Aceh is a cautionary example for Indonesia

Since the end of the three decades under military strongman Suharto, Indonesia has emerged as the most vibrant democracy in South East Asia. Yet this new freedom might prove costly to the character of a nation frequently held up as a beacon of moderate Islam. As we are seeing from the Arab Spring, some of the things that emerge after the fall of a dictator are not so nice. The absence of a tough-guy ruler in Indonesia has meant a rise in Saudi-funded Islamic fundamentalism and acts of terror, from bombings targeted at Westerners in Jakarta and Bali, to persecution of Shi'as and Ahmadis.

If Indonesians want a glimpse at a possible future of their nation, they need only peek over at Aceh, a province where Islam reigns supreme. The Acehnese have fought a long struggle for independence, against the Dutch and now against Indonesia, but their fight for self-determination might garner a little more sympathy if they didn't seem so keen to turn Aceh into SE Asia's capital of Islamic lunacy.

The administration of Lhokseumawe, Aceh, is planning to issue a bylaw banning women from straddling motorcycles, arguing that the practice is “improper” in a province governed by Islamic law. Lhokseumawe Mayor Suaidi Yahya said that women should sit sideways on motorcycles, with their legs dangling off to one side. The planned regulation had been discussed with many parties, including local ulema, Suaidi said in his 2013 New Year’s speech. The mayor said that the ban would restore fading local values caused by poor morality and make it easier to differentiate women from men when riding pillion. He said that the planned regulation could in fact uphold the dignity of women in the region.

Unspun has it right. This has nothing to do with what women wear or do, but everything to do with the idea that men are incapable of controlling their basic urges. And when you set such a low standard for men to follow, it's not surprising when they lower themselves to it.

The Temper Trap at the AFL Grand Final

Not sure how many people tuned in to watch Sydney beat Hawthorn in the AFL Grand Final this year, but my guess is it's somewhere between "heaps" and "a shitload", in addition to the 99,000 who were at the ground. And apart from those who got up to go pee, millions were watching an Indonesian-Australian guy killing it centre stage as the half time entertainment. Yes, that's Dougy Mandagi, lead singer of Melbourne band The Temper Trap, originally born in Manado on the island of Sulawesi. So forgive my momentary ethnic jingoism as I proclaim my pride that one of my peoples is tearing it up at the biggest event of the Australian sporting and television calendar.



The first song (new single Trembling Hands) is pretty good, the second (Drum Song) is a bit meh, and the third is the money shot - Sweet Disposition, the track that everybody loves. It starts at about the 5:30 mark if you are impatient.

Obama's gay marriage, fake father and other wingnut fantasies

Ever seen those ads for Dos Equis beer which feature a character they call "The Most Interesting Man in the World"?
Well clearly they've got it wrong, because no one as lived a life as extraordinary as Barack Obama. Or at least that is if you believe right-wing conspiracy theorists.

So far we've seen Obama the Communist, Obama the Black Radical, Obama the Secret Muslim, Obama the Atheist, Obama the Kenyan, Obama the Indonesian, Obama the Black Radical, Obama the Guy Who Is Just Like Adolph Hitler, and even Obama the Antichrist.

Now in a flash of inspiration, someone has come up with a concept that neatly combines the right-wing's two favourite destroyers of the fabric of society (gay marriage and Islam) into one nice package: Obama was secretly married in college - to a man! And to a Pakistani man at that!

What makes Obama the most interesting man in the world is not just that he is able to simultaneously be all of these things - a gay Muslim who is really an atheist yet claims to be a Christian - but that no one who he ever met in all that time seems to be willing to verify any of these details. Which, if you really want to get into conspiratorial mode, is probably because he had everyone who knew his secrets killed execution-style by the Illuminati Hit Squad.

The genius behind this story is the Tea Party's professional conspiracy theorist in chief, Jerome Corsi. You may remember Corsi for his role in smearing 2004 Presidential hopeful John Kerry's decorated record as a soldier in Vietnam, and his role in the Birther movement. His logic states that Obama must have been married because he was photographed wearing a ring on his left hand where one normally wears a wedding ring. And Corsi decides it was probably a gay marriage because... well, in this photo he is seated almost touching another guy, his Pakistani college room-mate Sohale Siddiqui. And sitting close to another guy is, as we all know, a clear sign that one is hungry for cock.

These two are like, totally gay for each other.

These two are just good friends.

To be honest, if BO experimented in college, I personally don't give a shit. A lot of people do that sort of thing; that's what college is for. If he is indeed on the "down-low" as they say, he'll have something in common to chat about with half the congressmen in the Republican party. But anyway, BO looks like he might be the "top" in that relationship, and we all know it's not gay if you're the pitcher.

Speaking of pitching, Corsi is pitching a couple of other conspiracy theories at the moment over at WorldNetDaily.

Firstly, Corsi is touting "absolute proof" that Obama was both an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim, based on a document at the Indonesian school where he was enrolled as a young child. Whether or not the document is real is probably immaterial; anyone who knows Indonesia knows that it's standards of record-keeping are hardly rigorous in their accuracy. As conservatives are constantly telling us, bureaucracies are inefficient, and Indonesia's more than most. What seems likely is that it was assumed Obama was an Indonesian because that's what his stepfather Lolo Soetoro was. Religion-wise, it should be noted that it is effectively illegal to NOT have a religion in Indonesia. Belief in God is one of the tenets of Pancasila, the national ideology, and while no one cares if someone doesn't actually practice the religion, not claiming a religion would draw suspicions of Communism. Thus it makes sense that Soetoro would list his stepson's religion as Islam, since that made as much sense as any other alternative at the time.

An even more interesting theory being promoted by Corsi at WND is that Obama's real father was not Barack Obama Snr, but was instead their family friend Frank Marshall Davis, who was a mentor to the young Obama. This is delicious for the WND audience since Davis was a member of the Communist Party and thus must have been a bad person. Joel Gilbert, director of the "documentary" entertaining this theory, Dreams of My Real Father, wasted 2 years of his life studying photos to support this theory.

“I decided to investigate Frank Marshall Davis. His close physical resemblance to Obama was shocking, while Obama little resembled the Kenyan Obama,” Gilbert told WND. “How could this be?”

Here is a comparison of the President with his Kenyan father and the man Gilbert alleges is his real father. You can initially see where Gilbert might have got this idea from; there are some ways in which Obama looks more like Davis than Obama Snr.

But there's another obvious explanation. Can you guess the detail Gilbert has missed?

Genetically, Obama Jnr and Davis almost certainly do share something: European DNA. Virtually all African-Americans who are descended from slaves have some white European ancestry. On average, 20% of African-American DNA comes from white ancestors. You can be a black American, whose parents are both black, yet be more than 50% European genetically.
Frank Marshall Davis has some level of white DNA, probably in the average range for his ethnicity. Barack Obama II is 50% white. Barack Obama Snr is an ethnic Luo with no apparent white ancestry. Which is why, shockingly, he looks so much darker and more African than his son.
Obama doesn't look much like his mother either, come to think of it. He's sort of... blacker-looking. Maybe she's not his real mother either?

