Jakarta (another bad idea from Malaysia)

Translation: This country needs many polygamy volunteers. Conflicts, natural disasters, poverty, and ‘old’ virgins are the serious problems afflicting our country’s women. Thus, this country needs volunteers for polygamous marriages to overcome this nationwide female problem.

photo: from Cycads

A bad idea which apparently is not a new bad idea at all.

‘Polygamy club’ draws criticism in Indonesia

from AP 10.24.2009

By ALI KOTARUMALOS (AP)

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Plans to open branches of a Malaysian “Polygamy Club” in Indonesia have upset women’s groups and religious leaders in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, who say the search for multiple wives should be handled privately — not by a matchmaking service.

Under Islamic law, Muslim men are permitted four wives. The club claims a noble aim of helping single mothers, reformed prostitutes and women who feel they are past marrying age meet spouses. It also offers counseling to people facing problems in polygamous households.

The Malaysian owners say they want to “change people’s perception about polygamy, so that they will see it as a beautiful rather than abhorrent practice,” club chairwoman Hatijah Binti Am said as members from around 30 families attended a gathering in Bandung, west Java, for the opening of the first Indonesian branch last week.

Others will soon be added, including in the capital, Jakarta, said spokeswoman Rohaya Mohamad.

“Indonesia is a Muslim-majority country, so polygamy can be a way of life there too,” Rohaya said.

Polygamous relationships are believed to be gaining in popularity in secular Indonesia, but it’s impossible to say how many there are because the marriages are performed secretly at mosques and are not recorded by the state.

Indonesia’s 1974 Marriage Law permits a man to have a second wife if his first is an invalid, infertile or terminally ill. However, there is no way to monitor adherence to the rules.

Polygamists point out that the Prophet Muhammad is thought to have married about a dozen women in his lifetime, including widows in need of protection. But a prominent member of the influential Indonesian Ullema Council, a board of Muslim priests, described the launching of a formal club as a “provocative campaign.”

“Such a club is needless,” said Ma’ruf Amin. “It will draw (negative) reactions rather than solve problems” because the practice is generally opposed by women in the country of 235 million people.

Several prominent political and religious figures in Indonesia openly married second wives in recent years, sparking widespread public debate and calls to ban civil servants from polygamy. Analysts believe the number of men with multiple wives is increasing as this emerging democracy searches to balance modern governance and Islamic identity.

Amin said that although Islam allows polygamy, popularizing the practice could encourage multiple marriages in which the husbands fail to adhere to strict guidelines, including fair treatment of all wives and children and equal financial support.

Opposition has also come from women’s rights activists.

Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, director of the Institute for Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice does not oppose men having several spouses, but said the club should not advertise openly.

“If they did it privately, that would be fine,” she said, citing the acceptance of polygamy under Islam and by the Indonesian state according to specific requirements.

However, Yohanna, a member of the same women’s rights group, said the club effectively promotes abuse.

“While we are campaigning against domestic violence, which includes polygamy, there is a group campaigning that polygamy — which hurts other women — is a positive thing,” Yohanna told MetroTV.

Polygamy is also legal for Muslims in Malaysia but not widespread. The club was founded there in August and claims to have around 1,000 members — 700 of them women — many of them former members of a banned Islamic sect of Al-Arqam.

Malaysia’s Home Affairs Ministry was reportedly keeping a close eye on the club.

Hatijah, the club founder, is a wife of Ashaari Muhammad, the leader of the Al-Arqam sect that was outlawed in 1994 by the Malaysian government after the group’s teachings and beliefs were found to deviate from Islam. The group then claimed to have around 10,000 followers.

Ashaari was portrayed by the movement as messiah who had the authority to forgive the sins of Muslims. He has 38 children from four wives, eight of them with Hatijah. Twenty-three of the children are in polygamous marriages.

Indonesia’s more than 200 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith, but a small hardline fringe has successfully pushed for Islamic law of Shariah in more than a hundred municipalities across the nation, and the predominantly Muslim province of Aceh.”

Jakarta (here’s looking at you)

photo: Subtopia

According to the wikipedia:

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the “sentiment of an invisible omniscience.”

Bentham himself described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”

from: The Jakarta Post

Police launch state-of-the-art station at HI

Sat, 09/26/2009 12:05 PM | City

JAKARTA: National Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri officiated a high-tech police post at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, Central Jakarta, on Friday.

The eight-by-four-meter post is equipped with CCTV cameras, three online computers with digital maps, and a 29-inch touch screen LCD display, and is therefore claimed to be the city’s most sophisticated police post.

“The CCTV cameras and the computers are linked with the City Police’s traffic management center *TMC* system. Duty officers will be able to direct the traffic during the gridlock,” Bambang said.

Governor Fauzi Bowo and City Police Chief Insp.Gen. Wahyono attended the launch.

Bambang said similar posts would be built in Matraman and Pasar Rumput to tackle rampant brawls in those areas. – JP

—

Of course if this is not sufficient here comes PUNA…

—

from: FOCUS Information Agency

Indonesia plans to launch surveillance drone

“Jakarta. Indonesia plans to launch a drone plane called “Puna” next year to support national defence and monitor extremist activity, an official said Sunday.

“Puna, an unmanned small aircraft, can safely observe hard-to-reach areas. It has been tested and we’ll launch it next year,” said Surjatin Wiriadidjaja, deputy chairman of the government’s Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology.

“We equipped Puna with a camera and the military and the police can use it for surveillance,” he told AFP.

Wiriadidjaja said Puna could be used “to observe terrorist activities” and for other tasks such as monitoring forest fires.”

Forest Fires are one thing and terrorists quite another.

photo: Air-Attack.com

Above a  fully armed MQ-9 Reaper taxis down an Afghanistan runway.

It can easily, by its obvious appearance, handle any kind of brawl imaginable.

The problem is it can’t really distinguish a brawl from a boisterous wedding.

Hope you are not in the mandi if (or when) the “sentiment of an invisible omniscience” decides to pay a visit.

Jakarta (the stoning of Miss Indonesia or The Beauty and the Beast)

I am not a great fan of beauty pageants but I do know beauty when I see it.

Here are two new stories which have just come across my Indonesia news story search.

Rather striking that they appear at the same time.

Still, I suppose (hope?) that Indonesia drags itself kicking and screaming toward some sort of modernity.

Here’s the point (in a strange sort of way):  Miss Sandioriva IS Miss Indonesia. She IS NOT Miss Aceh.

THE BEAUTY

from the BBC 10.12.09

Aceh outrage over Miss Indonesia

By Karishma Vaswani

BBC News, Jakarta

Qori Sandioriva crowned Miss Indonesia on 9 October 2009.

“Clerics in Indonesia’s conservative Muslim province of Aceh say they are outraged that an Acehnese woman has won the title of Miss Indonesia.

Qori Sandioriva, 18, won the Miss Indonesia title on Friday, beating 37 other contestants for the crown.

The clerics say that by failing to wear a veil during the competition she has betrayed her Acehnese roots and brought shame to the province.

Aceh has special autonomy in Indonesia and has implemented partial Sharia law.

