#tvn24

[batri-jopa]

Shockingly, almost every participant in the march who agreed to talk to us admitted that he did not watch the latest TVN 24 reportage titled "Franciszkańska 3", so he does not know the facts presented there from the period when Karol Wojtyła was still a Krakow metropolitan. Thus, these people protested against something they did not really know.

Where the fuck do I live...😵��💫

[whisperofthewaves]

btw I just randomly remembered today was the first time I learnt the british queen had more children and grandchildren than charles and the two princes. like there's 2/3 of a family tree I had no idea about. not that it adds anything to my life. still mildly surprising

[hotdyke-hardstyle]

VICTORIA DE ANGELIS for TVN24 GO (2022)

[djkerr]

📷 @wronam via Twitter/X

📷 @tvn24 via Twitter/X

📷 Jerald Lentini via FB

Christine Baranski joined Polish-American leaders for a bus tour from Philadelphia to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania as part of a “Get Out The Vote” (GOTV) campaign in Luzerne County. They traveled to Luzerne County’s Polish and Eastern European neighborhoods to rally support among the community for Kamala Harris.

In a telephone interview this past Monday [source], Baranski said she is looking forward to meeting people and talking about the campaign.

“I’m up for anything,” Baranski said. “I might knock on doors, do some canvassing and I’ll even give pep talks to volunteers. And I hope to speak at a rally at the end of the day.”

Baranski said she is supporting Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz because she feels they have the compassion and empathy for middle class people and will do all they can to improve their lives.

“And I can relate to that,” Baranski said. “I grew up in Buffalo, NY, in a home with a lot of economic anxiety. So I decided I wanted to get out and talk about this campaign and our vice president, who I hope will be our next president.”

Baranski said she can relate to Harris because, like Harris’ mom, Baranski’s mother sacrificed a lot to make ends meet.

“I think Vice President Harris has a visceral approach based on her life experience,” Baranski said. “She knows what that struggle for success is all about, in contrast to her opponent who inherited millions of dollars from his father and who lives in a gilded palace in Florida. Kamala Harris has a tremendous capacity for empathy that is born of experience because she lived through it — she understands.”

(October 16, 2024)

[nerdy-needy]

North Korean refugees in Poland

During the Korean War 1,500 orphans from North Korea were sent to Poland, with the majority arriving in 1953.

They were placed in a small, remote location in Płakowice due to the confidential nature of the operation. A group of around 1,200 children arrived in Poland after enduring two years of harsh conditions in the Soviet Union. They were taught by Korean and Polish caregivers, but the Korean supervisors limited the affection shown by the Polish caregivers. They were taught the same subjects as Polish students with additional Korean language and history as well as civic education.

The orphans were constantly reminded of their homeland and the revered leader, Kim Il-sung, through propaganda films and strict protocols.

However, between 1957 and 1959, all North Koreans were suddenly repatriated, despite the children's attempts to delay the transfer. After returning to North Korea, the orphans faced a challenging reality of hard labor. They maintained correspondence with their Polish caregivers with whom they have created a very close relationship, calling them "moms" and "dads", telling them how much they missed them. Some tried escaping. The letters stopped arriving around 1961 when the correspondence was banned.

"left to Korea" Municipal archive in Otwock / Source: tvn24 (https://tvn24.pl)

one of the Korean refugees nicknamed "Małpka" with her caretaker's son

an article about it here

a documentary film here

[mariacallous]

With Russia’s intelligence network decimated since its invasion of Ukraine, signs from Poland point to an army of ‘useful idiots’ hired locally to carry out espionage, sabotage and arson.

Poland’s government has been vocal in its warning about the risk of covert operations by Russia and said it is planning to invest more in the country’s security agencies and take other measures to counter that rising threat.

On May 27, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski announced the introduction of restrictions on the movement of Russian diplomats on its territory, citing evidence that the Russian state is involved in authorising sabotage operations on its soil.

