Poland boils and broils in climate change shocker

My old granny used to say when offered tea, or coffee: “I don’t mind…as long as it‘s warm and wet!”

She always looked at me in incomprehension when I used to double - no, quadruple - up with laughter at that. I was 16 years old, after all.

But warm and wet is what we are seemingly stuck with here in Poland, so I suppose I should be grateful [note tenuous link between early formative experience and current affairs angle.]

It’s warm - a very warm 34 degrees centigrade as I write - or for my American readers: Really Very Hot Degrees Fahrenheit. It was even hotter in July.

It’s also very wet. Recurrent floods have been a story here since May.

It’s enough to make the This Is The End Of The World freaks rush for the streets to proclaim we are burning/drowning in our own cesspool of sin.

And, on cue, here they come. Kind of. But not from a twitching religious fanatic high on too many nights alone with Revelations and four horsies of apocalypses...

No, it’s a scientist. Poland has been warm, and wet, because of global warming.

And this is not any old weather forecaster, who relies on cows having a bit of a sit down before he sees rain coming: it’s climatologist Mirosław Miętus from the Institute of Meteorology.

He says that this year will be “the warmest for 150 years”, since record began.

In the days before records began, people just used to sit around saying: “Few…it‘s hot.” But suddenly people started to record how hot they felt and apparently, in this part of the world, folks have never been so steaming.

There was also over three times more rain in May than usual and two times more than in July. Our studio workplace - which mrs. beatroot spends hours and hours in a day - was flooded for the second time a week ago. More expense, more trauma.

“This is a manifestation of global warming,” Mirosław Miętus says, comfortingly (not) with more frequent heat waves and heavier rain fall to look forward to. Atlantic storms have penetrated deeper into mainland Europe. It could get worse.

Blimey! Can anybody cheer us up? What does the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say about this?

"One cannot conclude 100 percent that nothing like this has happened in the past 200 years, but the suspicion is there. Even if it's only a suspicion," said Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-president of the IPCC), referring to the heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan, a warm and wet combo that Poland has got a taste of this summer.

Few! So there is only a “suspicion” that this could be caused by global frying, that man has brought to Earth as a form of petulance, with too many people doing just too many things.

But no! This article goes on to emphasise the suspicion, regardless of the fact that it is only “a suspicion”.

“According to the IPCC, droughts and heatwaves like those affecting Russia and 18 US states become longer and more intense in a warming planet.

"Whether in frequency or intensity, virtually every year has broken records, and sometimes several times in a week," said Omar Baddour, who tracks climate change for the World Meteorological Organization.

"In Russia, the record temperature in Moscow (38.2 degrees Celsius, 100.8 degrees Farenheit in late July) -- which had not been seen since records began 130 years ago -- was broken again at the start of August. In Pakistan, the magnitude of the floods is unheard of," he said.

"In both cases, it is an unprecedented situation. The succession of extremes
and the acceleration of records conform with IPCC projections. But one must
observe the extremes over many years to draw conclusions in terms of climate,"
he said.”

He did it again! Teasing us with doomsday then delivering the caveat.

But, of course, there are different explanations: you cannot see a trend in weather in any one event; it’s La Nina, El Nino’s inversion; it’s the beavers fault.

Beavers? , Yup: the fury dam-maker, who, up until now had had a very good PR. They even featured in Naked Gun.

As I write now, it’s evening: the wind picks up once again after a boiling hot day; trees sway in submission, the dog yaps, sirens wail and we head for the sandbags to defend the studio from the next Biblical-like flood.

And there are no beavers around this part of Warsaw.

Reasons to defend the Defenders of the Cross

Last week when it was expected that the authorities were going to move The Cross from outside the Presidential Palace to St Anne’s church - and as the Defenders of the Cross often screamed their disapproval - my little office filed up with people watching the scenes on TV.

As the pushing and shoving started with the cops (see previous post) and one deperado grabbed hold of the cross, the people in my office started taunting the Defenders of the Cross. “Idiots” and “Psychos” and “Burak (redneck)” ran the commentary.

And my toes curled, a little.

They curled further still - like week-old stale bread - when President Komorowski, church officials, city authorities backed down. The cops copped out. (latest in saga here and here)

So who is the villain here? The alienated Cross Defenders, often poor, uneducated, alienated from the last two decades of Poland Inc? Victims of events they feel is beyond their control. Or the Polish State not up for a fight in what it says it believes in?

The Polish State has always had an awkward and distant relationship with its citizens in Poland. This is a historical process - partition, Soviet-isation etc…that has left the State with a desperate need to connect with the Poles. Lech Kaczynski knew this. The big displays on Army Day, the Warsaw Rising museum, the emphasis on Historical Politics. These were his way - the Law and Justice way - of trying to create a mass behind a state.

That Kaczynski was/is trying to create a Poland simply out of what it was in the past, is revealing about the relationship that type of national-conservative politics has with The Future. They really have no idea of what that kind of Poland would be. And it’s bound to fail because of that.

Civic Platform - who, now that Komorowski is safely ensconced in the Presidential Palace have a monopoly of power - have a different problem. They have to present themselves as a modernising force, with normal centre-right christian democratic type politics. Poland should be a ‘normal’ country within Europe.

Yet, when they are challenged on this - to make a statement about the separation between symbols of church and state, which this conflict over the cross has provoked - they back down. They lose stomach for the fight.

So who is the villain of the Battle for the Cross? The comparatively weak desperados of the Defenders of the Cross? Or the hapless cowards of the Tusk-Komorowski-Church establishment who are failing to gain any respect from anyone in Poland - foe, and friend, alike?

