As firemen and the army are on the ground helping the immediate recovery of locations affected by
#PolandFloods
, you can help too - chip in by donating to one of the bank accounts listed in this article:
A Polish town in climate and water crisis be like:
🥵 lays concrete as far as eye can see
🥵 gets unbearably hot
🥵 wastes precious water 💦 to cool the place it has made hot with the concrete
Second night of protest against Poland's anti-abortion regulations, sparked by the death of a 30-year old woman, who pregnancy doctors feared to terminate, reportedly fearing legal consequences.
Pic: thousands in Kraków's historic market square.
Some guy on TV elaborating on how "foreign investors" will suffer if SWIFT is shut down.
How will they suffer exactly? They're gonna have to spend a night in a shelter while bombs will rain on their houses? Please depict their suffering in more detail.
Poland continues to snub Hungary for its pro-Russia position. After President Duda said last week that Orban's policy would be "very costly" for Hungary, Poland's defence minister is skipping the Visegrad Four meeting of peers in Budapest this week.
Poland's new government fired the supervisory boards and management of all public media in a move to end PiS' control over them.
Broadcasters TVP 1 and TVP Info stopped working: just music and the TVP 1 logo are being broadcast right now.
Crazy time.
Hey,
@EU_Commission
,
@RegioPoland
,
@EUClimateAction
, do you know that EU taxpayers' money paid for this atrocity in Poland, and for many more similar "revitalisations"? How does that square with your climate priorities?
Poland's second largest city, Kraków, has taken in over 100,000 refugees from
#Ukraine
in past two weeks, that's a whopping 13% of the city's pre-war population. Authorities are calling for help as they're struggling to cope.
Commercials on Polish TV during the break of Morocco - Portugal game: painkiller, painkiller, painkiller, bank, painkiller, painkiller, painkiller, cough syrup, painkiller, electronics store, painkiller, shaving gear.
Były sobie trzy elektrownie atomowe ⚛️, każda produkująca 10 TWh czystej energii rocznie.
Był sobie kryzys klimatyczny i energetyczny.
Elektrowni jutro już nie będzie.
Kryzys klimatyczny i energetyczny są dalej.
Polish independent journalist site (where i happen to write on climate-related stuff)
@oko_press
has just run results of a poll on what Poles are afraid of. It shows that Polish men aged 18-39 are most afraid of “gender ideology” and LGBT movement.
Seriously, Polish men, WTF.
Poland gone crazy about Olga
#Tokarczuk
, yday’s winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. Polish internet’s full of pix of bookshops w “No Tokarczuk” signs on doors; sales of her books up 6,000% in Empik & u get a free ride on public transit in Wroclaw with a book of hers in hand.
Poland, 2019.
A Catholic foundation from Koszalin, Poland, burned what they described as “witchcraft” artifacts: Harry Potter books (morning,
@jk_rowling
) a Hello Kitty branded umbrella, etc.
The entire parliamentary representation of the Left showed up for today’s swearing in of President Duda wearing rainbow face masks in protest against LGBT hate campaign, which the president helped unfold.
Stanisław Lem, the genius Polish writer, whose sci-fi works transgressed the genre's boundaries and transformed it forever, was born OTD 100 years ago.
Poland’s public radio’s Program Three cancelled this weekend’s music chart because a song critical of Kaczynski topped it.
Geniuses. The commies were so much smarter in actually letting problematic songs on air or allowing their release on LPs or singles.
ICYMI: two (or even three, not sure now) activists were detained in Poland for putting up rainbow flags on a few Warsaw monuments in protest against the govt-orchestrated, Church-inspired discrimination of the LGBT people.
In short: police will be after you in Poland for this:
As huge pro-EU rallies take place in Warsaw and across Poland, the govt-run broadcaster TVP runs headlines saying "protests against the Polish constitution," "Polish Constitution vs German hegemony," or "Tusk attacks Polish sovereignty."
If somebody tells you fascist imagery, or slogans, or chanting were marginal during the Independence March today, they haven’t been to the march or are lying to you
#MarszNiepodeglosci
#IndependenceDay
Four years ago, Polish president did not hesitate much before congratulating Trump his victory.
You weren't "awaiting the nomination by the Electoral College" back then, were you?
It gets crazier: for literally a minute now, a journo (?) appeared on TVP 1 with a fiery speech on the government taking over control of the media. He was cut off mid-sentence and the channel is broadcasting music and its logo again.
