Live Earth on Polish TV

It’s the first time that extensive coverage on Polish TV of one of these global media events. But many Poles will be right to ask: what is the point of all this?

Thenews.pl reports:

The most extensive coverage of “Live Earth” will be on TVP Kultura. From 8.00 a.m. till late at night the channel will transmit “Live Earth” concerts from, among others, New York, London, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Hamburg and Istanbul.

“Live Earth” will also be broadcast in special live coverage on MTV Polska. In addition, the station will also show a special, ecological episode of “Pimp my Ride” with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a guest star, and clips in which young people will tell about efficient ways to protect the environment.

The audience of RMF FM radio will also be at the centre of things - the station will cover the concerts in the form of commentaries and live coverage. In the evening the broadcaster will replay the most interesting parts of the event – the “Live Earth” music will be played all night.

Extensive coverage then. But apart from getting to see lots of live bands play a few songs, what else will Poles get from the experience?

A man with a mission
Life for Al Gore has changed over the last few years far quicker than the rate of climate change. Not ten years ago he was ‘Al Bore’ – the man who not only more wooden than a forest, but who also somehow lost an election he appeared to win. Or something.

Now, all of a sudden, he is ‘Mr Interesting’, a man with a mission, who can turn a power point presentation into a hit movie documentary with dire warnings about global warming, and bag himself an Oscar in the process.

Gore, the mann of the moment, the inspiration behind Live Earth, has said that climate warming is not ‘about politics’, it’s about morals…’ Meaning, it’s not up for debate, ‘it’ is a done deal, beyond the questioning of us mere mortals.

So what’s the point of Live Earth then? ‘To raise awareness’, says the Live Earth web site.

But you would have to be living on planet Mars to have missed – to have ‘low awareness’ of the constant, moralistic, media deluge on ‘carbon footprints’ and ‘carbon credits’. So what is the point of ‘raising awareness’ of something that everybody ‘knows’ and is ‘aware’ of all ready?

But maybe you wouldn’t have to be living on Mars to have missed that kind of media coverage. Maybe you might have been living in Poland?

It’s true – Poles have not been lectured about our ‘debt to the planet’ like those of you have in the UK or US. In a country that has been starved of economic development like Poland and the rest of the old ‘Eastern bloc’, has, being lectured by rich westerners - like Al Gore – about how we must cut our energy consumption (and cut the rate of economic growth) is frankly, a pain in the neck.

The constant self – flagulation that many middle class liberals go through in the west about global warming – “Ooo, I really must connect the manual knitting machine to the roof-top, small holdings wind farm, this weekend…” – is not so common among the aspiring middle class in Poland.

That’s because the Polish middle class ARE aspiring: much of the liberal, middle class in the UK, for instance, thinks advanced economic development is the reason why they are not happy…. “Perhaps if we went back to living in straw huts and drove around in Ox - drawn carts we might improve our self esteem’, they ponder over organic nuts and berries.

So maybe the real target of Al Gore and assorted celebrities this weekend is not just to improve their self esteem and make them feel important: perhaps the target audience is people in emerging economies – like China, India, Poland, who want the benefit of economic development, so as to be in a better position to adapt to any change mother nature has in store.

And that, for Al Gore, is amoral.

I think I liked him more when he was boring.

Belated happy July 4 from Poland

Poles still like the Americans, but not nearly as much as they used to.

According to the Global Attitudes Project by the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of Poles have positive feelings towards the United States. That’s higher than the average in Europe.

But support for America is declining in Poland. Back in 2000 – only seven years ago - 86 percent of Poles supported the United States.

So Poland may be one of the best friends America has got in this part of the world, but if the trend over the last decade is anything to go by, then this support is becoming more and more lukewarm.

Poland nursing a grudge

The EU deal that wasn't; striking doctors and nurses; and the Father Henryk Jankowski – Mel Gibson connection: the usual weird and wonderful stories out of Poland didn’t stop just because I went on holiday.

For the last two weeks now, nurses have joined doctors and come out on strike and camped themselves, literally, opposite the prime minister’s office. Just half a kilometer from where I live, a line of tents – a ‘white city’ - has emerged on the plush Ujazdowski Avenue, and lining the lush Lazinki Park.

Work to rule, even hunger strikes have been part of the protest – these people are pretty desperate. Not hard to imagine why as both sets of workers get less than the national wage for doing a job that requires a much higher than average level of skills and training.

The government has been unsympathetic (unlike the general public) to their plight and repeatedly claimed that ‘there is no more money’ – as they waste billions sending armed forces to Afghanistan and Iraq, and elsewhere besides.

The latest news appears to be an offer by health minister Zbigniew Religa for a 30 percent pay rise… next year. The nurses and doctors must be tempted to take the offer and pack up their tents.

EU agreement that wasn’t

Chancellor Merkel must have felt proud of herself when she got Poland to sign up to the new EU Treaty, an agreement which included Warsaw accepting a new method of voting that decreased its influence in Brussels. This was a surprise as the ‘square root’ method favoured by the Polish government was something that the Kaczynskis claimed was ‘worth dieing for…’.

