The End is Nigh

Today was the last day of classes here in Jakarta, and I couldn’t be happier. Spending eight hours in class every day for the past four and half weeks has been a serious challenge. Coming off of a year where I was either out in the field, or able to come and go from my office as I pleased, sitting through often monotonous and superfluous lessons turned into an incredibly frustrating affair. I have immense respect for my twin sisters, Alice and Daphne, who are entering eighth grade this year, and are just now being initiated into the world of waking up at 6AM, riding the bus, taking classes all day, playing sports in the afternoon, riding the bus home, eating dinner, doing homework – and rinse wash repeating for five years. I certainly don’t have the attention span or mental endurance to go through with that today!
An average day here consisted of three hours of Bahasa (Language) Indonesia classes, split between the morning and afternoon, and four hours of teaching English as a second language classes. Several times a week, we had guest speakers come to talk with us about everything from finding medical care to cultural taboos to part time volunteer positions at our sites. The nineteen of us will be spread across the archipelago, from Medan, North Sumatra to Denpasar, Bali – Hillary, who will be living in the latter city, is the envy of us all.
This morning, an American Marine helicopter captain came to sit-in on our class. He will spend the next year teaching Indonesian marines in Surabaya, East Java how to speak and how to teach English. The idea behind his mission is to give Indonesian military personnel an added skill set while preparing him for a future role as a regional commander of some sort. He seemed like a great guy, and I’m happy to know that our troops are being managed by people like him. Check out his blog for a different take on life as an expat in Indonesia:
JonB-One.blogspot.com
We were all given our travel arrangements to our sites today. I’ll be flying to Surabaya on Friday morning, where (in theory) I’ll be met by the consulate general and the principal of my school. Only forty more hours in Jakarta!

Puppets and The View

My last weekend in Jakarta was a good one. I frequented the clubs, made a trip to the Wayang puppet museum, and finally got on top of an office building to snap a sunset panorama of the cityscape. Here are some photos. Enjoy.

Why the U.S. Supports Israel – And Must Continue to Do So

After running into some opposition here regarding the state of Israel and Jews more broadly, I thought it would be appropriate to outline some causes for the perception of blind American support for the Jewish state, and why those causes are justified. There are four main reasons why America continues to unabashedly support Israel, even when its policies seem contrary to international or American values and law:
1) Both nations are “bastions” of democratic practice and liberal economic success. The U.S. sees Israel as a strategic ally in maintaining security, pushing forward peace, modeling democracy, and showing the world how economic success leads to national unification and individual prosperity in a region where such pillars of modern nations are either forsaken or constructed ineffectively. Since World War II, and even more so today, the U.S. looks to Israel as a dam, one that holds back an uncertain and unwieldy tide.
2) Both nations share similar cultural backgrounds, namely faith in a Judeo-Christian God. Again, in terms of regional neighbors, Israel is a unique position. With the exception of Lebanon – which on paper is a Christian state – the Middle East is overwhelmingly Muslim. While Muslims do share many traits in common with Jews and Christians – including a founding father, Abraham – as of late, the differences have appeared more striking than the similarities. Recent Islamist – I have adopted the habit of calling the religion “Islam” and the ideology “Islamism” – approaches to political independence and economic success, starting with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, have led to the cooption of Islamic and Islamist principles as a front for insurrection at the gates of the political and economic status quo. Israel, America, and the Jews, always scapegoats of the politically marginalized, have once again been bequeathed the dubious role of oppressor. As long as radicals and militants refuse to acknowledge – not accept – Western approaches to sustaining livelihoods, this divide will exist.
3) The U.S. feels a duty and responsibility to protect Israel and Jews after its failure to do so during the Holocaust of World War II. This point is self-evident. The Balfour Declaration that followed World War I set the stage for the transfer of power. The atrocities of World War II cemented an obligation in the minds of Europe and America. It has yet to be seen whether institutional memory will hold the same regard for Israel and her people once the Holocaust is only remembered and taught on the History Channel and in textbooks. Hopefully the U.S. will never forget its obligation to supply and support those that it forsook.
4) AIPAC, the American-Israeli political action committee in D.C., is one of the strongest political influence groups in the country. In Indonesian academic circles, and I imagine in other Muslim nations, AIPAC is often given as the number one rationale for why Israel garners such firm support from the U.S. While it is undeniable that AIPAC and its $70 million play a significant role in persuading policy makers to defend Israel, it is certainly not the only, or even the most important reason. AIPAC is a seventy year-old institution, whereas its Arab and Muslim counterparts are no more than toddlers in the life of American politics and foreign policy. It will be interesting to see what role Arab and Muslim political action committees play as they garner more clout over the coming years and decades.
None of these points are particularly original, but seen together on one page, I hope they contribute to a picture of the current Israeli-American relationship, and why it is – and must remain – so special. I welcome comments.

