Last week’s suspension of Australia-Indonesia military co-operation has been confirmed as fallout from Indonesia’s internal politics. Indonesian military commander General Gatot Nurmantyo has since “stood on the foot” of President Joko Widodo for diminishing the suspension. After leading a counter rally to Islamist rioting in Jakarta at the beginning of December, Gatot is now overseeing […]
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There has been a lot of confusion about the recent abrupt cancellation of Australia-Indonesia military cooperation and, with the exception of language teaching, its resumption. As should have been clear from the outset, Australia has been used as a whipping boy for an internal Indonesian power play. The trouble started at the SAS base in […]
Indonesia’s seemingly sudden suspension of military cooperation with Australia raises a series of questions about the alleged ‘offensive’ training materials and remarks and whether the suspension reflects another, or mixed, political agendas. Military cooperation between the two countries has been abruptly suspended following an exchange of correspondence regarding the ‘offensive’ materials. Indonesia’s military (TNI) spokesman […]
In the wholesale shift from ‘legacy media’, most of what is known about is going on in Syria comes from social media – most ‘legacy’ news concentrates on the ‘human interest’ of suffering and much less on the ‘bigger picture’. But, as has been widely noted, the shift to online sources of information has meant […]
Jokowi and Ahok in friendlier times The trial for blasphemy of the Jakarta’s Governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known as ‘Ahok’), has thrown into sharp relief key issues in Indonesian politics: Islamism, racism and the status of the presidency. But, most of all, it has posed questions about the nature and viability of Indonesia’s much […]
It has been just over a year since Myanmar went to its historic elections, replacing its military-based government with one elected by the people. Yet in that time little has changed in Myanmar and, for the country’s ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority, the situation has become worse. In what a UN spokesman claims is ethnic cleansing, […]
As has been reported recently in the press, a conference of ‘white nationalists’ that met in the wake of the recent presidential election witnessed some members using the Hitler salute and one of the speakers openly using Nazi rhetoric. Video excerpts are available via The Atlantic, and certain of the expressions used (such as the German term Lügenpresse) […]
Donald Trump becoming President-elect of the United States of America came as he rode the back of a protest vote. It was a protest vote the likes of which has not been seen for the best part of a century, but which appears to be finding an increasingly loud voice, in many places. This vote […]
Anyone who is involved in academic work realizes that the language of ‘impact’ and ‘outcomes’ has come to dominate the notion of ‘excellence in research’. This is, of course, why there have been previous attempts in Australia to rank excellence (such as the 2010 ERA Journal Rankings, A*-C) and why there remain notions of measuring […]
Voting for the US presidential elections begins at 10 pm tonight (AEDT), so get a bowl of popcorn, pull up your deck chair and settle in for this final act of memorably tasteless political drama. It will be an over-nighter, but all you political junkies won’t be able to sleep anyway so you may as […]