My previous presentations always concerned cycling. This time I am going to touch a slightly different topic: urban sports. In my 3 posts I will show you various physical activities that can be done in Warsaw. Starting today with simplest sports and ending on Friday with extreme ones.
Probably the easiest sport to start is running. Every morning we can see lots of people running through parks, forests or promenades. All you need to have to start jogging is shoes. It may sound obvious, but good sport shoes are necessary unless you want to have problems with knees or joints. Not everyone knows that running without proper shock-absorption on feet is very harmful. Moreover, we should chose appropriate surface to run on, best would be forest ducts. Most popular mistake seen in Warsaw is running on concrete - like the one near Vistula. There are lots of motivators in our city to start running. In the season, every month we can find great marathons that gather nearly 20 000 runner such as: Warsaw Halfmarathon, Run Warsaw, Zoo Run and so on. Here comes my first question: what do you thing about closing city centre for a whole day to organize a competition for runners?
One of the most popular sports in Poland is skiing. Although we have only one hill from which we can ski (of a discussable quality), there are lots of places for snowboarders or ski runners. There are several places to rent a ski near Kampinos National Park on in southern part of Kabaty district. This winter we could see a record number of people skiing there, so paths were great and they are about to improve in future. The most popular place to snowboard is on Kazury road and on the slope near Old Town. There are several competitions organized every year. Some people also ride on their boards holding a rope attached to the car through forests. (photo:Competition on Kazurka hill) Talking about winter sports, we can go ice skating in winter in a really big number of places, but for me only 2 are worth visiting: Torwar (which is extremely crowded) and Stegny.
Last activity that is quite popular in our city is rollerblading. The main problem is finding appropriate surface. It has to be perfectly flat to move forward and everybody knows how situation with our roads look like, not mentioning pavements. Sometimes I see people rollerblading on the streets but for me it looks like suicide. Here is a movie of a little different way of riding:
Thing worth mentioning here, that is successfully avoided in media is that doing sports in the city is not really that healthy. During increased effort our lungs need larger amount of air, which is also less filtered. You probably know about the air pollution caused by cars and you can easily connect those two facts. But still, doing something in the polluted air is better than doing nothing in the same air. I hope.
Do you know any other sports that are commonly met (I skipped cycling) in Warsaw or maybe you have even tried some of them? How long did you manage to train, before you get bored? :)
The collapse of energy giant Enron is the largest bankruptcy and one of the most shocking failures in United States corporate history. In just a little over 15 years, Enron grew into one of the US’s largest companies. It embraced new technologies, established new methods of trading in energy and seemed to be a shining example of successful corporate America.
But the company’s success was based on artificially inflated profits, dubious accounting practices, and – some say – fraud.
Enron's dramatic expansion and rise to international prominence
Enron was born in July 1985 when Houston Natural Gas merged with Omaha-based InterNorth. Kenneth Lay, an energy economist who had held academic and government positions throughout his career, became chairman and chief executive. His ambitions for the new company he had helped form went beyond the business of piping gas. He wanted to see an energy trading revolution and place Enron at the heart of it.
By 2001 he appeared to be succeeding in his goal, having created a multinational corporation employing thousands with a turnover of billions of dollars. But suddenly, as if from nowhere, the company unravelled and collapsed. How could a company worth billions come crashing down, destroying the livelihoods of thousands?
How the power business became big business
In the 1980s, energy corporations lobbied Washington to deregulate the business. Companies including Enron said the extra competition would benefit both companies and consumers. Washington began to lift controls on who could produce energy and how it was sold.
New suppliers came to the market and competition increased. But the price of energy became more volatile in the free market. Enron saw its chance to make money out of these fluctuations. It decided to act as middle man and guarantee stable prices - taking its own cut along the way.
How Enron took a bet on energy
Kenneth Lay had been anxious to expand the business right from the word go. Jeff Skilling, an ambitious thinker from the world famous consultancy firm McKinsey, offered a way to do it. Skilling believed that Enron could profit from trading futures in gas contracts between suppliers and consumers - effectively betting against future movements in the price of gas-generated energy.
Buyers and sellers use futures markets to get what they hope will be a better deal on commodity prices than they would do on the open market. Enron offered to do the same with gas by buying and selling tomorrow's gas at a fixed price today.
In the deregulated energy world, it appeared to make sense to many suppliers and industry consumers who took up the offer. The new Enron was emerging.
