Poland topics

A guide to Polish vodkas

Proven masters of make-do with the potato as their primary resource, the Poles have been producing and drinking vodka since the early Middle Ages, distilling their skill into some of the best vodka blends available in the world, many of which date back centuries.

Proven masters of make-do with the potato as their primary resource, the Poles have been producing and drinking vodka since the early Middle Ages, distilling their skill into some of the best vodka blends available in the world, many of which date back centuries. The two most highly regarded clear Polish vodka brands must be Belvedere and Chopin, both of which you’ll find in any alcohol shop (Source: http://www.newpolandexpress .pl).  

Nigel Farage needs a Polish rightwinger in his Euro group because money talks

Britain’s leading Jewish organisation has accused Nigel Farage of putting Ukip’s credibility on the line by striking a deal with a far-right Polish party whose leader has a history of Holocaust denial and racist and misogynistic comments.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said Farage had “very serious questions to answer” after the Ukip leader confirmed that an MEP from Poland’s Congress of the New Rightwould be allowed to join his European grouping.
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Defending his decision, Farage said on Tuesday that he needed Robert Iwaszkiewicz to join his Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) alliance to preserve its existence, as EU parliamentary groups were required to have at least 25 MEPs from seven different countries. The deal would guarantee that Ukip will would maintain about £1m a year in funding.
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Farage told the BBC that he had never spoken to Iwaszkiewicz but he had found “nothing in this guy’s background to suggest that he is a political extremist at all”.
The Ukip leader also hit out at the European authorities for an “extraordinarily corrupt backroom deal” that meant the EFDD nearly had to fold when one of its MEPs, a Latvian, resigned.
“All of us in the European parliament have to make compromises to make sure our voice is heard,” he said. “I want us to have our voice. I want us to be heard. But I will not do it at any price, so if it came to a decision that do we cast Ukip to the outer darkness of the non-attached group, or do a deal with a known prominent extremist in Europe, I would not do that deal.”
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The controversy erupted on the same day as Farage was fined £200 by the Electoral Commission for accidentally failing to declare that he had had free use of an office since 2001. And Ukip was forced to defend its new calypso theme tune as a “bit of fun” against accusations that the singer’s mock-Caribbean accent carried racist undertones.
Despite the Ukip leader’s defence of Iwaskiewicz, critics said it was unacceptable that the party was linking up with someone who belonged to a far-right party that was eschewed even by the Front National in France.
Iwaszkiewicz caused controversy when he reportedly said that hitting a woman could “help them come back down to earth”, which he later claimed had been a joke.
Jonathan Arkush, vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said the his organisation was “gravely concerned by reports that Ukip may sit in the same parliamentary grouping as a far-right Polish MEP in a bid save its funding”.
Arkush added: “Robert Iwaszkiewicz belongs to an extremist party whose leader has a history of Holocaust denial, racist remarks and misogynistic comments. He belongs to the far-right Polish JKM [Congress of the New Right], led by Janusz Korwin-Mikke, who has reportedly called into question the right of women to have the vote.
“Furthermore, we entirely reject Ukip’s justification that ‘all groups in the European parliament have very odd bedfellows [and] the rules to get speaking time and funding are set by the EP, not Ukip’. Extremists and racists should be roundly rejected, not embraced. Even France’s far-right Front National rejected the JKM as being too extreme.
“ For Ukip to choose such a figure as Robert Iwaszkiewicz as a bedfellow, apparently for money, is beyond belief. Nigel Farage now has some very serious questions to answer. He has placed in issue the credibility of Ukip.”
Rafal Pankowski, an executive member of the Polish anti-racist group Never Again, said that the intervention of British Jewish groups followed many concerns from the Polish community.
“The Congress of the New Right’s leaders and leading members have often used anti-semitic stereotypes in their discourse and used the phrase Jewish communism many times in speeches and articles,” he said. “I am surprised by Ukip’s decision to get involved with the Congress. It shows that racist and anti-semitic statements are no barrier to Ukip.”
Korwin-Mikke, whose party has two remaining MEPs and received 7.5% support in Poland during May’s European parliamentary elections, is one of the most outspoken figures within the far-right groupings of parliament.
In July, he declared in English that the minimum wage should be “destroyed” and said that “four million niggers” lost their jobs in the US as a result of the US president John F Kennedy signing a bill on the minimum wage in 1961.
He went on to claim that 20 million young Europeans were being treated as “negroes” because of the minimum wage. He refused to apologise and was fined 10 days of allowances for his comments.
Korwin-Mikke has also called for the vote to be taken away from women, has claimed that the difference between rape and consensual sex was “very subtle” and has said that Adolf Hitler was “probably not aware that Jews were being exterminated”.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, ruled out forming an alliance with the Congress of the New Right after the European elections. “[Korvin-Mikke’s] remarks, his political views, ran contrary to our values,” she said at the time.
The EFDD has been desperate to recruit a new MEP since last Thursday when Iveta Grigule, a Latvian member of the group, resigned. This meant that the group only had MEPs from six EU member states, just below the number needed to qualify for official group status.
Former UKIP MEP candidate, Shneur Zalman Odze, who is a rabbi, defended his party’s decision to ask Robert Iwaszkiewicz to join the EFDD Group.
“The only comment he made on Hitler was that he was an evil man who should have been executed,” he said. “Korwin-Mikke is not a member of the EFDD group.
“Both Ukip and EFDD Group abhors and rejects any scent of anti-Semitism. As a Jewish rabbi, I was number four on the Ukip north west MEP candidate list, and I can assure you in my many years in Ukip I have never once experienced any anti-semitism.”
He argued many political parties in the European parliament have “very odd bedfellows”.
• The headline on this article was amended on 22 October 2014 to remove the words “say Jews”, an unacceptably broad description.

Mazur case dropped by prosecutors

“There is insufficient evidence to conclude that the Polish-American businessman induced others to murder General Marek Papala,” Jaroslaw Szubert of the Lodz Appellate Prosecutor’s Office told reporters, noting that the decision relates to just part of the investigation and that prosecutors were following new lines of enquiry which might connect Mr Mazur to the case.


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Police General Marek Papala was gunned down outside of his Warsaw apartment on June 25 1998 as he got into his Daewoo car in what appeared to be a professional hit. Investigations led to the arrests of a number of known criminal gang members and, thanks to evidence provided by one, onto Edward Mazur.
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Mr Mazur, a 68-year-old Polish born businessman who emigrated to the United States of America in the 1960s and became an American citizen, was then suspected of having offered hitman Artur Zirajewski, alias Ivan, USD 40,000 to murder General Papala.

Mr Mazur was held by Polish police in 2002 but released. He was held by the FBI in October 2006 but in July 2007 an American court refused an application to extradite him back to Poland. The judge described the evidence provided as unbelievable and stated the evidence of ‘common criminals’ was not enough to hand an American citizen over to Poland.

A police psychologist later questioned the credibility of Artur Zirajewski’s claims. Artur Zirajewski died in January 2010 on the hospital ward of Gdansk prison.

“This procedure should have come to an end long ago due to the fact that it was all fabricated,” Mr Mazur’s lawyer Piotr Kruszynski told TVN. The lawyer announced that his client will consider submitting an application for damages against the Polish state for wrongful arrest.

Two other underworld figures did come to court in 2013 charged with carrying out the murder but the judge threw out the case slamming prosecutors as he did so saying, “The issuing of an acquittal is not the failure of the court. This is justice. It’s only the failure of the prosecutor, who has failed to convince the court that there is a case to answer.”
http://www.newpolandexpress.pl /polish_news_story-6757-mazur_case_dropped_by_prosecutors.php

ECHR says Poland guilty in CIA case

 

The European Court for Human Rights this week ruled that Poland should pay compensation to two suspected terrorists who claimed that they were held and tortured by the CIA on Polish soil sometime during the period 2002-2003.

The seven-person panel of judges, including one Pole, ruled that Poland had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by permitting the US to establish a secret prison in the country. The CIA was accused of flying prisoners to this prison who had been arrested in Pakistan and Dubai in connection with terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. The court also ruled that the two men - Palestinian Abu Zubajda and Saudi Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri be paid EUR 130,000 and EUR 100,000 respectively. The two men are awaiting trial and are being held in Guantanamo Bay.

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The judges found that Poland had breached the provisions of the Convention on the prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment; the right to freedom; security and respect for privacy and the right to an efficient and fair process. It also found that the Polish authorities had not cooperated with the court and the fact that they had not denied the charges made the claims of the two prisoners “sufficiently compelling” for them to rule in their favour. It did note however that it was unlikely that representatives of the Polish authorities were aware or knew exactly what was happening at the prison, believed to have been a remote villa in the Mazurian lake district at Stare Kielkuty. Poland had, however, created the conditions for the law to be broken and had broken the convention by not taking measures to ensure people under its jurisdiction were not subject to torture or inhumane treatment.
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The complainants lawyers told reporters that they hoped the Court would also punish Poland for the lack of action in investigating the case. Prosecutors in Poland have still not completed their investigation into the case, which has being going for six years and whose deadline has lately been extended to October 11 this year.

The judgement was met with anger, disappointment and concern across the political spectrum in Poland. Civic Platform’s Stefan Niesolowski voiced a view shared by many, including the former Prime Minister Leszek Miller who was leader at the time of the alleged renditions, that those guilty for outrages like 9/11 were receiving better treatment than the victims.
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“Poland stood on the side of those who jumped from the thirtieth floor of the WTC. Those who had a choice to either smash into the pavement or burn alive,” he said, noting also that the Strasbourg ruling was not the final verdict. Michal Kaminski meanwhile appealed for a peaceful resolution to the case because “media publicity abroad may increase the terrorist risk for the country”.

