On being offensive

Or: why the Pope should not say sorry.

As an evangelical, fundamentalist humanist anti-theist, I tiptoe into this debate as if walking on eggshells. But then, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.

And until I can think of another eggy metaphor I will get on with the point.

Pope Benedict has apologized for the offense he has caused some Muslims by his remarks last week in a lecture about “Faith and Reason’.

But why should the leader of the Catholic Church apologise for saying things he believes in? He is a Catholic. If he agreed with Muslims then he would be a Muslim. There is a fundamental doctrinal incompatibility between the two faiths. That’s why they are two different faiths.

Many though are seeing the Muslim outrage as part of Islam’s unique view of itself as a ‘Super Victim’. But maybe it is we in the West, with our wet liberal relativism and multiculturalism who have created a cultural climate where everyone feels the right to scream for an apology when they find something ‘offensive’(see here here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here or here).

Mick Hume in Spiked writes:

This bizarre ruckus over the words of a medieval monarch has turned into a revealing picture of the modern world. A world in which nobody, not even the leader of a major faith, is allowed to express a strong opinion without risking condemnation and demands for an apology. A world dominated by a victim mentality, in which groups with hyper-sensitive ‘outrage antennae’ are always on the lookout for the chance to claim that they have been offended, insulted or oppressed by the words of others.

Pope Benedict thinks that the moral relativism abound in the West is a bad thing. I, as an evangelical, fundamentalist humanist anti-theist, agree with him, though we would disagree profoundly about the relationship between ‘Faith and Reason’ – which to me are mutually exclusive terms.

But the Pope should not have to apologise simply because he is being a Catholic. If people don’t like what he says – I don’t like what he says – then tough. We can either engage with his remarks or ignore them. But don’t be mistaken, either, for thinking that it is only Muslims who have the Super Victim mentality.

The Pope making Catholic remarks is like a hen laying eggs – it’s just what they do best (ah, another egg metaphor!).

November election in Poland?

It feels a little like Groundhog Day, but we appear to be on the verge on an early election. Again.

A row within the ruling coalition over the amount and type of government spending in the 2007 Budget Bill has given one of the minority parties – Samoobrona – the chance to leave the government after being seen to be fighting for causes popular with its constituents – farmers and poorer Poles.

The announcement of more troops to Afghanistan – a deployment too far for many – has seemingly given extra impetus to Andzej Lepper’s (photo above, in favourite pose) threat that he will not support the Budget.

PM Jarolsaw Kaczynski said:

‘Andrzej Lepper has to decide whether he wants to govern and change Poland, whether he wants to serve his electorate in the countryside and small towns, or whether he wants to destroy it all. One thing is obvious, it’s impossible to go on governing in this way, from one quarrel to the other, because it’s totally ineffective.’

We have been here before. Many times. The difference to the many previous ‘election scares’ over the past year is that both minority parties have been in the government for a few months and can demonstrate to their constituencies that they have ‘done their best’ but the ‘big bad nasty government is unbending, and we can leave the government with our honour intact’.

We also have a resurgent opposition PO in the opinion polls.

The latest survey, which is inline with recent polls, puts the free market PO at 30 percent, with the majority party in the ruling coalition PiS at 24 percent (minus 1 in the beatroot’s PiSed-Off index).

A few months ago, when PO declined the opportunity for another election, polls were showing that Poles did not want another election so soon after the last one. But now the mood has changed. People are fed up with the uncertainty of a coalition at war with itself.

It’s difficult for LPR (which has a declining support) but for Samoobrona and PO the temptation to go to the country must now be very tempting.

The Budget Bill should be finalized by the end of the month. But a meeting began today among the three coalition parties will resume tomorrow. So something has got to give soon. Six months ago the government would have expected to win an election. Now they are not so sure. But the chances, and the will, to pull another late rabbit from another late hat is receding tonight.

Oriana Fallaci – the eulogies

I read loads this weekend (see here and here and even here) about what a great woman Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci was, who died last Friday, aged 77 – of how she was a courageous woman in the face of Islamic terror, etc…

But as she got older, and certainly after 9/11, she turned into an elderly Italian version of Ann Coulter – in other words, a ranting, raving right wing bigot.

Here is just part of what she said on Polish TVP television after the lethal bombings by British religious fanatics in London in July last year.

Interviewer: Father Andrzej Majewski: Those responsible for the terrorist attacks on London were Muslims born in Great Britain or English citizens [actually third generation British]. They can therefore be considered Europeans. Do you believe that in order to defend our continent and western society we should banish all the Muslims from Europe?

Oriana Fallaci: To begin with, they are not Europeans at all. They can’t be considered Europeans. Or not more than how we could be considered Islamic if we lived in Morocco or Saudi Arabia or in Pakistan taking advantage of residence or citizenship.

Citizenship has nothing to do with nationality, and it takes a good deal more than a piece of paper on which it is written English or French or German or Spanish or Italian or Polish citizen to make us English or French or German or Italians or Poles.

That is, an integral part of a history and a culture. In my opinion, even those with citizenship are guests and that’s that.

Or rather, privileged invaders.

Naturally, if they want to go of their own free will, I wouldn’t cry over it. Quite the contrary, I would light a candle to the Madonna.

In the essay published a few days ago by the Corriere della Sera, “We are treating the enemy like a friend”, I even suggest they do so. “If we are so ugly, so bad, so disgusting and sinful,” I say, “”if you hate us and despise us so much, why don’t you just go back to your own homes?”

The fact is that they would do anything but. It’s the furthest thought from their minds. And even if they were to think about it, how could such a thing take place? Through an exodus equivalent to that in which Moses brought the Jews from Egypt and crossed the Red Sea? They are too many, by now. Calculating only those who are in the European Union, as the most recent data suggests, they are around 25 million. Calculating even those who are in countries outside the European Union and in the Ex Soviet Union, around 60 million.

Dear Father Andrzej, it is by now too late to ask them to go back home. We should have, you should have, asked that of them twenty years ago. That is, when I was already saying, “But don’t any of you understand that this is an invasion that has been well calculated, and if we don’t stop them we will never be free of them again?”

Now explain to me how that same rant could not have come from the mouth of a Jean Marie Le Penn, or any other dribbling neo-fascist.

Great woman? She may have been once, but by the time she died she was just a senile old racist.

More?
Even her rantings are too much for Chris Hitchens, that arch foe of 'Islamofascists' everywhere - see Holy Writ, Atlantic, April 2003

What’s in it for Poland?

The new Polish military adventure in Afghanistan will cost the cash strapped government 100 million dollars.

Leader of Samoobrona, Andzrej Lepper (photo above with rather large tooth pick), is scornful of the Afghan mission. After PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski came back from Washington following his very short meeting with George W. Bush, Lepper commented: “That’s the most expensive five minutes Kaczynski ever spent.”

"Instead of helping Polish pensioners, teachers and nurses, we are sending our soldiers to a war. It's a scandal," Lepper said. "Poland cannot afford such a commitment".

Other opposition parties have come out against the deployment. SLD leader Wojciech Olejniczak said Friday that Poland already had troops in Iraq and Lebanon and could not afford to "dispose of its forces with such ease. Poland is not a military power. We can’t afford this."

Another rural based party, PSL agrees. In fact, all the 'leftist' parties here are against.

A spokesman for Kaczynski's party, Law and Justice, said that the 1000 troop offer by Poland was decided “way before Kaczynski went to the US.” Poland initially offered 500 more troops but has since doubled the offer. The NATO conference in Warsaw last weekend was probably when the offer was made.

Poland offered that amount in the hope that other countries would start coming forward and offering more too. But so far, so little.

