Angels, Elementals and Humans

My previous post about angels reminded me of an interesting article that I read that helped me to understand a little more about where angels stand in the grand scheme of things. It's written by a guy called Iasos (pronounced Ya-sos) who was born in 1947 and as is reported in his biography:

In 1967, to his surprise, Iasos began spontaneously "hearing" a new type of music in his mind, which he then referred to as "paradise music". After graduating from Cornell in anthropology in 1968, Iasos decided to move to California and to dedicate his life to manifesting this "heavenly music" he was experiencing internally, since he was convinced it would have an uplifting, healing, spiritually-invigorating and harmonising effect on many potential listeners.

He has been involved in New Age music ever since and so maybe that qualifies him to talk about angels, elementals and humans. In his account, there are three kingdoms:

• the human kingdom comprising humans whom he describes as "step-down transformers for Divine thought forms"; they work with thought and feeling and energise these thought forms with their feelings
• the elemental kingdom comprising elementals who work primarily on the mental plane and are known as "builders of form"; they translate thought forms into physical forms and are divided into four different types: earth, air, fire and water
• the angelic kingdom comprising angels who administer to the spiritual needs of both the human and elemental kingdoms

This is just a very brief summary of some of what he says and you are directed to the website to explore the matter in more detail. His conception is interesting and I'm interested in exploring it further.

Guardian Angels

I was researching about Tielhard de Chardin when I stumbled upon this article by a guy called Tobin Hart who has written a book called The Secret Spiritual World of Children. He was describing what led him to write the book in the first place and he begins:

Children have a secret spiritual life. They have spiritual capacities and experiences - profound moments that shape their lives in enduring ways. These are sometimes stunning, often tender, and reveal a remarkable spiritual world that has been kept largely secret.

It's quite a touching little anecdote that involves his daughter's guardian angel. His daughter was seven years old at the time. It got me thinking on the subject of angels. The best known angel of all is the Archangel Gabriel, or Jibril as he's known in Islam, and while doing a little investigation I discovered that an Australian film had been made in 2007 with the title Gabriel that is a sort of science fiction tale about this angel. Here is the link to the Wikipedia article about the film. It's gotten mixed reviews but it's certainly one I'll try to watch.

Nursery Rhymes

Today I took my grand-daughter to the amusement centre at the local mall. There is an enclosed area that children can enter with an admission ticket and once inside, there is an assortment of play equipment to keep the little ones amused. She will play in there for more than an hour while I sit outside listening to a mind-numbing loop of children's nursery rhymes, sung in a grating sort of sing-song fashion by a group of children. One of the songs was "Ring a Ring o' Roses" which is supposedly a reference to the symptoms of the pneumonic form of the bubonic plagues of the middle ages. However, the Wikipedia article for the rhyme casts doubt on the theory that a rosy rash ... was a symptom of the plague, posies of herbs were carried as protection, sneezing was a final fatal symptom , and “all fall down” was exactly what happened. It is assigned the status of urban myth. However, The Phrase Finder is a little more accepting of the idea and, while urging caution, suggests it might be possible.

This site on the origin of English rhymes is totally supportive of the idea, although admitting that the idea has its skeptics:

The words to the Ring around the Rosy children's ring game have their origin in English history. The historical period dates back to the Great Plague of London in 1665 (bubonic plague) or even before when the first outbreak of the Plague hit England in the 1300's. The symptoms of the plague included a rosy red rash in the shape of a ring on the skin (Ring around the rosy). Pockets and pouches were filled with sweet smelling herbs (or posies) which were carried due to the belief that the disease was transmitted by bad smells. The term "Ashes Ashes" refers to the cremation of the dead bodies! The death rate was over 60% and the plague was only halted by the Great Fire of London in 1666 which killed the rats which carried the disease which was transmitting via water sources. The English version of "Ring around the rosy" replaces Ashes with (A-tishoo, A-tishoo) as violent sneezing was another symptom of the disease.

You can actually order of the 27" x 22" poster of the above print for $21.99 from here. If you double click on the image, you get a larger version but it has a very obvious water mark embedded in it to thwart those who might try to print it directly. My personal belief is that the rhyme does refer to the bubonic plague but the debunkers remain and Snopes.com, a site that investigates urban myths and a site to which the Wikipedia article alludes, contains a quite detailed analysis of the possibility and concludes that the claim is false. No matter, I believe!

The Bogus News

With the exception of public holidays, The Jakarta Post arrives every morning at 6am and every school day I read it from about 6:15am until 6:50am. On weekends, I rise much later of course and read it far more thoroughly. The local and international content is depressingly unchanging. The names and faces change but the underlying themes remain the same. This is the bogus news as Barry Long used to say, which is really no news at all. I think I'll stop commenting on it.

I just read a blog by somebody who had written down, in condensed form, his seventy most interesting dreams from the mid-1970s. He was familiar with Jungian psychological concepts and described several dreams involving Meher Baba, so the dreams struck a reponsive chord in me. Reading about this guy's inner world was far more stimulating than the vast majority of articles I've read on the pages of that tawdry rag that masquerades as the expat's daily newspaper here in Jakarta.

In view of the fact that this is my 100th post, I've decided to rename this blog Postings from Inner Space and to renounce its former name, The Jakarta Post. Prior to that it was called Ramshackle Ramblings and initially it was Ramshackle Ramifications. Let's see how long this name lasts but I hope the name change will help give this blog a renewed and more energetic focus.

Black and Light

The recent threats of lengthy, rotating power blackouts in Jakarta have not been been realised fortunately, thanks apparently to self-imposed controls on power consumption by its residents. The power situation remains precarious however, and who knows what games will be played behind the scenes now that the nine month election campaign has kicked off. The energy sector has been badly mismanaged and it will not be fixed in the short term.

The recent crackdown on corruption in customs and immigration is to be applauded but apparently it's now very difficult to get anything processed. It's not exactly clear why. It could be that the incoming staff are still getting their heads around their new responsibilities. For instance, the minister overseeing customs moved the entire staff of 1,300 from the main Tanjung Priok office and relocated them elsewhere. She brought new staff in to replace them.

There's also been some high profile raids on the customs offices that have netted lots of brown envelopes containing lots of money. So right now it is almost impossible to bribe a customs or immigration official but at the same time it's almost impossible to get anything processed. A reasonable suspicion might be that a go-slow strategy has been adopted by employees but I could be wrong.

