Moose on the Loose

It’s amazing what a week’s holiday can do for the mind, body and soul. Not to mention one’s perspective on the things that are happening in the world at large. After spending a week away from Poland the first piece of Polish news I hear (or rather, the first piece of news that is anywhere remotely interesting) was the astonishing fact that a moose had spent much of Monday (yesterday) morning running around the streets of Warsaw. Apparently, the poor fellow had been frightened out of Kampinos forest by herds of weekend tourists wanting to breathe in the fresh forest air.

Anesthetised Public
The reason why this piece of news made the headlines is two-fold. First of all, we’re in the media silly season where all manner of rubbish hits the headlines due to the simple fact that there’s nothing much else going on. However there is a lot going on at the moment in Polish politics. Too much. This leads me to believe that the Polish media (and almost certainly Joe Public, i.e. ‘Jan Kowalski’) has become ambivalent, desensitised and downright fed up with the ever-growing chaotic maelstrom of Polish politics.

Biggest Megaphone
Poland’s political elite class has degenerated into a bickering gaggle of washerwomen content only on out-shouting each other. Water-tight argumentation, mental dexterity and lexical prowess have been replaced by public slanging matches, coalition in-fighting and below-the-belt calumny. It’s ugly, it’s petty and a complete waste of time. The news that Law and Justice (PiS) has been using state departments (and underhand techniques) to dredge up ‘dirt’ on opposition politicians no longer comes as a surprise to anyone anymore. The era of the Moose is upon us…

Love the World with Ping-Pong

I found a website the other day the address of which I cannot for the life of me remember but I spent at least half an hour downloading pictures from it much to my delight. The author of the website has decided to give a visual account of some of the world’s dignitaries, sports people, actors, actresses, musicians and more through the world-encompassing, peace-bringing and love-giving sport of table tennis. I thought I’d share some of the pics with you all.

Lech Wałęsa (giving it to the Commies)

Fidel Castro (face contorted in sporting strain)

Prince Charles (notice hand NOT in pocket)

Chairman Mao (loving it)

Pope JP II (blessing bats in holy happiness)

Arnie (getting ready to terminate his opponent)

Borat (prior to an important Kazakh match)

Pavarotti (singing to victory)

Marilyn Monroe (looking good, with bat)

Liz Taylor (resting between Cleopatra shots)

Cher (I’ve got you, bat)

André Agassi (not looking convincing)

Ronaldo (where’s the ball, Ronnie?)

Star Trek (even in hyperspace…)

Christina Aguilera (dirrrrrty batter)

Popeye (ping-pong and spinach for the masses)

Mr Ed (boyhood horse hero & intelligent equine)

Anyone fancy a game? I’m pretty good with a bat myself…

Foot in Mouth Disease

I have a theory that the level of a country’s cultural development and civilisation can be gauged by the standard of its public toilets. Obviously, everything is relative but take a look at service station bogs in Sweden, Holland or Germany and take a look at the holes in the ground you find in Northern Africa, for example. Everything else comes somewhere in the middle and in this way we can establish where a county can be found on the cultural continuum.
Well, I think it’s a good theory…

My other theory is that you can gauge the state of a country’s political culture/development/class by the amount of absurdity contained in the country’s legislation or by the amount of surreal decisions announced by its politicians. Which brings me to Ewa Sowińska, Poland’s controversial Children’s Rights Ombudsman.

Sowińska recently made the news by writing a letter to the Pope claiming that the forces of darkness (in the guise of certain independent media) were closing in on Poland and Poland’s church hierarchs and were attempting to bring down Holy Mother Church through defamation, criticism and a consolidated attack on Archbishop Wielgus who was set to become Archbishop of Warsaw but had to step down after it was found that he had collaborated with the communist Secret Police (see previous blog entry). When asked why on earth the Children’s Rights Ombudsman was writing an official letter to the Pope on government headed paper she replied that the good Archbishop spent many hours teaching children and this was, therefore, a matter for the Ombudsman. Hmm…

Anyway, this time Sowińska – of the far-right League of Polish Families - has excelled even herself. She has expressed concerns about the sexuality of Tinky Winky of the Teletubbies who, she believes, is quite obviously gay. She came to this conclusion upon noticing that dear old Tinky has a penchant for carrying handbags. Sowińska is so intent on pursuing her anti-gay crusade that she is currently in consultation with psychologists about this matter. If convicted, charged and found to be gay, Tinky Winky will be banned from Polish TV as this is a blatant case of the promotion of a gay lifestyle which is abhorrent to all God-fearing League of Polish Family members.

