SociallyIneptWeeb

I’m sorry, is this somehow a revelation? “Direct heir” they say… There is a very good chance that “penal colony” is a former Gulag.

A: Read my comment again, it explains what happened, and what can be done to change this.

B: The situation described was under the previous government. They were (for all intents and purposes) the same as Republicans when it came to abortion.

The Polish society at large remains split (unfortunately), and the part that doesn’t want legalisation of abortion is also most politically active in terms of voter mobilisation (i.e. they tend to move their asses on election days) and the moderate right (which is part of the current government) doesn’t want to potentially alienate those voters.

Right now it seems that the best course of action will be a decriminalisation, and a return to the previous status quo: abortion is legal when the life of women is at stake. This would mean that while getting one wouldn’t be illegal, Polish hospitals wouldn’t give you one. Any liberalisation beyond that seems to be an issue for a national referendum, which the moderate right is neutral on (i.e. they would allow one to happen, and would not stop things if liberalisation won)

“The ruling government is admitting they don’t have the money to fund the state media” say the people who carted out the funds from state media.

It’s been two weeks. They’ve been in power for two weeks.

And you have to understand, this isn’t caused by the right-wing passing some law, oh no, no… The Constitutional Court declared abortion unconstitutional. To change this, the new government needs to either change the constitution (requires a massive majority in Parliament), or completely rebuild the current justice system, replacing the CC justices responsible for that ruling (which will take a long time). Any attempt to do it with a simple act will get struck down by the right-wing in just the same way.

That is nothing to say about the fact that about a third of government coalition doesn’t want complete legalisation, only a return to the old “compromise”

EDIT: And they did manage to do a lot in those two weeks so far, it’s not like this is the only thing they promised to do.

Just so we’re all on the same page:

THIS HAPPENED IN JULY.

Just in case anyone wants to pin the blame on the new government.

The controversy is theoretically still ongoing for this case, but on the down low, as just one part of the backlash against the restrictions put on abortions in Poland 3 years ago.

The summary got some things wrong.

It was Polish truck drivers, not farmers. They protested the fact that Ukrainian transport firms were allowed by the EU to operate on the European market without regular restrictions, which, in their opinion, gives Ukrainian drivers an unfair advantage, as not following the regulations allows them to offer lower prices than others.

This protest has been ongoing for a few weeks by now, but there has been no movement from the government, as it has begun in the middle of the post-election transition period, as the ruling coalition changed.

Some interpreted the inaction, as an attempt to dump the responsibility for this mess on the other side of the political divide, and the ability to meet the demands of the protesters is seen as an important test for the new coalition, especially in context of the Ukraine-Russia war.

Domestically, most agree that the interests of the domestic industry should be prioritised, but shouldn’t be allowed to compromise the security situation of Ukraine, since they are fighting Russia, seen as the biggest geopolitical threat to Poland.

So the entire thing will be a delicate balancing act, of accounting for the well-being of domestic enterprises, the strategic and diplomatic interests of the state (i.e. helping Ukraine kick Russia’s teeth in), and taking care of the problem as quickly as possible.

For context, the demands of Polish drivers include returning to the previous system of permissions and an audit of Ukrainian transport companies created after the escalation of conflict, however they do not want restrictions on transport of humanitarian aid and army supplies for Ukraine.

I wonder if that might get the Catholics to condemn Israeli war crimes?

People cried watching them. Seriously.

Some stuff was obviously done with sticks and scotch tape so to say, since the takeover was very chaotic, the new team didn’t really have much resources. But it seems a lot of lower level people have been retained.

The first segment was about the takeover itself, and while it kinda reeked of propaganda, after they’ve shown the government’s justification for the whole thing, they brought up the President’s response. And he is from Law and Justice, the previous team. This is what made people cry, since for the first time in 8 years you could hear the opposition voices in state media.

It only got better from there with the budget, where every party got a moment, and the sentencing of those two MPs I’ve mentioned in main comment.

Overall rather bland, but most people say that’s what public media should be like - bland and including every side involved.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that every view should be acceptable, but they should be inclusive, even to those with fringe views.

For a bit more context:

Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość - PiS) has illegally taken control of state media back in 2016. Normally the chairs and boards of state media are managed by the National Council of Radio and Television (Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji - KRRiT). This is a constitutional provision, and members of the Council have terms. So PiS passed a law that moved these competences to a new body, that they created. That law was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court (Trybunał Konstytucyjny - TK), which normally would mean the end of the story, so what did PiS do?

They ignored the courts.

New leadership of the state TV got an increase in funding and set to work turning it into a propaganda tube for the party. Most of old presenters left in protest, but that didn’t deter the people in charge. For the past 8 years, the formerly decently impartial state TV, that used to report on government corruption and scandals, became an unceasing stream of adoration for “the greatest government in history, that valiantly fights for the betterment of Poles”. People compared the primitive propaganda of the past 8 years to that of Best Korea (to the point that you should be able to find on YouTube DPRK’s propaganda videos with audio from Polish state TV replacing the original audio)

So when the right wing populist government finally “fell off a bike”, as we say in Poland, the priority of the new team was to undo the clusterfuck that were state media.

