the second most powerful administrator in the game: Michel Platini - a glorious footballer, but a complete oaf as head of UEFA. Maybe its time, not just to blow the whistle on corruption in Polish football, but show a red card to Sepp Blatter and the rest of the cronies at FIFA.

Simon Mol is dying

The Cameroonian on trial since July for deliberately infecting women in Warsaw with HIV is to be released from prison to get treatment for AIDS.

His condition seems very serious as he will not be put under police custody when in hospital but he has had his passport taken away and is forbidden to leave Poland.

The case caused outrage when it broke in late in 2007. I can’t face writing the details all over again and hesitated before even writing this much here, as it seems to bring out the worst in everyone.

What is perhaps the biggest danger now is that his trial will never be completed and that the truth as put before a court of law - the only truth that counts - will never fully emerge. The women he infected, and Mol himself, deserve to see the end of this. It appears this might not happen.

For details of the case see previous posts here and here.

Poland’s ‘liberal’ government - part 365

Donald Tusk’s ‘liberals’ are conservatives in drag.

“Poland's liberal opposition Civic Platform party has won a massive poll victory…” (BBC); “Poland's main liberal opposition Civic Platform was leading elections for the European parliament early Monday with 25.21 percent…” (Eurobusiness); “’Liberal landslide ends Poland's era of the twins”…” (M&C); “Foreign leaders and Poland's business community on Monday welcomed the victory of the liberal Civic Platform party in Sunday's parliamentary elections…” (Financial Times).

So wrote the western press after the victory of Civic Platform in last autumn’s general election. With the defeat of the Kaczynski/Giertych/Lepper arch-conservative coalition, the future of Poland was Donald Tusk’s ‘liberalism’, right?

Wrong. As I have pointed out many times there is little ‘liberal’ about the current government, apart from a certain liberalising instinct when it comes to the economy. This past month we have seen how conservative the Civic Platform party really is. Donald Tusk is the equivalent, not of a Polish J.S. Mill, but a weird kind of Polish pro-European Margaret Thatcher - in drag.

Take his call for ‘chemical castration’ of paedophiles following the brutally strange case of the Polish Fritzl. When challenged that castration, be it of the chemical or knife variety, was against human rights - once a punishment is served and a debt paid to society the convict should be free to rehabilitate themselves back into society; or when doctors complain that they are there to treat people, not castrate them; or that this is against the Polish Constitution, the ‘liberal’ Donald Tusk said: “I don’t consider paedophiles truly human, so why should they have ’human rights’?”

Of course, castration would not have prevented the repeated rape of the Polish Fritzl’s daughter…nor would it have prevented the abuse of the majority of the victims of child molesters in general. Most have no previous convictions. But that’s not why Tusk is supporting chemical castration. His policy proposal is the typical knee-jerk reaction of a reactionary, conservative political jerk - the need to be seen to be doing something about a modern folk devil, whenever a media panic ensues.

The liberal Civic Platform government also has a problem with that bastion of liberalism throughout the ages - free speech and expression. Director Paweł Chochlew is looking for funding for his new fictional feature about the Nazi invasion of Westerplatte that effectively began WW II. A thousand national myths surround this event. But Chochlew decided that a fresh approach was needed and decided to look again at some of those myths. But when he sent the script in to the government’s film board to try and get some money to produce Tajemnica Westerplatte (The Secret of Westerplatte) the government promptly threw it in the bin. The script is “anti-Polish” and “demeaning”, apparently. Chochlew’s defence that his film was meant to be fictional and so has no responsibility to be ’historically and/or politically correct’ fell on deaf ears.

It seems that some of Poland’s myths are so fragile that they cannot be challenged.

Donald Tusk’s government is censorial and reactionary. And each time journalists - both at home and abroad - reach for the ‘liberal’ adjective to describe them, John Stuart Mill turns, uneasily, in his grave.

The end of capitalism as we know it?

Morbid headlines are starting to appear in the Polish media just as they have elsewhere - we are facing the “worst financial crisis since 1970s…no, 1940s…no, the Great Depression!” What a load of nonsense.

A few months ago I was talking to a British bloke here in Warsaw. He was a member of the old Trotskyist Militant faction, an entryist organisation within the UK Labour Party that I knew well when I was involved in the Poll Tax unions of the early 1990s. That was quite a while ago but the rhetoric is undimmed by nearly two decades. “We are heading for a showdown,” said my Trotsky friend. “Environmental crisis, and capitalism is facing its greatest meltdown since the 1930s. We live in interesting times. It gives us great opportunities politically,” he said knowingly.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Did lefties still talk like this, these days? Are they still waiting for the inevitable collapse of capitalism?

