Weirdness
Two items cropped up in my screen in the past 24 hours, further signs that the world has gone crazy.
Reuters is carrying a photo with the following capiton: Brazilian student Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, holds her cat Mimi together with what Cassia claims are Mimi's own offsprings born with dog traits last Friday, three months after mating with a neighbour's dog, in the southern Brazilian city of Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul state, November 15, 2006. A geneticist from the Passo Fundo University plans to take blood samples from the animals to verify the claim by Cassia and her husband Rogerio that the puppies are part of Mimi's litter of six, of which the three that were born with cat features died soon after birth, leaving the surviving three dog-like offsprings.
Dogs and cats successfully breeding together? Say what?
The second image is a satellite image of an 87,500 sq ft Colonel Sanders, the mascot of U.S. fried-chicken restaurant chain KFC, in the desert in Nevada. KFC claims it is the first brand visible from space.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Thursday, November 16, 2006
UNEMPLOYED!
Just found out my contract is not going to be extended beyond Dec. 31. 13th floor Jakarta called earlier to break the news.
22 months of 60-hour weeks (minimum) in Aceh, and words like "exceptional contribution" thrown around like horseshoes, and no job for 2007.
Particularly ironic as 'Dutch', the new BA boss - who was as surprised as me about the news - has managed to piss off all his senior staff who are literally burning up the wires trying to find work elsewhere.
Damn.
Just found out my contract is not going to be extended beyond Dec. 31. 13th floor Jakarta called earlier to break the news.
22 months of 60-hour weeks (minimum) in Aceh, and words like "exceptional contribution" thrown around like horseshoes, and no job for 2007.
Particularly ironic as 'Dutch', the new BA boss - who was as surprised as me about the news - has managed to piss off all his senior staff who are literally burning up the wires trying to find work elsewhere.
Damn.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Reaction to Aussie Imam's Rape Comments Heats Up
It is a long way from the shore of Aceh, but the controversial comments by an Australian imam are creating heat across the Islamic world. It remains to be seen if this will this evolve into another 'cartoon controversy'.
The commentary below appeared in the Nov. 3 issue of The Herald newspaper in Australia. It is a strongly-worded analysis of the reaction within that country's Muslim community to some exceedingly offensive statements made by a leading Mufti.
Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly in a recent address to the faithful likened immodestly dressed women to "uncovered meat" inviting assault.
The comments come several months after a series of virulent, tit-for-tat bashing incidents between 'white' men and Lebanese-Australians that began when a drunken mob of Australia-first thugs swarmed dozens of non-Caucasian men, and two highly-publicized gang rapes by men of Paksitani and Lebanese descent.
Beneath the story I have included a large portion of the transcript of what the Mufti actually said. It comes during an obtuse and rambling lecture about the nature of God and punishment that includes the statement - that for some reason the press has not picked up on -that "behind every man who is a thief, a greedy woman. She is pushing him. Not our women in Australia, the women of Canada... And no matter how much he brings her, she wants more. She wants to change the car, and change... Of course, the woman keeps demanding from her husband more than his ability. Either she will tell him to go and deal in drugs, or to go and steal."
Backing a bigot
Andrew Bolt
November 03, 2006
Excuses over. The disgraced mufti of Australia set Muslims a test last month and they failed. That test couldn't have been easier: make Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly pay for preaching that unveiled women invited rape. Prove that Muslims can't be led by a man who says raped women must be "jailed for life". Prove we have nothing to fear from your faith.
Simple? Yet yesterday 34 Muslim groups signed a petition backing this bigot, while others plan a big rally for Sydney tomorrow, denouncing not Hilaly but the non-Muslims who criticise him. The results are in: Islam here -- as represented by many of its leaders -- is now a threat. What's more: our culture of self-hate makes us too weak to properly resist. I know saying such things is hard on the many moderate Muslims I keep insisting are out there. I am sorry for that, but where in God's name are those people? How much longer must we wait for them to speak?
