Poland on The Huffington Post

Stolen Auschwitz camp sign found

2009-12-20T20:30:55Z

Police recover stolen death camp sign following raid in northern Poland.

Auschwitz Gate Sign: Polish Police Find Stolen "Arbeit Macht Frei" Sign

2009-12-20T20:18:06Z

WARSAW, Poland — Polish police found the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign that was stolen from the gate of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz after an intensive three-day hunt and arrested five suspects, police said early Monday. The sign was found cut into three pieces.

Police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo told The Associated Press that the sign was found Sunday night in northern Poland, the other end of the country from the southern Polish town where the Auschwitz memorial museum is located and where it disappeared before dawn Friday.

Peres: Stolen Auschwitz sign has deep historical significance

2009-12-18T12:01:06Z

President Shimon Peres met with Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Copenhagen on Friday to discuss the theft of the infamous entrance sign of former Nazi death camp Auschwitz.
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Read more: Copenhagen, Poland, Home News

Max Kolonko: Lech Walesa to Sue Organizers of the 20th Anniversary of Berlin Wall Collapse?

2009-12-14T13:01:21Z

Lech Walesa, former head of the Polish Solidarity movement, the man who started the domino collapse of the Evil Empire, is considering legal action against the organizers of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

On Nov 9th, moments after Lech Walesa pushed the block of dominoes symbolizing the fall of Berlin Wall, Walesa, 66, collided with a segway operated by the organizers' filming crew. Walesa, hit in the back by the speed-gaining, 120-pound souped up two-wheeler, grabbed his back, staggered, leaned against the domino blocks, but held on.

A week later Lech Walesa was hospitalized in a clinic for Polish government VIPs in Warsaw. He complained about a back pain. Two weeks later, the pain did not recede. " I can't get up from my chair," Walesa complained to the Polish newspaper Super Express. "If my condition doesn't improve I will take the organizers to court," he said.

This week Walesa unexpectedly cancelled his appearance in London, where he was to receive an honorary doctorate in philosophy at the London Metropolitan University.

"Walesa cancelled on the advice of his doctors", said Liz Walker, chairman of the Association of Polish Entrepreneurs & Companies. "Since the unfortunate accident in Berlin, Walesa complains of back pain," she added.

Recalling the accident, Walesa maintains he didn't feel the pain in his back until 11 o'clock the next day, when during the coffee break for the Nobel Peace Prize recipients, he "couldn't get up from a chair." However, the organizer of the Festival, Kultur Projekte Berlin, tells a different story.

During his stay in Berlin, Lech Walesa was constantly accompanied by an organizer's representative, said Simone Leimbach of Kultur Projekte Berlin in a written statement to my inquiry. "Lech Walesa did not complain about any kind of discomfort and did not ask for medical help", Leimbach added. The company did not offer apology to Walesa for the incident.

Some personal injury attorneys interviewed for this publication argue that Walesa might have a legal case. "Two things happened", says one of the attorneys on a condition of anonymity. "One, he was hit in the back which is documented on camera; two, he complains about back pain as a result of the accident."

Ultimately it is up to the doctors to decide if the injuries occurred. Sources say, however, that doctors examining Walesa in a Polish clinic a week after the accident occurred, did not detect any permanent injury to Walesa's back.

Attorneys still argue that in the absence of his prior history of back pain it is still possible to compensate an accident victim for medical expenses, pain and suffering.

"We see a lot of times when people are hurt, especially in back injuries, that if you can prove that event occurred and if we know that the client had a back problem shortly after it, in the absence of his prior history of back pain, you have a case", says an attorney specializing in personal injury litigation.

Lech Walesa didn't reply to questions about the case by the time of this publication. Asked about the incident in an interview with a Polish news channel TVN24, Lech Walesa commented bitterly: "You gotta die of something."

The story of a block of coal.

The first time I saw Lech Walesa was in 1981. Times were tough. The Solidarity trade union, born in the agreement between the communist government with the striking workers of Gdansk Shipyard, was just a few months old. The Poles were tired, hungry and furious. The blood of the Pulaski nation was slowly reaching the boiling point.

People were afraid that the Communist government, pressed by the Solidarity union against the wall, will perform some sort of a provocative "hocus pocus" and use it as an excuse to bring to Poland the Soviet tanks that "quite accidently" held military maneuvers Soyuz 81, just across the border.

And then -- it happened. Jan Rulewski, a local Solidarity activist occupying governmental offices in protest, was removed from the building head first. The photograph of the beaten union worker circulated throughout the town. People took to the streets.

In solidarity with the workers, my (at the time) classmate, Radek Sikorski, current Foreign Minister of Poland, hit the streets with "bibula"-- hand-made illegal pro-Solidarity leaflets, which we wrote earlier. They were stamped with the seal of our School Striking Committee, whose matrix we carved out of a sliced potato (private printing machines were illegal and Communists required typewriters to be registered).

I went on to steal coal from our school boiler room in order to bring it to an elderly woman who couldn't afford heat in her apartment. Radek and I both knew well that if caught, we could kiss our Polish lives goodbye.

The block of coal was big, heavy and barely fit into my rag bag. I carried it down the street when the word broke: Lechu (that's how we called Walesa back then: La-khu) is in town! There he was: standing on the balcony of a building in our town's market square.

Walesa talked about freedom. As great an orator as he is, Walesa spoke our language; simple, strong, passionate. He spoke about rights we didn't have, life we could not afford. He spoke about the right to liberty and property and the right to live a dignified life without an undignifying regime.

Lechu was talking and talking and the crowd was growing and growing. I stood amongst it, a teenager, in the center of the square, literally frozen, listening to Walesa and back then in that square in Poland, on that cold, March afternoon, for the first time in my young life I began to believe that freedom to Poland would come.

When Lechu finished his speech, the crowd -- by now about a thousand strong -- moved on somewhere ahead by itself, chanting: Lech Wa-lesa! Lech Wa-lesa! Then suddenly, it stopped. The monolith of black shields of ZOMO (paramilitary special forces of the police) was forming quickly ahead. The police clubs began to work.

