Saturday, March 21, 2009

Myśląc Ojczyzna: "Sprawy błahe i ważne"

Myśląc Ojczyzna: "Sprawy błahe i ważne"
red. Stanisław Michalkiewicz (2009-03-18)
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Szanowni Państwo! Zamieszanie i jazgot spowodowany nagłym odkryciem nepotyzmu wicepremiera Waldemara Pawlaka oraz urządzona przez premiera Tuska pokazucha w postaci wyrzucenia z partii senatora Misiaka za "złamanie standardów" sprawiły, że mało kto zauważył, iż właśnie wczoraj stocznia w Gdyni rozpoczęła wyprzedaż urządzeń, co oznacza koniec przemysłu stoczniowego w Polsce. Ale, jak to mówią, są sprawy błahe i sprawy ważne. To, czy Polska będzie miała przemysł stoczniowy i w ogóle - jakikolwiek, a nawet - czy sama będzie istniała - to należy do spraw błahych. Do spraw ważnych, a nawet - najważniejszych należy, kto ile i komu ukradł, czy się podzielił z kim trzeba, czy nie, no i - gdzie schował szmal. Nad tym pracują całe sztaby ludzi, zorganizowanych w tajne policje, które mają walczyć z korupcją. Zwróćmy uwagę na to subtelne sprecyzowanie zadań. Wszystkie te policje mają tylko z korupcją "walczyć", ale tak, by jej, broń Boże, nie zlikwidować. Bo gdyby miały ją zlikwidować, to sprawowanie władzy publicznej straciłoby wszelki urok i kandydatów na posłów trzeba by pozyskiwać z łapanki. Natomiast na walce z korupcją można się całkiem nieźle urządzić, zwłaszcza, gdy przestrzega się zasady, żeby samemu żyć i dać żyć innym. Dlatego też, im więcej mamy tajnych policji oraz innych instytucji walczących z korupcją, tym bardziej korupcja rośnie w siłę, co jest zgodne z zasadą, że co cię nie zabije, to cię wzmocni. Oczywiście jazgot w sprawie nepotyzmu pana wicepremiera Pawlaka powstał nie dlatego, że kogoś takie rzeczy gorszą, tylko dlatego, że wicepremier Pawlak pierwszy zaproponował, by unieważnić umowy przedsiębiorców z bankami na tak zwane opcje walutowe. Wśród tych przedsiębiorców byli również prezesi spółek Skarbu Państwa, co wzbudza podejrzenia, że mogli działać na zlecenie swoich polityków prowadzących, którzy w dodatku mogli ich zapewniać, iż w razie czego rząd podejmie desperacką obronę złotówki, więc żadnego ryzyka nie ma. Tego wykluczyć nie można, bo żaden z tych prezesów nie został wyrzucony z posady, ani nawet z partii, więc wygląda na to, iż pokazucha z senatorem Misiakiem w roli głównej, musi nam wystarczyć, byśmy uwierzyli w srogość i pryncypialność premiera Tuska. Ale możliwość unieważnienia umów na opcje walutowe oznaczałaby utratę zysków dla banków. W bankach zaś, podobnie jak w całym sektorze finansowym, jeszcze na samym początku sławnej transformacji ustrojowej, usadowiła się razwiedka. I co - miałaby wyrzec się zysków tylko dlatego, że wicepremier Pawlak ma takie miękkie serce dla przedsiębiorców, a zwłaszcza - spółek Skarbu Państwa? Toteż za pośrednictwem niezależnych mediów udzieliła wicepremierowi Pawlakowi poważnego ostrzeżenia, z którego wynika, że wcale nie musi być partnerem koalicyjnym Platformy Obywatelskiej, bo w każdej chwili razwiedka może skonstruować inną koalicję, niechby i z posłów niezależnych. W tej sytuacji wszystko może zakończyć się wesołym oberkiem: Sejm uchwali ustawę umożliwiającą przedsiębiorcom odstąpienie od umów na opcje walutowe, więc przedsiębiorcy żadnej straty nie poniosą. No dobrze - a co z bankami i siedzącą tam razwiedką? A banki zaskarżą tę ustawę do niezawisłego sądu, który nakaże Polsce wypłacić im odszkodowanie. Banki zatem też nie stracą, bo za wszystko zapłaci polski podatnik, który po to właśnie jest. Skoro zatem omówilismy sprawy najważniejsze, możemy teraz przejść do spraw błahych, których fragmentem jest rozpoczęcie likwidacji polskiego przemysłu stoczniowego. Wielu ludzi myśli, że jest to następstwem decyzji pani komisarki z Brukseli, ale to nie jest prawda, bo początków tego procesu należy szukać głębiej. Jeszcze w XIX wieku, kiedy w Niemczech zaczął rozwijać się przemysł, pojawiła się tam koncepcja gospodarki wielkiego obszaru.Chodziło o to, by rozwijającemu się przemysłowi zapewnić z jednej strony samowystarczalność, a z drugiej możliwości zbytu. Bez wchodzenia w szczegóły, koncepcja gospodarki wielkiego obszaru sprowadzała się do wniosku, że Niemcy powinny kontrolować politycznie obszar daleko większy od własnego terytorium państwowego, organizując tam życie gospodarcze i podział pracy. W okresie I wojny światowej te idee skonkretyzowały się w postaci koncepcji Mitteleuropy, obejmującej utworzenie w Europie Środkowej i Wschodniej państw pozornie niepodległych, ale faktycznie - niemieckich protektoratów, których gospodarki - w ramach podziału pracy w skali Europy - byłyby peryferyjne i uzupełniające dla gospodarki niemieckiej. Klęska Niemiec w I wojnie światowej niewiele tu zmieniła, bo myśl raz rzucona w przestrzeń żyła już własnym życiem, a dodatkowej dynamiki nabrała po objęciu władzy w Niemczech przez wybitnego przywódcę socjalistycznego Adolfa Hitlera. Pod egidą NSDAP idee gospodarki wielkiego obszaru zostały twórczo rozwinięte, przybierając postać konkretnych rozwiązań, a nawet nazw - jak choćby Europejska Wspólnota Gospodarcza, zaproponowana przez hitlerowskiego ministra gospodarki Funka. Klęska Niemiec w II wojnie światowej tylko nieznacznie opóźniła realizację tych projektów, ale obecnie są one realizowane w ramach Unii Europejskiej, która stanowi ucieleśnienie tamtej XIX-wiecznej koncepcji gospodarki wielkiego obszaru. Już wtedy było jasne, że w tym wielkim obszarze jedne terytoria będą pełniły role ekonomicznego centrum, podczas gdy inne - gospodarczych peryferii. W tym podziale pracy Polsce przypada oczywiście rola peryferii, na co nie tylko się godzimy, ale - za pośrednictwem naszych przedstawicieli - aż przytupujemy z uciechy, bo za posłuszeństwo posłuszni wynagradzani są wynagrodzeniami w postaci tzw. "grantów" i innych podarunków. To jest rzecz przesądzona, w związku z tym mało kto zaprząta sobie nią głowę, bo znacznie bardziej interesujące są sprawy naprawdę ważne, a więc - kto, ile i komu ukradł, czy podzielił się z kim trzeba, no i - gdzie schował szmal.
Mówił Stanisław Michalkiewicz

