Indonesian death squads reminisce in 'The Act of Killing'

As retired death squad captains go, Anwar Congo is surprisingly brash and suave. He struts the side alleys of Medan, a grubby second-tier Indonesian city, in mustard-colored suits and gold watches. He has Shaft’s fashion sense and — in his mind, it seems — Sidney Poitier’s fetching looks.

For decades, Anwar’s movie-gangster panache has helped divert attention from an ugly truth: He’s a mass murderer. By his own boastful admissions, Anwar was a mid-level player in a 1960s anti-communist killing spree that racked up at least half a million deaths, quite likely more. Estimates run as high as 3 million.

Anwar, now 72, is the unlikely leading man in The Act of Killing, a highly acclaimed documentary executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog. Recorded over eight years by Texas-born director Joshua Oppenheimer, the film challenges Anwar and his silver-haired cohorts to re-enact the bloody scenes from their youth, when they pursued and slaughtered their countrymen en masse. Anyone suspected of communist activity or sympathy was targeted; simply looking Chinese sufficed.

That these men so gleefully act out the horrors stored in their memory banks is jarring. Their swagger is owed to the fact that their murders were led and sanctioned by the government, which feared the communist wave rocking every Southeast Asian nation from Vietnam to Burma.

The men are doubly fearless now that their deeds are enshrined in Indonesian history as heroic.

“I felt as though I’d wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust,” Oppenheimer said, “only to find the Nazis still in power.”

The film is filled with 1960s and ‘70s Americana: Aging killers drunkenly jamming to Creedence Clearwater Revival, Anwar dancing the cha cha cha on a rooftop where he’d strangled men with wire, withered gangsters’ fetish for cowboy hats and tangerine turtlenecks. “Al Pacino,” Anwar says in the film, “he’s one of my favorites.”

Their Western pop culture fetish recalls an uncomfortable truth: The US government, busy exterminating communists in Vietnam, once cheered on and supplied Indonesian paramilitaries willing to wipe out their own homegrown insurgents.

The film also showcases the ugly cost of impunity. Though Anwar’s clique is no longer free to slay suspected communists, the men roam markets extorting Chinese shopkeepers with violent threats — all while being filmed by Oppenheimer. His exposé into contemporary crime — and his unflattering portrayal of powerful men — factored into his Indonesian crew’s decision to remain anonymous.

Oppenheimer spoke to journalists in Bangkok via Skype earlier this month. Here are his thoughts — edited for length — on angry reactions from former death squad members, America’s influence on Indonesia and the murky ethics of filming real-life shakedowns.

On feeling “love” for a mass murderer: Anwar and I are in touch every three or four weeks. We’ve been through an intense, personal and intimate journey together that has transformed us in different ways. I don’t know if it’s friendship ... It’s him running away from his pain and trying to deal with it at the same time. Me trying to expose a moral vacuum borne of impunity for genocide. But I think there is love between us.

On filming shakedowns against Chinese merchants: I raised the question with my crew: Maybe we shouldn’t shoot this. I don’t want to be an accessory to their crime. My crew said this happens in every market in Indonesia. Every day. Nobody ever films it. You have a responsibility to document it.

What I did is asked (the extortionists) ... to move along 50 yards and wait for me. I told them I was getting a release form signed. What I was really doing was explaining why we were there and paying everybody back. That transformed what would have been inexpensive into one of our most expensive days of shooting because we filmed 30 such encounters.

On potential threats to the Indonesian crew: The anonymous Indonesian crew, these are people who gave up eight years of their lives to work on this film. Risking their safety. Knowing they may never be able to put their names on this work.

Many Indonesians, helpfully, have only one name. It’s hard to find a member of this crew even if they know their names. There have been no safety repercussions since the film has been released though we remain vigilant. I have been threatened repeatedly. I could probably go to Indonesia now but I don’t think I’d get out again.

On the killers’ reaction to the film: When (Anwar) saw the finished film, he was very moved. Very quiet, tearful ... and then he pulled himself together and said, "Josh, this film shows what it’s like to be me. I’m grateful to have finally had the chance to express these feelings."

The high-ranking politicians who joined the film for their own personal reasons certainly don’t like the film and must feel betrayed a little bit. And I think they should be ... if they like the film, that would mean I’ve failed in my work.

[Editor’s note: in an interview with The Jakarta Post, Anwar called the film a “headache” and described himself as a “victim of the director’s deception.”]

On Indonesia’s ties to the West: So long as [Indonesia] has been a convenient client for US corporations, the narrative has always been positive ... This film is a corrective. It’s a mirror held up to society ... but also to all of us. Everything we buy, everything touching your bodies right now and my body, every article of clothing, is haunted by the suffering of the people who make it.

All of them work in places like the Indonesia in "The Act of Killing," places where there’s been mass political violence, where the perpetrators have won. That means we depend on Anwar and his friends. If you call them monsters — and I certainly do not, they’re human — but if you call them monsters then we depend on monsters for our everyday living.

