Mumbai 2008

Unread post by **simonshack** » Thu Nov 26, 2009 5:46 pm

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THE MUMBAI ATTACKS ( 26/11 2008)

Today was the first anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, so I spent some time looking into this most dramatic news story. My first wish was to learn from the "news" the final death toll of that tragedy. One year on, one should expect such a figure to be finally, firmly established. Here's the result of my frustrating quest for information :

MUMBAI CASUALTY TOLLS as reported by the World "News"

160dead
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiap ... niversary/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

164 dead - 233 injured
http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_o ... ha_1316917" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

164 dead - 293 injured
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties ... ai_attacks" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

166 dead
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_26 ... nt_1316779" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

171dead (at least)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008 ... 439710.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

173 dead - 308injured
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

174 dead
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8379828.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

188 dead - 286 injured
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index ... ticle=3841" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

195dead
“Death toll risen to 195 as more bodies have been discovered”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1041937.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(at least)195 dead - 295injured
"The siege was finally ended 60 hours later, with at least 195 dead and 295 wounded."
http://agonist.org/20081126/bombay_unde ... terrorists" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(more than)195dead
“The Holtzbergs joined the more than 195 people who were killed”
http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/ ... Killed.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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300 dead expected (Early report ? november30 2008)
“THE death toll in the Mumbai terror attack is expected to soar to nearly 300, Indian officials said yesterday”
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/as ... 58216.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And then ? of course - we have a FOX NEWS "scoop" :rolleyes:
“REPORT: MUMBAI TERROR ATTACK AIMED TO KILL 5,000 PEOPLE”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,459284,00.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Alan and Naomi SCHERR

http://www.onelifealliance.org/about/alan-and-naomi/

Then I bumped into two American casualties allegedly shot, “execution-style”, by the terrorists (of which only one was caught alive). Alan and Naomi Scherr. They were members of the Virginia-based “Synchronicity Foundation”. I would appreciate if anyone here would have some more info about this foundation. Here are a few relevant links :

Father, child confirmed dead in Mumbai attacks“A foundation in Virginia is confirming the deaths of a Nelson County man and his teenage daughter in the terrorist attacks in India.” http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/ ... 29/123164/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

DIVINE VISION: Sanctuary draws faithful to apparition of Mary
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/lifes ... _cdp/9073/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Virginians Slain in Attacks Lived Out Peaceful Ideals
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01360.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FOX REPORTS Synchronicity Foundation Casualties
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/2 ... 46979.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks for any feedback on this! :)

Unread post by **godzilla** » Thu Nov 26, 2009 9:31 pm

Below is a small biography about the Guru of the Synchronicity Foundation from their website. I read on another page there that Master Charles Cannon had his 'holistic realization' while in the presence of his Guru Paramahansa Muktananda. I am hazarding a guess this is the famous Swami Muktananda (now passed) of Siddha Yoga fame, the so-called 'chief disciple' of the incomparable Bhagavan Nityananda. The meditation techniques Master Charles offers don't resemble to me the original Siddha Yoga teachings of Swami Muktananda.

But anyway, sincere or not, there is a lot of money to be had for organizations that offer modern western seekers different approaches of new-agey, Hindu tradition based spirituality. There are also some major economic shifts happening in India that perhaps some organizations could possibly be connected to in various ways. Currently in India the capitalist elite are making their move to control populations of common folk and the rich resources they live on. I know the western capitalists have their greedy hands in that pie.

"Master Charles Cannon, affectionately known as Master Charles, was coined The American Guru in the award-winning documentary film, The Spiritual Revolution. He is the originator of the Synchronicity Experience, author of the spiritual autobiography, The Bliss of Freedom and Spiritual Director of Synchronicity Foundation for Modern Spirituality. He is an ordained monk of the Vedic/Tantric Tradition and for many years was a close disciple of Paramahansa Muktananda, one of the most acknowledged Eastern Spiritual Masters of the modern era. His monastic name is His Holiness Swami Vivekananda Saraswati.

Radical, revolutionary and iconoclastic, he is an authentic Spiritual Master who breaks the rules, defies the established dogmas and delivers a living spirituality reflective of the times in which we live. His seeming abandonment of traditional contexts of spirituality in favor of a modern approach has made him one of the most innovative spiritual teachers of our time.

Master Charles and the Synchronicity Experience have been well-featured in the international media. His speaking engagements have included: the United Nations; the World Health Organization; the National Institutes of Health; Columbia, Oxford, Tel Aviv and Bombay Universities; Westminster Abbey and the Vatican."

http://www.synchronicity.org/Master-Cha ... ducts/525/

edit: Looking more at the Synchronicity Foundation website there is no doubt in my mind it is a hoaky, pseudo-spiritual organization. Besides raking in the dough from western spiritual seekers by offering a new-age package brand of mysticism and 'enlightenment', I can only imagine what else they are up to.