For more than 20 years they said nothing as their most prominent imam, in their biggest mosque, damned Jews as perverts, called suicide bombers heroes, praised terror groups, vilified non-Muslims and hailed the September 11 terror attacks on the United States as "God's work against oppressors".
They said nothing as he gave the run of his mosque to a pro-bin Laden youth group and hired one of its translators as his spokesman. For years they let this man, their mufti, represent Islam in this country, whose language he never really bothered to learn in nearly 30 years of living here.
But I never lost hope, and so for a few days last week thought . . . at last! At last we heard Hilaly being damned by Muslims, too -- by women's groups, a Melbourne University academic and even the Islamic Council of Victoria, which had foolishly helped to make this Egyptian the mufti so no government would dare deport him.
At last Muslims were disowning this man. He was disinvited from a Brisbane festival. There was talk of stripping him of his title. The Lebanese Muslim Association, which runs the Lakemba mosque, even debated sacking him as imam, before banning him from preaching for three months. No, this wasn't much, but many in the media grabbed it hungrily. We badly want to find Muslims who'll renounce the values of the hate-preachers, to show that it's not us against Islam. Mind you, we shouldn't have had to be so pathetically grateful.
What sane person could want a woman jailed for being raped? But we should have known already this was a bigger problem than just Hilaly. Last year Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed also gave a speech in Sydney, which said raped women had themselves to blame. And which of the 500 men who heard Hilaly say the same at his sermon complained? Only when it was reported in the English-speaking press did some concede Hilaly had gone too far.
Yet even then supporters sent him vanloads of flowers, and when he returned to his mosque last Friday he was greeted "like a rock star", said one paper, by an adoring crowd of 5000.And that criticism of him? It faded away.
Now the Lebanese Muslim Association isn't so ashamed of him, after all: "We did accept his apology and we want to move on." The Muslim Women's Association, which first admitted to being "shocked" by Hilaly's sermon, now said he was "very good to all Muslim women".
Said founding president Aziz El Saddik: "Those who say bad things about him, they have very bad manners."
His sermon on rape was for Muslims only. Not our business. But we can't afford to believe that any more.
They weren't Muslim women, after all, who were raped by a Lebanese gang in Sydney, which called them "sluts" and "Aussie pigs". It wasn't a Muslim teenager who was pack-raped in Sydney by Pakistani brothers, whose father told the court: "What do (the victims) expect to happen to them? Girls from Pakistan don't go out at night."
When Hilaly preaches excuses for such rapes, that concerns us all. Very much.
But it is true that not all those defending Hilaly like what he said. The people behind tomorrow's rally say, rather, that our criticism of him has degenerated into just Muslim-bashing. Yesterday's statement by 34 Muslim groups -- most representing Islamic colleges and students, or the Muslims of tomorrow -- says the same, even as it confirms something far more scary.
"We believe that the public scrutiny of this matter should have ended with the sheik's apology," it says. "We believe that the Muslim community should be allowed to deal with the ramifications of the incident without interference from people who only wish to promote hostility and incite hatred towards our community. Finally, we consider this matter to be closed."
Closed? In fact, Hilaly has not retracted a word of what he said. If this matter is "closed" then he has won. But what is most frightening is not that he's won, but how. Both this statement and the rally show he's won because even educated Muslims, born right here, think it's better to defend a Muslim bigot than to have him criticised by infidels.
It's the code of the tribe: the worst of us is better than the best of you. It's a closed community speaking -- a paranoid one that sees itself at war even with people whose only worry is that their preacher excuses rapists. And menace is in the air.
What other congregation at prayer needs to be reminded -- as Hilaly reminded those at his mosque last week -- not to punch people on the way out? Which other rally for a religious leader needs to be warned -- as the NSW Police Minister warned this week -- that police would not tolerate any violence?
I'm not surprised one of Hilaly's former advisers, Jamal Rifi, warns that if he hangs on as Lakemba's imam he may trigger "racial tensions, much bigger than what we had over the Cronulla riots".
