When the going gets weird...

My favorite bits and pieces from the last couple of days

Snakes and Adders
The clearing of the 50+ hectare Rasuna Epicentrum lands smack in the centre of Jakarta and opposite the Grinch’s temporary lair claimed the life of a seven-meter-long reticulated python, crushed by a back-hoe on Saturday morning: as if I needed another reason to hate Aburizal Bakrie and his band of reptiles.

Save Me From Myself
A judge in Sulawesi fired because he was caught in a polygamist relationship (formally prohibited behavior for civil servants but tolerated, nudge-nudge, wink-wink claims he only married the other three women to prevent himself from committing adultery (ed: presumably with them...).

Top Cop Cock Block
Indonesian National Police and armed forces announced last week they will no longer accept Papuan recruits who have tried to increase to the size of their tackle through bindings and the use of mildly poisonous plants to encourage swelling on account of it affecting their readiness to fight.

Idiocy in Paradise
Much harrumphing in Bali after the release on youtube of teasers for a film that focuses on the Kuta Cowboy phenomena of young Indonesian surfer types servicing older foreign female tourists. Bali’s bandar “traditionalists” (ed: goons in checker-board sarongs and silly hats) are publicly outraged to discover that a small group of beach boys are providing the same types of services as the thousands of juvenile female sex workers trolling their wares on the Island of the Gods.
Gov Made Pastika – the much admired former police general – applauded the beach raids conducted this week which saw two dozen ‘muscular, tanned men’ detained and questioned.

The Company You Keep
The Justice and Human Rights Minister toured the country’s new bespoke prison wing for corruption suspects on Tuesday accompanied by….one of the country’s most loathed corruption suspects.

Roaring Mice
Gayus, a nobody in the tax office who has emerged at the centre of a poisonous new scandal after it was revealed he amassed over $3 million in kickbacks in a few short years is singing to investigators, implicating his former bosses, local prosecutors and senior officials at the AG’s offices, several judges and national-level police generals in a broader “judicial mafia” conspiracy that is too Byzantine to explain in brief. No one disputes that Gayus is a very small fish in the grand scheme of things, but what’ll be interesting to see is how he is remade into a national hero.

Ango-Indo Conspiracy Poisoned Local Kids: And a Nation Yawns….
The UK arm of an American company, Innospec Ltd, that manufactures fuel additives was fined $12.5 millions in a London court for bribing Indonesian officials $8.7 million to delay implementation of the government’s order to convert from leaded- to non-leaded gasoline for several years. Does anyone believe the American and British business communities in Jakarta were unaware that this was going on? Where’s the embassy demos, the outrage?

What’s His Name’s Disease, Contagious
Hard on the heels of news that a central figure in the $2.6 million Bank Indonesia vote-buying scandal is unable to comply with multiple subpoenas to appear before the KPK because she is undergoing therapy for ‘memory loss’ in Singapore, a crooked Bupati from Kalimantan has suddenly developed similar symptoms…. and was immediately released from prison.

Taliban-Lite Tangled Up in Blues
The forgetful corrupter (previous item) in Singapore, Nunun, is married to former deputy national police chief Adang Daradjatun who is a Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) legislator. It is hard to believe that such a conservative and pious (uhhh.. ya) man would be unaware that his wife is running around handing out millions of dollars in travelers cheques to crooked politicians so I for one am looking forward to his detention.
Better news came early this week with the detention of PKS legislator Mukhamad Misbakhun accused of forging a letter of credit to secure a $21.4 million bank loan that he subsequently defaulted on. The juice is in the fact that he borrowed from the collapsed Bank Century and was one of the prime movers behind the House’s investigation into the bank’s failure, a thinly disguised smear job directed at the current finance minister, Sri Mulyani.

