Treasure Hunters in Poland begin to dig for Nazi "ghost" train.

Searchers in Poland begin to dig for Nazi "ghost" train believed to be full of treasures. (LiveScience).

Treasure hunters broke ground today in Poland, hoping to find a legendary train said to be filled with gold and hidden by Nazis near the end of World War II.

But some scientists doubt that such a train ever existed and said it's unlikely the team will find the gold they're looking for.


"We're entering the sphere of almost urban myth," Tony Pollard, a battlefield archaeologist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, told Live Science. "From my own experience as an archaeologist, I'm highly dubious about it, and I think most of the archaeological community shares that opinion."

According to local lore, the Germans hid a train loaded with gold and other loot in a secret tunnel as the Soviet army advanced in 1945. Government-sponsored and private efforts alike had attempted to locate this fabled treasure trove over the past several decades.

Last summer, a pair of amateur explorers, Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter, claimed that they had identified the spot where the train was buried, in the town of Walbrzych in Poland. [Images: Missing Nazi Diary Resurfaces]

The announcement touched off a frenzy. Treasure hunters and tourists reportedly flocked to the region. Some Polish officials even backed the claims; Poland's deputy minister of culture said he was "99 percent" certain the train existed after seeing Koper and Richter's ground-penetrating radar images, which supposedly showed an armored train buried underground.

Excitement over the discovery dampened just a few months later, after a scientific commission from AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, Poland, attempted to verify the findings and found no evidence for the train. "There may be a tunnel, but there is no train," Janusz Madej, a geology professor who led thecommission, reportedly told a press conference in December 2015.


Koper and Richter, however, pressed on. This week they began digging in the spot where they say they found a train-shaped anomaly in their radar scans. Photos from the site showed that the team has already started clearing large amounts of dirt with an excavator. The German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that the team plans to initially dig 20 feet (6 meters) deep.

  Pollard noted that he was especially skeptical about Koper and Richter's radar images, which purported to show the underground train in great detail. "I've worked with ground-penetrating radar experts, and these are like no results that I've ever seen," he said, adding that radar images of buried archaeological features typically look more abstract

He added that he was also disappointed that much of the discussion surrounding this treasure hunt was about the possibility of striking gold and its value. "I certainly don't want people to think this is archaeological research," Pollard said. "Archaeology's raison d'être is to answer questions about the past. If there is indeed a train laced with Nazi gold, it could raise a lot of questions."

Even the discovery of an empty tunnel could be an interesting turn of events. In this part of southern Poland, the Nazis used forced labor to build a vast network of tunnels called the Riese complex ("riese" is the German word for "giant").  Read the full story here, More here.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski A Polish Putin: Autocratic Power Grab Accelerates in Warsaw.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski A Polish Putin: Autocratic Power Grab Accelerates in Warsaw. (Spiegel).

Poland's national-conservative government was quick to sideline the country's high court. Now, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his party have their sights set on complete control of the state.

At age 73, she is the grande dame of politics in Warsaw -- and she still talks so much and so fast that hardly anyone can get a word in edgewise. More than anything, though, Jadwiga Staniszkis is not afraid of those in power.

Even as a young assistant professor during communist times, her defiance got her into trouble and she spent some time in prison as a result.

Today, 27 years after the fall of communism, Staniszkis is once again taking on the authorities. The sociology professor has become one of the most outspoken critics of the current national-conservative government under the control of Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Although Kaczynski has no formal position in the government, he is widely seen as the one pulling the strings in the background.

Staniszkis was long a fan of Kaczynski and has even campaigned for his national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party in the past. She once gushed: "I think he is perhaps the most intelligent politician in Poland. I like him a lot."

Today, she says: "He wants to monopolize power with no limitations. The approach is informed by a Bolshevik understanding of politics."

Kaczynski has placed state-run media in Poland under his control and weakened the country's highest court, known as the Constitutional Tribunal. And that was just the beginning.

The Warsaw-based newsmagazine Polityka has even described it as a coup d'état. There have been large protests in the country, harsh criticism from Brussels and a rule of law inquiry from the EU, but nothing has yet stopped Kaczynski.

Now, on his path to absolute power, he is preparing to put every last aspect of the state under his control. Already, he can rely on his party's majority in Polish parliament to do his bidding. But he apparently has aspirations beyond just dominating ministries, state agencies and the judiciary. Under his leadership, the state is to take on a stricter, fatherly role -- not unlike an autocracy.


