Three Monkeys Online - the free current affairs & arts magazine

A couple of weeks ago Jacek Dehnel had an article in Polityka in which he described his visit to Vienna. This week it’s Michał Witkowski’s turn: he was in Jerusalem and writes an interesting piece on it, on Polish-Jewish relations and on stereotypes. Here are the last lines: “What is the truth? What is a stereotype? I don’t know. I’m no expert. I’m just an ordinary tourist who wants to take a photograph but can’t because it’s the sabbath.” This is why I prefer Witkowski to Dehnel.

It’s not always politicians and economists that are the most convinced that privatization or at least commercialization are the answers to everything. Here’s an astounding piece of neo-liberal thinking from a Doctor Talarek that appeared in this week’s Polityka in an otherwise interesting article about the massive numbers of people who die – not just in Poland – of starvation after hospital visits (the sickness but also the treatment often depresses the appetite). Talarek works in a hospital that has not outsourced its catering and employs dieticians to oversee the food served up to patients but even still, every day about 20% of meals are sent back. “They eat what their families bring from home or they eat in the hospital cafeteria. Maybe if they had to pay for their meals they wouldn’t return so many of them?” Hmmm. Maybe. Or maybe if they closed their profitable little greasy spoon patients would eat what the dietician gave them. Or maybe if their patients weren’t sick they would have better appetites.

Could it not have occurred to Talarek that charging for meals for patients with appetites depressed as a result of treatment would result in more of the malnutrition problems the article describes?

Out of the top corner of my eye, while sitting on a bar stool the other night, I saw the strapline on a Polish rolling news channel on the TV. It said “W Brukseli o kryzysie” or “In Brussels the crisis [is being discussed].” It got me wondering, and this is what I wondered: which crisis? The war on Gaza? The gas shortage in Europe? The general, world-wide depression? Interesting times.

Who’s to blame in each of the three crises? Israel or Hamas? Russia or Ukraine? The trade unions or the trade unions? Yes, you were mistaken if you thought the depression was caused by reckless lending, short term chasing of profit at all costs, poor financial regulation, ideologically blinded (but independent!) central banks, poor planning, bad business practices, the abdication by politicians of their responsibility for providing for the overall good. It says so right here in Gazeta Wyborcza and the usually more measured Polityka. Here’s the latter on the demise of the US car industry: “It was not the financial crisis that brought the Big Three to the edge of the precipice but … the trade unions.” The unions won such good pay and conditions for their members that the manufacturers could not compete with other countries like Japan, sweatshop of the world. (And why shouldn’t the workers of the richest most powerful country in the world not enjoy the best pay and conditions - is that not what being rich and powerful is all about?)

I would have thought that the job of the trade union was to - to simplify greatly - gain as much pay for as little work as possible. Management wants the inverse and so a happy medium should be found. The US unions, then, succeeded (if Polityka is to be believed) but management, sadly, was not up to the job. So who gets the blame? Not the jet-setting management, for failing miserably, but the unions, for succeeding admirably.

Meanwhile Gazeta Wyborcza acknowledged the economic disaster with its Friday (16th) headline: “It has Begun.” It reports on negotiations between employers, unions and the government, quoting one of the most-quoted people in the country, Jeremi Mordasewicz of the employers’ organisation Lewiatan, that if the unions’ demands are met it will destroy the country. Among those demands are pay raises, a raise in the minimum pay (currently 38% of the national average) a cut in VAT, especially on food, and a raise in income tax on the richest. Raising pay for the poorest puts money into the economy as that money is immediately spent on real goods and services. Giving it to the rich (by means of regressive taxes, for instance) means just that: giving it to the rich, unless you still cling to the trickledown theory, in which case hang in there. It can’t be long now before a kindly plutocrat offers you a dime to shine his shoes. You can give him some stock tips in return.

Elsewhere on the business pages in Poland is the amazing discovery that banks - cover your ears and eyes if you are of a nervous disposition - earn money on international currency dealing by selling, e.g., Swiss francs for more than they buy them. Lots of Poles took out mortgages in foreign currencies and are now crying foul because not only are those foreign currencies more expensive these days but the banks are not using the central bank’s exchange rate. No one less than me wants to be seen to seem to be on the banks’ side but have Poles never heard of “let the buyer beware”? But of course the banks set their own, usurious exchange rates.