That kind of thinking, then, might be still alive, but not so well, on what is left of the cranky leftwing. No surprise, really, I suppose. But my friend’s catastrophist thinking has become almost mainstream today. Everyone is talking about the crisis in the financial sector in the US and elsewhere as if it really was the greatest economic crisis since… well, the Great Depression.

See the skies raining bankers and brokers as they take their last step, from a tenth story window!

Last month, the British press reported that UK finance minister, Alistair Darling had “let the cat out of the bad” when he announced that Britain faced the worst economic conditions since…1948![?] Quite why the chancellor chose 1948 as his Year Zero is still a mystery to me. Why not 1947, or 1949?

Darling was quite obviously talking out of an orifice not designed for the talking out of.

My dad was alive in 1948 and I remember him talking of rationing, which was still in existence then in Britain. There were chronic shortages of many things, including labour. Those post-war years were dark and difficult for most.

Darling’s 1948 bull, however, looks almost sensible compared with some other doom mongers, who, like Mr Militant, think a new Great Depression is coming. But let’s look at that real Great Depression and see what it had in common with the banking crisis of today.

What they do have in common is that both then and now, problems started in the US. In the first ten months of 1930, 744 American banks failed. Prices and incomes fell on average around by 20 to 50 percent during those years. At its worst point in 1933, 25 percent of Americans couldn’t find work. Between 1929 and 1932 the Times index in New York declined by 89 percent. Poverty was endemic. More than half of Americans were living below subsistence level. In 1930, GDP shrank by 9.4 percent!

Sounds familiar today? No, it doesn’t, does it. And nobody is expecting growth to fall by nearly 10 percent. In fact, what is expected is that growth will remain sluggish in western Europe and the US…maybe even dipping below zero for a time. Unemployment today is not expected to rocket over 10 percent. Mass poverty is not about to return.

In Poland, they are starting to get media alarmist too. But it never will reach the hysteria that is now sweeping our great commentators and politicians in western Europe and the States. Poles remember hard times just gone past. Nothing is going to be worse than the 1980s. The economy is growing by 6 percent, will slow to something like 4 percent. And though the price of bread is rising like a particularly lively yeast culture, it won’t be going up by 100 percent overnight, as the communist had an annoying, and very dumb, habit of doing every ten years or so.

There is an unforeseen element in all this that is hard to predict. But if my friend Mr Trotsky, from Tunbridge Wells, wants a revolution then he had better sharpen up his ideology, and maybe even power of hypnosis - he‘s gonna need them - cause he will not be stepping from the ruins of capitalism and sweeping into the Presidential Palace, just yet.

Polish kings, American presidents?

A slightly bizarre article by Polish born American Henryk A. Kowalczyk (not the PiS MP) ponders: which foreigner would be best suited to become US president?

He thinks either Tony Blair or ex-finance minister and early-1990s “Mr. Shock” therapist Leszek Balcerowicz would be good choices...bizarrely.

He starts off claiming some similarity of Polish kings to US presidents. The similarities being - firstly the kings, like presidents, were elected (though the electorate was rather small in the case of Poland) and that the end results of the ballot could be a little messy.

Slightly tenuous link, Henryk, but never mind.

But his main point is that foreigners could be elected as kings of Poland - several were. But in US elections every one in six living in the US are not eligible for the top job. Maybe that is why the usual calibre of entrants is so poor?

So he comes up with a few names who would be good as foreign presidents. UK ex-prime minister Blair he chooses because - bizarrely - he:

…is already deeply involved in the Middle Eastern mess, and he was clever enough to have already started pulling British forces from Iraq. This indicates that, as president, he would get us out of Iraq as soon as achievable, and with as little humiliation as possible.

Oh, and…

Blair reformed UK immigration policy by managing increased legal immigration and keeping illegal immigration at about 0.7 percent of the population (compared with at least 4 percent in the U.S.). We need someone who can do the same here. Additionally, Blair worked on reforming the government-run National Health Service by promoting the increased role of the private sector. In the United States, we might need some government involvement in reforming our privately run health care system. Blair sounds like the most qualified man for this job.

So Blair should be US president for his record on Iraq, immigration and the health service!? I don’t think you would get a single British person anywhere to agree on all three…or even one or two, of those.

And Balcerowicz? US president? Yup!

His "shock therapy" converted the completely disintegrated Polish economy of the socialist era into a halfway decent market-driven system. Balcerowicz grew up and received his education in a socialist country, but gradually matured to understand and value the benefits of the free market.