In the battle over the Constitutional Tribunal, Professor Staniszkis knows the primary adversaries well. Both Andrzej Rzeplinski, who is president of the court, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who has robbed the court of its power, attended her university classes.

Professor Staniszkis, who has known Jaroslaw Kaczynski for several decades, has not been allowed to see him for months. The two don't have that much to say to each other anyway. "He doesn't understand the Western concept of sovereignty, which uses a system of checks and balances to prevent a dictatorship of the majority," says Staniszkis. Her former student, she adds, wants absolute power. "It is archaic and reminiscent of Putin's approach to power." Read the full story here.

Video - Polish PM: NO refugees after Brussels attacks.

'Refugees...not Welcome' - A far-right, anti-refugee party has won a landslide victory in Poland.

'Refugees...not Welcome' - A far-right, anti-refugee party has won a landslide victory in Poland. (Thejournal.ie).

POLAND’S CONSERVATIVE LAW and Justice party won a landslide in yesterday’s general election on anti-refugee rhetoric and welfare promises, ending eight years of centrist rule in a victory that risks inflaming tensions with the EU and Russia.

The eurosceptic PiS led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski garnered an outright majority, according to projections from partial results by local television channels, ousting leftist parties from parliament for the first time since the fall of communism in 1989.

“This is the first time in the history of Polish democracy that a single party has scored (an outright) majority” in the Sejm, the lower house, Kaczynski said in a victory speech after Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz conceded defeat.

He also paid tribute to his twin bother, the late president Lech Kaczynski, who died in a 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, western Russia, saying: “Without him, we wouldn’t be here today. His spirit is stronger than his body. We must keep his memory alive.”

His push for power preyed on fears arising from Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II and analysts said a PiS government was likely to reverse Kopacz’s decision to accept refugees under an EU quota plan.

Kaczynski claimed refugees were bringing “cholera to the Greek islands, dysentery to Vienna, various types of parasites,” in comments that critics said recalled the Nazi era.

He insists Warsaw should financially support EU efforts to tackle the crisis, but not take in refugees — a view surveys suggest is shared by nearly 60 percent of Poles.

“After eight years in opposition, Kaczynski is making a big comeback,” Warsaw political analyst Eryk Mistewicz told AFP.

Poland has become an east European heavyweight after a quarter century of explosive growth and vastly-improved living standards since the demise of communism.

“Rather than aggressively locking horns with the EU, he will look for ways to extract maximum benefit from it. With Russia, he may also forego confrontation,” he said.

Analysts agree the PiS will still anchor Poland’s security policy in NATO and strong US ties as a buffer against any threat from Russia.

It will seek ways to continue heavy reliance on coal at upcoming global climate talks, and joining the eurozone will remain a distant prospect.

Some warn Kaczynski’s return could relaunch a political dynamic tinged with authoritarian overtones.

“If PiS end up governing alone with an allied president, Poland will become another Hungary,” Polish Academy of Sciences professor Radoslaw Markowski told AFP. Hmmm......As i warned far right will rise all over Europe. Read the full story here.

Poland - Alleged First images of Mysterious Nazi 'Silver' train in underground tunnel released.

Poland -  Alleged First images of Mysterious 'Silver' Nazi train in underground tunnel released. (Fact [GoogleTranslated].

Fakt24.pl was send an email with pictures that look just like the gold train. Are they real? We asked about it experts.

Our sender was very enigmatic in a letter sent to us and did not want to confirm that the photos that depict the notorious "gold train". He did not want to betray, when & Where they were made ​​and how they came into his possession.

For the verification of photography and what is on them we asked experts from the National Railway Museum in Warsaw and Koscierzyna and an expert in testing gaming Thomas Prusickiego of Qloc SA
As we learned from Michael Pekuły the National Railway Museum in Kościerzyna, photos show German diesel locomotive Panzertriebwagen 16, the only copy of which is in Europe have the Railway Museum in Warsaw - Yes, indeed they have in their collections an armored train.

On the other hand we do not know whether this "golden" - which no one has ever seen - it looks the same - says the portal Fakt24 Anna Koselska and added that the exhibit, which is in the museum's collection is a compilation of equipment German and Russian - at one point was captured by Army Red and some elements of mechanisms earned Russians - explains Koselska.

