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May 31, 2006
Avoision
This week's Polityka has an ad for a cultural event called a "Gala of Film Music" to take place in the National Philharmonic in Warsaw on June 25th. There is a photograph of a concert hall and orchestra and another photograph of a cup of coffee. A caption tells us that "the gala is a celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Zino Davidoff, creator of the brand and the legendary creator of the good taste" -- of coffee, you might think, if you are not a smoker. But no, this is Davidoff cigarettes we're talking about here, despite the steaming cup of coffee pictured. So where is the health warning? Or do only plebs need telling that smoking kills?
Posted by hgrodsk at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2006
By popular demand...
On the back page of today's Dziennik is a short piece about the EU's "You control climate change" campaign. The slogan is translated as "Kontroluj zmiany klimatu," which means "Monitor changes in the climate."
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)
May 29, 2006
Ambitions
"Ambitny" is the Polish word used to describe art which is - well - ambitious, demanding, challenging. Powstanie Warszawskie (Warsaw Uprising) by Lao Che is most definitely "ambitny." Over ten tracks it sets out to capture the doomed uprising that took place in 1944 and which was described by Miron Bia?oszewski in Pami?tnik z powstania warszawskiego ("Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising", translated by Madeline Levine) and on film by Andrzej Wajda in Kana? ("Tunnel" or "pipe" - it refers to the use of the sewers by the Polish insurgents during the uprising).
May 4th's Gazeta Wyborcza carries an article about the opening of a new part of the Warsaw Uprising museum, which houses a reconstructed B24 "Liberator" bomber. The museum has been open for two years and certainly sounds impressive. Here you do not just wander around looking at exhibits in glass cases: you get a feel for the history. You can even go down a reconstructed sewage pipe. No sewage, but you do get to hear the dripping of water and feel the claustrophobia and dread. The museum's opening was attended by Lech Kaczy?ski, then president of Warsaw, now of Poland.
Track five on Lao Che's album is called "Stare Miasto" ("Old Town"). Were it not for the lyrics descibing the hardships of the uprising, it would seem to be a contemplative, almost dreamy ode to a beloved town. It builds, however, to a crescendo and the repeated refrain: "dost?pu do w?azu my ?adamy!"
One of Kaczy?ski's projects is the "Narodowy Instytut Wychowania" ("National Educational Institute"), whose aim is to restore traditional values to Polish pupils - to turn them into good patriots, with respect for the achievements of Polish heroes of, among others, the Warsaw Uprising.
From the sleeve notes to Lao Che's album:
"A minimum of help for the city at war was brought from Italian airports by the western allies. Few transport planes with weapons and food for the fighters came.... The civilian population demanded access to the sewage pipes. But only the army and a few wounded had access.... Directive: priority access is given to healthy, armed people. The injured must stay behind with the civilian population."
"Dost?pu do w?azu my ?adamy!" means "Let us down the manhole."
Perhaps Polish school children would be better with ambitious music than another state organ telling them what to think.
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
The Doctors Plot
Today's Wyborcza takes rival newspapers Fakt and Dziennik (both published by Springer Verlag) to task for their hysterical coverage of the doctors' strike. El?bieta Cichocka comments that for several months she has been hearing with "przera?enie" (terror, dread) how doctors have been discussing the use of "miners'" tactics - i.e. physical, violent protests.
Miners and Samoobrona activists (on separate occasions) have engaged in illegal civil disobedience. The miners got what they wanted and Samoobrona got into government.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:48 PM | Comments (0)
Petulance, the dangers of
A short passage from Marcin ?wietlicki's new novel, Dwana?cie (Twelve), should give pause to all internet posters except me. A brash Varsovian kicked out of a Kraków pub thinks on his way out that he'll destroy the business by writing about it in his blog. The blog entry he thinks up:
avoid the "Office" on Jan Street in Kraków hick peasant interior decor like in a train station waiting room ridiculous old school sounds unpleasant service the only doubtful attraction is that fucking drunk "master" but he's washed up a long time gone grey flabby
Come to think of it: didn't the Simpsons get there first with Comic Book guy's "worst Itchy and Scratchy episode ever" post?
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2006
Won't somebody please think of the children?
"Terrorists" reads the headline in today's Fakt (in English: Fact - I present this information without a trace of irony). Beneath it are photographs of the terrorists in question: about half a dozen doctors, who are on strike at the moment in Poland (80 hospitals out). The tabloid whips itself into the usual frenzy of self righteousness.