There was nothing to fight them with. The workers bare hands against strong, well fed communist's protectors trained in beatings. I looked at the block of coal I held in my bag and thought of the freezing woman waiting for it and that in Poland coal is called "the black gold."

I took the black slab out from the bag, raised it above my head and slammed it against the street. Eager hands of workers picked up the pieces... The black hail of coal rained upon ZOMO. It joined cobblestones which someone else had torn out from the pot ridden street. Another day of the fight for freedom was on.

I recalled all that, 28 years later, sitting in an armchair in my house in New Jersey, sipping a martini which was embracing me like my first woman: slowly and unhurriedly. I watched Lech Walesa on TV, live, standing on a street of Berlin. Looking older, with his famous mustache now gray, he stood in front of the styrofoam wall of dominoes symbolizing the Berlin Wall, ready for the symbolic push. I very much wanted Walesa to do it right.

The only thing that was pissing me off in this historic view was a segue-equipped television crew hanging on next to him, constantly getting in the shot of the international television feed. Being 20 years in the television production business I knew they had the "hard pass" which other not-so-lucky film crews despise. It meant they will be close to the event and I knew if they didn't know what they were doing we would have a problem. And we did.

Lech Walesa -- the man who "collapsed communism," survived prison threats, isolation camps, plots and political intrigues, 28 years after he made people pick up the black gold of the nation and throw it in the face of the evil -- staggered.

If he would have fallen, well, that would have been the news. But I knew Lech Walesa would not fall. Not "our" Lechu. He staggered, leaned forward, but held on. It was just one of these things that was meant to be.

But will the lawsuit take him down? Will the charisma and the historic image of the great leader he enjoys, succumb to pettiness of our times that are a'changing? Times in which we fight not with rocks, stones and fists but with lawyers and tricks, and where pain and suffering always has a monetary value attached? No, Lechu will not sue. Lech Walesa is bigger than that.

Red Baron's Death Certificate Found By Historian

2009-12-07T12:19:09Z

WARSAW, Poland — A Polish historian says he made a surprising find when poring through World War I archives – the death certificate of Manfred von Richthofen, the German fighter ace known as the "Red Baron."

Maciej Kowalczyk said Monday that he found the file last month while going through old German archives in the western Polish city of Ostrow Wielkopolski. The area was formerly German, and Richthofen was briefly stationed there.

Sundance 2010: World Cinema Narrative Competition

2009-12-02T16:00:15Z

This year's 14 films were selected from 1,022 international narrative feature submissions. All that I Love/Poland (Director and screenwriter: Jacek Borcuch)--In 1981, during the growing Polish Solidarity movement, four small-town teenagers form a punk rock band with the hope of playing at a local festival. Cast: Mateusz Kościukiewicz, Jakub Gierszał, Mateusz Banasiuk, Olga Frycz, Igor Obłoza. North American Premiere Animal Kingdom/Australia (Director and screenwriter: David Michôd)--After the death of his mother, a seventeen year-old boy is …

A scene from Christopher Morris's "Four Lions." Image courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival.

Leon T. Hadar: Assessing Obama's Foreign Policy: Guess Who Is Small Now?

2009-11-30T17:00:29Z

"You used to be big," says the B-movie hack screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) when he meets the faded and aging silent film star Norma Desmond (portrayed by Gloria Swanson) in her decaying mansion in Billy Wilder's classic film-noir Sunset Boulevard (1950). "I am big. It's the pictures that got small," responds the bristling Desmond/Swanson. To which the sneering Gillis/Holden replies: "I knew there was something wrong with them."

Some of the criticism of President Barak Obama's foreign policy coming from the neoconservatives on the right -- and occasionally also from progressives on the left -- remind me of Norma Desmond's famous lines. America is still the world's "only remaining superpower," the detractors argue. And yet under the current administration, this supposedly great power is being pushed around by China, disrespected by Russia, dismissed by Pakistan, ignored by Iran, and manipulated by Israel.

If Americans are the Masters of Pax Americana why can't we talk the Chinese into revaluing their currency; induce the Russians to impose sanctions on Iran; compel the Pakistanis to end their support for the Jihadis; bully the Iranians into ending their nuclear-military program; and get the Israelis to stop building new Jewish settlements on the West Bank? That America is still the Big Boy on the global block and that Washington has failed to use that enormous power to deliver results suggest to the critics that the problem lies in the White House, in a weak president that just does not have what it takes to lead America in this world. America is big. It's the president who got small.

Indeed, while conservatives who are not satisfied with the new Afghanistan strategy insist that Obama should be sending more troops to Hindu-Kish, critics on the left fault the White House for not getting rid of Hamid Karazi, the politically corrupt leader of that country, and for failing to make Pakistan into a non-failed state.

Then there was Obama's decision to abandon a planned missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic as part of an effort to "reset" U.S. relationship with Russia. So why is Washington still waiting for a clear pledge from Moscow to support economic sanctions against Iran if it refuses to work out a nuclear deal with the international community? And why should Americans wait for a green-light from Vladimir Putin to allow Georgia and Ukraine into NATO?

And apropos of Iran; where are the diplomatic rewards America should have been receiving from Iran in return for Obama's stated willingness to engage with the Ayatollahs in Tehran? As the neoconservatives see it, only the threat of military power will bring an end to Iran's drive to develop nuclear weapons.

If anything, both right-wing and liberal critics seem to share the view that Washington should 'do something" to assist the pro-democracy movement in Iran. And the members of a similar right-left coalition have slammed Obama for refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama before leaving for his trip to China and for not raising China's human rights violations and its protectionist economic approach (by tying the value of the renminbi to that of the U.S. dollar) during his meetings in Beijing.

When it comes to the Middle East, Obama is being challenged by his political supporters who expected him to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and in particular, to pressure Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu to stick to his commitment to freeze the buildup of Jewish settlements; while right-wing detractors accuse the president of "abandoning" Israel in order to "appease" the Arabs.

On the issue of the Middle East as well as on other foreign policy challenges, Obama has to deal with the wide gap between the realities of the global politics and economics and the expectations that he may have created upon entering office. Many of his fans on home and abroad had assumed that Obama's multiculturalist persona and cosmopolitan disposition, not to mention his charisma and star qualities would help him win the hearts and minds of publics and elites around the world.