In contrast, other images are definitely of inferior quality, and make an impression as if it was done in a completely different place. Moreover, the alleged bars resemble more silver than gold - In The pictures the air is filled with a lot of debris and dust, but the train, boxes, or bars are not, in any event dusty - comments Prusicki. - Unfortunately, I could not see the typical computer graphics errors, so-called. peak clipping, or when two objects merge. Read and see the 6 pictures here

Ukraine Asks Poland for Free Coal - 'Give me free coal and i won't steal your gas'?

Ukraine Asks Poland for Free Coal - 'Give me free coal and i won't steal your gas' ?(RN).

Ukraine has asked Poland for free provision of coal for the country's power plants, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday in Milan, where a working breakfast involving Russian President Vladimir Putin, his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko and a number of key EU leaders was held.

"Ukrainians asked for Polish coal. They do not have enough coal to produce electricity. And then they told the Poles that it would have been good to rent this coal for free. So take a look... on the reaction of the Poles."

Earlier in October, Polish Senate Speaker Bogdan Borusewicz said as his country has large reserves of coal, it could work together with Ukraine to help it cover the lack of coal.

As a result of the Kiev-led military operation in Ukraine’s southeast, much of the country’s coal supplies have been disrupted.

According to statistics from the Russian Academy of Sciences Energy Research Institute (ERI RAS), out of the 90 mines that were operating in eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk before the conflict, only 20 are currently functioning. In addition, the destruction of railroads has significantly disrupted coal transit. Hmmm.....Sounds like negotiating with the mob...'I'll make you an offer you can't refuse'

Polish Jews Split Over Exhuming Jewish Victims of Nazi era Polish Pogrom.

Source picture here.

Polish Jews Split Over Exhuming  Jewish Victims of Nazi era Polish Pogrom. HT: Forward.

In September 1941, a group of villagers wielding axes and other tools descended upon the homes of their Jewish neighbors and murdered every last one, according to testimonies gathered by Holocaust scholars.

Not much else is known about the massacre in Wasosz, a village 100 miles east of Warsaw, including basics like the number of victims. Current estimates range widely, from 180 to 1,200.

In an effort to provide conclusive forensic evidence about the massacre, in July a Polish prosecutor asked Jewish community leaders for permission to exhume the bodies. The plan has split the community, with some passionately supporting what they see as a last chance for justice and others claiming it would violate the dignity of the dead and Jewish religious law, or halachah.

“Once the bodies are in the ground, halachah teaches us they are not to be disturbed except when it is done to protect the dignity of the dead or to save lives,” Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told JTA. “I and other rabbis and the leadership of the Jewish community in Warsaw, among others, feel neither stipulation applies to Wasosz. A desire to clarify history is not enough.”

Piotr Kadlcik, president of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, the country’s main Jewish umbrella group, called Schudrich’s position “a serious mistake, with detrimental implications.”

“We have tools to determine details about both victims and perpetrators in a matter which is still a criminal matter,” said Kadlcik, who is seeking an exhumation followed by Jewish burial of the human remains. “If we let this chance go, the case of Wasosz will become history – an unclear one and subject to falsification.”

In a move to undermine opponents to exhumation, Kadlcik has requested an opinion from Rabbi Yakov Ruza, a prominent authority in Israel on forensic medicine. Polish prosecutors have also reviewed the Israeli law that permits exhumation in cases involving a murder investigation, Kadlcik said.

Meanwhile, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance – the government body whose prosecutor, Radoslaw Ignatiew, initiated the investigation of Wasosz – is holding off on any exhumation until at least 2015 while the issue is discussed within the Jewish community.

The debate has ramifications well beyond an internal Jewish dispute over halachah and forensics. In the background are echoes of Jedwabne, an earlier investigation of another wartime mass murder of Jews by Poles.

The opening of that probe in 2001 was a watershed moment for Poland, according to Joanna Michlic, a historian at Bristol University, who wrote a 43-page paper chronicling how the debate split the Catholic Church, generated ultranationalist protests featuring anti-Semitic hate speech, led to the replacement of a memorial plaque that blamed the Germans for the murders and, finally, yielded the first admission by a Polish president of Polish guilt.

Before Jedwabne, Holocaust-era crimes by Poles were taboo because they undermined the communist narrative that all Poles were equal victims of Nazism. The subject remains divisive today because it undermines the current government’s focus on Polish wartime heroism and resistance to totalitarianism.

