Congress: Keep an eye on Kaczyński’s Poland

"Any U.S. military aid to Poland that the current L&J government might ask for must be inextricably linked to the state of democratic practices in the country, including respect for the independence of the judiciary;"

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The new government has pushed forward three staggering changes. The man chosen to oversee police and intelligence agencies is a party stalwart who received a three-year suspended sentence for abusing power in his previous role as head of the anti-corruption office, signaling that political loyalty is above the law.

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The government has purged European Union flags from government press briefings, demonstrating that it sees Polish national interests in opposition to European values.

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And it has weakened the country’s separation of powers by rejecting the previous Parliament’s nominees to the constitutional court — and instead appointed its own candidates, provoking a constitutional crisis.

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Concerns over the health of Polish democracy were raised after the ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) of Jaroslaw Kaczynski reversed last-minute appointments of constitutional judges by the previous government.

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Opposition politicians and liberal media have accused the government of seeking to take charge of neutral institutions.

But PiS says the previous government of the conservative Civic Platform had no right to appoint judges before the election it knew it would lose.

The scenario is reminiscent of the repeated EP debates on Hungary in previous years, where socialists, liberals, greens and far-left MEPs have criticised prime minister Viktor Orban on media freedom, rule of law, and, more recently, on his comments on the death penalty and immigration.

The EP has adopted five critical resolutions on Hungary since 2011 and invited Orban several times for heated debates.

But its efforts were counterproductive. He tended to come out looking strong because MEPs have little power to sanction or discipline national governments.

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The relationship between Poland and the European Union is at its worst in years, as the two sides engage in a nasty war of words. That is a dangerous game for Poland's right-wing government. Although the EU generally is seen as a pretty benign institution, it has shown it can be tough on delinquent members, and in Poland's case, it has a strong hand to play.

The government led by the Law and Justice Party, known as PiS, began to assail the EU soon after taking office last month. Officials called for European Council President Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, to be put on trial for failing to conduct a proper investigation of the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski, the brother of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski. And this week, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo demanded an apology from European Parliament President Martin Schulz, who had said her party's actions had "the characteristics of a coup d'etat."

Schulz isn't alone in criticizing the Polish government: Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, who is serving as head of the EU Ministerial Council, recently expressed concern that "basic rights and the constitution" were being trampled in Poland.

Mainstream European politicians, such as Schulz and Asselborn, are clearly irritated with the right-wingers' success and with what they view as Poland's obstructionist policy. The government is attempting to mobilize east European nations to fight against a system of refugee quotas and a single European border agency, two measures many of the nations that form Europe's core consider essential to the resolution of the refugee crisis.

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"They have started to violate the foundations of the democratic state of law. This is unprecedented. In Poland's 26 years of democracy, a ruling party has never behaved like this," said Hanna Szuczewska of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy, a movement founded days after the new government took power in November.

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Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski says the Constitutional Tribunal was filled with people loyal to the previous centrist government, led by the Civic Platform party, and changes must be made so it "no longer protects the previous crony system."

"We must reorganize Poland and it must be a huge reorganization," Kaczynski told supporters at a pro-government march Sunday. "But we are denied that right today, even though we won the election."

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"They want to control every aspect of life, every sphere of the public scene," said Krzysztof Izdebski, a human rights lawyer who co-founded another new democratic initiative, We Are Watching You.

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At the heart of the controversy is Kaczynski, seen to be the real power behind both the prime minister and the president. A former prime minister himself from 2006-2007, Kaczynski's rule was marked by domestic political turmoil and tensions with neighboring Germany and other European powers. Law and Justice, however, says it was just protecting the country from outside powers that wanted to erode Poland's sovereignty.

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Montecresto said:

Wow, that is interesting, I've seen no coverage of this, and you're right, I see this was posted yesterday, no interest here either.

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When some 50,000 people turned out in Warsaw recently to protest a plan by Poland’s ruling party to pack the nation’s constitutional court, the hard right-wing political faction responded quickly with a counter-demonstration of its own. Its counter-protest featured, among other things, a placard that mocked those claiming to defend democracy as “the committee to defend Jewish-Communist wealth.”

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At around the same time in Wroclaw, Poland’s fourth largest city, crowds at a parallel demonstration to support the recently elected Law and Justice party shouted, “Wroclaw is being de-Polanized as the Jews are buying up homes in the city.”
At another Wroclaw demonstration, held November 18 to protest a European Union plan that would see Poland admit some 7,000 Syrian refugees, demonstrators denounced the proposed immigrants as Islamists — and to somehow add to this point, they set fire to a previously prepared effigy of a Hasidic Jew holding the E.U. flag.