Roman Giertych, the former leader of the League of Polish Families (LPR), said the ruling brought shame on Poland and that Prime Minister at the time Leszek Miller should stand before a State Tribunal. He also said that this case would be a test of the strength of the Third Republic.

Legia crowned champions again

With Lech's goalless draw at home against Pogoń Szczecin last Saturday, Sunday's Legia match was all about their celebration of the title, even if the occasion was rather underwhelmed by an unlikely defeat to Ruch Chorzow.

With relegation settled for a while now and two games left, the emotions were long past in the Ekstraklasa.

At least last week saw some interesting matches - Wisla's 2-3 defeat to Gornik was interesting, while Lech bounced back with an impressive 4-0 victory over Ruch. Referee Szymon Marciniak gave three penalties in Lechia’s 2-2 draw with Wisla to provide some drama, while relaxed defending from both Jagiellionia and Korona gave those who prefer goals something to cheer - 4-4 was the scoreline on Tuesday night in Białystok.

However, with the results obvious, some clubs failed to get the crowds for the final games of the season. Zawisza might have taken tens of thousand fans to Warsaw for their Polish Cup victory, but only 1000 of them were present as Gornik defeated them on Wednesday. Slask's new stadium was filled to a fraction of its capacity during their 1-0 win over Cracovia, which simply summed up their poor season.

The last league round of the season is again being played over two days, with the most interesting clash on Sunday for what should have been a final title decider. Yet Lech come to(http://www. newpolandexpress.pl). 

A guide to Polish vodkas

Proven masters of make-do with the potato as their primary resource, the Poles have been producing and drinking vodka since the early Middle Ages, distilling their skill into some of the best vodka blends available in the world, many of which date back centuries.

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Proven masters of make-do with the potato as their primary resource, the Poles have been producing and drinking vodka since the early Middle Ages, distilling their skill into some of the best vodka blends available in the world, many of which date back centuries. The two most highly regarded clear Polish vodka brands must be Belvedere and Chopin, both of which you’ll find in any alcohol shop.

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(Source: http://www.newpolandexpress.pl/ polish_news_story-6748-in_vitro_up_for_debate.php)

in vitro up for debate

The new draft law on infertility and in vitro treatment in Poland came up for public consultation this Wednesday.

According to the Polish Press Agency, after a year into the new programme, the Ministry of Health wants to collect the thoughts of the public and gauge reactions. The key areas to be looked at are uniform procedures, rules and standard practice of treatment which are aimed at increasing the health and safety of patients, states Krzysztof Bak, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health.

“One year into the programme, we have had 2,700 pregnancies and 249 births. We feel this is the time for public consultation,” wrote Deputy Minister of Health Bartosz Arlukowicz on Twitter.

He added that the act supports a ban on embryo trade, cloning and experimentation. “This is an act for the treatment of fertility - a new comprehensive approach on diagnosis with an aim to increase the number of Infertility Treatment Centres.”

At present, there is still no legislation fully covering this area in Polish law. “In the past this was condemned ... but we are now hoping that new laws will mean in vitro will be safer and more controlled in Poland,” medical journalist Kamila Gebska told TVN.

(Source: http://www.newpolandexpress.pl/ polish_news_story-6748-in_vitro_up_for_debate.php) 


Polish Government Survives Vote of Confidence

Poland's center-right government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk survived a confidence vote on Friday that was called by the opposition over leaks of embarrassing conversations by some leaders.
The vote went 236-155 in the government's favor in the Sejm, or lower house of parliament. The result is a setback for Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the nationalist Law and Justice party, who called for the vote. Kaczynski accuses Tusk of dragging Poland into a political crisis and of general incompetence in guiding the country of 38 million.
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Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz survived a separate confidence vote also called by the opposition.
The government turmoil was sparked last month when a weekly magazine, Wprost, released secretly recorded conversations of top leaders. In one, National Bank of Poland president Marek Belka and Sienkiewicz are heard discussing how the central bank could help the governing party win re-election in 2015, a seeming violation of the bank's independence.
In another, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski was heard saying that Poland's alliance with the U.S. is worthless. It was a sentiment expressed before the crisis in Ukraine prompted President Barack Obama to promise to do more to bolster Poland's security. President Bronislaw Komorowski reacted to that leak by stressing the importance of the alliance.
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Soon after the scandal broke the government looked fragile, and even Tusk said early elections might be the only way out. But he has since survived two confidence votes in a little over two weeks. Tusk requested the earlier vote to strengthen his position during talks at the European Union.
(http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/polish-government-survives-vote-confidence-24517328)

Polish Catholics in decline

Poland's reputation as a European bastion of the Catholic Church is under threat after new figures revealed a dramatic decline in church going.
An official survey by the Polish Catholic church found that in the last 10 years the number attending Sunday mass has fallen by around two million, and that on average only 39 per cent of the population now attend church: the first time the figure has been below 40 per cent since 1980.
The drop was described as "significant" by Father Wojciech Sadlon, director of the Catholic Church Institute of Statistics, the body that carried out the research.
It comes despite the Church still holding a prominent and powerful place in a society in which many people still regard Catholicism as an essential aspect of being Polish.
But Poland's Catholic Church has endured a torrid tame of late. A succession of child sex abuse scandals, and the Church's apparently clumsy response to the scandals, have shredded its once revered reputation, and put it on the defensive.
It has also faced demands for cuts to its state funding, and that the ubiquitous crucifix found on the walls of public buildings such as schools and hospitals be removed on the grounds it blurs the division between church and state.
Church-going, it appears, is also suffering from the appeals of modern life.
"Lifestyles on Sundays have changed," explained Father Sadlon. "Faith is losing out to other 'offers' such as people spending time with friends and family, as well as just sitting in front of the TV as an individual.
"People who often came to church were motivated by an attachment to tradition and a culture given to them by their family, but this is no longer enough to sustain them and so they gradually cease to attend," he added.
To rub salt into the Polish Church's wounds, the decline in church attendance in Poland contrasts with a resurgence in church going in Spain and Italy where factors such as the appeal of Pope Francis have given Catholicism a new zeal.
 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/10961493/Polish-Catholics-in-decline.html)

BREAKING NEWS IN POLAND 

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  • Authorities: 11 people killed in yesterday's plane crash in southern Poland; 1 survivor with serious injuries - @BBCNews
  • More: 1 person on plane that crashed in southern Poland survived and was taken to hospital in Czestochowa
  • 2 confirmed dead, 9 missing and presumed dead after small plane carrying parachutists crashes in southern Poland
  • Poland's PM Donald Tusk wins confidence vote following wiretapping scandal
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  • Poland's PM Donald Tusk says he will ask parliament for a confidence vote after leaked tapes scandal
  • Poland's finance minister says he fully agrees with President Bronislaw Komorowski's view on need for debate on euro after 2015 parliamentary election
  •  Obama: 'History was made here. We remember how when an Iron Curtain descended, you never accepted your fate'
  • Obama tells Poland in Warsaw speech 'History was made here, the victory of 1989 was not inevitable, it was the culmination of centuries of Polish struggle'
  •  Lech Walesa, onetime leader of the pro-democracy Solidarity trade union that ended communism in Poland, said his country should join the eurozone to become fully free and safe from Russia
  • President Obama says he came to Poland to reaffirm US commitment to its security
  •  Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says Russian President Vladimir Putin's call to postpone Ukrainian referendum had 'no practical dimension'
Zawisza Bydgoszcz win Polish SuperCup
Zawisza Bydgoszcz win Polish SuperCup
Zawisza Bydgoszcz win Polish SuperCup

Zawisza Bydgoszcz win Polish SuperCup
Zawisza Bydgoszcz win Polish SuperCup 

Zawisza Bydgoszcz defeated Legia Warszawa 3-2 in an away win in Poland's SuperPuchar (SuperCup) on Wednesday, scoring the decisive goal in the 90th minute.

Zawisza Bydgoszcz win Polish SuperCup
Zawisza Bydgoszcz win Polish SuperCup

The annual showdown, which pits the winner of the country's top rung Ekstraklasa league (won by Legia this year) against the winner of the Polish Cup (Zawisza), has been held since 1983.Zawisza were the first to find the back of the net, with Carlos Luis delivering the goods thirty minutes into play.Yet just before the referee blew the half-time whistle, Legia managed an equaliser thanks to Jakub Rzezniczak. Zawisza struck back in the 54th minute, with Alvarinho pushing the Bydgoszcz side ahead. Seventeen minutes later the teams were level-pegging once again, after a goal from Marek Saganowski. However, Vahan Gevorgian provided the 90th minute clincher that brought delight to Zawisza stands, with the Bydgoszc.   

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Interest rates to remain unchanged
Poland’s Monetary Policy Council (RPP) stated this week that there would be no changes made to the National Bank of Poland’s interest rates in the coming months.
As well as announcing this decision, the RPP stated that some indicators suggest the pace of the country’s economic recovery may be slower than previously estimated and that it saw the possibility of deflation, reported news station TVN24.
Amid the current controversy surrounding the recent leaked tape scandal, President of the National Bank of Poland Marek Belka focused on his day job stating “The likelihood of interest rate cuts up until September is small.”

In addition to this news, the RPP said that it believes the gradual improvement of the labour market situation - a mixture of both a reduction in unemployment and a slight increase in wage growth - has been a major contributor.
It also noted that inflation during the month of May was much lower than expected - 0.2 percent, instead of the NBP’s initial inflation target of 2.5 percent.

