Houshphandzadeh wrote:

Woody wrote:http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/mumbai_under_attack.html

In that first picture, I just get the feeling she'd be hot if she turned around.

Only housh could look at stark pictures of brutal tragedy and find the piece of ass

Wizlah wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Wizlah wrote:Really, I appreciate I managed to sound exceptionally $#@! pompous and up my own arse there, but a) read THE $#@! COLUMN, and b) I'M $#@! STRUGGLING TO SEE WHERE THE $#@! THAT IT WAS OKAY TO SHOOT THE $#@! OUT OF PEOPLE. SO WHEN THE RIGHTOUS AS $#@! AMONGST US ARE FINISHED $#@! WAILING ON MY ARSE, LETS ALL GET BACK TO $#@! DISCUSSING NEWS ANCHORS THAT I'VE NEVER $#@! SEEN.

I read the article.

right, so you're being an informed righteous prick rather than an uninformed one.

Wiz, in addition to attacking that hotel, they also attacked the Jewish Community Center. That's what I was referring to.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like a portion of almost every major religion hates every other religion. Usually there's some reasonable justification, if you're willing to go back far enough. I'm just sick of the whole thing and I suspect I'm not the only one turned off to organized religion as a whole because of the these nutcases of all stripes. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews... whatever. If you're oppressing or killing someone in the name of religion, you're a fucking idiot and you're not doing God's work (by their own religious book's definition).

jerseyhoya wrote:

Wizlah wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Wizlah wrote:Really, I appreciate I managed to sound exceptionally $#@! pompous and up my own arse there, but a) read THE $#@! COLUMN, and b) I'M $#@! STRUGGLING TO SEE WHERE THE $#@! THAT IT WAS OKAY TO SHOOT THE $#@! OUT OF PEOPLE. SO WHEN THE RIGHTOUS AS $#@! AMONGST US ARE FINISHED $#@! WAILING ON MY ARSE, LETS ALL GET BACK TO $#@! DISCUSSING NEWS ANCHORS THAT I'VE NEVER $#@! SEEN.

I read the article.

right, so you're being an informed righteous prick rather than an uninformed one.

Wiz, in addition to attacking that hotel, they also attacked the Jewish Community Center. That's what I was referring to.

Yeah, and me getting pissed off at what seemed like a glib response from you didn't help. And yeah, I knew about the attack on the jewish community centre.

I don't see Mehta's piece as somehow justifying the actions of the gunmen. I do see it as a useful reminder that there is a ready supply of poor muslims living in a very prosperous city which has a history of retialiatory attacks between hindus and muslims going back to the bombings of 1993. It's been mentioned that the Indian govt at the moment had made a lot of promises on coming down hard on terrorism, and right now they've been shown up. I would be concerned on a two counts.

The first and most obvious is that either there is a pakistani element to this operation, or the indian govt rushes to blame them to curry favour with the electorate (like the spanish conservatives blamed ETA for the madrid bombings in 2004). Ratcheting up further pressure on the pakistani govt right now would play into the hands of the pakistani military which can only be a bad thing

Secondly, that the indian govt cracks down hard on muslim communities to be seen to be hard on islamic militants. gets you a whole new group of recruits to al-Qaeda affiliates pretty quickly.

Wizlah wrote:Anyone wanting a different perspective on the attacks on Mumbai would do well to read Sukutu Mehta's Maximum City.

Wiz, it all came down to this AWFUL way of introducing the article you linked to. Most perspectives in the news, nytimes, bbc, talk about the utter tragedy and awfulness of the event. Therefore, I took different to mean that the tragedy wasn't that bad or that somehow the victims were actually just getting what they deserved. If you had simply linked to the article with a different intro, this misunderstanding might not have occurred.

And as for the rest, I actually kind of like the Pakistani military - rational actors and all that relative to some of the others who could be in charge.

Wizlah wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Wizlah wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Wizlah wrote:Really, I appreciate I managed to sound exceptionally $#@! pompous and up my own arse there, but a) read THE $#@! COLUMN, and b) I'M $#@! STRUGGLING TO SEE WHERE THE $#@! THAT IT WAS OKAY TO SHOOT THE $#@! OUT OF PEOPLE. SO WHEN THE RIGHTOUS AS $#@! AMONGST US ARE FINISHED $#@! WAILING ON MY ARSE, LETS ALL GET BACK TO $#@! DISCUSSING NEWS ANCHORS THAT I'VE NEVER $#@! SEEN.

