More Money for Israel? They're richer than ever, and they don't need it – so why are we giving it?
by Justin Raimondo
American military aid to Israel has been increased yet again, which leads us to ask the inevitable question: What are we getting for our money?
Well, we're getting this, as well as this, and this – not to mention this.
The regularly quoted figure is $3.5 billion per year. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt go with the figure of $3 billion in their new book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, averring that this is "generous, but it is hardly the whole story." This "canonical" figure, they say, "omits a substantial number of other benefits." The authors cite former congressman Lee Hamilton as saying that Israel is one of three countries whose aid total "substantially exceeds the popularly quoted figures." The actual figure, said Hamilton, is more than $4.5 billion.
As Mearsheimer and Walt have pointed out, neither the practical nor the moral case for this extraordinary amount of material support is justified: our Israel-centered foreign policy has been a burden to us in our dealings with the other nations of the Middle East, and it is increasingly clear that U.S. and Israeli interests have diverged since the end of the Cold War. Contrary to the Lobby's assertion that 9/11 made their fight our fight, the exact opposite is the case. Anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is a deadly danger to our national security and a great boon to Osama bin Laden and his many imitators around the globe. This arming of the Israeli Sparta is a strategic and diplomatic liability that grows with each passing year.
This post by Matt Yglesias over at The Atlantic makes a lot of sense, as far as it goes. An argument made by the Amen Corner is that the Israelis are performing a valuable service by refining the technical expertise of the military-industrial complex: they're doing the research and development that is giving America the weapons of tomorrow. But "this doesn't really make sense," Yglesias writes, "since defense contractors – American, Israeli, French, whatever – get paid for their work as is, so it's not clear why the Israeli government would need extra payment."
It's hard to differentiate between private and public industry in socialist Israel, especially when it comes to the military-industrial complex, where no clear line of demarcation exists. Indeed, in the United States, and throughout the world, such companies are virtual arms of the government, which is their primary and often only customer.
The point to be made is this: Just as America's policy of military intervention in the Middle East benefits Israel strategically, serving as an ever expanding protective shield against the hostility of its neighbors, so American subsidies in the form of military aid are designed to bolster the burgeoning Israeli arms industry, so that government-supported Israeli companies can sell us new weaponry developed on our dime.
The system works a little differently in Eastern Europe, where the installation of missile defense-systems purportedly defending against a very unlikely Iranian attack is a direct subsidy to the American companies that developed it. Again, aid to the Israelis is given on unusually favorable terms, and this underscores once more the central point made by Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, which is that the existence of the Lobby – as the single most powerful influence on the conduct of American foreign policy – explains the discrepancy.
Israel is a rich country. They don't need this enormous outpouring of free cash to shore up their military machine, which amounts to around one-sixth of our total foreign aid outlay and about 2 percent of the Israeli gross domestic product. It is the equivalent of roughly $500 per year to each and every citizen of Israel. So why this incredible amount of military aid?
After all, the Israelis are unofficial members of the nuclear club. They could turn Tehran into a molten puddle of glass at a moment's notice, and maybe someday they will. Which is precisely the point. Israel is one of the most warlike countries on earth, given that it has been, since its inception, perpetually at war with its neighbors. Israel's partisans claim this is no fault of the Israelis, yet that question is not only highly debatable, it is utterly irrelevant as far as determining what the American interest is in all this.
This new aid package will accelerate a process that was begun some time ago and help make Israel America's confidante and primary ally, a post once occupied by the British, ensconcing the Jewish state as the primary armaments-producer to the American empire. Israel will profit from the rise of the American empire not only monetarily, but also geopolitically.
This strengthening of the Israeli military-industrial complex fills the coffers of the War Party to overflowing and helps keep the political and economic dynamics of this uniquely binational war economy flowing and politically viable. As regards the latter, as we have seen, the Lobby and allied groups and individuals take a leading role in plumbing for an aggressive policy in the Middle East, pushing for policies that increase war profits. It's the economics of that famous "cycle of violence" that everyone is always talking about breaking, yet it won't be broken until the power of the military-industrial complex is successfully curtailed, and, with it, the decisive influence of the Lobby.
One effect of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy will be to reopen discussion of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and how it's not being enforced in the case of AIPAC. As the arrest, trial, and conviction of Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin makes all too clear, Israel's top lobbying organization in the U.S. is an agent of a foreign government: the upcoming trial of top AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman on charges of passing classified information gleaned from Franklin to Israeli government officials threatens to uncover what it means to really function as a foreign agent – including engaging in espionage, in addition to routine cheerleading for the Israeli government talking point of the moment.
Many people have written me – given that I have covered the implications of the AIPAC spy trial in detail but haven't published anything on the subject recently – asking whatever happened to Rosen, Weissman, and the case, and darkly implying that since the supposedly all-powerful "Jewish cabal" that (in their view) runs the world couldn't possibly allow this to come to trial, it won't ever see the light of a courtroom. Ah, not so: the trial, though delayed – through the successful legal tactics of the defense – has not been derailed. A trial date of Jan. 14, 2008, has been set – although this, too, is tentative, given the outcome of several pending legal maneuvers. Another reason for the successful delaying tactics by the defense: the media hasn't paid any attention to this case, apart from a brief flurry of interest when the story first broke.
For the reasons why that is so, you'll just have to read The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. I'm just finishing it up now and hope to have a report for you soon. In the meantime, the Lobby marches on, devastating all opposition with its virulent smear campaigns, and pulling in a good chunk of change for the mother country in the process. So, what are we getting for our involuntary "contribution" to the IDF?
Well, nothing. But our politicians, and the corrupt corporate interests whose sock-puppets they are, are getting plenty – of that you can be sure. The former are getting reelected, thanks to huge campaign contributions by the special interests, including the armaments industry, and the latter are getting rich off the backs of the American taxpayers.
And the beat goes on…~ Justin Raimondo
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poland's Foreign Ministry says the country's ambassador to Iraq has resigned. why?
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poland's Foreign Ministry says the country's ambassador to Iraq has resigned. why?
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poland's Foreign Ministry says the country's ambassador to Iraq has resigned due to health problems resulting from injuries sustained in a 2007 ambush in Baghdad.Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said Tuesday that Gen. Edward Pietrzyk stepped down after doctors advised him that the «climate and medical care» in Baghdad
Poland's loyalty to US a one-way street? Today, Poles can feel a little disappointed when thinking of their American allied.
Poland's loyalty to US a one-way street? Today, Poles can feel a little disappointed when thinking of their American allied.
Bush Administration did offer to Poland 20 Millions
This is a joke ( it will build 5 miles of the road on today Poland?
Who is advancing president Bush?
Is President Bush he out of touch with he situation in Poland! This time to view Poland as a poor former Soviet country is long time gone.
And where is the Secretary of State. Oh ye, she did graduate international studies in Stanford. So what did she learned there?
Poles are not coming to US to work for $12.00 per hour
Live rates at 2008.07.10 15:04:36 UTC
12.00 USD = 24.8735 PLN
United States Dollars Poland Zlotych
1 USD = 2.07279 PLN 1 PLN = 0.482441 USD
10.07.2008
Lech Alex Bajan
Polish American Polish American from DC
«did not permit a full rehabilitation» from wounds suffered in the October 2007 attack.The 58-year-old Pietrzyk sustained severe burns when his three-car convoy was ambushed by roadside bombs near the Polish embassy. The ambassador's bodyguard and two Iraqis died in the attack.Paszkowski says Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski accepted Pietrzyk's resignation. Pietrzyk held the post since April 2007. No successor has been named.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poland's Foreign Ministry says the country's ambassador to Iraq has resigned due to health problems resulting from injuries sustained in a 2007 ambush in Baghdad.Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said Tuesday that Gen. Edward Pietrzyk stepped down after doctors advised him that the «climate and medical care» in Baghdad
Poland's loyalty to US a one-way street? Today, Poles can feel a little disappointed when thinking of their American allied.
Poland's loyalty to US a one-way street? Today, Poles can feel a little disappointed when thinking of their American allied.
Bush Administration did offer to Poland 20 Millions
This is a joke ( it will build 5 miles of the road on today Poland?
Who is advancing president Bush?
Is President Bush he out of touch with he situation in Poland! This time to view Poland as a poor former Soviet country is long time gone.
And where is the Secretary of State. Oh ye, she did graduate international studies in Stanford. So what did she learned there?
Poles are not coming to US to work for $12.00 per hour
Live rates at 2008.07.10 15:04:36 UTC
12.00 USD = 24.8735 PLN
United States Dollars Poland Zlotych
1 USD = 2.07279 PLN 1 PLN = 0.482441 USD
10.07.2008
Lech Alex Bajan
Polish American Polish American from DC
«did not permit a full rehabilitation» from wounds suffered in the October 2007 attack.The 58-year-old Pietrzyk sustained severe burns when his three-car convoy was ambushed by roadside bombs near the Polish embassy. The ambassador's bodyguard and two Iraqis died in the attack.Paszkowski says Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski accepted Pietrzyk's resignation. Pietrzyk held the post since April 2007. No successor has been named.
Monday, July 28, 2008
ZYDOWSKA WDZIECZNOSC CZYLI "CZARNA NIEWDZIĘCZNOŚĆ"
ZYDOWSKA WDZIECZNOSC CZYLI "CZARNA NIEWDZIĘCZNOŚĆ"
Sendler Irena Mother of the Holocaust Children
ZYDOWSKA WDZIECZNOSC CZYLI "CZARNA NIEWDZIĘCZNOŚĆ"
Napisał St. Trzeciak
Friday, 25 July 2008
XXXI STR 223 Mesjanizm a Kwestia żydowska. ks. dr St. Trzeciak 1933r. Wydawnictwo Molauñ- Niemirowska 1/43 00-921 Wa-wa, Tel.22-659-0435
„Niech ludzkość cała wie i pamięta , żę żydostwo niemieckie, to typ ludzki najwyższej jakości” ....” Temu najwyższej klasy typowi odpłaca się teraz naród niemiecki czarną niewdzięcznością:W ten sposób „ Koło żydowskie „ w sejmie polskim w dniu 15 marca 1933 r. na swoim posiedzeniu występuje w obronie Żydów nimeickich uchwalając protest przeciwko okrucieństwom i męczęniom, na jakie wystawione jest żydostwo w Niemczech.
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Protest przeciwko prowadzonym negocjacjom w kwestii restytucji majątków żydowskich
Napisał Administrator
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Warszawa,30.06..2008
Pan Lech Kaczyński Prezydent Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej Pan Donlad Tusk Prezes Rady Ministrów Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej
Szanowny Panie Prezydencie! Szanowny Panie Premierze !
W nawiązaniu do Panów wizyty w Waszyngtonie i w Izraelu oraz ostatnich spotkań na polskiej ziemi z Ronaldem Lauderem pragniemy przekazać Protest przeciwko Waszym obietnicom rozwiązania problemu restytucji mienia pożydowskiego.
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Komisja Kongresu USA: niech Polska zwróci mienie
Napisał (bart)
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Komisja Spraw Zagranicznych Izby Reprezentantów Kongresu USA przegłosowała projekt rezolucji Izby, wzywającej Polskę do uchwalenia ustawy zapewniającej zwrot lub rekompensatę właścicielom mienia prywatnego zagrabionego przez Trzecią Rzeszę i rządy komunistyczne.
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ODSZKODOWANIA SPROWADZIC NA WLASCIWE TORY
Napisał Jerzy Skoryna
Friday, 25 July 2008
Nasz “Sprzymierzeniec,” z czasów II Wojny Swiatowej USA, wspólnie z Anglja i Rosja sowiecka w Jalcie i Poczdamie podpisalI, „stan prawny”, jaki mial rzadzic w Europie po wojnie. W tych traktatach BEZPRAWNIE Polsce skradziono wschodnie teryrorjum Pañstwa. Wepchnieto sila bagnetów sowieckich, w „zone wplywów sowieckich”, uznajac NIE POLSKA, lecz SOWIECKÁ administracje jako „Rzad Polski” - PRL.
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Granie Polską
Napisał Marek Lubinski
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Polska nie posiada rządu, który reprezentowałby i bronił interesów Narodu Polskiego i polskiej racji stanu. Polityka zagraniczna państwa polskiego, (gdyż o polskiej polityce zagranicznej mówić nie można wcale w sytuacji, kiedy kolejne rządy RP podejmują decyzje wbrew polskim interesom), prowadzona jest dla Polski tragicznie. Tak było w przypadku wciagania na siłę i za wszelką cenę naszego Kraju w struktury unijnego kołchozu i tak jest we wszystkich innych kwestiach istotnych dla przyszłości Polski.
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Order dla Kiszczaka
Napisał Piotr Jakucki
Monday, 21 July 2008
Skrót do: http://www.medianet.pl/~naszapol/MAIN/biezi.php Po skończonej rozprawie o spowodowania śmierci górników z kopalni "Wujek", zabitych przez ZOMO w grudniu 1981 r. po wprowadzeniu stanu wojennego, gen. Czesław Kiszczak zaproponował dziennikarzom zaproszenie ich na wódkę i zakąskę. Miał prawo być usatysfakcjonowany. Po raz kolejny ten jeden z największych dyktatorów PRL wygrał z kulawym prawem tzw. III RP.
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Witold Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz on the Easter Monday 1943, he also survived the Warsaw Uprising an the German POW camp in Germany.
He returned to Poland after the war and started organizing resistance
against the communists.
When he learnt that the Allies would not help to liberate Poland from the Soviets he started demobilizing the military underground organization.
It was then, that the communists arrested him.
Witold Pilecki was born May 13, 1901, in Olonets on the shores of Lake Ladoga in Karelia, Russia, where his family had been forcibly resettled by Tsarist Russian authorities after the suppression of Poland's January Uprising of 1863–1864. His grandfather, Józef Pilecki, had spent seven years in exile in Siberia for his part in the uprising. In 1910, Pilecki moved with his family to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where he completed Commercial School and joined the secret ZHP Scouts organization. In 1916, he moved to Orel, Russia, where he founded a local ZHP group.[1]
During World War I, in 1918, Pilecki joined Polish self-defense units in the Wilno area, and, under General Władysław Wejtka, helped collect weapons and disarm retreating, demoralized German troops in what became the prelude to the Vilna offensive. He subsequently took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. Serving under Major Jerzy Dąbrowski, he commanded a ZHP Scout section. When his sector of the front was overrun by the Bolsheviks, his unit for a time conducted partisan warfare behind enemy lines. Pilecki later joined the regular Polish Army and fought in the Polish retreat from Kiev as part of a cavalry unit defending Grodno (in present-day Belarus). On August 5, 1920, he joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw and at Rudniki Forest (Puszcza Rudnicka) and took part in the liberation of Wilno. He was twice awarded the Krzyż Walecznych (Cross of Valor) for gallantry.[1]
After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921 with the Peace of Riga, Pilecki passed his high-school graduation exams (matura) in Wilno and in 1926, was demobilized with the rank of cavalry ensign. In the interbellum, he worked on his family's farm in the village of Sukurcze.[1] On April 7, 1931, he married Maria Pilecka (1906 – February 6, 2002), née Ostrowska. They had two children, born in Wilno: Andrzej (January 16, 1932) and Zofia (March 14, 1933).
[edit] World War II breaks out
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, on August 26, 1939, Pilecki was mobilized and joined the 19th Polish Infantry Division of Army Prusy as a cavalry-platoon commander. His unit took part in heavy fighting in the Invasion of Poland against the advancing Germans and was partially destroyed. Pilecki's platoon withdrew southeast toward Lwów (now L'viv, in Ukraine) and the Romanian bridgehead and was incorporated into the recently formed 41st Infantry Division. During the September Campaign, Pilecki and his men destroyed seven German tanks and shot down two aircraft. On September 17, after the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Pilecki's division was disbanded and he returned to Warsaw with his commander, Major Jan Włodarkiewicz.[1]
On November 9, 1939, the two men founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland. Pilecki became its organizational commander and expanded TAP to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other major cities of central Poland. By 1940, TAP had approximately 8,000 men (more than half of them armed), some 20 machine guns and several anti-tank rifles. Later, the organization was incorporated into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and became the core of the Wachlarz unit.[1]
[edit] The Auschwitz campaign: 945 days
Street roundup in northern Warsaw's Żoliborz district, 1941In 1940, Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp at Oświęcim (the Polish name of the locality), gather intelligence on the camp from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. Until then, little had been known about the Germans' running of the camp, and it was thought to be an internment camp or large prison rather than a death camp. His superiors approved the plan and provided him a false identity card in the name of "Tomasz Serafiński." On September 19, 1940, he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka), and was caught by the Germans along with some 2,000 innocent civilians (among them, Władysław Bartoszewski). After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, the survivors were sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was tattooed on his forearm with the number 4859.[1]
Auschwitz concentration camp photos of Pilecki.At Auschwitz, while working in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Pilecki organized an underground Union of Military Organizations (Związek Organizacji Wojskowych, ZOW). ZOW's tasks were to improve inmate morale, provide news from outside, distribute extra food and clothing to members, set up intelligence networks, and train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack by the Home Army, arms airdrops, or an airborne landing by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, based in Britain.[1]
By 1941, ZOW had grown substantially. Members included the famous Polish sculptor Xawery Dunikowski and ski champion Bronisław Czech, and worked in the camp's SS administration office (Mrs. Rachwalowa, Capt. Rodziewicz, Mr. Olszowka, Mr. Jakubski, Mr. Miciukiewicz), the storage magazines (Mr. Czardybun) and the Sonderkommando, which burned human corpses (Mr. Szloma Dragon and Mr. Henryk Mendelbaum). The organization had its own underground court and supply lines to the outside. Thanks to civilians living nearby, the organization regularly received medical supplies.[1]
ZOW provided the Polish underground with priceless information on the camp. Many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW. In the autumn of 1941, Colonel Jan Karcz was transferred to the newly-created Birkenau death camp, where he proceeded to organize ZOW structures. By spring of 1942, the organization had over 1,000 members, including women and people of other nationalities, at most of the sub-camps. The inmates constructed a radio receiver and hid it in the camp hospital.[1]
From October 1940, ZOW sent reports to Warsaw, and beginning March 1941, Pilecki's reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London. These reports were a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki hoped that either the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp, or the Home Army would organize an assault on it from outside. By 1943, however, he realized that no such plans existed. Meanwhile the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them. Pilecki decided to break out of the camp, with the hope of personally convincing Home Army leaders that a rescue attempt was a valid option. When he was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the phone line and escaped on the night of April 26–April 27, 1943, taking along documents stolen from the Germans. In the event of capture, they were prepared to swallow cyanide. After several days, with the help of local civilians, they contacted Home Army units. Pilecki submitted another detailed report on conditions at Auschwitz.[1]
[edit] Back outside Auschwitz: the Warsaw Uprising.