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Eleven killed in plane crash at parachute club in Poland 

Eleven people were killed and one person seriously injured after a plane from a parachute club crashed in southern Poland, with local media suggesting the light aircraft may have been carrying too many passengers.
"Twelve people were on board the plane and the only survivor was taken to hospital and is in a serious condition," Justyna Sochacka, a spokeswoman for the emergency services, told AFP.
The light twin-engined aircraft, a Piper Navajo, took off from an airfield in Rudniki near Czestochowa with 11 parachutists and a pilot on board, according to reports.
Quoting anonymous sources close to the case, the PAP news agency reported that the aircraft could have been overloaded, and temperatures of 27 degrees Celsius (80.6 Fahrenheit) in the area may have contributed to the engine overheating.
Eyewitnesses said its engines began making an odd, droning sound before the aircraft began to fall from the sky.
"It was flying from the south and the engine was making strange sounds," said eyewitness Barbara Minczykiewicz, a resident of the village of Topolow where the plane crashed, quoted by Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza broadsheet daily.
"It was flying very low, close to houses. It tilted to one side on its wing and caught fire," she said.
Village residents found one person alive and two bodies outside the aircraft, which was engulfed entirely by flames, according to Mrs Minczykiewicz.
Robert Koziol, another eyewitness, told Gazeta Wyborcza it appeared some of the passengers had attempted to jump out of the plane as it careened to the ground.
"There were open parachutes lying on the ground. One parachutist survived, but two others who we also found outside the plane didn't," the retired police officer said.
"The worst thing was that one person tried to get out of it (the plane) but slid back inside. We tried to help them, but there was nothing we could do: everything was on fire, even the ground," he added.
Mr Koziol said he also heard the plane produce a strange droning sound, before it spun out of control.
Rescue workers at the scene quoted by the Polish PAP news agency said the passengers had virtually no chance of surviving the fire.
Police and prosecutors on the scene launched an investigation into causes behind the catastrophe.
A special air accidents investigator, who by coincidence was flying in another plane to the Rudniki air field at the time of the accident, said he heard no distress call from the pilot of the doomed plane.
"I didn't hear any alarm signals on the radio from the Piper (aircraft)," Jacek Bogatko said.
The crash site is less than two miles away from the runway.
Edited by Steve Wilson
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk /news/worldnews/europe/poland/10949248/Eleven-killed-in-plane-crash-at-parachute-club-in-Poland.html

Polanski plans Polish picture

There were reports in the media this week that film director Roman Polanski has stated he will be happy to work on his new project in Poland if he is given the guarantee that he will not be extradited.According to TVN, Polanski is currently staying in a rented apartment in the Podgorze district of Krakow and has emphasised his love for the country stating that he loves speaking the language and he “knows the history of almost every building [of Krakow]”.
Next year, the director wants to begin work on his new film project, an adaptation of Robert Harris’ ‘An Officer and a Spy’. At present, the project’s working title is ‘D’. Along with producer Robert Benmussa, he is currently considering three locations: Krakow’s ‘Alvernia Studios’ and Warsaw’s ‘ATM studios’ and ‘Wytwornię Filmow Dokumentalnych i Fabularnych studios’.
However, before any work can go ahead, the producer has stated they need confirmation from the Polish government that Polanski will not be extradited, due to pending charges connected to his alleged sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
“There is no current knowledge of an extradition request,” states Patrycja Loose, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice. Source: http://www.newpolandexpress.pl /polish_news_story-6682-polanski_plans_polish_picture.php
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The Warsaw Mermaid - Syrenka

Feisty, beautiful and very, very busty. Her image has bewitched millions, and you’ll find her film star looks printed on everything from flags to mags.
But stop panting at the back. She turns out to be it, and it turns out to have a tail. Who is this godless Jezebel you ask? Well, none other than the Syrenka, the fresh water mermaid whose been representing Warsaw since before you’d remember.
Where does the story begin then? First known mention of a mermaid thing as the symbol of Warsaw can be traced to a royal seal dated from 1390, though this one certainly wasn’t much to be looking at; depicting a hideous looking bloke with a dragon’s tail was as close as you’d come to seeing  (http://www.newpolandexpress.pl /polish_news_story-1622-the_warsaw_mermaid_-_syrenka.php)

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Poland’s biggest rising star may have just flamed out

A major scandal consuming the government in Poland is threatening to derail the career of the brightest star in Polish politics as it exposes a hidden rift between Washington and a once-staunch ally.

Recorded surreptitiously in an opulent Warsaw restaurant and leaked to the swashbuckling right-wing magazine Wprost this week, the so-called Warsawgate tapes purport to reveal the country's central banker angling to pull strings in the government and a former minister negotiating with the head of the Polish equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service to quash a probe of his wife's dental practice.
But the most shocking revelation came in the crude language of Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski — a Twitter-savvy, Oxford-educated former journalist once thought to be among America's strongest supporters in Warsaw and a frontrunner in the behind-the-scenes race for foreign policy chief of the European Union.
“This is a wonderful instrument to undermine his chances this time around to gain an important European position,” says Konstanty Gebert, a veteran Polish political analyst associated with the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“His job in Poland is safe, but if he tries for more, those tapes will re-emerge,” he adds. “They're bound to hound him for life.”

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Sikorski eclipsed German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier during the early days of Ukraine’s crisis earlier this year, playing a main role in brokering negotiations between then-President Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition, and claiming the lion's share of accolades for averting a Tiananmen Square-style bloodbath.
A former war correspondent who’s married to the Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Anne Applebaum and dined at the same Oxford old boys' club as British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson, Sikorski's ambitions run high.
Poles believe he’s aiming as high as the presidency if not the prime minister's office.(http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions /europe/poland/140625/poland-radoslaw-sikorski-tape-recording-scandal-us-russia-ukraine)

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Now he hopes — or hoped — to succeed the UK's Catherine Ashton as the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs or Denmark's Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO secretary general.
But the tape scandal shows him to be more Rahm Emmanuel than Barack Obama.
“The running joke at the Foreign Affairs Ministry is 'What's the difference between God and Sikorski?’” Gebert says. “’God doesn't think he's Sikorski,'”
Heard on tape excoriating his countrymen for their pride in giving “the Americans a blowjob,” Sikorski describes Poland's alliance with the US as “worthless” and uses a racist epithet to disparage what he calls the slave mentality of his fellow Poles.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk has so far declined to dump Sikorski or respond to calls for snap polls to re-establish the government's legitimacy.
As damage control, the foreign ministry has said that Sikorski was actually parroting what the opposition was saying at the time.
Experts point out that even if the recording does reflect the foreign minister's own views, the tapes date back to February, when Washington had yet to take a strong stance on Ukraine’s crisis and offer Warsaw the security assurances it wanted in response to the Kremlin’s aggression.
Still, the harsh words — which have drawn comparisons to the embarrassing recording of US diplomat Victoria Nuland that hit Youtube in February — suggest Obama's 2013 revision of a planned missile defense system in Europe and much ballyhooed pivot to Asia may have damaged relations with Poland more than previously believed.
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More from GlobalPost: Germans are drinking more non-alcoholic beer and less of the real stuff
Some rumors blame the tape scandal on Russian spies, and Sikorski himself has said the recordings represent an attack against the government by “organized criminals.”
But in a country that attributes everything, including bad weather, to Moscow, blaming the usual suspects may not be enough to prevent a temporary damping of Poland's rising star even if Sikorski doesn't flame out altogether.
“These tapes are very damaging to the image that Poland has built for itself, with hard work, as a serious, responsible, normal country,” Gebert says. 
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/poland/140625/poland-radoslaw-sikorski-tape-recording-scandal-us-russia-ukraine

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Polish PM says leaked tapes of officials' conversations is an attempt to destabilize the nation


Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Monday the secret recording of over a dozen senior officials and businessmen is an attempt to destabilize the country.
Tusk, speaking at a news conference in the Baltic Sea port of Gdansk where he was meeting his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy, said he will not be forced by the illegal eavesdropping into making changes in his government line-up.
A Polish news magazine said on Sunday it had obtained a secret recording of Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, in contention for a senior European Union job, saying that Poland's relationship with the United States was worthless.
The Wprost news magazine said the recording was of a private conversation earlier this year between Sikorski and Jacek Rostowski, a member of parliament with the ruling Civic Platform who until last year was finance minister.
The magazine did not say who recorded the conversation or how it obtained the recording.
Aides to Sikorski and Rostowski said they had no immediate comment. A government spokeswoman said it was hard to form a view based on a few excerpts of a conversation, but there might be a comment later.
There also was no immediate comment from the US State Department.
According to a transcript of excerpts of the conversation that was published by Wprost on its Internet site, Sikorski told Rostowski: "You know that the Polish-US alliance isn't worth anything."
"It is downright harmful because it creates a false sense of security ... Complete bullshit. We'll get in conflict with the Germans, Russians and we'll think that everything is super because we gave the Americans a blow job. Losers. Complete losers."
According to the transcript, Sikorski described Warsaw's attitude towards the United States using the Polish word "murzynskosc."
That derives from the word "murzyn," which denotes a dark-skinned person and someone who does the work for somebody else, according to the PWN Polish language dictionary.

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Central Bank transcript
The remarks were brief excerpts from a longer conversation between the two men, and it was not immediately clear if Sikorski had made comments elsewhere in the conversation that contradicted those excerpts.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last month that Sikorski would be a natural candidate for the job of the EU's top diplomat. The role is filled by Catherine Ashton, but may become vacant when a new European Commission is formed.
Asked by Reuters to comment on the transcript of Sikorski's conversation with Rostowski, foreign ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski said: "We do not comment on media speculation. ... Possible comments will be published only after the whole magazine is published."
Government spokeswoman Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska said the government was waiting for publication of the full recordings before commenting.

