Mumbai (attacks)

Allthough yesterday i tried to get what was happening from little information, trying to acces all was less of a help then you'd expect. However a few things cleared up.
The attack on the jewish centre eg. I now think it was possibly genuine, for two reasons mainly, the centre is a landmark building (i thought of it as some office annex guesthouse), and that it is not over yet, or at least not when the indians announced it. You would expect a violent rampage not to immediatly release any ultraorthodox jew they caught. So that story gained credibility.

Yet there is something wrong, with these attacks. For one thing contrary to alJ (and i assume international news, first announced, the confirmed nr of attackers sticks at 18, sidenote, that could be a few more by now , as the building are not all (completely) cleared. Next there are supposed to be 10!! targets. and a few random bombings.. the attacks started 15 minutes from another, the station (wich is a genuine incident i think now), first. About the station i am not sure, but it did have the characteristic of sacrificial attack, apparently it concerned only two attackers and not the nr the carnage initially suggested to me. (say 8-10). At the hotels the situation was not much agrevated by security forces initially, the guys stormed in guns blazing. (appears confirmed by some of the pictures and that it was moreless in the news all the time)


This puts a questionmark at the seriousness of the hostage taking, and indeed the demand was outrageous, (if sincere) the release of all mujahedheen in india prisons.
all?? no nr was mentioned. For some time apparently the attackers were in contact with the media untill the police made it impossible.

A few incidents still need scrutiny, the boat loaded with explosives, its doubtfull a well organised group would need an extra boat with explosives they have no use for.

Militairy explosives in a restaurant close. Suspect since the indications bombs have been used are minor. The kind of explosions mentioned are hard to get, except in the militairy. Since they tried to set fire at the hotels(?) and had no problems with using a lot of grenades, one would assume they would use the explosives before leaving all of them behind in a not connected place.

So thats a no so far,(the computer crashed and apparently exposive charges are now exploding..) such events, or non events appear to suggest the situation escalated not only through the attackers, they are 'criminalised' after all, people want to make it worse then it was..
yet this theory, what initially happened at the hotels or any other place is somewhat unclear.

Next problematical issue, there have been two attacks (?) one of them including hostages, on a childrens hospital and some other hospital.
In the pattern of actions this makes no sense, all other targets have an obvious profile (rightly or perhaps wrongly applied) except the station, that was apparently attacked first. Beside that i found not a single story in the newspapers confirming attacks on the hospital took place. I found indications something happend there, people were glad to have escaped, but not a single descriptive account wich is suspect when all tv stations of the world are on a newshunt.

About the other supposedly attacked hospital i havent seen even a single fact, allthough i think wikipedia mentions a name. Even if a better articulated story is later released (like today) i insist it is suspect the media knew no other contribution earlier, i am not in mumbai and not a police chief there, so i have to be reserved about what is true and what not.

The attack on the police station also goes without description, apparently it was the most professional part of the action as it succeeded in killing 3 high profile cops.
I must guess it was well prepared and they knew to intrude in the right offices, still then taking the total suggested nr of attackers, its quite a miracle 1 or 2 man came through the defences of a policestation. So perhaps it was even better planned or coordinated, and the killed guys were just getting out.

peculiar detail, also about this event i found none but the vaguest descriptions in the media. 'policestation got attacked', and high profile cop killed, but not one description of the event altho article's relate the killed cops to the attack on the policestation it does not mention how, or any other circumstance.

Soo what are the conclusions? Firstly due to the lousy overall picture during a session of massive media representation i have a strong feeling there is more behind this. But what? The story as it stands now suggest to me still a dehumanising of the attackers, random bombs. extra weapons and even extra attacks belong to the evidence for that. Sometimes not related events are in the course of the action related by the police, if for example an armed man took hostages at a hospital, (it's happened before) the police might think it is a related attack.
That leaves us with the other hospital, since i know nothing factual yet about these 'attacks' i think they are suspect.

There are a few other incidents that are being related to these events, none of these have been exactly well described in the media, none of them lead to facts, and except the ones i already mentioned in my first post, none of those apparently claimed deadly victims. (perhaps i missed a victim at some bombing, apparently there have been a few bombings in mumbai, one would guess not through the known attackers (dead or alive), but perhaps still as the 15 minutes pause between actions suggests timing and leaves some space for actions.

I am annoyed that with so much fuzz so little facts are actually displayed, it takes like 10 articles to find out there are 18 known attackers for example.
(one article mentioning the dead , two others prisoners, (3 ,9 resp.) similarly only after a rather long period i find that there have been only two attackers at the station. Reading 30 articles (including some rather comprehensive ones), i am yet to find the first descrption of the police station event.

Such limited informations actually suggest a story is being prepared. The credibility of reports arising after the crisis is less then the ones yet released. (that could be checked in reality at least partly.)

Allthough not evrything is clear yet , are the jewish hostages free?, news said that through more then a day now, or are they not? some sources in alJ say the event at the 'jewish tower' is not over yet, and apparently in the hotels as well some shooting still took place today.