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Soros – Real Father of Reforms in Poland

Soros – Real Father of Reforms in Poland

With the change of Poland from a communist dictatorship to a free market system, much credit has been given to Leszek Balcerowicz, who supposedly is the father of the “miraculous” economic reform. However according to the special report published by the Executive Intelligence Review of Washington, D.C., the real brains behind the reforms that have impoverished and enslaved Poles for generations is a Hungarian Jew, mega speculator George Soros, who also carries American passport.




Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930 and educated in England, George Soros and his Curacao based Quantum Fund have quickly become a silent partner of Rothschild’s, Reichman’s, US expelled Marc Rich, Israeli arms merchant Saul Isenberg and many other wealthy and influential Jews, such as Henry Kissinger. The main objectives of their activities are speculative investments to take advantage of political and economic weaknesses of various countries.



Soros' Quantum Fund makes money by anticipating economic shifts around the world. In 1992 Soros thought the British pound would lose value because of political and economic pressures. He borrowed billions of pounds and converted them to German marks. When the pound collapsed Sept. 16, Soros repaid the pounds at the lower rate and pocketed the difference. His profit: $1 billion.



To understand how George Soros is different from other financial speculators, just ponder this: Enron's whiz kids, once considered the acme of high-finance innovation, named one of their infamous off-balance sheet partnerships "Chewco" -- after the "Star Wars" character Chewbacca. Soros chose to name his primary vehicle for earning billions of dollars "the Quantum Fund."

He was alluding, says his biographer, Michael Kaufman, to Werner Heisenberg's theory of "indeterminacy": the impossibility of knowing simultaneously both the position and velocity of any atomic particle. As applied to markets, the implication was that you can't invest in something (especially on a Soros-ian scale) without affecting its prospects, for good or ill.

"Soros's choice," writes Kaufman, "was both an ironic wink and a gesture of homage to notions of fallibility, reflexivity, and his own convention of incomplete determinism."

OK, so Soros is like, really smart, and those Enron guys, despite the Harvard MBAs, now look kind of dumb. But the two did have some things in common.

Soros is credited with being the chief developer of the hedge fund -- a strategy for investing that, at its simplest, maximizes an investor's ability to pick winners (and losers) and yet at the same time insures against larger market trends that could be completely unpredictable. So, for example, at the same time you are buying one company's stock because you think its stock price will rise, you are selling another's short, because you think it will fall. By balancing your long and short positions, if something unexpected happens, like a terrorist attack, that drives all stock prices up, or down, across the board, you are insured against losing your shirt. Some of your bets will win, no matter what. And if nothing unexpected happens, all of your bets might win.

As Enron mutated away from being a natural gas trader into a financial derivatives player, it advanced the concept of hedging beyond the sublime and the ridiculous straight to the land of pure idiocy. Enron, the biggest bankruptcy of all time, even bet on bankruptcy protection! In this, Enron's derivatives traders were descendants of Soros; as financial speculators intent on beating the system by being really, really smart, they attempted to hedge against every possible eventuality.

Soros and the latter-stage Enron both strove to make money chiefly by manipulating money. The difference is that Soros rarely lost a bet, while Enron's executives, blinded by greed and hubris, took themselves to the cleaners.

Are financial speculators parasites profiting off the people and companies who do the real work, or do they in any way produce value themselves? Michael Kaufman's intriguing biography of Soros never fully addresses this question -- one of the few flaws in an otherwise eminently readable book on the enigmatically fascinating Soros. And Soros himself neatly sidesteps the conundrum, by virtue of what he has done with his winnings.

Soros, a "revolutionary plutocrat," would-be philosopher king and one-man Marshall Plan, set out to change the world -- to use his billions to fund the spread of "open societies." He became a one-man conduit of funds from West to East, from affluent to non-affluent.

Which raises another question that Kaufman's bio never delves into too deeply. When an ordinary individual donates money to charity, it's easy to respect that as a personal choice. But when the individual involved can spend billions -- when he's the kind of person who can casually say, "Tell me about the health of the king of Thailand ... I happen to own 5 percent of the Thai stock market this week" -- then you start to wonder, is this really kosher? Who is this man accountable to?

One of Soros' nicknames is "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England," in reference to a famous multibillion dollar bet his fund made that John Major's Conservative government would not be able to prop up the value of the British pound. The phrase is usually used admiringly -- what a paragon of financial expertise this Soros guy is!