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"It's hard to relate to something which is just a few sentences taken out of a conversation. We'll comment probably on Monday or Tuesday after the government's sitting," she said.
An aide in Rostowski's parliamentary office said he would not comment "at least until he familiarizes himself with the whole conversation."
Wprost last week published secret recordings of conversations between two other senior officials, central bank chief Marek Belka and Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz.
According to a transcript, the two men discussed the central bank helping the government with the economy if it is facing election defeat, and ways of applying pressure on a businessman. Both man have said their words were taking out of context and that they did not break the law.
The recordings prompted calls from the opposition for the government to step down. A raid by prosecutors on the premises of Wprost magazine to try to seize as yet-unpublished tapes prompted protests over media freedoms.
Tusk said last week that calling an early election was an option if no other way could be found out of the crisis.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/poland/140623/polish-pm-says-secret-tapes-attempt-at-destabilizing-nati

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The remarkable economic boom that began in Poland in 1990 has now become a remarkable economic divide

 Towering green loading cranes stretch along a wide canal leading to the shipyard where Poland's Solidarity movement began three decades ago.
For some, they are monuments to a golden age for the shipbuilders who fought for the right to form an independent labor union and eventually helped spearhead the communist collapse in 1989.
Among them, 54-year-old Zbigniew Stefanski stood on the barricades during the first strikes led by union leader Lech Walesa against the communist authorities a decade earlier. “I was arrested more times than I can remember,” he says. “Once I was beaten so badly my own mother couldn't recognize me.”
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But the sacrifice was worth it. “There was a big victory,” says the gaunt, weather-beaten worker with a deeply lined forehead and a graying goatee. “There were great hopes.”
However, the painter at the former Lenin Shipyard — which was partially privatized before filing for bankruptcy in 1997 — quickly becomes wistful.
“Now it's all gone,” he says.
Poland has experienced a remarkable economic boom since it started on the path to democracy in 1990.
But it’s also seen a growing divide between those who managed to prosper and others like Stefanski who feel they’ve been left behind. He says he lost his home as well as his wife because of troubles with the law and low wages.

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The division is clear right here in the shipyard, part of which has been taken over by Sunreef Yachts, which builds luxury boats. For young Poles of the post-communist generation such as 28-year-old Lukacz Lorkowski, whose father once worked in the state shipyards, the rusting cranes are symbols of a broken past.
After earning a degree in ocean engineering, he found a job at Sunreef and swiftly climbed the ladder from craftsman to supervisor. He owns a car and a motorcycle and is building a new house.
“I have a lot of things my father didn't have,” he says.
Inside a brick building the size of an airplane hangar, a dozen craftsmen in jeans and flannel shirts string wires and secure plywood boards in the cockpit of a new 70-foot yacht. The air is thick with the smell of fiberglass and the whirring sound of machines.

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Business is booming.
Last year, Poland's 900-odd privately owned boat builders did more than a billion dollars of business, delivering around 15,000 luxury yachts to buyers in the US and Europe.
The rapidly growing industry helps explains why the export-oriented economy is expected to grow another 2.5 percent next year.
Still, among maritime workers, Sunreef's Lorkowski is among lucky few. At 13,000 workers, the country’s entire yacht-building industry employs only three-quarters of the number that once swarmed over ships in the Lenin Shipyard alone.
It's the same story in industries across Poland, whose 10 percent to 13 percent unemployment rate matches the European Union average.
A full quarter of the country's young remains jobless despite the exodus of some 2 million Poles for jobs elsewhere in Europe.

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That wasn’t the promise in 1989.
During the first democratic elections that year, all seats in parliament went to Solidarity members except for one. That went to a businessman who had been thrown out of the Communist Party for corruption — a feat that took considerable doing. He won by promising workers he would give the one in ten with real talent a chance to rise to the top.
“That should have been a warning signal,” says Konstanty Gebert, a journalist who was part of the union movement.
The government lifted price controls and opened trade to foreign competition, forcing businesses to adapt or die. While that later enabled companies such as Sunreef to thrive, it also put millions out of work and gutted a labor movement that had inspired the world.
“Nothing was sexier than a trade union in 1980,” says Gebert, who remembers a TV news announcer applauding rising unemployment — an indicator of a “normal” economy. “But by 1990, it had gone the way of bad toilet paper and shiny suits.”
Last September, a glimmer of the old labor movement surfaced in what some called an “autumn of discontent.” Over four days, Solidarity and two other trade unions protested austerity measures that included the abolishing of the eight-hour workday, a decrease in the minimum wage and an increase in the retirement age.
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But when the peaceful demonstration culminated in a march on Warsaw by as many as 100,000 protesters, Prime Minister Donald Tusk called it “an attempt at overthrowing the government.” 
A year before, Lech Walesa himself had called on Tusk to send out police with truncheons when unions picketed against an increase in the retirement age.
How did Solidarity become shunned even by the man who was once its leader?
Many of its leaders left Poland or made new careers after the communist collapse, while the idealism of those left behind broke amid the privatization of state assets.
Jeremi Mordasewicz, a construction entrepreneur and former member of the government's labor commission, says the unions that had fought on behalf of Poland's workers later doomed companies in industries like shipbuilding and mining to shut down because they resisted reforms.
“In my enterprises, we had to cut half of the employees, and even then our production was higher than it had been before,” said Mordasewicz, who is now a mediator in union negotiations.
Similar problems continue to drag on the economy, he says.

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Borrowing capital costs more than in Germany, while the productivity of Polish workers is far lower. That’s bad for investment, which is sorely needed to create jobs for a workforce that’s still bloated.
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Some say the social inequities partly stem from a deeper problem.
Thanks to the backlash against communism in the 1990s, people naively believed competition could solve every problem and scorned investing in education and social programs, says Andrzej Celinski, a former leader of the independence movement who broke from Solidarity in 1999.
“It's one of the country’s biggest shames,” he says.
Back at the former Lenin Shipyard, row upon row of bracings for building container ships stand empty. A single, orange-colored gas transport ship floats in the canal.
“In the '80s, we used to build 13 or 14 ships a year,” painter Stefanski says.
“You could walk across the decks from one to another,” he adds, gazing off across a scrubby field where now pallet after pallet of steel lies rusting. 
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/poland/140404/poland-gdansk-shipyard-unions-solidarity

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Polish filmmaker wades into Solidarity leader controversy

 When Lech Walesa launched a strike with a group of fellow workers over the firing of one of their colleagues in August 1980 at the Gdansk shipyard on the Baltic Sea, the electrician couldn’t have known he was embarking on a path that would result in the dismantling of communism and culminate with his presidency.
But it wouldn’t end there. Since stepping down, the 69-year-old former leader of the Solidarity union movement who once mobilized millions of Poles has become one of his country’s most controversial figures, criticized for his sharp-worded criticism of homosexuals and leftists.
Now another famous Pole, the film director Andrzej Wajda, is weighing in with his take on Walesa’s role in history in the final installment of a trilogy about disillusionment in communism he started in the 1970s. “Walesa: Man of Hope” premieres at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.
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The Oscar-winning filmmaker describes his friend as a “modern hero, who due to his obstinacy transformed our country into a democracy without any bloodshed.”
“My movie is going to portray him exactly as such a man,” Wajda said in an interview.
Even if the film successfully makes an impression in Venice, however, the real test will come when it’s shown in Poland later this year.
Back in 1980, Walesa called off his initial strike after the shipyard director agreed to its demands. However, the action had inspired workers at other factories to plan their own strikes. When Walesa changed course and announced a general strike to unite them, he established himself as the co-founder and leader of the largest trade-union movement in history.
Solidarity, which won backing from 800 various companies and mines across Poland by the end of the month, eventually earned the support of a quarter of Poles who came together to expand their demands that the communist authorities respect their rights, freedom and dignity.
Walesa soon led negotiations between the striking workers and the government that concluded in a groundbreaking agreement, marking a significant first step toward overthrowing communism without the throwing of a single rock.

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Walesa maintained his opposition leadership over the next decade, despite being detained, persecuted and kept under surveillance, until the communist government agreed to enter round-table negotiations in 1989 that led to the first democratic elections since World War II.
Parliamentary Speaker Bogdan Borusewicz was an opposition leader who organized the first wave of protests in August 1980. He remembers Walesa as someone who “was a very good strike leader, who never committed any mistakes and neither did other strikers.”
Walesa’s crowning achievement was to be elected the country’s first post-communist president in 1990. But his reputation has since steadily deteriorated.
The onetime blue collar worker with no higher education was regularly criticized for heavy-handedness and a lack of diplomatic skills. He was also accused of having collaborated with the communist secret police, which he’s steadfastly denied.
In an interview at his office in Gdansk, the white-haired former president, who still sports his trademark mustache, explained that given his volatile personality, controversy was inevitable once he was elevated to the country’s highest office, a position he says he never wanted.

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“I knew that I would be criticized and misunderstood,” he said. “But in the end I didn’t have a choice because no one else would have been able to utterly destroy communism in Poland.”
The former union leader, who openly acknowledges what he calls his “coarse and independent attitude,” became politically isolated after numerous clashes with his allies and onetime Solidarity colleagues.
Henryk Jarczyk, a correspondent for the German broadcaster ARD, has interviewed Walesa numerous times over the past two decades. He says each time he met the former leader, he found him to be more “big-headed, sometimes even arrogant.”
“When I interviewed him after he lost re-election for his second term as president, he tried to insinuate that no one in Poland was as well prepared as he to fight the communist regime,” he says. “Even more, he indicated that the revolution in the 80s would have accomplished nothing without him.”
More recently, Walesa prompted international criticism for suggesting Polish gay politicians should “sit behind a wall” in the country’s parliament.
A friend of such right-wing American politicians as Rick Santorum, he also made news in the United States last year by endorsing Mitt Romney during the then-presidential candidate’s visit to Poland. Solidarity criticized Walesa for it, saying Romney was an enemy of trade unions and labor rights.
Walesa defends his actions, saying his recent statement about gays was misunderstood.
“I have my own considerations and standards which are not always clear and appropriately interpreted,” he told GlobalPost, adding that he’s always understood and respected minorities.
Nevertheless, the Nobel peace laureate never officially apologized.
Many Poles believe he’s discredited himself.
Robert Biedron, Poland’s first openly gay deputy, whose mother belonged to Solidarity and who says he long looked up to Walesa, believes the former leader has “lost his political path.”
“He was once a great leader who took on the communists and gained democracy for Poland,” he says. “Now, he often proposes theses that don’t reflect reality, are wrong and even disgrace his reputation. I think that’s how the majority of Polish society perceives him.”
Walesa’s opinions and personality have become “an explosive concoction,” Biedron adds. “He may be the most famous homophobe Nobel Peace Prize winner in the world.”
If anyone can challenge such beliefs, it’s Andrzej Wajda. His films, which typically depict major historical events, have helped shape the Polish perception of communism. Among them are the two preceding installments in his trilogy, the critically acclaimed modernist films “Man of Marble” and “Man of Iron.”

