Fascism: Why It Can Happen Here

In a matter of days the husband and I will head to Europe for two weeks - as usual, we have the house sitting/dog sitting lined up - and it will be interesting to see first hand how America's image is tattered in the eyes of long time allies.  A year ago while in the United Kingdom, the popular contempt for the Trump/Pence regime was palpable, especially as the violence exploded in Charlottesville and made the front page of every major London newspaper.  Britain, of course has its own problems with white nationalism, xenophobia, and dreams of lost empire that resulted in the Brexit vote - another election where Russia sought to breed hate and discord - which may yet destroy Britain's economy and eliminate any claim it clings to as a world power.  All thanks to what boils down to racial animosity. France, where we visit first, fought back Russian efforts to bring fascism to power yet still has its problems, not the least of which is its favored status as a target of Islamic terrorism - it represents everything religious extremists hate.  As we prepare to set off, America seems poised at a precipice where democracy may die if Democrats fail to prevail in a blue wave that blocks Republican efforts to turn the country into a democracy in name only.  A column in the New York Times looks at the perilous situation.  Here are excerpts:

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a friend of mine — an expert on international relations — made a joke: “Now that Eastern Europe is free from the alien ideology of Communism, it can return to its true historical path — fascism.” Even at the time, his quip had a real edge.  And as of 2018 it hardly seems like a joke at all.

[In[ Poland and Hungary, both still members of the European Union, in which democracy as we normally understand it is already dead.

In both countries the ruling parties — Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary — have established regimes that maintain the forms of popular elections, but have destroyed the independence of the judiciary, suppressed freedom of the press, institutionalized large-scale corruption and effectively delegitimized dissent. The result seems likely to be one-party rule for the foreseeable future.

And it could all too easily happen here. There was a time, not long ago, when people used to say that our democratic norms, our proud history of freedom, would protect us from such a slide into tyranny. In fact, some people still say that. But believing such a thing today requires willful blindness. The fact is that the Republican Party is ready, even eager, to become an American version of Law and Justice or Fidesz, exploiting its current political power to lock in permanent rule. Just look at what has been happening at the state level.

In North Carolina, after a Democrat won the governorship, Republicans used the incumbent’s final days to pass legislation stripping the governor’s office of much of its power.

In Georgia, Republicans tried to use transparently phony concerns about access for disabled voters to close most of the polling places in a mainly black district.

In West Virginia, Republican legislators exploited complaints about excessive spending to impeach the entire State Supreme Court and replace it with party loyalists.

And these are just the cases that have received national attention. There are surely scores if not hundreds of similar stories across the nation. What all of them reflect is the reality that the modern G.O.P. feels no allegiance to democratic ideals; it will do whatever it thinks it can get away with to entrench its power.

[A]t the national level? That’s where things get really scary. We’re currently sitting on a knife edge. If we fall off it in the wrong direction — specifically, if Republicans retain control of both houses of Congress in November — we will become another Poland or Hungary faster than you can imagine. This week Axios created a bit of a stir with a scoop about a spreadsheet circulating among Republicans in Congress, listing investigations they think Democrats are likely to carry out if they take the House. The thing about the list is that every item on it — starting with Donald Trump’s tax returns — is something that obviously should be investigated, and would have been investigated under any other president. But the people circulating the document simply take it for granted that Republicans won’t address any of these issues: Party loyalty will prevail over constitutional responsibility.

Many Trump critics celebrated last week’s legal developments, taking the Manafort conviction and the Cohen guilty plea as signs that the walls may finally be closing in on the lawbreaker in chief. But I felt a sense of deepened dread as I watched the Republican reaction: Faced with undeniable evidence of Trump’s thuggishness, his party closed ranks around him more tightly than ever.

This goes even for politicians who once seemed to have some principles. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was a voice of independence in the health care debate; now she sees no problem with having a president who’s an unindicted co-conspirator appoint a Supreme Court justice who believes that presidents are immune from prosecution. Senator Lindsey Graham denounced Trump in 2016, and until recently seemed to be standing up against the idea of firing the attorney general to kill the Mueller investigation; now he’s signaled that he’s O.K. with such a firing.

But why is America, the birthplace of democracy, so close to following the lead of other countries that have recently destroyed it?

Don’t tell me about “economic anxiety.” That’s not what happened in Poland, which grew steadily through the financial crisis and its aftermath. And it’s not what happened here in 2016: Study after study has found that racial resentment, not economic distress, drove Trump voters.

The point is that we’re suffering from the same disease — white nationalism run wild — that has already effectively killed democracy in some other Western nations. And we’re very, very close to the point of no return.

