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Lech Walesa, the former Polish president and Solidarity trade union leader who played a leading role in the fall of Communism, has the coronavirus, he said on Friday. Originally a shipyard electrician in the northern port city of Gdansk, Walesa became a symbol of the historic changes that ended the Cold War, leading the Solidarity trade union movement which brought about the switch to a free-market economy in 1989.

Poland's freedom icon Lech Walesa on Thursday said the United States was "no longer the main global power" in political and moral leadership ahead of a visit by President Donald Trump. Trump is due in Poland on Sunday for ceremonies marking 80 years since the outbreak of World War II. "President Trump, I urge you to regain the position of world leader for the USA," Walesa said in an interview published in Thursday's edition of Poland's centrist Rzeczpospolita daily. "The world needs the leadership of the USA. Moral and political leadership, not only economic and military leadership," added Walesa, a...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Poland's former president Lech Walesa, a democracy hero, has been hospitalized with heart problems in his Baltic coast home city of Gdansk, his son said Saturday. Jaroslaw Walesa told The Associated Press via text message that his father was feeling "unfortunately weak." It was not immediately known when he could be discharged from the heart diseases ward of the Gdansk University Clinic.

Obama hold-over Ambassador Paul W. Jones tried to sabotage Trump’s trip to Poland according to diplomatic sources. Jones attempted to mislead the Trump advance team to believe that the Polish people still love former Polish President Lech Walesa and to hold extensive meetings and photo ops with him. Despite Walesa’s historical achievements during Solidarity, numerous scandals since that time including accusations of his work as a Communist collaborator have altered views of Lech Walesa in Poland. At this point, Lech Walesa has fallen out of favor with much of Poland, and the current Law and Justice Party, which welcomed President...

2 videos posted of Sarah Palin in Obama's home tuff (not Kenyan or Hawaii but Chicago). News reported 4,100 showed up to see Sarah Palin. The Governor also impressed Illinois’ top Republicans willing to spend $500 to $25,000 at a fund-raiser for the state party.

I voted in Chicago for Adam Andrzejewski! He's going to do the unthinkable here in the belly of the beast. Turnout was light. And Chicago Lady, Rosanna Pulido was on the ballot as well. This could be Hugh!

Rush Limbaugh has thrown his support behind Adam Andrzejewski (pronounced "an-gee-EFF-skee"), a Republican candidate for governor of Illinois. (Audio here.) Tomorrow's GOP primary is crowded with challengers, and Andrzejewski has trailed former state party chairman Andy McKenna in the polls. But he has been riding a surge lately, starting with an endorsement from former Polish president and Solidarity founder Lech Walesa on Friday, and continuing with Rush's declaration that Andrzejewski might be "the Scott Brown of his contest." "I have not heard Rush’s remarks yet — I’ve spent the day campaigning in Polish neighborhoods all over Chicago — but people...

From the Gdansk Lenin Shipyards to the city of the Back of the Yards, Lech Walesa, former President of Poland, and preeminent community organizer, attended a fundraiser on Friday, January 29, to endorse Adam Andrzejewski (an gee eff skie) who is one of six Republicans seeking the nomination of his party for Governor of Illinois. Walesa , who led trade union strikes in Poland in the early 1980s, managed to bring about needed economic and political change for laborers without resorting to violence. He led the Solidarność or Solidarity, a broad anti-Soviet social movement. Its activities included workers taking to...

Illinois Gubernatorial Candidate and conservative Adam Andrzejewski rallied supporters in O’Fallon, Illinois this afternoon. It was a standing room only crowd.While campaigning in O’Fallon the Andrzejewski team announced that Adam had just received the endorsement of the largest Chicago Polish paper today. And…. It was announced that Adam had surged to within two points in an internal poll conducted by a conservative organization in Washington DC. Andrzejewski was 8 points down earlier in the week in the Illinois race. It may have been the endorsement by Lech Walesa that helped Andrzejewski surge in the latest polling. And this is despite...

First let me begin by stating the following commentary is not an endorsement of Adam Andrzejewski's gubernatorial bid who is seeking the GOP nomination in the February 2nd primary. But I must provide full disclosure regarding my prior relationship with former state Sen. Patrick O'Malley. My wife Julie and I know O'Malley well. He was our state Senator when we lived in Crestwood, Illinois in southwest Cook County. We care for him deeply and always will. As a private citizen, I supported his bid for the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2002. Then-Attorney General Jim Ryan went on to defeat O'Malley...

