Rumsfeld falls on his sward...

...as Reuters loses the plot.

If Rumsfeld has left us with anything worth keeping (and it certainly ain’t his prowess as a military planner) then it must be his contribution to the English language.

First we had his invention of ‘New Europe’, as a way of describing the pro-Atlanticist, free market, non-protectionist Poles and others (well, he got the pro-Atlanticist bit right). And then of course we had the almost Shakespearian:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

On WMD in Iraq he said:

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

But there again, he also said something that James Joyce would have been proud of::

"We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead."

But my favourite is:

"I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started."

He will be sorely missed by everyone, except maybe for Iraqis. Oh, and I bet Reuters journos are sorry to see him go, too.

Reason reports today:

Bad timing award on the day goes to this Reuters story, sent out at 10:50 a.m [about two hours before his resignation was announced].

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the face of U.S. war policy and a lightning rod for critics worldwide, will not be forced out just because he faces a tougher time from resurgent Democrats.

Oops!

More?
The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld, Slate magazine

President Kaczynski goes to London

He’s met with Tony Blair and my dear Queen, Lizzie II.

It's part of a three day visit ending Thursday. But how’s the visit going? Well here are two reports.

The first is from Radio Polonia:

The London visit of the Polish head of state has been seen as a very fruitful and friendly one...In fact it is said that Lech Kaczynski did not have such friendly talks with any other officials during his foreign trips as he did with PM Tony Blair. Both politicians underlined they shared common opinions and stand on matters concerning the EU and NATO as well as energy security.

And now look at this report from thisislondon.co.uk. Notice any difference?

‘Thousands of 'feckless' Poles are raking in unemployment benefits back home while doing 'very nicely' out of the British economy, according to the Polish President [!!?].

Lech Kaczynski also said Britain has become the 'destination of choice' for many of his countrymen, who have ended up jobless and homeless here.

He was flanked by Tony Blair as he made the remarks, which had to be translated into English before the Prime Minister realised he had been acutely embarrassed on his own doorstep.

Er...eh? Must be two different visits they are reporting. Or maybe Blair was being friendly when he was being embarrassed?

The full transcript of the press conference at Number 10 shows that Kaczynski was responding to a question from the press about what to do with the number of homeless and jobless Poles in Britain. He was also asked if he enjoyed his English Breakfast:

I did enjoy the English breakfast very much, yes, although it was a bit too hearty for me, a bit copious. The hotel is also exquisite, very well located in a wonderful part of London, close to Buckingham Palace. As regards unemployed Poles and homeless Poles in London and the UK, I believe that there are a number of people, not only from Poland but from other countries from the new European Union who are helpless or feckless naturally, but they seek a better life, they go abroad and currently the UK has become a destination of choice for such individuals. Poland does not shirk responsibility for its own citizens. We are aware that this problem exists, we are aware that there are people who aren't doing very well in life but this is something you find in all society. Poland does not seek to avoid its share of the responsibility. We know that there are those who have succeeded in the UK, who have jobs, who are doing very well thank you considering especially the differences between the wages in the UK and in Poland. But these people are registered as unemployed in Poland, so they are living a fiction and they are raising the unemployment figures in Poland while they are doing very nicely here in the UK and their unemployment benefits should rightly be sent to London. And this is something that we would like to do without, but like I said Poland is not avoiding its share of the burden.

Not so unreasonable. Blair responded:

...the vast majority of Polish people that come and work here are working very hard, they are very well regarded and on the whole as I find, and as I think most people do certainly in a city like London, they are both well respected and well liked.

The first report may have dodged the issue altogether, but the other reports are politically motivated, by the usual suspects in the British press, who are trying to stir it up all they can.

More?
Polish president blasts 'feckless' countrymen who flock to UK, Yorkshire Post
Leader in Poles Rap, Daily Mirror

A bloody cheek

A US diplomat has suggested that Polish deputy PM Roman Giertych get the sack for asking for a debate about Poland’s involvement in Iraq.

