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Navy launches second locally made guided-missile boat The Jakarta Post, Batam | Fri, 02/17/2012 The Indonesian Navy accepted delivery of its second locally made KCR-40 guided-missile fast boat at a handover ceremony at Batu Ampar Port in Batam, Riau Islands, on Thursday. The KRI Kujang, made in Indonesia by PT Palindo Marindo, will join the KRI Clurit, the first KCR-40 that the private shipyard made for the Navy. Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro, Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Adm. Agus Suhartono, Navy chief Adm. Soeparno and lawmakers Mahfudz Siddiq and Max Sopacua from House Commission I overseeing defense attended the ceremony. “The...

Alexander Aan was just another bureaucrat holding down a desk at the Department of Planning until his Facebook Atheism page came to the notice of Indonesian authorities in Obama’s old stomping grounds. Now Aan is facing a five year jail sentence for using social media to spread the message that Allah does not exist. Alexander is being charged with “defiling” Islam by using passages from the Koran to challenge the Islamic religion. And while the State Department and the media routinely go on the attack against any manifestation of what they call “Islamophobia,” it isn’t likely that they will be...

Indonesia’s Submarine Play Indonesia's military has signed a $1.1 billion contract for three submarines. What does that mean for the region? The latest $ 1.1 billion contract for three Type-209/1400 diesel-electric submarines looks set to breathe new life into the Indonesian Navy (Tentera Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut or TNI-AL). It represents the third major TNI-AL purchase after the acquisition of new corvettes and landing ships since 2000 and has also been described as a move to “maintain power balance in the region,” prompting various analysts to attribute the purchase to Jakarta’s attempt to play regional submarine “catch-up.” For more...

Railway staff have begun hanging concrete balls above train tracks in Indonesia to try to stop commuters from riding for free on carriage roofs.

A pyramid far older and larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, has been discovered in Indonesia. Mount Sadahurip in Garut, West Java, dubbed the "Garut Pyramid," has been undergoing verification tests by the Ancient Catastrophic Disaster Team to see if the mount was indeed formed by the existence of a man-made structure. By using Superstring geo-electric instruments, surveyors are measuring the resistivity of the geological layers, with additional funding being approved from Germany to undergo excavations. The initial survey has concluded that the structure is highly unlikely to be of natural formation. A 3D contour plot of topographical...

BIG Earthquake Strikes Off Of Sumatra (Indonesia) Joe Weisenthal Jan. 10, 2012, 1:49 PM Just reported by the USGS. A big 7.3 earthquake off the cost of Northern Sumatra. Here's the map. The full details from the USGS are here. According to Reuters, the Indonesian government has issued a tsunami warning.(snip)

Heralding an End to Indonesia’s War of Occupation Kim Peart17.12.11 4:45 amOne day an Australian Prime Minister may find the courage and resolve to fly to Washington and address the Congress and the President and inform them that we no longer agree with their policy on West Papua, that they are plain wrong to facilitate and support the ongoing Indonesian colonial occupation of western New Guinea, that the Papuan people of this territory deserve to be granted the free and fair vote that was stolen from them in the fraudulent plebiscite held in July 1969. Source

Daewoo Shipbuilding Bags Order for 3 Subs from Indonesia Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering said it picked up a huge order to build submarines from the Indonesian Ministry of Defense on Wednesday. The company will build three 1,400-ton class diesel-powered submarines in a project worth about W1.3 trillion (US$1=W1,162), representing the biggest single export contract in the history of Korea’s defense industry. Daewoo now ranks as the first Korean company to export submarines it has created with its own technologies. It first received technological support from Germany in late 1988 and used this at the time to build a 1,200-ton...

Indonesian police in the Sharia-ruled province, Aceh, have detained 25 teenagers, but it is not clear why. The youths call themselves “punks” and human rights activists call their detention an attempt to curb freedom of expression in the traditionally conservative province. After a charity music event for a local orphanage at Banda Aceh’s Budaya Park on Saturday, police in the province arrested dozens of teenagers for apparently no other reason than their appearance. Those detained had come to Aceh from as far away as Jakarta and West Java, sporting hairstyles and clothing rarely seen in the conservative province. Witnesses said...

US offered F-16s ‘to anticipate rising China’ Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta The United States has reportedly asked for Indonesia’s help to counter the increasing influence of China, particularly in the South China Sea, which some foreign policy analysts say reflects the US’ strategy of “proxy by war”. An Indonesian source, who closely followed the contacts between the two countries, recently told The Jakarta Post that the US had asked Indonesia to receive 24 used F-16 fighter jets from the US, rather than purchasing new ones that would come in a fourth number of the granted units. The Indonesian...