There is no doubt that through his personality and life-story, coupled with the manufactured media events, friendly gestures and cool style, Obama has been able to start changing America's global brand name. But that his media image and style of foreign policy have failed to produce any dramatic foreign policy success does not reflect a breakdown of presidential leadership, an ineffective decision-making process, a lack of moral authority or some sort of personal intellectual deficiency. Obama is certainly not a small-time president.

In order to understand the constraints operating on Obama as he tries to pursue his foreign policy agenda one should reread the U.S. National Intelligence Council report which had been issued in November 2008, in the same month in which Obama was elected as president. It predicted continued U.S. economic and military decline, the rise of a multi-polar system in which America will have to share power with China, India and other players. "By 2025, the U.S. will find itself as one of a number of important actors on the world state, albeit still the most powerful one," it concluded.

While the financial meltdown and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have accelerated this process of American decline, the elites in Washington have been unwilling to accept that reality and assume that American could still "do something" to impose its interests and values worldwide. At the same time, the political right seems to be operating under the delusion that a Republican president a la Reagan - and unlike Obama -- would be able revive and even strengthen American global power.

But even a Roosevelt, a Truman, a Kennedy or Reagan would have no choice but to deal with the reality that is facing Obama, in which domestic resistance and rising global challenges make it more and more difficult for Washington to secure its military and economic hegemony on its own - to continue being the Big Number One --- and necessitate working together with other powers to contain threats to the international system while trying ensure that the United States is at least, a first among equals. Unfortunately, many in Washington are going to look at the mirror and assert that, "We're Big. And it's the guy in the White House that makes us look small."

Today: A tanker hijack and a Swiss vote to ban minarets

2009-11-30T12:00:04Z

Stories compiled by Gizem Yarbil, Connie Kargbo, Channtal Fleischfresser, Christine Kiernan, Ivette Feliciano, and Mohammad al-Kassim, and edited by Rebecca Haggerty and Ben Piven.

PHILIPPINES: Philippine journalists gathered in the hundreds Monday to protest the massacre of 57 people, including 30 journalists, last week.

BANGLADESH: In southern Bangladesh, 77 people have been reported dead after a ferry capsized.

SOMALIA: A Greek-owned tanker delivering oil from Saudi Arabia to the U.S. was seized by Somali pirates on Sunday. The tanker, which has 28 crew members on board, is believed to be o ne of the largest vessels seized by Somali pirates, weighing in at 300,000 tonnes.

MAURITANIA: Three Spanish aid volunteers went missing on Sunday in the West African nation of Mauritania. Spanish authorities fear the volunteers may have been kidnapped by Al-Qaeda operatives.

RWANDA: France and Rwanda have agreed to restore ties three years after severing relations over a dispute regarding the Rwandan genocide.

Swiss referendum poster. Photo: flickr user rytc

GERMANY: The trial of alleged Nazi John Demjanjuk got underway Monday in Munich. The 89-year-old retired Ohio auto worker is accused of being an accessory to the the murders of 27,900 people at Poland’s Sobibor camp.

NETHERLANDS: Radovan Karadzic, on trial in the Hague for allegedly masterminding atrocities against Serbians during the Bosnian war, has filed a motion questioning the legitimacy of the UN war crimes tribunal where he is being tried.

SWITZERLAND: The Swiss decision to ban the construction of minarets is, according to the Swiss Justice Minister, “directed against fundamentalist developments.” Moreover, the weekend vote has prompted right-wing representative of several other European nations, including Denmark and the Netherlands, to call for similar votes in their own countries.

PERU: The government of Peru issued a public apology this weekend for the first time ever to its Afro-Peruvian population for what it termed centuries of abuse, exclusion and discrimination.

URUGUAY: A former guerrilla leader has been elected President of Paraguay.

HONDURAS: Porfirio Lobo appears to have won the presidential election in Honduras, but what happens now, after the elections, is still up for debate.

DUBAI: Stocks continue to fall in the United Arab Emirates as trading reopened after a four-day holiday.

An official at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that the organization is closely watching Dubai’s Government plan for restructuring Dubai World.

ISRAEL: Settlers say they won’t cooperate with Civil Administration officials as one of several planned protest gestures after the Cabinet decision to halt new construction projects.

IRAN: Iran says it will expand its nuclear program after last week’s rebuke by the UN nuclear watchdog agency.

Top stories from around the world as brought to you by the Worldfocus newsroom. Today: Somali pirates seize an oil tanker; Honduras holds a presidential election; and the Swiss vote to ban the construction of new minarets to accompany mosques.
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Alex Storozynski: U.S. Honors Stalin on Hallowed Ground, Will Saddam Hussein Be Next?

2009-11-18T20:43:22Z

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians began taking down their statues of Josef Stalin, the mass murderer who killed millions of people. Astonishingly, in America, the National D-Day Memorial is honoring Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at its museum in Bedford, Virginia.

This misguided move will haunt millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, etc. whose families were massacred by this Soviet tyrant. Stalin's killing machine slaughtered more people than Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did.

Hitler and Stalin were allies and started World War II in 1939 by both attacking Poland at the same time. But William McIntosh, the D-Day Memorial's president says that because Stalin became a U.S. ally after Germany invaded Russia, he deserves to be acknowledged along with Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

McIntosh is wrong. Stalin only gave lip service to the allies so that they would attack Nazi Germany on the Western front. Stalin did not liberate Eastern Europe from the Nazis in 1945; he sent in Soviet troops that occupied half of Europe until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Stalin the communist barely hid his disdain for capitalist America during WWII, and once the war ended, he began the Cold War and ordered his scientists to work on missiles and nuclear weapons that could destroy the United States.

Given McIntosh's logic, should America put up a statue of Saddam Hussein because he was an ally of the U.S. in the 1980s when we supported Iraq in a war against Iran?

Congress authorized the D-Day Memorial and private donors raised $19 million to honor soldiers that fought in the invasion of Normandy. Now McIntosh is lobbying Congress to make his museum part of the National Park Service so that it can receive federal tax dollars.

