Jerzy Robert Nowak, historyk (profesor wyższej uczelni) i publicysta, autor ponad 40 książek i około 1500 publikacji prasowych (w tym około 900 artykułów). Jako świetny znawca problematyki węgierskiej (należy do nielicznych cudzoziemców mianowanych za zasługi dla kultury węgierskiej nadzwyczajnym członkiem Węgierskiego Związku Pisarzy) zrobił ogromnie wiele dla upowszechnienia wiedzy o naddunajskich „bratankach". Już w 1966 roku - w wieku 26 lat - opublikował na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim książkę o najnowszej literaturze węgierskiej, która zgodnie została uznana przez węgierskich krytyków krajowych i emigracyjnych za pracę „pionierską". Później wydał m.in. książkę o dziejach stosunków polsko-węgierskich „Węgry bliskie i nieznane", „Węgry 1939-1973", książkę o Powstaniu Węgierskim, „Historię literatury węgierskiej XX wieku", dwa wybory węgierskiego eseju, wybór poezji największego węgierskiego poety XX w. - Endre Adyego, wybór „Pamiętników" ks. F. Rakoczego.
Opublikował również książkę o najnowszej historii Hiszpanii, szybko rozchwytany mimo 50 tys. nakładu wybór myśli C. Norwida „Gorzki to chleb jest polskość" i wybór pism gen. J. Prądzyńskiego.
W 1975 r. „czujnie" partyjni recenzenci zablokowali wydanie w PWN 600-stronicowej książki J.R. Nowaka o historii węgierskiego stalinizmu. PRL-owska cenzura zablokowała również parę dziesiątków artykułów J.R. Nowaka (m.in. w „Polityce", „Twórczości", „Przeglądzie Technicznym", „Studiach Filozoficznych" i w „Radarze") z powodu wyrażanych w nich dążeń do poszukiwania prawdy o kulisach najnowszej historii lub sugestii proreformatorskich. W latach 70. 80. J.R. Nowak niejednokrotnie występował przeciwko przejawom antypolonizmu na Węgrzech (głównie ze strony niektórych żydowskich środowisk komunistycznych). Ostro zderzał się m.in. z kierownikiem działu kulturalnego organu KC WSPR - P.E. Feherem. W 1986 r. J.R. Nowak opublikował w prasie polskiej i węgierskiej kilka artykułów krytykujących jadowicie antypolską powieść Gy Spiró „Iksowie". Z zemsty na Węgrzech zablokowano wydanie dokonanego przez J.R. Nowaka wyboru polskiego eseju, mimo trzech entuzjastycznych recenzji wewnętrznych.
Po 1989 roku prof. J.R. Nowak odegrał większą niż ktokolwiek inny w Polsce rolę w ukazywaniu zagrożeń antypolonizmu i przełamywania tabu wokół problematyki żydowskiej (kilka książek, bardzo obszerne teksty do „Encyklopedii Białych Plam" i ponad 200 artykułów). Szczególnie duże zainteresowanie wzbudziły dwa kolejne cykle publicystyczne o stosunkach polsko-żydowskich: „Przemilczane świadectwa" (47 artykułów na łamach „słowa - Dziennika Katolickiego") i 30 dwukolumnowych artykułów „Za co Żydzi muszą przeprosić Polaków" w „Naszej Polsce". W 1999 r. ukazała się jego pionierska książka „Przemilczane zbrodnie", przerywająca długotrwałe milczenie o zbrodniach popełnionych przez zbolszewizowanych Żydów na ich polskich sąsiadach. W 2001 r. prawdziwym bestsellerem stała się jego książka „100 kłamstw J.T. Grossa". W 2003 r. Polonia amerykańska wydała angielski przekład tomiku „Kogo muszą przeprosić Żydzi".
Nader cennym źródłem wiedzy o obrazie Polski i Polaków w świecie stały się dwa kolejne wydania książki J.R. Nowaka „Myśli o Polsce i Polakach". Jego dwutomowe „Zagrożenia dla Polski i polskości" stały się prawdziwym bestsellerem 1998 r., podobnie jak wydany rok później „Czarny leksykon" (demaskatorski obraz ludzi z polskich pseudoelit). Wielkim zainteresowaniem cieszyły się również jego książki: „Kościół a Rewolucja Francuska" (wydana w 2003 r. w Czechach), „Walka z Kościołem wczoraj i dziś", „Spory o historię i współczesność" (ponad 650-stronicowy wybór dorobku publicystycznego) i „Czarna legenda dziejów Polski", demaskująca rozliczne dzisiejsze próby zafałszowywania polskiej historii. W latach 2001-2002 ukazały się 2 tomy wyboru kazań ks. prałata H. Jankowskiego - „Ks. Jankowski na przekór kłamstwom" w wyborze J.R. Nowaka i z jego obszernymi wstępami.
Od 2000 r. w wydawnictwie MaRoN, w serii "Biblioteka książek niepoprawnych politycznie" ukazało się ponad 20 tomików J.R. Nowaka. W 2001 roku wyszła jego obszerna książka "100 kłamstw Grossa o żydowskich sąsiadach i Jedwabnem".
Prof. J.R. Nowak robi szczególnie wiele dla budowania mostów między Krajem a Polonią. Na zaproszenie Prezesa KPA Edwarda Moskala wygłosił referat o antypolonizmie na posiedzeniu Rady Dyrektorów KPA. Miał blisko 300 audycji w polonijnych radiostacjach USA i Kanady. Od dłuższego czasu bierze stały udział (dwa razy w tygodniu) w programach Wojciecha Wierzewskiego w polonijnym radiu w Chicago (uważany jest za najlepszego komentatora z Polski). W prasie polonijnej (głównie w Stanach i Kanadzie, ale także i w Ameryce Południowej, Australii i Francji) przedrukowano paręset artykułów J.R. Nowaka.
Konsekwentna obrona polskości prowadzona przez prof. J.R. Nowaka naraziła go za to na różne ataki i szkalowanie w kraju (na łamach „Gazety Wyborczej", „Wprost", „Tygodnika Powszechnego", „Midrasz", etc.). Ciągle próbuje się blokować dotarcie do jego książek na terenie całego kraju. W 2002 r. doszło do wystąpienia przeciwko 3 książkom prof. J.R. Nowaka ze strony prokuratury w Tychach. Sprawa zakończyła się fiaskiem po wielkiej serii wystąpień w obronie książek prof. J.R. Nowaka ze strony o. Tadeusza Rydzyka, prezesa KPA Edwarda Moskala i licznych innych działaczy polonijnych, kilku interpelacji poselskich, kilkudziesięciu profesorów i in. Niepowodzeniem zakończyła się również podjęta w 2003 r. próba zaskarżenia broniącej prawdy o Polsce książki „100 kłamstw J.T. Grossa" w prokuraturze warszawskiej.
Od 2000 r। prof. J.R. Nowak przygotowuje stały obszerny cotygodniowy przegląd prasy „Pro i contra" w najpopularniejszym tygodniku katolickim „Niedzieli". Publikowane tam teksty J.R. Nowaka zyskały m.in. podziękowania ks. arcybiskupa Józefa Michalika i przeora (obecnie generała) zakonu paulinów Izydora Matuszewskiego.
Minął miesiąc cz. III (2008-10-25)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9642
Minął miesiąc cz. II (2008-10-25)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9641
Minął miesiąc cz.I (2008-10-25)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9630
Fałszowanie historii Polski trwa nadal (2008-10-08)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9461
Huczne obchody rocznicy urodzin Lecha Wałęsy (2008-09-30)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9372
Minął miesiąc cz.III (2008-09-27)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9353
Minął miesiąc cz. II (2008-09-27)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9375
Minął miesiąc cz.I (2008-09-27)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof.dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9350
Historia, której nie było... (2008-09-17)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9220
"Minął miesiąc" (2008-08-30)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9039
"Minął miesiąc" cz.II (2008-08-30)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=9040
Obecna sytuacja Polski i zachodzące zmiany (2008-08-16)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8867
Kłamliwy program TVN Uwaga (2008-07-21)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr. hab Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8628
Przed Trybunałem Konstytucyjnym (2008-07-07)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8506
Bieżące wydarzenia na scenie politycznej (2008-07-05)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8495
"Minął Miesiąc" cz.II (2008-06-28)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8458
"Minął Miesiąc" (2008-06-28)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof.dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8441
Książka o Wałęsie (2008-06-20)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8356
Spotkanie w Krakowie: Polska wobec wyzwań współczesności (2008-06-16)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8305
Wykłady z Krakowa (2008-06-16)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak, prof. Bogusław Wolniewicz
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8317
Polska wobec wyzwań współczesności (2008-06-16)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak, prof. Bogusław Wolniewicz, prof. Andrzej Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8312
Polska wobec wyzwań współczesności: prof. dr hab Jerzy Robert Nowak (2008-06-15)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8298
Aktualia (2008-06-12)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8246
Aleksander Kwaśniewski na czele Rady Tolerancji (2008-06-05)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8183
Dalsze spotkania w obronie Polski (2008-06-04)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8174
"Minął miesiąc" (2008-05-31)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8141
"Minął miesiąc" cz.II (2008-05-31)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=8142
Oskarżenie skierowane przeciwko prof. dr hab. Jerzemu Robertowi Nowakowi (2008-05-10)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7961
Szkolnictwo wyższe (2008-04-29)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7897
Minął miesiąc cz. I (2008-04-26)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof.dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7855
Minął miesiąc cz. II (2008-04-26)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof.dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7835
Wykłady prof. Nowaka wywołały konflikt w KIK? (2008-04-18)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7760
Komentarz do aktualnych wydarzeń (2008-04-16)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7726
Tajemniczy proszek w korespondencji (2008-04-07)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7650
Prowokacje TVN (2008-04-03)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7609
Minął miesiąc cz.I (2008-03-29)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof.dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7567
Minął miesiąc cz.II (2008-03-29)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7572
Zakończyła się seria 18 spotkań w obronie Polskości (2008-03-17)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7458
Kontrowersyjna książka T. Grossa - "Strach" (2008-03-10)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7385
"Sto dni nowego rządu" (2008-02-23)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7234
Trwa akcja przeciwko kłamstwom Grossa (2008-02-19)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7183
Kolejne spotkania, wybory w Czechach, sytuacja w Kosowie (2008-02-16)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7175
Kolejne ataki "GW" (2008-02-15)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7165
Czy sprzeciw wobec Grossa to antysemityzm? (2008-02-12)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7143
Po spotkaniu z Polonią (2008-02-02)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=7057
Minął miesiąc cz.II (2008-01-19)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=6930
Minął miesiąc cz.I (2008-01-19)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=6929
Nowa książka Grossa - "Strach" (2008-01-16)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=6900
"Strach" J.T. Grossa (2008-01-12)Rodzaj audycji: [Aktualności dnia]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=6853
Minął rok cz.II (2007-12-29)Rodzaj audycji: [Rozmowy niedokończone]
Autor: prof. dr hab. Jerzy Robert Nowak
Adres: http://www.radiomaryja.pl/audycje.php?id=6711
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Polish Taxi driver beaten by 3 Americans Navy Servicemen in Gdynia- Gdansk Poland last Night.
Polish Taxi driver beaten by 3 Americans Navy Servicemen from USS "Hewes" in Gdynia-Gdansk Poland last Night.
We have to ask US Department od State, Department of Navy for a deep apology and compensation to the hard working and polite Polish Taxi Driver beaten by American Navy Servicemens-hooligans and of the official military duty.
This will put the bad light on the law that govern American Navy and Army stations in Poland and Europe as a whole.
Poland is not another third world country when US and Blackwater can do what ever they want! We are country of law and order.
US Navy Serviceman for act of hooliganism shall be prosecuted and arested the same night. The same way as any polish citizens.
Amerykańscy żołnierze pobili w Sopocie taksówkarza. Mężczyzna trafił do szpitala, żołnierze wrócili na okręt. To, czy uda się ich przesłuchać, praktycznie zależy od dobrej woli ich i ich przełożonych.
Żołnierze z USA pobili polskiego taksówkarza
Żołnierze z USA zbili polskiego taksówkarza fot. AP / Wilfredo Lee
10 amerykańskich żołnierzy zaatakowało taksówkarza w Sopocie. Mężczyzna jest w szpitalu. Napastników zatrzymała policja, ale już ich zwolniono, bo są wojskowymi z USA.
10 amerykańskich żołnierzy wyszło z jednej z sopockich dyskotek. Zachowywali się głośno i agresywnie. W okolicach Grand Hotelu chcieli zamówić taksówkę. Żaden z kierowców nie kwapił się jednak, żeby ich zabrać. Taksówkarze już nie raz mieli problemy z amerykańskimi marynarzami - piją, krzyczą, trzeba się z nimi kłócić o zapłatę za kurs.
"Amerykanie podeszli do jednego z kierowców. Na początku doszło do słownych utarczek. Potem jeden z nich miał uderzyć Polaka" - mówi dziennikowi.pl Barbara Kuczyńska z zespołu prasowego policji w Sopocie.
Taksówkarz upadł na ziemię i uderzy głową o chodnik. Nie podniósł się już. Żołnierze odeszli. Koledzy taksówkarza wezwali pogotowie i policję.
"Zaraz po zatrzymaniu musieliśmy przekazać żołnierzy żandarmerii wojskowej" - dodaje Barbara Kuczyńska. "Kierowca złożył właśnie zawiadomienie o popełnieniu przestępstwa, ale żołnierze są już na swoim statku. Nie możemy ich tak po prostu przesłuchać. Musimy wystąpić o zgodę na ich przesłuchanie w charakterze świadków. To oczywiście utrudnia nam postępowanie, ale takie są procedury."
Taksówkarz trafił do szpitala. Według informacji podanych przez TVN24, ma wstrząśnienie mózgu. Przeciwnicy budowy amerykańskiej tarczy antyrakietowej w Polsce wiele razy powtarzali, że obecność amerykańskich żołnierzy w Polsce będzie wiązała się z podobnymi incydentami. Teraz , od tego jak zostanie rozwiązana sprawa pobicia w Sopocie, zależeć może stosunek Polaków do amerykańskich baz.
Do incydentu doszło w pobliżu Grand Hotelu w Sopocie w piątek około 23.30. Do jednej z taksówek stojącej na postoju podeszło dwóch mężczyzn. Policja twierdzi, że byli ubrani po cywilnemu. Wsiedli do jednej z taksówek, potem do następnej, w końcu do trzeciej. Próbowali ustalić cenę za przejazd do Gdyni.
Mówili po angielsku, a kierowca znał tylko włoski. Nie zgodził się na kurs za kwotę zaproponowaną przez mężczyzn. Doszło do kłótni i przepychanek. Po chwili do pierwszej dwójki podeszła kolejna grupka mężczyzn. Jeden z nich uderzył taksówkarza w twarz.
- Piotr przewrócił i stracił na chwilę przytomność - opowiada "Gazecie" Paweł, kolega taksówkarza. - Podbiegli koledzy i powstrzymali dalszą agresję.
Koledzy taksówkarza wezwali policję. Policjanci wylegitymowali napastników. Okazało się, że to marynarze z USS "Hewes", amerykańskiej fregaty stojącej w gdyńskim porcie.
Tu jasność, co do tego, co było dalej się kończy.
- Policjanci wezwali żandarmerie wojskową, która przejęła marynarzy i przewiozła na okręt do Gdyni - informuje Kościuk z Komendy Wojewódzkiej Policji w Gdańsku.
Następnego dnia okazało się, że obecność Żandarmerii Wojskowej była zbędna.
- W sobotę około godziny 14. sprawę przekazano policji z Sopotu - mówi Kościuk.
Żandarmeria Wojskowa: To sprawa dla policji
Rzecznik Żandarmerii Wojskowej, mjr Marcin Wiącek, przedstawia odmienną wersję wydarzeń.
- My nie prowadziliśmy żadnych czynności w tej sprawie. Nie rozumiem, dlaczego policja chciała to zrzucić na nas. Prawo mówi jasno, że żołnierzy zagranicznych, którzy nie popełnili przestępstwa związanego z ich działalnością wojskową muszą ścigać służby cywilne. Po żołnierzy przyjechali ich przełożeni i zabrali na okręt - mówi rzecznik ŻW.
Z naszych informacji wynika, że amerykańskich marynarzy odwiozła na okręt polska żandarmeria.
Taksówkarz jeszcze w nocy z piątku na sobotę trafił do szpitala: - Ma wstrząśnienie mózgu, dostał kroplówkę.
Czy marynarze zgłoszą się na przesłuchanie?
Tomas Williamson, attache morski przy ambasadzie amerykańskiej w Polsce, zapewniał rano, że strona amerykańska zamierza współpracować w tej sprawie z polskimi władzami.
- Z tego, co wiem dwaj marynarze mieli się zgłosić do sopockiej policji na przesłuchanie jeszcze w niedzielę po południu - mówił Williamson.
- Tak, te czynności zostaną wykonane - mówił nam po południu podinsp. Mariusz Putno, szef sekcji dochodzeniowo śledczej w KMP Sopot.
Policjanci z Komendy Miejskiej Policji (KMP) w Sopocie wyjaśniają okoliczności pobicia taksówkarza przez grupę amerykańskich żołnierzy. Taksówkarz przebywa w szpitalu miejskim w Gdyni.
Jak powiedziała Barbara Kuczyńska z KMP, zawiadomienie o zdarzeniu sopocka policja otrzymała w nocy z piątku na sobotę.
"Powiadomiono nas, że w okolicy Grand Hotelu grupa mężczyzn zachowuje się agresywnie wobec taksówkarza jednej z trójmiejskich korporacji. Na miejscu po wylegitymowaniu okazało się, że agresywnie zachowującymi się są amerykańscy żołnierze". "Powiadomiliśmy Żandarmerię Wojskową, która wraz z opiekunem Amerykanów zabrała ich na okręt" - wyjaśniła Kuczyńska.
Świadkiem zdarzenia był Paweł Wilkicki, mieszkaniec Sopotu i jednocześnie znajomy poszkodowanego. Powiedział, że taksówkarz leży w szpitalu, ma go opuścić w poniedziałek.
Relacjonując zdarzenie Walkicki podkreślił, że "to nie było brutalne pobicie, ale przepychanka między grupą mężczyzn a taksówkarzem; w pewnym momencie jeden z agresorów przewrócił taksówkarza, który upadł na beton i na chwilę stracił przytomność".
Zastępca Komendanta Miejskiego Policji w Sopocie, mł. insp. Krystyna Stępniewska potwierdziła, że w sobotę zostali przesłuchani świadkowie zdarzenia i poszkodowany taksówkarz.
Prowadzący sprawę, Naczelnik Wydziału Dochodzeniowego sopockiej KMP, podinspektor Mariusz Putno powiedział, że policja zwróciła się do dowódcy amerykańskiego okrętu o wyrażenie zgody na przesłuchanie sprawców zdarzenia. "Teraz czekamy na odpowiedź" - dodał.
Putno poinformował, że u poszkodowanego taksówkarza "obrażenia spowodowały naruszenie czynności narządów ciała na czas nie przekraczający 7 dni". Oznacza to, że czyn ten jest zagrożony karą pozbawienia wolności do lat dwóch.
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
sms: 703-485-6619
EMAIL: Polonia@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
We have to ask US Department od State, Department of Navy for a deep apology and compensation to the hard working and polite Polish Taxi Driver beaten by American Navy Servicemens-hooligans and of the official military duty.
This will put the bad light on the law that govern American Navy and Army stations in Poland and Europe as a whole.
Poland is not another third world country when US and Blackwater can do what ever they want! We are country of law and order.
US Navy Serviceman for act of hooliganism shall be prosecuted and arested the same night. The same way as any polish citizens.
Amerykańscy żołnierze pobili w Sopocie taksówkarza. Mężczyzna trafił do szpitala, żołnierze wrócili na okręt. To, czy uda się ich przesłuchać, praktycznie zależy od dobrej woli ich i ich przełożonych.
Żołnierze z USA pobili polskiego taksówkarza
Żołnierze z USA zbili polskiego taksówkarza fot. AP / Wilfredo Lee
10 amerykańskich żołnierzy zaatakowało taksówkarza w Sopocie. Mężczyzna jest w szpitalu. Napastników zatrzymała policja, ale już ich zwolniono, bo są wojskowymi z USA.
10 amerykańskich żołnierzy wyszło z jednej z sopockich dyskotek. Zachowywali się głośno i agresywnie. W okolicach Grand Hotelu chcieli zamówić taksówkę. Żaden z kierowców nie kwapił się jednak, żeby ich zabrać. Taksówkarze już nie raz mieli problemy z amerykańskimi marynarzami - piją, krzyczą, trzeba się z nimi kłócić o zapłatę za kurs.