I read the article.

right, so you're being an informed righteous prick rather than an uninformed one.

Wiz, in addition to attacking that hotel, they also attacked the Jewish Community Center. That's what I was referring to.

Yeah, and me getting pissed off at what seemed like a glib response from you didn't help. And yeah, I knew about the attack on the jewish community centre.

I don't see Mehta's piece as somehow justifying the actions of the gunmen. I do see it as a useful reminder that there is a ready supply of poor muslims living in a very prosperous city which has a history of retialiatory attacks between hindus and muslims going back to the bombings of 1993. It's been mentioned that the Indian govt at the moment had made a lot of promises on coming down hard on terrorism, and right now they've been shown up. I would be concerned on a two counts.

The first and most obvious is that either there is a pakistani element to this operation, or the indian govt rushes to blame them to curry favour with the electorate (like the spanish conservatives blamed ETA for the madrid bombings in 2004). Ratcheting up further pressure on the pakistani govt right now would play into the hands of the pakistani military which can only be a bad thing

Secondly, that the indian govt cracks down hard on muslim communities to be seen to be hard on islamic militants. gets you a whole new group of recruits to al-Qaeda affiliates pretty quickly.

In all honesty, this doesn't sound like an action that has much to do with the plight of Indian Muslims. The targets were not specifically Hindu, they were westerners. The amount of organization and the way the tactics were carried out also indicates a level of sophistication not seen in India before.

It's also the case that Islamic terrorism has little to do with economic deprivation.

jeff2sf wrote:And as for the rest, I actually kind of like the Pakistani military - rational actors and all that relative to some of the others who could be in charge.

I do not. they run up a massive military budget in a country which can ill afford it. they have funded mujahadeen to run a brutal proxy war in kashmir with the indian army. They backed and oversaw the sale of nuclear technology to iran, attempted to sell same to libya, all in the interests of furthering their own military might. there are elements within the military who have very strong militant islamic tendencies. they are pragmatists of the most dangerous kind - they have shown themselves capable of doing whatever it takes to secure what they believe best for their small country, frequently ignoring pressure from larger world powers and international agencies.

TenuredVulture wrote: In all honesty, this doesn't sound like an action that has much to do with the plight of Indian Muslims.

I don't think it needs to be. It's not clear yet who may be responsible - within 24 hours, news reports changed from suggesting that the Deccan Mujahadeen tag was nothing to set store by to being a viable option. recent reports have suggested a connection with british born pakistanis.

TenuredVulture wrote:The targets were not specifically Hindu, they were westerners. The amount of organization and the way the tactics were carried out also indicates a level of sophistication not seen in India before.

I'll trust to your encyclopediac knowledge of bombings and shootings in india, so. I'm presuming that the 10 bombs which were set off in mumbai in 1993 weren't very sophisticated at all, given the death toll (317) and the placing (including the indian stock exchange).

TenuredVulture wrote:It's also the case that Islamic terrorism has little to do with economic deprivation.

You take your soldiers where you can find them. I would be surprised if poorer, marginalised groups who feel their government aren't looking out for them didn't supply a reasonable number of impressionable and angry young men. just because you use one recruiting strategy in the UK doesn't mean you can't use another somewhere else. as for their economic state and it's relevance to islamic terrorism - I'd guess it's just used as a further proof that the government is set against them, and that this will all be rectified with a caliphate/sultanate.

Frank Gardner, the BBC's principle security correspondent (guy who got shot in saudi a couple of years ago, now in a wheel chair) pointed out that the chatter on islamic militant websites was all about expecting something big to happen, being really desperate to see al qaeda do something. There's been word of peace talks, idealogical rifts within al-qaeda. something similar happened within an exhausted and played out IRA in the 60s in ireland. Folk in the north felt that the ira based in the republic of ireland couldn't protect them from the b-specials and loyalist burning of churches, and that the british government didn't care. Led to a whole new rebirth of the organisation, built within the 6 counties. I don't think al quaeda is in exactly the same situation, but I think new angry blood is key to keeping any terrorist organisation ticking over.

Brief rundown of possible culprits.

In any event, I stand by my assertion that impoverishment is not a root cause of terrorism.

jeff2sf wrote:

Wizlah wrote:Anyone wanting a different perspective on the attacks on Mumbai would do well to read Sukutu Mehta's Maximum City.

