The greatest week ever…

I would just like to say a quick word of thanks to all of the people who have read the BEING HAD Weblog this week. According to the stat checker, this last week has been the most successful since it was started more than three years ago. Since last Saturday, there have been over 500 readers each day for the blog group as a whole and on Tuesday the BEING HAD Times came within 15 visitors of having its best day ever. Even the Polish Police and Administrative Corruption page, which is quickly approaching its 500th post, has tripled in readership. Most probably, the greatest share of the thanks for this jump in popularity should go to Google and Blogger who have allowed BEING HAD to be out in the public. Obviously they have done pretty much everything they can to allow as large a readership as possible to find me and they should know that I am quite grateful for all of their help. And of course, thanks need to go out to those readers who have been with me and have supported the project with their thoughts, letters and occasional contributions.

What is the point?

I was speaking to a good friend the other night about the BEING HAD Blog and what purpose it was supposed to have served. He, like many people has had ideas as to how I could make the blog more popular or what sorts of changes could be made towards that end and as always, his main point was that the blog should focus on either retribution, spite and vindictiveness towards the Polish system or on the idiosyncrasies of an American "living the life" in Belarus; Serving both, he feels, defeats both.

Unfortunately though, there is nothing I can do about it. The BEINGHAD Blog was started because of what happened to me in Poland. Therefore it is about the case. But because I got really, really sick of writing the same things over and over about Poland, I started to write about what was happening to me here, and therefore, it is also about Belarus.

Now, my purpose of keeping this thing alive and in the public has always been the same:

I WANT AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FROM POLAND THAT WHAT THEY DID WAS WRONG.

And of course I would like to receive some reasonable compensation from them; I think I have said somewhere that $125,000,000 would be about right. This number might be a little low, but I would go with it if the offer came across the table.

But I also believe that the two parts are not mutually exclusive. I mean, would Poland have felt so free to contrive such a stupid and farcical legal situation had they not the agreement of the American Embassy? Of course not. And conversely, would the American embassy have allowed my situation to drag on and on had I not told them I was interested in spending some time in the Republic of Belarus? Also, of course not.

This is not to say that I have been trying to make what happened to me into a political issue. I mean, it is fundamentally a political issue but I am far from being interested in making a scandal strictly for the sake of scandal as the Polish argument seems to go. But on the other hand, this was the exact time when the Poles were allowing those secret CIA prisons to exist on their territory and the Poles were the only country in Europe supporting the Iraqi war. And of course, both countries hate Belarus.

But the real basic, fundamental and bottom line issue is and has always been that what they did to me was simply not right: I had committed no crime other than committing myself and a little money that I could find towards a bike shop project in the town of Pinsk.

There are no laws anywhere, in any country, written or implied which state that making a bike shop in Belarus is a crime.

There are also no laws in Poland that say you can't hit a man for driving into you with a car.

Now, there are laws that speak of perjury in Poland and at least in theory, there are laws against corruption. And though there might be laws against political protesting I had up until that time never participated in any political or social action either for or against Poland or Belarus. Yes, I was a biker and I promoted biking as a great solution for health and transportation problems but I never worked as a part of any advocacy; I was just an independent businessman who bought, sold, fixed, rode and found parts for bikes.

My partners and my then fiancée were waiting patiently for me to return from what was supposed to be a week in Poland- they ended up waiting over 11 months. By the time I got back, my name and reputation were completely slandered and the results have followed me even to this day. And this is why I am still here.

So, what's the story?

My situation is, at least as of the time of this writing, a bit better than it has been. I like my job (teaching English) and find the building and bettering of my situation to be interesting. Of course life could be better. But then of course, I might not even have stayed had my original plans been allowed to go through. So really, who can say?

To me though, the only really important thing is that the truth needs to simply be. Apparently they have a new corruption guru over in Poland but I haven't heard from them. I have spoken to any number of legal advocacy groups dealing with the myriad of legal issues incurred by that idiot system over there, but they are never interested in helping. Frankly, I don't know if I am ever going to receive any final satisfaction from this. But what can I do but just keep going? What happened is what happened and this is what I have done in response. Really: what else can I do?

As always, I am grateful and happy for all of the new friends I have met because I have made this weblog and of course, life has most certainly been more interesting because of it. No, I don't think I would have made this blog had I not become interested in showing people what Poland had done and probably, I might never have started blogging had my life here been in any way normal or what I had planned or at least without such unwarranted and unnecessary outside influence.

So these are my thoughts marking the most successful week in the history of this blog. As Tanya would say: The life will show us the way.

If it is such that my numbers will continue to grow, all I can hope for is that somewhere in there, among all of the people who open these pages, will be some enterprising activist or international lawyer or publicist or fellow angry citizen who thinks that this project is worth fighting for. It would be nice. And hey, maybe there is something in it for us after all. You never know.

Cheers, and thanks for reading me,
Adam Goodman

more soon…