By placing a bust of Stalin on hallowed ground, McIntosh disrespects veterans, including my father who took part in the Normandy invasion. When the war began, Dionysius Storozynski was 17 and living in Lvov, Poland. He fought in the underground against Stalin's army that invaded Poland and later joined the Polish troops in France that fought the Germans in the West. When France surrendered, he was evacuated to England and trained for the allied invasion of Normandy.

In 1944, when the beachhead was taken, Corporal Storozynski rode a motorcycle off a transport from England as part of the 24th Lancers Regiment of the 1st Polish Armored Division. It was lead by Major Jan Kanski with 47 officers, 634 men, 52 Sherman tanks, 11 Stuart tanks and six anti-aircraft tanks. My father sped ahead of these troops, and scoured the French countryside with his binoculars. He radioed the coordinates of the Germans to Polish tank commanders. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower inspected my father's regiment, which saw heavy action in Caen, Falaise and Aberville in France. They helped liberate Belgium and Holland.

During the campaign, my father lost part of his hearing when he drove over a land mine. Major Kanski lost his life.

My maternal grandfather, Sgt. Wladslaw Krzyzanowski, also fought in the Polish Army against Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. In 1939 he was tortured and sentenced to death by Stalin's NKVD, forerunner of the KGB. His crime? He fought against Stalin's ally at the time, Hitler. My grandfather's sentence was commuted to life, and he was one of 1.5 million Poles sent to Stalin's forced labor gulags in Siberia in the years 1939-1941. He escaped and joined the army of Polish Gen. Wladyslaw Anders that fought alongside British General Bernard Montgomery. The Brits and the Poles pushed the Germans across North Africa and together with the American military liberated Italy. My grandfather won medals at the Battle of Monte Cassino.

Other Polish soldiers were not as lucky. The NKVD took 22,000 Polish officers into the Katyn Forest, tied their hands behind their backs, and one by one shot them in the back of their heads. The bodies were dumped into mass graves. Many have yet to be recovered for proper burial.

That's how Stalin treated prisoners of war. He wasn't much better to his own people. Before World War II began, the NKVD killed millions of Russians during the "great purge" of Stalin's political enemies. Stalin forced collectivization, stole farmland from peasants, and starved to death 10 million Ukrainians in a vengeful act of genocide. And it was Stalin's 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Hitler that split Poland in half, allowing the Germans to carry out the Holocaust that murdered six million Jews.

Stalin enslaved the Russian people. That's why Russia has taken down most of the statues of Stalin and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev is critical of those who gloss over Stalin's image. "From the point of view of the law, killing of a huge number of compatriots for political or unsubstantiated economic motives is a crime," Medvedev recently told Der Spiegel magazine. "The rehabilitation of those involved in these crimes is impossible."

In addition to the civilians that Stalin murdered, he sent Russian soldiers to their death by using them as cannon fodder, marching them directly into the line of German gunfire without a cohesive battle plan. Medvedev said recently on his web site, "Stalin's crimes cannot diminish the heroic deeds of the people who triumphed in the Great Patriotic war."

If McIntosh wants to honor Russia's contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany, he should put up a statue of the Unknown Russian Soldier. That would make more sense than a bust of Stalin.

It took the people of the former Soviet Empire five decades to right the wrongs of Stalin's "evil empire," as Ronald Reagan called it. These days, the Poles are planning to put up a statue of Reagan in Warsaw to acknowledge his role in ending Soviet Communism. How ironic that in Virginia, America is putting up a bust of Stalin.

Both sides remember the day the Berlin Wall fell down

2009-11-09T18:30:03Z

For decades, the Berlin Wall stood as the symbol of the Cold War. Built in 1961, it was the line in the sand where western democracy ended and communist rule began. Then suddenly, 20 years ago today, it was gone.

As a reporter, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff hitch-hiked overnight to Berlin to cover the story. He is now the senior director at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

(View full post to see video)

Daniel Fried was working at the Polish desk at teh U.S. State Department when the wall came down. He later became the U.S. ambassador to Poland.

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Sergey Shestakov was the chief of staff for the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations. He explains how the Soviets saw the fall of the wall.

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As a reporter, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff hitch-hiked overnight to Berlin to cover the story. Daniel Fried was working at the Polish desk at the U.S. State Department when the wall came down. Sergey Shestakov was the chief of staff for the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations.
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Poland: Support For Afghan War Plummets

2009-11-04T15:28:56Z

WARSAW -- When Joe Biden, the U.S. vice president, passed through Warsaw a couple of weeks ago, he larded unabashed praise on Poland for its participation in the war in Afghanistan.

Think Tank's Advice To Europe: Stop 'Fetishizing' American Relationship

2009-11-03T17:20:53Z

The council released a study on Monday called "Toward a Post-American Europe," based on wide-ranging interviews and research conducted in the 27 EU member states. In it, the authors make a clear appeal to European leaders: This "fetishization" of the trans-Atlantic relationship must stop, write Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney. It is high time that Europe declare a new, "post-American" age and do away with old myths about the trans-Atlantic relationship.

Russia Infuriates Poland With "Simulated' Nuclear Attack

2009-11-02T09:58:26Z

Russia has provoked outrage in Poland by simulating an air and sea attack on the country during military exercises.

Chauncey Zalkin: Women at Work: Insights From Women on the Front Lines of Polish Design

2009-10-22T15:24:19Z

Out of the ashes of a more austere and oppressive time comes a design landscape unfettered by a design past, one that is swiftly moving toward a vibrant future.

Gian Luca Amadei, product editor of Blueprint magazine, saw a spark in one designer from Poland who spoke with infectious enthusiasm about what she saw emerging on the home front. His curiosity led to an invitation to visit. When he got there, he was struck by the number of women leading the change. That discovery led to his book, Discovering Women in Polish Design with photographer Dario Lombardi.

I attended the launch during London Design Week but also had the pleasure of meeting Luca the previous evening where we talked heatedly about our mutual interest in the people behind the goods. After all, design is about people - the handiwork of the creator, human ingenuity, and the social ramifications of design in use. All too often design is presented as a faceless object. The book, which I read in full on the plane back to Barcelona, shines a light on the human factor, the people, the emotion, and the problem solving ability of design, in this case inside of a culture in transition.