Yesterday (20th of December) at 11:00, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, decreed, based on the Code of Trading Companies (which governs regular companies as well as state enterprises), that the chairs and boards of Polish Television, Polish Radio and Polish Press Agency (all state owned) were fired, and who would be their replacements.

18 minutes later, the news channel TVP Info stopped broadcasting, and it’s signal was replaced with TVP 1. Over the next hours the new leader of state TV arrived at its headquarters and slowly but surely, the new team took back the media, including the social media accounts of the state TV. Last holdouts included Twitter/X.

Obviously we were all following this with bated breath, including the ad hoc protest of around 200 people in defence of “independent media”, and “constitutional order” i.e. screaming that it’s not fair that the old team doesn’t get to keep spewing propaganda for our tax money.

At 19:30 instead of regular news segment, old (pre-2016) presenter came on air and said that everyone deserves to have actual news instead of propaganda in the state TV that they paid for, and that the news segment will return tomorrow (in other words today - 21st of December).

I can assure you, that for the first time in 8 years thousands, if not millions of Poles, will turn on the state TV.

For some additional things:

There was a vote about a motion to “depoliticise the state media” in Parliament. Law and Justice MPs didn’t take part in the vote because… They went to state TV to protest the changes (when reporting on that, the state TV, at the time still loyal, covered the number of MPs who voted against)

Two PiS MPs were declared guilty in a 6-year long trial that same day. They automatically lost their mandates for this, and instead of going to the Police… They also went to the state TV headquarters. The Police followed them, which prompted cries of “police brutality” from the protesters (ironic, considering they were the ones who used police brutality just a few months earlier).

A presenter from TVP hijacked a farming news segment to rant about the takeover, until the power was cut off, ending his rant mid-sentence.

Former TVP employees went to a private right-wing news to hold their own news segment at 19:30, lulz were had.

That’s about it.

EDIT: some spelling mistakes

Law and Justice are more like Brezhnev era Communists than fascists. Racism isn’t really part of their agenda.

Confederation though, are honest to God Fascists.

Aaahhhh…

Unternehmen Hannibal, good times.

For real?

Law and Justice - people who unironically believe that life was better under Communism, believers of the Toruń Catholic Church of Saintest Saint John Paul “singlehandedly destroyed Communism” II, demented seniors, basically anyone epitomising the term “Land of the Blooming Onion”

Confederation (Braun and co.) - Fascists, ancaps, techbros, Russian spies, conspiracy theorists, sexists, nationalists who believe Eligiusz Niewiadomski (google him) was the greatest hero of this country, and finally (and unfortunately) young men, who believe no other party has anything to offer them in a world where their prospects is being a wage salve to some corpo, or homeless.

For a more involved explanation from a Pole:

On th 15th of October, the ruling “United Right” coalition (or Law and Justice and satellites) lost the parliamentary election, getting 194 seats (231 necessary for majority in lower house). It became the most important election in modern Polish history, with 74.38% of registered voters voting, beating the 1989 elections that ended Communist rule in the country. After that, the slow process of transition to a new government began.

The President (Law and Justice) chose the date for the start of a new Parliament, and, in a controversial move, ignored the three committees that announced their intention to form a majority coalition government (with 248 seats total), instead giving the task of forming the government to Mateusz Morawiecki, the Prime Minister for the past two Parliaments (also Law and Justice).

For the past two weeks Morawiecki had to face the task everyone acknowledged was impossible: forming a majority in a Parliament where every party was against them, and they had no majority. Many see this appointment as an attempt, by his own party, to kill Morawiecki’s political career, as after the inevitable failure to form a new cabinet, he would be forced to shoulder the blame for the party’s failure.

As an aside, it’s worth mentioning, that Law and Justice is not in its best shape right now. The party’s de facto leader, Jarosław Kaczyński is considered to be in progressively deteriorating health. There are few that could possibly take the reins of the party after his departure from politics (be it due to retirement or death). The most likely are Zbigniew Ziobro, a christofascist, homophobic psycho, largely responsible for the dismantling of the independent judiciary, and Morawiecki himself. Morawiecki has little ideological zeal, he is, for all intents and purposes, a bland professional, a former banker and, ironically, Donald Tusk’s economic advisor, back before 2014.

In the background, the outgoing government tried it’s hardest to entrench itself in any position of power it could, giving positions to, as we say it, the “mediocre, passive but loyal”, any cousins that managed to get by without stealing anything so far, hardliners and so on. Their hope is, that the new government wouldn’t be able to completely clean house from the dregs of nepotism and corruption, and that they could latch on until (hopefully for them) next election.

Of main interest were positions related to state media, strategic enterprises and any positions that could sabotage any and all efforts of the incumbents.