European Union (EU) governments are likely to curtail their imports of Indonesian palm oil-based biofuel, which has become cheaper due to a tax cut, to protect their own domestic plants, a top analyst said on Wednesday. "The EU has supported the build of local production capacity that is heavily under-utilised and will not be able to survive if foreign competitors to rapeseed biodiesel cannot be kept out of the market," Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy told Reuters. Biodiesel producers in Southeast Asia and the Americas are making headway in Europe's lucrative renewable energy market,...

Indonesia to buy 24 refurbished US F-16 fighters (Reuters) - The United States plans to supply 24 refurbished F-16C/D fighter aircraft to Indonesia, the presidents of the two countries announced in Bali on Friday on the fringes of an Asia-Pacific summit. It was the second militarily significant announcement of President Barack Obama's ongoing nine-day Asia-Pacific trip. The upgraded Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) F-16s will give Indonesia a "much-needed" capability to protect its sovereign airspace, the White House said in a "fact sheet" that emphasized the relatively low price tag, put at $750 million by the Pentagon. Under a separate tightening...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama will showcase a $21.7 billion deal Boeing has struck with Indonesia's largest domestic airline, Lion Air, the White House said. Obama will attend a signing ceremony on Friday for the order for 230 aircraft, which the White House said would support more than 110,000 jobs across the United States, on the sidelines of an East Asia Summit he is attending on the Indonesian island of Bali.

TAIPEI — The crew of a Taiwanese fishing vessel fought against armed Somali pirates to retake their ship after it was hijacked off East Africa, Taiwan authorities said Sunday. The 290-tonne Chin Yi Wen with a crew of 28, including nine Chinese, eight Filipinos, six Indonesians and five Vietnamese, had been out of contact since Friday, the foreign ministry said. But the crew managed to overwhelm the six armed pirates and retake control of their ship. ... The Somali pirates fell into the sea, Tsay said, quoting the fishing boat owner, adding that details of the saga and the fate...

The U.S. Department of State has bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking “key libraries” around the world with “Dreams from My Father” more than a decade after its release. The U.S. embassy in Egypt, for instance, spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of Mr. Obama’s bestselling 1995 memoir. Six weeks earlier, the embassy had placed another order with the same book seller, Kalemat Arabia, for more than $9,000 for copies of the same book, federal purchasing records show. Around the same time, halfway around the world,...

The State Department has spent $70,000 in taxpayer money to buy copies of Barack Obama’s book Dreams from My Father. One embassy in Indonesia spent more than $3,800 buying copies of Obama’s other book The Audacity of Hope. Again, all with taxpayer money — all while Obama profits from the purchases. But hey, it most be common place to buy books written by presidents to hand out as gifts and put in libraries, right? Nope. A search by the Washington Times of the federal database found no examples of the State Department purchasing books by President Clinton or President Bush....

SUMATRA, Indonesia –Several earthquakes have struck near south Sumatra of the 5.0 and 5.1 magnitude range today- making a tense situation on the volcanically-dotted archipelago potentially even more volatile. The Anak Krakatau volcano is showing signs of increased seismic activity. Authorities fear the volcano is building towards an eruption that could dwarf the one which occurred in 2007. Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Disasters Mitigation Center reported the numbers of seismic tremors now registering from the volcano have exceeded 5,000 a day. There are also reports of a gaseous mist which has seeped from the volcano and have enshrouded it in...

Korea to make $1.1 bil. sub sale to Indonesia By Jung Sung-ki Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) has begun final-phase negotiations with the Indonesian government over the construction and sale of three 1,300-ton, Type-209 submarines valued at $1.1 billion, the company said Tuesday. Korea’s biggest arms sale is expected to be completed by November. Previously, a $400 million deal with Indonesia to sell 16 T-50 Golden Eagle supersonic trainer jets, jointly built by Korea Aerospace Industries and Lockheed Martin of the United States, was the biggest weapons sale. “We have launched talks to sign a contract with Indonesia’s defense...

Former singing star and now Republican activist Pat Boone has repeated his assertions that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore illegible to be in the White House. In an appearance at a Republican convention in Los Angeles, Boone, a member of the Beverly Hills Tea Party, told reporters: “I was in Kenya a year and a half ago and everybody said, ‘You know, he [Obama] was born here.” He added: “Why else would he be hiding all his records? He is spending millions of dollars so we do not have his records. And experts have already looked...

