Tikno Viewpoint

Within this post, I just picked up the scattered stories from the media in Indonesia related to the three book-bomb attact on 15 March 2011. The first news that has attracted me to publish this post was Jakarta Globe titled "Democracy in Indonesia in 'Danger': Journalists Alliance": Judging from the package sent, the perpetrator was clearly trying to silence Ulil by killing him", said Nezar Patria, chairman of AJI (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen / The Alliance of Independent Journalists). The case has to be solved. An attack against an advocate of pluralism is a hard blow to our national ideals. Democracy in Indonesia is now in danger. Tempo Interaktif also published the letter (written in Indonesian) that found within the book-bomb packet addressed to Ulil. According to Jakarta Globe , there were three book-bombs. The first one addressed to Ulil Abshar Abdalla, co-founder of Jaringan Islam Liberal (English: Liberal Islam Network). The second package was addre...

While a lot of Indonesian children are not able to get a good education because their parents can not afford, on the other hand there are some of the elite society send their children to study abroad. As we know, send the kids to get education abroad requires substantial extra costs. Indeed, this is a situation of high-contrast. Here are some assumption of Indonesian society (perhaps also in other developing countries) towards oversea graduates (from developed countries) of their children: 1) Higher quality education. 2) More competitive in employment. 3) Certainly able to speak English. 4) They were considered elite. (psst: I should end this points with question mark). This post is not intended to look at one eye on education in Indonesia because there are many qualified people who graduate from Indonesia's school/university has sat on managerial level at large companies or become high officials in government. Beside that, there's a saying stated that quality of a person is no...

When reading news I found an interesting news reported by Antara News and Tempo Interaktif. There is mentioned that the two of Australia's famous newspaper, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, has reported confidential information about President Yudhoyono. The news on both newspaper were based on WikiLeaks's information which was leaked from the diplomatic wire of U.S. Embassy. Fellow blogger Martin Manurung, as I read on his profile was a President Director of PT Sekurindo Gada Patria (a company provides consultancy on managing risks and business continuity), has an interesting post about this issue titled Arti Heboh Wikileaks . Sadly he wrote in Bahasa Indonesia. He had quote and translate parts of the sentences from the Australian newspaper that he considers important (and I quote from his post), that is: ...The US diplomatic reports-obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to The Age - say that soon after becoming President in 2004, Dr Yudhoyono intervened in th...

As we know the pro-democracy movement was on the rise in the Middle East and North Africa. The victim started from Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Yemen, and the next candidate is Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and maybe Bahrain. I also saw a wave of pro-democracy has brought a sense of worry for countries in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia. When pro-democracy movement shook Tunisia, oil prices has not been affected, likewise when these movement travel to Egypt, because these two countries was not a significant oil producer for the world. But when the pro-democracy protests spread to Libya, oil prices has jumped since mid-February when the rebellion in Libya increases. Thus Saudi Arabia was forced to increase its oil production in order to maintain the stability of world energy and cooling the overheated energy prices. The most frightening is that if pro-democracy demonstrations spread to Saudi Arabia . It seems that USA and European countries are aware that the longer th...

Before you continues to read this post, please read the brief history of Aceh , until Tsunami disaster happened and finally get a special autonomy right from Indonesian central government. For years the Indonesian military has struggle to fight against what we call Gerakan Aceh Merdeka / GAM (English: Free Aceh Movement) who want to establish an Islamic state and impose Sharia law in Aceh province. This proves that Indonesia do not wanting Islamic state system because Indonesia is a country based on the laws (national law), democratic, consist of various ethnic groups, has 6 official religion, with national motto: Unity in diversity, not an Islamic state that implement Sharia law. However, this war has caused many casualties and was not offering the civil order, harmony, and security for millions of civilians in Aceh. I say thousands of victims as a side effect of war, not just a matter of the position of a woman as reported by Jakarta Globe with the title " Women Unfit to Lead,...

Terry Jones, a pastor who leads a tiny church called "The Dove World Outreach Center" in Gainesville, Florida, U.S. plans to burn copies of Koran on September 11, 2010, as reported on New York Times with the title: A Bonfire in Danger of Spreading . The reason of this action is to commemorate the event of terrorist attacks on 9/11. Gosh, for me it's really a crazy plan. I warn you that your plan, if it really happened, will spreading the new tensions around the world and very possibly this event (burns the Quran) could be used by extremists as a justification to act further. I also condemn the creator of a Facebook page titled " International Burn A Koran Day " and urge the owner of Facebook to aware and immediately remove such page because the contents of this page just showing emotional debate, hatred and also stupid. Any negative actions will produce another negative reactions as opposed to you . If we really want to give a small contribution for peace and ha...

Maybe this post can be used as a reflection of how you deal with logic and faith (unlogic). After that, let people know of what you think. Just see how you react to this post.If you're very religious people (almost fanatic) then I guess your reaction will be very different to those who think more logical in response to various occurrence in these universe or even to your daily life. Take an example on a plane crash. Logical approach would yield the answer that lead to "human error" or "engine failure" and then find ideas to fix it. Religious approach will yield the answer that lead to "God's will (fate)". Or... perhaps you are in between them which it called moderate. Illustration between science and faith. Can you compare or even combine the two of the flowchart above? If you can, then I will say you are being in best efforts. Why? Because... even sophisticated computer was run based on the combination of two signals namely positive and negative. ...