‘Falling Down: Bombay’
A powerful rant by Delhi adman Suhel Seth, whom Taj staff texted not to return after the shooting started. He says (paraphrased), ‘We don’t have men, we have wimps running this country. You can’t have 20 people hold 1.1 billion for ransom.’ At 1:20 (thanks, AK):
More from Seth (paraphrased): ‘Did you see how we lifted bodies in hand-carts? Who are we fooling? It is not about this particular attack, it is about our callousness and ineptness. We have a Third World mentality.’
Someone’s been watching A Wednesday.
on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008, 4:45 am in Terror!, Video clips › 
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Hoarding
I wouldn’t say “wimps”, but I would say “incompetents”.
random rants… the more one sees, reads and hears the worse it feels.
– the laissez faire attitude of the indian government. ‘chalta hai’ all the way. one has to admire the bravery of j. yadav (the policeguy in the clip in the next story) who took on the terrorists with his ancient rifle. we have a pile of bodies to show for our inability to properly equip the policemen. the papers here say a large number of the nsg commandoes are diverted to politicians because it makes the pols feel important.
– the govt agencies are not talking with each other. patil was a chamcha to sonia gandhi. hence the plum position. people are calling out to people like laloo prasad yadav or sheila dikshit to become the home minister. they are the ballbusters who get stuff done. the rest are merely placeholders.
– i have stepped back into the canadian newspapers and wondered if my perception of all this would have been the same had i not been in the middle of this in india. this is what counts as informed commentary - pap by sheema khan and by doug saunders and it blows my mind at the patronizing tone. Saunders takes the colonialist’s tired tone saying this is the same old hindu-muslim cycle of violence and so this wasnt as heinous as people are making it out to be. what’s a couple of desis here or there? khan rolls out some tripe about peace love and harmony. what annoys me is the newspaper (mind you! G&M is one of the more informed media channels in canada) believes they have to provide a milquetoast commentary to paint a fair and balanced picture. They have no clue about the ground reality in mumbai. you have people of all faith coming together in grief and in anger - the gurdwara volunteers that did a round the clock langar to feed the rescuers, the imams who refused to recognize the terrorists as muslims, the universal condemnation of thackeray and his goons for their lack of appearance in the time of crisis, the multi-faith prayers in the cities, the memorials, the calls for a black baqr-eid… and we have the western media perpetuates the thesis that this is business as usual, the same old cycle of violence. surely, the chattering classes around the world have to wake up. in many respects this is even worse than a bombing. one may believe that the truly innocent, the babies.. were ‘collateral damage’ in the warped mind of a terrorist.. but here you have a bunch of guys pick and shoot children down. Do the journalists sitting out here believe anyone thinks this was a matter of faith or even of war?!
India ws caught with its pants down.We need to start focusing on how to prevent and how to control the situation when it does occur.
I agree with the third world mentality…other peoples life isn’t seen as important and that is tragic. This tamasha went on for days and 200 bodies later.
I am surprised at how seriously these attacks were taken compared to previous ones. Every time an attack happened, I’d be totally pissed while nobody around seemed to notice. Americans didn’t even know while the Indians were like, yeah, shit happens. This time everyone is afire, while my first reaction was, ‘relax dude, its just another terrorist attack’.
But I am glad people are taking notice. Hope it lasts.
Anyway, kudos to ultrabrown for perhaps the best blog coverage of the attack, esp your news bar.
I agree, the news bar was excellent.
Thanks, guys. I’m slightly scared your obsession matches mine.
Manish, it’s called love.
Compatibility in reading taste is a “luxury” and kind of irrelevant, Levy said. The goal, she added, is “to find somebody where your perversions match