Quotes from the panel discussion moderated by Blueprint editor, Vicky Richardson.

Trend expert, Zuzanna Skalska:

Women's work

(In the past in Poland), men were engineers and ran businesses. Women were in charge of decoration, family, nesting. Women can see in 3D. We are good organizers. We are synchronizing from the time we get up to the time we go to sleep. That's why we're good for the future of design.

'To me the friction is happening on the border of male and female energies. We used to live by "the Maria code". Poland, Spain, countries where Catholicism was strong. Women got a place on the train. You carried bags for the women. Men constructed. Women were aesthetic.

An industry in transition

Students focus on the creative object more than mass production. They don't know about operations. Up until now, Polish design has been mostly handmade. Recycled. Not expensive. Not sophisticated. It is seen as fresh and exciting but we need to focus.

(In the past in Poland), our everyday life was uncomfortable. Our shoes. Our buses. Design is the quality of everyday life. Polish design is still underground We honor Italian and Scandinavian design. We need Polish design in Poland.

Know-how is being brought back to Poland. In Holland, everything's been designed and re-designed where in Poland everything has never been done. (That is exciting.)

We have (no old habits to break) so we can implement design thinking in everything. We are developing marketing strategy for design. Design of objects that go hand in hand with marketing strategy. We can (employ) design thinking from beginning to end.

Polish designers are returning to their country more and more out of choice to improve Polish design instead of staying in the already established design cities.

Poland's position is unique. We have a system in Poland. The PPP, a private public partnership where the government partners with the private sector. The government acts as facilitator for the know-how that already exists in the private sector. There is money allocated specifically for design. Design used to be part of the department of culture but is now in the department of economics. Anything that is a key driver for economic growth gets the money so there is plenty of money for design initiatives. So for example, you have a private design school with 100% government money behind it. This is causing rapid change. We can move to new systems right away. We can take huge steps quickly. Design has become a tool to make Poland competitive.

(Indirect) Quotes from the book

A Jacobsen-Cielecka, journalist and curator:

Magazines should publish more challenging and avant-garde items and stories to push their readership to look harder, deeper.

Iker (the design group) is not investing much in advertising, instead focusing on design.

M Lubinska, Founder Moho Design:

You need a visionary designer and a visionary manager.

If I'd written a business plan, I wouldn't have done what I have done.

B Bochinska, President of the Board, Institute of Industrial Design in Warsaw:

There are designers who are not just talking about sustainable design or eco or ergo design but thinking of people's needs. I need these designers.

A Wojczynska, Interior Designer:

(20 years ago, when you couldn't buy tiles in Poland), all international calls were blocked so you'd have a special lady to say: 'I want to have a connection with France.' And she would say: 'Okay, this will be a two hour wait.' In Communist time, you couldn't have direct contact with the west.

A Siedlecka:

One outcome of the Communist era, you learn how to make something from nothing.

(When asked to present at schools) they usually want to know about marketing. They know how to design, they want to know the practicalities.

The book was published in loving support by Blueprint magazine. To find out where to buy the book, go to the website or Amazon.

Two great Polish design blogs I found through further research: Zsah Blox and Design Girl

Pictures and individual work can be found on What Women Make

Switzerland, Slovakia qualify for World Cup

2009-10-14T17:26:46Z

— Switzerland and Slovakia earned Europe's final two automatic berths for next year's World Cup on Wednesday night, while Argentina tried to beat out Uruguay and Ecuador for South America's last certain spot in the 32-nation field.

Costa Rica played at the United States, which clinched its sixth straight berth last weekend, and the Ticos hoped to stay ahead of Honduras and gain the final automatic place from North and Central America and the Caribbean.

Portugal, Greece, Slovenia and Ukraine finished second in their groups and joined Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Ireland and Russia in the European playoffs. They will be drawn into four pairs on Monday, and the winners of home-and-home, total-goals matches on Nov. 14 and 18 will qualify for next year's 32-nation field.

By the end of Wednesday, 23 of the 32 nations will have been determined for next year's tournament in South Africa.

In addition to the U.S., Mexico had ensured a berth in CONCACAF, while Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia and Spain had clinched automatic berths in Europe. Brazil, Chile and Paraguay had earned berths from South America, and Australia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea won Asia's spots. Ghana and Ivory Coast joined host South Africa, which qualified automatically as host.

At Basel, Switzerland qualified for its second straight World Cup, clinching with a 0-0 tie against Israel.

Eliminated by Ukraine on penalty kicks in the second round at the 2006 tournament, Switzerland (6-1-3) extended its unbeaten streak to eight matches and finished atop Group Two with 21 points. Greece (6-2-2), which won 2-1 against visiting Luxembourg (1-7-2), was one point back in second.

"This qualification means a lot to me," Switzerland coach Ottmar Hitzfeld said. "Now we are with the best teams in the world. But first we want to enjoy this evening."

At Chorzow, Slovakia qualified for its first World Cup, beating Poland 1-0 on a third-minute own goal by defender Seweryn Gancarczyk, who attempted to clear a cross but kicked the ball past goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek.

"It was an unlucky play," Dudek said. "It took a bad bounce, and it was bad luck to surrender an own goal so early."

Before it split into two nations, Czechoslovakia appeared in every World Cup from 1930-90 and lost the final in 1934 and 1962. Czechoslovakia also won the 1976 European Championship.

Slovakia (7-2-1) won Group Three with 22 points, while Slovenia (6-2-2) finished second with 20 following a 3-0 win at San Marino and will go to the European playoffs.

After getting eliminated in the first round of the 2006 World Cup despite an opening 3-0 win over the United States, the Czech Republic failed to qualify for next year's tournament. The Czechs (4-2-4) finished third in Group Three.

At Guimares, Portugal won its third straight qualifier as Nani scored one goal and assisted on another.

Simao Sabrosa, Miguel Veloso and Edinho also scored for Portugal (5-1-4), which finished second in Group One with 19 points, two behind Denmark (6-1-3).

