This reads well: Imagine what modern Europe would look like now if Poland had the political status of Georgia, lying in some sort of political-moral twilight zone with former Soviet interests linked to the KGB having a far freer time to penetrate into that society and play games with Polish assets. As […]
More on Russia, always a rich seam for foreign policy First Principles. Thus Max Hastings gives us a striking Russia metaphor: The Russians yearn for respect, in the same fashion as any inner-city street kid with a knife. They will become willing to play with the west by western rules […]
Welcome Instapundit readers. While we Crawfs have been travelling the Georgia story has moved on, to the point where French President Sarkozy has been helping broker some sort of truce and possible peace plan. No end of commentaries too, of course, many dwelling on what this episode tells us […]
Richard Beeston and Edward Lucas both know what they’re talking about on Georgia. Both wonder if Georgian impulsiveness is not going to backfire. Lucas: It seems Russia is ready to hit back hard, in the hope of squashing the West’s pestilential protégé. In short, it looks more and more as […]
Busy ploughing through Lonely Hearts by John Harvey. The hero of this series of well praised detective stories is Detective Charlie Resnick. He has a Polish background which makes a lugubrious appearance now and again. But if Arrow Books are going to do detective stories with a Polish angle, they ought to get Poles to […]
An interesting pair of Ambassadorial letters to newspapers have appeared in recent days. First, HM Ambassador in Poland Ric Todd wrote in July to the Polish paper Rzeczpospolita about the death in a plane accident in 1943 in Gibraltar of General Sikorski. Various Poles continue to insist that this death was suspicious, […]
Anglican Bishops have been marching against world poverty – then tucking in to a worthy feast. Hypocrites! When Pope Benedict XVI visited Krakow in 2006 the Polish authorities were determined to prevent any unseemly scenes of drunkenness among the vast crowds thronging to see him. So alcohol sales were banned in […]
President Kaczynski of Poland says that ‘for now’ he will not sign the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. The BBC report describes Kaczynski as "a conservative who has long opposed the reform treaty". But what about this? "I really want ratification." One way or the other, President Kaczynski is good at saying […]
A powerful TV programme in Poland has aroused a lot of interest there. Trzech Kumpli ("Three Mates") describes the fates of three men who were students in communist-era Krakow in the 1970s. One became a poet murdered seemingly by the communist police. One under the Kaczynski twins’ leadership became the […]
Back from Brussels, hearing lots of theories about whether the Lisbon Treaty is dead, alive or in some sort of suspended animation. The core options appear to be these: brutalise/bribe the Irish into submitting mainly via various ‘Declarations’ aimed at meeting most of their identifiable concerns, allowing a further and […]