Poland Seeks to Outlaw References to Polish Complicity with Nazis

A Polish police officer checks a Jewish man's documents at the Kraków Ghetto, 1941

A story in the Washington Post shows just how far tight wingers will go to rewrite history in the hope of erasing references to their complicity in moral turpitude or even war crimes.  The story relates to a pending law in Poland that would make it a crime to acknowledge the fact that even though Poland was occupied by Hitler's Nazi regime, there were plenty of Poles only to willing to participate in the genocide against Jews and other horrors.  Yes, there were many Poles who tried to do the right thing and oppose the Nazi agenda as resistance fighters and by other means, but the shocking truth is that a large number were complicit - something the right wing wants to wash away from public memory and rewrite history so that only Germans were involved with, in the case of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the murder of over 1 million men, women and children. With the Trump/Pence regime pushing a racist, bigoted and homophobic agenda, will Trump loyalists including morally bankrupt evangelical Christians want to sanitize history to delete their own complicity, if not active engagement in moral wrongs?  The effort in Poland shows the critical need that history tell the whole story lest future generations forget just how horrible individuals can be when confronted with evil - especially those who park themselves in church pews on Sundays and seemingly forget the Gospel message the moment they walk out the church door.  Here are article highlights:

A diplomatic crisis between Israel and Poland appeared to be deepening on Sunday as Poland’s deputy chief of mission, Piotr Kozłowski, was summoned to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem over a law approved by the Polish parliament making it a criminal offence to mention Polish complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust.

Polish lawmakers voted Friday for a bill that would fine or jail people who blame Poland or Poles for Nazi atrocities committed on its soil during World War II, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The law still needs final approval from the Polish Senate and the country’s president.

It comes as the country has become more nationalistic. Tens of thousands of people chanted and marched through Warsaw last year in an annual gathering of Europe’s far-right movements, and the majority party has sought to protect Poland's image.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Kozłowski the vote's timing was “particularly surprising and miserable," pointing out that Friday was the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was also the 73^rd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in southern Poland.

Polish officials say the law would not limit Holocaust research or the freedom of expression.  Even though several death camps, including the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau, were built on Polish soil, Poles say they should be referred to as Nazi extermination camps or camps in occupied Poland, disassociating Poland from the Nazi crimes committed there.

The bill, which would jail even foreigners for up to three years for using terms such as “Polish extermination camps,” passed the lower legislature overwhelmingly. For the country's ruling Law and Justice Party, it's part of a years-long effort to prevent people from “slandering the good name of Poland,” as officials once put it.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Center, . . . . said the law was “liable to blur the historical truths regarding the assistance the Germans received from the Polish population during the Holocaust.” . . . . restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion,” read the Yad Vashem statement.

[B]etween these broad strokes of Nazi genocide and Polish heroism, some Poles also turned on Jews — or at least helped Germans kill them. . . . Villagers in Jedwabne, for example, reportedly locked about 300 Jewish residents in a barn and burned them alive in 1941, the BBC wrote. Some modern-day Poles deny the story or blame Germans for pressuring the villagers, but others see evidence of willing complicity throughout the occupation.

Jan Karski, a famed Polish resistance fighter, once told an interviewer of the “ruthless, often without pity” attitude some of his countrymen held for Poland's large Jewish population.

“The truth is that local authorities were often left intact in occupied Poland, and many officials exploited their power in ways that proved fatal to their Jewish constituents.”

Some Poles welcomed the forced removal of their Jewish neighbors from their homes, he wrote. Some happily enriched themselves at the expense of their dispossessed neighbors, and some “did not recoil from committing acts of murder, rape and larceny — not always orchestrated by the Germans.”

Is It Hysterical to Prepare for War with Russia?

I have repeatedly voiced my sense of deja vu as I watch events in Ukraine and listen to the lies and hollow denials of Vladimir Putin.  The world has heard these story lines before, particularly in 1938 and 1939 when no one wanted to seriously the ravings of Adolph Hitler.  Like Hitler, Putin is a megalomaniac and seemingly suffers from delusions of grandeur, seeing himself as Russia's new tsar.  Just as frighteningly, he seems to be tacitly accepting some insane and terrifying statements by those who would unleash atomic war warfare in Eastern Europe.  A piece in Slate ask the question of whether it is naive to believe that Putin will not do something crazy that threatens world stability (such as it is).  Here are highlights:

WARSAW, Poland—Over and over again—throughout the entirety of my adult life, or so it feels—I have been shown Polish photographs from the beautiful summer of 1939: The children playing in the sunshine, the fashionable women on Krakow streets. I have even seen a picture of a family wedding that took place in June 1939, in the garden of a Polish country house I now own. All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house. 

In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?

I realize that this question sounds hysterical, and foolishly apocalyptic, to American or Western European readers. But hear me out, if only because this is a conversation many people in the eastern half of Europe are having right now. In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine.

The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here—Novorossiya can grow larger over time.

Russian soldiers will have to create this state—how many of them depends upon how hard Ukraine fights, and who helps them—but eventually Russia will need more than soldiers to hold this territory. Novorossiya will not be stable as long as it is inhabited by Ukrainians who want it to stay Ukrainian. 

There is a familiar solution to this, too. A few days ago, Alexander Dugin, an extreme nationalist whose views have helped shape those of the Russian president, issued an extraordinary statement. “Ukraine must be cleansed of idiots,” he wrote—and then called for the “genocide” of the “race of bastards.”