The good doctors are not making any friends by opening for (private) business in the afternoons but are they really as heartless as they are made out to be? Dziennik reported on the front page on the 23rd (the headline that day merely accused the doctors of manipulating children and blackmail) on the plight of little Marcel (14 months), who had been turned away from a clinic. Today's Dziennik has an interview (this time on page 19) with Dr. Krzysztof Bukiel, of the trade union organising the strike, who points out that little Marcel had already waited a month for the appointment, the implication clearly being that lack of state investment was responsible for a far longer delay in treatment than the strike. Bukiel explains: "we're being called criminals because patients' visits are being postponed by two weeks while people forget that the patients have been queueing for six months."
It's not just the government (which had warning of the strikes) that has more important priorities than public health. Fakt's "terrorists" headline appears on its back page: the front page is taken up with the pope's visit to Poland. Dziennik devotes its first ten pages to Papa Ratz.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2006
World's shortest characterisation of Poles?
He was a typical Pole, who said "no" to everythingS?awomir Mro?ek describes his father in the autobiographical Baltazar.
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)
The Coalition Government
So divided is the new government that each ministry becomes the fief of the party that holds it. The ministries are, in practice, patronage machines employing only party loyalists. They are milked for money, jobs and contracts. Ministers cannot be dismissed for incompetence or corruption, however gross, because it would lead to the deal between the parties and communities unravelling. The government has become a sort of bureaucratic feudalism with each ministry presided over by an independent chieftain.
If this sounds like too harsh a verdict on Poland's government it's because it's Patrick Cockburn's report on Iraq, which is occupied by, among others, Poland.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2006
Shadow and Substance
This weekend's skittishly unpredictable Gazeta Wyborcza has an intriguing article on the always fascinating subject of the European Union by Judit Kiss, a Hungarian economist. The article is built around a tortuous analogy between the EU referendum and the Merchant of Venice as yet another technocrat tries to perusade us that they read literature too. Who knows? Perhaps if you prick them they even bleed?
Kiss has the answer to the question that has been keeping us all awake this last year or more, namely why France and Holland rejected the European Union referendum: the "political elites" did not ask the citizens who were allegedly to benefit from the constitution their opinions while they were drawing up the treaty.*
It was not the content but the way in which the constitution arose that caused its rejectionIf the "political elites" had consulted the public the constitution would either have had a different content or the same content. If the former, Kiss's point is unmade: it is the content that determines whether the constitution is acceptable to the majority of people. If the latter, the consultation would have been meaningless. Kiss's article is a slightly more subtle version of the universal cry of the establishment loser: "it was public relations what won it." One must never admit that the sheep made up their own minds about which way to vote, basing their decision on the substantive issues of the proposition. Unless of course they vote the way you want them: then they have made a mature and informed decision.
In answer to the question of why so many countries voted yes Kiss would - I am quite sure - fearlessly say it was because of the lack of consultation with the public. But then she wouldn't get her articles published in Gazeta Wyborcza.
* Actually, the public was asked its opinion. I suspect most people did not volunteer one out of the conviction that nobody in the "political elite" would pay it a blind bit of notice. The sheep are awfully cynical these days.
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2006
That's my Life
In the previous post I mentioned how a line in a Langston Hughes poem was changed in communist Poland from "And the slime in hotel spittoons: / Part of my life" to "The slime in hotel spittoons / That's my life."
As it happens, "That's my life," is a phrase that might reverberate with some today: Noam Chomsky uses it in discussing the Guardian's hatchet job on him.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:33 PM | Comments (2)
May 17, 2006
Chavez, the Guardian and Rzeczpospolita
Todays's Rzeczpospolita has a translation of part of yesterday's Guardian editorial. Interestingly, Rzeczpospolita leaves out a few sentences from the Guardian piece without following the convention of putting in ellipsis to mark the ommission. Also, the Polish newspaper translates the original "the old left" with the words "extreme left-wingers."
The Guardian suggests that Chavez is popular in Europe mainly because he is anti-Bush (perish the thought that it is because of any positive contibution Chavez has made to Venezuela) but that's not enough for Rzeczpospolita. The original reads:
To some extent, Mr Chávez is a beneficiary of the crude logic of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" [my italics].
The Rzeczpospolita translation reads:
Mr Chávez's popularity in Europe stems from the principle "my enemy's enemy is my friend"
This is the kind of distortion that used to take place under the communists in Poland. For instance, in a translation of Langston Hughes's poem "Brass Spittoons," which apeared in the Polish press in 1948, the line
"And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life"
was changed to
"The slime in hotel spittoons
That's my life."
The original, though harshly crtitical of America's treatment of its underclass, was just not critical enough so the translator intervened to change this vision of misery from a "part of my life" to "my life." It's good to see that Poland has not blindly abandoned everything associated with communism.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:45 PM | Comments (1)
Ridiculousness breeds ridiculousness
Quote from a Polish politician who shall remain nameless:
The overwhelming majority of mafia members in Poland and abroad are heterosexual.
