Poland.

[slavicmuse]

All I have to say is CoGiC (Church of God in Christ) Christians scare the ever-living sh!t out of me! They are some of the worst Protestants I have ever encountered! My best friend (adopted black girl who is actually mixed white/black) was adopted and raised by a CoGiC family.. I was not allowed into the house anytime we wanted to hang out and I had come to pick her up (I had a car, she didn't) because I wasn't CoGiC, to make matters worse, her mom found out I was a practicing Pagan at the time. I was have to wait in the pouring rain to help my friend Shavonne because I could step foot into the house because I was not welcomed into a house of God (though I had always been taught that a "house" of God was a church..not someone's residence)... But yeah.. as much as him being black in the Polish government should through concern - him being CoGiC is all red flags for me!!

Dec 6, 2010 16:49:38 GMT -5 TsarSamuil said:

Someone is trying to Americanize the whole world?...

-------------

Poland welcomes first black member of parliament.

PAP/tvn24
06.12.2010 11:57

John Godson has become the first black member of Poland's lower house of parliament (Sejm) in what is being seen as a large step forward in the nation's race relations.

Born in Nigeria, Godson has held Polish citizenship for ten years. He will take the place of Civic Platform’s Hanna Zdanowska, who resigned from her parliamentary post after winning Sunday’s local government elections in Lodz.

Godson was previously serving as a local councillor in Poland’s central city.

In an interview with Polish Radio Lodz, Godson declared that he will still remain active in promoting his home city even though he will be spending much of his time in Warsaw on national affairs.

“I am from Lodz, I will live here, I want to die here and I want to be buried here,” the MP said, adding that he will commute to Warsaw to take part in parliamentary sessions.

Godson stated that his policy agenda will include the improvement of infrastructure, as well as increasing access to broadband internet.

Godson said he will also work on bettering diplomatic relations with African countries, adding that Poland only has four embassies on the continent and that he wants to see Polish oil companies investing there.

In the last local government and council elections on 21 November, Godson received Lodz’s second-choice vote from the Civic Platform list, gaining a place on the city’s municipal council. He was first elected to the Lodz city council in 2008.

John Godson came to Poland in the first half of the 1990s and received Polish citizenship in 2000. He is a graduate of the Department of Agronomy at Abia State University in Nigeria and also holds a doctorate in human resource management. Godson continues to lecture at a number of universities thoughout Poland.

Godson is also the president of the African Institute in Poland as well as a pastor of the Church of God in Christ, a Christian Pentecostal church active in Poland. (jb/pg)


John Godson’s official page can be found here.
www.godson.pl/index_en.html

[krakus]

Nah, I am not going to quit now.

oohhh ..what fear...a czech soldier! ;D ;D ;D
really, your small landlocked country had a serious effect on you.



pathetic....


Too bad czech republic didn't exist until 1993.

Of Course, czech lands have always been a German colony. Sad...


Czechia

btw...the word Czech itself came into English later via Polish .

oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1238102#m_en_us1238102

[sobjeslav]

At least you guys won't go burn each other's houses down.

[TsarSamuil]

Apr 2, 2011 9:10:41 GMT -5 krakus said:

btw...czech troll, I would caution, because your economy, media,...are dominated by germans.
Poland not.


I think the Czech flag is no longer funny, but vulgar. Anyone agrees on this?




Czechia = European PornLand

I agree it's too much porn, prostitution, alcohol, drugs n crap in Prague. But that flag was kinda creative, cute (yes) n funny, got a sense of humor?

I hope Czech Rep is more 'normal' outside Prague... Slovaks seem more proud n nationalist to me, but that's just my guess.

[TsarSamuil]

Snowblade, if you are going to post giant pictures, just let them be links or they ruin the page...widens too much.

----------------

JP II assassination attempt - Jaruzelski points finger at Islamists.

Thenews.pl
05.04.2011 10:53


The Pope is shot, May 1981; photo - PAP/EPA

With under a month to go before the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II in Rome on 1 May, former communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski has claimed that “radical Islam” could have been behind the attempt to assassinate the Polish Pope thirty years ago.

“Radical Islam detested the Pope and saw in him a leader of crusades,” the 87 year-old Jaruzelski has told the Jezus Catholic magazine.

Rejecting the long-standing theory of Soviet, or Bulgarian communist involvement in the assassination attempt, Jaruzelski said that, “the Islamic trail would seem the most logical.”

The Pope was shot as he was driven through a packed St Peter's Square on 13 May 1981. Four bullets hit the pontiff, but he survived thanks to emergency surgery.

The would-be assassin was Mehmet Ali Agca, a trained sniper of Turkish background.

Three Bulgarians, including airline representative Sergei Antonov, were tried alongside Agca, after the latter claimed that he was acting on behalf of the Soviet satellite.