"Amerykanie podeszli do jednego z kierowców. Na początku doszło do słownych utarczek. Potem jeden z nich miał uderzyć Polaka" - mówi dziennikowi.pl Barbara Kuczyńska z zespołu prasowego policji w Sopocie.
Taksówkarz upadł na ziemię i uderzy głową o chodnik. Nie podniósł się już. Żołnierze odeszli. Koledzy taksówkarza wezwali pogotowie i policję.
"Zaraz po zatrzymaniu musieliśmy przekazać żołnierzy żandarmerii wojskowej" - dodaje Barbara Kuczyńska. "Kierowca złożył właśnie zawiadomienie o popełnieniu przestępstwa, ale żołnierze są już na swoim statku. Nie możemy ich tak po prostu przesłuchać. Musimy wystąpić o zgodę na ich przesłuchanie w charakterze świadków. To oczywiście utrudnia nam postępowanie, ale takie są procedury."
Taksówkarz trafił do szpitala. Według informacji podanych przez TVN24, ma wstrząśnienie mózgu. Przeciwnicy budowy amerykańskiej tarczy antyrakietowej w Polsce wiele razy powtarzali, że obecność amerykańskich żołnierzy w Polsce będzie wiązała się z podobnymi incydentami. Teraz , od tego jak zostanie rozwiązana sprawa pobicia w Sopocie, zależeć może stosunek Polaków do amerykańskich baz.
Do incydentu doszło w pobliżu Grand Hotelu w Sopocie w piątek około 23.30. Do jednej z taksówek stojącej na postoju podeszło dwóch mężczyzn. Policja twierdzi, że byli ubrani po cywilnemu. Wsiedli do jednej z taksówek, potem do następnej, w końcu do trzeciej. Próbowali ustalić cenę za przejazd do Gdyni.
Mówili po angielsku, a kierowca znał tylko włoski. Nie zgodził się na kurs za kwotę zaproponowaną przez mężczyzn. Doszło do kłótni i przepychanek. Po chwili do pierwszej dwójki podeszła kolejna grupka mężczyzn. Jeden z nich uderzył taksówkarza w twarz.
- Piotr przewrócił i stracił na chwilę przytomność - opowiada "Gazecie" Paweł, kolega taksówkarza. - Podbiegli koledzy i powstrzymali dalszą agresję.
Koledzy taksówkarza wezwali policję. Policjanci wylegitymowali napastników. Okazało się, że to marynarze z USS "Hewes", amerykańskiej fregaty stojącej w gdyńskim porcie.
Tu jasność, co do tego, co było dalej się kończy.
- Policjanci wezwali żandarmerie wojskową, która przejęła marynarzy i przewiozła na okręt do Gdyni - informuje Kościuk z Komendy Wojewódzkiej Policji w Gdańsku.
Następnego dnia okazało się, że obecność Żandarmerii Wojskowej była zbędna.
- W sobotę około godziny 14. sprawę przekazano policji z Sopotu - mówi Kościuk.
Żandarmeria Wojskowa: To sprawa dla policji
Rzecznik Żandarmerii Wojskowej, mjr Marcin Wiącek, przedstawia odmienną wersję wydarzeń.
- My nie prowadziliśmy żadnych czynności w tej sprawie. Nie rozumiem, dlaczego policja chciała to zrzucić na nas. Prawo mówi jasno, że żołnierzy zagranicznych, którzy nie popełnili przestępstwa związanego z ich działalnością wojskową muszą ścigać służby cywilne. Po żołnierzy przyjechali ich przełożeni i zabrali na okręt - mówi rzecznik ŻW.
Z naszych informacji wynika, że amerykańskich marynarzy odwiozła na okręt polska żandarmeria.
Taksówkarz jeszcze w nocy z piątku na sobotę trafił do szpitala: - Ma wstrząśnienie mózgu, dostał kroplówkę.
Czy marynarze zgłoszą się na przesłuchanie?
Tomas Williamson, attache morski przy ambasadzie amerykańskiej w Polsce, zapewniał rano, że strona amerykańska zamierza współpracować w tej sprawie z polskimi władzami.
- Z tego, co wiem dwaj marynarze mieli się zgłosić do sopockiej policji na przesłuchanie jeszcze w niedzielę po południu - mówił Williamson.
- Tak, te czynności zostaną wykonane - mówił nam po południu podinsp. Mariusz Putno, szef sekcji dochodzeniowo śledczej w KMP Sopot.
Policjanci z Komendy Miejskiej Policji (KMP) w Sopocie wyjaśniają okoliczności pobicia taksówkarza przez grupę amerykańskich żołnierzy. Taksówkarz przebywa w szpitalu miejskim w Gdyni.
Jak powiedziała Barbara Kuczyńska z KMP, zawiadomienie o zdarzeniu sopocka policja otrzymała w nocy z piątku na sobotę.
"Powiadomiono nas, że w okolicy Grand Hotelu grupa mężczyzn zachowuje się agresywnie wobec taksówkarza jednej z trójmiejskich korporacji. Na miejscu po wylegitymowaniu okazało się, że agresywnie zachowującymi się są amerykańscy żołnierze". "Powiadomiliśmy Żandarmerię Wojskową, która wraz z opiekunem Amerykanów zabrała ich na okręt" - wyjaśniła Kuczyńska.
Świadkiem zdarzenia był Paweł Wilkicki, mieszkaniec Sopotu i jednocześnie znajomy poszkodowanego. Powiedział, że taksówkarz leży w szpitalu, ma go opuścić w poniedziałek.
Relacjonując zdarzenie Walkicki podkreślił, że "to nie było brutalne pobicie, ale przepychanka między grupą mężczyzn a taksówkarzem; w pewnym momencie jeden z agresorów przewrócił taksówkarza, który upadł na beton i na chwilę stracił przytomność".
Zastępca Komendanta Miejskiego Policji w Sopocie, mł. insp. Krystyna Stępniewska potwierdziła, że w sobotę zostali przesłuchani świadkowie zdarzenia i poszkodowany taksówkarz.
Prowadzący sprawę, Naczelnik Wydziału Dochodzeniowego sopockiej KMP, podinspektor Mariusz Putno powiedział, że policja zwróciła się do dowódcy amerykańskiego okrętu o wyrażenie zgody na przesłuchanie sprawców zdarzenia. "Teraz czekamy na odpowiedź" - dodał.
Putno poinformował, że u poszkodowanego taksówkarza "obrażenia spowodowały naruszenie czynności narządów ciała na czas nie przekraczający 7 dni". Oznacza to, że czyn ten jest zagrożony karą pozbawienia wolności do lat dwóch.
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
sms: 703-485-6619
EMAIL: Polonia@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
Saturday, October 25, 2008
ANTI-SEMITISM AND POLONOPHOBIA Sets the Record Straight on Polish-Jewish Relations
ANTI-SEMITISM AND POLONOPHOBIA Sets the Record Straight on Polish-Jewish Relations
In recent years, there has been a great deal of emphasis on Polish anti-Semitism. This is despite the fact that anti-Semitism existed virtually everywhere, and in Poland never approached the level which Jews encounted in many other European nations. Moreover, the positive aspects of Polish-Jewish relationships have been virtually ignored. Pogonowski's excellent book does much to show, in fact, how Jewish communities flourished in Poland.
This review updates an earlier one, and refers to the 1998 paperback edition. This latter edition contains several articles not found in the original hardback edition. The authors trace many mischaracterizations of Polish-Jewish history in the American press. The informed reader can appreciate how little has changed since then. For example, the recent publications of NEIGHBORS and FEAR by Jan T. Gross have resurrected many old Polonophobic canards that should have been, if nowhere else, laid to rest by this 1998 edition.
There is an extensive expose of the so-called Kielce Pogrom--A Soviet-staged event (pp. 403-422). The Soviets wanted to discredit a free Poland in the eyes of the west, and to terrorize the remaining Jews into fleeing to Palestine. Other anti-Jewish actions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia got little press in the west, probably because anti-Communism had been relatively weak in those countries.
In Kielce, the tale of the blood libel had been spread by agent provocateurs (p. 414). The Jews were shot by Communist police, and club-wielding fake "steel workers" also took their toll. Other Communist police involved in the so-called pogrom had been dressed as goons or priests. There is the fantastic myth of the 15,000 to 75,000 cheering Polish onlookers (p. 406), a myth recently repeated by Gross in his FEAR. The actual number of Polish onlookers, most of whom were probably motivated by curiosity, didn't ever exceed several hundred at its peak.
After the "pogrom", inconvenient eyewitnesses met their deaths. The Kielce files themselves were burned in November 1989, shortly before the Communists left power.
Pogonowski makes clear that the Communist anti-Jewish policies of 1968 were not Polish. They were plainly Soviet-dictated (pp. 30-31).
The atlas itself is chock-full of useful information. The reader soon learns that, despite the frictions and mutual prejudices which sometimes developed between Poles and Jews, Poland was historically one of the most tolerant nations in the world for Jews. If the fact that 80% of the world's Jews, at one time, made their home in Poland does not prove this fact, then what does? This book makes it clear that Poland had been centuries ahead of others in terms of human rights and religious tolerance.
Iwo Pogonowski's book is a veritable mine of information about Polish-Jewish relations since the Middle Ages. This subject has been badly distorted in the English-language publications, mostly for reasons that have nothing to do either with history or honesty. "Jews in Poland" needs to be read slowly, in small doses, with frequent returns because sometimes a very important fact is hidden in a footnote or some such obscure place. This volume looks and reads like a scrapbook, and the impression is reinforced by its graphic aspect.
"Jews in Poland" is full of very instructional maps and diagrams, it also carries a good selection of illustrations (although their quality is rather so-so). All in all, a book that stands head and shoulders over any other treatment of Jewish-Polish history in the English language.
Of course Polish anti-Semitism existed and still exists. So does Jewish Polonophobia. In fact, the very Polonophobia whose existence Pelta denies has been the subject of studies by academics, including Jewish ones. The premise that more Poles denounced Jews than helped them has mathematically been shown to be false. Of course, fugitive Polish Jews were denounced not only by ethnic Poles, but more so by Polish-speaking Germans (Volksdeutsche), Ukrainians, and other Jews. (To elaborate on these two issues, and many others, see my Listmania: Exposing Polonophobia...).
THE KIELCE POGROM
Why does Pelta imagine that I deny the fact of the Kielce Pogrom? And of course there were other disturbances in Poland (see below). But this in no way negates the probable Soviet staging of the Kielce Pogrom.
OLD MEDIA CLIPS ON POGROMS
Old newspaper accounts prove nothing. Time and time again, the western press had uncritically printed accounts from Jewish sources that later turned out to be fabricated or greatly exaggerated. For instance, Jewish sources in 1918 spoke of massive pogroms in Poland where thousands to tens of thousands of Jews were killed. The outraged Wilson administration sent Henry Morgenthau, an American Jew and his team, to investigate. It turns out that the actual number of Jews killed was about 280, and a large fraction of them had been the victim of common crimes (whose victims also included Polish gentiles), caused largely by the breakdown of discipline in the then-inexperienced Polish Army.
In the 1930's, there was a big hullabaloo about the Przytyk Pogrom. It turns out that all of 2 (two!) Jews died in it, as did one Pole.
The total number of Jews in Poland killed in the years after WWII comes out to 300-600, and most of these were the victims of common banditry (rampant in Poland at the time), rather than anti-Semitism. Higher figures (e. g., 1500 or 2000) are completely conjectural. Considering the fact that about 300,000 Polish Jews survived the Nazi occupation, the Jewish death toll comes out to 0.1-0.2% of Poland's remaining Jews. If this is not making a mountain out of a molehill, then what is?
I wouldn't be surprised if more Jews were killed in horse-carriage accidents than in all the Polish pogroms. So, if anything, Jews should fear for their lives more from horses than from Poles. In addition, Jews also killed Poles, and certainly not only in self-defense...But that's another subject in itself.
POLISH "FREEDOMS" UNDER GERMAN RULE
Pelta tries to diminish Polish suffering under the German Nazi occupation by making the bogus argument about Germans allowing Poles to move around, but not Jews. How ridiculous! To begin with, the Germans, under the wartime conditions, lacked the manpower to arrest and ship 28 million ethnic Poles into urban ghettos. Secondly, most Poles, unlike Jews, were farmers, and the Germans HAD to allow them to move around in order to enable them to farm their lands and deliver their goods to market or to collecting points (mostly for German confiscation). Finally, the Germans couldn't kill many more than the 2-3 million Poles they killed because it would have interfered too much with German war production (for further elaboration, see my Listmania: Forgotten Holocaust: Nazi Genocide Against Poles).
SPARED "POLES" AND JEWS
Pelta also tries to diminish Polish suffering by asserting that Germans spared Polish children but not Jewish children. He is wrong on both counts.
The Germans knowingly and deliberately spared various full-blooded German Jews (the Schutzjuden), including children, and relabeled them Aryans. So the old argument that "Unlike any other people subject to genocide, the Jews were uniquely targeted for complete extermination" is false.
Polish children with racially-desirable features were thought by Germans to be self-evidently of German descent. So the kidnapping of Polish children and their raising by German families was not any sort of mercy to Poles, but an act of taking actually-German children and subjecting them to de-Polonization and re-Germanization in a German environment.
WHO IS STIFLING DEBATE?
Pelta's remark about the Poles attempting to stifle debate is as laughable as an ant calling a sauropod dinosaur a tiny creature. Fact is, it has always been the Jewish side trying to stifle debate by leveling the charge of anti-Semitism against anyone who disagrees with Judeocentric premises or who points out any Jewish wrongdoing. In fact, the accusation of anti-Semitism has become so overused that-like the boy crying wolf-- its effect has worn off.
Certain Jewish individuals and groups have joined the left-wingers in their smear campaign against RADIO MARYJA, and in attempts to get it shut down-all because its patriotic and religious message doesn't fit their worldview. Talk about attempting to stifle debate! (Charges about RADIO MARYJA being racist and anti-Semitic are completely bogus and slanderous. I have listened to RADIO MARYJA a long time and never once heard a single derogatory remark about any racial or religious group).
RESCUING JEWS
Considering the risks Poles took to so much as give a Jew a glass of water, Pelta should be ashamed of himself for his remarks.
Of course relatively few Poles helped Jews. To begin with, only a small fraction of Polish Jews had escaped from the ghettos to make themselves accessible to Polish help. And Poles lived under constant German surveillance and terror. Duh...
Pelta's wisecrack about Poles rescuing Jewish babies in order to convert them to Christianity is too absurd to dignify with a response.
PROPERTY RESTITUTION
Property loss during war is a common situation. My parents and grandparents were relieved of their property, of course without compensation, by the Soviets following their conquest of eastern Poland in 1939. Churchill and Roosevelt made it permanent by recognizing the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland at Teheran in 1943. So, as the rightful heir, from whom should I seek compensation? From Russia and/or the Ukraine? Or from the British and American governments? Or from all four?
EXERCISING KINDNESS
Considering the no small amount of moral arrogance with which many Jews talk down to Poles, dare I suggest that the Jewish side is in need of learning kindness more than the Polish side?
Jan Peczkis
In recent years, there has been a great deal of emphasis on Polish anti-Semitism. This is despite the fact that anti-Semitism existed virtually everywhere, and in Poland never approached the level which Jews encounted in many other European nations. Moreover, the positive aspects of Polish-Jewish relationships have been virtually ignored. Pogonowski's excellent book does much to show, in fact, how Jewish communities flourished in Poland.
This review updates an earlier one, and refers to the 1998 paperback edition. This latter edition contains several articles not found in the original hardback edition. The authors trace many mischaracterizations of Polish-Jewish history in the American press. The informed reader can appreciate how little has changed since then. For example, the recent publications of NEIGHBORS and FEAR by Jan T. Gross have resurrected many old Polonophobic canards that should have been, if nowhere else, laid to rest by this 1998 edition.
There is an extensive expose of the so-called Kielce Pogrom--A Soviet-staged event (pp. 403-422). The Soviets wanted to discredit a free Poland in the eyes of the west, and to terrorize the remaining Jews into fleeing to Palestine. Other anti-Jewish actions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia got little press in the west, probably because anti-Communism had been relatively weak in those countries.
In Kielce, the tale of the blood libel had been spread by agent provocateurs (p. 414). The Jews were shot by Communist police, and club-wielding fake "steel workers" also took their toll. Other Communist police involved in the so-called pogrom had been dressed as goons or priests. There is the fantastic myth of the 15,000 to 75,000 cheering Polish onlookers (p. 406), a myth recently repeated by Gross in his FEAR. The actual number of Polish onlookers, most of whom were probably motivated by curiosity, didn't ever exceed several hundred at its peak.
After the "pogrom", inconvenient eyewitnesses met their deaths. The Kielce files themselves were burned in November 1989, shortly before the Communists left power.
Pogonowski makes clear that the Communist anti-Jewish policies of 1968 were not Polish. They were plainly Soviet-dictated (pp. 30-31).
The atlas itself is chock-full of useful information. The reader soon learns that, despite the frictions and mutual prejudices which sometimes developed between Poles and Jews, Poland was historically one of the most tolerant nations in the world for Jews. If the fact that 80% of the world's Jews, at one time, made their home in Poland does not prove this fact, then what does? This book makes it clear that Poland had been centuries ahead of others in terms of human rights and religious tolerance.
Iwo Pogonowski's book is a veritable mine of information about Polish-Jewish relations since the Middle Ages. This subject has been badly distorted in the English-language publications, mostly for reasons that have nothing to do either with history or honesty. "Jews in Poland" needs to be read slowly, in small doses, with frequent returns because sometimes a very important fact is hidden in a footnote or some such obscure place. This volume looks and reads like a scrapbook, and the impression is reinforced by its graphic aspect.
"Jews in Poland" is full of very instructional maps and diagrams, it also carries a good selection of illustrations (although their quality is rather so-so). All in all, a book that stands head and shoulders over any other treatment of Jewish-Polish history in the English language.
Of course Polish anti-Semitism existed and still exists. So does Jewish Polonophobia. In fact, the very Polonophobia whose existence Pelta denies has been the subject of studies by academics, including Jewish ones. The premise that more Poles denounced Jews than helped them has mathematically been shown to be false. Of course, fugitive Polish Jews were denounced not only by ethnic Poles, but more so by Polish-speaking Germans (Volksdeutsche), Ukrainians, and other Jews. (To elaborate on these two issues, and many others, see my Listmania: Exposing Polonophobia...).
THE KIELCE POGROM
Why does Pelta imagine that I deny the fact of the Kielce Pogrom? And of course there were other disturbances in Poland (see below). But this in no way negates the probable Soviet staging of the Kielce Pogrom.
OLD MEDIA CLIPS ON POGROMS
Old newspaper accounts prove nothing. Time and time again, the western press had uncritically printed accounts from Jewish sources that later turned out to be fabricated or greatly exaggerated. For instance, Jewish sources in 1918 spoke of massive pogroms in Poland where thousands to tens of thousands of Jews were killed. The outraged Wilson administration sent Henry Morgenthau, an American Jew and his team, to investigate. It turns out that the actual number of Jews killed was about 280, and a large fraction of them had been the victim of common crimes (whose victims also included Polish gentiles), caused largely by the breakdown of discipline in the then-inexperienced Polish Army.
In the 1930's, there was a big hullabaloo about the Przytyk Pogrom. It turns out that all of 2 (two!) Jews died in it, as did one Pole.
The total number of Jews in Poland killed in the years after WWII comes out to 300-600, and most of these were the victims of common banditry (rampant in Poland at the time), rather than anti-Semitism. Higher figures (e. g., 1500 or 2000) are completely conjectural. Considering the fact that about 300,000 Polish Jews survived the Nazi occupation, the Jewish death toll comes out to 0.1-0.2% of Poland's remaining Jews. If this is not making a mountain out of a molehill, then what is?
I wouldn't be surprised if more Jews were killed in horse-carriage accidents than in all the Polish pogroms. So, if anything, Jews should fear for their lives more from horses than from Poles. In addition, Jews also killed Poles, and certainly not only in self-defense...But that's another subject in itself.
POLISH "FREEDOMS" UNDER GERMAN RULE
Pelta tries to diminish Polish suffering under the German Nazi occupation by making the bogus argument about Germans allowing Poles to move around, but not Jews. How ridiculous! To begin with, the Germans, under the wartime conditions, lacked the manpower to arrest and ship 28 million ethnic Poles into urban ghettos. Secondly, most Poles, unlike Jews, were farmers, and the Germans HAD to allow them to move around in order to enable them to farm their lands and deliver their goods to market or to collecting points (mostly for German confiscation). Finally, the Germans couldn't kill many more than the 2-3 million Poles they killed because it would have interfered too much with German war production (for further elaboration, see my Listmania: Forgotten Holocaust: Nazi Genocide Against Poles).
