AA NAN TAKANA

The cartoon above appeared in USA today Friday September 21, 2012. Depicting how the Muslim World have just ignore deaths of so many people in Syria, but when a video in Youtube can provoke and raise rages, the cartoon get my attention. It's appearance is stereotyping, but it does have a point. First, I would like to express my opinion about the appearance. Graphically the cartoon capture intelligently how the general west think about Muslim World. Arabic figures with sandals and untidy appearance; a woman with burqa; another woman using scarf on her head, a man with turban, an Alladin hat. Every thing represent external image of Muslim World. It represent how small the cartoonist know about I Islam and Moslems. The untidy appearance can represent the situation where most Moslems live right now, under developed notion, and poverty. After all, I am not sure what the dog represents here. My first impression translating it as representing the opinion that Moslems are no different ...

I surfed the Internet, watching videos of Ted x events in Jakarta in Youtube this morning. I found two very interesting videos. First, the video Ridwan Kamil spoke about change, on how Indonesian youth should be creative and be responsible to the community. Second Anis Baswedan who spoke about a program called Indonesia Mengajar. The most interesting part in Kamil's video is at the end of the speech where he remind his father's advice. His father told him that there are four kinds of youth; the smarts but do not care, the fools but care, the fools who do not care, and last the smarts who care. The  smarts who do not care are people who just think about their leisure such as students and scholars who work abroad, and too afraid to return to Indonesia to work with petty salary. The fool who care are those who go to demonstration, some times get paid for that. The fool who do not care are the hoodlums in the market and villages. The one that his father advocate him to be is th...

Saat pertama datang di Amerika Serika (AS), sering timbul keinginan membandingkan berbagai hal, baik itu besar atau trivia antara kampung dan tanah rantau ini. Sebagian besar adalah trivia karena memang yang terlihat itu hanyalah trivia. Diantara nya adalah istilah moto berbahasa latin di lambang negara amerika serikat  e pluribus unum. Moto ini dapat ditemui di semua koin AS. E Pluribus Unum memiliki arti yang hampir sama dengan Bhinneka Tunggal Ika Indonesia. Berbeda-beda tapi satu. Secara bahasa e pluribus unum berearti yang beragam (plural) satu (unum). Kedua moto yang serupa ini di tuliskan di pita yang di indonesia di pegang di kaki burung garuda, kalau di AS di gigit di paruh elang. Sebagai rakyat indonesia, agak memalukan memang, saya tidak tau bagaimana sejarahnya moto Binneka Tunggal Ika bisa sampai ada di kaki Garuda. Di AS sendiri moto ini berasal dari gentleman's magazine terbitan london tahun 1731, yang kemudian saat kemerdekaan AS tahun 1776 diakomodir menja...