Responding to a call from the nationalist Giertych - who is against Polish troops being stationed in Iraq - for an open debate about the war and for accurate figures of the many Iraqi deaths (30,000?...500,000?) caused by, or resulting from, the ‘Coalition’ invasion and occupation be published, the US Deputy Ambassador in Warsaw, Kenneth Hillas, (pictured) said in a meeting with a Polish official:

“Should a deputy government head in Germany, France or Denmark make such a statement, he would be dismissed from his post”.

Roman Giertych has said of the memorandum containing these remarks:

'Maybe we have created a situation in which Poland has allowed the US to exercise absolute power over its foreign policy to the extent of eliminating Polish opinions...'

Many are wondering why it is that only extreme politicians like Giertych and others (see my Andrzej Lepper – peace activist) are reflecting and voicing public opinion in Poland. A majority of Poles have been against the Iraq war from the very start.

This is because mainstream conservative and ‘liberal’ politicians in Poland have been so anxious to bend over backwards (not a pretty picture) to any demand by Washington, no matter how ridiculous or destructive.

But Giertych is right: the current US administration has a very vague idea of what ‘national sovereignty’ means – which is why they went in to Iraq in the first place.

More?
Polish ministry summons U.S. ambassador over accusation diplomat overstepped his bounds, IHT, Nov 6
U.S. spokesman refuses to discuss brouhaha in Poland over U.S. diplomat's comment, IHT, Nov 7

Surprise, surprise

Becca at p3 has written a very angry post about how EU funds are being denied the Campaign Against Homophobia in Poland. Shock!

Apparently Brussels gives the funds to the Education Ministry to dole out to NGOs etc to promote ‘tolerance’. Thing is, the current Education Minister is Roman Giertych.

Becca’s post is here and be prepared, quite frankly, not to be surprised. A more shocking post would be: ‘Polish Education Ministry funds gay rights campaign!’

If Brussels really wants to fund these groups then it should be via a direct grant from the EU, and not left in the hands of politicians who are elected to oppose it.

We may not like what they do sometimes – we definitely don’t like what they do sometimes - but nations should have some autonomy on what causes etc they think worth finding. This government doesn’t, obviously, think the Campaign Against Homophobia is one of those organizations. Maybe the best way to fight that is by engaging in politics and debate in this country, and not in the convoluted, remote, corridors of Brussels.

Worried about EU apathy?

Then do like the Polish Robert Schuman Foundation and create a ‘Virtual EU Parliament’ internet game. No really! Lots of fun!

Shocked at the pitifully low turnout at the 2004 EU parliamentary elections in Poland (a massive 20%) the Foundation’s Michał Kwietniewski - the man behind the project - said the aim of the game is "to raise awareness and familiarize young citizens".

The game has the sexy title of ‘Become a Member of the European Parliament International Internet Game’ (or BeMEP for short), where you can set up your own Brussels talking shop! Sounds great!

The Polish version of the game was so successful [?] apparently that they have launched the international version. The blurb says:

The Game is a simulation of the work of the European Parliament. Each of the contestants will become a Member of Parliament and will commence his activities in the virtual Parliament. He will have to negotiate with other contestants, predict the outcomes of votes in the real European Parliaments, and answer questions regarding the European Union. Furthermore everyone will be able to participate in virtual trainings (e-learning) on cultural, political, social and economical aspects of the European Union.

It doesn’t say whether you can also approve acres of useless, unreadable laws or fiddle your travel expenses, however. If not then the game’s designers may have left out one of the main motives for becoming a Euro lawmaker in the first place. Allegedly.

But if ‘Become a Member of the European Parliament International Internet Game’, doesn’t satisfy the inner Eurocrat in you then how about trying out the Eurocracy board game, where the aim is to become the President of the EU! Gulp! The game’s web site says it aims it to make ’European Governance fun for the whole family…’.

