Posted on 11/28/2004 2:26:25 AM PST by Grzegorz 246
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Groups of Poles demonstrated across the country Saturday in support of western-leaning Ukraine opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who claims he was cheated out of victory in his country's presidential election.
Russian-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has been declared the election's winner, but Ukraine's Parliament on Saturday symbolically declared the election invalid after a week of growing street protests and allegations of vote fraud.
"Brother Ukrainians, we greet you from Warsaw, we greet Viktor Yushchenko," Poland's first democratic premier, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, told a crowd at a protest concert in the capital amid chants of "Yushchenko, Yushchenko."
"We admire your peaceful struggle."
Elsewhere in Warsaw, some 100 demonstrators rallied outside the Russians Embassy, chanting "Ukraine without Putin" and flying flags with Yushchenko's orange campaign colour.
Earlier in the week, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his predecessor, Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, went to Kyiv in an effort to help find a solution.
Support for Yushchenko has cut across party lines in Poland, and in the western city of Gorzow Wielkopolski on Saturday members of the main opposition Civic Platform distributed orange balloons, ribbons and tangerines.
"When we watch television reports, we see a picture similar to the events in our country 15 years ago," an organizer, Robert Surowiec, told the Polish news agency PAP. "All that we can do now is to back such actions and show our neighbours in Ukraine that we are with them."
Activists in Zielona Gora, in the southwest, collected some 500 signatures in support of Yushchenko's claim, and a rally was held in the eastern city of Bialystok, organized by the Solidarity trade union and opposition parties.
This is true, but Russia has a large Muslim population for centuries and Russians/Muslims worked out the ways to go along somehow. EU (future EUrabia) faces the sudden influx of Muslims who get radicalized while the EU[rabia] ideology is based on militant secularizm bent on eradication the Christian fundations of Europe.
Russia was lucky to remove another version of parasitic secularism from her neck. Europe is just entering the spiritual Gulag with the nice decorations, bread and circus, with narcotic dreams. When she wakes up it will be the moment of agony and death.
Really.
BTTT
God bless Poland, a country that is supporting liberty throughout the world.
What Poland want is influence over Western Ukraine which has a Slavic Catholic majority population while the East is Orthodox. Also it is an area that Polish nationalists still claim as their own based on when Poland had imperial holdings there until the Cossacks drove them out.
The Ukraine is not like most European countries. It is not a nation state based on ethnicit and there is no Ukranian ethnicity - Ukraine simply means 'boderland'.
Is Zyprexa a Cossack tribe?
(I'm no Poland expert) My wife buying Polish pottery does not count
So let me get this right.
On the INTERNET (With global access), you say your politicians are all commies and bent.
Did you hear that on the radio or satellite TV? Maybe you heard this while visiting somewhere like Germany, the Check republic or other EU countries (Which you will now belong to)?
You're a NATO country that bought F16s, Leopard 2 tanks and has troops in Iraq for crying out loud!
Do you see a slight contradiction?
I understand that there are always those who get recycled and were bad guys before and somehow oooz by. Some NAZIs found their way into German politics after the war. More than one official was a good party member 10 years earlier and then later worked in some office as a official again. But this is also true in Iraq, Italy, Austria and EVERYWHERE else. This does not make your country a communist run state. On the other hand what do you do with all these people? Beat them to death? Exclude them and marginalize them? Some probably aren't even bad. And being UNmoral like they, is not the answer. Some were just tag alongs who realized they must stamp the ticket to succeed in such a society. The conductor Karajan was no real NAZI, but if he was going to work as a conductor in that time he had to toe the party line. Yes he was a NAZI, but not really.
http://www.geocities.com/immortalbruckner/karajan.html
This guy could have been crushed, but at what end? He was a good conductor, let him be.
I imagine it's similar in Poland.
Some of the same faces that spewed the party propaganda of past sit in positions of authority today. I imagine some don't see the reforms going far or fast enough and are a bit disgruntled (Maybe). I imagine there are many twists and turns here, but I doubt that conditions are like 1980. Some may have an unrealistic perception of what freedom is? Some think it's anarchy.
