Thursday, July 13, 2006

The Mumbai Blasts: Some Recent Discussions

I went to meet a few friends yesterday, and over a cup of tea and a few plates of dahi misal we talked about things.

A friend who would have probably preferred to have a vadapao with his tea said that there was no warning of this event. Despite the successes last year in catching the Manmad stockpile and in compromising the Hawala unit at Haj house there wasn't a real decrease in the threat perception but there was no specific information leading to this. This was not like 1993 where several people had heard that something was afoot. This time around there was no information.

Another friend who reads a lot of newspapers and surfs the web complained that in the West especially the US - the entire incident was being spun as either being linked to Hindu-Muslim tension or being related to India-Pakistan-Kashmir. There was no attempt to describe it as a senseless attack on the world's largest democracy - there was no sense of outrage. The sense of shock and anger that followed the London or Madrid blasts is absent in the Western media. Utter nonsense about Kashmir or Babri Masjid is being paraded by media groups in the US and their media-"chelas" in India. In his view the media was now thoroughly penetrated and any subsequent response to the event would have to come up with a way of managing the media's unhealthy behavior. I can't quite describe how angry he was at the media's conduct and the ease with which Indian media houses were being led by their American counterparts. He said that the Indian media was too scoop-hungry for its own good and severe punitive measures against errant media houses would have to be taken to contain the situation if people that matter in the media do not come to their senses. I want to reproduce some of his words verbatim - as I feel they are very important

"You are standing in a room with your head bleeding - you don't know who has hit you - but one person - and only one person - is repeatedly pointing at others in the room and blaming them - at the very least you should wonder why he is doing that."

(Later in an email he sent me this link and he said this information was being deliberately released to provoke a specific reaction. Look up the antecedents of the source before you rush to accept anything it says. I asked him about the Great One and his recent oracular insight into the linkage between Kashmir and the blasts, and he replied that the Great One doesn't want to admit to himself that he has overstayed his welcome, this state of denial feeds his public madness.)

A visitor from Delhi was also there, and he said that a trail of evidence did point to local extremists but only as support staff not perpetrators. The complexity of the scheme and the devices pointed to a more professional entity. The money trail led somewhere completely different and the even if one were to accept that the LeT was responsible, one still had to answer the question "why".

A friend of a friend also from Delhi asked a simple question, "If this was hatched in Pakistan, why didn't the Americans with all their surveillance catch it? We actually welcomed the US presence in Pakistan because we felt that it would deter Pakistan from attempting stupid and ungodly things, but was our sense of trust misplaced?"

A recently retired person who thought that dahi misal would give him a heart attack mused "see how smug the Pakistanis are - they know they are going to get the "credit" and bragging rights for this murderous rampage and they know that the Americans are going to protect them from our retribution... kitney khush hain yeh log - dekho."

We talked for a few hours and left satisfied with the misal and our discussions. On my way home I stopped off to get a drink and as I passed through the lobby of a five star hotel, I saw the nigerian sitting in the corner, the darwan tells me he is back in business, so I guess Mumbai is back to normal.

6 Comments:

At 4:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maverick,
It is also interesting what the "informal" arms of the establishment have to say about the attacks. The most puzzling thing here is that the "dog did not bark". The major weblogs with connections to the democratic establishment have been almost completely silent on this matter, while the only blogs which did do some coverage of this are rightwing american blogs (most prominently instapundit and Pajamas Media, who collected links and info about the bombings).

Also curious is the ToI speculation about "Gujarat" and rich Gujaratis. This is another interesting line of spin.

 
At 5:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We Indians in particular hindus need to bypass the path of media, politics and 'harmony' when it comes dealing with terrorism and our security. This has actually become a question of our identity and existence. If we look at history our pacifist nature has made us tolerate all kind of insults, conversions and aggressions. Pakistan, China and US are having a go at us again and again and we foolishly laugh, take the beating in the name of resilience. Why do we need useless phone calls from US and UK while we are getting screwed by Pakistan and Islamists? Why we look outside for sympathy We don’t understand. It seems we have become a nation of hijdaas. We must harden up at this point of time otherwise we don't deserve a place in the history of mankind and known civilisations. We need to look inwards to protect ourselves, harness our own strengths, we don’t need words and sympathy from phoney outsiders.

