Trouble with Tigers, the MinTwit strikes again, and a $50,000 Booty Bounty

News Item 1:
Minister proposes giving endangered Sumatran tigers to “rich people” as a conservation measure.
News Item 2:
SBY bitch-slaps (Javanese style) proto-Taliban MinTwit for proposed Internet control measures
News Item 3: Religious Affairs pimps want $50,000 down payment for RI brides

A couple of days after the vice-president declared Jan 22 the national day for wildlife conservation, the Ministry of Deforestation floated the idea of ‘renting’ critically endangered Sumatran tigers to rich folk as a serious governmental conservation effort.
For a mere one billion Rupiah ($110,000), and with the understanding that there’s ample space and food, well-heeled Indonesians will be allowed to ‘adopt’ a tiger of their very own, (though it would remain the ‘property’ of the state).
The deforestation ministry’s chief of nature conservation was widely quoted saying “There is much demand from rich people who want them, who feel that if they own a tiger they are big shots. We have to take concrete steps to protect these animals.”
Stroke of genius: get rid of all those pesky carnivores so we can pave Sumatra with oil plantations! Presumably they’ll come up with some brilliant new idea to deal with the populations of Sumatran elephants, rhinos and orangutan once the loggers manage to buy their way into the Leuser ecosystem for real.
In an effort to control the ensuring shitstorm of protest from the NGO set that obviously doesn’t care about tigers – there’s something like 400-500 of them left – and don’t understand their needs and aspirations (ya know, WWF, Greenpeace etc), the loggers, (oops, I mean ministerial tree huggers) busted a couple of Jakarta suits operating their own personal conservatories. A total of three adult tigers and six yoots were seized in two raids, along with all manner of endangered birds, mammals and, it is rumored, Gary Coleman.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say our favorite kneecapper Tommy W is behind this. TW crept out of his lair long enough recently to bankroll the release of two tigers in Lampung. If you’ve seen his house, or those of his henchmen (darn, I mean, business associates) y’know he’s gonna have a full on chubby for his personal collection of tigers, hawks and komodo dragons. Further research will be required on this one…


President Waffle took time out of his busy schedule having knives removed from his back to publicly roasted Minister of Twits Tifatul Sembiring this week for the colossal clusterfuck that is his ministry.
The issue this time ‘round was the recently released draft of a bill from the Communication and Info Tech ministry that will create an internet death panel empowered to order service provides to prohibit access to websites it deems offensive. It will also require internet providers to monitor all content, and hold them legally responsible should “offensive” or “illegal” material arrive on the desktops of impressionable Indonesian citizens.
MinTwit was swanning about Europe when the draft was released. Rather than wait for him to return to take his punishment like a man, SBY, in true Javanese fashion, noted that ministers really ought to submit draft bills to the palace before floating them to the public. He mentioned no names….
“I hope ministers do not come up with too-early statements… that could create the wrong perception in the public,” the prez was quoted as saying. “I want to remind all cabinet members that if there are thoughts or intentions to prepare a government regulation or bills, [you are] obliged to report it to the president through the cabinet secretary or state secretary”.
For those unfamiliar with the niceties of Javanese diplomacy, that was a public bitch-slap.
While MinTwit Sembiring was not personally responsible for this idiotic idea (step right this way, Sofyan Djalil!) it dovetails nicely with the Taliban-Lite world views he espoused as head of the PKS: after all, you should be in the mosque, not pulling your pud watching Cinta Laura videos on YouTube.
This is the latest half-baked idea to emerge from MinTwit’s entourage (see past posts ad nauseum), that included: his personal intervention several months back to sever internet access for all First Media subscribers in Indonesia, blaming earthquake/tsunamis on immoral behavior, and efforts to geld the country’s anti-corruption ninjas by requiring they submit wire tap requests for judicial review.

