Friday, November 28, 2008

Updates Etc.

Up to do wine shit for the rest of the week. Goodbye, San Francisco, especially you, little French waiter from Chez Spencer--nous nous sommes biens amusés.

I've not been following the papers, but have caught some hotel cable news, and I must say that the intense fixation on how the Mumbai attackers have been looking for Brits and Americans is more than a little untoward given the hundreds of Indians who have been injured and killed. Must it always be about us? India has long struggled with domestic terrorism (and India's governments have long profited by blaming Pakistani provocation for every eruption), and yet our natural inclination is to assume that this all has to do with the Anglo-American "War on Terror." Color me a skeptic.

Posted by IOZ at 10:59 AM | email »
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9 comments:

David Chappell said...

It's the old Times of London attitude - "Fog in Channel, Continent Cut Off", always about us.

1:33 PM
Thomas Daulton said...

You see, now that we're the "World's Policeman", any threat to law & order anywhere in the world, is a direct threat to us, and vice versa. Just goes with the job. *Sigh*, it's a heavy burden all right, but it's a just and fair burden that co-incidentally happens to fall upon the shoulders of Anglo males with light skin.

2:08 PM
Liberto Capudenda said...

Yes, IOZ, it's always about us so the Guv'ment has another excuse to justify and expand it's powers.

3:30 PM
Thomas Daulton said...

Racism, government power grab... you say tomato, I say tomaaaahhhhto. Can't it be both at the same time?

3:42 PM
bonecrusher said...

If in Sonoma, Iron Horse is not to be missed. Also, Lynmar has a very nice small-bites + tasting offering. Nothing special about Harvest Moon's tasting, but their wines are my personal favorite.

4:51 PM
steve said...

Ok, plug time. If in Calistoga, check out the Sharpsteen Museum. Kelley's No Bad Days Cafe in Napa. If in Napa or Petaluma, check out the murals - at least the good ones. Modesty is apparemtly insufficient to prevent me from mentioning them...

3:08 AM
McDuff said...

It could be worse. Here in Blighty our schizophrenically racist tabloids have been breathlessly raising the notion that one of the terrorists might maybe possibly have been British. From what I can gather, this idea has nothing so mundane as facts or evidence to even suggest it is true, but it's the kind of notion that is almost guaranteed to spring from a hive-mind marinaded in a peculiar cocktail of self-importance and a belief that the country is going to the dogs (the dogs, incidentally, are all brown).

12:20 PM
Fritz said...

As far as "always about us" -- watch, if you can bear it, TV coverage of the Olympics. And if you want great amusement, try TV coverage from a different country (like Canada) so the focus on the home team is more obvious.

But it seems probable that the attackers came from Pakistan or at least trained in Pakistan. Is this surprising? So now what is the Pakistani government going to do about it?

2:34 PM
Brian said...

Pakistani "government" Ah -a quaint concept, no? Are you talking about the nominal head and the "elected" parliament? Or...the ISI? The military command? The Northwest Provinces tribal leaders? Al Qaeda? What is this Pakistani government of which you speak?

11:55 AM

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