I wonder if she’s ever seen Little Britain…

Vetting? What Vetting?

I have specifically, in premeditated fashion, avoided making any entries on my blog this week in order to avoid becoming too embroiled in the political crisis that has been unfolding around the ruling of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal concerning the constitutional nature of the much-maligned Vetting Act.

Now that all the hoohah’s finally come to a (judicial and legislative) end, I have decided to comment on the bizarre goings-on. It all started when parliament, including ruling coalition and the majority of opposition Civic Platform (PO) MPs, decided to pass an amendment to the (anti-communist) Vetting Act which widened its jurisdiction to encompass, amongst others, journalists and academics who might have collaborated with the Communist Secret Police (SB).

The ramifications of the new Act became apparent to all and it meant that those touched by the Act would have had to submit vetting declarations to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in order to obtain a certificate of ‘moral health’. In practical terms, this meant that almost a quarter of a million (!) people would have had to submit these declarations and then have to wait for the IPN to verify them. By all accounts, the IPN would have been hard pressed, working flat out, to get through all of these declarations in little over ten (!) years.

In real terms, this puts a shadow over Poland’s ability to deal with its communist past. All the former communist states, seem to have dealt with their shady history by simply opening up their archives to all. The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party have been fighting tooth and nail to prevent this from happening and many believe the archives of the IPN are in their hands and are being used for political ends.

To illustrate the political machinations of PiS let us look at the week’s events. The deadline by which all vetting declarations were to be made was May 15th. The Constitutional Tribunal, as the primary authority responsible for ruling on questions of the constitutional (i.e. legal) nature of legislation, promised to rule on whether the Vetting Act is in accordance with the Constitution by the 11th May for the good of the people, so that the quarter of a million people affected (and confused) by it would know whether or not to submit these declarations.

Ludwik Dorn, Speaker of the House (and therefore supposedly objective) called for the Constitutional Tribunal to not rule on whether the Vetting Act was in accordance with the Constitution so soon. No clear reasons were given. After the Tribunal ignored his pleas, PiS played their ace card and submitted a petition stating that information on two of the judges of the Constitutional Tribunal had been found in the archives of the IPN; the idea being that they collaborated with the Secret Police. When pressed by the Tribunal, the PiS MP responsible for the petition crumbled but a shadow of doubt was cast on these two judges who had to be suspended for the time of this ruling. An hour later, their IPN files were found to be cleaner than clean. How the PiS MP got his hands on these files so quickly is still a mystery to many.

Even with the loss of two judges, the Tribunal was able to conclude their ruling and as the black clouds thickened and the heavens opened above Warsaw the judges declared that nearly half of the regulations in the Vetting Act were not in accordance with the Constitution. President Kaczyński and PM Kaczyński were quick to point out their displeasure. However, in all of this it has become apparent that this is more than just a battle for the realisation of one party’s vision of vetting but a power struggle on the future of Poland’s legislative system.

Five reasons to worry (Part II)

In the previous post, I mentioned why Poles may feel worried by what is going on in their country. We looked at three reasons for this feeling of uneasiness: political zeal, intolerance and lack of integrity. In this post, we look at the final two.

Fourthly (political instability), after over a week of uncertainty, Poland’s Sejm chose a new speaker of the House. Marek Jurek resigned in a huff annoyed that his pet project to tighten anti-abortion laws was not passed. He was also miffed at the fact Jarosław Kaczyński et al did not show him their full support in – what he believed to be – the most important moral battle in the history of modern Poland. In his place comes Ludwik Dorn, a controversial figure who is disliked, although respected, by opposition politicians. He is famed for his eloquence and sharp wit, but is also known for his inability to bring people together and guilty of dividing opinion – a dangerous quality for the Speaker of the House. He is also the man that coined the term wykształciuchy and has shown hostility recently to Poland’s academics. Poland’s lack of political stability and the country’s political divisions have long been the cause of both stagnation and petty conflict. We shall see whether the new Speaker can bring an element of calm to the disorder

Fifthly and lastly (non-diplomacy), Poland’s government seem to be continually embroiled in some ever-growing absurd political saga. It became clear that the government was unable to deal with the art of diplomacy with Law and Justice (PiS) aimlessly hopping from political incident to political incident. First we had the so-called potato crisis in which Lech Kaczyński was likened to a potato, then we had the energy crisis which did not do much to endear Poland to the EU, soon after came the Russian meat ban crisis. Not all these problems were directly caused by Poland’s government, for example, the Auschwitz problem or the Prussian claims problem but one can’t help thinking that the government should invest more time in tact and diplomacy. We are now witnessing a more sinister crisis concerning the Anti-Missile Shield which some believe could re-ignite the ferocities of the Cold War. Add to that recent unrest in Estonia and Poland’s support of the Estonian government and we could be facing an international impasse. Let us hope and pray Russia’s increasing belligerence can be curbed.

