The first is set in the US in the 1950s, when the country was gripped by Cold War Tensions. Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy exploited the fears and uncertainties and claimed that he had a list of Communists and Soviet sympathizers in the US Government and society.

Thereafter, using Senate Hearings as his bully pulpit he proceeded to launch a witch hunt against the putative Communists. Many innocent lives were affected. Careers were destroyed and some of his victims took their own lives.

For a moment he seemed unassailable. If you spoke out against then that meant you were a Communist or a sympathizer. There were some dissenting voices but by and large most people were afraid to provoke the ire of McCarthy because of his thuggish and intimidating tactics.

Then one fine day, the mirror cracked. McCarthy was trying to implicate a young man who belonged to the law firm of US Army legal counsel Joseph Welch in senate hearing that was broadcast live on TV. Welch stood up to McCarthy in his now famous “You Have no Decency” response (see YouTube video below) and it was over. From there McCarthy was exposed for the charlatan he was and stripped bare. People realized that the King had no clothes and McCarty went on a downward spiral. The Senate censured him and he died 10 years later, supposedly of a heart attack but widely suspected of dying from alcoholism.

The second story is set in present day Indonesia, which is in the grip of indecision and political intrigue between the various political parties and government institutions . Habib Riziq exploited this situation to build his base of support  in Jakarta through the FPI and is now trying to extend his influence in the rest of this country.

His tactics, like, Mccarthy’s are similar. Thuggism that intimidates dissenting voices. The FPI has been threatening people and even the police with impunity. Even though there are dissenting voices, people are generally afraid of confronting him or the FPI. They not only destroy lives but also property.

Now comes  the fine day yesterday in which hundreds of people from the Dayak community in Kalimantan stood up to Habib and the FPI by banning him from landing in Palankaraya airport and rejecting the FPI’s presence in their backyard. Is this Indonesia’s “You have no decency” moment?

Langkah Suku Dayak Tolak FPI Bisa Jadi Contoh – Nasional – Beritasatu.com

“Ini momentum bagi masyarakat lain, bisa jadi contoh untuk jangan diam saja kalau melihat ada benih-benih intoleransi,” kata Bonar.

Keberanian masyarakat adat suku Dayak untuk menolak keberadaan Front Pembela Islam FPI di Provinsi Kalimantan Tengah harus dihargai dan menjadi contoh bagi masyarakat lain untuk berani menentang benih-benih intoleransi antar umat beragama.

“Keberanian masyarakat Dayak untuk menolak FPI secara terbuka itu harus kita hargai, dan seharusnya menjadi inspirasi bagi yang lain untuk berani bicara dan bertindak melawan intoleransi,” kata Wakil Ketua Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, Bonar Tigor Naipospos, hari ini.

Ratusan masyarakat adat Dayak di Palangkaraya menolak kedatangan anggota FPI ke kota tersebut dalam rangka tablig akbar, karena khawatir keberadaan mereka akan mengganggu keharmonisan antar umat beragama di Provinsi Kalteng.Menurut Bonar, penolakan tersebut sangat wajar dan bisa dimengerti mengingat catatan aksi FPI.”FPI kan sudah ada di Kalimantan Timur, mereka sudah melakukan sweeping beberapa kali dan bahkan menganggu komunitas Ahmadiyah di Samarinda. Wajar kalau para pemuda Dayak khawatir kalau kejadian yang sama akan terulang di provinsi mereka,” kata Bonar.

Menurutnya, ada lebih banyak lagi pengikut Ahmadiyah di provinsi Kalimantan Tengah, bahkan jumlahnya adalah yang terbesar di provinsi Kalimantan.Lebih jauh Bonar menambahkan bahwa penolakan masyarakat adat Dayak terhadap keberadaan FPI tetap membutuhkan alasan yang sangat kuat agar tidak menentang hak umum untuk berserikat dan mendirikan organisasi.

