CNN wins, FOX loses, Deepak Chopra and other Mumbai thoughts
I have been obsessed with events in Mumbai and one of my most obvious observations is that Fox has been completely outclassed by CNN in its coverage. Fox is simply not a global news network of any serious reach and not worth watching in a situation like this.
CNN’s coverage has been pretty good by and large. I even excuse them bringing on Deepak Chopra and his narcissistic platitudes. For Chopra, no surprise, it’s always about us… Washington, Washington, Washington… and not at all about Islam and jihad. Naturally enough. If it’s not about us, how is he going to get any money or attention? Not surprisingly someone over on the HuffPo thinks the human potential movement has something to offer in such a situation and criticizes CNN for cutting Chopra off. Oh, please.
Amir Taheri has a different and far more informative view:
While it is not yet clear which group was behind the attacks, it looks as if the perpetrators were trying to imitate the tactic of ghazwa, used by the Prophet against Meccan caravans in his decade-long campaign to seize control of the city.
The tactic consists of surprise no-holds-barred attacks simultaneously launched against a caravan or settlement with the aim of demoralising the enemy and hastening his capitulation.
Of course it’s inconvenient for the smart set at the HuffPo to understand that Islamism isn’t all about George Bush, Iraq, etc., but stems from adhering to Eighth Century ideas conceived before there was even a Black Friday sale at Bergdorf’s. But so it goes.
Another observation: I have traveled to many developing countries, yet somehow I was still astonished to hear they don’t have potable tap water in Mumbai and those holed up in the hotels were running out of bottled water. Well, not astonished, but disheartened. You would think that, with all their burgeoining high tech, the Indians would get it together to have a decent water system in their most powerful city. Again, so it goes.
UPDATE: Two links worth reading on Mumbai are here and here.
ANOTHER UPDATE – DEEPAK CHOPRA: Apparently I was wrong about Chopra. On Larry King tonight he has asked the unthinkable: Why is all this international terrorism of Islamic origin? Larry the Dimwitted attempted to go around the question, but Chopra kept pursuing it. Good for him.
Roger, you’re absolutely right about CNN’s coverage and I hope I can gain absolution for the sin of watching. Another good source was ibncnn on the internet. My guess is that it is part of the CNN worldwide deal. The coverage was excellent. I happened to see that Deepak interview a couple of days ago. I sounded like a complete idiot and I’m sure that CNN cut him off so that he wouldn’t seem like a blabbering fool to his ‘followers’. I also detected a bit of saliva dripping from the left corner of his mouth. An idiot.
Yes said but true. CNN did beat up on FOX on this one.
By the way, one of non Black Friday articles on the front page of the Daily News (Los Angeles) is entitled Soldiers Move On ‘Militants’.
Now to cook MY turkey so I have lots of yummy left overs.
I do sound like an idiot sometime but meant to write, ‘He sounded like a complete idiot…..”
need spell check and a device that protects me from the improper use of pronouns
CNN has a much wider reach, obviously, but a few things I saw over the last few days stick out. On CNN, one of the female international reporters (an anchor?) trotted out the “we must remember that these young Muslim men are disaffected…” canard – basically that they are mad because of unemployment and lack of opportunity, etc; essentially the same garbage they’ve been spewing for years to justify Islamist terror. On MSNBC, an anchor (I believe it was Kiran Chetry) earnestly asked a guest that while she understood targeting Westerners, why, oh why would they attack a Jewish center? At that point I shut the TV off in disgust. Whether she honestly didn’t know, or it was just more attempted shaping of the narrative – the MSM’s specialty – it was a ridiculous and stupid question.
“On MSNBC, an anchor (I believe it was Kiran Chetry) earnestly asked a guest that while she understood targeting Westerners, why, oh why would they attack a Jewish center?”
Whoa… that one takes the cake.
Correction: It may have been Kyra Phillips on CNN. Whomever, my point stands.
Islam doesn’t adhere to Eighth Century ideas. Islam IS Eighth Century ideas.
The inability to understand that, the inability to understand that Islam cannot modernize or liberalize or humanize itself and remain Islam is at the root of our enlightened elites reluctance to oppose Islam unconditionally.
God Bless the Telegraph for allowing Amir Taheri to give his view.
I wish the NYTimes or the WaPost would find a place for this fellow or for any of the other non apologists of Islam who have first hand knowledge.
There are number of good Indian blog posts about the incident and several make the point that intelligence and surveillance, the same thing that Bush has done and the left opposes, are the key defenses and were neglected by the Indian government. This newspaper article</a< is probably the best so far. I have more links on my blog.
Careless with the carets, there.
Here in Mexico City, we watched the BBC’s coverage on our local cable that I thought was even better than CNN’s. No funny stuff as far as I saw.
I say we need an immediate no-holds-barred attack on every Al Qaeda group and sympathizer by every country that means business in the world. Liquidation. Everywhere. No rights. No wavering. No hand-wringing. Every mosque and mullah must take an oath of rejection of the group and jihad or simply get executed. Every mosque take the vow or get levelled.
