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July 30, 2006
What do Children Want?
"Lebanese Children want to be Martyrs" is the surprising headline in Friday's Gazeta Wyborcza. The subhead: "Thousands of children are the victims of Hezbollah's war with Israel [not Israel's war on the Lebanon]. In photographs from the Lebanon one sees mostly the dead or those injured after the explosion of bombs. But most of them are those with sick souls." I don't recall such sickly moralising accompanying the same newspaper's publication of a photograph of Israeli children writing messages on the bombs used to kill their Lebanese neighbours.
An article below this one opens with uncritical acceptance of Israel's stated motivation: "Israeli aeroplanes continue to bomb the Lebanon searching for Hezbollah bases." Maybe they are indeed using bombs to look for something - I normally look for things with my eyes but that's just me - but how does GW know that that is actually why Israel is destroying the country's infrastructure, blowing up children, killing UN observers?
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:38 PM | Comments (5)
Progress is Regress
It turns out we're all going to die in poverty, regardless. The problem is too many nasty old people hogging the social welfare budget and too few young ones contributing to it. In Friday's Gazeta Wyborcza three young Polish economists make their contribution to the debate. Billed as an "appeal" and complete with exclamation marks (read me!), it is in fact a carelessly disguised piece of anti-welfare state propaganda (they call for partial payment for medical treatment). Too timid to call for the outright dismantling of taxpayer funded public health care, they instead join others in a softening-up process: when referring to free health care they put the word free in inverted commas. I presume that when writing about the patent-protected "free" market they also use scare quotes.
Newcomers to the current scare story about how we're all getting too old will at once be struck by an apparent inconsistency: Poland has high unemployment and yet the problem is a shortage of workers to support all those non-workers (or "parasites," as the economists would dearly love to be able to call them). So desperately short of hands are we that the authors propose forcing everyone to give up two years of their leisure time.
I could go on, but I will limit myself to one important observation: not once in the full-page article do the three economists refer to Poland's steadily (if slowly) rising Gross Domestic Product (or "wealth"). For instance, they say that in the 1960s for every pensioner or invalid there were 12 tax paying workers. Now there are ony two and a half. Is it possible that the three young lions who wrote the article do not know how inefficient communist Polish industry was in the 1960s? Have they never heard of disguised unemployment? Not being an economist with access to all the necessary statistics and projections*, I do not know if the growth in GDP is enough to offset the decline in the ratio of workers to non-workers. But I do know, since it is common sense, that to discuss the question without taking into account the rising productivity and overall wealth of the nation is meaningless.
The authors cannot even get their lazy stereotypes right. In discussing the average Pole, they call him "Jan Kowalski." The average Irishman is "John Smith."
* According to the United Nations Development Programme, Poland's GDP grew on average 4.2% per year from 1990 to 2003, which means Poland in 2003 had 71% more wealth to distribute than in 1990 if this compound interest calculator can be trusted.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:36 PM | Comments (1)
July 23, 2006
Holiday Reading
The following is a first draft of a translation of an episode from Bruno Jasie?ski's novel Pal? Pary? (I Burn Paris - the title arose from a misunderstanding on Jasie?ski's part of the French idiom). In the novel, Paris is cordoned off after being hit by a plague and ascends into anarchy. There are different statelets dotted around the city. The passage below deals with the problem of the police.
'Parable of the Navy Blue Republic
On the third day the Cité Island was witness to the first ever demonstration of unemployed police in history. A crowd of unemployed navy blue people stretched across the entire island, pouring into the square before the Prefecturé. At the head of the march, demonstrators carried banners bearing slogans like “The Republic is Dead. Long Live the Republic!”, “We demand some kind of government!” and “A Police Force with no Government is like a Tram with no Electricity!”.
An impressive political meeting took place in the square in front of the Prefecturé. After lengthy debating it was decided, in the name of saving the police as such, to approach each of the governments of the newly formed statelets and offer them their services.