Indonesia has not been blessed with particularly wise or thoughtful religious affairs ministers over the past decade, and the new guy, Suryadharma Ali, seems intent on further lowering bar.
The latest offering, contained a draft marriage bill, is the proposal that would require foreign men to deposit Rp 500,000,000 ($55,000) in a Sharia bank account if they intend to marry an Indonesian woman. The intent of the down payment contained in Article 142 appears to be to prevent horny Arabs with a taste for unregistered temporary Islamic marriages (known as nika sirih) from leaving their local lady destitute when he decides to swap her for a younger model, (or reverts to type and shacks up with some doe-eyed four-legged beauty).
The bill contains several other ill-conceived ideas to address nika sirih that the ministry’s DG for Islamic guidance expects to present to the Cabinet secretary. Amidst all the howls of protest, the analysis from the NU’s women’s organization resonated loudest in my mind. Besides sounding like the ministry is pimping out the nation’s treasures, they asked, ‘who decided we are only worth Rp. 500 million?”
Brilliant!
Unmentioned in the bill is that these booty bounty provisions will only apply to Muslims marrying Muslims, so presumably kafir are more reliable in these matters.
Observers will recall that Indonesia’s past religious Kahunas include Indiana Jones wannabe Said Agil Al Munawar, who responded to a vision from his personal dukun, by attempting to excavate a grave in the dead of night in search of billions of dollars worth of Sukarno’s gold, and was subsequently sentenced to five-years in jail for fraud. He, as others before and since have sold their souls for Saudi dollars (funding construction of their swish new headquarters by some accounts) while enriching themselves, their staff and their political parties at the expense of true believers by jacking the costs of state-organized Haj pilgrimages.

Minister of Twits Strikes Again

From the ‘You’ve gotta give him credit for moxie’ file, Communications and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring is again making headlines with a list of A-List untouchables who will be immune to electronic eavesdropping if his proposed new wiretapping bill is approved.
Grinchtour has delved into the story in past posts – including the fact the minister is a Twitter-enabled (@tifsembiring) FB slave – so there’s no need to review in detail.
Suffice to say the former chair of Indonesia’s Taliban-Lite party (PKS) has thrown off any pretext of respectable Hamas-inspired social responsible, grassroots activism, to aggressively push for measures that will emasculate the only reliable prosecutor of graft cases in the country. His proposed new bill will create a new super agency to oversee the approval of all wiretaps, including those of the corruption eradication commission (KPK) whose 100% success rate in prosecuting corruption cases has been credited in large part to their ability to listen-in without securing a judge’s approval.

This new agency, which will leak like a bus load of juvenile hockey brats after an overnight road trip, is expected to handle all requests for wiretaps from several law enforcement and spooky agencies, including BIN, the Indonesian equivalent of the CIA.

Whoever heads up or oversees its operations – gosh, now I wonder which tier-three Minister will assume that duty, huh? – will secure a lush new source of funding for future elections, harem expansion and overseas real estate acquisitions.
To no one’s surprise, the Twit reserves a place for himself on a list of people (President, Attorney General, National Police chief etc) who’ll be exempt from KPK wiretaps. And, in addition to protecting an A-list of potential/current corruptors, the Twit’s proposal will extend the security blanket to their “families and colleagues” (WTF does that mean?) Indonesia Corruption Watch’s Emerson Yuntho told journos recently.
So, to review: Minster Twit assumes responsibility for approving all wiretaps – and lush new sources of funding – while providing immunity to the most powerful people in the country and their inner circles. If it survives the current civil society outrage, this is one piece of legislation that’ll pass through the DPR approval process like shit through a goose.
Quite the ambitious power grab for the head of a ministry once tasked with spying on the local media, that was officially shuttered by Abdurrahman Wahid in 2000, but managed to linger like a bad smell all these years.

Indonesia’s President ‘Bravely Retreats’: Minister of Twits Moves to Block Wiretaps

Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono continues to lead from the rear this week, abandoning key figures in his administration to the wolves while his coalition partners (including the Grinch’s favorite Twit) patiently chip away at national anti-corruption efforts.
In an effort to distance himself from possible scandal, SBY (aka Limp Biskit) fled the country as his embattled vice president and finance minister prepared to address a hostile parliamentary commission – which is 100 per cent apolitical and absolutely not in any way remotely related to a personal vendetta between the current head of Golkar and the minister – investigating the dodgy bailout of Bank Century last year.
For analysis of the President’s decision to vanish without a public show of support for Veep Boediono and the well-regarded Sri Mulyani Indrawati, we turn now to the Ballad of Brave Sir Robin:
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!
Boediono – formerly of Bank Indonesia – remains a cipher but Sri Mulyani is a national hero. A former IMF poobah, Forbes Magazine’s 23rd most powerful woman in the world (2008), and remarkably resilient to social pressures to helmet-ize her hair, she’s been around long enough to be an excellent counter-puncher: rather than airing her feelings about chief Golkar hood Aburizal Bakrie in the local media (who’ll garble the message), she went on record with her misgivings about the parliamentary investigation in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, an organ much more likely to influence Bakrie’s bottom line than the local business rags, all of whom are in someone’s pocket.
Let the games begin!