A new report shows that Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 terrorist hijackers of 9/11, continues to promote a violent form of Islam through its school system and textbooks 10 years after the attacks. “The Saudi government has given over its textbooks to the clerical Wahhabi extremists that it partners with to maintain control of the country,” ... As a consequence, the texts continue to teach students that “the Jews and the Christians are enemies” of Muslims, and that “the struggle of this (Muslim) nation with the Jews and Christians … will continue as long as God wills.”...

A film about religious tolerance in Indonesia has been pulled from a major TV network after an Islamist group warned the film could trigger nationwide violence. Question Mark tackles the issue of religious harmony by showing a Buddhist family, a Muslim family and a woman who converts to Christianity, all living together. But the Islamic Defenders Front, a group with a history of violence, siad the message of pluralism is dangerous. The organisation says it is insulting to show a Muslim playing the role of Jesus in a church play. The group has forced one of Indonesia's main television channels...

West Java. Guidelines on how to perform female genital mutilation/cutting issued by the Indonesian Ministry of Health could cause an increase in the practice, medical experts and rights groups fear. “This will give doctors a new motivation to circumcise [girls] because now they can say the Ministry of Health approves of this, and the Indonesian Council of Ulema [MUI] approves of it,” said Jurnalis Uddin, a doctor and lecturer at Yarsi University in Jakarta. Though FGM/C was banned in 2006, two of Indonesia’s Muslim organizations, including the largest and mostly moderate, Nahdlatul Ulama, ultimately condone the practice advising “not to...

Upon his return from his Martha's Vineyard vacation, a trip cut short so he could be photographed pretending to exercise some hidden capability to temper Irene's fury, Obama announced he wanted to give a speech to a joint session of Congress upon its return to D.C., on a night and at time which not coincidentally was already scheduled to be the night of the first Republican candidates' debate. Obviously the white House brain trust figured they'd steal attention from the debate and look presidential because, in their sophomoric calculations, if the Republican Speaker of the House turned down this imperious...

An American scientist working with a team of Indonesians scientists has discovered a new giant black warrior wasp species. The wasp will be added to the list of items named after the country’s national symbol, the mythical bird Garuda. The insect-eating predator was discovered by Lynn S. Kimsey, a professor of entomology and the director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, while working with 12 scientists from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) during an expedition to the Mekongga Mountains of Sulawesi. Scientists are shocked by the discovery of the insect, with the male...

Evidence continues to mount that President Obama was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, raising concerns over his presidential eligibility. Obama’s American mother, Ann Dunham, separated from her first husband, Barack Obama Sr., in 1963 when the president was 2 years old. Dunham and Obama Sr. are reported to have later divorced. In Hawaii, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian, in 1965 and moved to Indonesia in October 1967. Divorce documents filed in Hawaii on Aug. 20, 1980, refer to Obama as the “child” of both Soetoro and Dunham, indicating a possible adoption in the U.S. The divorce records...

Bogor's mayor has a new reason not to allow the Yasmin church to open: the name of the street on which it is built bears an Islamic name.

An Indonesian man who survived a deadly mob attack by Muslim hard-liners was sentenced Monday to six months in prison . . .

Citibank is facing scrutiny in an Indonesian small-business man's death after the man reportedly was subjected to a "harsh interrogation" over an unpaid debt. The International Business Times identified the man as Irzen Octa, who was $5,700 in debt on his Citibank credit card. He reportedly was led walking into a room in Jakarta last March but emerged a few hours later in a wheelchair. Investigators presume Octa, 50, was either unconscious or dead by that point, the Times reported.

AFP reports that General Motors is investing $150 million on a West Java, Indonesia plant. The move is expected to create 800 jobs in the region. GM has about $20 billion left as cash and cash equivalents after having received about $50 billion from taxpayers a little over two years ago. While taxpayers may have reason to be unhappy about the investment overseas, at least GM is making a move that seems not to be based on politics.The plant in Indonesia is reported to have a capacity to build 40,000 units per year. Sales of GM vehicles in Indonesia...

A crowd of at least 100 people attacked and torched a prayer centre of the Christian Batak Synod (Hkbp). They had previously attacked another Christian church five miles away. The violence took place on the first day of the holy month of fasting and prayer for Muslims. A mob of a hundred people attacked and set fire to two Protestant house churches in Logas Tanah Darat, in the Regency of Kuantan, Riau Province (Sumatra). The incident occurred August 1, coinciding with the start of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and prayer for Muslims, but the news was broadcast by...

Two house churches in Riau were burned down Tuesday, the latest of a series of attacks on minority religious groups in Indonesia.

