Month: October 2023

At the peak of his power but unable to contest next year’s presidential election, Indonesia’s wildly popular leader, Joko Widodo, is hedging his bets between the top two candidates and nurturing a dynasty to ensure a lasting influence, sources say.

While Jokowi, as he is known, has appeared to back the contender from the ruling party, he has also been covertly marshalling support for controversial ex-general Prabowo Subianto to run Southeast Asia’s largest economy, four people with direct knowledge of the deliberations told Reuters.

Both leading candidates have indicated they will continue Jokowi’s economic policies, signalling continuity for flagship projects like moving the capital away from Jakarta and developing an electric vehicle industry in the trillion-dollar G20 economy.

But deepening Indonesia’s patronage and dynastic politics would be at odds with democratic reforms the world’s third-largest democracy has achieved since throwing off authoritarian rule a quarter-century ago, analysts say.

“This is just showing that he is every bit as much a transactional, practical and self-interested politician as his contemporaries,” Sana Jaffrey, a research fellow at Australia’s National University, said of the president’s divided loyalties.

“He is just not ready to part with power yet.”

The presidential palace did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Jokowi is not allowed to seek re-election after serving the maximum two terms.

The ruling Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), of which he is a member, has named a regional governor, Ganjar Pranowo, as its candidate. He is running against Prabowo, who lost the top job to Jokowi twice before joining his cabinet as defence minister in 2019.

A September opinion poll put Prabowo ahead of Ganjar 34% to 30% with a third candidate trailing. Other surveys show a tighter race.

The endorsement of Jokowi, who commands approval ratings of 80%, will have direct bearing on who wins February’s election.

In the strongest signal yet about who Jokowi is likely to throw his weight behind, his vast, informal volunteer network this week announced that all its regional branches had proposed Prabowo as their candidate of choice.

The hinted endorsement was the latest and most public move in what 10 sources describe as an opaque “double game” that Jokowi has been playing for months.

In August, Jokowi abruptly summoned the head of Golkar, Indonesia’s second-largest parliamentary party, to the palace, and instructed him to endorse Prabowo, even though the party had been poised to declare support for Ganjar, four sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

The National Mandate Party (PAN) received the same instruction, two sources said.

Days later Golkar and PAN announced support for Prabowo, giving him the largest party support base.

PAN denied this account, while presidential staffers and Golkar did not respond to requests for comment.

Jokowi has also lent support to Ganjar, deploying teams and volunteer groups to work on his campaign, four sources said.

As recently as September, the president appeared on stage at a national PDI-P event, telling the crowd he had advised Ganjar to start planning for the day he would lead the nation.

“I whispered to him, ‘After you’re inaugurated – a day after you’re inaugurated – you have to take care of food self-sufficiency. Don’t take too long’,” Jokowi said.

Ten sources say the moves to secretly back Prabowo were likely prompted by Jokowi’s desire to carve out his own power base amid a deepening rift between Jokowi and PDI-P chair Megawati Sukarnoputri, a stalwart of Indonesian politics who has in the past played kingmaker herself.

Jokowi has also engaged in talks about vice presidential picks for both Ganjar and Prabowo, three sources said.

The head of Ganjar’s campaign team said he was unconcerned about the claims as Jokowi had explicitly expressed for support for Ganjar’s candidacy, something he has not done for any other candidate.

The backroom machinations are striking in a country that in 1998 forced a corrupt and nepotistic autocrat, Suharto, to step down after three decades in power.

Jokowi was elected in part because he was seen as independent from the Suharto-era old guard, while Prabowo is Suharto’s ex son-in-law and the former head of the special forces.

In his decade in power, analysts say, Jokowi has deepened Indonesia’s entrenched patronage politics, although this has done little to dent his popularity across the sprawling archipelago of more than 270 million people.

“It’s not just patronage as usual, it’s brazen in a way that we haven’t seen for a long time,” said ANU’s Jaffrey.

Recent developments also suggest Jokowi has an eye on building his nascent dynasty.

His eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the 36-year old mayor of Surakarta, has been touted as a possible vice presidential candidate for Prabowo, although the legal minimum age is 40.

The Constitutional Court, headed by Jokowi’s brother-in-law, is expected to rule on Monday on requests to lower the age limit.