The article also shows pictures of Davis' children, Lynn and Mark, for comparison. He also married a white woman, so his children have that mixed appearance. They do vaguely resemble Obama, particularly if you think black people tend to look alike. But they also look considerably "whiter" than Obama, particularly when it comes to their hair, which appears far less sub-Saharan African in form than Obama's. This is as you would expect, since Davis is presumably "whiter" than Obama Snr.

As a person of mixed race myself, I also don't look all that similar to either of my parents, and it's not uncommon either.

Of course, if you pay attention you may notice that all these conspiracy theories contradict each other. I mean, Obama can't be both a foreign Kenyan AND have a father who is an American communist. And he's probably not both an atheist AND a secret Islamic jihadist. But as any good mudslinger knows, if you fling enough mud, eventually some of it will stick. And given that around a quarter of all Americans think Obama IS a Muslim and a foreigner, Corsi and friends have a sizable audience to pitch their wingnut wet dreams to.


See also:
If Obama is a Muslim, maybe I am too...
Obama's birth certificate, and the racist impulses behind Birtherism
The Muslim-ness of Obama's family, and what it has to do with his presidency

A tip for putting on accents

In this funny clip, comedian Jimmy Carr demonstrates a common technique used for assuming an accent. He also makes the most of the opportunity to poke fun at Scousers (people from Liverpool).


As someone with a bit of a talent for accents myself, I have a few of my own phrases. They are useful because they encapsulate the things that make the accent distinctive. If you're not familiar with the accents I'm referring to here, this may be lost on you, but bear with me.

For example, for sounding like a Filipino, a phrase like "This burger has a nice flavour" is ideal, because it forces you to highlight the distinctive way Filipinos speak - heavy emphasis on the r sound, and f and v pronounced as p and b respectively.

For an Indonesian accent, the phrase I use is one that I heard while at a karaoke bar in Jakarta: "You are the sunshine of my life" (yes, it's the Stevie Wonder song). The r is rolled, the th becomes a d, "sunshine" becomes "sunsine", and "of" becomes either "off" or "op", according to your preference (a lot of Indonesians, like Filipinos, struggle with f and v).

For a Vietnamese accent, I like "This tastes very nice", which ends up sounding something like "This tay vey nai".

Know any other phrases that encapsulate a particular accent? Share them.

Obama eating dog meat as a child: proof of his unspeakable evil?

The latest reason Barack Obama is a terrible human being is that when he was a child growing up in Indonesia, he ate dog meat.

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”

Well, it's not really news; that's an excerpt from Dreams from my Father, which was first published in 1995 and has sold a bundle. So millions of people have read this paragraph before and never cared before. However conservative website The Daily Caller decided to make it into news recently. It's essentially a response to the stories of Mitt Romney driving around with a dog atop his car back in the 80s.

Now, to their credit, most conservatives don't seem to be treating this as a serious issue. Rather, it's a light-hearted way to mock the President. And fair enough, it's good fodder for some gags. Like when Republican strategist tweeted about this picture of Obama with his dog Bo (left): "In hindsight, a chilling photo." I'll pay that one.

Yet amazingly some on the right think this is actually a story, a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the liberal left. Here are some excerpts from a ridiculously deluded post from The American Thinker:

Condemning the transportation of a dog in a pet crate on a car roof while supporting a President with a history of eating dog is indicative of the imperious elitism the left often promotes.

Yes, people actually believe that something someone a 50 year-old man ate when he was around 8 years old, living in another country, has some kind of relevance to anything at all.

Dog jokes aside, if the President were truly concerned about dogs' well-being, he would still to this day be sickened at the thought of the lunch his stepfather Lolo served him 40+ years ago. Therefore, when signing the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act, Obama could have redeemed himself by citing his personal exposure to animal cruelty as a child in Indonesia. The fact that Obama never mentioned eating dog meat is an illustration of how liberals excuse their own past offenses and feel justified standing up for contradictory arguments, even if that defense is accomplished by merely failing to expose past wrongdoing.
Think about it. Who else, knowing full well that at some point in his life he dined on Rover for lunch, would allow his campaign to express disapproval for the sin of letting a dog ride in a crate on the top of a car? Who, other than liberals, would dare to condemn the treatment of a family pet being taken on vacation, however the dog arrived there, after the candidate they support nonchalantly described snake meat as a little tougher than a mutt burger? In the end, if one tries to comprehend the rationale behind supporting a dog-eater while protesting cruelty to animals, the only justification can be that America's polymathic president is excused because his life experience includes a sincere reverence for an ancient animist tradition.

Regarding Romney putting his dog on top of his car, that's also a non-issue to me. I'm no expert in canine welfare, but I can think of plenty of other reasons to dislike Mitt than something he did back in the 80s which may or may not have been an inappropriate way to treat a beloved family pet.

But Obama-eats-dog is even less of an issue. With Romney, if it can be proven that his treatment of Seamus the Irish setter was indeed cruel (and I'm not sure that it was), then that at least it might say something about his character, since he was a grown-ass man at the time. What Obama ate when he was a kid has nothing to do with anything. It's not like he personally tortured and killed the dog before consuming it. A relative gave him some meat to eat, and he ate it. As you would expect of any well-raised child.

The American Thinker article even attacks Obama for not mentioning dog-eating every time he talks about animal welfare, and not being openly horrified when he does so. This is a really odd way to look at things. Is someone who campaigns for better treatment of cattle, yet who eats beef, a hypocrite? No.

It's a decidedly Western perspective that views dogs as being some kind of sacred beast that must be treated with reverence, in contrast to the millions of cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens that are raised in horrific conditions yet nobody gives a shit about.

Don't get me wrong, I don't support the eating of dog meat. I've had my own personal run-in with the stuff which had a major effect on me. But a dog is an animal, no more and no less than a cow or a pig. What separates one from the other is a purely arbitrary classification. I might be cuter and smarter than the guy next door, but that doesn't make my life worth any more.

And eating dog meat is a fairly common practice in much of Eastern Asia and elsewhere; in many cases, in regions where meat is a scarce commodity. (Ironically, it occurs only rarely in Indonesia, as it is considered haram in Islam.) I would hazard a guess that Obama recognizes that while the eating of dog meat might be unpleasant in concept, it is just a reality of the world. Putting Americo-centric judgements on the practice serves no great purpose in this context.

For conservatives, the dog-eating anecdote serves to boost one of the long-running avenues of attack on the President: that he is really a foreigner who is radically different from "real" Americans and doesn't understand them. Ironically, they are going to put their faith in Mitt Romney, a man who is far more out of touch with the average American than Obama ever was.

More (cross-cultural) thoughts on "The Raid"

Just a couple of things I wanted to add to my previous review of Indonesian martial arts flick The Raid.


* Read the subtitles of this film, and it's not shy on swear words. There are plenty of f-words, and at least one c-word. But if you happen to speak Indonesian as well, you'll notice that there's no such thing actually spoken - I didn't make out any Indonesian words that were actually that dirty. Indonesian has swear words, of course, but you don't often see them in movies. A lot of the flavour of Bahasa Indonesia is in the tone and expressiveness of those whose speak it, rather than the words themselves, and so the English translation tries to capture those emotions in words, rather than letting the tone do the work.