With issues like foreigners buying property in Poland being hot issues, I just can't see the system of old being in power there (Private ownership).
With Opel/GM building a car plant there in the future (Private stock trading firm) it just seems a bit far fetched.
Red6
I could not understand your rant. Maybe you are upset that you did not know that the Poles are now ruled by the same communists that busted Solidarity. Yes, they changed their party name from Communists to Socialists but it is the same party - meets in the same party headquarters. I have no problem with such a fact and I can understand why Polish communists would rather have a Ukraine aligned with Poland over Russia.
The second picture (in #10, above) shows a man waving a flag of Belarus. Why?
It is because that is another Slavic country bordering Russia, which has been dragged under Russian influence and has reverted to more communistic ways. It has even officially changed back from this white-red-white banner to a flag very much like the old Stalinist flag of Byelorussian SSSR.
See http://flagspot.net/flags/by.html
After the breakup of the USSR and until 1995, they used the whire-red-white nationalist banner:
http://flagspot.net/flags/by_1991.html
Now Belarus is once more a satellite, with a dictatorship and political conditions worse than in Russia itself.
Obviously the demonstrators are drawing a parallel with Ukraine.
I keep telling you guys: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER trust the Russians.
No. 56 says that the renamed former communistic party in Poland meets in the same headquarters as the former ruling party under communism.
That would be strange. The headquarters was a huge building. I remember it quite well. Now it holds the stock market. Perhaps they rent some office space there?
At any rate, not all Polish communists were really dedicated communists. Many were opportunists, and they were much milder than, say, East German communists. They may be socialists, which makes them like the ruling parties in Germany, France, and many other European countries (unfortunately). They are still far more democratic than the Putin KGB club. They will not squash Ukrainian independence as the Russians are trying to do.
We will destroy Lukashenko sooner or later.
Read more about Polish conspiracy:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1288393/posts
It seems that Russians really believe in this stuff :)
read my #34.
Bad, really really really bad, desperate and pitiful attempt at propaganda.
Shame on you for using religion to further your untruthful nonsense.
But let me get this straight - you're not Slav but an expert on Slavic history - you're not Catholic but an expert on RC/UC relations?
You can only be a Slav to know Slavic history? It is a fact that the UKr vote mostly split down religous lines.
More rant?
Sure,
How could a private, stock trading, profit driven firm like McDonalds do business in a communist state?
As member of the EU certain political/economic conditions must be met for membership, how did Poland slip by as a communist state? Frankly, I think Poland is meeting the Maastricht requirements better than the original founding states that wrote the 3% max debt clause into it.
OK, I can easily believe that the Poles fall for the "Euro" version of socialism. But I don't think Poland is a satellite of Russia or anyone else today. Look at the hell the Poles gave the Europeans because of the European Constitution. They think very independent, or so it seems. Buying a US fighter while joining the EU was a bold move. Though economically and from a defense issue the best one, it was a bold one which surly raised a brow.
I see Poland as slightly left politically, independent, aware of its past (As most who bled for their freedom), a team player (EU/NATO) with some national pride and with a distrust of the Germans and Russians. They seem to have adopted the typical European flavor of socialism. A pseudo-free economy with heavy state involvement. While I see this as disadvantageous in the long run, I don't think their communist.
The Germans use their old government buildings too, their not NAZIs. That's not even a logical argument anymore.
Didn't know GM was there already. But apparently GM is bringing more there. The Germans see conspiracy everywhere of course since they think it's their unwillingness to support Iraq. However, Siemens is going to Asia, Mercedes is in Mississippi, BMW in SC. But since GM is a US firm words like "hegemony" and "imperialism" always come up. They can't help themselves. However, they fail to see high labor, energy, fuel costs, combined with excessive environmental policies, highly regulated difficult labor laws and high taxes as driving out industry. Try doing business after 1800 hrs or on a holiday. For years businesses have been begging to change the conditions in Germany. The public told them to shut up. Poland will benefit from this. It's cheaper and easier to build in Poland. Poland is EU and this makes Poland attractive. I know in Germany many are sweating it right now in Ruesselsheim and elsewhere, their job may go to Poland.
Red6
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