America the Inspiration?

Walt Whitman wrote, “The core of democracy is the religious element.” In Indonesia, his words ring especially true. The entire nation is currently wrestling with itself over the future of its seven year-old democracy and how – or in extreme cases, if – it can be reconciled with the majority’s dedication to Islam.
I believe in America the Inspiration. We are a democracy and country that, relatively speaking, works quite well. Over the past two centuries, our government and society have been models for the rest of the globe. Our business and political successes, our commitment to humanitarianism, and our unprecedented ability to create the goods and services that the world craves have made us the contemporary equivalent of Rome. But, confronted with a new millennium and a new global system, we must ask ourselves what kind of America we want the world to see in the twenty-first century. Perhaps more importantly, we must also come to terms with the kind of world that we want to inspire.
In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy pledged America’s commitment “to those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery… [We promise] our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required – not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.”
Foreign aid is no longer just a hand-out, but a mechanism for counteracting terror before it starts. While the ideological right and left long stood on opposite poles on almost every international issue, today, that is no longer true. Especially on humanitarian matters, in which religious conservatives have expressed a special interest, the two extremes overlap. As did Kennedy, both sides recognize not only a moral obligation, but a practical interest in helping those in direst need. It is in all of America’s best interests to provide the scaffolding with which developing nations can construct their own functional societies and economies.
It is unclear, however, when our policy of helping became the propagation and idolization of opulence. The desire to accumulate is our main export today. Look at my last entry (Versailles of the East) for an intimate look at what happens when liberal economic policies succeed. The result is the same the whole world over. The success of the nouveau riche often results in the same staggering displays of wealth and status that I witnessed last weekend. The extremely wealthy should by no means be told what to do with their money. But it struck me that such ostentatious and frankly gratuitous spending only feeds the fires of resentment that the U.S. is trying to quell.
As George Bernard Shaw observed, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Osama bin Laden and his acolytes advocate a world view that consists of resentment, envy and guilt. They are focused on old injustices, not future opportunities. Where America stands for the values of “freedom,” “liberty” and economic prosperity, bin Laden and other militant, radical Islamists demand that their followers embrace an “unreasonable” view of mirthless consolation. They do not offer tangible ideas for improving the lives of people here on Earth. Rather, their morality is of the most selfish kind, where all citizens of the world suffer for the glory of a few. Radical Islamists demand that the Global North, and all those who follow our policies, apologize for seeking longer, healthier, and happier lives.
Unfortunately, as of late, the United States’ motives in fighting terror have been widely disparaged as insincere. Many people, and not only in Muslim societies, believe that America’s real aims are to control oil, defeat Muslims, advance the interests of Israel, and dominate the world – just as Al Qaeda has alleged. An advisory panel of the State Department reported that in many countries the United States is viewed as “less a beacon of hope than a dangerous force to be countered,” and that large majorities in Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia see “George W. Bush as a greater threat to the world order than Osama bin Laden.”
To a certain extent, since September 11, the U.S. has played perfectly into Al Qaeda’s hand. Leonard Weinberg, a terrorism expert and former-Fulbrighter, says that terrorists seek a combination of or all of the following three factors: The sowing of widespread fear, the creation of publicity for the terrorist group, and the provocation of an over-reaction by the authorities under attack. As we have witnessed in both Iraq and Lebanon, fear, publicity, and over-reaction have resulted in disastrous outcomes.
The difficulty in combating terrorism is not that the Bush administration has sought to exercise leadership on moral grounds; virtually every administration has tried to do that. “The problem,” as Madeleine Albright writes, “is that [the administration’s] rhetoric has come close to justifying U.S. policy in explicitly religious terms – and that is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.” The members of Al Qaeda envision themselves fighting a religious battle where good and evil are as real as they are to the American President. As Albright continues, “With strong leadership, the United States can bring the world together in opposition to the murder of innocent people. But we will never unite anyone around the proposition that to disagree with the president of the United States is to pick a quarrel with God.”
If the U.S. is to succeed in counteracting terrorism, we must first reevaluate the merits of propagating a world based on morality-coated greed. A recent column in the Jakarta Post read, “Despite the gloomy situation, I am still confident in saying Indonesia is a great nation. Why? Because we never look back… but continue to prepare ourselves for the incoming disasters and misery! Why should we learn from history when neglecting that history helps us feel there is nothing wrong with us?” After a month here in Indonesia, I would have to agree that Indonesians, by and large, have adopted a tragic life view. I have met countless Indonesians who work incredibly hard in order to provide themselves and their children with the possibility of having more opportunities. But, due in large part to the economic crisis of 1998, they simultaneously acknowledge that there is no sure bet.
To make a rash generalization, Americans are also by nature a perseverant and confident bunch. However, as former Secretary of State Albright said, “Confidence comes from the effort to learn all one can about a problem; self-righteousness comes from a tendency to believe that one has learned all there is to know.” It seems to me like much American public thought these days is trending towards the latter. Our flawed domestic policies prove that we haven’t yet discovered the holy grail of economic and social development.
Then why are we still held in such high regard? I think the answer may lie in the fact that we actually aren’t.

