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September 27, 2007
Of Achievers and Wasters
In connection with research by one David Amodio, Krzysztof Szymborski writes in the current Polityka that the results of scientific experiments and research are often incorrectly interpreted by journalists and misunderstood by readers. Results presented in the cold, clinical language of science inevitably become valorised, which can disgruntle the reader. Perhaps he has in mind statements such as this one: “left-wingers have a natural tendency to choose unproductive careers, for example in academia, leaving conservatives [i.e. right wingers] with profitable and useful options like finance, law and accountancy.” This statement issued from the Parker/Pelican/Waterman/Remington typewriter of a man who describes himself as “the duty conservative in a group of radical liberal professors in a typical American college.” The name of the boffin in question? Krzysztof Szymborski. The simplified results of Amodio’s research? Conservatives are less intelligent than left wingers.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2007
Katyń
Katyń is where the Soviets murdered between 15,000 and 25,000 Polish soldiers and other citizens during the second world war. Andrzej Wajda has made a film called "Katyń," to which hordes of schoolchildren are trooping off to every day. Here's Tomasz Sakiewicz of Gazeta Polska on the subject: "The elites of the Second Republic [inter-war Poland, a dictatorship for much of the period] had to be murdered in order to raise up new elites, insensitive to the Soviet lifestyle."
Sakiewicz is far from alone in thinking that if an inferior class of people had been killed communism might not have gained a hold in post war Poland.
Posted by hgrodsk at 07:28 AM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2007
Poland Goes it Alone
Poland has told the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, of which it is a member, that it does not want monitors at its forthcoming general elections. One of the lamer arguments in favour of the general oppression (bugging, lustracja) in PiS-dominated Poland is that "if you are honest you have nothing to fear and nothing to hide."
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:12 PM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2007
Language Learning
“Kraków is my home and I learned Polish in about a week.” Impressed? These are the words of Argentine soccer player Mauro Cantoro, as quoted on page 8 of last weekend’s scrupulously accurate Dziennik. Cantoro must be either extraordinarily gifted or extraordinarily deluded. I turned at once to page 29 and the full interview. In answer to the question “Did learning Polish take a long time?” the footballer actually replied “I took lessons for… a week.” The three dots were presumably inserted by the journalist – an annoying affectation in written Polish, whose verbal counterpart I have never ever heard. Cantoro continues: “However, it was a real pain, so I gave up. Language is best learned by practising…”
Journalism too.
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:30 PM | Comments (2)
September 23, 2007
A Golden Twelve
Pokaz prozy (Prose Display) is, as reviewers have pointed out, a curious book. It aims to showcase good modern Polish prose (12 writers born more or less in the period 1945 to 1960, all of whom have already achieved success). What it displays is, in fact, the weakness of modern Polish prose. To begin with an old favourite: product placement.
I had hoped to find a brand name in at least one piece by every author but it was not to be. Barańczak namechecks "Przemysławka" eau de cologne and mentions syrenkas and maluchs, kinds of cars. Stefan Chwin fits in a references to Singer sewing machines and Star lorries. Kowalewski firmly anchors his story in its period and class by mentioning a glove from "Buquet" and naming more wines than you could shake a stick at. Volkswagen gets a mention from Libera, as does Soplica vodka. Rylski, like Barańczak uses an eau de cologne to characterise a person - in this case it is "Brutal" (still available in all good kiosks). Olga Tokarczuk signifies foreign sophistication with the unforgettable words "Johnny" and "Walker." Adam Zagajewski has a character write his verses not on a humble typewriter but on a Remington. When not using a Remington, he uses a "Złoty Pelikan" or golden pelican, a kind of fountain pen beloved of Polish intelligentsia of a certain age, though the "Waterman" brand also gets a look-in in Zagajewski's contribution. Jerzy Pilch is more Catholic: he name checks not only the pelican and the waterman but also the parker, covering as many bases with the snobs as possible without mentioning anything so crude as a bic. Lastly, Bronisław Maj gets in a mention of a Czech make of guitar known as Jolana ("we didn't know any other brands"). So drinking, writing and splashing on the male perfume would seem to be the obsessions of Polish writers. But a full three of the twelve featured writers manage to tell their stories without once mentioning a brand name.