Papa’s Rollin’ Stone Gathers No Political Joss

One of the weirder recent newsy bits that slipped beneath the radar was the midnight relocation last week of the gravestone of Indonesia’s first president Soekarno and what it says about the declining political fortunes of his puddin’ daughter.
Jakarta Post gave it a couple of inches. I’ve not found any other references in the Indonesian media or blogosphere tho I’m sure there’s more out there.
Story goes that the two-ton slab of rock – which looks like a meteor but I can’t confirm - marking his grave in Blitar, East Java, was pushed one meter to the north by a posse armed with permits, shovels and four 5-ton jacks. Word is the move was executed at daughter Megawati (Mega) Sukarnoputri’s orders, supervised by her son and witnessed by a member of her political party PDI-P (Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle).
Before I suggest the likely motive behind the rolling stone, one admission: I reckon there’s a special place in hell reserved for people like Mega. The fact she has never bothered to reach out to the families of the party activists murdered by security forces in front of her Jakarta office in 1996 – “I never asked them to support me…” – tells you everything you need to know about her character. I also watched her physically jerk away from terrified Madurese during her six-minute visit to the camps where they were living during the worst of the Kalimantan/Sampit headhunter riots. Only weeks of retail therapy in Singapore allowed her to recover from the trauma of a poor, ‘unclean’ person having the gall to actually make contact with her. She’s a sham, a parody of the courageous woman who stood up to Suharto in the 90s.
There is little doubt that Mega’s orders regarding Daddy’s tombstone were inspired by her regular consultations with her spiritual advisors and astrologers who likely suggested the slab’s positioning as lacking the necessary JavaVoodoo-meets-Feng Sui to cement her political fortunes. As for why it was done at this specific moment in time, I’ll posit the following.
PDI-P are in crisis as they enter their three-day national congress in Bali this week. What was once the populist choice of the people, whose tides of supporters turned the streets of the country’s major cities the party’s red-and-black back in the day, is a national disgrace. Under Mega’s stewardship – including a desultory three-year as president – PDI-P has imploded. Gone are any vestiges of the neo-people’s power vibe it carried through Suharto’s decline and disgrace, pimped off by the party brass to a new old guard of powerful businessmen lead by her husband, Taufik Kemas.
Despite Mega Inc.’s efforts to cement the family fortunes by pushing forth her daughter as the logical next leader, this is a ‘dynasty’ in collapse.
Observers expect Mega to be re-elected party chairman but it is clear to all but the most brainwashed of supporters that her aura is greatly diminished. PDI-P has been pummeled in the past two national elections, watching its share of the popular vote plunge from 34% in 1999, to 20% in 2004 and 14% in 2009. Mega was soundly beaten (60/40) in the run-off presidential elections in 2004. Her personal popularity was further tested last year when incumbent President Waffle took almost two-thirds of the ballots cast to Mega’s 28%, obviating the need for the presidential run-off.
At the provincial level, PDI-P saw its locked-up East Java gubernatorial race (pop 40 million) stolen through a combination of ballot-stuffing and graft and their power greatly diminished in other regional and local elections.
Various members of the clan – don’t even get me started on the bed-hopping in this family - have defected to other parties, and/or challenge her for the leadership of a party she claims as a birthright. More importantly, dozens of current and former national legislators have found themselves caught up in recent scandals, ranging from the auctioning off of the deputy governorship of the national bank to the collapse of Bank Century.
The party will not toss off Mega this week and tack back towards a serious challenge to the Democrats and a successor to President Waffle (TBA at a later date). With the dynasty as stake, she’ll need all the mojo she can muster to position the 3rd generation of the family as the ‘natural’ choice for the future of PDI-P, and thus the reason for last weeks’ dead-of-night kejawen moment in rural East Java.

Poop, Boob-radar and Furry Babies: Pearls of Wisdom From a New Dad (Part I)

This is the day the Grinchlettes were scheduled to arrive. Clever buggers, they decided to roll up in the middle of Letterman seven weeks early. Here’s what I’ve gleaned about the process and child-rearing thus far:
* Babies don’t totally suck (though I’m still unclear as to their actual function).
* Childbirth is not as gory as you might think, though the furry black pelt covering their bodies is a bit of a surprise (even for a Grinch).
* Cesarean deliveries are the new “normal”. The missus’ unassisted ‘natural’ delivery of was met with shock and awe.
* Telling a new mum whose 30-hour labor ended in a C-Section that that you delivered twins naturally three hours after your first contraction is an unnecessary infliction of psychic pain.
* Five weeks in an incubator does not guarantee your pre-term newborn healthy skin color. Consuming your own body weight every 72 hours on the other hand…
* In a corollary to “Every Sperm is Sacred”, there exists an astonishing variety of different types, consistencies, hues and densities of poop, and each is fascinating in its own special way.
* Diaper technology has come a long way in the 30 years since I last tried to wrap a worming infant.
* We Grinch seem to have a built-in mechanism to prevent us from rolling over and crushing our spawn while we sleep.
* The first thing grinchlette will grab in his/her greedy little fists is chest fur, followed by the goatee (and later, glasses).
* Most girl children eventually lose the hardwired “boob-dar” that allows them to track the location, vector, speed and size of breasts with an accuracy that is the envy of NASA. Boys refine it over a lifetime and bring it to the grave.
* Rookie parents who wish to entertain friends with toddlers and young children should tell ‘em all about their “plans for the feeding schedule…”
* Movies featuring zombies, vampires and murderous angels are all popular with the after-midnight nursing set. The same cannot be said for CSI, further proof that one does not need a fully functioning frontal lobe to wish “actor” David Caruso ill.
* People you do not know will tell you what is best for your child. Other new parents will applaud the judicious use of Tasers, mace and 2x4s in such circumstances.
* The selection of suitable strollers is (or ought to be) a ‘guy thing’.
* A 2G memory card is not enough space to contain a week’s worth of photos of your spawn.
* Having twins means there will always be a squabble about who gets to wear the “I’m With Stoopid” t-shirt.
* Despite their many obvious flaws, females kinda rock.