Like most Indonesians, these customs and immigration employees don't earn a reasonable salary and are strongly tempted to augment their meagre income through bribes. In fact I would imagine that if you didn't collect sufficient bribe money to pass on to your superiors then your chances of promotion would be very low.

Corruption is still deeply entrenched in this society but at least those guilty of the practice are a little more nervous these days. The Corruption Eradication Commission has certainly collected some high profile scalps recently but it may become a victim of its own successes. The politicians are getting increasingly nervous (I can't think why) and moves are afoot to draft some legislation that will blunt the effectiveness of the Commission.

A Booze-Free Lombok

Vice President Jusuf Kalla is doing his bit for Indonesia's 2008 tourism initiative. Yesterday he announced "Make Lombok an Islamic tourist zone without beer or alcohol". Anyone who has ever been to Lombok, the island adjacent to Bali, knows that very few tourists ever visit and turning it into an alcohol-free zone will ensure that almost nobody goes there. It probably won't happen in the short-term. Kalla has been helping the local Golkar candidates in forthcoming gubernatorial elections and his comments were probably intended for voters in West Nusa Tenggara (of which Lombok forms a part).

What's funny about this announcement is that there is strong support to turn another of Indonesia's islands (Bintan, near Singapore) into a legalized gambling area and gambling of course is quite un-Islamic. The Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming reports that "Malaysia's Landmarks Bhd., backed by Asia's largest gambling company, hopes to build Indonesia's first legalized casinos in a $3.1 billion resort project to compete with Las Vegas Sands Corp. in Singapore". It is just waiting for the "green light" from the Government. Of course local Muslims on the island will not be allowed to gamble.

These initiatives are illustrative of a growing fragmentation within the country caused by indecisive leadership that wants to appease Muslim fundamentalists but still attract foreign investment. The fundamentalists can't be appeased without completely capitulating to their demands for an Islamic State. The police meanwhile continue their crackdown on terrorist cells by raiding a house in Palembang, arresting nine terror suspects and finding an assortment of assembled bombs. The fact that this raid occurred on the same day that the police were celebrating their 62nd anniversary raised a few eyebrows and only added to the widespread cynicism that the public feel toward the protectors of law and order within the country.

Journey through Hell

We are back in Medan but only after surviving one horrific, four-hour ride on a supposedly air-conditioned bus. As the bus left Lake Toba, the internal climate was reasonable but at that point we were enjoying the cool air at the Lake's altitude of 900 metres. Before long however, we were descending into the tropical heat of the lowlands and the air being pumped through the bus's interior seemed to be the same as the air on the outside. The windows couldn't be opened and for the next three and half hours I sweated continously and lapsed in and out of consciousness.

As the bus traveled along, the driver picked up more passengers, far in excess of the number of allocated seats, and so the aisle filled up with more bodies who in turn generated more heat. A guy standing in the aisle beside me decided to light up a cigarette in spite of the no smoking signs but was persuaded to extinguish it by some other passengers. Finally, on the outskirts of Medan, the bus broke down completely and we were forced to catch a becak to our hotel.

The becak is a motorcycle with a sidecart for passengers and is intended for two adults at the most. This day it carried two adults (Desy and myself), two children (Sabina and her cousin Ilham) plus a large suitcase, my backpack and several smaller bags. We must have made quite a sight and attracted many stares, especially with a Westerner on board. We battled through Medan's chaotic afternoon traffic (it was about 4pm) and I wish I could have captured the scene with my camcorder or digital camera but I was half-dead by this stage and intent on survival not documentation. The incident,though undocumented, will remain firmly etched in my memory under the category of "things survived but never to be repeated".

Greetings from Lake Toba

I'm surprised that I'm creating this post on the shores of Lake Toba in the north of Sumatra because for many years this place has been a technological backwater. When I first visited in 2002, it was difficult to even get a mobile phone signal and now I'm accessing the Internet from the hotel's free hotspot. It certainly demonstrates how the telecommunications infrastructure in Indonesia has improved over the past six years, although it still has a long way to go.

As wireless Internet connectivity improves with the rollout of WiMAX and the cost of Internet-enabled devices continues to fall, the Internet will become more accessible to Indonesians and play more of a role in the education of its students. Fixed phone lines, that would allow at least dial-up access to the Internet, are never going to penetrate to the more remote areas of this archipelago and thus wireless connectivity of some sort (GPRS, HSPDA, WiMAX) is the future.

But enough of technology, I'm currently looking over a lake that is 900 metres above sea level and is more than 500 metres deep at its deepest point. The tranquility of the location is in stark contrast to the violence of the eruption that created it. About 75,000 years ago, an explosion occurred here that was so powerful and so catastrophic in terms of its effect on the world's climate that the human race at the time may have been reduced to as little as 1000 breeding pairs (see Lake Toba catastrophe theory).

Blue Energy

It all started around the time of the UN climate talks in Bali late last year when an Indonesian company "launched a range of gasoline and diesel products under the name blue energy". Here is part of an article, dated December 5th 2007, that reported on the occasion:

In a lavish ceremony held on the sidelines of this week’s U.N.’s climate talks in Bali, the company launched a range of gasoline and diesel products under the name “blue energy” witnessed by Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono himself.

Just days before the launch, Indonesia’s environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said that the country would have “its own fuel made out of plain water”.

Five cars, pumped with “blue energy” that have made a 5-day trip from Jakarta to Bali went through a pollution test. The result: 50 percent lower emissions on average.

Yudhoyono dubbed this “a winner for Indonesia”, cheered by the crowd in white-blue uniforms, while songs, written and composed by the president himself, played in the background. The company’s chairman said this could be Indonesia’s way out of the oil economy. In short, it’s a magic fuel.

Even back then the article mentioned that the magic was fading but not enough to deter the true believers. Joko and Purwanto, the masterminds of this scam, had managed to convince the President who "set up a special team to pursue the project, pouring billions of rupiah into the effort" according to today's The Jakarta Post. The research team came from the Muhammadiyah University in Yogyakarta and they "decided to develop the invention and appointed Joko and Purwanto as expert staff".