SPARED "POLES" AND JEWS
Pelta also tries to diminish Polish suffering by asserting that Germans spared Polish children but not Jewish children. He is wrong on both counts.
The Germans knowingly and deliberately spared various full-blooded German Jews (the Schutzjuden), including children, and relabeled them Aryans. So the old argument that "Unlike any other people subject to genocide, the Jews were uniquely targeted for complete extermination" is false.
Polish children with racially-desirable features were thought by Germans to be self-evidently of German descent. So the kidnapping of Polish children and their raising by German families was not any sort of mercy to Poles, but an act of taking actually-German children and subjecting them to de-Polonization and re-Germanization in a German environment.
WHO IS STIFLING DEBATE?
Pelta's remark about the Poles attempting to stifle debate is as laughable as an ant calling a sauropod dinosaur a tiny creature. Fact is, it has always been the Jewish side trying to stifle debate by leveling the charge of anti-Semitism against anyone who disagrees with Judeocentric premises or who points out any Jewish wrongdoing. In fact, the accusation of anti-Semitism has become so overused that-like the boy crying wolf-- its effect has worn off.
Certain Jewish individuals and groups have joined the left-wingers in their smear campaign against RADIO MARYJA, and in attempts to get it shut down-all because its patriotic and religious message doesn't fit their worldview. Talk about attempting to stifle debate! (Charges about RADIO MARYJA being racist and anti-Semitic are completely bogus and slanderous. I have listened to RADIO MARYJA a long time and never once heard a single derogatory remark about any racial or religious group).
RESCUING JEWS
Considering the risks Poles took to so much as give a Jew a glass of water, Pelta should be ashamed of himself for his remarks.
Of course relatively few Poles helped Jews. To begin with, only a small fraction of Polish Jews had escaped from the ghettos to make themselves accessible to Polish help. And Poles lived under constant German surveillance and terror. Duh...
Pelta's wisecrack about Poles rescuing Jewish babies in order to convert them to Christianity is too absurd to dignify with a response.
PROPERTY RESTITUTION
Property loss during war is a common situation. My parents and grandparents were relieved of their property, of course without compensation, by the Soviets following their conquest of eastern Poland in 1939. Churchill and Roosevelt made it permanent by recognizing the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland at Teheran in 1943. So, as the rightful heir, from whom should I seek compensation? From Russia and/or the Ukraine? Or from the British and American governments? Or from all four?
EXERCISING KINDNESS
Considering the no small amount of moral arrogance with which many Jews talk down to Poles, dare I suggest that the Jewish side is in need of learning kindness more than the Polish side?
Jan Peczkis
Monday, October 20, 2008
The Pogrom of Kielce (part 1 of 5)
The Pogrom of Kielce (part 1 of 5)
Kielce
A Study by prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
Pogonowski is a renowned author of books and articles about Poland and is particularly knowledgeable about the history of Jews in Poland. As reference material for this writing he has referred extensively to "Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism" by Michael Checinski, "Poles, Jews, Communism-- The Anatomy of Half-Truth 1939-1968" by Krystyna Kersten and "Pogrom of Jews in Kielce, July 4, 1946" by Bozena Szaynok. He also credits the Information Services of the Canadian Polish Congress for special materials and help.
Part 1 of 5
PUTTING TO REST WORLD WAR II'S SPIRIT OF HATRED
World War II was a war of hatred: institutionalized hatred, ethnic hatred, popularized hatred. Born of this hatred, monstrous actions taken by ordinary people resulted in, among other things, the mass-murder of millions of civilians. Long after the guns have been silenced, the spirit of animosities energized by World War II between peoples, between cultures, and between religious groups stays alive within some people's hearts. World War II and its spirit of hatred will continue to live on until reconciliation between these groups is complete.
Young people born a generation or two after the end of World War II generally have little natural interest in nursing animosities born of earlier eras. These animosities, in order to live on, have to be carefully cultivated in younger people by those who may feel their interests are served by doing so. Surprisingly, there have been systematic attempts by some to keep these animosities alive by devising mythological accounts of what happened preceding World War II, during the War, and in the aftermath of the War. Even more surprisingly, some of these mythologies have been advanced by people from groups who were victimized in the War, people who should have the strongest vested interest in the truth being propagated.
There are many versions of these mythologies, but one in popular currency in mid-1990's North America distils roughly to this: an outside force known as the Nazis forcibly gained control of Germany and under totalitarian military rule forced a policy of war and ethnic hatred and extermination on a frightened but generally unwilling German populace. According to this myth, the real story of genuine ethnic hatred can be found among Jewish people and gentiles who lived in Poland, whose alleged long-standing animosity pre-dated the War, and extends beyond the end of the War to this day. The myth-speakers claim that the Polish nation was the true anti-Jewish state, and that atrocities perpetrated on countless Jewish people on Polish soil in German-occupied Poland were carried out with great relish by a willing Polish populace that was tired of dealing with a Jewish sub-culture that had been already relegated to ghettos prior to the War. The existence of the myth of non-support by the German people of the actions of the Nazi regime even motivated the title and thesis of a recent doctoral dissertation turned into book by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1996.) Goldhagen documents the involvement of ordinary Germans in carrying out what today are referred to as Nazi atrocities.
As Goldhagen was clarifying the role of the Germans, others were perpetuating the myths. In April, 1996, propagation of the anti-Polish myth was advanced by the film "Shtetl," shown on Public Television in the United States. The film falsely suggests Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Through its own baseless and malicious claims about Polish people, the film is unwittingly a study of the encouragement of ethnic hatred by Jewish people toward Polish gentiles. Israeli students in the film are shown making a series of claims, sometimes gleefully, about alleged Polish involvement in the Holocaust, including attempts to shift the blame for Nazi crimes from German people to Polish people. The students even mocked Polish rescue efforts, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Germans punished Polish gentiles collectively for providing any form of assistance to Jewish people, or even for not turning them in.
The film "Shtetl" focused negatively on the local Catholic church and priest several times. In actual well-documented fact, Polish gentiles helped Jewish people in Poland extensively during World War II. This assistance included the hiding of tens of thousands of Jewish people in the homes of Polish gentiles, which put the gentiles' entire families at risk of death. Several thousand Polish gentiles, including men, women, and children, were burned alive or otherwise summarily executed for the crime of hiding or assisting Jews. As an example of local Catholic Church involvement, it is ironic that the wartime pastor of the very Catholic church that was featured in the film was murdered because he was assisting Jews. His name was Father Henryk Opiatowski of Bransk. Yet, Father Opiatowski was never mentioned in the film! In no other country during the war were people subjected to death in this way for providing assistance to Jewish people. These students of the Holocaust were certainly taught how anti-Semitism produced six million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust; apparently they did not also learn how anti-Polonism produced three million Polish gentile deaths during the occupation--the Polish aspect of the Holocaust. Since the students in the film Shtetl were not eyewitnesses to the horrors of the Holocaust, they may very well be a window into the way the Holocaust is being taught in some Jewish homes and schools. If the purpose of teaching about the Holocaust is to never forget how ethnic hatreds can be nurtured to the point of destroying a people (and it should be), then Holocaust teaching will fail if along the way it teaches young Jewish people to hate Polish people.
There is another example of an obstacle to Jewish-Polish goodwill that is perhaps more significant and potentially longer-lasting in promoting ethnic hatred by Jewish people towards Polish people than the film Shtetl. It is an exhibit in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., that falsely presents events that occurred in Kielce, Poland in 1946 as part of the Holocaust. It refers to the clearly Soviet-staged violence in Kielce as a "Polish pogrom." [The Museum has changed the text since this writing.] To many visitors of the Holocaust Museum, the exhibit by its very inclusion seems to suggest that after the end of World War II, a liberated Polish populace chose to continue Hitler's work of exterminating Jewish people. The study you are now reading examines these events in Kielce, and shows that the suggestions of a Polish-led extension of the Holocaust are patently false. The Kielce Pogrom had nothing to do with the German-engineered Holocaust. It had everything to do with the Soviet-engineered strangulation of the Polish nation.
Like all effective myths, those related to World War II have some elements of truth underlying them. In conjunction with the construction of these myths, though, actual facts and events have been distorted or misrepresented, and certainly the contexts within which they occurred have been falsely stated. Sadly, the distortions, misrepresentations and falsehoods are sometimes purposely and systematically advanced by those who feel a need to humiliate the Polish nation and members of the Polish ethnic group from around the world. Those who today seek to humiliate or destroy people because of their ethnic association are kindred spirits to those who sought to humiliate or destroy people because of their ethnic association in the World War II era. Let me say unequivocally: anti-Semitism in the World War II era or now is wrong and it is evil. On the flip side of the coin bearing the image of anti-Semitism is the image of anti-Polonism. The coin of anti-Semitism cannot be melted down and destroyed without also melting down and destroying anti-Polonism.
I will state up front that I have a vested interest in the truth about World War II and its aftermath being clearly illuminated. I am a veteran of 64 months of imprisonment in Gestapo prisons, concentration camps, and death marches. My own ordeal, and the suffering and death of many of my Polish and Jewish friends and prison-mates, not to mention the sacrifices made by the young men who fought and died as soldiers, will have been rendered meaningless if the hatred of Jewish people by the Nazi leadership and various members of the German nation are simply replaced by hatred of Polish people by Jewish people, or vice-versa. Those who even today perpetuate myths and misconceptions about animosities associated with World War II and its aftermath are not merely bearing false witness--they are willing accomplices to the spirit of hatred of World War II, a frightening spirit embodied in its purest evil form by Adolf Hitler.
I have seen, first hand, the disgusting, murderous results of ethnic hatred. I have devoted the latter part of my life to writing about the long-term coexistence of Polish Jews and gentiles within Poland, and am committed to trying to help diffuse animosities stemming from World War II. In this spirit of friendship and respect, I wrote and had published earlier this decade a documentary history entitled "Jews in Poland: The Rise of Jews as a Nation From Congressus Judaicus in Poland to the Knesset in Israel." If World War II presented any lessons to the people of the world, it showed what can eventually happen if ethnic animosities are allowed to fester and grow.
The study you are now reading is a quest for Polish-Jewish reconciliation. For it to be successful, those who would join this quest must have one thing in common: respect for the truth. As part of this quest, I will address how Jewish-Polish animosities have been cultivated in the aftermath of the War, and in particular how Soviet actions and Soviet-induced events and situations contributed to or drove the process of cultivating the animosities. In particular, I will take the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Kielce Pogrom to discuss this event in detail and use it as a basis for discussion of the larger geopolitical situation. This study deals primarily with the results of Soviet-institutionalized hatred and the Soviet crime of provoking situations purposely designed to sour Polish-Jewish relations. In general, the public in Western countries knows very little about the specifics of these types of Soviet misdeeds.
For this study, the book "Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism" by Michael Checinski (New York: Karz-Cohl Publishing, 1982) is an important source of information for the Cold War period. I will use Checinski's book as a resource to help illuminate the events and situations in the aftermath of World War II that relate to Polish-Jewish relations. Checinski's book details the relations between Poles and Jews in the postwar "People's" Republic of Poland and the damage done to these relations under the conditions created by the Soviets. Checinski was an insider of the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus. As a Jew who survived the Lodz Ghetto, Checinski was naturally very sensitive to Soviet policies which fomented and used anti-Semitic excesses in the satellite empire to serve Soviet purposes of the time. Checinski's book shows Soviet methods used to bring the destruction of law and morality to Poland and other satellite states. I also draw heavily on material from a book by Krystyna Kersten, "Poles, Slavs, Communism: The Anatomy of Half-Truth 1939- 1968." (Warsaw: Independent Publishing House, 1992) and also from "Pogrom of Jews in Kielce, July 4, 1946 by Bozena Szaynok (Warsaw: Bellona Publishing, 1992). Along the way, I will include some necessary background information relating to World War II. Overall, through this study I hope to help unravel some of the root causes and dynamics of Polish-Jewish relations after World War II, and how these ate strongly affecting Polish-Jewish relations even today.
THE KIELCE POGROM IN A NUTSHELL
A "pogrom", a Russian word that translates to "devastation, " is defined as "an organized massacre, especially of Jews in Russia, such as 1881, 1903, and 1905." (The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, 1989.) Anti-Jewish violence in Russia was usually started with 'a false accusation that a ritual murder had been perpetrated on Christian children by local Jews. Violence directed against Jewish people that occurred on July 4, 1946, in the town of Kielce, referred to as the Kielce Pogrom, is aptly named for several reasons. For one, it was indeed organized. And as it will be explained in detail, it was organized by the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus in Poland, a captured country which was under Soviet occupation at the time. This pogrom, although not on Russian soil, was arranged by a totalitarian leadership centered in Russia and it was started with the same technique of planting a false accusation that a ritual murder had been perpetrated on Christian children. And as even the common dictionary definition shows, this is not the first time Russians have instigated this type of activity.
In the Kielce Pogrom, an uprising occurred over the span of many hours that resulted in the death of 41 Polish citizens: 39 Jews, and two gentiles. It was a horrible crime, and regrettably, there was some complicity among a very small number of gentile Poles in this inexcusable violence. These Polish criminals, as will be pointed out, were tried and convicted for their crimes. The reports, however, of the involvement of a mob of 15,000 cheering Polish citizens are completely untrue. Also, the idea that the uprising was of a spontaneous nature is also untrue. As it will be shown in this study, this event was carefully provoked and staged by the Soviet occupiers at that time. This event was staged to achieve specific political purposes dictated by Moscow's global strategy including Europe and the Middle East.
THE SOVIET-NAZI PARTNERSHIP
Why would Soviets want to stage an uprising that would embarrass Poland? After all, didn't both Poland and the Soviets fight alongside of Britain and the other allies in World War II? Didn't Hitler's German army invade both Poland and the Soviet Union, and isn't "the enemy of my enemy my friend?"
There is general public awareness that the United States and the Soviet Union were World War II partners in the Allied fight against Nazi Germany. Many fewer, however, are aware of the nearly two-year Nazi-Soviet partnership embodied in the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, which was signed on September 28, 1939. It divided all of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union and contained secret provisions for the mutual extermination of potential Polish opponents of both Germany and the USSR. Both Germany and the USSR agreed to control their respective parts of Poland. This meant taking all necessary measures to contain and prevent the emergence of any potential Polish actions toward either Germany or the USSR, and then communicating with each other on the progress made toward the goals of the treaty. The treaty lasted until Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Soviet hostility toward Poland and the desire of the USSR to control as much Polish territory as it could continued beyond the German invasion of Poland.
The Soviets implemented their part of the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty by executing 21,857 members of the Polish leadership community, including many Jewish people. Katyn, in what is now Bielarus, contained the graves of 4443 such men and became a symbol of the mass execution of members of the upper echelon of Polish society in the Spring of 1940 At the same time Germany ran a parallel operation with the code name Aktion AB [Auserordentliche Befriedungsaktion, which translates to "extraordinary pacification"], culminating in the execution of about 20,000 Polish professionals.
Because of the German-Soviet Treaty to divide Poland among themselves, the Eastern half of Poland was under Soviet, not German, rule from September, 1939 to mid-1941. During that time, there were many Jewish people who collaborated with the Soviet terror apparatus against the conquered Polish State. Among the many eyewitnesses to those events is the famed Polish courier Jan Karski, who was made an honorary citizen of Israel for his efforts to worn an unresponsive West about the fate of Poland and Polish Jewry. In February, 1940, Karski reported: "Jews are denouncing Poles to the secret police and are directing the work of the communist militia from behind the scenes. Unfortunately, one must say that these incidents are very frequent." (Report to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London.)
Hundreds of published accounts, including Jewish ones, confirm that Jews were involved in the roundups of Polish soldiers and officials (e.g., at Rozyszcze and Kowel), the jailing and executions of Poles (e.g., at Lwow and Czortkow), and in policing the deportation of Poles, in cattle cars, to the Gulag (e.g., from Gwozdziec). By the time the Germans attacked their erstwhile Soviet ally in mid-1941, over one million Poles had been deported to distant and probable deaths from towns like Bransk. All of this occurred before the Jewish Holocaust got underway. Naturally, these events had a significant impact on Polish attitudes, though that was not the only factor influencing them
GERMAN OCCUPATION OF POLAND AND CONTROL OF JEWS
By mid-1941, Germany gained control of all of Poland and the Germans continued the establishment of Jewish ghettos that the Germans had started in 1939. Germans formed the Jewish ghettos by evicting hundreds of thousands of gentiles from their homes and then crowding many more Jewish families there than the space could reasonably accommodate. There were no Jewish ghettos in Poland before Germany started creating them in 1939. It is ironic that some people not well acquainted with the history of the ghettos have mistakenly thought that the ghettos were formed by a bigoted Polish population who spitefully wanted to segregate the Jewish population to selected areas. Instead, the real truth is that Polish people were unwillingly removed from their homes by the Germans to form the ghettos, and then the Polish people illegally aided the Jews by bringing them substantial amounts of food and other supplies.
In terms of living conditions, the ghettos formed by the Germans bore a haunting similarity to the concentration camps that the Germans had been organizing since 1933. The Polish Armed Resistance reported that 500,000 Jews were crowded into the Warsaw Ghetto: 600 people per acre. Hunger, and unspeakably poor hygienic and sanitary conditions resulted in the spreading of tuberculosis and other contagious diseases. The Central Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Polish People reported: "The isolated ghetto is restricted to internal trade, consisting of people's private property, clothing, and household goods which are sold at low prices for extremely expensive food ... There is no heating fuel in the ghetto ... The health and sanitary conditions are beyond description--there is a monstrous hunger and poverty ... Overcrowded streets are full of aimless, pale, and starving people ... People die in the streets ... An orphanage is being overcrowded with daily arrivals of newborn babies ... The Germans' plunder of once-affluent Jews continues ... as well as the treatment of Jews in an exceptionally brutal manner ..."
Each ghetto had its own Jewish Council [Judenrat] which oversaw day-to-day affairs and a Jewish police force which carried out German orders to supply laborers and, as pointed out by Jewish historians such as Isaiah Trunk and Hannah Arendt, to round up Jews for deportation to death camps. Thus, relatively few Germans were needed for such "Aktions," or official actions by the German government against the Jewish people. Nor did their success involve any type of cooperation from Polish gentiles. Because the system set up by the Germans did not rely on Polish police, even the opportunity for the Polish police to aid the German roundup of the Jews was marginal or non-existent, as pointed out by Raul Hilberg, the foremost Holocaust historian, in his important work, "Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders." Conditions in the Bransk ghetto have been described in Isaiah Trunk's "Judenrat" (New York: Macmillan, 1972) and in "Bransk: Book of Memories" (New York: Shoulson Press, 1948).
Polish gentiles certainly were not the masterminds who formed the neither ghettos nor collaborators with the Germans on the brutal treatment of the Jews. To the contrary, Polish gentiles sabotaged German plans for the starvation of ghetto inmates. The Polish gentiles made illegal deliveries of food to the ghettos--including about 250 tons of flour per day. Jozef Dabrowski and others were shot by the Germans for making such deliveries. By then the daily food ration in Warsaw was 184 calories for a Jew, 669 for a Polish gentile, and 2,613 for a German. Eighty percent of the food consumed in the ghetto was smuggled in by Polish gentiles. The supply of raw materials into the ghetto was forty times greater than that officially permitted by the Germans, according to the records of the Jewish Council of the Warsaw Ghetto. (I.C. Pogonowski, "Jews in Poland: A Documentary History, pp. 106-107.")
After Germany's invasion of Russia, Adolf Hitler verbally ordered the "Final Solution of the Jewish question," namely the extermination of eleven million European Jews. To work out and communicate the details of implementing the "Final Solution," the Wannsee Conference was held in Berlin on January 20, 1942. At the conference, the leaders of the German civil service established the specific means by which the genocide was to be conducted. As a direct result of the conference, the Berlin government announced an invitation for bids from German industry to purchase equipment for an industrial process to exterminate eleven million European Jews.
According to plans developed at the Conference, terrorized Jewish personnel were to be used in the extermination process. Also, the plans further directed that the extermination camps were to be isolated from the Polish population for maximum secrecy. For this reason, the camp guards were recruited from Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Despite German terror and German attempts to keep Poles in the dark about the Germans' actions, radio broadcasts made by the Polish resistance regularly informed the West of German atrocities in Poland. (I.C. Pogonowski, "Jews in Poland: A Documentary History, New York: Hippocrene Books Inc., 1993, pp. 110, 119, 120, 121, 124, 125).
