Polish Devil Child

A friend of mine in DC forwarded me an article in Germany's Der Spiegel about a Polish teenager who had the "pleasure" of being an exchange student in the U.S. with a family of fundamentalist Christians. As my friend pointed out, the student seems just a little on the whiny side, and it's a shame we're not getting the other side of the story from the nutty family. But it is interesting to see a clash of cultures, especially on such a spectacular scale. Maybe Michael (assuming that's Michal) should have left a little earlier than after six months, but at least he'll have something to talk about, along with the nightmares of being waken up to go to church at the crack of dawn every day.

I would love to see how an American teenager would survive life with a supporter of the nationalistic League of Polish Families, having to recite the rosary every evening...

Poland in Need of Good PR

Gazeta Wyborcza is reporting that Polish government will soon hire a PR specialist to take care of Poland's image abroad (link in Polish). It's true, there's been a wave of critical media coverage of the Duck Republic in foreign press lately. But I'm not quite sure just a new PR post will take care of that. And we're not talking just public relations here. The Kaczynski twins are in need of a full blown crisis management team to deal with all of their recent gaffes.

First recommendation: stop blaming everybody else, especially the national media, for creating the mess. Take the blame and loosen up. Drop the witch hunt against a German newspaper. Dress up as a potato to show you can take a joke. Or maybe not.

Poland, Dangerous for Foreign Correspondents?

Here's something to be proud of. Poland is now regularly featured on the web site of Reporters Without Borders, an organization that monitors abuses against news folks around the world. Now, the group reports, some foreign correspondents in Poland are becoming potential targets. After the scuffle over the Potato comments against President Kaczynski, it looks like the right wing Nasz Dziennik has published the names of 16 German correspondents in Poland (This is in Polish. I'm not a reader of Nasz Dziennik, so I missed the original article earlier this month). The paper also tells its readers to "get to know these names." How about getting to know press freedom? And how about not harassing foreign correspondents?

Poland Up In Arms Over Russian Pipeline

Poland, always a little touchy over deals between Russia and Germany, at least since that 1939 fiasco, is quite upset over the fact that Germany still wants to go ahead with a pipeline that will take Russian gas under the Baltic Sea. This, of course, will leave their neighbor in the middle in the cold and more vulnerable to Russian whims, similarly to Ukraine and Georgia. The previous German chancellor already got rewarded for playing along with Uncle Vladimir, but looks like Angela Merkel is also not willing to drop the agreement.
The Baltic pipeline doesn't seem to make much economic sense because it will cost more to build. So what's the deal here? Hey, aren't those pesky Social Democrats in Merkel's cabinet? Oh, yeah. And never mind that Poland is now part of the EU and certainly a much more stable partner than the Russians. Good neighbors.

Schroeder Gets Paid with Gas

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder seems to be coming out just fine after (barely) losing the elections earlier this year. The man who was one of the strongest critics of the U.S. and probably the biggest European friends of Russian president Vladimir Putin, gets rewarded with a post as the head of the shareholders committee of the gas pipeline that conveniently circumvents Germany's eastern neighbor Poland. So Gerhard gets the prize and Poland gets punished for standing up to its bully neighbor to the east.

Something stinks here, especially since Schroeder vigorously lobbied for this pipeline when he was the chancellor. He might regret this, however, because getting in bed with Gazprom and the rest of Russian gas interests may not be the cleanest arrangement.