On August 25, 1943, Pilecki reached Warsaw and joined the Home Army's intelligence department. The Home Army, after losing several operatives in reconnoitering the vicinity of the camp, including the Cichociemny commando Stefan Jasieński, decided that it lacked sufficient strength to capture the camp without Allied help. Pilecki's detailed report (Raport Witolda—"Witold's Report") was sent to London. The British authorities refused the Home Army air support for an operation to help the inmates escape. An air raid was considered too risky, and Home Army reports on Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz were deemed to be gross exaggerations (Pilecki wrote: "During the first 3 years, at Auschwitz there perished 2 million people; in the next 2 years—3 million"). The Home Army in turn decided that it didn't have enough force to storm the camp by itself.[1]
Pilecki was soon promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz) and joined a secret anti-communist organization, NIE ("NO or NIEpodleglosc - independence"), formed as a secret organization within the Home Army with the goal of preparing resistance against a possible Soviet occupation.[1]
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, Pilecki volunteered for the Kedyw's Chrobry II group. At first, he fought in the northern city center without revealing his actual rank, as a simple private. Later, he disclosed his true identity and accepted command of the 2nd Company, fighting in the Towarowa and Pańska Streets area. His forces held a fortified area called the "Great Bastion of Warsaw". It was one of the most outlying partisan redoubts and caused considerable difficulties for German supply lines. The bastion held for two weeks in the face of constant attacks by German infantry and armor. On the capitulation of the uprising, Pilecki hid some weapons in a private apartment and went into captivity. He spent the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps at Łambinowice and Murnau.[1]
[edit] Soviet take over of Poland
After July 11, 1945, Pilecki joined the 2nd Polish Corps. He received orders to clandestinely transport a large sum of money to Soviet-occupied Poland, but the operation was called off. In September 1945, he was ordered by General Władysław Anders to return to Poland and gather intelligence to be sent to the Polish Government in Exile.[1]
He went back and proceeded to organize his intelligence network, while also writing a monograph on Auschwitz. In the spring of 1946, however, the Polish Government in Exile decided that the postwar political situation afforded no hope of Poland's liberation and ordered all partisans still in the forests either to return to their normal civilian lives or to escape to the West. Pilecki declined to leave, but proceeded to dismantle the partisan forces in eastern Poland. In April 1947, he began collecting evidence on Soviet atrocities and on the prosecution of Poles (mostly members of the Home Army and the 2nd Polish Corps) and their executions or imprisonment in Soviet gulags.[1]
Photos of Pilecki from Warsaw's Mokotow prison (1947).On May 8, 1947, he was arrested by the Polish security service (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa). Prior to trial, he was repeatedly tortured but revealed no sensitive information and sought to protect other prisoners. On March 3, 1948, a staged trial took place. Testimony against him was presented by a future Polish prime minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was accused of illegal crossing of the borders, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for general Władysław Anders (head of the military of the Polish Government in Exile) and preparing an assassination on several officials from the Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Pilecki denied the assassination charges, as well as espionage (although he admitted to passing information to the II Polish Corps of whom he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws); he pleaded guilty to the other charges. On May 15, with three of his comrades, he was sentenced to death. Ten days later, on May 25, 1948, he was executed at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison on ulica Rakowiecka (Rakowiecka Street)
Pilecki's conviction was part of a prosecution of Home Army members and others connected with the Polish Government in Exile in London. In 2003, the prosecutor and several others involved in the trial were charged with complicity in Pilecki's murder. Cyrankiewicz escaped similar proceedings, having died.[1]
After Poland regained its independence, Witold Pilecki and all others sentenced in the staged trial were rehabilitated on October 1, 1990. In 1995, he received posthumously the Order of Polonia Restituta.
His place of burial has never been found. He is thought to have been buried in a rubbish dump near Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.
Until 1989, information on his exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime.[1]
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W polu dobra i zła
Nasz Dziennik, 2008-01-26
Refleksje eurosceptyka (cz. III)
The Other Side of the Coin: Large-Scale Jewish Crimes against Poles, February 27, 2007
The Other Side of the Coin: Large-Scale Jewish Crimes against Poles, February 27, 2007
By Jan Peczkis (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
This Polish-language book has the title: HUSHED-UP CRIMES: JEWS AND POLES IN THE EASTERN BORDERLANDS IN THE YEARS 1939-1941. Much press attention has been devoted to Polish crimes against Jews, such as the massacre at Jedwabne and the so-called Kielce Pogrom. Why no mention of the other side of the coin? Jerzy Robert Nowak believes that it owes to political correctness, in which the sensibilities of Jews are respected owing to their losses in the Holocaust (pp. 65-66). But Nowak points out that there is no such respect for Polish sensibilities despite Poles having experienced their own Holocaust (3 million Poles murdered by the Germans alone), least of all (in Nowak's opinion) from Jews.
Anyone who follows Jan Tomasz Gross (Jan T. Gross) in believing in the insignificance of Jewish-Communist collaboration is in for a rude awakening upon reading this book. According to cited Jewish scholars, Jews frequently constituted 75%-90% of the Soviet-serving administration in Soviet-conquered eastern Poland (p. 246, 223). In fact, no sooner had the Red Army invaded eastern Poland than her Jews began to engage in large-scale, aggressive anti-Polish actions. Jews helped disarm Polish soldiers, and humiliated them by tearing off their insignia (p. 239). Ironic to the scene in Steven Spielberg's SCHINDLER'S LIST, a mob of Jews threw mud and stones at defenseless Polish prisoners (p. 89). Jews helped the Russians round up Poles on many occasions (p. 9, 61) and played an instrumental role in identifying Poles for imprisonment or deportation to horrible deaths in Siberia (p. 112). Jews helped destroy monuments of Polish heroes (p. 148), frequently desecrated Christian churches (p. 161-on), and even produced a mock atheistic parade in which a horse was dressed up in the vestments of a Catholic priest.
Nowak elaborates on the known murders of Poles by Jews in 17 named cities and towns in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in 1939 alone (pp. 47-on). Jews were also involved in the murder of Poles (and Ukrainians) imprisoned by the Soviets while the latter were beating a hasty retreat ahead of the unexpected German invasion of June 1941 (p. 62-on).
The fact of extensive Jewish-Communist collaboration is attested to by not only anti-Semitic Poles, but also philo-Semitic ones such as Jan Karski (p. 237) and Stanislaw Kot (p. 240). And to show that this is no Polish imagination, Jerzy Robert Nowak discusses (p. 33-on, pp. 82-83, 105, 115, 142, 220, 225) numerous Jewish authors who don't mince words about the large scale of Jewish-Soviet collaboration, including Harvey Sarner, Ben-Cion Pinchuk, Alexander Smolar, Hugon Steinhaus, Dov Levin, Abraham Sterzer, Arnold Zable, Charles Gelman, Alexander Wat, Henryk Reiss, Mark Verstandig, Yitzhak Arad, Pawel Szapiro, and Henryk Erlich. Smolar was especially candid about the murders of Poles by Jews (p. 48).
Recently (2006), Jan Thomas Gross (J. T. Gross) has written FEAR, in which he obsesses about Polish acquisitions of post-Jewish properties. But long before Poles did this, Jews were already expropriating Polish properties under Soviet rule (pp. 132-135). In fact, Jews sometimes knew which Poles were about to be deported to Siberia, and cajoled these Poles into selling them their properties for almost nothing.
Many rationalizations have been offered for the widespread Jewish-Communist collaboration (the Zydokomuna). Nowak examines these and finds them all wanting. (In a sense, it doesn't matter. Regardless of exact motives, whenever Jews choose to become Poland's enemies, they also make a deliberate choice to receive Polish enmity in return, and thereby forfeit the right to complain about such things as Polish anti-Semitism).
The most common rationalization is the one about Jews clinging to Soviets out of fear of extermination by the Nazis. In actuality, Hitler's diatribes were not taken seriously by most Polish Jews in 1939 (p. 210), who saw the Germans as a cultured people (p. 212), and for whom Nazi anti-Semitism was either unimportant (p. 211) or transient. It is a little-known fact that Polish Jews sometimes welcomed the invading Nazis (p. 213-on), and even attempted to cross from the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland to the German-occupied one (p. 210, 212). Finally, the mass shootings and mass gassings of Jews by Germans were not to begin for nearly two more years!
The Jewish collaborators were not, as sometimes claimed, just radicalized youth and the very poor (p. 223). Furthermore, they also included many big-name Jews (p. 166-on).
Nowak also rebuts Krystyna Kersten (pp. 206-208), who would have us believe that Jews showed proportionate anti-Soviet as well as pro-Soviet behavior. In fact, records show that few Jews were arrested for anti-Soviet actions (pp. 224-225) and relatively few Jews were deported to Siberia (and then primarily for trying to cross into the German-occupied zone)(p. 225-226). (In any case, it makes no difference. Jews had turned against other Jews in various other contexts).
Against the view that Jews were merely retaliating against Poles for past anti-Semitism, Nowak points out that Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poles also took place in several towns where, according to local Jewish opinion, prewar Jewish-Polish relations had been good (pp. 218-219). (One may also ask when the Jews ever retaliated against Russian anti-Semitism, which historically had been much more severe than its Polish counterpart. And, of course, the victims of Jewish-Communist collaboration included Polish children and other Poles who could not possibly have ever wronged any Jews. Those who complain about the collective scope of the Polish reprisal against the Jews of Jedwabne must remember the earlier collective anti-Polish scope of the Jewish-Soviet collaboration).
Nowak believes that Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poles had been driven by the fact that many eastern Polish Jews were recent descendants of Russian Jews (the Litvaks) who felt no loyalty to Poland (pp. 230-231). Against the view that the Litvaks were never made to feel welcome, Nowak provides contrary examples, including Pilsudski's favorable treatment of them. (In any case, in a non-pluralistic society such as Poland, one expects the minority to conform to the majority, not the other way around. When in Rome, do as the Romans do).
Sendler Irena Mother of the Holocaust Children
ZYDOWSKA WDZIECZNOSC CZYLI "CZARNA NIEWDZIĘCZNOŚĆ"
Napisał St. Trzeciak
Friday, 25 July 2008
XXXI STR 223 Mesjanizm a Kwestia żydowska. ks. dr St. Trzeciak 1933r. Wydawnictwo Molauñ- Niemirowska 1/43 00-921 Wa-wa, Tel.22-659-0435
„Niech ludzkość cała wie i pamięta , żę żydostwo niemieckie, to typ ludzki najwyższej jakości” ....” Temu najwyższej klasy typowi odpłaca się teraz naród niemiecki czarną niewdzięcznością:W ten sposób „ Koło żydowskie „ w sejmie polskim w dniu 15 marca 1933 r. na swoim posiedzeniu występuje w obronie Żydów nimeickich uchwalając protest przeciwko okrucieństwom i męczęniom, na jakie wystawione jest żydostwo w Niemczech.
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Protest przeciwko prowadzonym negocjacjom w kwestii restytucji majątków żydowskich
Napisał Administrator
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Warszawa,30.06..2008
Pan Lech Kaczyński Prezydent Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej Pan Donlad Tusk Prezes Rady Ministrów Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej
Szanowny Panie Prezydencie! Szanowny Panie Premierze !
W nawiązaniu do Panów wizyty w Waszyngtonie i w Izraelu oraz ostatnich spotkań na polskiej ziemi z Ronaldem Lauderem pragniemy przekazać Protest przeciwko Waszym obietnicom rozwiązania problemu restytucji mienia pożydowskiego.
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Komisja Kongresu USA: niech Polska zwróci mienie
Napisał (bart)
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Komisja Spraw Zagranicznych Izby Reprezentantów Kongresu USA przegłosowała projekt rezolucji Izby, wzywającej Polskę do uchwalenia ustawy zapewniającej zwrot lub rekompensatę właścicielom mienia prywatnego zagrabionego przez Trzecią Rzeszę i rządy komunistyczne.
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ODSZKODOWANIA SPROWADZIC NA WLASCIWE TORY
Napisał Jerzy Skoryna
Friday, 25 July 2008
Nasz “Sprzymierzeniec,” z czasów II Wojny Swiatowej USA, wspólnie z Anglja i Rosja sowiecka w Jalcie i Poczdamie podpisalI, „stan prawny”, jaki mial rzadzic w Europie po wojnie. W tych traktatach BEZPRAWNIE Polsce skradziono wschodnie teryrorjum Pañstwa. Wepchnieto sila bagnetów sowieckich, w „zone wplywów sowieckich”, uznajac NIE POLSKA, lecz SOWIECKÁ administracje jako „Rzad Polski” - PRL.
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Granie Polską
Napisał Marek Lubinski
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Polska nie posiada rządu, który reprezentowałby i bronił interesów Narodu Polskiego i polskiej racji stanu. Polityka zagraniczna państwa polskiego, (gdyż o polskiej polityce zagranicznej mówić nie można wcale w sytuacji, kiedy kolejne rządy RP podejmują decyzje wbrew polskim interesom), prowadzona jest dla Polski tragicznie. Tak było w przypadku wciagania na siłę i za wszelką cenę naszego Kraju w struktury unijnego kołchozu i tak jest we wszystkich innych kwestiach istotnych dla przyszłości Polski.
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Order dla Kiszczaka
Napisał Piotr Jakucki
Monday, 21 July 2008
Skrót do: http://www.medianet.pl/~naszapol/MAIN/biezi.php Po skończonej rozprawie o spowodowania śmierci górników z kopalni "Wujek", zabitych przez ZOMO w grudniu 1981 r. po wprowadzeniu stanu wojennego, gen. Czesław Kiszczak zaproponował dziennikarzom zaproszenie ich na wódkę i zakąskę. Miał prawo być usatysfakcjonowany. Po raz kolejny ten jeden z największych dyktatorów PRL wygrał z kulawym prawem tzw. III RP.
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Witold Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz on the Easter Monday 1943, he also survived the Warsaw Uprising an the German POW camp in Germany.
He returned to Poland after the war and started organizing resistance
against the communists.
When he learnt that the Allies would not help to liberate Poland from the Soviets he started demobilizing the military underground organization.
It was then, that the communists arrested him.
Witold Pilecki was born May 13, 1901, in Olonets on the shores of Lake Ladoga in Karelia, Russia, where his family had been forcibly resettled by Tsarist Russian authorities after the suppression of Poland's January Uprising of 1863–1864. His grandfather, Józef Pilecki, had spent seven years in exile in Siberia for his part in the uprising. In 1910, Pilecki moved with his family to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where he completed Commercial School and joined the secret ZHP Scouts organization. In 1916, he moved to Orel, Russia, where he founded a local ZHP group.[1]
During World War I, in 1918, Pilecki joined Polish self-defense units in the Wilno area, and, under General Władysław Wejtka, helped collect weapons and disarm retreating, demoralized German troops in what became the prelude to the Vilna offensive. He subsequently took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. Serving under Major Jerzy Dąbrowski, he commanded a ZHP Scout section. When his sector of the front was overrun by the Bolsheviks, his unit for a time conducted partisan warfare behind enemy lines. Pilecki later joined the regular Polish Army and fought in the Polish retreat from Kiev as part of a cavalry unit defending Grodno (in present-day Belarus). On August 5, 1920, he joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw and at Rudniki Forest (Puszcza Rudnicka) and took part in the liberation of Wilno. He was twice awarded the Krzyż Walecznych (Cross of Valor) for gallantry.[1]
After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921 with the Peace of Riga, Pilecki passed his high-school graduation exams (matura) in Wilno and in 1926, was demobilized with the rank of cavalry ensign. In the interbellum, he worked on his family's farm in the village of Sukurcze.[1] On April 7, 1931, he married Maria Pilecka (1906 – February 6, 2002), née Ostrowska. They had two children, born in Wilno: Andrzej (January 16, 1932) and Zofia (March 14, 1933).
[edit] World War II breaks out
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, on August 26, 1939, Pilecki was mobilized and joined the 19th Polish Infantry Division of Army Prusy as a cavalry-platoon commander. His unit took part in heavy fighting in the Invasion of Poland against the advancing Germans and was partially destroyed. Pilecki's platoon withdrew southeast toward Lwów (now L'viv, in Ukraine) and the Romanian bridgehead and was incorporated into the recently formed 41st Infantry Division. During the September Campaign, Pilecki and his men destroyed seven German tanks and shot down two aircraft. On September 17, after the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Pilecki's division was disbanded and he returned to Warsaw with his commander, Major Jan Włodarkiewicz.[1]
On November 9, 1939, the two men founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland. Pilecki became its organizational commander and expanded TAP to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other major cities of central Poland. By 1940, TAP had approximately 8,000 men (more than half of them armed), some 20 machine guns and several anti-tank rifles. Later, the organization was incorporated into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and became the core of the Wachlarz unit.[1]
[edit] The Auschwitz campaign: 945 days
Street roundup in northern Warsaw's Żoliborz district, 1941In 1940, Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp at Oświęcim (the Polish name of the locality), gather intelligence on the camp from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. Until then, little had been known about the Germans' running of the camp, and it was thought to be an internment camp or large prison rather than a death camp. His superiors approved the plan and provided him a false identity card in the name of "Tomasz Serafiński." On September 19, 1940, he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka), and was caught by the Germans along with some 2,000 innocent civilians (among them, Władysław Bartoszewski). After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, the survivors were sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was tattooed on his forearm with the number 4859.[1]
Auschwitz concentration camp photos of Pilecki.At Auschwitz, while working in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Pilecki organized an underground Union of Military Organizations (Związek Organizacji Wojskowych, ZOW). ZOW's tasks were to improve inmate morale, provide news from outside, distribute extra food and clothing to members, set up intelligence networks, and train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack by the Home Army, arms airdrops, or an airborne landing by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, based in Britain.[1]
By 1941, ZOW had grown substantially. Members included the famous Polish sculptor Xawery Dunikowski and ski champion Bronisław Czech, and worked in the camp's SS administration office (Mrs. Rachwalowa, Capt. Rodziewicz, Mr. Olszowka, Mr. Jakubski, Mr. Miciukiewicz), the storage magazines (Mr. Czardybun) and the Sonderkommando, which burned human corpses (Mr. Szloma Dragon and Mr. Henryk Mendelbaum). The organization had its own underground court and supply lines to the outside. Thanks to civilians living nearby, the organization regularly received medical supplies.[1]
ZOW provided the Polish underground with priceless information on the camp. Many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW. In the autumn of 1941, Colonel Jan Karcz was transferred to the newly-created Birkenau death camp, where he proceeded to organize ZOW structures. By spring of 1942, the organization had over 1,000 members, including women and people of other nationalities, at most of the sub-camps. The inmates constructed a radio receiver and hid it in the camp hospital.[1]
From October 1940, ZOW sent reports to Warsaw, and beginning March 1941, Pilecki's reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London. These reports were a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki hoped that either the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp, or the Home Army would organize an assault on it from outside. By 1943, however, he realized that no such plans existed. Meanwhile the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them. Pilecki decided to break out of the camp, with the hope of personally convincing Home Army leaders that a rescue attempt was a valid option. When he was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the phone line and escaped on the night of April 26–April 27, 1943, taking along documents stolen from the Germans. In the event of capture, they were prepared to swallow cyanide. After several days, with the help of local civilians, they contacted Home Army units. Pilecki submitted another detailed report on conditions at Auschwitz.[1]
[edit] Back outside Auschwitz: the Warsaw Uprising.