It’s the underbelly of our reality. I said when I started premiering this film that, in a way, we’re guests of Anwar and his friends’ cannibalistic feast. But, in fact, we’re hosts of that feast.

On the Indonesian public’s response: It’s come to Indonesia like the child in "The Emperor’s New Clothes" pointing at the king and saying, “Look, the king is naked.” Everybody knew it but they were too afraid to say it.

This film has opened the space for the fearless sharing of stories ... people who no one ever knew had family killed or imprisoned are coming forth and saying, "This happened to us."

The head of Indonesia’s leading newsmagazine, Tempo, called me after a screening and said, ‘"Josh, there was a time before 'The Act of Killing' and a time after 'The Act of Killing.' Our magazine has censored stories about this period for decades. I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to grow old as a perpetrator like the men in this film ... we’re going to break our silence on this genocide and, in doing so, break the media’s 47-year silence."

In one fell swoop, it told Indonesians, "Look, you can talk about this." You can be open about this. And perpetrators no longer boast about what they’ve done.

Sources : Global Post

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Kenya piles pressure on Somali refugees to return home

Kenya on Friday said Somali refugee camps were being used as a safe haven for Islamist militants and said the time had come for hundreds of thousands of refugees to go home.

The country's interior minister also said 15 immigration officers had been fired in connection with an ongoing tightening of national security after last month`s attack on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall, which killed at least 67 people.

"For many years, Kenya has been host to the largest refugee community in the world, we are host to almost 600,000 refugees. We have welcomed, with open arms, refugees fleeing from insecurity in neighbouring countries," Joseph Ole Lenku told reporters.

"Some of these refugees have abused our hospitality and kindness to plan and launch terror attacks from the safety of the refugee camps. This cannot and should not be allowed to continue," he added.

In the wake of the Westgate attack, several Kenyan officials pointed the finger at Dadaab, a Somali refugee camp in the northeast and home to over 400,000 people, as being a "training ground" for Somali extremists.

Lenku stopped short of supporting calls from some Kenyan lawmakers that the camp be immediately closed, but said Somalia was "now experiencing relative peace" and that Kenya was now "working closely with the government of Somali and UNHCR to ensure that the repatriation process is as smooth and humane as possible."

Lenku also said a purge was underway in the immigration service, with 15 officers fired for issuing "Kenyan identity documents to illegal immigrants thereby endangering national security".

"For the avoidance of doubt, let me be loud and clear, the purge that has started today will extend to many other government departments," he said.

"So all those who may have been part of the network facilitating the issuance of Kenyan identification documents to illegal immigrants who turn out to be criminals, I have only one message for you: your days are clearly numbered," he warned.

The minister also vowed a complete audit of all identity cards and passports issued in the last two years to "flush out those who have been issued with illegal passports and other identification documents."

Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents claimed responsibility for the Westgate attack, saying it was in revenge for Kenya military action against the group in southern Somalia.

Sources : Antara

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Phonebloks The phone you can build like Lego

A new mobile phone concept that would give users a chance to choose from a range of components, and replace or upgrade them when necessary, has generated enormous interest online. But could this sustainable, modular device ever become a reality?

Six months ago, the Dutch designer Dave Hakkens took apart his favourite camera.

"I noticed all these little parts," he says. "And everything was good except for the lens motor. That had broken."

But when Hakkens contacted the manufacturer to get a replacement motor, he was advised to just replace the whole camera. "With your bike you repair the tyre, you don't throw the bike away," he says. "But for some reason this is what we do with electronics."

Hakkens realised that if a device could be taken apart and upgraded more easily it would last much longer, minimising electrical waste. And so the idea of Phonebloks was born.

The concept - Hakkens hasn't figured out how to actually make it - is for a phone with a replaceable screen and easily moveable, changeable "bloks", each containing a different element such as battery, chipset, gyroscope and so on.

In the video Hakkens made to publicise Phonebloks, the bits fall into place on the backplate of the phone like pieces of Lego. The bloks vary in size and can be made to tessellate in any number of combinations.

"Let's say this is your phone and you do everything in the cloud - why not replace your storage blok with a bigger battery blok?" asks the voiceover. "If you're like this guy and love to take pictures, why not upgrade your camera?"

Last month, Hakkens set about showing off Phonebloks using the "crowd speaking" platform Thunderclap. Users donate their social reach to a project they support, allowing the site to commandeer their Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook accounts to broadcast a message at a single, predetermined moment.

Hakkens was aiming for 500 people to sign up to his Thunderclap, but the Phonebloks video went viral, gaining seven million views in three days. He has now amassed 950,000 Thunderclap supporters and on Tuesday the Phonebloks video will ping across social networks 375 million times.