But what are we doing to help Muslims to break from him and leave this cultural ghetto, this encampment, before things get truly ugly? Not enough.
For a start, we make too many excuses for the Hilalys, as if they were mere children, or Australia the real villain. Yesterday Suzanne Bassette, national secretary of the Australian Democrats, even said: "I'm willing to stand up with anybody else in this country who happens to agree with Sheik Hilaly's sentiments . . . Unfortunately, how a woman dresses does affect her level of likeliness to be chosen." She said the "real lesson" from this fuss was this "latest opportunity to get angry".
The problem wasn't the mufti who wants to jail raped women, but his critics. Bassette wasn't alone. The Age ran a big cartoon likewise blaming sluttish white girls for putting themselves in danger, and federal Labor's Peter Garrett, the former singer, said Hilaly's comments were terrible, but "at the same time, the levels of violence against Australian women is something happening in the bars, in the clubs, in the bedrooms, in the boardrooms".
Again, we are the truly wicked. Leave Hilaly alone.
How can a culture so sick of itself resist the kind of challenge that Hilaly and his angry supporters represent? How can it inspire young Muslims to side not with him but with us? I don't know, when we teach the young we are a country of child-stealing, land-raping, Muslim-murdering, Yank-licking, gas-belching vandals. Until that changes, expect the traffic to flow more into Hilaly's ghetto than out of it.
Just consider the radical mother of two of the Australian Muslims arrested in Yemen last week on terrorism charges, and accused of ties to al-Qaida -- a so-called former "hippy chick" from Mudgee, who found in Islam what she couldn't in the society that raised her.As I said: Muslims have failed. But so have we all. We now have urgent work to do, if we want to save ourselves from far more strife than we dare yet imagine or say.
Portion of Transcript of Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly's comments
But in the event of adultery, the responsibility falls 90% of the time with women not men.
Why? Because the woman possesses the weapon of seduction. She is the one who takes her clothes off, cuts them short, acts flirtatious, puts on make up, shows off, and goes on the streets acting silly.
She is the one wearing a short dress, lifting it up, lowering it down... then a glance, then a smile, then a word, then a greeting, then a word, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay Jail, (laughs - one word not clear), then comes a merciless judge who gives you 65 years.
But the whole disaster, who started it?
The Al-Rafihi scholar says in one of his writings, he says: If I receive a crime of rape - kidnap and violation of honour - I would (...) the man and teach him a lesson in morals, and I would order the woman be arrested and jailed for life.
Why, Rafihi? He says, because if she hadn't left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn't have snatched it.
If you take a kilo of meat, and you don't put it in the fridge, or in the pot, or in the kitchen, but you put in on a plate and placed it outside in the yard.
Then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats ate the meat. Then (...). Right or not?
If one puts uncovered meat out in the street, or on the footpath, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover... then the cats come and eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat?
The uncovered meat is the problem! If it was covered the cat wouldn't have... it would have circled around it and circled around it, then given up and gone.
If the meat was in the fridge and it smelled it, it can bang its head as much as it wants, but it's no use.
If she was in her room, in her house, wearing her hijab, being chaste, the disasters wouldn't have happened.
The woman possesses the weapon of seduction and temptation.
That's why Satan says about the woman, "You are half a (...). You are my messenger to achieve my needs.
You are the last weapon I would use to smash the head of the finest of men.
There are a few men that I use a lot of things with, but they never heed me.
But you? Oh, you are my best weapon.
Draw your own conclusions about this but I'm thinking at the very least there should be some sort of licensing procedure for all those 'weapons of seduction'!
It is a long way from the shore of Aceh, but the controversial comments by an Australian imam are creating heat across the Islamic world. It remains to be seen if this will this evolve into another 'cartoon controversy'.