On August 25, 1943, Pilecki reached Warsaw and joined the Home Army's intelligence department. The Home Army, after losing several operatives in reconnoitering the vicinity of the camp, including the Cichociemny commando Stefan Jasieński, decided that it lacked sufficient strength to capture the camp without Allied help. Pilecki's detailed report (Raport Witolda—"Witold's Report") was sent to London. The British authorities refused the Home Army air support for an operation to help the inmates escape. An air raid was considered too risky, and Home Army reports on Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz were deemed to be gross exaggerations (Pilecki wrote: "During the first 3 years, at Auschwitz there perished 2 million people; in the next 2 years—3 million"). The Home Army in turn decided that it didn't have enough force to storm the camp by itself.[1]
Pilecki was soon promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz) and joined a secret anti-communist organization, NIE ("NO or NIEpodleglosc - independence"), formed as a secret organization within the Home Army with the goal of preparing resistance against a possible Soviet occupation.[1]
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, Pilecki volunteered for the Kedyw's Chrobry II group. At first, he fought in the northern city center without revealing his actual rank, as a simple private. Later, he disclosed his true identity and accepted command of the 2nd Company, fighting in the Towarowa and Pańska Streets area. His forces held a fortified area called the "Great Bastion of Warsaw". It was one of the most outlying partisan redoubts and caused considerable difficulties for German supply lines. The bastion held for two weeks in the face of constant attacks by German infantry and armor. On the capitulation of the uprising, Pilecki hid some weapons in a private apartment and went into captivity. He spent the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps at Łambinowice and Murnau.[1]
[edit] Soviet take over of Poland
After July 11, 1945, Pilecki joined the 2nd Polish Corps. He received orders to clandestinely transport a large sum of money to Soviet-occupied Poland, but the operation was called off. In September 1945, he was ordered by General Władysław Anders to return to Poland and gather intelligence to be sent to the Polish Government in Exile.[1]
He went back and proceeded to organize his intelligence network, while also writing a monograph on Auschwitz. In the spring of 1946, however, the Polish Government in Exile decided that the postwar political situation afforded no hope of Poland's liberation and ordered all partisans still in the forests either to return to their normal civilian lives or to escape to the West. Pilecki declined to leave, but proceeded to dismantle the partisan forces in eastern Poland. In April 1947, he began collecting evidence on Soviet atrocities and on the prosecution of Poles (mostly members of the Home Army and the 2nd Polish Corps) and their executions or imprisonment in Soviet gulags.[1]
Photos of Pilecki from Warsaw's Mokotow prison (1947).On May 8, 1947, he was arrested by the Polish security service (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa). Prior to trial, he was repeatedly tortured but revealed no sensitive information and sought to protect other prisoners. On March 3, 1948, a staged trial took place. Testimony against him was presented by a future Polish prime minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was accused of illegal crossing of the borders, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for general Władysław Anders (head of the military of the Polish Government in Exile) and preparing an assassination on several officials from the Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Pilecki denied the assassination charges, as well as espionage (although he admitted to passing information to the II Polish Corps of whom he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws); he pleaded guilty to the other charges. On May 15, with three of his comrades, he was sentenced to death. Ten days later, on May 25, 1948, he was executed at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison on ulica Rakowiecka (Rakowiecka Street)
Pilecki's conviction was part of a prosecution of Home Army members and others connected with the Polish Government in Exile in London. In 2003, the prosecutor and several others involved in the trial were charged with complicity in Pilecki's murder. Cyrankiewicz escaped similar proceedings, having died.[1]
After Poland regained its independence, Witold Pilecki and all others sentenced in the staged trial were rehabilitated on October 1, 1990. In 1995, he received posthumously the Order of Polonia Restituta.
His place of burial has never been found. He is thought to have been buried in a rubbish dump near Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.
Until 1989, information on his exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime.[1]
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The Other Side of the Coin: Large-Scale Jewish Crimes against Poles, February 27, 2007
The Other Side of the Coin: Large-Scale Jewish Crimes against Poles, February 27, 2007
By Jan Peczkis (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
This Polish-language book has the title: HUSHED-UP CRIMES: JEWS AND POLES IN THE EASTERN BORDERLANDS IN THE YEARS 1939-1941. Much press attention has been devoted to Polish crimes against Jews, such as the massacre at Jedwabne and the so-called Kielce Pogrom. Why no mention of the other side of the coin? Jerzy Robert Nowak believes that it owes to political correctness, in which the sensibilities of Jews are respected owing to their losses in the Holocaust (pp. 65-66). But Nowak points out that there is no such respect for Polish sensibilities despite Poles having experienced their own Holocaust (3 million Poles murdered by the Germans alone), least of all (in Nowak's opinion) from Jews.
Anyone who follows Jan Tomasz Gross (Jan T. Gross) in believing in the insignificance of Jewish-Communist collaboration is in for a rude awakening upon reading this book. According to cited Jewish scholars, Jews frequently constituted 75%-90% of the Soviet-serving administration in Soviet-conquered eastern Poland (p. 246, 223). In fact, no sooner had the Red Army invaded eastern Poland than her Jews began to engage in large-scale, aggressive anti-Polish actions. Jews helped disarm Polish soldiers, and humiliated them by tearing off their insignia (p. 239). Ironic to the scene in Steven Spielberg's SCHINDLER'S LIST, a mob of Jews threw mud and stones at defenseless Polish prisoners (p. 89). Jews helped the Russians round up Poles on many occasions (p. 9, 61) and played an instrumental role in identifying Poles for imprisonment or deportation to horrible deaths in Siberia (p. 112). Jews helped destroy monuments of Polish heroes (p. 148), frequently desecrated Christian churches (p. 161-on), and even produced a mock atheistic parade in which a horse was dressed up in the vestments of a Catholic priest.
Nowak elaborates on the known murders of Poles by Jews in 17 named cities and towns in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in 1939 alone (pp. 47-on). Jews were also involved in the murder of Poles (and Ukrainians) imprisoned by the Soviets while the latter were beating a hasty retreat ahead of the unexpected German invasion of June 1941 (p. 62-on).
The fact of extensive Jewish-Communist collaboration is attested to by not only anti-Semitic Poles, but also philo-Semitic ones such as Jan Karski (p. 237) and Stanislaw Kot (p. 240). And to show that this is no Polish imagination, Jerzy Robert Nowak discusses (p. 33-on, pp. 82-83, 105, 115, 142, 220, 225) numerous Jewish authors who don't mince words about the large scale of Jewish-Soviet collaboration, including Harvey Sarner, Ben-Cion Pinchuk, Alexander Smolar, Hugon Steinhaus, Dov Levin, Abraham Sterzer, Arnold Zable, Charles Gelman, Alexander Wat, Henryk Reiss, Mark Verstandig, Yitzhak Arad, Pawel Szapiro, and Henryk Erlich. Smolar was especially candid about the murders of Poles by Jews (p. 48).
Recently (2006), Jan Thomas Gross (J. T. Gross) has written FEAR, in which he obsesses about Polish acquisitions of post-Jewish properties. But long before Poles did this, Jews were already expropriating Polish properties under Soviet rule (pp. 132-135). In fact, Jews sometimes knew which Poles were about to be deported to Siberia, and cajoled these Poles into selling them their properties for almost nothing.
Many rationalizations have been offered for the widespread Jewish-Communist collaboration (the Zydokomuna). Nowak examines these and finds them all wanting. (In a sense, it doesn't matter. Regardless of exact motives, whenever Jews choose to become Poland's enemies, they also make a deliberate choice to receive Polish enmity in return, and thereby forfeit the right to complain about such things as Polish anti-Semitism).
The most common rationalization is the one about Jews clinging to Soviets out of fear of extermination by the Nazis. In actuality, Hitler's diatribes were not taken seriously by most Polish Jews in 1939 (p. 210), who saw the Germans as a cultured people (p. 212), and for whom Nazi anti-Semitism was either unimportant (p. 211) or transient. It is a little-known fact that Polish Jews sometimes welcomed the invading Nazis (p. 213-on), and even attempted to cross from the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland to the German-occupied one (p. 210, 212). Finally, the mass shootings and mass gassings of Jews by Germans were not to begin for nearly two more years!
The Jewish collaborators were not, as sometimes claimed, just radicalized youth and the very poor (p. 223). Furthermore, they also included many big-name Jews (p. 166-on).
Nowak also rebuts Krystyna Kersten (pp. 206-208), who would have us believe that Jews showed proportionate anti-Soviet as well as pro-Soviet behavior. In fact, records show that few Jews were arrested for anti-Soviet actions (pp. 224-225) and relatively few Jews were deported to Siberia (and then primarily for trying to cross into the German-occupied zone)(p. 225-226). (In any case, it makes no difference. Jews had turned against other Jews in various other contexts).
Against the view that Jews were merely retaliating against Poles for past anti-Semitism, Nowak points out that Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poles also took place in several towns where, according to local Jewish opinion, prewar Jewish-Polish relations had been good (pp. 218-219). (One may also ask when the Jews ever retaliated against Russian anti-Semitism, which historically had been much more severe than its Polish counterpart. And, of course, the victims of Jewish-Communist collaboration included Polish children and other Poles who could not possibly have ever wronged any Jews. Those who complain about the collective scope of the Polish reprisal against the Jews of Jedwabne must remember the earlier collective anti-Polish scope of the Jewish-Soviet collaboration).
Nowak believes that Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poles had been driven by the fact that many eastern Polish Jews were recent descendants of Russian Jews (the Litvaks) who felt no loyalty to Poland (pp. 230-231). Against the view that the Litvaks were never made to feel welcome, Nowak provides contrary examples, including Pilsudski's favorable treatment of them. (In any case, in a non-pluralistic society such as Poland, one expects the minority to conform to the majority, not the other way around. When in Rome, do as the Romans do).
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Mr. Zacharski had spied for Poland obtained classified plans of American aircraft and systems, including the F-15 fighter jet, the Patriot missile sys
Mr. Zacharski had spied for Poland obtained classified plans of American aircraft and systems, including the F-15 fighter jet, the Patriot missile system and the Stealth aircraft
Marian Zacharski, a Polish intelligence officer was operating under commercial cover, posing as a salesman for a Polish export firm.
The FBI arrested him in 1981. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Four years later, he was exchanged for 25 Western agents held in Soviet and East European prisons in one of the Cold War’s periodic spy swaps.
Zacharski was dubbed the "Silicon Valley spy" by the US media because of his success in stealing US defense secrets and technology.
Zacharski paid or arranged payment of $110,000 to William Holden Bell, a senior radar engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company in Los Angeles, California.
The information Bell provided on the F-15 Look Down-Shoot Down Radar, TOW anti-tank missile, Phoenix air-to-air missile, and quiet radar saved the Soviets approximately $185 million in technological research and advanced their technology by about 5 years by permitting them to implement proven design concepts.
The neo-Communist press in Poland hailed him as the "biggest star of Polish intelligence in the Communist era."
On 15 August, 1994 the Polish Government announced Zacharski’s appointment as head of civilian intelligence in the Office of State Protection.
On the August 17, 1994 the US Embassy delivered a démarche to the Polish Government. It noted that Zacharski was still under a life sentence in the United States and requested that Warsaw reconsider his appointment.
Zacharski withdrew his name the next day
To a casual observer, William Holden Bell appeared to be the very model of a hardworking, leisure-loving Los Angeles suburbanite. A U.C.L.A.-trained radar engineer, Bell, 61, had put in 29 years with Hughes Aircraft Co., a major defense contractor once owned by the late Howard Hughes. Together with his pretty second wife Rita, a Belgian-born Pan American airlines cabin attendant, and her nine-year-old son from an earlier marriage, Bell lived in a fairly ordinary-looking condominium complex in Playa del Rey. It had the usual Southern California accouterments—tennis courts, pools, saunas and Jacuzzis. One of his neighbors there was Polish-born Marian Zacharski, 29, an affable, fast-climbing executive of the Chicago-based Polish-American Machinery Corp. Since both men enjoyed tennis and watching their children play in the pool, there seemed to be nothing extraordinary about the friendship between them. Nothing, that is, until both were arrested last week by the FBI.
What a casual observer would not have noticed about Bell and Zacharski —and their neighbors certainly missed —was a tale out of John le Carré: international espionage, replete with secret passwords, a document-copying camera, clandestine meetings with foreign agents, and payoffs made in gold. Zacharski, the FBI alleged last week after six years of not-so-casually observing him, was an undercover operative for the Polish intelligence service. According to a court affidavit filed by the bureau, he had paid Bell about $110,000 over the past three years to photograph highly classified documents detailing Hughes Aircraft radar and weapons systems. The film was passed to Polish agents and ultimately, it is believed, to the Soviet Union.
The FBI got wind of Bell's intrigues about a year ago and obtained his confession and cooperation in the investigation shortly before his arrest. Bell's motive, said Agent John Hoos, was "definitely monetary." Despite a $50,000 salary, Bell said he had been having "financial problems" when he first met his neighbor about three years ago. Zacharski offered to help him out. Equipped by his new friend with a movie camera capable of taking single-frame exposures, the Hughes engineer began photographing unclassified company documents in exchange for cash and gold coins.
Gradually, Bell later confessed, his position became more compromised, and he was required to record more highly classified plans of advanced radar and weapons systems. Bell's involvement grew deeper still in late 1979, when Zacharski told him he would have to start delivering the film directly to Polish agents overseas. During the next year and a half, Bell made three trips to Austria and Switzerland, where Polish agents would identify themselves to him with the code phrase, "Aren't you a friend of Marian?"
The case of Marian and his friend is just the latest example of what the FBI calls "technology transfer"—the continuing effort by foreign countries, particularly the Soviet Union, to grab American technical know-how in whatever way they can. The methods, says FBI Spokesman Roger Young, "range from the legal and overt to the covert and illegal. Sometimes they are crude to the point of a car pulling up to a technological trade show and just loading up with free literature."
Because of loosely enforced Commerce and State Department regulations, says Young, "only rarely can we catch anyone as calculating as Bell." According to Kenneth Kaiser, an agency counterintelligence supervisor in Chicago, Poland is particularly active in the pirating of corporate data. Says Kaiser: "While the Soviet KGB gets all the press, Polish intelligence is perhaps superior. They, however, could care less about military intelligence; they want economic and scientific secrets. Their objective is to short-circuit development costs and undersell us." And, as the Zacharski case suggests, they are good at finding friends in the right places
Marian Zacharski (born in Gdynia, Poland in 1951, raised in nearby Sopot), was a Polish Intelligence officer arrested in 1981 and convicted of espionage against the United States. After four years in prison, he was exchanged for American agents on Berlin's famous Glienicke Bridge. Arguably, he was one of the most famous agents of the Polish intelligence service. Back in 1996, prosecutors in Warsaw charged him with flagrant mismanagement at the Pewex company, and Gorzów Wielkopolski police want to question him about illegal car trading.
Espionage
Zacharski was president of the Polish American Machinery Company (POLAMCO) and lived in the United States from about 1977 till 1981. Acting as the commercial representative, he was at the same time an officer of the Polish intelligence service. In June of 1981 William Holden Bell, project manager of the Radar Systems Group at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, California, and Zacharski, were arraigned on espionage charges. For the apprehension of Marian Zacharski credit belongs to a Polish diplomat Jerzy Koryciński at UN who blew the whistle, while asking for political asylum in the US.
Under disguise of business activities, and over the period of several months, Zacharski developed a relationship with Bell. According to a court affidavit filed by the bureau, he had paid Bell about $110,000 in cash and $60,000 in gold coins, to photograph highly classified documents detailing Hughes Aircraft radar and weapons systems. Furthermore, Zacharski won access to material on the then-new Patriot and Phoenix missiles, the enhanced version of the Hawk air-to-air missile, radar instrumentation for the F-15 fighter, F-16, "stealth radar" for the B-1 and Stealth bomber, an experimental radar system being tested by the U.S. Navy, submarine sonar and tank M1 Abrams.
According to Kenneth Kaiser, an agency counterintelligence supervisor in Chicago, Poland was particularly active in industrial espionage. While the Soviet KGB got all the press, Polish intelligence was perhaps superior. They, however, could not care less about military intelligence; they wanted economic and scientific secrets. Their objective was to short-circuit development costs and undersell us And, as the Zacharski case suggests, they were good at finding friends in the right places.
Zacharski disclosed the activities of a Russian spy in Poland who under code name "Olin" (known as affair of Olin - Polish Security Services and Oleksy Case Olingate cooperated with one of the best connected KGB agents and the most powerful Russian spies Vladimir Alganov and another Russian diplomat, Georgiy Yakimishin. This consequently resulted in fall of Polish government under Prime Minister Jozef Oleksy. *Afery Prawne(Polish).
In June of 1996 Marian Zacharski left Poland for Switzerland, and the tracks of his whereabouts vanished. Currently Wojciech Bockenheim from Polish TV station TVN produced six TV movies entitled Szpieg (eng. for Spy) "in search of Marian Zacharski", which is dedicated to disclose some of activities of Zacharski
The Spy Who Went Into Retailing 1991Marian Zacharski has a finely tuned sense of irony, and he ought to. A decade ago, he was sentenced by an American court to life in prison, a Polish agent who paid a high penalty for stealing military secrets. Today, six years after his release in a spy exchange, he is a leading businessman in Poland, director of this country's most profitable retailer."Each day, all that is becoming more distant," Mr. Zacharski said of his years as a foot soldier in the cold war in the guise of a sales representative for a Polish machine-tools company. "History has moved forward. I owe a lot to America. If I've become a seasoned businessman, it was because of the years I spent in America. It was my university of life."With his perfectly coiffed gray hair, starched white shirt and lightly accented colloquial English, Mr. Zacharski epitomizes Poland's new breed of Westward-looking entrepreneurs. While competitors struggle to cope with the new principles of free-market economics, he has a sure grasp of his marketing strategy. He wants to emulate J. C. Penney, not K Mart, and hopes to build relationships with customers eager to buy previously scarce consumer goods.The state-owned company he heads, Pewex, was the nationwide chain of stores that sold imported items for dollars, German marks, or other hard currency. It is being privatized and today, with the border open to imports, Pewex accepts payment in Polish zlotys.Sitting in his office on the 12th floor of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Warsaw, Mr. Zacharski speaks confidently of prospects for doubling gross sales this year, to $2 billion. One advertising gambit he plans has a distinctly Western flavor: Pewex is playing host to a tour this spring by the American figure skating troupe the Ice Capades. Mr. Zacharski says the company must diversify to maintain market share.American intelligence officials remember Mr. Zacharski for skills other than his marketing acumen. To them, he was the ultimate professional. His prowess in recruiting a disgruntled engineer at Hughes Aircraft as his American agent is still studied at the F.B.I. academy as a textbook example of how a resourceful spy plies his trade. 'Very Talented'"I knew he was very talented, and I was convinced he was a very talented spy," said Robert Brewer, a private lawyer in San Diego who prosecuted Mr. Zacharski in 1981. "I'm not a bit surprised that whatever venture he got involved in, he would succeed."Indeed, Mr. Zacharski is a rarity among intelligence operatives East or West in his ability to prosper in a subsequent career. The attributes of a capable spy -- grace under pressure, personal charm, daring -- would seem to be ideal for business executives. But the United States has had enormous difficulty helping defectors from Soviet and Eastern bloc intelligence services find work in the West. And today, intelligence agents dismissed by the new democracies in eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland are also said to be struggling to find an employer who can make use of their abilities.From 1977 until his arrest in 1981, Mr. Zacharski worked as what is known in espionage jargon as an "illegal." It is considered the riskiest job in the spy business. Some Face PrisonMost intelligence officers enter foreign countries as diplomats who enjoy immunity from arrest. They are closely watched by counterespionage agents and if caught are simply deported. To avoid surveillance, some spies pose as students, tourists or business executives. Their handlers work particularly hard at inventing credible cover stories because these illegals face imprisonment if detected.In Mr. Zacharski's case, his cover as a sales representative for a Polish company was as much a vocation as spycraft. He recalled with evident pride his success in selling machine tools to American companies.He was more circumspect about details of his espionage career, declining to say when and how he was enlisted. But it was still easy to see why he was both a successful spy and a formidable salesman. He fixes a visitor with his light blue eyes, and he has a knack for creating a warm, congenial atmosphere even in a short conversation. 'Like a Game'What was it like to be a spy?"It's something in which you have to turn your emotions off," he recalled. "It's a job, and the same time, it's something like a game between certain types of agencies."Mr. Zacharski grew up in the northern Polish city of Sopot, and attended college in Warsaw, studying business. At some point, he was enlisted in the Polish intelligence service, which was working closely with Soviet intelligence to steal Western technology."I consider myself a great patriot," Mr. Zacharski said of his decision to become a spy. "To me it makes no difference whether Poland is Socialistic, Communist or a feudal country. To me, it's that it was Poland. My country is Poland and I do everything possible for it."Mr. Zacharski came to the United States in 1975, accompanied by his wife and daughter.For several years, he worked as president of the Polish American Machinery Corporation, with headquarters in Elk Grove Village, Ill. The Personal TouchListen to how Mr. Zacharski describes the attributes of a great salesman: "Business is not done between companies. It's done between people. Before you sell your product, you have to sell yourself."Mr. Zacharski was doing both in the United States. In 1978, he met William Holden Bell, an aerospace engineer at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, Calif., who was embittered and having financial problems. Mr. Zacharski moved into the condominium complex in which Mr. Bell lived, befriended him, played tennis with him and slowly eased him into espionage."This was a classic case in which an intelligence officer correctly assessed his target. Mr. Bell needed a friend and Zacharski just recruited him beautifully," said Kenneth Degraffenreid, former head of intelligence programs at the White House.Over the next three years, prosecutors said, Mr. Bell was paid more than $110,000 for secrets on military radar systems, including the technology for the radar-evading Stealth aircraft then under development. In 1981, he was caught by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confessed, and agreed to wear a hidden microphone to entrap Mr. Zacharski. The plan succeeded, and the handsome Polish emigre was arrested on June 28, 1981. A Life SentenceMr. Bell was sentenced to eight years. Mr. Zacharski went before a Federal judge for his punishment on Dec. 14, 1981, a particularly inauspicious moment. The day before, Poland's Communist Government had imposed martial law. Mr. Zacharski said the life sentence was not a surprise.Though he would not have been eligible for parole until June 2011, he said he never gave up hope. He asserts that his biggest worry was whether he could get a job when he returned to Poland. In 1985, he and three other agents were traded for 25 spies being held in Eastern bloc countries. Months later, the Government named him to a post in Pewex and he soon went to work as head of the consumer electronics division. He became general director last year.It is not yet clear whether he will head Pewex when the company is sold into private hands. Mr. Zacharski says he has the qualifications, pointing to a 74 percent increase in sales last year. Political ConcernsOf late, Mr. Zacharski's prominence has attracted some unwanted political attention. Lech Walesa, the new President of Poland, ran on a platform of sweeping the Communist elite, or "nomenklatura," from posts in business and industry. Though Mr. Zacharski was appointed to Pewex by the Communist Government, he was chosen director in a competition last year.He was recently the subject of an unflattering article in Tygodnik Solidarnosc, the weekly paper with close ties to the Walesa camp. The article recounted published reports linking Mr. Zacharski's operations in the United States to the Soviet intelligence service, the K.G.B."They are trying to create an atmosphere that I am a foreign object in this country, and this is complete nonsense," he said.These days, Mr. Zacharski seems to have little nostalgia for his years in the back alleysNo, I don't miss it," he said. "At a certain point in your life you do certain things. At that point in my life, I was young and brave. Now, I am old and settled," said the 39-year old Mr. Zacharski, with only the hint of a twinkle in his eye.
