first it was my understanding that they had the food before they refused to pay i often have the goods in my possession before i settle the paycheck second not being paid for a little food is an awfully big deal in india it isn t far from stealing the only food my children have so i ll have to watch them starve the margin of survival is very very thin so yes in my particular reality distortion field not paying for a little food in india is akin to a direct act of violence intended to cause suffering if not death on the victims family that such an act triggers a violent response is imho hardly surprising in other words as far as i could tell the people on the train fired the first shot with all of that said i still don t know if this happened or not nor do i know for sure that the margin of survival for those muslim vendors was that thin original message from stephen d williams mailto swilliams URL sent monday september NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER am to johnhall URL cc fork spamassassin taint org lea URL subject re slaughter in the name of god wow it seems you are evaluating this with a large reality distortion field if the activists on the train refused to pay for food then the vendors shouldn t give it to them and the local police force should be arresting them etc you have to be operating from a particularly primitive point of view which obviously was in operation with the participants here to think that religious differences or not being paid for a little food or taunting was even a remote justification for burning a train full of people alive sdw john hall wrote what i understood was that the activists on the train refused to pay for the food and other items they acquired from the muslim vendors then taunted them that may not be true but it would put things in a more interesting light taking food from a small vendor in india and not paying them is trying to starve them it sounded consistent with the ideas and purpose of the train full of activists i m rarely an apologist for muslims anywhere yet i find my sympathies with the muslims in this case even after they burned the train from fork admin URL mailto fork admin URL on behalf of stephen d williams the pity of it is that some muslims were ready to give it to them their murderous attack on the train load of vhp activists at godhra with its awful atavistic echoes of the killings of hindus and muslims by the train load during the partition riots of NUMBER played right into the hindu extremists hands sdw swilliams URL URL stephen d williams senior technical director 