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I can see that Bloomberg is still bloomberging: First paragraph: >> "Poland: reasonable strategy roiled by leftist impulses." The current government is a far

I can see that Bloomberg is still bloomberging: First paragraph: >> "Poland: reasonable strategy roiled by leftist impulses." The current government is a far right Catholic party that has just enacted a law partly denying the Holocaust (somewhat related to this, one of their senator sparked a scandal by posting actual Nazi propaganda online), and the country may have its EU voting right suspended due to the administration's attacks against the judiciary. But yeah the most important thing is that one of their economical policy happens to be left-leaning. On the economist Thomas Piketty: >> "Last month, the anti-capitalist economist wrote about ..." Piketty is left-leaning, not "anti-capitalist". Caption of a Piketty photograph: >> "Only academic. Until now." Piketty has been a (prominent) advisor for politicians on the French left for at least a decade. You go Bloomberg "News". You keep doing you.

dozzie 9y ago
> The current government is a far right Catholic party [...] More like "far center, a little to the left", with a twist for religion and nationalism. It doesn't have that much with being pro capitalism.
- ergo14 9y ago
  And conservatism. It is hard to categorize them easly, but they don't seem to be center of political scene in my opinon.
  - baq 9y ago
    They're national socialists. They don't like aliens, want to be in control of everything they deem important and are perfectly willing to break the rule of law for the good of society. They gave everyone with more than one child free money. They also call everything 'national' instead of 'public'. They think that the EU is a hindrance and an enemy, as if Putin didn't exist (that the part I can't understand the most.)
    - lainga 9y ago
      Why bring up Putin? It is possible to be in NATO but not the EU.
      - baq 9y ago
        Because there's no third option. It's either the EU or Russia; there's no independent in-between possible. NATO won't help with a self-inflicted economic and geographic squeeze.
    - bobthechef 9y ago
      You're parroting an extremely twisted line touted by some media sources. You must realize how absurd it is to call them national socialists given the accepted meaning of that term. It's actually quite clownish. W.r.t. aliens, that's nonsense. Even the article mentions Ukrainian immigration. For the record, Poland took in what were effectively ~1 million Ukrainian refugees and immigrants because of, you know, that war still being waged by Russia that the West keeps forgetting about. Germany and other Western countries didn't take in any Ukrainians. Poland refused to take in migrants during the migrant crisis for a number of reasons, including: refusal to acquiesce to Merkel's dictates after having she had utterly bungled that affair (most migrants aren't even Syrian refugees); migrants who had arrived in Poland and elsewhere eventually left and moved to Germany or Sweden anyway; Poland is largely homogeneous and having witnessed cultural-religious friction in the West decided not to subject itself to that experiment esp. given the precarious geopolitical place the country occupies; Poland diverts significant funds to efforts on Syrian soil to help Syrians on the ground; Poland is already in the Schengen zone and so what's this business with no aliens? > perfectly willing to break the rule of law for the good of society The current judiciary is full of law-breaking and less than savory people with ties to the old Communist establishment. That whole affair with the Tribunal (a Communist invention instituted by Jaruzelski during martial law to protect Communists, basically) is more complex. Every party had put its own candidates in and the previous ruling party, the Civic Platform, just before office, had exploited incoherent and unsatisfiable laws to create a situation that could only be resolved it seems the way it had been. Needless to say, it is far more complex than the way you claim it is. There is a general problem with Polish laws looking like Swiss cheese and issues with the Polish constitution. And even if it were the case that the rule of law was being violated for "the good of society", then perhaps there's a problem with the system if it needs to be violated to make necessary changes? > They gave everyone with more than one child free money. Not everyone agrees with that policy, but what is so wrong with it that you had to mention it as if it were an evil thing? The goal is to help slow or counteract the negative birth rate of the country. Europe in general is facing serious demographic issues. "Importing" large numbers of people from totally different cultures is not a great solution (see Germany, France). > They also call everything 'national' instead of 'public'. No, they don't. And when they do, so what? That's how state-owned institutions and programs are often labelled in Poland and elsewhere outside the US. The National Theatre, the Polish National Opera, the National Institute of Remembrance. What a silly grievance. > They think that the EU is a hindrance and an enemy, as if Putin didn't exist (that the part I can't understand the most.) They don't have issues with the European Union as such. They have issues with some ways the EU operates today and the way it relates to the countries of the former Eastern bloc. And who do you think makes up a good chunk of "Poland's owners" in this article? Hint: they're on the other side of "the river" and they own 80% of the Polish media. The current party, if you'll recall, signed the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. And w.r.t., Putin, Poland, and this party, are more keenly aware of the threat Putin poses than anyone, hence being one of very few countries actually meeting NATO defense quotas, hence trying to increase NATO presence in the region, hence pushing for the Three Seas Initiative with American support, hence previous attempts at installing a missile shield. The EU has done little to counter Putin. The West shows little solidarity with the countries most threatened by Putin. For example, Germany continues to carry on with its backroom deals and gas pipelines circumventing Poland, even though it would be cheaper to run the pipeline through Poland instead of through the Baltic. So, I really have no idea what you're talking about.