Personally, I would probably have more fun eating my foot.

PM Kaczynski keeps a low profile

Photojournalists have been instructed that they are not allowed to take pictures of the Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s profile.
Extraordinary piece of silliness, this one. I mean, we all have our complexes but this is getting ridiculous.

The strange announcement was made at a press conference yesterday where signs forbid snappers getting round to the side of the PM and taking pictures. No reason was given for the strange demand.

The government has long been touchy about the coverage it gets from the media here in Poland. They think it’s bias, and maybe it is. But though Jaroslaw’s ‘profile’ has not been good in the media, I can’t see how a ban on his profile will make that ‘profile’ any better.

The control freakery that the government’s critics have long accused it of has gone to new lengths with the attempt to control what photos are taken of its members.

The ban of profile shots of the PM has not, to my knowledge, been extended to profile shots of the President, which is odd, as identical twins usually have the same profile.

And of course, once you start making odd demands like this one of the media you are just asking for trouble. Profile shots of the PM are now all over the internet. The German blogs seem very impressed by it all, see here [sorry, it's Dutch] and here and here and here and here.

The Friday Moustache

the beatroot is proud to add to his ‘Hall of Famous Polish Moustaches’ Poland’s greatest footballer, Zbigniew Boniek.

Unlike some variations, Zbig’s contribution to the art of growing a Polish moustache is a modest expression of his hair growing talents. No great Salvador Dali type curly wings for our Boniek (it would have made him an easy target for defenders to disrupt play by hanging onto it) .

So what we have is a trimmed, sensible tache. Only one problem: it’s ginger! It looks like a Scottish hamster has decided to nest under Zbigniew’s nose.

But, nonetheless, I have to award the beatroot’s ‘Finest Moustache on a Sporting Pole Award’ to Mr Boniek, for his lifelong contribution to facial hair topography.

The Sun really is going for it...

Brits are told to get ready for a tidal wave of Romanian gangsters:

ROMANIAN gangs commit 80 to 85 per cent of all cashpoint crime in Britain, The Sun can reveal.

The staggering figure is contained in a secret Cabinet memo which warns the crooks will be joined by a wave of new recruits after Romania and Bulgaria join the EU in January.

The classified document, seen by The Sun, predicts a devastating rise in street violence, people-trafficking, prostitution, tax dodges and cash card fraud.

Gasp! The government memo, apparently written by EU minister Geoff Hoon warns that Romanian and Bulgarian women will be trafficked into the country. Aggressive beggars will threaten money out of the British in the streets. They will steal your mobile, pick your pocket, will smuggle cigarettes and contraband in to the country.

I have no idea how the British government thinks it knows all this. It’s seems incredible. Literally. But Sun readers don’t care: they see an Eastern European apocalypse coming round the corner. In the comments section at the Sun’s web page MarcCoden says:

‘Why have we lost our National identity? Why are we the Country that these people will choose to come to? We are a joke under this Government? Blair is to blame for this and his ridiculous policies.’

Don’t think so, Marc. Actually, more Poles have gone to live and work in Germany than they have to the UK (the figure in the link should read 250,000 by the way). But I am not hearing the same level of screaming about this issue there, even though Poles do not have full rights to work in Germany! And Romanians will probably be joining the 500,000 Romanians already in Italy.

Still, whatever – Eastern Europeans are now well and truly a political issue in Britain. Shame. Immigration is an issue again. And I thought Britain had got rid of this kind of crap years ago.

Now let's watch the left spring into action to defend Eastern Europeans. They have not done much up until now. The silence on the lefty blogs has been deafening.

Waiting...

More?
Eastern Europeans: the new 'white niggers', Spiked, November 3

Grave day in Poland fills up more graves

More carnage on the Polish roads on All Saint’s Day.

It’s the day when families in Poland – like in Lithuania, Croatia, some parts of Germany - visit graves of dead relatives, tidy the place of leaves and weeds and light candles. The cemeteries are huge and at night, the sea of little flickering lights as far as the eye can see is amazing.

