Name : steven
New York law firms are cutting associates for the first time since 2001 as the collapse of the subprime mortgage and credit markets causes private equity deal volume and structured finance work to slow. Clifford Chance, the world s highest-grossing law firm, dismissed six senior associates who worked on mortgage-backed securities in its structured finance practice on Nov. 5. At least two other firms asked associates, or salaried lawyers, to take sabbaticals or switch departments, a move that often precedes job cuts. Partners, about one-fourth of the attorneys at the biggest firms, may also face some belt tightening. The subprime collapse and its effect on the credit market and the volume of deals have brought a slowdown in work, probably leading to job cuts. While structured finance practices have been hit the hardest, mergers and acquisitions and private equity practices also face a slowdown, legal consultants said.
Name : us economy stagnate
IMF: US economy is set to stagnate The US economy is likely to �stagnate� in the second half of this year, the IMF warned on Friday, as stock markets in the US and Europe fell to their lowest levels since March. The US economy is likely to stagnate” in the second half of this year, the International Monetary Fund warned on Friday, as stock markets in the US and Europe fell to their lowest levels since March and US bank shares hit a five-year low. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below 12,000 for the first time since March, while the broader S&P 500 fell 1.9 per cent, as oil rallied and concerns about the financial sector intensified. The S&P financials index hit its lowest level since April 2003, 5 per cent below its March low. Commercial and regional banks have borne the brunt of the recent pullback, because of fears about rising housing and consumer debt delinquencies. The IMF said continued economic weakness would result in inflation risk going down, not up, in the coming months, and urged the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates on hold for the time being – challenging market expectations that rate increases will soon be required. The IMF also suggested that the dollar had declined to a level at which it was closer to, if not at, its medium-term equilibrium value, on a broad trade-weighted basis. John Lipsky, second-ranking IMF official, said: We anticipate the economy will slow to virtual stagnation in the second half of the year.” The IMF is now forecasting no growth at all in the US this year, measured from the final quarter of 2007 to the final quarter of 2008. That is a modest upgrade from its prior projection, but it remains far below the average of private sector and US authorities forecasts. Lipsky said the IMF does expect that growth will start to pick up in 2009 but said that recovery will be gradual rather than aggressive”. Friday s financial sector weakness followed a barrage of negative earnings and ratings downgrade news this week. Morgan Stanley fell 3.8 per cent yesterday after reporting a slump in profits and credit losses from a suspected rogue trader on Wednesday. Citigroup fell 4.3 per cent after saying on Thursday that it would report substantial second-quarter writedowns linked to mortgages. Further downgrades for bond insurers MBIA and Ambac and forecasts of rising losses at mortgage finance groups Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cast a wide shadow over the sector. Financial Times
Name : The Bush Standard: If You Aid a Terrorist You Are a Terrorist.
TEYMOOR NABILI: In recent years, Indonesian authorities have arrested or killed some 300 alleged Islamic militants, and in Jusne of this year they announced their biggest success to date: the arrest of Abu Dujana, the alleged head of the military wing of Jemaah Islamiyah. Now, these successes have been attributed to a new focus on counterterrorism using elite units within the police force and helped by arms and training from Western governments. But those same elite units have been implicated in a catalogue of human rights abuses and criminal activity. I'm Teymoor Nabili, and on this edition of 101 East we look inside Indonesia's antiterrorism police. BRIMOB is one of the oldest special operations units within the Indonesian police force, and within BRIMOB itself, the newer units, Detachment 88 and Gegana, are spearheading the current fight against terrorism. 101 East has been granted rare access to BRIMOB and Gegana training. Fawziah Ibrahim [phon.] reports. FAWZIAH IBRAHIM: They're Indonesia's frontline in the war on terror, the country's top police force in training. They're part of the mobile brigade better known by its acronym BRIMOB. They're trained in anti-terror and bomb-disposal operations and are deployed in emergency situations. Being part of the 34,000-strong BRIMOB means being part of an elite force. BRIMOB TRAINER: [translated] If you love BRIMOB, clap your hands. If you love BRIMOB, stomp your foot. If you love BRIMOB, and you really want to show it, if you love BRIMOB, laugh out loud FAWZIAH IBRAHIM: BRIMOB is essentially a police unit, but one trained along military lines. It's used in domestic security and defense operations. Its two main anti-terror units, Gegana and Detachment 88, have been credited with crippling