Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

I've signed a few petitions organised by Avaaz.org. These include one protesting the use of Japanese tsunami relief funds being used to provide security for a whaling fleet, another condemning the use of torture by Syria's regime against demonstrators, and others concerning the rape of the planet by oil companies and their rapacious ilk.

At the last count, Avaaz had 10,580,054 members who receive email notifications from a dedicated team funded by donations from the members. Our concerted voices do have an impact, yet I feel that the suggested action requested from "friends across Indonesia" may be counter-productive.

The suggested petition is worded thus:

To President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono:

In the wake of the A.A.L. sandal scandal, we call on you to end the criminalisation of children, initiate a fundamental review of the police, and devise urgent reform programmes so that our police carry out their civic duties repsonsibly (sic). This is a time for you to stand with Indonesian citizens — we count on you to take all necessary steps to bring about a police force that works for the people, not against them.

Yes, I am in whole-hearted support of the message, and have already drawn attention to it in my last post. However, Avaaz has the following on the petition page: Since police in Palu brutally beat fifteen year-old A.A.L. and threatened him with a 5 year jail sentence in the 'sandal scandal', citizens across the country are standing up against police brutality. If we can ramp up public pressure now we could end this abuse.

'Torture' is ingrained in the mindset of the police, and was throughout colonial Dutch times and the Suharto era. A mere petition will do nothing to change it, nor will SBY be swayed, as he will surely refer to foreign-funded NGO's interfering in Indonesian affairs, as he did recently.

Let the pressure mount from within is what I've suggested  A petition will do nothing, but making monkeys out of the police by presenting them with bananas is not an arrestable offence, but they will surely take note. Non-violent yet upfront demonstrations can be effective and media-worthy events.

Mweanwhile, the case for police reform is already a media topic, as this recent opinion article in the Post  clearly shows.

Punishment for children should provide strong educational and deterrent effects instead of merely throwing them in jail. Civility is supposed to be a yardstick when it comes to dealing out punishment for kids.

Hence, the need for Juvenile Court legislation that really makes sense, that would prevent children from being detained in prison. There must be correction houses, such as boarding schools or special dorms, for children with legal problems.

The government and the House of Representatives need to say yes to pass the bill without delay. The bill must give an ear to a restorative justice approach with a view to prioritizing mediation and rehabilitation over penalties.

The absence of the country’s justice system in dealing with young delinquents frequently makes law enforcers take a punitive approach.

I would add that civilian control of the police is of paramount urgency.. Although it will probably take a generation for critical reasoning to be engrained in the rakyat, there are signs that it is beginning to take hold. AAL is an unfortunate victim, a martyr to the cause, and there will be more resulting in an even gretaer pressure for true reformasi to take hold.

So, my message to Avaaz is simple: Sabar aja, dong!

When someone bumbles around or bumbles about, they behave in a confused, disorganized way, making mistakes and usually not achieving anything.

Some think that SBY deserves the appellation Pak Bumble because his slow response to every conflict in the country [has] contributed to the weakening of state authority in the country.

This character analysis of Mr. Bumble from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist says that he has a heart for the poor. But the trouble is he doesn’t act on his pity – he seems to feel like it’s a weakness, and he doesn’t want to lose face. He seems to think that he won’t be respected if he shows pity to anyone.

State authority at most levels has always been subject to, or in league with, forces beyond public control, be they strategic alliances with the Muslim bloc or rapacious foreign based conglomerates seeking land to deforest and supplant with palm oil plantations or destroy with coal and gold mines.

One can but agree that if SBY is the ultimate authority in Indonesia, then he seems to lack the gravitas to exercise it. Contrarian that I am, although one may think that I’m cynical, history may yet judge SBY to be the true architect of reformasi, the word coined in the latter months of the Suharto era  by the proponents of demokrasi. There are signs that we are on the threshold of achieving a country governed by the people for the people.

There is increasing disgust at the antics of small fundamentalist Islamic groups, at the rapaciousness of oligarchs who think little of grabbing the nation’s resources without a by-your-leave, let alone compensation, and at the incompetence and corruption of self-elected politicians and bureaucrats who believe that being a public servant means that the public are there to serve them.

