Katyn, yesterday and today

Added On April 8, 2010
Russia joins Poland to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. CNN's Atika Shubert reports.

* Death toll rises in Kyrgyzstan unrest; state of emergency declared





Added On April 8, 2010
CNN's Errol Barnett interviews a blogger in Bishkek via webcam to see the extent of unrest and damage in Kyrgyzstan.

* Kyrgyz president says he won't resign


Before last week I had never heard of the Katyn massacre, in which Russian troops killed over twenty thousand Poles at the beginning of WW2, simply to consolidate the planned Soviet satellite state that communist Poland became after the war. It took another tragedy, in which Poland's president and wife and over 90 others were killed in a plane crash the day after the above videos were posted, to make many people aware of what happened at Katyn in 1940, myself included. (They were on their way to a ceremony in remembrance of the 70th anniversary of the massacre.)

By the way, did you know that Lech Kaczyński, the recently deceased Polish president, had two PhDs and was a member of Solidarity? He was also shipped off to an internment camp by the government for a while in the early 80s, when the communists enacted a period of martial law. Part of me wants to deify him, as liberals are wont to do, but I remind myself that Poland has co-operated with the US government this past decade in the CIA black sites programs, and that gives me pause. But he still sounds like a more admirable character than either our current leader, or his smirky predecessor.