Polish President and Army Chief of Staff dead

[Helen Reyes]

I have to agree that the event couldn't be designed better to play on Polish martyrology, history and public opinion, but I can't see who benefits. Katyn, Sikorski all over again. I've been reading lately that for the first time Polish history (and the baltic states) have entered the debate in the run-up to British elections. Does Cameron's camp take a "hard line" on Putin's Russia re: Litvinenko and all that? I haven't been able to follow it much, but it's an interesting coincidence that Poland is in the British news a lot lately, at least from what I hear.

Is there any interest in reminding Poles of Russian treachery right now? Any pressing need to drive a wedge somewhere? I'd prefer to think the Anglo-American oligarchy was behind it, rather than Putin, but I don't see any interest for either to do this right now.

The weather in the extreme west of Russia was bad the few days before the accident/event, some hard rains, but it seems it didn't rain as much as in Kyrgyzistan.

Lithuanian newspapers are reporting the crash was down to pilot error, most likely. There is no sentiment, however, that "the Russians would never do that, it's barbarous!" as Mssr. Ascherson seemed to say in Jan's repost.

[Jan Klimkowski]

I have to agree that the event couldn't be designed better to play on Polish martyrology, history and public opinion, but I can't see who benefits. Katyn, Sikorski all over again.

Let me start by saying that I have, and had, little time for the Kaczynski twins and much of their politics.

However, C20th Polish history and geography is C20th Polish history and geography.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Katyn.

The assassination of Sikorski.

The Warsaw Uprising.

Yalta.

Etc.

As a matter of European geography, the Poles are the most homogenous ethnic group on the autobahn leading from Berlin to Moscow, and this has certain, perhaps inevitable, consequences.

In addition, the geopolitical relationship between Russia and Germany is at least as important for continental Europe as that between Germany and France.

If this was not an accident, pilot error, then cui bono? is always a good question. But not the only one.

Public executions of prominent political figures typically have a symbolic dimension. The magickal potency of the act, pulsing through the aether of the collective unconscious, has a life and resonance of its own.

At the geopolitical level, when we are considering potential perfidy of this magnitude, Charles' hypothesis should be very much in the foreground:

George Michael wrote of a group of American and Soviet military, political, and intelligence assets "whose masters were above Cold War differences."

Those "masters" are the Sponsors.

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/....php?t=419

[Charles Drago]

"Public executions of prominent political figures typically have a symbolic dimension. The magickal potency of the act, pulsing through the aether of the collective unconscious, has a life and resonance of its own."

Jan,

One cannot overvalue your insight on this matter.

The murder of JFK was, at its core, a ritualistic act.

[Peter Lemkin]

I just waiting for the first poles [no pun intended] to come out to see what % of Poles suspect the Russians were repeating the Katyn murder all over again. I have heard rather a few say so - or so speculate as possible - on the radio I've been listening to. What was that old 'saw' about 'those who do not learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat them...?' The investigation is to be done by the Russians. As far as I've heard the Poles asked to also have investigators involved, but so far that has been politely declined - except for recovery of the wreckage and bodies. The 'black boxes' [which are really red] are in Putin's hands, as are the investigators and the writing of the report as to what happened and why.

[Phil Dragoo]

I have not confirmed reports that the plane was overhauled in Russia in December.

It is said that assuming power will be Prime Minister Tusk who gets on well with Putin.

We are to be comforted that Vladimir Putin will assume responsibility for the investigation.

There is an unconfirmed report of failure of cell phones aboard the plane before the final approach.

In my view Putin has been entirely consistent throughout his tenure of power.

Kursk was a disaster for him; Bulava has not been reliable. Now he has achieved a technical success, the decapitation of the Polish regime.

Frank Davis filled the young Obama with tales of the glorious Red Army, and the now-grown had scrapped the missile shield and granted Putin another concession.

“Western thinking has become conservative:
the world situation should stay as it is at any cost;
there should be no changes. ....
The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. And when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.”
[Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn at the Commencement, 8 June 1978, Harvard University]

Cass Sunstein will be along shortly to assure us there was no conspiracy.

To those who say Putin would not be so stupid as to commit such an act on Russian soil, is polonium naturally occurring in London restaurants.

[Jan Klimkowski]

My emphasis in bold at bottom of article:

'They were wiped out. It's our Katyn trauma all over again'

Poland struggles to come to terms with the loss of its president and dozens of senior officials in a plane crash near Smolensk airport

Waclaw Oszajca was struggling to come to terms with the full scale of his country's worst postwar tragedy. But as he clicked through portraits of the 96 victims of the Smolensk air crash on a news website a very personal story unfolded.