So when a character says "Step back!" sternly to his subordinate, the subtitle reads "Step the fuck back!" and so on.

The rudest Indonesian words I noticed were bangsat (bastard), which was translated as the c-bomb by the subtitlers, and anjing (dog), which seemed to take on several different meanings, including "fuck you!"



* By contrast to a lot of the reviews going around which are hailing this as one of the greatest action movies of recent years, respected US critic Roger Ebert panned it and gave it one star in this review.
Now, opinions are opinions; I have a lot of respect for Ebert and can't complain if something is not to his taste. What did interest me though were a few lines in the review that puzzled me and seem to show a US-centric perspective on the world. That's interesting to me because so much of how we evaluate things is due to our upbringing, culture and vantage point. He says:

"What country are we in? The movie never tells us. (It was filmed in Indonesia.) Establishing Rama as a Muslim seems pointless, except as a cheap fakeout in character development."

What country are we in? It's interesting that a reviewer would write such a thing, because consider this: do most American movies need to state that they take place in the USA? Sometimes they might state the city, but certainly not always. So why must a movie that is made in Indonesia, and in which the characters are clearly Indonesian and speak Indonesian, point out that it is taking place in Indonesia?

The Muslim thing is also odd. Given that 90% of Indonesians are Muslim, and it's widely known as the world's most populous Islamic-majority country, why wouldn't it show that the main character is a Muslim? Given that the opening sequence shows Rama, up before dawn, preparing himself for the gruelling day ahead, what is odd about seeing him praying? If anything, it just shows him as a spiritual man of good character, who as any religious person would, seeks divine strength for the risky business that awaits him.

That praying scene can be read in another way, though. While it shows the main protagonist as a devout Muslim, it is a minor detail overall. Yet in the current global climate, is writer-director making a statement by having Western audiences cheer for a Muslim hero? I'm reminded of the brilliant series The Wire, in which perhaps its most beloved character is Omar, a fearless stick-up guy who just happens to be gay. His sexuality is just a minor background detail, as you could argue Rama's religion is in The Raid, as if to remind us that people are so much more than whatever category they belong to.

Thoughts on "The Raid"

So this will sound like a cheesy ad voiceover, but... if you only see one action movie this year, make sure it's The Raid. Actually, screw that. If you only see one action movie in the next five years, you still need to make sure it's The Raid.

First, let me state that this movie is not going to be for everyone. It's virtually 100 minutes of Indonesian dudes fighting each other, recovering from fighting each other, and getting ready to fight each other. If that's not your thing, no one will blame you if you go watch a rom-com instead.

For the rest of us, The Raid is edge-of-the-seat stuff. The plot is nothing amazing, but since when have martial arts flicks required an amazing plot? All you ask for is that it basically makes sense*. In this story, 20 cops, mostly rookies armed to the teeth, are sent into a derelict apartment building to extract the landlord, drug kingpin Tama (Ray Satehapy). The only problem is that the building also serves as a safe house for the cream of Jakarta's population of gangsters and thugs, who the cops will have to fight their way past in order to get their quarry on the 15th floor.

It's a lot like a video game, with the protagonists facing an onslaught of different baddies as they climb the levels of the tenement. Most of the cops get wiped out early, leaving just a few survivors, including the team's leader Jaka (Joe Taslim), and rookie cop Rama (Iko Uwais), who has his own motives for coming along on the mission.



There are hints at Indonesia's ever-present police corruption, with the cops merely being pawns in something bigger, but that's secondary to the main theme, which is dudes letting loose with fists, knees, machetes and machine guns.

There are two main stars here. One is writer-director Gareth Huw Evans, a Welshman who 5 years ago was teaching people how to speak Welsh. Then after his Indonesian wife suggested a change of scene, he decamped to Indonesia and helped make a documentary about the local martial arts, a path that led to his first  film, Merantau. Now with the release of The Raid (titled The Raid: Redemption in the US for copyright reasons), Evans is improbably being hailed as the saviour of martial arts. The reason is simple: the guy really knows how to shoot a fight scene, and can come up with new and interesting ways for his characters to kill people.

During the making of his earlier documentary, Evans came across Iko Uwais, a pencak silat practitioner who was working as a delivery driver at the time. Evans cast him as the lead in Merantau, and now again as Rama in The Raid. Uwais is reminiscent of Tony Jaa, the Muay Thai star whose 2006 film Ong Bak also reinvigorated the chop-socky genre. Like Jaa's characters, Rama is the mild-mannered, virtuous guy who just happens to be extraordinarily good at kicking bad guys' asses.

The best characters though are the baddies. Ray Satehapy as Tama is a great villain, loathsome yet sort of likeable. The scene of Tama speaking into a microphone, inviting his residents to help remove the "infestation" that has taken over their building, could be routine in another actor's hands but his lazy, chilling delivery makes it one of the best scenes in the movie. It does help if you speak Indonesian though. Likewise, his right-hand man Mad Dog (played by the film's fight choreographer Yayan Ruhian), is a great villain who likewise challenges the audience to admire him as well as recoil at his brutality. He's a wiry little guy with a somewhat honorable manner of being an insane killer: he passes up the chance to shoot people in favour of beating them to death with his fists and feet. Which is summed up in his best line: "Pulling the trigger is like ordering take-out". Gotta love a psycho who keeps it real.

Already I can see this movie achieving several things.

It's going to be the highest-grossing Indonesian movie of all time, internationally, although that wouldn't be hard. Apparently made for just over a million dollars US, this still looks fantastic. And while you'd normally think a movie featuring a little-known Indonesian cast, all speaking Indonesian, would hardly result in much backing from the big-time movie promotion business, it's been picked up for major release in an odd show of good taste from the big players when it comes to these things.

It's going to be the movie that has people all over the world interested in pencak silat, the Indonesian martial art form. I'm hardly the expert in these things, and couldn't really tell you how it's different to any other style, but I'm sure plenty of fans of the genre are taking notice. (On this evidence, it seems to feature a lot of kneeing dudes in the head.) The movie is basically one long demonstration of pencak silat being inflicted on a cast of scruffy bad guys.

One thing it is going to achieve is not merely a sequel (Evans has already announced it's in the works), but also a Hollywood remake. And it would hardly take Nostradamus to predict that the remake is going to suck in comparison. So forget that and enjoy the real thing.



* In the way that Tony Jaa's Ong Bak made sense, while the follow-up The Protector/Tom Yum Goong also had great sequences but unfortunately had a plot that was almost insulting in its stupidity.

