Praying for Rain

[afrykan]

Wiadomość została usunięta ze względu na złamanie prawa lub regulaminu.

Praying for Rain

[Gość: whatever]

Please, get a proofreader!!! There are some good points in the article though, despite the annoying errors, which should not be present in an article published by a (formerly) prestigious newspaper.

Don't believe Michnik's lies about Poland

[gwailo]

"In Poland today, unlike in Winston Churchill's famous quip, when one hears the
doorbell ringing at six in the morning, there is no certainly at all it is the
milkman." DON'T BELIEVE THIS LIE! Poland respects human rights. Michnik smears
Poland in international media because we, Polish people, don't want to vote for
his corrupted cronies. If you are a corrupted Socialist thief you indeed may be
afraid that Anti-corruption Bureau may go after you. If you are an honest,
innocent, hard-working person you don't need to worry. Come and see on your own
eyes!

"The public prosecution service, the special services, and the National
Remembrance Institute - the institution in charge of the communist secret
police archives - have been fully subdued, becoming obedient towards the
government. They have become an instrument of building a state of suspicion and
fear."

The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) filed a motion to court for issuing
an arrest warrant for the Stalinist judge Stefan Michnik, brother of Adam. In
the 1950s., he sentenced at least ten innocent people to death, who were
rehabilitated years later.
IPN applied to the court for the European Arrest Warrant to be issued for
Stefan Michnik, who has lived in Sweden since 1969, but still has Polish
citizenship. Through his smear campaign Adam Michnik wants his brother's
extradition to be rejected by Sweden, so that his brother could die free as
other Stalinist murderers such as Solomon Morel, Jakub Berman, etc.

The Michnik brothers come from a pre-war communist family. Their father, Ozjasz
Szechter, a first secretary of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine before
the WW2, while their mother Helena (née Michnik) wrote Stalinist history books
indoctrinating Polish children during Soviet occupation. Most of the key people
in Michnik's newspaper are children of the activists of the pre-war Communist
Party of Poland (and its subdivisions such as the Communist Party of Western
Ukraine). Those organizations were small, totalitarian groups which had been
against democracy and independence of Poland from the very beginning. They were
hated by majority of Polish citizens as USRR's Fifth Column in Poland.

After 1956, Stalinists lost their power to some other communist faction and
some of them became critical of the government but they have never been
persecuted as strongly as conservatives, Catholics and others who did not
belong to "leftist family." Michnik enjoyed many privileges in Communist
Poland. he could travel to the West when others could not get a passport.

During the final years of the Communist dictatorship Michnik tried to portray
himself as a opposition leader but in reality most of the oppoistion distrusted
him as his group belong to what the communists called "constructive
opposition", the ones who were collaborating with them and to which the
generals eventually passed the power. During the transition Michnik and his
group manged to enrich themselves quickly and with help of the generals grabbed
a huge chunk of Polish media market (in the key moment the Communists provided
hard-to-get paper for the Michnik's newspaper but kept persecuting other
opposition publishers). He and his leftist allies smeared people such the
Kaczynski brothers who criticised nomenklatura privatisation or stealing state
assets by well-connected Communists. Only because of the Kaczynskis resistance
the stealing of the people's assets by the Red capitalists did not reach the
magnitude of similar events in Russia.

During his "oppostion" years Michnik has always advocated replacing Communism,
which bankruptcy was way too obvious who lived in East Bloc by some other
socialism. He wanted to replace Communist slavery with Socialist serfdom in
which his cronies would control media and economy, and common people were
deprived of free market and an opportunity to compete freely. He was and is
distrusted by majority of Poles who dislike his bias.

During the time when general Kiszczak was still a Minister of Internal Affairs
In 1990 Michnik with three other men (Andrzej Ajnenkiel, Jerzy Holzer, and
Bogdan Kroll) had access to Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration
(which supervised communist political police) archives. He has subsequently
denied access to these archives to Polish people trying to preserve his
monopoly and control over the net of the communist police informers in the
country. Subsequently, gen. Kiszczak ordered a huge chunk of these archives to
be destroyed but Michnik not only protected him from prosecution but called him
a "man of honour." Kiszczak is reponsible for deaths of scores of demonstrators
during the martial law and unexplained deaths of more than 100 oppoistion
activisits in the 1980s. General Jaruzelski is responsible for deaths of more
than 50 shipyard workers during the December 1970 strikes. As a result of
Michnik's protection none of them has a ever served a day in prison.

