Running with arthritis

Ok, that is about a year since I last updated this blog. By anyone's standards  that's lame. Perhaps I will change this in the near future. I have recently finished my work for the summer and am sitting at home in the beautiful Polish countryside looking out at the July weather ... and guess what? Its raining and there is a thunder storm overhead. Undoubtedly if I went and chatted to one of my neighbours the first quip would be about the "angielska pogoda."

What have I done in the last year? Well apart from the normal, English lessons, exams and proofreading I have been running. After ten years of a self-imposed ban on running I returned to the discipline with a vengeance. My ban was due to my arthritis and my belief that my running days were over. Last May I started a gluten free diet after discovering that I was a borderline diabetic and found that it had positive results on my joints as well. I generally felt much better and decided to take up running again.

I entered myself in the Uniejów 10km run in October, giving myself six weeks to train. This of course was too much too soon and I more or less crippled myself in the first few weeks. After ten years I was in bad shape cardio wise and needed to rebuild my stamina. However, I completed the run and It gave me confidence. Since then I have done several runs (10km, 15km and a half-marathon) and my latest passion is for triathlons.

Why triathlons? Well I decide to use the cross-training method to help my joints and thought, well if I'm swimming and cycling as well I might as well train for a triathlon. So far I have done one and was happy with my finishing time and can't wait to do the next :)

I am Spartacus – The role of public acceptance of responsibility and punishment in civildisobedience

The recent case of Edward Snowden has inspired many debates on the role of ‘whistleblowers’ and state intelligence gathering facilities in a 21st century world. The debate has been multifaceted as it has not only centred around the revelations of Snowden concerning the US National Security Agencey (NSA) and its British counterpart: Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), but it has involved debate on the role of a ‘whistleblower’ and whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor.

In this paper I wish to focus on the actions of Edward Snowden and his actions concerning
the method of release of the information and his flight from the hands of US justice authorities. As by way of a recap let us look at how the story initially broke. On 6th June 2013 The Guardian Newspaper reported that the NSA was collecting phone records of US citizens1 Within three days Edward Snowden was named as the source of the leaks and was reported to be in Hong Kong. Since that time more information concerning both British and US intelligence gathering methods has been publicly released and Edward Snowden has received asylum in Russia (one year licence2).

There are perhaps two things that mark this case out from previous security leaks. Firstly the ‘whistle blower’ reasonably quickly came out publicly and declared that they were the source of the information. Snowden’s actions were in stark contrast to other high-profile whistle blowers who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. Secondly, Snowden fled the USA and went to two of its key rivals. In earlier years this would have been known as defecting, but in our modern mono-polar world it takes on a more complex character. Snowden did not release the information for ideological reasons as would possibly have been the case were it during the cold war, nor was he inspired by financial gains but rather he believes that governments should not hold /gather large quantities of information.

Edward Snowden therefore represents a new breed of whistle blower3. However, for now let us concentrate on Snowden’s decision to leave US jurisdiction and its implications for him as an instigator of civil disobedience. Within western culture one of the earliest examples of civil disobedience can be in the life and death of Socrates. In Plato’s book Crito4 we hear Socrates’s argument against flight from prison and the death penalty (Plato):

Soc. Then consider the matter in this way: Imagine that I am about to play truant (you may call the proceeding by any name which you like), and the laws and the government come and interrogate me: "Tell us, Socrates," they say; "what are you about? are you going by an act of yours to overturn us- the laws and the whole State, as far as in you lies? Do you imagine that a State can subsist and not be overthrown, in which the decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and overthrown by individuals?" What will be our answer, Crito, to these and the like words? Anyone, and especially a clever rhetorician, will have a good deal to urge about the evil of setting aside the law which requires a sentence to be carried out; and we might reply, "Yes; but the State has injured us and given an unjust sentence." Suppose I say that?

Socrates argues that while living in a state a citizen makes a contract with that sate and agrees to abide by the laws. If a citizen does not agree with the actions of the executive branch then they can commit civil disobedience, yet they must accept the repercussions as laid out in the laws of the sate. Failure to accept the repercussions makes a mockery of the laws and thus contradicts the contract agreed between the citizen and the state and put in force by the citizen’s continued residence in the state (up until the incident in question) (Plato5):

For, after having brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good that we had to give, we further proclaim and give the right to every Athenian, that if he does not like us when he has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him; and none of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him.

