The EU, God and Poland...

...here we go again.

As Richard at EU Referendum notes, Angela Merkel is not just putting the blessed EU Constitution back on the agenda (big, wide-mouthed yawn!) but she is putting GOD back on the negotiating table., too.

Please….have mercy!

EU Referendum blog says Merkel regrets the big ‘C’ was not specifically identified in the original EU Constitution document as, "...[I] would have liked to have seen a clearer declaration on the Christian roots (of Europe) … No one doubts that they significantly shape our life, our society."

Richard then goes on to speculate that this is, “…primarily a [German?] ploy to exclude Turkey from the EU, or make it feel unwelcome – in the hope that this Muslim country would be dissuaded from joining.”

Well, maybe – although Merkel is chairwoman of the German Christian Democrat Union…

But putting God back in the ‘Constitution’ (Zzzzzz) is that rare thing: an issue that unites Warsaw and Berlin.

The Kaczynski brothers would gladly throw off that chip on their shoulder about being called a ‘potato’ by a German newspaper if they could join hands with Merkel over getting Christianity into the resurrected EU (yawn!) Constitution.

The previous (yawn, Zzzzz, snore!) constitution mentioned Europe’s ‘religious and humanist’ traditions.

Personally, I don’t see why we have to have any mention of this kind of thing at all. Basically, the treaty is going to be about how to manage an EU with 27 members in it. It should not be about forcing a collective value system on what it means to be ‘European’.

Richard at the EU Referendum blog concludes on the whole sorry non-debate:

Politics and religion, of course, is a dangerous mix but, when an idea is floated in the European Union, it does seen that you simply cannot say no. Like a recalcitrant child refusing to eat its breakfast being re-presented with the same meal again and again, the people of Europe, it seems, are to have God thrust into their lives – and a Christian God at that - whether they like it or not.

Amen.

‘Communists still a grave threat’?

That’s the headline of an article by Eric Margolis in the Canadian Sun.

“Once again, the dauntless Poles show us the way”, says the piece, which goes on to recount the recent and on-going ‘Red Priest’ scandal and the continued digging by the government into some Poles pre-1989 records, looking for evidence of communist collaboration.

Margolis writes:

A few years after Poland's liberation from communist rule, I met with its deputy minister of defence. He suggested a stroll in a park, "because here in my office, there are many listeners."

I asked if communists still posed a threat. He whispered: "They are gone, but they are still here."

That just about sums up the Polish government’s position today. Last week brought more collaboration stories – as every week seems to, these days - one involving a former aid to Lech Walesa, and another about a popular TV historian, who was spying for the Commies in London during the 1980s, allegedly.

The Canadian article mentions some famous collaborators, in France and even the Roosevelt’s Whitehouse. But there is little evidence to back up the article’s headline: ‘Communists still a threat’.

A threat? Where? To who?

The Law and Justice government would claim that since 1989 ex-communists, turned capitalists, allied to their economic liberal friends (isn’t Poland complicated?) have carved up much of the economy for their own benefit.

But does that constitute a ‘present danger’, as Margolis seems to claim? Does he mean a ‘danger’ like in the old days? To the West?

Or is he expecting Polish priests, political aides and historians to drive tanks into the middle of Prague, at any minute?

Polish Communists in solidarity with Cuba!

No, I am not talking about the ex-communist SLD. I’m talking about the Polish Communist Party.

There still is one, you know. And it’s envoi, Comrade Marcin Popiuk, was in Cuba this week giving support to the ailing Comrade Castro, who appears to be very ill indeed.

(Here is Castro, btw, a few months ago getting rather intimate with Comrade Chavez.)

Prensa Latina reports:

‘…[The Polish Communist] group condemns the US economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba.

...Popiuk also expressed his solidarity with the five Cubans unfairly imprisoned in the US since 1998 for infiltrating Miami organizations responsible for numerous terrorist acts against Cuba.

The Polish communist leader [?] praised the opportunity of learning while here that "Cuban people s health and education have another dimension."

I must say I agree with him being against the US blockade – all sanctions are morally wrong and are harming ordinary people, not their anti-democratic leaders.

But the article gives us another insight into the current state of Polish communist thinking (a minority sport in Poland, but still…).

‘Questioned on Poland s inclusion in the European Union, he pointed out there are more disadvantages than advantages.

"Now we are politically dependent on that block and also economically, since we have opened our country to capitalism. There are no limits for foreign investors to acquire our land or industries," Popiuk explained.

“…limits for foreign investors…” is exactly the stance on this issue we get from Polish nationalists. And that’s always been the way with Polish communists – Red Nationalism. Maybe Popiuk really should seek out an alliance with the League of Polish Families and comrades at Radio Maryja?

The Communist Party of Poland (not to be confused with the Polish United Workers Party, which ruled in Poland from 1948 until 1989)) sounds like an old party, which existed from 1918 to 1938 when Stalin shut them down after the inevitable purges, etc. Another (illegal) Communist Party was formed by Stalinist Kazimierz Mijal in 1965. After his emigration to Albania [?] in 1966, the party was based for some time in Tirana.

The new Communist Party is actually only four years old. They describe themselves as ‘neo-communist’ – whatever that means…

Due to its very small size (actually almost non-existant membership) I imagine they regard themselves as ‘vangaardist’ waiting for the right moment to ‘go to the class’ and lead us into revolution. Or not.

But as you can see by the photos of the last Polish Communist Party Congress (December 2006), its membership appears to be rather elderly.

Hurricane force winds rip through Poland

This is what the dog and I were confronted with on the walk in the park this morning.

Six people are dead; electricity is still cut in many areas of the country; the railways on various lines are suspended.

The media are calling it ‘a hurricane’, which it is not, of course, as hurricanes are circular weather systems with an eye in the middle. This one was a storm with hurricane force winds.

No matter what the definition is, it was a destructive and scary beast.

These pictures are taken of a park just to south of the centre of Warsaw where we live. The dog was amazed by all the carnage – more sticks to play with! But it was much worse in other areas of Poland.

Of course, a freak act of nature like this will be endlessly chewed on by the doom mongers, the (fallen) tree hugging environmentalists, as a sign of the coming global warming apocalypse. These storms do happen. I remember a particularly spectacular one smashing into Britain in 1988 (?).

But that won’t stop them claiming that storms like this and the very warm winter we are having (hooray!) is ‘nature’s revenge’ on us horrible humans.

Let them fantasize about inanimate objects taking ‘revenge’ – the rest of us will just get on with clearing up the mess.

Photos taken by Traczka.

Who succeeded Alan Greenspan as Head of the Fed?

If you know the answer then you are more qualified to run Poland’s Central Bank than the one we are stuck with for the next six years...…

In interviews with parliamentarians yesterday, President Lech Kaczynski’s nomination for the post of Chief of the National Bank – the little known, or respected Slawomir Skrzypek, was asked what he thought of Alan Greenspan’s successor at the Federal Bank?

Unfortunately, Skrzypek didn’t seem to know who Greenspan’s successor is.

Ooops!

This confirms the opinion of many that poor old Skrzypek has neither the experience or talent to run a local bank, let alone the Central one. The only reason he has been given the job, say the many critics, is that he is old pals with Lech Kaczynski.

Cronyism in a government at war with cronysim? Surly not…

So if you do know who is the man standing in between Bush and Greenspan in the photo above then let me know quickly and I will put your name forward as a possible substitute for the job of top Polish Banker...

Poland, HIV and the dreaded ‘PC’

Why does everyone want to make HIV into a Sontagian metaphor? Well, I bet nobody else asked you that today…

I turned on the satellite television in Egypt to watch the evening news on TV Polonia (yes, Polish TV is beamed into the hotels) and there was Simon Mol, handcuffed, walking towards a police van. As he passed the camera he shouted, “The media are manipulating this story – I am the victim.’

