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Attacks on Mumbai
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| Magnetonium |
I thought I was blind, but I couldn't find a thread on this here :eek:
Anyways, aside from the common knowledge on the events, and the obvious Indian intelligence and police failure - like seriously, how could 10 gunmen easily shoot 400 people, terrorizing the city and almost take the whole Mumbai hostage?
Kinda got confused by the following article. Its obvious that whoever did this didnt want relations between India and Pakistan to get better. Almost like Israel-Palestinian conflict. There are nationalists on both sides in this case. And the Taliban-like groups (I prefer not to use the Al-Qaeda term).
Anyways, check this article out - who knows, this could be closer to the truth ...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...ernational/home
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Mumbai and Manhattan share quite a few characteristics. They're both on long, narrow peninsulas, with the wealthy parts at the bottom and slummier sections extending to the north and east, and both are deeply multi-ethnic cities – economic, industrial and cultural magnets that define their entire continents. They're also exciting, expensive and exasperating places to live. And they're both targets of terrorism.
So it's tempting to describe this week's outrages as “the Sept. 11 of India.” The narrative is hard to resist: A surprisingly well-organized group of mysterious Islamic terrorists launches a fiery attack on symbolically important buildings at the city's southern tip – an attack apparently aimed at foreigners, Jewish people and the business elite, in the full view of the media. A city's innocence is traduced. There's a collective struggle to restore normality and repel the invaders. It's portrayed as a clash of civilizations.
Let me suggest that you ignore this narrative. To follow this storyline, to see these events as civilizational warfare, is to misconstrue the nature of India and, importantly, the nature of the whole world to a dangerous degree.
India does have a problem with terrorism and extremism, one that threatens to destabilize the amazing humanitarian and economic progress it has made in recent years. But it isn't one of Islamic extremists trying to take over the state. Quite the contrary.
The most prominent Indian killed in the terrorist attacks on Wednesday was Harmant Karkare, the head of Mumbai's anti-terrorism squad, who was assassinated in the city's central train station along with several of his deputies.
The day before, he had received a death threat. That didn't surprise him, he told reporters, as it came just days after he had filed charges against 10 men in India's recent major terrorist attack, the Sept. 29 bombings in the city of Malegaon that killed nine and injured 80.
The accused are Hindu nationalist activists, young women and men associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Mr. Karkare also linked BJP-tied Hindus with the much deadlier bomb attacks in Malegaon two years ago, which killed 37 and injured 125 and had been blamed by local police on Muslim groups – an odd accusation, since the targets in both attacks were mosques.
EPIDEMIC OF TERRORISM
These were not lone attacks. In the past decade, India has seen an epidemic of Hindu terrorism that reached its nadir – I hope – in 2002, when almost 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered in the state of Gujarat. That massacre, like so many others, had been whipped up by Hindu-nationalist parties, in response to an earlier, smaller instance of Muslim violence.
There are certainly extremists from both religions. But there's a difference: One side has formed a government and is trying to do so again. It already controls Mumbai and is close to gaining power in much of the rest of the country.
The BJP ruled India from 1998 to 2004, and its politics are those of racial nationalism – it was born of Hindutva movements that get their ideas directly from German national socialism.
That's right: The movement that has overtaken and politicized sections of this traditionally peaceful religion believes India should be an “Aryan” nation, and, in the same confusion of linguistic and racial identities that made Adolf Hitler's movement possible, it believes that only Hindus (and sometimes only Hindus from the central state of Maharashtra) are legitimate citizens.
In a few weeks, much of India will go to the polls in state elections, and the BJP stands to gain power in as many as four of the states. The party's new prime ministerial candidate is Lal Krishna Advani, a far-right activist who in the 1990s provoked a mob to demolish a 400-year-old mosque, leading to riots that killed thousands.
The BJP was not happy with Mr. Karkare's investigations. Rajnath Singh, the BJP president, denounced him on Nov. 10, exonerating anything done by a Hindu extremist: “Whosoever believes in nationalism cannot be a terrorist.” On Internet discussion forums after Mr. Karkare's death, numerous activists argued that he got what he deserved.
Mumbai is at the centre of this foment. The city is ruled by the Shiv Sena (Army of Shiva), a more militant and grassroots-oriented branch of the same extreme-right Hindutva movement.
