You Get What You Vote For...

The beauty of a democracy is you get what you vote for.

And, if you get taken in by the charm offensive of candidates about how, once they are elected, they are going to serve your interests because you are the constituents and they serve only at your pleasure, blah, blah, blah (how cynical am I tonight?), then you could end up with this view on a regular number of plenary session days in the Indonesian Parliament.

If you want to read about the lazy Indonesian legislators, and their excuses for excessive absenteeism, then head over to The Jakarta Globe. The best excuses to date have been that parliamentarians work too hard and that they have permission letters from their parties to be absent. It sort of reminds me of the permission notes I write for my students when they want to leave class to go to the toilet.

But, if you just want to have a chuckle about the empty "people's house" then the picture is for you!

Robin Tampoe -- One Time Corby Lawyer -- Struck Off

This is Schapelle Corby related news. However, the main subject of this little post is Robin Tampoe; a one-time lawyer for Schapelle Corby.

Robin Tampoe (photo courtesy of here) became involved in the Corby case very early on. He provided pretty bad advice, in my opinion, because his own ego required that he piggy back on this case in order to make a name for himself by using someone else's legal predicament to further his career. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, this has backfired in a big way and has in fact ended his legal career as he has been struck off the role of legal practitioners.

The advice was indicative of someone not knowing the intricacies of the Indonesian legal system and also highlighted a substantial lack of understanding of the substantive law that applies in Indonesia. In this sense, the writing was on the wall for Corby as soon as Tampoe became involved. However, the advice is not the reason for his striking off, but rather his conduct as a lawyer and handling of client information.

It was certainly a Forrest Gump kind of a moment in the type "stupid is as stupid does". Simply, Tampoe came into possession of confidential information which he then divulged to the world on TV. This information related to prior criminal convictions among members of the family. After being dumped from the Corby legal team he then went on to add insult to injury by disparaging them in the documentary, "Schapelle Corby - The Hidden Truth", by calling the family "trash".

The Legal Services Commissioner initiated the action based on an allegation that Tampoe breached client confidentiality. In essence, he failed to uphold the lawyer - client privilege that certain communications are subject to. In a written judgment of Justice Roslyn Atkinson of the Queensland Legal Practice Tribunal, Tampoe was found guilty of professional misconduct. Atkinson then ordered that Tampoe be struck off the roll.

On a side note. It is interesting to see that in the current Manohara case two of Indonesia's senior lawyers, Todung Mulya Lubis and OC Kaligis, have left the legal teams of Prince Tengku Temenggong Mohammad Fakhry and Manohara Odelia Pinot respectively, and then gone on to make some disparaging remarks about their former clients relating to their respective intents to resolve that matter. I wonder, any ethics or professional misconduct issues there?

What's Your Preference?

The miracles of modern medicine and our ability to save and prolong life are an integral part of who we have become, who we are, and who we will be. It is also a matter of some concern, at least, in a medical ethics sense.

The most obvious example of a current concern is the leaps and bounds being made in cloning technology. I am all for development of new technology. Nevertheless, new technology, particularly in medical science, is going to give rise to some interesting ethical and moral debates.

I have just finished reading this interesting story about prospective parents being able to choose not only the sex of their child, but also the child's hair colour, eye colour, and even skin colour. I guess this is like a little bit of pre-natal cosmetic surgery.

The issue here is that some individuals are exploiting advances that were made with more primary concerns involved. Scientists who have developed the ability to identify certain diseases or markers for potential health problems have also, as part of the process, discovered ways to manipulate cells and genes to ensure certain outcomes, like blue eyes.

Medical research is not cheap, so it is of no surprise that the selection of the specialized traits for your baby will also not come cheap. The current estimated cost is USD 18,000. Having had a look at my perfect little bundle of screaming joy on getting home earlier tonight, I can think of other things to put USD 18 K to, rather than a set of hazel coloured eyes or darker skin.

When it is all said and done, to each their own. However, even if I had the money or the ability to choose these traits, I would not do it and I would not have done it in this case. This, for me, is a separate issue from one such as identifying a gene for disease, such as down syndrome. But, that's just me.

Unspinning the Spin

The WTF factor has again come to my attention and despite assertions on a number of blogs where I suggested I was going to avoid entering the fray again on this particular topic, I lied! What is going on at Unspun's blog is ludicrous and the man deserves to be called for the overt racial and gender baiting that he is resorting to as well as the petty name calling, like dumbass!

