If you would kindly stop "looking for the fingerprints of al Qaeda" and limit your wild speculations about who is doing this, we might have a better chance of understanding what is actually going on in Mumbai and of taking you to be a serious journalist.
At this point there is no evidence that points more toward Qaeda than toward the enemies of India, yet you go on and on and on trying to coerce an endless string of experts into backing up your obsessive conjecture while "Possible Al Qaeda connection" scrolls across the screen. It's quite possible that this is not primarily about us at all.
Please remember that it isn't terrorism unless we are terrified and your hysteria serves only to blow this incident up disproportionately. Were you screaming about the human tragedy while we were blowing the hell out of Baghdad? No, you were like an excited schoolboy asking "Is this the shockinaw? Are we in the shockinaw yet?" Your credibility with regard to the dramatic lament over lost American lives has long since been sullied.
When you have nothing to say, which is a good deal of the time, please shut up.
The last few times I've watched CNN News, they seemed to be mostly babbling in the vein you mention -- pure speculation confounded with actual news. The fact that somebody merely supposes something becomes the story....
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I've heard that the gunmen were demanding to know which people they encountered were Brits or Americans -- but that doesn't take us very far. My guess is that their primary goal (whoever they are) is to destabilize India itself and that their singling out of Americans and Brits might be a way to get us to take notice of what they're doing. But I don't think the true motivation for this atrocity is going to be clear for a while yet.
ReplyDeleteSince the election, I've sworn off CNN, sworn watching CNN, and swear I'll never watch CNN again. Blitzer may blather but he doesn't bother me as much Lou Dobbs who doesn't report news but editorializes it. Since switching to the Beeb, I discovered news actually takes place outside of US borders ... and that the earth is round.
ReplyDeleteFogg! I could hear Blitzer's over-the-top melodramatic drone in my ears as I read your post. He drives me nuts - always has. He is a sensationalist - always has been.
ReplyDeleteAs for the culprits in Mumbai - an awful lot of Jewish people seem to have been caught up in the catastrophe as well. I mention that because it struck me today in the midst of the "Americans & British" stories. Yes - Israel is synonymous with the US in the eyes of many. But still.
Otherwise - how truly very frightening to have India & Pakistan now caught up in volatile, adversarial positions.
BBC is tho only real choice these days. Not nearly as entertaining, but you get the news and without the hysteria. They did a much more calm and credible job of listing all the possibilities last night.
ReplyDeleteI swore off Dobbs some time ago. I couldn't take the COMmunist China and the Mexican obsession, but Blitzer just annoys the hell out of me. The man looks so nervous he can hardly control himself.
It's entirely possible that someone who would love India and Pakistan to have a war is behind it and I agree that hitting on Americans is the best way to get publicity and it's quite true, a good part of the world thinks Israel is the 51st state. I once heard an Egyptian fellow claim that all the US presidents have been Jewish.