In other news:
The assault on efforts to bust corrupt businessmen and politicians remains one of the many news nodes spinning off recent scandals involving the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and once again, Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

“I don’t want law enforcers and government agencies to wiretap each other,” Antara quoted the Minister of Twits as saying. “This has happened and could happen again.”

A bit of background.
Indonesia's legal system is a disgrace: one can state categorically that there is no justice in the land. And don't talk to me about friggin' racial profiling, crack cocaine & mandatory minimum sentences, OJ Simpson and the cost of rigging a Manhattan jury. We’re talking orders of magnitude more f****d up than the worst North America can throw down.
The Grinch has worked within the system - most recently at the highest court in the land - and outside: from top-to-bottom the courts, attorney general's office, law enforcement, legal profession etc are populated by cabals of venal, money-grubbing, soulless safari-suited scumbags. They are overwhelmingly the majority. No matter how clean and idealistic they are at the start, the machine grinds ‘em into dust.
It is a reflection of the rot, that even Indonesia’s toothy civil society manages to suspend its sense of disbelief long enough to stamp senior cops "clean" even though they live in million dollar homes, drive Harleys and send their kids to school abroad, ostensibly on a $400.00/mo salary. The clean ones are the ones who have stolen enough to afford to be clean.
The KPK is the most effective (only!) institution investigating corruption cases in Indonesia. They've nailed many pelts above their doors and, while most have been the low-hanging-fruit-variety, (plot: old school crooked politician filmed entering 5-Star hotel suite rented by industrialist empty-handed; exits with suitcase fulla dough) they are to be commended for their work.
The KPK – which operates independently of any government ministry and reports directly to the Presidential Palace – is staffed by the best and brightest, including cops, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, techies etc. They are uber-nationalistic and hate the way their country is portrayed overseas. I wouldn’t say they are ‘anti-foreigner’ (they’ve received heaps of help from the FBI and others) but there is definite ‘f***-you’ faction that bristles at what is sees as Westerners lecturing them about their own country (topic for another day, perhaps).
It also enjoys the right – a scary one in any jurisdiction – to conduct warrant-less wiretaps. Desperate times require desperate measures and it was Parliament itself that approved these measures a few years back as being necessary to ensure successful cases were mounted. All was hunky dory until the mouth-breathers in Parliament – the most corrupt institution in RI according to a 2009 Transparency International report – discovered that they too are subject to KPK taps. Doh!
The KPK itself has been embroiled in a major scandal the past few months. Its chair is on trial for allegedly organizing the contract killing of a bent businessman last year who was supposedly blackmailing him for copping a handjob from his third wife, a caddy at a local golf course. Disclosures by the KPK boss prior to trial lead to a very senior cop and a millionaire businessman (allegedly) collaborating to frame two well-regarded members of the KPK board for taking bribes.
It’s all very Byzantine but the upshot is that the public is furious with the police and AG, the Limp Biskit has intervened and the investigation is in the process of being ‘legally’ dropped (as opposed to illegally dropped which, seriously, is kinda what has happened).
Into all this wades the fellow who is rapidly emerging as my personal favorite political piñata and all-round doofus. Fresh from cutting access to blogs around the country, blaming catastrophic natural disasters on pornography, and censoring an Aussie movie about murdered journalists in East Timor, Minister Tifatul, he of Twitter & Facebook fame, has decided that restricting KPK’s use of wiretaps - and gelding the KPK - is in the public's best interest.
To be fair, Twitfat's pronouncements on this issue make a valid point. Too many government agencies (five at last count) can tap yer phone, though I understand all but the KPK require a judge's signature, a formality in a land where a Rolex (hell, a Swatch!) will get you off a murder charge.
Warrantless wiretaps make this civil libertarian very queasy. So too does the massive public clamoring for the President to intervene directly in the police investigation into the KPK case (more fertile ground for Blog musings), but to suggest it and a revamped Porno Law are public priorities is laughable.
It’s all the more suspicious because of Twitfat’s pedigree as the former head of the supposedly incorruptible Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) aka Taliban-Lite. PKS is one of the president’s coalition partners. Talk about mixed messages: After prevaricating and stumbling about in the wilds for Javanese semantics for ages, Limp Biskit last week declared anti-corruption efforts to be a ‘Jihad’, even as members of his own cabinetare working diligently to undermine one of the key tools the KPK has in prosecuting that war, and he abandons his top aides to a parliamentary investigation with barely a murmur.

