a berlin blog
|
a berlin blog |
|
|
Thursday, September 09, 2004 Jakarta, Jakarta
The Australian embassy was just hit by a car bomb. Australian and American governments released travel warnings only two days ago about anti-western violence before the September 20 runoff elections, so there must have been some intelligence; and one of the convicted Bali bombers took a cozy trip to Starbucks in Jakarta last weekend. Australians, obviously, are pissed. UPDATE: Jema'ah Islamiyah seems to have claimed the attack. "We decided to make Australia pay in Jakarta today when one of the Mujahideen brothers carried out a martyrdom operation at the Australian embassy," says the Reuters translation of an Arabic internet declaration. Pay for helping in Iraq, is the idea. Maybe JI thinks it can sway Australia's October election, where troops in Iraq are an issue. And maybe it can: The best thing for John Howard, and for that matter George Bush, would be a terrorist blast in or near the homeland to frighten regular citizens. A scared electorate will vote conservative in both countries. It'll be nothing like Spain. But you can't expect Islamic radicals to make such subtle distinctions. They are, as I learned last June, none too bright. UPDATE 2: For making the same point in a harsh way, Ken Parish gets eviscerated early and often by right-leaning Australians, labelled amusingly in the comments as "rent-a-loons." UPDATE 3: This short piece reports a phone call 45 minutes before the bombing to demand the release of Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. UPDATE 4: News reports of a possible second attack keep turning up. UPDATE 5: Indonesian cops are now saying that the explosion was plan B for terrorists who had wanted to assassinate President Megawati and an Australian minister two months ago, during an opening ceremony for a new counter-terrorism center in central Java. I mentioned (and dismissed!) news about that plot last June. UPDATE 6: There's grainy surveillance video of the blast at BBC.com. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:35 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment
| |
|
|
 Too Much of Nothing, a novel  Politics and Prose  about our editor 
The Underground Grammarian  current Berlin blog page  |