Um…

On a side note: I wonder which Polish king George W. Bush would fancy himself as? Probably Jan Sobieski (1674-1696), who won - helped win - the Battle of Vienna (an event the city of Krakow is celebrating this weekend) which “saved Europe” from the evil Turkish/Islamic empire. But maybe readers can come up with other monarchical role models for Poland’s King George W. the First. Poniatiowski? Nah…

Two tribes go to war

The electability of a foreigner in the US would be dependant on how he or she could come to be seen as part of the correct lifestyle tribe. These days, elections are not really about policy at all. This election is as much about lifestyle as politics.

Recent research shows that Americans are increasingly choosing the location of where they live on the basis of their political allegiance - Red or Blue. There are now almost consciously created Democrat zones and Republican parts of town.

Each sees the other group as if they came from Mars or Venus. Do you eat organic or spend Sunday morning at the Evangelical church? Do you prefer cats as pets (then you are a Democrat) or are you more likely to own a dog (then welcome to the GOP). The Economist writes:

Over time, this means Americans are ever less exposed to contrary views. In a book called “Hearing the Other Side”, Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania crunched survey data from 12 countries and found that Americans were the least likely of all to talk about politics with those who disagreed with them.

Lifestyle as a definition of ‘politics’ could be seen by the nomination of Sarah Palin as McCain’s vice-presidential candidate, and the so-called ‘liberal’ reaction that came after.

Palin, though a pro-life, gun owning, God fearing Good Conservative, was conspicuously quiet on these issues in her acceptance speech. She seemed to be going out of the way not to say anything too political. She didn’t need to preach to the converted on those issues in the Republican electoral base. And she didn’t want to scare away too many of Hilary Clinton’s disaffected female supporters. This was the Republican version of ’identity politics’: “Vote for me…I am woman!”

And the liberal reaction to her shock candidature was anything but political. This was a middle class elite showing its disgust for her and her lifestyle. She is a gun-toting, hockey-mom redneck; she dared have a child in early middle age!! She returned to work after only a few days after giving birth…!

And remember - these are not conservative critics , they are the Huffington-ites of this world.

So could a foreigner immediately identify, and be identified, with one of these tribes? Blair? He maybe is a ‘liberal’ and is at ease with the Clinton tribe. But he is also a war-monger and supporter of the neo-con project of bombing democracy into the Middle East and elsewhere.

Maybe Balcerowicz would understand a little easier. There are some similarities between Poland and the US in this regard. Poles have always thought tribally - most urbanites have little in common with small town or rural folk. They vote differently on that basis. The Kaczynskis, despite being from Warsaw and qualified lawyers, like to make a show of their ordinariness, their non-cosmopolitan-ness - Jaroslaw’s favourite food is not oyster but scrambled eggs. Both twins like to make it known that they are not too keen on foreign travel - much as Sarah Palin has done.

However, in Poland, things are different. There is not the physical separation of the different tribes. Communist housing policy mixed everyone up. New areas are emerging and transforming, but the majority still live all jumbled up together.

And anyway, Poland is a thousand tribes, and the US just two, with a few sub-tribes thrown in for good measure. It maybe is easier to rule a country with a social complexion of just two lifestyle groups, but the presidential elections are precious little to do with politics and a whole lot more about snobbery - inverted or otherwise. This is one development that Poland should not import. We may as well go back to Poland's feudal kings.

Sikorski with Laughrov

The New Cold war looks like this. Bit of a laugh, innit? (photo)

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was in town today. The meeting with Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski was keenly anticipated by the media commentariat. Would Sergei the Russian Bear be taken to task by Rad the Eagle? Or was Lavrov going to roast the eagle on a spit? After all, it’s Sikorski’s signature on the anti-missile shield agreement.

Would their high-octane meeting do what that particle physics experiment could not? Create a black hole with an energy force field so strong that the Foreign Ministry building on Szucha Avenue collapses in on itself, disappearing into thin air, and taking all of Poland and Russia’s diplomats with it?

There was a time when everyone thought - because Dziennik said so - that Lavrov had cancelled his trip to Warsaw after Poland’s support for Tbilisi during the South Ossetian war.

And then it was - if he does come, should he meet President Lech ‘Caucasus Rambo’ Kaczynski as well?

In the event, Kaczynski was out of the country today, busy with urgent meetings of the Visegrad group - and you can be forgiven for never hearing of it before. The G8, it is not.

So tension was high in Warsaw’s Foreign Ministry this morning.

And then…nothing really happened.

After the two emerged from their meeting it was all rather jolly and polite. If I was on the verge of a New Cold War I wouldn’t be smiling like that. But the thing is, we are not in a New Cold War - unless we want to talk our way into one, that is.