But sadly, a significant number of Poles have died today in car accidents. Since the weekend there have been 770 serious accidents causing 96 deaths and 1000 injured. Nearly 3000 drunk drivers have been arrested.

Around 7,000 people die on Polish roads every year. That’s 40% higher than in Ireland, for example, where the problem seems to have been exported to.

Among the safest drivers in Europe, according to an EC report, are the Dutch, Swedish, Germans (all those lovely no speed limit autobahns!) and the Finns (didn’t you just know Finland would be in the top group). The worst drivers are in Poland, Portugal, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Cyprus and the Czech Republic.

It’s a shame that on the day Poles visit graves so many of them seem intent on getting in one.

Boys and girls come out to play…

...but maybe not in Polish schools, they won’t.

Following the horrific suicide of a girl school pupil after prolonged bullying which resulted in a simulated rape by boys in front of her class, there has been calls from the Education Minister, and many others, for stricter discipline in schools and for coeducation to be phased out.The case has repulsed everyone.

Vice-minister Mirosław Orzechowski (he’s the one who doesn’t believe in Evolution), said that boys and girls need space when they growing up to develop as people:

"it would be a sensible way to gain some reflection on the self during one of life's stormier turning-points, and it would enable children to take their first steps into adulthood in a calmer atmosphere."

I was at an all-boys school (Carshalton High School for Boys) and I can’t say it had that effect on me and my mates. All we thought about by the time we reached 14 or so was girls, girls, girls. I even gave up liking football for a while. At lunchtime we would sneak out and try our luck down at the girls’ school.

Problem was, we were so unused to female company that we were hopeless at chatting them up. Most of us just felt awkward. We had to act ‘mature’ in front of them, because they seemed so much more mature than us. And they were.

Sometimes it was a relief just to get back to the boys’ school with all the lads and act like complete idiots again.

So I don’t think separate schools will make boys any more mature or wiser and any better at relating to girls.

I also don’t think we can generalize about education policy from what is a disgusting, shocking, but rare horror in the classroom.

Polish media least free in EU

According, that is, to Reporters Without Borders (RWB).

Ticali.com reports that just as France and United States have tumbled down the rankings of 168 countries in the RWB annual world index of press freedom, Poland has slipped down the rankings too, in 2006:

Poland (58th place) comes in at last place among the EU countries. "A journalist [Jerzy Urban, editor of leftwing and anti-church satirical magazine NIE ]was forced to pay a large fine for 'offensive remarks' made against the Pope, a subject that remains taboo", highlighted the press freedom group, which also noted how "an investigative journalist from the satirical weekly magazine 'NIE' [again] faces between three months and five years in jail for refusing to reveal his sources".

Finland, (they are usually top of everything) Iceland and Ireland have the most free press, says the report. On the other hand, North Korea doesn’t have a free press at all.

Fear of the Polish Plumber, part 333

Has the Head of Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality got an Eastern European problem?

Here are words of deep wisdom from Trevor Phillips of the CRE, on the BBC this week. He said that the new wave of Poles etc to Britain are, “frankly with attitudes towards black people which date back to the 1950s. That is unacceptable.”

The remarks come the same week as the UK announced that it will not be accepting workers from Romania and Bulgaria when they join the EU next year.

Poles, of course, don’t have the same experience of having a significant number of immigrants come to Poland from their recently collapsed empire (coincidentally, in the photo above, Trevor Phillips is holding up his semi-prestigious OBE – Order of the British Empire, awarded to him by the Queen. I bet he'is now a proud member of the New Labour Establishment). Some may be a bit naive but Poles aren’t a threat to the national way of life in the UK, as that idiot Phillips seems to suggest.

What is shocking is that nobody has complained about his remarks. It seems that it’s true: PC speech code means that the only types of people you can say negative things about these days are central and eastern Europeans and the white working classes.