For sure the media are distorting elements of the story, as they will; and for sure Mol has been the victim of much in life – that’s why he is in Poland in the first place: but to regard himself as a ‘victim’ in this case is weirdly delusional. With many women HIV infected and many more thinking they might be infected, Simon must be in a very strange place psychologically right now to think he is the victim.

Others however are determined to make a wider point about this – just as Simon Mol has done, and will.

Virtuous blog accused me of something quite nasty. When talking about the Simon Mol posts on this blog (see below) he says I went out in an extreme way to:

‘...defend Mol (maybe not defend, but abstract the case into political sphere away from the actual human suffering) regardless of all. Even if I can appreciate taking a stand of a devil’s advocate, again, the message focuses on the culprit and disregard the victims. In the comments someone notices that the author seems to find Mol suspected of a deed equal to spreading flu, which for me, if proven, would rather amount to a mass murder.

I don’t think that is fair comment at all.

The point of the second Mol post was about how some are trying to turn what are basic human tragedies, lives completely changed, suffering, into a political crusade. It is not me that is doing the abstracting, or the crusading.

(As far as my concern for HIV and AIDS sufferers, I trained as an AIDS information officer back in the late 1980s at University, when the AIDS panic was first sweeping through the UK. Ignorance was rife (many thought you could get HIV from a toothbrush, or from kissing. I have also known people die from the virus. Care I do and have done.)

Margaret Thatcher tried to use the AIDS panic in those early days in Britain to promote what she called ‘Victorian values’. For others it was the ‘wroth of God’, against homosexuals.

So HIV has always been wheeled out to support some kind of political point, both reactionary, or in the form of the dreaded Political Correctness.

This time it's not AIDS and gays, however, it’s AIDS and Africans.

Mol’s behaviour has taken on a much wider significance than to the lives that he has affected. People want to make a point, to push an agenda, to show, as one Polish newspaper headlined it last week: ‘The Consequences of bad ideas.

Peter S Reith – from, I think, the Warsaw theatre crowd that Mol used to hang around with - wrote in Rzeczpospolita that ,”… the ideas that allowed Mol to ravage women must also be held to account.’

These ideas he summarizes as ‘Political Correctness.”

Mol apparently thought that anyone who accused him of being HIV positive was ‘being racist.’ Which, of course, (if he knew that he was already infected - which now seems very possible indeed as he first had a test in 1999 in a refugee camp in Poland - is another example of his capacity for victim based delusions. It seems as though he can’t separate himself and his actions from his position as a black refugee in Poland.

Reith implies Mol yelled at women that even the act of wearing a condom was ‘racist.’

He concludes:

If some women had not been corrupted by the academia and the culture of political correctness to believe that they owed sexual gratification to Simon Mol on account of his skin color and status as a member of an "oppressed" group, this tragedy would have been avoided.

This stretches the meaning, and power, of ‘Political Correctness’ to breaking point, I think...

Watching Ps, Cs and Qs

The classic liberal PC does have many negative aspects. Political Correctness is about ‘speech codes’ – restrictive speech codes; a way of closing off debate; of not being offensive; ‘You can’t say that!’

It all started with the naive belief in liberal academic circles, decades ago that if you changed the composition of words – astronaut instead of space man, chairperson in instead of chairman, etc, sexist thought would simply melt into thin air. Language didn’t reflect reality, it constituted it.

All very daft, of course. By the 1980s ‘PC’ had become a form of political abuse. It became a way the right mocked the left.

But it’s a big jump from that to claiming that young girls had sex with Mol because it was ‘PC’ to do so. The context of speech is important.

Reith writes:

’…for many women, having unprotected sex with a black man fulfilled two politically correct obligations: it was trendy to have sex with a black man, and it was also a sign that one was not prejudiced against blacks.‘

I am sure he never meant this, but Mr Reith seems to rule out the possibility that they might have found black men attractive simply because they found black man attractive.

And anyway, remember too that Poland – which, let’s be honest - has a level of prejudice that I am sure Peter would agree is on a rather different level from where he comes from.

In a context where there is genuine prejudice – much of the time innocent, though sometimes ugly, naivety – the act of showing that you are not prejudice seems a powerful statement. It gives the more ludicrous claims of Simon Mol, about not wearing condoms, some traction, purchase, …even sense.

If these women did have unprotected sex because it was ‘PC’ – is that a supposition? – then the consequences have been very unfortunate, life changing.

But if the PC factor is that important – if - then maybe it’s the context in which Mol finds himself in that feeds the victim status he clearly thinks is the only thing that defines him as a person. But if this were a society that had grown to cope with the immigration of blacks then Mol would seem transparently ridiculous.

Maybe these poor girls believed him because some of it was true?

‘Red Priest’ resigns, but the Church fights back

Appointed by Pope Benedict on December 6 as Archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus resigns just before special ‘ingress’ ceremony this morning.

Watching on TV now it looks like a wedding where all the guests turn up only to discover it’s a funeral. President Lech Kaczynski is sitting in his pew with the wife. The whole of Poland’s political and religious establishment is there.

It’s like some sick reality TV show. Big Brother at prayer.

Archbishop Wielgus, thought proven to have been spying for the communist authorities over a period of 20 years, is there, humiliated. After all, only on Friday he made a statement saying: "I damaged the church. I denied the facts of this collaberation."

This contradicts previous statements he has made before denying any collaberation with the Communists.

Case closed then, surly?

But when the resignation was read out in the Cathedral this morning most of the congregation started shouting and chanting in protest. I have never seen anger in a Church before.

Then top Polish Catholic, Cardinal Glemp stands up to say a few words. But if the government – which will be defined in the history books for its relentless, ruthless vetting of public officials for collaboration with the communist regime – thought Glemp would be making some kind of apologetic statement on behalf of Wielgus, were in for a bit of a shock.

Cardinal Glemp said that ‘Today we have seen a ‘court’ where the evidence against amounts to Xerox copies of copies of copies of old documents. The case for the defense has not been put. We do not want this type of court.’

When he said these words applause rang throughout the cathedral. It seems that the Polish Church thinks that Wielgus – who admitted lying on Friday after a month long hounding by the media, by historians, by the government – thinks that he has been the victim of a witch hunt. Glemp seems to think that the government’s vetting process in this case has not been fair. Much of his flock appears to agree with him.

Someone in the Church shouts out ‘Stay with us…’

What looked to be the end of the matter seems to be only the start. Some in the Church now have joined a growing number who think that the 'vetting culture' here has turned into a frenzy of recrimination, of revenge, where innocent victims get caught up in the craziness (though as has been pointed out in the comments below, the irony is that Radio Maryja listeners - who have done as much to create this culture of revenge as anyone - are complaining the loudest. They are saying that the incriminating documents were leaked by someone who was in the communist secret services trying to screw the catholic Church..).

Revenge is the motive for much of what is happening today - not justice. I have seen at close hand a completely innocent person get caught up in this, accused of collaboration, of being ‘a Red’. It’s not pretty, it’s not fair, it’s not civilized, it’s not justice.

Sick, old Cardinal Glemp himself will now stay on in the role of Archbishop of Warsaw until they can find someone else who has no skeletons – real or imagined – in his closet.

Crowds are standing in the rain outside the Cathedral, chanting, protesting. Strange times in Poland get stranger still.

Racists enjoy the MOL HIV case

The case of Simon Mol will become a cause celebre for racists everywhere.

Simon Mol has tested positive for HIV. In itself this is distressing. There are at least four girls who have also tested positive for HIV – with what they are calling an ‘African’ strain of the disease.

But the issue is not whether Simon has HIV – it’s about what Mol’s motives were when having sex with the girls. Polish Radio reports:

Polish Police are looking for women who have had sexual contact with the Cameroonian refugee, poet and journalist Simon Moleke [his proper name], who has been charged and arrested for intentionally infecting women with the HIV virus.