Bonar juga mengatakan sebaiknya dijalin dialog antara kedua pihak dan FPI harus berjanji bahwa mereka tidak akan melakukan tindakan kekerasan dan melanggar hukum.”Jika mereka tidak mau menurut syarat tersebut, barulah bisa ditolak keberadaannya,” kata Bonar.Bonar menambahkan radikalisme adalah hal yang tidak mungkin bisa dihindarkan, namun selagi para penganut kepercayaan radikal tersebut tidak melakukan tindak kekerasan atau menyebarkan pesan kebencian maka keberadaannya masih bisa ditoleransi.

“Ini momentum bagi masyarakat lain, bisa jadi contoh untuk jangan diam saja kalau melihat ada benih-benih intoleransi,” kata Bonar.

Then there is the court of public opinion in which Anas has been virtually tried, judged and convicted as guilty as sin when it comes to corruption. That this is so is seen in the fast deteriorating confidence that Indonesian voters have in the Democrat Party, as attested to by several political polls. It now looks that unless the Democrats have a house keeping they will continue to lose support just in time to be trounced in the 2014 general elections.

Sooner rather than later Anas will, because of his conviction in the Court of Public Opinion, become such an embarrassment that he would be forced to step down.

What’s funny here is that Anas and his supporters have only themselves to blame as they virtually pleaded no contest to all the charges leveled at them in the Court of Public Opinion. There was no attempt at all to plead his case before the public, to convince the public that he was unfairly accused and that he is innocent.

All this is indicative of the elite politics mindset that Indonesia’s politicians embrace. Theirs is a world where what matters are the intrigues of palace politics, political patronage and the backdrop deals. These practices have no place in a democracy where, sooner or later, public opinion will assert itself.

So. What are the Democrats going to do? Make lame noises about how Ana’s should go and then wring their hands in hopelessness and do nothing? Or take decisive steps and, if nothing else, suspend Ana’s from all positions and power until it all blows over. The former course is to court certain defeat at the upcoming polls. The latter at least gives them a chance to repair the damage before the polling starts.

detikNews : Bukan Tersangka, Anas Tak Akan Mundur

Makassar – Ketua Umum DPP Partai Demokrat Anas Urbaningrum menanggapi sambil lalu desakan mundur dari internal Partai Demokrat seperti yang diserukan Ruhut Sitompul. Anas menegaskan dia tidak berstatus terdakwa atau tersangka.

“Anda semua tahu, ini obyektif sekali, saya bukan terdakwa, bukan tersangka, saksi saja tidak, statusnya jelas seperti itu,” ujar Anas saat ditanya detikcom soal desakan mundur dari internal partainya, usai melantik Pengurus DPC Demokrat Kabupaten Gowa, di Gedung Haji Bate, Sungguminasa, Sulsel, Rabu (8/2/2012).

Anas menambahkan, partainya memiliki mekanisme yang dijalankan berdasarkan AD/ART, etika dan peraturan organisasi. Terkait permintaan mundur, Anas menyerahkan semuanya pada mekanisme partainya.

“Menyangkut proses hukum, pendirian kami jelas, kami menghormati proses hukum, kami menyerahkan sepenuhnya pada aparat hukum untuk memproses secara adil dan obyektif, berdasarkan prinsip-prinsip penegakan hukum yang adil, bukan berdasarkan desakan-desakan atau tekanan opini,” pungkas Anas.

Sebelumnya, Ruhut Sitompul meminta Ketua Umum PD Anas Urbaningrum mundur demi masa depan PD yang lebih baik. Apalagi jika dikaitkan dengan pemilu 2014 mendatang. Kasus-kasus yang berkaitan pengurus PD, dimungkinkan membuat citra dan perolehan suara partai jeblok.

Take this morning for instance. Unspun was at the gym at the break of dawn doing battle with the Flab when in comes this hulking Australian to do some workout. In between sets of weights, however, he would look at himself in the mirror and practice his golf swings with all the seriousness of someone about to play at St Andrew’s.

Why is it that golf is the only game where the players practice their swings unabashedly in public? What’s so special about the game that strips otherwise sensible persons from the capacity of self-realization? What magical sway doe sit hold over them that they do not know how ridiculous they look to others with the Air Golf maneuvers? It all looks like Air Guitar with the music turned off.

