As you might have guessed from the long gaps between posts, I am on holidays — holidays in dial-up land, also known as Ireland. Here, without links or diacritics, are some random observations: As the number of Poles in Ireland continues to rise, journalists continue to make no attempt whatever to spell their names right. […]
Summer is over, the evenings are drawing in, the roads are again clotted with traffic, and, if you were not sufficiently depressed, the country’s worst journalist is back in the saddle. Yes, Orna Mulcahy surpasses even chick-lit author “Kate” Holmquist and R�is�n Ingle in the production of the most vacuous prose appearing in The Irish […]
Like Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines, like President Bush to New Orleans, like Bertie Ahern to, er, Fagan’s , I have returned. The reasons for my online absence (or should that be “offline presence”?) are varied and prosaic: the demands of a new job and “quality parenting” stand out. Of course, we should not discount […]
In their article in Gazeta Wyborcza the three young economists offered up the following statistic: in 1960s Poland for every retired person and invalid in receipt of welfare there were 12 people working and paying taxes. Turning to this week’s Sunday Times I read that in Ireland in the 1960s there was a tiny 1.4 […]
The Union of Islamic Communities and Organisations in Italy, a non-governmental association, paid to publish a full page notice in a number of newspapers five days ago under the heading “Yesterday Nazi Massacres, Today Israeli Massacres”. The notice was prompted, according to the association, due to the widespread indifference to civilian deaths caused by Israel’s […]
In June, 1975, Richard Gilbert directed a production for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation entitled ‘The Old South’ – a salute to the USA Bi-Centennial. As part of the production he interviewed US Five Star General Mark Wayne Clark, then President of the Citadel Military College of South Carolina. Clark fought in World War I, and […]
Western readers will notice something peculiar about the stern and impressive Stefan Chwin’s latest novel and other works of fiction from this part of the world: the unashamed name dropping. I mean brand names. starannie ogolony i spryskany O… S… carefully shaven and sprayed in O… S… W supermarkecie A… In A… supermarket niczym dostawca […]
Proof, if it were needed, that police forces in Western Europe and America are not heavy-handed when it comes to policing the ‘war on terror’. On the 13th of August a 34 year old Italian businessman sent an email, from the computer of his cousin, to the F.B.I. The email was a threat against George […]
I blame Bia?oszewski. For the short sentences. In fact, fragmentary. Sentences, that is. Very annoying. He wrote a book once. Famous. Pami?tnik z powstania warszawskiego. It was called. Miron Bia?oszewski wrote short, abrupt sentences in a sometimes successful attempt to capture and reflect the urgency and chaos of Warsaw during the uprising. Polish lends itself […]