Nani started in place of FIFA player of the year Cristiano Ronaldo, who injured an ankle in Saturday's 3-0 victory over Hungary. Nani scored on a left-footed volley in the 14th minute, Sabrosa doubled the lead in the 45th and Veloso scored off Nani's cross in the 52nd. Edinio scored in the 90th.

At Wembley, Peter Crouch scored in the fourth and 76th minutes, David Beckham assisted on Shaun Wright-Phillips' 59th-minute goal after entering as a second-half substitute and England (9-1) completed qualifying with a 3-0 victory over Belarus.

At Parma, Alberto Gilardino scored in the 78th, 81st and 90th minutes, rallying defending champion Italy (7-0-3) over Cyprus 3-2. Cyprus had built a 2-0 lead on goals by Ioannis Okkas in the 12th minute and Chrysostomos Michail in the 48th.

At Hamburg, Lukas Podolski scored in the 90th minute, giving Germany (8-0-2) a 1-1 tie against Finland, which had gone ahead on Jonatan Johansson's goal in the 11th minute.

At Zenica, European champion Spain (10-0) completed a perfect qualifying campaign with a 5-2 victory at Bosnia-Herzegovina as Alvaro Negredo scored twice, and Gerard Pique, David Silva and Juan Manuel Mata got one goal each.

At Saint-Denis, Karim Benzema, Thierry Henry and Andre-Pierre Gignac scored for France (6-1-3) in a 3-1 win over Austria.

Leon T. Hadar: Counter-Factual History: McCain Is President and Bono Wins the Nobel Prize

2009-10-14T16:20:43Z

"I have to admit that I'm beginning to miss George W. Bush," is the way former Republican Senator "Chuck" Hagel responded when being asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer to assess the foreign policy record of the administration of Republican President John McCain. "We probably should have paid more attention to what candidate was saying [on the top of the television screen: McCain declaring "We are all Georgians today!"] or singing [on the top of the television screen: McCain singing "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran"] during the presidential campaign," Hagel said.

Indeed, after occupying the White House for nine months, McCain's historic diplomatic and national security decisions have led to a dramatic transformation of the international system. The U.S. and its allies in the 10-member League of Democracies (LOD) are being drawn into a diplomatic and military confrontation with the Shanghai Treaty Organization (STO) headed by China and Russia in several geo-strategic hot spots around the world -- in the Caucasus (Russia-Georgia), the Balkans (Serbia-Kosovo), the Middle East (Israel-Syria) and East Asia (China-Taiwan), and the Straits of Hormuz (Iran).

A few weeks after his inauguration, President McCain dispatched his Secretary of State and former Senator Joe Lieberman to Europe to lobby France, Germany and Britain in support of giving a green light to Georgia's speedy accession into NATO. "A new iron curtain has descended across the Caucasus," Lieberman declared during an address at Charles University; in attendance were two former anti-Soviet dissidents, Poland Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa and former president of Czechoslovakia Vaclav Havel as well as representatives of Ukraine and the three Baltic states. Lieberman explained that in face of strong opposition from Berlin and Paris to offering NATO members to Georgia, the McCain Administration was planning to sign a bilateral defense accord with Georgia and deploy U.S. troops to that country. Secretary Lieberman also reiterated the McCain Administration's commitment to install a planned anti-missile shield system in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev, who described the U.S. decisions as "only steps away from a U.S. declaration of war against my country," responded by inviting the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Transnistria, to join the Russian Federation. "The fascist clique in Washington, just like Hitler and Napoleon, has misjudged the will of the Russian people to defend their motherland and defeat the aggressors," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told cheering crowds in Moscow, setting the stage for a series of international crises that seemed to threaten world peace.

First, a parliamentary election in Serbia brought to power a nationalist political movement that called for strengthening economic and military ties with Russia. Russia welcomed the outcome of the election and invited Serbia's new leaders to Moscow where a Russian-Serbian defense treaty was signed; it included a commitment to challenge "with all the necessary" Kosovo's declaration of independence.

China expressed support for what became to be known as the Moscow Declaration. Alluding to the separatist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Chinese government explained that Beijing and Moscow were united in their opposition to "the secessionist puppets and their American puppeteer."

At the same time, the growing tensions in Ukraine over a proposal by the leading pro-Western political parties to apply for membership in NATO seemed to be degenerating into a civil war in the country, with Russia pledging to come to the assistance of the "courageous neighbors who favor independence over submission to American imperialism." Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states called on NATO to come to Ukraine defense and "prevent another Munich," a plea that was backed by the McCain Administration.

In Washington, President McCain proposed that the "recent Russian aggression requires America and the great democracies to form a new league of freedom." But most of the West European states with the exception of Britain rejected the idea, with Germany and France warning the Americans the new aggressive U.S. approach toward Russia could return Europe to "the dark age of the Cold War." In response, National Security Advisor Robert Kagan stated, "Old Europe is getting even older and seems to remain stuck in Venus," adding that he was worried that much of Europe would be "Finlandized" and become "a dependency of Russia."

A growing split in NATO and Europe ensued, with the Czechs, Poles, Latvians, Lituinians and Estonians deciding to join the new LOD and take part in its founding session in Washington, on July 4th. Other members of the group included Costa Rica, Colombia, Israel, Mongolia, Kosovo, Albania, Georgia and Azerbaijan. In an opening address, McCain proposed that NATO be transformed into a global security arm of the LOD and recommended that it add Israel, Colombia and Mongolia -- and Taiwan - to its ranks.

The Chinese leaders responded to McCain's speech by recalling their ambassador from Washington and inviting Medvedev and Putin to Beijing. The two governments announced that they were planning to turn the STO into a global defense alliance that would consist of "all the anti-imperialist forces in the world" including Venezuela, Honduras, Iran, Syria, Serbia and Belarus. It also revealed that the STO was planning to dispatch a Russian cruiser and two nuclear missile submarines to the Straits of Hormuz to take part in a planned Iranian military exercise.