Massive deportations from the Warsaw ghetto in the summer of 1942 (to the Treblinka death camp) were not carried out with the assistance of any Polish agency. Indeed, in German-occupied Poland, there was not even a vestige of a Polish government at that time. Instead, the deportations were organized by the Jewish police in coordination with the Judenrat and the occupying German forces. Horrifying descriptions of this Aktion are found in the diaries of Emanuel Ringelblum, the chronicler of the Warsaw ghetto, and elsewhere. These sad events are only a part, but a significant part, of the eventual roundup and execution by the Germans of a large proportion of Poland's Jews in what later came to be referred to as the Holocaust.
On April 19, 1943, a Jewish uprising began in the Warsaw Ghetto as Germans started the final liquidation of the Jews there. The massacre ended on May 8, 1943. Professor Marian Fuks later wrote: "It is absolutely certain fact that without help and active participation of the Polish resistance movement it would have not been possible at all to bring about the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto." ("The Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland," July-December 1989, p. 44).
It should go without saying that the German occupation and brutal control of Poland was not welcomed by the Polish people. Unfortunately, neither could the Polish people find solace in the eventual Soviet re-entry into Poland and their consequent program of brutal control. Upon Soviet re-entry into Poland in 1944, the Soviet terror apparatus was systematically liquidating the remnants of the Polish Home Army and any perceived Polish opponents of a Soviet takeover and control of Poland. It is an undeniable fact that many Jews, usually communist functionaries, were collaborating with the Soviets in denouncing, jailing, and executing Poles. (See for example, "Karta," no. 15; Oswald Rufeisen's account in Nechama Tec's "In the Lion's Den"; Wanda Lisowska's 1946 account on conditions in Ejszyszki found in "Zeszyty Historyczne," no. 36.) Poles suspected of having either collaborated with the Germans or of being anti-Semitic could be, and were, executed with impunity. For example, in Drohiczyn, nine Polish gentiles were murdered by local Jews because they were falsely suspected of killing a Jew, a crime in fact perpetrated by the Soviets (Warszawa: Archiwum Polski Podziemnej, Dokumenty, 1994).
Tens of thousands of Polish gentiles were executed in repressions that affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Polish gentiles. The foregoing are not invented facts: Both Simon Wiesenthal and Stanislaw Krajewski, vice-chairperson of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews, among others, have publicly admitted their shame on this account. Under these types of wartime circumstances, where Jews were successfully encouraged to betray Polish gentiles to the Soviet authorities, animosities toward Jews in the general population were not a matter of anti-Semitism, but simply a matter of survival. Active Jewish collaboration and popular support for Soviet forces invading Poland occurred from the beginning of the War. In the book "Poles, Jew, Socialists--The Failure of an Ideal," edited by Antony Polonsky, et al. (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996), Dov Levin writes "The Red Army entered Wilno [Poland] early on the morning of Tuesday, 19 September 1939, to an enthusiastic welcome by Wilno's Jewish residents, in sharp contrast to the Polish population's reserve and even hostility. Particular ardor was displayed by leftist groups and their youthful members, who converged on the Red Army tank columns bearing sincere greetings and flowers."
Despite these enormous obstacles, and the fact that Polish gentiles also were undergoing their own Holocaust which consumed several million victims, hundreds of thousands of Polish gentiles risked their lives to help Jews. In Warsaw alone, before the uprising of 1944, which resulted in its total destruction, some 15,000 Jews were being sheltered. Emanuel Ringelblum estimated that as many as 60,000 out of the city's 700,000 Christian residents were involved in the rescue efforts. Assistance has been documented at more than 600 Catholic churches, monasteries, convents, and church-run orphanages throughout Poland. Poles form the largest group recognized by Yad Vashem as "Righteous Gentiles," as many as 40% of all those recognized. Yad Vashem is a Jewish organization devoted to honoring those who saved Jews from the Holocaust.
Just as there were some Jewish collaborators during World War II, small numbers of Polish gentiles also collaborated with the Germans. There is no justification or excuse for their actions, and neither was this conduct condoned or tolerated. With the active support of Polish public opinion, the Polish Underground passed and carried out many death sentences against anyone found collaborating with the Germans. It is regrettably true that collaborators, whether with the Nazis or the Soviets, whether Polish Jews or gentiles, were an effective force to contend with. But at the same time, they were tiny, marginal and unrepresentative groups in their respective communities.
Simon Wiesenthal has advocated the following wise and balanced assessment of that tragic period which consumed millions of Jewish and Polish lives: "Then the war came. It is at times like these that the lower elements in society surface--the blackmailers who would betray Jews ... On the other hand, the 30,000 or 40,000 Jews who survived, survived thanks to the help of the Poles. This I know." During the five years of German occupation most of the efforts to shelter Jews ended tragically for the Jewish victims and their Christian friends.
What do the leading Holocaust historians have to say about alleged Polish complicity in the Holocaust? Yisrael Gutman, director of research at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem and editor in chief of "The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust" (1990), has stated authoritatively: "All accusations against the Poles that they were responsible for the Final Solution are not even worth mentioning. Secondly, there is no validity at all in the contention that Polish attitudes were the reason for the siting [sic] of the death camps in Poland." And again: "I want to be unequivocal about this. When it is said that Poles supposedly took part in the extermination of the Jews on the side of the Germans, that is not true. It has no foundation in fact. There was no such thing as Poles taking part in the extermination of the Jewish population." Professor Gutman stated that the percentage of Poles who collaborated with the Germans was "infinitesimally small." He said this in a conversation with Polish Ambassador Dowgiallo (Harvey Sarner, "From Science to Diplomacy: A Pole's Experience in Israel," Brunswick Press, 1995). Richard Pipes of Harvard University, wrote in the introduction to I.C. Pogonowski's book, "Jews in Poland," published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: "It must never be mistakenly believed that the Holocaust was perpetrated by the Poles. Nor must it be ignored that three million Poles perished at German hands." Szymon Datner, longtime director of Warsaw's Jewish Historical Institute, has been equally blunt: "Poles are not responsible for the crimes of the Holocaust."
Kielce
A Study by prof. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski
Pogonowski is a renowned author of books and articles about Poland and is particularly knowledgeable about the history of Jews in Poland. As reference material for this writing he has referred extensively to "Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism" by Michael Checinski, "Poles, Jews, Communism-- The Anatomy of Half-Truth 1939-1968" by Krystyna Kersten and "Pogrom of Jews in Kielce, July 4, 1946" by Bozena Szaynok. He also credits the Information Services of the Canadian Polish Congress for special materials and help.
Part 1 of 5
PUTTING TO REST WORLD WAR II'S SPIRIT OF HATRED
World War II was a war of hatred: institutionalized hatred, ethnic hatred, popularized hatred. Born of this hatred, monstrous actions taken by ordinary people resulted in, among other things, the mass-murder of millions of civilians. Long after the guns have been silenced, the spirit of animosities energized by World War II between peoples, between cultures, and between religious groups stays alive within some people's hearts. World War II and its spirit of hatred will continue to live on until reconciliation between these groups is complete.
Young people born a generation or two after the end of World War II generally have little natural interest in nursing animosities born of earlier eras. These animosities, in order to live on, have to be carefully cultivated in younger people by those who may feel their interests are served by doing so. Surprisingly, there have been systematic attempts by some to keep these animosities alive by devising mythological accounts of what happened preceding World War II, during the War, and in the aftermath of the War. Even more surprisingly, some of these mythologies have been advanced by people from groups who were victimized in the War, people who should have the strongest vested interest in the truth being propagated.
There are many versions of these mythologies, but one in popular currency in mid-1990's North America distils roughly to this: an outside force known as the Nazis forcibly gained control of Germany and under totalitarian military rule forced a policy of war and ethnic hatred and extermination on a frightened but generally unwilling German populace. According to this myth, the real story of genuine ethnic hatred can be found among Jewish people and gentiles who lived in Poland, whose alleged long-standing animosity pre-dated the War, and extends beyond the end of the War to this day. The myth-speakers claim that the Polish nation was the true anti-Jewish state, and that atrocities perpetrated on countless Jewish people on Polish soil in German-occupied Poland were carried out with great relish by a willing Polish populace that was tired of dealing with a Jewish sub-culture that had been already relegated to ghettos prior to the War. The existence of the myth of non-support by the German people of the actions of the Nazi regime even motivated the title and thesis of a recent doctoral dissertation turned into book by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1996.) Goldhagen documents the involvement of ordinary Germans in carrying out what today are referred to as Nazi atrocities.
As Goldhagen was clarifying the role of the Germans, others were perpetuating the myths. In April, 1996, propagation of the anti-Polish myth was advanced by the film "Shtetl," shown on Public Television in the United States. The film falsely suggests Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Through its own baseless and malicious claims about Polish people, the film is unwittingly a study of the encouragement of ethnic hatred by Jewish people toward Polish gentiles. Israeli students in the film are shown making a series of claims, sometimes gleefully, about alleged Polish involvement in the Holocaust, including attempts to shift the blame for Nazi crimes from German people to Polish people. The students even mocked Polish rescue efforts, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Germans punished Polish gentiles collectively for providing any form of assistance to Jewish people, or even for not turning them in.
The film "Shtetl" focused negatively on the local Catholic church and priest several times. In actual well-documented fact, Polish gentiles helped Jewish people in Poland extensively during World War II. This assistance included the hiding of tens of thousands of Jewish people in the homes of Polish gentiles, which put the gentiles' entire families at risk of death. Several thousand Polish gentiles, including men, women, and children, were burned alive or otherwise summarily executed for the crime of hiding or assisting Jews. As an example of local Catholic Church involvement, it is ironic that the wartime pastor of the very Catholic church that was featured in the film was murdered because he was assisting Jews. His name was Father Henryk Opiatowski of Bransk. Yet, Father Opiatowski was never mentioned in the film! In no other country during the war were people subjected to death in this way for providing assistance to Jewish people. These students of the Holocaust were certainly taught how anti-Semitism produced six million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust; apparently they did not also learn how anti-Polonism produced three million Polish gentile deaths during the occupation--the Polish aspect of the Holocaust. Since the students in the film Shtetl were not eyewitnesses to the horrors of the Holocaust, they may very well be a window into the way the Holocaust is being taught in some Jewish homes and schools. If the purpose of teaching about the Holocaust is to never forget how ethnic hatreds can be nurtured to the point of destroying a people (and it should be), then Holocaust teaching will fail if along the way it teaches young Jewish people to hate Polish people.
There is another example of an obstacle to Jewish-Polish goodwill that is perhaps more significant and potentially longer-lasting in promoting ethnic hatred by Jewish people towards Polish people than the film Shtetl. It is an exhibit in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., that falsely presents events that occurred in Kielce, Poland in 1946 as part of the Holocaust. It refers to the clearly Soviet-staged violence in Kielce as a "Polish pogrom." [The Museum has changed the text since this writing.] To many visitors of the Holocaust Museum, the exhibit by its very inclusion seems to suggest that after the end of World War II, a liberated Polish populace chose to continue Hitler's work of exterminating Jewish people. The study you are now reading examines these events in Kielce, and shows that the suggestions of a Polish-led extension of the Holocaust are patently false. The Kielce Pogrom had nothing to do with the German-engineered Holocaust. It had everything to do with the Soviet-engineered strangulation of the Polish nation.
Like all effective myths, those related to World War II have some elements of truth underlying them. In conjunction with the construction of these myths, though, actual facts and events have been distorted or misrepresented, and certainly the contexts within which they occurred have been falsely stated. Sadly, the distortions, misrepresentations and falsehoods are sometimes purposely and systematically advanced by those who feel a need to humiliate the Polish nation and members of the Polish ethnic group from around the world. Those who today seek to humiliate or destroy people because of their ethnic association are kindred spirits to those who sought to humiliate or destroy people because of their ethnic association in the World War II era. Let me say unequivocally: anti-Semitism in the World War II era or now is wrong and it is evil. On the flip side of the coin bearing the image of anti-Semitism is the image of anti-Polonism. The coin of anti-Semitism cannot be melted down and destroyed without also melting down and destroying anti-Polonism.
I will state up front that I have a vested interest in the truth about World War II and its aftermath being clearly illuminated. I am a veteran of 64 months of imprisonment in Gestapo prisons, concentration camps, and death marches. My own ordeal, and the suffering and death of many of my Polish and Jewish friends and prison-mates, not to mention the sacrifices made by the young men who fought and died as soldiers, will have been rendered meaningless if the hatred of Jewish people by the Nazi leadership and various members of the German nation are simply replaced by hatred of Polish people by Jewish people, or vice-versa. Those who even today perpetuate myths and misconceptions about animosities associated with World War II and its aftermath are not merely bearing false witness--they are willing accomplices to the spirit of hatred of World War II, a frightening spirit embodied in its purest evil form by Adolf Hitler.
I have seen, first hand, the disgusting, murderous results of ethnic hatred. I have devoted the latter part of my life to writing about the long-term coexistence of Polish Jews and gentiles within Poland, and am committed to trying to help diffuse animosities stemming from World War II. In this spirit of friendship and respect, I wrote and had published earlier this decade a documentary history entitled "Jews in Poland: The Rise of Jews as a Nation From Congressus Judaicus in Poland to the Knesset in Israel." If World War II presented any lessons to the people of the world, it showed what can eventually happen if ethnic animosities are allowed to fester and grow.
The study you are now reading is a quest for Polish-Jewish reconciliation. For it to be successful, those who would join this quest must have one thing in common: respect for the truth. As part of this quest, I will address how Jewish-Polish animosities have been cultivated in the aftermath of the War, and in particular how Soviet actions and Soviet-induced events and situations contributed to or drove the process of cultivating the animosities. In particular, I will take the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Kielce Pogrom to discuss this event in detail and use it as a basis for discussion of the larger geopolitical situation. This study deals primarily with the results of Soviet-institutionalized hatred and the Soviet crime of provoking situations purposely designed to sour Polish-Jewish relations. In general, the public in Western countries knows very little about the specifics of these types of Soviet misdeeds.
For this study, the book "Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism" by Michael Checinski (New York: Karz-Cohl Publishing, 1982) is an important source of information for the Cold War period. I will use Checinski's book as a resource to help illuminate the events and situations in the aftermath of World War II that relate to Polish-Jewish relations. Checinski's book details the relations between Poles and Jews in the postwar "People's" Republic of Poland and the damage done to these relations under the conditions created by the Soviets. Checinski was an insider of the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus. As a Jew who survived the Lodz Ghetto, Checinski was naturally very sensitive to Soviet policies which fomented and used anti-Semitic excesses in the satellite empire to serve Soviet purposes of the time. Checinski's book shows Soviet methods used to bring the destruction of law and morality to Poland and other satellite states. I also draw heavily on material from a book by Krystyna Kersten, "Poles, Slavs, Communism: The Anatomy of Half-Truth 1939- 1968." (Warsaw: Independent Publishing House, 1992) and also from "Pogrom of Jews in Kielce, July 4, 1946 by Bozena Szaynok (Warsaw: Bellona Publishing, 1992). Along the way, I will include some necessary background information relating to World War II. Overall, through this study I hope to help unravel some of the root causes and dynamics of Polish-Jewish relations after World War II, and how these ate strongly affecting Polish-Jewish relations even today.
THE KIELCE POGROM IN A NUTSHELL
A "pogrom", a Russian word that translates to "devastation, " is defined as "an organized massacre, especially of Jews in Russia, such as 1881, 1903, and 1905." (The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, 1989.) Anti-Jewish violence in Russia was usually started with 'a false accusation that a ritual murder had been perpetrated on Christian children by local Jews. Violence directed against Jewish people that occurred on July 4, 1946, in the town of Kielce, referred to as the Kielce Pogrom, is aptly named for several reasons. For one, it was indeed organized. And as it will be explained in detail, it was organized by the Soviet-controlled terror apparatus in Poland, a captured country which was under Soviet occupation at the time. This pogrom, although not on Russian soil, was arranged by a totalitarian leadership centered in Russia and it was started with the same technique of planting a false accusation that a ritual murder had been perpetrated on Christian children. And as even the common dictionary definition shows, this is not the first time Russians have instigated this type of activity.
In the Kielce Pogrom, an uprising occurred over the span of many hours that resulted in the death of 41 Polish citizens: 39 Jews, and two gentiles. It was a horrible crime, and regrettably, there was some complicity among a very small number of gentile Poles in this inexcusable violence. These Polish criminals, as will be pointed out, were tried and convicted for their crimes. The reports, however, of the involvement of a mob of 15,000 cheering Polish citizens are completely untrue. Also, the idea that the uprising was of a spontaneous nature is also untrue. As it will be shown in this study, this event was carefully provoked and staged by the Soviet occupiers at that time. This event was staged to achieve specific political purposes dictated by Moscow's global strategy including Europe and the Middle East.
THE SOVIET-NAZI PARTNERSHIP
Why would Soviets want to stage an uprising that would embarrass Poland? After all, didn't both Poland and the Soviets fight alongside of Britain and the other allies in World War II? Didn't Hitler's German army invade both Poland and the Soviet Union, and isn't "the enemy of my enemy my friend?"
There is general public awareness that the United States and the Soviet Union were World War II partners in the Allied fight against Nazi Germany. Many fewer, however, are aware of the nearly two-year Nazi-Soviet partnership embodied in the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty, which was signed on September 28, 1939. It divided all of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union and contained secret provisions for the mutual extermination of potential Polish opponents of both Germany and the USSR. Both Germany and the USSR agreed to control their respective parts of Poland. This meant taking all necessary measures to contain and prevent the emergence of any potential Polish actions toward either Germany or the USSR, and then communicating with each other on the progress made toward the goals of the treaty. The treaty lasted until Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Soviet hostility toward Poland and the desire of the USSR to control as much Polish territory as it could continued beyond the German invasion of Poland.
The Soviets implemented their part of the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty by executing 21,857 members of the Polish leadership community, including many Jewish people. Katyn, in what is now Bielarus, contained the graves of 4443 such men and became a symbol of the mass execution of members of the upper echelon of Polish society in the Spring of 1940 At the same time Germany ran a parallel operation with the code name Aktion AB [Auserordentliche Befriedungsaktion, which translates to "extraordinary pacification"], culminating in the execution of about 20,000 Polish professionals.
Because of the German-Soviet Treaty to divide Poland among themselves, the Eastern half of Poland was under Soviet, not German, rule from September, 1939 to mid-1941. During that time, there were many Jewish people who collaborated with the Soviet terror apparatus against the conquered Polish State. Among the many eyewitnesses to those events is the famed Polish courier Jan Karski, who was made an honorary citizen of Israel for his efforts to worn an unresponsive West about the fate of Poland and Polish Jewry. In February, 1940, Karski reported: "Jews are denouncing Poles to the secret police and are directing the work of the communist militia from behind the scenes. Unfortunately, one must say that these incidents are very frequent." (Report to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London.)
Hundreds of published accounts, including Jewish ones, confirm that Jews were involved in the roundups of Polish soldiers and officials (e.g., at Rozyszcze and Kowel), the jailing and executions of Poles (e.g., at Lwow and Czortkow), and in policing the deportation of Poles, in cattle cars, to the Gulag (e.g., from Gwozdziec). By the time the Germans attacked their erstwhile Soviet ally in mid-1941, over one million Poles had been deported to distant and probable deaths from towns like Bransk. All of this occurred before the Jewish Holocaust got underway. Naturally, these events had a significant impact on Polish attitudes, though that was not the only factor influencing them
GERMAN OCCUPATION OF POLAND AND CONTROL OF JEWS
By mid-1941, Germany gained control of all of Poland and the Germans continued the establishment of Jewish ghettos that the Germans had started in 1939. Germans formed the Jewish ghettos by evicting hundreds of thousands of gentiles from their homes and then crowding many more Jewish families there than the space could reasonably accommodate. There were no Jewish ghettos in Poland before Germany started creating them in 1939. It is ironic that some people not well acquainted with the history of the ghettos have mistakenly thought that the ghettos were formed by a bigoted Polish population who spitefully wanted to segregate the Jewish population to selected areas. Instead, the real truth is that Polish people were unwillingly removed from their homes by the Germans to form the ghettos, and then the Polish people illegally aided the Jews by bringing them substantial amounts of food and other supplies.
In terms of living conditions, the ghettos formed by the Germans bore a haunting similarity to the concentration camps that the Germans had been organizing since 1933. The Polish Armed Resistance reported that 500,000 Jews were crowded into the Warsaw Ghetto: 600 people per acre. Hunger, and unspeakably poor hygienic and sanitary conditions resulted in the spreading of tuberculosis and other contagious diseases. The Central Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Polish People reported: "The isolated ghetto is restricted to internal trade, consisting of people's private property, clothing, and household goods which are sold at low prices for extremely expensive food ... There is no heating fuel in the ghetto ... The health and sanitary conditions are beyond description--there is a monstrous hunger and poverty ... Overcrowded streets are full of aimless, pale, and starving people ... People die in the streets ... An orphanage is being overcrowded with daily arrivals of newborn babies ... The Germans' plunder of once-affluent Jews continues ... as well as the treatment of Jews in an exceptionally brutal manner ..."