How a cross brought Poland's establishment to its knees

No - President Komorowski, government, Catholic church top-frocks and cops were not on their knees in prayer. They were in such an ungainly position before a bunch of protestors outside the Presidential Palace, who said they would “defend to the death” the removal of a simple wooden cross put their in commemoration of the death of a president in western Russia.

Last Wednesday, the then president-elect, in agreement with Poland’s Roman Catholic establishment and national scout movement (responsible for the planting the wooden cross in front of the presidential residence after the Smolensk disaster) agreed that the spontaneous memorial to those who died should be moved to the nearby St Anne’s church.
Come the hour of cross removal, cometh the wroth of a couple of thousand Defenders of the Cross. They pushed against police lines; they shouted “Gestapo”, “Traitor” and “Communist” as the police pushed back. One woman grasped the cross, to be quickly disentangled from it. Cops fired tear gas from small aerosol cans when they thought the Defenders had gone a bit far.

See video by gazeta.pl of as bad as it got - which was never that bad - below.


The result of what was a bit of push-and-shove by quite a small crowd of protestors? President Komorowski et al backs down and the cross stays where it is.

Who are those guys?

The self styled Defenders of the Cross - egged on by Lech Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw’s Law and Justice party - are a motley bunch of the ultra-religious, the nationalist, the anti-Russian, the alienated, the anomic and downright deranged.

Occasionally individuals possess all the above traits simultaneously.

For instance, one of the more prominent protestors is veteran cross defender Kazimierz Switon.

If the name sounds familiar it's because Switon - a one-time Solidarity activist, catholic fundamentalist, owner of his own little workshop during communist times, middle ranked trade unionist and post-1989 oddball - hit the headlines in 1999 when he went on hunger strike in protest at the removal of a small forest of crosses which had been placed outside the gates of the Auschwitz museum during a visit by John Paul II.

When authorities decided to remove the cross forest, Switon and fellow cronies went into action, blaming…the international Jewish conspiracy, of course, for wanting the Christian symbols removed from outside the Nazi Auschwitz death camp.

A news report from 1999 reads eerily like reports this week about the Defenders of the Cross.

“Catholic activist, Kazimierz Swinton, who led the campaign to erect the crosses against the wishes of the church's leadership, had mined the area to deter attempts to remove him. Swinton will now be prosecuted for the possession of explosives and inciting racial hatred after he distributed leaflets calling on Poles 'to wage merciless war on Jewish-Communist masonry, the biggest enemies of the Polish state’.”

Fast forward to 2010 and the now 79 year old Switon is back. Switon has been working alongside Leszek Bubel for many years, the leader of the nationalist Polish National Party, another attendee at Defenders of the Cross rallies in Warsaw.

Following the argy-bargy in front of the Presidential Palace on August 3, sent a letter, and email, on behalf of Bubel and the other Defenders to Prime Minister Donald Tusk.: “Despite the many protests […] at the instigation of Satanists you started a war over the Cross on Polish soil,” he wrote. “The Cross commemorating the murders [of Lech Kaczynski and 95 others] must stay in front of the Presidential Palace. If you start another war over the Cross then prepare for the end of your government,” Switon warned, spookily.

Weak elite

Of course, if you received a letter like that from a marginalised delusionist like Switon you would probably read it, have a chuckle, then throw it in the bin. But not Tusk, not the Church, not the Polish Establishment, terrified of the likes of Switon and the Defenders of the Cross.

President Komorowski had argued that a religious symbol such as cross should be in a religious place, such as a church. And he’s right. But Komorowski and the rest don’t seem to have the courage of their convictions. Terrified that they might seem insensitive to the view that Russia and other dark forces might have been the authors of the Smolensk disaster - that they were “murdered” - and scared that they might seem insensitive to a religious symbol, they backed down. Despite the relatively low level of support for the Defenders of the Cross, they sank to their knees in submission at the sight of the protests in front of the Presidential Palace.

Consequently, they have shown that Poland’s political elite remains as weak as it ever was. And unable to show authority and leadership, they have opened themselves up to all sorts of marginal groups who want to get even with the harbingers of modernity in Poland.

As all sides haggle over the future of the Smolensk Cross, the new power monopoly of President Komorowski-Prime Minister Tusk-Civic Platform party seems more like a rickety boat, vulnerable to cross-wind.

Uncle Bronek slaughters Kaczynski with…slim majority

What happened there, then? A few weeks ago Bronislaw Komorowski was around 15 percent ahead of Jaroslaw Kaczynski in opinion polls which gave respondents the choice of ten candidates. But on Sunday, Bronek squeaked home in the presidential elections head-to-head by just six percentage points, in a two-Polands-type split.

At one point, Sunday, the momentum seen in the opinion polls leading up to election day seemed to point to the unthinkable.

About 5 pm, election day on Sunday, three hours before polling stations closed, I got gossip, from two independent sources, that opinion pollsters OBOP - who was polling for public broadcaster TVP - was seeing a lead in its exit poll of 53 % Kaczynski, 47% for Komorowski. This rumour was going around all the TV and radio broadcasters.

It appears that this came from someone seeing early returns from pollsters, which had excluded many polls from urban areas. But many journalists got into their heads that Kaczynski was on for a miracle win.

In the end, after a brief lead for Kaczynski in early official vote counts, Komorowski prevailed.

At 53 percent of the vote, however, Bronislaw ‘personality by-pass’ Komorowski doesn’t really have a massive mandate to allow his mates in the government an open door policy for any legislation it wants to shove through parliament. But it must be tempting, right? I know I would!