The rakyat are beginning to recognise that if they want something done, then perhaps they should do something about it themselves.

Hence the co-ordinated demonstrations this week by farmers protesting land grabs without financial or legal redress.

Note: whereas the 1960 Agrarian Law states that the state should respect the land owners’ rights over their lands, the 2009 Law on Minerals, Energy and Coal stipulates that owners of land known to have potential deposits should allow their land to be explored and exploited – and their refusal may result in imprisonment.

Other signs of public discontent include the rallying for victims of insensitive law enforcement agencies. This has seen a 15 year old boy accused of stealing a policeman’s worn out flip-flops, beaten up, and prosecuted as an adult and facing a five year jail sentence. Although the flip-flops presented as evidence were not those he allegedly stole, the judge found him guilty but set him free. This inconsistency was no doubt due to the public furore over the case, and that 5,000 pairs of (used) flip-flops were donated to the police on the grounds that they must be impoverished. One would have thought that the cost of bribes would have kept pace with inflation, but I could be wrong about this.

Another case in the news is of two “mentally retarded” 20-something guys kept in detention from 11th November last year charged with stealing 15 bunches of bananas. Although prosecuters originally refused to accept the case, once they had done, on Friday last week, they immediately freed the suspects in a bid to close the case. Meanwhile, student activists organised a collection of 1,000 bunches of bananas to give to the police, thus making monkeys out of them.

These are not the first examples of a sense of humour coming to the fore in Indonesia when addressing grievances. It’s been two years since I wrote about a batch of cases including Prita Mulyasari’s fine for defaming the hospital which maltreated her which was paid through a public coin collection.

Confrontation can only be met with more violence, so this week of civil disobedience has been welcome. But I do wish these demonstrators outside the legislature hadn’t blocked the toll road which is part of my route home!

Remember: Get Angry, but Have Fun.

I've checked the TV schedules but there's no coverage tonight of the FA Cup 3rd round match between Fulham and Charlton. Strange really, because for the first time this season we are the underdogs, expected to lose.

Yet in the history of matches between us, we're honours virtually even: Charlton have won 21 times compared to Fulham's 22 victories, with the sides sharing 21 draws.

There we are sitting pretty at the top of the division, with a five goal cushion and a massive goal difference over competing clubs and having what is possibly our best ever season

And, what is more, Fulham are worried, as well they might be. Manager Martin Jol says: "We have to be aware that Charlton are a team with a winning mentality [so] I will play my strongest team against Charlton."

This is echoed by defender Steven Kelly who believes the Cottagers will need to be at their best if they're to advance to the fourth round.

Of course, if you know that Fulham are a Premiership side and that since we played them in 2006 – it was a 2-2 draw – Charlton have slipped down two divisions, then it all begins to make sense. Fulham beat Arsenal on Monday, so they're a side riding high, on self-belief if not in the league table.

If I were 'back home', I'd have a good internet connection and could watch live steaming or, better yet, actually go to the match at Craven Cottage, a pleasant ground on the Thames.

I have been there; it's the ground where Son No.1 got involved in his first live football match. He was quite young and as I went through the turnstile, the guy on the other side of the glass said that I needn't pay for the wee lad if I sat him on my lap. I bagged a seat with the same view as in the pic above. The seat next to me turned out to be unoccupied so I plonked him down next to me; this turned out to be a little mistake.

Fulham scored and the wee lad promptly started to pummel the guy on the other side of him – a Fulham fan. On damage was done, but it was an indication that tribal instincts are ingrained early.

Now he supports Barnet FC and sponsors some of their team kit, which can only be a good thing.

As for tonight, I'll have to console myself with some beer in my Charlton mug as the live text feed supplied by the BBC occasionally updates our unexpected victory. This is as close as I'm going to get to assuaging my Addickshun. Unfortunately, I'm too late to treat myself to some Charlton-branded sweets from the club's online shop. They're offering "a new range of 12 different types of. These are: teddy bears, cherry kisses, wine gums, fruit pastilles, foal bananas, foam shrimps, cola bottles, jelly babies, midget gems, berry bites, jelly beans and fizzy fish."

