All Terrorism in Global, Stupid

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When terrorists struck Mumbai's train system on July 11 this year, the reaction in the US media was predictable. It was virtually dismissed as a "local" attack, in the sense of being peculiar to India, and attributed to factors such as Kashmir. This "local" mantra was repeated ad nauseam on television newscasts and in newspapers such as the New York Times. In fact, since the Indian media called it the 7-11 attacks, there was also a measure of sniggering here, especially in the blogosphere. After all, 7-11 is associated with convenience stores in the US, often run by Indian Americans. And caricatured in the form on Apu on The Simpsons. So, really, it happened in India, it couldn't be taken that seriously in terms of impacting the world, especially America. Think again. The plot to blow up airliners from London to the United States has highlighted the manner in which....