This was in response to the real nut-job of the piece, Wojciech Wierzejski, a member of the current, democratically elected Polish government, who has demanded in parliament that links between homosexual organisations and the mafia (a catch-all term used to mean organised crime) be examined. It is a fact, according to Wierzejski, that the majority of gays are either secret agents or worked with the secret police.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2006
Who's the Boss?
Sometimes you have to admire Poles their openness. The new head of the state TV channel is the right wing Bronis?aw Wildstein. In the puling adolescent west the new boss of a TV station or newspaper might be expected to trot out some feelgood cliches about how he does not intend to interfere in anyway with editorial decisions made by the journalists under him. One would expect him to pay some lip service to the idea of independent reporting. Poland is an altogether more robust place. Today's Dziennik - jumping the gun only slightly - carries a list of journalists likely to be fired for having different opinions to that of their new, politically appointed boss.
On May 9th Dziennik had a front page headline reading: "Prime Minister attacked over left wing director of PZU" (a state-controlled insurance company). President Kaczy?ski himself is reported to be scandalised by the presence of a lefty in the director's chair. Again, in the west we would be subjected to lofty, empty talk about making appointments on the basis of merit, not political persuasion. Not Poland. Here it's quite unabashedly a case of jobs for the boys.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2006
Framing the Debate
Today's Gazeta Wyborcza contains an article on Chavez and Morales which is too outrageously partisan to pass up even though I've mentioned the subject before. It's by Maciej Stasi?ski, which I suspect might be the name of a computer program which shuffles and deals out US-approved cliches about "populism," "demagoguery" or "the free market." Here are the first few sentences of what is ostensibly a news report (i.e. not an opinion piece or an editorial) about the Vienna summit:
The summit of 58 presidents and premiers was to open the road to dialogue. And maybe it would have worked, had it not been for the two greatest populists in Latin America: the Venezuelan Hugo Chavez and the Bolivian Evo Morales. The oil and gas wealth which the two control has turned their heads and prompted them to a demagogic and nationalist crusade against the free market [my italics]Any political commissar could be proud of that. It's a wonder Stasi?ski didn't brand them "lap dogs" or "fellow travellers"... The rest is too awful to read but dipping in more or less at random I came up with this pearl:
Morales did not spare Spain's socialist prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero either, even though he [Zapatero] supports him. He upbraided Zapatero for Spain's failure to meet its promise to cancel Bolivian debt and double economic aid.So you see, Morales is a miserable ingrate for daring to criticise a supporter. As for the substantive issue -- has Spain really reneged on promises made to Bolivia -- of that Stasinski has not a word to say. Nor does he explain what he means by "free trade" but we can be almost certain that "trade" would be a more accurate description of what is on offer, since inevitably any deal on the table will include patent protection laws.
On the facing page of the paper is an article and two interviews about France. You may have heard of France: its productivity is greater than that of the US and yet they have a 35 hour week. The article headline is: "Is France a 'sick man'?" Of course it is: just look at the first questions in the two interviews carried out by Konrad Niklewicz:
"Can France be reformed at all at all?" [Okay - I put in the second "at all" myself]
"France and Holland are two founder members of the EU. Holland is reforming and liberalising all the time, while France has ossified in its shell. Why?"
Clearly there in no agenda here. These questions are wide open and could invite any kind of answer -- especially when, like Niklewicz, you put them to two Christian Democrat Euro-politicians.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:18 PM | Comments (2)
May 11, 2006
More intellectualism
Today's Rzeczpospolita has a mercifully short report on a conference organised by the Szko?a G?ówna Handlowa (literally: Main School of Trade) in Warsaw. A picture of its former rector Marek Rocki is captioned "Free Education is a Fiction" - a quote from the man himself. What does this intellectual titan mean? "Two thirds of students pay for their studies and the remaining third do not get free education because it is funded by the taxpayer." That's right: Rocki has discovered that so-called "free" education is in fact funded. And you thought professors and teachers just came in every day out of the goodness of their hearts, that laboratories and lecture theatres just grew on trees or burst forth from the ground without any capital input and that exam papers marked themselves.
But let's take a look at the distinguished professor's argument concerning the two thirds of students attending private colleges and paying their own fees. The argument is that the state should stop funding education because so many people already pay for it themselves. Why do people attend private colleges? Because there is no room for them in state colleges. And why is there no room for them in state colleges? Because the state underfunds education. So Rocki's argument is: the state should stop funding education because it underfunds education. Genius! There Is No Alternative.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2006
Intelligentsia II
I know little about Rafa? A. Ziemkiewicz but he seems to think along my lines so he is clearly a genius. Here is an article he wrote about intellectuals and ignoramuses for those readers who speak Polish.
