Poland’s new government moves to crack down on ‘hate speech’
Karina Bosak and Dobromir Sośnierz from the Confederation party
BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | KRESY.PL | JANUARY 22, 2024
Poland’s new government is moving to limit freedom of speech and actively penalize so-called hate speech, a move that has been associated with stifling dissent and limiting opposition to issues surrounding mass immigration, religion, and LGBT issues in other European countries.
Poland’s Confederation party is now voicing its opposition to new proposals outlined in the left-liberal coalition government’s agreement, which will effectively destroy free speech.
“The ruling coalition, as part of its coalition agreement, has announced that they want to penalize so-called hate speech. The current left-wing Deputy Minister of Justice Krzysztof Śmiszek, from the New Left, has stated that his department is currently working on introducing these regulations, which limit freedom of speech and public debate in Poland. We, as the Confederation, strongly oppose this. The direct consequence of criminalizing certain words will, in fact, be the criminalization of conservative, religious, Christian views,” declared Confederation MP Karina Bosak on Friday.
Bosak added that public debate needs to be free, open, and unencumbered. She pointed out that her party “does not want there to be any sacred cows in Poland, that there are social groups whose ideas cannot be criticized at all in a healthy, free public debate.”
“We will defend Poles against such regulations and proposals that threaten freedom of speech and their values,” declared the Confederation MP.
Dobromir Sośnierz, another party member, highlighted concerns about the subjective nature of defining hate speech.
“What the left understands by so-called hate speech, in practice, will mean speech hated by Minister Śmiszek, not necessarily speech that expresses hatred towards someone, but something that leftists dislike,” he remarked.
Sośnierz also warned that such regulations would, in practice, limit public debate.
“This government is starting not by expanding our freedoms but by limiting them again, which will also lead to clogging up the courts,” he added.
In his view, the ministry’s work is “an act of sabotage, especially in this situation where a massive crisis in the judiciary is looming, as well as perhaps the exclusion of certain judges from ruling. Adding more cases for the judiciary to resolve, which are completely unnecessary, will be counterproductive.”
Deputy Minister Śmiszek announced this week legislative changes to introduce criminal responsibility for what his party considers hate speech against homosexuals.
“The time has come to ban disgusting, homophobic, discriminatory statements in the public sphere,” declared Śmiszek, who is openly homosexual.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament is calling on EU leaders to include incitement to hatred and hate crimes in the catalog of transnational crimes, which include terrorism or human trafficking.
Israelis opposing war receiving ‘death threats,’ says Knesset member Ofer Cassif
Lawmaker from the Arab-majority Hadas-Ta’al party and a Knesset member, Ofer Cassif in his office in West Jerusalem on January 12, 2024. [Arif Kayacan – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | January 20, 2024
Firebrand Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif, who has been criticized for backing South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, says “there is an assault going on” against those who are opposing Tel Aviv’s military campaign in Gaza.
The vocal politician from the left-wing, Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party, was suspended from the Knesset for 45 days for criticizing the war that began after the Oct. 7 cross-border offensive by Hamas.
The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s more than 100-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip has crossed 24,000 people, most of them women and children.
The initial Hamas attack is said to have killed 1,200 people, and around 240 hostages were taken, some of whom were released during a week-long truce in November.
In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Anadolu, Cassif said rejection of Israel’s military response has led to “an assault on freedom of speech,” including death threats.
“People are arrested for tweets and posts, not in support of Hamas, of course, but in supporting ending the war, or before even cease-fire. Students are suspended from the universities and colleges. People are fired from their workplaces. The police are brutally violent towards the demonstrators,” Cassif said.
“There is an assault on freedom of speech of those who raise voice against the war … there are death threats. Because it’s not only violence from above, from the government from the prime minister, legitimization of the violence against the protesters, of course by [Itamar] Ben Gvir (national security minister) and the police, which unfortunately mostly became a kind of a private militia of Ben Gvir. But it also penetrates the society as a whole. And you can see that within the society, a growing a part of the public supports, literally and explicitly, violence against those who oppose the war, including death threats.”
‘Region will explode’ if Netanyahu doesn’t go
Cassif said everyone will pay a “huge price” and the entire “region is going to explode” if Israel does not get rid of the “terrible government” headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to him, the only way to stop the catastrophe from happening is by stopping the war, exchange of prisoners and release of all hostages, withdrawal of Israeli military from Gaza, and the beginning of serious peace process.
