The Year of the Water Snake

According to the Chinese Calendar, the new year will fall on 10 February 2013, and the Year of the Water Snake will begin.

Unlike the present Year of the Water Dragon which Feng Shui experts said is good for romance, in the Year of the Water Snake people's commitments and promises will be tested.

A Feng Shui expert Gunadi Wijaya was quoted by The Jakarta Post as saying that this new year will not be very good for romance. Couples need to be very careful if they want to maintain their relationship.
He said that the snake is fast and quick as it moves while the water is robust. Couples need to watch for backstabbers, avoid any fights and excessive emotions.

Another Feng Shui expert Yohan Suyangga said that  in the coming year we will see major scandals and affairs that we have not seen before. He said that snakes have poisons with great effect, but people can use those effects negatively or positively.
He further said that the Year of the Water Snake would be good for Politics and would serve as a prelude for the elections in 2014. New leaders will emerge, those who use to compete with each other will work together and form a coalition.

I am not a believer in Feng Shui, I just like to know what people have in their minds about the future. So I hope that everything would be okay, people would be happier and luckier than in the previous year.

Picture :  Courtesy of MotherSky.

Guest Writer: Rob Baiton

When I started this blog on October 2007, my intention was to write about matters related to the laws in Indonesia.

But considering the "very complicated characteristics" of the implementation of laws in Indonesia, after some time I get bored with disappointment. In order to keep on blogging, I write about other matters i.e. Politics and Nature in Indonesia.

One of the blogger who inspired me to keep on writing is Rob Baiton, who at that time lived in Jakarta and worked as English Editor of the Indonesian legal website: www.hukumonline.com. Besides, he has also mentored and lead Indonesian law students compete in international Law Speech Contests.

I learned a lot from Rob's blog i.e. therabexperience.blogspot.com, which muse about the Laws, Politics, Culture in Indonesia and Australia.

Today Rob is living in Sydney, Australia, with his Indonesian wife and a handsome young son.

Please find below one of Rob's latest post about a case which has been highly exposed by the Indonesian media for the last couple of weeks.

Ariel, Luna Maya, + Cut Tari ...

Indonesia and porn, porn and Indonesia seem to go hand-in-hand, don't they? It never ceases to amaze me the level of hypocrisy that exists on this single issue. There are those jumping up and down waving the morality flag demanding that long jail sentences be handed down to people who find the need to film themselves doing the deed and then have this very deed find its way into the public domain. Yet, most surveys and other statistical data pegs Indonesia as one of the biggest consumers of porn on our little globe called earth.

I think Desi Anwar says it best in her opinion piece on the matter when she talks about moral censure, peeping toms and playing god. It is worth a read and you can find it here.

The realities here are that it is against the law, people know it is against the law, and they must certainly know that if they get caught then there is a pretty good chance that the relevant law enforcement agencies will go the whole nine yards to get a conviction. This seems particularly so if you happen to be a celebrity. Ariel, Luna Maya, and Cut Tari are going to find this out in the most public of ways. One arrest has been made and another two seem imminent. The Porn Law and the Criminal Code are destined to get a work out on this one.

It really is sad that this is being played out in the way that it is. There are just so many more important things that politicians could be doing rather than legislating morality. There is in a similar vein so many more important things that the police and other law enforcement agencies could be dealing with rather than a couple of starlets getting the once over by a singer who seems to be afflicted with a little bit of the "Don Juanism" condition.

However, it must be noted that none of this is surprising on any front. All of us who are either Indonesian or who have long associations with the place understand that Indonesians have an insatiable appetite for gossip, particularly celebrity gossip. Indonesian TV is testament to that. We also know that the politicians and law enforcement people often look for any good gossip in order to deflect attention from real issues that need real work and real responses to see them resolved.

Yes, the reality here is that you have a couple of sex videos, pretty tame by most accounts, and nothing to write home about. Yet, it is news that has diverted the attention of a nation, and seen the story picked up by the international press. On the importance scale, the size of Ariel's penis, his sexual prowess, or the preferred methods associated with any climax activity, ranks, at least in my opinion, a very distant last on a long line of really important issues such as the systematic attempts to dissolve the KPK from its current form, the failure of parliament to speed up the legislative process, or myriad of other issues. Then again, I am sure that it will not be too long before we are hearing that Ariel's escapades have directly contributed to an earthquake or a tsunami or some other natural disaster that befalls the innocent in Indonesia. Sad!

As a matter of priority, it is time that people thought about the things that are really important and worked towards resolutions on those fronts.

Then again, good gossip and a sex video is something that most people just need to talk about!

Political Storytelling

Politicians around the world have used storytelling to win the hearts of people who listens to their speeches. In this regards, Caren S. Neile, Ph.D wrote an interesting article titled Spinning on the Stump in the Toastmaster magazine last November. Here is an extraction of the said article:

One of the late US President Ronald Reagan’s favorite stories concerned the meeting of two men, one from the USA, the other a Soviet citizen.
“In my country,” said the American, “I can walk straight into the Oval Office and say that I don’t like the way Ronald Reagan is running the United States.”
“I can do that with Gorbachev, too,” replied the Soviet.
Having heard about Soviet repression, the American was incredulous. “You’ve got to be kidding!” he said.
“Not at all,” replied the Soviet. “I can walk straight into Gorbachev’s office and say, “I don’t like the way Ronald Reagan is running the United States!”
In our cynical age, you might readily agree that politicians make great storytellers. After all, a common definition of “storyteller” is liar. But even the most jaded observers of politicians know that storytelling has long been a powerful tool for persuasion.

On May 13, 1901, Winston Churchill, who went on to become Prime Minister, gave a speech to the British Parliament in which he argued against increased government funding for the British Army. The language is a bit flowery, but the story stands out loud and clear:
“The government of the day threw their weight on the side of the great spending Departments, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Churchill’s father) resigned. The controversy was bitter, the struggle uncertain, but in the end the Government triumphed, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer went down forever, and with him, as it now seems, fell also the cause of retrenchment and economy, so that the very memory thereof seems to have perished, and the words themselves have a curiously old-fashioned ring about them.”

Mahatma Gandhi, a lawyer, became a famous proponent of non-violence as he led the successful Indian protest against the British occupation, or Raj. In a1919 speech he said:
“I am talking the other day to a member of the much-abused Civil Service. I have not much in common with the members of that Service, but I could not help admiring the manner in which he was speaking to me. He said: Mr. Gandhi, do you for one moment suppose that all we Civil Servants are a bad lot, that we want to oppress the people whom we have come to govern?” “No,” I said. “Then, if you get the opportunity, put in a word for the much-abused Civil Service.”

While these techniques may seem relatively benign, there are numerous ways in which political storytelling can seriously mislead and manipulate listeners, with often horrific results. Both Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich and its predecessor, the Weimar Republic, reworked old German fairy tales such as “Sleeping Beauty” to reflect their anti-Semitic agenda. In many countries, women’s rights are curtailed due to cultural beliefs and local folklore saying a woman’s place is in the home. And because the prevailing storyline of the American South for 350 years was that Africans were less than human, slavery was considered perfectly moral.

In connection with the general election in Indonesia on April 9, I felt that we should try to learn from history. Storytelling, like any other powerful tool, can be used by the power elite and the opposition – for good or for evil. So, it is our obligation as voters, to recognize when it’s being used.