More Bali Bombs: Suprised?

How many people died in Iraq last week? Want to take a guess? Fifty? A hundred? Five hundred? Anyone???

No, we don't really care any more. Who can keep up with all that death and madness?

But you can bet we will be counting the dead in Bali very, very carefully as the details filter through the coming days of endless, frenzied front-page media hysteria. Exactly how many Australians/Brits/Americans were killed in these suicide bombings? It's very important for us to know, isn't it?

I will not be a part of that media hysteria. It is part of the sickness that has brought our societies leaders like George Bush and John Howard, who immediately sought to turn the latest deaths to his political advantage. Howard called it an "attack on Democracy". He should know something about that.

Will the public swallow this standard government propaganda line? Or will these latest bombings prompt some more thoughtful analysis? To paraphrase Dylan, how many deaths will it take till we understand that too many people have already died?

A couple of points to note:

The US Government had warned its citizens in Bali on Friday of a possible terrorist attack that would target Westerners there.

And an Australian visiting Bali says he was warned last week by a friend who lives there that a terrorist attack was imminent, and to avoid town on Saturday night.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Jakarta, Charles Silver, said he "could not confirm or deny" whether fresh material from its spy services led to the US warning on Friday.

"There is intelligence collected all the time. That's classified material that we don't give out," he said.

So the US government had information which it did not share with Australia, and the local Bali mafia knew something big was coming but chose to warn only their friends. The word on the streets was: "Look, with the guys coming up, if you are white, don't come into town on the Saturday night."

Both those angles require more investigation. Where is our precious "special relationship" with the USA? Whatever happened to the need for us to share intelligence better than before? And were the Bali mafia afraid to snitch on the Al Quaeda figures, or were they quiet because they actually sympathise with the cause? And in either case, what does that tell us about the direction this whole bogus "war" is heading?

Also worth noting, Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock is now saying a terrorist attack in Australia is "highly probable." This is the same pro-war stooge who helped orchestrate the media chorus criticizing anyone in the past four years who ever dared to suggest such a thing. How stupid are we?