Terrorism in Jakarta - and Melbourne

If any of our friends in Melbourne are feeling terrorised - please come and spend some time with us in Jakarta until things settle down.

Oh - DFaT hasn't issued an alert about travelling to or staying in Melbourne?  Why am I not surprised?  They save such pointless, counter productive and destructive responses for Bali and Jakarta.  It's good to see ordinary Australians ignore them - and sad to see companies covering their butts to no useful purpose.

Well done AFP and Vic Police for the work that led to arrests in Melbourne this morning - before something happened.  Also well done to the Indonesian police for their work since the hotel attacks here 10 days ago.  

We ought to be more realistic about these things.  Terrorism exists because, on one level, it works - it's an high impact, low cost way to advance a minority view.  Whether it's evil or not depends on your point of view - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.  Consequently, it will always be with us.

Having watched what has happened over the last 10 years, I think the only rationale response to terrorism is police work within the rule of law.  Because the threat is international, it now needs international cooperation - with the collaboration between Australia and Indonesia since the Bali bombings being a good model.

A year or so ago I read a book called Three Cups of Tea about a guy called Greg Mortenson and his work in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  His work costs about the same as terrorism in input terms.  But he truly does God's work.  A few dollars in his hands achieves what millions in military expenditure cannot.

I just looked at his website - and its seems he's now having a wider influence - quite exciting really.  It's worth a look.

In the mean time - keep safe and think clearly.

Jakarta bombings

Friday morning there were two bombings at major hotels in Jakarta - where we live at present.  If you have any reason to come to Jakarta, I would encourage you to follow through on your plans - for several reasons:

First, as terrible as these, or any attacks are, the are still extremely low probability events. You have to be very, very unlucky to be caught up in them.  We were in Jakarta on Friday morning and only a couple of kilometres from the bombings.  But I found out about them via The Age website - and Friday proceeded just as it was planned for me and almost everyone else in this huge city.  Yesterday, it was almost easy to forget it had happened - life goes on as usual for most of us.

Second, you can reduce the already vanishingly small terrorism risk, by thinking clearly about the nature of the risk.  One could, for example, avoid international hotels.  If you come to Jakarta, there are several older hotels (still 5 star) that no longer have the big prestige operator, but are still comfortable places to stay - and much cheaper.  Because the risk is so small, I probably can't be bothered with this.  Late on Friday morning I went to a meeting in another big hotel - it was just too much hassle to change the meeting venue. 

Next, terrorism depends, for its effectiveness on ordinary people being terrorised by it.  It doesn't make sense to me to be phlegmatic about road accidents that kill thousands of people every day - yet stricken by terrorism which kills a few only very occasionally. 

Of course, objectively, there is always a chance of terrorist attacks in Jakarta - but objectively, it's always lower than in London - or many other cities from time to time.  

The bombing will have its pernicious effects.  First the damage to the families and friends of those killed or injured - and our prayers should be with them.  But then the wider damage to the economy, as people stop coming to this city for a while and cancel plans to do business in Indonesia.  This damage is less dramatic and traumatic, but more substantial in the long run.  And - we mainly do it to ourselves!

There is an extent to which the bombers nearly always win - just because they do 'terrify' us.  In this horrible cause, sorry to say, they are aided and abetted by Departments of Foreign Affairs and the HR departments of companies.

Instead of giving a clear headed assessment of relative risks, these people (who should and do know better) give in to the need to 'do something' and upgrade a travel warning or cancel a business meeting.  In doing so - they do the devil's work!

I am interested in what the police and intelligence people turn up about these bombings.  I will consider what they say carefully - but I will not be terrified.