posted on Mar, 3 2005 @ 04:27 AM
I think this ruling is kind of interesting..
If the Indonesian court wanted to pacify the Australians, they would have handed down a much more severe sentence. If they had wanted to pacify the
cleric's followers, they would have released him.
What exactly is Indonesia trying to do here? It looks like they're trying to walk a very thin line, and my prediction is their strategy will fail.
They would have been better off appeasing one side or the other, rather than pissing them both off.
There are SO MANY inconsistencies in the evidence surrounding the events at issue, I'm surprised a verdict was handed down at all - I was predicting
a dead-lock.
I know a lot of people just accept what is handed to them, but Indonesia has not been going gently. Their parliament had an open, heated debate about
the nature of the Bali bomb, and a sizable percentage of the Indonesian government believes a micronized nuclear device was used (the evidence clearly
points to this). The Jakarta Post ran a couple of stories on this issue, and despite the best efforts of the mainstream media the Indonesian people
are fairly well informed about the nature of the explosion (Bali), certainly more so than nearly all Americans, Australians, and Europeans who are
calling for the death or dismemberment of Bashir and Amrozi.
I can't figure out what Indonesia is up to here. It's pretty obvious that while radical islam is a threat, it lacks the tactical nuclear weapons to
carry out attacks like those seen in Bali and Jakarta.
I have no love for religious extremists, generally they make the world a more miserable place, and the fact that they encourage ignorance makes them
anathema to a sane and rational community. However, I think the evidence points to another culprit. I know nobody wants to turn this into another
thread on Bali, so I'm not going to dump a bunch of links and information on this thread. There are other threads going that speak to this issue,
and anyone who wishes to be more informed on the actual evidence, is urged to seek those threads out.