It is the only province in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, that follows these laws.

Qori Sandioriva was born in Jakarta but has an Acehnese mother. Thanks to her mother’s connection to the province she was able to enter the competition as Miss Aceh.

But Islamic clerics in Aceh say she has misrepresented her region.

They say she should have worn a veil during the competition, in keeping with the traditions of her mother’s province.

Teung-ku Faisal Ali, the secretary general of Aceh’s Ulama Association, told the BBC that anyone who represents Aceh must uphold the province’s values.

He said Qori Sandioriva did not wear a veil during the competition and therefore did not represent the Acehnese people, who have strong Islamic faith and values.

When asked about not wearing a veil during the competition, Ms Sandiorova said she believed hair is beauty, and that she is proud of beauty.

The controversy is likely to return next year when she goes on to compete in the Miss Universe contest where she will have to don a swimsuit as part of the pageant.”

AND THE BEAST

(photo: AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

New Indonesia stoning law is ‘torture’: rights group

(AFP) – 10.12.09

JAKARTA — A new law mandating death by stoning for adulterers in Indonesia’s deeply Islamic Aceh province advocates “torture” and should be overturned, US-based group Human Rights Watch said Monday.

“Stoning and flogging constitute torture in any circumstances,” Human Rights Watch Asia head Elaine Pearson said in a statement.

“Imposing these draconian punishments on private, consensual conduct means the government can dictate people’s intimate lives.”

The law — which also allows punishments of up to 400 lashes for child rape, 100 lashes for homosexual acts and 60 lashes for gambling — was passed unanimously last month by lawmakers in the staunchly Islamic region.

It has yet to be approved by the provincial governor and is opposed by the central government in Jakarta.

The law, based on local interpretations of Islamic or sharia law, is supposed to replace elements of Indonesia’s criminal code.

It allows the death penalty for a married person and 100 lashes for an unmarried person found guilty of adultery.

Human Rights Watch urged the central government and a new incoming local parliament in Aceh to overturn the law.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Teuku Faizasyah, told AFP the law would not come into effect without the approval of Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf, who has stated his opposition to the law.

“Even if local government approves it, if the central government thinks it’s not in line with national law, the central government can ask it to overturn or annul the law,” he said,

“The central government wants to make it clear that the law and legislation at the provincial level should not in any way contradict the law and legislation promulgated at the national level.”

Aceh had previously adopted a milder form of sharia law in 2001 as part of an autonomy package from Jakarta aimed at quelling separatist sentiment.

Nearly 90 percent of Indonesia’s 234 million people are Muslim, but the country also has significant Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Confucian minorities. Most local Muslims practise a moderate form of the religion.”

Jakarta (Balibo Five)

Photo from:  Asiafinest.com

Indonesia’s Special Force soldiers, known as Kopassus, line up for drills at headquarters outside Jakarta.

Image: © Jacqueline M. Koch/Corbis

It seems to me that you do not have much room to bitch and moan about the bombings in Jakarta unless you take care to clean your own house.

Case in point is the new movie about the Balibo five. These “five”, of course, were five foreign journalists which were captured and killed during the Timor crisis of 1975.

As the Wikipedia has it:

“Indonesian rule in East Timor [now Timor-Leste] was often marked by extreme violence and brutality; estimates of the number of East Timorese who died during the occupation vary from 60,000 to 200,000. A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a minimum bound of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974-1999, namely, approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 ‘excess’ deaths from hunger and illness.”

This occupation was green lighted by the USs own notorious war criminal Henry Kissinger and would not likely have gone forward without the tacit blessing of US foreign policy interests- Soeharto’s  regime was a prop for these interests.

East Timor, 1975. As Indonesia prepares to invade the tiny nation of East Timor, five Australian based journalists go missing. BALIBO is a political thriller that tells the true story of crimes that have been covered up for over thirty years.

Starring: Anthony Lapaglia, Oscar Isaac, Damon Gameau, Gyton Grantley. Directed by Robert Connolly, Produced by John Maynard, Rebecca Williamson, Screenplay by David Williamson, Robert Connolly, Based on the book Cover Up by Jill Jolliffe.

The Jakarta Post reports:

RI dismisses ‘Balibo Five’ film as ‘fiction’

Ary Hermawan , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 07/24/2009 5:27 PM | National

Indonesia dismissed as fiction the recently premiered Australian film describing the murder of five foreign journalists by the Indonesian Army during the 1975’s war in East Timor, saying the so-called “Balibo Five” case was closed.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Teuku Faizasyah also downplayed the impact of the film on bilateral relations between Jakarta and Canberra, which he said had already officially stated the five journalists had not been murdered, but accidentally killed in crossfire when Jakarta was fighting the Fretilin rebels.

“They [the five journalists] were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Faizasyah said.

Directed by Rob Connolly, Balibo is to be premiered Friday at the Melbourne International Film Festival. In the film, the five journalists were murdered by the Indonesian Military to keep the news of the invasion from spreading outside Indonesia.

“It’s quite clear the journalists were murdered,” Connolly said, as quoted by AFP.

“We have to look at the case according to the facts, not a film script…Is the film based on facts, or on the filmmaker’s imagination? We consider the film as fiction,” Faizasyah said.

Indonesia will not protest the airing of the film in Australia and has not decided whether it will ban it from being aired here, Faizasyah said. “We cannot ban people from making films, otherwise the film industry will die.”

A documentary film on the plight of a Chinese Uighur leader, alleged to have incited the worst race riots in China last month, will also be screened at the festival to the ire of Beijing, currently in a row with Canberra over the Rio Tinto spy case.

The Chinese government failed to block the screening of the documentary, but Chinese filmmakers canceled their participation in the festival to protest the documentary’s screening.

The BBC reports on 7/24/2009:

Indonesia ‘tortured’ Balibo Five

East Timor’s President Jose Ramos-Horta has said five foreign journalists who died in Indonesia’s 1975 invasion were tortured and shot by the military.

He made the allegation at the Melbourne launch of the film Balibo, which depicts their deaths as Indonesia’s army crossed into East Timor.

Jakarta has always said that they were killed in crossfire with rebels, which Australian governments have accepted.

The film shows them being shot on the orders of Indonesian army officers.

Mr Ramos Horta was a rebel commander at the time and is a central figure in the film. He said he had looked into the deaths of the “Balibo Five” soon after they were killed in the border town of Balibo.

At the Melbourne premiere, he claimed the film was largely accurate, but that its makers were unable to convey the full horror of the killings because it would be too shocking for cinema audiences.

He said the journalists were not just killed by the Indonesian military but, as he put it, “brutally tortured”.

Their bodies were burned to dispose of the evidence of their killings, he said.

Diplomatic reticence?

Balibo is the first feature film to be shot in East Timor.

It tells the story of Australians Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart, Britons Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie and New Zealander Gary Cunningham – who were killed when Indonesian troops overran Balibo in October 1975.

The filmmakers have said that the official Indonesian and Australian view that they died in crossfire is absurd.

That film’s version of events was validated by an Australian coroner in 2007.

After a fresh review of the evidence, the coroner ruled that the journalists had been killed as they tried to surrender to Indonesian forces.