The commentary below appeared in the Nov. 3 issue of The Herald newspaper in Australia. It is a strongly-worded analysis of the reaction within that country's Muslim community to some exceedingly offensive statements made by a leading Mufti.
Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly in a recent address to the faithful likened immodestly dressed women to "uncovered meat" inviting assault.
The comments come several months after a series of virulent, tit-for-tat bashing incidents between 'white' men and Lebanese-Australians that began when a drunken mob of Australia-first thugs swarmed dozens of non-Caucasian men, and two highly-publicized gang rapes by men of Paksitani and Lebanese descent.
Beneath the story I have included a large portion of the transcript of what the Mufti actually said. It comes during an obtuse and rambling lecture about the nature of God and punishment that includes the statement - that for some reason the press has not picked up on -that "behind every man who is a thief, a greedy woman. She is pushing him. Not our women in Australia, the women of Canada... And no matter how much he brings her, she wants more. She wants to change the car, and change... Of course, the woman keeps demanding from her husband more than his ability. Either she will tell him to go and deal in drugs, or to go and steal."
Backing a bigot
Andrew Bolt
November 03, 2006
Excuses over. The disgraced mufti of Australia set Muslims a test last month and they failed. That test couldn't have been easier: make Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly pay for preaching that unveiled women invited rape. Prove that Muslims can't be led by a man who says raped women must be "jailed for life". Prove we have nothing to fear from your faith.
Simple? Yet yesterday 34 Muslim groups signed a petition backing this bigot, while others plan a big rally for Sydney tomorrow, denouncing not Hilaly but the non-Muslims who criticise him. The results are in: Islam here -- as represented by many of its leaders -- is now a threat. What's more: our culture of self-hate makes us too weak to properly resist. I know saying such things is hard on the many moderate Muslims I keep insisting are out there. I am sorry for that, but where in God's name are those people? How much longer must we wait for them to speak?
For more than 20 years they said nothing as their most prominent imam, in their biggest mosque, damned Jews as perverts, called suicide bombers heroes, praised terror groups, vilified non-Muslims and hailed the September 11 terror attacks on the United States as "God's work against oppressors".
They said nothing as he gave the run of his mosque to a pro-bin Laden youth group and hired one of its translators as his spokesman. For years they let this man, their mufti, represent Islam in this country, whose language he never really bothered to learn in nearly 30 years of living here.
But I never lost hope, and so for a few days last week thought . . . at last! At last we heard Hilaly being damned by Muslims, too -- by women's groups, a Melbourne University academic and even the Islamic Council of Victoria, which had foolishly helped to make this Egyptian the mufti so no government would dare deport him.
At last Muslims were disowning this man. He was disinvited from a Brisbane festival. There was talk of stripping him of his title. The Lebanese Muslim Association, which runs the Lakemba mosque, even debated sacking him as imam, before banning him from preaching for three months. No, this wasn't much, but many in the media grabbed it hungrily. We badly want to find Muslims who'll renounce the values of the hate-preachers, to show that it's not us against Islam. Mind you, we shouldn't have had to be so pathetically grateful.
What sane person could want a woman jailed for being raped? But we should have known already this was a bigger problem than just Hilaly. Last year Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed also gave a speech in Sydney, which said raped women had themselves to blame. And which of the 500 men who heard Hilaly say the same at his sermon complained? Only when it was reported in the English-speaking press did some concede Hilaly had gone too far.
Yet even then supporters sent him vanloads of flowers, and when he returned to his mosque last Friday he was greeted "like a rock star", said one paper, by an adoring crowd of 5000.And that criticism of him? It faded away.
Now the Lebanese Muslim Association isn't so ashamed of him, after all: "We did accept his apology and we want to move on." The Muslim Women's Association, which first admitted to being "shocked" by Hilaly's sermon, now said he was "very good to all Muslim women".
Said founding president Aziz El Saddik: "Those who say bad things about him, they have very bad manners."
His sermon on rape was for Muslims only. Not our business. But we can't afford to believe that any more.