Versailles of the East

I never would have guessed that Indonesia would be the location of my first Evangelical Christian wedding. I’ve hung out with Evangelicals all over the world, from Thailand to Mississippi, but never in a Versailles-like palace, complete with Italian marble balustrade and Louis XVI original armoires. Nico, the seventy-five year-old Indonesian man that John and I met while trying to find a bookstore, proved to be the stereotypical crazy, gay uncle of the family, but his fondness for bule granted the two of us access to a social scene that until yesterday, I’d only read about.
We met Nico at his house at 8.00AM, and were whisked away in a caravan of SUV’s to a suburb of Jakarta called Sentul. The gated community we entered was home to dozens of Mediterranean style villas, perched thousands of feet above the dry, rolling hills of West Java. The house where the wedding service was held belongs to the bride’s father (it turns out Nico never married, and many of the tales that he spun for John and me in his broken English were totally fabricated, as corroborated by the various family members we befriended throughout the day) who made his money selling “office supplies.” We didn’t prod any further.
The compound must have been forty thousand square feet. The photos above don’t really do it justice. The palace was an Indonesian nouveau riche take on seventeenth century opulence and elite social standing. The father of the bride, a practicing Muslim, had built a prayer house next to the pool in the backyard. A legitimate waterfall fell forty feet from the prayer house’s roof into the gunnite lined pool, surrounded by bronze sphinxes and Sundanese textile weavings.
Beyond the sheer opulence that surrounded me, what struck me most was the obvious juxtaposition of East and West. An enormous, fat white man (he must weigh 350 pounds) delivered a heavy-handed, culturally generic sermon to a crowd of some one hundred people, of whom only John and I understood his rapid, southern inflected diatribe on forgetting the past, starting anew, and building a family based not on a shared history, but on the promise of the predetermined path. The service was accompanied by an Indonesian Christian rock quintet, which burst into mispronounced rounds of variations on the savior and squawky electric guitar solos.
Indonesia is ninety percent Muslim, but it seems that Jakarta is home to a disproportionately large number of Christians, many of whom belong to the country’s upper crust. Religion here is treated like an appendage – along with your home and marital status, your religion is a point of introduction in everyday conversation. Beyond the five culturally accepted religions – Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, and Protestantism – religions are not recognized. Being a Jew puts me in an interesting situation.
On the one hand, as a “cultural ambassador,” I feel obligated to share with people that Jews don’t have horns, they all don’t live in Israel, and they all don’t hate Muslims. On the other, explaining “Yahudi” tests the limits of my abysmal Indonesian skills, and also, I’ve been told, is an excellent way to garner otherwise unsolicited antipathy and hatred. Consequently, in normal conversation and on my security card issued by the government, I say that I’m Kristen (Christian), which is usually enough of an answer for most people.
Those people to whom I reveal my religion are often unfamiliar with the concept of Judaism. I venture “saudara Ibrahim” (brothers of Abraham), and try to steer away from any connection to Israel, which is perceived and talked about here as the “permanent aggressor.” Even my Bahasa Indonesia teacher, Ony, who spent a year on a Fulbright grant studying at Stanford, thought that the word Jew was interchangeable with Israeli.
John and I spent the evening at Hotel Dharmawangsa, one of Jakarta’s swankest spots. While we were only two of roughly one hundred guests at the morning service at Versailles, at the night reception, there must have been fifteen hundred people. We were the only bule there, and were worried about being perceived as bums off the street who had come to cash-in on the deluxe buffet and dessert bar. Our fears were assuaged, however, within a few minutes, when we saw our faces broadcast onto a twenty-foot wide projection screen, giving our muted congratulations via digital video tape to the bride and groom. We had been recorded individually that morning while drinking coffee and making small talk next to the waterfall. And now here we were, two scruffy, random white dudes, eating tiramisu and rubbing shoulders with the country’s hoi palloi. We didn’t need money or friends or supermodel girlfriends. We were bule.