What follows is not a clip mark but an unadulterated cut and paste of the comments made and Unspun's response (in pink)! You be the judge!

on March 21, 2008 at 5:42 pm2 Rob

Unspun,

I am a great believer in free speech and Anita and your good self can write and post whatever you feel you need to in order to make your point. You selectively cut and pasted the Baliblog comments and Anita has followed your lead in this respect with the way she cut and pasted my comments.

Doing this might make a point for you but it loses the necessary context of the whole…but once again your blog your right to post what you want…but in the interests of truth you should correct your error with regard to who has said what. I am happy to take any flak for my comments on this topic and would hope that those comments be directed at me personally and not at my wife or family.

Like power, with free speech comes responsibility…

The term whore was one I used and in fact the actual word is pelacur as it was uttered by an Indonesian in Indonesian. If you go back and read the posts you will see that Oigal has a point, it is not his term!

To suggest that in some way myself or Oigal are anti-Indonesian or label all Indonesians with the same brush is not only unfair it is wrong. In my own defence I don’t think that I said in any of my posts that it was a majority of Indonesians or even that the majority of bules in Indonesia have experienced what I have experienced personally to suggest otherwise is a distortion of what was posted…

I will still be reading your blog as I will still be reading Anita’s…I am a committed life long learner and despite the fact that I disagree with some of the things that you both write it does not mean that I cannot agree with you on other things…As I said I learn something new every day from reading different perspectives on how others view their life experiences…In the big scheme of things that is how we all should live life and reasoned debate about differences and similarities will contribute to the breaking down of stereotypes and bigotory across the board.

Cheers…

PS. If Akismet captures this as spam…I hope that you release it for publication…

on March 22, 2008 at 10:28 pm3 simon

Unspun;

Making a statement about “bitter white men disappointed with life in Indonesia (and who have nowhere else to go)” sounds rather vitriolic. Which “bitter white men” are you refering to exactly? Please clarify this.

When you claim that these Indonesian “women are seen with bule (Caucasian) men, and therefore are labeled as whores.”; you are are refering to; specifically the wives of two men (Rob and Oigal). Don’t you think that this is rather too personal and offensive; calling their wives “whores” on your blog?

You now want to know “If you have a Caucasian partner, did you specifically target the race as your potential other-half? Why?” Could it be because they fell in love? Honestly; this is some really awful stuff here.

on March 22, 2008 at 10:54 pm4 unspun

@Simon: The bitter white men - if I name them I would be making things personal, which I have tried to avoid so far.

On the “whore” reference. It was from Anita’s blog. I clipped it but didn’t say it, so wrong attribution there.

And if any dumbass is going to live up to their name by calling the clip selective, they’s better understand how Clipmarks works. Of course it is selective if you can only clip a maximum of 1,000 words

Agree tho that things are getting a tad nasty. is this because we’re hearing for the first time from the other side - articulate Indonesian women who’re smarter and more in-your-face than your average bar pickup or the subservient trophy girlfriend?



These are some of the points I made in response to Unspun's little rant. But as is the normal way my comments are not always posted automatically because they get captured by a spam filter. I am no techno whiz but with a little effort I can set my spam filters to let certain addresses to pass the filter, but that is just me!

My points are these:

Obviously the "dumbass" reference is directed at me this is not rocket science. My comments refer to selective clipping (actually cut and paste) of posts from blogs to highlight a point or support an argument but where the clip is done in such a way as to alter the context in which it was originally written. This is dishonest! The simple way to get around this would be to write under the clipmark that the quoted part is part of a longer post that discusses issue "X". Alas this is not Unspun's style!

Yet Unspun starts his response with the holier than thou idea that he is trying to avoid the nastiness and stay above the fray as an objective observer. He then hides behind Anita's skirt like a little boy saying the reference is not something he uttered but something he clipped from Anita's post, how noble!

The term 'whore' entered the argument way before Anita's post and because I used it in a reference to some personal abuse that my wife and I had experienced, my mistake for relaying a personal experience and not referring to the more general experiences. I learn from my mistakes! To suggest that the term ws clipped from Anita's blog and that is where it originated is plain wrong and a distortion of the truth. Simply, the term appeared on Unspun's blog first because it was posted in response to a clipping he had made from someone else's blog (Baliblog).

But the icing on the cake here is the belittlement of women when his blog and comments are supposedly in support of women with this beautiful little quote:

"... is this because we’re hearing for the first time from the other side - articulate Indonesian women who’re smarter and more in-your-face than your average bar pickup or the subservient trophy girlfriend?"