the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network in Indonesia. Several raids conducted by the units in recent years have resulted in the deaths or arrests of key JI members. But with the accolades come allegations of human right abuse. Activists have continuously accused BRIMOB of torture, indiscriminate killings and abuse of civilians in restive areas like Aceh, East Timor and Poso. BILLAH (Fmr Nat Human Rights Commissioner): The action and also the paradigm behind police men is more or less the same as the army, so they easily treated the others as enemy. So they took and killed other people [inaudible] of a military person easily. FAWZIAH IBRAHIM: A recent Human Rights Watch report is typical of the abuse allegations against BRIMOB. HRW's investigations in the province of Papua turned up fourteen cases of alleged human rights violations, including rape, murder, torture and ill treatment. The report claims the police unit had used excessive, brutal and lethal force against civilians while seeking out militants. HRW goes on to accuse BRIMOB of encouraging a culture of impunity and that members continue to act as if they are above the law. In response, BRIMOB has promised to conduct its own investigations into the allegations and to punish those found guilty. The force is keen to clean up its tarnished image and insists they have revised their operations. STEVANUS YULIAN (Head of BRIMOB): [translated] Our doctrine has changed. Our motto is now: “My heart and soul for all of humanity.” It's important that we set a good example. We have an internal judicial process, so if anyone targets citizens or violates human rights or is found to have committed torture, they will face our judicial process. If they're guilty, they'll be punished. We feel that if you commit a crime, you should face the consequences. FAWZIAH IBRAHIM: Some observers, however, say BRIMOB may have been pressured to change its tactics by sponsors who can no longer ignore the reports of abuse. Indonesia's elite police force is backed by countries like the United States and Australia in their fight against terrorists. STEVANUS YULIAN: [translated] Yes, we receive help from America in the form of antiterrorism training. We conduct exercises with the ICRC and Germany's defense force. When it comes to our weapons, we buy them through credit export and soft loans from Britain and Australia. ANSYAAD MBAI (Indonesian Counter-Terror Body): The funding is relative. There is no definite number of the funding, but we just need the training, the training for this special team. I don't want to say the number of the funding, and I don't know. I don't know that. FAWZIAH IBRAHIM: While these foreign sponsors may be uncomfortable with the level of accountability of Indonesia's security forces, a recent study was more critical. A report co-authored by the Indonesian Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies found the security sector has been too slow to implement changes legislated over five years ago. For some, the reforms have come too late. Twenty-five-year-old Ponimin is paralyzed from the waist down. He says he was shot by BRIMOB police seven years ago during a riot in his village. Ponimin had been trying to escape the violence when he felt the bullet hit him, causing him to fall into a ditch. That's when seven BRIMOB policemen turned on him. PONIMIN (BRIMOB Victim): [translated] They beat me with their hands and legs. They pressed the gun barrel to my head so hard it left an imprint on my skin. I was in so much pain that it got to the point where I could not feel any more pain, because the attack was so savage. They took turns hitting me, treating me like a ball. They pulled me out of the ditch by my jacket. They kept shouting, “Let him die!” At the same time, I was beaten on my left thigh. Shortly after that, I was shot again and beaten some more. At that point, I left my fate to God. I was prepared to die, because I was at their mercy. In that situation, there was nothing I could do. FAWZIAH IBRAHIM: Ponimin was eventually rescued by a villager and taken to safety. He's angry that none of the BRIMOB policemen who attacked him have been brought to justice. PONIMIN: [translated] It's always the little people like me who will always lose out, and the more important people like them will always win. FAWZIAH IBRAHIM: Ponimin remains skeptical about the nation's security forces' ability to reform. And until ordinary Indonesians are convinced that they have changed, they'll run the risk of being seen as a threat rather than a protector of the people. TEYMOOR NABILI: I'm joined in the studio today by Allan Nairn, an American investigative journalist who has testified about Indonesian police and military before US Congress; Robert Lowry is a retired lieutenant colonel from Australia and a graduate of the Indonesian Army Command and Staff College; and also by Noor Huda Ismail, an Indonesian security expert who has carried out extensive research on jihadist networks and religious extremism. We also invited a representative of the Indonesian police to take part in this discussion, but they declined that offer. Gentlemen, to you I say welcome. Thank you for joining us today. ROBERT LOWRY: Thank you. ALLAN NAIRN: Thank you. NOOR HUDA ISMAIL: Thank you.
