Here is a round-up of commentary from various Indian blogs:

India’s Nine-Eleven
From Great Bong (Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind).

Is this India’s 9/11? There is no doubt that what we have seen today is as much an act of war as 9/11. Foreigners have breached the nation’s borders (with consummate ease may we add). Not through the snowy slopes in the mountains. We are used to that. Not through the porous borders of Bangladesh. We know of that. But through the coastal waters of India’s biggest, supposedly most secure, city. The waters of which as a route for narcotics smuggling should theoretically have been under heavy government surveillance. Or perhaps it is the very lucrativeness of the clandestine water traffic (after this this is D-country) that makes the local authorities not look too closely.

However will this the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back that will ultimately make national security the number one national agenda? Will this change India as 9/11 changed USA fundamentally? Though I would like to hope so, I have too much faith in our so-called “resilience” to be more than a bit pessimistic.

To understand the scope of the operation and the sheer scale of India’s failure, one needs to look at historic precedents of similar kinds of amphibious assault. In 1961, in the famous Bay of Pigs invasion Cuban emigres, trained by the CIA, tried to retake Havana by a similar beach-originated attack after days of US air attack. They could not get much beyond the beach despite being supported by the full might of the United States of America, which in the 60s was possibly at the height of its power. Though I do not want to draw exact historical parallels (the scope of Bay of Pigs was to overthrow Castro), the point I am trying to make is that it should be theoretically intensely difficult for foreigners to use the sea route to infiltrate a country, even more so when the country claims to have an extensive defense infrastructure. But these group of men, well trained and equipped they be, managed to do so without detection and without being attacked. If this does not shake every Indian to the core, I fail to see what will.

The two questions that we all ask now: is why and who? The questions we do not ask because we are afraid of the answers are “When next?” and “How much more”? This being a sunny happy blog, let me not even go into those dark areas. For now.

A Night Out in Mumbai
From India Uncut.

This is turning out to be one crazy night. A friend of mine had an opening of her art exhibition a few hours ago, so we ventured to South Bombay for that. We attended the exhibition, sipped the litchee juice, nibbled on party snacks, and then six of us headed out for dinner. First we tried Indigo Deli, which is a couple of hundred metres from the Taj. We were told there would be a 25-minute wait. So we headed to All Stir Fry, the restaurant in the Gordon House Hotel in a lane down from there. They told us we’d have to wait 20 minutes. We stepped out again, and as we did so, we heard gunshots, and saw people running towards us from the left side.

One of the hotel employees rushed out and told us to get back in. “There must have been an encounter,” he said. “Get back in, you’ll be safe inside.”

We followed him in. We waited in the lounge-bar upstairs for a while. The big screen there was showing cricket. India won. Then someone changed the channel.

That’s when we realised that this was much more than a random police encounter, or a couple of gunshots. We heard that terrorists with AK-47s had opened fire outside Leopold’s, the pub down the road. We heard there was firing elsewhere in the city as well, including in the Taj. We watched transfixed, and as the apparent scale of the incidents grew, we realised we couldn’t go home. We asked if they had a room vacant; they did, so we settled in, switched on the TV, and watched in horror.

More below the fold and all are worth reading.

(more…)

Clinton “is a monster, too. She is stooping to anything. . . . The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.” Samantha Powers on Senator Clinton

She’s back. According to the Washington Post:

Samantha Power, the Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign last spring after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster,” is now advising the president-elect on transition matters relating to the State Department — which Clinton is slated to head.

Power is listed on Obama’s transition Web site as part of the team reviewing national security agencies. Her duties, according to the site, will be to “ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in.”

In short, she is part of a team that is likely to work directly with Clinton, a potentially awkward situation for the two women. Obama is expected to officially announce Clinton as his choice for secretary of state after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Transition officials declined to comment. A spokesman for Clinton did not respond to an e-mail sent yesterday evening. Power has been on the list of review team officials since mid-November; the Associated Press first called attention to her presence on the list yesterday.

But people close to the transition suggested too much was made of Power’s comment at the time, and said that she has made moves to bury the hatchet with Clinton and that the senator accepted those efforts.

If so, that could pave the way for Power to reemerge as a key adviser for the new president after being barred for months from appearing on television as a foreign policy surrogate for Obama.

It was a campaign. Things were said. I said my share as well. It’s time to heal. It’s also time to govern and that will require the talents of many including Samantha Powers.