Each ghetto had its own Jewish Council [Judenrat] which oversaw day-to-day affairs and a Jewish police force which carried out German orders to supply laborers and, as pointed out by Jewish historians such as Isaiah Trunk and Hannah Arendt, to round up Jews for deportation to death camps. Thus, relatively few Germans were needed for such "Aktions," or official actions by the German government against the Jewish people. Nor did their success involve any type of cooperation from Polish gentiles. Because the system set up by the Germans did not rely on Polish police, even the opportunity for the Polish police to aid the German roundup of the Jews was marginal or non-existent, as pointed out by Raul Hilberg, the foremost Holocaust historian, in his important work, "Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders." Conditions in the Bransk ghetto have been described in Isaiah Trunk's "Judenrat" (New York: Macmillan, 1972) and in "Bransk: Book of Memories" (New York: Shoulson Press, 1948).
Polish gentiles certainly were not the masterminds who formed the neither ghettos nor collaborators with the Germans on the brutal treatment of the Jews. To the contrary, Polish gentiles sabotaged German plans for the starvation of ghetto inmates. The Polish gentiles made illegal deliveries of food to the ghettos--including about 250 tons of flour per day. Jozef Dabrowski and others were shot by the Germans for making such deliveries. By then the daily food ration in Warsaw was 184 calories for a Jew, 669 for a Polish gentile, and 2,613 for a German. Eighty percent of the food consumed in the ghetto was smuggled in by Polish gentiles. The supply of raw materials into the ghetto was forty times greater than that officially permitted by the Germans, according to the records of the Jewish Council of the Warsaw Ghetto. (I.C. Pogonowski, "Jews in Poland: A Documentary History, pp. 106-107.")
After Germany's invasion of Russia, Adolf Hitler verbally ordered the "Final Solution of the Jewish question," namely the extermination of eleven million European Jews. To work out and communicate the details of implementing the "Final Solution," the Wannsee Conference was held in Berlin on January 20, 1942. At the conference, the leaders of the German civil service established the specific means by which the genocide was to be conducted. As a direct result of the conference, the Berlin government announced an invitation for bids from German industry to purchase equipment for an industrial process to exterminate eleven million European Jews.
According to plans developed at the Conference, terrorized Jewish personnel were to be used in the extermination process. Also, the plans further directed that the extermination camps were to be isolated from the Polish population for maximum secrecy. For this reason, the camp guards were recruited from Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Despite German terror and German attempts to keep Poles in the dark about the Germans' actions, radio broadcasts made by the Polish resistance regularly informed the West of German atrocities in Poland. (I.C. Pogonowski, "Jews in Poland: A Documentary History, New York: Hippocrene Books Inc., 1993, pp. 110, 119, 120, 121, 124, 125).
Massive deportations from the Warsaw ghetto in the summer of 1942 (to the Treblinka death camp) were not carried out with the assistance of any Polish agency. Indeed, in German-occupied Poland, there was not even a vestige of a Polish government at that time. Instead, the deportations were organized by the Jewish police in coordination with the Judenrat and the occupying German forces. Horrifying descriptions of this Aktion are found in the diaries of Emanuel Ringelblum, the chronicler of the Warsaw ghetto, and elsewhere. These sad events are only a part, but a significant part, of the eventual roundup and execution by the Germans of a large proportion of Poland's Jews in what later came to be referred to as the Holocaust.
On April 19, 1943, a Jewish uprising began in the Warsaw Ghetto as Germans started the final liquidation of the Jews there. The massacre ended on May 8, 1943. Professor Marian Fuks later wrote: "It is absolutely certain fact that without help and active participation of the Polish resistance movement it would have not been possible at all to bring about the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto." ("The Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland," July-December 1989, p. 44).
It should go without saying that the German occupation and brutal control of Poland was not welcomed by the Polish people. Unfortunately, neither could the Polish people find solace in the eventual Soviet re-entry into Poland and their consequent program of brutal control. Upon Soviet re-entry into Poland in 1944, the Soviet terror apparatus was systematically liquidating the remnants of the Polish Home Army and any perceived Polish opponents of a Soviet takeover and control of Poland. It is an undeniable fact that many Jews, usually communist functionaries, were collaborating with the Soviets in denouncing, jailing, and executing Poles. (See for example, "Karta," no. 15; Oswald Rufeisen's account in Nechama Tec's "In the Lion's Den"; Wanda Lisowska's 1946 account on conditions in Ejszyszki found in "Zeszyty Historyczne," no. 36.) Poles suspected of having either collaborated with the Germans or of being anti-Semitic could be, and were, executed with impunity. For example, in Drohiczyn, nine Polish gentiles were murdered by local Jews because they were falsely suspected of killing a Jew, a crime in fact perpetrated by the Soviets (Warszawa: Archiwum Polski Podziemnej, Dokumenty, 1994).
Tens of thousands of Polish gentiles were executed in repressions that affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Polish gentiles. The foregoing are not invented facts: Both Simon Wiesenthal and Stanislaw Krajewski, vice-chairperson of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews, among others, have publicly admitted their shame on this account. Under these types of wartime circumstances, where Jews were successfully encouraged to betray Polish gentiles to the Soviet authorities, animosities toward Jews in the general population were not a matter of anti-Semitism, but simply a matter of survival. Active Jewish collaboration and popular support for Soviet forces invading Poland occurred from the beginning of the War. In the book "Poles, Jew, Socialists--The Failure of an Ideal," edited by Antony Polonsky, et al. (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996), Dov Levin writes "The Red Army entered Wilno [Poland] early on the morning of Tuesday, 19 September 1939, to an enthusiastic welcome by Wilno's Jewish residents, in sharp contrast to the Polish population's reserve and even hostility. Particular ardor was displayed by leftist groups and their youthful members, who converged on the Red Army tank columns bearing sincere greetings and flowers."
Despite these enormous obstacles, and the fact that Polish gentiles also were undergoing their own Holocaust which consumed several million victims, hundreds of thousands of Polish gentiles risked their lives to help Jews. In Warsaw alone, before the uprising of 1944, which resulted in its total destruction, some 15,000 Jews were being sheltered. Emanuel Ringelblum estimated that as many as 60,000 out of the city's 700,000 Christian residents were involved in the rescue efforts. Assistance has been documented at more than 600 Catholic churches, monasteries, convents, and church-run orphanages throughout Poland. Poles form the largest group recognized by Yad Vashem as "Righteous Gentiles," as many as 40% of all those recognized. Yad Vashem is a Jewish organization devoted to honoring those who saved Jews from the Holocaust.
Just as there were some Jewish collaborators during World War II, small numbers of Polish gentiles also collaborated with the Germans. There is no justification or excuse for their actions, and neither was this conduct condoned or tolerated. With the active support of Polish public opinion, the Polish Underground passed and carried out many death sentences against anyone found collaborating with the Germans. It is regrettably true that collaborators, whether with the Nazis or the Soviets, whether Polish Jews or gentiles, were an effective force to contend with. But at the same time, they were tiny, marginal and unrepresentative groups in their respective communities.
Simon Wiesenthal has advocated the following wise and balanced assessment of that tragic period which consumed millions of Jewish and Polish lives: "Then the war came. It is at times like these that the lower elements in society surface--the blackmailers who would betray Jews ... On the other hand, the 30,000 or 40,000 Jews who survived, survived thanks to the help of the Poles. This I know." During the five years of German occupation most of the efforts to shelter Jews ended tragically for the Jewish victims and their Christian friends.
What do the leading Holocaust historians have to say about alleged Polish complicity in the Holocaust? Yisrael Gutman, director of research at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem and editor in chief of "The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust" (1990), has stated authoritatively: "All accusations against the Poles that they were responsible for the Final Solution are not even worth mentioning. Secondly, there is no validity at all in the contention that Polish attitudes were the reason for the siting [sic] of the death camps in Poland." And again: "I want to be unequivocal about this. When it is said that Poles supposedly took part in the extermination of the Jews on the side of the Germans, that is not true. It has no foundation in fact. There was no such thing as Poles taking part in the extermination of the Jewish population." Professor Gutman stated that the percentage of Poles who collaborated with the Germans was "infinitesimally small." He said this in a conversation with Polish Ambassador Dowgiallo (Harvey Sarner, "From Science to Diplomacy: A Pole's Experience in Israel," Brunswick Press, 1995). Richard Pipes of Harvard University, wrote in the introduction to I.C. Pogonowski's book, "Jews in Poland," published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: "It must never be mistakenly believed that the Holocaust was perpetrated by the Poles. Nor must it be ignored that three million Poles perished at German hands." Szymon Datner, longtime director of Warsaw's Jewish Historical Institute, has been equally blunt: "Poles are not responsible for the crimes of the Holocaust."
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Joe Biden all together we can overcome the problems
Joe Biden all together we can overcome the problems
John Paul II, WE LOVE YOU
General Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama! pt.1
Barack Obama: Colin Powell and Unity in America
Poland Georgia Together Forever! Polish-Georgian Friendship
Elect Barack Obama Joe Biden Presidential Campaign Commercial 'Fall in Wounded Soldier' LA Music Award Nominated Video
Please help Poland!!!
Polish Pilots of the RAF
Tribute to Georgians in Polish Service
Polish Squadrons in Battle of Britain
All the support from the Polish American
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
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Polacy pomagaja Stanom Zjednoczonych USA
Hello from Polish American Lech Alex Bajan of Arlington Virginia.
Jako Polak z USA of 1987 musze podac moje rozrzalenie z tej niesprawiedliwosci jaka jest w dzisiejszym swiecie w traktowaniu Polski i Polakow.
Polacy pomagaja Stanom Zjednoczonych USA : Iraq, Afghanistan , Kosovo, Panama, Haiti, Polish Army's Peacekeepers in Golan Heights.
Co mamy z tego. Gdzie te kontrakty w Iraku? Nic z tego? Ile to nas Polske i Polakow kosztuje. Mozna by za to zaplacic dlugi wszyskich szpitali w Polsce w wyslac na studia kazdego Polaka a albo podwoic swiadczenia dla najbardziej ubogich.
Co nasz Rzad robi w tej sprawie?
Dlaczaego nie mamy dobrego lobingu w USA. A ja moge pomoc. Jestem 20 lat w Washington DC i wiem jak to dziala.
Przed rostrzygniecien kontraktu w Iraku juz bylem poinformowany ze US kontrakt nie bedzie dla Polski a dla firmy belego sekretarza wojsk USA.
Former Republican Congressman and Secretary of Defense, under President Clinton, William Cohen, sits at the helm of the Cohen Group.
On dostal wiele kontraktow ktore sie Polsce nalezaly.
Nawet byly wypowiedzi Ministra Wojsk Irackich ze kontrakt nie zostal dobrze wypelniony przez firme Cohena: ze wiele sprzetu po dostarczeniu nawet nie dzialalo.
Czy tak chca zniszczyc i tanio wykupic Polski przemysl zbrojeniowy.
Sam pochodze z Krasnika w Lubeskim gdzie slawna na calym swiecie Fabryka Lozysk Tocznych wybudowana w ramach Centralnego Osrodka Przemyslowego w latach 20-30 XX wieki i calkowicie z modernizowana przez firmy japonsko – zachodnio europejskie w latach 80-tych za wiele miliardow dolarow. Ktora kiedys exportowala do 70 krajow swiata i zatrudniala 12 tys. Pracownikow
Zobarztmy tylko dane:
Polacy pomagaja Stanom Zjednoczonych USA
Poland / Polska dostaje/ only gets $28 milions of the real US help for the Polish Army
but it cost to Poland ( our mation ) is 1 billion per year to send our troops all over the world Iraq, Afghanistan , Kosovo, Panama, Haiti, Polish Army's Peacekeepers in Golan Heights.
Country
Three Years Before 9/11 ('99-'01)
Three Years After 9/11 ('02-'04)
Change in Dollars
Six-Year Total ('99-'04)
Israel
$9,823,862,000 $9,094,874,000 ($728,988,000) $18,918,736,000
Egypt
$6,122,603,000 $6,025,456,540 ($97,146,460) $12,148,059,540
Pakistan
$9,075,000 $4,152,654,219 $4,143,579,219 $4,161,729,219
Jordan
$981,050,000 $2,670,414,688 $1,689,364,688 $3,651,464,688
Colombia
$1,549,497,000 $2,048,565,665 $499,068,665 $3,598,062,665
Afghanistan
$8,415,000 $2,663,783,836 $2,655,368,836 $2,672,198,836
Turkey
$5,357,000 $1,324,923,070 $1,319,566,070 $1,330,280,070
West Bank and Gaza
$630,557,000 $271,058,000 ($359,499,000) $901,615,000
Peru
$263,543,000 $445,825,971 $182,282,971 $709,368,971
Bolivia
$281,470,000 $320,682,000 $39,212,000 $602,152,000
Ecuador
$110,103,000 $251,367,795 $141,264,795 $361,470,795
Poland
$33,242,000 $301,136,119 $267,894,119 $334,378,119
Iraq
$37,945,000 $283,986,478 $246,041,478 $321,931,478
Haiti
$176,368,000 $87,296,000 ($89,072,000) $263,664,000
Indonesia
$78,126,000 $184,930,913 $106,804,913 $263,056,913
Philippines
$14,642,000 $245,636,802 $230,994,802 $260,278,802
Mexico
$89,957,000 $162,080,493 $72,123,493 $252,037,493
Lebanon
$66,417,000 $110,109,000 $43,692,000 $176,526,000
Timor-Leste
$84,791,000 $89,339,000 $4,548,000 $174,130,000
Bahrain
$693,000 $144,593,000 $143,900,000 $145,286,000
http://polishdeportedfromus.blogspot.com/ my blog
Support Our Allies - They Support Us?
"...For Your Freedom and Ours..."
Gen. T. Kosciuszko (Poland and America's Patriot)
- Poland sent combat troops to Iraq, Afghanistan , Kosovo, Panama, Haiti, Polish Army's Peacekeepers in Golan Heights, Americans during the war.
- Polish troops are responsible for security in 1 of the 4 zones in Iraq
- 20,000 soldiers from 17 countries served under Polish command
Poland sent its elite commando unit, GROM, which means thunder. It helped secure the port at Umm Qasr, which was vital to delivering aid to Iraq. The unit also secured nearby oil platforms before they could be sabotaged.
In the first Gulf War, Polish intelligence officers snuck into Iraq to rescue a group of CIA operatives trapped behind enemy lines.
Poland's secret agents disguised CIA agents as Polish construction workers and smuggled them out of Baghdad.
This was not the first time Polish soldiers risked their lives for our freedom. Generals Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko were two of the first foreigners to fight in the American Revolution. Kosciuszko designed and oversaw the construction of West Point. After that, he returned to Poland, where he led a democratic uprising. As a result of that fight, Poland had the first written democratic constitution in Europe, second in the world only to the U.S.
USA DEPORTED POLISH WOMAN IN US SINCE 1989 PERFECT CITIZEN FORMER SOLIDARITY, PERFECT MOTHER, NO CRIMES
I have to bring to your attention. What kind of:
How autocratic our Homeland Security in US is.
Ciekawy wiadomosc prasowa:
Israel to Get $90bn US Defense Aid
John Paul II, WE LOVE YOU
General Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama! pt.1
Barack Obama: Colin Powell and Unity in America
Poland Georgia Together Forever! Polish-Georgian Friendship
Elect Barack Obama Joe Biden Presidential Campaign Commercial 'Fall in Wounded Soldier' LA Music Award Nominated Video
Please help Poland!!!
Polish Pilots of the RAF
Tribute to Georgians in Polish Service
Polish Squadrons in Battle of Britain
All the support from the Polish American
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
sms: 703-485-6619
EMAIL: polonia@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
Polacy pomagaja Stanom Zjednoczonych USA
Hello from Polish American Lech Alex Bajan of Arlington Virginia.
Jako Polak z USA of 1987 musze podac moje rozrzalenie z tej niesprawiedliwosci jaka jest w dzisiejszym swiecie w traktowaniu Polski i Polakow.
Polacy pomagaja Stanom Zjednoczonych USA : Iraq, Afghanistan , Kosovo, Panama, Haiti, Polish Army's Peacekeepers in Golan Heights.
Co mamy z tego. Gdzie te kontrakty w Iraku? Nic z tego? Ile to nas Polske i Polakow kosztuje. Mozna by za to zaplacic dlugi wszyskich szpitali w Polsce w wyslac na studia kazdego Polaka a albo podwoic swiadczenia dla najbardziej ubogich.
Co nasz Rzad robi w tej sprawie?
Dlaczaego nie mamy dobrego lobingu w USA. A ja moge pomoc. Jestem 20 lat w Washington DC i wiem jak to dziala.
Przed rostrzygniecien kontraktu w Iraku juz bylem poinformowany ze US kontrakt nie bedzie dla Polski a dla firmy belego sekretarza wojsk USA.
Former Republican Congressman and Secretary of Defense, under President Clinton, William Cohen, sits at the helm of the Cohen Group.
On dostal wiele kontraktow ktore sie Polsce nalezaly.
Nawet byly wypowiedzi Ministra Wojsk Irackich ze kontrakt nie zostal dobrze wypelniony przez firme Cohena: ze wiele sprzetu po dostarczeniu nawet nie dzialalo.
Czy tak chca zniszczyc i tanio wykupic Polski przemysl zbrojeniowy.
Sam pochodze z Krasnika w Lubeskim gdzie slawna na calym swiecie Fabryka Lozysk Tocznych wybudowana w ramach Centralnego Osrodka Przemyslowego w latach 20-30 XX wieki i calkowicie z modernizowana przez firmy japonsko – zachodnio europejskie w latach 80-tych za wiele miliardow dolarow. Ktora kiedys exportowala do 70 krajow swiata i zatrudniala 12 tys. Pracownikow
Zobarztmy tylko dane:
Polacy pomagaja Stanom Zjednoczonych USA
Poland / Polska dostaje/ only gets $28 milions of the real US help for the Polish Army
but it cost to Poland ( our mation ) is 1 billion per year to send our troops all over the world Iraq, Afghanistan , Kosovo, Panama, Haiti, Polish Army's Peacekeepers in Golan Heights.
Country
Three Years Before 9/11 ('99-'01)
Three Years After 9/11 ('02-'04)
Change in Dollars
Six-Year Total ('99-'04)
Israel
$9,823,862,000 $9,094,874,000 ($728,988,000) $18,918,736,000
Egypt
$6,122,603,000 $6,025,456,540 ($97,146,460) $12,148,059,540
Pakistan
$9,075,000 $4,152,654,219 $4,143,579,219 $4,161,729,219
Jordan
$981,050,000 $2,670,414,688 $1,689,364,688 $3,651,464,688
Colombia
$1,549,497,000 $2,048,565,665 $499,068,665 $3,598,062,665
Afghanistan
$8,415,000 $2,663,783,836 $2,655,368,836 $2,672,198,836
Turkey
$5,357,000 $1,324,923,070 $1,319,566,070 $1,330,280,070
West Bank and Gaza
$630,557,000 $271,058,000 ($359,499,000) $901,615,000
Peru
$263,543,000 $445,825,971 $182,282,971 $709,368,971
Bolivia
$281,470,000 $320,682,000 $39,212,000 $602,152,000
Ecuador
$110,103,000 $251,367,795 $141,264,795 $361,470,795
Poland
$33,242,000 $301,136,119 $267,894,119 $334,378,119
Iraq
$37,945,000 $283,986,478 $246,041,478 $321,931,478
Haiti
$176,368,000 $87,296,000 ($89,072,000) $263,664,000
Indonesia
$78,126,000 $184,930,913 $106,804,913 $263,056,913
Philippines
$14,642,000 $245,636,802 $230,994,802 $260,278,802
Mexico
$89,957,000 $162,080,493 $72,123,493 $252,037,493
Lebanon
$66,417,000 $110,109,000 $43,692,000 $176,526,000
Timor-Leste
$84,791,000 $89,339,000 $4,548,000 $174,130,000
Bahrain
$693,000 $144,593,000 $143,900,000 $145,286,000
http://polishdeportedfromus.blogspot.com/ my blog
Support Our Allies - They Support Us?
"...For Your Freedom and Ours..."
Gen. T. Kosciuszko (Poland and America's Patriot)
- Poland sent combat troops to Iraq, Afghanistan , Kosovo, Panama, Haiti, Polish Army's Peacekeepers in Golan Heights, Americans during the war.
