Blogging the democratic revolution
Miss Indonesia Universe, crowned Aug. 25, 2006 Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! News! Miss Kazakhstan World 2005, Miss Kazakhstan Universe 2006 Source: Missosology Miss England World 2005 Source: Yahoo!, via My Pet Jawa Miss Afghanistan Earth 2003 Source: Wikipedia What do these girls have in common? They’re all Muslim beauty queens, showing off their hair, faces,…
Abu Bakar Bashir, Southeast Asia’s Leading Terror Mullah Source: The Sydney Morning Herald I get a visceral reaction every time I see this guy. I first heard of Abu Bakar Bashir, the leading terror cleric in Southeast Asia, in early 2002 from Sidney Jones, who was then with Human Rights Watch. She knew her stuff…
East Timor, with less than a million people, is like a small town, with small-town niceness … and small-town small-mindedness. It’s also coming off a 25-year populist guerrilla war for independence, meaning that there are a lot of unemployed soldiers and guerrillas around, without a purpose. The barely-developed half-island won its independence from Indonesia in…
A few days ago, I was blogging about the tombs of Imogiri, near Yogyakarta, in central Java, discussing them as the place I was at onset of Indonesia’s democratic revolution in 1998. Today, those tombs are at the epicenter of the deadly earthquake in Indonesia, centered in Bantul. Hospitals are overflowing and more than 3000…
Dear old Gus Dur of Indonesia is the one of the best Muslims I have ever known. He’s a holy man whose life of prayer reflects vividly in the life he leads. He is humble, gentle, kindly and noble. I used to talk to him back in Jakarta, years ago, before he became Indonesia’s first…
I was somewhere outside Yogyakarta on this day eight years ago, within sight of Mount Merapi volcano. One of the greatest democratic revolutions in history was about to erupt but I didn’t know it then. I was at a mysterious Javanese graveyard of tombs outside Yogyakarta, where old and young many of them in traditional…
Amid all the smoke and dust of urbanized Jakarta – motorcycles, white Islamic veils, clove cigarettes, blue jeans, smoking satay on the street grill – in a megalopolis of something like 21 million people – there is a real Java, Indonesia, too. This one isn’t revolutionary, but eternal. By eternal, I mean it seems to…
Via Real Clear Politics, the Washington Post has an astounding article about a young rock band in Indonesia that is defying the vicious local Islamofascists by singing innovative songs against Jihad terrorism. Every time the terrorists threaten to blow them up, the youthful band comes up with a new song, calling it their next new…
The weekend’s terror attack on the Indonesian island of Bali was a monstrous atrocity. Does it have revolutionary implications? I think it does, because it’s closely aligned with Indonesia’s brave self-transformation into an authentic democracy in 1999. The terrorists who struck Bali were trying to destroy Indonesia’s fragile democracy – at a sensitive time. With…
One of the biggest triggers to revolution in any country is the concept of ‘rent-seeking.’ It’s a concept that’s largely foreign to us Americans, but perfectly understood by many people in other cultures. It’s the concept of someone exacting unfair payments over others because of some fundamental and resented privilege. If you were in the…
Indonesia is at the boiling point with a whole string of frightening developments. Oil prices are going through the moon and the indonesian government, which subsidizes oil, is being crushed by those higher prices. That’s sent the miserable-anyway currency, the Indonesian rupiah, to its lowest levels in four years as capital flight takes off. Meanwhile,…
They’re so darn dumb. How does anyone get that dumb? Rule Number One: You DO NOT do drugs in Asia. Rule Number Two: You DO NOT transport drugs in Asia. Rule Number Three: You DO NOT associate with anyone who does drugs in Asia. Rule Number Four: You read the signs at airports, the ones…
The first time most people on this side of the world had ever heard of Aceh was late last year on Dec. 26, when an enormous tsunami swept over the land and killed over 130,000 people. It’s part of Sumatra, an island of 4.1 million in Indonesia, and home to three decades of a rebel…
Today’s 20-year verdict against Schapelle Corby, supposedly for drug possession and drug running on the island of Bali, has radicalized a major part of Australia. The 27-year-old surfer insists she didn’t do it, but was the victim of an airport smuggling ring that forgot to retrieve its pot from her boogie board bag. Conveniently for…
I was bothered by Indonesia’s Abu Bakar Bashir verdict and realized it was going to amount to a political struggle in Indonesia’s six-year-old democracy, because voters there had just elected a new president who ran for office on an anti-terror platform. That sham verdict is going to pose some problems for Indonesia’s new president as…