NOTES FROM NEXT DOOR: April 2024

Monday, April 29, 2024

FOXED TO FIX PROBLEMS? TRY THE MILITARY WAY

THE LEARNED SOLUTION: FIX PROBLEMS WITH VIOLENCE

Are you well-armed, fired up, pitchfork to hand? The quarry is elusive, his background suspect but we know his name - DV. Are we getting closer?

Every case is searingly awful but overall there have apparently been changes, with Crikey using Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data to claim domestic homicide rates have fallen:

“A decade ago over 60 women a year were murdered by partners; the number has been below 50 since 2018.” Allegedly there have been 25 so far this year.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus reckons there’s a “crisis of male violence”. PM Anthony Albanese has said “men and boys have to clearly have discussions about these issues.”

Swag of reasons have been offered, from lousy parenting, bad teachers, mental sickness, economic distress, social snubbing, feeling worthless, being jobless and - according to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton - entertainment, technology and rudeness:

“I think social media has a role to play here. The computer games that young boys are playing where violence is a very significant part …what they’re seeing on social media, the normalisation of all of that, it’s just the lack of manners in society more generally…”

However, there's one rarely mentioned reason, discomforting to raise in Anzac Week: Militaries train men to believe problems have to be solved by violence and that's embedded in our culture.

Unless a family member is involved most Australians don’t get to see military top-ups at Kapooka, the training base for our 28,000 soldiers near Wagga Wagga, so little public debate.

But Indonesia makes enrolments public and celebratory like those in the East Java garrison city of Malang. The latest was last weekend.

Admiring friends and families, youngsters flanked by proud Dads and tissue-clutching Mums watched their adolescent friends, brothers and sons walk through the guarded gates. Sisters and daughters weren’t seen.

Months later the crowds will be back blocking the street again and this time allowed closer to the parade ground. Here their upcoming heroes will show how they've transformed from ambitious individuals or aimless youth to robots.

They’ll be shouldering tools designed to smash with efficiency the bones, flesh and organs of people just like them and us but with other ideologies.

How can any nation halt violence, international or domestic, when it trains its males to solve problems with brutality? US psychologist Abraham Maslow is remembered for his aphorism: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

For hammer read fist, gun or knife.

For personal safety and threatening suicidal extremists violence is probably the only answer; but for all face slaps and insults, why does defence so often become offence?

Like Australia, Indonesia has an appalling DV record though much under-reported because of public shame, poor police training and a culture that says hits in the home are a private matter.

Public barbarity sets the tone. Back in 1965, the military helped militias slaughter real or imagined Communists in a genocide of half a million or more fellow citizens. Five Australian journalists were murdered in Balibo, East Timor, 50 years ago.

Just before the new century arrived so did mobs in Jakarta killing more than 1,000 - mainly ethnic Chinese citizens of Indonesia.

More recently the nation’s new leader has been accused of past human rights abuses.

Likewise, some in our armed forces, though the case involving Ben Roberts-Smith is set to be appealed.

Such histories suggest public abhorrence should follow and perhaps it is, though slowly. Here’s why: We have a problem finding enough toughies to don a uniform along with the US, UK and other Western nations that recognise the links of official and domestic violence.

There are no recruitment gatherings outside Jakarta's Foreign Affairs Department where well-educated polyglots seek careers as diplomats using words, not weapons.

Indonesia’s 3,500 official peaceniks (less than one per cent of the warmen) aren't obvious or lauded, so we're left with the image of those keen to enrol in the bang-bang business and be cheered for their work.

Indonesia is currently at war with itself using rotations of about 4,000 of its 400,000 troops to destroy (the smoother term is 'put down') a prolonged low-level conflict involving indigenous West Papuans. They want independence - just as the Javanese did when fighting the returning Dutch colonialists in the late 1940s.

Close to the recruits' Malang barracks is a statue celebrating their predecessors' patriotism, though at the time the Netherlands called them terrorists. This label is currently tied to the Free Papua Movement.

Few know what awful things are happening in the closed province and most don't want to hear. That includes the Australian government and opposition.

The more gung-ho selected to ‘serve’ in West Papua will salute their good fortune in having real targets and maintaining the ‘unity state’, though families of the 106 ‘security forces’ who’ve died there chasing ‘armed criminal groups’ since 2010 will think differently.

So will the civilian victims of the conflict - tens of thousands dead according to reports that can’t be verified.

The recruits in Malang, Kapooka and elsewhere will be learning to squeeze triggers to zing bullets through cardboard cutouts of fellow humans. Seeing what results their more imaginative colleagues will secretly hope their fate is not to kill and be burdened with guilt for a lifetime.

Many will escape that nightmare because the Army is so big and under-employed that lower ranks often have to dig out landslides and help with other natural disasters.

As Indonesia is a pious nation pacifists will pray soldiers stay shouldering hoes across slipping hillsides rather than assault rifles through Papuan mountains. However, appeals to the never-seen but much-praised phantom rarely work. The deity, if she, he or it stays true to form and history, won't have a care in heaven.

The options: Use our intelligence to work out how to do the job of turning aliens into allies and accept women as equals, or give up and keep primitive violence as the default fix.

As the establishment media in Australia is keen to bugle every 25 April, this is not the time to talk of the ugliness of military matters, only to recognise the sacrifice of those who will not grow old.