The filmmakers are hoping that Balibo will spur the Australian government into action.

Almost 18 months on, it still has not given its response to the coroner’s findings – a reticence which may stem from its fear of upsetting diplomatic relations with Jakarta, says the BBC’s Nick Bryant in Sydney.

Indonesian troops invaded East Timor shortly after Portugal withdrew in 1975, ending 450 years as its colonial ruler.

At least 100,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of Indonesia’s 25-year occupation, which ended with East Timor’s independence in 2002.

At the Balibo premiere, Mr Ramos-Horta applauded the changes which had taken place recently in Indonesia.

“It is better. Indonesian democracy today is one of the most inspiring in the south-east Asia region.”

At least Mr. Horta has the decency of understanding and acknowledging the changes which Indonesia has seen since 1975. They are rather immense. But it would serve the interest of justice for the Indonesia government to address this issue in the light of the historical reality and not continue to deny the terrible events which occurred in Timor-Leste.

More to the point is that Wiranto, who ran as Megawati’s VP in the recent Indonesian elections (just concluded), still has not be held accountable for his own involvement in these events.

The recent bombings in Jakarta, which are deplorable, are but small splinter in the finger compare to the torture the Timor people endured for nearly thirty years.

Jakarta (40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy)

Photo: Production stills, 40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy

40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy

A link to their web page is posted in the upper right column.

“Directed by anthropologist Robert Lemelson and edited by two-time Academy Award winner Pietro Scalia, “40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy” is a moving feature length documentary film about one of the most horrific chapters in Indonesia’s history.

In one of the largest unknown mass killings of the 20th century, an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were secretly and systematically killed in 1965-1966, when General Suharto began a bloody purge of suspected communists throughout Indonesia.

Under his authoritarian rule, any discussion, recognition or memorializing of the mass killings that differed from the Suharto’s official state narrative was quickly suppressed.

“40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy” follows the compelling testimonies of four individuals and their families from Central Java and Bali, two regions heavily affected by the purge.

As they break their silence publicly for the first time, each family provides an intimate and frightening look at what it was like for survivors of the mass killings.

In chilling detail, they describe the events of 1965 through their own experiences; re-living and reflecting upon the stigmatization and brutalization that they continue to endure on both the village and state levels.

Over time, the survivors and their families attempt to find ways to deal with a tragedy that was not openly recognized by their neighbors, government or the world.

Through their stories, the audience will come to understand modern-day Indonesia’s potential for retribution, rehabilitation and reconciliation within this troubled historical context.

The characters’ narratives illustrate that such violence creates tears in the social and political fabric of society, which can take generations to heal.

Music

Genjer Genjer by Dengue Fever

Dengue Fever is a Los Angeles based band that combines Cambodian pop music with psychedelic rock. Their rendition of the song “Genjer Genjer” is featured in the film. The song “Genjer Genjer” was initially written about women who gather the genjer plant, tie it in bunches, and sell it in the market. The song later became associated with the Indonesian communist party, and the government banned its performance.

Indonesia Postmodern compilation by Elemental Productions

This eclectic compilation of Indonesian music arose out of 7 years of studio and field recordings looking at culture and mental illness in Bali and Java. Many of the films, spanning up to a decade in the lives of their central characters, are still in the process of being shot and edited. But the songs, gathered and recorded during downtime in Indonesia and at home in the US, gradually increased in number, eventually becoming a project of its own.

“The film’s score, which was edited by Richard Henderson (“Borat,” “The Life Aquatic”), is entirely original and complements the intense testimonies of the participants.” -Anita B. Hofschneider, The Harvard Crimson, February 20, 2009.

MUSIC EDITOR

Richard Henderson

Richard Henderson attended S.U.N.Y. Buffalo in the late 70’s and studied film history. Richard’s vibrant career path led him to work as a music editor and music supervisor on such acclaimed films like Borat, The Life Aquatic, and Into The Wild, which won him the Golden Reel Award. He is currently working on the sequel to Borat called Bruno with Sacha Baron Cohen.

COMPOSER

Malcolm Cross

Malcolm Cross studied music performance and composition in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He also completed additional postgraduate studies in Jazz and Studio Music. Malcolm’s past work includes original film scores for “Insomniac Obsessions” directed by Paul Cameron Carter, “Oh Saigon” documentary directed by Doan Hoang, “I Dream of Dog” directed by Jessica Rice, and “The Grey” by Norman Trotter IV.

THEME SONG

Genjer-Genjer

Inspired to write about the economic conditions of his town, Banyuwangi, Muhammed Arief wrote the song “Genjer Genjer,” the theme song in the “40 Years of Silence.” In 1942, the Japanese held colonial rule over Indonesia. The Japanese took all the crops grown in the town, which resulted in conditions of poverty and famine. The townspeople resorted to eating a weed that grew in the paddies, called the genjer plant (limnocharis flava). The lyrics of the song “Genjer Genjer” are about women who pick the young genjer leaves, tie them in bunches, and sell them in the market.

Arief later joined Lekra (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat), an artists group that shared ideology with the Communist party. The artists in Lekra began to sing and perform the song, and the song quickly became popular among Indonesians of all political leanings. The song became even more popular when two famous singers, Bing Slamet and Lilis Suryani, began to perform and record the song everywhere. The song later was sung at Communist political rallies, and its presumed association with the PKI increased.

Later, a college newspaper called Harian KAMI (Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Indonesia), published altered lyrics to “Genjer Genjer.” Instead of describing how the genjer plant was picked, sold, and eaten with rice, this version described how it was Communist supporters that were responsible for the coup that led to the death of the six military generals on September 30, 1965. These lyrics also implicated Gerwani, a women’s organization, of being involved in torturing the generals. Although these were not the original lyrics, the publication of this version of the song further strengthened the public perception that the “Genjer Genjer” was associated with the Communist party.

As a result, the Indonesian government banned the song entirely. Anyone who was known to have performed or recorded the song was subject to suspicion and often arrest. Thus, the song “Genjer Genjer” now holds great significance for Indonesia’s political history.

Jakarta (The King of Pop, Idle threats,Tehran, the Indonesian Police)

This is IT.

Well…  in case you have not heard the news Michael Jackson is dead. All the news channels are covering the event ad nausuem. I am certain, in short order, the news will filter to as far as Kalabahi on Alor island or to Wetar island where the Wetar Ground-dove coos way down the chain of the Malay Archipelago.

Fox News reported that:

“News of Michael Jackson’s death yesterday caused the largest spike in SMS traffic in our network history,” AT&T Wireless spokeswoman Jeannie Hornung told FoxNews.com. “Nearly 65,000 texts per second were sent as fans reached out to each other to share the sad news.”

And…

“Yahoo! News set a record in unique visitors with 16.4 million UV’s in a day,” Yahoo spokeswoman Carolyn Clark told FoxNews.com. “Our previous record was on Election Day when we had 15.1 million visitors. Yahoo! News had 4 million visitors come to the site between 3-4 p.m. [PDT Thursday], setting an hourly record.”