Wiz, it all came down to this AWFUL way of introducing the article you linked to. Most perspectives in the news, nytimes, bbc, talk about the utter tragedy and awfulness of the event. Therefore, I took different to mean that the tragedy wasn't that bad or that somehow the victims were actually just getting what they deserved. If you had simply linked to the article with a different intro, this misunderstanding might not have occurred.

And as for the rest, I actually kind of like the Pakistani military - rational actors and all that relative to some of the others who could be in charge.

Here's an idea, Jeff, you can avoid misunderstandings by reading the article and deciding what perspective (not ANSWERS, mind you-it's quite possible you still haven't read the article and think this is what it did),it brings to the issue before mouthing off in self-righteous fashion. What it did was give some historic and cultural perspective to the question of who these people were, where they were and why they were so angry, a question that might occur to some when dozens of Indians and westerners are being slaughtered, and one that hadn't really been touched on in all the discussion of Katie Couric's tits. But then that might imply that you're someone who doesn't fully understand the situation like every other person in the world rather than the only one with the moral clarity and reason to see and pronounce upon what's really going on-although your support for a military dictatorship in Pakistan gives me all I need to know about your moral vision. I mean, why should this issue be different than any other?

Economic deprivation doesn't explain terrorism.
Religious divisions don't explain terrorism
Imperialism doesn't explain terrorism
Class structures don't explain terrorism
Geo-politics don't explain terrorism

Understand all of these and, most importantly the culture of the time and place where it occurs and maybe you start to get a clue. But it's so much easier to just blame "evildoers" and not have to think about it. Which is fine if you want, just don't attack those who might want to understand it better.People like you and jersey (who at least read the article before choosing his straw horse)who attack as moral relativism any attempt that might even appear to explore causes of atrocities without introducing the word scum into every line make me a little ill because it shows a tremendous amount of disrespect toward others by denying their ability to recognize evil and stifles any discussion that can't be put in the form of the self-assured pronouncement.

That's my self-righteousness pronouncement on self-righteousness, which I'm sure has convinced no one of anything other than my wisdom when I was steering clear of the politics thread-which I now again promise to do.

I think jeff forgot his V-8 today or something

Yeah, that was a pretty dumb ass post as well, swish, stick to the one liners. I read the article as well, it didn't explain much except that there are poor Muslims that are oppressed in India. No ****, Sherlock. Do you think I haven't studied the India-Pakistan relationship and all the inherent issues that follow from that? Of course I have. Am I an expert? Of course, I'm not.

But yeah, sometimes evil is evil.

Look, lets just stop ignoring the elephant(s) in the room.

Wiz is a euro-commie and jeff is a neocon that just insists he's a liberal democrat in order to get you guys to read his posts.

There, I said it.

jeff2sf wrote:But yeah, sometimes evil is evil.

Yeah, pretty much. Understanding is important on some level, but so is abject horror, disdain and hate.

Also, I think swish mixed his metaphors. I got up on my high horse to attack my strawman. I didn't choose any straw horses.

Wizlah wrote:
I don't see Mehta's piece as somehow justifying the actions of the gunmen. I do see it as a useful reminder that there is a ready supply of poor muslims living in a very prosperous city which has a history of retialiatory attacks between hindus and muslims going back to the bombings of 1993. It's been mentioned that the Indian govt at the moment had made a lot of promises on coming down hard on terrorism, and right now they've been shown up. I would be concerned on a two counts.

The first and most obvious is that either there is a pakistani element to this operation, or the indian govt rushes to blame them to curry favour with the electorate (like the spanish conservatives blamed ETA for the madrid bombings in 2004). Ratcheting up further pressure on the pakistani govt right now would play into the hands of the pakistani military which can only be a bad thing

Secondly, that the indian govt cracks down hard on muslim communities to be seen to be hard on islamic militants. gets you a whole new group of recruits to al-Qaeda affiliates pretty quickly.

There is absolutely no indication there is any Pakistani influence or involvement, despite the government trying to paint it as such. It's a problem of their own, completely, and they don't want to deal with the consequences. There's plenty of Indian extreme Muslim and Hindu people that they don't have to be from Pakistan.

It's sorta like when we(the American press and public) really wanted to blame the OKC bombing on foreigners.