Name : The Things that Terrorists Do: "Kill(ing) and Maim(ing) Defenseless Men, Women and Children," in this Case, in Aceh
In Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh, an army helicopter has just gone down, undoubtedly stirring mixed reaction among villagers in the area. On the one hand, the crash -- reported by Jakarta's Metro TV as a shootdown -- killed officers of the hated Indonesian armed forces, TNI, the force that, in effect, occupies Aceh, a historically distinct region that wants independence. But on the other hand it is sure to bring the most terrible retribution if the TNI decides to say that rebel fire brought down the copter. Day-to-day the TNI abuses Acehnese for fun (the rapes), for profit (the extortion and theft), and to break them (rape, torture, murder, school burning and reeducation camps), and to provide an excuse for their own existence in an Indonesia with few external enemies. But on those occasions when the outgunned Aceh rebels (GAM, the Aceh Freedom Movement) actually attack the army or police, the security forces strike back disproportionately, sometimes at the spouses and children. Last week Amnesty International released a report on Aceh noting that "human rights abuses ... are so pervasive that there is virtually no part of life in the province which remains untouched" ("New Military Operations, Old Patterns of Human Rights Abuses in Aceh," Amnesty International, October 7, 2004). They spoke of recent "extrajudicial executions of civilians by the military" -- local activists say hundreds of them -- including "the unlawful killing of women and children," a fact which is not surprising, given that the Indonesian army commander has said that anyone who criticizes military rule is GAM, and that the national TNI chief has said of GAM: "hunt them down and exterminate them" (Anatara, the government press agency, quoted Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu as saying, on December 8, 2003: "People who dislike the military emergency in Aceh are GAM members. So if they have the same voice as GAM members, this will mean that they are the younger brothers of the separatist movement." Amnesty quoted Gen. Endriartono Sutarto at a May, 2003 military briefing). Aceh is actually one of the worst cases of repression of civilians in the world, but, for various reasons the world doesn't see it even though the scale is comparable to that of, say, Palestine. The economy is based on the revenues of a vast Exxon/Mobil-run natural gas field -- or, it would be if those revenues found their way back into the hands of poor Acehnese (2001 central government statistics said 21.6% of Aceh toddlers were malnourished; a later internal World Bank estimate put the percentage twice as high). Though Aceh is officially part of Indonesia, in May of 2003 the TNI launched a full-scale invasion of the place, explicitly modeled on the then-recent US invasion of Iraq. The invasion featured much talk from Jakarta authorities about "shock therapy," "embedded" journalists, and the political "blessing of September 11" (as the Indonesian president's main political aide, Rizal Mallarangeng, put it [Jane Perlez, "Indonesia Says it Will Press Attacks on Separatists in Sumatra," New York Times, May 23, 2003]), as well as "numerous extra-judicial executions of civilians by the Indonesian military (TNI)" ("Aceh Under Martial Law: Human Rights Under Fire," Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, June 2003). The Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda was quoted by the BBC (May 9, 2003): "Honestly, what we are doing or will do in Aceh is much less than the American power that was deployed in Iraq." The TNI sealed the point with bombing runs from US supplied F-16s, and low-level strafing from US OV-10s, a plane that also figured prominently in Vietnam and in occupied East Timor. But TNI has had to be sparing with those Aceh raids because they are hurting for spare parts. US military aid and sales were severely curtailed due to US grassroots activism in the '90s, but now the Bush administration is pushing to restore training and subsidized weapons sales to Indonesia and Attorney General Ashcroft wants to formally classify the Aceh GAM rebels as "terrorist." President Bush senior once gave a good, objective definition of terrorism. In his Vice Presidential foreword to a Pentagon/State Department report on the subject, Bush the elder wrote: "terrorists deliberately target noncombatants for their own cynical purposes. They kill and main defenseless men, women and children ... Freedom fighters, in contrast, seek to adhere to international law and civilized standards of conduct. They attack military targets, not defenseless civilians." Unfortunately, though, the Bush definition is not currently in use. If it were, US allies like the TNI would be targeted for US action rather than aid, and the old president's son would be facing trial -- or worse -- for sponsoring terrorism.