Among the other hilarious items from the business pages these days in Poland is the discovery of foreign exchange options. Again, people are running around crying foul because of a basic failure to understand (or even read) their contracts. To avoid unpleasant surprises some export businesses bought guarantees from the bank that a certain rate of exchange would be honoured regardless of the actual exchange rate obtaining on the date of the deal. Everything was tickety boo when the zloty was strong and getting stronger but - what’s this? It turns out the zloty can go down as well as up. And down it has gone, like a brick. Who could have expected this? Aren’t markets always supposed to go up? The lure of options was so strong that some businesses went beyond merely protecting their bottom lines from currency fluctuations to the kind of full-on barrow-boy, hopeless gambler-with-a-system-syndrome playing of the system that brought down America’s economy. They are now going bankrupt.

Presumably some way of pinning this on the trade unions will be found. After all, this is a country where people say “liberal” and mean Friedmanite fundamentalist.

Jacek Żakowski is what passes for a left winger here in Poland. In fact he’s regarded as practically a Bolshevik, while the organ he writes for, Polityka, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, is considered almost socialist. Despite his undeniably communistic credentials the final few sentences of a recent article about the politics of doing nothing in the aforementioned pinko rag are worth quoting in full:

But somehow it has come about that in a country which – it is ever clearer – is involved in a civilisational leap, everything public has for years been consistently pushed into deeper chaos. The point of this is obvious. When TVP [public television] broadcasts only dancing on ice and the speeches of chairman Kaczyński, when the quality of public education has fallen well below private education, and when a visit to a specialist in a public health clinic means a three year wait everyone will finally agree with the ideological thesis that all public services should be privatized

I despatched Ukraine a few weeks ago. Epic though the travelogue was, panoramic and sweeping in its grandeur, it turns out that my deft, broad brushstrokes that summed up an entire country in a series of arresting images left out a few minor details. Here comes Daniel Olkowicz in this week’s Polityka with his impressi—errr, painstakingly researched, almost academically cautious report on certain selected aspects of the country, hedged about with a thicket of qualifying phrases and concessions:
“Dzisiaj ukraińskie hotele w niczym już nie odbiegają od europejskich standardów”
“Today, Ukrainian hotels do not in any way differ from European standards”
I beg to differ. All Ukrainian hotels are “ancient,” “aging,” “Soviet-era,” and “antediluvian.” I know: I was in one. True, it wasn’t in Kiev, where Olkowicz prepared his report but what difference does that make? If Olkowicz can infer from the quality of his expense-accounted hotel that all other hotels in the country are excellent, I can do likewise in my dreary quarters. It’s pure coincidence that Olkowicz’s report comes from the capital and mine from the provinces…

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.

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.

Headline in last week’s Polityka: “How to demand a pay-rise that will give you a good living and not bankrupt your employer.” In the olden days employers were expected to look out for their own interests. Now it seems this burden is also to fall on the employee.

Last week’s Polityka has an article on that most intrusive of the arts: architecture. Like their fellow members of the ??e-elity at the Gazeta Wyborcza, they seem think it a terrible shame that Poles are so backward looking. They just don’t appreciate the efforts made by thrusting, forward-looking engineers — errr, I mean architects of course. I have not read the illustrated article - hence the title - so stop reading if you think I should have read it before commenting.

The article has examples of good modern architecture in Poland and abroad. From abroad we have the tumorous bladder that is the Kunsthaus in Graz. From Ireland we have a science fiction confection from Daniel Liebeskind - not built yet and unfortunately giving ammunition to those who say architecture is just drawing nice pictures of buildings and letting engineers figure out how to make them. Still, that’s all a matter of taste. What isn’t, though, is the amazing coincidence that all the good buildings in Poland pictured (except one interior shot) are the same: big glass boxes. By a truly amazing coincidence, one of those glass boxes houses the publishers of Gazeta Wyborcza.

Unrelated item: in the latest Polityka there is a photograph of the sign at the Polish military base in Afghanistan: “Camp White Eagle,” the manly soldiers proudly proclaim.

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?