But what if, say, Osama bin Laden was doing the betting? What if such manipulation was pursued on behalf of "the closed society" as opposed to the open?

Liberals love to shower Soros with respect, ignoring his Wall Street background, because his motives are so obviously honorable, and the money he is spending so clearly is going to "good" causes. But his life raises some troubling questions about the autonomy of capital in the era of globalization. Make enough money, and you don't have to obey anyone's rules.

As one might expect from the first "authorized" biography of Soros, "Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire" is flattering to its subject. But it's never fawning, and the psychological portrait it draws is convincing and illuminating.

Soros' life, no matter how you slice it, has been extraordinary. The first several chapters of the biography -- which deal with the teenage Soros' efforts to avoid the depredations of first the Nazis and then the Soviets in his native Hungary -- read like a thriller. As Kaufman notes, this background makes it easy to understand how Soros was able to cope with the pressures involved with high-stakes investing: When your formative experiences include watching friends and colleagues get rounded up and shipped off to Auschwitz in the waning days of World War II, it's likely that little else will ever be able to frighten you.

Soros' early experiences with fascism and totalitarianism also illuminate his motives, later on, in helping Eastern European and Soviet dissidents. Kaufman excels at dissecting and explaining Soros' psychological makeup. As just one data point -- can you imagine a Rockefeller or Carnegie or Gates frankly talking about insights gained from psychoanalysis, if they ever even admitted to seeing a therapist at all?

Kaufman gets Soros to open up -- about his analysis, about his family, about his dreams. A picture emerges of a man who was not only intensely self-critical but also sought out criticism from others. And his obsession with being an actual philosopher, along with his grandiose visions of single-handedly changing the world, make him come off as more than slightly neurotic.

Few neurotics, of course, are able to dispense about a half a billion dollars a year to whomever they choose. Is that really a good thing?

During the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad, accused Soros of destabilizing his country through currency speculation. According to Kaufman, Soros was not involved in currency trading in Malaysia at the time, but his response, at a conference held in Hong Kong that year, is instructive.

"Dr. Mahathir's suggestion yesterday to ban currency trading is so inappropriate that it does not deserve serious consideration. Interfering with the convertibility of capital at a moment like this is a recipe for disaster. Dr. Mahathir is a menace to his own country."

Never mind that the stringent restrictions on currency flow that Malaysia did impose are now widely considered to have worked spectacularly well. What's important isn't whether Soros was wrong or right, but the arrogance implicit in Soros' categorization of Mahathir as a "menace."

If you or I were to think that Mahathir is a neo-authoritarian despot who is fundamentally anti-democratic, that's one thing. But Soros can get peeved at a leader and decide to bankroll a popular movement aimed at destabilizing a government. He's done it before! If I were a Malaysian citizen aware of what Soros had done in Poland and Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union, I'd be a little worried when he started calling my leader bad names. Who could stop him? Who could censure him?

No one.

Soros has stated that he doesn't do philanthropy in countries where he is involved as a trader, and vice versa. He has also noted that he considers his philanthropy moral and his money-management business "amoral." But is it really possible to make such distinctions? If the consequences of a billion-dollar bet on a currency change "anomaly" destabilizes a given country's economy, boosting unemployment and inflation, does that balance out the good karma that accrues from connecting all of Russia's universities to the Internet?

We should all be grateful that deep down, George Soros appears to be a good guy, at least as judged according to liberal Western values. His commitment to "openness" is sincere; his dedication to improving people's lives is unquestionable. He is the ultimate meddling, bleeding-heart liberal do-gooder, and for that, let's give him a cheer.

But at the same time, a guy like George Soros can't be voted out of office if you disagree with him. And when his billions of dollars can affect public policy, not just in his own country but in any country of his choosing, there is good reason to be a little bit nervous. Maybe Prime Minister Mahathir is indeed a menace to his own country. But on a bad day, a grumpy George Soros could be a menace to any country.

In order to gain valuable inside knowledge of the speculative possibilities, George Soros has set up a huge organization of inter-related “open society” institutes staffed mainly by Jews. Although his “institutes” have been expelled from China, Russia, Indonesia and the Czech Republic, they exist in Albania, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the USA. There is no doubt that this organization allows for great economic intelligence gathering possibilities to detect weaknesses subject to financial speculation. But to go one step further, George Soros has also been known to manipulate the outcome of the political process by funding his own candidates in presidential elections, as recently documented in the Ukraine and Peru. In today’s information age, it is much more profitable for speculators to have their own people (insiders) in the government they are planning to raid. His favorite agenda is to convince the government of a particular country that neo-liberal reform is the best way out of financial crisis, so he can take advantage and speculate with their currency and privatization. Soros justifies his methods with a statement that what he is doing may not be moral but it is not against the law.

According to Lyndon LaRouche, Soros has gained a new position in the course of the 1997-98 period. The big thing that is occurring in Southeast Asia and in East Asia, is that the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, has become a hero of economics. He defied Al Gore, he defied Madeleine Albright--personally, nose-to-nose in Asia--on the issue of George Soros. And Madeleine Albright and Al Gore came to the enraged defense of George Soros.

In the period between October 1998 and the Brazil crisis of February 1999, George Soros was used as a key adviser on how to generate an avalanche of fraudulent money, which was used in particular to try to deal with the Brazil debt crisis. So, George Soros has gone from being a figure of what he was earlier, to using his experience and connections for a somewhat different operation. He's a key part of what is actually being generated, a global hyperinflation like that of Weimar 1923.