The implication is that Mol knew he had HIV and has been going around Warsaw, not just casually and carelessly having unprotected sex with girls, but trying to give women a potentially deadly disease!

That is an amazing claim and one I don’t know how the police substantiate.

Whatever – the case is taking on a political character. Even in the Polish Radio report, politics creeps in:

The case has surfaced only recently, but as records on the internet forum of the Green Party website show, the intentional spreading of HIV by Moleke might have been known to the leftist activist circles as early as over half a year ago.

I imagine the writer of that report means a post dated June 28, 2006 on the forum of zieloni.org.pl (the Green party web site) warning that Mol was ‘spreading HIV’ around Warsaw.

Mol has connections to the Green Party in Poland.

June, remember, was the month when the claims (in fact, exactly the same text on exactly the same day) that he was deliberately spreading HIV first emerged online at poezja.org , a supposedly cultured web site in Poland for poetry lovers.

In fact, it was someone called ‘ppp’ who posted both warnings (see comments in previous post). So the readers of a poetry web site plus Green Party forum readers knew about this. But they were not trying to keep it a secret. That's why they put this message online.

Racists lick their lips

The crude racism that has been appearing on these web sites (and there has been some nasty stuff) is nothing to remarks made on an international white supremacist web site with the jolly title Pan Aryan National Front.

If the ramblings of racist morons makes you physically sick then don’t read this next bit. Under aliases such as LR Eichmann (naturally) our charming racists comment:

….A gift of multiracialism... HIV, AIDS, sexual diseases, rapes, without forgotting [sic] more steals, more homicides, etc.... Why do even the white girls from Poland believe niggers are good persons?

…….kill him, and send those girls with that mind to the nuns!....or better butcher the nigger…

……Poor white girls.... but they were FUCKING STUPID. Sleep with the dog and wake up with fleas!

And so on, literally ad nauseam.

Mol has a high profile in the Polish media. He is Poland’s ‘celebrity refugee’. Whatever the outcome of this case, racists are going to use it for their own destructive ends.

More?
I am sure poezja.org had a forum about this. But now that forum thread has suddenly disappeared. Why?

Refugee tried to infect innocent Poles with HIV, screams the tabloids!

African poet, playwright, human rights worker and Poland’s ‘celebrity’ refugee, has been arrested for deliberately spreading HIV to ‘at least’ 100 women in Warsaw.

This story, to anyone who knows the guy, stinks.

The newspapers Dziennik and tabloid Fakt (both owned by the German Axel Springer publisher), splashed headlines all over their front pages today claiming ‘He infected 100 women’!

On the inside pages they describe ‘Simon M’ - a refugee from Cameroon who has won numerous awards for both his artistic and humanitarian work - as a charming charlatan, who knowingly infected unsuspecting girls with the virus.

He would seduce them at artistic parties, he would stop girls in the street and ask them for directions!

The opening paragraph of the Fakt story:

‘Tender words by this well-read, black skinned lover have deceived many Warsaw girls. But Simon only had one thing on his mind – drag them to bed and infect them with the deadly virus HIV.’

I love the ‘black skinned lover’ bit. Later the article says:

‘It’s known that he has seduced at least 100 women.’

Apparently, the accusations that Simon has HIV, knew had HIV, and then deliberately tried to infect ‘at least 100 women’ with HIV, began to circulate on internet forums of arty types in the capital – see poezja.org and teatr.pl (he is a playwright and poet, remember!) when someone posted that he ‘is conscious that he has HIV, but lies, and without scruples knowingly sentences girls to death’!

This ‘warning’ went unheard until December, when the panic began to build after someone responded:

‘I am one of the infected women that you write about. THIS MAN SPREADS HIV.’

On the main evening TVN news the police said that they had received ‘numerous calls’ from women who had been with Simon (is this where the ‘100’ figure comes from?). Four women who have tested positive for HIV (following reading the forums?) had unprotected sex with the guy. He ‘doesn’t like condoms’, said the TV reporter pruriently.

Africans + AIDS + Poland = racism

These allegations will not come as a shock to Simon, sadly. On his web site on Feb 26, 2006, he wrote:

Some three-years ago, my [Polish] girlfriend was forced by her parents to split with me after a 12-month affair. They couldn’t tolerate the fact that their daughter was dating an African. After our split she was further compelled by her relatives to undergo an HIV test to verify her medical state after this ‘unclean affair’ with an African. She did the test, which emerged negative.

As I said, this story smells bad...

Though the article in Fakt claims that the rumours of Simon spreading the disease started last June, it seems that they emerged much earlier. In February last he writes:

Character assassination isn’t a new phenomenon. However, it appears here the game respects no rules. It wouldn’t be superfluous to state that there is an ingrained, hash and disturbing dislike for Africans here. The accusation of being HIV positive is the latest weapon that as an African your enemy can raise against you. This ideologically inspired weapon, is strengthened by the day with disturbing literature about Africa from supposed-experts on Africa, some of whom openly boast of traveling across Africa in two weeks and return home to write volumes. What some of these hastily compiled volumes have succeeded in breeding, is a social and psychological conviction that ‘every African walking the street here is supposedly HIV positive, and woe betide anyone who dares to unravel the myth being put in place.

Anyone who knows Simon – and I have met him several times – finds these accusations incredible, in all meanings of the word.

He is described in the newspapers as a sensitive, intelligent, educated person – and that’s exactly how he seems to me. He is here as a refugee after being persecution in his own country.

Since being in Poland he has played a very active part in various anti-racism campaigns, has had books of poems published and plays put on in the theatre. He has also been a tireless worker with other refugees and those seeking refugee status in Poland (governments here have been completely unprepared for these people, so someone has to help them).

The accusations against him are that:

a) has HIV
b) knows that he has HIV
c) had unprotected sex with women when he knew he had HIV
d) did not tell them he had HIV,
e) and certainly in the FAKT article, tried to infect them with HIV
f) and then when confronted by the women after they discovered points a to e lied about the having HIV in the first place.

If found guilty he could face up to 12 years in jail.

But how we know any of this is not clear at all from the media reports.

Simon is pleading not guilty, of course. It's like one of those off-the-peg stories Polish tabloid journos dream of: 'Black African artistic seducer infects innocent Polish girls with HIV!!!

Knowledge about HIV – and Africans, for that matter - is very limited here. Just ripe for a scare story.

These are very serious allegations, of course, and the fate of not just Simon M but the image of African refugees in Poland rests on the outcome.

Ominously, in February 2006, Simon seemed to know what was coming:

As an activist, I know I have set myself on the firing line.

The Polish government will fail in its fight to clean up public life...

...because it will fail to reduce the influence and size of the state.

In a perceptive article in Reason magazine - Is Liberalism Dead in Central Europe? - Marian Tupy reminds us, as this blog has done many times, that when the Western press labels members of the Polish government ‘right wing’, or even ‘far-right’, they are missing an important point:

‘Of the Central European countries—Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic—all but the Czech Republic are seeing the rise of politicians who combine “right-wing” attitudes toward public and private morality with “left-wing” ideas about economics. Demands for tax hikes, price controls, tighter labor regulations, and renationalization of privatized property mix freely with calls for a return to faith, traditional family values, and restrictions on sexual autonomy.

Polish PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski is not a central European version of Margaret Thatcher. If they met he would call her an economic ‘liberalizer’ (a dirty word in Polish government circles) while she would give him a sharp whack over the head with her handbag and accuse him of being a bit of a [whisper it] ‘socialist’.

And it’s the attachment that all the elements of the current governing coalition – PiS, LPR, Samoobrona – have to maintaining the state as central to their redistributive, protectionist economic agenda that will limit any success in the Kaczynski’s central platform: to rid Poland of the corruption that has taken hold since the fall of communism.

It’s telling that there hasn’t been a big backlash against liberal reformers in Estonia, the country that has gone furthest in the transition from communism to free markets. In their Baltic outpost miles to the east of Central Europe, the Estonians have greatly reduced the size and scope of government and, as a result, limited corruption as well.