Another smoking kid in Indonesia

Ilham, who lives in Sukabumi, located in West Java, started smoking when he was four years old and now smokes around 25 cigarettes a day.
The young boy's habit was allowed to spiral as there are no age restrictions on purchasing cigarettes in the country, while his poor family have little awareness of the health risks involved.
Ilham said his mother, Nenah, gives him a small amount of money that he spends entirely on his smoking habit.
"My mother gives me 5,000 rupiah," he said, and, when asked if all the money was spent on cigarettes, he nodded.
Ilham's mother revealed that he no longer attends school as teachers do not allow him to smoke in class. She said the eight-year-old is liable to fits of rage if he is not allowed to light up.
"I have to let him smoke, otherwise he will get mad. He smashed the windows five times because I told him he could not smoke," she said.
Government statistics show that in Indonesia, cigarettes account for the second-largest household expenditure, after food.
Nearly one in three people in Indonesia smoke, in a population of 239 million.
[Source]

Forgive me for making a political point about this... but this is why I'm always skeptical of libertarians and the like whose dream is a society of pure capitalism unimpeded by the inherent oppression of government regulation.
Indonesia is an example of such an "anything-goes" place, and kids like Adi Ilham are the result. You can point to poor parenting, obviously, but this kid is the product of a society that puts virtually no restrictions on the tobacco industry.

Two other examples of what I'm talking about:

The famous footage of a two year-old Indonesian kid with a 40-cigarette-per-day habit.

The Indonesian abbatoir scandal.

The ineffectiveness of government and the police force make Indonesia something of a free-for-all. It's no surprise that mob rule is a common part of life. But I actually think it's testament to the Indonesian character that the country is as relatively peaceful, safe and friendly as it is.

Getting excited over "The Raid"

It's a couple of days before the release of Indonesian action movie "The Raid" and I can't wait. And I'm not someone who goes to the cinema that often.

I'm not going to lie and say that there's not some Indonesian patriotism at play here, because there is, and heaps of it. Indonesia is not South Korea or Hong Kong; it does not have an immense track record of making awesome films. (The only one that I've seen and liked is the romantic comedy Janji Joni, or "Joni's Promise".) So when a movie from Indonesia creates a big buzz at various film festivals and gets a 94% rating on RottenTomatoes, that's enough to almost make me have a joyous accident in my pants. Particularly when the trailer brings to mind such excellent movies as Thailand's Ong Bak, Korea's Oldboy and Brazil's The Elite Squad. It's being re-titled The Raid: Redemption for US audiences, presumably because there are sequels in the works.



The reviews are good, and I'm just quoting from those featured on the RottenTomatoes page here:

"...one of the most stirring action films in eons with The Raid, a relentlessly brutal and endlessly enjoyable flick that never runs out of inventive ways to kill people."

"The combination of a great premise, brilliantly-inventive direction, incredible fight sequences and spirited performances makes it easy for us to already proclaim that The Raid is the action movie of the year."

"An unrelenting, action-packed can of whoop-ass that delivers one of the most fun moviegoing experiences of the past decade."

"It's easy to forget the story altogether in the sheer rush of Rama's fight to the top floor; instead, viewers will wonder how the amazing battle that just ended could possibly be topped. But it is, again and again."

A lot of comparisons are being made to Ong Bak, which revitalized the martial arts action genre with it's Thai flavour, combined with Tony Jaa's visceral physicality and penchant for elbowing guys in the skull. But here instead of Muay Thai, it's the Indonesian art of Silat which is going to get some worldwide exposure. The martial arts hero here is Iko Uwais, and Welsh-born director Gareth Evans.

It opens this Thursday night, and I'll be there with my ticket humming the Indonesian national anthem.

Peaceful Indonesians

Reader Fred Rice pointed me to this clip seen at Japan Probe the other week.

"A Japanese TV show found an international survey that ranked countries where people were least likely to become angry. Indonesia was ranked #1. To test this claim, they sent comedian Udo Suzuki to Bali, where he acted like a jerk and tried to provoke the anger of Indonesian people.
Just to test his anger-inducing abilities, he first tried sneaking up behind a white woman and popping a balloon next to her head. Sure enough, she got visibly angry and left the area.
He then targeted Indonesians. First, he did a couple surprise balloon pops. Next, he randomly poured water on somebody. He cut in line at a grocery store. Then he put super spicy hot sauce into an ice desert.
One guy seemed very uncomfortable after eating the hot sauce, but nobody became visibly pissed off. Nobody yelled at him. Nobody stormed away in anger. Suzuki’s antics provoked no rage.
According to post-prank interviews, Indonesian parents teach their children not to get angry over small matters and not to fight with other people. A lot of Indonesian people don’t think it would be worth getting worked up over a little prank."

try to make them angry by cicacocadou3

Now obviously that show is pretty staged and proves little or nothing. And obviously I'm biased being part-Indonesian myself, but as far as I'm concerned, the study is pretty accurate. It may be a huge and culturally diverse country, but as a general rule, Indonesians are a very easy-going people. Of all the countries I've been to around Asia, only the Thai people seem to match Indonesians in the polite and friendly stakes.

Or alternatively, you could take a completely different view.

This is of course the same country which has suffered several internal terrorist attacks in the last decade. It's the same country in which up to 1 million people were murdered in anti-communist pogroms during the civil unrest of 1965-66, with the killing often carried out by civilians. It's the same country guilty of bloody repressions in West Papua, Aceh and its former province East Timor. It's the same country that in the last 15 years has witnessed sectarian conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Sulawesi and Ambon, mass beheadings of Madurese transmigrants by Dayak tribesmen in Kalimantan, and mass gang-rapes of ethnic Chinese women and looting of Chinese shops in the 1998 unrest. Indonesia is frequently lauded for practising a moderate, secular and tolerant form of Islam; yet Muslim militancy has been on the rise in various forms with groups like the Islamic Defenders Front, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the terrorist Jemaah Islamiyah. It is notable that one of the few words to have entered the English language from Indonesian/Malay is amok, meaning to suddenly snap and start attacking people indiscriminantly. It's a very Indonesian phenomenon.

In other words, it looks like an extremely violent and aggressive place. So which is the real Indonesia?

The Indonesian abbatoir scandal, and pain for the sake of "purity"

I would love Indonesia to make headlines in Australia for the right reasons, for a change.

 

CANBERRA - Australia suspended live cattle exports to 11 Indonesian abattoirs on Tuesday and announced a review into the A$320 million (S$421.76 million) trade after graphic footage was broadcast of Australian cattle being inhumanely slaughtered.

"I have decided to halt the trade of live animals to the facilities identified by the footage. I reserve the right to add further facilities to the banned list," Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig said in a statement.
"I will appoint an independent reviewer to investigate the complete supply chain for live exports up to and including the point of slaughter," he said.
Australian national television on Monday aired footage of cattle being beaten, whipped and kicked prior to slaughter in Indonesia, prompting a political outcry in Canberra and Indonesian officials to call for calm to avert a trade row.
"It exposed nothing short of shocking cruelty for Australian livestock," said independent MP Andrew Wilkie, whose backing is vital for Prime Minister Julia Gillard's one-seat government.
Wilkie and independent Senator Nick Xenophon on Tuesday unveiled legislation calling for the immediate ban on live animal exports to Indonesia and a full ban of live animal exports to all nations within three years.
"The pictures we saw last night were horrific, and if it was happening here in Australia, those people would be arrested and prosecuted," Xenophon told a news conference.
More...

The footage, which was covered on ABC's Four Corners program Monday night,can be viewed here. It doesn't make for easy viewing, that's for sure.