It all started to unravel only recently however, and the latest statement from the University's rector was that "he felt ashamed his university and researchers were deceived" and he has filed a lawsuit against the two "inventors". Yesterday the research team began dismantling the facilities that had been constructed but not without some resistance from the inventors' lawyers who claimed that radioactive substances could leak from the power project if it were torn down.

These sorts of scams take place everyday in Indonesia where economic pressure makes people vulnerable to get-rich-quick schemes but this one is memorable because it has taken in the President and the scientific wing of a leading University. I'm reminded of the empty energy promises in recent years of "cold fusion" and Peter Brock's "orgone energy".

Homo Domesticus

It's been a quiet week, this first week of my holidays, and the photo of Sabina with her menagerie of soft toys sums up the domestic tranquility of it all. The murderers, psychopaths and robbers are still out there of course but hopefully that is where they'll stay. Next week, we head off to Medan and Lake Toba for a week or more and I'll probably leave my laptop behind and bring some physical books to read.

It's been two years since our last visit to the Lake and back then there was limited Internet access (via my mobile phone's GPRS) but I'm just as happy to leave it all behind me for a week or so. I spend everyday at one computer or another so it's probably healthy to have a respite so I'll declare Lake Toba a technology-free zone for me personally. There's not even a TV set in the hotel rooms where we normally stay and that's certainly not missed. The only thing I can't do without is The Jakarta Post. I have an entrenched habit of reading the paper at breakfast time and I'm out-of-sorts when it's late or doesn't arrive on public holidays.

With our newly acquired camcorder, I will be taking plenty of video footage and of course I'll have my digital camera to take lots of photographs. In that sense, I won't be completely free of technology. It would be interesting, one day perhaps, to go with only a sketchpad and pencils. I have done some sketching over the years, although I discovered early on that I had little aptitude or patience for oil painting or watercolours.

Rising Violence

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Boy band mogul sentenced to 25 years

Boy band mogul Lou Pearlman, who launched Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday for swindling investors and major U.S.banks out of more than US$300 million, in a news article that I read today. This guy provides a prominent example of a psychopath in action. He defrauded his family, his close friends and people in their 70s and 80s who have lost their life savings.

This quote from his cousin Lois Nevler says it all:

Lou Pearlman was robbing me of my savings, while smiling and saying everything was great, with full intent of what he was doing," she wrote. "Any human being that can intentionally do what he has done is a horrible, evil man, without a conscience and definitely without a soul.

Obviously, having managed such famous bands he should have been comfortably off financially and yet he carried on a scam for two decades, amassing more and more wealth at the expense of his victims. He set up two sham companies that existed only on paper and managed to attract investment even from banks, so clearly he was persuasive and convincing as many psychopaths are. I would think the percentage of psychopaths in the ranks of leading entrepreneurs would be well above the level in the general population.

The problem is that people will read about Lou Pearlman and dismiss him as an aberration, clinging to a belief that human beings are basically good and that there's only a few rotten apples amongst us. The reality is that maybe 5% of the apples are rotten, that's 1 in 20, and that is unsettling.

Psychopathocracy

I just love my recently discovered word psychopathocracy, which means rule by psychopaths, because to a large extent it helps to explain the state of the world. A psychopath can lie, cheat, manipulate and charm the people about him without feeling the slightest glimmer of conscience or guilt. I say him because the majority of psychopaths, about 80% or more, are male and given their superficial charm and inner ruthlessness, it's not surprising that they rise quickly in politics, business and the judiciary. They are attracted to power because they then have more opportunity to indulge their utter self-centredness.

The term psychopath has been widely misunderstood and misapplied. There is a tendency to think of the screen character Hannibal Lector as the archetypal psychopath but in fact this character is rather atypical. The great majority are not murderers and never attract the attention of the police. Psychopaths are far more likely to manipulate than to murder. It is their shameless and skilful scheming that helps them rise to the top of whatever profession they enter. Non-psychopathic personalities cannot conceive of such deviousness and are always at a disadvantage.

Psychopaths can never admit that they are wrong and will always find an excuse for their behaviour or someone else to blame if their schemes are uncovered. The percentage of psychopaths in the general population is estimated to be around 5% but their concentration is likely to be far higher in the upper echelons of the military, government, medical profession, legal profession and the CEOs of large corporations. They live amongst us, dominate our institutions and yet they are an alien race that has remained undetected for the larger part of human history. Only in the last one hundred years has their existence been recognised but even today, their numbers and influence are vastly underestimated.

I'll have more to say on this topic of course and I'll quote from some corroborating sources (the idea is not just in my head) but today I'd like to congratulate myself on reaching prime day number 21599. Saturday is also a prime number day (21601) and so I'm especially happy to be enjoying twin prime days.

Handouts to the Poor

Who says SBY doesn't care about the peasants? He's getting ready to hand out US$1.55 million to 19.1 million households (or 76.4 million people) of the nation's poor to offset the forthcoming fuel price increases. During the first phase of this scheme, each household will receive Rp100,000 per month until December. Dire threats have been issued against "any officials found to be hindering the flow of funds to rightful recipients" but as usual this will be a relatively common practice. Typically, some of this amount will be cut by the distributing official, let's say Rp20,000. If the recipient complains then some bureaucratic impediment will be invented to stop any money being paid at all.

Many genuinely poor people don't qualify because they don't have the necessary documentation. The documentation costs money and so it's a Catch 22. Even those poor who do manage to get the full amount will find that it doesn't go far. Eventually the handouts will stop altogether, so it's only a temporary expedient at best. People are hurting and it's interesting that The Jakarta Post, that sad excuse for a national daily, carries very little news coverage of the real impact this is having. From other reliable sources, I've heard that suicide rates caused by financial stress are soaring but statistics on this are hard to come by. Crime rates are climbing as well and again there's very little coverage given to this. I guess they don't want to be seen to be panicking the expats.

Blogging Back from the Brink

Is there anything sadder than a dead blog? Someone has actually started a Graveyard of Dead Blogs, a site where people can drop off links to dead blogs (defined as blogs that have been inactive for more than three months) so that they have a final resting place. Here is the link.

I don't want my blog to end up there and so it must live on, at least while I remain in Jakarta. There's no shortage of interesting news, that's for sure, and the most interesting is a plan to raise the price of fuel by 25 or 30% in July. The fuel subsidy within the country in blowing the budget out of the water because of the soaring price of oil but reducing the subsidy will be deeply unpopular and a rash of demonstrations can be expected over the next couple of months in the lead up to it. Electricity prices are also expected to rise shortly and food prices have been soaring all year. More and more people are slipping below the poverty line and the government seems oblivious.