BALI bomber Umar Patek was seeking a meeting with Osama bin Laden when he was arrested a few kilometres from the al-Qa'ida chief's hideout. The arrest in Abbottabad of Patek, the last major figure who was still at large for the 2002 Bali attacks that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, has raised a critical question: did Patek give vital information to the mission to kill bin Laden, or did his arrest by Pakistani intelligence risk upsetting the American operation? Patek was arrested on January 25, nine days after stopping in the mountain garrison town on his way to meet...

S. Korea, Indonesia to launch partnership for Seoul's fighter jet project By Yoo Jee-ho SEOUL, Aug. 1 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and Indonesia will this week launch their partnership for Seoul's project to develop new stealth fighter jets, local procurement officials said Monday. According to the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), defense and procurement officials from the two countries will mark the beginning of their partnership in an opening ceremony of their new joint research center on Tuesday in Daejeon, some 160 kilometers south of Seoul. Noh Dae-rae, head of DAPA, and Eris Herryanto, secretary general of the Indonesian defense...

Southeast Asia’s underwater bazaar Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, Singapore A scan of recent naval procurement by Southeast Asian navies points to the fact that submarines top their shopping lists. Thailand and the Philippines have been talking the talk to add submarines to their fleets. Thailand plans to buy six ex-German Navy Type-206 submarines. Despite facing domestic criticisms against the plan, Bangkok believes the US$257 million purchase will be money well-spent. The Thai Navy argues that the underwater warships are needed to patrol the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand and catch up with neighboring navies’ modernization. The Philippines, too, has recently...

China’s omnivorous energy requirements have been attracting increasing attention as of late, as Beijing attempts to secure any and all sources of power for its growing industrial base. Nowhere is this more noticeable than Beijing’s policies in the South China Sea, where Chinese assertions of sovereignty are unsettling the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, all of whom have counter claims on the various shoals and islets. China’s landward neighbors are also feeling the hot breath of Beijing’s mandarins, however, most notably its economic rival India, with whom China fought a brief war in 1962 in the Himalayas over...

Asia’s Next Fighter Project July 14, 2011 By Trefor Moss Indonesia and South Korea are working on a new fighter, the KFX. But is there really any need for the programme? An international consortium for the development of an advanced fighter aircraft? It sounds familiar – and the precedent isn’t encouraging. The programme to build the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) involving the United States and eight other countries has become a cautionary tale over the complexity and runaway expense of developing a next-generation fighter aircraft, even with the economies of scale that multinational participants are meant to...

Indonesia-South Korea Fighter Jet Deal Readies for Take-Off Amid Expert Doubts Ismira Lutfia | July 12, 2011 Indonesia has taken a huge gamble in a deal with South Korea to manufacture a new type of fighter plane, an expert warned on Monday, with a real risk that the project could end in disaster. “The aim for transfer of technology is positive, but there is a basic problem in it,” said Connie Bakrie, a defense analyst from the University of Indonesia. “Will it be a cheaper and better fighter? Why don’t we buy planes already in operation?” The warning came as...

A 1996 expedition resulted in conclusions that the ancient early human species, Homo erectus, coexisted for a time with modern humans in Indonesia. The most recent expedition suggests otherwise, challenging a widely held hypothesis of human evolution. Homo erectus, an ancient human ancestor that lived 1.8 million - 35,000 years ago, is said by theorists of human evolution to have lived alongside Homo sapiens (modern humans) in Indonesia, surviving most other Homo erectus populations that became extinct in Africa and most of Eurasia by 500,000 B.P. Perhaps not so, according to an international team of researchers, after conducting archaeological investigations...

Homo erectus is widely considered a direct human ancestor -- it resembles modern humans in many respects, except for its smaller brain and differently shaped skull -- and was the first of our ancestors to migrate out of Africa, approximately 1.8 million years ago. Homo erectus went extinct in Africa and much of Asia by about 500,000 years ago, but appeared to have survived in Indonesia until about 35,000 to 50,000 years ago at the site of Ngandong on the Solo River. These late members of Homo erectus would have shared the environment with early members of our own species,...

Korea to Export Military Vessels to India, Indonesia Korea is expected to sell minesweepers worth US$500 million to India and submarines worth $1-1.2 billion to Indonesia, a government official said on Thursday. They are the country's biggest arms exports so far, exceeding even the $400 million sale of T-50 supersonic trainer jets to Indonesia. "Outbidding an Italian rival early this year, a Korean firm has been chosen as the priority negotiating partner for India's minesweeper project," a government source said. "The negotiations are in their final stage and the contract will likely be signed as early as August." India is...