It is only a matter of time before they get a nuclear bomb from the N. Koreans, Iranians, or Pakis. There is no more time to waste.
I have no tv reception. However, I totally loved the IBN/CNN coverage. They didn’t interview any people until they started talking to ex hostages. They put Indian politicians and Pak politicians on also.
Actually, Mumbai looks like a great city, with a good heart. As to the water, it is in the same situation as was London back in 1850. Huge and sudden population increase with concomitant breatkdown of public works.
No reason the big hotels can’t have water purification systems, then.
it is 6:10pm Pacific, and there is still brisk gunfire clearly heard at the Taj… also smoke. The point is, the teen gunmen STILL HAVE LOTS OF AMMUNITION.
the best place to watch this is
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/video_streaming.php
Trying to make sense of the senseless seems to me an exercise in futility. We are witnessing pointless nihilism rather like the attacks of 9/11. Not unlike the burning banlieus of Paris on a Saturday night, or for that matter the murderous anarchy inflicted by the “assassins” during the crusading period. I could be wrong. Maybe there’s a government somewhere responsible, but I doubt it.
I would be convinced that the Mumbai attacks are part of some world-wide jihad if I could hear a consistant message from bin Laden or anyone else with authority to speak for Islam. Yet every attack seems to carry with it a new justification from whichever perpetrator can capture the attention of the press.
I see bin Laden as a minor son looking for recognition from a wealthy family (indeed, perhaps the world). America ignored him three times: USS Cole, East Africa, and Khobar Towers. Osama needed to do something spectacular to get our attention. He was clever and diligent enough to eventually find a way. What he lacked was the followthrough to establish himself as a leader of consequence. Whatever happened to all those terrorist cells imbedded in the U.S. for a second round of attacks? I remember hearing from “experts” that the U.S. would be hit again. Didn’t happen. Either U.S. intelligence is very good or the enemy is incompetent. Probably a blend of both. Well, thank God for that this day.
I can claim one area of expertise getting back to my original point because I’m a teacher of young men. They are animals. Sexual frustration combined with a newly minted mind can be a ferocious combination. Lashing out should be expected. You don’t have to be Freud to understand the following (or maybe you do): the combination of sexual repression and violent tendencies will manifest in destruction. I could add more by way of anecdotal storeies, but such is enough for tonight. It’s not about Islam per se. I think the deeper answers lie elsewhere.
But that’s just me.
~Paules: Please take a look at this list and see if you can identify any consistency therein:
http://tinyurl.com/z6o55
It’s ALL about Islam. To deny the obvious concrete evidence — death and mayhem perpetrated on a daily basis, with one common denominator — would require willful blindness of the highest order.
But that’s just me, I guess.
And me as well.
~Paules, I suggest you go backand study the origin of Islam and the role played in it by the very sexual repression you blame. Indeed, Islam can be read as sexual repression pure and simple.
No, we are witnessing 8th century savagery with 20th century weapons. Nihilist wouldn’t single out Americans, Brits and Jews as targets. This is militant Islam on display. We’ve seen them cut off heads. We’ve seen them blow up civilians. This time they shot people up close and personal. Same folks, different methodsl, same end result: scared and dead infidel.
Roger, we watched much of this on New Delhi TV (ndtv.com) internet streaming live. They had good coverage.
BTW, has anyone else noticed how incompetent the Indian response was? It should never have taken days to clear that hotel. It reminds me of Columbine and the overly cautious police response which cost lives.
From what was said on IDN tv was that the police and the commandos were NOT cautious: many of them were killed in the past few days.
The Taj hotel is gigantic and very old, with tons of hallways, etc. Also it was loaded with tourists. The police had no idea how many terrorists there were. The terrorists had a huge amount of ammunition. And the hotels and railway terminus and hospital and restaurant and cinema were filled with civilians. The civilians were either killed, or escaped, or, if they were in a hotel, locked in their room with only cell phones available to talk to people outside.
The police and commandos had no up to date floor plans for any of the hotels. The terrorists, on the other hand, had excellent info re layouts, etc.
So, this was not like Columbine at all. The police and commandos and firemen were real heroes in Mumbai.
A long time ago, I heard a news report that the Congress Party lost an election in an Indian province. It was a surprise upset. The reason given was that the Party failed to come through on their promise to install modern sewers in the province. That was sometime in the 1980s.
Since it didn’t happen in Queens, New York I forgot about it until Roger’s comment about bottled water. But, at the time, I thought the same thing.
Just an aside,but what was wrong with the name “Bombay”? I expect that many people had at first no idea where “Mumbai” was…(I understand that Madras and Calcutta have also been changed).
Scott, me thinks they were too English.
Gentlemen,
Islam as the single cause for outbreaks of terrorism seems to me a bit simplistic. My experience in the Muslim world informs me that Islam is more often a cause for complacency and fatalism than for violence. I am fully aware that there exists within Islam virulent strains like Wahabbism. Yet outbreaks of violence seem more episodic through history rather than normative. The problem is complex with Islam being but one element in the equation.