Afghanistan and the 2007 Budget Bill

At a time when Lepper and LPR’s Roman Giertych are pushing for more to be spent on agriculture and education – their two respective ministries – it must be galling to see 300 million zloty being spent on the Afghan adventure at the drop of a hand grenade.

Lepper has repeatedly threatened to leave the coalition if he does not get increases in public spending.

The government has said that government debt in the 2007 Budget must be capped at 30 billion zloty. Many economists think this is too high a figure as it is.

Others, like lowly paid teachers, medics, police... scratch their heads and wonder just what Poland gets from all this posing in war zones? No more money is being offered to the education and agriculture ministries but the defense ministry gets another 300 million zloty, to be spent on something with little tangible benefit for Poland.

Many think Afghanistan is a dangerous diversion.

Taliban threatens Polish troops

Poland will ‘rue’ the decision to send more 'peacekeepers' to Afghanistan, says Qari Muhammad Yousaf, spokesperson for those who do not watch television, listen to music but who do like their women with bags over their heads.

The Kavkaz Centre, a web site for radical mujahideen types reports that the Taliban High Command – which they refer to as the Islamic State of Afghanistan – warns that when Poland sends 1000 troops to the country in February they might not get a friendly welcome from everyone.

"I advise the Poland government not to send troops by reviewing its decision and this is my message to the parliament and people of Poland that Canadian and British troops which is considered very fierce, are in trouble, therefore you should not take this decision."

"We consider all foreign troops either they are in Afghanistan or planning to come to Afghanistan as invading forces and every Afghan thinks that it his duty to wage a Jihad (Holy War) against these forces, the government spokesman, Qari Muhammad Yousaf, told the Afghan Islamic Press news agency.

"The former USSR had made this mistake by sending 120000 troops to Afghanistan but faced defeat. Now a few troops can do nothing but to bring destruction to Afghanistan and increase their death rate." Poland should thank that their troops are not as active as US, British and American troops but what fate they met? The US showing its wisdom pushed NATO into an unjustified and wrong war and God willing the Polish troops will also face defeat, the spokesman predicted.

Oh dear.

More?
Better paid, better armed, better connected - Taliban rise again, Guardian, Sept 16

Kaczynski meets Bush after all

But at one time it looked like he had been snubbed.

News sources reported that according to the Polish schedule released before Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's arrival in the United States, he was to meet with President Bush mid afternoon – maybe they could share a hamburger? Pierogi? Unfortunately, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there was no such meeting on Bush's schedule.

Oops!

When this was pointed out to Bush he complained that he was too busy trying do defend his ragged Was on Terror, and hanging on to votes in the mid-term elections in November. And anyway, Condi and Dick were going to meet him.

In the end, George popped his head around the door during a meeting with Cheney and said, “Didn’t I meet you before, last February? I never forget a face!”

He didn’t say that really. He thanked Kaczynski and Poland “for its stead fast support in the war on terror. Thanks. Bye!”

But Jaroslaw barely had time for George, either. Many are commenting that the Polish PM has had an absurdly hectic schedule.

Kaczynski is having meetings and giving speeches and press conferences on missile systems in Poland (and a possible bilateral defense agreement to go with them (or not), Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon – Israel, energy security, Ukraine\s entry into NATO, anti-Semitism in Poland (or not)….

He’s giving a lecture at the Heritage Foundation on ‘Central Europe’. He’s having meetings with Polonia representatives in Chicago.

So many meetings on too many things, surely the prime minister must have a huge team from which to delegate talks? Well, not this prime minister - he seems to be involved in everything. Foreign Office, Embassies are by-passed as Jaro sticks his finger into everything. That’s very much his style.

Professor Zbigniew Lewicki, expert on Polish-US affairs from Warsaw University, told Radio Polonia

'It is, indeed, a very packed schedule. I think there are too many meetings. Usually PMs don't do that. There are people who do that for them. Then the Prime Minister would meet with one or two really important hosts, rather than try to deal with every issue by himself.’

Still, Bush did good in meeting with Jaroslaw, no matter how short. When you snub the Kaczynskis they get upset, and have long memories…

Poland to send even more troops to Afghanistan

Poland will be sending 1000 more troops to quell an increasingly vicious Taliban counter attack. But I have a better plan. Send in Madonna!

The problem NATO military chief General Ray Henault had with the meeting of defense ministers in Warsaw last weekend was that many NATO countries signed up to send troops to Afghanistan, but have been dragging their feet ever since by not sending enough troops, or when they have sent troops neglected to accompany them with any decent equipment.

Poland has already committed over 500 troops six months earlier than they were scheduled to. Now it is the first to pledge even more forces.

Polish troops will be stationed, not in the southwest Helmand province where the British are and is extremely dangerous at the moment, but in the north of the country (up where the Germans are and comparatively safe) and in the east. They will only arrive in February 2007.

Many wonder why, five years after the US and others invaded Afghanistan to smash the Taliban and ‘get’ bin Laden in response to 9/11, they have neither smashed the Taliban nor got the bearded one...

So what can we do to pacify the Taliban and maybe even tempt Laden out of his cave?

Well, the beatroot thinks that conventional methods of battle will not be affective in this most asymmetric of wars. So we need an unconventional response.

Madonna, Gloria Gaynor or even George Michael could just hold the key.

Everyone knows that homosexuality was a capital offense during Taliban rule. What many don’t realize is that the city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s home town, is a hot bed – maybe literally – of homosexuality.

In one of BBC World Affairs editor, John Simpson’s brilliant books, he recounts seeing many Taliban fighters hanging around street corners with their Kalashnikovs slung casually over their shoulders, wearing eye make up, cheek blusher and a pair of gold lame sandals! Simpson wrote that they didn’t seem too interested in doing any fighting as most of the time they were convulsed in a hail of giggling and a cloud of marijuana smoke.

Homosexuality is far more common in Kandahar and among the Taliban than it is in London, Amsterdam, and San Francisco!

Mullah Mohammed Ibrahim, a local cleric told the LA Times:

"Ninety percent of men have the desire to commit this sin," the mullah says. "But most are right with God and exercise control. Only 20 to 50% of those who want to do this actually do it."

Following the mullah’s math, this suggests that between 18% and 45% of men here engage in homosexual sex—significantly higher than the 3% to 7% of American men who, according to studies, identify themselves as homosexual.

In other words, Kandahar, Afghanistan is one of the gayest places on earth!

Dr. Mohammed Nasem Zafar, a professor at Kandahar Medical College, estimates that about 50% of the city’s male residents have sex with men or boys at some point in their lives.

"The Taliban had halekon [young male lovers] , but they kept it secret," says one anti-Taliban commander, who is rumored to keep two halekon. "They hid their halekon in their madrasas," or religious schools.

The photo above is taken from an article on gay Taliban in the New Yorker. Even though the craven image was banned many Talibs took the opportunity to have their photo taken and had it touched up a bit to make them look even more camp than they already did.

So this is where Madonna comes in. The Taliban obviously have no respect for NATO. But what about Madonna? If we parachuted her in to do a concert they might put down those kalashnikovs and ‘Get into the grove’. They could even sing along to ‘Papa don’t preach’ and do the pose during ‘Vogue’.

It’s a sure fire winner. Before long Kandahar would by one big gay pride march.

The only problem might be: if Poland has control over the area then, will President Kaczynski give the go ahead for the march?

Beatroot’s Socialist Realism Awards

This blog has a quest.

We aim to find the most ridiculous (and by definition, the most fantastic) piece of socialist realism art ever (see previous post).

