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Remembering the revolution (the better one)

From The Observer via the Guardian: A time when hope replaced repression

By the start of 1989 communist regimes had ruled eastern Europe for 45 years. By the end of that year they had all been routed by extraordinary public uprisings. Here, Neal Ascherson, who reported on the momentous events for the Observer, recalls the idealism and anger that drove the protests…

Twenty years ago, a landscape began to tremble. At first, nobody noticed anything special. In January 1989, business was much as usual in the Soviet half of Europe. Strikes in Poland, harassment of East German dissidents, a Czech playwright called Vaclav Havel arrested yet again after a small demonstration. The west had more important stories to think about. George Bush Sr was being inaugurated as president of the United States, and Salman Rushdie was in hiding after the Iranian fatwa. In Moscow, that wonderful Mikhail Gorbachev was pushing ahead with his perestroika and glasnost. (How the Russians must love him!)

In London, a Czech exile named Karel Kyncl wrote an article about the arrests in Prague. He said that he had a funny feeling about Havel. He wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he became president of Czechoslovakia and much sooner than anyone thought. Readers smiled indulgently. Poor old Karel!

Then the trembling increased. The mountains around the cold war horizon began to wobble and fall over. Polish communism went first. Next, Hungary’s rulers published an abdication plan. In August, the Baltic republics of the Soviet Union began to demand independence. In November, Erich Honecker of East Germany was overthrown, and on 9 November the Berlin Wall was breached.

Next day, a palace coup in Bulgaria brought down Todor Zhivkov, the party leader. On 28 November, the Czechoslovak communist regime surrendered to the people. In December, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania was chased from office and shot. And just three days before the end of the year, on 29 December 1989, Vaclav Havel became president of the Czechoslovak Republic.

…

The revolutions began in Poland. In 1981, General Jaruzelski had crushed the Solidarity movement and imposed martial law. But everyone knew that the system was mortally wounded. It was just a matter of waiting for it to die. Boys and girls went round wearing tiny Canada badges. The shorthand letters CDN also stood, in Polish, for three words: “Next Instalment Shortly”. Poland’s commercial break ended in 1988, as a fresh wave of strikes broke out. The government, nerveless and divided, eventually re-legalised Solidarity and opened round-table talks with the opposition in February 1989.

The round table sanctioned independent trade unions and provided for multi-party elections in June. Reluctantly, Solidarity accepted that the elections had to be rigged. A block of seats reserved for “official” candidates would ensure a regime majority in the Sejm (the lower chamber of parliament).

But then the people stepped in. I was in the cafe of the Europejski hotel in Warsaw on that June day, as young Solidarity messengers piled our table with billows of exit poll print-outs. At first, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Solidarity had won all but one of the openly contested seats. But in those reserved seats, only two of all the communist candidates had reached the 50 per cent of the vote needed to qualify. The voters had worked out how to destroy them.

That summer morning, the whole game suddenly changed. After 45 years, Polish communism had been annihilated. And the incredible, which was also the inevitable, now took place as negotiations opened to form the first non-communist government in Soviet Europe. On 12 September, a dignified Catholic editor named Tadeusz Mazowiecki became prime minister. The benches of the Sejm were crowded with skinny, laughing young men and women who, only months before, had been dodging the security police.

…

Anyone who took part in the 1989 revolutions, or in the resistance movements that prepared the way for them, has to work through mixed feelings today. Disappointments live with an enduring sense that the victory was real and can’t be reversed. In Poland, I remember Marta Krzystofowicz from those times as a graceful, intrepid conspirator for freedom. Today, she is married and has a grown-up daughter. She says: “I have a glass of fresh orange juice, an uncensored newspaper to read, a passport in my desk drawer. It’s enough.”

Nobody regrets being part of a great and good revolution. That soaring feeling, physical and spiritual at once, has often been described. A girl in Leipzig told reporter Steve Crawshaw: “I felt that I could fly!” The Polish poet Galczynski once wrote: “When the wind of history blows/ The people, like lovely birds/ Grow wings …” And in 1989, for a few beautiful months, they flew.

Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, ,

Holy Memory – Prof. Leszek Kołakowski

From the BBC: Polish anti-Marxist thinker dies

The Polish philosopher and historian of ideas, Leszek Kołakowski has died in hospital in Oxford, England. He was 81.

