India may face 26/11 type attacks again, says Army chief

bhupalamm — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:30:14 +0000

Mumbai: Army chief Deepak Kapoor on Tuesday warned that 26/11 type Mumbai terror attacks were a possibility and that India has to take all steps to counter such strikes.

The South Asian region is infested with terror groups. Be it India, Afghanistan or Pakistan, “we have to collectively battle such threats,” said kapoor.

Kapoor said both Defence Minister A K Antony and Home Minister P Chidambaram had asked our nation to be cautious against such threats.

To allegations from Pakistan Army that they have seized some Indian-made weapons from terrorists involved in recent attacks, the Army chief said,India had no intention of causing trouble inside Pakistan and that it did not support any terror group in the region, said the Army chief.

“We want Pakistan to be stable and peaceful,” he said.

A news channel on Monday reported that India is on high-alert, with intelligence inputs that suggest an attack by sea, originating in Pakistan, is expected before the one-year anniversary of 26/11. Government sources confirmed that India would not hesitate to retaliate.

Over the weekend, Home Minister P Chidambaram warned Pakistan against sending terrorists into India.

“I’ve been warning Pakistan every time, to not play with our country again and to stop with the Mumbai game. I’m warning Pakistan for the last time. If Pakistan attempts to send terrorists into India again, India will not only foil those attempts but also give them a crushing response,” said Chidambaram.

Resonance in India

tatadmin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:46:58 +0000

This article was written on Jan-23-2009.

Resonance in India
TAT update from India

Dear Friends and concerned citizens,

I am sure many of you may have been wondering what happened to “Together Against Terrorism” after the last time we met. As we had mentioned, many of us were travelling to India during December and January and hence there has been a silence on the web for a while. However, I decided to finally break the silence and write to the group from India.I have been traveling in Maharastra as part of my vacation while I was in India. While I was there, I decided to interview some of the people that I met during my travels and record their thoughts on our campaign against terrorism. I am very happy to report that the youth of India that I spoke to refreshingly share our perspective of trying to figure out how to prevent these kinds of attacks in the future more than blame Pakistan. Therefore, I feel that we have an energizing resonance among the youth that I had not seen before. Please note that this does not mean that they condone Pakistan or these actions in any way, but we believe that our energy is better utilized in taking preventive measures in the future.I am currently in the process of figuring out how to condense the videos into short segments and put them online for all of us to share. As soon as they are online, I am sure you will hear from me again. I am in India for another two weeks approximately and in the meantime I plan to do some more brainstorming sessions at Bangalore and will consolidate the results. In the meantime, please do your best to keep this movement alive by having your own discussions with your friends and people you meet and make notes. If any of you want to update the entire group, if you send me your notes, I will send them to the whole group here. As soon as we have our own website, it will be much easier to share the information. We are still not there yet, but I am sure we will soon have that set up. If any of you are willing to help with that, please let me know.

Sincerely,
Mahesh Bhupalam
Together Against Terrorism Campaign Volunteer

At Together Against Terrorism, our mission is:

To focus on strategies to:

prevent terrorist violence
increase security of our communities
spread message of peace and love

Brainstorming Session Kickoff

tatadmin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:40:12 +0000

Brainstorming Session Kickoff
Update on meeting held on Friday, Dec. 5, 2008

Hello Friends,

Here is an update on the first brainstorming session that happened on Friday, Dec. 5, 2008 evening at 427 ERC, 6:30 – 7:30 pm.

We had a total of 11 people. Many students could not show up due to exam week. However, whoever showed up had lots of great ideas. I kicked off the brainstorming session with the following mission of the group:

Together Against Terrorism mission:

To focus on strategies to:

prevent terrorist violence
increase security of our communities
spread message of peace and love

I then presented the question:

How do we prevent or minimize these attacks in the future?