Nomination for Best Painting: Boris Vladmirski - ‘Roses for Stalin’. (circa 1950)

Polish Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism, an art ideology enforced by the Soviet state as the official standard for art, literature etc., was defined in 1934 at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet writers. It was based on the principle that the arts should glorify political and social ideals of communism. (Slogan on painting above says: ‘Our young hearts are beating for our nation'.)

It covered all areas of the arts including music, all the visual arts, writing.

Introduced after the Soviets ‘liberated’ Poland after WW II, lasting up until the late 1950s, socialist realism, in practice, was mostly a patronizing celebration of all things ugly and pompous.

Whereas art directly after the Bolshevik revolution was avant gardist, challenging, modernist, socialist realism was made to be 'simple' - in the same way that the word 'accessible' means to today's liberal - so even ‘simple workers’ could understand its meaning.

In popular music this led to songs being produced with lyrics about happy tractors and steel mills. I imagine the lyrics went something like:

We love concrete, we love steel,
We love working in the fields,
Hey ho, hey, ho!

We love working down the mine,
We love working all the time!
Hey, ho, hey ho!

We love building roads of tar
For General Secretary’s big car
Hey ho, hey ho!

Socialist realist architects were the biggest criminals. You can avoid a rotten painting by not going to a gallery; you can avoid crap music by covering your ears, but architectural monstrosities cannot be so easily ignored.

Here is a selection of some of the wonderful stuff you can still see in Warsaw today.

Palace of Culture and Science: This is the Stalinist legacy by which everything else should be measured. It was a gift from Stalin. The Poles didn’t want it, but you don’t refuse a present from Uncle Joe. Not unless you actually appreciate the outdoor life in a gulag, that is.

Around its base, and on the outside of various other buildings (the Stalinist plac konstytucji having so many of these figures you could fill up a Communist Party Congress with them) are homoerotic, in the same way as when George Orwell in Road to Wigan Pier describes miners taking a shower after a hard days grind at the coal face. These figures are meant to represent the strength of the proletariat but they just end up looking a bit camp.

President Kaczynski goes to Israel

He doesn’t like going abroad much – but this week the President of Poland is visiting a key country for Polish foreign policy.

Lech Kaczynski likes to stay at home. But one of the draw backs of being head of state is that you have to keep packing your passport.

Since becoming president last autumn he still hasn’t done much traveling. He has made the short hop to Brussels and Germany and back in February he was in Washington. But now he is begining to seriously clock up some frequent fly miles by going to Tel Aviv .

The EU, US, Israel – these are the key destinations for a new Polish president to make an impact and give some character and purpose to diplomacy.

Israel is far from being an easy trip.

The inclusion of the League of Polish Families (LPR) in the governing coalition this year, a party which Tel Aviv thinks is anti-Semitic, prompted the Israeli government to protest via their Ambassador in Warsaw. So the Polish president is going to be very eager to please.

Today a joint declaration on the visits of youth delegations to Poland was signed by Israel’s Deputy Director-General for Eurasian Affairs Mark Sofer and Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Kowal.

These youth visits were under the control of LPR’s Roman Giertych as education secretary, before the government removed them from his department after complaints from Israel.

President Kaczynski told Haaretz before he left for Israel:

"Giertych is not anti-Semitic, He only grew up in an anti-Semitic tradition. He is the son and grandson of Polish politicians. But recently he has undergone a change. Today he is certainly not anti-Semitic. There is no problem with him. The problem lies in the extremist elements in his party."

But what about the statue Kaczynski unveiled last month dedicated to WW II Polish resistance fighter Jozef Kuras, who not only fought the Nazis and then the communists but also found time to attack an orphanage full of Jewish Holocaust survivors?

"I heard about Kuras as an anti-Communist activist," he says, "but I was not aware of all the other aspects relating to him. This is a subject of historical controversy. Accordingly, I have ordered an examination of the matter so that the historical truth will come to light."

So keen was the President to impress Israeli journalists he occasionally went over the top a little.

"I am fond of Israel, Poland has a special relationship with Israel," Kaczynski told Haaretz, "Arik Sharon is one of my big heroes."

Maybe not a great thing to come out with. Sharon is not a popular figure in either Palestine or Lebanon. Poland has promised to send over 500 troops as part of the UN peacekeeping force in Hezbollah territory. Polish forces might have to confront them if they see any breach of the ceasefire. He is also going to have meetings with the President of the Palestinian authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

But there was no stopping Kaczynski. On his personal view of Jews he gushed:

“I love Jews. I had many Jewish friends in the different periods of my life. I understand today what I did not understand as a child: that my attitude toward the Jews was that I viewed them as Poles in every respect, albeit as special Poles. [?] At home and in my milieu I heard that Christos was actually a Jew. It is true that I also heard other voices, which claimed that the Jews crucified Christ."

Er...yeah.

Kaczynski is in Israel for four days, the longest time he has spent in a country abroad. Such is the importance of Israel to Polish foreign policy.

More?
Polish president: We're Israel's best friend in Europe, Jerusalem Post, Sep 11

9/11 monument - Homo Homini, Poland

At 5 pm, Monday, (low ranking) politicians and dignitaries will be in Kielce to unveil Poland’s tribute to all those died on 9/11 five years ago, the Homo Homini monument.

It’s a work by artist Adam Myjak.

Representatives from all the world’s will be in attendance.

George Bush has sent a letter to the organizers of event which thanks Poland for its support in the ‘war on terror’.

The monument is not just to commemorate the 3,000 who died on 9/11 – including 6 Poles - but also as reminder of the destructive power of hatred in general. Kielce was where a a pogrom against Jews in 1946.

This week we have been buried under the weight of ‘anniversary journalism’ coverage of the nihilism, five years ago. And maybe the way we react to this kind of thing is more dangerous to us than the thing itself.

Simon Jenkins, a British columnist who writes for the Times and Guardian, has been the most realistic over the years. He wrote this week:

Terrorism is ten per cent bang and 90 per cent an echo-effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and knee-jerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new "politico-media complex", especially shrill where the dead are white people. It is this that puts global terror into the bang. While we take ever more extravagant steps to ward off the bangs, we do the opposite with the terrorist aftershock. We turn up its volume. We seem to wallow in fear.

Let’s honour the monument in Kielce and then move on, a little more confidently

Good news from the Polish political blog front

Readers of English language blogging about Polish politics and current affairs have never been better served.

I think Warsaw Station, or maybe the old Polblog, was the first blog in English that I became aware of. Warsaw Station is two years old this month. The blog went through a hibernation period for much of this year but is now back even better than he was.

A new blog started up this month: Polish Matters. He was the author of Eurogoeseast, which froze in March this year. But now he is back with a site more focused on Poland. If the last blog was anything to go by he will be concentrating on political economy.

Back from holiday soon is Our man in Gdansk, which is part of the Three Monkeys thing. He does a few posts about finance, economy and politics but he strays into other areas as well. Picks up some good stories in the Polish press.

We also have Traveling Life by Chris Borowski, who gives us a perspective from Poland’s second largest city – Chicago. He has picked up a head of steam recently and does mainly Polish political stories but also a few US ones as well.

There are lots of other blogs in English but few regularly do stuff about politics. And crucially, few provide comment about the stories. Blogging is much more than just cut and pasting a story from MSM. You have to add some ‘value’ to the story.

If I have missed someone out let me know.

But if you read the above blogs, and come back to me occasionally, you should get a rough idea about what is going on in the weird and whacky world of Polish politics...

9/11 – one view from Poland

Most Poles feel that they have been dragged into someone else’s ‘war on terror’.

