In an interview in this weekend’s Dziennik Noam Chomsky says that Hitler, when he invaded Czechoslovakia, claimed he was doing so to bring peace. The Soviets also claimed to have Poland’s interests at heart in the 1940s. The US claimed to be bringing democracy to Iraq. What is the newspaperman’s response? Imperialna Ameryka niczym się […]
There is a scene in “Boogie Nights” where the luckless ex-porn stars go off to do some drug dealing. The dealer spends a good part of the scene bragging about his mix-tape. It’s not a blunder on the part of the film makers. They really did have mix tapes in the 80s. I am reminded […]
The front page of today’s Gazeta Wyborcza – apart from the strange claim that a 46.7% voter share for the left wing candidate in France’s presidential elections is a “crushing” defeat – re-runs the pensions time bomb scare story. The story is expanded on in the economics section and commented on by Witold Gadomski on […]
It is probably tempting fate to use the words “new low” and “tabloid” in the same sentence but I cannot resist: Polish tabloid Fakt has hit a new low. Their animatronic reconstructions used to be just ridiculous pandering to their non-literate readers but this… Former minister Barbara Blida was arrested in her home on suspicion […]
Unilever’s campaign for real profits continues. A full page advertisement appears in the women’s supplement to Gazeta Wyborcza. It includes a picture of the masterminds of this operation. In case the irony is not abundantly clear, I’ll put “masterminds” in inverted commas. These are in fact the Polish drones, acting on instructions from Higher Up, […]
They have this TV station here called TVN 24 – yes it is original, isn’t it? – devoted to news only. I happened to catch sight of it over the tremendously boring Easter holidays here. As befits a creative industry, they have copied the western habit of having a ticker tape at the bottom of […]
Andrzej Zybertowicz puts up a strong, if entirely illogical, defence of the law requiring journalists to swear to whether they did or did not cooperate with the secret services of communist Poland in Wednesday’s Rzeczpospolita. Journalists should sign the loyalty declarations beacuse they are “the fourth estate.” It’s that simple. I have scoured the constitution […]
Not all journos here are finding the legal requirement to pledge that you never informed under communism so irksome as those prima donnas who claim that this is mere humiliation, since in any case the archives are about to be thrown open to journalists (and that, as mentioned before, means nearly everyone — including you, […]
There’s a painting I particularly wanted to see so I took myself down to Kraków to have a look, spending a few days in the old place. I picked up a copy of the local paper and was dismayed to find that the good people of the newspaper are obssessed with Wrocław. How much money […]
Who is to blame for all this snow? This is the question which has been tormenting journalists in local newspapers for the last few days as Poland gets a belated flurry of snow action. Who can we blame for the gigantic tail backs and traffic jams, for the hours wasted by drivers in their cars, […]