“This government should go home, if not to prison” as it has caused a lot of damage to both Israelis and Palestinians, he said. “The only way to live, to have a future, to prosper, is this. No war.”
Israeli contradictions
He also highlighted the contradiction in statements of Israeli authorities over the assault on the blockaded enclave, who on one hand say they never intentionally target civilians, but at the same argue there are no innocents in Gaza.
“A minister said ‘… dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza is an option.’ Another member of the Knesset, although a backbencher, said Gaza be eliminated. He used this term eliminated. Netanyahu himself, the prime minister, said Gaza is like Amalek. Amalek is like a codename, a biblical codename, of a group that deserves extermination.
“The president of Israel, who is supposed to be objective and beyond politics, signed a bomb, before it was sent to Gaza. And he also said that there aren’t any innocent people in Gaza. This is only the tip of the iceberg. So how can you say that you do not target civilians, innocent civilians, and at the same time, you say they aren’t innocent civilians. This contradiction shows exactly how this government behaves, what is the policy of this government, and I emphasize this is against Israel too.”
‘What’s going on in Gaza must be investigated by impartial body’
Cassif said he did not want to claim that the Israeli government is pursuing a genocidal policy in the Gaza Strip, arguing: “The legal definition of genocide is one that I leave experts to analyze.”
But, he added, there are two main reasons for him supporting the genocide case in The Hague: conducting an impartial investigation on Gaza bombing, and to save lives.
“What’s going on in Gaza must be investigated by an impartial body. I do not trust the government of Israel or any branch or proxy of the Israeli government to investigate itself … It’s like asking a thief to investigate oneself whether he or she stole something. It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
“This terrible assault on Gaza is costing the lives of thousands of thousands of Palestinians, and hundreds of Israeli soldiers and Israeli hostages. They (Israeli hostages) are held in terrible conditions by Hamas in Gaza. I want the lives to be saved.”
But that cannot be done just through protests in Israel, he added.
“We cannot demonstrate, we cannot raise our voice. We are limited. There is a dictatorship now here, practically. What’s left is to look for a refuge in international organizations. So that’s the main reason why I think we should have supported the appeal of South Africa.”
Interests of Palestinians and Israelis ‘not contradictory’
“The interests of Israel, and the interests of Palestinians, as far as I see, are not contradictory. I think it’s in common interest of both the Palestinians and the Israelis to seek peace and to end the war,” Cassif said.
The Israeli government, he said, “totally neglected” the hostages. “The government doesn’t do anything to save the hostages. And everybody knows the only way to save the hostages, who are dying there, is by ending the war.”
The parliamentarian claimed 47% of the Israeli public, according to polls, supports ending the war in order to rescue the captives. “I agree with this specific point. I do hope the ICJ will ensure a decision that will end the war.”
Israeli press ‘betrayed’ profession
Asked why the Israeli army does not allow journalists to enter Gaza, Cassif said: “Perhaps they have something to hide … Normally when you don’t allow someone to get into somewhere. It’s because you don’t want someone to see something.”
About press freedom in Israel, Cassif said there have been situations where authorities “mobilize,” or force the media to “publish something and not to publish something else,” but now a vast majority of journalists are “voluntarily” supporting the policy of the government.
“You can say, there are not many limitations on freedom of the press, but the press itself, most of them, choose not to act freely … this is disgraceful, it’s unprofessional, and it will be remembered once this terrible era is ended and finished. It will be remembered that they betrayed the profession.”
‘They want to silence us’
Commenting over a lawmaker’s efforts to get him expelled from the 120-member Knesset, Cassif said “they want to silence” and “don’t want our voice to be heard … the voices against the war. This is the part of the persecution and silencing of the people who support peace and go against violence and war.”
The opposition lawmaker said he believed the efforts against him will succeed, but he will approach the Supreme Court to get relief as “there is no legal basis.”
“According to the law, a member of Knesset can be expelled only if one supports racism, terrorism, or armed struggle against Israel. Neither of those is relevant to me. I’m against racism, I’m against terrorism. I am against armed struggle against Israel.”
He said the claim is based on political reasons. “The world should understand that the assault on Gaza, and the silencing of peace lovers and the democrats in Israel are two sides of the same coin. They continue with a coup they began before Oct. 7 by other means.”
PM Orbán: EU parliament wants to rob citizens of a choice on Ukraine funding
MAGYAR NEMZET | JANUARY 19, 2024
By forcing through a four-year, €50 billion aid package to Ukraine just a few months ahead of European elections, members of the European Parliament want to rob people of the right to choose their future, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wrote on X.
