Banggai Crow MSU expert says endangered Indonesia crow survives Associated Press October 17, 2009 EAST LANSING, Mich. - A Michigan State University researcher says a crow species long feared extinct still survives on a remote mountainous island in Indonesia. Naturalists say that paves the way for efforts to protect the Banggai crow, previously known to scientists from a pair of century-old [...] Read Full Story

Riff-raff at Ya’Udahs, Jakarta, 2008. I was tasked to write this essay for my ‘Concepts and Theories in Geography’ course. Thought I would share it here. Who I am as a Geographer Michel Foucault once stated that everything he wrote was autobiography. Experience makes us who we are. I grew up in a small town in Eastern [...] Read Full Story

The Urban Foot: King Street and Fort Street, Honolulu, Hawaii Turn Buy Nothing Day up a notch this year by joining the Wildcat General Strike! On November 27/28 we are asking you to claw at capitalism and sink your teeth deeper into the corporate machine. Buy Nothing Day was a radical concept when we first introduced it [...] Read Full Story

Photo: AFP Transparency International has released its Corruption Perceptions Index  for 2009. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) table shows a country’s ranking and score, the number of surveys used to determine the score, and the confidence range of the scoring. The rank shows how one country compares to others included in the index. The CPI score indicates the [...] Read Full Story

Photo: Jakarta Globe Tailors working by candlelight in Central Jakarta on Thursday. The shop was plunged into darkness for three hours. (Photo: Yudhi Sukma Wijaya, JG)   I have often thought that one of the most interesting things about Jakarta is that it is a place where one can actually experience the future. from Spero News 11.12.2009 Indonesia: Jakarta [...] Read Full Story

Photo: The Jakarta Globe (“Cities are [supposed to be] developed for people, not for cars. The city of Jakarta provides only for cars and motorcycles.” –Milatia Kusuma Mu’min, Indonesian country director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.) – The Gray Wave of the Great Transformation could be used to describe Jakarta. However this is the [...] Read Full Story

Photo via Pat Dollard On subject of ‘pirates’… From MIT Press: The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations by Daniel Heller-Roazen “The pirate is the original enemy of humankind. As Cicero famously remarked, there are certain enemies with whom one may negotiate and with whom, circumstances permitting, one may establish a truce. But there is also an [...] Read Full Story

This is Sumatra. photo: DIMAS ARDIAN/GETTY from The Independent Illegal logging responsible for loss of 10 million hectares in Indonesia By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent Monday, 26 October 2009 The Independent “Lush tropical rainforest once covered almost all of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands between the Indian and Pacific oceans. And just half a century ago, 80 per cent remained. But [...] Read Full Story

Translation: This country needs many polygamy volunteers. Conflicts, natural disasters, poverty, and ‘old’ virgins are the serious problems afflicting our country’s women. Thus, this country needs volunteers for polygamous marriages to overcome this nationwide female problem. photo: from Cycads A bad idea which apparently is not a new bad idea at all. ‘Polygamy club’ draws criticism in [...] Read Full Story

Out in the provinces… (just passing on the news for friends) BERTANI ATAU MATI – TOLAK TAMBANG BESI Saturday, October 24 2009 @ 12:50 AM CDT Indonesia: Thousands of Kulon Progo Farmers Resist Corporate Evil, Fighting the Police Friday, October 23 2009 @ 08:46 AM CDT Contributed by: Anonymous AsiaThis morning (Monday, 20th October 2009), around 2000 coastal farmers connected to PPLP [...] Read Full Story