The Vice President recently got annoyed when questioned about rising poverty rates and countered with the observation that all the malls were still full of shoppers. Indeed they are and more luxury malls are being built and more are planned. These ground water guzzling, electricity hungry, green space swallowing malls are lasting monuments to rampant corporate greed and environmental irresponsibility. Needless to say, the Vice President is a businessman. Away from the shopping malls however, all is not well and these monuments to Mammon may end up as smoking shells if the peasants decide to revolt.

The VP is also a politician of course and lately he's been seen almost daily in photographs on the pages of The Jakarta Post, doing the sorts of things politicians do to get noticed. Clearly, he has an eye on the presidency but his popularity is low and he is unlikely to be a serious contender. The President remains the most popular choice for voters by a long margin in spite of a demonstrated lack of leadership and a well-established reputation for indecision. The run-up to next year's election should be interesting with the VP and his Golkar Party desperate to regain the glory days they enjoyed under Suharto. To this end, they are certainly working on "strategies" but further speculation on this subject is subject to self-imposed censorship.

Climate of Fear

I'd actually prepared a post several days ago but hesitated to publish it. On further reflection, I realised the time had come to cease commenting on events in Indonesia. A climate of fear is taking root in this country and I for one no longer feel comfortable publicly broadcasting my views on the political and social situation here. Enough said.

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.

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.

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.

Life Imprisonment

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Of Whingers and Bingers

While lamenting the dearth of wine in Jakarta, I have been saving money every month by not being able to visit the duty free bottle shops anymore. I also think Indonesia is better off for not having embraced alcohol. This substance is devastating aboriginal communities in Australia, causing nationwide health problems and contributing to domestic and social violence. I read The Sydney Morning Herald most days and the press that alcohol is getting at the local, state and national level is not good. It seems as if Australia simply can't handle its alcohol. While Indonesia has many problems, widespread alcohol abuse is not one of them.

The key question for Australia is whether the problem is getting worse or whether it's just getting more publicity or more attention from health professionals. There is of course a problem but there always has been, ever since the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. The hard drinking culture of Ireland and England was exported along with all the other Anglo-Celtic baggage. Rum was actually used as currency in the early days of the colony. When I was growing up in Australia, the pub was an exclusively male domain and opening hours were strictly regulated. Pubs didn't open on Sundays. Things have changed a lot since then. Women finally won access to pubs, the opening hours lengthened and the availability of cheap alcohol proliferated.

One things for sure. My body is less resilient than it used to be to the effects of ethanol. Fortunately, living in Indonesia means that the opportunities for drinking are limited and the cultural pressure to drink (outside of the expatriate community) is zero. However, I'm shortly off to Oz for ten days or so and I'm certainly looking forward to an occasional glass or three of some fine wines. Of course, I'll be careful not to binge drink because the Great Helmsman himself has warned against that. I am a whinger but not a binger. In fact Annabel Crabb writes in the SMH that "binge drinking is such a popular issue at the moment that it has generated a brand new noun" as in "I'm just here for a spot of binge" or "Another glass of binge?".

In the News

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More on Tofu and Tempe

Disturbing news in The Jakarta Post this morning. Here it is:

Consuming tempeh can reduce the risk of developing dementia in the elderly, but eating tofu can increase it, said a joint study between universities here and in Britain on Wednesday.

The study between University of Indonesia (UI), Indonesia Respati University, University of Loughborough and University of Oxford said people over 68 years of age who consumed tofu more than twice a day had a worse memory than those who rarely ate it.

The tofu news is surprising but the article goes on to explain that this could well be caused by the common practice in Indonesia of adding formaldehyde to tofu in order to extend its shelf life. There have been intermittent crackdowns on the practice but it still remains widespread. You just don't know whether the tofu you're eating is contaminated or not. This is a worry considering that I usually eat tofu once a day. Being a vegetarian is never easy but I guess I should look around for a testing kit. I remember reading about one not all that long ago.

The Lighting of the Lamps

There have been several power blackouts in Jakarta over the past couple of weeks caused apparently by a lack of coal. The ships that carry the coal (that heats the water that drives the turbines and so forth) have not been able to dock due to inclement weather. If they can't dock next week then things could get very black indeed, especially at night. You could well ask why coal hasn't been stockpiled as a buffer against temporary disruptions like this but that would imply some sort of forward planning and there simply isn't too much of that in PLN, the government-run organisation that's responsible for supplying electricity to the country.

Widely regarded as one of the most corrupt institutions in Indonesia, PLN has overseen a steady decay of the country's electricity-generating infrastructure, aggravated by a dearth of foreign investment and its own mismanagement, of which the current coal shortfall is the most recent example. While PLN continues to enjoy its lucrative monopoly, things will only get worse. The organisation has a strategic plan however, that will fix everything: build nuclear power plants across Java, one of the most densely populated and seismically active islands on Earth. It's insane of course but there is a lot of money to be made in the awarding of contracts and very little money to be made in researching renewable energy resources. Bring on Chernobyl.

A New Approach to Valentine's Day

You may or may not know that 2008 is Indonesia's Tourism Year. That's why the Deputy Mayor's comments in the article below are even more interesting. Here is part of what he said and you can imagine that the local business people were overjoyed to hear this. If you click on the map above you'll get a larger image and you can see where Bukittinggi is located.

"As a tourist city, many people visit Bukittinggi to celebrate New Year's at Jam Gadang, the city's tourist icon. New Year is the same as Valentine's Day... its celebrations are closely linked to immoral acts," Ismet said. "So let Bukittinggi be deserted by tourists, rather than be allowed to serve as a place for immoral acts."

Here is the full article as it appeared in today's The Jakarta Post:

Valentine's celebrations banned in Bukittinggi

Nation News - Thursday, February 14, 2008

Syofiardi Bachyul Jb, The Jakarta Post, Padang

The Bukittinggi municipal administration has banned residents from celebrating Valentine's Day, on Thursday, on the grounds the occasion is not in line with Minangkabau traditions or Islam.