I asked everyone to think of different answers to this question. Discussion began with people throwing off different ideas in response to this question. At some points, the discussion was>" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="300" height="225" align="right" /> tense as strong emotions against terrorism made everyone edgy. However, I mentioned that there are no good or bad ideas, but only ideas at this point. No idea is guaranteed to fail or guaranteed to succeed. Above all, this is only a time to collect ideas and not to debate on whether one will work or not. After that, ideas flowed smoother. Pretty soon, Balasaheb Darade, who was the scribe for the ideas could not keep up with the typing fast enough. All in all we managed to gather many strong ideas.

Here are just a few of the splendid ideas that were generated during the group brainstorming session:

Educate local communities to be able to spot any threats such as suspicious objects, bombs, suspicious activity etc. on the streets and in public places wherever they are.
Provide better technology to our police forces, armed forces etc.
Provide urban warfare training to our armed forces as they generally do not receive this kind of training
Establish a secure database of building plans (Autocad or some popular format) of prominent buildings in the country so they have a better response in case there is a terrorist threat.

By the time the meeting ended, several participants decided to start implementing some of the ideas. For example, one of the ideas received was to go to local schools in India and talk to kids and spread the message of love so that they don’t start hating people of other religions or backgrounds. Many of the members were leaving for India shortly and they thought they could start doing this while they are there. Perhaps this was the biggest success of our meeting last night! We are already about to make a difference.

Meeting was concluded with the following next steps:

1. Our group needed a more formal structure – a forum/website/blog etc for better communication.

2. A group email subscription list so people can opt in or out of the group emails

3. Consolidate all ideas that we received yesterday and categorize them in some logical fashion

4. Conduct more group sessions and collect ideas

5. Start identifying resources to implement any and all ideas received

6. Figure out action plan to implement ideas

A vote of thanks was given to all the active members of the group who have helped us come this far before.We are still in the process of assembling all ideas in a database. If you have any other ideas regarding the question stated above, you are welcome to reply to this email. We will keep collecting ideas. Please remember that we can all come up with thousands of reasons for any idea not to work, but only the most open minded among us not the smartest of us can figure out how to make it work. I am sure we are all smart, now let’s try to be open minded. Let’s start the avalanche of ideas.

Sincerely,
Mahesh Bhupalam
Together Against Terrorism

P.S.
We are looking for volunteers for the following tasks:1. Register domain name www.togetheragainstterrorism.com
2. Set up Joomla website
3. Set up Joomla forum
4. Design an idea collection database for online data collection

The above are our immediate tasks. Please come forward if any of you can help in any way.

CNN ireport: Candlelight Vigil at The University of Cincinnati – Balasaheb Darade comments

tatadmin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:36:30 +0000

Organizer Balasaheb Darade, a second-year master’s degree student, called for everyone to take a stand against Terrorism. ‘Together Against Terrorism’ is the title for the Candlelight vigil for Mumbai Terror Victims that was held at University of Cincinnati’s McMicken Commons. Wednesday, December 3, 2008.

CNN ireport: Mumbai, India: Candlelight Vigil at The University of Cincinnati – Mahesh comments

tatadmin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:20:44 +0000

iReport —

Mahesh Bhupalam UC graduate and current professional in Cincinnati, was Master of Ceremony for the first UC Mumbai, India Candlelight Vigil. Mahesh spoke with me after the event. The lighting was low, but please enjoy.

Welcome & Thank You

tatadmin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:48:33 +0000

Many of you who have supported, participated, helped create this group “Together Against Terrorism” have carried its message far and wide. Although dormant for a few months now, the spirit and message that we spread has not died down. Many of you have asked when we are going to meet again and what are our next steps.

This website is our next step going forward. From now on, we can all be up to date about what is going on, share and exchange ideas. As part of kicking off this website, we will start posting some of our past activities such as video recordings of people’s suggestions to prevent terrorism, meetings and discussions etc. Enjoy and let’s all join hands once again and reignite our passion for peace and solidarity. Thank you so far for your support and let’s continue the spirit.