A few thoughts:

• Indonesians are, generally speaking, a warm and good-natured people, but the concept of animal rights remains a fairly foreign one. This is not to say that Indonesians are any more callous toward animals than most other people in developing countries; but there is certainly a widespread cultural attitude that views animals in purely utilitarian terms. It's quite telling that the Indonesian slaughtermen, knowing full well that they are being caught on video, treat the cattle in incredibly cruel ways and think nothing of it. 
• It wasn't dwelt upon too long in the story, but one of the key issues here is halal butchery. Modern science has shown that stunning an animal unconscious before administering the lethal cut is by far the most humane way of slaughter. But Muslim countries everywhere have been hesitant to adopt this method, partly for economic reasons, and partly because stunning is not mentioned in the Qur'an. Even in Australia, where stunning has become mandatory in abbatoirs, some have been granted exemptions from this, in order to meet the demand for halal meat. (I'm not sure if this applies to kosher meat as well?) From what I understand, some halal meat production in Australia involves stunning, and some doesn't. Likewise for Indonesia. There needs to be some serious education about this in the industry, and among Muslims, who should really be the ones agitating about this. There is nothing in the Qur'an to my knowledge that forbids stunning, so I'm sure that if made aware, most Muslims would consider that stunning is not only more humane, but also compatible with halal regulations. Does Allah really consider it more religiously pure for animals to suffer much more than they need to? I doubt it. 
• Unless stunning is made mandatory in Indonesia (which I doubt it will be any time soon, if ever), inhumane practices will continue unabated. The bottom line is money - it is a poor country. As everywhere, those with money are notoriously tight-fisted with it and unlikely to implement costly new technologies unless they are forced to. And even then, widespread corruption will be an impediment, as it always is in Indonesia. Even if Australia can flex its muscles and achieve some kind of victory here, which looks possible, it will probably only affect the livestock that comes from Australia.  
• Those of you who favour a small-government approach in which industries are left to regulate themselves should consider this documentary as a powerful argument as to why industries shouldn't be left to regulate themselves.
• As barbaric as some might consider the treatment of the animals in the documentary to be, bear in mind that this shouldn't be completely foreign or unimaginable to Westerners. Like many things in the developing world, Indonesia is doing what the West was doing about 100 years ago. And many animals in Australia still exist in awful factory farming conditions. So Australians shouldn't be too quick to get on their high horse. 
• The footage of Australian-raised brahmin cattle awaiting their fate is disturbing, and Australian audiences were repulsed by the idea of these beautiful animals being put to death in a painful, efficient and careless way. But I do find it interesting that the same audiences have no problem with the basic idea of these beautiful animals being killed to make burgers and steaks. The only difference between the Indonesian and Australian methods is a few more minutes of stress and horrific pain - the end product is still the same. A nice creatures's life extinguished just so you can have something to go with your potatoes. Yes, I'm a vegetarian.

"Muslim publics divided: Encounters with anti-pluralism in a democratic Indonesia"

This is an excellent podcast courtesy of the University of Melbourne, about the tug of war between progressive secularists and radical fundamentalists in Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world.

Indonesia has long been lauded as an example of a kinder, gentler form of Islam, and one of the more successful recent examples of democracy in not just the Muslim world, but in Asia as well. Yet so many of the headlines to come out of Indonesia are of religious-based violence and terrorism. Which is the real Indonesian Islam? Perhaps this will enlighten you somewhat.

Comparing people to monkeys

Indonesians used to have a joke about their former President, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie (left). It goes something like this:

An American, a Briton and an Indonesian are arguing about their countries advances in medical technology.

The Brit says "We had a woman who lost her arm in a train wreck, yet our surgeons were able to graft onto her a prosthetic arm that worked so well that she can still do her job as a doctor."

The American says, "Yeah? Well, we took a man with severe heart problems and transplanted a pig's heart into his body. He's still alive and is able to run marathons."

The Indonesian scoffs. "That's nothing. We had a man whose head was cut off and crushed, but our doctors were able to graft the head of a monkey onto his body. He is now the President of Indonesia."

Fast forward to 2011, and you may have caught the story last week of Marilyn Davenport, the Orange County Republican party official who sent around an email depicting Barack Obama as a monkey.


Now, predictably, in her excuse-making response to claims of racism, Davenport offered up that old chestnut that people seem to think is the universal get-out-of-jail card for racist behaviour - "I have black friends". Of course you do, dear. Or you did once, anyway.

It's a trope that has been wheeled out numerous times: Obama the monkey president. Now, my memory is not perfect, but I don't recall Clinton or Bush Snr or Reagan being regularly likened to monkeys.

George W Bush was caricatured as a monkey quite a bit though. And conservatives love to point that out, as a rejoinder to claims that portraying Barack or Michelle Obama as simians is racist. How can it be racist, when Dubya was portrayed as a monkey all the time?

Well, here's how. Bush was likened to a monkey because he was almost universally regarded as an buffoon with low intelligence. (I for one don't think Bush was quite as dumb as he was made out to be, but he certainly gave plenty of ammunition to those who would see him that way.)

Now, why is Obama being likened to a monkey? Even his staunchest opponents don't seem to think he is stupid or buffoonish. They prefer out-of-touch, elitist, sinister, communist or a secret Muslim. None of which are really associated with being apelike.

He is, however, black. And some people of questionable intellect seem to associate blackness with being some kind of lower primate. Ask the hooligans in Spain and Eastern Europe who bring bananas to football matches with no other purpose other than to throw them at black players. When Nigerian international Peter Odemwingie left his club Lokomotiv Moscow to play in the English league, a section of the home crowd unveiled a huge sign basically saying "good riddance", accompanied by a picture of a huge banana. White players don't get this treatment.


But here's the thing. Some people do actually resemble monkeys or apes. Some of them are black. Do black people really look more like monkeys than any other racial group? Only if you look through a racist lens. You could just as easily argue that Europeans, being the most hirsute of all peoples, are the most monkey-like, but you never hear anyone bring that up.

Returning to the joke about B.J. Habibie above, that's a joke made by Indonesian people about another Indonesian. There is no racial subtext. And anyone who's actually observed Habibie in action would probably agree that with his facial features, small stature and quirky mannerisms, he does remind one of a monkey.

So if a person actually does look like one of our simian cousins, in theory it shouldn't be a bad thing to make a joke about that. But the ugly legacy of racism means that likening people of African origin to monkeys is likely to induce too much angst from various quarters, whether you think that individual person resembles a monkey or not.

There are plenty of white foks who look like they'd be at home in the treetops. For example:



English singer Mick Hucknall,
of the band Simply Red




Belarusian footballer Alexander Hleb



Actor Robin Williams



Welsh footballer Gareth Bale



Former New Kids on the Block singer Danny Wood





And the cool thing for me is that I can say these guys look a bit like primates and no one is really going to get offended because (a) they are white, and (b) they are undeniably some primate-lookin' dudes.





Former NBA star Patrick Ewing.

But if someone was likening, say, former NY Knicks centre Patrick Ewing to a gorilla, would that be racist? 





Some would say yes. So let me make it clear, I'm not saying Patrick Ewing (great player, btw) looks at all like a gorilla. If you think he does, you might be racist.