They weren't Muslim women, after all, who were raped by a Lebanese gang in Sydney, which called them "sluts" and "Aussie pigs". It wasn't a Muslim teenager who was pack-raped in Sydney by Pakistani brothers, whose father told the court: "What do (the victims) expect to happen to them? Girls from Pakistan don't go out at night."
When Hilaly preaches excuses for such rapes, that concerns us all. Very much.
But it is true that not all those defending Hilaly like what he said. The people behind tomorrow's rally say, rather, that our criticism of him has degenerated into just Muslim-bashing. Yesterday's statement by 34 Muslim groups -- most representing Islamic colleges and students, or the Muslims of tomorrow -- says the same, even as it confirms something far more scary.
"We believe that the public scrutiny of this matter should have ended with the sheik's apology," it says. "We believe that the Muslim community should be allowed to deal with the ramifications of the incident without interference from people who only wish to promote hostility and incite hatred towards our community. Finally, we consider this matter to be closed."
Closed? In fact, Hilaly has not retracted a word of what he said. If this matter is "closed" then he has won. But what is most frightening is not that he's won, but how. Both this statement and the rally show he's won because even educated Muslims, born right here, think it's better to defend a Muslim bigot than to have him criticised by infidels.
It's the code of the tribe: the worst of us is better than the best of you. It's a closed community speaking -- a paranoid one that sees itself at war even with people whose only worry is that their preacher excuses rapists. And menace is in the air.
What other congregation at prayer needs to be reminded -- as Hilaly reminded those at his mosque last week -- not to punch people on the way out? Which other rally for a religious leader needs to be warned -- as the NSW Police Minister warned this week -- that police would not tolerate any violence?
I'm not surprised one of Hilaly's former advisers, Jamal Rifi, warns that if he hangs on as Lakemba's imam he may trigger "racial tensions, much bigger than what we had over the Cronulla riots".
But what are we doing to help Muslims to break from him and leave this cultural ghetto, this encampment, before things get truly ugly? Not enough.
For a start, we make too many excuses for the Hilalys, as if they were mere children, or Australia the real villain. Yesterday Suzanne Bassette, national secretary of the Australian Democrats, even said: "I'm willing to stand up with anybody else in this country who happens to agree with Sheik Hilaly's sentiments . . . Unfortunately, how a woman dresses does affect her level of likeliness to be chosen." She said the "real lesson" from this fuss was this "latest opportunity to get angry".
The problem wasn't the mufti who wants to jail raped women, but his critics. Bassette wasn't alone. The Age ran a big cartoon likewise blaming sluttish white girls for putting themselves in danger, and federal Labor's Peter Garrett, the former singer, said Hilaly's comments were terrible, but "at the same time, the levels of violence against Australian women is something happening in the bars, in the clubs, in the bedrooms, in the boardrooms".
Again, we are the truly wicked. Leave Hilaly alone.
How can a culture so sick of itself resist the kind of challenge that Hilaly and his angry supporters represent? How can it inspire young Muslims to side not with him but with us? I don't know, when we teach the young we are a country of child-stealing, land-raping, Muslim-murdering, Yank-licking, gas-belching vandals. Until that changes, expect the traffic to flow more into Hilaly's ghetto than out of it.
Just consider the radical mother of two of the Australian Muslims arrested in Yemen last week on terrorism charges, and accused of ties to al-Qaida -- a so-called former "hippy chick" from Mudgee, who found in Islam what she couldn't in the society that raised her.As I said: Muslims have failed. But so have we all. We now have urgent work to do, if we want to save ourselves from far more strife than we dare yet imagine or say.
Portion of Transcript of Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilaly's comments
But in the event of adultery, the responsibility falls 90% of the time with women not men.
Why? Because the woman possesses the weapon of seduction. She is the one who takes her clothes off, cuts them short, acts flirtatious, puts on make up, shows off, and goes on the streets acting silly.
