Indian Terror Attack

Seven timed blasts hit railway carriages and platforms within 20 minutes during Mumbai's evening rush hour, crippling the city's transport system. The biggest blast took place in Bandra, a suburb with a big Muslim community.

Pakistani officials, including President Pervez Musharraf, have condemned the attack. At least 170 dead, many hundreds more injured; the attacks today

came within hours of a wave of explosions in Srinigar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, where a series of grenade attacks killed eight people and wounded more than two dozen. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings….

The Financial Times story, quoted above.

Reason's June account of the culture those monsters were attacking today: Shikha Dalmia's reporting on what Detroit could profitably learn from Bangalore.

Comments

[crimethink]

It's been a rough couple of days for South/Central Asia... the plane crashes in Irkutsk and Kashmir, and now this stuff.

[Herrick and His Balls]

Kashmir should be an independent nation. Anyone who denies this should have something hot shoved up their ass.

Sadly, I am not denying this.

[TF]

I just did a spit-take on my screen.

[snooty logic professor]

Ah, but the inverse of a proposition does not necessarily have the same truth value as the original proposition. Thus, the proposition

if someone denies that Kashmir should be independent, then they should have something hot shoved up their ass

does not necessarily imply that

if someone does not deny that Kashmir should be independent, then they should not have something hot shoved up their ass.

So by all means, commence with the sticking.

[gaijin]

I was actually thinking that perhaps this was another fundamentalist attack designed to undermine global trade...given India's role as a supplier of human capital for the western economic system...

I guess when the usual Kashmiri bomber suspects take credit we'll know for sure.

[Body/Mind]

You can't stop the bodies that do this. You can only influence the minds to stop the bodies that do this.

[snooty logic professor]

Ah, a dualist! Can I be your second?

[Deus ex Machina]

In another transit related tragedy, a woman was killed by falling concrete from Boston's craptacular Big Dig (the $14.6 billion gift that keeps on giving).

Coupled with the recent subway accident in Spain and today's fire in the Chicago metro, I'd advise staying at home for the next few days.

[Deus ex Machina]

Oh, and I should add that my cousin, a former Boston resident, was nearly hit herself by several falling chunks of ice from one of the Dig's new bridges. Who did they hire to build that monstrosity? The firm that built new Orleans' levees or just mob affiliated front companies?

[tarran]

Our masters in Boston are demanding to take over control of the Turnpike Authority because they are unhappy with their safety record.

Of course, given the sorry state of the streets I biked on this morning, it is possible that what the officials mean is that there aren't enough potholes and cracked concrete in the tunnels rather than there are too many.

If there is a way to make it worse, I'm sure they will be able to find it.

[Dave]

I sure do love religion.

[R C Dean]

I'm not tracking. Could someone explain how the attacks in India are the fault of the US?

You can't stop the bodies that do this. You can only influence the minds to stop the bodies that do this.

But until their minds are influenced (if ever; try talking sense to a fanatic) you have to stop their bodies.

[PolPot]

"I sure do love religion."

That's right, if everyone were atheists like me we wouldn't have any of this kind of violence.

[tarran]

Pol,

Some forms of atheism do constitute religion. There is a difference between categorically saying there is no God and saying I do't know if there are gods or not.

Although, I think that religion is not the problem. Rather it is the desire to impose a set of beliefs on others without their consent which is the problem.

For example, I have Christian Fundamentalist friend who has some very strange laws he lives under. Since he does not force me to live under those laws, we get along just fine. If I tried to make him work on his sabbath at gunpoint, or he to make me rest on that day, we'd have a problem.

[PolPot]

After all it was clearly my lack of belief in supernatural entities that informed the Cambodian genocide....

[Bombadil]

Pol, have you suffered anmesia in the afterlife? Don't you recall that you were a former Buddhist monk? And, from what I understand and have seen, Southeast Asian Buddhism is not Zen. It also tends to incorporate animism. You were saying?

[bombadil]

'amnesia'. Guess I have a case of dyslexia or spoonerista.

[John]

Terran,

If people don't believe in God, they will beleive in anything. For whatever reason, human beings are not cut out to live happy peaceful meaningless nihlistic lives. If they don't beleive in God, they still look for meaning elswhere. Sometimes it is through peaceful pursuits but other times and indeed many times it is through the embrace of utopianism. Whether it be worshiping the state through communism, the race through facsism, the earth through environmentalism, or themselves through hedonism, somehow they always end up worshiping something and some of them end up being violent over it. Eliminating religion won't make the world anymore peaceful.

[thoreau]

Bombadil, I have a question for you about religion:

Are you one of the Valar or Maiar? Or are you a separate creation of Iluvatar?

Or maybe you're Iluvatar Himself?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[saag murgh]

I know it's nitpicky to argue with quoted text, but I wouldn't characterize Bandra as a Muslim suburb. Of course there are Muslims there, but I wouldn't read it as either an assault on Muslims OR evidence that Islamic militants are behind the attacks. Bandra is an upscale suburb popular with expatriates (it's especially popular with finance workers) and the odd Bollywood star. If anything, it's a big ol' f you to them, though there's no chance in hell that they'd ever be caught dead on the train.

No pun intended.

[mk]

Between the war and the depressingly regular bombings in the middle east, Britain, Indonesia and just about everywhere else, I'm really starting to become desensitized to this kind of thing. It was a despicable, grotesque act and the people who perpetrated it should be hung up by their genitalia. But it seems to me that there was a definite lack of rage/empathy surrounding this.

Note to terrorists - You've already flooded the market with your cowardly attacks. You have been relegated to the bargain bin.

[John]

MK,

Good point. I suspect that at some point terrorism, at least on this scale, will run its course because people will just get used to it and stop paying attention and it will thus cease to terrorize or accomplish any political goal. In the 1980s terrorists used to take hostages and highjack planes until it had happened enough that people just stopped paying attention.

[Bombadil]

Thoreau,
I'm one of the heretofore unknown, dyslexic, irony-challenged heads of Aslan (before the resurrection and the merging of Middle Earth to Narnia).

[Bombadil]

uh, I meant 'after' (eyes shifting side to side) 'after' the resurrection...it's tough being an aspect sometimes.