You can hawk your proud squawk

But really

Can you really walk the walk?

Yeah, I thought not...

Juliebird

'We Americans don't live under the thumb of bloodthirsty sociopaths who impose their will with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and kill anyone who objects. We Americans don't live in fear of saying the wrong thing (say, expressing a political opinion, or making fun of Our Leader, or questioning a new law) to the wrong person and ending up tortured in prison'. You don't? Clearly you are unaware of the American citizens who have been arrested and tortured and held without trial for years. People who have the charges changed to suit the purposes of their captors: if one charge is found to be unfeasible they find another one. Bloodthirsty sociopaths? How would you describe people who start a war to enrich themselves and steal other people's oil? Or who have innocent people kidnapped so they can unlawfully imprison and torture them? People who drop bombs on wedding parties and family homes. People who shoot or blow up children and pregnant women.'Impose their will with the subtlety of a sledgehammer'? Remember Joe Wilson's wife? Remember those loyal footsoldiers in the hospital trying to get John Ashcroft to sign something he didn't want to sign when he was semi-conscious? 'We Americans don't live in fear of saying the wrong thing...and ending up tortured in prison'. If anyone ever passes Patriot Act II which mercifully, to my knowledge was not passed into law, you will. Under Patriot Act II the plan was to have all these postmen checking on what kind of mail you got and other people in other jobs also checking up on everyone. Patriot act II was not aimed at 'terrorists' it was aimed at ordinary American citizens.The difference between the former Soviet Union and the United states under Patriot Act I or II is that in the Soviet Union they spoke Russian. You should start asking yourself if you want to be protected by such people. More importantly who will protect you from them? And they're not going anywhere. Perle will be in his villa in Tuscany, Bush will be back on his ranch, Cheney will be out shooting defenceless animals somewhere, Kissinger will be on the phone plotting some crime while Obama and the Democrats try to fix the aftermath of what they've done and get defamed daily on Fox news for their efforts. And then these monsters call other people terrorists.

Despite all of Roy's pronouncements in this article, India certainly does not need a Patriot Act of its own. Perhaps better intelligence gathering, but to say that the US was helped b/c of the post-9/11 Patriot Act is to say that Germany in 1933 was made safer after the Reichstag fire when the Nazis went after the Communists, trade unionists, Jews and others in that society. This is an incredibly weak argument that borders on farce.

Mumbai has long had a history of Muslim vs. Hindu violence, mainly due to the city's increasing number of non Muslims, many of whom earn more than their Muslim brothers. This poverty-fuelled agression has long been there - since well before there was a War on Terror - and that brings me to my next point:

Roy tries to suggest a rather bogus 'fact' in that virtually no Indian students (at one school, mind you) are applying for visas to study in the US, at least not so many as in 1988. What Roy fails to see is that many Indian students are not pressing to study in the US mainly because of the Patriot Act, which treats people with Muslim surnames as terrorists, and it also puts much more restrictive conditions on their terms of study than ever before. Why study in a country that wants to spy on its own citizens and monitor foreign email and phone traffic? What kind of lesson in democracy is that for any Indian student (Muslim or otherwise)?

Do some real reading, people, and resign the simplistic writings of Roy and his ilk to the dustbin of history. India's history has a lot more to teach us all than a few sensationalistic, overblown reports from the likes of BBC, CNN et al. This massacre as India's 9/11? That's a joke. A temporary blow to the city's tourism industry, but not a '9/11'.

What I find somewhat amazing in the press coverage is the fact that seemingly nothing is said about the fact that 400 million Indians make less than $1 a day.

And at the same time, you have these 5-star hotels in Bombay. I am the only one who thinks that there is more to this story?

It seems incomprehensible to me that there would not be MASSIVE, EXPLOSIVE economic tensions in a nation like that. Unless those 400 million poor Indians are all IDIOTS. But I doubt that. Indians tend to be highly intelligent.

My suspicion is that the USA is smoothing over this potentially explosive class warfare tension because so much of American business has been "off-shored" to India.

More and more, every time that you call Tech Support, for ANYTHING, some jerk answers in India. Its called "cheap labor". And thanks to VOIP phones, they don't need GREEN CARDS. Thanks to Bush, of course, the biggest TRAITOR in American history.

Since the Indians have stolen so many American jobs, and they have made so much money, I say they should take care of THEIR OWN security. Why should America be the World's Policeman, FOR FREE?

Anyway, I would pay some attention to the 400 million pound guerilla in the room. And wouldn't it be a shame if American companies did not want to "offshore" their operations to India? Oh, boo-hoo. They might have to hire "expensive" AMERICANS again. And why are Americans so "expensive"? Because we are paying taxes for armies to defend cheap-labor offices in places like India. Let them fight their own internal battles.

...is a good question to my mind! Perhaps I am dense, or of low I.Q.!

Perhaps I have not actually watched and listened to this unfolding story, for four days straight, as I remember doing. But even so, should not the source of this mass murder and mayhem,( "carnage" is the word used on NPR just this hour,)should not the beginning, the locale, the ORIGIN of this insane series of death dealing actions be learned?

I have read the Roy article twice and I do not understand what it is exactly that India is doing that is so wrong much less racist in attempting to pin point just exactly who and where is the source!

A good parallel could be the striking physical similarities between the British and the Germans in WWII...and how each side used those factors. The same in the Arab and Israeli conflict and the recently resolved conflict after hundreds of years, in Northern Ireland! It happened in the former Yugoslavia too...could Roy have such a limited memory or knowledge of other human conflicts around the world?

The first question to a captured attacker or invader will always be "WHO are you and WHERE are you FROM?"