Although Agca was sentenced, the case against the Bulgarians fell apart owing to lack of evidence.

Jaruzelski claims the court was correct to drop the charges.

“During a visit to Bulgaria in 1982 or 1983, I candidly asked Todor Zhivkov, then Secretary of the Communist Party: 'Comrade Todor, what can you tell me in confidence about the Bulgarian trail?' He answered: 'Comrade Jaruzelski, do you take us for a mass of fools? Do you think that we would leave Antonov in his place if he was really involved in an attack?”

Jaruzelski continued that “there were various countries and various forces that wanted the Pope to be eliminated, but it does not mean that they gave Ali Agca the order to kill him.”

In the general's opinion, “radical Islam detested the Pope, and saw in him a leader of crusades.

“It might not be a coincidence that Ali Agca is a Turkish national, and that he had already threatened to kill John Paul II during his visit to Turkey in November 1979.”

It was suggested that Jaruzelski would attend the beatification ceremony on May 1 at the Vatican – which some former Solidarity-era activists considered outrageous. He announced that because of his bad health he would not be able to attend, however.

Two weeks ago it was announced that Jaruzelski has cancer. (nh/pg)

[TsarSamuil]

Russia hands over new declassified Katyn massacre files to Poland.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office handed over to Poland on Thursday 11 volumes of declassified documents related to the massacre of over 20,000 Polish prisoners of war in Western Russia in 1940, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office said.

The Katyn massacre, in which 21,000 Poles, including officers, police and civilians taken prisoner during the 1939 partitioning of Poland by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were killed, remains one of the most painful issues in Russian-Polish relations.

The documents handed over to Poland contain conviction and burial certificates of those killed in the Katyn Forest, near the western Russian city of Smolensk, and other data related to the massacre.

Last year, Russia handed over to Poland hundreds of files of its investigation into the killing of the Polish POWs.

The Soviet Union always blamed the massacre on the Nazis, saying the killings took place in 1941, when the territory was in German hands. However, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev formally admitted in 1990 that the executions took place around 1940, and were carried out by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD.

In the 1990s, Russia handed over to Poland copies of archive documents from the top-secret File No.1, which placed the blame solely on the Soviet Union. In September 1990, Russian prosecutors also launched a criminal case into the massacre, known as "Case No.159." The investigation was closed in 2004.

In November 2010, lawmakers from the lower house of Russia's parliament approved a declaration recognizing the Katyn massacre as a crime committed by Joseph Stalin's regime. Poland has hailed the move.

MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti)

[TsarSamuil]

Walesa: late President Kaczynski ‘does not deserve monument’

Thenews.pl
15.04.2011 07:58

With over a year passed since the death of President Lech Kaczynski in the Smolensk air disaster, former president Lech Walesa has come out against any special monument being built for the late head of state, saying “he does not deserve a monument”.

The conflict between Lech Kaczynski and the Solidarity leader dates back to the early days of Walesa’s presidency, immediately after the fall of communism in 1989.

With a year passing since the death of Lech Kaczynski, Walesa obviously feels liberated to criticise the late president.

Walesa made his remarks at a press conference in Gdansk, declaring that Kaczynski had “failed” as a president.

“He created conflict and offended all his neighbours,” Walesa said.

“He did a lot of stamping of his foot, but stamping does not make Russia run away,” he continued, commenting on President Kaczynski’s suspicion of modern-day Moscow’s foreign policy and particularly what he regarded as the Kremlin’s aggression towards Georgia in 2008.

“Sure, he waved his sabre around, and that appealed to certain people., but this didn't help Poland,” Walesa said on Thursday.

The issue of what monument would be appropriate to commemorate the memory of Lech Kaczynski has been one of the flash points between the ruling Civic Platform party and the Law and Justice opposition.

Walesa said that twin brother of the late president, Jaroslaw Kaczynski - the leader of the Law and Justice party - should not champion a monument, as it was likely to be defaced, and that would be “unpleasant.” (pg/kk)

[boroslav]

Walesa should soft-pedal. As president, he was a similar incapable creature like Yeltzin.

[White Cossack]

He did a lot of stamping of his foot, but stamping does not make Russia run away

LOL! So true. If only more people would realise that...

[TsarSamuil]

Weekly accused over “anti-semitic” cover.

Gazeta Wyborcza
18.04.2011 14:23



A Polish-language weekly sold in several countries has been accused of anti-semitism after a cover depicted two Orthodox Jews surveying Warsaw, accompanied by the provocative speech bubble: “Son, one day all of this will be yours.”

The article, entitled “What more do we have to give back to the Jews?”, was published in the Angora weekly to tie in with the re-emergence of the debate about compensation to families – of all religious denominations – that lost property under the Nazi and Communist regimes.