“It’s not a question of the colour or even the nationality of the government,” the plan’s proponent explained. “The police, in order to regain its raison d’etre, to return from the land of fiction to the ranks of real institutions, must try as soon as possible to seek some kind of government, or even the idea of a government. Without the concept of law and order we are shadows of our former selves.”
The plan was accepted unanimously and messangers were sent with the offer to all the governments, with the exception of the communist government in Belleville.
All the governments, fearing the introduction into their territories of a foreign element, replied in the negative, justifying their position by the impossibility of feeding new arrivals given the extremely meagre supplies of food left (“we’ve enough of our own mouths to feed”).
In a final impulse of self-preservation the proposal of one policeman to find any old civilian and force him to declare a dictatorship on the Cité Island was accepted. It was decided to organise a raid without delay.
After fruitless half-hour searches a patrol appeared at the entrance to a small street carrying in their arms an unknown, paralysed old man. The old man betrayed unmistakeable signs of terror. When he was brought into the Prefecturé he started to cry and tried to break free - in vain, of course.
In the Prefect’s study a delegation of police officers informed him that he was a dictator and as such he should issue a few decrees reinstating the idea of authority by law and order.
The old man sat apathetically in a chair, not reacting at all to the honour and power that was being offered to him. Attempts were made to explain the thing to him in the simplest words. In vain. As it turned out, he was deaf.
With difficulty they manaaged to come to an understanding with him in writing. The office drew up a declaration, which the old man, after long hesitation and threatened by a revolver barrel, eventually decided to sign.
An hour later the first declaration of the dictator went up on the walls of Cité Island. In this declaration the dictator stated that he was taking power in Cité Island and establishing a state of law and order. Anyone who dared to oppose the authority of the new dictator would be regarded as illegal and liable to the harshest condemnation/ extermination. It was signed Mathurin Dupont.
The whole island that day heaved a huge sigh of relief. The institution of the police, as such, had been saved. Exultant police marched around with a swagger, their heels ringing on the asphalt as if they wanted to assure themselves of their undeniable reality.'
Bruno Jasie?ski was a Polish futurist and later socialist realist who was murdered by the NKWD in 1938 or 1939. Before his death he wrote in a letter to Jezhova, chief of the NKWD, the following:
Such punishment, though I have not deserved it, will be an entirely justified form of self-defence on the part of the soviet state against its enemies and I will accept it without dissent. Only, please let me not be tortured any longer -- that is my final and only request.There is a short biography of Jasie?ski here.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2006
Glory
Socialist Realist art (or "socrealizm") was official dogma in Poland in the late 40s and early 50s and elsewhere for longer. Paintings, architecture and sculptures of the period glorify the working class and the achievements of socialism. Kitsch would be a kind word for much of it. Also striking is the resemblance to fascist art: there is a fascination with strong, healthy young bodies. See here, here and here for examples.
While wandering around an exhibition with its glowing reports of Polish Stakhanovs the other day I cast my mind back to the glorification and celebration of my own struggles for a better, brighter, capitalist future in Ireland. One afternoon the exciting news filtered down from on high that our section of the bank had in one day achieved the norm-busting feat of processing over one million pounds in car loans. We workers had outdone ourselves in the fight for a more car-filled future. Plainly, this extraordinary victory in the war against walking had to be marked and so our brigade leader announced that the following day after work we would go to the pub. The day arrived, another million pounds worth of automobile was put on the road and my fellow workers - women all, for progressive Ireland knew no discrimination - disappeared to change out of their work clothes into their civilian clothes (identical to their work clothes) before meeting in a local bar. Joyless, joyless. Even though the motoring public of Ireland was paying, each worker ordered precisely one vodka and diet coke or similarly emasculated product before trickling home, one by one. Where were the patriotic songs, the laughter, the collective buzz of making common cause? The rousing speeches?
Where was the company portraitist with his easel, painting a picture of me wearing a red tie?