From Tupy’s perspective any battle against corruption and sleaze is doomed if they do not reduce the size and role of the state.

I would also add that to seriously put a dent in Polish corruption the government must also seriously tackle the connection between the political class and the public sector.

But since taking power PiS has passed laws that actually make it easier to get rid of top civil and public servants, only to be replaced, of course, with functionaries more amenable to their political outlook and project.

Old boys’ networks are replaced by New Boys’ networks, and the opportunity for corruption and nepotism is obvious, tempting, irresistible.

Beatroot’s New Year Resolutions

May I wish all my lovely readers an optimistic New Year...

...and as it is the start of a new year it’s time to turn over a new leaf, start afresh, change all those bad habits.

So in that spirit the beatroot promises to...

1) Be much more balanced and objective in my views and posts

2) Break all New Year resolutions regularly.

p.s. A big thank you to all the people who have commented on this blog in 2006 – both the ‘passing trade’ and especially the regulars. You have been informative, educational and entertaining and often the best thing about the blog.

I am drinking a very nice Chilean red (no, that’s a wine, not something to do with Allende!) and I am toasting you all right now.

Cheers (even to those who hate me)!

Saddam dangles, EU divides

Poland supports hanging Hussein.

President Lech Kaczynski has said that the death penalty for the ex-Iraqi dictator was the ‘only possible outcome’ once he was found guilty in court of ‘crimes against humanity’.

But the killing of Hussein is being used by nations and organizations like the EU to underline their attitude to the death penalty. Even in death Saddam has managed to divide the ‘international community’.

Some of the new members such as Poland have welcomed the execution. The Czech Republic's Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, welcomed the hanging, describing it as "an act of justice", whereas the British government has said, “We advocate an end to the death penalty worldwide, regardless of the individual or the crime. We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation."

Opposition to the execution has also come from within the EU in Denmark, France, Portugal, Spain and Germany.

Lech Kacynski has annoyed the EU with calls for a reinstatement of the death penalty in Poland – although one of the conditions of membership is that countries drop execution as a form of punishment.

But Kaczynski does seem to be in line with the people of the EU, in this case at least.

In a survey of 12,570 people in six countries by the new French international broadcaster France 24 and Novartis/Harris Interactive, most participants favored the death sentence for Saddam. With the exception of Italians, participants from Britain, France, Germany and Spain supported the execution.

I have no sympathy at all for the old shitbag, but to me the hanging seems like a symbolic form of revenge (as all capital punishment ultimatly is) and will do nothing to stop the violence in Iraq, which has been caused by the invasion and the subsequent and disastrous occupation. Hanging Saddam will do nothing to stop that.

More...
Check out Uruknet.info, a strange pro-Saddam web site

President Gerald Ford won’t be remembered for much.....

...except for being the only president of the US never to win a presidential election...

...and wasn't he the bloke after Richard Nixon and the one before Jimmy Carter? But can you remember anything he actually did?

Except, that is, for saying in a presidential debate against Carter that:

"There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford Administration…I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union."

Er...um...well...

He said that only five months after strikes had broken out in many cities in Poland after a 60% rise in the price of food, made by the ever incompetent, Soviet backed, communist authorities. And the strikes of June 1976 were ruthlessly broken up by the ZOMO militia, with the backing of the (dominating) Soviets in Moscow.

Nuff said.

End.

Get any strange Christmas cards this year?

Well, several members of the Polish parliament did via email from the ultra-nutty anti-Semites, National Rebirth of Poland (NOP).

According to chief NOP crazy Adam Gmurczyk the e-cards are in reaction to ‘absurd political correctness’.

The two incidents of ‘political correctness’ he is referring to are: the binning by a department store in Germany of thousands of Santa Clause toys showing Old St Nick making a Nazi salute (though the Rossman store protested that Santa was innocently pointing to the sky); and the outcry in Poland by media and most politicians after a film was found showing members of the All-Polish Youth having a kind of outdoor ‘fascist BBQ’ three years ago, shouting ‘Sieg Heil!’…accompanied by a swastika burning in the background.

“It was enough for the All Polish Youth to make some gestures for journalists to think that Fascism had arrived," said Gmurczyk, dumbfounded by all the fuss.

But even Roman Giertych, Head of LPR and founder of the reformed All-Polish Youth in 1989, has since disowned them.

As regards the Nazi Santa toys...well, yes, they could be pointing at the sky as Santa spots where he parked his reindeer. Banning them was silly, but shows how sensitive anything resembling the Nazis still are in Germany today.

But Polish ultra-nationalists dismissing the furor over All-Polish Youth – and producing the very stupid Christmas card above - shows that these people have a rather warped idea of what the word ‘irony’ means.

In that context, the Santa Clause toys, and the Xmas card, become a sick form of ‘fascist ketch’.

Just to give you a flavour of National Rebirth of Poland’s er...’politics’ (the group has been going since 1981) a recent campaign during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict included a poster stating, "Bomby na Izrael - Już czas!!!" ("Bombs against Israel - it's about time!!!")

But I suppose me protesting against that kind of crap is just ‘political correctness’.

Desperate Poles in UK eat fish heads for Christmas!

No, they don’t actually. But the Wall Street Journal thinks they do in the Beatroot’s nomination for the Most Stupidest Article 2006.

Yup, Poles eat carp, not turkey, for Christmas dinner. And Christmas dinner is not on Christmas Day but on Christmas Eve.

All very confusing. It’s certainly got the angling correspondent for the WSJ, Peter Fritch, in a flap. Reporting from Dorking, Surrey, in southern England he writes:

‘…the fish has great value to hungry Polish fishermen [in the UK] armed with nets, wet suits and even the occasional spear gun.

Unlike Britons, to whom carp are inedible bottom feeders fit only for sport, Poles and other Eastern Europeans eat them as a matter of culinary tradition. And many of the half million Poles who have streamed into Britain in recent years love to serve them on Christmas Eve -- starting with a nice fish head soup.’

Fish head what? Who told Fritch that? On Christmas Eve Poles usually have either beetroot (of course) or mushroom soup. Still, what’s a few facts when you are on a mission.

And note the reference to ‘hungry Poles’…those eastern European desperados…

Poles – Fritch goes on, and on - deprived of the familiar piscine delicacy in Britain are apparently lining the UK’s river banks angling for carp. And this, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a recipe for... culture clash [?].

‘The culture clash [I warned you] threatens to escalate as Britain's river banks become increasingly crowded. In many places the Poles' heavy fishing artillery isn't welcome. "It's a sore point with local anglers when they see (Poles) walking the banks with spear guns and nets [!] ," says Peter Arnold, proprietor of Pro-Angling, a bait and tackle store north of London.’

And Poles are so desperate to get their hands on the slippery beasts that they will poach them from private property!

‘Tony Pearson, owner of several fisheries in county Essex, says he has caught people stealing carp. He has taken the radical step of banning all Eastern Europeans from his lakes.’

The article – read the whole gory lot here – is a sign of the times; when the humble Polish Christmas carp can be an excuse for even a British fishing correspondent [!] to get in some reference to the problems caused by the immigration apocalypse heading the UK’s way.

Personally I have the opposite problem: trying to get my hands on a decent turkey. But then, that's a different kettle of fish...

Merry Christmas everybody from the beatroot.

More ?
Interestingly, Mr. Rago, an assistant editorial features editor for the Wall Street Journal wrote an article this week called The Blog Mob : written by fools to be read by imbeciles. about how all us bloggers are a bunch of half-wits and our readers not that much better.

Well, us bloggers may be fools, Mr Rago, but on the evidence of the above is the WSJ any better?

Jesus – King of Poland?

A very silly idea, of course. But nothing is too daft for some of Poland’s lawmakers.