Nobody has complained apart, that is, from Mick Hume in the Times, who, after comparing the Head of the Commission for Racial Equality unfavorably to Borat writes:

Phillips’s veiled warning that Eastern Europeans could cause a “conflict of diversity” reveals what today’s elite think of the white working classes — as an ignorant ethnic pogrom waiting to happen.

Like Borat’s joke, the furore over Eastern Europeans is really about us rather than them. The way we look at immigrants reflects how we see ourselves. In a more self-confident moment, the British authorities would not be worrying about whether a few thousand hard-working Bulgars might tear apart the fabric of society.

Baby beats

Bite sized root vegetables when I am too tired to write longer stories.

Top story for days here has been Edward Mazur’s arrest in the US in connection with the murder, eight years ago, of ex-police Chief Marek Papala in Warsaw. Poland has applied for his extradition from Chicago.

He’s being charged with ordering the murder in a mafia, hit man style killing of someone who simply ‘knew too much’…

Mazur’s lawyers are saying this is a politically motivated move, due to his connections with the ex-communist SLD. The government is using the (outrageous) murder to underline the alleged corruption at the heart of the Third Republic. They think the order for the murder came from within the then SLD Interior Ministry.

Problem is, Mazur has joint US/Polish citizenship.

the meaning of life

The League of Polish Families, a particularly busy party at this time of the year, is calling for the Abortion Law - which currently only allows for terminations when the health (sometimes) or life of the mother is at risk, or when the pregnancy was the result of a rape, etc - to be repealed.

LPR wants women who have been raped to have the kid anyway. They are also calling for a change in the constitution to guarantee the right to life of a fetes from the moment of conception.

The majority party PiS seems to be for leaving things as they are.

I hope Poland doesn’t ‘duck’ out of this debate. It literally involves ‘the meaning of life’ and the rights of women over their own bodies.

Portugal is having a referendum soon, maybe Poland should too?

next stop, maternity ward

Though ‘95% Catholic’ Poland has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, babies are still been born here. But not usually on public transport.

Sulafa Ismail from Sudan, gave birth to a daughter in the middle of the rush hour this morning. The Mayor of Warsaw visited the mother and Duha (meaning ‘Light’) later in hospital.

When I first heard this story I just hoped Sulfara had bought an extra ticket for Duha. If you get caught without one it’s an 80 zloty fine (but many get away paying less).

It turns out that the tram company has offered the mum free travel on their sometimes rickety trams for life and all her (six) kids free travel till they are 18.

That’s quite a lot of tickets.

Expect in the coming months many more babies being born on public transport. It’s an earner!

Polish politician threatens to set up another political party

No…please...not another one!

In a land where political parties come and go like a Spring shower (shower being the operative world) Andzej Olechowski (see his very posey web site here) has decided to come out of political retirement and start up yet another.

Olechowski was the founder, in 2001, of the ‘pro business’ Civic Platform, the sole characteristic of which seems to be a belief in the ‘free market’ and a ‘flat tax’ policy.

He didn’t stay long on the Platform though. After losing the Mayor of Warsaw election a year later (that's his election poster in the photo) to Lech Kaczynski (Olechowski got a miserable 13%, probably because of his crap election poster), and after some minor ‘ideological’ squabbles with some of the more rightwing members in Platform, he got bored of politics and left to indulge himself as a businessman.

But now he is back, testing the water as to whether another free market party would be viable.

I doubt it, quite frankly. There is a gap in the Polish political scene for another party, but a normal European centre-left social democratic one. The social democratic ground is currently occupied by the SLD, but as they are mainly made up of ex-communists they are not really what can be described as ‘credible’.

But Olechowski won’t be founding one of those.

He does share some of the credibility problems of the SLD, however, as he worked for the communists in the mid-1980s, as an economist in the Central Bank and other slightly darker places that kept an eye on Polish finance activities (in a country that didn’t really have any).