In a few short years, Enron became a massive player in the US energy market, controlling at its height a quarter of all gas business
Lobbying and donations on Capitol Hill (1989 - 2001)
One question that was already being asked before Enron crashed was this: how much influence did it have on Capitol Hill?
Enron certainly wasn't the only company lobbying for energy deregulation, but deregulation helped Enron establish the trading markets that became its core business. Directors built relationships with both Democrats and Republicans. Kenneth Lay himself had strong personal ties to two Republican presidents, George Bush Snr and his son George W Bush. As Enron expanded, there was little scrutiny of how it was managing the expansion. But when it began to unravel, the questions began to pour in.
Early 2000: Dot.com boom
Enron began 2000 with a plan to move into broadband internet networks and trade bandwidth capacity as the dot.com economy prospered. Enron's dynamic ideas, coupled with its stable old-economy energy background, appealed to investors and the share price soared.
It was one of the first amongst energy companies to begin trading through the internet, offering a free service that attracted a vast amount of custom. But while Enron boasted about the value of products that it bought and sold online – a mind-boggling $880bn (£618bn) in just two years – the company remained silent about whether these trading operations were actually making any money.
At about this time, it is believed that Enron began to use sophisticated accounting techniques to keep its share price high, raise investment against it own assets and stock and maintain the impression of a highly successful company.
Late 2000: Trouble brewing
By the summer, Enron's shares had hit an all time high of more than $90. But there was also controversy. California was suffering an energy crisis, blamed by many on its poor handling of deregulation.
Some claimed Enron had profiteered by buying futures in electricity supplies and passing them on at higher costs. Enron dismissed the allegation saying it was merely the market-maker.
Enron's 2000 annual report reported global revenues of $100bn. Income had risen by 40% in three years. In reality, real revenue would have been far lower had it not been for the special partnerships established by chief finance officer Andrew Fastow.
August 2001: Crisis revealed
On 14 August 2001, seemingly from nowhere, Jeff Skilling resigned as chief executive, citing personal reasons. Kenneth Lay became chief executive.
The development was a shock to investors who suddenly began to fear that all was not well in Houston. Investors sold millions of shares. As the price dropped below $40, Mr Lay insisted that there were "no issues". When Mr Skilling resigned, one executive who knew of Mr Baxter's concerns decided to act, and warned Mr Lay that Enron was on the verge of "imploding".
Sherron Watkins, an Enron vice-president, wrote an anonymous letter to Kenneth Lay setting out her fears of an impending scandal. Simply put, Enron's accounts didn't add up - and Enron's brilliantly effective partnerships appeared to be the problem.
Ms Watkins believed that some of the separate partnerships and contracts known as "special purpose entities" were only separate in name. They were run by Enron and funded with Enron stock, instead of outside investors.
As stock slid to $33 a share, nearly two-thirds lower than a year earlier, executives bit the bullet and owned up to their mistakes. They consolidated the complicated outside partnerships within the company's main accounts, dramatically altering the strength of the company.
On Tuesday 16 October, Enron announced its first quarter loss in nearly four years: a massive $618m.
A day later, Enron said that it would slash its quoted assets by $1.01bn because of "errors" in the way that it had accounted for the special partnership. Staff were panicking - and with good reason. Enron's final decision was to block employees from selling stock in their pension schemes.
But by the end of the week, Enron shares were changing hands for just $15. With the empire collapsing, the full details of the maze of financial partnerships and contracts were only just being revealed.
On 8 November, the company took the highly unusual move of restating its profits for the past four years. It effectively admitted that it had inflated its profits by concealing debts in the complicated partnership arrangements.
On 19 November Enron sought to negotiate better conditions for $690m of debt that were due for immediate repayment, but the shares were still falling. Within days the shares plummeted to just $4.01.
And then the final blows came. On 28 November, Enron was left fighting for its corporate life after the major credit rating agencies gave it junk-bond status - a highly symbolic decision to judge the company a massive risk for investors, and with the potential to collapse. The announcement meant that Enron was immediately liable for almost $4bn of its $13bn of debt.
In three months Enron had gone from being a company claiming assets worth almost £62bn to bankruptcy. Its share price collapsed from about $95 to below $1.
