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June 30, 2007
Thin Ice
Monica Leech, a PR consultant to a government minister, has unexpectedly lost her libel case against the Irish Independent. The Indo had published a story about what had happened the previous day on RTE radio: a caller introducing himself as "Norman" had stated that Leech was winning public contracts in exchange for performing sexual favours for the minister (Martin Cullen). An interesting aspect of the case comes out briefly in Miriam Lord's article on it in Friday's Irish Times. The judge referred to the caller as a "nutcase" in the presence of the jury. The prosecution thought that this might "take from the case's serious nature," as Lord puts it, so the jury was recalled and "Norman" was reclassified as "malevolent."
The more credible the accuser the...
Leech's lawyers argued, then, that the word of a random, anonymous, prank caller - malevolent, but not a nut - carried enough weight to "destroy" (her counsel's words) her reputation.
Some reputation.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2007
Attention to Detail, Part Umpteen
Marcin Świetlicki's second novel, Trzynaście (Thirteen), is a follow up to his first novel, Dwanaście (Twelve), which was a "magical, cult" novel, the blurb tells me. I read Twelve so I suppose that makes me a "follower with exaggerated zeal" of Świetlicki. Or maybe Świetlicki was yanking his publisher's chain when he wrote the blurb: he uses "magical" several times in the novel, to plainly satirical effect.
It's a whodunnit and I'm sure if I read it carefully I would find dozens of lapses unforgivable to my stern, logical, narrow western mind. But Świetlicki, at least, rises above all that - and he did work for years as a proof-reader. Trzynaście is more a state-of-the-gaff novel - very immediate, published very soon after the events, such as Papa Ratz's visit, described in it - and throwing casual digs left and right, but mostly at the bubble world of Warsaw.
Here he is describing a policeman:
"Of course it would be lot more elegant if the Lieutenant had a terrible secret, a scar cutting acrosss his face, if he speeded around underground corridors on a motorbike..."It's good to see Świetlicki's a reader.
In Twelve Świetlicki took the opportunity to mock bloggers. Now he widens his focus:
"Of course Mr. Greg takes all his luggage to the Wars*, his laptop too, naturally, it's very becoming: to sit in this hideous, unstylish Wars and stare at the laptop screen. In this way a civilised person cuts himself off from these savages. In this way a civilised person spends time in the better world he deserves, the world of the internet.""Mr. Greg" is a Varsovian, his diminutive very dimininutive.
Lastly, for your consideration, is the ludicrous Warsaw bookshop scene, where a TV journalist is launching her poetry. Among those present are
"...the magical, cult publisher of Lampa. Plus one young painter from a good family. And one well known female singer who loves books, but only those bought in this place. In other bookshops books are uglier, worse and less wise. Coelho bought here tastes best, Coelho bought here tastes wonderful."At this gathering the Lieutenant feels out of place but as the narrator says, it is he who is the literary figure. The rest are all too real. In an author's note, Świetlicki warns against identifying his made-up characters with real people but then again, he also thanks an Irek Grin for describing a Warsaw pub toilet to him.
*Wagon cars on Polish trains are operated by a company called "Wars."
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2007
The Echo Chamber
Some time ago a genius discovered that Republicans don't watch Michael Moore films and Democrats don't watch Hannity and Colmes. Lefty talks to lefty, nutcase to nutcase and no one crosses the party lines. There is no real debate. I myself regularly check out Hannity and Colmes, Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter - albeit via Tbogg - but niggling doubts persist about the spectrum of my reading. So I determined to read Dawid Warszawski's lengthy rebuttal of Tony Judt in this weekend's Gazeta Wyborcza. This would be just the kind of robust, intellectual jousting that helps us form a synthetic view of the world, uncoloured by one's own preferences.
Tony Judt had claimed that people like Adam Michnik (editor of GW) and Vaclav Havel were this era's useful idiots, with their unstinting support for US foreign-policy misadventures. I agree entirely with him, so let us see what Warszawski has in defence...
In paragraph two he writes: "I unambiguously supported the war with Saddam [sic] out of fear of the weapons of mass destruction which the Iraqi dictator possessed and had used against neighbouring countries and his own citizens."
I'm afraid I stopped reading there. I met UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and there were no weapons of mass destruction. Everyone knew it. They were laughing at Colin Powell before he even left the podium at the UN with his forged casus belli.
Warszawski's article is headlined: "Me, a useful idiot."