"It comes down to a consumer signal," says Kyle Wiens, the founder of iFixit.com, a repository for user-generated repair manuals to the latest gadgets. "The market needs to indicate to manufacturers that we care about modular, repairable hardware."

Phones have never been as modular as computers, but Wiens says they used to be sturdier and more repairable.

Take batteries. Until the iPhone came along in 2007, batteries on all handsets could be readily removed. With every new phone the power source is a little bit harder to get to, stuck down with more glue, or tucked away in a case that's more impregnable. To get the battery out of the HTC One, the geeks at iFixit had to mangle the phone's casing and remove the motherboard.

"I wish batteries were more replaceable than they are," says Bruce Harvey, an electrical engineer at Florida State University. "The reason they're not is in order to make the phone so small, the battery's shape is conformed to fit in there, rather than be a square block [like Phonebloks]."

It is consumer preference for a small phone that has pushed manufacturers to hide their batteries away. In the same way, our craving for ever-slimmer, speedier phones has led them to pile hardware - such as the central processor, memory and wifi - on to the same chip, not separate them out into blocks.

Harvey believes that Phonebloks is a technical challenge but an achievable one. The bloks could talk to one another if they were all designed to work with the same signalling system. However, he says the real difficulty would be in making a modular phone robust enough to survive the "harsh environment" of the trouser pocket. Each component would have to be encased in a material such as plastic, adding thickness and making the device less sexy.

"It's one of those things where if people look at it they say, 'Wow, I can be more ecologically sound, I get upgrades when I want to…'" he says. "Then someone shows them that their phone's going to be six-tenths of an inch (1.5cm) thick or something like that. Reality will meet up with hopes and dreams."

The challenge of marketing a modular system doesn't end with the chubbiness problem.

"We sadly live in a disposable society and people do have an expectation that they will change their phone every so often," says Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight (and proud owner of more than 800 handsets going back two decades).

How long people hang on to a handset varies across the world. On average it's just over three years, but in the US it's just 20 months.

Although new devices are almost always bought on a contract, people have come to regard their new phone as a "free upgrade". Lots of us wait impatiently for upgrade day - phone technology is advancing so fast that multiple components, though still functional, feel outdated after a couple of years.

Why your phone is rubbish (or will be)

However, this trend may not continue indefinitely, Wood says. Mobile phones could be approaching an "innovation plateau" where the basics like speed and screen resolution are as good as they can get. Add to this the regular software "drops" that make our phones feel like new, and people might start hanging on to their handsets for longer. In this kind of market, Phonebloks might become viable, Wood argues.

Home computers reached an innovation plateau some years ago, but while we replace our computers less frequently than we used to, not many of us exploit the modular nature of our PCs and upgrade the modules. However, in Hakkens's view that's because it isn't easy enough - only "die-hard geeks" are willing to reach for a screwdriver to unscrew their memory or motherboard.

Price is arguably the least important factor in the mobile phone market, but it may represent another challenge for Phonebloks.

In the long run, you might think consumers would save money with a modular system that can be continually upgraded and never needs chucking out, but this may not be the case.

Big phone companies achieve enormous efficiencies of scale by negotiating special rates with parts manufacturers, buying up production capacity for months at a time. In return, the parts manufacturers get investment for research and development and a guarantee of future business.

The idea of marketing "bloks" to end-consumers through a "blokstore" might not be so appealing to these companies, which might in turn prevent similar economies of scale being achieved.

Hakkens recognises that neither the big phone companies nor the manufacturers that work with them are likely to jump at his idea - he sees it as a chance for other electronics companies to enter the fray. He says he has been approached by a number of companies and individuals excited about getting involved.

"Right now, I'm thinking about what would be the best next step," he says. "Would it be to build it myself, open-source, online - or partner up with companies and collaborators?"

He seems to have been caught off guard by the attention his little idea is receiving. "I wasn't planning to do a next step," he admits, "but now I have all these people offering help."

Kyle Wiens and Ben Wood are enthusiastic about Phonebloks, but they both believe the concept might end in a half-way house - a phone in which the battery and screen, and possibly the memory and camera, can be easily replaced. For Wiens, the key to making a green phone is different - a design durable enough for the device to reach a second-hand market.

"The whole phone doesn't need to be modular so long as it can be repaired and kept in service," he says.

Dave Hakkens doesn't pretend to have all the answers, or even certainty that Phonebloks will see the light of day.

"Half of the world says it's possible, the other half says it's not possible," he says. "I don't think anyone really knows because no-one's really tried it. So that's the next thing to do - just figure it out."

Sources : BBC

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"Mudik" tradition in Turkey during festival of sacrifice

Tradition of "Mudik" or going back to the hometown does not only happen in Indonesia, but also in Turkey. 

That is how i experienced during the Kurban Bayram holidays here.