A Muslim asylum seeker in Warsaw was in an internet café browsing sites in Arabic. The manager of the café decided that this was suspicious behavior and called the cops. Minutes later anti-terrorist units dashed into the café and arrested the asylum seeker, who was innocently checking out a few web sites.

Four years ago two Pakistanis were arrested in Warsaw central station after police decided that the men were ‘acting suspiciously’. When police raided the flat the men were staying at they found a map of Warsaw with various government buildings with rings drawn in pencil around them. The police decided that the Pakistanis were obviously planning a terrorist attack.

It turned out that men were asylum seekers who had ringed the government addresses they had to visit as part of their applications for refugee status.

Such has been the irrational behavior of some Poles in the wake of September 11.

When the planes went into those buildings five years ago in what was really just a mindless display of barbaric nihilism, Poles were as shocked and awed as everyone else. The general feeling of horror was compounded by the fact that several Poles died in the attacks on the Twin Towers along with Americans, British...

But Poles also felt that this was essentially an attack on America, not Poland.

Since the Bush administration launched its ‘war on terror’, however, successive Polish governments have responded to calls for help and have sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush has admitted in a speech today that there were indeed secret CIA prisons where terrorist suspects have been detained and been subjected to an "alternative set of procedures" to get information out of them. Last year the Washington Post alleged that one of these prisons where these ‘alternative sets of procedures’ (torture?) had been carried out was in Poland.

"In addition to the terrorists held at Guantanamo, a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency," said Bush. (see full transcript of the Bush speech here).

As this blog has often pointed out, the evidence for one of these prisons being in Poland is weak, but the accusations have helped cement in peoples’ minds that Poland is up to its neck in America’s ‘war on terror’.

Warsaw has also been talking with Washington about anti-missile systems being placed in Poland to shoot down rockets fired by ‘rogue states’ such as Iran.

Polish governments eagerness to get involved in Bush’s war on abstract nouns has made Poles feel vulnerable, and caused internet café managers and Warsaw police officers to act in the irrational way that they have.

Successive opinion polls have shown that a majority here do not want their armed forces involved in the carnage of post-Saddam Iraq. They do not feel it is their war. They feel that their government’s involvement in the war on terror has made them a possible target for the jihadists.

What was five years ago a deep sympathy for the people of America has turned into a low level unease that Polish foreign policy has dragged Poles into a war that is not theirs to fight in the first place.

In defense of Lepper

Yes, he is trying to hold the fragile coalition government ‘to ransom’…but most of the criticisms of the leader of Samoobrona are motivated by good old fashioned snobbery.

On Saturday Andrzej Lepper, deputy PM and Minister of Farming, said he thought that ‘there would be an election next year’ but it would not be him that would be calling it. He implied that Law and Justice, which leads the coalition, were the ones that were planning an early election.

Last week, however, Lepper was threatening to leave the coalition if the government didn’t come up with extra funds for farmers – who make up much of his constituency – who are suffering from a poor harvest and flooding after the summer’s extreme weather conditions.

So what’s going on?

The simple truth is that both sides are playing coalition politics, with all the bluff and counter-bluff of a poker player with a weak hand.

Lepper is trying to get an increase in public spending – high spending and state intervention were premised in his party’s manifesto. Samoobrona are unfashionably unreconstructed Soviet style socialists.

But they have never hid that.

Lepper also knows that the threats of leaving the coalition do not carry much weight. He knows that to bring down the government he needs the support of opposition Civic Platform (PO). But PO failed to support the no confidence vote in parliament earlier this year – waiting instead for the government to fail more spectacularly and so boost their position in the opinion polls. A vague tactic very characteristic of their vague opposition to date.

Civic Platform, the ‘middle class party’ in Poland, have also made great play of the Kaczynski government making coalition pacts with Lepper, someone they regard as ‘a criminal’ – pointing to his various arrests when he was a trade union rabble rouser in the mid 1990s.

Snobbery Platform

That view of Lepper plays well with many voters in Poland. Look at this comment about him by a Pole on a Ukrainian forum:

‘He is a very clever person and his extremely populist and socialist slogans attract uneducated voters, mainly peasants. In foreign policy he is very pragmatic, and will talk to anyone and everyone, including such rogue states as Belarus and North Korea.

He is a very autocratic leader. His party consists of many former lower ranked communists and some MPs who not finish elementary school [15 yrs old]. But party members are just pawns to him.

I consider him to be fifth columnist in the Polish government.’

Note the stinking snobbery of that comment. He attracts ‘peasants’, the uneducated, fools who follow his self-serving political maneuvering. Samoobrona voters are just dupes and his party members are just pawns to be pushed around.

But it could also be argued that he is as self serving as Civic Platform have been – except that he has simply been much more effective at it.

Civic Platform have failed to form an effective opposition to the present government. They have refused to enter the coalition, which means that smaller, more extreme parties like Lepper’s or Giertych’s far-right LPR have had much more influence on government policy than their size in parliament warrants.

But instead of representing the interests of their voters, Civic Platform, led by Donald Tusk, have sat on the sidelines, sneering down their noses at Lepper and Samoobrona.

If I was a Lepper voter I would be much more pleased with my vote than if I had voted for Civic Platform.

Lepper is simply representing the interests of his constituency. That’s what politicians are meant to do.

Leaving the coalition would do Lepper little good. Better, probably, to stay in and try and blackmail the government into spending more.

That’s what he promised to do during the elections. Civic Platform promised to form a coalition with the Law and Justice. They have failed. Lepper may be seen by many as a much more honest a politician than someone like Donald Tusk.

MI5 files on Polish seductress

WW II documents released by MI5 this week reveal a Polish refugee seductress who beguiled the British aristocracy, but worried the hell out of the Secret Services.

The story involves an arms dealer supplying both sides of the Spanish civil war; a down on his luck alcoholic British aristocrat; and even the future prime minister of Britain, Anthony Eden.

Read more about the Polish unexploded WW II sex bomb here.


More?
National Archives - Soviet Intelligence Agents - released Sept 4, 2006
A search for Krystyna Skarbek, Radio Polonia

Elton John meets Lech Walesa at Sopot Festival - Update

It might be interesting.

Elton John flies into Poland today to perform at the Sopot Festival, the annual celebration of all things middle of the road musically in the Baltic coastal resort. As well as playing the old favourites and showing us his new pair of glasses, Elton will be meeting up with legendary Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa.

But what will the two superstars talk about?

Maybe it will be Walesa’s comment last year that homosexuality was ‘intrinsically evil’?

Elton John – who ‘married’ his partner David Furnish last year in London – wrote an article in the Guardian in 2005 on world homophobia. After listing abuses in United Arab Emirates, Jamaica and Uganda, he wrote:

‘In Poland the man who will become President this year, Lech Kaczynski, banned a Gay Pride 'Equality Parade', saying it would be 'sexually obscene'. Several Pride marches have been banned in Poland. Predictably, there has been a simultaneous growth in harassment and intimidation of gay people by right-wing groups.'

So I wonder if John and Walesa will be having a philosophical discussion about the meaning of the word ‘evil’ in Sopot tonight?

Update: I am watching Elton John in concert from Sopot now (well, someone had to!) and he has just introduced the third song with: ‘This is a song about love and tolerance…’. I wonder what he means?

Update 2: In between the end of set and the ‘encore’ Lech Walesa was introduced to Elton on stage. They first showed a photo of when the singer met the Solidarity leader in the 1980s - both of them appeared to be in their New Romantics period. Walesa then gave a little speech, saying how much he appreciated the support of Elton all those years ago.

