Saturday, April 26, 2008
Blogger Problems
I've been having trouble accessing Blogger in the sense that I can't access this blog directly at http://sean-reeves.blogspot.com. I can access my dashboard via http://www.blogger.com however, which is odd. Maybe the government is following up on its YouTube debacle and has decided to ban access to Blogger. Anyway, I'll attempt to post this and see what happens.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Back to Biasa
The bans have been lifted after many complaints, especially from businesses who rely on YouTube and multiply.com for advertising. Instead, the ISPs will focus on banning individual pages that are causing offence. This could easily be a solution to Indonesia's unemployment problems because this approach to the problem will necessarily employ massive teams of people working in shifts, night and day, scouring the Internet for offending pages. Additional teams could be employed tracking down Indonesian bloggers who are causing trouble in the blogosphere.
Latest laugh in town concerned a very popular music group called Slank who wrote a song four years ago about the members of the House of Representatives, accusing most of them of being a bunch of crooks. Some of the current crop of members had recently begun considering legal action against the group after they performed the song at the Corruption Eradication Commission's Jakarta office last week. Unfortunately, one of them has been caught accepting a bribe and so the prospect of litigation has suddenly evaporated.
As writer for the The Jakarta Post commented:
The problem with our lawmakers is they are not used to critics. Nearly half of them date back to the New Order era, when lawmakers were protected from criticism by the heavy-handed tactics of the regime.
Latest laugh in town concerned a very popular music group called Slank who wrote a song four years ago about the members of the House of Representatives, accusing most of them of being a bunch of crooks. Some of the current crop of members had recently begun considering legal action against the group after they performed the song at the Corruption Eradication Commission's Jakarta office last week. Unfortunately, one of them has been caught accepting a bribe and so the prospect of litigation has suddenly evaporated.
As writer for the The Jakarta Post commented:
The problem with our lawmakers is they are not used to critics. Nearly half of them date back to the New Order era, when lawmakers were protected from criticism by the heavy-handed tactics of the regime.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
RetroWorld
Welcome to RetroWorld, also known as Indonesia 2008. Recent government initiatives have been to pass legislation that will impose draconian penalties on bloggers who are a little too outspoken and to ban YouTube, MySpace and some other sites that have hosted a recent video that was critical of Islam. The ban is very easy to circumvent and only serves to further diminish the country's status within the international community. If the government's reaction is to ban any site, blog, video-sharing or social networking site that features anything that is critical of Islam, then it may as well ban Internet access completely as Burma effectively does.
The blogging legislation is perhaps most disturbing because it threatens to muzzle the burgeoning community of Indonesian bloggers at a time when freedom of expression elsewhere within the country is already under threat. The black cloud of Wahabism is growing darker and more ominous within the country and continues to intrude into the everyday lives of Indonesian citizens. The latest craziness involves a call for masseuses in Jakarta to wear some sort of chastity belt when they are working in massage parlours. Apparently, such devices are already in use in East Java. Jakarta is a relative oasis in the surrounding desert of Islamic conservatism but maybe not for much longer.
The blogging legislation is perhaps most disturbing because it threatens to muzzle the burgeoning community of Indonesian bloggers at a time when freedom of expression elsewhere within the country is already under threat. The black cloud of Wahabism is growing darker and more ominous within the country and continues to intrude into the everyday lives of Indonesian citizens. The latest craziness involves a call for masseuses in Jakarta to wear some sort of chastity belt when they are working in massage parlours. Apparently, such devices are already in use in East Java. Jakarta is a relative oasis in the surrounding desert of Islamic conservatism but maybe not for much longer.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Life Imprisonment, I'll drink to that.
The courts here have sentenced some poor bastard, who waved a separatist flag in front of SBY (the Indonesia president) last year, to life imprisonment. Now there are some Indonesians deserving of life imprisonment, such as Suharto's son Tommy, but this guy is certainly not one of them. Fine the guy, even throw him in jail for a month but incarcerate him for the term of his natural life, where's the justice in that? The Jakarta Post reference is here.
The creeping threat of prohibition seems to have been allayed as the duty free alcohol stores here are cautiously opening their doors to expatriates again. Some are restricting purchases to three bottles per person while others are not limiting purchases but imposing a 10% surcharge which is being paid to you-know-who. These stores have seen a massive drop in revenue over the past few months because they have been restricted to selling alcohol to diplomatic staff only. Not much money in doing that.
Even if alcohol sales return to normal for expatriates, it will still be very difficult for Indonesians to purchase a bottle of wine. It was only a few short years ago that I could go my local supermarket and pick up a bottle of Australian wine at a reasonable price but those days are never likely to return. I keep mentioning creeping Islamisation of the country but it's really creeping Arabisation. Indonesians have had a relaxed and syncretic form of Islam for several centuries and its only since Suharto's fall from power that this has started to sour.
During Suharto's reign, the Islamic hardliners were slapped down whenever they became too vocal but since his departure, they have been increasingly bolder and none of the subsequent presidents has had the courage to publicly oppose them. The rot that is eating into Islam in Indonesia has come from outside the country in the form of Wahhabism, named after Muhammed ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, who interestingly studied in Basra and reputedly developed many of his ideas there. This form of Islam is really a perversion of the spirit of Islam and would have been roundly repudiated by the Prophet himself. Unfortunately, it has taken root in Saudi Arabia and many other countries. It is now a real threat to Indonesia. It is not flag-waving separatists that will tear Indonesia apart but this crazy Wahhabi sect.
The creeping threat of prohibition seems to have been allayed as the duty free alcohol stores here are cautiously opening their doors to expatriates again. Some are restricting purchases to three bottles per person while others are not limiting purchases but imposing a 10% surcharge which is being paid to you-know-who. These stores have seen a massive drop in revenue over the past few months because they have been restricted to selling alcohol to diplomatic staff only. Not much money in doing that.
Even if alcohol sales return to normal for expatriates, it will still be very difficult for Indonesians to purchase a bottle of wine. It was only a few short years ago that I could go my local supermarket and pick up a bottle of Australian wine at a reasonable price but those days are never likely to return. I keep mentioning creeping Islamisation of the country but it's really creeping Arabisation. Indonesians have had a relaxed and syncretic form of Islam for several centuries and its only since Suharto's fall from power that this has started to sour.
During Suharto's reign, the Islamic hardliners were slapped down whenever they became too vocal but since his departure, they have been increasingly bolder and none of the subsequent presidents has had the courage to publicly oppose them. The rot that is eating into Islam in Indonesia has come from outside the country in the form of Wahhabism, named after Muhammed ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, who interestingly studied in Basra and reputedly developed many of his ideas there. This form of Islam is really a perversion of the spirit of Islam and would have been roundly repudiated by the Prophet himself. Unfortunately, it has taken root in Saudi Arabia and many other countries. It is now a real threat to Indonesia. It is not flag-waving separatists that will tear Indonesia apart but this crazy Wahhabi sect.
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