  - bobthechef 9y ago
    One of the sources Morawiecki draws from is Catholic social teaching, which, as can be expected, is not particularly friendly toward morally bankrupt, exploitative, and unrestrained incarnations of capitalism. So, really, opposition to that variety of destructive capitalism is not a left/right wing issue as it is erroneously often thought of in the United States. (The Church is also opposed to socialism as an inherently perverse model, but it is not categorically opposed to some government social programs, though I would suspect they are viewed as less than idea, preferring saner business practices and charity).
the_nozzle 9y ago
Pump your breaks there kid - the only thing that is being denied is that occupied Poland had anything to do with the installment of the holocaust by the Germans (they were next in line to the chimney). As much as I don't like the asshats from PiS, I do understand where they are coming from, after seeing "Polish concentration camps" in the western press on a monthly basis. To your other point - most of the polish judiciary has roots in the communist prosecution apparatus and is actively shielding all of the assholes that had a soft landing after the "toppling" of the communist government. Fuck'em.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  > most of the polish judiciary has roots in the communist prosecution apparatus and is actively shielding all of the assholes that had a soft landing after the "toppling" of the communist government I was under the impression that most of the people that were working as judges during the Soviet occupation are now dead or retired..?
  - the_nozzle 9y ago
    Most of the supreme court judges still hail from the old system (not sure of the average age but it's got to be around 70). Communism/socialism was in a slow decline when they started their careers, but that does not change the fact that they swore their fealty to the communist party.
    - nkkollaw 9y ago
      So you really think that because they swore to the Communist party 30 years ago they still push that agenda, even though it was a foreign power, that doesn't even exist anymore..?
  - bobthechef 9y ago
    He didn't say they were all judges. He said they had roots in the Communist establishment (his focus is on the deeply embedded secret police, but it goes beyond that). You also have Communist/post-Communist dynasties and clans where power is inherited and shared through ties and nepotistic practices stemming from the Communist period. It's nice to think that the fall of Communism automatically led to the wholesale liquidation of the Communist establishment, but that's fabular, and after you think about it, quite a silly thing to expect. It would be disastrous to simply remove them without having prepared to replace them. When a certain establishment had been running the state for half a century, with all its ties and knowledge and competencies, you couldn't just expel them all just like that. They and they alone have been running the state for almost 50 years! (Especially given that the pre-War elites were either exterminated by the Nazis and the Soviets, or fled the country, or whatever, but outsiders unless they joined the ranks of the People's Republic). So, unless you manage this transition somehow with the end goal of reducing if not disrupting the continuation of that corrupt establishment[0], an establishment known for profiting for its own selfish gains[1] and trained by Moscow to function as essentially colonial puppets of foreign interest, you still have a problem. [0] Not everyone in that establishment was corrupt, of course. [1] Hence the actual way in which state assets were privatized, often for funny money to foreign owners, sometimes for liquidation and removing domestic sources of competition, and in ways where former party apparatchiks and the like profited from their sale.
classicsnoot 9y ago
I would honestly like to know how clarifying the historical accuracy of claims is somehow denying the Holocaust. Your comment has been flagged so it is obvious the Cowards of Dang's Round Table have decided your invective inspired to much vitriol for their liking, but I think your self imposed mental illness should be given over to the light, not pushed into the shadows to fester in the minds of the inadvertently as well as willfully ignorant. Polish history is fraught with calumny and misunderstanding. Sometimes they are apathetic, anti-Semitic fools, other times they are reasonable and intelligent hosts of a hard pressed diaspora population. None of this has any bearing on the fact that the Poles are in a three-way tie for most fcked up by WWII. IMO they were hurt the most. On top of the travails of WWII they were then thrust into the Soviet sphere. I know this will seem like a reprehensible statement, but if you want to learn about a group fuked by their neighbors and shunned by the world with their history erased and their culture besmirched internationally, it is the the children of Rejtan, not Judah. Consider that both groups lost roughly the same numbers (gross total) but one group gained a Homeland as well as an upward trajectory that apparently has no ceiling while the other was doomed to the orbit of the worst political and social experiment in recorded history. So, I say to you: before you vomit up some BS you acquired on r/postcapitalism look into the deep history of a person, place, or people when they seem to act atypically or illogically. Sometimes the history can illuminate. If you think my remonstration is misplaced or my recounting of history sloppy or inaccurate, I'd love to carry on a deeper conversation. ... assuming I'm not shadow banned for thoughtcrimes ;)
- beedogs 9y ago
  Their government is still lunatic-right, regardless of how many hairs you feel like splitting about some of their policies.
  - classicsnoot 9y ago
    I only wrote about their history in regards to why they would like for the world to stop acting like they were complicit in the Jewish Holocaust. Does it ever get tiring calling your opponents some flavor of crazy, only to watch them sweep you out of power even as you eat your own in a reckless purity spiral? Thanks for Trump, BTW. We never would have been blessed by him if you fellas didn't exist.

