New Indonesia doc: The Burning Season

Looks like an Australian documentary about Indonesian deforestation, The Burning Season, has been picking up some big awards. It recently won an Inside Film prize for best documentary, for its creator Cathy Henkel.

Labelled an "environmental thriller" for how it chronicles the competing concerns of palm oil plantations, the endangered orangutans of Kalimantan/Borneo, and entrepreneurs who are trying to sell carbon credits to Western polluters (and thus funding the forests in their natural state), The Burning Season took 18 months of shooting on four continents to complete.

The issue seems to be reaching a tipping point, as environmental organizations try to get the word out before the razing of forests gets too out of hand. After all, such clearing results in 20% of global carbon emissions. At such a rate - 300 football fields an hour, it's said - the "lungs of the world" are in serious jeopardy.

Maybe that's why Henkel has managed to recruit a new American fan to spread the gospel: None other than California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Can't hurt to have The Terminator on your side.

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7.5 Earthquake Hits Sulawesi

It's one of the world's sad ironies that natural disasters so often hit nations that are the least equipped to handle them. Something like a Hurricane Katrina is horrible enough when it happens to the richest country in the world, so when the developing world is affected by Mother Nature, the effects are even more dearly felt.

And so to the news of a massive 7.5-magnitude earthquake beneath the sea floor near the island of Sulawesi. The nearest town was Gorontalo, and no word on casualties or property damage yet, but the strength alone was enough to cause a serious tsunami warning. In fact it was an earthquake the triggered the Sumatra tsunami of 2004, and which devastated the region in so many ways that are still being dealt with.

It can't be said that earthquake news is ever surprising in Indonesia, since the archipelago owes its very existence to seismic bursts throughout history. After all, the country sits right on top of the "Ring of Fire," the Pacific Ocean's minefield of volcanoes and fault lines. Such is the inescapable fragility of everyday life.

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Say it ain't so, Rihanna!

Terrorists have claimed another, unlikely victim: Rihanna's upcoming Jakarta show.

With Indonesia on alert after the execution of the three Bali bombers, some countries have put out travel advisories about visiting. Until the situation shakes out, and we see if Jemaah Islamiyah or brother organizations take any revenge, many diplomats are saying it's best to be cautious.

And so, the sultry R&B songstress from Barbados has canned her performance, saying security wasn't up to par. Perhaps understandable, since the 20-year-old doesn't really want to get caught in the nexus of international politics, religion and terror. She just wants to sing 'Umbrella', God dammit!

Refunds are available for disappointed concert-goers, or you can wait until January or February, when she plans to come back. But if I was Rihanna, it's not the Smiling Bombers I'd be wary of. What about Indonesia's new anti-smut bill, which takes aim at women dressing scantily in public? That's her whole schtick!

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Indonesian charity FAQs

Hard to believe, but 2008 is fast drawing to a close. And for American taxpayers, that means you want to log any charitable contributions by the end of the year, in order to claim them by the April 15 filing deadline. If not, you may have to wait until 2010 to see any tax benefits.

Don't just throw your money down a hole, though, but be rigorous about who receives your giving. To evaluate Indonesian charities that might be worth some of your largesse, check out sites like Charity Navigator, which has a rating system based on criteria like what percentage of donations are gobbled up by administrative costs. Plug 'Indonesia' into the search engine on the home page, and you get a slate of 40 nonprofits to sift through.

Some of the five-star winners that have operations helping Indonesia's 230-million-plus people: The Red Cross, Direct Relief International, Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, Unicef, World Vision, and Save the Children, among others.

Charity Navigator isn't the only nonprofit watchdog, though: GuideStar and Charity Watch perform similar services. Granted, it might be a very tough time to give, considering the trillions in wealth that the housing bust and stock-market meltdown have wiped away. But if you can actually save lives for only a few dollars, it's hard to justify not giving.

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Jakarta Globe hits the newsstands

Extra marks to the new Jakarta Globe for chutzpah (for those not familiar with the term ... brass balls). In a digital era where print journalism is basically dying a slow and painful death, at least in America, in comes a new English-language daily.

The Jakarta Post is obviously the granddaddy of English publications in Indonesia's capital, and I imagine it'll be a steep climb to unseat such an insitution. But the Globe is backed by big money, i.e. billionaire James Riady, and if he wants a newspaper then he'll have one. (Reminds me of Canadian media baron Conrad Black, who started the National Post as a conservative voice even as it lost millions and millions of dollars.)

Early reports project a 48-page daily with a starting print run of 50,000 and a soft-news feel, with plenty of lifestyle and sports. Senior editor Lin Neumann, formerly of the Hong Kong Standard, is headmanning the project, which kicks off in just about the worst economic environment imaginable. He also has the lofty goal of being compared to the South China Morning Post, the Straits Times and the Bangkok Post.

As a freelance journalist, I wholeheartedly support any new print venture that employs us ink-stained wretches, and pays its invoices on time. But as a reality check, think of Conrad Black's other vanity publishing venture, the New York Sun. It too started with much gusto a few years ago ...but thanks to hard economic realities, it just closed its doors for the last time.

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American dangdut?!

A while back we reported on the unlikely story of Arreal Tilghman, an African-American from Delaware who somehow was becoming a star in dangdut, the popular Indonesian musical style.

Looks like he's been through his apprenticeship and is ready to hit the airwaves. The 22-year-old won the Dangdut in America auditions, and was then spirited away to the archipelago to refine his techniques. He then came back for a November launch through his label NSR Productions, with a crucial assist from the Indonesian ambassador who promoted the event.

I don't know much about him - does he sing in Bahasa Indonesia, for instance? - but am curious to see if this American dangdut push gains traction. Will he become the next Rhoma Irama, peddling rhythms to a U.S. audience that are a unique blend of Indian, Arab, Malay, and Portuguese? Hey, if Barack Obama can grow up in Jakarta and become president, anything can happen ...

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