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Downplaying speculation that he’s seeking to restore his reputation, Wajda says his opinion about contemporary Walesa is irrelevant.
“Lech played his role as a leader and accomplished his mission leading to free elections during the round-table negotiations,” he said. “It’s this period of time that’s depicted in my movie.”
If more hints were needed about his portrayal in the film, however, Walesa himself describes it as “phenomenal.”
“The movie is really good,” he said, “but it’s a fairytale.”
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Some believe a positive portrayal that’s dismissed as too distant from Walesa’s current reputation risks further overshadowing his achievements.
However, Tomasz Lenz, a member of parliament from the governing center-right Civic Platform Party, says he believes the film will play an important role by helping Poles rediscover Walesa’s role in history.
“We will meet him again from a new perspective,” he says. “This movie may influence how people perceive Walesa in Poland and the world.” 
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/poland/130904/walesa-wajda-man-of-hope-film

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World’s longest braid saves Polish river

 Earlier this year, Cecylia Malik ensconced herself inside the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery here for an interactive project: she would ask visitors to help her plait a colorful 4-mile braid, the world’s longest.
Not just art for art's sake, the project was part of her campaign to save the Bialka River in southern Poland from over-development.
Bored by conventional petitions and protests that had largely been ignored, the smiling, red-haired 38-year-old succeeded in capturing the imagination of scientists, fellow artists and ordinary people who joined her in April to lay the recycled fabric braid across the Bialka’s banks in vivid protest.
It was media-savvy — a visually appealing, oddball campaign lapped up by reporters also tired of the same old approach.
“There had been a lot of things — letters and petitions — but it was boring, completely boring stuff,” Malik says. “So my friends and I prepared something crazy, funny, beautiful and nice. We wanted to make the fight famous.”
Although the river is part of a network of areas protected under a European Commission project called Natura 2000, some argued the regulations should be relaxed to allow for flood-mitigation work.
Local residents wanted the riverbed deepened and containment walls built along the banks, which often flood and change course.
Malik’s activism eventually pressured the government to bow to public pressure last month by scrapping plans to “regulate” the river — for now, at least.
Malik — who’s making a documentary film about her Bialka’s Braids project — has brought the enormous work to the UN’s climate change conference taking place this week and next in Warsaw, where she was invited to set up an installation.
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Malik — who’s making a documentary film about her Bialka’s Braids project — has brought the enormous work to the UN’s climate change conference taking place this week and next in Warsaw, where she was invited to set up an installation.
She's directed much-needed attention to the fraught debate between supporters of environmental protectionism and development in Poland, where decades of communist rule that focused on building heavy industry have taken a terrible toll on natural ecosystems.
While some Western European governments are attempting to reverse the mistakes of the 1960s and ‘70s with projects to restore rivers encased in concrete, experts say the Polish authorities largely remain locked in old thinking.
The authorities have channelized more than 6,000 miles of river in the past two years, according to hydrobiologist Roman Zurek of Krakow’s Institute of Protection, who adds that less than 2 percent of Poland’s 4,000 bodies of water are currently considered to be in “good” health.
One legacy of under-education and environmental neglect under communism, says Krakow conservationist Pawel Augustynek Halny, is that natural habitats remain undervalued, seen by many as a commodity to be exploited as the economy grows.
“In most of the parts of Poland, they are cutting down trees and building walls on the banks of rivers,” he says. “It’s very unnatural. The devastation is huge.”

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With her mantra “defending beauty with beauty,” Malik has become an unlikely force for the environmental movement.
She took up conservationism after a bout of depression four years ago.
Reluctant to spend all day alone in her studio and inspired by Italo Calvino’s 1957 book "The Baron in the Trees," she photographed herself climbing the branches of a new tree each day for an entire year.
“I wanted to break some rules, try something different,” she says. “But I’m a mom, I have two children and it wasn’t possible to escape from my private life because I had to climb down the tree every day to the kids. But I escaped in a metaphorical way.”
Malik’s often breathtakingly precarious series of 365 photographs went viral on Facebook and connected her with a large network of influential environmentalists, journalists and other admirers.
In 2011, she learned that a developer had bought the Zakrzowek reservoir outside Krakow’s city center for a major housing development that would threaten the habitat of the common blue butterfly.

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Capitalizing on her new prominence, Malik donned vibrant handmade blue wings to galvanize locals to rally against the plans together with her sister Justyna Koeke. The authorities scaled back the project soon after and the developer eventually pulled out, saying it was no longer financially viable. The reservoir was saved.
Later that year, Malik began videoing herself paddling down Krakow’s six waterways aboard a raft made of recycled materials, which later morphed into a project to raise awareness about river pollution that eventually spurred the Bialka’s Braids project.
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Although she considers herself an artist first, she says her childhood spent in the Polish mountains has driven her love of nature and commitment to protecting her country’s natural assets.
“Maybe five years ago I could have gone alone to the river and screamed from the banks and no one would have heard me. I had no power,” she says.
“But now I know my voice will be noticed, I want to say something important, use that little bit of power in a good way.”
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story said the Bialka's Braids project was 12 miles long, the length of Malik's initial plan.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/poland/131114/Poland-environment-bialka-river-artist-cecylia-malik

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Polish Digital Cookbook App Wins in China

 The Polish social cooking app Cooklet won in the Best Digital Cookbook category during the award ceremony of one of the most prestigious culinary contests in the world, the Gourmand Awards. The event, which took place on May 21st in Beijing, saw Cooklet compete against numerous notable projects from Brazil, China and the United States. The Polish team can now add the award to an ever expanding list of honors received in the last several months.



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The Gourmand Awards is easily one of the most significant cooking events in the world. The cooking Grammys, now in its 19th edition, has been held since 1995 simultaneously with the world’s biggest cookbooks fairs. The Wrocław-based startup’s app Cooklet won in the Best Digital Cookbook category.


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The founders of Cooklet.com are obviously huge lovers of cooking. Around 2010 they vowed to turn their passion into a legitimate technology-driven business. Four years have passed and Cooklet evolved into an entire ecosystem of cooking apps – a website as well as mobile apps for Android, iOS, Blackberry and Amazon Kindle devices, to name just the most important features. The app lets you gather all of the recipes you find interesting, but first and foremost it serves as a social platform for all foodies to interact with each other. If you’re a foodie yourself and want to find  interesting people that love cooking and quality food-related content, download Cooklet for at least one of your devices before you make your next meal.
The Gourmand Awards is hardly the only international success of Cooklet. It was named the best app in the Adobe®AIR® contest AppCircus @ Blackberry Jam 10. The Android version placed 3rd in the Samsung Smart App Challenge 2013 in the category of tablet apps.



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This is a very important moment, not just because of the prestige and esteem the awards enjoy all over the world. This is also an incredible step towards closer cooperation with premium content publishers from everywhere,” said Grzegorz Trubiłowicz, the founding father and one of the main authors of the Cooklet application and website.

Major European Electronics Company Enters Polish Market

The French electronics company Archos has announced the launch of their vast consumer electronics line in Poland. Their products will be available through the distribution networks of Action and ABC Data.
“The Polish market is very important for us. We have high hopes for it and we are truly happy about establishing cooperation with some really significant partners,” stated Loic Poirier, CEO of Archos. “We are proud that Archos products, which offer high quality for a reasonable price, will be available to Polish consumers.”
Archos’ product portfolio includes tablets, smartphones and intelligent devices. The company was created in 1988. 20 years later it debuted on the tablet market, and just 12 months later, in 2009, it released the very first Android tablet. Currently their line includes tablets with screens from 7 to 13.3 inches, equipped with various CPUs, (optional) keyboards and 3G or 4G technology. Archos offers a wide range of smartphones – from budget models for basic tasks to advanced devices dedicated to multimedia entertainment and providing access to 4G networks.
The company is also planning to introduce its home automation devices to customers. Thanks to their experience in mobile technologies, Archos has come up with a line of smart solutions to enhance communication between household appliances, or the first step in the Internet of Things.
As a longtime Google partner, Archos ensures that all of its products are certified by the Mountain View giant. As a result, all Archos product users can enjoy full access to the Google Play app store.
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Digital Dragons 2014: Krakow Turns into Gaming Capital for Two Days

 The Digital Dragons conference, held in Krakow on May 8-9th in its third edition, easily earned the reputation as the event of the year for the Polish gaming industry. Over the course of two days visitors could take part in nearly 60 seminar sessions spread among four venues – all in the raw, post-industrial setting of Krakow’s Old Tram Depot and the Museum of Municipal Engineering. The conference’s main organizer, the Krakow Technology Park, won several local officials and the heads of top educational institutions over to the idea, among them Marek Sowa, Marshal of the Małopolska Region, Prof. dr hab. med. Wojciech Nowak, Rector of the Jagiellonian University, Prof. Kazimierz Furtak, Rector of the Krakow University of Technology and Dr hab. Paweł Węgrzyn, Director of the European Games Academy, who all served on the honorary committee of the event. The Polish Ministry of the Economy was also present at its own booth during the event.
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The organizers set on a difficult path of appealing simultaneously to the smallest developers in the form of the indie gaming crowd as well as to the top gaming studios with big budgets, thus providing us with a wide spectrum of gaming experiences. The main venue hall hosted several dozen indie developers on long benches placed along the central area, where they were easily visible and their games accessible for players and potential investors. Visitors readily engaged with the multitude of indie games available, using their hands-on experience to later vote for the best game of the show. The indie games showcase was surrounded by more traditional booths occupied by gaming companies and supplementary businesses – among them hardware manufacturers, payment systems and crowdfunding services.
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Some of Digital Dragons’ lectures ran in small and densely packed rooms, while others occupied huge and almost empty halls, as it seemed the organizers had a hard time predicting the demand for lectures on specific topics. Nevertheless, many interesting presentations were delivered by famous Polish and international game developers, as well as by small and virtually unknown startup founders, some even sharing their failures and the offering post-mortem experience as a valuable lessons in the form of lists of things to avoid.

