“Nie podnosimy cen bez powodu” says the startling sticker on the door of a kiosk near my house. It means, translating freely, “we won’t raise prices for no reason.” The campaign bears the imprimatur of those noted advocates of centrally planned economies Gazeta Wyborcza and the Polish National Bank. In a free market am I […]
It’s a run of the mill Saturday evening in May. I aint got a penny to scratch my itch, and the raging sobriety makes it impossible to appease the two choices that dominate my Palookaville bound night. The alternatives are becoming worryingly clear. Will the planet’s most unlikeliest Limerick man, this time in his annual […]
Prefacing his latest book, The War for Children's Minds, with quotes from both Stalin and Ignatius Loyola, Dr. Stephen Law questions what type of education system is best suited to making moral citizens. The book is a strident defense of the englightenment, arguing that a liberal education should be favoured over a 'traditional' or 'authoritarian' […]
'Leadership' was the issue of the last month in Australian politics. Peter Costello, the treasurer and heir apparent in the ten-year old conservative government finally publicized the leadership tensions that had long been a part of government politics behind the scenes. Seizing on the third party confirmation of a leadership handover 'undertaking' made over a […]
&ldquoIn northern industrialised countries – and increasingly all over the world – our culture of birth is heavily medicalised. On TV, birth is presented as a medical event that is safe only in the hands of doctors, and if women obey the doctors, everything turns out all right. Those who ask questions or opt for […]
“Lebanese Children want to be Martyrs” is the surprising headline in Friday’s Gazeta Wyborcza. The subhead: “Thousands of children are the victims of Hezbollah’s war with Israel [not Israel’s war on the Lebanon]. In photographs from the Lebanon one sees mostly the dead or those injured after the explosion of bombs. But most of them […]
It turns out we’re all going to die in poverty, regardless. The problem is too many nasty old people hogging the social welfare budget and too few young ones contributing to it. In Friday’s Gazeta Wyborcza three young Polish economists make their contribution to the debate. Billed as an “appeal” and complete with exclamation marks […]
The following is a first draft of a translation of an episode from Bruno Jasie?ski’s novel Pal? Pary? (I Burn Paris – the title arose from a misunderstanding on Jasie?ski’s part of the French idiom). In the novel, Paris is cordoned off after being hit by a plague and ascends into anarchy. There are different […]
Socialist Realist art (or “socrealizm”) was official dogma in Poland in the late 40s and early 50s and elsewhere for longer. Paintings, architecture and sculptures of the period glorify the working class and the achievements of socialism. Kitsch would be a kind word for much of it. Also striking is the resemblance to fascist art: […]