Commentary: Poland and Hungary Are What Healthy Democracies Look Like

“Even by today’s low standards, this is shockingly delusional,” I thought after reading Kati Marton’s diatribe against the current Polish and Hungarian governments in the Los Angeles Times last week.

Most such pieces are relatively standard and don’t warrant a response. This one, it seemed to me, mutilated the charred corpse of the truth. As a Polish citizen and Polish speaker who has lived in Hungary, I concluded it was too much to overlook. Allow me to share some of my experiences from these two countries, which most often bear no resemblance to the ones Marton describes.

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Moderna Recalls More than 750,000 COVID-19 Vaccine Doses After ‘Foreign Body’ Found in Lot

The pharmaceutical company Moderna on Friday recalled 764,900 doses of its Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine after a “foreign body” was found in a vial.

The contaminated lot was manufactured at a contract manufacturing site, ROVI, in Spain, and was distributed in mid-January 2022 in Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Spain, according to a company press release.

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Commentary: Who is Running the Biden Regime?

So how did that work when Joe Biden announced that Vladmir Putin is a “butcher” who “cannot remain in power” only for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to follow up with a pay-no-attention-to-the angry-old-guy-shouting-at-the-clouds correction. According to Blinken, the United States does not “have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else.”

Well, that’s a relief. Otherwise Putin might get the idea that U.S. and NATO involvement in Ukraine poses an existential threat that would prompt him to do something really crazy like use tactical nukes or chemical or biological weapons to win at all costs. Because, after all, if the U.S. and NATO are trying to topple his government, then what does he have to lose?

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Russia Cuts Off Key Gas Pipeline to Europe Amid Rising Tensions

The flow of natural gas through a key Russian-controlled pipeline suddenly stopped Wednesday as tensions continue to increase between Russia and the West.

The Yamal-Europe pipeline’s liquified natural gas (LNG) flows, which are operated by Russian state-run firm Gazprom and have usually been pumped westward from Russia to Germany through Poland, were halted early Wednesday, European data showed, according to Reuters. The sudden stoppage reportedly represented a setback after leaders expected the pipeline to return to its normal flow pattern.

In December 2021, Gazprom slowed the pipeline’s gas flows, which represent 10% of the region’s supply, and the company reversed the flow direction from westward to eastward. The sudden reversal sent natural gas prices, which had already spiked amid a European energy crisis, even higher.

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Thousands of Migrants Stuck in Between Belarus and Poland as Tensions Flare

Thousands of migrants are stranded at the Belarus-Poland border, with Belarus and Russia performing military demonstrations amid rising tensions in the region, CNN reported Friday.

Up to 2,000 people are trapped between Poland and Belarus, enduring hunger and hypothermia in the freezing forests and camps along the border, CNN reported. The number of migrants at the border has the potential to grow to 10,000 people in the near future if the situation doesn’t change, according to Belarusian authorities.

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