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Among some of the better known speakers were Marcin Iwiński and Michał Platkow-Gilewski of CD Projekt RED, who explained the process of brand-building using their Wiedźmin – The Witcher franchise as an example, while Oscar Clark, the architect of Playstation Home, explained how to think about games as services. Presentations ranged from deeply technical ones, like “Low level optimization for AMD GCN GPU architecture” by Michał Drobot of Ubisoft Montreal, to much lighter, like 2D game animation explained by Mariel Kinuko Cartwright of Lab Zero Games. Some presenters were even trying to answer eternal questions, among them how to turn your game into a commercial hit (Paweł Weder, product owner at Ganymede) or how to address the issues of piracy delivered by indie developer Sos Sosowski. There were also sessions not strictly related to games, though nevertheless very valuable for aspiring entrepreneurs, like when and where look for startup funding, how to develop the proper relationship between publishers and developers, or how to conquer remote markets like Brazil and China.

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Why E-voting Probably Won’t Change the Face of Voting in Poland


The latest report by the Polish Human Rights Defender and the CBOS opinion polling institute analyzed how willing Polish citizens are to vote by means of the Internet. In the wake of the upcoming European Parliament elections it’s worth taking a look at how it’s done in Poland and throughout the world. Does e-voting have the potential to aid the generally shrinking voter turnout? Can it save some money? And what about the issue of security?
What do Poles think of e-voting?
Some of the basic findings of the report seem to show a promising future for e-voting hopefuls in Poland – 76 percent of Polish citizens approve of the practice of voting through the Internet, and within that number, 44 percent believe that method should be available for everyone, while 32 percent consider it a fit addition only for those for whom casting a ballot in person is difficult. The older the respondents, the less likely they are to support the e-voting-for-everyone cause. The support for the latter option rose with age, but only slightly. Despite these figures, as many as 68 percent of all participants indicated that out of all voting methods the traditional one, in person, is their preferred option – to the point that they don’t seem to express any interest in the Internet as a voter’s aid.
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Does it really save time or money?
Any debate over the use of technology to improve an otherwise traditional area of everyday life naturally raises a simple question: how do we benefit from it? The more we do benefit, the more likely we are to remove the shackles of tradition. So how can we benefit from e-voting?

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Drapiński cast doubts upon the perspective of getting more people to vote as well. “E-voting would definitely make life easier for Polish citizens outside of its borders. For them the cost of getting to the voting venue is oftentimes enormous. At the same time, I don’t think it would convince those who just don’t feel like voting.”
How do they do it elsewhere?
Most probably much to your surprise, Estonia is currently one of the most developed e-societies in the world. In 2011 about 15 percent of voters used the Internet to cast their ballots. Up to 85 percent of Estonians consider the Internet a proper way of voting. The process takes a total of seven days. During that time, Estonians can cast their votes and change them until the very moment they are collected by the system. To log in, one needs an ID and a special reader, which costs only about 7 euro. Other countries that use some form of e-voting include Norway, Switzerland and the U.S. In the latter, the system is mostly used to verify if the votes previously cast in polling stations were registered properly.

In spite of the ongoing debate that has been around since 2009 and is brought up during every election,  this method of voting is not going to be introduced anytime soon. The Polish Ministry of Administration and Digitization (MAC) has only started working on a project. What’s more, “the introduction of e-voting would have to be preceded by certain changes to the law,” says the spokespeople of MAC, Adam Koziołek. Well, considering all of the shortcomings of this method and the security threats, maybe this one time it wouldn’t hurt to wait. At least until we know how to really get this  right.
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Crowdfunding in Poland: Can a Pole Do It?

 When musician Neil Young, concerned about the quality of digital music offered by sites such as Apple’s iTunes, announced the launch of a brand new music download service with a focus on high audio quality, he managed to tell an inspiring story that quickly earned him the hearts of millions. Those millions of hearts translated into millions of dollars through Kickstarter – a practical implementation of the idea of crowdfunding and about the most democratic way tech innovations, art projects and just about any creative endeavour can be brought to light.
To further deepen the topic of crowdfunding and at the same time focus on the local scene, we decided to compare one of the biggest crowdfunding sites in Poland, PolakPotrafi.pl, with the ultimate behemoths of the U.S. crowdfunding world: Kickstarter and Indiegogo. There will be numbers, rules, infographics and more.
Crowdfunding 101
In the unlikely event of unfamiliarity with crowdfunding, its basic definition describes it as “financing an initiative by collecting funds from a large group of people”, most recently over the Internet. It was originally conceived as a means of getting money to fund creative projects, especially in the field of arts, and bears a resemblance to the hundreds year old practice of arts patronage, or the support the wealthy have provided to all kinds of artists, writers and other poor creatives.

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There are several types of crowdfunding sites, but the basic rules are the same. First, whoever is seeking the funds begins a campaign. They explain what their project is about and ask users to back it by donating money. They set a funding goal (amount of money to raise) and a time limit. They are usually required to offer some kind of tangible or intangible (services) products for backers that vary in value depending on the amount of money they contributed.
Lots of people refer to crowdfunding as the most democratic way of creating. That’s especially true with crowdfunding sites that use the “all-or-nothing” rule. When it’s applied, campaign owners receive their money only if the funding goal they set is achieved. Otherwise, the money is returned to the backers and the project will most likely never materialize. In a way, these are the people who “vote” whether a project should be created or not. The inventors or artists have to try their best to prove its relevance/usefulness or any quality that makes it worthwhile through a well-planned marketing campaign.
Another thing that makes crowdfunding unique is how very little it has to do with the usual seller-consumer or entrepreneur-investor relationship. People who choose to donate their money on Kickstarter or Indiegogo rarely expect a return that would make this move rational from an economic point of view. The required rewards are oftentimes symbolic and even when they do include a copy of the gadget, app or video game the project is about, it is rarely enough to call it even. To some extent the money donated is a gift for the project’s creators – a gift that is meant to express their enthusiasm about the project and its capabilities or their sympathy for the people behind it. In essence, it serves as a way to become a part of the creative process with an exciting goal.

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The success of Indiegogo and Kickstarter spawned a number of more and less successful look-alikes. In Poland, where high levels of creativity have translated into a multitude of startups, apps and surprising enterprises, it was only a matter of time before our very own version of Kickstarter came out. PolakPotrafi.pl (A Pole Can Do It) was founded in 2011 and in that time it has enough of an impact to justify an article and a modest comparison with the American giants. Does it work the same way and, more importantly, does it work out the same? Let’s find out by comparing the rules, the amounts involved, the most successful projects and the reception they’ve enjoyed (or not).
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The rules
PolakPotrafi is by far the largest crowdfunding site in Poland, with a market share of around 70-75% as assessed by PolakPotrafi.pl’s project manager Jakub Sobczak. As such, it is not afraid to sport the “all-or-nothing” rule. Only projects capable of reaching their funding goal get to keep the money. It makes campaigns more exciting and intense, but it also means that PolakPotrafi earns its 7.4% share only on those projects that actually get funded. In addition, the site covers all the costs of returns in case of unsuccessful projects. This sort of mechanism requires the team of PolakPotrafi to carefully monitor the quality of projects – the better their success rate, the more likely they are to profit from their crowdfunding platform.
The crowdfunding process utilized by PolakPotrafi is almost identical to Kickstarter’s. Therefore, both websites have to maintain high success rates in order for the strict “all-or-nothing” rule to work properly. Indiegogo takes a different approach. Despite being the oldest of the three platforms we’re examining (established in 2008, a year before Kickstarter), it doesn’t compare well to Kickstarter in terms of total money pledged, total projects funded or success rates. Indiego never used the “all-or-nothing” model. Instead, it opted for a more flexible approach, which allows users to campaign for almost anything and keep the funds even if the funding goal is not reached. As a result, the majority of projects get some money, but, unfortunately, only one tenth receive 100% or more.
While Indiegogo’s inclusive approach ensures that not only creative projects can compete for backers, the number of those who actually “make it big” is significantly lower. Unlike the children of Kickstarter, Indiegogo hopefuls get a lot less credibility – basically, anyone can enter and even unsuccessful project may be able to snatch some money.
The lack of “all-or-nothing” stakes makes campaigns less exciting, and the sense of urgency evaporates. One must try much harder to create buzz.
The money
If I were to sum up the financial comparison of the three projects, it would go along these lines: PolakPotrafi allows you to get some decent funding as long as your project is based in Poland. Indiegogo is the place to go if you’re not confident whether you can raise all of the money you need or if the project doesn’t meet Kickstarter’s strict guidelines. Kickstarter is by far the best option for creative projects that really stand out. It runs circles around any other crowdfunding site in just about every respect – success rates, total amount pledged, successful dollars or the number of funded projects. While every crowdfunding site can help you raise money, there is no doubt as to where the real deal is taking place. Just look at some of the most successful Polish Kickstarter projects.