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.

Enough Demo(cracy): Time to Split Some Heads

Jakartans are daily witnessing the application of the old adage about too much democracy being a bad thing.
At the risk of lining up behind Mahathir Mohammed and Lee Kuan Yew whose distain for the practical application of democratic principles is eloquent and well documented, I long for the days when a phalanx of club-wielding Brimob stormtroopers could be relied up to clear rabble from the streets of the capitol.
Alas, with the very rare exception, the days of the legitimate act of mass demonstration or the use of street power to effect change in Indonesia are past. The last true manifestation of this was the elections of 1999 when the main thoroughfares of the country’s population centers vanished beneath a sea of red and black t-shirted supporters of HRH Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Beyond the on-going reformation of modern day Indonesia, there were two street-level consequences of these demos.
The first is that the security forces were forced to step back from the traditional iron fist/smoking barrel approach to crowd control. The clearest manifestation has been in police response to demonstrations in Jakarta. Lead-cored batons, shields and tear gas have been replaced by rows of unarmed shovel-faced female cops (PolWan) in fuchsia lipstick linking arms in front of the rows of the riot cops. It defuses the situation remarkably well, though whether it’s because the mob fears these PolWan as much as I do (gimme a fat cracker Javanese cop anyday), or the humor value, is a mystery to me.
The second consequence is that the shadowy forces that bankrolled and coordinated the demonstrations the ultimately forced Suharto to resign in 1998 – imagine the logistics of supplying food, drink, transportation and cigarettes to 250,000 people on the streets of the capitol for days on end – learned they could affect change by harnessing street power. Many individuals were beaten; some died. But the political calculus of the day declared this an acceptable butcher’s bill.
No longer fearing the cops and intelligence agencies, the nation’s business and political elite have been allowed to refine the use of paid demonstrations to push narrow partisan political causes. Demonstrations now are purely cynical affairs. Powerful people pay for organizers to disgorge the ignorant poor from buses in front of the target of the day. Lead by bullhorns and carrying banners they can’t read, they regularly bring the city to a standstill for the equivalent of $2/head and a boxed lunch.
So in-grained is this demo-in-a-box approach that when Aceh-born media magnate Surya Paloh and the poor, deluded, Sultan of Yogya decided they were going to launch a ‘mass organization’ last month they put 25,000 paid butts in the seats of Bung Karno stadium to provide the applause.
As much as it galls me to admit, the rare exception to the current rule comes from fundamentalist elements of Islamic society who have rallied their members to the street around a specific issue. Through 2008 and 2009, thousands of white-clad wannabes in Taliban short-pants and scraggly beards aligned with the vile Indonesian arm of Hizbut Tahrir, joined the gangster bagmen-turned-preachers of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and other hateful, church-and mosque burning constituencies associated with the Indonesian Ulema’s Council in well choreographed shows of force before the presidential palace to demand the clocks be turned back the 6th century.
You may not like it, and their access should be restricted to minimize the impact on city residents, but at least they come with a set of principles, racist, misogynist and violent as they may be. Nothing illegal in having an opinion. If they break the law, then the police should drive those Droogies into the pavement. Otherwise let ‘em holler and “allahuakbar” at an indifferent population and empty buildinga till the cows come home.
More typical are the bogus demonstrations that have been going on in front of the KPK offices for the past six weeks. Like tens of thousands of others, I’ve suffered through the interminable traffic delays caused when 45 gormless kampung nut-scratchers in masks bring eight lanes of traffic to a halt for hours at a time. They’ve no idea why they’re there except that something called “Bank Century” is “corrupt” and some woman (a politically naïve finance minister who dares to stare down powerful business interests) is “Satan”.
Well, enough is enough. It is time for Jakarta Governor Fuzzy Bobo to take off the gloves, crush these cockroaches, publicly name and prosecute the organizers, and demand they remunerate everyone inconvenienced by their actions. He can start by rejecting any application for a demonstration permit with the slightest hint of being a paid-for event. Civil society has already attacked him for suggesting changes to the current free-for-all, blathering on about “freedom of expression” and “human rights” etc. Bull. Democracy and human rights do not trump the rights of tens of thousands of commuters, office workers and ordinary folks who just wanna get to work on time or home at the end of a long day. This is street theatre, not 'democracy', and should be confined to the stage (or as Bobo suggested, the park surrounding the National Monument, Monas).
Meantime, ladies, wipe off the lipstick, pick up a truncheon and start beating out a path.