What we need is an 'Indus organisation' working in background independent of political and democratic institutions. Due to corruption, lack of competent people and infiltration of foreign spies these institutions (IB, CBI, Left, Cong, BJP, Police, Armed Forces, Media) can not anymore be relied upon to give us security and respectable life.

Indus will be used to execute our strategic policies, protect our civilisation, dismantle terror using force and literally if needed use all dirty tactics in a discreet manner. We didn't do this when moguls came, when europeans came, when british ruled, when chinese attacked, when pakis alomost nuked us. See the results now.. a fragmented, pathetic India ruled by cowards who can’t even take pakistan’s name in front of International media in fear of rattling some meaningless peace process nobody in pakistan cares about. See our bloated fattened IB, RAW and Police officials totally clueless about terrorist attacks and incapable of even preventing an US spy becoming RAW sub-head and tapping Prime Minister’s phone line.

The so called diversity has become a curse to our mother land. We can’t today even trust our prime minister who behaves like a numb head when terrorists attack and kill our innocent brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. We have only been treated as a sheep in the world so far. Nobody gives a damn about India’s problems. And why should anyone since we couldn’t even assassinate one Dawood who killed almost 800 innocent people in 1993. We have to prove we are not a looser religion. We have to use aggression. Peaceful means don’t work with brain-washed jihadists. For god’s sake, all hindus get this straight in your heads, minds and hearts.

We can not solve the terrorism problem with concepts of love and harmony. We have been stupidly following these mis-guided principals of non-violence while turks, sultans, moguls, french, portugese, british, chinese, pakis and americans have been raping our motherland. Love and harmony would have worked for instance with a pacifist minority of buddhists or some sub-sect of hindu religion. My friends I am not instigating violence. If we don't rise and fight now history will judge us as cowards unfit of independent existance. In another 100 years Indian continent will be part some middle-east country with a tiny hindu minority working as slaves.

We are not against muslims in India who have unfortunately forgotten that they are genetically still Indus and their ancestors were forcefully converted by mogul aggressors. The muslims in India are told by their overseas masters not to say 'Vande Mataram'. They have become zombies and most of them want to make India an Islamist nation. One shameful example: Fire crackers are lit in Hyderabad, Auragabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Allahabad and parts of Mumbai when Pakistan wins a cricket match against India.

Unfortunately we have been brainwashed by our selfish coward politicians and mis-designed education system that ultimately the ‘truth’ and ‘right’ will prevail. This is not going to happen. The times have changed. In today’s world full of imperialist west and jihadi middle-east only force and ruthless vengeance can save a country like India. Take Israel’s example. This is a wake up call to all hindus. This is a last chance to decide our own fate.

We want back our land Pakistan and flush away the occupiers to middle east. We will break the back, nose, limbs and head of anyone who dares to hurt us.

We will face resistance by idiot pseudo-secular hindus like Mulayam Singh (represents selfish politicians) Arundhati Roy (represents overrated but useless arty-farties) and, Amartya Sen (represents tired outdated intellectuals with western influence lacking respect for Indus heritage). We will have to ignore them since they have been blinded by the ‘love’ of muslim brotherhood and so called past 600 year multi-cultural history. What they have forgotten is that the hindus were totally humiliated, raped, looted, enslaved, chopped and exploited during these times. We don’t care about them. Our history shows some of our own people joined hands with outsiders and caused debacle of our nation on countless occasions. If time comes we will have to ‘deal’ with such traitors as well. Traitors in all parts of world are hanged except in India where they become ministers, join Left or become foreign spies in police, RAW and Media. What a shame!

