Poland's 'Secret Tape' Scandal Goes Surreal, Amid Claim that Minister Ordered Arson Attack on Russian Embassy in Warsaw in November 2013

'We Gave the Americans a Blow Job,' Got Nothing, Says Polish FM Sikorski - Nov. 2013

A Polish 'Game of Tapes' | June 10, 2015 |

Radoslaw Sikorski is the most prominent victim of a government shakeup in the wake of a wire-tapping scandal and electoral troubles. Radoslaw Sikorski has also stepped down as Speaker of the Sejm. (Had badmouthed British PM David Cameron)

Prime minister Ewa Kopacz's chief advisor, Jacek Rostowski, has resigned, as has head of special services Jacek Cichocki - although the latter remains in post as head of the office of the prime minister.

Speaker Sikorski, 3 ministers resign over taping scandal | RT |

Polish businessman Zbigniew Stonoga published more than 2,500 pages of secret documents. He has been reportedly fighting a long-running battle with the authorities. The confidential reports from the investigation included top-secret information concerning the personal details of state security officers, as well as senior officials, including ministers and conversations in restaurants.

The leaked tapes reveal politicians making inappropriate jokes and indiscreet comments about colleagues and foreign leaders. The head of the prime minister's office Jacek Cichocki has called the publication "the biggest leak in history," Inside-Poland.com reported. (website doesn't exist anymore)

The World According to Dutch FM Halbe Zijlstra | Feb.12, 2018 |

Foreign affairs minister Halbe Zijlstra has admitted lying about being at a meeting where Vladimir Putin supposedly set out his plans for a 'Greater Russia'.

Zijlstra claimed that he had overheard the Russian president talking about his expansionist ambitions during a gathering of businesspeople at Putin's dacha in 2006. At the time Zijlstra was working for Shell. But in an interview in the Volkskrant at the weekend he admitted that he had not been at the meeting, but 'borrowed' the anecdote from someone whose identity he wanted to protect.

• Excerpts from the Transcript of a Meeting with Sakhalin Energy Shareholders - Dec. 2006

'I made the decision that this is an important geopolitical story with serious implications,' he said. `I put myself in the story to make sure that the revelations weren't about the person who was actually there. Because that could have had implications for him or his company.'

In his original version of the story, which Zijlstra began relating at VVD party conferences in 2014, he claimed he had been a back room in the dacha when he heard Putin define 'Greater Russia' as 'Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states,' adding that 'Kazakhstan was nice to have'.

Doubts about the veracity of the foreign minister's claims came to light when former senior Shell executive Jeroen van der Veer told the Volkskrant that Zijlstra had not been at the meeting in 2006. Zijlstra admitted he was not present but insisted that the substance of the story was true.

The Counter-offensive | The Atlantic - by Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg |

Uniquely, the United States has the power to determine how, and how quickly, the war of attrition turns into something quite different. The Ukrainian defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, spoke with us about the "Ramstein Club," named after the American air base in Germany where the group, which consists of the defense officials of 54 countries, first convened. Still, his most important relationship is with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ("we communicate very, very often"), and everyone knows that this club is organized by Americans, led by Americans, galvanized by Americans. Andriy Yermak, Zelensky's chief of staff, told us that Ukrainians now feel they are "strategic partners and friends" with America, something that might not have felt so true a few years ago, when Donald Trump was impeached on charges of seeking to extort Zelensky.

In our interview with Zelensky, which we conducted with the chair of The Atlantic's board of directors, Laurene Powell Jobs, we asked him how he would justify this unusual relationship to a skeptical American: Why should Americans donate weapons to a distant war? He was clear in stating that the outcome of the war will determine the future of Europe. "If we will not have enough weapons," he said, "that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us. If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova, and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus, and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. That's three Baltic countries which are members of NATO. They will occupy them. Of course, [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don't have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union." The fate of NATO, of America's position in Europe, indeed of America's position in the world are all at stake.

This is a war over a fundamental definition of civilization, Zelensky
says, a battle "to show everybody else, including Russia, to respect
sovereignty, human rights, territorial integrity; and to respect people,
not to kill people, not to rape women, not to kill animals."

If a Ukraine that believes in the rule of law and human rights can achieve victory against a much larger, much more autocratic society, and if it can do so while preserving its own freedoms, then similarly open societies and movements around the world can hope for success too. After the Russian invasion, the Venezuelan opposition movement hung a Ukrainian flag on the front of its country's embassy hall in Washington. The Taiwanese Parliament gave a rapturous welcome to Ukrainian activists last year. Not everyone in the world cares about this war, but for anyone trying to defeat a dictator, it has profound significance.

• Anne Sikorski-Applebaum the Raving War Lunatic | Aug 30, 2014 |
• The Atlantic and NY Times' Normalization of the Alt-Right | Tikun Olam - Apr 8, 2018 |

Both Jeffrey Goldberg, elevated a little over a year ago to managing editor of The Atlantic, and his predecessor and mentor, James Bennet, now the NY Times op-ed page editor, have embarked on a process of normalizing the alt-right, via hiring its devotés to grace their respective pages.

'Sapere aude'