Another Olechowski party will be more of the same; the room for a ‘free market’ rightwing party in Poland is not a large area and Civic Platform are doing well if they get 30 percent in the opinion polls.

None of the current political parties we have now have real roots in Polish society. And Poland has had many since 1989. All of the current crop (apart from SLD) are less than ten years old. They are basically vehicles to get politicians into parliament. Yet another fly-by-night Olechowski creation – here today, gone tomorrow – will do nothing to rejuvenate political life in Poland, but will add to the alphabeti-spaghetti that is Polish party politics.

Poland - Hungary 1956

If you don’t know the connection then see here. photo: Budapest October 1956


Poznan June 1956

Better out than in?

Or: why the alleged ‘outing’ of Polish politicians is maybe not such a brilliant idea.

Veteran (I hope he doesn’t mind that word) libertarian journalist and gay rights campaigner, Doug Ireland, published an article in Gay City News on Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski this week where he goes straight for the jugular:

Poland’s homophobic Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski — the identical twin brother of Polish President Lech Kaczynski—was outed as a homosexual in major Polish media last week…

Rzeczpolita [Rzeczpospolita?] published documents—some only recently declassified, and some that were leaked—from the files of the Polish Secret Service that discussed Prime Minister Kaczynski’s homosexuality. As part of an investigation, begun in 1992, of right-wing political parties that, the documents said, “could threaten democracy,” a Secret Service department then headed by Colonel Jan Lesiak reported, “It is advisable to establish if Jaroslaw Kaczynski remains in a long-term homosexual relationship and, if so, who his partner is.”

...Then, also last week, former President Lech Walesa repeated on Polish television a crack about the current prime minister’s homosexuality that he had made 13 years before—when, in an interview on the Polish public TV network TVP1, he had said that the Kaczynski twins had come to his birthday party, and that “Lech came with his wife and Jaroslaw came with his husband.”

The rumours about Jaroslaw’s sexuality have been around for along while, of course. But to put the current ‘outing’ in context, Kaczynski is the head of a government which has made some gross homophobic remarks since it came to power last November. His brother, President Lech Kaczynski, when mayor of Warsaw, banned a gay march and called gays ‘perverts’.

So the tactic of gay campaigners here has been to point to the hypocrisy of Kaczynski’s (alleged)...er...position.

When the political is reduced to the personal

I should be honest and say that in July this year Doug Ireland contacted me about the existence of the report by Colonel Jan Lesiak (which as I have showed in a previous post is mostly full of gossip got from reading magazine articles) and asked me how he could get hold of some translated extracts.

I told Doug then that Col Lesiak was a secret service agent during the very oppressive 1980s, when Solidarity leaders were being banged up by Stalinists, and that he was not a good source of information about prominent Solidarity activists like the Kaczynskis.

In fact, for various reasons I didn’t want to get involved in all this – largely on the principle that raking up details of the personal lives of politicians – even hypocritical ones – was not the best way to win political arguments.

But Doug Ireland has contacts with the anti-homophobia movement here and they have been feeding him lots of gossip about the private lives of Polish conservative politicians.

For instance, in the article in Gay City News Doug Ireland quotes gay journalist Michal Rolecki as saying: “…everyone knows that the president and the home secretary regularly visit female brothels.”

Blimey! Does everyone know that? I didn’t, neither does anyone else I have asked about it. Does the president of Poland really sneak into brothels for a quick one now and again? I doubt it.

But as Rolecki says “…you must bear in mind that sex still remains a considerable taboo in Catholic Poland. Some three-quarters of Poles say that that sexuality is a private thing not to be discussed in public. For example, we have never had a sex scandal related to government…”

Actually, there was an expose of the sex lives of Polish politicians published in a book by a journalist who got to sleep with many of them, Anastazja Potocka. The revelations were published about the same time as the initial ‘outing’ of Kaczynski by Walesa. In fact, many think that she was working with Col. Lesiak.