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Merdeka

In Indonesia, where merdeka (independence) is still a hotly contested issue, the day that celebrated the nation’s sixty-first anniversary of her people’s legal separation from the Dutch was a rather tame, albeit ludicrous, affair. Those Fulbrighters strong and willing enough to risk battle with their hangovers met with our Bahasa Indonesia teacher, Ony, this morning at ten, and made our way north to Ancol, Jakarta’s main port of departure. Ony convinced us to spend our day-off with promises of “fungames” – “like, you know, that game where you grab the fish, I think you call it eel, and run to the next bucket?” – and pohon pinang, which he described as climbing tall, greasy trees in order to retrieve hanging bikes and other goodies. His boasting proved to be justified, and then some.
Last independence day – Indonesia’s that is – I was in Medan, Indonesia’s fourth largest city and the capital of North Sumatra. Festivities celebrating the sixtieth anniversary included a large parade, complete with mini riots protesting the electricity company’s parade float and its recent inability to cope with rolling black- and brown-outs across the city. The day ended with me riding on top of a ten-foot tall tribal mask that was supported in a perfect strangers mouth (see photo) after having danced la bamba with a used car saleswoman in front of several hundred passersby.
This year’s festivities were marked by less solitude and a lot more sweat. Making our way through crowds that must have numbered in the hundreds of thousands, my buddies and I posed for photos with local pole climbers (see photo) and watched some of Indonesia’s most popular rock groups play to a hot and sweaty crowd that wasn’t much different from what you’d find at a typical American rock concert. I had an advantage though, in that being a good foot and a half taller than the next tallest person, I was able to get a good view – and some interesting photos (see above) – without having to sit on my boyfriend’s shoulders. The whole topless thing doesn’t really go over so well here, but I thought about sewing some seeds of decadence and social disruption. My elevated status as “cultural ambassador” was the only thing that held me back. Although it sure didn’t for some of the Fulbrighter girls last night, who turned into the stars of Bedroom, a trendy Jakarta lounge, after they removed a group of men’s t-shirts and proceeded to lasso them with their stolen garments. The nightlife here is impressive, but that’s fodder for its own blog entry.
The pohon pinang turned out to be an incredible spectacle. Two-hundred-and-sixty-one forty-foot tall poles were laid out in front of the massive concert stage. Companies and individuals sponsor the poles, and pay for the placement of bicycles, stuffed animals, and other goodies at the top of the intimidating dowels-on-steroids. As fans danced and families paraded underneath, teams of ten men stood on one another’s shoulders in order to climb-up, a task made infinitely more difficult by the splinters and black grease that lay along their way to a ten-speed. I didn’t see anyone take any bad falls, but a tumble from the top could easily lead to paralysis, or worse. Judging from the muscles, tattoos and scars on the grease-covered guys who paraded back from the pohon pinang grounds with something to show for their efforts, this is not a sport for the vertigo-stricken or faint of heart.
After spending the afternoon studying my language lessons while lounging by the pool, John and I had dinner with a guy whom he’d met on the street. Nico is seventy-five, but incredibly energetic, and psyched to speak with Americans. His house is filled with 18th century wood carvings from all over the archipelago. I was pretty impressed with my Indonesian skills, until his two grown-up daughters got home and notified us that Nico had in fact not been telling us about his two adopted Acehnese children, but was actually inviting us to his other daughter’s wedding this weekend. After being given a velvet-lined invitation and being told that it will be held at Jakarta’s nicest hotel, there was no way we could resist.
I ended the day with Uma Thurman and “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” which was terrible.