Lavrov did complain about the anti-missile system - but he was blaming the US, for trying to build a Nato ring around Russia. He said Poland was no threat to Moscow.

Sikorski said that he “understood Russia” better now. Which is good. I hope he shares his insights with us, and often.

And they both talked about the relations that are still going on between the two countries, in terms of trade, cultural ties, and so on.

So far, so predictable, so diplomatic. It was a par for the course foreign ministry meeting.

All the time the elephant in the room - Georgia - remained virtually untouched.

The only tricky bit came when Sikorski brought up the embarrassing antics of some of Russia’s generals. They love to get in the newspapers threatening to nuke Poland from the face of the universe. Which is quite rude, isn’t it?

But all in all, this was not the hyper aggressive Russia we have seen, on occasion, recently.

The historic fear of Russia in Poland is entirely understandable. But having an ahistorical fear of them is not. Russia is in a very new place right now. It has economic power, not military. It will try to hang on to as much territory as it can. It does so because it feels threatened. It’s from weakness not strength that Moscow is authoritarian and can bully.

And we should always ask ourselves: can the US, UK etc really accuse Moscow of being the bullyboy when they have taken it upon themselves to act like the world’s policeman/humanitarian social worker - whether the ‘client’ wants it or not - since the end of the Real Cold War.?

Beware the bear with a thorn in its foot. But in the end Russia needs the West as much as the West needs Russia. All talks and disputes should take that as their starting point.

The Polish Fritzl

A man has been arrested in Poland for imprisoning his daughter for six years, raping her repeatedly and fathering two children who were immediately put up for adoption. Sounds familiar?

The 45 year old man comes from Siedlce, eastern Poland and is now in custody after she finally reported him.

His wife knew about all this, but was too afraid to do anything about it. Police are now searching for the two children, born in February 2005 and January 2007, to establish that they were the result of the sexual abuse.

Of course, the case clearly resembles the Austrian Josef Fritzl case earlier this year. I wonder if the western media will re-hash the nonsense they came out with then - that Fritzl was a product of Austria’s Nazi past and how “Central/Eastern Europe” just can’t come to terms with its past?

Poland’s government knew all about ‘secret’ CIA prisons?

Radio Zet has alleged that top ministers in the previous Law and Justice government were shown a report back in 2006 detailing the existence of those illusive CIA prisons in Poland used to detain Islamist terrorist suspects.

The names who saw and authored the report will be familiar to regular readers of this blog.

The author was our old friend Roman Giertych, who was heading a committee on the activities of Poland’s secret services at the time.

His report, written sometime in 2006 - confirming allegations made by Human Rights Watch back in late 2005 - was seen by Zbigniew Ziobro, state prosecutor Janusz Kaczmarek and special services coordinator Zbigniew Wasserman.

Crucially, today’s allegations have neither been confirmed nor denied by the present state prosecutor, Marek Staszak.

My understanding of the evidence collected by the Council of Europe’s report - which supported the original allegations made by the NGO and the Washington Post - you can see here and here.

Government ministers, and former president Aleksander Kwasniewski have always denied the allegations, dismissing them as nonsense.

In May 2007, the U.N. Committee Against Torture called on the Law and Justice government to disclose information gathered by Poland’s parliamentary committee on the CIA prisons issue. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski dismissed the request: “The matter is now closed,” he said. But if the parliamentary committee had had access to the report written by Roman Giertych - and is it not too dumb to presume that they had? - then he, the prime minister, knew of the existence of these places in Poland.

If Radio Zet’s information is correct then several politicians are, quite simply, telling naughty little fibs.

Even though the present Polish government announced that an investigation into the issue would be re-opened, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said this week:

"I have commented the issue as defense minister and I can take the responsibility for what I know and for what took place when I was responsible for military installations.

"I can once again categorically confirm -- during the time of the Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and Jaroslaw Kaczynski governments, and also now, nothing like that has taken place in Poland."

So that is a flat denial, then. But we must look at Sikorski’s words carefully, however. He is stating that not since Law and Justice took office in November 2005 - Radek has been a minister in both the previous and present governments - have there been CIA prisons in Poland. But the reports following the initial allegations by Human Rights Watch stated that the prisons were closed down around the same time as the Law and Justice government won the election.

So maybe Sikorski is merely saying that there have not been any such prisons in Poland for the last three years. He is not saying there never have been.

The Council of Europe’s report quoted one US military intelligence source as saying: “Listen, Poland agreed top down…from the president [Kwasniewski], yes….to provide the CIA all it needed.”

If Radio Zet’s report turns out to be true then Giertych, Ziobro and ex-Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski are going to have a lot of explaining to do.

The return of Beger

Feeling down? Listless? A little depressed? Think it’s maybe the start of those pesky autumn blues?