46 members of the Polish parliament have tabled a motion to name Jesus Christ as the ‘honorary King of the Republic of Poland’.

The lawmakers are from the governing Law and Justice; alongside junior members from the coalition, League of Polish Families.

There is an historical precedent to this mad move, however. The Virgin Mary was made Honorary Queen of Poland 350 years ago by King Jan Kazimierz (who must have been a lonely soul).

Luckily, the motion has little chance of passing through parliament. But it does give me a chance to name the Beatroot’s Understatement of the Year Award to Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, who said of the wild and wacky idea:

"This kind of action, although it may stem from good will, sounds a bit like propaganda."

A bit like propaganda?

Stop carp abuse in Poland! Now!

Carp abuse? No, it’s not the latest accusations against Stanislaw Lyzwinski…

December 20 is Fish Day in Poland, when environmental activists stage demonstrations against the live transportation and sale of carp destined for the Christmas table on December 24.

If you are interested in joining the Carp Liberation Front then meet outside Centrum Handlowego "Wileńska", Targowa Street, Warsaw at 20.00 hrs when a demonstration demanding rights for fish (including the right to vote in Euro and local elections) will take place.

Fish have rights too, you know?

Polish journalist awards 2006

Prestigious ‘Grand Press’ award goes to Polish government’s favourite programme.

The Grand Press 2006 – the top award for Polish journalists – has gone to Tomasz Sekielski and Andrzej Mrozowski, presenters of Teraz My, the current affairs programme on TVN.

In 2006 Teraz My has broken many stories (sometimes controversially by way of entrapment, etc) that have embarrassed the government.

The conservative government has accused TVN of being part of an anti-government conspiracy made up of ex-communists and liberals.

And I don’t suppose Kaczynski brothers supporters will be surprised at Sekielski and Mrozowski’s award (10,000 euros and a statuette). They would point to the make up of the jury, which is from mainstream media which they believe is part of the dreaded liberal/ex-commie ‘uklad’:

Ewa Milewicz ("Gazeta Wyborcza"), Andrzej Jonas ("The Warsaw Voice"), Michał Kobosko ("Newsweek Polska"), Piotr Mucharski ("Tygodnik Powszechny"), Rafał Olejniczak (Radio Zet), Adam Pieczyński (TVN 24), Janusz Sejmej ("Panorama" TVP 2), Jan Skórzyński ("Rzeczpospolita"), Andrzej Skworz ("Press"), Tadeusz Sołtys (RMF FM), Piotr Zaremba ("Dziennik"), Jacek Żakowski ("Polityka").

Don’t see anyone from Radio Maryja or Gazeta Polska...

More
Polish press (only slightly out of date)

Monkey in red

No, it’s not the new single by Chris de Burgh. It’s Lech Kaczynski’s least favourite Brussels correspondent.

The Sunday political talk shows are still going on about a comment President Kaczynski made Thursday when he was in Brussels on EU business.

As his previous answer towards the end of a press conference was being translated into English – and seemingly unaware that the microphone in front of him was still live – the following exchange was clearly heard between Kaczynski and his Under Secretary of State Anndrzej Krawczyk:

Krawczyk: Do you want to take another question?

Kaczynski: One more question – but not from that monkey in red [referring to TVN 24 journalist Inga Rosińska – photo above]

Krawczyk: Pardon?

Kaczynski: Not that in red.

For obvious reasons TVN 24 is not this government’s favourite TV channel.

Journalists have been outraged by this here, and are still banging on about it three days later. But I am sure Inga has thicker skin than that.

The incident brings to mind when George W. Bush was on the campaign trail before the 2000 presidential elections in the US when, once again in front of a live mic that he thought was turned off, he turned to Dick Chaney and said:

“"There's [liberal New York Times journalist] Adam Clymer - major league asshole…”

What’s interesting is that both Kaczynski and Bush refused to apologize for the boobs, complaining that they were sorry that a private remark had been made public.

But words in front of an open microphone at a public press conference do NOT a ‘private conversation’ make, Mr. Presidents…

In his non-apology Kaczynski did emphasis that his use of the word ‘monkey’ was not meant to be a comment on the way the TVN journalist looks, who, he said with chivalry, “Is a very attractive women.”

So maybe if Kaczynski does fancy making a quick cover of the old Chris de Burgh...er...classic,…then he could just get it into the shops before Christmas.

I've never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight
I've never seen you shine so bright
I have never seen that dress you're wearing
Or the highlights in your hair that catch your eyes
I have been blind

The monkey in red
Is dancing with me
Cheek to cheek……

Is the Suffolk Strangler a Pole?

Update Monday morning…Englishman arrested on suspicion of 5 murders in Suffolk… more here

Well, according to our old Polonia-phobic friend, the UK Daily Mail, someone from Poland is the main suspect.

Under the headline Strangler police hunt BMW Pole, the Mail reports that Suffolk police are looking for a BMW driving ‘Eastern European’ who works on a farm near where the body of one of the murdered women was found.

One of the murder’s 5 victims (and maybe now a sixth - this story gets nastier everyday), Anneli Alderton, was last seen getting into a BMW.

A witness spoke to the Daily Mail anonymously:

"I noticed the [Eastern European’s] BMW parked on a dirt track and because it matched the description of the car the police were looking for and because it was so close to where the bodies were found, I tried to find out who it belonged to.

"I spoke to someone who knows the owner of the car and he isn't around at the moment.

"I phoned the police and a forensic team was sent down to examine the car. It might just be a coincidence but it was too obvious to ignore."

Last night the BMW was no longer parked on the track and there was no-one at the man's home, where the lights had been left on all day.

Not really much to go on here and the British media is rife with speculation at a time when police are sensibly keeping what evidence they have under raps.

The Daily Mail has been leading a (successful) campaign (here or here or here) against Romanian and Bulgarians being allowed to work in Britain when they join the EU in a few weeks time. They have been doing this by printing all sorts of negative stories about the catastrophic effect of having so many Poles and others from CEE in Britain.

Call me a cynic but isn’t it a bit strange that this ‘exclusive’ report pinning the blame on a Pole just happens to brake in the Mail?

And do I get the impression the Daily Mail, which has led the eastern European scare campaign in Britain, would love it if the apparent serial killer just happened to come from one of the countries that they see has been ‘swamping’ their green and pleasant land with immigrants?

More
Turning murder into reality TV, Spiked

Polish martial law smokes

Express Wieczorny [?] reported back in 1982…

‘A thief broke into [one of the few] cars parked outside a block of residential flats in Warsaw yesterday, and stole a cartoon of (rationed – pictured above are meat ration cards, I think) cigarettes.

But this was an honest thief, as he left on the backseat of the car, where the cigarettes had been, 51 zloty – the exact price of the cartoon of cigarettes.’

The thief was obviously out of ration coupons and desperate for a smoke!

Substitutes: more memories from living under martial law 1981

Inspired by beatroots Lwow correspondent, Opamp, take a look at the way Poles had to package things during a time of acute shortage.

Martial law lasted from December 13 to July 1983. That’s a longtime to live with nothing much in the shops – and what there was, was pretty crap (see previous post).

In those dark days of rationing cards - one kilo of sugar a month, two kilos of meat, one pair of shoes for six months, and, much more gravely, only half a litre of vodka a month – printers inks were also tragically in short supply.

This meant that when there was some chocolate in the shop then it tended to come in a packet that looked like this:

They made labels in any colour you want – as long as it’s grey…or pink!

This, as Opamp points out, was what was known as etykieta zastępcza, or ‘substitute label' – probably one of the finest contributions that the commies ever gave the world of design (on par, of course, with the brutality of much of socialist realism).

After you had gobbled down your plastic tasting ‘chocolate-like’ (Mum...why does the chocolate suddenly taste like shit?) then how about a dribble from your half a litre ration of vodka?