Name : State of the Union. Entitlement, Justice, and the War of All Against All.
President Bush just said "We will deliver justice to our enemies" (US State of the Union Address, January 28, 2008). So does that mean that it's dependent on our enemies to deliver justice to us? That's the way people like Bin Laden think, and Bush apparently shares his mindset. A leader chooses his definition of justice and goes out and kills -- or does whatever -- to the culprit. Thats the way things theoretically work by default in the absence of a strong society, in the condition of something like what Thomas Hobbes called "the war of all against all." But if we didn't have a strong society, Bush wouldn't have a $2.8 trillion budget (FY 2007). He wouldn't have Secret Service bodyguards, so he'd have to wear a holster to the podium, as Arafat -- who had a smaller budget -- once did. Without a strong society there wouldn't be any effective inheritance laws, so Bush would be out there scrambling for work and food like everybody else. In other words, you can't have it both ways. You can't luxuriate in huge social entitlements while ignoring society's most basic laws and taboos: the ones regarding killing other people, the ones that say that society defines justice on these matters -- not individual leaders, or even establishments -- and it defines it by consensus and law (i.e. murder laws), made laboriously over time. So if Bush wants to go out and kill somebody with a sword, as he might in a Hobbesian world, that's up to him. But he shouldn't be surprised -- or complain -- when he's arrested by society's law-enforcers.
Name : Kejelasan tercapai, Penindas bertahan di tempat: kesepakatan yang melucuti senjata sepihak di Aceh
Hari ini (15 Agustus 2005), Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM) akan menandatangani kesepakatan dengan pemerintah Indonesia. Dengan ini mereka sepakat untuk meletakkan senjata dan menerima amnesti, uang dan tanah pertanian. Mereka akan diizinkan membentuk partai politik lokal dan sebagai imbalannya, membuat janji politik untuk diam: dalam hukum Indonesia, partai ini tidak akan diizinkan untuk menganjurkan apa yang selama ini menjadi pendiriam GAM-kemerdekaan untuk Aceh, atau sekurang-kurangnya pemilihan melalui referendum mengenai kemerdekaan. TNI-POLRI, yang telah membunuh jutaan warga sipil Aceh (GAM juga melakukan pembunuhan, tetapi dalam jumlah yang jauh lebih kecil), sementara akan menarik beberapa pasukannya, tetapi dalam jangka panjang berhak untuk mengirimnya kembali ke Aceh sekehendaknya karena Jakarta tetap menjadi penguasa di Aceh. Sekarang pun, dalam bulan-bulan transisi mendatang, ketika beberapa ratus monitor asing akan hadir, pasukan-pasukan dari satuan-satuan militer dan polisi yang dikenal paling ganas masih berada di Aceh: operator-operator Intel yang menyelenggarakan rumah-rumah penyiksaan, personel Angkatan Udara yang telah menjatuhkan bom di desa-desa, dan BRIMOB yang melakukan penculikan dan perkosaan di berbagai checkpoint boleh tetap di sana selama secara teknis diklasifikasi sebagai unsur-unsur "organik." Dan di luar butir-butir formal kesepakatan ini-sebagaimana diakui baik oleh aktivis maupun kalangan militer-Kopassus, pasukan khusus yang dilatih oleh AS, pasukan yang paling ditakuti, juga tetap berada di Aceh, bergerak secara terselubung dan menerapkan "taktik dan teknik" dengan "menteror" dan "penculikan", seperti dicantumkan dalam salah satu pedoman pelatihan rahasia mereka (Buku Petunjuk tentang Sandi Yudha TNI AD, Nomor: 43-B-01). Kesepakatan ini disajikan sebagai penarikan TNI dan kesepakatan perdamaian untuk Aceh. Tetapi sesungguhnya kesepakatan ini tidak memenuhi kedua butir tersebut - TNI-POLRI akan bertahan di Aceh dan berhak mempertahankan senjata dan menggunakan sekendaknya -dan mereka yang selama ini merupakan pelanggar perdamaian utama, melakukan sebagian besar pembunuhan warga sipil, penyiksaan, pembakaran, perkosaan, penghilangan, pencurian, pemerasan dan penahanan tanpa dasar hukum. Namun kesepakatan ini memang membawa perubahan besar karena mematikan langkah GAM dan dengan demikian membantu memperjelas situasi: sekarang tak dapat disangkal lagi bahwa keadaannya