Postscript:
On March 4, the Jakarta Globe published the following story about rent-a-demo:
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/national/jakarta-protesters-unite-show-us-the-money-and-food/361715

Garuda Pancasila, Armani Love Child Horror

Much whingeing and harrumphing this week when some bright bulb got it into his head that Armani, yes that Armani, was pissing on the glorious Republic of Indonesia because one of their t-shirts bears a logo passing similar to the Garuda/eagle icon that serves as the coat of arms attached to the declaration of national principles known as Pancasila (itself a subject for another day).

Leading national daily Kompas directed the government to sue, the now ubiquitous Facebook site petition was created and rather telling the mob of drooling nationalist slap-heads to get a life, Justice Minister Patrialis Akbar waded in claiming possible copyright infringements.
Which is a funny thing for the top lawman to say because if anyone is cruising for a legal bruising it would seem to be the artists that created Indonesia's coat of arms in the first place.
Why they didn’t settle on an image of Vishu’s kick-ass winged chimera in the first place is a bit of a mystery. Instead, the official story is that the Pancasila image was inspired by the Javan hawk, one of the rarest birds on earth according to the Malaysia-based TRAFFIC, a wildlife group that monitors the trade in wild plants and animals. As far as I can tell, the RI Garuda resembles that noble raptor about as much as my hairy green behind. But if one were to troll through the ranks of heraldry one might conclude that the image is the unnatural product of a drunken coupling between a two-headed Russian eagle and Moldovan canary.



The (s)wanky Dago tailors apologized to any offence caused, yanked the t-shirt from the website and everyone has gone back to sleep. But I for one am waiting for Reds to sue RI for stealing their Imperial eagle's love child.

Grinch Population Increases by Two

Your Grinch is somewhat less grumpy that usual this week due to the arrival of his first pups, a male and a female, who emerged into the harsh light of day seven weeks earlier than expected on January 14.
In the manner of their species, they will henceforth be referred to as Boy and Girl, until such time as they are old enough to chose a name for themselves.
Fraternal twins, they bear almost no resemblance to each other which is merciful because who wants to waste the brainpower trying to sort out one spooky identical twin from the other. I believe the Girl most resembles me:



The jury is undecided about the Boy. It is worth noting that anthropological geneticists posit the reason pups most often resemble he what sired ‘em, is a holdover from a more primitive era when fathers were known to eat newborns who’s lineage might be in question (rather than fattening them up for a later date as is now the case).
The missus and I brought the Girl to the den today for the first time, 11 days after she rent the pre-dawn skies with her Grinchy wails. The Boy will remain in his toaster for some more days in a secure facility well away from vulnerable life forms with inferior innate survival skills, like fawns, bunnies, Who-manoids and other bite-sized aperitifs masquerading as sentient.
Herself and I are of course moderately not-unhappy about this event and look forward to sharing our multiple 3-4 a.m. feedings with residents of neighboring den units. The Girl’s viewing hours will be restricted for the next few days, but once the bars of her cage are properly welded she will pose no danger to our guests.