But the finest vodka it most defiantly was not. You have heard of ‘table wine’ before, so how about a little ‘table vodka’ complete with ‘label substitute’?


Na Zdrowia!

Martial Law, Poland, December 13, 1981...

...tasted like plastic.

There is an evocative free gift with this week’s edition of Newsweek Polska. It’s a little box of chocolates.

Inside the period looking box are two chocolates: one is made of real chocolate; the other is made of the ersatz chocolate (czekoladopodobny) that was all most Poles could get hold of during Martial Law, a period of rationing of food stuffs.

A family was allowed one average sized chocolate bar a month. People said that there were less squares of chocolate in the bar than days of the month.

The ersatz chocolate given away by Newsweek must bring back memories in a very tangible way for Poles. What better way to conjure up a memory than by letting people taste it?

I just tried a piece of martial law chocolate. It tasted of plastic. But it also brought back memories of what cheap chocolate tasted like when I was a kid back in London. I am sure I remember that taste of cheapness before.

Many of the people that I know have memories based around what it was like to be a kid back then. Many say the first thing they knew about martial law was when they went to turn on the television on a freezing cold Sunday morning. Instead of seeing the cartoons that were played every week at that time by the one TV channel they had – TVP – they were confronted with the now infamous image of General Jaruzelski. Minus his dark glasses for the momentous occasion he said:

The Fatherland finds itself at the edge of an abyss. ..In this situation, inaction would be a crime against the nation. One must say: Enough. ..Calling on the army can have, and has, only a provisional, extraordinary aspect. .. May this exhausted country, which has already experienced so many catastrophes and so much suffering, not see even one drop of Polish blood spilt. We will, by a common effort, stop the specter of civil war. Let us not build barricades where a bridge is needed.

For kids it must have seemed bewildering, but the meaning of what had just happened was lost on them, thankfully. For their parents, however, it must have left the taste of something much more unpleasant in their mouths than the cheap, plastic chocolate that would be part of the rations during the year long period of clampdowns.

Around 25,000 people were charged with 'crimes against the state' and 90 people were killed during that period.

More?

This is a print of a famous photo taken by Time photographer Chris Niedenthal of a cinema (Kino Moskwa, where Silver Screen now is on ul. Marszalkowska) in Warsaw during martial law. The film showing that week was: Czas Apokalipsy - Apocalypse Now

Happy birthday Radio Maryja

The radio station that everyone loves to hate (apart from a million anomic Poles, and the Polish government) is 15 years old this month.

“I'm standing here with the feeling that I'm taking part in something important. I'm taking part in the 15th anniversary of an institution ... that has played a great role in Poland's history," said Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski last week.

The Polish government is in the middle of a ‘moral revolution’, which ‘would not be possible without the Radio Maryja family’, Kaczynski gushed.

But what have others said in the past about Radio Maryja and father of the family, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk?

The papal nuncio in Poland, Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyuk, wrote to the Polish episcopate requesting their aid "to overcome difficulties caused by some transmissions and the views presented by Radio Maryja".

The Vatican has issued a serious warning to 'stay out of politics'.

The Polish Council for Media Ethics referred to the station's "primitive anti-Semitism".

A report in 2000 by Tel Aviv University began: “The popular Catholic nationalist radio station Radio Maryja is still the most influential source of anti-Semitic propaganda in Poland.”

Last surviving member of the Warsaw Ghetto, Marek Edelman, accused Maryja of broadcasting openly anti-Semitic comments.

The recently retired Archbishop Jozef Glemp charged Radio Maryja with promoting a specific type of religiousness, a selective approach to Church teachings and regarding itself as the only true church.

Etc...

So what kind of ‘moral revolution’ will Radio Maryja be helping the Polish government in, exactly?

Happy 15th birthday Maryja! Sto lat, sto lat...

More?
As a special birthday treat watch a 1 min 30 second video of how the peace loving, moral revolutionaries from Radio Maryja’s listenership react when they find out that the camera filming them is from the much hated TVN 24 round the clock cable news station. See video here

The speed of Lyzwinski’s DNA test...

...coming only 24 hours after he gave his tissue sample...

...has sparked off a conspiracy here that the tests were ‘faked’. The Prosecutors Office in Lodz had been ‘got at’ in other words, by a government who wanted the whole affair hushed up. Etc.

Not being an expert on DNA tests I wouldn’t like to comment - except to draw attention to the speed of the DNA test result confirming the identity of Saddam Hussein after he was caught down a little hole by the Americans three years ago this month.

Genome News, no less, reported back then:

One day after Saddam Hussein’s capture on December 13, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Iraqi Governing Council, announced at a press conference that DNA tests had confirmed Hussein’s identity. The announcement came less than 24 hours after his capture, indicating that the DNA test, which usually takes days to perform, had been conducted with unusual speed.

I suppose when you need the results badly then science can be speeded up. And in the small world of Polish politics, Lyzwinski’s sex life and the capture of Saddam Hussein are equally Earth shattering – or maybe equally meaningless.

More
DNA twist in Polish sex scandal, BBC News

Poland's exit strategy from Iraq

It’s the Polish president’s decision whether to keep troops in Iraq or bring them home now – shame no one seems to have asked the Iraqis.

900 Polish troops were originally scheduled to pull out of the carnage of Iraq at the end of this year. But last Thursday, Defense Minister Radek Sikorski signed the necessary motion for a prolonged mission. President Lech Kaczynski, whose duty it ultimately is, will probably make his decision on whether Polish troops stay on another half year or year this week.

Last month Kaczynski said that Poland had ‘invested so much’ in Iraq that they should stay on until the ‘job was done’.

Over the past 36 months since Polish troops have been stationed in the south-central zone in Iraq, 22 including 18 soldiers lost their lives.

Baker-Hamilton

Polish officials said that exactly how long Poles stay is dependant on American ‘strategy and tactics’. Up until now these ‘strategy and tactics’ [ironic snigger] such as they are, have been built around a sound bite – George Bush’s mantra, “Stay the course’, an open ended commitment to the occupation until things, magically, get better.

But things on the ground refuse to get better – they just get worse.

So Bush has dropped the ‘Stay the course’ and is fumbling around for another sound bite, which he was hoping the much trumpeted Baker-Hamilton Commission would deliver.

But the commission’s report turns out to be a slim document with even thinner and less substantial ideas contained within it.

They realize that the war has destabilized the region (as those anti-war from the very beginning warned the fools in Washington and London that it would) so some creative diplomacy is needed involving Syria and Iran, they say. How Bush will manage that when he has labeled these regimes as ‘evil’ will be, in a gory, prurient kind of way, interesting to watch.

But much of the report echoes signals already coming out of the British and American governments that the ‘Iraqi government better get their house in order quick, otherwise we will just pull out troops (and reconstruction money’ anyway, whether they like it or not.’

The BBC reports what that the (democratically elected) Iraqi Prime Minister thinks of the latest American attempt to dictate events:

Mr Talabani said elements of the Iraq Study Group report undermined Iraqi sovereignty and its constitution.

The president said that on the whole, he rejected the report.

The arrogance of the Americans, British, Polish is stunning. They are literally trying to pass the buck for the bloody chaos they have created onto a weak and helpless Iraqis state – which was fatally weakened by the US-led invasion in the first place: the – de-ba’athification and so on – and the UN sanctions which preceded it, killing around 500,000 children by UN estimates in the process.

This is the deadly politics of denial. By refusing to admit that the invasion gave little chance to Iraqis to maintain a multi-ethnic state, post-Saddam, they are failing to learn the most important lesson in all this: that you cannot impose freedom, liberty and democracy from without.

The Baker-Hamilton Commission, the American government, the Democrats in Congress, the Blair government in London and the Polish government, should refer to what the Iraqis want when deciding whether to stay or leave.

But they won’t. The imperial arrogance continues.

More?
We Must Not Leave Iraq, American Enterprise Institute
The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Recommendations: "Stay the Almost Course", Political Affairs net

It’s not Lyzwinski’s baby!

