DeeKnow’s Grotto

Its a good thing that the Russians know how to suffer. And if there's such a thing as a recipie for a successful Russian story, then it is surely something like the following...

• set the scene during a devastatingly cold winter
• insert a couple of characters who almost fall in love
• Ivan, a junior officer in the army
• Alexandra, a strangely attractive peasant girl
• throw in bucket-fulls of tragedy over a span of many years
• kill off one of Ivan or Alexandra, and a family member or two

Toss the above elements round in seven hundred pages of heavy-gauge paper and out will pop a great Russian story. Alternatively, you might read any of the hundreds of webpages and print sources covering the tragedy in Beslan this week.

I'm not trying to make slight of the events, Jesus no, its friggin horrible. Its just that stuff like this is covered by regular news sources with such enthusiasm that by now everyone's literally sick to the stomach from hearing about it.

The thing that struck me about the school slaughter is the same thought that made an impression after the Moscow theatre bombing in 2002 and the more recent train and plane bombings. And that is ... how the hell do the Chechen separatists think they'll improve their position using tactics like this?

Age old conflicts like the Israeli/Palestinian one seem largely tit-for-tat, action and reaction, and we become desensitised because of their scale and frequency. But the Chechen cause is losing any sympathy it may have gained when Russia steamed in guns a blazing in 1999 and flattened Grozny.

Surely the seperatists have now signed the death warrant for the independant nation they are hoping to form. And consider this comment too from an article at mosnews.com about the feasibility of UN intervention ...

Chechnya, placed under the UN’s jurisdiction, would be raised from the ruins by international institutions that would then help build a civic society there .... But even if by some miracle it happened, Russia, being a permanent UN Security Council member, would easily veto the decision.

8:54:33 PM