Then when he had finished the two stars from the 1980s embraced on stage. In fact, they had a big cuddle, patting each other’s backs and exchanged kisses on the cheek! It was all very passionate and emotional.

Then before Elton began his final number he gave a little speech that went like this:

“I come back to Poland 22 years after that photo with Lech Walesa was taken. He is a great man. I love coming to Poland, the audiences are always so great.

But I am a gay man and I have been saddened by the recent aggression towards gay people in Poland. I just want to say that gay people are not a threat to anyone and WE JUST WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE.’

And then Elton settled down at the piano to play ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word.’

Sopot Festival has never been so interesting!

US anti-ballistic missile base in Europe – Poland or Czech Republic?

This is one competition both governments would rather lose.

AP reported Friday that:

An interceptor missile destroyed a mock warhead over the Pacific Ocean on Friday in a key test of the [US’s] missile defense system, U.S. military officials said.

The technology will be housed in the US and another site, probably in central Europe.

Out of the sites where the US system could be installed in Europe – to stave off any rockets fired by ‘rogue states’, apparently (which means Iran or North Korea these days) the Czech Republic and Poland are the leading contenders. But the Czechs have a vital advantage, is appears.

The Czech newspaper CeskeNoviny writes that:

‘Members of the U.S. expert team who visited the Czech military premises said that the localities in the Czech Republic suit the U.S. needs better than those in Poland from the technical point of view, the server quotes a source from diplomatic circles, who requested anonymity as he/she is not authorised to comment on the selection of areas for the U.S. base.

A source form the Czech Defence Ministry has confirmed the information.

"The Czech localities have a rocky bed, while the Polish ones are allegedly situated on sand," the source from the ministry said.’

The Polish area referred to is probably somewhere in the Tatra mountains, the beatroot believes.

I have already reported, last year, that Polish government ministers seemed a little squeamish at the idea of a US missile systems on Polish soil. People believe that it would make Poland ‘a target’ for nutty Islamo-terrorism. Defense Minister Radek Sikorski said the idea would be a ‘hard sell’ to the voters.

An opinion poll this week confirms the minister’s fears. The poll found that 63 per cent of Poles are against the project, 23 per cent are in favour, while 14 per cent do not have an opinion.

A similar majority are against the idea in the Czech Republic.

The US Congress will be publishing a report on the matter mid-September.

Lech Walesa’s moustache…

...is a magnificent beast.

Apart from the squiggly writing of its logo, or the monument outside the gates of the Gdansk shipyard, Walesa’s tache must be the greatest and most revered symbol of the Solidarity movement.

Charities have asked him to shave it off in the past to raise money for good works (such as the Polish Society for the Protection of Moustaches) but to no avail.

In 2002, however, the Polish nation was shocked when he briefly shaved off his fury facial appendage, for a ‘bit of fun’, he said.

And oh what fun we had.

But it soon grew back again, much to moustache lovers relief everywhere.

I have been accused on this blog of being an anti-moustache-ist, and, after a period of deep reflection, I must plead guilty as charged.

Being an anti-moustache-ist I joined the huge ranks of those who have persecuted tash wearers throughout history.

In 1800 B.C. Pharaoh Teqikencola outlawed moustaches among the elite Egyptian society. Many think this eventually led to the demise of the Ancient Egyptian empire.

And, of course, Ataturk banned the moustache in Turkey in his drive for secularization early last century. Similar policies are being considered today as Turkey presses for membership of the European Union.

Tony Blair banned moustaches during cabinet meetings.

So apologies to the wearers of moustaches everywhere, including females who refuse to wax – we salute you sisters!

In honour of the humble moustache here is a web site dedicated to returning the fury thing to the centre of style and fashion.

And did you know that there are around 867 Poles who have the surname Wasikowski, meaning one 'from the place of the guy with the moustache'!

Some famous moustaches

Whatever happened to the solidarity in Solidarność?

Underneath the celebrations this week to mark the 26th anniversary of the August strikes which led to the formation of the first free trade union in the communist bloc, lurks bitterness and incrimination.

The news that Lech Walesa was leaving Solidarity, and did not want to share a platform at the celebrations with his old prison mate from martial law Solidarity days, President Lech Kaczynski, seemed to surprise many outside Poland. But few were surprised here.

Walesa says many things, but this time he appears to be serious.
“They (Solidarity) have backed the Kaczynskis too much," Walesa told PAP news agency. "I don't want to be involved with that. It is no longer my Solidarity, Something is wrong with it."

Walesa has been a lonely figure politically for a longtime in Poland. At one time or another he seems to have wound up most of his old friends.

The bitter spat with the Kaczynski brothers goes back at least to the early nineties when Lech was in the middle of what his critics say was a dictatorial presidency. Relations between Walesa and many of the more right wing, and much of the time more Catholic, members of Solidarity were never good. This reached a peak during the chaos of the Olszewski government of 1992, with both sides accusing the other of planning a coup d\tat.

In fact, he tried to run the Solidarity movement the same way he tried to run the presidency. Walesa has always seen himself as a pragmatist. Principles come second to realities. And that often pit him up against the Solidarnosc fundamentalists for whom the purity and democracy of the revolution was everything.

Two of these fundamentalists have been in the news this week. Anna Walentynowicz, whose sacking from the Gdansk shipyard was the initial spark which set off the Solidarity strike in ‘Lenin’ shipyard, and Andrzej Gwiazda, one of the main negotiators during the strike.

Being fundamentalists they see the Solidarity revolution as being only half done. They think the ex-communists still have too much influence and too many have got rich. So when deputy defense minister Antoni Macierewicz claimed that many of Poland’s post 1989 foreign ministers were Soviet spies, Walentynowicz and Gwiazda leapt to his defense.

And then we get the news of National Institute of Remembrance (Poland’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee, but without the reconciliation) releasing evidence that Jacek Kuron, one of the leading Solidarity intellectuals, had had talks with the communist secret services in the late 1980s.

Kuron, it is said, wanted to exclude some groups within Solidarity from the Round Table talks of 1989.

Walesa has said that he had authorized Kuron and twenty other members of the union to talk and negotiate with the security forces. Continuity after the end of communism was vital, he said.

Not so say the fundamentalists.

Kuron was always held in suspicion by many in Solidarity. He was secular, a son of a Communist. Educated. Reformed Nomenclature.

But the main cleavage between the various parts that made up Solidarnosc are represented today by the various parties we have both in government and outside. Law and Justice, League of Polish Families are in government and come from the conservative/fundamentalist wing of Solidarity. The more secular, pragmatic free market orientated Civic Platform and perhaps the Democratic Party and individuals from the old Freedom Union are in opposition. The gap between the different Solidarity factions has never been wider.

And then we have Lech Walesa, all by himself, as usual.

More?
Walesa snubbed on Solidarity celebration UPI, Sept 1
The Polish politics of personal destruction leave few untouched Polish Outlook,

Polish goalkeeper given red card by Scottish authorities for making sign of the cross!

Artur Boruc, Celtic FC’s goalie has been cautioned by the Glasgow Fiscal Prosecutor for making the Catholic sign of the cross before a game with Rangers, his team’s arch Protestant rivals.

Confused? You shouldn’t be. Welcome to the wonderful world of Scottish sectarian football.

The religious Lifesite reports:

According to the Crown Office, [back in January this year] the goalkeeper of Celtic, Artur Boruc, gave three gestures, which incensed the home crowd of the opposing Rangers during a heated Old Firm match at Ibrox stadium in Glasgow. Artur Boruc, gave a “V” for victory and an obscene gesture toward the crowd; however the crowd also complained about Boruc’s crossing himself at the start of the second half of the February 12 match.

