we suck - big time

- morning mate, how is it going?
- Yako tako. Aren’t you deported yet?
- I’ve been, wankers didn’t give me a chance to say ‘bye’; sorry, and have a good life
- Are you in Afghanistan
- Yeah
- How is Usama?
- Between us, he is doing quite well. I think he is having breakfast with his master, mr.bush... Have you got a number for Urzand?
- No, but let’s talk later….
-
This was the conversation I had on Friday with Sonya, a friend, who is on the same program from Moscow while she was riding in a public auto-bus.
As the conversation finished, she noticed she was getting bad eyes from the occupants, who witnessed charismas eve bombs in Warsaw tram stations a couple of days ago; and there is a picture of the perpetrator with description and alert behind her.

In a few seconds she realised the entire bus was suspicious of her phone call, and were steering at her as though she was djabel (the polish devil).
She decided to jump out of the bus in the next stop, before she is arrested by police for having an allegedly suspicious phone call and eventually not having a quite valid visa or at least kicked out of the bus by the occupants.

We both received three month visas for Poland, unlike 62 other people on this program. Who received a one year visa for the full duration of the program. It was two days before our visas expire. Getting deported was a very ‘plausible joke’ among us, and it was quite likely to happen.

When coming to Poland the university recommended that we apply for a one year visa and that is the easiest arrangement to make. But Sonya and my request for a one year visa was turned down without giving us a good reason and we were issued three month visas.
When in Poland our team-mates dubbed us Al-qaida and Mafia as they couldn’t see any other reason for us not getting equal civil benefits.

When meeting with minister of foreign affairs, we brought this up with him and asked him if he could reimburse us the 130 euros we pay for residency card as this only applies to two people, out of hundreds who receive scholarships and this is not fair. But he said he couldn’t help said it’s our problem and he is sorry in a very political way.

As our request for residency in Poland faces more obstacles set forth by the authorities I start to believe my teammates’ conspiracy. It seems like polish government applies bureaucratic restrictions on citizen of the countries, who are not considered friendly and positive bilateral relation doesn’t exist. If you follow the news you can see restrictions on individuals are imposed when relation exacerbate with Byelorussia, after the expulsion of polish diplomats or on Russian band over polish farm products.

On the other hand civil freedoms have been bestowed such as easy visa access and passage to Western Europe without transit visa to Ukrainian citizens after diplomacy was tighten between the governments.

In other words individuals are not really respects as human beings but as a political tool.
In a post conventional war era national states play with individuals to achieve political objectives.

I find this particularly interesting, I was always thought that democratic countries has respect for people as individuals and human beings; I guess my contemplation was rooted in the universal declaration of human rights which we recognised more than half a century ago and the EU essence. Let me quote you article1, part1 of the EU treaty for the draft constitution “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights. These values are common to the Member States in a society of pluralism, tolerance, justice, solidarity and non-discrimination”

All this stuff is part of the truth and not the whole truth. There is not much respect for individual and human being as we claim, but that’s ok, what bothers me is we are not being honest about it. We claim all these great values, while we are miserable. I have a new clause for universal declaration of human rights and EU treaty ‘WE SUCK – BIG TIME’ it’s rude but honest. I do believe honesty is the only conduct to avoid all sorts of hypocrisy.