Well, you are wrong. You are feeling like that because you have been deprived of the joys of having former MP Renata Beger constantly occupying the TV politico-spotlight. Now she (left of photo) is back! But who is that woman she is leaving the court building with?

I suppose this post should be labelled: “post-fourth republic nostalgia”. Of all the weird and whacky characters during those heady, Law and Justice/Self Defence,/League of Polish Families coalition years, Renata Beger was one of my favourites.

But since her party - led by another all time great of Polish politics, Andrzej Lepper - was chucked out of parliament last autumn by the wise voters of Poland, Renata has disappeared from our screens.

Until now. She is starting her trial for allegedly using small bribes to get people to round up the thousands of signatures needed before they can officially become a parliamentary candidate.

Renata, bless her, says that she has been stitched up by the media. Gazeta Wyborcza had done an undercover exposé on her, which is how she came to be in court for electoral fraud.

Her party - Samoobrona, or Self Defence - is no stranger to the courts and the legal process. In fact, Andrzej Lepper and his bunch of merry men - and Renata - have seen more legal action than many of the lawyers that represent them.

Sex scandals, public order offences, dubious electoral behaviour…you name it, they been accused of doing it.

So, after the court was adjourned today, Renata,who loves having her photo taken, was captured walking out of the building. Or maybe it wasn’t today but one of those other times?

But who is that woman with her in the slightly….well, I want to be a gentleman here, so you can fill in the rest of that sentence by yourself. Clue - it’s something to do with her dress sense. And the age she is. And the profession she practices.

Is she one of Renata’s good-time girlfriends? Is she her PR? For sure she can’t be her stylist!

Nope…that’s her lawyer!!!

Get the feeling she is going to lose this case? Renata faces a 10,000 zloty fine - around 5,000 dollars.

Owimpians of Poland

No, I don’t have a speech defect: I mean oWIMPians. Polish athletes came home from the Beijing Olympics, a little shame faced, today, bringing with them just 10 medals - three gold, six silver, one bronze. That’s poor. I’ve seen more medals on the chest of an old age pensioner on Remembrance Day.

What a bunch of wimps!

And the statistic of just ten medals gets worse when you consider only two of them came in the proper sports events - the track and field (by “proper sport” I exclude ‘synchronised nose picking’ and the like).

The ’blame game’ started even before the athletes touched down at Warsaw airport. Thenews.pl reports:

During the games, Polish athletes, including fencer Sylwia Gruchala and runner Marek Plawgo, said that their poor results in China were due to the ubiquitous irregularities in their respective sports associations, such as alcoholism in the Polish Fencing Association and favouritism in the Track and Field Athletic Association.

Alcoholism in the fencing association? Scary! Can you imagine someone coming at you from the Polish fencing association, dressed all in white with that strange face mask, brandishing a sabre, or whatever, while dangling on the end of a piece of string and at the same time being completely pissed out of their heads!

Surly a few health and safety issues there?

MP’s like Jaroslaw Govin (Krakow, PO) have waded in, repeating the accusations against the sports associations, made by athletes …who failed.

I am sure it is partly to do with funding and a lack of good people to administrate sport. Blah! But that can be said for administrations in Poland, generally. Maybe, however, what Polish athletes really lack is the balls to win - even the synchronised beach billiards squad could do with those.

Poland, frozen conflicts and new ‘cold wars’

Stop blogging for just four months over the summer and what happens? The world - certainly this part of it - has changed. And not for the better.

The deal between Washington and Warsaw on the anti-ballistic missile system last week was signed by Condoleezza Rice and her buddy, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski (pictured below) as the guns in the Caucasus were still warm and smoking.

Russian troops were still pulling out - or were they? - of areas in Georgia they had occupied since President Mikheil Saakashvili sent many of his troops to certain death by ordering them, somewhat ludicrously, to take back control of South Ossetia, one of the small, pro-Russian breakaway regions his nation lost after the nasty war in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed around them.

Poland - in the shape of its government and particularly its president, Lech Kaczynski - has been using the conflict between Moscow and Tbilisi to nail their colours to the mast of “protecting freedom and democracy” of the brave young George against the might of an imperialistic old dragon in the Kremlin.

The Novosti Russian news agency reported Saturday:

Two more NATO ships, a Polish frigate and a U.S. destroyer, passed through the Bosporus strait and entered the Black Sea on Friday evening to boost the alliance's presence in the Black Sea, where it is delivering humanitarian cargoes to Georgia, a source in the Turkish navy said.