Respect from we who are left behind means keyboarding free opinion in English and not propaganda in German or Japanese. A pause, though not a halt from seeking better ways of handling problems and recognising a root of male violence

The seeds are nurtured by unverifiable tales of patriotism so worthy of interrogation. As the present political pushaway goes, all can be ‘a topic of conversation’.

But beware; The lofty right will pronounce suggestions of links between martial training and marital biffo as woke, making us a nation of milksops compared with hard Indonesia.

Gods forbid.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 9 April 2024:https://johnmenadue.com/the-learned-solution-fix-problems-with-violence/

NO APPEALS - ACCEPT UGLY REALITY

THE COURT DECIDES, THE DOOM FOLLOWS?

As predicted in Pearls & Irritations earlier this month, an appeal by the two losing candidates in the 14 February Indonesian presidential election has been trounced by the Constitutional Court in Jakarta.

The challenges to the result came from former Jakarta Governor and one-time University rector Dr Anies Baswedan (25 per cent), and former Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, (16 per cent).

The judges voted five to three to toss out allegations the state had interfered to back the hands-down winner of the three-way contest, disgraced former general Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto. He snared 58 per cent of the vote.

During the hearings, not attended by Jokowi, his ministers said claims were nonsense. Tucker boxes and other welfare aid handed out just ahead of the vote were to help the poor and not designed to sway voters.

It's not called pork barreling in Indonesia where the meat is taboo for most, but the intent is the same.

The Court's decision means the right-wing Prabowo and his vice-presidential running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka will have their hands on the wheel of the world's third-largest democracy in October. By then Prabowo will be 73.

There are no further appeal provisions and so far no street riots, as happened after the 2019 election when Prabowo lost.

Another argument used in the bid to overturn the election result was plagiarism.

Gibran, 36, is the eldest son of the current president Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo. Indonesian law prevents anyone under 40 from standing for high office, but the Constitutional Court, then headed by his uncle, decided to let the young man be a candidate.

Anies' and Ganjar's legal team told the court democracy would suffer if Prabowo's win was upheld - and they could be right as the dogs are already snarling for the spoils.

In the Indonesian system, all parties form coalitions to boost their chances, and even those who backed the losers are now saying life will be better with the winner who can share bits of the bones, maybe even some offal for the disgruntled donors

Prabowo heads the Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement) Party he created in 2008. It drew six smaller parties before the election while Anies had three and Ganjar four.

Once enthroned in October, Prabowo and Gibran have five years in office. This will leave the losers with little to do but snap and snarl while dashing down the roadside fence as the triumphant swans pass.

The Westminster system doesn't operate so there's no cohort of shadow ministers supposedly full-bottle on the government's departments and duties, ready to take over temporarily should the elected government collapse.

The vindictive sniping and vile slurs that make up much of Australian parliamentary behaviours are rarely heard. Indonesian politicians can be as nasty as their Down Under colleagues, but they tend to keep the hate under control in public statements.

Sounding off and being beyond defamation lawyers if speaking on the floor and during a parliamentary sitting isn’t a privilege for Indonesian MPs. A few are now favouring the courts to correct the slurs they encounter - a trend making NGOs careful of their language.

Opposition in most democracies is a miserable job, but if the minors can creep into the shade of the big tent they’ll likely get rewards for moving, such as a soft ministry where salaries are higher and corruption chances better - such as Religious Affairs.

What happens next? The victors will give out the goodies and long-serving ministers under Jokowi, like Foreign Affairs Minister Reno Marsudi, 60, will probably be replaced by a more Prabowo-minded candidate.

She or he doesn't have to be an elected member. Experts and mates from outside politics can be appointed as a minister without having to join a party.

Retno, who was ambassador to the Netherlands before promotion and studied European law pre-career. She’s been in the job for ten years serving a president more interested in domestic affairs where he has done well building toll roads and new railways along with a universal health scheme.

Like Medicare, its well-being is under threat by doctors used to the private system so seeking more government money for their skills. Public hospitals are also discovering a need for the latest diagnostic equipment and bigger staff carparks. Fixing these inherited hassles is going to test the talents of the new administration.

An off-the-cuff promise made by Prabowo while campaigning is also going to cause headaches and a lot of unbudgeted money - $47 billion for free meals at primary schools.

The intent is good; early childhood stunting and wasting caused by malnutrition and non-nutritious meals is a serious issue affecting more than 20 per cent of youngsters.

Bringing that figure down to Australian levels, reportedly among the world’s lowest, is going cost a ransom and probably involve overseas help - shaming the new government that prefers to be known for its more obvious triumphs.

Top of the list is Jokowi’s legacy show, the new capital of Nusantara in Kalimantan on Borneo Island, and a voracious money guzzler.

Much of last year was spent by Jokowi trying - and failing - to get foreign investors to support his idea that the best way to take the weight off sinking, polluted and overcrowded Jakarta, was to start afresh 1,000 km north.

It's widely believed that Gibran was steered by Dad into the VP job to ensure Prabowo keeps his predecessor's so-called green city mega-project with its ostentatious palace arising from felled forests.

First published in Pearls & Irritations 6 April: THE COURT DECIDES, THE DOOM FOLLOWS Duncan Graham