Subway Suicide Mission

Today's paper had a piece on the horrible suicide missions of two female bombers in Moscow. They did so in two different subway stations killing 35 people as a part of their Islamic extremist movement.

I've never understood this movement and that may be due to the fact that I've only heard the Western and Israeli perspectives on all of this but still it is very hard to keep an open mind about a group that chooses to go to various countries and blow innocent people up because their "God told them so".

This whole idea of sacrifice feels so archaic and unrealistic because I cannot imagine any God having their followers hurt themselves and others in order to achieve salvation. It just doesn't add up.

I would LOVE to see the texts the extremist groups are basing their actions off of because to date I cannot think of one instance where they present evidence for their preaching tactics and beliefs.

Another question I have is why Moscow? This is the same area that was already hit by extremists- why round two? Is it still the separatist war or is there more to the story?

Feel free to fill me in, I'm all ears.

In our book The Elements of Journalism the authors looked at a story by Loretta Tofani where her work resulted in the exposure and the legal action that put the wrong do-ers behind bars because of multiple rapes they committed in a prison where officials were simply looking the other way. "Public disclosure of the information forced the government to change the system.."(154).

This came to mind as I read this breaking story about Moscow because with the coverage of this story people are looking at not only this attack but the attacks last year and in 2004 which all lead back to Vladimir Putin's actions regarding terrorism and his attempts to quietly and privately handle the problem. There are documents and people speaking up about Putin's mandates which controlled who could be in power and just how much power these individuals could have in an attempt to block any possible rebel groups with connections to the Islamic regime.

Journalists covering this angle of the story are bringing to light, therefore, the possible corruption and manipulative ways of the Russian government which could be at the core of this war in the first place. Therefore, if Putin had perhaps thoroughly acknowledged this terrorist group and done more people would not have died today, last year or even back in 2004 when he was re-elected for a second term as President. Now serving as Prime Minister he has a lot of questions to answer and hopefully he will begin to pay head to the public outcries and even fellow officials warnings.