She is the one wearing a short dress, lifting it up, lowering it down... then a glance, then a smile, then a word, then a greeting, then a word, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay Jail, (laughs - one word not clear), then comes a merciless judge who gives you 65 years.
But the whole disaster, who started it?
The Al-Rafihi scholar says in one of his writings, he says: If I receive a crime of rape - kidnap and violation of honour - I would (...) the man and teach him a lesson in morals, and I would order the woman be arrested and jailed for life.
Why, Rafihi? He says, because if she hadn't left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn't have snatched it.
If you take a kilo of meat, and you don't put it in the fridge, or in the pot, or in the kitchen, but you put in on a plate and placed it outside in the yard.
Then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats ate the meat. Then (...). Right or not?
If one puts uncovered meat out in the street, or on the footpath, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover... then the cats come and eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat?
The uncovered meat is the problem! If it was covered the cat wouldn't have... it would have circled around it and circled around it, then given up and gone.
If the meat was in the fridge and it smelled it, it can bang its head as much as it wants, but it's no use.
If she was in her room, in her house, wearing her hijab, being chaste, the disasters wouldn't have happened.
The woman possesses the weapon of seduction and temptation.
That's why Satan says about the woman, "You are half a (...). You are my messenger to achieve my needs.
You are the last weapon I would use to smash the head of the finest of men.
There are a few men that I use a lot of things with, but they never heed me.
But you? Oh, you are my best weapon.
Draw your own conclusions about this but I'm thinking at the very least there should be some sort of licensing procedure for all those 'weapons of seduction'!
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Abundant Ales and Agro Elephants
Just back in Banda Aceh after a week's running around Java. Spent a full day in Yogyakarta for the first time since the I left in early June, a week after the earthquake. Still 800,000 people without decent place to live and the rainy season approaching. The government's position seems to be embodied by "Crisis? What Crisis?" Wait till the vast chickencoops (yes, literally raised wooden chickencoops 120 m long) crowded with birds and homeless families brew up a nasty Avian flu cocktail and maybe that'll get someone's attention.
Stayed in Jakarta for the Eid, had the best visit yet with the in-laws who are doing some renos in defiance of the floodwaters that seem to seep through the foundations twice a year. There was a calm there I'd not seen before which gives me hope.
Mixed business with pleasure. Briefed out some journo friends about how things are progressing in Aceh and actually spending time with 'my staff' in the office - something that happens every two months, so infrequently that the graphic designer breaks out in a sweat every time I walk into the room - while eating fabulous Thai and Indian food and getting completely hosed three consecutive nights at the Face Bar and The Oriental, something I rarely do up here.
The Evil Thieving Ex-Security Guard has vanished from immediate view though he may simply be saving up his energy to take another run at us now that the fast is over. My housekeeper, The Mouse, had a family tragedy to attend to in far-off Tapaktuan (Dad's in a coma and fading) leaving roomie El Gordo to his own devices while I was away. Won't say he's any worse than me in similr circumstances but the litter of dead cockroaches in the kitchen and the empty fridge testified to his sloth.
Learned yesterday that my old driver, Wally, is dealing with a nasty bit of business as well. His young son fell out of the back of a minibus and cracked his head on the pavement three days ago. Apparently in quite serious shape in Harapan Bunda hospital in Banda so I'll visit later today.
Seems there's a never ending series of tragedies here. Young security guard was beaten to death by a couple of cops for unknowingly raising the Indonesian flag upside-down. Dozens of road death here over the holiday period and further rumblings of discontent within the GAM ranks.
Today I stumbled across the story below filed out of South Sumatra. Not an uncommon occurance there and further north in Aceh. Villagers v Starving Elephants is always going to end badly.
And so it goes.
Starving elephants kill Indonesia farmer
Tue Oct 31, 1:32 AM ET
Starving wild elephants trampled a farmer to death and destroyed several houses in a rampage in a village on Indonesia's Sumatra island, witnesses said Tuesday.