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The publicity
The Kickstarter team skillfully took advantage of the “all-or-nothing” rule and managed to create a platform that makes people come back. Journalists keep a close eye on the most interesting stories and are quick to cover them, creating ever more buzz and credibility for budding projects. The last days of major project campaigns draw a lot of attention, tears of happiness and, at times, those of sorrow.
It’s not easy to admit failure but every time two projects fail, one gets an incredible chance to make their dreams come true.
However, just because Kickstarter has the upper hand again doesn’t mean that other crowdfunding platforms remain in obscurity. Indiegogo has had its share of million dollar projects to boast about, and with its flexibility that allows for such diverse enterprises to compete, they have no problem getting people to care. Just to give you a taste of what it can do, I encourage you to follow the story of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe. This nonprofit organization purchased the entire site of the great inventor Nikola Tesla’s laboratory on Long Island, New York, with the intent to build a science center and museum there that would properly commemorate his remarkable accomplishments. It wouldn’t have been possible without an Indiegogo campaign that raised a total of $1,700,000 (!). The original goal of $850,000 was reached within a week and the buzz was as big as any large Kickstarter entry.

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While there are still enough individuals in Poland who, when asked about crowdfunding, would at best start a quick Google search, there are many signs that at least among the more Internet-driven communities it is already a natural part of getting ambitious enterprises funded. The supporters of Janusz Korwin-Mikke – the leader of the conservative and neo-liberal party the Congress of the New Right – took just three days to crowdfund over $10,000 to create a movie about their beloved leader who just recently made it to the European Parliament. Korwin. The Movie is one of PolakPotrafi’s most spectacular projects and, just like any event involving the controversial politician, it resulted in a major response from the Internet. Hundreds of articles about the movie and, most importantly, about the potential of crowdfunding should convince more and more skeptical groups to embrace PolakPotrafi and other crowdfunding platforms in Poland.
More than one Pole can do it
Speaking of other Polish crowdfunding platforms, while PolakPotrafi is obviously the biggest one, there is a total of about ten interesting crowdfunding-related projects, the most interesting of which include:
Wspieram.to – is the second biggest and quite similar to PolakPotrafi. It supports an “all-or-nothing” model and doesn’t allow offering a project’s shares.
siepomaga.pl – dedicated to charity projects, cooperates with various public benefit organizations
megatotal.pl – serves as a crowdfunding platform for musicians. Thanks to this site over 70 LPs by independent artists were released.
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Big, bigger, but still not the biggest
Crowdfundning is a subject of interesting financial, sociological and psychological analyses both in the U.S. and Poland. No surprise there. It allows innovative people to get money to bring their ideas to realization. And it’s a public vote over the validity of ideas.
Crowdfunding brings patronage to the masses, lets them become part of the creative process and is a breathe of fresh air in a world in which everyone expects you to overpay.
To give for the sake of someone else and feel good about it without expecting any return is something that drives many crowdfunding enthusiasts. But while tons of small- and medium-sized projects can expect to benefit from Kickstarter and its runner-ups, the biggest and most complicated projects still prove to be too much. The producers of the high end smartphone Ubuntu Edge learned this the painful way when their ambitious goal of raising $32,000,000 fell short of their expectations, totaling just under $13,000,000. But maybe soon enough even complex hardware will cease to be a part of giant tech companies’ monopoly. All it takes is a great story, a great idea and a lot of energy… or so they say. (http://bitspiration.com /featured/crowdfunding-in-poland-can-a-pole-do-it/)

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Polish Hospital Head Fired Over Denied Abortion

Warsaw's mayor said Wednesday she fired the head of a maternity hospital who refused to perform or facilitate an abortion of a badly deformed fetus for reasons of conscience.
The case — which saw the recently delivered baby put under intensive care with major brain and skull deformity — has stirred wide debate in Polish media, raising questions about the boundaries of faith in public life in a country that is traditionally Catholic but increasingly becoming secular.
Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz said she fired obstetrician Bogdan Chazan, a declared Catholic, over the case. She said a review showed that Chazan refused to perform an abortion toward the end of the legally-allowed period and failed to advise the woman on where an abortion was available and on the approaching deadline.
Warsaw's Roman Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz, said that the sacking of Chazan amounted to a "dangerous precedent that hurt the rights not only of the Catholics, but of all people."
It was not clear why the couple had not sought abortion at a different hospital or why they waited so long before making a decision.
Pregnancies in Poland can be terminated before the 24th week if the fetus is in seriously poor health. A doctor can refuse for reasons of conscience, but has a legal obligation to direct the patient to another doctor. (http://abcnews.go.com /International/wireStory/polish-hospital-head-fired-denied-abortion-24482359)
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Polish Opposition Calls for No-Confidence Vote


Poland's main opposition leader has called for a no-confidence vote in the liberal government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk following leaks of secretly taped conversations of some ministers and officials.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski asked the Parliament on Wednesday to oust Tusk's team and proposed his own candidate for new government leader. Kaczynski's Law and Justice party, which mixes national Catholic values with socialist views, is ahead of Tusk's ruling party in opinion polls, more than a year ahead of parliamentary elections.
The vote was expected on Friday. The ruling coalition has a narrow majority in parliament, and last month easily won a vote of confidence.
Tusk has refused to step down over the illegal tapes.
 (http://abcnews.go.com /International/wireStory/polish-opposition-calls-confidence-vote-24480826)
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Leaked tape has Polish FM comparing ties with US to giving oral sex

The Polish Foreign Minister believes his country’s alliance with the US is worth nothing and compared his government’s stance to giving oral sex and receiving nothing in return, a Polish magazine said, citing a leaked recording of a private conversation.
Excerpts from the alleged exchange between FM Radoslaw Sikorski and Jacek Rostowski, an MP and former finance minister, were published Sunday by Wprost, which promised a full transcript and audio files later on Monday or Tuesday. The same magazine triggered a political storm in Poland this month by releasing a recording of a conversation between the head of Poland’s central bank and the interior minister, implying a link between the two violating the bank’s independence.
According to Wprost, Sikorski is skeptical about the reliance of Poland, one of the staunchest allies of Washington in Eastern Europe, on American protection.
“The Polish-American alliance is not worth anything. It’s even damaging, because it creates a false sense of security in Poland,” Sikorski allegedly said.
“Complete bullshit,” the tape purportedly records Sikorski as saying. “We will get a conflict with both Russians and Germans, and we’re going to think that everything is great, because we gave the Americans a blowjob. Suckers. Total suckers.”
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What Can Singapore and Poland Teach America?

 I sat down recently in London with John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief of "The Economist," to discuss his new book "The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Invent the State."
John, in your book you basically think that the notion of the State should be changed and your suggestion, if I am not wrong, is "trim the State and revitalize democracy." But do you really think that such big change is possible?
Yes, I do, because of two factors: history and technology. Historically speaking the Western State has been through three and a half great revolutions. The first took place in the 17th century, when Europe's princes constructed centralized States. Then they became trading empires and then entrepreneurial liberal democracies. The second revolution took place in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It began with the American and French revolutions and eventually spread across Europe as liberal reformers replaced regal patronage systems. The third great revolution was the invention of the modern Welfare State and that, beside other changes, is what we in the West live with today.
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And what about technology?
The Internet has revolutionized everything that it has touched, from the newspaper business to retail. It would be odd if it did not also revolutionize the State. The internet revolution is robbing the state of what was one of its great sources of power -- the fact that it possessed so much more information than anybody else. Education will be delivered in a different way.
Things have to change if you want to serve the poor with a better education, better health care, better welfare.
Go to Singapore and you will get all those public services with higher quality at a fraction of the cost. Today we know so much more about relative school performance. America has a much worse school rating than Sweden, Poland or Singapore.
Do you think that Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi brings a new kind of government?
He talks with punch and aggression. He said he wanted things to change. In France, Hollande said the same, but he did not succeed and he did not even try. For Renzi it may be possible -- the rhetoric is good and he has more political subtlety than some others; but the labor laws did not change yet. . . but they may.

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Who is changing?
Sweden, Singapore, Quebec, Britain. Yes, in Britain they have reduced the size of the State without obvious cuts. Cities somehow are easier to change. One example is crime. Crime figures came down by a huge amount, burglary dropped enormously, bank robberies dropped dramatically.
What kind of State would you like to have?
I want a liberal State. A pragmatically small State that wants to keep the individual supreme. But it is liberal not libertarian. I am happy with a National Health Service.
But what is going on with States today?
The problem is that the individual has a smaller space and the States are out of money. People are changing on local levels. I am thinking of Sweden, which reduced its expenses from 67 percent of its GDP to 49 percent just by doing sensible things. Angela Merkel's favorite statistic is that the European Union accounts for 7 percent of the world's population, 20 percent of its GDP and 50 percent of welfare spending. This is not going to last.
What does your job as Editor of The Economist consist of?
I think that here, if you want to compare me with other editors, your fingers are in the ink. We don't have extra people outside of our own staff and we don't individually sign pieces. One has to remember that most good ideas come from below.
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But how do you work?
I think that for a weekly magazine it is valuable to have something very curated, that gives you an idea of the world. Our readers have to trust that we will cover everything important and what is going on weekly. We still think that our bundle adds value.
Who are your readers?
People who are interested in ideas. But the same readers can buy The Economist and People magazine. They want a mixture. Today the top end is growing, more people travel, go to university and rely on ideas.
What is your political side?
Liberalism, that is still the backbone here. We pushed gay marriage, we went against Guantanamo first, we were for legalizing drugs...
Are you doing well?
We make 60 million pounds a year because we have a product you can charge for. When I became editor I was convinced that the Internet was like a hurricane and would hit magazines. I was wrong. People wanted a filter, the sales of the paper edition went up. In America today iPad and Kindle readers are more or less as many as the people who prefer print. We know that young people, students, go for print. What is important is to understand that a magazine is finishable. Once you read it, it is over.
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Tricity 


Gdansk Starowka TP 5786 20100611
The neighbouring cities and town of Gdynia, Gdańsk and Sopot, form an extensive urban agglomeration called the Tricity along the Baltic Sea coast of northern Poland. Gdynia is a modern city port, Gdańsk is a historical monument to Pomeranian history and Sopot an elegant seaside resort.
Worth seeing
Gdynia is a relatively young city transformed from a village to an important industrial and maritime city between 1920 and 1930, with a population today of approximately 250 thousand. Numerous businesses are based here, in particular those which deal with international trade, shipping and fishing.

