Enough Already

Bali. Damn. I guess I'm not surprised, but at the same time, I'm always surprised by random acts of stupidity and violent stupidity especially. When I was there a few weeks ago, people proudly pointed out the security measures they'd taken to ensure the safety of their guests (whom they treat with the most amazing hospitality). Of course security doesn't guarantee security. I don't know if I mentioned this, but I really didn't WANT to like Bali, but you just can't help it. It's where everyone who goes to Indonesia goes, but, it has absolutely earned it's title of Paradise. Everything about it, especially the people.

And so, another bomb. This will hit them hard, not only because, once again, they have sustained the bulk of the casualties, and they will suffer great losses from tourism, which will undoubtably drop off again. But additionally, a couple of unrelated things that have recently occured in Indonesia threaten to really throw this country into a tailspin. Three days ago, SBY's government finally cut fuel subsidies, which have kept fuel in Indonesia at unnaturally low prices for many years. Because of some major problems in oil production, Indonesia has not been able to afford these subsidies for a few years now, but successive gov'ts have been wary of cutting them, after the last rise in fuel prices that contributed to the ousting of Suharto in 1998. They current subsidies eat up about 1/3 of the goverment's budget. So, on Thursday last week, the government raised the price of oil, dramatically. Kerosene, used by most people, especially the rural poor, for cooking, rose 187% and gasoline rose 87.5%. Those rises will affect every aspect of peoples lives and will see a rise in the price of nearly everything. The weekend saw protests in several cites on Java, as well as Lombok. They were mostly peaceful.

Then, there's the bird flu, which was already threatening tourism and even more so, farmers who have had to cull large portions of their livestock. Jakarta has seen many new cases in the last few weeks, 6 resulting in death.

So three separate forces that will all combine to make life in Indonesia much more financially difficult for a LOT of people. No, they did not need another bomb now.

My biggest hope is that people will not stop traveling, will not allow fear to keep them confined within the "safe" borders of their own country. We desperately need to be out in the world, all of us. We need to know that people truly are the same the world over. We need to not allow the despicable people who commit acts like this to win. We stay home, they win, and we all become further from understanding each other, and the world becomes that much scarier.

I mentioned the below editorial sometime back, it's really worth a look:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/25/opinion/edtaleb.php