POLAND: Prosperity And Success Bring Political Ugliness; Russia's Duma Condemns Stalin For Katyn Massacre.

NYTIMES/ MICHAEL SLACKMAN :
    "Poles actually have sound reasons to celebrate: they have navigated the treacherous transition from Communism better than most of the post-Soviet satellite nations, and theirs is the only country in Europe to have avoided a recession during the financial crisis.
   Instead, they are feeling insecure, pessimistic and uncertain about the future, and they have turned on one another.
“We have a beautiful face in tough times and during difficult moments, but in normal times, we are lost,” said Jan Oldakowski, an opposition member of the Parliament who was one of several members of the opposition Law and Justice Party to recently quit the party to form a more centrist coalition. “With freedom, Poles do not know how to cooperate with each other.”
     The political leadership is at war with itself. Personal attacks and insults are flying.Poles actually have sound reasons to celebrate: they have navigated the treacherous transition from Communism better than most of the post-Soviet satellite nations, and theirs is the only country in Europe to have avoided a recession during the financial crisis.
     Instead, they are feeling insecure, pessimistic and uncertain about the future, and they have turned on one another. The political leadership is at war with itself. Personal attacks and insults are flying. Politicians have traded accusations of drug abuse, mental illness, collaborating with the Nazis and being agents of Moscow."

ALSO, By a vote of 324-57, Russia's Duma condemned the Katyn massacre (uncovered graves pictured) and directly blamed Soviet leader Josef Stalin for the 1940 execution of more than 20,000 Polish officers. It called the killings committed by Soviet secret police a “crime by the Stalinist regime and the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state.”
FOR MORE DETAIL, SEE:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/duma-declares-stalin-to-blame-for-katyn/425148.html

POLAND: 1ST UPDATE: President's Body Returns After 96 Die In Smolensk Plane Crash, As Nation Mourns.

BBC/1ST UPDATE/  His brother Jaroslaw kneeled before the casket of the dead president after it arrived in Warsaw following the tragic Smolensk plane crash that killed 96 and almost decapitated the Polish leadership. “The modern world has never seen such a drama,” said Polish PM Donald Tusk. “Many of our friends and acquaintances have died.”This is so very much like Katyn, where our head was cut off," said former President Lech Walesa. An inquiry led by PM Vladimir Putin himself is looking into why the pilot of the 20-year-old Russian Tupolev airliner refused to divert as the plane tried and failed to land three times before clipping some trees and crashing short of the runway. The delegation was on its way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the notorious Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by Russian agents. Some are calling the new tragedy the Second Katyn Massacre.

Polish Bishop Says Poles Must Forgive Russia For Mass Slaughter At Katyn.

REUTERS VIA NYTIMES/
A Polish bishop says Poles must forgive Russia for Soviet crimes in order to improve relations, speaking at a graveyard of more than 4,000 Polish officers killed by Josef Stalin's army in 1940.
"The fate of those killed is already in the hands of God," Tadeusz Ploski, a Catholic Polish army bishop, told a group of 250 prison guards visiting Katyn to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of War World Two.