Not long ago, Vladimir Zhirinovsky—the Russian member of parliament and court jester, who sometimes says things that those in power cannot—argued on television that Russia should use nuclear weapons to bomb Poland and the Baltic countries—“dwarf states,” he called them—and show the West who really holds power in Europe: “Nothing threatens America, it’s far away. But Eastern European countries will place themselves under the threat of total annihilation,” he declared. Vladimir Putin indulges these comments: Zhirinovsky’s statements are not official policy, the Russian president says, but he always “gets the party going.”

A far more serious person, the dissident Russian analyst Andrei Piontkovsky, has recently published an article arguing, along lines that echo Zhirinovsky’s threats, that Putin really is weighing the possibility of limited nuclear strikes—perhaps against one of the Baltic capitals, perhaps a Polish city—to prove that NATO is a hollow, meaningless entity that won’t dare strike back for fear of a greater catastrophe. Indeed, in military exercises in 2009 and 2013, the Russian army openly “practiced” a nuclear attack on Warsaw.

Is all of this nothing more than the raving of lunatics? Maybe. And maybe Putin is too weak to do any of this, and maybe it’s just scare tactics, and maybe his oligarchs will stop him. But Mein Kampf also seemed hysterical to Western and German audiences in 1933. Stalin’s orders to “liquidate” whole classes and social groups within the Soviet Union would have seemed equally insane to us at the time, if we had been able to hear them.

But Stalin kept to his word and carried out the threats, not because he was crazy but because he followed his own logic to its ultimate conclusions with such intense dedication—and because nobody stopped him. Right now, nobody is able to stop Putin, either. So is it hysterical to prepare for total war? Or is it naive not to do so?

It is dangerous to cling to the hope that dictators are sane and rational individuals.  Hitler and Stalin made that very clear.

Putin is Reprising Hitler and Stalin's 1939 Invasion of Poland

Some are saying that Vladimir Putin has derived his play book for reviving Russian imperialism on the tactics of two of the most horrible figures in world history: Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin.  Both mass murderers on a horrific scale.  It's been noted that Putin's claims that he seeks to protect ethnic Russians mirrors Hitler's pretense of protecting ethnic Germans in 1938 and 1939.  But Putin's model also follows Stalin's excuse for invading Poland in 1939 as Germany invaded from the west.  Some, thankfully, remember their history.  Sadly, far too many do not and seem doomed to see history's horrors repeated.  The Daily Beast looks at Putin's effort to reprise Stalin's brutal regime.  Here are excerpts:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new use of Russian military force inside Ukraine harkens back to 1939 when Joseph Stalin led a Russian invasion of Poland, and Dempsey predicted Putin was far from finished.

Dempsey was speaking to the Aspen Security Forum and responding to the news that the U.S. government is accusing the Russian military of firing artillery from Russian territory into eastern Ukraine in support of separatists there. The latest development represents a dangerous escalation of the crisis on the part of Putin and the Russia-Ukraine crisis is now a global problem, he said.

“It does change the situation. You’ve got a Russian government that has made a conscious decision to use its military force inside another sovereign nation to achieve its objectives. It’s the first time since 1939 or so that that’s been the case,” Dempsey said. “They clearly are on a path to assert themselves differently not just in Eastern Europe, but Europe in the main, and towards the United States.”

Joseph Stalin used similar rhetoric and justifications when he invaded Poland in September 1939, only days after Adolf Hitler’s Nazi army invaded Poland from the other direction. Stalin and Hitler had signed a secret pact of non-aggression and proposed to carve up Europe between them, but Stalin said his goal was to protect ethnic Russians in his near abroad.

“The Soviet Government cannot regard with indifference the fact that the kindred Ukrainian and White Russian people, who live on Polish territory and who are at the mercy of fate, are now left defenseless,” read the note from the Soviet Foreign Ministry to the Polish Ambassador to Moscow on the day Stalin invaded.

“Putin may actually light a fire that he loses control over,” he said. “There’s a rising tide of nationalism in Europe right now that has been created in many ways by these Russian activities.”

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters Thursday that U.S. intelligence showed that the Russian military had now fired artillery from Russia into Ukraine, but she declined to provide any details about the source of the intelligence.

“We have new evidence that the Russians intend to deliver heavier and more powerful, multiple rocket launchers to the separatist forces in Ukraine, and have evidence that Russia is firing artillery from within Russia to attack Ukrainian military positions,” she said. 

“Putin’s problem is that he is right now on the verge of military defeat. So he has two choices right now, neither of them good,” Saakashvili said. “He could move in his troops, after which he would become an international pariah with no certain outcome. The second choice he has is to live with military defeat, but that could trigger a process inside Russia that he can no longer control… Putin cannot afford to lose.”

Like so many of his predecessors, Putin's rule will ultimately harm the Russian people.  They need to find a way to overthrow his rule before it is too late.