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2006
The Lebanon
Wednesday's Gazeta Wyborcza reprinted a New York Times article by Israeli writer Etgar Keret entitled "Je?li ju? Wojna, to Lepsza Taka" (If it's war, then it's better this way, translated by Maciej Kositorny). The original appeared under the title "The Way We War." I thought it would kick up murder on the interweb but a quick search returned only 41 hits. In GW it appears under the photograph of little Israeli children writing on artillery shells - a picture which did raise a stink, though maybe in time it will turn out -- like the pictures of Palestinian children cheering after the attack on the World Trade Centre and the stories of children being thrown out of incubators in Iraq -- to be a fake. Maybe.
Keret's article starts off in mere bad taste. He describes how he manipulated the fact that Israel is at war to get some leeway in an argument with a taxi driver. But then the hair starts to stand on end:
We long for a real war to take the place of all those exhausting years of intifada when there was no black or white, only gray, when we were confronted not by armed forces, but only by resolute young people wearing explosive belts, years when the aura of bravery ceased to exist...Phew! No more of the demoralising bulldozing of family homes -- now we can just bomb the civilian population of our neighbour and feel good about it again.
In the early 1970s the Irish Republican Army mounted attacks on Britain using the Republic of Ireland as a base. Though the government of the Republic did not support the IRA, there was a perception that the IRA enjoyed widespread support in the Republic: two government ministers were sacked for allegedly trying to import arms for use in Northern Ireland. Did Britain scramble the jump jets, bomb our airports, order half of Dublin to pack up and leave? I don't think so.
Also, reports from an Irishman caught in Beirut (he has now been evacuated).
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2006
Czechs and the Poles
The current Polityka carries a review of "Bored in Brno," a film directed by Vladimír Morávek, which "sends up the myth of Czech sexual potency." I've been to Czecho (yes, yes, I have it on good authority that the name of the country is now "Czecho") a few times but had never come across this myth. Sex is a noticeable feature in Czech books though. Or look at Petr Zelenka: people having it off all the time, or at least trying to. Another thing that happens in Czech books is that people drink beer (Hrabal, Hašek). People also go out and sometimes listen to music, including jazz (Škvorecký). In sum, there's plenty of socialising, drinking and screwing in the Czech world. What's the outlook in Polish literature, then? Pretty grim, I'm afraid. People do sometimes have sex and they do sometimes drink but not often and certainly not for pleasure. (See Andrzej Stasiuk's Mury Hebronu (The Walls of Hebron) or Marek Nowakowski's "Wigilia" for the only correct treatment of sex in Polish literature.)
No, "ribald" is not the word that comes to mind in modern Polish literature, though G?owacki occasionally sales dangerously close to the winds of joie de' vivre. Poland has been called the happiest barrack in the socialist camp but you'd never know from reading their novels. While Josef Škvorecký was chasing girls (see his short stories), Libera's insufferable narrator in Madame was pining after an older woman, whom he never laid, of course: something to do with the communists. I haven't read every Polish book there is so if you know of any exceptions to the gloom, shame and misery attached to simple, earthly pleasures in Polish books, let me know. Also, if you can remember how Madame ends, feel free to correct me. And lastly, any Freudians who would care to explain why a film that satirises Czech sexual potency should be re-titled for Polish audiences "Sex in Brno" are also invited to comment.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:12 PM | Comments (4)
July 12, 2006
Language
Nie ("No") is a weekly current affairs magazine, edited by Jerzy Urban. The magazine is known for, among other things, its unparliamentary language and its attacks on "good taste." The language is one of its strongest points, though. Reading the main daily newspapers here can be a real struggle. The younger journalists (e.g. in Dziennik) are palatable enough but have nothing to say. Legible but unreadable, you might say. The older journalists get bogged down in qualifications and complications. In Nie there is life in the lines. Here they are on the subject of PiS (Law and "Justice")'s TV ad campaign:
?miech te? wywo?uje emitowana w telewizjach reklamówka PiSuaru. Zer?ni?ta z zamierzch?ej reklamy Reagana....That doesn't do justice to the original. "W telewizjach" (on televisions) is difficult to translate: it is a little like the way some write "the internets" when they want to satirise a politican's limited knowledge of the technology. ("Telewizja" means "television" and is not supposed to be used in the plural as it is in this case.)
