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Showing posts from April, 2019

Indonesia Memilih: Jokowi or Prabowo?

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According to latest polls by CSIS and Litbang Kompas (via Jakarta Post), Joko Widodo or "Jokowi" is currently leading Prabowo Subianto by 9 percentage points and he looks almost certain to be reelected as president - unless some miracle happens. Here's a rough guide or a simple breakdown of the voting pattern across Indonesia's major provinces and islands. This is by no means a perfect generalisation of the Indonesian election, but I just thought it would be interesting to dissect the voting pattern.  Some groups are not included as their political inclination vary according to religious identity e.g. the Muslim Moluccans overwhelmingly voted for Prabowo while the Christian Moluccans voted for Jokowi. For Jokowi: The Javanese, Balinese, Bataks, Dayaks, Papuans, Lampungese, Minahasans, Flores For Prabowo: the Acehnese, Minangs, Malays, Sundanese, Bantenese, Buginese, Banjarese, Gorontaloan . (Pic: Prabowo won in West Java) #pilpres2019

Julian Assange, Wikileaks and the War Criminals

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There is a famous saying that the oldest profession in the world after prostitution is spying and espionage. The traditional idea of spying is basically to steal secret information and bring it home to your national spy agency. The internet has fundamentally changed that.  Julian Assange's Wikileaks is like James Bond but with a twist - he dumped all of the stolen secret/classified information on his Wikileaks website for a global audience. So finally, after "hiding" for nearly 7 years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange, the self-declared "information anarchist", widely described by the media establishment as a narcissist, was arrested.  Whatever your views about Assange or Wikileaks, the fact is that he and his Wikileaks outfit have succeeded in exposing the US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, exposing gigabytes of diplomatic cables documenting thousands of reports/diplomats' conversations, which amongst others confirmed and reaf