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The terror attacks have brought more media attention to Mumbai. The world is now aware and cautious of the situations in India. Many countries have already issued travel advisory for the visitors to India. The English Cricket team has called off its participation in the upcoming test series. And the world-at-large probably has already forgotten and moved on to worry about other things.
‘CNN, MSNBC and FOX are good for nothing', cries Ptcbus at ‘Random Rambles':
“I was trying to find out the latest happenings in Mumbai this evening. All that I was able to see was Anderson Cooper presenting some award to someone, Hannity’s America on Fox and some shady prison documentary on MSNBC. Why do they call themselves News Channels? I had to rely on websites from BBC and other Indian sites to find out the latest videos and news stories. What do these channels achieve by keeping the American population ignorant of world news? American media: Shame on you.
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2227 Hrs Nov 27: The only news channel that is broadcasting any news about the Mumbai attacks right now is CNBC (which is a business news channel). Pathetic!”
Local Mumbai newspapers: Image by Flickr user James Cirdland, used under a Creative Commons License
Let’s turn our focus to the Indian media, was their lack of digression a mistake? Could they have done any better to support the local police? Did they do a pathetic job as well? ‘Yes!’ replies Veetrag in his post, ‘Pennies prevail over prudence':
“One disappointing thing that has emerged is irresponsibility of media. Role of media is to provide information to the public but in a proper way and taking care of that they are not divulging important information. I am watching TV channels - NDTV, IBN-CNN, India TV, Sahara Samay, Star News and many other and have realized that none of them are doing their job properly. In this unfortunate event they are trying to sensationalize the information and acting irresponsibly.
First mistake they are making is providing sensitive information such as movement of NSG and Police forces to public. I am sure, this information is not useful to public at this time. At this time, people need to find out where their relatives are, who is injured, which hospitals are people taken to, what blood type is needed and where. These are much more important information if provided to public it would be helpful. Yes, people need to know what area are safe, what is the progress but giving step by step information is not useful. There are rumors (and probably true) that the same information is retrieved by terrorists and can be used against the brave souls who are trying to protect our lives.”
Has Mumbai survived this onslaught? Or have the insurgents prevailed? SriRam Vadlamani notes at his blog Indianomics:
“Were they successful?
• BSE and NSE the two important stock exchanges were closed on Thursday
• India’s sovereign rating by S&P revisited but remains intact.
• England pulls out of the cricket series and re-think the coming test series.
• Champions league is postponed.
• Most countries issued travel advisory.
• Hotels and aviation stocks are losing more than 6% in today’s trading.”
He notes amongst other things that the Indian GDP is seen at 7.6%. Inflation is down to 8.84%, which he adds, ‘is something to cheer about’ and shows some positive signs:
“Terrorists were successful to some extent. But, Sensex was much more resilient and matured in its behavior. It did not tank 1000 odd points because of panic. Only select stock like aviation and hotel sectors took a beating, which is expected. Tourism, aviation and hotel sectors will see a downturn from now on, but the other sectors should be able to pick the mood up. The mood might be down for a few months but India will bounce back. If there is positive which can be take out of this, it is the resilience of India, its economy and most importantly its people.”
This post is part of the Global Voices coverage on the terror attacks in Mumbai, India on November 26, 2008.
The brutal attack that has taken place is truly shocking. However, there has been many attacks on Indian Cities and the Government seem to have doing nothing in terms of catching the perpetrators. The whole police and anti-terrorism organizations inside the government seem to be incapable or lack the will to fight terrorism. This is a major failure of the government and victory for the terrorist forces and will go down as another sad day in history.
>The only thing they have been/are concerned about are how this affects America, or how dangerous things could turn for America or how many lives of Americans have been lost.
The ONLY people the terrorists INTENTIONALLY rounded up and isolated for possible massacre were those holding American or British passports. True?
So forgive us if we act concerned about our own.
And btw, millions of Americans disagreed with the war-mongering actions of George W Bush that brought about widespread hatred by Muslims worldwide; that’s why we elected Obama.
