Monday, September 6, 2004

The Beslan corner

In Beslan, the bad guys didn't just kill civilians. They killed children. Worse, they apparently carefully planned killing children they knew.

With the 911 attacks, Al Qaeda attacked symbols. Killing innocents was part of the plan, but not the whole purpose. Planes full of innocents were flown into highly symbolic buildings.

Now, in Russia, killing the most innocent of the innocent, the most loved, is a strategy put to practice.

Of course, it's been a strategy elsewhere for some time. It's not new. But I sense with this horrifying event some kind of corner has been turned. This wasn't a bus, a plane, or even a crowded market. It was a school: a place that embodies a society's care and love for its children.

Many in Russia (and adjacent states) must feel far more terror today than we in the U.S. have felt at any time since 911, even when the feds have pushed the terror level to orange or red. They've seen trains and airplanes blown up, and now they've lost a school where hundreds of children were bombed or shot while they tried to escape.

They, and we, have been given new terrors to imagine — not as events, but as the cold hearts of strangers who have the will, and the means, to kill our children... not as a collateral effect of bombings or sabotage; but as a purposeful, even personal, stragegy.

Of course there's a war going on. Or wars. Or policies we call wars. But these wars are for... what? Is Beslan just about Chechnya? I don't know. There's so much I don't know that I feel presumptuous just bringing up the subject. But I have so many questions...

What will we learn from Beslan? That we need to use more "force" of whatever kind? Is terrorism a behaviour without a context? What are those contexts, really? Are they just about land, or religion, or any other cause? Are the causes we see only those that fit our political frameworks and certitudes? What are the unintended effects of our own responses?

How do we fight something that isn't a nation-state? And who are "we" anyway? As I read the stories, my heart goes out to people in a country I don't know, who have lost family and friends, whose own hearts are torn and broken beyond any description. (And last week I felt the same way about Sudan. Still do.)

I want to know more. I also know the answers won't just come from the usual sources. We need to hear from Russian bloggers and other parties far more directly interested, and involved, than we are here in the West.

Meanwhile, if you want to help, go here. Or to the International Red Cross / Red Crescent. (Here's their press release.)

And I'll leave you with the Hal Crowther line (as best I remember it, from a column other than the most recent, linked above) that continues to haunt me: The best way to give a lie the force of truth is to soak it in innocent blood.

Bonus Link: Thomas P.M. Barnett: Mr. President, Here's How to Make Sense of Our Iraq Strategy. The only way America can truly achieve strategic security in the age of globalization is by destroying disconnectedness. Interesting read from a Pentagon and Navy War College veteran, and author of The Pentagon's New Map. (Also the title of his Esquire essay from last year.) Here's his blog. Thanks to Brice Tebbs for the pointers.

What you don't hear is what you get

Kurt Starsinic on why iPods are not the modern equivalents of transistor radios:

So, something new is happening. Instead of broadcasting what we listen to, we're advertising that we listen. It's becoming sexier not to enter other people's attention space uninvited.

The emphases are his. He continues,

In my view, we've passed a rubicon in the battle for our privacy and autonomy. It's evinced by the rise of the MP3 player and the RSS feed, and by the fall of the dorm stereo and the mailing list. It just may be that (contrary to my most pessimistic views) we're not all doomed to drown in a sea of infoglut.

Then hear this

Back from vacation, Susan Mernit recommends KMUD, one of the best regional community noncommercial stations on Earth.

I'm listening now, to ... not sure. Some kind of opera thing. The Monday Afternoon Classical program.

Doesn't sounc bad at 16kbps, over the Real3 codec and RealPlayer, which now runs on 3 platforms, including Linux. That's nice of Real, but I gotta tell ya, juggling codecs, and clients, and codecs in clients (via plugins and whatever else) is a pain in the ass.

I'm just glad KMUD doesn't require a subscription, like KPIG does now (and didn't before the CARP/LOC ruling that knocked them off the free Internet). That's an even bigger PITA. I think subscriptions work for the likes of Sirius and XM (for the forseeable, anyway), but not so well for internet radio, which by nature much more interactivity (including transactions, conversations real relationships and other functions found in natural — read: not supply-controlled — markets).

A chance to get paid to vote

VOTE or NOT is how the guys at HOT or NOT are encouraging democratic participation. Chris Nolan approves. So do I.

Maple tag?

In the Toronto Star, Michael Geist warns against Canadian adoption of the proposed U.S. broadcast flag.