http://www.ziggi.pl Watching the world from the Polish perspective: Articles & Eassays. en http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=61Tensions within the European Union over how to deal with an increasingly assertive Russia have boiled over just days before a summit with President Vladimir Putin, as new EU member states step up their campaign for a tougher line.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=60It has been a depressing couple of weeks for those who worry about Russian imperialism and sympathise with the underdog. But it has not been entirely hopeless.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=59Recently, the European Parliament condemned the Polish government's attempt to strip Bronisław Geremek of his parliamentary mandate. A leader of Solidarity, a former political prisoner, and the foreign minister responsible for Poland's accession to NATO, Geremek refused to sign yet another declaration that he had not been a communist secret police agent.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=58Interview with Poland’s President, Lech Kaczyński on the threshold of the Kraków Energy Summit, May 11-12 2007:http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=57Poland is committed to dealing with the prickly issue of Holocaust property restitution, Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga said, adding that she could not say whether a bill on the issue before parliament would be passed by the end of the year.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=56Recent developments revolving around energy supplies and the future of Kosovo demonstrate how an emboldened Russia is intent on dominating the European agenda. Moscow's strategy toward the European Union consists of three core elements: disrupting EU consensus; gaining influence over key states; and preventing any further NATO or EU expansion.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=55The interview of former Poland's deputy minister of defense Radosław Sikorski with Izabela Leszczyńska from "Dziennik" - the an influential Polish journal.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=54The German Chancellor's visit to Poland last month appears to have drawn the neighboring countries into more cordial relations, but did not generate substantive solutions to disagreements stemming from the countries' conflicting priorities.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=53In politics all is rarely well when the most heated debates erupt over symbolic acts, not policies. When disagreements about flags, declarations and history are in the news, tempestuous times often lie ahead.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=52Missile defense has suddenly emerged as a divisive issue in Europe. Rather than enhancing European security, the Bush administration's plan to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic threatens to increase strains with Russia and deepen divisions with America's European allies, particularly those in Eastern Europe, where support for US polices has been strongest.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=51Poland is pressing ahead with plans to request US Patriot missiles to defend itself against medium and short range ballistic threats – a move likely to infuriate its neighbour, Russia.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=50The proposed deployment of a US-manned ballistic missile defence (BMD) radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland has sparked a heated war of words between Moscow and Washington.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=49'In denial', 'phobic', 'hateful'… increasingly, certain kinds of speech are depicted as a sickness, and censorship is seen as the cure.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=48The European Union is belatedly grasping the riskiness of its dependence on Russian gas, but it is disunited and short of ideas for how to reduce it.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=47Officials from Poland and Ukraine said Wednesday that their serving as co-hosts of the European soccer championships in 2012 could have immense positive repercussions for two nations whose leaders are struggling to calm domestic instability.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=46The Nazi death camp of Auschwitz is at the centre of a bitter dispute between Russia and Poland, with Moscow accused of seeking to inflate the figures for Soviet wartime victims and Warsaw charged with trying to rewrite the history of the second world war.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=45A committee formed by the Israeli Ministry of Education has recommended assigning psychologists to the delegations of teenagers traveling to Poland. The ministry accepted the recommendation, based on the committee's assessment that teenagers find it difficult to cope with the horrors at the memorial sites established at the extermination camps and that many of them develop "post-traumatic" symptoms.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=44For Russians the current political imbroglio in Kiev was similar to the struggle for power that took place in Moscow in September and October 1993.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=43Why German government is using all means to prevent involvement of German soldiers in conflict in the south Afghanistan?http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=42We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewishhttp://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=41Almost two decades have passed since dictatorship gave way to democracy in Poland, but after years of burying memories and avoiding the subject, this country is finally grappling with its communist past.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=40Let Warsaw reach out to Westminsterhttp://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=39Poland's right-wing government is using foreign politics instrumentally like a mirror reflecting their hard-line 'patriotic' determination back to the local audience. But costs are high and dangerous.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=38The U.S. proposal to place radar and interceptor sites for a new missile defense system in Central Europe -- respectively, in the Czech Republic and Poland -- may generate a new security partnership with the countries of the region. Or it could provoke a spiral of misunderstanding, weaken NATO, deepen Russian paranoia and cost the United States some of its last friends on the continent.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=37The Baltic Sea region is feeling the pain from Europe's awkward relationship with Russia.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=36With the addition of the two latest European Union members on January 1, the EU is looking much as its original planners envisaged - East and West have been united, and the wider social and economic project could generally be deemed a success.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=35Despite their historical, ethnic and linguistic similarities, Poles and Czechs often get along more like a pair of suspicious next-door neighbors than regional partners.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=34Britain's new cultural divide is not between Christian and Muslim, Hindu and Jew. It is between those who have faith and those who do not. The American journalist HL Mencken once wrote: "We must accept the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." In Britain today, such wry tolerance is diminishing. Today, it's the religious on one side, and the secular on the other. Britain is dividing into intolerant camps who revel in expressing contempt for each other's most dearly held beliefs.