Posted on 10/15/2013 10:54:36 PM PDT by TexGrill
OTTAWA — It wasn’t long ago that Indonesia was considered a major source of worry. The world’s most heavily populated Muslim country — now with more than 250 million residents — was hard-hit by the Asian economic crisis, which led to dictator Suharto’s 1998 resignation.
Then in 2002, a devastating terrorist attack on the resort island of Bali left 202 dead, more than half of them vacationing westerners.
Some speculated that the archipelago state, made up of an estimated 17,508 islands (roughly 6,000 are inhabited, though the population is located primarily on five main islands), would break apart, leading to one or more failed states, along the lines of Afghanistan or Sudan.
Those overblown predictions are a distant memory today as Indonesia builds a reputation as one of the world’s most stable and unique emerging countries set to play a leadership role over the next two decades.
Despite ongoing problems with corruption, indecisive leadership, and human rights violations, Indonesia is a country the Canadian government and business community can’t ignore, according to analysts.
“Indonesia is a very different kind of emerging power, especially in the Asian context,” said Amitav Acharya, an expert on Indonesia at the Washington, D.C.-based American University.
Indonesia is a G20 member that doesn’t have the kind of pedigree of fellow Asian members such as China, India or South Korea, with their huge economies and sophisticated militaries.
(Excerpt) Read more at vancouversun.com ...
Yeah, it was just a bunch of Aussies, after all. What do we care.
I can’t manage to glean the slightest connection between your first and second statements.
As someone who was here in Bali in October 2002 when the bombs went off in Kuta and again in 2005 when backpack bombs were detonated in Kuta again and also in Jimbaran, I can tell you that there is NO ONE in Bali who writes off the victims of those terrorist attacks as “just a bunch of Aussies.” That’s a load of crap, but maybe you don’t know any better.
Or, as you admit, maybe to you they were “just a bunch of Aussies.”
To us, they were our friends, our brothers and sisters, and our neighbors.
I was employing irony. The article pooh-poohed the dire predictions for Indonesia that were made after the the Bali bombing. So I was ironically and bitterly justifying this estimation.
OK.
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