Well, President Lech Kaczynski had to come home from the summit in Germany with his tail between his legs and very much alive.

Unfortunately, his brother, PM Jaroslaw appears to have been none too pleased by Lech’s work abroad. He suddenly announced days after the deal was signed and sealed that, in fact, Warsaw did not accept the deal. He said that it was unfair to relate the voting weight of a country to the size of its population. Why? “Because Poland’s population would have been much larger than the current 38 million if not for the Nazis (and Soviets) murder during WW II.”

Er…um…

This is indeed a strange argument. Should Ireland be given greater voting strength in the EU because it suffered a 25 percent decrease in its population during the Potato Famine of the 1840s?

As someone said to me at work today – to think something like that in private is understandable, but to use it as a negotiating tactic is ludicrous.

A better argument would have been to point out that WW II, and the Soviet occupation after it, severely stalled the lively development Poland experienced between the two world wars.

But even still – I don’t think even that argument would have increased Poland’s entitlement to EU structural funds.

Father Jankowski – a bit like David Beckham, actually

The Dziennik newspaper printed a story today revealing that the priest so prominent during the Solidarity strikes of 1980 has contacted Mel Gibson to direct the planned biopic of Jankowski’s life.

Funding for the new movie is no problem – some big name sponsors are ready to sign up. All the film needs is the delicate touch of Gibson, director of the film The Passion, which ultra-Catholic Jankowski obviously greatly enjoyed.

It was also revealed that Father Jankowski is releasing a new range of cosmetics – notably a perfume called HJ – and he is also, via the Jankowski Institute, opening a chain of cafes, which will be serving wine, vintage Jankowski, as every bottle has the priest’s face on it.

But what will this new perfume and wine smell and taste like?

Well some are expecting them to smell and taste of…anti-Semitism.

Jankowski has been repeatedly told off by the Vatican for his anti-Semitic statements. In 1997 the Polish Church was forced to ban him preaching for one year after these kind of remarks, reported by the Anti-Defamation League:

‘[Jankowski said]…in June 1995, with Polish President Lech Walesa in attendance, that members of the Polish government have secret allegiances to Israel or Russia, and that the Jewish Star of David was part of the Nazi swastika and the communist hammer and sickle. In December 1995, during a meeting at his Church, Father Jankowski said, "I have nothing to apologize for my [anti-Jewish] words...Why shouldn't we talk about such things as the murder of Germans by Jews? Why may we not talk about the Jewish-communist administration that governs Poland today? The reason is that they have banks, and everything else in their hands."

So will Jankowski become the new Polish David Beckham, endorsing all sorts of products, from wine to cosmetics, or is his ‘brand’ already tarnished by his ugly prejudices?

Beatroot goes to Venice

Back July 2

What’s Polish for: Can I fondle your buttocks?

"Proszę, czy mogę pogładzić twój miękki tyłeczek"?

Just one of the lines in a small ‘tourist glossary’ thought up by an Irishman who is a frequent visitor to the weekend tourist hotspot of Krakow.

The phrases in the little dictionary are written out in English phonetics, so the above sentence I suppose would read:

‘Proshe, che moge pogwaghich tfoy mienki tewechek?

The phrase book also includes other chat up lines (all bound to fail, of course) such as: "Jestem twoim niewolnikiem". (I am your slave’).

There have been many stories in the press about Brits on stag party weekends in Krakow, Wroclaw, etc getting stinking drunk and upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the oh, so cultured inhabitants of the city. This is just the latest of them.

The Super Express tabloid even reported in the oh so supiorior tone of the most snobbish of Krakovian – “The locals are disgusted’….’They [drunken British - Irish] deserve a punch in the nose…’. Blah, blah…

They seem to miss the point that the phrasebook is obviously a silly joke.

They also seem to forget that there are well over half a million Poles in Britain and Ireland and many of them are going out nighttime and getting completely hammered.

And long may they do so.

Being a half Brit/Irish myself, I find some of the antics of the British and Irish in Poland slightly embarrassing. But let’s get this in perspective: a few hundred lads having a good time in Krakow should be met with as much tolerance as a few hundred thousand Poles should be welcomed in the UK and Ireland.

The Super Express tabloid – which when reporting the story adopts a high condescending tone (in amongst pictures of topless women and other tabloid trash) is merely reproducing some of the rubbish journalism that has appeared in the British press about Poles since they arrived in high numbers three years ago.

Super Express deserves a punch on the nose.

Update: I can reveal (as the hacks would say) that the origin of this ‘phrase book’ is actually TWO YEARS OLD - that's before the cheap airlines started flying over the British stag parties. This dumb Polish tabloid story is not even fresh news! Dumb, gets dumber. Cheap journalism gets cheaper still. See online phrase book here.

Bush in Poland

He came, he saw, he got an attack of the trots.