From a forensic perspective, the dig in Jedwabne was inconclusive. Though an excavation of the site revealed some human remains, it never progressed to include exhumation – as per understandings reached between Polish authorities and rabbis, including Schudrich.

Without exhumation, it was impossible to answer such basic questions as how many people died, which in turn left the door open to revisionism in far-right circles. Several nationalist lawmakers, clergymen and journalists continue to dispute Polish complicity.

“Jedwabne was ultimately a missed opportunity,” Jan Gross, the Princeton historian whose research triggered the 2001 debate, told JTA. “Some important findings were recovered, but questions persisted because the probe was interrupted before basic facts could be recovered.”

For Kadlcik, Wasosz is a chance to correct the opportunity missed at Jedwabne.

“For the ultranationalists, the bottom line from Jedwabne is as follows: The Jews made accusations but hid behind their religious laws at the first attempt to corroborate,” Kadlcik said. “Well, this time we need to settle this and serve justice.”

But Schudrich also drew painful lessons from the Jedwabne probe.

“The entire place was littered with human remains – not just the area where we thought the bodies lay,” he said. “So as soon as the digging began, we saw bones fused together in fire, earrings of little girls. We found children’s bones. To any reasonable person, that settled any doubts there may have been about a massacre. There is no justification to violate the dignity of the dead.”

As for serving justice, Schudrich said, “The perpetrators will get justice from God. The small minority that refuses to face reality and historical evidence, no exhumation is going to change their minds.” Hmmm....The truth must be known, so we learn from our past , NEVER AGAIN.

Jack the Ripper Identified as Jewish Barber From Poland...(Not the Onion).

Jack the Ripper Identified as Jewish Barber From Poland...(Not the Onion). HT: Forward.

The serial killer Jack the Ripper was identified through DNA as a Jewish barber who immigrated to London from Poland.

Businessman Russell Edwards, an amateur Jack the Ripper sleuth, and molecular biologist Dr. Jari Louhelainen of Liverpool John Moores University made the discovery through DNA traces found on a shawl recovered from one of the crime scenes that allegedly belonged to one of his victims.

The discovery is announced in a book by Edwards that is scheduled to be released on Tuesday, the Daily Mail first reported on Sunday.

Edwards identifies the killer as Aaron Kosminski, who would have been age 23 at the time of the murders.

Kosminski, who came to England in 1881 with his family, reportedly lived near the scenes of the murders. He was brought in by police as a witness at the time of the murders and later released. Kosminski died in an insane asylum in 1919.

The serial killer nicknamed Jack the Ripper is accused of killing five women over about three months in the fall of 1888 in and near the Whitechapel district of London. The victims’ throats were cut and their bodies mutilated.

Edwards bought the shawl, which allegedly came from the murder scene of the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes and still contained bloodstains, at an auction in 2007.

Louhelainen was able to find blood that matched the victim and other body fluids that ultimately were linked to Kosminski. Hmmm.......the professor also performed Genetic analysis of DNA from elephant dung.

Krakow's New Chief Rabbi Eliezer Gurary: All Non-Jews Dislike Jews.

Source Picture

Krakow's New Chief Rabbi Eliezer Gurary: All Non-Jews Dislike Jews. HT: Forward.

Several Polish rabbis and Jewish lay leaders criticized Krakow’s new chief rabbi for saying all non-Jews do not like Jews — a statement he was recorded making in an interview and then denied uttering.

On Friday, six rabbis who belong to the Association of Rabbis in Poland said in a statement that they “firmly oppose” remarks made by Rabbi Eliezer Gurary in an interview published June 9 on the Hebrew and English editions of inn.co.il, the news website of Israel’s Arutz Sheva internet radio station.

In another statement published Friday, five Polish Jewish lay leaders wrote they were “disturbed and deeply concerned” by Gurary’s statement, which they said “essentially painted all non-Jews as anti-Semites.”

In the published interview, which was conducted in Hebrew, Gurary was quoted as saying: “let’s state it very clearly: those who are not a Jew – do not like Jews. Everyone understands and knows it.”
An alternative translation substitutes “like” for “love.”

In their statement, the Association rabbis wrote: “We are hoping that Rabbi Gurary will withdraw his harmful declaration.” They added that “the generalization that Gurary made is simply not true.” In Poland, they wrote, “we are fighting prejudice and we are working on good relations with our countrymen regardless of their religion or ethnicity.”

Contacted by JTA, Gurary, a Chabad rabbi who has been living in Krakow for eight years, denied making the statement during his interview with journalist Nissan Tzur.

