Head shots

ENAR

Oh, how Adam Smith would have shuddered to know that the “invisible hand,” which he described as the guiding force of markets, can be seen most often these days cutting the necks of videotaped hostages in Iraq and Saudi Arabia – and that this, too, is guiding a new and exotic market, that of execution CDs. In September, the passion to film atrocities was evident in Beslan, South Ossetia, where Chechen gunmen shot footage of the booby trapped gymnasium where they were holding hundreds of captive schoolchildren, though the exact reason why they filmed remains unclear. Perhaps it was to warn off Russian security forces by showing them the surfeit of explosives in the room; perhaps it was to record the event for posterity or for propaganda purposes. That said, few experiences are more ghastly than watching similarly reasoned videotapes from the Chechen war, where rebels filmed themselves cutting the