And on October 8th after Iran announced that it detonated five nuclear devices, Russia and China convened an emergency meeting of the STO in Caracas, Venezuela, which concluded with a warning to Washington that the members of the organization were ready to help Iran "protect itself from American-Israeli aggression." Adding to the worries about an approaching war, were reports from the Middle East indicating that Israeli military forces were massing at the border with Lebanon and Syria in the aftermath of number of deadly clashes between Israeli troops and Hizbollah guerillas.

"I don't want to sound despairing, and I do hope that I'm wrong, but I fear that we are heading towards a new and costly Cold War, or even - God forbid! - a World War III," Hagel said during his CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer the next day. Blitzer also interviewed noted musician and singer Bono who was just awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his successful efforts to relieve third world debt and promote AIDS awareness in Africa. "I'm very, very sad that our efforts to promote peace around the world are being overshadowed by the gathering war clouds," Bono told Blitzer. "My guess is that if Barack Obama would have been elected as the U.S. president, the lights would not be going out all over the world today," he said, adding: "It's quite possible that President Obama would be the one receiving the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Imagine that."

Mich. man denies WWII crimes in deportation case

2009-10-13T15:58:03Z

DETROIT — An 88-year-old retired auto engineer told a judge Tuesday that he never shot Jews while serving in a Nazi-controlled police force during World War II, during an initial hearing over whether the government can deport him.

Speaking through his lawyer, John Kalymon, of suburban Detroit, denied the U.S. Justice Department's assertion that he claimed to have fired his gun at least eight times and killed a Jew in August 1942, when Jews were being rounded up and removed from what is now Lviv, Ukraine.

Court rules against Stalin grandson in libel suit

2009-10-13T15:26:31Z

MOSCOW — A Russian court ruled against Josef Stalin's grandson Tuesday in a libel suit over a newspaper article that said the Soviet dictator sent thousands of people to their deaths.

A judge at a Moscow district court rejected Yevgeny Dzhugashvili's claim that Novaya Gazeta damaged Stalin's honor and dignity in an April article that referred to him as a "bloodthirsty cannibal."

Last surviving leader of Warsaw ghetto uprising laid to rest

2009-10-09T14:31:19Z

Poland's President Lech Kaczynski, Jewish leaders and hundreds of Poles on Friday bid farewell to Marek Edelman, who was the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis.
...

Polish president 'won't sign EU treaty'

2009-10-08T07:15:27Z

Poland's President Lech Kaczynski will not sign the European Union's Lisbon
Treaty on Sunday, his twin brother Jaroslaw said today, contradicting an
earlier statement from a presidential aide.

Max Kolonko: Polanski's Pardon? Not So Fast

2009-10-03T14:17:36Z

The climactic scene of Roman Polanski's 1962 classic Knife in the Water leaves the characters torn at the crossroad of their lives. It is ironic that the author of that film masterpiece, Polanski, found himself 32 years ago at such an intersection and made a decision to bail.

It was a conscious decision. Polanski ran from the law. From the legal perspective, the director of Rosemary's Baby became a fugitive that day, wanted for -- according to the deal reached with the prosecutors -- sexual molestation of a child. In fact, from the legal perspective, it was a rape committed by a 45-year-old, very talented man, on a 13-year-old girl, lured with a promise of fame and fortune.

I find it incomprehensible (being also a Polish citizen) that Polish authorities can engage the majesty of the state to defend a fugitive, no matter how famous he is. This is, at least, how one can read a letter of the Polish Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski, to the American Secretary of State, Hillary R.Clinton, requesting (according to the Polish media) Polanski's pardon. Sikorski's letter constitutes a diplomatic intervention on a ministerial level, involving the state in a case of a fugitive who evaded justice for a court-proven criminal act.

Will Poland, being in the middle of a diplomatic bout with the United States over the scrapped missile defense deal, receive Polanski as a prize for sacrificing its international agreements to Russia? Or perhaps Polanski deserves a pardon because, as the Polish Foreign Minister stated, he is a "recognized film director" whose work the chief of Polish diplomacy "likes"?

One of the Polish filmmakers, Krzysztof Zanussi, calls the then 13-year-old victim "a prostitute" who had been pushed to intercourse by her mother. Can the lifestyle of Hollywood justify the rape of a minor? Film directors know best that as long as there is show business there will be wannabe actresses desiring money and fame. The victims often fall silent because they know that a police report equals the abandonment of that stage in their life.

Anne Applebaum, wife of Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski, writes in the Washington Post that Polanski "has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers' fees, in professional stigma." Applebaum lists the mitigating factors: He could not return to Los Angeles in 2003 to receive his Oscar for The Pianist, Polanski's father survived the concentration camp at Mauthausen while his mother died in Auschwitz, and his wife was butchered by Charles Manson's gang.

I would not like to see Judge Applebaum in court. Themis, the Greek goddess of justice, does not wear a blindfold in Applebaum's cry of protest. Roman Polanski, his life tragic as it is, thirty-two years ago, stood at the crossroads of his life and consciously chose his fate: avoiding justice and paying the price for his act, which was a prison bunk at Chino penitentiary.

The severity of the act cannot be diminished by the fact that "it was a long time ago" or that the perpetrator lives in exile. A sad childhood like Polanski's should strengthen a man's character, rather than become a pass to ruin the life of another human being.

American law is a precedence law, a history of interpreting the letter of the law in the context of similar cases and reaching a decision through analogy. Polanski's pardon could mean that the American court system may be facing the revision of sentencing of sexual molesters sitting in prison, as well as giving up on those who, thus far, have successfully escaped responsibility for their acts.

The world is full of nice, talented guys who sit in jail for making a wrong turn at the crossroads of their lives. The Polish film director should have his day in court. Until then, the final episode of this unfortunate story will not end.

The author is a New York television producer, author, writer, former U.S. television correspondent for TVP, TVN and Panorama.

Polanski Loses Support From Poland

2009-10-02T11:06:30Z

WARSAW, Poland -- When Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss authorities on a 32-year-old rape charge, the first reaction of many Poles was to immediately leap to his defense, but in recent days a counter-reaction has begun to set in that is much less favorable to the respected director.

Polanski's detention caused a major stir in Poland, where it has dominated newspapers and television. Although Polanski -- of Polish-Jewish background and a Holocaust survivor -- left communist Poland in the 1960s, he is still seen as one of the country's major cultural figures.