One of the few 20th Century eastern European thinkers to gain international renown, he spent almost half of his life in exile from his native country.

He argued that the cruelties of Stalinism were not an aberration, but the logical conclusion of Marxism.

MPs in Warsaw observed a minute’s silence to remember his contribution to a free and democratic Poland.

Leszek Kołakowski was born in Radom, Poland, 12 years before the outbreak of the World War II.

Under the Nazi occupation of Poland school classes were banned so he taught himself foreign languages and literature.

He even systematically read through an incomplete encyclopaedia he found.

He once said he knew everything under the letters, A, D and E, but nothing about the Bs and the Cs.

After the war he studied philosophy and became a professor. Seeing the destruction wrought by the Nazis in Poland he joined the Communist Party.

But he gradually became disillusioned and more daring in his criticism of the system. In 1966 he was expelled from the party and two years later he lost his job.

Seeking exile in the West, he eventually settled at Oxford’s All Souls college where he wrote his best-known work, the three-volume Main Currents of Marxism, considered by some to be one of the most important books on political theory of the 20th Century.

In the 1980s, from his base in Britain, he supported Poland’s pro-democracy Solidarity movement which overthrew communism in 1989.

For many of its leaders he was an icon.

Along with a photographic retrospective, Interia carries the following quotes:

Czeslaw Milosz: “how could Leszek Kołakowski, philosopher, positivist, materialist and Marxist become Kołakowski the wise, turning against the philosophies of all the isims?”

Fr. Józef Tischner: He was “the spiritual master of the liberal intelligentsia”

From the Professor: “How to be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist.”

Christian Witness, Perspective, ,

Where hope is found

Eminem’s new video draws parallels between his career and the economic state of his hometown, Detroit.

Having grown up in a declining rust belt city I see the parallels. The struggle is to continuously recognize your inner beauty and that of your neighbor in the midst of decay, neglect, and abuse. Faith is that lifeline. The call of our Lord and Savior breaks through the walls and the depression. He tells you that beauty does exist — right there in your humanity and that of your neighbor.

Christian Witness, , , , , , ,

The theological economist

The Bishop of Rome issued his encyclical Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) on the subject of Christian teaching on economics. The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, S.J. comments on it in the Washington Post. A few excerpts here:

“Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end,” he writes in Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth), but “once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.”

He decries that “Corruption and illegality are unfortunately evident in the conduct of the economic and political class in rich countries…as well as in poor ones.” He also says that “Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers.”

…Benedict disappointedly acknowledges that “The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase” [italics in text].

“The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require,” he affirms, “that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone.”

In his encyclical, Benedict calls for charity guided by truth. “Charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples,” he says. “Justice must be applied to every phase of economic activity, because this is always concerned with man and his needs,” he writes. “Locating resources, financing, production, consumption and all the other phases in the economic cycle inevitably have moral implications. Thus every economic decision has a moral consequence.”

The encyclical notes the globalization that has taken place since Paul’s encyclical was issued over 40 years ago. Alas, “as society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbors but does not make us brothers.” True “development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side.” The goal of such development is “rescuing peoples, first and foremost, from hunger, deprivation, endemic diseases and illiteracy.”

Sounding like a union organizer, Benedict argues that “Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country’s international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development.”

Rather the goal should be decent employment for everyone, which “means work that expresses the essential dignity of every man and woman in the context of their particular society: work that is freely chosen, effectively associating workers, both men and women, with the development of their community; work that enables the worker to be respected and free from any form of discrimination; work that makes it possible for families to meet their needs and provide schooling for their children, without the children themselves being forced into labor; work that permits the workers to organize themselves freely, and to make their voices heard; work that leaves enough room for rediscovering one’s roots at a personal, familial and spiritual level; work that guarantees those who have retired a decent standard of living.”

…

While Benedict acknowledges the role of the market, he emphasizes that “the social doctrine of the Church has unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice for the market economy.” He unflinchingly supports the “redistribution of wealth” when he talks about the role of government. “Grave imbalances are produced,” he writes, “when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.”

Although Benedict’s emphasis in the encyclical is on the theological foundations of Catholic social teaching, amid the dense prose there are indications, as shown above, that he is to the left of almost every politician in America. What politician would casually refer to “redistribution of wealth” or talk of international governing bodies to regulate the economy? Who would call for increasing the percentage of GDP devoted to foreign aid? Who would call for the adoption of “new life-styles ‘in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments'”?