For sure, by this time tomorrow the news will have circled the globe hundreds of times over.

As I watched the ever continuing news coverage I was reminded by one commentator of how we are all just like Michael Jackson- from the richest potentate to the poorest kampung dweller we will all it up covered in a white sheet hauled off the whatever our final resting place is.  A comforting thought indeed.

Still, while our necks which are attached to our heads are turned to look at the passing wreck in other news North Korea threatens to wipe the United States off the face of the earth in a “shower of fire”.

Do they really believe this? This come while a U.S. Navy destroyer shadows an NK cargo ship carrying small arms to the democratic loving regime of Myanmar. No doubt the NKs are dangerous but it seems an awful lot like putting a few rocks in a tin can and trying to make as much noise as possible all the time screaming  out “hey, look here, we’re dangerous.”

Then there is Tehran. Ahmadinejad today compared Obama to Bush.  Laughable. The man and his regime are clearly mentally ill. The world has seen the video of the tragic death of Neda Soltan. The Iranian government alternately has accused the CIA of killing her and of the British Broadcasting Company of having arranged her death so that they could film it. Currently her family is not to be found.

What is clearly remarkable about the Iranian situation is how clear the Internet and cell phones are contributing to the truth rising above the madness of the lies Iranian government is telling.

This is, apparently, where an Islamic Republic will get you. An oligarch of grey beards who value money and power above the Holy Quran.

The Internet and cell phones played an important role in the 1998 student demonstrations in Jakarta but it has been over ten years since this took place and the technology is cheaper and much more wide spread now.

As this opinion piece which appeared in the Jakarta Post recently indicates…

Iran elections, Prita Mulyasari and Internet freedom

Bonni Rambatan , Malang | Fri, 06/26/2009 1:10 PM | Opinion

On May 13 this year, Prita Mulyasari was sued by Omni International Hospital for defamation and was sent to prison for expressing her opinions online, an action many would consider stifling free speech.

Thousands of people, largely Internet-literate youth, took to Facebook and the blogosphere and rallied for her freedom, after which she was released from prison and placed instead under city arrest to await her trial.

Exactly one month later on June 13, the Islamic nation of Iran entered what has largely been called its worse period of civil unrest in over a decade following the release of election results.

Communication within the country was crippled, with phone lines and many IP addresses blocked. People worldwide signed petitions and voiced support for the protesting Iranians via cyberspace.

The protest movement in Iran have been widely dubbed a “cyberwar” as people offer support to the Iran opposition by providing new venues of free speech, including new proxies for the protesters, baiting fake Iranian identities to government authorities, leaking documents, setting up anonymous forums, and so on.

Regular updates of the situation on the ground that would never have made it to media outlets such as CNN instead emerged through grassroots sources such as Twitter.

Through this technology, people worldwide could follow the unrest virtually in real-time while on YouTube, amateur videos of the protests, complete with the shaky camera angles and sounds of violence, reached our computers.

While it is true that the significance of the Iranian election protests far dwarfs the case of Prita, one should never be so easy to dismiss one case in favor of another, as each provide insight into the current state of society.” go to article…>

Iran is a very  computer literate nation. Seventy percent of the population is below the age of thirty. Iran is also a nation of bloggers, there are 60,000 in Tehran alone.

In Tehran there truly is a Twitter and a Facebook revolution. While there are those who do disparage social networks and “don’t have time for them” Iran has shown how very useful they can be. Apparently they are hard to shut down short of total electrical blackouts.

Here the immediate brutality of the police and government have been reported not in days or hours or minutes but in seconds.

Which brings me to the slow motion of the brutality of the Indonesian Police. No YouTube or Twitter moments here. Yet.

The AFP reports:

Torture ‘widespread’ in Indonesia: Amnesty

By Stephen Coates – 1 day ago

“JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesian police commonly beat and torture people in custody and offer better treatment in exchange for money and sex, Amnesty International said in a report released.

The human rights organisation demanded the Indonesian government acknowledge the problem and end the culture of impunity that allows police to act as if they are above the law in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.

The report, “Unfinished Business: Police Accountability in Indonesia”, found that the police were particularly brutal to the most vulnerable and marginalised people, such as drug addicts and women.

“Amnesty International’s report shows how widespread the culture of abuse is among the Indonesian police force,” the organisation’s Asia Pacific deputy director, Donna Guest, said.

“The police’s primary role is to enforce the law and protect human rights, yet all too often many police officers behave as if they are above the law.”

The report cited the case of 21-year-old sex worker Dita, who was arrested in 2006 and described being sexually abused on the way to the police station.

“I was arrested with five or six other prostitutes. On the way to (the station) they were grabbing me and touching me saying, ‘You’re so young, why aren’t you in school?’,” she was quoted as saying.

At the station the women were told they could buy their freedom with 100 dollars or with sex.

“Three of the girls agreed to have sex with them. I point blank refused to do either. Our pimps have paid them enough already,” she said.

Abuses meted out included shootings, electric shocks and beatings, sometimes for days on end, the report said.

“The suspects often received inadequate medical care for the injuries they received as a result of torture and other ill treatment,” Amnesty said.

“In some cases detainees had to pay for treatment after police abused them, and received inadequate medical care from police medical institutions.”

The report, based on interviews in Indonesia over two years, said police frequently sought bribes from detainees in return for better treatment or lighter sentences.

“At a time when the Indonesian government and senior police figures have made the commitment to enhance trust between the police and the community, the message is not being translated into practical steps,” Guest said.

“Too many victims are left without access to real justice and reparations, thus fuelling a climate of mistrust towards the police.”

Most police do not even know of, let alone follow, the force’s code of conduct which forbids abuse, she said.

Victims’ complaints were not impartially investigated and opened the plaintiff to further abuse, especially if they were still in police custody.

Amnesty recommended the government acknowledge and condemn the problem but no police or government officials attended the launch of the 84-page report.

It is the second report from a major international rights group to condemn torture in Indonesia this month.

US-based Human Rights Watch said on June 5 that torture and abuse of prisoners in a jail in Indonesia’s sensitive Papua region is “rampant.”

The United Nations has reported that Indonesian police routinely torture and beat suspects in custody.

Indonesia is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture but it has no corresponding law against the practice.

The UN special rapporteur for torture visited Indonesia in 2007 and found that police used torture as a “routine practice in Jakarta and other metropolitan areas of Java”.

A decade of political and institutional reform after the fall of the military-backed Suharto regime in 1998 has not left its mark on the police and prison system, analysts say.”

I would argue that the violence on the streets of Tehran is not so much different that the violence on the streets of Jakarta.

We are caught between sensational pop news,  the lies of violent governments whose only intent it to perpetuate their grip on power, and histories which we do not care to address in polite company.

Time to fire up the cell phone camera.

Shine a light.

Jakarta (the legacy)

I have posted Tom Allard’s excellent reporting from the Sydney Morning Herald here in full. This is just a small part of the Indonesian puzzle. There is Timor, Ache, Trisakti, and Semanggi… Ambon and Kalimantan…  There are just too many cockroaches of the Soeharto era to stamp out.  Some are even prominent politicians.