Our friend from south suggests that we look inside. Yeah sure, I did and found that after having their fair share of resource in India, Muslim population failed to progress because of their own fault. They prefer to send their children to Madrassa where no modern topics are taught and then expect jobs and chances to line up for them! They don’t follow family planning and have more children than they can afford and thus putting themselves in perpetual poverty. Then they go on ranting against the majority that we are oppressing them! Who told them to stay here in the first place; they got their own country after partition and drove almost all the Hindus from there. The fact that we have more Muslims in India than Pakistan is a testimony to our secular credential. They have much freedom and facility here than any minority anywhere in the world. And still, their youths jobless may be like many from other religion or pockets in India take up arm and start killing fellow Indians in name of religion. They started in the 90′s with Kashmir with the systematic killing of Kashmiri Pandits but the world chose to close their eyes and ears. Now they do it in all the parts of India. So we don’t have to see inward, if any so called moderate Indian Muslim is reading it, please start rectifying your community before blaming others!!
Let me start with how sad it is to see the city that is a true cosmo come under fire like this.
But again it is not shocking to see such a tense drama. India is highly unsafe from past 10
years. The government, and security forces are 10 steps behind the extremists. They dont seem
to think out of the box and unfortunately that makes the extremists bold. India is stuck with a
legacy of Mahatma Gandhi (who no doubt was the greates). Even today in such trecherous times we
keep reminding ourselves that our nation is non-aggressive and eventually we do NOTHING. All the politicians are content with getting elected every 5 years and making their money once elected. They don’t give a damn about the country. We will see this kind of junk even
more going forward. The only way to STOP this nonsense is by attacking Pak occupied Kashmir and
destroying the extremist camps there. All of us knows who did it but the Government has no
courage to say so. SHAME ON the Politicians.
Oh by the way, those idiot bystanders need to go home and get a life.
Message to all of you over there hear that sound that is the sound of the big vacuum cleaner sucking the jobs you guys took from American back to this country. No corporation is going to use your country for workers it is too dangerous and yes that is our concern as these are american concerns not Indian in so you can stop attacking the Americsn news media they have go report this based on our investments there. Say bye bye to your outsourcing scheme….that has hurt so many American famulies
while the attacks by themselves are shocking, the callous reaction of the India TV channels has been depressing beyond imagination.. cant understand if they even realise the levels they are stooping down to.
Some American’s are just idiots. There are many people who do not hold Indians responsible for taking American’s jobs. Do not listen to the idiot posting prior.
We feel for you and your country, just like you felt for us when we were under attack.
Stop using this attack as a way to spew hateful talk and creating more resentment to American’s worldwide.
We are so sorry that extremism has once again hit your shores.
Thanks Karen P. I was beginning to think that it might all have been a plot by Americans who feel that ‘outsourcing’ and India unfairly ‘took away’ their jobs…they dreamed up this diabolical scheme to get back their jobs.
except that one gets the feeling this was meticulously planned and executed…these guys seemed to be pros…
Although the Indian commandos did a commendable job, it was shameful to watch the level of training and equipments with the Mumbai police and other forces which were involved in combatting these terrorists. Our prime priority now should be to invest in acquring training and equipments of International standards alongwith investing in high class intelligence. Only this can equip us better for the future.
It is terrible what happened in India. Americans, British and Jews deliberately targeted and Indian bystanders killed by Islamic terrorism, but this is not new. And I am afraid it will continue. It will continue as long as India as a Nation continues to support Islamic terrorism all over the world by voting with them at the UN, by condemning every attempt another nation is doing to protect their civilians from the murderers that take cover under Islam, and it will continue as long as India does not realize that parroting Arab and Muslim propaganda as if they were the victims and not the real perpetrators, does not grant them an insurance policy against Islamic terrorism worldwide. It is time for all the civilized and progress-seeking nations to stand up against this retarded form of religious interpretation and get their forces together to fight Islamic terrorism everywhere, be it India, Spain, UK, US or Israel. If they do not understand that this is the only solution, they will see themselves in deep s… when Muslims come to demand their payment from them, in the form of blood and lifes of innocent people, as they are doing now in Mumbay.