But the only people cheering from the sidelines, as politicians and media pundits reached for the ’new cold war metaphors’ were probably a few arms dealers. Georgia needs even more US arms! Patriot missiles coming to Poland! American troops to set up a garrison in Poland! Yippee!

And people like President Kaczynski must have been cocker-hoop! Here was HIS mission - his reason to be. As he said - “Russia has now shown its true [imperialistic] face.” Someone had to stand up to them. Didn’t they?
The war in Georgia galvanised travel-averse old Kaczor into a radical transformation. Suddenly, before our incredulous eyes, he turned into Action Man interested in notching up a few frequent fly miles vouchers. As the war raged in South Ossetia, a duck-like Rambo figure emerged from the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, rounded up fellow New Cold War Warriors from Presidential Palaces and PM Offices in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and set off in Poland’s Air Force One for Tbilisi.

But where Kaczynski goes, farce quickly follows. At one point during the flight the pilot - fearing that Tbilisi airspace was still controlled by Russia - refused to go to Georgia and re-routed the plane for safer climbs in Azerbaijan. But President Kaczynski first ordered that the pilot be sacked - then took control of the plane. Kind of. I can almost imagine him - almost - gripping the joystick in sweaty hands as he said, his voice firm with purpose and intent: “I am the Polish Commander-in-Chief and this plane is going to Tbilisi!”

Sadly, that was just my imagination. Actually the pilot touched down somewhere in Azerbaijan and then Kaczynski and crew were forced to endure a four hour car journey for his date with destiny.

Kaczynski goes to Tbilisi

And what a heady experience it must have been. President Kaczynski is no longer popular at home. But here, in front of crowds of Georgians, he could appear the hero. Here were a few leaders sticking a finger up at Putin, almost daring him to do his worst.

But while President Kaczynski was forging a new reputation for himself as a 21st century Pilsudski - well, he can dream - the rest of us were feeling decidedly nervous. The signing of the anti-missile deal, the war in the Caucuses, are both the result of national and international elites looking for a sense of their own worth - and that goes for Moscow and Washington, Tbilisi, Warsaw and Paris. The price, meanwhile, the average Central and Eastern European- in-the-street is paying is a more unstable region.

We are left with more questions than answers. Why did Saakashvili start a war with Russia he knew he would lose? Did he expect President Kaczynski - his main supporter internationally - to send a few Polish F-16s over Moscow? Did he not realise that Polish F-16s are having a little trouble flying over Warsaw these days, so naff and knackered is consignment given to them by Washington? Did he honestly think that acting like the loose canon he is would make Georgia’s chances of joining Nato any greater?

And why do so many people think that Moscow is acting from a new position of strength when they are actually trying to hang on to what are, realistically, meaningless pieces of territory in South Ossetia and Abkhazia? This is not strength - it shows their desperation, weakness and diminishing influence in the region.

Is the anti-missile shield really needed at all? Are the existential threats more the product of post-Cold War and War on Terror fantasies? Will the shield really make us safer? Is a further antagonised Moscow really worth it? Wouldn’t some creative diplomacy be a better way for international leaders to spend their time?

One of Us?

More questions: What did Bush say to Saakashvili in private as he praised him in public? When the Georgian president was contemplating making his suicidal move against South Ossetia two years ago he reportedly got more than an earful from Colin Powell. “Back off!,” was the clear message.

Bush often says that Saakashvili - in reality an authoritarian who has more in common with someone like Putin than many realise - is “one of us”; Bush often reminds us that Saakashvili is “western educated.” Which is true - but there again, so is George W Bush “western educated.” So what does that say about the state of Western Education Systems?

the beatroot returns...

...on September 1. I was musing about a multimedia thing, and there will be elements of that, now and again, but usually it is going to be the same old rubbish.

See you then.

New by the beatroot

A guest post on Polandian.

Eurovision - nobody loves us, we don’t care

The last post

Well...kind of. After three years and 646 posts, the beatroot is going into a summer hibernation - as all root vegetables should do at this time of year - only to re-emerge in the autumn bigger, better…etc.

We will be back in a slightly different form, however, taking a little more multimedia approach. And I am still going to write for other places. In fact, I can write more often elsewhere.

Thanks to everyone who has passed through here, at some time or another - and particularly the regular commentators, who helped give us a reputation for being a bit better than the ordinary blog.

And there has been quite a few folk passing by.

From January 1, 2008, we have had 289,248 hits with 238,814 uniques.

In April, the last full month, we got 79,542 hits and 65,303 uniques.

I know some commercial web sites in the English language in Poland that would be pleased with that.

The reasons for the summer break are many: over work, the need to recharge batteries, etc.