Kurban Bayram or the Feast of Sacrifice is celebrated by Muslims in Turkey, or known more as Eid al-Adha. The festival, which this year falls on the 15th to the 18th of October, commemorates an event when Islamic prophet Ibrahim sacrificed a ram, in place of his son Ismael, as an act of obedience to God.

As it is a public holiday, many Turkish people travel to visit family members and friends. 

Osman family Gedikli cut Animals for Qurban in their backyard in Duzce, Turkey, on Eid al-Adha.

I was invited to stay at Osman Gedikli`s house, a Turk and a father of my close friend, during the whole Bayram holiday in 'zmit, Kocaeli. On that time i didn't have a plan for the annual 4-day holiday. 

The student dormitory that i stayed in Ankara would also be closed during the Bayram holidays, so i decided to accept the invitation and went to Kocaeli.

I thought i would only be staying at the house and do nothing special for the Kurban Bayram, considering how secular Turkey is. But on the D-1 to the Bayram day, Osman Gedikli said that we were going to Duzce, the province where their grandparents live. So then i packed my bag and went with them.

On the way to Duzce, seeing the pleasant view of a natural village where the crops grow and cattles live free, i then remembered my family`s tradition to visit our grandmother`s house in Rangkasbitung, Banten. 

We visit our relatives, ask for forgiveness, and eat special Eid food. In Indonesia we usually eat ketupat (rice cake coated with coconut leaf) served with opor ayam (chicken cooked in coconut milk) or rendang (spicy meat).

Like in Indonesia during "Lebaran", Turkish people also visit families in their hometown. It was very crowded in the bus terminal where i departed Ankara. It reminded me of the "mudik" season in Indonesia where everybody goes back to their hometown and bus tickets were sold out.

The typical thing for the Feast of the Sacrifice is that parents buy new outfits for their children and give the old clothes to the poor. The children wear their new clothes throughout the festival just like "Lebaran" in Indonesia.

Many shops, banks and businesses are closed for the duration of the festival. Supermarkets usually remain open but on restricted hours. Travel is also hectic at this time, as people visit friends and relatives to celebrate. 

In Duzce, we meet with the grandparents. The children kiss the hands of the elders and put them on their foreheads, showing respect. After, the elders give money, a special Bayram "hediye" for the children, same as Indonesia's THR or Chinese's angpao tradition. 

Even i got hediye 50 Turkish lira (around Rp300.000) from the grandmother and 20 lira more from the grandfather. Lucky me since i am a student and not a kid anymore, but they still give me a THR.

"The Sacrifice Festival is about charity. People are constantly on the move visiting family and friends. Family ties get strengthened and children are given an opportunity to bond with the older generations," said Yusuf Gedikli, the grandfather.

The men only

A big Kurban difference between that in Turkey and Indonesia is about the Eid prayer. In Indonesia, everyone goes to the mosque on the Eid day before the Kurban sacrifice starts, regardless of their gender or age. While in Turkey, the men are the only ones who do the prayers, while the women go back home for preparing the meal. 

When the men return home, we all eat together with the meal prepared by the women before. After that, the Kurban sacrifice starts. This family sacrificed their cows which were under the name for seven people, including their aunt, uncle, and neighbors. 

In Islam, sacrificing a cow can represent seven people, while one goat or sheep can only represent one person.

While the Turkish government has recently made it illegal to sacrifice the animals in public places such as playgrounds and parks - advocating professional abattoirs instead - this is not always enforced. 

The Gediklis slaughtered a cow in the backyard. They then cut up the animal in full view for the ritual sharing of the meat to the needy people. Some pieces of the meat were also cooked at home.

We only spent one night in Duzce, regarding the fact that there were still some relatives back in Kocaeli. After returning from Duzce, we visited the other relatives` houses.

In Turkey, it is very common to serve sweets in Bayram, such as chocolate, candy, and cakes. There is a traditional Turkish dessert called Baklava, usually made special for Bayram. 

It is a sweet pastry with nuts inside and coated with melted sugar. Every time I visit a relative`s house, �ay (Turkish tea) and baklava are served.

It was a very happy time during Bayram, where all of the families meet each other, share stories, and eat good food. I had a great time experiencing this new culture, but i also miss my family tradition and our special Eid food back home.

Sources : Antara

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SOE ministry to take over Inalum from Japan

The House of Representatives agreed on Tuesday to hand over PT Inalum`s management to the State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Ministry following the government`s decision to acquire it after three years of negotiations with the Japanese government.

The House made the decision in its joint meeting with all parties, as the government decided not to extend the expired contract of PT Inalum, an aluminum joint venture between Indonesia and Japan in which Indonesia held 41.13 percent of the company`s shares and Japan owned 58.87 percent.

"House Commission VI and the government agree to hand over the management of Inalum to the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry based on the law," Commission VI Chairman Airlangga Hartarto said when reading a statement at the conclusion of the joint meeting with Industry Minister MS Hidayat and SOE Minister Dahlan Iskan, at the Parliament building here on Tuesday night.