“Liberal MEPs attacked Hungary once again in the European Parliament yesterday. They want to give money to Ukraine for 4 years, while the European elections are just 5 months away. They essentially want to strip people of their rights to make decisions on their future. What an anti-democratic position! Hungary disagrees. If we want to help Ukraine, let’s do it outside the EU-budget and on a yearly basis! This is the only democratic position just 5 months before the elections,” Orbán wrote.
On Wednesday, two key debates were held in Strasbourg. The first focused on the previous and upcoming EU summits, while the second was entitled: “The situation in Hungary and frozen EU funds.”
After the EU parliament discussed funding to Hungary, the agenda was supposed to focus on the EU summit set for Feb. 1. However, MEPs were so fixated on Hungary, that the country dominated their conversations for nearly the entire session, so much so that even Romanian Socialist MEP Maria Grapini pointed out that the debate was fixated on the vilification of Hungary and the previous session’s discussion on Ukraine.
Trump is the Republican’s candidate but the “deep state” has its own plan, says Chronicles editor
By Ahmed Adel | January 19, 2024
It is certain that Donald Trump will be the candidate of the Republican Party, but it is also certain that the establishment, known as the American “deep state,” will not allow him to be the next president of the USA, according to Dr. Srđa Trifković, foreign policy editor of the American magazine Chronicles.
Former American President Donald Trump won the Republican internal party elections in Iowa, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis won second place. More than 60% of voters turned out for the elections, and Trump received 50.6% of the votes, while Desantis won 21.4% of the votes. Behind them was the former US ambassador to the United Nations and avid war hawk Nikki Haley.
The intra-party election in Iowa officially started the 2024 US presidential election race, and Trump is clearly popular with the voters but is hated by the top of the party.
“The popularity of numerous challengers in the form of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley cannot be compared to the popularity that Trump enjoys among pro-Republican voters and party members on the ground,” said Trifković.
“This, of course, does not mean that the Republican establishment, that is, the leadership of the Republican Party in the Senate and the House of Representatives of Congress, as well as in the apparatus of the top of the party, is enthusiastic about Trump – on the contrary,” he stressed.
The editor highlighted, as an example, how the late Senator John McCain belonged to the wing of the Republican Party that had the slogan – ‘Never Trump.’ McCain’s legacy is still present today, but it is evident that among registered Republicans, Trump’s popularity remains indisputable.
Nonetheless, this will not exempt Trump from facing immense opposition, in his run to become president again, from the Democratic Party, the FBI, the military-industrial-complex, and the media. According to Trifković, these are different branches of the “deep state,” and they are conspiring to prevent Trump from running in key states, with “an experiment” already made in Colorado after the Supreme Court of that state, which Democrats control, disqualified Trump from the race for president.
“[The court] used an obscure amendment to the Constitution of 1866 that was expressly intended to prevent Confederate officials from running for public office after the North’s victory in the American Civil War,” the editor said, adding that holding Trump accountable for the attack on the Capitol in 2021 was “absurd, but in the politicised world of the American judiciary, anything is possible.”
It cannot be ruled out that since Trump is currently accused of 92 misdemeanours, the former president’s opponents will time some of the court decisions right before the election so that he is disqualified at the last minute by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania or Georgia, which Democrats control. This would mean that he cannot appear on the ballots in those states.
According to a poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the University of Georgia, Trump (45%) leads President Joe Biden (37%) in the swing state of Georgia. Biden narrowly won Georgia in 2020, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate won the state since 1992, but it is almost certain that a Republican will win in this year’s election. For this reason, the “deep state” is attempting to disqualify Trump from such key states.
If Trump cannot be prevented from becoming president again by disqualifying him from key states, Trifković said there is a “Plan B,” which is to repeat “the theft from November 2020, when we witnessed the bizarre spectacle that in the key cities of the key counties, the counting stopped around three in the morning, and then at six in the morning continued with additional tens of thousands of votes for Biden that were mysteriously created from a pool of postal votes.”
“It was a blatant theft that is statistically absolutely inexplicable, but you can’t say that publicly in America today because the very claim that the election was stolen is criminalised and demonised,” he added.
It is telling that more than 70% of Republicans would be satisfied with Trump as a nominee in comparison to the 57% of Democrats who would feel the same about Biden being the Democratic Party’s choice. Biden is barely the Democrat’s first choice, which makes it easy to see why he is not Americans overall first choice as president.
