Meanwhile in Cuckooland 22

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It’s official: Poland is more Catholic than a Pope now. While the church officially recognizes prophecies from Fatima, it does not includes them as a official dogma. Even Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a conservative chairman of Vatican’s Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith recommends prudence and stresses, that such events don’t have to be believed by all of the faithful.

Meanwhile the parliament of Poland, in theory a secular country, voted in a resolution that sanctions miracles from Fatima. In this document one can read that “in a exeptionally dramatic way, by forwarding the three-part secret and a spectacular Miracle of the Sun, the Mother of God reminded this evangelical thruth, that the only thing that people really need to be happy is the almighty God”. The vote was preceded by a discussion in which, suprisingly, PiS was talking politics and the opposition was quoting the clergy: PiS MP’s argued that cult of Fatima was important for the Polish struggle with communist regime and that in today’s geopolitical sistuation of Poland, message from Fatima becomes even more important. Wojciech Król from PO responded with a quote from late Józef Tischner, catholic priest and valued philosophy professor: “Faith is important, but it can’t replace intellect”.

It’s a good thing then, that father Tomasz Duszkiewicz is not only the man of faith, but of the intellect, that allowed him to achieve an MA in Theology. Since he happens also to be a friend of Jan Szyszko, minister of environment, his qualifications made him suitable for the needs of the forestry, and hegot himself a cosy job there. He don’t even have to attend, as the tasks assigned to him allows for remote work. He will be educating people on environment, and fighting fake news spread by environmental organizations, such as claims that cutting trees in national parks and protected primeval forest is a bad thing to do or that ridiculous accusation that hunting is about killing animals for fun. Father Duszkiewicz strongly opposes such un-Polish views spread by eco-terrorist organizations: “They say shooting animals is brutal killing” – he argues – “It has nothing to do with killing! There is nothing wrong with hunting. It’s a Polish tradition! How a Polish tradition can be a bad thing?”

To ensure that no foreign-sponsored eco-terrorist will be able to see what is going on in Białowieża forrest, the forestry superintendence issued a blanket ban on entering the woods in the area. As pointed out by Adam Wajrak, a popular journalist and environmental activist, this step will be a huge blow for local economy, as Białowieża is a world famous destination for bird watchers and nature lovers, and the ban on entry to the forest issued in order to hide the scale of mass logging, will strip the area from it’s only tourist asset.

In theory, entering the forest can result only in a fixed penalty issued by forestry guard or the police. But nobody can be sure any more. The times when institutions of Polish government were acting within the law are now things of the past as proved by an infamous case of Ameer Alkhawlany, and Iraqi PhD student who refused demands by counter-intelligence to spy for them on Muslims before World Youth Day in Kraków. They wanted him to go to Mosque and report on what is happening there, but Ameer is not even a religious person. Imagine, that you are in Poland and you are approached by sad men in black, who demand that you go to a Czech pub to spy on your fellow countrymates, and you don’t even like beer… You would not expect to be jailed for refusing such offer, would you? Well, Ameer did not expected it as well, and yet he was illegaly detained without the rights to defend himself. The accussations against him were allegedly so secret that even his attorney had no chance to see them. At the same time, as a person who was not arrested, but detained in refugee camp, he was expected to pay for his stay. Finally, after several months of torment his case made to the court, where was dismissed on the spot. Obviously the top secret thing was that counter-intelligence had nothing on him, apart from the will to revenge. The court ordered For Alkhawlany to be released, yet the spooks carried him away from the courtroom, allegedly injected with unknown substance, and he disapeared to the unknown location. Day later he was found in Iraqi Kurdistan, the area he has no connections at all. The best source on information on the case of Amer Alkhawlany is this Facebook profile, that includes also some information in English.
Meanwhile Ministry of Interior is really pleased with its actions. According to this infographics they ensure safety of Poles by refusing to accept “a wave of Muslim Migrants”. And if those nasty Muslims somehow get here, they would not dare to do such things as they did recently in Stockholm. Michał Lisiecki, a leading pro-PiS publicist, made it clear on Twitter: for each victim of islamist attacks, 10 Muslims should be decapitated. He invoked code of Hammurabi, but later deleted this tweet, propably after a writer Jacek Dehnel pointed out, that Hammurabi did not demanded tenfold payment for the crimes: this idea came from German governors of the Nazi occupied Poland. Lisiecki deleted his tweet and apologized for it, but screenshots of it were still circulating Polish social media, which obviously could not make him happy. He resolved to threaten those who forwarded it with a paragraph 256.2 of the penal code, which prohibits propagation of fascism or totalitarism. Oh, the irony…