Starting here would be a good thing.

Survivors … Sumini and Anwar Umar. Photo: Tom Allard

From the Sydney Morning Herald, June 13, 2009

Indonesia unwilling to tackle legacy of massacres

Tom Allard Herald Correspondent in Jakarta

MOST Thursday afternoons, octogenarians Sumini and Anwar Umar take a bus from their homes in Jakarta’s suburbs to the city centre and set up camp outside the presidential palace in the city centre.

They join a smattering of other elderly Indonesians. Each of them are victims of the brutal crackdown on leftists that wracked the country from 1965 to 1966. The massacre of about 500,000 people, and imprisonment without trial of about 1 million others, ranks as one of the worst mass killings of the 20th century.

Yet this meagre, if heartfelt, protest each week across the road from the offices of the President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is testament to the ambivalence many feel about the slaughter and its inability to reconcile the actions of the perpetrators, the military and vigilante groups from Indonesia’s mass Islamic organisations.

The spark for the bloodletting was the failed coup in 1965,which began with the abduction and murder of six generals but lasted barely one day.

Crushed by an obscure general, Suharto, who would later become a long-standing dictator, the forces behind the coup remain a subject of debate.

But, with the support of the United States and the acquiescence of Australia, the army began a propaganda campaign that blamed the treasonous uprising on the Communist Party, then a major force in society.

Whipping up a frenzy of anti-communist hatred before it launched its killing spree, members of the Communist-linked Indonesian Women’s Movement, or Gerwani, were accused of cutting off the genitals of the generals. The women, so the reports went, then took part in a sexual orgy with Communist cadres and sympathetic air force officers at the very place the bodies of the generals had been thrown into a well.

Sumini was a member of Gerwani, living in Central Java and working as a kindergarten teacher. She remembers the propaganda campaign. “I did not believe it,” she said. “Gerwani was good … Its statutes said we should help the illiterates, children from poor families.”

It was a couple of months after the failed coup that Sumini was detained by an army officer and sent to prison, along with her sister and cousin. It was another 10 years before she was released.

“I remember my sister being stripped and electrocuted,” she said.

Mr Anwar, who was a secretary-general of a civil servants union, spent 12 years in prison. He, too, was electrocuted, beaten with a chair and fists. The worst thing, though, was being separated from his family.

They had no idea what had happened to him, but remained ostracised for his affiliation with the union movement. Three of his children had died – including one who committed suicide – before his release.

Like all those identified as leftists, Sumini and Mr Anwar were unable to get work after their release, their identity papers marking them as former political prisoners.

Even so, compared with other victims, Mr Anwar and Sumini got off relatively lightly.

The mass killings were particularly gruesome. Some were lined up and shot by the military. Many more were beheaded, garrotted or had their throats slit by Islamic militias with knives or machetes.

“It was done face to face,” says Greg Fealy, of the Australian National University. “It’s not like the mechanical process that the Nazis had, or Pol Pot’s farms [in Cambodia].”

Mr Fealy will be among about 30 academics who will congregate in Singapore next week for the biggest conference ever held on the massacres.

It is perhaps instructive that the conference is not being held in Indonesia and that most of the participants are not Indonesians.

Despite some steps towards accounting for the events of 1965 and 1966 after the fall of Suharto, Indonesia’s efforts to undertake a detailed official investigation into the coup and its aftermath have been stillborn.

The Parliament set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission after Suharto was deposed, but it never got off the ground after Mr Yudhoyono failed to appoint delegates and the Constitutional Court ruled it unlawful.

The highly sanitised history of the period taught at schools was briefly abandoned in 2004.

But the old texts, depicting the events as a patriotic campaign that resulted in less than 80,000 deaths, were reintroduced in 2006 following protests by Islamic groups and the military. The offending text books from 2004 were burnt.

Katherine McGregor, a University of Melbourne academic and the convener of next week’s conference, said there remained a lack of political will from the highest levels to tackle the legacy of the massacres.

As the Indonesian scholar Asvi Warman Adam notes, Mr Yudhoyono’s father-in-law, Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, was the military officer who led the killings in Central Java.

Jakarta (Kartini Day)

Raden Ayu (Ajoe) Kartini, (April 21, 1879-September 17, 1904)

Below is from my on-going thesis… which (God be praised) will be finished soon…

“The Ethical Policy was established in 1901, when the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina proclaimed that the Netherlands had an ethical responsibility toward their colonial subjects. As Waaldijk describes it, “A whole generation of Dutch Colonial civil servants was trained and inspired along the lines of this “Ethical Policy”. The went to the colony not only to make a career for themselves, but also to help the indigenous population, fight poverty and superstition, start schools, educate, elevate. Some – though certainly not all – of these “ethical” civil servants were fervent advocates of the dualistic judicial system. In their view the authentic cultures of the different peoples in the colony should be respected and protected.” (Waaldijk 1998: 106). Here the ethical policy is seen through the lens of Dutch orientalists who “discovered” Javanese culture and the common law practice of “adat”. The Dutch became, through their colonial gaze, “Indologists.” But the Dutch, from the time of the establishment of Batavia, had steadily maintained a policy of segregation which codified through their laws precise hierarchies of social order based on race. As Waaldijk notes: “The principles of of the “Ethical Policy” were therefore based on the principle of racial discrimination as it had been institutionalized in the Dutch Colony” and that consequently colonial “ethical” administrators described the inhabitants of the colony as “wards” who needed custodial protection” (1998:107). When Raden Adjeng Kartini, at the age of eighteen, wished to make a contribution to demonstrate solidarity in the struggle for women’s emancipation in the Netherlands at the National Exhibition of Women’s Labor held at the Hague in 1898 she was received by its organizers as “an object of guardianship, not as an independent citizen.” The Javanese women who did attend the exhibition did not attend any of the conferences, they were dance performers: “the objects of good intentions.” Waaldijk concludes that “in 1898 this attitude resulted in a silence where a conversation across lines of racial discrimination might have been possible” (1998:112).”

I am happy that Indonesia has a Kartini Day.  It is good to remember her.

Jakarta (global climate change and the wealth of nations)

East Jakarta, 2008

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous”

-A.N. Whitehead

This morning I decided to turn on the TV and check the news. The first thing I saw along the bottom of the screen in the CNN news ticker was “4,118 US forces dead in Iraq.” 

The war in Iraq is not only a war for oil, as all the Bush adminstration rationales for the war have now been exposed as blatant lies and intentional fraud, it is a war for oil profits led by war criminals.

From N.Y. Times, 7/11/2008

Book Cites Secret Red Cross Report of C.I.A. Torture of Qaeda Captives

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 11, 2008
Correction Appended

WASHINGTON – Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001. …> go to article

From AFP

Antarctic Ice Shelf ‘Hanging by Thread’: European Scientists

PARIS – New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is “hanging by its last thread” to Charcot Island, one of the plate’s key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

“Since the connection to the island… helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk,” it said. …> go to article

Brilliant Plans to Destroy the Planet: The World Bank Tackles Climate Change

By Janet Redman, Institute for Policy Studies. Posted July 11, 2008.