The thing that must always be remembered is that the United States, as a national economy, is presently hopelessly bankrupt. For example, the United States, at the current rate, has a national current account deficit rate of approximately a half-trillion dollars a year. Well, that's the mark of a bankrupt business. It has no hope of ever earning the income to pay that deficit. We don't know how much money is being put in to try to keep the United States from collapsing. Official figures from central bankers and others show at least $1 trillion a year. LaRouche estimates is that, in addition to that, there is an additional trillion dollars a year or more, which is now going into over-the-counter derivatives.

In other words, the United States, as an economy, is presently like a hopelessly bankrupt firm, which is borrowing ever vaster amounts of credit by the day, to keep from closing the door. By every objective standard, the U.S. economy and the U.S. dollar are the most bankrupt nation in the world. And, it's a time bomb that can set off the biggest financial collapse in all history, a collapse that will sink the entire world economy.

So, states LaRouche, the significance of Soros, is that these fellows are trying to keep alive, keep the bankruptcy from the door, long enough to establish their kind of world government, or one-world government, system.

As if this was not enough, George Soros has also been actively promoting the free use of narcotics, which leads to greater liberalization of the particular countries and greater possibilities of speculative gains.



According to the EIR Report, Soros has been personally responsible for introducing “shock therapy” economic chaos into the emerging economies of Eastern Europe since 1989. He has foisted on fragile new governments in the East, the most draconian economic madness, policies that have allowed Soros and his financial friends to loot the resources of large parts of Eastern Europe at less than dirt-cheap prices.



In Poland, in late 1989, Soros personally organized a secret meeting between the communist government of Mieczyslaw Rakowski (also Stanislaw Gomulka and Wojciech Jaruzelski), and the leaders of the then-illegal opposition, the Solidarnosc trade-union umbrella organization. According to well-informed Polish sources, at that 1989 meeting between the communist regime and the Solidarnosc, Soros unveiled his “plan” for Poland: The communists must let the opposition Solidarnosc take over government so as to gain the confidence of the population.



Then, said Soros, the state must act deliberately to bankrupt its own industrial and agricultural enterprises using astronomical interest rates, withholding needed state credits, thus burdening firms with unpayable debt. Once that was done, said Soros, he would encourage his wealthy international business friends to come to Poland as prospective buyers of privatized state enterprises. A good example of this Soros privatization plan is the case of the large steel facility, Huta Warszawa. According to steel experts the complex, a modern one, would cost $3-4 billion for a Western company to build new. The Polish government agreed to assume the “debts” of Huta Warszawa, and sell the debt-free, steel making complex to Milan Company, Lucehini, for a price of $30 million!




To further the Soros plan, Soros personally recruited his friend (Belorussian Jew with American passport), 35-year old Harvard economist, Jeffrey Sachs, whose only prior claim to experience was that of advising the Bolivian government on the advantages of the disastrous neo-liberal reform. Next, Soros set up one of his numerous foundations, the Stefan Batory Foundation, staffed by Polish Jews related to the Mazowiecki government. The Stefan Batory Foundation became the official sponsor of Sach’s work in Poland in 1989-90. Before his recent move on Peru to advise Soros-sponsored President Alejandro Toledo and his Belgian-Jewish-Polish wife Eliane Karp, Sachs visited Poland over 40 times. In 1996, although officially never employed by the Polish government (as argued by Janine Wedel) , Sachs neverless was decorated with the Order of White Eagle by post-communist President Alexander Kwasniewski.



Soros boasted that he had “established close personal contact with Walesa’s chief advisor, Bronislaw Geremek. I was also received by Gen. Jaruzelski, the Head of State, to obtain his blessing for my foundation.” He also worked closely with the “eminence grise” of Polish “shock therapy”, Prof. Trzeciakowski , a behind-the-scene adviser to Finance and Economics Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. Soros also cultivated relations with the man who would first impose Sach’s “shock” therapy on Poland: Balcerowicz himself. When Lech Walesa was elected President of Poland, Soros said: “largely because of Western (Washington) pressure Walesa retained Balcerowicz as Minister”. Balcerowicz imposed a freeze on wages while industry was to be bankrupted by cutoff of state credits. Industrial output fell by more than 30% over two years.



Since, during early “shock therapy”, Balcerowicz maintained a fixed rate of dollar exchange with interest rates in Polish zloty reaching 80% a year, for many years Poland was a dream country for currency speculators like George Soros. Unfortunately, during those years there was no tax on the interest earned in Polish banks and therefore there are no records as to how much money was siphoned out of the country. Tax on the interest earned was applied in the year 2001 and only since then has interest income been recorded. Although there are no verifiable records, I estimate Poland lost up to $30 billion dollars due to speculation with its currency exchange. Prof. Kazimierz Poznanski, of the University of Washington, documents that Poland has lost over $80 billion dollars through manipulation of currency exchange and dishonest privatization.



Soros admits he knew in advance that his “shock therapy” would cause huge unemployement (approx. 20% in 2002), closing of factories, and social unrest. For this reason he insisted that Solidarnosc be brought into the government. Through his Batory Foundation, Soros also co-opted key media opinion-makers such as Adam Michnik (Gazeta Wyborcza), and with cooperation from the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, imposed a media censorship favorable only to Soros’s “shock therapy” and hostile to all critics – a censorship which rivaled that of the communists, according to some Polish reports.



Not a shabby achievement for a Hungarian Jew, who survived the “holocaust” and started with nothing else but a name. His personal net worth is estimated at 15 billion dollars. “Time” magazine has characterized George Soros as a “modern-day Robin Hood”, who robs from the rich to give to the poor countries of Eastern Europe and Russia. “Time” claimed that Soros made huge financial gains by speculating against Western central banks, in order to use his profits to help the emerging post-communist economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, to assist them to create what he calls an “Open Society”. “Time’s” statement is entirely accurate in the first part, and entirely inaccurate in the second. He robs from rich Western countries, all right – then he uses his profits to create the basis to rob even more savagely from the East, under the cloak of “philanthropy”. His goal is to loot wherever he can. Soros has been called the master manipulator of the “hit-and-run capitalism” and Poland with cooperation from the postcommunist rulers, has been one of his easy prey. However, officially, there are no records that George Soros himself or his Quantum Fund has taken out a single dollar out of Poland. The real looting was done by others, who were fully protected by the privacy laws of the post-communist banking system.