However, what is most important for Poles is the feeling of security and stability after so many years of pain, strife and division. The power of diplomacy and unity has never been so important.

Politician Speak with Forked Tongue

The world is full of politicians who deliberately (or even unwittingly) try and effect language. Historians give countless examples of witless (or even intelligent) political schemers who have made their mark on language. Either through the coining of new compounds, bizarre collocations, alternative set phrases and mixed metaphors or through commentary about politicians by observers are we forever introduced to a variety of odd constructions that sometimes bubble and sink in the linguistic melting pot or float to the top like unwanted excrement refusing to disappear.

Poland’s politicians are no different and are busy at work trying to stamp their authority on the Polish language. I was filled with linguistic glee (whatever that is!) when I learned that Roman Giertych, of ultra-catholic, right-wing fame, won his battle for the re-introduction of uniforms in Poland’s primary and high schools because of the fact that some people have begun calling these uniforms Giertyszki or Romanówki - a great example of Polish’s delightful penchant for possessive-diminutives. This also reminds me of Borówki (which also means ‘berries’) referring to the team of people closely associated with Marek Borowski, leader of the SDPL.

However, what really drew my attention to the linguistic shenanigans of Poland’s political classes was Transubstantiation in which we find the following examples of political gobbledygook:

łże-elity,   bure suki,   lumpen liberałowie,   wykształciuchy

All these words are usually uttered with venom (or bile, take your pick) and are generally always directed at politicians of the ‘liberal persuasion’ (don’t say it out loud – this is Poland) by members of Law and Justice (PiS). Anyone who belongs to any sort of elite, intellectual grouping, academic team or is a liberal (struck out to make it less offensive) can be classed as one of the above.  As Transubstantiation tells us (but with additional commentary of my own) łże-elity are the ‘lying elite dogs’; bure suki is another subtle reference to dogs and it generally means ‘drab dogs/bitches’ (how nice!); lumpen liberałowie is a classic and shows the disdain with which PiS views liberalism – these are the ‘lowly liberals’, the ‘uber-scum of Poland’; the final one wykształciuchy is a brilliant perversion of the word ‘educated’ giving it a contemptuous coating. I’ve heard it used to refer to academics and journalists who refuse to be vetted by government authorities.

Whatever you think, you can’t say that politicians don’t have the gift of the gab. Yes, they’re ill-mannered, unfriendly and unethical, but they have the ability to make me smile when I hear the verbal garbage they use. The phrase that seems to have the greatest political (and statistical) currency in Poland at the moment is IV RP which has nothing to do with Received Pronunciation but is an abbreviation of czwarta Rzeczpospolita or ‘Fourth Republic’, a fantasy utopia coined by Poland’s President Lech Kaczyński to imply a new state that aims to cut all ties with the (post-communist) ‘Third Republic’ (1989 and onwards). The idea is interesting but has met with little support outside government circles leading to the even newer concept of the ‘Fifth Republic‘ put forward by Lech Mażewski.

We certainly do live in interesting times.

Ego Surfing

Ego surfing I think it’s called when you look for yourself on the web. Obviously, I’ve done it. I’ve done it lots and lots of times. The term brilliantly sums up the process of using the internet to pander to our egos.

Anyway, in an effort to break with my usual preoccupation of looking for myself on the internet – I mean I know what I’m going to find – I decided to search for the most bizarre links I could find using my own name as a reference point. My search didn’t go unrewarded.

I found that my name (or rather my surname) was shared by a host of wierdos, oddballs and freaks. Well, at least in my warped way of thinking. I tried to put myself in these situations and that’s when it started to get wierd. Uzar is many things on the internet – I’m Turkish, I’m an evil aquatic being, a body builder, a jailbird, you name it.

Once I trawled through the usual crap including my academic publications, radio work and other bits and bobs, I decided to filter out the serious stuff and focus on the wierd. As I mentioned, I share a surname with famous body builder Mike Uzar - I sincerely hope he’s family (!); I was sent to a page called – get this – “Find a Grave” – thoughts of DIY grave-digging sprung to mind; I found a news article about good old Charlie Uzar, one of the oldest inmates around – 96 years old and still in prison. Last but most certainly not least was the infamous (no, I’ve never heard of it before) film entitled Uzar’s Revenge which I simply must get hold of. It sounds like an absolute gas. My namesake is an evil alien aquatic scientist. If anyone out there is able to get hold of this, let me know.