Yum, even though each bag costs £1.60 (c.Rp.23,000).

A final question; why on earth is ESPN showing Manyoo v Man City? Who could possibly be interested in that local derby, eh?

COYA

So, we lost four nil, but were not disgraced: our lads did themselves proud.

The League One leader's performance belied the scoreline."

There's a dream afoot to cover the Eiffel Tower in Paris with thousands of hemp or sack-cloth bags that would carry soil and a large variety of plants [which] would be added gradually, working from the bottom upwards in the same way as a plant grows, over the second half of 2012.

This "would symbolize the reconciliation of nature and mankind."

So would this.

Because our parents and teachers had “fought the war for the likes of us”, in the 50′s and 60s we were raised to be conformists. Many of our teachers had seen service in World War 2 and had subsequently learned how to teach in a one year course at one of the 55 emergency training collegs hastily established to meet the demand.

Naturally discipline was strict, almost military at times. In state-run schools, and also in private schools where at least part of the funding came from government, corporal punishment was not outlawed by Parliament until 1987.

The 1944 Education Act introduced the Tripartite System of secondary education which consisted of three different types of secondary school: grammar, secondary technical schools and secondary modern. It allowed for the creation of comprehensive schools which would combine these strands. As to who went where, the 11+ exam was introduced. The grammar schools were intended for children who would later be expected to go onto to tertiary education and gain a university degree before entering the workplace.

It was my misfortune to be the only boy from my primary school to go to a grammar school founded in 1652 with the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, a guild granted a royal charter in 1444 by King Henry VI with the power to import, regulate and control the manufacture and sale of leather throughout London, as its Board of Trustees. I was lonely and ill-suited to the learning of Latin by rote, or mathematics come to think of it, and I was generally streamed in the lowest class each year. My reports always had the comment that I had ability “but could do better”.

Because I was extremely short-sighted, as my owl-like glasses proved, my sporting endeavours were confined to running the line for rugby matches, or going on cross-country runs. As the school playing field was in suburbia, this meant running through streets with little to view. Unfortunately, I was rather good at that and got picked to be one of the twelve in the school’s cross-country team against Shooter’s Hill Grammar. I made sure that I came in 23rd (not 24th and last) so that I wouldn’t be picked again!

I was not such a loner that I considered suicide, which poor Terry Stitson did by hanging himself from a clothes peg in the changing room. All the same, the only friends I had were similar misfits.

(If you really want to know which school this was, and still is although it is now co-educational, then you may like to know that noted jazz-rock musician Tony Reeves left two or three years before I did. A couple of other ‘Old Boys’, now deceased, were Henry Williamson, author of Tarka the Otter and a member of the British Union of Fascists, and Edward Nelson, whose “moving portrait of his wife won the prize for the best portrait in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1947.”)

I eventually moved on to a three year course at a Teacher Training College. Because I was not under any compulsion to take part in sporting activities, I took to them with alacrity and represented the college in the following sports: football, field hockey, badminton, tennis, and stoolball. I even on occasion played cricket and seven-a-side rugby (without my glasses), generally because there was a desperation to make up the numbers.  .

Obviously, being given the freedom to grow into adulthood, to be individually responsible for one’s actions, was liberating.

School was inhibiting and I had few outlets for individual expression, so greatly admired the few who broke the mould. There was a school band among my contemporaries, Karl King and the Vendettas. Karl was not at our school, but the others were. Thanks to the power of the internet, you can see some memorabilia and hear their demo single here.

One outlet we did have was the fantasy world of comics with the Bash Street Kids and the Nigel Molesworth books written by Geoffrey Willans, with cartoon illustrations by Ronald Searle, which ridiculed skool rools and dissiplin and pompus teechers at St. Custard’s.