He said the statement was a misquote and accused critics of targeting him personally in “a vicious and lowly blood libel.”

But in the recording of the interview, which JTA obtained, Gurary is heard making the generalization and adding: “This shouldn’t come as news, anyone who lives out [of Israel] can tell you the history of non-Jews’ attitude. Of course, there are places where this is more felt, and there are places where this is less felt. In some places sympathy to Jews is more felt; in others, hatred to Jews is more felt.”

Polish FM: Poland evacuates consulate in Crimea.

Polish FM: Poland evacuates consulate in Crimea.(Taz).

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Saturday Poland had evacuated its consulate in Ukraine's Crimea due to disturbances by Russian forces, Reuters reported.

Sikorski said on Twitter: "Because of continuing disturbances by Russian forces there, we have reluctantly evacuated our consulate in Crimea, Ukraine."

The consulate is in Sevastopol, the home of both Russia's Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian navy, where Russian troops drove a truck into a missile defense post and took control of it overnight.

As a result of protests in Ukraine, the country's President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted on Feb. 22. The Verkhovna Rada (parliament) has approved the new composition of the parliament and is preparing to hold pre-term elections.

On Feb. 26 several thousand people participating in two rallies gathered in front of Supreme Council of Crimea. After the escalation of the protest actions in Crimea, the Federation Council supported President Vladimir Putin's appeal regarding the use of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine pending "the normalization of the socio-political situation in that country".

Leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and the U.S., as well as chairman of the European Council and the chairman of the European Commission made a joint statement condemning Russia's position on Ukraine and canceled the preparations for the G8 summit in Sochi, scheduled for June 2014.

"Euro heist II" - Poland Confiscates Half Of Private Pension Funds To Cut Sovereign Debt Load.

"Euro heist II" - Poland Confiscates Half Of Private Pension Funds To Cut Sovereign Debt Load.HT: ZeroHedge.

While the world was glued to the developments in the Mediterranean in the past week, Poland took a page straight out of Rahm Emanuel’s playbook and in order to not let a crisis go to waste, announced quietly that it would transfer to the state – i.e., confiscate – the bulk of assets owned by the country’s private pension funds (many of them owned by such foreign firms as PIMCO parent Allianz, AXA, Generali, ING and Aviva), without offering any compensation. In effect, the state just nationalized roughly half of the private sector pension fund assets, although it had a more politically correct name for it: pension overhaul.

By way of background, Poland has a hybrid pension system: as Reuters explains, mandatory contributions are made into both the state pension vehicle, known as ZUS, and the private funds, which are collectively known by the Polish acronym OFE. Bonds make up roughly half the private funds’ portfolios, with the rest company stocks.

And while a change to state-pension funds was long awaited – an overhaul if you will – nobody expected that this would entail a literal pillage of private sector assets.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said private funds within the state-guaranteed system would have their bond holdings transferred to a state pension vehicle, but keep their equity holdings. The funds would effectively be left with only the equities portions of their assets, even this would be depleted, and there will be uncertainty about the number of new savers joining.

But why is Poland engaging in behavior that will ultimately be disastrous to future capital allocation in non-public pension funds (the type that can at least on paper generate some returns as opposed to “public” funds which are guaranteed to lose)?

 After all, this is a last ditch step which no rational person would engage in unless there were no other option. Simple: there were no other option, and the driver is the same reason the world everywhere else is broke too – too much debt.

By shifting some assets from the private funds into ZUS, the government can book those assets on the state balance sheet to offset public debt, giving it more scope to borrow and spend. Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said the changes will reduce public debt by about eight percent of GDP. This in turn, he said, would allow the lowering of two thresholds that deter the government from allowing debt to raise over 50 percent, and then 55 percent, of GDP. Public debt last year stood at 52.7 percent of GDP, according to the government’s own calculations.

To summarize:

1. Government has too much debt to issue more debt
2. Government nationalizes private pension funds making their debt holdings an “asset” and commingles with other public assets
3. New confiscated assets net out sovereign debt liability, lowering the debt/GDP ratio
4. Debt/GDP drops below threshold, government can issue more sovereign debt

And of course, once Poland borrows like a drunken sailor using the new window of opportunity, and maxes out its new and improved limits, it will have no choice but to confiscate more assets, and to make its balance sheet appear better, until one day, there is nothing left in the private sector to confiscate. At that point the limit itself will have to be legislated away, and Poland will simply continue borrowing until one day there are no foreign lenders willing to take the same risk as the nation’s private pensioners. At that point, Poland, which is in the EU but still has the Zloty, can just go ahead and monetize its own debt by printing unlimited amounts of its currency.