The voice of the 53-year old Jesuit priest and one of Poland's most respected theologians fell to a whisper as he pointed out the faces of friends, including a priest, a military chaplain, government aides and a historian.

"These were some of our best," said Oszajca, who yesterday took a train from his home in Lublin to Warsaw, to pay tribute to them on national radio. "They were wiped out in seconds. Young, old, women, men, leftwing, rightwing. It's our Katyn trauma all over again," he said.

The 1940 Soviet massacre of Poland's officer corps in the forests of Katyn remains one of the most harrowing events in 20th-century Polish history. In the bitterest of ironies the ill-fated delegation had been travelling to Katyn to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre when its plane crashed in Smolensk, close to where the atrocities took place.

Yesterday's newspapers were already calling the tragedy the "second Katyn". Special editions were dominated by pictures of the late president, Lech Kaczynski, and his economist wife Maria.

(snip)

But while many were consumed with thoughts of what had been lost, others were seeking to lay blame. The fact that the Russian-made Tupolev 154 crashed in woods close to the site of the massacres has only helped to fuel conspiracy theories about the causes of the crash.

Russian and Polish investigators have recovered the flight-data recorders and are investigating the possibility that the plane's pilots ignored warnings that they were approaching Smolensk too low in thick fog.

But many Poles are already sceptical about the official version of events.

Arkadiusz Mularczyk, an MP for the Kaczynski's Law and Justice party, was one of several politicians who failed to get a seat on the plane. He travelled to Smolensk by train instead.

"It feels like God gave me another chance to live," he said. But he had unanswered questions. "I was already in the Katyn forest when the plane crashed, and the visibility was perfect, the sun was shining. So why didn't they let them land?" he asked.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr...-kaczynski

[Carsten Wiethoff]

"I was already in the Katyn forest when the plane crashed, and the visibility was perfect, the sun was shining. So why didn't they let them land?" he asked.

Difficult to decide. Katyn forest is 20-25km from the airport, that might be a factor.
On the videos of the crash scene it sure looks foggy to me.
For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzDCK6nPfJ4
But it is difficult to estimate visibility on the video.

[Peter Lemkin]

"I was already in the Katyn forest when the plane crashed, and the visibility was perfect, the sun was shining. So why didn't they let them land?" he asked.

Difficult to decide. Katyn forest is 20-25km from the airport, that might be a factor.
On the videos of the crash scene it sure looks foggy to me.
For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzDCK6nPfJ4
But it is difficult to estimate visibility on the video.

Commercial planes land in fog and rain all the time! Did the airport have a radio beacon and did the plane have the equipment to to follow it? More to the point, did someone sabotage the plane...a very easy thing to do these days! And all too often used....the danger on flights IMO is greater from the intelligence goons than from real 'terrorists' intent on taking a plane down. The intelligence goons ARE the biggest and most organized terrorists, but I digress......

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Commercial planes land in fog and rain all the time! Did the airport have a radio beacon and did the plane have the equipment to to follow it? More to the point, did someone sabotage the plane...a very easy thing to do these days! And all too often used....the danger on flights IMO is greater from the intelligence goons than from real 'terrorists' intent on taking a plane down. The intelligence goons ARE the biggest and most organized terrorists, but I digress......

There is an NDB at the airport. The minimum visibility for an NDB approach at Smolensk is 1000m. An NDB approach in the conditions reported would be dangerous and illegal. There may be PAR (precision approach radar), but a PAR approach means that the incoming plane is assisted by the ATC who has the radar view and has to talk back its altitude to the controller. It is not clear that this was the procedure used, it seems that at some point in the approach the plane stopped communicating with ATC.
The plane was equipped with ILS, but there is not an ILS (which is what would be used at most civilian airports in these conditions) nor a VOR at the airport.
Reference : http://avherald.com/h?article=429ec5fa&opt=0

So technically the conditions for landing were marginal at best, more likely illegal. But this, of course, tells us not, if there was foul play.
I can see means and opportunity, given the plane was overhauled in Russia in December. I even can get an idea of a motive, reading Jan's posts. This gives us cause for suspicion, and maybe a suspect, but that is still far from proof of foul play.

Both alternatives are possible, and even when the final report will be issued (and I don't doubt it will claim pilot error) both alternatives remain possible, because reports can be manipulated.
In the end it will be a question of likelihood and which evidence can be trusted.

[Carsten Wiethoff]