THE TERRORIST OUTRAGE IN MOSKVA: A COMMENT

"Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has no doubts that the organizers of the deadly blasts in the Moscow subway carried out on Monday morning will be punished.

"It is well known that today a terrible crime against civilians in its effects and disgusting in its character was carried out," the prime minister said. "Dozens of people died in the subway."

"I am sure that police will do their best to find and punish the criminals," Putin continued. "The terrorists will be destroyed."

Two blasts in Moscow's subway stations Lubyanka and Park Kultury occurred during the early morning rush hour with an interval of 40 minutes, the first one at approximately 8:00 a.m. Moscow time (5:00 GMT). According to preliminary information, at least 37 people have died and dozens were injured".

"Moscow Terrorist Attack organizers will be punished," 29 March 2010, in www.rian.ru.

"They 're terrific rogues these Asiatics! You don't think their yelling helps much do you? You can't tell what the devil they're saying....Terrific cheats, they are. But what can you do about them? They do like to skin the traveller....Yes, sir, we had enough of these ruffians; now, thank God, things are quieter, but there was a time when you couldn't venture a hundred paces beyond the rampart without some hairy devil stalking you, ready to put a halter around your neck or a bullet through the back of your head the moment he caught you napping."

Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Times. Trans. Martin Parker. Originally published in 1840.

"Today we were unlucky, but remember we have only to be lucky once."

Official Irish Republican Army (IRA) statement on the failed attempted bombing of the entire British Cabinet in Brighton on the 12th of October 1984.

There is both not much and too much one can say about what happened on the morning of the 29th of March, Moskva time. Obvious thoughts such as the fact that the Russian police and security organs seem to be completely incompetent and hopeless, while seemingly true on the surface, obscures rather than illuminate matters. How many people (besides myself it seems) recalls that in October 1984, it was merely chance which prevented the IRA from blowing up the entire British Cabinet? An intelligence failure of major proportions notwithstanding the fact that MI-5, was and is immeasurably superior to the present-day Russian Security Services. And, while the deaths of 37 innocents, particularly during Holy Week (both Pravoslovnii and Catholic), is something horrible beyond measure, looking at the matter more coolly (provided one can of course), it is easy to see that the numbers of dead, do not far surpass the worse cases of dead in some IRA bombings of the 1970's and 1980's, in London and other parts of the UK. Obviously, the Russian authorities do really need and require a major effort to round-up and destroy the terrorist cells and cadres in Moskva (and elsewhere in Russia proper). Whether or not this incident means that Putin & Medvedev should 're-think' the 'Kadyrov Solution' to the Chechen problem is not something that I am willing, or indeed can pronounce on with any confidence at the moment. There are some who will tell you, people who have personal experience of Kavkaz liudii, that what North Caucas, et. al., needs and requires is simply more of the Kadyrov treatment: that Kavkaz liudii only respect brute force and that any endeavors of liberalism are treated as signs of weakness and decadence. The upshot of the entire matter though seems to be that like the British who eventually, via good intelligence work and policing managed to defang the IRA by the mid-1990's (by which time the entire IRA apparatus was infiltrated by MI-5), Russian intelligence needs to get back to basics and begin the long and hard fight with these Muslim filth. Otherwise, I am afraid that more and more people will eventually incline to 'solving' this problem the Iosef Vissarionovich way. Not something that anyone who has an ounce of Christian feeling in him or her wishes to contemplate.