Posts from — January 2004

Montpelier to Mumbai is a wonderful little travel blog by a group of students from Montpelier, Vermont, who had travelled down to Mumbai to participate in the World Social Forum that just recently concluded in Mumabi.

Its an interesting collection of first-hand experiences of the young students of their very first time in India. Its full of posts that speak about the colours and the warmth of the people here which make the city rise above its poverty and filth. :-)

All Parties Hurriyat Conference chairman Moulvi Abbas Ansari praises Indian Prime Minister A B Vajpayee by calling him an apostle of peace!!

Well that’s what you call “appeasement”! With the peace talks between India and Pakistan taking big strides forward, suddenly the Hurriyat seems to have been rendered redundant! So its not unusual to see the Hurriyat cosying up to the Indian Government… primarily because they know that the Pakistani Government doesn’t look to be too keen on continuing to be pals with them!

With all kinds of colourful Homeland Security alerts in place, US claims to be well in control of the security situation. The nationwide Orange alert that existed over the Christmas holiday period was lowered by one level to Yellow just recently. But the airports and airlines continued to be at the Orange alert status indicating an elevated security risk.

Then came the extraordinary cancellations of international flights to the US, which included the cancellation of two British Airways flights. US officials spoke at length about how the flights were cancelled only after specific intelligence information.

All this leads one to believe that the extraordinary security measures by the US security agencies have proved to be quite effective in avoiding repeats of Sept 11 style incidents.

But then how can the American officials explain the discovery of live ammunitions in the coat pocket of a 45-year old Sudanese man who came to Heathrow (en route to Dubai) from Washington DC’s Dulles airport?! If the terror alert is still Orange at airports in the US, how did these bullets in the coat pocket go undetected through the ‘intensive checks’ that would’ve been performed at the Dulles airport?! And it seems all the more ridiculous when one considers the fact that the bullets were found during ‘routine’ checks at Heathrow.

Makes one wonder if all the security system in place in the US is all smoke and mirrors!!

Daimler Chrysler have launched their super luxury sedan, Maybach, in India at a staggering pricetag of Rs. 5 crores!!!

I suddenly feel very very poor!!

When the security agencies cannot tell the difference between a six-year old girl and a terrorist, you know you are in paranoia-land!! … and when they do nothing about it even after realizing its a silly mistake, you can be dead sure that you’re in Bush country!!