Final Days in Jakarta

My final days in Jakarta saw me go to the Foreign Ministry to talk to their North American group, a non-governmental democracy organization, a newspaper interview, and the US Indonesian society. These were very different audiences from students.

I was surprised when I went to the Ministry that there was much less security than at my hotel. There was almost none I could detect. We pulled right up, I walked right in. No badge, no ID check. Can you imagine walking into the State Department like that?

My hotel has built its entrance out 50 feet from the actual lobby door. Your car has to go through a gate where the hood is opened and the undercarriage checked with mirrors and bomb detection devices (this was not true outside of Jakarta). When you get out you have to walk through a metal detector. The hotel was bombed a few times a little ways (years) back.

Humans are poor planners but good responders. Many here think that only westerners are targets because, well, that has been true -- but the local terrorist cells (of which the Indonesian government has been pretty effective in reducing and eliminating) are no happier with Indonesian foreign policy (the reality not the rhetoric) than with US foreign policy. If they were ever to gain strength again I would guess they might change tactics. The "shoe bomber" has now forced americans (no where else that I have found) to take off their shoes at airports -- thank god he didn't hide the bomb in his underwear.

The groups listed above were all educated, well informed about the US elections, and had strong views of the US foreign policy. The questions were the same but, for the first time, came not just the Jewish Lobby question but the "Jewish lobby influencing the campaign" question -- in this instance against Clinton. I will post my answer later in an "here is what I said feel free to disagree post".

US Indo was a very interesting group -- people who had the time to attend and had, for the most part, done very interesting things with their lives. More questions there about the technical aspects of elections and more at the Ministry about domestic views on foreign policy. There were almost thirty questions in all between the two groups.

The democracy group reminded me of similar groups in Russia. It was a little hard to determine their role and funding. They operated out of what appeared to be a house and had a nice meeting room and a very nice little library. The library was full of books on political philosophy, government, policy, etc. They had Habermas, Marx, Burke, Foucault, and a hundred other writers -- all available for student research. They also provided computers. The place was packed with researchers. Very impressive.

Their session was a little different with people presenting longer comments rather than questions and more of a discussion -- which sometimes didn't seem to ever touch -- ensued. One man asked a question so long that, in the course of it, I changed my mind as to whether he was a socialist, a communist, or a right wing fanatic twice in the course of his talk. At the end I just said "yes" and there was about a three second delay and then laughter.

The newspaper wanted to know who was going to win and why they were weak. Almost no one asks anything about McCain -- it is like he doesn't exist here -- it is all Clinton and Obama -- and Clinton only exists as a person that is currently making Obama more interesting by staying in the race.