The BBC reports that a plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski has crashed near a Russian airport. The latest news on the World Service is that there were no survivors.The tragedy of such a disaster may not be especially noteworthy (what an awful way of putting things) given the plethora of terrible events. However, the misfortune of the crash seems compounded by the very reason the Polish president had been on in Russia, which was to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of thousands of Poles by the Soviets.

I'll leave it to Mat to comment on the significance of the news and on how it's addressed in the Polish press.

Textbooks in Texas

In Texas, the board of education is changing school textbooks to correct what they say is a 'left leaning' bias in education The politics of the choice of textbooks in Texas may seem a very distant concern. However, given its size, the choice of school textbooks in Texas influences the content of textbooks sold in the rest of the country. If the content of history and social science textbooks is being shaped by a narrowly conservative and Christian worldview, then one may wonder what their influence will be on the outlook of future generations of school students.

Here's a report from Aljazeera.

US nuclear policy

In the media anticipation of and then excitement at a general election in the UK, it may have been easy to have missed a potentially significant change in US policy. The new policy on the use of nuclear weapons rules out their deployment against non-nuclear nations, even if the threat posed or attack made involves biological or chemical weapons - unless the security of America or its allies is put at 'fundamental' risk. Quite what that amounts to is not immediately clear, but the ruling out of nuclear retaliation against biological or chemical (or cyber) attack from a non-nuclear nation marks a distinct break from Bush. For a report see:

http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15867948

The changed policy has a more subtle importance. See:

http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-really-matters.html

The separation in status of biological and chemical weapons from nuclear weapons is clearly implied by the policy. Why think this is so important? Well, with the advent of nuclear weapons, the concept of a weapon of mass destruction gets introduced to mark the enormity of their destructive capacity in relation to other kinds of weapons. Yet, when we think back to 2002-2003 and the invasion of Iraq, we find biological and chemical weapons falling within the scope of WMD. Saddam was known not to have nuclear weapons. For all their wicked effect, there is little real reason to regard biological or chemical weapons as instruments of mass destruction. By separating the way in which today’s defence doctrine regards these different types of weapon, the change in nuclear policy points to the profound dishonesty of the case made for the invasion.