tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-186894432008-07-12T06:51:04.126-05:00Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comBlogger206125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-42934586572537804922007-03-23T00:15:00.000-05:002007-03-23T00:34:13.475-05:00

There is nothing better than getting a tape of one of the leaders of Poland's post-communist party (SLD) ripping on pretty much every one of the other top leftists, including former president Aleksander Kwasniewski and former prime minister Leszek Miller. But that's exactly what we got with another former PM and handsome devil, Jozef Oleksy putting out a full load of dirty laundry in a taped

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-17969046917057883062007-03-21T16:03:00.000-05:002007-03-21T18:04:38.155-05:00

A little PR here. Here's an article I wrote on the fundraising by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Last year he got some serious money from Utah, the heart of Mormon country. I calculated that it's about 5o cents for each Utah resident, and that in the year before he has to get big dough to run the official campaign. UPDATE: Interesting set of responses out there. Some positive,

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-91270951049865381572007-03-13T22:28:00.000-05:002007-03-13T22:52:31.845-05:00

Well, at least you can call Burger King persistent. The company pulled out of Poland a few years ago, selling all its restaurants to KFC. Well, the grill broiled burgers are coming back. And, if I am not mistaken, the new license is held by AmRest Holding, the same company that pulled the plug last time. McDonalds survived in Poland, just recently celebrating 15 years there. Why anybody would

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-88047506490122542622007-03-12T00:04:00.000-05:002007-03-12T02:22:47.221-05:00

Look who's back in the good graces of Andrzej Lepper. On Sunday, the leader of Self Defense brought Stanislaw Lyzwinski to a news conference discussing these bizarre IOU's Lepper forced all party members sign to guarantee they won't leave the party. So what if Lyzwinski is likely to be indicted for sexual assault, intimidation of witnesses and other charges. Lepper had banished his former right

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-38614716621048602942007-03-11T23:15:00.000-05:002007-03-11T23:57:14.588-05:00

"It has to be clearly said that 16 months after PiS's victory, no activist or supporter of our party, who bled himself during our election campaign, suffers from hunger and want." This stark quote was made by one of the leaders of the Kaczynski brothers' PiS party, as quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza. Of course all politicians have to reward their supporters and the spoils system has been around for

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-58314886657438084702007-03-11T22:45:00.000-05:002007-03-11T23:03:56.358-05:00

Polish Outlook pointed me in the direction of this Bloomberg article. It tries to show that fewer Poles are heading to the U.S., especially Chicago, to get illegal jobs because they can find legal ones in western Europe. Not a far stretch to see the rational for this, although the mostly anecdotal evidence in the article doesn't prove very convincing. One indication: fewer people eat pierogi at

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-17331975727484423192007-03-10T22:26:00.000-05:002007-03-10T22:39:45.220-05:00

Beatroot wrote a nice post on the new law that requires all journalists, possibly even bloggers, to be vetted for communist collaboration. All in all, just another move by the Kaczynski government to hurt the unfriendly journalists. After all, why would the media criticize the Duck Republic unless it was loaded full of communist sympathizers and former agents? The biggest problem here is not

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-42831717620786322082007-03-08T00:26:00.000-05:002007-03-08T01:31:02.516-05:00

The Wall Street Journal is running a great feature today by Dan Michaels on the way that mainly Polish job seekers have helped no frill airline Wizz Air to become a success. Wizz had targeted these emigrants almost from the start, helping it to develop a foothold in Poland and other East European countries before Ryanair and others figured out the game here. There is one chart in the article I

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-72596852308840513872007-03-07T02:15:00.000-05:002007-03-07T04:48:38.392-05:00

So the geniuses at the neo-socialist Self Defense party have come up with another brilliant idea. They are proposing a new law that would forbid Polish television stations from inserting commercials into movies and other programming without the consent of the author. Sure, nobody's happy that they have to sit through advertising in the middle of another showing of Home Alone (a perennial favorite

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-35353990832009706122007-03-04T01:13:00.000-05:002007-03-04T01:29:42.148-05:00

Just came across this weird item, which says Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is coming to Poland as part of a European trip that will also include Spain. Not many details, but one of the issues to be discussed is the "war on terror." Poland is playing a key role in Afghanistan, so I'm sure that will be another issue on the table. I'm almost worried that this visit will place Poland back on

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-42293554116796080522007-02-26T01:12:00.000-05:002007-02-26T01:52:46.928-05:00

Not surprisingly, the Oscar for the best foreign flick went to Lives of Others, a movie portraying the obsession of the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, to spy on its own people. I highly recommend the movie. I especially enjoyed it because I am fascinated by the how the old communist systems tried to control its citizens and how people reacted to the authoritarian state. One of the most

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-64133502225164709542007-02-25T23:47:00.000-05:002007-02-26T00:34:19.646-05:00

So far, I have stayed away from writing about the report on the Polish military intelligence agency (WSI) released last week. Mainly, I thought this was just yet another pile of dirt compiled to discredit the critics of the Kaczynski brothers. This particular tool, dull as it was, seemed to have mainly targeted members of the media. The report was compiled by a Kaczynski henchman, Antoni

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-16172935823501792022007-02-22T21:54:00.000-05:002007-02-22T22:14:39.796-05:00

While you're reading the rest of the blog, take a listen to this song. One of my favorites, in large part because it reminds me of someone special from across the ocean. She's far away, but I think about her always. Of course, it's also dedicated to my two fantastic sisters! What a lovely version. Enjoy Antony and the Johnsons.

