Pokaz prozy (Prose Display) is, as reviewers have pointed out, a curious book. It aims to showcase good modern Polish prose (12 writers born more or less in the period 1945 to 1960, all of whom have already achieved success). What it displays is, in fact, the weakness of modern Polish prose. To begin with […]
According to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”If we keep Fitzgerald’s definition in mind, the comment from a judge (another one?) at the interminable Mahon tribunal that Bertie Ahern’s explanations about […]
Or should we sit chewing our crud in bovine placidity as the police and state prosecution service finally disappears into PiS’s back pocket, soles of their boots and loafers visible to all? Vaclav Havel suggested international observers be sent to monitor elections in Poland when PiS – err, the police – arrested people who were […]
It’s good to see that The New York Times has abandoned the irritating TimesSelect model, which required the web audience to pay a subscription to read columns from op-ed contributors such as Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman (check out Krugman’s interesting new blog here). Now the paper has moved to an ad-supported approach, not only […]
The best thing by far on Polish TV right now – better even than the not-bad-for-Poland Szymon Majewski Show – is PiS’s childishly crude and hilariously inept party political broadcast. The theme is corruption, of course, the only tune PiS knows, and it contrasts two Polands – that of “not long ago” and the Poland […]
One of the more invidious preemptive strategies of the big players in particular industries is to fund “front” organizations supposedly charged with educating us about the messy side-effects caused by the very products its patrons churn out. It’s called being a “good corporate citizen.” So we have the drinkaware.ie website, which is developed by the […]
I mentioned before how the names change but the faces remain in Polish politics. Here is the concrete example of Jacek Kurski, sometimes known as the “Bull Terrier” though “Liar” would be both less complimentary and more truthful. Mr. Kurski, deeply principled politican that he is, in his infinite care for the people of Poland, […]
Roberto Calderoli, ‘honourable’ exponent of the Lega Nord, spent his week dreaming up ways to stop a proposed Mosque being built in Bologna. The mosque has already been the subject of hot debate, given its proposed size (a six thousand metre squared building, on land roughly 52 thousand metres squared) – which is apparently much […]
The controversial speech made by Germany’s ambassador to Ireland, Christian Pauls, demonstrates that you don’t have to be a diplomat to head an embassy. Offering a bleak overview of his host country, Herr Pauls apparently told his audience –a group of 80 German industrialists gathered at Clontarf Castle–that Ireland was a “coarse” place where the […]