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“This government harbors anti-Judaic sentiment which can easily become anti-Semitism,” said the Rev. John Pawlikowski, professor of social ethics and director of the Catholic-Jewish studies program at the Catholic Theological Union, in Chicago.
Among other things, Law and Justice, known also by its Polish acronym, PiS, has failed to denounce the effigy burning in Wroclaw. The party also has appointed a defense minister who’s made anti-Semitic comments and has, via its culture minister, Piotr Glinski, threatened to sue those it believes guilty of “defamation against Poland.”

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Abbazorkzog said:

This is big.

!!!UPDATE!!!

Poland Turns Hard to Right — and Jews Wind Up in Crosshairs







This is huge.

Debate on Poland in European Parliament gets green light

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Abbazorkzog said:

...............Kaczyński’s Poland to Putin's Russia and Orban's Hungary. I think we have our next candidates for the modern-day Axis, what say you DP?

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Chagos said:

Whatever common ground may be appearing, the inherent Polish fear and hatred of Russia will prevail.

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“Perhaps in the entire history of NATO it hasn’t happened that a member state attacked a NATO facility,” Tomasz Siemoniak, former minister of defense, currently member of the political opposition, told reporters.

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Abbazorkzog said:

I have a feeling the fear will overpower the hatred. Warsaw has been in the scope of Moscow before, it can happen again.
In fact...

Poland’s new government raided NATO-affiliated counter-intelligence offices in the middle of the night



Haven't seen these Polish Hypernationalists attack anything having to do with Russia yet.
Just sayin.

Poland ousts head of Nato-linked agency
Poland changes leadership of NATO affiliate in night raid - StarTribune.com

With all these far-right factions coming to power it just reeks of a Kremlin-Trojan Horse designed to threaten EU and NATO cohesion and erect a system of divide and conquer.

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Poland’s deputy defense minister, Tomasz Szatkowski said that Polish Defense Ministry is considering to ask NATO for access to nuclear weapons from the U.S. The request can be granted under the Alliance’s nuclear-sharing program, which states that non-nuclear member state are allowed to borrow American nuclear weapons.

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Montecresto said:

Just can't get any traction with this thread can you Abba.

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Abbazorkzog said:

I never get any traction with any of my threads... but I'll keep updating them nevertheless. People can only remain ignorant for so long.

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Montecresto said:

I wonder why the EU was perfectly fine with a coup in Ukraine but seems to have their knickers in a knot over Poland???

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Abbazorkzog said:

I wouldn't call Ukraine's situation a coup per se, I think Yanukovich's ousting was the orchestration of elements within his own government that wanted power for themselves. Viktor was a tyrant though, so 'Im sure that was most of the reason.

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Abbazorkzog said:

In what way is this any way even remotely on topic?

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Montecresto said:

Back to post 13. :shrug:

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Abbazorkzog said:

13 is on topic. 14-17 are not. Partially my fault. Anyway, this is about Poland. Anything having to do with Ukraine... well...there is quiet literally a thread named for that. :shrug:

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Poland’s new government wants a deal with Great Britain. Help us get a NATO (meaning American) garrison, and we’ll agree to limit European migrant flows to Britain.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was rebuffed when he sought Warsaw’s support for his European Union reform plan. However, over the holidays, Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said, “Of course, Britain could offer something to Poland in terms of international security.” He went on to complain that “there aren’t, aside from a token presence, any significant allied forces or defense installations, which gives the Russians an excuse to play this region.”

Indeed, as host of the July NATO Summit, Polish President Andrzej Duda will make the issue a priority: “We need a greater presence of NATO in this part of Europe.” He called for allied bases in Poland and said: “We need more guarantees from NATO, not only we as Poland but the whole of central and eastern Europe in the current difficult geopolitical situation

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The meeting was held over a meal of sour soup and trout in the shadow of a castle that switched hands over the centuries between Hungary and Poland. The pair weren’t close in the past. When Orbán was in Warsaw in 2015, he didn’t even see Kaczyński, who was reportedly dismayed at the Hungarian leader’s close ties with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

But they now have an enemy in common — the foreign critics in Brussels, Berlin and beyond who have lambasted them both for allegedly trampling on European democratic norms — and an increasingly similar political philosophy and approach to governing. With each week, the parallels between Law and Justice (or PiS, as it’s known by its Polish acronym) and Orbán are coming into sharper relief.

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