"The Valentine's Day celebration is not our culture as it usually relates closely to immoral acts where, during the celebration, young couples tend to hug and even kiss each other. This is an immoral act, right?" Bukittinggi Deputy Mayor Ismet Amzis told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

A similar prohibition was implemented by the administration on cafes, restaurants, hotels and other tourist sites planning to hold Valentine's Day celebrations.

The administration said it would enforce existing regional regulations on "immoral act eradication" and take companies that celebrated the day to court.

A number of permits already issued for Valentine's Day activities have also been revoked.

Bukittinggi Mayor Djufri told a press conference earlier that his administration would shut down a number of tourist sites known to attract visitor's on Valentine's Day, including Jam Gadang, and some cafes.

Djufri urged parents in Bukittinggi not to let their sons and daughters go out Thursday night.

In order to replace Valentine Day's parties, the Bukittinggi administration urged schools to drive their students to mosques or prayer rooms Thursday night to hear religious sermons "for the sake of improving their morality."

The suggestion was made in response to the circulation of pornographic photos depicting a young couple from a senior high school in the city.

The photos, taken on a mobile phone camera, have been widely circulated in Bukittinggi over the last three weeks.

The couple captured by the photos has been expelled from school.

Ismet said the municipality had assigned 100 public order officers to keep an eye on cafes, restaurants, hotels and other public places on Thursday.

The officers have been given authority to detain young couples found on the streets or at tourist sites.

Besides Valentine Day's, Ismet said, the Bukittinggi administration would also ban New Year's Eve celebrations at Jam Gadang next year.

"As a tourist city, many people visit Bukittinggi to celebrate New Year's at Jam Gadang, the city's tourist icon. New Year is the same as Valentine's Day... its celebrations are closely linked to immoral acts," Ismet said. "So let Bukittinggi be deserted by tourists, rather than be allowed to serve as a place for immoral acts."

Roni Valian, head of the Bukittinggi chapter of the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association, said he was still evaluating the mayor's ban and declined to comment further.

Prime Week

Tomorrow, Tuesday the 12th February, is a prime day for me. It's number 21499. As it turns out, Friday is also a prime day, number 21503, and so it's sort of a prime week for me. After this, it's two weeks exactly before I encounter prime day 21517 which is followed closely by a whole bunch of prime days (the twin primes 21521 - 21523 and then 21529). After that it's nearly a month until I enjoy twin prime days again with 21557 - 21559. Sometimes, like today, the prime days just sneak up on me and catch me by surprise. I need to do a little more forward planning by marking them in a special calendar that I guess I should reserve for just that purpose.

I quite understand that most people will not share my fascination with prime numbers and I've been labeled insane by one person when I shared a particular theory of mine about prime numbers and God-realization. However, I remain unperturbed and will refine my theory further before launching it on Scribd. If you haven't been to this site, you must visit. There is a cornucopia of information on it and a great many e-books by well-known and little-known authors. My most recent download was Nikola Tesla's autobiography which is simply fascinating. The more I visit, the more I download and I simply don't have time to read them.

Even as I write this, I was tempted to visit the site and type "prime numbers" into the search box. One of the search results was "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" which is a novel I read last year. The reason this novel came up is that the central character "Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic." It was an interesting read and Christopher certainly shares my passion for prime numbers.

Well, it's already prime day 21499 and I have school tomorrow, so time for bed.

Keating's Eulogy

Well, Keating has written a glowing tribute to Suharto in The Age, which I've linked to here. He regards him as Indonesia's saviour in the dark days when Communist forces were gathering on Australia's doorstep. As well as battling the Red Menace, he says that Suharto held back the tide of Islamic fundamentalism that otherwise would have seen boatloads of suicide bombers alighting on Australia's northern shores and trekking southwards to the big cities. It is a fulsome, silly article.

For a more balanced view of Suharto's legacy, I've linked to an interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald by Hamish McDonald who wrote a book about Suharto in 1980. My opinion of the guy is determined largely by my feeling that he orchestrated the events of 1965 that led directly to the deaths of perhaps a million Indonesians. Now that he's gone, I think more evidence will come to light about that watershed event in Indonesian history.

I remember reading Time Magazine's account of the killings when I was in Year 12 and the stories left an indelible impression on me. From that time on, I vowed that I'd never set foot on Indonesian soil. Well, my resolve obviously waned over the years and I've ended living in the very place that I never wanted to visit. More than forty years on however, I still want to get to the bottom of what really happened.

Tough Time for Tigers

Part of the reason for the rapidly declining tiger population in Indonesia can be grasped by two stories that appeared in the local paper today. One article, describing the flooding in East Java, reported that floodwaters have reached 1.5 metres high inundating shops and houses and forcing students at one Islamic boarding school to abandon their mascot, an endangered Sumatran tiger in a cage (see photo). The tiger is showing paw deep in rising water that hopefully didn't rise too much higher. Of course, it's illegal to keep tigers but so what? Students need a mascot and what could be better than a Sumatran tiger.

The next article is equally disturbing and needs to be quoted in full. I doubt that the villagers are as innocent as they make out. I'd say they were involved as well but decided to shift all the blame to the soldier once the news got out. Anyway, if there were 400 tigers left in the wild yesterday, there are only 399 today. I'd say their extinction in the wild is assured.

Soldier kills endangered tiger, skins it, distributes meat

JAKARTA (AP): A soldier shot dead an endangered Sumatran tiger that was caught in a trap in Riau province, then skinned it and distributed its meat to villagers, a conservationist said.

The incident happened in Tenggayun village after residents asked the soldier to help release the animal from a pig snare, Bastoni, an official with the Sumatran Tiger Conservation Program, said Thursday.

"Instead, the soldier fired nine bullets to its body and head, and then asked villagers to skin the wild beast," he said, adding that the man proceeded to dole out the meat and take home the tiger's pelt.

"It was sadistic," said Bastoni. He said he intends to file a complaint with the army.

Environmentalists say the Sumatran tiger, or Panthera tigris sumatrae, is the most critically endangered tiger subspecies in the world, with fewer than 400 believed to be left in the wild.

Ring of Fire

The screenshot shows a newly added feature to Google Earth whereby the location of major earthquakes around the world over the past 40 years can be visualised. I've zoomed in on my neck of the woods to show the western end of Java and the southern tip of Sumatra. The reddish circles represent earthquakes and the orange triangle are active volcanoes. If you click on a circle, a pop-up window displays details of the quake including magnitude, location, date, depth and severity. As you can see, I'm living in a virtual mine field and where the next temblor will be is anyone's guess. It could be right under my feet.