The meeting was also attended by Head of the Government Development and Finance Comptroller (BPKP) Mardiasmo and North Sumatra Governor Gatot Pujo Nogroho. 

The House agreed to the results of negotiations carried out by The Asahan Project Negotiation Team, formed by the President in 2010.

"We hope the takeover process will be smooth so that the government will own 100 percent of PT Inalum`s stake beginning November 1, 2013," Hartarto said, referring to the contract of the joint venture firm, which will expire on October 31, 2013.

PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (Inalum) manufactures aluminum in Asahan, North Sumatra, with an annual production capacity of 230,000 - 240,000 tons.

The project began operating on January 6, 1976 based upon an agreement signed on July 7, 1975 and set to expire on October 31, 2013.

Japan, with 12 private Japanese firms in the joint venture, is the majority shareholder through Nippon Asahan Aluminium (NAA). 

Fifty percent of NAA shares are controlled by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), which represents the Japanese government, while the remaining 50 percent are owned by private Japanese firms such as Sumitomo Chemical Company Ltd, Sumitomo Shoi Kaisha Ltd, and Nippon Light Metal Co Ltd.

The House also agreed to transfer shares to Japan on behalf of the Indonesian government, based upon the results of the Indonesian negotiating team as contained in the Master Agreement with Japanese NAA.

Industry Minister MS Hidayat said he appreciated the House Commission VI`s endorsement of the agreement reached by the negotiating team with the Japanese side. 

"We hope all processes that have to be passed in the takeover of Inalum would proceed smoothly, based on plans, so that Inalum would be managed well," noted Hidayat. 

Last year, then-Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo, who is now governor of the central bank, Bank Indonesia (BI), said that Japan`s Nippon Asahan Aluminium should no longer extend its cooperation contract. Moreover, Indonesia suffered losses during the 22 year cooperation.

PT Inalum reported a profit of US$12 million in 2010, while its debt burden reached US$70 million, according to Hj Meilizar Latif, a member of North Sumatra`s Legislative Assembly (DPRD), last year.

The Indonesian government has chosen not to extend the contract and is prepared to pay some US$424 million to Japan to control all Inalum shares. However, both sides still have different estimates of the value of Inalum assets.

Differences occur because NAA Japan, shareholder of PT Inalum, calculated the revaluation of assets, while the government, through the Finance and Development Comptroller, or BPKP, does not recognize revaluation.

Now the government has proposed a new book value calculation of US$558 million for acquiring the 58.87 percent stake that has to be paid to Nippon Asahan Aluminium Ltd.

The US$558 million value was based upon the audit of the BPKP, worth US$424 million plus an asset revaluation assessment worth US$134 million, according to Chief Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa. 

Based on this agreement, the Inalum takeover process must be finished on October 31, 2013, at the latest.

Rajasa said that the new value being proposed by Indonesia was lower than NAA`s book value of US$626 million, but much higher than that of the BPKP, which totaled US$424 million.

"The revaluation has been going on, so that the value increases to US$558 million. Both sides will discuss this in the next two days," the coordinating minister for economic affairs added. 

Rajasa said that there were still five work days to finish the deal, including the fund transfer based upon agreements reached with the NAA side. Thus, the takeover process is expected to be finished through consensus without the need to go to the arbitration court. 

In the meantime, Industry Minister MS Hidayat said that the US$558 million value was the final bid for Indonesia to offer in the next one to two days. 

"The Indonesian government is inclined to settle the problem without going through the arbitration process. Although we have not reached a final deal, we still do not want to settle it on the arbitration table," he said.

After that, Hidayat said, both sides are expected to sign a document on the termination of the work contract between Indonesia and Japan at the Inalum office. 

"We hope the signing of the termination of the contract would be attended by representatives of the 12 stakeholder companies," the minister stated.

Meanwhile, before the House decided to hand over the management of Inalum to the ministry of state-enterprises, SOE Minister Dahlan Iskan said last week that he would not speculate on the make-up of the future management of PT Inalum, after it is taken over by Indonesia on November 1, 2013. 

"I will follow (whatever decision it will be made). It is up to the government whether it will be made into a state-owned company or put under the ministry of finance," he said, after attending a coordination meeting on food resilience at the office of the coordinating minister of economic affairs last Wednesday.

Dahlan also declined to elaborate, when asked whether the government might later choose to turn Inalum into a state-owned company under his management. 

He expressed confidence that by November 1, 2013 PT Inalum would return to Indonesia. Inalum is the only aluminum plant in Southeast Asia that has complete smelting facilities.