Was the better than expected performance by Jaroslaw Kaczynski down to the ‘Smolensk balance’ - a sympathy for Jaroslaw after he lost his twin brother on a foggy day in Smolensk?

In the first round of the election 36 percent voted Kaczynski. So the ’bounce’ was more a ‘bobble’ as his total support consisted of just one-in-three Poles. It isn’t that most Poles don’t feel sorry for the poor guy. It’s just that many loath him as a politician.

But in a two way split, Jaroslaw and his type of politics will receive around half of the votes up for grabs, many from the usual reservoir of ‘hold your nose’ voters.

The fact is, the almost fifty-fifty split in votes is just where Poland was back in 1995, when it divided like a pie cut down the middle, between Lech ‘I’m a living legend’ Walesa and his nemesis, former communist party card-holder Aleksander ‘two-wins’ Kwasniewski .

(I could have used other metaphors there: in fact I put “divided like…” into google to see what would happen, being suddenly bereft of metaphors. The best it could come up with was “divided like a butt…”, but I digress).

Political maps of Poland (Komorowski in orange) have looked like the one pictured above for years.

What’s changed is that where once voters would have voted SLD, Kwasniewski’s ex/post communists, now they vote what foreign journalists refer to as ‘pro-business’ Civic Platform - or, in other words, a centre right candidate like Bronislaw Komorowski.

So this is a ’two Polands’ split, almost, on cultural, not political lines. Following the collapse of SLD, Civic Platform have taken up the urban, more secular, aspiring vote. And Kaczynski has got the eastern half of the country: the rural, many of the poor, elderly, church-going, disillusioned with capitalism.

Civic Platform, however, have been handed a metaphor-like poisoned chalice. No more excuses. They can pretty well do what they want. They can pretty much screw it up as they want.

Kaczynski knows this, and, with almost half of Poland to be potentially tapped for support, watch for his return, like (metaphor alert) the prodigal …um…twin, in the parliamentary elections scheduled for next year.

You have been warned.

Give PiS a chance

As the two candidates entered the grounds of Poland’s public television, Sunday, ready for the first head-to-head presidential TV face off, a new anthropological, ethnographic sub-culture could be spotted waiting for them just outside the entrance to the TVP building.

They wore flowers in their hair, they banged their tambourines, resplendent in orange kaftans, like Polish Maharishi chanting happy slogans.

They resembled hippies but they were not. For these were supporters of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, candidate of the Law and Justice party, or PiS in the Polish acronym. They were not your usual, common and garden, peace loving hippy, high on herb and an overdose of patchouli oil.

No. These were the HiPiS. And they want to you to join them.

There were some high profile names in amongst the gaggle of hiPiS - Marek Migalski, Elżbieta Jakubiak, Paweł Poncyliusz - part of the PiS new-wave - singing John Lennon’s Give PiS a Chance. Yeah - they really were singing that.

At one point, as they descended, slowly, on the public television building, I thought they were going to repeat a stunt by one of their forbearers, 1960s Timothy Leary, who gathered a few thousand hippies - whose brains had been deep fried in too much acid - and surrounded the Whitehouse in the sincere belief that they could levitate it into the sky.

I imagined Jaroslaw Kaczynski, guru-like, wearing swirling white robes, emerge from his limo and commanding TVP to rise up into the sky, like a balloon.

LSD King Timothy Leary told us to “Turn on, tune in and drop out. ” But as Law and Justice control TVP at the moment, maybe Kaczynski would come riding into the television studios on a magic carpet, advising all who would listen to “Turn on, tune in, to TVP”.

The hiPiS are a result of Law and Justice’s lengthy internal debate on how to change their image, attract a few more younger people to vote for them. It’s also part of Jarsolaw Kaczynski’s personality make-over. It was planned that Kaczynski was going to get a new softer image some months ago - make him more cuddly, less aggressive, less conflict-inclined. And then Smolensk happened, and maybe - maybe - he actually started to believe the PR. Maybe.

So in the last few weeks Jaroslaw has turned into the Polish Ghandi. Where once he was the commie-baiting attack dog, straining at the leash for conflict, now he wants to end the fighting, he says, to unite Poland in a hiPiS paradise.

Smolensk crash and the Kook-meister

There are the finest investigative journalists; there are the lowest of yellow press hacks: and then there is Jane Burgermeister.

Of all the kooks who are running around Poland and western Russia sniffing out the conspiracies that brought down the Smolensk TU 154, Burgermeister is surely one of the most ludicrous. The Swiss-Irish-Austrian (no wonder she is confused!) “investigative reporter” was fired last year, says her web site, as European Correspondent of the Renewable Energy World magazine [?] after she alleged that an international corporate syndicate is manufacturing artificial swine flu to depopulate the US (pdf)! She has since filed a law suit against the UN and WHO for their part in the dastard conspiracy. (??? - yeah, you get the idea).

Now she has got her ample set of teeth into Smolensk. Her “investigative reporting style” entails scouring the net for conspiracy theories. That’s it. And then she seems to believe them all.

This is her after Lech Kaczynski’s funeral. She has gone all the way to Krakow (from Dublin, Vienna, Bern - who knows!) to do a piece to camera, and regurgitate her conspiracy theories - but not, note, to do any investigating.


Basically, she alleges that the plane was lured away from the real runway at Smolensk by falsely situated landing beacons. There, the plane hit the trees and burst into pieces.

But she also says, ominously, that “no bodies or personal affects have been found,” and a host of other nonsense without any factual base to them at all.