That would make some sense, the whole operation could hardly been carried out by 8 -18people, assuming even only half of these attacks were carried out by one group, one team. curiously estimates of nr of attackers lack, the only revealing source are their casualty's and prisoner nr's.

Today 3 captured attackers have declared or stated to be from kashmir, suggesting all would be, and although i see a more indian wide perspective behind these attacks it surely appears the most logic one group so organised (that what they did was well organised) comes from one place. Speaking against that is the apparent nr of attackers are higher then the nr accounted for, for example apparently today there has been another incident at the station, (i consider that incident genuine after finding out it concerned two attackers only) i think what is called copy cat action.

Like other events suggested inside mumbai there are also people (moreorless) willing to violently rise up to make a statement. This is kept out of the news, yet it explains why the indian government plans immediate emancipatory action.

good for a laugh when an interviewed westerner in another building stayed covered in a darkened room when actually 1000s of indians were moving about on the same street.
Also good for a laugh, the interviewer found that a wow , smart thing to do, the indian policeman commenting ,who's voice sounded suspectedly amused no matter that he tried to restrain it to a professional sound said, well ofcourse it is practical if people follow the government directions...

At the moment i am less certain about far reaching government involvment in the actions, but i still suspect infiltration, infiltration usually takes place (but not starts always) on a higher then 'soldier' level. The secret service is there for influence.

This effect is twohanded, altho the infiltration serves to expose the group and hinder it's violence, to gain a credible position within such a group a regular infiltrator (vying for influence) usually promotes escalation. A less inspired militant would stand out, but also not gain a lot of credibility.
The other side is still, that the police wanting to expose the pressure group would try to steer it in more violent ways often. Ofcourse under the premisse of being able to control and expose the group.

There are a lot of scenarios that secret services would opt to let this attack pass through (lets be optimistic, thus preventing other, easily worse attacks, like bombs on markets and streets). It has all the looks of such an action, with these obscure side events that defy description(hospitals?, jewish hostages rescued thrice?, the *not a bomb* attack in the station, most every yurpean routinely escaping with all but 1 indians staying back, a very probable police assault during the rescue of the westerners, the murder of a rumouredly moderate police officer?

Like someone rightly pointed out, actions like this serve to instill fear, and as such facilitate repressive measures.

I hope the indian government manages a reaction that proofs me wrong. (they appear to be doing that through adressing the fact india does have some problems with its treatment of minority's)

What we can learn of this? That unbiased and unhindered reporting are not a reality in india,(the financial capitals of the world), even with major parts of the world press assembled. I think things would look much better now, if journalism had had more resources, whatever will now be the reported outcome of events, none of it has been confirmed in actuality, and the facts will be so much harder to proof.

The whole great 'life'show i didnt witness seems mostly aimed at emotionally touching people, more then 100 poor people die in india every day, why is that less of a problem then when for once a hundred rich die? It is definetly not that the two problems are not related.

oh i foget i tried to reconstruct the events that must have facilitated the 40 parlementarians escape. Not a pretty picture, bunches of security guys around, a very calm (waiting an hour ) escape through a door that later seems used as an escape still, (a rather natural exit then). it suggest a level of control of the movements of the attackers inside the building. That would ofcourse be also the case when city police attacked the hotels from the outside (in rather obvious with the security agents as they were active inside) It cannot be wholly excluded this suggests some form of contact between some of the attackers and the securty agents, a form of contact i would think several others had no knowledge off. It may mean that at least one of the security personal inside had some knowledge of the attack ahead.
Overall if the descriptions of the weaponry etc, fit and the deathcount etc. at the hotels is correct (i think that it means like 85 people killed in the hotels),
the atack wasn't aiming at maximal casualty's.

oh yes i stopped thinking about all teh other attacks but the ones on the hotels because i think they carry less information of the intends, wishes and mentality of the attackers. Perhaps the attack on the jewish building must be excluded, but i still consider it untypical, possibly a different (sub)story.

for the station attack i have a keen eye if other figures of the attackers arise, and you could try and find out if it was meant as a distraction, but that seems obvious.

Anything they will still tell about the 'hospital hotels' will turn me highly sceptical.

Also statements of the captured persons i regard as highly doubtfull, you have to realise that to cover any story such statemets will be (ab)used.
witness"statements" are a necessary element in any cover up.

Even when only or mostly kashmiri's sympathise with some pakistani group, wich i think is easily explained through representation usually, it doesnt mean people from kashmir are not dissatisfied.

Rumour again.. but some voices tell us there is definetly discontent in kashmir, and it is an old complaint, in india clearly better understood in material terms then here. Scetching all these people as some anonymous monster with farfetched intends will create animosity first among us, the west, and immediatly in india that is forced into some western policy of fighting the muslims between the black sea and mumbai (decca in fact). Such animosity obviously already exist among afghani's and pakistani and us (..), we tend to overlook that the one does not go without the other,
and it's the easiest of all things to now involve kashmir into such a onedimensional picture.