For me this is a tad sad! First it presupposes that bar pick-ups and trophy girlfriends are stupid and inarticulate! I would guess there might be a few women out there that might be a little concerned with such a charcterization. I am sure it would offend my mother and I am equally as sure that she would give a dressing down to any clown that offered such foolish remarks about women, any women! But I guess in Unspun's defence he does modify the bar girl / trophy wife analogy with "average", whatever average is!

I, personally, am not afraid of hearing or debating the other side of any argument. On the contrary, I live for it! The fact that it is made by articulate and smart women is not an issue. I readily except that there are plenty of women out there in the world who are smarter than I can ever dream of being.

There are others though that might be potentially smarter than me who have never had the opportunities that I have had in terms of education. And, therefore, have been forced in to making ends meet in ways that had they had access to other opportunities like education they might not been forced into the choices they have had to make now to support their families.

It is my sincere hope that Indonesian women write about the posts that Unspun is producing to exploit the position of some women in society. The analogy of bar women and trophy wives as inarticulate and stupid shows a complete lack of understanding of the problems but as usual simply engages in the perpetuation of another stereotype, as a man I find this characterization offensive but I will let women and Indonsian women in particular respond on this!

If they are not offended then so be it. If Unspun then feels vindicated that this reflects a bitter and twisted white man commenting outside of his realm of expertise, then so be it. It is a question of principle and I am willing to stand by those principles and argue for them.

I do not know Unspun personally and therefore cannot judge him on anything but his writings. He seems to want to label me and all of my "bule" friends as twisted and bitter what fellas with no where else to go. Indonesians should find that characterization offensive as well as it suggests that when you are a clapped out white fella with nowhere else to go you come to Indonesia.

My loyal readers, you be the judge as to whose comments elicit responses of twisted and bitter. But back to my point, the postings of Unspun are manipulative, deceptive, prejudiced, and quite often racist in their exploitation of racial stereotypes. Once again my loyal readers you be the judge.

This post is not intended to be personal in spite of the fact that it refers to one particular individual. Rather it is a critique of what has been posted and the manipulation of a particular debate surrounding a particular set of stereotypes that have been milked by this individual. It is also not nasty, not even a tad!

To Anita (excellent blog) and Marisa (also excellent blog) and all you other female Indonesian bloggers out there (too many to name)! Keep doing your thing! I enjoy reading your blogs and hope that we can enter into constructive debate where there is a topic that affords itself to such debate. But keep posting the "day in a life" type posts as well as it is interesting to read what people's life experiences are. Hopefully, from these experiences and these interactions we can break done the stereotypes and the bigotory that gets under our skin and gets the blood boiling!

Blogging Ethics...

I wonder what blogging ethics are? What constitutes intellectual honesty and integrity?

I am a man of principle and call things as I see them and admit my mistakes when I get it wrong but it does not seem that everyone who blogs is like me, which is probably a good thing as the statistics indicate that I am not a popular read. So, perhaps I should abandon my principles and go for the popularity judged by visits or comments or something or whatever it is that determines what blogs are popular and what are not.

Yet, I am not going to do that. I am not going to abandon my principles and if people read me good, if they don't so be it! My blog is as much for myself as it is for anyone else. It is my stress value to vent and rant when I want to and to inform of happenings in and around me, but that's it! You get what you get!

It seems that comments I have made and some comments of my blog colleagues, some I know personally and some I know only as blogging kindred spirits, have touched a raw nerve and elicited a number of personal attacks that were not there and selective interpretations of what was.

As I said, I am a man of principle. I stand by and will defend the opinions that I hold through rational argument and debate. But when that argument and debate degenerates into personal attacks and plain distortion of the arguments made to paint the comments out of their original context. This is a standard journalistic and writing trick to deflect scrutiny of any response.

You will see that it is possible to be duped by the media. This blog contains one such example of this in relation to a post I made about Schapelle Corby. My error was corrected after one of my readers alerted me to the distortion that I had inadvertently continued to perpetrate. It would be refreshing if some others were quite as upfront and forthright in correcting the distortions that they allow to be perpetrated through their blogs when notified of the distortion...Ahhh to be so lucky.

This is not a whinge, although I am sure somewhere out there can suitably distort it into something else that resembles a whinge, but once again it is a reflection of my own personal experiences and my own personal opinions. If it offends then perhaps those that it offends should take a breath and consider why they are offended.

I am a nice bloke...read my posts and comments on other blogs. When I offend I apologise for the offence and correct a misrepresentation or mistake if one is made.

These recent experiences have not turned me off blogging but rather reinforced my belief that this is a perfect forum for open discussion and debate...so I am here for the long haul...get used to it, whether you like it or not!

Have a good weekend!