Of course, we all know how that story ends.

The response to the confiscation was, naturally, one of shock:

The reform is “a decimation of the …(private pension fund) system to open up fiscal space for an easier life now for the government,” said Peter Attard Montalto of Nomura. “The government has an odd definition of private property given it claims this is not nationalisation.”

“This is worse than many on the markets had feared,” a manager at one of the leading pension funds, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

“The devil is in the detail and we don’t yet know a lot about the mechanism of these changes, what benchmarks will be use to evaluate our performance… (It) looks like pension funds will lose a lot of flexibility in what they can invest.”

Catastrophic consequences for fund flows aside, the Polish prime minister had a prompt canned response:

Tusk said people joining the pension system in the future would not be obliged to pay into the private part of the system. Depending on the finer points, this could mean still fewer assets in the private funds.

“The (current) system has turned out to be built in part on rising public debt and turned out to be a very costly system,” Tusk told a news conference.

“We believe that, apart from the positive consequence of this decision for public debt, pensions will also be safer.”

You see, he is from the government, and he is confiscating the pensions to make them safer. Confiscation is Safety and all that…

Polish officials have tried to reassure investors, saying the overhaul avoids the more radical options of taking both bond and equity assets away from the private funds outright.

They say the old system effectively made Polish public debt appear higher than it really is.

Well, once you nationalize private assets, the public debt will lindeed appear lower than it was before confiscation: we give them that much.

End result: “The Polish pension funds’ organisation said the changes may be unconstitutional because the government is taking private assets away from them without offering any compensation…. This may lead to the private pension systems shutting down,” said Rafal Benecki of ING Bank Slaski.”

Unconstitutional? What’s that. But whatever it is, it’s ok – after all the public pension system is still around. At least until that too is plundered. But in the meantime, all such pensions will be “safer”, guaranteed.

But best of all, in the aftermath of Cyprus, we now know what the two most recent European blueprints for preserving the myth of solvency are: bail-ins, which confiscate deposits, and pension fund “overhauls”, which confiscate, well, pension funds.

And now, back to the global recovery soap opera.

Polish President Calls Cooperation with U.S. over Missile Defense ‘Mistake’.

Polish President Calls Cooperation with U.S. over Missile Defense ‘Mistake’.(RN).Poland needs its own missile defense shield while the agreement with the United States on the deployment of an anti-ballistic-missile defense system on its territory was “a mistake,” Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said in an interview with the Wprost magazine, published on Saturday. “We must have this element of the Polish defense [missile defense system]. Spending large sums on military hardware is actually meaningless if it is not secured from… the missile attack and air raids,” Komorowski said, adding that Polish shield must be a part of the existing European missile defense system. The president also said that the agreement to deploy the U.S. anti-ballistic-missile defense system on the Polish territory which was later scrapped by the U.S. President Barack Obama, has been “a political mistake” that should not be repeated in future.

“Our mistake was that while accepting the U.S. proposal, we have not taken into account a political risk related to the change of the U.S. president. We have paid a too high political price for that,” Komorowski told the magazine.

The United States scrapped plans in September of 2010 for an anti-ballistic-missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. Moscow welcomed the move, and Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev said later that Russia would drop plans to deploy Iskander-M tactical missiles in its Kaliningrad Region, which borders NATO members, Poland and Lithuania. Last year, however, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Washington's plans to deploy the U.S. new-generation ballistic missile defense interceptor site in Poland by 2018.Hmmmmm.......More "CHANGE".Read the full story here.

"Lost And Found" - 'Belarusian List' of Katyn Victims Found.

