Terrorist Attacks in India
Forget the tomfoolery. Some serious news in India (live stream). 80 dead in Mumbai, hundreds injured.
NDTV: “A Briton who escaped the terrorist attack at the five-star Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai Wednesday night said the attackers specifically asked for American and British tourists.”
Bloomberg reports that “as many as 80 people were killed and 240 injured in India’s financial hub of Mumbai as gunmen armed with rifles and grenades raided five-star hotels in the country’s first terrorist attack targeting foreigners.”
Reuters: “The chief minister of Maharashtra state said on Thursday the situation in Mumbai was still not under control after attacks by gunmen across the financial hub.”
India Times: 11 policemen dead.
For current updates, see Mahalo and Mumbai Twitter tag for leads on stories.
(I am retweeting relevant news stories here.)
Bombings in India
BBC: “At least 29 people have been killed and more than 100 wounded after a series of explosions struck the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, officials have said.”
This comes a day after seven blasts in Bangalore. Are these homemade bombs from SIMI? Or is SIMI being implicated by another terrorist group?
Eat a Falafel At Your Own Peril!
CQ Politics: “The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.” (via MeFi)
We’ll Hunt Down Every Last One of Those Hand Cream Carrying Terrorists If It’s the Last Thing We Do
BBC: “A woman passenger has been arrested after a flight from London to Washington was diverted to Boston because of an on-board disturbance….She was carrying hand cream – a banned item – and matches on board the United Airlines flight. The aircraft was escorted into Logan airport by two jet fighters.”
Virgin Atlantic: Turning Sane Humans Into Basket Cases With a TV Dinner Aesthetic
And How Many More Are There?
AOL: “Of the estimated 1,200 mostly Arab and Muslim men detained nationwide as potential suspects or witnesses in the Sept. 11 investigation, Benatta would earn a dubious distinction: Human rights groups say the former Algerian air force lieutenant was locked up the longest….But time did not stand still for Benatta: The clock ran for 1,780 days. The man detained at 27 was now 32.” (via Lee Goldberg)
Dangerous Bottle of Water, Left Unattended, Causes Grief at Airport
[RELATED: Meanwhile, when in doubt, take out the fruit with a high-powered water cannon. (via Black Market Kidneys)]
Surely, They Acted In Their Best Interests Here and Didn’t Wait Two Weeks for Political Gain
Times Online: “Although reports that Mr Bush was woken at his ranch in Texas yesterday morning by a call from Tony Blair were denied by the White House, the two leaders had been in regular touch — as recently as Sunday — about British police efforts to track and capture those behind the aircraft plot. American authorities were told about a fortnight ago of an ‘accelerating plan’ to target US airlines flying from Britain to Los Angeles, Washington and New York. One official was quoted yesterday as saying that British authorities would not have arrested the suspects ‘if they hadn’t thought these guys were ready to go — the trip line had been reached — they dropped the hammer when they did because they thought they were out of time’.”
At the risk of coming across as a paranoid looneytune, this is damn fishy. Even if you’re waiting for the right moment for the terrorists to congregate so you can nab as much of a ring as you can, surely nabbing these guys as early as possible makes more sense — particularly when you have them all in your crosshairs. Either the British police are dumbasses or there’s clearly something else going on here. Why else would the White House deny that Bush and Blair had great morning phone sex? Unless, of course, Blair mumbled his suggestive imagery and begged Dubya to be his bottom.
Terrorist Plot
I woke up to craziness this morning. News here.
What is the evidence of this plot? There are 21 people arrested, but they better be damn clear on what went down. The skeptic in me wonders if the “no liquids” ban is a disingenuous way for airlines and airports to sell more beverages.
Or Perhaps Some Folks Need a Surrogate Baby Blanket To Cling To
Cato Institute (PDF): “In the end, it is not clear how one can deal with the public’s often irrational — or at least erratic — fears about remote dangers. Some people say they prefer comparatively dangerous forms of transportation like the private passenger automobile (the cause of over 3 million deaths during the 20th century) to safe ones like commercial airlines because they feel they have more ‘control.’ But they seem to feel no fear on buses and trains — which actually are more dangerous than airliners — even without having that sense of control and even though derailing a speeding train or crashing a speeding bus is likely to be much easier for a terrorist than downing an airliner. And people tend to be more alarmed by dramatic fatalities — which the September 11 crashes certainly provided — than by ones that cumulate statistically. Thus, the 3,000 deaths of September 11 inspire far more grief and fear than the 100,000 deaths from auto accidents that have taken place since then. In some respects, fear of terror may be something like playing the lottery except in reverse: the chances of winning the lottery or dying from terrorism may be microscopic, but for monumental events that are, or seem, random, one can irrelevantly conclude that one’s chances are just as good, or bad, as those of anyone else.” (via Boing Boing)
Homeland Security Confuses “Billy Budd” with Billy Wright
I’m no expert, but I think it’s safe to say that a has-been assclown is no terrorist threat to the United States of America. Everything after Vauxhall and I, on the other hand, has been utter nonsense and any future offerings by this twit should be seized by customs.
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