Return to Main

“Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved.” — Pranab Mukherjee, Foreign Minister of India

Lashkar-e-Taiba (Urdu: لشكرِ طيبه laškar-ĕ ṯaiyyiba, literally Army of the Pure or Righteous, also transliterated as Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba or Lashkar-i-Taiba) is one of the largest and most active Islamic terrorist organizations in South Asia. The group was founded by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed in Afghanistan’s Kunar province in the late 1980s becoming especially active after 1993 and has close ties to Al-Qaeda. The aim of the group is the end of Indian rule in Kashmir and establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) is believed to be based near Lahore and is said to operate several militant training camps in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and is believed to receive support from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency. The group also receives support from South Asians Muslims living in the Persian Gulf region and through “Islamic charities.” Lashkar e-Taiba purports to train its hundreds of thousands of young members for an Islamic Jihad in the troubled region of Kashmir & Jammu. Journeyman Pictures offers a video report on the organization.

Indian intelligence consider Lashkar-e-Taiba to be the military wing of the well-funded Pakistani Islamist organization Markaz-ad-Dawa-wal-Irshad, which recruited volunteers to fight alongside the Taliban. India says that over the last several years, the group has split into two factions, al-Mansurin and al-Nasirin. Known for its expertise in suicide bombing and conventional assault tactics, Lashkar-e-Taiba has carried out many deadly attacks, including the raid on the Indian Parliament in 2002, which killed 14. Although the organization stopped claiming responsibility for attacks after it was ostensibly banned by Pakistan in 2002, Indian authorities have arrested many Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives in connection with attacks in the region. The group is now the prime suspect in the attacks in Mumbai. Again, they have denied responsibility. More on Kashmiri militant extremists from the Council of Foreign Relations.

From the Indian Express:

Interrogation of the lone gunman nabbed alive by the Mumbai Police after Wednesday’s Terror attacks has left investigators in little doubt that the unprecedented raid on the country’s financial capital was the work of Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

According to details of the interrogation accessed by ‘The Indian Express’, the man has been identified as Azam Ameer Qasab, a 21-year-old Pakistan national and is believed to have admitted that he is a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative.

According to a statement recorded by the police following his arrest, Qasab is a resident of Faridkot in Chipalpura Taluka of Ukhad Zilla in Pakistan’s Punjab. Qasam admitted that he was trained, along with several others, at two separate camps in Pakistan. The first camp lasted for close to three months and involved training in the use of firearms and explosives.

After a short break of a few weeks, the second camp focused on marine drills which were used by the attackers to land on the city’s shores. During his training, he was also shown CDs with footage of different spots in Mumbai including some of the locations targeted, Qasam is believed to have said. “During his preliminary interrogation, Qasam said that the instructions given to them were to fire on sight with orders that the maximum possible number of people should die at their hands,” said a police source who grilled Qasam.

From the New York Times:

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday that there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for this week’s deadly attacks in Mumbai.

The officials cautioned that they had reached no firm conclusions about who was responsible for the attacks, or how they were planned and carried out. Nevertheless, they said that evidence gathered in the past two days pointed to a role for Lashkar-e-Taiba or possibly another group based in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which also has a track record of attacks against India.

The officials requested anonymity in describing their current thinking and declined to discuss specifics of the intelligence that they said pointed to Kashmiri militants. In the past, the American and Indian intelligence services have used communications intercepts to tie Kashmiri militants to terrorist strikes. Indian officials may also be gleaning information from at least one captured gunman who participated in the Mumbai attacks.

According to one Indian intelligence official, during the siege the militants have been using non-Indian cellphones and receiving calls from outside the country, evidence that in part led Indian officials to speak publicly about the militants’ external ties.

(more…)

Tell me why I can’t marry the man of my dreams. I want to know. I am tired of this circular argument. I am tired of feeling your hate when I have done nothing other than perhaps having been born. Is that my crime? Being born gay. Really? Is that your argument?

You take the words of a desert tribe who lived in caves for the word of a god. I’ve got news for you. There is no god. Freedom of religion should include freedom from religion. If you choose to believe in absurd notions of winged creatures that speak, burning bushes that issue edicts, virgin births, transfigurations, coming back from the dead and rising into the heaven that’s your own delusion. I didn’t choose my sexuality. It came with me and I am tired of not having you believe me or the 10% of humanity that’s telling you the same thing across the centuries no less. Homosexuality has always been with us and as long as you keep breeding it’s likely to be. God doesn’t make homosexuals, heterosexuals do.

So why, why can’t I?

