MUMBAI AND THE COLLAPSE OF INDUSTRIALIZED CIVILIZATION

by

Michael C. Ruppert

(c) Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved. Michael C. Ruppert

(Send it. Use it. But leave my name on it and don't change it. -- Especially you, Gore Vidal.)

Thanksgiving, Nov. 27,2008 – 00:30 PST – (After my last post I'd better start putting a time sig on these.)

I do not know how many other corporations are affected; but they will be many, if not most of the Dow 30 and the Fortune 500. And I can tell you that on Friday morning, any customer or client of Citigroup, Symantec or Hewlett-Packard will be unable to get customer assistance over the phone. Warranty service for these corporations will stop. I know that because I have been through that horrible grind with all of them in the last year or so. All of their calls are taken in Mumbai, by Indians. Nothing is working in Mumbai and there can be no certainty when anything will be working. Because the attacks included the premier hotels in the financial district, no multi-national will ever trust the city again. The risk is too great. I can almost bet that the multinationals are all well prepared for attacks on their own facilities, but were totally unprepared for an attack that pulled the city out from under them.

I think many corporations also have data processing and IT centers there are well.

The Achilles tendon of globalization has just been severed.

The Achilles tendon of globalization has just been severed.

Ordinarily, I would go out and start researching to see how bad the exposure is but I already know that it is catastrophic. The markets will do all our research and reporting very quickly for us. Citigroup will be devastated. Its CEO Vikram Pandit, is Indian.

I am certain that this was the intended outcome of the attacks.

Fingers have been pointing to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Depak Chopra has even pointed at Saudi Arabia as a possible financier… with the whole world watching. He is a fine soul, but I wonder if he knows what he's doing. Every head of state in the world with an IQ above 70 is right now living his or her worst nightmare. (You know who that leaves out.) But something in all this smells Chechen or Russian to me in terms of style, organization and capability. No way did this one originate in the States.

I have scanned my memory banks from Munich to Mogadishu; from 9-11 to Tanzania; from Tet to London…. And I keep coming back to Beslan as the closest model. All the CIA hands and terror experts, some of the very good "experts" fail to mention the many similarities this has with Beslan. It's just my gut. Yet no one on CNN or anyplace else I have seen has even mentioned Chechnya. Still, this is truly an entirely new species of terror attack. There is a reason why science does not rush to name and certify new species.

I can draw no conclusions yet, nor should anyone else. Chechnya is bad enough as a possible source, but I pray that these attacks are not Russian. If they are then all I can say is "Duck and cover." This is about as heavy as it gets. There is a strong stew of CIA, Al Qaeda, Russian DFS and Taliban simmering there, (see Rubicon). But, to quote our frequent contributor Victoria, "We are all standing in a pool of gasoline"… and someone just threw the match.

Sometimes understanding is the booby prize; like the guy who stood on the bow of the Titanic screaming, "I'm not getting off this ship until I find out why this happened!"

What scares me most about the Mumbai attacks is the following:

1. They are not over yet.
2. We don't know who did it.
3. At this level of sophistication I would expect the capacity for a "follow-on" in the near future. If the intent of the attack is to put the United States completely out of business it will have to do so quickly.
4. The United States still has enormous military power which might be viewed in some DoD circles now as "Use it or lose it." They too can see the writing on the Imperial wall.
5. The attackers have made no demands.
6. To even publicly breathe that it might be state-sponsored puts us (i.e. all mankind) a hair trigger away from nuclear conflict in any off our theaters tactically and on a MAD basis strategically.
7. The logistics and C3 (Command, Control and Communications) for this looks state-sponsored.
8. This is an absolutely brilliant and potentially fatal blow aimed precisely at the weakest spots we have mapped in "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" and at "From The Wilderness".

The fact that there are no convincing suspects as yet also points to a state-sponsor trying to disguise itself as a large terror group. That might explain why there are no demands... Demands identify the suspect.

I am being very careful right now. There are many intriguing threads and it is too early for any of us to rush to judgment. It took me two and half years and many tens of thousands of dollars in research and investigation to conclude and write that Richard Cheney had masterminded and executed 9-11 for the purpose of seizing Iraqi oil. My book has never been challenged or even acknowledged by the U.S. government; a government which spent millions on web sites and press releases to (rightfully) discredit all other 9-11 investigations. My book is in the Harvard Business School Library. It has a thousand footnotes. It has sold a lot of copies.

The analytic construct for Mumbai I have is this:

It is clear that the United States is imploding and that its economic, military and political influence are dying. As with all empires, it was the power of the state; whether economic, cultural, or military, which held the divergent parts together. In many cases enemies were bound next to enemies like two cats tied so tightly in a wet burlap sack that they could not move. But if the sack were to loosen, weaken…and expand? What if six wet cats were in the sack as it started to rend?

Our present, publicly-acknowledged cats include India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Now throw in Russia and Chechnya… Shake and stir.

Is it sinking in how dangerous this is?

I think I understand how Edward R. Murrow felt in London during the Blitz… What a giant he was… Maybe I know what I want to be when I grow up.

MCR
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Jenna Orkin


The Hindustan Times reports that India's security agencies are blaming the attacks on the Al Qaeda linked group, Lashkar-e-Taiba ("the Army of the Good"). While Lashkar was officially condemned in Pakistan in 2002, it reportedly receives clandestine support from members of the Pakistani army and intelligence communities, whether 'rogue' or officially sanctioned.

According to a new book, "The Search for Al Qaeda," by Bruce Riedel, an advisor on South Asia to Obama, Lashkar-e-Taiba was the offspring of the Pakistani Intelligence agency, ISI and Osama Bin Laden in the late 1980's. Its immediate goal was to dislodge Indian rule in Kashmir.

The current goals of the group, as set forth in a pamphlet entitled "Why We Wage Jihad," have evolved to promoting the installation of Islamic rule in all Muslim dominated regions of Asia including not only Kashmir but also South Asia, (in view of Mike's suspicions, note this one) Russia and China. And, again in view of Mike's suspicions, recall the comment sent in by someone yesterday which quoted Gaffar Abdul Amir, an Iraqi tourist from Baghdad on what the Brits would call a "busman's holiday:"

They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed.

Today Pakistan is taking the extraordinary step of sending Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the director general of ISI, to India in an effort to allay concerns that ISI was involved in the attacks.
The last time tensions between India and Pakistan reached this pitch was around this time of year, 2001. The threats to the New York subway system yesterday highlight the ways in which this situation mirrors the aftermath of 9/11, with the two hubs, New York and parts of India, under siege.