This followed a series of announcements by the prime minister. On May 14, Donald Tusk announced his government would invest an additional 100 million zloty (about 23 million euros) in Poland’s security agencies, as well as reverse a decision made under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government to shut down regional branches of the Internal Security Agency (ABW), the institution in charge of combatting covert activities and terrorism.

To justify his decisions, the prime minister said there was a “growing threat in Europe and in Poland regarding the aggressive actions of the Russian and Belarusian intelligence services”. The scale of these actions has of late become “bigger and more disturbing”, he added, informing that, in recent weeks, Poland had prevented “attempts at direct action, including sabotage and attempted arson”.

Over the subsequent weeks, the Polish government kept the issue in the headlines. On May 21, Tusk told TVN24 that nine people had been arrested and charged with “involvement in acts of sabotage in Poland and on behalf of Russian services”. Judging by the list of such arrests available on the website of ABW, the figure given by Tusk seemed to be a summary of recent events as opposed to a single new development.

The following day, he announced the formation of a commission to evaluate Russian influence among the Polish political class, designed to feed information to prosecutors. During the TVN24 interview the previous night, Tusk had suggested that inquiries about Russian influence in Poland have appeared to converge on the person of Antoni Macierewicz, a former PiS defence minister and hardliner – a notion previously explored by investigative journalist Tomasz Piatek in his book Macierewicz i jego tajemnice (“Macierewicz and his secrets”).

In parallel to these announcements, several fires broke out in May across Poland, including at Warsaw’s largest shopping centre at Marywilska 44, which led to speculation, including by government officials, that these might have been the result of Russian sabotage. There has not, however, so far been any evidence publicised to indicate that.

Indeed, the ordinary Polish citizen could be forgiven for feeling a sense of a heightened, imminent Russian threat on Polish territory following these incidents, coupled with the ominous statements and speculation coming out of the government.

Certainly, there seems to be unanimity among security experts that Russian covert actions are a real risk for Poland and the rest of Europe today. But how seriously should we take the incidences that have happened in Poland to date?

Arrested developments

Contacted by BIRN, Poland’s counterintelligence agency did not give a precise number of arrests or convictions related to Russian covert operations but referred us to the information on its website. Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, ABW indicates 28 people have been arrested on charges related to espionage or sabotage in favour of Russia, leading to the pressing of charges against 19 individuals; a couple of others were expelled. These numbers are indicative, as not every arrest or conviction has an entry on the ABW page, to the best of BIRN’s knowledge.

But what is clear is that the arrests have intensified over the last year, especially in recent months.

ABW arrested in April a Polish man who had allegedly expressed his readiness to cooperate with Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, including providing information about the Rzeszow-Jasionka airport, the main hub through which military and other aid for Ukraine transits. ABW claims the information this man was to provide would likely be used to organise an attempt to murder the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

In late January, a Ukrainian man was arrested for planning, on instruction from Russian intelligence agencies, to set fire to facilities located “close to elements of strategically important infrastructure” in the south-western city of Wroclaw. In late May, three men allegedly part of the same network were arrested in other locations in Poland.

The Polish security agencies have also been closely cooperating with their Czech and European peers in helping to dismantle the Voice of Europe disinformation network – a vast influence and propaganda operation whose rolling up is continuing to ensnare various European politicians and aides.

On January 19, in connection to the Voice of Europe affair, a Polish man described as “well placed in national and European parliamentarians’ circles” was charged with spying for Russia, including conducting “propaganda actions, disinformation and provocations”. The Poles have been continuing the investigation since, with searches across the country and sequestering tens of thousands of euros in March.

In April, two Polish men were arrested for allegedly attacking Russian activist Leonid Volkov in front of his home in Vilnius. The Poles were linked to extremist football hooligan networks and seem to have been hired for the job by a Belarusian working for Russia.