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-46817482660619088252007-02-22T13:51:00.000-05:002007-02-22T20:29:12.693-05:00

Seems like this little cartoon in the New Yorker is causing quite a stir among the Polish community in Gotham City and elsewhere. The magazine editor's somewhat shaky explanation is that "the heart of the joke is the difficulty in saying the name." In this vain, my parents must have been on drugs when they named me Krzysztof, forgetting to put a few extra vowels in there. So is this a Polish

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-45847595559737494412007-02-21T22:05:00.000-05:002007-02-23T03:07:42.376-05:00

I know, I know. It's not a shocker anymore to read articles by baffled foreign correspondents about the mess in Poland. But this article by Judy Dempsey in the International Herald Tribune goes quite deeply into the Kaczynski purges and vendetta-driven policies. And yes, there's little time for planning future policies in the Duck Republic, and the weak opposition is sidelined. What else is new?

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-82392429205251934622007-02-14T01:19:00.000-05:002007-02-14T01:37:01.529-05:00

"I probably have to do it. I don't think I have another option." That's what former prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz is saying about taking a job at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. And, he adds, London is a capital of the world, perhaps along with New York. So, there we have it. Even though he didn't get a job at PKO BP, Marcinkiewicz will work at a bank. I wonder if

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-72025615382371807832007-02-10T21:22:00.000-05:002007-02-10T22:11:06.516-05:00

Former Polish prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has withdrawn his name from consideration for the top post at PKO BP. In his blog, Marcinkiewicz blames the decision on the whole controversy surrounding his candidacy, which would have made his job much more difficult. Marcinkiewicz points a stern finger at the media, as well as the financial and banking circles, from which he"did not received

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-30951886372592326952007-02-05T22:56:00.000-05:002007-02-06T00:15:26.395-05:00

Another great day for mediocrity in Poland. Defense minister Radek Sikorski, one of the more qualified members of the the Kaczynski cabinet, was fired over a dispute with the head of military counterintelligence Antoni Macierewicz, one of the most nationalist politicians loyal to the Kaczynski twins. Sure, there are plenty of other layers behind this latest move that I won't discuss, but it still

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-33632227448761965512007-02-01T21:21:00.000-05:002007-02-01T21:38:18.637-05:00

Four. That's how many women have now come forward accusing the leader of the neo-communist Self-Defense party, Andrzej Lepper, of pressuring them to have sex with him. According to Gazeta Wyborcza, the latest witness is hard to dismiss. She's a wife of a prominent member of the party who advised Lepper on relations with Ukraine. Heck, he even got Lepper a doctorate from a Ukrainian university,

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-6251790444346841802007-01-31T23:32:00.000-05:002007-01-31T23:41:43.554-05:00

I especially enjoyed this little quote from an FT article by Jan Cienski about Polish music bands having problems attracting audiences because of the record migration of young Poles to western Europe. The government has woken up to the population drain. A poster campaign compares young people who have decided to stay with veterans of the wartime underground. Yeah, that will do it. Young people

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-25105802102292120212007-01-31T22:46:00.000-05:002007-02-01T21:46:47.325-05:00

"Dear great, extremely smart and all knowing journalists. I sincerely ask you to leave me along and to stop looking for something for me to do." This is how former Polish prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz starts his latest blog entry (in Polish). Frustrated? A little. Looks like his successor and party boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski has come to his senses and decided no to squeeze the supervisory

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-24509666546216309902007-01-25T10:59:00.000-05:002007-01-25T12:12:11.840-05:00

I'm a big movie fan and do my best to stay away from the plethora of crappy movies out there. But sometimes you get caught in the traps set by the evil marketing geniuses out there. Still, here's an interesting article to help avoid falling into their traps. It walks through all those sneaky strategies used to convince you to buy/watch awful movies. Enjoy. And for God's sake, stay away from

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-75310131709234772922007-01-18T23:00:00.000-05:002007-01-18T23:55:39.253-05:00

Lepper-gate, or Sex-gate, or whatever you call this mess in Poland, looks to be getting even uglier. With "Archbishop Spy" grabbing the headlines in the recent weeks (scandals seem to be coming from all directions in Poland nowadays), Lepper-gate has been mostly pushed into the back pages. But there have been some developments worth mentioning. According to Gazeta Wyborcza, Deputy Prime Minister

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-88695775230093330762007-01-17T00:02:00.000-05:002007-01-17T00:05:19.668-05:00

If you fly a lot (and this blog's name is Traveling Life), then I recommend reading this handy Wall Street Journal article on what happens when your luggage disappears and what you should do in that unfortunate event.

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18689443.post-56817150210578125322007-01-16T22:17:00.000-05:002007-01-16T22:30:02.859-05:00

Polish papers are trumpeting the impending change at the top of PKN Orlen, central Europe's largest oil company. The Kaczynski twins are pushing another less-than-qualified crony to run a leading Polish company thanks to the government's golden share. He will replace a much more qualified manager. When I wrote about this to my friend Piotrek, a keen observer of Polish business, here's how he

Chris Borowskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15162436876533539408noreply@blogger.com