Pissoir's ad on the tellybox is also getting a few laughs. Ripped off from an ancient Reagan ad....
Now here is the more "serious" Gazeta Wyborcza on the same subject:
Oba materia?y maj? niemal identyczn? konstrukcj?. Odwo?uj? si? do pracy, rodziny, mi?o?ci. W obu mo?na obejrze? zadowolone rodziny wracaj?ce z zakupów, szcz??liwe m?ode ma??e?stwa, rolnika pracuj?cego na traktorze, a nawet ludzi nios?cych dywan....
The material in both cases is almost identical in construction. They refer to work, the family and love. In both one can see happy families returning with the shopping, happy young couples, a farmer working in his tractor and even people carrying a carpet....
It's worth noting that the high brow, serious, weighty etc. GW gives this trivial item far more space (including six photos) than the scurrilous, low brow, muck raking etc. Nie.
The irony of all this is that Jerzy Urban was spokesman for a communist regime which was famous for "dr?twa mowa" (literally: "numb talk") or, in other words, newspeak.
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:06 PM | Comments (2)
July 11, 2006
Modern Life is Rubbish
After extensive research I have discovered that the perpetrator of the song "It's all about the money" is a lady who goes by the name of Meja. She is Swedish. Wikipedia says her real name is Anna Pernilla Bäckman but that's not important. The lyrics of the song are important - crucially important - to understanding the General Decline of Everything. Here's a sample:
"It's all about the money
It's all about the dum dum du du du dum"
Nothing wrong with that.* Lou Reed was always partial to a little doo doo wah's and when he sings la la la la la la on "Sweet Jane," well... But Meja is no Lou Reed. Her song continues:
"I don't think it's funny"
"Money" and "funny" has to be the most banal rhyme in the English language (how lucky we are so little rhymes with "love.") It's a linguistic trap lying in wait for poetasters and Miss Meja danced straight into it. Look how Pink Floyd elegantly flirted with and skirted around the same problem on Dark Side of the Moon:
"Money, its a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash"
See how they tease you? Gas means "funny" but it doesn't rhyme with money. Instead they pull off a partial rhyme with "stash" - which means "money."
It might seem unfair to compare Pink Floyd with Meja. After all, one is just pop while the other is far more ambitious stuff. But "pop" means "popular" and Dark Side of the Moon was certainly that. The only conclusion that can reasonably be drawn from this wide-ranging study is that modern life is, indeed, rubbish.
I spend far too much time on buses listening to commercial Polish radio.
*Actually, if you've heard her you will know that there is plenty wrong with that.
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:25 PM | Comments (3)
Bad Translation
Perhaps I should make this a regular feature - if I could be bothered buying Rzeczpospolita regularly. Today's paper, as usual, contains translations of editorials from foreign papers on page two. One is from the Daily Telegraph. The Rz writes:
"Tymczasem teoria, ?e za kryminalne zachowania obywateli odpowiedzialne jest spo?ecze?stwo, jest nieprawdziwa."
This means:
"The theory that society is responsible for the criminal behaviour of citizens is false."
The original reads:
"The idea that society is to blame for criminal behaviour is passé."
Passé does not mean false.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2006
You can skip this one - it's about party politics
Things are all a kerfuffle in Polish politics at the moment. The president backed out of an international summit a few days ago because he had a pain in his stomach. Before that a German newspaper made some unpleasant jokes about him and Poland. Then every former Polish foreign minister wrote an open letter condemning the president for backing out of the summit - blah blah blah, the usual farce. Poor old Gazeta Wyborcza devoted several serious pages to the affair this Friday and then -- if Beatroot is to be believed (and of course he is) -- the prime minister goes and resigns, making, I can't help think, the GW's thundering look like a lot of hot air. Beatroot brings up the subject of media management in his post (the news breaks late on Friday evening - the government seems taken unawares) and it is tempting to picture newspaper editors cursing Marcinkiewicz for letting the teevee get the jump on them, for keeping their staff awake all night, for making them re-set the front page. So well done Marcinkiewicz.