Benedict believes that if people understood God’s love for every single human person and his divine plan for us, then believers would recognize their duty “to unite their efforts with those of all men and women of good will, with the followers of other religions and with non-believers, so that this world of ours may effectively correspond to the divine plan: living as a family under the Creator’s watchful eye.”

I say Amen! amen! It will be interesting to watch as Roman Catholic and other Christian business people and political leaders dance their way around this, or more likely choose to ignore it. The reaction will be much the same as that of Roman Catholics and other Christians who ignored, countermanded, or attempted to out theologize and teach John Paul II on the Iraq war.

Perspective, Poetry, Political, , , ,

June 25 – Political lunacy NY style and Lunatics All Around Me by Ryszard Riedel

A few comments and observations:

Lunacy 101a — Tell them you’re a what?

I work with a lot of very reasonable, hard working, excellent folks. They put their heart and soul into their work and are not beholden to the political elite. It is one wonderful aspect of the civil service merit system (there’s a lot of bad too), i.e., a glaring lack of hacks. The same is true of the people at the top, while appointed politically, they generally serve with dignity and do so responsibly, carrying out the mission of the agency.

In studying the sociology of bureaucracy you learn that those at the top can do little to change the bureaucracy, and what they can do is often on the fringes, externals as it were. The best leaders enable the workers in the bureaucracy, providing them with the means to carry out the mission more efficiently and effectively. They don’t shy away from change, but make change organic. The bad leaders are the ones who take advantage or who actually think they can rule with an iron fist.

Interestingly, the bureaucratic system often changes the leader to a far greater extent than the bureaucracy is changed by them. The leaders take an ownership interest, and the best leaders meld in, adopt the bureaucracy, because the bureaucracy adopted them.

All that being said, somewhere near the top lie the “true believers,” the hacks, political mercy hires, and other assorted hangers on. If you want to have fun with these folks, tell them what you believe. The true believers proudly carry the “conservative” or the “egalitarian” card with honor (their brand). It is their badge of courage.

When engaged in conversation I love to mention my libertarian streak. This sort of pronouncement takes folks completely off guard because they either don’t know what it means, or they only know it as a caricature. The twisted facial expressions are priceless. It’s really great with the egalitarian crowd because they so believe that they know what’s best for each person and culture. That comes with so much baggage, so many preconceived notions (prejudice really), that their heads practically explode when you say that people are best off when left to determine their own fate.

Lesson One: Begin your adventures in New York’s political lunacy by telling everyone you’re a libertarian.

Lunacy 101b — Use the bigotry of power.

As you may know, New York’s Senate is split with 51 Republican/Republican sympathizer votes and 51 Democrats. Both sides are vying to control the Senate floor. There is no tie breaking vote because we do not have a lieutenant governor. He became governor when the last one resigned, and New York’s Constitution make no provision for replacing the lieutenant governor.

The struggle for control is best exemplified in the fight over the Speaker’s Chair. In the past few days the Democrats snuck in and took control before the Republicans could get there. The reverse happened in the days prior. The Democrats made a big show of placing females in the Speaker’s chair, they being guarded in their position by the Sergeant-At-Arms.

I don’t think anyone noticed this angle, or at least I haven’t read it anywhere, but isn’t that simple bigotry and prejudice on display. They placed women in the spot because the other side wouldn’t dare to physically push them out of their position at the rostrum. They basically determined that “traditional” deference to a woman (and aren’t the Democrats supposed to be the party of equal rights and so forth) would win the day. So to Senators Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Diane Savino, thank you for your portrayal of the “weaker-sex” and for allowing the nice burly Sergeant-At-Arms to protect you.

Lesson Two: Enhance New York’s political lunacy through the exploitation of a person’s sex for political gain.

Lunacy 101c — Agree that you’re a libertarian too.

I actually love what’s happening in the State Senate for several reasons. First, it has created a lot of rubrical fun in relation to parliamentary procedure. The geeky parliamentarians (or here) among us are in heaven and have been weighing the relative merits of Mason’s Manual of Legislative Procedure versus Robert’s Rules of Order. Second, and most importantly, nothing is getting done.

Casey Seiler of the Times Union writes in Hitting bottom? Senate sessions go from bad to worse:

I kept waiting for some distinguished veteran lawmaker — somebody who knows that this will be his or her final term in the chamber — to burst into tears, collapse to the floor and call out for heaven’s punishment to fall on the chamber immediately.

