Strike!
> G'Day, Mate! I'm a little hesitant about posting this, 'on the fly' - not
> least because you've experienced the loss of some mates in the Bali bomb
> disaster - but it really does need to be pointed out that the old saying,
> "Guns don't kill: People do." applies equally as much to religious
beliefs!
I agree 100%. I did not mean to disparage Muslims, or hold them more likely
to kill than believers in any other system. I don't blame Islam for the
death of my friends. I was merely commenting on Brad's (now, sadly,
well-proven) fallacy, that the absence of a particular group ensures
relative safety. And that, if I read you correctly, is precisely your own
view.
Having said that, and I believe this is also well-documented, Indonesia in
particular seems to have a disproportionately large amount of nutters in
just about any of their many social/religious groups. Muslims, Christians,
Animists (the Dayaks) seem to take turns at perpetrating some kind of
outrage in that country. For that reason alone, NOWHERE in Indonesia is ever
really safe.
It is a desperately poor country, that can't seem to get a break. And to add
to that, it is only really a country because Suharto decided that it should
be! It is experiencing rapid "Balkanization", with several independence
insurgencies going on as we speak. Poor people without hope, national unity
or anything to be proud of, tend to gather around whatever appears to give
them a semblance of order, or a rallying point for expressing their
frustration and pain. In Indonesia, that has, sadly, mostly been religion
and/or ethnicity
This is of course not an Indonesian, or for that matter an Asian phenomenon,
Europe has had quite its share of that sort of thing in the last 100 years!
> It's nothing new.
> Neither is terrorism. What is new, is the extent of the media exposure
now
> given to acts of terrorism. Something that invariably inspires
politicians
> to ride the wave of public opinion.
I do agree completely. Like I said in my previous post, I simply re-evaluate
certain things I would previously have done unthinkingly, and choose the
prudent path. I travel to Jakarta all the time, it's part of my job. But I
won't go to Makassar or Surabaya right now, and I stay away from the more
popular nightspots.
You are absolutely right, terrorism is nothing new. These days, I often find
myself reminding those who think this is an entirely new ball-game that
Europe has lived for over half a century with the IRA, ETA, Baader-Meinhof,
Red Brigades, Black September, 22nd November, Carlos, Abu Nidal, Ghadaffi's
proxies, and so on.
The main difference is, the new breed of terrorists is targeting Americans,
and that, as you quite rightly point out, ensures prime-time placement for
as long as CNN can possibly string it out.
The other day I was watching a CNN report from Manila, following the bombs
that went off in Mindanao and on a couple of buses in the capital. The
report opened dramatically with a shot of an armed security guard rummaging
through a woman's hand bag as she entered a shopping mall. The shot was
accompanied by a statement from the reporter that went something like, "This
is life in Manila today, a capital in fear. Shoppers waiting to enter a mall
must subject their hand bags to armed guards for inspection for explosives
and guns".
Leaving aside the fact that for at least the last 50 years, Manila has had
more guns per capita than Amarillo, Texas, this search (by guards who have
always been armed) has been SOP in Manila for at least the last 5 years I
have been traveling there! But now it makes exciting, appropriately alarming
footage.
> I'd rather base my decisions on where to go in the world on whether or not
I
> can afford it, than on the fact that somebody in that place might want to
> cause me harm. I can stay at home and have that happen! :-)
I don't think there is anything wrong with applying SOME caution. Or are you
saying that if I sent you a plane ticket to Chechnya (thus taking the money
out of the equation), you would go without a care ? :-))
Bjorn
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