I'll just translate (clumsily) one sentence:
Lepper is the effect, not the cause, of the blurring of the criteria of decency, a blurring which was done earlier, and not by ignoramuses.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)
Solidarity? What solidarity?
You would think that with their glorious and recent history of trade unionism the Poles would know a thing or two about striking. Today's Dziennik carries a story about the doctors' strike. It seems that the good doctors are manning the picket lines in their public hospitals in the morning and then, in the balmy afternoons, gracefully retiring to their oak-panelled private consultancy chambers where those members of the public who were denied state treatment earlier during the day can now buy it from the "striking" doctors.
The article is accompanied by a picture of Dr. Andrzej Spisak, his hands spread out in wide-eyed wonder that anyone might find this behaviour anything less than ethical. His lab coat bears the name of a limited company...
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:19 AM | Comments (1)
May 09, 2006
Intelligentsia
Sometimes you have to laugh (or if you're Henryk Grynberg, sneer) at decadent Westerners who have never experienced totalitarianism. In Gazeta Wyborcza (May 6th) a page (actually, many pages) is given over to the threat to democracy posed by ignoramuses Andrzej Lepper and Roman Giertych, the coalition partners. Some choice quotes from Lepper and Giertych are also given (Giertych, in particular, seems rather unbalanced when he gets to the subject of foreign affairs).
Fortunately there is some bracing intellectual comment at hand. On the facing page is an article entitled "Polish Stuffiness" by Tomasz Wo?ek, head of a television station (showing tonight: "Bodily Sanctions, erotic film, USA 2001, starring Jacklyn Lick"). The sub-head runs: "Observing today's anti-intelligentsia campaigns I have the impression of a mental smog arising before me, smearing successive stretches of public space, polluting our spiritual lives." Three paragraphs in comes the bit that degenerate Westerners just won't understand:
I regard General Franco ... as one of the most outstanding statesmen of the twentieth century, as a politician who saved Spain from the threat of communism, while eluding Hitler's snare and in the long term lead his impoverished country to relative wealth, simultaneously opening the way to democracy.
At least there's nothing stuffy about Jacklyn Lick.
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)
May 07, 2006
Habemus Gubernaculum
A coalition government for Poland has finally been agreed. This time it even has a majority, as the LPR (League of Polish Families) got onside when (because?) an extra three ministries were created to ensure jobs for the boys - errr, a meaningful input from the coalition partners into matters of national policy. Thus, Roman Giertych, chief of the LPR (who had been sidelined in coalition negotiations not two weeks ago) is now minister for education. The "liberal" media is sniffy. Gazeta Wyborcza (6/5/06) writes:
Never before in the [17 year] history of the third Polish Republic has the minister for education been so ostentatiously devoid of qualifications.There are many reasons to dislike Giertych - an odious man who took the trouble to remind his wife's university examiner that she was married to him - but to complain that the new minister is "unqualified" shows a basic misunderstanding of democracy. Should only teachers be allowed to be ministers for education? Bankers - ministers for finance? Perhaps the ministry for justice should be reserved for a cop and a squaddie should be the minister for defence. Is "being elected" not qualification enough for public office?
Gazeta Wyborcza has shown a tendency of late to go overboard, weakening otherwise valid criticism. For example, on Friday 5th of May the front page news was that lots of members of Samoobrona (now in government) were bankrupt. The first sentence runs:
Although Samoobrona has 50 million zloties in its party account from loans, the budget subvention, and members' subscriptions, its leading politicians, who have just taken power, are drowning in debt.Is the paper trying to suggest that Samoobrona should dip into its subvention and subscriptions to dig its deputies out of financial holes? Can you imagine the squawking that would arouse?
If I were a partisan journalist, dedicated to turning public opinion against a party I did not like (not that I am for a minute suggesting the GW's journalists are anything but strictly impartial), I'm not sure I would follow this strategy: everyone secretly loves a cad and a bounder and in Poland many people will identify with politicians who have money problems. Samoobrona claims, after all, to be sticking up for the little guy who has been steamrolled by the big bad (western) banks. And indeed, one deputy - clearly cuter than the Wyborcza journalists - simply says he lost track of his debts ten years ago, while others blame unscrupulous businessmen for their woes. The newspaper presents this as a damning indictment of Samoobrona. Many supporters will see it as evidence that Samoobrona are "our kind of guys."
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:26 PM | Comments (2)
May 02, 2006
Chavez Via the US State Department
Media Lens has a good article about Chavez coverage in Britain. Meanwhile in Poland Rzeczpospolita makes a much better attempt than Gazeta Wyborcza to disguise its disdain for Chavez in today's paper.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)