Socretes’s argument develops a concept which over two thousand years later was deployed by Mohandas K Gandhi when confronting the might of the British Empire in India. Although Ghandi was in many respects fighting the British Government, he nevertheless accepted the legal implications of his action. Ghandi in fact spent a lot of time in prison6 pleading guilty to his charges. This acceptance of guilt and failure to flee is in fact what determines the true effectiveness of civil disobedience. Were, for example, Rosa Parks7 to have left the bus before the police arrived then no doubt the story of civil rights in the USA would have been very different. 

This element of public accountability is sadly what is missing in Edward Snowden’s case. Snowden’s case has been often compared to that of Bradley Manning8 with the striking difference being the arrest and conviction of Manning. While Snowden remains outside of US law his claim of fighting for democracy is at best limited.

1 See http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order
accessed 24.8.13
2 See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23768248 accessed 24.8.13
3 See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2339268/Edward-Snowden-IT-geek-Americaswanted.
html accessed 24.8.13
4 See http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html accessed 24.8.13
5 Ibid
6 See
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2024558_2024522_2024456,00.html
accessed 24.8.13
7 See http://www.ushistory.org/us/54b.asp accessed 24.8.13
8 See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23784288 accessed 24.8.13

Commonwealth War Graves

Commonwealth War Graves at Poznań Old Cemetery

It was, I amid, with some surprise that I noticed a sign to Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery with the subscipt : British Commonwealth Section (1), while driving through Poznan a year or two back. Alas, as with many things in life, my initial intrigue was overtaken by other things and it was only when I noticed a similar sign on the road to Gdansk the other day that I decided to check it out on-line.

(1) Yes I know this is an outdated name and politicly incorrect, but then again most people in Poland are still strugling with the Bombay/Mumbai thing.

When you go on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission webiste you are told this about the Poznan cemetery:

Grave of Lithuanian RAF Pilot

After the First World War, the graves of Commonwealth servicemen who had died in Poland as prisoners of war were gathered together in this cemetery. There are now 174 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the cemetery. One of the burials is unidentified. Special memorials commemorate one casualty known to have been buried in Czersk Prisoners of War Cemetery, 29 known to have been buried at Szczypiorno Prisoners of War Cemetery and 18 known to have been buried at Pila (formerly Schneidemuhl) Prisoners of War Cemetery, all of whose graves could not be identified. The majority of the 283 Second World War burials in the cemetery are those of airmen, many of whom died in bombing operations on Stettin (now Szeczin). Also buried here are those involved in the mass escape from Stalag Luft 3, Sagan (now Zagan), in March 1944, and others who died while prisoners of war during the German occupation, at Stalag VIIIC, Sagan, Stalag XXID at Poznan, Oflag XXIB (also known as Oflag 64) and Stalag XXIB, both at Schubin (now Szubin). There are also 19 war graves of other nationalities in the cemetery, most of them Polish. The cemetery also contains the POZNAN MEMORIAL commemorating five RNAS armoured car ratings who died near Brezazany in July 1917 and whose graves were never located.

To be honest, until coming to Poland and in fact living here, I did not know much about Poland's First or Second World War history. Everyone of course knows the big stuff such as the Sept. '39 invasion and Britain and France's declaration of war etc... But beyond that most west European's knowledge of Poland's war is limited to the odd character in an otherwise overly British/American war film.

Perhaps its know different, with more east European influnce on the film indusry. But that was definetly the case for anyone who grew up watching repeats of sixties war films :)

This faliure of west Europeans to understand the wars in east Europe is of course indicative of the post-war devide. It is a cruel irony that the so called 'free' west knew actually far less about their European brethren than their eastern counterparts. Growing up in Communist Poland, often meant a thirst for all things western, while those in the west had little interest in all things eastern.

In many ways this was of course encouraged by official government policy: after the war the government wanted to make sure awkward issues of Polish occupation and betrayal were kept out of the general public's attention. It is only in recent years that this subject has been revisted, as illustrated by the resent visit of Polish Foriegn Minister, Radosław Sikorski to the RAF Museum's new exhibit on foreign fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain.