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Too make a long story short, a bunch of Polish spies (or Military Counter Intelligence agents) on duty in Afghanistan put photographs of themselves with their full names on a popular website here called “nasza-klasa” (our class). It’s a school reunion site where old boys, schoolmates, Taliban fighters and so on meet up to see how their old buddies have aged, got fat, got married, tried to occupy one’s country and so forth.

Prompted by this, I decided to devote this one to absurdities of Polish life. Like for instance, the requirement that in order to sit a driving test you must have done a course in a driving school. If you fail you have to do a supplemental course in a driving school. Guess where the examiners are recruited from? Well from the driving schools, of course. What matters is not that you can drive but that your driving school papers are in order.

Here’s a direct quote from Jarosław Kaczyński of PiS: “I am against a referendum because it would certainly produce unambiguous [jednoznaczne] results… I think that referendums should be held in those countries where public opinion is against [the Lisbon Constitution]. The people should not be cheated. The decent thing would be to have referendums in England [sic], France and Holland.” (Nasz Dziennik, March 12th, reprinted in Nie). On second thoughts, I’m not sure that is so absurd. He’s only saying what all the Eurocrats think: no referendums because people might vote for the “wrong” thing. When Ireland rejected the Nice referendum, the exercise was simply repeated until the people voted yes.

Nie also tells of the following happy situation in the administration of public health service in Poland: the NFZ (roughly equivalent to the UK’s NHS) draws up reports on abuses in the health services (overcharging the state in various ways) but the organ that is empowered to do anything about the abuses doesn’t get the reports because the NFZ is not obliged to hand them over, which it doesn’t want to do because if it did it (i.e. the NFZ) would get less money from the state to provide health services. Clear? Of course not.

I commented before on Konrad Niklewicz’s bizarre ideas about who should sponsor the debate on GMOs – i.e. the companies that stand to earn most from their introduction, not scientists, the state or, God help us all, opponents. And here a week or two later is the same Niklewicz writing about how lobbyists rule in Brussels. One example is the “Competitivness [sic] in Biotechnology Advisory Group,” of which the dismayed Niklewicz writes: “It does not have a single non-governmental organization representative; it has six scientists and twenty business representatives” (Gazeta Wyborcza March 28th). This article is shoved back to page 30, the business section, unlike the same author’s clarion call for business to lead the debate on GMO, which was on page 2.

Another curiosity of Polish law: it is possible to libel the dead. Roman Giertych has to publish an apology to the family of Jacek Kuroń for remarks he made in 2006. (Kuroń died in 2004.) I’d take Kuroń’s side against Giertych any time, living or dead, but in my innocence I really did think that dead people had no say in the matter.

When Minister for Justice Ziobro left office he had to return some of the gimcracks our rulers are given to help them oppress us. Specifically, something like three mobile phones and a laptop computer. Ziobro, a man of impeccable morals, obviously had nothing to hide and the damage evident in the returned laptop was purely from wear and tear. He was a hard man, Ziobro. The laptop is on the road to recovery of data now, though. The unencrypted data shows that he was writing the scripts for the State TV news service. On second thoughts, I’ll put that in the passive voice: scripts for the State TV news service were written on his laptop. The encrypted stuff will be denuded and demasked in the next week or two.

It’s no wonder the present government is doing nothing.

Axel Springer’s Dziennik is in fine fightin’ form to judge by Tuesday’s edition of the paper. They’re not letting those Greens get away with the oil slicks that have been polluting the Wisła (Vistula) lately. An editorial thunders: “Ecologists take their Heads out of the Vistulan Sand.” And it’s all thanks to the brave journalists of Dziennik who started asking Questions. Questions like “where are the ecologists when the Wisła is being polluted with oil?” A very pertinent question too, though perhaps it would be better directed to Przedsiębiorstwo Eksploatacji Rurociągów Naftowych (Oil Pipe Utility Company) – which owns the leaking pipe in question. The implication is that the Greens are happy to intervene in the pleasant environs of Rospuda (which the state wants to destroy with a bypass) but are not willing to get their hands dirty in the oil-slicked river. Can you spot another difference between one case and the other? It’s very subtle and it seems to have eluded the reporters of Dziennik but I can reveal that one is an ecological disaster that has already happened and the other is one that might yet be prevented.

And then there’s the miners. Two articles in the paper have references to Thatcher in their title so you can guess where the sympathies lie. There are some interesting statistics in this story. It has widely been reported that the one-day warning strike for higher pay caused the owners of the coal mines losses of 43 million zloties. 40,000 workers were out. Out with the back of the envelope and it seems that each worker each day earns the mines’ proprietors 1,000 zloties. Not a bad return for a monthly wage of around 4,000. The strikers want a 7% rise this year (14% next year), which would cause untold suffering, bankrupt this, that and the other, is totally unrealistic etc etc etc (article by Maksymilian Klanik, former boss of the mine company). Elsewhere the paper reports that average Polish pay in November 2007 was 12% higher than November 2006. This is commented on by five experts – three bankers and two company owners. No trade unionists were asked their opinion or their members’ opinion, presumably because there is no such thing as a trade union expert on pay. Tony Blair used to go on about “joined-up government.” It would be nice to have joined-up journalism too.

