As predicted, with the election won PiS instantly executed a radical handbrake turn. Promises by Andrzej Duda – such as those of additional money for pensioners – were scrapped day after the preliminary results were announced. Apparently it would be too expensive. Promises “tourist token”, a coupon that was supposed to allow Poles to enjoy holidays, designed to help the tourist industry, will also be not available to the pensioners. At the same time, one will not be able to use it to buy services from small businesses such as tourist guides or kayak rental places – this opportunity was cancelled as PiS MP’s suspect, that Poles will use it to pay for services not related to tourism. The old saying goes that “everyone sees others through the prism of himself” and that explains why they assume that others will also use that money to steal from the government. But the fact that the coupon will be only used when paying for the big companies means that its whole point, helping the Polish tourist industry, was lost.
Click HERE to read the previous part of the series
Click HERE to see all chapters of the series so far
Yeah, the results of the work carried in the Polish parliament might not be the smartest. But at least it’s a lot of fun. Especially the recent vote on choosing the members of the paedophilia commission. The speaker of parliament could not stop laughing when she realized how funny the word “member” is. You know, “member” is just the other way to say “penis”. Hahaha, hihihi, let someone stop this madness!!!
Speaker Witek seems to have a lot of good humour recently. She decided that the parliamentary committee will look into citizen’s project of the bill that would make “dressing on 31st October as a skeleton, witch, vampire, devil or other being associated with hell” punishable by no less than 15 days of prison. Well, it’s nice to see that PiS finally listens to citizens as promised.
Another interesting act of law, that already went through the parliament, is a new bill allowing burning trees in electric power stations. This apparently PiS’ idea of “renewable energy sources” and fighting climate change. They argue that they only mean the trees that are no use for the timber industry (broken, dead, too small, infected by borer beetles etc.)but the regulation is so unclear that practically every kind of timber can end in power plants. Could it be because State Forest, as usual, chopped plenty of trees for whom they have no buyer now due to economical slowdown caused by pandemics? Anyway, environmental organizations don’t’ think this is funny at all.
But it’s not only the parliament that has exercises humour recently. After TVP has been accused of spreading hate (they already lost some court cases when they protested against having their hate campaign against Gdańsk mayor Paweł Adamowicz being associated with his murder), they reshuffled their Ethics Committee. So now all complaints about TVP’s impartiality and bias will be considered by the team of its leading pro-PiS propagandists, including a man who compared Donald Tusk to Hitler and Stalin.
Those standards are now likely to be forced on other media as well. Jarosław Kaczyński in his interview referred openly to TVP as “our media” and accused the “other media” of manipulation. According to him, it’s because of the independent media that young people don’t support PiS and Andrzej Duda. Luckily, this is soon to change as the bill of “media repolonization” is to be ready soon, as Poland should not be different from Western countries and it should follow their example.
Surely he meant “Eastern”? Because when it comes to Western, the PiS approach to media is not exactly recognized as valuable input. After Andrzej Duda referred to a commentary on Polish Politics in Die Welt as a “German attack”, 31 foreign reporters from countries such as France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK, Slovakia, Lithuania and Romania protested against such attack on Die Welt reporter Phillip Fritz.
Still, we don’t exactly know yet how that “repolonization of media” is going to look. But some PiS supporters decided to take the matter in their own hands: the offices of “Fakty” has been vandalized. Their computers were vandalized, their data storage devices stolen and the graffiti “FAKTY TVN GET TO F*CK” was painted on the wall. If the police are going to look for perpetrators, I advise them to start looking for stupid people, as they vandalized offices of wrong “Fakty” – this was not TVN’s flagship news program, but the completely unrelated magazine of the same title. Perhaps the lady who drove her car under the train, as “the train was blowing its horn, so she thought its giving way to her” might be a good point to start (she walked out of the wreckage with just minor injuries)?
But despite such attacks, the media are still free – for now. And thanks to that we can see how PiS already pressed the pedal to the metal. LGBT activist fighting against the van that drives around Warsaw plastered with false information associating being gay with paedophilia and spreads hateful messages from the speakers has been brutally arrested. Since they are accused of merely minor criminal damage, the footage of the police bursting into their flat and brutally handcuffing the activist behind the back seems to be a clear example of the political persecution. When the arrested asked to be allowed to put socks and shoes on, the police officer was clearly amused as he gave permission but refused to take the handcuffs off, thus making it impossible. Bart Staszewski, another activist known for placing signs “LGBT-Free zones” on the entry signs to the places that proclaimed itself to be such zones have also been interrogated by the police. So far as a witness, as this gives him fewer rights than if he was interrogated as an accused. He was really amazed by the amount of intelligence the police amassed about him and his friends, especially that his acts can be at best considered to be a minor offence.