Jane Kookmeister - whose supporters included Michael Jackson, an article posted on fellow super kook David Ike’s web forum claims - later refined her theories to include the assertion that there were actually only four people on board the plane when it took off from Warsaw airport on April 10; the rest of the, 92, passengers were kidnapped!

Uncensored magazine quotes this fearless journalistic lioness, and “investigative reporter”, in its new June edition.

Actually, we cannot blame Burgermeister for inventing this nonsense. She didn’t. She is just looking for this kind of thing - and willingly hoovers it all up - because she sees the world being manipulated by unseen forces beyond her - beyond our - control. The theories have been coming out of Poland and elsewhere by conspiracy theorists, determined to find one that they can actually prove was real. For Americans and others the dark forces lurk in the UN and other places. In Poland they hail from Russia.

Nonsense nurtures their feelings of impotence in a complex, modern world. I hope they get better - soon.

The election campaign, that never was

Imagine: three weeks before a presidential election and no campaign posters trumpeting and sloganeering their candidate, dominating the street furniture of downtown. Welcome to Poland’s weirdest election campaign - ever.

There’s nothing. No mug shots of photo-shopped hopefuls with leering catchphrases - just two with a hope of winning, two with a hope of raising their profile, and the rest: self publicising narcissists that democracy attracts like a kid to the ice cream parlour, on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Imagine: you are a campaign manager of a presidential candidate, in hustings done in the shadow of a) the Smolensk horror, and b) the floods. You had been planning your most sophisticated campaign. And then - national mourning, and later the unimaginable stench of flooded homes and lives. Pity poor campaign manager.

The thinnest tightrope walker, of a field of 10 in the presidential elections on June 20, is Bronislaw Komorowski. He’s juggling three balls in the oddest election non-circus on Earth: being an acting president, speaker of parliament and a presidential candidate. Three roles means three opportunities of screwing up. So far, neutrals think he is just about managing to walk the rope without mishap. He’s a clear leader in the polls, too, but they may be giving a skewed picture. He’s been doing things within his current functions, but not actively campaigning.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, meanwhile, has been the most conspicuous in his absence from the campaign. Still wearing the black suits and tie of mourning for his twin brother, he holds few press conferences, a brief appearance at an election rally, and a video expressing peace and love for Russia and thanks for every tear they shed for Smolensk. It’s been called “Jaroslaw‘s metamorphosis”.

He’s saying: Jaroslaw has changed.

All the other candidates have not been pushing the campaign - many have called for the ballot to be put off till the autumn because of the disruption of the floods.

Whatever: I bet election campaign managers sleep like a baby, these days - waking up every 20 minutes, crying their eyes out.

Kaczynski death - it was the Russians wot done it

The conspiracy theory that the Russians were behind the death of President Lech Kaczynski last Saturday is bubbling to surface.

The sorrowful reaction from politicians of all political colours has been genuine in the wake of the plane crash killing Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 others in Smolensk on Saturday.'

But suggestions that the pilot, maybe under pressure from President Kaczynski and others not to be late for the ceremony - and Kaczynski has a track record of hassling pilots - is the dominant explanation outside of Poland and with many inside.

But there is a right wing conservative element who thinks that this could not be simply a tragic accident, or Polish pilot error. This was sabotage.
Law and Justice MP Artur Gorski - who we have met before on this blog after he said that the election of Barack Obama as US president meant the “demise of white civilisation” - broke ranks with the PC mourning line yesterday..

“'One version of events says that the plane approached the airport four times, because every time the Russians refused it permission to land - they wanted to send the plane with the president to an airport in Moscow or Minsk,” Gorski told the ultra-conservative Nasz Dziennik newspaper.

Russian investigators, after examining the black boxes from the aircraft, say that the plane, in fact, only circled two times. But Gorski claims that the Russians were scared that Kaczynski’s visit would overshadow a similar ceremony three days before, attended by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Vladimir Putin. And that’s why air traffic control didn’t want the plane to land and suggested going to another airport in Moscow, or Minsk.

Nasz Dziennik, which has been pushing this type of theory, also published the opinion of an ‘expert’ in aviation at Szczecin Polytechnic, Ryszard Drozdowicz, who says pilot error in judging the height of the aircraft - the plane struck tress before crashing - was unlikely and that the probable cause was a mechanical failure, or that there had been deliberate sabotage of the plane.

The Soviet-built Topolov TU 154 had been serviced only a few months before…in Russia!

A man with a loud hailer embarrassed the huge queues of people lining up to pay respects in front of Kaczynski’s coffin in the presidential palace, Tuesday, claiming the deaths were part of a conspiracy involving PM Donald Tusk, Putin and Obama. See photos.

Whatever the conclusion of the Russian and Polish teams investigating the crash, this type of thinking will prevail within the right wing conservatives and ‘mohair berets’. President Kaczynski died where many before him died from Poland. That’s enough evidence to think that he died at the hands of the same people.

Israeli media bash the Polish bishop

“It is so sad that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz a Polish cleric still engages in anti-Semitic rhetoric because so much Jewish blood was shed on Polish soil," said Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, reacting to Bishop Pieronek’s comments that the Holocaust had become a “propaganda weapon”.

Fozman was quoted in Haaretz after top Bishop Tadeusz Pieronik told an Italian catholic web site on Sunday that he found the appropriation of the tragedy of the Holocaust by Jewish groups “arrogant”, as they were the only ones who suffered during the during WW II “unbearable.”

Christians and others who suffered under the iron boot of communism should have a day such as Holocaust Remembrance Day, too, says the bishop. "But they, the Jews, enjoy good press because they have powerful financial means behind them, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States and this favours a certain arrogance that I find unbearable."

