In rhetoric it is a common but cheap trick to introduce an extraneous point and try to make it the issue instead of the one at hand. Smoke and mirrors stuff, you might say.
Indonesia’s House of Representatives members are particularly skilled at this art, as they have recently stalled ratifying the ASEAN agreement allowing our neighbors to help us fight the haze that’s choking neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.
The reason? Lawmakers would not ratify the agreement until illegal logging provisions are included. They feel that unscrupulous Malaysians are camped along the border waiting to buy illegal timber. Since the harvesting of illegal timber also contributes to the haze, they reason, they would not ratify it until the Malaysians promise to be good boys and include a provision saying they’ll not buy illegal timber and punish the evil illegal timbermen.
This is just BS. The agreement is about fighting fires to stop the haze. It is about getting negihbors to lend a hand since Indonesia does not have its act together in resources to put out the fires whose smoke is choking our neighbors and causing them millions of dollars in health of their people and disruption.
The issue of illegal logging is one of enforcement by Indonesian authorities since the harvesting, though it may be done by Malaysians and others, is carried out within Indonesian soil. The Indonesian authorities have that onus, no one else.
The problem is that the Indonesian authorities just haven’t got their act together when it comes to enforcement of the law, which seems to be an alient concept. All one needs to do is have a look at the traffic in Jakarta, where busses can stop in the middle of the road to let down and pick up passengers, and in the process cause massive unnecessary traffic jams, to see what Unspun means.
Unspun 
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