But what intrigues Unspun is why  is it only golf that produces such absurd behavior. We do not see tennis players, football players, swimmers or runners, or basket ball players, or billiards players get into a reverie, take leave of their senses and start practicing their moves in public? So why golfers?

This is one of the mysteries of life for me. Anyone care to enlighten us on this phenomenon?

Make no mistake, Unspun’s 100 percent in agreement with Wicaksono aka Ndoro Kakung in the story below. There are just too many Twitter accounts to be able to crack down on, and who’s to decide what’s insulting and what’s not? One person’s insult may be another person’s attempt at honesty.

Nevertheless the nature of Twitter users have changed somewhat in Indonesia. It used to be quite a friendly and quite a well-mannered place. Disagreements were allowed and there was some decorum. Lately however, maybe because every man and his dog are now on Twitter, the nature of the conversations there have deteriorated and some Tweeters have built a sizable following based on Twits that insult others. One young journalist, for instance, has about 20,000 people following merely because he pisses on anyone and everything within range. The Tweets are an angry rant at the world and not at all even witty or intelligent, which would have mitigated its boorishness.

Sadly, there is more and more people like that journalist. They have a following because the Twitter crowd in Indonesia is looking for entertainment, not information or conversations. They get excited when someone is pissing on others and if a pissing contest ensues between two people it is even more entertaining. And if you have detractors who dare not confront you face to face, the anonymity and impersonal nature of Twitter allows them to join in the pissing contest, a bit like the Roman senators joining in to stab at Cesar during the Ides of March.

In social media terms they are trolls. A troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous or off topic messages either in Twitter or other social platforms with the primary intent of provoking a reaction or of distracting you from the topic in discussion. Such people are not open to reason, no matter how much you try. What do you do with people like that?

The best course of action is to monitor what they say but ignore them completely. If they don’t get a rise out of you they will eventually tire and pick on someone else.

And what of the ever lingering electronic disparagement they have made of you? Relax. There is so much clutter and insults out there that such posts will hardly make a dent because even though social media is the rave of the town it is often the traditional media that legitimizes or gives credibility to a story or claim. Unless that happens there is very little reason to rise to their bait.

By announcing that the Government is targeting the trolls, Tifatul is playing exactly into their hands. Already Twitter today is full of rude and insulting remarks about the Minister. Some things are best left alone. There is too much of other important things for the Information Minister to do, such as how to close the digital divide and improve the bandwidth and the horrible state of mobile communications in this country. They have too much time on their hands, indeed.

‘Rude’, ‘Anonymous’ Tweeters Beware: Tifatul to Target Twitter | The Jakarta GlobeAfter blocking access to almost one million pornographic Web sites, the Communication and Information Technology Ministry is now targeting anonymous accounts on Twitter. Minister Tifatul Sembiring said on Monday that he has learned that Twitter was filled with many anonymous accounts that often use insults to attack other people.

“We are now studying it. Because if they really violate [laws] and insult people, they could be reported as spam. Then their [accounts] could be closed by Twitter officials,” he said. Complaints can be filed against Twitter users that disturb the public or attack and offend public figures, he claimed, even if it is an anonymous account.

“If they violate the laws, they will be punished. Principally, every account user could be held responsible by tracing his position and device,” he said. Based on the Information and Electronic Transactions ITE Law, Tifatul said, there are five violations in the cyber world that can warrant legal charges: pornography, gambling, threats, fraud and blasphemy.The ITE Law stipulates that anyone who violates the law could face seven to 12 years of imprisonment.

Blogger Wicaksono, who has about 55,000 followers on Twitter, told the Jakarta Globe the ministry had too much time in its hands if it actually pursued that plan. He said there were growing numbers of anonymous accounts, but many of those accounts are tweeting humorous material, such as an account named Suster Ngesot the mythical crawling nurse ghost. “And what is the definition of insulting? It has so many interpretations,” he said.