ialah TNI-POLRI versus warga-warga sipil. Inilah yang senantiasa menjadi inti kehidupan politik di Aceh modern, yang tidak dilihat dunia luar karena GAM secara sia-sia menembaki penindas dan mengalihkan perhatian pihak luar (yang memang sudah seadanya saja) dari pembunuhan warga-warga sipil yang dilakukan TNI-POLRI. GAM pantas mendapat pujian karena meletakkan senjata. Seharusnya sudah lama mereka melakukannya. Selama ini mereka hanya memperburuk permasalahannya, dan sekarang mereka telah pergi dan berbagai peluang terbuka. Namun, tindakan menegasi diri itu tidak boleh disalah-artikan sebagai penyelesaian masalah Aceh, dan yang secara de facto menjadi janji tutup mulut juga tidak boleh disalah-artikan sebagai sikap yang berlaku bagi masyarakat Aceh sebagai keseluruhan. Pada bulan November 1999, masyarakat Aceh menyelenggarakan demonstrasi besar yang, dilihat secara proporsional merupakan salah satu demonstrasi terbesar dalam sejarah dunia. Mungkin seperempat penduduk Aceh memasuki Banda Aceh dan secara damai menyuarakan tuntutan untuk referendum. TNI-POLRI yang tidak cukup mengantisipasi kejadian ini, menghancurkan gerakan warga sipil ini karena tahu bahwa meski mereka tidak akan kalah secara militer dalam perang tembak-menembak melawan GAM, mereka mungkin sekali kalah secara politik apabila dunia sempat mendengar suara-suara damai Aceh itu. Hal itu tidak terjadi. Jafar Siddiq Hamzah, suara internasional Aceh saat itu, yang telah memberi kesaksian di Kongres AS, disiksa hingga mati ketika pulang (jenazahnya ditemukan bulan September 2000). Suara-suara lain dibunuh, ditahan atau menjadi eksil, dan baru dengan tsunami bulan Desember 2004, untuk pertama kalinya dunia mulai mengetahui Aceh. Secara legal dan militer, orang-orang Aceh masih tersubordinasi seperti dahulu. Meskipun kesepakatan perdamaian memuat dua rujukan pada perjanjian-perjanjian PBB mengenai hak-hak sipil dan politik dan membentukan institusi lokal seperti pengadilah HAM (tanpa wewenang yang tercantum secara khusus), hukum-hukum represif yang mengikat semua orang Indonesia juga masih berlaku bagi orang Aceh. Dan, lebih penting lagi, TNI-POLRI-yang secara efektif masih berdiri di luar hukum-masih menduduki wilayah Aceh. Namun, dilihat secara dingin dan pragmatis, dengan tersisihkannya GAM, ada peluang bagi suara-suara perlawanan yang meski masih tertindas mungkin bisa menjadi produktif secara politis. Muhamad Nazar, aktifis sipil yang paling dikenal-yang dinilai terlalu besar untuk dibunuh-dipenjarakan karena menganjurkan referendum dalam pidatonya di desa. Ada berita informal bahwa ia akan dibebaskan, tetapi apabila ia menyampaikan isi pidato yang sama, ia bisa dipenjarakan sekali lagi-atau mengalami nasih yang lebih buruk. Tetapi dalam masa paska-GAM ini, akan terbuka kemungkinan bahwa pengorbanan seperti itu akan menarik perhatian luar yang berarti. Perhatian seperti itulah yang memungkinkan Timor Timur memperoleh kemerdekaannya dalam kondisi yang berbeda. Tetapi bagi Aceh, hal itu lebih sulit karena secara historis Aceh menjadi bagian Indonesia (dan sudah berdiri bahkan sebelum ada Indonesia), sementara Timor Timur merupakan wilayah asing yang di-invasi oleh Indonesia dengan dukungan AS pada tahun 1975. Kehilangan sepertiga dari penduduknya dalam pembantaian oleh TNI-POLRI tidak menghasilkan apa-apa bagi masyarakat Timor sampai pada pembantaian Dili tahun 1991 menarik perhatian luar dan pengakuan bahwa ini merupakan kasus pembunuhan kaum sipil oleh militer yang tidak dapat dibenarkan. Aceh merupakan kasus serupa, dan orang-orang Aceh juga banyak yang mati sia-sia. Kalau mereka terus berbicara menuntut referendum, kemungkinan besar mereka akan terus mati, tetapi sekarang mungkin mereka bisa memperoleh sesuatu dari pengorbanan itu karena situasi tidak lagi ditutupi kabut konflik bersenjata antara TNI-POLRI dan GAM, sehingga represi sepihak yang dilakukan TNI-POLRI akan menjadi gamblang. Yang mungkin mereka peroleh ialah publisiti yang melemahkan TNI/POLRI dan aparat pemerintahan Indonesia yang umumnya represif. Dan pelemahan seperti itu merupakan satu-satunya harapan akan tercapainya demokrasi, kebebasan ataupun keadilan di Aceh dan di Indonesia secara