Vladimir Putin Continues to Follow Model of Adolph Hitler

I haven't said much of late about the disaster in the Ukraine or Vladimir Putin's continued use of a game plan once by Adolph Hitler to justify his invasion of neighboring countries while stirring up xenophobia - and more importantly - popular support on the home front.  Substitute the names Hitler and Poland for Putin  and Ukraine and the same pattern becomes unmistakable.  And like Hitler, Putin appears to be stirring up trouble in eastern Ukraine so that he can then claim he has to act to protect "ethnic Russians."   Sadly, many Russians, suffering from a susceptibility to the Russian exceptionalism myth that has lingered for 1000 years are falling for Putin's propaganda campaign.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Putin's reprise of Hitler's 1938 model.  Here are excerpts:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emphasized on Thursday that the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament had authorized him to use military force if necessary in eastern Ukraine, and also stressed Russia’s historical claim to the territory, repeatedly referring to it as “new Russia” and saying that only “God knows” why it became part of Ukraine.

Speaking in a televised question-and-answer show, Mr. Putin also admitted for the first time that Russian armed forces had been deployed in Crimea, the disputed peninsula that Russia annexed last month immediately after a large majority of the population voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine.

Mr. Putin’s remarks on eastern Ukraine came as officials from Russia, the United States, Europe and the new government in Kiev were meeting in Geneva for four-way negotiations aimed at resolving the political crisis.

Russia has mobilized troops along the border with Ukraine and in recent days pro-Russian demonstrators have caused widespread unrest throughout the eastern part of the country, seizing police stations and other government buildings and forming roadblocks. There have been several outbursts of violence, including a firefight at a Ukrainian military base overnight in which at least three pro-Russian militiamen were killed.

Mr. Putin said that Russia felt an obligation to protect ethnic Russians in the region, who are a sizable minority. “We must do everything to help these people to protect their rights and independently determine their own destiny,” he said.

It’s new Russia. Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in Czarist times, they were transferred in 1920. Why? God knows. Then for various reasons these areas were gone, and the people stayed there — we need to encourage them to find a solution.”

 As I said, Putin is following Hitler's script closely.

Poland to Introduce Civil Partnership Law

While same sex relationships here in Virginia receive less legal recognition than those of the relationships between individuals and their pets, Poland is poised to see a civil partnership law introduced by the ruling party (the bill's author is pictured).   Needless to say, the Roman Catholic Church is incensed - which is a good thing.  It is far past time that Poland end the Church's meddling in secular, civil law matters.  It will be interesting to see how the bill fares and, if it is enacted, it will be another powerful sign that another former bastion of Catholicism is moving to embrace the future and equality rather than remaining enslaved to backward thing and religious sanctioned discrimination.  One can only ponder when the hell the United States - the falsely self-style land of liberty and religious freedom - will catch up with more and more countries in the world that actually delivery freedom.  The Advocate has details on the development in Poland and here are some highlights:

The center-right ruling party in Poland, Platforma Obywatelska, is planning to introduce a law recognizing civil partnerships for same-sex couples, reports GayStarNews. The proposed legislation would offer many of the same legal rights to same-sex couples afforded by marriage, including inheritance, pension funds, notary and medical rights. Notably lacking from the bill, however, are adoption, citizenship rights, and joint tax benefits.

Radio One reports the bill will be formally introduced next week in Poland's Parliament. The introduction has surprised many, since last year the PO opposed a similar relationship recognition bill presented by the Democratic Left Alliance party.

The bill is being met with fierce opposition in the staunchly Catholic nation. Opponents, who label civil partnerships "psuedo-marriage," warn that the legislation will undermine the institution of marriage.

Poland's constitution defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, but the Eastern European country has made strides toward LGBT inclusion in recent years. In 2011, Poland elected its first openly transgender politician, Member of Parliament Anna Grodzka. In 2010, Poland hosted its first EuroPride gay pride festival.

That's right, opponents of the bill are offering up the same old tired lie used by the National Organization for Marriage as justification for their bigotry.  Let's be honest.  The opposition stems from religious based hate and bigotry and the bill's opponents need to be called out for what they really are all about.

Mitt Romney: The Superficial America

The criticism of Mitt Romney's less than successful trip abroad to dupe voters into thinking the man has a clue when it comes to foreign policy issues continues.  The Washington Post today blasts Romney in its main editorial.  Personally, the only things the trip did is to prove (i) Romney will pander and say whatever non-substantive platitudes he thinks any particular audience wants to hear, and (ii) Romney is an arrogant ass who thinks his money and privileged life exempt him from having to answer questions like any other candidate should.  Worse yet, he has no serious policy proposals beyond sound bites.  It's as if he's a rewarmed version of Chimperator George W. Bush.  Here are highlights from the Post's editorial:  

What has Mr. Romney revealed about his world view? Not nearly enough.  In broad terms, Mr. Romney has sought to distinguish himself from President Obama by suggesting he would be more muscular in projecting U.S. leadership and power, in what he often depicts as a titanic struggle of good vs. evil. But how would Mr. Romney translate his vision into action? So far, his assertions have been superficial, and sometimes maladroit.