Finally, in what is likely to be the biggest spy-related operation to date, charges were laid against 16 individuals for being part of a Russian spying network in November 2023. Their actions included the “reconnaissance of military facilities and critical infrastructure, monitoring and documenting the passage of transports to Ukraine, and preparations for the derailment of trains to Ukraine.” The members of the network, originating from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, are already in prison, most serving final sentences.

Besides the arrests, another key incident happened in May, when a Polish judge, Tomasz Szmydt, fled to Belarus and requested political asylum there, sparking fears that he had been a Russian or Belarusian asset all along.

What is becoming clear, say intelligence experts, is that these Polish examples are in line with a wider European trend identified by security experts, whereby Russia, devoid of its extensive network of intelligence operatives since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, is outsourcing its spying and sabotage to cheaper local providers.

‘Cut price’ spying

As part of an investigation published in May, the Wall Street Journal spoke to a 23-year-old Ukrainian called Maxim Leha, who is currently in prison in the eastern city of Lublin. The Polish authorities consider him to be the leader of the 16-man spying network. Based on Leha’s account, most of the spies recruited in Poland by GRU contacts were young Ukrainians, Belarusians or Poles, adrift young men looking to earn a bit of extra cash.

The job they had to do was oftentimes simple: stick a phone camera to a pole next to where trains carrying military aid to Ukraine are passing and later share the footage. But, by using multiple sources like these, the Russians can gather significant amounts of intelligence, security experts agree.

In another example provided to BIRN by Pawel Makowiec, a cybersecurity expert at CyberDefense24.pl website, members of the Kremlin-linked hacker group Cyber Army of Russia Reborn accessed a wastewater utility in Wydminy, north-east Poland, in January, recording themselves as they played around with the control panel at the plant.

“This is a big security fail since the hackers got in,” Makowiec comments. “But what you also see on the video is that the hackers didn’t really know what they were doing when they were pushing those buttons around. They were not able to cause any actual damage at the plant.”

Indeed, Gazeta Wyborcza’s report on one of the football fans arrested for attacking Volkov in Vilnius said the man is likely to have been ignorant about the political dimension of the attack he was paid to do.

The WSJ calls this approach to spying “low cost” and “low risk” for Russia. Beginning with 2018’s Novichok poisoning in the UK, the discovery the same perpetrators were responsible for the 2014 Vrbetice munitions depot explosion in Czechia and then the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European states expelled around 500 Russian diplomats, including many individuals considered to be spies. This has forced Russia’s various intelligence agencies to rebuild those networks using non-professional hires, oftentimes Russian-speaking individuals – including Ukrainian, Belarusian or Russian refugees – already based in the target countries.

“These cheap and seemingly bumbling efforts are nothing to be sneered at,” a senior Western military intelligence official told the WSJ. “They are part of a large toolbox of intelligence gathering that has helped Russia destroy key materiel with minimum investment.”

A major 2024 report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the UK’s leading security think tank, reached a similar conclusion. “Russia is using unconventional methods to expand its influence, evade containment, and destabilise and disrupt its adversaries – and is making progress in several directions,” it said.

“Russian methods are often unsophisticated and there is a litany of failures,” the authors wrote. “Nevertheless, they persist, and so there is a requirement for sustained vigilance.”

Back in Poland, Makowiec also thinks it would be naïve to dismiss the Russian threat, while also cautioning that it is important to avoid knee-jerk reactions and instead analyse events carefully, as some of them probably have nothing to do with Russia.

He gives an example of an incident from last summer, when trains were stopped on the tracks after an alarm sound was sent on the internal radio system. While many media reported it is as likely to be caused by Russia, Makowiec says such situations are actually commonplace in Poland as the radio system is easy to access.

“We are a frontline country and transport hub for Ukraine, no wonder people always suspect it’s the Russians when something like this happens. But we have to be very careful in assessing what happened,” he says.

“At least when it comes to cybersecurity, I’m not too worried,” Makowiec adds. “Our cybersecurity experts are in the global lead and governmental websites have really stepped up security measures in the last years. Still, the Russians might always surprise us.”

