Friday Follow Downs.

Apparently Vice President Kalla is not internet savvy so he relies on his secretary ~ "That's what they're for."

Given that underlings here traditionally only impart glad tidings upwards, that seems to suggest that we bloggers can criticise him with impunity.

I don't know if lantern-jawed Abdurizal Bakrie, the current Minister for People's Welfare, is similarly illiterate, but you might like to know that Bakrieland has a flashy Product Exhibition on at Lounge Klub Rasuna to go with its flashy website.

If you want to live in an upended shoe box (75sq.m) in Bogor and can afford Rp.250 million (c.$30,000) be his guest. Apartments in Jakarta are a little more expensive but then you are given a 24" TV, an i-Pod and a Nokia handphone as incentives.

Wow.

Richard Lloyd Parry got a little bit upset with the review, by regular Jakartass reader Miko, of his book Suharto's Indonesia: In The Time of Madness. My comments didn't seem to help either but I do look forward to receiving a copy of the book.

Meanwhile, I have discovered that Richard, now the Asia Editor for The Times and the Foreign Correspondent of the Year and based in Tokyo, has a blog of his own in which he can post articles edited and shortened in the print version.

Thus I discover that he has written that drugs for serious illnesses have already been developed from jungle plants by scientists known as bioprospectors who draw on the traditional knowledge of indigenous people. But plant species which have yet to be discovered or fully analysed are threatened by logging and plantation companies as they destroy the forests for short-term profit.

Those of us who are appalled at the pure greed that threatens to destroy 'the lungs of South-East Asia' for ever, and all to house a few steroid soaked young people for a very short time in one of the most polluted cities on the planet (the Beijing Olympics if you're curious), must welcome mainstream journalists to our side. They still have a wider readership than we few bloggers.
 

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¶ 5:30 pm