dozzie 9y ago

> The current government is a far right Catholic party [...] More like "far center, a little to the left", with a twist for religion and nationalism. It doesn't have that much with being pro capitalism.

ergo14 9y ago
And conservatism. It is hard to categorize them easly, but they don't seem to be center of political scene in my opinon.
- baq 9y ago
  They're national socialists. They don't like aliens, want to be in control of everything they deem important and are perfectly willing to break the rule of law for the good of society. They gave everyone with more than one child free money. They also call everything 'national' instead of 'public'. They think that the EU is a hindrance and an enemy, as if Putin didn't exist (that the part I can't understand the most.)
  - lainga 9y ago
    Why bring up Putin? It is possible to be in NATO but not the EU.
    - baq 9y ago
      Because there's no third option. It's either the EU or Russia; there's no independent in-between possible. NATO won't help with a self-inflicted economic and geographic squeeze.
  - bobthechef 9y ago
    You're parroting an extremely twisted line touted by some media sources. You must realize how absurd it is to call them national socialists given the accepted meaning of that term. It's actually quite clownish. W.r.t. aliens, that's nonsense. Even the article mentions Ukrainian immigration. For the record, Poland took in what were effectively ~1 million Ukrainian refugees and immigrants because of, you know, that war still being waged by Russia that the West keeps forgetting about. Germany and other Western countries didn't take in any Ukrainians. Poland refused to take in migrants during the migrant crisis for a number of reasons, including: refusal to acquiesce to Merkel's dictates after having she had utterly bungled that affair (most migrants aren't even Syrian refugees); migrants who had arrived in Poland and elsewhere eventually left and moved to Germany or Sweden anyway; Poland is largely homogeneous and having witnessed cultural-religious friction in the West decided not to subject itself to that experiment esp. given the precarious geopolitical place the country occupies; Poland diverts significant funds to efforts on Syrian soil to help Syrians on the ground; Poland is already in the Schengen zone and so what's this business with no aliens? > perfectly willing to break the rule of law for the good of society The current judiciary is full of law-breaking and less than savory people with ties to the old Communist establishment. That whole affair with the Tribunal (a Communist invention instituted by Jaruzelski during martial law to protect Communists, basically) is more complex. Every party had put its own candidates in and the previous ruling party, the Civic Platform, just before office, had exploited incoherent and unsatisfiable laws to create a situation that could only be resolved it seems the way it had been. Needless to say, it is far more complex than the way you claim it is. There is a general problem with Polish laws looking like Swiss cheese and issues with the Polish constitution. And even if it were the case that the rule of law was being violated for "the good of society", then perhaps there's a problem with the system if it needs to be violated to make necessary changes? > They gave everyone with more than one child free money. Not everyone agrees with that policy, but what is so wrong with it that you had to mention it as if it were an evil thing? The goal is to help slow or counteract the negative birth rate of the country. Europe in general is facing serious demographic issues. "Importing" large numbers of people from totally different cultures is not a great solution (see Germany, France). > They also call everything 'national' instead of 'public'. No, they don't. And when they do, so what? That's how state-owned institutions and programs are often labelled in Poland and elsewhere outside the US. The National Theatre, the Polish National Opera, the National Institute of Remembrance. What a silly grievance. > They think that the EU is a hindrance and an enemy, as if Putin didn't exist (that the part I can't understand the most.) They don't have issues with the European Union as such. They have issues with some ways the EU operates today and the way it relates to the countries of the former Eastern bloc. And who do you think makes up a good chunk of "Poland's owners" in this article? Hint: they're on the other side of "the river" and they own 80% of the Polish media. The current party, if you'll recall, signed the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. And w.r.t., Putin, Poland, and this party, are more keenly aware of the threat Putin poses than anyone, hence being one of very few countries actually meeting NATO defense quotas, hence trying to increase NATO presence in the region, hence pushing for the Three Seas Initiative with American support, hence previous attempts at installing a missile shield. The EU has done little to counter Putin. The West shows little solidarity with the countries most threatened by Putin. For example, Germany continues to carry on with its backroom deals and gas pipelines circumventing Poland, even though it would be cheaper to run the pipeline through Poland instead of through the Baltic. So, I really have no idea what you're talking about.
- bobthechef 9y ago
  One of the sources Morawiecki draws from is Catholic social teaching, which, as can be expected, is not particularly friendly toward morally bankrupt, exploitative, and unrestrained incarnations of capitalism. So, really, opposition to that variety of destructive capitalism is not a left/right wing issue as it is erroneously often thought of in the United States. (The Church is also opposed to socialism as an inherently perverse model, but it is not categorically opposed to some government social programs, though I would suspect they are viewed as less than idea, preferring saner business practices and charity).