Marian Zacharski - najsłynniejszy agent polskiego wywiadu. W czasach zimnej wojny wykradł Amerykanom dokumentację supernowoczesnej broni, wartej ponad 2 miliardy dolarów. Losy superszpiega PRL-u i oficera wywiadu III RP prześledził dziennikarz TVN i TVN24 Bogdan Rymanowski. Reżyserem filmu jest Wojciech Bockenheim, autor „Wielkich ucieczek”. Tak powstał serial "Szpieg", który od maja będzie można zobaczyć w TVN.
Zacharski przybył do USA w 1976 roku, jako przedstawiciel Polish-American Machinery Company (POLAMCO). Formalnie zajmował się sprzedażą obrabiarek kalifornijskim przedsiębiorstwom przemysłu lotniczego. Zaprzyjaźnił się z pracownikiem jednej z firm, Williamem Bellem. Wykorzystując fakt, że Bell tonął w długach, zaproponował, że kupi od niego tajne materiały.
Za niespełna 200 tysięcy dolarów zdobył m.in. dokumentację rakiet przeciwlotniczych, obrony przeciwlotniczej, bombowca strategicznego, czołgu i myśliwca. Materiały te centrala w Warszawie przekazała Moskwie.Skazany na dożywocieFBI aresztowała Zacharskiego w 1981 roku. Został skazany na dożywocie, w amerykańskim więzieniu przesiedział ponad cztery lata. W czerwcu 1985 roku Zacharskiego oraz trzech innych szpiegów wschodnioeuropejskich wymieniono na moście między Berlinem Wschodnim a Zachodnim na 25 zachodnich agentów, schwytanych w krajach bloku wschodniego.
Po zmianie systemu superszpieg PRL-u został zatrudniony w Urzędzie Ochrony Państwa. Przez kilka dni był nawet szefem wywiadu III RP.W 1995 roku Zacharski zdobył informacje o działalności rosyjskiego szpiega o kryptonimie "Olin". Wybuchł skandal, gdy ówczesny szef MSW Andrzej Milczanowski oskarżył z trybuny sejmowej urzędującego premiera Józefa Oleksego o współpracę z rezydentami rosyjskiego wywiadu w Polsce: Ałganowem i Jakimiszynem. Oleksy podał się do dymisji, a śledztwo w największej aferze szpiegowskiej zostało umorzone.Oficerowie, którzy zajmowali się tzw. sprawą "Olina" zostali usunięci ze służb specjalnych. W czerwcu 1996 roku Marian Zacharski opuścił Polskę i zapadł się pod ziemię.Premiera 8 majaKim naprawdę jest Zacharski? Gdzie teraz przebywa? Jakie tajemnice zabrał ze sobą? Odpowiedzi na te pytania w Stanach Zjednoczonych, Meksyku, Rosji, Niemczech, Austrii i w Szwajcarii szukał ponad rok Bogdan Rymanowski.
Marian Zacharski, a Polish intelligence officer was operating under commercial cover, posing as a salesman for a Polish export firm.
The FBI arrested him in 1981. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Four years later, he was exchanged for 25 Western agents held in Soviet and East European prisons in one of the Cold War’s periodic spy swaps.
Zacharski was dubbed the "Silicon Valley spy" by the US media because of his success in stealing US defense secrets and technology.
Zacharski paid or arranged payment of $110,000 to William Holden Bell, a senior radar engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company in Los Angeles, California.
The information Bell provided on the F-15 Look Down-Shoot Down Radar, TOW anti-tank missile, Phoenix air-to-air missile, and quiet radar saved the Soviets approximately $185 million in technological research and advanced their technology by about 5 years by permitting them to implement proven design concepts.
The neo-Communist press in Poland hailed him as the "biggest star of Polish intelligence in the Communist era."
On 15 August, 1994 the Polish Government announced Zacharski’s appointment as head of civilian intelligence in the Office of State Protection.
On the August 17, 1994 the US Embassy delivered a démarche to the Polish Government. It noted that Zacharski was still under a life sentence in the United States and requested that Warsaw reconsider his appointment.
Zacharski withdrew his name the next day
To a casual observer, William Holden Bell appeared to be the very model of a hardworking, leisure-loving Los Angeles suburbanite. A U.C.L.A.-trained radar engineer, Bell, 61, had put in 29 years with Hughes Aircraft Co., a major defense contractor once owned by the late Howard Hughes. Together with his pretty second wife Rita, a Belgian-born Pan American airlines cabin attendant, and her nine-year-old son from an earlier marriage, Bell lived in a fairly ordinary-looking condominium complex in Playa del Rey. It had the usual Southern California accouterments—tennis courts, pools, saunas and Jacuzzis. One of his neighbors there was Polish-born Marian Zacharski, 29, an affable, fast-climbing executive of the Chicago-based Polish-American Machinery Corp. Since both men enjoyed tennis and watching their children play in the pool, there seemed to be nothing extraordinary about the friendship between them. Nothing, that is, until both were arrested last week by the FBI.
What a casual observer would not have noticed about Bell and Zacharski —and their neighbors certainly missed —was a tale out of John le Carré: international espionage, replete with secret passwords, a document-copying camera, clandestine meetings with foreign agents, and payoffs made in gold. Zacharski, the FBI alleged last week after six years of not-so-casually observing him, was an undercover operative for the Polish intelligence service. According to a court affidavit filed by the bureau, he had paid Bell about $110,000 over the past three years to photograph highly classified documents detailing Hughes Aircraft radar and weapons systems. The film was passed to Polish agents and ultimately, it is believed, to the Soviet Union.
The FBI got wind of Bell's intrigues about a year ago and obtained his confession and cooperation in the investigation shortly before his arrest. Bell's motive, said Agent John Hoos, was "definitely monetary." Despite a $50,000 salary, Bell said he had been having "financial problems" when he first met his neighbor about three years ago. Zacharski offered to help him out. Equipped by his new friend with a movie camera capable of taking single-frame exposures, the Hughes engineer began photographing unclassified company documents in exchange for cash and gold coins.
Gradually, Bell later confessed, his position became more compromised, and he was required to record more highly classified plans of advanced radar and weapons systems. Bell's involvement grew deeper still in late 1979, when Zacharski told him he would have to start delivering the film directly to Polish agents overseas. During the next year and a half, Bell made three trips to Austria and Switzerland, where Polish agents would identify themselves to him with the code phrase, "Aren't you a friend of Marian?"
The case of Marian and his friend is just the latest example of what the FBI calls "technology transfer"—the continuing effort by foreign countries, particularly the Soviet Union, to grab American technical know-how in whatever way they can. The methods, says FBI Spokesman Roger Young, "range from the legal and overt to the covert and illegal. Sometimes they are crude to the point of a car pulling up to a technological trade show and just loading up with free literature."
Because of loosely enforced Commerce and State Department regulations, says Young, "only rarely can we catch anyone as calculating as Bell." According to Kenneth Kaiser, an agency counterintelligence supervisor in Chicago, Poland is particularly active in the pirating of corporate data. Says Kaiser: "While the Soviet KGB gets all the press, Polish intelligence is perhaps superior. They, however, could care less about military intelligence; they want economic and scientific secrets. Their objective is to short-circuit development costs and undersell us." And, as the Zacharski case suggests, they are good at finding friends in the right places
Marian Zacharski (born in Gdynia, Poland in 1951, raised in nearby Sopot), was a Polish Intelligence officer arrested in 1981 and convicted of espionage against the United States. After four years in prison, he was exchanged for American agents on Berlin's famous Glienicke Bridge. Arguably, he was one of the most famous agents of the Polish intelligence service. Back in 1996, prosecutors in Warsaw charged him with flagrant mismanagement at the Pewex company, and Gorzów Wielkopolski police want to question him about illegal car trading.
Espionage
Zacharski was president of the Polish American Machinery Company (POLAMCO) and lived in the United States from about 1977 till 1981. Acting as the commercial representative, he was at the same time an officer of the Polish intelligence service. In June of 1981 William Holden Bell, project manager of the Radar Systems Group at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, California, and Zacharski, were arraigned on espionage charges. For the apprehension of Marian Zacharski credit belongs to a Polish diplomat Jerzy Koryciński at UN who blew the whistle, while asking for political asylum in the US.
Under disguise of business activities, and over the period of several months, Zacharski developed a relationship with Bell. According to a court affidavit filed by the bureau, he had paid Bell about $110,000 in cash and $60,000 in gold coins, to photograph highly classified documents detailing Hughes Aircraft radar and weapons systems. Furthermore, Zacharski won access to material on the then-new Patriot and Phoenix missiles, the enhanced version of the Hawk air-to-air missile, radar instrumentation for the F-15 fighter, F-16, "stealth radar" for the B-1 and Stealth bomber, an experimental radar system being tested by the U.S. Navy, submarine sonar and tank M1 Abrams.
According to Kenneth Kaiser, an agency counterintelligence supervisor in Chicago, Poland was particularly active in industrial espionage. While the Soviet KGB got all the press, Polish intelligence was perhaps superior. They, however, could not care less about military intelligence; they wanted economic and scientific secrets. Their objective was to short-circuit development costs and undersell us And, as the Zacharski case suggests, they were good at finding friends in the right places.
Zacharski disclosed the activities of a Russian spy in Poland who under code name "Olin" (known as affair of Olin - Polish Security Services and Oleksy Case Olingate cooperated with one of the best connected KGB agents and the most powerful Russian spies Vladimir Alganov and another Russian diplomat, Georgiy Yakimishin. This consequently resulted in fall of Polish government under Prime Minister Jozef Oleksy. *Afery Prawne(Polish).
In June of 1996 Marian Zacharski left Poland for Switzerland, and the tracks of his whereabouts vanished. Currently Wojciech Bockenheim from Polish TV station TVN produced six TV movies entitled Szpieg (eng. for Spy) "in search of Marian Zacharski", which is dedicated to disclose some of activities of Zacharski
The Spy Who Went Into Retailing 1991Marian Zacharski has a finely tuned sense of irony, and he ought to. A decade ago, he was sentenced by an American court to life in prison, a Polish agent who paid a high penalty for stealing military secrets. Today, six years after his release in a spy exchange, he is a leading businessman in Poland, director of this country's most profitable retailer."Each day, all that is becoming more distant," Mr. Zacharski said of his years as a foot soldier in the cold war in the guise of a sales representative for a Polish machine-tools company. "History has moved forward. I owe a lot to America. If I've become a seasoned businessman, it was because of the years I spent in America. It was my university of life."With his perfectly coiffed gray hair, starched white shirt and lightly accented colloquial English, Mr. Zacharski epitomizes Poland's new breed of Westward-looking entrepreneurs. While competitors struggle to cope with the new principles of free-market economics, he has a sure grasp of his marketing strategy. He wants to emulate J. C. Penney, not K Mart, and hopes to build relationships with customers eager to buy previously scarce consumer goods.The state-owned company he heads, Pewex, was the nationwide chain of stores that sold imported items for dollars, German marks, or other hard currency. It is being privatized and today, with the border open to imports, Pewex accepts payment in Polish zlotys.Sitting in his office on the 12th floor of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Warsaw, Mr. Zacharski speaks confidently of prospects for doubling gross sales this year, to $2 billion. One advertising gambit he plans has a distinctly Western flavor: Pewex is playing host to a tour this spring by the American figure skating troupe the Ice Capades. Mr. Zacharski says the company must diversify to maintain market share.American intelligence officials remember Mr. Zacharski for skills other than his marketing acumen. To them, he was the ultimate professional. His prowess in recruiting a disgruntled engineer at Hughes Aircraft as his American agent is still studied at the F.B.I. academy as a textbook example of how a resourceful spy plies his trade. 'Very Talented'"I knew he was very talented, and I was convinced he was a very talented spy," said Robert Brewer, a private lawyer in San Diego who prosecuted Mr. Zacharski in 1981. "I'm not a bit surprised that whatever venture he got involved in, he would succeed."Indeed, Mr. Zacharski is a rarity among intelligence operatives East or West in his ability to prosper in a subsequent career. The attributes of a capable spy -- grace under pressure, personal charm, daring -- would seem to be ideal for business executives. But the United States has had enormous difficulty helping defectors from Soviet and Eastern bloc intelligence services find work in the West. And today, intelligence agents dismissed by the new democracies in eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland are also said to be struggling to find an employer who can make use of their abilities.From 1977 until his arrest in 1981, Mr. Zacharski worked as what is known in espionage jargon as an "illegal." It is considered the riskiest job in the spy business. Some Face PrisonMost intelligence officers enter foreign countries as diplomats who enjoy immunity from arrest. They are closely watched by counterespionage agents and if caught are simply deported. To avoid surveillance, some spies pose as students, tourists or business executives. Their handlers work particularly hard at inventing credible cover stories because these illegals face imprisonment if detected.In Mr. Zacharski's case, his cover as a sales representative for a Polish company was as much a vocation as spycraft. He recalled with evident pride his success in selling machine tools to American companies.He was more circumspect about details of his espionage career, declining to say when and how he was enlisted. But it was still easy to see why he was both a successful spy and a formidable salesman. He fixes a visitor with his light blue eyes, and he has a knack for creating a warm, congenial atmosphere even in a short conversation. 'Like a Game'What was it like to be a spy?"It's something in which you have to turn your emotions off," he recalled. "It's a job, and the same time, it's something like a game between certain types of agencies."Mr. Zacharski grew up in the northern Polish city of Sopot, and attended college in Warsaw, studying business. At some point, he was enlisted in the Polish intelligence service, which was working closely with Soviet intelligence to steal Western technology."I consider myself a great patriot," Mr. Zacharski said of his decision to become a spy. "To me it makes no difference whether Poland is Socialistic, Communist or a feudal country. To me, it's that it was Poland. My country is Poland and I do everything possible for it."Mr. Zacharski came to the United States in 1975, accompanied by his wife and daughter.For several years, he worked as president of the Polish American Machinery Corporation, with headquarters in Elk Grove Village, Ill. The Personal TouchListen to how Mr. Zacharski describes the attributes of a great salesman: "Business is not done between companies. It's done between people. Before you sell your product, you have to sell yourself."Mr. Zacharski was doing both in the United States. In 1978, he met William Holden Bell, an aerospace engineer at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, Calif., who was embittered and having financial problems. Mr. Zacharski moved into the condominium complex in which Mr. Bell lived, befriended him, played tennis with him and slowly eased him into espionage."This was a classic case in which an intelligence officer correctly assessed his target. Mr. Bell needed a friend and Zacharski just recruited him beautifully," said Kenneth Degraffenreid, former head of intelligence programs at the White House.Over the next three years, prosecutors said, Mr. Bell was paid more than $110,000 for secrets on military radar systems, including the technology for the radar-evading Stealth aircraft then under development. In 1981, he was caught by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confessed, and agreed to wear a hidden microphone to entrap Mr. Zacharski. The plan succeeded, and the handsome Polish emigre was arrested on June 28, 1981. A Life SentenceMr. Bell was sentenced to eight years. Mr. Zacharski went before a Federal judge for his punishment on Dec. 14, 1981, a particularly inauspicious moment. The day before, Poland's Communist Government had imposed martial law. Mr. Zacharski said the life sentence was not a surprise.Though he would not have been eligible for parole until June 2011, he said he never gave up hope. He asserts that his biggest worry was whether he could get a job when he returned to Poland. In 1985, he and three other agents were traded for 25 spies being held in Eastern bloc countries. Months later, the Government named him to a post in Pewex and he soon went to work as head of the consumer electronics division. He became general director last year.It is not yet clear whether he will head Pewex when the company is sold into private hands. Mr. Zacharski says he has the qualifications, pointing to a 74 percent increase in sales last year. Political ConcernsOf late, Mr. Zacharski's prominence has attracted some unwanted political attention. Lech Walesa, the new President of Poland, ran on a platform of sweeping the Communist elite, or "nomenklatura," from posts in business and industry. Though Mr. Zacharski was appointed to Pewex by the Communist Government, he was chosen director in a competition last year.He was recently the subject of an unflattering article in Tygodnik Solidarnosc, the weekly paper with close ties to the Walesa camp. The article recounted published reports linking Mr. Zacharski's operations in the United States to the Soviet intelligence service, the K.G.B."They are trying to create an atmosphere that I am a foreign object in this country, and this is complete nonsense," he said.These days, Mr. Zacharski seems to have little nostalgia for his years in the back alleysNo, I don't miss it," he said. "At a certain point in your life you do certain things. At that point in my life, I was young and brave. Now, I am old and settled," said the 39-year old Mr. Zacharski, with only the hint of a twinkle in his eye.
Marian Zacharski - najsłynniejszy agent polskiego wywiadu. W czasach zimnej wojny wykradł Amerykanom dokumentację supernowoczesnej broni, wartej ponad 2 miliardy dolarów. Losy superszpiega PRL-u i oficera wywiadu III RP prześledził dziennikarz TVN i TVN24 Bogdan Rymanowski. Reżyserem filmu jest Wojciech Bockenheim, autor „Wielkich ucieczek”. Tak powstał serial "Szpieg", który od maja będzie można zobaczyć w TVN.