What Soros means by “open”, is to open up, for him and his financial predator friends, the economies of the former Warsaw Pact countries, so they can loot their resources and assets. By bringing people like Jeffrey Sachs and their economic “shock therapy” into emerging economies, Soros has laid the foundation for buying invaluable assets of whole regions of the world at dirt-cheap prices, for himself and his selected rich friends, who share a dream forming world government one day.



It must be stated that George Soros would never be able to create crisis in Poland without the full cooperation of the perpetual oligarchy of the Polish-Jewish and meddling of the American-Jewish politicians, but their treason is a subject for discussion some other time.





Stanislaw Tyminski



Encl.

EIR Special Report: “The true story of Soros the Golem”, April 1997
Interview with Lyndon LaRouche, Executive Intelligence Review, , July 7, 2000.
George Soros “Underwriting Democracy”, 1991

Polish Prof. Boguslaw Wolniewicz on the Formal Ontology of Situations

Polish Prof. Boguslaw Wolniewicz on the Formal Ontology of Situations



INTRODUCTION
"The theory presented below was developed in an effort to clarify the metaphysics of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The result obtained, however, is not strictly the formal twin of his variant of Logical Atomism. but something more, general, of which the latter is lust a special case. One might call it an ontology of situations. Some basic ideas of that ontology stern from Stenius Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Oxford, 1968 and Suszko Ontology in the Tractatus of L. Wittgenstein - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 1968.
Let L be a classic propositional language. Propositions of L are supposed to have their semantic counterparts in the realm of possibility, or as Wittgenstein put it: in logical space. These counterparts are situations, and S is to be the totality of them. The situation described by a proposition a is S(a). With Meinong we call it the objective of a."
From: Boguslaw Wolniewicz - A formal ontology of situations - Studia Logica 41: 381-413 (1982). pp. 381-382.

"Different ontologies adopt different notions of existence as basic. Aristotle's paradigm of existence is given by the equivalence:
(A) to be = to be a substance.
On the other hand, the paradigm of existence adopted in Wittgenstein's Tractatus is given by the parallel equivalence:
(W) to be = to be a fact.
Now, an Aristotelian substance is the denotation of an individual name, whereas a Wittgensteinian fact is the denotation of a true proposition. It seems therefore that the notions of existence derived from these two paradigms should be quite different, and one might readily expect that the metaphysical systems erected upon them will display wide structural discrepancies.
It turns out, however, that in spite of this basic difference there runs between these two systems a deep and striking parallelism. This parallelism is so close indeed that it makes possible the construction of a vocabulary which would transform characteristic propositions of Wittgenstein's ontology into Aristotelian ones, and conversely. To show in some detail the workings of that transformation will be the subject of this paper.
The vocabulary mentioned is based on the following four fundamental correlations:

Aristotle
1) primary substances (substantiae primae)
2) prime matter (materia prima)
3) form (forma)
4) self-subsistence of primary substances (esse per se)

Wittgenstein
1) atomic facts
2) objects
3) confiugration
4) independence of atomic facts

Aristotle's ontology is an ontology of substances, Wittgenstein's ontology is an ontology of facts. But concerning the respective items of each of the pairs (1)-(4) both ontologies lay down conditions which in view of our vocabulary appear to be identical. To show this let us confront, to begin with, the items of pair (1): substances and facts.
(The interpretation of Aristotle adopted in this paper is the standard one, to be found in any competent textbook of the history of philosophy. Therefore, with but one exception, no references to Aristotle's works will be given here.)Relatively to the system involved substances and facts are of the same ontological status. Aristotle's world is the totality of substances (summa rerum), Wittgenstein's world is the totality of facts (die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen). For Aristotle whatever exists in the basic sense of the word is a primary substance, for Wittgenstein - an atomic fact. Moreover, both ontologies are MODAL ones, allowing for different modes of being (modi essendi); and both take as basic the notion of `contingent being' (esse contingens), opposed to necessary being on the one hand, and to the possibility of being on the other. Both substances and facts are entities which actually exist, but might have not existed. The equality of ontological status between substances and facts is corroborated by the circumstance that both are PARTICULARS, there being - as the saying goes - no multiplicity of entities which FALL UNDER them.
Substances and facts stand also in the same relation to the ontological categories of pairs (2) and (3). Both are always COMPOUND entities, a substance consisting of matter and form, and a fact consisting of objects and the way of their configuration. But in neither of the two systems is this compoundness to be understood literally as composition of physically separable parts or pieces. The compoundness (compositio) of a substance consists in its being formed stuff (materia informata), and the compoundness of a fact in its being a configuration of objects.
In view of correlation (4) we have also an equality of relation which a substance bears to other substances, and a fact to other facts. Self-subsistence is the characteristic attribute of primary substances: substantia prima = ens per se. If we take this to mean that each substance exists independently of the existence or non-existence of any other substance we get immediately the exact counterpart of Wittgenstein's principle of logical atomism stating the mutual independence of atomic facts. It should be noted that thus understood the attribute of self-subsistence or independence is a relative one, belonging to a substance - or to a fact - only in virtue of its relation to other substances - or facts.
From a Wittgensteinian point of view Aristotle's substances are not things, but hypostases of facts, and thus their names are not logically proper names, but name-like equivalents of propositions. (By that term we mean roughly either a noun clause of the form `that p', or any symbol which might be regarded as a definitional abbreviation of such clause.) Surely, from the Aristotelian point of view it might be easily retorted here that just the opposite is the case: substances are not `reified' facts, but on the contrary - facts are 'dereified' substances. Without passing judgement on these mutual objections let us note in passing that their symmetric character seems to be itself an additional manifestation of the parallelism discussed."
From: Boguslaw Wolniewicz - A parallelism between Wittgensteinian and Aristotelian ontologies. In Boston studies in the philosophy of science. Vol. IV. Edited by Cohen Robert S. and Wartofsky Marx W. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company 1969. pp. 208-210 (notes omitted).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS (Works in Polish are not enclosed)
In 1970 Boguslaw Wolniewicz published a Polish translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus logico-philosophicus.

