Saturday, July 09, 2005

Fwd: Different strokes for different folks

jul 8th
 
when white countries are attacked, it is 'terror'. when india is attacked, it is 'alleged militants allegedly attacked', and of course the militants are justified because of something somewhere that hurt their tender sentiments. but when 'terrorists' attack white countries, the justifications based on hurt sentiments (and indeed genocide as in the deaths of 500,000 iraqi children due to harsh sanctions) are never mentioned.
 
can we say double standards, boys and girls?
 
this is teesta setalvadism on a global scale. part of it is racism, pure and simple: a white life is worth 50 indian lives. this is because indians dont yell and scream enough, we just take our lumps and keep quiet. this is why making noise on wikipedia and wikinews and so forth can be highly useful. there is value to emphatic repeated assertion. (remember the one-man ngo that is making life miserable for coca-cola.). let us become wikipedia contributors in a big way.
 
part of it is that the media is just plain scared of muslims. they are afraid muslims will attack them if they say anything against them.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arvind Kumar <narvind@lycos.com>
Date: Jul 8, 2005 12:14 PM
Subject: Different strokes for different folks

BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4659093.stm
London rocked by terror attacks

Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,1029393,00.html
45 killed in Bombay bomb blasts

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,15935,1523933,00.html
Four bombs in 50 minutes - Britain suffers its worst-ever terror attack

Compare the following sttaements from the Guardian reports.

Ob the Bombay blasts -
There was no immediate claim of responsibility last night - but suspicion is likely to fall on Islamist extremists, possibly taking revenge for last year's communal riots in the neighbouring state of Gujarat, where 2,000 Muslims died.

On the London blasts -
At least 38 people were killed yesterday and more than 700 injured as terrorists struck at the heart of London, causing the biggest loss of life in a terrorist attack on mainland Britain.

Reuters:
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-07T170056Z_01_N07318127_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-BRITAIN1-DC.XML
Four blasts tore through packed trains and a bus during London rush hour on Thursday, killing over 33 people and disrupting a summit of world leaders in Scotland in the deadliest PEACETIME ATTACK on the capital.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13330948_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-42-DEAD-IN-BOMBAY-BOMB-ATTACKS-name_page.html
The 1993 bombings followed Hindu-Muslim riots triggered by the destruction by Hindu zealots of a 16th century mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. Hindu hardliners say the mosque was built on the site of a Hindu temple.

Since then, Ayodhya has been a lightning rod for tensions.

CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/south/09/22/india.muslims/
Alienation of Mumbai Muslims

Since last December a series of explosions has rocked the city, with bombs placed in public transport vehicles: on buses, trains, taxis.

The most deadly were in August, when near simultaneous taxi bombs exploded in two places, killing 53 people.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/golf/07/07/british.open.terror.ap/
British Open will not be affected by terror attacks

NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/08/business/worldbusiness/08exchange.html
The London Stock Exchange proved resilient Thursday, remaining open after four terrorist attacks hit London, though the market closed lower after setting a trading volume record.

From Amy Waldman's report on the Bombay blasts -

The Bombay police commissioner, R.S. Sharma, said Monday night that law enforcement authorities suspected that so-called jihadi groups were also responsible for Monday's blasts, although he offered no specific evidence for that assertion.

But many of the jewelers in the area are originally from the state of Gujarat, prompting immediate speculation... that the blast was in retaliation for communal riots there last year that left 1,000 Muslims dead.
---

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6 comments:

ecophilo said...

With our own ISI (Indian (p)seudosecular Intellectuals) feeding the global press, what else can we expect.

Anonymous said...

My reactions to the news reports on the London blasts were EXCACTLY those of Rajeev! It's amazing how much the US and UK media are talking and analyzing the blasts, when something like this happens with such regularity in India. And yes, the coverage is definitely quite racist. The attacks on India are very rarely "terror attacks," if at all they are reported.

nizhal yoddha said...

most LTTE leaders are christians actually. velupillai prabhakaran is a methodist. the 'affluent hindus' supporting the LTTE could be getting blackmailed by them.

and what is this afrodravidian business? dravidian itself is an absurd concept. it is highly likely that the indus-sarasvati civilization was the indigenous civilization of this land and any such distinctions are mostly useful for conversion purposes. it was one bishop caldwell who came up with the 'dravidian' concept, naturally.

and anyway everybody came from africa (according to oppenheimer's interesting theory, africans came to india, went east to s.e. asia; after a major volcanic eruption, indians actually died out and the land was repopulated from south east asia and then they (we!) started walking westwards and populating europe, so europeans are actually african-indian-southeast-asian-indian-derived: see an earlier link in this blog), so why pick on some bizarre theory that 'dravidians' are akin to egyptians or ethiopians or something. it is true, though, that a somali or ethiopian would not look out of place in, say, kerala. in fact somali warlord whatever his name was has a wife from kerala! but it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that physical characteristics are no indicator of 'race': many 'whites' in africa and america have lots of 'black' genes and vice versa (of course the vice versa is not surprising because of the thomas jefferson effect for instance, that we discussed earlier: black women becoming white 'by injection' :-) ).

Anonymous said...

Interesting tone from Tavleen - is it becoz her kid lives in London ?

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=74160

Anonymous said...

In Sri Lanka, leaders on both sides are Christians. The law against Tamils that sparked the conflict came from a Christian named Solomon Bandarnaike. The flames were fanned by another Christian, Junius Jayawardane.

The only leader who tried for peace was not a Christian (Premadasa) and he was killed.

It requires the Abrahamic thought process of 'otherising' people to pass discriminatory laws. That is why you usually see the western ideas turning violent.

LTTE also has links to Marxist-Leninists (another offshoot of Abrahamic thinking).

Think over this: the leaders who have been killed on both sides of the conflict are non-Christians - Amrithalingam, Padmanabhan, "Kittu", Premadasa etc. OTOH, Christians like Anton Balasingham, Jayawardane survived the bloodiest days of conflict. That itself seems suspicious.

Right from the time the British left SL, it has been led by a Christian except for a brief interlude from the time Premadasa was the president until the Bandarnaike family grabbed power again (I'm lumping SOLOMON Bandarnaike's wife and daughter among the Christians).

iamfordemocracy said...

I heard Tony Blair's speech in commons yesterday (11th) carefully. He mentioned 15 countries where bomb blasts took place. India didn't figure in the list!!