Selamat Tahun Baru!

All together now, to 2008: Good riddance.

Since we're all now overanxious, overmedicated, and broke, may history treat this past year like a junior tranche of subprime-mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations. (Tee hee, a little finance humor.)

Hopefully 2009 will bring better things for all. And if not ... you can always wash the bad news away with a really good Pinot Noir.

Selamat Tahun Baru!

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Mideast mess, spilling elsewhere

What the world needs now is ... not the unholy mess coming out the Mideast. Yet again.

Hard to know what to say, that hasn't already been said. It's the usual cycle of violence that serves no one. Hamas was not in the right to be rocketing Israel, and Israel isn't in the right with its shock-and-awe campaign against the Islamic paramilitary group. If these were children, we'd sit them all down in the corner and take away their marbles. Unfortunately these children all have high-tech weaponry, and millenia of religious grudges to work out.

Now Indonesian militant groups are said to be recruiting fighters to send to Gaza, the government is calling on the UN to decry the Israeli attacks, and Indonesian medical teams are on the way to help out. The vast membership of the Muhammadiyah group is actively lobbying for sanctions to help end the bombings.

In other words, this is spilling beyond local borders, poisoning religious and cultural relations far beyond the limits of Gaza. For what it's worth: Stop.


Today's Top Stories

Jakarta's history gets its due
Heritage sites largely untapped

Gus Dur speaks up
Former president condemns Gaza attacks

China VP on way home
Li Keqiang visited Indonesia, Egypt, Kuwait

Rupiah stable - for now
More currency trouble could be on way in 2009

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Gamelan for misanthropes

Love the distinct and haunting sounds of gamelan music, but don't have a massive orchestra of Javanese or Balinese musicians handy?

Then Soniccouture has just the product for you. It's a 24-GB library of 25 gamelan instruments, with 4,000 samples to draw from. For those unfamiliar, gamelan is an ensemble of bronze percussion instruments like gongs, chimes and xylophones. Said to be around since 800 AD or so, it's one of Indonesia's most unique cultural exports, and is promoted in the US by the American Gamelan Institute.

It runs around $380 for the whole package. Basically, in your slippers and from your own basement, you can arrange and conduct an entire gamelan orchestra. How cool is that?


Today's Top Stories

One of world's largest gold mines?
Tycoon Yusuf Merekh zeroes in on Lembata, island off Flores

Jusuf Kalla starts listening tour in East Indonesia
VP busy shilling for Golkar

Airport exit tax ramped up
Typical government cash grab

Indonesia gets the blues
Gugun and the Bluesbug band catching fire

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Megawati as shopoholic?

Is it just me, or do most articles about Megawati Sukarnoputri contain the subtext that she's - as the saying goes - not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree?

I have no personal knowledge of her, or axe to grind. But it seems that many journalists dance diplomatically around the idea that she's not that swift, or that she's more consumed with subjects like gardening and shopping than les affaires d'etat.

Now a new book more or less says it overtly. Dari Sukarno Sampai SBY doles out juicy anecdotes about Indonesian heads of state. Megawati, for her part, is said to "lose concentration" when it comes to geopolitics instead of cooking.

Could be a sexist take on a female leader, I suppose. But historically speaking, it wouldn't be at all surprising if the latest in a dynastic political line is not exactly (to use another expression) the sharpest knife in the drawer. George W. Bush, anyone?


Today's Top Stories

New York Times goes to Java
Big feature on Borobudur and environs

Aceh reefs on the mend
Tsunami devastation receding earlier than thought

Visit Indonesia, uh, 2009
One more year! One more year!

Another one bites the dust?
Corruption watchdogs go after embezzled hajj cash

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Indonesia and the Russian bear

Russia seems to be making a full-time occupation of tweaking American interests. Sending warships to Cuba, running roughshod over Saakashvili's Georgia, cutting off oil pipelines to Europe whenever it serves its interests.

In short the old Cold War spirit is back, led by a veteran of those times, KGB functionary Vladmir Putin. Russia's latest salvo: Ramping up its military shipments abroad, including fighter jets to Indonesia. Two were just delivered, with more to come.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Indonesia is famously independent, back to the Sukarno days and the creation of the non-aligned movement, and can buy arms from whomever it wants. So too can it enter into joint ventures with Russian oil and gas interests, which are currently scouring the archipelago.

But consider what Russian dealings have brought to foreign companies like BP, which entered into a business agreement in good faith and got their heads handed to them on a platter. Russian friendship, it seems, has its limits. When the bear is becoming cornered - thanks to a plummeting national stock market and ruble, which together have devalued wealth by as much as 80 or 90% - it's useful to keep that precept in mind.


Today's Top Stories

Anniversary of the tsunami
Still rebuilding, four years on

No Christmas issues in Indonesia
Celebrated peacefully in world's biggest Muslim country

Indonesia getting ... boring, says Australia?!
No major crises in 2008

Massive Sumatran flooding
15,000 displaced in Lampung provinces

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Merry Christmas!

What a year we've had. As the old Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times."

Global financial meltdown, wars and deaths, terror and heartache. Things you always thought you knew, turned out to be dead wrong. It was the kind of year that makes it hard to be an optimist.

But amid the gloom, there have been moments of clarity and joy. The election of a new president, to break away from the tragic and unnecessary mistakes of the past eight years. A return to honesty and reality, of people living within their means and buying homes they can actully afford. The birth of my beautiful second son.

And so, merry Christmas and happy holidays to all. May 2009 represent not be another missed opportunity in this short life, but a fulfillment of our better natures.


Today's Top Stories

Stimuli all 'round
Indonesia mirrors U.S., plans infrastructure bonanza

Bakries in crisis mode
Find buyers for some debt, in exchange for Bumi stock

Rare Javan rhinos found
Hanging out at Jakarta McDonald's?

Indonesia's chess princess
Irene Sukandar nation's first female grandmaster

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