But Barack Obama? C'mon. Dude doesn't really like any variety of primate. Even his much caricatured big ears aren't really that big.

White British football fans comment all the time on how Gareth Bale looks like the chimp Cornelius from Planet of the Apes. Indonesians have little problem joking about how much their former President resembles this gibbon. But are you gonna find any African-Americans who find the Obama-monkey reference amusing? I doubt it. They know they history behind that shit.

People who cry that there's nothing racist about portraying a black president as a monkey either don't know the history behind it, or are being disingenuous. Because no matter what you think about the president's politics... if you look at or think about Barack Obama and you somehow connect him to being monkey-like, that says that there is something racist and messed up in your brain.

If Patrick Ewing was president, however...

DISCLAIMER: If anyone decides that comparing anyone to a monkey as I have done in this post is racist, let me hereby declare that some of my best friends are white. And black. And Asian. Oh, and monkeys. I think that covers all the bases.

The world's most average name

Here's a thought experiment.

Meet Muhammad Chen. He is the world's most average person.

Well, sort of. According to this post over at Abagond's blog, the world's most average person is a 28 year-old male who lives in Shenzhen in China and is a Roman Catholic. His name is a combination of the world's most common surname (Chen) and the world's most common given name (Muhammad).

So why don't you ever meet anyone named Muhammad Chen?

You don't have to be a genius to figure out that despite those being the most common given and surnames in the world, the combination of them is not common at all. Why? Because Muhammad is a name associated with the Muslim world, Chen is a name associated with Han Chinese, and those are two worlds that don't have a great deal of overlap. So the world's most average name is actually a very uncommon one.

Actually I know for a fact that there are a few Muhammad Chens out there somewhere, but my guess is that almost none of them actually live in China. Here’s why:

Muslims do exist in China - there are estimated to be around 20 million of them and perhaps many more according to some estimates. The main Muslim groups in China are the Hui (Chinese Muslims), and various Central Asian people (including Uighurs, Kazakhs, Salar and Dongxiang) from Western China.
Many of the Central Asians tend to have Muslim/Turkic names (including Muhammad, I assume), but because they are not Han Chinese, it is unlikely that they would have a surname like Chen. (An example is the Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer.) By contrast some of these groups, such as the Salar and Dongxiang, have Mongol or Chinese names.

The Hui, who make up around half of all Muslims in China, often claim ancestry dating back to the Arab and Persian traders who arrived in China during Mongol rule. But even though they are officially considered an ethnic minority, the Hui are effectively Han Chinese in virtually all aspects save religion. They look like Han Chinese, speak Chinese, and have Chinese names. The Arabic names of their ancestors have become Chinese over time – so Muhammad might become Ma, or Mu.

So even among the 20-million-plus Muslims in China, you would be hard-pressed to find a Muhammad Chen. The Chinese and Arabic naming traditions are not so conducive to merger; although if there exists a Hong Kong pop singer named Khalil Fong, then anything is possible.

So where to find a Muhammad Chen?

Out of curiosity I ran a Facebook search on Muhammad Chen, and all the results I could find with an identifiable nationality were from Indonesia. This makes sense. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, has around 10 million ethnic Chinese. Of those, only a minority are Muslim, and while some of them have fully adopted Arabic or Indonesian names, some may have adopted a Muslim name yet kept their surname. Alternatively, the Muhammad Chens could be the product of a mixed Chinese and pribumi (native Indonesian) marriage. Similar result for spelling variations of Muhammad (Mohammad, Muhamad, etc), and I even tried Muhammad Chan for the hell of it. Most seemed to be Indonesian.

So there you have it. I dunno if that interested you, but it did me. Maybe I need to find better hobbies.

Mistakes Indonesians make when trying to speak English

So, yesterday I am with my girlfriend and he want to buy a pair of earring, but I spend the money on some shirt for him instead.


Anyone who speaks a language that is not their first is going to make mistakes. It's a universal phenomenon. But if we look at particular cultural and linguistic groups, we can notice certain specific kinds of mistakes common to that group.

An obvious and well-known example is the Japanese difficulty in pronouncing the sound /l/, often rendering it as an /r/ instead. But these sorts of culturally-specific mistakes are not just in pronunciation. They may be in grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, or even in concepts that differ from culture to culture.

I'm using the Indonesian language here as an example. By extension, this also includes Malay, of which Indonesian is really a dialect. (Although given that Malaysians are normally exposed to English earlier on than Indonesians are, they might not make the same mistakes.)

People who speak English as a mother tongue often take for granted what a damn complicated language it is. By contrast, Indonesian is a very simple language in many ways, and it is in this contrast in approaches that some of the most common mistakes are made.


- INDONESIAN GENDER CONFUSION. (Nothing to do with transexuals here.)
Indonesian does not distinguish between “he”, “she” and “it”. When it comes to third-person singular pronouns, Indonesians just use the same word (dia) no matter whether it's a male, female or an animal without any specific gender. While that may sound confusing, it's not, because the context is key.
Here's an example:  If I start talking about “Mr Smith”, then I have established by my use of "Mr" that he is male. So subsequently when referring to Mr Smith, I can just refer to him as dia because whoever I'm talking to knows that it is a man. But if I then start talking about Mr Smith's daughter, or Mr Smith's dog, I also use dia.
But when Indonesians speak English, they commonly confuse "he", "she" and "it". Thus it is common to hear phrases like, "Yesterday I was talking to my father and she got a bit angry" or "Check out that girl, he has nice legs".

- TENSE CONFUSION.
Indonesian has no separate markers for tenses (as in the English “had”/”has”/”will have”/”is having”).  Everything is said in the present tense.
If that sounds strange, it's not. Again, it’s all context – once I establish that I’m talking about something that happened yesterday, it is just assumed that I’m speaking in past tense, and I use the same verbs as I would if I was talking about the future or the present.
Obviously, when speaking English, Indonesians can forget to apply tense to their verbs, saying things like “yesterday I go to the shop”.

- PLURALS.
In English, the suffix "-s" on the end of a word indicates plurality. However, Indonesian doesn't really have plural suffixes. Sometimes, plurality is indicated by simply doubling the word. So teman means "friend", and teman-teman means "friends", which does not imply a specific number. But other times, a single teman is enough, accompanied by a contextual word to indicate whether it is plural or not. So if I add banyak ("many"), I have banyak teman ("many friends"). The use of "many" implies plurality, so it is not necessary to further indicate that there is more than one friend in this situation. Thus the use of the suffix "-s" in the English phrase "many friends" is redundant, as saying "many friend" would convey exactly the same message. Likewise, if I have 80 teman, the plurality is implied by the number.

Thus, many Indonesians when the speak English say things like “I own 2 house” or “We have enough player to make three team”, because it makes perfect sense in their own language.

Thus, comparison to a simple and utilitarian language like Indonesian reveals what an unneccesarily complicated language English is; it's full of grammar that doesn't really have to be there.
Take, for example, the phrase, "Yesterday I went to the cinema with Gary and he brought some friends."
The Indonesian equivalent translates as "Yesterday I go to cinema with Gary and he bring some friend." Which may sound strange and fobby to native English speakers, but it conveys all the same information, only stripping away all the fiddly grammar which makes English a hard language to learn.