Elsewhere the flippant disregard for accuracy is again in evidence. Maj's story is a kind of paeon to the Animals. Here he is quoting Eric Burdon: "I've smoked my first cigarette at ten." I doubt Burdon speaks English like a schoolboy yet to master the subtleties of the past perfect and the simple past tenses. Libera also tries is hand at a bit of the old English. As is to be expected of a translator of Samuel Beckett he does a little better and "It's my plesure" and "it's much cheeper" can probably be blamed on the book's proof readers. I'm not so sure that his "I hope, you have read him" can be blamed on proof readers though. A writer's mistake, not a proof reader's.
Rylski is obviously not a big fan of Rylski: he has never read Rylski's work. Otherwise the word "rozkosz" (delight) in various guises would surely not have occurred 9 times in his story (five times in 3 and a half pages). Maybe it's just the western pedant in me, but why do the mother and her child, in the same story, come to the beach every year for their summer holidays when the mother has "światłowstręt" (light intolerance, photophobia). Would the woods not be a shadier option than the beach? Here's a snippet of "dialogue:"
"'I'm definitely not going to shave.'"
'What did you say?' asked his wife.
'I had a dream...'"
But that's not what he said. He said "I'm definitely not going to shave." I know, because it's written above.
Olga Tokarczuk's "Professor Andrews w Warszawie" is a happy hunting ground of cliches. A treasure trove. A veritable gold mine. The Prof - one of the stupidest people ever to people the pages of fiction and entirely devoid of any self-preservation instinct (Tokarczuk forgets to feed him for one entire day) - visits Poland just as martial law is declared and at a guess I would say that his confusion is a metaphor for the confusion of the country. At a guess. The cliches: the prof gets into a rattling car. The town is sad. There are tower blocks everywhere on the housing estate. The books on the shelves are in ugly covers. Even the snow seemed grey. He finds a telephone box at last. But he has no coins, only bank notes and he doesn't even know if they are large or small in denomination. He decides to return and realises he is lost. The inside of the bar is dismal. The food he eats there is not good, tasteless. In the shop there are only bottles containing a clear liquid, perhaps vodka [actually it's vinegar] and jars of mustard. People stand obediently in queues. He buys a Christmas tree more or less accidentally because that was what the queue was for. He sees in a bath a large, floating fish [probably a carp]. It was alive.
And it's no good saying that's what Poland was like in December 1981. If it was, then "so much the worse for reality," as Barańczak once said, quoting someone else. A dismal display.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2007
Now Can We Panic?
Or should we sit chewing our crud in bovine placidity as the police and state prosecution service finally disappears into PiS's back pocket, soles of their boots and loafers visible to all? Vaclav Havel suggested international observers be sent to monitor elections in Poland when PiS - err, the police - arrested people who were starting to speak out against the party. He was being hysterical, they said: it couldn't happen here. Now it turns out the police are rounding up opposition activists in connection with alleged election campaign financing irregularities going back two years. Their "investigation" has been going on for nine months but it was felt in ruling State Prosecution/Police/PiS circles that now, coincidentally just before an election, was a good time to move up a gear and begin the mass interrogations. Even right wing law'n'order type Ludwik Dorn is embarrassed, and has suggested the cops ease off.
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:35 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2007
TV Guide
The best thing by far on Polish TV right now - better even than the not-bad-for-Poland Szymon Majewski Show - is PiS's childishly crude and hilariously inept party political broadcast. The theme is corruption, of course, the only tune PiS knows, and it contrasts two Polands - that of "not long ago" and the Poland of today. In the first half we see a bunch of fat cats (villas, swanky cars, improbably fat and smoky cigars) exchanging briefcases full of cash for contracts: one of them says to the other "now all we have to do is bribe the opposition." In the second we see panic, fear and the same fat cats swearing (it's bleeped) into their mobile phones "[minister for justice] Ziobro's not on the take!"
