Currently, I'm based in Mumbai. Both my hotel and my place of work are more or less in the middle of a triangle formed by the Taj Hotel, Victoria Railway Terminus (VT; now officially known as CSM Terminus or CST), and the Oberoi Trident Hotel at Nariman Point as its vertices. CST and the Taj are each scarcely half a kilometre from where I am now; Oberoi Trident is a little further away. As I write, figures of casualties as known now have been announced: over 100 people have died in this terrorist attack, and well over 300 have been injured, several of the injured are not expected to survive; there are 'x' number of hostages in the terrorists' hands at the Taj and the Oberoi Hotels. Most of us fear that the hostages may not be rescued.

This part of Mumbai is more or less closed down as of now; most offices in S. Mumbai (where the tragedy is currently unfolding) are closed and everyone is glued to their TV sets watching and hoping against hope that things will end happily for the hostages at least.

Some of the posters here have expressed their opinion that the heart of this current tragedy has happened directly account of the conflict between India and Pakistan regarding the status of Kashmir; others have expressed the opinion that this is a conflict between Muslim Pakistan and 'Hindu India'. Only the first belief is true: despite many aberrations that do occur, India is still a secular nation and many of us are striving to keep it so.

Why am I grateful that Barack Obama + Joe Biden is to be your next President and Vice-President and not John McBush + Sarah Moosehunter?

Well, Obama and Biden may bring some sanity into US domestic and foreign policies; which may in turn enable us to turn away from the sheer lunacy and utter idiocy (and incompetence) of the GW Bush era.

Actually, it should not really be so difficult to do that: all that is needed to investigate, explore in depth and convince ourselves and each other just how the things we do from day to day (as individuals; as groups; as nations) "may contribute to" or "may hinder/prevent" accomplishment of the goals we wish to achieve over time - our 'Missions'. If we can come to understand that your legitimate 'Mission' is, in a democratic society, not necessarily antagonistic to my different but also legitimate Mission - if we can understand this much, then we would not ever need to take arms as these terrorists have done.

John N. Warfield, Professor Emeritus George Mason University. Fairfax, VA, USA, has created powerful tools that enable us properly understand and integrate all aspects of our daily actions to achieve our long-term goals and Missions. To a great extent, it si found that most human conflicts can be satisfactorily resolved without having to indulge ourselves in violence against our 'presumed antagonists'.

Developments from Warfield's seminal contributions to systems science, about which I've written several times in these forums at Salon, now enable anyone at any level easily and readily to apply Warfield's sophisticated concepts of systems science to daily ongoing concerns of all kinds.

More information about Warfield's work is available at http://www.jnwarfield.com and from the "John N. Warfield Collection" hed at the library of George Mason University (check out: http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaead/published/gmu/vifgm00008.tp). Write to me at gs (underscore) chandy (at) yahoo (dot) come to find out more about those developments of Warfield's work (there is some information about these tools in several of my postings at Salon).

-- GSC

"...lame-duck, clueless Bush administration"

The GW Bush administration was always clueless.

It became "lame-duck" only when Obama thankfully won on November 4th/5th.

(A minor point, true, but it is well to be accurate, unlike GW Bush and his War Criminal Gang).

Also, the GW Bush administration has been composed of War Criminals ever since they lied to US citizens and the US Congress in order to get their dirty little war going against Saddam Hussein. When do US citizens propose to do something about these War Criminals who have been ruling them these last eight years?

(I'm NOT by any means claiming that Saddam Hussein was an admirable character; or that he did not deserve to be taken down. Only, it should have been done under UN auspices.

-GSC

My e-mail id is

gs (underscore) chandy (at) yahoo (dot) com

(and not as published in my message "Obama can't do anything for us in Mumbai right now,...

Sorry about that!

-- GSC

Someone observed, I believe rightly, that God had nothing to do with Obama being elected President.

Here's my list of people who should be thanked:

1. Obama himself

2. GW Bush, War Criminal, for being so incompetent that he practically drove the US off the cliff (and forced US citizens to realise that things simply had to change)...

3. Sarah Moosehunter...

4. John NcBush

...

And, I believe, (not least or last at all as I have put them) US citizens - all those who voted Obama in and John McBush out - should be hugely thanked: it was a very big step they needed to take - and they took it!

GSC

Nope, Agore - you thought wrong (if you had thought at all). All the trouble in the world is NOT Bush's fault!

The world was already in a very difficult situation when he stepped in. He simply made it all worse, a whole lot worse - so that it is now going to be hugely difficult to dig ourselves out of the whole he has dug for the US and for the rest of the world. (GW Bush along with his Gang of War Criminals).

You should have been thinking all these years of ways of putting these thieves and war criminals on trial. You should have givem them a fair trial, something they denied to most of those they conflicted with in their crazy neo-con push - and then, if found guilty, they should have been appropriately punished. My recommendation of appropriate punishment would have been a year or two at Guantanamo under the most severe conditions that they gave to others.

You and your fellow US citizens did not do your bounden duty. I do hope that Obama will now at least bring a sense of minimum decency back to the US government, which has been smelling utterly putrid over at least the past eight years.

GSC