- Polish troops are responsible for security in 1 of the 4 zones in Iraq
- 20,000 soldiers from 17 countries served under Polish command
Poland sent its elite commando unit, GROM, which means thunder. It helped secure the port at Umm Qasr, which was vital to delivering aid to Iraq. The unit also secured nearby oil platforms before they could be sabotaged.
In the first Gulf War, Polish intelligence officers snuck into Iraq to rescue a group of CIA operatives trapped behind enemy lines.
Poland's secret agents disguised CIA agents as Polish construction workers and smuggled them out of Baghdad.
This was not the first time Polish soldiers risked their lives for our freedom. Generals Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko were two of the first foreigners to fight in the American Revolution. Kosciuszko designed and oversaw the construction of West Point. After that, he returned to Poland, where he led a democratic uprising. As a result of that fight, Poland had the first written democratic constitution in Europe, second in the world only to the U.S.
USA DEPORTED POLISH WOMAN IN US SINCE 1989 PERFECT CITIZEN FORMER SOLIDARITY, PERFECT MOTHER, NO CRIMES
I have to bring to your attention. What kind of:
How autocratic our Homeland Security in US is.
Ciekawy wiadomosc prasowa:
Israel to Get $90bn US Defense Aid
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Poland and US making the Argentinean mistake? Are there any similarities?
Poland and US making the Argentinean mistake? Are there any similarities?
It was a few years ago when corporate TV stations showed a terrible situation in Argentina – a country of a stormy past, but in a pretty good shape since the introduction of global economy. Crowds of people protesting in the streets, soldiers shooting at them. Smoke, squibs, fire and unemployment surpassing 22 per cent. In 2001 Argentina was on the bottom of an abyss, from which – according to Western economists – there was no escape. Globalists, industrialists and bankers were massively leaving the country taking away with them whatever still could be taken. The media were ordered to forget about that country and its sheer existence.
In December 2001 Argentina fund herself in an economical hole into which it was pushed by its elites and globalism. The banks stopped paying out the money. Nobody was able to control the economy of the country. President Carlos Menem, previously in power, an industrialist chosen for the post in 1989, had promised Argentineans beautiful women and Ferrari cars. But through the back door he would sell out the country’s assets to foreign hands for ridiculously low prices. He borrowed large sums of money from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The citizens of Argentina, which thanks to the borrowed money was prospering like never before, cheered for their President and declared him a genius of the free market.
The idyll ended when they had to start paying back the borrowed money. In 2001 the gross domestic product went down as much as 11 per cent. However, the country did not receive any additional funds or any concrete pieces of advice from the IMF.
The history of Argentina is full of unsuccessful uprisings, sudden upheavals, protests and wars. It is also full of poverty of masses and unimaginable richness of a small group of the chosen ones. It is full of corruption, horrible torture and fascist prisons. But by the end of 1990s the whole world was left speechless. What was going on the streets of Argentina was a warning and a prophecy for the enthusiasts of global economy.
In private the journalists were wondering how it was possible to ruin a whole country in such a short time. How was it possible that no one noticed that and no one counter-reacted? Such questions were circulating in the Internet and in private conversations. But newspapers and TV bulletins were chasing for sensation and blubbering about fiscal irresponsibility on a large scale. Average Argentineans and the new president, De la Rua, were soon to be blamed for everything.
Argentina was alive and kicking, but corporate media did not want to let the public know about it. In 1999, when De la Rua was chosen President and the country had already been in recession for 3 years, conniving CNN would announce that Menem had not been re-elected because he could not enter for election for the third time, according to the constitution. However, he said that he would enter the election in 2003. Menem belonged to Peronists party, the biggest political power in Argentina. He was closely linked with the USA, globalism and free market.
The new President of Argentina had almost no move. Peronists were still in power and they attacked him from the very beginning. De la Rua asked his countrymen in his speeches: ‘Please, understand how important is unity. I want to be the President of all Argentineans.’
When economic crash came, International Monetary Fund was the first to wash their hands. Its experts claimed that Argentina spent too much Money although the country’s budget was much smaller than the budget of the USA during the Great Depression. When the economists ridiculed such an explanation, the lawyers of IMF began their attack. They claimed that Argentina had had such rights to distribute the loans to which the Fund had to adjust and which made normal economical functioning impossible. It means that the Fund wants us to believe that poor Argentina dictated them the conditions.
All that show was supervised by the elites of the USA. For the last 55 years, during the whole existence of the International Monetary Fund, the voice of the United States has been decisive. Other rich member countries could easily oppose the USA in voting and win, but by some strange coincidence they never did. When we take a closer look at IMF we will find out that in fact it is only a group of lenders ruled by the American Treasury. We should not be surprised then that the American government (and the obedient American and Western media after them) unanimously stated that Argentina must be submissive to the rules imposed on her by the IMF.
Economical analysis
Today we know already why Argentina’s economy collapsed, although the media do not want to say it. I am begging here for a special attention of the readers in Poland. In 1991 Menem based the country’s economy on a ‘higher’ currency which was the American dollar. A stable exchange rate of 1:1 between the dollar and the Argentinean peso was introduced. Menem hoped that the dollar would soon become the circulating currency in Argentina. It was quite a good idea at first, but soon it turned out that the value of the dollar was overrated. Automatically the value of the Argentinean peso was also overvalued. Let us pay attention how the euro is functioning in Poland.
At the moment when investors figured out that the value of the peso is overrated they started fearing that it would fall. That is why they began demanding higher and higher interest rates on everything. Also on private and government loans. It caused a huge debt. The interest rate was raised to 40 per cent.
To keep up the parity on the American currency, the Argentinian government had to have adequate amount of American dollars in the banks. The more the crisis developed the more American dollars the government had to buy for a significantly overrated price. More and more people demanded transactions in cash. This process pushed Argentina into a debt of 140 billion of dollars. In December 2001 the Argentinian government announced to the world that they are not able to pay anything. Argentina became the pariah of nations.
To keep up the overrated value of the peso, International Monetary Fund gave Argentina huge loans. Only in one year to the country’s Treasury were sent 40 billion dollars as a package organised by many lending institutions. Only one basic requirement that was to guarantee that these loans would be paid off was to maintain zero budget deficit. Which meant that Argentina had to oscillate on 100 per cent of the budget. It is impossible during a recession to keep 100% of a budget, besides it takes some painful operations like serious cuts in the budget, which in turn cause high level of unemployment eventually leading to street fighting on a big scale.
How did that process look like from the point of view of an average, hard-working Argentinian? At the beginning of the 1990s Argentinians were encouraged to buy almost everything. Companies were privatized and incorporated into conglomerates. People were encouraged to build houses by giving them low-mortgage loans. People were asked to set up their own companies and those who were laid off were given compensation packages. Luxury cars were shown to the middle class and sold for very low down-payments for high-percentage loans and long-term payments. The media shouted out that the situation is so good, that everybody would be able to afford to pay off the loans on cars or houses. ‘You can have everything now – you will pay off later!’. The Argentinians – like Poles today – enjoyed the prosperity not knowing that a trap had been set up for them. After 40 years of poverty and wars they could at last have in their gardens or garages what so far they had seen in American films.
With the Western capital came the people whose task was to watch its flow. They taught Argentinians what the free market and global economy is about. Soon they had such huge influence on Argentina’s administrating structure that the country, practically speaking, lost its independence.
In the situation when the American dollar was bought with the peso at the rate of 1:1, everything that was produced in Argentina (as well as services) was too expensive to be exported. The whole country – just like Poland and other countries – was literally choked to death. Import of goods was much cheaper than their production. In that way almost 10% of gross domestic product was destroyed.
Mass privatizations at the beginning of the 1990s of almost all national assets for a fraction of its market value had already caused unemployment on a big scale. Mainly electricity, municipal and telecommunication companies were privatized. Globalists know very well how to do it. You start privatizing from the chosen key sectors. After that, other co-operating sectors become incompatible. Then there is no way out but to privatize all other sectors in the structure upwards. When the spiral of privatization went up, the spiral of dismissions from work went down. At the bottom there was a bigger and bigger number of unemployed people ending up with no means of living.
On the scale of the country, the spiral movement up was balanced by the movement down. Finally more and more people stopped doing their shopping and the money stopped circulating. So did the taxes. Poor Argentinians did not pay taxes because they had nothing – instead, they started buying rifles. When the money stopped circulating, now privatised companies laid off more and more people to keep up the economy of their firms. Those three inter-related crisises (taxes, unemployment, overrated value of the currency) get the Argentinian government to beg IMF for help or advice. International Monetary Fund, after long negotiations, made their decision. ‘Argentina is too much in debt. We can’t help. Let us leave that country in the state of free falling into an abyss.’ Also, during many military councils the decision was made how to cut off Argentina from the outside world if the expected rebellion of armed Argentinians was to spread across the borders.
This decision by IMF get the Argentinians (who foresaw the fall of the value of the peso) to rush to the banks to pay out their savings. The banks were closed, the salaries in many sectors of the country’s economy were held up. In desperation, the President declared that Argentina stopped paying off her debts. The press foretold that in the country there would be hair-raising scenes and after that they lost their interest in the matter.
The Argentinian miracle
It seemed that there was no retreat for Argentina. The rats began to leave the sinking ship. President Menem left for Chile. The businessmen and their international advisors were leaving for their countries. Even small investors, whose parents had come to Argentina in search for a better life, frantically tried to get entry visas to their mother countries. Whole factories with full machinery equipment were left behind – it was not profitable to produce there anything any more. The workers were laid off with nothing. Beautiful residences with swimming-pools were left abandoned, as well as whole office blocks lined out with marble. Those who had led to that crisis were moving like locust on other fields which could still be eaten up.
’Time’ magazine was wondering: ‘What can President De la Rua do now? This is a million-dollar question. Whether alone or in a coalition, he immediately needs a plan to ease the crisis. He has to help his countrymen to fill their stomachs and, maybe, to revive economical growth. The problem is that – to ease the results of the crisis concerning poor people – the government has to spend millions of dollars on food and basic needs. And this will cause a further escalation of the financial crisis. Something must happen…’
And it did happen! The Argentinians trusted their President who broke the negotiations with international financiers. The army, police and ordinary people lined up in support. They claimed that Argentina belonged to Argentinians, not to international financial mafia. The Argentinian government, left alone, made a decision which get the White House and international bankers furious. Against their recommendation, the exchange rate of the peso was freed. Minister of Economy, Roberto Lavagna, stated: ‘Having competitive prices of currency exchange will help our export and enable fulfillment of the country’s needs.’ They also decided to end the free market policy to which the country’s economy was a prisoner. An economical co-operation with Brazil and China was established. Some capital started to flow to the country. The central bank began to buy the dollar again, but only as much as necessary to keep up the economic growth.
When Argentina announced that after 3 years from the moment of separation from degenerated ideas of globalists she was able to pay 30 cents for every dollar of her debt and keep up her unprecedented economical growth, at first nobody believed her. Then the media were strictly forbidden to inform about it. We should not be surprised as it is a palpable proof how quickly an economy of a given country and life of its citizens can improve when they forget about globalist absurdities.
In December 2004 the British ‘Guardian’ wrote: Three years ago, in December, Argentina was in crisis. The economy was rolling down uncontrolled into an abyss, banks closed their door to the investors, company presidents changed every week. Today the common opinion among the economists in Buenos Aires are that the country has left the worst behind. Yes, Argentina is still fighting with a complicated process of reconstruction of her debt, but the economy has undergone incredible changes.’
Like Phoenix, the economy has risen from the ashes. After an 11-per-cent fall in 2002, in 2003 the domestic product rose almost 9% and it will rise another 8% this year*. The government carefully announces that GDP will rise 4% in 2005, but most experts in economy believe that in fact the growth will be 5%.
The assumptions of ‘free market’ were bad for jobs and employment. In 2002 the unemployment reached its peak with 22%. Now it is 12%.
Whether you are faithful believers or not, some commentators say about the rise of Argentina as of a miracle which Rodrigo Rato, the director of IMF, could not cause. The hand of God turned out to be more powerful than the hand of International Monetary Fund. Now nobody is cheating any more.
Another thing which is hidden by the media was the fact of absolute unification of the working class with the management class. When the factory owners closed their firms and fled to other countries, their workers and directors occupied nearby cafes and park benches. When they were sitting idly on the streets, they were discussing how to improve their life and situation of their country, doomed to fail. The employees of such abandoned factories as Zanon looked at the gates melancholically. They spent most of their lives in those factories. Finally they made up their minds. They entered the grounds of their empty and devastated factories, started the machines and began production out of the materials which were still in the warehouses.
The authorities and the army looked at that almost communist-like behaviour of the people in a friendly manner. Soon department managers, office clerks and economic directors joined the turners, polishers and warehouse men. In the record-breaking time sales and export were initiated. There were no fixed hours of work. The decisions concerning their factories were taken by the people during short production meetings.
It turned out that the production is profitable and needed. What had not been profitable for globalists started to be such for common people without the help from banks and financial cartels. Soon production and sales reached their record levels in some factories. The people shared the profit with one another. They had never earned such sums of money before. So, they started to spend them. Thus building industry and other branches of industry got moving.
All that happened so quickly that America did not even have enough time to declare Argentina a communist country. The Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD) was established. Soon this organisation had the power to influence politics. And that was yet another mystery of the Argentinian miracle.
The rats come back
The situation of Argentina began to improve. Globalists and factory owners began to come back and demand a return of their factories taken over by the people. Those who had left the country on the verge of a civil war 3 years before, now have some claims quoting international laws. Does that remind the Poles of something?
MTD, which was created almost literally on the streets, is strong. The organization is threatening with mass demonstrations. The ceramics factory, Zanon, the first one to be taken over by its workers and revived to the state of a profitable works, has become a symbol of the new and better, like Gdansk Shipyard used to be for Poles. MTD is considered by CIA and other similar organizations as a group which managed to create the most modern strategies and solutions how to unite and defend people from capitalism.
The returning rats from international financial circles are fighting back. Because Argentina constitutes a serious threat to the whole global economy, we should assume that if the USA wasn’t involved in Iraq now, the American soldiers would be defending their oil under the Argentinian grass in the name of democracy, or would be defending the freedom of their country there.
Kirchner, new President of Argentina, demands the extradition of the ex-president Carlos Menem, who is in Chile. Menem is wanted by the Argentinian authorities for corruption and bringing the country to ruin. He planned to enter for the presidential election in 2007 and used to promise the factory owners to return their property. Of course, that is why he enjoys the support from international financiers and can afford to laugh at the orders and decisions of Argentinian courts of law.
In January 2005 international bankers agreed to the proposal from the Argentinian government to be paid 25 cents for every dollar of the debt. An unseen thing happened – Argentina declared a war to IMF and several other globalist organizations and won. Argentina, protected by her own army, not only blackmailed the globalists, but also refused any negotiations with 700,000 holders of the state bonds. Argentina has an open way to be accepted back to the community of international societies from which she had been thrown away before. And she did it on her own conditions, as a full member, making decisions on her own.
Many bankers and international investors accuse Argentina of totalitarism and cheating investors and lenders. It caused quarrels among big financiers, Italian and American among others, who claim that if it was not for 9/11, they would be talking to Argentinians in a different manner.
Three months later IMF again began demanding a full payment of the debts. But Argentina was already strong enough being in economic co-operation with Brazil and China to show the bankers from Wall Street ‘the middle finger of her right hand’. Argentina started to prove to the world that about half of the creditors had already made a considerable profit on the Argentinian debts and that it was not fair that they should demand any more. This opinion was exposed by Chinese and Indian media. By the way, Argentina showed in black and white how some people tried to bring the country to bankruptcy and what it meant in practice.
The British ‘Guardian’ writes: ‘Three things worked for the benefit of Argentina. First, Kirchner’s card was strong thanks to the strong economy. Secondly, the truth about IMF was being revealed, that is why they wanted a quick settlement. Thirdly, Wall Street left Argentina just before the crisis and the negotiations were led by European banks. So the American Treasury was not pressed to play hard with Argentina. Also, they did not want Kirchner to make friends with a strong populist, President of Brazil, Lula.
Now many indebted countries may follow Argentina’s footsteps – and show the globalists their behind. Including Poland. And that is what the financial circles fear most. A precedence was created. A relatively non-significant country, held up against the wall, defied the wide-spread slogans of democracy, law and free market. And she won – at least so far. There has emerged a big chance for other countries. Now, when the American army is involved in Iraq, they can get rid of the yoke. You only need to want it and go for it. Just like the citizens of Argentina did, regardless of their social function, possessions and education.
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
EMAIL: alex@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
It was a few years ago when corporate TV stations showed a terrible situation in Argentina – a country of a stormy past, but in a pretty good shape since the introduction of global economy. Crowds of people protesting in the streets, soldiers shooting at them. Smoke, squibs, fire and unemployment surpassing 22 per cent. In 2001 Argentina was on the bottom of an abyss, from which – according to Western economists – there was no escape. Globalists, industrialists and bankers were massively leaving the country taking away with them whatever still could be taken. The media were ordered to forget about that country and its sheer existence.
In December 2001 Argentina fund herself in an economical hole into which it was pushed by its elites and globalism. The banks stopped paying out the money. Nobody was able to control the economy of the country. President Carlos Menem, previously in power, an industrialist chosen for the post in 1989, had promised Argentineans beautiful women and Ferrari cars. But through the back door he would sell out the country’s assets to foreign hands for ridiculously low prices. He borrowed large sums of money from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The citizens of Argentina, which thanks to the borrowed money was prospering like never before, cheered for their President and declared him a genius of the free market.
The idyll ended when they had to start paying back the borrowed money. In 2001 the gross domestic product went down as much as 11 per cent. However, the country did not receive any additional funds or any concrete pieces of advice from the IMF.
The history of Argentina is full of unsuccessful uprisings, sudden upheavals, protests and wars. It is also full of poverty of masses and unimaginable richness of a small group of the chosen ones. It is full of corruption, horrible torture and fascist prisons. But by the end of 1990s the whole world was left speechless. What was going on the streets of Argentina was a warning and a prophecy for the enthusiasts of global economy.
In private the journalists were wondering how it was possible to ruin a whole country in such a short time. How was it possible that no one noticed that and no one counter-reacted? Such questions were circulating in the Internet and in private conversations. But newspapers and TV bulletins were chasing for sensation and blubbering about fiscal irresponsibility on a large scale. Average Argentineans and the new president, De la Rua, were soon to be blamed for everything.
Argentina was alive and kicking, but corporate media did not want to let the public know about it. In 1999, when De la Rua was chosen President and the country had already been in recession for 3 years, conniving CNN would announce that Menem had not been re-elected because he could not enter for election for the third time, according to the constitution. However, he said that he would enter the election in 2003. Menem belonged to Peronists party, the biggest political power in Argentina. He was closely linked with the USA, globalism and free market.
The new President of Argentina had almost no move. Peronists were still in power and they attacked him from the very beginning. De la Rua asked his countrymen in his speeches: ‘Please, understand how important is unity. I want to be the President of all Argentineans.’
When economic crash came, International Monetary Fund was the first to wash their hands. Its experts claimed that Argentina spent too much Money although the country’s budget was much smaller than the budget of the USA during the Great Depression. When the economists ridiculed such an explanation, the lawyers of IMF began their attack. They claimed that Argentina had had such rights to distribute the loans to which the Fund had to adjust and which made normal economical functioning impossible. It means that the Fund wants us to believe that poor Argentina dictated them the conditions.
All that show was supervised by the elites of the USA. For the last 55 years, during the whole existence of the International Monetary Fund, the voice of the United States has been decisive. Other rich member countries could easily oppose the USA in voting and win, but by some strange coincidence they never did. When we take a closer look at IMF we will find out that in fact it is only a group of lenders ruled by the American Treasury. We should not be surprised then that the American government (and the obedient American and Western media after them) unanimously stated that Argentina must be submissive to the rules imposed on her by the IMF.
Economical analysis
Today we know already why Argentina’s economy collapsed, although the media do not want to say it. I am begging here for a special attention of the readers in Poland. In 1991 Menem based the country’s economy on a ‘higher’ currency which was the American dollar. A stable exchange rate of 1:1 between the dollar and the Argentinean peso was introduced. Menem hoped that the dollar would soon become the circulating currency in Argentina. It was quite a good idea at first, but soon it turned out that the value of the dollar was overrated. Automatically the value of the Argentinean peso was also overvalued. Let us pay attention how the euro is functioning in Poland.
At the moment when investors figured out that the value of the peso is overrated they started fearing that it would fall. That is why they began demanding higher and higher interest rates on everything. Also on private and government loans. It caused a huge debt. The interest rate was raised to 40 per cent.
To keep up the parity on the American currency, the Argentinian government had to have adequate amount of American dollars in the banks. The more the crisis developed the more American dollars the government had to buy for a significantly overrated price. More and more people demanded transactions in cash. This process pushed Argentina into a debt of 140 billion of dollars. In December 2001 the Argentinian government announced to the world that they are not able to pay anything. Argentina became the pariah of nations.
