According to a report by the BBC, the United States warned the Indian government of a potential threat one month before the Mumbai attacks. Further, Mike McConnel, The Director of National Intelligence is implying that the US suspects the attackers were members of the Kashmiri based group Lashkar-e-Toiba, which Indian authorities believe to be responsible. Lashkar-e-Toiba denied involvement while the attacks were still occurring.

According to the BBC, the Associated Press was told that the US had warned India about a potential operation targeting some of the locations ultimately struck during the attack and that those responsible would most likely enter the country by sea. Indian authorities are also now claiming that on November 18th they intercepted a satellite phone message tipping them off to a seaborne attack on the city.

US speculation will most certainly add fuel to an already substantial fire in India regarding Pakistani culpability, as tension between the two countries increases.

Video from yesterday’s heated question period.

Also, a story that’s been overlooked that’s of import.

Twenty-eight years ago today one of my closest and dearest friends, Keira-Anne Mellis, was born in Port Hardy, BC. At the age of two she would move to Courtney, where she would spend the majority of her life before moving to Vancouver.

I met Keira in the summer of 2006 while in a state of complete personal chaos. Over the last two and a half years she has proven herself the sort of friend that one can only hope to have in a lifetime. Through two of the worst years of my life she was unshakably supportive, understanding, and gracious. She is, to be blunt, one of the best people I have ever had the privilege to know.

So on this, her birthday, I, along with my family and Rod, want to wish her the very best of all things.

As one might expect, I have been flooded with emails regarding the coalition government initiative being pursued by the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc.

First, let me say that the use of the term ‘coup d’état’ in this instance is entirely ridiculous. That doesn’t mean that I support the initiative, just that this move is not illegal under our system of government, thus labeling it a coup attempt is idiotic at best.

As for the initiative itself – I think it nothing more than business as usual in Ottawa, a representation of the never ending partisan nonsense that has turned the House into an alternate universe in which the interests of ordinary Canadians are routinely sidetracked.

I’m well aware that groups with which I am affiliated are backing the move, but from my chair I only see this leading to another federal election in 18 months, and another waste of tens of millions of dollars so that Canadians can, once again, be faced with having to choose from a group of lackluster candidates seeking this nation’s highest office.

If a coalition government were to seriously address the issues of climate change, the war in Afghanistan, and nuclear policy in an aggressive fashion then I might be persuaded to support the move. But I have this sneaking suspicion that if they do succeed in toppling the current government, infighting will simply replace the contention already prevalent on the floor of the House and such issues will simply be bogged down by conflicting policy positions.

Yes, I did post an entry earlier today about Barack Obama’s recent appointments. And yes, it did include speculation and some condemnation. But to be honest with you, I’ve reached the end of my rope with regards to speculating about the pros and cons of Obama’s soon-to-be administration. The truth of the matter is that no matter Obama’s historic victory, and the sense of optimism that it has created, the state of the American military industrial complex will not be significantly altered. And because of that, neither will those bedrock aspects of US foreign policy that have remained consistent since the end of the Second World War. In truth, there is only one thing that can threaten that reality – an economic collapse. Beyond that, its prevalence within the modern American landscape will remain intact.

Members of Presidential administrations are only significant in their peripheral, even unknowing, role of helping support the status quo and that on which the military industrial complex thrives – neocolonialism, economic imperialism, militarism, and the now inseparable connection between government and the defense sector. That is a national reality that no President has been able to even come close to altering in half a century. Barack Obama will fair no different.

The world is replete with contradictions driven by the need to sensationalize that which supports policy. The recent attacks in Mumbai are being labeled “India’s 9/11”. That said, I have a question: what, or when, was Iraq’s 9/11? Was it during the decade in which international sanctions caused the deaths of some 1 million Iraqis after America’s once Middle Eastern golden boy overstepped his bounds? Or is it the last 5 years of war that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions? It would seem the people of Iraq don’t get their own 9/11, despite the fact that their country was illegally invaded based on lies and the hegemonic lust of ideological neoconservative zealots. Over 4,000 American soldiers have paid with their lives and yet Iraq remains the most dangerous country in the world despite what those makeup laden spin doctors on television routinely spew.

Today, 58 Iraqis were killed and another 112 were injured by a car bomb and a teenaged suicide bomber in Bagdad, a bombing in Suleikh, a suicide car bomber in Mosul, and a bomb in Yarmouk.

Hear about it?