Jokowi’s youngest son, Kaesang Pangarep, 28, was recently appointed head of the Indonesian Solidarity Party just days after joining.

In Medan, Indonesia’s third-largest city, Jokowi’s son-in-law, Bobby Nasution, is the mayor.

With the uncertainty over where Jokowi’s loyalties lie, these placements are deliberate, said Yoes C. Kenawas, a research fellow from Atma Jaya University who studies dynastic politics.

“Ganjar and Prabowo are ‘Jokowi’s men’ but who knows after Jokowi steps down,” he said. “Blood is thicker than water.”

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a last-ditch appeal on Saturday for his fellow Australians to back a referendum to recognise Indigenous people in the constitution, as the country went to the polls to decide on the historic measure.

“I sincerely hope that Australians, when they walk into that ballot box today, vote ‘Yes’,” Albanese said in Sydney, according to a transcript.

Australians must write ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on the ballot to answer whether they agree to alter the 122-year-old constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people and create an Indigenous body, called the Voice to Parliament, that can advise the government on Indigenous issues.

A poll released on Saturday indicated the ‘No’ vote is likely to succeed despite a late lift in support for ‘Yes’. Academics and human rights advocates fear a win for the ‘No’ camp could set back reconciliation efforts by years.

Supporters of the proposal believe entrenching an Indigenous Voice in the constitution would unite Australia and usher in a new era with its Indigenous people, who account for 3.8% of the population and are its most disadvantaged, by most socio-economic measures.

Many Indigenous people favour the change, but some say it is a distraction from achieving practical and positive outcomes and would not fully resolve issues affecting them. The political opposition says the measure is divisive, would be ineffective and would slow government decision-making.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. (from 2100 GMT on Friday in Sydney and Melbourne to 2400 GMT in Perth), although nearly half the more than 17 million eligible to vote had cast their vote early. Voting is compulsory in Australia.

Vote counting starts after polls close at 6 p.m. (0700 GMT in Sydney), and the Australian Electoral Commission will release tallies as they come in.

At Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Indigenous man Michael Mahoney said he voted ‘Yes’ for “equality for all people, and a voice from my people to be part of our constitution”.

Nearby, Sydneysider Geoff Sumner said he voted ‘Yes’ in the hope that “this will make a difference and we can improve Aboriginal conditions all around”.

Another voter and ‘No’ campaigner, Greg Mason, doubted the usefulness of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

“The Voice is another bureaucracy on top of already multiple bureaucracies which don’t provide answers,” he said. “They don’t provide solutions to generational change.”

Referendums are difficult to pass in Australia, with only eight of 44 succeeding since the nation’s founding in 1901. Constitutional change requires a majority of votes both nationwide and in at least four of the six states.

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Malawi launched its first-ever Centre for Artificial Intelligence and STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics — Friday at the Malawi University of Science and Technology. Established with support from various U.S.-based universities, the center aims to provide solutions to the country’s innovation and technology needs.

The project’s leader, Zipangani Vokhiwa, a science professor at Mercer University in the U.S. and a Fulbright scholar, says the center will help promote the study and use of artificial intelligence, or AI, and STEAM for the socioeconomic development of Malawi and beyond.

“Economic development that we know cannot go without the modern scientific knowledge and aspect so the center will complement vision 2063 for Malawi as a country that needs to be moving together with the country developments in science,” Vokhiwa said. “Not to be left behind.”

Vokhiwa said the center, known by its acronym, CAIST, will offer educational, technical, policy, and strategy products and services in emerging technologies such as AI.

He said it will also offer machine learning, deep learning, data science, data analytics, internet of things and more that are based on humanistic STEAM education and research.

A consortium of various U.S. universities provided the center with pedagogical and technical support.

These include Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Tech University, Morehouse College, Colorado University, Georgia Southern University, Clemson University, New York University and Mercer University.

There are fears worldwide, however, that the introduction of AI will result in loss of jobs.

CBS news reported  that AI eliminated nearly 4,000 jobs in the U.S. in May.

But Vokhiwa said the advantages and disadvantages of AI are still debatable.

“As has been said by the experts, AI has both positive elements and negative elements,” he said. “But knowing fairly well that we cannot run away from digitization of what we do, AI will be needed, and Malawi does not need to lag behind.”

Vokhiwa said AI has helped create employment because it needs people to run the AI machines.