A difference between Russell's and Wittgenstein's logical atomism. In Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses für Philosophie. Wien, 2. - 9. September 1968 - Vol. II. Wien: Herder 1968. pp. 263-267Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp.193-197

"A note on Black's 'Companion'," Mind 78: 141 (1969).Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - p. 229."It is a mistake to suppose that in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus" the meaning of Urbild has any connexion with that of picture. "

A parallelism between Wittgensteinian and Aristotelian ontologies. In Boston studies in the philosophy of science. Vol. IV. Edited by Cohen Robert S. and Wartofsky Marx W. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company 1969. pp. 208-217Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the philosophy of science 1966/1968.Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp.198-207

"Four notion of independence," Theoria 36: 161-164 (1970).Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp.127-130.WFour (binary) relations of independence I(p,q) between propositions are distinguished: the Wittgensteinian I sub-w, the statistical I sub-s, the modal I sub-m, and the deductive I sub-d. The validity of the following theorem is argued for: I sub-w(p,q) implies I sub-s(p,q) implies I sub-m(p,q) implies Isub-d(p,q). "

Wittgensteinian foundations of non-Fregean logic. In Contemporary East European philosophy. Vol. 3. Edited by D'Angelo Edward, DeGrood David, and Riepe Dale. Bridgeport: Spartacus Books 1971. pp. 231-243

"The notion of fact as a modal operator," Teorema: 59-66 (1972).Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 218-224"The notion of fact /fp = "it is a fact that p"/ is characterized axiomatically, and the ensuing modal systems shown to be equivalent to tT, S4 and S5 respectively."

Zur Semantik des Satzkalküls: Frege und Wittgenstein. In Der Mensch - Subjekt und Objekt (Festchrift für Adam Schaff). Edited by Borbé Tasso. Wien: Europaverl. 1973. pp.

Sachlage und Elementarsätz. In Wittgenstein and his impact on contemporary thought. Proceedings of the Second International Wittgenstein Symposium, 29th August to 4th September 1977, Kirchberg/Wechsel (Austria). Edited by Leinfellner Elisabeth. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky 1977. pp. 174-176

"Objectives of propositions," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 7: 143-147 (1978)."The paper sketches out a semantics for propositions based upon the Wittgensteinian notion of a possible situation. The objective of a proposition is defined as the smallest situation verifying it. Two propositions are assumed to have the same objective iff they are strictly equivalent. Formulas are given which determine the objectives of conjunction and disjunction as functions of the objectives of their components. finally a link with possible-world semantics is established."

"Situations as the reference of propositions," Dialectics and Humanism 5: 171-182 (1978)."The reference of propositions is determined for a class of languages to be called the "Wittgensteinian" ones. A meaningful proposition presents a possible situation. Every consistent conjunction of elementary propositions presents an elementary situation. The smallest elementary situations are the "Sachverhalte"; the greatest are possible worlds. The situation presented by a proposition is to be distinguished from that verifying it, but the greatest situation presented is identical with the smallest verifying. The reference of compound propositions is then determined as a function of their components."

"Les situations comme corrélats semantiques des enoncés," Studia Filozoficzne 2: 27-41 (1978).

Wittgenstein und der Positivismus. In Wittgenstein, the Vienna circle and critical rationalism. Proceedings of the third International Wittgenstein Symposium, 13th to 19th August 1978, Kirchberg am Wechsel (Austria). Edited by Bergehel Hal, Hübner Adolf, and Eckehart Köhler. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky 1978. pp. 75-77

"Some formal properties of objectives," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 8: 16-20 (1979)."The objectives of propositions as defined in an earlier paper are shown here to form a distributive lattice."

A Wittgensteinian semantics for propositions. In Intention and intentionality. Essay in honour of G. E. M. Anscombe. Edited by Diamond Cora and Teichman Jenny. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1979. pp. 165-178"More than once Professor Anscombe has expressed doubt concerning the semantic efficacy of the idea of an 'elementary proposition' as conceived in the Tractatus. Wittgenstein himself eventually discarded it, together with the whole philosophy of language of which it had been an essential part. None the less the idea is still with us, and it seems to cover theoretical potentialities yet to be explored. This paper is a tentative move in that direction.According to Professor Anscombe, (*) Wittgenstein's 'elementary propositions' may be characterized by the following five theses: (1) They are a class of mutually independent propositions.(2) They are essentially positive.(2) They are such that for each of them there are no two ways of being true or false, but only one.(4) They are such that there is in them no distinction between an internal and an external negation.(5) They are concatenations of names, which are absolutely simple signs.We shall not investigate whether this is an adequate axiomatic for the notion under consideration. We suppose it is. In any case it is possible to modify it in one way or another, and for the resulting notion still to preserve a family resemblance with the original idea. One such modification is sketched out below."

"On the lattice of elementary situations," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 9: 115-121 (1980).

"On the verifiers of disjunction," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 9: 57-59 (1980).

"The Boolean algebra of objectives," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 10: 17-23 (1981)."This concludes a series of papers constructing a semantics for propositional languages based on the notion of a possible "situation". Objectives of propositions are the situations described by them. The set of objectives is defined and shown to be a boolean algebra isomorphic to that formed by sets of possible worlds."