New missile defense plan bets on Navy interceptors

2009-09-30T13:26:01Z

WASHINGTON — Ever since President Ronald Reagan proposed building a ballistic missile shield in 1983 to prevent a doomsday scenario, the idea has been dogged by an unanswered question: Will it work?

The prime target during the Reagan era was Russian missiles. A scaled-down defensive system recently proposed by the Obama administration would aim to shoot down warheads from Iran, which has heightened concerns by building a clandestine uranium enrichment plant and test firing missiles this week with a range of up to 1,200 miles.

Shirin Sadeghi: Poland and Polanski: Chemical Castration in the News

2009-09-28T14:08:26Z

In an irony that will not be lost on him, Roman Polanski chose a rather ill-timed moment this week to get arrested for the 1977 incident that closely follows most biographical descriptions of the Oscar-winning director.

Polanski, having avoided the United States for 31 years allegedly because he doesn't want to deal with a 1978 U. S. arrest warrant against him for having sex with a 13 year old girl (he would have been 44 years old at the time of the incident), apparently failed to realize that Switzerland has had an extradition treaty with the United States for around 60 years now.

The Polish-French film director was detained by Swiss authorities before he could participate in a tribute to him at the Zurich Film Festival.

Coincidentally, Poland has been in the news this week for approaching a status as possibly the first European nation to mandate chemical castration for sexual offenses against, amongst other things, children under the age of 15.

Sounds like Polanski might have to add Poland to his list of countries to avoid in the near future. That is, of course, depending on the eventualities of this weekend's Swiss arrest and the Polish legislative system.

Unintentionally, however, Polanski's arrest brings world attention to an issue that the Polish government deems rather straight forward: adults having sexual relations with children is not merely wrong in a way that is rather obvious to most people, but steps should be taken to prevent repeat offenses by known individuals.

If the allegations against Polanski are true, as many people -- including many of those who have awarded and lauded him over the years -- would seem to believe, then it is a sad commentary on the double standards of fame and fortune that an individual who allegedly turned his back on the basic decencies of civilized society has managed not only to evade lawful repercussions but has had apparently reputable institutions uphold him despite this.

Human nature may not be so forgiving, but human institutions have unfailingly demonstrated time and again that they are. So the question is begged: can the person be separated from the talent, and if so, should they be?

This isn't about a personality issue being associated with a revered talent -- Picasso was a well known misogynist according to many accounts, but it would have been just as strange to condemn him and his art as it would have been to condemn Wittgenstein's writings because he was rude.

What this is about is a criminal act that is cruel, inhumane and damaging to a child, because no matter what anyone says or said about the 13-year-old girl who was involved in this incident, she was a child and by definition an innocent victim of what allegedly was done to her by someone who was well into his adulthood.

This is also about evading justice.

Polanski may be a talented film director, but according to his 1978 arrest warrant and his own admission, he did have sex with a 13 year old child when he was in his 40's. Most people would call him a pedophile or a child molester, or both. We don't know if he ever repeated this offense, or if in fact this offense was a repeat of earlier such behavior, but what we do know is that this type of behavior is too often not an isolated incident in the lives of the individuals who engage in it.

What the Polish government is saying -- and what many people worldwide agree with -- is that perpetrators of this crime can no longer be trusted to make the right decision when it comes to their sexual urges.

There is one certain way to prevent recurrences of this type of assault and that is to remove the urge entirely.

Chemical castration disables the urge by suppressing the hormones that drive sexual urges. It is a life-long process of regular administration of the chemicals that suppress these urges and would no doubt carry with it the complications of ensuring that the chemicals are actually administered properly, the long-term costs of administering them, and so forth.

A more cost-effective and certain prevention is old-fashioned castration: the irreversible excision of an offender's testes or ovaries. While centuries of knowledge on the issue of castration (consider stories of the Mughal-era eunuchs who protected harems but had affectionate relationships with each other) would suggest that it does not entirely remove human sexual instincts, it certainly dramatically reduces the sexual urge that in the case of sexual offenders is apparently uncontrollable.

Many people argue that castration of any kind is cruel and unusual punishment, that it is unfair to someone who may never commit this crime again. But it seems likely that the victims, potential victims, and even the perpetrators themselves would be better off with such a solution in place under the law.

While some states in America agree with the Polish government -- California, for instance, also mandates chemical castration for a two-time sexual offender -- not all do. Do states not think it is important enough to warrant prevention of repeat sexual offenses or is it a more deep-rooted problem of forgiving men -- and the vast majority of convicted sexual offenders are men -- their sexual urges?

Thus, a third element is added to the issues of double standards for the famous and ineffective punishment of sexual offenders: that of the gender bias. It's not difficult to imagine how different Polanski's life and career might have been if he were in fact a 44 year old woman who had engaged in sexual relations with a 13 year old child.

Nobody is perfect, no doubt about it, but some imperfections seem more forgivable than others. What the Polish government is saying about the kind of behavior that allegedly took place between Polanski and a 13 year old girl is that, at the end of the day, there simply is no excuse for it, and not only that, but that it is a problem that must be prevented from recurring and that decision cannot be made by someone who has already crossed a line that most people have the physical and mental resources not to.

Changing people's attitudes about the rich and famous, or their ingrained gender biases, is a slow process, but that's where laws come in handy: some problems do have solutions.

Roman Polanski has admitted to a sexual crime against a child and spent three decades evading justice for it -- this is not admirable or laudable. This week, the Swiss Ministry of Justice has again brought attention to this fact. It's just a shame that it has taken 31 years and an extradition treaty for Polanski to head down the road toward responsibility and decency.

Medvedev lauds US move on missile defense

2009-09-23T18:25:09Z

UNITED NATIONS — Russian president Dmitry Medvedev lauded on Wednesday the Obama administration's decision to scrap plans for an Eastern Europe-based missile shield, a major irritant in relations with Moscow.

"We view this decision as a constructive step in the right direction that deserve a positive response from the international community," Medvedev said, referring to Washington's decision last week to shelve a Bush-era plan for an Eastern European missile defense shield.