Malawi’s Minister of Education, Madalitso Kambauwa Wirima, officially opened the AI center at the Malawi University of Science and Technology.

She said the launch of the AI center has set the tone and laid the foundation for the country to explore the opportunities that come with new technologies.

However, she said, while AI has the potential to transform the country, there is also a need to address its downside.

“For this to happen, the government will be looking to CAIST for knowledge and expertise so that we can together facilitate the development of the necessary policy and regulatory frameworks governing responsible use of AI,” she said. “The earlier we do this the better, because AI is already here, and we are all using it. Some of us with enough knowledge, but many of us surely without full knowledge of it.”

Kambauwa Wirima said that whatever the case, AI is something that Malawi cannot avoid, mentioning that the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community is already addressing the issue.

“We adopted a decision to develop regional guidelines on the ethics of artificial intelligence to be domesticated and implemented by member states,” she said. “Therefore, Malawi cannot sit on the fence.”

Address Malata, the vice chancellor for Malawi University of Science and Technology, said the university is strategizing its operations to align them to various development agendas including Malawi 2063, Africa Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals, so that whatever the center does, it should benefit everyone.

How far gone is Donald Trump these days? He has a script in front of him, telling him what he’s supposed to say, yet he still can’t seem to remember which side of the Israel crisis he’s supposed to be on. Trump heaped praise on Hezbollah during a speech.

Now Trump’s babysitters are attempting to do damage control, posting this on Trump’s Truth Social page: “I have always been impressed by the skill and determination of the Israeli Defence Forces. As they defend their Nation against ruthless terrorists, I want to wish every soldier the best of luck. May you return home safely to your families, and may God bless you all!”

Well okay then. This is the kind of thing that Donald Trump should have said, but instead he said the opposite. Now his babysitters are once again trying to clean up Trump’s messes. When someone is so senile that they need babysitters, the media shouldn’t be hyping them as a supposed candidate in the next presidential election. Everyone knows Trump isn’t going to last that long.

The post Senile Donald Trump’s babysitters hit the panic button as they try to clean up his mess appeared first on Palmer Report.

When Jim Jordan and his allies went out of their way to try to tank Steve Scalise’s nomination for Speaker of the House this week, it allowed Jordan to capture the nomination instead today. But it also appears to have created such hard feelings that Jordan’s already weak odds of finding the votes have now taken a tumble.

The first sign of trouble was when House Republicans decided to go home for the weekend instead of holding a full House vote for Speaker this afternoon. This was a pretty clear sign that Jim Jordan isn’t even close to having the votes. Now it’s gotten even uglier.

One unnamed House Republican is now telling Politico that if Jim Jordan tries to force a House floor vote on whether to make him Speaker, some House Republicans might stay away – thus allowing the Democrats to elect Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker.

So that’s where we’re at now. House Republicans in the most vulnerable 2024 races are now flat out stating that they’d rather have a Democrat as Speaker than have Jim Jordan as Speaker. There are almost no words for how cartoonishly embarrassing this is for the Republicans. They’re a punchline and they need to be replaced by Democrats in 2024. You can donate to the DCCC here.

The post House Republicans talk of revolt as Jim Jordan’s Speaker nomination begins falling apart already appeared first on Palmer Report.

More than 1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza faced an Israeli deadline on Saturday to flee south, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had only just begun to retaliate for last week’s Hamas rampage across southern Israel.

U.S. President Joe Biden said consultations were under way with regional governments on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as trapped Palestinians faced shortages of power, food and water amid Israeli bombing.

Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas for the attack a week ago in which its fighters killed 1,300 Israelis, mainly civilians, and seized scores of hostages.

Israel has since put the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, under a total siege and bombarded it with unprecedented air strikes. Gaza authorities say 1,900 people have died.

More than one million residents of northern Gaza on Friday received 24 hours notice from Israel to flee south before an expected ground offensive. Hamas vowed to fight to the last drop of blood and told residents to stay.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said tank-backed troops had mounted raids to hit Palestinian rocket crews and gather information on the location of hostages, the first official account of ground troops in Gaza since the crisis began.

“We are striking our enemies with unprecedented might,” Netanyahu said in a rare statement televised on Friday after the Jewish Sabbath began. “I emphasise that this is only the beginning.”