RIP Tor Norling: Pengeskap reiser, meg venn

Inside a broken clock
Splashing the wine
With all the Rain Dogs
Taxi, we'd rather walk.
Huddle a doorway with the Rain Dogs
For I am a Rain Dog, too
Oh, how we danced and we swallowed the night
For it was all ripe for dreaming
Oh, how we danced away
All of the lights
We've always been out of our minds.
The Rum pours strong and thin
Beat out the dustman
With the Rain Dogs
Aboard a shipwreck train
Give my umbrella to the Rain Dogs
For I am a Rain Dog, too.
Oh, how we danced with the
Rose of Tralee
Her long hair black as a raven
Oh, how we danced and you
Whispered to me
You'll never be going back home
You'll never be going back home
Rain Dogs
Tom Waits - from the Album Rain Dogs

Learned this morning of the tragic and untimely death of my old friend, Bangkok-based Norweigan freelancer, Torgeir Norling.
Tor, 37, was killed early Sunday morning when he was hit by a bus while walking with friends.
A droll, soft-spoken fellow with a taste for the brew, we'd pooled resources and contacts on several occasions over the years, including East Timor, Afghanistan and a couple of times in Aceh, including in 2001 when he was detained and harassed by Indonesian intell in Lhokseumawe. We always wondered if it was the same braindead guys who busted and interrograted my wife and I for several hours in 2004.
Though we'd fallen out of contact the past couple of years we managed to hook up for beers at the Bangkok Foreign Correspondent's Club a few months back, shaggy, wild-eyed and chain-smoking, to rehash old stories and mull the future. He'd become a dad in the interim & the way he described it, he seemed to relish the part.
I was surprised to learn he's part-owner (dunno exact role, actually) in Rain Dogs bar off Rama IV Road: a suitable name for a man whose cleareyed reportage rested heavily on the little guy, the monk, the activist, the refugee.
Suitable offerings to Ullr, Odin and Freya tonight, my friend.

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.

The Curious Case of Robert James McNeice

What are we to make of the curious case of Australian Robert James McNeice, who remains in a Jakarta prison 16 months after his arrest - ostensibly at the request of the Australian Federal Police - for allegedly embezzling Au$270,000 from one of Australia's wealthiest families?
I first met Robert in post-tsunami Aceh where he was trying to get a coffee export business off the ground. In May or June of 2008, an acquaintance with a ‘security’ background here called out of the blue to ask if I knew where Robert was because Interpol had a warrant for his arrest: I’ve no way of knowing if Interpol was involved and had not heard from him in months.
McNeice was picked up by Indonesian police in Aceh in August 2008. A short time later he was transported to Jakarta where he remains behind bars to this day.
The few media reports about the case say Australian authorities wanted him extradited to face charges back home. There's contradictory testimony about whether the extradition request was thrown out of South Jakarta court last year - which might remove grounds for detention as the 43-year-old is not accused of committing a criminal offense in Indonesia - but here we are heading into 2010 and McNeice's case has yet to be resolved.
Surely it has nothing to do with the shadow cast by the alleged victim of his embezzlement, right? I mean, it's not like "Aussie" John Symond, whose company Aussie Home Loans revolutionized the business of lending in Oz and made himself an enormously wealthy man in the process, is going to hold a grudge. The story goes that Symond's nephew John introduced McNeice to the 'ol man. From what I gather, he is accused of embezzling large sums of money from both men to support a fictitious watch-buying spree in the States: McNeice was part owner of a Sydney watch shop at the time.
Robert popped up in Aceh at some point after Dec. 2004 tsunami claiming to be a coffee wholesaler who wanted to export the province's highland Arabica under an Aceh Coffee Company brand. He told me he'd built up a chain of coffee shops in his native New Zealand that he'd recently sold off, and that he planned to invest in Aceh coffee.
Over successive casual meetings he described how he was successfully linking small highland plantation holders together in cooperatives, enforcing 'no-pesticide' standards as a first step to securing the valued international 'organic' label, while building a resort-style getaway in the hills of Bener Meriah. I recall some folks actually visited his 'resort' and came back impressed by the charms of cool mountain life.