I wonder how the stock market has reacted to this. Actually, that's a total lie but I guess the papers, in the absence of any information, will pad out their speculation with worrisome articles about what is happening to the share portfolios of people who own shares. Presumably share prices will wobble and someone who was in the know will make a few quid on it before it goes back to normal -- oblivious as all sentient beings should be to who gets to be called prime minister.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:18 PM | Comments (1)
July 06, 2006
Miracles of the Free Market
It's 30 degrees in the shade and you need a cold drink. Into the shop with you so, up to the counter, out with the money and what is there to drink? If it's to be cold it has to be fizzy. The fridges here are filled with the products of one company and that company is not usually a local one that makes unpretentious bottles of juice. So you can have warm juice or cold capitalism. It's the same in pubs: the product of only one brewing company is sold. It's almost as if the supplier had stipulated that no other company's beer be sold: otherwise the belogoed furniture and umbrellas go back to the warehouse along with the fridges, the ashtrays, the tee shirts... But of course that can't be the case as it would surely be a distortion of the market and therefore illegal. Whatever the explanation for this perplexing and unsatisfactory situation is: if you want a cold drink of your choice you had best head up the country: it's only out in the sticks that the occasional outlaw shopkeeper uses his one fridge to cool beers and soft drinks made by various different companies.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)
Science
I haven't seen a copy of the Sunday Times in a pleasantly long time but I presume their coverage of science is as top-notch as ever: gushing articles about the latest and bestest weapons for British soldiers made by British scientists.
I was reminded of this by today's Dziennik, which has a page given over to science facing a page headed "economics" but really about -- well, what is it really about? The main story is "Businessman's Telephone: mobile phone producers are outdoing each other in phones for workaholics." There is a picture of a phone that can scan business cards and store them in its memory: so much more convenient than an actual business card, I'm sure you'll agree. Three other phones are featured in an accompanying graphic. So that no one can accuse Dziennik of lack of balance, each of the phones is produced by a different company. Naturally, if just one company's products were featured the whole thing would smack of PR: the news article would in fact be no more than a sleazy advertisement and readers would skip it. But since no less than three gigantic multinational corporations are adverfeatured, everything is okay.
A column on the same page is headed "Hi Tech: Gadgets of the Day." It too is a shop window for various companies with product to sell. At the bottom is an article about a case being taken against Yahoo China for - if the author is to believed (and I have no reason to doubt him/her) - providing information about web sites where you can download files for free.
There is no editorialising but the import of this page is clear: consumption is good, but only if you pay for it.
The next page is headed "Science" and here all frivolous consumer guides to nice things to buy is rejected in favour of a stern devotion to the rigours of the hard sciences. Most of the page is given over to the formula for mixing sand and water in the ideal proportions for making sandcastles. Another article announces that Robin Hood came from Sheffield, not Nottingham (at least we are spared a photofit of his face). The three remaining articles are very short. So that's science and technology: sandcastles and gizmos.
Okay, it's the silly season (or "cucumber season" as it is called in Poland) but why should the fact that parliament is not in session mean that readers interested in science be subjected to drivel about sandcastles? Global warming does not go to the seaside for summer: it brings the seaside to you.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)
Political Humour
Przekrój has an interview with a satirist, Krzysztof Piasecki, who is faced with a problem at work that many would envy: it's too easy.
I start a sketch, I start repeating what politicians have said and I don't have to add anything because everyone's already splitting their sides laughing.... I quoted deputy Pi?ka and people howled with laughter.
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)
Studies
How does one measure the intellectual capital of a person? I came across this intersting philosophical/rhetorical question while looking over the shoulder of a fellow bus passenger the other day. How indeed? Well, it turns out from my studious passenger's lecture notes (photocopied, inevitably) that there is a mathematical formula. I think there was a "Q" in it. If you're curious: try here.
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)