Apart from that PiS and its followers is busy with celebrating some more anniversaries. From those of religious significance, they celebrated the anniversary of death of pope John Paul II. TVP, a PiS controlled state TV prepared a special material which included fragments of Karol Wojtyła’s sermons. If the viewer would be dumb enough to do not get the message, that “our pope” was against leftys, Muslims etc, the choice of clippings chosen in the way to support that thesis was illustrated with footage of such outrageous pictures like Nicea truck attack, gay pride marches or night club located in former church building. There were also elements from our own backyard, such as recent protest against introducing harsh anti-abortion laws. This “masterpiece” of impudent propaganda can be watched here.

As I write this words, another important anniversary is celebrated in Poland. 10^th of April used to be a date when tributes to 20 000 of Polish officers murdered in Katyń by NKVD were paid. Now it has been turned to a special issue of monthly instalments of dancing on people’s graves during which Jarosław Kaczyński for years invariably announces that we are just about to uncover the truth. Today yet another plaque remembering victims of plane crash was unveiled in Warsaw. People who don’t support PiS government might have to pay their tribute to Smoleńsk victims elsewhere, as they won’t be allowed to participate in Warsaw event. Despite it being a national celebration, the area was fenced off, and only people with named tickets will be allowed to get inside. It is not clear how such tickets can be obtained, although it was made clear that tickets will be refused if the person is unable to warrant dignity and ensure, that it will behave decently. Surely by that they mean “entry to PiS supporters only”, as if they were really about letting in people who behave with dignity, surely President Duda, who is guilty of breaking constitution several times, would not be allowed?

But don’t worry, as there is already more than 400 monuments to the victims of the crash (map here), and some might even include names of victims other than president Kaczyński and PiS politicians, unlike the plaque unveiled today. The prime minister’s office seems to have troubles with basic arithmetic, as it informed on Twitter, that it will commemorate all 96 victims of the crash, meanwhile if you look closer, you will see that only names of president Lech Kaczyński and three other PiS politicians are inscribed on it.

Prime ministerial office is not the only one that has problems with basic mathematics. Similar difficulties are faced by members of the Smoleńsk plane crash commission of Antoni Macierewicz (don’t mix them up with panel of experts from State Commission on Aircraft Accidents Investigation who already investigated the case and found it to be a tragic accident, this is a bunch of random ignorants who strive to prove that it was an assasination). Television TVN ridiculed all the schoolboys errrors and contradictions of so called “experts” in this 15 minute reportage, in a result the station was accused of spreading slippery journalism. I don’t want Britske Listy to be accused of such things, therefore I will try tell the truth:

If I understand correctly, according to Macierewicz’ experts the presidential plane was firstly crippled by several explosive materials placed in such place that they cut approx 20% of its wing, without igniting jet fuel inside. Then it has flew through several trees that caused no harm to it, probably because they were made of rubber, if we believe expert’s visualisations. Meanwhile Russian flight controllers were feeding the crew with false informations in order to make them crashing their plane, as allegedly this was only way to hide the fact, that the plane was actually blasted with 80 kg of TNT placed under the seats in the passenger cabin. In a result of that explosion, the plane turned to its back, which was physically impossible, so it didn’t. I know it is contradictory, but hey ho, planes are not designed to fly in a bubble of helium that was created there by Russian special forces. When the plane finally hit the ground, the Russian army generated artificial fog, to provide cover for Specnaz soldiers who were rummaging the wreckage and shooting the survivors. Or something along those lines, it’s hard to keep track, as they keep changing their versions. One thing is sure: it was an assasination, and we are just about to uncover the truth.

But most of Poles are fed up with this Smoleńsk crap. They have to live their everyday lives, tackling dangerous street infested with crazy government drivers (this time it was deputy defence minister’s driver who jumped red light and crashed into correctly travelling car) and equally dangerous columns of US Army (this time a military tanker rear-ended a learner driver’s car). Forget Smoleńsk, if government motorcade meets one of those US army fuel tanker columns, it could end in explosion that would make a Miracle of the Sun from Fatima look like a fire-cracker.

Photography: Creative Commons CC 2.5 via Wikipedia.
This piece was published in Britske Listy

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