Authorities in Saudi Arabia have discovered a Sri Lankan maid who had been kept against her will without pay for nearly 14 years by her local employers, in the latest case of abuse of domestic workers in the kingdom... [...] She was the second Indonesian maid to have been executed in Saudi Arabia since 2008 The woman says she acted in self defence when the man tried to rape her... One major problem facing migrant workers in Saudi Arabia is the sponsorship system, which effectively means a domestic worker cannot leave the country without the consent of their employer. Campaigners...

An Indonesian fisherman has caught a coelacanth, an ancient fish once thought to have become extinct at the time of the dinosaurs, a fishery expert said on Monday. Yustinus Lahama and his son caught the fish on Saturday in the sea off North Sulawesi province and kept it at their house for an hour, said Grevo Gerung, a professor at the fisheries faculty at the Sam Ratulangi University. After being told by neighbours it was a rare fish he took it back to the sea and kept it in a quarantine pool for about 17 hours before it died. "If...

Indonesia goes on alert against E. coli strain from Europe English.news.cn 2011-06-06 12:25:02 FeedbackPrintRSS JAKARTA, June 6 (Xinhua)-- In response to the outbreak of a highly toxic strain of E. coli that has killed more than a dozen people in Europe, Indonesia's Health Ministry on Sunday ordered all international airports and seaports to be on alert for sick passengers, the Jakarta Globe daily quoted an official as saying on Monday. "It's still too early to be overly scared of this food bug in Europe and the United States, but there's nothing wrong with a little extra precaution," said Tjandra Yoga...

There has been so much written and conjecture on the forced out into the open Obama passport documents that I have not had much interest in exploring them in the name Soebarkah which appears on the document as one of the listed names of Barack Hussein Obama. As an exclusive as only found here though, the name Soebarkah is a confirmation of adoption, Obama's Muslim status and a sort of strange Islamic prophecy of the day Barry was adopted by Lolo Soetoro in that it was not in the stars to last. Soetoro in the name, in the prefix of...

-- Support for Islamic, Public Schools Begun by Bush ContinuesInsufficient public funding and substandard educational quality—-poorly qualified teachers, ineffective classroom methodologies, lack of education planning, teacher absenteeism, budgeting and management—all result in low completion rates after primary school and extremely low rankings against international testing standards, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics.Having reached the above conclusion about one of the largest school systems in the world, the Obama Administration is infusing $90 million into a project to improve teacher performance and student outcomes in that particular system—the nationwide school network, that is, of Indonesia. The five-year endeavor will...

Indonesia Re-Arms Retired Frigates May 17, 2011 Thought to be obsolete by NATO standards since 1985, the six retired Ahmad Yani class frigates have been given a new lease on life. The traditional low-tech/high-tech mix of technology throughout time has taken its latest jump. Indonesia, one of the world's largest countries with the most coastlines to protect of almost any maritime country, has long sat on the fence between the technology of the east (Soviet/Warsaw Pact) and the technology of the west (US/NATO). Currently it has taken an old historical warship and added a new twist to its armament to...

May. 10 – An Indonesian MA60 turbo-prop plane carrying 27 people crashed into the ocean off the country’s easternmost Papua Province on May 7, leaving no survivors according to a navy officer’s confirmation. As the first fatal accident reported for this model, which was developed and made in China, the crash may temporarily set back the plane’s improving sales records worldwide. According to Transport Ministry official Bambang Ervan, the aircraft, operated by Merpati Nusantara Airlines, was enroute to the small port town of Kaimana from the coastal city of Songrongand with 21 passengers and six crew on board when it...

Jakarta Police will guard a mass prayer organized by the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) for Osama bin Laden, who was shot dead in a US military operation on Monday. The service will be held at the FPI headquarters in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, from 7 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. According to Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Baharudin Djafar, the police will guard the event as usual. He added that the FPI did not need to request permission from police to hold the event. “Its an ordinary Koran recital. We can't stop people from praying,” he added, as reported by...

Claims despite 'adoption' by Indonesian stepfather, it is U.S. 'law' that mattersA statement from Barack Obama's half-sister has at least cast a shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of the "Certificate of Live Birth" document that was released by the White House this week in an attempt to stifle questions about his eligibility, by referencing his apparent adoption by her father, Indonesian Lolo Soetoro. On a Facebook page, Maya Soetoro-Ng wrote to a woman who had met her in Hawaii after Madelyn Dunham, the mother of Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro and grandmother to both Maya and Barack, passed away...

<p>Drudge, Breaking NOW: Obama to show long form birth certificate!</p>