Pieronek, asked if the Holocaust had been exploited, said: "Certainly it has. It is used as a propaganda weapon to get advantages that are often unjustified."

Eeek! What was Pieronek on?

His comments come just before January 27’s Holocaust memorial day, when national leaders gather in Auschwitz in southern Poland. This year’s guests include Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Has 75 year old Pieronek taken leave of his senses?

Everyone I have talked to are surprised by Pieronek’s outburst. Pieronek is not a Rydzyk or a Jankowski - he is mainstream very senior, retired now, Polish Roman Catholic bishop, was on the executive bishop’s council, etc. He represents the status quo in Poland among the clergy.

Bishop Pieronek has hardly helped himself. His plea today on TVP television that his comments have been “taken out of context” and the even weaker “I did not authorise the article” - is he used to journos ringing him up to check quotes? (* see note below)- are lame. He denies saying that the Holocuast “was a Jewish invention,” but nowhere does he retract what many see as a tired old anti-Semitism.

"I am totally shocked by these comments, particularly if they came from a member of the Church hierarchy," said Leone Passerman, ex-president of Rome's Jewish community.

Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, said: "It is so sad that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz a Polish cleric still engages in anti-Semitic rhetoric because so much Jewish blood was shed on Polish soil."

“We find it unacceptable that an important religious figure in Poland, only a few days away from International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is capable of making such inflammatory and false remarks” stated European Jewish Council President Dr. Moshe Kantor, quoted in ynet.

Personally, I think the Italian journalist who wrote the original story was taking a liberty with the “Holocaust was a Jewish invention” bit. He says before that: “In a sense,” so he was not literally saying it was an invention. But the general sentiments he spoke of are not unusual here in Poland. Not at all. what's changed is that recently you can get away with saying these type of things - especially after the Gaza debacle.

*I was informed today that there is a “Press Law” which originated in 1984 but which has been amended several times since, which says that the journalist, if requested, must authorise quotes with the interviewee. I found that strange. Is it?

Kaczynski, Doda and the Devil

Polish pink pop princess Doda stole a kiss from President Lech Kaczynski at a prestigious journalist’s ball.


President Kaczynski is obviously pleased about the experience. In fact, I think she awoken certain urges he hasn’t felt for years. Allegedly. But is the head of state aware that he has let the Dark Prince dance on his lips?

Pink to Black

Pink pop princess Doda is Poland’s Tabloid Queen, famous for being Doda and being seen to be Doda as often as possible in successive media cycles. Doda was a footballer’s wife, for a while. So the Brits will get the essence of Doda in that media stereotype.

It is said around where I live that Doda wanted to buy one of the very expensive flats on the other side of the road. But the owners blocked the sale for fear she might bring down the tone of the area (and believe me, the tone of the area is not that great as it is).

Scary

After giving football hubbie the boot, Doda fell into the hands of darker forces, in the shape of Nergal, the lead guitarist and singer of Death Metal band Behemoth. Behemoth are occultist, scary/ludicrous silly boys who dress in black and sing about goats heads and pagan rituals and naughty things designed to shock mummy.

Behemoth do things to shock on stage, too. They are currently going through court proceedings after Nergal [don’t try this at home, folks] tore up a bible on stage in Krakow.

This dark spirit has now entered Doda, who has recently been seen out and about wearing not her trade mark pink, but black, the colour of…Behemoth.

Notice that First Lady Maria Kaczynska is not as pleased as Lech was at the amorous attentions of the lover of the fallen angel from hell, as Doda, cheeky one, makes the sign of the Devil.

Spooky, isn’t it?

“Work makes you free” sign theft conspiracy theories

The theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" sign from Gate I at the site of the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz showed one politician from the ruling Civic Platform party has delusions of an outside conspiracy, trying to make Poland look bad. (photo: Police image of alleged criminal working for dark international forces?)

The sign disappeared for three days before police, acting on a tip off, arrested five men up near Torun. They are accused of arriving at the Auschwitz museum site at around 03.00 CET Friday morning, unscrewing the five metre sign, hauling what weights anything up to 40 kilograms 400 metres, through a hole in the fence and into a van and then driving it up to northern Poland. There they sawed it into three bits and then hid it in the woods.

In those three days, politicians and others inside and outside Poland expressed how shocked they were, etc, and some pointed to dark motives behind the theft.

Avner Shalev, head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem was reported to have said: " This act constitutes an act of war."

A theory that neo-Nazis had set the whole thing up rapidly did the rounds. Others thought that this was a set up by those who want to do Poland down.

Civic Plarform’s Pawel Gras said the motive behind the Auschwitz sign theft could be to damage Poland’s international reputation ahead of January’s 65th anniversary celebrations of the liberation of the death camp on January 27. The timing of the theft was “no accident,” he told Radio Zet.

“If the case is not solved by [January] all of the attention will be on the theft and not the message that should be coming out of Poland,” Gras said Sunday.

That this was a criminal act, pure and simple, did not come into it in those three days when the sign was a sign of the times - when everyone sees a deep, dark motive of international scope behind everything that happens.

Today, however, everyone is saying that the gang of men, all known criminals, must have been paid by some weirdo collector. They were not neo-nazis. They were not international provocators.

But that’s a bit boring, isn’t it? I prefer what Gras might be implying: It’s the Russians wot did it!

Lech Poznan go to Bethlehem

Football club releases excruciating Christmas song. Reindeers weep. So does Cliff Richard.