It is worth bearing in mind that Indonesian is a lingua franca. It may be the official language of business, school and government, but less than half the country speak it as a first language. Instead at home they are more likely to speak their local language (Balinese, Acehnese, etc). Indonesia descends from the dialect of Malay that was spoken around the archipelago as a trade language. Perhaps one reason it was successful in this context, and thus able to spread all over the region, is because its simplicity made it easy to learn.

It is notable as well that "Manglish" (Malaysian English, basically a pidgin form of English spoken widely in Malaysia) is also far simpler than English in its sentence structure and grammar, and has taken on many of the characteristics of Malay/Indonesian. Here's an example:
A: "On the fan, can or cannot?"
B: "No, dowan [don't want]. Off it lah, it will blow my papers around."
A: "Ok lah. Aircon got, what?"
B: "Ya, got."


- PRONUNCATION
"Hep you pinis? I hep pinis. So now you won to go to de bits to kets de pis, or you won to wats the pilm instead?"

Certain sounds don't exist naturally in Indonesian, such as /sh/, which is usually mispronounced as /s/. /th/ is pronounced either as /d/ or /t/ depending on the word. /ch/ exists in Indonesian, but never at the end of the word; Indonesians struggle to pronounce this in that context, and it usually comes out as /ts/. Regarding vowels, /a/ as in the English "cat" doesn't exist in Indonesian and is pronounced /e/ as it "pet" instead.
Not all Indonesians can pronounce /f/ and /v/, pronouncing them as /p/ and /b/ instead. This is common but hardly universal, whereas it is ubiquitous next door in The Philippines.

So the phrase above would properly read, "Have you finished? I have finished. So now you want to go to the beach to catch the fish, or you want to watch the film instead?"

See also:

How language tells the history of Malaysia and Indonesia

Is English threatening the future of the Indonesian language?

Communication challenges in Malaysia

Koreans, you too can curse like an American

English words of Indian origin

"Pulp Fiction" in Italian, German, French, Turkish and Spanish

The assumption of sugar, or not

I once heard Sheena Iyengar relate an anecdote about her difficulties ordering green tea with sugar in Japan. The waiter and manager refused to bring it to her, because drinking green tea with sugar is just not done in Japan, and they felt it their duty to protect her from making such a baffling and unseemly consumer choice.

It's a choice however that most in the West take for granted. Growing up in Australia in the days before expresso machines were everywhere, serving and ordering tea or coffee was pretty simple. You ask someone if they want milk or sugar (or serve the drink black with the milk and sugar on the side). Those were the only variations. Today it has become a somewhat more complex affair (you might find someone asking for a decaf soy milk flat white, for example), but one standard assumption still remains. Sugar is served on the side, not in the drink. Or if it is, your host will have first asked you whether you want sugar and how much.

But it's important to remember that this assumption is not shared all over the world.


I was in Malaysia recently, and as I am prone to do, I had eaten too many delicious Malaysian sweets that day. So I hankered for something cleansing and slightly bitter to counter my sugared-out feeling. Sitting down at a cafe, I ordered teh O, which is what they call black tea in Malaysia. To my surprise, it was full of sugar - the standard way of serving it. I was informed that for sugar-free tea I had to order teh O kosong (kosong meaning "zero" or "empty"). In the traditional Malaysian coffee shop, rarely is there sugar on the table - it is already in your drink unless you state otherwise.
The same places also served Chinese tea, but by contrast, it is always served without sugar. Which is quite right, too; I've never known anyone to drink Chinese tea with sugar and this seems like a very wrong thing to do, somehow. Although truth be told I'm sure it would actually be quite nice.
Chinese tea and black tea are not all that different, really. Which is why it was odd that the default assumption was that one should never be served sweet and the other should always be served sweet.

So what happens if you just order "tea" in Malaysia (teh)?

Most likely you'll get black tea with milk and sugar. Although when I say "milk and sugar" I mean sweetened condensed milk, or a combination of evaporated milk and sugar. Which to be honest, is a whole lot nicer than milk with tea and sugar the English way. (The one pictured here was from PappaRich in Bangsar.)

Then there's teh tarik and teh halia and teh ais and so on, but that's a whole 'nother story.

When I was younger I travelled with my parents to various places in Indonesia, and visited family friends at their houses. Almost without fail, the hosts would serve us tall glasses of hot tea of the fragrant local variety. At the bottom of the glass was a substantial quantity of sugar - perhaps 3 teaspoons worth, or more, I couldn't really tell. A teaspoon was either left in the glass or available nearby.
I would stir the tea and drink it down as was polite - it's pleasant but very sweet, as you'd imagine; and soon enough we would depart to visit another household, who would serve the exact same drink. Now if you visit 4 or 5 people in a day, and then do it all again the next day, pretty soon you're consuming a whole lot more sugar than you need to. By the time we left Indonesia, my teenage acne was a little out of control, and while the humid weather may have had something to do with it, I blamed the sweet tea.
I complained to my mother about how the amount of sugar Indonesians put in their tea was ruining my complexion, and by extension, my adolescent self-esteem.
Her response: "So why did you stir the sugar into it then?"
Good question. I just assumed that was what you did. The sugar was in the glass for a reason, right? And if sugar is just sitting at the bottom of a tea-filled glass, it's just asking to be stirred, no?
But the proper way was obviously to stir "to taste". If you want it really sweet, stir all the sugar in; if you just want it a little sweet, stir just a little.

Likewise, my first time ordering coffee at a Malaysian-Chinese coffee shop resulted in a thick bitter brew with no apparent milk or sugar... until I got to the bottom of the cup, and discovered a thick layer of sweetened condensed milk waiting for me. Where I come from, it would be almost unthinkable for a cafe to serve coffee or tea with 2 sugars already added, and it puzzled me that this was such a common practice in Malaysia.

Yet, it's just about knowing the rules, and everyone in Malaysia knows them. I'm sure a lot of Malaysians would tell me, "If you didn't want sugar in it, why didn't you order it without sugar?" Which, objectively, is not an illogical question.


See also:

The guide to ordering food in Malaysia
"Egg tea" in Indonesia
Is chai latte only a drink for wankers?
Green tea is intent on world domination
Filipino iced tea and other hard drugs

Indonesia's richest men, and what it says about the country

I don't really know jack about economics, but I my attention was drawn to Forbes magazine recently as it released its list of the 40 richest Indonesians.
Here's the top 10:

1. R Budi and Michael Hartono : US$11 billion
2. Susilo Wonowidjojo : US$8 billion
3. Eka Tjipta Widjaja : US$6 billion
4. Martua Sitorus : US$3,2 billion
5. Anthoni Salim : US$3 billion
6. Sri Prakash Lohia : US$2,65 billion
7. Low Tuck Kwong : US$2,6 billion
8. Peter Sondakh : US$2,3 billion
9. Putra Sampoerna : US$2,3 billion
10. Aburizal Bakrie : US$2,1 billion

Now, I don't necessarily begrudge anyone making lots of money, but HOW they make their money is sometimes a problem. Indonesia being what it is, undoubtedly most or all of those men have had to do a little dirt along the way to making their fortune; bribery and corruption have simply become a regrettable fact of life. But that aside, a perusal of the industries themselves that many of these men profit from reveals what else is killing Indonesia.