Zacharski przybył do USA w 1976 roku, jako przedstawiciel Polish-American Machinery Company (POLAMCO). Formalnie zajmował się sprzedażą obrabiarek kalifornijskim przedsiębiorstwom przemysłu lotniczego. Zaprzyjaźnił się z pracownikiem jednej z firm, Williamem Bellem. Wykorzystując fakt, że Bell tonął w długach, zaproponował, że kupi od niego tajne materiały.
Za niespełna 200 tysięcy dolarów zdobył m.in. dokumentację rakiet przeciwlotniczych, obrony przeciwlotniczej, bombowca strategicznego, czołgu i myśliwca. Materiały te centrala w Warszawie przekazała Moskwie.Skazany na dożywocieFBI aresztowała Zacharskiego w 1981 roku. Został skazany na dożywocie, w amerykańskim więzieniu przesiedział ponad cztery lata. W czerwcu 1985 roku Zacharskiego oraz trzech innych szpiegów wschodnioeuropejskich wymieniono na moście między Berlinem Wschodnim a Zachodnim na 25 zachodnich agentów, schwytanych w krajach bloku wschodniego.
Po zmianie systemu superszpieg PRL-u został zatrudniony w Urzędzie Ochrony Państwa. Przez kilka dni był nawet szefem wywiadu III RP.W 1995 roku Zacharski zdobył informacje o działalności rosyjskiego szpiega o kryptonimie "Olin". Wybuchł skandal, gdy ówczesny szef MSW Andrzej Milczanowski oskarżył z trybuny sejmowej urzędującego premiera Józefa Oleksego o współpracę z rezydentami rosyjskiego wywiadu w Polsce: Ałganowem i Jakimiszynem. Oleksy podał się do dymisji, a śledztwo w największej aferze szpiegowskiej zostało umorzone.Oficerowie, którzy zajmowali się tzw. sprawą "Olina" zostali usunięci ze służb specjalnych. W czerwcu 1996 roku Marian Zacharski opuścił Polskę i zapadł się pod ziemię.Premiera 8 majaKim naprawdę jest Zacharski? Gdzie teraz przebywa? Jakie tajemnice zabrał ze sobą? Odpowiedzi na te pytania w Stanach Zjednoczonych, Meksyku, Rosji, Niemczech, Austrii i w Szwajcarii szukał ponad rok Bogdan Rymanowski.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Folly of Attacking Iran Lessons from History
The Folly of Attacking Iran Lessons from History
Mossadeq and Oil Nationalization
From 1949 on, sentiment for nationalization of Iran's oil industry grew. In 1949 the Majlis approved the First Development Plan (1948-55), which called for comprehensive agricultural and industrial development of the country. The Plan Organization was established to administer the program, which was to be financed in large part from oil revenues. Politically conscious Iranians were aware, however, that the British government derived more revenue from taxing the concessionaire, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC--formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company), than the Iranian government derived from royalties. The oil issue figured prominently in elections for the Majlis in 1949, and nationalists in the new Majlis were determined to renegotiate the AIOC agreement. In November 1950, the Majlis committee concerned with oil matters, headed by Mossadeq, rejected a draft agreement in which the AIOC had offered the government slightly improved terms. These terms did not include the fifty-fifty profit-sharing provision that was part of other new Persian Gulf oil concessions.
Subsequent negotiations with the AIOC were unsuccessful, partly because General Ali Razmara, who became prime minister in June 1950, failed to persuade the oil company of the strength of nationalist feeling in the country and in the Majlis. When the AIOC finally offered fifty-fifty profit-sharing in February 1951, sentiment for nationalization of the oil industry had become widespread. Razmara advised against nationalization on technical grounds and was assassinated in March 1951 by Khalil Tahmasebi, a member of the militant Fadayan-e Islam. On March 15, the Majlis voted to nationalize the oil industry. In April the shah yielded to Majlis pressure and demonstrations in the streets by naming Mossadeq prime minister.
Oil production came to a virtual standstill as British technicians left the country, and Britain imposed a worldwide embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil. In September 1951, Britain froze Iran's sterling assets and banned export of goods to Iran. It challenged the legality of the oil nationalization and took its case against Iran to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The court found in Iran's favor, but the dispute between Iran and the AIOC remained unsettled. Under United States pressure, the AIOC improved its offer to Iran. The excitement generated by the nationalization issue, anti-British feeling, agitation by radical elements, and the conviction among Mossadeq's advisers that Iran's maximum demands would, in the end, be met, however, led the government to reject all offers. The economy began to suffer from the loss of foreign exchange and oil revenues.
Meanwhile, Mossadeq's growing popularity and power led to political chaos and eventual United States intervention. Mossadeq had come to office on the strength of support from the National Front and other parties in the Majlis and as a result of his great popularity. His popularity, growing power, and intransigence on the oil issue were creating friction between the prime minister and the shah. In the summer of 1952, the shah refused the prime minister's demand for the power to appoint the minister of war (and, by implication, to control the armed forces). Mossadeq resigned, three days of pro-Mossadeq rioting followed, and the shah was forced to reappoint Mossadeq to head the government.
As domestic conditions deteriorated, however, Mossadeq's populist style grew more autocratic. In August 1952, the Majlis acceded to his demand for full powers in all affairs of government for a six-month period. These special powers were subsequently extended for a further six-month term. He also obtained approval for a law to reduce, from six years to two years, the term of the Senate (established in 1950 as the upper house of the Majlis), and thus brought about the dissolution of that body. Mossadeq's support in the lower house of the Majlis (also called the Majlis) was dwindling, however, so on August 3, 1953, the prime minister organized a plebiscite for the dissolution of the Majlis, claimed a massive vote in favor of the proposal, and dissolved the legislative body.
The administration of President Harry S Truman initially had been sympathetic to Iran's nationalist aspirations. Under the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, the United States came to accept the view of the British government that no reasonable compromise with Mossadeq was possible and that, by working with the Tudeh, Mossadeq was making probable a communist-inspired takeover. Mossadeq's intransigence and inclination to accept Tudeh support, the Cold War atmosphere, and the fear of Soviet influence in Iran also shaped United States thinking. In June 1953, the Eisenhower administration approved a British proposal for a joint Anglo-American operation, code-named Operation Ajax, to overthrow Mossadeq. Kermit Roosevelt of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) traveled secretly to Iran to coordinate plans with the shah and the Iranian military, which was led by General Fazlollah Zahedi.
In accord with the plan, on August 13 the shah appointed Zahedi prime minister to replace Mossadeq. Mossadeq refused to step down and arrested the shah's emissary. This triggered the second stage of Operation Ajax, which called for a military coup. The plan initially seemed to have failed, the shah fled the country, and Zahedi went into hiding. After four days of rioting, however, the tide turned. On August 19, pro-shah army units and street crowds defeated Mossadeq's forces. The shah returned to the country. Mossadeq was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for trying to overthrow the monarchy, but he was subsequently allowed to remain under house arrest in his village outside Tehran until his death in 1967. His minister of foreign affairs, Hosain Fatemi, was sentenced to death and executed. Hundreds of National Front leaders, Tudeh Party officers, and political activists were arrested; several Tudeh army officers were also sentenced to death.
Mossadeq and Oil Nationalization
From 1949 on, sentiment for nationalization of Iran's oil industry grew. In 1949 the Majlis approved the First Development Plan (1948-55), which called for comprehensive agricultural and industrial development of the country. The Plan Organization was established to administer the program, which was to be financed in large part from oil revenues. Politically conscious Iranians were aware, however, that the British government derived more revenue from taxing the concessionaire, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC--formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company), than the Iranian government derived from royalties. The oil issue figured prominently in elections for the Majlis in 1949, and nationalists in the new Majlis were determined to renegotiate the AIOC agreement. In November 1950, the Majlis committee concerned with oil matters, headed by Mossadeq, rejected a draft agreement in which the AIOC had offered the government slightly improved terms. These terms did not include the fifty-fifty profit-sharing provision that was part of other new Persian Gulf oil concessions.
Subsequent negotiations with the AIOC were unsuccessful, partly because General Ali Razmara, who became prime minister in June 1950, failed to persuade the oil company of the strength of nationalist feeling in the country and in the Majlis. When the AIOC finally offered fifty-fifty profit-sharing in February 1951, sentiment for nationalization of the oil industry had become widespread. Razmara advised against nationalization on technical grounds and was assassinated in March 1951 by Khalil Tahmasebi, a member of the militant Fadayan-e Islam. On March 15, the Majlis voted to nationalize the oil industry. In April the shah yielded to Majlis pressure and demonstrations in the streets by naming Mossadeq prime minister.
Oil production came to a virtual standstill as British technicians left the country, and Britain imposed a worldwide embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil. In September 1951, Britain froze Iran's sterling assets and banned export of goods to Iran. It challenged the legality of the oil nationalization and took its case against Iran to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The court found in Iran's favor, but the dispute between Iran and the AIOC remained unsettled. Under United States pressure, the AIOC improved its offer to Iran. The excitement generated by the nationalization issue, anti-British feeling, agitation by radical elements, and the conviction among Mossadeq's advisers that Iran's maximum demands would, in the end, be met, however, led the government to reject all offers. The economy began to suffer from the loss of foreign exchange and oil revenues.
Meanwhile, Mossadeq's growing popularity and power led to political chaos and eventual United States intervention. Mossadeq had come to office on the strength of support from the National Front and other parties in the Majlis and as a result of his great popularity. His popularity, growing power, and intransigence on the oil issue were creating friction between the prime minister and the shah. In the summer of 1952, the shah refused the prime minister's demand for the power to appoint the minister of war (and, by implication, to control the armed forces). Mossadeq resigned, three days of pro-Mossadeq rioting followed, and the shah was forced to reappoint Mossadeq to head the government.
As domestic conditions deteriorated, however, Mossadeq's populist style grew more autocratic. In August 1952, the Majlis acceded to his demand for full powers in all affairs of government for a six-month period. These special powers were subsequently extended for a further six-month term. He also obtained approval for a law to reduce, from six years to two years, the term of the Senate (established in 1950 as the upper house of the Majlis), and thus brought about the dissolution of that body. Mossadeq's support in the lower house of the Majlis (also called the Majlis) was dwindling, however, so on August 3, 1953, the prime minister organized a plebiscite for the dissolution of the Majlis, claimed a massive vote in favor of the proposal, and dissolved the legislative body.
The administration of President Harry S Truman initially had been sympathetic to Iran's nationalist aspirations. Under the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, the United States came to accept the view of the British government that no reasonable compromise with Mossadeq was possible and that, by working with the Tudeh, Mossadeq was making probable a communist-inspired takeover. Mossadeq's intransigence and inclination to accept Tudeh support, the Cold War atmosphere, and the fear of Soviet influence in Iran also shaped United States thinking. In June 1953, the Eisenhower administration approved a British proposal for a joint Anglo-American operation, code-named Operation Ajax, to overthrow Mossadeq. Kermit Roosevelt of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) traveled secretly to Iran to coordinate plans with the shah and the Iranian military, which was led by General Fazlollah Zahedi.
In accord with the plan, on August 13 the shah appointed Zahedi prime minister to replace Mossadeq. Mossadeq refused to step down and arrested the shah's emissary. This triggered the second stage of Operation Ajax, which called for a military coup. The plan initially seemed to have failed, the shah fled the country, and Zahedi went into hiding. After four days of rioting, however, the tide turned. On August 19, pro-shah army units and street crowds defeated Mossadeq's forces. The shah returned to the country. Mossadeq was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for trying to overthrow the monarchy, but he was subsequently allowed to remain under house arrest in his village outside Tehran until his death in 1967. His minister of foreign affairs, Hosain Fatemi, was sentenced to death and executed. Hundreds of National Front leaders, Tudeh Party officers, and political activists were arrested; several Tudeh army officers were also sentenced to death.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Naomi Klein Calls For Progressive Pressure On Obama
Naomi Klein Calls For Progressive Pressure On Obama
US wants Poles to visit, spend lots of money
US wants Poles to visit, spend lots of money
By ZUZIA DANIELSKI | Associated Press Writer
12:36 PM EDT, June 30, 2008
WARSAW, Poland - Time to shop until you drop across the Atlantic, the U.S. embassy says. In an unusual appeal, the United States is enticing Poles to visit and spend money this summer in hopes of propping up its faltering economy. The campaign comes as the Polish currency hit a historic high -- reaching 2.1194 zloty to the dollar on Monday.
"When you visit the States, bring an extra suitcase so you can return to Poland with a suitcase full of new items," U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Victor Ashe, is quoted as saying on the embassy's Web site.
The invitation is a sea change in bilateral relations. For most of the 20th century, impoverished Poles traveled to the United States in search of any possible job. Now they are being seen as a source of increased revenue.
The idea was a Warsaw initiative, said embassy spokesman Chris Snipes. He was not sure whether similar promotions had been undertaken by other U.S. embassies around the world.
By VANESSA GERA
The Associated Press
While inviting Polish tourists, the embassy makes no mention of easing U.S. visa requirements for Poles. Warsaw, a staunch U.S. ally, has been demanding for years that the visa requirement be ended, along with the US$100 fee for the lengthy procedure.
The embassy did note that the average waiting time for a visa was down to two days.
"The zloty is particularly strong and it's a good time to travel to the States," Snipes said.
WARSAW, Poland -- Not so long ago, the U.S. enjoyed something akin to a mythical status in Poland. Ronald Reagan was a hero, the dollar was king and Washington was a trusted guardian against Russia.
But that starry-eyed idealism has eroded, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the tough stance Poland has taken in negotiating a missile defense deal with Washington.
The two allies announced Wednesday that they agreed tentatively to base American missile interceptors in Poland, part of a planned U.S. missile shield against Iran. But contentiousness that surfaced over nearly 18 months of negotiations belied the fact that the U.S. was in talks with one of its closest friends in Europe.
"Many problems in the bilateral relationship became apparent during the missile defense talks," said Maria Wagrowska, a security expert with the Warsaw-based Center for International Relations. "And they are not only political _ they are also psychological."
She and other analysts agree that if the U.S. had tried to get a deal before the Iraq war, it would have been much easier.
Today, Polish politicians feel burned by the Bush administration, largely because Warsaw's staunch military support for the U.S. war in Iraq failed to win substantial contracts for Polish companies in Iraq's reconstruction, as many here had expected.
"Poland took an idealistic approach when it decided to support the U.S. in Iraq," Wagrowska said. "Now there is a much more reasonable, commercial approach because of the disappointment that we didn't earn anything in Iraq."
By ZUZIA DANIELSKI | Associated Press Writer
12:36 PM EDT, June 30, 2008
WARSAW, Poland - Time to shop until you drop across the Atlantic, the U.S. embassy says. In an unusual appeal, the United States is enticing Poles to visit and spend money this summer in hopes of propping up its faltering economy. The campaign comes as the Polish currency hit a historic high -- reaching 2.1194 zloty to the dollar on Monday.
"When you visit the States, bring an extra suitcase so you can return to Poland with a suitcase full of new items," U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Victor Ashe, is quoted as saying on the embassy's Web site.
The invitation is a sea change in bilateral relations. For most of the 20th century, impoverished Poles traveled to the United States in search of any possible job. Now they are being seen as a source of increased revenue.
The idea was a Warsaw initiative, said embassy spokesman Chris Snipes. He was not sure whether similar promotions had been undertaken by other U.S. embassies around the world.
By VANESSA GERA
The Associated Press
While inviting Polish tourists, the embassy makes no mention of easing U.S. visa requirements for Poles. Warsaw, a staunch U.S. ally, has been demanding for years that the visa requirement be ended, along with the US$100 fee for the lengthy procedure.
The embassy did note that the average waiting time for a visa was down to two days.
"The zloty is particularly strong and it's a good time to travel to the States," Snipes said.
WARSAW, Poland -- Not so long ago, the U.S. enjoyed something akin to a mythical status in Poland. Ronald Reagan was a hero, the dollar was king and Washington was a trusted guardian against Russia.
But that starry-eyed idealism has eroded, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the tough stance Poland has taken in negotiating a missile defense deal with Washington.
The two allies announced Wednesday that they agreed tentatively to base American missile interceptors in Poland, part of a planned U.S. missile shield against Iran. But contentiousness that surfaced over nearly 18 months of negotiations belied the fact that the U.S. was in talks with one of its closest friends in Europe.
"Many problems in the bilateral relationship became apparent during the missile defense talks," said Maria Wagrowska, a security expert with the Warsaw-based Center for International Relations. "And they are not only political _ they are also psychological."
She and other analysts agree that if the U.S. had tried to get a deal before the Iraq war, it would have been much easier.
Today, Polish politicians feel burned by the Bush administration, largely because Warsaw's staunch military support for the U.S. war in Iraq failed to win substantial contracts for Polish companies in Iraq's reconstruction, as many here had expected.
"Poland took an idealistic approach when it decided to support the U.S. in Iraq," Wagrowska said. "Now there is a much more reasonable, commercial approach because of the disappointment that we didn't earn anything in Iraq."
Friday, July 4, 2008
Inauguracyjne posiedzenie Polonijnej Rady Konsultacyjnej przy Marszałku Senatu VII kadencji
Inauguracyjne posiedzenie Polonijnej Rady Konsultacyjnej przy Marszałku Senatu VII kadencji
Wladyslaw Zachariasiewicz will represent all American Polonia is the prestigious Polonia Council that advises the Speaker of the Polish Senate. In Poland, the Senate has a special role in looking after Polonia throughout the world.
23 czerwca 2008 r. rozpoczęło się dwudniowe inauguracyjne posiedzenie Polonijnej Rady Konsultacyjnej przy Marszałku Senatu VII kadencji. Tematem posiedzenia Rady jest:
"Kraj a Polonia i Polacy w świecie - wyzwania XXI w."
Marszałek Bogdan Borusewicz wręczył akty nominacji członkom Polonijnej Rady Konsultacyjnej przy Marszałku Senatu VII Kadencji. Otrzymali je:
Andrzej Alwast - Prezes Rady Naczelnej Polonii Australijskiej i Nowozelandzkiej,
Kazimierz Anhalt - Koordynator ds. Rozwoju Federacji Organizacji Polskich w Irlandii,
Anżelika Borys - Prezes Związku Polaków na Białorusi,
Emilia Chmielowa - Prezes Federacji Organizacji Polskich na Ukrainie,
Andre Hamerski - Prezes Centralnej Reprezentacji Wspólnoty Brazylijsko-Polskiej BRASPOL,
Józef Kwiatkowski - Prezes Stowarzyszenia Nauczycieli Polskich na Litwie "Macierz Szkolna",
Władysław Lizoń - Prezes Kongresu Polonii Kanadyjskiej,
Jan Mokrzycki - Prezes Zjednoczenia Polskiego w Wielkiej Brytanii,
Tadeusz A. Pilat - Prezydent Europejskiej Unii Wspólnot Polonijnych,
Aleksander Sielicki - Zastępca Kierownika Centrum Kultur Kubania w Krasnodarze,
Władysław Zachariasiewicz - Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki Północnej.
W pracach Rady uczestniczyć będzie również Helena Miziniak - Szef Zespołu Doradców do spraw Migracji Ekonomicznej Obywateli Polskich do Państw Członkowskich Unii Europejskiej (gość honorowy).