A woman pregnant with a fetus suffering from acrania (no skull) is denied
#abortion
, as Poland bans termination due to fetal defects. She develops depression, which doctors ignore, citing an opinion by a Catholic org that depression is no danger to health.
Oh shit.
Polish local authorities and their drive to "modernize" things are worse than pestilence and famine combined.
A tree alley near the town of Świdwin is no more.
(pix not showing same exact location)
A 19-year old resident of Krzeszowice, southern Poland, reportedly fried eggs by placing a frying pan on the heated concrete surface of his town's market square. Turning cities into lifeless concrete deserts has long been the plague of Polish towns and cities.
A wy jak spędzacie początek lata? Bo na przykład 19-letni Kacper Ropka z Krzeszowic w Małopolsce usmażył jajecznicę na gorącej płycie rynku zamienionego w betonową patelnię.
#betonoza
Warsaw’s oldest tree, the 600-year old oak Mieszko in Ursynów (Natolin). Set on fire by some idiot in 2019, it survived and is thriving again this spring.
Promised my son a weekend away from Warsaw. Before I could start figuring out where to go, he random-googled some “Poland on weekend” stuff and asks to go to Bydgoszcz. Here we are then.
Climate change adaptation, Poland style, exhibit 2,137.
🌞 Make your market square a concrete frying pan for the most part.
🌞 A heat wave comes.
🌞 Ask Lenin's question: "What is to be done?"
💡!
🌞 Place umbrellas.
🌞 Your town's climate change adaptation plan is now completed.
Meanwhile, Polish media are reporting that the domestic right-wing answer to Facebook, called
#Albicla
, is rife with security issues and copied its T&Cs from, well, Facebook.
Why I'm not surprised.
Meanwhile, local authorities in Janów Podlaski celebrated a so-called revitalisation of the town's market square.
Just why did they all seek refuge in the shade I wonder?
Because they got rid of nearly all trees? No, that can't be the reason.
Via
@slowopodlasia
Dead Kennedys 1983 in New York City
The band between the albums Plastic Surgery Disasters and
Frankenchrist, full of ideas and far removed from all self-made trouble
D. H. Peligro, East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride and Jello Biafra
#hardcorepunk
#deadkennedys
#punkrockhistory
The Tusk-headlined opposition rally in Warsaw so far:
- turnouts well above expectations; seen a figure of 500,000 given unofficially by the Warsaw town hall
- totally festive with lots of witty & vulgar placards
- culmination bit later this afternoon at the Castle Square
A local NGO posted these old "before" and "after" pix of a river in the Łódź province, Poland, that was unfortunate to have been targeted for regulation, paid for in part by
@EU_Commission
rural development program money, of course.
Judging from my morning walk in my neighborhood, Polish grandmas might be the largely unseen yet crucial factor in parents’ being able to (fairly) comfortably support the strike in education that kicked off today. School kids doing shopping etc with babcias everywhere.
It appears as if, in contrast to countries like Czechia or Slovakia, Poland can't offer any Afghans a plane out of Afghanistan while visas have been made available in the mightily convenient location in Delhi.
Poland health minister Szumowski: if we subtract 300
#coronavirus
cases in six big local outbreaks from the total [of record 657 today], we'll be at a stable level of more or less 300 cases.
In other developments today: if Austria had no Alps, it'd be flat.
Szumowski: Jest sześć dużych ognisk. Trzy kopalnie, trzy zakłady pracy. Jeżeli odejmiemy te 300 wyników dodatnich z tych ognisk, to mamy mniej więcej stabilny stan na poziomie 300 zachorowań
#300POLITYKALIVE
Bezpłatne przejazdy dla obywateli Ukrainy naszymi pociągami! 🇺🇦 Obywatele Ukrainy przez najbliższe 4 tyg. mogą odbywać nieodpłatne przejazdy w klasie 2 pociągami kategorii ekonomicznych TLK i IC PKP IC w komunikacji krajowej.
@MI_GOV_PL
@MAPGOVPL
Więcej:
Klimakrise? Kernkraft!
Poland's environmental and pro-climate action org
@fota4climate
and other similarly minded groups staged a protest against the planned closure of the Grohnde nuclear plant in Germany today.
Downtown Warsaw is testimony to the incredible effort to restore - more or less - its historic buildings after WW2 destruction. But also to the ingenuity of Polish post-war architects. Here’s a killer modernist project on Karowa St. 18, built in 1978.
