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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.

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 arrested by Soviet officials for dissenting against the government for being "political" is being shunned by the United States of America for the same reason 30...

Lech Walesa said that there would not be a free Poland without Ronald Reagan, during the unveiling of a statue in Warsaw of the late American president on Monday.The former Solidarity leader said that “as a participant in these events,” it was “inconceivable” that such changes would have come about without the last American president during the post-1945 cold-war era. Walesa added that thirty years ago, it seemed that the fall of the communist system would not be possible without a nuclear war. The bronze statue of Reagan has been installed not far from the American Embassy, on Ujazdowskie Avenue,...

"LECH WALESA IS COMING TO NEW YORK CITY! HE'S COMING TO ZUCCOTTI PARK IN SUPPORT OF OWS!!" "OWS?" "YES, OWS!" "OMG! OMG!!" Such was the breathless, orgasmic reaction among the DUmmies when word got out that the Hero of the Polish Workers, Lech Walesa--Mr. Solidarity himself!--was coming to America to STAND WITH THE OWSIES!! WOO-HOO!!!! WHEEEEEE!!!!!! FREUDENSCHADE, BABY!!!!!!!!! Witness the joy in these threads, i.e., this THREAD, "K Olbermann: Lech Walesa to visit New York in support of OWS," and this THREAD, "Lech (Solidarity)Walesa, former Polish president, to visit New York in support of Occupy Wall Street," and this...

The Polish champion of freedom and liberty, founder of Solidarity, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, and first President of modern Poland Lech Walesa had been rumored to possibly be traveling to New York to stand with Occupy Wall Street protesters. Press accounts reporting this “breathless” news had given all of us pause. We suspected that the European news media had filtered out accurate information about the genesis of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). When Walesa’s comments hit the AP wire last week, my team immediately reached out to our Polish contacts. We made the point that the political themes...

The Polish champion of freedom and liberty, founder of Solidarity, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, and first President of modern Poland Lech Walesa had been rumored to possibly be traveling to New York to stand with Occupy Wall Street protesters. Press accounts reporting this “breathless” news had given all of us pause.

Solidarity hero Lech Walesa is flying to New York to show his support for the Occupy Wall Street protesters. "How could I not respond," Walesa told a Polish newspaper Wednesday. "The thousands of people gathered near Wall Street are worried about the fate of their future, the fate of their country. This is something I understand." A former shipyard worker who led Poland's successful revolt against Soviet communism, Walesa said "capitalism is in crisis" and not just in America. "This is a worldwide problem," he told the Lublin-based Dziennik Wschodni newspaper. "The Wall Street protesters have focused a magnifying glass...

Legendary Polish Solidarity leader and co-founder Lech Walesa did not agree to meet president of the United States Barack Obama on Saturday afternoon. Walesa said: "it does not suit me" answering journalist why he was not going to talk to Barack Obama. Lech Walesa in the interview for a national newspaper added that he does not have time. According to the source, who spoke under the condition of being unnamed to the Polish Press Agency (PAP), Walesa was invited on the short notice, a day before the meeting with the American president. Later US Ambassador Lee Feinstein telephoned former Solidarity...

Courage: Someone who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for actually doing something just snubbed someone who won it for nothing. But Lech Walesa's refusal to meet President Obama is also a cry to save Poland. Lech Walesa, the former Polish president and heroic leader of the Solidarity trade union that helped liberate the entire Eastern European Soviet bloc from communist rule, has his moral courage indelibly engraved in the history books. At 67, Walesa is a living legend with nothing left to have to prove. But on Friday, Walesa once again answered the call to duty and announced he...

Lech Walesa refuses meeting with Barack Obama de A.C. HotNews.ro Vineri, 27 mai 2011, 18:41 English | Regional Europe Lech Walesa, former leader of the Solidarity union, former President of Poland and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1983 declared on Friday that he will not accept the invitation to meet with President Barack Obama, AFP reads. Walesa was due to meet the US President on Saturday. It is tough to tell journalists what you would want to tell the President of a super power but this time I will not tell him, I will not meet him,...

Lech Walesa, Poland's Solidarity-era legend, ex-president and 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner said Friday he would not accept an invitation to meet with fellow Nobel winner US President Barack Obama. "It's difficult to tell journalists what you'd like to say to the president of a superpower. This time I won't tell him, I won't meet him, it doesn't suit me," Walesa told Poland's public broadcaster TVP. Obama is due to arrive in Poland later Friday after the G8 summit in France. Walesa was originally scheduled to meet Obama Saturday along with other key figures in Poland's post-1989 transition from communism...