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)
More money less money
This weekend's Gazeta Wyborcza is headlined "You Will Earn More." The euphoria continues, unblemished by debate, assessment, macroeconomic statistics or rationality in the body of the story. "Skladka na ubezpieczenie rentowe" will drop from 6.5% of your gross wage to 3.5%. That's a fall of nearly a half! The exclamation mark was used by the newspaper. On the front page! In a news article! About tax! Tax! Reporting the progress of the taxation law change, later in the article the newspaper writes: "no one voted against it!" Yes: no one! The bill now has to go through the senate and the president: "And they must hurry!" Oh yes, hurry, hurry, hurry so we can get our paws on the money the taxman has been stealing from us all these years and frittering away on sick pay, unemployment benefit, pensions and other such frippery frapperies. "Skladka na ubezpieczenie rentowe" means social insurance, more or less.
The anti welfare state propaganda continues on inside pages. A story on page 33 has the curious headline "Today is the Taxpayer's Holiday." It reports the preposterous spin by the Adam Smith Institute that all the income earned before June 16th goes to the state and that from now on you, the worker, are earning for yourself. The Adam Smith Institute is entitled to its own beliefs on how Poland should distribute its income but surely a repsectable newspaper should treat these wild opinions with a little distance, and not write, in sentence one of the tendentiously headlined tale, "Tax freedom day comes earlier than ever this year: June 16th".
On an entirely unrelated note, doctors, teachers and nurses are on strike in Poland because of low pay.
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2007
Polish Bishops Join the War on Terrorism
Bishop Stanisław Stefanuk described the use of strikes by teachers and doctors as a terrorist method in his sermon on June 7th (Corpus Christi). He must read Fakt
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
Police Forced
"Police had to use force yesterday to disperse demonstrators" reads a photograph caption in Friday's super libertarian Gazeta Wyborcza. How do they know?
In the absence of two independent, named sources (or is that old hat in the old media?), should the caption not read: "Police used force to disperse demonstrators"?
This was published hard on the heels of stories about the conviction of ZOMO (a kind of auxillary police) officers for killing 9 miners three days after the declaration of martial law in December 1981 in the "Wujek" mine. Would anybody like to bet the communist authorities did not use the expression "were forced to" when describing the actions of the ZOMO?
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
Kaczyński's Ten Minutes
Friday's Gazeta Wyborcza carried a story under the above headline (more or less) on its front page. In it Bartosz Węglarczyk calculated how much time Kaczyński would have to talk to Bush on the latter's visit here. The answer: 40 minutes, and since an interpreter would be needed that should be halved.
Consecutive interpreting Węglarczyk can conceive of - but not, dear Lord, simultaneous.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2007
Chomsky in Dziennik
In an interview in this weekend’s Dziennik Noam Chomsky says that Hitler, when he invaded Czechoslovakia, claimed he was doing so to bring peace. The Soviets also claimed to have Poland’s interests at heart in the 1940s. The US claimed to be bringing democracy to Iraq. What is the newspaperman’s response?
Imperialna Ameryka niczym się nie różni od nazistowskich Niemiec czy sowieckiej Rosji - to bardzo atrakcyjna teza.
That imperialist America is in no way different from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is a very attractive thesis.
Or, by the same masterful use of logic, I differ in no way from Elton John and Johnny Depp since we all have one thing in common: we wear glasses. Well some of us, sometimes. But – hey - it’s probably close enough for Dziennik. Chomsky does not respond to this clumsy smear by Maciej Nowicki, which makes me wonder…
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:34 AM | Comments (1)
History Repeating Itself To The Surprise Of Journalists
There is a scene in “Boogie Nights” where the luckless ex-porn stars go off to do some drug dealing. The dealer spends a good part of the scene bragging about his mix-tape. It’s not a blunder on the part of the film makers. They really did have mix tapes in the 80s. I am reminded of the film's ludicrous, vain and downright nasty character every time I read another fawning journalist’s article about the Ipod and How It Has Changed Our Lives. (I particularly like those that wonder philosophically: for the better or the worse?) There’s one in the ever-loyal Gazeta Wyborcza of May 30th. I say ever-loyal because at the behest of the machine’s producers – and in common with 99% of the world’s journalists – they call it an iPod, in flagrant contravention of Polish (and English) orthography. It was written not by journalists, but media researchers, so this is serious business – even if the piece is illustrated by the vain, ludicrous and downright nasty George W. Bush. There’s no real need to describe the rest of the article because anyone over 30 (who is not a journalist) will know it all from first hand experience of the “walkman revolution.”
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)