Here is how the top 4 made their fortunes:

#1) clove cigarettes and palm oil plantations
#2) clove cigarettes and palm oil plantations
#3) palm oil plantations
#4) palm oil plantations

and so on. Palm oil is the main reason that Indonesia has the 3rd highest rate of deforestation in the world (only Brazil and DPR Congo, which are much larger in size, are worse). And while palm oil kills the Indonesian environment, clove cigarettes kill the Indonesian people. Almost 70% of Indonesian men smoke, and the numbing, sweetening presence of cloves in the popular kretek brands (Gudang Garam, Sampoerna, etc) must surely be a factor, since it disguises the harshness that dissuades many youngsters who try cigarettes for the first time.
This doesn't mean that those millionaires and billionaires who made their fortune this way have done anything wrong per se. And no doubt their industries have created numerous jobs, so valuable in this poor country. But it's a shame that the great bringers of wealth and prosperity in Indonesia are the same things that are slowly killing Indonesia at the same time.

Interestingly, #6 is actually an Indian who has adopted Indonesian citizenship (I believe he's also India's 62nd richest man). The majority of the top 40 are also Indonesians of Chinese origin (it's hard to tell with many since they have adopted Indonesian names). This is not a bad thing - it's reflective of the Chinese drive to succeed in business - but with ethnic Chinese making up only around 3% of Indonesia's population, it's not hard to see why many resentment still festers towards the Chinese minority amongst pribumi ("native" Indonesians).

(Hat tip: Unspun)

Obama in Indonesia

Barack Obama visited Indonesia this week, returning for the first time to the country where he spent several years of his early childhood. He spent only 23 hours on the ground, but clearly made a positive impression in a nation in which he is very popular.

He gave an address at the University of Indonesia, in which he talked of his childhood in Jakarta, praised Indonesia's burgeoning democracy and affirmed the commonalities between the two countries. You can watch some of it below; the full 30 minute speech is easy enough to find if you want it.

He got a reception worthy of a rockstar, with rapturous applause particularly with his reminiscences of a young life in the Jakarta suburb of Menteng, buying satay and bakso (meatball soup) from street vendors. And his few phrases in Bahasa Indonesia went down a treat as well. His pronunciation is not perfect but it's pretty good. Check out the 2:35 mark - while speaking of his stepfather Lolo Soetoro, he actually rolls the R perfectly as an Indonesian would (a lot of non-Indonesians struggle with this).


It is this ability to connect with non-Western cultures that makes him extremely popular around the world, yet conversely it inspires only suspicion for a significant portion of American voters back home. That an American President can pronounce foreign names properly and attempt reach out to Muslim countries which could potentially be US enemies should be a great asset; yet it only provides further ammunition for those who insist on believing Obama to be a Muslim socialist Manchurian candidate.

Of course the President's trip was not all smiles and pats on the back.

Approximately 20,000 people, primarily from fundamentalist groups such as Hizbut Tahrir, gathered to protest Obama's presence in Indonesia, decrying the USA's unquestioning support of Israel and accusing him of oppressing Muslims.
For those Americans who think that Obama is hell-bent on introducing sharia law into the US, take note. Indonesia's Islamists obviously didn't get the "he's a Muslim" memo.

There was some other controversy as well, this time related to a handshake. Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring is known for his stringent Muslim beliefs, and has previously expressed his belief that men and women should not have any physical contact unless they are married or related. Tifatul was seen enthusiastically shaking the hand of Michelle Obama, but then later tweeted that he didn't want to; her hand was extended towards him and he reluctantly shook it to be polite. What a sacrifice for him to make!

You'd think Tifatul would have learned to stay off Twitter after the controversy that followed his extremely poor joke about gays and AIDS. But no. His tweet was picked up by international media and caused a minor stir. This is a little embarassing for Indonesia; most Indonesians have no problem at all with handshaking between the sexes, and thus would not wish to see themselves associated with narrow minds such as the Information Minister. But it also was no doubt met with glee from the anti-Obama brigade in the US who are keen to point out a diplomatic faux pas from a member of the first family. Of course, no blame can objectively be levelled at either of the Obamas. Sembiring was one of a number of people standing in line, and all the others happily shook hands with Michelle Obama. How was she to know that one among that group is an ultra-conservative who thinks a handshake is somehow sinful?

Sembiring, I think, does actually know that whatever one's beliefs, sometimes you have to compromise on them for the sake of politeness. This is something that most people understand instinctively, whatever their religion. But rather than admit this, he attempted to portray himself as remaining spiritually pure and thus implied that Michelle Obama virtually forced her sinful handshake upon him.

Malaysian-Indonesian blogger Unspun, who has a pretty good handle on these things, puts it rather nicely.

Well, what do you expect? As that sage of the human condition, Forrest Gump, would have put it: “Stupid is as stupid does.” When you put a Fool in the greeting lineup for a state guest the Fool will always act the Fool. The question that needs to be asked is what tomfoolery has prevented the President from firing Tif the Fool long ago, so that he would not grow up to be a national embarrassment as he has today.

In one fell stroke, he’s stolen the thunder from Obama and SBY, at least for the Twitterati of Indonesia.

The Colbert Report had an amusing take on it as well.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Michelle Obama's Embarrassing Handshake
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

The US public pays almost no attention to Indonesia as it is, and when they do it's for this? Some people like Tifatul Sembiring need to realise that they represent more than just their own petty little agendas.

Images of Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Yogyakarta, located in central Java, is a small city of around 400,000 people, known both for its bustling street life and its place as a heartland of traditional Javanese culture. It maintains a balance between the old and the new; cars, buses and motorcycles compete with the more laid-back pace of pedal-powered becaks.

 Above: Eating lesehan-style (on mats by the roadside) is one of the signature experiences of Jln Malioboro, the street that Yogya seems to revolve around. The food is good but not necessarily the best Yogya has to offer - you need to sniff around a bit further for that - but it is a must for those who enjoy observing the energetic hustle and bustle of street life.

Above: Yogya is famed for its ayam goreng (marinated fried chicken), and part of the appeal surely is due to the use of kampung (village) chickens rather than factory-farmed ones. Hopefully this fellow's handsome demeanor will save him from the deep-frier.

Above: Naga statue at the Kraton (Sultan's palace)

Below: The bird market in the south of the city, which bears the rather odd title of PASTY (an acronym for Pasar Satwa & Tanaman Hias Yogyakarta)

Left, right and below: Tamansari (Water Castle), designed in the 17th Century by a Portuguese architect overlaid by traditional Javanese motifs.

Above right and left: A craftsman painstakingly creates a wayang kulit hand puppet, made from the hide of water buffalo.

Below: Wayang kulit in action, depicting the great Hindu epics of yesteryear.

All these photos courtesy of Aveena, who also has a photo blog here.


Related posts:

Gudeg, the ugly but beautiful culinary specialty of Yogyakarta

Chinese donuts on a Yogya roadside - the best breakfast ever

"Cat-poo coffee"