I wish I could site the paper I read from a Danish sociologist, but I haven’t got the time to look it up. It’s somewhere in the archives at Gates of Vienna. The gist of his study suggests that the problem is primarily demographic. The Islamic world is sitting on a population bubble of too many young males. Natural aggression between young men results in violence based on a need for status. The author goes on to site various historical examples, but I’ll let his work speak for itself if you should be so inclined to look it up. I think he’s on to something.
Throw sexual repression into the mix and the results become literally explosive. The sexual proclivities of men in the Muslim world have a dark and unspoken side. I won’t go into the details, but anyone who has traveled in the region knows what I’m talking about. Widespread homosexual activity is the signature mark of a misogynistic society. And Islam is certainly that.
Throw into the equation people who are ignorant and illiterate. Rates of literacy in Afghanistan and Pakistan are among the lowest in the world at about 33% for the tribal peoples of the region. I can’t express it any other way: they are primitives. It’s the perfect recruiting ground for reactionary violence against anything that smacks of modernity. How else are young men so easily motivated by nonsense like the promise of seventy-two virgins?
We can politely agree to disagree, but I reject Islam as the single cause. Human society is more complex than to suggest a single cause for anything relating to our species. Even a reformation within Islam, something I find highly unlikely, might not be sufficient to quell the violence. The problem will persist probably longer than any of us will be alive. Solutions are few, but to suggest it’s all about Islam strikes me as narrow-minded.
~Paules, you are confusing necessary and sufficient causes. No one here, that I know of, suggests that Islam is the entire cause of the situation. It is, however, the soil on which it is growing. You are correct that an Islamic reformation may not be the entire solution, but without it, we are sunk. Islam provides a divine excuse for insane behavior.
~Paules, Roger is right that Islam is the soil in which this grows.
The more proximate causes are the good old sins of greed, envy, meglomainia etc. that afflict all Utopian cults, especially the leadership.
Islam is a Utopian cult in the same way that Fascism, Communism etc. are. All will be perfect if only the heathen will bow to the master. And note the similarity between Islam and Communism. In Islam all the bennies go to the self-professed agents of an unknowable Allah via a dead Mo. In Communism they skipped the diety except for putting an ideology in it’s place instead of a theology.
But, the result is the same. A sacred dogma that can only be known via the priesthood who, of course, reap the rewards. Those dachas don’t come cheap. Neither do the palaces of the self-designated mullahs, not to mention the high given by virtually limitless power.
So, the peasants provide the cannon fodder for the leadership of the cult. If the cult isn’t getting where the leadership thinks it should be then you get the equivalent of a temper tantrum like Mumbai.
Mr. Simon,
There is perhaps one force strong enough to change the face of Islam. Modernity itself might be the answer. An educated populace living with abundance and liberty always grows more secular over time. Indeed, the natural progression moves toward agnosticism if not outright atheism.
The Turks, for example, are not a pious people by Muslim standards. I can’t remember once seeing anyone in Ankara or Istanbul throwing out a prayer rug five times a day. The norm was to visit the mosque for Friday prayers. Likewise, the Iraqi people seem to recognize that American-style modernity is preferable to theocratic mayhem. Even Arabia is moving away (slowly) from tradition toward reform.
You say yourself that “Islam provides the excuse for insane behavior.” Yes, but I think AlanC has it about right because he’s looking at the human motivations behind the dogma. Islam is the excuse that hides the face of tyranny. The mullahs of Iran are in practice nothing more than garden variety kleptocrats. As are the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas. They rely on hatred and ignorance as a means to control subject populations. But it’s all a carefully contrived lie for purely non-religious motives.
A million Arab citizens of Israel know the truth. They are free, prosperous and hold all the rights of citizenship. Terrorism against Israel comes from without, not from within. The Jews are not the problem; in fact, they represent the solution.
If my reasoning is correct, then the problem is tyranny, not Islam. Religion is the excuse disguising baser motives. Yes, probably some of the more fanatical imams are deluded in their beliefs. But then that’s a form of ignorance, is it not? I’m not trying to split hairs. Dialectic is useful for finding truth. Modernity will bring the people of the Middle East education, liberty, and abundance. Therein, I think, lies the only viable solution.
Yeah,Promoguy….but how can one ever be too English?
#15 Paules:
Those experts were operating from their experience, they were extrapolating on ‘what they would do’ if they planned the 9/11 attacks. So would I. With those attacks completed I would have it be the signal for sleeper cells to begin operations, like Mumbai. Keep hitting, keep causing pain and spreading terror for as long as those cells can remain active.
And perhaps that was the plan, but too many got rolled up on 9/12 and other days, things we will not know about for decades. Or perhaps Bin Laden and Co. were too arrogant and thought one good hit would cause collapse (the Y2K hysteria may have given them that idea).
Again – who knows?
Roger,
When FNC combines with Murdoch’s UK SkyNews, it actually has pretty good global reach.
Why they didn’t use it in this case is unclear to me.
They certainly matched and exceeded CNN in Iraq war coverage, not only in quantity, but certainly in, um, outlook.
I thought a chunk of Fox had been bought up by the Wahabists – excuse me, the Saudis. So, does anyone think Fox would give good coverage of this sort of thing even if they could?