"Uncertainty has severely impacted the market's confidence in Enron and its trading operations," Kenneth Lay commented as he saw his company implode. As the business world sat back stunned, 4,000 Enron employees out of the 20,000 strong workforce in the US immediately lost their jobs, on top of 1,100 who had already been made redundant in London.
While America reeled from the bankruptcy and Enron employees, past and present, worked out what they had left, the Justice Dept announced a criminal investigation. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had received campaign funds from the company in 2000, excluded himself from the investigation along with the 100 federal investigators in Houston.
The following day, Andersen, its role increasingly in the spotlight, admitted that employees had disposed of Enron documents. The White House also confirmed speculation that Kenneth Lay had appealed to members of the administration for help.
Andersen fired its chief Enron auditor David Duncan amid speculation that he oversaw the shredding of documents. Enron, in turn, fired Andersen. It proved to be the largely symbolic final act of Kenneth Lay's reign at Enron. Two days after the FBI entered Enron's gleaming Houston headquarters, he resigned. On 25 January, Clifford Baxter, Enron's former vice chairman and chief strategy officer, committed suicide.
The shockwaves of a corporate crash are always keenly felt - but few failures have led to the kind of investigations Enron and its managers now face.
Part of an amazing document about Enron entitled: Enron - The Smartest Guy in the Room
To sum up
Enron is an example of managerial greed, flagrant conflict of interest and callous disregard for the well-being of the thousands of employees and shareholders who, in good faith, had invested their sweat and equity in the company's operations; and that's not to mention, in the case of California, a whole citizenry denied electrical power.
Possible discussion topics
Have you ever heard about the Enron case before?
In your opinion, is Enron’s corporate culture values of risk taking, aggressive growth and entrepreneurial creativity essential to succeed in business?
Would you agree with a statement that the corporation is the vehicle for the crime?
Greed or conceit? What do you think is the motive and the rationalisation for choosing to break the law?
Also, I wonder what's your opinion about corporate honesty and loyalty to both its' clients and employees. Have you heard about any suspicions or evidences of corporate criminality in Poland?
Sources
'Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story' (Excerpt: http://wwwebooks. com/ebooks/book_display. asp. IID=208804)
'Enron - The Smartest Guy in the Room' movie
Center for Responsive Politics / Federal Election Commission
With my third post I would like to conclude the meaning and perception of events that took place during last days. Apart from mourning for the plane crash victims I suggest changing a little bit point of view - from emotional to political and national. Only tyrannies or regimes fall apart when their superiors pass away, in the countries with stable democracy positions are taken over by their deputies and when it is needed - special elections are announced.
By looking at the death toll list we can see that PiS has lost a lot of it's clue politians only to mention: Lech Kaczyński, Krzysztof Putra, Grażyna Gęsicka, Przemysław Gosiewski, Zbigniew Wassermann, Aleksandra Natalli-Świat. Other politcal parties also lost prominent politicians like Grzegorz Dolniak, Sebastian Karpiniuk from PO or Jerzy Szmajdziński, Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka from SLD. Surely it has moved all the polish politicians and should somehow change paradigm of polish policy discourse. The question is how and how long will the effects last?
Many medias and commentators mentioned that such a dramatic event could eventually unite Polish nation. Obviously many of these gestures are manifestation of human compassion and after emotions will fade away, oppositive parties can again start to offend each other. I hope this will not happen and everybody will get a lesson from this fatal accident. It's main message should be not dividing but uniting with an ultimate goal in mind - welfare of the country.
Another aspect are our relations with Russia. Russian officials made much more than diplomatic protocol assumes. They also mourned for victims. This is a right moment in history to finally bury the all the hatchets.
How do you think will look the next 60-70 days until presidential elections? Note the very difficult situation of Bronislaw Komorowski, who is a candidate for president and now he is acting a president due to constitution. SLD and PiS candidates are dead - will Jaroslaw Kaczynski try to accomplish his brothers goal?
Due to the latest events I will stick around Katyn for my second post too. As you all should know by now - today in Smolensk, Russia a horrific tragedy took place. A plane carrying Lech Kaczynski and other leaders crashed as it landed in the fog. Apart from any political convictions, I am absolutely positive that this event is incredibly surreal for every Pole, just like September 11th 2001 was for Americans. I mean it is a kind of event that you'd never see coming and once it happens it is impossible to get over it without any reflection.
