I suspected that many of the much celebrated Wikileaks revelations would be trivial, misleading parts of wider discussions and/or ambiguous in their meaning. I also expected newspapers to distort them even further. I have not bothered to follow the scandalous revelations, however, and I did see one summary from thenews.pl that I found quite interesting, as it shows that the Polish government over-reacted to a (non-existent?) snub by French President Sarkozy.
I thought, therefore, that I would do some of my own manipulation based on a CNN article containing a number of Kaczynski quotes that I found via Inside Poland. Which Kaczynski? Don't try to allocate different quotes between Lech and Jarosław, as they all come from just one person. Here they are:
"I don't get delusions and so on and so forth. I mean, I had very serious problems with social adjustment in adolescence, and a lot of people would call this a sickness. But it would have to be distinguished between an organic illness, like schizophrenia or something like that."
His brother was jealous "over the fact that our parents valued me more highly."
"I believe in nothing".
"My motive for doing what I am going to do is simply personal revenge."
No idea? An additional clue: he doesn't have a birthmark on his face. If you're still not sure, see the CNN article.
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3 comments:
yep what can i say poland has a long history of over reacting to non existent insults.
Too bad both Kaczynski's werent on that plane as both are equaly worthless :)
I didn't voted either one of Kaczyńskis, but this joke wasn't funny.
Thank you very much, Odrzut. I dearly hoped that there would be a comment something like yours. There is no joke, it's a psychological test to demonstrate the way we can misunderstand what we are told and to show the way the media capitalises on this.
I tell you it's manipulation. In the Wikipedia references I show that I know that the Polish spelling is 'Kacziński' and, in directly referring to 'Jarosław', I demonstrate my ability to type Polish letters. I might have put in Kaczinski by mistake, but I used it twice, so the likelihood is reduced.
I constructed the wording so that an impassionate, objective reader could conclude that it is neither of the Kacziński twins. This was reinforced, for people who know of them, by quotes that are extremely unlikely to have come from either. Additionally, those of us who know Polish names and letters could even conclude that the person is living somewhere other than Poland.
However, we all see what we want to see - myself included, of course.
There is in fact no suggestion in my post that either of the Kaczyński brothers said or wrote these things. I have only told the truth in the way that journalists, politicians, etc, do, except that I have gone out of my way to let you know that you might be misled. You may not have been fooled, but even wondering whether the quotes might have been made by one of the brothers is completely in your head, not in anything I wrote. I simply encouraged you.
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