The Bear Minimum

It’s a sad time for Poland, there’s no doubting that, but it also must be such a terrible shock for them too.

I personally feel that each and every person is special. That we all have an intangible effect on those who’re in our lives, or affected by our lives, and often we’re not aware of how great that effect is. When a public figure dies, there’s a large ripple that brushes across many, many people. If you imagine your country just lost their President as well as his wife, and chiefs of the army and navy… It would be a huge shock to the Polish people.

It’s also so sad to me that they were all on their way over to Russia for a memorial service dedicated to a Russian perpetrated war atrocity in which 20,000 Polish POWs were killed. Call me paranoid, but one does have to wonder about all this… The world knows that Putin is an untrustworthy and unscrupulous man who is not above having any opponents killed. This is fact. So I’m betting that Polish officials are going to be in the thick of the investigation as much as possible.

Mr Kaczynski, who was a contentious figure in Poland, was brought back to Warsaw yesterday, and now rests in the Presidential Palace. When his coffin arrived at the Palace the gathered crowd softly began to sing the Polish national anthem. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but that to me is heart achingly sad. I know that Kaczynski wasn’t a saint, that he had is own set of issues, but he was still respected and obviously trying to better his nation.

We’ve seen throughout history the effect of having a leader taken early in life. It scares the nation to an extent, and I think this will be no different. I sincerely send my condolences to the Polish people and the families of those who lost their lives in the crash.