One of the perks of attending an elite school, be it Eton, Oxford, Cambridge or the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is not only the high quality education, but the network of friends one can build. Indeed, in Hogwarts, Harry Potter found friends, which was much more important than the spells he learned.
The tendencies towards greater intrusion into people’s privacy were visible well before 9/11 and can be imagined even without the elements of its influence. The transition to e-prescriptions, online banking and voting – these are daily routines in Estonia and will be rather sooner than later in other parts of the Western world as well.
Poles are currently celebrating Christmas. A holiday dedicated to a small refugee. Yet, nobody will probably mind getting indigestion from all the food they consume while at the same time thousands of other small refugees cannot count on our assistance. Can you see the irony?
Poland cannot allow to have its law go downhill nor to have sect-like religious behaviors promoted. The former puts paid to the accomplishments of the Polish Round Table Talks of 1989. The latter, on the other hand, disgraces the sheer idea of religion.
The fourth edition of Freedom Games was held on October 19-21, 2017, in Łódź (Poland). The unique interdisciplinary forum, the aim of which is to offer a creative space for individuals from the sectors of culture, business and public affairs, among others, to discuss the key challenges the Western societies must face in the 21st century.
Numerous needed reforms and laws guaranteeing and protecting equal rights and freedoms have not been passed in Latvia due to lack of political will or poor public administration (or perhaps both). And in the era of the rise of populism, these advances seem more and more distant and unrealistic.
The debate on LGBT rights in Poland is not a red herring. It is a question of whether gays and lesbians have the same human rights as the rest of Polish society. It’s the question that demands an answer from liberal parties – tells Liberte! Renata Kim, a Newsweek Polska editor.
Before PiS and the right wing have embarked in Poland on a large-scale anti-immigrant propaganda project, more than a half of all Poles had been understanding of helping migrants fleeing wars. After all, what other nation in the world could better understand what war means for a person than the Polish nation?
In social sciences, extremism is defined so vaguely that anybody can hide anything behind it. Anything can be outside the “mainstream”. However, if status quo is the mainstream, well – who is not an extremist then? Extremes simply do not meet, and to be an extreme defender of morality cannot be punishable.
For over three decades, the position of the Constitutional Tribunal seemed to be solidly grounded in the Polish institutional landscape and the pluralistic public discourse. However, with the recent demolition of the Tribunal, we are faced with an end of an era.