How Iraqis die doesn’t concern us. Iraqis die every day. Old news. How Americans die, on the other hand, does concern us and is always news worthy.

A US historian once opined on the Spanish conquest of the South West during which Native Americans were given 5 minutes to choose whether to convert to Catholicism or face annihilation. The edict that they were read was in Latin, so of course they couldn’t understand it and were thus killed. The point made was what if a foreign peoples arrived in Catholic Europe and told the French or the Spanish that they had 5 minutes to abandon a belief system and an entire way of life that had been over a millennia in the making? You can imagine the response.

Now imagine it again.

To learn more, visit the World AIDS Campaign website.

WTF?

“As the credit crunch bites, Britons may be turning to sex as a cheap way to pass the time, a charity says.

A YouGov survey of 2,000 adults found sex was the most popular free activity, ahead of window shopping and gossiping.”

I’m not going to bother really speculating about what happened in Mumbai. To many it will be viewed as an al-Qaeda plot, to others an operation undertaken by the Kashmiri group Lashkar-e-Taiba. While aspects of it appear to reveal significant training and preparation on the part of those responsible, something that I have even asserted, a question has to be asked, one that I had not asked myself until this morning – has all the speculation floating around done more to define the intentions of the attackers than their true intentions?

The Telegraph is reporting today that the only surviving member of the group behind the attacks, which is now in Indian custody, is believed to have joined Lashkar-e-Taiba a year ago and that he received training at a camp in Pakistani governed Kashmir where the plot was hatched. That, of course, would rule out al-Qaeda and place the emphasis on the ongoing Kashmiri conflict that has raged on and off between India and Pakistan since 1947. Then again, Lashkar-e-Taiba released a statement almost immediately denying any responsibility. Depending on the severity of the interrogation techniques being used by the Indians on the 19-year-old in custody, he could be copping to the Kennedy assassination for all we know. The Indians have already taken the position that Pakistan was the group’s point of origin, so ensuring that outcome might be something that they’re not willing to abandon at this point, despite the reaction of the Pakistani government, no matter what the boy in custody says – which, of course, we’ll never actually be privy to.

That said, Paul Cornish, the Chairman of Chatham House’s International Security Programme, has written an interesting article on the BBC’s website entitled The age of ‘celebrity terrorism’, in which he makes some interesting points. An excerpt…

“But, for all the horror of the Mumbai attack, there might have been much less to it than first met the eye, and a hasty and exaggerated response might have played more of a part, and given more meaning to the attack than it should.

Nobody appears to have heard of the Deccan Mujahideen - perhaps because they have never existed.

Perhaps it was not so difficult after all to plan and execute this attack: small arms and hand grenades are not hard to find, boats are scarcely specialised equipment, and Mumbai is a vast, open city with more than enough soft targets.

Perhaps we do not know enough about where the perpetrators are from, because they could have come from almost anywhere?

The terrorists were willing to show their faces on CCTV. Was this suicide for martyrdom - as in New York and Washington in 2001, and London in 2005 - or suicide for celebrity, as in Columbine in 1999 and Virginia Tech in 2007?

And perhaps so little is known of the terrorists’ cause, because they simply did not feel the need to have one.

The attack in Mumbai was obviously planned - but “military-style planning” (whatever that means) is probably not necessary for the mass murder of unarmed and unsuspecting civilians going about their business in crowded railway stations and restaurants.

This could also have been a plan which had a large gap where mission, cause or vision statement ought to have been.

But no matter. The terrorists might have assumed, quite correctly as it happens, that the world’s media and the terrorism analysis industry would very quickly fill in any gaps for them.”

In a day filled with an ongoing terrorist crisis, the deaths of American shoppers (shootings in toy stores, trampling Wal-Mart employees to death), and God knows what else, a little brightness is in order.

So I might as well talk about a kitten.

Eli has grown. So has Benji. Eli’s growth is only natural because he’s a kitten. Benji’s is unnatural because he’s been eating all of Eli’s food behind my back for two weeks and has turned into Jabba The Hut. Casey could care less about any of it. So I moved Eli’s food on to a shelf that only he can reach, which has sent Benji into a depression that is broken only by his new found hobby – attempting to lick Eli to death.

Strangely, Eli likes showers. One of his favourite things to do, besides sleeping behind my computer, is to stand in the shower once I’m out of it. I have no idea why. He is also quite fond of his own shadow, his reflection, and the movement of just about anything on a computer screen.

Video:

Even Better!