On several issues, Mr. Romney sketched out ambitious goals but said nothing about how he would achieve them. In the VFW address, he vowed to avoid deep cuts in the military budget but offered no clue about the trade-offs or difficult decisions required, while blithely skipping over his own party’s role in the nation’s fiscal train wreck. In Jerusalem, he renewed his pledge to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons — “We must not delude ourselves into thinking that containment is an option” — but by what means?  

Mr. Romney sounded the klaxon about China’s violations of human rights and other concerns but offered not a single constructive idea for managing the deeply intertwined relationship with Beijing. He was vague on how he would respond to the upheavals of the Arab Spring.

In London, Mr. Romney expressed doubt about Britain’s readiness to host the Olympic Games, a comment that was bush league but not very consequential. More serious was Mr. Romney’s suggestion that “culture” explains the economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians, and (for good measure) between Mexico and the United States. His comparison left out restrictions on Palestinian trade, workers and goods imposed by Israel over many years, and, more to the point, he reflected an alarmingly simplistic view of complex questions.

Mr. Romney’s trip ended on an unfortunate note in Warsaw. For days, frustrated journalists have not been permitted to question Mr. Romney. When they shouted questions at a wreath-laying ceremony, a testy spokesman rudely told them to get lost. The spokesman apologized, but the questions were left hanging. With fewer than 100 days until the election, we hope Mr. Romney will come up with serious answers on foreign policy.

Mitt Romney - America's Borat (Continued)

This image that I found on Facebook is ever so appropriate given Mitt Romney's ill-conceived and even more poorly executed trip overseas to try to give the impression that he's got some foreign policy gravitas.  About the only thing the trip has proven is that Romney will pander and prostitute himself to whatever audience he is facing at the moment.  As for core principals - except for a love of money and avoiding taxes - he has none it would seem.

The Catholic Church's Fading Influence in Poland

With the fall out of the sex abuse scandal that continues to explode all around the world (Australia for example is lately seeing case after case of the now familiar pattern of enabling of and cover up for known predators), the Church's reactionary rejection of modern knowledge and science, and the Church's anti-gay jihad, the Roman Catholic Church is largely in a much deserved free fall in the Western world.  In Ireland, once a bastion of Catholicism, the Church's reputation and influence has suffered irreparable damage.  Now Poland, another former bastion seems to be headed the way of Ireland.  Indeed, the only growth areas for the Church are in backward and uneducated areas such as Africa where ignorance and naivete have so far protected the Church's reputation.  Der Spiegel has an article on the Church's decline in Poland.  Here are some excerpts: 

Twenty years ago, the Catholic Church played a major role in the fall of communism in Poland. Today, with the country changing rapidly, the church's influence is quickly waning. Once considered the most Catholic country in Europe, the faithful are vanishing. 

Just past the Polish border, passengers traveling by train from Berlin to Warsaw can see Jesus. He is 36-meters (118 feet) tall, made of concrete, and towers over the surrounding fields near the town of Swiebodzin, a gilded crown perched nobly on his head. His gaze is directed over the Recaro plant, which makes car seats and is the region's biggest employer, and toward the setting sun. His outstretched arms seem to suggest that he wishes to take the Western heathens into his heart.

The plaque at the base of the giant religious statue says that Jesus Christ is the true king of Poland and will rule for eternity. It is not for nothing that the country is, in the eyes of the church at least, Europe's most Catholic nation.

Some 95 percent of all Poles still say that they are Catholic. Yet loyalty to the church is waning. Even the conservative Catholic publicist Tomasz Terlikowski estimates the true number of devout Catholics at little more than 20 percent. "We Poles like to proclaim our Catholicism," he says, but the reality looks quite different.

Only slightly more than 44 percent of young people say they go to church on Sundays, compared with 62 percent in 1992. Forty-two percent admit that they do not observe all religious commandments. Hardly anyone pays attention to rules about things like sexual abstinence before marriage anymore. The number of illegal abortions runs into the hundreds of thousands every year. In addition, four-fifths of Poles are bothered by the fact that the church regularly intervenes in politics.

[T]he church has failed to keep up with the modern age, says Barto. Many of his fellow Poles agree.
After joining the European Union, Poland turned to the West and embraced the Western lifestyle more than almost any other country. Nowadays, Polish women dream of careers, self-fulfillment and children. Hundreds of thousands of young Poles live together without being married. In booming cities like Warsaw and Poznan, gays and lesbians live their lives as openly as in Berlin or Madrid.  "More and more taboos are falling by the wayside. But the church reacts by hardening its positions even further," says Barto.

The church is short on answers to the challenges it faces in booming Poland. The priests routinely react to job market volatility and long working hours, emigration and return, stress and careers by invoking earlier, more pious times.