There have been some great Christmas songs in the past - but not many. There have been a few mediocre Christmas songs in the past - but not that many, either, What there has been, however, is a great deal of utter, utter rubbish Christmas songs. The list is almost endless.

And there have been one or two good songs by, or for, football teams - by New Order for England’s World Cup 1990 bid and, the best, Lightening Seeds for England’s Euro 1996 campaign. But mostly, football songs are just execrable noise pollution, which, cumulatively, are part of the cause, research will reveal one day, of global warming and climate change.

Lech Poznan - first division club; nicknamed the Railwaymen; used to be good until a decade a go, now not so - have gone and done a double-wammy - they have scored a brace - by being a football team which has made a Christmas song! Two crimes in one, just for you this holiday.

It gets worse. The song is a Polish Christmas carol.

The lyrics to Przybieżeli do Betlejem (Shepherds came to Bethlehem) you don’t really need to worry about. It’s the usual stuff. All you need to know to sing along is the chorus, which is “Glory on high, glory on high and peace on earth.” and the repeated phrase by the backing singers “Chwala,” glory!

So, sit back and watch a musical own goal. Merry Christmas Lech!

PS. Correction. I have listened to this a few times now and I am beginning to (cringe) like it! Call a doctor.

The Double Life of Senator Piesiewicz

A politician, drugs, prostitutes, blackmail, cross-dressing and video tape. It’s the mix of a tabloid editor’s (wet) dream.

It’s the story of Krzysztof Piesiewicz - screenwriter for Krzysztof Kieslowski, a lawyer who helped in the prosecution of the murderers of Father Popieluszko, and a senator for the Civic Platform party - brought down by his own stupidity and a large dollop of growing media fascination with sleaze in Poland.

Tabloid Super Express published video of Piesiewicz taking a white substance - which appears to be of a recreational nature - in the presence of two prostitutes. Later, a half-conscious, then, even later, unconscious senator, dressed in women’s clothes, is seen having lipstick applied to his face by the gals.

The video results from revenge. Piesiewicz, after meeting one of the girls a couple of times, had promised to find her a job. When he didn’t deliver, a plan to blackmail him emerged. On past occasions, the senator was willing to pay for the women to shut up about the rendezvous, but on the third occasion he refused. So a demand of half a million zloty was made, otherwise they were going to the media.

Piesiewicz, with a late burst of wisdom, decided to go to the police. He now faces drug related charges and the girls face an extortion rap. The women - who police say are part of a gang which tries to blackmail celebrities - are facing blackmail charges.

His party, Civic Platform, has deserted him and suspended his membership. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said today: “It seems his political career is over […] His behaviour is indefensible.”

But wait a minute. The senator is guilty of, essentially, giving way to some basic urges. The fact that he risked so much was probably an added, kinky bonus. But he never gave away state secrets, he never did anything, politically, wrong.

On the other hand, he is the victim of a set up and blackmail. The collusion of this by the media in Poland - a feature of the British media which has become nauseating - is probably the most saddening thing about the whole, sad, story.

IPN - Polish for 'False Memory Syndrome'?

Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has accused a diplomat who spent years in a communist prison of being a communist secret agent.

The IPN’s education office released a statement yesterday accusing Maciej Kozlowski - who is currently Deputy Director of the Department of Africa and the Middle East - of being the communist collaborator code-named “Witold”, even though he was arrested for smuggling in copies of the oppositionist Kultura magazine across the Polish-Czechoslovakian border in 1969.

He was sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment for spying for the CIA. Koalowski - a former Polish ambassador to Israel (1999-2003) - but was released in 1972.

But the IPN - a body set up in the 1990s to look into Nazi and Communist crimes towards the Polish nation - has forwarded to the prosecutors claims that he falsified a vetting statement - which all public officials must sign - saying he had never collaborated with any communist agents.
The IPN says that Kozlowski worked for the communist Division II Security Service based in Krakow from 1965 to 1969, specialising in counter-British intelligence.

If it is proved that he was, in effect, a double agent, then he would have to leave his post at the Foreign Ministry.

Kozlowski said in a previous case which was dropped in 2000 that if the communist secret services have files on him then it is only because he was an opposition activist, not because he was a spy.

Kaczynski’s historical attack dogs

Since 2005, the IPN has been accused of acting as an organiser and prosecutor of witch hunts against opponents of the Kaczynski twins. The Jaroslaw Kacztynski government (2005-07) widened the institute’s powers and broadened the vetting process against not just public officials but anyone working in the public arena, including journalists (and including the beatroot, even though he is British and was drunk in a university bar in London for most of the 1980s). The Constitutional Tribunal has since ruled that this part of the IPN’s functions was unconstitutional.

But the IPN has continued to spray allegations of communist collaboration around on a daily basis. Earlier this year two historians from the institute released a book, rehashing allegations that Lech Walesa was the 1970s communist collaborator “Bolek”.

Walesa has now taken President Lech Kaczynski to court for slander, after he made the same accusation.

British historian Norman Davies wrote in the Guardian that Poles should find these constant attacks embarrassing. "Those who are once again attacking Lech Walesa's good name must not realise how they are damaging Poland's reputation abroad in doing so. People in the West, in particular, are not aware of the complex nuances of Polish politics. For this reason I hold the view that attacks against Lech Walesa are a deeply unpatriotic act. ... ”

Last week Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that he wants to de-politicise the work of the IPN. The government has submitted a draft bill which proposes a change in the IPN’s board and a speedier access to files held by them.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party (critics say the IPN is its historical attack dog) has said it will oppose the move.