Shiv Sena gained power after the 1993 riots in which mobs of Hindus killed countless Muslims in response to bombings, destroying the unity and cosmopolitanism that once defined the city: Before 1993, Hindus and Muslims generally shared neighbourhoods. Since that horror, they have generally lived apart.
NOT THE FULL STORY
From this, you may believe that India has been overtaken by sectarian divisions and religious polarization. That also would be wrong.
This is, after all, a country whose people, 80 per cent of whom are Hindu, have overwhelmingly elected a government with a Prime Minister who is Sikh, a President who is Muslim and a governing party led by a Roman Catholic woman.
Most Hindus have no interest in the politics of religious nationalism. And most of India's 150 million Muslims have nothing to do with Islamic politics – they're the Muslims who rejected Pakistan, an Islamic state, during the Partition of 1947.
This week's attacks may have originated in Pakistan, as the Indian government has claimed; whatever the case, it will probably draw reprisals against Indian Muslims from Hindu nationalist figures, who insist on seeing their mosque-attending neighbours as Pakistan loyalists and descendents of invaders (both claims are fictional).
U.S. thinker Martha Nussbaum, in a superb analysis, has described the current Indian situation as not a clash of “civilizations” but another consequence of the “clash within.”
It is, she says, a multisided confrontation “between people who are prepared to live with others who are different, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity, achieved through the domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition.”
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| Magnetonium |
the Chill Out Forum. I dont go there. |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by ********
So what is your word on this?
What exactly happened? What does it mean, what will it mean?
What do you think Rice is chatting over there for? |
I think that Hindu nationalists played a part in this, as now this morning I read in the media that the alleged surviving attacker is not from the village in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir as claimed; in fact those villagers say he looks nothing like them and dont know him.
Who gives a rats ass what Rice is there for? She's an idiot. Trying to look busy. Telling Indian government that Americans didnt have any involvement in the attacks. Telling India that they have USA's support on this. She's always in places of importance to US interests where hits the fan. Like in Georgia couple months ago after the South Ossetian conflict.
EDIT: This is not the first "terrorist" attack within Indian borders, and even within Mumbai, and previously Hindu nationalists were behind the attacks in many instances (not all though, there's also Islamic insurgency in the north-east). One can only wonder ... |
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| DJ Damerchi |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
I think that Hindu nationalists played a part in this, as now this morning I read in the media that the alleged surviving attacker is not from the village in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir as claimed; in fact those villagers say he looks nothing like them and dont know him.
Who gives a rats ass what Rice is there for? She's an idiot. Trying to look busy. Telling Indian government that Americans didnt have any involvement in the attacks. Telling India that they have USA's support on this. She's always in places of importance to US interests where hits the fan. Like in Georgia couple months ago after the South Ossetian conflict.
EDIT: This is not the first "terrorist" attack within Indian borders, and even within Mumbai, and previously Hindu nationalists were behind the attacks in many instances (not all though, there's also Islamic insurgency in the north-east). One can only wonder ... |
whoah so u think its a conspiracy to a certain degree? I know that recently there has been a surge in Hindu nationalism, i attended a rally last year it was pretty ed(just happened to be there in the capital city of goa at the time)
but i cant bring myself to believe that the certain factions of these Hindu Nationalist parties would play some role in this, at the expense of so many of their own.
Im thinking the surviving terrorist was giving perhaps falsifying his background so they cant further the investigation into the depths of the organization
this is all really sad, i was there just last year, smoked a nice J by the gateway of india. I wasnt staying in the taj and oberoi, just some -* hole |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Damerchi
whoah so u think its a conspiracy to a certain degree? I know that recently there has been a surge in Hindu nationalism, i attended a rally last year it was pretty ed(just happened to be there in the capital city of goa at the time)
but i cant bring myself to believe that the certain factions of these Hindu Nationalist parties would play some role in this, at the expense of so many of their own.
Im thinking the surviving terrorist was giving perhaps falsifying his background so they cant further the investigation into the depths of the organization
this is all really sad, i was there just last year, smoked a nice J by the gateway of india. I wasnt staying in the taj and oberoi, just some -* hole |
I think that it was either Islamic radicals or Hindu nationalists. Of course all signs point to Islamic radicals from Pakistan. I am leaning towards that, but I am keeping my doubts.