Certainly, Poland is facing a wave of disinformation, cyber-attacks and attempts at sabotage and espionage. But the level so far might not merit the level of panic that one can feel when watching the news over the past few weeks.

Writing for Gazeta Wyborcza, journalist Dominika Maciejasz reminded readers that Polish cities face fires every hot season, many of which are caused by waste companies trying to illegally get rid of waste.

If officials bring up the Russian suspicion with every incident even when there is no evidence pointing in that direction, Maciejasz argues, “the effect will be that an avalanche of speculation will spread and start living a life of its own”.

One of the possible consequences of that could be to make Poles more suspicious of Ukrainian and Belarusian refugees, or simply cause panic among the public – both effects that, ironically, Russia is looking to achieve in Poland.

[tomorrowusa]

Two headlines which help explain the victory of Poland's pro-democracy opposition in Sunday's election...

Opozycja zmobilizowała niegłosujących. Na PiS głosował żelazny elektorat (The opposition mobilized non-voters. An iron electorate voted for PiS)

Stats are preliminary, but voter turnout was around 73% in Sunday's parliamentary election – a post-Communist high. The opposition got out the vote – big time. As many as 31% of the eligible voters who did not vote in the 2019 election voted in this one. Meanwhile, the ruling party whose acronym is PiS tightly held on to its own voters; it wasn't enough for them. 87% of PiS voters had voted in 2019.

Wśród młodych najwięcej stracił PiS (PiS lost most among young people)

Of the five party groupings which won seats in the Sejm, PiS came in fifth among voters under 30. Donald Tusk's Koalicja Obywatelska (KO) came in first and Lewnica came in second. The rigid socially conservative agenda of PiS was regarded as repulsive by many young people in Poland.

But wait, there's more!

One aspect of the youth vote which the second TVN24 article did not emphasize is that women were particularly important in the turnout. This is from a DW article about the defeat of PiS.

High turnout thanks to young and female voters

Observers say young and female voters, motivated by the issue of abortion rights — which the ruling PiS has sought to curtail and Donald Tusk has promised to liberalize — turned out in large numbers to support opposition parties. "Until recently, half of women said they would not vote," sociologist Justyna Kajta of SWPS University in Warsaw told AFP news agency. "Now these exit polls actually show more women than men voted."

From "half of women said they would not vote" to "more women than men voted" shows how decisive increased involvement by women, especially younger women, can be.

During the 2020 demonstrations against the extremist anti-abortion law authored by PiS I saw a sign which this election reminded me of. It displayed a fundamental truth as well as a great bilingual political pun based on a classic song by Bob Marley.

The word kraj is pronounced like the English word cry. In Polish, kraj means country though in certain contexts it tends to refer to Poland in particular. For language nerds, you may recognize it as coming from the same Slavic root as Ukraine (Ukraina as written in Polish).

For a well-functioning country, you need active participation by women in the political process. That happened this week in Poland. ❤️🇵🇱

So massive GOTV and appealing to forward-looking young people had a considerable impact in Poland. Those are lessons which should not be overlooked by center-left parties and coalitions in other countries.

BTW, a second exit poll was released for Sunday's election. It showed the current opposition with 249 seats in the Sejm; that's one more than the earlier poll. But the official results should be available by the middle of the week.

[beardedmrbean]

Special services in Poland have discovered and removed bugging devices in a room where cabinet ministers were due to meet.

The weekly cabinet meeting normally takes place in the prime minister’s office in Warsaw.

But Tuesday's session was relocated to the southern city of Katowice because several ministers, including Prime Minister Donald Tusk, were due to attend a major economic conference there.

Poland has seen increased spying activity since it became an international hub for military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion.

In a separate case this week a judge has sought asylum in neighbouring Belarus, and Mr Tusk said on Tuesday he had access to confidential documents.

“The State Protection Service, in co-operation with the Internal Security Agency, detected and dismantled devices that could be used for eavesdropping," wrote security services spokesman Jacek Dobrzynski on X. "The services are carrying out further activities in this matter."

