Putin: "the Poles overplayed their hand and forced Hitler to start World War II with them."

I at first thought this must be a mistranslation. But after watching video, I can confirm Putin really said it (I am native speaker of Russian): “the Poles overplayed their hand and forced Hitler to start World War II with them.” https://t.co/K0XSWPMwA8

— Ilya Somin (@IlyaSomin) February 9, 2024

"Ukraine has worked for years.... to contain a fringe far-right movement whose members proudly wear symbols steeped in Nazi history..."

"... and espouse views hostile to leftists, L.G.B.T.Q. movements and ethnic minorities. But some members of these groups have been fighting Russia since the Kremlin illegally annexed part of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and are now part of the broader military structure. Some are regarded as national heroes, even as the far-right remains marginalized politically. The iconography of these groups, including a skull-and-crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and a symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front line, including soldiers who say the imagery symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism. In the short term, that threatens to reinforce Mr. Putin’s propaganda and give fuel to his false claims that Ukraine must be 'de-Nazified'...." 

From "Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History/Troops’ use of patches bearing Nazi emblems risks fueling Russian propaganda and spreading imagery that the West has spent a half-century trying to eliminate" (NYT).

"We are heating Europe, but they still threaten us with closing the border. But what if we cut off [gas] for the Poles and, for example, for the Germans? What will happen then?"

"We should stop at nothing when defending our sovereignty and our independence.... I would recommend that the Polish leadership, the Lithuanians and other brainless people think before speaking."

Said President Lukashenko of Belarus, quoted in "Huge far-right protest in Warsaw as Poland-Belarus border crisis intensifies" (London Times).

"Poland’s top court ruled Thursday that its national laws can trump those of the European Union...."

"The Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw ruled that parts of E.U. law were not compatible with the country’s constitution. They include an article that says that laws from Brussels have primacy over conflicting national legislation and another relating to the binding nature of decisions of the European Court of Justice. Those principles are essential to how the union functions legally.... 'It’s at the core of the union,' said Didier Reynders, the European Union’s justice commissioner.... Poland’s justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, described the decision Thursday as 'historic,' saying it set the 'constitutional limits' of E.U. 'interference' in Polish cases.... The move puts the country on the path to 'Polexit' said Jeroen Lenaers, justice spokesman for the largest political bloc in the European Parliament.... 'Enough is enough. The Polish government has lost its credibility.'"

From "Poland deepens rifts with European Union after rebuff over judicial rules" (WaPo).

"Poland’s government carried out a sweeping purge of the Supreme Court on Tuesday night, eroding the judiciary’s independence..."

"... escalating a confrontation with the European Union over the rule of law and further dividing this already riven nation.... For years, the party has demonized judges as unreconstructed Communists and obstructionists. After taking power in 2015, it took control of the Constitutional Tribunal, which is tasked with ensuring that laws do not violate the Constitution, and gave authority over the country’s prosecutors to the Ministry of Justice.... Hours before the purge took effect at midnight, Poles again took to the streets in more than 60 cities and towns around the country. As the sun set in Warsaw, crowds gathered in front of a memorial dedicated to those who died in the city’s 1944 uprising against Nazi Germany, chanting an old but familiar refrain: 'Solidarnosc.'"

The NYT reports on a "new law passed by Parliament requires that judges retire when they turn 65 unless they appeal to the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, who has sole discretion over whether they can remain." Under this law, 27 of 72 Supreme Court justices were forced to retire.

72 Supreme Court justices?! Some American lawprof caught flak for suggesting enlarging the U.S. Supreme Court to 15.

"Tens of thousands of nationalist protesters disrupted Poland's independence day events Saturday, waving flags and burning flares as they marched down the streets of Warsaw."

"Demonstrators carried banners that read 'White Europe, Europe must be white,' and 'Pray for an Islamic Holocaust.' Some wore masks and waved red and white Polish flags, chanting 'Death to enemies of the homeland,' and 'Catholic Poland, not secular.' Police estimate that 60,000 people took part in the nationalist demonstration. While the vast majority were Poles, other protesters came from all over Europe."

CNN reports.

"President Trump Gives Remarks to the People of Poland."

"We debate everything, we challenge everything...."

ADDED: That was a live stream when I put it up, but it works as a recording now. You have to scroll to about -49:00 to get to the beginning of the appearance. Here's the NYT article about the speech. Excerpt from the end of the article:

The pro-Duda crowd at Krasinski Square, in which many waved American and Polish flags, serenaded reporters from both countries with periodic chants of “fake news.”

That came about an hour after Mr. Trump tag-teamed with [Polish president, Andrejz Duda] in a transnational denunciation of journalists who write negative stories about them...

What made Mr. Trump’s sermon against the mainstream news media different this time was that Mr. Duda’s center-right party, Law and Justice, proposed restricting the media’s access to the Parliament last year. The government backed down after street protests.