President Bush and other leaders of the industrialized world managed to produce a masterfully vague, loophole-ridden statement on climate change at a Group of 8 summit held at a secluded resort on the banks of Lake Toyako in Japan this week.

Meanwhile, thousands of delegates from grassroots movements transformed tranquil Odori Park in downtown Sapporo into the central nervous system of a bottom-up response to ecologically destructive development policies. On the opening day of the G8 summit, activists from every continent joined Japanese environmental and global justice groups in the streets brandishing banners, flags and megaphones. Their message was unambiguous: “Climate Justice, Yes! World Bank, No!” …

…Also offensive to developing countries is that the World Bank is asking the countries least responsible for causing climate change to take out loans to help pay for adapting to the inevitable impacts. According to the G8 statement, rich country “donations” to the Strategic Climate Fund will count toward those nations’ obligations for development aid, stretching an already pitiful sum impossibly thin.

Piling more debt onto many already heavily indebted nations will mean less money for climate-related disaster preparedness, emergency services and food shortages in the future.

World Bank Climate Hypocrisy

The World Bank’s effort to reinvent itself as the global climate crusader is a dangerous charade. With $2 billion already spent on coal, oil and gas projects this year, the World Bank continues to be among the world’s largest multilateral financiers of greenhouse-gas-emitting projects in the developing world.

The new Climate Investment Funds proposed by the United States and others will house the Clean Technology Fund. Donations from rich countries will ostensibly be used to bring low-carbon technologies to developing countries, and clean energy access to their poorest citizens. But environmental groups have taken to calling the Clean Technology Fund the Slightly Less Dirty Technology Fund because of the bank’s outright support for slightly more efficient coal power…

U.S. Role

Fiery protest in Japan was matched by a chilly reception among some members of the U.S. Congress to the Bush administration’s request for a $2 billion donation to the World Bank’s new funds. Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, pointed out at a recent committee hearing on a U.S. contribution that the “World Bank is not seen as an institution friendly to the environment” and that it seems to “spend one day a month protecting the environment and the other 29 days destroying it.” Still, it’s likely that Congress will authorize the money…” …> go to article

Janet Redman is a researcher for the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., where she provides analysis of the international financial institutions’ energy investment and carbon finance activities. She is the author of the recent report “World Bank: Climate Profiteer.”

Cheney’s staff censored EPA, ex-official alleges
Warming’s effects on health at issue

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post / July 9, 2008

WASHINGTON – Members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former official of the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday.

In a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, Jason Burnett, former EPA deputy associate administrator, said an official from Cheney’s office ordered that six pages be edited out of the testimony last October of Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Several media outlets, including The Washington Post, reported at the time that Gerberding had planned to say that the “CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern,” among other passages. White House officials said then that they questioned the scientific basis of aspects of Gerberding’s draft testimony.

Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the administration feared that Gerberding’s testimony would force the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. The White House has opposed mandatory limits and insisted that voluntary measures and increased research are the best way to address the issue. …> go to article

Is this picture becoming clear?

Follow the Money (an example)

Thomson Financial News
Indonesia’s Adaro sets IPO this week after securing approval
07.06.08, 10:22 PM ET

JAKARTA (Thomson Financial) – Indonesian integrated coal company PT Adaro Energy Tbk said on Monday it has scheduled its $1.3 billion initial public offering for Tuesday through Friday after obtaining approval from the capital market regulator Bapepam-LK.

Adaro is planning to sell 11.3 billion shares or 34 percent of its enlarged capital at 1,100 rupiah a share, making the IPO the biggest ever on the Indonesian stock market.

Adaro Indonesia is the country’s second-biggest coal company after PT Bumi Resources Tbk.

In 2007 Adaro produced 40 million tonnes of coal and sold 36.6 million tonnes, while Bumi sold 55.4 million tonnes of coal.

The shares will be listed on the Indonesian stock exchange on July 16.

The IPO was originally set for June 24 to 26 but was delayed due to issues relating to a share ownership dispute as well as tax and royalty payments.

Adaro Energy currently owns 61.23 percent of Adaro Indonesia, and has a 61.8 percent stake in Indonesia Bulk Terminal and 58.89 percent of Coaltrade Services International Pte. Ltd. …> go to article

 RPT-Indonesian “rent-a-mob” queue for $1.3 bln coal IPO
Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:39am

By Andreas Ismar

JAKARTA, July 10 (Reuters) – They didn’t look like your typical investors, as they queued under the scorching sun in Jakarta’s posh business district for shares in Indonesia’s biggest, hottest, initial public offering PT Adaro Energy.

There were women carrying babies, and men in flip-flops, shorts and faded T-shirts — the poor and unemployed, bussed in from Jakarta’s suburbs or slums and paid to stand in line for others.

Adaro Energy, Indonesia’s second-biggest coal miner by output, offered $1.3 billion of shares for sale this week, but most of those are earmarked for connected parties and many other investors are scrambling to get hold of the stock.

That’s where hundreds of people like Hilmawati and Arif come in, earning 25,000-35,000 rupiah ($2.70-$3.80) to queue up for shares on behalf of a man they called “the boss” .

“I’ve been waiting here since 7 o’clock, waiting for them to open at 10,” said Hilmawati, a 30-year-old housewife, as she waited in front of the exhibition hall in Jakarta’s Sudirman Central Business District.

“I’ve been going back and forth three times already. The officials were cruel, they asked so many questions, I just say I came from here,” she said, brandishing an order form from state-owned Danareksa Sekuritas.

“We came in one bus, 50 of us. For one form we got 25,000 rupiah, excluding lunch money, they take care of the transport. Later they will take us back home at four o’clock. If we got the form we give it to the leader, if not we won’t get paid,” said Hilmawati, adding that she knew nothing about Adaro or shares.

The boss uses their names and IDs to apply for multiple share allocations, betting that some, if not all, will be successful.

Brokers in Jakarta admit privately that this is a common practice to get shares in “hot” issues. In a country with millions of poor and unemployed, it is easy to rent a crowd, whether to buy shares or to gather in protest.

Several big foreign investors active in Asia have grumbled that they were shut out of the Adaro offering despite heavy overseas interest in what is seen as an attractively priced offering.

The deal underscores the opacity that sometimes plagues Southeast Asia’s biggest country and gives international investors pause. Red tape and rampant corruption are also frequent complaints.

On Thursday, a few applicants were turned away because of their scruffy attire, but entrepreneurs were at hand, renting out business shirts and ties, so that would-be investors could look the part.

“I cannot get in because of my shoes, they said we must wear leather shoes. They screen us by our looks,” said Arif, an unemployed man in his twenties who said he had at least tried to do some homework on the share offering.

“This is a kind of mining company, you know, coal. Many people know nothing about Adaro, I just tried to find out about it, asking around, hearing what people said.

“We were never informed about this by the boss. What the boss did was just tell us that there’s a share offering, then he gave the print out which contains our name and the company that we should buy.”