Otwierając posiedzenie marszałek Senatu Bogdan Borusewicz stwierdził, że, powołanie Rady jest wyrazem troski o jak najlepszą kondycję spraw polskich i Polaków w świecie. Zwrócił również uwagę na konieczność koordynacji działań wszystkich instytucji państwowych, które zajmują się sprawami Polonii i Polaków zagranicą. Marszałek wyraził życzenie, aby wobec ogromnej różnorodności polonijnych organizacji Rada Konsultacyjna była reprezentacją Polonii całego świata.
Minister Radosław Sikorski powiedział, że sprawy Polonii są jednym z priorytetów MSZ, a rząd traktuje sprawy polonijne niezwykle poważnie. Minister zadeklarował również gotowość współpracy MSZ z Senatem w sprawach polonijnych.
Minister Katarzyna Hall przedstawiła plany resortu edukacji związane z opracowaniem i wdrożeniem programu nauczania języka polskiego, zwłaszcza dzieci, których rodzice czasowo przebywają poza krajem.
W drugiej części posiedzenia podjęto obrady w trzech grupach roboczych:
I. Zespół ds. Polaków na Wschodzie
Zespół którego pracom przewodniczył senator Łukasz Abgarowicz szczególna uwagę poświęcił trzem problemom: Karcie Polaka, przestrzeganiu praw mniejszości polskiej oraz problemom nauczania języka polskiego.
W trakcie obrad uczestnicy przedstawili następujące wnioski:
1. Karta Polaka.
Karta Polaka na Ukrainie i Białorusi jest praktycznie niedostępna dla większości uprawnionych ze względu na niewydolny system jej przyznawania. Należy bezwzględnie i w jak w jak najszybszym tempie dokonać zmian organizacyjnych, które skrócą kolejki oczekujących z wielu lat do 2 - 3 miesięcy.
Informacja o Karcie Polaka wśród uprawnionych niezrzeszonych w organizacjach Polaków jest niewystarczająca, szczególnie na Białorusi. Należy wspólnie z organizacjami polskimi na Ukrainie i Białorusi opracować metody szerszego upowszechnienia wiedzy o Karcie.
Ustawowe kryteria przyznawania Karty są zbyt sztywne, co utrudnia lub wręcz uniemożliwia otrzymanie karty wielu uprawnionym. Należy je uelastycznić.
Przed nowelizacją ustawy o Karcie Polaka należy, z inicjatywy Senatu RP, zorganizować konferencję z udziałem przedstawicieli rządu RP, organizacji polonijnych, organizacji pozarządowych oraz naukowców z dziedziny gospodarki, socjologii i demografii dla zdefiniowania oczekiwań i przewidywanych skutków wdrożenia Karty.
2. Przestrzeganie praw mniejszości polskiej.
Na Białorusi i Litwie prawa mniejszości polskiej są z premedytacją łamane przez władze centralne tych państw. Należy wzmóc nacisk władz Polskich na rządy Białorusi i Litwy z oczekiwaniem właściwego wywiązywania się tych ostatnich z umów międzynarodowych i bilateralnych dotyczących traktowana mniejszości narodowych. Jak się wydaje, szczególnie na Litwie może to przynieść szybkie pozytywne rezultaty.
Na Ukrainie środowiska polskie nie mogą korzystać z pełni swoich praw ze względu na częstą niechęć władz lokalnych. Wydaje się, że poprawić sytuację może przełamywanie tej niechęci przez nawiązywanie szerszej, pozarządowej współpracy z Ukraińcami z włączaniem w nią organizacji polskich z Ukrainy. Senat RP winien zainicjować szeroką akcję nawiązywania stosunków partnerskich pomiędzy miastami, szkołami, uczelniami itp. polskimi i ukraińskimi.
3. Problem nauczania języka polskiego.
Państwo polskie winno zabiegać o tworzenie szkół polskich w miejscach zwartego zamieszkania Polaków w ramach systemów edukacyjnych poszczególnych państw.
Szkoły polskie winny otrzymywać pomoc metodologiczną, kadrową i każdą niezbędną tak, aby być konkurencyjnymi na rynku edukacyjnym.
W środowiskach polskich mieszkających w rozproszeniu niezbędne jest wzmocnienie szkółek sobotnio-niedzielnych, a także stworzenie i wdrożenie systemu nauki języka polskiego przez Internet. Postuluje się też wprowadzenie kursu języka polskiego do programu TV Polonia.
4. Promocja kultury polskiej i ochrona polskiego dziedzictwa kulturowego poza granicami.
Obserwuje się zbyt słabą, w stosunku do np. rosyjskojęzycznej, ekspansję kultury polskiej zwłaszcza w formach atrakcyjnych dla młodzieży. Należy sponsorować wyjazdy na koncerty czołowych polskich zespołów, zwiększyć podaż ich płyt na rynkach lokalnych a także wzbogacić program TV Polonia o programy muzyczne i rozrywkowe.
Niewystarczająca jest dbałość o polskie dziedzictwo kulturowe i miejsca pamięci narodowej na Ukrainie i Białorusi. Poza wysiłkami władz państwa polskiego, które należy wzmocnić, wydaje się celowe wsparcie działań pozarządowych zmierzających do porządkowania i utrzymania w należytym stanie cmentarzy polskich. Należy w nie włączyć środowiska polskie na Wschodzie, a także młodzież, która w ramach obozów wakacyjnych, organizowanych np. na Ukrainie, może wykonywać prace porządkowe.
II. Zespół ds. Polonii Europejskiej
Podczas obrad Zespołu, któremu przewodniczył senator Andrzej Person zwrócono uwagę na niewystarczające działania władz polskich w odniesieniu do nowej emigracji. W ocenie zespołu istnieje potrzeba monitorowania tego zjawiska także w mniejszych środowiskach, w takich krajach, jak: Norwegia, Włochy, Austria, Holandia, czy Hiszpania.
Obradujący w Zespole przedstawiciele członkowie Rady przedstawili następujące wnioski:
Działania władz polskich w zakresie nowej emigracji nie są w pełni wystarczające - podstawową potrzebą jest monitorowanie dynamiki tego zjawiska, tak, by uzyskać jego całościowy obraz. Skalę zjawiska należy dostrzegać również w mniejszych środowiskach. Listę monitorowanych państw należy uzupełnić także o takie kraje jak Norwegia, Niemcy, Włochy, Szwecja, Austria, Holandia, Francja, Hiszpania.
Podstawową potrzebą dla nowej emigracji jest uzyskanie przed wyjazdem informacji, na temat zasad życia obowiązujących w kraju docelowym. Przykładem może być stworzony przez Zjednoczenie Polskie w Wielkiej Brytanii poradnik "Żyć i pracować w Wielkiej Brytanii".
Apelujemy o utrzymanie ilości etatów konsularnych oraz liczby lokali przeznaczonych na konsulaty w krajach, gdzie zwiększyła się liczba Polonii.
Edukacja dzieci i młodzieży polonijnej w systemie edukacyjnym kraju osiedlenia wymaga rozszerzenia o przedmioty ojczyste, tak by możliwa była ciągłość edukacji po powrocie do Polski.
Należy dostosować program edukacji polonijnej uzupełniającej do polskiej podstawy programowej.
Apelujemy o niezamykanie instytutów kultury polskiej na terenie Europy. Jednocześnie zachęcamy władze polskie do korzystanie z doświadczeń organizacji polonijnych w zakresie promocji kultury polskiej za granicą. Uważamy, że model menadżerski promocji polskiej kultury za granicą jest bardzo dobry, należy jednak pozostawić polskie instytuty jako obiekty, które można w tym modelu wykorzystać.
Postulujemy partnerskie traktowanie organizacji polonijnych w rozstrzyganiu ważnych dla Polonii kwestii (ustawy o Karcie Polaka, o Obywatelstwie) oraz rozważenie stworzenia grup roboczych z udziałem działaczy organizacji polonijnych przy konsulatach lub przy Wydziałach Konsularnych Ambasady RP.
Zwracamy uwagę na potrzebę integracji młodzieży polonijnej z młodzieżą polską.
Postulujemy zwiększenie udziału tematyki polonijnej w polskich mediach publicznych.
Konieczne jest ustalenie statusu nauczyciela polonijnego.
Oczekujemy deklaracji rządu polskiego i jasnego stanowiska wobec zakupu lub przyszłego finansowania nieruchomości Fowley Court w Wielkiej Brytanii.
Władze Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej powinny rozpocząć działania w ramach UE i Rady Europy o ujednolicenie standardów w poszczególnych przedmiotach nauczanych w szkołach powszechnych i gimnazjach. Taka standaryzacja w dzisiejszym świecie mobilności siły roboczej jest konieczną by uchronić dzieci i młodzież od tracenia lat edukacji.
III. Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach obradował pod przewodnictwem senatora Sławomira Kowalskiego.
W toku obrad Zespół wypracował następujące wnioski:
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach wnioskuje o utworzenie Polonijnych Zespołów Konsultacyjnych przy Ambasadach RP, które miałyby na celu zintensyfikowanie współpracy z organizacjami polonijnymi za granicą/które byłyby platformą współpracy z organizacjami polonijnymi za granicą.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach dostrzega potrzebę podmiotowego rozszerzenia Ustawy o Karcie Polaka o pozostałe kraje świata, co pomogłoby mieszkającej tam społeczności polskiej zachować związki z narodowym dziedzictwem kulturalnym.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach wnioskuje o utworzenie nagrody Senatu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej dla nauczycieli polonijnych, którzy uczą za granicą w systemie tzw. szkół sobotnich.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach uważa za potrzebne utworzenie ponadregionalnej Szkoły Liderów Polonijnych, otwartej dla przedstawicieli wszystkich środowisk polonijnych.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach apeluje, by władze polskie dołożyły starań w zakresie zapewnienia nauczycielom polonijnym uczącym za granicą możliwości awansu zawodowego.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach wnioskuje o utworzenie wspólnego i spójnego planu promocji pozytywnego wizerunku Polski i Polaka w świecie.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach uważa, że w interesie polskiejdiaspory i państwa polskiego konieczna jest partnerska współpraca miast i regionów.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach jest zdania, że przy okazji Zjazdów Polonii i Polaków z Zagranicy należy ograniczyć liczbę wniosków do dwóch lub trzech, a co więcej powinny one dotyczyć problemów ponadregionalnych/o szerokim zasięgu geograficznym.
W drugim dniu obrad, podsumowując zgłaszane przez Zespoły wnioski, marszałek Bogdan Borusewicz podkreślił, że formuła zespołowej pracy Rady przyniosła duże efekty. Wysoko też ocenił zaangażowanie w prace Rady przedstawicieli ministerstw i organizacji pozarządowych. Marszałek z aprobatą przyjął nakreślone przez Radę kierunki działań, zwłaszcza postulaty dotyczące propagowania nauczania języka polskiego Podczas plenarnego posiedzenia Rady, któremu przewodniczyła wicemarszałek Krystyna Bochenek przyjęto następujące wnioski końcowe:
Sprawą dla nas podstawową jest dalsze utrzymanie zarówno opieki Senatu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej nad Polonią jak i dotychczasowego modelu finansowania naszej działalności. Rozumiemy, że wolą polskich władz częścią środków dla Polonii dysponuje MSZ i MEN a w praktyce wiele organizacji korzysta z tych funduszy. Pragniemy jednak podkreślić, że jest dla nas ważne aby finansowanie poprzez organizacje pozarządowe pozostało podstawową drogą wspierania naszej działalności.
Pragniemy podkreślić nasze niezachwiane poparcie dla Związku Polaków na Białorusi kierowanego przez Andżelikę Borys. Pragniemy podziękować władzom polskim za udzielone Związkowi dotychczasowe poparcie i prosimy o dalsze konsekwentne stanowisko i działania w tej sprawie.
Rozumiemy trudności związane z egzekwowaniem umów międzynarodowych wobec najbliższych sąsiadów. Znamy też dotychczasowe działania władz polskich. Pragniemy jednak przypomnieć i prosić o jak najrychlejsze i zdecydowane działania w dwóch sprawach szczególnej wagi:
pisowni nazwisk polskich na Litwie, jak również używanie języka polskiego (ojczystego) w miejscach zwartego zamieszkania ludności, która to sprawa pozostaje w jaskrawej sprzeczności z obowiązującymi w Europie standardami.
realizacji Traktatu Polsko-Niemieckiego ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem finansowania organizacji polonijnych i edukacji polonijnej. Trudności związane z edukacją w Niemczech podkreślane są na wszystkich konferencjach i sympozjach oświatowych.
Poprzedni rząd rozbudził duże nadzieje rozpoczynając prace nad szerokim programem wspierania edukacji polonijnej. Pragniemy jedynie przypomnieć tę sprawę prosząc o kontynuację działań w tym zakresie.
Młodzież jest przyszłością zarówno Polski, jak i Polonii. Ważne są dalsze działania wszystkich zainteresowanych stron na rzecz zwiększenia integracji młodzieży polskiej i polonijnej. Konieczna jest zmiana polityki wobec młodzieży zarówno Polonii jak i władz polskich. Zadania skierowane do młodzieży i dla młodzieży winny być naszym zdaniem priorytetowo traktowane, przez wszystkie podmioty wspierające działalność polonijną.
Jest nas w świecie miliony. Niejednokrotnie pokazaliśmy, jak wiele możemy dla Polski zrobić. Możemy i chcemy Polsce dalej pomagać. Zawracamy się z kolejnym apelem o partnerskie traktowanie, o korzystanie z naszej wiedzy i możliwości. Skoordynowane działania polskich placówek dyplomatycznych i organizacji polonijnych z pewnością będą korzystne dla Polski.
Wyrażamy nasze poparcie i wdzięczność za uchwalenie przez Sejm Ustawy o Karcie Polaka. Dla naszych Rodaków zza wschodniej granicy Schengen była to sprawa wielkiej wagi. Ważna jest dalsza nowelizacja tej ustawy obejmująca bezpaństwowców, kraje bałkańskie i pozostałe środowiska polonijne na świecie. Równie ważne jest zapewnienie powszechnego dostępu do Kart Polaka w szczególności na Ukrainie i Białorusi. Podstawowa część ustawy potwierdzająca honor przynależności do narodu polskiego winna naszym zdaniem jednakowo traktować wszystkich Polaków poza granicami kraju.
Zbliża się 20-lecie zmiany ustrojowej w Polsce. Uważamy, ze nadszedł najwyższy czas na uchwalenie nowej i nowoczesnej Ustawy o Obywatelstwie. Najwyższy też czas, aby przestały obowiązywać przepisy z "głębokiego" PRL-u. Są tu dwie grupy osób w imieniu których prosimy o właściwe ujęcie w projekcie ustawy: Pierwsza, to osoby, którym władze PRL-u odebrały obywatelstwo w sposób bezprawny. Uważamy, że ze względu na godność osób tak poniżonych i pokrzywdzonych inicjatywa winna należeć do władz polskich. Druga grupa, to osoby, które zmuszone były do zrzeczenia się obywatelstwa ze względu na przepisy państw zamieszkania.
Pragniemy podkreślić wagę konsultowania ustaw z zainteresowanymi, co jest na co dzień praktykowane w demokracjach zachodnich. Prosimy o konsultowanie ustaw i raportów nas dotyczących przynajmniej z ważniejszymi organizacjami polonijnymi.
Wnioskujemy o utworzenie wspólnego i spójnego planu promocji pozytywnego wizerunku Polski i Polaka w świecie.
http://www.polonia-polska.pl/index.php?id=ak80623
Wladyslaw Zachariasiewicz will represent all American Polonia is the prestigious Polonia Council that advises the Speaker of the Polish Senate. In Poland, the Senate has a special role in looking after Polonia throughout the world.
23 czerwca 2008 r. rozpoczęło się dwudniowe inauguracyjne posiedzenie Polonijnej Rady Konsultacyjnej przy Marszałku Senatu VII kadencji. Tematem posiedzenia Rady jest:
"Kraj a Polonia i Polacy w świecie - wyzwania XXI w."
Marszałek Bogdan Borusewicz wręczył akty nominacji członkom Polonijnej Rady Konsultacyjnej przy Marszałku Senatu VII Kadencji. Otrzymali je:
Andrzej Alwast - Prezes Rady Naczelnej Polonii Australijskiej i Nowozelandzkiej,
Kazimierz Anhalt - Koordynator ds. Rozwoju Federacji Organizacji Polskich w Irlandii,
Anżelika Borys - Prezes Związku Polaków na Białorusi,
Emilia Chmielowa - Prezes Federacji Organizacji Polskich na Ukrainie,
Andre Hamerski - Prezes Centralnej Reprezentacji Wspólnoty Brazylijsko-Polskiej BRASPOL,
Józef Kwiatkowski - Prezes Stowarzyszenia Nauczycieli Polskich na Litwie "Macierz Szkolna",
Władysław Lizoń - Prezes Kongresu Polonii Kanadyjskiej,
Jan Mokrzycki - Prezes Zjednoczenia Polskiego w Wielkiej Brytanii,
Tadeusz A. Pilat - Prezydent Europejskiej Unii Wspólnot Polonijnych,
Aleksander Sielicki - Zastępca Kierownika Centrum Kultur Kubania w Krasnodarze,
Władysław Zachariasiewicz - Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki Północnej.
W pracach Rady uczestniczyć będzie również Helena Miziniak - Szef Zespołu Doradców do spraw Migracji Ekonomicznej Obywateli Polskich do Państw Członkowskich Unii Europejskiej (gość honorowy).
Otwierając posiedzenie marszałek Senatu Bogdan Borusewicz stwierdził, że, powołanie Rady jest wyrazem troski o jak najlepszą kondycję spraw polskich i Polaków w świecie. Zwrócił również uwagę na konieczność koordynacji działań wszystkich instytucji państwowych, które zajmują się sprawami Polonii i Polaków zagranicą. Marszałek wyraził życzenie, aby wobec ogromnej różnorodności polonijnych organizacji Rada Konsultacyjna była reprezentacją Polonii całego świata.
Minister Radosław Sikorski powiedział, że sprawy Polonii są jednym z priorytetów MSZ, a rząd traktuje sprawy polonijne niezwykle poważnie. Minister zadeklarował również gotowość współpracy MSZ z Senatem w sprawach polonijnych.
Minister Katarzyna Hall przedstawiła plany resortu edukacji związane z opracowaniem i wdrożeniem programu nauczania języka polskiego, zwłaszcza dzieci, których rodzice czasowo przebywają poza krajem.
W drugiej części posiedzenia podjęto obrady w trzech grupach roboczych:
I. Zespół ds. Polaków na Wschodzie
Zespół którego pracom przewodniczył senator Łukasz Abgarowicz szczególna uwagę poświęcił trzem problemom: Karcie Polaka, przestrzeganiu praw mniejszości polskiej oraz problemom nauczania języka polskiego.
W trakcie obrad uczestnicy przedstawili następujące wnioski:
1. Karta Polaka.
Karta Polaka na Ukrainie i Białorusi jest praktycznie niedostępna dla większości uprawnionych ze względu na niewydolny system jej przyznawania. Należy bezwzględnie i w jak w jak najszybszym tempie dokonać zmian organizacyjnych, które skrócą kolejki oczekujących z wielu lat do 2 - 3 miesięcy.
Informacja o Karcie Polaka wśród uprawnionych niezrzeszonych w organizacjach Polaków jest niewystarczająca, szczególnie na Białorusi. Należy wspólnie z organizacjami polskimi na Ukrainie i Białorusi opracować metody szerszego upowszechnienia wiedzy o Karcie.
Ustawowe kryteria przyznawania Karty są zbyt sztywne, co utrudnia lub wręcz uniemożliwia otrzymanie karty wielu uprawnionym. Należy je uelastycznić.