Ryszard Kalisz from the ex-communist SLD said his party has repeatedly called for abolishment of the IPN. But since that proposal has little support then he would support any legislation which illuminates “pathology” from the work of the institute.

Political sclerosis

The IPN is not just an archive populated by a bunch of dusty historians. It has legal powers to prosecute. As such, it has become the modern day Polish equivalent of Joseph McCarthy. For the current board under its president Janusz Kurtyka, a communist collaborator is someone whose name was held in communist secret service files. For whatever reason. That seems enough to bar them from public service today.

Still, a name is enough for some with an axe to grind. As Salvador Dali said of memory and remembrance: “The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.”

Jaruzelski asked for 1981 Soviet intervention

Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) is to release documents which appear to show that General Jaruzelski did indeed request support from Moscow if Solidarity protests got out of control.

Professor Antoni Dudek at the institute writes on his blog that the documents - to be released in the IPN’s December bulletin - are records of a conversation between Jaruzelski and General Viktor Kulikov, a commander to the Warsaw Pact alliance on December 9, 1981, four days before the planned Martial Law crackdown.

The communists were hoping that the reaction would be workplace sit-in strikes (as in fact happened in the places like the Wujek coalmine) as these would be containable. But what Jaruzelski feared most was that the protests would spread out onto the streets and into party headquarters.

“If [protests] spread across the country, it's you [the Soviet Union] who will have to help us,” Jaruzelski says, when discussing possible reactions by Solidarity to martial law.

Jaruzelski goes on to say that if the Soviets refuse to help then Poland would consider pulling out of the Warsaw Pact.

Jaruzelski’s demand was discussed at a Politburo meeting the day after in Moscow, where it was turned down. “It‘s too risky,” Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB is meant to have said, according to other, supportive, documents handed over to Poland by Boris Yeltsin 16 years ago.

Mikhail Suslov - who was effectively leading the Soviets at that time, as the health of Leonid Brezhnev failed - is reported to have said: "So I think we are all here agreed that sending troops in is out of the question."

This all rather contradicts Jaruzelski’s line on declaring martial law 28 years ago, which he has always claimed was an attempt to snuff out any temptation by the Soviets to roll tanks into Poland, as they did in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956.

Treason?

UPDATE - Lech Wałesa reacted to the news today that documents appear to show Jaruzelski called for Soviet assistance in case of uprisings, or whatever, by saying: “If this is how it looks then General Jaruzelski should be charged with treason….”

UPDATE 2 - Jaruzelski denies allegations

Jaruzelski was on the TV last night denying he ever called for Soviet troops to invade Poland if the Solidarity resistance became violent. “If it were not so sad it would be funny,” he said of the allegations. He then suggested that the documents, if that is what they show, were forgeries.

He repeated that martial law was declared to stop a civil war in Poland. He told the Monika Olejnik show on TVN24 that at a meeting of the Polish Episcopate (November 24/25, 1981) bishops agreed that there was a risk of feticide in Poland.

Of Marshal Viktor Kulikov he said. “I knew Kulikov…but I did not ask him for help. ”

He admitted that he had talked about the possibility of Soviet military intervention with Mikhail Suslov, de facto leader of the Soviet Union at that time. However, he claims that Suslov assured him that martial law would be an internal matter for the Polish government. “I had to make sure whether the threat of intervention was real or not,” Jaruzelski said, adding that he was very afraid that the Kremlin might order in troops. “If that happened it would be [international] war.”

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No sex please...we’re Danish?

Something is rotten in the capital of Denmark. Prostitutes are offering free sex in protest against a local government campaign urging Copenhagen climate change delegates to steer clear of the city’s brothels.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, 97 other leaders of governments, 30,000 researchers and delegates from NGOs - plus 5,000 accredited journalists - will not be the only ones showing up this week for the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen. They will be joined by scores of human trafficers and their cargo, if the Copenhagen local government is to be believed.

Copenhagen’s “don’t pay for sex” campaign is in the response - or maybe the fantasy - that the inflow of women sex slaves increases at such large events as the UN climate change conference. The brothels have hit back, saying they will offer free sex. Details of the offer are vague. How will it work? Pay for one bonk, get one free?

The fantasy of thousands of women being trafficked to Copenhagen to service a summit full of tree huggers is a strange one, though, and reminds me of a similar protest by Polish nuns on the eve of the 2006 World Cup in Germany. No such tsunami of human trafficking occurred, but what the hell. These climate change summits attract this kind of miserable-ist, misanthropic loathing of large amounts of humans in one place.

And not being content with warning climate change delegates to steer clear of the bulging brothels, the Danish government has ordered the removal of Christmas trees from the vicinity of the conference halls.

‘We have to remember that this is a UN conference and, as the centre then becomes UN territory, there can be no Christmas trees in the decor, because the UN wishes to maintain neutrality,’ said Denmark’s foreign minister Svend Olling.

Sounds like Copenhagen will be full of more hot air in the coming two weeks than a year’s worth of Poland’s carbon emission permits.

Poland’s Environment Minister resigns

Embarrassingly, Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki - who Super Express calls “Poland‘s least known minister” - has handed in his notice. According to Wprost magazine today, Nowicki claims that he actually has less power than his deputy. Unlike his underling, Nowicki is a non-partisan “expert” in the cabinet and not a Civic Platform member. PM Tusk will not announce the resignation till Tuesday at the next full cabinet meeting. Nowicki will still be going to Copenhagen - hopefully to attend the climate summit and not the brothels - on Monday, however.