And the point of all of this? Life’s a lot more amusing then we might think.

Eco Disaster

It has finally happened. The Podlasie Provincial Governor has given permission for the construction of the highway that will cut through the heart of the wetlands of the Rospuda Valley, one of the most unique peatland regions in Europe, not to mention the world.

According to the majority of ecologists, the so-called Augustów bypass will alter the Rozpuda Valley ecosphere beyond recognition. Many were hoping the central government would teach the local authorities a lesson in eco-protection. However, Poland’s Environment Minister rubber-stamped the decision and construction work is set to begin in the next few weeks, if not days.

The European Commission has threatened the Polish government with sanctions if the construction of the road goes ahead. These are not idle threats. The Commission ordered Spain to stop all traffic on a newly-built road that cut through an important natural region. Millions of euro, therefore, have been spent on a road that cannot be used. Poland’s ecologists and a large group of citizens are hopeful these EU threats will bring the government to its senses.

Several large protest groups have formed whose aim it is to undo the petty money-driven administrative decisions that could eradicate one of the last surviving biospheres of this kind. You are free to contact the Environment Ministry directly here or sign the petitions that might hopefully make a difference (‘Mire Conservation’ Petition; ‘Save Rospuda’ Petition and ‘Baltica’ Petition). A little bit of solidarity could help right the wrongs of those who have no concern for our environment.

Laziest Country in World

It has come to my attention that Poland and the Poles could well be regarded as the laziest nation in the European Union and perhaps the world. Why? How? According to the latest forecasts of the Social Insurance Fund (FUS) it seems that the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) will need sizeable state subsidies in order to function in the upcoming years. The annual deficit of FUS in the period 2008-2012 will be somewhere between a staggering PLN 18.8 billion and PLN 36.7 billion. If one takes into account that the new Pensions Act may be passed this year guaranteeing intermediary pensions for miners (how ridiculous is that!) the state will have to subsidise FUS to the tune of anything between PLN 93.8 billion and PLN 183.6 billion.

FUS is actually made up of four funds – the pension fund, disability fund, accident fund and sickness fund. They are responsible for collecting contributions and paying out benefit. According to the forecast, the pension fund will have the largest deficit which will be a minimum of PLN 152.9 billion within the next five years. 

One of the major reasons why this is the case is the fact that the average real age of retirement in Poland is 58.7 for men and 56 for women, the lowest age of retirement in the world. Poland also has the lowest number of working people between the ages of 55 and 64 in the European Union (27% compared with 42.2% in the EU).

I have always wondered why there are so many national holidays in Poland and always been annoyed at the work ethic (i.e. the lack of one) in this country. These statistics just bring the scary truth home to me. Poland either has to buck its ideas up and get to work or fall behind. Just imagine what could happen if they became the hardest working country in the world. The potential for change is more than just significant…

Cleaning Up after WWII

It seems the problems and legacy of World War II is still with us. The Prussian Claims Society (NB: not German but Prussian) has filed yet another lawsuit to the Strasbourg Court against Poland seeking compensation for property and financial losses due to expulsion of German citizens after the war. The lawsuits are nearly always filed against Poland, although the Society is keen on claiming compensation from the Czech Republic also.

If it wasn’t enough that both Poland and the Czech Republic had to deal with the debilitating losses during the War and then suffer the ignominious situation where – as allies – they were treated with as much honour as defeated war criminals. Poland territory was moved west (without their prior consultation), mass expulsions were forced upon the millions living in the eastern territories bringing death and misery to thousands and then, to cap it all off, almost half a century of totalitarian rule by an oppressor who ritually plundered, raped and pillaged the country’s financial and cultural wealth.

Poland joins the EU and what happens? The Germans come crying and moaning saying they were forced out of their homes. Not wanting to be relativistic and compare the suffering of the Poles and Polish Jews with that of the Germans (is it possible to put this on a scale?), the fact of the matter is, Germany lost the war and Poland – as part of the Allied Forces – was on the winning side (not that one could tell) as Germany was granted the millions flowing from the Marshall Plan, Poland was forced (by the USSR) to not take up the offer.

War is a terrible thing and pointing the finger after 50 years just simply won’t help. The Polish government has already announced that if the Society continue with their outrageous attempts to reclaim property and finances, Poland will be forced to seek war reparations from Germany, which of course would probably spell the end for amicable Polish-German relations.

In a sense, this all smells of Versailles…