For sure he'd got to the point of producing product: many expiates working in Aceh bought Aceh Coffee Co product in its distinctive silver package. It was pricy but good. Later, when I moved to Jakarta we'd meet occasionally for drinks and he'd always cough up a gratis 1 kg bag. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and yet... there was always something a little odd about the whole venture. Never managed to pin it down, but it just struck me as a really dodgy venture and that he was not to be trusted.
In the only detailed interview circulating (http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3063463/Outcry-over-Kiwis-lengthy-Jakarta-jailing), McNeice says he refused consular help from both the Aussies and Kiwis (he holds dual citizenship) and decided to forego a lawyer until recently. Like everything associated with him, there’s the smell of truth amidst the turd.
He's certainly no cause celebre in Oz. He’s not become a media darling like Schapelle Corby - the curvy Aussie drug-smuggler busted in Bali a few years back and sentenced to 20-years in prison. In fact, the normally vociferous Jakarta-based Aussie press pack have been strangely silent about the case. Odd, given the Australian press' appetite for this kinda thing: evil Indonesia justice system/'injustice' experienced by ordinary 'mate'/$400 million self-made man hoodwinked by con artist/ etc. I reckon the story writes itself, no...?

Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis

hey Charley I'm pregnant
and living on 9th street
right above a dirty bookstore
off cuclid avenue
and I stopped taking dope
and I quit drinking whiskey
and my old man plays the trombone
and works out at the track.

and he says that he loves me
even though its not his baby
and he says that he'll raise him up
like he would his own son
and he gave me a ring
that was worn by his mother
and he takes me out dancin
every saturday nite.

and hey Charley I think about you
everytime I pass a fillin' station
on account of all the grease
you used to wear in your hair
and I still have that record
of little anthony & the imperials
but someone stole my record player
how do you like that?

hey Charley I almost went crazy
after mario got busted
so I went back to omaha to
live with my folks
but everyone I used to know
was either dead or in prison
so I came back in minneapolis
this time I think I'm gonna stay.

hey Charley I think I'm happy
for the first time since my accident
and I wish I had all the money
that we used to spend on dope
I'd buy me a used car lot
and I wouldn't sell any of em
I'd just drive a different car
every day dependin' on how
I feel.

hey Charley
for chrissakes
do you want to know
the truth of it?
I don't have a husband
he don't play the trombone
and I need to borrow money
to pay this lawyer
and Charley, hey
I'll be eligible for parole
come valentines day.

Tom Waits
from the album Blue Valentine
1978

The Grinch Behind the Wheel

The first time I drove a car in Jakarta, I buried the front end of Phil's Kijang under the rear bumper of a clapped out Metro Mini half a km from her driveway. It took 30 minutes and six guys bouncing on the hood to pop 'er free. That was June 1999 and I've basically not driven a four-wheeler in the city since.
Until now.
After much hemming and hawing, I've rented a 2006 Innova - a ubiquitous mid-sized Toyota MPV - and driver on a month-by-month basis: the days of her-pregnant-self sucking on bus fumes while trying to flag cabs in the rain @ 7pm are over. The ride come bundled with a driver - Pak Hakim - who appears to be a lovely unassuming 50something from Bekasi who giggles like a Japanese schoolgirl. We'll see how long it takes to break him of that habit as he adjusts to the world's worst backseat driver riding shotgun in a city of 1.5 million vehicles, most operated by unlicensed mouth-breathers who have sorted out clutch, brake and gas pedals and little else.
I've had 'er out a couple of times now, getting acclimatized & all that, and while it's early days I have picked p a few things in a decade of ojek and taxi travel here. Negotiating the streets of New Jak City is different than the highways and byways of Whoville where a social compact exists and certain clear conventions are taught (driving school/graduated licenses etc), enforced (traffic laws, armed co-commuters) and rewarded (relative safety of the journey, dawn coffee @ 140kmh etc).

(pic lifted from: http://allworldcars.com/wordpress/?p=11866)
The Jakarta driving experience requires a rewiring of Western neuro pathways, conventions and protocols. Like shoals of smelt, flights of swallows and a myriad other naturally occurring phenomena, traffic flow here is a classic reshaping of what psychologists call 'Emergence', a surrendering of the will of the individual to the wisdom and survival instincts of the collective, which allows novel and coherent structures to emerge as patterns and properties in complex systems re-organize themselves. In other words, the emergent system is much more than the sum of it parts.

In practical terms it means the Jakarta traffic Jedi can dispense with checking rear- or side mirrors, blindside etc, accommodating merging vehicles or considering any impediment more than two car lengths ahead on the understanding that the collective will see him through.