So the party does not like Morawiecki. Some expected him, to take the last lifeboat on a sinking ship, and announce before his exposé (an address before the lower house, where the Prime Minister tries to convince it to give the new cabinet a vote of confidence), that he couldn’t form a cabinet, thus saving himself from the disgrace.

That did not happen.

Yesterday Poles all over the country, before TV sets, online, in cinemas (sic!) and over 400k live on YouTube (beating, or nearly beating the national record for the biggest live audience) were treated to the newest episode of our latest favourite Sitcom “Pierwsze posiedzenie Sejmu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej” (1st session of the Sejm (pronounced “same”) of the Republic of Poland) from 10 o’clock to just past 19 (7PM for computationally challenged), as Mateusz Morawiecki tried to convince a room full of haters that his cabinet will be great.

I could go on and on about all the insane shit that happened, all the hypocrisy of Law and Justice, but we all know where this ends up.

On the 11th of December, 2023, at around 16:20 (4:20PM) CEST, the Sejm, voting 190 for to 266 against, with 4 absent, decided AGAINST granting the 3rd Morawiecki cabinet the vote of confidence.

For the first time in modern history, the presidential pick for Prime Minister failed the vote of confidence.

Great! So what do we do now?

Now begun “the second constitutional step”, where the Sejm itself picked the Prime Minister from amongst their own.

The Marshall of the Sejm (Speaker) decreed, that the Convention of Seniors (marshall, deputy marshalls and representatives of all parties) will meet with him to decide upon a candidate.

An hour later, Donald Tusk was announced as the new Prime Minister.

The motion for his appointment was signed by 248 MPs, representing all members of the “democratic opposition” - Left to Centre-right parties in opposition to Law and Justice (no far-right, though they voted against Morawiecki).

Today the new Prime Minister had his exposé, and the new cabinet was formed. Poland enters a new era.

My comment might have been overly long and dramatic, but for majority of Poles this is an extremely important event, representing an end to 8 long years of indignity, corruption, nepotism, dismantling of democracy, trampling of our liberties and so, so much more evil.

So yeah. Hope I didn’t bore you to death.

And if you’re Polish yourself, and have voted in the elections:

Dziękuję.

This is actually his third term as Prime Minister. He predates the infamy of the other guys.

I knew I should have watched the livestream!

Also, it’s Grigoriy Braunovitch, the resident Russian schizo, for him that’s Tuesday.

Also, also, Tusk is Prime Minister now, after the vote of confidence for the third Morawiecki cabinet failed 190-266, and Parliament picked it’s own candidate. All 248 democratic opposition candidates (i.e. not the previous government or the party of that clown in the article) signed the motion to pick him as Prime Minister.

Wow, that’s cartoonishly evil. It’s like they held an internal contest on the “Most horrible thing we could say in response”.

Ok, so the idea that “government debt is the debt of the citizens” is not entirely true.

In general government takes on debt if it’s planned spending is bigger than its revenue.

There are many reasons for that phenomenon, the main being, that the government undertakes many programmes (for example social security) that it needs to pay for, as well as the cost of its operations etc. being bigger than the profits from those operations.

There are two types of govt debt - external (owed to foreigners) and internal - owed to its own citizens (which is why saying that each individual citizen “owes” some amount of govt debt is inaccurate). The latter is mostly in the form of govt bonds and loans from national banks.

There are two main impacts of govt debt:

1. High debt can cause an increase in interest rates, which will lead to a fall in private investment (which is a component of GDP, and translates to future economic growth i.e. high debt --> high interest rates --> lower investment --> slower growth)

2. And obvious one is the risk of a sovereign debt crisis like in Greece, when the government is unable to repay its debt, leading to an economic crisis, collapse of the economy, IMF loans and all that “good stuff”. That is an extreme situation, and usually means that the country is in deep shit regardless of debt.

There are also tangentially related risks.

1. Inflation - One might ask “Why not issue more money to pay off the debt?” Inflation is the answer why. According to theory, one of the forms of inflation is monetary inflation, when there is so much currency available, that the purchasing power of the currency unit (i.e. $1, 1€ etc.) falls, so prices rise to keep up with the fall.

2. The decrease in purchasing power of the currency also means, that foreign currencies become “stronger” in relation to it. That’s good if you’re earning your wages in dollars, but your home currency is falling (since your wages effectively rise in value) but if you’re in the opposite situation it can be a problem.

Honestly I don’t even know where to start with this, so I’ll keep it simple. Enshittification of Twitter, Reddit et al. is not necessarily a result of capitalism, and likewise Fediverse doesn’t exist because “workers took the means of production”.

For example the disastrous YouTube monetisation policy comes in part from a desire to keep the site “child friendly” (that’s why swear words and gore are banned), and in part due to a need to follow existing copyright law.

Even if YouTube was run by a worker co-op, or was a state enterprise those two factors would likely still lead to stringent monetisation rules.