"A closure system for elementary situations," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 11: 134-139 (1982).

"On logical space," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 11: 84-88 (1982).

"Ludwig Fleck and Polish philosophy," Dialectics and Humanism 9: 25-28 (1982).

"A formal ontology of situations," Studia Logica 41: 381-413 (1982)."A generalized Wittgensteinian semantics for propositional languages is presented, based on a lattice of elementary situations. Of these, maximal ones are possible worlds, constituting a logical space; minimal ones are logical atoms, partitioned into its dimensions. A verifier of a proposition is an elementary situation such that if real it makes true. The reference (or objective) of a proposition is a situation, which is the set of all its minimal verifiers. (Maximal ones constitute its locus.) Situations are shown to form a Boolean algebra, and the Boolean set algebra of loci is its representation. Wittgenstein's is a special case, admitting binary dimensions only."Contents:0. Preliminaries; 1. Elementary Situations1.1.The Axioms; 1.2.Some Consequences; 1.3. W-Independence; 1.4.States of Affairs;2. Sets of Elementary Situations2.1.The Semigroup of SE"-Sets; 2.2.The Lattice of Minimal SE"-Sets; 2.3.Q-Spaces and V-Sets; 2.4.V-Equivalence and Q-Equivalence; 2.4.V-Classes and V-Sets;3. Objectives of Propositions3.1. Verifiers of Propositions; 3.2. Verifying and Forcing; 3.3. Situations and Logical Loci; 3.4. Loci and Objectives of Compound Propositions 3.5. The Boolean Algebra of Situations;4. References

"Truth arguments and independence," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 12: 21-28 (1983).

"Logical space and metaphysical systems," Studia Logica 42: 269-284 (1983)."The paper applies the theory presented in "A formal ontology of situations" (Studia Logica, vol. 41 (1982), no. 4) to obtain a typology of metaphysical systems by interpreting them as different ontologies of situations.Four are treated in some detail: Hume's diachronic atomism, Laplacean determinism, Hume's synchronic atomism, and Wittgenstein's logical atomism. Moreover, the relation of that theory to the "situation semantics" of Perry and Barwise is discussed."

"An algebra of subsets for join-semilatttices with unit," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 13: 21-24 (1984).

"A topology for logical space," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 13: 255-259 (1984).

"Suszko: a reminiscence," Studia Logica 43: 317-321 (1984).Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp.302-306

"Die Grundwerte einer wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassaung," Conceptus 19: 3-8 (1985)."The scientific world-view is one of the fundamentals of our culture. It can be characterized in part by its specific system of values. A world-view is regarded as a scientific one if "truth" is one of its primary values, that is, as a value which is not a means, but an end in itself. Truth is served in particular by the two instrumental values of conceptual clarity and openness to critique. Their standing is (at present) low, for two reasons. (1) Unclear thinking not only promotes social idols; its consequences are also often difficult to see clearly and immediately. (2) In any case truth is of no interest (in a biological sense) to human beings; therefore, critique can at best be a socially tolerated activity. On the other hand, truth is not only a value, but also a force which in the long run cannot be held back; this fact gives some hope to adherents of the scientific world-view. "

"Discreteness of logical space," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 15: 132-136 (1986).

"Entailments and independence in join-semilattices," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 18: 2-5 (1989)."The paper generalizes Wittgenstein's notion of independence. in a join-semilattice of elementary situations the atoms are the Sachverhalte, and maximal ideals are possible worlds. A subset of that semilattice is independent iff it is free of "ontic ties". This is shown to be equivalent to independence in von Neumann's sense."

"On atomic join-semilattices," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 18: 105-111 (1989).Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 307-312.
The essence of Logical Atomism: Hume and Wittgenstein. In Wittgenstein. Eine Neubewertung. Akten 14. Internationale Wittgenstein-Symposium. Vol. 1. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky 1990. pp. 106-111

"A question about join-semilattices," Bulletin of the Section of Logic: 108 (1990).

Concerning reism in Kotarbinski. In Kotarbinski: logic. semantics and ontology. Edited by Wolenski Jan. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1990. pp. 199-204Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp.265-271

Elzenberg's logic of values. In Logic counts. Edited by Zarnecka-Bialy Ewa. Dordrecht: Kluwe 1990. pp. 63-70Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 286-292 (with the title: Elzenberg's axiology""1. Values are what our value-Judgements refer to, and the passing of Judgements is one of our vital activities, like sleeping and breathing. We constantly appraise things as good or bad, pretty or ugly, as noble or base, well-made or misshapen. No wonder that both the act of appraisal and that which it refers to - i.e. the real or spurious values - have been always the source of philosophical reflexion. In systematic form such reflexion is what we call axiology.In Polish philosophy it was Henryk Elzenberg (1887-1967) who reflected upon matters of axiology most deeply and incisively.(...)3. Leibniz had said somewhere: "There are two mazes in which the human mind is most likely to get lost: one is the concept of continuity, the other is that of liberty". This admits of generalization: all concepts are mazes, viz mazes of logical relations between the propositions that involve them.One such maze is the concept of 'value'. Possibly, it is even the same as one of the two mentioned by Leibniz, only entered - so to say - by another door. For it would be in full accord with Elzenberg's position - and with that of Kant too - to adopt the following characteristic: values are what controls the actions of free agents. Thus the concepts of value and of liberty should constitute one conceptual maze, or - which comes to the same - two mazes communicating with each other.To get a survey of such logical maze the first thing is to fix the ontological category of the concept in question. Thus, in our case, we ask what kind of entities are those 'values' supposed to be. (Ontological categories are the most general classes of entities, the summa genera A term even more general has to cover literally everything: like 'entity' or 'something'. For everything is an entity, just as everything is a something.)Different ontologies admit different sets of categories. The categories most frequently referred to are those of 'objects', 'properties', and 'relations'; the more exotic ones are those of an 'event', a 'set', a 'function', or a 'situation'. One point, however, is of paramount importance: the categories admitted In one ontology have to be mutually disjoint". p. 63; 66.