For clueless non-football fans I should explain that Glasgow has two teams: Celtic, which is traditionally supported by Scottish Catholics, and Rangers, which is followed by Scottish Presbyterians.

Apparently, a Polish goalkeeper who crosses himself for luck can be cautioned for inflammatory behavior.

Church spokesman Peter Kearney found the decision "alarming" and said, "It is extremely regrettable that Scotland seems to have made itself one of the few countries in the world where this simply religious gesture is considered an offence."
According to the Sunday Herald, the Catholic Church is seeking the Crown Office to clarify “whether or not it deems the sign of the cross to be an offensive action, which is the equivalent of gratuitous hand gestures”.

“This is not simply a Catholic issue but a human rights issue,” said a spokesman for the Church. “Freedom of religion is part of the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Human right? This is football, mate. It’s just a game.

Poor old Artur Boruc must also be confused about the other ‘offensive’ gesture he made to the crowd: putting two fingers up in the air.

Of course, in Britain this is the sign of ‘F#ck off!’…but in Poland the same gesture is made with only one finger – as in ‘Spin on it’.

And I am sure that fans of the Protestant Glasgow Rangers – no angels themselves - can take a couple of innocent gestures made by a newly arrived Polish goalkeeper (he’s only been playing at Celtic since last season).

One of the favorite songs of Rangers fans that can be heard sung at the Ibrox stadium (and a song that has got the PC UEFA football authorities up in arms recently) goes something like this:

Hullo, hullo, we are the Billy Boys!
Hullo, hullo, you’ll know us by our noise!
We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood!
Surrender or you’ll die!

Winding up the opposite team is part of the game of football. Always has been.

Free speech in Poland must mean free speech for everyone

Gay activists are to take legal action against members of the governing party under Section 212 and 216 of the Polish Criminal code for two incidents of inciting discrimination and the promotion of hate speech. But are these the right cases to call in the lawyers?

Doug Ireland in Gay City News (hat tip: Doug Ireland) writes:

In one of the Polish ruling party’s latest anti-gay provocations, Waldemar Bonkowski [above - I bet his mum is proud of him], a leading Parliament member from the northern city of Koscierzyna, hung a banner in his headquarters reading, in part, “Today it’s gays and lesbians — what’s next, zoophilia… Our Polish pope is looking down from the sky and asking, Whither Goest Thou, Poland?”

In [another] incident, Pawel Zyzak, editor in chief of a party bulletin, Right Turn [W Prawo Zwrot!], wrote that gays are “animals” and were “the emissaries of Satan sent to destroy the Catholic Church.”

Leading gay activist, Lukasz Pałucki of the Equality Foundation and organizer of Warsaw’s Tolerance Parade last June, is consulting lawyers over the latest in a long line of homophobic comments from government and party representatives.

But going to courts over the two pieces of infantile nonsense quoted above is not the right way to go about challenging officially sponsored homophobia in Poland.

The only justification for legal action against what someone says or writes – no matter how vile - is if it presents a clear and present danger to an individual or a group of individuals.

The ‘queers are animals’ kind of dribble is not an incitement to violence, it is just the expression of a very ignorant person, indeed.

Even the ignorant have a right to dislike or even hate who they like. And they have a right, however distasteful, to express that ignorant opinion.

Before the Tolerance Parade this summer Wojciech Wierzejski, spokesman for League of Polish Families, said that if ‘deviants begin to demonstrate they should be beaten (bludgeoned) with batons’.

Now that is an incitement to violence and should have been prosecuted.

In another incident which seems to step over the line of free speech and into incitement, Doug Ireland reports:

Polish police announced that, after a three-month investigation, they have arrested the man responsible for knifing an activist whose name and photo had appeared on a hit list published by the neo-nazi Blood and Honor Web site. The Web site targeted lesbian and gay activists as “enemies of the white race” and called for their assassination, providing their photographs, names, and addresses.

During this year’s Warsaw Gay Pride March, members of the Law and Justice Party’s youth division, the All-Polish Youth — a thuggish strong-arm group, largely composed of skinheads, which has been responsible for many violent attacks on gay events, and many of whose members are also members of Blood and Honor — were observed taking photographs of participants in the Pride March. Gay activists suspected that the photos would have wound up on the Blood and Honor Web site.

It is right that the courts have got involved over the Blood and Honor list and they should have been involved over the remarks by Wierzejski.

But the stupid remarks by Bonkowski and Zysak should be given the widest possible circulation. Only the most homo-hating Pole would get excited by such childishness. And I am sure that if they want to attack gays then they would have done it by now or will do it in the future anyway. And they will do it because they decided to, with their own free will. So they will have to take the consequences alone - we can't blame it on what someone wrote about 'Satan'.

The rest of Poland will get a chance to see these men for what they are. And then they can challenge it or they can ignore it, as they see fit.

This government has shown that it is prepared to go to the courts over remarks that it finds offensive. Human rights activists should not be encouraging them by taking legal action over ‘offensive’ remarks, but only those which directly incite violence.

Free speech means that we will not always like what is said. And that’s a lesson that some in the government have to learn as well.

The last Englishman in London

I found this comment buried away in an old post from July after it dropped into the archive. It’s worth quoting at length, if only for its gory stupidity.

Here is the whole thing from someone using the alias Last Englishman in London (you can imagine, I am sure, what’s coming). My comments will be interspersed between the paragraphs.

Two things strike me reading this blog.

1/ Lots of Pro-Polish sentiment..fair enough considering the target audience.
2/ A few apologetic English people with the backbone of a jellyfish.

Strange, many Poles think I am being too hard on them (which I am not, only certain politicians and ways of thinking) so I seem to annoy everyone. Sounds like I might be doing something right.

I want to explain why the English people are becoming tired of immigration - all immigration. The Poles may well be decent, hard working people but...

Re: I’m not racist. but...

House prices in the UK have soared [here we go] , it's almost impossible to get on to the housing ladder for young people. There are simply not enough houses for the people already here and 100s of 1000s more people arriving only makes the matter worse.

How would you feel if you were told that there was no room in your local hospital, dentist surgery, doctors surgery or room for your children in the local school? You've been paying your taxes for years surely your entitled? But the schools and hospitals are trying to cope with HUGE influxes of foreign nationals who have not spent years paying into the system.

It's almost impossible to get anywhere quickly in the South East of England, our roads are over congested, our airports and trains too. How does it help us to accomodate so many more people?

The house price rises and property boom have been going on for at least ten years now – well before the arrival of the central European ‘hordes’. Successive governments have failed to make sure enough house building has been going on to keep up with demand, Green campaigners try to maintain ‘greenfield sites’ around the cities, slowing down expansion. The train and transport system has been a disgrace for ages too.

But back to the clichés…

At the end of the day the UK is the home of the British people [does he think that is an original thing to say?]. We've every right to feel angry when a massive influx of foreigners starts to damage our way of life. People outside of the UK have no RIGHT to be here, they are here through the good graces of the British people.

[Froths at the mouth...and prepares for the coup de grace. Deep breath...]

As well as 100s of 1000s of Eastern Europeans there are 100s of 1000s of Africans and Asians [Ooo, not Africans and Asians!]. Until Poland experiences such an influx of foreigners and such a rapid change to it's social fabric I feel that Polish people are not qualified to speak with authority on the issue.

The Last Englishman in London is deranged. What about when the Prussians, Russians, Austro-Hungarians ripped the place into three for over a century? And what about when the Soviets and Nazis pilled in here, destroying everything? Rapid change to its social fabric? Nah...Poland never experienced that.