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=33The administration's rush to deploy missile defenses in Europe brings a sinister response from Russia.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=32Europe's 50th birthday is fast approaching but nobody can agree what to write on the card.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=31Britain is bidding to host the new phase of America's missile-defence shield in Europe. Expect fireworks.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=30Russia has warned Poland and the Czech Republic against hosting elements of a US anti-missile defence shield. For the former Soviet satellites Moscow's sabre rattling underlines the need to forge strong military links with the US.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=29Vladimir Putin's recent diatribe against America reflects the deeply resentful attitude the former superpower has towards the remaining one. One way to understand Russia's bloody history is to see it as an oscillating tussle between forces bent on emulating the West and those resolved to shun it. For much of the 20th century, the chief object of Russian admiration and revulsion has been the United States—the country that, with its combinations of fissiparous diversity and fierce patriotism, insularity and messianic sense of destiny, Russia arguably most resembles. After the rushed, giddy embrace of American ideas in the 1990s, the anti-Western impulse has again become increasingly conspicuous during the presidency of Vladimir Putin. Judging by his speech at a conference in Munich on February 10th, the ascendancy of this old reflex is now complete.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=28The Polish government flails, creaks and sheds ministers.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=27When a Gazprom-led consortium begins laying the foundation for a major new pipeline to pump Russian gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Western Europe, it is likely to run into problems -- thousands of them.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=26In the third century AD there was a prophet called Mani. He preached a doctrine of conflict between Good and Evil. He saw the material world as the devil's creation. Marriage and motherhood was a grave sin in his view, since by bearing children people multiply the works of Satan. The Manichean ideal was to move mankind to a superterrestrial realm of Good by way of gradual extinction.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=25In a few decades, radical Islam will ultimately dominate the European Union, and perhaps most of the world. It has already become a dominant force in the UN, which is reflected in the results of voting against Israel's anti-terrorist barrier. In this respect, we should note that the widespread usage of the word "wall" is itself a small victory of anti-Israeli propaganda, since 93 percent of the barrier consists of a fence that can be quickly removed once the Palestinian authorities manage to restrain the terrorists' activity.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=24Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, once said that just as his country's rapprochement with France was necessary to begin European integration after the second world war, there would be no lasting peace in Europe after the cold war without close partnership between Germany and Poland.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=23European unity is indivisible. When one nation is intimidated or ostracised, all are not free. Every aspect of our shared culture, if not the last century of shared suffering, confirms that for us.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=22When the "corporate prayer" movement first started in 1996, few people in Holland took any notice. Why should they have done so? After all, Holland's manifest destiny was to become a fully secularized country, in which prayer was considered at best an irrational but harmless pastime. That was then.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=21An assertive Russia will flex its energy muscles next year.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=20Angela Merkel at Foghhttp://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=19Mazeikiu Nafta has been bought by PKN Orlen; does the latter have the financial muscle to turn the firm around?http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=18From Portugal in the west to Ukraine in the east Gazprom is expanding its presence in the European market.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=17When Germany takes over the European Union's leadership from Finland on Jan. 1, it will shoulder tough challenges such as reviving the stalled E.U. constitution and guiding edgy relations with energy supplier Russia.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=16The latest Gazprom-Gaz de France deal is bad newshttp://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=15Big oil has a long history of having assets appropriated by hostile governments.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=14Amnesty's report echoes Kremlin propaganda in a way that Estonians find sinister and offensive.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=13At times it seems that Poland is three different countries. One is peopled by politicians, journalists, top businessmen and others obsessed with Warsaw and its political crises, arguments with Russia and Germany, sex and bribery scandals and lack of action on economic reforms.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=12One of Poland's main reasons for bolting itself into Nato and the EU was to escape Russia's orbit. Now, it is using EU membership as a shield.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=11Give me the man, ran an old KGB adage, and I will find you the crime.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=10Having Germany and Russia as neighbours, Poland ought to be more interested in federal Europe.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=9Russia's habitual abuse of its energy muscle is bad for its citizens, its neighbourhood and the world.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=8There is something insane in Polish-Jewish relationships. It goes beyond typical controversy around the scale of anti-Semitism in a given country. There is something more in this case, and the question of antysemitism seems to cover and replace something else which is very unlikly to be dicussed in public.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=6There are two well-known facts about Poland. One is that Poles are exceptionally anti-Semitic. The second is that Poles are exceptionally homophobic.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=4The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, could order the assassination of all his exiled opponents in Britain, including me, unless Tony Blair and George W. Bush end their appeasement of his authoritarian regime.http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=3The following is a summary of an article by Adam Grzeszak, featured in "Polityka" (influential Polish weekly).http://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=2Putin Tries to Depose a Neighborhttp://www.ziggi.pl/articles.php?id=1Will Poland maintain its veto against EU-Russia negotiations for a new economical and political agreement? Energy and agriculture seem to be the key.