First of all, I know it looks impossible to even say, so let's clear up that last name. It's pronounced An-gee-ef-ski. I know, I know, that means here in Illinois we could possibly go from a Governor Blagojevich to an Andrzejewski. But the difficult last name should stand as the only similarity between the two men, for Adam seems to have some ideas on how Illinois might get out of its fiscal nightmare. I interviewed him not long ago and he had some very interesting thoughts on how to fix Illinois. (adamforillinois.com/) In fact, Andrzejewski has already made some headway...

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Polish president Lech Wałęsa believes Germany should lead either a deeply reformed, or an entirely rebuilt EU, in the wake of a possible Brexit. Wałęsa’s comments come as a series of opinion polls show a growing lead for the campaign rallying British voters to leave the 28-nation EU in a landmark referendum on June 23rd. “Germany in particular must calculate what would be better for development (of the EU): do we create a completely new organization… or do we fix the old EU?” Wałęsa told AFP during an interview in Gdańsk, the cradle of...

Mr Kaminski gave details of what he claimed was inside a file on Mr Walesa, covering the period 1970-6: "Inside the personal file there is an envelope and inside, a hand written commitment to cooperate with the secret police signed 'Lech Walesa - Bolek'," he said. Mr Kaminski said that among the documents in this folder were some "hand-written confirmations of receiving funds", signed with the pseudonym 'Bolek'. "In the work folder... are many reports by a secret informant with the pseudonym 'Bolek' and notes by secret police officers from meetings with the secret informant," the director added.

GDANSK, Poland -- When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989. Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold...

More than three decades on from the events that shot him to fame, Lech Walesa, the co-founder of Solidarity, is enjoying himself as Poland’s ‘enfant terrible.’GDANSK – It was difficult to know whether Lech Walesa was cynical, joking or dead serious. Maybe all of the above. His direct approach to, and simplistic views of, a complicated international reality can embarrass the listener. Nevertheless, it is clear that the former president of the Polish Republic – a Nobel Prize laureate, who co-founded Solidarity, contributed to the collapse of the Soviet bloc and became an icon of liberty and freedom – can...

Soon after becoming House Speaker in 2011, Republican John Boehner started running the traps on inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to a joint meeting of Congress. But when Barry Jackson, then Boehner’s chief-of-staff, checked with President Barack Obama’s top advisers, Jackson said he was left waiting a month only to get no response. Ultimately the Netanyahu speech went ahead in May but soon after Jackson faced the opposite problem: the White House had promised South Korea’s leadership an appearance before Congress, he said, without checking first with the speaker. None of these slights justify what seems like...

Lech Walesa: Putin declares war on world. We must give proper answer Former Polish president Lech Walesa said in the European Parliament that Russian president Vladimir Putin had declared war on the world, UNN reports with a link to Polskie Radio. He raised his concerns about the situation in eastern Ukraine. “When Ukraine handed over its nuclear weapons, powerful states guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity, but he [Putin] violated the agreements. He declared war on the world,” the ex-president said. He is confident that Putin “uses illegal methods”. “Europe and the world bear responsibility and try to prevent confrontation, while he...

(Reuters) - Lech Walesa, head of the Solidarity movement that ended Communism in Poland, knelt in prayer on Friday at a Catholic funeral mass for General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Communist leader who for decades was his sworn enemy.

Anti-communist crusader and former president of Poland Lech Walesa tells Newsmax that of all the national leaders currently on the world stage, the one who has "disillusioned" him the most is President Barack Obama. Walesa also asserts that Obama "wasn't ready" to take on the task of leading the world's most dominant superpower. And he calls for reforms at the United Nations so the world body can help fill the vacuum left by the United States' failure of leadership under Obama. Walesa played a key role in freeing Eastern Europe from the clutches of Soviet communism and ultimately in the...

The former president of Poland and leader of the Solidarity movement is not enamored with President Obama and his leadership. The Hill: Former Polish President Lech Walesa says America no longer leads the world "in terms of politics and morality." Walesa, in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, spoke negatively about President Obama's leadership skills. "When he was elected there was great hope in the world. We were hoping that Obama would reclaim moral leadership for America, but that failed. America does not lead the world in the area of morality," Walesa said. Walesa, who is promoting a new biopic...