I include that for the sheer humor, and because it would be interesting to see (both the call and the actual punishment), but more to the point:

So that was bad. But what happened in Thursday’s faux session was even worse — rock bottom.

Instead of a procedural rugby match, we witnessed a much more genteel flouting of the governor’s renewed call for a productive special session. The Democrats gaveled in and gaveled out in three minutes, and then left the chamber. Then the Republicans and breakaway Democrat Pedro Espada Jr. arrived, and repeated the exercise in about 150 seconds. Amazingly, no legislation was passed.

It wasn’t “A Chorus Line” or “Cats,” but it was a carefully choreographed show designed not for value or entertainment but to allow both sides to avoid another car-crash spectacle. This elaborate gavotte was obviously worked out in advance by both parties, who have otherwise failed to agree on anything in two and a half weeks.

To be clear: As time-sensitive legislation languishes, the only matter that both sides can find common ground onNot necessarily true. Both sides signed the necessary paperwork to assure that legislators continue to get paid. Priorities you know. is that they don’t want to look like bozos. When their collective vanity is at stake, they’re willing to take immediate and decisive action.

That’s really the best part in all of this. Not “Amazingly, no legislation was passed,” but ‘Thankfully, no legislation was passed.’ Nothing is happening. No more freedoms are being taken away and the so called “time-sensitive legislation,” which is merely authorization for local tax increases (because in New York the State has to grant authority to local governments to do local business), isn’t getting passed.

The euphemisms for authorizing tax increases is wonderful. They call it “home rule messages” or “noncontroversial pieces of legislation.” It should be controversial and failure to do these things means that hard choices will have to be made. I hope they argue forever, and in true New York form are returned to office to keep arguing. Government would do nothing, no tax increases, no more invasive legislation for the common good, and then…

Lesson Three: New York’s political lunacy would be best enhanced through the forcible conversion of everyone into libertarians.

The Polish musical group Dżem as a song from their album Lunatics entitled “Lunatics All around Me” which I have translated for you. Enjoy….

Evil dreams have no illusions
The dreams all men fear
Blackest night, the city sleeps
No one can wake up
A cat on the roof, a rat in the gutter
The moon tempting in a white garment
No green light

Ref: The lunatics surround me Ooo!

Apartment buildings casting black shadows
and like a white tear, an empty open window
The Lunatics flee
The Lunatics flee
In love with you
From around that same window
I see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing

Translated by Dcn. Jim

Sen to zło, nie ma złudzeń
Sen ogarnął wszystkich ludzi
Czarno wokół, miasto śpi
Nikt nie może się obudzić
Kot na dachu, szczur w kanale
Księżyc kusi mundurki białe
Zielonego światła brak

Ref: Lunatycy otaczają mnie O, o, o !

Bloki czarne cień rzucają
A z otwartych, ślepych okien jak łzy białe
Lunatycy uciekają
Lunatycy uciekają
Zakochani w sobie
Wokół same lustra otaczają ich
Nie widzą nic nie, nie słyszą nic, nic nie czują

Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, ,

20 years ago today – High Noon – the downfall of communism

ulotki_plakaty_3338190

High Noon – June 4, 1989

ulotki_plakaty_3338171

Do not sleep because it’s time to vote.

Zachowaj, Panie Boże, Ojczyznę naszą.
Która w Tobie, Boże nasz, nadzieję pokłada.

Ześlij, Panie, pomoc z przybytku Twego.
Z nieba wysokiego wesprzyj ją.

Niech nie weźmie nad nią góry nieprzyjaciel.
A duch nieprawości niech jej nie szkodzi.

Niech Bóg sprowadzi pokój i szczęście do domu jej.
I bezpieczeństwo do posiadłości jej.

Panie, wysłuchaj modlitwę moją.
A wołanie nasze niech do Ciebie przyjdzie.

Pan z Wami.
I z duchem Twoim.

Módlmy się: Błagamy Cię Panie, za przyczyną Najświętszej Maryi Panny, Królowej Polski, i wstawiennictwem Świętych Patronów naszych, ochraniaj Rzeczpospolita Polska od wszelkich przeciwności, zachowaj ją od zasadzek nieprzyjaciól oraz błogosław nam i władzom naszym we wszystkich dobrych przedsięwzięciach. Przez Chrystusa Pana naszego. Amen.