"In reality," says former monk Barto, "most clergymen are preoccupied with internal power struggles. If there is anyone who is especially ill-suited to teaching people ethical behavior, it's a scheming church leader."

I would certainly second the last sentence quoted.  Moral bankruptcy is the principal hallmark of the Church hierarchy and I would argue that most atheists are likely far more ethical than the Church's bishops, cardinals, and yes, the Pope.  Greed, secrecy and the quest for power and control are their main characteristics and objectives.

Polish Catholic Church Faces Demands to Confront Sex Abuse

While many nations in Europe have faced the reality that the sexual abuse of children and youths and hierarchy dictated cover ups were the norm and not the exception, one nation that has not done so as yet is Poland. In some ways Poland parallels what happened in Ireland since the Polish Church like the Irish Church long played a role in maintaining national identity and was a unifying entity in the struggle for freedom from foreign overlords. With that unique position in society, the opportunity for abuse became even more likely and enhanced. Fortunately, it seems the Church's lack of accountability and ability to hide crimes may be coming towards an end. Of course, the Polish populace need to fully open their eyes and one can only hope that government backed investigations such as occurred in Ireland will be the ultimate result. The Catholic Church clearly cannot be trusted to investigate or police itself. Here are highlights from the National Catholic Reporter on events unfolding in Poland:

WARSAW, POLAND -- When Bartek Obloj, a 13-year-old altar boy, hanged himself in his home village of Hludno just before Christmas 2007, he left a letter to his mother complaining of being molested by his parish rector. Police were called and his shocked parents blamed the priest for their son’s death.

A month later, Poland’s Catholic Tygodnik Powszechny weekly reported that Fr. Stanislaw Kaszowski had been moved to a parish 20 miles away after personally saying the boy’s funeral Mass. He’d denied the accusations, the paper added, and defiantly failed to appear at a court hearing.

Hludno’s mayor, Stanislaw Gladysz, testified that locals had long complained of the priest’s “sadistic behavior” and “sexual exploits,” adding that for a decade he’d asked the local ordinary, Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl, to move the priest. However, Michalik, president of the Polish bishops’ conference, had given Kaszowski his full confidence, the mayor said, and refused to discuss the claims.

When Poland’s Catholic Wiez monthly published a special issue on clerical sex abuse this summer, it was the first time a Catholic publication had dared tackle the subject. “The harm caused by sexual molestation of children is unquestionable — but the evil is much greater when pedophilia occurs in the community of faith, and when, in a falsely conceived defense of the church, the authorities hide the facts, conceal the perpetrators and ignore the suffering victims,” the Warsaw-based journal said in its editorial.

Leading Catholics, including the country’s children’s rights spokesman, have been urging the Polish church to adopt procedures for handling abuse claims since 2002, when Archbishop Juliusz Paetz of Poznan resigned after being accused of molesting seminarians. But media inquiries have been stonewalled and whistleblowers warned off. While millions of words have been devoted to denouncing abortion and defending family values, no Polish church leader has ever spoken up at his own initiative on behalf of victims of abuse.

Paetz himself has continued to appear at high-profile church events, while priests and lay Catholics who helped expose his abuses have faced censure. In 2006, he was shown on TV chatting at length with Benedict XVI during the pope’s Polish pilgrimage. In 2009, a handwritten telegram from Benedict, praising the disgraced archbishop’s “fruitful service” to the church, was published at Paetz’s request in Poland’s Catholic Przewodnik Katolicki weekly.

[A]ny criticism of a priest, even by loyal Catholics, is treated as an attack on the church and faith, and the worst church penalty a pedophile priest can expect is to be moved to another parish,” Spiewak told NCR. “If the church doesn’t deal with this problem and stop sheltering its priests from canonical and criminal responsibility, it will sooner or later face the same crisis as the church in other countries. But its leaders have avoided many of the issues faced elsewhere, and seem to think they can do the same with this one.”

Ordinary perpetrators of abuse are treated severely in Poland. . . . When it comes to Catholic priests, however, accusations of inaction and indifference have multiplied.

Fr. Hans Zollner, the Jesuit pro-rector of Rome’s Papal Gregorian University, told the Catholic monthly the situation was comparable to that of Germany before a wave of abuse scandals in 2010. He believes the same crisis will erupt in the Polish church if it fails to “confront the reality” of abuse. . . . . he fears “fortress mentalities” will kick in as complaints and accusations spread, fueling a growing anticlerical backlash.

The tragic case of Bartek Obloj, the altar boy from Hludno, was covered at length by Poland’s official press agency, PAP, and became the subject of a Polish TV documentary. Four years on, however, Obloj’s grieving parents still await answers.

The parish priest, Kaszowski, appeared in court in July 2008, charged with “psychically and physically torturing” the boy. But his trial was delayed pending a psychologist’s report on the 13-year-old prior to his suicide. Although this was filed last February, it wasn’t made public, and while the trial has now started again, it’s being held in camera, without access for the public. The priest, for his part, is refusing to submit a testimony and still working at the nearby parish.

