A character called Jakub Sosnowski has gone into business in Poland selling cog notes for ignoramuses. That is: you pay him and he tells you what such and such a book is about or what such and such a record is like. In this way you can shine at social gatherings to which you have […]
“Sometimes publishers get texts which have not been properly read, even by their own authors – books in a terrible state,” says editor Filip Modrzejewski in this week’s Polityka. It’s worse than that, Mr. Modrzejewski. Sometimes readers get books that even the authors haven’t read. The picture painted in the article is dispiriting. For one […]
Poor Gazeta Wyborcza. Your heart has to go out to them. They must feel like they’re banging their heads off a brick wall in there. Today’s lead story is about how the Polish National Insurance is about to open up its records on 25 million Poles to the CBA (Central Anti Corruption Bureau, in reality […]
The signs are unmistakeable. All over the land it is evident that Polish politicians have shaken off the complexes and shackles of yesteryear. The East is awake! The last time I saw election posters here almost every single photograph of the candidate had the very top of his or her head cropped by the photographer. […]
That’s the message sent by both Dziennik and Gazeta Wyborcza today. The Polish ambassador to the Poland-occupied nation of Iraq was injured in an explosion. Someone else was killed. Here’s the GW (electronic version, today): W Bagdadzie bomby raniły polskiego ambasadora Dwie lub trzy bomby wybuchły na trasie konwoju polskiej ambasady w Bagdadzie. Zginął funkcjonariusz […]
Poland has agreed after all to allow international observers inspect its elections. They are trying to say it was all a big mistake caused by the incompetence of the minister for foreign affairs. She is pretty incompetent, though, so it might even be true.
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 […]
Katyń is where the Soviets murdered between 15,000 and 25,000 Polish soldiers and other citizens during the second world war. Andrzej Wajda has made a film called “Katyń,” to which hordes of schoolchildren are trooping off to every day. Here’s Tomasz Sakiewicz of Gazeta Polska on the subject: “The elites of the Second Republic [inter-war […]
Poland has told the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, of which it is a member, that it does not want monitors at its forthcoming general elections. One of the lamer arguments in favour of the general oppression (bugging, lustracja) in PiS-dominated Poland is that “if you are honest you have nothing to fear […]
“Kraków is my home and I learned Polish in about a week.” Impressed? These are the words of Argentine soccer player Mauro Cantoro, as quoted on page 8 of last weekend’s scrupulously accurate Dziennik. Cantoro must be either extraordinarily gifted or extraordinarily deluded. I turned at once to page 29 and the full interview. In […]