The Beatroot Republic

But mainly it’s because the beatroot has run out of a subject. This blog was really about Poland under the Fourth Republic - that two years of lunacy from the Law and Justice government.

It’s been six months since the demise of one of the strangest governments in Europe, certainly in my lifetime. And little did I expect to be caught up in it all.

So in case your memory has dimmed, let me remind you of how it was.

At one time we had a government with a cabinet made up of six inch nail swallowers, bearded ladies and other circus freaks.

The PM was Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leading the charge against what he thought was a cabal of communists, still clinging on, post 1989, in public institutions, government, organized crime and media. Jaroslaw didn’t just think there were legions of Reds huddled together under his bed - he was of the impression that they were under his nose, his hat and probably under his pet cat’s basket (I never did find out what his cat‘s name is, so let‘s call him Sebastian).

Jaroslaw launched an assault on what became known as the uklad by setting up a counter uklad. The nepotism that Poland has indeed laboured under since the fall of communism continued - except now we had a different bunch of cronies fighting over the spoils of being in power in this poor, long suffering country. Why a decent people like the Poles can’t ever get themselves a government good enough for them, we can only ponder on as one of those great unanswered questions - like, how large is the universe; or why it is we can’t tickle ourselves?

So close was the net he weaved around him that many expected Sebastian the Cat to get a job as Minister of Feline Affairs.

But he resisted. He did, however, end up by doing something even stranger - appoint Roman Giertych and Andrzej Lepper as his vice prime ministers.

This was too much for many of Kaczynski’s supporters, and it was all down, down from there into an inferno of madness.

Still, for a blogger, it was groszy from heaven. Every day brought some gory fascination. It was like watching the political equivalent of a slow motion car crash, on a loop.

If you came in late and have no idea what I am talking about then feel free to look back through this blog….and I never had to make one word of it up….Cue here wobbly screen like they do in old corny movies when cutting to another time, a memory, or when it’s a dream sequence.

Yeah, perhaps it was all a dream. And now we have woken up, haven’t we?

Haven’t we?

That's all, folks.

Potty Polish PM admits he ‘did inhale’

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

We forgive you Tomaszewski!

Two Brits have sent me a link to their myspace page where you can hear the first hymn by English football fans in support of the Polish football team at this summer’s Euro 2008 football championships in Switzerland and Austria.

And it’s a great little song! Written by Will Hetherington and Rupert Slade - the latter lived in Poland for four years - it's about an English football fan depressed after England were knocked out of Euro 2008 by Croatia. He was thinking like I was thinking - who to support now? No Scotland or Ireland in the finals either (and Wales never qualify for anything, anyway). Just then, Magda, the Polish barmaid in the English pub he is sitting depressed in, pulls him a pint and suggests he support Poland - well, there are hundreds of thousands of Poles in the UK.

The title refers to the goalkeeper of the 1973 Polish side who (in)famously knocked England out of the 1974 World Cup finals.

Polska Song (Come back Tomaszewski - all is forgiven)

Sitting in the pub
The final whistle's still ringing in my ears
All our hopes are dashed
And summer laughter's turned to tears

In the final game,
All we needed was a draw,
But Beckham couldn't bend it,
And now three lions roar no more

But I'm shaken from my blues
The sound of singing full of pride.
Haven't you heard the news?
Poland's gone and qualified

Polska, Polska, naprzod Polska,
You're our boys in white and red.
Polska, Polska, Come on Poland
Go where others fear to tread.

From London to Warsaw
From The King's Head to The Swan
Polska, Polska, naprzod Polska
Together we are strong.

Don't look so down
Says Magda pulling me another beer,
Wipe away that frown
And find yourself another team to cheer.

Whatever colours we wear
Our passion is the same
'Cos football's here to share
So come and join us in the beautiful game

Well my team are firing blanks
And the summer fills me with woe
I may not know Krakow from Gdansk
But I'm willing to give it a go

Polska, Polska, naprzod Polska,
You're our boys in white and red.
Polska, Polska, Come on Poland
Go where others fear to tread.

From London to Warsaw
From The King's Head to The Swan
Polska, Polska, naprzod Polska
Together we are strong.

Hear Polska Song here.

Fritzl, Austrians and ...Radio Maryja?

The shocking, disgusting and incomprehensibly cruel case of the Austrian ‘children in the cellar’ has made some commentators look for sociological causes, in some unlikely places, for what is really the individual act of a psychopath. Even Poland’s cranky, ultra-conservative anti-Semites at Radio Maryja have been dragged into the increasingly wild comment-fest.

Many commentators have tried to explain, what I believe is almost the unexplainable, by trying to find something buried deep within small town Austrian culture. And they seem to be finding it in a place even colder and darker than the cellar under Josef Fritzl’s house in Amstetten.

