I see that the post on whether or not to go to Bali, Indonesia has been deleted by Fodors due to the incendiary political comments of some of the posters. Just remember that along with the posts expressing personal political views, the good information goes away too!

opps, certainly wasn't my intention to start anything....oh well, live & learn.

I don't think you started anything really. You can't help how people respond. Are you going there?

Sorry to see the thread get deleted. I didn't start the political discussion but I certainly contributed to the deletion.

On one hand, it is perfectly understandble that Fodors doesn't allow political discussion on its travel boards - such topics are very easily got heated up and out of control; on the other hand, besides spleeping, eating, moving and sightseeing, from time to time, politics is indeed closely related to travel activities. We all see and hear tons of that over the past few years wherever we go. It is one of the hottest subject among travellers.

I like the way how LP's TT hands it - they such setup another forum for such discussions: "Tired of being told to take that political argument to another board? Well, this is that other board.", and there we go, and it is one of the most active forum on TT, atracting many high quality frequent posters coming from the regular forums.

Finally, I appologize for being part of the reasons of the loss of otherwise a pretty informative thread.

I just hope many saw that jack and I politely agreed too disagree. well I did so in my opinianated writing style.

I've been away the past couple of days until just now-and don't know what "incendiary political comments" have been made-but as far as Bali and the threat of terrorism goes-anyone who is contemplating a trip to Bali and Indonesia would be well-advised to take great care in their travel plans there, which includes reading up on all travel advisories put out by State and as added measure for Americans, Australia's travel advisories as well, and to be alert at all times as to what is going on around you in the areas in which you are staying or traveling. The group responsible for the horrific attack on the Australian Embassy-the Jamaa Islamiya -is a branch of al-Qaeda, and they are a grave threat in that part of the world. As I stated on the previous post, the JI bombed the JW Marriott almost exactly a year ago, killing some 10 people, and injuring over 100- pulled a car bomb right up in the Marriott driveway-causing the roof of the lobby to cave in -which is where the majority of deaths occurred. The Australian Embassy attack was preceded by an earlier warning that the JI was threatening to carry out yet another attack on one of the western hotels in Jakarta, so for anyone to say you should ignore that, and go on about your business as if there were no heightened threat of terrorist acts, is being not only naive, but foolish.

Although the JI's m.o. is centered in Jakarta, this group was absolutely involved in the Bali bombing of 2002 as well, and Bali is where the vast majority of tourists go in Indonesia-so one can't say that the Jakarta bombing happened there, and has nothing to do with Bali-and that everything is "perfectly safe" in Bali (an odd phrase that certain posters seem to want to use on these forums despite all factual evidence to the contrary!) The JI is a group that has openly declared that they ARE targeting westerners and western institutions in that country, and unfortunately, they are not the only terrorist group operating in that country with those objectives, JI is, however, the deadliest, and possibly the most well-organized.

And as far as something that was said about Bali being no more dangerous than New York or Washington, well, that is factually waaaay off base. You simply cannot compare the security infrastructure, population, location, etc. of the US and Indonesia when talking about terrorist acts and threats to civilian populations-they are not, in any way, in the same order/magnitude- even with the US at the highest Code Red threat level-you are FAR safer from terrorist attacks anywhere in this country than there.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Indonesian Govt. has been taking forceful steps recently to get the JI and terrorist situation under control, the fact of the matter is, they don't have it in any way under control, and were not, until Bali, even taking the terrorist threat seriously. Unlike in this country and the west, a sizable number of the Indonesian population outside of Bali are sympathizers, if not outright supporters, of certain terrorist groups, al-Qaeda being only one of them.

All I'm saying is that it is exceedingly ill-advised for those traveling to Indonesia to act as if there is no clear and present terrorist threat to western tourists/institutions there, and to go about in such a way as to "forget" about it -given the present situation in Iraq and elsewhere, there are indications that the frequency of such terrorist attacks may well be on the rise in Indonesia, rather than the wane.

Well said Orgy. Actually I too am partly responsible for the editing. I am sorry for that. I also feel that some things can't be left unchallenged. Again, JM2C. Cheers, Larry. Back to travel now.