But then, to rub in the stupidity...

There was the German invasion of 1939 but you did at least get a chance to defend yourself.

Unbelievable. Favorably comparing the Nazi invasion and the Holocaust to the influx of a few hundred thousand Poles and others to the UK is truly the most cretenous thing I have seen for a long while.

I hope the Daily Mail, the Sun and the editors of the rest of his media intake who have been whipping this immigration thing up to its current froth and throth are proud of themselves.

What exactly is this under Senator Putra’s nose?

Evolutionary biologists make shock find, which they believe to be a previously unknown species of mammal, clinging to the nostrils of the deputy speaker of the Polish Upper House.

Apparently, member of Law and Justice, Senator Krzysztof Jakub Putra, woke up one morning and there it was – a fully formed...well, what?

Natural historian and journalist Bill Beaver of Hairy Things monthly told the beatroot this morning:

We are shocked. This is an unprecedented find for zoologists everywhere. We are just mystified as to its evolutionary genealogy.

Some think it is a direct descendant of the mammoth, which walked the Earth as long ago as BC 40000. Others think that it is a relative of the South American guinea pig.

Though not a lot is known about Senator Putra’s facial appendage UNESCO has promised to make his face a World Heritage Site and the EU has earmarked structural funds for its maintenance and upkeep.

UK - EU immigration policy

When is an ‘open door’ immigration policy not an ‘open door’ immigration policy? Answer: when it’s a-jar.

Both the UK conservative press and lefty liberal press have reacted a little squeamishly this week to the news of UK Home Office figures showing that, including the self-employed, over half a million Poles and other central Europeans have joined the UK workforce since the expansion of the EU in 2004.

The tabloid Sun – never a friend of the immigrant – screamed about how Poles and others had forced down British wages. And the Guardian ‘liberal’ columnist Polly Toynbee wrote exactly the same thing, claiming that to support the open door policy was to support American neo-cons (!):

‘Near-full employment should mean pay rises – but cheap imported labour helps keep it low….[and a ] 10-year unbroken burst of growth’ and a decrease ‘in pay inflation’ are a consequence of ‘cheap imported labour’.

Both the opposition Conservative party and many on the New Labour front bench are calling for Romanians and Bulgarians to not be given the same opportunities to come and work in Britain when they join the EU next year.

But not all British journalists are scared of the Polish plumber. Neil Davenport at Spiked has been refreshingly forthright:

The case for an open-door policy should be central to any meaningful discussion of immigration. People from Poland to Peru, Estonia to Ethiopia, should be allowed to come and live and work in Britain as they see fit. What is wrong with people moving around the globe in search of work and a better quality of life? Draconian controls on human movement are not only an affront to individual freedom and liberty; they also popularise dangerous Malthusian notions that society’s problems are caused by there being ‘too many people’. …

Whatever arguments are used to justify them, the truth is that immigration controls are a disgrace and a menace to freedom, liberty and prosperity. That half-a-million Eastern Europeans have passed through Britain to live and work is good news for them, and us. Apparently, a million-strong ‘Romanian invasion’ is heading this way, too. Bring ’em all in, I say.

Britain should keep its doors wide open and not be so scared of being ‘swamped’ and ‘flooded’ by central and eastern Europeans. A rich country like the UK should have a little more confidence in itself.

Miss World organizers in Poland make a bit of a tit of themselves

A poster advertising the Miss World contest scheduled to take place in Warsaw on September 30 has had to be altered after being thought ‘to revealing’.

The Warsaw City authorities are proud of themselves at having lured the Miss World contest to the Polish capital. They claim, as I wrote in Beauty with a purpose, that it will provide jobs and income for Warsaw and improve its image.

Getting the image of the contest right is of prime importance. So the Miss World organizers were alarmed when the poster for the contest, by artist Rafal Olbinski, showed a mermaid (the symbol of Warsaw) with one of her breasts showing.

And just as American television producers buried their heads in anguish when Janet Jackson revealed one of her best assets at the Superbowl game a few years ago, so the Warsaw city authorities immediately got on the phone in anguish to artist Olbinski.

“Can you cover her tit up, please’, they ordered, and Olbinski obliged by draping a white scarf over the offending mammary glad. Canada.com:

Tadeusz Deszkiewicz, head of Warsaw city hall's promotion bureau, told The Associated Press that there is "no doubt that Olbinski's original version was strongly erotic and we did not want to attach such aspect to the Miss World contest." [?!]

Not want to attach what to the Miss World contest? Erotic? Oh, I see. It's a contest that is without any sexy bits at all - it's a contest to promote the capital. Now I remember.

This is of course also strange as the Warsaw mermaid symbol is topless and not at all ashamed it.

It’s also strange again for another reason. The Miss World contest is to determine which girls have the best physical assets. That’s what it is for. Nothing less and certainly nothing more.

So why all the fuss? Why not let the Warsaw mermaid just let it all hang out?

Who are the richest politicians in Poland?

A relevant question – it’s they, after all, who are the least bribable.

Wprost magazine has a list of the top 50 best-off politicos in parliament. You might be surprised by which party many of them come from.

The richest politician, by a long way, is Janusz Palikot (photo - nice hair!), a member of the opposition, free market orientated Civic Platform (PO). He’s worth about 333 million zlotys – around 100 million dollars. He made his first million in the early 1990’s from producing wooden pallets for transporting alcohol (well, someone had to).

In fact, his party, Civic Platform, has the greatest number with 18 members of parliament in Wprost's top 50. No surprise really, as PO is the most business friendly party in Polish politics. Entrepreneurs and the growing and aspiring middle class make up its electoral base.

But guess which party has the second richest MPs in the top 50? It’s the rural proletarian, ex-Stalinist, farmers based trade union, Self defense (Samoobrona)!

Led by deputy Prime Minister Andzej Lepper, Samoobrona has 9 MPs in the top 50. There’s money in muck, as they used to say in Britain.

In fact the second richest politician in Poland is Samoobrona member Jozef Pilarz, worth a cool 23 million pln. He makes his money from farming and land ownership. So though its base support is from among the poorer members of Polish society, Self defense voters are represented by some of the richest.

Wprost calculates that the richest member of the ruling Law and Justice party is Radek Sikorski (12 million). He’s a graduate from Oxford University, who worked as a journalist for various British media in the Afghan war against the Soviets after which he went to the US. He’s married to American journalist and fellow member of the neo-con American Enterprise Institute, Anne Applebaum.

Wprost also lists the world’s highest paid politicians and heads of state.

Japan’s PM Junichiro Koizumi comes out on top, paid around 30,000 dollars a month. Next up is, amazingly, Irelands Mary McAleese, who gets a bit more than George Bush, at just under 30,000 dollars.

President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski only receives a poor 19,000 zlotys a month ( 6,500 dollars). But even that’s much better than the impoverished Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Siergiej Staniszew, who takes home to his wife as little as 1,200 dollars a month.

Strange then, is it not, that Bulgaria is the 54th least corrupt country in Europe, according to Transparency International, and Poland is 70th!

Maybe we should be paying Polish politicians even less?

Cucumbers seen flying across the sky in Poland

In Britain we call it the ‘silly season’ - in Poland it’s called the ‘cucumber season’, when the media starts to fill up with bull…

I could mention bees attacking policemen, four year olds in charge of street gangs, or a Turkish pilot who went to the wrong airport by mistake near Poznan because she could not speak English properly.

But take your eyes of the TV or newspaper for a moment, stop reading such nonsense and look up at the sky. Is that a little green man in his space ship, or is it a deranged journalist deprived of politician stories during the summer break?