To keep up the overrated value of the peso, International Monetary Fund gave Argentina huge loans. Only in one year to the country’s Treasury were sent 40 billion dollars as a package organised by many lending institutions. Only one basic requirement that was to guarantee that these loans would be paid off was to maintain zero budget deficit. Which meant that Argentina had to oscillate on 100 per cent of the budget. It is impossible during a recession to keep 100% of a budget, besides it takes some painful operations like serious cuts in the budget, which in turn cause high level of unemployment eventually leading to street fighting on a big scale.
How did that process look like from the point of view of an average, hard-working Argentinian? At the beginning of the 1990s Argentinians were encouraged to buy almost everything. Companies were privatized and incorporated into conglomerates. People were encouraged to build houses by giving them low-mortgage loans. People were asked to set up their own companies and those who were laid off were given compensation packages. Luxury cars were shown to the middle class and sold for very low down-payments for high-percentage loans and long-term payments. The media shouted out that the situation is so good, that everybody would be able to afford to pay off the loans on cars or houses. ‘You can have everything now – you will pay off later!’. The Argentinians – like Poles today – enjoyed the prosperity not knowing that a trap had been set up for them. After 40 years of poverty and wars they could at last have in their gardens or garages what so far they had seen in American films.
With the Western capital came the people whose task was to watch its flow. They taught Argentinians what the free market and global economy is about. Soon they had such huge influence on Argentina’s administrating structure that the country, practically speaking, lost its independence.
In the situation when the American dollar was bought with the peso at the rate of 1:1, everything that was produced in Argentina (as well as services) was too expensive to be exported. The whole country – just like Poland and other countries – was literally choked to death. Import of goods was much cheaper than their production. In that way almost 10% of gross domestic product was destroyed.
Mass privatizations at the beginning of the 1990s of almost all national assets for a fraction of its market value had already caused unemployment on a big scale. Mainly electricity, municipal and telecommunication companies were privatized. Globalists know very well how to do it. You start privatizing from the chosen key sectors. After that, other co-operating sectors become incompatible. Then there is no way out but to privatize all other sectors in the structure upwards. When the spiral of privatization went up, the spiral of dismissions from work went down. At the bottom there was a bigger and bigger number of unemployed people ending up with no means of living.
On the scale of the country, the spiral movement up was balanced by the movement down. Finally more and more people stopped doing their shopping and the money stopped circulating. So did the taxes. Poor Argentinians did not pay taxes because they had nothing – instead, they started buying rifles. When the money stopped circulating, now privatised companies laid off more and more people to keep up the economy of their firms. Those three inter-related crisises (taxes, unemployment, overrated value of the currency) get the Argentinian government to beg IMF for help or advice. International Monetary Fund, after long negotiations, made their decision. ‘Argentina is too much in debt. We can’t help. Let us leave that country in the state of free falling into an abyss.’ Also, during many military councils the decision was made how to cut off Argentina from the outside world if the expected rebellion of armed Argentinians was to spread across the borders.
This decision by IMF get the Argentinians (who foresaw the fall of the value of the peso) to rush to the banks to pay out their savings. The banks were closed, the salaries in many sectors of the country’s economy were held up. In desperation, the President declared that Argentina stopped paying off her debts. The press foretold that in the country there would be hair-raising scenes and after that they lost their interest in the matter.
The Argentinian miracle
It seemed that there was no retreat for Argentina. The rats began to leave the sinking ship. President Menem left for Chile. The businessmen and their international advisors were leaving for their countries. Even small investors, whose parents had come to Argentina in search for a better life, frantically tried to get entry visas to their mother countries. Whole factories with full machinery equipment were left behind – it was not profitable to produce there anything any more. The workers were laid off with nothing. Beautiful residences with swimming-pools were left abandoned, as well as whole office blocks lined out with marble. Those who had led to that crisis were moving like locust on other fields which could still be eaten up.
’Time’ magazine was wondering: ‘What can President De la Rua do now? This is a million-dollar question. Whether alone or in a coalition, he immediately needs a plan to ease the crisis. He has to help his countrymen to fill their stomachs and, maybe, to revive economical growth. The problem is that – to ease the results of the crisis concerning poor people – the government has to spend millions of dollars on food and basic needs. And this will cause a further escalation of the financial crisis. Something must happen…’
And it did happen! The Argentinians trusted their President who broke the negotiations with international financiers. The army, police and ordinary people lined up in support. They claimed that Argentina belonged to Argentinians, not to international financial mafia. The Argentinian government, left alone, made a decision which get the White House and international bankers furious. Against their recommendation, the exchange rate of the peso was freed. Minister of Economy, Roberto Lavagna, stated: ‘Having competitive prices of currency exchange will help our export and enable fulfillment of the country’s needs.’ They also decided to end the free market policy to which the country’s economy was a prisoner. An economical co-operation with Brazil and China was established. Some capital started to flow to the country. The central bank began to buy the dollar again, but only as much as necessary to keep up the economic growth.
When Argentina announced that after 3 years from the moment of separation from degenerated ideas of globalists she was able to pay 30 cents for every dollar of her debt and keep up her unprecedented economical growth, at first nobody believed her. Then the media were strictly forbidden to inform about it. We should not be surprised as it is a palpable proof how quickly an economy of a given country and life of its citizens can improve when they forget about globalist absurdities.
In December 2004 the British ‘Guardian’ wrote: Three years ago, in December, Argentina was in crisis. The economy was rolling down uncontrolled into an abyss, banks closed their door to the investors, company presidents changed every week. Today the common opinion among the economists in Buenos Aires are that the country has left the worst behind. Yes, Argentina is still fighting with a complicated process of reconstruction of her debt, but the economy has undergone incredible changes.’
Like Phoenix, the economy has risen from the ashes. After an 11-per-cent fall in 2002, in 2003 the domestic product rose almost 9% and it will rise another 8% this year*. The government carefully announces that GDP will rise 4% in 2005, but most experts in economy believe that in fact the growth will be 5%.
The assumptions of ‘free market’ were bad for jobs and employment. In 2002 the unemployment reached its peak with 22%. Now it is 12%.
Whether you are faithful believers or not, some commentators say about the rise of Argentina as of a miracle which Rodrigo Rato, the director of IMF, could not cause. The hand of God turned out to be more powerful than the hand of International Monetary Fund. Now nobody is cheating any more.
Another thing which is hidden by the media was the fact of absolute unification of the working class with the management class. When the factory owners closed their firms and fled to other countries, their workers and directors occupied nearby cafes and park benches. When they were sitting idly on the streets, they were discussing how to improve their life and situation of their country, doomed to fail. The employees of such abandoned factories as Zanon looked at the gates melancholically. They spent most of their lives in those factories. Finally they made up their minds. They entered the grounds of their empty and devastated factories, started the machines and began production out of the materials which were still in the warehouses.
The authorities and the army looked at that almost communist-like behaviour of the people in a friendly manner. Soon department managers, office clerks and economic directors joined the turners, polishers and warehouse men. In the record-breaking time sales and export were initiated. There were no fixed hours of work. The decisions concerning their factories were taken by the people during short production meetings.
It turned out that the production is profitable and needed. What had not been profitable for globalists started to be such for common people without the help from banks and financial cartels. Soon production and sales reached their record levels in some factories. The people shared the profit with one another. They had never earned such sums of money before. So, they started to spend them. Thus building industry and other branches of industry got moving.
All that happened so quickly that America did not even have enough time to declare Argentina a communist country. The Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD) was established. Soon this organisation had the power to influence politics. And that was yet another mystery of the Argentinian miracle.
The rats come back
The situation of Argentina began to improve. Globalists and factory owners began to come back and demand a return of their factories taken over by the people. Those who had left the country on the verge of a civil war 3 years before, now have some claims quoting international laws. Does that remind the Poles of something?
MTD, which was created almost literally on the streets, is strong. The organization is threatening with mass demonstrations. The ceramics factory, Zanon, the first one to be taken over by its workers and revived to the state of a profitable works, has become a symbol of the new and better, like Gdansk Shipyard used to be for Poles. MTD is considered by CIA and other similar organizations as a group which managed to create the most modern strategies and solutions how to unite and defend people from capitalism.
The returning rats from international financial circles are fighting back. Because Argentina constitutes a serious threat to the whole global economy, we should assume that if the USA wasn’t involved in Iraq now, the American soldiers would be defending their oil under the Argentinian grass in the name of democracy, or would be defending the freedom of their country there.
Kirchner, new President of Argentina, demands the extradition of the ex-president Carlos Menem, who is in Chile. Menem is wanted by the Argentinian authorities for corruption and bringing the country to ruin. He planned to enter for the presidential election in 2007 and used to promise the factory owners to return their property. Of course, that is why he enjoys the support from international financiers and can afford to laugh at the orders and decisions of Argentinian courts of law.
In January 2005 international bankers agreed to the proposal from the Argentinian government to be paid 25 cents for every dollar of the debt. An unseen thing happened – Argentina declared a war to IMF and several other globalist organizations and won. Argentina, protected by her own army, not only blackmailed the globalists, but also refused any negotiations with 700,000 holders of the state bonds. Argentina has an open way to be accepted back to the community of international societies from which she had been thrown away before. And she did it on her own conditions, as a full member, making decisions on her own.
Many bankers and international investors accuse Argentina of totalitarism and cheating investors and lenders. It caused quarrels among big financiers, Italian and American among others, who claim that if it was not for 9/11, they would be talking to Argentinians in a different manner.
Three months later IMF again began demanding a full payment of the debts. But Argentina was already strong enough being in economic co-operation with Brazil and China to show the bankers from Wall Street ‘the middle finger of her right hand’. Argentina started to prove to the world that about half of the creditors had already made a considerable profit on the Argentinian debts and that it was not fair that they should demand any more. This opinion was exposed by Chinese and Indian media. By the way, Argentina showed in black and white how some people tried to bring the country to bankruptcy and what it meant in practice.
The British ‘Guardian’ writes: ‘Three things worked for the benefit of Argentina. First, Kirchner’s card was strong thanks to the strong economy. Secondly, the truth about IMF was being revealed, that is why they wanted a quick settlement. Thirdly, Wall Street left Argentina just before the crisis and the negotiations were led by European banks. So the American Treasury was not pressed to play hard with Argentina. Also, they did not want Kirchner to make friends with a strong populist, President of Brazil, Lula.
Now many indebted countries may follow Argentina’s footsteps – and show the globalists their behind. Including Poland. And that is what the financial circles fear most. A precedence was created. A relatively non-significant country, held up against the wall, defied the wide-spread slogans of democracy, law and free market. And she won – at least so far. There has emerged a big chance for other countries. Now, when the American army is involved in Iraq, they can get rid of the yoke. You only need to want it and go for it. Just like the citizens of Argentina did, regardless of their social function, possessions and education.
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
EMAIL: alex@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
Poland and US making the Argentinean mistake? Are there any similarities?
Poland and US making the Argentinean mistake? Are there any similarities?
It was a few years ago when corporate TV stations showed a terrible situation in Argentina – a country of a stormy past, but in a pretty good shape since the introduction of global economy. Crowds of people protesting in the streets, soldiers shooting at them. Smoke, squibs, fire and unemployment surpassing 22 per cent. In 2001 Argentina was on the bottom of an abyss, from which – according to Western economists – there was no escape. Globalists, industrialists and bankers were massively leaving the country taking away with them whatever still could be taken. The media were ordered to forget about that country and its sheer existence.
In December 2001 Argentina fund herself in an economical hole into which it was pushed by its elites and globalism. The banks stopped paying out the money. Nobody was able to control the economy of the country. President Carlos Menem, previously in power, an industrialist chosen for the post in 1989, had promised Argentineans beautiful women and Ferrari cars. But through the back door he would sell out the country’s assets to foreign hands for ridiculously low prices. He borrowed large sums of money from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The citizens of Argentina, which thanks to the borrowed money was prospering like never before, cheered for their President and declared him a genius of the free market.
The idyll ended when they had to start paying back the borrowed money. In 2001 the gross domestic product went down as much as 11 per cent. However, the country did not receive any additional funds or any concrete pieces of advice from the IMF.
The history of Argentina is full of unsuccessful uprisings, sudden upheavals, protests and wars. It is also full of poverty of masses and unimaginable richness of a small group of the chosen ones. It is full of corruption, horrible torture and fascist prisons. But by the end of 1990s the whole world was left speechless. What was going on the streets of Argentina was a warning and a prophecy for the enthusiasts of global economy.
In private the journalists were wondering how it was possible to ruin a whole country in such a short time. How was it possible that no one noticed that and no one counter-reacted? Such questions were circulating in the Internet and in private conversations. But newspapers and TV bulletins were chasing for sensation and blubbering about fiscal irresponsibility on a large scale. Average Argentineans and the new president, De la Rua, were soon to be blamed for everything.
Argentina was alive and kicking, but corporate media did not want to let the public know about it. In 1999, when De la Rua was chosen President and the country had already been in recession for 3 years, conniving CNN would announce that Menem had not been re-elected because he could not enter for election for the third time, according to the constitution. However, he said that he would enter the election in 2003. Menem belonged to Peronists party, the biggest political power in Argentina. He was closely linked with the USA, globalism and free market.
The new President of Argentina had almost no move. Peronists were still in power and they attacked him from the very beginning. De la Rua asked his countrymen in his speeches: ‘Please, understand how important is unity. I want to be the President of all Argentineans.’
When economic crash came, International Monetary Fund was the first to wash their hands. Its experts claimed that Argentina spent too much Money although the country’s budget was much smaller than the budget of the USA during the Great Depression. When the economists ridiculed such an explanation, the lawyers of IMF began their attack. They claimed that Argentina had had such rights to distribute the loans to which the Fund had to adjust and which made normal economical functioning impossible. It means that the Fund wants us to believe that poor Argentina dictated them the conditions.
All that show was supervised by the elites of the USA. For the last 55 years, during the whole existence of the International Monetary Fund, the voice of the United States has been decisive. Other rich member countries could easily oppose the USA in voting and win, but by some strange coincidence they never did. When we take a closer look at IMF we will find out that in fact it is only a group of lenders ruled by the American Treasury. We should not be surprised then that the American government (and the obedient American and Western media after them) unanimously stated that Argentina must be submissive to the rules imposed on her by the IMF.
Economical analysis
Today we know already why Argentina’s economy collapsed, although the media do not want to say it. I am begging here for a special attention of the readers in Poland. In 1991 Menem based the country’s economy on a ‘higher’ currency which was the American dollar. A stable exchange rate of 1:1 between the dollar and the Argentinean peso was introduced. Menem hoped that the dollar would soon become the circulating currency in Argentina. It was quite a good idea at first, but soon it turned out that the value of the dollar was overrated. Automatically the value of the Argentinean peso was also overvalued. Let us pay attention how the euro is functioning in Poland.
At the moment when investors figured out that the value of the peso is overrated they started fearing that it would fall. That is why they began demanding higher and higher interest rates on everything. Also on private and government loans. It caused a huge debt. The interest rate was raised to 40 per cent.
To keep up the parity on the American currency, the Argentinian government had to have adequate amount of American dollars in the banks. The more the crisis developed the more American dollars the government had to buy for a significantly overrated price. More and more people demanded transactions in cash. This process pushed Argentina into a debt of 140 billion of dollars. In December 2001 the Argentinian government announced to the world that they are not able to pay anything. Argentina became the pariah of nations.
To keep up the overrated value of the peso, International Monetary Fund gave Argentina huge loans. Only in one year to the country’s Treasury were sent 40 billion dollars as a package organised by many lending institutions. Only one basic requirement that was to guarantee that these loans would be paid off was to maintain zero budget deficit. Which meant that Argentina had to oscillate on 100 per cent of the budget. It is impossible during a recession to keep 100% of a budget, besides it takes some painful operations like serious cuts in the budget, which in turn cause high level of unemployment eventually leading to street fighting on a big scale.
How did that process look like from the point of view of an average, hard-working Argentinian? At the beginning of the 1990s Argentinians were encouraged to buy almost everything. Companies were privatized and incorporated into conglomerates. People were encouraged to build houses by giving them low-mortgage loans. People were asked to set up their own companies and those who were laid off were given compensation packages. Luxury cars were shown to the middle class and sold for very low down-payments for high-percentage loans and long-term payments. The media shouted out that the situation is so good, that everybody would be able to afford to pay off the loans on cars or houses. ‘You can have everything now – you will pay off later!’. The Argentinians – like Poles today – enjoyed the prosperity not knowing that a trap had been set up for them. After 40 years of poverty and wars they could at last have in their gardens or garages what so far they had seen in American films.
With the Western capital came the people whose task was to watch its flow. They taught Argentinians what the free market and global economy is about. Soon they had such huge influence on Argentina’s administrating structure that the country, practically speaking, lost its independence.
In the situation when the American dollar was bought with the peso at the rate of 1:1, everything that was produced in Argentina (as well as services) was too expensive to be exported. The whole country – just like Poland and other countries – was literally choked to death. Import of goods was much cheaper than their production. In that way almost 10% of gross domestic product was destroyed.
Mass privatizations at the beginning of the 1990s of almost all national assets for a fraction of its market value had already caused unemployment on a big scale. Mainly electricity, municipal and telecommunication companies were privatized. Globalists know very well how to do it. You start privatizing from the chosen key sectors. After that, other co-operating sectors become incompatible. Then there is no way out but to privatize all other sectors in the structure upwards. When the spiral of privatization went up, the spiral of dismissions from work went down. At the bottom there was a bigger and bigger number of unemployed people ending up with no means of living.
On the scale of the country, the spiral movement up was balanced by the movement down. Finally more and more people stopped doing their shopping and the money stopped circulating. So did the taxes. Poor Argentinians did not pay taxes because they had nothing – instead, they started buying rifles. When the money stopped circulating, now privatised companies laid off more and more people to keep up the economy of their firms. Those three inter-related crisises (taxes, unemployment, overrated value of the currency) get the Argentinian government to beg IMF for help or advice. International Monetary Fund, after long negotiations, made their decision. ‘Argentina is too much in debt. We can’t help. Let us leave that country in the state of free falling into an abyss.’ Also, during many military councils the decision was made how to cut off Argentina from the outside world if the expected rebellion of armed Argentinians was to spread across the borders.
This decision by IMF get the Argentinians (who foresaw the fall of the value of the peso) to rush to the banks to pay out their savings. The banks were closed, the salaries in many sectors of the country’s economy were held up. In desperation, the President declared that Argentina stopped paying off her debts. The press foretold that in the country there would be hair-raising scenes and after that they lost their interest in the matter.
The Argentinian miracle
It seemed that there was no retreat for Argentina. The rats began to leave the sinking ship. President Menem left for Chile. The businessmen and their international advisors were leaving for their countries. Even small investors, whose parents had come to Argentina in search for a better life, frantically tried to get entry visas to their mother countries. Whole factories with full machinery equipment were left behind – it was not profitable to produce there anything any more. The workers were laid off with nothing. Beautiful residences with swimming-pools were left abandoned, as well as whole office blocks lined out with marble. Those who had led to that crisis were moving like locust on other fields which could still be eaten up.
’Time’ magazine was wondering: ‘What can President De la Rua do now? This is a million-dollar question. Whether alone or in a coalition, he immediately needs a plan to ease the crisis. He has to help his countrymen to fill their stomachs and, maybe, to revive economical growth. The problem is that – to ease the results of the crisis concerning poor people – the government has to spend millions of dollars on food and basic needs. And this will cause a further escalation of the financial crisis. Something must happen…’
And it did happen! The Argentinians trusted their President who broke the negotiations with international financiers. The army, police and ordinary people lined up in support. They claimed that Argentina belonged to Argentinians, not to international financial mafia. The Argentinian government, left alone, made a decision which get the White House and international bankers furious. Against their recommendation, the exchange rate of the peso was freed. Minister of Economy, Roberto Lavagna, stated: ‘Having competitive prices of currency exchange will help our export and enable fulfillment of the country’s needs.’ They also decided to end the free market policy to which the country’s economy was a prisoner. An economical co-operation with Brazil and China was established. Some capital started to flow to the country. The central bank began to buy the dollar again, but only as much as necessary to keep up the economic growth.
When Argentina announced that after 3 years from the moment of separation from degenerated ideas of globalists she was able to pay 30 cents for every dollar of her debt and keep up her unprecedented economical growth, at first nobody believed her. Then the media were strictly forbidden to inform about it. We should not be surprised as it is a palpable proof how quickly an economy of a given country and life of its citizens can improve when they forget about globalist absurdities.