Mr Dobrzynski told the TVN24 broadcaster the devices were found during a routine security sweep of the room. Poland’s Internal Security Agency is now investigating what the devices were, and who could possibly have installed them.

Following the security check, the cabinet meeting went ahead in the building as planned.

A spokeswoman for the Silesia regional authorities, Alicja Waliszewska, told state news agency PAP that the device may have been part of the room’s old communication system that was no longer operational.

The discovery follows news on Monday that a Polish judge is seeking asylum in neighbouring Belarus.

Tomasz Szmydt, a judge at the Voivodship Administrative Court in Warsaw, told a news conference in Minsk his actions were in protest against Poland’s “harmful” policy towards Belarus and Russia that could result in armed conflict between the countries.

Investigators are checking whether the judge had been spying. He was reportedly due to rule next month on cases concerning security clearance for confidential information on Nato, of which Poland is a member.

Commenting on the affair, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on X: ��A traitor. The only question is since when.”

Mr Szmydt gained notoriety in Poland for his involvement in an online smear campaign that was allegedly run from the justice ministry against judges who opposed the judicial reform introduced by the previous Law and Justice-led government.

Donald Tusk has convened a meeting of the Secret Services College for Wednesday to discuss potential Russian and Belarusian influence in Polish politics in recent years.

“We must be aware that services, in this case Belarusian ones, worked with a person who had direct access to the minister of justice… who had access to various classified documents to which no intelligence service should have had access,” the prime minister told a news conference.

Former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro has denied ever meeting the judge.

Mr Tusk added that "the fact that judge Szmydt’s relationship with the Belarusians has a long history... must raise our greatest concern".

Last year, the Polish authorities charged several members of an alleged Russian spy network who were tasked with preparing sabotage acts to paralyse the supply of weapons and aid to Ukraine.

Cameras were discovered near the Rzeszow-Jasionka airport near the Ukrainian border that serves as a logistics hub and is protected by American troops and Patriot missile batteries.

[myslodsiewniav]

4.01.2024

Umowy wysłał (satysfakcja jest), przeprosił, ale zaraz potem dodał, że to w sumie moja wina, że mu nie przypomniałam xD (czyli nie przeprosił xD).

LOOOOOOL

Druga sprawa - umówiłam się do lekarza. Zobaczymy na co dadzą mi skierowanie (muszę zbadać wit D i B12, bo tą anemię to nadal na 200% procent mam). Na luty, po sesji egzaminacyjnej, ustawię się na badanie u gina - must totalny.

Niebawem będzie też pierwsza rocznica zgubienia dowodu osobistego i odwołania wakacji na Cyprze (na które wylecieć mieliśmy 3 dni po zdarzeniu). Chlip. [pomyślałam o tym, bo zgubiłam ID właśnie w dzień robienia corocznych badań, morfologii, wit D, B15, hormonów, ech... No i wynika mi z tego, że się regularnie badam, z czego jestem dumna]

Ojciec cisnął siostrę, a teraz mnie, żebym namalowała obraz wilka (moja sis namalowała wilka w zeszłym roku - piękna sprawa, weszła w malarstwo olejne, bardzo mocno wsiąkła) - bo siostra nie chce mu oddać tego wilka, a on ma marzenie, by podarować taki hiperrealistyczny obraz... Tuskowi. Bo Tusk w jakimś wywiadzie coś tam o sympatii do wilków gadał. JPDL. To weszło za mocno i wychodzi za daleko, ten TVN24 siada mu na mózg. Ze zgrozą stwierdzam, że mój tato wyznaje Tuska tak, jak odbiorcy Radia Maryja - Rydzyka.

Poza tym - dostałam odpowiedź z uniwerku, tam, gdzie się starałam o pracę: podziękowali mi za rozmowę, nie zatrudnią mnie. Dostałam też info z konkursu fotograficznego - nie jestem wśród wygranych, być może będę wśród wyróżnionych (a może nie).