"Lost And Found" - 'Belarusian List' of Katyn Victims Found.(RN).The long-sought "Belarusian list" of Polish officers executed in 1940 by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, has been found in Russia’s state military archives, Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported. Natalia Lebedeva, a leading Russian historian on Katyn and a senior researcher at the Institute of General History (Russian Academy of Sciences), found the document in the archive of the Soviet 15th military escort brigade stationed in Belarus in 1940, which was engaged in transporting NKVD prisoners to Minsk. The Belarusian list contains 1,996 names of prisoners taken from cities in what is now western Belarus: Brest, Pinsk, Baranovichi, Grodno, Bialystok and others. They were apparently shot along with some 20,000 other Polish officers at prison camps in Russia (Kozelsk and Ostashkov) and Ukraine (Starobelsk). Lebedeva, who said all the families of the shot officers were deported to Kazakhstan, plans to compare the list of the dead with the list of those deported.According to archival documents, 21,857 Poles, mostly captured Polish army officers, were executed in the spring of 1940 by the NKVD. Despite the fact the killings occurred at a number of NKVD prison camps, the mass executions are called the Katyn Massacre, after the Katyn forest in Smolensk region where many of the executions were carried out. In Soviet times, the massacre was attributed to the Nazis, but in 1990 Moscow acknowledged that the Soviet authorities were responsible. Russia provided a list with the names of 14,552 soldiers who were shot and buried in Katyn, Kalinin, Mednoe and in Kharkov (Ukraine). In 1994, Kiev gave Warsaw the so-called Ukrainian list, which included the names of 3,435 victims. In the ensuing years, researchers began to doubt they would ever find the Belarusian list. On December 23, 2011 Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that not a single citizen of Poland was shot in 1940 on the territory of Belarus. According to Lukashenko, Belarus was only a "transit point." On May 22, 2012 Vladimir Adamushko, director at the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Republic of Belarus, said there was not and could not be any such list.Hmmmm........Communism in all her glory.Read the full story here.

"Apologist-in-Chief" won't apologize to Polish people.

"Apologist-in-Chief" won't apologize to Polish people.(ABCNews).Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski said Wednesday he had written a personal letter to President Barack Obama urging him to do more to correct the record after Obama referred to “a Polish death camp” in a White House ceremony on Tuesday. “I hope we will jointly act to make up for this unfortunate mistake. I believe that every error, every mistake can be corrected if it is given adequate consideration,” Komorowski said in remarks posted on his official website. Komorowski stopped well short of explicitly demanding an apology from Obama, who used the phrase Tuesday as he honored World War II Polish resistance hero Jan Karski with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian American honor. Poland’s foreign minister had demanded a full apology late Tuesday. But Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk made no reference to an apology on Wednesday even as he blasted Obama’s remark. The phrase shocked Polish leaders and echoed across media in Poland, where the remark was seen as suggesting that Poles — not Nazis — carried out the genocidal policies of Adolf Hitler. Obama’s past comments all-but-certainly refute that interpretation, and the White House has said he merely “misspoke.”. . . Asked whether Obama had plans to reach out to Polish leaders, Carney demurred. The Polish president cast the issue in terms of improving relations with the United States. “Every recognized and reconsidered mistake can bring us closer together,” he said, “to prevent recurrence of painful phrases that are divorced from the truth but which influence opinions about Poland’s history and present day.” “We in Poland know well that the phrase ‘Polish death camps’ is not only painful and unfair but simply untrue,” Komorowski said.Hmmmm......Now if Poland were Islamic that would be a whole other ballgame.Read the full story here.

Polish PM Caves In to the people their demands, Freezes ACTA Ratification

Polish PM Caves In to the people their demands, Freezes ACTA Ratification.(Novinite).Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk has yielded to mass protests, announcing Friday that his government would put on hold plans to ratify ACTA, the controversial international online anti-piracy accord.
"I consider that the arguments for a halt to the ratification process are justified," Donald Tusk told reporters, as cited by international media."The issue of signing of the ACTA accord did not involve sufficient consultation with everyone who is part of the process," Tusk said, adding that he would hold broad talks on what to do next."The ACTA ratification process will be frozen as long as we haven't overcome all the doubts. This will probably require a review of Polish law. We can't rule out that, at the end of the day, this accord will not be approved," he declared.
Tusk's decision comes in the wake of high-profile protests mostly by young Poles who fear the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) -- aimed at creating international standards for intellectual property protection -- could significantly curtail online freedom.
ACTA was negotiated between the 27-nation European Union, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States.
Bulgaria's Borisov Cabinet has also come under fire for the secret signing of ACTA.
Even though Bulgaria has seen no street rallies, massive outcry by Internet users and ISPs led on Thursday Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov to declare that ACTA will be applied with reservations and will be supplemented by the existing Bulgarian legislation in its part referring to Internet content.Hmmmm.........President Obama could learn a lesson in Democracy from Poland it seems.Read the full story here.