Every recent poll finds that most respondents would vote for Trump in a match-up with Biden. As Trump would quickly wind down the war in Ukraine and slowly de-escalate tensions with Moscow, the “deep state” is desperate to ensure he does not come to power.
In conclusion, Trifković said: “The paranoia with which the establishment deals with those who doubt the legitimacy of the election already indicates the extent to which they were dubious.”
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Jim Jordan Demands Answers After Biden Admin Caught Flagging “MAGA” And “Trump” To Track Political Opponents’ Financial Transactions
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 18, 2024
Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Wednesday, announced that it had obtained documents revealing that federal agencies have flagged financial transactions for financial institutions for people using politically sensitive words such as “MAGA” and Trump.”
In a letter to Noah Bishoff – who was a former FinCEN Director (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) – and now an Anti Money Laundering (AML) officer at fintech company Plaid, Inc. Jordan described situations in which Americans buying bibles or shopping at sporting good stores might find their transactions flagged.
New documents obtained by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government reveal that the federal government flagged terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP” for financial institutions if Americans used those phrases when completing transactions. Individuals who shopped at stores like Cabela’s or Dick’s Sporting Goods, or purchased religious texts like a bible, may also have had their transactions flagged. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious concerns about the FBI’s respect for fundamental civil liberties. – Judiciary.house.gov
“The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents indicating that following January 6, 2021, FinCEN distributed materials to financial institutions that, among other things, outline the ‘typologies’ of various persons of interest and provide financial institutions with suggested search terms and Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement,” reads the letter.
“These materials included a document recommending the use of generic terms like ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA’ to ‘search Zelle payment messages’ as well as a ‘prior FinCEN analysis’ of ‘Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators,” the letter continues. “According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.’ In other words, FinCEN urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”
The Committee announced that it’s seeking interviews with senior intelligence officials, including Bishoff.
EC Chief Ursula von der Leyen calls for public-private collaboration to fight 2024 election “disinformation”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 17, 2024
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, delivered an alarming pro-censorship proclamation at the annual Davos World Economic Forum. She expressed her concern that “misinformation” and polarization in societies pose a serious threat to the international business community.
“For the global business community, the top concern for the next two years is not conflict or climate,” she said in her speech to elites. She argued that the bigger problem is “disinformation and misinformation, followed closely by polarization within our societies.”
In her exhortation, Leyen said that there needs to be partnerships formed between governments and the private sector to curb “disinformation.”
“Many of the solutions lie not only in countries working together but, crucially, on businesses and governments, businesses and democracies working together,” she said.
Leyen suggested that it was especially important as 2024 will be “the biggest electoral year in history.”
She added: “Even as the insidious spread of misinformation and disinformation threatens the cohesion of societies, there is a risk that some governments will act too slowly, facing a trade-off between preventing misinformation and protecting free speech, while repressive governments could use enhanced regulatory control to erode human rights.”
Australia: ABC staff threaten strike after Arab journalist sacked
Award-winning journalist and author Antoinette Lattouf
MEMO | January 17, 2024
ABC journalists in the broadcaster’s Sydney offices yesterday threatened to strike unless management addresses concerns over the unlawful dismissal of radio host Antoinette Lattouf, Anadolu news agency reported.
The award-winning journalist and author, who is of Lebanese heritage, was sacked by ABC last month for sharing on Instagram a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the besieged Gaza Strip.
The internationally-recognised rights watchdog released a report on how starvation was being used as “a weapon of war” by the Israeli government in Gaza. ABC also published a news item on the report.
On Tuesday, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed a leaked chain of WhatsApp messages from a group called Lawyers for Israel who had lobbied for Lattouf to be sacked.
“The ABC sacked broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf after a high-level and coordinated letter-writing campaign from pro-Israel lobbyists that directly targeted the corporation’s chair, Ita Buttrose, and managing director David Anderson,” the news daily said.
The report reveals that the Israeli lobby “repeatedly wrote to the ABC demanding Lattouf be sacked, and threatened legal action if she was not.”
Yesterday, about 80 ABC staff members demanded a meeting with Anderson, who is currently on leave.
They threatened to stage a walkout if their concerns were not addressed.
Lattouf has legally challenged her termination, saying she was sacked on the grounds of “political opinion or a reason that included political opinion” and later expanded the claim to include race, due to her Lebanese heritage.
While ABC has denied Anderson was behind Lattouf’s sacking, the broadcaster has told a court that the journalist was removed “because she ignored a direction from managers and shared a controversial social media post from Human Rights Watch.”