Greenpeace hang Tusk in airport

Prime Minister Tusk is one of the targets of Greenpeace protestors at Copenhagen. The environmentalists have hung posters at the city airport with grey-headed heads of government apologising at some future date for not doing more to stop the global warming catastrophe. Tusk joins Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and others as targets of Greenpeace’s ire.

“We're hoping these ads predict the wrong future -- the one where world leaders look back with a "coulda, shoulda, woulda" attitude at a Copenhagen climate summit which failed,” says the Greenpeace web site.

Poland were one of several of the poorer EU states that held out against Brussels presenting too restrictive a position on CO2 targets at a pre-Copenhagen EU summit at the end of October. Warsaw is worried about being dragged into an agreement whereby they would have to help richer EU states to contribute to developing nations to adapt to global warming.

Much to the annoyance of Gordon Brown and leaders of some of the other western European member states, Poland won the argument - getting the size of any contributions to be on a voluntary basis.

Tusk is also eager to hang to the carbon emissions permit sale scam. After Russia and Ukraine, Poland is the holder of the largest carbon emission permits’ surplus in the world, coming in at around 500 million units for the years 2008 to 2012. The country has been negotiating with other countries interested in purchasing the AAU surplus. It has sold permits to Spain and Ireland worth millions of euros which can make contributions to lowering the government budget deficit, which is going up like a hot air balloon at present.

Three out of four Poles believe that global warming is manmade; one in three believe global warming is a threat to Poland and 62 percent think that we should reduce carbon emmissions, even if this means hikes in the cost of electricity.

The survey by PBS-DGA from a sample of 500 (too small a sample of be reliable, but never mind) finds that Poles are more split on whether the government should sacrifice economic growth in the fight against climate change, however, with 53 percent saying that economic growth could be sacrificed to pay for the battle against climate change.

“The survey‘s good news,” said the now former environment minister Maciej Nowicki, pleased with the level of “awareness” of supposed anthropogenic global warming.

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How sexy is President Lech Kaczynski?

President Lech Kaczynski is the 116 hottest leader of state in the world, according to a Canadian satirical web site.

The Hottest Heads of State web site has ranked 172 leaders of state, or government, in terms of their sex appeal.

No criteria is given, or methodology. But Lech Kaczynski is ranked just nine places below Chancellor Angela Merkel - natch! - but three places above Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, and 56 places above the decidedly un-sexy Chairman of the National Defence of North Korea, Kim Jong-il.

The world’s most sexiest politician, according to Hottest Heads of State, is Ukraine’s prime minister and presidential candidate, Yulia Tymoshenko. Ghhrrrrrrow!

The compiler of the list does have an idiosyncratic view of what ”hotness” entails, however. Ranked at number 12 in the ranking of the world’s hottest statesman is Belarus president. Aleksander Lukashenko.

Rydzyk’s hotline to heaven

I have seen the future, and the future is...Father Tadeusz Rydzyk!

The restless, ultra conservative, media empire of the founder of Radio Maryja, TV Trwam, the newspaper Nasz Dziennik, a ‘media school’ in Torun and much more besides, is now moving where no restless, ultra conservative, media mogul has moved before: the mobile phone market!

It’s a logical business move. Take the loyal audience you have - and there is no more loyal a media audience - and push a product directly at them. It's a happy coincidence, too, that much of your target audience is one of the rare demographics in Poland that doesn’t much use mobile phones - the old and/or the deeply confused about modern life.

The product on offer is a pre-paid mobile phone with very big buttons, just perfect for those arthritic fingers to make a quick call to family, friends, the priest and even one of those infamous radio phone-in shows that are always on Radio Maryja, and make a quick anti-Semitic remark, or two?

For more information call 720 00 77 77. Numbers beginning with a “7”, in Poland, by the way, mean you pay.

Zloty from heaven!

Madonna versus the Black Madonna in Poland

So outraged are some of the more religiously minded in Poland, that they are organizing a mass pray-in to keep her out of Warsaw on August 15.

She is the Material Girl who charges outrageous sums of money for concerts - the tickets here have been retailing at eye-watering prices - around 250 euro for a seated ticket. She’s a Kabbalist, exhibitionist, African baby-poacher. She is the conical - titted, self promotional genius/trickster; Nelson Mandela has been out of prison longer than the last decent song she wrote was in the charts; she can’t sing and I don’t really like her muscles.

There’s lots of things you can say about Madonna. But I never thought she was Satan in ripped fishnets.

But…thenews.pl reports:

Several forms of protest are being planned against the Madonna concert in Poland on 15 August, including mass prayer sessions.
Religious groups are outraged that the concert is being held on a Catholic feast day celebrating the Assumption of Holy Mary.

And the protestors have received the surprise support from former Solidarity leader and ex-president Lech Walesa. “It is true. I support this protest,” he told the Dziennik daily.

Head of the regional Mazowieckie council, Marian Brudzynski, is coordinating two weeks of the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy prayer on the rosary and an outdoor mass at Warsaw City Hall, all in the name of blocking the pop star’s concert in the capital.

Blimey! August 15 is also a national holiday - Army Day. Sounds rather secular. But this is the day, in 1920, when the Miracle of the Vistula occurred - when General Pilsudski’s men - with, so many think, a little help from the Man Upstairs - beat back Trotsky’s Red Army and saved the whole of Europe from the communist menace.

President Kaczynski - not, I imagine, from Madonna’s natural fan-base - has said that there is nothing constitutionally to stop the woman from giving a concert.

But Madonna - the singer - is popular here. she sold out those very expensive tickets. Easily. The battle of the Madonnas - the black one versus the white - is a delicious example of Poland’s version of the Culture Wars.