[moonbowplushie]

This post is making rounds again. Can we please stop?

These birds are dead. This is a photo taken in Chernihiv, Ukraine. A small flock of birds got spooked and flew into a glass bus stop. The photo was taken from a report by a local news outlet. Fifteen birds were found, only one survived. Initially a zoo volounteer posted about the birds in a local facebook group.

Sources: 1. https://konkret24.tvn24.pl/polska/to-sa-pijane-jemioluszki-nie-oto-co-przedstawia-zdjecie-i-gdzie-powstalo-6624499 2. https://www.facebook.com/groups/zoovolonterChe/posts/1622619711571704/ 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEDj1yQVKRw

Photos of the dead birds and the one alive one from the fb group under the cut. Of course CW for animal death.

[ukrpress]

Польских войск на Украине не будет

Появление польских войск в Украине необходимо исключить, заявил в эфире телеканала TVN24 глава польского Бюро нацбезопасности Яцек Севера. “На сегодняшний день участие польских войск в Украине необходимо исключить” , – сказал Севера. Кроме того, глава польского Бюро нацбезопасности отметил, что Украина не сможет отвоевать занятые Россией территории даже после расширения мобилизации. “Это и так…

[head-post]

Poland’s Duda displeased with PiS-backed presidential candidate

Polish President Andrzej Duda voiced his displeasure with the new presidential candidate from his party, Karol Nawrocki, Euractiv reported.

Duda is due to finish his second term in 2025 and will not be able to run for another term. Therefore, PiS was forced to find another candidate for next year’s elections. The choice fell on Nawrocki, the president of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN).

Speaking about the presidential candidates at a press conference in Armenia last week, Duda forgot Nawrocki but recalled the names of the remaining nominees, including Donald Tusk of the Civic Coalition and Rafał Trzaskowski, the incumbent mayor of Warsaw.

I like the fact that the formation of the group of candidates for Polish president is ongoing. […] The Civic Coalition has presented its candidate, Mr Rafał Trzaskowski. PiS supports the civic candidate… Mr Karol Nawrocki.

Experts speculate that Duda may have felt insulted that he was not even asked about what happens next with the presidential election. Agata Adamek from the private TVN24 channel claimed:

He feels like a politician who actually accomplished a task that, when he was running for president, seemed impossible.

According to Adamek, Duda allegedly considered national-oriented candidate Sławomir Mentzen “a more interesting candidate.” Mentzen, 38, is co-chairman of the Confederation Party and has served in the Polish parliament since last year.

Poland is due to hold presidential elections on 11 or 18 May 2025. The speaker of parliament, Szymon Hołownia, will set the date on 8 January. Five candidates have been nominated for the presidency: in addition to Trzaskowski, Nawrocki and Mentzen, Hołownia and the Republican Marek Jakubiak plan to compete for the presidency.

Read more HERE

[asestgrin]

Польша продвигает серьёзную провокацию в отношении России на Украине

Министр иностранных дел Польши Радослав Сикорский в эфире телеканала TVN24 заявил, что на предстоящей министерской встрече НАТО может быть поднят вопрос о перехвате ракет, запускаемых над территорией Украины. Эта инициатива Польши связана с усиливающейся напряжённостью в Восточной Европе и стремлением стран НАТО усилить меры защиты и поддержки Украины в условиях продолжающегося конфликта. Сикорский подчеркнул, что вопрос о перехвате ракет имеет стратегическое значение, поскольку это решение мож... Читать дальше »

[liberte-news]

OFF Radio Kraków, první polská stanice vytvořená umělou inteligencí, šokovala posluchače rozhovorem s Wislawou Szymborskou. Kritici žádají návrat k lidským moderátorům, zatímco vedení slibuje nový formát vysílání zaměřený na mladé.

