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polska

My always obsession...

“The New Polish Potatoes”

Monday 10 July 2006 | 0 Comments

Ah, those Kaczynski boys, they’re a crazy pair:

[Prime Minister] Marcinkiewicz resigned just days after President Kaczynski, 57, canceled a “Weimar Triangle” summit meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Jacques Chirac of France.

These summit meetings were first started 15 years ago, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union to forge closer political, economic and security ties between the three largest countries in the European Union but also to break down decades of suspicions and tension between Warsaw and Berlin.

Kaczynski’s office canceled the meeting with very short notice, officially because Kaczysnki had become ill. But senior Polish diplomats and opposition politicians said the real reason was a satirical article published in the German daily Taz newspaper that described the Kaczynski twins as “the Polish new potatoes.”

Anna Fotyga, Poland’s foreign minister, publicly complained to the German Foreign Ministry and demanded a formal apology. After Berlin said it would not comment since it supported freedom of the press, Fogyta said the lack of response was “shocking” and compared the article to the language used in Der StÃ¼rmer, a propaganda weekly during the Nazi era. Former foreign ministers accused the government of damaging Poland’s national interests. (IHT)

I think if this had happened during recess, the Leck or Jarek would have just smacked the editor.

Maybe that would have been less damaging for Polish foreign relations.

"Come on, Larry. Just once! Let's just see if she'll notice. I swear I won't do anything with her." How many twins have uttered something like that to their identical sibling, trying to convince the sibling to let him go on a date with his brother's girlfriend?

What if the twins both held public office, only one was much higher in rank? Say Jeb and W were twins -- wouldn't you think that Jeb would try, just once, to convince his brother to let him make some kind of address as the president? "Come on, Georgie! We ain't talkin' about a State of the Union address. It's just a little chat out in the Rose Garden. They'll never notice!"

We're fortunate that Jeb and W aren't twins, because they seem just, well, lacking-in-seriousness enough to try it.

Such a situation is not inconceivable in the near future in Poland, though. Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has resigned and the ruling party, PiS (Law and ~~Order~~ Justice -- Prawo i Sprawiedliwość), has indicated that they want Jarosław Kaczynski to take the position.

"Kaczynski. That sounds familiar," some might think.

That's because the president of Poland is Lech Kaczynski, Jarosław's twin brother.

Oh, he's so adorable, let's just call him "Jarek."

It's not clear whether Jarek is going to take the position. He turned it down earlier on the reasonable grounds that it might give some people the willies to have twin brothers in the two highest positions in the nation, but I think this time he'll just suffer through those discomforting thoughts and take the post.

But it's no big change. Jarek's been running the country for month's. Marcinkiewicz's just been a puppet, people say.

That sounds awfully familiar.

At any rate, the BBC report seems strangely enough to confirm this:

Over recent weeks, there had been frequent reports of a rift between Mr Marcinkiewicz and Jaroslaw Kaczynski over economic policy.

BBC did not use the Polish character "ł," pronounced like the English "w," so it's not a typo.

Wait a minute? I know Jarek is the PiS party leader, but his brother is president, is he not? Wouldn't it be tensions between the president and the PM that would cause the PM to resign, rather than tensions between the party boss and the PM? Unless, of course, the party boss is the boss.

The good thing in all this? At least Jarek will admit -- sort of -- that he's in charge.

One Foot On Each Continent

Thursday 06 July 2006 | 0 Comments

Only when you have lived in two countries can you really appreciate the fact that there is no perfect country. But that appreciation comes with a price — homelessness.

My adventure with kielbasa and vodka began ten years ago last month, when I packed off for what I thought would be two years in central Europe. Little did I know — I lived there for seven years, all told.

The fact that I returned shows that I really didn’t need the last four years to call the place “home.” I’m still not even close to fluent in Polish (nor will I ever be) and the average Pole can still drink me under the table (though I’m not ashamed of that), but somehow the sausage and freezing winters did something to my DNA, and I feel at least partially Polish.

Every time I came back to the States, I lived through reverse culture shock. I immediately hated it and loved it: the ability to get humus at four in the morning versus a culture that seems to be in love with kitche; a hundred kilometers in under an hour versus ridiculous health insurance.

It was even worse moving back the first time. Poland called to me even in my dreams. When I went back for a visit after a year in Poland — culture shock, of a sort. “I can’t believe I lived here!”

Yet there was a strange comfort there, and so I went back, fully aware of the challenges and fully prepared for the material sacrifices. A few days after arriving, I wrote in my journal: “Will I ever learn to be happy with my life as it is at that very moment?”

I hated it. And stayed four more years.

Back to America, full of high hopes, and I hate it again.

Once you live in another culture, your legs are knocked out from under you. You see the silver lining and the disgusting grey of both cultures, and you realize you’ll probably never be entirely happy in either.

Corpus Christi

Wednesday 07 June 2006 | 0 Comments

From my journal ten years ago today — my first experience with Corpus Christi, though I had no idea what it was.

