political update

It was a bad week in Indonesian politics. At least it was for the politicians. Consider: last week Wanda Hamidah from PAN was caught up in a drug bust at the home of TV celebrity Raffi Achmad. More fool her. However the real news was the hilarious demise of Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq on corruption allegations along with the salacious arrest of his bag man, Ahmad Fathanan,  who was arrested wearing nothing but a surprised look in a Jakarta hotel. Whats makes this funny and ironic is that Pak Lufthi was hitherto chairman of the PKS or the local franchise of the muslim brotherhood in Indonesia. The same PKS that cloaked themselves in religious self-righteousness as the only party free from corruption. The same PKS that championed the pornography law. The same PKS whose parliamentary cadre was caught viewing pornography(on a government PC!) while sitting in on house deliberations. Oh how the pious have fallen.

Predictably the PKS brass have blamed everyone else for their erstwhile leader's poor judgement citing mysterious forces, foreign powers, and even the Joos.  I suppose when facts or evidence are not in abundance playing on the prejudices of the nation is the best that a desperate party can come up to save their sorry asses. I thought that I was a cynic but these guys must have tattooed  the insides of their eyelids with  HL Mencken's insight, (and I paraphrase here) "you can never go broke underestimating the intelligence or the American Indonesian public".

The only good news from all this is that with elections just around the corner there is some opportunity to rid the nation of the parasites who feed upon it. Hopefully Indonesians will demand more from their leaders then the cynical cloaked-in-piety lot that they are stuck with till 2014. Kudos too to the KPK who are ever so slowly landing bigger and bigger fish in the corrupt pool of Jakarta politics.


 

An Unpopular View

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.


Joeseph Goebbels

This will not be a popular post. If you are easily swayed by pictures of cute whitecoat seals then this probably isn't for you. Anyways...

I was not particularly surprised when I read about the recent ban of seal products into the EU. There seems to be a growing trend of false enviromentalism, cheap populism with a unhealty dose of hypocrisy thoughout what used to be Europe. Unsatisfied with their singlehanded destruction of fish stocks off the grand banks in the 80's and 90's the EU has decided to further stick it to the residents of the poorest and most isolated parts of Canada by banning the product which had hitherto comprised a significant portion of their annual income.


The main reason cited by the drafters of this ban was the "inherent cruelty" of the hunt. Excuse me? Did you say cruelty? Well lets consider some european humaneness towards animals. Muskrats on the order of 500,000 per year are killed in Belgium and Holland alone. They used to be killed for their fur but are now (since the animal rights activists lauuched a campaign) killed as a nuisance animal and the carcasses are left for rot. In France geese are force fed with a long metal tube till they die for the sole purpose of extracting their swollen livers au fois gras. Germany culls thousands of wild deer and boar for sport hunting, mostly for the trophy heads. And the nadir or course is Bull fighting in Spain where the bulls are badgered and barbed before a live audience before being put down with a sword. The european parliament seems also to have overlooked their own domestic fur farms which raises animals for the sole purpose of skinning them and dwarfs the seal hunt by a factor of 500:1. Yup it all makes me wonder how these MEPs could brand the seal hunt as cruel but somehow overlook their own little cruelties in animal welfare.

Fact is its easy for the EU to adopt a pseudo moral position in regards to seals: it doesn't cost them anything in the way of votes. I would like to seem them try to ban foix gras - the resulting jacquerie would have them climbing over each in retreat.

The real evil here are all these groups such ass IFAW, HSUS, Animal Liberation Front, Respect for Animals, PETA etc etc ad nauseum which use seals as a poster child to raise funds to support their fraudulant organisations. If there was ever a bigger bunch of hypocrites on this planet I've yet to meet them. These groups have no real interest in ecology or animal welfare. If they did they would have been doing more to stop overfishing and habitat encroachment instead of recruiting sexy starlets and other easily-led celebutards into posing in front of cameras to protect species of animals that don't need protection. No form of mis-information is too low for these groups and they seem to have a Goebbels like touch of telling the big one and hoping that the great mass of the people will fall for it. So far it appears to be working.

The EU should look to its own before labelling other peoples lifestyle choices inhumane. When Gucci starts making fashion products out of straw and the Germans start making their bratwurst from tofu then they can't start lecturing the rest of us. Hypocrites one and all.