Have you spotted the flaw? Who the hell bribes the opposition? It's the ruling party that counts. Also, who were the opposition in the Poland of "not long ago" portrayed in the ad? Why, the Kaczyńskites, that's who.
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2007
Parties Come and Parties Go
I mentioned before how the names change but the faces remain in Polish politics. Here is the concrete example of Jacek Kurski, sometimes known as the "Bull Terrier" though "Liar" would be both less complimentary and more truthful. Mr. Kurski, deeply principled politican that he is, in his infinite care for the people of Poland, was in the early 90s associated with Porozumienie Centrum, the Kaczyńskis' old party. Then he got in with something called the Ruch Odrodzenie Polski (Movement to Rebuild -- oh what difference does it make?). Then he joined the Christian Union (former PM Marcinkiewicz's old party, unless I miss my guess) before joining the now defunct AWS, Akcja Wyborcza Solidarności, which once ruled this country! They lost so he joined PiS but left for LPR (Giertych's bunch of nutcases) before going back to the winners: PiS again. (Details courtesy of the current Nie but you can also check out this website Znani Polacy.) Neither Nie nor Znani Polacy has any information on what the people he pretends to represent make of all this.
Characteristic of the political brutality here is the headline in the latest Newsweek over a picture of PO leader Donald Tusk: "Porażka w wyborach oznacza koniec platformy"
"Losing these elections means the end of PO"
Note: not the end of ineffectual leader and perennial loser, Donald Tusk, but the end of an entire political party, and I suspect Newsweek is right.
Another party that requires neutralising is the Partia Kobiet, the Women's Party. Primesident Kaczyński is seeing to that: he has poached the wife of former PO politician Jan Rokita to act as his adviser in women's affairs - an area in which he has shown little interest up until now - except when the woman in question was Barbara Blida.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2007
Neck
On a bus stop I saw an ad for Telekomunikacja Polska* and Orange and Dell computers. It's accompanied by a lavish (read: finger-down-the throat) TV ad campaign. It's a great offer: you can go to a shop (Orange's I think) and - wait for it - buy not only a computer but also connection to the internet. And that's it! I think you'll agree that presenting the opportunity to buy two things in one shop (e.g. fruit and vegetables) as an "offer" takes some neck. I went to their web site and checked the details. Here's one of the "benefits:"
laptop DELL do odebrania w dniu zawarcia umowy
a Dell laptop yours to collect on the day you sign the agreement
In other words, when you buy the computer, you get to own it. There's also an allegedly promotional price, carefully quoted without the VAT - you can do the sums yourself, mook - but no indication of what the computer would cost in any other shop, or what it cost before the "promotion" or what it would cost if bought outside of the promotion. But hurry! The so-called promotion lasts only as long as stocks but in any case not longer than until the end of the year.
Meanwhile Vision Express is running a charming TV ad for all the sniggering teenagers out there in need of glasses. It shows a guy reading the letters chart in an optician's. The letters are "OMG," "WTF," "STFU."
* A notorious abuser of its monopoly. But not to worry, it's a private monopoly.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2007
Politics Polish Style
The ins and outs of Polish politics are a bit too sleazy and trivial for most so there follows a comparison of Polish politics and normal, Irish politics. My fellow monkey, Shane Barry, will doubtless bristle at the description of Irish politics as “normal” but there you are…
Phone Tapping
Yes, it happens in Ireland too. It happened to Geraldine Kennedy (now editor of the Irish Times) and Bruce Arnold but the difference is that in Ireland it was a big scandal, remembered to this day, two decades and more on, as a blot on the copybook of Irish democracy. Heads rolled. Apologies were made, damages paid. The taoiseach (prime minister) resigned when it emerged, much later, that he knew about the bugging, that it was not the solo action of an errant underling minister for justice. The minister for justice in question was Sean Doherty, who gave recording equipment to another cabinet minister to record the conversation of a third minister. And Poland? The minister for justice routinely records his conversations. Piotr Pytlakowski of Polityka was bugged – is probably being bugged as I write – and what? The government is collapsing but it’s not because of public outrage at the intrusion into the privacy of journalists. No one is falling on any swords. Certainly no one is apologising and I doubt Pytlakowski will ever be compensated.