Noted human rights group The Association of the Open Republic, which counts former minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski on its board, has lodged an official complaint in the prosecutor's office in Lodz, central Poland, declaring that the publication incites racial hatred.

“It is an outrageous cover,” says Stefan Ciesla, a member of the board of the association, who adds that “it recalls the lowest stereotypes applied by Germany's Nazi Party during the early stages of its existence.”

However, Angora itself is retaining a calm front. Editor-in-chief Pawel Woldan insists that the cover is a “satirical sketch” and is thus “governed by its own rules.”

“I do not understand where this hyper-sensitivity comes from,” he says. “It’s an absurdity.”

“Everyone is accusing us of anti-semitism now,” Woldan continues, “but no one has commented that we have published material in defence of Jews on several occasions.”

However, Pauline Babinski, a noted US lawyer of Polish descent, believes that Angora is not seeing the full picture. “Showing something like this in a country like Poland, where millions of people were killed by Hitler’s men during the Second World War, is simply unbelievable,” she says. (nh/jb)

[TsarSamuil]

CIA 'Framed' Bulgaria for Pope John Paul II Assassination Attempt - Report.

Novinite.com
Diplomacy | April 21, 2011, Thursday

Bulgaria had nothing to do with the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 by Turk Mehmet Ali Agca, according to a new book.

The book clearing Bulgaria of the assassination attempt on the late Pope is called "Kill the Pope: The Truth about the Assassination Attempt on Pope John Paul II" was co-authored by Marco Insaldo, a journalist with the Italian paper La Repubblica, and Turkish journalist Yasemin Taskin.

The authors said they had based their claims on 20 years of research as cited by The Daily Telegraph.

The British paper reminds that John Paul II was seriously injured after being shot four times at close range by Turk Mehmet Ali Agca on May 13, 1981. It says that based on visits Agca made to Sofia, the theory that Bulgaria's communist secret service, and perhaps even the KGB, lay behind the attack emerged about a year after the incident and have now become broadly accepted.

According to "Kill the Pope" book, the CIA drew up a story of Communist conspiracy after America's top diplomat circulated a request for material to use against the Communist bloc.

"There is no evidence that Bulgaria had anything to do with the attack on the pope. The Bulgarian connection is the creation of the CIA," Insaldo is quoted as saying.

In his words, Agca, who belonged to an outlawed ultra-nationalist and pro-Islam Turkish group called the Grey Wolves, tried to kill the pope purely because of his and the group's fanatical anti-Western ideology.

The Italian journalist further claims that Agca's visits to Bulgaria were due to flourishing links between the Grey Wolves and Bulgarian organized crime, and that the CIA was aware of this.

"Alexander Haig, then secretary of state, had asked the CIA to find anything that could be used against the communists. The CIA knew the Grey Wolves had connections with Bulgaria through organised crime and that Agca had visited so when he tried to kill the pope they were very smart and exploited the connection," Insaldo explains.

Michael Ledeen, an American foreign policy expert, supported the theory in a series of articles in the New York Times and on the NBC television network one year after the attack.

Mr Insaldo also alleged that Italian secret services, in co-operation with the CIA, forced Agca to confess to a Bulgarian connection: a confession the Turk later retracted.

The Italian journalist added that during one of the many meetings he and co-author had with Agca the Turk said "the attempt wasn't complicated", which he regards as hint that the Bulgarians were not involved.

The Daily Telegraph further cites Italian Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, who led an investigation into the assassination attempt, dismissed the new book as "rubbish".

In an interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita he maintained that the communists were behind the attack. They had looked on with alarm at the way the Polish-born pope had galvanised the anti-communist opposition in his native land and feared his influence could spread unless he was silenced.

During his visit to Bulgaria in May 2002, Pope John Paul II stated that he did not believe in the Bulgarian involvement in the attempt on his life.

[TsarSamuil]

MEPs call for end to “Polish concentration camp” slur.

Thenews.pl
12.05.2011 10:24

A cross-national group of MEPs at the European Parliament has appealed to media outlets to desist from referring to “Polish concentration camps.”

The appeal is the latest chapter in a long-running saga aimed at curbing the spread of disinformation about the death camps set up in occupied Poland by Hitler's Nazi regime.

Many in Poland are highly sensitive about the matter. As the joint statement highlighted, Polish citizens, both Catholic and Jewish, were amongst the chief victims of the camp system.

Likewise, there was no so-called 'Quisling' collaborative government in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Campaigners have already succeeded in changing the editorial guidelines for several leading publications, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Not all editors have acceded to the proposals, however, with some claiming that the word Polish was used in a geographical sense regarding the camps.

This week's appeal was put together by the Reconciliation of European Histories Group, a cross party enterprise that was founded in May 2010.

