Answers in a nutshell.

Nice name for a blog, eh?

That aside, here are some follow-ups.

That coin
The Guardian gives the following answer:

Jack Taylor used the coin for the game as it had been specially crafted by the Indonesian mint - only three were made, one of which was presented to Taylor for his services to football and it was very heavy.

Ujang Salemba who posed the original question comments that this is really a non-answer.

Water Works
Having criticised the performance of Thames Water who cannot manage to adequately supply water to Londoners let alone Jakartans, I was interested to note that they're selling their shareholding in the local company. Yosef Ardi reports on a story in TempoInteractive that, apart from continued UK investment, Indonesian businessmen led by Sandiaga Salahudin Uno (chairman of Indonesia's Young Entrepreneurs Association) will have a stake, with 5% being owned by Saratoga Investment, a company with family ties to Astra International.

Astra regularly tops polls for the best managed Indonesian company and it is my gut feeling that we may now see some 'social responsibility' being enforced in the management of what, after all, is a societal resource.

And I'm not just saying that because a new blog, Astra Watch, gives Jakartass a permanent link.

Tit for Tat?
It's very rare that Jakartass takes sides in geo-political issues. I back calls for ceasefires rather than crying out for vengeance. I do not support acts of war nor acts of terrorism, so it is rare for me to 'take sides'.

However, there is enough evidence on the net and out in the open to 'prove' that Israel's incursion into the Lebanon has been long-planned. Aangirfan supplies several links in my comments suggesting that Israel's fluid borders are because of their need for access to Lebanon's water. I am also impressed by this article by George Monbiot

Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the San Francisco Chronicle that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".

That such acts of premeditated violence encourage poor young fools from Indonesia and elsewhere to volunteer their lives is natural. That they would be doing precisely what Israel wants them to do ~ acts of so-called provocation only encourage responses ~ is also pre-meditated.

An immediate ceasefire is imperative. As it is in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Chechen .....
 

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¶ 11:30 am