And that’s just the beginning of “national purification” if we believe the participants of the neo-Nazi march that took place in Katowice. In the pipeline, there is also withdrawing Poland from the Istanbul convention for preventing violence against women and domestic violence. The government sources claim, that this convention is used to “force through gender ideology that Catholic and pro-family organizations consider to be alien to Polish family traditions”. That is apparently good enough reason to reduce protections for the victims of domestic violence…
Now the Polish government, along with Victor Orban, fights in Brussels so the payments to the EU countries cannot be tied to the observance of rule of law. Incidentally, that scandalous idea is also about forcing gay marriages and LGBT ideology on Poland – if we believe Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro.
The PiS also signalled that they are going to crush the independence of the local governments. “It’s time to break those big-city principalities ruled by the opposition” – thundered one of PiS MP’s, apparently unable to come to terms with the fact, that most of the big cities don’t want to be ruled by PiS.
And I am sure that it will be well reported by pro-government media. Because they can afford to. While papers and magazines everywhere in the world struggle during those difficult times of pandemics, those that support PiS did not suffer at all, thanks to the advertisement purchased by state-controlled firms and institutions. Some titles, like Gazeta Polska Codziennie, noted a growth of 87% compared to the same month last year. The state-controlled companies doubled or even tripled their advertising budget just to be able to afford such overwhelming support of pro-government media.
In other news:
- the court upheld the appeal of the man fined for cycling without his face masks. The ruling confirms the expertise of legal experts that forcing people to wear face masks without introducing the state of emergency due to pandemic was illegal.
- the other court found Sebastian Kościelnik, a young driver rammed by Beata Szydło’s limo, guilty of causing the accident. He won’t be punished but has to pay 1000 złotych to her and her driver. This time legal experts agree that the sentence is scandalous.
- it has emerged that Andrzej Duda was late, and therefore his plane did not manage to leave from the small airport in Babimost near Zielona Góra before the airport gets closed for the night. The plane finally departed, but the following of procedures is questioned. The presidential staff denies putting any pressure on the crew. Apparently they have learned nothing from the story of the infamous flight to Smoleńsk.
- the vintage bridge >in Pilichowice near Jelenia Góra is to be blown up as a part of the shooting of the new Mission: Impossible movie. Apparently destroying heritage constructions is “good for promotion for the country”, and it’s not a problem that the bridge is about to be listed, as “it is old anyway” and the filmmakers pay enough to build a new one.
And last but not least: the biggest news of recent days: the wedding of Jacek Kurski, chief of TVP. The wedding took place on the 18th of June, and after the ceremony in Łagiewniki sanctuary, the newlywed couple in a colourful procession led by Jarosław Kaczyński himself went to visit the grave of his brother at Wawel castle. As one does, there is no better wedding party than visiting graves of the family of your political leader nowadays (no, I am joking, it was cringe as hell). But this was not an ordinary wedding, oh no. It does not happen every day that the Church allows people who are not widowed to place their vows for the second time – and both Jarosław Kurski and his wife have been married in church before, and both have kids from their previous marriages. But apparently if one has money and connections amongst bishops, everything has been possible, so the previous marriage of Kurski, despite lasting 24 years, resulting in three children, and being blessed by no one else but Pope John Paul II himself has been deemed invalid. According to the church’s law, it is as it never existed, which for obvious reasons sparkled controversy. If Kurski’s children are also god-fearing Catholics, they might be pissed, as after the church ruled that their parents’ marriage never existed, they became children of illegitimate birth and the Bible says: none of the illegitimate birth nor any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord – not even in the tenth generation. (Deuteronomy 23).
Still, the problem of getting to the assembly of the Lord might be relevant only to two of those children, as Gazeta Wyborcza just published a long investigative piece, according to which his oldest son for many years molested 8 years younger daughter of their neighbours. To make this all even more awkward, Wyborcza’s chief editor is Jarosław Kurski, Jacek Kurski’s own brother.
Oh, those are certainly very interesting times for Kurski’s family. But remember, it’s gay people who destroy marriages and introduce paedophilia.
This piece was published in Britské Listy
Illustration created used public domain picture from Pickpik.com and photo entitled Angry Bride by Cristina Valencia (C.C. 2.0)