keseluruhan. Tetapi institusi-institusi represif itu hanya akan menjadi lemah kalau bisa dicegah penggunaan kesepakatan ini oleh AS, Eropa, Australia dan kekuatan-kekuatan luar lain untuk berusaha memaksakan pengembalian militer dan/atau menambah bantuan asing bagi militer dan polisi. Dapat dikatakan bahwa dihentikannya bantuan militer atas desakan akar-rumput membuka jalan untuk berakhirnya pendudukan Timor Timur, dan sebelum itu, jatuhnya Jend. Suharto, diktator yang didukung AS. Jadi, apakah kesepakatan ini membantu atau merugikan akan banyak tergantung juga pada perilaku pihak-pihak luar, dan justru risiko-risiko dan kerumitan seperti ini yang menyebabkan beberapa orang jenderal TNI-POLRI enggan menerimanya. Banyak liputan pers dan spekulasi akar-rumput di Aceh berpusat pada apakah TNI-POLRI dan, bisa juga dikatakan pejuang lapangan GAM, akan mematuhi kesepakatan. Bagi banyak orang GAM, kesepakatan ini merupakan obat yang pahit. Merekalah, dan bukan pembunuh-pembunuh berskala besar, yang harus meletakkan senjata, melepaskan tujuannya dan merendahkan diri di hadapan negara musuh. Tetapi pada saat yang sama mereka akan memperoleh amnesti dan di atas kertas akan bebas pulang ke rumah masing=masing. Bagi TNI-POLRI, nampaknya sebagai kemenangan: mereka memperoleh senjata api dan hak untuk berkuasa, sementara Aceh memperoleh bendera lokal. Tetapi konflik dengan GAM ini sangat menguntungkan jenderal-jenderal Jakarta karena telah memberi pembenaran pada dominasi mereka di Indonesia dan menjadikan banyak jutawan. Mudah sekali melihat kenapa banyak di antara mereka akan menyesal dengan perginya GAM yang bersenjata. Tetapi Presiden Indonesia, Jend. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono-yang melakukan supervisi pada represi dan darurat militer di Aceh di bawah Presiden yang lalu, Megawati Sukarnoputri-mempunyai pandangan yang lebih strategis. Ia nampaknya menyadari bahwa meskipun TNI membutuhkan perang bersenjata dua pihak untuk membenarkan dirinya pada masyarakat Indonesia, TNI tidak membutuhkan konflik bersenjata lebih banyak lagi. (Baru-baru ini militer mengirim 15.000 pasukan Kostrad dan Kopassus ke Papua yang sangat tertindas, di mana terdapat gerakan perlawanan bersenjata ringan, dan militer masih memprovokasi kekerasan Muslim lawan Kristen di kepulauan utara Indonesia tengah), dan bahwa hilangnya uang surplus yang dapat dicuri dari Aceh sebagai zona perang bisa diimbangi dengan uang yang dapat dicuri dari penambahan bantuan tsunami, serta kekuasaan yang dapat diperoleh kembali oleh TNI-POLRI secara keseluruhan dengan bantuan militer dan polisi dari luar. (Militer dan polisi juga bisa berharap akan melanjutkan proyek-proyek gelapnya di Aceh dan Sumatra Utara, termasuk penebangan ilegal, ganja, prostitusi, hijacking, pemerasan, "keamanan" dan landasan perikanan lepas pantai yang menggunakan anak-anak yang dipaksa kerja). Jend. Susilo juga yang mengatakan bahwa "menuntut referendum" di Aceh "dianggap sebagai tindak pidana melawan negara" (Jakarta Post, 24 Desember 2003), dan prinsip itu masih akan dipaksakan dengan kekerasan, tetapi nampaknya ia berharap bahwa kesepakatan ini sekarang memungkinkan pihak luar negeri melihat bahwa Jakarta telah berubah. Kalau ternyata Jend. Susilo benar, dan bahwa kesepakatan ini membawa sumberdaya dan kekuatan baru bagi TNI-POLRI, maka keluhan jenderal-jenderalnya tidak akan berakar, dan kesepakatan ini akan menjadi malapetaka bagi Indonesia dan Aceh. Tetapi para petinggi militer sekarang masih mempunyai alasan kedua untuk prihatin: seorang penasihat bagi Yusuf Kalla, wakil presiden Indonesia yang juga seorang pengusaha, yang merupakan pemain utama di balik kesepakatan aceh, secara pribadi mengatakan bahwa sekarang Kalla juga akan menjadi broker finansial bagi perjanjian perdagangan senjata internasional yang baru (penasehat ini mengatakan bahwa perjanjian perdagangan paska Aceh sekarang telah muncil dengan Eropa, Cina dan Israel, antara lain), peran menguntungkan yang secara tradisional dimainkan oleh jenderal-jenderal purnawirawan TNI dan POLRI. Pada saat ini ditulis-beberapa jam sebelum penandatanganan kesepakatan di Helsinki, Finlandia-orang-orang berkumpul di masjid-masjid dan gereja di Aceh dan berdoa secara publik untuk perdamaian, dan mungkin berdoa secara pribadi untuk kebebasan dan keadilan. Kesepakatan ini tidak akan mengantarkan hal-hal ini. Mereka masih divonnis hidup di bawah penindasan. Tetapi kesepakatan ini juga mengacak situasi yang lalu dan membuka peluang kecil yang, kalau mereka masih berani mengangkat suara, kali ini, kalau mereka ditembaki atau dibelenggu, ada seseorang di luar yang mungkin mendengarnya.
