Financial Times: Bali bombings revive calls for special autonomy

Here's a better than average little article with a human perpsective on the downturn in tourism since Bali2.

Not a must read, but interesting nonetheless. It talks about how most of the Balinese tourism industry is owned by cronies (including family) of Suharto. Suharto was a terrible dictator of the twentieth century -- a fact which is filtering through only slowly to Australia and everywhere else.

And it talks about a push within Bali for a greater share of the profits from tourism, using as a point of argument increasing proportions of natural resources able to be kept by the island provinces where they are found. If natural resources qualify those above them for such treatment, why not cultural resources of the Balinese which, it is argued, drive the tourist economy in Bali. It seems another reason to desire increased autonomy is the consequential increased ability to keep out those pesky Javanese muslims who keep on blowing the place up, and who threaten to make the Balinese a minority in their own land, much as the Han Chinese are doing to the Tibetans. Bali