Przed nowelizacją ustawy o Karcie Polaka należy, z inicjatywy Senatu RP, zorganizować konferencję z udziałem przedstawicieli rządu RP, organizacji polonijnych, organizacji pozarządowych oraz naukowców z dziedziny gospodarki, socjologii i demografii dla zdefiniowania oczekiwań i przewidywanych skutków wdrożenia Karty.
2. Przestrzeganie praw mniejszości polskiej.
Na Białorusi i Litwie prawa mniejszości polskiej są z premedytacją łamane przez władze centralne tych państw. Należy wzmóc nacisk władz Polskich na rządy Białorusi i Litwy z oczekiwaniem właściwego wywiązywania się tych ostatnich z umów międzynarodowych i bilateralnych dotyczących traktowana mniejszości narodowych. Jak się wydaje, szczególnie na Litwie może to przynieść szybkie pozytywne rezultaty.
Na Ukrainie środowiska polskie nie mogą korzystać z pełni swoich praw ze względu na częstą niechęć władz lokalnych. Wydaje się, że poprawić sytuację może przełamywanie tej niechęci przez nawiązywanie szerszej, pozarządowej współpracy z Ukraińcami z włączaniem w nią organizacji polskich z Ukrainy. Senat RP winien zainicjować szeroką akcję nawiązywania stosunków partnerskich pomiędzy miastami, szkołami, uczelniami itp. polskimi i ukraińskimi.
3. Problem nauczania języka polskiego.
Państwo polskie winno zabiegać o tworzenie szkół polskich w miejscach zwartego zamieszkania Polaków w ramach systemów edukacyjnych poszczególnych państw.
Szkoły polskie winny otrzymywać pomoc metodologiczną, kadrową i każdą niezbędną tak, aby być konkurencyjnymi na rynku edukacyjnym.
W środowiskach polskich mieszkających w rozproszeniu niezbędne jest wzmocnienie szkółek sobotnio-niedzielnych, a także stworzenie i wdrożenie systemu nauki języka polskiego przez Internet. Postuluje się też wprowadzenie kursu języka polskiego do programu TV Polonia.
4. Promocja kultury polskiej i ochrona polskiego dziedzictwa kulturowego poza granicami.
Obserwuje się zbyt słabą, w stosunku do np. rosyjskojęzycznej, ekspansję kultury polskiej zwłaszcza w formach atrakcyjnych dla młodzieży. Należy sponsorować wyjazdy na koncerty czołowych polskich zespołów, zwiększyć podaż ich płyt na rynkach lokalnych a także wzbogacić program TV Polonia o programy muzyczne i rozrywkowe.
Niewystarczająca jest dbałość o polskie dziedzictwo kulturowe i miejsca pamięci narodowej na Ukrainie i Białorusi. Poza wysiłkami władz państwa polskiego, które należy wzmocnić, wydaje się celowe wsparcie działań pozarządowych zmierzających do porządkowania i utrzymania w należytym stanie cmentarzy polskich. Należy w nie włączyć środowiska polskie na Wschodzie, a także młodzież, która w ramach obozów wakacyjnych, organizowanych np. na Ukrainie, może wykonywać prace porządkowe.
II. Zespół ds. Polonii Europejskiej
Podczas obrad Zespołu, któremu przewodniczył senator Andrzej Person zwrócono uwagę na niewystarczające działania władz polskich w odniesieniu do nowej emigracji. W ocenie zespołu istnieje potrzeba monitorowania tego zjawiska także w mniejszych środowiskach, w takich krajach, jak: Norwegia, Włochy, Austria, Holandia, czy Hiszpania.
Obradujący w Zespole przedstawiciele członkowie Rady przedstawili następujące wnioski:
Działania władz polskich w zakresie nowej emigracji nie są w pełni wystarczające - podstawową potrzebą jest monitorowanie dynamiki tego zjawiska, tak, by uzyskać jego całościowy obraz. Skalę zjawiska należy dostrzegać również w mniejszych środowiskach. Listę monitorowanych państw należy uzupełnić także o takie kraje jak Norwegia, Niemcy, Włochy, Szwecja, Austria, Holandia, Francja, Hiszpania.
Podstawową potrzebą dla nowej emigracji jest uzyskanie przed wyjazdem informacji, na temat zasad życia obowiązujących w kraju docelowym. Przykładem może być stworzony przez Zjednoczenie Polskie w Wielkiej Brytanii poradnik "Żyć i pracować w Wielkiej Brytanii".
Apelujemy o utrzymanie ilości etatów konsularnych oraz liczby lokali przeznaczonych na konsulaty w krajach, gdzie zwiększyła się liczba Polonii.
Edukacja dzieci i młodzieży polonijnej w systemie edukacyjnym kraju osiedlenia wymaga rozszerzenia o przedmioty ojczyste, tak by możliwa była ciągłość edukacji po powrocie do Polski.
Należy dostosować program edukacji polonijnej uzupełniającej do polskiej podstawy programowej.
Apelujemy o niezamykanie instytutów kultury polskiej na terenie Europy. Jednocześnie zachęcamy władze polskie do korzystanie z doświadczeń organizacji polonijnych w zakresie promocji kultury polskiej za granicą. Uważamy, że model menadżerski promocji polskiej kultury za granicą jest bardzo dobry, należy jednak pozostawić polskie instytuty jako obiekty, które można w tym modelu wykorzystać.
Postulujemy partnerskie traktowanie organizacji polonijnych w rozstrzyganiu ważnych dla Polonii kwestii (ustawy o Karcie Polaka, o Obywatelstwie) oraz rozważenie stworzenia grup roboczych z udziałem działaczy organizacji polonijnych przy konsulatach lub przy Wydziałach Konsularnych Ambasady RP.
Zwracamy uwagę na potrzebę integracji młodzieży polonijnej z młodzieżą polską.
Postulujemy zwiększenie udziału tematyki polonijnej w polskich mediach publicznych.
Konieczne jest ustalenie statusu nauczyciela polonijnego.
Oczekujemy deklaracji rządu polskiego i jasnego stanowiska wobec zakupu lub przyszłego finansowania nieruchomości Fowley Court w Wielkiej Brytanii.
Władze Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej powinny rozpocząć działania w ramach UE i Rady Europy o ujednolicenie standardów w poszczególnych przedmiotach nauczanych w szkołach powszechnych i gimnazjach. Taka standaryzacja w dzisiejszym świecie mobilności siły roboczej jest konieczną by uchronić dzieci i młodzież od tracenia lat edukacji.
III. Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach obradował pod przewodnictwem senatora Sławomira Kowalskiego.
W toku obrad Zespół wypracował następujące wnioski:
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach wnioskuje o utworzenie Polonijnych Zespołów Konsultacyjnych przy Ambasadach RP, które miałyby na celu zintensyfikowanie współpracy z organizacjami polonijnymi za granicą/które byłyby platformą współpracy z organizacjami polonijnymi za granicą.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach dostrzega potrzebę podmiotowego rozszerzenia Ustawy o Karcie Polaka o pozostałe kraje świata, co pomogłoby mieszkającej tam społeczności polskiej zachować związki z narodowym dziedzictwem kulturalnym.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach wnioskuje o utworzenie nagrody Senatu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej dla nauczycieli polonijnych, którzy uczą za granicą w systemie tzw. szkół sobotnich.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach uważa za potrzebne utworzenie ponadregionalnej Szkoły Liderów Polonijnych, otwartej dla przedstawicieli wszystkich środowisk polonijnych.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach apeluje, by władze polskie dołożyły starań w zakresie zapewnienia nauczycielom polonijnym uczącym za granicą możliwości awansu zawodowego.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach wnioskuje o utworzenie wspólnego i spójnego planu promocji pozytywnego wizerunku Polski i Polaka w świecie.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach uważa, że w interesie polskiejdiaspory i państwa polskiego konieczna jest partnerska współpraca miast i regionów.
Zespół ds. Polonii i Polaków na pozostałych kontynentach jest zdania, że przy okazji Zjazdów Polonii i Polaków z Zagranicy należy ograniczyć liczbę wniosków do dwóch lub trzech, a co więcej powinny one dotyczyć problemów ponadregionalnych/o szerokim zasięgu geograficznym.
W drugim dniu obrad, podsumowując zgłaszane przez Zespoły wnioski, marszałek Bogdan Borusewicz podkreślił, że formuła zespołowej pracy Rady przyniosła duże efekty. Wysoko też ocenił zaangażowanie w prace Rady przedstawicieli ministerstw i organizacji pozarządowych. Marszałek z aprobatą przyjął nakreślone przez Radę kierunki działań, zwłaszcza postulaty dotyczące propagowania nauczania języka polskiego Podczas plenarnego posiedzenia Rady, któremu przewodniczyła wicemarszałek Krystyna Bochenek przyjęto następujące wnioski końcowe:
Sprawą dla nas podstawową jest dalsze utrzymanie zarówno opieki Senatu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej nad Polonią jak i dotychczasowego modelu finansowania naszej działalności. Rozumiemy, że wolą polskich władz częścią środków dla Polonii dysponuje MSZ i MEN a w praktyce wiele organizacji korzysta z tych funduszy. Pragniemy jednak podkreślić, że jest dla nas ważne aby finansowanie poprzez organizacje pozarządowe pozostało podstawową drogą wspierania naszej działalności.
Pragniemy podkreślić nasze niezachwiane poparcie dla Związku Polaków na Białorusi kierowanego przez Andżelikę Borys. Pragniemy podziękować władzom polskim za udzielone Związkowi dotychczasowe poparcie i prosimy o dalsze konsekwentne stanowisko i działania w tej sprawie.
Rozumiemy trudności związane z egzekwowaniem umów międzynarodowych wobec najbliższych sąsiadów. Znamy też dotychczasowe działania władz polskich. Pragniemy jednak przypomnieć i prosić o jak najrychlejsze i zdecydowane działania w dwóch sprawach szczególnej wagi:
pisowni nazwisk polskich na Litwie, jak również używanie języka polskiego (ojczystego) w miejscach zwartego zamieszkania ludności, która to sprawa pozostaje w jaskrawej sprzeczności z obowiązującymi w Europie standardami.
realizacji Traktatu Polsko-Niemieckiego ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem finansowania organizacji polonijnych i edukacji polonijnej. Trudności związane z edukacją w Niemczech podkreślane są na wszystkich konferencjach i sympozjach oświatowych.
Poprzedni rząd rozbudził duże nadzieje rozpoczynając prace nad szerokim programem wspierania edukacji polonijnej. Pragniemy jedynie przypomnieć tę sprawę prosząc o kontynuację działań w tym zakresie.
Młodzież jest przyszłością zarówno Polski, jak i Polonii. Ważne są dalsze działania wszystkich zainteresowanych stron na rzecz zwiększenia integracji młodzieży polskiej i polonijnej. Konieczna jest zmiana polityki wobec młodzieży zarówno Polonii jak i władz polskich. Zadania skierowane do młodzieży i dla młodzieży winny być naszym zdaniem priorytetowo traktowane, przez wszystkie podmioty wspierające działalność polonijną.
Jest nas w świecie miliony. Niejednokrotnie pokazaliśmy, jak wiele możemy dla Polski zrobić. Możemy i chcemy Polsce dalej pomagać. Zawracamy się z kolejnym apelem o partnerskie traktowanie, o korzystanie z naszej wiedzy i możliwości. Skoordynowane działania polskich placówek dyplomatycznych i organizacji polonijnych z pewnością będą korzystne dla Polski.
Wyrażamy nasze poparcie i wdzięczność za uchwalenie przez Sejm Ustawy o Karcie Polaka. Dla naszych Rodaków zza wschodniej granicy Schengen była to sprawa wielkiej wagi. Ważna jest dalsza nowelizacja tej ustawy obejmująca bezpaństwowców, kraje bałkańskie i pozostałe środowiska polonijne na świecie. Równie ważne jest zapewnienie powszechnego dostępu do Kart Polaka w szczególności na Ukrainie i Białorusi. Podstawowa część ustawy potwierdzająca honor przynależności do narodu polskiego winna naszym zdaniem jednakowo traktować wszystkich Polaków poza granicami kraju.
Zbliża się 20-lecie zmiany ustrojowej w Polsce. Uważamy, ze nadszedł najwyższy czas na uchwalenie nowej i nowoczesnej Ustawy o Obywatelstwie. Najwyższy też czas, aby przestały obowiązywać przepisy z "głębokiego" PRL-u. Są tu dwie grupy osób w imieniu których prosimy o właściwe ujęcie w projekcie ustawy: Pierwsza, to osoby, którym władze PRL-u odebrały obywatelstwo w sposób bezprawny. Uważamy, że ze względu na godność osób tak poniżonych i pokrzywdzonych inicjatywa winna należeć do władz polskich. Druga grupa, to osoby, które zmuszone były do zrzeczenia się obywatelstwa ze względu na przepisy państw zamieszkania.
Pragniemy podkreślić wagę konsultowania ustaw z zainteresowanymi, co jest na co dzień praktykowane w demokracjach zachodnich. Prosimy o konsultowanie ustaw i raportów nas dotyczących przynajmniej z ważniejszymi organizacjami polonijnymi.
Wnioskujemy o utworzenie wspólnego i spójnego planu promocji pozytywnego wizerunku Polski i Polaka w świecie.
http://www.polonia-polska.pl/index.php?id=ak80623
Tusk chciał zerwać negocjacje
Tusk chciał zerwać negocjacje
Nasz Dziennik, 2008-07-04
Rząd Donalda Tuska bez wcześniejszego uzgodnienia z prezydentem Lechem Kaczyńskim był gotów doprowadzić do zerwania rozmów z Amerykanami w sprawie instalacji systemu rakiet przechwytujących. Fiasku negocjacji miała zapobiec wizyta szefowej Kancelarii Prezydenta Anny Fotygi w Waszyngtonie. Supozycje o próbach zerwania rozmów potwierdzałaby bardzo chłodna atmosfera towarzysząca wczorajszemu spotkaniu premiera Polski Donalda Tuska z ambasadorem Stanów Zjednoczonych w Polsce Victorem Ashe'em. Wczoraj wieczorem polski premier odbył także 40-minutową rozmowę telefoniczną z wiceprezydentem USA Dickiem Cheneyem. Jej szczegóły nie są jednak jeszcze znane. Prawdopodobnie rozmowa ta dotyczyła rozwiązania "pewnych problemów politycznych", o których informował wcześniej amerykański Departament Stanu.
W gmachu MSZ przy ul. Szucha wrze. Ministerialni urzędnicy w nieoficjalnych rozmowach przyznają, że jednym z celów wizyty prezydenckiej minister Fotygi w Stanach Zjednoczonych mogło być uspokojenie sojusznika co do polskich intencji w sprawie budowy na terytorium naszego kraju elementów amerykańskiej tarczy antyrakietowej. Rząd Donalda Tuska miał być gotów do zerwania negocjacji. O tym, że rozmowy nie przebiegają tak, jak powinny, świadczyć może chłodna atmosfera, jaka towarzyszyła wczorajszemu spotkaniu premiera Donalda Tuska z ambasadorem Stanów Zjednoczonych w Polsce Victorem Ashe'em. Wprawdzie ani Pałac Prezydencki, ani kancelaria premiera nie potwierdziły tej informacji, to jednak we wczorajszym wywiadzie radiowym Lech Kaczyński jasno dał do zrozumienia, że Fotyga poleciała do Waszyngtonu z misją "ostatniej szansy". Ze strony rządowej napływały informacje, że ta wizyta bardzo negatywnie wpłynęła na stosunki polsko-amerykańskie. Zupełnie odmiennego zdania jest zaś prezydent RP Lech Kaczyński, który wcześniej już stwierdził, że to nieudolna polityka rządu Tuska mogła spowodować ostatnie ochłodzenie relacji na linii Warszawa - Waszyngton (szerzej w rozmowie z prezydentem Kaczyńskim - s. 2).
Amerykanie ogłosili sukces
- Osiągnęliśmy wstępne porozumienie dotyczące umieszczenia w Polsce tarczy antyrakietowej - powiedział nam wczoraj wyższy przedstawiciel Departamentu Stanu USA. - Polscy negocjatorzy przedstawili listę żądań i życzeń, m.in. dotyczących modernizacji polskich sił zbrojnych. Spełniliśmy te postulaty i negocjacje zakończyły się sukcesem - powiedział po spotkaniu z polską grupą negocjacyjną John Rood. Tymczasem strona polska zaprzecza tym doniesieniom. Rzecznik polskiego MSZ Piotr Paszkowski stwierdził w rozmowie z "Naszym Dziennikiem", że skoro negocjacje trwają, nie możemy mówić o ich zakończeniu. Dodał, że pertraktacje zakończą się w momencie, kiedy rząd podejmie decyzję albo o ich zakończeniu, albo o przyjęciu wynegocjowanej umowy. Według rzecznika, nie ma żadnych podstaw, aby twierdzić, iż negocjacje się już zakończyły. - Rozmowy w Waszyngtonie były jedynie kolejną turą negocjacyjną, przewidzianą harmonogramem rozmów - podkreślił Paszkowski.
Asystent sekretarza stanu Dan Fried stwierdził, że Stany Zjednoczone wzięły sobie do serca polskie niepokoje związane z większą współpracą USA z Rosją i NATO w sprawie tarczy. Fried określił Polskę jako "wspaniałego sprzymierzeńca", który wysłał swoje wojsko do Iraku i Afganistanu. Dodał także, iż Ameryka zrozumiała, jak ważne dla Polaków są te rozmowy. Z tych samych źródeł wynika, że Stany Zjednoczone przystały na polskie postulaty i zamierzają pomóc Polsce w dozbrajaniu. W obecnej sytuacji nie wiadomo jednak, na czym dokładnie owa pomoc będzie polegała i czy rzeczywiście okaże się adekwatna do naszego wkładu. - Stany Zjednoczone są w stanie zaoferować swoim sojusznikom albo tym, na których im faktycznie zależy, znacznie większą pomoc finansową niż ta, jaką nam do tej pory gwarantowały - powiedział "Naszemu Dziennikowi" były minister obrony narodowej Romuald Szeremietiew. Jak zauważył minister, umieszczenie rakiet przechwytujących na terytorium Polski jest dla Ameryki dużo tańszym przedsięwzięciem aniżeli wybudowanie systemu na terenie Stanów Zjednoczonych. Polska w momencie zainstalowania na jej terytorium amerykańskiej tarczy potrzebuje więc odpowiedniego systemu obrony przeciwlotniczej. Dla USA nawet znaczne wzmocnienie polskiej obrony jest i tak najkorzystniejszym rozwiązaniem.
Do późnych godzin wieczornych trwał wczoraj swoisty teatr niesprawdzonych informacji i spekulacji, w którym to co jakiś czas strona amerykańska informowała o zakończeniu negocjacji, podczas gdy Polacy zaprzeczali podawanym rewelacjom. Taką informacją podzielił się z czytelnikami m.in. dziennik "Washington Times", podając, że sprawa tarczy jest już kwestią zamkniętą. Gazeta stwierdziła, iż osiągnięto porozumienie i ustalono, że w Polsce znajdzie się baza 10 rakiet przechwytujących jako elementu amerykańskiej tarczy antyrakietowej.
Wszystko wskazuje na to, że tajemnica kulis polsko-amerykańskich negocjacji wyjaśni się najpóźniej do połowy przyszłego tygodnia. Stanom Zjednoczonym nie pozostało bowiem zbyt wiele czasu na sfinalizowanie porozumienia w sprawie tarczy ze względu na zbliżającą się wakacyjną przerwę w obradach Kongresu oraz zaplanowane na jesień wybory prezydenckie.
