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Poland's freedom icon Lech Walesa on Thursday said the United States was "no longer the main global power" in political and moral leadership ahead of a visit by President Donald Trump. Trump is due in Poland on Sunday for ceremonies marking 80 years since the outbreak of World War II. "President Trump, I urge you to regain the position of world leader for the USA," Walesa said in an interview published in Thursday's edition of Poland's centrist Rzeczpospolita daily. "The world needs the leadership of the USA. Moral and political leadership, not only economic and military leadership," added Walesa, a...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Poland's former president Lech Walesa, a democracy hero, has been hospitalized with heart problems in his Baltic coast home city of Gdansk, his son said Saturday. Jaroslaw Walesa told The Associated Press via text message that his father was feeling "unfortunately weak." It was not immediately known when he could be discharged from the heart diseases ward of the Gdansk University Clinic.

A handwriting analysis has determined that Lech Walesa, the leader of Poland’s anticommunist Solidarity movement and later the president of Poland, was a Communist paid informant in the 1970s, according to a new official report issued on Tuesday. Mr. Walesa, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, immediately denounced the report as unreliable and politically motivated, while his supporters insisted that the full picture of his seeming collaboration with the Communist authorities was more complicated than the report suggested. The report was prepared by the state-run Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow, which analyzed more than 150 documents that were found last...

Lech Walesa, the former Polish president a longtime adversary of Poland’s current leadership, has been stripped of state protection when he travels abroad, and says he believes the motivation is political. The Government Protection Bureau, which provides bodyguards to serving state officials and retired presidents, said it would no longer protect Walesa on his foreign trips. It said that also applies to the other living ex-presidents, Bronislaw Komorowski and Aleksander Kwasniewski. Bureau spokeswoman Natalia Markiewicz said the agency is following the law, which gives former presidents the right to a bodyguard only when they are in Poland. She said earlier...

Mr Kaminski gave details of what he claimed was inside a file on Mr Walesa, covering the period 1970-6: "Inside the personal file there is an envelope and inside, a hand written commitment to cooperate with the secret police signed 'Lech Walesa - Bolek'," he said. Mr Kaminski said that among the documents in this folder were some "hand-written confirmations of receiving funds", signed with the pseudonym 'Bolek'. "In the work folder... are many reports by a secret informant with the pseudonym 'Bolek' and notes by secret police officers from meetings with the secret informant," the director added.

GDANSK, Poland -- When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989. Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold...

(Aug 2, 2012) POLISH officials have unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, honouring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago. The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organising or taking part in strikes against the communist regime. The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the...

Anti-communist crusader and former president of Poland Lech Walesa tells Newsmax that of all the national leaders currently on the world stage, the one who has "disillusioned" him the most is President Barack Obama. Walesa also asserts that Obama "wasn't ready" to take on the task of leading the world's most dominant superpower. And he calls for reforms at the United Nations so the world body can help fill the vacuum left by the United States' failure of leadership under Obama. Walesa played a key role in freeing Eastern Europe from the clutches of Soviet communism and ultimately in the...

The former president of Poland and leader of the Solidarity movement is not enamored with President Obama and his leadership. The Hill: Former Polish President Lech Walesa says America no longer leads the world "in terms of politics and morality." Walesa, in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, spoke negatively about President Obama's leadership skills. "When he was elected there was great hope in the world. We were hoping that Obama would reclaim moral leadership for America, but that failed. America does not lead the world in the area of morality," Walesa said. Walesa, who is promoting a new biopic...

Old utopians may die, but utopianism never does fade away. While speaking at a summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Warsaw on Monday, Nobel Laureate and former Polish president Lech Walesa added Modern-day Moses of Magog to his résumé, advocating a “secular Ten Commandments” as a basis for universal values. Said Walesa, “We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we will build the world of tomorrow,” reports France 24. Ah, “build the world of tomorrow.” Somehow that reminds me of WWI being “the war...