Sources : Antara

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JPMorgan Fine: The Worst Possible Response To The Financial Crisis

Far from being a cathartic event, JPMorgan's tentative settlement just shows how badly the aftermath of the financial crisis has been handled. Thanks in part to financial-industry lobbying, the Dodd-Frank reform rules have turned into a crazy-making 2,300-page document that will have lawyers scouting for loopholes. As Mayo puts it, "what we really needed was three pages outlining the Volcker Rule as Paul Volcker actually envisioned it"--meaning a simple separation of commercial and investment banking. That would end the too-big-to-fail problem by splitting the federally insured restaurant of deposit taking and lending from the risky casino of trading.

Jamie Dimon, chairman, president and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., listens during the Institute of International Finance Annual Membership Meeting in Washington on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013.

Of course, given the political and lobbying energy that's been poured into Dodd-Frank, that was never going to be an easy task. Just implementing the existing rules completely will take several more years. So what should happen now? If JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon really wants to appease the public, he should take a personal pay cut in 2013 to compensate for the billions in legal fees and fines that will dampen the bank's profit for a few quarters. (Dimon took home $18.7 million in 2012, after his bonus was cut in half because of the London Whale debacle.) More crucially, the government should come up with clearer rules of the road immediately. We need laws that hold financial executives personally responsible for actions that society deems harmful. And we need banking rules that make the system safer. The $13 billion in this deal buys us neither.

Sources : TIME

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JPMorgan Fine: The Worst Possible Response To The Financial Crisis

I find myself in the odd position of feeling sorry for a too-big-to-fail bank. JPMorgan Chase is reportedly ready to pay $13 billion to the U.S. government--potentially among the largest such settlements ever. The tentative deal, which is separate from other settlements that may be made with institutional investors, centers on alleged misdeeds in the selling of mortgage-backed securities, those spliced-and-diced housing-based assets that caused the 2008 financial crisis. It's supposed to allow JPMorgan to move beyond the sins of the crisis while also showing how tough the Department of Justice has gotten on banks, giving Main Street the warm feeling that Wall Street has finally paid for all the pain it caused.

Jamie Dimon, chairman, president and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., listens during the Institute of International Finance Annual Membership Meeting in Washington on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013.

In reality it does none of those things. In fact, this mega-settlement would be in some ways the worst possible response to the economic destruction of the crisis and the Great Recession. For starters, it does absolutely nothing to make the financial system safer. Rather than clear, sensible rules that prohibit risky behavior on the part of banks, we get enormous fines for ... what, exactly? The details of the settlement haven't been finalized yet, so we don't know the specifics of what the fines are supposed to compensate for. We don't know which institutions and executives were considered at fault, or indeed whether there was any criminal wrong-doing. (Investigations on that score continue.) It's likely that many of the transgressions were actually committed by Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, two institutions that JPMorgan bought--at the behest of Washington--during the financial crisis in order to stabilize the system.

Aside from ensuring that no head of any major bank is ever going to want to help the government in similar situations again, the deal also has the worrisome aura of a populist shakedown. Officials appear more concerned about appeasing anger over the financial crisis than doing the harder and more politically contentious work of re-regulating the banking system properly. Remember, five years on from the crisis, only 40% of the rules called for by the Dodd-Frank reform law have been completed. "The amount seems almost poll-based, as if Washington surveyed voters and asked how big would the penalty need to be for people to feel like JPMorgan paid a fair amount," says behavioral economist and finance expert Peter Atwater, who worked for JPMorgan in the late '80s and early '90s.

At the same time, the mega-settlement sends a perverse message. "If you are big enough and profitable enough, you can simply pick up the phone to the DOJ and cut a deal," says Mike Mayo, banking analyst at investment firm CLSA and author of Exile on Wall Street: One Analyst's Fight to Save the Big Banks From Themselves. "If you are ABC Community Bank somewhere in the Midwest, you don't have that option." It's true that $13 billion is a very big number--it's about $2 billion more than Google made in profit last year and roughly triple what BP agreed to pay after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But it's also what JPMorgan earned in profit in the first two quarters of this year. It's a hit, no doubt, but it won't cause lasting pain.

Sources : TIME

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The Japanese men who prefer virtual girls to sex

Unless something happens to boost Japan's birth rate, its population will shrink by a third between now and 2060. One reason for the lack of babies is the emergence of a new breed of Japanese men - the otaku, who love manga, anime and computers more than sex.

Tokyo is the world's largest metropolis and home to more than 35 million people, so on the face of it, it is hard to believe there is any kind of population problem at all.

But Akihabara, an area of the city dedicated to the manga and anime subculture provides one clue to the country's problems.

Akihabara is heaven for otaku.

They are a generation of geeks who have grown up through 20 years of economic stagnation and have chosen to tune out and immerse themselves in their own fantasy worlds.

Kunio Kitamara, of the Japan Family Planning Association, describes many young Japanese men as "herbivores" - passive and lacking carnal desire.

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I think twice about going out with a 3D woman”

Yuge

It seems they no longer have the ambition of the post-war alpha males who made Japan such an economic powerhouse and no interest in joining a company and becoming a salary man.

