<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1458" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The WEEK<BR>ending 6 September 2004</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>BESLAN: BLAMING THE TARGET, EXCUSING THE PERPETRATORS</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Coverage of the Beslan school massacre told us more about the mindset of the West than it did about the violence in the Russian Federation republic of North Ossettia. By any normal standard, the crime was committed against the Russian people. A gang, claiming adherence to independence from the Federation for Chechnya, took 1400 people hostage during a school celebration. Holding them for three days - without water and in baking heat - the gang opened fire on a group of children who made a break for freedom, the Russian special forces tried to stop them shooting with covering fire, upon which the gang set off the bombs that killed upwards of 350 people.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>But at the BBC, this atrocity was covered as an embarrassment to Russian President Putin. Western correspondents seemed unable to understand the gravity of the situation, dumping on the Russian authorities, instead. The Dutch Foreign Minister Berhard Bott, speaking for the European Union said: 'We would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened'. But it was not the Russian authorities that killed the children and their families. Andreas Gross from the Council of Europe added to the insult saying ' when something like this happens, it does not happen just out of nothing, just out of the dark'. The Times, projecting its own appetite for up-to-the-minute gore, complained that the Russian media did not report the shooting for a whole hour, seeing this as evidence of a return to the Soviet era.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Of course the West has a history of strategic sympathy for the 'Islamic republics' on the old Soviet Union's southern frontier, having supported separatist movements and 'governments-in-exile' - a policy that led to Western sponsorship of the Afghan Mujahideen and volunteer Arab militias in Bosnia. Focussing on the Russian Federation's treatment of Chechnya as if it were the explanation for the atrocity confuses the issue. In fact it is the splits in the Chechen separatists, and the Federation's relative success in consolidating links with moderate leaders there that has driven the fringe into more extreme acts. Isolation, not popular support, explains the militants' anger. A popular campaign would have felt more constrained from attacking schoolchildren - unlike media commentators in the West.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>END OF EMPIRE?</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>On Spiked this week, James Heartfield argues that the Marxist theory of imperialism has little to tell us about the drive towards war at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Taking issue with the theses put forward by radicals like David Harvey, Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood, Heartfield says that you cannot explain today's military conflicts as a struggle for resources, nor as a result of the 'overaccumulation of Capital'.<BR><A href="http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA6BA.htm">http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA6BA.htm</A></FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>CHOKING ON ENVIRONMENTALISM</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The British city which suffers from some of the worst air-quality in its centre is the one with more Green councillors than any other and among the most aggressive anti-car policies. According to the Calor Gas Report the air in Oxford city centre contains substantially higher levels of nitrogen oxides than any other. These chemicals are implicated in respiratory disorders. </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Oxford city centre is largely car-free with few roads which allow private cars, and parking tightly restricted. Instead car drivers can use the park and ride service which operates from car parks ringing the outer edge of the city. One result is that the city centre is packed with buses. Perhaps, as they cycle round the city centre, the Green voters of north Oxford are reassured to see the Cowley masses and the commuters corralled onto buses rather than lording it over them on four wheels. But it may not be good for their health.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>OVALTEENIES</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Released by Rough Trade, the album The Libertines has been trailed by wide media coverage of lead Pete Doherty's court appearances, drug addiction and on-off friendship with his other creative half Carl Barat. In song as in life, the Doherty and Barat display their love-hate friendship. The album has a good line in schoolboy cynicism and rough and ready tunes - but descends into mawkishness. The chorus 'I know longer hear the music' sounds all too like Ralph McTell's Streets of London. The long shadow of Morrissey still looms over pop music in Britain, which seems unable to get over its wistful meditation on Englishness.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></BODY></HTML>