I am waiting for the bus, sitting in front of a church. I went in for a moment, but decided I should probably leave – I didn’t cross myself with holy water (It appears to be stagnant water with a greasy film.) and I was getting a few looks (though there were several others who did not cross themselves either).

Suddenly the bells began ringing and eventually I caught sight of a procession coming around from behind the church. Choir boys were dinging small bells and behind them was a procession of relics. A little behind that was the priest, walking under a canopy supported by six men, preceded by a young priest waving an incense burner. The head priest was holding a staff with a gold sun in front of his face – he was led by the arms, for he certainly couldn’t see where he was going. Behind the priest was a group of loosely organized lay-persons, singing a capella. The woman beside me knelt as the group went by. A strange thing, this Christianity.

Ten years ago. Ten years. Ten years…

Exodus

Saturday 06 May 2006 | 0 Comments

From The Observer:

So many young Poles are leaving to find jobs and a better life in Britain that bosses back home are desperate for them to return to keep the wheels of Polish industry turning, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Wroclaw. [...]

More than half a million Poles have moved to Britain to find jobs since Poland joined the European Union two years ago. They have fled a country with 18 per cent unemployment, the highest figure in the 25-nation bloc. But now the drain of talent has speeded up to such an extent that Poland is complaining of a drastically reduced population and the lack of a suitable workforce to help the country develop. (Source)

But why would an educated twenty-something want to return to this:

Poland is still anchored in its anti-Semitic past, says Gabriele Lasser in Berlin's die tageszietung Consider the output of Radio Maryja, one of Poland's main radio stations and virtual house organ of the governing Law and Justice Party. (Between the hymns and prayers, ministers use it to announce policy.) This Catholic station, which spews out right-wing propaganda for the benefit of its 3 million listeners, surpassed itself last month with an anti-Semitic diatribe from the pundit Stanislaw Michalkiewicz. Polish "kikes," he bellowed, have manufactured a "Holocaust industry," in order to "extort" compensation from the taxpayer for property expropriated during World War II. Poland's telecom watchdog, which recently imposed a heavy fine on another radio station for satirizing Radio Maryja and "damaging the journalistic ethic," didn't utter a peep of protest. But the comments incensed Pope Benedict, and the Vatican fired off a furious letter to Poland's bishops, demanding they stop turning a blind eye to this extremist claptrap. Benedict is due on an official visit next month. If the bishops want to avoid a spanking from the pope in person, they had better do something, and soon, about Radio's Maryja's hateful programming. (From The Week news magazine).

And now Andrzej Lepper is Agriculture Minister and Roman Giertych is Education Minister. There's already talk about "cleaning" homosexuals out of the education field...

"It could be worse," Kinga and I said when PiS (Law and Justice Party) got elected in Poland last year.

It is worse...

A Page from Whose Book?

Monday 06 February 2006 | 0 Comments

Several times it’s been pointed out that journalists in Muslim countries who offend the wrong person can find themselves in jail.

But why be so hard on them about that? They’re just taking a page from Poland’s book:

New York, January 17, 2006 — The Committee to Protect Journalists today called the jailing of a Polish journalist for criminal libel an affront to Polish democracy and called on the Polish president to pardon him.

“Poland is now part of democratic Europe and democracies do not jail journalists for criticizing officials,” CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. “We condemn the jailing of Andrzej Marek and call on President Kaczynski to pardon him immediately. We also call on the Polish authorities to decriminalize libel and leave redress for defamation to the civil courts as in established democracies.”

Marek, editor-in-chief of the weekly _Wiesci Polickie_ in the northwestern town of Police, began a three-month jail term Monday in Szczecin for libeling a Police city official in 2001.

An aide to Kazcynski said the president, who is a lawyer, would examine Marek’s case, The Associated Press said.

Marek said on entering prison that he was innocent “because I told the truth,” and added that he would “wait for clemency until my last day in this prison,” AP and Agence France- Presse reported. (Source)

And it’s not just an isolated incident, if the current administration has its way. Recently, President Kaczynski’s administration stated that journalists who walked out on a multi-party press conference should be punished for showing disrespect.

The whole story makes it even more ridiculous. Recent elections in Poland have left no clear majority, and so there’s still not a coalition government formed. Recently, three of the right wing parties (League of Polish Families, Law and Justice, and Self-Defense — if I hadn’t told you they’re right wing, you’d know it from their names, wouldn’t you?) put their squabbling behind them and decided to work together to create a strong, fascist Poland. (One report in English)

They told no one of their talks, and when they signed their little pact, invited journalists only from one television station: TV Trwam. This is the television version of Radio Maria, an ultra-right-wing, nationalistic, anti-Semitic radio station owned by Jan Rydzyk, a millionaire priest (yes, there’s more than one of those in Poland, if you can believe it). They then invited other, secular journalists in to disclose the information to the public.

Angered that they were left out of the loop, all non-Trwam journalists walked out.

Kaczynski and the others were furious, and threatened to punish the journalists, though they were not clear how they wanted to do that.

Perhaps beheading?