Marta Ziarnik
Anna Wiejak
Nasz Dziennik, 2008-07-04
Rząd Donalda Tuska bez wcześniejszego uzgodnienia z prezydentem Lechem Kaczyńskim był gotów doprowadzić do zerwania rozmów z Amerykanami w sprawie instalacji systemu rakiet przechwytujących. Fiasku negocjacji miała zapobiec wizyta szefowej Kancelarii Prezydenta Anny Fotygi w Waszyngtonie. Supozycje o próbach zerwania rozmów potwierdzałaby bardzo chłodna atmosfera towarzysząca wczorajszemu spotkaniu premiera Polski Donalda Tuska z ambasadorem Stanów Zjednoczonych w Polsce Victorem Ashe'em. Wczoraj wieczorem polski premier odbył także 40-minutową rozmowę telefoniczną z wiceprezydentem USA Dickiem Cheneyem. Jej szczegóły nie są jednak jeszcze znane. Prawdopodobnie rozmowa ta dotyczyła rozwiązania "pewnych problemów politycznych", o których informował wcześniej amerykański Departament Stanu.
W gmachu MSZ przy ul. Szucha wrze. Ministerialni urzędnicy w nieoficjalnych rozmowach przyznają, że jednym z celów wizyty prezydenckiej minister Fotygi w Stanach Zjednoczonych mogło być uspokojenie sojusznika co do polskich intencji w sprawie budowy na terytorium naszego kraju elementów amerykańskiej tarczy antyrakietowej. Rząd Donalda Tuska miał być gotów do zerwania negocjacji. O tym, że rozmowy nie przebiegają tak, jak powinny, świadczyć może chłodna atmosfera, jaka towarzyszyła wczorajszemu spotkaniu premiera Donalda Tuska z ambasadorem Stanów Zjednoczonych w Polsce Victorem Ashe'em. Wprawdzie ani Pałac Prezydencki, ani kancelaria premiera nie potwierdziły tej informacji, to jednak we wczorajszym wywiadzie radiowym Lech Kaczyński jasno dał do zrozumienia, że Fotyga poleciała do Waszyngtonu z misją "ostatniej szansy". Ze strony rządowej napływały informacje, że ta wizyta bardzo negatywnie wpłynęła na stosunki polsko-amerykańskie. Zupełnie odmiennego zdania jest zaś prezydent RP Lech Kaczyński, który wcześniej już stwierdził, że to nieudolna polityka rządu Tuska mogła spowodować ostatnie ochłodzenie relacji na linii Warszawa - Waszyngton (szerzej w rozmowie z prezydentem Kaczyńskim - s. 2).
Amerykanie ogłosili sukces
- Osiągnęliśmy wstępne porozumienie dotyczące umieszczenia w Polsce tarczy antyrakietowej - powiedział nam wczoraj wyższy przedstawiciel Departamentu Stanu USA. - Polscy negocjatorzy przedstawili listę żądań i życzeń, m.in. dotyczących modernizacji polskich sił zbrojnych. Spełniliśmy te postulaty i negocjacje zakończyły się sukcesem - powiedział po spotkaniu z polską grupą negocjacyjną John Rood. Tymczasem strona polska zaprzecza tym doniesieniom. Rzecznik polskiego MSZ Piotr Paszkowski stwierdził w rozmowie z "Naszym Dziennikiem", że skoro negocjacje trwają, nie możemy mówić o ich zakończeniu. Dodał, że pertraktacje zakończą się w momencie, kiedy rząd podejmie decyzję albo o ich zakończeniu, albo o przyjęciu wynegocjowanej umowy. Według rzecznika, nie ma żadnych podstaw, aby twierdzić, iż negocjacje się już zakończyły. - Rozmowy w Waszyngtonie były jedynie kolejną turą negocjacyjną, przewidzianą harmonogramem rozmów - podkreślił Paszkowski.
Asystent sekretarza stanu Dan Fried stwierdził, że Stany Zjednoczone wzięły sobie do serca polskie niepokoje związane z większą współpracą USA z Rosją i NATO w sprawie tarczy. Fried określił Polskę jako "wspaniałego sprzymierzeńca", który wysłał swoje wojsko do Iraku i Afganistanu. Dodał także, iż Ameryka zrozumiała, jak ważne dla Polaków są te rozmowy. Z tych samych źródeł wynika, że Stany Zjednoczone przystały na polskie postulaty i zamierzają pomóc Polsce w dozbrajaniu. W obecnej sytuacji nie wiadomo jednak, na czym dokładnie owa pomoc będzie polegała i czy rzeczywiście okaże się adekwatna do naszego wkładu. - Stany Zjednoczone są w stanie zaoferować swoim sojusznikom albo tym, na których im faktycznie zależy, znacznie większą pomoc finansową niż ta, jaką nam do tej pory gwarantowały - powiedział "Naszemu Dziennikowi" były minister obrony narodowej Romuald Szeremietiew. Jak zauważył minister, umieszczenie rakiet przechwytujących na terytorium Polski jest dla Ameryki dużo tańszym przedsięwzięciem aniżeli wybudowanie systemu na terenie Stanów Zjednoczonych. Polska w momencie zainstalowania na jej terytorium amerykańskiej tarczy potrzebuje więc odpowiedniego systemu obrony przeciwlotniczej. Dla USA nawet znaczne wzmocnienie polskiej obrony jest i tak najkorzystniejszym rozwiązaniem.
Do późnych godzin wieczornych trwał wczoraj swoisty teatr niesprawdzonych informacji i spekulacji, w którym to co jakiś czas strona amerykańska informowała o zakończeniu negocjacji, podczas gdy Polacy zaprzeczali podawanym rewelacjom. Taką informacją podzielił się z czytelnikami m.in. dziennik "Washington Times", podając, że sprawa tarczy jest już kwestią zamkniętą. Gazeta stwierdziła, iż osiągnięto porozumienie i ustalono, że w Polsce znajdzie się baza 10 rakiet przechwytujących jako elementu amerykańskiej tarczy antyrakietowej.
Wszystko wskazuje na to, że tajemnica kulis polsko-amerykańskich negocjacji wyjaśni się najpóźniej do połowy przyszłego tygodnia. Stanom Zjednoczonym nie pozostało bowiem zbyt wiele czasu na sfinalizowanie porozumienia w sprawie tarczy ze względu na zbliżającą się wakacyjną przerwę w obradach Kongresu oraz zaplanowane na jesień wybory prezydenckie.
Marta Ziarnik
Anna Wiejak
Bush’s Legacy and the Damage Done
Bush’s Legacy and the Damage Done
By Amitabh Pal, July 3, 2008
With President Bush attending his last G8 summit in Japan, it is a good time to assess the foreign policy legacy of his Administration—and what a legacy!
From the Middle East to Latin America to Europe to South Asia, Bush’s policies have created multiple disasters.
First, let us quickly get out of the way the positive things he has done. He has substantially increased foreign aid, especially the amount dedicated to fighting AIDS and other infectious diseases in Africa. (The aid has been tied to the Bush Administration’s pet projects, such as abstinence-only programs and the purchase of brand-name drugs, but still…) And the Bush Administration has sobered up and negotiated (if in a tardy manner) with North Korea over its nuclear program.
That’s all I can up with. Otherwise, it’s been one catastrophe after another.
In the May issue of Current History magazine, Books Editor William Finan has listed five qualities of the Bush Administration that got it into its global mess: unmitigated triumphalism, belief in the infallibility of America’s military might, Bush’s supreme self-righteousness, his religious beliefs, and what Finan calls the Administration’s “smite them” doctrine. The combination of these elements has brewed a deadly cocktail.
The results are most apparent in the Middle East, where the Bush Administration’s legacy will be the hardest to mend. As Bassma Kodmani asserts in Current History, the Arab world is waiting for the new Administration in January 2009 to completely redo the record of the Bush crowd in the region—from Iraq and Iran to Israel/Palestine and Lebanon. Only then will the Arab governments and elites feel that the damage has been undone. To them, Bush is “one of the worst U.S. Presidents they have known in their long years in power,” Kodmani says.
Washington’s overweening arrogance and free-market zealotry has not endeared it in Latin America. That is why it has very few true friends in the area, save Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who came to power in a dubious election, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whose government is cozy with brutal death squads.
In Europe, Bush first antagonized much of the continent with his unilateral invasion of Iraq. And he’s now busy annoying Russia with his installation of the missile defense system in Eastern Europe, supposedly to protect against incoming missiles from Iran. Russia’s pique is not surprising, since, as George Lewis and Theodore Postol point out in the May/June issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the system seems to be aimed as much against Russia as Iran.
“Despite claims to the contrary by both Missile Defense Agency and State Department officials, the interceptors that Washington wants to deploy in Poland are fast enough to catch Russian ICBMs launched from locations west of the Ural Mountains toward the continental United States,” the authors write. “The location of the interceptor site in Poland is ideal for this purpose, as is the location of the European Mid-course Radar [in the Czech Republic].”
In South Asia, the Bush record has been dismal. Its main claim to fame in its relations with India has been a disastrous nuclear deal (see my detailed analysis) that will reward India’s ego trip of a nuclear weapons program in exchange for making it a junior partner in the Bush Administration’s global agenda. And in Pakistan, the Bush folks bafflingly hitched their fortunes to General Pervez Musharraf, who is finally being eased out of power in slow motion after nine years of autocratic rule.
Bush’s colleagues in Japan will probably breathe a sigh of relief next week that they won’t have to see much more of him after the summit. But come 2009, it’ll take the new Administration a long time to fix his legacy.
By Amitabh Pal, July 3, 2008
With President Bush attending his last G8 summit in Japan, it is a good time to assess the foreign policy legacy of his Administration—and what a legacy!
From the Middle East to Latin America to Europe to South Asia, Bush’s policies have created multiple disasters.
First, let us quickly get out of the way the positive things he has done. He has substantially increased foreign aid, especially the amount dedicated to fighting AIDS and other infectious diseases in Africa. (The aid has been tied to the Bush Administration’s pet projects, such as abstinence-only programs and the purchase of brand-name drugs, but still…) And the Bush Administration has sobered up and negotiated (if in a tardy manner) with North Korea over its nuclear program.
That’s all I can up with. Otherwise, it’s been one catastrophe after another.
In the May issue of Current History magazine, Books Editor William Finan has listed five qualities of the Bush Administration that got it into its global mess: unmitigated triumphalism, belief in the infallibility of America’s military might, Bush’s supreme self-righteousness, his religious beliefs, and what Finan calls the Administration’s “smite them” doctrine. The combination of these elements has brewed a deadly cocktail.
The results are most apparent in the Middle East, where the Bush Administration’s legacy will be the hardest to mend. As Bassma Kodmani asserts in Current History, the Arab world is waiting for the new Administration in January 2009 to completely redo the record of the Bush crowd in the region—from Iraq and Iran to Israel/Palestine and Lebanon. Only then will the Arab governments and elites feel that the damage has been undone. To them, Bush is “one of the worst U.S. Presidents they have known in their long years in power,” Kodmani says.
Washington’s overweening arrogance and free-market zealotry has not endeared it in Latin America. That is why it has very few true friends in the area, save Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who came to power in a dubious election, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whose government is cozy with brutal death squads.
In Europe, Bush first antagonized much of the continent with his unilateral invasion of Iraq. And he’s now busy annoying Russia with his installation of the missile defense system in Eastern Europe, supposedly to protect against incoming missiles from Iran. Russia’s pique is not surprising, since, as George Lewis and Theodore Postol point out in the May/June issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the system seems to be aimed as much against Russia as Iran.
“Despite claims to the contrary by both Missile Defense Agency and State Department officials, the interceptors that Washington wants to deploy in Poland are fast enough to catch Russian ICBMs launched from locations west of the Ural Mountains toward the continental United States,” the authors write. “The location of the interceptor site in Poland is ideal for this purpose, as is the location of the European Mid-course Radar [in the Czech Republic].”
In South Asia, the Bush record has been dismal. Its main claim to fame in its relations with India has been a disastrous nuclear deal (see my detailed analysis) that will reward India’s ego trip of a nuclear weapons program in exchange for making it a junior partner in the Bush Administration’s global agenda. And in Pakistan, the Bush folks bafflingly hitched their fortunes to General Pervez Musharraf, who is finally being eased out of power in slow motion after nine years of autocratic rule.
Bush’s colleagues in Japan will probably breathe a sigh of relief next week that they won’t have to see much more of him after the summit. But come 2009, it’ll take the new Administration a long time to fix his legacy.
Lesson learned, Poles get tough over US missiles
Lesson learned, Poles get tough over US missiles
By VANESSA GERA – 18 hours ago
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Not so long ago, the U.S. enjoyed something akin to a mythical status in Poland. Ronald Reagan was a hero, the dollar was king and Washington was a trusted guardian against Russia.
But that starry-eyed idealism has eroded, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the tough stance Poland has taken in negotiating a missile defense deal with Washington.
The two allies announced Wednesday that they agreed tentatively to base American missile interceptors in Poland, part of a planned U.S. missile shield against Iran. But contentiousness that surfaced over nearly 18 months of negotiations belied the fact that the U.S. was in talks with one of its closest friends in Europe.
"Many problems in the bilateral relationship became apparent during the missile defense talks," said Maria Wagrowska, a security expert with the Warsaw-based Center for International Relations. "And they are not only political — they are also psychological."
She and other analysts agree that if the U.S. had tried to get a deal before the Iraq war, it would have been much easier.
Today, Polish politicians feel burned by the Bush administration, largely because Warsaw's staunch military support for the U.S. war in Iraq failed to win substantial contracts for Polish companies in Iraq's reconstruction, as many here had expected.
As a result, Warsaw has decided that if it is going to link its fate to another major American military project, it's going to get what it wants beforehand — and in writing.
"Poland took an idealistic approach when it decided to support the U.S. in Iraq," Wagrowska said. "Now there is a much more reasonable, commercial approach because of the disappointment that we didn't earn anything in Iraq."
As part of a missile defense deal, Poland has asked for billions of dollars worth of military investment from the U.S. to upgrade its air defenses, including Patriot ground-to-air missiles. What Poland will get is not known.
The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been driving a hard bargain in part because the Polish public strongly opposes the proposed base. For its own survival, the government must show voters that it is not Washington's lapdog, and that it is securing some tangible benefits in exchange.
"Poland doesn't have very much money and I think that we deserve something from the Americans if only because of our participation in the Iraq war," said Danuta Zegarska, 54, a stay-at-home mother relaxing in a Warsaw park on Thursday.
Tusk has acknowledged that his government "is not acting like a naive enthusiast, but like a hard negotiator."
"Poland's security is a holy thing," he said Tuesday. "I will not allow for even the smallest mistake to be committed, and that's why the negotiations aren't as simple as they once seemed."
For its part, the U.S. seems to be playing a hardball, too. As talks bogged down, it emerged last month that U.S. officials had met with Lithuanian leaders to discuss putting the base there instead.
Poland considered that the diplomatic equivalent of arm-twisting.
Poland's Defense Minister Bogdan Klich called that "one of the forms of pressure" that the Americans put on Poland during the talks. "We don't feel that the Americans seriously considered" Lithuania, he said in a radio interview Thursday.
Further complicating the issue is Russia's wrath over U.S. plans to set up military installations so close to its own borders. As part of the system, a missile-tracking radar would be placed in the Czech Republic.
Russia has threatened to attack both sites with missiles of its own, leading Warsaw to use that danger as the basis to demand a massive infusion of U.S. military aid.
Disillusion with the U.S. is also strong among the Czech public, and opposition to missile defense huge. Prague, however, demanded little in return from the U.S. beyond Czech participation in American research and development projects.
That hasn't gone over well with the public, and the frustration there has sparked a grass roots campaign — the No Bases Initiative — which Czech media have described as one of the most significant since the anti-communist movement of Vaclav Havel.
"The Czech government went for this deal on the presumption that we owe the United States for what it did for us before the fall of communism," said Jiri Pehe, a Czech political analyst.
"But a huge majority of Czechs are against the radar. They don't see why we should accept this at all, and if we do, why we shouldn't ask for something in return from the richest country in the world."
Vanessa Gera, correspondent in the Warsaw bureau of The Associated Press, has covered central Europe for seven years.
By VANESSA GERA – 18 hours ago
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Not so long ago, the U.S. enjoyed something akin to a mythical status in Poland. Ronald Reagan was a hero, the dollar was king and Washington was a trusted guardian against Russia.
But that starry-eyed idealism has eroded, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the tough stance Poland has taken in negotiating a missile defense deal with Washington.
The two allies announced Wednesday that they agreed tentatively to base American missile interceptors in Poland, part of a planned U.S. missile shield against Iran. But contentiousness that surfaced over nearly 18 months of negotiations belied the fact that the U.S. was in talks with one of its closest friends in Europe.
"Many problems in the bilateral relationship became apparent during the missile defense talks," said Maria Wagrowska, a security expert with the Warsaw-based Center for International Relations. "And they are not only political — they are also psychological."
She and other analysts agree that if the U.S. had tried to get a deal before the Iraq war, it would have been much easier.
Today, Polish politicians feel burned by the Bush administration, largely because Warsaw's staunch military support for the U.S. war in Iraq failed to win substantial contracts for Polish companies in Iraq's reconstruction, as many here had expected.
As a result, Warsaw has decided that if it is going to link its fate to another major American military project, it's going to get what it wants beforehand — and in writing.
"Poland took an idealistic approach when it decided to support the U.S. in Iraq," Wagrowska said. "Now there is a much more reasonable, commercial approach because of the disappointment that we didn't earn anything in Iraq."
As part of a missile defense deal, Poland has asked for billions of dollars worth of military investment from the U.S. to upgrade its air defenses, including Patriot ground-to-air missiles. What Poland will get is not known.
The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been driving a hard bargain in part because the Polish public strongly opposes the proposed base. For its own survival, the government must show voters that it is not Washington's lapdog, and that it is securing some tangible benefits in exchange.
"Poland doesn't have very much money and I think that we deserve something from the Americans if only because of our participation in the Iraq war," said Danuta Zegarska, 54, a stay-at-home mother relaxing in a Warsaw park on Thursday.
Tusk has acknowledged that his government "is not acting like a naive enthusiast, but like a hard negotiator."
"Poland's security is a holy thing," he said Tuesday. "I will not allow for even the smallest mistake to be committed, and that's why the negotiations aren't as simple as they once seemed."
For its part, the U.S. seems to be playing a hardball, too. As talks bogged down, it emerged last month that U.S. officials had met with Lithuanian leaders to discuss putting the base there instead.
Poland considered that the diplomatic equivalent of arm-twisting.
Poland's Defense Minister Bogdan Klich called that "one of the forms of pressure" that the Americans put on Poland during the talks. "We don't feel that the Americans seriously considered" Lithuania, he said in a radio interview Thursday.
Further complicating the issue is Russia's wrath over U.S. plans to set up military installations so close to its own borders. As part of the system, a missile-tracking radar would be placed in the Czech Republic.
Russia has threatened to attack both sites with missiles of its own, leading Warsaw to use that danger as the basis to demand a massive infusion of U.S. military aid.
Disillusion with the U.S. is also strong among the Czech public, and opposition to missile defense huge. Prague, however, demanded little in return from the U.S. beyond Czech participation in American research and development projects.
That hasn't gone over well with the public, and the frustration there has sparked a grass roots campaign — the No Bases Initiative — which Czech media have described as one of the most significant since the anti-communist movement of Vaclav Havel.
"The Czech government went for this deal on the presumption that we owe the United States for what it did for us before the fall of communism," said Jiri Pehe, a Czech political analyst.
"But a huge majority of Czechs are against the radar. They don't see why we should accept this at all, and if we do, why we shouldn't ask for something in return from the richest country in the world."
Vanessa Gera, correspondent in the Warsaw bureau of The Associated Press, has covered central Europe for seven years.
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