the_nozzle 9y ago

Pump your breaks there kid - the only thing that is being denied is that occupied Poland had anything to do with the installment of the holocaust by the Germans (they were next in line to the chimney). As much as I don't like the asshats from PiS, I do understand where they are coming from, after seeing "Polish concentration camps" in the western press on a monthly basis. To your other point - most of the polish judiciary has roots in the communist prosecution apparatus and is actively shielding all of the assholes that had a soft landing after the "toppling" of the communist government. Fuck'em.

nkkollaw 9y ago
> most of the polish judiciary has roots in the communist prosecution apparatus and is actively shielding all of the assholes that had a soft landing after the "toppling" of the communist government I was under the impression that most of the people that were working as judges during the Soviet occupation are now dead or retired..?
- the_nozzle 9y ago
  Most of the supreme court judges still hail from the old system (not sure of the average age but it's got to be around 70). Communism/socialism was in a slow decline when they started their careers, but that does not change the fact that they swore their fealty to the communist party.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    So you really think that because they swore to the Communist party 30 years ago they still push that agenda, even though it was a foreign power, that doesn't even exist anymore..?
- bobthechef 9y ago
  He didn't say they were all judges. He said they had roots in the Communist establishment (his focus is on the deeply embedded secret police, but it goes beyond that). You also have Communist/post-Communist dynasties and clans where power is inherited and shared through ties and nepotistic practices stemming from the Communist period. It's nice to think that the fall of Communism automatically led to the wholesale liquidation of the Communist establishment, but that's fabular, and after you think about it, quite a silly thing to expect. It would be disastrous to simply remove them without having prepared to replace them. When a certain establishment had been running the state for half a century, with all its ties and knowledge and competencies, you couldn't just expel them all just like that. They and they alone have been running the state for almost 50 years! (Especially given that the pre-War elites were either exterminated by the Nazis and the Soviets, or fled the country, or whatever, but outsiders unless they joined the ranks of the People's Republic). So, unless you manage this transition somehow with the end goal of reducing if not disrupting the continuation of that corrupt establishment[0], an establishment known for profiting for its own selfish gains[1] and trained by Moscow to function as essentially colonial puppets of foreign interest, you still have a problem. [0] Not everyone in that establishment was corrupt, of course. [1] Hence the actual way in which state assets were privatized, often for funny money to foreign owners, sometimes for liquidation and removing domestic sources of competition, and in ways where former party apparatchiks and the like profited from their sale.

classicsnoot 9y ago

I would honestly like to know how clarifying the historical accuracy of claims is somehow denying the Holocaust. Your comment has been flagged so it is obvious the Cowards of Dang's Round Table have decided your invective inspired to much vitriol for their liking, but I think your self imposed mental illness should be given over to the light, not pushed into the shadows to fester in the minds of the inadvertently as well as willfully ignorant. Polish history is fraught with calumny and misunderstanding. Sometimes they are apathetic, anti-Semitic fools, other times they are reasonable and intelligent hosts of a hard pressed diaspora population. None of this has any bearing on the fact that the Poles are in a three-way tie for most fcked up by WWII. IMO they were hurt the most. On top of the travails of WWII they were then thrust into the Soviet sphere. I know this will seem like a reprehensible statement, but if you want to learn about a group fuked by their neighbors and shunned by the world with their history erased and their culture besmirched internationally, it is the the children of Rejtan, not Judah. Consider that both groups lost roughly the same numbers (gross total) but one group gained a Homeland as well as an upward trajectory that apparently has no ceiling while the other was doomed to the orbit of the worst political and social experiment in recorded history. So, I say to you: before you vomit up some BS you acquired on r/postcapitalism look into the deep history of a person, place, or people when they seem to act atypically or illogically. Sometimes the history can illuminate. If you think my remonstration is misplaced or my recounting of history sloppy or inaccurate, I'd love to carry on a deeper conversation. ... assuming I'm not shadow banned for thoughtcrimes ;)

beedogs 9y ago
Their government is still lunatic-right, regardless of how many hairs you feel like splitting about some of their policies.
- classicsnoot 9y ago
  I only wrote about their history in regards to why they would like for the world to stop acting like they were complicit in the Jewish Holocaust. Does it ever get tiring calling your opponents some flavor of crazy, only to watch them sweep you out of power even as you eat your own in a reckless purity spiral? Thanks for Trump, BTW. We never would have been blessed by him if you fellas didn't exist.