For some light humour it’s always worth turning to the “science” pages: “Małpy i matematyka. Amerykańscy uczeni odkryli, że makaki potrafią dodawać równie dobrze jak ludzie” (Monkeys and Maths. American scholars have discovered that makaki (macaca fascicularis) are as good at addition as people) is the unambiguous trailer on page 21 to an article on page 26 in which we find out that monkeys can indeed add just as well as humans – as long as they’re not required to add up to a number higher than 17. While we’re all laughing, look at the headline on page 6: “PO uspokaja kobiety” (Civic Platform [de govmint] reassure women). A scare story emerged a few days ago that women, because they live longer, would get smaller annual pensions than men. But that’s totally not going to happen because the government, whose minister - another newspaper claimed - had already signed the necessary death warrant totally didn’t sign it because there’s like going to be consultation and all so there’s no need to be alarmed, frightened, afraid, insecure, worried or confused about your welfare-state future in a country being run by private market ideologues oftentimes compared to Margaret Thatcher.

So much for the home front. What about the war of occupation valiantly being fought by Polish soldiers? The editorial on page 4 is headlined with a question, “Czy mamy prawo opuścić Irak?” (Have we the right to leave Iraq?), which is answered in the subhead for people too intelligent to be bothered labouring through the tortured content of the article: “Tak, bo nie mamy żadnych długów, ani wobec Amerykanów, ani wobec Irakijczyków” (Yes, because we owe nothing to either the Americans or the Iraqis). So that’s alright then. As Jimmy Carter said when refusing to pay reparations to Vietnam, “the destruction was mutual.” Here’s a choice quote from the leader article: “Leaving Iraq does not mean fleeing in panic. And it won’t be: we aren’t Spaniards. The most optimistic projection would see us out at the end of the tenth shift, i.e. the middle of next year.” Optimistic, sure, but from whose point of view? Iraq’s? The Polish soldiers’? Dziennik’s Andrzej Talaga’s? The Spaniards get a tongue lashing elsewhere in the paper from one John C. Hulsman (not to be confused with John A or John B – inferior models, long since withdrawn from circulation), co-author of the bumptiously titled Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World: “The Polish government has clearly given to understand that it is withdrawing its army from Iraq. We should now hope that Warsaw will not repeat the mistake of Spain, which bowed to the pressure of public opinion and without consulting America hurriedly withdrew its contingent.” Nothing riles a good American democrat more than governments that do what their electorates tell them to - especially when they don’t check if it’s okay with the yanks. Towards the end of the article he does grudgingly admit that Warsaw can pull out because it was an electoral promise of the winning party (“the United States has accepted…”) but he has more time for the English: “…the government in London did not give in to the pressure of public opinion…” The English pulled out in “style” and many years after the people wanted to.

Roman Bolko, deputy head of BBN (Polish writers – unable to imagine anyone not on the same wavelength as themselves - usually assume you know what such abbreviations stand for and do not trouble themselves to explain. A footnote describes Bolko rather cryptically as deputy head of BBN and former head of GROM. BBN is Biuro Bezpieczeństwa Państwa (State Security Office); GROM is some bunch of Boy’s Own Commandos), is interviewed on page 6 – the paper couldn’t get hold of any rank and file soldiers obviously - and he also mouths off about style: “we have to maintain our style, responsibility and trustworthiness” and later “we must do everything to save face as we come out of this.”

No Iraqis were asked about the differences between Polish, Spanish and English style or the importance of saving face.

That’s the message sent by both Dziennik and Gazeta Wyborcza today. The Polish ambassador to the Poland-occupied nation of Iraq was injured in an explosion. Someone else was killed. Here’s the GW (electronic version, today):

W Bagdadzie bomby raniły polskiego ambasadora
Dwie lub trzy bomby wybuchły na trasie konwoju polskiej ambasady w Bagdadzie. Zginął funkcjonariusz BOR, ambasador Edward Pietrzyk jest ranny.

Bombs in Baghdad Injure Polish Ambassador
Two or three bombs exploded on the route of a Polish embassy convoy in Baghdad. A BOR officer died. Ambassador Edward Pietrzyk was injured.

The dead man is given a name in paragraph four.

Asked by Niedziela (”Sunday,” a Catholic weekly) if he was in favour of withdrawing Polish troops from Iraq, Lechos?aw Kaczy?ski, primesident of Poland, replied:

We have gained a few things thanks to it [our engagement in Iraq]. It’s completely senseless, Polish soldiers have died there — that’s the most important thing because the life of any person is worth much more than any money. A lot of money has been gone on our action in Iraq. It costs a lot and we are financing it ourselves. It would be like investing and then withdrawing from the investment and losing everything.
(Quoted in Nie, nr. 32, 2006)

Even Bush can generally be relied on to mouth something about nation-building or weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or whatever his prompters tell him the reason of the day is.

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.