The people of Lubuk Embut, a village on Riau province 600 miles northwest of the capital, Jakarta, have been terrorized by a herd of around 20 elephants in search of food, said Jayok, a village chief who goes by a single name.
Sumatra's elephant habitats are quickly shrinking due to illegal logging and land clearing. About 2,500 are believed to live in the wild on the island, Indonesia's largest.
"We cannot sleep at night and are scared in the day by the sound of trumpeting elephants," Jayok said.
The head of the Riau province's nature reserve, Nafsir Siregar, said scores of wild elephants have also vandalized the nearby villages of Siak and Balairaja, about 90 miles northwest of the regional capital, Pekanbaru.
Siregar said there were insufficient funds to relocate the endangered Sumatran elephants to a protected area where they won't pose a threat to people.
Just back in Banda Aceh after a week's running around Java. Spent a full day in Yogyakarta for the first time since the I left in early June, a week after the earthquake. Still 800,000 people without decent place to live and the rainy season approaching. The government's position seems to be embodied by "Crisis? What Crisis?" Wait till the vast chickencoops (yes, literally raised wooden chickencoops 120 m long) crowded with birds and homeless families brew up a nasty Avian flu cocktail and maybe that'll get someone's attention.
Stayed in Jakarta for the Eid, had the best visit yet with the in-laws who are doing some renos in defiance of the floodwaters that seem to seep through the foundations twice a year. There was a calm there I'd not seen before which gives me hope.
Mixed business with pleasure. Briefed out some journo friends about how things are progressing in Aceh and actually spending time with 'my staff' in the office - something that happens every two months, so infrequently that the graphic designer breaks out in a sweat every time I walk into the room - while eating fabulous Thai and Indian food and getting completely hosed three consecutive nights at the Face Bar and The Oriental, something I rarely do up here.
The Evil Thieving Ex-Security Guard has vanished from immediate view though he may simply be saving up his energy to take another run at us now that the fast is over. My housekeeper, The Mouse, had a family tragedy to attend to in far-off Tapaktuan (Dad's in a coma and fading) leaving roomie El Gordo to his own devices while I was away. Won't say he's any worse than me in similr circumstances but the litter of dead cockroaches in the kitchen and the empty fridge testified to his sloth.
Learned yesterday that my old driver, Wally, is dealing with a nasty bit of business as well. His young son fell out of the back of a minibus and cracked his head on the pavement three days ago. Apparently in quite serious shape in Harapan Bunda hospital in Banda so I'll visit later today.
Seems there's a never ending series of tragedies here. Young security guard was beaten to death by a couple of cops for unknowingly raising the Indonesian flag upside-down. Dozens of road death here over the holiday period and further rumblings of discontent within the GAM ranks.
Today I stumbled across the story below filed out of South Sumatra. Not an uncommon occurance there and further north in Aceh. Villagers v Starving Elephants is always going to end badly.
And so it goes.
Starving elephants kill Indonesia farmer
Tue Oct 31, 1:32 AM ET
Starving wild elephants trampled a farmer to death and destroyed several houses in a rampage in a village on Indonesia's Sumatra island, witnesses said Tuesday.
The people of Lubuk Embut, a village on Riau province 600 miles northwest of the capital, Jakarta, have been terrorized by a herd of around 20 elephants in search of food, said Jayok, a village chief who goes by a single name.
Sumatra's elephant habitats are quickly shrinking due to illegal logging and land clearing. About 2,500 are believed to live in the wild on the island, Indonesia's largest.
"We cannot sleep at night and are scared in the day by the sound of trumpeting elephants," Jayok said.
The head of the Riau province's nature reserve, Nafsir Siregar, said scores of wild elephants have also vandalized the nearby villages of Siak and Balairaja, about 90 miles northwest of the regional capital, Pekanbaru.
Siregar said there were insufficient funds to relocate the endangered Sumatran elephants to a protected area where they won't pose a threat to people.
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