The bomb a couple days ago & Innocense of Muslims fallout
I didn't post about this because I don't really have anything to say about it. But the bomb that hit the bus full of contractors a few days ago was sort of on the other side of town. Mostly, it was on the other side of the big hill (we call it a mountain, but it'd only a mountain by midwest standards where everything is flat) from my house. It hit at 6:40, and I heard it very loud and clear. I went out to the roof to look around and see if I could see any smoke or anything else, but I didn't, so I nearly decided it must have just been a big boom, but not a bomb.
Found out a couple hours later that it was, indeed, a bomb. That afternoon, they had confirmed (although there were some counter reports) that it was a female suicide bomber, which is rare in general, but particularly so here in Afghanistan. (There have been several cases of men wearing burkas and then detonating, but this was the first actual female suicide bomber.)
One of my students lived nearby, and we talked about it in class, of course, but the comments weren't anything particularly noteworthy. Obviously everyone is sad it happened, sad at the state of Afghanistan, just wants peace, etc. But that's hardly unique.
As for the movie fallout, the internet stuff mentioned in last post (gmail, youtube, google) was blocked for I think about a day and a half. I maintain that it was because of this that Afghanistan remained as quiet as it did. Things are still tense, and we keep getting the standard warnings that there's going to be an attack on this embassy or that traffic circle, but these are pretty standard anyway and not really worth noting or worrying about.
So for now, life just continues to go along pretty much uninterrupted and normally. Chinese curses and all...
Found out a couple hours later that it was, indeed, a bomb. That afternoon, they had confirmed (although there were some counter reports) that it was a female suicide bomber, which is rare in general, but particularly so here in Afghanistan. (There have been several cases of men wearing burkas and then detonating, but this was the first actual female suicide bomber.)
One of my students lived nearby, and we talked about it in class, of course, but the comments weren't anything particularly noteworthy. Obviously everyone is sad it happened, sad at the state of Afghanistan, just wants peace, etc. But that's hardly unique.
As for the movie fallout, the internet stuff mentioned in last post (gmail, youtube, google) was blocked for I think about a day and a half. I maintain that it was because of this that Afghanistan remained as quiet as it did. Things are still tense, and we keep getting the standard warnings that there's going to be an attack on this embassy or that traffic circle, but these are pretty standard anyway and not really worth noting or worrying about.
So for now, life just continues to go along pretty much uninterrupted and normally. Chinese curses and all...