In the 80s, this was done with the help of the myth of the omnipotence of the drug mafia: electronic credit cards should be introduced instead of money, so that there is no "black cash", which is then taken by planes by drug lords to Latin America. And in the 90s, the image of the enemy changed: now it is not drug lords from Latin America, but Islamic terrorists. Well, the conclusion is still the same: all the same, let's get rid of cash, let's live under video cameras, let's stop in easily observable (and subsequently - in easily controllable) objects.

The threat from Colombia has been replaced by the threat from Arabia. The threat is extraordinary – and the measures to eliminate it must be unusual: since the enemy can be everywhere and anyone can become an enemy, then total surveillance of everyone is needed.

So among the sins of Muslim terrorists there is also the sin of blindness: they did not notice in whose hands they became puppets.

Please note the modality of my speech: I am not talking about it as a fact, but as my feeling. I have no evidence for this thesis. Except, perhaps, for one: the absence of terrorist attacks in the United States after September 11, 2001. It is the United States (and its staunch ally Britain) that most annoys the Islamic world. This is where the arrows of reciprocal anger should have been directed. But no, everything is calm across the sea. Is it because their vigilance is at its best, you say? Well, in Israel, vigilance is even higher, and bus stops blow up there regularly. And in Britain, for example, in September 2004, activists of the "Fathers for Rights" movement with amazing ease penetrated into super-protected buildings - into Parliament or Buckingham Palace and staged their protests there. So the zero count of terrorist attacks in the United States and England is explained not by good defense, but by the lack of attack. I believe that it is more difficult to get into the White House than into a Russian school. But shops and bus stops are hardly better guarded in the United States. Than in Russia. But there are no explosions... [24]. Strange silence.

On the other hand, Russia is slowly but surely being turned into a frontline state, protecting an anxious Europe from a disturbed Islamic world. And the president has already pronounced this word: "war". And in war as in war: there are no atheists in war. Whatever the architects of the "new order" are up to, God has his own plan. And maybe Russia, which in the 90s made a choice between chewing gum and faith, now, in war conditions, will still understand the need to gain faith.

GOD AND PAIN[26]

The guest of the "Tribune" is Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy, Deacon Andrei Kuraev

- The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the head of the Church of England, said the tragedy in Beslan made him "momentarily doubt the existence of God." I remember that the same thoughts were expressed by the witnesses of the Spitak tragedy in Armenia. It is impossible to accept the suffering and death of innocent children.

- This statement should not be so shocking to people who know at least a little about the history of Christian thought and mysticism. In the Old Testament, the prophets often dare to God: "Lord, where are You? Thou hast fallen asleep, wake up, O Lord!" And Christian saints – for example, St. Gregory the Theologian, and then St. Theodore the Studite – in the moments of the most difficult ecclesiastical and national crises quoted the words of the Gospel: "Christ is asleep" (the Gospel indeed tells us that during a storm on the Lake of Gennesaret Christ slept and the frightened apostles woke Him). So if a person looks around in fright and suddenly exclaims: "Where are You, Lord!" then this is not some kind of anti-Christian or atheistic intonation. A cry to God, a feeling of horror from the fact that you do not feel the Lord next to you is, on the contrary, an expression of a living relationship with God.

As for faith in God in a moment of suffering... You know, if such a tragedy had occurred in a Muslim school, it would have been more difficult for Muslim theologians to explain. And when this happens to our children, then to the question – "Lord, where were You when they suffered in Beslan?", we say: "Our Christ was also there." Because for Christians, Christ is not just an all-good spirit hovering somewhere beyond the cosmos. This is the God who became man and took the full measure of human sorrow even before we do. He himself went through betrayal and crucifixion.

- In this case, can we see in these tragic events some kind of God's Providence?

- One of the hostages said that when the bandit pressed a cross into his body with the muzzle of a machine gun and demanded to glorify Allah, the boy shouted "Christ is risen!" According to him, at that moment these terrible explosions occurred, the wall next to them collapsed, the terrorist was thrown back by the blast wave, and Sasha was the first of all to jump out of the window and ran, followed by the rest of the children. Perhaps if it were not for these explosions, everything would have ended much worse.