Free Republic

Five suspected terrorists were reportedly killed during police raids at two different locations in Bali late on Sunday. Police have yet to issue an official statement on the nature of the raids and details on the casualties. The first raid took place at around 10:15 p.m. in a budget hotel, Laksmi, on Jl. Danau Poso 99X, Sanur. The area is known as one of the most famous red-light districts in Bali, where people can easily obtain a cheap room from staff at budget hotels who rarely ask for valid identification from their guests. Neighbors said that they heard a burst...

JAKARTA, INDONESIA, March 7, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – As a young child in Indonesia, Barack Obama’s nanny was a transgender “woman” who walked around his home in female clothing and let the future president see him trying on lipstick. In 1969, “Evie” – who was born a man with the name Turdi – worked as a cook when he met Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. (Turdi/Evie, like many Indonesians, goes only by one name.) Dunham had moved to the nation’s capital of Jakarta to live with her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. For two years, Turdi watched “Barry”, as Obama was called,...

Indonesia to build missile manufacturing plant วันพุธ ที่ 07 มี.ค. 2555 Jakarta, March 7 (ANTARA) - Indonesia plans to build a plant to produce C-705 missiles as a follow-up to the cooperation agreement with China made some time ago, Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said. "The plan is now still being discussed to manufacture C-705 missiles that have a shooting range of up to 140 kilometers," he said here on Tuesday. He said the cooperation would help strengthen Indonesia`s defense and give a financial income for the country. He said the missiles would later be stationed in border regions to protect...

Barack Obama's former nanny has been revealed as a gay transgender man who made the future president laugh by trying on his mother's lipstick. 'Evie' cared for the boy she called Barry when his mother Ann Dunham moved to the Indonesian capital of Jakarta in the late 1960s. Openly gay, she would leave the house dressed in full drag - but was very careful that Barack never saw her. 'He was so young and I never let him see me wearing women's clothes,' Evie said. 'But he did see me trying on his mother's lipstick, sometimes. That used to really...

Legislator Tubagus Hasanuddin raised questions on Friday about a recent Defense Ministry purchase of six Russian fighter jets, claiming the deal might have been unduly marked up by $50 million. Tubagus, deputy chairman of House of Representatives Commission I overseeing defense and foreign affairs, pointed out the high price of the planes compared to previous purchases of the same aircraft. Planes already acquired by Indonesia, he said, only cost $55 million each. Indonesia bought six of the Sukhoi jets from Russia in 2007 for $355 million. There was also a discrepancy with the published list price, he added. The latest...

A program providing training and scholarships to Indonesian professionals is about to be expanded by the Obama Administration, which hopes to increase the “number of Indonesian future leaders holding advanced degrees (Masters) from U.S. and in-country institutions of higher education.” According to a Statement of Work (SOW) posted today to the FedBizOpps database, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is seeking contractors capable of carrying out Phase II of the “Program to Extend Scholarships and Training to Achieve Sustainable Impacts," or PRESTASI. (Solicitation #SOL-497-12-000004). The selected vendor will continue to assist existing Phase I participants while identifying and placing...

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...