Saturday, December 06, 2008

The Game Changer

A good article by Christopher Kremmer calls Pakistan the "sovereign equivalent of a suicide bomber"

6 comments:

Ghost Writer said...

nothing new in that phrase - our own KPS Gill has been saying that for years
Is it just me - or does everyone feel that the coverage of this attack is overblown now only because the 'rich and famous' are under attack? We had more people die in the commuter train bombings in Mumbai. even now - the majority focus has been on the hotels when by some accounts more people died at the CST (VT?) station. i guess all the media folk wake up when 'people like us' face the meat grinder eh-? the dispossessed are never to be bothered with

Karmasura said...

Agreed Ghost Writer.. indeed it is because those places which are supposed to be one of the most secure in the nation have been attacked that this has gotten so much attention. Perhaps the only case which has got more attention than this was the attack on the Parliament, which should have been even more secure.

I sincerely hope that the last straw has been drawn.

Harish said...

Absolutely..people like "us" also includes white tourists from far away lands, "secular" minded officials, the rich and the famous.

Well the dispossesed in India generally are Hindus who dont have any rights...Do they?

Anonymous said...

You said it Ghost -It seems little like the 9/11 of Islamists.

Here is the dark side of myself out in open :-

While I prayed for the well being of hostages in taj, the possibility of a times of India editor trapped inside there crossed me several times. That would change a lot, times of India would never dismiss contemptuously when hindus are massacred. Finally there was a TOI editor there, but she was a food editor, not an anglicized political apologist. The French award winner f***** Ba**** editor of TOI wrote a condolence piece on her, they have turned against the terrorists [ I deplore the untimely cruel end of yet another person , absolutely no pleasure out of that, the pleasure is the news media going against terrorists without confusion of freedom fighters ].

They are scared. People like the big people suffered this time. Deepak Chopra wants more action from pakisthan, not withstanding rant against hindu fundamentalists I skipped reading Amitabh Ghosh in NY times, he may be wanting action against terrorists - suffering and misguided Lakshars.

Anonymous said...

About my prev post : That was not to trivialize any horror. Couple of years back, my clients would have offered me to stay in Taj, or I wouldn;t have surprised myself if put my family there. It is not about class warfare, it was about the insensitivity that finds suicide when when Sabarmati was fire bombed.

san said...

Guys, I agree with what you have to say. I was looking again at this video of some policemen courageously taking on the terrorists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FcBUCO9jc8

I was proud of what they did, but I felt ugly inside too. As I listened to the newscaster's voice, I felt like I was listening to uppercrust people watching their servants play cricket for them.

Our policemen are from lower socio-economic backgrounds than the chattering classes. This is certainly reflected in the poor quality of equipment they have, and the poor quality of the system they're forced to function within, whether it be the absence of more potent laws, lack of better anti-terror infrastructure, or wider policymaking that has brought us into this mess.

When it comes to the obvious socio-economic divide in the country, our policemen are definitely on the lower side of it. Our chattering classes could never be bothered to consider the challenges of national security in earnest. This is why they've continued support for appeasement policies, and even turned a blind eye as Pakistan went nuclear in the first place.

This is why we need Modi, because he's a self-made success who's come up from the bottom, and he has more claim to greatness than any of us. Modi can uplift India, and our chattering classes can be damned. I hope he's kept safe from harm, even as it's obvious that the terrorists are stalking him. Ironically, an attack on Modi wouldn't benefit Al-Qaeda, since it certainly wouldn't prompt any Congress-led govt to go to war.