Saturday, April 01, 2006
Defending "Enlightenment values" in Poland (and Iraq) posted by Meaders
It's the New Europe:Le Madame, formerly Warsaw's only gay club which was also a welcome space for a wider variety of people, was raided by police and evicted early Friday morning. The eviction came after a week-long occupation and a series of protests involving hundreds of supporters...
The effort to close the club was led by President Lech Kaczynski's anti-gay Law and Justice Party. After various failed attempts to close the club the party decided to simply purchase the building and evict them. Kaczynski, while serving as Warsaw's mayor last year, declared a gay pride parade to be an illegal demonstration. Although some of the pride marchers were arrested by police following the event Kaczynski condemned police for not using force to stop the march and for arresting some of the fascists who tried to disrupt the parade. He won last year's presidential election, which fell three days after a series of false bomb scares shut down the city center. The dummy bombs were allegedly left by "gay terrorists". Since the election, an MP from the conservative Catholic Party has accused the Law and Justice Party of orchestrating the bomb hoax as an election ploy.
Meanwhile,
After a brief telephone conversation with U.S. President George W. Bush, Kaczyński said he would strengthen Poland's ties with the United States. In a television interview he confirmed that under certain conditions, Polish troops could continue their stabilization mission in Iraq beyond the current timetable.
It is, of course, the anti-war left that has compromised its every principle to collude with fundamentalist homophobes bent on destruction etc etc repeat until fade.