Meanwhile in Polish parliament, debate just finished over a draft bill concerning restitution of property, including - of course, as it was submitted by the far-right - Jewish property.
Anyway, a phrase used in the debate: "during the so-called Holocaust..."
SO-CALLED
Meanwhile, Polish railways have suffered an outage of traffic control infrastructure in several locations across the country. Significant train delays. No confirmation of a cyber attack so far. The govt's cybersecurity task force is meeting later today to look into the incidents.
“If we have to choose between the risks of nuclear energy where we could nuke the area for thousands of years if I compare that with only the heating of the atmosphere then we choose coal because there is no better alternative."
Jana Wiechmann, Greenpeace Germany, 2011.
WOW.
A "journalist" publishes old photo of the dark waters of the River Narew joining the muddy Vistula, suggesting the latter's color is because of the recent failure of the sewage treatment plant. "Scary," she wrote.
And I worry about my typos and minor inaccuracies.
🤔🤦♂️
Dzień dobry! Dziś mój pierwszy dzień pracy jako ministra klimatu i środowiska. Dziś też zaczynam swoją aktywność na Twitterze, gdzie będę informować o działaniach i inicjatywach na rzecz klimatu i środowiska.
#pierwszytweet
Chatted to Anna & Małgorzata, local ladies at the Medyka border crossing with 🇺🇦 (talking to a TV crew in the pic). They're on a call all day giving out soup (smelled v tasty) to the refugees. The big pot didn't even last 1 hour this time - a new one was on its way as we spoke.
Dzień dobry, witamy na pierwszej konferencji prasowej Zjednoczonej Opozycji. Na pytania dotyczące opodatkowania, prawa do aborcji, związków partnerskich i polityki klimatycznej odpowiedzą Grzegorz Schetyna i Marcelina Zawisza.
Gdyby opozycja (pomijam Konfederację) szła w dwóch blokach, a nie w trzech, być może PiS nie miałby większości w Sejmie. A start w dwóch blokach nadal dawałby wyborcom opozycji spory wybór.
For a bit of black humor, we're off to the Polish town of Kutno, where an ugly parking lot - but lined with nice trees - was moved underground while most trees were cut to make room for a huge & lifeless concrete wasteland aka "Freedom Square". For PLN40mn, incl. PLN18mn from EU.
I’ve seen this before. In Denmark, middle class people can’t afford to drive a car. They have a bike and take the train for long trips. My embassy driver would bike an hour in the snow to get to work. That’s the future team Biden wants for Americans. Is this what you want?
So, um, Germany, with all its accumulated wealth, tech superiority, order that just helped it weather a deadly pandemic, having the support of US and EU etc. can't accept temporary inconvenience of hard-hitting Russia, which is killing innocent people a few hours' VW drive away?
Un-fucking-believable
#WarOnTrees
(64 trees destroyed because local government couldn't think of another way of giving local people a sidewalk and a bike path. Bike path! Something's really messed up if bike paths trump trees.)
Deets (Polish):
So the US Ambassador to Poland basically told a prominent PiS MP to shut up about the US-owned broadcaster TVN allegedly originating from post-commie military intelligence service WSI. And it's only Monday of the final week of presidential campaign here.
Poland population change between 2011 and 2021 censuses.
Five centers of gravity (so to speak): Warsaw, Kraków, Tri-City, Poznań, and Wrocław.
Via Kartografia Ekstremalna
I’ve found one of the most stunning examples of destruction that local authorities in Poland are capable of under pretence of "revitalisation" and “modernisation.”
#WarOnTrees
These are possibly pretty smart moves by Trzaskowski. First, a conciliatory letter to PiS's supporters, now posting a pic of friendly greeting volunteers working for Duda. It's "I run against your candidate in a political contest, but i don't run against people like you."
Wspólnota zaczyna się od drobnych rzeczy – od wyciągnięcia ręki. Dziś w Opolu spotkałem wolontariuszy Andrzeja Dudy. Możemy się spierać, możemy się nie zgadzać, ale powinniśmy się szanować. Bo Polska jest wspólna!
No analysis comes even close to conveying the shock that September 1939 was to the Polish people than pix of then 12-year old Kazimiera Kostewicz (later Mika) despairing over dead body of her sister.
(graphic content)
Google Julien Bryan for the story behind pix.
#80WW2