Not Trotsky-ists – the few hundred anti-globalists who turned up in northern Poland to protest the visit of the President of the Free World do not have many old Trots in their ‘movement’ – Bush got an attack of the G-8 trots, otherwise known as ‘Euro summit diarrhea’.

But he found time to meet up with President Lech Kaczynski and wife, Maria.

Notice the woman with dark hair, of ample bottom and the sleeves of her top shrunken by too much washing machine action, behind Kaczynski? She’s the translator, as Lech has no clue what Bush and Mrs Bush are babbling on about - otherwise known as 'Bush's verbal diarrhea'. Maria speaks English, apparently.

The translator later had to translate to George Bush in English what George Bush was babbling on about.

Bush also got to discuss anti-missile shields with a dog; meanwhile, Lech Kaczynski abducts a member of the Putin Youth Movement, Nashi.

Bush then found time to apologise for getting Lech involved in Iraq...anti-missile shield...CIA prisons…Afghanistan…...still no visa waver program...…

Council of Europe nails Kwasniewski and WSI as CIA stooges?

The report headed by Dick Marty (above) claims that CIA prisons in Poland were known about by the then president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, and operated in collaboration with agents from the now disbanded Military Intelligence Agency (WSI).

The report’s main finding, I suppose, is that Poland and Romania both operated clandestine CIA prisons, but the one near Szymany airstrip in northern Poland was set up to hold so-called High Value Detainees (HVD) – in other words, the most dangerous of suspected al-Qaeda type terrorists. Poland was the site of the CIA’s most important and sensitive ‘prison’ in Europe.

The 9,000 word report – much of which I have waded through – paints a picture of the now disbanded Military Intelligence Service (WSI) as a ‘cartel’ operating on behalf of ‘self-interested elites’, and beyond the oversight of civil bodies, such as parliament, or even the prime minister’s office.

But not the president’s office. One ‘military intelligence source’ (the report is full of unnamed ‘sources’) told Dick Marty:

“Listen, Poland agreed top down…from the president, yes….to provide the CIA all it needed.”

The recruitment

CIA agents apparently identified ‘point men’ within the WSI – which the present PiS government, when giving reasons for disbanding it last year, described as operating as if it was a ‘state within a state’. The report seems to make the same allegations.

Once identified and recruited these ‘point men’ would be told things on a need to know basis, and that information stayed within this small circle of operatives.

The WSI had two functions, says the report, when aiding the CIA in the rendition program. It provided military security when prison transfers were taking place; and it infiltrated other state organs, such as the Air Navigation Services Agency, the Border Guards and Customs Office to make the smooth running of the transfers a very closed secret.

Top agent – Jerzy Kos?

One of the top agents was apparently Jerzy Kos, who was head of the Board of Mazury-Szczytno Airport Company. ‘He was our man,’ says one ‘source’.

Later Kos went to work for a private construction company (Wrocławska Jedynka – in which the public National Investment Fund has a stake, and which has received state loans in the past of over 1 million zloty to pay off redundant workers) which gained contracts in war torn Iraq. This Mr Kos is quite a guy.

The plot thickens

When, in June 2004, Kos became a kidnap victim in Baghdad, the American Special Forces staged a rare raid to free him (see Fox News report of rescue). The implication is that Kos is a very valuable guy to the CIA.

CIA sources said that they picked Poland initially, then Romania, as they believed that much of central and eastern Europe does not, yet, have trustworthy secret services.

But Poland, in particular, was different. One source told Marty:

“We have an extraordinary relationship with Poland. My experience is that if Poles can help us, they will.”

Poland negotiated its agreement with the CIA, says the report, in late 2002, early 2003.

“We have established that the first HVDs were transferred to Poland in the first half of 2003,” says the report’s author.

The most highly prized HVDs to have been detained in Poland were Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shekh Mohamed. Both were subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation techniques...' These ‘techniques’ have been controversial, to say the least (and described here).

The evidence for all this comes from the many ‘unnamed sources’, and from flight logs (see here), which have detailed the landings and taking off of CIA planes – evidence, most of which identified by Human Rights Watch when it first made the allegations back in November 2005.

The ‘new evidence’ – or ‘proof’ as Marty has termed them - appears to come from the interviews with the unnamed sources.

So they are impossible to verify.

But the picture that the report paints is plausible. The government disbanded the WSI because it thought it was out of control, and was operating, just as the report says, as a state within a state, on behalf of ‘elites’ – the present government, of course, would refer to these elites as the infamous ‘uklad’.

So it is perfectly possible that renditioned prisoners were being held in Poland, before being flown off to even more darker places, under the noses of prime ministers and parliamentarians. Hence their genuine ignorance.

But the accusation that former president Aleksander Kwasniewski was in on all this is a dangerous one for him, just as he is making his ‘political comeback’.

Yesterday, Kwasniewski said: “I deny it. I have as much many times.”

Yes, Olek, but do we believe you, anymore?

Read the report