Beslan

I watched a Cutting Edge documentary last night about this tragic and half forgotten event.

It amazes me how quickly the media move on from such tragedies to the next one and the next. Each one ramped up and sold as monumental only to be superseded by the next one in the constant need to sell advertising or maybe to distract us from other, more sinister man-made activities.

How long until Katrina is swamped by the next terrorist event or natural disaster?

The reporter in the documentary stated that the terrorist acts are like a play with the intention of grabbing the attention of Moscow or the world. This is especially true of the Chechen terrorists who appear to have mastered the long drawn out TV saga as seen in School Number 1, the theatre siege and an earlier hospital siege. Perhaps this is also true of the way other terrorist events, natural disasters and personal tragedies are played out in the media.

Missing children stories in particular are well suited to rolling news as we can tune in every night and hear whether there have been developments, which characters have come to the fore, has the plot twisted and how far are we from an ending (either happy or more commonly sad).

Anyway, what I wanted to note was that the minister from Moscow went to the site of the siege on the third or fourth day armed with a suitcase containing the names of 700 celebrities who had offered to change places with the children. Thinking about how that may have worked and turned out makes the mind boggle.