Name : Cataclysm by Money Whim. The Islamist Industry. The World Ends Every Few Seconds.
Three years ago today, the tsunami hit Aceh. It was a cataclysm so vast that Acehnese don't talk about it all that much. It's easier to deal with human-scale things. That morning, December 26, 2004, in an inland town far from the impact, the initial rumbling of the earth was so terrifying that people ran into the alley, screaming. One of them, a woman, did so in a daze, having woken from a deep sleep, and, apprehending what was happening around her seized up and fell down to the dirt path, trembling. Not long after -- and it is still mysterious why, since phones from the shore, at Banda Aceh, were down -- someone started yelling "tsunami!, tsunami!," as strange trickles of water indeed appeared from nowhere. Everyone knew that the sea was an hour's journey away, but this was no time for theorizing. People ran to the mosque, which has a second floor, a kind of cupola below the call-to-prayer niche, and Muslims and Hindus gathered praying, talking, and crying, awaiting Noah's flood. Not all of them, though. A few stayed with that woman who was stiff and trembling, then fully unconscious. If they were going to drown, they would drown a few minutes sooner, and in the good company of a beloved one. As it happened, the tsunami never struck that town. The earthquake had shattered the municipal water pipes. That accounted for the trickle, which, in a kind of celestial joke, would be the only piped water some ever saw, since in that, as in many poor kampungs piped water -- "PAM" -- was a mere dreamt-of, anti-microbial luxury. If the tsunami had been high enough to take out that town, which is well inland and elevated, it would indeed -- for the world -- have been the end of the world, but that didn't happen, so we're now talking. But for much of coastal Aceh, the world did end that day, and in such a way that rich people noticed. It was a slow news day -- the week after Christmas is, as they say in America, "dead" -- and within days Brian Williams was doing the NBC Nightly News live, by klieg light, from Banda Aceh. That brief moment in the global manmade electronic sun did not dry out flooded Aceh, but it did bring vast donations since, when people see suffering they can be decent provided that a. they really see it -- and in graphic terms --, and b. they are not told by authority that the dead people deserved it. Traveling west from Banda in the aftermath was like traveling on an Apollo space mission, since, once the bodies had gassed and popped or been taken away, the scene was less beachfront than lunar. There were three old men sitting on folding chairs -- actually, probably in their thirties or forties. All of their extended families were dead. They, still stunned, were a new social unit. Not fifty yards behind them, on a slab that was once a house, there was an obscene graffito. Like a number of indecent writings in history, it was authored by a religious grouping. "These are the wages of sin," it said. The signature was "FPI" -- the Islamic Defenders Front, a group of men usually found in Jakarta girlie bars busting up the places when the owners don't pay off or when they are too tightwad in doling out instructional-use bottles of the sinful liquor. The FPI is one of those useful institutions found in places like Indonesia and Pakistan that are simultaneously the subject and the object of the US Global War on Terror (GWOT, an official Pentagon term), and its symbiotic affiliate, the Islamist Industry. They are both the problem and the solution since, on the one hand, they are scary Islamists, but on the other, they are backed by the Indonesian security forces, which are backed by the US