Lattouf demands a clear public apology, financial compensation and the offer of a proportionate position.
Hearings are scheduled to begin later this week.
In a statement to the Sydney Morning Herald, Lattouf’s lawyer, Josh Bornstein, said that after “October 7 and the ensuing conflict in the Middle East, it has become common knowledge in the media industry that Arab and Muslim journalists are being subjected to intimidation, censorship and expulsion.”
US elections falsified – Putin
RT | January 16, 2024
Elections in Russia’s new regions were honest and transparent because people showed up to vote in person, unlike the voting by mail in the US, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a meeting with municipal educators in Moscow, the Russian president brought up the 2020 American presidential election as an example of what democracy should not look like.
“It’s probably possible to falsify anything. Just like the previous elections in the US were falsified through voting by mail. Well, it’s clear what voting by mail is. They bought ballots for $10, wrote them in, and without any supervision from observers, tossed them into mailboxes. And there you go,” Putin said.
His observation came in response to a question about the voting in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, four formerly Ukrainian territories that joined Russia in 2022. No one forced people there to show up at the polls, or barred them from doing so – they simply voted with their feet, Putin said.
“What is this, if not democracy? Democracy is when people express their will,” the Russian president said.
Multiple US states changed their election rules in 2020 to allow voting via mail-in ballots, citing the Covid-19 pandemic. The final official results showed Democrat Joe Biden winning 81 million votes, the most ever in US history, over the incumbent, Republican Donald Trump.
Trump has challenged the election as “rigged,” pointing to various irregularities in half a dozen states as well as the mail-in ballots that were impossible to audit. The Democrats and most US media have denounced anyone questioning the 2020 vote as an “election denier” and insisted that everything was perfectly legitimate.
According to a February 2021 account in Time magazine, Biden became president because of a “well-funded cabal of powerful people” who were “fortifying” the election by “working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”
FBI Recruiting, Entrapping Autistic Children Terror Patsies for National Security
By Ben Bartee | Armageddon Prose | January 15, 2024
Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.
The good folks over at the Department of Justice (Ministry of Love), are spending our hard-earned bucks forked over to the IRS at gunpoint to recruit and entrap autistic adolescents in manufactured terror plots in the name of national security.
“Humzah Mashkoor had just cleared security at Denver International Airport when the FBI showed up. The agents had come to arrest the 18-year-old, who is diagnosed with a developmental disability, and charge him with terror-related crimes. At the time of the arrest, a relative later said in court, Mashkoor was reading ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid,’ a book written for elementary school children.
Mashkoor had gone to the airport on December 18 to fly to Dubai, and from there to either Syria or Afghanistan, as part of his alleged plot to join the Islamic State. The trip had been spurred by over a year of online exchanges starting when Mashkoor was 16 years old with four people he believed were members of ISIS. According to the Justice Department’s criminal complaint, the four were actually undercover FBI agents. As a result of his conversations with the FBI, Mashkoor could face a lengthy sentence for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization…
Law enforcement agents first became aware of Mashkoor’s online activities in support of ISIS in November 2021. But instead of alerting his family, Mashkoor’s lawyers told The Intercept, FBI agents posing as ISIS members befriended him a year later and strung him along until he became a legal adult.
‘It is appalling* that the government never once reached out to his parents, even while they were sending undercover agents to befriend him online starting when he was 16 years old,’ said Joshua Herman, a defense attorney representing Mashkoor. ‘Almost all of the conduct he is alleged to have committed took place when he was a juvenile.’”
*Appalling, perhaps, but not shocking. Why would the FBI agents try to prevent crime when they can get a promotion out of egging it on? There’s no money or prestige in quietly extinguishing terror in the womb.
What they need to sell to the masses is spectacle — Bread and Circus.
Anyone who knows anything about how the feds work recognizes this modus operandi:
· recruit a mentally ill patsy
· pump them full of cash and bad ideas
· set up a terror plot on their behalf
· swoop in to save the day from the threat that they created in the first place
· Parlay the alleged foiled terror plot into fatter budgets to do more of the same
And around and around we go!
I, for one, feel much safer now that the FBI is capturing autistic minor terrorists for posting naughty stuff online and putting them in prison for life where they belong.
God bless our heroes in law enforcement.
Where would we be without the FBI?
That’s a rhetorical question: inundated with autistic child terrorists, obviously.
They keep us safe. They keep us warm. They give us life. The Lord has sent them down from heaven to calm our flighty hearts.
