Will we ever be able to forget Beslan? Possibly, as human memory is sometimes mercifully but tragically short.
The footage of the massacre of all those innocent children will haunt us for a few weeks and then fade as new sensations are transmitted worldwide in what I like to call War by Television. In the process we have become hardened. Many of us watched the carnage while indulging in some scrumptious TV supper on a tray. This has become an everyday occurrence.
The 21st century has achieved the unbelievable. Never has news been more instant and never has it had less effect.
Whether it is Steven Spielberg who concocts what we are watching or whether it is mere newsreel seems to make little difference to our hardened attitude and apathetic reactions.
We may possibly have more response to the carefully orchestrated emotional appeal of Spielberg rather than the real thing, which is possibly why films cause far more furore than mere newsreel. I read that Fahrenheit 9/11 will not be contesting the Oscars to enable it to be shown on TV prior to the November US election. It is common knowledge too that Hollywood has, for the last 60 years, been churning out films about the Holocaust in order to keep fresh in our memory the enormity of it and to justify the State of Israel that was created out of the world's bad conscience after World War II. In Tibet, more Tibetans have died in Chinese ethnic cleansing than all the Jews in the gas chambers, and only two films have been made about them.
Chechnya has always been a trouble spot. When the Eastern bloc was still the Eastern bloc we knew practically nothing about what went on behind the practically tangible Iron Curtain. Today the Iron Curtain exists no more and we are bombarded with an explosion of problems and disasters we never knew existed till the late 1980s; problems that have been relatively unchanged since the sway of the Romanov, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.
At the beginning it was so different. I will never forget the tears of happiness on the face of a gentleman of the old school with whom I watched the coverage of Gorbachev's visit to the Pope. He never thought he would live to see the head of state of Communist Russia and the head of the Roman Catholic Church meet each other. Neither he nor I ever thought that what was about to happen would be the opening of Pandora's box!
The Third World War, one could argue, started then. Terrorism had been escalating since the end of the Cold War and after 9/11 the fighting fire with fire attitude brought the situation to fever pitch. Every week a couple of aid workers from countries participating in some way in the Iraqi occupation are kidnapped and consequently gruesomely executed on screen when the kidnappers' demands are not met.
Other terrorist groups have followed this example and at this present moment in time we are still unaware of what may have happened to the two Frenchmen who were kidnapped because of the headscarf ban in France. This is the tip of the iceberg. Millions around the globe live in abject misery; homeless, maimed and unwanted, they are the direct result of human greed. Again we are shielded from the knowledge as it is the aim of the world's leaders only to change things in order for them to remain the same.
We in Malta are thankfully very peripheral to the issue and as we happily blast our petards in the balmy summer atmosphere and howl about gin palaces in Brussels that may probably cost less than the collective cost of the fireworks that are consumed in one summer, we are blissfully unaware of the world crisis caused by intolerance and greed that has brought the planet to the brink of destruction.
So here we are at last as part of a bloc called the EU that is under constant terrorist threat. Whether we like it or not we are now economically as dependant as never before on the policies dictated by Brussels and it appears that the days of the great handouts and monetary gravy trains are over and we will yet again have to fend for ourselves.
Since and because of 9/11 and what it precipitated the world's economy is in shambles. The day when Iraq will be reconstructed seems ever more remote as we read that the death toll of US soldiers has topped the 1,000 mark; a number that one must multiply a hundredfold to get the total of fatalities since this wretched war started. A war, which like all others in our pathetic human history, was started on a pretext and with a hidden economic agenda and that was supposed to be over in a few weeks and now has dragged on for almost two years without a solution in sight and with decades of human misery to come.
The man who sparked it off is seeking re-election. The millions spent on a US electoral campaign circus is truly mindboggling. There we have for all to see the still largely isolationist US electorate determining world policy. For all it's worth, with the kind of effect the presidency has on the rest of the world you and I should have a US vote. Despite the buffoonery and the mythical weapons of mass destruction, prognostications seem to indicate a GWB victory in November. Mind you, they say a week is a long time in politics and as for three months, that is like an epoch.
They also say that Bin Laden has been captured and that he will be produced like a rabbit out of a hat on the eve of the election. What difference the capture of Osama bin Laden will make to the situation is negligible. If he is captured there will be another thousand like him to take his place. The production of a humbled and humiliated Osama bin Laden may clinch a Republican victory but what will the consequences be for the rest of us?
It is very clear that Islam is being used as a pretext. The leaders of the Islamic religion, fragmented as they are, all collectively call for the establishment of peace. There can be no peace unless the leaders of all world religions, that in different ways are all working towards one goal, come together and put a stop to this inexorable tidal wave of violence that is engulfing us.
Only John Paul II can achieve this. He is the religious leader with the highest international profile in history and the one who has earned the respect of the world. All he needs to do is call all other denominations to Assisi, as he has done before, and hammer out a common policy to save the world. It is something that I hope and pray will happen soon before it is too late. Item one on the agenda is that never again in history is religion to be used as a pretext for war and violence. If it is, those who do should be anathemised and cast out as tools of the devil. There is no religion in this world that upholds violence and therefore there is no way that violence could be remotely condoned. Using it as an excuse for violence is a betrayal of the highest order and must be treated as such.
kzt@onvol.net