If America is to regain its leadership role in the world, then "We, the People" must select the kind of leaders who possess and are dedicated to a deep understanding of those ideas essential to liberty.Some one or two of these Republican candidates who win election, or some other person out there needs to emerge who truly understands the ideas of liberty our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were founded upon. Further, those persons must have the courage and tenacity to stand upon those principles in the face of Progressivism. That has happened before. President Reagan's real strength and authenticity...

An ally who feared U.S. indifference. Tragedy In Smolensk: Lech Kaczynski was a Polish patriot and a friend of the West who believed in the defense of freedom and democracy. We don't have many friends like him, and we treated him shabbily. Numerologists might note the number 70 figured prominently in both the life and death of Poland's president. Kaczynski, 60, his wife Maria, an economist, and 95 others who died Saturday on their way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners in the Katyn Forest in western Russia in 1940 by Stalin's secret...

Is America A Declining Power? Its Friends Think So and They Are Scared Written by Barry Rubin Wednesday, 03 February 2010 18:11 "What do you think," asked the reporter, "about the U.S. pressure on China?" Puzzled, I responded, "What pressure on China?" And then I realized what he meant. Like many observers, especially those in the Third World, he thinks U.S. policy is tightly coordinated. In other words, he thinks that the United States was about to sell arms to Beijing's rival, Taiwan, and have the Dalai Lama, who claims to be the rightful ruler of Chinese-occupied Tibet, come to...

Fox News uses Walesa to get at Obama 05.02.2010 13:07 Fox News commentator Sean Hannity has used former Poland’s President Lech Walesa’s statement to launch an attack on the US President Barack Obama. Hannity opened his Thursday show on the conservative, Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel by quoting Lech Walesa as saying: "No one has the least doubt that the United States is the economic and military leader in the world, but I have heard a lot of doubts regarding the moral and political leadership of the United States. Other nations have always rested their hopes on the United States...

RUSH: Here's Lech Walesa. This is last Friday in Chicago at a campaign event for Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski, and this is what he said, a portion of his remarks. WALESA (via translator): The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it. Militarily. They also lead economically but they're getting weak. But they don't lead morally and politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on...

Chicago Media Largely Ignore Lech Walesa Visit, Endorsement of Conservative Republican in Governor’s Race Wednesday, February 03, 2010 By Michael W. Chapman, Managing Editor CNSNews.com) – Lech Walesa, a Nobel Laureate and former leader of the Solidarity trade union in Poland, which helped topple 50 years of Soviet occupation there and end the Cold War, went to Chicago, Ill., last week to endorse a conservative Republican in the gubernatorial primary race but the local media largely ignored him. This near-blackout by the media occurred despite the fact that 1 million people of Polish nationality live in Chicago, making it the...

Lech Walesa, a Nobel Laureate and former leader of the Solidarity trade union in Poland, which helped topple 50 years of Soviet occupation there and end the Cold War, went to Chicago, Ill., last week to endorse a conservative Republican in the gubernatorial primary race but the local media largely ignored him. This near-blackout by the media occurred despite the fact that 1 million people of Polish nationality live in Chicago, making it the city with the largest Polish population outside of Warsaw, Poland, and despite the fact that Walesa himself was the first post-Soviet president of Poland (from 1990...

The last real survivor of the generational of leaders who won the Cold War spoke here last week and the so-called alert media here stretched its arms upward sleepily and emitted a huge yawn. A key member of a quartet that smote Communism…Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher…Walesa is the last healthy survivor of those hardy leaders (Thatcher is seriously enfeebled). But the media, evidently populated by callow 24-year-old assignment editors unacquainted with world history (Lech who?) declined to cover him notably in favor of the really vital stories. Such as: how many graves were overturned in Burr...

Leaders: The champion of Polish freedom tells America it's no longer that shining city on a hill. As it slouches toward socialism, he warns, those yearning to breathe free in the world can no longer look to the U.S. for help. They were the giants of their age. Together, President Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and a little known shipyard worker named Lech Walesa stood up to Soviet communism and brought freedom to the captive nations of Europe. Last Friday, Walesa was in Chicago campaigning for a GOP gubernatorial candidate in the Illinois...