Return to Main

The coordinated terror attacks in India’s commercial capital of Mumbai are still unfolding with at least one or two of the attackers still at large and holding hostages. We are not yet past the latest round of Islamic terror unleashed upon the world and in still in shock at the ferocity of these attacks. But in India and indeed around the world, tough questions are emerging even as the story remains incomplete. Who were these men? Who helped them procure their weapons? Who carried out their intelligence? Who trained them? Who financed them? The answers to these questions increasingly point to Pakistan. These men landed in small crafts by sea. They clearly had the benefit of advanced training under fire and in combat. It is premature to accuse the Pakistani government of direct involvement but there remain elements of Pakistan’s ISI who are opposed to any rapprochement with India. Pakistan needs to establish control over its military and intelligence services or risk isolation and backlash over a disturbing pattern of behaivour by rogue elements of the Pakistani state.

Prime Minister Singh’s Approach to Pakistan Comes Back to Haunt Him
In India, questions are being raised about Prime Singh’s approach to Pakistan. Here’s the Times of India

Of all his formulations, the one that has returned most often to haunt Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is the assertion that Pakistan
too, like India, was a victim of terrorism. The macabre irony embedded in the peculiar hypenation plays itself out in a ghastly re-run with every terror strike.

The PM’s remark, made before a meeting with Pakistan’s former dictator Pervez Musharraf in September 2006, indicated a singular failure to appreciate the nature of the terror threat and Islamabad’s role in ensuring India remains in a near-permanent state of fearful expectation. In a stroke, the wolf had been turned into a lamb.

Not only do wolves usually don’t really change colours, what was remarkable about Singh’s statement was it came barely two months after the 11/7 Mumbai train bombings where the government saw a Pakistani hand. Yet, a yo-yo response — just a month earlier he said the peace process with Pakistan was under threat — has marked the PM’s approach to terror.

His tough-sounding words after the massive November 26 attack on Mumbai — that he would “take up” with neighbours the use of their territory for launching strikes against India and that “individuals and organisations” behind the outrage would be hunted down — sound like a tinny, worn out record. Even the PM’s aides might find the cowboy act a little hard to swallow.

Politics can be an unforgiving line of work but the PM has chosen to ignore the perils of not learning from mistakes. Soon after serials blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi shook the country, Singh told a governors conference that he was not opposed to tightening anti-terror laws.

The point really is whether the government is flexible to the point of bending before every storm. Soon, after Congress’s political calculations ruled out special anti-terror laws, the PM developed an amnesia that afflicts politicians. Until the fidayeen struck Mumbai. “Existing laws will be tightened to ensure there are no loopholes for terrorists to escape,” the PM intoned on Thursday. Disbelief wrestled with incredulity.

No one really believes any laws will be added or changed. The promise of a federal investigative agency has been part of a file in PMO for many months now.

After having bought into the political argument that anti-terror laws “target” minorities, Congress has found it difficult to retrace its steps. Yet, with each succeeding terrorist atrocity, the pressure to be seen to be doing something has increased. But the PM has sought to make concessions that Congress is not prepared to underwrite.

Apart from the India-US nuclear deal, the PM has tended to see peace with Pakistan as part of his legacy. But even as he built useful CBMs with Musharraf, the bid to de-militarise Siachen shocked the armed forces which felt the plan was ill considered. Today, the “mountain of peace” line seems more tacky than it ever did.

Return to Main

Here are some highlights from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil USA 2008 Conference. Senior energy analyst Robert Hirsch reflects on the immediate liquid fuels problem, and how the rebuilding of our entire energy system which will require at least twenty years and the importance to think about energy on long-term horizon. He reflects on comments made during the ASPO-USA 2008 conference presentations, noting that he remains optimistic about American response to the daunting challenges ahead.

Political science professor Kyle Saunders is the “Professor Goose” behind The Oil Drum energy and peak oil study website. Professor Saunders champions the need to learn from one another about complex, interdependent topics like the economy, energy, noting that every piece of information we can get can reduce uncertainty. The Oil Drum certainly has its share of technical assessments but many of the posts are easily accessible and understandable to those of us not energy experts. It’s one of my favorites websites and a link can be found in the Energy and Peak Oil section of the BTF blogroll.

In a question-and-answer session at the close of ASPO-USA’s 2008 conference, presenters respond about the current financial chaos and resource scarcity, how to encourage intelligent political action, the need for a peak oil high-visibility champion, peak oil’s relationship to climate change, and suggestions for household energy reduction.

Return to Main