Braking to allow a fellow motorist to cross your bow provokes a symphony of horns as the lane behind accordions: better to roll ahead, ignore the interloper till he or she secures the suitable sine wave and squeezes through.
The problem with the emergence is that it is predicated upon something beyond obedience, something more like surrender: the life of a single anchovy means less than nothing in a school of tens of billions. Its loss to a humpback whale or blue shark equals nothing.
Such is not the case, and even the most masochistic, deferential Javanese driver is still hardwired for survival. And, stupidity. He will not pull over for an ambulance or fire truck, but will brake - indeed often does - for no apparent reason whatsoever. He will pull over and park in the slow lane in order to sit and pluck single hairs from his chin oblivious to the massive jam it causes - part of the larger national blind-spot about the principle of cause and effect. S/he will drive 30 kph in the fast lane of the toll road, and 130 kph in the breakdown lane. The bar sticking out of the steering column that activates the windshield wipers is handy, but the other one... well it makes something tick and a light flash on the dashboard but for a case of kratendeng he couldn't tell you why and what for.
Nature didn't plan for idiocy or self-preservation so Jakarta's emergent system, nice as it is for fish and birds, doesn't work very well. How the Grinch will fit a square peg hammered into maturity on the mean streets of Montreal into this round hole remains to be seen. I can report that the wheel lock tucked under the driver's seat is a bit light, but it's one of those comfortable shorties that are quick to deploy and great for use in tight places... like traffic jams.

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.

Curiouser and Curiouser...

Can't raise anyone at First Media at 11 p.m. but I can confirm that I can access Grinch on Tour if I log on via telkomsel instead.
So the problem isn't my computer.
The problem isn't the browser or the signal - I'm still surfing elsewhere with ease - and the problem doesn't seem to be 'blogger' generally because I can view other "blogspot" offerings offshore.
However, when I google "blogspot & Indonesia" and tab the top ten sites, three of them (including http://amrihgunawan.blogspot.com/ & http://around-indonesia-asia.blogspot.com/) show "failed to open" notices like my own.
Others, like http://indosnesos.blogspot.com/ and http://thm-collection.blogspot.com/ open without a bump. Curiouser and curiouser...

More blog-blockage? Or paranoid ramblings...?

This is more of a test than anything else, but I am curious.
I have not been able to open my blog @ home since since around 1 p.m. today. I can tweak the dashboard and it'll let me edit past posts but I can't view any of them so I have no way of knowing whether the changes have stuck.
Could be a snafu or could be that First Media is again acting on government orders and blocking access... I guess I'll know if I can log on via another service provider tomorrow to see if this post appears.
GT

The Urgent Threat To World Peace Is … Canada

The harm this country could do in the next two weeks will outweigh all the good it has done in a century.
By George Monbiot.
Published in the Guardian 20th November 2009
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/01/the-urgent-threat-to-world-peace-is-…-canada/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world’s peace-keeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country’s government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I’ve broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petrostate. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation which has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

In 2006 the new Canadian government announced that it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%(1).

It’s now clear that Canada will refuse to be sanctioned for abandoning its legal obligations. The Kyoto Protocol can be enforced only through goodwill: countries must agree to accept punitive future obligations if they miss their current targets. But the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation(2). Never mind special measures; it won’t accept even an equal share. The Canadian government is testing the international process to destruction and finding that it breaks all too easily. By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations from striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007 it single-handedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations(3). After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country which had done most to disrupt the talks(4). The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world’s 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th(5).

In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed that the government was scheming to divide the Europeans(6). During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying(7). Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada’s obstructions. A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth(8).

In Copenhagen next week, this country will do everything in its power to wreck the talks. The rest of the world must do everything in its power to stop it. But such is the fragile nature of climate agreements that one rich nation – especially a member of the G8, the Commonwealth and the Kyoto group of industrialised countries – could scupper the treaty. Canada now threatens the well-being of the world.

Why? There’s a simple answer. Canada is developing the world’s second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It’s actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, of pristine forests and marshes, will be dug up, unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.

To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil(9). The contaminated water is held in vast tailing ponds, some of which are so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface(10). Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers. The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases(11).

Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes(12). Alberta’s tar sands operation is the world’s biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions(13). By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark(14). Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.

Canada hasn’t acted alone. The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell(15), a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Now it has invested in plants built to process it(16). The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government’s share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for exploiting the tar sands(17).

The purpose of Canada’s assault on the international talks is to protect this industry. This is not a poor nation. It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. But the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada’s politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place.

Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of rampaging Neanderthals to trample all over it. Timber companies were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government’s scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.

