a while ago i saw something on pbs

don't remember if it was on india in general OR just about the dabbawalas. i DO remember i was absolutely blown away by what the dabbawalas were capable of doing

oh there error rate is ONE IN A MILLION. can YOU say that? oh and most dabbawalas are illiterate. oh and they do it on bicycles and trains. now some use cell phones but that's a newer addition.

it's fascinating to me.


Dabbawalas In Mumbai - The best video clips are right here
Newly Frugal Indians Revive Tiffin Tradition
Homemade Lunch Delivery Surges

By Emily Wax

Washington Post Foreign Service
MUMBAI -- Outside one of this city's busiest railway stations, Vilesh Shinde balanced 50 metal containers on a wooden board atop his head and rushed into the thick morning traffic, sprinting through the financial district to deliver home-cooked meals to his newest customers: young Indian professionals. Shinde is one of Mumbai's approximately 5,000 dabbawalas, or lunch deliverymen. Dressed in white caps and starched chef's smocks, bearing foot-tall lunch pails known as tiffins, the fast-moving dabbawalas are a symbol of old India who not long ago appeared to be an endangered species.........

proof enough for me

the lone terrorist survivor of the mumbai attacks did indeed come from pakistan. i'm NOT saying the pakistani government had anything to do with the attacks, but i'm not saying they didn't either. the government is still not readily admitting the gunman was pakistani.

Villagers: Surviving Mumbai attacker killed for Kashmir
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
FARIDKOT, near Depalpur, Pakistan — The lone gunman captured alive by Indian police during last week's terrorist attack on Mumbai comes from a dirt-poor village in Pakistan's southern Punjab region where a banned Islamist group has been actively recruiting young men for "jihad," according to residents of the village and official records seen by McClatchy Newspapers.

Ajmal Ameer Kasab, the dark haired 21-year-old man arrested by Indian authorities in the first hours of the assault -- in which over 170 people died -- left the village four years ago, several residents said. He would return once a year to see small family home and one villager recalled him talking about freeing the Muslim-dominated region of Kashmir from India.

His origins are a key to the investigation of the attack and could have a profound impact on relations between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, already at the brink of confrontation. Until now, the Pakistan government has repeatedly said that there was no solid evidence to back Indian accusations that the gunmen came from Pakistan. .................

i am almost certain

government to continue to deny the terrorists were FROM the madmen who wreaked terror and rained blood upon the city of mumbai were from pakistan. i am not certain if the government had anything to do with it or not. however, for the pakistanipakistan is not only an insult it is ALSO insane.

you might as well believe turkey when it denies the armenian genocide

Terror Attacks Traced to Two From Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and ROBERT F. WORTH
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Fresh evidence unearthed Thursday by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.

While Mr. Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai. .......

found via good

another take on the mumbai

massacre

and it mentions our dear king MORE than once. here's but one passage

............Veteran Mideast reporter Patrick Cockburn writes, "The origins and motives of the men who slaughtered so many people in Mumbai will emerge in the coming days. But already the butchery should be underlining one of the greatest of the many failings of the Bush administration post-9/11. Pakistan was always the real base for al-Qa'ida. It was the Pakistani ISI military intelligence which fostered and partly directed the Taliban before 2001 and revived it afterwards. It is Pakistan which has sustained the Islamic jihadi fighters in Kashmir where half the Indian army is tied down. Yet the Bush administration in its folly allied itself to General Pervez Musharaf and the Pakistani army post-9/11, ensuring that jihadi groups always had a base............

and here's the link to the story itself (an interesting one)
Mumbai Attacks: Piecing Together the Story
AlterNet
What happened?

Saikat Datta of Outlook India writes that by mid-September, Indian agencies knew that the attack would come from the sea, by mid-November, they knew that the Taj hotel would be targeted. And yet the attacks still happened. A blow by blow account of how the plan to attack Mumbai by sea was hatched and executed.............

it doesn't matter which theories are correct or not correct. this NEVER should have happened

a bit more on mumbai

was it Lashkar-e-Taiba? was it pakistan in general? i don't know. i don't want to be quick to point my finger either. i know it was beyond insane. i know in a MILLION years i will never understand how the deaths of innocents help one's 'cause'. i will never understand how the deaths of innocents make you more lovable in your god's eyes. i just will never understand NOR ACCEPT terrorism
pic: Terrifying: One of the gunmen carrying an automatic rifle in the train station in Mumbai
'I was told to kill to my last breath': Captured terrorist's account of Mumbai massacre reveals plan was to kill 5,000
By Ian Gallagher
The only terrorist captured alive after the Mumbai massacre has given police the first full account of the extraordinary events that led to it – revealing he was ordered to ‘kill until the last breath’. Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, said the attacks were meticulously planned six months ago and were intended to kill 5,000 people. He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages....... ..........He described how its mastermind briefed the group to ‘target whites, preferably Americans and British’. Some of the militants, including Kasab, posed as students during a visit to Mumbai a month ago, filming the ‘strike locations’ and familiarising themselves with the city’s roads..........

one would think the assholes at faux 'news'

would have better things to say in the wake of what happened in mumbai. well, one would HOPE they would. just when you thought they were actually HUMAN...they knock you back over with their stupidity, evilness, bullying AND their INSTIGATING. that's what they do best ... INSTIGATE

Fox: Will Mumbai attacks delay Gitmo closing?
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Fox News' Alisyn Camerota appears to be hoping that in the wake of Thursday's terrorist attacks in India, Barack Obama might rethink his campaign pledge to close down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

"President-elect Barack Obama condemns the attacks in Mumbai and promises to root out terrorism, but he also promises to close down Guanatanamo Bay," Camerota noted, as the Fox banner asked "Obama's Guantanamo Paradox: Can he close Gitmo after India attacks?"

Camerota spoke with Democratic political consultant Bob Beckel and former Republican Senator Rick Santorum about Guantanamo on Friday, asking, "Is it hard to get a handle on exactly where Barack Obama stands on how he would handle terrorists?"
.......

updates

from mumbai

let's keep all in our thoughts and prayers.

Eyewitness Updates: Nariman House
By Keith Bradsher

Keith Bradsher, a Times correspondent, is sending The Lede updates from his Blackberry as he watches a commando operation taking place at the Nariman House, home to the Orthodox Jewish group Chabad Lubavitch. The time stamps are London time (GMT). Mumbai is five and a half hours ahead of his timestamps.The most recent posts will be added to the top of this post............

because there is not enough

pain and horror and misunderstanding and war and murder and torture in the world as it is, let's just add a bit more. when we hurt one we hurt many. when we hurt another, we just hurt our OWN brother or sister.

violence.

why?

Dozens Die in Mumbai Attacks
Hotels Under Siege; Gunmen Said to Target Americans, Britons
By Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post Foreign Service
NEW DELHI, Nov. 27 -- Gunmen attacked three luxury hotels, a hospital, a train station, a movie theater and other buildings in Mumbai late Wednesday, killing at least 100 people and wounding more than 300 in a rampage through India's financial capital, police said. The attackers took dozens of people hostage, and witnesses said they were seeking out Americans and Britons. An unknown group asserted responsibility in e-mails to India's news media. The gunmen, armed with explosives, lay siege to two of the hotels all night. Troops stormed in to rescue people, some of them foreign nationals, who were trapped inside. The 105-year-old Moorish-style rooftop dome of the landmark Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel was engulfed in fire, and flames billowed out of many rooms. One wing of the waterfront hotel was gutted. Seven hours after the first attack, firefighters rescued more than 50 hotel guests and escorted them to ambulances. ..........