 

Indispensable information for marketers, anyone interested into what drives the young Indonesian psyche and, yes, even our competitors. Heh.

There was a time when Unspun was naive enough to think that they held some promise of insights and knowledge. But after attending a couple of them and watching their list of speakers I’ve stopped paying attention to them. I trash all the email almost without looking at them.

The reason? Many of the conferences and workshops are shams. This is how it works. They choose the speaker according to which company is willing to sponsor them. Never mind the caliber of the speaker, the quality of their presentations or whether they know squat about anything.

So long as they are willing to “sponsor” the conference organizer, and they are nominally in an area of practice that is hot (social media and measurement are lava for the month) they get to become speakers. So you end up having all these international PR companies and in-house PR flacks from corporations chasing their five minutes of fame at these talkfests.

The worst problem is that many of them, who are so-called communicators, do not know the first thing about speaking and selling their companies. Instead of selling their companies through their brilliant insights and experiences that are shared with the audience, they instead launch into breast beating or horn blowing about their companies.

It is ironic but by doing this they piss off the audience who feel cheated because they came to learn and got a sales pitch instead. It is only if you get very lucky that you stumble on a speaker that gets it and shares fresh insights and experience.

The responsibility of this state of total disrespect for the conference participant, however, must lie with the conference organizer. To make money they have taken the easiest route possible by prostituting their offering for a few pieces of silver. Then they do not even try to mitigate the damage by stipulating what the speakers should touch on and what they shold not do – shamelessly promote their companies.

Yet this happens in almost of the conferences and workshops that the conference organizer has offered. Unspun wonders how long they can keep it up before enough people realize the futility of attending them?

Have you a conference experience to share?

In this week’s update the Raconteurs also discuss what’s behind the online fad of using the expression “KOWAWA \(´▽`)/”, the urban legend behind the wary tweets about Nenek Guyung and how Telkomsel’s online tricks as it launches the IPhone 4S.

The idea behind these weekly updates is that old fogeys like me who aren’t on the Net as much as we should, as well as corporations and communicators who need to keep abreast of the conversations in Indonesia’s social media scene, have an easy way of accessing this information.

What do you guys think of this service?

Find out and keep abreast of what’s buzzing in Indonesia’s social media hive in a weekly update started by Unspun’s colleagues at Raconteur here

Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone. .

Crazier, in fact more rabid than them, however, is the rights watchdog Komnas HAM (National Commission on Human Rights). Here’s why.

The story below is from today’s front page in The Jakarta Globe. It quotes Komnas HAM spokesperson seemingly defending the rights of children by condemning KSI’s move. His reasoning is that students have a right to going to school safely. KAI’s installation of concrete balls could fatally harm children who habitually ride illegally on the roofs of trains. Ergo, KAI is violating the rights of children.

What poppycock! If Komnas HAM was truly concerned about children rathe than displaying their great balls of fury, they would ensure that students had a proper place in the trains. Perhaps pressure KAI to allocate a space or seats for students.

But that is apparently beyond the Komnas HAM. It’s easier for them to criticize KAI and jump on the rights bandwagon. This is a disservice to the students and the intelligence of any thinking person.

Train Roof-Rider Deterrent Could Be Fatal: Rights Group
Mary Anugrah Rasita | January 18, 2012

A rights watchdog has criticized the state railway company for its installation of potentially deadly hanging concrete balls over train tracks to prevent roof surfers.

Yosep Adi Prasetyo, a spokesman for the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), said the move by Kereta Api Indonesia to install concrete balls hanging from wires would lead to violations of human rights as the balls had the potential to kill.

“Picture this: If a student has to take the train, he or she would face the threat of being killed by the concrete balls,” he said.

“Now his right to get to school safely is simply violated.”

KAI has repeatedly tried to discourage people from the dangerous practice of riding on the roof of trains. It has threatened measures such as fines and detentions, dousing roof riders with colored water and smearing grease on the roof

Really? Here’s a comparison in Uppercaise

Well, they do say that the Net makes everything transparent.