We do not represent RSS, BJP or hindu fundamentalists. We have no political ambitions. We do not want and need any positions-of-power and fame. We will operate independently and only in favour of Hindu heritage, its preservation and its expansion.

We need hindus of all castes and colors from all walks of life.

Do you want to join Indus? We need you.

 
At 11:22 PM, Blogger s c r a p s s t u f f s said...

Man, how I miss dahi missal and vada pao. Can't even get a decent vada pao that doesn't cost the earth here!

About lack of warning, they are getting smarter you know!

And expecting Uncle to know everything that's happening in Pakistan is laughable :-D

I mean seriously, people in GoI believe that?

 
At 8:35 AM, Blogger maverick said...

Hi SSJ,

I don't want to join anything.

I am a strictly non-violent gandhian mostly-vegetarian fruit juice drinking satyagrahi.

Yesterday my wife told me, I should drink more karela juice and less orange juice. She has diabetes and I have to drink karela juice. You see - even here we live in tyranny.

In my spare time I type some of my thoughts on a computer and occasionally I visit a friend who tells me something about current events.

What seem like alphabets in a soup to you are actually very familiar to me. They are my friends and my friends' friends. How could I possibly turn my back on a friend or even the friend of a friend?

Namakh haraamon mey hamari ginti kateh nahi ho sakti. Jis thali mey khaate hain.. us mey thooka nahi karte.

The "Indus" miyan ... sarhad key us paar hain.

Bhatta,

I had heard about this. The "gujuratis" part is some complicated shakedown funda. They have been keen to shake down the Gujus for a while now. Did you know that atleast two major industrial houses in pakistan opnely trace their roots to Gujurat? they are Memons of some kind.

Scrapsstuffs,

At some level trust is given. Now with hindsight it seems like this should not have been done.

 
At 10:21 AM, Blogger maverick said...

Nitin,

I feel that is precisely what my friend who reads a lot of newspapers was pointing out.

Newspaper coverage is heavily slanted towards making this seem like something brought about by

1) India's mistreatment of Muslim minorities and/or

2) India's problems with Pakistan over Kashmir

The news coverage in the west is being slanted deliberately to make this seem like India's own fault. And all the Indian media houses seem to be keen to play along with this.

Look at NDTV's headlines - sensationalist does not begin to describe it. When did we ever say that "talks were off" - that is NDTV spin! - all we said was "Pakistan has to deal with terrorists on its soil".

Look at the spin that Indian express is putting on Antulay and Arjun Singh's statements. Both simply said "make sure more innocents are not hurt" - a perfectly sensible stance - whatever our response to these events is - it cannot produce more terrorists. If we do that we end up in the mess that the Israelis ended up in after those post-Munich witch hunts! Antulay and Arjun are voices of sanity and the way that Shishir Gupta is representing their views - they sound like they are sheilding criminals. The public is too angry too see the difference - the media mafia is deliberately provoking that sentiment.

The only point where I disagree with
my friend who reads newspapers is the management policy. A more intricate approach is needed in dealing with the newsmedia penetration.

I am saying it publicly now - the scoop-hungry news media have to be reined in soon otherwise the problem will worsen.

 
At 5:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi mavericks,
the situation is far more complicated that what i thought. Any way.
1)Indian moslems are our friends. Some of the reactions of the Indian muslims have been like this
a) They hate the moslem clergy.some of them consider the clergy as algae in the pond.
b) Hence i disagree with SSJ has said.SSJ should in fact delete his posts.There are mad men in both community.

2)It is good that I switched off the T.V after the blasts.Never realized that I Indian media has been penetrated so much!!

3)I am fully confident of RAW & IB capabilities. Sometimes I feel that given the reach and power of GOI, GOI delibrately allows this terrorism to sustain in a controlled manner.When the redlines are crossed Kaluchak,Parliament ... then only things get hot. It may be my feeling who knows.

4) last question why did this happen?

P.S hi maverick you know me well.Just it is convenient enough to post as "anonymous".Avoid the trouble of logging in again.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home