Prosecutors have confirmed that no charges are pending against former Polish president and leader of the Solidarity movement Lech Walesa, following a complaint alleging that he promoted hatred against homosexuals. While giving his views during a TVN24 interview on recent debates in parliament about legalizing civil partnerships for homosexuals in Poland, Walesa said, “Homosexuals should sit on the last bench in the plenary hall, or even behind the wall, and not somewhere at the front.” Lech Walesa, the former president of Poland, helped bring down Communism. As a tiny minority, homosexuals should not be overrepresented. “A minority cannot impose itself...

"Walesa said in a television interview on Friday that he believes gays have no right to sit on the front benches in Parliament and, if represented at all, should sit in the back, "and even behind a wall." "They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking (what they want) from the majority," he told the private broadcaster TVN during a discussion of gay rights. "I don't agree to this and I will never...

Election 2012: Lech Walesa, the Polish patriot and former president of Poland, and another ally our president has betrayed, endorses the GOP candidate's quest to restore U.S. leadership in the struggle against the world's despots. Walesa knows a thing or too about resisting and defeating collectivist tyranny, and he has no tolerance for those such as President Obama who appease and apologize to it. Unlike Obama, he earned his Nobel Peace Prize by leading the Solidarity movement that brought freedom to a Poland that suffered for decades under the Nazi jackboot, then as part of the Soviet gulag. In May,...

Romney thanks Poles for their courage to fight for freedom   Peter Gentle 31.07.2012  Republican candidate in the US presidential elections, Mitt Romney has thanked Poles for their “courage” in joining the “fight for freedom” in Afghanistan and Iraq, on the second day of his trip to Poland.   Mitt Romney at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, Tuesday: photo - PAP Radek Pietruszka “I would like to express my gratitude to the Polish government and Polish people for the courage of your men and women in supporting the fight for freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Romney said...

Lech Walesa told Mitt Romney he must be successful in November. U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) and his wife Ann (L) meet with former Polish President Lech Walesa in Gdansk, Poland, July 30, 2012. (REUTERS/Kacper Pempel) Anti-communist leader Lech Walesa told Mitt Romney today that he must be successful in the November elections not just for America but for the rest of the world too. The former Solidarity leader understands how the economic decisions by US leaders influence global markets.The Washington Post reported: “I wish you to be successful because this success is needed to the United...

When President Obama visited Poland last year, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his American guest, “We feel that you are one of us.” He didn’t go as far today, at least not publicly, following a meeting with Mitt Romney. But former Polish president Lech Walesa, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, did give his seal of approval to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “I wish you to be successful because this success is needed to the United States, of course, but to Europe and the rest of the world, too,” Walesa said through a translator. “Gov. Romney, get your...

WARSAW, POLAND — Fresh from a warm embrace from iconic Polish leader Lech Walesa, Mitt Romney will wrap up a three-country trip overseas Tuesday with a major speech that he hopes will send a message that he's tough and more willing to take a harder line with rogue nations than President Barack Obama is. Romney arrived in Warsaw late Monday after a day in Gdansk, where he enjoyed the most enthusiastic reception of his six-day trip, which was marred by controversies at the first two stops, in London and Jerusalem. He was greeted in Gdansk by crowds that swarmed in...

Gdansk Lech Walesa today endorsed Mitt Romney for president, saying he hoped the Republican presidential candidate is "successful."

The Obama administration, in its never-ending quest to embarrass itself and America, has insulted one of the pivotal figures in ending Communism in Europe, Lech Walesa: According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no. Administration officials told the Journal that Walesa is too “political.” A man who was...

Lech Walesa was once a trade-union activist. He was often arrested for speaking his mind against Communist oppression behind the Iron Curtain in Poland and for defying the Soviet Union. He was an electrician who, with no higher education, led one of the most profound freedom movements of the 20th century — Solidarity. He became president of Poland and swept in reforms, pushing the Soviet Union out of his homeland and moving the country toward a free-market economy and individual liberty. And President Obama doesn’t want him to set foot in the White House.