h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*That day* rapidly approaches... It's Nettie's 21st and it is a day in which, in 2001, everything really *did* change forever! Three years, and look what's happened since, although, as we all know well now, Iraq had exactly nothing to do with the events of 911.
The Russian school siege in North Ossetia is over, and it ended badly, but there was really no other way it could end. I was in tears reading about it in our local Sunday paper - those poor scared kids! Why on do people do things like that? What do they think they are going to achieve?
I want so bad, to be able to talk to Garth about all this, but of course I can't. (Or I could - but he can't talk back, so where's the point?) From where he is, he knows it all anyway, he knows more than I do, about all the things we had questions about, and discussed - just this time last year, I remember sitting with him, feverishly speculating and *saying* "When we die, we'll know"... It didn't occur to me then that it might be of very little importance, when you're taking the long view... Outside linear time, as he used to say, said, about God - to be compared, he said once, with the Wormhole aliens in Deep Space Nine, in their experience of time.
I had disturbing dreams last night, and I've felt out of sorts all day, still queasy with the 'flu. The music we are mostly listening to now is: The Moody Blues compilation. My current personal fave - 'The Story In Your Eyes':awesome!
Jim beat his friend with a longsword, at Auckland Sword and Shield. He is really made up about it. They have a girl with a digital camera there, preserving certain things for posterity.

Hi Della,

Yes, the anniversary appraoches. When it happened I thought that finally the Americans might understand that there are consequences to their actions. I hoped beyond hope that they may decide that 3,000 dead would be enough.

I was wrong. The whole sad tragedy was simply repackaged, wrapped in the star-spangled banner, and used to visit the same pain and suffering on 50 times the number lost in 9-11. It also, coincidentally(?), served the power interests of the most powerful clans in the US.

As I have said time and again when people lay the blame for war at the feet of your religions, follow the money. Islam and Christianity are no more to blame than poor airline security.

The Ossetia school massacre is just another outgrowth of the same political power game.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

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Exactly! Yet, I have heard angry people on the radio today damning all Muslims because of it. I understand they're angry, well, we all are - but not all Muslims are to blame...
The thing about 911 is, things really did change - but it really had nothing to do with Iraq. That's what is so frustrating!

On Radio 4 last Friday, Fred Halliday argued that Al Qaeda should be seen not as a product of Islam, but as a vestige of the Cold War.

Interesting, I guess. It seems to me that the problems in Chechenya, for example, arguably stem partly from the lack of any kind of post-war 'Marshall Plan'. The post-soviet economy was left to the naked free market. Russia was not properly democratised in the way that Germany and Japan were, post WWII.

Salaam aleikum.

Chechenya seems to me to be have been a Russian colony
If it had been granted independence when the USSR collapsed a lot of trouble might've been avoided
The West has ignored the plight of the Chechens in a way it would not have done if Russia had acted in the same way in the Baltic states

I think you're right, Edward, at least in that respect - Russia was just left to sink or swim...
I do not believe in Al Quaeda as such, because it seems to be a bogeyman, as much as a real entity! I find it highly doubtful that Al Q., were involved in this!

The Chechen disaster - I shall have to learn more about the background. Our local news-lite kept playing U2's 'Sarajevo' as background music to their unwieldy and possibly inaccurate coverage yesterday evening. It's a news programme for 15-24 year olds, and I would not be surprised if some in the audience or even the presenters are somewhat geographically confused!

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The problem is that you Europeans don't understand American attitudes toward war very well. You had two world wars fought on your continent last century to teach you that wars are destructive and not often productive. Our involvement in those wars was relatively minor--we didn't fight on our own soil and our cities weren't bombed (ignoring Hawaii, which wasn't a state at the time, anyway). Americans still see wars as a sort of holy crusade for our nation and it's ideas of democracy and freedom. With the exception of Vietnam, we've won every war we got into and justified it as a moral crusade. The revolution and the war of 1812 were the defence of liberty against tyrrany. The Civil War was a crusade against slavery (or for states rights from the Southern perspective). WW I was fought to keep the world safe for democracy and WW II to get rid of the fascists and militarists that we'd allowed to claim a large portion of the globe.]

As long as Americans see war as a glorious defence of freedom against the powers of evil (whatever they may be defined as at the time), and as long as we believe that the power of history or justice or Jehovah is on our side, we can't see consequences to our foreign policy.

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I think it depends how you define Al Quaeda. I doubt Bin Laudin or whoever is in charge of them now even knew this was going to happen. However, there are a lot of terrorist groups, like the Abu Sayef, that have some loose association with Al Quaeda in terms of training or supplies either in the past or present. Whether such groups are involved in the Chechen resistance or not, I don't know, but thy may well be.

Al Quaeda as a organization in Afganistan under Bin Laudin's control may be defeatable, the network of organizations that it is at the center of cannot be defeated very easily if at all.

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That certainly is the impression I get from American TV and movies, Athena...