“They have been fake news for a long time,” Mr. Trump said of CNN when asked about the tweet, adding that the network had been covering him in “a dishonest way.” “We don’t want fake news,” he added, as Mr. Duda nodded vigorously in agreement.

Ah! Here's the full text of the speech. Let me excerpt the part I was trying to catch on the fly. He was talking about Western Civilization:

The world has never known anything like our community of nations. We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers. We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives.

And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves....

And if we fail to preserve it, it will never, ever exist again. So we cannot fail.

"In 1943, Polanski escaped the Krakow Ghetto and assumed the name Romek Wilk and lived in the countryside..."

"... aided by a family that had known his father, pretending to be a Christian boy."

“I survived because I did not look very much like a Jew,” says Polanski. “Particularly when I was a kid, I definitely looked like a lot of kids in Poland.” Even though at this point he lived no more than 30 miles from Auschwitz, Polanski says this rural area was quiet and free from violence; he knew “nothing about what was happening on the other side of the wires. … I only learned about all the atrocities right after the war.”...

Days before the war ended, Polanski recalls picking berries in the forest near Krakow when he heard a sound like the thrum of insects, only louder. “And then I realized it was coming from the sky,” he recalls. “I looked up, and these were the American bombers coming, hundreds of them. It was one of the most joyful moments of my young life. I laid down on the ground, and I was watching those planes.”

"The book is... a kind of manifesto and at various points a meditation on the nature of whiteness..."

From an L.A. Times book review: "'The White Road' is an obsessive journey into the world of porcelain." The review, by Geoff Nicholson, begins:

In 1717, Augustus the Strong of Poland, a porcelain devotee associated with the Meissen facility nearby, developed a passionate need to acquire 18 large Chinese porcelain vases owned by Frederick William I of Brandenburg and Prussia. The vases were not for sale, so Augustus suggested a swap. In exchange for the vases, he would supply William with a battalion of 600 dragoon guards. The deal was accepted, the porcelain became known as the Dragoon Vases, and the battalion took the Meissen cipher — two crossed swords — as its banner.

About two and a quarter centuries later, had you been in Berlin or Warsaw, you could have gone into a store belonging to the Allach company and bought a porcelain cupid or candlestick or storm trooper, and on the underside of the base would have been the Allach mark, which Edmund de Waal tells us, "is the double lightning Sig of the SS. Cleverly, it is also the Meissen mark of the two crossed swords." The company's catalog proclaimed that white porcelain was the embodiment of the German soul. The company's factory — perhaps you're suspecting something unpleasant by now — was in Dachau....

[T]he history of porcelain, as told in "The White Road," is a constantly surprising, sometimes absolutely staggering, coming together of art, craft and commerce, politics and religion, national identity, larger-than-life characters and wild, sometimes ruinous obsession. Who knew?

You can buy "The White Road: Journey into an Obsession" here. And here's a book by Geoff Nicholson: "The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism."

I found that review after searching the word "obsessive," after somebody called me "obsessive," here. Was that obsessive of me? Here are "6 Weird Signs You Might Have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder." I don't have any of those weird signs, but maybe I have some unweird signs... or weird signs of my own. Must blog first thing in the morning. Thinks words may open doors to journeys of meaning. Must open doors....

"This painting by Wojciech Fangor is one of the most canonical works of Polish socialist realism."

"In the canvas, there are two women."

The one of the left hand side is the antagonist: slim, in a fitted, fashionable dress, patterned with English writing (Miami, New York, Wall Street, London, Coca-cola). Her manicured hands, which surely haven’t been calloused by hard labour, hold an elegant green bag....

[The woman on the right] is proud, relaxed, resting one of her hands on her hip, and the other – on a shovel’s handle. She is strong, self-assured, and natural. Under the rolled up sleeves of her jumpsuit we see well-built forearms....

In the background, we see a symbolic representation of the effects of these two positions. On the left hand side, there are ruins.... while on the right, behind the workers, we see a freshly constructed, multi-storey building with rows of windows divided by simple architectonic elements, in a typical socialist realist style. Even the weather in the painting is meaningful. The clear blue sky on the right side of the composition seems to be threatened by the clouds approaching from above the ruins....

What I love about this picture is that for all the heavy nudging to feel revulsion toward the woman in white, she's really rather fabulous. Love the sunglasses. Love the writing on the dress. And I really love the way painted propaganda backfires. The fact that the man is looking askance at her while he maintains a possessive grip on the shoulder of jumpsuit lady transforms the woman we were supposed to hate into a feminist icon. It's no longer obvious that she's not working. She could be working in the tech industry. She's getting on with her pursuits, not wasting energy disapproving of other people. Yes, she's keeping a grip on her handbag, but I would too. Those surly disapprovers look ready to expropriate it.

"Polish town installs lime green statue of Lenin taking a leak."