Yes, it is the same pattern that we've seen in country after country where the Catholic Church believes it self to be above that law and show absolutely no regard for the lives and welfare of children and youths. And people ask me why I'm no longer Catholic? Why on earth would I want to be a part of such an evil institution.

Catholic Church in Steep Decline in Poland

The 12th Century minded Pope Benedict XVI has said that one of the goals of his papacy was/is to revive Christianity - Catholicism in particular - in Europe. Increasingly, however, it seems that instead he is overseeing the Church's wake on that continent instead. And deservedly so in light of the Church's worldwide sex abuse scandal and the ever increasing evidence that secrecy, cover ups, and an utter disregard for the welfare of children and youths was and remains the norm for the Church hierarchy. Yes, there are crocodile tears shed when the truth of the abuse comes out in the news media, but most responsible in the hierarchy have gone totally unpunished. Added to this phenomenon is the Church's refusal to accept modern medical, scientific and mental health knowledge - a refusal that is all the more evident given the free flow of information via the Internet. Catholic Spain - once reliable from the Vatican perspective - now has gay marriage and abortion. And now, according to a New York Times story, the Church finds itself in free fall in Poland, yet another once reliable bastion of Catholicism. To my view, the Church leadership has brought most of this on itself and it looks increasingly that those who claim to want to "save the Church" are the ones killing it. The irony is just too delicious. Here are some highlights from the Times story:
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Poland is still an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation, still conservative and still religious, especially when compared with its European neighbors. But supporters and critics of the Roman Catholic Church all acknowledge that the society is changing. They agree that church representatives in Poland have lost authority and credibility, and that much of the population is moving toward a more secular view of life, one with a greater separation between church and state, and a rejection of church mandates on individual morality.
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Poles cite a wide variety of reasons for the church’s declining influence. They say the dynamic gained momentum after the death in 2005 of the hugely popular Pope John Paul II, whose leadership is credited with helping bring down the Iron Curtain.
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Church critics and supporters said that the trend was partly an expression of disgust with the clergy for taking sides in recent political battles, and partly the influence of thousands of Poles who had returned home after working and studying in the more secular societies in the West.
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But they also said there was a strong anticlerical movement in Poland, one that was unique to this nation and not tied to the sex scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church elsewhere. It is more closely linked to an almost genetic predisposition to rebel against authority, many people here said, as much as the church’s often heavy-handed intervention in national politics and debates over social issues, particularly in vitro fertilization.
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The list of grievances against the church tends to be Polish specific: that it managed to recover its property after Communism, but that average people often could not; that it appeared to take sides in politics . . .
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Antichurch sentiment has run so hot that one of the most popular politicians in the country, Janusz Palikot, started a political party based largely on an anticlerical platform. He said that the national divide tended to be generational, with older citizens more closely aligned with the church, but that it was impossible to discern distinct boundaries.

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The Church truly seems headed towards a day where its sole center of influence will be limited to backward countries with uneducated populations, primarily in Africa. And Rome will have accelerated the trend by insanely clinging to 12th century dogma and "natural law" arguments now refuted by modern knowledge.

Brazilian Priest's Erotic Sex Abuse Dungeon

The Catholic Church sex scandals seems to have no end in sight as stories of abuse by priests continue to come to light around the world. Worse yet, in some cases the accused predators were shipped from parishes to unsuspecting parishes in other parts of the world. One place where such priests are surfacing is in Brazil where new allegations against a Polish priest take the abuse scandal to new bizarre levels like something out of a bad porn movie. True to form, the Catholic bishop has stated his "regret" for the situation, yet no one seems to take responsibility for allowing such freaks into the priesthood in the first place much less responsibility for the obvious deliberate cover ups. The Church condemns loving, committed gay relationships, yet continues to harbor sexual predators. Here are highlights from Google News on the latest out of Brazil:
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A court has ordered the arrest of a Polish priest suspected of sexually abusing a teenager in a Rio de Janeiro suburb and turning his parish home into what the judge described as an "erotic dungeon" for sex with adolescents, authorities said Friday.
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State prosecutors have accused Marcin Michael Strachanowski, 44, of handcuffing the 16-year-old former altar boy to a bed three years ago in the parish house where the priest lived and threatening to kill the youth if he spoke of the abuse. "I already know the flowers I will place on your coffin," Strachanowski warned, according to prosecutors.
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The Polish priest was suspended from his duties after the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro learned of the order for his arrest, church spokesman Adionel Carlos da Cunha said in a statement issued Friday. The judge issued the order on Thursday. The archdiocese "expresses its regret over what happened, especially with the people involved and possible victims," he said.
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[I]nvestigators found "erotic material sent to the victim via Internet to seduce him" and that the priest also took other youths to the parish house, "which he converted into a kind of erotic dungeon where he submitted them, often with the use of handcuffs, to orgies."
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Sex-abuse scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church have mushroomed around the world recently, and some of the accused priests have surfaced in Brazil, home to more Catholics than any other nation.
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Late last month, prosecutors charged the Rev. Jose Afonso with abusing altar boys ranging in age from 12 to 16. Prosecutors said the alleged abuses took place in the city of Franca, in southeastern Sao Paulo state.
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Also last month, 83-year-old Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa was detained in northeastern Brazil for allegedly abusing at least three boys after being caught on videotape having sex with a young man, a former altar boy. Barbosa is under house arrest while authorities investigate. Two other priests in the same archdiocese are also accused of abuses.