While several thousand residents headed south on Friday from northern Gaza, many others said they would stay. “Death is better than leaving,” said Mohammad, 20, outside a building smashed by an Israeli air strike near the centre of Gaza.

Mosques broadcast the message: “Hold on to your homes. Hold on to your land.”

The United Nations and other organisations warned of a disaster if so many people were forced to flee, and said the siege should be lifted to let in aid.

“We need immediate humanitarian access throughout Gaza, so that we can get fuel, food and water to everyone in need. Even wars have rules,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Friday.

Biden, speaking to reporters during a tour of a Philadelphia shipping terminal, said addressing the humanitarian crisis was a top priority.

U.S. teams in the region, he said, were working with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, other Arab governments and the United Nations.

“The overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas and Hamas’ appalling attacks,” he said. “And they’re suffering as a result as well.”

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said it was impossible for Gazans to heed Israel’s order to move south without “devastating humanitarian consequences”, prompting a rebuke from Israel that the U.N. should condemn Hamas and support Israel’s right to self-defence.

“The noose around the civilian population in Gaza is tightening. How are 1.1 million people supposed to move across a densely populated war zone in less than 24 hours?” U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths wrote on social media.

Mahmoud Abbas, president of Hamas rival Palestinian Authority, told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jordan that the forced displacement would constitute a repeat of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from what is now Israel. Most Gazans are descendants of such refugees.

Gaza is one of the most crowded places on earth, and for now there is no way out. In addition to Israel’s blockade, Egypt has resisted calls to open its border with Gaza.

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday met Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Austin said military aid was flowing into Israel but that this was the time for resolve and not revenge.

Gallant said, “The path will be long, but ultimately I promise you we will win.”

Blinken met King Abdullah in Jordan on Friday as well as Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank but lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007. Blinken later flew to Qatar, a U.S. ally with influence among Islamist groups.

In the West Bank, demonstrators supporting Gaza fought gun battles with Israeli security forces. Palestinian officials said 16 people were shot dead.

There have also been fears of hostilities spreading, including to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where clashes this week have already been the deadliest since 2006.

Reuters news videographer Issam Abdallah was killed on Friday while working in southern Lebanon. Reuters said it was seeking more information and working with regional authorities.

Earlier, Reuters reported that Israeli shelling had struck a Lebanese army observation post at the border.

The Israeli military said it fired in response to a suspected armed infiltration, but later said it was a false alarm.

Israel’s U.N. envoy said it would investigate what had happened in the area following the journalist’s death.

“We always try to mitigate and avoid civilian casualties. Obviously, we would never want to hit or kill or shoot any journalist that is doing its job,” Gilad Erdan said.

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One of the many reasons House Republicans shouldn’t be allowing George Santos to remain in Congress while he’s awaiting criminal trial is that when you see him holding a baby that he admits isn’t his, before ditching the baby and running down the hallway while screaming the F-word, you truly don’t know if it’s just a clown show or perhaps some kind of bizarre criminal plot. After all, the guy is out on bail on twenty-three felony charges.

When the media asked Santos if the baby was his, he said “not yet.” What does that mean? People on social media are now asking, perhaps only half-jokingly, if this was some kind of kidnapping plot. That sounds like exactly the kind of thing you’d say while, you know, kidnapping a baby.

This is all so insane that even right wing publications are now mocking George Santos for the whole spectacle. We’re sure the baby is fine, but we still haven’t found any news outlets who have been able to identify who the baby was. And Santos’ only response thus far has been to tweet a video of himself screaming:

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The person who confronted George Santos has apparently been arrested, so maybe Santos really is the victim in all this. But Santos is clearly completely out of his mind at this point. If he’s behaving like this now, what’s his behavior going to look like a week from now, once it sinks in more for him that he’s going to prison for a very long time? This guy is spiraling.

We’re pretty sure this whole thing wasn’t a kidnapping plot, but again, this guy is out on bail. What the bleep is he still doing serving in Congress? He shouldn’t even be allowed inside Congress on a guest pass.

The post What the bleep was all that with George Santos and that baby? appeared first on Palmer Report.

Iran eyes to expand oil exports despite U.S. sanctions: minister  Xinhua

Trump says he stands with Netanyahu after a barrage of GOP criticism for saying he ‘let us down’  WRIC ABC 8News