So whose is it?

DNA tests released Saturday evening prove that Self Defense MP Stanislaw Lyzwinski is not the father of Aneta Krawczyk’s child.

But don’t think this is the end of it. Aneta Krawczyk’s lawyer has just said her client is considering forcing a DNA test on Andrzej Lepper! She is still claiming both Lyzwinski and Lepper had sex with her, promising a nice little job.

Lepper has just said that the whole thing is an attempted coup by the newspaper that broke the story, Gazeta Wyborcza, allied with opposition Civic Platform, to oust Self Defense out of the ruling coalition and so bring down the government.

The truth? Who knows. But it looks like we may have discovered a new sex position which should be included in the Karma Sutra.

Position 69 we know. But what do you think Position 68 is?

You do it to Andrzej Lepper...and then he owes you one!

More here

I wrote a post about the finance minister...

...that was completly wrong.

She didn;t resign. No idea where the story came from. Lots of 'nervousness and emotion around the corridors of power' at the moment, according to Minister Zyta Gilowska.

But I still think she will be resigning soon as she is now a front runner for the chief of the Central Bank, a position vacant soon with the end of the term of Leszek Balcerowicz.

So I apologize to any readers I may have misinformed.

It probably won't be the last time.

I took the post off. Sorry. But naybe she is waiting for her moment to resign for this

Tony Blair says Poles are not racist and intolerant

Which rather contradicts what the Head of UK’ Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Philips, said last month.

Blair said today in a speech calling for more tolerance from recent immigrants coming to the UK, who he sees as yet another ‘threat to our way of life’.

"It is not a problem with Britons of Hindu, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese or Polish origin. Nor is it a problem with the majority of the Muslim community [but] a new and virulent form of ideology associated with a minority of our Muslim community".

Though appearing to give the Poles a clean bill of health, Blair seems to think that the UK’s problems come from outside, from crazy mullahs indoctrinating our kids.

His speech from Downing Street then takes a convoluted turn. In a speech about immigrants and their supposed intolerance to other faiths, etc, Blair started going on about the 7/7 bombers, which were second or third generation immigrants, born and bred in northern England. Washing Post quotes him saying:

"Their emphasis was not on shared values but separate ones, values based on a warped distortion of the faith of Islam," Blair said. "It has thrown into sharp relief, the nature of what we have called, with approval, 'multicultural Britain.'"

He said that the London attacks had caused, for the first time in a generation, "an unease, an anxiety, even at points _ a resentment," about Britain's tradition of offering refuge to people from across the globe and allowing people of all religions to practice their faith.

He said money allocated to faith groups would now be tightly controlled, called on all faith schools to team up with schools teaching a different religion and hailed laws that require preachers arriving in Britain from overseas to be able to speak English.

The last bit is very bizarre. If preachers arriving from Britain can’t speak English then that makes them a lot less able to influence ‘our kids’.

A very confused speech by Blair, which tries to sidestep the fact that it is indeed something about multiculturalism and a lack of a uniting value system in the UK that might just be to blame for Britain’s problems. But at least the supposedly racist Poles get left out it this time.

Polish sexual harassment at work

In the wake of ‘sex-gate’ (see here) the hot topic at the Polish workplace this week has been ‘sexual favours’ for promotion.

Everyone is talking about it. In an opinion poll for Polskie Radio by Pentor Research International, 33% of those asked believe that women are forced to have sex with their boss ‘very often, or often’ if they want to, er, climb up the greasy poll and get promotion. Only six percent thought that this never happens.

To say it never happens would be ridiculous. But to believe that it happens ‘very often’ is equally silly. But it would also be naive to believe that sexual dynamics does not play some role in the way men and women interact at work.

I am one of those people who prefer having a female boss to a male one. And it’s probably because the ‘sexual dynamic’ is always somewhere buried beneath the more official interactions. A bit a flirting never hurt anyone.

But I can’t say that any female boss has jumped me bones, and at the same time as she whispered sweet nothings in my ear promised me a pay rise. I have never had to get my leg over to get a leg up the ladder. .

But what I did experience quite often when I was working as a university lecturer – in the UK and Poland - was thinly veiled, and not so thinly veiled, advances from female students. It was always quite obvious and I quite enjoyed it, to be honest. It never affected the way I marked their work, though. In fact, I got even tougher with them, spent longer marking their papers looking for weaknesses.

But over emphasizing the potentially abusive nature of sexual dynamics at work is a deeply negative development and points to how we are trusting each other less and less. .

In US and UK universities it’s often the case where the male lecturer avoids being alone with a female student, or if he does makes sure the door is left open. That mistrust between adults is corrosive to teaching and learning and I hope that level of suspicion doesn’t come to campus or the workplace in Poland.

It’s better to trust our fellow men and women than be suspicious that every opening of the door or other courtesy is an invitation for a little rumpy-pumpy, or the opening salvo of ‘sexual blackmail’.

Not so all-mighty Lepper begs: ‘Feel my pain’.

Tearful Andrzej begs press to back off.

Andrzej Lepper cried today at a press conference. Yes, political bruiser Lepper, referring to the hounding he is getting from the press since Aneta Krawczyk claimed she could describe what his todger looked like (see previous posts below), said today in front of the ranks of the national media: “You can hound me, but [blub, sniff] please, please [gulp] leave [blub] my family [blub, blub] alooooone….[blub].”

Hanky anyone?

Polish anti-Semitic kook gets sent for psycho tests

One time MP, and presidential candidate, Leszek Bubel gets locked up. But is it for his anti-Semitism or is he just nuts?

Prosecutors in Bialystok have ordered that Bubel be detained for ‘spreading anti-Semitic hate speech and text’ and will be ordered to have psychiatric tests. This is not the first time that he has been charged with such offenses.

Last year he was charged under the Polish penal code (Art. 257), which prohibits ‘insulting individuals because of their ethnic, national, racial and religious affiliation,’ and carries a maximum charge of three years in prison. Bubel got off with a 5,000 zloty fine.

He had a written a pamphlet called ‘Polish-Jewish battle of the Crosses’ in which he had written gibberish such as ‘Jews brains are circumcised’ and other weirdo bullshit.

The guy is certainly very odd indeed. He was a candidate for president for the Polish National Party (Polska Partia Narodowa) during the presidential elections last year and received 0.13% of the vote (about the same as the LPR candidate got in the recent Warsaw local election, in fact).

He was elected to the Polish parliament 1991-93 as a member of the Beer Lover’s Party (until the party split into factions, as all Polish political parties inevitably do, into the Big Beer Party and the Little Beer Party).

He has run a number of magazines including Nasze Polska (Our Poland) and a bi-monthly Tylko Polska (Only Poland), both regularly and fanatically anti-Semitic and are what would be known these days as ‘Holocaust denial’ publications.

He also appears to have had some links as a publisher with Samoobrona, the party that is currently embroiled in their very own Monika Lewinsky-type sex scandal.

So, a thoroughly bad egg in everyone’s book, bar the most carpet-chewing of racists, that is.

And maybe he is a complete nutcase. But I hope the psychiatric tests he is being ordered to undergo are medical in nature and not because of his distasteful political activities.

And should an odorous nutter like Bubel be arrested and charged for ‘hate speech’? What he says is obviously so stupid and prejudiced that only the most extreme or mentally deranged would take any notice of him.

Much better would be to let him speak, let him hate, and let the rest of us deal with him as we see fit – or, even better, completely ignore him.

New allegations in Samoobrona ‘sex-gate’ scandal

Lyzwinski wanted an abortion; forced drugs on Aneta to induce early birth!

This is one hell of a weird scandal. Aneta Krawczyk (photo), the women who claims that Vice Premier Andrzej Lepper and other top brass in Self Defense (Samoobrona) offered jobs and promotion within the party for sexual favours, was on the TVN Teraz My program last night (the same program that broke the Beger-gate scandal) making some more amazing allegations.

