A funeral Mass for Zofia Korbonska, a heroine of the Polish underground resistance against Nazi occupation, participant in the Warsaw Rising of 1944, political activist against Communist rule after World War II, and former Voice of America (VOA) Polish Service broadcaster, was held at the Our Lady Queen of Poland Catholic Church in Silver Spring, MD on Friday, September 10, 2010. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Polish-American statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, spoke in Polish about Zofia Korbonska’s deep patriotism, extreme sacrifice, and political wisdom in her long struggle alongside her husband Stefan Korbonski to restore freedom and independence to their beloved Poland. View the text of Dr. Brzezinski’s speech in Polish
Democracy Digest from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED): It was thirty years’ ago, on 31 August 1980, that strikers from Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard forced the communist regime to recognize Solidarnosc as an independent trade union, release political prisoners, end media censorship and accept the right to strike. The regime later imposed martial law and Solidarity was forced underground before being…
Russia owes Poland an apology for massacre, U.S. official says | Medill | Washington Posted using ShareThis
Professor Aleksandr Guryanov’s presentation [translated from Russian] from the Katyn observances at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress, May 5, 2010. This is sent with permission of Professor Mark Kramer [translator] and the Harvard University Cold War Archives. It can be reprinted or reposted with acknowledgment. “The Katyn Problem in Contemporary Russia” Aleksandr Guryanov, “Memorial” Society Esteemed Mr. Chairman and Ladies and…
Poland, Public Diplomacy, Russia
Obama Failed to Notice the Hitler-Stalin Pact but Remembers The Elbe Anniversary
President Obama announced his decision to scrap the U.S. missile defense system in Central Europe on September 17, 2009, the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. He then signed an arms control agreement with Russia in Prague, the prime site of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. On the day of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s funeral, he…
Obama’s Public Diplomacy Katabasis in Poland President Obama may very well kiss the Polish American vote good bye after committing yet another public diplomacy blunder which gave Vice President Biden, U.S. Ambassador to Poland Lee A. Feinstein and some Congressional Democrats plenty of reasons to be pulling their hair out in utter frustration over his insensitive behavior toward an important…
April 11, 2010 America Mourns with Poland – U.S. Embassy Warsaw American officials and Americans around the world are expressing their condolences to Poland. After his phone call with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, President Barack Obama said, “President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United…
Opinia.US SAN FRANCISCO — An article in the U.S. semi-official military newspaper Stars and Stripes suggests that the Obama administration’s plan for placing a limited number of Patriot missiles in Poland has no military significance and is being implemented largely for diplomatic reasons to appease Warsaw after President Obama scrapped President Bush’s far more ambitious anti-ballistic missile defense system. …
TedLipien.com, SAN FRANCISCO — Speaking softly to dictators while insulting faithful allies seems to be the essence of President Obama’s confused diplomacy. The Obama administration has repeatedly offended Poland’s pride in recent months, making Polish officials extremely suspicious and anxious about foreign policy and military commitments of the new U.S. administration. First, President Obama made public his strong desire…
TedLipien.com, SAN FRANCISCO — In angry late-night phone calls to reporters last week, State Department diplomats were defending careless comments by President Obama’s new ambassador in Warsaw, Lee A. Feinstein, who revealed on Polish TV the content of sensitive negotiations with the U.S. about increasing the number of Polish troops in Afghanistan. Polish officials had good reasons to keep this…