Posted on 12/04/2005 10:34:44 AM PST by lizol
Conservative Poland Roils European Union
International Herald Tribune Published: December 4, 2005 By GRAHAM BOWLEY
BRUSSELS - When Polish members of the European Parliament placed an anti-abortion display in a parliamentary corridor in Strasbourg, France, recently, Ana Gomes, a Socialist legislator from Portugal, felt compelled to act, she said.
The display showed children in a concentration camp, linking abortion and Nazi crimes. "We found this deeply offensive," Ms. Gomes said. "We tried to remove it." A loud scuffle ensued as she and the Poles traded insults before the display was bundled away by Parliament guards.
But the matter does not end there. It was the latest skirmish in what some here see as an incipient culture war in the heart of Europe, a clash of values that has intensified since countries from Central and Eastern Europe that are experiencing an increase in the influence of the Roman Catholic Church joined the European Union last year.
In the 732-seat European Parliament, and more widely in the European Union, the clash extends beyond abortion to issues like women's rights and homosexuality.
"New groups have come in from Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Catholicism is certainly becoming a very angry voice against what it sees as a liberal E.U.," said Michael Cashman, 54, a European Parliament member from Britain who has campaigned for gay rights. "On women's rights and gay equality, we are fighting battles that we thought we had won years ago."
With a population of 40 million, Poland is the biggest of the 10 states that joined the European Union last year. It is still uncertain, 19 months later, how Poland, a formerly Communist and overwhelmingly Catholic nation, will fit in with the other members on issues from foreign policy to economic management.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I love the Russian Slavic people - you know the long suffering Christian Orthodox kind.
I love the Polish Slavic People - you know the long suffering Roman Catholic Christian kind.
Too bad they can't put aside their historic grievances - on both sides - and ally themselves morally and economically.
Any hope?
Very nice. Thanks.
The hope, if I may interject, is that the madness of the West will finally unite them. It is already something that they all oppose in the East, but it may take time before they realize that they're in it together.
The hope, if I may interject, is that the madness of the West will finally unite them
Russians and Poles have a very long, very bitter history. It's dobutful that they can reconcile their deep-rooted differences and resentments.
What the hell do you mean by FINALLY unite them??? Poland has been united with THEM for 200 years recently and we've had ENOUGH!!! So we joined West. And we like it now :)))
Try Luksuksova--also Polish and very good. My DH said the last time he bought it, it was about $25-.
Surely don't want to put abortion is the same light as the Holocaust. Some people think that the Holocaust is the worst thing that happened in human history. These people need to take a serious look at world history for it tells worst stories including the one of abortion.
REactor? Are you from Chernobyl? You're overheated, buddy!
Try Spirytus - i'm not sure how much it costs these days, but it's concentrated - 180 proof, so you need less.
Take it easy. Poland and Russia are united by far more benign qualties than you may realize.
And don't forget - there were just as many Polish Commies as Russian ones. In fact some of the most horrible were Polish.
Well said vox_PL. I wish Poland would have never joined the EU.
Taking into account that there are 4 times more Russians on this planet than Poles, and that it was Russians who established the first communist paradise your statement doesn't seem to be very credible.
In fact some of the most horrible were Polish.
You mean Iron Felix? Felix was Polish only by birth. He renounced his country early in his life and became Russian revolutionary. He was Polish to the same extent as Hitler was Austrian, that is not very much. Even worse, he was not considered Polish even by his contemporaries. If he himself thought that he was Polish - only God knows.
You mean to tell me that all those years of the Polish Communist state, it was really Russians in Warsaw speaking Polish? Yeah...
C'mon now. As for more Russians than Poles being commies so what? What matters is the ratio not the actual numbers.
Again, it is the future that matters. There are many negative qualities of the secular west that need reform. Russia and Poland can together form an alliance of moral uprightness shall we say as a bulwark against the tendency of the west to deteriorate into secularist immorality.
Until 1956 they didn't even bother to learn Polish. It was their Polish flunkeys who had to speak Russian. The rulers of Poland were NKVD general Ivan Serov, Minister of Defence of the People's Republic of Poland was Russian General of Polish origin Konstantin Rokossovski - there were jokes circulating about his "Polish" language.
In later years after 1956, sure, there were Polish administrators of the country, but they wouldn't have stayed in the saddle for a week were it not for Russian armies stationed all over Poland in strategic places.
Russia and Poland can together form an alliance of moral uprightness against the tendency of the west to deteriorate into secularist immorality.
Oh please. Poland and Russia? Catholic Poland and generally atheist with a few spots of nationalist Orthodoxy Russia? Against what? West? Bwahahaha!
True but on the other hand she was nice until you came with that #**#.
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