'VIP Syndrome' Cause of Polish Plane Crash?

Until now I have not remarked on the crash of the Polish airliner that took the life of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and many top Polish officials. I am still stunned that so many top officials would have been placed on a single aircraft. Years ago as in-house counsel, we NEVER had the entire law department travel on the oil company's corporate jet for the very reason that someone had to remain if disaster struck to go onward. Second, I cannot believe that the pilots ignored repeated orders from the control tower to divert to a different airport. Now, it seems that the fault may lie on Kaczynski, who was a raging homophobe and arrogant ass in life, who may have insisted that the plane land. He no doubt was in for a shock if he has now discovered that that God is a black lesbian or someone similar who will not look kindly on his nasty bigotry against gays. Here are some highlights from The Independent on the possible new facts on the tragedy:
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Alexander Alyoshin, deputy chief of the Russian Air Force's general staff, said the pilot had ignored several orders from air-traffic control not to land at Smolensk because of thick fog. "The head of the air-traffic control group gave a command to the crew to put the aircraft into the horizontal position, and when the crew did not implement this order, several times gave orders to divert to an alternative airport. "Despite this, the crew continued the descent. Unfortunately this ended in tragedy."
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The airport is a small, military facility that does not usually accept civilian craft. Aviation experts speculated that the pilots may have been ordered to land by the Polish President. "It's a clear case of VIP-passenger syndrome," flight safety expert Viktor Timoshkin told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. "Air-traffic control told him to take the plane to Moscow or Minsk. I'm certain that the pilot will have told the President about this, and got a firm reply that the plane must land in Smolensk."
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The Polish press reported that just 36 minutes before the crash that would take his life, Mr Kaczynski called his twin brother Jaroslaw from aboard the plane, to tell him that everything was going to plan and he would soon arrive in Smolensk.
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If these facts hold true, it is saddening that a man who was an ass in many ways cost 90+ individuals their lives. One can only hope that Poland will find a new leader who is more respectful of all citizens and with less hubris.

Poles Favour EU Gay Rights Treaty Despite Government Opposition

The Roman Catholic Church – which continues to believe that it should be able to dictate matters of Civil law in nations around the world – and reactionary elements in the Polish government have been leading opposition to Poland’s execution of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights because it would guaranty civil rights to LGBT citizens in Poland. As is all too typical, the opponents of the treaty have used scare tactics and raised the specter of a homosexual agenda and gay marriage that they claim threatens Polish institutions and citizens. Fortunately, their propaganda campaign has failed based on a new poll. Here are some story highlights (http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/politics/2005-7211.html):

An opinion poll in Poland has found strong backing for a new EU treaty criticised by the country's homophobic President in an address to the nation last week. The survey will come as an embarrassment to President Lech Kaczynski, who used lurid images of gay marriage to illustrate the "threat" to the Polish nation he claims the Lisbon treaty poses.

The poll was published by daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. Despite the President's dire warning that the treaty would lead to the introduction of gay marriage in Poland, 69% of respondents did not believe him. Overall 65% want the treaty to be approved and 15% do not.

Over footage of two men getting married in Canada the President, a notorious homophobe, claimed the Lisbon treaty would "affect the accepted moral order in Poland." Former Prime Minister Kaczynski claimed that Poland was "culturally different" from their EU partners, especially when it came to the rights of LGBT people and the use of the death penalty, and refused to sign up.

Another Catholic Church Revelation of Hypocrisy

MyWay News has an embarrassing story on the Catholic Church in Poland. Turns out that a number of bishops were collaborators or agents of the communist secret police. Portions of the story follow:

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - A special commission of Poland's Roman Catholic Church said Wednesday that documents in secret police files showed "about a dozen" living bishops had ties to the communist-era secret services.

After six months of work, the commission said that among Poland's 132 bishops "about a dozen were registered by the security services of communist Poland as 'secret collaborators' or 'operational contacts,'" while one was registered as an "agent" of the intelligence service.

Back in January, the New York Times reported:

Warsaw’s new archbishop, Stanislaw W. Wielgus, caught in Eastern Europe’s widening witch hunt for former Communist secret police informers, admitted Friday that he had collaborated with the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or Security Service, known as the S.B.

Wielgus (pictured above) ultimately resigned. It should be no surprise that an institution that covered up the sexual abuse of children world wide also cooperated with repressive secret police agencies. I can only wonder how many lives they damaged in this manner. This same wonderful institution currently is working overtime to deprive gays in Poland of civil legal rights.