Unread post by **godzilla** » Thu Nov 26, 2009 11:05 pm

Hey, check out this Synchronicity Foundation tribute page for Alan and Naomi Scherr and read some of the posted tribute messages. It looks hauntingly familiar.

http://www.alanandnaomi.com/

Unread post by **simonshack** » Fri Nov 27, 2009 3:43 pm

godzilla @ Nov 26 2009, 11:05 PM wrote: Hey, check out this Synchronicity Foundation tribute page for Alan and Naomi Scherr and read some of the posted tribute messages. It looks hauntingly familiar.

http://www.alanandnaomi.com/

Thanks Godzy ! Very interesting. I have a feeling religious foundations of all kinds are all too often 'coincidentally' involved in, shall we say, the 'war on terror' peripherals & propaganda.

And yes...the tribute messages do indeed look hauntingly familiar. :rolleyes:

Unread post by **godzilla** » Fri Nov 27, 2009 5:52 pm

There is a photo gallery of Alan and Naomi at the tribute link with photos supposedly taken through the years at various events at the Synchronicity Foundation, and some from Mumbai just prior to the attack. It seems odd to me that photos of a spiritual center supposedly hosting events for many followers show only a handful of people.

I wonder what happened to Alan's left foot in the linked photo?
http://www.alanandnaomi.com/index.php?o ... toindex=10

Other photos there also look tampered with.

Unread post by **godzilla** » Sat Nov 28, 2009 5:41 pm

Something else that is interesting about the Synchronicity Foundation's memorial to Alan and Naomi is that there have been no memorial tributes posted since last May. Wouldn't the one year anniversary of their deaths bring at least one surviving friend or family member to post a remembrance? They supposedly lived at the Foundation with a close "family" of spiritual friends, surely someone there would post a remembrance at their own memorial site on the one year anniversary of Alan's and Naomi's deaths.

http://www.alanandnaomi.com/

Unread post by **godzilla** » Sat Nov 28, 2009 8:43 pm

Here is a Washington Post article from a few days ago (November 23, 2009) supposedly about the experiences of the Synchronicity Foundation people during the Mumbai event.

Unshakable Faith

The Mumbai terrorist attacks killed two pilgrims from Virginia, but not their companions' belief that everything, and everyone, is connected

By April Witt
Sunday, August 23, 2009

Naomi bent over the exotic, blood-red flower blossoms that flourished in the ashram garden and breathed in. It was a delicious moment of perfect peace: Naomi Scherr, just 13 years old, her shoulder-length strawberry-hued hair damp from the Indian heat, her face full of wonder at the beauty of a world she was just discovering. It was the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008.

Lingering in a sacred garden on the outskirts of the busy Indian port city of Mumbai was just one more blissful interlude on the 10th day of what had been a joyous spiritual journey for Naomi, her father, Alan Scherr, 58, and 23 fellow pilgrims with an international meditation group based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Inside the ashram, young monks chanted hauntingly beautiful prayers in Sanskrit for the spiritual tour group from the Synchronicity Foundation. "It was heaven," recalled Helen Connolly, a yoga teacher from Toronto who was Naomi's roommate on the trip. Afterward, as their giant tour bus threaded past the tiny motorcycle taxis called tuk-tuks that clog Mumbai's streets, Helen had the dreamy sense of being inside an orca as it swam through schools of minnows.

Later that evening, in a rented hall in downtown Mumbai, the pilgrims sat meditating with the America guru who had led them to India: Master Charles Cannon. Indian locals wandered in to join them and greet the visiting guru, a trim, quietly charismatic 63-year-old mystic with a down-to-earth manner. Master Charles teaches a holistic view of the universe in which everyone and everything -- sunlight and shadow -- are one unified consciousness; and in which the events of this world, whatever they may be, are somehow meant to be. As Master Charles brought this night's session to a close, pilgrims and locals spilled onto the dark streets, still relishing the blissed-out, almost opiated state that some longtime meditation practitioners achieve. Master Charles, however, sensed shadow. As the guru and his followers made their own way back to their five-star hotel, the Oberoi, Master Charles had the incongruous sense that something was about to happen. Be alert, he thought: Ah, it's very close.

Four days earlier, on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 22, a small boat launched from the Pakistani coastal city of Karachi. Its passengers were 10 young men who had spent months training for this moment. Each carried a large rucksack stocked with Kalashnikov ammunition, two 9mm pistols, hand grenades, an Improvised Explosive Device and a cellphone. The young men, terrorists recruited from across Pakistan, journeyed into the Arabian Sea. They were headed more than 500 nautical miles south -- to Mumbai.

- snip -

On the afternoon of Nov. 26 -- the same afternoon that Naomi and her fellow pilgrims were admiring flowers in an ashram garden -- the jihadists set anchor four nautical miles off Mumbai. Then they waited and made final preparations for the night ahead.

What lay ahead was terror and slaughter across Mumbai -- three days that came to be known as India's 9/11. What lay ahead in one tiny corner of the city was a strangely synchronistic meeting of the yin and yang: American mystics who believe they are one with the universe encountering terrorists with guns in hand. What lay ahead, Master Charles would come to say as survivors struggled to understand and heal, was the eternal oscillation of sunlight and shadow, "the experience whose time has come, the happening of the happening."

