For civillisation. The train bombings in Mumbai have reached a death toll of 200, with over 700 injured. In what commentators are indicating are attacks inspired by Madrid and London, it seems we commuters are the ultimate soft target. I mused on this some time ago, before Madrid, before Beslan, that if terror and carnage was your game there were far easier groups to slaughter than military ones. It can't be a co-incidence that suddenly, there's a lot of police on London Underground.

So it goes. India joins Spain, France, Russia and ourselves in coming to terms with act of spite and cowardice . . . although give the residents of Mumbai their due, the trains are as packed yesterday as ever they were. Varshakale puts this succinctly and nicely in her blog. "India will not kneel" is the admirable attitude coming from government, what's more uncertain is how this will affect the Kashmir situation and escalate conflict with Pakistan.

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Photo nicked from the Guardian - Ritesh Uttamchandani/AP

Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Lebonese Hezbollah decide to up the stakes in the Palestinian/Israel conflict and capture two more Israeli soldiers. Israel declares this an "act of war" even as it is busy shelling civillians and peppering population centres with helicopter-fired rockets (because the first causualty in war is irony, you know?).

This morning they attack Beirut airport, and attacks further in the south of Lebanon have killed 22 civillians. They're damn lucky that during their bombing of the runway, they didn't hit a passenger jet just flown in from Cyprus.

The way this is going we're looking at another full-scale conventional war or, and I hope to God I'm wrong, Israel popping off a theatre nuke.

I'm not sure if this is genuine or not, but in a TV show the other day, a Native American Indian character said "when enough blood has spilt on the ground, it cries out for more". Sounds more like a screenwriter than a genuine proverb, but a theory I've had for the Middle East for a good long while.

Of course this isn't helped by the rest of us, either. The US supplies military equipment to Israel even though it knows damn well that Israel has nukes. The usual suspects aer also behind blocking an attempt to control the proliferation of small arms. Shit, it's like we don't want peace on this planet, we'd all rather fight eachother until there's nothing and no-one left.