Things That Aren't Being Said

This is in relation to the attacks on Mumbai this week.

Despite the burden of a bloody history with India, the civilian government of Pakistan has made significant public gestures of friendship and peace toward India of late. Some claim they are merely rhetorical gestures. Whether or not this is true, these gestures must be documented. In fact, any voices of peace and conciliation should not (nor ever) be ignored, particularly at this time. Pakistan President Zardari, remember, lost his wife last year to an assassination.

The Pakistanis have formally condemned the attack and are in a mad scramble to urge calm.

Muslims, in addition to Hindus, Christians, Jews and likely people of other faiths too, died in the attack and people of all faiths are protesting the attack.

More of what's not being said or shown:

By implication: all deaths like this are tragic. There is no quantifying one person's death as more important or more relevant. You wouldn't know this by watching the Western press. Its coverage of these attacks has been brazen in its omission of the following:

1)mostly Indians died in this attack;
2)people died in the train station and other places, too. Most coverage might lead one to believe all of this went down at the hotels.
3) A coordinated bomb attack on an Indian train in Mumbai in 2006 killed more than 200 Indians. Much less press devotion to that story (as opposed to, say, deep coverage of the similar Madrid train attacks and to the current story), but more disturbing, barely any mention of it in current coverage...to provide context. The theater of this attack lit it up globally, but despite the horror of it, nobody will convince me it rates as more horrible than 2006. How does one manage to compare such things?
Last, but not least, one month ago, there were coordinated bomb attacks in Assam, an eastern state in India. At least 70 people died. Barely any coverage. Rajasthan's attacks got some play in the west. Delhi was bombed recently, too. To say nothing of a mind-blowingly devastating Pakistan earthquake in 2005 that killed more than 73,000 and disappeared from our radar not three days after it happened. And who knew, without tracking BBC religiously, that an earthquake hit Pakistan and killed at least 170 people last month.

More on this in the coming days. (Meaning, I will attempt to counter arguments that say it's impossible to write about this stuff thoroughly in Western news coverage. A well-fed lie.)