She says that Stanislaw Lyzwinski, with whom she is claiming that has had a child (we wait for the DNA tests), tried to get her to have an abortion. When this failed she says that a friend of his, who is a vegetarian surgeon [??], gave her drugs late in the pregnancy to induce a still-birth!

If that is true then Lyzwinki could be prosecuted under numerous, serious charges.

It’s also being claimed that Andrzej Lepper – who Krawczyk is also claiming had sex with her – sexually molested the present government’s Minister of Labour, Anna Kalata, who is also a member of Samoobrona.

He denies all the allegations claiming that it is all a set up to bring down the government.

How on earth are Samoobrona going to get out of this horror? How is the coalition government, of which they are a vital member, going to survive this?

More?

Polish Sex Scandal - Accuser Speaks, Traveling life blog

Rokita’s line in the sand

The splits in Civic Platform mainly revolve around one crucial question.

As we saw before the local elections recently all is not well on the opposition Civic Platform (PO) – in fact, a few party members seem set to fall off it.

The main Platform dissident is Jan Rokita (right of photo). The last line in an ‘open letter’ sent to head of PO, Donald Tusk (left), he demanded an answer to one simple question:

“Will you, or will you not, rule out completely an alliance with the ex-communist Left?”

For many Poles this is still a crucial issue. Most of my friends are what in the West would be called ‘liberals’ – on social issue many are even ‘center-left’. But none of them would entertain the idea of voting for the ex-communist SLD, or Marek Borowski’s breakaway party.

So any alliance after an election between PO and SLD would be a very difficult one, for obvious and understandable historical reasons. SLD etc are the heirs to a party that locked up Solidarity dissidents, murdered striking miners and so on.

So Rokita’s question is a pertinent one: would you be seen dead in bed with the reds?

At the time of writing, Donald Tusk has failed to give a clear answer – suggesting that he may be tempted to make this historic leap, if an election resulted in a hung parliament with a composition that demanded an alliance between SLD and PO.

And that is a distinct possibility. I get the impression that the Kaczynkis are tempted to go to the electorate again. With scandals rife within the two main junior political parties in the coalition, he may just have to. And as their support declines most of it is going to the Kaczynski’s Law and Justice.

So time for Tusk to give a clear-cut answer to Rokita might just be running out.

Sex, lies and Samoobrona

Another day, another scandal for the coalition government.

Last week it was film of the youth wing of League of Polish Families partying hard with neo-fascists.

This week it’s accusations by Gazeta Wyborcza that female workers for Self Defense (Samoobrona) were ordered to perform sexual favours for top members of the party, including the leader, Andrzej Lepper (baff!).

It is alleged that in a kind of political casting coach situation, a worker at a Samoobrona local government office, Aneta K (this is now a legal case so we can’t give her whole name), says that promotion was promised up the party ranks if she was willing to indulge in a little rumpy-pumpy with prominent member of Samoobrona, Stanislaw Lyzwinski (photo). She is also claiming that she was commanded to have sex with Andrzej Lepper, and to keep servicing him, if she wanted to keep the job.

The Prosecutors Office is looking at the allegations.

Party members are fighting back dirty, however. They say that Aneta has three kids, each by a different father. So she is a loose woman and not to be taken seriously.

Aneta K counters that, in fact, the first two kids are from her husband, who she is now separated from. But the third child is indeed Lyzwinski’s. To prove it she has had DNA tests done and is waiting for the results.

Wife of Lyzwinski says she trusts him if he says he didn’t do it, but if he did, then it just shows what a man he is (she sounds like she deserves him, stupid cow).

Andrzej Lepper is claiming that this whole ‘affair’ is a set up by Gazeta Wyborcza to break the ruling government coalition, which he is Vice PM of.

The coalition staggers on…but if Jaroslaw Kaczynski was serious in his election promise to ‘clean up Poland morally’ then how much longer can he tolerate a Vice Premier associated with grubby sex scandals and an Education Secretary, Roman Giertych, associated with neo-nazi party goers?

Well, maybe he can tolerate it as long as he needs a majority in parliament. But it’s gonna cost him and the government…

Pinochet has heart attack. Tee-hee...

...but right wingers in Poland, including many in the present government, will not be too happy about the demise of ‘our bastard’.

When Pinochet was arrested in London for human rights violations during a trip in 1998 to see old British buddies like Margaret Thatcher, Marek Jurek – the current Speaker of the Polish parliament - and other rightist MPs, sent a letter of protest to the British government demanding Pinochet be set free.

A group of right wing journalists from the now defunct Zycie newspaper (who have political links with the present Polish government) went to England to give support to the man who ‘battled against communism’.

Aleksander Kropiwnicki of Zycie wrote at the time:

"The decision to detain Pinochet was political. The independence of the judiciary branch--a cornerstone of democracy in this supposedly most law-abiding country in Europe and possibly in the world--suffered a heavy blow."

Tomasz Wolek, the then Editor-in-Chief of Zycie, wrote breathlessly:

"He was the first person in the second half of the 20th century brave enough to put an effective stop to worldwide communist expansion. He saved not only his own country, but all of Latin America,"

In the end, they got their way, and Pinochet was allowed to go home - though only to face trial there (which is where he should have been judged, of course). But the Zycie journalists and conservative POlish politicians were simply following the old Cold War logic that, ‘Maybe he is a bastard, but at least he is our bastard’.

That kind of attitude was rife on both sides during the Cold War and led to Washington and London’s support of various tyrants – Saddam Hussein included – who could do their bidding in regional hotspots around the world. The Cold War, most of the time, was a war fought by proxy, through and between these dictators.

Well, Pinochet looks like he will never be prosecuted in Chile, as his illness will kill him before a judge has a chance to charge him. And in this post-cold war world few tears should be wasted on that.

Fog saves Warsaw from polonium contamination!

The Nov. 28, BA846 Heathrow to Warsaw flight – one of the four planes involved in the Russian spy poisoning murder – had to be diverted to Vienna due to thick fog in Poland that shutdown many airports this week.

Phew! That was a close one. If it wasn’t for the fog we could have been in for an irrational radiation panic.

More?
Britain's Polonium restaurant doing a roaring trade, AP, Nov 1

Is Poland the new UK?

You could forgive those poor old hapless Eurocrats on the EU Commission for thinking so.

It used to be Maggie Thatcher who wound up Brussels, insisting on a single currency opt out and many other intransigent demands.

The slightly batty old ‘iron handbag’s’ catch phrase when dealing with the EU was simply, “No, no, no…”

Well, now it’s Warsaw getting the ‘trouble maker’ tag. The Russian veto over the Polish-Russian meat wars (‘Nie, nie, nie!) is only the latest in a long line of stubborness from the Poles. EU Observer reminds us that:

In the past 12 months Poland's cry of "solidarity" [from Brussels to the other new EU members] has erupted over labour market access, the services directive, a German-Russian gas pipeline and the Schengen zone. Its budget deficit is breaking EU rules. Its plan to hold a referendum on eurozone entry is unpopular and in January it alone vetoed VAT reforms.

Tusk, tusk. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said this week that he doesn’t envisage a referendum on the single currency till 2011. Brussels bit back by saying that Poland’s budget deficit will be 4% in 2007 one percent above the magic 3% that is stipulated in the sexy sounding Growth and Stability pact, which tries to keep high spending governments in line (and there is a long line of those).

But having Poland as the bad boy only partially deflects criticism from Brussels itself – which, since people in Holland and France told it where to stick its silly ‘EU Constitution’, hasn’t known what to do with itself. Now its only relevance, apparently, is to lecture Poland (and now Turkey) on what democracy looks like (quite forgetting that you cannot impose democracy).

Maybe Brussels should take a good hard look in the mirror a bit more often, and democratize itself.