The new feature can be accessed by going to Layers in the Sidebar and selecting Places of Interest >>> Geographic Features >>> Earthquakes.

Suharto

Well, Suharto is gone and this quote caught my fancy (source):

Weep not for Indonesia's former president Suharto who died today at the age of 86. Suharto's iron-fisted rule bought economic growth but also ushered in nepotism and corruption. And Suharto's legacy of corruption and shady business dealings go back a long way. In the 1950s, he was allegedly involved in sugar smuggling which some said cost him command of an army division during a 1959 anticorruption drive. Suharto claims that he bartered sugar for rice to ease a local food shortage and did not benefit personally. Still, he was transferred to a less influential position at the army staff college. It is said Suharto through his rule cultivated a network of wealthy allies, many in the ethnic Chinese business community. He did this through a system of rewards and punishments administered by the state. Suharto's nepotism and corruption was well known. reached epic proportions, culminating in a national car project awarded to Suharto's youngest and most beloved son, Tommy. According to anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, Suharto and his family may have amassed as much as $35 billion during his reign and the independent organization today still ranks Indonesia as one of Asia's most corrupt countries.

However, it's good to know that the brotherhood of old bastards is still strong because Dr Mahathir Mohamad defended the legacy of one-time Indonesian strongman Suharto and described him as a "great leader and an international statesman" (source). Never mind that Suharto and the CIA played the leading role in the death of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians back in 1965. Maybe he's already met some of them on the other side. I'm sure they'll be pleased to see him.

For the Love of Microsoft

On the front page of today's The Jakarta Post, there is the headline Ministry's Microsoft love slows down open-source which connects with the mention of IGOS (Indonesia Go Open Source) in my previous post. As part of the IGOS initiative in 2004, five Government ministries signed a declaration to use open-source software. However, only the State Ministry of Research and Technology, has acted on the declaration, with 92 percent of its computers running open-source programs. Other ministries ... remain reluctant to use the software.

There is a clear lack of political will on the part of these other four ministries. One can only speculate as to why the Government is not serious about promoting free software, prefering instead to spend its very limited resources on paying licensing fees to Microsoft. A search on Google failed to find the IGOS's Internet Address on the first few pages and instead I tracked it down using Wikipedia. The site itself at http://www.igos.web.id is a sparce and clearly neglected site. On the opening page, the menu link item program is misspelled as pogram.

Of course, most home users are using pirated versions of Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw and so on, which is understandable as they are readily available and cost practically nothing. If you buy a new computer here, the vendor will happily offer to install as much pirated software as you'd like but you will not be asked first whether you'd like open-source software installed. It's may be an image thing as well. Microsoft, and especially Apple, are seen as "cool" but open-source products such as Linux and Open Office are are not. Technology in Indonesia is associated with status first and utility second.

A good summary of what's available by way of open-source software can be found at Open Source Living.

Soy Joy

Why didn't I think of that title for my last post, instead of the very pedestrian "tempe and tofu return". This clever little rhyme was the caption to a photo contained in another article in The Jakarta Post reporting on the hardships caused to tempeh and tofu business owners by high soy bean prices. The article concludes with this quote from one owner: we cannot use locally produced soybeans to produce tofu and tempe. It damages too easily.

Interesting. The plot thickens when we consider the content of the following article, also in today's newspaper, which I'll quote in its entirety.

Simple soybean solution form scientists

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Tempeh and tofu would not have disappeared from the family dining room, as it did this week, if the country's government had listened to Indonesia's scientists.

The archipelago would have been able to stop importing soybeans from the U.S. and would probably even be exporting a high-yield protein-rich bean to other countries.

"Perhaps we didn't have the time to pay attention to soybeans then," said Endang Sukara, deputy chairman of the natural sciences department of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

But in 2004 and after successfully breeding "newly improved" soybeans, LIPI scientists invited then-President Megawati and her agriculture officials to see their high-yield harvest in South Sumatra. Endang wasn't joking when he said the soybeans had added value. Kedelai Plus, the new improved variety, was able to produce up to three times the yield compared to regular soybeans and required less than half the amount of fertilizer.

"We told the government all about it, and they were there during the harvesting at Musi Rawas in South Sumatra," Endang said at LIPI's Center for Biotechnology Research in Cibinong, West Java. "But they never followed it up."

To create Kedelai Plus, a team of scientists, led by Harmastini Sukiman, isolated hundreds of Rhizobiums, a microbe that binds Nitrogen from the ground for soybean roots to absorb. They then discovered one special string called Rhizobium B64.

"The strain worked really well for soybeans by boosting productivity and improving the plants' resistance to diseases," Harmastini said. "Soybean plants produce more beans using B64."

The scientists grew Kedelai Plus in many areas across Indonesia, including South Sumatra, North Sumatra, West Java and East Java, with outstanding results. Farmers in Indonesia can produce on average up to 1.2 tons of soybeans per hectare, but in every harvest Kedelai Plus was yielding 2.4 to 4.5 tons per hectare. The team discovered a way to inject the microbe into the soybean, which meant farmers no longer had to glue the microbe onto the bean skin, or sprinkle it across the soil.

"Rhizobiums grow abundantly in the soil, so for Rhizobium B64 to survive the competition, we must make sure there are enough B64 cells for the soybean roots to absorb," Harmastini said.

With the help of a special vacuuming machine, LIPI was able to turn any type of soybean variety into Kedelai Plus with similar results. Endang said he was confident the new technology would see Indonesia end its dependency on expensive, imported American soybeans.

"All the government needs to do now is up-scale the machine and produce Kedelai Plus in various seed centers so that farmers can purchase them at affordable prices," he said.

Endang said he has been dreaming of a day when he could drink soybean milk, snack on soybean yogurt and have a tempeh burger for lunch, all made from domestic soybeans. But for the time being, farmers wishing to plant "newly improved" soybeans can bring their own seeds to LIPI in Cibinong to be injected with Rhizobium B64 at a cost of Rp 50,000 (US$ 5.30) for 20 kilograms of soybean seed.

