WHERE'S THE CRICKET - Ashes to Ashes

WHERE'S THE CRICKET??

Whilst I have made Indonesia my home, pay my taxes and rave at the lack of leadership and short term greed as any responsible person should (despite the more xenophobic amongst us insisting we are guests, sorry guys welcome to the new world of globisation). There are times when the longing for the country of your birth becomes a weight only a draught horse could bear.

Today is one of those times. The Ashes tour has started and there is no bloody coverage !!

Ah the ASHES....England and Australia play a number of 5 day long cricket matches to decide who gets to take the ASHES home. Not to be able to bear witness to this, is tantamount to denying your heritage. (More on the Ashes history later if you want).

WHERE'S THE CRICKET??

In Indonesia we have pay tv (of sorts) called Indovision on which you can find endless suburban english and italian soccer matches (yawn), roller girls (sexy but pointless), sheep dog trials (plead the 5th), caber tossing (tough on mr caber)but cricket??? Not on your life. I would have thought with the large Indian, English, Oz, NZ population, the cricket was a "monty" but nope, just plenty of repeats of TNA "wrestling" ...BUGGER!!

Still on cricket, I notice the Indians are still pissed at the oz team who gave the "short shift" to the stuffed shirt official who would not get out of the road for the team photo after Australia's magnificent win recently in India. Bad luck guys..winners is grinners..

Back to Indovision, Lose the Ads!! Your service is already over priced for what is provided and lame ads only pisses paying customers off. Certainly, I will never bank BCA after the current and endlessly repeated commercials

Once again .....WHERE'S THE CRICKET!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Geez I'm Crook!

As some have you may have noticed (ok one of you..thanks T/S) I have not been posting for awhile. The stump has had to relocate for a couple of reasons. One, the house contract was up and two, the old place was subject one to many break-ins. The view overlooking the fields out the back was great but also provided a great escape route for local "Ali Barbers".

Move completed and I have the internet up and running again. Of course we still have to got through all the usual gump. First off is reporting to the local RT. The “RT” is sort qausi-goverment officer, cum village head, cum busy body (although the busy body role is usually left to his wife). Then off to report the change of address to the police, immigration etc with the usual "administration fees" to make sure things are not lost.

On top of all that, some evil bug decided to take residence in my body (I have no idea why, it could not be considered a 5 star body even from a bugs point of view). Besides inducing a general feeling of “ugh and no blogging”, the bugs caused the cancelation of a trip to the big smoke (Jakarta) where I was due for a months training.That was a real bugger, I was looking forward to arcing up the Blok M debate again). Despite numerous trips to the doctor, it has taken some time to evict the body invaders. At one stage I was even thinking of visiting th local dukun (local mystic man) but after their failure stopping the mudflow and the causing the cancellation of POTUS visit despite huge publicity, I figure I might be better off with David Blaine or a panadol

Anyway I am sorta back and somewhat jealous the treespotter has got trolls that can spell as opposed to the semi-literate and barely logical mobs that live under my bridge.

THE UGLY HUMAN

My view towards humanity is a particularly low ebb this month. Of course, reading about the scum that continue to plague this corner of Paradise does not help one bit.

The court case of the swine who are accused of beheading three school girls earlier this year has begun. With the Jakarta Post reporting here here and more coverage here.

"Prosecutors yesterday detailed how Hasanuddin, Lilik and co-accused Irwanto Irano planned the schoolgirl beheadings with six other men. They prepared six machetes and black plastic bags for carrying off the severed heads and spent several days surveying the area where the students regularly passed by"

Nine men lying in wait to ambush 4 schoolgirls!!

What brave and noble warriors they must be!!!

Not being great believer in the existance of an afterlife, however on the off chance I am wrong then I hope these guys are off to a really special place..

The really scary, obnoxious part is one of these F*ckers went and spoke to religious community (?)leader about the plan.. Did he report it ...nagh not on your life(or should I say their life). Something is seriously wrong when men... (I would call them animals but animals don't deserve that)that are capable of such acts exist amongst us

I am not about to get into the religion thing because to be honest, I think the world has had a gutful of it all!! Don't bother with the I hate Muslims comments, I hate Christian comments, I hate (insert your religion of choice here)...I will delete ya all!! If only you could do that with some of the scum that call themselves human.

Do you think we will see wide-spread condemnation of these acts.. or just more radio cartoon competitions..

Unfortunately, although a Nation with a long history of Kings, Regents and Dictators, Indonesian democracy has yet failed to produce a leader with the vision and courage to carry Indonesia into a safe, prosperous future. As a result, those of black hearts and maggot riddled ethics have taken advantage of this lack of leadership to inflict their own perverse needs and wants on a virtually undefended populace.

Its sad but one can only hope its temporary..

spritual refreshment

The Pentonarc has just returned from Beautiful Bali (Lucky bugger) and has some nice pictures of the island of the Gods… We here at the Greenstump have no such luck (how do you get these jobs that come inclusive with holidays?).