Its too complicated at this point, hopefully someone else can shed some more information for us ... |
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| DJ Shibby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
I think that Hindu nationalists played a part in this, as now this morning I read in the media that the alleged surviving attacker is not from the village in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir as claimed; in fact those villagers say he looks nothing like them and dont know him.
Who gives a rats ass what Rice is there for? She's an idiot. Trying to look busy. Telling Indian government that Americans didnt have any involvement in the attacks. Telling India that they have USA's support on this. She's always in places of importance to US interests where hits the fan. Like in Georgia couple months ago after the South Ossetian conflict.
EDIT: This is not the first "terrorist" attack within Indian borders, and even within Mumbai, and previously Hindu nationalists were behind the attacks in many instances (not all though, there's also Islamic insurgency in the north-east). One can only wonder ... |
The Hindu religion is one of the more spiritual, earthly religions, and as such it comes with a certain appreciation for life, similar to Buddhism in that they're very progressive in their metaphysical atunements to the question of origin and whatnot. That's not to say all organized religions don't have their crazy factions, but I don't really see why you'd think Hindu Nationalists played any role in this?
If anything I'd default to Muslim or governmental secret service interaction... but that's just by default, I wouldn't believe a damn thing til I got more information.
One pseudo-on topic question I think we have to ourselves as well is what role gun control, or lack thereof, could have contributed to preventing the extensive number of people killed.
If anyone could buy a gun, would more people have died, or less? What's the social ramifications of freely having guns in a given geographical locale?
I'd guess more people would die yearly, but there would be less shocking media items arising, like the Mumbai attack. |
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| DJ Shibby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
I think that it was either Islamic radicals or Hindu nationalists. Of course all signs point to Islamic radicals from Pakistan. I am leaning towards that, but I am keeping my doubts.
Its too complicated at this point, hopefully someone else can shed some more information for us ... |
You missed the most distressing and dangerous "group" though... and that is no group.
What if it was ten guys who got together, for religious superficial reasons, political beliefs, whatever... maybe they were ex military and naturally a little whacky in the head.
Scary thought, huh? :) |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Damerchi
but i cant bring myself to believe that the certain factions of these Hindu Nationalist parties would play some role in this, at the expense of so many of their own.
Im thinking the surviving terrorist was giving perhaps falsifying his background so they cant further the investigation into the depths of the organization |
nice to see some common sense in here. |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Shibby
You missed the most distressing and dangerous "group" though... and that is no group.
What if it was ten guys who got together, for religious superficial reasons, political beliefs, whatever... maybe they were ex military and naturally a little whacky in the head.
Scary thought, huh? :) |
OK, so I read more into this story, and the evidence present in the media is so overwhelming that the attackers were brainwashed/trained in Pakistan controlled territory to carry out this attack.
One thing that I am still scratching my head about is - how the hell is it even humanly possible for a group of 10 people to attack and overwhelm half a dozen dozen sites spread out over a considerable area in southern Mumbai?
I asked couple Indian friends of mine (one of them had family in Mumbai and they got lucky) and they share the same sentiment. They think that because Mumbai is so huge, and the scope of the attack, there were other people involved who have gotten away, who simply dissipated into the night. After all, these attackers looked like they could have been anyone, even Hindu. They spoke clean Hindu when interrogating hostages and at sites.
The Mumbai friend of mine also added that there were attacks against the rich and foreigners in Mumbai before, though nothing like this. Mostly bombings.
Also good to note that there is a huge Muslim population in Mumbai, mostly in the central and northern (slums) part of the city, and the surroundings. There are the Muslims that mainly rejected Pakistani state at the time of partition.
I really respect the Muslim Indians decision in this matter, who clearly spoke out against the attacks. Their representatives denounced the attackers and said that Indian land is too sacred/holy to bury these terrorists, and they should be buried where they came from, assumably outside of India.
It turns out that some if not many of the Indian Muslims actually love India and are proud of living there. Despite the sometime tense relations between the two main religious groups. Kinda fascinating. And whats even more interesting, these people dont have much love or support for Pakistan. |
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