to fight Islamists. Creatures of the POLRI -- the Indonesian National Police -- FPI also works with the armed forces (TNI) (Two years ago the FPI actually hung banners in Jakarta generously praising the POLRI, the kind of street recognition -- that if you're a POLRI man -- you know you'll never get without paying well for). After the tsunami the TNI flew the FPI to Aceh on US C-130s, with the apparent idea that they would intimidate and spread havoc, as Aceh activists reasonably feared. But in a surprising turn, suggesting that even hypocrites can experience awe, the FPI guys seemed to largely behave themselves, ideologues' graffiti notwithstanding. According to a doctor who worked alongside them in the gruesome task of lifting bodies, they were quiet, and -- as poleaxed as everyone else -- went about their work with some humbled diligence. Not so a visiting cleric who I was unfortunate enough to share a van with, who explained benignly that the particular wrecked town that we were viewing was famed for gambling, racing, alcohol, and infidelity. He was suggesting, in other words -- like, say, an American spokesman in bombed Fallujah -- that all those dead people deserved it. He didn't even get annoyed when I asked why the divine tsunami had managed to miss Jakarta -- where he's from -- where the venues of sin are famous (and police-protected) and outstrip those of coastal Aceh. Instead his smile got wider, and still more beneficent. It was like watching American religious -- or some political -- TV. The signal is : 'You pathetic sap. I know the secret. You are going to hell. And get out of my way, I've got a date tonight, in Jakarta (or in Washington).' The tsunami in Aceh killed perhaps 200,000 people, the same rough number as the toll of children killed worldwide, in some part, by malnutrition roughly every two weeks. (For 16,000 child malnutrition deaths daily, see 2007 World Population Data Sheet, Population Reference Bureau, Washington.) Politically, we don't define each preventable -- undeserved -- death as being a cataclysm, though for the dier, and for their loved ones, it is, and, unlike a tsunami, stoppable. This anniversary week, the news reports that Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs got a 67.9 million dollar bonus, enough to put a tsunami's - worth of children in his hands -- to let-die or save, strictly at his own whim. (Alistair Barr, MarketWatch, "Goldman Sachs CEO gets $67.9 million bonus," December 21, 2007). The little brother of a friend of mine survived the tsunami by climbing up a light pole, and when the flood receded he climbed down and, the story goes, sat upon the ground and thought some. The 30-foot flood had swept cows, cars, and children on past him. When he got down he saw corpses and mud. Was he the world's last surviving person? He considered that possibility. Eventually, they say, he regained his wits, started walking, and, with some relief, learned -- as another young man would later say, commenting on life in the wake of one death -- that "this world still exists," which is true. But the converse is also true. Every time one single person dies, the world they saw from ends. The world ends, somewhere, every few seconds. It's a cataclysm. We should see it as such, and, when preventable, prevent it, even if that means contravening some whims.
Name : Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, Excuses for Murder. Tell it to the Judge.
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the Indonesian cleric and political leader, says that the Bali bombers "were not terrorists but counter-terrorists." (Suherdjoko, "Ba'asyir pays homage to Bali bombers in jail," The Jakarta Post, December 16, 2007). It's a claim that should outrage anyone who realizes that the Bali bombers executed their victims just to use their corpses to send what they saw as a political message. (For discussion of this theme see posting of November 28, 2007, "Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers. Cold Blooded Celebrity.") Such outrage could lead to the answer : 'You're wrong, they weren't counter-terrorists,' and it's a powerful answer since you shouldn't claim to be fight