It wouldn't be surprising if the cartel controlling imports of soy beans had something to do with this lack of enthusiasm of the part of the Government. Even though such a product would be great for Indonesians, it wouldn't be well-received by the importers of soy beans and so a strange inertia settles over the politicians. It's like the Government's IGOS (Indonesia Go Open Source) initiative. Open source software is great for the country but not well-received by Microsoft and Apple. Once again, a strange inertia settles over the politicians.

Tempeh and Tofu Return

Massive protests in Jakarta have seen the Government belatedly remove the tariff on imported soybeans but there is continued demand to abolish the existing system whereby there are only four designated importers of the 1.3 million tonnes of soybeans imported. These four companies effectively form a highly lucrative cartel that is profiting at the expense of the local producers of tofu and tempeh. If the market were more open, the suspicion is that prices would decline as the competition increased. That may not happen.

The good news is that tofu and tempeh are now back on the supermarket shelves. There was an interesting article in The Jakarta Post today about tempeh, written by Jonathan Agranoff, a U.K. doctor and nutritionist, currently working for the United Nations in Indonesia. He has written a book called A Concise Handbook of Indonesian Tempe that I'll try to get a hold of it. In his newspaper article, he mentions that tempeh is the only non-animal source of vitamin B12, which I wasn't aware of. There is a very informative website at www.tempeh.info that I've been reading through.

I just hadn't realised just how healthy tempeh is for me but my recent avoidance of eggs and cheese (I never used milk directly anyway) has made me more interested in my sources of protein. Meanwhile, I'll start collecting more of Dilbert's comics about Mike the Vegan, in case I start to take myself too seriously.

Shocking Soybean Story

Here's a change from my recent religious posts. This news is important to me because as a near-vegan*, I rely largely on tofu and tempe for my protein requirements. My wife, Desy, went to the supermarket today and sure enough there was no tofu or tempe on the shelves. I didn't realise that Indonesia imports 70% of its soybeans from overseas (mainly the USA).

Have a read of this post from http://indosnesos.blogspot.com dated Jan 13, 2008

Tofu, tempe producers stage rally outside presidential palace

Some 3,000 tofu and tempe (fermented soybean cake) producers staged a rally outside the presidential palace here on Monday, urging the government to stabilize the soybean price which jumped almost 100 percent in the past year.

To get their demand fulfilled, the demonstrators agreed to cease production for three days starting on Monday, tofu producer Kliwono Sutoro said.

The soybean price spiral dealt a major blow to tofu and tempe producers as the selling prices of the products remained, he said.

Then I have a quote from http://www.antara.co.id/en

Indonesia mulls cut in soybean import duties - trade official

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia is considering cutting import duties for soybean to offset soaring soybean prices which have hurt the local food industry, a senior government official said on Monday. Soybean imports are subject to a 10 percent duty.

"One option is to lower import duties for soybean but we don't know yet how much it will be," Ardiansyah Parman, director general for domestic trade at the Trade Ministry, was quoted by Reuters as saying.

U.S. soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade rose by the 50-cent a bushel trading limit on Friday, notching an all-time high amid spillover buying from corn after the USDA reported a smaller-than-expected corn inventory, traders said.

Old-crop January soybeans ended 42 cents higher at $12.86 a bushel.

But Parman said the policy on import duties would be temporary and in the long-term there should be a policy to improve domestic soybean output.

Indonesia still imports nearly 70 percent of its soybean demand, mainly for the food industry which uses soybean for tofu and soy sauce production. The industry is dominated by small and medium-sized companies.

Indonesia's soybean output is expected to reach 750,000-800,000 tonnes this year, rising from 608,260 tonnes in 2007.

The country imported an estimated 1.4 million tonnes of soybeans in 2007, up from 1.2 million tonnes in 2006, according to data from the Indonesian office of the American Soybean Association.

The association said Indonesia imports between 80-90 percent of its soybeans from the United States, with the rest coming from Argentina.

* my personal definition of a near-vegan: someone who doesn't eat eggs, cheese or milk directly but who still consumes them indirectly via bread, pastries, biscuits etc.

The Aquarian Gospel

Well I seemed to be hooked on this Jesus thing for a while longer. I've read nearly all of "Jesus in India" as mentioned in my previous post and the arguments that Ahmad puts forward are logically and clearly expressed. The Gospels describe Jesus walking around and talking to his disciples after his alleged death, in much the same way as he did before his crucifixion but I won't try to summarise it all here. The hyperlink is there for those who wish to read his account.

What's interesting is that I discovered from a post on another blog by Randeep Ramesh that:

Hollywood is to fill in the Bible's "missing years" with a story about Jesus as a wandering mystic who travelled across India, living in Buddhist monasteries and speaking out against the iniquities of the country's caste system. Film producers have delved deep into revisionist scholarship to piece together what they say was Jesus's life between the ages of 13 and 30, a period untouched by the recognised gospels. The result is the Aquarian Gospel, a $20m movie, which portrays Jesus as a holy man and teacher inspired by a myriad of eastern religions in India. The Aquarian Gospel takes its name from a century-old book that examined Christianity's eastern roots and is in its 53rd reprint.

Now in the book "Jesus in India", Ahmad brings up the idea of the Buddhist connection in the early life of Jesus but dismisses it fairly quickly. However, he also says that Jesus was referred to as the "traveling prophet". A quick search of the Internet reveals a location for the Aquarian Gospel with the comment that:

The Aquarian Gospel was rediscovered during the spiritual ferment of the 1960s; a beat-up paperback copy of this book was de rigeur in every hippie pad, and it no doubt played an unsung role in naming the 'Age of Aquarius'.

Well, I have to confess that I didn't read it but I guess my (at that time) still recent escape from the madness of Catholicism didn't incline me to investigate JC any further. So it seems that 40 years later, I will be reading this book in electronic format rather than as a "beat-up paperback".

The Movement

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New By-Law

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Chairman Rudd

Given the current landslides and flooding in Indonesia and the other ills that seem to regularly befall the country, the logo above might be used as part of the 2008 tourism campaign. It couldn't be any worse than the existing campaign that began with the slogan "Indonesia: 100 years of nation's awakening". Oops. How did that one get through? Of course it had be changed even though Garuda planes already had it stuck on their tails and clearly a lot of money was going to be lost on already printed material that would need to be tossed away. The slogan is now "Indonesia: 100 years of national awakening". How this slogan is going to entice tourists to the country is a mystery.