It is the death at the weekend of Ronald Searle, at the ripe age of 91, which has occasioned this post. Apart from Molesworth, as “as any fule kno”, Searle also created St. Trinian’s, a fictional girls’ boarding school that later became the subject of a popular series of comedy films which were regularly shown on our (b&w) TV. (Ignore the 2007 remake.)

Searle’s publisher, Simon Winder said, “He created an alternative to the conformity of Harold Macmillan’s Britain. He gave Britain in the 1950s particularly a sense of anarchy. He was extraordinarily sceptical about all forms of authority and there’s something just astonishingly anarchic about Molesworth and St Trinian’s.”

Ah, anarchy. I’m not sure I knew what the word meant then, but I’ve learnt my lessons well since.
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Check out Perpetua – a Ronald Searle tribute blog.
Follow Nigel Molesworth on Twitter (@reethen)

Any chance that you will instantly recognise which country is being referred to in this article?

This is a country …. where democracy flourishes; where a president steps down after two terms in office because that is what the constitution required … and where the opposition freely criticises the government.

It is a country where economic growth has been strong, where literacy is almost universal and two-thirds of the population have a phone.

If you said "Indonesia", think again.

This is the next sentence: It is also a country that beats many EU countries in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2011.

Indonesia is ranked at 100 out of 183 countries, with a score of 3 out of 10, categorised as "Highly Corrupt".

"For every corrupt politician, there are a dozen corrupt business people."
Mo Ibrahim

Any chance that politicians such as Aburizal Bakrie could relinquish one (or preferably both) of those two roles?

Any chance that Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton will be translated into Indonesian, preferably by Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI – Indonesian Ulema Council)?

This book proposes that we should look to religions for insights into how to build a sense of community, make our relationships last, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, and more.

More pertinently, perhaps I should ask if they would understand its central message. If they did, then "deviant sects", such as Ahlul Bait Indonesia (Shiite) and Jemaat Ahmadiyyah Indonesia (Ahmadiyya) would be accepted as members.

Any chance either that its constituent members will remember that when first established by Suharto in 1975 its primary aims were threefold:

• Strengthening religion in the way the Pancasila describes to ensure national resilience.
• Participation of the Ulama in national development.
• The maintenance of harmony between the different religions in Indonesia.

Any chance that they will consider issuing a fatwa condemning attacks on churches by rogue elements of the Islamic faith.

Malaysia and Indonesia together account for 85% of the world's palm oil. In June last year, the United States Department of Agriculture issued a 'Commodity Intelligence Report' on Malaysia's palm oil industry.

Malaysian companies have collectively established over 1.0 million hectares of active oil palm plantations in Indonesia and own a further 1.0 million hectares of land (land bank) which has official permits allowing its development in the future. As a result of these sizable investments, Malaysian conglomerates have become the 2nd largest commercial palm oil enterprises in Indonesia – behind only the Indonesian companies themselves.

Wilmar, a Singaporean conglomerate, is the world's largest listed palm oil firm, with plantations in Sumatra, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan.

Singapore is also the headquarters of Cargill Asia Pacific Holdings; Cargill operates a 27,000 hectare oil palm plantation in Sumatra.

SBY is a great supporter, at least, he says he is, of  the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) scheme, whereby countries are paid to not cut down forests. I wonder if he is aware that Norway, which has given $30m (£19m) to Indonesia to get the REDD scheme underway, actually made $150 million in profits in 2010 from Norwegian companies which are involved in "logging, plantations, and mining companies currently deforesting large areas of Indonesia." Source

Any chance that SBY will stop complaining about locally (i.e. government) registered, branches of international NGO's which criticise the environmental malpractices of these non-Indonesian companies?

Berry Nahdian Forqan, the executive director of Walhi (The Indonesian Forum for the Environment), a domestic environmental group which builds partnerships with many international NGOs, said, "The President has clearly misunderstood NGOs, which strive for sustainable development in Indonesia. It’s also obvious that he sides with the corporations. He should have launched an evaluation on the performance of companies operating in this country and meted out punishments to those who violated human rights.”

Ah, but he won't Berry; he's been greenwashed!

Any chance that any of the above will come to pass this year?

Fat chance!