"The statue replaces a more traditional sculpture of Lenin that was removed in 1989, following the fall of communism in Poland. The piece, dubbed the ‘Fountain of the Future,’ is designed to encourage debate...."

ADDED: I oppose, in addition to communism, tag proliferation, but this was the post that made me do what I'd resisted in the past, making a tag for Lenin. Having done so, I went back and added the tag to 11 old posts with the name Lenin and it's an interesting lot — including:

"If you grew up in Milwaukee and then move elsewhere, surely a return will put you right back into your childhood shoes?"

"I feel that way about Warsaw. Each time I come back, it's as if I am a teen again, with all the angst and worry and rush that is so characteristic of being, say, fifteen. Because Warsaw is for me my coming of age. My eye opener. My adolescence."

"Throughout their existence as a separate culture, Ruthenians formed in most cases rural population, with the power held by local szlachta and boyars..."

"... often of Lithuanian, Polish or Russian descent. As in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, the trade and commerce was mostly monopolized by Jews, who formed a significant part of the urban population."

Since the Union of Horodlo of 1413, local nobility was assimilated into the traditional clan system by means of the formal procedure of adoption by the szlacht... Initially mostly Ruthenian and Orthodox, with time most of them became polonized. This was especially true for major magnate families... whose personal fortunes and properties often surpassed those of the royal families and were huge enough to be called a state within a state. Many of them founded their own cities... with settlers from other parts of Europe. Indeed there were Scots, Germans and Dutch people inhabitating major towns of the area, as well as several Italian artists who had been "imported" to the lands of modern Belarus by the magnates.

Have you thought about Belarus, today's "History of" country?

"I'm switching to Polish now, in stores and elsewhere. But I find that I have that American softness to my speech. The Polish melodic inflection is gone too."

"I hear its absence, but I do nothing to force it back. I'm kind of enjoying the reaction. At several points, people think that I am an American who has learned Polish very very well. Nearly perfectly! The accent isn't perfect, but so what! Which brings me to this question that I come back to again and again: why do so many Poles love America so much? Even as that love is not at all reciprocated. I mean, America let them down. Again and again. Thinking back to the war (and I do, every time that I am here)...."

My colleague Nina, in Warsaw, with lots of photographs, including one of a snow-covered statue of Ronald Reagan.

"I came to live in the States as an adult (if you can call 18 adult) because of the goodness of a person who died today."

My colleague Nina Camic wrote yesterday, about Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the long-time publisher and CEO of the NYT.

I was an au pair to his little girl. I learned through him and his wife how to transition from Warsaw to New York again. I came with barely a flight bag full of clothes and possessions and joined a household that had a staff of helpers and an extended family of cousins, aunts, nephews -- all intensely close, bonded in ways that history sometimes bonds people because of unusual circumstances.... After dinner, he and I would clean up in the kitchen and if I learned how to wipe down every last inch of counterspace it was because he taught me well. He was too kind for words and his little girl was just like him, making my au pair duties about the easiest that could be.

"Officials in Poland are in an uproar over photos showing a group of young teens licking cream off a priest's knees."

"The school said the initiation ritual was a long-standing tradition at the school, and no one had ever complained about it before."

Racializing Romney.

The press is.

Obama's Poland gaffe — you know, it was a Poland gaffe that lost the election in 1976 for Gerald Ford.

What Obama said was "Polish death camps," a terrible misstatement, carelessly referring to the geographic location of the camps without noticing the implication that that the Polish people ran those camps.

What Gerald Ford said, in a crucial debate with Jimmy Carter, was: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, an there never will be under a Ford administration." In a 1989 interview, Jim Lehrer asked "why did you say that?"

The House of Fallen Timbers...

... a small log cabin that David Lottes built from the dead trees that were cluttering up his 4-acree wood.

The blog-saga begins here.

ADDED: 2 good quotes in that blog's sidebar:

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” — John Steinbeck

"The secret of being a bore is to tell everything." - Voltaire

The Steinbeck quote reminds me of this essay by Larry Kaufmann: "The Occupy movement has it all wrong: Income mobility proves that the American dream is still alive." ("No one can change the past, so it's pointless to worry about what others have earned (or saved and turned into wealth) in previous years.")

The Voltaire quote seems like the theory behind Nina Camic's blog. She's in Paris now, after her pilgrimage to Warsaw. ("I’ve stopped speaking Polish for good... I became an immigrant without at least initially intending to be that....")

AND: Thinking of tiny houses and OWS encampments and prompted by Sofa King in the comments — Does he have all the permits for building that? — I went looking for this:

However, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary.

Full moon in Warsaw.

The cab driver "does not like it when foreigners think of Poland as the 'former communist country.' It’s not that to him and I can tell that he dislikes my references to that communist past.... He does not know that I am, in fact, Polish. Or from Poland...."