a sense of joy and then a panic

Oh my God, guys, Clinton is in Indonesia for two days. How frakking amazing is that? Japan, Indonesia, South Korea. Between Japan (de facto protectorate, traditional trade partner and ally in Asia) and South Korea (protectorate-cum-ally). A month into Obama's presidency. That's such good news for the relationship, I can't even articulate it. Indonesia has never been considered alliance material. Not that I think Indonesia should make alliance an end-goal, but if the U.S. recognizes Indonesia as holding similar levels of import as JP and SK - and if it shows Indonesia the level of respect accorded to those countries, which is crucial - that is HUGE.

"Indonesia has experienced a great transformation in the past 10 years, building strong and growing institutions, welcoming and developing a vibrant civil society, and at the same time respecting human rights and a successful fight against terrorism and extremism, ending sectarian and separatist conflict, and working to make the world a safer place for global trade and for human rights," she said.

That's right, bitches. Indonesia rocks your socks. Only took 60 years, baby! 60 years! Where was America 60 years after independence? Doing the fucking Trail of Tears? Pfft.  Indonesia owns your ass, America.

(yes, I know the world in general changed between 1776 and 1965 - but if we're going to start taking everything into account, we also have to consider that Indonesia has only been a democracy since 1998, and the United States has been a democracy since 1776/1789)

Philpott, S.  (2006).  East Timor's double life: smells like Westphalian spirit.  Third World Quarterly, 27(1): 135-159.

See?  Political scientists are cool too.

I don't actually like Virtue & Moir (the skaters).  I am biased against Canadian skaters.  Ever since that boo-hoo at the 2002 Olympics.  Canadians and their boring costumes and sentimental modern elegance, blah.  It's like Gilmore Girls overdose.  I have a favorite Russian ice dancing pair (Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin) who were out of the ISU championships because of an injury. 

Other songs I feel "raw emotion" from:
- "Wild Horses": the Sundays [no sweeping exits, or offstage lines, could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind]
- "This is Everything": Tegan and Sara [maybe this is the last honest love that I'll ever give]
- "Exit": U2 [beating, beating, beating, beating, oh my love, oh my love, oh my love, oh my love]
- "Alexander the Burn Victim": Scarling [and when he drinks he hits on you]
- "Running Up That Hill": Placebo [and if I only could make a deal with God, and get him to swap our places, be running up that road, be running up that hill, be running up that building]
- "Is This Desire": PJ Harvey [is this desire enough, enough]
- "Hyper Chondriac Music": Muse [you wanted more than I was worth, you think I was scared yeah, and you needed proof]
- "Leif Erikson": Interpol [you come here to me]
- "Rock Star": Hole [well what do you do with a revolution?]
- "Pretty on the Inside": Hole [is she pretty from the back?]
- "Jennifer's Body": Hole [he said I'm your lover, I'm your friend, I'm purity, hit me again]

I'm reading about what happened to student protesters and other political activists in Indonesia during the '90s.  It's eerie, because it's what my father was trying to avoid when he stopped criticizing the government, and while student leaders were being electrocuted and iced and beaten in early 1998, he was dying regardless.  The irony is that they ended up surviving.  In the past two days I've had to tell my life story to two complete strangers.  The taxi driver gave me advice: don't move to Indonesia, baby, it would break your mother's heart, and don't marry an Indonesian guy, sweetie, marry an American guy.  The woman from the State Department said she didn't know if anyone can ever move on from the death of a loved one, then she put her sunglasses back on. 

In the writing of my monstrous research/analytical paper (can't forget those theories...), I was going to write down an opinion expressed by a man I'd only written down as B.M. Diah, and wanted to find out more on him - who was he?  how was he not a member of the Indonesian political elite? - so I googled his name.  His name came up first on Indonesian wikipedia, but since I wasn't sure if I'd be able to understand formal Indonesian, I went to the page in English.  But it wasn't his page - it was his wife's.  In fact, B.M. Diah doesn't have a page in English wikipedia (although it turns out he was a journalist and published several Indonesian political journals, and became an ambassador, and is general considered a "prominent" non-politician political Indonesian - you know, the kind of person my father was supposed to be, if he wasn't "late, could have been great"). 

