Tag: Mumbai

Nov 05 2010

Obama Visits Mumbai

I’ll take a break from lambasting President Obama to salute the fact that he’s visiting India and, in particular, my (thus far) favorite Indian city (of the very large type), Mumbai.

Over at my own, just-for-fun blog, LetsJapan.Wordpress.Com, I’ve posted a new front page piece titled “Obama Visits Mumbai,” in particular some photos, micro-vids and reminiscences from Mumbai.  I will be updating and adding to this piece — more history, more photos, more personal stories — over the next 24 hours, so I hope you’ll visit and come back several times over the next day or two.

 

  A Mu photo:  Mumbai’s Financial District, February 2007.

.

Excerpt:

Mumbai — formerly “Bombay” — is an energetic, crowded, verdant, upbeat (and sometimes odiferous)  city.  Mumbai offers its residents and visitors both modern restaurants and side street food kiosks, lingering colonial trappings and 21st Century Indian pride, bustling intersections and quiet parks, Hindu Temples, Mosques, Churches and Parsi Agiaries (fire temples for the now-dwindling population of Zoroastrians).  Situated on the Southwest coast of India, looking out on the Arabian Sea, it’s home to almost 14 million people.  Since 2006 I’ve been fortunate to have visited Mumbai four times, though I haven’t been there since 2008.  I’ve stayed at the Taj Mahal hotel.  It was built in 1903 and is the crown jewel of the extremely unique architectural style known as “Bombay Gothic,” a mixture of late-Victorian, early Edwardian, Rajastani forms, and even some Hindu Temple cues.  One story, perhaps apocryphal, goes that its builder, Jamsetji Tata, was denied entrance into “whites only” British hotels of the day, so he just up and decided to build his own, a more beautiful and luxurious “palace” than any in old Bombay….

.

 Again, updates and additions to come over the next 24 hours.

 Have you visited Mumbai, yet?  Have you visited India?  What are your impressions, but from a personal or “macro” perspective?  I’d love to read about that here.

.

 

Oct 16 2010

Three years before: Mumbai Attack!!

Whoops looks like another point of total incompetence, or more likely a want that it was true so their wars and hate rhetoric could continue, by the cheney and his puppet’s administration!! All the better for them if Americans were killed, and they were!!

Destroying the National security more, reaping the war blood wealth for themselves and their tight knit group of extreme hawks!

FBI Was Warned Years in Advance of Mumbai Attacker’s Terror Ties

Dec 08 2008

Connecting the Dots on the Mumbai Attacks

Excerpt from an article by the managing editor at the The Environmentalist:

There has been a great deal of reporting, speculation, finger pointing and denials on the Mumbai attacks, much of which has focused on trees (dots) instead of forests. After reading with empathy and horror of the death and destruction, the question remained, who was behind this and why?

snip

The press has been referring to the Mumbai attacks as India’s 9/11. Given the impact on India and the larger impact on both the global economy and the ongoing conflicts in South Asia, that seems an accurate assessment.

http://world.the-environmental…

The article lists the different players involved and identifies, by name, the likeliest suspects.  

Here’s the link.

Dec 02 2008

Schneier on the media information clampdown around Mumbai

This fear is exactly backwards. During a terrorist attack — during any crisis situation, actually — the one thing people can do is exchange information. It helps people, calms people, and actually reduces the thing the terrorists are trying to achieve: terror. Yes, there are specific movie-plot scenarios where certain public pronouncements might help the terrorists, but those are rare. I would much rather err on the side of more information, more openness, and more communication.

He gets it.

I was going to post a reply to his previous blog on the subject that said the same thing, but then – especially having realized that he wasn’t buying the Associated Press bullshit erm, disinformation piece which claimed there were “only 10 terrorists” either – I realized that 1) I was preaching to the choir and 2) he’d probably find a way to say the exact same thing I wanted to, and say it better. He did.

My 20 year career in IT has revolved around the use of technology to ensure that people can communicate, especially in a time of crisis. I’ve lived through two such crises in which there was a major disruption of communications: the Flugtag/Ramstein Air Show disaster of 1988, and the attacks on the WTC. I’ve provided mission critical IT support during the first Gulf War. What I’ve learned from these experiences is that it’s far better to have a well-informed citizenry who are on your side, untrained civilians though they might be, than to worry about giving away information to a small number of enemies. Our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people. In such a crisis I, for one, would never hesitate to give any civilian – perhaps a fellow citizen soldier – the best possible fighting chance, even if their only desire was to get away unharmed.

So yes, as clinical as I might sound, there actually is a shred or two of compassion in there. Indeed, I find the willingness of the media to outright lie to the folks who need them the most to be one of the foulest manifestations of the lack of compassion displayed by the mindless and yes, heartless servants of the military/industrial complex.

Schneier seldom, if ever, disappoints. I really hope the coming administration will take his advice seriously.

Fifty days until sanity…