Friday, June 03, 2005
Mostly stupid
It has pretty much been confirmed that the white powder posted by a terrorist to the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra was – quote - “Mostly harmless”.

Fans of Douglas Adams will remember that ‘mostly harmless’ was the edited version of the entry for Earth in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the previous, unedited version being just ‘Harmless’.

But while it seems that the powder was mostly harmless, its fall-out threatens to be anything but with tempers flaring in Indonesia (as should be expected after a terrorist act against them) whilst the Australian government attempts to downplay the act as simply, ‘reckless’.

It begs the question of what would have happened if the reverse had occurred and white powder had been sent to the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

(Labor) Opposition defence and homeland security spokesman, Robert McClelland, suggested that overdramatising the incident could place Australian embassies at great risk.

But then he later said that it was ‘too soon to link the incident to the Schapelle Corby case.’

Can you see what we’re dealing with here?

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