Pomoc Boźa niech będzie zawsze z nami. Amen. — From Ojcze Nasz

Translation by Dcn. Jim

Save, O Lord God, our Motherland.
For in You, O God, we have our hope.

Lord, bring Your help from on high.
From on high, aid us.

May the enemy not overtake us.
Nor a spirit of evil harm us.

May God bring peace and happiness to our homeland.
And security to her possessions.

Lord, hear our prayer.
And let our cry come unto you.

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.

Let us pray: Vouchsafe O Lord, through the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland, and through the intercession of our Patron Saints, protect our Republic of Poland, keep it from enemy ambush and bless us and our authorities in all good works. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In the Lord is our help, now, and forever and ever. Amen.

Perspective, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, , , , ,

Pounding the pulpit for the Polish vote

From the DAWN Media Group: Poland’s Roman Catholic Church urges followers to vote

WARSAW: Poland’s powerful Roman Catholic Church is urging it’s huge flock in the country to use the European Parliament election this week to pick lawmakers who reflect church values.

More than 90 percent of Poles are Catholic and Polish bishops recently called on ‘all faithful to choose people in the elections who fully represent the point of view of the Church regarding ethical and social questions, in particular the protection of human life, marriage and the family.’

‘In this way, each one of us can contribute to the renewal of the Christian face and culture of Europe,’ the top clergy said, highlighting their opposition to abortion, in vitro fertilisation, euthanasia and gay marriage.

‘Obviously the church thinks it is it’s obligation to take a position in the debate,’ sociologist Jacek Kucharczyk from the independent Institute of Public Affairs (ISP) think tank in Warsaw told AFP.

‘Nevertheless, many Poles who define themselves as Catholics do not accept the church’s involvement in politics,’ he added. ‘They don’t like to have priests indicate candidates that a Catholic should support.’ During Poland’s 2001 parliamentary elections, Poles voted en masse for the leftist ex-communist party and for ex-communist Aleksander Kwasniewski as president in 1995, instead of Poland’s Solidarity union legend Lech Walesa, a devout Catholic. Kwasniewski won a second term in 2000…

This is why the Roman Church in Poland is loosing adherents, most particularly among the young. Prof. Zdislaw Mach, Director of the Centre for European Studies, Jagiellonian University, concludes in The Roman Catholic Church in Poland and the Dynamics of Social Identity in Polish Society:

To sum up, it seems that the Roman Catholic Church finds it difficult to respond to new challenges which arise from the development of democracy in eastern Europe and of the desire of those countries to join European institutions. The Church still uses the discourse of conflict, inherited after communist times, when the Church built its unique position, at least in the Catholic countries like Poland. Moral monopoly and direct influence on the state and the law are still its main aims. The pluralistic model is not particularly popular among the Church representatives and, consequently, the result of their activities is creation of boundaries dividing the society along religious lines. On the other hand the Church is very slow in reforming itself in such a way that would be more flexible and better adapted to the rules of the market and ideological competition. Consequently the Church is loosing its popular support and its influence, and often relies on the old methods of ideological polarisation and the discourse of conflict to win its cause.

Among my friends and acquaintances in Poland, this rings true. Their children have no attachment to the Church. They see the Church as a force organized for the purpose of political gain. What they truly seek is an enrichment of the inner life of the soul, from which the fruitful decisions the Church advocates for will come. But that’s a long process, the building of a society from within. It seems easier to pound the pulpit and demand the vote under penalty of hell. Just the sort of thing Fr. Hodur and the Catholics of Scranton rallied against in 1897.

Media, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , ,

Videos from CNN’s Autumn of Change: Poland

Lights, camera … Poland
CNN’s Fred Pleitgen visits a Polish film school that has produced some of the world’s greatest filmmakers.

Polish economy going strong
CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen on the state of the Polish economy, which is faring much better than its neighbors.

Polish cuisine comeback
After the collapse of communism, Polish people also opted for fast food restaurants, but they are going back to their roots.

Birthplace of Solidarity
CNN’s Fred Pleitgen visits the town where Poland’s uprising against communism began.

Poland’s free media
Poland’s media has flourished since the fall of communism. CNN’s Fionnuala Sweeney reports.

Catholic Poland
Fred Pleitgen reports on the power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland.

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