POLSKO | Podle Polského rozhlasu Krakov je OFF Radio “první stanicí vytvořenou umělou inteligencí” v Polsku. Moderátoři Kuba, Emi a Alex, kteří se specializují na současný život, ve skutečnosti neexistují, jsou výtvory AI, stejně jako texty na stránkách stanice, píše TVN24. ILUSTRAČNÍ FOTO V úterý si lidé mohli poslechnout rozhovor týkající se současné literatury s básnířkou a nositelkou…

[tomorrowusa]

Is it a coincidence that the election night map on TVN24 in Poland used the colors of the Ukrainian flag to designate which party was ahead in each województwo (province)? 🙂🇺🇦🇵🇱

In any case, here are the final results from the official election authority the Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza.

The official results in the number of seats per party were amazingly close to the exit polls. While the specific number of seats per party differed slightly, the Sunday night Ipsos poll and these official results both give the three pro-democracy parties a total of 248 seats.

The official turnout (74.38%) was more than a percentage point higher than the already high exit poll estimate. This is the highest turnout since the 1989 election which saw the end of communism in Poland.

When you vote, you win.

People who have lived under authoritarianism don't need to be prodded into voting.

Tim Mak is an American journalist in Ukraine. He tells about Marcin Banasiak, a Polish citizen who is doing humanitarian work in Eastern Ukraine. Long story short: Just to vote in Sunday's election, Marcin spent 26 hours traveling from Kharkiv to Warsaw. That required traveling almost the entire length of Ukraine and then over to Warsaw via the border city of Chełm.

Read Tim's account of Marcin's vote quest at Mastodon.

If Marcin can spend 26 hours (traveling one way) to help rescue democracy in Poland, we should not complain about the minor inconveniences related to voting in the US.

American historian and journalist Anne Applebaum lives in Poland with her husband Radek Sikorski who happens to be an MEP and former cabinet member in the previous Donald Tusk government. In The Atlantic (archived) on Monday she wrote about what led to the pro-democracy victory at the polls.

[A]bout 73 percent of Poles voted across the country, far more than the number that voted in 1989, and in some places the turnout was higher than 80 percent. In Warsaw, Gdansk, Lublin, and Wroclaw, as well as some European cities, voters stood in line for many hours, polling stations ran out of ballots, and some people were able to vote only long after the polls had been scheduled to close. At one Warsaw polling station near midnight, an election worker wept on live television, thanking her compatriots for showing up in such large numbers. How did they do it? Anger is a powerful emotion, and over the past year, PiS made a lot of people angry. Repeated PiS corruption scandals—corruption being one of the inevitable results of politicized judges, police, and prosecutors—certainly helped the opposition. So did high inflation, partly created by PiS’s decision to spend heavily on social programs as the election approached. So did the decision by PKN Orlen, a state-owned oil company, to lower gasoline prices in advance of the vote, thereby causing shortages around the country, as well as general mockery. But this turnout was produced by positive emotions too. Donald Tusk, the leader of the Civic Coalition, pointedly used the language of civic patriotism rather than angry nationalism. Thousands of volunteers came together to organize election-monitoring teams. Hundreds of thousands of people marched in two major demonstrations in Warsaw, carrying Polish and European Union flags; others joined a series of big public meetings around the country.

The new government, when it assumes office, won't be perfect – because no humans are perfect. But it will be enormously better. And similar to Democrats in the US after Trump, the presumed three-party coalition in Poland will spend a lot of time repairing democratic institutions degraded by PiS.

[goleniow24info]

Zarzuty postawiono, dokonano aresztowań, ale składowisko w Mostach działa nadal

Zarzuty postawiono, dokonano aresztowań, ale składowisko działa nadal … Jak przekazał Sołtys Mostów pan Ireneusz Mielniczuk w wywiadzie dla TVN24 – W naszej miejscowości jest kopalnia żwiru, pomału zamykana, którą siedem lat temu przerobiono na składowisko odpadów. -Miały tam być popioły i tego typu rzeczy, ale potem zaczęto zwozić plastiki, chemię i inne niebezpieczne substancje – mówił…