Adaro said in a document that 69.15 percent of the 11.14 billion shares offered will be allocated to five investors who already had stakes in PT Adaro Indonesia, a coal miner that Adaro Energy plans to acquire with the proceeds from the IPO. They are Farallon Capital, Kerry Coal, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), and Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Just 22.82 percent of the IPO shares are being allocated to domestic institutions, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, and individuals. (Additional reporting by Harry Suhartono; Editing by Sara Webb) …>go to article

Partners get huge chunk of Indonesia’s Adaro IPO
Wed Jul 9, 2008 11:52am 

By Harry Suhartono and Tony Munroe

JAKARTA/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Shares in PT Adaro Energy’s $1.3 billion IPO, Indonesia’s largest offering, were mostly distributed to connected parties, disappointing some domestic investors and global funds.

Several big foreign investors active in Asia have grumbled that they were shut out of the country’s biggest-ever initial public offering despite heavy overseas interest in what is seen as an attractively priced deal.

The deal underscores the opacity that sometimes plagues Southeast Asia’s biggest country.

No international prospectus was issued, which was surprising to some observers given the size of the IPO, but not unheard of, people familiar with the matter said.

Adaro said in a document that 69.15 percent of the 11.14 billion shares offered will be allocated to five investors who already had stakes in PT Adaro Indonesia, a coal miner that Adaro Energy plans to acquire with the proceeds from the IPO. They are Farallon Capital, Kerry Coal, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research), and Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Just 22.82 percent of the IPO shares are being allocated to domestic institutions, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, and individuals. Schroders Investment Management Indonesia will become the biggest unconnected institutional buyer of the IPO with $12 million worth of shares.

Remaining shares went to foreign investors including Dubai Investment Group, a company document said. …> go to article

Commentary

From my ”comment” on Jakartass post “Blinkers“, July 8, 2008

…I am convinced that the current energy market is being manipulated (in the mix of supply and demand issues and rank speculation) to enrich elites, both in Indonesia and in the United States.

I would argue that the natural resources of Indonesia belong to the Indonesians and not to political cliques or Chinese investors.

… the wealth of the nation (Indonesia) is on a vertical elevator ride to the small percentage of those who sit at the top while it should be spread horizontally to the benefit of society as a whole.

Scarcity of food, fuel and high rates of inflation hurt those at the bottom the most.

Push it to the limits of poverty and indeed as in some places in Indonesia the results are malnutrition and death.

From my ”comment” on Indonesia Matters post “Power Blackouts“, July 12, 2008

“Indonesia is a rich country but we are poor people, why is that?”

I have heard that on more than one occasion from my brother-in-law.

It is part question, part statement, and part indictment.

How can there be an energy crisis in Indonesia when the country is so energy rich?

Globalization, multi-national corporations, and the corrupt political elite have conspired to steal the wealth of Indonesia for the benefit of themselves and at the expense of the national welfare.

This is not inherently an Indonesian problem as we see here in the US record profits being posted by the oil companies the likes which have never been seen in the history of capitalism.

Given the dire warnings we have been given regarding global climate change it seems folly to continue to pursue our fossil fuel way of life but that way of life cannot be changed over night, in a snap.

Oil profits need to be used to stabilize energy needs and invested in alternative sources of energy through developing those technologies through research and development.

More to the point the wealth of the nation needs to be spread horizontally and not vertically.

Right now those profits sit in the bank accounts of the rich and the rest of us can clearly all go to hell.

Indonesia to shift factory hours amid blackouts: vice president
Fri, Jul 11, 2008 AFP

JAKARTA – INDONESIA will move manufacturers’ working hours to weekends in a bid to avoid prolonged rolling blackouts across the country, the vice president said on Friday.

The move, which will also see working hours shifted to off-peak times, has been brought in to avoid burdening the overstrained grid during peak hours.

‘A joint ministerial decree will be signed this afternoon, and will become effective in August,’ Mr Jusuf Kalla told Dow Jones Newsires, without giving further details.

State power monopoly PLN started two weeks of rolling blackouts in Jakarta on Friday after six months of frequent outages on the dense Java-Bali grid cost businesses millions of dollars in losses.

The rolling blackouts in Jakarta are officially due to maintenance work that will interrupt gas supplies to two state-owned generating stations in North Jakarta, but analysts have blamed the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

Analysts have warned electricity shortages could limit economic growth and discourage local and foreign investment in South-east Asia’s largest economy.

‘The economy will not be able to grow above six per cent if (PLN) can’t increase supply by nine per cent annually,’ said Mr Purbaya Sadewa, chief economist at the state-owned investment bank PT Danareksa.

Rising demand for electricity has led to increasing numbers of blackouts across the country in the past few years despite its vast resources of oil, natural gas, coal and geothermal energy.

The power crisis appears to be deteriorating even though only 53 per cent of the archipelago’s 234 million people has access to electricity.

The government is planning to boost capacity by some 30 per cent to about 40,000 megawatts by 2011, but the first new power station is not expected to be operational until mid-2009.” …> go to article

 

My favorite quote of late is from A. N. Whitehead, “It is the business of the future to be dangerous“.

We will soon see just how dangerous it will be.

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Jakarta (news, books, and sex, news)

Nites  Photo by =Geiss

News

How the wheels of justice turn so very slowly… still, better late than never (with some qualifications)…

From Reuters 6/16/2008

Top court won’t review Exxon Indonesia lawsuit

Reporting by James Vicini, Editing by David Alexander and Sandra Maler

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear an appeal by Exxon Mobil Corp. seeking to dismiss a lawsuit by 11 Indonesian villagers who claim the company’s security forces committed human rights abuses at a natural gas processing plant in the Aceh province.

The high court followed the recommendation of the U.S. government and it turned down the company’s appeal without any comment. The Supreme Court’s action does not set any precedent and does not represent a ruling on the merits of the dispute.

The lawsuit, filed in 2001 in federal court in Washington claimed the security forces at the facility were comprised exclusively of members of the Indonesian military and that Exxon retained them even though it had been aware the Indonesian army had committed human rights abuses in the past. … go to article

 Books

I recently received, showing up in my mail box, Celebrating 60 Years – 1948 – 2008 TUTTLE, A Memeber of the Periplus Publishing Group, New Titles and Complete Backlist, Fall 2008.

Periplus, of course, has bookshops throughout Jakarta. Their site is found here.  Over the years I have purchased many of their publications which include Tuttle’s Concise Indonesian Dictionary and the Periplus wall map of Indonesia(71 cm X 118 cm), a beautiful full color map of the archipelago which is a work of art in itself.  I have on order the Jakarta Street Atlas 2nd. Ed.(don’t leave home without it). Tuttle is famous for its Asian language dictionaries, Periplus for its maps and travel books. And much, much more.

From Tuttle

“2008 marks a milestone for Tuttle Publishing. Originally established in 1948 in Rutland, Vermont, and Tokyo, Japan, this year we are fortunate and honored to be celebrating our 60th anniversary. Since its inception, Tuttle Publishing has been a leading publisher of books on Asia. We are extremely pleased to be able to continue this tradition, and invite you to explore the rich cultural heritage of Asia through this website”.