They have taken on a mole-like existence and, worryingly, withdrawn from relationships with the opposite sex.

A survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2010 found 36% of Japanese males aged 16 to 19 had no interest in sex - a figure that had doubled in the space of two years.

I met two otaku, who believe themselves to be in relationships with virtual girlfriends.

Yuge and Nurikan discuss their relationships with Rinko and Ne-Ne

This girlfriend is actually a Nintendo computer game called Love Plus, which comes as a small portable tablet.

Nurikan and Yuge take their girlfriends, Rinko and Ne-ne, on actual dates to the park, and buy them cakes to celebrate their birthdays.

"It's the kind of relationship we wish we'd had at high school," says Nurikan.

In the game he is a 15-year-old, though in reality he is 38.

"As long as I have time, I'll continue the relationship forever," says Yuge, who is 39.

"As she's at high school, she picks me up in the morning and we go to school together. After school we meet at the gates and go home together... In the game I am 17."

Yuge says he often puts Ne-ne - or the games console containing her - into the basket of his bicycle, then he takes photographs of them at his destination.

Though Yuge would like to meet a real woman, and Nurikan is married, they say this is easier than having a real girlfriend.

"At high school you can have relationships without having to think about marriage," says Yuge. "With real girlfriends you have to consider marriage. So I think twice about going out with a 3D woman."

Nurikan says he keeps Rinko a secret from his wife, and hopes he never has to choose between them.

It's hard to avoid feeling that otaku are in a perpetual state of childhood and are quite comfortable with their lives this way.

Exactly why they have retreated into fantasy land is not obvious.

Tokyo-based social commentator Roland Kelts says many young Japanese men are pessimistic about the future. They don't believe they will match their parents' wealth and don't want to commit themselves to relationships.

"If you compare China or Vietnam, most of those kids on scooters going to nightclubs, and dancing their heart away and perhaps having sex - they know it's getting better, they know they are probably going to rock their parents' income," he says. "No-one in Japan feels that way."

Several surveys have shown that even when Japanese men and women are in relationships, they have very little sex. In one survey just 27% said they had sex every week.

Marriage rates are also plunging, and very few babies - only 2% - are born out of wedlock.

Japan's demographic timebomb is also linked to the lack of immigration.

In Britain one in eight people were born abroad, compared to one in 60 in Japan. But immigration in Japan is still heavily restricted, despite a dearth of some qualified workers.

In Britain there are 60,000 healthcare workers from overseas, while in Japan - where there is a serious shortage of nurses - there are only 60.

Japan has managed to preserve its unique culture in an increasingly globalised world but could that very sense of identity stand in the way of solving its population problems?

Or is it just time for Japanese men to grow up, have more sex and make more babies?

Sources : BBC

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AG Calls Martin Killing an ‘Unnecessary Shooting’

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday called the killing of Trayvon Martin a “tragic, unnecessary shooting,” and said the Justice Department will follow “the facts and the law” as it reviews evidence to see whether federal criminal charges are warranted.

In his first comments since the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Martin case, Holder said the 17-year-old’s death provides an opportunity for the nation to speak honestly about complicated and emotionally charged issues. He said the nation must not forgo an opportunity toward better understanding of one another.

“I hope that we will approach this necessarily difficult dialogue with the same dignity that those who have lost the most, Trayvon’s parents, have demonstrated throughout the last year — and especially over the past few days,” Holder said. “They suffered a pain that no parent should have to endure — and one that I, as a father, cannot begin to conceive.”

The Justice Department is examining evidence in the case and testimony from the state trial to determine whether criminal civil rights charges would be brought. However, legal experts say Justice officials would likely be saddled with some of the same challenges that complicated the unsuccessful state case. The key to charging Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, lies in whether evidence exists that he was motivated by racial animosity to kill Martin, who was 17 when he was shot during a fight with Zimmerman in February 2012.

“There is a federal prosecution that theoretically is possible, but I’m sure federal prosecutors would think long and hard, given the state of the evidence, whether they would try to pursue that,” said Scott Sundby, a former federal prosecutor who teaches criminal law at the University of Miami law school. “You’d have to prove that George Zimmerman was seeking out to commit the crime against Trayvon Martin, specifically because he was African-American.”

President Barack Obama won’t involve himself in the Justice Department’s decision on whether to pursue a civil rights case because it would be inappropriate for the president to express an opinion on how the department deals with Zimmerman, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

Zimmerman, 29, was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges Saturday by a jury in Seminole County after claiming he fired his weapon in self-defense only after Martin attacked him. No evidence surfaced in the trial that Zimmerman had a racial bias, and his friends and family have repeatedly denied he harbored racial animosity toward blacks. Florida did not use its own hate crime laws against Zimmerman.