Don't believe Gwailo's lies about Michnik & Poland

[Gość: Anti-Gwailo]

Quote:
"In Poland today, unlike in Winston Churchill's famous quip, when one hears the
doorbell ringing at six in the morning, there is no certainly at all it is the
milkman." DON'T BELIEVE THIS LIE! Poland respects human rights. Michnik smears
Poland in international media because we, Polish people, don't want to vote for
his corrupted cronies. If you are a corrupted Socialist thief you indeed may be
afraid that Anti-corruption Bureau may go after you. If you are an honest,
innocent, hard-working person you don't need to worry. Come and see on your own
eyes!"
Unquote

Gosh. Doesn't this sound awfully like the protestations from Stalin's Russia, or
even Nazi Germany:
"If you are an honest, innocent, hard-working socialist you needn't to worry.
Only if you are a corrupted bourgeois capitalist exploiter, then the NKVD may go
after you... If you are an honest, innocent, hard-working German patriot you
needn't to worry, only if you are a Jewish banker or a commie, then the Gestapo
may go after you..."

Apperently the ruling circles and the petty-minded minority (in terms of votes)
that got them into power are fraught with very much the same kind of paranoia
and conspiracy theories as certain totalitarian governments. Although cast with
somewhat different actors, the roles and the script seem to be basically the same.

The rest of the post seriously attempts to blame Michnik for the (alleged)
misdeeds of his brother, mother and father of 50 to 70 years ago. By extension,
it tries to absurdly blame the entire Gazeta Wyborcza staff for the (merely
alleged) politics of their parents. Collective punishment par excellence, and
yet another striking resemblance of the totalitarian mindset.

It goes on to downplay and even deny Michnik's role in the anti-communist
opposition. I'm not familiar with the subtleties of Michnik's political views
during his Solidarity years. AFAIK there never even was any serious discussion
about what to replace communism with. The attitude was very much "let's cross
that bridge when we come to it". But even if Michnik did, as the post maintains,
favor "replacing Communism with some other socialism" back then, that's no
reason to blame him. Many if not most dissidents of 1968 and after advocated
"socialism with a human face", because real capitalism was totally out of reach
even to those who might have preferred it. (After all, one democratic socialist
bird in the hand was worth two capitalist birds in the bush.)

Quite apart from that, this "more capitalist than thou" finger-pointing is
utterly ridiculous when it appears in defense of the Kaczynski/Lepper/Giertych
gang, whose economic policies and propaganda are clearly socialist - even if
they ashamedly prefer to call them "pro-welfare state", "social" or
"solidarity", and have shunned the old internationalist rhetoric of the
socialists in favor of a national makeover. "national socialism" - ring a bell?
I guess that's what you guys call "Kali's morals" (double standards): "Michnik
advocate socialism in 1970s - bad; Kaczynski practise socialism in 2000s - good...?"

It may be too far-fetched, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if "gwailo" was an
agent provocateur created to prove Michnik's article right... ;)

Another thing

[Gość: Anti-Gwailo]

There's yet another thing I wanted to point out which has always struck me as
quite peculiar.

Isn't of one of the things that Christianity is supposed to have over Judaism
the idea of forgiveness as opposed to eye-for-eye revenge? Then how come
self-proclaimed uber-Christians are so mad at the Jew Michnik for making peace
with his erstwhile oppressor?

Don't get me wrong, nobody has to agree with Michnik's reconciliation with
Kiszczak, or his overall political views. But, for Christians to accuse Michnik
as a traitor and a non-Christian/Jew on the same breath seems strangely
inconsistent with Christianity's idea about itself and Judaism.

[Gość: an]

Wow yet another conspiracy theory - this time from Gwailo!
Gwailo, you nicely omitted the fact, that Michnik was severely prosecuted by
communists and sentenced for three years in prison for his participation in 1968
demonstrations.

[Gość: loppe]

What a fanstastic introduction to Polish politics for visitors to our country!:)

[Gość: Pundit]

Ignorant fool or cynical liar

Spiting for Money

[Gość: Emigranto]

Nothing else but spiting for money. Michnik must be blind, insane or he is just
a cynical liar!