- snip -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... =ST2009082

Unread post by **godzilla** » Sat Nov 28, 2009 9:45 pm

On the last page of the Washington Post article I refered to in my last post, Alan Scherr's widow recalls a recent dream:

"A few weeks ago," Kia recalled, "I dreamed that I was being hired by the Obama administration. They said, 'There's one more job left. And your job is to open the ice cream.' "

And on the same page is mentioned her's and Master Charles' new foundation begun in honor of her loved ones we are told were killed at Mumbai:

"Kia finds strength daily in helping plan a new Synchronicity-related foundation called "One Life Alliance." Every day, she's reading books about all kinds of people working to promote peace all over the world. She's even seeking out authors and peace activists, which astounds her because Alan was always the outgoing one. Kia was the shy, retiring homebody. Now, she sometimes feels as if the trauma of her extreme loss and grief has somehow ripped her wide open -- open to a new way, a new life, a new identity."

The new foundation just started by Master Charles and Kia Scherr: "One Life Alliance" http://www.onelifealliance.org/

At the following page of their new foundation we find some interesting members and advisors:
http://www.onelifealliance.org/Honorary ... cular.html

Like this high rolling investor:

Micheal Lang completed his post graduate degree at Oxford University. He has worked as a partner in numerous law firms, as a counselor for the Price Commission Executive Office of the President and was a Founder and Managing Director of Notre Capital Ventures. He lives in Santa Fe New Mexico with his wife Tami.

And this guy:

David Swartz is the Chair of the Higher Education Information Security Council and Chief Information Officer of American University. He was the Vice President and CIO at George Washington University for eight years, and the Director of Information Systems and Network Services at West Virginia University, where he had responsibility for enterprise infrastructure and information systems. David has worked as a consultant on ERP systems and telemedicine networks for groups such as Columbia Health System out of Nashville, Saint Francis Health System out of Tulsa, the states of North Dakota and South Dakota, Indian Health Service, the Veterans Administration and the U.S. Military. He has been an author and editor with Telemedicine Today where he has published over 50 columns featuring articles on telemedicine technology. He has published 35 peer reviewed articles, two chapters and one book.

Unread post by **hoi.polloi** » Wed Dec 09, 2009 5:58 pm

I would like to help with Mumbai somewhat. What I can say from the outset is that I watched a reporter standing around aimlessly in front of the digital scenery and when the "explosion" apparently "surprised" her "out of nowhere" my baby brother and I looked at each other and laughed. The bad acting was all too evident. He even said, "Wow. That looked really fake."

Thanks to Godzila and Simon for making a lot of good headway on this. It is very clear that the Mumbai event is another 9/11 with very limited/"matrix"-like scenery and spooky players like a Jewish-looking fellow from Virginia acting like a guru and maintaining the reality of the simulation for American audiences.

The banality of their scripts is insulting to say the least. Having said that, perhaps we should trudge into it as brave researchers.

Observe: http://www.asianwindow.com/tag/mumbai-terror-attack/

Unread post by **godzilla** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 6:47 pm

hoi.polloi 4 Dec 9 2009, 10:58 AM wrote: It is very clear that the Mumbai event is another 9/11 with very limited/"matrix"-like scenery and spooky players like a Jewish-looking fellow from Virginia acting like a guru and maintaining the reality of the simulation for American audiences.

Hi Hoi.

Take a close look at all of the photos on the Synchronicity Foundation's 'Alan and Naomi Scherr Memorial' when you have a chance and tell me what you find. I see a lot of image manipulation when I look at them.

http://www.alanandnaomi.com/index.php?o ... toindex=10

Unread post by **hoi.polloi** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 7:15 pm

Oh yes, I was looking at this with Simon. My first reaction was confusion about the image data that reads "false" when you point at an image for a few seconds.

Why does it say "false"? Certainly, that is a boolean value in the program, but why is it a rather hilariously accurate description of the "photos"?

There's the occasional neck joints for one:

and familiar positions/expressions for two. It's weird how these galleries seem to be made all together, and simulacrum/acting gathered at random parking lots and cabins??

Is this a spiritual retreat or a bar-mitzvah?

There is one head in particular that made me cringe when I saw how they had pasted it on ... I'll see if I can find it. It's really awful/funny.

Unread post by **brianv** » Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:43 pm

I'm sorry I couldn't go any further than the first page, the ridiculousness was overwhelming.

What about that guy's head transplant?

Unread post by **fbenario** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 1:15 pm

Well, at least we aren't surprised to read this, are we?

Mumbai gunman recants confession, alleges torture

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who is being tried in a special court -- and was photographed carrying an assault rifle during the attack on Mumbai's main train station -- told the judge he came to Mumbai as a tourist and was arrested 20 days before the siege began.

On the day the attacks started, Kasab said, police took him from his cell because he resembled one of the gunmen, shot him to make it look like he had been involved in the violence and re-arrested him.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091218/ap_ ... a_shooting