Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Bombay is Burning




















By now, everyone must have heard about the widespread attacks in Mumbai. I was getting a haircut when the news came over CNN.

Besides shock, besides having already been stirred up by a nightmare, there is sympathy.

Early on, it looks like the low-tech but well-coordinated, under-the-radar, attackers shot and killed Hemant Karkare, Mumbai's top anti-terror officer, and his lieutenants. This would seem to have been planned as a way to prevent a quick response by the Indian government, and to promote maximum chaos worldwide.

Much more will be revealed.

Today's Rune: Movement.

5 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

It definitely looked well coordinated. It'll be interesting to see what happens as we approach Obama's inaguration.

the walking man said...

Did you move your head in the wrong way? Did the barber nick you or screw up your do? If not...then tell me how the news of this latest act of evil directly affects the portion of earth you and I live on. Is not the backyard full enough of things to be concerned with?

Mumbai does nothing to decrease or increase the vigilance I have for all evil and seeing as their is nothing in finite reality that I can do to affect the outcome of this once again ill considered action, ergo I will keep abreast but allow it no place to create discord. I will stay out of the barber's chair awhile longer.

Distributorcap said...

the past 5 years of "response" to terrorism has been a miserable failure........

i wonder how obama will handle this sort of thing

lulu said...

I had dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel when I was in Mumbai last fall, I also had drinks at Cafe Leopold that same night. My best friend here, Tracy, was in Mumbai at a training session for the IB just last week and was also in both of those spots.

I have friends who teach at the American school there as well. It's terrifying.

Johnny Yen said...

The selection of Mumbai was very deliberate-- it's a place of tolerance. My guess is that one of the intentions of the guys who did this was to drive a spike between the different peoples who co-mingle there. I hope they don't succeed.

The killing of the head of the anti-terror commando unit was certainly delliberate. On the other hand, the fact that on 9/11, the communications center for dealing with exactly that kind of event was in the World Trade Center was pure dumb luck. Well, except for "America's Next President" Rudy Guliani overruling everybody who told him that putting the disaster command center in the one place terrorists had already struck, and had promised to strike again, was a bad idea.