I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada. How could that be true?

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2007/som-sum_eng.cfm

2. The government has pledged to match the (feeble) US 2020 target (which in Canada’s case means just 3% against 1990 levels) , but unlike the United States, Canada has proposed no cuts beyond that date.

3. Eg http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=a1a6748c-ef0c-4acf-acad-1cef2bdae5b7&sponsor=

4. Andrew Nikiforuk, September 2009. How The Tar Sands Are Fueling The Global Climate Crisis.
Greenpeace Canada. ***

5. http://www.germanwatch.org/klima/ccpi09res.pdf

6. Lee Berthiaume, 17th June 2009. Government Planned to Split EU On Climate Change Talks. Embassy Magazine. Cited by Andrew Nikiforuk, ibid.

7. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/print/CTVNews/20091012/kyoto_091012/20091012/?hub=Canada&subhub=PrintStory

8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/26/canada-criticised-over-climate-change

9. WWF, 2008. Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel?, Page 27.
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/unconventional_oil_final_lowres.pdf

10. http://peopleandplanet.org/tarsands/localimpacts

11. Environmental Defence, February 2008. Canada’s Toxic Tar Sands: the most destructive project on earth.
http://www.environmentaldefence.ca/reports/pdf/TarSands_TheReport.pdf

12. Andrew Nikiforuk, ibid.

13. http://peopleandplanet.org/tarsands/localimpacts

14. Andrew Nikiforuk, ibid.

15. ibid.

16. ibid.

17. Ed Crooks, 16th November 2009. Canadian Protest Over RBS Oil Sands Role. The Financial Times.

'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.

Pups Just Wanna Polka

It has been a long road but the Grinch and his missus will shortly welcome two new members to the Jakarta clan.
She's 26 weeks gone with a belly that ripples occasionally with the Dreaming of Twins. Apparently The Beatles are popular with the unborn set because every time we plug Magical Mystery Tour into the boom box, they get all kung-fu, ninja, "hucky-tucky-YA!" with the barrel rolls and elbow jabs you'd expect from Po & Co. Gonna talk to the Doc and see if we can have a birth-mix of Revolver and maybe a bit of Linkin Park/Prodigy (to get the gal psyched for the howl-y bits) when the time comes...
Click below or cut-and-paste to your browser to see the Pups Polka on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrO8Ujngi3Y
If that doesn't turn your gears then try the following to catch Animal, Beaker and a talking clam perform Bohemian Rhapsody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGlTzt24Izw&feature=popular
And if that doesn't work, well...piss off

Happy Josaphat’s Day!

Today is Idul Adha, Islam’s Day of Sacrifice and end of the line for several hundred thousand goats, sheep and cattle across Indonesia. For those who care about such things it commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to his (merry prankster) God. The laneways outside mosques are awash in blood as animals are butchered and their meat parceled off for distribution to poor families. It’s a big deal: for many people a more important day on the calendar than the Idul Fitri holiday that caps the fasting month.
Personally, I’m much more interested in the fact that Nov 27 is also St. Josaphat’s Day. One of the more entertaining discoveries of the past six months or so was the fact that sometime back in the Middle Ages the Catholic Church unwittingly canonized Siddharta Gautama (the Buddha) in the form of Josephat. Yer Grinch stumbled across this whilst diligently investigating the entomology of “riffiest riff that ever riffed a raff” http://www.nonstick.com/sounds/Yosemite_Sam/ltys_083.mp3 segued into “Jumpin’ Jehosephat” at which point all roads lead to Rome… literally.
As unpalatable as it is to some, there is wide agreement among Catholic scholars that the “Christian” St. Jo is not a historical figure. The evidence points to an engaging, textured story about the origins of the Buddha in 6th century BC captured listeners' imaginations that was carried by the winds of commerce between India/Sri Lanka and Jerusalem over the course of the next millennium+, morphing along the way through the filters of several languages, to be "spun" into a Christian tale. http://www.laputanlogic.com/articles/2006/03/15-1234-6894.html
I love it not because if gets under the skin of genuine devotees – though this is fine sport as well – but bc it pokes holes in the ‘absolutism’ that is central to so much orthodoxy, and the sweet irony that for centuries the same missionaries who sought (and continue to seek) to “save” the heathen sub-continent were also unwittingly paying homage to the spiritual leader of 360 million Buddhists.
And so it goes…

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.