The Church
The Catholic Church in Ireland is famous for putting the kibosh on the Mother and Child scheme, an early attempt at creating a welfare state. The good men of the cloth thought that the state should stay the hell out of curing poverty as the family was sacred. But that was in the 1950s. Fifty years later, a Polish minister for education proposed that Religion (nb: not the study of religions) be made a compulsory school subject (in a state which has a secular constitution). That minister was Giertych, now yesterday’s man. His successor, Legutko, announced that religion would not, after all, be compulsory. That stern resolve lasted a day. The bishops stamped their crosiers and now religion is back on the syllabus. Soon universities will have to accept the grades made by young cynics who feigned devoutness to get higher marks in religion.
Commissions and Tribunals
In Ireland if you want something to go away you set up a tribunal of enquiry which meets for years or even decades enabling all to forget about the nasty problem. In Poland you set up a parliamentary commission. Here political careers get made but little emerges in the way of concrete charges that can be brought against wrong-doers. So, the two countries are not so different there. The commissions do act faster though.
Collective Responsibility
There is none in Poland. As mentioned before, it’s perfectly acceptable for one coalition partner to blame the mess on another partner. For example, when primesident Kaczyński was discussing his pre-election bribe – err, important policy initiative – of 3 or 4 billion for the health services next year he claimed that there had been a disagreement between the ministries of health and finance about the share of GDP to be spent on health. “The Ministry for Health seems to have done its sums better,” he quipped. Later that same day the Minister for Finance, Zyta Gilowska, said “I am not prepared to accept the raising of health insurance contributions.” At least in Ireland there is a pretence that ministers are collectively responsible for their colleagues’ decisions. At least the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
Party Loyalty
There is none in Poland. Irish politics have been set in stone since the Civil War: two large, very similar right-wing parties and some smaller “przystawki” as they say here. (In this respect, if in none other, we are way ahead of the English with their "Conservatives" and "Labour.") In Poland all is change, all the time. Parties come and go, often ignominiously, deputies cross the floor, jump ship, back-stab, create “new” parties, renege on coalition deals... Voters change their preferences constantly, describing themselves as left-wing in one survey and right-wing in the next. The Kaczyńskis are in charge of a party called PiS, which has existed only since 2001, but before that they were in Porozumienie Centrum. They took part in the round table talks in 1989 and now fiercely denounce those talks as a sell-out. They were associated with Lech Wałęsa and now they hate him. The Polish way is arguably more honest. They’ve given up all pretence of having politics or principles. The labels change but it’s the same faces all the time and pretty much the same (lack of) policies. In Ireland not even the names change. The sham is still maintained that the parties are different.
Diplomacy
I got this from a Bulgarian diplomat quoted in Polityka. He was referring not just to Poland but Central and East European countries in general: in the west the veto is treated as the weapon of last resort. In the East it’s just a rhetorical device, a casually thrown out opening gambit.
Separation of Powers
For some, a noble and inspiring idea: surrendering political power to an independent judiciary and promising never to interfere. In Ireland it is considered so important that sacking a judge caught with child pornography is remarkably difficult. In Poland it is considered a liability. The minister for justice is also the country’s chief prosecutor. Not only, then, does he set out the country’s course in matters of justice, he can also, if he wishes, interfere in individual cases. And he does wish. And he does interfere.
See the Beatroot for a similar rundown of Polish politics.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2007
Statistics
Blaming the opinion pollsters (see earlier entry) is usually the resort of the washed-up but sometimes you have to wonder. In this weekend's Gazeta Wyborcza there are two articles concerning, among other things, mobile phones. Side by side they sit, contradicting each other. Polling agaency CBOS tells us that in a random sample of 903 representative adults resident in Poland 78% have mobile phones. Meanwhile, UKE (the bureau of electronic communication, a government body) says that the ratio of mobiles to Poles is 99.6%.
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2007
...Or Does Fear Work?