Holder’s comments on the case came in a speech to the 51st national convention of the Delta Sigma Theta, the nation’s largest African-American sorority, and drew strong applause with his characterization of the shooting: “We are … mindful of the pain felt by our nation surrounding the tragic, unnecessary shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., last year.”

Martin’s family and supporters maintain that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin and decided to follow him, leading to the fatal fight. Supporters of the Justice Department filing civil rights charges say additional evidence could exist in the federal investigation that didn’t come up in the state prosecution of Zimmerman, possibly even unknown witnesses.

Several civil rights groups, including the NAACP, are demanding that the Justice Department bring federal charges against Zimmerman, and there have been numerous protests around the country about the outcome of the Florida trial. Beyond the exact language of the law itself, the federal probe must navigate between sensitive racial and political issues that arose when Zimmerman initially wasn’t charged in Martin’s killing.

Barbara Arnwine, president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called the verdict “a travesty and miscarriage of justice” and urged the Justice Department to bring criminal civil rights charges against Zimmerman.

Zimmerman could get life in prison if charged and convicted under federal hate crime laws.

Several former prosecutors said they’d be surprised if the department were to charge Zimmerman under civil rights laws.

“I think it would be a very steep, if not insurmountable, hill to climb and would be shocked to see any further DOJ involvement,” said Jeffrey Sloman, former U.S attorney in Miami.

Sundby said the legal system does not always provide an outcome that satisfies people who believe Martin’s killing was unjustifiable and morally wrong.

“That’s frustrating as a lawyer to say, but sometimes the legal system — even if there’s a sense that an injustice was done — it doesn’t have an answer to that injustice,” he said.

Sources

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A Civil Suit Could Make Zimmerman Pay — or Could Backfire

Trayvon Martin's father Tracy cries as he listens to the description of his son's death during George Zimmerman's trial in Sanford, Fla., on June 24, 2013

In the end, "Stand your ground" played a small role in George Zimmerman's acquittal, but it could pose a big risk to Trayvon Martin's family if they pursue a civil trial

The jury weighing criminal charges against George Zimmerman has spoken, but the case may not be over — and that jury might not be the only jury. Trayvon Martin’s family is considering filing a wrongful-death civil suit against Zimmerman, which could produce a very different result. But it could also backfire.

Hollywood is not the only industry that believes in sequels. When criminal trials end — whether with a conviction or an acquittal — the victims are still free to sue for money damages. Most famously, after O.J. Simpson beat the murder charges against him, the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman sued him and won $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. (Whether the families were able to collect that money is a different story.)

A lawyer for Martin’s family put a civil lawsuit squarely on the table in a postverdict appearance on ABC’s This Week. “They are certainly going to look at that as an option,” Benjamin Crump said. “They deeply want a sense of justice.” The family has already received a settlement from a wrongful-death claim they made against the homeowners’ association of the subdivision where the shooting occurred, perhaps for more than $1 million. (The Department of Justice is also, separately, considering whether to bring federal hate-crime charges against Zimmerman.)

There are some good reasons to believe a civil suit could win, even after prosecutors struck out. Civil trials have a lower standard of proof than criminal trials. Instead of having to establish guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” — a particularly hard threshold to meet in a homicide case with few witnesses and little hard physical evidence — in a civil case, the Martin family would only have to prove it was more likely than not that Zimmerman’s negligence caused Martin’s death.

There would also be a new jury — perhaps one chosen in a different jurisdiction. Some trial watchers thought the jury that heard Zimmerman’s case was a good one for the defense — not least because it was nearly all white. The next jury might see the encounter between Zimmerman and Martin very differently. Another big difference: in a civil case, Zimmerman would likely have to testify. He chose not to take the stand in the criminal case — a right protected by the Fifth Amendment — and that seems to have been a smart move. At a civil trial, lawyers could cross-examine Zimmerman about the details, and inconsistencies, of his account of the shooting.

But for all of the potential upside, there would also be risks for Martin’s family in suing. First, while money may not be their primary motivation, Zimmerman does not seem to have millions of dollars lying around to pay a civil-damages award. There have been widespread predictions that in the next few years he will be richly rewarded with book deals and speaking fees — this is America, after all — but he likely also has some big legal bills to pay.

The bigger threat to Martin’s family would be Florida’s “Stand your ground” law, which wound up playing a small role in the criminal trial. Under the law, if Martin’s family sued, Zimmerman would be entitled to a hearing at which he would be given a chance to show that he used deadly force only because he was in reasonable fear of death or serious injury. He skipped that step before the criminal trial, but he would no doubt take it if he were sued. And if Zimmerman won his “Stand your ground” hearing, he would not only get the civil suit thrown out, but the law also says that whoever sued him would have to pay him attorneys fees, expenses and compensation for any loss of income resulting from the proceedings. That would be a bitter pill for the family to swallow: the man who shot their son to death beating the criminal charges, getting the civil lawsuit dismissed — and then presenting them with a bill.

Sources

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