The Polish president is dead.

[Howitzer428]

Just heard about this. My most sincere condolences to the families of those involved. Hopefully the investigation will be conclusive and the people will have closure.

[big ned]

Heres a interested reply I read



What Do You Think Really Caused Lech Kaczynski's Plane To Crash? - Yahoo! Answers


Witness`s did say that they heard big bangs

That's exactly what i've warned against...conspiracy theorists 'It was supposed to be the anniversary of some Polish/Russian massacre thing'. That says it all about these type of people, they don't even know the circumstances of the whole story.

'They heard big bangs'...Yes, that's what you would probably would hear as an aircraft exploded in a deadly, high speed fire ball.

Look at the known facts, not the heresay, otherwise you'll always be ten steps behind the clever money, and look stupid to boot. Are you looking to blame it on the Russians because of the previous history of your two countries? Things have changed a lot since those days, let's be realistic, and not so zealous, clear heads are required at times like these.

Regards, Ned.

[Ty Revelo]

A very sad event.

In reflection, why were so many prominent people carried on the same aircraft ?
Normally, dignitaries of such importance would be allocated to separate flights in case of an accident !.

Gary J.


These are questions that can only be answered by what remains of the Polish government itself. The aircraft crashed on it's fourth attempt to land, having chosen to ignore the advice of the airports ATC. Furthermore, it was put forward a couple of years ago to upgrade to a more modern aircraft, this was vetoed for monetary reasons i believe.

At the end of this tragic saga the truth will become known, from the available evidence already made public, it would appear that a perfectly servicable aircraft was flown into the ground by an experienced crew....Nothing new there, one wonders what pressure they may have been put under by the 'powers that be'.

It only takes one person that wields power without knowledge of the circumstances over those with the knowledge but not the power to override that decision that disasters like this occur,...and will again.

Regards, Ned.

Ned, exactly what my point was about all high ranking people on one jet.

I for one have not read all the details about the crash but when the black box is found all of our questions may be answered.

rgds, Ty

[SteveR]

A terrible tragedy. I hope the answers for this comes very soon.
As for me I wouldn't trust the Russians any farther than I can spit.

[big ned]

TY,

The flight data recorder (Black box) was found soon after the crash. Time and patience should reveal it's contents, but perhaps not all the answers...There are many other points that will never be known, as relevant as they maybe, because they died unrecorded with the main players on the aircraft, such is the nature of life and death everywhere.

Regards, Ned.

[robert odulinski]

A terrible tragedy. I hope the answers for this comes very soon.
As for me I wouldn't trust the Russians any farther than I can spit.

Here here and so say i, do the maths in terms of statistical probability its a likelihood they had a hand in it. Just like the big 3's betrayal at Yalta truth will out one day.

[big ned]

Here here and so say i, do the maths in terms of statistical probability its a likelihood they had a hand in it. Just like the big 3's betrayal at Yalta truth will out one day.

With the greatest of respect Rob,

The aircraft crashed on the fourth attempt to land against advice proffered by the ATC in the tower at Smolensk. Four times Rob, four times..!,

Your knowledge of the maths interests me. Could you kindly explain to me and others here how this tragic accident is a 'statistical probability' that the Russians had a hand in.

Why do so many people from Poland, or of Polish descent, look for an answer that is ignoring the latent facts, or those that are known at this time.

We all will have to wait for the results of the investigation for a couple of years is my bet, the main question from my point of view is why was the almost complete political, armed forces and banking's highest players allowed to be on the same aircraft. This is the critical question that all Poles should be asking, a government that was doing an excellent job of handling the country's economy in times of a global recession and admired by many other members of the E.U. has been destroyed at a stroke.

This is unprecented since the second world war, hopefully the E.U. and the USA will rally to help Poland in their moment of need, but please,please do not try to lay the blame at the feet of others, the fact that all these members of the Polish 'glitterati' were on the same aircraft, is a question that Poland itself has to face.

Regards, Ned.

[GFC]

Thank You Roger Cohen - Quite a contrast to what PARADE magazine published 10 days ago about "Polish concentration camps"

Op-Ed Columnist - The Glory of Poland - NYTimes.com
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Op-Ed Columnist
The Glory of Poland

* comments (113)


By ROGER COHEN
Published: April 12, 2010

NEW YORK — My first thought, hearing of the Polish tragedy, was that history’s gyre can be of an unbearable cruelty, decapitating Poland’s elite twice in the same cursed place, Katyn.

My second was to call my old friend Adam Michnik in Warsaw. Michnik, an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers, once told me:

“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”

Michnik’s obsession has yielded fruit. President Lech Kaczynski is dead. Slawomir Skrzypek, the president of the National Bank, is dead. An explosion in the fog of the forest took them and 94 others on the way to Katyn. But Poland’s democracy has scarcely skipped a beat. The leader of the lower house of Parliament has become acting president pending an election. The first deputy president of the National Bank has assumed the duties of the late president. Poland, oft dismembered, even wiped from the map, is calm and at peace.

“Katyn is the place of death of the Polish intelligentsia,” Michnik, now the soul of Poland’s successful Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said when I reached him by phone. “This is a terrible national tragedy. But in my sadness I am optimistic because Putin’s strong and wise declaration has opened a new phase in Polish-Russian relations, and because we Poles are showing we can be responsible and stable.”

Michnik was referring to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s words after he decided last week to join, for the first time, Polish officials commemorating the anniversary of the murder at Katyn of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. Putin, while defending the Russian people, denounced the “cynical lies” that had hidden the truth of Katyn, said “there is no justification for these crimes” of a “totalitarian regime” and declared, “We should meet each other halfway, realizing that it is impossible to live only in the past.”

The declaration, dismissed by the paleolithic Russian Communist Party, mattered less than Putin’s presence, head bowed in that forest of shame. Watching him beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, I thought of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984: of such solemn moments of reconciliation has the miracle of a Europe whole and free been built. Now that Europe extends eastward toward the Urals.

I thought even of Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, a turning point on the road to a German-Polish reconciliation more miraculous in its way even than the dawning of the post-war German-French alliance. And now perhaps comes the most wondrous rapprochement, the Polish-Russian.

It is too early to say where Warsaw-Moscow relations are headed but not too early to say that 96 lost souls would be dishonored if Polish and Russian leaders do not make of this tragedy a solemn bond. As Tusk told Putin, “A word of truth can mobilize two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation. Are we capable of transforming a lie into reconciliation? We must believe we can.”

Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.

For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.

It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.

So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.

Ask the Poles. They know.

[robert odulinski]

Beautiful and poignant thank you you for an inspirational read.