"A sequel to Hawranek/Zygmunt," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 20: 143-144 (1991).

Needs and value. In Logic and ethics. Edited by Geach Peter. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1991. pp.

On the discontinuity of Wittgenstein's philosophy. In Peter Geach: philosophical encounters. Edited by Lewis Harry. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1991. pp. 77-81Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 13-17.

"A question of logic in the philosophy of religion," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 22: 33-36 (1993).

On the synthetic a priori. In Philosophical logic in Poland. Edited by Wolenski Jan. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1994. pp. 327-336

Logic and metaphysics. Studies in Wittgenstein's ontology of facts. Warsaw: Polskie Towarzystwo Semiotyczne 1999.Contents: Preface 11; Discontinuity of Wittgenstein's philosophy 13; 1. Elementary situations as a lattice of finite length 19; Elementary situations as a semilattice 73; 3. Independence 127; 4. Elementary situations generalized 137; 5. Auxiliary studies 193; 5.1 The Logical Atomisms of Russell and Wittgenstein 193; 5.2 A parallelism between Wittgenstein and Aristotle 198; 5.3 Frege's semantics 207; 5.4. The notion of fact as a modal operator 218; 5.5 "Tractatus" 5.541 - 5.542 224; 5.6 History of the concept of a Situation 229; 6. Offshoots 243 6.1 Languages and codes 243; 6.2 Logic and hermeneutics 254; 6.3 Kotarbinski's Reism 265; 6.4 On Bayle's critique of theodicy 271; 6.5 Elzenberg's axiology 286; 6.6 Needs and values 293; 6.7 Suszko: a reminiscence 302; Supplements 307; Indices: Index of subjects 317; Index of names 326; Index of Tractatus references 329.

"Atoms in semantic frames," Logica Trianguli 4: 69-86 (2000)."Elaborating on Wittgenstein's ontology of facts, semantic frames are described axiomatically as based on the notion of an elementary situation being the verifier of a proposition. Conditions are investigated then for suchframes to be atomic, i.e. to have lattice-theoretic counterparts of his "Sachverhalte"."

"Extending atomistic frames," Logica Trianguli 5 (2001)."A "semantic frame" is bounded join-semilattice of elementary situations, with its maximal ideals to represent possible worlds and mapped into the complete sets of propositions determined by a given abstract logic (L, Cn). A frame is Humean if the elementary situations are separated by its possible worlds, and it is atomistic if the semilattice is so. One frame is the extension of another if the latter is an {0,1}-subsemilattice of the former satisfying certain conditions discussed."

Tractatus 5.541 - 5.542. In Satz un Sachverhalt. Edited by Neumaier Otto. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag 2001. pp. 185-190"In Wittgenstein's "Tractatus", thesis 5 is the Principle of Extensionality: all propositions are truth-functions of their clauses. This, however, has been often thrown into doubt. There are - it is said - compound propositions whose truth-value does not depend on that of their clauses. The usual example given are the so-called intensional contexts, like "John thinks that p", or "John says that p". And indeed, the truth-value of "p" is patently immaterial here to that of the whole proposition which it is part of.Wittgenstein's retort are the following much discussed theses, adduced here in a translation of our own:5.54 In the general propositional form, propositions occur in one another only as bases of truth-operations.5.541 At first sight it seems that a proposition might occur in another also in a different way.Particularly in certain propositional forms of psychology, like "A believes that p is the case", "A thinks p", etc.For taken superficially, proposition p seems here to stand to the object A in some sort of relation.(And in modem epistemology - Russell, Moore, etc. - these have actually been construed that way.)5.542 However, "A believes that p", "A thinks p", "A says p" are clearly of the form " 'p' says p "; and this is not correlating a fact with an object, but a correlation of facts by correlating their objects.The objection is met here in two steps. Firstly, it is pointed out that a proposition of the form "John says that p" is actually of the form "'p' says that p". The idea is this: the proposition "John says that Jill has a cat" means: John produces the sentence "Jill has a cat", the latter saying by itself that Jill has a cat. In such a way propositions get independent of the persons producing them, and communicate some objective content. It is surely not by John's looks that we come to know about Jill's cat, but merely by his words. Whom they stem from, is irrelevant.In his second step Wittgenstein follows Frege's interpretation of indirect speech, but with modifications. He points out that the formula " 'p' says that p " is equivalent to some compound proposition in which neither the proposition "p" as a syntactic unit, nor anything equivalent to it, does occur although there occur all the logically relevant constituents of "p" separately.(...)The distinction between abstract and concrete states of affairs is not drawn explicitly in the "Tractatus". But it fits well thesis 5.156, if we expand that thesis by a few words of comment, added here in brackets:5.156(d) A proposition may well be en incomplete image of a particular (concrete) situation, but it is always the complete image (of an abstract one).The circumstance that in 5.156 not "states of affairs", but "situations" are mentioned, is of no consequence in our context. We assume that states of affairs are just atomic situations, and so the distinction between "concrete" and "abstract" applies to both."

"Extending atomistic frames: part II," Logica Trianguli 6: 69-88 (2003)."The paper concludes an earlier one (Logica Trianguli, 5) on extensions of atomistic semantic frames. Three kinds of extension are considered: the adjunctive, the conjunctive, and the disjunctive one. Some theorems are proved on extending "Humean" frames, i.e. such that the elementary situations constituting their universa are separated by the maximally coherent sets of them ("realizations")."

"On a minimality condition," Bulletin of the Section of Logic 34: 227-228 (2005).


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