No matter. Leave it alone. This year I'm going to be positive, or at least negative about another country. What about Australia? I notice Chairman Rudd is pushing ahead with the Great Internet Porn Filter and may well be on his way to emulating the Great Firewall of China. This YouTube video that I found is quite funny as it parodies his Chinese connections.

Karen Armstrong

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Behind the Scenes

The Islamic Day of Sacrifice only occurs once a year but it should remind us of what takes place in abattoirs every day in every country of the world. The animals are similarly mistreated. Islam is perhaps the only religion that lays down some guidelines for the ethical treatment of animals, even though the guidelines are almost completely ignored. Sites like www.islamicconcerns.com however, give hope that this may be slowly changing. On this site, Moslems discuss the ethical treatment of animals from an Islamic viewpoint and quote from the Qu'ran and Ahadiths (collected sayings of the prophet) to support their statements.

It is only from within Islam that change will come because criticism from non-Moslems is not well received at all. That won't stop me passing comment on Islam nor reading what other non-Moslems have to say about the religion and its founder. I'm currently reading Karen Armstrong's biography of Muhammed and the more I read, the more I realise how far certain professed Moslem groups like the Taliban have strayed from the original message of the Prophet. They have in fact regressed to the pre-Islamic period described as the Jahiliyah (the time of ignorance). Consider the following quotation from her book:

Muhammed was a man who loved and needed women. In this he differed from many of his contemporaries. Later, some of his closest companions, who clearly believed that women should be kept in their place, noted that in the pre-Islamic period most Meccans thought little of the female sex. We have seen that women had no status during the Jahiliyah and even some of the most prominent Muslims treated their wives and daughters harshly. But Muhammed seems genuinely to have enjoyed women's company and to have needed affection and intimacy. In later years, his gentleness and apparent leniency with the women in his life perplexed some of his closest companions.

It should be remembered that Muhammed was utterly faithful to his first wife, Khadija, until she died. In the early days following his terrifying revelation, she was a crucial support. The book goes on to say:

Trembling, he waited for the terror to abate, and Khadija held him in her arms, soothing him and trying to take his fear away. All the sources emphasise Muhammed's profound dependence upon Khadija in this crisis. Later he would have other visions on the mountainside and each time he would go straight to Khadija and beg her to cradle him and wrap him in his cloak. But Khadija was not just a consoling mother figure; she was also Muhammed's spiritual advisor. It was she who was able to provide the support that other seers and prophets have found in an established religion.

The Taliban have simply returned to their pre-Islamic roots and are a recidivistic insult to the changes that Muhammed tried to bring about. The fact that so many followers of Islam fail to live up to the ideals espoused in the Qu'ran is not Muhammed's fault. He did his best but the baser aspects of human nature and ingrained cultural norms have later distorted his message.

Have a Nice Day

The site http://www.animalsaustralia.org has some graphic photos of the suffering that animals undergo on their journey from Australia and on their arrival in Egypt and the Middle East. The photo above and video below were both taken from that site.

More videos from Animals Australia

Bouncing Back

My last post was on November 18th following my Bouncy Town misadventure. Since then I got sick, like two-week sick, and it was all I could do to drag my tired old body off to work. The second week I had a really bad chest infection and all the while there were exams to write and mark, followed by reports to write. I've bounced back however, and am looking forward to beginning holidays on Wednesday.

Of course Thursday is the dreaded Islamic Day of Sacrifice, so I'll stay indoors that day. The graphic that I've uploaded expresses my feelings in the matter. Here's a recent quote from a site that monitors the spread of avian flu:

The high point of the hajj, when pilgrims converge on Mount Arafat, will take place on Tuesday, and Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice marking the end of the pilgrimage, will be celebrated the next day. All Muslims are required to make the hajj to Mecca, in western Saudi Arabia, at least once in their lifetime if they have the means to do so. Pilgrims sacrifice an animal, usually a sheep, for Eid al-Adha as part of the rituals. "Usually we get around 2 million sheep, goats and cows for the hajj season. The work is ongoing," Mohammad Jameel, an official in the storage terminal department at the Jedda Islamic Port, told AFP. "The livestock is shipped from Somalia, Djibouti, Australia and New Zealand," he said, adding that the ships each carry around 120,000 sheep or goats.

"The work is ongoing" indeed, two million animals slaughtered in Mecca alone on just one day. The total number throughout the Muslim world would presumably be in the tens of millions. Getting murdered is one thing but the suffering of the animals on these ships is appalling and well documented. The prophet Muhammed was scathing in his condemnation of those who mistreated animals and would have been appalled at these death ships and their connection with Islam. The Islamic Day of Sacrifice is not really about killing animals at all. It is about inner sacrifice which is much more difficult to accomplish of course . Today however, most Moslems are fixated on external rituals and miss the deeper meaning behind them. No matter what I say however, the bloodbath is coming.

Here is a link to an article written in mid-2007 by an Australian, Jenny Hume, about the live animals exports. It's titled "Live animal exports: defending the indefensible". Things are particularly bad in Egypt where sacrificial animals are horribly mistreated, in defiance of what is prescribed in the Qu'ran. I'm been down this path before however, and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in listening.

Bouncy Town

Sunday is normally a holiday for me but for some reason I decided to volunteer to help man a promotional booth that my school had set up in Bouncy Town. I had no idea where Bouncy Town was but I assumed it would be located inside an air-conditioned mall (all such previous promotions have taken place within malls). Nobody ever mentioned the word OUTDOOR and so it was with a sense of growing apprehension that I found myself sitting in a tent watching a blazing sun climb towards its zenith. I was still sitting there four and a half sweltering hours later.

If I do venture outdoors during the day in Jakarta, it is only for the purpose of moving from one air-conditioned environment to another. I can't believe I sat where I did for as long as I did. Sitting here writing this in my air-conditioned study, I still feel hot. Worse still, the booth was a marketing disaster, because there were hardly any visitors, apart from the one or two that my more enthusiastic Indonesian colleagues managed to drag in.

I was the token expatriate face that parents of prospective students supposedly like to see. This day however, it was a very sweaty face and the beaming smile ;-) that normally adorns it was gone. The smile still hasn't returned and it will take some time for the memories of my meltdown at Bouncy Town to fade.

Misguided

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