The Group

Here we are, all 18 of us, in all our glory. And the Kid, keeping it REAL slick.

Recent Photos

Bureaucracy, Presidential Dinners & The Bule Effect

Yesterday I got my first exposure to the downside of working under the U.S. government. Up to this point, it’s all been pretty peachy – deluxe hotel, VIP access around the city, top-notch lecturers and conversations. I was actually beginning to wonder when the machinations of the much maligned American bureaucratic animal would kick it, and sure enough, it did.
When I was still in the States, I arranged with Real Medicine, a Los Angeles-based NGO, that I would be their representative on the ground here in Indonesia, and that I would visit Yogyakarta, home of the massive earthquake that killed several hundred people a few weeks ago. I had arranged meetings with doctors and aid workers on the ground, and I was going to stay there with David Wolfowitz, a Fulbrighter and son of Paul Wolfowitz, current president of the World Bank and former ambassador to Indonesia. I had purchased plane tickets yesterday morning for the paltry sum of sixty dollars roundtrip.
Unfortunately, the week-old executive director at Fulbright, Mike McCoy, notified us after our first morning session on Friday that new policy forbids travel outside of Jakarta during our month of training here. I had to cancel my meetings, let the director of Real Medicine know that I won’t be able to work on the ground for another month, back out on Wolfowitz, and eat half the cost for my tickets.
All was not lost though. Wolfowitz is sending me photos from Yogyakarta that Real Medicine can use at a benefit dinner next week. And since I was able to stick around Jakarta for another Friday night, John and I had a pretty unique experience of our own right here.

One of the best parts about being a bule (white foreigner) here in Indonesia is the undeserved access one gets to people. By dint of skin tone and feigned maturity, I have met and hung out with people here who wouldn’t look twice my way Stateside. I call this phenomenon the bule effect.
Mid-week, John was invited to an event to commemorate the Alliance of Independent Journalist’s (AJI) twelfth anniversary. John passed along an invitation to me, but since I was supposed to be in Jogya this weekend, I turned down the appealing offer. However, since my plans “fell through,” I was able to tag along last night for what proved to be yet another very cool and inspiring event. The night started sitting next to the former President of Indonesia, and ended singing live karaoke with the Jakartan intelligentsia.
Somehow John and I managed to arrive an hour late to the event, which was held in the ballroom of a swank hotel in central Jakarta. Some three hundred people were milling about, talking and networking while eating nasi goreng (fried rice) and pineapple. By nature of the bule effect, as soon as John and I entered the ballroom, we were ushered to the front of the hall, directly in front of the speaker’s podium, and next to the table where the night’s press freedom award winners were seated. One of this year’s winners was Abdurrachman Wahid, Indonesia’s fourth President, who served from 1999 to 2001, the tumultuous years following the deposition of Suharto. He was ten feet to my left, sitting with a group of lively and happy Indonesian men and women, none of whom were wearing the jilbab (headscarf). Wahid was not the greatest President, but he has since made a legacy for himself by promoting free speech and advocating the liberalization of Islamic politics.
All of the night’s speeches were in Indonesian, and I could only get a general feel for what was being discussed, but most speakers seemed to focus on the concept of free speech and how far it has come in only seven years. When AJI was founded in 1994, because of the repressive then twenty year-old Suharto regime, all free speech and controversial publishing was done underground from people’s homes, at great risk to their safety.
It is absolutely incredible to see how far things have come since then. To think that only seven years ago this country was on the brink of exploding. As I spent the evening talking with some of Indonesia’s most respected radio, print, and photojournalists, I repeatedly asked the question, “Do you see Indonesia moving towards stronger democratic processes or towards more fundamental Islam, or are the two not mutually exclusive?” Everyone that I asked responded with “We’ll just have to see.” Coming from what could arguably be called the source of democratic change and progress, I didn’t find that to be too inspiring.
After the event ended, John and I left with a twenty-seven year old Australian radio producer named Rebecca. She has been working as a regional BBC correspondent here for the past few years, and proved to be very well connected. We wound up sharing pitchers of beer and singing karaoke to a live cover band with some of the country’s most important thinkers and writers. The editor in chief of the Jakarta Post and I shared a Sting duet while “Anchorman” played on the TV overhead. It was magical.