And, by the way — and this isn’t said these days nearly enough — thank God for Saint George W. Bush, whose handlers pushed the PATRIOT Act through.
It’s called the PATRIOT Act (in capital letters) because it’s patriotic to arrest and prosecute autistic children for their terror. If you disagree, you’re probably a terrorist yourself.
You don’t hate Freedom™, do you?
If you aren’t doing anything wrong, like doing autistic child terrorist the heroes of the FBI entrapped, what do you have to hide?
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist.
Naked power and excessive force replaces the rule of law in Poland
BY JAN ROKITA | TEOLOGIAPOLITYCZNA.PL | JANUARY 15, 2024
Two years ago, the Hungarian opposition fighting to displace Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was promising, in case of victory, an experiment by which they would bypass the constitution, as if it was not there, despite not having the two-thirds required to actually legally change it. Orbán won, so it never happened, which may be a pity, as Poland might have been spared the experiment we’re currently facing.
In Hungary, the whole process would have had to go further, as there had been real constitutional change there, whereas in Poland, Law and Justice (PiS) leader Jaroslaw Kaczyński merely experimented with the gaps in the constitution without actually changing it.
What is happening in Poland is that the new liberal government is overturning procedural constraints so that its objectives are realized. This is utterly contrary to the 20th-century tradition of rulers staying within the bounds set by laws. These bounds were augmented by international laws and courts, which led to frustration that procedure was leading to political impotence and to these courts establishing a judicial aristocracy of progressive judges.
Poland’s rule of law crisis is the first in post-war Europe of this scale, so it is well worth watching since it may be a foretaste of epoch-making change. There are two aspects of this crisis of particular significance.
The first is that a semi-permanent state of emergency has been introduced, despite there being no emergency for people’s rights and constitutional procedures to be suspended. Such a suspension is required in times of war or natural disaster, as survival is more important than procedure. But this is not what we have here.
Take the example of public media. A minister steps in and, without declaring an emergency, takes action that is totally outside of the law just because he wants to bypass the unpleasant need for cohabitation with the head of state over changing legislation. Then, the government effectively suspends one of the president’s competencies, the right to issue pardons, by using an interpretation of the law rendering such a pardon invalid.
But we are going further still.
In Poland, the government is questioning the legal validity of key institutions such as the constitutional court and also judges who preside in other courts, calling them non-courts and non-judges.
No one has ever done this. Even during de-Nazification or the move away from communism, the existence of institutions themselves was not questioned. Their decisions and verdicts were questioned, but never their very existence.
Revolutionaries such as Georges Sorel have often argued that force is not necessarily evil. But I am rather inclined to agree with Max Weber who said that whenever force is used in politics, we are entering a pact with the devil. The liberal proceduralism that democratic Europe adopted after World War II was intended to minimize the zone of violence in politics.
Procedures are a constraint, but they protect our freedom by containing the use of force. This is why whenever the rule of law breaks down and is replaced by political will, force follows. The confrontation between force and procedure is a zero-sum game. The dream of the post-Fukuyama utopia of a liberal world without the use of force is over.
A new political era beckons in which, as has often been the case, Poland is to serve as a primary testing ground.
Jan Rokita is a former senior politician.
Featured Video
Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
UAE tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- ‘The Arab Vote’: How Israeli Racism Has Ruined Their Elections
- Israel forces Palestinians in Gaza to choose between assassination alone or death with their families: Report
- US Approves Sale of 500 Patriot Missiles to Ukraine, Deliveries May Take Years
- German Imperialism: An Urgent Explainer
- Backed by AAP, West Virginia Proposal Would Allow Dental Hygienists to Give HPV Vaccine to 9-Year-Olds
- Poland Is the Symptom and Europe Is the Patient
- UAE security forces tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization: Report
- They Compared the Spice to the Drug. The Spice Won — Again. (Part 2)
- Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War
- Wrong, AP and NPR: Europe’s 50,000 Heat Deaths Are a Computer-Model Estimate, Not a Real Body Count
- If Americans Knew
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- 1,300 will gather in Palo Alto on Nov. 1 for Z3 Conference on Zionism
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- The Long Arm of AIPAC
- Genocidal intent behind Hebron assault, rights group says
- This week, Israel killed 8-year-old who survived bombing that wiped out her family
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- Israeli soldier poses at damaged Lebanon church, sparking anger
- New Report. Manufacturing the Great Replacement: Is Israel behind one of the largest racist influence campaigns ever documented?
- ‘Arab voice doesn’t count’: Jewish Israeli blocs reject Palestinian support
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
