No justice, no peace

Iwrite this during the holidays when I should be filled with feelings of giving, of thankfulness, of rebirth, of “Peace on Earth” and goodwill to all persons. Sadly, I am not. In the ending months of 1997, I watched in numbed amazement as my NBC colleagues covered the story of a Kentucky teenager who somehow saw fit to blow away his classmates while they were attending a prayer session. I saw a judge determine that a teenage nanny, convicted of killing an eightmonth-old, should not serve any jail time, contrary to sentencing guidelines, and set her free. And each day tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children are killed or maimed by the most insidious and apolitical killers on our planet: land mines. And despite this daily carnage, my country—my president—refuses to sign an international ban on these wicked devices. These are just a few of the recent events playing on an endless loop in my head. I could easily exhaust the word limit for this column with examples. But what’s the point of this dreary news and what does it have to do with the frontier of cyberspace?