Our Man in Gdansk comments on the coverage of Poland's ecology, coal mines and involvement in Iraq.

The beatroot reports: “Arnold Buzdygan […] – sometime wannabe presidential candidate, and a regular on usernet sites in Poland – went to court in Wroclaw, southwestern Poland, last week, to sue Wikpedia Polska for deformation of character. […] Buzdygan claims that his fiancée’s mother refused to let the marriage go ahead because of an entry […]

The beatroot writes again about Simon Mol, a “Cameroonian ‘refugee’, poet and human rights activist” charged with infecting 12 Polish women with HIV. (Many of the 213 comments to this post do not seem to have much to do with the subject.)

The beatroot writes about Polish boxing and kickboxing champion who donated one of his kidneys to his sick baby daughter: “The case has highlighted the lack of donors in Poland, though the country has one of the lowest family refusal rates in the EU – where relatives block the removal of organs after death.”

Dr. Sean's Blog reviews texts on populism in Central and Eastern Europe that have appeared in the special issue of Journal of Democracy: “The irony is that this comes just as the ‘populist backlash’ seems to be waning.”