Herawati Diah, his wife, is an Indonesian journalist.  She founded The Indonesian Observer, one of the earliest English-language Indonesian magazines, with her husband in 1955.  She has three sons.  She has outlived her husband and published a book, An Endless Journey: Reflections of an Indonesian Journalist.  She also graduated from Barnard College.  Class of 1941.

When I told this to Kim, she said, "Dude.  Maybe it's fate."

I just looked her up further.  Apparently she was "the first Indonesian woman to obtain a degree from an American university" (majoring in sociology, Kim) an act that "aroused the ire and the suspicion of the Dutch East Indies colonial authorities", leading to her imprisonment for three months when she arrived home - released by the Japanese conquistadores - I mean, imperial forces - in 1942.  It ran in the family.  Her mother, who ran Indonesia's only women's magazine and refused to send her daughter to school in the Netherlands, and sister, who studied in Japan, were also dangerous nationalists held on political charges.  She met her husband working at a radio station.  She later met Gandhi.  She was part of a coalition of women insisting that many rapes took place in the May 1998 riots. 

To be fair, she isn't perfect, far from it.  She's a member of the Indonesian elite, and it shows in her support for Suharto - her husband was even information minister of Suharto's administration.  I am not a Suharto supporter, largely because my father was not.  Then again, my father wasn't around to see colonialism, as he was born two years after Indonesia's independence.  He was part of a younger generation than Diah, with its own frustrations - she was clearly influenced by an older nationalism.  That of course is the clincher about Suharto's era.  He was good for Indonesia in a lot of ways.  My Chinese donor couple I met last night at the Torchbearers Reception, upon hearing when I was in Indonesia, made the remark: "Oh, you were there in the good years".  Politically speaking, these years right now are the good years - Indonesia has a president who believes in democracy and human rights, not one who re-elects himself for 32 years.  But economically, yes, I was there in the boom era, because Suharto caused the boom era.  That was when the Chinese, as the donor couple said, professed love for Indonesia.  And when my father's friends, some of them former student protesters themselves who decided to get MBAs and go into business, got rich (my father did not - he stuck with his Ph.D in Political Science and became a poor, suppressed university professor).  Of course, as Vatikiotis argues, economic development serves as a political placebo.  But that doesn't take away from Indonesia turning into an Asian tiger under Suharto. 

My father knew this too.  It didn't change his mind.  He was part of the people that saw economic development as a political placebo, I think.  From what I've gathered from his writings, he felt that economic development was an especially powerful placebo for the middle class, and it kept them from voicing opposition to Suharto, which was, in his opinion, what the counter-Suharto forces needed.  Anwar - a woman, I might add - confirmed this: the middle class gave Suharto free reign to pursue economic development over political democracy after the anti-Communist bloodletting in 1965.  Suharto often said that he was Indonesia's shepherd.  My father would say that yes, Indonesians are apparently dumb goats, in need of a shepherd.

I still think Diah is an interesting figure.  She's now ninety years old.  Yes, ninety, and still "segar" - healthy and fresh.  She had been a tomboy as a child.  Short hair.  Dolls bored her.  Born exactly thirteen years after the death of the most influential Indonesian woman among Indonesians, Raden Ajeng Kartini.  This is an observation about Columbia.  "At Columbia University, it can be seen how varied Americans are, physically speaking.  Minorities are very visible.  American Jews, for example.  During lectures, they are very aggressive and want to be number one.  Many succeed."  Amazing stuff, isn't it, given that she was quoting events of the '30s that could be written today. 

All in all, I seriously wonder why - why oh why - she has never been mentioned by Barnard when they go on rants about the incredible women who have graduated from our school.