A story in UFO Digest (too hard to digest for me, I am afraid) dated August 15 this year about a UFO sighting in 1995 reported:

‘According to an article in Nieznany Swiat Magazine, the photo [above] was taken at the end of June or beginning of July 1995 by Mrs. Maria Korejwo, a school teacher, in Katy Gorne [near Pustelnik Pinski] in Siedlce district in Mazowieckie wojewodztwo, Poland.

Mrs. Korejwo didn't see the object when the photo was taken.

Kodak photo laboratory workers concluded that the film was not defective and suggested a possible explanation for the appearance of the acorn shaped object. They stated whatever the object is, the reason the photographer did not see the actual object, was simply because the object was moving too quickly!’

Eek! An object moving too quickly to be seen! What can it be? An alien carjacking the Space Shuttle?

The day before that story appeared, the American Chronicle recounted the story of The Alien Abduction of Mr. Wladyslaw, who apparently, around the year 2000 (he doesn’t remember exactly when) was taken into an alien space craft for reasons best known to the aliens. Who are we mere earthlings to question why.

The case of Mr. Wladyslaw's abductions has been investigated by Grzegorz Domanski, an UFO researcher from the Legnica UFO Research Club. He was acquainted with a woman named Halina who related to him the strange experiences of her nephew.

Mr. Wladyslaw's experiences are not unique, but his story along with tomes of other abduction cases is confirming the hypothesis that not all extraterrestrial races are peaceful and benevolent. Some are extremely dangerous and have unknown agendas.

Legnica, is a city in southwestern Poland, capital of Legnica Province.

Is it all the vodka, or what?

On August 8, American Chronicle was at it again. Poland, it seems, is an alien playground – a central European UFO car park. Under the headline, Military aircraft chased UFO over Slupsk:

Radar identified an UFO object that had entered Polish airspace. Mr. Stanislaw Z. notified the proper officials and soon an alert was announced. In the following minutes Captain Praszczalek would have direct contact with the UFO…..

But the media this summer has not always been so gridlocked with Polish flying saucers.

At the end of last month, on a very hot July 28, Polish Outlook reported that Poland’s skies were unusually clear of UFOs.

The Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reports that there have been no UFO landings in Poland this summer. There has been a definite lack of pictograms [crop circles] that are created by the aliens when they land in the wheat fields in Poland.

Wylatowo, Poland is known for those pictograms. Every year farmers' wheat fields in Wylatowo are damaged when the aliens create pictograms. The farmers are always very angry but the town is UFO heaven and a lot of tourists come to see a UFO.

The newspaper ran a survey to try and find out why the aliens have stopped visiting Poland.

Here are the results of the survey

It's too hot - 2%
People don't feel like making them many more - 35%
It's the opposition Civic Platform’s fault - 63%

Since the Polish government ruling coalition party Law and Justice has been blaming the Civic Platform for any unpopular decisions or moves that the Law and Justice Party makes, it only stands to follow that it is the Civic Platform's fault that the aliens are no longer visiting Poland. And it is Civic Platform's fault that income is down in Wylatowo because tourists are not coming to see the pictograms.
It's the Civic Platforms fault!

Well, things obviously changed as we went into August. Were government sponsored aliens waiting for opinion poll results to show a lead for Law and Justice? Or were they waiting for the summer parliamentary recess and the appearance of flying cucumbers in the sky?

More Polish UFO stories?
See here or check out a bunch of them at the EASTERN EUROPEAN UFO JOURNAL

Evidence based medicine is microfascism!

Stop laughing...it really, really is! If some are still wondering why nice British middle class boys from good homes are turning to obscurantist weirdo religions, then read on...

Wondering why religion and not modernity retains its influence on so many in Poland? And what about Islam in the UK? Are both a threat to 'our European way of life'?

Journalists like Melanie Phillips et at, who go on and on about the ‘threat to the West' from 'alien ideologies' like 'Islamofascism', are missing the point.

This is not about the strength of Islam but the increasing weakness of Western culture and its turn away from Enlightenment values.

Irrationality in the west is coming from our own, increasingly anti-science, relativist culture. It’s nothing to do with ‘them’ ‘over there’.
Check out this nonsense from post-modernist academic and Foucaultian nursing researcher Dave Holmes entitled Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism (snigger!).

If you can’t stomach reading the whole lot then here is a choice bit of bullshit which attacks the ‘microfascism’ of evidence based medicine (meaning the normal medicine that has helped make us the healthiest and longest living in the history of humanity):

‘Drawing on the work of the late French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the evidence-based movement in the health sciences is outrageously exclusionary and dangerously normative with regards to scientific knowledge. As such, we assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena.

The philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari proves to be useful in showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an all-encompassing scientific research paradigm — that of post-positivism — but also and foremost in showing the process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms of knowledge, therefore acting as a fascist structure.

ER...right. I used to teach that sort of crap at university. I should have been taken outside and made to eat a book by Foucault. Instead, people tried to give me research grants!

So are you still wondering why middle class British boys believe that blowing themselves and others up on trains and airplanes will bring them an early date with 12 virgins?

Are you still wondering why religion and not rationality has retained its influence with many in Poland? It’s because it is not meeting much opposition from liberals, many of whom are becoming as obscurantist as the religious.

The threat is not from ‘without’, it’s from our own, stupid, rotting culture.

More?
Poseurs of the World Unite, By J. Carter Wood
Archie Cochrane: fascist! by Ben Goldacre
The Sokal hoax shows how post-modernists will swallow any old bull...

How to make a homebrew liquid bomb and terrorize a nation

It’s a little harder than it sounds.

From the reports in the media these are the ingredients that the British jihadist bombers were planning to create ‘murder and mayhem on an unprecedented scale’ with.

Your aim is to make triacetone triperoxide in a dried powdered form, a high explosive which can be made from 'common household chemicals' and which is 'unlikely to be caught by airport screeners'. This you will make on the plane while in the toilet. The ingredients you will need:

Adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. You will have to concerntrate this yourself, which is difficult. Better get a trained chemist to do it for you. Doing it yourself is risky.

Acetone and sulfuric acid.

Add vegetable dye to some of these (very unstable) ingredients and put in drinks bottles such as Powerade energy drink.

Remember to pack in your hand luggage several frozen gel-packs, preferably in a Styrofoam chiller (hydrogen peroxide must be kept near freezing point otherwise it ain’t gonna work), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper.

Get on plane and slip into small toilet.

The Register mercilessly tells us how to do the rest:

‘Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath [from the first class Champagne bucket of course], and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

You see – it’s easy to be a jihadist, nihilist suicide bomber. You just need some very tricky ingredients, a virtual laboratory in your hand luggage and half a day or more left alone in the airplane toilet.

What’s brown and sounds like a bell?

Dung!

After Zbigniew Brzeziński, called for a little bit of sense to enter into the recent spats between Poland and Germany, Polish authorities have apparently...completely ignored him! Look at this from Expatica:

Poland's coastguard has cancelled the loan to Berlin of a ship's bell recovered after the world's worst maritime disaster, the 1945 sinking of a liner carrying 9,000 German civilians, exhibition organizers confirmed Thursday.

The bell was on display at a newly opened Berlin exhibition devoted to 20th century refugee expulsions including the flight of Germans from eastern Europe. Many Poles say it is offensive to their own war dead to memorialize Germans' suffering...

Brzeziński has said that the current conflicts between the two countries are much smaller than the role the two countries could be playing on the international stage.

Good advise, me old mate. Shame nobody seems to be listening.

More?
Another Polish object withdrawn from Berlin expellee display, Radio Polonia, Aug 17