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Places of interest are plentiful in Gdynia. Three of them are located around Kościuszko Square: the Oceanographic Museum, the Marine Aquarium and the Naval Museum. Marine enthusiasts can visit the ship museums moored in the southern dockyard to see the ORP Błyskawica ("Lightning") destroyer and the Dar Pomorza sailing ship. Those who prefer relaxing promenades will appreciate the seashore boulevards lined with cafés and taverns where shanties play and sailors recount tales to anyone willing to listen.
It is worth looking at the repertoire of the Music Theatre and the Drama Theatre in Gdynia. They are known for holding premieres by authors and artists from all parts of the world. Every summer the city becomes a venue for acclaimed international jazz musicians who participate in the Gdynia Summer Jazz Festival.
Some important sporting events are organised here regularly, conditions are very good for practicing water sports in the region; Gdynia Sailing Days or The Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race - a spectacular parade of tall ships from distant seas and countries. These events are always accompanied by artistic presentations and performances in which every one in the city is involved, especially during the partying and revelry.

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Sopot, called the summer capital of Poland, is a busy place especially in the holiday season and welcomes tourists from around the world. The city centre is located along Bohaterów Monte Cassino Street, on the shore, along a beautiful promenade, closed to traffic, with plenty of restaurants and clubs. Straying a little from this promenade into one of the small streets of the town is all it takes to discover a different face of Sopot.
The famous Sopot pier juts out of Bohaterów Monte Cassino Street and is the longest wooden construction of this kind in Europe. From it there is a wonderful view of the Gulf of Gdańsk and a marvellous panorama of the city. Near the pier, there is a lighthouse open to the public. Plays and performances by the Atelier Theatre located nearby are an interesting option for summer evenings.
The city offers accommodation in hotels and private guest houses, some or which are in historical villas just by the sea.

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With over 1000 years of history and tradition Gdańsk offers visitors many interesting monuments located mostly along Długa Street and its direct surroundings. 16th and 17th century renovated residences line the street on an itinerary leading to the Old Town. Each building has its unique form and character mirroring that of its original owner.
The Gothic Main Town Hall houses the historical museum of the city. The Neptune Fountain, the symbol of the city, stands in Długa Street. The High Gate (Brama Wyżynna), together with the Executioner's House and the Prison Tower (Katownia), the Golden Gate (Złota Brama) and The Amber Museum should be visited. On the quayside of the Mołtawa River stands the Crane, the biggest Medieval port crane in Europe. The Old Town is rich in ecclesiastical monuments, among which, the largest brick built church in Europe, the St. Mary Basilica (Kościół Mariacki), deserves special attention.

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Gdańsk is not only the history of the past millennium. Modern Gdańsk is also the home of Lech Wałęsa, one of the founders of "Solidarność", Nobel Peace laureate and former President of Poland. Many places in Gdańsk are closely linked to the "Solidarność" movement. One of them, The Pomnik Poległych Stoczniowców, also known as the Monument of Three Crosses, was erected to commemorate those who gave their lives in the streets of Gdańsk in the fight for democracy.
Accommodation
The accommodation offer is rich in choice and includes the finest high standard hotels. Visitors to the city can pick from among hundreds of hotel rooms, apartments, youth hostels or private guest houses, some of which offer rooms with a stunning view over the Gulf of Gdańsk or the panorama of the city. (http://www.poland.travel /en/news-from-poland/welcome-to-the-tricity/)
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Cities

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  • Warsaw — capital of Poland and one of the EU's thriving new business centres; the old town, nearly completely destroyed during World War II, has been rebuilt in a style inspired by the classicist paintings of Canalletto
  • Gdańsk — formerly known as Danzig, one of the old, beautiful European cities, and rebuilt after World War 2's destruction
  • Katowice — Metropolis of Upper Silesia and a cultural hub
  • Kraków — the "cultural capital" of Poland and its historical capital in the Middle Ages; its centre is filled with old churches, monuments, the largest European medieval market-place and, more recently, trendy pubs and art galleries. Its city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
  • Lublin — the biggest city in Eastern Poland having a well-preserved old town with typical Polish architecture, along with unusual elements of the so-called Lublin Renaissance 
  • Łódź — once renowned for its textile industries, the "Polish Manchester" has the longest walking street in Europe, Piotrkowska Street, full of picturesque 19th-century architecture
  • Poznań — the merchant city, considered to be the birthplace of the Polish nation and church (along with Gniezno) presenting a mixture of architecture from all epoques
  • Szczecin — most important city of Pomerania with an enormous harbour, monuments, old parks and museums
  • Wrocław — an old Silesian city with great history; placed on 12 islands, it has more bridges than any other European town except Venice, Amsterdam and Hamburg.
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Cinema of Poland


The history of cinema in Poland is almost as long as history of cinematography, and it has universal achievements, even though Polish movies tend to be less commercially available than movies from several other European nations.
From 1955 onwards, the works of directors of the so-called Polish Film School had a great influence on the contemporary trends such as French New Wave, Italian neorealism or even late Classical Hollywood cinema. After World War II, despite censorship, filmmakers like Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Żuławski impacted the development of the cinematography. In more recent years, while no longer struggling with censorship, and with a large number of independent filmmakers of all genres, Polish productions tend to be more inspired by American film.
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The first cinema in Poland (then occupied by the Russian Empire) was founded in Łódź in 1899, several years after the invention of the Cinematograph. Initially dubbed Living Pictures Theatre, it gained much popularity and by the end of the next decade there were cinemas in almost every major town of Poland. Arguably the first Polish filmmaker was Kazimierz Prószyński, who filmed various short documentaries in Warsaw. His pleograph film camera has been patented already before the Lumière brothers' invention and he is credited as the author of the earliest surviving Polish documentary titled Ślizgawka w Łazienkach (Skating-rink in the Royal Baths), as well as the first short narrative films Powrót birbanta (Rake's return home) and Przygoda dorożkarza (Cabman's Adventure), both created in 1902. Another pioneer of cinema was Bolesław Matuszewski, who became one of the first filmmakers working for the Lumière company - and the official "cinematographer" of the Russian tsars in 1897.
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Traditional Polish Sports and Games


As the time passed by, almost every traditional Polish sport was forgotten. Nowadays there are only some small villages where people still play games such as palant, kapela, kulanie kulotka, pierścieniówka or ringo. These are the sports that aren't totally forgotten and weren't replaced by other types of sport more characteristic of our times.
Palant
The history of this sport begins in the Middle Ages. In the 19th century the interest in "palant" increased, and so some competitions were held. This sport was so popular that the Polski Związek Piłki Palantowej (Polish Organisation of Palant Ball) was founded. Unfortunately, this organisation didn't last long. It was transformed into Polski Związek Baseballu i Softballu (Polish Organisation of Baseball and Softball). Palant is quite similar to baseball. You also hit the ball with a bat whose name is "palant". After you hit the ball you have to run to the finish line and then back to the "nest". The task for the opposite team is to hit the running player with the ball. Now "palant" is played in the village of Grabów (near Łódź), where the title "King of palant" has only positive connotations. (In Polish palant also means a fool, dumbass).
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Kapela
This folk sport was played till the beginning of the Second World War. The idea of the game was to hit kapela (a small pyramid made from some stones) with a stone. This sport was mostly played by herdsmen.

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Kulanie kulotka
This folk game was played in a village called Bukówiec Górny. Players had to roll kulotko (a wooden disk) with a wooden stick in the shape of a board. The task was to toss the kulotko across the finish line of opposite team.
Pierścieniówka
This game was created in 1936 in Poland. It is similar to volleyball, but the net here has 3 holes (pierścienie). You don't throw the ball over the net, but through those holes, and it's only acceptable,when you do it using two hands. This game isn't popular, but it's really easy to play, so everyone can enjoy it. This game is played in 4-player teams.
Ringo
This game was invented by Włodzimierz Strzyżewski, a Polish fencer and journalist, who demonstrated how to play the game while he was covering the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

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Ringo is played on a rectangular court with a raised net, similar to volleyball or badminton. Individual players or teams stand on opposite sides of the net and throw a small rubber ring back and forth, without letting it hit the ground. When it is played one by one, then there is only one ring, when more - two. The winner of the game is the person/team that will first score 15 points. To score a point the ring has to hit the floor on the opponent's side. Players can catch the ring with both left and right hands, but they have to throw it with the same hand they caught it with. With the ring in hand the player can make four steps, then he or she has to throw it. You lose a point when:
• you touch the ring with some other part of the body than a hand,
• the ring hits the net and falls on your side,
• you change the hand in which you held the ring,
• you throw the ring with both your feet in the air,
• you throw the ring in an inappropriate way.
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Obama praises Polish video game

 Economic development can take all kinds of forms — even video games.
After meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw, President Obama praised the game The Witcher as a prime example of how Poland is becoming a manufacturing and high-tech hub.
"The last time I was here, Donald gave me a gift — the video game developed here in Poland that's won fans the world over, The Witcher," Obama said.
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"I confess, I'm not very good at video games," the president said. "But I've been told that it is a great example of Poland's place in the new global economy, and it's a tribute to the talents and the work ethic of the Polish people."(http://www.usatoday.com /story/theoval/2014/06/03/obama-poland-video-game-witcher-donald-tusk/9906967/)
 
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