Vignettes

“Oh man, there’s a shitload of unreleased sexual tension here.” Over the weekend, I hung out with Erick Danzer, a PhD candidate from the University of Wisconsin and a Fulbrighter just wrapping-up his research. Erick was enlightening a few other Fulbrighters and me as to what he learned during his two years of research across the archipelago. Beyond the political economics of coffee, palm oil, and rubber, he had a funny anecdote for the women on our trip. “Ladies, when you meet an Indonesian man, he will think of you in only one of the following three ways. In his eyes, you are either A) a pristine virgin, B) a sex-crazed whore, or C) a wizened old Ibu (mom). It’s probably best if, even if you’re pretending, you opt for the last choice.” In the words of a wiser man than myself, the dude abides.

* * * * *

I spent a few hours last night at Jaya Pub with a fellow Fulbrighter named Ethan. Ethan has a master’s degree in geology from the University of Texas at Austin, and has spent three months living in a tent with one woman in Antarctica. The dude’s cool.
He found Jaya Pub in the Lonely Planet, which calls the place a “Jakarta institution.” Which it most certainly was. The bartender was small and old enough to be a prune, and the barmaidens were dressed in classical Dutch garb, sans clogs. The night’s live music group was warming up in front of a projector screen featuring prerecorded Rolling Stones concerts. I can’t understand how all those guys are still living. Have you seen Keith Richards?
Our band at the pub was a motley crue, made up of an ex-Metallica roadie on rhythm guitar, a former male model on bass, a dude who they’d just pulled off a 24-hour Warcraft binge on the keyboards, and the former male model’s ugly older brother on drums. After waiting for the Stones to wrap-up, they introduced the bartender’s niece on vocals, and plugged right into a decent but unintelligible version of “Georgia on My Mind.”
Instead of clapping, the bar was strung with old-fashioned hand-operated bicycle horns, which the crowd was pumping with impressive alacrity. Were they just being friendly? The band wasn’t that good. It wasn’t until the song was over that I bent over to my neighbor and inquired. “Jogya, not Georgia,” he said. “Like the city in Java.”
“Ohhhhhhh,” I replied. I got it. This place was cool.

* * * * *

Today we went on a fieldtrip out to Bogor, a suburb of Jakarta famous for its botanical garden and miniature deer. Our goal was to observe local teachers, and to see how we can improve on what they do. My job’s really not going to be that hard. Just showing up and saying hello will be more productive than any of the classes I saw today, which spent two hours reading about Australia’s blue tongued frogs. A little relevance, if you’d be so kind.
The classes are made up of around forty high school students, most of whom are fifteen years-old. The kids are great – really smart, enthusiastic, and motivated. Many had questions for me about AMERIKA and were excited to share their goals of going to fashion school and Harvard. They just can’t learn from teachers who are afraid to speak and from idiotic competency based curriculums which leave most of the students unchallenged and bored. I imagine that figuring out how to reconcile fun and relevance with test taking knowledge will be my main task.

* * * * *

I’ve been meeting the most interesting and inspiring people here. On the ride home from Bogor, I chatted with a middle-aged woman named Patsy who came with us for the day. She is a professional English teacher, and she and her husband had spent their lives traveling to different countries, spending a few years in Peru, a few in Africa, and most recently, a decade between Sumatra and Papua in Indonesia. In the fall of 2002, she and her husband were traveling with a group of English teachers in rural Papua, when completely out of the blue, their bus was ambushed by rebels. They were shot at and hostages were taken. In the end, eleven unarmed Americans were dead, one of whom was Patsy’s husband. She suffered gunshot wounds to her leg and lower back, yet she still escorted her husband’s corpse to Australia.
Since then, Patsy has been on a vendetta of sorts. Starting with her local congressman, she has voiced her complaints up and up the ladder, until she was meeting with Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, and the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudyhono, lobbying for an investigation into the murders of her husband the other teachers. She is responsible for stalling the current American attempt at reinstituting military ties with the Indonesian army, which were severed after the human rights atrocities of East Timor. She lectures, for free, at American high schools about the power of the individual in the American democratic process. She is awaiting her appearance before the Indonesian equivalent of the Supreme Court, where she will testify against a Papuan man who has pleaded guilty to participating in the 2002 ambush. I told her she should write a book.

Recent Photos