'Immoral' TV Causing RI Disasters, Tsunamis - Tech Minister

Pulling a page from a playbook more often associated with the American evangelical nutter class, Indonesia's Communications and Info Technology Minister used Friday’s Idul Adha prayers to blame 'immorality’ for the country's recent spate of deadly natural disasters.
Fresh from getting excoriated in the blogosphere and by some of his Twittering brethren for unilaterally blocking access to blogger.com last week, Tifatul Sembiring was quoted by the national wire service Antara saying:
"Television broadcasts that destroy morals are plentiful in this country and therefore disasters will continue to occur."
He later singled out naughty DVDs produced in Indonesia as particularly blameworthy.
AP quoted an Acehnese tsunami survivor, who lost 10 members of her family to the Dec. 26 disaster as replying:
“I prefer to believe that natural disasters occur because of the destructive force of nature that cannot be avoided by humans.”
Over the past few years Indonesia has experienced a series of natural calamities including the tsunami, multiple deadly earthquakes and more landslides, ferry-sinkings and plane crashes than I care to remember.
To much rejoicing from his acolytes at the Taliban-lite Prosperous Justice Party he fronted until last month, the Minster said he expects to complete (another) piece of anti-pornography legislation in the next six months that will block access to site deemed blasphemous or offensive to ethnic and religious groups… (in other words 70 percent of the content on the Internet).
Though he has only been in office since October, the guy who heads up DepKomInfo is rapidly emerging as one of the leading knuckleheads of SBY’s gormless new cabinet. What, oh what, will he say next?
They might not agree on much else, but the Minister finds himself walking lock-step with some of the more reptilian delegates of the American lunatic fringe.
Over the past decade most of America’s leading evangelical lights have blamed fags, women and porn for a variety of natural disasters, terrorist attacks and diseases: it squares with their reading of the same final chapters of the Old Testament that receive wide reverence from Islamic scholars.
Some notable samples:
"We take no joy in the death of innocent people," Michael Marcavage, the head of Repent America and a former Clinton White House intern said following hurricane Katrina "But we believe that God is in control of the weather. The day Bourbon Street and the French Quarter was flooded was the day that 125,000 homosexuals were going to be celebrating sin in the streets. We're calling it an act of God."
In 1998, televangelist Pat Robertson warned the city of Orlando, Fla., that a gay celebration there bring the wrath of God in the form of a hurricane or other disaster. Celebrating homosexuality "will bring about terrorist bombs, it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor," he suggested.
In 2001, Wee Jerry Falwell blamed gays and lesbians (along with feminists, abortionists and the American Civil Liberties Union) for the terrorist attacks in New York City. "I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen," he said
In 2007, the Brits piped up to prove Yanks don’t have the corner on the idiocy market. Following widespread flooding in the UK, a group of senior Church of England bishops opined that the grred and immorality of modern society – rather than a lot of rain – was to blame.

More on Indonesian Minister Blocking Blog Access

This story has kinda vanished - there's been little mention about it in 'mainstream' media struggling to do justice to news about the KPK, the Antasari trial, Bank Century investigation etc etc - and I've been too busy to spend a lot of time checking out the local blogosphere.
But from what I've been able to piece together, the Minister for Communications and Technology, Tifatul Sembiring, ordered his staff to issue a letter to Internet providers around the country to block access to a specific blog that was (re)publishing the controversial Dutch cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Good little Droogies that they are, the ring-kissers decided to impress the boss with a letter ordering access to all blogsites be blocked. As far as I know, the only company to comply was my provider, First Media.
By all accounts the Minister is wired. He has his own (dormant) website , a blog and Twitter account @tifsembiring (though who actually composes his tweets is unclear). You don't want a modern day Luddite in this position - PKS's ranks are swollen with urban professionals - so in that sense he might be the right pick. But....
This specific case appears to have been resolved now - I'll double check later at home to see if FM has turned the tap on again - but the larger questions will likely will remain - unaddressed:
- by what right does a Minister decide unilaterally what should and should not be accessible to the general public;
- what does it tell us about the Minister's likely agenda - Pak Tifatul is the co-founder and outgoing chairman of the Taliban-lite Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) - six weeks into a (potential) five year appointment that his first act of office is to restrict access to information;
- is a broader clampdown on how the Internet is used and information, disseminated, in the works and,
- what if any role should the private sector in Indonesia play in pushing back against government edicts of this type.