Similar efforts were made in America by the Kosciuszko Foundation, whose chairman, Alex Storozynski, argues that the sloppy editing is “Orwellian doublespeak” that “distorts history.” (nh/pg)

[TsarSamuil]

Big Brother is watching Poles?

IAR/PAP/Newsweek Polska
20.05.2011

A new report from the Polish Bar Council reveals that Poles are under more surveillance than any other country in the European Union, with police and special services tapping lines and vetting citizens’ itemised phone bills.

“The amount of citizens’ data which public authorities reach for puts [Poland] first on the list throughout Europe,” barrister Mikolaj Pietrzak, head of the Human Rights Committee at the Polish Bar Council told Polish Radio.

The Polish Bar Council’s report comes after European Commission figures which state that in 2010, police and special services in Poland looked into itemised telephone bills 1.3 million times without any checks from the courts or prosecution, and without citizens’ knowledge.

According to Mikolaj Pietrzak, there is no reason for police to reach for such information if citizens have not committed a crime, and that searching for such documents breaks the citizens’ constitutional right to privacy.

Polish policing authorities have the freedom to check whom citizens are calling, where they are during any calls made and how long the conversation lasted. “This information is often more important than the conversation itself,” Pietrzak adds.

The Polish Bar Council is not the first institution to criticise the data-protection laws in the country. The General Inspector for Personal Data Protection and the Citizens’ Ombudsman, Irena Lipowicz, have also slammed the law in this respect.

Meanwhile, the Polish Bar Council has opined that Poland’s presidency of the EU Council will offer a chance to modify the European Commission directive on collecting and retaining information on citizens. (jb)

[TsarSamuil]

Steinbach - ‘Poles not ethnic minority in Germany’

thenews.pl
24.05.2011

Poles should not expect to obtain national minority status in Germany, said the head of the Federation of German Expellees, Erika Steinbach on the final day of her controversial trip to northern Poland, Monday.

During a press conference in the city of Rumia (now Gdynia, near Gdansk) where she was born in 1943, Steinbach, the CDU MP who heads the Federation of German Expellees, said Poles living in Germany were mostly economic migrants, which is why they could not be labelled a national minority.

Steinbach began her trip to Poland on Sunday with other MPs from the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) by holding a meeting with members of the German minority in Poland in Gdansk on the Baltic coast.

Though a controversial figure in Poland, where many consider Steinbach’s role as head of the German expellees union has been one of trying to paint Germans as equal victims of Hitler’s murderous rule, couldn’t resist causing still more controversy yesterday when she claimed that Germany was home to only two ethic minorities: Danes, which stems from historical border shifts, and the Sorbs, who have been inhabiting the eastern parts of Germany for centuries.

Hundreds of thousands of Poles are currently in Germany with more set to follow after Berlin opened its doors fully to central and eastern European EU members on 1 May.

“There are specific regulations in Germany, and across Europe, that clearly stipulate, which community may be granted national minority status, which entails special privileges,” Steinbach continued.

The head of the expellees’ federation added however that German society is multicultural and open to foreigners.

“For instance, people of over 100 nationalities reside in Berlin, among them economic migrants from Italy, Portugal, Turkey and, of course, Poland. All these people have come to Germany of their own accord. If they live in Germany long enough, they may be granted citizenship, like native Germans. Naturally, though, this does not mean that they have a national minority status.”

Demonstrators held up banners saying “Persona non grata” in against the policies of Erika Steinbach.

“We, the Kashubians [an ethnic minority from northern Poland] do not want her here, nor her provocative actions taken against our motherland, Poland,” read another banner.

The trip of the CDU MP was organized by the German consulate in Gdańsk with the approval of Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (pg/ab)

[TsarSamuil]

Lithuania reinstates ‘minority ministry’

IAR
05.09.2011 17:10

The Lithuanian government has reinstated the Department for National Minorities and Emigration at the Cultural Ministry.

Stanislaw Widtmann, a Lithuanian citizen of Polish ethnicity, has been appointed deputy minister for national minorities.

A decision on setting up the post was taken in late July, marking the reestablishment of a body headed by Widtmann dissolved two years ago, to the significant dissatisfaction of Lithuanian public opinion.

“We want the issues of national minorities to be resolved on the top administrational level again,” said Culture Minister Arunas Gelunas.

The move comes in the wake of a suspended strike at schools attended by the Polish minority in Lithuania following an intervention by Prime Minister Donald Tusk in the dispute over new regulations introducing Lithuanian as a language of instruction in certain academic subjects.

In Lithuania, national minorities comprise 16 percent of the entire population. The over 250,000-strong Polish diaspora is the biggest of them, constituting 7 percent of all the country’s inhabitants. (aba/jb)