In December 2004 the British ‘Guardian’ wrote: Three years ago, in December, Argentina was in crisis. The economy was rolling down uncontrolled into an abyss, banks closed their door to the investors, company presidents changed every week. Today the common opinion among the economists in Buenos Aires are that the country has left the worst behind. Yes, Argentina is still fighting with a complicated process of reconstruction of her debt, but the economy has undergone incredible changes.’
Like Phoenix, the economy has risen from the ashes. After an 11-per-cent fall in 2002, in 2003 the domestic product rose almost 9% and it will rise another 8% this year*. The government carefully announces that GDP will rise 4% in 2005, but most experts in economy believe that in fact the growth will be 5%.
The assumptions of ‘free market’ were bad for jobs and employment. In 2002 the unemployment reached its peak with 22%. Now it is 12%.
Whether you are faithful believers or not, some commentators say about the rise of Argentina as of a miracle which Rodrigo Rato, the director of IMF, could not cause. The hand of God turned out to be more powerful than the hand of International Monetary Fund. Now nobody is cheating any more.
Another thing which is hidden by the media was the fact of absolute unification of the working class with the management class. When the factory owners closed their firms and fled to other countries, their workers and directors occupied nearby cafes and park benches. When they were sitting idly on the streets, they were discussing how to improve their life and situation of their country, doomed to fail. The employees of such abandoned factories as Zanon looked at the gates melancholically. They spent most of their lives in those factories. Finally they made up their minds. They entered the grounds of their empty and devastated factories, started the machines and began production out of the materials which were still in the warehouses.
The authorities and the army looked at that almost communist-like behaviour of the people in a friendly manner. Soon department managers, office clerks and economic directors joined the turners, polishers and warehouse men. In the record-breaking time sales and export were initiated. There were no fixed hours of work. The decisions concerning their factories were taken by the people during short production meetings.
It turned out that the production is profitable and needed. What had not been profitable for globalists started to be such for common people without the help from banks and financial cartels. Soon production and sales reached their record levels in some factories. The people shared the profit with one another. They had never earned such sums of money before. So, they started to spend them. Thus building industry and other branches of industry got moving.
All that happened so quickly that America did not even have enough time to declare Argentina a communist country. The Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD) was established. Soon this organisation had the power to influence politics. And that was yet another mystery of the Argentinian miracle.
The rats come back
The situation of Argentina began to improve. Globalists and factory owners began to come back and demand a return of their factories taken over by the people. Those who had left the country on the verge of a civil war 3 years before, now have some claims quoting international laws. Does that remind the Poles of something?
MTD, which was created almost literally on the streets, is strong. The organization is threatening with mass demonstrations. The ceramics factory, Zanon, the first one to be taken over by its workers and revived to the state of a profitable works, has become a symbol of the new and better, like Gdansk Shipyard used to be for Poles. MTD is considered by CIA and other similar organizations as a group which managed to create the most modern strategies and solutions how to unite and defend people from capitalism.
The returning rats from international financial circles are fighting back. Because Argentina constitutes a serious threat to the whole global economy, we should assume that if the USA wasn’t involved in Iraq now, the American soldiers would be defending their oil under the Argentinian grass in the name of democracy, or would be defending the freedom of their country there.
Kirchner, new President of Argentina, demands the extradition of the ex-president Carlos Menem, who is in Chile. Menem is wanted by the Argentinian authorities for corruption and bringing the country to ruin. He planned to enter for the presidential election in 2007 and used to promise the factory owners to return their property. Of course, that is why he enjoys the support from international financiers and can afford to laugh at the orders and decisions of Argentinian courts of law.
In January 2005 international bankers agreed to the proposal from the Argentinian government to be paid 25 cents for every dollar of the debt. An unseen thing happened – Argentina declared a war to IMF and several other globalist organizations and won. Argentina, protected by her own army, not only blackmailed the globalists, but also refused any negotiations with 700,000 holders of the state bonds. Argentina has an open way to be accepted back to the community of international societies from which she had been thrown away before. And she did it on her own conditions, as a full member, making decisions on her own.
Many bankers and international investors accuse Argentina of totalitarism and cheating investors and lenders. It caused quarrels among big financiers, Italian and American among others, who claim that if it was not for 9/11, they would be talking to Argentinians in a different manner.
Three months later IMF again began demanding a full payment of the debts. But Argentina was already strong enough being in economic co-operation with Brazil and China to show the bankers from Wall Street ‘the middle finger of her right hand’. Argentina started to prove to the world that about half of the creditors had already made a considerable profit on the Argentinian debts and that it was not fair that they should demand any more. This opinion was exposed by Chinese and Indian media. By the way, Argentina showed in black and white how some people tried to bring the country to bankruptcy and what it meant in practice.
The British ‘Guardian’ writes: ‘Three things worked for the benefit of Argentina. First, Kirchner’s card was strong thanks to the strong economy. Secondly, the truth about IMF was being revealed, that is why they wanted a quick settlement. Thirdly, Wall Street left Argentina just before the crisis and the negotiations were led by European banks. So the American Treasury was not pressed to play hard with Argentina. Also, they did not want Kirchner to make friends with a strong populist, President of Brazil, Lula.
Now many indebted countries may follow Argentina’s footsteps – and show the globalists their behind. Including Poland. And that is what the financial circles fear most. A precedence was created. A relatively non-significant country, held up against the wall, defied the wide-spread slogans of democracy, law and free market. And she won – at least so far. There has emerged a big chance for other countries. Now, when the American army is involved in Iraq, they can get rid of the yoke. You only need to want it and go for it. Just like the citizens of Argentina did, regardless of their social function, possessions and education.
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
EMAIL: alex@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
It was a few years ago when corporate TV stations showed a terrible situation in Argentina – a country of a stormy past, but in a pretty good shape since the introduction of global economy. Crowds of people protesting in the streets, soldiers shooting at them. Smoke, squibs, fire and unemployment surpassing 22 per cent. In 2001 Argentina was on the bottom of an abyss, from which – according to Western economists – there was no escape. Globalists, industrialists and bankers were massively leaving the country taking away with them whatever still could be taken. The media were ordered to forget about that country and its sheer existence.
In December 2001 Argentina fund herself in an economical hole into which it was pushed by its elites and globalism. The banks stopped paying out the money. Nobody was able to control the economy of the country. President Carlos Menem, previously in power, an industrialist chosen for the post in 1989, had promised Argentineans beautiful women and Ferrari cars. But through the back door he would sell out the country’s assets to foreign hands for ridiculously low prices. He borrowed large sums of money from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The citizens of Argentina, which thanks to the borrowed money was prospering like never before, cheered for their President and declared him a genius of the free market.
The idyll ended when they had to start paying back the borrowed money. In 2001 the gross domestic product went down as much as 11 per cent. However, the country did not receive any additional funds or any concrete pieces of advice from the IMF.
The history of Argentina is full of unsuccessful uprisings, sudden upheavals, protests and wars. It is also full of poverty of masses and unimaginable richness of a small group of the chosen ones. It is full of corruption, horrible torture and fascist prisons. But by the end of 1990s the whole world was left speechless. What was going on the streets of Argentina was a warning and a prophecy for the enthusiasts of global economy.
In private the journalists were wondering how it was possible to ruin a whole country in such a short time. How was it possible that no one noticed that and no one counter-reacted? Such questions were circulating in the Internet and in private conversations. But newspapers and TV bulletins were chasing for sensation and blubbering about fiscal irresponsibility on a large scale. Average Argentineans and the new president, De la Rua, were soon to be blamed for everything.
Argentina was alive and kicking, but corporate media did not want to let the public know about it. In 1999, when De la Rua was chosen President and the country had already been in recession for 3 years, conniving CNN would announce that Menem had not been re-elected because he could not enter for election for the third time, according to the constitution. However, he said that he would enter the election in 2003. Menem belonged to Peronists party, the biggest political power in Argentina. He was closely linked with the USA, globalism and free market.
The new President of Argentina had almost no move. Peronists were still in power and they attacked him from the very beginning. De la Rua asked his countrymen in his speeches: ‘Please, understand how important is unity. I want to be the President of all Argentineans.’
When economic crash came, International Monetary Fund was the first to wash their hands. Its experts claimed that Argentina spent too much Money although the country’s budget was much smaller than the budget of the USA during the Great Depression. When the economists ridiculed such an explanation, the lawyers of IMF began their attack. They claimed that Argentina had had such rights to distribute the loans to which the Fund had to adjust and which made normal economical functioning impossible. It means that the Fund wants us to believe that poor Argentina dictated them the conditions.
All that show was supervised by the elites of the USA. For the last 55 years, during the whole existence of the International Monetary Fund, the voice of the United States has been decisive. Other rich member countries could easily oppose the USA in voting and win, but by some strange coincidence they never did. When we take a closer look at IMF we will find out that in fact it is only a group of lenders ruled by the American Treasury. We should not be surprised then that the American government (and the obedient American and Western media after them) unanimously stated that Argentina must be submissive to the rules imposed on her by the IMF.
Economical analysis
Today we know already why Argentina’s economy collapsed, although the media do not want to say it. I am begging here for a special attention of the readers in Poland. In 1991 Menem based the country’s economy on a ‘higher’ currency which was the American dollar. A stable exchange rate of 1:1 between the dollar and the Argentinean peso was introduced. Menem hoped that the dollar would soon become the circulating currency in Argentina. It was quite a good idea at first, but soon it turned out that the value of the dollar was overrated. Automatically the value of the Argentinean peso was also overvalued. Let us pay attention how the euro is functioning in Poland.
At the moment when investors figured out that the value of the peso is overrated they started fearing that it would fall. That is why they began demanding higher and higher interest rates on everything. Also on private and government loans. It caused a huge debt. The interest rate was raised to 40 per cent.
To keep up the parity on the American currency, the Argentinian government had to have adequate amount of American dollars in the banks. The more the crisis developed the more American dollars the government had to buy for a significantly overrated price. More and more people demanded transactions in cash. This process pushed Argentina into a debt of 140 billion of dollars. In December 2001 the Argentinian government announced to the world that they are not able to pay anything. Argentina became the pariah of nations.
To keep up the overrated value of the peso, International Monetary Fund gave Argentina huge loans. Only in one year to the country’s Treasury were sent 40 billion dollars as a package organised by many lending institutions. Only one basic requirement that was to guarantee that these loans would be paid off was to maintain zero budget deficit. Which meant that Argentina had to oscillate on 100 per cent of the budget. It is impossible during a recession to keep 100% of a budget, besides it takes some painful operations like serious cuts in the budget, which in turn cause high level of unemployment eventually leading to street fighting on a big scale.
How did that process look like from the point of view of an average, hard-working Argentinian? At the beginning of the 1990s Argentinians were encouraged to buy almost everything. Companies were privatized and incorporated into conglomerates. People were encouraged to build houses by giving them low-mortgage loans. People were asked to set up their own companies and those who were laid off were given compensation packages. Luxury cars were shown to the middle class and sold for very low down-payments for high-percentage loans and long-term payments. The media shouted out that the situation is so good, that everybody would be able to afford to pay off the loans on cars or houses. ‘You can have everything now – you will pay off later!’. The Argentinians – like Poles today – enjoyed the prosperity not knowing that a trap had been set up for them. After 40 years of poverty and wars they could at last have in their gardens or garages what so far they had seen in American films.
With the Western capital came the people whose task was to watch its flow. They taught Argentinians what the free market and global economy is about. Soon they had such huge influence on Argentina’s administrating structure that the country, practically speaking, lost its independence.
In the situation when the American dollar was bought with the peso at the rate of 1:1, everything that was produced in Argentina (as well as services) was too expensive to be exported. The whole country – just like Poland and other countries – was literally choked to death. Import of goods was much cheaper than their production. In that way almost 10% of gross domestic product was destroyed.
Mass privatizations at the beginning of the 1990s of almost all national assets for a fraction of its market value had already caused unemployment on a big scale. Mainly electricity, municipal and telecommunication companies were privatized. Globalists know very well how to do it. You start privatizing from the chosen key sectors. After that, other co-operating sectors become incompatible. Then there is no way out but to privatize all other sectors in the structure upwards. When the spiral of privatization went up, the spiral of dismissions from work went down. At the bottom there was a bigger and bigger number of unemployed people ending up with no means of living.
On the scale of the country, the spiral movement up was balanced by the movement down. Finally more and more people stopped doing their shopping and the money stopped circulating. So did the taxes. Poor Argentinians did not pay taxes because they had nothing – instead, they started buying rifles. When the money stopped circulating, now privatised companies laid off more and more people to keep up the economy of their firms. Those three inter-related crisises (taxes, unemployment, overrated value of the currency) get the Argentinian government to beg IMF for help or advice. International Monetary Fund, after long negotiations, made their decision. ‘Argentina is too much in debt. We can’t help. Let us leave that country in the state of free falling into an abyss.’ Also, during many military councils the decision was made how to cut off Argentina from the outside world if the expected rebellion of armed Argentinians was to spread across the borders.
This decision by IMF get the Argentinians (who foresaw the fall of the value of the peso) to rush to the banks to pay out their savings. The banks were closed, the salaries in many sectors of the country’s economy were held up. In desperation, the President declared that Argentina stopped paying off her debts. The press foretold that in the country there would be hair-raising scenes and after that they lost their interest in the matter.
The Argentinian miracle
It seemed that there was no retreat for Argentina. The rats began to leave the sinking ship. President Menem left for Chile. The businessmen and their international advisors were leaving for their countries. Even small investors, whose parents had come to Argentina in search for a better life, frantically tried to get entry visas to their mother countries. Whole factories with full machinery equipment were left behind – it was not profitable to produce there anything any more. The workers were laid off with nothing. Beautiful residences with swimming-pools were left abandoned, as well as whole office blocks lined out with marble. Those who had led to that crisis were moving like locust on other fields which could still be eaten up.
’Time’ magazine was wondering: ‘What can President De la Rua do now? This is a million-dollar question. Whether alone or in a coalition, he immediately needs a plan to ease the crisis. He has to help his countrymen to fill their stomachs and, maybe, to revive economical growth. The problem is that – to ease the results of the crisis concerning poor people – the government has to spend millions of dollars on food and basic needs. And this will cause a further escalation of the financial crisis. Something must happen…’
And it did happen! The Argentinians trusted their President who broke the negotiations with international financiers. The army, police and ordinary people lined up in support. They claimed that Argentina belonged to Argentinians, not to international financial mafia. The Argentinian government, left alone, made a decision which get the White House and international bankers furious. Against their recommendation, the exchange rate of the peso was freed. Minister of Economy, Roberto Lavagna, stated: ‘Having competitive prices of currency exchange will help our export and enable fulfillment of the country’s needs.’ They also decided to end the free market policy to which the country’s economy was a prisoner. An economical co-operation with Brazil and China was established. Some capital started to flow to the country. The central bank began to buy the dollar again, but only as much as necessary to keep up the economic growth.
When Argentina announced that after 3 years from the moment of separation from degenerated ideas of globalists she was able to pay 30 cents for every dollar of her debt and keep up her unprecedented economical growth, at first nobody believed her. Then the media were strictly forbidden to inform about it. We should not be surprised as it is a palpable proof how quickly an economy of a given country and life of its citizens can improve when they forget about globalist absurdities.
In December 2004 the British ‘Guardian’ wrote: Three years ago, in December, Argentina was in crisis. The economy was rolling down uncontrolled into an abyss, banks closed their door to the investors, company presidents changed every week. Today the common opinion among the economists in Buenos Aires are that the country has left the worst behind. Yes, Argentina is still fighting with a complicated process of reconstruction of her debt, but the economy has undergone incredible changes.’
Like Phoenix, the economy has risen from the ashes. After an 11-per-cent fall in 2002, in 2003 the domestic product rose almost 9% and it will rise another 8% this year*. The government carefully announces that GDP will rise 4% in 2005, but most experts in economy believe that in fact the growth will be 5%.
The assumptions of ‘free market’ were bad for jobs and employment. In 2002 the unemployment reached its peak with 22%. Now it is 12%.
Whether you are faithful believers or not, some commentators say about the rise of Argentina as of a miracle which Rodrigo Rato, the director of IMF, could not cause. The hand of God turned out to be more powerful than the hand of International Monetary Fund. Now nobody is cheating any more.
Another thing which is hidden by the media was the fact of absolute unification of the working class with the management class. When the factory owners closed their firms and fled to other countries, their workers and directors occupied nearby cafes and park benches. When they were sitting idly on the streets, they were discussing how to improve their life and situation of their country, doomed to fail. The employees of such abandoned factories as Zanon looked at the gates melancholically. They spent most of their lives in those factories. Finally they made up their minds. They entered the grounds of their empty and devastated factories, started the machines and began production out of the materials which were still in the warehouses.
The authorities and the army looked at that almost communist-like behaviour of the people in a friendly manner. Soon department managers, office clerks and economic directors joined the turners, polishers and warehouse men. In the record-breaking time sales and export were initiated. There were no fixed hours of work. The decisions concerning their factories were taken by the people during short production meetings.
It turned out that the production is profitable and needed. What had not been profitable for globalists started to be such for common people without the help from banks and financial cartels. Soon production and sales reached their record levels in some factories. The people shared the profit with one another. They had never earned such sums of money before. So, they started to spend them. Thus building industry and other branches of industry got moving.
All that happened so quickly that America did not even have enough time to declare Argentina a communist country. The Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD) was established. Soon this organisation had the power to influence politics. And that was yet another mystery of the Argentinian miracle.
The rats come back
The situation of Argentina began to improve. Globalists and factory owners began to come back and demand a return of their factories taken over by the people. Those who had left the country on the verge of a civil war 3 years before, now have some claims quoting international laws. Does that remind the Poles of something?
MTD, which was created almost literally on the streets, is strong. The organization is threatening with mass demonstrations. The ceramics factory, Zanon, the first one to be taken over by its workers and revived to the state of a profitable works, has become a symbol of the new and better, like Gdansk Shipyard used to be for Poles. MTD is considered by CIA and other similar organizations as a group which managed to create the most modern strategies and solutions how to unite and defend people from capitalism.
The returning rats from international financial circles are fighting back. Because Argentina constitutes a serious threat to the whole global economy, we should assume that if the USA wasn’t involved in Iraq now, the American soldiers would be defending their oil under the Argentinian grass in the name of democracy, or would be defending the freedom of their country there.
Kirchner, new President of Argentina, demands the extradition of the ex-president Carlos Menem, who is in Chile. Menem is wanted by the Argentinian authorities for corruption and bringing the country to ruin. He planned to enter for the presidential election in 2007 and used to promise the factory owners to return their property. Of course, that is why he enjoys the support from international financiers and can afford to laugh at the orders and decisions of Argentinian courts of law.
In January 2005 international bankers agreed to the proposal from the Argentinian government to be paid 25 cents for every dollar of the debt. An unseen thing happened – Argentina declared a war to IMF and several other globalist organizations and won. Argentina, protected by her own army, not only blackmailed the globalists, but also refused any negotiations with 700,000 holders of the state bonds. Argentina has an open way to be accepted back to the community of international societies from which she had been thrown away before. And she did it on her own conditions, as a full member, making decisions on her own.
Many bankers and international investors accuse Argentina of totalitarism and cheating investors and lenders. It caused quarrels among big financiers, Italian and American among others, who claim that if it was not for 9/11, they would be talking to Argentinians in a different manner.
Three months later IMF again began demanding a full payment of the debts. But Argentina was already strong enough being in economic co-operation with Brazil and China to show the bankers from Wall Street ‘the middle finger of her right hand’. Argentina started to prove to the world that about half of the creditors had already made a considerable profit on the Argentinian debts and that it was not fair that they should demand any more. This opinion was exposed by Chinese and Indian media. By the way, Argentina showed in black and white how some people tried to bring the country to bankruptcy and what it meant in practice.
The British ‘Guardian’ writes: ‘Three things worked for the benefit of Argentina. First, Kirchner’s card was strong thanks to the strong economy. Secondly, the truth about IMF was being revealed, that is why they wanted a quick settlement. Thirdly, Wall Street left Argentina just before the crisis and the negotiations were led by European banks. So the American Treasury was not pressed to play hard with Argentina. Also, they did not want Kirchner to make friends with a strong populist, President of Brazil, Lula.
Now many indebted countries may follow Argentina’s footsteps – and show the globalists their behind. Including Poland. And that is what the financial circles fear most. A precedence was created. A relatively non-significant country, held up against the wall, defied the wide-spread slogans of democracy, law and free market. And she won – at least so far. There has emerged a big chance for other countries. Now, when the American army is involved in Iraq, they can get rid of the yoke. You only need to want it and go for it. Just like the citizens of Argentina did, regardless of their social function, possessions and education.
Alex Lech Bajan
Polish American
CEO
RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
EMAIL: alex@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
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