But generally the private lives of politicians are left out of the newspapers. And that is not a particularly Polish, or Catholic thing: in fact most European countries are not like the US, (or the UK, for that matter). There is a separation between public and private.

In the US ‘political arguments’ commonly end up revolving around the grubby activities of drunks like Foley – which of course, is not really a political issue at all.

I do understand that gays and lesbians are using the alleged ‘outing’ of Jaroslaw Kaczynski to bash the government with the same weapon that the government has been bashing them with.

But the best way to challenge homophobia is to restrict the argument to political principles. Gays have as much right to live as they want as heterosexuals do. The issue is about equality and human rights, not what politicians get up to, or don’t get up to, in the privacy of their own bedrooms – or wherever.

Let’s stick to politics and kick the personal out of the political. Otherwise the argument comes down to the behaviour of politicians, and not the principles of Politics.

Even cows want to get away from Lukashenko

Illegal bovine immigrants in Poland!

It seems it is not just humans who despise the regime of President Lukashenko in Belarus. Radio Polonia reports:

A herd of 240 cows which crossed the border on river Bug from Belarus into Poland is today being transported back home.

The cows, which are all 14 to 18 months old, swam the river in the vicinity of Janów Podlaski on Sunday. Border guards alerted veterinarian services but attempts to turn the herd back across the river failed. The cows were then rounded up and placed in temporary quarantine.

I would have given them refugee status.

Polish creationists will be delighted to know...

...that Charles Darwin’s complete works have just been put on line.

Creationists and evolutionists can check out ‘the largest collection of Darwin's writings ever assembled.’

‘This site currently contains more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images of both publications and handwritten manuscripts. There is also the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published and the largest manuscript catalogue ever assembled. More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from secondary reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, published descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens and important related works for understanding Darwin's context.’

Groping isn’t OK. in Poland

Neo-fascist British National Party get confused…

Under the headline Groping’s okay is Poland – apparently!, the BNP’s web site runs a story that opens like this:

A case that came up before Weymouth magistrates last week may well illustrate the extent to which we Brits, some say, are being “taken for a ride” by some migrants to our country.

Our Dorset correspondent tells us that the above court was told by a Polish defendant – or rather his taxpayer funded interpreter – that groping women is an acceptable pastime in Poland!

Well that appears to be the defence put forward by one Thomasz Stepniowski. Mr. Stepniowski is charged with four offences, which the local media have explained relates to how ”the women he groped included a teenager aged 15 and a woman in her mid-40s. He fondled the breasts of three of them and pinched another on the bottom.”
Perhaps even more surprising is the media assertion that Mr. Stepniowski’s claim of - groping is acceptable behaviour in Poland - is shared by the female Polish interpreter present in court. This lady, we are informed, is alleged to have: “volunteered the view that she was "outraged" such a matter could be brought to court and that she had agreed that such behaviour would be acceptable in Poland.”
But what is absolutely amazing is that sentencing has been reportedly postponed until later this month - when a witness is to be called who will apparently tell the court ”about Polish attitudes to such behaviour”.

I can’t remember reading such a load of rubbish in a very long time.

For the information of the fascist who wrote this gobshite, groping is definitely NOT okay in Poland. In fact it occurs much less frequently than on British public transport, where unilateral ‘frottage’ is quite a common occurrence on crowded tube trains, etc. The Polish guy in question is delusional, of course. As to the witness who agreed with him that groping was OK in Poland...unbelievable!

But you can see how these cases are being used by nasty little parties like the BNP to stir up trouble.

Another thing I find amazing is that I found this story on Google News… Web sites by dirty little fascists should not be counted as ‘news’. Period.

Oh, by the way – they formed a new coalition government in Poland. Again.

I find the behaviour of these people so ludicrous that I’ll leave it to a couple of links.

Old-is-new coalition bodes more turbulence for Poland, Raw Story

Poland: Is this really interesting news?, fxstreet.com

It's probably better just to ignore them.