Instead we have had to find our spritual refreshment in other ways.

INVEST IN BULLSHIT

Anytime you want to catch up on Business in Indonesia it’s normally a good plan to pop across to see Yosef's blog. This week one of his commentators noted there was a distinct absence of "bule" at the latest piece of government invest in Indonesia wank. The Infrastructure Two Summit (this is the summit you have when your first was a dismal failure) was the Indonesian Government’s latest attempt to revive the long dead patient that is International Investment in Indonesia.

The Yosef's commentator suggests the lack of western interest was due to the rise in Chinese investment. I beg to differ; the more likely reason is most international business people can smell the stench of corruption and bullshit thousands of miles away.

Of course, international cases like the trial of Rich Ness hardly instill confidence.. Richard Ness is being charged over environmental crimes (As opposed to the mud brothers Grim), in the latest piece of one law for you and one for us.

Ness is currently facing ten years in prison and a US$60,000 fine. He is accused of polluting the environment and causing illnesses. However, over 30 independent studies (most notably the United Nation’s World Health Organisation, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization of Australia, and the National Institute for Minamata Disease) have repeatedly confirmed that there is no evidence of environmental damage and, most importantly, medical analysis has established that there is no incidence of arsenic or mercury poisoning among the local community.”

Although I have to disagree with his son Eric who said

"One of my biggest concerns is that the law hasn’t been followed. It sometimes feels like the law doesn’t matter."

Now that is simply untrue, Tempo only recently revealed that Indonesian legal system made Indonesian history this year with the conditional release of Tommy Suharto, the defendant in the murder case of Supreme Court Judge Syafiuddin Kartasasmita. In Indonesia’s history, remission of 38 months, like Tommy received, has never been granted, a new record.

I think it should be congratulations all round, nothing like setting legal history to inspire filth oops sorry typo..faith in the legal system.

SS SECURITY

After the recent "liberation" of various items of value, we have sacked the SS (Sleeping Security) and gone up market.

Oh where oh where were these cartoons when I was young..

Smoke blocks Climate Change

No personal pictures today as my camera has been liberated (amongst a heap of other stuff) in the name of some bastard needing money for Idul Fitri. Religious holidays seem to increase theft no matter what religion. However, with poverty and the lack of law and order in Indonesia, minor crime is endemic and much worse during the holiday season. If I let the cynic in me run riot then it is easy to comment, religion as always more about the ritual than intent, a view somewhat supported by the World Wide Corruption Watch. I will leave you to guess which countries are "top da pops"

Still to put a traditional curse on the mongrel “I hope your chooks turn into emus and kick ya dunny down” (I hope your chicken transform into emus (Large flightless birds) and destroy your outdoor toilet)….Ah there I feel better.

Still taking the cynic in me for a walk: Climate change has become big news this week, The theory has been around for awhile but really seems to be grabbing the news lately. To be expected our resident green (est) blogger Jakartass is also giving it a good run.

Climate Change may well be a fact, or yet another “oh the evil west yawn”. I cannot help but remember that in the 70’s the ice age was coming (along with a Nuclear Winter, not the same but as well). Then by the 90’s overpopulation would have completely overwhelmed the planet. The average age of an American would be 47 due to pesticide contamination. Then we had to dodge planes falling out of the sky with Y2K, it actually wasn’t computers that brought them down but a number of stone age misfits.

The other problem I have with Climate Change shrills is the grandiose claims such as: Islands are sinking!! The ice is melting!! blah blah. Interestingly, the Greenland ice sheets are thicker? than they have ever been!
Anyway you should accept the shrills, run around in circles, sure enough along comes something like:

"Water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore. While humanity’s three billion tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the atmosphere’s CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually less than half of 1% of the atmosphere’s total CO2 content (750-830 GT). The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth’s oceans and land. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT — making three GT seem hardly worth mentioning.”

Bugger!!!..confused again..Seems to me a fair bit of psuedo science going on here...

Meanwhile the 9 out of 10 Government is still content to allow Indonesia to smother under a blanket of smog and ash. Two months and no blue sky or sun, but hey we can send to troops to Lebanon for international respect..sheeet. Big splash in the papers about the two water-bomb planes from Russia. Of course, its not likely Indonesia is paying for them! Once again the international community will get scammed and the rich, selfish bastards will get rich while the young and old die to put money in their bank.

Its as bad as it has ever been, cannot ever breathe indoors today..eyes watering, coughing! Unbelievable... the next door neighbour has decided its a good time to burn off his wet vegation...what is wrong with some people????

A nation should hang its head in shame, when its children cannot even attend school without wearing masks due to plain ugly greed!

On a postive note the mad Mufti has promised to wear a tape over his mouth.. now if only that would catch on with all all the rest of the nutters with the hotline to our salvation.