Lest India and the world slip into early 2002 mode:

Any decent, civilized person watching scenes in Mumbai of extremists shooting indiscriminate machine gun fire and launching grenades into civilians crowds -- deliberately slaughtering innocent people by the dozens -- is going to feel disgust, fury, and a desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, regardless of what precipitated it. The temptation is great even among the most rational to empower authority to do anything and everything -- without limits -- to punish those responsible and prevent repeat occurrences. That's a natural, even understandable, response. And it's the response that the attackers hope to provoke.

Well, there's a couple of good things going on. Pakistan have sent over the head of the ISI to speak to the Indian govt to share intelligence. That's sensible. India have drawn a distinction and said that the attackers may have been pakistani based, but not necessarily pakistani sponsored. So they're not slinging the worst mud they can.

The following really made me curious however:

Whether by chance or design - some experts believe it was a goal of the terrorists - the Mumbai attacks came days after Ali Asif Zardari, the Pakistani president, made striking overtures: to withdraw his country's first-strike nuclear threat, sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, create an EU-style economic zone with India and allow visa-free travel.

So, wait, the pres is threatening to sign up to non-proliferation (something they flat out refused to be involved in till now whilst they were busy hawking uranium enriching centrifuges all over the middle and far east) and is up for some kind of economic agreement with his bigger richer neighbour? Signing away pakistan's biggest guarantee of autonomy (its nukes/first strike capability)?

I'm not surprised this happened so soon afterwards. Whether it's come from within the government/army or whether it's mujahadeen who don't like the way the political winds are blowing, this feels like a plan to get india and pakistan pointing fingers at each other and pakistan backing away from cooperation on nuclear issues. Here's hoping it doesn't work.

Now I want to know what condeleeza rice has actually been saying when she's been talking to india and pakistan. Has there been commitment of foreign aid to pakistan? Trade arrangements with india? military aid? can that continue in tough times? Any cooperation between the two would go a long way to easing tensions and allowing obama to pursue one of his stated goals of hunting down bin laden without having to be so gung ho and getting the pakistani military all uptight.

Interesting times.

Wizlah wrote:Well, there's a couple of good things going on. Pakistan have sent over the head of the ISI to speak to the Indian govt to share intelligence. That's sensible. India have drawn a distinction and said that the attackers may have been pakistani based, but not necessarily pakistani sponsored. So they're not slinging the worst mud they can.

The following really made me curious however:

Whether by chance or design - some experts believe it was a goal of the terrorists - the Mumbai attacks came days after Ali Asif Zardari, the Pakistani president, made striking overtures: to withdraw his country's first-strike nuclear threat, sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, create an EU-style economic zone with India and allow visa-free travel.

So, wait, the pres is threatening to sign up to non-proliferation (something they flat out refused to be involved in till now whilst they were busy hawking uranium enriching centrifuges all over the middle and far east) and is up for some kind of economic agreement with his bigger richer neighbour? Signing away pakistan's biggest guarantee of autonomy (its nukes/first strike capability)?

I'm not surprised this happened so soon afterwards. Whether it's come from within the government/army or whether it's mujahadeen who don't like the way the political winds are blowing, this feels like a plan to get india and pakistan pointing fingers at each other and pakistan backing away from cooperation on nuclear issues. Here's hoping it doesn't work.

Now I want to know what condeleeza rice has actually been saying when she's been talking to india and pakistan. Has there been commitment of foreign aid to pakistan? Trade arrangements with india? military aid? can that continue in tough times? Any cooperation between the two would go a long way to easing tensions and allowing obama to pursue one of his stated goals of hunting down bin laden without having to be so gung ho and getting the pakistani military all uptight.

Interesting times.

We have a deal that basically allowed India to join the nuclear club. I think that may come into play. We probably have some intelligence that we're offering to India.

It's also important to note that the ISI and the Pakistani military aren't necessarily all on the same page. So, it is plausible that elements within the ISI provided assistance, even if the Pakistani government isn't involved.

I had a dream where I was posting on this message board and calling monkeyboy all kinds of names(which is weird on a few levels). I guess that rant I went on against him in the political thread must be weighing on my conscience. So I apologize, Monkeyboy.

WilliamC wrote:I had a dream where I was posting on this message board and calling monkeyboy all kinds of names(which is weird on a few levels). I guess that rant I went on against him in the political thread must be weighing on my conscience. So I apologize, Monkeyboy.

As far as I'm concerned, it was just a dream. So, no worries. And I apologize for my part, as well.