Riot-Demonstrations, and Poland

 Watched a fair amount of coverage over demonstrations (and later riot-action)....mostly over Frankfurt, Koln and Hamburg.

Most in Frankfurt?  Police say 8,000 range in mid-day....probably around 1,000 as darkness fell.  Violence/fires....mostly after dark.  Police detained a number of folks in the shopping district.  Report suggested around 1,000 police were on the scene there. 

Water cannon use noted....with temps down near 5C....awful cold if you got a full dose of the cannon.

I'd say there were two 'players'....students with complaints in the afternoon, who headed home as it got dark.  The rowdy folks stayed and caused the looting/damage. 

As for Poland?

I watched the PM (Tusk) give his 8 PM 'talk'.  Three things from that...he proposed at some point, resolutions and laws to rebuild the rule of law, but it's a odd statement from a guy who had a coup-card in the mix.

Then he said the police were there protecting the Constitutional Tribunal from the attackers....but as they arrived....they were mostly there to confine the folks inside the Tribunal building, who were gov't workers.

Then he said brawls are a bad thing....but never saying that coups are pretty bad as well.

I went and watched the 'talk'...with the sound muted.  What I can say....Tusk had a bad case of 'worry'/panic.  Hands shaking at times.  If you asked me over worries....he's maxing out on the scale. 

What does not make sense....polls show the KO-Party (Tusk's folks) leading (around 31/32 percent) with the fall 2027 election looking positive for a 'win'.  So why screw up the outlook with a banana-republic coup?  It does not make much logical sense.

Number of suggestions that the coup-planning was mostly a small group (maybe less than ten)....mostly folks around Tusk.  They seemed focused....at the end of the coup, there would be no President or VP....that the public would accept the coup as legitimate, and the whole landscape was we-are-protecting-democracy-by-cranking-up-a-coup.  

Early election BS?  There's simply talk....no substance.  There are various triggers to cause a Tusk coalition to collapse.  

Four parties make up the Tusk coalition....Poland 2050, Polish People's Party, the New Left, and finally KO (Tusk's own party).  Social commentary?  You get the impression that a lot of folks from the four parties probably were NOT expecting a coup occurring, and rather shocked how things have played out. If there was a vote of confidence over Tusk (the PM)  in the next week....I'd only give him a 50-50 chance of surviving the vote.