The catalog is full of beautiful books, of that there is no doubt, and if I had deeper bank account than I currently have there certainly would be several new titles appearing on my bookshelves. Here are five below which caught my eye (not including Straits and Narrow by Grace McClurg, The Rain Tree by Sylvie Phillips, and Unhooking a DD-cup Bra without Fumbling by Adam Adams (a book which claims to be written without the use of the letter “E”, now that is something!). 

Well, it is summer in Hawaii, so it is not just a question of my bank account but also the time, the hammock strung between two shade trees, and the large glasses of iced tea necessary to address this stack of books.

     

    

 

 

Sex

Two things come to mind here.  You can’t judge a book by its cover. Sex sells.  Unfortunately, I have not read the books which I have mentioned here. Not yet anyway. So I cannot make a fair comment. 

The Asian Review of Books panned Jakarta Undercover writing that, “The blurb on the back of JAKARTA UNDERCOVER claims it as Indonesia’s answer to America’s ‘Sex and the City’. It has sold over 200,000 copies in Indonesia, and proved something of a sensation, lifting the lid on the sexual adventures to be had in the world’s fourth largest capital, and giving the lie to the image of a puritanical Muslim nation.

But MOAMMAR EMKA’s book probably proves the truth of a different adage: that one country’s erotica is another’s turn-off. The exploits chronicled here are described in a spare, bland style, both slightly cold and offputting. Emka talks about the services available for the rich and favoured in the new Jakarta — expats, the wealthy business people, some politicians, the elite — and only once or twice does he does mention that Indonesia is still one of the poorest countries in the world, where the sort of prices he mentions here for nights of wild excess would add up to earnings for a year or more”.

Monsoon Books wrote of Jakarta Undercover II, “After the enormous success of Jakarta Undercover, Moammar Emka is back with more on the seedy nightlife and underground sex servics of modern, hip Jakarta. Delving deep into the city’s karaoke clubs, massage parlours and transit hotels, the author takes it upon himself to experience first-hand the tasty delights on offer and what exactly they involve.

What is a cat-bath massage? Who are the Mickey Mouse girls? How much does an all-night gigolo really cost? How popular is the after-lunch hand-roll service?

From swingers parties to midnight lesbian packages, Jakarta seems to have it all when it comes to sexual services. And if you thought the first book was explosive, Jakarta Undercover II will leave your imagination running wild. 

Indonesia’s bestselling series—over half a million copies sold!”

Not much of a real review.  But something to think over at any rate.

Gerrie Lim’s The Invisible Trade is altogether something different as reviewed by the Asian Sex Gazette

“Welcome to the very real, largely hidden, and often surreal world of high-class sex for sale in Singapore, where the sexual desires of this tiny island run the gamut from simple missionary zeal to the cracking of the whip. Never before have outsiders been offered such a fascinating look into the weird and wonderful, delightful and sometimes depraved world of five-star, high-class prostitutes that operate in Singapores flourishing sex trade.

For those writing about the sex industry, there is always the danger that the story will become as exploitative as its subject matter. In this survey of high-end sex workers in Singapore, Lim (Inside the Outsider) manages to avoid this trap by giving the workers space to speak for themselves.

Emily, one of Lim’s subjects, describes her first time with a client: “On my first job I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do… I didn’t know how to do a massage or how to talk to a strange guy.” But now, she says, “If you think about the money you can do anything.” …> go to review

“If you think about the money you can do anything.”

I can’t see how Lim’s Part II can beat that quote.

Erotica Revealed has a good review of The Best of Singapore Erotica.

“What I discovered was a collection of stories, essays and poems that help clarify why Singapore has a sex-hostile reputation. Legal restrictions on homosexuality and other “deviant” sexual acts are only the beginning. The obstacles to satisfying sex in the city-state appear to be many and formidable: ferocious upward mobility and a punishing work ethic; shortage of affordable housing, which leads to young adults living with their parents in situations with little privacy; traditional values that favor security over romance; and finally, a complex, multi-racial class hierarchy with social distances that are near-impossible to bridge.

In spite of, perhaps even because of, all these barriers, some of the authors represented in this volume do succeed in creating arousing and emotionally involving tales that I would classify as erotica. One of my favorites is Ricky Low’s “Clean Sex,” in which a successful young Chinese businessman falls in love with an Indonesian housemaid, only to lose her when she’s accused of stealing the expensive presents he has bought for her. Another highlight is “Naked Screw” by Alison Lester, which portrays an initially confrontational but ultimately sensual encounter between a free-spirited ex-pat who likes to walk around her apartment without clothing, and a traditional South Asian laborer who claims that her nakedness offends him. Meihan Boey’s “A Dummy’s Guide to Losing Your Virginity,” in which she chronicles her methodical approach to finding and bedding her first lover, is a clever comic gem:

“Feel free to fit us both into any convenient category of human behavior. Rest assured, I will not complain. Complaining, I find, is the refuge of the weak and unimaginative who have neither the courage to put up with shit nor the wherewithal to get out of it.”

“And Then She Came,” by Jonathan Lim, is a creepy yet unquestionably sexy story of a helpless student “not sober enough to be superstitious,” who attracts the attention of a voracious female ghost. Aaron Ang’s “A Perfect Exit” is a sweet, sentimental and finally surprising story of geriatric lust. I also enjoyed “Self-Portrait with Three Monkeys,” by Chris Mooney-Singh, although it is more a character study than a story, the heroine a middle-aged career woman who consoles herself for her loveless couplings with an orgy of art. Another notable contribution is Weston Sun Wensheng’s “An MRT Chronicle,” a wry commentary on the trials of being young and horny in a society that offers no privacy at all”.

 Jakarta Urban Blog has previously posted on human trafficking in Asia and Indonesia.  

March 7, 2008 Jakarta (informal) part 2

 

And so here is the flip side to all of this…

 News

From The National (United Arab Emirates)

 Illegal logging trade forces jungle brothel in Indonesia

Marianne Kearney, foreign correspondent
Last Updated: May 24. 2008 5:39PM UAE / May 24. 2008 1:39PM GMT

JAKARTA // The illegal logging destroying Indonesia’s tropical forests is fuelling another illicit trade: the trafficking of girls as sex slaves.

Girls as young as 13 are being lured from their homes with promises of employment as waitresses or maids, and then pressed into servicing loggers, their bosses and forestry officials deep within the jungles of West Kalimantan, on Indonesia’s side of Borneo island.

Maria, a child’s rights activist, stumbled upon the jungle brothel during a trip to West Kalimantan to rescue teenagers in illegal gold mines.

The girls, many of them between 13 and 17, had been trafficked from within West Kalimantan, or Indonesia’s main island of Java, 920km away, she said.

“If they want to run, they’re in the middle of the forest, living beside a river, which is too deep and dangerous to swim,” said Maria, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of being tracked down by the traffickers.

The girls were paid as little as 300,000 rupiah per month (Dh118), and forced to live in appalling conditions, she said.

“They didn’t even have simple houses; they were living in huts or just tents made of plastic, with thatch roofs. There were no facilities for them,” Maria said. …> go to article

 Destroy a forest. Destroy a people. 

 “If you think about the money you can do anything”.

 

 

 

 

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