One opinion poll puts the ruling regime ahead. Another, conducted a day ot two later puts rivals PO ahead by a good 8 points.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
The Perfect Spy
There's an interesting short piece in this week's Polityka, which I have started reading again on account of how they seem to know what the government/state prosecution office is going to do - and to whom - a week or two in advance of events. Because of a shortage of recruits to the intelligence services, the standards have been lowered. They will now accept short people, for instance, and some asthmatics, fat people, people with tattoos etc. The question that comes to mind is: was it ever a good idea to exclude short people, fat people etc. from the business of spying? Isn't the point of a spy that he (she) looks and sounds like an average Joe? How many elaborate stings, heists, hustles, entrapments and operations have been foiled in the past because someone got suspicious of the constant encounters with splendid specimens of manhood, untroubled by flat feet, epilepsy, missing fingers, kidney stones and all the ailments that flesh is heir to?
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2007
The Beauty of the Free Market
As you approach Kraków, or any other town in Poland, it becomes clear that when it comes to advertising billboards, anything goes. Confirmation of the abundant evidence of the outraged senses comes this week on the pages of Polityka, from the lips of one Jacek Maria Stokłosa:
Several years ago all provisions concerning protection of public space were removed from building and roads statutes. All in the name of the broadly understood free economy. However, the belief that the market would on its own regulate the chaos, because, for example, shopkeepers would see the advantage of creating elegant streets, proved illusory.Anyone who really believed that had obviously not being paying attention to the aesthetic feast of the senses that is commercial Polish television.
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2007
Fear Works
The atmosphere of oppression - for some, of course, it's more tangible than any "atmosphere" - has given ruling regime PiS quite a boost in the opinion polls. PiS has gained 8 points and PO lost 6.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)
Smear Campaign
Supposing you, the prime minister of - oh, say, a central European country of around - for argument's sake - 35 million people, wanted to smear someone - a former political ally, for example, who has started blabbing. And suppose this country is by now jaded with political scandals, what might you do? Also, you've tried and failed to set him up already. The state prosecution service is on side, so you could reach for the nuclear option: child pornography. But there's a catch. Your obedient prosecuting attorneys have been just a little bit too obedient - Alberto Gonzales obedient, in fact - and digging up some child porn on your political opponent-ally-opponent (what day is it? Tuesday? Opponent) would be that little bit too obvious. Perhaps it would be better to smear him by association. He has advisors: take one of them out. But there's another catch: the right to privacy. If you were to bring charges you would have to refer to the defendant by his or her first name and the first letter of the surname: Piotr T., for instance. But there's a clever boy working in the state prosecution office. If charges aren't brought, you can name the victim publicly. Et voila!
Any Polish legal eagles reading? Please correct me if I'm wrong about the right to privacy.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2007
Bugging
If there are more than the usual typos in today's entry it's because I am looking over my shoulder more than usual. Here's waht I read in last week's admirably well-informed Polityka (they correctly predicted that businessman Ryszard Krauze was in the sights of the authorities):
In fact, a (probably) legal tap was put on the phone of a private detective from Gdańsk. Several journalists, including myself [Piotr Pytlakowski] called him around that time because he had a lot of behind the scenes information concerning certain stock market operations and the secrets of well-known people from the world of business and politics.In this way our telephone calls found themselves in the circle of suspicion and were automatically subject to operational tapping. Such phonetaps can be laid on for 5 days without court approval. Later, they are supposed to be erased and the person informed that his or her conversations were recorded - we, of course, were not informed.
"The circle of suspicion" is a phrase which has found favour with the ruling regime of late due to its usefulness in vaguely smearing innocent people. There's more, if you can stomach it.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2007
Parody
In an obscure, out of the way cinema, in an obscure, out of the way town, I stumbled across a comic gem the other day: a part-Polish production of a parody of David Lynch, complete with people dressed as animals moving slowly, people passing through borders into -- into what? other worlds? the past? fiction? The hilarity was completed with such Lynchian trademarks as menacing music, manic laughter, quiet patches interrupted by sudden loud noises and, of course, extreme close-ups, turning the most banal faces into scary monsters. It was directed by David Lynch. Its name is Inland Empire.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)