The locals knew something, didn't they? So why did they look away, pretend it wasn’t happening?

Apparently, it’s all to do with Austria’s anti-Semitic past. Yup! Of course it is. But not only Austria's dark past. Look at this bit from Howard Jacobson’s column in the Independent (UK).

As chance would have it – let's call it chance, anyway – the unremarkable provincial Austrian town of Amstetten has looked away before. There was a concentration camp in Amstetten. Not a big one. Just a sub-camp of Mauthausen, of which there were approximately 50 dotted around lower and upper Austria. Since Mauthausen's speciality was extermination by means of slave labour, in particular the extermination of politically educated and vocal enemies of the Reich, we might fairly assume that Amstetten's speciality was the same. It is also worth noting that Amstetten was a camp for women.

Whether it is equally worth noting that the Polish Catholic radio station Radio Maryja [my italics] – a continual embarrassment to the Vatican on account of its nationalistic and anti-Semitic utterances – has opened several bases in the Austrian Tyrol, the first of them in Amstetten, I don't know…

Well, if he doesn’t know whether it was worth pointing that out - and I would argue that it was ridiculous to point that out in the context of this story - then why bother in the first place?

It says here (under religious antisemitism) that the founder of Radio Maryja, the anti-Semite Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, decided in 1999 to expand his operations in the Tyrol region, adding to the base already set up in Amstetten, the town where the disgusting Fritzl imprisoned his daughter and children.

That said, the small town of Amstetten (eastern Austria) is not in the Tyrol region, which is in the west of Austria, as is the district of Amstetten - which is a different place. Could this be a mix up with Radio Maria International (which Rydzyk did have an involvment with back in the 1980s in Bavaria) which does have a place in Amstetten?

Whatever. What has that got to do with this case? Where is there evidence that any lingering anti-Semitism in Austria, or anywhere else, had anything to do with such a freak case such as this?

Maybe Brendan O'Niell in spiked is right. What Jacobson and others are alluding to is this: Catholic Austrians, like those Radio Maryja listening Poles, are not like us. They are from the East and so do not think and behave as we do in western Europe. They live in a denial culture, hiding from their past, deaf and blind to their present.

That the ultra-conservative loonies at Radio Maryja can be dragged into a case so shocking - because it is so unusual - maybe shows up something a little disturbing about some western European thinking about Central and Eastern Europe. It tells us nothing, however, about what caused a psychopath like Fritzl to do what he did.

Update - maybe someone can help, here.

In the Jacobson article linked in the above post it claims that Radio Maryja had a base in Amstetten and then expanded and has now many bases in the Tyrol region.

But the town where Friztl lived is in east Austria. Tyrol is in west Austria. There is also a Amstetten district in west Austria, but very far from the eastern town of the same name.

We have also failed to find evidence that Radio Maryja has bases in Austria, as is claimed in the Jacobson article and the other link I give in the original post.

What we have found is that another radio network, Radio Maria does have a base in Amstettel.

Father Rydzyk of Radio Maryja had contact with a Radio Maria in Germany in the 1980s.

Could Jacobson be mistaking Radio Maryja with Radio Maria?

Help!!!

Poles decide London mayoral election?

That’s what the losing candidate Ken Livingstone told Polish Radio this week.

'The Polish vote may be anywhere between 60 and 100,000 and therefore it’s become a decisive vote. We all expect this to be a very close election.'

'So the Polish community will effectively determine the outcome.'

Well, with the Conservative candidate Boris Johnson winning by 140,000 first and second preference votes then the Polish vote may well have been decisive.

There has been a record turnout in the election for London’s mayor. OK, the turnout is still only 45 percent, but that’s about ten percent better than usual.

And out of the 2.4 million voters who did go to the Poles yesterday, maybe up to 100,000 - the number who registered to vote - were from Poland.

So both the main candidates - the incumbent Ken Livingstone and conservative rival Boris Johnston were on to the Polish community in London during the election campaign to try and appear as their candidate.

Livingstone, or instance, promised a Polish day in London every year, to fall on May 3, Constitution day in Poland.

Former Polish prime minister (and once actiong mayor of Warsaw) Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz - who is now based in London working for the EBRD - reportedly gave his pledge to Boris Johnson.

And many observers believed that many Poles were likely to have given their vote to Boris, as Livingstone’s old nickname, dating back to the 1980s when he was a hard left local government politician, is Red. And maybe Poles, who wouldn’t know too much about the guy and how he is, these days, a typically British ideologically-lite politician, maybe they were not too keen on candidates with a nickname like that.

Heaer both leading candidates on the Polish vote here.