70 years after mass murder of 20+ thousand polish officers, 96 Polish dignitaries in the vanguard of Polish President lost their lives on their way to commemorate the first. Truely an overwhelming tragedy which bitter irony is that they also died on russian soil carried by russian plane.
With present information we can only speculate on what in fact had really happened. What is certain anaerobic conditions were very difficult with very dense fog. The airport in Smolensk is an adapted old military object with no automatic landing system control. On 4th landing trial, Plane with Polish delegation hit the treetops and crashed. All 96 persons onboard died. Black boxes have been already found and after analysis will provide factual information about the causes. Therefore arguing on what could fail or blaming anyone at this moment is pointless and unnecessary.
From all over the world signs of support and deep condolences are sent. World leaders pay tribute to Polish leader and delegation. Russia announced a national mourning day, Brazil three, in Poland it will be six days till Friday, 16th. Every paper, television or internet media covered this story todays as breaking news. It is really unpleasant situation in which Poland is on whole world's lips, still their reactions are appreciated. Popular football match called Gran Derbi which is a duel between best spanish teams FC Barcelona and Real Madrit was preceded with a minute of silence in memory of victims.
Death toll included inter alia Lech Kaczynski, Maria Kaszynska, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, Ryszard Kaczorowski, Slawomir Skrzypek, Maciej Plazynski, Janusz Kochanowski, Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka (wife of PJIIT rector), Anna Walentynowicz, Grażyna Gęsicka, Janusz Kurtyka and many more.
I send my deepest condolences to families of victims of this ruthless accident. May all of you rest in peace. Like few comments in press pointedly noticed: Katyn is a cursed place for Polish nation.
Here you can find photos of passangers of this unfortunate flight: http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/51,80291,7752578.html?i=0
This time my presentations will cover three quite present issues that willy-nilly somehow concern each of us. Later discussion should be much easier because you won't have to elaborate on things or hobbys that are not necessairly points of your interest. I believe topics picked by me are much more universal and common for all of us.
Let's than kick off with a really tender topic - Katyn massacre presented in medias yesterday because of it's 70th anniversary. If not particulary related to your family, still is a tragic act of genocide on Polish military elite. Obviously justified by older generations, for us for sure much less, it remains a thorn in the flesh when speaking of Polish-Russian relations. And that careful weighting of every word - whether it truely brings back the truth about that tragedy. Of course, avoiding by Russians of genocide term is simply dictated by hard-nosed means because in that case Russia would have to pay off tremendous restitutions to families of victims. As we know Katyn wasn't the only example of bestial breaking of the human rights by USSR, therefore total sum of such restitutions would be unimaginable. Althought above mentioned, in my opinion, recent policy of Vladimir Putin is going in right direction.
Especially admitting that Katyn massacre was intentionally performed by Soviet Russia. On the other hand I can only imagine that for families of victims, according to saying "deeds not words", it is still not enough and they can expect something more. Only concern that occupies my mind is fact that Katyn is a matter of life and death for some groups of interests. Although it is still an open wound it shouldn't be a stringent argument in modern business or policy relations with Russia. Conservatists tend to impose such rhetoric forgeting that eventually it leads to nowhere.
As a reminder (based on Wikipedia), Katyn also known as Katyn Forest massacre was a mass murder (genocide) of (most commonly cited) 21 768 Polish prisoners of war, intellectuals, policemen by Soviet NKVD. On March 5, 1940 Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria and entire Soviet Politbiuro approved this "sentence of death". Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer, the Soviets were able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, and the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship. Executions took place on April when after 3 April at least 22,436 POWs (Prisoner Of War) and prisoners were executed (methodical killings - shooting in the back of the head). In 1943 Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest. Soviet Union denied the massacres until 1990, originally accusing Germans of making up a hoax. An investigation by the Prosecutor's General Office of the Russian Federation has confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres, yet does not classify this action as a war crime or an act of genocide. This acknowledgement would have made necessary the prosecution of surviving perpetrators, which is what the Polish government had requested. The Russian government also does not classify the dead as victims of Stalinist repression, which bars formal posthumous rehabilitation.
Is your family personally related to Katyn massacre? Do you find recent symbolical gestures of Putin a way for healing Polish-Russian relations or in contrary - acknowledging by Russia should be a matter of life and death for Polish policy?
Do you believe it is true? Are we manipulated by our governments and first of all lobbyists standing behind them? Is there any way for ordinary people to react to it?
